Repentance - Joel 2

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 29th. How about that? It's Memorial Day. All the good things are going as summer gets underway. And we're starting the podcast by talking about yesterday's sermon on repentance, which goes incredibly well with what we are going to read about this week in our daily Bible reading. And it all is wrapped up with a great cup of coffee. So whether you're listening to this on Monday or whether you took a day off because of the holiday, and it's actually Tuesday now. Oh, don't get confused about the date . Don't worry about that too much. Let's just think a little bit about that Sermon Sunday from Joel and then let's get into daily Bible reading. Let's get it all. Let's get it all going. Grab that coffee. Let's get started. Yesterday I preached on the preaching theme for the year, having a Heart for God, and it just seemed like the right time to talk about a huge part of having a heart for God is the ability to repent. And I borrowed out of our reading from Joel in that great text in Joel chapter two on Ring Your Heart and Not Your Garments. Hope that sermon helped you. I think it's gonna mesh so well with what we're about to read in the book of Jeremiah. And I just wanna say this, I I , I think you just go back and read the Joel passages over and over and over again until we get to the place where we realize how critically important it is to have a tender heart, to have that heart that can turn back to God when we've turned away from God. One of the driving issues in the scriptures is, is your heart soft or is your heart hard? We're gonna see more of that in our Bible class in Exodus because we come upon the consummate example of hardheartedness in Pharaoh and we're gonna see plenty of that in Jeremiah. When you do wrong, can you render your heart? Can you turn back to the Lord? That's what that's all about. And if, if you want to have a heart for God, that passage in Joel chapter two needs to be a huge part of your life. Let's think about Jeremiah then. Let's get ready for daily Bible reading in Jeremiah chapter one For Deadly Bible Reading. Today we are reading on Monday, Jeremiah one versus one to 10. And this is really where I love the podcast and where you're listening to, it pays off because I'm able to give you some background information on Jeremiah did not have a slot this month to preach a sermon on how to read Jeremiah or do anything like that. Couldn't work that in. So here we go. The podcast is what's gonna give you the information you need to climb into Jeremiah and understand what's going on here. Grab onto it with both hands. I really like Jeremiah a lot. He is the most persecuted Old Testament prophet. He is the only prophet to record an eyewitness account of the fall of Jerusalem. He is the writer of this incredible book and also the book of Lamentations. So much of what Jeremiah says is just so applicable and so helpful, but unfortunately I think sometimes Jeremiah has been avoided. It's not the easiest book to read. I'll say something about that in a minute. And it's a lot of doom and gloom and we don't like doom and gloom, but Jeremiah is an extraordinary prophet. He is a priest who is called to be a prophet, don't know a whole lot more biograph, biograph , biographical. Well that's hard to say. Biographical information about him. He does seem to have a bent towards sadness and lamentation. And maybe that comes because he is preaching, probably begins his preaching during the end of Manassas reign when the people are so steeped in wickedness. There are other prophets of his time, Zeniah , Obadiah , Halda the prophet, and Ezekiel and Daniel are all during the time of Jeremiah cuz he preaches for some 40 years, a long time. And as we're reading in Jeremiah, we're gonna get a lot of information and a lot of emphasis on Babylon. So please make note that there's a change on the world stage, a serious declining and Babylon is coming on. They'll be the big dog on the block. Now, Jeremiah's main message over and over again is that the people need to repent. He kind of takes the Joel two passage and expands it into 40 years of preaching. I think that's a pretty good summary of Jeremiah. He does talk a lot about how security can only be found in God because as the Babylonian power rises in the East, there's lots of conversation about, Hey, could we form an alliance with as Syria , they're diminishing, but maybe that would be enough. Hey, what about Egypt? Could we get Egypt on our side? And Jeremiah says, all of that's a mistake. Don't do that. Serve the Lord, repent, serve the Lord. So he calls for the people to repent so that God will not bring judgment upon them. Then at some point, Jeremiah shifts his preaching and starts saying, it's too late. Judgment is going to come. We just need to learn the lesson of judgment. And then finally, Jeremiah even has some things to say about how this judgment is for the purpose of restoration. That the idea is we'll learn from this so that we can serve God in a better way. And Jeremiah even has some things to say to the exiles who are, by that time when he's writing that in Babylonian captivity. Now, what's the hardest part about reading Jeremiah? I think the hardest part about reading Jeremiah is that it's not in chronological order. And while the beginning of the book is pretty much in chronological order, mostly set during the time of Josiah, after that, it really starts to skip around. And it gets very, very difficult to keep track of who's king of what, where and when and, and are we under direct seed right now? Or is Babylon still coming and could we still make an alliance with the Egyptians or, oh wait, they've already demolished the city. It gets very difficult, particularly for Western