The news of the gospel of the Lord Jesus. You find it in John the 17th chapter in beginning of verse 11. Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to you. Holy Father, keep through your name those whom you have given me that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name, those whom you gave me, I have kept, and none of them is lost except the Son of perdition that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to you, and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world, and for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by the truth. I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us, that the world may be lead that you sent me, and the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you have sent me, and have loved them as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also whom you gave me may be with me where I am, that they may be hold my glory which you have given me, for you loved me before the book, O righteous Father, the world is not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that you sent me, and I have declared to them your name and will declare it, that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I in them, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, let's pray together. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this prayer which you prayed for your disciples before your passion, before your death and entomment, and then before your vindication, your resurrection and exaltation, to your Father's right hand, and we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you are a great high priest and that you haven't stopped praying for your people. And as a high priest, you daily make intercession for your church, and you make that intercession before the Father, and it is the Father's good pleasure to hear your prayers for your people, so that your people are preserved in the unity which you have accomplished and affected by your work and through your spirit, or Jesus, it's hard for us to see that unity sometimes. But we thank you that it's there. We ask you that you would help us now by your spirit and through this portion of your word to be glad and to rejoice in the unity which you have affected among your people. Give us encouragement, O Lord. We ask in your name, amen. You may be seated. This last week, the Presbyterian Church in America, our denomination, General Assembly in Dallas, Texas, and every day there was a news release. And if you read this last week in New York Times maybe or other papers that might have carried these news releases, you might have gotten a particular picture or impression of our denomination and its work, and that impression or that picture that you might have had paid in for you, probably doesn't very well represent what actually transpired in the course of this last week. Now our denomination has weaknesses and warts. And if you want to know what they are, I'll be glad to tell you. I know what they are. And they're not particularly pleasant, they're not particularly desirable, they certainly aren't things that we aspire to, but they're there. But anytime you get a bunch of centers together, you're going to find warts. Now the news media don't particularly recognize that and don't want to make a allowance for that or acknowledgement of that, the news media will want to report on the warts without offering acknowledgments and caveats and disclaimers and that sort of thing. What I want to do, and I hope that you'll indulge me this, well, you don't have any choice because you're here and I'm in control. What I want to do is tell you a little bit about what I observed and participated in this last week as our denomination held its 29th General Assembly. So many of us here at St. Paul New to the Presbyterian Church in America, you don't know a lot about your wider family, we probably don't do an adequate job of reporting to you frequently enough what is going on in this wider denomination of ours, so I want to take this occasion to let you know of some things that are going on in the life of our church. And these are just a few observations, but I think that they are in keeping with the text of John 17. The first thing that I would want to observe about our denomination is that it is only a portion, it is only a portion of God's Church. It's only a corner, a little corner of the vineyard, the worldwide vineyard in which God is working every moment of every single day. There are Christians everywhere, hundreds of them, thousands of them, tens of thousands of them, tens of millions of Christians around the world, and you find them in all kinds of places, places that you and I wouldn't want to be ourselves, but nevertheless there are Christians in those places, and I'm not just talking about geographic locations or socioeconomic places, I'm talking about denominational connections. People with theological perspectives that ours, the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America isn't the only place you'll find Christians. I trust we understand that. It was brought home to me in a couple of very compelling ways and conversations that I had with folks at General Assembly, I was in a conversation with Tim Keller, who is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Redeemer's elders, the session of their church, and just for the benefit of those of you who are new to Presbyterian things and to Presbyterian denominations, we have three levels of church involvement in the life of this church, if you will, and at the local level, there is of course the congregation which is governed or shepherded, really, is the better word, by elders. Elders are those, and God has set apart, and then they are those whom the congregation recognizes having been set apart by God, and they serve as under-shepherds, shepherding the flock of God who Christ is committed to them, and then the next level of church involvement is what we call Presbyterians. Presbyterians are churches in a particular geographic region. Timothy, you'll remember, as Paul reminded him, Timothy was to stir up the gift that God had given to him by the laying on of the hands of the Presbyterian. When Timothy was ordained, the elders in a particular location affirmed that he had been called, and they laid their hands on him, and ordained him to