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 of the other and better working 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 for. So we have a cup of coffee and we start the week together on Monday morning coffee.

I've got my Bible. I'm ready to talk about Luke. I'm ready to talk about yesterday's sermon. I'm ready to do all the things that we need to do to get this week started on the podcast. It's really, it really seems to me that we're getting 2026 started in a great way. People are locked in on this Bible reading schedule. That is going great. We're all looking forward to Friday's winter singing that's coming up and then Super Saturday with these three speakers. There's just an air of anticipation for all of that. It's a great start to the new year. And I love that we're staying with the gospel of Luke. Just can't get enough of Luke's gospel. So let's get to it. Grab your Bible, grab your coffee. Let's grow together. Yesterday I preached a sermon about going to church and what do we do when we just we're just not into it. We just don't feel like worshiping. What do we do about that? How do we handle that? Maybe you aren't looking at the upcoming winter singing with an air of anticipation, not excited about Super Saturday. What where are we with all of that? So let me just add a couple of things here. Let me add something I didn't say Sunday. Sometimes the problem really isn't motivation or selfishness or even sinfulness. Sometimes the problem is simply weariness. And I wonder sometimes how much we give attention to being rested and ready for Sunday. When kids take those awful standardized tests that the schools now have to administer, they send home all sorts of stuff about making sure the kids get a good meal the night before and send them with healthy snacks. And of course, they just emphasize getting to bed on time. No one thinks Junior is going to knock the top off the test if he's out till midnight. And I think that still works for adults. If you are sitting for the CPA or the bar exam, you probably are not going to run a marathon the day before, and you would not stay out all night the night before with friends. So, an important question to ask, if you lack that motivation to get up Sunday morning and get where you need to be, get with God's people and worship the Lord, what's your Saturday night look like? Kids today are just involved in a gazillion activities, and a lot of that is done on Saturday, and we're going and blowing and we're doing. Well, is it any surprise then that we're worn out, keeping the kids out too late after a long day of kinds of maybe sports and everything else going here and going there. They're exhausted, we're exhausted. It is tougher to get up on Sunday morning, and that isn't just for the kids. Maybe that's something adults need to think about. We're traveling, we're we're playing 36 holes of golf, we're going fishing, we're going hunting, we're going out shopping, or going to see relatives, or maybe we're binge watching the show that we're really into till 1 a.m. because we've just got to see one more episode. And by the time we get in bed late Saturday night, we're just blown out and we're done. Going to church tomorrow is tough. It's really going to be tough. And then we start running out excuses and we're live streaming in our jammies instead of being in church. If your body isn't feeling it, then get your body right by resting. Let's value church. Israel rested on the Sabbath day. There's something about the rhythms of life being taught to us there under the law of Moses. Let's value worship enough to arrange our schedule, to say no to some things that we might really like to do that could be good, that could be fun. Let's value worship enough to arrange our schedule so we are rested and ready. That may go a long way to defeating this. I just don't feel like going to church today. That, I think, helps us as we think about what we need to do before the Lord. And that begins the first 13 verses with some teaching on prayer. And I think it's obvious that Jesus taught on prayer a lot. Luke is the gospel that shows Jesus praying more than any of the other gospels. And so there may be some significant differences here in the wording, or maybe they're not that all fired significant, but don't let that throw you. I think Matthew has a slightly different version of this in the Sermon on the Mount that comes much earlier in Jesus' ministry. But when you ask Jesus about prayer, this is the standard thing that he's going to say. And the prayer here is very simple and very direct, and it is just a focus like a laser on expressing a dependence upon God and upon wanting to do his will and being protected so that you can do his will. That then leads to the parable of the persistent friend. And I don't like that name for that parable at all. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding that goes with this parable. It is kind of like the parable in Luke 18, verses 5 to 8. And we'll get to that obviously when we're reading in Luke chapter 18. This is a parable that is only included in Luke. And I think it's a great place to see you cannot make too many points of comparison in parables. Sometimes people try to over-analogize. Is that, can you do that? Overanalogize a parable and make everything stand for something. Clearly, the sleeping man here is playing kind of a godlike figure, but Jesus is not teaching that God sleeps and shuts the door and doesn't want to be bothered. The parable here says that God is always ready to give. That's what it is doing next to the Lord's Prayer. We pray and ask for these things, and Jesus then tells a parable that says God wants to give. And the parable here is a how much more parable. It is actually teaching the very