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 the 31st. I'm Mark and I'm holding a sermon outline. I'm holding my Bible and a Bible reading schedule, but mostly I've got both hands on a beautiful ember mug that's holding some delicious coffee. It's all about starting the day with some coffee, isn't it? Or maybe in the middle of the day, or even at the end of the day, that would be decaf I expect. But somewhere in there, we're gonna have some amazing and wonderful coffee. Let's work on it together. Pour that cup of coffee. Let's get ready, let's get set. Let's go. Yesterday in the 10 40, I did q and a love q and a, just it's such a wonderful opportunity to think about some, maybe, maybe some issues that I would not wanna preach an entire sermon on or to connect with where you are talking with a friend or talking with a coworker . The concerns, things that are bothering you. I just, everything about q and a is just a big win, and I love on a fifth Sunday getting to bring that into the 10 40. There are people maybe haven't been to the nine, they haven't thought about going to the nine. This gives them an opportunity, Hey, you know this happens in the nine most months, so hey, give us a try on the nine, and I am gonna give you an extra thought here, like getting to do that on the podcast. I'm gonna give you a little bit of history, and if you're not a big history buff like I am, don't shut this out. Remember, those who don't like history are , yeah, they're doomed to fail their history test or that that's not exactly how that quote goes, is it? Let's think about the history of the Pentecostal movement, because yesterday I talked about how to help somebody who thinks they're speaking in tongues, doing that ecstatic gibberish, pouring out all those nonsense syllables that Pentecostal and charisma people do today. They think that's the real deal. How do you talk to somebody about that? That's very difficult. And I did not mean in any way yesterday to say, I've got five step program and you just say this and then they say this and just follow the script. No , no, no, no. That's a very difficult conversation. However, if you get into a little deeper conversation and the conversation can hold it and your relationship can take it, then I wanna give you an extra thought that might be of some value to you, because it may be, it may be helpful to talk about the history of Pentecostal tongue speaking in the United States. Now, there are some random and obscure references to some groups in the far distant past who were involved in these kinds of frenzied behaviors. But by and large, that's very rare and very unusual. Modern day Pentecostalism comes from a man named Charles Fox Parum about the turn of the century in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, parem was an eccentric preacher in his moral character, a little bit dubious in some places. He was infatuated with some weird ideas and aberrant theology, and he taught all of that at a place called Bethel College in Topeka, Kansas. And in 1901 on New Year's Day, one of his students, Agnes Osmond, reportedly spoke in random syllables after Parum encouraged students to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So she's blurting these syllables out and everybody who heard her concluded that she was speaking in tongues. Now, here's what's interesting about that. They all thought she was speaking Chinese because none of them knew Chinese. And for the rest of the day, she seemed unable to speak in English. And she even wrote, she scribbled some things down and everybody said she's writing in Chinese. These students were convinced that their prayers had been answered for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And what they were witnessing was the very same miraculous phenomena that we read about in Acts chapter two. Now, the hitch and the get along here is that when the scribblings were published in the newspaper, it was found that she was not writing Chinese at all. It was just random scribbles. But Parham continued to push the she and, and by this time now he and many other students at Bethel College could speak foreign languages. He even said this would be a boon to missionary work. Here's a typical report from the time. These are his very words. The students of Bethel College do not need to study in the old way to learn the languages. They have them conferred upon them. Miraculously, different ones have already been able to converse with Spaniards, Italians, Bohemians, Hungarians, Germans, and French in their own language. I have no doubt various dialects of the people of India and even the language of the tribes of Africa will be received during our meetings in the same way. Actually, he used kind of a racial purgative there about Africa. So I edited him a little bit. But can you see that everybody knew that tongue speaking was to speak in a known foreign language? Everybody understood it that way, and that's what they thought they were doing. Of course, when Palms missionaries went abroad, it was a gigantic and colossal failure and embarrassment because they got off the boat and they'd start speaking gibberish, expecting the people in France or Italy or China to understand the gospel. Hey , I'm speaking to you the gospel, and these people, they, we don't know what you're, it's gibberish to us. Oh , no, no, I'm speaking Chinese. No you're not. No you're not. Now about that time the movement began to metamorphs a little bit, began to to evolve, and there was a early disciple of Parem , William Seymour. He was an African American holiness preacher who had been under parham's instruction. And in 1906 he was invited to lead a series of meetings in California and he was preaching in an old