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  This passage contains the famous “Sermon on the Mount” spoken by Jesus.   But we have to go back to Matthew 4:23-25 to see who the crowd is to whom Jesus preached.   They are the “multitudes” who had heard about the “healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.”   They all either need a miracle of healing themselves or know someone who does for whom nothing else has worked.   They may even have carried someone with them hoping for healing from Jesus, as was often the case when people couldn’t get to Him by their own power. To this multitude with their various conditions and needs, Jesus spoke words of encouragement as He sat on the mountainside.   They had other conditions than those for which they came to seek relief.   It was those conditions that Jesus addressed as “He opened His mouth and taught them…” His speech is not just about what they should do or try to be.   That is often the focus presented to us by those who attempt to explain the passage.

  This amazing opening to the New Testament contains so many important things!   We are familiar with most of them.   But if there is a part of this beginning to the gospel we pay the least amount of attention to, it is surely the very first part of it, the geneaologies.   Closer examination of these and those in Mark’s gospel show that Matthew was establishing the legal ancestry of Jesus and Mark his bloodline.   That is consistent with what is Matthew’s evident method of presenting Jesus to the Jewish nation as the legal fulfillment of the promised Messiah. But do these ancestral lists hold much interest for us non Jews, apart from appreciating their original intent which importance should not be overlooked or minimized?   Jesus had no blood connection to His father Joseph, yet this is how the New Testament begins. Many of us have family to which we have no blood connection but who are as important to us as Joseph was to Jesus.   We don’t have any need to establish pedigree, bu

                  “Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the Lord Almighty.” — Malachi 1:8                 God is our greatest authority. We would not give our earthly authorities our scraps. Yet so ­often we offer God the leftover portions of our time, money, energy, thought, and emotion. He gets the scraps and rejects—just as the Israelites were offering the worst of their animals in sacrifice. It must have been a burden to care for a blind or lame animal. The temptation to sacrifice such an animal would be very real. Wouldn’t a blind or lame animal suit God’s purposes just as well as any other animal?                 We face a similar temptation. We pray with the five extra minutes we might have and are not sure what else we can do with that time. We help with a service project on a Saturday that is “free” on our calendar. We are happy to give if we have some disposable i­ncome. We read that deep religious book if we are

  DISCUSSION                                                                                                                   Again, we find ourselves among the prophesies of Zechariah to God’s people. Chapters 1-8 record visions prophesying the eventual internment of God’s people to the Babylonians.   In chapters 9-14 Zechariah gives us a glimpse of the kingdom that will never be destroyed as Daniel prophesied about in Daniel chapter 2. The messianic kingdom will be led by a king riding on a donkey (9.9), and his people will reject him. Zechariah also tells us in chapter 11 that Jesus will be a rejected shepherd (Luke 17.25, John 10.11). That shepherd will not always be rejected though and through his authority a New Jerusalem (the church, heaven) will be established.   The New Jerusalem will have a river of life as it represents the Garden of Eden and that river will be healing to all creation. Through mercy and grace, Christ gives us that healing in his blood and that’s the ke

  DISCUSSION                                                                                          Reading Zechariah is a wild ride. Like life it is not always linear. The flow of thought is hard to follow, but the theme remains the same throughout.   Life doesn’t fit into neat orderly patterns. Zechariah asks us to look above the chaos and hope for the coming kingdom, which will motivate faithfulness in the present. Zechariah is divided into two main parts, chapters 1-8 and then 9-14.   In the first eight chapters Zechariah has a series of dream visions and then we find their interpretations in chapters 7-8. These dreams, like some we have, are strange and vary from patrolmen, horns, blacksmiths, and even a woman in a basket being carried by a stork! While these are often hard to understand, they all drive home the point that God’s people have strayed from him. He describes their captivity in Babylon as a woman trapped in a basket being flown east to captivity. The Hebrew writ

