Monday Morning Coffee with Mark

Money, Giving and Your Heart

April 24, 2023 Mark Roberts Season 3 Episode 17
Monday Morning Coffee with Mark
Money, Giving and Your Heart
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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. I'm Mark. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast for Monday, April the 24th. I'm looking at my sermon notes from yesterday's sermon as we talk about the heart and having a heart for God. I've got a bunch of Bible reading notes stacked all around me and I am working. Yep, I'm working on a cup of coffee, which means it's time for us to get started. Let's get started with the Monday Morning Coffee podcast. As we're looking back at yesterday's sermon, we're thinking about that sermon, I'm thinking about that sermon about money and giving God your heart. Somehow I'm on this role, I think this is the third week in a row now where I've begun the podcast and talking about the sermon by saying this is a very difficult subject because a couple of weeks back, it was Easter Sunday and then last Sunday we talked about Bible authority and all that goes in that, and that's a difficult subject. And then this Sunday, yeah, let's just, let's just do it all over again. Let's just talk about something impossibly difficult that people don't want to hear about and that's giving and money and its relationship to our walk with God. But I'm, I'm really pleased with the reception of the word of God at West Side. Everyone is so keen to follow the will of the Lord and that you care so deeply about God and His word. People outside the West Side Church, you listen to this podcast, the comments that come back in. People were very, very kind about the Bible authority sermon last week. And I know that the kind of people who listened to a podcast to start their week are the kind of people who are sincerely interested in serving God with all your heart, which means the challenge of giving is right in your wheelhouse. Because while God doesn't need our money, money does have great power where your treasure is there will your heart be also. And it is hard for us to put our treasure in the Lord and not in our stuff. And I talked about how money equals control and we all like to have control. And money is a tool by which we can do for ourselves and in fact exalt ourselves with a sense of pride and superiority. And so we can very easily end up loving money instead of loving God. The challenge out of all of this, just buckle it down. We talked about being practical. You wanna be practical about having a heart for God, give your money away, be generous. And I know yesterday when you were listening to that sermon, you were thinking of how this week you could give to a charity, a reputable charity to someone who is in need. You could show generosity with your money and that would well demonstrate that you have heavenly values, not earthly values that you're seeking first the kingdom of God. And that even more you have a heart for God. I know you thought about that yesterday. Now the podcast Monday morning is here to remind you, do it, do it. Don't let that be a fleeting thought on Sunday. Activate it, apply it, put it in play, do it. Give away some of your money this week and you'll find it is more blessed to give than it is to receive. Once you've got that plan in place, open your Bible. Let's think about King has AKA in second Chronicles 30. So for Monday's Bible reading, we are reading Second Chronicles, the 30th chapter beginning in verse 13. This is the continuation of course of Hezekiah's amazing Passover. We're gonna restore the worship of God. And what we're going to do is we're gonna worship God with the Passover feast and that's called the Feast of unleavened bread in verse 13. But that is synonymous with the Passover Notice of verse two. So as you're looking at all this Passover business, don't forget how significant the Passover is to Judah, to Israel. It symbolizes and causes them to remember God's past deliverance from Egypt, how he brought them out, the Exodus. And it particularly sets before them why they were to do God's will because they owe everything to the Lord. So this is instrumental in Hezekiah's overall plan to restore the true religion and the true worship of God is let's start by getting back to basics, getting back to our roots, who we are. We are the people of God. We are in covenant relationship with God. And so we're going to serve the Lord, unfortunately serve the Lord in the Passover. And there's great application there to the Lord's Supper, just great application to the Lord Supper. These people do this once a year. We get to do that that every week because it reminds us we owe everything to God. And so then we get into this difficulty here where a whole bunch of people are not in the right position to observe the Passover and they're not clean. Verse 18, a bunch of these people who came