Monday Morning Coffee with Mark

Why Church?

August 08, 2022 Mark Roberts Season 2 Episode 38
Monday Morning Coffee with Mark
Why Church?
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Welcome to the Westside church’s special Monday Morning Coffee podcast with Mark Roberts. Mark is a disciple, a husband, father and grand dad, as well as a certified coffee geek, fan of CS Lewis’ writings and he loves his big red Jeep. He’s also the preacher for Westside church.

Speaker 1:

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.

Speaker 2:

Mark.

Speaker 3:

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday morning coffee podcast for Monday, August the eighth on mark. I have my Bible open. I've got a great cup of coffee right here. I'm thinking about yesterday sermon and how to integrate that into our lives effectively. And I'm ready to get you ready for ready to get you ready? Can you really do that for daily Bible reading? We wanna start the week, right? With a sharp spiritual focus, particularly coming out of the sermon yesterday in the 10 40 about why church let's talk about it. Let's talk about daily Bible reading. Let's get started. Let's think about that sermon yesterday. Why church just talked about a couple of things that do not account for the creation of the church. The church was not made because we were just too busy and God's just filling up our schedule with more busy work or because the world needed a social club or a superiority society. I think that's an important emphasis right there. Church is about. And I want to remind you, this is the church relationship we're talking about, not the idea of going to church, going to worship the church relationship is about how solo Christians are weak Christians. We need each other to be strong spiritually. And of course a group can do a lot more than an individual can do on their own. We pool our efforts, our resources together, and the group provides accountability. I am responsible to you and your responsible to me, maybe the extra thought that I would add then this morning is if you thought about the church's three works and you thought I was going to say, the reason for the church is to do evangelism ation in benevolence. That is absolutely right. That's important, but I'm not convinced that that is the sole reason for the church's existence. We do those three things together. That's 0.2, the combined resources idea. But when we focus on just those works, maybe we just don't get how important it is that we work together. And that I need to be doing that individually. Somehow church work becomes something that they are doing them over there. Maybe it's a kind of collective kind of thing that they do for the world. And I need to be part of the church. That is the idea I need to be. Part of those works evangelism edification in benevolence. I need to be doing that. I need to participate in the life of the church. And so this is a great time to ask and I'm loving having this podcast here. This is a great time to ask. What's your role in the church today? What, what part are you playing in the church this week? We all came together on Sunday and we did that collective worship thing together. That's amazing. That's wonderful. What, what else have you got? How else are you participating in the church relationship? That's a great question to be asking and a great question to be answering as we push forward into this week. How am I part of the church Monday to Saturday? Think about that, answer that and open your Bible to Romans chapter 11. Let's think about daily Bible reading for the week. This week in our daily Bible reading, we will finish Romans chapter 11 and then begin a new section of Romans Romans chapter 12. And in fact, we'll read into chapter 13 by Friday. So let's finish Romans 11 that's Monday, and Tuesday's reading. Don't forget where we are. We're talking here about the Jews and their relationship to God what's going on, how come most Jews aren't accepting Jesus as the Messiah. And in some ways, is that leading to a feeling of Gentile superiority? I say that kind of stuff. And I emphasize that and I wonder people think I'm just making that up. Well, look at verse 13. Now I'm speaking to you, Gentiles. See Paul is talking to them and then look at verse 18, do not be arrogant toward the branches. So there is some Gentile, arrogance going on here, where they are saying God's all done with the Jews and doesn't care about them anymore and not interested in that. And it's all about us. And let's just all move on from here. And Paul warns them severely that attitude is divisive is going to cause problems in the Roman church. Maybe we need to think about that. I don't, I don't guess we have a lot to do with Jewish folks. Usually most of us do not have opportunity to be in close contact with some Jewish people on a regular kind of basis, particularly in a religious sort of way where, where these people used to be going to synagogue together and are now going to church together. Probably we don't have that sort of relationship with too many Jewish folks in our world, but we still don't want to have an, an arrogant attitude towards Jewish people and act as if somehow there's really not much way for them to get in the kingdom. No, as Gentiles, we, we should be thankful for Jewish folks and particularly what the forefathers did. And that is exactly Paul's point in our Bible reading today. They stumbled verse 11. I think here the so that they would fall. I don't think Paul is saying that they can never be saved, but here they crucified Christ is the fall. And I think that idea there in verse 11 is about how they rejected the Messiah. But that doesn't mean that they have lost all hope. No. As a result of what's