Hello, and welcome to the West Side 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 each other and better work the applications into our daily life. Mark will then look forward into this week's 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, January the 12th. I'm Mark, and I am ready to talk to you about the sermon yesterday, and I'm ready to talk to you about daily Bible reading, and I'm ready to not be a hypocrite about this cup of coffee that I'm holding in my hands. Usually I start off by saying something about, oh, this is an amazing cup of coffee. This is the greatest cup of coffee in the world. And the reality is today, full disclosure, yeah, this is not, this is not the greatest cup of coffee in the world. I do have really good coffee on a regular basis, and there's a lot of steps and a lot of procedures, and a lot of things, equipment and so forth, that I do so that that's going to happen. And this is probably a much better than average cup of coffee for people who are not into specialty coffee and all the craziness. I haven't gone down that rabbit hole, but I must tell you, uh, and yeah, I'd even have to admit I had to microwave this to get it warm again. And so it's just, it's just not that great. It's not that great. I'm making up for it by eating a Biscoff cookie. Biscoff cookies are amazing, and they make anything, even an average to below average cup of coffee, better. So, all things considered, it's working out pretty good. And that means you should grab your Bible, grab your coffee or Dr. Pepper or Coke Zero or even Diet Mountain Dew. I'm talking to you, sweetheart. Grab whatever you need to grab because it's time. Let's grow together. Yesterday's sermon was about a sin that Jesus just can't stand. And I hope if you got nothing else out of that, you did see that Jesus really, really doesn't like hypocrisy and hypocrites. I hope just the reading of the text made that clear. But maybe as I was working with that, you were thinking, hey, how does all that Matthew 6 denouncing of hypocrisy and worship, how does that play when you have Matthew 5? Jesus says, let your light shine. Matthew chapter 5, verse 16, let your light shine so that people will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. And then in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus is all, hey, don't be praying where people can see you. Don't be giving, making a big fuss about it. Don't let everybody know you're fasting. How do we, how do we reconcile that? What's Jesus doing there? And I think the answer to that is to go right back to the text. Matthew 6, verse 1 says, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them. In order to be seen by them. It is about motive. Why are we doing this? What is in our heart? It's not wrong to be seen praying or giving or fasting, but it is wrong to pray or give or fast in order to be seen by them. One very wise old 19th century Scottish preacher said, show when tempted to hide, hide when tempted to show. I believe that'll work. I believe that'll work. And now we turn our Bibles to the book of Luke and we start thinking about our daily Bible reading. Let's get our feet set where they need to be because it's been a weekend now. Please remember here, we're in some conflict coming out of chapter 5, 517, as he was teaching the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were sitting there who'd come from every village of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem. Jesus is attracting a lot of attention. Some of that is not welcome attention. These guys are checking Jesus out, and I think Luke is injecting some tension into the story here. What's going to happen if Jesus continues to cross swords with the Pharisees? Who will carry on if the Pharisees do away with him? What will happen as this conflict continues? And we get a lot of that with the difficulties with the Sabbath and the synagogue, and that's where chapter 6 begins. So first there's the eating on the Sabbath story, verses 1 to 5, and that doesn't go well at all for the Pharisees. They try to make an attack on Jesus. Of course, verse 2, they are absolutely mistaken here. It was not a sin to do what the disciples were doing, it was a violation of their human traditions and rules, but it was certainly not a sin. Jesus would have told the disciples, stop it, don't do that if it was sinful. And Jesus does cite David and the things that David did. And that maybe is a little bit complicated there. There's some discussion about probably the priest inquired of the Lord, and the Lord signed off on it and said, give him the provisions, give him some food, it's going to be okay. The Lord made an exception for David. Whatever we're going to make of that, and please don't use this to try to somehow teach some kind of situation ethics that when you're hungry, you can steal. Don't do that. You can't do that. The point is that Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath, verse 5. And that introduces the idea of authority. Jesus is the Son of Man. That comes out of Daniel chapter 7. He is more than just a man. He is the Messiah. He is the leader. He's the savior. He is the king. And the son of man emphasis is that he is powerful and he has the right to do as he pleases. That's what they're missing, and that's what they need to get here. So then we