Congregation this evening will open our Bible to the book of Proverbs and chapter 22 Proverbs chapter 22 As you're turning there, just for a moment, let me make mention of something that you might have been noticing the last number of weeks. In the back of church, under the pamphlet shelf, there is a table there with books. And those books are for you to take home and read if you're inclined. No charge. Just take a book and read it. Some of them are very small. They could be read in an hour or two. And a few are a bit larger. There's a kid's book back there about the canons of dort as well so any of those books are free for any of us to take home and read and encourage ourselves with Those good resources. So let me just bring that to your attention tonight then to proverbs chapter 22 We'll begin our reading at verse 17 And this section is noted to be sayings of the wise and that's very valuable for a church and for a federation to desire those things of wisdom. Our text will be verse 28, but let's begin our reading Proverbs chapter 22 at verse 17, this being the word of God. Pay attention and listen to the sayings of the wise. Apply your heart to what I teach, for it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart. and have all of them ready on your lips, so that your trust may be in the Lord. I teach you today, even you. Have I not written 30 sayings for you, sayings of counsel and knowledge, teaching you true and reliable words, so that you can give sound answers to him who sent you? Do not exploit the poor because they are poor, and do not crush the needy in court, For the Lord will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them. Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man. Do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn his ways and get yourself ensnared. Do not be a man who strikes hands in pledge or puts up security for debts. If you lack the means to pay, your very bed will be snatched from under you. Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers. Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings. He will not serve before obscure men. So congregation in these sayings of the wise comes again our text notice verse 28 Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers Well then in terms of the life of a church a congregation and a federation we want to understand the spiritual application of these things and Then to that end we need the Lord's help Let's bow before him this evening and ask for that help, which he loves to give us in prayer, shall we? Our Father in heaven, we are so very thankful that you've given your word, which is applicable to all of the situations of life. And so we ought to be confident to find direction in principle or in clear instruction out of the Bible for every situation. including Lord, now the need for us as a congregation and federation to remain steadfast in the things we have received. We pray that you would bless us, Lord, as we look to your word for guidance and teaching on this. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, the congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as we considered it this morning, thinking about the king of the church, the one who ascended to the right hand of his father and is there ruling and reigning, I think I can assume safely that none of us here tonight need to be convinced about who the protector and provider and even who is the builder of the church. I think it is fair to say that each one of us would trust that it is Jesus Christ who has that defender, who is that provider, who is even the builder of the church. And so the one who is promised to build his church is indeed doing that, and the one who is promised to protect his church is indeed doing that. Well, how then does that come into an application of this text? And how do we understand our situation as a congregation and federation in regards to Jesus Christ's work and the call, the charge, the warning that comes to us in this text, which says, again, do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers. Well, congregation, here's where we begin, then, to understand it. The king has planted his church. You might need to add that to your theme. I forgot to have it included. The king has planted his church inside the landmarks of his word. His church inside the landmarks of his word. Well then, tonight we want to consider that under these following four heads. What should we understand landmarks to mean? What will be the result of remaining inside? Third, what are the motivations behind moving landmarks? And then fourth, how do we make sure they won't be moved? Because the king has planted his church inside the landmarks of his word. Well then first of all, what should we understand landmarks to mean? Well now this is an extremely valuable text and that idea of wise value is really key to this section of Proverbs. This section is talking, as we mentioned a moment ago, about the application of knowledge, which is called wisdom, and how do we apply knowledge, and even, how do we apply knowledge, find wisdom in financial considerations? Notice this at verse 26. Do not be a man who strikes hand in pledge or puts up security for debts. If you lack the means to pay, your very bed will be snatched from under you. Wisdom in terms of financial concerns is a biblical thing. The Lord is very concerned, and you might know this already, but the matter of money is approached many, many times in the Bible, significantly. Well, there's something of that here also in verse 28, the application of wisdom to things of value. We could put it this way. Don't say that the property line is that oak tree over there, when actually the property line is rather that line of rocks a little bit closer. And so the idea here is that wisdom ought to be applied in the realm of things that matter. And in the ancient day, probably not different from our day really, the property value line was extremely significant. Now today, all you need to do is click on the right website and put in the address or put in the name