The Second Coming of Jesus Christ

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, January the 24th. I'm mark. And I'm merging you to buckle up for the podcast because I have a ton of stuff for you this morning that will really help you get your week going with a big dose of the energy from our worship yesterday. If you haven't listened to that sermon, you didn't hear that sermon yesterday. Click the link and the show notes below so that you can hear that sermon on the second coming up. Jesus. And then let's think about our daily Bible reading. Grab your Bible reading schedule. We're gonna be in acts 13, acts 14, act 15 this week, lots going on. When we think about the second coming of Jesus, lots going on in our daily Bible, reading all of that and yes, a cup of coffee. This is a cup of coffee. I just pushed through the arrow press. If you don't know about the Euro press, you should, because it's an amazing way to make coffee. And it's a fairly inexpensive coffee device. And I love my a press. All of that's coming together. We've got Bible reading, I've got sermon notes. I've got a lot of stuff here. As we start our week together, pushing forward to serve the Lord in a better way. Let's get to it Yesterday in the 10 40 at west side of I preached the sermon on the second coming of Jesus. The Christ that is actually not very true. What really happened was I just turned the Bible loose and let the Bible preach the sermon. Really like that kind of thing. There certainly is a place for working a text that explaining a text. In fact, I did that in the 9:00 AM. When I preached through first Samuel, the 26th chapter, I think about the Ethiopian Unix going down the road facts, chapter eight, he says to fill up, I need some help here in understanding the text. So we don't always just read the Bible and just let it sit there. Sometimes we need to do some teaching and preaching from the Bible, but there is a place for just letting the word of God speak. It is. So it is so clear. It is active living in a alive, sharper than any two edge sword. And sometimes particularly I think on some very fundamental doctrinal ideas, we can just let the word of God do the work. And I tried to do that yesterday, reading a ton of passages about the second coming of Jesus Christ. Couple of main ideas in the sermon yesterday. Again, if you haven't heard that sermon, if you weren't in person or online with us yesterday at west side, just click the show notes and you can get that sermon link and watch or listen to that lesson. Come couple of big ideas yesterday. First that the second coming is just a constant emphasis in the new Testament. New Testament writers are just mentioning it all the time, just in passing. They'll say something about when he comes again on the day of the Lord. They're just always having that at the top of mind. Then we talked a little bit about how much the Bible has to say about the second come that it's a personal return. It's gonna be visible and audible. You can't predict it. And it is called the day of the Lord, which has an ominous judgment sound to it. And that takes us to the idea about what's going to happen at the day of the Lord at the second coming, every knee will bow and all will be judged. Evil will be destroyed. The Christians will be gather they're under Christ and glory will be given to Jesus. And even as I'm reeling off all this material from yesterday, it just seems kind of empty because what really worked yesterday was just all the passages that, that with power and force say these very kinds of things. And so all of that comes to conclusion in that it needs to matter to me. I need to be thinking about the second coming, because I'm gonna be part of it. I'll be raised. Um, it ought to be the source of my hope and thinking about it ought to remind me how to live and what I am to be. We ought to be looking forward to it. It'll be the greatest day that we'll have ever known and as a result of that. And because of that, we should pray a oh Lord come. And I love that expression in Corinthians. Marinna our Lord come quickly. Now, let me just give you a couple of other thoughts about that and, and, and try not to say too much about that. I really liked yesterday what the Bible does there and, and just letting the Bible speak in that kind of fashion. But I'll say this, it seems to me that sometimes we run to dangerous extremes when it comes to the teaching and doctrine of the second coming. One of those extremes is to just focus endlessly on it and to try to figure out everything about it and to parse everything about it so that we just know every last detail about everything and how it's all gonna go. And where's, it's gonna go and just endless fixation upon the second coming. I've seen that all through my preaching life, very early in my preaching life, I was exposed to some ideas where there was some use of new Testament, Greek to try to decide some things