Laodicea

Hello, and welcome to the Westside churches special Monday Morning Coffee podcast on this podcast, our preacher Mark Roberts will help you get your week started right. With look back at yesterday's sermon so that we can think through it further and better work the applications into our daily lives. Mark will then look forward into this week's Bible reading so that we can know what to expect and watch for. And, he may have some extra bonus thoughts from time to time. So grab a cup of coffee as we start the week together on Monday Morning Coffee with Mark.

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday morning coffee podcast for Monday, may the 30th today is Memorial day. And I don't guess I really want to start with happy Memorial day because, well, it's not really a happy holiday. Is it? Memorial day is the day given to celebrate and honor those who gave their lives in the cause of freedom in the United States, military forces. We appreciate and think so much of those who have paid the ultimate price that we might be free and have freedoms. Sometimes there'll be a little confusion. You see veterans day that's in November veterans day stuff will get crossed over on Memorial day and Memorial day stuff will get crossed over onto veterans day. But, uh, veterans day is the day to celebrate all who have served in our serving in our armed forces. Today. Memorial day is about those who gave their lives, serving you and me serving our country, that we might have freedom. That's a sober beginning to our Monday morning coffee podcast. But as people who celebrate every first day of the week, the one who made the ultimate sacrifice that we might be free from sin Memorial day is a day that, yeah, that's a day that's worth us stopping and thinking a little bit about, particularly as we consider those around the world who are persecuted for their faith, because they don't have the freedoms that we enjoy. It just seems a fitting beginning for us on this Memorial day, to be thankful for those who have paid the Supreme price that we might have freedoms, and we might enjoy our faith and our ability to speak about our faith. So freely. So that's our beginning today. We'll talk about the sermon yesterday, got that road trip thing working again, and then we're gonna dive in gonna dive into second Corinthians in our daily Bible reading let's get started. If that was a sobering, beginning to the podcast, probably not going to change the tone and tenor of things as we consider the sermon. I preached yesterday as part of the preaching theme for 2022, we went and visited the church. INEA revelation. Chapter three in verse 14, says to the angel of the church in Odyssey are right. The words of the amen, the faithful and true witness. The beginning of God's creation. I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. That is not a very pleasant bit of revelation written to that layout Odyssey in church. And yesterday we talked about theey in church and what was going on there and what was right there. Not really very much and what was wrong there. It seems like that dominates the ideas that Jesus has for that congregation. This is a very wealthy city, and I really wanted to emphasize that yesterday. And it is a church that in fact, probably thought very well of itself and needed to make a better assessment of where they were. So the main points were, it is possible for a church's self assessment to be way, way off. And then secondly, that church may have problems with its own assessment. If it's still doing a little, if it's completely dad completely, uh, nonfunctional, then the church may say, Hey, we're not really what we ought to be, but as long as you're kind of keeping house for the Lord and having services on Sunday, it's very easy for a congregation to say we are all that. We are really amazing. Aren't we something, I know the Lord's glad we're on his team, but maybe this is the most important part of the lesson yesterday. My third observation was that Jesus offers grace even to a congregation like Leia. Jesus says very clearly that he still loves this church revelation three and verse 19. Jesus says those whom I love I chasing and discipline. So Jesus loves these brethren and he loves this church and he wants them to do better and to think more carefully about their walk with him and what they need to be doing as a church of Christ. I hope that's where the emphasis was yesterday. It's difficult to preach about these churches, the seven churches of Asia, because they have some significant and serious problems. And that should always cause us to examine ourselves at west side and see what would the Lord say if he was writing to us, that can be a somber and sobering thing and it ought to be, but I don't want to send everybody home on a down note and I don't want everyone to just be down and depressed. So I hope this idea about the Lord cares and the Lord loves us. And the Lord wants to accept us will be kind of a balancing note. There array of sunshine in what is a pretty gloomy forecast for the layout Odyssey in congregation. If