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 17th. I'm Mark. I have my Bible open and I do have my notes from yesterday's sermon about the questions Jesus asked, and I am looking at a pile of stuff about the Psalms. It's gonna be a great week reading in the Psalms. So much good stuff. Pour that cup of coffee. Let's get ready, let's get set, let's go. So yesterday was number 11 in the series, the top 12 questions that Jesus asked. And that question came from John chapter three and verse 12 where Jesus says to Nicodemus, Hey pal , if I tell you earthly things and you don't believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things, that's the Mark Roberts International East Texas translation. And I just wanna give you two quick extra thoughts here from from two passages in John that I think will help us. First, if you're looking at John three, just step up into John chapter two where it says in John chapter two at verse 23, when Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing, but Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. So some of that verse 23, many believe that sounds pretty good, but, but it doesn't seem to be that great because the next two verses, Jesus seems to have some reluctance there that that's, that's not the kind of faith he's looking for. That's not the kind of strong faith that they really need to have. Notice the connection to signs. And then the first thing that Nicodemus says in John three verse two is no one can do these signs. I wonder if Nicodemus may be a representative, a representative, Woohoo . Try to get that out. A representative of the people in John chapter 2 23, 24, 25, who have inadequate faith who are responding to the miraculous signs, but they are not responding with full faith. And I say that because Jesus says in the question, why don't you believe Nicodemus problem is not intellectual? It's a faith issue. But then secondly, secondly, John 1938 tells us that Nicodemus helped Joseph of Arimathea with the burial of Jesus. Something has happened between John three and John 19 and this proud Sanhedrin councilman is now risking everything for Jesus. It is not hard to believe that not very long after like on the day of Pentecost, Nicodemus was born again. Hope that helps you As you think about that great question that Jesus asked him, turn your Bible now, not to Samuel, but to the Book of Psalms. This is a week in the Psalms. Let's do some daily Bible reading. Monday's reading is Psalm 34. The reading for Monday is the 34th Psalm. I love this psalm. This is a Psalm of thankfulness, and if you look at the heading there, it's of David when he changed his behavior before Aex so that he drove him out and he went away. Now remember the subtitles to the Psalms are very old, but they are not inspired . They're not an original part of the text. However, they reflect long tradition and I think they are helpful and of value. I'll place this here with first Samuel 21. We read that last week. David escapes to gaff. He is , he's wrong . The run from Saul and all the bad things that Saul's trying to get done, and he runs off to gaff and ends up having to act like a bad man to get out of there and save his own skin. What I love about Psalm 34 is that this psalm celebrates God's deliverance. Instead of saying, look at me, look how clever I was. I acted like a lunatic and they got rid of me. By the way, a bialek , there probably should be aish because that's the king in gaff that may reflect a copyist error. But this psalm just breeze thanksgiving in so many ways. Please notice verse one, I will bless the Lord at all times. Blessing the Lord does not mean what it means When the Lord blesses us, the Lord blesses us because we are inadequate, because we have need blessing. The Lord means to praise God's name to exalt God. That's what bless the Lord means. Make sure you have that in your Psalm vocabulary as we work through the Psalms this year. And I want you to particularly notice that praise in the Psalms is substantive in these Psalms of praise and thanksgiving. There there are reasons given for praising God. God saved me, God instructed me, God is with me. It's very solid. It's not just chanting over and over again, Jesus, Jesus or praise God or victory, victory, victory. Some of that has taken hold in the religious world. And some people, some seem to think that that really is the way to worship or to praise God. It's just not, we don't see that in scriptures. What we see in the scriptures is God has done something and the psalmist talks about that or God is something, and the psalmist talks about that. So the Psalm moves then particularly in verses eight to 14, to talk about the goodness of God in verse eight. I should I , I have to tell you this, it's my favorite verse in the whole Bible. It is my favorite verse in the entire Bible. Oh , taste and see that the Lord is good. I call that the Baskin Robbins verse because when you go to Baskin Robbins and they have a new flavor and you're looking at it and you think, man, is that gonna be any good? Maybe you're talking to someone. What do you think about that? Should we get that? What's the guy behind the counter do? He doesn't describe the ice cream to you. He doesn't tell you about it, doesn't tell you about his experience with the ice cream. He gets one of those little pink spoons and he scoops it up and he hands it to you and he says, Hey, why don't you try this? And that's what the psalmist says. Verse eight, taste and