Biblical Truths from West Palm Beach church of Christ

We have been looking at how to renew our faith for the new year. We look forward to a new year in hope of having a better year. As we think about the upcoming year, we are looking at how we can have an improved, deeper faith for 2024 and we are looking at this through the lens of Malachi. Malachi records that the people are questioning God. They do not believe that God has shown his love toward them. They do not understand why they do not have the favor of the Lord. So God is explaining to the people the problems in their faith and what needs to change to have a righteous relationship with him. Please take your copies of God’s word and turn to Malachi 2:10 and we are going to consider the paragraph here.

To set up this section, we need to be reminded about the context of the discussion between God and his people. God has been explaining to the people that he is not receiving their worship. The people are bringing their sacrifices and offerings, but God would rather the temple doors be closed than for the people to continue in their worthless offerings. There are two problems that God observes that is going on among the people that makes their worship worthless. We will look at these two problems and consider what this looks like in our lives. Then we will consider God’s solution so that we can have the faith that God wants in his people…

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We are going to have a short series called Overcoming Sin Addiction and we are going to look at how to do this from the second chapter of Jeremiah. I would like you to take your copies of God’s word and turn to Jeremiah 2. The series theme comes from what God says through Jeremiah in verses 23-25.

“You are a swift she-camel running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, sniffing the wind in her craving— in her heat who can restrain her? Any males that pursue her need not tire themselves; at mating time they will find her. Do not run until your feet are bare and your throat is dry. But you said, ‘It’s no use! I love foreign gods, and I must go after them.’” (Jeremiah 2:23-25 NIV)

I want us to notice this picture before we begin this lesson. God describes the people craving after their sins, unrestrained like an animal in heat. God is calling for them to stop. But the people’s response is in verse 25. They say that it is no use. They love their foreign gods and have a compulsion to go after them. Sin is being pictured as an addiction…

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We are in a series called Fresh Faith where God is exploring the people’s failures in their faith and telling them what needs to be different to belong to him. The people, however, have been surprised by this. They are questioning God throughout this prophecy. God has proclaimed his love for his people. Yet the people have questioned how God has loved them. God has told the people that they are not honoring him. But the people have questioned how they are not honoring him. The reason they are not honoring God is because they do not love to worship God. They want to give God their leftovers and find having to worship God tiresome and a weariness. So here is an important question. How did these people get to this point? How did the people get to a point of being unable to see God’s love? How did the people get to where they do not have a heart for God? How did they get to the point that worship was a burden to them and did not have a passion for God? What you will see as you come to Malachi 2 is that this is a continuation of God talking about the lack of honor he has received from the people. You see this in Malachi 2:2 where God warns the people about taking this message to heart and honoring his name. So we are going to look at how the people got to this point and what the solution is for their spiritual apathy. As we begin I also want us to notice that the framework of this paragraph is probably backward to the logic we typically apply to an argument. Malachi 2:1-3 is God telling the people what he is going to do because they are not honoring him. In Malachi 2:4-7 God explains the way things should have been. Finally, in Malachi 2:8-9 God describes the people’s failure…

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It is hard to believe how far people can fall in their lives. We are certainly able to watch it in the lives of celebrities who seem to have it all only to lose so much due to their foolish ways and sinful decisions. But this is not a problem that only afflicts those who are without God. There are many people in the scriptures who are recorded for us to show the great fall that they experienced so that we would learn from them. Unfortunately, Gideon is one of those men whose life takes a catastrophic turn to spiritual disaster. In our last two lessons we have seen the rise of Gideon by the power of the Lord. We were introduced to Gideon as a man hiding in winepress, threshing wheat in order to hide it from the Midianite invaders. We concluded Judges 7 with Gideon taking 300 men by the power of the Lord and defeating the 135,000 Midianite army with only trumpets and torches…

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We are in a series called Fresh Faith where we are looking to how we can prepare ourselves for this coming new year to have the faith that God wants us to have and that we want to have. Our first step to a renewed faith is to see God’s love for you that he chose you before creation to adopt you as his child. This morning we are going to look at the second picture of faith and how we can move closer to God. We are in the book of Malachi. One of the unique features of this book is that God will make a statement and the people will question that statement. Then God will give the answer to their question. So God is working with a people who are questioning God and working to move them to saving faith…

