Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

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Being sung and some maybe leaders in the Gothic organization hearing it, saying that, “Oh, this new generation has ruined another old hymn, thinking that it was a jazzed up version by some modern composer.” But actually, we sing it that way because that’s the basic tune and setting that Martin Luther wrote it to. And what we’re trying to do in calling ourselves Reformation Covenant Church instead of Reformed Covenant Church is to tie ourselves to the Protestant Reformation that actively sought to apply its faith in everything that they did, seeking reformation in everything, including the church and very actively doing it and not passively the way that so many of our hymns kind of leave us.

Nothing wrong with quiet meditation, but nothing wrong either with being active and getting ready to march for the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to talk today about the word, the Bible, and the reformation. And so we’re leaving our marriage series for this Sunday. And the verse I’m going to read is quite simple. It’s gospel in response. And I want to talk about it today in reference to our church, our time, and the history of which we stand.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. I’m going to read Psalm 119 verses 105 and 106. And those of you who probably are aware of this—you’re some Bibles include the word “nun” (a Hebrew character) at the top of verse 105. That’s part of the inspired word of God in Psalm 119. These Hebrew alphabetic letters, and it’s very important for the topic which is the Bible or the word. Okay. Psalm 119:105.

This begins this section. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Verse 106: “I have sworn and confirmed that I will keep your righteous judgments.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, show us the gospel in this text. Show us our proper response moving from 105 to 106. Help us to be a people part of the Bible-believing church that came out of the reformation and help us be a people who take that seriously and who, desiring not to slide back into some kind of dead orthodoxy, liven us, Lord God, to a knowledge, a deep thirst for your word and for life in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

All right, please be seated. So that’s the basic text and as I said it is gospel in response—a declaration of what God’s word is. It’s a lamp to our feet. It’s a light to our path. And then the response to that tremendous truth that we’re going to talk about today is a commitment, right? To know it and follow it. If you’re going to follow it, you’re going to commit to walking in that path. You have to know what it is. So that text is gospel in response and it’s in very obvious and significant ways as we tie it together with other portions of scripture.

Now I want to talk just briefly at the beginning of this talk about *sola scriptura*. At our Anselm meeting we were trying to come up with a better definition for who evangelicals are in our CRC constitution. There’s been some discussion about the word “evangelical” and what it means and Bahnsen had a proposal that was rejected.

It was rejected because it was thought too scholastic. Let me see, I had the wording here. Yes. So he talked about this and part of what he had suggested for the change in our constitution is this: that we adhere to *sola scriptura* as the formal principle of theology and *Solus Christus*—salvation of sinners is to be attributed to Christ alone—as the material principle of theology. Now what Bahnsen was trying to do there was to take two of the five *solas* that came out of the Protestant Reformation and place two of them in the context of our constitution and of course we all in the CRC affirm all five *solas*. They are *sola scriptura*—the one we’ll talk about today—by Scripture alone, *sola fide*—by faith alone, *sola gratia*—by grace alone, *Solus Christus*—by Christ or through Christ alone—and *soli Deo gloria*—to the glory of God alone.

And so but this language of the formal principle and then the material principle through some of the people in Anselm—it seemed like scholasticism where we were using these big words that nobody understands. And I only bring it up because it’s pretty significant what’s being said there. By the formal principle being identified as *sola scriptura*. In other words, what that means is that’s the beginning thing, that’s the base, that’s the foundation for the other four *solas*. And *Solus Christus* is the material principle—it follows.

We know *Solus Christus* because of the formal principle and adherence to *sola scriptura*. It’s the Bible that undergirds what we know about Jesus and what we know about grace and what we know about faith and that we’re to do all things to the glory of God. So the Scripture *sola scriptura* is one of the five *solas*, but it’s placed differently as people discuss it historically as this formal principle. It’s the beginning from which the material principles and what it teaches are then articulated.

You see the difference? And I guess what I’m saying is if you lose the formal principle, the base, everything else goes away. It all just goes away, folks. So *sola scriptura* is quite important and it was exceedingly important to the Protestant Reformation because the reformation, while certainly a reformation of all of life, was very importantly, maybe primarily, a reformation of the church. And it was a reformation of the church that was thought possible because of *sola scriptura*.

The church that they were attempting to reform would never submit to reformation as long as it held to two standards of authority: the scriptures plus tradition and the voice of the church. The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t affirm *sola scriptura*. They affirm, you know, scriptures, yes, but the tradition of the church also. And if you push them hard, their apologists will tell you the church created the Bible, so actually it’s the primary authority.

Now, how are you going to reform something that’s the primary authority? Well, you can’t. It’d be as if we said we’re going to reform the Bible. We’re not going to do that. So, you see, this is one of the five *solas*, but it’s foundational and it’s foundational for *semper reformanda*—you know, always faithful, always reforming, rather. A reformed church is not finished. It’s perpetually involved in further reformation, subjecting itself to the word of God for what it does.

