Dennis Tuuri

The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Let’s pray.

Almighty God, we thank you for calling us forward this Lord’s day into holy convocative worship, to sing praises to your name, to hear from the unscriptured word, and to rejoice in the presence of Jesus among us in the word and in the sacraments.

We thank you Lord God that you find our worship acceptable this morning. But as we come forward we acknowledge that you are our creator and you are the one who made all things and who are to who is totally righteous and just and good and holy. We come before you Lord God then acknowledging that we are not totally righteous, good, just or holy but indeed we are fallen and that we have sinned this week and indeed this morning in failure to conform ourselves perfectly to your scriptures and to your law word.

We thank you Lord God for giving us an understanding of who you are and as a result for reminding us of who we are, sinners in need of grace. We thank you, Lord God, that your word is a word of proclamation that grace has been extended to sinners through the shed blood of the savior Jesus Christ who kept covenant for us. We thank you, Father, for accepting our worship then because our sins are forgiven through his atoning blood and we have his imputed righteousness in which we now come before you robed as it were in his righteousness, not our own.

And so our worship is acceptable this day. Thank you, Lord God, for assuring us in your scriptures as we come forward repentant for our sins with the mind to amend our ways according to your scriptures that you do indeed declare yourself to have brought forgiveness to us in the work of Jesus Christ. Open wide our mouths then Lord God, we thank you for creating us anew in Jesus and giving us new breath as it were to sing forth new praises to you and a new song for him of him who triumphed gloriously over sin and death and brought his people into the kingdom.

Help us then this day sing praises to you with loud voices and have open ears to hear your scriptures and to hear what you say to us that we might live apply in response to you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Oh come let us sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord. Call upon his name. Sing unto him. Sing psalms unto him. Glory ye in his holy name. Seek the Lord and his strength. Remember his marvelous works that he hath done.

Oh ye seed of Abraham his servant, he is the Lord our God. He hath remembered his covenant forever, which covenant he made with Abraham, and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, saying, “Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan.” When they were but a few men in number, when they went from one nation to another, he suffered no man to do them wrong, saying, “Touch not mine anointed.” Moreover, he called for a famine upon the land. He sent a man before them, even Joseph, whose feet they hurt with fetters, until the time that his word came. The king sent and loosed him. He made him lord of his house to bind his princes at his pleasure. Israel also came into Egypt and he increased his people greatly.

Sermon scripture is found in John 6, verses 53-59. The Gospel of John 6:53-59. But we’ll be speaking to the whole of the text of John 6.

This is a summation of that particular portion of scripture. John 6:53-59. Then Jesus said unto them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him.

As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead, but he that eateth of this bread shall live forever. These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.”

We’ve been going through a series of sermons explaining why we do what we do in corporate worship here at Reformation Covenant Church.

We began our series on biblical worship with the call to worship, the portion of scripture that we read every Lord’s day morning as we are called to worship, reminding ourselves we are here because God calls us. And as Psalms repeatedly indicate as well as the book of Hebrews, if we fail to heed that call and come forth, we’re cursed by God. So we’re called to worship. God initiates worship. Very important that we started there, that we understand that.

Having said that, we recognize that call is to every Sabbath day, every Lord’s day, every Christian Sabbath to come forward to worship God. And that is why we’re coming forward—not primarily to fellowship and primarily to worship God and to meet with him. Having said that and understood God’s initiative in worship, however, then we talked for a week about the day of preparation, how to be ready to come forward to worship God.

Then we talked about our response to the call to worship as a prayer of confession of sins and absolution. And we for a couple of weeks used a formalized set of confessions and absolutions that were used during the time of the Reformation. We have used those occasionally in our communion liturgy. And we will also use them occasionally in our first half of our service in this part of the formal worship service—the portion that is more geared after what has been called the synaxis or the synagogue portion of worship.

The idea is that as we come before our creator and redeemer and sovereign, we recognize who we are and therefore we throw ourselves down at his face as dead men. We looked at that pattern throughout the scriptures where you have an understanding of the presence of God. The response of man being forgiven, confession of sins, falling down as dead men before God. God absolves man. He takes the coal off the fire, puts it on Isaiah’s lips. The coal is Jesus, of course, he is the whole burnt sacrifice, burnt up and taking upon himself God’s wrath due us for our sins. Jesus is put on our lips, as it were the word of absolution is given to us and so we come back to newness of life, a new creation, and that always ends up in service to the one who redeems us and gives us the new creation.