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We like to be in the majority. We like to be in the majority because we can think that this means we are on the right side. This is part of our culture war right now. There is a battle for the majority because the belief is if you have the majority, then you must be right. When you are outnumbered, then it can be really frightening. We also see this in our culture today. It is becoming more frightening to be a Christian because we now for the first time really feel like we are outnumbered. We feel like we belong to a very small minority. Now we always were in a small minority but it wasn’t as obvious as it is now. I think about what happened to Daniel’s three friends. Nebuchadnezzar proclaimed that everyone needed to bow down and worship the statue when the music played. All the people of the nation were considered to have gathered for this moment. Can you imagine what it looked like when the music sounded and thousands of people began to bow down to the ground and worship the statue but there were these three men who remained standing? It is hard to stand against overwhelming odds. But this is where God is going to put a man named Gideon at this moment…

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To appreciate what God is going to do for the people of Israel through Gideon, we have to see what is going on in their history. We are told at the end of Judges 5 that Israel had experienced a time of rest and peace from the surrounding nations for 40 years. But this time of peace does not last because Judges 6 opens by telling us that the people of Israel returned to doing evil in the sight of the Lord. I think it is very important to read the end of verse 1. There we are specifically told that the Lord gave his people into the hand of Midian for 7 years. The next few verses show what this looked like in the life of Israel. Midian is regularly overpowering Israel. The situation is so severe that the people of Israel had to make shelters and hiding places in the mountains and caves…

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Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 ESV)

Just slow down and think about what the apostle Paul taught as he came to the end of his first letter to the Thessalonian Christians. This is God’s will in Christ for you: always rejoicing, constantly praying, and giving thanks in all circumstances. But let the end of this direction rest on you for a moment. Give thanks in ALL circumstances. This is a week that our country has set aside as a time for thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is something that we think about when it comes to the good things we presently have or are experiencing in our lives. But I want us to consider how Paul does not say to give thanks when things are going well. Paul does not say that give thanks when you see God’s blessings in your life. Paul does not say to give thanks when you receive answered prayers. Paul would say yes to those reasons to give thanks. But notice that Paul says to give thanks in every circumstance…

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It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. This is probably the only line I remember from the required readings of Charles Dickens in high school. Yet as I opened the book of Jeremiah and read the first few sentences, it was the first thing that came to my mind. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. We are told in Jeremiah 1 that Jeremiah is a priest in the village of Anathoth which is in the tribal boundaries of Benjamin, just a few miles from Jerusalem. But Jeremiah receives the word of the Lord in the days of Josiah, the king of Judah. The nation of Judah had a very imbalanced history in which there were good kings who arose and served the Lord and led the people in righteousness. But there were also wicked kings who arose and rejected the Lord and led the people in evil and idolatry. The scriptures name two kings in particular who reigned over Judah in which they obeyed the Lord like no other kings in the nation’s history. Those two kings were Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:5-6) and Josiah (2 Kings 23:25). The reign of Josiah was an amazing time of reforms and spiritual restoration. This was very important because the prior two kings did great wickedness. In fact, Josiah’s grandfather was Manasseh who is described as the most wicked king Judah ever had reign over them (cf. 2 Kings 21). Josiah tore down idols, cleansed the temple, restored the Passover, and pressed the people to obey the Lord. Jeremiah 1:2 records the best of times. But Jeremiah 1:3 records the worst of times. Jeremiah will be a prophet not only in the days of Josiah, one of the best kings Judah ever had, but he will also prophesy through the reigns of the final kings of Judah, ending with Zedekiah which is when the city of Jerusalem was captured by the Babylonians. Jeremiah is going to prophesy during a time of great spiritual fervor and prophesy during a time of great rebellion to the Lord, all the way to the destruction of the nation in 586 BC. Jeremiah prophesied during the best of times and during the worst of times…

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Matthew 24 ended with Jesus warning his disciples that they need to be ready for his coming in judgment. In last week’s lessons we saw that Jesus warned that his delay to bring judgment will tempt his servants to no longer stay awake and be ready and will tempt his servants to mistreat one another (cf. Matthew 24:42-51). Matthew 25 will now explain what being ready for Jesus’ coming looks like. This would be very important and appropriate for them to hear now because Jesus is warning that he was going to come in national judgment against Israel. Not one stone of the temple would be left upon another (Matthew 24:2) and Israel was worthy of God’s judgment (Matthew 21-23). But Jesus not only speaking about the judgment of Jerusalem but extends to speak about all of God’s judgments including even the final judgment when Christ returns. Let’s notice how Jesus shows us how to be ready in Matthew 25…

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