"Hopewell This Week" (2020.04.15 Hopewell Harbinger)

Hopewell This Week, April 13–18, 2020

▫Attached is a pdf of Lord’s Day’s Worship Booklet, complete with Hopewell @Home devotionals for this week, in addition to 8.5x11's of the memory verse and catechism questions that can be used as posters to help with memory work.

▫Since the Harbinger is a little later this week, also attached are the Session Meeting Digest from Monday as well as tonight’s Prayer Meeting Folder.

▫There are a couple of updates from the Session in the Digest

▫The link is now active for audio and pdf of the Lord’s Day morning sermon (Luke 13:1–9 How Jesus Wants You (and Everyone) to Respond to COVID (and all Calamity))

▫Every day at 9a.m. Joint prayer with the rest of the ARP Synod for repentance and revival in light of the current chastening providence of God.

▫Wednesday, April 15, at 7p.m. Live webcast of the Prayer Meeting devotional and led-prayer. The prayer meeting folder will be available at http://bit.ly/harpclive

▫Children’s Catechism for April 19
Q25. What did God promise in the covenant of works? A. To reward Adam with life if he obeyed him.

▫Shorter Catechism for April 19
Q33. What is justification? A. Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.

Songs for April 19 morning service: 

TPH341 "Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed"   

ARP119N “Your Word’s a Lamp” 

ARP045B "Daughter, Incline Your Ear"

A.M. Sermon Text for April 19: Genesis 24:59–67

▫Memory Verse for April 19
(Genesis 24:67) Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent; and he took Rebekah and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.

Today's Hopewell @Home lesson is from the first serial reading on the coming Lord's Day, 1Samuel 5:1–5. When God humiliates our idols, we need to be grateful and respond by abandoning them, not trying to "go back to normal" or creating ways to keep them. The recording of pastor's family's entire worship time (after catechizing) is available [on Facebook]

2020.04.15 Hopewell @Home ▫ 1 Samuel 5:1–5

Read 1 Samuel 5:1–5

Questions from the Scripture text: Where did the Philistines take the ark (1 Samuel 5:1)? Into whose house did they set it (1 Samuel 5:2)? By whom did they set it? At what time did the people of Ashdod wake (1 Samuel 5:3)? Where did they find Dagon, and what was he doing? What did they do to Dagon? When did they arise the next day (1 Samuel 5:4)? Where was Dagon? What was he doing? What had happened to him? How did the priests and worshipers of Dagon respond to this, long term (1 Samuel 5:5)? 

The Philistines thought Dagon had won the battle of the gods (cf. 1 Samuel 4:7). But, as we will painfully find out if the Lord is merciful enough to bring us to our knees in this life, He abides no competition.

The first lesson is pretty obvious. You can try to prop your god up, but it will end up on its face, and if you keep going, it’ll lose its hands and its head. Your money can’t love you back, and it will sprout wings and fly away. Fame is empty and vanishes quickly. Legacies get forgotten. Laid up possessions just wait until calamity takes them, or even just a foolish descendant. Your sin cannot give you deep joy, and even its light pleasure cannot last long—ultimately, apart from Christ, that sin will bring the wrath of God upon you forever and ever.

The second lesson is only slightly more subtle. We have a hard time giving up our idols. What a ridiculous and hard-heartedly wicked tradition arises in 1 Samuel 5:5! Their idol has been humiliated and destroyed, and still there are priests who serve him and worshipers who frequent his temple. They even treat as holy the threshold on which their god was humiliated! We are so stubbornly wicked—even when God’s mercy knocks our idol on its face, we tend to double down and press on in living for it anyway. God help us!

What have you been depending upon or delighting in that has failed you lately?

