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 30th. I'm Mark. I'm holding some coffee and mostly I'm just really excited about being home. Had a really great weekend with the Northwest Church in Austin. Loved being there. Been with that church a couple of times now. Their preacher, Danny Simmons has been with us a couple of times. He's just a phenomenal young preacher. Really enjoyed being around Danny. Really enjoyed being with that church, but of course missed being home. They do the same kind of service schedule that we do here at West Side . So they meet in the morning and not in the evening, which meant once I got done yesterday in the morning, I was able to make my way home, get home in time to watch a little bit of football and be with Dina and just be home again. So that's all good. Makes it easier to get the week started. Now, of course, no sermon notes because I didn't preach yesterday at West Side means we just need to get over to John chapter 20 and get all about our daily Bible reading. So pour that cup of coffee, get that cup Dr. Pepper, get that team made. Whatever it is, get it going because it is time. Get ready, get set. Let's go. It is Monday and today we read John chapter 20, verses 11 to 18. Our reading is John 2011 to 18 and it is great to start the week with these appearances from Jesus. Just wonderful, wonderful stuff. So hard last week to read the crucifixion, such such difficult material not to understand, but to just to be impacted by it and to think about what it means and how it happened. That's just tough. And now just all the joy and the light that happens here. And that starts here in John chapter 11 with Mary weeping outside the tomb. And we get verse 13 where an angel says, why are you weeping? And I do think there is an edge there, a little bit of this is not the time for weeping. This is the time for joy and and maybe there's a connection there to our Lord's supper observance. Sometimes our Lord's supper observance is so rooted in the cross and it's a time for weeping. We forget to talk about the empty tomb, that it's a time not for weeping. It's a time for joy. So Mary turns around and she does not know that it is Jesus. This happens all the time with Jesus' resurrected body. And we wish that we knew more about that. And we just really can't speculate because we just don't know what we don't know. We know that Jesus is not always recognizable, recognizable. Boy, that's tough to say, isn't it? On the road to Emmaus, for example, the disciples there do not recognize him. You can touch Jesus' body. Luke chapter 24 and verse 39, for example, and it is scarred. There are genuine scars that you can see in our reading tomorrow. Luke John 20, verse 20, not Luke John 2020. He showed them his hands and his sign. Jesus can eat Luke chapter 24 verses 41 43, but it can, Jesus also can pass through doors and we'll get that into Mar's reading John 20 and verse 19. So I just don't know everything there he is to know about that. I don't think anybody knows everything there's to know about that except Jesus. But Jesus is here and she does not immediately recognize him. Finally, she does in verse 16 and she says, Rob , and in a text where there's a lot of, we don't know. Once again there's a little bit of that we don't know. Some authorities say that this is nothing more than my master and it's, it's not something special. But a lot of scholars say that this is a title given to only a very select few rabbis and would recognize, recognize Jesus as being something beyond just a regular rabbi. Of course, we have that wonderful hymn based off of this particular verse. And then Jesus says, don't cling to me. And yeah, here we are again with a lot of, well, Jesus, what , what ? What exactly is going on with that? And there are many options that have been offered to explain that. I think the best, the best alternative here is Jesus is saying, don't cling to me like I'm going to disappear. Like I'm a vapor , like , like, like it's a hallucination, like I'm a mirage. I am real. And don't clinging to me trying to hold me here because this is the time for you to go and share good news. One writer said Jesus is not like wet paint that needs to dry. And I think that maybe captures this idea very, very well. And Jesus then says, I'm ascending to my father and your father, Jesus's work opens the way to the Father for everybody. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that wonderful? The rest of chapter 20 on Tuesday. See you then. It is Tuesday, Tuesday's reading is John chapter 20, verses 19 to 31. There's three pieces to this. There's an appearance of Jesus to the apostles. Thomas is not part of that. So the second part of our reading today is Thomas and his doubts and Jesus taking care of those. And then our reading today concludes with a wonderful purpose statement for the gospel of John, the two verses that have driven everything as we've been reading through John's gospel. Let's talk about this appearance a little bit. Look at verse 20. Only Jesus could show his side and they have joy just as Jesus had promised. Remember in John 14 verse 18, John chapter 16 verses 20 through 22, Jesus is not a