False Standards of Authority - Investigating God's Will for Today

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

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast for Monday, may the 22nd. I am Mark, and you need to buckle up for the podcast today. I have a ton of stuff for you this morning that will help you get your Monday going with a big dose of the energy that our Sundays give to us. All of that with a big cup of coffee, that's the best way for us to start our work week. So let's get started. Let's think for a minute here about yesterday's sermon on false authorities. What does not authorize us in our lives, in our worship, in our work together as a church? How do we not know the will of God is kind of where this is coming from And I appreciate very much the good reception this series is getting. People are interested in knowing God's will. And I just wanna say coming out of that, this is not about patting ourselves on the back saying that we've got it all right. We know everything and condemning everybody else. Absolutely not. What this is about is knowing why we believe what we believe, knowing why we do what we do, both as a church and individually and making certain that we are carefully looking at every aspect of our life to say, God, is that what you want me to do? Am I authorized by God to do this in short, am I doing the will of God? And what we saw yesterday is it's really easy to substitute in what mom and dad told me or what a religious leader told me or what I feel. It's so easy to substitute something else besides God's word for our authority in what we're doing. We don't wanna make that mistake and that's why I'm preaching this series on Bible authority. Speaking of Bible authority. Wow, we are turning our attention in Bible reading to somebody who did not care at all about Bible authority. And that's King Manassa. Let's get ready to think about daily Bible reading For a Monday's reading. We're reading in two Kings 21 verses one to nine, and if you are a little worn out on the prophet Joel in trying to make application of some of his visions and ideas about the day of the Lord, and you're ready to think about some tangible, concrete sorts of things, the history of God's people, welcome to Second Kings Chapter 21. This begins in 6 98 BC when Manassa starts to reign. Second Kings 21, 1 Manassa was 12 years old when he began to reign. Now there's lots of questions about how all of that works because of the timing of he's reign and the invasion of Sakib and some things that we can date there. Maybe he was co-agent with Hezeki for a period of time. We're not sure of this. As you're reading today, what you do want to notice is what's not being talked about. This was a time when there was a ton of political maneuvering in the world as Syria and Egypt were all at each other. Everybody's competing here to see who can run the world, who could be the big superpower. And there isn't anything said about that at all. Nothing is said of that. That's not important. Remember, the Bible isn't the history of the world, the Bible isn't even the history of the Middle East. The Bible is the discussion of God's work, what God is doing. And that means the emphasis will be on Manassas, failure to serve God. By the way, somebody is going to notice that kings doesn't record Manassas repentance. If you didn't know that Manassa repented there, I just, uh, yeah, spoiler alert, let the, let the cat out of the bag. And you know, I don't wanna let cats out of the bag, but Second Chronicles will tell us about Manassas repentance. Kings does not because kings is really stressing his failure. And you don't want in the middle of a failure, failure, failure, failure sermon to have to stop off and give some fine print and say, oh yeah, but by the way, this and this happened. And here's my disclaimer about all of that. No, you just let the big failure stand out. Always watch for what's in Bible history and what's not in Bible history. So for example, in Chronicles, there is no mention of David's adultery that we talked about yesterday. Chronicles is making some points about David being super faithful and doesn't want to introduce a disclaimer. Oh yeah, he was super faithful, but this also happened in Chronicles. That's not working. And so the chronicler, that's probably Ezra doesn't make mention of that. You can't write about everything and something that detracts from your major point is something that doesn't, doesn't get in the text. There is not going to be written about. So watch for what is there and what is not there. What's not here is political maneuvering. What's not here is any kind of repentance. What is told in Kings is that Manassa pushed them into an apostacy for which they could not return. Not even Josiah down the line will be able to rescue them from this miserable, terrible apostacy. And we just get a long list today of Manassas sins and all the wretched and horrible things that he did. In fact, now by the time I get to verse nine, they did not listen and Manassa led them as straight to do more evil than the nations had done, whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel. By this point I'm starting to wonder, was anybody really doing right under hezeki besides Hezeki or were they all just faking it? Because