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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, September the 1st. I'm Mark. I'm holding a great cup of coffee, and I am ready to talk to you about yesterday's sermon and to talk about our daily Bible reading. Let me see if I can brush the crumbs off of my notes. because I'm eating while I'm talking to you. What am I eating, you are wondering? I'm eating a delightful coffee loaf. Usually, I'm not a big fan of coffee-infused flavors in ice cream or candy or just about anything. I like coffee, but I don't like coffee in all kinds of other stuff. Coffee needs to come in a mug. But a wonderful friend of the podcast made me a coffee-infused loaf of bread, and it's just pretty amazing. I froze some of it so it would still be here when i got home from alaska and i gotta admit it's just pretty amazing coffee and coffee bread what more could you ask for well whatever it is that you need this morning to get going whether that is some coffee whether that is dr pepper or mountain dew oh my dina careful with that mountain dew whatever it is pour that cup of coffee pour that cup of diet dr pepper pour that coke zero let's get ready let's get set Let's go. Yesterday was a fifth Sunday, which means I did Q&A in the 1040 instead of in the 9 a.m. as I normally do. That gives me an opportunity to give everybody a look at Q&A. Maybe it encourages some people to come to the 9 a.m. on the last Sunday of the month so they can get more of that Q&A business. Good questions make for good Q&A. And yesterday I dealt with a question about Jesus's race. And I am disturbed, I must tell you, at the number of people who are trying somehow to inject racism into the gospel and somehow make Jesus into a racist or decide that Jesus, as I dealt with this question yesterday, that Jesus somehow was African-American, was he dark-skinned. And I said yesterday that I would point you to some additional resources. I would remind you in June of 2024, I preached a lesson about that whole issue and all that's again, I am just distressed at people who are trying to add racism into the story of Jesus. There's just nothing there. There's just nothing there. In this business of, oh, somehow you're a Christian and that means that you've given in to the white man, that is so far outside of anything the Bible teaches. Jesus always cared for the oppressed and the downtrodden. If there is anybody who is drawn to Jesus, and I think Historically, lots of minority groups and groups that have been oppressed have been very drawn to Jesus. Jesus is for everyone, and any attempt to somehow co-opt him to a racist agenda is just so repugnant to anybody who has read anything in the Gospels at all. So if you're struggling with some of that, or you know somebody who is, point them to that lesson, and maybe that will be of some value to them. Remember, like I said, good questions make for good Q&A. Keep asking those good questions. And then, hey, don't forget to write that question down or message me, email me, something like that so I have it in tangible form. But once you've got your question down, turn your Bible to 2 Kings because we are in 2 Kings chapter 15. Our reading for Monday is 2 Kings 15, verses 17-18. We will catch up here some of the reign of some of the kings in Israel and even get an additional note about a king down in the south in Judea. So we begin with Minaham in verses 16 to 22. He is a vassal to Tiglath-Pileser III. The Assyrians are on the rise. It's been about 50 years where they have been a little disorganized and had a lot of internal turmoil. But Tiglath-Pileser III reorganizes the army. He ends independent kingdoms. replacing them with the Syrian provinces. And he is the king that uses mass deportation to demoralize conquered people. When he conquers you, he picks up everybody, or most everybody, and moves them to somewhere else. This would be the equivalent if Texas was conquered, which of course is unthinkable. But what if Texas was conquered and the invading army moved all of us to Saskatchewan in Canada? We would be completely displaced. We would have no familiarity with the culture, the geography, the weather. We would be thousands and thousands of miles from home, which if you're walking, pretty much precludes any kind of escape. You're just done. And Tiglath-Pileser used that to break people's spirit. And you can certainly see here that Menahem is not interested in that happening, so he buys him off. And a talent, verse 19, weighed as much as 75 pounds, and so this is a huge sum of money. He is replaced then with Pekahiah in verses 23 to 26. He reigns over Israel and Samaria. He's evil, not a good man. There are, by the way, all kinds of chronological issues here. If you're adding up math and doing all kinds of the reign of this guy was so long and the I can't do math, so I don't have any issues with that. But