phantom, he's not an hallucination, he's not an illusion. He has a real body and the disciples are just overjoyed at this. When people try to deny the resurrection, we just need to remember that what you're talking about is a bunch of regular people like you and me who apparently are just complete morons. They're absolute buffoons. They believe this complete fairy tale and give their lives for it. Come on, come on, come on. You have to take seriously the testimony of these first century documents that tell us there were a ton of people who saw Jesus' resurrected body. They believed it because of what they saw. And so then Jesus sends them verse 21, they'll be on the mission that Jesus has been on. Remember how much emphasis in John's gospel there is on sending and being the sent one ? Jesus is the one sent from the Father. Now Jesus is sending them, he breathes on them verse 22 in what I think is a symbolic portrayal of what is to come on the day of Pentecost. And then he says, you're going to be able to forgive sins. Now that's not carte blanche where an apostle can just go around waving his hands and just forgiving people who are unre. Of course not What Jesus means there is by the preaching of the gospel, sins will be reined. Then we deal with Thomas here. He only appears as a name in the synoptics. He's getting a little bit more ink here in the gospel of John. And I love that John's gospel ends with Thomas because the whole gospel is about do you believe? So one more time, John puts a case in front of us of skepticism and clear, Hey, I don't know, this doesn't sound like it's gonna a clear lack of faith and says, where are you reader ? Are you with people like Thomas or are you gonna believe in Jesus? And we see that Jesus then affirms Thomas and helps him come to faith. Verse 28, my Lord and my God, the gospel began with the statement that Jesus is God and it ends with the statement that he is God. And I love the tie in verse 29, however , people who didn't get to see what Thomas saw going to believe, what about you and me? How can we say my Lord and my God? And the answer is the gospel of John. Now Jesus did verse 30 many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and by believing have life in his name. That's why John wrote this great gospel and that's what it causes us to do, to understand and to believe. Tomorrow we'll read in John chapter 21, see you on Wednesday. And Westsiders, I'll see you tonight on Zoom. Sometimes we don't meet that first Tuesday night of the month. I know about all of that, but we're clear for takeoff tonight. I'll see Westside folks on our zoom call tonight. I'll see the rest of you on Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. Who wants to go fishing? Let's go fishing. It's John chapter 21 that we're reading John 21 verses one to 14 and the disciples have gone fishing and there's some criticism of that. Let's talk about it. First and foremost, a lot of people wanna know what John 20 one's doing here because verses 30 and 31 of chapter 20 certainly do sound like the end of the book. And there have been people who have tried to say that this is a tack onto the manuscript and somebody else wrote this and on and on and on. You just never run outta things that liberals, scholars want to say about the Bible that impune its integrity and we just don't want to go there. First and foremost, there are no manuscripts of John that do not include chapter 21. It is all one gospel. And while acknowledging that there are some vocabulary words in terms that are different, the style is very much the same. There is no break in style. It sounds exactly like John and it has a wonderful, wonderful purpose. And that purpose would be to give us the reconciliation of Peter and to show that the disciples are not to compete with one another, to deal with a false rumor about the beloved disciple. John is concerned about that. And I think more than anything, it just continues Jesus' appearance to the disciples gives us more evidence so that we can do that belief thing that this gospel is all about. So the disciples are in Galilee and they are clearly forming a community here. I think that's oftentimes an overlooked aspect of this. The apostles are coming together and they are staying together even without Jesus in their immediate alt of the time presence. Now they're fishing verse three, and some people are, how can you fish at a time like this? And others are saying they're completely forsaking Jesus, but I don't think so. They haven't been commissioned to go into all the world and preach the gospel. They don't know exactly what they are to do. You gotta eat. And so they go to Galilee so that they can do some fishing and so they can eat. Remember Jesus told them to go to Galilee, mark 14 verse 28. So I don't see this as a problem. I just see them as waiting for the next thing . What else do we do? What should we do next? There's no indication of course, that once the great Commission is given and once they're told to go back to Jerusalem and wait for power to come from on high , the Holy Spirit and all the things that happened on the day of Pentecost, there's no indication that any of the apostles