happened here, Gentiles are able to come in and that might make Israel that might make Jews jealous so that they will say, Hey, what, what are those Gentiles doing over there? I, I wanna know more about that and that could lead Paul hopes to Jews actually coming into the kingdom. And then as I said, he does address directly the issue of Gentiles and their thinking in verse 13. And he is pleased to be a minister to Gentiles verse 14, but he is still very interested in his nation, in his tribe, in his kinsman, the Jews. And you really can't argue that the Jews have all been cast off verse 15, uh, says that they have been rejected, but no versus one. And two says, God hasn't rejected them. So what's the answer? Well, the answer of course is that God never cast off real Israel, genuine Israelite have always been in. They can't be any other way. That's who they are. They're the people of God. They are chosen by grace and they are always going to be with the Lord. But some of these Jews are not true Israelite. And as a result of that, they have been rejected. And there's a reference then in verse 16 to the dough offered as first fruits go back and read in numbers. 15, when you brought the first fruit of the harvest in that consecrated, the entire harvest unto the Lord, the first fruit here probably would be a reference maybe to the patriarchs. And then Paul shifts out of that into verses 17 to 24, where he discusses an olive tree and he discusses grafting branches in, if you don't know about grafting, you just need to Google that and you'll get all kinds of information about how to do that. And that that can be done. You can actually stick a branch from a pear tree onto an apple tree and make an apple tree grow pears, which is kind of weird and blowing my mind. But the idea here is that Gentiles have no cause to boast or be high minded and that the Jews could still get in if they will turn in faith. And that's precisely what he works down through. There are some branches that have been broken off verse 17, and some wild branches now are in, but those original branches could still get in. Remember the root verse 18 is what supports you. I don't really think that's physical Israel. Gentiles were never into that. I think the idea probably here is the patriarchs and, and once again, verse 18, don't be arrogant. God broke some branches off to make room for me. These Gentiles would say verse 19. Well, that may be so verse 20 that they were broken off, but if God broke off those Jews, God could certainly break off the Gentiles who get arrogant and lose their place. Uh, by the way, just try to get one saved, always save into verse 20 21, 22. You just can't get it. There. It's just no chance at all. And then finally, the good news verse 23 is if Jews will believe, if they'll turn in faith, they can get back in the tree. God is under no obligation to bless branches that don't believe, but certainly, certainly God wants all people to be saved. And that is the power of this olive tree illustration. We've got some wild branches. We've got some natural branches laying on the ground. And Paul is hoping that those natural branches can believe get, I guess, a branch can't believe, but you understand the metaphor that Paul's pushing here. He's hoping that Jews will turn to Jesus Christ in faith and rejoin the tree tomorrow. We complete Romans chapter 11, we'll read verse 25 to 36 and a passage that's become very controversial. We'll deal with that and answer some of the questions that come from that in our reading tomorrow. See you on Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday. As we complete Romans chapter 11, our reading today use verses 25 to 36. And once again you see that cautionary note, right at the top of our reading, unless you be wise in your own site, brothers need to be thinking about your attitude. Gentiles don't want to be arrogant. Don't want to act like somehow we're the special people of God now because the Jews blew it. God doesn't care about them anymore. No, God absolutely cares about all people. Now, how that's gonna work in many ways is, is going to be a mystery. This is something that you're not going to be able to figure out without revelation do you, I, I want you not to be unaware of this mystery. Paul says in verse 25 mystery, that's not Matlock. That's not Sherlock Holmes. That's something that God has to tell us, or we just would never get it all put together. And maybe the idea here, a partial hardening verse 25 has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come. Maybe the idea is that if, if the Jews had turned immediately to Jesus, it would've been easy for them to assume they were entitled to it. Well, of course, I mean, we're the people of God. We've always been the people of God. And so maybe someday we'll let some of you Gentiles in, but of course this is mostly for us and you'll never be equal with us in any sort of way. Well, Hmm. It didn't work that way. Did it? Israel largely rejected Jesus. And then the Gentiles came in fully and completely. In fact, they've come in so completely now they're looking down upon the Israelites. So we need to think about where we are in relationship to things. Paul says to the Gentiles in Romans and by inspiration to you and me as well, Gentiles who may be, can be looking down our noses at unbelieving Jews. Well, those unbelieving Jews have become enemies of the church. And we see that over and over and over again in the book of acts, it's always the Jews who are attacking Paul and causing so much trouble. And that's gonna go on until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. Now, I don't think fullness here is a numerical term God's counting. And when there's a certain number of Gentiles, KA