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Bible Classes / Speaker:Berry Kercheville The post Chronicles: Introduction & Survey (Part 2) , 1 Chronicles 1 -9 : The Genealogies and their Purpose appeared first on Woodland Hills Church of Christ.

Old Testament Sermons / Speaker:Berry Kercheville Broken Covenant, Broken Prophet Jeremiah 11-12 Introduction: When we read most of the literary prophets, we learn virtually nothing about the prophet himself. But in Jeremiah, we live with the prophet throughout his mission. It is clear that God wants us to feel Jeremiah’s emotions and disappointments so we can see the heart of God through him. God and Jeremiah suffer together as they battle with Judah over their unfaithfulness and the coming Babylonian invasion. In these two chapters we see God revealing a sermon Jeremiah is to preach to the people concerning the consequences of breaking God’s covenant. After the sermon, the Lord shows Jeremiah that the people are plotting to destroy him. This sets up the beginning of a “broken prophet” that culminates in chapter 20 when  Jeremiah decides to quit. Jeremiah is now realizing the depth of Judah’s sin and the seeming uselessness of preaching to these stubborn people. Most importantly, we learn about ourselves—the seriousness of living in a covenantal relationship with God, and the challenges we face as we suffer in the midst of a broken world.  Broken Covenant: “Hear the Words of This Covenant”, 11:1-17 1-8: “Covenant” is a common word used in scripture that we are all familiar with. However, most Christians are a bit fuzzy on the type of covenant God instituted with his people. God’s covenant with Israel was called a “suzerain” covenant. It is defined as, “a sovereign or a state exercising political control over a dependent state.”  You might be familiar with this when you consider Babylon conquering Judah in 605 BC. Babylon now controlled Judah, and as long as Judah paid tribute and did not rebel or make deals with other nations, they could live in peace. But if Judah did not keep those terms, Babylon would destroy them, which is exactly what happened. Israel’s covenant with God was also suzerain. Though Israel had done nothing to deserve it, God had graciously delivered Israel from the bondage of Egypt. The covenant came after deliverance, and if they do not accept the covenant, they are returned to bondage or destroyed. But if they kept the covenant, God promised to care, protect, and provide for them, and even make them great if they gave their total allegiance to him.  Whether Christian or not, we have the same covenant with God. Through Christ deliverance is offered.  If we accept and keep the covenant he will give “exceedingly great and precious promises.” (2 Pet. 1:4) In Jeremiah’s sermon, God makes the terms of the covenant quite clear. If you are accustomed to lawyer–like language as when you sign a mortgage or rent a house, you will be surprised at the simplicity of God’s covenant. The foundational premise of God’s covenant with his people is obedience. We see God’s repeated statements in this section: “Hear the words of this covenant” (2), “do all that I command you” (4), “Hear the words of the covenant and do them” (6), “…warning them persistently, even to this day, saying ‘Obey my voice.’” How difficult is it to understand these repeated commands of hearing and obeying? How do so many not understand, “Obey my voice,” and “be careful to obey my covenant” (18x in Deuteronomy). What it really exposes is a person’s half-hearted desire to be saved. A person who tests God’s commands against their own desires and believes it won’t matter if they intentionally compromise God’s instructions, simply does not want to “make your election and calling sure” (2 Peter 1:10). 9-13 “Conspiracy!” This is another word that was common in those days. When the people of a suzerain rebelled, which Israel did many times with foreign conquerors, it was called “conspiracy.” This typically happened when the subject nation made treaties or alliances with other nations. Israel had done this by their multiplicity of gods and their trust in the nations instead of God. In other words, God’s demand of us is loyalty, total allegiance to him. Anything less and we are in violation of the covenant. “Seek first…” 14-17 Consequences of violating the covenant. Note that even the prayer of a prophet will not save them. Note verse 15: “even sacrificial flesh” will not avert their doom. When we continue in violation of God’s covenant, no amount of prayer, going to church, and taking the Lord’s Supper is going to save us. Again, God desires “steadfast love, not sacrifice”. It is foolish to think that outward acts of worship would somehow make up for idolatry (vs. 17). We cannot have other “gods” in our lives and think that God is not provoked to anger. Please note God’s response to our lack of complete allegiance to him: he “has decreed disaster against you,” and we are “provoking God to anger.”  Broken Prophet: “Like a Gentile Lamb Led to the Slaughter” 11:18-23 Surprise Jeremiah! Their conspiracy is not just against God, it is against you. Anathoth was Jeremiah’s home town. He was a priest in that town. Even his own family (12:6) and people have turned against him and warned him that he would be killed if he continued to preach in the name of the Lord. 12:1-4 Jeremiah pleads his case before God. Notice the similarity of Jeremiah’s complaint to our world today. We might think, “Amen, Jeremiah,  something has to be done about this wickedness. It’s destroying everything!” — How long? (Vs. 4).   12:5-6 God’s Reply:  What a surprising answer God gives that is so important for us: If you get weary running with men, how will you handle running with horses? In other words, this is only the beginning of your trials.  At this point, Jeremiah is so much like us. This isn’t right! This is so unfair! This is not the way it is supposed to be! But God’s time for judging the wicked is not our time. In the letters to the seven churches, how many times did Jesus warn the Christians to “overcome” and not give in to the persecution? Instead of saying, “I will protect you,” he said, “more of you will die…be faithful unto death.”  The Hebrew writer repeatedly said the same thing: “Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.” (Hebrews 10:35-36) 7-13 God’s Complaint. After warning Jeremiah that the next danger he will face is his own brothers, God launches into a description of what his people have done to him. We see God placing Jeremiah in a similar position has had been done to Hosea. Jeremiah suffers in a similar way as God so he can feel the pain and disappointment and so preach to the people. 7: God has had to forsake the “beloved of my soul.”  8: They have become like a lion in the forest, roaring against him and wanting to devour him. Therefore, “I hate her.” We should learn to never say, “No matter what we do, God still loves us.” God desires for us to be saved, but when we turn against him, we are his enemy. This isn’t just us living sinfully—“a victimless crime.” We are destroying the kingdom of God, God’s eternal purpose. We have joined the enemy. Can you imagine hating one of your children that way? Yes! Especially when we love God and God’s kingdom more than anything or anyone else in this world. 12-13 “The sword of the Lord devours.” Destruction is decreed, “but no man lays it to heart” (vs. 11).  Conclusion: There are two choices before us, and only two. When God gave his own Son on the cross, he offered us freedom from our bondage to Satan. That freedom is dependent on us entering into his covenant. The covenant is simple to understand: Hear my voice…Obey my words. If you refuse follow the covenant, you are still in bondage and will die in your sins. The other choice is to stand with Jeremiah. As Jesus said, “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 16:25 As God said in Deuteronomy 30:15, 19, “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil…I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life.”  Berry Kercheville The post Jeremiah 11-12 Broken Covenant, Broken Prophet appeared first on Woodland Hills Church of Christ.

