Isn't the Bible anti-LGBTQ?

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 27th. It is Memorial Day and I am home. Great. Two weeks overseas with a great group of Christians, lots of fun, nothing like traveling and there's nothing like traveling with a big group of Christians. Really enjoyed that but was glad to be back home. Jet lags real deal so you can be sure I'm holding a cup of coffee right now and I am pleased to be talking with you about yesterday's sermon. That's a controversial area for sure. And then talking about our daily Bible reading our summer series starts this week too. So there is plenty for us to talk about. It's time. Let's get started. So let's talk a little bit about yesterday's sermon. That was a difficult sermon. You know that people aren't going to like it no matter how carefully you try to say God loves everybody. There will be people who will be unhappy about where that sermon comes out and maybe some people are gonna be happy that it didn't come out more ferociously, is that a word? Ferociously more fierce and more hateful and that certainly seems to be in vogue in some quarters and that's not any more right than the other side trying to justify what the Bible calls ungodliness. The basis for that entire sermon though was to look at what God is for because that is a lot better approach I think than trying to refute the charge. The Bible is against L-G-B-T-Q folks. I'm trying to help people better understand why the Bible is for what it is for. And part of that comes home to us now on the podcast because I'm going to guess most of the folks listening to this podcast are not in the L-G-B-T-Q camp. And what we need to remember and be reminded of and take away from that sermon yesterday is that God knows what is best in the sexual relationship for all of us, not just for L-G-B-T-Q folks. That's not what the Bible says about sexual intimacy. Being reserved for marriage is not just something we need to read to people who are in the gay lifestyle. No , what God says about marriage and the marriage bed , Hebrews 13 four, Matthew 19, four to six, all of those passages, those passages apply to teenagers who think that God's prohibition against fornication is just old fashioned. So I'm gonna go ahead and hook up or have friends with benefits. God's word is for 20 somethings who think living together before marriage makes sense. So they move in together without the benefit of wedlock. And it is, yes, for 50 somethings who are binging some show on Netflix that presents adultery is so much fun and so exciting. And in our heart of hearts we're thinking, man, I if only I could do that, my life would , oh , that'd just be so great. We all need to start believing what the Bible teaches us about every aspect of life, but particularly the sexual relationship because that is such an important aspect of life. We need to believe what the Bible is for and the Bible is telling us God's way is best. God is for what is good for you and for me. Hope that helps you as we continue to think about that sermon. And I do hope somebody noticed that that sermon, that sermon links in really well to the sermon I preached on authenticity on May the fifth. Maybe go back and listen to that sermon, maybe share the May the fifth sermon and the sermon yesterday with somebody. Get people thinking about what it means to be authentic and what God is for, because God is for you, being an authentic person made in his image, coming to know him, love him and trust him. Hope that helps you. Two sermons to help you. Wow. Double double. How about that? And now let's think a little bit about daily Bible reading. It is Monday and today we read one Peter chapter three verses 13 to 22. What a set of verses for me to come home to in some ways this may be the most difficult verse or set of verses in the entire New Testament. What is going on when it talks about Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison? To who to what? Well, let's back up a little bit. Let's start in verse 13. I love here who is there to harm you if you're zealous for what is good, but even if you should suffer verse 14 for righteousness sake. So if you do what's right, you're not gonna be harmed. But even if you are harmed, verse 14, I love how Peter's working that we do the best that we can. We have to live with a good conscience. Notice verse 16, ready to make a defense verse 15, to people who ask us why we are what we are, who we are, the hope that's within us. I think sometimes one Peter three 15 gets used to say, we should be ready to answer why we don't have instrumental music or why we're not atheists, why we don't believe in evolution and and and we should be ready to answer those things. But specifically one Peter three 15 is talking about the essence of our Christianity and who we are as Christians, what we do as Christians, what we believe it is, our hope that is in view here. And then Peter says it's better verse 17 to suffer for doing good if that's God's will than for doing evil. That sets up then verses 18 to 22, some of, as I said, the most difficult verses in all of the New Testament. What exactly is going on here with Christ preaching or proclaiming to spirits in prison? Verse 19, apparently connected in some way to Noah. There's no way in a podcast that I'm gonna be able to thrash through everything and every possibility in all of the difficulties here. There's even some translation difficulties here and you'll see different translations of verse 19 particularly it is not an easy text at all. The major views here are one that Jesus went to the realm of the dead and preached to the spirits of those who had been disobedient in the time of Noah. So