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 25th. It's a special day today because today Dena and I are headed home. As you're listening to this, we're in the airport in Fairbanks, Alaska, getting ready to board an airplane to go to Seattle, and there'll be a layover there, and then that final leg of the journey home, Seattle to Dallas. Really been a great trip. Every bit of it has been amazing and wonderful, but we're excited, of course, to be home. I think you know you've been on vacation long enough when you're ready to be home. And I am, I know you're wondering, yep, I'm holding a great cup of coffee. This is some AeroPress that I'm working with right here. So you need to get yourself a cup of coffee or tea or Dr. Pepper or whatever it is that starts your Mondays. Let's get ready. Let's get set. Let's go. Let's go. Our reading for Monday is 2 Kings chapter 12. The reading this week will be very simple. Just read a chapter a day. 2 Kings 12 on Monday, 13 on Tuesday, 14 on Wednesday. 2 Kings 12, 13, 14. You know where we're headed. You know what we're doing. Today it is 2 Kings chapter 12. And today we are focused on King Joash. You may have there Jehoahash. There's different ways of writing his name, spelling his name. Don't get lost in all of that. He really has two periods of time in his life. First of all, he He is very faithful to the Lord. while Jehoiada is alive. But once Jehoiada passes away, and 2 Chronicles 24 covers this in more detail, once Jehoiada passes away, he just acts terribly. He just falls apart spiritually. It's really a terrible, terribly sad story. But here in 2 Kings 12, he repairs the temple. Notice he's doing what's right, verse 2. However, he does not have the strength to enforce a national return to the Lord. You see that in verse 3. But he is interested in repairing the temple. The temple's about 140 years old now. It's been vandalized by idol worshipers, Athaliah and others. Not a good situation. Needs to be cleaned up, tidied up, rebuilt, repaired. And so some money is collected. And it seems like, verses 7 and 8, maybe there's... Is there some dishonesty here? Are they just not getting around to getting it done? Have the priests not received their regular income so they're using what's given for the restoration of the temple to live on? Joash gets all of that cleaned up and fixed up and we're making the temple new again. Now, all of that is spent, all that money that's collected then is spent on external repairs. There's not making of basins of silver, verse 13, snuffers, bowls, and trumpets. but they are repairing the actual physical building of the Lord. However, he then begins to move away from God. And verse 18 tells us, kind of gives us some foreshadowing of that in Joash's life. He should have depended upon God here, but instead he strips the temple of its treasures. So you get a good look there of somebody who's fading at the finish line. I've said a lot about that as we've talked about youth lectures. In the at the end of their life who lose their way and don't keep serving the Lord as they should. Again, if you have time today, go read 2 Chronicles 24, and you'll see that Jehoiada was a wonderful, wonderful man, but once his influence upon Joash is gone because he passes away, then all of a sudden, Joash just goes crazy and all kinds of weakness follows. Our reading for Monday, 2 Kings 12. It is Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday, and today we read 2 Kings chapter 13. 2 Kings chapter 13 is our reading for Tuesday. This is the reign of Jehoahaz. We spent a little bit of time in Judea seeing what's going on there with temple repairs. What's happening in the north? Well, in the north, in the 23rd year of Joash, the son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, the guy who's repairing the temple, the things that go with that, there's a Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu. Remember, Jehu's been promised a dynasty, and he began to reign over Israel in Samaria. However, He does evil, and the next thing you know, here come the Syrians, and they're attacking and oppressing, and all kinds of things are going on there. So in a very surprising move, verse 4, Cries to God. And maybe just as surprising, God listens to a wicked king. And so verse 5, a savior is sent. There's a lot of discussion as to exactly who this savior, who this deliverer is. But what this reminds me of, does this remind this? Yeah, this is the judges. It's the cycle of the judges all over again. I can't even believe this is happening. I'm not sure I would have seen that as clearly if we hadn't been in the judges all this summer. But it's like you're reading the judges one more time. But there's no real change. Verse 6, in the heart of the people. and the result of that is there'll just be continued oppression and continued difficulty. The chapter then ends by discussing the death of Elisha, and there's kind of a puzzling scenario going on here with the king not... not really showing faith. And I'm not entirely certain what goes on here, what the arrows represent. They seem to represent the victories of the Lord. But verse 17, he has no real faith. He seems to be lackluster. He seems to be, yeah, whatever, I'm doing this because this old prophet's telling me to do this. And then the striking of the ground, he seems to have done that very timidly. Yeah, okay, strike the ground. Yeah, whatever. And Elisha's angry and says, hey... You should have vigorously done this. I'm telling you, this is symbolic of what God is going to do for you. And you want God to vigorously defeat your enemies. You should be excited, just pounding the ground. You would have had a great victory. And I think this just shows very clearly where things are in Israel. People are very, very far away from God. And even when they, for a moment, turn back to God because the circumstances are bad, it really does not last. And then, of course, we get this wonderful scene where they bury Elisha, and next