The Parables of Jesus

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, June the third . I'm Mark. It's vacation Bible School Week here at West Side . I've got some coffee. I've got notes from yesterday's Sermon on the Parables, which of course goes with our theme for vacation Bible school and the summer series. And I am ready to talk with you about daily Bible reading 'cause we're going back to my favorite gospel this week. How great is that? What an unbelievable week we're having and it's time to get it all going. Let's get started. So yesterday I did preach on understanding the parables to launch our vacation Bible school week. Always try to tie vacation Bible school Sunday. What I'm preaching there in the 10 42, our VBS theme, and I just wanna share an extra thought or two here as we continue to think about the parables all this week and in fact all this summer, maybe the thing that I would say that would help us the most in the parables and in understanding the parables is that what all of us just need to do is load up our time machine. Now, hold coffee there. Let's get in a time machine because as I mentioned yesterday, the parables can be very, very familiar to us and that can blunt their effectiveness in our lives because so many of Jesus's parables play off the surprise factor. Jesus loves to turn the tables on his audience. So in Luke 18 we read the parable, the tax Collector and the Pharisees, and we are booing the Pharisees from the start. We know about those Pharisees. We don't like those Pharisees. Pharisees are bad. We are booing them. We're cheering that tax elector . But of course that is precisely the opposite of what Jesus's audience would've done. They heard that prayer that that Pharisee offered. They heard that prayer all the time. There wasn't anything unusual about that. They did not think that was out place or inappropriate. They heard and accepted that prayer all the time. That guy is good with God. Now that tax collector over there, he's helping the Roman government. He is scum of the earth. And then Jesus says, you know what? That's the man who's doing the right kind of praying. That is a shocker, but it's not shocking for us. So get in your time machine load up and go back and hear the parables like Jesus's audience would have heard the parables. What are they thinking? What is surprising here? What's embarrassing here? What was accepted by everyone? And then Jesus turns everything around and reverses all of that. Watch out for that as we read the parables, as we consider the parables and think about the parables in vacation Bible school and as we continue to hear them in our summer series, watch for our reversal from what Jesus's time the people in Jesus' day and time would have been expecting. And now let's think about what Peter wrote about the teachings and life of Christ as we turn our attention. Well not exactly the second Peter, but let's get daily Bible reading underway from the gospel of Luke. It is Monday and today we're reading Luke chapter 9 28 to 36 . And that may seem a little strange since we've been reading in Peter's epistles, but tomorrow we'll read in second Peter the first chapter about being eyewitnesses of his majesty and that we saw him when he and heard This is my beloved son with whom I well pleased . We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven for we were with him on the holy mountain. Two Peter one verses 17 and 18. That's a reference to the transfiguration. So today we will read the transfiguration, open your Bible to Luke chapter nine. We're gonna read Luke 9 28 to 36. So as we're reading in Luke's gospel, a couple things to make notice of. And I'll try not to just go off on all the things that Luke is developing here because we really need to think about Peter, but this is about the glory of Jesus. Verse 31. And Moses and Elijah are talking to him about his exodus and his departure, verse 31, which he will fulfill or accomplish in Jerusalem. And I think there's a lot here in the transfiguration in many ways like Jesus's temptations, I never feel like I have fully drilled all the way down and God , everything that is here, there's just so much that's happening here. And in some ways maybe a lot of what's going on here is for Jesus to encourage him to strengthen him. But you certainly get this combination of glory and the cross going on. And that's hard for the disciples to understand. This is right on the heels of Jesus saying in Luke nine, in verse 18, who do the crowd say that I am? And of course Peter gets it right. You are the crisis son of God. Luke nine 20, this of course the more famous, more famous passage for this is Matthew 16. But here Luke nine 20, he tells them in verse 21, don't tell anybody about this. And then he says, the son of man has to suffer. That's the problem the disciples have. If Jesus is the Messiah, he's not gonna suffer. He's going to lead armies in triumph over Rome. It's gonna be grand, it's gonna be glorious. They struggle. Verse nine, chapter nine, verse 23. If you're following me, it's not onto the battlefield. You're taking up your cross, you're