about the second coming. Sometimes the term is used the Peru, which means the presence or the arrival of Jesus. And then there's also a term, some passages use the term, um, epiphany, which I'm probably not even saying, right, which means in appearing an epiphany. And then there's also the revelation of Jesus, the apocalypse. And, and there's been some teaching where people tried to make very fine distinctions in those terms and set up different ideas about the coming of Jesus based on those. And, and that's completely bogus. And the Bible doesn't sustain that those terms are used synonymously and different passages and different places. Then there's, there's been this 70 a D doctrine that's bounced around some where folks have tried to say that Jesus actually did return in 70 a D, which if you're thinking that sounds crazy. You're only thinking that because it is there, there's just been folks who have just climbed into the idea of the second coming and out of that derived all kinds of bizarre theology and all kinds of crazy ideas and have divided churches and caused every kind of problem. And we want no part of that. We want no part of that. We need to be ready to say that there's some things about the second coming. We don't know. We need to be some things that we would say about the second coming. We think this is how it's gonna be, but we're not gonna be dogmatic about that. Like I said, yesterday, I'm not on the planning committee. I'm on the, the welcoming committee. I borrowed that quote from another preacher. And, and I think that well, phrases where we are. So one extreme is to just become obsessed with the second coming to the point where we're saying more than the Bible will say about it. But the other extreme is to just never say anything about the second coming and to always focus on, for example, preparation, and to meet the Lord in death without ever saying anything about, I might not die. Jesus might come here first. And I'm thinking about the parable, for example, of the 10 virgins and how five are Felician fiber wise and the fiber wise, because they had made preparation. And the idea behind that par in Matthew chapter 25 is that there are things that we actively do because we believe the bride groom will come. And that may be a subtle distinction because I'm gonna do some things that are righteous and that are glorifying to God, and I'm gonna try to live, right. Cuz if I do die, I want to be ready to stand before the Lord. But think sometimes if we would speak a little bit more about the return of Christ and I'm making preparation, I'm making ready. And particularly if we would pray our Lord come, maybe that would push us a little bit more in the, into that middle ground, between obsession and never saying anything about it, never thinking about it to where we were balanced. And we were healthy in our spirituality, cuz we are aware that at any time Jesus could come again. Sometimes I'm afraid that the only time we really think about the coming of Jesus is when we sing those songs in church. And that's just not sufficient because as we saw yesterday, the second coming is so meaningful and so important. And so vital. It is our hope. I wonder sometimes if Christians haven't gotten so caught up in politics because we've just given up the idea that Jesus could come and set things, right? So we'd better vote things, right? And while I'm certainly not want to stray off into politics and political activity and that whole open, that whole big can of worms, I don't like can of worms. I don't like worms crawling across my desk. Here. There is no doubt that we are never gonna set all things right by political means and political action. The problem of the world is sin. And the only way that can be set right is not by voting, not by research, not by development, not by technology, not by science, but by Jesus. Jesus is the one that we need to pin our on. And that hope is that he will return, oh Lord, come Lord, come quickly. Let's pray that more. Let's think about that more. And let's talk about that more. I'm doing these things because I wanna be ready for the Lord. I remember when I was a teenager, sometimes when I'd go out the door, my parents would ask me if the Lord comes while you're out tonight, doing whatever it is you're gonna do. Will that be a good thing? That's a mighty fine question to be asking. I need to be asking myself that question all the time. Cuz I want to think about the possibility and re the second coming of Jesus Christ all the time. Let's think about our daily about reading then a little bit. This week in our daily bowel reading will be in acts chapter 13, 14 and 15 on Monday, we'll read acts 13 versus 43 to 52. This is the climax and results of Peter's not Peter. Paul's great sermon at any a city that he preaches in the synagogue. And this really becomes kind of the pattern that we're gonna see again and again in Paul's life. The key verse here