Hello, and welcome to the Westside Church's special Monday Morning Coffee podcast. On this podcast, our preacher, Mark Roberts, will help you get your week started right with a 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, June the 9th. This is a special week at Westside, a busy week at Westside. It's Vacation Bible School week. I'm Mark. I am holding an extra great cup of coffee. This is some Black Bear coffee from Stumptown Roasters. I love Stumptown Roasters, and this was brought to me by a podcast listener who was on vacation and thought about me while she was on vacation. How great is that? I always appreciate kindness like that. So I have got notes from yesterday's sermon. I'm looking at stuff for Bible reading. I'm thinking about Vacation Bible School tonight. Pour that cup of coffee. Let's get ready. Let's get set. Let's go. Let's start with a quick look back at yesterday's sermon, a sermon in which I talked about loneliness and isolation and how that is kind of reaching a celebrated status in our culture and society today. And biblically, Being by yourself is not such a great thing. You don't want to be the one sheep. So the only extra thought, the only extra thing that I got for you is to say at the end of that sermon, I challenge you to spend 15 minutes this week making a connection with somebody. Text somebody, call somebody, and then go and be with someone face-to-face. Did you do it? Have you done it? We all thought yesterday, yeah, that's right, I need to do that. Now, it's Monday. Let's go do that. and maybe an opportunity to make some connections. Tonight at Vacation Bible School, Terry Slack is going to be talking about Joshua and setting up the stage for some of the things that go on in the book of Judges. Come to Vacation Bible School tonight at 7 at the Westside Church, and that'll be an opportunity to hear a great lesson and, yes, to make some connections. Before we get to VBS tonight, though, we need to do our daily Bible reading. We are in Kings, and it's time to talk about 1 Kings 7. Let's go do some daily Bible reading. It is Monday, and the reading for Monday is 1 Kings 7, verses 1 to 22. If you get a sense of deja vu like I do when I'm reading 1 Kings 7, it is because I am preaching through 1 Kings, and I just preached on 1 Kings 7 very, very recently. So if you need more information, I'll try to keep the podcast here a little bit short on 1 Kings 7 because we've just been through this. Just go back and listen to that sermon. I worked through it exegetically and talked a lot about some of the issues that are going on there. Notably, I would add this in case you don't remember or you didn't hear that sermon, don't have time to go back and listen to it. because it's Vacation Bible School week. There's a lot of discussion about Solomon's house taking so long to build while his own house, verse 1, is 13 years of building, and the temple is only seven years in building. And I think, as I said in the sermon, that may not indicate that there's a heart problem here with Solomon. David got the plans from God for the house and set aside all the materials necessary, so that made that project go a lot quicker. And it is important to note that Solomon's palace is part of the temple complex. It is affixed to it, so this is is all kind of going on together here. And it does seem like this is 20 years of building, which would be half of Solomon's reign. It may be that he is spending too much time on his own house and not nearly enough time on God's house, but that is not necessarily the case. in the text itself. The other issue in this text is these amazing pillars that get built, Joachim and Boaz, and no, we don't know why they're there, and no, we don't know exactly what that means. Joachim means he will establish, and Boaz means in his strength. What they symbolize is simply not known. There are tons and tons of suggestions about all of that. Some people want there to be something burning on the top of the pillars, and I'm not sure how anybody could climb up on top of this 27-foot high pillar, and it's got a capital on top of that that adds another 36 inches or give or take or so to the top of the pillar, how you're getting up there to fill that thing with oil or to offer a sacrifice. I don't see them being set on fire, but again... We're just not sure what they're there for. But it is clearly part of the temple, and it is clearly ordained of God. And I would add, I gave you this note last week, there are a number of examples of freestanding pillars at the entrance of temples all through Phoenicia and elsewhere in the biblical world. So that old business about God's people can't ever do anything that looks like what they're doing over there with fake religion, that just doesn't hold water. The temple does look like... other temples. When people come to Jerusalem, pagan people come to Jerusalem, they look at the temple. They don't say, hey, I don't know what that is. No, they know exactly what that is because it looks like other temples throughout the known world at that time. They are