And in the context of the Protestant Reformation, *sola scriptura* was of incredible primary significance and importance for everything else that followed. And that is the heritage which we inherit here today and our country is a direct result of the Protestant Reformation. It’s a direct result of *sola scriptura*. It’s so important to affirm.

Now *sola scriptura* means being judgmental. Okay. *Sola scriptura* means that it is the standard by which everything else must be measured. It doesn’t mean it’s the only authority we have. Parents are authorities. There are church authorities, civil authorities, lots of authorities in the world. But what *sola scriptura* says is it is the authority by which all the other authorities are judged, including the church. Okay.

Well, now if we’re talking about an authority that judges things, right? That is the *canon*—the standard by which to evaluate things and make judgments. *Sola scriptura* inevitably implies having a judgmental attitude. You know, I say that for this audience because I know you’re going to hear me out the rest of the way. We today think of being judgmental in a negative way. “Well, that person’s always critical.” I didn’t say critical and I didn’t say always critical or hyper-judgmental. What I said is that if the scriptures are the authority for our lives, and we must evaluate everything in our lives in relationship to that authority, that means we’re judging perpetually. It means we’re making evaluations. It means we’re saying some things are good and some things are not good and some things are allowed and maybe aren’t good or bad. But we’re always making these evaluations.

How could it be otherwise? If you believe and affirm *sola scriptura*—that it is the standard, the *canon*—the *canon* is the *cannon*. The *canon* is the standard. Then what that means is it’s the ruler by which everything else must be measured. And measuring is making a judgment. It’s making a determination and evaluation. Our Savior said to judge with righteous judgment.

Okay. I was having lunch with one of the young men here at church last Sunday at the agape and he wanted to promote the scandalization of homelessness—bringing back the notion that being homeless is a scandal. Well, no. You can’t talk about poor anymore. You talk about “resource challenged.” I’m serious—in within the city council of Portland, that’s the redefinition of words that’s going on because our culture doesn’t believe we should ever judge anybody or anything. Now, that is the polar opposite of *sola scriptura*. *Sola scriptura* commands you, if you’re a Bible-believing Protestant, to evaluate everything, including this sermon by the way, right? If you’re going to be noble, to evaluate this sermon by the word of God—you’re supposed to be judgmental today, okay?

So *sola scriptura* is a call and it is one of the most important things that will help affect reformation in our country—is to restore a proper evaluation, discernment, and the proper place of making judgments, including negative judgments of people that do sinful, wicked things. And we are now approaching a place in this country where when we do that as Christians and as churches, we’re going to run afoul of the authorities. That’s what’s going to happen. Bring it.

As President Bush said, we believe in the Bible. And the Bible tells us that we’re supposed to be making evaluations. Now, we’re not unloving and ungracious. You know, people don’t like us as Christians because we think certain things are wrong. Well, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think certain things are wrong and shouldn’t articulate it. When we do that, we give up *sola scriptura*. We give up the whole thing.

So, I want to talk today about the scriptures, but they’re in the context of this: that what we celebrate today is the reformation of a church and that the church itself is subject—you should be judgmental about this church. Next Lord’s day we’re going to have a congregational meeting here. As you leave today’s service, okay, on the table where you got your orders of worship and outlines, as you leave worship today there’ll be a sheet, 11 by 7, folded with some papers in between. Those are a couple of different plans for some possible ideas to do things to our exterior of the building out here to make it an easier place for children and parents and others to hang out.

And so we’ll be talking about that next week at our congregational meeting. We’ll also be discussing community groups and what our ideas are for fairly significantly transforming what we’re doing into the week through community groups and transitioning. And we’re going to make some presentation about that for discussion and feedback.

What we do at these congregational meetings rather is to be evaluated by you. That’s why we share it—to get your input, to discuss things, to have you make evaluations based upon the scriptures of what we’re trying to do. So we subject everything we do in this church to the word of God and we expect the same from you and we expect the same when you vote, for instance, and you evaluate political positions. *Sola scriptura*—at the end of the day your standard by which you do everything in life—has to be the scriptures.

All right. Well this verse makes some bold but quite clear claims about the scriptures. Right? I mean it’s pretty plain. We have a plain meaning to this text. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” That’s pretty plain, right? Well, let’s talk about a few specifics pulled out of other portions of scripture about this truth and kind of understand it correctly.

Now, this verse talks about how the word shines a light on everything that we do, right? And by the way, light means the ability to evaluate where you’re going to put your foot and if you’re going to stumble or trip or not, right? So, judgmentalness—if you look up “judgmental,” that’s all it means: making judgments. Doesn’t mean overly judgmental or overly judging. So light allows you to make judgments. That’s what the word here is talking about.

But it’s more than that because the Bible doesn’t just shine a light on your path. The Bible illumines your eyes for that light in the first place. Okay? The Bible opens our eyes. We read this in Isaiah 29:18: “In that day shall the deaf hear the words of this book and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness.”

