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, February the 10th. I'm Mark. I've got some great coffee right here. This is Ethiopian Jgi chef and it is a wonderful light roasted coffee. I have notes from yesterday's sermon about why Christianity is so wonderful. I am really liken that series a lot. And then we're gonna talk about Samuel and what a jerk Saul is. Wow , that was a downer, but it's gonna be a great week and there's lots of great stuff in the word of God for us this week and lots of things to think about from yesterday's sermon about grace. So pour that cup of coffee, get ready, get set, let's go. So yesterday in the 10 40 hour, I continued my series that I'm just doing occasionally from time to time about why Christianity is so wonderful. And that gave me a good opportunity to talk about grace because grace is what empowers Christianity and makes it so wonderful. But sometimes, sometimes we don't maybe think it's so great, it's not so amazing. And I tried to work with that some yesterday. I'm a little worried sometimes a sermon can get very technical and that may be hard to follow and sometimes the preacher brings way too much material and he's trying to deliver three hours worth of material in about 17 minutes and it just kind of overwhelms everyone. I hope that was not the case yesterday and I hope that maybe some clarity about a better definition of grace is helpful to you. But I do want to say this, I really believe what most people are looking for when we talk about grace, teach about grace, preach about grace, is to have more confidence in their salvation. And we look over at our Calvinistic friends, I'm sorry, reform theology is now the term they want to use. We look at those folks and and they have this grace is a no strings attached gift and it saves you no matter what the perseverance of the saints once saved, always saved. And that looks very, very comforting and we are kind of envious of that. But I would remind you that part of the package of Calvinism, of reform theology is also the belief in predestination that God decides who is saved and who is lost no matter what you ever do. So how much assurance you got. Now you're always wondering whether I'm in the saved or I'm in the lost, and if I'm over here in the lost , there isn't anything I can do about it because God arbitrarily makes all those decisions before anything ever happens and you can't move from one group to the other. That's where the perseverance of the saints come from. If God has decided that you are saved, then you are saved no matter what you do. So Calvinists don't have near as much assurance as sometimes we think they do standing over there if they're once saved, always saved business. There's some things that come along with that that undermine true assurance. Instead, when you understand what grace means in the New Testament world, that it is a gift given to bond, then what you and I have is a relationship with God. And I want to emphasize bonding. What that means is God wants you to be saved. He gave his son so you'd be saved. He gave us his word so we'd be saved. He gave us his church so that we could keep being saved. He gives us in his providence, deliverance from temptation and a gazillion other things so that we will be saved because God wants you to be saved. And if you need assurance in your salvation, I'm gonna suggest that rather than looking at yourself and talking about what you have done to respond to God's great gift, which of course is important and essential and we want to do that, what kind of person would not respond to God's amazing gift? We must respond to God's amazing gift. But my response is always going to be far short of God's amazing gift. I guess maybe to keep working that gift metaphor. If, if someone gives a student a four year scholarship to school and there was no way that they were gonna go to school and now they are going to school, they will write a thank you note and they should write a thank you note. But the thank you note falls far short of the value of a four year scholarship. And our response to God's grace will always fall short of his amazing grace. But what we focus on is that he wants us to be saved. Therein is assurance. If God wants me to be saved and I want to be saved and I'm trying to respond to his grace, you know, and I know that's gonna work out, that's gonna work out because God wants us to be saved and I'm responding in that relationship to him. And that is wonderful. Go read Titus three verses 4, 5, 6, and seven and you'll know we can't but grace can and that's amazing and it makes Christianity wonderful. Let's go see what David's up to as he continues to struggle with the king who would like to murder him. Let's turn our Bibles over to First Samuel. It is Monday and the reading for Monday is First Samuel chapter 20, verses one to 23, the reading for Monday. First Samuel chapter 20, verses one to 23 . And I think it's important for us to step back for a moment from the material here in Samuel and just ask why is this in the Bible? What's going on here? And a big piece of that is this material shows how innocent David is. That would be very important to establish him as the rightful king. He is not a wicked assassin who cut down the true king and usurp the throne. And there's actually a number of places as we continue to work through the life of David, that people will actually say some things. Usually they're mites, usually they're from Gia of Saul and there are people who are saying things about you usurp the throne, you don't get to be the king. And this material lays those kinds of ideas to rest. But as we turn to one Samuel chapter 20 today, and you notice verse five, David's just had it. He needs this matter settled once and for all I I, I can't keep coming to the court and Saul's throwing