Monday Morning Coffee with Mark

To My Heart's Content - Paul and Contentment - Phil 4

November 21, 2022 Mark Roberts Season 2 Episode 39
Monday Morning Coffee with Mark
To My Heart's Content - Paul and Contentment - Phil 4
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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 3:

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast for Monday November the 21st. I'm Mark. Got a great cup of coffee here. Got my Bible, I have sermon notes ready to talk with you about everything that goes into Thanksgiving week. That's right. It is Thanksgiving week and we're gonna have a great opportunity to put in play some of the things that we talked about yesterday and some of the things that Paul is talking about in our daily Bible reading this week. It's gonna be a special week, got our prayer service on Wednesday. So many good things are happening. Let's get started. Yesterday I preached on contentment, a sermon title to my heart's content. Are you from Philippines? Chapter four versus 10 to 13. And we concluded yesterday as we were working together in the word of God with four ways to promote contentment in our lives, saturate yourself in the promises of God. Make content people your role models, serve someone else and practice being content. We will get a great opportunity, particularly to practice being content on Thursday. That's a day to count blessings and to just realize how much we have been blessed by the Lord. That'll be kicked off as I said on our Wednesday night prayer service as we pray and are thankful to God. Just lots of opportunities to look around and say, it doesn't matter what's going wrong, what's not working, what's broken in my life in this country politically, on and on and on. No, I have much to be thankful for and much to give thanks for and that will promote contentment in your life. As an additional note, let me just say this. I'll give you Psalm 100 as an amazing psalm to read at the table Thursday, the hundred Psalm a Psalm forgiving thanks. Make a joyful noise into the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness, coming to his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who made us and we are his. We are his people. And the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name. For the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness unto to all generations, the five verses of this Psalm point, straight to the goodness and greatness of God, giving him honor and adoration and praise because he made us. He takes care of us, he loves us. His faithfulness endured through all generations. What an amazing God we serve. What an amazing God who cares for us and blesses us and that promotes contentment and that's gonna be found in our daily Bible reading too, isn't it? Let's get started in some daily Bible reading notes. Got your Bible. Let's start reading in Philippians. It is Monday and we are reading in Philippians, Philippians chapter three verses 12 to 21 As we complete chapter three today, and once again, modeling comes to the front. I really love this in so many ways. I, I just have learned so much in reading Paul's epistles this year and lots of times I've discovered things that of course have always been there that I just have never seen. And I don't think I've ever paid enough attention to how many times Paul is saying, Hey look, here's an example. Do like this. Oh hey, do you see this person? Why don't you model that? And so of course in today's reading as he talks about how he emptied himself of status like Jesus did in chapter two verses five to nine, Paul then says, I gave up my status in chapter three beginning in about verse four, circumcised on the eight day verse five, Hebrew, the Hebrews, all of those things. I count all that as lost. Verse seven. Now in our reading today, he begins to talk about going forward, I press on verse 12 to make Jesus and the home with Jesus, the resurrection of the dead. All of those things I press on to that prize. I haven't got there yet. I'm pressing on and I want you to do that too. Verse 17, join in imitating me. That's where he's going. And in fact, this is about maturity. Verse 15, let those of us who are mature think this way. Perfect is how the New American standard renders that, but mature is much better. We want to be mature in Christ. And then like I said, this is about models. Imitate me, don't imitate those enemies of the cross. Verse 18, our citizenship Verse 20 is in heaven and that is that word found nowhere else in the New Testament. This idea of Romans citizenship, uh, that's found in Philippians one and then here in Philippians three, these are the only places this term is found in the New Testament citizenship. So important to the brethren in Philippi. So important to citizens of Philippi. No, we have a better citizenship. We have a citizenship in heaven and we're looking forward to moving home to going where we belong. Great reading today. I'll see you tomorrow. We'll pick up in chapter four. Welcome to Tuesday. Today we read chapter four verses one to nine. And once again the theme of unity comes to the front. That of course begins with Paul saying, I love you, you are my joy in crown. Crown here is not a king crown, a royal crown. It is the victor's crown, the laurel wreath that you were uh, given crowned with when you won like an Olympic event. And then Paul says, Yodi and sin taiki, you need to get along. Now