the gospel ministry. And that's what Presbyterians do, that's pretty largely what their work is. It's two things, in effect, one, it is ordaining people into the gospel ministry, and receiving ministers from other Presbyterians who are coming to churches in the Presbyterian, and then the second thing that they're responsible for, is the extension of the church in a particular region, that is, church planting and special ministries, like ministries to colleges or to prisons and jails, that sort of thing. And then the final level of church involvement is the General Assembly, which is what Matthew's Assembly acts as the whole church, largely to resolve matters of theological controversy, and you see an example of that in Acts 15. And there was a controversy that was confronting the church, and there were questions about what the gospel was, and who ought to be admitted to the church, whether a person had to be circumcised and, in effect, become a good Jew before he could become a good Christian. The church gathered together in Jerusalem and said, that's hogwash, that's not the way the gospel works. You don't have to become a good Jew, to become a good Christian. No, no, you believe in Jesus, and by virtue of faith in Jesus, you're received into the church. And by that gathering occurred in Acts 15, the whole church came together to resolve that dispute. So those are the levels of church involvement. Now, back to Redeemer Church in New York City, the elders at Redeemer Church have encouraged Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to establish a master of arts in theology for pastors in New York City, who are in ministry, who lack theological training, but who need and who want theological training. Now, these are not PCA people. In the last year, this is thrilling stuff, this is just one example. In the last year in New York City, 30 new African churches have been planted, not African American. These are just churches that Redeemer is aware of, not African American churches, but African churches have been planted in New York City. And they're made up of immigrants, refugees from places like Ghana and the Ivory Coast and Uganda. And these pastors who serve these churches, many of which, number in the hundreds of congregants, two, three, four, five hundred people gathered in these churches, these pastors worked two and three jobs to make ends meet, and then they served these congregations, and they're without theological training. And so the elders of Redeemer Church, seeing and need have presented an area to establish a training program for people who are in ministry, not asking of them that they come to Philadelphia but taking what is a gift that we have in the Presbyterian Church in America, a sensitivity to theological things, taking that into the city of New York and providing training for pastors like these 30 plus pastors in these African churches that have been planted in New York City. That, to me, is a right kind of ecumenical work. That expresses the kind of unity that Jesus did pray for in John 17 and that he still prays for, that he at the right hand of the Father continues to request of the Father. The PCA, you see, is involved in New York City with people from a number of different ethnic and socioeconomic and even feelings, giving to them what is a gift that God has given to us so that these churches might be strengthened. That's a wonderful thing and that kind of thing is going on, not only in New York City but in other major cities in the United States and it's marvelous. It is a marvelous thing. Here's another example. I was struck by the bigness of the church through a conversation I had about India and the work that is going on in India. India, by the middle of this next century, will become the most populous nation on the planet. It will overtake China as the most populous nation on the planet and it's a kind of a crossroads a sort of a religious crossroads with Hinduism and Buddhism and Islam all sort of converging in this place. But you know what has been found by our missionaries who are there, by PCA missionaries? What they have found is that none of these three religions addresses the particular needs of a particular cast of people in India. And don't for a minute think that ideas don't have consequences because religious ideas have enormous consequences. We don't have time to go into this now, but just know that historically in Hinduism, in the theology of Hinduism, in this life, you get what you have earned in previous lives. And if you are an outcast, you are an outcast because in previous lives, you accumulated enough bad karma to warrant for you in this life a particular status in life. And you see, it's a violation of the world order. It's a violation of the order of things for you to do anything to relieve the suffering of outcasts. Do you see that? But the gospel comes into that world and says no. That isn't how it works. Oh, it is the case that you get what you've gotten because of a previous life. But that previous life is the life of Adam and the disobedience of Adam. And the consequence of Adam's sin is that all of us are touched and all of us are held in a bondage and the gospel comes to these outcasts and proclaims liberty and freedom in Jesus and hundreds and thousands of outcasts are coming to faith in Christ through the ministry of the gospel in India. And our missionaries are there to report it. Don't look to the New York Times to report this. Don't look to the Wall Street Journal to report this. They won't? They can't. They have philosophical convictions that won't allow them to do it. But just know that the gospel, not only through PCA missionaries, but through lots of missionaries from lots of different theological backgrounds and lots of different denominational connections is penetrating the darkness of India and thousands and thousands of lower castes people are coming to faith in Christ. And it is wonderful. It is wonderful to look beyond our own theological limitations and denominational connections and to recognize that it is the gospel that is having success in places like India and in New York City. And again, that to me is an example of the kind of thing that Jesus prayed for in John 17. And as you look at that, you see the fulfillment of it because it isn't one particular