What that means is the Holy Spirit is tied to this book. The coloring page for the kids is Martin Luther. You got the spirit up there. You got the Bible there in front of him. And the idea is that Martin Luther and the reformers taught the importance of the Bible because the Holy Spirit speaks through the Bible. Hebrews says as the Holy Spirit sends—in the present tense. And so the Bible itself is how the Holy Spirit, what the Holy Spirit uses to open your eyes to any light to begin with.

You see, so the Bible isn’t just good advice on what you should be doing. The Bible is what the Spirit of God uses. You hear the words of this book and God unstops your ears and opens your eyes through reading that very book or hearing that very book. So do you see the significance? It’s not just a light that you can listen to and shine. Without it, you’re in complete utter darkness because it actually opens your eyes to what is true.

In Psalm 119, I’m going to read a bunch of verses here about what the Bible does. “The entrance of thy words gives light.” So, the same basic idea: the Holy Spirit provides light by opening your heart, your mind, your eyes, your ears to the Bible. And then it goes on to say, “it gives understanding unto the simple.” So how do we know what the heck is it to do in our lives? How do we understand what our lives are about? The Bible. It says explicitly that the words of the Bible are the way we understand life.

God calls us today. You know, when one of the elders of the congregation walks up that aisle, what you’re supposed to be thinking is we’re all with him. We’re all going to heaven now. And God’s called us to his place. He wants us to wipe our feet off at the doormat of the house. Then he wants us to come in. And he wants to have a chat with us. He wants to talk to us about his word. And by that word, he wants us to understand—give understanding to the simple. Even people that aren’t that bright, that don’t have high IQs, will have understanding of their world by knowing the Bible.

You see, and then God has a meal with us and dismisses us, sends us out to take that wonderful message. So understanding, if you want understanding of things in life, the Bible is your tool.

Psalm 25:5: “Lead me in thy truth and teach me for thou art the God of my salvation. On thee do I wait all the day.” So now looking at the Bible to teach us things, it ties that—this text does—to salvation. Now so that means the Bible is clear as to how we’re to be saved from eternal damnation, right? And live with Jesus in heaven. It does that. That seems important. It seems like what’s going to happen when you die is of the most important thing you can think about, right? And this text tells us that salvation comes through the Bible, through the very words that the Holy Spirit uses. Pretty important.

But then if we think of salvation as broader than just going to heaven and saving us from damnation or living with Jesus eternally on earth, salvation means we’re being saved in all kinds of dimensions, right? And we have all kinds of enemies, but we’re saved from those enemies. How? by God’s grace and the Holy Spirit as we read the Bible. So salvation is a comprehensive term and the Bible comprehensively is the means by which God grants us salvation.

Proverbs 13:9: “The light of the righteous rejoices, but the lamp of the wicked will be put out.” Joy. The light of the righteous rejoices. So in other words, if you’re in light, if you’ve got the word of God, which is this lamp, it brings joy to your life. Do you want more joy? Well, we want joy and we usually count on external circumstances to bring us joy. “I’ll be joyful if this happens around me.” But this text and many others says that joy is a result of the light of the scriptures. That’s how we get joy.

Another similar text, Proverbs 19:8: “The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart in spite of whatever circumstances you find yourselves in, friend.”

The great truth of *sola scriptura*, the Protestant Reformation, reclaiming these very clear biblical texts for us. The great truth is you can have joy through the testimonies and statutes of God, through knowing them. And that is a joy that nothing in your circumstances can alter or take away from you. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Yeah. You want joy. Don’t come complain to me about how things are tough in your life. Well, actually do. I want to be sympathetic. But if you want joy, read your Bible and see how well your path is being illuminated by God’s word. Joy is tied to the Bible.

**Hope**

Romans 15:4: “Whatsoever things were written aforetime talking about the scriptures—were written for our learning. So it’s the source of how we learn. But to what end? That we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”

So several things there. You want more patience, you need to know the Bible. You want comfort? The scriptures are written as a comforting word to you. You have difficulties, anxieties, trials. The scriptures are your comfort. And not only that, but the scriptures move you past comfort. And the ultimate reason, the ultimate production of what’s happening here is that we might have hope. Do you have doubts about the future? Are you not hopeful about what the future will bring? The Bible is the answer for that dilemma. The Bible was written specifically so that you might have hope, that you might come through difficulties being comforted by God’s word and brought to a position of hope.

All this stuff is contingent upon the verse we just read—that light that produces joy and hope and comprehensive salvation and life, etc. All these things are brought to us by knowing and reading our scriptures. It’s that simple. We’re to be people of the book and when we’re not, well no wonder we don’t have joy or hope or we’re not being saved from difficult things. And no wonder if we’re not doing that—that’s what happens.

Ephesians 1 says the same thing—that the purpose of the scriptures is to bring enlightenment that you might know what is the hope of your calling. Hope is a direct result of knowing the word of God.

