From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Most of you, I'm sure, will remember that we are engaged in an investigation of the 9th and 10th verses in the 10th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans: "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

Now, we've described this statement as a definition of saving faith. That is why we've spent so much time on it. It is one of these great crucial statements in the New Testament. You remember the context. The Apostle is concerned about the failure of the Jews to believe the Gospel. They were going about to establish their own righteousness and had rejected the righteousness which is of faith.

The Apostle says that this is a great tragedy, that they should be exerting all this energy, traveling backwards and forwards, encompassing land and sea to make proselytes, and all the time the Gospel, as it were, is there before them and with them. It is this word of faith, he says, which we preach. And what is that? Well, it is this: that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Then he expounds that. For, he says, it is with the heart that man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Now, you remember that we've divided it into three headings. The first of all, there is the content of saving faith, and that's most important. It is that we believe that Jesus is Lord and all that that includes. The second thing is that we believe that God hath raised him from the dead and all that that includes.

In other words, we found here a very perfect and wonderful summary of the content of the Christian Gospel. It's full and it's comprehensive. Then we went on to consider the nature or the character of this saving faith. There we noticed that the Apostle is particularly insistent upon the fact that it is something that comes from the heart, that it isn't a mere intellectual belief or an intellectual assent to a number of propositions.

He repeats twice over that it's a matter of the heart. Thou shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness. We saw the importance of that and tried to consider where assurance of salvation came into that and drew that distinction between faith and assurance of faith. It is by faith we are saved, not by our assurance of salvation.

However, we've dealt with all that and now that brings us to our third and last heading, which is the proof of saving faith. The Apostle puts that before us, of course, by putting this emphasis upon confession with the mouth. Now, whether you retain the point I've been making about the difference in the order of the two verses or not, I don't know. However, let me put it again to you.

You notice that in the 9th verse he says, "if thou shalt confess with thy mouth and believe in thine heart." Mouth before heart. But he says in verse 10, "it is with the heart that man believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." The order is important, but it depends exactly how you look at it. If you meet a man, you will discover whether he's a Christian or not by what he says to you.

But if you're looking at the whole thing from the standpoint of how a man becomes a Christian, well then you find, of course, that the belief in the heart comes before the expression with the mouth. It is out of the fullness of the heart that the mouth speaketh. So in the 10th verse, the Apostle is putting it more theologically, if you like. In verse 9, it's practical. In verse 10, it is more accurate from the standpoint of the true order in which these things take place.

However, what is important for us now is to realize the emphasis which the Apostle does put upon this confession with the mouth. Again, you notice he repeats this. He says it in both of the verses. His object in doing so is to show us what a vital part this is of a true saving faith. Now, I've had occasion to point out with regard to the first two sections how we must never divide these things, that they always go together.

The three aspects of saving faith are always present together. There is no true saving faith unless the three are there. There must be the true content. There must be the experimental aspect, the experiential aspect; the heart must be involved. Equally, it is true to say that this confession with the mouth is also involved. What the Apostle is really saying is this: that the confession with the mouth is, after all, the inevitable outcome of believing with the heart the true content of the Christian faith.

It is the confession with the mouth that ultimately gives a proof of the fact that our heart is really engaged in this matter and that we haven't merely some kind of abstract or theoretical or merely intellectual belief. Again, I would remind you that the Apostle has really said all this very perfectly already in the 6th chapter and the 17th verse, where he puts it like this: "God be thanked that you were the servants of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you."

The three things are there, and again he puts it in the practical order. He says you have obeyed from the heart the form of doctrine or of sound words into which you were delivered. Now, obviously the obeying is the last, the third act, but he puts it first because he was looking at it there practically. What had happened was that the doctrine had come to them, they had believed it, they'd felt its power, they'd been moved by it, and they'd shown that by obedience.

So there you see you've got the three things once more. Now, this is a very important matter, and it's very interesting to notice the attention that is paid to it in the teaching of the New Testament as a whole. Our Lord frequently made this self-same point. Take, for instance, that parable of his on the question of repentance, which is to be found in the 21st chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew beginning at verse 28.