incredible pieces. They are probably hollow. Otherwise, they'd be enormously heavy and just be very difficult, I understand, from an engineering standpoint to get the things up. And they are cast down at the Jordan River. Because there's a reference to this later in the text. We'll read some of this tomorrow in verse 46. In the plain of the Jordan, the king cast them in the clay ground between Succoth and Zarethan. And they're super important because Jeremiah, when he covers... Wow, that's probably not the right word for Jeremiah. It's not like he's a reporter. But when he talks about the destruction of the temple and the destruction of Jerusalem, he gives a lot of attention to these pillars. They matter and they are important to the Jewish people. And they are, spoiler alert, completely destroyed by the Babylonians. So our reading for Monday is 1 Kings 7, verses 1-22. See you tonight. Stephen Baxley, no, no, that's not right. Terry Slack will be talking to us about Joshua. And I'll see you tonight at 7, 7 o'clock west side for Vacation Bible School. The reading for Monday, 1 Kings 7, verses 1 to 22. It is Tuesday. It is Tuesday, and we do have Vacation Bible School tonight, so there'll be no Zoom meeting, of course, Westsiders. Our reading for Tuesday is 1 Kings 7, verses 23 to 51. We're finishing up this chapter, and there's a couple of enormously important pieces that are being put together here, starting with this brass sea. It's the molten sea, verse 23. And my understanding is this kind of circular vat or tank to hold maybe as many as 10 or 12,000 gallons of water. There's nothing easy about casting one of these or the metallurgy behind it. This is a very important item because the priest will need this water to purify themselves and to do the washings and all that goes with that. Then there's some mobile basins that are also poured and made. They're very large, and they will help support all the sacrificing going on in the temple. Finally, verses 40 to 46 kind of summarize a bunch of this. Again, lots of costly materials, lots of things being done here. that just must have boggled the imagination. People saw all that was being done for the temple. They must have I can just see people coming down just to see it, just to see the stuff being wheeled in. Wow. Can you believe that? Verses 47 to 51, then the golden table and the lampstands. Please remember the average Israelite never went inside the temple. So if you wanted to see this stuff, you'd need to see it when it was being installed because the average Israelite, as I said, is not going inside. It is incredible building unlike any other building. Verse 51 tells us all the work that King Solomon did in the house of the Lord is The house of the Lord was finished, and Solomon brought in the things that David his father had dedicated, the silver, the gold, the vessels, stored them in the treasuries of the house of the Lord. So they didn't even use everything that David had put aside, and yet it is an incredibly expensive and enormously elaborate building, all of which says God is special. I use this quote when I preached on 1 Kings last month. One scholar said, I want to suggest that the splendor of the temple... He says, ample informal worship, biblical scholarship, or the quality of our daily work. I like that a lot. I like that a lot. I like for us to think about what we are building. Is that saying what we are building with our lives, what we are building with our priorities, with our time, and especially what we are building as a congregation, what we are doing together? Is that reflecting our priorities, and does that say God is special? Our reading for Tuesday is in 1 Kings 7, verses 23 to verse 51. See you tonight at Vacation Bible School, 7 o'clock. Stephen Baxley will talk to us about Samson, and we'll learn more about Samson the judge. See you tonight, everybody. Welcome to Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. Today we read 1 Kings chapter 8. verses 1 to 21. 1 Kings chapter 8 contains Solomon's dedication prayer at the dedication of the temple. It may be the greatest prayer in the Old Testament. It is magnificent, and there are two big themes in this prayer, one of which we get in our reading today, which is that God does what he promises. God fulfills his word. If you will underline every place it says fulfilled in our reading today, you'll be busy. Everything about promises and you did what you said, much of that In tomorrow's reading, we will still see some things about fulfilled, for example, in verse 24, verse 25, verse 26. But then the big theme becomes forgive. So we have fulfilled and forgive. So we start our reading today with the bringing up of the Ark of the Covenant, verse 1, out of the city of David over to Mount Zion. I think sometimes we operate with maybe a very modern view of cities. Maybe we're thinking of Dallas, Fort Worth, and it's all just one giant city. It's all grown together. But at this time, the city of David is over on one hill, and the temple is over on, and Solomon's palace is with that, over on a different