group, not one sect or one theological conviction or one denominational connection. But you see all of these different things are tied together by the blessing of God being upon them and fruit being born through them. It's wonderful. That's why I love to go to General Assembly because you get to hear stories. I hate to go to General Assembly and sit before they, but to hear the stories is through me. Here's the second thing. The first thing, it is good to be reminded that the church is a whole lot bigger, a whole lot broader, a whole lot wider than just our denomination. And it's great to be reminded that we are involved in cooperative ventures, in cooperative works, working with other denominations and other mission agencies as believers are being gathered into churches and disciples. That's a wonderful thing. Here's the second thing. And maybe I should have mentioned this first, but secondly, it is deeply encouraging to me, not on an issue, that is committed to the idea that there is a final authority in matters of faith, what we are to believe, and practice how we are to live. It is deeply encouraging to be in a denomination that is committed to the idea that there is a source of truth. It is deeply encouraging to be in a denomination that is committed to the Bible as the Word of God. And it can be very frustrating, it can be very tedious. I've always said one of my least favorite places to be is a massive room filled with nothing but ministers. But on the other hand, it is profoundly encouraging to know that as these ministers come together, and as they struggle to figure out what it means to be Christians, to be a denomination, and to practice our Christianity before the watching world, commitment to the Bible is not a piece of theological lumber from the past to be discarded. It is a present commitment, and it has the utmost of significance for our day and time. It has the utmost of significance for our day and time. This was reflecting upon this, and by the way, Jesus, in his prayer to the Father, asks the Father to sanctify his disciple, that's in verse 17, to sanctify his disciples. And they are to be sanctified by the truth. That is there to be perfected, there to be made complete, there to be made whole. And the means by which the Father will sanctify the disciples is God's own truth, sanctify them in truth, your truth, and so how does God perfect the people? God perfects the people by taking his own word and applying it to his people, so that they might be perfected and made whole and complete. That's a very significant thing. I was reflecting upon this this last week, it just reflected upon the fact that there has been a significant shift in the last 50 to 100 years, and before that there was a significant shift in the previous 200, 250 years. About 250 years ago, we'll say, or 300 years ago, there was a significant shift, or the beginnings of a significant shift, away from the notion that people needed for God, and I'm using this is overly simplistic, I suppose, and I'm using street language to describe this, but this is how it has moved over the course of the last 300 years. 300 years ago, it was everyone's conviction that in order for the truth to be known, God had to speak it into our world. But beginning with the enlightenment, in the birth of the modern world, there was a change, a significant change, and a change was this. With the enlightenment, it was still believed that truth could be known, that it existed, that it was out there, and that it could be accessed. But revelation and God's revealing that truth were no longer necessary, truth existed objectively and that truth could be accessed by the mind, by reason, and reason was elevated to a place of inordinancy, much too high, far too much trust, and confidence was placed in reason. And for the modern person, and during the modern age or the modern period, truth still existed object of me and you, and all we had to do to resolve disputes about truth was reason, reason would resolve those disputes. Now, I remember this back in the 60s, the heavy days of the 60s, on college campuses, when people would get in debates about the nature of reality, they would fight about these things. Now why would they fight about these things? They would fight about them because they believed there was something true out there, and they fought with one another, reasoning with one another, because each person believed that by his reason he had accessed that truth, and he was trying to resolve the dispute and persuade the other person to the correctness of his position. Trying to get into a fight with somebody today, if you can't do it, because there's been a shift in the last 50 years or so, and people don't believe that truth is out there anymore. But rather, if you ask somebody what they believe, they'll give you an answer, and if you tell them that you differ from them, they'll smile politely and say, gee, that's wonderful. Have you ever seen, have you ever run into this? It's basically this notion that you can believe whatever you want to believe, so long as you believe it sincerely, and we can be at odds with one another completely, diametrically opposed to one another, but we can smile politely at each other, and think that we can still live in the same neighborhoods, and we can, as long as it's a theoretical matter. But when I take a pistol and put it to the head of your three-year-old daughter, then ethics comes into play, and it's no longer just a matter of what I believe or what you believe. There's a life at stake. There's a life at stake. Our culture doesn't understand that. It smiles politely, but it is internalized truth that has made it individual and personal and subjective, and when truth is individual and personal and subjective, there's no final court of appeal, and that's why Timothy McVey can blow up a building and go to his own death with a smile on his face. I am so glad to be in a denomination that says, don't you understand? This is the death of culture. This is the death of individuals. This is the death of everything that you and your heart of hearts would prize. We are in a denomination that takes seriously the fact that God has spoken. He has spoken into this confusion. He has spoken into this diversity of opinions. He has declared himself. He has revealed