Biblical Truths from West Palm Beach church of Christ

We have a saying that, “You can never go home again.” You have likely experienced why this expression exists. When I left San Diego for college in Tampa and returned to San Diego the next summer, life was not the same. My life had moved on. The lives of my friends had moved on so that things were not the same when I came back. But what happens is we hold in our minds the way things were when we were kids when we lived at home. But then we come back and home is not the same. It is almost that we take a picture of how things were, hoping that somehow everything will be frozen and pick up right where we left off. But this is where this saying comes in. You can never go home again. You go home but things are not the same. Sometimes we really wish that home could be the way we remember it…

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Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once.” 4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, 5 “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’” (Matthew 21:1–5 ESV)

When the New Testament authors quote prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures, they are not doing so as a proof text. They are not plucking verses out of context and saying, “See Jesus did that.” Rather, the quote is intended to take our minds back to the original prophecy as a whole and understand that the whole prophetic message is being recalled and fulfilled. This action of Jesus is so important that all four gospels record this event. You will notice in your cross-references that this action that Jesus takes comes from Zechariah 9. The goal of the prophet Zechariah is to encourage the people to be faithful to the Lord and do the work because God has great things promised for their future. Zechariah gives another picture of what God is going to do for us and for the world when the Christ comes…

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Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:13–14 ESV)

Jesus ends his sermon with a call to enter by the narrow gate. The reason for this call is because it is easy to miss the way that leads to life. What Jesus says in verses 13-14 is so contrary to what people want religion to be. Our world says that the road is wide that leads to life. In fact, they say there are many roads that lead to life. But it is difficult to be on the road that leads to destruction. But please consider Jesus’ own words. There are only two paths…

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If you have been to the Magic Kingdom at Disney World, there is an attraction called the Carousel of Progress. One of the great reasons that people ride it is because you can sit down in air conditioning for a 30 minute attraction. The ride looks at what life was like every couple of decades and what those advancements were over the years. It is pretty amazing to think about where we were as a country technologically 100 years ago and then notice how fast things improved to get to where we are today. But at the end of each scene as you are about to move to the next decade of advancements, the main character will sing a song that says, “There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day. There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, just a dream away.” The point of the song is to show how life can be so much better going forward. This is the message that Zechariah is bringing to God’s people to give them hope. Your future is bright because God is going to do great things. So let’s notice this message and its meaning for us today…

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The Sermon on the Mount can be so familiar to us that we can easily read what Jesus said in a quick manner and really miss the teeth of what he said. What Jesus said can almost be mentally cast aside because we have heard it so often. This is certainly the temptation for Matthew 7:7-12. It is easy to read Matthew 7:7-8 and spend our whole time talking about how we need to ask, seek, and knock. But there is so much more that Jesus wants to show us. Jesus wants to teach us about the disposition of God. You will notice that Jesus does not merely say you need to ask God, you need to seek God, and you need to knock. I want us to notice that Jesus is trying to give us some confidence for why we should have a vibrant prayer life. Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. Everyone who asks receives. Everyone who seeks finds. Everyone who knocks it will be opened (7:7-8). Jesus is trying to give us the strength and encouragement to talk to God and to ask God for things in your life. So let’s hold this call to ask God in our minds and we will return to it in a moment. But I want us to see the motivations that God is giving to us…

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God has concluded sending visions to his prophet Zechariah, showing the people the great things that lie ahead if they will return to him and build the temple. With the temple work underway, there is a question that arises among the people. They want to know if they should continue mourning and fasting in the fifth month like they have been doing all these years. It is important to know why they have been mourning and fasting in the fifth month for all these years. This fast marked the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem 70 years ago. We read in 2 Kings 25:8-9 tells us that the temple fell on the seventh day of the fifth month. So for 70 years the people have been mourning and fasting because of the temple’s destruction. But now that the temple is in the process of being rebuilt, the question is if they should continue mourning and fasting. The Lord has two answers to give to the people which were not only instructive to them, but teaches us so much about what God is looking for from us as his people…

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It is one of the more famous verses in the scriptures. Many people know John 3:16 and they also know this verse, even if they do not know where it is located. “Do not judge.” Of course, this is not only taking the statement out of context, but it is also cut part of the sentence and not quoting the whole statement. So as we live in a world where the greatest crime is to judge another person, we need to come to this teaching of Jesus and carefully consider what Jesus was teaching us to do and not to do as he continues his teaching in what we call the Sermon on the Mount…

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Zechariah 5-6 contains three visions and one picture that Zechariah is to act out. We have been noticing that the book of Zechariah is all about hope and encouraging the people to rise up and do the work that God has put before them. God’s continuous motivation for us to love him and follow him is for us to see what he has done for us and what he promises to do for us. We have repeatedly noted how the apostle Paul’s letters first speak about what God has done for us. After doing so, then Paul will talk about how we ought to live because of God’s gracious work. God did this with Israel also. God rescued Israel from Egyptian slavery. Once they came to Mount Sinai, God asked his people to obey his laws because they had been rescued and because God would do great things in the future for them if they would. This is the idea in this prophecy. There is a clear call to action at the end of chapter 6 based on God’s life purpose for us. It is a question that will ask us if we are building God’s temple. But before God tells us about what he wants us to do, he must give us three pictures to melt our hearts to hear God’s call…

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The first word in Matthew 6:25 is the word, “Therefore.” Before we can enter this paragraph about worry, we need to reconnect to the prior paragraph. In verses 19-24 Jesus told us to treasure heavenly treasures and not earthly treasures. Make your treasure in heaven and not on earth. This idea is going to lead into this teaching about worry and anxiety.

Therefore, do not worry about your life. Let me just stop before we go further in the lesson and just ask, “Are we worried about our lives?” What does the “therefore” have to do with this? We noticed that what you look at is going to affect your life…

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There are many times in our walk with God that we are going to feel weak in the faith. We are going to feel weak in our service. We are going to feel weak in our worship. We are going to feel weak in life. We are not alone when we feel this way. All of us experience these times in our lives. God addresses those times when we feel this way. It is exactly the way God’s people felt when they came back to rebuild the temple of the Lord. You can imagine what a daunting task these people had when they left Persia and came back to Jerusalem. The walls of the city are torn down. There are no houses to live in. There is no farming lands ready to produce. The temple has been burnt and toppled. There is so much work to do. We need to plant so we can eat. We need to build a house so we can live. We need a city so we can exchange goods and services in a marketplace. We need a temple so we can worship our Lord who has preserved us. There are 42,360 people who have returned to do this work (Ezra 2:64). While this is a lot of people, the amount of work that needs to be done is overwhelming and discouraging. So God has sent his prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, to encourage these people to not give up and to have hope even though they feel weak in this moment. So let’s look at how God brings encouragement and hope to his people and how that message can help us when we need hope when we are weak…

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