denying yourself, you will lose your life. Verse 24. That's hard. And so Luke ties to that event in verse 28 by saying about eight days after these sayings, the transfiguration helps the disciples to understand or should help the disciples to understand that the cross and glory go together. And this is such an Old Testament event. Of course Moses and Elijah are there representing the law and the prophets. The cloud represents the presence of God, the voice of God, thunder's forth . I mean every bit of this is heavy Old Testament, Peter, of course he's the one that we're focusing on, opens his mouth when he probably needs to be listening and he doesn't seem to understand the preeminence of Jesus. That's what's going on in verse 33 and 34 and 35, listen to Jesus and in context, listen to him about what? That he is going to die. That he is going to the cross, that he is the messiah. A messiah that's very different than what the disciples had considered. I would urge you verse 35, listen to him to make a note there. Something about listen to Jesus about the cross. That's what's happening here in this context tomorrow. Then we'll go see what Peter has to say as he remembers this great event. And we turn back to two Peter. It is Tuesday and today we are back in second . Peter. Today we read Second Peter chapter one verses 12 to 21 . We get the purpose statement here for the second epistle, verse 12. I intend to remind you these qualities though you know them are and are established in the truth that you have good place here for a preacher to say you can expect some repetition in the pulpit reminding people of what they know is part of the role of teaching and preaching in the kingdom of God. We just need to be stirred up sometimes by way of reminder the things that we need to be giving our attention to. And as Peter does that he then begins to move forward. I want you to be established in this truth. And this epistle really is about false teachers. And Peter now is going to try to cut the ground out from underneath these false teachers as he begins to talk about verse 16. We didn't make this up. These are not cleverly devised myth. We were eye , we witnesses. So he wants them to trust in the truth of God's word as revealed by the apostles. It seems very clear that Peter is anticipating that he will die soon. And he wants these believers, churches, churches and Christians that Peter established, Christians that Peter would've baptized. He wants them to stand in the truth. So one more try to get them to stand fast on what is absolutely so and not be swayed by these false teachers that he will address much more directly as we move for forward in two Peter. And so 17, 18, 19 talks about the transfiguration, which we read yesterday and and there's a verse here. Verse 19 is a little bit difficult. We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed. Notice there's a tie to the transfiguration and the Old Testament talked about that yesterday, how that's such an Old Testament event. It's just full of Old Testament symbolism here. And the idea I think is that the transfiguration confirms what the Old Testament says about Jesus. Not entirely sure about the morning star rising in your heart. Star oftentimes is a reference to Jesus. Maybe the idea here is that when they see Jesus come again, their hearts will be assured as faith becomes sight. That would work for us of course now as we anticipate and await the second coming of Jesus. And then verse 20, knowing first of all that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. Some people try to use that to mean that no one has the right to study the Bible and to reach their own conclusion. But that's not what Peter's going for. The idea here is that these authors did not speak on their own, that God is speaking through them. Prophecy does not originate with the prophet. Verse 21, men spoke from God. That's David, that's Jeremiah. These men are impelled by the spirit. And in fact, that is one of the translations here of carried along by the Holy Spirit. I don't think that we should consider inspiration to be dictatorship or dictation I guess is really the word I'm going for here, where the Holy Spirit just takes a man over and he's like a puppet. He's like a robot writing what God tells him to write. On the other hand, we should not consider inspiration to be a circumstance where the writer is just randomly kind of putting down his very own ideas. What we get is the Holy Spirit impelling someone using their personality, their words, their ideas, the way they express themselves to express the very words of God. All of the Bible, not just the ideas but the very words are inspired by the Holy Spirit as he uses men like Peter, like Paul, like Luke to record the sacred scriptures. Tomorrow we forge further in second Peter and we're gonna think some about these false teachers. See you on Wednesday. Westsiders, no zoom tonight the elders are meeting. So that pulls them out of our zoom call. And of course it's VBS week. Lots of tired people in all that goes with VBS. So let's take a night off, we'll talk about Bible reading