Now, I've quoted this already in connection with the believing from the heart, but I want now to quote it to show you where the element of confession comes in. Here it is: "What think ye? A certain man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, 'Son, go work today in my vineyard.' He answered and said, 'I will not,' but afterward he repented and went. And he came to the second and said likewise, and he answered and said, 'I go, sir,' and went not."

Now, that's a very perfect commentary on this very thing. You see this second son, when his father comes and asks him to go to the vineyard, he says, "I go, sir. I will go." But he didn't go. So there was no point in his saying "I will go." But this first son who at first said "I will not," he afterward repented, which we interpreted as meaning that he thought again and was sorry that he'd spoken like that to his father and saw that it was quite wrong and changed his mind.

Repent, metanoia: thought again, changed his mind. Yes, but the really important point about it is this: that he went. That is a vital part of repentance. That is in essence the difference between remorse and repentance. A man suffering from remorse is sorry that he's done that thing and he's annoyed with himself. He's suffering the consequences and he says that he was a fool. But then he gets up and goes and does it again.

Now, that's just a useless remorse. Repentance means that you not only change your attitude toward something but that you give proof of it by doing the exact opposite. So I always feel that this statement about the first son should be read like this: he answered and said "I will not," but afterward he repented and went. And if he hadn't gone, he would not be a case of repentance.

Therefore, our Lord there is putting the emphasis upon the expression of what one feels. You don't merely get the right view and feel it; you prove it by doing the thing that you had formerly said that you wouldn't do. Now, there is another statement of our Lord's with respect to this whole matter which you get in the 12th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke in verses 8 and 9.

Here is our Lord sending out his disciples to preach and to cast out devils. He warns them that they mustn't expect to be received with open arms by everybody. They must expect persecution. Indeed, it may well be the case, he says, that they will have to choose between loyalty to him and to the truth and perhaps even saving their lives.

He says to them, "Fear not them... be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say unto you, fear him." But then these are the verses: "Also I say unto you, whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God. But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God."

I read to you those verses out of the second chapter of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles in order that I might bring out this self-same point: that the moment those people were pricked in their hearts and repented and believed the Gospel and were baptized, they gave expression to it. They gave expression to it, you notice, by belonging to the Church and by adhering to them.

They continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and breaking of bread, and prayers. And all that believed were together. You see these are the terms. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.

These are the points that you will find constantly emphasized in the New Testament teaching: that the moment these people were truly convicted and repented and converted, they gave expression to it. And, of course, you get it still more explicitly in the Epistles. Now, people have sometimes foolishly tried to say that there's a division of opinion as between the Apostle Paul and the Apostle James. There isn't, of course.

All that James was concerned to do when he says that faith without works is dead is to show that a mere intellectual assent is of no value. So he argues—and on the surface, it seems as if he's arguing for justification by works—he says that Abraham was justified by what he did and by his action. Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?

What he means is this: that if Abraham had just said to God when God told him to do this to his son, "All right, I will do it," but then had done nothing about it, that it would have been of no value. He says, Abraham gave proof of his faith by actually proceeding to do the thing which God had told him to do. Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? Now, that's the point. The works make faith perfect. It is the works that ultimately prove the reality of the faith.

So he says, you see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. What he means by that is not by saying that you have faith only. It is the works that prove the faith. Because the last verse is this: "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." In other words, if there are no works present, well then it isn't faith. It is nothing but an intellectual assent; it is nothing but a kind of academic or theoretical belief.

Very well, you see then that this is a point that is made very frequently in various parts of the New Testament teaching. Now, the question before us is, what does this mean exactly? "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

Now, it's very important that we should interpret this correctly because it has often been misinterpreted. It has been misinterpreted to mean this: that what really saves a man is his confession with the mouth that Jesus is the Lord. It says that. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, thou shalt be saved. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

It has been argued—I referred you remember to that doctrine known as Sandemanianism, and it was the essence of that teaching—that it is the actual saying of this with the words and with the mouth that saves a man. But, of course, we can't accept that interpretation for a moment and for this reason: that if that were so, well then the Apostle is contradicting not only the whole of his teaching, but particularly his teaching in this 10th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.

