Washings That Remind Us How Badly We Need Christ's Cleansing and Safety [2022.02.12 Evening Sermon in Exodus 30:17–21]

We need a sinless Priest, Whose cleansing is effective for us, once and for all.

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Progressing Like Apollos: from Right Ideas and Morals to Knowing the Triune God in Christ [2023.02.12 Morning Sermon in Acts 18:24–28]

Apollos accurately knew some truth about Jesus and had been instructed in the Lord's way for us to live. But when Aquilla and Priscilla instructed him more accurately in the way of the Triune God, he came to know that it is God Himself from Whose grace we receive faith and repentance in Christ, through the Spirit.

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Biblical Theology of the Diaconate (22): Israel's Diaconal Failure as Church and Kingdom to Reflect God's Generosity [2023.02.12 Sabbath School]

God exiled both the northern and southern kingdoms because (in part) they had failed to reflect His holy generosity both as a church and as a kingdom. (click here to DOWNLOAD mp3/pdf files of this lesson)

Three Ways the Last Adam's Benefits Are Infinitely Greater Than the First Adam's Detriments [Family Worship lesson in Romans 5:15–17]

How is the first Adam’s covenantal representation unlike the last Adam’s? Romans 5:15–17 looks forward to the sermon in this week’s midweek meeting. In these three verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that the goodness, righteousness, and life of Jesus are infinitely greater for those who are in Him than the offense, condemnation, and death that were ours from the first Adam. (click here to DOWNLOAD mp3/pdf files of this lesson)

2023.02.13 Hopewell @Home ▫ Romans 5:15–17

Read Romans 5:15–17

Questions from the Scripture text: What is not like what else (Romans 5:15)? What had one man done? What happened to many? What is the relationship between this event and the one related in the rest of the verse? What two things come to others? Through what Man? How much of these two things come? To how many others? What in Romans 5:16 is not like what? What came from one offense? Resulting in what? But from what did the free gift come? Resulting in what? What had the one man done in Romans 5:17? What reigned through him? How does this compare with what is in the second half of the verse? How much grace do these others receive? Along with what gift? Who reigns now? In what? Through Whom? 

How is the first Adam’s covenantal representation unlike the last Adam’s? Romans 5:15–17 looks forward to the sermon in this week’s midweek meeting. In these three verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that the goodness, righteousness, and life of Jesus are infinitely greater for those Who are in Him than the offense, condemnation, and death that were ours from the first Adam. 

“But.” Not all “buts” in the New Testament are the same, “but” the word that begins Romans 5:15 is one of the stronger adversative conjunctions. We might be thinking, “here’s the catch.” But we’d be mistaken to think that the gospel is somehow less than we had begun to hope. In fact, in the three differences between Adam as type, and Christ as antitype, what we discover is that believers’ gain in Last Adam is infinitely greater than was our loss in the first Adam.

Christ’s goodness infinitely greater than Adam’s offense, Romans 5:15. Adam’s offense was the offense of a man. But “the gift of the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ” is actually “the grace of God.” For, God Himself has become a man. When we receive from Christ, grace upon grace, we receive benefits through a man Who is a divine Person. And thus, it didn’t just come to us; “much more” it “abounded” to us (verse 15, cf. “abundance” in Romans 5:17).

Christ’s justification infinitely greater than Adam’s condemnation, Romans 5:16. Just one offense was enough to condemn to Hell the whole multitude of humanity. So, take that guiltiness and multiply it by the number of offenses that Adam committed in his life. And then take that and add to it another multitude of offenses by every single one in Adam who had been chosen in Christ. And then take that and multiply it by the number of that multitude who had been chosen in Christ. What do you get? An unimaginable quantity. One that is always increasing (not unlike the American national debt at the time of writing), but still a quantity. How great, then, is the justification in Christ! Infinitely greater than the condemnation in Adam.

Christ’s life infinitely greater than Adam’s death, Romans 5:17. We saw in Romans 5:14 how death had reigned from Adam to Moses, and even until now. Since we sinned in Adam, when Adam sinned, and died with Adam when we sinned in him, we all come into this world spiritually dead. And we experience continually the reality of that spiritual death and physical death, throughout this life. Even believers, who are alive, fight to kill the spiritual death that remains in them from their former nature. Who shall win this battle? Christ! Since Christ’s goodness is infinitely greater than Adam’s offense, believers “receive abundance of grace.” Since Christ’s justification is infinitely greater than Adam’s condemnation, believers receive “abundance” […] of the gift of righteousness.” Therefore, those who receive this “much more” […] “reign in life” through the One, Jesus Christ, than death had ever reigned through the one Adam.

