Daily Bible Reading, Week 10

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, March the fourth. I'm Mark. I'm holding a great cup of coffee. I've got my Bible open to the gospel of Mark because I'm gonna go straight to daily Bible reading because, because I didn't preach yesterday at West Side Brother Warren, I'm sure did an outstanding job. I'm looking forward to listening to that sermon and I am actually home for the weekend. I was in the Atlanta area with the Roswell Church of Christ, but I'm home and awfully glad to be home and talking with you about the gospel of Mark. Open your Bible to Mark chapter 11. Let's talk fig trees. Let's talk discipleship. Let's get started. Monday's reading is in Mark, mark chapter 11, verses 20 to 26, and this is about the fig tree. Let me get a swallow of coffee here. Okay, that's about the end of that coffee that I roasted the other day. I'm gonna need to fire the roaster up and get going again. Probably gonna need some help with that. Jonathan , are you listening? But Mark chapter 11 is about that fig tree beginning verse 20 that we read last week in verses 12, 13 and 14. Remember the fig tree puts the leaves out and then the fruit comes. So Jesus saw the fig tree's leaves and assumed there would be fruit there. There was none. The fig tree was barren. And so here we get again a revisiting of that what happened with Jesus's curse upon the fig tree. Verse 20, as they passed by in the morning, they saw that the fig tree had withered away to its roots, destroyed from the roots. Judgment has fallen on this tree. Maybe sometimes we talk about Jesus cleansing the temple, but Jesus didn't cleanse the fig tree, did he? He judged the fig tree. And that helps us think about what Jesus is saying about Judaism. It has the leaves, it has the appearance of bearing fruit, but it is barren and Jesus is going to, Jesus is going to judge that one writer said what he answers is the tree's. False advertising with leaves that hides its fruitlessness. The tree gives the impression it might have something to eat just as the temple gave the impression it was a place dedicated to the service of God. And of course then Jesus says some things about prayer, about picking up mountains and chunking them in the ocean. And we easily devolve into a discussion about what we can do in prayer. And does this mean I can pray for anything and if I just believe it, God has to give it to me? There's a couple of things that we need to remember about that. First and foremost, removing a mountain was a common figure of speech among Jewish people who wanted to describe a situation that would be pretty much impossible. In fact, there may even be an illusion there to Zechariah 14, to splitting the very mountain. Jesus is standing on the Mount of Olives , and we read that last year as we visited with the prophets and learned from them. Maybe the thing to do here is to focus on the word believe. Believe what he says will come to pass. What can we believe God will do? We can believe that God will do his will. He will do what brings about the kingdom. He will do what is best. God will not do what somebody decides needs doing because that serves their purpose or makes their life richer, fuller, and more luxurious. Can anyone believe that God is enslaving himself to us and to our foolish whims? Jesus never intended prayer to become something kind of like magic. We wave our magic wand and chant the magic words and God suddenly has to do that. God isn't committed to doing everything that we ask and that's a very good thing. I am sure if you are like me, you can look in the past and see some things you ask God for that were just terribly foolish. Instead, Jesus says that we can do incredible and almost impossible things like forgive others and preach the gospel everywhere. If we will trust God and do his will, if we will trust God and do his will and let God do his will in us. I think the idea here is that the apostles can do the work of God, they can continue Jesus's work if they will have faith and they will pray. What a powerful lesson on judgment and on prayer. See you tomorrow as we continue in Mark chapter 11. It is Tuesday and our reading today is Mark chapter 11, verse 27 to 33 , where Jesus's authority is questioned and the linkage here is verse 28. By what authority are you doing these things? That's what Jesus did in the temple verses 15 to 19, especially verse 18, Jesus's cleansing of the temple. Make a note of that in your Bible so that as you're reading along, you'll know where Jesus is. This is on Tuesday, the last week of Jesus' life. He's walking in the temple verse 27 and he gets challenged here. Hey, yesterday you overturned the money changers tables and you drove people out of the temple . Who do you think you are? And the idea here is to put Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. Are you some kind of egomaniac? You think you have the right to do these sorts of things or are you acting in some sort of official capacity even though you don't have any credentials? Or are you making an explicit claim to being the Messiah? Who are you? And Jesus says, let's just see if you're asking an honest question. That's a great answer with these kinds of people. And so Jesus says, let's talk about John the Baptist. Was he from heaven or from men? And I don't think Jesus just trying to make them hush up. If they will agree that John was from heaven, then Jesus will say, let's talk more about that because he testified of me and now you can accept my teachings like you've accepted John the Baptist teachings. But of course they didn't accept John