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, November the fourth. How did it get to be? November? I've got my Bible here. I've got my notes from yesterday's sermon. I've got a ton of notes to help us in daily Bible reading because we are in the book of Revelation and that is a book that that makes us uncomfortable even after a guy preached the sermon about getting comfortable with the book of Revelation. It's still kind of difficult, isn't it? We're gonna talk about it. We're gonna talk about the sermon yesterday. So grab your coffee, get ready, get set, let's go. So yesterday's sermon was about getting comfortable in the book of Revelation and there was a ton of stuff that I didn't get to say because there's so many things to say about the book of Revelation. But I'm gonna put this out here and you're probably gonna hear this again and again as we work along, as we do the Tuesday Zoom. As I work through the podcast, I think a key question to ask in the book of Revelation is what's being repeated? Repetition counts when a book is going to be read and will be consumed audibly. That's not how we are consuming the book of Revelation today. We all have our own copy. We're all reading it, we're reading it in different translations, we're doing silent reading. Of course, that's how we read today. A lot of that not done in New Testament times, reading was almost always done out loud. And remember, most people who get this book aren't going to get it in written form because they can't read. We don't know exactly everything about literacy rates in the New Testament world, but most people cannot read. So this book will be read in the assembly and people will consume it through their ears. That's how they're gonna get this message. And in that situation, it's important to repeat material so that it'll sink in. And so as we're working in the book of Revelation, people will start looking for a linear timeline. They're gonna start looking for a storyline. This happens, then this happens, then this happens, then this happens, then bang into the story. But that may not be how the book of Revelation is going to be structured. It may be more circular. This happens and then this happens. And then conclusion. And then guess what? It happens again. It happens again. It happens again. Same conclusion. And then guess what? Same thing happens again and again and again. And the same conclusion so that the main message will sink in. We just get different vantage points of the terrible things that are happening and the way God's people are being kicked around and that they need to stand firm and stay faithful to the Lord. That message gets repeated. I think the structure of the book of Revelation is more circular than it is linear. So think about repetition. Start watching for things that are being repeated, themes that are coming over and over again. And particularly words that are being repeated, thrown. So many times in the book of Revelation, lamb, so many times in the book of Revelation, overcoming so many times in the book of Revelation, watch for what's being repeated. Those are the things that matter most in the book of Revelation. You get the things that are repeated. You're gonna be more comfortable with this book, and that means we can do some daily Bible reading. Get your Bible to Revelation chapter three. Let's read It is Monday. And today we read Revelation, the third chapter verses 14 to 22. This is the last of the seven letters to the seven churches of Asia. This is the letter to the church at Laia , maybe the most famous of these letters. And it is famous because this church receives no commendation of any kind. But this was, this was a city that you would think would be getting all kinds of commendations because it was a very wealthy center, a big banking center there, very wealthy city. I should have said there was a famous medical school there and it made IS ave . They were very famous for black wool that was widely sought. Lots of great things happening in La Ossea , a rich, wealthy city. And remember, we're talking about cultural accommodation. That's the issue in Revelation three 14 to 22 . This church is accommodating itself to its culture. They're acting like the people that are around them. They think they're so important, they think they're so wealthy and they are spiritually dead. Lukewarm water is useless. Hot water for some things. You hot water for coffee. How about that? Gotta have hot water for coffee. Cold water, cold water's great. Gotta have cold water on a hot day. When does anybody come into a restaurant and say , do you have a glass of tepid, lukewarm water? Not too hot, not too cold, just right there. No lukewarm water is useless. And with, as one writer said, stunning bluntness, Jesus counsels this church that they need to get their zeal together and they need to repent. And I love this open door. Open this door and I will come, come in and die. That's a banquet image there. Jesus wants to have fellowship with us, but we have to open that door And the layout of sin brethren, they need, they need to open that door by turning back to the Lord and not accommodating themselves to the culture. That's Monday's reading in Revelation the third chapter verses 14 to 22. It is Tuesday. It is Tuesday. And today we read Revelation chapter four verses one to 11. That's the entire chapter, revelation, the fourth chapter. It is very easy, I think, to run right past this and get on with things in chapter six where the book of Revelation gets going in a way that we kind of expect it to. And the the going gets exciting and there's visions and things that are happening. And I wanna encourage you not to do that. I think Revelation four and five