Biblical Truths from West Palm Beach church of Christ

Our theme for 2022 is Journey With Jesus. We are taking our journey with Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew. Now that we are moving past the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew is going to record various accounts and events in the life of Jesus. One thing you will notice as you go through Matthew’s gospel is that he is not recording a continuous story. The gospel is not giving us a chronological account nor is it telling us an order of events. Rather, we are seeing short accounts from the life of Jesus, placed together to give us another angle on Jesus’ life. There are two reasons why I bring up this important point.

First, there is a strong temptation by many to want to supplement Matthew’s account with the accounts recorded in the other gospels. I cannot tell you how many commentaries and research works I consulted that did this. Rather than taking the text as it is presented, they go to the other gospels to fill in some of the missing details. This is a big mistake. There is a reason Matthew has recorded what he recorded the way he recorded it…

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Nehemiah has come to Jerusalem to help repair and rebuild the city of Jerusalem. Nehemiah was an important person in Persia being the cupbearer to King Artaxerxes. Nehemiah inspected the situation in the city and then called the people of Jerusalem together to tell them his intentions to rebuild the city. He told them about how the good hand of God had brought them to this moment and that God would give them success for this project.

Nehemiah 3 records the will of the people to rise up and do the work. Scan your eyes through chapter 3 and you will read about all of the people. You will see the repetition of the word “repair” throughout the chapter. I counted the word 38 times in the chapter. It is a beautiful description of everyone doing the work….

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But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9 ESV)

What the apostle Peter is doing in this letter is teaching how we live so that the praises of Jesus are proclaimed in the world. The point of being a Christian is to show the world how glorious Christ is. We live to show the goodness and glory of Jesus to everyone. We exist to display Christ. For far too long Christian morality has been completely misunderstood. We do not exist to do good so that we can look down our noses at everyone else who is not doing good and try to shame them into doing good. We do not communicate, “I’m doing good. What is the matter with you?” We do good so that people see Jesus. We do not do good to try to bring about a facade of moral conformity. We do good so that people will desire Jesus, glorify Jesus, and then be transformed in their lives by Jesus. Jesus made this point in the Sermon on the Mount…

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What is your first response to disturbing news? When bad news comes to you, what is your initial reaction? We are going to look at these questions in just a moment. We are returning to our theme for our Sunday evenings in 2022 called Return, Rebuild, and Renew. For our theme we have looked at the book of Ezra and we are going to continue by looking at the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah teaches us about handling adversity and pressing forward when dealing bad news and hard times. The book is intended to give us to courage to return to the Lord, be renewed by the Lord, and be rebuilt by the Lord to go forward in life. So this will be our book to carry us through the rest of the summer as we look to the Lord to rebuild and renew us…

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We are talking about how to have faith and practice our faith in a culture and society that rejects God. Peter is writing to Christians who are living in similar circumstances. How can you have faith when you feel the pressure of society? In our last lesson we looked at how Peter reminded us that we are strangers and exiles. We do not belong here. Open your Bibles to 1 Peter 2 and we will begin in verse 13 as we look at how to live before God in a culture that has turned against God…

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Our theme this year has been titled, “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross.” The goal of our theme is to look at the importance of the cross and how the cross changes everything about how we look at life. I hope that this series has changed how we think about the cross. In our lesson last month we examined Philippians 2 which teaches to have a cross attitude. We will not think of ourselves but will think about others. We need sacrificial thinking. In this last lesson in this series we are going to look at how sacrificial thinking is to lead to sacrificial action. There are many bumper stickers on vehicles today that say, “Salt Life.” I think the idea is that the person would like to live on the water above all else. For Christians, the bumper sticker of our lives is to read, “Cross Life.” Now that we understand the idea of the cross, this picture does not sound very good. The cross was the execution device used by the Romans on the worst of criminals. Do you want that kind of life? Who would want that kind of life? But this is exactly the life Jesus teaches. Open your copies of God’s word to Luke 14:25-35.

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Listen to what the apostle Paul says about Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6–8 NIV)

This is a stunning picture of our Lord Jesus. Consider who Jesus is and what he does. Christ Jesus is fully God. He is completely God. The scriptures clearly tell us that Jesus is God in every way. There is nothing lesser about him…

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The big question that arises in Genesis 38 is why is this event recorded here? Why does this story “interrupt” the flow of the Joseph narrative? You will notice in chapter 39 the narration returns to Joseph and continues with him until the end of Genesis. Some scholars reject this text by calling it an addition because it seems to break the flow of the Joseph story. But we know that God puts these stories in the scriptures for a reason. The scriptures do not contain random stories, but actual events purposefully placed in the scriptures to teach readers about God. So rather than be troubled by this chapter and its inclusion, we should ask what God is teaching us at this point.

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The concept of sin is being lost in our culture’s vocabulary and consciences. However, not only has the world lost the knowledge of sin, many Christians also have an incomplete understanding of what is sin… There are many places in the scriptures where God gives us a clear picture of the meaning of sin.

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. (1 John 3:4 ESV)

God defines sin as lawlessness. Too often sin is defined as doing something bad based on society’s definition of what is “bad.” God defines sin as acting without his law. Lawlessness is breaking the law or acting without the approval of the law. Sins are not defined by society’s laws. Sin is defined by God’s laws. It does not matter what people think are deadly sins or define to be as immoral. Notice that Jesus taught this point…

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God declared in the first commandment that Lord is the only God and he alone must be worshiped. The first commandment focused on the object of people’s worship. The second commandment focuses on how people are to worship the Lord…

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4–6 ESV)

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