get a second Sabbath problem when Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, verses 6 to 11. Please pay attention to verse 9. Jesus says, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it? I'm challenged by that to be reminded that in the law, all it said is don't work on the Sabbath. And God expected people to be able to work that out. Figure that out. Now, by the time of Jesus, there's all kinds of rules and regulations because the Pharisees were determined to figure it out for everybody. But that is not what God wanted. God did not tell Moses to define work endlessly down to the nth degree, nor did he instruct the Pharisees to write the 39 volumes they had, create the 39 categories of work that they had made and write volumes and volumes about all of that. God expected people to figure that out. I need to be mindful of that. Sometimes I'm ready to figure everything out for everybody. And as we walk by faith, sometimes we have to figure that out. And I need to be careful about telling everybody what my conclusions are that work means. Jesus says, you guys don't have a clue here what's really going on. And of course, it's ridiculous to try to in some way apply the rules of work to Jesus doing a miraculous healing. Is a miracle work? Does Jesus expend energy? Come on, that's a completely different animal. There's no point in even trying to apply that to Jesus, especially since Jesus would never violate the law. But you see the authority that he has. And then Jesus in verse 12 begins to select the apostles. A couple of things. Notice he prays all night. In Luke's gospel, Jesus is praying all the time. And what's an apostle? One sent with authority to represent another. Then Luke gives us the sermon on the plane. Now I can't in a podcast here go on forever about the sermon on the plane. Let me just give you some introductory ideas. There is first and foremost no need to try to reconcile this to Matthew. Newsflash. Preachers preach the same sermon more than once. It'll happen. Yes, it will. I can personally attest to that. When I get the opportunity to go in gospel meeting work, I don't write brand new sermons and take them on the road. I'll be preaching something that you've heard at West Side. That's how that is. And I think this is Jesus' fundamental sermon on the nature of the kingdom and the nature of kingdom citizens. I expect he preached this hundreds of times all over Galilee and Judea. There are 41 verses from Matthew that are not in Luke, and there are 29 verses here, and there are 111 in Matthew. So you can see that there's a lot of things that are very different. For example, there are woes 24, 25, and 26, and those are only in Luke. Those are not in Matthew. Little surprising to see woes in Luke's account because Luke is so optimistic and happy. I would thought maybe he would omit that. No, Luke includes that. And I think so much of this is very straightforward. So much of this is the kind of material that we have some head understanding of. We just need to make sure that we move it to our hearts. We need to make sure that we live this. And that's helped when we look at like 42, 642, which I started the sermon on Sunday talking about hypocrisy, focus on yourself. And then the trees and the bad fruit talked about that Sunday as well. It's about our heart and our heart calling us, moving us to do what Jesus says. And that's where Jesus ends the sermon. 46. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and don't do what I tell you? That's authority. And then we get the wise man building his house upon the rock. Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, not just listens to the podcast, does them. There's a heavy emphasis here on doing differently, being different. All of that is so important. You read down through this, who would act this way? Who would do this kind of stuff? Jesus says, My disciples will. Reading for Monday is Luke chapter six. I'll see you tomorrow. The reading for Tuesday is Luke 7. But the reading for Monday is Luke chapter 6. Welcome to Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday. Today we read Luke chapter 7. The reading for Tuesday is Luke 7. And yes, we do have a Zoom call tonight. Westsiders, hope to see you tonight in the Zoom prayer and Bible study session. This is more, Luke 7 is more of that authority theme. Luke 6, 46. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and don't do what I tell you? We just get tons of authority ideas here in Luke chapter 7. And that stands out, for example, in the healing of the Roman centurion slave, verses 1 to 10. Someone's going to ask me if this is Cornelius, and it might be. We don't know that for sure, but he sure does look a lot like Cornelius, doesn't he? And please notice that the emphasis in this miracle is not the miracle. It's really only mentioned rather briefly, verse 10. The stress here is on the attitude of the one that's seeking the healing and how he understands authority and he submits to the authority of Jesus. That's what we need to be thinking about. And there's only two times that Jesus marvels at faith. One's in Mark 6, 6, where he marvels at a lack of faith, and then here where he marvels at tremendous faith. Luke really likes to accent outsiders, Gentiles, not Jews, who are coming to the kingdom of God, who are close to the