said , well , I'm not doing that. I'm gonna go fishing. Of course not. This is a time between. And so they need to eat and they go to Galilee and they fish. And the result of that verse five is that Jesus shows up and says, children, do you have any fish? And that can be translated. Friends, the new international has friends there. It could even be translated something very colloquial like Guys , but it is best children. John likes that term. He'll use it in one John as we head in that direction, get ready for that. And this is not, let's be clear, this is not the Luke five episode where they have fished all night and Jesus says, push out and fish on the other side. It's not that episode at all here. You can't bring the net in there. They get another boat and get all of the fish here. The nets won't break in Luke five, the nets are breaking. It's not the same episode at all. And it is clear that John saw this with his own eyes. So much of this represents his eyewitness understanding eyewitness account of what he saw. Simon Peter verse 11, halls the net ashore. Does that help you? Does that help you see Simon Peter, he is a strong man. He's a fisherman that involves heavy wet nets and hauling nets full of fish. 153 fish. In this particular case, I think, I think if you bumped into Simon in the marketplace, you'd be bumping into somebody who was just pretty husky. Pretty tough, pretty strong. What about the 153 fish? How about , how about we don't get lost in a bunch of crazy speculation? And that certainly has happened. Lots of people try to make the number be something serial of Alexandria riding in the fifth century. Imagine that the 100 represented the Gentiles saved and the 50, the remnant of the Jews that are saved. That's a two to one ratio for those of you who can do math. And then of course three. Three is the Trinity Augustine writing also in the fifth century, suppose that the 153 represented the law and grace. 'cause the sum of all the numbers between one and 17 is 153. And the number 17 can be broken down to 10 commandments, which is the law. And the number seven just stands for grace. And I would give more of those, but it all just makes my head spin and it's all just ridiculous. Sometimes 153 is just 153 by the way. There's no connection made here to the Lord's supper either. And that final note that I'll give you in verse 14 is that this is the third time, 'cause the appearance to Mary Magdalene does not count. She was not part of the apostolic band. Tomorrow we complete John's gospel. Maybe the whole purpose we get this phishing account we read today is so that we can have the conversation we're gonna read about tomorrow. See you tomorrow. It is Thursday. It is Thursday, and we're completing the 21st chapter of John's Gospel, which means we are completing John's gospel today. Our reading is John 21 verses 15 to 25. This is the famous conversation between Jesus and Peter. And as I said in yesterday's podcast, this may be the real reason why John has recorded the phishing episode. Because, because we need to see where Peter stands, this terrible denial of Jesus. Is he still part of the apostolic band? Is Jesus gonna kick him out? Can he be used in the kingdom? Of course, by the time that John wrote this, Peter is a major force in the kingdom of God. He preaches the first gospel sermon and all the things that happened in Acts and everybody knows about Peter. So you can't conclude this story without saying something about Peter and where he fit and and how did he get back in, in God's good graces, if you will, so that after the terrible denial, he could be the Peter that most people by the time they're reading the gospel of John would've known and thought of. And the answer is, Jesus restored him. Jesus restored him by asking him three times, do you love me? And verse 15, do you love me more than these? And that of course makes us ask the question, these what ? Is that more than fishing, more than your fishing buddies? Probably Jesus is getting at more than the other apostles. Remember Peter was very , uh, he was all about, I'm never gonna deny you. He's boasting himself. He was very assertive that he loved Jesus. Hey, these other guys may forsake you, but I won't do that. And I think Jesus is sharpening the point here. You you , you said you love me more than these other guys, but you denied me. And Jesus will ask him three times and Peter will affirm three times, you know that I love you. And that's all about those three denials. All of that shows that Jesus knows about the denials and is making Peter confront the fact that he denied him. In fact, in verse 17, Peter is grieved and says, Lord, you know everything. The three here is about the three denials. It is not emphasis not about some kind of play on Greek terms for love. That is very often the case that is made and it is terribly mistaken. Lots of people say, and in fact the new international version kind of supports this particular bogus view of things that Jesus is asking Peter if he agape him, which is this super high form of incredible love. And that Peter then says, no, I just phileo you, which is like I , I kinda like you a lot sort of thing. And