building on Azua Street in the edge of downtown Los Angeles. And he began to teach some of these distinctive doctrines that he had heard from Parum . He taught, for example, that the only biblical evidence of being baptized in the spirit was the gift of speaking in tongues. And mm-hmm <affirmative> Within weeks, dozens of people at the Azua Street revival were manifesting tongues speaking in the fame of the Pentecostal movement just spread from there. That's the genesis of tongue speaking as we know it today. And as it continued to spread, and of course more people realized this was not any foreign language known to anybody on the planet, then people began to reinterpret biblical tongue speaking and start talking about how this is the language of angels, or that Paul says, you don't necessarily need to understand it as the speaker that that this is really about what you experience, this communion between you and God, this knowing that God accepts you by baptizing you with the spirit. And so the focus on the personal encounter with the Spirit led to people being much more open to this just being a coherent, an incoherent, ecstatic utterance. And I want say again, it was about the experience and what the experience said about the person who was doing this babbling and how it validated and verified their salvation and their standing with God. That's where the modern day Pentecostal denominations come from. The Assemblies of God, the Church of God, the Pentecostal Holiness Church, they come out of that Azua Street revival in Los Angeles. So when you're talking with somebody about tongue speaking, if you can get this far and if they're open and if your relationship can handle some pretty straight up talk about what this is all about then, then maybe you might challenge somebody to do some reading and some research about where charismatic tongue speaking, sometimes that's called glia from the Greek word in the New Testament for tongue speaking. Where'd that come from? How did that get started? What did everybody used to say that was and how that changed and shifted when it was revealed to be fraudulent and fake? Finding out that charismatic tongue speaking started in Los Angeles and in Topeka, Kansas, may may open some people's eyes when they realize it didn't start in Jerusalem. In Acts chapter two, hope that's helpful to you. Let me give you one more note. Don't forget, in the nine yesterday I talked about building connection, biblical insights on friendships and friends. And at the end of that, I urged everyone to take some initiative and do something to build a connection, to build some friendships to en , to enlarge our social circle and to be more socially fit. Go back and listen to that sermon and be reminded of that. Or if you were not in the nine, go listen to that sermon. What did you plan to do when I was talking about all of that? Have you done it? Have you done it? Part of the podcast is to encourage us to take action on Monday with what we plan to do on Sunday. Take that action today, build some connection. Once you've done that, get your Bible and let's think about what's going on in Second Samuel. It is Monday in Monday's reading in Second Samuel chapter seven verses one to 17 verses one to 17, two Samuel chapter seven. This is, this is one of the most important chapters in all of God's word . Sometimes I work with a kind of scaffolding for the Old Testament that I got when I was a student back at Florida College from wonderful Bible teacher. There are the five key passages in the Old Testament and second Samuel seven is one of those five. So anytime you have a list of five out of everything that's in that big Old Testament and there's just, hey, these are the big five, you know this is a huge deal. And this chapter in its context here originally serves as the conclusion to a trilogy of material about Jerusalem. Chapter five. David takes Jerusalem, chapter six, David moves the Ark of the Covenant into his capital . There's some misadventures with that, but it does get there. And then in chapter seven, that finishes with David's desire to build a palace for God, a house for God. And that is the emphasis in our reading today. The term house occurs 15 times in chapter seven. It's used a number of different ways. For example, it means David's palace verses one and two, if then can reference a palace or house for the Lord the temple verses five and six and seven. But mostly it references a ruling dynasty for David and our friends in the United Kingdom would understand and latch onto this immediately. We probably will need a little help here because house in two Samuel seven will not always mean a physical structure. Now it does in verse one, but then when God says in verse 11 that he will build a house for David, he's not talking about a physical structure there, he's talking about a dynasty. We may be familiar with that kind of thing over in England, the house of Windsor or the House of Hanover. That's the royal family and their lineage and everybody who's part of that family. So when the ruling Monarch passes away, when Queen Elizabeth died, they didn't just go down the street and start asking people, would you, would you like to be the next king? Would you like to be the next? No. There's rules about who can inherit the throne and sit on the throne. And there's people whose job it is to keep charge of all those genealogical records and they make sure they get the right person who's of the right ruling house. And sometimes that's complicated. For example, Mary Queen of Scotch , she's a pretty famous ruling monarch. She was not Scottish and she actually was in France when it came her turn to rule and they went and got her at that time she didn't even speak