**Assurance of Salvation**

1 John 5:13: “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the son of God that ye may know that you have eternal life.” You know, people struggle with assurance and they think about their experience. Their experience does not produce assurance. What produces assurance is this light, this lamp. The scriptures were specifically written to give you assurance of faith. And if you’re struggling with assurance and haven’t turned to the word of God for this knowledge of your salvation and assurance, you’re looking in the wrong place for that. You’re looking for assurance in all the wrong places. If you’re looking in your experience or in your heart feeling or in what other people think of you, the scriptures say they’re given to us to produce assurance.

Proverbs 18:28: “Thou wilt light my lamp, the Lord will enlighten my darkness.” Now, I take this to mean, you know, generally of course, but you know there’s specific times of darkness that we enter into. You know, for instance when we’re depressed, there’s a darkness to that, right? And so to bring us out of that kind of depressing darkness, what’s the means of escape? The word of God, again. So the word of God is an answer to darkness, including the darkness of depression.

2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. To what end? That the man of God may be perfect, rather thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”

Do you want equipping? Do you want more good works in your life? Do you want to be equipped for those good works? Read your Bibles. Pray about your Bible. Meditate on your Bible. Study your Bible. Okay, that’s how it works. If you want good works in your life, you want assurance, you want to get lifted out of depression, you want joy, you want hope, you want a comprehensive blessing to your life—the Bible is your answer. The Bible is your man, right? It’s your man. It’s the source of all this stuff for us.

God says it reveals our sin. Do you want to grow in grace? Do you want to know what your sins are? Proverbs 20:27 says: “The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord searching all the inner depths of his heart.”

You know, we always talk about that verse: “the heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it?” Right? So, your heart’s a mess. Well, you can know it. You can know your heart. That’s what the scripture says—that the word of God, the lamp of the Lord, searches all the inner depths of your heart. God’s word is a light to shine in your own heart. Now, you may need other people to help you see it, but that word of God is the key of your sanctification. It reveals your sins. Do you want to grow holier? Don’t try it without the Bible. The Bible is this lamp that’s given to give—that’s provided by God to be the way the Spirit of God speaks in the present to you, bringing you all the wonderful blessings.

And you’re thinking, “Yeah, I know all this. I know all this. I know all this.” What do you do about it? What do you do? We’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

In the section, by the way, that I just read, Proverbs 20:30 says: “Blows that hurt cleanse away evil.” So the idea is the word of God searches your heart, corrects you and rebukes you and that’s how you grow in grace.

I think this is true in society too. In Zephaniah 1:12, we read: “It shall come to pass at that time that I will search Jerusalem with lamps.” Search Jerusalem with lamps. Well, I think that’s what God does. The lamp of his word, okay, comes to us as a church and searches us as well. And it searches our culture. So if we want to be able to comprehend what’s happening in our culture, to reveal what’s wrong and what’s right, the lamp of God’s word is what we turn to.

Acts 26:18 says the Bible’s given to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God that they may receive forgiveness of sins. So the Bible, the light of God is what God provides to turn us away from the deceptive blindness of Satan. Do you want to be released from deception, released from the power of the devil? Well, you know, you could go to an exorcist or whatever it is, but the scriptures are given here as the light that will prevent you or deliver you rather from deception on the part of Satan himself.

Again, in 1 John 2:26: “These things have I written unto you. So, 1 John is written concerning them that seduced you.” So, he writes them as better to help them understand who’s attempting to seduce them. And so when we’re trying to be seduced by forces of opposition to God and ultimately to ourselves, how do we prevent seduction from happening? We read the Bible. The Bible has been written to assist us to know and resist people that seduce us.

Job 29:3: “When his lamp shone upon my head, when by his light I walked through darkness.” Isn’t that wonderful imagery? I mean, it kind of supplements what we just read in Psalm 119. By the light of God’s word, we walk through darkness. Okay? And he goes on to say: “Just as I was in the days of my prime when the friendly counsel of God was upon my tent.”

Oh, that’s beautiful imagery—kind of summing all of this up. The Bible is the friendly counsel of God hovering over your tent. And when you make the Bible, the friendly counsel of God, your friend, your source of joy and hope and deliverance and prevention from deception and comprehensive salvation, understanding of your world and of the world around you and of what happens on the daily news. When you make the friendly counsel of God, the word of God, you know, when you cleave to it, what are you then? Job describes it as being in the prime of life. That’s when you’re in your prime.

Guys like me haven’t passed our prime. We really haven’t. If we grow in our knowledge of the scriptures, as when you age and mature, you grow in hearing the friendly counsel of God, you are growing into your prime and you can walk through darkness.

Now, now that’s the plain meaning, expanded out a little bit, of what the text tells us today—the significance of the word of God. This and so many more things could be said and at the end of the day, ultimately, the scriptures affirm that the light of God’s word is equated to life—rejoicing life in the Savior, life. Life isn’t just getting by. Life is rejoicing life, a knowledge of God and living life. And the scriptures tell us that indeed these commandments are life to us. We read, for instance, in Proverbs 6:20 about the commandments of your parents, but in relationship to this lamp of God’s word.