When/how do you feel guilt or death from Adam? How will you bring Christ’s greater-ness to bear at those times?

Sample prayer:  Father, thank You for giving us Your own beloved Son to be our last Adam. Grant that Your Spirit would constantly give us life from Him, to live and reign over the sin and death in us. And grant that Your Spirit would assure us from Your Word that You are doing so, we ask through Christ, AMEN!

Suggested songs: ARP32AB “What Blessedness” or TPH433 “Amazing Grace”

2023.02.11 Hopewell @Home ▫ Acts 18:24–19:7

Read Acts 18:24–19:7

Questions from the Scripture text: What ethnicity of man does Acts 18:24 talk about? What was his name? Where was he born? What was his speech like? How does the apostle describe Apollos’s Bible knowledge? To where did he come? In what had he been instructed (Acts 18:25)? What led to him speaking and teaching? What did he teach? With what quality of teaching? But what limitation? Where does he speak in Acts 18:26? In what manner? Who heard him? What do they do with him? Where/how? To where does he go in Acts 18:27? What do the brethren from Ephesus do? What does the letter ask the Corinthians to do? What is the result, when he arrives? How does the apostle describe the Christians that Apollos helped? What did he do publicly with the Jews (Acts 18:28)? In what manner? By showing them what? From where? When Apollos was there, who arrived where (Acts 19:1)? Whom did he find there (Acts 19:2)? What does he ask them? But how do they respond to the idea of the Holy Spirit? What question does this provoke from the apostle (Acts 19:3)? How do they answer? What does Paul call John’s baptism (Acts 19:4a)? But what does he say that John had preached (verse 4b)? What baptism do they know receive in Acts 19:5? Then what does Paul do to them in Acts 19:6? And what else happens to them? With what effect? How many of them were there (Acts 19:7)?

How is baptism useful for explaining the way of God to us more accurately? Acts 18:24–19:7 looks forward to the morning sermon on the coming Lord’s Day. In these twelve verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that baptism identifies to us that it is not we who produce repentance, but the triune God Who saves us, even to the point of giving us repentance and faith through grace by His Spirit. 

It has been part of the joy of the last several paragraphs that the Holy Spirit has been bringing Jews to the Lord Jesus Christ. However, in the passage before us we see one of the weaknesses of Jewish thinking. Even a Jew like Apollos tended to think in terms of the repentance that we need to give God, rather than the repentance that God has provided to us in Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit.

Even a man like Apollos. Praise God for Apollos. He is a Jew, but even God’s judgment upon the Jews to scatter many of them has resulted in Apollos being born at Alexandria, a city of learning. By this providence, he himself was eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures. But this was no mere head knowledge. Having been instructed in the way of the Lord Jesus, and knowing the truth about Jesus with some accuracy, the Spirit had blessed him to be fervent—boiling over—with these glorious truths.

Needed the lesson of Christian baptism. The latter half of Acts 18:25 tells us the weakness in Apollos’s thinking. He was full of zeal, but he only knew the baptism of John. We see this corrected in two different ways in our passage. In Acts 18:26, Aquila and Priscilla hear him, take him aside, and explain to him the way of God more accurately. Note that “the way of the Lord” in Acts 18:25 and “they way of God” in Acts 18:26 are the same. The Lord Jesus is God. This much Apollos knew. But what was it about God’s way of salvation that he needed to learn better? 

We see it in the second correction in Acts 19:4. The implication is that these men have this flaw of only knowing John’s baptism because they had been converted under Apollos’s preaching before his encounter with Aquila and Priscilla. Apparently, Apollos was preaching clearly that Jesus is God but failing even to mention the Holy Spirit, because these Ephesian “disciples” had never even heard of Him! Of course, they had heard of the Spirit of God; but, they did not know that the Spirit is a Person of the Godhead Who brings people to believe through grace (end of Acts 18:27), and Whom Jesus has poured out from heaven, just as the water of baptism is poured out upon the earth.

Indeed, Paul reasons that if they have not heard of the Holy Spirit, then they have not received the naming ceremony of Christian baptism, because when we are baptized into the Name of Christ, we are baptized into the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is the great self-disclosure of the triune God. 

What is the lesson of Christian baptism. Christian baptism does more than just mark off the members of Christ’s church, by placing the Name of the triune God upon them, and imitating Jesus’s pouring out of God the Holy Spirit. Christian baptism announces that the repentance that we so desperately needed, the triune God Himself has provided.

The apostle describes John’s baptism as a “baptism of repentance.” It was an acknowledgement that they had sin that they needed to do something about. But he was not the Christ. The gospel was not that God is angry with sin, and that we need to turn from it and do better. Those things were true, but those things couldn’t save. In fact, acknowledging that they needed repentance was unable actually to give the repentance that they knew that they needed!

So John’s greater message was not the repentance that they presently needed but the faith that they would soon be able to exercise more clearly. They were to hope in the Messiah Who was coming—the Christ Whom John identified to them as Jesus. The message of the gospel was not that they needed to repent and to be forgiven, but that in Christ Jesus they would find and receive everything that they needed—especially this forgiveness, and including this repentance. In fact, it is the Holy Spirit, Whom Jesus pours out, Who gives both repentance and faith (Acts 2:38–39; Acts 11:18; cf. Luke 24:47).

The effectiveness of Christian baptism. The Lord uses baptism both retrospectively and prospectively. In Cornelius’s house, Jesus baptized them first by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:44–46; Acts 11:15–16), and then the water baptism was poured on the earth (Acts 10:47–48; Acts 11:17–18). Here, the sequence is reversed. The water is poured on earth first (Acts 19:5), and then the Holy Spirit comes upon them (Acts 19:6). 

The efficacy of a believer’s baptism is not tied to the time of its administration. It is a sign and seal unto faith, but it often comes after faith—affirming that what the Lord has done was really and truly the work of the Lord. But it always comes before faith. For, the Lord continues to give us increasing repentance and faith throughout this life. And, the pouring out of the waters of Baptism remind us that it is the enthroned Lord Jesus Who keeps pouring out His Spirit upon us to complete the work that He has begun. 

So, we may bless God for giving us baptism, which the Spirit (and His servants through whom He teaches us) uses to “explain to us the way of God more accurately.” For, we are always needing more and more to grow in finding our repentance and faith from the Lord Jesus Christ, by His Spirit. 

When were you baptized? What does this tell you about the nature of God? What does it tell you about what was happening in your life before you first came to faith, and Who was doing it? What does it tell you about what has been happening in your life since you first came to faith, and Who is doing it? From where do repentance and faith come? In what situations in your life, recently, have you most needed to be reminded of this? How can you make use of your baptism to help at those times?

Sample prayer:  Lord, we thank You and praise You for Your glorious, triune nature. Father, we praise You for loving us from before the world began, and determining to conform us to the image of Your Son, so that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren. Lord Jesus, we praise You for coming into the world to save sinners, so that You might purchase us and present us to the Father. Holy Spirit, we praise You for Your almighty work and divine fellowship, as You apply Christ to us by His Word. Now we ask, Father, that You would continue to work in us by Your Spirit, through Jesus Christ, AMEN!

Suggested songs: ARP51B “From My Sins, O Hide Your Face” or TPH193 “Baptized into Your Name Most Holy” 

Washings That Pointed to Cleansing and Safety in Jesus [Family Worship lesson in Exodus 30:17–25]

What do we learn from a bronze basin on a pedestal outside the tabernacle? Exodus 30:17–21 looks forward to the p.m. sermon on the coming Lord’s Day. In these five verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that even consecrated, veteran priests were still continually soiling themselves with sin, so that we need a sinless Priest, Whose cleansing is effective for us once and for all. (click here to DOWNLOAD mp3/pdf files of this lesson)

2023.02.10 Hopewell @Home ▫ Exodus 30:17–21

Read Exodus 30:17–21

Questions from the Scripture text: How does Exodus 30:17 introduce a slight change in subject? What are they to make (Exodus 30:18)? Out of what? With what base? For what purpose? To put where? And to put what in it? Who will use it (Exodus 30:19)? What, specifically, they will wash? Before what two activities, especially must they wash (Exodus 30:20)? Lest what happen? What, specifically must they wash (Exodus 30:21)? Lest what happen? How long is this requirement in effect? 