is the Jews verse 45, begin to stir up trouble. When they see that they are losing some of these Gentiles, these God fears. And so Paul and Barnabas verse 46, speak out bowling and say it was necessary. The word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrusted aside and judge yourselves, unworthy of eternal life. Behold, we're turning to the Gentiles. Thrust means to reject, refuse to listen. And it is a term that Stephen uses three times in his defense speech in acts chapter seven, verse 27, verse 39, verse 45. Remember how we talk about how we talk so much about how Paul becomes Steven. He is even using the language that Steven used. So in verse 47, they further that with a quote from Isaiah 49, the Lord has commanded us saying I had made you a light for the Gentiles. That's a servant passage and portrays the people of God, the Israelite as being the servant of God, to be a light to the world that you may bring that passage verse 47 goes on to say salvation to the ends of the earth. And so that was God's plan for Israel. They were his servant to bring law night to the world. Paul says, you're a disobedience servant. That's what kind of servant you are. You're not doing what God wants you to do. And so that section concludes verse 52. The disciples were filled with joy, that joy theme that Luke loves so much and with the holy spirit, the church doesn't wither without Paul. And Barnas because the church has the holy spirit continuing to work and continue to be part and to continue to empower the local church there in anti APA city. So Paula Barnas have to leave, but those brethren will be fine because God is still with them. That is where we are in act chapter 13. That's our reading for Monday. I'll see you tomorrow on Tuesday, we'll read in acts chapter 14. We're gonna read seven verses as Paul and Barnabas come to. I Iconium, I do wanna say a couple of things here that will help us in our daily Bible reading watch for how Paul is being paralleled to Jesus, that important for this theme of Jesus, continuing to work through his church. We've already seen some of that. Jesus confronts the devil, for example, in Luke chapter four and Paul confronts bar Jesus, the son of the devil in acts chapter 13 and then Jesus preaches in the synagogue and is rejected in Luke chapter four. So here Paul in acts chapter 13 has in the synagogue and been rejected. Guess what's going to happen next? Well, Jesus heals a lot of people, including a paralytic, Luke chapter four, Luke chapter five. Well in our reading in Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday here, we're gonna see Paul healing, a cripple man, Luke 14. Oh Luke 14. How about acts 14, verse eight, just like Jesus did miracles specifically. The healing of a paralytic. Paul will do that as well. Paul and Jesus are being carefully parallel in the things that the holy spirit has recorded here by the pen of Luke. So chapter 14 and verse one tells us that at I Iconium, they entered together into the Jewish synagogue. Now I Iconium is about 90 miles down the road from Antioch. Pisidia in fact, it's actually a climb. You climb about 3,300 feet to the plateau that it was on. It's an important commercial city, a Roman colony, but still very Greek in its nature. It was known as being a very beautiful city and there's some success that's going on here. But again, we get this problem where the Jews stir up the crowd, verse two and obstruct the gospel. You're gonna have plenty to say on this question about how the gospel's being thwarted here, but there are signs and wonders being done just like in Jesus's ministry. And just like at the beginning of the Jerusalem church in chapter two, chapter four, chapter five. So Paul's ministry paralleling Jesus ministry paralleling the beginnings of the church. Maybe we'd say some things there about paralleling Peter's ministry. Maybe the question that's gonna come here. He's out of verse four where it says the city was divided some sided with Jews and some sided with the apostles. And there's always a question there about Barnabas being an apostle. Well, the term apostle has a special usage and then a general usage. There's a couple places where it's used a general kind of way, meaning a messenger. And then of course there's a distinctive special usage where it means one of the 12, just like the term elder being an elder could be saying somebody is an elder or could mean he is an older man or it could mean he is an elder serving as a shepherd of the local church in the same way here. I think this just references Paul Barnas as being messengers and not so much Paul's apostolic cred here. And I think we have to look at the context to know the difference. It's possible to think of Barnabas as being in apostle of the church, a messenger from the church at Antioch, without him trying to be part of the 12. So then in verse six, they have to flee again to Lira and Derby Lister is about 18 