Christian McShaffrey: Why Does the Septuagint Matter Today? (RBS 2024 Plenary Lecture 4)

 

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The Vision (8.30.24): Seven Parallels Between Melchizedek and Christ

 

Image: Ripening tomatoes, North Garden, Virginia, August 2024.

Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 14:18-20; Hebrews 7.

Hebrews 7:14 For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood. 15 And it is yet far more evident: for that after the similitude of Melchisedec there ariseth another priest, 16 Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.

In the book of Hebrews, the inspired author (I believe it was the apostle Paul) makes comparison between the lesser ministry of the mysterious Melchizedek to Abraham in Genesis 14:18-20 and the greater ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here are at least seven parallels that might be drawn: 

1.  Melchizedek was a priest and king.  The Lord Jesus Christ is our great Prophet, Priest, and King.

2.  Melchizedek’s name meant “My king is righteous.” The Lord Jesus Christ is the true “King of righteousness” (Hebrews 7:2).

How did Christ exercise his kingship?  As a servant.  His coronation was in humiliation on the cross.  His crown was one of twisted thorns, his scepter a reed, his raiment a purple rag.  But by his death he justified many. Indeed, he is the King of justification.

3.  Melchizedek was the King of Salem, the king of peace.  The Lord Jesus Christ is the true King of Salem, the Prince of Peace.

Our Lord is this in two ways:

First, in the ultimate sense he gives us peace with God: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).

Second, he gives us peace within ourselves and with others: “And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

The old adage is:  No Jesus, no peace; Know Jesus, know peace.

As one cheesy church sign which I once saw on the roadside in Houston, Texas several years ago put it: “If your life is in pieces, look to Jesus for peace.”

4.  Melchizedek met with Abraham.  The Lord Jesus meets with us.

He does so often unexpectedly, surprisingly, seeming to appear out of nowhere.

5.  Melchizedek was made “like unto a Son of God” (Hebrews 7:3).  The Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

6.  Melchizedek represented a continuing priesthood, unlike that of Levi and Aaron.  The Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal priest who gave himself once for sin on the cross and now ever liveth to make intercession for us (cf. Hebrews 7:25).

7.  Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek.  We give our lives to Christ with gratitude, as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1-2).

Now consider how great this man Melchizedek was!  Yet, the Lord Jesus is greater than Melchizedek. He is our greater Melchizedek. He is the King of righteousness and the King of peace.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

David Kranendonk: What was the Reformation Perspective on the LXX? (RBS 2024 Plenary Lecture 3)

 

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Jeffrey T. Riddle: How Did the Early Church Use the Septuagint? (RBS 2024 Plenary Lecture 2)

 

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Russell Fuller: What Exactly is the Septuagint? (RBS 2024 Plenary Lecture 1)

 

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Introduction: Reformation Bible Society 2024

 

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The Vision (8.23.24): Ten Admirable Qualities of Abraham (from Genesis 14)

 

Image: The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek, engraving by Adriaen Collaert, 1584-1585, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 14.

Genesis 14:22 And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, 23 That I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich.

In last Sunday’s sermon from Genesis 14 I suggested at least ten spiritually admirable qualities of Abram (Abraham) which we might note and follow:

First: Unlike Lot, he did not “pitch his tent toward [align himself with] Sodom,” and so he was spared the temporal distress and humiliation which Lot endured (cf. Genesis 13:12; 14:1-12).

Who knows what pain we are spared by openly aligning with Christ rather than with the world?

Second: He had friends in the world but was not corrupted by them (v. 13).

See 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul told the Corinthians that if they had to stay away completely from worldlings they would need “go out of the world” (v. 10).

Third: He had compassion on Lot his kinsman in his distress (v. 14).

He might well have turned his back upon Lot. Matthew Henry made much of this, writing that Abram provides a model: “Though others have been wanting in their duty to us, yet we must not therefore deny our duty to them.”

Fourth: He used lawful means to defend himself by arming his servants (v. 14b).