from the North, they are not ritually clean. That doesn't mean that they're dirty, they've got dirt, they fell in the mud. It means that they haven't done the things to be ritually pure to come into the presence of God and they ate the Passover anyway. And so there's a lot of confusion about that. But the Lord verse 20 heard Hezekiah's prayer and healed the people. Now this is a giant looks like Solomon moment and we got that in Friday's reading, but now we get additional praying here where the Lord healed the people. And I think the sense there should be in the sense of pardoned as if sin here is like a spiritual disease. So they are healed from this sin because what they are doing is actually wrong. Now, maybe I should say something about this Passover that's out of place because they're observing this at the wrong time and in the wrong way, the the wrong kinds of people and they're not ritually pure in all of the things that go with all of that. So could we use Hezeki Passover as a template then to say, okay, we're gonna worship God the way that we wanna worship God and yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I know that's not authorized, it's not right, but hey Hezeki, they're doing some things here that are not authorized. So you know, we'll just jump in and be like Hezekiah and Hezekiah's Passover. And I have seen Hezekiah's Passover used in that kind of way. But let me, let me say this. The things that are going wrong here, particularly the timing of the Passover eating the Passover in the second month is allowed under the Old Testament law. So it's not like they're way out on a limb and they just made up some whole new ideas. No, these circumstances, these contingencies were covered in the law. Moses, even more, this is a one time event. You can't maintain repeated practices and then run over to Second Chronicles 30 and say, Hey, we're doing what they did. Now this happened one time and the people here are trying to do what's right. They're not trying to find a loophole to do what they want to do. They're desperately trying to serve God. And then finally they admit and confess that they are in Sinn. I've never seen anybody use Hezekiah's Passover who started by saying, yep, this is sin flinn wrong. And what we're doing is sin flinn wrong, but we're hoping the Lord will pardon us. The Lord will heal us because we mean well and we wanna be like hezeki and so forth. No, no, no, that'll never fly, that's never gonna work. But I think the key here is once we're crystal clear that we're not gonna misuse Second Chronicles 30, what we do want to do with this text is draw near to the Lord. That's what we're doing. We're drawing near to the Lord. And we wanna see this text in a balanced way. Too many people. Imagine God like a policeman in a speed trap hiding behind the bushes. You can't see the speed limit sign, it's you know, hidden by a hedge. And then you go zipping along in Ang, he catches you<laugh>, I caught you doing 60 in a 30. Well, but officer I never saw, doesn't matter. I caught you, I caught you. People see God that way. Or people see God as the umpire. They're trying to slide into home and touch homeplate with their little toe before they get tagged out. And God is there saying, oh you didn't quite, oh you are one centimeter away. Boy, if you just slid a little faster, you could have got to heaven. People see the Lord that way. And what Hezeki, pa, hezeki Passover shows us here is that is not who God is. That is not who God is. God is not looking for an excuse to throw you out. God is not looking to catch you in some obscure violation of a law that you didn't know about. And so now you're in all this trouble. God wants to accept us. God wants to accept us. Do you see that God loves these people and is pleased by their attempts even though their attempts are broken? And there's some problems here. God is delighting in their worship. But again, if God accepts you, you don't go on sending willfully. You do everything you can to do what's right, which is exactly what's happening in Sacred Chronicles 30. It's such a misuse of this text to say, oh, we're gonna do what we want and God will just have to take it because he will go through the hek hole. Oh please, that's outrageous. But in the same way, this ridiculous view of the Lord that he hates us and doesn't want us to go to heaven, why did he send Jesus? Why did he write all this Bible? Why does he have prophets begging people to return to the Lord and do what's right? If God doesn't want to accept us, we've got to change our thinking about the Lord. That's why we're reading this and that's why I'm so glad we read Second Chronicles 30 today. See you tomorrow. Welcome to Tuesday. And today on Tuesday we're reading Second Chronicles 31 versus one to 10. This is a restoration moment. We are restoration people. Sometimes we talk about the restoration movement. We mean some of those preachers and some