miles down the road to Herby another 55 miles down the road. Lister is a Roman colony, largely in an educated area. The ruling classes made up of Roman army veterans. The Roman empire loved to do that. If you serve faithfully in the Roman army, when you retired, you'd be given lands in a city and they would settle a lot of ex-military people there make that into kind of a little Roman area there. Notice in verse six and seven, there isn't anything said about a synagogue. So Paul is preaching directly to Gentiles. That's a first, that's the first time that has happened in our ministry records here in the book of acts. So what I really wanna do is talk about this healing that we in verse eight, but that's actually in Wednesday's reading. So I'll just say this seven versus here is not a lot to read. Make sure you're using your time. Cuz you'll have plenty of time. It's not gonna take you a long time to read, ask 14 one to seven, make sure you're using your time to pray. And to answer those questions. The purpose of dividing these readings into such small chunks is to give us time to think about the reading, to think through the text. So the text will get through us. We need to be making application. What am I learning from this? How am I changed by this? But particularly we wanna look at those questions and we wanna think about Paul's life. So that pretty quickly here, we're gonna start reading some of the things that Paul wrote that'll happen next month in February, as we begin reading in the festival and I correspondence, but by the time we get there, we just want to be, have thought so much about Paul's life and what it was like to be Paul, how he was pursued and persecuted all of those kind of things that we are really ready to sit down and read what Paul wrote with a new appreciation. And that's not gonna happen if you're not working the questions. So make sure you read your seven verses today. And then you sit down and work the questions preferably with a book and a pen in hand. That's the best way to work. The spiritual disciplines here of reading the text and thinking through it. I'll see you tomorrow. We will read about this lane, man. Who's healed in Lira. So Wednesday we will read about Paul and Barnabas at Lira. This is acts 14 versus eight to 18. And here we get a story of Paul healing, a lame man, and it is told very deliberately in the same style with the same language as Peter's healing of a lame man in acts chapter three. And I would encourage you to go back to acts chapter three, read about that lame man being healed and then read this in acts chapter 14. Just make a note in your notebook there of some of the similar phrases and some of the similarities there really will help you see how Luke can be so intentional in how he does things. Notice in verse eight, there is standard Luke overkill. The man is sitting there. He could not use his feet. He was crippled. He had never walked three times. Luke tells us this man is lame. And then in verse nine, Paul is the heart knower as Jesus was so many times in Luke's gospel, Jesus knows men's heart. Jesus knows the heart of men. That's probably easier for me to say verse 12, there's some confusion. Barnabas. They called Zeus and Paul Herney because he was the chief speaker. Ze is the chief God that's Jupiter the head of the gods. So there's some seeing here that Barnabas is kind of in charge, but Hermis are mercury, uh, often portrayed the FTD Floris guys got the winged hat that's that's mercury. Uh, I have some mercury dimes that I use as markers when I'm playing golf. I love that leaned head, their beautiful, beautiful silver dimes. Mercury is the speaker. So that would tell us something here about who's doing the speaking. Paul is the one that takes the lead in these things. And so here we get a little mini sermon. Uh, I've said, I think I said a couple of times that there are three sermons of Paul's acts 13 acts S and then I gave credit for a sermon here in acts 14. I I'm not sure I wanna do that. I think I'm just gonna go back and saying, Paul only has two sermons recorded for us in the book of acts. This is a mini sermon and it does sound an awful lot. Like the sermon that he preaches in acts chapter 17, this is a sermon to a purely Gentile audience. And it says some of the same things that Paul will say in, for example, that God is a creator of everything. Verse 15, that God is the governor of all history, verse 16. And that he is the source of all good things in verse 17. Now there's no word of how this goes. Although later we will hear that there is a church there, but there's not much discussion here of the reception instead, verse 19, which is actually part of tomorrow's reading in verse 19, the Jews of Antioch and I Iconium, they show up and cause problems again. Paul is really getting the runaround here, being persecuted, being beat up. Then I don't mean to get ahead of myself into tomorrow's reading, but