Pekahiah is assassinated in verse 25 by Pekah. There are questions about what it means. Argob in the citadel of the king's house, verse 25, with Argob and Aria. There's different translations of that. It seems like this is an inside job. And in verse 30, as we continue to track the Assyrians and the Assyrian rise, there is, there are, are, are, wow, that's hard to say on a Monday. There are archaeological records of Tiglath-Pileser and the things that he's doing here. His own account states, they overthrew Pekah their king, and I placed Hoshea as king over them. So Hoshea here is basically a puppet king, and you are seeing more and more of the power of the Assyrians. Finally, the chapter concludes with the reign of Jotham. So we move south back to Judea. Jotham is a good king. He orders his ways before the Lord. Second Chronicle 2 Chronicles 27 gives us more information about that and helps us with that. But in summary, he did what was right. He continues Uzziah's building programs. He defeats Ammon and took tribute from them. And he is mighty because he ordered his ways before Jehovah. Like I said, 2 Chronicles 27 and verse 6. If you have time today, it's Labor Day. A lot of us are off work and so forth. If you're not out in the field hunting doves like some of us are, take some time and go read 2 Chronicles 27 and catch up on Jotham's reign as the The Chronicler gives us more information about that. But our reading for Monday is 2 Kings 15, verses 17 to 38. Welcome to Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday. Our reading today is 2 Kings chapter 16, the entire chapter, and we're talking about King Ahaz. This is a tough chapter. I don't like King Ahaz at all. This guy drives me crazy. It'll be something to talk about him in Zoom tonight. But he does so many things that are wrong. Verse 3, he walks in the ways of the kings of Israel. Once again, King David is mentioned. Verse 2, and our point this year in our Bible reading is to connect to David to be a person who seeks after God's heart, he's not a true son of David. He doesn't care about God. He doesn't care about what's right. He follows in the ways of Jeroboam. He follows in the ways of the Israelite kings. And he's doing the things that God evicts Israel, the northern tribes, out of the land for. So there's a dark cloud in verse 3. If God brings judgment on Israel for those things, what will happen to Judea when they do the very same kind of things? And so that results in all kinds of attacks, resurrection King of Syria. Verse 5 and verse 6 comes and attacks Judea. And so he forms an alliance with Assyria. What are you thinking, Ahaz? This is the dumbest move possible. This would be something similar to a nation that felt threatened, say, by communist China. I'm kind of harking back to the 50s and the 60s, asking the Soviet Union when it was communist, hey, can you help us out? Where is that going to end? You'll just end up being under their boot instead of under this other country's boot. What are you doing forming an alliance with Assyria? And in fact, Isaiah chapter 7 covers this time, and the prophet of God tells Ahaz, don't do this. Don't do this. But he does not listen. He does not turn to God. He makes an alliance. And yes, it is a temporary fix to the problem, but it is no long-term solution. And in fact, it leads to more apostasy because verse 10, he sees this altar and has to oh, I've got to have one of these. And so this may be done to impress Tiglath-Pileser. Interestingly, most scholars will say that Assyria did not seem to force religion on its vassal provinces. So he does not have to do this, and please don't cut him a pass by saying he's forced to do it. He wants to do it, and he does it because he does not care about God. And it's just appalling to see this being imported into Judea, and he's just another brick in the wall, if you will, another step down the road of apostasy, another reason God will have to bring judgment upon this wicked king and the terrible things that he's introduced into Judea. We'll talk more about this. It's Tuesday, so we get Zoom tonight, Westsiders. We'll talk more about this, and there is clear parallels to what we see so often today in which it seems like many times brethren want to Welcome to Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. Today we read 2 Kings 17, verse 1. 