CRPC Podcast – Westminster Confession of Faith 11.4-5 Pastoral Implications of Justification
Those whom God effectually calleth he also freely justifieth;a not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous: not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them,b they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.c
a. Rom 3:24; 8:30. • b. Jer 23:6; Rom 3:22, 24-25, 27-28; 4:5-8; 5:17-19; 1 Cor 1:30-31; 2 Cor 5:19, 21; Eph 1:7; Titus 3:5, 7. • c. Acts 10:44; 13:38-39; Gal 2:16; Eph 2:7-8; Phil 3:9.
Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification;a yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.b
a. John 1:12; Rom 3:28; 5:1. • b. Gal 5:6; James 2:17, 22, 26.
Question: Does Regeneration or Justification have Precedency in Order of Nature? – Thomas Halyburton
Thomas Halyburton (1674-1712) was born into a family of Scottish Covenanters. His Father, Rev. George Halyburton, was a minister in the Reformed Church of Scotland until his ejection in 1662. Twenty years later George was denounced by the Privy Council of Scotland for holding “conventicles” (church services in the open air, unauthorised by the established church and outlawed by the government in those days). After his father’s death, young Thomas’s family (mother and sister) fled to Rotterdam in order to avoid the fierce persecution which was carried on against the Covenanters, where Thomas had his early education in the school of Erasmus. Following the Revolution, he returned to Scotland and continued his education.
After a period of inner struggle with the philosophy of Deism, God sovereignly and graciously enlighened Thomas’s soul, and gave him saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He became committed to the same Reformed Christian religion as his father, and followed in his footsteps as a minister of the gospel. On completing theological training, Thomas was licenced to preach in the Church of Scotland by Queen Anne, and ordained to the ministry of the church in Ceres, Fife. The church was part of the presbytery of Kirkcaldy.
After faithfully pastoring the church in Ceres for ten years, Rev. Dr. Halyburton became Professor of Theology at St. Leonard’s College in St. Andrews.
He died two years later at the age of 38, following an illness. At his request, his body was buried in St. Andrews next to his favourite Christian minister, Rev. Dr. Samuel Rutherford.
Thomas Halyburton’s theological and apologetic writings are marked by a distinctive thoroughness. The surviving scripts of his sermons show him to have been richly theological, deeply experimental (i.e. dealing with the experiences of the soul) and very practical — a master of the classic Puritan style of preaching.
This is the account of the first 3 chapters from the memoirs of Thomas Halyburton. I am making it available again because it is so in depth with the details of his awakening and very helpful for others going through these deep waters. “By the extremity of this anguish I was for some time, about the close of 1697 and beginning of 1698, dreadfully cast down. I was weary of my life. Often did I use Job’s words: “I loathe it, I would not live alway.” (Job vii. 16.) And yet I was afraid to die. I had no rest; “my sore ran in the night;” and it ceased not in the day. (Ps. lxxvii. 2.) At night I wished for day; and in the day I wished for night. (Deut. xxviii. 66, 67.) I said, “My couch shall comfort me;” but then darkness was as the “shadow of death.” (Job vii. 13, x. 21.) When I was in this case, I was often brought to the brink of despair: “He filled me with bitterness; he made me drunk with wormwood. He broke all my teeth with gravel-stones; he covered me with ashes.” (Lam. iii. 15.) He removed my soul far from peace: I forgot prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord; remembering mine affliction, and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul had them still in remembrance, and was bowed in me. (Lam. iii. 16-20.) Now I was made to think it a wonder that I was not consumed; and though I dreaded destruction from the Almighty, yet I could not but justify him, if he had destroyed me.
Heb 12:1-2 NKJV – 1 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares [us], and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of [our] faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Alpha and Omega Ministries (https://www.aomin.org/) is a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. James White, director, is a professor, having taught Greek, Systematic Theology, and various topics in the field of apologetics for numerous schools. He has authored or contributed to more than twenty four books, including The King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Potter’s Freedom, The God Who Justifies and What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Qur’an. He is an accomplished debater, having engaged in more than one-hundred sixty five moderated, public debates with leading proponents of Roman Catholicism, Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormonism, as well as critics such as Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and John Shelby Spong.
[Rom 13:3-4 NASB20] 3 For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; 4 for it is a servant of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a servant of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.
