Can we stop talking about Bible Authority?

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, April the 17th. I'm Mark Holden, a good cup of coffee here, ready to talk with you about Kings and Chronicles. Ready to work in the word of God. Think about our sermon from yesterday. Think about our daily Bible reading. Get the week started with a ton of spiritual momentum. Let's do this. Let's get started. Let's start by talking about the series that I began yesterday on Bible authority. I preached the sermon yesterday called Can We Stop Talking about Bible Authority? You know, last week I told you that Easter Sunday is a tough Sunday for preachers because you've just got such a big spectrum there, so many people there and you're trying to do a whole lot of different things at once. And, and this week I'm coming right back with the same kind of idea. Talking about Bible authority is really difficult. You've got people there who've heard these lessons and could teach these lessons. You've got people sitting there who've never heard about Bible authority and have no idea what you're talking about and maybe are a little offended that you would say anything done in the name of religion, anything done to please God, to glorify God, to worship God is somehow out of place or wrong. So there's a lot going on, and I think maybe that's why sometimes the inclination is, I'm just not gonna talk about this. And, and yesterday I quoted from some guys who said, we're not having these lessons anymore. We're, we're, we're not doing that. But as I demonstrated, I think that's a complete fail and does not serve God's purposes well and does not serve God's church well. So we want to continue to focus on God's will. That's what Bible authority really is all about. What does God want us to do? And Bible authority needs to be expressed in our lives. What does God authorize me to do? What does God want me to do today on Monday? And I think specifically and many times, this is where we end up talking about Bible authority. What does God's will for the church as we operate together, as we're doing things together, with our resources, with our time, with our building, with our assets, with our money, uh, it's actually of course God's money, God's assets, God's building. What do, what is God's will for those items? What is God's will for our efforts together? And I, I'll just add this to the sermon from yesterday. Maybe one of the reasons we have to keep talking about what is God's will, what does God want us to do is because old controversies just keep coming back. Um, on Wednesday night last I, I talked a little bit about stoicism because I'm teaching in Acts 17 and there Paul is addressing the stoics of the epicureans. And I think it's pretty easy to say, yeah, stoicism, whatever, that's like some ancient Greek thing or something or another. And then as it turns out, stoicism has made a major revival in the last couple of years. There's some bestselling books about stoicism. Um, there's even a TV commercial where the young lady is carrying a book by Marcus Aurelius, the classic book, uh, on stoicism. And so people are, are, are doing stoicism all over again. And so it just shows how what goes around seems to come around. And that's certainly true of the issues that are directly affected by our understanding of Bible by Bible authority in God's will. Specifically I'm thinking about instrumental music, you know, in mainstream churches of Christ, more and more and more churches of Christ are putting in some sort of instrumental service. And as that gets more and more popular, it seems like many times the acapella service is done entirely away with, or it's reg regulated to some weird time like 8:00 AM Sunday morning. I guess that's, you know, old people can come to this, but the main service becomes a instrumental service. And I, I think in the next several years there'll probably be some surveys to indicate maybe as many as half of mainstream churches of Christ are using instrumental music. So all this business of it's not an issue, it's not gonna be an issue. Are are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? It, it not only is going to be an issue, it is an issue. And we're going to see more and more people fleeing out of those kinds of churches who are looking for New Testament Christianity. And not only do we want to provide them a place where they can find refuge from Apostacy and they can do what's right and serve the Lord with us together here, we, we want to teach. We want to teach them why we're doing what we're doing. Why those things over there are not what God wants us to do. That is not God's will for how to worship. And we want to learn what God does want us to do. So not gonna talk about that all the time and be obsessed with it. No. But yes, from time to time we need to keep thinking about what is God's will for the church? What has God authorized the church to do? Let's talk about Bible authority. So having said that, let's talk about kings. Turn your Bible to second Kings 18. Let's get ready for Monday's daily Bible reading. It