readers who want to read things in chronological order. It's not in chronological order. Maybe the other difficult thing is that he, he preaches during the reign of five kings and four of them have a name that starts with Jay . Josiah Joah has Jo Joah Kim and Jo Joah Chan , thank you for everybody having a Jay to start their name. So it can be hard to sort out as we're reading along and as you're listening to the podcast, I'll try to give you some information about who's on the throne and the timeframes. Write that in your Bible the next time you're reading in Jeremiah, that will help you tremendously and pay attention to a couple of key words. Listening is a big emphasis in Jeremiah who you listen to, who you hear the idea of repenting and turning back, returning to God that's used over a hundred times in the book of Jeremiah. So there's enough introductory stuff to get us going. In Jeremiah, he is verse one, chapter one, verse one, the son of hill , Kay , probably not the high priest who discovered the copy of the law during the time of Josiah that we read about yesterday. That's not who is in charge here. Uh , that's not who is Jeremiah's father at least. And this would be about somewhere verse two, to whom the word of the Lord came in the day of Josiah. This would be in the 13th year of his reign, 6 27 bc. Josiah began raining in about 6 40, 6 41. So this is 627 years before the birth of Christ, give or take roughly speaking so and forth. And Jeremiah will preach for the next 41 years. How about that? So what God begins with then is a motivational word for Jeremiah because his task is going to be so difficult. Some translations have verse six as him being a child, but it's better translated here being a youth. And God tells him, you're not speaking from your own authority. I'm going to be with you and protect you, and I'm going to give you the source. I'm gonna be the source of your messages. Verse nine. But as you look at verse 10, the close of our reading today, there's only two positive words there. And there's four negative words there. Mostly Jeremiah's preaching. Yeah, gonna be kind of negative. Get ready for that. See you tomorrow and we'll continue in Jeremiah chapter one on Tuesday. It is Tuesday. And today we read Jeremiah chapter one verses 11 to 19. And here Jeremiah receives two visions. He sees an almond branch and then he sees a boiling pot. And in the q and a on Sunday, I said some hard things about original language research and that we need to be careful with all of that. And then here I'm going to cite some original language research. Let me speak in that particular direction. First and foremost, I'm not going to offer some kind of novel, new interpretation or new translation here of the word almond or something like that. Oh, I, I clicked on this word in my interlinear and I decided to offer an entirely different approach to Jeremiah one in verse 11. That's inappropriate. And I talked about that yesterday, or I'm sorry, on Sunday in the 9:00 AM as I talked about that in q and A, don't do that. We don't have the skill to do that. We usually don't have the tools to do that. We don't know what we're doing. Somebody cranks out a Greek or Hebrew argument that is far a field of what con good, solid translations, how they have rendered a passage. You need to be very, very suspicious of that. No, the English translations are not perfect, but wow, they're done by a committee of scholars and you get four or five translations and they're all lining up pretty much the same way. And then somebody comes up and says, oh no, all of those people have it wrong, but I have it right. Come on, come on, come on. We , we just need to be super careful about that. That doesn't mean though, that original language research never helps us. And when you consult good scholars, good commentaries, they can help us see what's going on here. Because in the English, this doesn't make much sense. I see an almond branch, verse 12, oh, I'm watching over my word to perform it. What , what , what does that have to do with anything? Well, maybe you have the marginal note like I do in the E S V that the word almond in verse 11, the Hebrew word for almond sounds like the Hebrew word for watching Hebrew loves po puns. Like this makes a word play . And, and we have, we have various devices like that, like alliteration, like the preacher to have three points that all begin with the same letter. And he pounds out those letters every time. You know, don't, don't let power, possessions or popularity take over your life. So we like that the , that's a device, that's a rhetorical device to help us remember and to help something make, have some emphasis, make a point in our uh , make a point and help us to remember those things. And so here you have almond and it sounds like watching and that works to make that more memorable. And then we have a boiling pot that is showing that trouble is coming from the north. The pot is tilting away from the north indicating it's going to pour out on the south. So all of this works together to say that there's gonna be some terrible judgments because verse 16, they have forsaken me and they are involved in idolatry . Two things are being specified there as the reason for the judgment. And then God closes verses 18 and 19, closes this message with a word of encouragement for Jeremiah because what he says is not going to be very welcome to many, many people. We'll continue to read in Jeriah on Wednesday. See you then. Welcome to Wednesday. And it's a special Wednesday because tonight we began at Westside, our summer series, the Case for Christianity. And our first speaker is Joe Greer. Here's Joe to tell you just a little bit about what he's talking about and what he's going to cover in his lesson this evening.