it does not seem like Hezekiah. Verse 21 of chapter 20, slept with his fathers and Manassa starts reigning chapter 21 verse one. And I mean, idolatry is on in no time. Ang here we are, we're right back into the wickedness and the people seem to be very willing to follow a king who just excels in wickedness. Tomorrow we will hear what God has to say about a king who excels in wickedness, the word of the Lord to manassa. Tomorrow it is Tuesday and today we continue to read in Second Kings the 21st chapter. Today we're reading verses 10 to 16. These are the acts of Manassa and how awful he is and was and what God had to say about it. In fact, God sends prophets verse 10, who are those prophets? Somewhat that to be Isaiah. But it seems that Micah and Isaiah are both off the scene well before Manassa began. Dra Jeremiah has not begun preaching yet. So these are nameless prophets, although some have suggested Haba could fit in here, eh, that's kind of iffy, not so sure about that. What we are certain of is that Manassa is more wicked than even the nation's around them. And God says that he's going to use a measuring line verses 12 and 13 to do something that will bring a disaster that causes people's ears to tingle. Notice in verse 13 that Manassa is compared to Ahab. He is the only Judean king to be compared to the northern kingdom's worst King Ahab. Remember Ahab and Jezebel? There's all kinds of discussion then about innocent blood in verse 16. That is a huge issue in the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 19, Deuteronomy 21. Lots of discussion about the shedding of innocent blood that bothers God. Pay attention to what bothers God. Manassa. Maybe here is sacrificing children. Maybe this is a reference to killing prophets. The historian outside of the Bible, Josephus. Josephus is not in the Bible. Sometimes people quote Josephus like you can read, you know, second Josephus right behind Chronicles. Or maybe you know, in between Galatians and Ephesians, there's the book of Josephus. No, you can't. Josephus is not an inspired writer. He's a historian. But Josephus does say that Manassa killed prophets of God every single day. How about that? Well, if you're kind of fed up with Manassa, maybe maybe we're going to go read something about Manassa that is utterly shocking. Tomorrow. Tomorrow be in Chronicles. It is Wednesday hump day and we are in the book of Chronicles second Chronicles 33 verse 10 to 20 records, one of the most shocking things in all of the Bible. Get ready, Manassa repent. That is exactly what second Chronicles tells us. In verse 11, the Lord brought upon him the commanders of the armies, of the kings of asy. This was a time of lots of political turmoil. There was revolts in asy. Babylon was coming on. Egypt used that revolt as an opportunity to revolt against the Syrian power as well. Lots going on on the world stage. God uses that then to bring manassa to repentance. Verse 12, when Manassa was in distress, he and treated the favor of the Lord as God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him and God was moved by his treaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. I don't even know what else to say. That's so incredible. First of all, that Manassa finally responded to God is just amazing. If somebody told you, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Manassa repents later on a prophet comes, helps him. Some bad things happen. There's a lot of adversity. And so you know what He turns to God, I would've said, no, he does not. You're making that up. And then if somebody said, not only did Ma Manassa repent and turn to God, but God received his repentance and forgave him and restored him to Jerusalem, I I think that's really where people would say, oh, you're making that up. There is no way God has forgiven somebody as wicked as manassa, but God did. God did. And he restores him. Verse 14, built an outer wolf. The city of David took away the foreign god's. Verse 15, he restores the altar of the Lord. Just, it's just incredible. It's just an incredible story of how God's word does have power, particularly when it's coupled with adverse circumstances to humble people and bring them to the Lord. It's an incredible story of God's grace and mercy. This is, this ought to get a lot more attention than it does sometimes. We, we cite Paul as the consummate example of God's willingness to forgive because he persecuted the church. I'll stack manassa against that any day of the week. At least Paul thought he was serving God when he persecuted the church. Manassa was serving false gods. That's about as wicked as it comes. Wow. Unbelievable. Except of course we believe it. It's in the word of God. But verse 17, tempers all of that, the people still sacrificed at the high places, but only to the Lord their God. So that was the worship to the right God in the wrong kind of way. And what that says is that a few years of reform cannot co counteract a half century of paganism. Maybe you're still wondering about why kings doesn't include the re, the repentance of Manassa. And one writer said his new personal relationship with Jehovah really did not affect all that much. The disaster had been inflict inflicted and the poison administered whatever change had come to Manassa has no impact on