is Monday and today we read in Second Kings the 18 chapter beginning in verse one. We're gonna read one to 12. And this is the beginning of Hezekiah's reign. As we turn back to the history books, Kings and Chronicles, let's just get reset where we are. Think about where things are going in the kingdoms and let's see if we can get rooted here in what's happening with God's people. Because we've been spending so much time with the prophets, the preachers who are addressing God's people. Let's think about history once again. And the reality of course as we look at Second Kings 18 is that the northern kingdom is no more. There is no more northern kingdom. Verse 11 of today's reading details that so you don't have to worry anymore about reading about double kings. This guy was king up here and this guy was king down here. And of course both the names started with Jay and we can't keep them straight. Don't need to worry about that anymore. 7 22 BC the Assyrian Empire comes and removes what's left of the northern tribes. They are gone and they will not return. So that leaves us Judah alone and for the next 150 years. Second King's details what is going on in the southern kingdom. This is now the only kingdom. And you should know that things here are not just peachy king. In fact, if you step back in your Bible, Toi King 16, the last king there a has is a miserable failure. Talked about him some in Micah because he does offer human sacrifices. And even worse, second King 16 details how he remodels the temple to look like a Syrian worship. He completely capitulates to Assyria becomes a vassal king to Assyria and is full on in idolatry. So this is a terrible, terrible time for the people of God. In fact, there's not been very many good kings in the South at all anyway. And a has just seems to have gone out of his way to be the wickedest of the wicked. And so today we meet the hope for the southern kingdom and that is a he his son Heza. Heka is an enormously important king. He gets time in king's time in Chronicles and time in Isaiah. And of course one of the ways of determining how important somebody is in the Bible is to just see how much ink they out Heka gets more space than anybody besides Solomon and King Ahab in the Book of Kings. And then if you pile in all dimensions and Isaiah and Chronicles, he's way up there, way up there with David. Think about that now way up there with David and what he does, verse four in our reading today, is he begins a reformation movement. He restores the worship of God by removing the high places that the other kings had tolerated. And we even get a mention in verse four of the bronze serpent na huan. You got to go back to the book of numbers and read about Moses lifting up the bronze serpent to heal the people they'd murmured against God. God sent vipers, snakes among them. You look on the bronze serpent, you'd be healed. Somebody had stored that. Hey we ought hold onto that. That's a cool thing. And and, and by the time of his zaya people are falling down and worshiping it. Maybe that's a great place to say something about religious relics. Maybe that's why we don't have religious relics. God could certainly have preserved all kinds of things. You know, Paul's walking stick ensure as the world somebody would be bowing down to it. So as we journey further, verse seven, the Lord is with him wherever he went out he prospered, he rebels against the king of serial member A has had completely given in to asy and was paying tribute. Uh, one king 16, seven, uh, to eight verse seven to 18. Maybe Isaiah is the one that counsels he Aki here. This is the time of Isaiah and Micah and he just has aka just goes and blows. I mean he is running. He struck down verse 18, verse eight, the Philistines as far as Gaza, so of the kings, only David and Hezeki have the expression used. The Lord was with him. That's used of David in verse Samuel 16 for Samuel 18, second Samuel five, uh, verse 10, particularly some other places and only David and Hezekiah are said to defeat the Philistines. Can you see what the writer of Kings is saying? Kings is setting up Hezekiah as a second David. He's going to lead the people to do what's right. And tomorrow we're gonna go to a very neglected book of the Bible to learn more about exactly that. See, tomorrow we're reading in Chronicles. Welcome to Tuesday. Today we read Second Chronicles 29 1 to 11. And I'll just ask you how much you know about the Book of Chronicles. I think for a lot of people, Chronicles is kind of like a little bit more of kings and not that important. But I want to say this, even though 50% of Chronicles is contained in Second Samuel, first Samuel, second Samuel first and second Kings, the reality is 50% of the material is not repeated in Samuel or Kings. So shouldn't we want to go read that material that we don't get in the other historical narrative books? I think the fact that Chronicles begins first Chronicles begins with nine chapters of genealogy, just kills it for the modern reader. This is a difficult book for people to read. And you get into Chronicles and it's