Hello and welcome to the West Side Church's special Monday Morning coffee podcast. On this podcast, our preacher Mark Roberts will help you get your week started right with a look back at yesterday's sermon so that we can think through it other and better work the applications into our daily life. 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 to move together on Monday morning Coffee with

Mark.

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast for Monday, October the 17th. I'm Mark and I am welcoming you to this podcast while holding a great cup of coffee in my hands. In fact, this is in one of my favorite mugs. It's a mug that Dan and I got last year in Yellowstone National Park. We were there about this time of the year last year and it was amazing and there's a bear on the side of this mug and we saw bears and that was incredible. If you haven't been to Yellowstone, you should go to Yellowstone and see all the things that God has made there. That's a pretty good way to start the podcast because this podcast is about what God is doing. We talked about that yesterday at Jericho and we're gonna talk about that in our Bible reading. We're in three different books of the Bible this week, all of which are powerful and important. Let's get started. Let's think about the sermon yesterday from Joshua six. I talked about the city of Jericho and God's rather unconventional strategy to take that city and the whole point of that lesson was just to make us think about how we treat God's authority and how we treat God's commands. Because you know, there were Israelite who were less than excited about Joshua telling them, Hey, we're gonna do this whole marching thing and that's just gonna be great. Someone certainly was thinking that has, that's never gonna work, or I've got a better idea. You know, that kind of thing is going on when you have as many people as you have there in the Israeli nation. And so as you make application of that to baptism, and that's really what that lesson was about yesterday, the kind of things that people say to evade baptism, to get around the force of that command. You can really, however you can really use that lesson, you can use the paradigm of Jericho to work with any of the commands that God has given to us. Maybe I'm thinking about the command to go into all the world and teach the gospel, the commands given to the New Testament Church, uh, the commands about autonomy and and shepherds overseeing each individual congregation. First Peter five, you have to know somebody at Jericho, for example, was saying, This is never gonna work. This is just not gonna work, which is the case of in faith we don't trust God, and as we see people doing all kinds of crazy things with the church's money and in the name of the church, and this is the time of year when you're gonna see fall festivals and pumpkin patches and all of these things all done in the name of evangelism, they're all done with very good intent. We're gonna attract a crowd, we're gonna get people in here. Yet they're way, way outside of the New Testament pattern for what the church ought to do and what God has commanded the church to do, and they just simply reflect inadequate faith in the power of the gospel. The gospel's not enough. We need to put on a carnival. The Gospel's not enough. We need a soccer field. The Gospel's not enough. We need a Mother's day out, and so I hope that that will give you kind of a basis to just work a lot of applications to obedience through and to help others to think through obedience in a good way, in order to be pleasing to God, to obey God. We need the heart that says, if God says it, I'll do it. We need a refusal to remake God into our image so that he conforms to our will and our desires. If God says it, I'll do it. Then we need a determination to obey God in his ways rather than substitute in our own plans. If God says it, I'll do it, and we need more than anything a submissive heart that says, If God says it, I'll do it. That's what obedience is all about and that's what we talked about from Jericho yesterday. Let's move into daily Bible reading. Now, This is a great week in daily Bible reading as we continue to read these epistles that Paul wrote, probably most likely from Rome, from prison house arrest probably is what we're looking at there in Acts chapter 28. These are the epistles that Paul sends with Tiki and we're getting some of that detail today as we finish the book of Colossians. Today, our reading is Colossians chapter four, the entire chapter, Colossians four, one to 18, give you a couple of notes about that. This is not a complicated chapter. I think in some ways these kinds of chapters in Paul's writing are hard for us to really get our hands on. They're not meaty and doctrinal and full of all kinds of verses that just leap off the page as being famous or the kind of thing that we, we build our, our entire discipleship all around. There's some personal stuff in here and I think sometimes we just kinda read through that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't