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, September the 23rd. I'm Mark and I have a great cup of coffee here in my Ember coffee mug, keeping it nice and warm. I'm all about yesterday's sermon. I hope that was helpful to you. I'm ready to think more about the gospel of John. Pour that cup of coffee, get ready, get set. Let's go. So yesterday's sermon formed a pair with the sermon the week before. The week before I talked about why do bad things happen to good people? And yesterday I talked about why good people do bad things. That's about sin, that's about temptation, and that lesson came right out of Proverbs chapter seven, which really roadmaps what that looks like. Couldn't say everything, thought that sermon was a little long. Anyway, just to be honest with you. I would like to have said something out of verse 18 where the adulterous woman says, Proverbs seven verse 18, come let us take our fill of love until the morning. Let us delight ourselves with love. We are getting ourselves into trouble. We are headed down the road into sin when we start renaming sin. This is not real love. It is adultery, it is lust, it is nothing but sexual fulfillment at the expense of my marriage vows. This is wrong. It is absolutely wrong, but of course, nobody wants to say, let's go be wicked. Let's go do some serious sinning. Let's go do something that will jeopardize our relationship with God. So instead we rename it and you can fill in the euphemisms here. You know what I'm talking about? Just be careful when that kind of thing starts coming out of our mouths, that ought to be a giant red flag that says, I'm on my way to no good place. Lots of steps leading to sin in Proverbs chapter 7, 7 18 is part of that don't rename sin. Now let's turn our attention to the gospel of John. Let's get to Monday's reading John chapter 19 verses one to 11. That begins with a very difficult verse and it's not hard to understand. It's the understanding that makes it so hard. This passage tells us that Jesus was flogged and the Romans were famous for their f flogging that would involve maybe what we would call the cat of nine tales, a whip with leather thongs, and in those thongs would be embedded metal, bone, glass, all kinds of sharp stuff that would just tear a man's back to shreds. Eusebius says that some were skirted so badly their inner organs were exposed, and then we get the crown of thorns in verse two. Date palms have very long thorns as long as 12 inches. And one scholar noted that these long spikes would give the effect of a starburst around Jesus' head, an imitation of the likeness of deified rulers on coins of that period. And you do see that on coins of the period, the ruler who claims to be a God will have sun rays emanating from his head in that fashion. And you get Pilate working with that . Verse five, you say He's a king and a God. Hey, it looks to me like he's just a man in all of this. We just are stunned at Jesus's complete calm and control his ability to control himself. One writer said, when we realized the power Jesus had, we understand more of his humility and we see God's brilliant glory. Thus the kingdom which was not of this world overcame that proud world, not by the ferocity of fighting but by the humility of suffering. That's Augustine's comments here in his commentary on the gospel of John, and this is true power. This is true meekness. This is true glory and this business of him saying that he's the son of God, verse seven would probably bother Pilate verse eight because he would be a superstitious Roman who would believe in God man . And so he asked Jesus, really the question of the gospel of John, where are you from? That's what John wants us to ask because that drives us to faith or drives us to know that we should not believe. Let me get a wig of coffee here. Oh, that is some Costa Rican that I'm really, really enjoying. And then Jesus talks about you don't have any authority. Once again, Jesus is running the show here and then he says, the one who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. I think that's probably not a reference to Judas. Judas didn't hand Jesus over to Pilate. I think that's probably a reference to Kf S in John's gospel. Kfs is the initiator. He is the one who starts everything here and remember, none of that negates human responsibility in any shape, form or fashion . Tomorrow we continue with Jesus in the hands of the Romans and headed to Calvary. It is Tuesday and today our reading is in John chapter 19 verses 12 to 22, and it covers the darkest day in human history. We look in verse 12 and see that the Jews are pushing and pulling at Pilate. They're using him kind of as a political puppet here. The Caesar was known to be paranoid and would immediately remove anyone who was suspected of treason. So verse 12, oh, you make yourself a friend of this rebel. Then you're not Caesar's friend, he's opposing Caesar. These Jews know better than that. And if you remember earlier, this hasn't been the trial at all. The charge has been you're a blasphemer. You claim to be