I could say one other thing, I think what I would want to add to that sermon is this. God doesn't have to accept every church somehow that has just become the de facto standard, the default setting for everybody. If you're doing church sorts of stuff, then God must just be ridiculously happy because you are doing churchy kinds of things. And the seven churches of Asia clearly disabuse us of that notion. We see much better. That church needs to be following the directions of its head or the head will send word there. The seven churches of age, getting that word, Hey, straighten it up, stop doing this. Or I will remove your lampstand or in the case of lay ossea, I will vomit you out. And obviously Jesus is not sending a direct message in, in the circumstance situation that those seven churches in Asia received, but through his word, he continues to communicate with the church to communicate with congregations. We need to read that word. We need to follow that word and we need to abide in that word so that we can please the head of the church. That's what being a church of Christ is really all about. And I hope that that will stick with you. And you'll continue to think about that. That's what Westside most certainly wants to be and must be. So there's some notes from yesterday's sermon. Hmm. I am holding a really good cup of coffee. That's a pour over that I did a little bit ago, and that is just amazing. And with that coffee in hand, and my Bible opened to second Corinthians, I'm ready to talk with you about this week's daily Bible reading. Let's do that. So it's Monday and we're reading in second Corinthians chapter 10. This is going to be really good stuff. This week. We will read second Corinthians chapter 10 in chapter 11 in their entirety this week. Nice clean edges, nice start and stops. None of this jumping into the middle of a chapter business. And I particularly like this because we've arrived at the place in Corinthians where if earlier, Paul kind of wanders in tangents on his tangents, we are at the place where Paul is much more definitive. There's two big ideas that he wants to take care of with the Corinthian congregation. Once he's cleared up and established his status with them, are you even accepting me as an apostle that dominates the first seven chapters of second Corinthians. As you know, then he talks about this contribution for the saints in Jerusalem, chapters eight in chapter nine, which we read last week. Now the rest of the book chapters, 10, 11, 12, and 13. This is all Paul defending his apostleship and attacking those who are false apostles. And some of this gets a little bit crazy. We're gonna see that in chapter 11, Paul ends up doing some things he doesn't really want to do as he tries to answer their false doctrine and their attacks upon him. But all of it fits under the umbrella of Paul, making certain that they understand he is a true apostle and that they repudiate those who are false apostles. So that really helps when we have a target. And we know what Paul is shooting at to make sense of each day's reading. Let's talk then about Monday's reading second Corinthians chapter 10 versus one to nine. I Paul verse one treats you by the ness and generalist of Christ. I beg of you verse two when I am present. So there's a change of tone here. There's a change of tone in our reading. Maybe Paul received some news, maybe part of the news that Titus brought. We talked about that in chapter seven is that there are these fake apostles that he will call them super apostles there that distresses him. He's glad to hear the good news that they are receiving him as an apostle, but he's unhappy to hear that there are those who are attacking him. Maybe Paul paused in his dictation and he started another day. Sometimes we get up on the wrong side of the bed, and we're a little grumpy about things as Paul maybe has prayed about this and thought about it through the night, he just starts. There's just a little bit more of an attack dog. Feel to what we're reading here in second Corinthians 10 than in what we have read earlier. And the charge does seem to be that Paul is so brave when he writes us, but he's not so brave in person. And we're familiar with that. Everybody has been in some kind of internet forum or online, uh, social media kind of thing. And there's somebody there who's a keyboard warrior and they're banging away saying all kinds of things, maybe saying ugly and mean things. And you know, and I know that if they were in person and looking you in the eye or looking whoever they're criticizing in the eye, they would never say that to their face. And so that charge is being leveled here at Paul. That that's how he acts. And as he works through that, there is a big distinction in our text today in the you versus the sum, Paul is appealing to some of the Corinthians. You people know this, you people know what's really going on. You know who I am, but there are some who are attacking me. So maybe underline that I have some of those used and somes underlined in my Bible, and that will help you to