know any of these people moving along, but the challenge here is to treat all of this as inspired scripture and and to see that all of it matters and the Holy Spirit put it here and we want to get all that we can get out of this particular material. Please notice a couple of things here. Paul does not pray in verse three, He's talking about pray for us also. He does not pray to be set free. Does anybody notice that? Pray that God may open a door for us for the word on account of which I am in prison. He's praying for more opportunities, not for his personal comfort or liberty. What an example in prayer that really is to you and me. Then there are some greetings there beginning in verse seven. Most of these names are only mentioned here or in the book of FileMan and there he is. Tiki verse seven talks so much about TSUs last week in the pulpit. Very, very important individual in Paul's life, one of his chief lieutenants. He shows up in several of these later letters. Paul very much counts on him and uses him in important work and carrying a letter like this would be very important and would be somewhat risky. Travel is difficult in New Testament times. We just go places and do things. We don't think anything of it, but that is certainly not the case in the New Testament world. In verse 10, then we get a mention of John Mark who we just talked about in a Wednesday night Bible class last week and Acts chapter 13. He abandons Paul and Barnabas and we don't know everything about all of that, but Paul views that as being very serious and does not want in Acts chapter 15 to take him again on another missionary tour in FileMan. He, uh, verse 24, John Mark is with Paul, and then in second Timothy four in verse 12, Paul asked Timothy to bring Mark along to join him, so there is a happy ending to that story. We're glad to see John Mark being mentioned in a place or two here as we come along. Notice again verse 12, A pra seems to be the one that founded the church probably from Paul's time in Ephesus. Deems then is mentioned in verse 14. Wish I could give you a happy ending to that story. Absolutely can not. Verse 16 then gives us some insight into the New Testament Church, what they did at an assembly, they would read these letters for example, and there is going to be a great deal of interest. Of course, in verse 16 when Paul says, See that you also read the letter from Ossea. There is of course in your New Testament no odyssey in a epi. This is almost certainly the epistle that we call Ephesians, and there is discussion about that and controversy about that. Yesterday I talked about FileMan and I can't say everything about everything in the pulpit. One of the things that I like to think about with FileMan is that it gives us some understanding of the value of apostolic documents. The Book of FileMan is a little book. It deals very much with some personal issues that are going on, and yet it has been preserved. That tells you a lot about how the church felt about letters that come from Paul or Peter or John. They didn't just chunk'em in the trash after they had read them. The idea then that there could be a letter to the church atea and it's now just lost. Uh, somehow it, it just evaded us, alluded us. It's just gone. That really seems farfetched when we have the letter to FileMan. How can we have that letter and not this letter? I'm always amazed at how some brethren just blithely announced, Oh yeah, that's just the lost part of the Bible really, If that's an inspired document, I suppose you could say yes, it was an inspired document, but God, God did not see fit for us to have it, but again, if it is an inspired document, the New Testament Church has a track record of holding onto those kinds of things, so I'm not comfortable at all. It's saying that the letter saying in any way that the letter to the layout of sins is now gone and it fell out of the Bible or any of those sorts of things. It it is the letter that we call Ephesians, and we'll talk more about that when we get to talking about the church that that letter is addressed to and why. Paul could say, Read the letter from layout Osea talking about the book of Ephesians. Then Paul closes the epistle verse 18 by writing with his own hand. That was an excellent way Paul used to make certain that brother or not fooled by a counterfeit epistle. My friend Bruce Reeves unpacks this chapter as being about prayer proclamation, Providence, partnership and participation. I think that's an excellent breakdown of chapter four and maybe the thing that I would say the most after having opened by noting that this kind of material sometimes can be a little hard to read and make good use of this is this is the place to climb into. Question three, how does our reading show Paul's people skills? This is a people skills chapter. Paul is calling folks out. Paul is saying hello to people, Paul is valuing. People read Colossians four through the lens of question three. It may mean a whole lot more to you than it would have otherwise. That's our reading for today. Not a difficult reading a