see that the Lord is good. Try it. Try God. You won't be disappointed. And it's just so that in so many ways people need to try God to understand his goodness, his goodness and pardoning sin. I can describe that to you. I can teach you the doctrine of atonement and propitiation. It's not like what you know when you're baptized into Christ, when you are born again, as we talked about yesterday, God's goodness in answering prayer that only comes to those who pray, who try it, who taste and see God's goodness in making His will known. That's only found by those who read the Bible and who read the Bible regularly and begin to see the principles and ideas surface in their life and they realize God's guiding hand through his word. Just , just try it, taste and see that the Lord is good. We're not real comfortable with testifying. And I'm probably pretty glad about all of that. But it is not wrong to look at a non-Christian and say, you know what you need to do ? You need taste and see, you need taste and see because the Lord is good. And that's what David says here. Please be mindful that this is a time when he's on the run and yet he's celebrating the goodness of God. And so he works through that. Then to say, especially as he closes out the Psalm, I thank God for listening to me. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous. Verse 15 and his ears toward their cry. And there's even a messianic implication there in verse 20, God listens. God hears, I thank God he's an amazing and wonderful God. He listens to me, he hears me and he delivered me from a really tight squeeze with the Philistines. Monday's reading Psalm 34. Welcome to Tuesday, Tuesday's. Reading is Psalm 56. Psalm 56 is our reading for today. And this is a lament, a complaint to God or more, more like a cry for God's help. And once again, the superscription here is telling us that this is the same setting as Psalm 34 that we read yesterday. This comes from one Samuel chapter 21 verses 10 to 22. When David went Toth Goliath's hometown in Philistia. And one writer said, the fact that two of David's psalms are tied to this one event demonstrates how devastating the experience was to David cut off from all that he had known. David tried to find refuge among the Philistines and when they turned on him, he nearly lost his life. This is a terrible time for David and a great time for us to focus on what makes David a man after God's own heart. Because that's what we're going for. We wanna be, we wanna be seeking God's heart. So as you read down through the Psalm, just notice verses five, six, and seven, the pressure is just unrelenting. They are coming after David constantly and that's what's driving him here to cry out to God. And then verse eight, you have kept count of my tossings, put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? What a beautiful, beautiful verse that references the care of God and the trust that David has in God. So he concludes verse 12, I must perform my vows to you, old God. I will render thank offerings unto you. Very, very common in the Psalms, for the Psalms to cry out to God and say, if you will deliver me, I will sing your praises or I will make a sacrifice, or I will teach a song to everyone, or I will tell everyone of my deliverance. That's a vow. And it's part of a lot of laments, a vow of praise, a vow to praise God. And I think maybe Psalm 34 fulfills that vow. And we should be careful here. This isn't a payment, it's not a tit for tat . You do this for me and I'll do that for you. It's the right response to God's amazing deliverance. Now let me just close the , this is a short psalm. It doesn't take long to read these psalms, but we need to think about the Psalms and bring them into our lives. I wanna say a couple of things here about David, maybe that will help us in that direction and talk more about that on Zoom tonight and how we integrate this into our lives. But lemme just say this first, David refuses to let fear drive him away from God. He will not abandon God just because things have gone badly and are going from bad to worse. But I would also add here that trust is a conviction for David. It's not an emotion. He's determined to believe in God, even when sometimes it's hard to believe in God. Maybe he doesn't feel like he's being watched over by the Lord. And then finally, I would say this trust doesn't mean that we don't act prudently or wisely. We know that God delivered David here and we know that God is getting the credit both in yesterday's reading and today's reading for delivering David, but the direct means of salvation, deliverance, if you will for David, was that he put on a disguise. He acted like a nut. He acted like a crazy person. And so they got rid of him. So David trusted in God and then David gave God something. Yeah, something to work with. Maybe we'll talk more about that in our zoom call tonight, Westsiders, and we'll work a little bit more on Psalm 56 and think about how to become a person like David who trusts God even when he's very afraid. A reading for Tuesday is Psalm 56. It is Wednesday and today we read Psalm 57. Our reading for Wednesday is the 57th Psalm, just 11 verses. Not a long Psalm. And once again, we're dealing with a time in David's life when he is fleeing according to the heading from King Saul. I wonder if assassins were seeking your life, would you be thinking about writing a psalm of praise? Would you be thinking about praising God? I think most of us, myself included, would