The whole point of the entire Epistle is to show and to demonstrate that justification is by faith only. So if you say that a man saves himself by saying, "I believe that Jesus is Lord," what you've done is you have turned this confession into works and you're back again on justification by works and not justification by faith. The Apostle is not saying that a man saves himself by repeating a formula.

But what he is saying is this: that a man shows that he is saved by making the confession. This is the way in which he establishes the thing beyond any doubt whatsoever. With the mouth, he confirms and makes known the fact of his salvation. That's what the Apostle is saying. This, therefore, is the ultimate proof as to whether a man really has saving faith or not.

This is the way, I say once more, that you test the difference between a mere theoretical interest in truth and an acceptance of it with the mind and a saving faith that really does mean salvation. Now, there is a very good translation, I feel, of these verses in the Amplified New Testament. It's a paraphrase rather than a strict translation, but it surely brings out the meaning.

It puts it like this: "With the heart a person believes and so is justified, and with the mouth he confesses—declares openly and speaks out freely his faith—and confirms his salvation." Now, that's the thing. He confirms his salvation. He doesn't procure it; he doesn't produce it. Otherwise, you're back on justification by works.

What a man does by the confession with the mouth is to confirm the fact that he is saved. In other words, a man comes to you and makes this statement, and if it is a statement that is made from the heart, he is proclaiming to you that he is a saved person. Now, there is a statement of this by this same Apostle in writing to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 12:3, where he puts it, you see, like this.

He's dealing with the spiritual gifts and so he makes this statement: "Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." Now, obviously that cannot possibly mean that it is impossible for any man to use the words "Jesus is Lord" without the Holy Spirit, because any man can say that.

There is nothing to stop any man, the greatest unbeliever, from using the actual expression "Jesus is Lord." What the Apostle is talking about is this: it is impossible for any man really to say, knowing what he says and giving proof in the whole of his life that he does mean it—it is impossible for any man to say in that way that "Jesus is the Lord" but by the Holy Ghost.

So you see, it isn't just a question of the words as such. It is the way in which they are said. Therefore, the statement means that the confession with the mouth is the last bit of evidence that we have of the fact that a man has a true and a saving faith and not merely a temporary faith or an intellectual belief. Well, now we'll see this still more clearly when I come now to my next section, which is: well then, what does this mean exactly, this confession with the mouth? How is it done? What does it include?

Again, it's a comprehensive statement. I feel the best way to consider it is to consider what they did in the early days of the Christian Church and what we do at the present time. Now, how was this done in the days of the early Church? Well, we've got abundant answers to that question in the New Testament itself. Now, this question of becoming a Christian in the early days was a momentous event, it was a momentous happening.

And this was a very difficult matter both for the Jew and for the Gentile. Why was it difficult for the Jew? Well, one of the most difficult things a Jew could ever say is that Jesus is Lord. But this is the confession: if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, which means that Jesus is the Lord. Now, that was a tremendous thing for a Jew to say.

Why? Well, because he had been brought up to say and all the great tradition of the centuries had taught that Jehovah is the Lord, that there is but one God. The Jews were the monotheists in a world that was given to polytheism. They believed, they said, "there is one God." That was the great emphasis of the law of Moses and all the teaching of their great prophets.

The idea that a person who had lived on this earth, whose name was Jesus and who was a man obviously—the idea that this person should be the Lord Jehovah was to a Jew something that was incredible. That is why they accused our Lord of blasphemy. That is why the early Christians were accused of blasphemy. That is why the Apostle Paul, as Saul of Tarsus, persecuted them.

He said these people are blaspheming. They are saying that this man is Jehovah, this man that was crucified. The thing is monstrous. So for a Jew to say that Jesus is Jehovah was a tremendous thing. That is why the Apostle says there in 1 Corinthians 12:3 that nothing but the Holy Spirit could possibly make a man say such a thing.

No Jew by nature would ever say it. It was the last thing he would ever say; it was blasphemy. So when you get a Jew saying Jesus is the Lord, Jesus is Jehovah, you can be absolutely certain that the Holy Spirit has dealt with him, that he's been regenerated, that he's got a new heart and a new mind and a new outlook, that he's altogether changed.

