Dennis Tuuri

was a tabernacle made. The first one was the candlestick and the table and the showbread, which is called the sanctuary. And after the second veil, the tabernacle, which is called the holiest of all, which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant, overlaid roundabout with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant, and over it the cherubims of glory, shadowing the mercy seat of which we cannot now speak particularly.

Let us pray. Lord God, we pray that your Holy Spirit would do his appointed work in the context of your covenanted host. We thank you Lord God for the gift of the Holy Spirit given to us on the basis of the Lord Jesus Christ’s work. And we thank you Lord God that he has come not to be conformed to our thoughts but rather to conform our thoughts and lives to the standard of your word, the command word of our King of Kings.

We pray Lord God your Holy Spirit that would illuminate these texts and other texts that we read to our understanding that we might indeed walk forth from this place as transformed men and women, boys and girls, in Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

We won’t really say a lot about the sermon text, this text we just read until the end of the sermon. Essentially I read it to show that there were three preeminent things in the context of the holy of holies: Aaron’s rod that blossomed, the pots of manna, and then the commandments, the two tables of the commandment of God, the word.

So we will talk about the significance of that as we move along.

Children, you are the recipients today of the only outline available. I’ve done hundreds of outlines for adults. I don’t think I’ve ever done one for children. So today we have a children’s outline, but hopefully it will remind you in the context of my sometimes complicated talks, I realize, of the simplicity of what I’m at least attempting to say in the power of God.

Children, the first thing you need to learn in life is patience. That is your primary task as you mature into young men and women is patience. So while I have provided you an outline, you must be patient for a few minutes while I review last week’s sermon and also give an introduction to the specific outline in front of you which should be of help to the parents as well. Patience. That’s what children need to learn and that’s what you need to engage yourself in today.

Now young people, patience in terms of moving through the outline. It would be good if you waited. Probably some of you have filled in the words already, but it’d be good if you waited until I tell you the words to fill in, or at least in terms of emphasis.

Now, we’re talking about the Canons of Dort. We’re wrapping this study up to next week will be probably my last sermon on the Canons of Dort. The topic that we’ve been on for a few months now is the perseverance of the saints.

This perseverance is not of themselves. We’ve seen the Canons talk about how we have sins, both small and great, and those sins are pointed out to the end that we must understand that left to ourselves, we would not persevere in the faith. Yet true saints do. Why? Because they’re preserved by God. So: perseverance and preservation.

Now, I began this series on perseverance, talking about God’s secondary means or God’s providence in sustaining us and developing us. And I think several months ago, I talked about God’s providence in terms of the legislative process. So I’ve got a little story here toward the end of this section on perseverance to talk about again the way God moves in different ways to bring his people together for the furtherance of his kingdom.

At the curriculum fair yesterday—and I wasn’t there most of the weekend. I was there a little while on Saturday, but I was there just long enough for God to do a particular thing.

Years ago, 1985, a woman comes over from Bend to the homeschool hearings. She comes simply to sit at the back of the room and pray and she remains in prayer for the homeschool bill throughout the session. It passes. And I’ve known this lady. We’ve seen each other off and on for a dozen years now. And I saw her at the curriculum fair yesterday. Wonderful lady, very interesting story in her life. Her last two years she was supposed to be dead by now.

Two years ago she was sent home from a hospital saying go home and die. Letters addressed to her at that hospital were returned to people that sent them saying “deceased” on the address. But by the providence of God she turned to some alternative medicine and she’s alive today and she’s been in bed for most of the last two years. But ten weeks ago she was able to get up out of bed and now she came to the curriculum fair as she tries to do, has done throughout the years, to represent Christian Liberty Academy at these various curriculum fairs.

So I saw her again. We always, you know, “Hey, how you doing? It’s been a couple of years.” So it was good to remake her acquaintance. Now, so I walked away then after talking a few minutes and receiving encouragement from her and her from me. And she said she continues to have me in her prayers perpetually, which is a, you know, blessing to have people praying for you. Anyway, so I move on and then later on some people come up to me and say, “There’s somebody looking for you. The lady from that Christian Liberty booth is looking for you.”