little bit longer than some of our readings. Just read that whole chapter today. I'll see you tomorrow. We'll be in the book of Philman. It is Tuesday and today we are opening our Bibles to the book of Philman. Our reading today is Philman one, one to 11. However, I'm gonna challenge you to maybe do something a little bit different here. Come off our Bible reading schedule just a little bit. I I'd like to challenge you to just read the book of FileMan, all of it today. Just read it all. If you did not hear the sermon Sunday in the 9:00 AM hour, when I preach from the book of FileMan, go listen to that sermon or watch that sermon from the live stream and then read the whole book. I read the whole book Sunday morning, then you read it today, read it again tomorrow. You'll have had three passes through the book of Philman. I don't really have a ton of extra stuff that I need to unload here, maybe to try to smooth out some technical difficulties or answer questions that might arise because of a difficult passage here in the text. Fleeman is very straightforward. I don't think it is that difficult to understand. We just need to read it more and particularly we need to read it more, looking for some points of emphasis, so today, read it all I I get it, I get it. Fleeman one one to eleven's what it says on your reading schedule, Read it all. Read the whole thing. It's not gonna take you very long. Read it all and pay particular attention to question two. The central theme in pulse preaching and teaching being emphasized in this epistle and that theme is Christianity changes everything, so except on sms as a brother, just highlight or underline in blue or red some color, everything you see that Paul's using and working here towards that goal. What does Paul say? How many different ways does Paul say? What does Paul use to illustrate that? Christianity changes everything, especially our relationships, one for another. Let's read all of FileMan today on Tuesday looking for the main thing. Christianity changes everything except on SMS as your brother. Let's read it all and I'll see you tomorrow. We're gonna read it all again tomorrow. See you on Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday, halfway through the week and today we're supposed to read the second half of Phil Leman, which would be Phil Leman chapter one versus 12 to 25. Actually, as I said yesterday, let's just read it all. Let's just read it all. Read it all on Sunday morning, read it all again on Tuesday. Read it all again on Wednesday. Just soak in FileMan a little bit, but today's challenge is to read it from the standpoint of Paul's people skills. That's question three. How does our reading show Paul's people skills and how he handles conflict? There is the potential for conflict here. Paul is very persuasive in the book of Philman and we ought to just pay more attention to that. If I can handle more conflicts and potential conflicts like Paul does in the book of Philman, I would be doing very, very well for myself. Read the book of FileMan, read it all again today and let's see if we can pay attention to some issues with persuasion and Paul's people's skills. We'll talk a little bit more about that tonight in Wednesday night Bible study in the Bible talk portion of our worship, but you read the book of FileMan today. That'll be a good thing to do on Wednesday. See you tomorrow. Welcome to Thursday and welcome to the amazing book of Ephesians. This is a crazy great book. It just needs plenty of time and I'm delighted the way we broke it up in the reading schedule that we will be here almost four weeks and that is just marvelous because Ephesians certainly warrants that kind of time and detention. We just want to sit down and get all the goodies that are here to get because there's just a whole big bunch of them. Now, I'm trying to be careful here. I don't want to put all my cards on the table because guess where the New Testament church wrote to is going Sunday. That's right. We're going to Ephesus and we'll be talking about what's happening in Ephesus and we'll be talking about this book, but a couple of things here to get us started today. First and foremost, this letter is very different. You will notice as we're reading along, it doesn't have personal messages. It does not attack a central problem. It is very much the least situational of all of Paul's of Paul's letters. We read other stuff that Paul writes and we can, It's like listening to half a phone conversation. We can reconstruct what's going on on the other end of the phone conversation. You can tell what's happening in Corinth because of what Paul is writing to COR and what he is saying to them. There isn't any of that kind of thing that's very specifically being called out or being denounced or being rebuked and admonished in the book of Ephesians. It's much, much more generally written, and that brings us right to our reading today, Paul verse one, one, An apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints who are and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Oh, there's