watch all of that. He is pleading in verse one and two. He talks about walking, according to the flash, that would be externals and, and showy being glitzy and glamorous. It seems like these false teachers really have an external appearance that attracts people and causes them to say, oh, oh, he he's really something. Look at, look at how he dresses. Look at what a great speaker he is. Maybe they use some of those Caral weapons that Paul mentions in verse four weapons of the flesh that would be gossip, slander, lying. Those kinds of things are the tools that a false teacher can employ to generate an audience and to get people to draw to him. In fact, in verse seven, if you'll pay attention there, look at what he is before your eyes. The idea there can be, look, look at what you see, or even are you looking? And the idea there is, are you looking at things on the surface? Is, is that how you Corinthians judge things? Remember when I talked about reading second Corinthians and we're working through all of that, and then that was in the 9:00 AM hour, couple of weeks back, you can see that on our website. As I talked about that, I talked about how their entire concept of ministry was off. They are attracted to, they are mesmerized by, they are captured by these who look so impressive, but they are not of the truth. And, and honestly, that's the kind of thing that worries me even today. Sometimes guys that are very slick, they tell a lot of funny stories. They are very glamorous in their appearance. They are very well spoken and entertaining, get a big audience. And a lot of people talk about them and say, oh, I, I love brother. So-and-so, he's an amazing preacher. Is he? Or is he an amazing speaker and entertaining speaker, an entertainer? There is a difference. And I think Paul here is a pretty good illustration verse 10 last verse that we read today, I, I guess I'm actually borrowing from tomorrows. As I look at the schedule. Now they say his Le letters are awaiting and strong, but his bodily presence is weak. And his speeches of no account. Maybe if we ask Paul to the youth lectures, people would say, what was that guy doing here? He's not, not a very good speaker. Um, I read his book. He writes really well, but, but he really can't speak that. Well, we have to be careful about that. We have to be careful that just because somebody isn't as eloquent as Apollos, um, brilliant in their, uh Allion and their ability to hold the audience in the Palm of their hand. That doesn't mean they don't have something to say, and that we shouldn't listen to them. Particularly if they have substance in what they are doing. Sometimes though we want the guy who can tickle our ears and who can hold our attention. One scholar said that Paul couldn't keep uterus awake. And that makes me think maybe he wasn't the most dynamic speaker, but of course he certainly had something to say that was worth listening to give that some thought, as you read down through the nine verses that we are reading for today in our reading from second Corinthians, chapter 10, and I will see you tomorrow as we continue in chapter 10, welcome to Tuesday. I am going to guess that because of the Memorial day holiday and the three day weekend, maybe some of you are climbing into the podcast. Now you're a day behind in your daily vibrating. You're just getting caught up and you know what? That's all, that's fine. That's fine. We're reading such short bits. We just read nine verses yesterday. It's not like you are a thousand chapters behind and can't even catch up. Jump in at the top top of chapter 10, the top of chapter 10, that was easy for you to say, jump in at the top of chapter 10 and read on down and just keep plowing. Just keep going. When you get to verse 10, because Tuesday's reading is verses 10 to 18, and the focus here is still what we were talking about yesterday. Paul is concerned about these false apostles, verse 12, they write their own testimonial. These guys set up their conduct as the standard, and then they measure up to that standard. Of course, if the Corinthians are gonna judge Paul on that kind of basis, that's just foolishness. And in fact, in verse 15, it even seems that some of these false apostles are claiming Paul's work for themselves as if they are the ones that established the church at Corinth. That of course is not the case, but please notice verse 16. Paul says there so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you. There it is. There it is. There's that shift where Paul says, Corinth, I need you to stand on your own two feet. You've got to stop with this vacillating between me and false teachers and having all of these problems because I'm leaving the area. This is what Paul references in Romans 15, about verse 22, where he starts talking about I'm coming to you in Rome on my way to Spain, Paul doesn't really like working with established congregations. He's the church planner. I'm going to Spain. I'm going where the gospel never has been to start new congregations out there. So I need Corinth to get it together. Paul says, because