English and they made her the queen of England because she was of the right dynasty, the right reigning house. So David has this great idea in the first three verses that he's going to build a house. And I've used the term palace and I mean that a palace for God, a place for God to live. And God says, I didn't need a house and couldn't use a house when Israel was moving in the wilderness. And I've never given a command for anybody to build me a house, but this kind of extra thought for God is rewarded here in verse five. Please notice it's not gonna happen. And Nathan should have consulted God before just signing off on this project. But God is still impressed with David's heart, with his sincerity, with his desire to do something for God. And as a result, verse five, Nathan is told to go and tell my servant, David, my servant, is a very rare expression in the Old Testament. Servant of Jehovah is used of only a few people, Abraham, Moses, Caleb , Joshua. So to say, you tell my servant David, I want him to do this . And so puts him in pretty tall cotton and I don't think there's a sense of rebuke here. What do you think you're doing? Tr ? No, there's none of that. In verse five. Instead the Lord makes great promises to David in verses nine, 10 and 11. First the Lord will make David's name great, which is a clear echo of the Abrahamic promises of Genesis chapter 12. And he will provide a place for Israel again that's out of the Abrahamic promises of Genesis chapter 12. And then the Lord will give David rest. And we've already read some of the battles in chapter five that David had to fight largely against the Philistines and the Amite. All of that may be why David is not to build the house. It's not time to build the house. There's more fighting to be done Solomon in in some ways here. My reading in two Samuel is, is crossing my preaching through one kings. I think the readings will catch up with where I am in my preaching before very much longer. But last Sunday I , eight days ago, I preached on one Kings five where Solomon gets ready to build this house and talked a little bit there about Solomon saying my father was a man of war. And that's, that's not in any way to cast aspersions on David's character. God commanded him to fight these battles. It just says it wasn't the time for that kind of thing. So David won't build the house, verse 13, but his son will build the house and verse 14 makes a promise about that son, that the throne will not be taken from him like it was taken from King Saul. King Saul was disobedient and lost the right to rule. Jonathan does not rule. Saul's grandsons do not rule. There is no house of Saul. But even if David's sons and grandsons are not righteous, the dynasty will not be taken from them. And I should add, there's going to be some conditions about being able to rule and we'll talk more about that as the year progresses. But God makes a covenant and this covenant will ultimately be fulfilled in Jesus the Christ. He sits on the throne of David, even now king of kings and Lord of Lords. Yes on David's throne. This is such a critically important part of the Messianic credentials. If somebody jumps up and down and says, you know what, I'm the Messiah. Well I need to see their family tree because second Samuel seven says, the Messiah will come from the house of David. That's what second Samuel is all about. And this is a place where scripture takes a real bend. The river turns sharply if you will, because from now on what we do is we watch the house of David to see, to see when the Messiah comes. We're watching for that ruling king who's part of this dynasty promised here in two Samuel chapter seven, our reading today, Monday is Second Samuel chapter seven verses one to 17. Welcome to Tuesday, Tuesday's. Reading is second Samuel chapter seven, verses 18 to 29. This is not a long reading, but it is a rich and full reading. I'm looking forward to talking with you about this reading in Zoom tonight. There's not normally a zoom call on the first Tuesday of the month because normally the elders are meeting but they are not meeting tonight. And next week I will be with the Campbell Road Church in a gospel meeting. So we'll not be able to have a zoom call on Tuesday. So let's do one tonight and let's talk about Second Samuel seven verses 18 to 29. This is an amazing part of two Samuel seven and it's something that we don't pay a lot of attention to. We're so locked in on those promises we talked about yesterday because they're enormous and so important, this covenant that God makes with the house of David. But a huge question to ask is how will David react to being told no, don't build it. You won't build it. You're not to build it. Kings don't often get told no. And here's the incredible reaction of King David to that and just watch as you read through here, the emphasis on the power in might and sovereignty. No one, no one David says is like God. Verse 19 has some difficulties in translation and depending upon which translation you're reading from, and if you are reading from two different translations, which is a really good practice, you may notice some disparity in those two . There's some very difficult Hebrew terms there that the translators have a hard time with. But all of this is about God is great, God is incredible, and it's good for us to just remember right here that we are looking back on two Samuel seven with Jesus on the throne. So I don't have any questions about God keeping his word. I don't have any problems with that. I I'm not worried about God keeping his covenant. David is walking by faith. David is walking by faith. David is saying, I trust God to do these amazing things that he's promised to do. So this is a great place