1 to 23. This is a very significant part of our reading because it is in line with the purpose of Kings. The purpose of Kings is to tell the people why they went to captivity. That is different than the purpose of Chronicles. That's why the accounts there are of different kings and different activities. They are not contradictory, of course. Don't get it twisted, but Chronicles emphasizes different points and different ideas. Kings is all about why did And that really starts in verses 7 down through the rest of our reading today, verse 23. Just over and over again, God removed them out of his sight until he cast them out of his sight. He removed Israel out of his sight. They despised his statutes. They followed the nations. Just work down through that carefully, and you will see that obedience to God genuinely matters. All of this starts with Hosea. Remember, he assassinated Pekah, chapter 15, verse 30, and so he is not a good person, and he He is a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser. But when Tiglath-Pileser died, verse 3, it seems that Hosea decides they want to become a free state, and so he decides to break away from Assyria, maybe get some help from Egypt. That does not work. And the end is they are deported, verse 4, hundreds of miles to the northeast. Now, actually, Shalmaneser is the king that follows Tiglath-Pileser, but he died during this time. It's his general, Sargon, who was probably present at the actual destruction of Samaria and all that happens with that. And I want to give you a note here about deportation. This is something that I can do on a podcast. I can't really get this information to you any other way. People commonly imagine that deportation means that they scraped every living person and their dog off the land and shipped them all out of there. I mean, if you had walked through Israel after this, it had just been a ghost town. There'd just been nobody. And that kind of thinking has fed the misconception that there is a lost 10 tribes out there somewhere, which has led to every kind of crazy theology that you can imagine. Oftentimes, there's some kind of thinking that Anglo-Saxon people are, in fact, the lost 10 tribes of Israel, and it's just bizarre, and it's weird, and it does not work. They do not deport everybody. The logistics of that, of course, are extremely difficult, and if you deport everyone, then the land is empty, and it's not making the the king any money. So what deportation means is you take the ruling aristocracy, you take military leaders, you take religious leaders, you take the people who could rebel, and you ship them out of there because that breaks their spirit. And there is plenty of language in other places in scripture that indicates that there were some Israelites left. And that deportation does not mean everybody is gone. So for example, in 2 Chronicles 30 and verse 1, there are Israelites said to have attended various functions in Judah, and there are many other places like that. So they're shipping the main body of the population. They are shipping educated people. They are shipping the aristocracy. Those people are deported, but don't imagine that the land is just completely denuded of all people. That is not exactly correct at all. And I'll give you just one more note. I love the ESV very much, as you know, but verse 14 says they would not listen. They were stubborn, and the term there is stiff-necked, and I think that's probably the better translation because that references an animal like an ox or a donkey that will not turn to the master's will, and that is exactly what has happened here. Verses 7 to 23 detail that in exhaustive detail because it matters. Don't skip it. Don't go through it too fast. Sit down in it and learn what what God is doing here when His people will not obey Him. Our reading for Wednesday, 2 Kings 1, 2 Kings 17, verses 1 to 23. Welcome to Thursday. Welcome to Thursday. And the reading today is 2 Kings 17, verses 24 to 41. This completes the story of the ten tribes being taken into captivity, being deported, by telling about the people that the Assyrians resettled in the land that is now known, or will be known in New Testament times especially, And these foreigners are struggling to adapt. They don't understand how to live in this land. They don't know what to do in this land. And the land is not friendly. Verse 25, There's lots of conversation about how that could have worked and why this would be there. A lot of dead bodies after the wars and so forth. How about we just believe the Lord sent them because this is God's land and it is a reminder of the broken covenant with God and maybe even an attempt to help these people think about the Lord But they aren't thinking about the Lord in a real way. Mostly what they want is some sort of superstitious faith to ward off the lions. And I think a lot of people want to use religion in that sort of fashion. I just want enough religion to keep bad things from happening to me. And of course, a priest, verse 28, is sent, but how could he possibly help? The priests that lived in the north as part of the ten tribes there, they were all part of Jeroboam's religion, false religion, corrupted religion. What that means is that the worship here is just wrong from the very beginning. And I'm saying all of this about the Samaritans and Samaria because in New Testament times, there's such hostility between Jews and Samaritans. And we