Hello, and welcome to the Westside Church's special Monday Morning Company 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 each other and better work the applications into our daily life. Mark will then look forward into this week's album reading so that we can know what to expect and watch it. 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.

Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for Monday, December the 15th. I'm Mark, and I am holding a great cup of coffee. I have my Bible open. This is an early start. Wow. Oh dark 30 here. We're getting things going. I know lots of people are starting things early because of the holidays. You've got to get around and maybe get some work done early so you can get out and shop later. Just a bunch of things happening, but we want to stop. I want to put all that aside for a few minutes. Think about what we were working on yesterday, what Jesus was asking, and then get our Bibles open, do our daily Bible reading, get the day started in the best way. Yep, that's exactly what this podcast is all about. So grab your Bible, grab your coffee, let's grow together. Yesterday was the last of the 12 questions that Jesus asked that made the preaching theme for this year. It's a great preaching theme. You got to vote on that. And I think that made it extra interesting to see what people wanted to hear, wanted to know more about. And this question which of you, by worrying, by being anxious, can add a single hour to their span of life is a powerful question, especially, especially with all the anxiety and worry that people are feeling. Some of that being fed by the media, I think, and just lots going on that makes people wring their hands and be pretty sure the sky is falling. Well, here's an extra thought for you. Imagine that you're carrying a backpack full of rocks. Each rock is a worry. Your job, your health, your finances, the news, the economy, what's going on with your sports team. You carry it everywhere. It's heavy, it's exhausting, it's slowing you down. Now, Jesus comes up and he says, Give me the entire backpack. Sounds easy, right? But but it's not. We end up holding on to the backpack tighter. We clutch it and we say, Listen, I I I can handle this. I'll I I got this. I'll I'll take care of it. And I think that's what anxiety does to our hearts sometimes. It makes us act like we are in control when we are not. But here's the truth giving the backpack to God isn't passive, it is active. You pray, you trust, and then you have to keep walking. You take that next step. You can't add a single hour to your life by stressing, but you can live your next hour more fully when you trust Jesus. That's Matthew 6.27 in action. So, how about this? This week, open that backpack up and pick one rock, one worry that has been weighing you down, and hand it to Jesus. I'm talking about something that you can't control, you can't do anything about it, you have no power over it, maybe is isn't even affecting you. Get that rock out of that backpack, pray about it, and let it go. And then you go on in faith. Watch what will happen. Your heart will feel lighter, your mind will be clearer, your faith will grow as you see what God can do. Anxiety loses its grip, and we start living the way God designed us to. Remember, worry is adding nothing to your life. Trust adds everything. Stop carrying rocks. Let Jesus have them, and then you and I can walk free. I hope the preaching theme this year helped you. I'm excited about next year's preaching theme, but I think this year's was really something very special. Give me some feedback about what you thought about the preaching theme for this year. And now get your Bible open to the book of Psalms. That's right. Psalm 110 is where we're starting this week. And you may be thinking, what else is there in Psalm 110? Mark preached about it. We talked about it all last week in the podcast. What am I supposed to do here reading Psalm 110 again? Let me encourage you maybe to jump over onto the internet and read a story. It's a very powerful story called Agaziz and the Fish. I'm probably not saying the professor's name right, A-G-A-S-S-I-Z, Agaziz and the Fish. And the story is about a student who comes to Professor Agaziz and says he wants to be a scientist. I believe, I believe, technically speaking, he wants to be a fishologist. And Professor Agaziz reaches over into a specimen jar and pulls out a big old fish and puts it on a tray in front of him and says, I want you to look at this fish. And the student thinks that means he's going to look at it for like 30 seconds and then they're have some kind of test. No, Professor Agaziz leaves. And so for several hours, he has nothing to do but look at the fish. And finally the professor comes back and kind of quizzes him a little bit, and he begins to realize that in the first 30 seconds he thought he saw a lot of the fish, but but after about an hour, he began to turn the fish over. He counted scales, he looked down its mouth. The longer he spent with the fish, the more he really saw the fish. And the story, it's all over the internet. You can read that in a number of places, will describe that whole encounter in a lot more detail. But the point of the matter is, sometimes we think we've mastered something, we pretty much have mined it dry in 30 seconds, which is about how long it takes to read Psalm 110. And I just want to encourage you to remember that simple and short