“When you roam, they will lead you. When you sleep, they will keep you. When you awake, they will speak with you. For the commandment is a lamp. The law is a light. Reproofs of instruction are the way of life.”

So, the commandment, the light of God’s word, is life and the source of life to us and how our life exists. Conversely, in Proverbs 20:20: “Whoever curses his father or his mother, his lamp will be put out in deep darkness.” And I think that refers to his death. His death. We see this over and over again in the scriptures. In Job 21, for instance: “How often is the lamp of the wicked put out? How often does their destruction come upon them? The sorrows God distributes in his anger?”

The opposite of life is death. And you know, when you have life, your eyes have light. And when you die, the lamps which are your eyes go out. And so if the word of God is our lamp, what it means is the word of God is our life as well. So and conversely then, if we don’t affirm the word of God as our life, then death is what follows.

Now there’s a relationship of this of course ultimately to Jesus, but first that relationship runs through David. Psalm 132 says this: “I’ll make the horn of David grow. I will prepare a lamp for my anointed.” So David then is seen as being essentially a lamp to Israel. And this is repeated in other scriptures.

First Kings 15:4: “Nevertheless, for David’s sake, the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem. How? By setting up his son after him and by establishing Jerusalem.” So the scriptures want us to think of King David as a lamp and God providing a lamp to follow him in the form of his son Solomon. So the lamp has identification; light has identification with the king and then the son of the king as well.

Again, First Kings 11:36: “To his son I will give one tribe that my servant David may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem.” So this relationship between David and the lamp ultimately of course—what this is picturing—is that Jesus Christ is the light of the world. He is the lamp that we read about in this Psalm, right?

2 Samuel 22:29: “You are my lamp, O Lord. The Lord shall enlighten my darkness.” So, the Bible in our verse talks about the relationship between the lamp and the Bible, and it’s the source of all these wonderful blessings as the Spirit of God speaks through it to us. But, but what that’s telling us is that God himself is the one speaking through that word because ultimately, “You, Lord God, are my lamp. My lamp is not your word apart from you. My lamp is the word, your word spoken to us.”

So the Bible doesn’t contain the word of God. The Bible is the word of God. God speaks in the present through the Spirit to us. And that speaking through the Spirit in the Bible is itself an indication that what we’re receiving is light. The light that really is ultimately God himself, by way of picture David. But ultimately, Jesus Christ is the great lampstand.

This word “lamp” here in the second part of the verse (that it’s in the first part of the verse, “Your word is a lamp to my feet”)—most of the occurrences of that are to the lampstand in the tabernacle and later in the temple. But ultimately that’s pointing us all—the temple is to Jesus. “Tear it down and I’ll raise it up after three days.” He’s the temple. He’s the lampstand. He’s the bright shining lamps, right, that shines forth. So the word of God is Jesus himself, the Spirit speaking through that word or in that word, the very word of God to us.

And ultimately then, the light that’s being spoken of in our text is identified directly with the Lord Jesus Christ. And he of course is the source of life. John 3:1 (these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ)—I read this a couple minutes ago. “The son of God believing you might have life through his name.” So assurance but life itself. So the word brings life to us. Light and life are the same thing here being tied together. And that’s because they’re mediated to us through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the lampstand.

Now we also should say that the Spirit of God, as we’ve been indicating all along here, is how this works. When we get the picture of the lampstand in the book of Zechariah, we’re told that the lampstand is being fed by two olive trees, right? This is in Zechariah 4:2. He’s given a vision of this lampstand with seven lamps. And it says in verse three of Zechariah 4 that two olive trees are by it, one at the right of the bowl and the other at the left. And so what does this mean? And Zechariah is told what it means. It says: “He answered and said to me, this is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit.”

What does it mean? “By my spirit” means that the olive trees represent the Spirit of God as the olive oil does. And that’s what feeds the lamps. Okay? So the Son of God is the light of the world. But that’s connected as well to the Spirit of God working through the Son of God and through his word to lighten our world. So the Spirit of God is what brings Jesus and the word to us. And as we said, the Spirit is listed in Hebrews as saying in the present—”says,” and then it quotes a particular verse I think from Psalms. The point is the Spirit hasn’t just said this in the past. The Spirit takes the Bible and speaks through it to us. And that’s the illumination that comes by bringing us Christ in the scriptures to do all those wonderful things that we’ve read of and that are summed up in Psalm 119:5 that the word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

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All right. So, this is what fueled the Protestant Reformation. And I want to make just one application among many of how this worked itself out. As they studied the scriptures, they saw—Calvin particularly saw—this office of the deacon in the New Testament and he saw the care for the widows being established by the deacons in Acts chapter 6. And so one of the most important reforms of the reformation were actually celebrating it Wednesday night—the reform of the diaconate in Calvin’s Geneva.

And what Calvin did was he put the deacons to work. He kind of reformed the office of deacon to provide for all the blessings that the word brings to a person’s life. And he did it in two different ways. One was specifically caring for poor people. And the other was the deacons were to visit the sick and those that were needy in terms of their health. So they saw it in two different roles. And Calvin saw this as a direct outworking of the requirements of Christ’s church to love its neighbor.

