I was very happy last January to have received an invitation to speak at the 1982 convention! For several reasons it did not take very long before a letter of acceptance was in the mail. First, this is the area that my wife and I consider as our home territory. Mrs. Kuiper was born near Edgerton, Minnesota, and I was born in Orange City, Iowa. So it is good to be in this area again, visiting relatives and friends. Secondly, as many of you already know, we have been asked to host the 1983 convention in Lynden, Washington. This means that our society members and myself will be observing things very closely, and taking notes, to help us in our planning for next year. The third reason for my eagerly accepting the invitation to speak is the most important of all. The letter of invitation included the splendid theme and text your host societies have chosen! What a powerful text: “Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness.” (II Peter 3:11) And what a timely theme: ‘‘Our Changeless Calling in a Changing World.”
Tonight, I have the pleasant task of introducing some of the basic ideas of that text and theme, laying the foundation somewhat for the speeches that follow by the Rev. Bruinsma and the Rev. Kortering. The topic that has been assigned to me is ‘‘Called to Obedience.” And I want to bring together the main ideas of the theme and my topic. We will speak of such things as the changing world in which we live. What are some of these changes? What causes these changes? What are we to think of them? Then there’s the matter of a changeless calling. What is your calling as believing young people of the Reformed faith ? Why is that a changeless calling ? Does a changeless calling in a changing world place us at a disadvantage or at an advantage? Does this mean we have to be joyless, old-fashioned, stuffy people?
One of the points the apostle Peter makes in the middle part of II Peter 3 is that the life of the child of God must be one of balance and stability. He must be in spiritual equilibrium. It’s possible, you know, that we live our lives under one of two extremes or opposites. We might be filled with an improper impatience for the return of Jesus Christ, an ardour that allows us no rest until He comes for us. Or, we might demonstrate carelessness in indifference towards that great day. In verse 9, speaking of the wonderful longsuffering of God to His church, Peter corrects a reckless impatience. Don’t fret, don’t worry, don’t believe the ignorant scoffers who say that Jesus is never going to come. . .and above all, don’t charge God with unfaithfulness, tardiness, or slackness. Rather, remember that He is being longsuffering to usward. That’s why He does not send Jesus yet. God does not will that any of His chosen ones should perish, which would surely be the case if Christ came now or at any premature time. The last child of God must be born and come to repentance. Thus we see that the longsuffering of God is salvation! (Verse 15.)
In verse 12, the apostle corrects indifference and slothfulness in respect to the day of Christ. And it seems to me, from my own life and experience, that young people fall into this category rather than into the first. You are more apt to be careless and indifferent in respect to the coming of Christ and the end of the world, than to be impatient for His blessed coming. So immediately after the convention text, we read that we are to “Look for, and haste unto, the coming of the day of God.” And we are to be “diligent”. With these things before our minds, let’s consider together the topic: Called to Obedience
- A SERIOUS QUESTION!
“Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be?” That’s the question that is before us tonight, and that is a most serious question. Is there anyone that doubts the seriousness of the apostle in these words? Is there anyone here who is not impressed with the idea of the end of the world? Listen to God’s Own Word! “The day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night.” No one knows the day or the hour; all we know is that that day comes quickly. “The heavens shall pass away with a great noise.” You have heard of the big bang theory of the origin of the universe. That’s all false of course, the universe did not begin when a cloud of gas exploded. But things are going to end with a loud noise! The end will not come with a whimper, but with a bang, a great noise! ‘‘The elements shall melt with fervent heat.” If you’ve studied a little chemistry, you know that the elements are the basic materials of creation, things such as oxygen, sulfur, iron, carbon, aluminum. They are all going to burn with intense heat, becoming molten and perhaps even gaseous. ‘‘The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” The mountains and the seas. The forests and the fields. The wildlife and the cattle. And all the works of man as well. The pyramids in Egypt, the skyscrapers in New York and Chicago, the bridges in San Francisco, the Astrodome and the Kingdome and the Silverdome and all the other stadiums and ballparks. The universities and libraries, the research laboratories and hospitals, inventions in the field of communications, you name it, it will be burned up! Cars, airplanes, space vehicles, everything that man has ever made will burn, and nothing that he has made will pass through the fire safely.