Jesus' body was in the tomb but his spirit was preaching. Usually that view then leads to a great deal of debate about whether Jesus was offering them a second chance, offering the dead a second chances outside of the biblical norms. There's no way that's what's going on, but that's where that case will go in a hurry. Why would Jesus be talking to those people if he isn't giving them another shock ? Some folks will say that this means Jesus preached through Noah during the time that Noah was building the arc. And all that goes with all of that. That is of course a very neat and tidy way of dispensing with this particular text. It fixes a lot of problems, but it really doesn't seem to fit the tenor of the passage at all. The tenor here, everything that's going on here is Christ suffered. Verse 18 And then look at chapter four verse one. Since therefore Christ suffered, it's not talking about Noah, it's talking about what Jesus did. And part of the difficulty here is that the spirits in prison is an expression that does not usually refer to human people. Usually that refers to some sort of supernatural being, which then leads to the third possibility that after his resurrection, Jesus preached to some supernatural beings that had been disobedient during the time of Noah. And the question would be, well what was Jesus saying to them? And I think the answer in this context is, Jesus' proclaiming victory, I suffered. You thought that you had won, I won, I have overcome. Which in context is what Peter is saying to these Christians, you can suffer and be victorious. You can overcome. Notice they didn't formally obey verse 20 during the time of Noah and the Ark was being prepared. By the way, verse 21 that reminds me of Peter says, of baptism, which does now save you. And so Jesus has gone verse 22 into heaven, is that the right hand of God? All powers are subjected to him. Jesus triumphed. The message of verse 18 and 19 is that whatever Jesus was doing that proclaimed or that is part of his victory, Jesus went to those who thought he had been defeated at the cross and said, no, I have overcome through suffering. Which is exactly what Peter wants his audience to do as well overcome through suffering. So verse 22, Jesus is now in charge of all things and Christians need to fear nothing. Jesus triumphed over suffering and even over enemies from long ago. So the main point here is Jesus suffered and it didn't ruin him or destroy him. Be like Christ. That's where this is. That's what this is about. I could say an awful lot about verse 21, but we use verse 21 a lot. You've heard verse 21 in the pulpit all the time 'cause it's such an outstanding passage to make the case that water baptism is essential to salvation. Mark that verse in your Bible. If you get into discussion with somebody, that's a great verse to go to. Uh , I don't know, just ask people. If the Bible explicitly said water baptism saves you, would you believe it? Then go read first Peter 3 21. I believe it and I think everybody else should too. It's not the easiest passage in the world when you start talking about what Jesus is doing and when, where and how. But the baptism passage still stands in verse 21 and I think in the context of verse 18 compared to four one we can get there. Jesus suffered. It didn't wreck him. In fact he triumphed through suffering. Come on , Peter says to his audience, you can do the same more from chapter four as we continue in one Peter tomorrow it is Tuesday today. Tuesday we read one Peter four, one to 11 and we have Zoom tonight. It'll be nice to be back on a zoom call with everybody from West side . We'll pray and spend some time in this particular text and there'll be some texts that people wanna talk about because there's again a couple of complicated verses here that may be just a little bit difficult to understand in verse one. We get Christ suffered in the flesh that's connecting to yesterday's reading. And then Peter says, whoever suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. What exactly are we talking about there? Probably what Peter's going for is those of us who identify with Christ have made plain where we stand and that we are done with sinning. We are done with that way of life. In fact, the new living translation , uh, that's a dynamic equivalent. Translation, not a word for word translation like the ESV or the New American standard, but the NLT has, if you are willing to suffer for Christ, you have decided to stop sinning. You have decided to stop sinning. We are done with the sinning business and Peter furthers that in verse two because the Christian life is divided, divided into a before and after. You know those before and after pictures you get with the diets and here's this person in the before picture and they're really, really large. And then the after picture, they're really, really thin before and after. This is how we used to live and we don't live that way anymore. By the way, in verse three, the word drinking parties is a passage that would speak to like a cocktail party. That is exactly what that's talking about. I know that Christians and the use of alcohol among Christians is very controversial, but I think that passage needs to be figured more into that conversation as Peter identifies that kind of thing, standing around with the drink in your hand 'cause everybody else has a drink in their hand. That kind of thing is part of the life of the Gentiles. And then verse four, these gentiles, they don't get it. They don't understand the way we live. There's always going to be an us them divide when you're involved in Christianity, they're not us and they don't understand us and they never will understand us. So