No more excuses! - Stopping the Shimei Cycle

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, November the 20th. It's Thanksgiving week. Lots going on our prayer service Wednesday night is coming up best Wednesday night of the year by far. All kinds of great things are happening this week, but I know you want to stay with your Bible reading, maintain your disciplines. We want to think a little bit about yesterday's sermon and load that into our lives beginning right now, so it's time. Get you some coffee. I have coffee. I've got my Bible open to second Samuel 19 and I'll tell you why in just a moment. Let's get started. The reason I have my Bible open to second Samuel 19 is because I didn't get to read this passage yesterday on Shiai Sunday. Yeah, it kind of was Shiai day. He was the center of the 10 40. He was a big part of the nine and what I didn't get to read, as we were talking about stop making excuses, learning from shi I , what I didn't get to read is that when David was restored to the throne, someone mentioned this would be an opportune time to get rid of people who didn't respect the royal throne. In Shemi shows up in two Samuel 19 verse 16 with his hat in his hand and he knows he is in real trouble and he says in verse 19, two Samuel 1919, let not my Lord hold me guilty or remember how your servant did wrong on the day, my Lord, the king left Jerusalem abishai in verse 21 said, shall not , shall I be put to death for this because he cursed the Lord's anointed. And I'm kind of thinking, Abishai, you are right. This man sinned against God's anointed king. But David says verse 22, what have I had to do with you, you son of Za Ruah that you should this day be an adversary to me? Should anyone be put to death in Israel, do I not know that I am this day king of Israel and the king said, he shall I , you shall not die. Now what's the point of reading that today? It is to make the point that sometimes we use grace as an excuse to continue in sin. Shall I should have felt humbled, tremendously humbled. Here he has in foolish and reckless ways, done things that should have cost him his life. By grace he is pardoned and he is allowed to live. But instead of being humbled when we get to first kings, when see that he lives recklessly and has no regard for the authority of the king, that that king of course being Solomon, it seems that shemi takes the fact that he got a pass as an excuse to not take the king's law seriously. Hey, I'll just get a pass again. And that is the danger of grace. We can presume upon it, we can take it for granted. We can decide. It means we got away with something. So since I got away with it last time, I'll probably be able to get away with it again. I wonder if any of us ever used grace as an excuse to sin. God's forgiven me before he will this time as well. God hasn't struck me dead for this. Don't think he's gonna strike me dead this time either. Hey, I'll get around to apologizing later. I'll get around to repentance sometime in the future, but right now I'm gonna enjoy the passing pleasures of sin for a season shim . I may have thought I got away with it and use that as an excuse to continue to live in violation of what the king told him to do. Let's make sure you and I are not using grace as an excuse to send the message yesterday. Stop making excuses. We need to obey God. Hope that helps you as you turn your Bible to the book of Haggai. Let's get Bible reading started for this week. It is Monday and today we read in the book of Haggai Haggai chapter two verses one to nine. This begins in verse one, giving a date. Haggai loves these dates. This is October 17th, five 20. It's been about a month since they started working and what we have here is the discouragement that comes when you start a project in about a quarter, maybe a third of the way in, you step back and you look at it and you realize this isn't gonna be as cool as I thought it was gonna be, or it's gonna take more work than I thought it was gonna take. This isn't going as good as we want and that is what's happening. Who is left among you? Verse three, who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it nothing as nothing in your eyes? In Ezra , the third chapter which we read last week, we saw that when they laid the foundations of the temple and put the ultra back in place, the people wept and shouted for joy. And the people who were weeping were the people who had seen the original temple. They knew then that they had no possible way to build anything as magnificent as what Solomon had constructed with the resources and the finances that Solomon commanded. But Haggai says again and again, be strong, be strong, be strong. Gonna hear more about that by the way, on Sunday, that's a sneak preview of what's coming next, but I love here that Haggai encourages the rubble by saying God is at work. Verse six is the only verse in Haggai that's used in the New Testament. It's used in Hebrews 12 and verse 26. The New Testament author uses this to speak of the final earthquake or shaking if you will, saying that we will survive that if we are in Jesus and then there's the discussion of the nation's bringing their treasures in. Some rabbis apply that to the Messiah, but the verse is never quoted or alluded to in the New Testament. I think maybe it applies to the church. I'm thinking about Ephesians two or one , Peter chapter two, the elect people are the treasure of the nation's called forth by Jesus and the glory there will be greater verse nine because Jesus will personally walk in that temple. I'm not entirely certain what to make of seven, eight, and nine and you may not be as well. What is the shaking? I'm not sure. We have to be able to identify precisely