just name after name after name and people throw up their hands and say, I'm out. But Chronicles is an enormously important book. We're gonna spend some time in Chronicles here in our Bible reading and I'm really glad that we're gonna do that. It is not just King's 2.0. In fact, in the Hebrew Bible, Kings appears in the section of the Hebrew Bible with the prophets and Chronicles appears in an entirely different section of the Hebrew Bible. The part that contains, for example, wisdom literature and the material from Ezra and Nehemiah Chronicles is actually the last book in the Hebrew Bible. And as you turn your Bible over to Second Chronicles, we're gonna read in chapter 29, I'll just get you to back up to chapter 27. So glad to have the podcast, just get to give you some bonus material. I hope you're thinking, Hey Chronicles, I wanna know more about Chronicles. Great, let's read more about Chronicles second Chronicles 27 7 there. Oh second Chronicles 27. Six. Six. Not seven Jonathan, this is a king. He became mighty because he ordered his ways before the Lord his God. That is the major theme of Chronicles. He ordered his ways before the Lord his God. I think it is fair to say that King's was written to say what happened? What went wrong? Why did we go into exile? King's documents, the idolatry, the outright paganism, the rejection of God. This is what happened to the Northern Kingdom. And in fact, this is what happens to the Southern kingdom as well. This is why we're in Babylon. Chronicles written by a different author, written at a different time, different part of the Hebrew Bible is written to say, this is how we go home. This is what we need to do if we're gonna serve God and be right in his sight and be back in the promised land where we belong. This is the way back. Kings is the way out the way to Exile Chronicles is the way home. And there's three big S in the books of Chronicles. First reuniting all of Israel in faithfulness to the law and in faithful worship to God. And we're gonna see Heka doing that. He sends messengers to the north and says, Hey you people up there, you come down here and worship God with us. You're part of the people of God too. You come worship God as well. And then secondly, huge emphasis on the temple. The temple is super important in Chronicles. We need to fix it up, we need to clean it up, we need to worship in the temple. And then there's lots on the royal dynasty of David. David's throne promises in second Samuel seven have to be preserved who's sitting on that throne. And so the chronicler is a lot more positive about Davidic kings than for example kings is. There's no mention in Chronicles of David's adultery, none of that. And it is in Chronicles that we read about King Manassas repentance. Kings tells us us that he was the worstest of the worst, which is not a word, but worst. That should be a word. He was just horrible. Chronicle says, yes he was and tells us about all of that too. And then says, but you know what? He repented. This is how to go home. And there's a ton on the heart. Chronicles likes to talk about the heart. Why? Because that's the way to go home. Second Chronicle seven verse 10. On the 23rd day of the seventh month, Solomon sent the people away to their homes joyful and glad of heart for the prosperity that the Lord had granted to David and to Solomon and to Israel, his people there go right there. There you go, right there. The temple. They're dedicating the temple. Second Chronicles seven verse 10. Their hearts are joyful and glad as they worship God according to his law. Second Chronicles seven 10, great passage, second Chronicles 27, 6, great passage to help us see the themes that are working in the Book of Chronicles. So let's get a little bit of chronicles in today. Get your Bible over second Chronicles 29, 1 to 11. Guess what our reading is about today? Yes, he aka who's this wonderfully faithful king and what is he gonna do? He's going to cleanse the temple. So in the first year of his reigns in Chronicle 29, 3, he opened the doors to the house of the Lord and he repaired them. That's what we needed. We've got to get back to God. The way to get back to God, the way the way to serve the Lord and to do what's right is to restore pure worship. That means we get the temple back in business. And that really breaks down into about four stages of the restoration process. Really love this Hezekiah business because you know we're restoration people. That's what we're trying to do. Christianity began. Well, the apostles are there and it, it's rolling, it's going. And then over time things got added to it, things got taken away. Men's ideas and opinions, different things got altered. All all kinds of problems. What are we saying to people? Let's go back to the Bible, let's go home, let's restore New Testament Christianity. That's hezeki. Well, okay, he's not restoring New Testament Christianity, you understand that? But what he's saying is we've got to go back to the law. We've got to go back and do what God tells us to do in the way that God told us to do it. Let's see