I'm not going to be here much longer, and he's not talking about going on to be with the Lord that is later in his life. That's not where we are in Paul's life. Right now. Paul has big plans to go to Spain and preach the gospel there. Just read through chapter 10, continue to see Paul as he battles against those who are trying to characterize him as weak and not an apostle in saying we don't have to listen to him or do what he says. Feel some of the desperation in Paul's writing here. Can you see some of the anxiety that, uh, what he says in chapter 10, betrays, Paul is desperately concerned about this Corinthian church. He cares about them. He's gotten some good news about them, but Ugh, they're not out of the woods yet. And so Paul is writing very strong words here in chapter 10 to say, you need to reject these fakers and you need to accept me. Second Corinthians, chapter 10. That's our reading for Monday and Tuesday. I'll see you tomorrow. Have something special to tell you about Wednesday. As we get ready and move into the summer, see you tomorrow. It is Wednesday and it is June the first can you believe it? It is June. What happened to spring? All of a sudden we are in summer, but if it is the first Wednesday after Memorial day, that means we are starting at west side, our annual Wednesday night summer series. What a delight to be back doing that. Haven't been able to do that with the pandemic and all the things that go with that. But this year we are back with our Wednesday night summer series. This year, the theme is the dirty dozen Satan's favorite tools for destroying your faith. And the lineup is powerful and extremely significant. We're dealing with the kind of temptations that the devil uses to destroy us and to keep us from being the disciples that we want to be. And I had said I had something special for you and I do. Here's the little clip from our first speaker. Speaking for us tonight is drew Nelson drew. Tell us, tell us a little about yourself and tell us about your sermon tonight.

Hi, my name is drew Nelson, and I'll be with you tonight, preaching on hysteria. Um, it seems to me, Satan has honed his ability to make us hysterical, uh, to convince us that the sky is falling for this or that reason to make us think God is not in control, that the world is about to end. Not because God said so, but because of some, some lesser thing, he makes us so focused on the urgent news of the moment that we forget about unchanging truths about God. So tonight I wanna talk about Psalm four, which is a call of David to, uh, biblical sobriety insanity. And I hope you'll be with us.

Thank you very much drew. I know I'm looking forward to hearing that lesson and I'm sure that you are as well. Let's think about daily Bible reading then for just a quick minute, second Corinthians chapter 11 versus one to nine is where we are today. Not a long reading, not a difficult reading, but this is where things kind of start going off the rails a little bit because Paul repeatedly will say here, I don't wanna be doing this. And then, oh yes. Oh yes. He's going to end up listing his accomplishments and running out his resume. That makes him super uncomfortable. But Paul who knows praising yourself, that is just not the kind of thing that tastes right. Feels right for him to be doing. But somehow he, he knows he has to answer his critics in some sort of way. He is not going to lose the church and Corinth to these fake apostles. So he begins to talk about that. Divine jealousy, verse two, jealousy's not always a bad thing and how that is pushing him to do some things that he does not want to do. Verse five. I am not in the least inferior to these verse five imminent apostles. Some translations have, but super apostles is what the ESV has. And I think that's a great translation right there. These men are holding themselves out as if they are something even better than Paul. They are disparaging Paul. They are undercutting Paul and Paul is trying to respond to that beginning in verse seven, we see part of their tactics and the background to this is what we read in first Corinthians nine. This is a great place to see how, when you read all of this in sequence in chronological order, it really helps your understanding. We read first Corinthians before we read second Corinthians. And in first Corinthians nine, if you remember just flip back in your Bible, you probably have some notes there in the margin. Paul talks about how he has a right to receive wages, to be paid by the congregations that he is preaching for and the places that he goes to to preach the gospel against that background. Now we're hearing in second Corinthians chapter 11, some people are saying, oh, you know that Paul, he didn't take wages. Oh, that shows that he's not a real preacher. Oh, sure. The apostles, if he was a real apostle, he would've expected us to pay him. And of course the philosophers of the day they did charge their students. That was, that was the norm. So if Paul isn't charging, he must not be a real preacher. He must not be a genuine apostle, but in