are extremely important and they need to be set in their place. And four and five do go together. They are both incredible visions of worship that end as one writer noted in a call for worship. And as we look at these chapters, and we'll read Revelation five on Wednesday and Thursday, but you just want to watch for all the parallels both are set before the throne, four , two and then 5 1 1 seated on the throne in both places do we see four living creatures and the elders , uh, we, the singing is the same. Holy, holy, holy. And you are worthy. This new song is there. The seven spirits of God are there and there is singing of honor, glory, power, and praise all of this to set the lamb, to set Jesus right by God so that we understand they are both deity and they are both to be absolutely praised and honored and worshiped as deity. So all of that is going together and we need to make sure that we hold that together even as we read this over the next three days. The point of all of that is to pay attention to God. And so it's very, very easy in these chapters to get lost, deciding what Jasper and Cornelian chapter four, verse three, what that means, what those colors signify or to discuss the four living creatures like a lion and a calf and a face like a man and a flying eagle. And decide what all of that means. And and all of that just becomes very arbitrary, very, very quickly. You can pull down 20 commentaries on Revelation four and you can get 20 different opinions on what a flying eagle represents and what the face like a man represents. And, and that just shows us we don't need to do that. We don't need to do that. I don't want in any way to lessen the importance of the 24 elders or the four living creatures or all these beautiful stones and uh , the sea of glass, the things that go with all of that. But that's just window dressing. It's the setting for God's throne room. That's what we need to be focusing on. That's what we need to be seeing. And there are many parallels to the events that are described here in chapter four, chapter five, and the way a Roman throne room was set up and the things that happened in a Roman throne room. And I think that's what first century Christians would've recognized. This is the real seat of power. This is the real throne. And and again, we just don't wanna overthink all the setting, all of the window dressing that is here. For example, the four and 20 elders that are here. I've seen so many different breakdowns of that. Usually we cut that in half, 12 and 12. 12 tribes and 12 apostles. But it doesn't say 12 and 12. It says 24. And that could be the divisions of the priest. There are 24 divisions of the priest. But the point is, again, we're not supposed to be thinking about that. Whoever watches a Star Wars movie, for example, and sees a bunch of storm troopers marching behind Darth Vader and counts them and then starts dividing, well, there were 10. That's five and five and five means this. We , we don't do that. We just know that wherever the bad guy goes, he's got his retinue of bodyguards with him. He's got his gang, his posse, whatever you want to call it. And and this is the 24 elders. Uh , I'm not sure I'm ready to call them a gang. That's probably not the best choice of words, but they're honoring God. And then these 24 elders will be honoring the lamb. That's what we need to see. That's what this is all about. Don't get lost in the details. And I love here the singing of Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and is to come. Isn't it a joy that we can still sing that today? I don't think chapter four is a difficult read if we just keep our eye on the main thing. The main thing is the throne of God. The main thing is the throne. And who's on it? It's not Caesar, it's not me. It is, it's the throne of God. God rules. God is in control. God is worthy of our worship. That's chapter four. No zoom tonight, Westsiders elder preacher meeting this evening. So no zoom tonight. I'll see everybody on Wednesday. Revelation four, one to 11, that's the reading for Tuesday. Welcome to Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. And today we read the front half of Revelation chapter five. This is Revelation chapter five, one to eight. And here we get everything that we saw in chapter four about God fused into Jesus Christ, the Lamb. This is a great place to just think a little bit about the Book of Revelation. There's no question who the lamb is. We all know who the lamb is. And the Book of Revelation is not afraid to say Jesus. In fact, we started with Jesus and that great image of power and strength and majesty in might in chapter one. But notice in chapter five, it doesn't say Jesus. And it is not a repeat of the image and the figures of speech and all that went with that in chapter one. Instead it's a lamb. It's an unusual lamb, but it is a lamb. And that helps us see that the book of Revelation is about evoking some things using imagery. The easiest thing to do would be for John to write Revelation chapter five. Jesus executes the plan of God, the end. Well, there you go now. Now we don't have to read the rest of the book Revelation, do we? But that is not what John does. 