what the shaking is. What rebel is being told by Haggai is that God is at work. Don't give up and don't quit. Just because you think it's small doesn't mean God can't use it. God is working and that temple that you're building is going to be important. We know that from the New Testament. As I said, Jesus visits this temple, but we'll talk more about the work of God. I love this idea in chapter two verses one to nine though that God is working. We need much more of that in our lives today. I am convinced and I hope in this busy, busy week you'll plan to spend some time with God by reading your Bible that'll help you in your Thanksgiving, which is kind of the point of the holiday on Thursday and it will help you draw near to God. See you tomorrow when we'll finish Haggai chapter two. It is Tuesday and today we complete the book of Haggai. We read Haggai chapter two verses 10 to 23. This breaks into two pieces, 10 to 19 is about holiness and sin and how that is transmitted. And then there's a final word in verse 20 through the end of the chapter, verse 23 for rebel . Let's talk about this complicated section in verses 10 to 19. This is a difficult question because we don't understand all the things that are going on with this. We don't understand about ritual, cleanness and uncles. Remember under the old law, if you touched a dead body or if you came in contact with certain diseases, a leper for example, you were considered unclean and that wasn't necessarily a sinful state, it's just that you weren't in the right state to go and worship God. And then of course there was also you could be unclean as a result of sin. So there's lots of purification that goes on under the old law, lots of ritual cleansing and baths that had to be taken to purify so that you could go to the tabernacle or you could go to the temple and Haggai is building on that. It's kind of the parable here of defilement and the question has to do with contagious holiness and contagious sin. If you touch something with something that's holy , does does that make something else? Does , does that convey holiness to whatever it touches? And of course the answer to that in verse 12 is no. If you have holy meat and you go around touching holy meat to stuff that that doesn't make the door of the house holy or the clothes holy or something like that, however precisely the opposite is true. If you have something that is unclean, if you have a dead body and you walk around touching people with that dead body, that's kind of a gross image. But if you use that dead body, you carry it around and you touch the door, you, you touch someone with it. Yeah, it conveys un holiness. It conveys un cleanliness. So one scholar said this is a kind of parable that Haggai uses to show it's always easier to spread spiritual pollution and defilement than it is to spread holiness in virtue. For example, if you take a glass of clean water and put it into a single drop of dirt and put into it a single drop of dirty water, you will soon see the effect. But a single drop of clean water in a glass of dirty water would have no visible effect. And I think that's exactly right. So the idea is that holiness is not catching, but sinfulness is, and Haggai makes his point then in verses 13 and 14 when he says that the bad attitudes of a few have infected everyone, that their sin is coag contagious if you will. You have been disobedient to God, you didn't obey so , so everything you touch has become unclean and unacceptable. Another scholar wrote, God is saying that during the 16 year period when the temple was neglected, the people may have thought they were holy because they were back in the holy land, they were in the holy city, but in fact they were defiled because of their disobedience. The result was that everything they did was defiled the harvest, rapport , economic and commercial life declined. God reminded them of this so their un holiness caught on to everything that was around them because they were ignoring God's house. That leaves us then with some ideas here about future blessing in verses 15 to 19 and there's some question in verse 15. Is it onward or backward? There's uncertainty about exactly how to translate all of that. But there's illustrations then of how bad it was before they were started the temple project and now verse 19, that all is going to be well, let's complete Hagi two then by reading this message to rebul . This word comes just to rebul on December 18th, five 20 and here God speaks of a shaking of the nations, maybe the time of the Messiah as God gets everyone's attention and the world is changing as the Messiah's rule begins. In fact , um, this idea of shaking the nations is the idea in Hebrews 12 in verse 26 and then the term my servant used in verse 23, rebel my servant. That is a term that is often used by Isaiah of the Messiah. So rebel seems to be a type of the Messiah. He is not the Messiah, but he is in the genealogy of Christ. And it seems to me that in these bad times, God is saying, I've not forgotten my promise to David in two Samuel seven and the Messiah is going to come. I will make you like a signet ring. Jehan we need to be reminded was likened to a signet ring thrown away in Jeremiah chapter 22 in verse 24. So Za Abel has been faithful and he will be exalted further, he represents an idea that the Messianic line interrupted by the exile is intact and God knows about those promises and has not forgotten them. I like Haggai a lot and I am certainly glad that we went and got some of the material in Ezra to give us good context as we read the book of Haggai Zechariah's message. His first message actually fits in between our Monday and Tuesday readings. Zachariah's first message comes