we don't know anything else about these two women. There's been an attempt to identify jodia with Lydia, but that theory has strained the linguistic similarities in their names and has not by any means one over scholars. These just seem to be two ladies here who are fussing and causing some difficulty and they need to get that stopped. And Paul then asks his true companion or true yolk fellow, and we don't know who that is to help these women so that they can stop fussing and be united. Part of this seems to be part of the answer to this seems to be rejoicing. Four. Four have a question about that for Q and a morning, and I want to think more about that then. But it is interesting that Paul seems to believe that more joy would solve the problem. Then he says the Lord is at hand, verse five and what that can mean. I I immediately, and maybe you do as well, start thinking about the second coming of Jesus, but this just may mean that the Lord is near in terms of relationship, not in a second coming. And then he says, don't be anxious when you have arguing and fussing and fighting. That breeds irritability. One writer said, anxiety tends to forget God and to rely upon human resources. And you can see that trouble in the church would cause anxiety and worry and problems. Instead, we need to stop fussing and fighting and we need to turn to the Lord. When we do that, we can have the peace of God. Verse seven pieces, such a big emphasis in scripture. We probably don't think enough about that and talk enough about that and then that will come if we'll think on the right sorts of things. I used verse eight recently in a sermon on the use of media and particularly our phones use that as a reverse filter. If you remember that sermon. We just start filtering everything through our phone by looking to see if it's the opposite of Philippians four, eight. And when you see things that are coming through that aren't true and not honorable, they're not right, they're not pure, they're not lovely. We need to turn that off. We need to say, this is not for me. I'm not gonna think on these kinds of things because if I want the peace of God verse nine, then I'm gonna need to have right kind of thinking. Notice how the piece of God really bookends this section. It begins for two with some fussing and now it closes with you need to be, you need to be in harmony with one another. Tomorrow, hump day and the end of the book of Philippians. I'll see you on Wednesday. It is Wednesday and this is my favorite Wednesday of the year because it is Thanksgiving Eve and tonight we will have the special Thanksgiving prayer service that we do every year here at Westside. This is just the best way to get Thanksgiving started. It is an amazing and wonderful time of prayer and I certainly urge you to be with us tonight at Westside. Couple of quick notes as we do our Bible reading and we finish up Philippians chapter four and the book of Philippians. In verse 10, Paul starts to be clear that he is very thankful for their gift, but he wants to stress that he has contentment. It's not I was I one writer said this and I, I wish I had said it, it's so well, well worded. Paul was not eagerly pacing his cell asking every five minutes if the mail had come with a check from Philippi. That's just exactly right. He's very grateful for the gift and it has helped him. There's no question about that. But Paul has learned to be content in any and every circumstance. Talk a little bit about that on Sunday as we think about con as we thought about contentment then, and this is what we need to install into our lives. I can be brought low, I can abound in any and every circumstance. I can face plenty and hunger, abundance and need. Then verse 13, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Really that is I can do all these things through him who strengthens me, what things facing difficult circumstances, abundance and need, poverty, riches, particularly being in prison. All these things I am able to face these circumstances through the power of Christ. This passage certainly gets badly misused and shows up in a lot of places. It does not belong way out of context. And particularly it is certainly not a universal statement that you can do anything in life by the power of God, you can't fly. Please don't jump off a building reciting Philippians four 13. You will meet the law of gravity and the ground quite quickly. That is not what Paul means. Truth and I have a kind of a joke between the two of us because there's a Texas Rangers player who would come to the plate and he had uh, as his walkup song, a hym kind of a rock beat hymn that plays this Philippians four 13 business. And the idea, I guess is that he can hit the ball in the power of Christ and and I certainly appreciate his faith and his devotion to the Lord, but he struck out a lot. So apparently Philippians four 13 truth and I would always say to one another, doesn't mean you can hit a baseball. And that is exactly right. It means Paul says that you can face difficult circumstances with God's help. And the Philippians have helped him. Verse 15, even in Fessel Nikah when he got run out of town and Acts records that for us going to act 17, they sent to him and now they have sent money to him via a paphitis verse 18, the gift that they sent. So Paul is tremendously thankful for that. But he could get by without it. He could. He's learned to be content in whatever circumstances he