Post-Pentecost: Stedfastness

Twenty years ago I read a sermon as a teen-ager I have never been able to forget. It is John Newton’s “Growth in Grace,” based on Mark 4:28, “First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” I was sure I knew what he’d say: Grace in the blade is saving conviction; grace in the ear is the stripping of all our righteousness and the revelation of Jesus’ righteousness; grace in “full corn” is full assurance of faith.

Instead, he said basically this: Grace in the blade is saving conviction and being drawn to a revealed Jesus to experience a time of “first love.” Grace in the ear is full assurance of faith and internal conflict. Grace in “full corn” is contemplation, simplicity, and stability. These characteristics are largely known, says Newton, by humility, spirituality, and union of heart to the glory and will of God.

Newton’s advanced, “full corn” Christian may be summarized in one word: stedfastness. This astonished me a great deal. I had expected Newton to place his emphasis on experiences rather than on fruits and marks of grace. Later I learned more as to why he emphasized fruit more than experience. Both, of course, are necessary. But fruit demands constant ingrafting into the Vine—a living out of, and in union with, Jesus. “From Me is thy fruit found” (Hos. 14:8). Experience’so often ends in itself—especially antiquated experience. Reminiscing about life is not living life. Experience is nice to have and to share, but it is by fruit that we live the daily warfare. And fruit demands stedfastness.

Stedfastness—not profound, mystically visionary experiences—is the hallmark of the advanced Christian. The child of God who knows experientially all the feast days of the ecclesiastical calendar from Advent to Pentecost cannot live out of these experiences. To live Post-Pentecost experientially demands, first and foremost, stedfastness.

True experience must bear fruit. That fruit must be growth in stability, in maturity, in stedfastness, in perseverance. Indeed, this very stedfastness is Scripture’s criteria for judging the validity of spiritual experience itself (2 Cor. 13:4-8).

How may I know if what I think I have received is really from God?

Many people have religious experiences. But not all such experiences are from God. Perhaps you too have often wondered: How may I know if what I think I have received is really from Cod?

The answer, my friend, is quite simple: By what comes before it, with it, and after it. Before true experience is given, room is made. Accompanying true experience is authenticity and the power of God. (By power, I don’t mean noise. A still, small voice can be more powerful than an earthquake if God is in it [1 Ki. 19:11-12].) Following true experience is godly fruit—yes, especially increased stedfastness.

We do not possess stedfastness by nature. In Adam, we were created with the necessary gifts to persevere and be stedfast in obedience. Sadly, we chose instability and sin. As children of Adam, we are prone to persevere only in sin and corruption to our own destruction. In a word, we are dead in sins and trespasses, apart from the renewing and persevering grace of God.

All true stedfastness is God’s gift of grace. We are Reubens —unstable as water (Gen. 49:4), apart from divine gracings. We need almighty grace to be regenerated, but also equal grace to remain converted. Increased stedfastness confirms increased grace. Those who are most advanced in grace live closest to Christ and are most stedfast in Him.

This is not to say that stedfastness is self-strength. Just the opposite is true. To be stedfast is to be acutely aware of our weakness, and in self-weakness to taste the grace of God which enables us to be strong in Christ. True stedfastness yields Paul’s confession: “When I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). True stedfastness underscores John the Baptist’s summary statement of growing sanctification: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn. 3:30).

Stedfastness is not the hallmark of infants or young men in grace, but of fathers in grace. Stedfastness is especially conveyed by those who are experientially acquainted with an expected (Advent), born (Christmas), suffering (Passion), dying (Good Friday), living (Easter), ascending (Ascension), Spirit-sending (Pentecost) Jesus. Stedfastness is true Post-Pentecost living. Scripture itself affirms this: “And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers”

(Acts 2:42).

“Continued stedfastly”: Does not this seal the validity of Pentecost? Is not this what separates much of modernity’s mass conversion gatherings from the New Testament pentecostal gathering? Errol Hulse has effectively shown us that more than 95% of “Billy-Graham-converts” return to their former lifestyles. They don’t continue stedfastly — particularly when persecution ensues.

Persecution is the acid test of stedfastness. It’s easy to begin something— also religious activity, but to persevere in the face of persecution and rejection, demands grace. To be stedfast under ridicule and satanic temptations, compels grace.

And where, dear believer, do you obtain this grace? Only in and from God Triune. You persevere with God in trial only because God has and shall persevere for and with you from eternity to eternity.

