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, March 17th on Mark. I've got some great coffee. I have all kinds of NCAA bracket stuff piled up all around because it is March madness time of the year. And once again, Dina will crush me in the annual NCAA turn ham contest. But hope springs eternal and that's why I'm trying yet again. I hope you're getting your picks in hope you've got some coffee. Most importantly, hope you're ready to think about yesterday's sermon, trying to push that into our lives, not just to have some talk about selflessness in the building. No , we wanna live that out starting today, and we especially wanna give attention to our daily Bible reading. Got that coffee? Let's get ready, let's get set. Let's go. Let me add a couple of notes to yesterday's sermon on selflessness, both the sermon on selfishness two weeks ago and selflessness yesterday. Those were tough sermons to put together to really get down to the root issue, to talk about how to combat that and how to work with that. And I wanna say some things about Jesus having boundaries in his life. I'm afraid sometimes selfless comes across as meaning self-care is not important, and that's not the case at all. Now, sometimes I am seeing more and more about how self-care is all important and that runs over into selfishness. I have to be careful about that. But Jesus has boundaries. In Luke chapter 12 and verse 15, Jesus says somebody on him saying, Hey, I need you to adjudicate this situation with my brother about the inheritance. And Jesus does not say, oh yes, I have to serve. I have to do everything People ask of me. Let me stop all that I'm doing, saving the world and deal with this petty problem. No, no. Jesus doesn't do that . He says, I , that's not me. That's not what I'm all about. I'm not doing that. In fact, then Jesus challenges that man to think about the role that material possessions are playing in his own life by telling the story of the rich farmer. In Mark chapter nine, James and John come and say, Hey, we wanna sit at your right and left hand in the kingdom. They have no concept of what the kingdom's all about, but again, Jesus does not say, Hey, you know what? I gotta do what anybody asked me to do. So, okay, James and John, you get the chairs? No, no. Jesus has some boundaries. In Luke chapter six, Jesus spends all night in prayer. So he's not always with the disciples, he's not always teaching people. He will take time for himself to refocus and to pray and to commune with his father. In Matthew chapter 14, Jesus is in the bottom of the boat. What's he doing? He's taking a nap. So sometimes that picture of selflessness means I can never take care of me and I can never draw a boundary line. I can never say no. We wanna be careful about that. I think especially of the harried mom who is serving everyone and is being used by everyone is just being run into the ground by her family, she's unhappy, she resents it, but she just keeps letting herself be overworked. Now, that may have started as serving and selflessness, but what that has become now is just a lazy family who's taking advantage of their mother's kindness or her unwillingness to have a strategic conversation about what real selflessness is. Yes, selflessness includes sacrifice, but Jesus didn't neglect himself or fail to take care of himself. Jesus does not drop dead one day in Galilee because he's dehydrated and doesn't eat. No, Jesus takes care of himself and he does not say yes to every request. Sometimes. Sometimes what's best for the person asking for something is that we say no . And Jesus did that. As I've mentioned in Luke chapter 12 and in Mark chapter nine, Jesus says Some nos that's hard to hear maybe, but that's what they need to hear. And women, I think this bonus note is really for a lot of the ladies who listen to the podcast, women seem especially vulnerable to the gospel of do more faster. Deny yourself all of the time, be boundaryless and just run yourself into the ground. Don't get that confused with genuine selfless lessness. I hope that helps you as we move forward in this week. We don't wanna be selfish , we want to be selfless. And now we turn our Bibles to the Book of Samuel and we begin Second Samuel, let's talk about daily Bible reading. It is Monday and today's Bible reading is two Samuel chapter one, verses one to 16. May I say a word or two about this new book of the Bible that we're jumping off into Second Samuel. Really it's not new. There's very little introduction necessary here. It used to in fact be part of for Samuel, it was all one book, but this is a good place to be reminded. The second Samuel's not really a biography of David. There are big chunks of David's life that are not covered here and there's lots of space spin on a couple of important events. Second Samuel's main purpose is to show the establishment of the monarchy, especially since