All Glory to God the Father and to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
In my pursuit of scripture, I ran across The Westminster Shorter Catechism. You may have heard about this or it may be something brand new to you. It’s been around long enough that even the oldest of us had access to it if need be. Written in 1646 and 1647 by the Westminster Divines, a group of English and Scottish theologians and laymen, intended to bring the Church of England into greater conformity with the Church of Scotland. When you start looking at church history, there is lots of politics and unfortunately bloodshed. The great deceiver is very prevalent in pushing government into Christ’s Church. We see this today with various state Governors trying to prevent us from going to church, using this supposed pandemic for an excuse. It is also a very good example of why there is nothing new under the sun, which we find in Ecclesiastes 1:9.
Getting back to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the word catechism is defined thusly: An elementary book containing a summary of the principles of the Christian religion, especially as maintained by a particular church, in the form of questions and answers.
This shorter Westminster Catechism was used in a practice of teaching the Christian faith. New converts to Christianity were taught through lectures during the first four centuries of the Church’s existence, but this practice was largely abandoned with the rise of Christian humanists; as I said, satan is very busy here.
Now that we know a little something about this I thought I would drop in the first 4 or 5 questions and answers of this shorter catechism which has a total of 107 questions. Keep in mind, this was taught to children and the longer form was used for adults. My little 4 year old niece Rachel sat on my lap and was quizzed by her father with random questions on this shorter catechism and she spit those correct answers back to him as fast as she could get them out of her mouth.
Questions and answers of Westminster Shorter Catechism 1 through 5:
Q1: What is the chief end of man?
A1: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.
Q2: What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him?
A2: The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.
Q3: What do the Scriptures principally teach?
A3: The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.
Q4: What is God?
A4: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
Q5: Are there more Gods than one?
A5: There is but one only, the living and true God.
The intent was for the parishioner to know this, from memory, all 107 questions. And you thought that sitting in a pew for about an hour once a week was keeping you in good stead. I picked this up from one of John MacArthur’s writings: ”A Spirit filled life is a Scripture saturated life.” God expects us to study His book. Imagine that you’ve cashed in your chips, as it were, and are standing at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter is quizzing you on some of this stuff, things you really should know from studying the scripture, and a failing grade denies you entry to heaven. You really have no time to waste.
https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/westminster-shorter-catechism/
We last left our boys, Paul and his friends, on the curb of the temple. The doors had just been slammed shut and the expectation of the crowd was they were going to stone these guys to death. We are at Acts 21 verse 30:
Then all the city was provoked, and the people rushed together, and taking hold of Paul they dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut.
At this point, it looked like the crowd was going to get their wish. Jesus Himself had been in similar situations. He was teaching in the temple in Nazareth, this was at the beginning of His Ministry. He had sat down, was handed a scroll, it was from the book of Isaiah 61 verses 1 and 2. He read this:
1 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
2 To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”
And then He closed the book: Luke 4:21: And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
But there was a problem, you see this was their boy Jesus, Joseph’s son. They knew him to be a simple carpenter and now he is talking crazy, like He was anointed by God, but He’s just a bumpkin carpenter. They drove Him out of the temple:
Luke 4:29: and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff.
And here’s the part where Joseph’s son does what only our King and Savior can do:
Luke 4:30 But passing through their midst, He went His way.
My point here is this, Paul and his friends are in a tough spot. Through the Lord’s Will, I might add. Many times it looks as if things are not going to turn out well for Paul and his friends, maybe for us or members of our family or friends. The Glory of the Lord is brought out in our weakness (2 Cor 12:9), in adversity of our situation. When it looks as if all is lost, bam, water comes out of a rock (Ex 17:6), food is found on the ground (Ex 16), people are healed when they were counted as almost dead (Luke 7:1-10). They could even be dead and now they are not (John 11). There are so many examples in the bible that we can learn from. And how will you know these things if you never open the Book outside of this bible study?
Let us finish Acts 21. The Lord had a different plan than those of the Jews who had grabbed Paul and his friends. A plan that would frustrate the people and bring Glory to Himself.
Acts 21:31 to the end:
31 While they were seeking to kill him, a report came up to the commander of the Roman cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. 32 At once he took along some soldiers and centurions and ran down to them; and when they saw the commander and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul.
Roman soldiers are brought in to thwart the will of the people. This is called Providence. How God, through His divine Will, can arrange things to happen without getting all splashy with a miracle. The kind of thing that happens to us every day, you may not even notice it. You should, and when you do, thank God for it. Thank God that He loves you so much that He would bless you with this or disciple you over that. A loving Father disciplines his children. We see in this world fatherless children, with little or no discipline. Look at any big city today and see what is happening. If you wonder at any of this, look at Romans 1 verse 18 and beyond. The Apostle Paul spells it out, even tells you the order of events. All foretold some 2000 years ago.
33 Then the commander came up and took hold of him, and ordered him to be bound with two chains; and he began asking who he was and what he had done. 34 But among the crowd some were shouting one thing and some another, and when he could not find out the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. 35 When he got to the stairs, he was carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the mob; 36 for the multitude of the people kept following them, shouting, “Away with him!”
37 As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the commander, “May I say something to you?” And he *said, “Do you know Greek? 38 Then you are not the Egyptian who some time ago stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness?” 39 But Paul said, “I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city; and I beg you, allow me to speak to the people.” 40 When he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the stairs, motioned to the people with his hand; and when there was a great hush, he spoke to them in the Hebrew dialect, saying “Brethren and fathers, hear my defense which I now offer to you.”
So the Romans show up, calm things down. God arranged that. God used these godless Romans to come in and calm things down throughout all of the Land so that this very same Paul could spread the good news throughout all of Roman territory.
That could not have happened in a land wracked with war as it quite often was.
What is God arranging now in our land of many godless people? How is He using what is going on in our country to His Glory? All of this and more is in His book. Read it, study it and give thanks to Him that we live in the most glorious time of information and availability. You’ve got some work to do, we all do. Let’s get busy. Go serve your King!