himself, and what he has said is truth outside of me, and it is an objective standard that you and I both come to. We come to that truth to resolve our disputes about what is right to believe and what is right to do. We may come to different conclusions, but at least we're going to the same source. And that is a huge difference. It's going backward, frankly. It's going backward. It's going backward to the time before the Enlightenment, but in another sense, obviously, it's going ahead. Again, most of you would have been terribly frustrated and even irritated at points if you had been present during debates this last week. I was, but then I remembered this is a denomination that is seeking to understand the mind of God as heath, and this is a denomination seeking to apply what God has revealed about himself and about us, and those are good things and necessary things in a culture that has no convictions at all, no convictions at all about objective truth, truth that is outside of you and me and that can be the final arbiter in our disputes about how we should live. There's a third thing, and this is technical, but it's important because I think it's instructive for us and how we live. In addition to being committed to the Bible, we are a confessional church, and we have embraced the Westminster confession of faith and the larger and shorter catechisms as expressing the system of doctrine taught in the scriptures. And that is a big issue for our denomination. And this is where things did get a bit testy and even ugly at some points in our general assembly this last week. Let me try to explain. When we say that we have received the Westminster confession of faith, larger and shorter catechisms as representing the system of doctrine taught in the scriptures, all we are saying is that the Bible remains the final authority in matters of faith and practice. But what does the Bible teach? What does it teach about God? What does it teach about itself? What does it teach about human beings? What does it teach about the person of Christ and the work of Christ? What does it teach about the church? What does it teach about the relationship of the church to the civil magistrate or to the state? These are the things that the Westminster confession of faith touches. It takes the teaching of scripture, if you will, it organizes the teaching of scripture according to headings. What the scriptures teach about themselves, what they teach about God, what they teach about his purposes, what they teach about the church, what they teach about salvation. The Westminster confession of faith, etc., are not the final court of appeal in matters of faith and practice. The scriptures are. But everybody, whether they actually have a confession or don't have a confession, everybody believes something. And what we do in the Presbyterian Church in America is receive these standards, they are called theological standards, we receive them as representing our understanding of what the scriptures teach and so they are a representation of what we believe. Now the issue that's before the denomination and the issue that I would ask you please to pray about with respect to the denomination is what is called subscription. When a person is ordained as a teaching elder, that is me, a pastor, or a ruling elder, that is Frank James, or Dale King, or Bob Brown, or as a deacon in the life of this church. When officers are ordained in the life of this church, one of their vows is this, do you receive and adopt the Westminster confession of faith as representing the system of doctrine taught in the scriptures? Yes, subscribing to the Westminster confession of faith and the catechisms. It means that we receive them as being consistent with what we understand the scriptures to teach. Now there are two views of this in the denomination. One view is called full subscription and the second view is called system subscription. Full subscriptionists receive these standards as they express the system of doctrine that is in the scriptures along with the particular details that are expressed in the catechisms. A particular detail would be what the scriptures teach regarding the Sabbath. And if you go read your Westminster confession of faith, my hunch is that the vast majority of us in this congregation either don't agree with it or are being disobedient to it because it's very narrow and very strict. It is what is referred to as the Puritan view of the Sabbath. It wasn't John Calvin's view, it wasn't the view of the continental reformers. People like Calvin and Swingley and Beza and others, but it is the view of the confession of faith. A full subscriptionist would require us all to observe the Sabbath according to the specifics that are found in the confession's statements about the Sabbath and then going one step further. Don't be frightened by this. These are kindhearted men for the most part, they just have a different view. Don't be frightened by this. But if out of accord with it, they would want for ministers, ruling elders, and deacons and possibly even church members to be disciplined in some manner, to be called to repent for their disobedience to what they understand the scriptures to teach. That's a full subscriptionist. A system subscriptionist, which is what I am, has a difference of opinion about this. A system subscriptionist embraces the Westminster standard's larger and shorter catechism as representing the system of doctrine taught in scripture, but I can take exceptions to some of the particulars and one of the points at which I would take an exception is the Sabbath. And the issue before the Denomination Archie can in integrity actually commit myself in that vow to receiving the Westminster Confession of Faith larger and shorter catechisms as representing the system of doctrine taught in the scripture. So there are those who want conformity at every point in every detail and there are those who understand that there's a system here and the system has to do with what our core things about what the scriptures teach, the nature of scripture itself, the God of the Bible, the person and the work of Christ, and then those particular things that are features of reform theology, which is what the Westminster Confession of Faith represents. But then there are some things that at a third