it's in absolute tatters, since the Philistines just crushed Saul and ran a whole bunch of the Israelites out of their own territory. And second Samuel then shows the establishment of David's monarchy, his reigning house, particularly in regard to the promises of second Samuel seven, really second Samuel's about the same thing. First Samuel's about which is God working through Israel, God working through Israel's leaders. The hero in Samuel like the hero in all of the Bible is the Lord. We need to be mindful of that. Let me get some coffee here. Hmm , that's some Ethiopian Yuri chef and that is wonderful coffee. So here we have the account of David receiving the news of Saul's death and one of the key words in chapter one is the word fallen. It's found in verses 4 10, 12, 19 and 27, and it is important verse one to notice that o Old Testament writers often divide major sections of their writing with the expression after the death of Joshua begins after the death of Moses. Judges begins with after the death of Joshua. So this is, this is a break in the text maybe that justifies dividing second Samuel from one Samuel and this man, verse two has come all the way from gilboa to ziklag . That's about 80 miles and it's a little ironic to see an amite making a beeline to prostrate himself before David. What about some of that? And then the account verses six to 10 that he gives is different than the account that the Bible gives in for Samuel chapter 31. And of course, Bible critics just go crazy here as if there's no way we could possibly reconcile these two texts. So we need to toss the Bible in the trash can . Newsflash not hard to reconcile. What happens here is the amite just lies. He says he killed Saul rather than Saul committing suicide because he thinks David wants to hear that and he will get a reward. David then inquires about him and realizes verse 13, that he has some knowledge of the ways of the Israelites and then David holds him accountable for what he says he has done. He says he took the life of the Lord's anointed. As a result, his life is forfeited. That's our reading on Monday , second Samuel chapter one verses one to 16 . Welcome to Tuesday, Tuesday's. Reading is second Samuel chapter one , verses 17 to 27. David's lament for Saul and Jonathan , this is a powerful section of scripture. I'm excited to talk about it tonight in Zoom. It is a funeral dirge little different than the lament that we're reading in the book of Psalms on Fridays. One scholar said this Dge is characterized by the frequent contrast of once and now or past and present. It stresses the good points and the qualities of the dead. No Ill is spoken of the departed one would not expect a distortion of truth, but there's some allowance to be made for certain amount of poetical license, which would account for some of the things that David says of Saul and Jonathan , verse 18 has a lot of translation issues. You have some marginal notes there. There's questions about how to translate the front of the verse and he said, or it should be taught or this may be the musical tune that this is to be sung to. And then there's a reference to the book of Dasher , and there are in the Bible a number of references to uninspired books. Just because God used something for research or had it written in some other place does not mean that it should be in your Bible and somehow it fell out or that it constitutes a lost book. The Bible, we don't know very much about the book of Joshua or it is quoted in Joshua chapter 10 and maybe in one Kings chapter eight. But again, we should not be surprised that there's some history written during this time. David then talks about gaff and chelon verse 20, and that stands for the Philistines as a whole. He just wishes this news wouldn't flood the Philistine world and that they would hear of Israel's embarrassing loss. And then verse 21, David places a curse on the mountain of Gilboa. It should just be a barren place. This is the place where the heroes of Israel have fallen. And then when the middle of the poem really verses 22 and 23 contains the purpose of the poem, then you get David's love, especially for Jonathan . But but even for King Saul, do we forget that Saul did wage battles against the Philistines and while David killed his 10,000, Saul killed his thousands. And so David says, these were important men and we value them so we weep over them. Maybe you've been to a funeral at some point in time and a person's not so great aspects and parts of their life are kind of glossed over. Well, that's kind of what David does here. This is not a long rehearsal of all of Saul's sins. We're not gonna have David singing some of, oh, and you failed in one Samuel 15 to do as God said, and you went and consulted the occult and no, no, it's not time for that. It's just time to think about how the mighty have fallen, verse 25 and how much David loved Saul