So I saw her and she said there was a fellow at the curriculum fair from South Africa and he was gathering information on homeschooling and she just thought, you know, she’s somewhat charismatic and I think in a good sense she looks for the leading of the Spirit of God. She said she just felt led by the Spirit that this man should talk to me. So I said okay. So I went back to the RCC booth and waited there and pretty soon he shows up. Young fellow from South—not that young actually, about my age probably—a fellow from South Africa and we get to talking and he is over here for a couple of months to gather information on homeschooling to take back to South Africa to encourage the growth of homeschooling in the context of South Africa in the providence of God.

Well, we have seen the developments in South Africa from a negative perspective and much of it has been a negative perspective. The movement away from a predominantly Christian government to now mostly a more of a Marxist or liberal government. An interesting part of that is that when we asked him about homeschooling, Hobby and I, he said that under the old constitution, what we always thought of as the good one, homeschooling was absolutely illegal and people were put in jail for homeschooling. Under the new constitution, it’s somewhat more liberalized in terms of education and parents now have the ability—it’s a little complicated—but have the ability to do homeschooling. So, in the providence of God, one of the things he did in moving in the affairs of men, you know, he always turns the king’s heart, not just when we like the way it turns. He always does.

And when he changed the government in South Africa in terms of his providence, he opened that country up for homeschooling and the impact that the kind of the vanguard of the Christian Reformation in the world today could take more root in the context of that country. So, praise God.

So we’re talking and I asked this: “You ever heard of Rushdoony?” I mentioned the book Other End of the Life written several years ago about South Africa. Rushdoony, I’ve read stuff by him. He said in that magazine called Chalcedon. And we said, “Chalcedon Report. Yeah. Yeah.” He said that, and we said, “He said, do you know about the Chalcedon Report? Do we know about the Chalcedon Report? You know, Judge Beers who helped start this church was a Rushdoony contact in the Pacific Northwest. And he said when we told him this, he said, ‘Oh, that’s great.’ And he shook our hand again.

I’ve been looking for someone in the States who’d be connected to Chalcedon somewhat and know about what they’re doing and be more reconstructionist.” It was like we were fellow, you know, laborers in the field, so to speak. And in the providence of God, he used this lady, these events for the last dozen years and whatnot to bring this fellow together. He was trying to set up an appointment at Chalcedon, but as you know, if you’ve tried to write or fax or email Chalcedon, they simply cannot get back to all the requests.

So we never got a response back. I’m going to now call up a couple of people, my brother and John King and Corvallis, who have good contacts with Andrew Sandlin, and I’m fairly confident that this man will be able to meet with the people from Chalcedon before he returns to South Africa in mid-July. And that will help him in terms of what he’s trying to do in bringing homeschooling with a particular reconstructionist transformationalist perspective into South Africa.

So, just a little story, but it’s a story again of the sort of stuff that God does to show us how every part of our lives is in the context of his providence. He’s always moving in the affairs of his saints to bring his kingdom to maturation and a further manifestation. And he’s doing it for our renewed growth and encouragement as well. It was a real encouragement to this man and he was to us as well as equipping him for service.

So, praise God for these kind of things.

Now, last week we talked about this doctrine: that the saints can know that they will persevere in the faith, that God will preserve them and you indeed can know, little children, you can be assured that you will persevere in the faith. Well, the Arminian said if that’s true then you’re not going to be careful about your spiritual walk. You’re not going to want to try to move in terms of sanctification. You’re not going to try hard to pray and study the word, et cetera. And we considered that last week and we read in 1 John 3 that indeed if it is specifically those who have this assurance of salvation, this assurance of preservation, in 1 John 3, who have this hope in Christ.

It is specifically then people like us who believe what the Canons teach, that the Scriptures teach the perseverance of the saints and that can be known by the believer. It is those people specifically—not who should but who will indeed—purify themselves. A fact. Why do they do that? By way of review, first we do that because of love. Behold what a great thing it is. We’re called sons of God. We know how unworthy we are. We’ve been called sons of God. So our love for God and the love of being the recipients of his grace means that we will purify ourselves.