of the things that happened during the time of raccoon, John Smith and some of those other guys. Hey, you wanna talk about the restoration movement? You need to talk about St. Chronicles 31. Because when everything was finished at Chronicles 31 1, Israel went out and they started abolishing idolatry everywhere. And somewhere in this, we need to start seeing the influence of Isaiah. Start seeing the influence of Micah as national restoration breaks forth. Hezekiah's decision to do, do right is very influential, leads the nation to do what's right. And he, I think is being influenced by Micah and Isaiah. And they may be, well, they may well be among the people continuing to fan the flames of what's do what's right. And so there's just an utter abolition of idol adultery. And then Asiah sets up the 24 rotating divisions that David had begun. So now once again, hezeki, that's verse two. Uh, the divisions of the priest, there's too many priests, too many levies. They can't all be there at the same time. So we're just gonna set this up orderly. You'll have your time when you come and you serve the Lord. And that is very much like David and that is very much like Solomon. So once again, we're seeing Hezeki. He's that second David, he's that second Solomon and justice, David and Solomon provided from their own wealth for the temple. So Hezeki does the same, the contribution of the king verse three from of his own possessions. And then he commands the people to give verse four their portion. And so now there's giving themselves, look how that's said, that they might give themselves to the law of the Lord. That's what the priest can do when they don't have to be out farming and running a shop and doing all kinds of other things. Now they can give themselves to the law of the Lord. That becomes increasingly important. We're gonna need the teaching of the priest. And so all this comes in, people are giving, this just fits so well with the things that we talked about on Sunday. People are giving their heart to God, which means they're freely giving of their means and their their prosperity and their substance to the Lord. And then verse 10, this is really the message of Chronicles. Just underline this in your Bible and just jot, I have jotted out to the side major emphasis in Chronicles, what is the book of Chronicles about? As Ariah said, since they began to bring the contributions into the house of the Lord, we have eaten and had enough and have plenty left for the Lord has blessed his people. So we have this large amount left. What's the book of Chronicles about? It's about the way home, the way back to God so that God will bless us and that is what's happening in our reading today. Second Chronicles 31, 1 to 10 on Tuesday will pick up tomorrow. See you on Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. And today we're reading Second Chronicles 31 versus 11 to 21. Effectively the rest of second Chronicles the 31st chapter. This reading begins with some names of the various men who are in charge of the contributions in the ties. Verse 12. And it's easy to move past these names. I get it. It's hard to say these names and we don't know these people. But never forget when names like this are recorded in the Bible. The Bible is shouting at you and me. God knows who's serving him. These people may not mean anything to us, but their name is in the Bible cuz God knew who they are. That ought to, yeah, that ought to get our attention. And then verse 16, except those enrolled by genealogy males from the three years old and upward, that may be a copyist error. It's probably 30 years old. Look at first Chronicles 22 and uh, 23 and three in that connection, probably not three year old serving in the temple. Then we get the kind of summary statements here. Verse 20. Hezeki did what was good and right and faithful. He's what the king should be. Verse 21. Notice here he did everything in accordance with the law and the commandments gonna keep coming back to that authority series where we're talking about, are we doing everything according to the law and the commandments? And when I'm talking about that, what I want to see is you nodding your head saying, yep, that's how we gotta do it. Because that's how Hezekiah did it. Now we're a different law, different commandments. I get it. You get it, we all get it. Okay. But clearly the Bible is saying we need to take seriously the law and the commandments. That's how we do the will of God. That's how we know the will of God. Let's do the law and the commandments with all our heart. That's what has AIA is about. So here's a good summary of Hezekiah's reforms. He cleansed the temple and restored the temple service. That's chapter 29. Then he kept the Passover Second Chronicles chapter 30 and abolished idolatry on a nationwide level. Second Chronicles 31. Then he established the priest. Then Levi's division second Chronicles 31 and got the tie. Then