kingdom of God, and you just get all of that right here. So we have a story of someone who almost dies, is dying, and then we have the story in verses 11 to 17 of someone who is dead. This is the first raising of the dead in Luke, and it is a story that is unique to Luke. There is a very clear effort here to identify Jesus with Elijah, thinking about the widow of Zarepath and Elisha, the Shunammite woman's son. These parallels are very, very strong. The story is being told with a decidedly Old Testament flavor to get to verse 16. A great prophet has arisen among us. Luke is certainly keeping the question: who is Jesus out in front of his readers? Great prophet. This is the first time he's called that. We need to think about what that means to be a great prophet. And God has visited us. This is a messianic kind of saying with messianic implications. Lots to unpack and think about right there. Then we get these questions from John the Baptist in verses 17 to 23. Some people have really freaked out about that. They don't want John to be doubting. I think this ought to make us feel better when we have a season of doubt when we're uncertain. John is concerned about Jesus. I expect that Jesus is not doing what John thought the Messiah would do. And so John had been preaching all this judgment. The axe is laid to the root of the tree. It's coming. This is it. Well, and and where is it, Jesus? When are you going to do something about all of that? And what Jesus does is he commends John. Instead of saying, how dare him doubt? I can't believe he has doubts. Don't do that. Don't do that. Parents, don't attack your children if they have honest, good questions about the Bible, the resurrection, the existence of God, all of those things. Doubt is part of our life as we grow in faith. Then there is the famous story beginning in verse 36 of the sinful woman. This story is only in Luke, and there are all kinds of discussions about this as people have mischaracterized the story. This is not the story in Matthew chapter 16 or Mark 14 or John 12, where Mary comes and anoints Jesus. And this is not Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene has been wrongly labeled as a sinner, which oftentimes means a woman was a prostitute. And so lots of people think of Mary Magdalene as being a prostitute. She is introduced as a brand new character in chapter 8 and verse 2. So this is probably not Mary Magdalene here in 36 to 50. I think the key here is to see Jesus' authority. He is the heart knower. Verse 40, he is proving that he is a prophet. What kind of prophet are we? The Pharisee says, hey, you know, if you are a prophet, you'd know better. Jesus says, I do know better. And I think there's something to what one of my favorite Luke scholars says, Daryl Bach. He writes, the point is obvious. Great forgiveness provides the opportunity for great love. When God forgives a notorious sinner for much sin, the realization of such bountiful forgiveness means the potential for great love. Jesus pursues sinners and welcomes association with them because of the possibility that they may realize God's gracious forgiveness. To keep separate from them would be to ignore a potentially rich harvest field. That's exactly right. And you and I need to think about that and our associations with people. We certainly want to be careful and wise about that. We certainly don't want to have sinners rub off on us and become like them. We don't want to do things that cause sinners to feel like we're endorsing them, we're condoning their behavior. They're fine just the way they are. But if we never get around people who are lost, how are we going to help anybody be saved? Luke chapter 7 helps us see Jesus doing that in action. Our reading for Tuesday, Luke 7, Westsiders. See you tonight on the Zoom call. Everybody else, see you tomorrow on the podcast. It is Wednesday. It's Wednesday, and our reading today is Luke chapter 8. I'll try to keep this short. These chapters in Luke, this is 56 chapter, 56 verses. Wow. You just comment and work on this forever. I'll try to leave something for Bible talk tonight. Notice the women here in the first three verses, that's just so important to Luke. The preaching to her here doesn't seem to be in the synagogue, and that that may mean that there's increasing hostility to Jesus. He can't get in the synagogue, but mentioning women here prepares us for their part in the resurrection narratives. Women are super important to Luke. They have a place in the kingdom, they matter to God. And yes, it would be a little scandalous for women to travel with Jesus, but maybe not for the reason that we suspect. The problem here is that women are not to receive education. They are not to listen to rabbis. Adult co-education, one scholar said, was unheard of. These women are learning Jesus' teaching as closely as his male disciples. That would surely bother many. So that's what's going on here, but they're hearing everything, including the parable of the sower, which then Jesus explains beginning in verse 10. In some ways, this is the most candid Jesus ever gets about his mission and who he is. And by this time, maybe Theophilus is wondering, maybe you're wondering, why doesn't Jesus just tell everybody? Why doesn't Jesus just print up some business cards? Jesus Christ, Messiah, I'm him. Just