Hello, and welcome to the Westside churches special Monday Morning Coffee podcast on this podcast, our preacher Mark Roberts will help you get your week started right. With look back at yesterday's sermon so that we can think through it further and better work the applications into our daily lives . Mark will then look forward into this week's Bible reading so that we can know what to expect and watch for. And, he may have some extra bonus thoughts from time to time. So grab a cup of coffee as we start the week together on Monday Morning Coffee with Mark.

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast for Monday, January the 20th. I'm Mark. I'm holding a great cup of coffee and, and I'm on my way home from California. I was with the Studebaker Road congregation in Long Beach, California for a weekend meeting. And as you're listening to this, I'm on an airplane headed home, which of course is my favorite destination. Can't wait to get there. And of course that means I'm wearing some Scarlet today and I'm hoping to get home in time to get the ball game on tonight and watch the Ohio State Buckeyes win the national championship. But we've gotten more important things to discuss than whether my Buckeyes can win the championship since I wasn't home in preaching. This podcast is all about daily Bible reading. Grab your Bible. Let's head over to First Samuel. Pour that cup of coffee, get ready, get set. Let's go. Our reading for Monday is First Samuel chapter 10, verses seven to 27. This is where we left off on Thursday and it was hard just to close the Bible and move over to the book of Psalms, wasn't it? We wanna see what's going to happen with Saul here. Now, Samuel calls the people together verse 17, to the Lord at mpa . And the key here as one scholar noted is that only the Lord and Samuel knew that the king had already been selected and anointed, but Samuel wanted the tribes to realize that Jehovah was in charge of the selection process. And do underline in your Bible, verse 19, today you've rejected your God who saves you from all your calamities and your distress. That's what this king is about, isn't it? That's what they want. They want a military leader, they want someone out in front. When they go into battle, they have rejected God's way of delivering them in favor of what nations around them use, which is a powerful warrior king. So now we cast some lots. Verse 20, and the tribe of Benjamin is taken by lot. And the next thing you know, it's all about Saul. And then we get another troubling note about Saul. All along the way, there's just stuff that makes you say, wait a minute there, Saul, what exactly are you doing? And verse 22 says, he's hiding. He is hiding. And it just doesn't seem to me like when you've been anointed by God and you've received the signs that show in chapter 10 that you've been anointed by God, that the thing for you to do is to run away from the responsibility that God has called you to not happy about this at all his size. Verse 23 is highlighted here. I think he is the ideal choice. If you want a big warrior king, he's the Israelite version of Goliath. And then the whole thing ends kind of strangely. There's no crown, there's no court, there's no palace. SA just goes home and and goes back to work as a farmer. We'll see that in tomorrow's reading. And some people don't even like him being selected in verse 27. People are complaining about that and there's some translation issues there, but Saul held his peace . Saul can be patient and wise, unfortunately, he's not always patient and wise. Keep your eye on that. Our reading then for Monday is First Samuel chapter 10, verses 17 to 27. Welcome to Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday. Today we read First Samuel chapter 11, all 15 verses. That is our reading for Tuesday. And this is the moment that Saul needs. It gives us our first chance to see the new king in action. And it gives him the opportunity to get into the action and show that he can be the leader of the people of Israel. If you watch carefully in First Samuel chapter 11, it will remind you a ton of the book of judges. There's a lot of judges stuff happening in the text here as we transition from judges to kings. And you'll see some very judgy sorts of stuff. Is that, is that a word? Some judgy stuff. See some very judgy kinds of things here. Let me grab some coffee. We'll get some very judgy stuff going on here and we will see a change though, something different from in the book of Judges. So Nahash verse one, the ammonite goes up and sieges jbs Gilead. And what he says is, I'm taking you over and there's nothing that you can do about it. So the men of Jesh say, we are gonna make a treaty. And Nahash imposes the harshest kinds of treaty terms upon them. I'm gonna gouge out your right eye, and tonight in Zoom I'll talk with you a little bit about why he's going to gouge out the right eye, what that does and why that's important and share with you as well. There's some material in the Dead Sea scrolls that that will shed some additional light upon this little story here. It's not scripture, but it does help us understand the history of what's happening. Maybe the important thing to notice here is that the elders of J Bs say verse three. Okay, we're gonna gonna think about it for seven days and see if anybody will help us out. But it's clear they don't expect any help. And notice no one says send for the new king, he will save us. No, nobody is thinking in that kind of way at all, but the spirit of God, verse six, rushes upon Saul in the Old Testament, the spirit of God comes upon people to empower them to do God's will. He's overtaken by this terrible affront to the Israelites. And here's the new thing. He sends out messengers throughout all the nation and unites the nation. In the book of Judges, there are various regional conflicts that go on and the tribe in that area responds to the threat and the judge shows up and leads them into battle and they toss the midianite yoke off or they get rid of the amite or whoever it is