see that reflected in the ministry of Jesus several times. And it starts right here. It starts right here. These people are not pure Israelites. They don't understand about Jehovah God, and they've never worshiped him correctly. And of course, it's a couple of hundred years. This is 722 BC when the northern tribes are deported. So it's quite a while to until Jesus gets there, and there will be a lot of different religious movements and things that go along during that time, particularly in between Malachi and Matthew, but it gets off to a bad start. It seems, verse 29, that mostly what they want to do is worship the local God, and we'll just add that to our God so that we're getting all of our bases covered. And I kind of think verse 33 may have some sarcasm there. So they, quote, feared the Lord, but they also served their own gods. I wonder if you couldn't put feared the Lord there in air quotes. Yeah, they feared the Lord, and of course I'm doing that with my fingers, which you can't see on a podcast, but this is not genuine service before the Lord. These people don't know the Lord. God's making an effort to push them towards Him, but it doesn't seem like that's really going anywhere. It's a sad end to this whole story of the land and the people that have come there. They don't know God. Maybe the passage that stands out the most is verse 24. At the end of that verse, it says they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. The expression took possession is used in Deuteronomy of Israel. This is the land they should take possession of. They had it and they lost it because they would not really fear the Lord. Our reading for Thursday, 2 Kings 17, 24-41. It's Friday. It's Friday and today, of course, we are in the Psalms. We're reading Psalm 38 today and this is a key psalm if we will be a person of David, a person after God's own heart. Psalm 38 is about suffering, and yes, in the Bible there is innocent suffering. I think about Job. He suffers. He is innocent. But this is the suffering that comes because of sin. And the question here is, can we still pray to God when we've cut off, we've cut ourselves off from the Lord by our own iniquity and wrongdoing? Is there any hope for us when we are in sin? And so Psalm 38 directs us to repent and pray before the Lord. This is called a Psalm of Penitence. There are not a lot of those in the book of Psalms. I guess Psalm 51 is probably the most famous penitential psalm, but there are others. Psalm 6, 32, 38, 102, 130, and 143. These Psalms of Penitence pour out before God sorrow for sin and a desire for the forgiveness and cleansing that can only come from the Lord. And while we are not entirely sure of the author of the psalm, it certainly feels like one of David's psalms, and it is found in the very first book of the Psalms the first section of the Psalms, and those are nearly all written by David. I'm pretty comfortable saying this is David. And as the Psalm begins, there are very strong terms for God's anger in verse 1, and it does seem like David feels like God has drawn a bullseye, a target on him. And then he repeatedly talks about because. Verse 3, because, because of your indignation. Verse 5, because of my foolishness. And I don't think we can diagnose specifically what David is sick with. Maybe there is some large language here, some poetry here, some metaphors to just say David feels absolutely sick with sin and sick with guilt. And so in verses 9 to 14, he begins to talk about how he is distant from God, and I can't stand being distant from God, and now he's talking about being alienated from others. And his silence, verse 13 and 14, comes partly because he has faith in God, as we will see, but partly because because he knows he is guilty. Job protests his innocence. Hey, stop with I'm a bad person. I'm not a bad person. I did not do bad things. David says, I know this is on me. This is on me. I have done what is wrong. So his single hope then in verses 15 to 22 is to wait upon the Lord, to trust in God. And verse 20 provides us the basic statement of David's entire life. Those who render me evil for good accuse me because I follow after good. I'm standing with the Lord. I want to stand with the Lord. I confess that openly. Verse 8 I rely upon the promises of God to forgive me, and I'm going to go back and do what's right. So God, verse 21, please do not forsake me. Be not far from me. I love that what David is about here is his relationship with the Lord. Not I got caught. Not I'm experiencing a bunch of bad consequences. I want God. I want to be in relationship with God. Psalm 38. That's our reading for Friday. Thank you for listening then. That's the podcast for the week. I hope it's helping you and I hope that you're telling others about it. So until Monday 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 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.