the next king. Amon Manassa had already made his impression there. How sad that is. Tomorrow we will begin reading about the rain of Manassas son Amon, and it's not going to be good. See you on Thursday. It is Thursday again, it's time to read about King Amon. He is Manassas son. He's 22 years old when he begins to reign. That's at the beginning of our reading. Second Kings 21 verses 19 to 26 is our reading for Thursday. Amon Reigns and he's just evil. Verse 20 did evil in the side of the Lord like his father had done. There's no surprise there. Manassas. Long, long-term wickedness just has an effect upon the land, upon the people and upon his own family. We wonder how long Manasi even lived after his change of heart and repentance. The chronicler adds that Amon didn't humble himself but added to his guilt. That's in chapter 33, verse 21, 22 and 23. And there is some question from the account in Chronicles just what had happened to all of Vanessa's idols? Did they get fully destroyed or did some of them just get put into storage because it seems like Amon got them back out and got them back out in a hurry. He is assassinated in verse 23. Wonder if that's some righteous people who were trying to change the course of things and get a righteous king going. Maybe that's a pro Assyrian party wanting to get their hands on the throne. Lots of political turmoil going on, but Amon ah, just doesn't last long and probably shouldn't have lasted long. He is wicked. And so at the end of our reading, Josiah comes to the throne verse 26, and we wonder is he going to be any better? We'll see about that tomorrow. Let's read more about Josiah on Friday and I'll see you then. It is Friday and it is time to talk about one of the great kings. That's King Josiah in our reading today. He begins reigning. This is second Kings 22 verses one to seven. He was eight years old when he began to reign. He reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. Josiah begins his reign in 6 41 BC and he is an incredible king. It is said in verse two that he did like David did. That is a huge compliment. Did not turn aside to the right or to the left. That comes from Deuteronomy 17 verses 11 in verse 20. And again, these are very, very lofty comparisons here. Only Asa and Hezeki are spoken of as being like David. He is such a good king and he may be such a good king because the prophet Zanaya is speaking during his time. And Jeremiah also is called the prophesy. He begins prophesying when Josiah was 21 years old in 6 24 bc. That's Jeremiah chapter one in verse two. And we are going to go read next week in the book of Jeremiah. So we'll talk more about Jeremiah next week, but just hold on to the idea that j Josiah is not bringing all of these reforms and doing all of these good things in a vacuum. Just one day after all of the wickedness of Manassa and Amon, Josiah jumps up and says, Hey, let's do what's right. There are some people who are encouraging him with that, and that's Zephaniah and Jeremiah. And of course there may even be other prophets who are doing the same. So they're going to repair. That's where our reading is today. They're going to repair the house of God. Money is taken from the temple to do what's right and to get everything going again, to pay the workman. Removing idols here is not enough. Josiah needs to restart the right worship of God by cleansing the temple. And the Book of Kings moves very quickly to the biggest project of Josiah's career, which is this cleaning up of the temple because that leads to the book of the law being found. But it is not the only thing that Josiah ever does. It's just a huge big piece of what he does. And it gets us started with him in the very best way. Not to give everything away, but yes, they are going to find the book of the law as a result of this cleaning up of the temple of God. That makes me always think a little bit about when we have workday down at the church building and we find workbooks from 10 years back, Bible class and we find a reading schedule from seven years back. And I remember in the old church building, we had a huge workday and there was printing press material and all of this other stuff from back when West Side printed its own bulletin and mailed it out. How about that? So there's always stuff accumulating, but the cleaning here is not old lesson books. It's not an old printing press. We used to print the Torah. It's idolatry and all the accoutrements that go with idols and all the wickedness. That's what Josiah is cleaning out. That's what Josiah is having taken out of the temple and the temple be repaired and brought back to condition so they can worship God. What a great king, what a great beginning to his reign. Looking forward to reading more about Josiah and looking forward to reading more about Jeremiah, who is a big force in his reformation. So thank you for listening. There's the podcast for the week. If you like the podcast, we certainly would appreciate it if you would subscribe or follow rate and give a review on iTunes or whatever app you listen on. Tell somebody about the podcast that helps the show get out to more people. Thanks again for listening. Until next week, 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.

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