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, August the 4th. I'm Mark. I've got some great coffee. I'm looking at my sermon outline from yesterday. I have a boatload of stuff from Daily Bible Reading. Man, stuff is happening in Daily Bible Reading. Miracles and all kinds of things are going on. It is going on, so you need to pour that cup of coffee. Let's get ready. Let's get set. Let's go.

Let's go.

So, yesterday's sermon was on the plan of salvation, God's part and your part. And let me get some coffee here. Yesterday... Yesterday, I preached about salvation. Oh, that's great coffee, especially in this mug. While I was at the Conway Youth Lectures, I was given a mug that says, I don't ride the crazy train, I drive it. And I'm not sure that's entirely true, but it's pretty hilarious and I love it. So yesterday, I did talk about the plan of salvation. And I think what I really loved about this sermon is it takes a verse, Acts 16, 30 and 31, that is sometimes used to try and prop up faith only saves and the idea that you can be saved by accepting Jesus into your heart. And it shows how that doesn't really work at all. Faith is integral to salvation and it drives so much of it. But James, for example, is very, very clear. Faith alone will not save. And that's why Paul had to preach to the Philippian jailer, and that's why that preaching did not end with him raising his hand to signify he had accepted Jesus into his heart. That story ends in the waters of baptism. And I want to add here, as I've had some conversations with various parents and so forth in various places, do your children know the five steps of salvation? If your kids don't know those, you need to work on that, mom and dad. Your kids should know those five steps of salvation by heart so that when they mature and grow and become accountable, they know exactly what they're supposed to do and why they're supposed to do it. I try to repeat those steps at the end of most every sermon so they'll just be ingrained in all of us, especially kids. But sometimes when the preacher goes to wrapping up, everybody gets to rustling around and grabbing stuff and putting things away, and that maybe just gets lost. Don't let that happen. Don't let that happen. Mom and dad, teach the steps of salvation. Someday, someday, junior, someday, sister, you want to hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized for the remission of your sins. Hope that helps you. Let's think about daily Bible reading. 2 Kings 4, verses 1-17 This is a difficult section here to date. This seems like it's a collection of Elisha's miracles, not a chronological account. One scholar noted that this would show the power of Jehovah over debt, verses 1 to 7, death, verses 8 to 37, drought, 38 to 44, and then disease, chapter 5, 1 to 27, and even difficulty in chapter 6. So this does seem to be saying some things about Elisha and that he is fully vested with the power of God. In this provision for the widow in verses 1 I love that Elisha jumps in immediately to help her. He is concerned about her. He wants to assist her. And one scholar noted that this woman gets more space in the Bible than the reign of Omri in 1 Kings 16, verses 23 to 28. And that says something because Omri establishes a dynasty. From a political standpoint, Omri is a very significant ruler. And from a biblical standpoint, the Bible hardly mentions him because he's wicked. He's an idolater. And God says, yep, you're bad, and moves on to something else. So then we want to talk about the Shunammite son in verses 8 to 30. And this is very similar to the miracle in 1 Kings 17, 17, where Elijah raises the son of the widow of Zarephath. And we just really see a lot of similarities here. But of course, before we can raise the son, we have to get the son here, which is our reading for today. I particularly like Gehazi in verse 14. It just seems remarkable to me how often men in the Bible miss the fact that a woman not having children is a huge deal. And Elisha is all, hey, I'll do anything for you. What can I do for you? And she's not really willing to jump out there and say, this is what I need. And Gehazi, you just kind of see him standing a little bit behind. Elisha kind of says quietly in Elisha's ear, she doesn't have any children. And Elijah says, aha, we can fix that. And so the next thing you know, she has a child, verse 17, and you have to know that child must have been the absolute delight of her eyes. What a joy that is. But in tomorrow's reading, we will see sometimes joy can lead to sorrow. Is Elisha going to be able to help with that? Our reading for Monday, 1 Kings. Goodness, it's a Monday, isn't it? It's going to be Monday all day long. The only answer to that is more coffee. A reading from Monday, 2 Kings 4, verses 1-17. It is Tuesday. It is Tuesday. Our reading for today is 2 Kings 4 verses 18 to 44. And I should add, Westsiders, there's no Zoom call tonight. There's no Zoom call tonight because the elders meet and I will be meeting with them this evening. So no Zoom this evening. Let's do our Bible reading. Verse 18, when the child had grown, please underline that in your Bible because it helps you see that these events may not be in order here. There has been a change in time. We had a child born in verse 17, verse 18. Now he is a grown child. And If you're looking at verse 23 and wondering why she's rushing so much, and I mean, she is hoofing. She is, verse 22, may I go quickly to the man of God? The reason for that is simple. In this culture, you bury almost immediately. Nobody wants a corpse in the house during the hot harvest season. This child will be buried almost immediately unless something happens. And so she heads to the mountain of the man of God, verse 27, which