Secondly, it is our changed nature. We don’t have lawlessness, rebellion to God. We now have a conformity to God’s law as our central motivating force. Yes, we’ve got sins. We have the Adamic nature to deal with, but our identity now is in Christ Jesus. We have a changed nature.

Third, Christ’s ethical and salvific purposes for you. Why did Christ come? He came to put away sin, to get rid of it. And that means in you, children. It was Christ’s intention to come to earth to take sin out of your life. And that’s why you’ve been called. That’s why you’re in Christian households. That’s why you believe in the Lord Jesus. So if your nature is changed and you have such love for the Father, and Jesus said his whole purpose was to remove sin, of course you’re going to, as you move in faith, sanctify yourselves and work hard at getting rid of sin and putting on the new man in holiness.

Fourth, we are in union and communion no longer with the devil. You know, before you’re a Christian, you may not know this, but people that aren’t Christians are kind of in a union and a sense of communion with the devil. They follow the devil’s model of rebellion to God. But we’re in union and communion with Christ. Praise God. And if we’re in union and communion with Jesus, he’s directing us perpetually to sanctify ourselves to be better and better, less and less sin.

And also, it is Christ’s dominical purpose, his ruling purpose, is not just to get rid of sin, but to destroy all the works of the devil. He saved you, little boys, little girls. He saved you, young men and young women. He saved you, older men and women, congregation of the Lord. He saved you as part of his process of destroying the works of the devil. And so, of course, if that’s his purpose, then we’re going to move in terms of purifying our lives.

These are facts. We are now the holy seed of God. We’ve been born again of God. And if we’ve been born again, we have a new nature. The Holy Spirit inhabits us to direct us to personal holiness. And finally, we have communion. We are the children of God. We’re in the context of the church of God. And that church also is part of God’s means to move us on to holiness. So certainly the Armenians were wrong to say that if we know we’re in Christ Jesus, that we have a new nature, that we have union and communion with him, that he has come to put away sin and that we might destroy the works of the devil.

All those things move together to say that yeah, if we were old men, it would cause us to sin. But we’re not the old men. We’re now in Christ. And because we’re in Christ, this knowledge doesn’t cause us to sin. It causes us to persevere. It causes us to pray, to diligently attempt good works, to desire more and more to please our father in heaven.

This is Father’s Day. Children, this is the last day you probably want to make your day dad angry or upset, right? You want to please dad today. Well, this is not ultimately—it is the Father in heaven’s day, right? This is the Lord’s day. And as children of his, we want to please our Father in heaven. And it makes us sad when we sin. It makes us feel terrible. And God says that we’re new creatures in Christ Jesus. And we will indeed move in holiness.

Okay, that’s by way of review. Today, following up on that, the Canons talk about the use of secondary causes or means. And so, while it is true that we will indeed become more and more holy in our lives—although we also have an increasing knowledge of our sins, so sometimes it doesn’t look that way to us—but if we think of the things we used to delight in and what we delight in now, we know God’s moving us ahead in holiness. But he does this by using secondary causes or secondary means.

Here’s what Article 14 says: “As it has pleased God to begin this work of grace in us by the preaching of the gospel, so he maintains, continues and perfects it by the hearing and reading of his word, by meditation upon it, by its exhortations, threatenings and promises, and by the use of the sacraments.”

So yes, we’re going to purify ourselves who are sure of our salvation. But we’re going to do it. God accomplishes it through the use of secondary means or causes.

Now early in the Canons of Dort, in dealing with God’s effectual calling of us, again there they asserted the use of means. Article 17 of the Second and Third Head of Doctrine said this: “The almighty working of God whereby he brings forth and sustains this our natural life does not exclude but requires the use of means by which he according to his infinite wisdom and goodness has will to exercise his power. So also the aforementioned supernatural working of God whereby he regenerates us in no way excludes or overthrows the use of the gospel whereby the most wise God has ordained to be the seed of regeneration and the food of the soul. For this reason, the apostles and the teachers who succeeded them in the fear of the Lord instructed the people concerning this grace of God to his glory and to the abasement of all pride.