bang, that's it? No, it's not a number. And then Jews can get in. It just means the, until salvation came to the Gentiles and, and then that would lead to some Jews seeing what's going on. And some Jews would then want to come in. I don't think in any sense that God has made some kind of predestined arrangement and only so many Gentiles are that, that just violates so many other ideas in scripture. But without question, the idea that Gentile participation in the kingdom becomes normalized and becomes becomes the standard operating procedure is, is something that Paul hopes will come to an end and that Jews to will enjoy the kingdom. And, and maybe again, it's that idea of jealousy will provoke them to come to the Messiah. And in this waivers 26, all Israel will be saved. Now. Now, what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, there's really two possibilities. Possibility. One is that all Israel is the true Israel of God, the remnant, the believers, those who choose the Lord as God has chosen them in his grace. Now, of course, some people say, and you may run into this, that each and every Jew physical Jew will be saved. All Jews without exception will be converted to the Messiah. And as I have said before, this will come about with some kind of bizarre in time scenario, which provokes or even forces Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah. And there's lots of cutting and pasting out of Ezekiel and Daniel in the book of revelation to get some wild outcome that will result in Jews suddenly becoming Christians. But, but Paul has said from the very beginning of this section, chapter nine begins by saying, Hey, I'm just in tears because Jews are being lost. And in fact that not all Israel is going to be saved. That's how that opens go back and read 9 1, 1 to six. How can Paul say I'm weeping that all Israel isn't going to be saved. If at the end of the section, he actually knows that there's going to be this amazing apocalyptic, something that will occur and cause all Israel to be saved. Paul Paul doesn't seem to think in chapter nine, that all Israel's gonna be saved. He's crying. Why is he crying? If everybody is going to be saved. Now the argument that's made, and I'm really glad to have a podcast where I can develop some of these ideas a little bit further and, and help you have some substance to your faith. And particularly as you dialogue or talk with people who have different ideas, this will help you. The argument that those who are given to the premillennial thinking premillennial is, is the idea that the kingdom of, of Christ is yet to come. Jesus is gonna return, set up a physical kingdom and then reign for a millennia reign for a thousand years from a physical throne in Jerusalem. And as part of that, that will result in the Jews being converted. And what the argument that's gonna be made about that will say is that God made unconditional promises to every fleshly, Israeli, to every Jew. And if you get into that discussion, and in fact, I hope that you do a couple of things ought to be said first, where and when did God ever make unconditional promises to Israel? There's none of that anywhere go read Deuteronomy 28 to 32. The promises that were made to the Israelites are heavily conditioned upon their obedience. And in fact, that whole section is blessings and curses. Here's what's gonna happen if you do what's right. And here's what's gonna happen if you do what's wrong, you'll be rejected. Then secondly, maybe we should ask if these unconditional promises are made to the Israelites. What, what, what about all the Israelites who died before this big conversion, tribulation apocalyptic revelation? So the in time thing happened, what about all of them? They didn't get converted. How does that supposed to work out? And maybe most importantly, to the context of what we're reading here today, how does it help Paul's situation in which present day Jews are being left out to speak of a future day, 2000 years in the future, when a bunch are going to get included, wouldn't the readers of this epistle say, well, you know, jolly well for them, but how does that help anybody? That's right here in the church in Rome right now don't use verse 26 to try to say there's some kind of massive future conversion to come that violates so many other passages. And particularly it violates what Paul has said about everybody needing to call upon the name of the Lord. We read that in chapter 10 last week on Thursday, we were reading that there's one way to be saved. All can be saved that way. That was the emphasis there in chapter 10 and verse 11, everyone who believes in him, there's no distinction between Jew and Greek. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, 10 13 for Paul now to say, there's gonna be this special, extra way for Jews to be saved, who don't call they'll be made to call all. Please. That's a violation of everything that the new Testament teaches about all being equal before the Lord. I think about Peter in X 10 and goes to Cornelius. And he says, he realizes, now that there's God has, is no respect of persons and that anybody who calls on the name, name of the Lord can in fact be saved. Now Peter's work in that in the direction of Gentiles. I'm gonna flip that around and work it in the other direction. Jews can be saved too, but they don't get special treatment. Nobody gets special treatment. Well, actually I can't believe I said that we all getting special treatment. We are all getting special treatment. The special treatment of God's grace as seen on the cross of Jesus Christ. That's how you get saved. All of us can be saved in that way. And Paul fervently hopes that someday his Jewish brothers will come to see the error of their