divine. They're switching horses here because you can't get somebody crucified for claiming to be deity. So we have to do all of this friend of Caesar business and it works. It just works. It was verse 14 about the sixth hour and the ESV has a note that puts that about noon, and it's probably not noon, that's probably Roman time and puts this very early in the morning somewhere around six to seven o'clock. We're not entirely sure where this judgment seat is. Verse 13, the stone of pavement for a long time that was located in the fortress of Antonio, that big square fort in the corner of the temple complex. But scholars. Now, the consensus seems to be that this may be over at Herod's palace that it would not be in the fortress Antonio, but it is now time for Jesus to be taken to Golgotha and to be crucified. And that gives me a good opportunity to say something about crucifixion. We don't know precisely upon what Jesus was crucified. Crucifixion was done on a variety of different stakes. You could use an X or a Y or an I or a T or as is traditionally seen a plus or a cross. It goes back to the Assyrian practice of impaling someone. The Romans had perfected it from what the Assyrians began. We do know that a title , uh, a, a motto, an inscription is placed upon the cross. So that kind of pushes you towards a T or to some sort of maybe an I and and then we get this cross beam that he's carrying and now that's more emphasis on the T or the plus the cross, the traditional cross. And all of that is to say that there's always somebody that's railing against tradition. You've always seen it this way, but it was probably this, but there's, there's really good evidence for what we've always believed that Jesus was crucified on a cross. He's carrying his cross beam. Verse 17. That's probably what that means. And there's very good evidence that condemned criminals had to do that. And as I said, this inscription verse 20 is placed above Jesus. So that seems to say some things about exactly what the cross would've looked like, that it would in fact be cross shaped and nobody likes the inscription, but that doesn't make any difference. It says your king Jews is a loser. He fought against the Roman government and he lost. Anybody else wanna try that? Anybody else interested in this? And maybe as you're looking at verse 18, verse 19, you're wondering, couldn't John tell us a little bit more about crucifixion and what happened there and where they drove the nails and how much it hurt and all the things that go with that? And John doesn't tell us any of that. Probably mostly because everybody in John's day had seen that done and knew exactly what that looked like and how awful it was. It is just appallingly terrible. Many people died of dehydration and shock having been on the cross several days. There would be muscle spasms. You can't breathe . The body slumps down on the cross and the chest muscles are contracted and you can't get air so you push up. But pushing up on your feet is obviously excruciatingly painful. The physical pain here is just unthinkably awful. But of course for Jesus, what's even worse is that he is bearing the punishment for the sins of the world. And I think John is gonna focus our attention more there than on that physical suffering. And again, nobody reading John's gospel in the first century needed a blow by blow description of crucifixion. Hebrew of course, is the language of Judea. Latin is the official language of the army and of all business, and everybody in that day spoke Greek, at least enough Greek to get by. So that's why the inscription is posted in those, in those languages. We'll be in zoom tonight, west siders , I'll see you on the zoom call. We'll talk more about this and what it means and how awesome, literally awesome it is that Jesus was willing to endure this for you and for me, for everyone else. See you tomorrow on the podcast as we continue in John 19. Welcome to Wednesday, and today we read John chapter 19 verses 23 to 30 . This is the end of Jesus' earthly life. This is Jesus' death on the cross, and our reading begins with the soldiers in contrast to the women that John will tell us are standing there in verse 25, the soldiers in verse 23 are gambling for Jesus' garments. The four parts here probably referred to a tunic, a head covering belt and sandals and they gamble then for this tunic, this seamless outer garment. There's lots, lots of speculation about the symbolism of the seamless garment and the Bible doesn't suggest any of that. Instead, we need to focus on verse 24 where John wants us to compare to Psalm 22, not argue about the cloaks deeper meaning Psalm 22 is all about the cross. But if you go read Psalm 22, you will find that about midway through the Psalm, there is a certainty that God will rescue and save. It is a lament, a cry for deliverance. But then the Psalm says, deliverance comes. The fact that Jesus uses this psalm on the cross says an awful lot about where Jesus is mentally when all of this is going on. There are four women standing there, verse 25, and it is four