things at me. I gotta get this fixed. So the new moon would be a time of joyous celebration. Amos chapter eight and verse five actually says that business stopped on that day. This is a festival that will last a couple of days. Very excited time, everybody's gonna celebrate. And so David is in fact verse six, he's telling a lie here and that's not a good thing. That doesn't make it right just 'cause David did it. And so Jonathan tries to reassure David and they work through that enough that they decide, Jonathan decides to make a covenant. Verse 14, if I'm still alive, show me the steadfast love of the Lord. Steadfast love of the Lord is that special term there for has said covenant kindness. And that expresses the incredibly close bond between Jonathan and David based upon faith in God. And it is an admission by Jonathan that he will not be the king. He understands that he understands the will of God. He is submitting to and acquiescing to the will of God. I will not be the king and what I need to know, verse 15, don't cut off your steadfast love for my house forever. Don't eradicate my family. That is extremely common in David and Jonathan's world. When a new king comes to the throne, particularly from a different family, then what he does is he wipes out the old family. That way nobody can say your pretender to the throne and it really should be this fellow right here. In fact, that doesn't even have to be an entirely new family. Sometimes when a king comes to the throne, he kills all of his brothers so that none of them can say, I have the right to sit on the throne. Very, very common. Jonathan says, please don't do that. And they make a covenant together. Then they set up a signal, a sign, and there's some discussion in the Hebrew uh , about how to translate that Hebrew and where the air is gonna be shot. Uh , don't get down in the weeds on that. What matters is Jonathan will sound out his father and will find out where Saul is on this. And then he will signal to David so that David can know whether he can return to the court or not. Our reading for Monday. One Samuel chapter 21 to 23. See you tomorrow. Welcome to Tuesday. Today's reading in Samuel is one Samuel chapter 20 verses 24 to 42. This is a rough reading. This is a rough reading. We'll talk more about it in Zoom tonight. But there's nothing here that makes Saul look any better. He's looking worse by the moment. I said last Wednesday night in Bible talks that someone had mentioned to me they just want sa to get off the stage and nothing in chapter 20 in our reading today will change that view, particularly what he says in verse 30. Let me give some attention to the text. Verse 25, the king sat on the seat by the wall. Saul's looking more paranoid by the moment. I think it's wild . Bill Hickok who always sat with his back to the wall so he could watch the entrance to the saloon, see if somebody's coming in to shoot him. Saul's doing the wild Bill hickok thing here. Then Jonathan tries to cover for David and even tries to explain away David's absence and it becomes clear that Jonathan is helping David. And that results in verse 30 where Saul says, you son of a perverse rebellious woman. And you should know that that is rendered rather gently in the major translations. There's some euphemisms being used there. It's very vulgar and very co coarse language. The NLT renders that you stupid son of a. And that is an insult to Jonathan . It's an insult to Jonathan's mom. It's just terrible. It's just terrible. And the fact that he talks like that and uses that kind of language just tells us everything about where Saul is spiritually because verse 31, he knows that if David is king, Jonathan cannot be king. And that's what it's all about for Saul . Verse 31. That's his agenda. I want my family to be established. I want a dynasty, I want a legacy. I want my son on the throne. I don't care what God wants. So Jonathan then meets with David, they go through the signal and then verse 40, Jonathan uh , says to the boy, Hey, gather up the weapons and you go on into the city. And then he and David have a cheerful party. And sometimes that confuses people. I thought we had a signal because we weren't going to have any kind of parting. And the way to understand that is to understand that Jonathan wasn't sure that it would be safe for him to actually physically talk to David. And so that's what the signal's about. But it becomes clear to him after they've gone through all the machinations with all of that, Hey I , I've got a minute here and if the boy will go into the city, we can talk. And so David and Jonathan talk and they do weep. Um , they , there will be one other time that David and Jonathan are together. Uh , but it's just , it's just bitterly difficult for both of them. They value each other's friendship so much. And King Saul is utterly wrecking that friendship of all the things that we can hold against King Saul. And that's a long list. One of them, and it's pretty close to the top of my list, is that he destroys the Saul, I'm sorry, he destroys the Jonathan David relationship. And Jonathan would've been such a tremendous help to David once he became King Saul. That's on you because all you think about is what you want rather than the will of God. The reading for Tuesday, a difficult and better reading for Samuel 20 verses 24 to 42. Welcome to Wednesday. Our reading today is for Samuel chapter 21, the reading for Wednesday for Samuel chapter 21. Lemme get some coffee here, see if we can get going with our reading. This is, this is kind of a crazy reading, no question about it. There's two parts to this. David runs to knob in chapter 21 verses one to nine. And then David flees to GA chapter 21 verses 10 to 15. And I think what we're seeing here is just the beginning of the rest of one Samuel David