In the meantime, however, they did not neglect to keep them by the holy admonitions of the gospel under the administration of the word, the sacraments, and discipline. So today, those who give or receive instruction in the church should not dare to tempt God by separating what he and his good pleasure has will to be kept very close together. For grace is conferred through admonitions. And the more readily we do our duty, the more this favor of God who works in us usually manifests itself in its luster and the more directly his works proceed.”

So what this says is that just like you have a body and God says your body is going to grow, but he says that the way he has out of his good pleasure and his wisdom decided to make your body grow is that you might eat food and drink things, right? He uses those secondary causes. The food causes you to grow. But ultimately, the primary, the first cause of why you grow when you eat food is God. God is the first cause.

“I’m going to cause these little boys and girls to grow up. I’m going to cause the parents to be kept healthy and to perfect themselves more and more in terms of their body by the use of food. It pleases me,” God says. “I can do it directly. They don’t need food. I don’t have to give them food, but it pleases me, God says, to use secondary causes or secondary means.” Okay?

Now, while this canon doesn’t say use that term, the point is they’re saying you’re going to get holier, you’re going to get more and more sanctified by certain things that God has decided to give you. Just like your body grows with food, your spirit, your soul grows by the word. And specifically, it says by hearing the word, reading the word, meditating on the word. And then it says that word has exhortations. It’s got threatenings, and it’s got promises to it. And God uses the word, but he also uses sacraments. And those are the primary secondary means. They’re the most important secondary means that God uses to make you grow in grace.

How do you do better today than you did a year ago? The word and sacraments. That’s the primary means. Okay.

Now, this is God’s choice. He didn’t have to do it this way, but he does do it this way. Secondary causes.

Now, I’m going to read from another document, the Westminster Confession. Their section on God’s eternal decree is this: “God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.”

God ordained from all time that you would be sitting in that particular chair where you’re sitting right now. God ordained them. Yet it goes on to say, “So as thereby, neither is God the author of sin. He ordains that you should sin, but he’s not the cause of your sin. You are. Nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have a will. You still have a will. Nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”

So God decrees whatsoever comes to pass. But he uses secondary causes and not only does he use them, he creates them. It’s not just that the things you do have significance apart from God. The only reason why your body grows when you eat food is because of God’s calling that food to be used to make you grow. So the reason you are matured by hearing, reading and meditating on the word and by taking the sacraments is because God has established that as a secondary means.

I love that language: “not the liberty or contingency of secondary causes is not taken away but rather established by the decree of God.” God is the first cause. Okay? But he operates in and through secondary causes. He, number one, these number two things are the things he decides to work through.

Bible tells us it is God at work in you both to will and to do according to his good pleasure. We are drawn out of nothingness as it were by the creation of God. And it is because that we are by God’s creation that he sets things in motion in terms of secondary means.

Now Van Til—there was a man named Cornelius Van Til, great theologian. And quoting now from John Frame’s article about Van Til: “secondary causes in the universe have genuine significance and, quoting Van Til now, not in spite of but just because of the fact that they act in accord with the one ultimate cause or plan of God.”

And now going on to quote Van Til, this is for probably mostly you fathers: “Now this quote further the formula ‘not in spite of but because of’ now we’re quoting from Frame again, which recurs so often in Van Til’s thought, places a substantial challenge before theologians as they deal with apparent contradictions in biblical teaching. Here we too often have been content merely to point out the consistency of biblical doctrines when the Bible itself would have us do more.

Have we been content merely to show that human responsibility is compatible with divine foreordination rather than showing that human responsibility depends upon divine foreordination and is inconceivable without it.”

See what he’s saying is that the reason why these secondary means or causes that God has established, the reasons why they work is because of God’s ordination. You see, it’s not just that they’re compatible. God establishes the legitimacy of secondary means through his decree. If God didn’t decree whatsoever comes to pass, then we have no knowledge. We have no certainty that God uses our secondary means to make things change in terms of his will. You see, now that’s a kind of a big thought. And if it’s confused you, just put it aside for now. But it’s a delightful thing to contemplate. And as you’re in the Lord, and as you get older and read some of this stuff, maybe it will cause you to be delighted as well.