a little blank there. Now, in your Bible it probably says who are in Ephesus, but you probably have the marginal note that there are many manuscripts that do not contain the words in Ephesus. It is lacking in a couple of the most important ancient manuscripts, the Sci Atticus, the Vaticans, P 46. It's not there and it may not be there because this may not just be to the church at eus. This seems to be a circular letter that was designed to be circulated to all of the churches in the area of Ephesus. We read about those in the book of Revelation, the seven churches of Asia. We know from what we read in Colossians on Monday that there is a letter that's Inea that also needs to be read in Colossi. Could that be Yes. I think that is the book of Ephesians and the reason it's not specific to any one circumstance. The reason Paul isn't saying a bunch of how here and there is because it's going to go to a lot of different places, so bear that in mind as you're reading along, and I think that will, yeah, I think you'll see some of the general ideas about Christianity. So then we're reading Ephesians one, one to 10 today, which is part of this amazing section beginning verse three, One of the longest sentences in all of the Bible versus three to 14 are 200 words without a stop in the original Greek, and it describes the new life that God has given us in Christ and it just praises the work of God. We are chosen, we are predestined, we are adopted, we're, we are the recipients of grace. We are redeemed. We are given every spiritual blessing. We are told the secret of God's will. We are made a heritage, we are sealed with the spirit ought. God is just doing all kinds of stuff, and Paul opens with this long statement of praise that just lifts us up. It's just a delight to read this and it lifts us up because that's what Paul wants to start the letter with. He knows that praising God brings Christians together and there is a fair amount here as we move in deeper into the book of Ephesians about walking in unity, one Lord, one faith, one being one, and one of the ways that we are, one is when we worship together, when we praise God together. So this just isn't about impressing people with Paul's letter writing skills. Wow, that was an astonishing sentence that you just wrote there, Paul. No, it's about bringing people together in praising God, and so he talks about all the blessings in the heavenly places, spiritual blessings. Verse three, think a little bit about what are you more tuned into material blessings or spiritual blessings? What are we the most hungry for? And there is a fair amount here. Verse five, He predestined us. There is a fair amount here in this first chapter about predestination and no believing in predestination does not make you a Calvinist. It makes you a Christian. Christianity teaches here and in other places about predestination. It's called corporate predestination, not individual predestination. There's far too much in the Bible that teaches about individual responsibility and individual free will to possibly believe that God has selected specific, I'm having a hard time saying that specific people, you, you and you, but not you, you and you. No, no, no, no, no. John Calvin utterly missed it. Unfortunately, his false teaching and errors continue to affect so many people. He altered the religious landscape permanently, but Paul teaches here that God has chosen those who will choose Christ. The word predestined literally means to set out boundaries in advance, and what God has done is staked out the boundaries for the group. The group of people that he would adopt wanna be adopted, come stand inside this corral. How's that for a Texas way of putting it? Be careful as you go along in making too much out of words. Verse seven, Like trespass, sometimes we define what sin means and trespass means, and inequity means a lot of that is used interchangeably. We need to be very careful not to put two final point on that. Sin and trespasses, for example, are used synonymously in chapter two and verse one, I really want you to emphasize verse eight, Lavished lavished, God's goodness is lavished upon us. I think so many problems that people have with God is just a failure to believe that God is good, that God lavishes his blessings upon us because he loves us and wants us to be saved. Read our reading today. Read our reading. Did I just say that? I did just say that. Read Ephesians chapter one, one to 10, Read it a couple of times. It will bring you before God in humble adoration. Give glory to God. Read that, enjoy that. It sets the stage for everything this epistle is all about. See, tomorrow we'll finish Ephesians chapter one. It is Friday and we are reading Ephesians chapter one versus 11 to 23. We are finishing completing this grand beginning to the book of Ephesians, and once again we start with the idea of predestination. Maybe I'm jumping past the word inheritance too soon if you search for inheritance or air, Paul uses that a lot and we don't talk about that very much. I need to talk about that more. What