is in. I hope that our prayer service tonight, in particularly a day of Thanksgiving tomorrow, will help all of us be more content. Notice the book of Philippians ends. Philippians 4 21, greet every saint in Christ Jesus. It ends the same way it began calling these folks saints, sanctified, set apart holy, the people of God in Philippi. What an amazing, amazing book. I really have come to appreciate Philippians in a better way than ever and I hope that you have as well. I hope tomorrow's a great day for you and we'll begin tomorrow reading a different kind of epistle, an EPIs, not to a church, but to a person. See you tomorrow on Thanksgiving Day. Welcome to Thursday and happy Thanksgiving Day to you. I hope you're going to have a great Turkey day today or that you are having a great Turkey day today. I know some of you are listening to this very early so that you can get your Bible reading done before everything gets started. Maybe some of you are running a Turkey trot this morning and so this will be a little bit later in your day. Maybe some of you aren't going to get your Bible read today. And I wanna say something about that and this is what I wanna say. No guilt, no guilt. Remember daily Bible reading is a great idea. It's a wonderful spiritual discipline. It's a great habit to be in and we all wanna be doing that. But it is not something the Bible mandates. The New Testament does not say explicitly and specifically, you better read your Bible every day or you're a bad Christian. We wanna do that. It helps us become a better Christian and draw closer to the Lord. But we don't want to be iCal about this and legalistic about this and beat ourselves up when there's a lot of stuff going on and we're not able to get to our Bible reading for the day. In fact, one of the things I love about our year with Paul reading schedule is that the readings are not gigantic and so big that if you get behind, you miss a day that you suddenly are a thousand miles behind and you feel like giving up, you can double up and you'll be just fine. I would say this, you've heard me say this many times before. It's a great, great tip for any kind of habit. Never miss twice, never miss twice. You miss two times in a row and wow, that habit will decay on you. So I hope that you won't be involved in Black Friday so much tomorrow that you can't get your Bible reading done. But if Thursday goes by and there was a lot of Turkey and a lot of stuffing in cranberries, hopefully the cranberries that come out of the can in that perfect can shape and make that slurping noise as they come out of the can. I love those, love those, love those. It's not Thanksgiving without those. I hope the Cowboys are winning today. I hope lots of great things are happening for you on Thanksgiving day and maybe maybe some reading in First Timothy will be part of that. We are starting the epistle to Timothy. This is first Timothy chapter one versus one to 11 that we're reading today. And I'm gonna give you the bare facts of the writing to Timothy. Here we go. When was this written? Somewhere in 80 62, 63, 64. This is after Acts 28. If you want to read about the events that Paul is describing here in for Timothy, you need to turn your Bible to Acts 29 or Acts 30. And if you are doing that now, the joke is on you because, because Acts ends in Acts chapter 28, there is no Acts 29 30. All we read in acts about Paul's life is that Paul is in Rome, he's under house arrest and he is waiting for the disposition of his trial before the tribunal, before C before Caesar. And so we don't know how that went. We don't know what happened to Paul. What we do know is that there are some things mentioned in Timothy and in Titus that are not covered in acts. So for example, in our reading today for Timothy one three, as I urge you when I was going to Macedonia, what? Wait, wait, what? That's not covered in any of Luke's narrative. In the book of Acts in Titus one, Titus is told about a trip to Crete that's not covered in Acts either. So it is clear that Paul won his case and got out of prison. And then of course when we get to second Timothy, it is clear that he has been re imprisoned. But I can't give you a ton of geographical details where Paul is when he wrote this, don't know precisely when he wrote this. This is after Acts 28. We're past Luke's great narrative here. And this is written to Timothy as we see here in verse two to Timothy, my true child in the faith. And the point of this is that Timothy is in emphasis and there are some problems there. There is some false teaching going on. So the theme that I'm going to use to answer the questions that we have on the back of our reading schedule, particularly question two, what is the central theme in Paul's preaching and teaching being emphasized in this epistle? The theme that I'm going to use for Timothy is this, stop error and teach the truth. That's what Timothy is supposed to do. Stop the error, teach the truth. And little bonus to you podcast listeners, a big part of Timothy and a big part of Titus is living in such a way that you'll have the influence and impact that you can do, that you can stop the error and teach the truth. You need to conduct yourself in a certain way, Timothy, so that you will have the ability to get this done. Stop error, teach the truth. So we're reading in first Timothy today for Timothy one, one to 11. Notice the note of authority. Notice the note. How did I say