'cause the saints who are going to receive this letter, those seven churches, they need more than flat doctrine. They need to feel the power of God. They need to see the power of God and they need to see the power of Jesus Christ, all that in chapter one in a powerful way. But they need to see the work of Jesus Christ and how he exercises that power. And it's not the way you might expect, especially in a Roman world where Roman power is exercised with military efficiency, strength, and rule come through force. Is that Jesus? Is that what Jesus is all about? Maybe his soldiers should start getting swords and spears and shields ready 'cause we're gonna go to battle and we're gonna physically overthrow the Roman government. Is that what this is about? Chapter five helps us understand Jesus is the unexpected Lord of Lord and king of kings. So let's get into chapter five just a little bit. There's a scroll written verse one within and on the back. There's so many Old Testament illusions in the book of Revelation. And that seems to hark back to things that Ezekiel saw . For example, in Ezekiel chapter two, I would have you pay particular attention here that no one can execute the plan. That's what that seems to be. The scroll seems to be the plans of God. No one is fit to do that. And there's weeping about that. And then one of the elders says verse five, the lion of the tribe of Judah can do this. So John hears something and then verse six, he turns and he sees something. Make sure you notice how unexpected what he sees is because what he hears is the lion can do this, then he turns around and he sees a lamb. And that lamb is the lamb that has been slain. I'm not huge on burrowing into New Testament Greek. Lots of times that just takes us away from what the terms usually really mean because the translations are really good. But I would tell you this, the word slain, there is the word that's used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the tugen . It is the word that is used in Isaiah 53 verse seven for the lamb slaughtered there. And that of course is that great messianic prophecy. So this is the slain lamb. This is the Isaiah 53 lamb. This is the slaughtered lamb. And he is the one who can execute the plans of God. That's what this is all about. That is what this means. And again, for those who say revelation is in some kind of code, who could miss this? It's so obvious that this is Jesus. It's not some difficult and hard to reach for, hard to figure out kind of idea. Here Jesus is the lamb that probably evokes the imagery of the Passover lamb, the sin offering. And again, especially with the use of the term slain or slaughtered, certainly this identifies Jesus as the one from Isaiah 53. He went, he took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. Verse seven. And then everyone worships more on that in our reading tomorrow. Revelation five, one to eight, that is the reading for Wednesday. Today is Thursday. Today is Thursday. And we complete Revelation, the fifth chapter today. Revelation five, nine to 14 is our reading today. This is the place where Revelation focuses on the worthiness of the lamb and the elders in the living creature worship the lamb. And I would have you notice as well that a great multitude worships the lamb. I looked verse 11, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures, the voice of many angels, numbering, myriad of myriads, thousands of thousands. And then verse 13, I heard every creature in the heavens, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea , all of them say to him, who sits on the throne and to the lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever . So the lamb does not replace God, but is worshiped alongside of God. And I think the emphasis here is how the lamb brings all people together. And I , yesterday I talked about Roman rule and Roman authority. Roman conquering means military power. And when Rome showed up and conquered you, that didn't bring everybody together in this wonderful song of praise. What happened to conquered people? Conquered people are enslaved. They are marched off into the worst existence possible. They are abused and used as slaves. In fact, in chapter 13, there'll be some discussion here about conquered people. And those people are made slaves. They are captives. Notice the lamb exercises, power and authority and mind . And that results in people coming together to honor and glorify and worship God. So this kind of might, this kind of overcoming, this kind of conquering is different than Roman conquering different than how the physical world operates. This is a different kind of kingdom with a very different kind of king. I hope. Revelation five and six bring you to a place where you are called to worship God and the lamb and you are worshiping God and the lamb. Revelation five, nine to 14. That is the reading for Thursday. It is Friday. It is Friday. And today we read Revelation chapter six verses one to eight . I've said some things as we've gone along in the podcast and in the pulpit about apocalyptic literature. I'm just gonna push that a little bit further. I've done a lot of work in that area, have done some writing in that area. I think this is a very misunderstood kind of material in the Bible. When we read the Psalms, we talk about parallelism, for example in Hebrew poetry. And we read Hebrew history and Kings and Chronicles and we talk about how that kind of material works. Epistle writing, there was a form for New Testament epistles, and many of the New Testament letters conform to the common everyday way of writing a letter, just like we have Dear John at the top and then the body of the letter. And at the end we say sincerely, that's standard letter writing form. And there's much standard forms in the Bible. Deuteronomy is a hitite treaty. It's in the form of a Hittite treaty. No, I'm not making that up. So what's the form here? In the book of Revelation? The form is called apocalyptic literature. And without getting way down in the weeds with all of that, I would say this, the thing that you need to notice about apocalyptic literature is that it is a pullback, the curtain kind of material. Here are the things happening on this earth and you're