What do we learn from a bronze basin on a pedestal outside the tabernacle? Exodus 30:17–21 looks forward to the p.m. sermon on the coming Lord’s Day. In these five verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that even consecrated, veteran priests were still continually soiling themselves with sin, so that we need a sinless Priest, Whose cleansing is effective for us once and for all. 

Here we have another new piece of furniture, probably because it was neither needed for the ordination of the priesthood nor part of the regular priestly service. Rather, the bronze basin on a bronze base (Exodus 30:18) is necessary for washing before each time a priest came to engage in his priestly service—whether outside the tabernacle at the bronze altar, or inside the tabernacle at the lampstand, the table, or the altar of incense.

Sinful priests among a sinful people. There is a repetition of the washing of both hands and feet here in Exodus 30:19 and again in Exodus 30:21. Specifically, just as the feet are unclean with the dust of the earth, so they are also spiritually unclean because these priests ways are sinful before God, and they walk among an unclean people. But it’s not just their feet. Their hands must be washed because the dirt that they are always accumulating parallels the sin that they are constantly committing in the things that they do.

In a culture that has become obsessive about the need for regular hand-washing, the spiritual lesson should not be lost upon us. We inevitably accumulate much sin and guilt through our ways, our actions, and even any others among whom we walk, when we are responsible for them and representatives for them. We are in need of continual repentance from our sin, and continual faith in Jesus Christ, Who cleanses us of it.

Who are in constant danger of death. A second thing that is emphasized by repetition is the mercy of this instruction, and the necessity of it. “Lest they die” (Exodus 30:20). “Lest thy die” (Exodus 30:21). The burnt offering is not making them safe. The tabernacle is not making them safe. Their being from the correct lineage is not making them safe. All of their previous service unto God does not make them safe. Every time they go in, they need to wash again. And it must not be thought that the water is making them safe, or it would not have had to be repeated. How constant were the reminders that they deserved death and Hell! 

And we have those reminders as well. But, praise God, it comes as reminder by way of remembrance: every time we come to God through Christ, every time we say “in Jesus’s Name,” every time we ask for forgiveness, every time we come to the table, every time we remember that we are baptized or observe another’s baptism… we are remembering not only that we deserve death and Hell, but that death and Hell have been paid. We are safe in Jesus!

Until this priesthood ends. This was a “statute forever to them —to him and his descendants throughout their generations” (Exodus 30:21). But there would come a time when the forever-priesthood like Melchizedek’s would replace the Levitical priesthood by a Man from the tribe of Judah (cf. Hebrews 7:13–14). Our Lord Jesus is not like these priests, however. Even walking among sinners, He never took a sinful step or went in a sinful direction. His hands and head and heart were clean of sin His whole life long. 

Now that our resurrected High Priest has ascended into heaven itself, believers in Him have been washed and consecrated in Jesus, by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:11). This consecration to enter the holy of holies (Hebrews 10:19–20, cf. 1 Peter 3:22) is signified in the sprinkling clean of our consciences (Hebrews 10:22b) that comes when the washing of baptism (Hebrews 6:19–20, Hebrews 10:22c, cf. 1 Peter 3:21) is an affirming seal upon faith (Hebrews 10:22a)

What are some of the reminders that you deserve death and Hell? What have you done recently that deserved this? How can you be safe before God? How has He sprinkled your heart clean? What sign of testimony does He place upon church members to affirm this reality to the whole church?

Sample prayer: Father, we thank You that You have given Your Son to wash us in His blood, and Your Spirit to apply Him and His cleansing blood to us by faith. Grant that we would hate sin, and that we would be confident of our forgiveness from You. We ask for this forgiveness through Jesus Christ, AMEN!

 Suggested songs: ARP51A “God, Be Merciful to Me” or TPH435 “Not What My Hands Have Done”

Assured by Sin and Death? [2023.02.08 Midweek Sermon in Romans 5:12–14]

One great reason that we sinned in Adam and died with Adam was so that we might learn about (and be sure of) our union with Christ, our actions in Him, and our benefits with/from Him.

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Identifying Dangerous Girls, Women, and Desires [Family Worship lesson in Proverbs 9:13–18]

Pastor teaches his family a selection from “the Proverb of the day.” In these six verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that like a woman who draws attention to herself and promises secret enjoyment, desires that attract us with a promise of secret sweetness are deadly.(click here to DOWNLOAD mp3/pdf files of this lesson)