And so absolution and confession is an important part of the correct biblical liturgy or order of service. And then we talked about the hymn of praise and its roots in the scriptures. We talked about the song of Moses, the song of the Lamb in Revelation 15, and the other songs recorded in the throne room of God. So as we come around God’s throne room and God brings us back to worship him in this new creation and gives us back the breath into our lungs—as it were that breath being taken away and the forgiveness of our sins and understanding of our death apart from the saving work of Jesus Christ—we give, he gives us back that breath so we might sing praises to him.

And then we talked about the antiphonal nature of worship as it has developed in the psalms that we read responsively every week. The psalms are written antiphonally, a way of response, and it’s a reminder to us that our lives are lived in response. God speaks. We respond to his initiative, and that’s a pattern for our whole life and indeed everything that happens in our life comes forward because God’s word spoken into being and his providence brings to pass all things his decree has ordained for us.

And so all of our lives are in response, either correctly or incorrectly, to God, either with unthankfulness or with thankfulness for what he has brought into our lives. And then last week we talked about the prayer of illumination that precedes the sermon. And we said that as we open the word of God here on Sunday, and also then as a pattern again for the rest of our lives, that word of God must be prayed for. That the word of God is not like any other book. It’s a book that must be spiritually understood. And so the Holy Spirit ministers to us the word as he takes those words and writes them on our hearts and helps us to understand them. And so we pray that God’s spirit would do that for us and would illumine the word of God to us, would open up and take the scales off of our eyes so we can see it.

I wanted to read a quote here reminding us of this.

One other thing I wanted to mention there, there was some talk last week about rationality versus irrationality. And there’s an excellent article that Mark McConnell gave me. I’m not sure actually if I’ve given him back his original copy or not. It was an article by Vern Poythress. And while we don’t necessarily agree with everything Poythress writes, nor does anybody, and that’s why the word of God is different—we agree with it 100%—Vern Poythress wrote an article in the Westminster Theological Journal, I believe, on the loss of interpretation and he just applied Trinitarian apologetics to the idea of understanding and rationality at all.

And the point he makes is that you can only understand and interpret things correctly if you have a biblical worldview and if you are submissive to God. And to the extent that the culture moves away from Jesus Christ in America today, it also moves away from rationality. It moves away from the ability to understand things correctly because he’s the source of all interpretation. And so I bring that up by way of saying that the spirit of God doesn’t just take this word and zap us somehow and get it into us. He uses our intellect and he makes it rational to us.

Okay, now rationalism—and depending upon totally upon our senses for an understanding of what’s right and wrong—can be taken too far, of course. But the point is there have been some writers who are associated with reconstruction who talk about actually talk about the equal ultimacy of the rational and the irrational. I don’t understand that sort of thinking. I don’t know if that means that half of the time we’re supposed to be acting irrationally or what that means. But the point is that the spirit ministers the word to our rationality and he corrects our rationality and helps us understand things correctly according to God’s perspective. Those two aren’t different ends of the pole. They come together in Jesus.

I also wanted to quote again from Calvin on this idea of the spirit’s illumination of the word. Quoting now from the Institutes, book one, chapter 9, paragraph or section three, on the knowledge of God the creator. Calvin said, “The Holy Spirit so inheres in his truth which he expresses in scripture that only when its proper reverence and dignity are given to the word does the Holy Spirit show forth his power.”

“And what has lately been said—that the word itself is not quite certain for us unless it be confirmed by the testimony of the spirit—is not out of accord with these things. For by a kind of mutual bond, the Lord hath joined together the certainty of his word and of his spirit, so that the perfect religion of the word may abide in our minds when the Spirit who causes us to contemplate God’s face shines, and that we in turn may embrace the spirit with no fear of being deceived when we recognize him in his own image, namely in the word.

“So indeed it is—God did not bring forth this word among men for the sake of a momentary display, intending at the coming of his spirit to abolish it. Rather, he sent down the same spirit by whose power he had dispensed the word to complete his work by the efficacious confirmation of the word.”

What’s the source of the Holy Scriptures? Holy men were taught by the Holy Spirit and they wrote the scriptures for us, and the spirit comes and ministers to us in the words of that revelation. And so the spirit and the word are joined, and the prayer for illumination every week asking the spirit to illumine the text to us completes that for us and reminds us of all that.

This morning we’re going to go on to talk about the sermon proper.

Much could be said, of course, and has been said, about the preaching of God’s word. Much of the scriptures—Psalm 119, which we quoted from last week, of course—is a whole psalm written in praise of God’s word. This morning I decided to take several sermons from the scriptures and look at them, make context, show the context rather for what biblical sermons are and also make comments on them as we go through them.