is Mount Carmel. And this is a place where If you visit the Bible lands, you get a dose of you don't know what you don't know because I did not know where all of these places, Shunem and Mount Carmel and all of that, how they related together. When you're standing on Mount Carmel, you can see across the valley all the way to Shunem. And so when the man of God saw her coming, verse 25, he would have been able to see her coming a long ways away. We don't know how he saw her and recognized her like that. Maybe she had a distinctive walk or she had a distinctive manner of... dressing, maybe she wore red handkerchief. We don't know about all of that, but he can see her coming from a long ways away and knows something terrible has happened for a woman to leave her work in the middle of the day to come see him. Then we get the episode where the prophets are saved from the deadly stew in verses 38 to 41. I wonder if this famine, notice verse 38, there was a famine in the land. Is that the judgment of God? Famine lots of times is the judgment of God. And then in verses 42 to 44, many hungry people are fed, and this This reminds us of what Jesus does. I think Jesus does something very, very similar in the Gospels, and I think Jesus is trying to say, hey, pay attention, pay attention. The messenger of God is here. At least see me as the messenger of God. So it's not a difficult reading today, but it's an interesting reading. All kinds of things going on in 2 Kings chapter 4. Our reading for Tuesday, 2 Kings chapter 4, verses 18 to 44. It is Wednesday, it is Wednesday, and tonight Paul Hammons will be with us at Westside to talk about Samson. Don't cut your hair before you come to church tonight. Paul Hammons talking about Samson in our summer series on the Judges. Before we do that, we need to do our daily Bible reading, so it's 2 Kings chapter 5. This divides neatly into two pieces. 1 to 14 is about Naaman, and then 15 to 25, I'm sorry, 15 to 27 is about Gehazi. It's good, and then it's really, really bad. A couple of things to pay attention to here. First of all, Please be aware, verse 3, that the slave here is not afraid to show her faith. She's not in a good place. She's a slave, but God still uses her for a greater thing. I think sometimes I end up complaining when what I need to be doing is pointing people to Jesus. She does a great job of that. We're not exactly sure where this fits in Elisha's timeline, but I'm going to guess that the king in verse 6, he brought the letter to the king of Israel, that's probably going to be Jehoram. And this is a huge amount of money that is being offered here Just incredible amounts of money. 10 talents of silver and 6,000 shekels of gold, 10 changes of clothing. This could be as much as 750 pounds of gold and maybe even 750 pounds of silver and 200 pounds of gold. It's just a ton. It's just a ton. And I'm really disappointed that Jehoram has so quickly forgotten the power of Elisha. What's going on with that, verse 7? He seems to have no idea what Elisha can do, and that is terrible. Please pay attention then in verse 11. Naaman was angry and went away and said, Behold... I thought he would surely come out to me. Come out to me is the important expression there. Naaman was considered to be a superior individual. As a result, Naaman expected the inferior to come out to him. So he gets all bent out of shape and gets in a huff about all of that. And I think there's a lot to be said here about how God does things differently than many times we would expect. Now, the ESV is very different in verse 13. His servants came near to him Most translations have, if he had spoken a great word with the sense of being, if he had told you some really difficult thing, wouldn't you be happy to do that? Instead, he told you a relatively easy thing, dip in the Jordan River. Hey, go do that. It's all going to be good. Maybe the ESV has it right. It's a great word. Hey, this is great news. You can be healed. Either way, there are some translation issues there. And again, scoping out the Hebrew, that's beyond the scope of this podcast. Yeah, that's beyond the scope of my abilities as well. Notice here, he has to wash in the Jordan seven times. By the way, when Dean and I were in Israel, we were way far north in Israel and got to see some of the rivers that Naaman would have been talking about, and they are cold and clear and fast, and they're just wonderful. And then, of course, we went south and were around the Jordan River, and it is chocolate milk. It's just not very appetizing as far as, hey, I'll take a swim in that. And so I get it. I get why Naaman is all, if I'm dipped I got better water than this at home, but that does not mean you don't obey God. You need to do what God has told you to do. So then Naaman asks for two mules worth of earth for 17, and I'm not sure what to make about all of that. Naaman is untaught. Perhaps the soil here would be a tangible reminder of who God really is. I'm not sure what to say about all of that. He is bothered at least by the inconsistency of bowing to a false god. when he knows Israel's God is the real, true God. I do think this story is really important here in Kings because it says that somebody outside of Israel understands who is God when Elisha cannot get the Israelites to have a clue who God is. It's just dreadful that Naaman can acknowledge God when Jehoram will not do that. A reading then for Wednesday, 2 Kings chapter 5. It's Thursday. It is Thursday, and our reading today is 2 Kings chapter 6. I want to say something here in verses 1 to 7 about this unusual miracle with the axe head. Elisha seems to have more unusual miracles associated with him than anybody else. I preached about the bears last week. Wow, there's just a lot