seeing all of that in your life and in your world and on your newsfeed. Now I'm gonna pull back the heavenly curtain and you're going to be able to see what's really happening. These events here on earth are just a reflection of, for example, the battle between God and and Satan between good and evil. Lemme grab a little coffee here. And so you're getting a real picture of the realities that are being played out here on this earth. It's a look behind the curtain kind of material. And we certainly should not read apocalyptic literature in the same way that we read, for example, epistles or that we read the book of Proverbs. And we understand that in in so many different ways today. You don't read a science fiction novel in the same way that you read the instruction manual to how to put together your IKEA furniture. You don't go to a chick flick movie and have the same expectations of that movie and watch it the same way that you watch a documentary. So apocalyptic literature has its own feel, its own form, its own stereotypes. And it was very familiar. It's used heavily in the New Testament world and the writers of apocalyptic, they knew how that works. They knew how that's gonna play. Kinda like I think the chick flick is a great illustration of that. You go to a chick flick, you're watching that within, I mean, before the opening credits are done, you can say, Hey, he is going to marry her. We know that there's gonna be complications, they're gonna be angry at each other. They're then they're gonna fall in love. And at the end of the movie, it's him and it's her. You know how that form works. And apocalyptic is like that. We know how that form works. Or I should say they knew how that form works. And again, it's not about making something out of every detail. So we're gonna get these four horsemen today, and there's lots of discussion about that and and I understand about that. I used to try to make these things align , particularly with the Jewish War in 80 67 . I I think there's a lot here in the book of Revelation about Judaism being judged by God. And so I'm trying to line this up with some of the things that Josephus writes about that war. I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that. What, what I'm gonna say about this is some terrible things are happening on this earth. Terrible things are happening on this earth. That's what happens as the seals are broken and these horsemen come forth, the horsemen remind us of Zechariah in Zechariah six. The horsemen are instruments of God's judgment. So here's that Old Testament illusion again, and we get a white horse and a conquering horse that some people think that's Jesus it . It doesn't seem, it doesn't seem enough there to be Jesus. It's just conquering. And then there's a red horse, and that seems to be warfare and all that goes with that. And then there's famine and I, I've seen that parallel. There was a famine in Jerusalem during the Roman siege. But again, I'm not gonna try to make a , this equals that sort of thing. When Revelation wants us to do that, it can certainly do that. I'm thinking about chapter four in chapter four, you get that Chapter four, verse five, I saw this before the throne. There were seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God. Okay, now I know what that is, but, but Revelation doesn't stop here and say this famine is the famine during the 80 67 war, or it was the famine in 80 92. It doesn't say that it's just bad things. Bad things are happening. And then the fourth seal is death and writer's name was death. Don't have to wonder about that. Do we see, verse eight tells us when we need to know, John will tell us or more to the point. Jesus will tell us through the pin of John, and all of these terrible things are happening on the earth. And I think that's just about terrible things happening on the earth because the Christians in the first century we're seeing turmoil and tribulation and troubles and all kinds of things are going on. And they're wondering, ha , has God lost sight of where we are in this mess? Is God off the throne? Is somebody else running the universe? What's happening? Notice how God is absolutely in charge . A crown, verse two was given to him, his writer, verse four was permitted. Verse six. And in the midst of these things, he says, do not harm the oil and wine. See how God is sovereign? God is in control. There's a lot of things happening and you feel like the world is run off its tracks. Don't be misled. God is still running everything despite the bad things that have been unleashed in this world. That's the message in Revelation six, one to eight. On Monday, we'll journey further into six chapter and see more about the bad things that are happening in this earth and why bad things are happening on this earth. But Revelation chapter six, verses one to eight is the reading for Friday. Thank you for listening to the podcast this week. If it's helping you, and I hope it is helping you, then tell somebody about the podcast. Revelation is fascinating to people. People may have misconceptions of what's in there, but everybody wants to know more about the Book of Revelation. You tell somebody, Hey, I'm reading the book of Revelation and I'm getting stuff outta the book of Revelation. It's a different way of reading the Book of Revelation. Come read the book of Revelation with me. Listen to the podcast, we'll talk about it. We'll think about it. Let's see what the book of Revelation is saying. So until Monday when we'll open our Bibles together. Again, I'm Mark Roberts and I wanna go to heaven, and I want you to come to I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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