Now we said that liturgy, which simply means the order of service, don’t associate liturgy with high church or low church. Liturgy is just the order, what we do, the service that we do every week. There’s good liturgy and there’s bad liturgy. And good liturgy is reformed according to the scriptures. And part of that, of course, is an understanding of God’s regulative principle. We said before that regulative principle cannot be restricted to worship. It really applies to God’s regulation of all of our lives by the word of God. But certainly in worship, we are commanded not to bring our own invention, not to worship our will, but to worship God the way he tells us to worship him. And so we want to begin this morning then by asserting the authority of the scriptures for having a sermon in church worship services. And it may seem like a silly thing to do, but there are people again associated with reconstruction that doubt whether sermons are really a part of biblical worship.

So we want to look at a couple of sermons from the Old and New Testament here to give us the authority of the scriptures for what we do according to God’s regulative principle. And as I said along the way, we’ll make certain comments.

Okay, point number one then: the sermon has biblical warrant. And we’ll start with the Old Testament witness of Nehemiah 8:2-8.

Nehemiah 8. It’s probably good for you to turn to that text. Nehemiah 8:2-8, where we have a sermon or a set of sermons talked about. Nehemiah 8, verse two: “The priest Ezra brought the law before the congregation both of men and women and all that could hear with understanding.”

And so we are told here—we’ll just stop briefly here and comment a bit on this phrase. You’ve heard us talk about this before, but it is worth pointing out again here that this tells us the audience of the sermon, who is required to come forward to hear the hearing of the law of God and its exposition. And that’s what the sermon is. The hearers of the sermon are here indicated as essentially composed of adults or older children capable of understanding the law and its exposition.

Now in verse one of this text it said that all the people came forward and verse two says that those came forward were men and women and all that could hear with understanding. And so all the people rather is qualified by this statement that those that came forward were men and women, adults, and all that could hear with understanding.

What this means is there is biblical warrant for exclusion of children from the sermon portion of public worship. And so we make provision of that in this church when the children are older, to understand what’s being said in the sermon, we move them upstairs. But until that time, we think it’s legitimate according to God’s regulative principle here of worship and the sermon given to us to have those children at some other place that cannot hear with understanding.

Now, it’s not a requirement that they can’t come forward. This principle says these people must be here, but certainly those younger ones can be there as well. The point of this is that there are two things to note here. First, if a parent makes use of the Sabbath schools provided by the church and takes their younger children and puts them in that Sabbath school the way that the parents apparently took their younger children and put them someplace else other than the place of God’s hearing of the word in this passage from Nehemiah 8, people shouldn’t condemn them for that. They shouldn’t chastise them for that. They shouldn’t think of them as lesser Christians for that.

On the other hand, if parents decide to leave their children up here while the sermon is being preached, again, they shouldn’t be condemned for that, as long as the service proceeds in an orderly manner. If the children get out of hand, of course, and there are other things that must be done to keep them disciplined.

Now, there are arguments on both sides, and I’ve heard them all, I think, by now in terms of teaching them to be quiet or teaching them to close their ears to the sermon, which is what you do some people say you’re doing when you have kids up here during the preaching of the sermon. But all that aside, we can talk about those things. But the script of scripture seems to clearly indicate that there is warrant for removing those without understanding.

But there’s a second part of this text in terms of the hearers of the sermon that I want to point out as well as we’re going through this text, and that is that both men and women and those that could hear with understanding were commanded to come forward.

Okay, now what that means is that if you’re not taking care of younger ones downstairs, you should normally be here in the hearing of the preaching of God’s word.

We said when we started this morning that essentially what we’re coming to do today is to worship God. And we worship God by hearing that word. We’re not here primarily to fellowship. Now, fellowship and reconciliation one to another is a great benefit of salvation. And we do fellowship around the table, and that is a good and proper thing to do in the Lord’s day convocation together and rejoicing in God’s presence.

But what we’re here to do is to hear God’s word, to sing praises to him, to worship him. And so if you take this time during the preaching of the sermon to go downstairs and to fellowship with other gals or other men or whatever, that’s wrong. See, that’s sin according to this text. You’re supposed to come into the hearing of the word. If you use this time to go downstairs and make your table settings up, that’s wrong. See, it says you’re supposed to be here for the hearing of the word of God. And so this requires the presence of some people—most people, actually.