The Reverend Richard D. Phillips was elected senior minister by the congregation of Second Presbyterian Church, on April 15, 2007. He came to Greenville from First Presbyterian Church of Coral Springs/Margate, FL, where he served as senior minister since 2002. Previously, he served as minister of preaching at historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA. He and his wife, Sharon, have five children: Hannah, Matthew, Jonathan, Ellie, and Lydia. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan (BA), the University of Pennsylvania (MBA), and Westminster Theological Seminary (M. Div. with first honors).
Rev. Phillips served in the US Army for 13 years, holding command and staff positions in a number of combat units. While gaining his M.B.A. at the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia, he was converted to faith in Christ through the preaching of the gospel at Tenth Presbyterian Church. A few years later, while serving as assistant professor of leadership at West Point and holding the rank of major, he and his wife were persuaded of God’s call into the ordained ministry. Resigning from the Army, they moved back to Philadelphia to attend seminary.
While still in seminary, Rick became minister to a large inner-city outreach to singles and within a few years was preaching weekly at Tenth Presbyterian Church in downtown Philadelphia, the very church in which he was earlier converted and where he had met Sharon. During that time he also served on the staff of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, a radio and publishing ministry led by Rick’s mentor and senior pastor, James Montgomery Boice. He remains on the board of directors of that organization, currently serving as vice chairman. He also chairs the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, founded by Dr. Boice in 1974 and passed on to Rick’s leadership after Dr. Boice’s death in 2000. Rev. Phillips’ preaching is heard nationwide on the radio program, God’s Living Word.
Rev. Phillips focuses his ministry on what he refers to as the “3 P’s”: preaching, praying and pastoring. Additionally, God has called him to a writing ministry and he regularly authors books and articles. Among his twenty-one books, his most recent include a commentary on Zechariah, Jesus the Evangelist, and most recently What’s So Great About the Doctrines of Grace. Rev. Phillips frequently speaks at conferences on the Bible and theology and is active in overseas missions, especially in East Africa.
Philip Schaff (January 1, 1819 – October 20, 1893) was a Swiss-born, German-educated Protestant theologian and ecclesiastical historian,[1] who spent most of his adult life living and teaching in the United States.
Life and career Schaff was born in Chur, Switzerland, and educated at the gymnasium of Stuttgart. His father died when he was young and he was sent to an orphanage.[2]
At the universities of Tübingen, Halle and Berlin,[1] he was successively influenced by Ferdinand Christian Baur and Schmid, by Friedrich August Tholuck and Julius Müller, by David Strauss and, above all, Johann August Wilhelm Neander.[3] At Berlin in 1841 he took the degree of Bachelor of Divinity[4] and passed examinations for a professorship. He then traveled through Italy and Sicily as tutor to Baron Krischer. In 1842, he was Privatdozent in the University of Berlin, where he lectured on exegesis and ecclesiastical history. In 1843, he was called to become Professor of Church History and Biblical Literature in the German Reformed Theological Seminary of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania,[4] then the only seminary of that church in America. During his time there, he spoke positively of some medieval Catholics and of the Oxford Movement and he was accused of heresy; a church council exonerated him.[5]
On his journey Schaff stayed in England and met Edward Pusey and other Tractarians. His inaugural address on The Principle of Protestantism, delivered in German at Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and published in German with an English translation by John Williamson Nevin was a pioneer work in English in the field of symbolics (that is, the authoritative ecclesiastical formulations of religious doctrines in creeds or confessions). This address and the “Mercersburg theology” which he taught seemed too pro-Catholic to some, and he was charged with heresy. But, at the synod at York in 1845, he was unanimously acquitted.
Schaff’s broad views strongly influenced the German Reformed Church, through his teaching at Mercersburg, through his championship of English in German Reformed churches and schools in America, through his hymnal (1859), through his labours as chairman of the committee which prepared a new liturgy, and by his edition (1863) of the Heidelberg Catechism. So much so that when the German Reformed Church, in a desire to begin producing more and better published material for the denomination published Samuel Miller’s work entitled A Treatise on Mercersburg Theology: Mercersburg and Modern Theology Compared in 1866. Schaff’s History of the Apostolic Church (in German, 1851; in English, 1853) and his History of the Christian Church (7 vols., 1858–1890), opened a new period in American study of ecclesiastical history.
In 1854, Schaff visited Europe, representing the American German churches at the ecclesiastical diet at Frankfurt am Main and at the Swiss pastoral conference at Basel. He lectured in Germany on America, and received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Berlin.