hill. Now, by Jesus' day, it will all grow together, and there'll be one wall that surrounds all of it and so forth. But at this time, there's the city of David, and then there's Mount Zion, where the temple is, and the ark is brought over there. And of course, pretty quickly, we get into some questions. How come the poles of the cherubim, the poles of the ark of the covenant are so long, verse 8, that you can see them? What's the deal with that? Did they not make the room big enough? Why do we have poles that we can see? One writer suggests, and I think this probably works pretty well, is that it was not an oversight or a miscalculation on the size of the Most Holy Place. Instead, being able to see the poles was to emphasize the portable character of the Ark of the Covenant. When you think about it, you don't need poles anymore on the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant is going to sit here in the temple. We're not moving it anymore. During the the time of the tabernacle, we needed the poles and it had to be moved every day and all the things that go with all of that. It will never move again. It is sitting right here from now on, but God has the poles remain to remind them of that time of the wilderness and maybe to make sure they don't get too comfortable with the idea that the ark is going to remain here at all times. That's not how God's presence certainly works. So then in verses 10 and 11, the temple is filled with the glory of God, which of course is exactly what God did with the tabernacle in Exodus chapter 40. So we get the same kind of language and God is approving of the temple and everything that is about this. just wonderful, God moves in to his house. And then Solomon begins to address the people in verses 12 to 21, and that address is just full of praise for God keeping his promises. And 2 Samuel 7 is just all over this opening to the prayer. Just every bit of this is God promised and God has done, God has fulfilled, God told my father, and God is doing and confirming exactly what he said he would do. David has a son on the Maybe the thing to say about that is that would point us toward the fulfillment of the promise that the Messiah will come, that everlasting king in the dynasty of David. If God has done all of these things, God will surely keep his word. We can expect the Messiah, which of course... is exactly the point the New Testament makes in the coming of Jesus. Our reading then for Wednesday, 1 Kings 8, verses 1-21. See you tonight at 7.30 for Vacation Bible School and our special Vacation Bible School assembly. Welcome to Thursday. Welcome to Thursday's reading in 1 Kings 8, verses 22-53. This is the magnificent part of Solomon's dedicatory prayer. all of it is wrapped around the idea that God has given us the temple as a way for sinful people to approach a holy God. And in 2 Chronicles 6, where there is the parallel account to this, we are told that there was a scaffold built above the people. And in Solomon, he's standing in verse 22, but at some point, He kneels to pray. And verse 54 of our reading in 1 Kings 8 reminds us that at some point Solomon the king, think of the impression that would make upon the people, he is kneeling. Once again, there is the fulfillment then of God's word, verses 23, 24, and 25, 26. There's the praise of God in this prayer. I just love that. Let's talk about what God is doing. Let's talk about how good God is. Let's praise God for who that he is. But then verse 27, what's this temple about? What's this temple about? Is this really a box for God? Now we've got him. Oh, we built this golden trap, and now we've got God contained. No, Solomon clearly knows better than that. Solomon prays, though, that the temple could be a meeting place for human need and divine mercy, notes one scholar. And I love how verse 27 says that God is awesome and great, and then in verse 28 it says... We can talk to him and he listens. What an amazing God we serve. The rest of our reading then details seven requests, seven situations where God's people will need God. And a ton of this is drawn out of Leviticus 26, the various blessings and cursings. If you do things that are wrong, this is what will happen to you. Some of it comes from Deuteronomy chapter 28. So there's defeat by the enemy, verses 33 and 34. What about no rain, verses 35 and 36? Canaanites prayed to Baal. the storm god, for rain. When Israel did that, God made sure it didn't rain to teach them a lesson about who truly is God. And so Solomon just works through these situations and over and over again, he says, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive. And I should say this, at the end of this, 2 Chronicles 7 verse 1 says, fire from heaven fell. So God accepts this prayer. God accepts this temple. God is pleased with what Solomon has done. And I should add here, maybe two quick notes. First of all, if you think there was no forgiveness in the Old Testament, then you need to review your thinking about that because Solomon is talking about forgiveness and there is is forgiveness