What did his arming of his servant say about his relationship with them as their master?

Fifth: He used skill and cunning (marks of wisdom) to overcome a greater adversary and all with the Lord’s help (v. 15).

This recalls Christ’s sending forth of the apostles, telling them to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves (Matthew 10:16)

Sixth: He communed with Melchizedek (v. 18).

This took place when the mysterious king and priest brought forth to him “bread and wine” (v. 18).

Seventh: He was blessed of God (v. 19).

Look at Psalm 1 and see a contrast between the “blessed” man (vv. 1-3) and the “ungodly” (vv. 4-6).

Eighth: He gave tithes to Melchizedek (v. 20b).

Abram was a proper steward of the things in his possession and gave the first and best to the cause of the Lord, embodied in Melchizedek.

Ninth: He was a man of his word and kept his pledge to God (v. 22):

The Lord Jesus himself would teach the importance of this in the Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5:37). We need men and women who live with integrity, who keep their word, and fulfill their commitments to God and man.

Tenth: He kept himself unspotted from the world in his promise not to take one thread or shoelace from Sodom (v. 23).

He was committed to holiness, to being set apart from the world. He trust not in the world for material provision, but in God.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 310: The ECM, Revelation 21:6, & Theology

 

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The Vision (8.16.24): Pitching a Tent Toward Sodom

 

Image: Abraham and Lot Separating, print, Philip Medhurst Collection at St. George's Court, Kidderminster.

Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 13. 

“Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom” (Genesis 13:12).

A contrast is drawn in Gensis 13 between godly Abram (later Abraham) and his nephew Lot.

When they returned from Egypt to the land of promise they decided to divide the land. Abram was a peacemaker, generously offering Lot first choice (vv. 8-9).

Lot looked and chose the plain of Jordan. It was lush, well-watered, “even as the garden of the LORD” (v. 10).  

But Moses anticipates what will happen on that plain, telling us this was “before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah” (v. 10). All that glittered was not gold. The land looked enticing, but its end would be fire and brimstone and destruction (see Genesis 19:24-25).

Using naturalistic reasoning, it looked outwardly like a very good real estate decision. Abram was left with what seemed the less attractive land. He “dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom” (v. 12).

There is no doubt spiritual significance in the statement that Lot pitched his tent (oriented his life) toward Sodom. The spiritual problem of Sodom is made clear in v. 13: “But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.”

Lot did not set up in Sodom but directed himself toward it. You might say he got as close to it as he possibly could without entering it, but, in the end, it rubbed off on him and his house. As Solomon would ask, “Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?” (Proverbs 6:27).  As we shall see later in the narrative, Lot will barely escape Sodom, but his wife literally will be ruined by it, and his two daughters will fair little better, morally speaking (Genesis 19). It seemed like such a good choice, a no-brainer, humanly speaking, but it would have disastrous consequences for Lot and his household.

As one reads Genesis 13, he might ask whether he will choose the way of Abraham (righteousness) or Lot (unrighteousness). Will he “pitch a tent” (orient his life) to the way of the Lord or the way of the world? As Christ will put it in the Sermon on the Mount, will he choose the narrow way that leads to life or the broad way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14)?

We must add a caution, however, about simply offering a “moralistic” interpretation of this account.

Our hope rests, in the end, not in our ability NOT to pitch our tent toward Sodom. It rests in the fact that there was one who came as a man, while also true God, and never bent in the direction of Sodom, and never entered it. But who took upon himself all the fire and brimstone, all the wrath that we deserved for our sin, saved us, and clothed us with his righteousness. That, in the end, is indeed our hope.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 309: The Women Behind Your Critical Editions

 

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The Vision (8.9.24): The Keys of the Kingdom

 

Note: Devotional message taken from last Sunday afternoon's sermon on Matthew 16:16-19.

“Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be found in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 18:18).

On Sunday afternoons in 2024 at CRBC we have been working our way through the Heidelberg Catechism (as supplemented by the Baptistic revision of it known as the Orthodox Catechism). This Catechism provides 119 questions and answers divided into the 52 Lord’s Days of the year.