Hello, I'm Joe Greer. I look forward to being with you this week as you begin your Wednesday evening summer series. Tonight's lesson is both foundational and powerful. What was it that compelled the first disciples to become baptized believers? I would suggest that it was evidence. Evidence that was convincing and undeniable. They were moved by what they saw and what they heard. Would you come study with us? I look forward to seeing you.

I know you're looking forward to hearing Joe tonight. Let's get our daily Bible reading in from Jeremiah, the second chapter today we're reading verses one to 11. This is a very picturesque section of Jeremiah if you're going to answer the question on the back of our reading schedule about metaphors. Question four, what figures of speech or metaphors are employed in the text? If you write all of these down, you're gonna fill a notebook up in a hurry because Jeremiah loves pictures. And what dominates our reading today in verses one to eight is the picture of an unfaithful wife. We'll go on from there to see a broken cistern, a plundered slave animals , a degenerate vine. Verse 21 of people who are staying . Verse 22, an animal in heat, verse 22 to 25. I mean, it just goes on and on. He really, really likes to put a metaphor out there to illustrate what he's talking about. And this material, chapter two really runs in a unit all the way to chapter six where Jo Jeremiah is exposing the people's hearts during the time of Josiah's reforms. One of the problems with Jo Josiah's, wow , that's difficult to say. One of the problems with Josiah's reforms is that the people don't seem to really take that to heart. They don't return with a whole heart. And I wonder if there are some complaints arising during Josiah's reforms. Maybe what we see a little bit further in chapter two, we'll get to some of this later in chapter two, we'll see that the people are not comfortable with what Josiah is doing. Verse 23, maybe people are complaining. Verse 25, maybe people are saying, Hey, I haven't done anything that's so bad. Are we seeing a little bit of that here in in in Jeremiah? Is he having to deal with some of that in his preaching? What really stands out in our reading today is in chapter two, verse eight, the priest did not say, where is the Lord? Those who handle the law don't know me. It's all about relationship. These people have forgotten God. And Jeremiah says that failure falls on the priest. Then in verse nine, he shifts to the imagery of a court case and even talks a little bit about those in Cyprus. And those who Kadar Kadar would refer to the desert tribes. Your translation may have [inaudible] instead of Cyprus. That's the coastlands. Those people, Jeremiah says they're at least faithful to their gods. Their gods are false gods, but they serve their gods. No, not my people. God says they're not faithful to me. Israel is the only nation to have worshiped the true one God, and they're the only nation to have exchanged the worship of the true one God for the vain pursuit of idols and idolatry. That is Jeremiah says in tomorrow's reading, appalling, we'll talk more about this and continue in Jeremiah chapter two tomorrow. But tonight it's the case for Christianity. And then tomorrow more in Jeremiah, see you tonight. It is Thursday and today we read in Jeremiah the second chapter verses 12 to 20. We will not read the entire second chapter. Feel free to go ahead and read it on your own time if you would like to, but Jeremiah is such a lengthy book, we just can't read everything. So we'll be sampling. Make certain that you're paying careful attention to the reading schedule and you're doing the readings that are set forth for that week, especially because as I noted, Jeremiah is not in chronological order. So sometimes it'll be a little Skippy as we jump around, as we are trying to read it in some sort of chronological order, meshing it with the history in Kings and Chronicles. So let's get started. In Jeremiah the second chapter verses 12 to 20, I think verse 13 is the key verse in our reading today. There is the double sin there called out of omission and co commission . One scholar said the most reliable and refreshing sources of water in Israel were her natural springs. This water was dependable, it's clear, cool. Consistency was satisfying. In contrast, the most unreliable source of water is cisterns. Cisterns were large pits dug into the rock and covered with plaster. These pits were used to gather rainwater and the water would be brackish, and if the rains were below normal, it could run out worse. Yet, if a cistern developed a crack, it would not hold water to turn from a dependable, pure stream of running water to a broken brackish. Cistern was idiotic. Yet this is exactly what Judah did when she turned from God unto idols. What an outstanding quotation that really helps us think about verse 13 and maybe a good application here is to ask what do people turn from God to serve today that is just a broken cistern. Do you see broken cisterns in your own life as you continue to read? Notice verse 16 references the Egyptians. Don't forget, Pharaoh shek had invaded Judah in 9 25, about several hundred years now before the time of Josiah, but one teams 14 covers that in verses 25 and 26. And that is a time when Egypt had triumphed