doesn't mean it's unimportant. This is an extraordinarily impactful Psalm. It's only seven verses, but it's all over the New Testament. Jesus makes use of it, Peter makes use of it, Hebrews is just building everything on it. So don't assume that we've maxed out because we read it last week and then we read some New Testament applications of that. Go ahead and read it again today. Read it from a different translation. Read it slowly. Read it out loud. It's Psalm 110. Keep looking at the fish. And I think I think it'll continue to yield more and more treasures for you. Psalm 110 is our reading for Monday. It is Tuesday. It's Tuesday, and our reading today is in 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 15, verses 12 to 28 is the reading for Tuesday. This is a beautiful, beautiful section of Scripture. I use this passage to show the importance of being able to think and reason because this is Paul's very carefully argued sermon on the resurrection of the dead. While we don't know everything that was going on in Corinth, it is apparent that some are arguing that there is no resurrection from the dead. And the object that Paul has in mind here is to tie together two resurrections, that one establishes the other. And the first, of course, would be the resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Big key here in 1 Corinthians 15, I'll give you this for free, is that this is most certainly about bodily resurrection. Everyone in the Greco-Roman world, well, not everyone, but most everyone in the Greco-Roman world at Paul's time certainly believed in some kind of afterlife, some sort of after you died, you're still conscious in some fashion. But no one believed, or very few people believed, in any kind of bodily resurrection. You went on in some kind of ethereal ghost state, some kind of shade, some sort of very spirity kind of thing, and I don't think spirity is a word, but it should be. And Paul wants to say that we will be raised bodily. So that's what's at hand here. And so verse 13 starts that if there's no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. The universal statement, there is no resurrection. No one rises from the dead cannot be true if someone has, yeah, risen from the dead. Jesus' resurrection completely destroys this theory. Notice verse 17, if Christ is not raised, then your faith is futile and you're still in your sins. The Bible continually links resurrection to freedom from sin. We have a tendency to link freedom from sin to Jesus' death. And of course, that absolutely does work. But there's a number of passages, Romans 4.25, Hebrews 7.25, 1 John 2.1. Lots of verses talk about Jesus' resurrection from the dead. Just pay attention to that and watch for that as we're working along in Scripture. In verse 20, then, Paul says, but in fact, so here is this introduction to the summation of the matter. Here's what we need to know, here's how this is going to work. And that comes down in verse 25. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy, verse 26, to be destroyed is death, for God has put all things in subjection under his feet. There it is. That's the 110th Psalm. That's what we're looking for here. And one writer said, Since 1524 pictures the risen Lord in possession of the kingdom to give to God, 1525 comments on Christ's current rule in this kingdom. And of course, under his feet is that Old Testament term for total conquest. And that verse is certainly teaching that Jesus is reigning now, right now. People who want to say that there's going to be a bunch of world events and then Jesus is going to return and he will start reigning, he will set up his kingdom, he will begin to reign. They need to read 1 Corinthians 15 and they need to read Psalm 110. Jesus is reigning now, 1 Corinthians 15, verse 25. Our reading for today is in Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 15, 12 to 28. It is Wednesday. It is Wednesday. Today our reading is in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 2, verses 5 to 18. This is the continuation of the Hebrew writer's discussion of how Jesus is the one to pay attention to. He is greater than angels. For to it was to no angel, verse 5, that God subjected the world to come. This is about Jesus again reigning and ruling. That's a huge theme, of course, in Scripture. But one of the big issues with that in the New Testament world was Jesus had been executed by the Roman government. Jesus' death, it was, yeah, that was very scandalous in the first century, particularly for Jews. That would mean that you were accursed of God. How could you possibly be the Messiah? But even for Gentiles, how can you be this great and powerful king when you had been put to death on a cross? So the Hebrew writer works very hard to talk about how suffering was the pathway to glory. Jesus didn't receive honor and glory until he suffered. That's what this section of Hebrews is really all about. He is the author of our salvation, verse 10. There's a number of terms there that are used in different translations. Pioneer, forerunner, captain. It means pathbreaker or leader, source, the founder. He's the leader who opens up the new way. He is made perfect, verse 10. Someone's going to ask, how is Jesus made perfect? And the next line helps us. He who sanctifies. Jesus is made perfect in the sense of being sanctified. That's priestly language, particularly the Septuagint uses that to mean consecrating a priest. He's