opposite of what a lot of people use this parable to teach, which is that you have to badger God into giving what you want. You keep beating on the door until finally God relents and blesses you. And that idea comes probably because of verse 8. Because of his impudence, that's what the ESV has, or other translations have the word importunity. Now, either one of those words are not something that we use a lot in regular conversation. Oh, you're so impudent. I guess you could play that in Scrabble for a lot of points, get it on a double and really go, but that's just not something that we that we say a lot. And I am very reluctant to climb in and start talking about translation issues. Here you have these committees of outstanding scholars, and they have years and years and years of translation experience and understand far more than just going to a lexicon and looking at a definition because grammar is a lot more than just what's the definition of the word. It's how it's functioning in the sentence and where it is in the sentence and the context and how the author uses it and way so much more. Translating is very, very complicated. But this word, if you if you start looking in different translations, is translated differently in a bunch of different places: boldness, shamelessness, hotspud, a bunch of different translations, and that that ought to clue us. Something's going on here. Something's happened. And so one scholar surveyed 258 occurrences of this term outside the Bible and never found a positive use for this term at all. So the term impudence here expresses, one scholar said, an ignorance of what is shameful. In fact, Josephus uses that term to describe a mother who ate her child during the Roman siege of Jerusalem. So this isn't praising persistence, praising impudence. No, in fact, there isn't persistence in the parable. The guy doesn't keep knocking, he knocks once, he gets bread. It is about shameless. It's about what's outside the boundaries of acceptable behavior. It's about an outrageous act. This guy does something that's ridiculous, but you know what? He still gets bread. So Jesus says, if a neighbor will respond to rude, shameless behavior and give what is asked, how much more will God bless you? And that, I think, is tremendously encouraging. In fact, in verse 13, how much more will the Holy Father give the Holy Spirit? There is Holy Spirit emphasis once again in the Gospel of Luke. Then there's some conversation about casting out demons, and there's always some discussion here about what exactly Jesus means in verse 20, if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, and the kingdom of God has come upon you. I think finger of God here is directly an attempt to sound like the Exodus and to sound like the account of Moses bringing the plagues upon Egypt, and the magicians say, this is the finger of God, Exodus 8, verse 19. And notice the kingdom of God here is not, it is not an institution. It is not even explicitly a reference to the church, which I understand and you understand starts in Acts chapter 2. It is a reference to the reign and rule, the power, the might of God. Verse 21, when a strong man fully armed guards his own palace, his goods are safe. When a stranger comes, verse 22, when one's stronger, not a stranger, I'm sorry, when one's stronger, more coffee, that's always the answer, then he attacks him and overcomes him. What Jesus is saying is, I'm stronger than the devil. That's what I'm that's what this is about. I am stronger than the devil. Otherwise, I couldn't do the things that you see me doing. And there's no way that I can work through this chapter without saying something about verse 28. Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it. The Mark Roberts International East Texas version says, Blessed rather are those who not only hear the podcast about the Word of God, but then actively do what Jesus is teaching. That's kind of a longer translation, isn't it? Then Jesus talks about the sign of Jonah, the need to repent, the need to act upon the word of God. It's time to decide. Don't sit on the fence. And how you hear is determined by your character. 33, 34, 35, 36. If you have a dark heart, you're not going to be able to see it. Then notice here in verse 37, Jesus eats with a Pharisee. This is the second of three occasions in Luke's gospel where Jesus eats with a Pharisee. Luke's gospel is the only gospel where the Pharisees are good at all, where they have any kind of commendable characteristics. And Jesus does. He eats with sinners, and we talk about that a lot. Nobody talks about Jesus went to a Pharisee's house. And he ate with him. And when he ate with him, he brought the word of God. He absolutely brought the word of God and said, there's some things here that are not right and that need to be changed. And so Jesus preaches bravely. And yeah, he does a great job here helping the Pharisees see that they're going to have to clean some things up, that they can't just continue to stand on external righteousness. That won't work. Woe to you lawyers, verse 52. Remember, lawyers are not attorneys. They're not the guys that are on TV all the time saying, Have you been hit by a company truck? Have you been hurt on the job injury? Working for a large corporation that has deep pockets. That is not the lawyers. The lawyers here are those who are experts in the word of God. It makes me uncomfortable to say this. Lawyers in this text would be pretty much akin to our full-time preachers who spend all their time studying the Word of God. Jesus has some challenges for people like that, for people like me. The reading for Monday, Luke chapter 11. It's Tuesday. It's Tuesday, and today our reading is Luke chapter 12. We do have Zoom tonight. Westsiders excited about