Now, we provide a nursery downstairs for young babies. You can make use of it to understand your obligations here to come forward for the hearing of the sermon. If you must, if you don’t want to use the nursery and you have to be downstairs taking care of your child apart from the nursery, then maybe it’d be a good thing if you ask the nursery workers if you could relieve them and take care of however many children might be down there so that they could come up and hear the sermon.

You see, if you really need to be with your child one-on-one downstairs, maybe you should think of relieving other people who could then be freed from nursery duty or other duties downstairs to come upstairs and hear the sermon. See, no sense in having a dozen women downstairs doing nothing while the preaching of God’s word is going on. This doesn’t say the men come and the women don’t. Says the men and the women both come to hear the sermon.

Anything other than that—do place settings, to fellowship, etc.—apart from a real need to take your child out, is wrong, sinful.

Okay, so they came forward, all that had understanding, and upon the first day of the seventh month. “And he read therein before the street that was before the Water Gate from the morning until midday.”

So we have here the time of the sermon. And I guess we could say regulative principle said we should have six hours for every sermon we preach. No, that’s a joke, folks. I wasn’t really going to comment on the length of the sermon here, but there was a good article by Reverend Rushdoony in the latest issue of the Chalcedon Report which probably some of you have read, in which he talks about the issue, the topic of the article is on maturity and the relative immaturity of our day compared to the maturity of other days. And he points out that as a lad he heard an Episcopal bishop from India preach for two hours and forty minutes that was fairly typical at that time. He talks about how in Scotland during the early 1800s the preachers there, many other very good Reformed preachers, would preach normally for two hours or more routinely with forty or fifty points, all of which the parishioners, he says, could routinely recite as they rehearsed and discussed the sermon during the week. They could talk about all forty or fifty points. They were that attentive for the two hours of the sermon.

Now, to be fair, Reverend Rushdoony, he says he doesn’t really want to go back to the days of long sermons. And I think he told us when we were down there that the spirit leaves a man after twenty minutes, but I don’t. But in any event, the length of the sermon in this particular portion of scripture was quite long.

Okay, so he preached this before the men and women and those that could understand. “And the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law.”

And we’ll stop here and say that you’re to be attentive unto the sermon. And we talked about that during the day of preparation. If you’ve forgotten some of the suggestions we gave you there for how to stay attentive during the sermon, go back and hear that tape or I could give you my notes or whatever. Hopefully, you have the outlines left over. But much of your attentiveness, your ability to be attentive on Sunday mornings to the sermon is going to depend on what you did Saturday night. And so that’s important to understand—the day of preparation in terms of coming here.

And then we talked about Job making a covenant with his eyes, and I think Steve Becker pointed out afterwards that the idea of a lesser bringing the members of our body under the control and in the dominion of Jesus Christ is implied in those kind of covenants, and the point is when you come into church you should make a covenant with your mind to attend to the things of God’s word and that’s what we pray for in the prayer of illumination. We pray that God would shine upon us and his spirits we can understand what’s said. We also pray that he would keep us from distracting thoughts and to be attentive to the word. And so that’s an important thing to remember here just in passing.

Verse four: “Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit of wood which they had made for the purpose. And beside him stood” and then it lists the names of a number of Levites.

And this is the first recorded record I know of the pulpit—a wooden pulpit or structure is made so that he can stand up above the people and preach from the pulpit and expound God’s word. And he, by the way, notice here that he stood as he delivered this sermon. He stood upon this pulpit of wood.

Verse 5: “Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people for he was above all the people and when he opened it the people stood up.”

It’s worth pointing out here that the reformers, many of them, thought that when the sermon in scripture was read you should stand in respect for God’s word. Now in terms of what we do here at Reformation Covenant Church, most of our worship service, particularly the first half—the hour and a half of the first half of the service—is very much geared to scripture. There’s a lot of scripture reading going on, and I guess we’d have to stand the whole time, which I guess might be okay, but it may be worth considering and we’ll talk think about this week and I’ll talk to some of you about it. It may be worth considering when the reading of the word for the sermon actually occurs and the Bible is open to have you all stand.

In any event, that’s what happened here in the book of Nehemiah. And the rabbis thought that tradition taught that every time the word of God was read like that, the people would stand out of respect for the word of God. And also to remind us that we’re standing up so we can obey the word, right? We’re ready to move into action as the army of God.

In any event, verse six: “Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen.’”