level we can take exception to, like how we would observe the south. That's the category that I quite frankly. And I think that that's the category that the most of the framers of the confession were in themselves because the confession of faith itself was document. If you study the history of the confession, you'll learn that it was a compromised document. And there were people who had differences of opinion regarding particulars, but they agreed about things that they could be said while at the same time people could take exception to some of those particulars. I think our denomination in large measure falls on the side of system subscription. That is, we can receive the system, though take exception to some of these matters that don't strike at the heart or the essence, the core of what it means for us to be Christians and what it means for us to be reformed Christians. Now the reason I'm concerned about this and the reason I think this has some application to us is because full subscriptionism, I'm persuaded, creates a climate of suspicion. I'm afraid it creates a climate and an attitude of Phariseism. And I'm afraid that it actually increases the danger of compromise. Because if in order to get into this denomination, I have to embrace this statement touching every single one of its particulars. And if I am not entirely persuaded about each one of those particulars, I might be tempted because I can't find a home any place else in the ecclesiastical world. I might be tempted to say that I do embrace them when I, in fact, don't embrace them. And once that kind of compromise begins at the level of conscience, I think that is a slippery slope that leads to further compromise at more substantial points. And I think, frankly, that we need to deal with one another in a broader and more consensual way than we sometimes do. We are not going to see eye to eye about every single thing. Sometimes in marriage counseling, I'll set a coffee cup between two people. And it's got one pattern on one side and one pattern on the other side. And I'll say to them, tell me what you see. And the one person will describe what is on this side, and the other person will describe what is on this side, and each will believe that the handle is on the right or the left depending upon where you're sitting.
And I'll use that as an example and illustration of how people can see things from different perspectives and believe in their heart of hearts that they're describing what is really there, but they've never gotten out of the chair and gone across the table and sat on the other side of the table to see what the other person sees. And if we become hard and fast, not about the exist part that doesn't believe the coffee cup is even there. We're agreed that the coffee cup is there. But if we become hard and fast and intransigent about the details that we see, without the willingness to get up and look at it from the other side, we're going to find ourselves full of divisions, there will be a climate of suspicion, and there will be the very great danger of Phariseism and Legalism. Very quickly, my fourth thing is just stories. The general assembly was full of stories. And I want you to know, and I'm just going to do this very quickly. I'm going to read some names, and I want you to know that each of these people has a very deep and profound affection for St. Paul's and the ministry that St. Paul's has had in their lives. Some of these people you don't know, Steve Angle, Hunter Dockery, Scott Wilkinson, but then others, Mike Schoo, who was planning a church in Lincoln, North Carolina, in Lincoln, Nebraska, whose wife Tanya is three months pregnant, by the way, you'll be glad to know that. John Musgrave, who's planning a church outside Raleigh, North Carolina, Doug Warren, who's planning a church in Portland, Oregon, Tom Allen, who is planning a church in Seattle, Washington, where 60% of the people in that congregation are new converts. All of these people were thrilled to see me, not because of me, but because of the experience that they have, the support that they have received from our church. What I try to say to us as a congregation is that we have a unique stewardship, we have a unique privilege as these RTS students come through us through our midst. Judging by what these folks have said, these folks that I saw at General Assembly, that stewardship has been well-exercised, and you are to be congratulated. We've given very generously about thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to these folks in one way or another, and that is deeply appreciated, and people have prayed for them, and that is deeply appreciated. The relationships they have with this congregation are deeply appreciated. And so as these people pass through your midst, try to remind yourselves that we have a unique stewardship, and while it may be disheartening to you, as it is for me, that we never get to know all of them, and they come for a while, and then they leave. Just know that there has been something of an incubation that has gone on here, and they are deeply grateful for it. I've gone way too long, I'm going to get in trouble again, I apologize. Those are just some observations, and I want you to be encouraged by them. I want you to pray for this portion of Christ's church, and I want for us to learn lessons, learn lessons, about how we can live together. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this portion of your church, and we thank you that your work is a whole lot better than the PCA, but we do praise and thank you for what is going on in our midst. And though, Lord, we ask you for your blessing to be upon us, that you'd encourage us, that you'd enable us to live together, and that you would multiply our witness throughout the world. And I thank you for the role that this congregation has had, this particular church has had, in encouraging and supporting and shaping dozens and dozens of people who are headed for the ministry. And I thank you, O Lord, that there are still years, and we trust even decades stretched out before us. And I pray that your blessing would continue to be upon us to the end that Christ's name is exalted, in the midst of all of you. And Lord, now as we come to this table, please hear us as together, we confess our sins. Let us pray together.