women, his mother, that's Mary, his mother's sister. That's probably Salomi , the mother of James and John. Then there's Mary, the wife of Clo and Mary Magdalene. Mark's gospel tells us that there were many other women there. So it's hard to be certain exactly of all the identity of all of this. Make sure we know exactly who's standing there. It is impressive to me that the women are there because you wouldn't want to be close to somebody. The Roman government is executing for being a rebel. Then there is this incredibly tender moment in verse 27 when Jesus says, and remember, Jesus almost always is distancing himself from his family. They don't seem to understand him. When Jesus says to John, verse 27, I need you to take care of my mom, I need you to take care of my mom. And verse 27 says, the disciple did exactly that. I I think the thing for us to remember here is that in all of the suffering that's going on here, part of this would just be how terrible it is to suffer in front of your mom who probably did not understand what was going on and what this meant. She would understand at some point, but right now, this would just be the most terrible end to your son that you could possibly imagine. And Jesus must have felt the sting of, are you disappointed in me? You thought so much was gonna happen here and I'm not. I'm not the Messiah. Maybe that you thought I was gonna be leading a political revolution and evicting the Romans and all kinds of great battles and glory and earthly palaces and thrones. Is his mother disappointed in him? Is she weeping? It's got to be just a terrible, terrible moment. Then in verse 28, Jesus alludes to Psalm 69. It's cited twice already in John's gospel chapter two verse 17, chapter 15, verse 25, and Jesus is suffering. He's thirsty. He iser very thirsty. Dying on the cross was very hard physically on the body. Dehydration, as I mentioned before, is a huge issue here and maybe as as we see the Hisp branch in verse 29 and and once again speculation just runs rampant here about some kind of connection to the Passover because you use a hiss up brush to paint the blood on the doorpost. There's no parallel drawn here by John to the brushy plant used in the original Passover. Instead, I think we just need to look at how much Jesus is suffering physically here. And then Jesus says, verse 30, I'm done. I'm done. It is finished or it is accomplished. It is accomplished. His death here fits the description of a voluntary act. He bowed his head and gave up his spirit and it is a victory cry. I came to do the will of the Father and I did it. I did the will of the Father all the way to the end. It is an amazing and incredible section of scripture to read. Tomorrow we'll see what happens after Jesus dies. It is Thursday and today we're reading John chapter 19 verses 31 to 42, John 1931 to 42. Notice verse 31 places this squarely on Friday, the day of preparation and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross, on the Sabbath in, in the Roman way of thinking, the longer the bodies stay on the cross, the better because it just makes a showpiece out of people who dare to in any way try to flaunt Roman authority or undermine the Roman government. But that can't be gotta get those off the cross because of the Sabbath. And so they send soldiers verse 32, this was usually done with an iron mallet and there's them in a skeleton found with smashed legs. They send them with a big hammer to break the legs, which causes the body to not be able, causes the victim not to be able to push up and get a breath. And so you suffocate. Nicodemus then is mentioned here in verse 39, and Joseph of Athea is mentioned here, both of whom are going to great risk. You don't want to be identified in front of the Roman governor with somebody who has been executed as a state criminal. Would you want to claim the body of Osama bin Laden? Hey, I'm his buddy. I'm his friend. That's not gonna go down. Well, we should be impressed with both of these men and their courage here and their understanding of who Jesus is and their desire to see Jesus treated correctly. The other big key here is verse 41, a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. That's massively important because it helps us see that when the tomb is empty, we know that Jesus rose from the dead. That's going to be very important as we go forward in the gospel of John. And aren't you glad that we're going forward in the gospel of John? The resurrection follows The cross by itself would be nothing but bad news. It's John 20 that turns that into the gospel. Good news, see you tomorrow. Welcome to Friday. Welcome to Friday, and after a dark week of reading some terrible things happening to our Lord in Savior, we come to the resurrection. Today's reading is John chapter 20, verses one to 10 . And I guess I should say this, as much as we love this account and we love to read this and it's such joy and light, there are a lot of attacks made on the gospels from the resurrection accounts. Who was first? Who was with who? Who saw what? And I should say a