What comes to the West Special Monday morning of the I think I think we will help you wheat into the week we can watch the next one.

Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for Monday, February the 2nd. I'm Mark. I've got some great coffee here. Oh, this is some Dominican Republic coffee. It's very, very good. I'm ready to talk about yesterday's sermon. I'm ready to think about daily Bible reading. And yes, it is Groundhog Day. Only in America, where we have sophisticated weather satellites, Doppler, radar, and all kinds of technology, do we allow a rodent to forecast the weather for us? And I am here for it. Go Punkstahani Phil, loving me some groundhog day. That's probably not as important as what happened yesterday when I began a new series, a mini-series on preaching. Let's talk about that and let's talk about daily Bible reading. Grab your coffee, grab your Bible, let's grow together. So yesterday I began a special series, Preaching Matters, a three-lesson series, kind of a mini-series on preaching and the sermon and its role in worship and how that works and what we ought to be doing about that and how we ought to think about that. I'm very excited about that series. I hope that you are too, would like to get more feedback on that. It's a little weird talking about the pulpit when you're the guy in the pulpit, but it is so important and so vital. Preaching plays such a big role in scripture. I thought it would do us some good to think through some of that. Now, here's something I don't think that I got to say as clearly as I would like to yesterday. Preaching is like a workout for your soul. It is kind of like going to the gym. And you don't always see immediate results when you start going to the gym. I talked about some of that yesterday, but like lifting weights or getting into some serious cardio, in the present moment, that may not be very comfortable and feel real great, but it strengthens you. Most people have had the experience of joining a gym and you go and you work out, and the next day you wish you would die. You're so sore and beat up. It's just terrible. But if you stay with it, if you don't give up, it will strengthen you. And I want to say the same thing about preaching. Well, maybe not that I people are home today wishing they would die because of yesterday's sermon. I hope that's not it. But when the word is proclaimed, it stretches your thinking, it challenges your assumptions, it exposes sin, it causes to obedience. So just like exercising and lifting weights, it can feel hard in the moment. And sometimes maybe you feel a little sore spiritually because you are challenged and convicted and stretched, but that is a good thing, and that is growth happening, even if it is invisible. So the next time you're listening to some preaching, remember you're not listening for inspiration necessarily, and you're certainly not listening to be entertained. You are training, you're strengthening your faith, your discernment, your ability to live God's way in the world that's constantly pulling you in the other direction. And over time, that hidden strength will show up in your choices, your character, and in your courage. Preaching matters because it shapes a resilient and faithful life. Hope that helps you. Would like to get more feedback, what you thought of this sermon about sermons. How about that? And today I am headed for a lot of preaching. I'm on my way this afternoon to the Florida College lectures. Sermons all day. A lot of that is live streamed. You might check into some of that and get a chance to listen to some really great preaching this week. Now, let's think about our daily Bible reading for the week. Let's go to the book of Luke. It is Monday, and our reading for Monday is Luke chapter 21. Can I admit that I'm just a little bit buffaloed here? Luke has these monster chapters, and now we're in a section of Luke where he is covering, reporting, detailing the most significant events in human history, namely the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. And the chapters just go on forever, which I guess means the podcast will go on forever. So just call in to work and say, I'm sorry I can't be there. I'm going to listen to a 39-hour podcast and do my daily Bible reading. I guess that's what we're going to do. Well, let's try a little bit of Luke 21 and see how we can work with all of that. It begins here with the widow's offering. And this story, the widow's might story, verses 1 to 4, is only in Mark and Luke. There are more details in Mark's account. I should tell you that in the temple there are these courts. The temple is a huge plaza. That's a big area where the church will meet over in the book of Acts. We'll talk more about that. And then there was the women's court, and Jewish women could go there, and then the court of the men, and there was a step up and another platform, another plaza, and the men could be there, then the court of the priests, and then the actual temple building. And so in the court of the women, there were 13 trumpet-shaped collection boxes. And instead of taking an animal directly to the altar and having it sacrificed, what you would do is you would pay the money for the sheep or the goat or the doves, whatever. You'd put it in the appropriate collection box. The money was counted out, and then the priest offered the appropriate sacrifices, the number of lambs or sheep that, or doves that had been paid for for that day. So it was very common for people to walk by these trumpet-shaped boxes. Josephus tells us it made a sound when the money went down inside. And you could sit there and watch people give, take care of their religious obligations. And that's what this woman is doing. She is giving, and she puts in two small copper coins, verse two. This is a lepta, a mite, and the widow's mite is that's that's a reference to