The root of your stedfastness is the unchangeable, sovereign love of the Father. “Is Ephraim my dear son? Since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still” (Jer. 31:20). To your comfort, child of God, the Father shall persevere in His eternal decree of good pleasure to you — therefore your perseverance as His saint (all your fears notwithstanding) shall be confirmed to the end of the world. That’s why the dying woman who confessed to Ebenezer Erskine that she was fully ready to die could answer him when asked if she were not afraid God would desert her: “No, because He would have more to lose in losing me than I would lose in being lost.” If one child of God does not persevere by grace to the end, the decree of the Father would not be upheld —the very thought of which is blasphemy. Keep courage, dear believer: He never forsakes the works of His hands.

Your stedfastness, rooted in the Father, is cemented through the meditorial work of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ stedfastness in the face of inimitable persecution and sorrow is the meritorious material out of which the fabric of your stedfastness is woven. Tell me, dear believer, when you went through seemingly unbearable trials in months or years past, who was the source of your stedfastness? Seen or unseen, known or unknown, externally or internally, it was Jesus. Oh, did not He suffer “innumerable reproaches, that we might never be confounded”? (Lord’s Supper Form) Your secret supply of stedfastness in the face of insurmountable odds comes from Jesus as the Tree of Life, who causes the sap of His merits to flow into you as His branches. Oh, precious, sacred, vital, holy, strengthening union with Jesus!

Stedfastness: rooted in the Father, cemented through the Son, is applied by the Holy Spirit. God’s indwelling Spirit — here lies the grand cause of why your faith, hope, and love remain alive in the darkest of nights. He who places these three jewels in your heart, keeps them glowing despite the suffocating smoke of sin and the dampening waters of internal and external opposition. The Spirit is your Keeper, your Preserver. What the Father has determined to live, and the Son has merited to live, the Spirit causes to live.

My friend, your stedfastness puts no feathers in your cap. “For who maketh thee to differ from another? And what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7) Let all your glorying be in God Triune (Jer. 9:24), for Post-Pentecost you must learn more than ever the simplicity of childlike dependence on the Triune God of your salvation.

“But,” perhaps you say, “I am so fickle, so un-stedfast. None so Reuben-like as I. My feelings fluctuate so drastically. Is it possible that the Lord is still working in me?”

Of course it is. You see, you and I are so tempted to turn in upon ourselves, rather than to the Word of God and to His triple protection in the Persons of Father, Son, and Spirit.

Persecution is the acid test of stedfastness.

Only when our faith focuses on its true object, God Triune, do we recognize that God’s stedfast love is our only hope for stedfastness. Apart from divine stedfastness, we are doomed to Reuben-like instability. Happily, however, by grace God’s perseverance produces our perseverance. Seek, my friend, as John Shairp advises, to lean more on God and less on feeling.

No child of God is content with the degree of stedfastness presently acquired in himself. After Newton wrote the above-mentioned sermon on Mark 4:28, he received a letter from an aged widow, who thanked him and added that she belonged to the “full corn” in the ear. Newton answered: “My dear madam, I am most sorry that there is one thing I forgot to include in my sermon. I should have stated that those who have reached the maturity of ‘full corn in the ear’ never recognize themselves to be such.”

My friend, it would be a sad sign if you were to count yourself as having fully arrived. Even the apostle Paul had to confess: “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13-14). Were you fully ripe, the Lord would harvest you, and take you Home.

Be not overmuch discouraged with your inconsistencies, but bring even these, yes, especially these, to your consistent Master who is able to wash away your sins and provide you with a season of richer grace. “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD” (Ps. 27:14).

It is also possible that you are going about looking for stedfastness in a wrong way. Stedfastness is always connected to means. Post-Pentecost, Luke informs us of four of these means: the apostles’ doctrine; fellowship (i.e., communion of saints); the breaking of bread (i.e., the Lord’s Supper); and prayer (Acts 2:42). How are you using these means which God gives to make provision for stedfastness?

Let us pray: Dear Lord, we grieve that we convey slightly at best the Post-Pentecost spirit of stedfastness. Graciously grant us to live more fully out of the Father’s unchangeable love, the Son’s vital union, and the Spirit’s applying grace. Stabilize us in Thy grace. Thou art worthy of more stability, more maturity, more stedfastness on our part. Help us to live as salt in the earth and light on the hill—not flickering, but burning and shining lights, out of Thy fulness as the Light of the world. Forgive our backslidings under temptation, our fickleness under emotion, our yielding under persecution. Grace us with stedfastness— biblically, doctrinally, practically, experientially—for Christ’s sake.

Rev. J.R. Beeke is pastor of the First Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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