for us to stop and think about what it means to be a person after God's own heart. Because second Samuel seven, yesterday's reading is about what God does. We don't need to tell God what to do. Hey, get busy. Hey, how about that covenant with David? Don't let that fall . No, no, God's never gonna miss a beat, never gonna fall down. Never gonna miss carrying out his word. And of course he has not. How do we respond to God? How does a person who's seeking God's heart respond to the Lord? Especially when the Lord has said no. That's worth thinking about. That's worth thinking about in a huge way and I hope that's helpful to you. Westsiders, I will see you tonight on the Zoom call everyone else. I'll see you tomorrow on the podcast as we move forward in Second Samuel, our reading for Tuesday, second Samuel seven verses 18 to 29. It is Wednesday. It is Wednesday, and today we read Second Samuel chapter eight. This is an easy chapter to read except well, it's got some grizzly details in it that make us kind of uncomfortable, but we need to remember that these were dangerous nations, dangerous people who could attack and destroy you and David needs to take care of these nations to secure his kingdom. Maybe the thing to remember is what God said yesterday in chapter seven in verses 10 and 11 about providing rest from all your enemies. Chapters now are reading today in chapter eight, may be the response to that and show God blessing David with those victories. This is a very easy chapter to outline. There's discussion of the enemies defeated in the West, verse one, the enemies defeated in the east. Verse two, the enemies defeated in the north verses three to 12 and then the enemies defeated in the south verses 13 and 14. And there's some notes here as you go along and read some of this. There's always, I should say, questions about Old Testament numbers . That's very problematic and very difficult. How many of this and how many of that, the Hebrew word for a thousand here may denote a military unit or a clan, the actual size of which could vary from time to time. Don't get lost on all the numbers that are going on here. I do love verse five. Hey dad , easer the king of Zoba . Wow , there's all these complicated names. How did , how did we manage to misread that on the zoom call? That always is so difficult. Last week we were reading all these names of all the enemies and the men that assassinated Ispo chef and we ended up with the banana brothers because we couldn't, couldn't even hardly say all these names. Well, how did Easer , how did is the old name for Baal ? And Easer means help here I raise my EBA Nier . So had Azer is Baal is my help. And what the writer of Samuel is pointing out is he didn't get any help. He didn't get any help. He had to get some help instead of from his gods. He had to get help verse five from the Syrians. And yeah, they didn't help him either. God gives the victory to David and maybe what second Samuel eight is doing for us today is telling us what David did during his 40 year reign. There's really not a lot of detail of everything that happened while he was king for 40 years. I suspect it took a long time to deal with all of these nations and take all of these battles, get 'em all finished and take everybody captive and all the things that go with all of that. Then verses 15 to 18 end with David's court. And there's some things that we don't understand, like verse 17, why are there two priests? There's some possibilities. Maybe one served under Saul, maybe another one was with David during the time that Saul was trying to assassinate him there . There's some ideas that are floated about that, but we just don't understand exactly what's going on there. The cites and the pite in verse 18, the cites come from cre , the P fights are Philistines. And so he's got that foreign mercenary honor guard standing around him. I think to this day, the Pope in the Vatican City has Swiss guards. So that idea of bringing someone in from the outside, they're not gonna be involved in palace intrigue and the tensions in the court, they're gonna be completely loyal to the monarch. I think that's what's going on there. What you get by the time we're done with our reading today is that David is established as a king. He has a court, he has a palace. He is really a genuine king, not just kind of a tribal leader, like during the time of the judges and and King Saul kind of making some progress in that direction. But it's David that really has established the monarchy and I think the big emphasis here is that God promised to bless David. And guess what God did exactly as he said David's life took a long time to get there, has now reached the apex, that place where it's exactly what he'd always hoped and dreamed it would be. He would be God's king serving God's people. That's our reading for Wednesday, two Samuel chapter eight. It is Thursday. Welcome to Thursday, and our reading today is a delightful reading. Two Samuel chapter nine is where we are reading today. This is about King David and it is all about his heart. That is exactly what we wanna focus on in a year when we're talking about seeking after God's heart. We want to be like David, and I think this is just a good place to just kind of get ahold of where we are in David's life. This is the place where in David's life, he's experiencing the blessings of God. Like I said yesterday, this is it. This is what David had hoped for. This is what David had been told it was going to be. So in chapter five, he unites Israel under his crown, and then in chapter six he brings the art to Jerusalem. Chapter seven. He says, God, I wanna build you a house and there's that amazing Messianic covenant in the promise of God. And