between Haggai two nine and Haggai two 10 and tomorrow we turn to Zechariah . Let's hear what that prophet was preaching during the time of Haggai and the return from exile. It is Wednesday and today we begin the Book of Zechariah . Full disclosure, this is probably what I have dreaded all year as we've been reading in the prophets. Zechariah is just difficult, really, really hard in places. So just get ready to scratch your head a little bit and say, I'm not entirely sure what that's about because you're gonna hear that plenty on the podcast. I'll say a few words about Zechariah. The man Zechariah's , a very popular Hebrew name. There are at least 27 men in the Old Testament with that name. He does seem to be a priest. Uh , Nehemiah chapter 12 in verse 16 talks about that he seems to have succeeded his grandfather and even become the head of his family. He does preach a lot longer than Haggai does. He may have preached even into the reign of art of Xes , which would be from 4 65 to 4 24. And he is not by the way the blood of Zechariah . The mention in Second Chronicles 24 verses 2021 and 22, he is not that Zechariah that's mentioned. There he is the Zechariah of Ezra chapter five and verse one. That's the context for Haggai and Zechariah . Now, the prophets, Haggai and Zacharia , the son of Eddo , prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel who was over them. Zechariah is here to get these people moving and to help them serve God in a better way, particularly to restart the rebuilding of the temple project The way that Zacharia does that of course is extremely memorable. He does that through a series of visions, or maybe I should say God does that through a series of visions revealed to Zacharia . The book is the longest and most difficult of these minor prophet books. There's tons of angels, an apocalyptic kind of language. It feels like the book of Revelation. It feels like parts of Daniel or Ezekiel. We need to remember in apocalyptic books like this not to try to make too much out of the details. In a minute we're gonna have some horses of different colors and there is always someone ready to tell us what those colors mean. The Bible doesn't make anything out of those colors. We need to be careful that we're not doing more than the Bible is doing. The Bible is showing us some big ideas. Apocalyptic literature is about encouragement, encouraging God's people don't give up, don't quit, don't join the enemy. Find comfort. And I think the Book of Zechariah deals in those kinds of ideas and that's where we want to be as well. So here comes this first sermon, as I said yesterday, it's between Haggai chapter two verse nine and Haggai chapter two, verse 10. That's a good thing to write in your Bible. In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius came the prophet Zechariah , the son of Eddo . This is October five 20 and in this first sermon, God indicates that he was very angry with their fathers verses two and three and wants them to return to me notice, not return to the law, no return to me. God desires relationship with these people. Don't be like your fathers. They did not listen. So the words of the prophets, verse six, did they not overtake your fathers? Yes, they most certainly did. And this year we have read the words of those prophets and seen that is exactly the case. So we need to do what's right. Their failure to respond to the word of God was a failure to respond to God. Notice verse four, they did not hear or pay attention to me when they didn't listen to Jeremiah. When they didn't listen to Hosea. They weren't listening to God. So the book presents primarily a bright future for Judah, but it all depends on this. Will they listen? Will they fully return to God? And brother home of Haley says that when Haggai and Zechariah are compared, one concludes that among those who returned from Babylon, there were some who were totally dedicated to the Lord and others whose total commitment was sorely lacking. Haggai moved the dedicated ones. Zechariah called the second group. I think that's probably right. Zacharia seems to have a little bit more emphasis on let's get it together. Where Haggai seems to have more emphasis on, it's gonna go, let's do this. You can do it. Maybe some distinctions in their audiences there. What follows then in Zechariah one verse seven is the first of eight visions given in February of five 19, there are eight visions and these visions follow a pattern, there'll be an introduction, and then there'll be a depiction of what is seen. Then Zechariah will say, what does this mean? And then an angel will say, this is what that means. And so he sees in this first vision, horsemen a man, verse eight, riding on a red horse, standing among the Myrtle trees, there was a red sore and white horses . What are these? My Lord? See this pattern? They go verse 10 to patrol the earth. And the idea here is the earth is at rest, the earth is calm. Wait a minute, I thought Haggai said there's gonna be a shaking that God is gonna move and do dramatic things. Maybe some people were wondering, is God still in charge? Is God still at work? Maybe God is still mad at us even though we've come home from the Babylonian captivity. The word comes to Zechariah that God is zealous. Verse 14, for Jerusalem, for Zion, he has not given up. He is angry with these nations that have come up against his people and is going to deal with them. So we come to the second vision, the four horns verses 18 to 21. Horns are an image of strength in the Bible. Psalm 18, two, and here we get four horns. These are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem. Verse 19, most scholars would identify that as a Syria , Egypt, Babylon, and the mito