couple things here. Some of the alleged discrepancies that Bible critics launch at us, they're just very, very trivial. For example, it's common to hear that Mary Magdalene is alone in the gospel of John, but other women are with her in Mark. However, in our reading today, you'll notice John does not say Mary Magdalene's all by herself. He did not say that he just singles her out so that we'll have someone to identify with and there's gonna be some points made about her, but he does not say she's by herself. The other thing that needs to be said here is that every discrepancy can be answered. All of these attacks, in fact, all of the attacks on the Bible, but all of the attacks on the resurrection accounts can be harmonized and can be answered. What we need to pay more attention to of course here on the podcast is how John is giving us these resurrection accounts. It's almost a formula. The one comes or the ones the people, they come and they're just engulfed in emotion. There's fear and doubt and grief. And then Jesus appears Jesus is there in the middle of that and he transforms them. That's the emphasis. Jesus's resurrection changes everything. So here's the first day of the week, verse 20, and it's still dark. That may be part of John's theme, light and dark. She's literally in the dark and she does not go in. Uh , she would be able to see if she went in. It's still dark. And so she goes and gets Peter, and this is a , a note I'll give you on the podcast. This is the kind of thing I can give you on the podcast. I think William Barkley is correct here. Peter must have been a very special leader in the apostles for her to come to him. He's still the leader despite his thre denials that just says an awful lot. It wouldn't take long for that story to get around Peter, big dog, the guy everybody looks to. Hey, he was denying Jesus. He, he didn't stand up for Jesus. People would know that. But as Barkley says, there must have been something outstanding about a man who could face his fellow men after a disastrous crash into cowardice. There must have been something about a man whom others were prepared to accept as leader. Even after that, his moments weakness must never blind us to the moral strength and stature of Peter and to the fact that he was a born leader. That I think is exactly right. And that's why he stands up in Acts two. That's why he's preaching that first gospel sermon. So everybody thinks Jesus has been stolen. Grave robbing was such a problem that in fact, emperor Claudius had made it a capital crime. So Peter bails out and is running to the tomb. Verse three probably with John and John is faster than Peter, and that's a place again where everybody gets lost trying to talk about why he's faster and so forth and so on. Um, that's just another place where I feel very much, I just identify so much with Peter, particularly the putting your foot in your mouth thing. I really identify with that. But here I identify with Peter because I do love to run and I I'm slower than Christmas. Peter's just slow. And so we get there and what we get is eye witness testimony, eye witness testimony. The cloths are still there and they've been folded up. Verse seven, why would you undress a body if you're stealing a body? That's gross. You wouldn't even want to do that. That if , if the disciples have stolen Jesus' body, there's no way they would have done that . And in fact, one of the greatest evidences for the resurrection is the impact that this belief causes on the apostles and others who come to the tomb. How do you account for that? These people saw something and they would give their lives for what they believed they saw. These people aren't dumb, they're not simple toss . They went to the tomb and they looked, and then we get verse nine, that johanan reflection. We've had so many of these where John just stops off and says, lemme tell you why this is. Here's little parentheses . Lemme tell you what this is all about. What a glorious reading this is. This is what puts the muscle behind the gospel story. I was teaching this in Bible drill not very long ago and reminded the kids. We were talking about the Lord's Supper, that the cross is what we think about during the Lord's supper, but we need to think about the empty tomb as well, because lots of people died on crosses that didn't make Jesus special. Well, okay, the sinless son of God dying on a cross. That's pretty special. But a lot of folks were executed on Roman crosses. What makes this work is that Jesus died and rose again. We need to remember that that is where our reading in John is today, and that's the joy and light of the gospel. Well, thank you so much for listening. If the podcast is helping you tell somebody about it, leave us a rating and a review that helps more people be able to locate the podcast. So until Monday, when we'll open our Bibles together. Again, I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come to, I'll be with you again on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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