Do you believe that? I ask you that as young people in the Church of Jesus Christ. Do you believe that everything God has created in the beginning, and everything that man has made since the beginning, will all go up in smoke and in flame? That these things shall be dissolved? There are many who do not believe that. Peter reminds us of that in our chapter, the early verses, where he speaks of the ignorant scoffers who say, “Where is the promise of Christ’s coming? Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” That’s not true, of course. All things do not continue as they were, for there was the universal flood, when the world overflowed with water. But they mean to say, these unbelievers, that the future won’t be any different than the past. No end of the world, no coming of Christ, no judgment, no accounting of everything you and I have ever done. But I’m not talking to evolutionists and scoffers, and false teachers in the world of unbelief. I ask this question of the young people of the Protestant Reformed Churches, children of believers: Do YOU believe that this world and everything it contains shall be dissolved, burned, and destroyed?
Believing young people of God say, “Of course I believe that. I believe that with all my heart. And I believe that because God reveals that to me in His Word everywhere. Christ returns to destroy His and my enemies, to make all things new, and to usher in the state of everlasting rest and peace, which Peter calls the new heavens and new earth in which dwelleth righteousness And I believe that in the second place because God has given me faith to receive that Word of God, that promise of God in Christ, to embrace it, to apply it personally to myself, to hope in it, and to give myself body and soul over to it! Oh yes, I believe THAT,” says the child of God of every age.
“Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be?” How shall we live? You see, the question that Peter puts to us is a question that calls for consistency between faith and life, between confession and walk. You believe this, now how are you going to live, what kind of a person are you going to be? Let’s not say that we believe something, and then live as if we never heard of that thing. Let’s not contradict in daily life what we confess to be true in our spiritual moments. Not only does the apostle’s question demand consistency, but it also calls for wisdom, doesn’t it? All these things are going to burn, now how are you going to live? Are you going to live as if they are not going to burn? Are you going to pretend these things are not so by forcing them out of your minds? You can’t even do that! God testifies in everyone of your consciences that the world comes to an end, and besides your parents and minister are going to remind you of this often. Or are you going to arrange and order your lives according to the truth that all these are going to dissolve? Are you going to reckon with that fact, living according to true wisdom?
You know, young ladies, young men, the world we live in is a changing world. The Bible points that out in many different ways and places. The fall of Adam and Eve led to great changes within man himself, as well as to his productions. With the fall creation underwent changes. Those changes multiplied and developed down to the time of Noah, and then came the catastrophic change in the flood. Since the flood, with the beginning of seasons and the division of the human race into nations and languages, these changes have continued and increased. In fact, as time goes on change is not a steady, plodding thing, but there is acceleration. Change takes place faster and faster so that a person is hard pressed to keep up! It will be sufficient tonight, it seems to me, to mention just a few areas of change that touch you and me in our lives, in our journey through this world as redeemed saints and pilgrims. Someone has calculated that the first doubling of knowledge took place around the year 1750. If there was so much knowledge in this world at the time of Christ, that knowledge was doubled in the year 1750. The next doubling of knowledge took place in the year 1900, only 150 years later. And then it doubled again by 1950, in only 50 years. It doubled again in I960, and it has doubled several times since then! It is this explosion of knowledge that demanded the invention of the computer. Man could not keep up with himself. Necessity was the mother of invention, so that the computer had to be invented to store and keep track of the facts and the figures of human knowledge, all that data.
I’ve read that 75% of the jobs listed in the want ads of a large city newspaper are jobs that were unheard of ten years ago. What change! There has been a tremendous change in the role of women in society, and I’m afraid in many churches as well. Women have come a long way, or gone a long way, depending on one’s viewpoint. Well over half the married women in this land work outside the home, something unheard of when our grandparents were teenagers. Of all the mothers in this country with children under five years of age, 51% of them work outside the home. And you know what is happening in many churches as far as women occupying the offices of minister, elder, and deacon.