the Baptist teachings. And that's exactly why Jesus is asking them about John the Baptist. And instead of answering honestly, what they do is go with total pragmatism. We better see which way the wind is blowing. See which answer will work out best for us. And so as one writer said, this option reveals they do not care if someone is commissioned by heaven or not. They want to do what they want to do. So Jesus says, I'm not gonna talk to you, not gonna give you an answer. There are some people that are not worth talking to. And it's easy sometimes for someone, particularly a false teacher, to jump up and down and say, oh, I'm being mistreated, and they won't talk to me. And how come they didn't come and talk to me personally about everything that I've ever said or done? And there are some people who have demonstrated they're not worth your time, they're not worth your time. If you don't want the truth, I'll not give you the truth. And I'll make direct, direct application of that to the folks who come and knock on my door who are part of the Watchtower Bible and track society. I'm talking about the Jehovah's Witnesses very, very quickly. I tell them I have documentation that proves that the Watchtower Bible and tracks society is a false prophet and has changed their doctrine and changed their teaching through the years. I keep a sheath of material in the closet right by the front door and I hold that out and I say, I'll tell you what. I want to give you my material and you gimme your material and you study my material. I'll study your material. We'll come together and we'll talk about it. We'll see what the Bible says. 'cause I just want to do what's right. I just wanna follow the truth. Will you accept my material? And without fail, the Jehovah's witnesses say , no, we cannot take your material. They back away from it like it's radioactive. Of course, they've been forbidden by their teachers and by their leaders to take anything from anybody told the , they've been told, oh, you better not read any of that stuff. And so they say, I won't take, oh, I can't take your material. And then I tell them, if you're not interested in the truth investigating the truth, I'll see what you have to say. If you'll see what I have to say, let's investigate the truth together. If you're not interested in investigating the truth, I don't have time for you . And that comes straight outta Mark chapter 11 and verse 33. And there are others who've tried to pick a fight or pick a debate with me. They're lo loading me down with material they want me to spend a lot of time chasing at , but they're not really interested in the truth. They're just interested in everybody saying, oh, you're right, and following them blindly. That's foolishness. That is foolishness. Let's study the truth. Let's see what the truth is all about. If these men have been about the truth, Jesus would've talked with them. They were not. And so he did not. That's a powerful lesson for us to learn today. May say more about that tonight in our Zoom Bible study, tomorrow we break ground into Mark chapter 12 and we get to hear one of Jesus's forceful parables. See you tomorrow on Wednesday. As we continue in the gospel of Mark, it is Wednesday and today we read the parable of the tenets . Mark chapter 12, verses one to 12. Notice that Jesus is still in the temple. That's important here because chapter 13 and verse one says as he came out of the temple, so Jesus is in the temple when he tells this particular parable. And there is a tie to the things that have gone on before in chapter 11. Notice particularly verse two, fruit of the vineyard. See , we're still talking about when we're still working with that whole idea of fruit and bearing fruit and being barren and is this parable is not difficult. Nobody could miss this. The owner is God and the tenants are the rulers of Israel. And the servants would be, would easily be the prophets and maybe even John the Baptist. And the implications of what Jesus is saying are evident and obvious. Everybody would understand what Jesus is going for, particularly since Isaiah chapter five talks about the song of the vineyard and Israel standing or being represented there by a vineyard. Jesus finishes this confrontation here with a quotation out of Psalm 118 in verse 25, which is the psalm, the crowd was chanting when Jesus entered the city. And Mark chapter 11 verses nine and 10, and this Psalm explains that the one who is rejected is the one who will be vindicated. The cornerstone here, probably not the best translation. More and more the consensus of scholarship is this is the capstone, the keystone in the center of an arch that holds everything together. Jesus is the one who will be exalted. These religious leaders, they're the wicked ones that God will judge more of this tomorrow in Mark chapter 12, welcome to Thursday. Today we're reading Mark chapter 12, verses 13 to 17 where Jesus talks with the Pharisees and the Herodians. We don't know a lot about the Herodians. They were the party that supported Herod, which certainly didn't make them very popular with most people. And it's a little unusual that they're hanging out with the Pharisees today. But I guess, I guess their hatred for Jesus is overruling all the rivalry and bickering that goes on between those who didn't much care for Herod and those who were supporting Herod. They just wanna know about taxes and that seems like such an innocent question, but all their flattery in verse 14 just hides that this is a very hot potato. If Jesus says don't pay taxes, then the Romans are gonna come get him, and the religious