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Valley Forge Baptist Church

Who was Melchizedek, and Why was He so Important?

11/13/2022

Melchizedek shows up abruptly and briefly in the Old Testament, but his special role in Abraham’s life makes him a significant figure. He is mentioned again in Psalm 110:4, the passage under consideration in Hebrews 4:14–7:28. As the king of Salem and priest of the Most High God in the time of Abraham, Melchizedek offered a historical precedent for the role of king-priest (Gen. 14:18–20), filled perfectly by Jesus Christ.
By using the two Old Testament references to Melchizedek, the writer (7:1–28) explains the superiority of Christ’s priesthood by reviewing Melchizedek’s unique role as a type of Christ and his superiority to the Levitical high priesthood. The Levitical priesthood was hereditary, but Melchizedek’s was not. Through Abraham’s honor, Melchizedek’s rightful role was established. The major ways in which the Melchizedekian priesthood was superior to the Levitical priesthood are these:

1.     The receiving of tithes (Heb. 7:2–10), as when Abraham the ancestor of the Levites gave Melchizedek a tithe of the spoils.
2.     The giving of the blessing (Heb. 7:1, 6, 7), as when Abraham accepted Melchizedek’s blessing.
3.     The continual replacement of the Levitical priesthood (Heb. 7:11–19), which passed down from father to son.
4.     The perpetuity of the Melchizedekan priesthood (Heb. 7:3, 8, 16, 17, 20–28), since the record about his priesthood does not record his death.

Dr. David Jeremiah - Confidence! (Revelation 1:8)

11/11/2022

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

What gives you confidence? For some people, it’s the right hairstyle or clothing. Other people feel confident because of the premium credit card in their pocket. A few people are blessed with a self-confident attitude, but it sometimes appears as arrogance. Others constantly battle feelings of insecurity.

Recommended Reading:

Psalm 27

The key to confidence is Christ. Proverbs 14:26 says, “In the fear of the Lord there is strong confidence.” Fearing God means living in awe of the Lord Jesus who represents to us the Father and resides within us by His Holy Spirit.
The Savior who was with us in the beginning is the same God who will be with us until the end. He is our Alpha and Omega. Everything that happens to us from birth to death is in His hands. Don’t let the confusion of the world distress you. We can live in joyful confidence because of Christ.
Stand a bit taller today and go into your agenda confident of His care and keeping.

___________________________________________________________________

Lord, Thou knowest what is best,
confident in this I’ll rest, till I dwell with all the blest,
and with Thee in heaven.

William Ebel

Why Does it Say that Jesus “Learned Obedience” in Hebrews 5:7?

11/9/2022

7 who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up
prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears
to Him who was able to save Him from death,
and was heard because of His godly fear,

The context of Hebrews 5:7 makes it clear that “who, in the days of His flesh” refers back to Christ, the main subject in v. 5. In Gethsemane, Jesus agonized and wept, but committed Himself to do the Father’s will in accepting the cup of suffering which would bring His death (Matt. 26:38–46; Luke 22:44, 45). Anticipating bearing the burden of judgment for sin, Jesus felt its fullest pain and grief (Is. 52:14; 53:3–5, 10). Though He bore the penalty in silence and did not seek to deliver Himself from it (Is. 53:7), He did cry out from the agony of the fury of God’s wrath poured on His perfectly holy and obedient Person (Matt. 27:46; 2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus asked to be saved from remaining in death, i.e., to be resurrected (Ps. 16:9, 10).
“Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered” (v. 8). Christ did not need to suffer in order to conquer or correct any disobedience. In His deity (as the Son of God), He understood obedience completely. As the incarnate Lord, He humbled Himself to learn (Luke 2:52). He learned obedience for the same reasons He bore temptation: to confirm His humanity and experience its sufferings to the fullest (2:10; Luke 2:52; Phil. 2:8). Christ’s obedience was also necessary so that He could fulfill all righteousness (Matt. 5:13) and thus prove to be the perfect sacrifice to take the place of sinners (1 Pet. 3:18). He was the perfectly righteous One, whose righteousness would be imputed to sinners (Rom. 3:24–26).
“And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation” (v. 9). Because of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ and His perfect sacrifice for sin, He became the cause of salvation. True salvation evidences itself in obedience to Christ, from the initial obedience to the gospel command to repent and believe (Acts 5:32; Rom. 1:5; 2 Thess. 1:8; 1 Pet. 1:2, 22; 4:17) to a life pattern of obedience to the Word (Rom. 6:16).