There’s the area of morality, the area which concerns itself with what is right and what is wrong. Tremendous changes have taken place in this area too. The commandments of God have been set aside by nearly every segment of society including the church. The Law of God is irrelevant, out of date, and anxiety-producing; get rid of it. Situation ethics has been adopted by practically the whole country. Situation ethics or the new morality (really the old immorality) holds that nothing is right or wrong absolutely or objectively, but you have to first judge the situation in which a certain act takes place. And what governs people more and more today is this: Everything goes, as long as you don’t get caught! If you get caught, it must have been wrong! Let me prove what a terrible grip the new morality has upon this land of ours. A survey was recently taken among public school teachers and educators. Now maybe you have wondered why your minister always talks about the godless public schools. Here’s why. Only one out of four public educators believes that abortion is wrong, one out of four believes that homosexuality is wrong, one out of four believes that sex between single people is wrong, and one out of three believe that living together before marriage is wrong. And these people are teaching the majority of the youth of this land!
And what shall we say about television, which came out when I was a boy, say about 1945. Many people are frightened half to death by what television is doing to America. They worry about the violence it inspires, about the misinformation that can be transmitted by it, about the complete lack of moral standards, even about what it is doing to the attention span of children. Then, in 1945, there was only a few hours of programming per day; today most channels blare around the clock, and there is cable vision besides. And the average American household watches almost seven hours of television a day. The contents of the programming I will not even try to describe. That’s the world we live in. Everything is changing, and changing steadily for the worse! How can there be stability in our lives? How can we be sure that we are not being swept along with the tide of change and immorality and sin? Isn’t there a ROCK somewhere unto which we can run and be safe? What manner of persons ought ye to be?
2. A JOYFUL ANSWER
You know, I’m very glad that I have an answer for you tonight! I have an answer that is true, that is satisfying, and that is lasting! And I didn’t make the answer up. God Himself gives us this answer through the apostle Peter in the convention text. And that answer is one which will appeal to young people, because it’s a joyful answer. The apostle really answers his own question. He asks, “What manner of persons ought ye to be?’’ And he immediately answers, “Ye should be holy and godly persons.’’ That’s how we are to understand the convention text. There is a question, very sober and serious since it speaks of the dissolution of all things. And there is a joyful answer!
Why joyful? Well, joyful simply because there is an answer after all! The fact that there is an answer to the question, “What shall we do? How shall we live?, even as everything speeds to the end toward the great and final conflagration means that all is not lost, but there is hope! That in itself is joyful. In the second place this is a joyful answer because of its contents. The answer speaks of obedience. Really, those words holy and godly amount to obedience, and obedience for the child of God is always a joyful matter because God blesses obedience and causes a way of faithfulness to be exceeding sweet!
Let’s look at those terms for a few moments. “Conversation” is a word that refers not only to our speech, but to the total walk of an individual. All that we do in the midst of the world, in all the relationships and departments of life equals our conversation. You ought to think here of your family, your relationship with your parents, and brothers and sisters. It takes in your schooling, the matter of teachers and classmates. Your jobs, your recreation and amusements, your dating, courting, and marriage. It includes also your church membership, your relation to your minister and elders as well as to your place in the communion of saints. Rev. Kortering will be touching on that on Thursday evening. Now that entire, broad conversation, that whole way of life in the midst of a world that teeters on the brink of ruin and dissolution, must be holy. That’s the modifier that the Holy Spirit uses: holy conversation. The word holy, which is related to the word saint, has two aspects to it, as you have learned in your Reformed Doctrine classes. Holiness implies separation from all that is sinful and defiled, first of all. The life that is holy is a life which flees from sin and keeps itself unspotted from the world. And secondly, holiness implies dedication to that which is pure, and lovely, and of good report. Separation from sin and consecration to purity and truth. Separation from corruption and uncleanness, and dedication to GOD, in other words. He is the only Good. The second term is godliness which really means to walk in the fear of God. This involves a walk according to God’s commandments. As the wise man of Israel said in Ecclesiastes 12, “Fear God and keep His commandments.” There is no way to express godly fear apart from a careful walk, a thankful walk, in all of God’s good commandments.
