Trinity Presbyterian Church North Bay — Sermons & Sunday School

Sermon preached on Luke 6: 37-42 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/17/2021 in Novato, CA.

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We continue today working through the Sermon on the Plain which runs through the end of this chapter in Luke. And I’m summarizing today’s message from it with the title of “Seeing Clearly”. That’s language Jesus used in verse 42. That idea of seeing clearly is useful for all the parts of today’s passage. We need to see clearly when it comes to the attitude we have toward others, especially in matters where we are wanting to find fault with them. We need to see clearly with regard to the teachers we have, even as we want our teachers to be able to see clearly themselves. We need to see clearly about our own sins and faults, so that we can see that we need the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Let us then dig into our passage and see how God’s Word will minster today again on our spiritual eyesight.

Let’s begin in our first point in verses 37-38 dealing with the measure we use with others. Here we find four parallel admonitions that Jesus gives. First, he speaks negatively against two things, regarding judging and condemning. Then, he speaks positively for two things, regarding forgiving and giving. The parallelism he uses is along the lines of what you find in Hebrew poetry. Indeed, the prophets often would speak in poetic ways, and Jesus’ rhetoric here shows such.

Let me begin by noting that verse 37 is one of the most commonly misused verses in the whole Bible. I have seen so many people quote Jesus here and think that he is saying we should not judge others, ever. To be fair, he does in fact say, “judge not, and you will not be judged.” But as I’ve been pointing out as we work through the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus often uses gives rather absolute-sounding declarations that need to be rightly understood and applied. It really is part of the poetic rhetoric and preaching style Jesus uses here. And so, taken on its own, in isolation, you might simplistically conclude that Jesus is commanding that we should never make judgments about others. But Scripture has to interpret Scripture. The Bible repeatedly calls us to make all sorts of judgments throughout life. That is even right here in our own passage. As we’ll consider in our third point, Jesus calls to consider who is and isn’t a worthy spiritual leader in our life. We need to discern that some would-be leaders in your life would just be blind guides. You can’t make such a determination unless you make some judgments.

So then, what is Jesus getting at when he gives these four admonitions against judging and condemning and for forgiving and giving? Well, we need to see it in the context of last week’s passage that called us to love our enemies and to give them good even if they give us bad. Last week we saw Jesus teach us to not reciprocate evil for evil, but instead to give good to those who give us evil. He summarized this with that golden rule principle in verse 31, that we should do to others, what we wish they would do to us. So, the context is dealing with matters of reciprocity. Jesus taught us to go beyond what the heathen do in terms of reciprocity. Don’t just give them what they give you. Do better than them. So then, Jesus continues to deal with this concept here. Do you want someone to always be finding fault with you? Do you want someone to always coming to you criticizing you and saying how wrong you are? Do you want someone to treating you with a censorious spirit and hyper-critical with you and harsh in their judgments and holding every little thing against you? Do you want someone to always go around acting like they are more righteous than you and that you always fall short in their eyes of the righteousn...

Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/17/2021 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series through the Belgic Confession, reviewing relevant Scripture passages on the Trinity.

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Sermon preached on Luke 6:27-36 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/10/2021 in Novato, CA.

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Today, we have a message from Jesus telling us to love our enemies. Enemies can come in various forms. Maybe as a Christian, you have not thought of many people as enemies. Or maybe, you’ve thought practically the whole world is your enemy. Enemies can come in various forms. Sure, they can be the very hostile unbeliever who hates you simply because you are a Christian. But likely you have various other more regular enemies – people you might not call an enemy to their face, or even think of as an enemy. It might be an associate or even a friend, yet who at points are in opposition against you. They can in such moments be a sort of enemy or foe. Whenever and for however you find yourself in opposition with someone else, Jesus here gives us this command to love them. Let us spend some time reflecting on this today. It can be a challenging topic, but he addresses this special call in verse 27, “to you who hear.” May God give us ears to hear this lesson today.

Let us begin in our first point to consider how Jesus calls us to do good to our enemies, looking at the first part of our passage in verses 27-31. This is how our passage starts out. After giving us the summary command in verse 27 to love our enemies, Jesus then goes on to explain what he has in mind. He begins by saying to do good to those who hate you, and the rest of this first section continues to explain what this looks like. Notice he gives various examples of people who might treat us badly. These are different ways that someone might act like an enemy to you. They might hate you. They might curse you. They might abuse you. They might strike you. They might take from you. They might beg you for a loan and not pay you back. They might flat out rob you. These are but examples, but it’s a pretty healthy list.

But see what Jesus is doing with these examples. He is pairing the evil thing the person is doing to you with something good he wants us to do in reverse. If they hate you, be good back to them. If they curse you, then you bless them. If they abuse you, pray for them. If they strike you, turn to let them strike you again. If they take from you, if they beg and don’t pay back, or even rob you, respond by giving to them. Jesus says to return their evil with good. That’s not our instinct, by any means. But that’s how Jesus says to fight back against them, so to speak.