And so he says: “How can we love our neighbors?” Rather than leave all this to the civil state, which is where it was, Calvin established an order called the Bourse Française. And I think that means “allowance” or “giving.” And they have these detailed historical records you can get that they accounted for every penny they used in the care of various things that they did in Geneva in the time of the Protestant Reformation.

Now the word was a lamp to their path and it was a lamp that established a set of officers, deacons rather, that Calvin saw as deacons. And for the last, you know, 450 years after Calvin’s reforms at Geneva, this is what the diaconate has largely been in reformed churches. It was established by Calvin. It didn’t predate Calvin. Well, you can go way back to the early church and see the care for the poor on the part of the institutional church talked about, but that didn’t so much happen in Catholicism. And at Geneva, when Calvin took over, they had a lot of refugees from the persecution of the French, right? that was going on—Protestants, reformed people. So they had a lot of what we would call immigrants they had to take care of, you know. They had a lot of young orphaned kids. They had a lot of older people that weren’t doing too good. And they had a lot of people that were just poor in the middle there somewhere.

And what he did is he established an order to take care of all these people. And so, you know, he set up—he took—had them care through hospitals for sick people. He set up orphanages for young people. He set up visitation of the sick by the deacons for sick people. And what he did was he reformed the current welfare system of Geneva, which was indiscriminate welfare, and he changed it into workfare for those that were able to work.

So getting back to the scandalization of homelessness, this is what Calvin did. If you were of able body, they would find you someplace to work in the fields, the gardens, whatever it was. So they had a strong vocational element to this training for the poor. They didn’t just subsidize the poor, they did workfare. And that was a specific reform of the order of deacons that Calvin had established.

So but another very important component of this that relates to our sermon is that Calvin knew that the word is a lamp to our feet. He was using it to reform the church. *Sola scriptura*—the church is reformed by the word, not vice versa. And so he was reforming the office of the diaconate. He was seeing the responsibility to love our neighbors. So we don’t just give care of the poor to the civil state. We get actively involved. At first, maybe working with them as they did in Geneva, but we get actively involved and we change the way it’s being done to reflect biblical truth that if you won’t work you shouldn’t eat.

And so he takes an indiscriminate welfare system and changes it into workfare. So he’s reforming things. But he knows that the heart of this whole reformation is the very word of God itself. And he said that it’s not enough for a mark of the church that the word be preached. Another mark of the church, Calvin said, is that it be followed. Right? Mark of the church: the word has to be preached. Well, if all you got is the preaching of the word and you guys walk out that door and you don’t do anything that the Bible tells you to do, we’re not a true church—is what Calvin said. It has to be followed. And specifically, it has to be followed in the way we care for the poor—the fact that we do it at all as a church.

And so Calvin knew this. But the point is he knew that what undergirded all his reforms was the word of God. And he knew that without the word of God, people in their individual lives would still be subject to lack of hope, lack of joy, lack of, you know, understanding of the world, etc. And so what Calvin did was established literacy training. He taught the kids how to read and write. And men who were not equipped for vocation, he would teach them vocation. And if the vocational track that they were putting men on required literacy, they would teach them words. They would teach them words.

So in at the Protestant Reformation, this truth that the word is a lamp to my feet was a driving verse that drove them—well, I mean with many with the rest of the scriptures affirming the same thing—that drove the reformation in Geneva. And what should drive our reformation today. And specifically what Calvin knew was you had to make people understand the word of God. You had to make them understand the word of God.

So the Protestant Reformation—what about our ongoing reformation? What’s our response? Well, the text says all this stuff summed up in “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” It’s gospel here. And the response to it is “I have sworn and confirmed that I will keep your righteous judgments.” And by keeping them, you have to know them.

So the response here is this affirmation that “I have sworn, I confirm to keep you—your judgments.” If the scriptures give us all this stuff, are you willing today to confirm, to keep them, to confirm, to know, understand, study them, and let them be the lamp to your path? That is the only lamp by which all other lamps must be normed. Our response must be a commitment to be Bible-believing Christians, which means we got to know our Bibles.

Now, what do we have to do to know our Bibles? One, our response means we have to be literate. One of the reasons for private schools, Christian schools, home schools is because the public schools have done such a lousy job of just teaching people how to be literate. And we now have illiteracy, you know, growing in numbers throughout the public school system. If for no other reason, pulling our kids out of the public school system so that they can be more literate is a wonderful thing too.

Literacy is absolutely critical. I went to Multnomah School of the Bible, I don’t know, 40 years ago or something. And I went to a Bible study methods class and the Bible study methods class was based upon studying a text, diagramming the sentences in the text, knowing what the flow of the English argument was. Well, the poor teacher had to spend weeks, maybe months (I really can’t recall, but a long time) teaching the students English. They didn’t know how to diagram a sentence. They didn’t know how a paragraph worked. They didn’t know about, you know, subjects and verbs and objects and, you know, adjectival phrases, etc. They didn’t know any of that stuff because they’d come out of the public school system and lost literacy.