Suggested Songs: ARP42A “As Pants the Deer” or TPH42C “As Thirsts the Hart for Water Brooks”

2020.04.14 Hopewell @Home ▫ Mark 15:24–38

Read Mark 15:24–38

Questions from the Scripture text: What were they doing with His clothes (Mark 15:24)? What was the charge against Him (Mark 15:26)? What does Mark 15:28 give as the explanation for the two robbers being crucified with Him? What did those who passed by do (Mark 15:29)? Who else blasphemed and mocked Him (Mark 15:31-32)? What happened for three hours (Mark 15:33)? What did Jesus say at the ninth hour (Mark 15:34)? What happened in Mark 15:37? And what happened to the veil of the temple (Mark 15:38)?

Next week’s Call to Worship, Prayer for Help, and Song of Adoration come from Mark 13:24–38 in order to sing God’s thoughts after Him with Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed.

Truly, Jesus was numbered with transgressors, and not just the robbers on His right and left. The irony is rich: soldiers casting lots beneath His cross for what they wanted, but He is hanging above them giving that which they need infinitely more.

The inscription above His cross said “King of the Jews,” which His enemies hated, but in reality the inscription told only part of the truth. The inscription could have read, “The Living and True God.” This is what brings three hours of dark (Mark 15:33) Simply astonishing.

Many pass by and blaspheme in Mark 15:29, whom He is saving by His blood above them, and whom He will bring to faith by His Spirit in several weeks at Pentecost. Then there are the priests, in Mark 15:31, from among whom many will be saved at the end of Acts 6.

The question of the text is on Jesus’s lips in Mark 15:34, “Why have You forsaken Me? And the answer is given from heaven to earth in Mark 15:38: to open the way to the Holy of Holies for sinners such as all of these! Sinners such as you, dear reader. The True and Living God went through literal Hell to grant entry into the Holy of Holies for selfish gamblers, ruthless robbers, and other mocking blasphemers who would come to believe in Him. Sinners like you. Astonishing.

Have you believed in Christ? What use are you making of access to the holy God?

Suggested songs: ARP2 “Why Do Gentile Nations Rage?” or TPH341 “Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed”

Today's Hopewell @Home lesson is from yesterday's morning sermon text, Luke 13:1–9. In calamity, God displays His wrath, patiently and persistently provoking fruitless church members to produce fruit, or else reveal that they are perishing in their sins. The recording of pastor's family's entire worship time (after catechizing) is available [on Facebook]

2020.04.13 Hopewell @Home ▫ Luke 13:1–9

Read Luke 13:1–9

Questions from the Scripture text: What did some people tell Jesus about in Luke 13:1? What does Jesus recognize that these people had concluded about those who died (Luke 13:2)? What does Jesus say should have, instead, been their conclusion (Luke 13:3)? Concerning what other event does Jesus challenge them concerning their conclusions (Luke 13:4)? What same conclusion does He teach them to draw in Luke 13:5? To what does Jesus compare an unrepentant person in Luke 13:6? What does the property owner say to do with the fruitless tree in Luke 13:7? What does the caretaker say that He will do first in Luke 13:8? What will be done if it still bears no fruit (Luke 13:9)?  

How should we respond to plagues? Government oppression? Economic disaster? Or other calamities?

It seems, from Jesus’s question in Luke 13:2 that they assumed that what had happened to the Galileans was punishment for some specific sin of theirs. And we know that in both the Old and New Testaments, the Lord did threaten and carry out particular punishments upon His people at particular times. So, maybe we have wondered if when something hard comes upon us, whether that’s a particular quid pro quo for a particular sin.

But unless the Lord has threatened something particularly, we do not have good ground to assume a direct relationship. There are many reasons that believers suffer, including to increase God’s wrath against their enemies, to have fellowship with Christ, to know their own weakness, to be sanctified and prepared for glory, and even just to glorify God.

But there is one thing that we must always do, with any kind of calamity: remember God’s wrath, repent of our sin, and cling to Jesus Christ. By introducing the second calamity (Luke 13:4), and saying the same thing about it (Luke 13:3, Luke 13:5), the Lord Jesus makes clear that this is an all-purpose application. “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

Jesus says that what we are to see is that God is very angry with sin. Look what sin has brought! And this is just the slightest display of it. Sin doesn’t just deserve for us to be slaughtered by Roman provincial governors or have towers fall upon us. It deserves the unquenchable flame of the lake of fire, together with undying worms that consume us from the inside out forever. Every calamity is a reminder of this.

