Biblical Truths from West Palm Beach church of Christ

We noticed in the prior lesson that 1 Chronicles is quickly bringing us to the life of David. After moving through an important genealogy in which accounts of faithfulness and unfaithfulness are recorded to show the people how to move forward and remind them of their past. Moving forward with God means not breaking faith. King Saul’s kingship and dynasty was removed from him because he was unfaithful to God and because he did not inquire guidance from God (cf. 1 Chronicles 10:13-14). The Chronicler shows that God’s people must remain faithful to the Lord or experience devastating consequences for disobedience. Chapter 11 opens with David. You will notice that the Chronicler is not paying attention to the early days of David’s life nor about his difficulties during the reign of Saul. The start point for David’s life for the Chronicler is with David on the throne…

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We have been looking at some common problems people experience in which they go through a deconstruction of their faith. This series is put forward as a way to help reconstruct the faith of those who are considering leaving God, leaving Jesus, leaving the faith, leaving the church, or leaving the scriptures. In our lesson we talked about the challenges that are made against the local church. Do we even need the church? Why do we have to do this? I hope the primary take away from the last lesson was that we need each other and to be faithful to him, we must work together, worship together, and love one another. God does not tell us that we can practice our faith before him in isolation. Rather, we are repeatedly taught that we belong to a body in which each part is important and is needed for the body to function and grow properly…

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We are beginning a new series for these two months called Restoring The Fallen. One of the amazing pictures about God is that he did not send all of his prophets condemning his people for their wickedness, only to leave them forever. God sent his prophets and his people rejected God’s message. So the people were punished and taken into exile. Yet God did not leave them in their sins and in the prison of exile in Babylon. We recently studied the books of Ezra and Nehemiah where we saw God bring his people back, giving them the strength to rebuild the temple and the city of Jerusalem. But Ezra and Nehemiah are now gone and the people have been left in Jerusalem. Now what? What hope is there for these people who have failed God in their past? Is there a path forward with God despite all of their sinning and failures? …

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We are in a series called Deconstructing and Reconstructing Faith. My goal in this series to answer some of the questions that I have seen and heard people facing, which is moving people to consider leaving the Lord, leaving the faith, leaving the scriptures, or leaving the church. In this lesson I want to talk about the church. There are a number of challenges to the church today. Do you believe you need to go to church to be a Christian? …

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We have the tendency to drown out noise that becomes loud and repetitive. Car alarms fall into this category. We hear a car alarm and after a few seconds we can ignore its sounds. You might have seen parents do this with their screaming or nagging children. The child is just yelling but the parent does not even to seem to notice it anymore. But it is entirely different story when it comes to the alarm in your home in the middle of the night. If your fire alarm or your security alarm goes off in the middle of the night, I don’t think anyone’s first reaction is to roll over and go back to sleep. You are going to get up. You are going to have the adrenaline running and your heart racing. You are going to start looking for your phone, ready to call emergency service. You are going to get ready…

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We have been in a series called Deconstructing and Reconstructing Faith. Our effort has been to consider some of the common reasons people question their faith and walk away from God, Jesus, the scriptures, or the faith. As I noted in the first lesson, there is not any way for me to address every concern that people have. But I wanted to talk about the things that I am seeing and hearing that are moving people away from God. This lesson is part 2 of Deconstructing Authority. Last week we started on the ground, building a foundation about biblical authority. We noted that it does matter what we do. It does matter how we live our lives and it does matter how we worship. We further observed that good feelings and good motives cannot be the basis by which we determine what God wants us to do. We also noted that silence is not authority either. Just because the scriptures “do not say that we can’t” does not authorize us to act in our lives or in our worship. If you missed that lesson, I hope you will go back and listen to it from the website. In our lesson we are going to continue our discussion about how to find God’s will for our lives. Let’s begin by talking about some of the solutions that have been more recently proposed to help us understand God’s authority for our lives…

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When we were children, it was fun to pretend. I used to watch cartoons and pretend to be the characters that I saw in those cartoons. Halloween is a time for children to pretend to be something that they cannot be in real life. It is fun to be able to pretend. But Jeremiah has a message for people who are pretending with God. Jeremiah is a prophet preaching to the people of Judah and Jerusalem, calling them to repent and warning them of the coming judgment. God is going to take up the problem of pretending to be the people of God in Jeremiah 4-5…

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We have been spending time in this series working through deconstruction. What I mean by deconstruction is that something happens that causes us to reconsider our Christian beliefs. I would like to remind us from the first lesson that we should always be rechecking our beliefs in light of the scriptures to make sure that we are believing what God said and not merely what someone taught us. But there appears to be areas where faith has been particularly shaken among God’s people. In the prior two lessons we looked experience and doubt as areas that can cause our faith to be shaken. If you missed those lessons, I encourage you to listen to those as those will help build a foundation for faith in your life… Our lesson today is called Deconstructing Authority. This will need to be a two part lesson because there are so many areas to address where authority has been a cause of difficulty for those who grew up in the pews or are questioning scriptural authority…

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How do you forgive a person who has ruined your life? How do you forgive people who have spent their lives working harm and evil against you? We have a saying, “Time heals all wounds.” I don’t know that “heal” is the right word. Maybe the word “forgets” may be more accurate because once the harm is brought back to mind, the hurt from the wound quickly returns to our minds and hearts. While healing can happen, the scars can still remain. Some of the hurts in my life reach 40 years back now. But they are not gone. They are healing but they are not gone. We have been looking at the life of Joseph and looking at where God is in the midst of suffering. Jacob has died and Joseph and his brothers have buried their father in Canaan just as he instructed. But this leaves Joseph with these brothers who hated him, wanted him dead, and sold him into slavery. We are told back in Genesis 47:28 that Jacob will live 17 years in Egypt. This means it has been about 40 years since Joseph’s brothers have sold him into slavery. What will Joseph do with his brothers now that his father is dead? What has Joseph learned about God for these 40 years?

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We are in a series in which we are looking at deconstructing and reconstructing faith. What I mean when I say “deconstruction” is that something happens in your life that causes you to reevaluate your faith and your understanding of Christianity. Then, sometimes that reevaluation leads to a complete abandonment of the faith. The reason for this series is my personal concern of what I have seen of people who have been taught the truth, or grew up in the pews, or were followers of Jesus only to have something happen in their lives to motivate them to walk away. One of the objections that people make is the problem of doubt. I have heard people tell me that they have questions so that is why they are not followers. I have heard others say that they have doubts and that is reason that they do not follow. Some have read the scriptures to say that if you have doubts or if you have questions, then you cannot be a follower of Jesus. So what I want to look at in this lesson is the problem of doubt. Is doubt the enemy of faith? Does God expect for us to have a blind faith? Is there a problem if I have doubts? Must I stop following Jesus if I still have questions?

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