In consequence of the ravages of the American Civil War the theological seminary at Mercersburg was closed for a while and so in 1863 Schaff became secretary of the Sabbath Committee (which opposed the “continental Sunday”)[6] in New York City, and held the position till 1870. In 1865 he founded the first German Sunday School in Stuttgart. In 1862–1867 he lectured on ecclesiastical history at Andover Theological Seminary.
Schaff was a member of the Leipzig Historical Society, the Netherland Historical Society, and other historical and literary societies in Europe and America. He was one of the founders, and honorary secretary, of the American branch of the Evangelical Alliance, and was sent to Europe in 1869, 1872, and 1873 to arrange for the general conference of the Alliance, which, after two postponements on account of the Franco-Prussian War, was held in New York in October 1873. Schaff was also, in 1871, one of the Alliance delegates to the emperor of Russia to plead for the religious liberty of his subjects in the Baltic provinces.
Schaff became a professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York City in 1870 holding first the chair of theological encyclopedia and Christian symbolism till 1873, of Hebrew and the cognate languages till 1874, of sacred literature till 1887, and finally of church history, until his death.
He died October 20, 1893, following a stroke.[5] He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.
Writings Schaff served as president of the committee that translated the American Standard Version of the Bible, though he died before it was published in 1901.
Schaff’s History of the Christian Church resembled Neander’s work, though less biographical, and was pictorial rather than philosophical. He also wrote biographies, catechisms and hymnals for children, manuals of religious verse, lectures and essays on Dante, etc.
In 1510, Luther traveled as part of delegation from his monastery to Rome (he was not very impressed with what he saw.) In 1511, he transferred from the monastery in Erfurt to one in Wittenberg where, after receiving his doctor of theology degree, he became a professor of biblical theology at the newly founded University of Wittenberg.
In 1513, he began his first lectures on the Psalms. In these lectures, Luther’s critique of the theological world around him begins to take shape. Later, in lectures on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (in 1515/16) this critique becomes more noticeable. It was during these lectures that Luther finally found the assurance that had evaded him for years. The discovery that changed Luther’s life ultimately changed the course of church history and the history of Europe. In Romans, Paul writes of the righteousness of God. Luther had always understood that term to mean that God was a righteous judge that demanded human righteousness. Now, Luther understood righteousness as a gift of God’s grace. He had discovered (or recovered) the doctrine of justification by grace alone. This discovery set him afire.
In 1517, he posted a sheet of theses for discussion on the University’s chapel door. These Ninety-Five Theses set out a devastating critique of the church’s sale of indulgences and explained the fundamentals of justification by grace alone. Luther also sent a copy of the theses Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz calling on him to end the sale of indulgences. Albrecht was not amused. In Rome, cardinals saw Luther’s theses as an attack on papal authority. In 1518 at a meeting of the Augustinian Order in Heidelberg, Luther set out his positions with even more precision. In the Heidelberg Disputation, we see the signs of a maturing in Luther’s thought and new clarity surrounding his theological perspective the Theology of the Cross.
After the Heidelberg meeting in October 1518, Luther was told to recant his positions by the Papal Legate, Thomas Cardinal Cajetan. Luther stated that he could not recant unless his mistakes were pointed out to him by appeals to scripture and right reason he would not, in fact, could not recant. Luther’s refusal to recant set in motion his ultimate excommunication.
Throughout 1519, Luther continued to lecture and write in Wittenberg. In June and July of that year, he participated in another debate on Indulgences and the papacy in Leipzig. Finally, in 1520, the pope had had enough. On June 15th the pope issued a bull (Exsurge Domini Arise O’ Lord) threatening Luther with excommunication. Luther received the bull on October 10th. He publicly burned it on December 10th.
In January 1521, the pope excommunicated Luther. In March, he was summonsed by Emperor Charles V to Worms to defend himself. During the Diet of Worms, Luther refused to recant his position. Whether he actually said, Here I stand, I can do no other is uncertain. What is known is that he did refuse to recant and on May 8th was placed under Imperial Ban.
This placed Luther and his duke in a difficult position. Luther was now a condemned and wanted man. Luther hid out at the Wartburg Castle until May of 1522 when he returned to Wittenberg. He continued teaching. In 1524, Luther left the monastery. In 1525, he married Katharina von Bora.
From 1533 to his death in 1546 he served as the Dean of the theology faculty at Wittenberg. He died in Eisleben on 18 February 1546.