                  “Thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD’”.                                                                                                                                                                 - Haggai 1:2-11                 Sheshbazzar, “the prince of Judah,” was the first governor Cyrus appointed over Judah when he allowed the Jewish exiles to go home in 538 BC (Ezra 1:8–11). We know nothing about him other than that he was of the tribe of Judah. On the other hand, Scripture tells us more about Zerubbabel, who succeeded Sheshbazzar as Judah’s governor. The grandson of Jeconiah—Jehoiachin—the last legitimately appointed king of pre-exilic Judah (1 Chron. 3:17–19; 2 Chron. 36:9–10), Zerubbabel was among the first Jews who returned with Sheshbazzar (Ezra 2). Since Zerubbabel was David’s descendant, he became a focus

              "The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing."                                                                                                                     Zephaniah 3:17 NKJV There is a beautiful verse in the Old Testament book of Zephaniah that talks about God singing over his people; and it is the only place in the Bible where this thought is expressed in this unique way.   Prior to that, God had the prophet Zephaniah deliver a message about God’s judgment on his people because of their idolatry.   But then, the prophet looks ahead to the restoration of the remnant of Israel; and he comforts God’s people by telling them how much God loves them. Before the Lord tells them, through Zephaniah, that he will rejoice over them with singing, he says, “I am your God; I am with you and I will quiet you with my love”!   Sometimes v

                  “ I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart and watch to see what He will say to me, and what I will answer when I am corrected”.                                                                                                                                                       —  Habakkuk 2:1   NKJV             God says: Never ignore your struggle with how I do things. Ask every question that rises in your heart as you live in this world. But prepare yourself to struggle even more with My response. You must stumble in confusion before you dance with joy. Know this: those who live by faith will struggle in ways that those who live to make their lives work will never know. It is that struggle, to believe despite desperate pain and confusion that a good plan is unfolding, that will open your eyes to see Me more clearly. Is that what you want? Will you pay the price?             The price is this: you will tremble in agony as you live in a sinful,

                  “ Now I will break their yoke from your neck and tear your shackles away.”                                                                                                                         - Nahum 1:13 God wants to break and destroy those things which afflicted his people and are a bondage to them. There is a similar prophecy in Isaiah, “In that day their burden will be lifted from your shoulders, their yoke from your neck; the yoke will be broken because you have grown so fat” (Isaiah 10:27). God longs to see his people free. Free from those things which are burdens and weigh them down. For the Israelites, it meant warfare, fighting against a physical enemy to achieve freedom from oppression so they could live in peace. For us, it might be painful memories, regrets from the past or fears for the future. Yet generally God’s methods are not what we anticipated.                 Farmers would yoke the oxen before they were fully grown. The yoke would brea

                  Micah isn't exactly a household word. Too bad. Though obscure, the ancient prophet had his stuff together. Eclipsed by the much more famous Isaiah, who ministered among the elite, Micah took God's message to the streets. Micah had a deep suspicion of phony religion. He saw greed in the hearts of the leaders of the kingdom of Judah, which prompted him to warn the common folk not to be deceived by religious pretense among nobility. In true prophetic style, Micah comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. He condemned sin. He exposed performance-based piety. He championed the cause of the oppressed. He predicted the fall of the nation. And he did it all at the risk of his own life. But Micah didn't just denounce and attack, leaving everyone aware of the things he despised but none of the things he believed. Like rays of brilliant sunlight piercing charcoal-colored clouds after a storm, the prophet saved his best words for a positive message to

                  Obadiah’s name, meaning “worshipper of Yahweh,” offers an interesting counterpoint to the message of judgment he pronounced on Edom, Judah’s neighbor to the southeast. As a worshipper of Yahweh, Obadiah placed himself in a position of humility before the Lord; he embraced his lowly place before the almighty God.             That God sent a man named “worshipper of Yahweh” to the people of Edom was no mistake. Edom had been found guilty of pride before the Lord (Obadiah 1:3). They had thought themselves greater than they actually were; great enough to mock, steal from, and even harm God’s chosen people. But the “Lord GOD,” a name Obadiah used to stress God’s sovereign power over the nations, will not stand idly by and let His people suffer forever (1:1). Through Obadiah, God reminded Edom of their poor treatment of His people (1:12–14) and promised redemption, not to the Edomites but to the people of Judah (1:17–18). The nation of Edom, which eventually disappeared