Persian empire. These have come and attacked Judah. What's gonna happen? These are the horns that scattered Judah, but God is coming to destroy them. Verse 21, God would raise up powers to destroy these nations. The shaking that Haggai promised is going to come to pass. Then tomorrow we read the third vision. I'll see you on Thursday as we read Haggai, no, not Haggai, as we read Zechariah chapter two. I hope you'll make time for that In all the Thanksgiving preparations that are going on, you'll spend some time with the Lord. If you can't, that's okay. We don't want Bible reading to become a, a burden and, and uh , some kind of false legalism where we feel compelled. You can double up on Friday. Maybe after you get out and do some Black Friday shopping or maybe at halftime of some of the ball games tomorrow, you can do that. Don't forget tonight we have our Thanksgiving prayer service. Best Wednesday of the year. Tremendous opportunity. Don't say I, I got so much to do, I'm, I'm gonna tune in and I'll just watch the live stream . Never the same. It's never the same. Is it Come be in the assembly. We'll sit together, we'll pray together. You'll be blessed to begin your Thanksgiving holiday in a time of Thanksgiving prayer. See you tonight and I'll talk with you tomorrow on Thanksgiving Day about Zaria too . It is Thursday, happy Thanksgiving. I hope you're having a wonderful day today. Hope the Cowboys will win. And I hope that your Turkey and dressing and stuffing and cranberries are wonderful cranberries out of the can. That's the only way to eat cranberries. I love it when it makes that noise coming out of the can. And that is absolutely the best way to eat cranberries, which is not why you tuned into the podcast, but that was a free bonus. Get your cranberries in the can. Now let's think about Zechariah chapter two. Here's the vision of the man with the measuring line, and he seems to be measuring verse two, spiritual Jerusalem verses four and five seem to indicate that this is Jerusalem as representative of God's relationship to all of his people. We're not even sure verse four, who this young man is, but then there is the call in verse six to come out of Babylon. When we were reading in Ezra, one of the good questions that we talked about at some length in our Tuesday night Zoom call was, did you have to leave Babylon? Here the call is to go back and people are loading down those who are going back with all kinds of gold and silver, but some people are not going back themselves. And we talked about, does that make you a bad Jew if you don't go home to the promised land? And there was good discussion about that. Not everybody went back. Daniel, for example, does not go back perhaps because he is old. But it does seem clear from both Jeremiah and Ezekiel that God's work is going on in Judea, in Jerusalem. If you wanna be part of God's people and God's plan, you need to pick up and go. Even if life is comfortable in Babylon, you'd better go home. Well, this now is furthered as we read the people in Babylon, they need to go because they are becoming like the Babylonians. They are becoming like that city. Now, verse eight is very difficult. We're not entirely sure where that is. Maybe the angel is sent to get glory for God by taking vengeance on the nation. It's hard to know, but through that vengeance, verse nine, God vindicates his claim as being the only God. And this is a reversal. This is not what is expected, which in apocalyptic literature like this where you see visions and angels and signs, reversal is very, very common. Everything is going one direction, then God shows up and bang wins the battle and everything goes in an entirely different direction so that that would be expected. And there's this shaking idea. Remember Zechariah is preaching in the time of Haggai who had talked in Haggai chapter two about a shaking. Well be patient, the shaking is coming and God is gonna vindicate his people. There will be a time to come verse 11, when many nations shall join themselves to the Lord. That seems to look beyond physical Jerusalem to a time when all people can be in covenant relationship with him. I'm thinking that's pushing into the time of the Messiah. That's pushing into the time of the gospel age and the Lord will inherit Judah. Verse 12. It says , portion in the holy land will again choose Jerusalem. I'm thinking about the heavenly Jerusalem, the church being exalted and glorified finally in heaven. Maybe that's the emphasis there, but the Lord is coming. The calm that was seen in chapter one in verse 11, and that Haggai has talked about that calm is about to be broken in a dramatic way. That's the vision of the man with a measuring line. Happy Thanksgiving, I'll see you tomorrow. We'll see how the deals are on Black Friday. Welcome to Friday and it is Black Friday. I can remember giving away my age here when you actually had to get up and go and stand in line at three o'clock in the morning outside of Best Buy or Bass Pro or whatever store you wanted to get a great Black Friday deal from. You lined up and then everybody stampeded in there and started grabbing stuff and running for deals. Now of course, we just get up, look on our phone or look on our laptop or our tablet and start clicking away as Black Friday deals come up on the web, things change and maybe technology makes it a little bit better. I have gotten up very early on some Black Friday mornings to accompany my daughters shopping. One year I stayed out all night with my niece and a good friend of hers. I promised them that I would ferry them around, chauffeur them around all the Black Friday deals. I just knew by about two o'clock in the morning they would be done. Absolutely