I do want to read a quote, however, illustrating the same point from John Calvin. And this has to do—this is out of his commentary on Genesis. The scriptures say, “Let the earth bring forth grass.” Okay, now quoting Calvin:

“Hitherto the earth was naked and barren. Now the Lord fructifies it by his word. For though it was already destined to bring forth fruit, yet, till new virtue proceeded from the mouth of God, it must remain dry and empty. For neither was it naturally fit to produce anything, nor had it a germinating principle from any other source till the mouth of the Lord was opened. For what David declares concerning the heavens ought also to be extended to the earth, that it was made by the word of the Lord and was adorned and furnished by the breath of his mouth.”

That being a quote from Psalm 33:6, “it is adorned and furnished. The scriptures say by the breath of his mouth.”

You see, primary cause: the breath of God’s mouth says to the earth, bring forth fruit, grow up trees. And the secondary means—the fruit bringing out, the means or the fruit or the trees, the land bringing forth the fruit trees is the secondary means, is God’s enabling it to do that. You see, his ordination is brings it to pass.

Moreover, it did not happen fortuitously that herbs and trees were created before the sun and moon. See, now you believe in six-day creation, right? Well, you got a problem, they say, because on day three, you had these grapevines grow up and these wheat crops grow up and the sun didn’t happen until day four. So, you guys are nuts, they say. No, no sun there to make them grow. They would have died that first day ’cause they can’t grow in darkness.

But listen to what Calvin says:

“We now see indeed that the earth is quickened by the sun to cause it to bring forth its fruits. Nor was God ignorant of this law of nature which he has since ordained. But in order that we might learn to refer all things to him, he did not then make use of the sun or moon.”

See, he didn’t want us trusting secondary means. He wanted to establish himself as the primary means. So God can cause wheat to grow up and grapes to grow without sun. No problem for God. And the only reason the sun works to make grapes taste sweet and to make wheat crops bud and blossom is because God’s word tells those things to happen in the world.

He creates the secondary means. He permits us to perceive the efficacy which he infuses into them so far as he uses them in uses their instrumentality. But because we are want to regard as part of their nature properties which they derive elsewhere. It was necessary that the vigor which they now seem to impart to the earth should be manifest before they were created. We acknowledge it is true in words that the first cause is self-sufficient and that intermediate and secondary causes have only what they borrow from the first cause. Intermediate and secondary causes have only what they borrow or have infused into them by the first cause, which is God’s ordination.

Well, this is a wonderful quote by Calvin, but I probably stressed this point enough. I would like to continue to read it, but I’m not going to. But if you read Calvin’s commentary on Genesis 1, you’ll find a wonderful explanation of what Van Til is now pointing out to all of us: that it doesn’t mean that God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are compatible. What it means is the secondary means and human responsibility only are useful because God has decreed that they have that kind of usefulness.

Okay. And God says that in terms of you growing up in the faith, he’s going to use certain things like he used the sun now to cause wheat to grow. He’s going to use his word and he’s going to use the sacraments to cause you to grow up in grace. There are secondary means.

Patience, children. We’re almost to the first point of your outline. Patience, patience, patience.

I want to talk about the importance of the word before we get to the actions that we’re to take relative to the word. The word is the Bible.

Now listen to these two verses. Listen to this. Ephesians 2:10: “We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus.

Genesis 2:4: “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”

You see the correlation? When we read in Ephesians that we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus, it’s supposed to point us back to Genesis 2 when the earth was his workmanship when he made it and when he created it. What’s the point, Dennis? The point is that you are Christians because God has ushered in a new creation. When God spoke through his word and the earth was made and created, that was the first creation.

But now God says that you Christians are also the work of God created in Christ Jesus. Okay? And how does he do it? He brought you to Christianity by the word. Without the word, the world doesn’t come into being. Without the Bible and the word, you don’t become a Christian. God, it has pleased God to use that secondary means to bring you into being as Christians. Paul says, “We are co-laborers together with God.”

Woo. Woo. We are co-workers with God in this work of making and developing and manifesting the new creation in Christ. Co-laborers. That sounds like a nice thing to be. We want to be working along with God, right? Well, if we’re going to work with God, we got to use his secondary means. And the means he brought about in the first creation and the creation of his children is the word, the Bible. The word has tremendous significance.