Now, when you don’t know how to speak the language, then you’re not going to be able to understand your Bible. And then you’re going to be subject to me. Then you’re not going to study to see if these things are really true or not. Because how could you do it? You can’t really read your Bibles effectively. Now, this was what drove, of course, in the Protestant Reformation, the translation of the Bible out of languages known by a few (Latin) into the vernacular of the people. But that doesn’t do any good if you don’t know the vernacular.

So, first of all, we have to be committed to literacy. Secondly, to Bible literacy. Okay, great. So, now you know how to read English and figure it out. You’re literate. But when you read your Bibles, do you understand the particular way it’s written? Do you know how the book sort of flows out? Do you know what book to look to for wisdom? Which book to look to for worship? What’s the relationship of what happens, the movement of the book of Proverbs?

You got to become literate in some of the basic themes of the scriptures to understand what you’re reading. You know, my wife has said—I think I’ve mentioned this before—read her Bible every day of her life for, you know, 50, 60 years or more. And then she started studying the Bible and laying the thing out and try to figure how it all connects in a particular section or book of the Bible and all of a sudden the lights go on because she’s seeing the flow. Now hopefully part of it’s been my preaching as well. But you know if you kind of know more about your Bible so you’re not just taking a verse out of context.

We have to be committed to Bible literacy or the word is no. It’s a pretty dull lamp. Pretty dim. It’s a two-watt lamp on your path. Is that what you want? You want two watts worth of assurance and joy and understanding of what’s going on or do you want a bright 300-watt bulb, you know, going on?

Well, Bible literacy is absolutely critical. As I said, Acts 17:11 says: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with gladness and readiness of mind.” They weren’t judgmental in the terms of being critical. They didn’t sit there and say, “What’s wrong with this sermon?” They received the word with readiness of mind. And then they searched the scriptures daily whether these things were so.

Now, how are you going to search the scriptures if you don’t have some context of Bible literacy going on? You got to know where everything is in at least in a general way. Part of this is Bible study. So, you got to kind of have Bible literacy. You got to know what’s being said about Messiah, etc. But then to study your scriptures as well.

In John 5:39, Jesus says: “Search the scriptures. For in them you think you have eternal life and they are they which testify of me.” He wasn’t condemning searching of scriptures. He was saying you should search the scriptures because they testify of me.

Do you search the scriptures? Do you study your Bible? Do you attend a Bible study? Do you do something more than just come to church and hear a sermon every week? Are you moving the needle on how brightly your path is lit? I think that Bible study must be a commitment of ours.

And then Bible memorization, right? And this would I would include with this Bible meditation. Psalm 119, verse 99: “I have more understanding than all my teachers. For thy testimonies are my meditation.” My meditation. You got to be able to read. You got to read your Bibles. You got to study your scriptures. So, be able to search them out what I’m talking about here. And then the scriptures go on to say you should be meditating on the Bible, thinking about it, memorizing it.

Okay? To memorize a thing is to meditate on a particular thing. Right? Psalm 119:11: “Thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against thee.” ESV puts it this way: “I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” Have you stored up the word and to the end that you not sin? Right? So you’re having trouble with particular sin. Have you memorized text relative to that sin?

Bible reading, Bible study, Bible memorization, Bible meditation. These are the proper response. If you’re going to say in response to the great gospel that the sovereign God has brought the Spirit and the Son together in the word and illuminated you and brought you into salvation—that it’s a lamp to your feet. If you hear that gospel today and you want to commit yourselves swearing and confirming to keep God’s righteous judgments, I think what you’re swearing and confirming is you’re going to know English. You’re going to learn, or know your language, whatever language the country you’re from is. You’re going to read your Bible. You’re going to study your Bible. You’re going to meditate on your Bible. And you’re going to memorize your Bible.

I don’t see any way around that based on these texts. Okay? And if we don’t do that, how can we possibly call ourselves Reformation Covenant Church? Reformation just through liturgy? I don’t think so. Reformation came with *sola scriptura*. It’s the standard. And if we don’t do that, brothers and sisters, we’re not going to be affecting any kind of reformation in our lives. If all you do is substitute this kind of a church for another kind of church is what you do, and believe and think in life—I have failed. Because the Bible says the formal principle, the base of everything else, the standard by which this church, this sermon, is to be evaluated is the very word of God. That’s what you’ve got to know. That’s what you’ve got to commit to.

Now, we’ve got tools here for you, right? We’ve got tools. We’ve been talking about Sunday school. Now, for whatever reason—and I’m not trying to make anybody feel guilty—but for whatever reason, all the Sunday school classes, the top three I think, three classes of Sunday school from about age 13 or 14 up to 19, they all have folded several months ago. Lack of interest, no kids coming to the class.