As we said, this all amounts to obedience. And that’s the duty of man, that’s the duty of every young person in the church. And that’s a wonderful, joyful matter, too. Now it’s time to notice that our calling is an unchanging calling! I speak to you tonight on the basis of an unchanging Word of God. The message which we declare unto you, which is the Word of God, the Bible, is the same message that prophets, apostles and evangelists declared to young people in the church from the very beginning. The reason why you have an unchanging calling in this changing world is that God is unchanging; more than that, God is unchangeable. You know that. But the point I want to make about the unchangeableness of God is that His Word to us, His commandments and precepts, are always the same! God doesn’t say one thing to us today, and another thing to us tomorrow. God doesn’t bless this today, and then curse the very same thing the next day. God never confuses us that way. But from eternity to eternity He is the same. Always He blesses obedience and punishes disobedience. And always the way of obedience is the same, spelled out for us in His Word, preached to you by the church and taught you by your parents. Thirdly, this means that you can pursue your life here below with a confident, good conscience that God will be faithful to His Word. You don’t have to worry about that. God will not change; He will not fool you or bring you to grief. So that obedience is indeed a matter of joy! God always blessed obedience! That is a fundamental rule of His kingdom from which He never departs. Holiness and godliness forever remain pleasing in His sight. That holiness and godliness He works in you by His grace, and then He is pleased to add grace to grace. Then we experience that God is for us, that wonder of wonders God is not ashamed to be called our God, that nothing can separate us from the love of God as it is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That’s joy, the joy of the obedience of faith!
Let me draw out some implications of this for you. “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved. . . let us not seek these things. Look around you. The things you see and touch and handle, the various institutions and relationships of life. They are going to burn with fervent heat. Shall I mention some of these things? There aren’t going to be any cars in heaven. Kind of foolish, then, isn’t it, to make your cars the most important thing in your life? To let your cars, the getting of them and the use of them control you, and even worse, often times ruin your relationship with the civil authorities and with your own parents. Your cars are going to burn. No basketball or baseball or tennis in heaven. Kind of foolish, then, isn’t it, to make this or that sport the great aim and ambition in your life so that many important things suffer on account of it. You just have to get that jump shot down, or that curve ball perfected! Sports, sports figures, stadiums, sports records and halls of fame, they are all going to burn! There isn’t going to be any marriage in heaven, according to the words of Jesus. There will be the great marriage between Jesus and His Bride, the church. But no marriage between a man and a woman. Kind of foolish, then, isn’t it, to make dating and courting and marriage the one great thing in life, so that you are going to get married no matter what, even if you have to marry an unbeliever! People in the church do that sometime, and they suffer the rest of their lives. They have a hell on earth, because they were not holy and godly in the choosing of their friends and mates. We may not seek, pursue after, make the great object of our striving and ambition, anything that passes away. That’s the great lesson we must learn tonight and practice all our lives.
But that doesn’t mean that life is gloomy, or that our calling is old-fashioned and narrow. There are things which do not pass away! There are things which are eternal, things which involve us in a glory and a joy that cannot be described! Jesus says, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” What kind of persons ought ye to be? Young people who live in the Word of God, the abiding Word of God which will pass through all the destruction of the day of the Lord. Man’s words and works shall pass away. But God’s Word, God’s promise to us in Christ, that will not be touched by the fire, but the fire will serve the perfecting of His precious promises. Jesus says in the sermon on the mount, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness”. That’s the kind of persons ye ought to be. Earthly kingdoms rise and fall, leaders and heroes come and go; you put your trust in them, or your hearts on them, and you shall be ashamed. But the kingdom of God which is based on the righteousness of Christ Jesus shall stand forever and ever! The fervent heat and the melting of the elements cannot bring His throne and kingdom down. They can only serve Him, and serve the perfection of that kingdom, and the bringing of us into our rightful place there!
May this convention center about the unchanging, abiding Word of God. May all that we do by way of recreation and games, serve us in our study and hearing of God’s Word. May we seek the kingdom of heaven this week in all that we do. And may that be true of us also as we return to our homes and places in life. Using the things that God gives us, but not being used by them, let us press all things that pass away into the service of Christ’s eternal kingdom. That’s your calling and mine. The person who does that shall never be ashamed.