does it mean to inherit, to be an heir with Christ is a crazy great idea? And then of course those who are going to inherit are those who have been chosen, those who are predestined, and again, that's just the planning of God. God has planned that those who accept Christ will inherit. That's all that's saying. Don't let Calvinism bully you into some false position or bully you away from the true position of loving the fact that God has predetermined what he's going to do with those who accept Jesus Christ to turned to him for salvation and that will lead verse 12, to hope in Christ to the praise of His glory. The ultimate goal of all humanity is to be involved in the praise and giving of glory to God. There is a catechism in Scotland that puts it very well. It says, The chief end of humankind is to love God and enjoy God forever, and I appreciate that very, very much and we are then sealed here given the guarantee of our inheritance sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Verse 13, and then the guarantee of our inheritance. Verse 14, the seal says that Christians belong to God and there are options here. The seal may be the spirit himself given to us in our personal and dwelling way, or it may be that the seal identifies who owns something and the spirit marks us and to to say that we belong to Christ. That doesn't have to be some supernatural glow in the dark kind of thing, but a guarantee. Verse 14 is a deposit, an earnest money. We put money down on a house. We put down earnest money. That means we really intend to buy it. We're going to follow through with the transaction and the spirit's been given to us. I really like the idea of personal and dwelling here. The spirit's been given to us. That's a guarantee that God is going through with the transaction of salvation and the spirit is singled out again in verse 17, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him. I love how revelation and the spirit go together here. I'm afraid sometimes I read, read my Bible as if the Spirit has nothing to do with the Bible. I'm just on my own, but the word of God is living and active. The Spirit is using the living and active word of God that I might have the eyes of my heart. Verse 18, enlighten so that I will know more about the greatness and grander of Jesus Christ. This first chapter, one writer noted is really dedicated to God and not the Ephesians. First, Paul blesses God for having blessed us in Christ, and then he prays that God will open our eyes to grasp the fullness of this blessing. That is well said, and that is precisely where verse 18 to 23 go. Lord, help us see how amazing Jesus Christ is and what all Jesus Christ has done and what all you are doing through Jesus Christ, who is the head of the body, the fullness of Him who feels all in all little heads up. Then for Sunday while I'll talk a little bit, actually talk a lot about the book of Ephesians and the church at Ephesus, and I'm going to use the idea as the dominant theme, the main theme, Since you are in Christ Walk Worthy, I really think that will set us up well in the book of Ephesians. Chapters one, two, and three are about being in Christ, how great Christ is, how amazing it is to be in Christ, what Christ has done since you are in Christ. Then chapters four, five and six walk worthy of your calling. I hope that will help you in your Bible reading today. See you on Sunday when we'll talk a whole lot more. Like I said, the New Testament Church Road tour is headed for fsis, and we wanna think about what it's like to live in eus and maybe even think a little bit about what it's like to live in some of those surrounding towns because this is more than likely a circular letter going to a lot of these churches, but I'll put my main emphasis on eus and what was happening there and what it was like to be a Christian and receive this great epistle that Paul wrote, at least to start with. It's going to Ephesus first and then would go to the other churches from there. Well, that's it. That's Bible reading for the week. I thank you for listening. Thank you for drinking coffee with me today as we're working through the word of God. If you love the Monday Morning Coffee podcast, please follow, subscribe, rate, and give a review on whatever app you're listening to. It will help other people find the podcast. Tell somebody about it. Tell somebody I'm reading my Bible. It's really helping me serve God in a better way. You can read your Bible too. Let's read our Bibles together. We'll talk about it together. We'll work in it together in this podcast. We'll help us understand the word of God, so then until Monday, may your coffee be delightful. May your Friday be wonderful, and may the Lord be with you today all day. I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

Thanks for listening to the West Side 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 dot. That's upbeat with two ps u ppp, B E A, where creators can get free music. Please share our podcast with others and look to seeing you again with a company Coffee of course, on next Monday.