working through this chapter with you tonight in the Zoom call. Let me just say a word or two here about the podcast. I'm still feeling my way along with these super long chapters that Luke writes for us here and trying to figure out exactly how to do all of that. And I'm not sure I want to work through and say something about just kind of as I'm reading down through the chapter, here's a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I may need to focus a little bit on some of the passages that may cause you to wrinkle your brow and be a little unsure about rather than saying something about everything. Let me see if I can tighten the focus on the podcast. So clearly, the issue today will be the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Luke chapter 12 and verse 10. Everyone who speaks the reading for Wednesday, Luke chapter 12, everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. Now this is not worded exactly the same as Matthew and Mark. There is what's going on here is the charging of the Holy Spirit with evil, but I still think this is very much about hardening your heart. One scholar said the one who hardens himself against what God is doing as he acts to save places himself beyond the reach of God's testimony. And I think it's significant here that the one who hardens himself against Jesus' earthly ministry will get another chance, the opportunity to accept the Holy Spirit-inspired preaching in the book of Acts. But failure then will be absolutely failure. And I think that's where Jesus, failure then will be absolutely fatal, I should have said. And I think that's where Jesus is going with this, that these people refuse to listen and they are determined not to listen, which means they will not seek the forgiveness that God offers to them. From time to time, someone will come to a shepherd, to an elder, to a preacher and say, I think I blasphemed against the Holy Spirit and I'm eternally lost. And the very fact that that person is concerned about it shows that they have not done that, because this is the hard heart that doesn't care about God, that is determined to do what I want to do in the way that I want to do it, and despite all evidence to the contrary, I will continue in what I want to do and what I want to believe. That person is not going to seek the salvation that God offers. I do want to say a word here about the parable of the rich fool. Please notice Jesus' warning, verse 15, about possessions. Luke is very concerned about money and possessions all through this gospel. And I think this is really about how our possessions can affect our discipleship. So as disciples are reading the book of Luke, we need to think about that and be aware of that. Possessions can get in the way, disciple, of what you want to be and what you should be. And that's what's happening in this parable. So then we get to verse 22, where Jesus talks about not being anxious. And this material is very similar to the material in Matthew chapter 6. Jesus gives a couple of arguments to counter anxiety. Just work through this. Life is more than the things that are going on all around us, the birds, the ravens, verse 24. God cares for them. It's useless. It doesn't add anything to your life, verse 25. And then again with the lilies in verse 27. How much more. The chapter then closes with a series of parables about expectation and reality and urgency regarding the coming of the Lord. Jesus offers these parables to say that you need to be watchful and ready at all times because the time of his return is unknown. And then the second explains that Jesus will come as a thief when he is unexpected. And then the third teaches that being ready for his coming means doing his will at all times while he is gone. Those ideas come, by the way, from one of my favorite scholars. I think that's a very helpful breakdown on these parables. So you get the parables here working towards this idea of we just need to be ready all the time. And finally, verse 56, you hypocrites, talked about hypocrisy two weeks ago. You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky. Why do you not know how to interpret the present time? It's happening right in front of you, and you can't even see it. You can see the weather and make decisions about that. I think this is a very poignant observation on Jesus' part. How much more, if I can use the way that Jesus teaches to make this point, we are absolutely fixated and fascinated about the weather. Our culture is all about weather. And trust me, I say that as somebody who is a major weather wonk. Dina can tell you, you never want to ask me a question about the weather without having a chair to sit down in because I'm going to talk about the weather and what's happening forever and ever and ever. And I have an amazing backyard weather station that gives me readings so that I know what's going to happen and what has happened. And I love to talk about the weather. We all love to talk about the weather. We have the apps on our phone, and the weather forecast has become a larger and larger portion of the newscasts. There's weather channels, there's a couple of those now. We are so into the weather. Let me ask you, disciple, are you paying attention to the weather and you're not paying attention to Jesus? Then you're paying attention to the wrong thing. And you're in verse 56. The reading for Tuesday, Luke chapter 12, much to talk about here on Zoom tonight. See tonight on Zoom call, Westsiders, Luke chapter 12 is the reading for Tuesday. It's Wednesday. It is Wednesday. And today we're reading Luke chapter 13. One of the ways to make sure that you're on track with what the author of a gospel is doing, seeing the portrait of Jesus that he is painting, is to pay attention to what is unique in his