over Judah. And then I love verse 17 here answering the question of verse 14, what's the problem here? The problem verse 17 is you, this is all your fault and that is expanded. Then in verse 18, the nation is vainly going from Egypt to as Syria trying to for some kind of treaty that would guarantee her safety. Finally then verse 19, your evil will chastise you and your apostacy will reprieve you. This is a basic principle. This is God's modus opera operandi. The punishment fits the crime, and particularly the punishment comes because sin has within it it's own bitter payback. When you get involved in sin, it's not just an eternity without God that you face, it'll make your life miserable right now. One scholar said the greatest judgment God could send to disobedient people is to let them have their own way and reap the sad, painful consequences of their own sins. And that of course makes verse 20 even more poignant. God long ago broke your yo God is the God who freed them from the Egypt. God is the God of the exodus. And yet now you bow down under every green tree like a. You refuse to serve God, but instead are caught up in idolatry . We'll shift out of Jeremiah two over to Jeremiah three for our reading to end the week on Friday. See you tomorrow. Welcome to Friday. And today we turn our attention to Jeremiah. The third chapter we'll read verses one to 14. The dominant word here is the word turn or return or faithless or backsliding. They're all in the same word, family. They're all in the Hebrew, the same form of the word turn or return . So underline that in your Bible and watch for all of that. It begins in chapter three and verse one with the discussion of how if a man's wife leaves him and they get a divorce, she was prohibited by the law, Deuteronomy chapter 24, from ever being reunited with her first husband. Yet Judah has left Jehovah and lived as a prostitute with many lovers. These actions are defiling her. And so what the prophet says here is that God has the right to not take her back. What's Jeremiah getting at? Jeremiah's getting at? They need to quit taking God for granted. Remember, God did divorce the northern kingdom. In fact, that will be the point in verses six to 11 in our reading today. So don't look around and say, meh , you know, whenever we get around a repenting, whenever we want God, God will certainly take us back. God will forgive us. It's all just good. No, it's not. You're behaving in an offensive and awful way. In fact, one writer commented, this material is kind of hard to read. There's lots of polluting the land with your prostitution and with your, with your whoom, you have the forehead of a. It's probably is a little ah , maybe a little PG rated as we're trying to do some reading in our Bible with our family. But one writer said that not only is this offensive, what is offensive is the behavior of the people of God. And that's exactly right. Rather than turning away from this, we need to talk about how God feels when his people turn from him. That's what's going on here and that's what's important in our reading today. Notice verse three, there's a fulfillment of where we started the year in Deuteronomy chapter 28, the blessings in the curses that's being talked about, showers being withheld in verses four in five. I think this is a real problem during Josiah's reformations, but people cry out to God, but eh , they don't really repent because it seems like as we get into verse six, the days of King Josiah that she, the people of God here , the she , she will return to me. God says verse seven, no, she did not return to me verse 10 with all of her heart, but in pretense, but in pretense not to get ahead of myself. But when Josiah dies and is buried with great pomp and circumstances, oh my . And then the next king comes up, there's just an immediate return to idolatry and and there's a little bit of this, Hey, wait, what happened to all that Josiah did? And I think Jeremiah is giving us some insight into this. The people did not return to God with all their heart. Wow. Shades of Joel and the things that Joel says about repentance. So go and proclaim these words. Look to the north. Verse 12. Is the north still there? No, God carried them away. God took them away because of their sin. So don't think that we can just send sin , sin and oh, it'll never make any difference. God will always forgive us. No, you need to repent. And the key to repentance, verse 13 is acknowledging guilt and that you rebelled against the Lord. That is what repentance is all about. That's what these people need. And you know what? That's a message we need today as well. On Monday we continue in the third chapter of Jeremiah. This is some strong preaching, but it is some needed preaching. Well, there you go. That's the podcast for the week. Thank you for listening. You know what I'm gonna say here. If you love the Monday Morning Coffee podcast, we'd love for you to subscribe or follow and especially to rate and give the podcast a review that helps more people find the podcast. And of course, the best thing to do is to share the show with someone else that helps more people read and understand the Bible. Well, until next week, I hope that 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.

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.