thing you know, a guy jumps in the grave because here comes some raiders, and when he touches the bones of Elisha, they just throw this dead body in the grave, and when he touches the bones of Elisha, he revives. What's the point of that story? Why is this in the text? That's a great question to ask, and I think the answer to that is it shows the Word of God does not die with Elisha. The Word of God has power. This was a powerful man of God, and even his dead bones have power. Maybe something to be said about what we'll read in Ezekiel later on about a valley of dry bones, but the Word of God has power even when Elisha, the man of God, is no longer alive. Let's see here. What do I need to tell Westsiders? Well, I need to tell Westsiders that we will have Zoom tonight. No ifs, ands, or buts about that. Zoom call tonight. We haven't had one in a while. We will be in Zoom. Everyone else will see you on the podcast tomorrow. Reading for Tuesday. Our reading for Tuesday. 2 Kings chapter 13. Welcome to Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. Tim Jennings will be with us tonight at Westside in the last of our summer series on the judges. Tim will be talking about Samuel and that's... That's just going to be so important for us as we continue to think about the king. Samuel is the kingmaker, and he started all of that with King Saul. So I'm excited to hear what Tim has to say about Samuel. Our reading today is 2 Kings chapter 14, and it's all about the reign of Amaziah. Amaziah seems like many of the other kings. He does right for a while, but after God blesses him, he becomes full of pride, and then he leaves the Lord. And you may be a little surprised about some of this here because he seems like he's doing fairly Well, verse 7, he struck down 10,000 Edomites. And there's a fuller account of that over in 2 Chronicles. Now here in a minute, the writer of Kings tells us about this battle with Jehoahash, king of Israel, and Amaziah gets beaten. And we may be thinking, what just happened here? I thought this guy's a pretty good king. But if you go read the parallel account in 2 Chronicles chapter 25, he hired troops to take on the Edomites and was told by God not to do that. He was told, 2 Chronicles 25, 7, by a prophet not to use the mercenary troops. In fact, a central theme in Chronicles is to not form foreign alliances. And then he ends up worshiping the gods of the Edomites. So Amaziah is not doing a great job as king. And then he decides to take on Israel. And Israel, then they kind of talk some smack back and forth. And the next thing you know, Amaziah is utterly defeated. He is completely demolished on the field of battle. Verse 14, Josephus says that Amaziah was released after the battle, and in things, I guess, he went back to trying to be the king and the things that happened there, but the bottom line to all of that is he's not a great king, and he ends up with a conspiracy. Verse 19, this is the same kind of thing that happens so often. A conspiracy is against him, and he tries to get out of Dodge, but that doesn't doesn't work, and he ends up being put to death. The chapter then ends in verses 23 to 29 with one of the single most important kings in northern Israel in Israelite history, and this is Jeroboam II. Make sure you have a note that it's Jeroboam II, not Jeroboam I. You'll end up being confused. Jeroboam I, Jeroboam, and Rehoboam are the two kings when the kingdom split after Solomon. This is not Jeroboam I. This is Jeroboam II. And this is a time when there's a little power vacuum going on. The seer are declining and the Assyrians are coming on, but they're not fully there yet. And Jeroboam II expands Israel during that time. He is very important in the overall political history of this region, and there's tremendous economic prosperity going on. All kinds of great things are happening, and none of that really matters because he's an idolater. And that's what 2 Kings gives attention to, noting, for example, this is the Jonah, verse 25, yeah, that's that Jonah. This is the time of the prophets trying to turn Jeroboam II's heart back to God. Our reading for Wednesday, 2 Kings, chapter 14. It's Thursday. It is Thursday, and our reading today is 2 Kings chapter 15, 1 to 16. This is an interesting reading, and in some ways it's an appalling reading. It'll be a reading you have a hard time stopping at, verse 16, but we're going to supplement this with some material in Chronicles as well. So buckle up. Here we go. In 2 Kings 15, we start with Uzziah. Some translations will have Azariah. This is that whole business of different ways of spelling the name, or it may be that his name was changed. Azariah means Jehovah has helped, but the Then when he becomes the king of Judah at age 16, he may have changed his name to a throne name, Uzziah, which means Jehovah is his strength. And even today, the king of England, Whatever his name is, now he's king something else, and I can't remember, and I don't know. And the reality is, in 1776, we fought a big war so that I don't have to know those things. That was for free. Get some coffee, and let's think about Uzziah here. He's a great king, and he reigns a long time. And you see the stability that he brings to Judea. Then there is that enigmatic reference there, the Lord touched him, verse 5, and he was a leper. If you want to know what that's about, you have to go to 2 Chronicles 26. In 2 Chronicles Chronicles 26, he gets too big for his britches. That's a wonderful East Texas expression. And the Lord takes him down a peg. And that is a powerful story that always reminds me of why we read our Bible. because I was fairly confident early in my preaching life that I knew the Bible, at least the facts of the Bible and the stories of the Bible, pretty much backwards and forwards. And I'm reading along, doing daily Bible reading, trying to read the Bible through in a year kind of thing. And I pop over to 2 Chronicles 26, and here's this king who struck with leprosy. And I