Contrasts that Tend in the Same Direction - Hebrews 1

11/7/2022

The contrasts in the opening verses of Hebrews 1 all seem to head in the same direction.
“In the past” contrasts with “in these last days.” God spoke “to our forefathers” stands over against the fact that in these last days he has spoken “to us.” In the past God spoke to the forefathers “through the prophets at many times and in various ways.” But in these last days God has spoken to us “by his Son” (1:1–2).
Indeed, the form of that expression, “by his Son,” in the original, suggests pretty strongly that the author of Hebrews does not think of the Son as one more prophet, or even as the supreme prophet. The idea is not that while in the past the word of God was mediated by prophets, in these last days the word has been mediated by the Son, who thus becomes the last of the prophets. Something more fundamental is at issue. The Greek expression, over-translated, means “in Son.” The absence of the article “the” is significant. Moreover, “in Son” contrasts not only with “through the prophets” but with “through the prophets at many times and in various ways.”
The point is that in these last days God has disclosed himself in the Son revelation. In the past, when God used the prophets he sometimes gave them words directly (in oracles or visions), sometimes providentially led them through experiences they recorded, sometimes “spoke” through extraordinary events such as the burning bush: there were “many times” and “various ways” (1:1). But now, God has spoken “in Son” - we might paraphrase, “in the Son revelation.” It is not that Jesus simply mediates the revelation; he is the revelation. It is not that Jesus simply brings the word; he is himself, so to speak, the Word of God, the climactic Word. The idea is very similar to what one reads in the Prologue of John’s Gospel. The Son is capable of this because he is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (1:3).
Strictly speaking, then, Christians are not to think of the New Testament books as just like the Old Testament books, bringing the next phase of God’s redemptive plan to us. Mormons argue that that is all they are - and then say that Joseph Smith brought a still later revelation to us, since he was yet another accredited prophet. But the author of Hebrews sees that the climax of all the Old Testament revelation, mediated through prophets and stored in books, is not, strictly speaking, more books - but Christ Jesus himself. The New Testament books congregate around Jesus and bear witness to him who is the climax of revelation. Later books that cannot bear witness to this climactic revelation are automatically disqualified.

Colossians 2:8-10 - Philosophy or Christ? – P1

11/7/2022

Our Sunday Sermon this week was from Colossians 2:8ff where we moved on to see Paul take on these False Teachers endangering the Colossians with a look at the difference between what Philosophy espouses and what is true about the Person and nature of the Lord Jesus Christ!

https://youtu.be/ps3AN6anV68

How Can God Forget My Sins? - What We Remember at the Table

11/5/2022

“This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).

It’s beautiful and fitting that the first explicit mention of the new covenant in the New Testament comes from the mouth of Jesus. And he mentions it at the most fitting moment. After sharing his final Passover meal with his disciples, Jesus takes a chalice of wine and says to them,
There is a world of meaning packed into those words that would change the world.

