GOD'S APPOINTMENTS WITH MEN

It should be obvious that my primary purpose is not theological disputation or polemics. I beg my reader, who may disagree with me on one or another point, to not reject my other points and miss my main purpose. Many theological treatises have been written defending this view of the sacraments and they defend it well. My main purpose is not theological disputation but theological appreciation. To that end I have tried to present reliable and succinct arguments for my positions. I am much more interested, however, in urging Christians to use the means which God has given us to bring the supernatural activity of God into our lives. 

We live in an age of theological oversimplification and ready-made heresies. On every hand, sincere Christians are reaching out in all directions for manifestations of the supernatural in a generation taught to doubt everything which is not physically demonstrable. The reaction among many sincere Christians has been a puerile belief in the supposedly miraculous or an unbiblical, naive view of prayer. 

Meanwhile the dynamic acting of God in the sacraments is almost universally ignored. Christendom is largely polarized into those who hold to a totally unsupernatural view of the sacraments on the one hand and those who hold an essentially magical view on the other. Even the theological descendants of the reformers who have good theology on the sacraments, give evidence in the way the ordinances are performed that they have little appreciation for the supernatural qualities of baptism and communion. As I write these lines, I am convinced that the evangelical community - both the wing that calls itself reformed and that which is "broadly evangelical," as the expression goes - is in dire need of a revival of interest in the sacraments. 

My position is faithful to the historic, reformed theology of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which I hold. It is an attempt to build on and apply that view for the benefit of our generation. The title, GOD'S APPOINTMENTS WITH MEN, suggests the theological orientation of this book. The grand old communion hymn of Horatius Bonar says it well: 

Here, 0 my Lord, I see thee face to face;
Here would I touch and handle things unseen; 
Here grasp with firmer hand the eternal grace, 
And all my helplessness upon thee lean. 

The subtitle of this book describes the persons to whom it is written. I hope that I may be of help to pastors who are charged with teaching God's people and who are held responsible by God for being correct in their theology. They not only must be "apt to teach" (I Tim. 3: 2 KJV) but must guard themselves from contemptuous familiarity with the things they so often handle. 

Furthermore I wish to speak to seminary students. I am struck with the lack of sacramental appreciation on the part of candidates for the ministry even among those who have good theology on the subject. It is my hope that we may rediscover the sheer awe of the ancients, that God would be so gracious as to make this humble minister the dispenser of such a great and spiritual treasure. 

But mainly, I pray that I may be of help to the ordinary Christian who typically wants more of God's grace and more of God's closeness and is tempted to seek an illicit and illusionary experience. These persons to whom this book is directed will always yearn for a "deeper life," a "closer walk," a more profound experience with God, for they have accepted Jesus Christ as their king and redeemer and are experiencing the tension of those finite earthlings who are children of the holy, infinite, eternal God. This tension was spoken of by Paul in Philippians 1: 23 and Romans 7: 24. It is my prayer that they will be helped to find an expression of and solution for their longings in the sacraments of Christ's church, God's "appointments," God's "meeting place" with his children.