and especially how much David loved Jonathan . Regrettably, verse 26, some have tried to make that into some kind of homosexual passage that's more a statement about the people who do that than anything else in our society today. We can't say the word love without thinking about sexual things and sexuality, and that's that's caused a lot of difficulties in our world especially. It creates all kinds of barriers and hindrances to male friendships. Everybody's afraid to say, I value you as a friend. And somebody might think, oh my, are they homosexual? There's nothing in this verse about a homosexual relationship that's so far outside of anything that David or Jonathan would've ever even contemplated. It just says, I needed you. I needed your friendship. You were a great help to me over verse 27, how the mighty have fallen. We'll talk more about this tonight with siders in our zoom prayer and Bible study on Tuesday, and that's what we do on Tuesday nights and that'll be a joy for us for the rest of you, see you tomorrow on the podcast as we journey further into two Samuel, welcome to Wednesday. Today we read two Samuel chapter two , the entire chapter, and there is a lot of geography here. This is that place where you need to be familiar with the maps in the back of your Bible, be looking at where things are. What we'll see here is that the kingdom gets divided in the first four verses. The minute of Judah come and they anoint David over Judah over the southern kingdom. And of course, verse one, David checks his timing with God first. That's so important, and he is anointed in Hein, which or Hebron , which is probably the most important city in Judea at this time. Jerusalem later will be the capital. It's not now. Then Buche V 8, 9, 10, and 11. He's made the king over Northern Israel, but he's really just a puppet in the hands of Abner. Abner is Saul's cousin and Abner does not consult God. He just does this because Abner is for Abner, and please notice verse eight that they go to Hanem . Hannu is on the east side of the Jordan River. Hanham is the new capital because the Philistines have taken over so much territory in the actual promised land. So now they're on the east side of the Jordan River. Wow. The Philistines really pushed Saul out of Israel, out of Israel proper. And that leads then to this battle beginning in verse 12, the field of sharp edges or sword edges where Abner and his men meet David's men , and there's a big battle here with Joe AB and Abishai and Abner, and there's the killing then of this terrible, this terrible killing where Assael is struck and killed. There is some discussion about exactly how he's killed in verse 23, but it seems like Asa hell who Josephus says, could outrun a horse. How about that is trying to run Abner down and Abner just rams him with the back end of his spear without even stopping. He just runs up onto his spear and that would truly be a brutal way to die without any question. Maybe one of the reasons we get this note is because Joab never forgets this. He never forgets this kind of thing, but that just sets up more fighting, more civil war versus 24 to 32, all kinds of battling back and forth. Really a terrible kind of thing going on because these are Israelites fighting Israelites and that sets up what will happen in chapter three. One more quick note here. Asa hell was a great warrior. He is the first in the list of the 31 Chronicles 11 and 26. He was a commander of the fourth of the army. This is just terrible, and as I said, Joab will never forget what happened to his brother. The reading for Wednesday is two Samuel chapter two. It is Thursday. It is Thursday, two Samuel chapter three verses one to 25 is the reading for today, and what an action packed reading this is. It begins by saying David grew stronger and stronger, verse one, even though there was war between the house of Saul and the house of David, that's really what this is about. David is getting stronger by the minute. Meanwhile, the house of Saul is diminishing, arguing and falling apart. We then get a list of David's wives and what this says is David's involved in polygamy. That's wrong. He should not be doing that. Deuteronomy 17, 17 specifically forbids the king to multiply wives. However, several of these wives have children that become important in the story later, and so the record here helps us get ready for them and set that up. But more than anything, it serves to show that while Saul's house gets weaker, David is growing in strength, power and status. David's getting more and more wives, but verse seven ish, Boche can't even control his concubines. There's a big contrast here. It's important I think here to say a word about concubines. Concubines are not full wives. They are unofficial wives and their children are not allowed to inherit, but they matter. To take the wife or concubine of the former king is to appropriate his