  The story is told of a very generous farmer.  Approached by his friends one day, they asked him, “We don’t understand you.  You give more than the rest of us, but you always seem to prosper more than us.  How is that?”  The farmer replied, “I keep shoveling into God’s bin, and God keeps shoveling more and more into mine, and God has the bigger shovel.” James Reston was a syndicated columnist for the New York Times for more than thirty years. In his final column for the newspaper, he wrote: “In America, we have learned something about how to deal with adversity since the great Depression, but not much about how to deal with prosperity. We are very rich, but we are not having a very good time. We are producing so much food that we don’t know what to do with the garbage, while half of the human race goes to bed hungry every night. Humans have a great difficulty of learning to live when prosperous.  It doesn’t always bring out the best in us.  The book of Amos is interesting in tha

                  Out of all the prophets, we probably know the least about Joel.   We also have trouble indicating the time frame in which it was written, because unlike the other book of prophecy, Joel gives no information of his time frame.   There is no mention of being with other prophets and there is also no mention of any kings that would have ruled.   A possible explanation might be due to a period in Judah’s history when they had no king, but a queen.   Athaliah was the only ruling queen of the nation of Judah and upon her death she was succeeded by her eight-year-old son Joash.   Since Joash was so young, the priest Jehodia ruled in his place until he came of age.   It could be that this is the time frame in which Joel lived and preached, since it was more of a caretaking period instead of an actual rule.                 One of the main thoughts of his writing is centered around the day of the Lord.   Using a recent tragedy of the day, a well-known locust plague, Joel cap

                     Ever heard an angry toddler yell that? He’s determined to accomplish something on his own and refuses your help. As parents, we chuckle and watch those fierce little ones in amusement, knowing we could help if only they would let us. In some ways, we’re all like toddlers. We insist we know better than God. We don’t need His help, His guidance, His input. The Israelites were guilty of this, too. Despite all that God had done for them, they relied on themselves and on idols.  Hosea 13:6  says, “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.” Just like the toddler who refuses to ask for help, often we only turn to God when we’ve exhausted all our own efforts. Our pride keeps us from remembering that He is there and He knows what is best for us. If we, as earthly parents, are eager to help our children, how much more eager is God to help us? He watches as we attempt to do life on our own and struggle th

                  How important is the daily study of God’s Word to my life? What benefit is there of having a thorough understanding of God’s laws? How does a lack of knowledge of God’s Word affect me? These are questions that we can get answered as we look at the ministry of the prophet Hosea to God’s people. Hosea prophesied to the northern kingdom of Israel during a time of economic prosperity for God’s people, but a time of spiritual decay and corruption. In fact, things in the northern kingdom of Israel were so bad that God warns the southern kingdom of Judah not to have anything to do with their northern brethren: “Though you, Israel, play the harlot, let not Judah offend…” (Hosea 4:15). Furthermore, God adds , “Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone” (Hosea 4:17). How had the people of God turned into such a degenerate people in rebellion against God?                 During His ministry Jesus had warned, “ Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave

                  How much does God love me? To what degree is God still willing to demonstrate His love to me despite my many failings? Through the prophet Hosea, we learn of God’s great love for His people. The prophet Hosea ministered to the northern kingdom of Israel during the days of the reign of Jereboam the son of Joash. From an economic standpoint the nation was enjoying a time of prosperity and growth (cf. 2 Kings 14:23-29); however, from a spiritual standpoint moral corruption and spiritual adultery permeated throughout God’s people.                 To illustrate Israel’s unfaithfulness to God and to show God’s unfailing love for His people, God gives Hosea a unique instruction: “"Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord” (Hosea 1:2). Hosea’s relationship with his wife Gomer (Hosea 1:3), who formerly had been a harlot and who would be unfaithful to him as evidenced by her b