contribution going for them. That's the Restent Chronicles 31 that we have just read. These are powerful, powerful reforms that Hezekiah brought to the people. One just wonders how much longer Judah was gonna last on the course that it was on of just wickedness and idolatry. Hezeki puts the pause button on the judgment of God. At least we think he did. Did he? We need to read more about that tomorrow. I'll see you on Thursday. A surprising turn in the story of his ukiah. It is Thursday and if you are thinking that we're gonna read in Sang Chronicles 32, you are, oh my, you're mistaken cuz we're gonna go read in Isaiah, we're reading in Isaiah 36, which is Isaiah's account of the Assyrian invasion during the kingship, during the reign of hezeki. And this is, at least in my book, I I don't know where you are on this. Pretty surprising what? What's the deal here? Hezeki has led the people to do what was right. I mean if this had been going on during some wicked idolatry king, then we'd be all, well sure you people are a bunch of idol. You're being punished by God. Hezeki has brought in enormous reforms and the people in general are doing what's right. So what are the Assyrians doing on their doorstep? And this is a monster problem. This is not your ordinary run of the mill problem. Like your car broke down or your washing machine broke. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is the kind of big monster problem that you date things off of. Like when we say things, oh yeah, that was the first year of the pandemic. Or maybe you had something terrible medically in your family. That was the year of Uncle Jack's diagnosis. This is that kind of thing. What's going to happen here is going to be the sort of thing that in Judah they talk about forever. That was the year CIB invaded and took away the northern 10 tribes. They're gone. No more Israel. This is the end of them. And he didn't stop when he got to the Israel Judah border, he just kept coming. Isaiah 36, 1 in the 14th year of King Hezeki cib, king of Syria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah. And he took them, by the way, there is excellent archeological evidence of this. You can see this in the British Museum. There's some uniform tablets and other stuff that talk about cakib and about all that he did. And our reading today, Isaiah 36, 1 to 10 well sets the stage for what this is all about because the rev shaa verse four starts shouting at the people of Jerusalem to make clear to them what's going to happen if they don't wave the white flag if you don't surrender, let me get a little coffee here. Mm, drinking coffee outta one of my favorite mugs. It's a new mug. This is from Foxtail coffee in Orlando. And I was able to visit there with a good friend of mine when I was in the meeting a couple of weeks ago in Orlando at Palm Springs. And it just brings back great memories. I love this mug. So the Ra Shaka, that's probably a title, not his name. Um, you look on his driver's license, his name is not Rev Shaa, this is a title. He begins to make all kinds of arguments about why they should capitulate, why you need to surrender. And his speech is full of trust and rely, you wanna underline those in your Bible trust and rely. His speech is about who do you trust, who do you rely on? And he makes at least four arguments here. Alright? Track out his arguments in verse six. He says, Hey, if you're trusting in Egypt, Egypt is weak. They can't stand up to us. And of course that is absolutely true. Egypt always promising everybody the moon and everybody's all about making a political alliance. And Egypt's gonna say, stop. Egypt's not saving anybody. They get whipped every time they come out in battle. Egypt's day is long past then in verse seven he says, what if you're trusting in the Lord our God? Now notice in your Bible the word Lord there is in small caps, that's the word Jehovah. So are you trusting in Jehovah, the God of Israel? No, no, no. You have offended that God by tearing down all those altars. See the Rahab Shaka doesn't understand the reformation of his zakiah. He thinks by tearing down all these different worship centers that that would actually hack God off. He doesn't know who God is and what God is all about. Then in verse eight he says, I'll tell you what, you don't have enough men stand up against us. Don't be thinking your army's big enough to beat us. We'll give you the the horses if you could put rider on'em cuz he knows they can't. And then finally in verse 10, he just throws in for good measure. I'll tell you what, God's on our side, there's always people who want to use God and say, somehow God is for me. And God wants you to know that I'm the one that you should follow. Or I'm the one that you should surrender to. You know, in every political election, candidates on both sides of the island and down the middle of the island and outside the island, every will all be saying, oh