what God wills for us. What has God authorized for us? Wow, how timely is this? So it's gonna come out in about four stages. First we're gonna recon consecrate the le, the levies in verses four to 14 so that they can do this kind of work. And then they'll be directed to purify the temple. That begins in verse 15. I'm kinda getting a little bit ahead of my reading just today. And then we're gonna rededicate the temple verses 20 to 30. And then all the people are gonna come. Verse 31. We're gonna have this big population come together and, and we're gonna consecrate the Levis and bring sacrifices and open the temple up. We're gonna serve God as the people of God. Once again, that's our reading for today. In fact, that's a little bit more than our reading for today. Aren't you glad you got the podcast? Let's, we'll think more about how all that works out as we continue to read tomorrow. We'll pick up in verse 12, second Chronicles, 29 12 on Wednesday. See you tomorrow. We to Wednesday and we're reading Second Chronicles 29 verses 12 to 19. There are some names here of these different clans. There are three clans in the tribe of Levi Coha. Mary I and Gershon and these clans each have different responsibilities. For example, during the time of the wilderness in carrying the different parts of the tabernacle. And so here come these families and these clans and they're gathered together and they're consecrated. Notice the emphasis. Verse 15, as the king had commanded in Chronicles, the king is the mover and shaker. He's the one making things happen. And we're gonna cleanse the house of the Lord. This is not a hard reading, he's not a difficult reason. Not even a long reading, but in some ways it's just bittersweet. All the utensils verse 19, that king A has had discarded, we have made ready and are consecrated. It it, it's hard to read that the people of God had completely forsaken the way of the Lord. That's so bitter. But finally a king stood up and said, we're gonna do what's right. Get in there and get that cleaned up so that we can worship God in there. Once again. Hezeki is an amazing king. This is an amazing chronicle and it's tremendously challenging to you and I, what in my life have I given over to idolatry that I just, I need to get that outta my life. I need to clean that up. And of course, as the people of God, collectively as the church, we are always looking, is there something here that we've given over to the, to the ways of idolatry? And we need to clean that out. Just great lessons here in restoration and we wanna be thinking about those as we read about Hezekiah's, restoration of the temple and of the worship of God. See you tomorrow. It is Thursday and today we've finished second Chronicles 29. We're reading verses 20 to 36. And here is Hezeki and he's getting things back in business in the temple. Hezekiah, the King Rose early verse 20, gathered the officials and here comes the sacrifices and they're doing what's right. Couple of things you need to notice here. Notice verse 25, Hezekiah stations, the levies in the house of the Lord of symbols, harps and liars according to the commandment of David and of God the kings and of Nathan the prophet. Probably the dominant note there is that Hezeki is like David. That's where the chronicler is going. Hezeki is the second David for you and me, there's a great application there because you're gonna talk about instrumental music with somebody and they're gonna jump up and down and say, David used harps. And that somehow means something to people, some way or another because, because they don't understand the division in the Old Testament and the New Testament that we're not worshiping in the Old Testament ways. I I love to say this, please don't bring a goat to church and that well illustrates that we're not under the Old Testament. But the other thing that that says is they've never read Second Chronicles. Because look at verse 25, verse 25 says that that instrumental music was their why according to the commandment of David and of Gad and of Nathan for the commandment was from the Lord through his prophets. Don't ever be embarrassed about instrumental music in the Old Testament. It was authorized by God, it was God's will that they worship in that way. And so rather than backing away from that, what we want to say is absolutely they had instrumental music in the Old Testament cuz God told them to. And if God had told us to do that in the New Testament, we'd be doing it right now. Now you just show me a passage in the New Testament where God says to do that and we'll get right on it. But until we can see that the commandment is from the Lord, we're not going to do that. We're gonna do like Asiah did. We're going to restore the worship of God to be and to do what God wants us to be. Down at the end of the chapter of the verse 34 where the priest aren't able to get everything done and there's a reference there to the levies being more upright in heart. Remember to be a priest, you have to be of the family of Aaron. So just cuz you're a Levi doesn't make you a priest. If you're