is in flight from Saul from here on Saul pursues David and David is always running for his life. That's so hard on David. And we'll see some breaking points as we journey along in Samuel and particularly as we read in the Psalms on Friday, that will help us tremendously to get a sense of where David is emotionally and mentally. It's just hard to be pursued by an army and by the king. This is, this is not what David signed up for when Samuel showed up and anointed him as king is it. So he heads to knob and there he consults with a Alek . A alek is the brother of a hija who is part of Saul's red in you . He is the one that advises Saul after Samuel will not First Samuel 14 verse three. And so it is clear that David does not trust a Alek . He would not trust him. A Aleks brother is on the other side of this divide. And so David just lies. There's so much lying going on in this text and none of that is good. None of that is good. Don't tell lies. Just 'cause David told lies doesn't mean you can tell lies I can tell lies lying, it's bad. Don't do that. And eating the showbread bad, don't do that. Talked a lot about showbread in my class on Sunday mornings, on in in the book of Leviticus. The the showbread is only for the priest and Alek here gives the bread to David and he should not have done that. Maybe, maybe he's just afraid of David. I'm gonna guess when David shows up with his band and it does seem sometimes it seems like David is alone and sometimes it seems like David's got his guys with him. I'm thinking this is a pretty thugy looking bunch. And by this time David is a mighty warrior and has killed an awful lot of people and he knows how to kill people. And I think Alek is just bullied and afraid of him. And so he gives him what he should not have given him. Now people have used this to justify everything under the sun because Jesus makes a point out of this in the gospels. But as Jesus is talking about it, he explicitly says it was unlawful for David to eat the show bread . I agree with Jesus, it was unlawful. Notably verse seven, a little bit of foreshadowing here, there's an mite standing there and he sees everything that's going down that will come back to haunt David later on. And so David grabs Goliath's sword. I'm wondering if he's just gonna like use that as a gift. Maybe he's gonna give that to the king of the Philistines. It's hard to imagine that David is comfortable wielding Goliath's sword maybe. Maybe he's bigger now and he is comfortable, but Goliath's sword would just be huge. The sword for a nine foot tall man is not the sword that David a five foot tall man would want to be carrying around. So maybe he's heading to the local pawn shop and get a hocket . I don't know. But he takes it and goes to gaff and that's an absolute disaster. Gaff is about 30 miles southwest. It's on the coast. The Philistines live in that part of the world that's now known as the Gaza Strip. That's where they are. You're seeing that map on the news all the time. So that's where the Philistines are. And this goes terribly wrong. Did David really imagine that people wouldn't recognize him there? Everybody is panicking and so he has to act like a madman. There's a great contrast here. Saul is mad. David can fake it. David can control the madness. Saul is out of control. And you might make a note here, Psalm 34 was written during this time and we will read Psalm 34 on Monday next week. So that's where that's coming from. It's Wednesday though today and today we read all of one Samuel 21, the reading for Wednesday, one Samuel 21. Welcome to Thursday. Our reading today is one Samuel 22. The reading for Thursday is the entirety of one Samuel chapter 22. Sometimes people will say it just can't get any worse and usually, usually they're wrong. And one Samuel 22 maybe underscores that because I'm pretty fed up with Saul. I didn't think it could get any worse. And then something horrible happens in one Samuel chapter 22, Saul does something that is so incredibly unthinkable. It's hard, it's hard to even read any of this. But David is in the cave of a doula. This is a time when he wrote Psalm 57 in Psalm 1 42. We'll read those psalms next week. And everyone who's in distress is pouring out to David. All the people that Psal has been oppressing and kicking around and people who have problems and maybe people who are outlaws and not really known for coloring within the lines. All of those people show up, which helps us see that David has quite the band about him. His group of people would be a gang of Tufts that you would not want to mess with. Even still, David consults with God. Notice he leaves his parents in Moab, verse three, which just shows you how bad it is. And then Gad tells him, this is not where you need to be. You need to go back to Judah. And so David obeys God. Verse five. That's a little verse, but it's a great hint at David's character. He's consulting God, he's responsive to God, he obeys God. You wanna be like David. There you go. Consult God. Respond to God, obey God. Obviously we don't consult through a prophet today and God is not gonna speak directly to you or to me, but we can consult God through his word. We can consult God through his church as we consult with wise brethren, wise sisters who may be a little bit more life experience than we have. We can listen to them and care for them and and care for the advice and counsel that they give us. So then we get this just terrible, terrible situation. Verse seven, Saul won't even use David's name anymore and he's big time paranoid, big time paranoid. Verse eight. Everybody's conspiring against me and he just wants everybody to have pity upon him. There is no conspiracy. Verse 14, Alek says, nobody's conspiring against you. David is very, very faithful. What is the deal? You completely missed this. And