The scriptures tell us we are to be people of the book. In Isaiah, we read that there are those who seek unto familiar spirits and wizards that peep and that mutter. “Shall not a people seek unto their God, for the living, and to the dead?” What do you do to get counsel on things? To determine what’s going to happen next week or tomorrow, to determine how you’re going to bring anything to a good end? How do you get counsel relative to your finances, to your recreation, to your vocation.

What counsel do you receive? Do you turn to the dead even though you’re alive in Christ Jesus? Do you turn to any source other than the word ultimately and those that have their knowledge based on that word?

In Isaiah 8, the answer to this is “to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”

In everything, we are to be people that have what we do dictated by the law and the testimony, the revealed word of God, the scriptures, the Bible. You got to know it. You have to know it. If you don’t, what happens? The ones who reject it in Isaiah, it says that they shall pass through it hardly and hungry. And it shall come to pass when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves and curse their king and their god, and look upward, and they shall look into the earth, and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish and they shall be driven to darkness.

Without the word, our life is darkness. It’s depression. It is anguish. It is fretfulness. It is cursing the very rulers that God places to help us. And we have a country full of people full of people with no turning to the law and to the prophets and whose lives are marked by fretfulness and cursing of authorities and darkness and no satisfaction in their world. Why? Because they have not turned to the law and to the testimony.

May it not be true of us. May we be men and women, boys and girls who know our Bibles, who the Bible is so familiar to us that we can understand what goes on in the context of our world by reading that scripture and by having it in our minds. Prophets talked about a time when there’d be a famine of the word of God. And today in America, there is a famine of the word of God. And people have no knowledge and no wisdom.

And the world deteriorates because of the famine of God’s word. May we not in this church be people who have a famine of the word of God in our homes. How much did you eat last week of the scriptures? How much did you minister to your children last week from the scriptures? And I’m not just talking about family devotions. Did you teach them the word? And our Revelation class went through image after image founded in the Old Testament that virtually none of us know because we have not been raised with a knowledge of God’s word and cannot understand.

Can we then understand what Revelation is about and then cannot understand what happens in our world and we can’t read the signs that are all around us because we haven’t learned the language of the scriptures yet. In your house do you have difficulties do you have trials and tribulations do you have consternation? If you know the word it doesn’t mean you’re not going to have these things but if you don’t know the word it means you’re always going to have these things. You profess to be Christians but have a famine of the word? You’re going to move in terms of darkness in distress.

Our savior said that people err when they don’t know the scriptures. Matthew 22:29. Jeremiah 8 says, “The wise men are ashamed. They are dismayed and taken. Lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord. And what wisdom is in them?” Don’t think you can be wise in the things of the earth, but not know God’s word.

Mark 7 talks about the hypocrites. Jesus said, “You lay aside the commandments of God, you hold the tradition of men.”

We have a day today where 99% of the people in this country are more concerned about the tradition of Father’s Day than they are in honoring the Father in heaven who in a sense is the father of all men having created all men. Now Father’s Day is okay if we see it in the context of the day of the Lord. We don’t want to set aside the commandment of God to keep the Sabbath and to have this day be a day of holy convocation for the sake of the Father’s Day. Don’t want to do that. That’s foolishness. God says his word must have centrality in our lives.

Second Peter says that we have been given a sure word of prophecy: “whereunto you do well that you take heed as unto a light that shines in a dark place until the day draw and the day star arise in your hearts.” He’s talking about the scriptures there. The scriptures give light to our paths. We should know these things of course.

Okay, so the word is exceedingly important. Psalm 19—we spoke of this a while back. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” Do you need to be turned in your soul? You’re depressed. Difficulties, trials, and tribulations. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. Do you need to be turned? The law is the general summation of the Lord. It is how you are converted in your soul. “The testimony of the Lord is pure, is sure, making wise the simple.”

Now, it doesn’t make wise the fool who doesn’t think about God at all. But if you’re simple and don’t have enough knowledge of God, how do you get more knowledge that you might become wise like the people you live in the context of? You want to be wiser than, you know, you are today, right? Well, how do you do it? The law of God, the testimony of the Lord. The testimony of the Lord refers to the scriptures that they speak forth truth and reject untruth.