Last Sunday, on Lord’s Day 31 (Questions 83-85), the teaching addressed the “keys of the kingdom.”

I don’t need to tell you that we live in an anti-authoritarian age. Every authority it seems is under question in our day. This includes the authority of the parents in the home, the elders in the church, the magistrate in society. Many are even challenging the authority and integrity of Holy Scripture itself.

On Lord’s Day 31, our instructors teach us about a special authority that has been given to the Lord’s church and to her officers for the spiritual good of all. This is symbolized by the image of keys, the keys of the kingdom. With a key one opens a door or locks it.

This authority is traced first to Christ’s instructions to Peter after he made “the good confession” that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (see Matthew 16:16-19). Second, it is traced to our Lord’s later instructions to the disciples in Matthew 18:15-20. This second passage is necessary for understanding the first, because it makes plain this authority, the keys, was given not only to Peter (as our Roman Catholic friends like to suggest), but to all the apostles, upon whom the church would be built, the Lord Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone. After the apostles it was given to the churches of Christ, as served by their ordinary officers.

The catechism teaches that the “keys of the kingdom” (authority in in the administration in the kingdom of Christ) is twofold. It consists of preaching and Christian discipline.

The magisterial Reformers used to speak of three marks of a true church: right preaching of the gospel, right administration of the sacraments (ordinances), and right exercise of discipline (discipleship). If a church lacks any of these three it is vulnerable to disqualification as a church.

With respect to discipline, we typically think of two kinds: formative and corrective. Formative discipline takes place through ordinary interactions, encouragements, and exhortations. Corrective discipline is more rarely used, as it is reserved for serious faults that require an unrepentant person to be removed (excommunicated) from the church and its ordinances until restoration might be achieved. A church will be unhealthy if it never exercises this kind of discipline, but also if it does so too often or, especially, unjustly.

The visible church is given real authority on earth. This is truly a sober and grave authority, and so it is not to be taken up lightly. Let us exercise this authority carefully and justly.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

The Vision (8.2.24): The Call of Abraham

 

Image: Blueberries, North Garden, Virginia, August 2024.

Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 12.

Last Sunday morning, we resumed our series through Genesis, beginning the account of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Genesis 12-36).

We returned to Abraham in Genesis 12. I suggested three parts to this chapter:

First, Abraham’s call (vv. 1-5): The LORD spoke to Abraham, telling him to leave behind his country, kindred, and his fathers’ house (v. 1). He gave to Abraham promises, especially that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed (v. 3). The mark of Abraham’s spiritual exceptionalism was his obedience: “So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him” (v. 4). Martin Luther said Abraham obeyed “the naked voice of God.”

Second, Abraham’s worship (vv. 6-9): As Abraham moved into the hostile and pagan land of Canaan at the LORD’s command, Moses tells us that he worshipped. First, after the LORD appeared to him and told him his seed would be given the land (v. 7). Then again, as he moved forward, we read, “and there he builded an altar unto the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD” (v. 8).

Third, Abraham’s deception (vv. 10-20): This account begins, “And there was a famine in the land….” (v. 10). The famine reflected his spiritual life at this point. He then “went down into Egypt to sojourn there” (v. 10). Later in Israel’s history Egypt would be a place of bondage. The godly man who had readily obeyed “the naked voice of God” got bogged down in deception and began to lean upon his own understanding, lying by saying his wife was his sister (v. 13), but the lie was found out and he was sent away (vv. 18-20). This reminds us that though Abraham was a man of God he still had remaining corruptions in him, as all believers will till the glorious end.

So, let us obey God’s call. Let us follow him in obedience and discipleship.

Let us worship the thrice holy God, even as we live in this already-but-not-yet, in-between time.

Let us trust in the LORD with all our heart and lean not unto our own understanding (see Proverbs 3:5-6).

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Broken Wharfe Podcast Interview: Before the Foundation of the World

 

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