that's bothering them. But the nation doesn't fight as a nation. Other parts of the country, they're not even involved in that. They don't care that Benjamin is being subjugated or that in the north something terrible is happening to the E rites. But here we get a United Israel all acting together and working together and they're working together under King Saul. Verse 11, the next day Saul put the people in three companies. So he acts as the leader and he leads the people and they do triumph. God gives them the victory. And Saul is very aware of that. Verse 13, today the Lord has worked salvation in Israel. This is a rare moment, a rare moment for King Saul. Maybe this is something we ought to hold onto . We think of all the terrible things he did every now and then He can get it right every now and then he can get it right. So they go to Gilgal , which is the appropriate place to go. Covenant renewal ceremonies have been done there before, like in Joshua chapter four, in Joshua chapter five, and Saul meets Samuel here several times. So Saul here is leading with God in mind. That seems to be a good sign for things to come. And when we get done with chapter 11, maybe I'm thinking, hey, this king thing, this could, this could work out. This guy seems like the right kind of king. We we, we got this, we had a military threat. He's a military leader. It's all good. Is it? Maybe that's something that we can explore tonight on the zoom call West Siders, everyone else see you tomorrow on the podcast, our reading for Tuesday. First Samuel chapter 11. Welcome to Wednesday, saddle up your camel and let's do this on hump day. It's First Samuel chapter 13 that we are reading. Today we are reading all of First Samuel chapter 1323 verses . So let's get right to it. And maybe I should start right away with the textual difficulties in verse one. This verse is full of translation issues that really are far outside of anything I can treat in a podcast. But you can see that from the different versions in the way they translate Verse one. If you have an older version of the ESV, then it will say Saul was do , do , do , do . Years old when he began to reign and he reigned, do , do , do . And two years over Israel, the newer ESV after 2011 says he lived for one year, then became king. And when he had reigned for two years, the New American standard has , Saul was 40 years old when he began to reign. He reigned 32 years over Israel. There's just a ton of troubles here when you're trying to translate the Hebrew. And Hebrew has lots of difficulties and issues, translating numbers just in general in this text. This verse is just fraught with troubles. Maybe the thing to say here is that we're not gonna let some uncertainty about exactly how many years Saul reigned or how old he was when he became king, upset our faith. That's not what our faith is based on. Our faith is not built on first Samuel 13, one . Our faith is built on the empty tomb. And yes, we would like to translate first Samuel 13, one correctly, and we'd like to understand what that is saying and all the things that go with all of that. But how long Saul reigned actually Acts 1321 tells us he reigned 40 years. So that settles that issue. But how long you reigned and all the things that go with that, that's not the basis of your Christianity. So let's keep translation issues with numbers and and , and we're gonna talk about that a lot all through the year, how long this guy reigned and when he reigned. That's gonna come up all this year as we seek God's heart and we read about kings, but we're not gonna let that destroy our faith. So in verse two, please notice we finally have a standing army and there is trouble here with the Philistines. There's lots of trouble here with the Philistines. Look at verse six, when the men of Israel saw that they were in trouble for the people who are hard pressed somehow, trouble is the word of the day today, isn't it? The people hid themselves in caves and holes and rocks and tombs and sisters . Why ? That just sounds like something straight out of the book of judges. And now Saul fails in the middle of this crisis. We wanna be careful. Verse eight, this does not seem to be the meeting of chapter 10, that was some time ago. But what is significant here is that Saul is rejected at Gilgal, the very place where he had been made king. And what happens is Saul reveals himself to be a coward. Verse nine. He just gets nervous because people are deserting him. And so he goes on without God. Now, sometimes people have said that his sin was offering the offering because he's not a priest and he can't do that. And that could be right. However, the the language here just may be accommodative. There are a couple of times that David Solomon, others are said to have offered the offering. And it doesn't mean that they usurped the place of the priest. What it means is they arranged for the offering and they looked at a priest and said, you do the offering like you're supposed to. In our family, we call that executively producing something. If there's a wonderful gift and somebody opens and says , oh, this is amazing, did you make this yourself? The answer is no. I executively produced it, which means I ordered it from Etsy. Well, it may be that Saul is executively producing the sacrifice here, but what he most certainly is doing is failing to obey the prophet. The prophet told him to wait. He did not wait. He did not do what Samuel told him to do. That is a sin that he will commit again in chapter 15. So it is obvious here that Saul thinks he can go on into battle without the counsel and assistance of God. He's not waiting on Samuel. That is the big issue. And then the rest of the chapter just details how the crisis just gets worse and worse and worse. And we even hear that the Israelites don't have weaponry. And that's a good place to learn something about reading the Bible. Why is this here? What is that doing in the story? What is that doing to you and me the reader? And the answer is, it heightens the tension. There is no way Israel's