Great Pivotal Moment
Reclining around the table that evening, the disciples were observing from front-row seats a pivotal moment of redemptive history. The great Passover “Lamb of God,” who had come to “take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29), was inaugurating a new-covenant Passover meal of remembrance to go along with his inauguration of the long-awaited new covenant foretold by the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31–34). The author of Hebrews quotes it in full:

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah,
not like the covenant that I made with their fathers
on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds,
and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
and each one his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,”
for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more. (Hebrews 8:8–12)

It’s unclear how much the disciples grasped at the time. But when Jesus said the cup represented “the new covenant in [his] blood,” he meant he was far more than a Passover lamb whose blood would momentarily shield God’s covenant people from a momentary judgment.
He meant that he had “appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). He meant that through his shed blood, he would completely achieve what centuries of the shed “blood of bulls and goats” could never achieve (Hebrews 10:4). He meant that his sacrificial death would make it possible for God to “be merciful toward [the] iniquities” of all his covenant people, for all time, and “remember their sins no more.”

Why the Old Covenant Became Obsolete
By all accounts, Christianity is now one of the world’s great religions, distinct from Judaism. But to Christianity’s Founder and the first generation or two of his followers, what we call “Christianity” was Judaism. It was Judaism with its great messianic hope fulfilled and without the old covenant’s caste of priests performing its required continual animal sacrifices. It was (and is) new-covenant Judaism.
The book of Hebrews provides the most in-depth explanation of why the old covenant had to be replaced by the new covenant. “If that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second” (Hebrews 8:7). So, what was faulty with the first? A full, careful study of the book of Hebrews is required to get the whole picture. But I’ll cover two major reasons.

Deficient Power to Defeat Sin
The first we see in Jeremiah’s prophecy: “They [the people of Israel] did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord” (Hebrews 8:9). That is, God “finds fault with them” (Hebrews 8:8), not the covenant itself. The history of Israel, from the time of the exodus from Egypt till the appearance of Christ, chronicles a continual breaking of the covenant that God had made with them at Sinai. This covenant inscripturated in the Law of Moses proved impossible for the people to keep because of their pervasive, inescapable problem: human sinfulness. As Paul explains,
The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. . . . [But] it was sin [rebelling against God’s holy law], producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. (Romans 7:12–13)
"The first covenant had the power to
expose sin, but not the power to free people from it.”
In other words, the first covenant had the power to expose sin, but not the power to free people from it. And this produced in even the most conscientious, rigorous observers of the law the cry, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24).

Deficient Blood to Atone for Sin
A second reason the old covenant was not final and complete was because its sacrifices, continually offered every year, could never make perfect those who drew near. “Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered?” the author of Hebrews reasons. “But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:1–4).
The old covenant made it clear that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). But as the old-covenant law lacked the power to free humans from sin, the old-covenant shedding of animal blood lacked the power to fully atone for human sin. All that these sacrifices effectually did was remind sinners of their “wretched,” inescapable sinful state — and point them forward to a coming, final, effective, once-for-all sacrifice.

Promise of the New Covenant
What we see foreshadowed in Jeremiah’s prophecy is the gospel the Messiah would bring: God’s intention to address these two major problems “once for all” (Hebrews 10:10).
Under the new covenant, God promised his people that he would “put [his] laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts” (Hebrews 8:10). This was a pointer to a superior law, “the law of the [Holy] Spirit of life” (Romans 8:1) who had the power set them free from their enslavement to their fallen sin nature, their “body of death.” It was a pointer to regeneration, where God’s covenant people would be “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of [the Messiah] from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). God’s people would receive a new nature inclined to keep God’s righteous law, now written on their new hearts and transforming their renewed minds (Romans 12:2).
And under the new covenant, God would “be merciful toward [his covenant people’s] iniquities, and [he would] remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). This was a pointer to a superior sacrifice whose shed blood had the power to atone for all their sins. It was a pointer to “a single offering [by which God would perfect] for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). And if God no longer remembers his covenant people’s sin, they are no longer in the “wretched” sinful state for which they need reminding.

Do This in Remembrance of Me
This is the world of meaning in those few words Jesus spoke to his disciples as he held the cup. But this time, I’ll quote from the apostle Paul applying Jesus’s words:
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:25–26)

“The Lord’s Supper is
a remembrance of the once-for-all new-covenant sacrifice
Jesus made for us.”

