Trinity Presbyterian Church North Bay — Sermons & Sunday School

Midweek study led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/18/2020 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series on Lamentations, looking at 2:11-22.

Sermon preached on 2 Kings 22 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/15/2020 in Novato, CA.

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What a mess that King Josiah inherited. We left off last chapter in 2 Kings with two horribly wicked kings, Manasseh and then Amon. While Manasseh did have a late in life repentance and begin to make some initial reforms, in general, it was a period of great sin and wickedness for this country which was supposed to be a holy nation unto the LORD. That ended with King Amon being conspired against and assassinated. What a mess that was being left to King Josiah. And as we see in verse 1, he was only eight years old to start. Yet, by the grace of God, Josiah is remembered in history as being a great reformer king. 2 Chronicles 34 even records that from his youth he set his heart diligently on the LORD and rather early in his reign began bringing spiritual reformation to the nation. Indeed, our account here in 2 Kings chronicles some of that reformation in today’s chapter and continues to recount it in next chapter. And our account here in verse 2 gives us the wonderful summary of his faith – he is one of those few kings of Judah to be described as walking in the ways of David. Indeed, Scripture paints this reformer king as one of the greatest in Israel’s history – especially because of all the work of reformation that he did.

Let us begin first then by consider verses 3 to 7 which deal with his making repairs to the temple. That is certainly part of the overall reformation work – repairing a temple that had been in disrepair. The language here should remind you of a former albeit lesser period of reformation under King Joash. Remember, he was the son of Ahaziah and his mother was the evil daughter of Ahab named Athaliah. Remember his mother had temporarily seized control and ruled the nation for six years in Ahab-like fashion. Then the high priest Jehoiada organized a coup and had Athaliah killed and seven year old Joash came to the throne. The next thing that is recorded is how Joash worked to repair the temple. The description there back in 2 Kings 12 has so much similarity to this account. It involved the high priest collecting money in a box at the temple and then doling it out to overseers who then hire the specific workers who did the necessary repairs. This is what we see in today’s passage as well.

Making a comparison here between Josiah with his predecessor King Joash is also fitting when we think of how they were both in the aftermath of Ahab-like reigns. We already mentioned Joash’s mother Athaliah, but remember last time we saw how Josiah’s father and grandfather were said to have reigned like King Ahab. Apparently, Ahab-like reigns allowed the temple to fall into disrepair. Let me state clearly – they shouldn’t ever let the temple fall into disrepair. But we are not surprised to see that Ahab-like monarchs would let it fall into such.

Another point in today’s passage on temple repair that was also the same as back in Joash’s repairs is in verse 7. There is says that no financial accounting was asked from the workers and general contractors because they dealt honestly. That’s an interesting thought. It might raise questions of prudence and accountability today. In our modern era, I can’t imagine not having an accounting. To clarify, it’s not that there isn’t some oversight going on here. Obviously, the high priest Hilkiah is providing an oversight role. Then there are these general contractors described in verse 5 who have oversight of the various specialized workers mentioned in verse 6. But there is some notable lack of financial accounting required of them – and that is noted here as a commendable thing. Why? Because they were honest workers.

Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/15/2020 in Novato, CA. This week as an epilogue to our our series on biblical history, we continued a survey of church history, considering the medieval church.

Sermon preached on 2 Kings 21 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/08/2020 in Novato, CA.

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The name Manasseh in Israel’s family heritage stems back to the oldest son of the patriarch Joseph. The name Manasseh means “to forget” in Hebrew. Joseph named his firstborn this as a testimony of how God caused him to forget all his hardships when God rose Joseph to prominence in the Egyptian government. After all the betrayal by his brothers and being sold off to slavery in Egypt, God redeemed Joseph’s life and brought him to a position of great honor and power. So, when his son was born, he named him Manasseh. It signaled how Joseph didn’t want to forget that God made him to forget all his past hardships. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what this King Manasseh, son of David, did. For most of his life, he forgot the LORD’s great redemption of Israel and his many blessings upon them as his chosen people. Sadly, King Manasseh’s forgetting of the LORD was something Israel had been doing off and on throughout their long history after the exodus from Egypt. Today’s passage reaches a height of such forsaking of God with all the great sin recorded herein. We see then a record of this great sin under Manasseh and also his son Amon. We also see here God’s fitting albeit sobering response.