It would be good to offer some clarification here. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses a teaching style that is often full of rather short absolute-sounding statements. Because of that, we might be tempted to simplistically apply them and come to some wrong conclusions. For example, we might incorrectly think Jesus is forbidding self-defense when he says turn the other cheek. We might incorrectly think Jesus is forbidding ever seeking justice when someone steals from you. We might incorrectly think we should never call the police when someone commits a crime against us. We might incorrectly think that Jesus thinks evil and injustice should just be allowed to go unchecked. I could imagine how people might think such. But Scripture has to interpret Scripture. One quick example of that is with Jesus himself in John 18:22 where he is struck by an officer during one of his trials. There is no record of Jesus literally turning his cheek to get struck a second time. Instead, Jesus as respectfully as possible rebuked the officer, calling the officer out for his injustice in striking Jesus without cause.

So then, we must appreciate what Jesus is and is not meaning here by these words. Following the principle of Scripture interpret...

Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/10/2021 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series through the Belgic Confession, reviewing article 8 on the Trinity.

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Sermon preached on Luke 6:17-26 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/03/2021 in Novato, CA.

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Last week we saw that Jesus selected his inner circle of twelve disciples who would also be his twelve apostles that he would one day send out into the world with the gospel message. But first Jesus must train them. And that is what he immediately proceeds to do. As verse 17 shows, as soon as Jesus selects the twelve, he then goes with them and begins to teach them along with a great crowd. His teaching would be applicable to all the crowd who sought to be discipled by Jesus. But we can appreciate how his words here would also especially speak to the twelve. It would tell them of the sort of life that Jesus was calling them into, in how they would need to take up their crosses and follow him.

This famous sermon of Jesus is known here in Luke as the Sermon on the Plain. We only read part of that sermon today, but it extends through the end of this chapter. It is likely Luke’s record of the same sermon in Matthew 5-7 known as the Sermon on the Mount. When you compare Luke’s account versus Matthew’s account, the similarities are abundantly clear, but there are also some notable differences. Luke’s account is much shorter. In today’s passage specifically, we see that Luke has less beatitudes than Matthew’s, yet Luke also records these contrasting woes. Also, Matthew’s beatitudes clearly draw out a spiritual application that is not explicit in Luke’s beatitudes. If in fact, Luke and Matthew are both reporting the same exact sermon, which seems like a likely case, I would note that there are various possible ways to harmonize the two accounts. But that would also tell us that we should not think of either of these accounts of this sermon as an exact transcript of what Jesus said, as if someone was like a courtroom stenographer and giving us a complete record. Rather, both are surely faithful, and divinely inspired, summaries of what was surely a much larger and longer sermon that day by Jesus. So then, today and over the next few sermons we’ll have an opportunity to consider Luke’s divinely inspired account of this memorable teaching by Jesus.

Let us then begin to dig into this Sermon on the Plain. In our first point, we will consider Luke’s emphasis in these beatitudes and woes on one’s outward estate. Compared to Luke’s account, Matthew’s gospel clearly spiritualizes these beatitudes. Where Luke says in verse 20, “Blessed are the poor”, Matthew says instead, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Where Luke says in verse 21, “Blessed are the hungry”, Matthew says, “Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness.”In light of Matthew’s account, it could be tempting to just spiritualize Luke’s versions. Yet, a spiritual application would not be the most immediately natural way to take Luke’s simple statements. And Luke’s contrasting woes such as, “Woe to the rich” and, “Woe to the full”, also don’t lend themselves to an immediate spiritual application. To be clear, I think Matthew’s spiritual applications can be an extended application of Luke’s beatitudes. But since we are studying Luke today, we should start with the more immediate emphasis and focus of his account.

So then, it’s here we need to make a clarification right away. With a superficial application, you might think Jesus is saying that you are blessed simply if you are poor, hungry, and sad, and you are cursed simply if you are rich, full, and glad. In other words, a superficial reading of this might sound like you can only be saved if you are downtrodden and miserable and you are damned if you have experienced any prosperity or happiness in life. But such a superficial understanding can’t be right,

Main Description: Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/03/2021 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series through the Belgic Confession, reviewing article 7 on how Scripture is sufficient for its purposes of revealing God’s will and the way of salvation.

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Sermon preached on Luke 6:12-16 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 09/26/2021 in Novato, CA.

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Today’s passage is a short and sweet passage the is nonetheless full of rich significance for the foundation and establishing the church under the new covenant. What Jesus does here has ramifications for what we find later in the book of Acts after Jesus ascended up into heaven in the formation of the early Christian church. Yet even before that, we see Jesus training and preparing these twelve for the gospel proclamation that he would be having them to do. And still today, their apostolic ministry has ongoing significance for us today, as we will discuss.

Let us begin in our first point for today by looking at Jesus’ all-night prayer. That’s how our passage begins. He goes up to a mountain, finds some solitude, and prays through the night. That’s verse 12, “an all night he continued in prayer to God.” This word for “all night” in verse 12, is just one word in the Greek. It is the only place this Greek word appears in the Bible. The word is extraordinary. Praying through the night is extraordinary – even for Jesus.