When we started, when we got this church, we saw the ability to be Reformation Covenant Church, a reformed church, always reforming based on the word of God. We saw the opportunity to provide at least a minimum amount of biblical literacy and Bible study for the children of this church by setting up a Sunday school program that would take them through every book of the Bible. If they start at age six and leave at age 19, our goal and vision was to have them go through teaching on every book of the Bible, to memorize at least for a short period of time a very short outline of each book, to have Bible literacy, to know what the themes are, to get some teaching on what our theology is as reflected in these books, to tie everything back to the Bible, the lamp, the light, the canon, the ultimate authority.

You see, that’s what we wanted to do. But, and you know, if you wanted your child to go to a different Sunday school class than the one we had prepared curriculum explicitly for, you had to get permission from the Sunday school superintendent. Some of you remember this. We don’t even talk about it anymore.

Now, here’s the point. The elders have met. We’ve discussed the problems and we’ve said: “Well, you know, maybe there’s we should make changes to the program, but not this year. It’s too late. And we want to see if maybe the problem is us. Maybe the problem is we haven’t laid out the vision of the importance of knowing the scriptures. And what a tremendous tool the Sunday school program could be for your kids to know the scriptures. Okay?”

And I know a lot of you are doing good stuff in teaching them apart from that. But here’s a minimum thing we can do—that you can do—to make sure your kids are exposed to the scriptures, to studying of them, and through, you know, explanation of them by men that this is their very calling, is to study the word of God and to articulate it to you, okay? Your pastors.

And so, we’re going to revisit, we’re going to revise the—we’re doing right now is telling you: “Hey, we’re going to keep doing it at least for another year. We’re going to have those classes. We’re going to encourage you, unless there’s some really good reason—unless you’re doing a great job teaching your script kids the scriptures—we’re going to encourage you to consider sending your kids to Sunday school. And we’re going to ask you to put them in the class that designed for their particular age to get kids from 6 to 19 through all of the Bible books.”

That means we don’t want them repeating things, right? And if you just sort of pick and choose which class they’re going to be in, we’re going to have a really hard time writing a scope and sequence to make sure your child has been exposed to all the Bible books. So, please cooperate with us. Tell us if you’ve got any concerns about it. Talk to the elders about it. But we think Sunday school is a tremendous tool to accomplish, you know, just what we’re talking about in terms of turning up the wattage on your knowledge of the scriptures and getting your kids with a solid foundation.

Bible studies, we don’t do many Bible studies. There are a few here and there. You want to start a Bible study up, get it going. You want some help from the elders in terms of somebody teaching it or suggesting material, ask us. But study your Bibles. Get hooked in. Don’t just think that this sermon every week can suffice for a 100-watt or a 300-watt bulb.

Our library, same thing with Sunday school, we’re looking at the vision for the library. And originally the vision was that library is going to contain stuff, for instance, from the Protestant reformers, you’re not going to be able to find in your average library or in your average church library or even necessarily at the Bible school or seminary library. Okay? Because it’s stuff that’s distinctive to us. And so it’s a library for learning. It’s a library for learning deeper things about the scriptures. There’s commentaries. There’s books that take basic verses like the one we’ve got here, articulate them out for you. The library is a tremendous source to increase your knowledge of the scriptures to turn up the wattage on that bulb, right? So that your path is enlightened, so you have more hope, joy, assurance of faith, keeping away from deception, etc.

The Bible is this tool that we have to know and our library that we’re in the process of writing a new vision statement for is part of that tool.

Finally, Christ School, Kings Academy, all the different private Christian education alternatives that are going on. Amy’s class for her kids, a school for her kids, etc. What we’re trying to do is restore a sense of literacy and Bible literacy through the production of school opportunities in our communities that will bring back this standard from which everything else is normed—the scriptures as the foundation for our lives as the formal principle of the reformation from which we know about Jesus, grace, faith and the glory of God.

I would ask you to consider today as you sit here, talking or thinking, as you go to bed tonight: verse 106, what’s your commitment going to be? Are you going to make a commitment to get a brighter bulb in your life? To turn up the wattage on the bulb that God’s given you, to know more about the scriptures, to meditate on them, to memorize them, to make use of some of these tools that we provide to you, and there’s lots of other tools besides?

But I ask you to commit to that as you come forward with your tithes and offerings this morning. And if you don’t, then think about it throughout the day and what we’re trying to say here. Ask any questions in Q&A time? Make sure you pick up the packets for the discussion of the exterior grounds back there and pray about this congregational meeting next week as we attempt to take the word of God, apply it in new and interesting ways and beneficial ways to increase the discipleship of our congregation and our knowledge of the scriptures.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for the wonderful truth that your word indeed is light and a lamp to our path. We thank you, your holy name, for the Holy Spirit that takes your word and has brought us to faith in Jesus as a result of that word. We thank you that it is indeed a living word, that the Holy Spirit speaks through it in the present. Bless us, Lord God, as we commit ourselves to respond to this wonderful gospel of the word by committing again to ramp up our knowledge and obedience to your scriptures. In his name we ask it. Amen.