So then, let’s begin with Manasseh’s record of sin. Notice that in verse 17 we find the narrator’s typical summary statement usually given at the end of a king’s life. It usually references where else the king’s record is chronicled. But there in verse 17 you notice that it also includes “and the sin that he committed.” When typical patterns are broken in the text, the differences are being highlighted. Sadly, the narrator says that the records for Manasseh especially record all the sin that he committed. That is because of the height of sin that was reached under his reign. What a turn Manasseh was from his godly father Hezekiah. He was not like Hezekiah or David. He wasn’t even like his other royal forefathers who were variously wayward in their obedience to God. Rather, Manasseh’s height of evil was the worst to date among the kings of Judah.

So then, we see various sins of Manasseh chronicled here. Notice the first way his sin is categorized here. It was sin like King Ahab and his wicked house. The Book of 1 and 2 Kings spend a considerable amount of time describing the great evil of Ahab and his house and how God eventually did away with that wicked house. Ahab was the most wicked king in the history of the northern kingdom of Israel. Sadly, this son of David, Manasseh, is described to be like Ahab in terms of his wickedness, verse 4. One way Manasseh’s evil was like Ahab is in terms of gross violations of the first commandment. Like Ahab, Manasseh brought the worship of Baal and Asherah into the country. He erected altars to Baal and made an image of Asherah. As if that wasn’t a bad enough rejection of the LORD, he even placed some of these things inside the temple! He made the temple to the LORD God to be some polytheistic pagan house of worship! Even King Solomon back in his day of making shrines for the false gods of his foreign wives had the restraint to at least make their own separate houses of worship. But here Hezekiah desecrates the LORD’s house by bringing altars and images to false gods. You might as well sacrifice pigs to Zeus on the LORD’s altar like the infamous Antiochus Epiphanes would later do. But this was Manasseh, descendant of King David who was doing this. Add to all this polytheistic worship that he also worshiped all the host of heaven, verse 5 – in other words practicing astrology like the pagans did worshipping the sun and the moon and the planets and the stars. Likewise,

Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/08/2020 in Novato, CA. This week as an epilogue to our our series on biblical history, we continued a survey of church history, considering the medieval church.

Midweek study led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/04/2020 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series on Lamentations, looking at 2:1-5.

Sermon preached on 2 Kings 20 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/01/2020 in Novato, CA.

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Today’s chapter closes out our study of Hezekiah in 2 Kings. One thing that has stood out in Hezekiah is his prayer life. Back in chapter 18, we were told how much Hezekiah trusted in the LORD as a man with a heart much like King David. Since then we’ve seen he’s a man of prayer when troubles come. That is of course, a major way we express our trust in the LORD. When troubles come, we should call out to God for mercy and aid. Hezekiah’s life has demonstrated that. We’ll see more of that again in today’s passage. And it should spur on our prayer life too.

Today’s sermon like the passage will be divided up into two main parts. Verses 1-11 deal with Hezekiah’s illness. Verses 12-21 deal with the envoys from Babylon that Hezekiah received. By the way, these events in Hezekiah’s life, including both his illness and the Babylonian envoys has the benefit of being recorded in 3 different places in Scripture: here, 2 Chronicles 32 and Isaiah 38-39. I will pull in details from those parallel accounts as they help us to understand what is going in in these two events. Let us begin then first by considering Hezekiah’s illness.

The setting for Hezekiah’s illness in verse 1 says it was “in those days”. That refers back in general to the previous chapters that dealt with Assyria’s threatening of Jerusalem and Hezekiah. Verse 6 adds to this by telling us that during Hezekiah’s illness they were still facing the Assyrian threat. God even mentions there that he will defend the city, which is the same thing he had said at the end of last chapter in 19:34, just before God did deliver the city from the Assyrians. In other words, while we are not told specifics, it seems that this record of Hezekiah’s illness moves us chronologically backwards in time from where we ended up at the end of last chapter. It seems to put his illness at some point in time between when Jerusalem was being threatened by Assyria but before God had delivered them from them.