first Corinthians nine, that material that we read, Paul talked about how he did not charge them for the gospel, because he did not want that to become a stumbling block. He didn't want that to be a hindrance to their receiving the gospel. He did not want people saying, oh, that Paul he's just in it for the money. And in first Corinthians chapter nine, as we were working through that material, we talked about how the philosophers of the day, some of them were fakers and they would come to town and they would draw group to themselves and they would fleece them for all the money they could get. And then they would move on to the next town. And Paul was aware of that. And so he says, Hey, I didn't take any money because I didn't want you to think I'm that kind of person. Well, and remember one of our elders, brother T Smith, wonderful, wonderful, godly, man. He always had such wise things to say. And one of the things that he would always say, tongue in cheek is no good deed goes unpunished. And what he meant by that is sometimes when we try to do the right thing and, and, uh, we have good intentions. Those, those intentions will be misunderstood. And that is what has happened to Paul here. Exactly. No good deed goes unpunished. I didn't take money from you because I didn't want you to think I'm one of those philosophers. Who's just in it for the money. Well now somebody or somebody's in cor in Corinth are saying, you know what? He didn't take money from us. He must not be a real preacher. Oh, Paul must just be beside himself here. And in fact, in verse nine, he makes mention there that some brethren from Macedonia supplied his needs. And so he is saying, I certainly am worthy of wages. That may be a reference there to Philippians four and verse 15, that may be Philippi that's sent to him when he was in Quran. So he is beginning to ramp up his response to these super apostles. And we're gonna get a little bit more of that tomorrow. I have a note in my Bible here. Maybe you would want to put a note in your Bible besides verse nine. He says when I was with you, that's in the fall of ad 50 to the spring of ad 52, somewhere around 80, 50 to 80 52. I like little notes like that. Try to kind of keep me centered on the timeline. So I know where I am in the new Testament timeline, verse nine references when Paul was with Corinth and establishing that church, we read about that in acts that's 50 to 52. That's just a good thing to have in your Bible. As you're reading along, see tomorrow, we'll talk a little bit more about second Corinthians chapter 11, and then things will really go off the rails on Friday. See tomorrow, welcome to Thursday today. We're reading second Corinthians chapter 11 versus 10 to 20. And here again, Paul is mounting that attack on these false apostles. And this is some Sterns die. First, 13, 14, 15, they are false apostles. They're deceitful workmen. They disguise themselves as apostles of Christ. They are in the employee of Satan verse 14 Satan's workers, verse 15, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. That's pretty stern stuff right there. Paul is clear that energy and activity do not equal faithfulness to Christ. We need to remember that. Sometimes we see people who seem to be doing a lot of good, but if they're teaching a false gospel, particularly I think about the plan of salvation, they are not helping people. We need to remember that. And then Paul resumes to resumes. This idea of boasting begins to talk about verse 16, boasting. He started with that in verse 11. I'm sorry. In verse one of chapter 11 now, verse 16, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to boast a little bit because, because you put up with these guys who, if they would slap you in the face or devour you or any of those kinds of things, 18, 19 20, you, oh, you say these men are amazing. These men are just incredible, but you won't put up with me the one who cares the very most about you. There's some irony here. You just put up with the gross men misconduct of these false teachers, but you will not accept the apostle Paul, a true servant of Jesus. The Christ. Why is that? Sometimes, sometimes a false teacher will appear and he is all smooth tongue and just telling everybody what they wanna hear and just Mr. Soft gospel, and he's watering down the gospel and that'll get you a following, but sometimes false, uh, false teachers will show up and they're abusive and they're harsh. And they're mean, and they put people down. And the result of that is some people of course are pushed away by that kind of attitude. But some people are drawn to that, that kind of militancy, that kind of abrasiveness gets equated somehow to being really strong in the Lord or really sound. And some people will be drawn to that kind of teacher. And I think maybe you're seeing some of that here in second Corinthians, chapter 11, don't be fooled Corinthians. Paul says, and in the same way, he's saying to you and me, we should not be fooled either. And then I've kind of been promising this all week. Things really get exciting and they will