a Levi, then you can do some of the things that are associated with the temple, the menial labor and the cleaning and, and, and during the time of the wilderness wandering, you could carry parts of the tabernacle depending on what Klan that you are in and so forth and so on. But you have to be in Aaron's family to be a priest. Well, we, we don't have enough priests now, and so there's a lot going on in the Levi seem to be more interested in doing this than the priest seem to be doing it. And the author doesn't really explain exactly what's going on with the priestly family. But we ought to remember that Uriah, the high priest, built an erian altar for King ahas. That was about 10 years ago chronologically to this account. So our priests haven't always, yeah, and the priests haven't always just distinguished themselves here as being the very most faithful people. A little bit more on this tomorrow as we continue in Chronicles we're going to read in Second Chronicles chapter 30, and we're gonna read about that reuniting of Israel. And we're gonna read about hezeki leading the people in faithful worship as they celebrate the Passover. See you on Friday. It is Friday. We made it. We made it, we made it, we made it, we made it through another week. And today we're reading a really joyous section of scripture. This is in Chronicles 30, and this is Hezekiah's Passover Chronicles really wants to emphasize reuniting Israel. We need to reconstitute Israel. It, the northern tribes are gone, but is there, is there anybody up there who wants to be faithful to God? Could, could we bring them in? Could we somehow get Israel back? And so verse one, Hezekiah into all Israel and Judah see that Hezeki is gonna reunite those who truly love the Lord. And as you read down through and Chronicles 30, it becomes very clear that the chronicler, that's, that's hard to say. The chronicler is setting up hezeki as a second Solomon. He parallels hezeki to Solomon, Hezekiah reunites the nation in the proper worship of God like Solomon did in the big dedication to the temple that's contained in, uh, one Kings chapter eight. And Solomon offers this big dedicatory prayer and Hezekiah offers this big dedicatory prayer. So very much same kind of thing going on. Very much Solomon did this and this was so good and so right. And Hezekiah is doing the same kind of thing. So watch for those parallels. You can go back to First King's eight, maybe read some of that Solomon stuff and, and, and see some of that and see how all of that is going to work. You will notice that they could not keep the Passover in the first month because the temple hadn't been cleaned out yet. And there is permission in the law to celebrate on the second month. And we can talk more about that as we come along a little bit further. Sometimes people have misunderstood some things about the Heah Passover. What we do want to see is that God wanted these people to do right, and God wanted these people to worship him and God made allowance for these people to worship him. We'll, we'll, we'll think more about that as we're coming along, but we'll see how good and joyous this is. Maybe, maybe that's an emphasis that that, that we need. Sometimes worship isn't all somber. It's not all sober and down. Yes, some things about worship sober us as we think about judgment as we think about the death of Jesus around the Lord's table. That's certainly something that causes some tears and causes some very serious reflection. But there can be, like in verse 26, great joy in our worship. And that's not always expressed by smiling. Sometimes you hear people say you wanna smile more in, in, okay, I'm not dictating to you how to express worship, but in how to express emotion, how to express joy. But there is a place for joy in our hearts as we worship the Lord. Second Chronicles 31 to 12 is our reading today and we'll just keep pushing through that as we come into next week. Isn't Hezekiah great king? And seeing these big themes in Chronicles really helps us see what's so spectacular about Hezeki and what a fine leader of God's people He really is. Thanks for reading with me. I greatly appreciate your comments on the podcast and your encouragement as working together to better understand the Bible and draw closer to the Lord. Well thank you for listening. If you liken what you're hearing, if you love the Monday Morning Coffee podcast, I hope that you have subscribed or followed the podcast so that it will automatically download onto your device. We would really appreciate it if you would rate it and give it a review that helps other people to find the podcast bestest thing to do best. This is not a word, but you know that it should be. The bestest thing to do is to tell someone about the podcast, give'em a vibrating schedule, say, hey, this will help you draw near two the Lord. So until next week, I hope your coffee is delightful. I hope your Friday is wonderful and I pray the Lord will be with you today all day. I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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