the coin she's giving. And one scholar says it's worth about one one-hundredth of a denarius. A denarius is a day's pay for a worker, for a day laborer. So this is, what is this, five minutes worth of work? It's not very much money, but Jesus commends her. Huge contrast here to the rich young ruler. She's willing to give, others are not. Then that takes us to the Olivet Discourse. Chapter 21, verses 5 to 38, have Jesus talking from the Mount of Olives, looking at Jerusalem, looking from the Mount of Olives, you can look down into the temple itself. And this has created no end of confusion. Let me give you a couple of quick keys here that will help you make sense of what Jesus will say. First and foremost, we need always to set in the context. Key number one, what's been going on? In Luke, this comes after a round upon round of debating to no good effect with religious leaders. And this is the close of Jesus' personal ministry. He has found hypocrisy in the nation, corruptness. People are not receiving him, people are not turning to God as they should. Then it's very important, key number two, that we pay attention to the question that's being asked. Verses five and six, this is about the temple. Jesus is not impressed with the temple. Jesus says it's going to be demolished. The question was not about the second coming. The question is about the destruction of the temple. The disciples don't understand that Jesus is going. Why would they ask about the second coming? Then look at verse 32. Jesus gives a time limitation. Heaven and earth, verse 32, will pass away, but my words will not pass away. This isn't a second coming passage, or Jesus lied or was mistaken or got it wrong. I don't like any of that. I didn't even like saying that. This is about the destruction of Jerusalem. And I know some people try to make about half of it about Jerusalem and some of it, the rest of it into the don't do that. Don't do that. Verse 32 is the time limitation. And when you read chapter 21 with that in mind, that this is about the destruction of the temple. It occurred in AD 70. The Roman army came, burned the temple, terrible, terrible siege, all kinds of horrible things happened. When you read it in context, looking at the question that was asked, verse 7, when will these things be? What will be the sign when these things are about to take place? When you remember, here's key number four, that elsewhere the Bible tells us there are no signs for the second coming. Just read it as a discussion, a prophecy. Jesus is a prophet. We've seen that in the book of Luke. A prophecy of the terrible destruction of the city of Jerusalem. When you read it like that, it's not that hard to make sense of it. It uses a lot of apocalyptic language, a very common type thing used in Isaiah, used in Ezekiel, be used heavily in the book of Revelation, signs and symbols to depict the great battle between good and evil. And this was a terrible, terrible war. The war began in AD 66 when some zealots took Masada and massacred the garrison there. There never really was a united Jewish front. There was a lot of infighting. Even when the city of Jerusalem was surrounded and besieged, they were attacking each other in different quarters of the city instead of paying attention to the Romans on the outside. It was really awful. Josephus tells us that children would snatch food from their parents' mouth, and mothers would do the same to their infants. The famine was so bad. It was a terrible, terrible time. And Jesus is warning his disciples so they'll get out of Dodge before all of that happens. So here's a great question. What's the awfulness going to get out of this? What's the awfulness going to get? First, Jesus is a prophet. And we've seen lots of that in Luke already. And then the fate of Jerusalem is tied to its rejection of Jesus. We'll get much of that as we continue to read along here. The city's filled with hypocrisy. The religious leaders are not leading the people closer to God and accepting Jesus. Jerusalem's out of business. Jerusalem and Judaism are going out of business, and God cares about the disciple and is taking care of them. Read through Luke chapter 21. Read it, looking at it as a warning, a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem. And I don't think it's that difficult a passage. The reading for Monday, Luke chapter 21. It's Tuesday. It is Tuesday. And the reading for Tuesday is Luke chapter 22, 71 verses, as I said yesterday, covering some of the most significant and important events that have ever occurred on the entire planet. I'm not sure how to summarize and cover all of this. Let's just get started. It begins with a conspiracy, first six verses, and this is all about the time of the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover. And those two events get merged together a lot, and the same terminology is referred one to another. And there is considerable controversy about exactly where this is in the timeline of Jesus' last week. And there are various attempts to locate this on Wednesday and Thursday or back it up more or push it ahead further. That's way beyond the scope of this podcast for certain. And I would just tell you that usually when people are trying to move around the Passover so that it is not Thursday night, Jesus is not on the cross on Friday. Usually there's some kind of agenda there. For example, sometimes people who are Sabbatarian will try to move things around, try to have the resurrection occur on the Sabbath. Just be careful with all of that. I think that's a rabbit hole that people can go down, and there's just no end to it because we're not sure exactly of the timing of these events. Verse 7, then came the day of unleavened bread. That's an unusual expression in the Gospels. Maybe the key thing for us to pay attention to, we're not going to pay attention to all kinds of