under the Old Testament. It is not the same as our forgiveness today because our forgiveness looks back to the cross, and this is forgiveness that is done in light of the coming of the cross someday. And we could talk about that further, but I've heard people talk about sins being rolled forward and all kinds of crazy ideas because they don't want there to be any Old Testament forgiveness. And all that's just nonsense. There is plenty of forgiveness, and Solomon is claiming it here. The other thing, just to make a note, This building is so special and so unique and so wonderful. How do you think it felt for Israel? How do you think it felt for the Jews to watch the Babylonians show up and burn it to the ground? What do you do then? There's no provision made for what we do, and we don't have a temple because we were wicked, and the place where we go to seek God and ask for forgiveness is physically gone. What do we do now? The burning of the temple, both in 586 BC and in AD 70, is an enormous marker that things are way off the rails, and people who had any inclination to try to be godly must have thought, what has happened and what do we do now? So think about that. Tomorrow we'll be in the Psalms, but our reading for Thursday is 1 Kings 8, verses 22 to 53. It is Friday. It is Friday. And that means we're in the Psalms. We are in Psalm chapter 30 or Psalm 30 today. This is a magnificent Psalm. It contains one of my favorite verses, Psalm 30 and verse 5. I love that verse. Let's talk about it. It is a Psalm of praise and thanksgiving. We always start with what kind of Psalm is it, but it is upside down. This Psalm is upside down. Usually what you get in this kind of song is a lament at the beginning, discussing all the terrible things that are happening, and then you cry out to God for help, and then you praise and thank God for delivering you. Now, this time, if you would put this psalm in order, it would be verses 6 and 7, then verses 8 and 10, 8 to 10, and then verses 1, 2, and 3. But what happens here is there's the praise of God. He's wonderful. He delivered me. Then there's the discussion of what got me into effects, and then there is the crying out to God in verses 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. So let's just kind of work through this a little bit. You might notice the ascription there that says, at the dedication of the temple, and of course, if David wrote this, then it couldn't be used at the dedication of the temple. It's a place to be reminded that those inscriptions are old, but they are not inspired. And it just may mean that this psalm got picked up and used later. At the temple, there is a tradition that Judas Maccabee used Psalm 30 when he rededicated the temple in the time between Malachi and Matthew when the temple had been desecrated and defiled by Antiochus Epiphanes. So here, look at verse 2. That really is the summary of the entire psalm. And verses 6 and 7 are kind of the important part of this because it contains a dumb remark, the silly boasting. I can do it. I'm on my own. And nothing's ever going to move me off of that. And what happens then, of course, is there's all sorts of adversity and there's all kinds of problems. And so now verses 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, we're crying out to God. God, I need some help. And God answers and has, verse 11, Turn for me my mourning into dancing. You have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness. And that brings us back to verse 5, my favorite part of this psalm. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Thought about that verse so many times. On Sunday, I mentioned how hard it is to have a sick child and to do that shift, maybe the midnight to 4 a.m., midnight to 6 a.m. shift. You're so alone. You're by yourself with this Sick child, and it just seems so dark. It seems so dark in the middle of the night when you're trying to hold a sick baby. And I think about Psalm 30 and verse 5. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. And isn't it true that when the sun comes up, everything just looks a little bit better? And what the psalmist says here is, The sun comes up because God makes it come up because God delivered me. Notice verse 1, I will praise you or I will extol you. Verse 12, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. That's the bookends in the psalm. This psalm is about praising God. The reading for Friday, Psalm 30. And that concludes the podcast for the week. I appreciate your listening and your kind encouragement. People email me, stop me, and say, hey, I listened to the podcast. It helped me this week. I appreciate that so very, very much. And until next week, then, of course, when we'll open our Bibles together again, you know what I'm going to say. I'm Mark Roberts, and I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come too. I'll 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, justchristians.com, and our Facebook page. Our music is from upbeat.io. That's upbeat with two Ps, 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.