So then, apparently Hezekiah develops some sort of boil and is at the point of death. God sends the prophet Isaiah to inform Hezekiah that his disease is going to kill him, verse 1. In response, Hezekiah goes to the LORD in prayer. He doesn’t waste a moment. He immediately turns away from Isaiah and puts his face to the wall and begins to pray. You might observe that unlike in the past, we don’t see him go to the temple to pray. But I would note that he has this active boil and that would presumably make him ceremonially unclean and therefore not able to go into the temple, Leviticus 13. But that doesn’t stop his prayer life. He immediately prays, lamenting with many tears. He begs that the LORD consider how he has lived his life and walked in faithfulness. In asking God to remember this, he is praying for mercy from this death sentence. By the way, some have wondered if this is a prideful, and therefore not commendable, prayer of Hezekiah. I don’t think such a conclusion is justifiable. Hezekiah doesn’t claim himself to be perfect here. And this sort of prayer mirrors various prayers of lament in the psalms. Ultimately it is a commendable moment prayer by Hezekiah that humbles himself before the LORD and tearfully pleads for help.

We observe that when Hezekiah prays, God immediately grants his request. Apparently, Isaiah was still on his way out of the palace grounds when God sent him back to Hezekiah with his response that he will be healed in three days. Interestingly, God has Isaiah use the means of some sort of compress of figs to apply to the boil to bring about the healing. This is interesting because that was one medical practice ...

Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/01/2020 in Novato, CA. This week as an epilogue to our our series on biblical history, we continued a survey of church history, considering the ancient church.

Midweek study led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/28/2020 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series on Lamentations, looking at 1:6-10, 13-17.

Sermon preached on 1 Peter 2:1-10 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/25/2020 in Novato, CA.

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“We are all consecrated as priests by baptism, as St. Peter says: ‘You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation’”. So wrote Martin Luther 500 years ago in 1520 in his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation. There he taught the doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers calling the laity to rise up against an apostate clergy to seek reformation in the church. Luther grounded that doctrine in several passages, but especially our passage here for today from 1 Peter 2. While this doctrine was always true for Christians, that each of us are priests, that reality had over time been concealed by the clergy and therefore fell into neglect and disuse. As Luther also wrote 500 years ago (in On The Babylonian Captivity of the Church), Rome had kept the church in a captivity akin to the Babylonian exile. In the Babylonian captivity the priests had been removed from Zion and the temple destroyed and so they could not be about their priestly service in the temple. So too, Rome had been keeping the Christian laity who had been consecrated as priests from exercising their priestly service in the church as the spiritual temple of God. Today, we remember this important doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers that such a wonderful truth might never again fall into such neglect.

Our first half of today’s sermon is to consider that this priesthood of all believers is a holy priesthood. That is found here in verse 5. The context speaks of how all Christians are being built up into a spiritual temple, founded on the rock and cornerstone of Jesus Christ. It connects our being built into such a temple with the fact that we are a holy priesthood. Priests need a temple to serve in, and in the new covenant, Christians are both the temple and the priesthood. Again, there is no distinction being made here between ordained clergy and lay people. It does not say that just those who are clergy are the temple and priesthood. No, all Christians are this temple and priesthood.

But the point here is that this priesthood is a holy priesthood. The word “holy” is about something that is set apart, special, and distinct. Sadly, it is this sort of distinction that Rome was utilizing but in a very wrong way. Rome was claiming this distinction between clergy and laity in regards to the priesthood and its associated privileges and prerogatives. Luther wrote this:

It has been devised that the Pope, bishops, priests, and monks are called the spiritual estate, [whereas] princes, lords, artificers, and peasants are the temporal estate. This is an artful lie and hypocritical device, but let no one be made afraid by it, and that for this reason: that all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone. As St. Paul says (1 Cor. xii.), we are all one body, though each member does its own work, to serve the others. This is because we have one baptism, one Gospel, one faith, and are all Christians alike. (Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation)

And so, by making this distinction, Rome is basically saying that the clergy are holy in a way that the lay people are not. Rome further advocated for this by their false doctrine concerning ordination. They actually claim that their priests upon ordination are impressed with a special indelible character so that they immutably possess the sacred dignity of priesthood. Luther writes:

But now they have invented the indelible character, and pretend that a priest after deprivation still differs from a simple layman.