Of course, surely the context tells us why Jesus spent the night with his heavenly father in prayer. Surely it was in light of what he was going to do the next day. He was choosing his special twelve disciples, also known as, apostles. Probably closely related to this is the famous sermon that he will then go on to preach right after me makes that selection. Luke records what is sometimes called the Sermon of the Plain but is likely an abbreviated version of the same Sermon on the Mount that Matthew records in Matthew 5-7. As we’ll see more next time, Luke connects the choosing of the twelve with this special sermon. The point is that Jesus had a really big day ahead of him. But beyond the special and memorable sermon, today I want us to especially appreciate how his all-night prayer was in the context of selecting these disciples.

In other words, before he made the big decision of which twelve to pick, he prays. He prays a lot. I’d imagine he prayed about who to choose. That was probably a lot of what he prayed for. But when you have all night to pray, you can cover a lot of ground. So, I would imagine after a concentrated time of praying for whom to pick, he then probably made he decision on whom he was going to pick. And then he probably prayed for each of them. Surely, Jesus prayed over each person whom he would select to be among the twelve.

Let us take some application in this first point. Jesus shows us the grace of prayer. And he shows us that especially before a big decision, it is proper and good to spend some concentrated time in prayer. This was literally one of the most important decisions Jesus made during his earthly ministry. In a certain sense, it was one of the most far-reaching decisions. And so, he prayed long and fervently all through the night before making this decision. Let us take application here. Do we pray like this before big decisions or before big days that are ahead of us? How many of us might go a lifetime without ever praying like this – but Jesus shows us a beautiful picture of prayer. You know, it is in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus teaches his disciples on the topic of how to pray. We see in Matthew 6:7 that the effectiveness of our prayers is not tied to the number of words we utter. He says that in critique of the pagans who would fill their praises with empty phrases or vain repetitions. Yet, while that is absolutely true, and Jesus even gives them a rather short prayer as a model of how to pray – I speak of the Lord’s Prayer, he nonetheless also models the commendableness of long,

Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 09/26/2021 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series through the Belgic Confession, addressing article 6 addressing why we do not receive the Apocrypha as canonical

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Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 09/26/2021 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series through the Belgic Confession, addressing article 6 addressing why we do not receive the Apocrypha as canonical.

Sermon preached on Luke 6:1-11 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 09/19/2021 in Novato, CA.

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Today, we get to think about Jesus and the Sabbath. In the Bible, a sabbath is a holy day of rest, most routinely one day in seven. As a holy day, it is a day not just for physical rest from our labors, but especially a day to set aside to spiritually rest in God, through worship, and especially in assembling together for worship as God’s people. This was an institution God established from the very beginning of creation as we find in Genesis 1-2. God made the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh, therefore God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. So then, we see in the Bible that God’s people observed a weekly sabbath even before God delivered it as the 4th Commandment to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The prophets taught regularly about the value of the Sabbath and, when needed, corrected the people when they were not observing it properly. After Jesus rose from the dead on the day after the Sabbath, on the first day of the week, we see the church begin to keep that day, Sunday, as their Christian weekly Sabbath. So then, Jesus here, joins in that revelation about how to properly observe the Sabbath, giving some needed corrections. But what Jesus contributed to this is not just as another prophet adding a further word about the Sabbath, but he speaks as the very Lord of the Sabbath.

That is where I’d like to begin in our first point. I’d like to speak for a moment about this statement in verse 5 where Jesus declares, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath”. That assertion is the basis for what Jesus says and does in this passage. Let’s begin with the language of the “Son of Man”. Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man” here. In fact, this is Jesus’ common way throughout his teaching ministry to refer to himself. So far, this is the second time he’s done that in Luke’s gospel account. The first time was last chapter, in 5:24. That’s when he spoke of himself as the Son of Man having authority to forgive sins. It’s interesting that statement was also a question of authority as we see here in today’s verse when he refers to himself as the Son of Man.

So, what is the significance and meaning of this title of “Son of Man”? Some have proposed that it is Jesus’ way of humbly emphasizing his humanity. While we know that Jesus is also the exalted Son of God, he doesn’t go around referring to himself as such, but in seemingly comparative humility, he refers to himself as the Son of Man. While I do think that is true to a degree, I think Jesus’ usage of it is more than that. Because in statements like right here and the one I just mentioned in last chapter, they speak of someone with great authority. Interestingly, if we look to the Old Testament usage of this term, we see a similar ambiguity. For example, in the book of Ezekiel, God repeatedly refers to the prophet Ezekiel as “son of man”, but it doesn’t seem to be used in any special way other than God speaking to a human prophet. Yet, in the Daniel 7, we see that the “son of man” language gets used in a quite an exalted way where it describes one like a son of man coming before God who is then given an everlasting and universal kingdom. So, even the Old Testament precedence on how this title is used is marked with some ambiguity.

Yet, I suspect that’s the whole point by Jesus using it. As we’ve seen and will see, at this point he’s rather guarded with how he reveals his identity as the Christ. So, he instead picks a more mysterious term that could be used for the Christ, but also could just be used for a prophet, and he lets his ministry and teaching reveal over time the significance of that title.