tell everybody I am the Messiah. But Jesus says here that there are people who aren't ready to hear it, and especially there are people who don't want to hear it. So the parables reveal and conceal at one and the same time. And Jesus furthers that theme in the parable of the lamp, verses 16 to 18. You get a swig here of coffee. Where Jesus says you need to be careful how you listen. Because if you listen well, you get to hear more. But if you refuse to listen, then you won't even get, you won't even get to start. You won't even get to first base with some of these ideas. Then I need to move forward a little bit here. Let's talk about the man with the demon. I've never taught the man with the demon, 26 to 39, that somebody didn't want to talk about the pigs. Even after I endlessly say we're not going to talk about the pigs, somebody raises their hands and says something about the pigs. It's just tough. And I get it. I'm curious about the pigs too. It's weird, it's strange, it's different. We wonder if that's telling us something about the demonic world. On and on and on, the speculation goes about the pigs. I think if Luke saw any of that, if you sit in Bible class and the Bible class degenerated into discussion about these pigs, he would just tear his hair out. How can we be talking about pigs and not notice the authority of Jesus? This is a terrible, unclean spirit. This is a wretched, wretched situation. People don't know what to do with this guy. He's completely out of control. And Jesus utterly handles it. Jesus completely handles this. That's where our focus needs to be. I don't know about the pigs. You don't know about the pigs. Nobody knows about the pigs. Stop talking about the pigs. And as I say that, I'll come in the church building tonight and someone will say, Hey, what about those pigs? We're not talking about the pigs. We're talking about Jesus, who has authority over everything, even demonic forces, even over demons. And then the chapter ends with Jesus healing Jarius's daughter. An incredible story. Verse 42, he had an only daughter. That's only in Luke. And this is so powerful. People laughing at Jesus. This can't happen. It happens. Jesus can do it. He heals, he raises from the dead, he casts out demons. Jesus has authority. Luke chapter 8. Our reading for Wednesday. Welcome to Thursday. Welcome to Thursday. And today we're Reading a monster chapter. We are in Luke chapter 9, 62 verses. Let's dive right in. I love how Luke sets up more of Jesus' authority. Look at verse 7: Herod the Tetrarch. That's Herod Antipas. That's who that is. I like to have those marked in my Bible. There's so many Herods sometimes, it's hard to keep up with who is who and who is where. But this is the son of Herod the Great, the baby killer. And look at verse 9. Who is this about whom I hear such things? Luke will answer that question now. Remember, he's pushing all this material out to Theophilus to help him understand and know who Jesus really is. You get this miracle then, the feeding of the 5,000. It's the only miracle in all four Gospels. And it is obviously the most important miracle. The symbolism here is just rich and full and deep. John develops it using the famous Bread of Life sermon in John chapter 6. For Luke here, this fits the is he a prophet theme because Moses provided manna, Elijah, both of these are prophetic vessels who were used to make miraculous provision. And this is all about Jesus doing prophetic kinds of things, being that great prophet. That does lead to a confession by Peter. And then you get Jesus, verse 22, saying, You're right, I'm the Messiah, and I'm going to be killed. That is a sharp left turn. From here, Luke just keeps pounding away at that theme. Take up the cross, verse 23. That is not a good thing for these apostles to hear. They had seen people carrying a cross, and what that meant when you saw somebody carrying a cross is they were headed to a really, really bad end. This is a hard thing for them to hear because they think of Jesus as a political leader. That's what they are considering. Jesus will lead a revolution. Jesus will lead them into glorious battles, and they're going to kick the Romans out of Palestine. Jesus says, none of that's going to happen. I will be put to death, and on the third day I will be raised. That is rough. And sometimes we don't give the apostles a break. We're like, what's wrong with you guys? Because we've been growing up with this all of our lives in little Bible class, Sunday school, all the way through. We've heard about Jesus, death, burial, and resurrection. We know all about all of that. We know the end of the story from the beginning. So we look at these guys and say, you fellas should have figured it out. I'm not so sure about that. But the transfiguration would help them figure that out. And again, this is a super old testament event. It's just living and breathing the Old Testament. Moses and Elijah are the ones who spoke with God on Mount Sinai. They are the two great prophets. The cloud represents the presence of God. The voice of God thunders forth. Moses and Elijah clearly represent the law and the prophets, the two great periods of Israel's history, the Exodus, and then the prophets preaching and teaching about the time of the Messiah coming. So the transfiguration just stands out as a super