and you can find the property markers and you can see, well, my neighbor's property actually is onto mine and I need to dispute that or I need to discuss it because obviously there's a problem here. Well, scripture wants us to be very interested then in the things which matter the most and it's not talking about money here, you see. The Lord is interested in more than just raw property values or physical boundary markers. There are deeper things to be discovered here. Now the Hebrew word here in verse 28 is actually very interesting when it says, do not move. Actually, it is in a positive way saying, be not disloyal. That's kind of construed in a negative way, but it means to teach us a positive truth. Do not be disloyal about the ancient boundary marker which your fathers set up. The deep issue, the sweeping matters, is the question of loyalty and fidelity in terms of the things which matter the most. and there is a significant matter to be considered for the church. And it's not property lines. Now, we actually have an article in our church order about the physical property that we own as a congregation. And it's there for a reason, which has been historically proved, that sometimes when a church leaves a denomination, the denomination says, well, we own your building, and we're going to take it from you. You've got to go find another one. No. We have an article in the church order which says, no, actually, this congregation owns all of its physical temporalities. And if we someday decided to leave, they can't take it because it's ours. But you see, beloved, this is not the matter of this text. This text is not about a physical property marker. Notice it says, do not move an ancient boundary stone, now this, set up by your forefathers. The matter that is significant here, in terms of loyalty, is where shall a church find her boundary lines in this culture? Where shall we find our property markers in this day? in this world. And when delegates meet beginning tomorrow night at a synod meeting, that ought to be a very significant consideration before our attention. And let me just run right to the conclusion of the matter to say this, that our boundary markers, the ones set up by our forefathers, are determined by loyalty to the Bible. Or to put that another way, the Bible is our primary property marker. Now we have a secondary property marker, and it is called, not surprisingly, the standards. Now if I say that, do you know what I'm talking about when I say that we have reformed standards? And of course you know we're talking about the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgian Confession, the Canons of Dort. But why that language? And it has been called that for generations, the reformed standards, because they function as boundary markers. All of the blessings of a green pasture and quiet waters for the Christian and for the church will be found inside the boundary, inside the property lines of confessionally reformed church life and practice. Every one of the articles of the catechism and the canons and the Belgic direct us to remain within the scriptures. And this, beloved, is where we want to stay for the sake of safety. We should understand landmark then to mean, firstly, the word of God, and secondly, our reformed standards. Well, let's begin to answer the question that's maybe on our minds, what will be the result of remaining inside? What will be the result of remaining inside? We're gonna come to in our third point some of the matters, the winds blowing against remaining confessionally reformed, but perhaps first it's best to explain why would we want to do this, remain in these boundaries? Again, notice this, Proverbs 22 in this section is talking about wisdom. And what is it about being biblical and about being confessionally reformed which we would say is an incredibly wise position to hold to. Beloved, you see, it is only when the church remains inside the landmarks that we will have a correct view of the things that matter the most. Now follow this. Within the safety markers, the boundary markers of our property, our land, we will, within that land, have a proper view of God, of man, of the world, of sin, and salvation, and justification, and glorification, and eternal life, and all of the things that are of primary significance. All of these things are loved, and believed, and taught inside the land. It is when you take one step outside the boundary marker that you immediately find yourself to be in great danger. And we can say that even in a more strenuous way. It has been proved historically again and again without fail that when a church, a group of people take the first step beyond those boundary markers, they will inevitably absolutely find themselves in one error or another. The errors that are going on today are no different, as we'll dwell on them in a little while. And so what matters most is that we stay within the boundaries. We stay in the land. We do not move them, you see. Be loyal is an active stance. Don't pick up the stone, if we want to think of the boundary marker as a stone, as it's told to us here. Don't pick up the stone and try to expand the land. No, rather be loyal to that boundary line we have received from our forefathers. You see, the Lord does, beloved, design for his church to be, 1 Timothy 3.15, the pillar and ground of the truth. That's who we are. He uses his church, he uses us, to provide truth, first to one another. You did that with your families. When you were raising your children, you said, now these are the things to be believed, and these are the things that are not to be believed, and this is what you were doing, is you were setting up the boundary markers. We say that to ourselves, we train ourselves in these things. We come to Sunday school and catechism and Bible studies, we hear the preaching of the word, But then we also want to say these things to other people. We want to say to the culture around us, as the church has its prophetic voice to the world and our day, we want to say, no, that behavior is transgressing