But we are also to see that glorious word, “unless.” That the Lord is patiently calling us unto repentance. He is giving us opportunity to believe. And He is grabbing our attention and stimulating us to cling to Christ and bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

Calamities, says our Lord, function like the Lord digging down around us and fertilizing us to produce fruit. He is patiently provoking us to repentance. The question, then, is what will He find this effort has produced?

Of what do you personally need to repent? Your family? Your church? Your country?

Suggested Songs: ARP32AB “What Blessedness” or TPH340 “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood”

How Jesus Wants You (and Everyone) to Respond to COVID (and all Calamity)

God alarms us by His wrath, and beckons us by His mercy—most of all at His cross. [PDF outline]

2020.04.11 Hopewell @Home ▫ Luke 13:1–9

Read Luke 13:1–9

Questions from the Scripture text: What did some people tell Jesus about in Luke 13:1? What does Jesus recognize that these people had concluded about those who died (Luke 13:2)? What does Jesus say should have, instead, been their conclusion (Luke 13:3)? Concerning what other event does Jesus challenge them concerning their conclusions (Luke 13:4)? What same conclusion does He teach them to draw in Luke 13:5? To what does Jesus compare an unrepentant person in Luke 13:6? What does the property owner say to do with the fruitless tree in Luke 13:7? What does the caretaker say that He will do first in Luke 13:8? What will be done if it still bears no fruit (Luke 13:9)?

All of God’s judgments against everyone demand that each of us ask of ourselves the question, “Am I repenting or perishing?”

We’re tempted to ask “which particular sins did the particular sufferers commit to bring this upon them?” That’s the thinking of the people that Jesus answers in Luke 13:2.

But Jesus’s answer is clear. All sin deserves this. And, apart from repentance (which cannot come without faith in Him), all sinners will get this and worse. Jesus is telling us that such judgments are just a picture in time of what every single sinner receives at God’s judgment. We will all die, but that’s not the worst of it. We die, because God is righteously angry. We die, because we deserve Hell. And, if we don’t turn from our sin to trust in Christ, that is exactly what we will get.

And just so we don’t think that the slaughter of the Galileans is the only such event which we should understand this way, the Lord Jesus proposes another—not Galileans this time but Judeans, not at the hand of a man, but in a clearer lashing-out of the providence of God.

We live in an age where the news reporters continuously confront us with disasters. Sometimes, it’s a real disaster. Sometimes it’s manufactured. But the cumulative effect is the same: we’ve been numbed into ignoring such reminders unto repentance.

And what does this repentance look like? It looks like bearing fruit. It looks like God identifying us as a tree that has been grafted into Jesus, because we’re starting to bear Jesus-type-fruit. In fact, He’s pretty clear in the parable that if we don’t bear this fruit, then we will be cut down (and, the implication is, cast into the fire).

This is frightening for us who have been just coasting along—satisfied to have some nice feelings about Jesus, to define for ourselves what makes a Christian life look or feel Christian. Maybe we’ve made rather little study of what the fruit is that the Lord looks for from us. Maybe we’ve been bothered rather little by whether or not that fruit is growing in/on us.

But, behold the patience of our God! He has not cut us down. In fact, He keeps bringing things into our lives to stimulate a jump-start of our fruit growth. By the breaking into time of God’s wrath and judgments, He digs around us and fertilizes us. He urges us to bear the fruit of repentance.

If you have Christ and are alive, you will bear that fruit, and bless the patience and persistence of your God. But if you continue as you have always done, God’s justice will be all the more glorified by this patience, when at last He cuts you down and casts you into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and His angels.

How can you know what fruit God looks for in you? What are some examples of its growing?