gospel. And verses 1 to 5 are unique to Luke's gospel because Luke is always all about repentance. And when tragedies happen, then there's always going to be someone who will say, that happened to them because they are a bad person. They got what they deserved. Jesus says everybody's a sinner and everybody needs to repent, not just people who are involved in a tragedy. And then we get the parable of the fig tree, six to nine. This is not the same as the cursing of the fig tree in Matthew and Mark. That's a good thing to make a note of in the margin of your Bible. And I think Jesus is making two points here that God is slow to punish, but the time of mercy and grace don't last forever if you don't repent. This is about repentance yet again. Then there is the healing of the woman, verses 10 to 17 in the synagogue. And I said I wasn't going to go through the chapter blow by blow, and here I am doing exactly that. But this story illustrates why judgment must fall upon the Jewish leadership. They are utterly hardened to Jesus and to his teachings. Please notice in verse 15 does not each of you on the Sabbath untie? Then verse 16 Um, this daughter of Abraham, verse 16, whom Satan bound for 18 years, be loosed. The word for loosed and untied are the same. That's the same word. I'm going to loose her like you would loose Your ox. I'm going to untie her like you would untie your donkey. In verse 17, the people rejoiced. They rejoiced. Jesus, Jesus just does great stuff, and regular people say, this is what needs to be happening. This is what we've needed to be hearing. This is what it looks like to truly follow after God. The mustard seed in the 11, verses 18 to 21, I preached on that as part of the question Jesus asked last year. That's October the 19th. It was the third question. I preached on Matthew's version of this, so I will I will let that stand right here. Jesus does some additional teaching. And remember, we are on the road to Jerusalem. The journey of destiny is what ties all of this together. And as Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem, there will be people who meet him. There will be encounters, and Jesus does a lot of teaching. Verse 28, 29, and 30 reminds us here of the Jewish conception of what heaven would be like. What heaven would be like is to get the chance to sit down at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That would be the greatest thing because eating is so significant in this culture. And I have some more notes about that as we journey along this week, talk about how that works and so forth. But to be invited to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob's house, it just doesn't get any better than that. And Jesus says, verse 29, people will come from the east, west, north, and south, and they will come. And some of you, verse 30, are not going to get invited. That's very much Luke's reversal theme, and very much Luke's theme on all people. God is interested in everyone. Let me conclude today's episode by just noticing verse 31. At that very hour, some Pharisees came and said to him, Get away from here, Herod wants to kill you. Remember, Luke is the gospel that shows Jesus eating with Pharisees, and it does seem here that the Pharisees are being nice to Jesus. Some Pharisees are trying to help Jesus out. Now there's some people are going to read that and say, no, it's a trap. They're trying to get Jesus out of the area. They have ulterior motives. And I understand why anybody would think the Pharisees are not good, but it kind of seems like right there, they're kind of trying to help Jesus out a little bit. Reading for Wednesday, Luke chapter 13. It's Thursday. It's Thursday. And today we're reading Luke chapter 14. For once, it's not nine zillion verses. This is just 35 verses. Seems like a piece of cake, doesn't it? There are four table stories being told in this chapter. First, the healing of the man on the Sabbath, and then Jesus goes to the house of a ruler of the Pharisees. How about that? Then there's the parable of the wedding feast, verses 7 to 11. Parable of the great banquet. And then verse 15, while Jesus is eating, someone says, Blessed is everyone, verse 15, who eats bread in the kingdom of God. So Luke loves to eat. Wow, I think Luke's probably an American. No question about that. So let's talk through this a little bit. First of all, this is a great place for me to just give you some notes. I think that'll be the focus on today's episode on eating in New Testament times. Outside the home, one would only eat with those in one's own social group. And even then, the seating will be arranged according to status. The host would invite only those who were on the same social, religious, and economic plane. It brought shame, in fact, upon a family to bring people into the house that would violate that custom. So here, this is a big deal. Who gets in and who doesn't get in? And that says a lot about what the ruler of the Pharisees thinks of Jesus, that he invites him into his home. Now, all of this matters because eating becomes one of the biggest issues in the New Testament church. Peter won't go to Cornelius' house in the book of Acts because he will not eat with a Gentile. And Barnabas and Peter then later get carried away in Galatians chapter 2, Paul says, because they won't eat with Gentiles. And eating is the thing that's dividing the church in Rome and in Corinth. What can we eat? Who could we eat with? How do we handle all that? Eating is a huge deal in the New Testament world. And that's a big break from how things are today. We just go into a restaurant, we sit down, we eat, we don't think about who else is in here, are they on the same social and economic status? It doesn't have that same emphasis, that same feeling in our world