yes, you know God is for me. So you should be for me. And the Arab Chaka just continues in that tradition. Of course, the Lord is not with him. And the Lord is not the one that is, that is blessing this or ordaining this. The Lord has brought a series to take away the northern tribes, but certainly not to attack Judea and righteous hezeki in the capital city of Jerusalem. What's going to happen next? You're talking about sitting on the seat of edge of your seat. This is it. I mean, we got a Syrian at the doorstep. Hezekiah, what are you gonna do about that? We'll talk more about Assyrians at the gates of Jerusalem on in Friday's reading. Hey, you made it. It's Friday. It is Friday, end of the work week. We'll read Isaiah 36, verse 11 to 22 today finishing the 36th chapter of Isaiah. And here's the place where the servants of Hezekiah say to the Arab Chaka verse 11, Hey, let's talk Aramaic here. Don't be shouting at everybody in Hebrew that, nah, no, we don't need to be hearing that we speak Arama. Arama was the official language of diplomacy and government. You don't, you don't need to dumb it down for us. We, we can talk Aramaic here, but of course the Arab Shaa understands what they're doing. They don't want the common people who are shut up in the city of Jerusalem and are shaking in their boots to hear what he's saying. That's why they want to shift to Arame. And he says, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. And then look again at verse 15. The Lord will surely deliver us. Don't let hezeki make you trust in the Lord. There it is. This is about trust. This is about relying. Who do you rely on? And are you relying upon God? God's gonna let you down. And then he says, verse 16, I'm gonna take you away. If you'll make your peace with me, i e if you'll surrender and come out to me, then each one of you will eat of his own vine, each one of his own fig tree. And each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern. That is probably double entendre to reference your wife. That kind of language is used as a metaphor of marital intimacy in Proverbs the fifth chapter beginning of verse 15 and in several other places in scripture. So what he's saying there is a very thinly veiled threat. If you want your wife to be safe, you'd better give it up because I, I need to speak carefully here. Don't, don't wanna harm anybody or cause difficulties for anyone. But when the Serian soldiers came and invaded and they breached the walls and, and they, they took a city captive and so forth, there would be a terrible slaughter of the soldiers and of the government leaders. And of course then the women would be terribly abused and assaulted. And so what the Ra Shaka is saying in verse 16 is, you need to think about your wife. You need to think about your woman and what's gonna happen to her if you don't surrender to me now. And then verse 18, beware less. Has a kindness lead you and say the Lord will deliver us. Has any of the gods of the nations delivered to his land outta the hand of the king of Syria? What's going on here? What's happening in Isaiah 36? It is a battle of the gods actually. It's a battle of the false gods versus the one true God. The Ram shakka doesn't see it that way. He doesn't understand what you and I understand, but you see what's, what's being said here, if the Assyrians can capture Jerusalem, then what they're gonna do is they're gonna go home and they say, our gods are stronger than those gods of the gods of the Hebrews, our Gods, bigger batter than, than the God of those Jews. Cuz we took'em. Okay, what is going to happen? And maybe now I'm looking at verse 18, I'm thinking, is God gonna have indicate his name? What's God gonna do? Well notice verse 19. Have they delivered Samaria outta my hand? Oh Samaria, the northern 10 tribes, they served the God of Israel, kind of sorta didn't they? And, and God didn't deliver them. What's going to happen? That takes us to next week's reading where the drama I, it's just so intense. I I just, I dare you to stop at Isaiah 36 22. Next week we'll be in Isaiah 37 Heka calls for Isaiah and says, we need God's help. We'll talk about that next week, and I'll see you on Monday with Isaiah 37. So thanks so much for listening to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast. I hope that you are, you have subscribed and followed the podcast. Don't forget to give us a review to give us a rating that really helps more people find the podcast. And if you'd simply tell a friend about the show, of course, that would really help us as well. But until next week, I hope that your coffee will be delightful. I hope your Friday is wonderful and that the Lord will be with you today all day. I'll 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.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 2 Chron 30:13-27
Tuesday 2 Chron 31:1-10
Wednesday 2 Chron 31:11-21
Thursday Isaiah 36:1-10
Friday Isaiah 36:11-22