just sat there absolutely stunned. I had no idea that was in the Bible. I did not know that was in the Bible. I had never read that. I had never heard anything about any of that. I was examining my Bible to see if somebody had added to the Word of God? Nope. It's part of the Bible, just in 2 Chronicles chapter 26. The main emphasis in 2 Kings, of course, is always what's going on in Israel. And so beginning in verse 8, we get this slide into disaster. We're probably about looking at about 20 years of history here, 753 to 732. We have five kings and four conspiracies. And remember, When you have assassinations like this, it just indicates the corruption and decay that's setting into the land. People don't respect authority. They don't respect the king. They don't want to do what's right. They just do whatever they want to do. So we're going to start up here with Zechariah, the son of Jeroboam, reigning over Israel. He reigned six months. He's not a good king. Surprise, surprise, surprise. There are no good kings in Israel. And so verse 10, Shalom conspires and kills him. And then... we get a little note there in verse 12. This was the promise of the Lord that he gave to Jehu. Your son shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation. I think that's probably the most important verse in our reading today. I don't have to know all these kings' names and what about this guy and what about that guy. What I need to know is that even though people were doing wicked things, God kept his word. You cannot stop God. And so he'd made a promise to Jehu and God keeps his promise. That's what happening here. So then Shalom jumps on the throne, verse 13, and Minaham says, I don't want you to be the king, and so we've got death and every kind, and then verse 16, Minaham sacks the city because they don't open the gates to him, which means they're rejecting him, and people die just in horrible fashions. Maybe this is something to remember about the peace and stability, the relative peace and stability that we've known here in our country. We don't have violent overthrow of the government, and if you don't open the city gates, See you on Friday. It's Friday. It is Friday. You made it through another week. Let's do the Psalm. Psalm 37 is the Psalm for today. This is a longer Psalm, 40 verses. Psalm 37 has 40 verses to it, and it is not a Psalm that is easy to outline. The reason it's difficult to outline in the main is because it is an acrostic. That means that every stanza begins with a letter, the corresponding letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The stanzas here are usually four lines, and this is an artistic device that makes the Psalm very, very beautiful and and shows that a lot of thought went into it. It's also a way of saying I'm covering this subject from A to Z, so to speak, but probably more than anything, it was a way of helping students to remember the truths here. The author, probably David, remember the headings are uninspired, he seems to be an old man here reflecting upon God's dealings with the righteous and with the wicked, and that makes it very much a wisdom or instructional psalm. As you read this, you'll think you're reading Proverbs because it's just Proverbs right one after another on the same subject. And really, this psalm is not nearly so God speaking to man. This is man speaking to God and talking to God about final justice and the blessing of the righteous. Those concepts just permeate this whole psalm. So it begins with the quiet spirit, verses 1 to 11. And I love verse 1, fret not yourself because of evildoers. That's a great verse to think about in a time when we're just constantly looking at the news, looking at our news feed, tapping on that, clicking on that. The 24-hour news cycle just... just feeds on fretting. Psalm 37.1 says we're not going to fret about that. And if you're having trouble doing Psalm 37.1, then cut all that other nonsense off. That's undermining our patience with God. Look at verse 7, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Then the psalmist talks about our hidden help in verses 12 to 26. And I do like the idea here of how sin can boomerang on evil people. Verses 14 and 15, the wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to So often, the Bible uses the boomerang principle. You understand, you throw that boomerang in here in a minute, it's going to come back. You better duck or put your hand up to catch it. And the psalmist says being wicked doesn't work. It's going to come back around on you. The way of the transgressor is hard. I just hurt myself when I become involved in sin. And that's a great reminder when we get frustrated with all the evildoers. Hey, hey, maybe I'll just take this into my own hands. Vigilante justice. I'm going to get armed. I'm going to bomb the abortion clinic. No, no. God's people don't do that. We take the long view, verses 27 to 40. We allow the Lord to establish our steps, verse 23. We trust in God. This whole psalm helps us in a world that's just topsy-turvy with evil and violence to say, I trust in the Lord. I delight in God, verse 4. I wait on the Lord, verse 7. He He is the one that I know is active and will deliver, verse 40. That's our psalm for this Friday. Psalm 37 is our reading for Friday. That's the podcast then for the week. Certainly do appreciate you listening to the podcast. I hope it's helping you with your daily Bible reading. And as we keep track of the sermon on Sunday, and I share some notes from that sermon with you each Monday morning. Hope your coffee's been good this week. Dean and I certainly are glad to be home from a great trip. Looking forward to an excellent fall here at Westside as we grow together in the Word of God. Tell others about the podcast and leave a rating or review. Well, that's it. I look forward to seeing you next Monday. I'm Mark Roberts. And I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come too. See you 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.