ways and they will be saved because God verse 32 is consigned all. Look at the all there to disobedience that he may have mercy on all. God recognizes the universality of sin and God shows everyone what a sin they are so that they will all, all Jew and Gentile come to him and be saved. It is a fitting conclusion to this section nine, 10, and 11. And I think it probably takes some Gentile, Christians down a notch, stop thinking so much of yourself. Stop looking down your nose at your Jewish friends, those Jewish brothers in, in, in Christ, in the church there. And let's get back to square one, which is our need for God to save us from our sands. He's going to do that Jew or Gentile. If we will turn to the Lord tomorrow, a brand new section of Romans. If you're tired of talking about Jew and Gentile relationships, get ready for Romans chapter 12. Let's work on that tomorrow. See you on Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday today. Nathan Hershey will be with us in our dirty dozen series, Nathan Hailes from the Castleberry church over in Fort worth. And he will be talking with us tonight about empty sacrifice. How timely is that? Given that our reading today is in Romans chapter 12 versus one to 10, which begins. I appeal to you, therefore brothers by the MES of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. This is a noted change in tone. There is no question that the book has taken a sharp turn right here. However, the subject matter remains the same church. Unity. Paul has provided the doctrinal reasons for them to get along for 11 chapters. Now he turns his attention to some very directed, very pointed, very plain admonitions, do this, do this, and don't do that. And in fact, if you just look ahead a little bit at what's to come, you'll see that church unity is absolutely still in view. Verse three, don't think too highly of yourself. Verse four, everybody has a place in the body. Verse nine, love one, another verse 16, be at peace. So we're at the part in the book of Romans where I think Paul has brought the Roman church to conviction about these, these matters. And now they're asking, well, what should we do? How do we do this? And Paul says, I'll tell you what you should do and how you should do it and how you can get along. That is what's still in view. As we continue to read in the book of Romans, I'll give you a couple of quick notes. I don't think these first 10 verses are difficult by any stretch of the imagination. Just keep underlining things that have a unity emphasis. Keep looking for things that talk about all in everyone. And that'll, uh, it'll jump off the page for you, but I would say a word or two here be be a living sacrifice. Paul says in verse one, holy unacceptable to God, which is your reasonable service, spiritual worship, different translations have different ideas there because that is a very difficult phrase to translate. It has to do with worship and taken with bodies. The point is that worship is not just done in our mind, but with all of us. And there is an emphasis there on the thinking part of us, the mind part of that, in fact, one translation has the worship, which Accords with mind and hard. And I think Paul here is going for a total response of the entire person. This will not be ritual. It will be real and genuine submission. And then he pushes through with this idea that we're going to prove God's will by doing God's will. We're gonna show that we are the people of God and we're not gonna exalt ourselves. Verse three, we're all functioning together. We're all working together. 3, 4, 5, 6. That has a very first Corinthians 12 sound to it. And some of the things that we read when we were in Corinthians again, being brought forward, look at verse nine. However, this may be the controlling thought. Let love be genuine. Love is the standard for the treatment of others. It is the fulfillment of God's will. For us. It is our chief obligation to God and to each other. Remember the first and greatest commandment. And the second one is Jesus enumerates. Those love the Lord, your God, with all your heart soul in mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. Lots of discussion about love in the book of Romans. And of course that's what the Romans need. They need to love one another. And if as you work down through chapter 12, we get some very good ideas about what loving one. Another really looks like how to do that. We get a series of things here that explains genuine love. There's a family love verse 10, that overlooks all kinds of problems and gets things worked out. Why? Because we are family and we honor each other and we care about each other. Romans 12, one to 10. That's what we're reading today. We'll pick up these thoughts tomorrow on Thursday, Romans 12 versus 11 to 20 ones are reading for Thursday. See you. Then it is Thursday. Let's read our Bible, Romans chapter 12, 11 to 21. We will finish this chapter today. So Paul continues this idea of let love be genuine. Romans 12 verse nine, these admonitions that are going to help the Roman brethren get along. And I think much of this is very self explanatory. You probably don't need a lot of help here. Read your Bible, make application of your Bible, ask yourself what can I do? How can I put this in play in my life? Like showing hospitality verse 13, by the way, that is not in new Testament times, having somebody in your home for a meal first century, Christianity did not function in an environment where you could make a reservation at a local hotel. So there was a need to take in strangers. That's what hospitality is in the first century world. In fact, there's even some pagan ridings from the second century that make fun of those gullible Christians who will