then in chapter eight, David is blessed with more victories. So here's a great thing to ask. When your life gets good, do you sit down and look around and say, wow, who can I be nice to? How can I share my good life with somebody else? Who can I be kind to? That's exactly what David does in this chapter. In verses one to six, he launches a search for someone to be coming to and what he's looking for is anybody from the house of Saul. And there's two things that we need to see here. First, this is about David keeping his promise. David promised Saul and Jonathan , especially Jonathan , that he would not exterminate their descendants when he became the king. And so Mephibosheth, Jonathan's son becomes the person through whom he can keep his word. The other thing to say here is this is ridiculously unexpected. This is not what you're supposed to do. I wonder how many advisors were shaking their heads and saying, David, no, no, no, no , no, we're not doing this. When you become king and you're not part of the ruling house, you're starting a new dynasty. What most kings do, we'll actually see this as we read further in the Old Testament, wicked men do this. They gather up all the descendants they can find from the last ruling house and chop their heads off that way nobody can say you are a usurper, you are not the rightful king. I am a descendant of the rightful king. You have no business sitting on his throne. So what David does here is absolutely unprecedented. You're not gonna be nice to Saul's grandson, Jonathan's son. That guy might make a claim to the throne. You should kill this guy, not bring him to the court. Which is why Mephibosheth comes to the court and he's terrified in verse six. And David has to say to him in verse seven, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. I'm gonna treat you great. I don't treat you right. I'm going to do what I always told your dad I would do. Now me amphibious chef, let's have a little coffee here. Mephibosheth was five when Saul was killed. So now he's probably in his twenties. He does have a young son, verse 12. So he's not a 7-year-old boy here, but he is crippled in his feet. And there's mention of that made at the beginning of the text, verse three, and at the end of the text, verse 13, which will prepare us for some later events in Mephibosheth's life. Also we're introduced to the Zeba character here. But the point of all of this is David is kind. David shows kindness to other people. Talked about building connections. You know in the 9:00 AM sermon on Sunday, one of the ways you can build connections with people is be kind to them. Be kind, who can you be kind to Today? We don't just read the Bible to get a bunch of data and information. Bible reading becomes Bible living, and today's emphasis is on kindness. Find someone and be kind to them. That's one of the ways you can be a person who seeks after God's own heart. See you tomorrow. We'll be in the Psalms, our reading for Thursday, second Samuel nine . Hey, oh , it's Friday. It is Friday, and today our reading is Psalm 55. Now this is a longer psalm, so I'm gonna try to keep my remarks short so that you have time to read the psalm. Maybe read the Psalm out of two translations. This is a lament. In fact, it is one of the most lamenting of all laments. It is a cry for help from start to finish. It does have a hinge point. If you look at verse 16, there is some change in the tone of the psalm because there the psalmist, David says, I call to God and the Lord will save me. So we start getting more of that personal trust. But this is very much about I need the Lord and I need the Lord to do something. Now many people think that this psalm comes out of the rebellion of Absalom and we will start reading about that next week in our daily Bible reading. As we move forward, we'll begin to see some of the pieces that come into play that end up resulting in this terrible rebellion by Absalom . So David has terrifying troubles in verses one to eight. He knows something about a painful betrayal. In verses nine to 15, there'll be some things there that you recognize. Verse 13, it is you a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We used to take sweet counsel together within God's house. We walked in the throng. That's probably a oph fo . There's just lots going on in the psalm. It concludes with David's personal trust in verses 16 to 23. And I love verse 22. The promise is not to remove the burden but to sustain the person. And that may reflect Nathan speaking a word from God to David. So really uncomfortable place in David's life. And his answer to that is, I need to talk to God, and I love every bit about that. You wanna talk about how to be a person after God's own heart. Psalm 55 is guiding us in a really good way. Our reading for Friday then is Psalm 55, and that concludes the podcast for the week. I thank you so much for listening. If the podcast is helping you, please tell someone about it and you know what to do. Leave a rating and review if you've done that. Thank you so very much. That is so helpful. Well, until next week then, when we'll open our Bibles together. Again, I'm Mark Roberts and I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come to see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

Thanks for listening to the Westside Church of Christ Podcast. Monday morning Coffee with Mark. For more information about Westside, you can connect with us through our website, just christians.com and our Facebook page, our music is from upbeat.io. That's upbeat with two P'S U-P-P-B-E-A-T, where creators can get free music. Please share our podcast with others and we look forward to seeing you again with a cup of coffee. Of course, on next Monday.