So you see, it was a very tremendous statement for him to make. Now, it was also difficult, I say, for the Gentiles, but for a different reason. At this particular time, the Roman Emperors had been claiming deity for themselves, and the people had been granting it to them and they were offering up a kind of worship to them. And the Roman authorities were insisting that people should say "Caesar is Lord."

So a Gentile when he becomes a Christian and is asked to make the confession that "Jesus is Lord" is immediately in difficulties. He is going to say something that is contradictory of that which is demanded by the Roman Empire with all her authority and power. "Jesus is Lord. Caesar is not Lord. Jesus is Lord."

Very well, we've got to bear that in mind as we consider exactly what it did mean to these early Christian believers. Not a simple matter at all, but an extremely difficult matter. What then did it involve? Well, these are some of the things that it involved. First of all, it involved a statement of their belief. The question was, could they or could they not say that they had come to see and to believe that Jesus is the Lord?

Take, for instance, there's a good illustration of it all in the incident concerning Philip the Evangelist and the Ethiopian eunuch. You remember the story. This is the material point: and as they went on their way, they came into a certain water, and the eunuch said, "See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?" And Philip said, "If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest." And he answered and said, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God."

He's made the confession. That was the first thing that he did. He'd been listening, he'd been asking questions, and Philip had been expounding the Scriptures and the Gospel to him. Now when this man makes his request for baptism, Philip says, "If you believe." That's the question. Do you believe with all thine heart?

You notice the same emphasis ours. Not merely "Are you ready to say? Not are you ready merely to repeat something that I tell you to repeat? Do you believe it with all your heart?" And the man replies saying, "I do believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." And Philip, realizing that he was making the statement from his heart, proceeded to baptize him.

Very well, then, the first thing is it's a statement of belief, and they made that statement. Then the second step was, of course, as we find here, baptism. You'll find that as the second step as a part of this confession everywhere in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Peter puts it there on the Day of Pentecost: "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ."

There it is. It happened here again in the case of this eunuch, and it had already happened in the case of the people who had believed in Samaria. You remember that Philip had been down there preaching, and these people had believed his message. But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

Again, I ask you to bear in mind what that meant. Here is something that is done and the public knows about it, that these Samaritans who were, as it were, half-Jews, were making this astonishing statement with regard to this person, Jesus of Nazareth. And so it applies with all of them. You get exactly the same thing in the case of Cornelius and his household.

Here is a Roman citizen; here is a Gentile. He believes the message. He makes this step, and on the strength of that, he is baptized. The same happened to those believers in Ephesus, the account of which you've got in the early verses of the 19th chapter of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Paul preaches to them. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Then afterwards, when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them, and they spake with tongues and prophesied. But the second point in this confession is submission to baptism. Now, the purpose of baptism is not merely that the candidate for baptism may make his confession, but it is a part of it. It's not the most important part, but it is a part.

A man, in asking for baptism or submitting to baptism, is making a confession. His confession is that Jesus is the Lord. He believes the content of saving faith—Jesus is the Lord, God raised him from the dead—giving there an assurance that the atonement and the work of the Cross was sufficient to atone for the sins of his people.

Very well, the third step then is, of course, belonging to the Christian Church, to the company of believers. Now, I take you back again to that second chapter of Acts. The moment these people believed, they were added to the Church. We are told that there were added to the Church that day some three thousand people.

And they continued—they all kept together. The thing is quite inevitable: that these people who'd suddenly seen this tremendous truth should all be together because they'd become alike and they're believing the same things and they want fellowship with one another. But there's a very wonderful statement of this, I always feel, in Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians and in the first chapter and in the sixth verse, where the Apostle puts it like this.

He says: "and ye became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost." Now, that's a kind of statement that you can slip over without observing it, but it's tremendously and crucially important. You became followers of us and of the Lord. Like those first believers in Jerusalem, they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship and breaking of bread and prayer.

In other words, these people, they turned to God from idols to serve the living and the true God. How does one know that? We know that because they became followers of the Apostles. They joined the company and they continued to do so and went on doing so. So that was the third way in which they made this confession with the mouth.

And then, of course, they did it also in their lives. There it is in that First Thessalonians again, the first chapter: "how ye turned to God from idols." They stopped going to the idol temples and they began going to the meeting place of the Christians. They met in houses, in one another's homes, but they'd stopped going to the idol temples. They'd stopped offering their sacrifices to idols and they had aligned themselves with God's people.