So we have here really another prayer as the sermon is about to be expounded. A prayer for illumination by Ezra to thank God for his word, to ask for the illumination of the Holy Spirit. And the people say amen. And they say amen with lifting up their hands and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

And no, I’m not going to just bounce over that and avoid a difficult issue. But I am going to do this. I’m not going to deal with this morning. We will return during this series of sermons on the liturgy of the church to physical posture during worship and specifically to the issue of the raising of hands. I for one want to know quite badly what the word of God says about that, and I’ve never done an extensive study, and we will take care of that during this series of sermons. And if any of you have any research material on that or anything to assist me in my study of that, please let me know. But we will deal with the lifting up of hands during worship at some point during this series of sermons.

Okay, and then it talks again about the Levites: “And this list of Levites caused the people to understand the law and the people stood in their place. So they read in the book of the law of God distinctly and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading.”

And so here what this idea of causing them to understand—some people think what’s going on here is these people, having been in captivity, have no longer, have kind of lost the ability to understand classical Hebrew. And so they think these Levites were essentially interpreters into the common language of the day as opposed to classical Hebrew. While that may be part of what’s going on here, the word seems to be broader than that. And it seems to be what these Levites are really doing is explaining the text to the people, certainly in their own language, but also that the people might understand the sense of what the law of God says and its application to their lives.

These were sermons that these Levites gave as Ezra read from the book of the law. It was an exposition of that word into the vulgate, into their tongue, so that they could understand it and make application to their lives. And so we have here biblical warrant for sermons, an exposition, a clearing up of the understanding of God’s word so that people could hear with understanding and move to obedience.

Okay, and that concludes the text that we want to look at for the Old Testament witness to the sermon in worship. And we have here in this text the basic elements of what became the synagogue system or what was developed in the synagogue system as well as then the model for the church later on in history. The scriptures are brought forward, prayer is made for them, a pulpit is used, people stand at the reading of the law, the presence of a number of readers and expositors is given, and the whole of the book then was eventually read through during this week of the text we’re looking at.

Some the reformers refer to this in the Latin as the lectio continua—I may not be saying that correctly—but the idea of taking a book or a section of God’s word, in this case the law of God, and reading it through on a continual basis. Lectio continua, so that you take a book the way we did Micah, for instance, and go through it continuously week after week until you finish it. And that’s what Ezra did here—with in this first week, they completed the whole reading of God’s law, start to finish. And as they would go through it, they’d stop and the Levites would explain what it meant to the people. So that’s the idea of preaching through a book or through the whole Bible. And that was commonly used during the time of the Reformation.

Calvin, of course, used this. Manton, who I mentioned last week, the man who wrote the introduction to the Westminster Confession of Faith, used this. He actually spent large periods of time on particular chapters of scripture. I think fifty or sixty sermons on Matthew 27, for instance, and some things like that. But the idea of the lectio continua is spoken of in Ezra here, going through the whole book.

Now the reformers didn’t insist on that. They also used what was called lectio selecta, so you’d select a portion, election, or a reading from the scriptures for a particular occasion. They would catechize people, for instance, and they had catechism sermons in the afternoons on Sunday. They would take certain days, holy days, or they would set aside for particular worship such as Christmas, etc., which most of them did at some point in time, and they would use particular text for that day.

That was used occasionally, but essentially the reformers and the church fathers primarily held to the lectio continua, where you take a book and exposit it through. Now both of these are expositional sermons, by the way. Exposition simply means to take the meaning out of the text, to make it clear. You can do that from a selected text such as we’re doing in this series on worship, or you can do it as you go through an entire book.

Now, it’s interesting that at the time of the Westminster Confession itself, a reversal was starting to take place. The Westminster Directory that was attached to the confession said the following: “Ordinarily, the subject of this sermon is to be some text of scripture holding forth some principle or head of religion or suitable to some special occasion emergent.” That’s the lectio selecta.

Okay, you select the text for the purposes of the congregation or a special event or whatever. Goes on to say, “Or he may give—” excuse me, “or he may go on in some chapter, psalm or book of the holy scripture as he shall see fit.”

And so by the time of the Westminster Directory, it seems like they were essentially saying normally you use the lectio selecta. You’ll select a text and give it to the people, or you can use the lectio continua if you want to. This was a change. And eventually the preaching through of books of the Bible became more and more a thing of the past as the reformation, the fires of the reformation sort of died out, and that was not a particularly good thing. It is a good thing to preach through books of the Bible. It’s not required scripture, but it’s certainly commended in the scriptures.

Okay, that’s the Old Testament witness. New Testament witness. Luke 4. Turn to Luke 4, please. We’ll look at that a little bit. While you’re turning there, the situation here takes place where Jesus teaches in the synagogue. He’s coming back from the temptation of the wilderness. He has returned in the power of the spirit into Galilee. And it says that without a fame of him through all the regions and about and he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.