he's stoned and left for dead. Paul is having a rough go of things here. We need to focus on that. Need to focus on that. I think sometimes people expect that Paul's life was just pretty amazingly perfect. And actually, if you read carefully thinking the text like we're trying to do Paul's life was rough. Very, very rough. He gets rejected in so many places and physical rejection is a big part of that. There's open hostility. And as I said in tomorrow's reading, Paul will have rocks thrown at him. I'll see you tomorrow. We'll continue reading in acts chapter 14. Thursday's reading then is acts chapter 14 versus 19 to 28. As we closed this chapter and we closed the first missionary journey. So in verse 19, we were told Jews came from Antioch and I Iconium. These people have come more than a hundred miles to cause trouble. That ought to be giving us some kind of clue as to what a lightning rod Paul really is. And his teaching is driving these Jews crazy. They're willing to travel great distances to disrupt his work, to undermine his work. They are certain that he is teaching aposty and air, and they're gonna put a stop to that. They stone in verse 19, you can't stone, a Roman citizen inside the city. So they have to drag him outside the city and they stone him. It's just terrible. Uh, we'd wonder here about how Paul survives this verse 20, he rose up is that a miracle? Luke is not clear. This is another one of those places where we just are kind of rubbing our head, had think scratching our head a little bit thinking, is that a miracle? God healed Paul or he was faking it. He was playing. We just don't know. We just don't know clearly being stone though, would just be body breaking, bone breaking, just a terrible kind of thing. We wonder about how you'd have the strength on the next day, verse 20, without God doing something miraculous for him to rise up with Barnabas and go on to Derby. Derby's 40 miles away. And this is as far east on this missionary tour tour, as Paul and Barnabas will get. In fact, there is a road from Derby that goes right through the mountains. It's known as the Felician gates, right to Tarsis. Tars is only about 150 miles away after the way Paul's been treated here. Don't, you know, he had to be tempted to just give it up and go home. I I'm out, I'm done. People hate me. People will travel miles to come beat me up and to destroy my work. I'm just going home. But Paul always has a great concern for his converts. He will pray for them. He will write them. He will send people to them and he will personally visit these churches that he and Barnabas have established to try to strengthen them. And so we get that in verse 21. And particularly we get verse 23, where elders are appointed. This is the first reference to elders outside of the church in Jerusalem. And the question that always is asked is how could you get elders here so quickly? And the answer to that is Paula barns had been gone several months here. We can read this in a hurry, but don't forget. They were there for a long time. The text tells us in acts 14, three. So sometime is going by here probably as I said, several months, would've gone by and you would have Jewish believers who would know the scriptures. They could recalibrate their thinking and probably be able to lead the church and function as elders there, maybe a little faster than we would think of. If you just took the gospel, maybe some place, the deepest, darkest Africa or south America, where people have never had any exposure to the word of God at any level. So Paul Barnham is then preach again on their way home. They preach in per verse 25. We don't know why they didn't, why they hadn't preached their before. And they head for home verse 28. They remain no little time with the disciples. They get home to Antioch for 26 and probably have traveled over a thousand miles and probably been gone for a year, maybe as long as two years. But this first missionary journey has concluded with taking the gospel to Gentiles. They are full fledged members of the kingdom of God. And that is gonna cause some discussion. Can that really happen? We're gonna need to think about that. And we're gonna think about that in tomorrow's reading in acts chapter 15, I'll see you. Then on Friday, then we begin acts chapter 15. We're gonna read the first nine verses today, acts 15 one to nine. And it is difficult for me to emphasize enough how significant and important what goes on in acts chapter 15 really is since acts is about Gentiles being in the church and being saved in some ways, this is the center of the book, at least theologically. We we're gonna find two issues here will be addressed. And it's important to make certain that we understand the, that both of these things are being talked about. And if we don't keep those things separate, we can end up being really confused. One issue. The main issue is the terms of admission for Gentiles to come into