And then, ultimately, the test, of course, the final test of confession, is their behavior under persecution, their behavior in time of trial, and their readiness for martyrdom. Now, you get that in many places in the New Testament. You get the martyrdom of Stephen. You get the Apostles thrown into prison and prohibited to preach or to teach any more in the name of this Jesus.

But they stand and they answer: "Whether it be right in the sight of God that we should listen unto you rather than unto him, judge ye. For we cannot but speak of the things which we have seen and heard." And they went on doing so. And they were ready to lay down their lives. So the Apostle Paul reminds the Philippians: "Unto you it is given on the behalf of Christ, not only to believe in his name, but also to suffer for his name's sake."

They were ready to do so, and they were massacred by the thousands—thrown to the lions in the arena, became the sport of the emperor and the great people. It didn't matter. Whatever they did to them, these men still went on saying "Jesus is Lord" and refused to say that Caesar is Lord. Now, that was how the confession was made with the mouth in the early times.

How is this done today? Now, here is an important question. Here is a question that I've often found has caused people much trouble. I've often had to deal with people in my pastoral work who've been in distress over this because they've had a feeling that somehow or another, they're not confessing Jesus with the mouth, and because they don't confess him with the mouth, they feel that they're not saved.

You see, they're a bit wrong in their doctrine and they're wrong in the outworking of the thing. They've got hold of the idea that it is this saying it with the mouth that saves, and therefore because they're not doing that, that they're not saved. This does make it very important that we should be clear as to how this exactly is done.

So I start once more with my negative. It isn't merely making the statement that matters in some mechanical manner, still less in some showy manner. What do I mean? Well, I mean something like this. I've known, and you probably have known, men who are always making this sort of statement. They're always repeating it, and they do so without any context, without any setting whatsoever. They repeat it almost like parrots.

It's almost like a gramophone record which just has one thing and it goes on repeating it. And they're always muttering it, and they think that in doing so, they're fulfilling this statement about confessing with the mouth the Lord Jesus. You know people who, in ordinary conversation, keep on saying "Praise the Lord" almost every other sentence. That's their way of saying that they're letting people know that they're Christians and they're always interjecting this remark.

Now, I'm putting this under my negative heading. I don't think it means that for a moment, because that very often brings the Lord and his Gospel into ridicule and contempt because it's unintelligent. And a Christian should never do anything that's unintelligent. The world doesn't understand the Christian, but the Christian doesn't make himself unintelligent in order to aggravate that.

The Christian isn't foolish. The Christian never does anything parrot-fashion. He never does anything mechanically. Confessing the Lord Jesus, as I've tried to show you was the case in the early Church, is a much bigger thing than this. It's a much deeper thing. Now, I'm not going to be dogmatic about my next statement, but I put it before you in order that you may think about it. Where does wearing badges come in this matter?

What exactly is the place of wearing a badge to show that you are a Christian? It's not a simple question. It's a difficult one and there are many sides to it. Now, let me put a much more extreme form of this. The Quakers of the 17th Century were very concerned about this, and George Fox taught that everything about the Christian should be different, that he should dress differently, that he should speak differently.

That is why he taught his people to say "thee" and "thou" instead of "you." And they did dress in a manner that was to make it abundantly plain and clear that they didn't belong to the world but that they were Christian people. Now, this has persisted. It isn't true of the Quakers today, but it did persist for a very long time. The difficulty about the matter, it seems to me, is this: that there is one aspect of it or looked at from one side, there is something which is excellent about this and something which is wonderful.

It does show that these people are prepared to suffer for what they believe. I always tend at this point to quote quite a striking illustration of this very thing that I remember stumbling across when I was a student over forty years ago. There is a disease which is known as Hodgkin's Disease. Why is it called Hodgkin's Disease? Well, because it was first described by a man called Thomas Hodgkin, who belonged to Guy's Hospital.

And I remember reading about the life of this man Hodgkin, and this is what I found. Hodgkin, though he was a great doctor, he never became a surgeon at Guy's. He never had any office or any post higher than that of the curator of the museum. Why not? The answer was because he was a Quaker. And as a Quaker, he lived in the early part of last century. As a Quaker, he dressed in a peculiar manner.