they malign us, but they're gonna give an account someday . Finally then in this early section, Peter then says verse six, that this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead. Wow, how about that? Someone says, well does that connect back to Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison? And it probably doesn't because as I said yesterday, that references or seems to reference supernatural beings, not regular people, people, but instead is speaking of maybe some kind of supernatural forces, maybe like demons and those kinds of people. And furthermore, how does that help with persecution knowing that Jesus preached it ? No , that that doesn't really encourage you or help you. Some people have thought maybe it's the spiritually dead, but in verse five, they will give an account to him who's ready to judge the living in the dead. Verse five, the dead is dead, dead, dead. All the way dead. Not mostly dead, all the way dead. Shout out to the princess bride right there in verse six. Then what he means is it it seems that the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead. These are people who passed away. They had their opportunity and they didn't take it. They missed out because they did not obey the gospel while they were alive . That that probably is where Peter is trying to go with that in verse six. And then in verse seven he says, the end of all things is at hand. Wow, as if we haven't had enough difficult passages already. But this is not that difficult to deal with because there are a lot of passages that talk this way because Jesus, Jesus's coming is always soon in scripture. It's the next big thing that's going to happen and we have to live as if that's gonna happen tomorrow morning or maybe even this afternoon. This affects how we live. So we want to be sober. And that's a great contrast there to verse three where people are not sober, they're drunk, they're living the way that Gentiles live. And of course alcohol is a huge part of that as they dull their pain and their lack of purpose and meaning in life. Then this section concludes verses eight to 11 by saying, since we don't live like Gentiles and we're not part of that life and we're not part of those friendships and part of those bonds and part of the party atmosphere and all the things that go with that, we must develop deep bonds, deep bonds with our brethren. That's what we do. In response to that, we draw closer to our brothers and sisters in Christ who know us. There would be Christians in the recipients of Peter's epistles here who had lost close friends because they are serving the Lord and they're not willing to go out and carry on and corrals and do all the things they used to do as pagans. And Peter is saying, we gotta take care of each other. Verse nine, show hospitality to one another. Showing hospitality lots of times in the New Testament means taking people in there. There isn't a Holiday Inn or Hampton Inn on every corner and a lot of hotels and inns in New Testament times are just not much more than a bar and a brothel. And that's not a place a Christian wants to be. So Christians when they travel, particularly missionaries, need a place to stay. But I think here it probably is referencing Christians getting together with Christians so they can encourage one another and so they can help each other. All of this then is about glorifying God so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. Verse 11, think about hospitality as a way to serve. Think about hospitality as a way to glorify God. Sometimes we act as if the only thing that matters in the kingdom is doing things in the church building. Boy, you know what the preacher's doing, what the song leader's doing, what a Bible class teacher's doing and teaching kids that's so important. And all those things matter. I'm hey, I'm all about the preaching thing. I kinda like doing that. Okay? But that's not the only thing that matters and that's not the only way to glorify God. We can glorify God in serving. We can glorify God in practical acts of kindness. We can glorify God. Yes, in the spoken word, whoever speaks that be one. Uh , let Him speak as one who speaks as as of the Oracles of God. And you can tell I'm having a great time getting that out. Let's see. We can have some coffee here, But there are many ways to serve the Lord. And when you practice hospitality with the view in mind of I can do this to serve God, that's a powerful, powerful way of glorifying the Lord and bonding Christians closer together. Remember, we do get Zoom tonight West siders and I am so looking forward to seeing you tonight for everybody else. We'll be back tomorrow on the podcast on Wednesday as we continue to move forward in first Peter the fourth chapter. See you tomorrow as Wednesday and today we begin our summer series at Westside. Really a delight. During the summertime we bring in a speaker on each Wednesday night, give that speaker a special topic and we get the opportunity to hear a bunch of great preaching all summer long. Starting our series, which this year is about. The parables is Austin Lewis and here is Austin to tell us a little bit about his sermon tonight.

Hi, my name is Austin Lewis and I'm excited to be coming to West Side on May 29th to talk about the parable of the prodigal son. That may be one of Jesus's most famous parables, but it's also one of his most encouraging parables. It's a message that reminds us of God's love for all people. It's a heartwarming message that will convict us to look at the world around us, to look at our friends and our family members and ask the question, do I love them? Like God loves them. I look forward to seeing you on May 29th.