probably be in duck in cover mode. Maybe. Maybe we'd be checking our ammo or looking to see if every shadow concealed a sniper or a ninja. My thoughts might not be, can I sing a hymn of praise to God? But look at verse four. My soul is in the midst of lions. I lie down amid fiery beast, the children of man whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords. David is praising God in the middle of a very difficult time in his life. This is again, a lament that is a psalm asking God for help, asking God for deliverance. I would say this, I think this lament has movement to it. There's confidence throughout the Psalm and as we get towards the end of the Psalm, it's not very lamenting. It's very crazy . And that's probably not real words, but it works for me. And again, hold on to the setting here. David is being chased around by his enemies. And even in the verse that I just read so often when David talks about his enemies, he's not so much talking about his life that he's worried about, but what drives David crazy is that people say bad things about him. Their teeth and tongues are sharp swords and spears and arrows. David can't stand the fact that they are slandering him probably to King Saul. And maybe here he's talking about some yes men who surround Saul and who are feeding these conspiracy notions that seem to have taken Saul to a fever pitch of hatred against David. And you should know that this psalm is very carefully structured verses one to four work together. And then verse five, there's a refrain or maybe we would call that the chorus, then verses six to 10, that's the second verse. And look at verse 11. There's the refrain, there's the chorus. So we get the idea that God is helping me with my enemies in the first four verses. And then we get the idea in verses six to 10 that the enemies really are nothing. I praise God again with the refrain in verse five, in verse 11, holding the Psalm together. I love the imagery here. Storms of destruction in verse one, in verse two, I cry out to God most high to God who fulfills his purpose for me. Think about that. When you want to be a man after God's own heart, need to look for God's purpose in my life. What is God doing even in these difficult circumstances? That's a beautiful, beautiful idea. So then David begins to talk, I'm moving to verse six here. I think there's a change of mood here. They're setting a net for me. They're trying to trap me, but they fall into it themselves. How many times in the Psalms do we read? Evil has its own bitter payback. People who are trying to do wrong end up tripping themselves up in their own sin. Instead. Verse seven, I'm trusting in God. Yesterday we talked about how for David, trust is not about emotion, it's about conviction. I'm trusting in God and and what's he doing to shore up that trust? I'm singing verse seven, awake my glory. That's a intriguing expression. Maybe has the idea here of awaken me, my ability to give glory to God. And I'll start in the morning and give thanks to you. Oh God. Verse eight verse nine. I'm gonna sing praises to everybody because your verse 10, covenant love, steadfast love has sad . That special kind of love loving the unlovely because we have given our word to do our best for them. Your love has said love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Beautiful psalm, wonderful psalm gives us great insight into the character of David. Even as he's being pursued by Saul all over the wilderness. Saul's trying to take his life. David says, I am trusting. I'm trusting in God. Our reading for a Wednesday is Psalm 57. Welcome to Thursday. Welcome to Thursday. Today we read Psalm 142. The 140 second Psalm is our reading for Thursday. Once again, we're reading a lament psalm as David is in the cave, something that's covered in one Samuel chapter 22 . David is on the run once more from King Saul. I love these psalms even though even though sometimes it's hard to read these and think about David in these kinds of terrible circumstances. But what I love about them is that they show David's honesty. I pour out my complaint. Verse two. I tell my trouble before him, David has been anointed king and what did he get for that? He nearly got killed a whole bunch of different times. David says, I need to trust in God, but that's not easy to do. My spirit is fainting within me. But over and over again, David says in the psalm, I'm trusting in God, you know my way. Verse three, my portion is in the land of the living. Verse five, verse seven, the righteous surround me . I think those are high points in this psalm. Now someone's gonna ask me about the heading and it says it's a mascal , M-A-S-K-I-L mascal . And there is plenty of conjecture about that. But we do not know. It seems to be a technical term, maybe saying what kind of psalm this is maybe designating something about the music. We do not know what that means. Lemme just give you a quick little breakdown here. I think you can break this psalm into three pieces. The Lord hears our prayers verses one and two. The Lord knows our circumstances verses three and four, and the Lord knows our needs. Verses five, six, and seven. This is a very plaintiff cry on the part of David. I think the emphasis here is that we can cry out to God when we're confused, when we're uncertain, when we are afraid. And we can be honest with God about that. Attend to my cry, verse six, I'm brought very low. Bring me out of prison, verse seven, that I may give thanks to your