today. And that applies especially to the parable of the ambitious guest, verses 7 to 14. I don't know where I got that title. That's a great title for a parable. Today I'm telling you the parable of the ambitious guest. One scholar noted that the seating would be done in a large U, the couches. Remember, everybody's reclining at table. Nobody's sitting in a European chair. We're reclining at table here. Thank you very much, verse 15 in the ESV. And the couches would be arranged in a U. And the chief seat would be the center of the bottom of the U at the base, because you command the room. You can see everybody on both legs of the U. And so then the positions of honor would be on the left and right of that position, and then you just, you know, keep going down from there. So what Jesus says is here's a banquet, and there's this rush for everybody to climb into these chief seats to get on the couches at the bottom of the U. And Jesus says that's a disaster. Don't do that, and you get Luke's reversal theme again. And this is very much about self-promotion. That is senseless, that's vain. Let God promote you. Any other kind of self-promotion is of no real value. And then Jesus talks a little bit about who you invite and that you ought to break some of these rules, these social engagement rules, verse 13 and 14. Don't do that. Instead, have generosity in who you bring into your home. That must have really caused some people to set up and say, oh, I don't know about this Jesus guy. I don't know if I want to do like that, but that's what Jesus is talking about. And that leads then to the great discipleship sayings in verses 25 to 35. These are some of the best discipleship sayings anywhere in the Gospels, and we need to read those and think about those and pray about those and be sure that we are counting the cost of discipleship. Reading for Thursday, Luke chapter 14. It's Friday. It is Friday, and today we're reading Luke 15. The reading for Friday, Luke chapter 15. Need to be careful here. I could talk about this chapter forever. I have literally preached a gospel meeting on nothing but the prodigal son. I'm not even kidding. Five nights on the prodigal son. Love these parables. Probably the biggest key here is to make sure you've got one and two, verses one and two, as the driving force behind everything that's happening here. All these parables go together. They all flow out of people being unhappy, Pharisees and Scribes being unhappy, that Jesus is trying to bring some people into the kingdom, trying to teach some people, having compassion for some people, that the Pharisees and the scribes have written off. God doesn't want those people. Jesus, you need to get away from those people. And there are some misunderstandings about what is lost here. It's very, very common for people, for example, to say that the widow, she has lost a coin out of her dowry and now she can't get married. There is no support for that. It gets told all the time. It makes people cry. I guess it preaches well. It's just not true. And I guess I should have said something about the shepherd, because in Luke 15, 1 to 7, here, with all this shepherding business, sometimes we get lost talking about the 99. How could he leave the 99? What about them? Are the wolves going to jump on them? Are they all going to Starbucks while he's gone? What about the 99 sheep? That is utterly unimportant. Don't think about the 99. What we need to focus on is the lost sheep and how risky it is for the shepherd to go get that sheep. And please do pay attention to how much joy and optimism there is in this chapter. There's rejoicing in verse 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 23, 24, and 32. The last thing that I will say to all of this is that the keynote in the parable of the prodigal son is repentance, but and maybe that's not the last thing I'm going to say, because I'm going to say one more thing. I am not convinced. I am not convinced that Jesus did not tell all three of these parables to get to verse 25 and tell the story of the older brother. That I think is where all of this points and where all of this is headed. Maybe a little bit like Nathan's parable with David, which just catches David completely unawares. David's jumping up and down and screaming and saying, Boy, that guy's just terrible. And then Nathan just drops a hammer on him. It's you, pal. And so here's some people who are complaining about Jesus reaching out to folks who they have decided God doesn't care about. And Jesus gets to verse 25 and he's looking at those people. You are the older brother. And the amazing thing about both of these stories, the prodigal son and the older brother, is that the father goes out to both of them. That's a violation of the social mores and customs of the day. No dad would do that, but the father loves both boys. And the father wants both boys to be in the father's house. That's what Jesus is doing in Luke chapter 15. The reading for Friday, Luke 15. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast this week. I really enjoy doing that. Love, love, love. Getting to work in the Word of God with you, talk about the sermon, and help daily Bible reading be more meaningful. One of the big keys in daily Bible reading is people have to understand it, have to be able to lock into what's going on there and figure out what Jesus is talking about, for example, in Luke's gospel, and make good use of that if we don't understand when we can't do the will of God. So I appreciate you listening and giving me this opportunity to be in your ears and talk more about Luke's gospel. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven. 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-P-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.