Thank you Austin. I think we're all looking forward to hearing more about the prodigal Son . It is Wednesday and that means our Bible reading today is one Peter chapter four, verses 12 to 19. This is a place where Peter really gets down to the brass ack about suffering. The keys here are for all of us to see that suffering is not stopping God's purposes. Instead, it is fulfilling them as he uses suffering to purify us. And Peter shows the meaning of suffering from two sides. First, our suffering for Christ significance in that we are sharing in Christ's suffering, we are being like Christ. That's chapter four, that's verse 13. Rejoice insofar as you share Christ's suffering and will be repeated in chapter five and in verse one. But secondly, our suffering doesn't destroy us. It purifies us. And as you're reading this today, think about the pagans who now are Christians who would just be completely flummoxed by persecution. This is something that has never been a part of their life. They're part of polytheism. Everybody worship who you wanna worship and you pay attention to my God a little bit and I pay attention to your God a little bit and everybody goes to all the temples and you just go wherever the holiday is for this God or that goddess and everybody's just all good with it all the time. And now I'm standing up for one God, there is only one God. All of that is nonsense. None of that is real and people are, people are fighting back against that. I'm getting kicked around, I'm getting beat up for that. That would really be a new experience to pagan people. Maybe that's why verse 12 says, don't be surprised. It would be a bit of a surprise. And the emphasis here over and over is don't be surprised you're blessed. Verse 14, don't do bad things. Hey, if you suffer 'cause you're a bad person, there's no glory to God in that. But if you're suffering as a Christian, don't be ashamed. That in fact can be the will of God. Notice verse 19. What about verses 17 and 18? It's time for judgment to begin at the household of God. And verse 18, if the righteous are scarcely saved, all that means all Peter's getting at is that if God hates evil so much that he will judge his own people. What about evil doers who have refused to obey the gospel? That's all Peter's going for here. One writer said, according to the prevailing view, the statement means that if Christians are dismayed at what is happening to them, they should consider the destiny of the disobedient. If they're attempted to repudiate their faith due to suffering and all that they are enduring, they should recognize that those who disobey God will suffer a far worse fate. I think that's spot on . And verse 18 is not barely saved. You're just about hardly not gonna get in there. Maybe you can sneak in under the back fence and and somehow weasel your way into heaven. Maybe God won't notice that you don't belong there. I was just barely saved. No there, Peter means through great difficulties, through difficulties, we're coming through, we're suffering, but we're gonna make it. We are going to get there because suffering is purifying us and it's making us closer to Christ tomorrow. First Peter, chapter five is on the docket. Good stuff coming to us in one Peter chapter five, see you on Thursday. It is Thursday and the end of the week is in sight , isn't it? And today we're reading an entire chapter, 14 verses of one Peter the fifth chapter. Let's get connection here. Let's make sure that we're tying all of this together in my Bible. As I turn the page from chapter four. Chapter five starts on a whole new page, big number five, up at the top of the page. It's easy to just isolate that chapter. We don't wanna do that. The tie here is therefore because of the state of affairs, because of the way we're being treated, the fact that we are suffering, then we need some things. We need to start with. We need to have some shepherds. We need good shepherds who will watch over us and who will take care of us. And Peter makes a very humble appeal here by saying, I'm one of you. He does not say, I'm a big apostle. I'm really super important and I'm telling you how to do this. He says, I'm part of this. I know what this is all about. Take care of the flock of God. That is among you. That is a strong statement for autonomy. Every church is on its own stands alone. We're not part of some denominational bureaucracy. We're not tied together to all the other churches of Christ and somewhere there's Church of Christ headquarters and they're handing down all kinds of decrees and dogmas. No, no, no, no, no. Every congregation is independent and autonomous has its own elders. It's doing its own work serving God as best as it possibly can, as it understands its work from the New Testament, and I love the metaphor here being a shepherd. David is a shepherd. God is said to be a shepherd in Psalm 23, Jesus calls himself the good shepherd. Shepherds provide what the flock needs to thrive and survive. That's feeding and guarding and guidance. That's the mainstay of elder work, mainstay of pastor work, elder pastor, Bishop Shepherd. They're all the same in the New Testament. And part of that then is we'll need humility. I'm moving down to verse five. In all of us, all of us will need to have the humility to respect our shepherds and to follow their lead. We need to do that out of the deep trust in God verses six and seven, as we humble ourselves towards the Lord as well. Remember, humility isn't thinking less of yourself. It's not pretending that you're worthless. Uh , by the way, there's a quote that's attributed to CS Lewis. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. That is a great quote. It's from Rick Warren and it's not from CS Lewis. And if you send it to me or if you come up and say, Hey, I know what humility is and you quote that as CS Lewis, you'll make smoke, come outta my ears. Don't do that. Humble yourselves . Verse six, under the mighty hand of God, humility is understanding who I am in God's eyes. As a Christian, I have value. As a Christian, I am important, but I am not the center of the universe and I am here by God's power and grace and I need to understand that as I see seek to serve God and glorify him. I'm casting my anxieties upon him. When you do that, even when you're suffering, even when you're being persecuted, instead of being angry at God or deciding that God has failed me in some way, I can trust in God and in his purposes and I will be watchful that I don't let the enemy get the drop on me. I think a huge application out of all of this is that we are not helpless. I am worn out on hearing people reading various columns and books that talk about we're hardwired for our DNA says or we evolved . There's all of this just predetermined this out there in the world. No wonder so many people in the world are so discouraged and so disheartened all the time because I'm just hardwired for fight or flight or I'm just hardwired to be this. No, no. We choose. We can choose. We've been made free moral agents and we can in fact resist the devil. Verse nine, we can do that. And verse nine concludes by saying other people are doing that. You can do it too . Humble yourself by casting your anxieties upon the Lord. That's what you can do, and when you do that, you can drive the devil away. The epistle ends then with a reference to S Venus and that is Silas and it probably means here, it probably means that he is burying the letter. There is similar language in Acts 1523. Some see him here as being described or being Peter's secretary, and that's possible. And the Greek, my understanding is the Greek in first Peter is very, very good, which might be better than we would expect out of a Galilean fisherman. I don't know, maybe Peter went to school. Maybe Peter was a really, really well educated Galilean fisherman. I don't know, maybe Silas is taking dictation here and as the Holy Spirit works with Peter, the Holy Spirit's working with Silas and cleaning up everything that's happening and making sure that the Greek, like I said, is the grammar here is good, but Silas probably probably is bearing the letter. There's a better case for that than that. He's the secretary, but one Peter has helped us. It's helped us to think about persecution and tomorrow we turn our attention to the second epistle that Peter wrote and that's gonna help us grow. I'll see you on Friday. Welcome to Friday, and today we start the second epistle that Peter wrote verses one to 11 of chapter one. Really don't think I need to say a lot here. Not gonna do a lot of introductory stuff. This is Peter as identified in verse one, and he's writing to people who probably are being persecuted and particularly they need to grow. There is lots of emphasis here on knowledge and knowing real knowledge. There is some writing beginning to develop towards the end of the first century about maybe people trying to develop some higher level Christianity. I'm better than you, I'm , I'm ahead of you. I know some things you don't know. And Peter May be seeing some of that, some of the early, some of the, the weeds beginning to spr a little bit. The dandelions popping up about this knowing more and so he emphasizes real knowledge and like I said, I don't think I need to say a whole lot about our reading today because I'm teaching this on Wednesday nights. We're teaching from grace to glory and talking about what it is to grow, and that is Peter's answer to a lot of these problems. We just need to grow. We've been blessed with grace. His divine power, verse three has granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge. There it is knowledge of him who called us to glory. We've been granted so much by God and we have the opportunity verse 11, and this way you'll be richly provided an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We have the opportunity for glory. We have the opportunity to go and live with God for all eternity. Sometimes we need to stop and think about exactly what that says. We get to live with God and the way to get there is to grow for this very reason. Make every effort to supplement your faith. Verse five, and maybe the dominant thing that I would want to say today is we just need to think about how much we want to grow. How interested are we in growing? We're reading about people who lived in a time when just day-to-day life was very difficult. Putting food on the table, growing that food, harvesting that food, working in the shop, all the things that went with New Testament life, it was just hard and and we're in a very different place. It isn't to say that our lives are not hard, but they're surely, surely not hard like they were in first century times and the result of having a lot of niceties and a lot of luxuries and an awful lot of appliances that make things easier for us is that we can easily become lazy. Look at verse five. Make every effort. Are we spiritually lazy? Maybe asking that from people who are reading their Bible and listening to a podcast about Bible reading and putting the sermon from Sunday in play in their lives is kind of foolish, but it just, we just need to be reminded. We want to make every effort and underlining your Bible in verse eight, what we get. If we will do that, if these qualities are yours and increasing, we won't be ineffective or unfruitful If we lack these qualities, we're just blind and if we will put these into our lives, we will not fall into sin. Verse verse 10, we will reach heaven. Verse 11. Wow, what great promises are there? We want to grow, and two , Peter's going to help us to grow. That then is the podcast for the week and I'm delighted to be reading the Bible with you. Looking forward to preaching on Sunday, glad our summer series has started. All the good things that happen in summer. All of that is in front of us, vacation, Bible school, youth lectures and more. It's gonna be a great, great summer and we're gonna keep reading our Bible and seeing Jesus through the eyewitnesses. Peter and John, tell somebody about the podcast, give it a rating that'll help more people. Discover the podcast and keep reading your Bible. I'm Mark Roberts and I want to go to heaven and I want you to come to thanks for reading the Bible with me this week. 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.