All Articles For Key, Steven R

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. In considering the gathering of the church, we saw how Scripture reveals that gathering as God’s work exclusively. It is the wonder work of divine, sovereign grace. It is the work of particular grace. That is evident in what the inspired apostle writes to the church at Thessalonica in II Thessalonians 2:13-14: “But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:...

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. Previous article in this series: August 2007, p. 444. We have seen that in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper God is pleased to sit at the feast table with us. The table of our Lord is the table of the covenant! The great and holy God takes sinners into His fellowship—not as sinners, but as those cleansed with the blood of His dear Son. Christ’s work in our redemption instills in us a desire to join our Lord in the fellowship of His love, to confess His...

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. Previous article in this series: June 2007, p. 392. Its Rich Symbolism he elements of the Lord’s Supper are very familiar to us. We understand that the bread and the wine symbolize Christ’s broken body and shed blood. He told us the same in the institution of the Lord’s Supper recorded inMatthew 26:26-27, the parallel accounts of Mark 14:22-24 and Luke 22:19-20, as well as I Corinthians 11:23-25. But how often have we considered the rich symbolism of the sacrament? We sometimes speak of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper as “coming...

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. Previous article in this series: January 15, 2008, p. 179. We have seen that the Lord’s Supper has been instituted for sincere believers, and that all others are forbidden to partake of the sacrament. Those sincere believers are clearly identified by Holy Scripture, so that as we examine ourselves there can be no mistaking the signs of whether we belong. The Heidelberg Catechism in Question and Answer 81 summarizes the biblical description of those proper partakers with three significant characteristics. The Proper Partakers In the first place, sincere...

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. Previous article in this series: December 7, 2007, p. 133. As we continue our consideration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper we must remember that the sacrament is a means of grace. But that grace is not for all. Because grace is not in things. It is not in the water of baptism, nor in the bread and wine of the Lord’s table. Grace is not in things. Always the means of grace must be understood in terms of God’s work of sovereign, particular grace. The preaching...

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. Having considered the sacrament of baptism, we now give our attention to the second of the two sacraments instituted by Christ in the New Testament. The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper follows from and is closely related to the sacrament of baptism. Baptism signifies our incorporation into the covenant of God. In baptism God gives us a sign and seal that He has taken us through Christ’s cleansing blood into His own covenant life and fellowship. And, to quote our Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 27, “since (infants),...

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. Previous article in this series: November 15, 2007, p. 78. e have seen that the Lord’s Supper is a blessed ordinance established by Christ for His church, by which our salvation is signified and sealed to us through faith as we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ our Savior. By this means of grace we are brought into the fellowship of God’s covenant life, to sit at feast with Him in Christ Jesus. In partaking of the bread and wine of the Lord’s table, we...

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. Previous article in this series: October 1, 2007, p. 20. As we continue our consideration of the spiritual feast that is ours in the Lord’s Supper, we must also understand that we receive that spiritual nourishment only by a spiritual operation, a spiritual work of the Holy Spirit.   Eating and Drinking by Faith   That spiritual operation occurs through faith.

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. The history of Christian education in the Netherlands is a long history. Prior to the Afscheiding  The Reformation, beginning already with Martin Luther, called for and established schools where the foundation would be the teachings of Holy Scripture. The Dutch Reformed gave the same emphasis to Christian education as early as 1574, when a Reformed synod called on preachers to see to it that there were good Christian schoolmasters.¹ But while the schools in the Netherlands—government schools—once had significant Christian content in their instruction, this was no longer the...

Rev. Key is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Hull, Iowa. Previous article in this series: September 1, 2007, p. 468. We began our consideration of the sacramental operation of the Lord’s Supper by seeing that the Lord’s Supper is our spiritual feast. Christ instituted the sacrament for our spiritual nourishment in much the same way that He gave us means for physical nourishment when it comes to the health and strength of our physical bodies. The spiritual nourishment necessary for our spiritual life is Christ. We must eat and drink Christ. That is the truth Jesus set forth in John...