the kingdom of God. What does it take to be save? And then the other issue is how then can Jews and Gentiles get along since Gentiles are coming into the church, how can we handle that? How can we make sure relationships go? Well, there's been so much animosity and racism and racist ideas on both parts, Jews, and Gentiles. How are we gonna make all of that work in a local church? Please notice carefully acts 15 one. Some men came down from Judia and were teaching the brothers unless you're circumcised. According to the customer, Moses, you cannot be saved. This is a salvation issue for these people. This is not, we kind wish you would. We think it'd be a good idea. Um, we'd really appreciate, no, this is you are not a Christian. You're not saved. You're not right with God, unless you do this. And circumcision was absolutely non-negotiable for Jews. We have lots of writings about that from Jews outside of the Bible, um, even a very Greek J like filo insists on every pros, light being circumcised. It indicated that you had coveted with God and were ready to keep the law fully. And so this really constitutes a direct frontal assault, not only on the conversion of Cornelius. And we'll hear from Peter today, he he's gonna jump up and say some things about that. We haven't heard from Peter in a long time. And now he comes back into the account because his work with Cornelius is under fire, but as well, the missionary journey that Paul and Barnam has just got done with that all is called into question. What were you guys doing? Did you circumstance anybody? Hey, you didn't foul real churches. Then those people aren't really Christians. You need to get back up there. You need to tell them the whole gospel. You need to tell them that they need to keep the law of Moses. They need to become Jews. They need to be circumcised. And of course a big part of this is how does acts chapter 15 relate to what goes on in the book of Galatians. And I've kind of tried to put off merging and meshing the timelines there because it's complicated and not always easy to do, but it seems to me in some ways that you could say Galatians chapter two, and Paul makes some comments about the Jerusalem and, and this idea of teaching the Judi, what the Judaizing teachers are, are pushing and pressing on the gen believers. You can make that correspond, Galatians two can be made to correspond, to acts chapter 15. But of course there are some real difficulties with that. For example, if that is the case, why then doesn't Paul discuss this Jerusalem council? Why doesn't he say to the Galatian brethren? And you know what we went and we hashed all this out and we worked it all out. And here's the discussion. And here's the results of that discussion. You would think for certain that Paul would tell about this conference and the meeting in Galatians two that Paul talks about there seems to be very private meeting, whereas acts 15 is a giant public meeting. And in Galatians two, Paul plays a big part where year in acts, 15, Paul plays a really minor role. So it seems to me that we're probably better off. If we think of Galatians two as being the visit that is discussed in acts chapter 11, there's the first visit for Paul to Jerusalem act chapter nine, verse 26, and then in act chapter 11, he visits due to a famine. And that probably is the Galatians two visit. After that Judis came down to Antioch, Peter and Barnabas got caught up in hypocrisy, Galatians two 11, discusses that and Paul the and other brethren ended up coming in, acts chapter 15 after he had written the Galatian correspondence after he'd written that letter, Paul and others come to Jerusalem, we gotta get this worked out. We've gotta hammer all of this out. Maybe in some ways the best argument for the Galatians two conference and so forth, being an acts and not in acts 15, is that in Galatians, the second chapter, Paul talks about Peter getting involved in hypocrisy, refusing to eat with Gentile brothers. And can anyone really imagine after Peter's very eloquent defense of what God did with Cornelius and what God did through him, can you really see him am standing up at acts 15 and making this great plea? Don't bind the law Moses on these brothers. And then he got involved in hypocrisy. I think that hypocrisy needs to come before. What happens in acts chapter 15, Paul straightens him out on that Paul and other brothers. And Peter go to Jerusalem to say, Hey, we, we, you gotta fix this. And Peter is there saying, I'm not like that anymore. I'm not doing that anymore. I'm not involved. That kind of hypocrisy. I understand better. I've repent of that. Here's what we need to do. We need to treat Gentiles as full members in the kingdom of God without putting the yolk of circumcision upon them. Well, let me just add one other quick note. Here does this in some way, give precedence for churchwide councils or conventions. And the answer to that is no, this is