leadership isn't gonna have a Jesus problem anymore. And of course, if Jesus says, yep , you ought to pay your taxes, then maybe that'll cut into his popularity because nobody likes to hear pay taxes. So Jesus knowing their hypocrisy, verse 15 says, bring me a denarius . The denarius would have an image of the Caesar on it and it would read Tiberius Caesar, the August son of the Divine Augustus and the Jews made a big deal about how objectionable these coins were. In fact, some said they were idols and you couldn't even touch them. You couldn't pay the temple tax with them either. A bunch of that, of course is just nonsense. Was anybody worshiping that an S , this business of no images had just been taken to ridiculous extremes by the Jews? Jesus knows that and says, Hey, take a look at this coin. Who's on it? And they said, verse 16, the Caesar's image is there and Jesus makes clear while you don't like the coins and you make a big deal about trivia and minute minutiae sorts of things, can there be any other kind of minutiae besides minute minutiae? You don't seem to have any qualms doing business with Caesar's money or walking on Caesar's roads or being protected by his soldiers or sending mail through the Roman male system. You are in his realm and you must render to him what is due just like you are in God's realm and you need to, you need to render to God what is his due. And there may be even a little bit here of that business of God being of man, being made in God's image and thus we belong to the Lord. Tomorrow. Mark chapter 12, verses 18 to 27. We'll talk about the resurrection. It is Friday. We've reached the end of the week and today we're reading Mark chapter 12, verses 18 to 27. The Sadducees are trying their hand at making Jesus look foolish or trapping him in something that he says. So they come and they ask this question about the resurrection, and you can just see them thinking, we've got Jesus. Now, I am certain in their debates with the Pharisees, the Sadducees love to get out this hypothetical question. I'm sure they thought this silenced the Pharisees completely. I wonder what the Pharisees tried to do with this and how they tried to handle it. Nobody handled it like Jesus did. So they asked this question based on what's called lever right marriage, which meant that if a man dies, his brother would marry his wife so that there would be an heir and they could maintain the promised land, the land that had been given to them in their tribe , in their clan and so forth in the family. The family needs to hold onto the land. So you marry your brother's wife and raise up an heir to your brother. And so they run through seven of these all trying it. None of them are able to have a child. Verse 22, last of all, the woman died. So in the resurrection, verse 23, who is gonna get this woman be seven men standing there saying, well, she's my wife. Well, you just see the resurrection, that whole idea is just silly. There'll be chaos. How could it possibly be? Jesus says, it's not silly. In fact, the silliness here is on the part of you, Sadducees, who don't know the scriptures or the power of God. Jesus goes on then in verse 25 and verse 26, to say that heaven is very different from how things are here, especially in the fact that nobody dies there. And that was the whole point of the live right law. What do you do when somebody dies without an air ? Well, that doesn't apply in heaven because there'll be no death. Now, please notice Jesus does not say that we will become angels. That's a very common mistake that we get wings and a halo. Oh gracious, that's a common mistake about angels. We will never be angels. Angels are an entirely different kind of being. We are not angels. And I would say this, I want you to think about this. He also doesn't say that marriage ends only that in heaven there won't be marrying. It may be that what God has joined together may reach into heaven, especially since we'll continue to be known there as we were known here, which is Jesus's point in verse 26, that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive. Notice all of that argument hinges on the verb tense of I am not. I was the God of Abraham, God, of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. I am. Sometimes people get after it when you make a very careful and precise argument. But Jesus makes that argument. Here I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob proves that they are still alive. We don't know everything about the afterlife, and these Sadducees didn't know everything about the afterlife. But Jesus says, a lot of our questions can be answered by reading the Bible and trusting in God's power. I have a lesson that I preached a while back entitled, dealing with hypothetical hand grenades, and that is exactly what the Sadducees are lobbying at Jesus here to try to make him look bad, and Jesus's answer to that is trust God's power . Read your Bible. I think that's a pretty good answer to most all of the hypothetical questions that we get tossed at us today. We just need to think through the scriptures and then trust in God to do exactly as he says. Well, that's the podcast for the week. I certainly do appreciate you listening to it. If the podcast is helping you, then tell somebody else about it and leave a rating and review so that more people can find this podcast. Until next week, then, when we'll open our Bibles together. Again, I'm Mark Roberts and I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come to see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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