Suggested songs: ARP1 “How Blessed the Man” or TPH400 “Gracious Spirit, Dwell with Me”

2020.04.10 Hopewell @Home ▫ Luke 4:1–13

Read Luke 4:1–13

Questions from the Scripture text: With Whom was Jesus filled and led, and into where (Luke 4:1)? What happened there for how long, and what did Jesus do and feel (Luke 4:2)? What does the devil now question in Luke 4:3, and what does he suggest in that questioning? How does Jesus answer in Luke 4:4? Where does the devil take Him, and what does He show Him in Luke 4:5? What does the devil offer to Jesus for doing what (Luke 4:6-7)? What does Jesus command the devil in Luke 4:8, and why? Where does the devil take Jesus in Luke 4:9, and what does he again question? What does he quote (Luke 4:10-11)? But how does Jesus insist upon interpreting these Scriptures (Luke 4:12)? At this point, what has the devil ended, and what does he do until when (Luke 4:13)?

Christ is the Son who perfectly trusts and obeys, submitting to God’s determination of when and how God will fulfill His Word.

At His baptism, the Father declared from heaven, “You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).  And then the evangelist reminded us in Luke 3:23–38 that Jesus came into the world to be the perfect human “son” that Adam had failed to be, and the promised son of God that God had promised to be a son of Abraham and a son of David.

Now, the devil comes to challenge that notion: “If You are the Son of God” in Luke 4:3, and again in Luke 4:9, “If You are the Son of God.”

After 40 days in the wilderness, where He was led by the Holy Spirit, Jesus is suffering from hunger. And that’s just the beginning of the suffering. We know where Peter got the idea of a Kingdom without suffering in Matthew 16:22, because Jesus gives him the same response in Matthew 16:23 that He gives to the devil himself in Luke 4:8, “Get behind Me, Satan!”

Satan offers sonship without suffering. Satan offers glory without suffering. Satan offers suffering on our own terms—not “nevertheless not My will but Thine be done” but rather, “Here’s how I want You to prove it, God.”

Praise be to God, the Lord Jesus is our righteousness, and He rejected all of these Satanic offers! And may He work the same mind in us as well: to suffer trustingly, if it comes at the hand of Him who has given us fellowship with Him in every word that proceeds from His mouth; to suffer greatly, if that is the part that He has assigned to us in the bringing of His kingdom; and, to suffer on His terms, doing whatever part He has assigned to us, and trusting that He will always keep every word of what He has promised is His own part.

How have you suffered? How much does that change God’s word to and purpose for you?

Suggested songs: ARP2 “Why Do Gentile Nations Rage?” or TPH231 “Whate’er My God Ordains Is Right”

2020.04.09 Hopewell @Home ▫ Ephesians 1:11–12

Read Ephesians 1:11–12

Questions from the Scripture text: What have believers obtain in Christ (Ephesians 1:11)? When was this determined to happen? Whose purpose decided this? How many things does He work according to this purpose? What is this purpose called at the end of verse 11? What, then, was the purpose of bringing the first (and the rest!) of the predestined ones to believe in Jesus (Ephesians 1:12)? 

Our inheritance is guaranteed. We don’t need to struggle to get good things from God. He has been planning to give us literally everything for literally forever.

This frees us to live for our purpose, which is clear: the praise of God’s glory. Our God “works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11), aiming at this praise of His glory. So, we too pursue our inheritance by aiming at that same praise of His glory.

This praise is the reason for which God brought that first generation to trust in Christ (Ephesians 1:12). And everyone whom He has brought to faith since then, He has also brought to faith in Christ for the praise of His glory.

Christ is at the heart of all of this. Our purpose is in Christ, that inheritance is in Christ, our trusting is in Christ, and that glory is in Christ. God grant us to live with a single eye to Him!

What more might you feel that you need from God than He has given you? What are some things that you really desire in life—how do they relate to or compare to bringing Him glory?

Suggested songs: ARP8 “Lord, Our Lord” or TPH214 “Sing Praise to God, Who Reigns Above”