The new-covenant Passover meal we call the “Lord’s Supper” is not, as some believe, a re-shedding of Jesus’s blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Nor is it primarily a reminder of our sinful state. It is a remembrance of the once-for-all new-covenant sacrifice Jesus made for us. When we partake of this little meal, we hear God the Father say, “Because my Son has shed his blood for the forgiveness of your sins, I will remember your sins no more.”
And more than that, we hear God the Father say,
“I will be your God, and you shall be my beloved child. And you shall know me” (Hebrews 8:10–11).

For that, after all, is the heart of the new covenant.
“Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

Those Everlasting Arms! (Deuteronomy 33:27)

11/3/2022

by: James Smith, in "Daily Bible Readings for the Lord's Household"

"Underneath are the everlasting arms!"

That is, underneath every believer.
Those everlasting arms are there . . .
·        to bear him up,
·        to bear him on, and
·        to preserve from all real danger.
The arms of God are . . .
·        invisible, no one sees them;
·        spiritual, no one feels them;
·        careful, no one falls out of them;
·        omnipotent, no one overcomes them.
If the everlasting arms of my God are underneath me, then . . .
·        I may quietly yield myself unto Him;
·        I may confidently expect divine protection;
·        I may be certain that He will lift me above my foes;
·        I may feel assured that He will safely convey me home.

Aged saints may rejoice in this; for to them the Lord says, "I will be your God throughout your lifetime, until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you!" Isaiah 46:4
And weak believers may rejoice in this, for "He will carry the lambs in His arms, holding them close to His heart!" Isaiah 40:11

O to realize this sweet and encouraging truth:
Underneath me are the everlasting arms!

Message 20221030

11/1/2022

Colossians 2:1-7 – Paul’s Love for the Church – Conclusion
Finishing up this first section of Colossians chapter 2 and setting the stage for the next part of our study of this great Pauline Epistle – Col. 2:8-10 “Philosophy or Christ” starting next week!!

Click the link below:
https://youtu.be/P1qZze5Cah

High Noon - Christian History

11/1/2022

In 1517 Pope Leo X, empty-pocketed and needing funds to rebuild St. Peter’s basilica, issued a special “sale” of indulgences. The very word “indulgence” tends to convey some very dubious moral connotations, but these indulgences were particularly questionable. What was an “indulgence”? It was a special sort of forgiveness for sins issued by the pope in consideration of various acts of merit, in this case donations to Leo’s treasury. Indulgences could even be “purchased” on behalf of loved ones in “purgatory”.
The Dominican friar, one Johann Tetzel became the pontiff’s peddler, a sort of 16th century ‘P. T. Barnum’ traveling around with a gilded, brass-bound chest, a bag of printed receipts, and an enormous cross draped with a papal banner. Whenever Tetzel came to a town, church bells peeled, crowds gathered, and street performers kicked up their heels. Tetzel would set up shop in the nave of the local church, open his bags, and shout, “I have here the passports to lead the human soul to the celestial joys of Paradise. As soon as the coin rings in the bowl, the soul for whom it is paid will fly from purgatory and straight to heaven.”

History tells us that he usually exceeded his quota.

But many were extremely troubled at all of this, and when the hard eyes of Martin Luther fell on the indulgences purchased by fellow villagers in Wittenberg, he studied them carefully and forth-rightly pronounced them frauds. At high noon on October 31, 1517, Luther, then a 33-year-old university professor, walked to the main door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and tacked to it a document. That particular door kind of served as the town bulletin board, and Martin Luther had an announcement to post. He called for a “disputation on the power and efficacy of indulgences.”
A few curious passersby drew near and scanned the words: “Out of love for the faith and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg under the chairmanship of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology. … ” There followed a list of 95 items that have come to known as “Luther’s 95 Theses”.

Luther did not yet know what mighty blows he had struck.

God is our mighty fortress, always ready to help in times of trouble. Nations rage! Kingdoms fall! But at the voice of God the earth itself melts. The Lord All-Powerful is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Psalm 46:1,6,7