then finally, Peter, then finally Jesus steps it down and says, well, how about some philo ? And, and, and Peter's trying to get stop, stop agape in the New Testament world is not this special Christian word that means the highest and most unreserved kind of love. It will come to mean that because Christian starts spinning it in that direction later, but not in the first century. In fact, the father is said to love the son with both philo and agape love. John chapter 3 35, John chapter five in verse 20, John, the writer of John the Apostle John loves to use synonyms and loves to vary things and there's just nothing to be. Jesus says, do you love me? And Peter says, you know, I love you that that's all there is to all of that. By the way, as I was teaching the Christian graces out of second Peter, the last of the graces is love. And so we talked a little bit about this and I reminded the class that Paul uses the word agape to describe Demis who loved this present world. Second Timothy four verse 10. Demis most certainly does not have that high unreserved Christian Love seeking to do the best for. Oh, come on. That's not what Paul says at all. We need to use Bible words in Bible ways, and we wanna make sure that we're not letting culture redefine Bible words. I'm thinking about the word baptism here. Noah Webster, baptism in the Bible means full immersion. What's happened to that word? Now I can, oh , it can mean dribbling a little bit of water on somebody. Well, that's not what the word baptism means. And the word love here just means write what you think it means. Peter, do you love me? That's all that we're working with here. And Peter now knows that Jesus knows and that Jesus is restoring him with feed by sheep. And then Jesus says, you're gonna stretch out your hands. And that's an expression for crucifixion. And that may have happened by the time John's readers are reading this. There are accounts that Peter was crucified upside down. Those are very legendary. That is not reliable. But, but Peter May well have suffered this terrible fate by the time John is putting his pen to papyrus here to write this gospel. This he said, verse 19, to show what kind of death he was to glorify God. So then there gets to be this ridiculous rumor that gets started because Peter says, Hey, what about this guy? And I love Jesus's answer, which is, why don't you mind your own business? Verse 22, I have a sermon I preach out of verse 22 about minding your own business. Follow Jesus. I need to preach that sermon again because sometimes we just get worried about everybody else and the whole wide world and what are they doing over there and what about this person over here? And what we need to do is mind our own business and follow Jesus. That is what Jesus tells Peter to do here. That'll tie up our reading. Then in John, what, what a tremendous gospel. Sometimes people ask me, what's your favorite book of the Bible? And the answer to that is usually the book of the Bible that I'm currently reading, studying, or teaching, which I guess makes Romans really start to rocket up the list since I'm teaching Romans on Wednesday night, book of Exodus is incredible. I'm teaching that on Sunday night and John's gospel has just moved me just, it's just incredible. I'm , I'm probably not gonna put it in front of Luke, love Luke so much. But this is, this is an incredible gospel because it helps us believe Jesus is the Christ and have life in his name. Tomorrow we get a letter from the writer of this gospel as we start reading. First John, it is Friday. It is Friday. We made it through the week and we're starting a new book of the Bible today. We start First John, what do you do if you've told the story of Jesus in a powerful kind of way, but now people are believing false doctrines about Jesus. If you are the Apostle John, the answer is you start writing some letters and we have those letters, first , second , and third John, and they deal with lots and lots of false doctrine. So get ready to think about truth, set up against error, truth in contrast to error. You will see, of course, a lot of similar themes that we've been reading in the gospel of John. I'm really excited about reading the epistles right after reading the gospel because ideas like from the beginning, we see that in one John three verse eight. And of course that's all over the gospel of John the world. Sin, walking in darkness, believing in his name, having life. Lots and lots of those big themes for John are going to appear in John's writing because there is, as I've said now, about four times, there is false teaching going on. And those problems are first theological that Jesus did not come in the flesh. And then ethical people are taking sin lightly. We're gonna get some of that from the, if we say, and he who says kind of statement so forth, somebody is saying, we can walk in darkness. Somebody is teaching that and that's why John is having to respond to that. Now, who's teaching this stuff? Well, particularly because these epistles are dated late in the first century, 80, 85, somewhere around in there. There is considerable consensus that there, by this time, there are emerging gnostic