“The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.” Is your heart been rejoiced this last week? And if it hasn’t, maybe it’s because you haven’t meditated on, read, or studied the statutes of the Lord. The statutes are the particular ordinances of God as found in the scriptures. “The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes,” so your eyes can see. Have you gotten a little depressed? Do you have problems, difficulty, dimness of eye? Well, have you attended to the secondary means that God has decided in his good pleasure to use, the word of God. It is the commandment of the Lord that’s pure enlightening the eyes.

“The fear of the Lord, a summation that God’s word produces a reverence for us, is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” More to be desired than gold, even than much fine gold. What’s more important to you? To get money or to get the word? And if it’s to get money, then you’re wrong. You’re idolatrous. The word must drive everything else.

Now, you know you got to earn money to support your family and all that, but recognize that money is a reflection of the value of God in heaven, which is known ultimately by knowing and obeying his word. And if we have a famine of the word of God and have our coffers filled with gold, we are very poor people indeed.

“By them has thy servant warned, and in keeping them there is great reward.” We’ll talk about that in a minute. That word contains warnings and great reward as well. Okay, the word is absolutely critical.

What do we do with the word? Number one, Article 14 says that God’s secondary means of the word is by the hearing of the word. Now, it’s interesting they start with hearing the word and not reading the word. The same thing, the same thing is found in Revelation chapter 1. The importance of hearing the word of God.

Revelation 1:3: “Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the word of this prophecy and keep those things which are written therein for the time is at hand.” Why? The point here is that this is an epistle written to the churches of God that is to be read in the context of the church. It doesn’t mean blessed are those that read at home. That’s not the primary emphasis. Blessed is he, the individual that reads in the context of the church. And blessed are they that hear the words of the prophecy and keep them.

You’re gathered together today as a group of hearers of the word. Yeah, that’s what you’re here for. So on your outline, kids, the first thing you must do is hear the word. And on some of those outlines, I got a picture of an ear. May not be obvious, an ear.

Now when you hear, you’re supposed to have real big ears. The Hebrew word is “shama.” Open the ears up. Lean forward and listen. “Shama, hear, O Israel.” Taken from Deuteronomy 6. We want to hear the word.

Now, that’s easy enough. You, well, “I got that one down ’cause I come every Sunday and I listen to the sermon.” How well do you listen? How well do you prepare yourself the day before? Do you come tired? Do you come sinful, not having confessed your sins in preparation to meet with God? Do you come attentive physically, mentally, and spiritually to hear the word? Do you come prayerfully to the hearing of God’s word that it might transform who you are?

See, children, you have to hear the word. But that means you got to get ready to hear the word. What is Saturday? The day before the Sabbath called in the Gospels. It’s called the day of preparation. Saturday is a day to prepare to meet with God in worship. You get everything ready. Get a good night’s rest. Get ready to come to church because you’re going to worship God, and you’re going to hear his word and you want to hear everything in that word for you because the scriptures say that as we come together and we convocate together, we form up as the army of God.

We have the commandments of God read to us and that word changes who we are. It makes us into a bigger and stronger army. Do you come to church looking for that kind of forming up under the command of God’s word? Well, if you don’t, make a commitment to do it next week. Make a commitment to take care of your physical state, your emotional state, your spiritual state. Prepare for the Lord’s day with rest.

Prepare with anticipation to hear the word. Prepare in prayer for the word to be preached to you that it might transform you. And prepare by confessing the sins as you prepare to meet with God. Don’t wait till Sunday morning when God calls you here to confess your sins. There was a trespass offering that was offered prior to the general sin offering. The confession of sins in the Old Testament system, individual sins must be taken care of.

So hear the word. We come together to hear the word. Now we’re also to read the word. That’s the second thing that the Canons of Dort talk about in terms of hearing the word. We come to hear a particular word. We came this morning hearing a word about manna and we heard a word about a rod and we heard a word about the tables of the commandments. Well, you know, we can’t take the time every week to say, “Well, this is what the manna was.” They were in the wilderness and stuff came down and it wouldn’t stay over, but the Lord’s day, there was two provisions or two allotments so that they wouldn’t have to work on the Sabbath.