the boundary. You've tried to move the stones. You've tried to expand the boundary markers of land. You may not do that. And the reason you may not do that is because the boundary markers are an objective property line. Let me ask you to try this. Go to your next door neighbor and hand them your building permit. which gives you permission, you would like to say, to build a deck that transgresses onto their property line by 10 feet, or 15 feet, or you're gonna add a new driveway, or you're gonna put a pool in their backyard, or something like that, and you know immediately what problems would come to you. You'd be in court, or if they're not really nice, you'd be in jail because there was a fight that would ensue, you see. Why? Because there is an objective line. You can't transgress it. That's their property. It's out of bounds. Beloved, so it is, so much more so with the Bible and our reformed standards. You can't just move them. The Bible's boundary markers are unchangeable. And the text tells us here, we have received these things from our forefathers. That is a very positive way of saying we had generations before us of believers, men and women in faithful churches, who believed these things. Maybe your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, they said, now these are the things that are to be believed. And those things were passed on down the generations. So much so, the text is putting it this way, that if we are in unity, And we'll come to this next week. If we are in unity, that unity is not just horizontal with us around us this day, but it is also on a timeline. You see, the text is talking about a unity with our forefathers in the faith. And this is something the church needs to be very eager to protect. The result of remaining then inside will be health and peace and spiritual maturing, because we are inside and we are safe. Well, thirdly, there are not only today, there have been for years and generations, but what are the motivations behind moving the landmarks? Well, certainly there is a strong and growing interest to move the ancient landmarks in our day. As we think about the poison from the culture, we must realize that it wants to, that poison wants to sweep into the church. This is not a new problem. This has been happening for generations. The problem, however, is that that poison sweeping in causes a change of heart in people in the church. Who want to say such things as, things are being said today, we want to accept every person for who they are. We want to affirm them as they say they themselves are. People today are demanding to be accepted in their own terms, under their own designations. And people in certain churches are saying, well, we ought to do exactly that. And there's a reason for that, two, actually, primary reasons. The first is a theological reason. You see it on the commercial that's going around again on TV. I mentioned this commercial a couple of months ago. I saw it again just recently that Jesus gets us commercial. When you see that what's behind that is a misunderstanding of the term God is love. Because that commercial Jesus gets us is the idea that God loves everybody exactly the way they are. He understands their gender decisions, their homosexual choices, their drug addictions. He accepts and understands all of that and loves everybody unquestionably as they are. That is unbiblical. Now, you understand, though, that the theological reasoning there forces people in churches to pick up the stone that used to be right here, marking the line, and move it. Because they want to say, well, the church opens its arms to everybody and every behavior and every activity Not only in terms of social matters, but in terms even more so of theological matters, which is how we've gotten to Arminianism, being the primary theological position of most churches in America, where the individual person, him or herself, is God, because the individual person, him or herself, is the final decider in his or her salvation. That is absolutely unbiblical. But to get there, people had to pick up the boundary stone and move it, you see. And say, well, the property line is no longer here. Now it's way over there. I said there were two reasons people do that. The first is a theological one where a misunderstanding of what it is to say that God is love is rampant. The second is a fear factor where people are afraid that if they don't expand the boundaries, the church is going to shut its doors because people won't come in anymore. Those issues of self-preservation are extremely powerful influences. Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers, one that has stood there and stayed there, unmoved. Consider, beloved, a very recent example in our own churches, when not that long ago, our own federation was wrestling with the issue of justification by faith alone, the so-called federal vision issue. If you want to know more about that, I'll be happy to talk to you separately. The main issue in that federal vision issue, that question was the matter of, am I justified by the work of Christ, both now and forever? Is it a done thing? Shall I say that I am justified by faith alone, and never again am I going to have to doubt or fear about my eternal situation with God? Biblical Christianity, the boundary markers have always said, yes, that's right. The federal vision said, no, we need to move the boundaries a little bit. Actually, they moved them in instead of out. But nonetheless, they were moved because they would say, well, unless you keep yourself justified by perfect obedience, you can never trust that you're going to go to heaven. That's absolutely unbiblical. But it happened by a moving of the boundary markers, you see. Now. Granted, beloved, these are significant and perhaps even confusing matters. We need to go back to the primary issue of the text. Do not be disloyal to the word of God or to our reformed standards. Because within those boundary markers, There's joy and peace and spiritual maturing that takes place. We need then, as we consider Synod Niagara 