Now at the time of this writing in Palestine, the synagogue service consisted of two readings or elections. One from the law, which was read lectio continua. The law was read through on a continuous basis at this time when Jesus lived over a course of three years. So over three years the synagogue service would read through the entire portion of the law the way that Ezra did in one week.

Additionally, there was a second reading which was taken from the prophets, and the second passage was left to the discretion of the teacher or teachers who would talk that day in the synagogue. But the second reading was to expound and make clear the meaning of the first reading. So the law was taught and then the prophets were a reading from the prophets were selected by the speaker or preacher to explain and expound the law text itself. That was the normal method. And by the way, this was binding upon all the synagogues in Palestine. So all the churches at this time of the time of Jesus all read the same portion of the law throughout all the synagogues on the same day.

As we went through this three-year cycle, different portions of the prophets would be read depending on which preacher was going to be there and what he wanted to use. But the point is that the prophets were used to explain the law of God and to show the application of it. Very important to recognize that.

Also before we get into this text, the preacher would then sit down in what was known as the seat of Moses, the seat of authority and instruction, and he would lecture on the passage and its relevance. And there was commonly a give and take between the person and the audience. This, by the way, is what you should remember when you read about Paul’s missionary journeys, how he taught the synagogues. It was very common for learned men who understood the law of God to go ahead and invite him to preach on a particular text from the prophets, explaining a text in the law. And so the early Christians made use of that in the synagogues of the Jews to preach about how the law and the prophets witnessed to Jesus, of course.

Okay, that’s the context. Verse 16 of Luke 4: “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And it apparently here he asked for that book. That’s what you would normally do. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.’”

He then closes the book, a visible sign that the reading of God’s word has ended. And what we’re going to have now is an exposition of that word by a man. And you know, we’ve talked before about maybe having two platforms up here. One for the reading of the scriptures, which is inspired by God, and the other for the delivery of the sermon, which is not inspired. And this visual symbol of closing the book indicated that in the synagogues.

Now we’re going to hear the word of man, hopefully faithfully expounding the word of God. In this case, we’re hearing the word of God again. But that was the symbol of the closing of the book.

So he closes the book. He gives it to the minister and he sits down, and the eyes of all of them are on him. “And the eyes of all of them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them: ‘Unto you this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.’ And so Jesus, having read the text from the prophets, begins to exposit that text in a sermon. He gives the people the understanding of the text the way that those Levites did under Ezra. Jesus now does for the people. And he explains the text to them.

He says unto them, “You will surely say unto me this proverb, ‘Physician heal thyself. Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.’”

Important to notice here that Capernaum was a normal base of operations for Jesus, which will be important as we go to John 6 in a couple minutes. But they say, he says, “You’re going to tell me, what we what you did, the miracles in Capernaum, do here in this country.” And Jesus said, “Verily, I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land, but unto none of them was Elijah sent, save unto Zarephath, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.”

“And many lepers were in Israel at the time of Elisha the prophet and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.”

So he uses other instances from the text, from the scriptures, from the Old Testament, to exposit the text from the prophets. And he tells them: Look, you’re going to say to me, you know, we want you to do these things here, but I am sent to a particular audience. There is particularism in Jesus’s message. There is great deliverance. There is the proclamation that he has come to fulfill and to bring in the year of jubilee, the year of release to the prisoners. But there’s also a specific application that is a restrictive or a particular group that he has come to heal and to give back life to, as the widow and the leper were cleansed.

Okay, and so we have the same elements here in the New Testament as we had in Ezra. We have the teaching of the word of God. We have people convocated to hear the word. The scriptures are read. They’re then exposed and made clear to the people, and the people then react one way or the other.

Okay, so that’s the biblical warrant which we need to have. We’re going to have sermons in regulated worship according to the regulative principle.

Having seen the biblical warrant for the sermon in worship, we turn now to the various elements of the sermon, which we really have already discussed somewhat, but we’re going to talk about in more detail from John 6. So, why don’t you turn to John 6 now and we’ll start to go through that portion of scripture.

It’s important to keep in mind here that the sermon is first of all an exposition of a scripture text. We’ve said this before, but it’s worth pointing out again. Whether or not the text is based upon lectio continua or lectio selecta—continuous reading of particular text or a selected verse, both being used in the synagogue system—the sermon is to give understanding to the scripture text and it does this as I said through exegesis or exposition.