consecrated. He is sanctified, and so he becomes our faithful high priest, verses 14 to 18. He identifies with us so much that he takes on flesh and blood and even shares in our death, so that he could defeat death and defeat the devil. Now, in all of that, where is Psalm 110? Where is Psalm 110 here? If you go back to verses 7 and 8, you made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Now, in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. There's the illusion there. This is leaning heavily also on the eighth Psalm as well. There's the allusion there to the 110th Psalm, that Jesus is reigning and ruling, and that he is in charge and has all power. And the way that he received this power, exaltation, glory, honor, is through suffering, that he might taste of death, verse 9, for everyone it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, see the emphasis on the power of Jesus in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. Jesus is reigning and ruling now as our King. Psalm 110 prophesies that, and the Hebrew writer says, that has happened because he suffered for you and me. The reading for Wednesday, Hebrews 2, 5 to 18. It's Thursday, and today we're reading Hebrews chapter 10, verses 1 to 18. I must confess, I've been waiting to read this passage since we started this section on Psalm 110. This is really where Psalm 110 comes to play. And so we're reading here about how the law is insufficient. It didn't, verse 2, even though there was the Day of Atonement, it did not really deal with sin. It didn't deal with the consciousness of sin, because verse 3, the Day of Atonement actually reminded people that they were sinners. They fasted and they confessed and they mourned on that day. They were reminded of where they were in their relationship with God, and that is that they were still sinners. And so then verse 5 begins a long series of quotations from Psalm 40. And the point here is that burnt offerings, animal offerings were never the will of God. The will of God would be a perfect sacrifice. And so the will of Christ was to be that perfect sacrifice. The will of God and the will of Christ merged together. And I do think we are getting some insights here that people in the Old Testament times did not really have. They did not know that the blood of bulls and goats couldn't take away sin, and their sins were, practically speaking, for them, forgiven. They went away from those sacrifices, those things saying, I am a forgiven sinner. But from God's standpoint, there needed to be something better than this. And I would expect that a thinking individual would know that these animal sacrifices could not possibly be the ultimate expression of what God wants. God wanted people to change their lives. God wanted people to be in obedience. There had to be more than an innocent animal that has no power of choice, no real consciousness of sin and right and wrong. That can't be the expression that's necessary to make me right with God. There needs to be something more. And so the Hebrew writer then points out, Jesus is the more. When Christ, verse 12, had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Verse 13, waiting until his enemy should be made a footstool for his feet. There it is. There's Psalm 110, and Jesus is the fulfillment of Psalm 110. He has been exalted as king, but he's also been exalted because he is the sacrifice for our sins. He is what we need so that we can be right with God. And then our reading today concludes with the Spirit speaking through Jeremiah. This is the covenant I'll make with them after those days. I'll put my law on their hearts and write them on their minds. The beautiful and just powerful section of Jeremiah that speaks of the new covenant. And that really ends the section here of Hebrews that's gonna argue for where we are with the Lord and what the Lord wants from us and what Jesus came to do and his supremacy. Now things from that point forward really begin to move in an enormously practical kind of way. This is how we live because Jesus has been the one-time sacrifice for our sins and has sat down at the right hand of God. The reading for Thursday is Hebrews chapter 10, verses 1 to 18. It is Friday. It is Friday. Once again, we have come through the week, and our Bible reading has sustained us and helped us. Our reading for Friday is 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 8 to 22, and I'm not even sure what to say about this on a podcast. This is quite a section of scripture. It is fairly straightforward until we get to about verse 18. There's a lot of practical admonition here. This uh the epistle of Peter is very much about living in a time when Christians are being persecuted. And I have uh in my Bible, I have underlined in orange. I don't use orange for anything else, so it really stands out for me when I have orange on the page. And I have orange where there are texts that are talking about being persecuted or suffering. So for example, 1 Peter 1, verse 19, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. And so in our text today, verse 9, do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling. Or verse 13, now who is there to harm you if you're zealous for what's good, but even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake. So this is a lot of material about how Christians suffer, even suffering unjustly, being persecuted for our faith. And Peter then makes the point that Christ suffered, verse 18. Christ suffered once for sins, verse 18. So we're going to be like Christ, we're going to suffer. He suffered, we will suffer. And then Peter, in a very puzzling section, turns to some things that Jesus did when he went, verse 19, and proclaimed to the spirits in prison because they formally didn't obey God. Verse 20, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Peter, he did what? When? How? Where? This is easily one of the most difficult exegetical problems in the entire New Testament. If you lined up a hundred Bible scholars and asked them, what passage in the New Testament is the very most difficult passage to work out and to figure out, you would get a lot of votes for 1 Peter 3, 18, 19, and 20. There's lots of questions here. Who are the spirits that Jesus preached to? When exactly did this preaching happen? What did he preach to them? And there are options all along the way. So on a podcast, we're doing our daily Bible reading, where you're listening to this before you go to work, maybe you're listening to this on the way to work, maybe you're listening on your lunch hour. It's impossible for me to work through everything about everything. And in fact, I don't know everything about everything in this text. I have dealt with this text in QA and some other opportunities. I preached through 1 Peter, so it's a long section in sermon from 1 Peter, the third chapter about this. I think the key here for us today is to understand the main point of the passage. The main point of the passage is that Jesus suffered, but he didn't quit. He didn't give up. And in fact, he proclaimed. A gospel of victory, verse 19. The emphasis in verse 19 is the proclamation of victory there. So the main point of the passage is that if Christ could win victory over these disobedient spirits of Noah's time, whoever that is, wherever that is, then we can and will be able to be victorious over the human troublemakers who are opposing the Christian gospel. That's a quotation from one of my favorite scholars. I didn't say that, he said that. But notice here the bracket that is forming this section, this idea of suffering and then being glorified. And that's verse 22. He has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God. Powers have been subjected to him. So there's the allusion to Psalm 110. Jesus has been exalted. And if you'll look at 4, 1, since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, remember, of course, Peter didn't write with chapter divisions, the thought of suffering continues right on in to chapter 4. Jesus suffered and he proclaimed victory. He overcame. You can will suffer and you need to be victorious like Jesus was. So there are a lot of questions about exactly when, where, and how verses 18, 19, and 20 happened. Maybe this is a good place to be reminded of what we do when we're uncertain of a text and we don't know everything about a text. We just hold on to the main thought. And the main thought here is that Jesus triumphed through suffering. And the Christians in 1 Peter that are being addressed here, they need to triumph in suffering as well. Don't give up. Don't quit. As Christ suffered, verse 1, chapter 4, arm yourselves on the same way of thinking. Whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. We're not going to get involved in sin anymore. We're not going to live that way anymore. Chapter 2, verse 2, chapter 4. Now I'm out of our Bible reading even as I'm making all this work. And I hope that that will help you and to get the main thought here, even if we're never going to get 18, 19, and 20 completely smoothed out with perfect understanding about everything in those passages, every nook and cranny. So the text that we're looking at is verse 22. There's Psalm 110, the right hand of God, everything is being subjected to Jesus. Once again, that is the point that we want to get out of Psalm 110. A reading for Friday, 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 8 to 22. That concludes the podcast for the week. I certainly do appreciate you listening. Hope you're telling others about it. We are coming up on that time where people start thinking about New Year's resolutions, one of which will be for people who are spiritually minded. One of those resolutions will certainly be, I want to read the Bible more. Recent polling data surveys, the Varna organization shows Bible reading is up. More people are reading the Bible now than have been on a regular, consistent basis, than have been doing so in a long time. There's just a lot of interest in spiritual things right now. And you want to take advantage of that, talk with people about your daily Bible reading, hand out daily Bible reading schedules, ask someone to read the Bible with you. Hey, this is what I'm doing. Will you do this with me in the new year? Encourage people to listen to the podcast. It keeps them going, it keeps them interested. It keeps them with a good level of understanding in their daily Bible reading. Let's talk about daily Bible reading. A lot of people want to do daily Bible reading. It is my joy to open the scriptures with you and get to talk about, yeah, even complicated and difficult texts like 1 Peter chapter 3. I'm glad I get a chance to do that. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven and I want you to come too. I'll 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, just Christians.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.