errors, the gnostics, G-N-O-S-T-I-C-S. And, and we hear a lot about the gnostics sometimes, and I think sometimes that just causes people to roll their eyes, but, but in the podcast you get a little extra and you get some benefit from that. Nos . Theism was a big melting pot of philosophies and ideas, pagan ideas, Greek ideas, and even Jewish ideas. And it's important for you to know that these were not systematized. You could not go check out a book from the local library that had, you know, gnostic handbook or gnosticism for dummies. It was just a melting pot, a mishmash of a lot of different ideas, many of which, almost all of which are counter to what the Bible would teach. It reminds me of the new age movement. If somebody says he's a new age , that you know kind of where that goes, but you don't know, are we talking about they're into crystals or are they into astral projection? New age doesn't have any one set of doctrines that you have to hold onto if you're gonna say you're a new agent . It's a lot of stuff about some stuff. So in gnosticism, generally speaking, the thinking was that matter is impure. Something is wrong with with matter. We need to get beyond the matter. And the way to get beyond matter, this physical body is through knowledge. And that's what no gnosis, gnostic, that's the Greek word for knowledge. So we're gonna have more knowledge, we're gonna know some things more than you regular people, which is gonna enable us to transcend this earthly body and the things that go with that. Well, of course, if earthly bodies are bad and somebody's saying Jesus came in the flesh, it isn't gonna be very long until somebody says, wait a minute, wait a minute. How ? How? How could that happen? I mean, your body is bad. Jesus wouldn't do that. So we get people who are denying the earthly incarnation of Jesus or others who are denying the deity of Jesus because of this gnostic presupposition that people are holding on to . And then you get a lot of this, I've got more knowledge, so I'm just better than you ordinary members. And sometimes that's a manifestation of gnosticism that we still see today. You sometimes you get people who think they know better than everybody else and they look down their nose and they have some special knowledge that they, because they have read more about Mel Kedi or because they've gone off on some theological tangent, maybe sometimes because they think they know original languages. Usually the people who are doing that know a whole lot less than everybody else, but they imagine that they are so knowledgeable, which makes me think of the gnostics that are here in verse John, it . This chapter is not a hard read at all. There's huge emphasis on being an eye witness , and we're gonna tell you the things that we have seen and heard, verse three, and the message to that, what we have seen and heard is that God is light. So think about this in terms of particularly people who are taking sin less than seriously and acting like it's okay. No, it's not okay. God isn't like that. God doesn't sin a little bit here and have a lot of righteousness over there. God is light verse five, and in him, there is no darkness at all. And we can't be partners. Fellowship, that's what fellowship means. Fellowship doesn't mean coffee and donuts. Fellowship is partners. We can't be partners with God when we walk in darkness. We need to walk in the light. Walk in the light. Now, John will define what he means by that in chapter two, verse 10, walking in the light in John's epistles here means to love your brothers. To love your brothers. And walking in the light should not be taken to mean sinless perfection. And there's a lot of misunderstanding about that walk. Here is a general manner of life. We need to be careful that we're not making more of that metaphor than John is going to make of that metaphor. But if we say that we are not sinning, then we are just deceiving ourselves. If we act like sins, not a big deal, that isn't. So. Sin matters to God, and we need to take care of our sin if we're going to have continued fellowship with God. That's one John, one more on this as we continue in. John's great epistle on Monday. We'll be in one John chapter two. Well, there you go. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast. Of course, if the podcast is helping you tell someone about it, that's the best thing that you can do for the podcast, and that'll help somebody in their daily Bible reading and as they maximize the things that we do together on Sunday, if you need some help or you, you talk to somebody about the podcast and they're like, I don't know how to make that work on my phone, then grab me or grab one of our deacons that's tech savvy and we'll get 'em up to speed. We don't ever want technical, technological barriers to get in the way of somebody being able to use the podcast. And please do leave us a rating and review that helps more people find the podcast. So until Monday, when we'll open our Bibles together. Again, I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven. I want you to come to see you Monday with a cup of coffee.

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