that? Notice the note of authority Paul in apostle verse one. By command of God, this is a very authoritative epistle. It is not some stuff that maybe Timothy might get around to one of these days. No, this must be done. This must be done because there is false teaching going on. Verse three, charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. One scholar said pulse's, preoccupation in this first chapter is with the importance of maintaining true and sound doctrine and refuting false doctrine. This strikes a discordant note at the end of the 20th century. It not. It is not only that most societies are increasingly pluralistic in fact, but that pluralism is increasingly advocated as politically correct. And that of course is exactly true. Nobody wants to say anymore. That's just wrong. That is error. That is false. That is not true. But that is a major emphasis in first Timothy. In fact, what you're looking at here is Galatians one, six to nine all over again. This is a different gospel and it has to be stopped. Timothy must do that. That's our reading for today. That's enough notes for today. Go eat some Turkey. Cheer for the Cowboys. I'll see you tomorrow as we keep reading in first empathy. Welcome to Black Friday. And I'm hoping if you're into that kind of thing that you found some great deals online or maybe you did it the old fashioned way and you went and lined up outside a store at four o'clock in the morning so that you could buy a 900 inch television for$4 and 31 cents. Hope you're having a great black Friday, however it is, and that you are celebrating and I hope maybe that you'll enjoy good times with family today. The World Cup is going on. And if that's something that you are interested in, go team USA as they play this afternoon. Let's think about Timothy and let's think about what Paul is writing to Timothy in First Timothy chapter one verses 12 to 20, our reading today. Couple of quick notes here. Notice that there is an inclusio, a book ending here of ideas. Verse 12, I thank him. And then verse 17, to the king of the ages of mortal invisible, the only God honoring glory forever and ever. A man so begins with a I thank and ends with an amen. That's a prayer and that's held together. That is called an iCLU. It's a bookend sort of idea. And while some people wanna kind of see this as a digression that Paul kind of gets off track and oh, let's be honest, Paul's certainly capable of taking some tangents. We've seen that as we spent the year with him. This is not a digression. This is a big part of the beginning of this epistle because Paul will use his personal testimony to argue here that salvation is of grace and it is not by adhering to Jewish law and particularly Jewish myths that have been derived from the Old Testament. So he talks a lot about how he has received grace and mercy even though he doesn't deserve it. Verse 14, grace overflow. That is a term, it's a rare term that really has the idea of overflowing like a flooded river that overflows its banks. That's a beautiful, beautiful term for grace. Think about how grace overflowed for you. And then Paul says verse 15, the saying is trustworthy. That is the first time, a five times that Paul will use trustworthy saying. And some folks have wondered if maybe Paul is quoting a hymn there. We've had some hy quoting in his writing of late, maybe that's going on even here. And so once again, verse 18, I charge you, we get this need to stop error and teach the truth. Idea, just like has been prophesied about you, you need to wage the good warfare. There's a battle going on and people have tried to tear onward Christian soldiers out of the hymnal because it's not politically correct. Paul doesn't care if it's politically correct. There's a fight going on between good and evil. Timothy. Get in it. Get in it and stop Hyman. And Alexander don't know a whole lot about them other than what's mentioned here. Hymans will be mentioned again in second Timothy chapter two and verse 17. Don't know anything else about'em, but false teaching needs to be stopped. Timothy, stop air teach the truth. That's our Bible reading for today. That's first Timothy chapter one. Thank you for listening to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast. I hope that you're enjoying it, it's helpful to you. And as a result, you will rate and give us a review on iTunes or whatever app you are listening on. Don't forget to subscribe or follow so that the podcast will download automatically in your app. Best thing to do, tell somebody about the show. That helps. Get the word out. I do appreciate you reading the Bible with me and listening carefully to the podcast. Hope you're having an amazing and wonderful holiday weekend. I hope to see you Sunday at the West Side Church of Christ. Sunday morning is q and a morning, and also we'll be in Samuel. So until next week, may your coffee be delightful. I hope your Friday is wonderful and that the Lord is with you today all day. I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

Speaker 2:

Thanks

Speaker 3:

For

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.is that's upbeat with two P'S UPP, B E A T, where creators can get free music. Please share our podcast with others. And we look forward to seeing you again with a company coffee, of course, on next Monday,

Sermon Notes
Monday Phil 3:12-21
Tuesday Phil 4:1-9
Wednesday Phil 4:10-23
Thursday 1st Tim 1:1-11
Friday 1st Tim 1:12-20