[1Thessalonians 4:1-8 NASB20] 1 Finally then, brothers [and sisters,] we request and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received [instruction] from us as to how you ought to walk and please God (just as you actually do walk), that you excel [even] more. 2 For you know what instructions we gave you by [the authority of] the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification; [that is,] that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 [and] that no one violate the rights and take advantage of his brother [or sister] in the matter, because the Lord is [the] avenger in all these things, just as we also told you previously and solemnly warned [you.] 7 For God has not called us for impurity, but in sanctification. 8 Therefore, the one who rejects [this] is not rejecting man, but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you.
▶️Pastor Patrick Hines has recently had a brand new book published, called, “Earth’s Foundational History – Part 1: Genesis Chapters 1 Through 5.” (Paperback – May 4, 2023) https://cutt.ly/16RCeZ0
These two books are also available on Amazon. All proceeds go directly to Pastor Hines:
▶️Am I Right With God?: The Gospel, Justification, Saving Faith, Repentance, Assurance, & The New Birth https://cutt.ly/S6RCbuM
▶️Redrawing the Battle Lines: 23 Sermons on Critical Issues Facing the Church https://cutt.ly/m6RCTi0
We subscribe to the Westminster Standards as our doctrinal statement. It consists of the following documents:
The Westminster Confession of Faith The Westminster Larger Catechism The Westminster Shorter Catechism
We also believe that Christian Worship is to be regulated and defined by God’s Word, the Bible.
Our worship services are designed to please and honor the Triune God of the Bible. We place Scripture reading and the preaching of the word of God at the center of worship along with Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These are God’s gifts to His church and ought to always be at the center of Christian worship. We are a congregation that loves to sing God’s praises, recite His Word back to Him, and actively engage in hearing and learning from God’s Word.
We embrace and promote a comprehensive Christian world and life view.
There is no area of life which is not under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is to God and His law which all people, including governments and civil rulers, will answer. The Word of God embraces and informs the way we view marriage, the family, children, education, politics, worship, law, government, war, the church, missions, evangelism, and worship. In the world today there is a battle of opposing worldviews. There are basically only two positions: God’s Word and man’s ideas. We stand positively for Biblical truth and negatively against man’s ideas which are opposed to Biblical truth.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope for mankind.
Because all men fall short of obeying God’s law, all men everywhere are in need of divine grace and salvation from God. This salvation is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ who died for sinners, was buried, rose again, and is alive today seated at God the Father’s right hand.
We Worship God Together as Families.
We offer nursery during the morning worship service for newborns and infants but encourage people to keep as many of their children as they can with them for morning worship. The audio of the service is in the nursery via speakers. There is also a crying room with a video screen and audio of the sermon. We offer Sunday school classes for all ages, but worship together as families. We do not offer “children’s” church.
All who profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and are members of an evangelical church are cordially invited to participate with us in the Lord’s Supper.
Purity Pleasing to God – Pastor Patrick Hines Sermon
True Christian Nationalism: What it May Look Like – Pastor Patrick Hines Reformed Christian Podcast.
I wanted to do this podcast as a follow up to the previous one about ecumenical “Christian” nationalism being a fool’s errand. What if true Christians did live to see widespread revival and biblical reformation? How would that manifest itself in society? How would that influence family-life, economics, public morality, church, and policy? Everything goes back to the way we define the word “Christian” in the phrase “Christian Nationalism.” The broad-brush perspective that seems to dominate discourse today includes under the term, “Christian,” groups that neither believe nor promote Christianity – groups like Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Without the biblical gospel, you do not have Christianity at all. That is not being a “rock-ribbed” Protestant or a narrow-minded bigot. That is simply following the apostolic position breathed forth by God in Holy Scripture. Both the theologians of Rome in the 16th century and the Protestant Reformers of that same century understood this: One of us is preaching a different gospel and is therefore under the anathema of God. They understood what apparently most people today do not understand. One of us is fatally wrong on the most important doctrine of the Christian faith – how we answer the question: How can I, a sinner, be right before the Holy God. Until we agree on how to answer that question, there is no “Christianity” to unite around.
We confess that this Word of God was not sent, nor delivered by the will of man, but that holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, as the apostle Peter says. And that afterwards God, from a special care, which he has for us and our salvation, commanded his servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit his revealed word to writing; and he himself wrote with his own finger, the two tables of the law. Therefore we call such writings holy and divine Scriptures.
Confessing the Faith, Belgic Confession Article 4, The Word of God Written – Pastor Patrick Hines
Christian Sermons and Audio Books 