tomorrow versus 21 to 33 will be our reading as we close out the chapter on Friday, and this is some kind of reading. Can't wait to do it with you. See tomorrow, we'll finish second Corinthians 11 on Friday, it's Friday. We made it through the week and we're finishing our reading in second Corinthians 11 that begins in verse 21. And finally, Paul has kind of made a number of runs at this. I'm gonna boast. I'm gonna boast. I don't wanna boast, but I'm gonna boast. I will. I, I don't like it, but I have to. Well, here it is to my shame here it comes. Verse 21. Are they Hebrews verse 22? Are they servants of Christ? Verse 23? You wanna talk about some persecution? I got your persecution and beginning in verse 24, Paul list, a long litany of terrible things that have happened to him. Now, much of that is not in acts. If you remember where we are in the reading in acts, we're only through acts chapter 20 verse two. So this can only be things that have happened up to that point in Paul's life. So the ship Rex exam, for example, that Paul references here is not, it's not the shipwreck in acts chapter 27 and 28. That hasn't happened to Paul yet. So if you wanna count total number of shipwrecks, yeah. Guess what, Paul, you think you've been shipwreck. That's gonna happen to you again in number of other terrible sorts of things, but we've had some imprisonments like acts 16 in Philippi. We don't know about the five Jewish whippings. We don't know. As I said about all of these shipwrecks, the beating with rods that would come from the hands of the Romans and we don't have reference to all of that. Probably the perils and journeys would be crossing the mountains between Perga in Phi and Antioch. As Paul goes from Antioch across from Antioch and Palestine across up into what's now modern day Turkey on that first missionary journey, we just don't have Luke doesn't record. All of this for us. The book of acts would be 900 chapters long if he did, because it is clear that many, many times Paul was abused and, uh, and misused and persecuted in terrible, terrible ways. Verse 28, then really sets all of this in its context, the daily pressure on me and of my anxiety for all the churches. I hope you underline that in your Bible. We're spending the year with Paul because we want to get to know Paul. And this verse may be like, like few others that we have read reminds us how much Paul hurt, how, how concerned Paul was for the churches that he had established and for his brethren. And, and it's not the physical sufferings that bother him so much. It's the things that are going on that are wrong in the churches where he has been. And with the brethren that he loves. So very much even rejecting him and rejecting the gospel, get ready for the book of Galatians. We'll get a big dose of that in Galatians. That's what really bothers Paul. And it is impressive. Verse 30, that what Paul boast about are the things that few people would boast of humiliation, suffering, being rejected and being persecuted. That's not much of a resume if you're one of these super apostles, but when you read down through this, you see who is a true apostle. Paul is a true apostle and he suffers and cares like a true apostle would. He concludes all of that in verses 32 and 33. With that reference to the time in acts chapter nine, where he has to escape Damascus in a basket. And that is covered in acts chapter nine, beginning in verse 20. So there are some places here where Luke's story of Paul's life and what Paul tells here in second Corinthians 11 will mesh and match up. But it doesn't always work that way because it's just more than Luke can even tell. Well, there you go. That's our Friday Bible reading and it is an impressive set of chapters that we've read chapters 10 and 11 this week. And it really does help us get next to Paul and to know his heart and to know his care and to know his interest in his brothers and sisters in Christ. Thank you for listening them. If you love the Monday morning coffee podcast, we'd love for you to subscribe, rate, follow, and give a review on iTunes or whatever app you're listening on. Mostly we would like for you to tell somebody else about the show that is the best way to help the podcast and to help others in their daily Bible reading. And as they make use of the material on Sunday, that I preach, help people integrate that into their lives all week long with the Monday morning coffee podcast until next time, then may your coffee be delightful. I hope that your Friday is just wonderful and I'm praying that the Lord will be with you today all day. I will see you on Monday morning with a cup of coffee.

Thanks for listening to the Westside church of Christ podcast. Monday morning coffee with Mark. For more information about west side, you can connect with us through our website, just christians.com and our Facebook page. Our music is from upbeat dot IO that's upbeat with two P'S, U P B E a T, where creators can get free music. Please share our podcast with us. And we look to seeing you again with a cup of coffee, of course, on next Monday,