important event. But unfortunately, what it sets up next is four failures by the disciples. They fail to heal the boy with the unclean spirit. They don't understand the second time, 44-45, when Jesus talks about his death. They argue about who will be the greatest, 46. And then they get exclusive 49 and 50. Probably the most important verse in our reading today, though, is verse 51. When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. You need to know that the rest of Luke's gospel is concerned about Jesus going to Jerusalem. It's the journey of destiny. He must go there. He must accomplish those things. He must be in Jerusalem. So all of this journey of destiny is what Luke is running, even as things happen along the way. Like 57, people come up to him and say, hey, I want to be a disciple. And so Jesus is doing and talking, but he's on his way to the cross. The reading for Thursday, Luke chapter 9. It's Friday. It is Friday. End of the week and all the good things that go with that. And today we're reading in Luke chapter 10. This is another monster chapter could spend a lot of time with Luke chapter 10. Let's think about the mission of the 70 and the sending of the 70 or 72. Lots of textual discussion about what it is. It's 72. You probably got the marginal note there. That's way, way beyond my pay grade. The point of this, and this is a unique part of the gospel account. This is unique to Luke. The point of this is that the kingdom has to go forth, that evangelism is part of being a disciple. And please notice again that prayer is the start of everything. Pray earnestly, verse 2, to send out laborers. I fear sometimes in our evangelism efforts, we do everything but pray. Pay attention to prayer. And those that don't hear verse 16, they are accountable for that. You need to hear the messengers of Jesus. They are accredited, they have authority. And then the 72 return, 17, 18, 19, 20, which gives us verse 18. I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. And that means, that means what? That's a really difficult verse. It may mean that in the preaching of the 70, Jesus saw the defeat of Satan. Unexpected and sudden, the gospel pushes back the kingdom of darkness. Something Jesus is talking about Satan being thrown out of heaven as his beginning and may try to somehow correlate that with Revelation 12, linking that to Isaiah 14, for example. It seems to me that what we have seen is that Luke is developing the theme of defeating Satan in the here and now. Not talking about Satan's origins. In Luke chapter 4, Jesus defeats Satan in the 40 days of tempting in the wilderness. I think the preaching of the gospel is what's under consideration in verse 18, and that Satan is being defeated by the gospel being preached. And Jesus rejoices then, verse 21. This is such a happy gospel. Jesus is excited. We get then the parable of the Good Samaritan. I've talked about that a lot in the pulpit. I've preached about that, used that a lot. I'll let that just rest here. I think probably most folks are familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan, but I do think Luke is setting up a theme here: disciples and neighbors. And then the Martha Mary episode, which may, by the way, be chronologically out of order, to fit in with this idea of listening and hearing that Jesus is developing in verse 24. I tell you, many did not hear what you hear. Now we get a story about hearing. And I think this says something about disciples and time with God. Do you spend time with the Lord? Are you looking to spend time with the Lord? And it is a story about choices, making choices. Making choices is hard. What's going on here with Martha is a good thing. Who wouldn't say feeding Jesus is bad? Oh, Martha, don't be doing that. Just let him starve. No, that seems like a very good thing. But it's not the best thing. It's not the best thing. And I do think there is some shock value to Jesus' words. I mean, come on, aren't we supposed to eat? Well, of course we must eat. But we can't let anything interfere with our primary function of kingdom citizenship, being what Jesus calls us to be. And I think we have to be careful. We don't want to get never eat, never serve, never make a meal. Just read your Bible out of this. There is a time for both. There is a time for both. If we are to ask Jesus, one scholar said, which example applies to us? The Samaritan who is actively doing, he's not reading his Bible, he's helping the guy in the ditch, or Mary, who's not doing anything but sitting at Jesus' feet listening, I think Jesus' answer would be yes. Jesus wants disciples to make good choices and to be kingdom citizens who are following him. Disciples who are taking up their cross and following him. Our reading for Friday, Luke chapter 10. That is the podcast for the week. Thank you so much for listening. I hope the podcast is a blessing to you. I know it's a blessing to me to get this opportunity to think through the Word of God, to talk about my favorite gospel, Luke, to drink coffee with you, and to think about the sermon from last Sunday. I do hope the podcasts are helping you and you're telling other people about it. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come too. I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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