You can’t bring all that knowledge of what the manna is into the sermon because it takes too much time. You’re supposed to know the word. You’re supposed to hear the word in the context of having studied the word in your homes, read the word, in the context of the family and our own personal reading that we might then understand the word preached in a further sense on the Lord’s day. So, we got to hear the word and we have to read the word.

Now, you know, maybe you think I’m getting by. Okay, I know a little bit of the word, enough to kind of figure out what’s being said and I sort of listen. Okay, I can get by without too much reading and hearing of the word. That’s a foolish thing to think. God says that we are to pay full attention to the word. We are to study the word in the context of our homes. We’re to know the word of God. We’re to be people of the word.

And I would challenge you all today to evaluate in your own lives how much this last week you spent reading and hearing the most important thing on earth that God uses as a secondary cause of your sanctification. If you’re not happy with your growth in grace or the people in your household aren’t happy with your growth in grace, ask yourself, “Have I used the secondary means?”

“Seven days without food makes one weak.” We—a—k. Get it? You don’t eat any food this last week, you’re weak. You don’t read the scriptures this last week, you’re spiritually diminished. It’s God’s secondary means. He won’t work apart from his means. He has decided and pledged himself to the use of these means. We must be of all things people of the book who hear the word preached, prepare for the preaching of that word and who also in the context of our world read the scriptures, study the scriptures to know what they mean.

If we don’t, then we are like those people in Isaiah 8 who instead move in terms of darkness, not in terms of establishment or blessing.

Hear and read are the first two points of the application of God’s secondary means. Making use of the day of preparation, preparing to hear the word, and then also for carrying over the study of that word in the context of our homes. Now, I know you got, you know, hopefully we’re doing family worship on a regular basis. Not enough: homeschool should have a tremendous amount of study in the scriptures involved in our education, whether it’s a private school, homeschool.

By the way, the picture of the absolute folly of the world is the government school systems that say if there’s one thing we will not do, it is to have the scriptures anywhere near the premises posted on the walls or whatever. That’s foolishness. That’s why our children must not be in public schools. But it does no good to take them into a homeschool situation and then not to teach those subjects based upon the word of God and not to take the time to have an essential class that we teach in our home schools, the study of God’s word.

I said last week at family camp, our classics is the Old Testament. And until we understand the Old Testament and what God was doing there in the classical period of our growth as a people, why are we studying the classics of the Greeks and the Romans? Foolishness. The word of God is extremely important.

Why chew? That’s the third word on this little children’s outline. What do I mean by chew? Well, the scriptures, the Canons of Dort say that meditation is the third thing we’re to do with the word. We’re to meditate upon the word. And meditation means to chew on. I don’t mean you take your Bible and chew on it, kids, but you take a portion of scripture and you think about it. You know, there’s a guy named Mortimer Adler writes a book every year of his life. At least he used to. I don’t know if he still does or not. You know how he does it? He sits in his living room in an easy chair and he relaxes and he lets thoughts kind of bubble up to the top of his mind and he’s got a little writing tablet there and he writes down the things that come to his mind. So he doesn’t let himself sleep, but he also is not working hard trying to figure things out. He’s kind of letting them kind of bubble up to the top of his consciousness and writes these thoughts down.

Now that’s somewhat what meditation is in a way. The only difference would be that as we start that process, we would have the word of God in the context of our mind. Some portion of the word, maybe it’s this picture for instance of the rod and the pot of manna and the tables of stone that Hebrews 9 tells us was in the context of the Holy of Holies. Maybe that’s an image from the scriptures, a word of the scriptures, a verse we meditate on and think about the significance of those things. Maybe we take a simple recitation, a memory verse. If your children are doing memory verses, don’t just memorize the verse and know the words. Go off a little while, think about the verses. Chew over what they mean. Sit and let God bring to your mind, as it were, implications of those verses to you.

Meditation on the word. Meditation is real important in the scriptures. Let me read you some verses here about the meditation that God calls us to do.

Psalm 119: “I will meditate in thy precepts and have respect unto thy”