gonna win. They don't even have enough weapons. So we close chapter 13, seeing Israel in terrible straits and their new king is not the leader that we need him to be. Our reading for Wednesday is one Samuel chapter 13. It is Thursday. It is Thursday. And today our reading is one Samuel 14, one to 23. And we meet one of the stars of one Samuel. Today we meet Jonathan . He's actually been in the text before in yesterday's reading in chapter 13. And in verse three , uh, verses two and three, we heard about Jonathan . But today we see who he is and he is a star in every sense of the word, particularly if you want to talk about starring in faith and courage. I really have some questions here about why verse two. Saul is staying in the outskirts of GI Youa . He's supposed to be attacking. He's been called by God to push the Philistines out. Remember chapter nine and verse 16, but he's not doing that. And there is an EOD available in verse three that becomes important in just a moment. But the theme of the act of the theme of the section here is that this is a time of action and that Jonathan is a man of action because verse six, nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few. Jonathan trust in God. Jonathan says, we're the people of God. God will be with us. Let's go. And in fact, his armor bearer backs him. I'm with you, it's risky, but let's go. God will be with you sometimes. Sometimes you need to be a Jonathan , but sometimes you just need to be Jonathan's armor bearer and support and encourage the Jonathan who's going forward. So they do a little fleecing here, verse 11, which kind of sounds like Gideon, kind of , yeah , gotta be pretty careful about that fleece business. But Jonathan does use a sign to decide whether or not they can go forward and they attack. And the result versus 14 and 15 is that there is a panic and probably that probably that panic is happening because the Philistines are thinking How many more like this would be coming? How many more guys have they got like this? Only fools would come alone. There has to be more behind them. So then we get this uncertain note, verse 18, where SALs says , bring the arc of God here. Some translations have the EFI here, which was mentioned in verse three, not the arc, but the point is Saul is ready to consult. God, thank you. Finally, Saul is ready to see what God wants him to do. But while he's doing that, verse 19, then there is this tumult and everything is going on and Saul says, stop talking to God. Oh no, no. What are you thinking? You don't stop consulting God and just jump into the battle. Why? Maybe the question to ask is why hasn't Saul consulted God before? This is a disaster. One scholar said, Saul is a person who prays when he should act and acts when he should pray. And that is consistently Saul's characteristic way of acting. So even though we know that the Israelites don't have enough weapons, notice that God doesn't need weapons because he uses Philistine swords Verse 20 against the Philistines. And the result of that is a great battle. Verse 23, A great victory in battle. So the Lord saved Israel that day. The Philistines are defeated, but Saul is not the leader that leads them into that kind of victory. It's really more about Jonathan , and it is certainly about what God has done. Saul shows a strange ability here to turn victory into failure. And we'll see more of that when we rejoin this reading on Monday. But for tomorrow, we're headed to the Book of Psalms. Our reading for Thursday is one Samuel 14, verses one to 23. It is Friday. It is Friday. And we are reading in the Psalms. Our reading today is Psalm five. And in contrast to our reading last week in Psalm four, which was an evening prayer, this is a morning prayer, verse three, oh Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. And again, we always ask What kind of psalm is this? And the answer is, it's a lament. It's a cry for help. Remember, lament here does not mean weeping and crying and grieving. Lamentations, Jeremiah kind of lament. Lament means a cry to God for help. However, as we read along in Psalm five, you'll notice that this is a Psalm expressing great confidence in God. The Psalm celebrates the joy of being numbered with those who can serve God and who know God and who worship God. And that is particularly highlighted in verses four, five and six. The emphasis here is that God does not take any pleasure in the wicked. So he's not gonna allow or tolerate the wicked to be into his presence. That's not gonna happen, that's not gonna happen. It will not happen. And I think there is some movement here from the quietness of verse four to expressions of divine wrath. In verse six, several of these verses are in green for me. Just love verse eight, lead me, oh Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies. Make your way straight before me. And then verse 11, that those who love your name may exalt in you. And do note verse nine, open tomb is quoted in Romans three, verse 13. Imagine an open tomb in the hot Mediterranean climate. Woo . That would be nasty. That'd just be terrible. And then verse 10, make them bear their guilt of God. Let them fall by their own counsels. One of the common themes in biblical wisdom literature is that sin defeats itself. Sinners are defeated by their own sins. I think you see some of that in Psalm chapter five. The reading for Friday is the fifth Psalm. Thank you then for listening to the podcast. If it's helping you, of course I know you'll want to tell somebody else about the podcast and encourage them to listen and read their Bible as well. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review that makes a big difference in the algorithm determining whether or not it's going to show this podcast or someone some other podcast if someone is seeking some information, a podcast about the Bible. So until next week when we'll open the Bible together again, I'm Mark Roberts and I want to 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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