of things going on around Elisha that maybe don't seem... normal and that we're not exactly sure how to handle or what to do with, I would say this about the floating ax head. If nothing else, it says something about how God is concerned not just with big things like the Syrian army, but he can be concerned about small things as well. That seems to me to be very encouraging in our prayer life. So then we get the idea of the kings of Syria worrying about how does... How does somebody seem to know everything that we're doing, all of our battle plans, before we even do them? And the reality is, of course, in verse 10, there are no secrets before God. God is sovereign. God knows all things. And I wonder here if Elisha didn't allow himself to be trapped so that everybody might know God's glory. And in fact, one of the most beautiful passages in all of the Bible, verse 16, And Elisha prayed and said, Please open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw. And behold, the mount was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. Oh, indeed. How often we need to just see. that God is with us and that God has more than those who come against us. What a powerful idea that really is. And that's just tremendously encouraging to me. I hope it will be to you as well. So then Samaria is besieged, beginning in verse 24 on down into chapter 7. And there's a number of things here that seem to be really, really troubling. Let's just start with the fact that this woman in verse 28 is not concerned at all that she had to eat her son. What she's really concerned about is that she in the deal. She's not freaking out and all, oh my, this terrible thing had to happen. Nope. What she's really concerned about is, I got cheated. This just says something about where Israel is and what's happened under Jehoram. And of course, all of this is prophesied in Deuteronomy 28. You need to be sure that you're marking that in your Bible. But Moses had very graphically described what would happen if Israel didn't follow God. Deuteronomy 28, 52 to 57, Leviticus 26, 27, 28, and 29. Those passages say, this is what the Lord will bring against you if, in fact, if, in fact, you don't follow the Lord. And it's interesting to me, verse 32, that the elders are now with Elisha, so I wonder if the king's failures are starting to cost him. Verse 32, I like what Elisha says. You see how this son of a murderer has had to take off my head? That's... That is the New American Standard. The ESV does not have the son of there, but clearly Elisha is referencing how he is the son of Ahab. This boy is turning out to be a real chip off the old block. Our reading for Thursday, 2 Kings chapter 6. It is Friday, it is Friday, and as much interest as we have in what's going on with that siege in Samaria, today we are in the Psalms, always in the Psalms on Friday. Psalm 54 is the reading for today. This is a lament, a cry for help, and it is a very short Psalm, so I would encourage you to go read 1 Samuel 23, verses 13 to 29. That, according to the heading here, is the background to the Psalm. That that reading will tell you that the Ziphites betrayed David to King Saul. Even after he had helped them, they ratted him out. So thanks a lot, Ziphites. What a bunch of losers you are. And the focus here, notice verse 3, is the evil men. Evil men have sold David out to King Saul. And he asked God, verse 1, to save me by your name. The name of God here means the character of God, the power of God, all that God is. And this is the place to say something about calling upon God's name. That isn't about getting his name spelled correctly. Is it spelled with a Y? Is it spelled with a J? Did you shout it out loud? No. It's about knowing God's character. that God can deliver and save. Then in verses 4 and 5, there is a shift here to confident trust. And then I love verses 6 and 7. This is praise. And you'll see verse 7, he has delivered me from every trouble. God has done this in the past. I was praying for deliverance. Apparently, either I have been delivered or I trust that I will be delivered. And here's just a note, something to think on, I believe that will help us as we end the week in our Bible reading here. I like how David faces needs realistically I'm not sure where we ever got the idea that strong faith denies the seriousness of a situation. If my company exports all the jobs that we have overseas and now I'm without severance, I'm not going to act like anything is wrong. I'm just going to smile, you know, because I trust God. That's nonsense. David trusts God. He trusts God all the time. Being a man after God's own heart is about trusting in God. But in times of real trouble, in times of real trouble, David says, I'm in real trouble. This is a serious situation. I need your help here. And that's one of the things that I love about the Psalms, and it's one of the things that I love about David. David trusts in God, but that never keeps him from saying, I'm confused. I feel alone. God, it's like you're not even listening to me. David can do that in a reverent way without being blasphemous or without accusing God in a rash way. But David has no place for pretend piety that some people seem to think that Christians are supposed to exhibit today. A reading for Friday, Psalm 54. Thank you for listening, then. That's the podcast for the week. If the podcast is helping you, of course, tell somebody else about it and leave us a rating or review so that more people will find it. Until next week, then, when we'll open our Bibles together again, I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven. I want you to come, too. Can't wait to see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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