He wore a long coat which was unlike the coats that was worn by the average medical men. And because of this, which was regarded by the authorities of Guy's in those days as an eccentricity, this man who richly deserved to be made a full surgeon was never made a surgeon. But it didn't trouble him; it didn't worry him. He was perfectly happy. He made this notable contribution to knowledge with regard to that particular disease and others but was never anything beyond the curator of the museum.

Now, there is an aspect of that I say which is very noble and very wonderful. Here is a man who's not going to sacrifice what he believes to be right in order to get earthly human advancement. That's one side of it. But there is another side. Does this confession with the mouth mean something which is, I say, ultimately mechanical? You see this is a subject that can extend itself in many, many ways.

For instance, I stand before you here not wearing what is called a clerical collar. Why does anybody wear a clerical collar? How did that ever arise? To what extent should we by external appearance—either clothing or the wearing of badges or anything like that—make it known that we are Christians? Well, now the ultimate answer I take it is this: that there are certain things which obviously need no discussion.

There are certain things which are done by the unbelieving world which a Christian should not do. There are sinful things in the matter of dress as well as everything else. There a Christian must certainly be different. Though the whole world were doing that thing which is wrong and sinful and ugly, the Christian shouldn't do it. There's an extreme. But that doesn't seem to me to justify of necessity the wearing of badges or going to the point at which we become a little bit eccentric in our clothing.

In other words, while it is true in a sense to say that the apparel doth proclaim the man, there is another sense in which it is equally necessary to emphasize that the man is much more important than his apparel and that the important thing is the man himself, what we really are. And I would be prepared to argue—and I'm afraid I've got to leave it at this for tonight—I'm prepared to argue that it should not be necessary for us to wear badges in order to show that we're Christians.

We should show that we are Christians. It should be obvious to anybody who meets us by the totality of the impression we make upon them that we are Christians. The difficult point, of course, is the point at which you decide where you cross the line from proclaiming that you are a Christian and parading the fact that you're a Christian.

As I say, it is right to praise the Lord, but if we keep on saying it after almost every sentence, it becomes meaningless repetition and almost gibberish. And you indeed become exposed to the charge that was brought against the Pharisees who made broad their phylacteries and stood at the street corners proclaiming that they were very godly men.

You see, there is the other side in which we're told that your left hand must not know what your right hand doeth. It is one thing to proclaim; it is another and a very different thing, I say, to parade. And oftentimes, therefore, it does happen that people who are either nervous about this matter or who are mechanically minded or simple in their understanding, tend to do it in an utterly mechanical and almost demonstrative manner, which in the end has the exact opposite effect from that which they designed to produce.

Will you agree with me, I wonder, when I put it like this: that it is the child who tends to be demonstrative. It is the child who dresses up and who wears badges and so on and so forth. And as you grow up, you grow out of that kind of thing and you realize that it is you yourself, what you are, that does the proclaiming rather than these external, adventitious advertisements of the thing that you are.

Well, I put it to you, as I say, for your consideration. That's only the negative aspect. God willing, we'll go on next Friday night to consider how positively we confess with the mouth in the total content of that term—that we believe that Jesus is the Lord and that God hath raised him from the dead.

Let us pray. Oh Lord, our God, we do indeed thank thee that again thou hast brought us to a concern about these things. We humbly thank thee that we have believed from the heart the form of sound doctrine that has been delivered unto us. We rejoice in thy presence, oh Lord, our God, that it is in him and in him alone we find salvation and that we rest our faith on him alone who died for our transgressions to atone.

Oh Lord, we offer up unto thee therefore all the praise and all the glory. And we pray that thou wouldst give us wisdom as we represent him and as we represent thee and the glorious truth of salvation in these evil days in which we find ourselves. Lord, wilt thou make us as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves? Wilt thou show us how to walk circumspectly, how to redeem the time because the days are evil?

Grant us thy blessing, oh Lord, as we part from one another. Be with us in all our associations, in all we do and in all in which we are concerned. And grant that ever and always we may live to the praise of the glory of thy grace. And now may the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now and evermore. Amen.