just take anybody into their home and give them a night, give them a bed for the night. I would guess that there could be an application of that to our world where we have somebody in for a meal, maybe even some application, we take somebody out for a meal, but primarily that's talking about giving someone a place to stay. And then there are some negatives there. Things not to do. Some of this begins to sound a little like the sermon on the Mount. And it ends then with repay no one for evil versus 17 to 21 deals with the idea of personal revenge. I love verse 18, if possible. So far as it depends upon you live peaceably with all do your best, but Paul recognizes. Can't always make everybody do the right thing. You can't make anybody do anything. You do the best you can to live peaceably. And then others will have to make their own decisions about what they are doing. It is marvelous not to be tasked with making folks be peaceable. Some people are just not going to be peaceable. If you have questions about that, jump on Twitter and you'll see that in a hurry, but we do the best that we can and we never get involved in revenge. That's become such a popular movie theme, such a popular idea today. I'm gonna get'em. I'm gonna show'em Christians. Don't do that. We never act that way. Instead. We treat people well, the idea, verse 20 then of heaping burning coals on their head. Not so that we can retaliate with good deeds. Oh, I really got him. Him not by being ugly to him, but by being super nice. Oh, I really showed him. No. The idea is that that would bring them to repentance, but it is important that we treat people right as Christians, it will make a huge difference because we know that you can't overcome evil with evil. No, you overcome evil with good. That's what we are trying to do. We won't be part of evil and we won't promote evil with evil means the end does not justify the means we do what's right. We serve the Lord. And, and that takes us into tomorrow's reading where Paul says, I know some of you are thinking, Hey, if I don't get out there and Ave myself, things are just gonna break loose and run'em up. I gotta do something. Paul says, no, God's got a mechanism in place to take care of that. Christian. You don't have to worry about that. We'll read that tomorrow. Romans chapter 13, see you on Friday. You made it. It's Friday. Today we start Romans chapter 13. We're gonna read in Romans the 13th chapter, the first seven versus this is easily the most extensive treatment of the Christian and secular government anywhere in the new Testament. And there's a couple of things that we need to make sure that we put both hands on and hold on tight two. As we are dealing with this section, Romans 13, one to seven, maybe the first thing to say here is there isn't anything in Paul's day that would've been easy about any of this. The Roman government was terribly corrupt. It was idolatry to its core. It was immoral in many ways and it persecuted the church. And yet Paul still expected that the citizens in Rome, these Christians in Rome could respect that governing authority and be able to submit verse one, to governing authority as God intended. We need to think about that. We have an awful lot of freedoms. We have an awful lot of civil rights and that is amazing and wonderful, but I fear sometimes that has resulted in, in Christians deciding they can take the law into their own hands, read carefully. What Paul says in Romans 13, one to seven. It's very difficult to get out of this chapter that, you know, what if we don't like the government or if the government doesn't do to suit us, we'll just do what we want to know. That's not here. That's not Romans 13. Since I'm talking about things that we wanna make sure that we have a good grasp of, as we enter into this discussion, that Paul leads here in Romans 13, couple of things that needs to be said first and foremost, there's nothing here about learning and knowing every tiny civil ordinance, unless you disobey governing authorities, inadvertently, and then you're lost. There's always someone who's worried about that on the book somewhere, there's always weird and strange laws. You can't wear socks on Tuesdays, or you can't say such and such and such and such on a Friday. And there's various lists of those circulating on the internet. We get a grand when we read some of those funny laws, but then someone says, oh my, I wore my socks on Tuesday. And in Topeka, Kansas, I violated the law. Am I gonna go to hell for that? Oh, Paul, isn't talking about that. That's not his emphasis. He's talking in very general terms about being good citizens and generally being in submission submission to governing authorities. And of course I should say here that there's nothing in this text that says God has specifically ordained every individual leader. Sometimes people get a little confused about some of that. God has ordained government, generally the idea of government, but no specific governing authority. Civic ruler has been appointed by God or is approved of God. God didn't approve of Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin. And I need to, yes, I need to come to grips with the fact that he may not approve of my favorite political candidate either God does not approve individual leaders any more than God approves what is done by every elder or by every eldership or by what every husband does. Think about it. God ordained marriage and the husband being the head of the home. That doesn't mean God signs off on everything that I do or that you do as a husband in your home. And of course, as I said, there's not anything here about evil government. Even though, though Roman government was certainly evil. That is not the topic under