2022, will we remain loyal? I have every reason and confidence to say that we will. But there are issues that we face as a federation years in the future that are going to challenge that. And so we need to remind ourselves tonight of not wanting to move the boundary markers, which leads fourthly to the consideration, how? How do we make sure that they won't be moved? Let it be said first that there is no, quote, magic formula. If we're looking tonight, waiting, expecting to hear from the pulpit something new and novel, some great idea that's going to fix all of these potential problems, I'm sorry to disappoint you. There's nothing new or novel in what I'm about to continue in preaching. It's actually hard work to remain loyal within The boundary markers. Because you see, and this ought not to surprise us, the idea here biblically is that we don't have a satellite determined boundary marker that we can just flip a switch and automatically everybody at every age level in the church knows it without a doubt and question. That's not how it works. To know where the boundary markers are requires hard work. It requires knowing the scriptures. Now, I've never tried it, and I don't think any of us really would try it, but I don't think we can take our physical Bible and kind of connect it to our head, and all of a sudden the knowledge that is in the Bible is just going to cross over like you plugged in a device into a computer into our brains. It doesn't work that way. No, rather to know the boundary markers in terms of the scripture and in terms of the three forms of unity, the standards in our Psalters, we need to read, we need to study, we need to meditate upon these things. We need to do all the things that the psalmist says in the Psalms. Oh, how I love your law. To use a phrase that's probably been overused by some, we need to know what we believe and why we believe it. If you talk with an old gentleman, I'll just use that as a common way of thinking of it, who's lived on his piece of property since he inherited it from his parents, and they inherited it from their parents out in the woods somewhere, he will know, because he's walked it and lived it, exactly where the boundary markers are. He's not in question about where his property line starts and stops. And so it is, beloved, with those whose Bibles are dog-eared and whose pages of the Bible are rough and whose Bibles are marked up and whose Bibles look like they've been tossed around because they've been used so much. That's what it takes to ensure that the boundary markers won't be moved. I mentioned this morning in the sermon an analogy and illustration from candidacy exams and the Bible knowledge section. I actually wish that the Bible knowledge section of our exams was twice as long as any other section. simply because we ought to want to make sure that the man coming to the pulpit knows his Bible inside and out, front and back, left to right, cover to cover, as much as is humanly possible. Why? So that he won't be led astray and lead the congregation to move the boundary markers. Now I say that and you think, well, that's kind of thinking negatively, but it happens. It is what happened in the Christian Reformed church. When the seminary situation changed from 1953 spring to 1953 fall in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and they got rid of all of the, quote, conservative professors at Calvin and brought in liberal professors at Calvin, the training began to bear fruit through pastors in pulpits so that you get to the situation today where everything seems to be open and acceptable in what was once formerly the most faithful confessional church in the United States. Beloved, we need to know the Bible. And then secondly, we need to know very well the standards We're going through catechism again right now, and our catechism class has just begun in the deliverance section. And as we're thinking about the glories of the deliverance that we have received from Jesus Christ, what we are pondering together as a catechism class is those primary matters. Who is God? Who is man? What is sin? How does salvation happen? And all of the rest of it, which we receive. And in receiving those things, we are taught where the boundary markers are. So that one day if our children in their married life and they're looking for a new church, they visit church ABC down the block in a different town, they walk in the door and they hear from the pulpit things which they immediately recognize. Now those are not the things that I was taught. They hear that the boundary markers in that church have been moved and they walk out the door and they don't come back because they're looking for a faithful church. Beloved, these are the things that we're praying for and hoping for and believing will be the issues of deliberation at Synod this week. Will our delegates, and I trust they will, strive to live within the boundary markers And again, as the text says, being not disloyal to what we have received from our forefathers. Beloved, pray to that end. I mean that with all earnestness. So know the scriptures yourselves, know the confessions. When's the last time you sat down yourself, alone, or with your husband or wife, and read through the Heidelberg Catechism. Just read through it. You can do it in a few hours. How well do we know these things? And then pray earnestly that this week, and when we come back next week together, we will hear that God has again preserved us within the boundary markers of his kindness, his word, and our reformed standards. Amen. Lord, now we plead with you this evening for these very things, for these are the things that we need. This is what every church of every generation needs. We need to know where the lines are drawn. So Heavenly Father, help us to believe that inside the promised land is. That area flowing with milk and honey, green pastures, quiet waters of fruitfulness and safety and spiritual maturing. Grant us, O Lord, to be delighting, to live inside the land, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.