tomorrow. I'll see you on Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. And don't forget this is a special Wednesday. I guess all of our Wednesdays during the summer are special because of our summer series, but this is a very special Wednesday because we have vacation Bible school night tonight. I hope that you're making plans to be with us tonight 'cause that really encourages the kids and just really helps them to see that this matters and that it is important. And I will get to talk a little bit about second Peter tonight. Let's work with this second Peter chapter two verses one to 11 is our reading for Wednesday. And this is tied very closely to chapter one. In chapter one, Peter's talked about true teachers, the apostles chapter one verses 16, 17 and 18 and the Old Testament prophets verses 19, 20 and 21. Now he turns to false teachers and this really is the heart of the epistle. The reason that he wrote, I think in many ways verse nine is the cornerstone of this epistle. That there's going to be those who are unrighteous and the Lord is going to bring judgment upon them. Now as you read this verse one, false prophets bring destructive heresies that might cause you to wonder how can anyone believe in once saved, always saved. In fact, one commentator said this verse seems to raise some questions about the Calvinistic doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. You think? I think maybe it does because if you can't be lost, then it doesn't matter what you believe. Or if false teachers come and tell you a bunch of things that aren't true, why is Peter even writing? These people are eternally sealed, they can't be lost. John Calvin tells us, oh my what nonsense. And this chapter, shells once saved, always saved over and over from start to finish. The reason false teaching is dangerous is because you can believe it and be lost. And that is exactly where Peter is in his writing. He talks then about bringing judgment, swift destruction. And I think the idea here is imminent destruction. We don't know what God did or when God did it, but Peter's telling his audience that these false teachers are going to be judged and judged soon. And I think there's an irony here because in chapter three, the false teachers are saying God's judgment's been delayed. God's never bringing judgment. Hey, judgment is coming, it's coming for you. False teachers. And then Peter uses some illustrations of when God has done that. Verse four talks about angels. And we don't know the backstory here and we should not try to speculate. It is exactly what it says. Angels sinned . They were judged then the world. Verse five, in Noah's time, nothing is said in Genesis about Noah preaching, but of course you wouldn't expect that Noah could be silent about this. And then Sodom and Gamara verses six, seven and eight, sensuality of course is a big part of what's going on there. And we are reminded of the story of lot. Verse seven reminds us, you can go live Sodom and gamara if you want to, but you're gonna end up regretting it and it can be very, very costly. It costs lot his family because of his poor decision making . So then verses nine and 10 really sums some things up here. The Lord knows how to rescue the Godly and punish the wicked. Verse nine, like I said, that's a cornerstone of this epistle and those that blaspheme. Verse 10, the glorious ones. Well what is Peter talking about there? That's a hard passage. It could be that he's just talking about the local church, the elders in the local church. The term is given as dignitaries in the new King. James, I'm not sure that fits the context very well. I wonder if it's angelic authorities. The word is used in that way in some other context like Ephesians 1 21 in Colossians one in verse 16. And maybe this is a case of these false teachers strutting around claiming to have power over devils and demons and evil forces and making a great show of rebuking them. Every now and then. I'm flipping channels. And you go by the network where they have all of these Pentecostal and charismatic false teachers and sometimes they're doing exactly that. Oh devil I rebuke you. And they make a big show of that. Like they have some kind of authority and some kind of power, they don't know what they're talking about. And Peter says , not even angels do that. Angels know the great power of darkness and don't do foolish things like this. I wish I knew more about that. But it is clearly a rebuke of the false teachers and we just need to keep it in that context tomorrow. We'll journey a little bit further in second Peter chapter two as we continue to think about false teaching and how what we believe matters to you. On Thursday, welcome to Thursday. And today we read Second Peter chapter two verses 12 to 22. This is a very important section of scripture because it helps us see that a big piece of this false teacher business is the character of the false teacher. These aren't people who are studying their Bible and just honestly mistaken, these are people who are evil, who are deliberately perverting the truth. And Peter says here verse 12, that what