consideration here. This is about the divine ideal, not human reality. One writer noted, and there isn't anything here about civil disobedience. We know that we have to obey God rather than men. And Paul would certainly agree with that. But Paul, doesn't talk about those instances where what civil authority says directly contradicts and conflicts with the will of God. That's not being dealt with in Romans 13, this is a passage that just talks about obedience and that we need to obey governing authority. That's where Paul is. And maybe if we remember that the Jews got kicked out of Rome, because there was a lot of fussing and a lot of fighting probably about Christianity that seems to have spilled over into the public marketplace and into the public forums until the seizure said all y'all out, everybody just out and did not make a distinction between Jews and between Christians that resulted in a lot of problems. We've talked about that, of course, in this book of Romans extensively, I think it is the most important idea behind the writing of the book of Romans and in acts 18, we read a little bit about that. Luke deals with that as Paul meets up in acts 18 one and two with Aquila and Priscilla who have been evicted by the edict of Claudias, they have been kicked out of Rome. So thinking about that as the background to this particular section, you can see that Paul would be saying, Hey, guess what? Everybody needs to mind their PS and QS. Everybody needs to be a good citizen. We don't wanna repeat of that disaster. That caused so much problems in the city of Rome. The idea here is that instead of me taking the law into my own hands, God has set up government to see to it. That law in law order are respected. Government has two functions. According to the Bible, rulers verse three are to be a terror to bad conduct. Government is to see to it that bad lawless behavior is put down and stopped. And verse four, he is God's for your good government is to uphold what is good, that's what's happening. And according to the Lord, that's what ought to, I should say, be happening. That is the implications of this particular text. And of course, government can be that and can be the servant of God, even if it is ignoring God and doesn't believe in God and doesn't care about God, they don't actually have any power, except from God. There is no divine right of Kings, by the way. Instead, God has put government in place. Not, not even any specific form of government. Think about that. Paul's not working in a democracy. He's not working in a Republic. God has not ordained any specific kind of government, but instead has put government generally in place to suppress bad behavior, uh, uh, to enact justice and good laws that help those who are good. The point of all that really comes to versus six and seven, that's a very sensitive subject where Paul says, you need to pay your taxes. That certainly would not be a popular thing for Paul to say, but it would be very important in first century Rome and in the Roman empire, there are other passages in the new Testament about government notably first, Peter chapter two versus 13 to 17, where you get the idea of needing to reverence God by honoring the king. And interestingly in revelation 13, here we are in Romans 13 in revelation, 13, civil government is a beast. It is attacking the church. And so the Bible certainly recognizes that civil government can get out of hand, but in today's reading, Paul wants Christians to submit to civil government as much as we possibly can. We need to do that. And that will of course, open doors of opportunity for the gospel and keep us out of trouble so that the government is not attacked. So the government is not attacking the church as it is pictured doing in revelation the 13 chapter, more than on our obligations to each other in the local church, in our reading on Monday from Romans 13. And guess what? On Tuesday we reach the pinnacle of the book. The reason Paul wrote Romans, how exciting is that? There you go. There's our reading then for today, Romans 13, one to seven. Thank you for listening then to the Monday morning coffee podcast, as always, I would ask you to share this podcast with others into rate and review it that helps people find the podcast, hope you're following it or subscribe to it on whatever app that you use so that it will just automatically download right onto your device. You probably been getting some extra downloads as we've been uploading, uploading some downloads. We've been uploading to you, the lessons from our youth lectures. And I hope those are a blessing to you. I would invite you to be with us this Sunday. This is back to school Sunday. Some of the school systems are already back in session, but we'll have our annual back to school, Sunday, prayer service, and I'll bring a message to help young people as they get ready to start a brand new school year. Hope to see you Sunday morning at the west side, church of Christ, hope that you'll be able to be part of back to school Sunday, as we pray God's blessings upon our students and give them something from the word of God to help them as they begin that school year. So until Sunday, when we're involved in worship and serving the Lord and praying for our students, and until Monday, I hope that your coffee will be delightful. I particularly hope that your Friday is wonderful and that the Lord is with you today. All day. I will see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

Speaker 1:

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 PP B E AT, 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,

Sermon Notes
Monday Romans 11:11-24
Tuesday Romans 11:25-36
Wednesday Romans 12:1-10
Thursday Romans 12:11-21
Friday Romans 13:1-7