Exegesis is a word you know we use and people don’t know what it means a lot of times, and it’s a big word. It just simply means to draw the text or to lead somebody into the meaning of the text, to draw the text out of the passage and to give people understanding of it. Eisegesis is another word we’ve heard somewhat of, and that means to read your meaning into the text. Eisegesis says, “I want it to mean this and I’m going to pour it into the text.” Exegesis is a big word. All it means is to explain the text and what it means. You make it clear to people so they can understand it and then apply it.

In Farel’s service book in 1533, he cites the example of Jesus in Luke 4, the text we just used in terms of the New Testament witness, and said that first a text of scripture must be read and then it should be taught. Farel also then cited the example of Ezra, the first the Old Testament witness we used. Farel cited that example in Geneva. He also says here that the preaching should be preceded by a prayer that the Holy Spirit would make clear the true meaning of the text, that it might bear fruit in the lives of the people.

Calvin, of course, followed Farel, and he also followed him in this practice. He so he taught expositionally, text the scripture, explain the scripture after you prayed that God would illumine the text to us.

Additionally, as I said, Calvin primarily used the lectio continua, and we have many of his sermons because they had a stenographer hired for eleven years to take notes on his sermons, and that’s why we have so many of them. But in any event, now in John 6, we read originally here verses 53 to 59. There’s sort of a summation of what we were talking about, what the rest of John 6 is about.

We are not told explicitly here in John 6 what the text of scripture in the synagogue was. We are told, of course, from verse 59—that was the last verse we read—”These things said he in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum,” and that could be translated “these things he was teaching in the synagogue.” It’s be also an acceptable translation here. And so verse 59 tells us that everything preceding that, from about verse 30 on, was Jesus teaching in the synagogue. So we don’t have here a random discourse out in the streets. We have here another sermon or a teaching of Jesus in the synagogue.

And because the synagogue used a law text and then a prophetic text, we can assume that’s what Jesus was doing in this particular instance. And I think what Jesus did then in this—in verse let’s see, let’s read verse 30: “They said therefore unto him, ‘What sign showest thou then that we may see and believe thee? What dost thou work?’ And then they say, ‘Our fathers did eat manna in the desert as it is written: he gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

Now, the people cite this text, and the implication is that this text was the text that Jesus was teaching from because that’s what he spends the rest of the chapter talking about—is what is bread from heaven? Where did it come from? What is it? What does it mean to our lives? Jesus takes that text and exposits it then. And there’s lots of reasons then to consider that this was the text that was actually used in the synagogue service that he now is expositing. Something for the people.

Okay, we don’t know that for a fact, but it seems to be implied here that he goes ahead and uses that verse and exposits it. And he does this exposition of the scripture really according to what Hughes Oliphant Old has written in his Reformed Tradition of Worship, what he calls a four-point sermon, expositing this text. The text from Exodus, from the book of Exodus, from the writing of God’s law is: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

And Jesus takes that text and first he talks about “he gave,” and he talks about the source of the bread. Then he talks about “from heaven,” what that means. Then he talks about “bread.” And then he talks about “eating” the bread. And he gives four specific points here. You can outline it that way. As he goes through this sermon, expositing the law text from the book of Exodus: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

And we’ll go through that now and talk about that. They say that. And then Jesus says to them in verse 32: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not the bread from heaven, but my father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world.”

Now, the very first thing Jesus does here is he corrects their misunderstanding of the source of heavenly bread. He says, “Moses didn’t give you bread from heaven. God gives bread from heaven.” So he corrects who gives them the bread. It is not ultimately Moses. It is God the Father from heaven. And he corrects them in that misperception of theirs. He corrects them immediately in his exposition.

They then say to him, “Lord, evermore, give us this bread.” Now, the context of this is, in case you not familiar with this text of scripture, Jesus has fed the five thousand. Okay, he’s given them lots of bread to eat. This is the day before. They like that. And they want to take him and by force make him king and to give him lots of bread. And he says no. And he takes off and he goes back to Capernaum where he teaches in the synagogue, and they find him in Capernaum. And by the way, the first thing they ask Jesus when they find him—they make inquiry. They make diligent search for him. They find him at the synagogue in Capernaum. What do they say to him? Tell us more. No, they say, “How did you get here?” Silly question, but it shows their heart. It shows they have an odd, a non-biblical way of thinking here. They’re not really interested in spiritual truth. They’re interested in these miracle sorts of things.