property and to make a bid for the throne. We will see more of that. Absalom tries that. Second Samuel chapter 16 and add , Aja tries that in one Kings chapter two, there are people who don't understand why it's such a big deal that Absalom goes in to David's harem, his concubines, or why Aja asks for a woman who had been used for David's purposes in one kings chapters one and two. But when you ask for the royal concubines, that is a way of asking for the crown. You're trying to act like you are the king. And so Abner asks for a concubine, and the result of all of that is that he has a falling out with is Bcha . Abner was very angry over the words of is Bcha verse eight, am I a dog's head of Judah? Most commentators understand this to mean you are treating me the commander of the army as if I'm only the captain of a pack of dogs. And remember, oh , this hurts me because I love dogs so much, but in the Old Testament, dogs are unclean animals and they are not viewed in a favorable light because they are not pets. They are often wild animals that run in packs and cause all kinds of problems, rabies and so forth. So Abner's had it with is Boche and he decides he's gonna, he's gonna defect . But the next thing you know David is undercutting Abner by negotiating directly with is Boche in verse 14. And he has some terms. He wants a woman, he wants his wife Michael back, and that may have to do with the harem business that we just talked about. Some have thought it was just the savvy political move because the presence of Saul's daughter as his wife would give David A. Strong claim to the throne of Saul. Maybe he just loves her. When we read about them in First Samuel chapter 18, about 10 years ago, Michael loved David a lot. She stood up for him and hid him when her dad was looking to kill him. Maybe they're just in love and David just loves this woman and wants her back, but it certainly shows that is Boche is weakening. He can't answer Abner and he has to surrender this woman to David is Boche is not the power. Abner's the power. Abner is mad at ibo Shef , the whole thing's falling apart. The teaser in all of this really the on the edge of our seats, the cliffhanger here is that Joab shows up, kind of miss some of what was going on and he doesn't buy any of it. At the end of our reading, he says, what's going on here? This Abner guy's out to get you. He's just a spy. Remember, there's bad blood between Joe AB and Abner, and that sets up our reading for next Monday. Tomorrow we're in the Psalms. Our reading though for Thursday is two Samuel three, one to 25. Tomorrow we're in the Psalms. It is Friday. It is Friday, and today we're reading Psalm 14, the PS song about the atheist, the fool. Verse one says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. The Bible doesn't pull any punches when it comes to atheist and atheism. It's just foolishness. It says that clearly without any apology of any sort, but we should notice where the fool is making this proclamation. He's not saying there's no God on the news or hawking a book. On the talk shows, he says that in his heart, this is an inner conviction. This may or may not have ever been publicly voiced, but this is practical atheism. The person who says, God is not important in my life. He's shutting off God. I live my life the way I want to live. And when you do that, that makes you into a fool, a person who's living outside of reality that will result verse one in corruption and abominable deeds and not doing any good. The Lord looks down and sees this kind of foolishness. Verse three, that they have become corrupt. A word that literally means sour. Don't they know? Verse four, all these evil doers who try to attack God's people, they can't defeat God, so they attack God's people. But you can't do that. Five, six, and seven says, God stands up for his people. You can't defeat the Lord. You can't defeat the Lord's people. What a powerful message for us today at a time when there is hostility towards people of faith , and sometimes we feel like sometimes we feel like maybe they're gonna win over there. No, they're not. The fools cannot defeat God. Our reading for Friday is Psalm 14. Well, thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to the podcast and reading the Bible with me this week and thinking more about our sermon from Sunday. If the podcast is helping you, you know what to do. Leave a rating or review so more people will find it and tell somebody about it. Share it on social media. Say I'm reading the Bible, it's making a big difference in my life, and this podcast helps me to read the Bible, understand it, and apply it well, until next week, then I'm Mark Roberts and I wanna go to heaven and I want you to come to, I so appreciate you listening to the podcast. I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee. Of course.

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