goes around will come around you reap what you sow. When you destroy, you will be destroyed. And I think he's emphasizing here that bad doctrine leads to bad living. I wanna underline that for you. Sometimes as we think about doctrinal messages, eschatology the doctrines of the end times or maybe we think about some doctrines about Jesus as being deity and the trinity, those kinds of things. Sometimes we can yawn a little bit, roll our eyes, let's talk about something practical like marriage or raising kids. But when we don't have our doctrines in place, scriptural authority, the work of the church, then that's gonna lead to wrong thinking and wrong living. And you're seeing that in verse 30 , verse 13. These people even get drunk in the day. Everybody thinks that was wrong. Remember in Acts chapter two, some people jump up and say, Hey, what's wrong with you? These people are are they must be day drinking. No, that's just wrong. They revel. Peter says, in the daytime, everyone understands you don't act that particular way. And so then Peter cites the example of Blum and it is of interest to me that he appears a number of times in connection with false teaching because he led Israel down the road of moral compromise, particularly leading to sexual sin. It it seems like that's where false teachers almost always end up. We can do things that's outside of marriage, that's outside of what God prescribes for the marriage bed. And so this, this false teacher ends up being rebuked by his own animal in verse 16, how outrageous it restrained the prophet's madness. I love the image in verse 17 of Waterless springs, having traveled to summers ago to Israel, get down there in the Dead Sea Valley. In some of that wilderness area, it is awfully dry. And if you were traveling and you thought, okay, I can can drain my canteen, I can drink my last little bit of water here because we're coming up on that spring by lunchtime, couple of miles away, we'll be there. And then you get there and that's a waterless spring. That would be devastating, maybe even life threatening, but they just boast and carry on. Verse 18, look at the emphasis on sensual passions and look at how they prey on new and weak Christians. They promise so much they deliver nothing. Verse 19, false teachers always promise freedom. But being free doesn't mean that we are free to do anything and everything. We are freed by the gospel from sin so that we can serve Jesus Christ. Peter concludes this section, the end in verses 2021 and 22 with some powerful word pictures. Verse 20 talks about being entangled and maybe the word picture there is of the gladiator being caught in the throne net of his opponent. In those gladiatorial games, sometimes one of the gladiators would bring a net and try to throw that over his opponent. And when he's all tangled up in that, then he could kill him. And then verse 22, we get the proverbs here about dogs and pigs. Some of this comes right outta Proverbs chapter 26 in verse 11, as the dog returns to his vomit. So a fool repeats his folly. And of course for us, pigs are viewed very differently than they would be by Peter's audience. They are very intelligent animals and in some ways maybe they're kind of cute and we maybe you know, somebody who has a pet potbellied pig and some of those kinds of things that appear on social media. None of that, of course is in play. In verse 22, for Peter's original audience, pigs were ceremony unclean. They were not thought of as being good animals. And so this image here of the pig going back into the mire would be a powerful way of expressing what these false teachers are all about. And of course, you know where I stand on dogs. Dogs are amazing. They're incredible. And yes, they are way better than cats. But here we get this idea, the dog returning to its own vomit dogs in biblical times, oftentimes there there is some reference to dogs being kept as pets, but in the main dogs were feared because they were wild and maybe rabid. The things that go with all of that, if you've had a dog, you know that sometimes verse 22 happens and it's just pretty gross. And I think that's where verse 22 is what these, what these false teachers do is just gross. They ought to know better. And that goes back to the idea of character that we talked about earlier. It's the character of the false teacher that Peter begins with more than just what they say, the error that they are proclaiming. It is what they are. They are false. So what they teach is false. And now as we turn to Friday, we get a look at one of the things that they are teaching that is so false. I'll see you tomorrow in second , Peter, the third chapter, it is Friday, made it to the end of the week. And we are reading second Peter the third chapter verses one to 10. Here's a chance here for us to hear what these false teachers were saying. They are arguing that Jesus isn't coming again. Everything remains the same as it always has been. It's been such a long time. Jesus hasn't come yet. So obviously he's not coming at all. This is a great place for us to think a little bit about end times and about what