not. Came in about eight that morning. We had literally been up shopping all night long. Wow. Oh, good times and good memories. Hope you're having a great black Friday. Hope the football games today are good and particularly am concerned about the games tomorrow. My Buckeyes have a huge game thinking about that already. But before all of that insignificant stuff goes down, let's think about Zechariah three and Zechariah four. We're gonna read both of these chapters today. I've combined some chapters in Zechariah so that we can get a little further in Zacharia a little faster because there's gonna be a lot here that's kind of hard to hold onto . It's a little bit difficult to know exactly what's being done or what's being said here. And so spending a great deal of time over and over saying, I don't know, probably isn't very profitable. So we'll read both of these visions today. The first is the vision of Joshua, the high priest. And there's no questions or interpreting explanations from an angel here because it's just so obvious. Joshua represents God's work in all of Israel and he is dirty. They need their sins forgiven and God cleanses him. How could God use a nation as filthy as the Jews are? In fact, in verse three, the expression for filthy is a really strong word, filthy, like the worst kind of filthy like you've been wade in the septic tank, filthy, really awful and defensive . And the angel says, get those garments off of him, and he's reclothed. And now there's promises to Joshua verse seven. If you walk in my ways and keep my charge, then all these good things are going to happen. In fact, the branch is going to happen. Verse eight, and that is the Messiah. The expression branch is used of the Messiah. In Isaiah four verse two 11 verse one, Jeremiah uses that chapter 23 verse five. Jeremiah 33, verse 15, Zechariah will use it again in chapter 16 , verse 12, the branch of David and the branch is gonna be part of this and there's a stone. That stone may be the church, it may probably best is seen as the Messiah. Jesus talks a little bit about being the stumbling stone, but great things are going to happen. Every one of you, verse 10, will invite the neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree . That's a expression that was common in Zacharia's day. For good times, good things are gonna happen in the mess . In the messianic time, the redeemed will invite everyone to come and enjoy the blessedness found in the kingdom of God. Then we get chapter four, the vision of the lamp stand. And this is very difficult. The main purpose here is not hard to perceive. Oftentimes that's how it is in visions, in apocalyptic kinda literature, we get the big idea, but some of the details are a little difficult. For example, it's a little hard to picture exactly what is being seen in verse two. Zechariah can see it, but we cannot, is this a single column and it's got a bowl on top and there's maybe others see a minera with different arms and a bowl on top of each arm being fed by two olive trees. Some people see seven lamps, some people see 14 lamps, some people see 49 lamps. It's hard to know exactly what we're looking at , but there are olive trees one on each side of it. And the angel says, what? What? What are you doing? What? Or Zechariah says to the angel, verse four, what is this all about? And the angel says, don't you know? And he says, I don't. And he says, this is the work of God. It is a design verses six and seven to encourage the rubble to stay with it. Keep building that temple lovable . You are in God's plan. God is blessing you. God is doing this. In fact, anything verse seven that gets in the way, any mountain that represents obstacles, God will level and God is pleased with you, lovable. God loves what you're doing and don't despise. Verse 10, the day of small things, keep at it. And there's this final section then that points to the anointed ones in verse 14. Hard to know who that is and what that references. The only ones anointed in the Old Testament are the high priest and a king. So maybe this is a king and a high priest is that rebel . And Joshua Rebel is not a king, but he is in the Davidic line. So maybe he has to do, and of course Joshua is the high priest. And those those roles are combined in the Messiah. Jesus is king and priest . Not sure I know everything about Zechariah chapter four, but it is clear that God is saying to rebel What you are doing matters. And I am pleased with it. Keep it up. Don't despise the day of small things. What a great message. Sometimes we get a little discouraged in the church. We see the things that big denominational churches are doing. Wow, we're just not as cool as they are. We're not doing great stuff like them. Don't despise the day of small things. God is at work. Thank you for listening, particularly during a busy holiday week. I hope that you have subscribed or followed this podcast so that it will download automatically onto your device. If you need help with that, say something to somebody at church on Sunday and will get you put with somebody who can do all the technical stuff necessary to make that work for you. Hope you've given a review on iTunes or whatever app you're listening on. And of course, as I always say, please tell someone else about the podcast, especially as we get into the new year and as people are thinking about Bible reading, you want to say to folks, this will help you stay in your Bible reading. So until next week, may your coffee be delightful. May your Friday be wonderful, and may the Lord be with you today all day. I'm Mark and I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come to see you on Monday.

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.