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Topical Sermons / Speaker:Berry Kercheville Resurrection! Introduction: If you consider yourself a “believer,” the very foundation of the being a disciple of Christ is the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth after three days in the tomb. As Paul argued in 1 Corinthians 15, if there is no resurrection from the dead, then… Christ has not been raised If Christ has not been raised, then all of scripture is a lie. If Christ is not raised, then our teaching and our faith is worthless and we are still in our sins eternally lost. If Christ has not been raised, we are of all people most to be pitied. Of course, if Christ was raised and reigns as King, then…Instead of the believer being “most to be pitied,” the most to be pitied are those who refuse to believe and take advantage of the resurrection by obeying Jesus. However, the resurrection of Jesus poses a greater issue than just the fact that Jesus raised from the dead. We make a huge mistake if we simply celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus every first day of the week. Jesus and the apostles taught that the resurrection carries with it power that believers are to use in their daily lives.  Paul wrote that we are to comprehend “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:19-20).  God’s Repeated Foreshadowing and Symbology By looking too narrowly at the evidence, here is what I mean. We must not simply examine the evidence for the resurrection of Christ, though that evidence should be examined carefully. There is evidence for the power of God in resurrection throughout scripture. Ephesians 2:4-5 “But  God, being  rich in mercy,  because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses,  made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Every person who is a disciple of Christ should be acutely aware that Jesus’ resurrection was intended to bring about both a present and future resurrection. We should be able to see our present resurrection simply by comparing our lives prior to Christ to our present lives.  Therefore it is critical to be reminded that God’s resurrection power has been evident long before Christ and long before our transformation. God has always been giving life to the dead.  Genesis 2:7 “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Until God breathed into Adam the breath of life, Adam was nothing but dead molecules formed out of dirt. We live physically because of the power of God’s Spirit breathing life into us. After the sin of the Garden and the pronouncement of the curse of death, God repeatedly illustrated his power and desire to raise us back to life.  Genesis 5 In the midst of 10 generations of, “and he died,” Enoch “walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.”  When God chose Abraham and Sarah through whom the world would be blessed, God intentionally waited until both of them could not have a child before giving life to their dead bodies. Romans 4:17-19 “as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the deadness of Sarah’s womb.”  We need to consider the great impact this has on us. If Abraham and Sarah do not have offspring, there is no Israel and there is no Christ and there is no us with hope and the world remain dead. Notice! God purposely did not leave our salvation in the hands of natural reproduction. The salvation of mankind is only in the hands of God and his power to give life to the dead.  To confirm, consider Romans 9:6-8: “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.”   The implications of this are profound. It is the children of the promise that are counted as offspring. In other words, we are brought to life just as Isaac, not because of “works” or by anything we could have done, but by the power of the Spirit of God implanted in us through the resurrection of Christ.  Therefore, God has tied together the two greatest miracles/signs in the life of Jesus: the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus. Even the entrance of Jesus into this world would not be by natural procreation, but by the power of the Spirit of God overshadowing Mary. Now we can see the importance of salvation only coming through our lifelong “obedience of faith” in Jesus Christ (Romans 16:26), and no other way!  As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born from again.”  John 3:13 “…children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of he flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Disciples Are Living Proof of the Resurrection Story  If disciples’ lives do not demonstrate and reflect the resurrection, they are not disciples!  John 20:19 “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” This scene represents the condition and faith of the apostles prior to Jesus’ appearance to them following his resurrection. The contrast is this scene as Peter and John all the Jewish leaders who condemned Jesus to death: Acts 4:10-13 “let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished.” What caused the change? Nothing but the bodily resurrection of Jesus.  But that was not the only change: Acts 8:3-4 “But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.” Note the affect that the resurrection had on disciples who were under the threat of imprisonment and death. No fear! Certainly they did not stay and get unlawfully arrested. But neither were they silent. Therefore, Jesus’ foundational principle for our future resurrection is our willingness to give up our lives. Matthew 16:24-25 “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’”  Romans 6:3-8 “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”  2 Corinthians 5:14-17 “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”  Conclusion:  The above texts give us a clear picture of whether we have hope of a resurrection to life with the Lord.  First, we must be united with him in a death like his as we are buried with him in baptism into death. This is the beginning of our covenant relationship with him. Second, since we have died with him, we no longer live for ourselves but for him who died and was raised.  Finally, please beware that our future resurrection can be either good news or bad news. John 5:28-29 “Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”  Berry Kercheville The post Resurrection! appeared first on Woodland Hills Church of Christ.

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