we believe about the second coming of Jesus. And there is still false teaching circulating about these matters. So we want to give careful attention to our reading today. Notice that Peter encourages them to think. Stir up your sincere mind. There is nothing wrong with encouraging people to think carefully and deeply. We should expect that kind of challenge in our preaching and in our teaching. Let's think. Let's think through this rather than just echo what we've always heard or what we were taught as a kid. And always I struggle when someone raises their hand in Bible class and says, I've always believed or I was always told, what does that even mean? The question is, what does the text say ? Now? What does this really mean? Maybe you always were told wrong. We wanna stir up our minds and get the connection in verse two, the prophets and your apostles once again, true teachers, the Old Testament prophets and your apostles, because now we're in these last days, verse three, that's the last dispensation. The time of Christ begins the last chapter of human history. And these false teachers though say no , ever since the fathers fell asleep, everything's just going on like it's always gone. On. The Fathers here may be a reference to the Old Testament fathers of faith. It's used that way in Romans a couple of times, not entirely certain, but what they're arguing is that what happened yesterday, we'll repeat tomorrow. And that that'll just go on and on and on. That God is not going to intervene in human history. He cannot and will not do that. We wanna be very, very careful about this kind of wrong teaching. This idea that what happened yesterday must repeat itself tomorrow. And Peter dispels that kind of thinking by talking about Noah because it had never rained before. Noah . Everything goes, oh Noah, you're building this boat. That's crazy talk. How are you gonna float that thing? But you know what? One day it rained, all things don't continue the same old, same old , same old . So don't forget verse eight, that God counts time differently than people count time. And of course there's a lot of misuse of this. People use this to decide that a day equals a thousand years and they get into Daniel and Ezekiel and they're cranking their prophetic clock . Don't do that, don't do that. That's not, that's not what Peter is saying. That's not the purpose of this. Verse one scholar said, the fundamental thought here is that people given their limited perspective cannot possibly understand God's timetable. What seems an eternity to humans is only a brief moment to an eternal God. And Peter goes on to say verse nine, that God's delay here doesn't mean that he's asleep, but instead just shows that he's very gracious. But the day of the Lord, verse 10, that's such an Old Testament expression. The day of judgment will come. It is going to happen. And Peter echoes the metaphor that Jesus uses come like a thief in the night. Jesus uses that in Matthew chapter 24 and verse 43. And a bunch of this is borrowed out of Isaiah 34. And in verse four, the ESV has the heavens in El pass away the heavens. Heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved. And then the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed or laid bare. And that's not what we normally expect out of that passage. That's not how we normally quote it. What we normally say here comes out of the New American standard, the Earth and its works will be burned up or maybe out of the new King James, which has a similar kind of idea. The idea that the elements will melt with fervent heat and the earth and the works that are , and it will be again burned up. So what is this laid bare business that we're getting or exposed as the ESV has and then it has has a marginal note. Some manuscripts will have burned up. The idea of exposed though that is the better translation. And the idea there is that everything is going to be laid bare in front of God, in front of the judgment of God. All things will be exposed before him. On that last great day, one scholar said everything that God has made and done and everything that mankind has made and done will be laid open and be on full view to him. And in fact, one translation, the NLT says the Earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment. So there's a tying together there of laid, bare, and exposed with deserving judgment. What a place to end, what a place for us to draw up and close as we think about the second coming of Jesus and what that will mean. Peter will draw direct implications from that in our reading on Monday. Get ready for that out of second Peter chapter three. But for now, I'll say thanks for listening to the podcast. That's the podcast for the week. If the podcast is helping you, please tell others about it and leave us a rating or review so more folks can be helped by it. So until Monday, when we get to open our Bibles again to second Peter to the third chapter, I'm Mark Roberts and I want to go to heaven and I want you to come to I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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