the king says verse 17, we're wiping these guys out. They help David kill all these priests. And you'll notice right thinking people say, I'm not doing that. I will not do that. This is wrong. And I don't, I'm not gonna participate in that. I don't care if you are the king, I won't do that. But of course, dag the mite, verse 18, he doesn't care about God. He doesn't care about what's right. He doesn't care about what's wrong. He just murders 85 persons who wore the linen ephod . Verse 18, the linen ephod . That's the mark of the priest of Jehovah. And those are white robes. Think about the scene here, the blood of these priests on these white robes. And I have to ask great verse 17, that they wouldn't do what the king said, but how come nobody told dag you won't either. Somebody needed to stand up for those priests. Don't let this man just murder them, massacre them. What is going on? One of the sons of a hemal, verse 20 escapes and he comes in towels. David, what Saul had done, and David knows it's on me, it's on me. I got them in trouble. I made it look like they were involved. I made it seem that they were on my side. This is my fault. And David w writes Psalm 52 from this terrible tragedy . Tomorrow we read Psalm 52. Today's reading Thursday's reading is for Samuel 22 . It is Friday. It is Friday. Our reading today is the 52nd Psalm, just nine verses. Psalm 52 is our reading today. I really think our schedule, our reading schedule this year is going to pay huge dividends with these readings on Friday in the Psalms because David writes some of these psalms at the worst times in his life and they help us then to understand where he is. And particularly as they constantly speak of trust in God, they help us grow our trust in God. If David can trust in the middle of such a tremendous crisis and all the things that are happening to him, we can trust as well. And what this Psalm is about is a terribly wicked and evil person. This is the one who mocks God and who does what he wants to do even if it hurts others. This is Atella the Hun . This is Adolf Hitler. This is Joseph Stalin. This is the child molester. This is the drug dealer who sees his customers overdose and die. This is the person who comes into a school and shoots children. This is an evil and wicked and horrible person. And what David does here is both cry out to God about that, which would make it a lament. But I think more than just that, it's a psalm of trust. It's a psalm of trust. And I'll come back to that at the end because what really bothers David here is evil people and the shamelessness of how they act. And we gotta watch what David says about that. He begins by talking about the vicious attack of the evil person. Uh , the evil person versus one to four. And I'm thinking about dag the mite here. And we saw that yesterday in our reading, even if DAG wasn't strutting up and down and boasting about it out loud. David's real point is he's pleased with himself. He has no remorse. He's not repenting and and I love that. Oh, why do you boast of evil , alm mighty man? I think that's sarcasm. Oh, you are a tough guy. Dag . You killed a bunch of priests and a bunch of women and children, aren't you the mighty warrior? And then David moves from four verses talking about the attack of the evil to talking about executing the evil in verses five, six and seven, that God will execute this evil person. This is the response of the righteous. At first, the righteous are just astounded at what evil people can do. But then they delight and they laugh and they praise God. And the laughing here is not gloating. That's not what this is about. It's just that surprise that God can turn the tables. This person looked like they were totally in charge and they're running the world and they always get their way. And God just upsets the apple cart and brings justice and judgment upon them. Which explains verses eight and nine, the confidence of the righteous. I am like an olive tree. David says, olive trees are so important in the Bible and they are still so important in the Bible lands today. They are an evergreen that can bear fruit and they can grow for centuries bearing that fruit. In fact, Dean and I, when we were in the holy lands, we saw a uh , an olive tree in the garden of Gethsemane. They still know that site. And there's an olive tree there that is 2000 years old. They don't know exactly where Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, but that olive tree does because that olive tree in all likelihood was there when Jesus was praying. So olive trees are so significant in the Bible lands. And David says, I am a lasting tree planted. Think about Psalm one here, because I trust in God and his hassad , his steadfast love, his covenant love. And so while the wicked verse nine boast in their evil, the righteous person boast about what God has done and what God will do. And that's why this is a Psalm of trust. Because this Psalm says God will deal with the wicked. God will deal with the wicked. They aren't getting away with it . They are not. And I know we get frustrated at miscarriages of justice. We get frustrated with evil people doing evil things and they don't seem to have to pay the tab. They will pay the tab. God will deal with the wicked. Psalm 52 encourages us to trust in God even more. Psalm 52 is our reading for Friday. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast this week. If it's helping you, I hope that you will recommend it to others so they can be involved in daily Bible reading and benefit from our time together on Sunday. So until next week when we will open our Bibles together again, I'm Mark Roberts and I wanna go to heaven and I want you to come to I will see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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