not a brotherhood meeting where brethren are summon from all points of the Roman empire. This is a two congregation meeting. The reason this happened isn't because is the mother church, and everybody's gone there to get a ruling or we're gonna have a convention there. The reason acts 15 happens is because these brethren are coming from Jerusalem down to Antioch and causing a problem. And Antioch says that Jerusalem church, Hey, we wanna talk to you about this cuz you guys are causing us a problem and they go to Jerusalem and get it worked out between these two churches. For the more, this is a one time event. There is no effort ever made to have any kind of regular self-perpetuating church conference or Sy odd. There's nothing like that. Anywhere in the new Testament, even though churches still have problems. And maybe the most important thing to say about this is there's something at this conference, the Jerusalem conference of acts 15 at no conference that they can have. And that is divinely inspired. Apostles. The apostles are here to give rulings and to give the will of God. We don't have that today. There's just no scriptural authority for that kind of business to go on X 15. Isn't telling us how to handle church problems. Hey, have a giant worldwide global conference. No acts 15 is giving us a pattern for what to do when there's problems. And that is look to what the apostles have told us. So that's a lot of notes about our reading. Before we do our reading, just read these verses acts 15 one to nine. I think it lays up very, very clear, not gonna have much troubles with that notice. Verse eight, Peter says God, who knows the heart Bo witness to them by giving them the holy spirit just as he did to us. That explains for us that the baptism of the holy spirit, the holy spirit falling on Cornelius's household in acts chapter 10 was a sign so that Peter would know that Gentiles are to be fully accepted into the kingdom of God. And what he is saying here is how can you argue with God who knows hearts notice the emphasis, then verse nine. He made no distinction between us and them having cleansed their hearts by faith. You don't have to be circumcised. What you need is you need to have faith. And we'll pick that up on Monday. As we keep reading in acts chapter 15, starting in verse 10 on Monday, we'll continue through this chapter. Work those questions. Think through those questions and think particularly about what a pivotal moment this was in church history. What if the circumcised party old sway? What if that gets added onto the gospel? What if you had to be circumcised the day to be a Christian? How different would things be? That's not what Jesus was preaching in. Luke's gospel. What a, that would represent wholesale aposty we should thank God for Paul, for Peter, for James who stand up and say, this isn't what Jesus us wants. This can't be right. It's gotta be stopped. We need to understand the pure new Testament gospel. Well, there you go. There's another Monday morning coffee podcast. If you're liking the podcast, we sure would like for you to rate and review the podcast on whatever app you are listening on and think about telling somebody else about the show. We are deep into January now, and this is the time when people start to abandon their Bible reading plans. They had big plans to read the new Testament through or the whole Bible through. And by now maybe they're getting bogged down. They're a little bit behind. Maybe they're a little discouraged. This is a good time. If you know someone who's interested in the word of God to check up on them and to say, Hey, how's that Bible reading thing going? And if you're hearing that it's not going that great. They're a little down, they're a little discouraged. I'm kind of behind that sort of thing. Point them to the year with the apostle Paul reading plan, you can download that@justchristians.com. Point them to this podcast. Sometimes what people need to continue in daily Bible reading is just a little help. They need something, someone to explain it a little bit to them so they can get some good application and good understanding of the text into their life and this podcast and your help can be key to helping people stay with daily Bible reading. So check on some folks, ask some people about it, share it on social media. Let's read the Bible together. Let's read about the apostle Paul. And so until next time, may your coffee be delightful? May your Friday be short and may the Lord be with you today? All day? I will see you on Monday morning.

Thanks for listening to the Westside church of Christ podcast. Monday morning coffee with mark. For more information about Westside, you can connect with us through our website, just christians.com to our Facebook page. Our music is from upbeat dot I that's upbeat with two PS, U P P 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 couple of coffee, of course, on next Monday.