name. God, I wanna praise you and if I get killed, I can't do that. So deliver me Lord so that I can point more people to you and to your goodness, bring me outta prison that I may give thanks to your name. I love that idea. And maybe, maybe one of the big things to take away from Psalm 1 42 today is that going on when we don't feel like going on may be the greatest skill for a follower of God. What is great about David here is that there's just not any quit in him. I'm gonna continue. I'm gonna stand with God, difficult, hard, but I will continue on 'cause I have a hope for a better future. Not just in eternity, in the sweet mind and , but I know I think God's gonna do some good things even now. God expects good things from God and God's ways and God's time, but, but God will take care of that. I'm just going to trust in God. Going on when we don't feel like going on is a great skill for people who are seeking after God's heart. Our reading for Thursday, Psalm 142. It is Friday. It is Friday. And today our reading is one of the most famous chapters in all of the Bible. Our reading for Friday is the 23rd Psalm. This is one of the most off quoted scriptures in the Bible. Yet sometimes I wonder if people understand all of the imagery and really appreciate the beauty and power of the 23rd Psalm. It is interesting that there's nothing here tying it to a specific occasion. There's nothing in a heading that says this is about a battle, winning a battle or running away from Saul or any of those kinds of ideas. What you get though is this giant idea. God cares for me. That's the big theme here. David develops that just again and again and again. God is caring for me and he does that using two images. First and most famous of all the imagery of a shepherd and sheep. And then there's the imagery of a banquet in verses five and six. Lemme say a couple of things here about this sheep and shepherd imagery, because we are not an agricultural and ranching society for the most part. Some of this may just go right past us, but those that take care of sheep, and there's lots written about this now, especially on the internet, you can read and research and see these kinds of things. Those who have experience with sheep can, can tell you a lot about how this psalm speaks to exactly what would go on when a good shepherd takes good care of his flock. So for example, he makes me lie down in green pastures. Sheep have a full-time job eating and they don't lie down unless they are full and safe and content. So for David to say, I'm a sheep and I'm lying down, that would immediately convey to his audience, God is an amazing shepherd. He's really taking care of me. He leads me beside still waters. The other thing that sheep need, they need food, they need water. And of course, in the desert water's at a premium, that's a difficult thing to find good clean water. No, God takes care of me. God leads me beside the best water source. I don't get lost. He's leading me in the paths of righteousness. And though even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, there's a lot of discussion about the imagery there to exactly how to, how to translate that. It can be the deep shadows or even blackness. It might convey even death. It may just mean here, difficult places, tough spots, but the good shepherd is with me and I'm not afraid. And then you move to this imagery of a banquet. You prepare a table, you anoint my head with oil. Goodness said , mercy shall follow me because my cup runs over. Those three images talk about what it would be to have a meal with God and how incredible that would be. Eating with God is a theme in the Bible. It happens back in the book of Exodus. Moses and the elders go up and they eat in the presence of God. It's a restoration of fellowship with God. And of course it occurs at the end of the Bible when in the Book of Revelation we read about the marriage supper of the lamb. To get to eat with God is an incredible idea. Maybe , maybe you think about a political fundraiser and you can buy a seat at a banquet and then you get to eat with a governor or eat with the mayor, or maybe even eat with the President. Yeah. How much is that gonna cost you? Is it gonna cost you thousands of dollars? You're gonna be in a giant banquet hall, hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people, and the president's gonna be on the other side of the room. You're not really gonna be in close proximity, not really gonna get to know him and talk with him. David says, I'm eating with God. God prepares a table for me. I am in close relationship with God and that's just an unbelievable idea. Well, it's not unbelievable because it's in the Bible. We trust that that great thing can happen for us because we trust in God like David does here. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I will remain in fellowship with God serving him forever. Six verses so powerful. Our reading for Friday is Psalm 23. With that we conclude the podcast for the week. Thanks for studying and reading along with me. I just appreciate it so much. If the podcast is helping you, I hope that you will tell others about it. And of course, leave us a rating and review that helps more people lock onto the podcast and give it a try. So until next week when we'll open our Bibles together. Again, I'm Mark Roberts and I wanna go to heaven and I want you to come too . I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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