Well, in any event, so he has given them bread, physical bread to eat in a miraculous event the day before, and they want more of that bread. See, and Jesus is telling them, and that’s why they quote this text as well as perhaps being the scripture reading for the day. And Jesus tells them, “You got it all wrong. First of all, the source.”

They say, “Okay, fine. We don’t care about the source. Just give us this bread.” Okay, “Lord, evermore, give us this bread.”

In verse 35, Jesus says unto them, “I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger. He that believeth on me shall never thirst. But I said unto you that ye also have seen me and believe not. All that the father giveth me will come to me. And him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

So Jesus goes to the second part of the sermon, which is a discussion of what the bread is, and he tells him I’m the bread. And he’s going to give him more about what this means as he goes on. But the point is he’s expositing this text from the law.

Now also an important thing to note here in passing is that he says this statement: “All the father giveth me shall come to me. Him that cometh me I will no wise cast out.” Jesus gives him here a word of comfort or encouragement. If you come to me, if the father is so ordained that you do come to me, I will in no wise cast out. It is a word of comfort and encouragement. This tells us that Jesus had a couple of things going on here. There were people here that would not believe. And the end of the text makes clear that Jesus knows who wouldn’t believe, and there are people that will believe. And so he does both things. He confuses those that don’t believe, and he makes clear to those that do believe. He gives them words of encouragement and comfort in the midst of his sermon. And that’s what a sermon is all about. It’s rebuke to some, it’s encouragement to others.

Okay, okay. Then he goes to the third part of his sermon, or what we could look at as the third part of his sermon—the phrase “from heaven.” Verse 38: “For I, the true bread, is who he’s identified himself. I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.”

Okay, and in this text, Jesus really cuts to the heart of their problem, of failure to humble themselves before God. That he came down from heaven means that he comes to reveal what is in heaven—God the father—to men. He comes to do the will of the heavenly one who is the source of the true bread that comes down to earth. And he says if you understood that, you would, what would their reaction be? You would humble yourself and you would do the will of the father in heaven because that’s what I am doing here. That’s the implication of me coming to earth from heaven—is to do the will of him that sent me here, to reveal him to you.

And he cuts through to their basic sin problem here. It’s failure to humble themselves before God, but rather they’re seeking after a god for their own desires. They want to fill their stomachs. They don’t want to fill their spiritual emptiness, okay, that they have. They want to live from earth. He wants them to live on earth from heaven and to do the will of the father in heaven, the way that he is doing that will.

And then he goes on in verse 39: “And this is the father’s will that hath sent me, that all of which you have given me, I should lose nothing, but I would raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone that seeth the son and believeth on him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Now, he says here twice that he’s going to raise people up at the last day. He repeats this in verse 44 and in verse 53, he repeats the same thing. So there are four at least four explicit statements here of the resurrection and him raising up the people that eat the true bread of life—which is himself, which is to believe on him. Now it’s important to point as we’re point that out as we’re going through here: Why did he do this? Chrysostom, writing on this text, asks the question: Why does he continually dwell upon the resurrection? And he does that, like I said, four times in these few verses here. He’s going to talk about raising people up.

Chrysostom says the following: “Now those men gain nothing. But let us take pains to gain by having the resurrection continually sounded in our ears. And if we desire to be grasping or to steal or to do anything wrong, let us straightway take into our thoughts that day. Let us picture to ourselves the judgment seat. For such reflections will check the evil impulses more strongly than any other thing. Let us continually say to others and to ourselves, there is a resurrection and a fearful tribunal awaiting us. If we see any man insolent and puffed up with the good things of this world, let us make the same remark to him and show him that all those things abide here. And if we observe another grieving and impatient, let us say the same to him and point out to him that the sorrow shall have an end. If we see one careless and dissipated, let us say the same, charm over him—that is, speaking of the resurrection—and show that for his carelessness he must render account. This saying is able more than any other remedy to heal our souls. For there is a resurrection, and that resurrection is at our doors, not afar off nor at a distance.”

So Chrysostom says that one of the reasons why Jesus repeated this teaching of the resurrection is that’s correction to us. It reminds us there’s an end point here, and the resurrection to damnation or to eternal life will occur, and it’s not far away. It’s at our door. Some of us in the congregation recognize any day God could take us into that resurrection, as it were, of life or damnation. And so Jesus here is trying to take their thoughts off of earthly things, filling their stomachs, to heaven. God sends them to heaven to reveal the things of heaven, to reveal God the Father, and to get them to think in terms of eternal truths.

They want to live for the moment. He’s trying to get them to live for eternity and accept the bread that comes down from heaven, not the bread that you put into your mouths all the time.