calendars, what day of the week it is, sort of things. We are going to pay attention to how much Jesus is in control. That is significant. And that's why Jesus makes these careful preparations with the disciples. The emphasis here is that Jesus knows where the Passover will be eaten, but Judas cannot know, which means Jesus cannot be betrayed before the Passover. Jesus is determined to eat this with his apostles. And I think it's important to see here that the Passover, you'd need a lot of preparations. This isn't you just stop by somebody's house and say, Oh, by the way, we're going to have the Passover. There would have to be all the food and the unleavened bread. Everything has to be prepared exactly correctly. Beginning in verse 14, then we have the longest account of the Passover in the Gospels. And a bunch of this gets repeated by Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. And it is an enormously important moment in the life of Jesus. There are various propositions about exactly what a Passover service looked like in Jesus' day. Again, not 100% sure about that, but there is a QA portion of the Passover. There is the point where the Son asks the Father, why do we do these things? And there's a case to be made that Jesus uses that question time to present himself as the sacrificial lamb, slain for their deliverance. Remember, the Passover lamb had to be eaten. And so Jesus talks about eating his body. How about that? Eating his flesh. So that may give a little insight into exactly what is going on here. But the Son of Man, verse 22, is a prophet. He knows everything that is going to happen here. There is not anything that will surprise Jesus. For the rest of the evening, Jesus runs the show entirely. And that includes a discussion with Peter, verse 31 to 34, about how he will he will deny Jesus. And I think the most important thing to see here is verse 32, I have prayed for you. And then in verse 41, when Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane, verse 41, Jesus is praying. Verse 46, I pray that you may not enter into temptation. If you ask Jesus how to defeat sin, how to defeat temptation, I think his answer would be, you need to pray about it. You need to be in prayer, you need to pray for divine strength, you need to pray to set your mind. Uh one writer said that animal sacrifices do not go willingly to the sacrifice. Here, Jesus agrees to be the sacrifice in the Garden of Gethsemane. And I guess wow. What's the answer to that? More coffee. The Garden of Gethsemane. And I should tell you this I have been to the Garden of Gethsemane. The site is very well attested. There are a lot of olive trees there. It's a beautiful, beautiful site on the side of the hill, Mount of Olives, right across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem and the temple complex. There is an olive tree there that is uh well over 2,000 years old. And although it is not known exactly where Jesus was in the garden when he was praying, this is the garden that he was praying in, and that olive tree knows where Jesus was. It is it is really something to be in the Garden of Gethsemane and think about these enormous events. Look at verse 48. Jesus says to Judas, Would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? Judas is trying to act like it's all innocent and so forth and so on. Once again, Jesus is the prophet. Jesus knows everything that's happening, Jesus is controlling all that goes on here. So here then Jesus is arrested, and uh suddenly the spotlight shifts to Peter, verse 54, so that we see that Jesus is correct in saying that Peter would deny him. Then Jesus is taken to the high priest's house, and we're not entirely sure where the high priest house is, but the high priest would live in the rich quarter of Jerusalem. And there is a house that fits this description very, very well. It has its own private jail, really something to be down in the dungeon there. Think about Jesus being held there as this fake trial is put together. There's two trials of Jesus. One is the Jewish trial, very different charges, and then there's the Roman trial, where they'll try to make a case to get Jesus on the cross, and they have to bring different charges to get the Romans interested in that. They're not going to get anywhere saying, oh, Jesus is a blasphemer. No, that's never going to work with the Romans, but that is what the Jews are concerned about. One of the interesting things about the high priest house, even if that's not the exact house, knowing that the high priest would live in the rich aristocratic quarter of Jerusalem allows you to see how far it is from the Garden of Gethsemane to the High Priest house. And this is a good case of you don't know what you don't know. I'd never really thought about that. You can look at those maps in the back of your Bible and you can see Jerusalem and, you know, what is it, a half inch from the Garden of Gethsemane to the High Priest house, and you don't think much of it. When you are actually there standing in the courtyard of the High Priest house, and you look across, there's two valleys then, all the way to the Garden of Gethsemane, which you can see on the Mount of Olives. There's a Russian Orthodox church there. It has giant golden, what are those, onions domes, and you can see those very, very clearly. It's a long ways. It's a long ways. And Jerusalem is extremely hilly, up, down Kidron Valley. I believe the other valley is the Tyropian Valley. And as you look across there, you just realize how tired Jesus must have been. He'd been up all night praying, very emotional, very passionate praying. Probably didn't say enough about this praying. Luke covers it so well here. Jesus is just exhausted. And then they walk him, chained and manicled, all the way to the high priest house. By the time he gets here, he has got to be just worn out. I'm not sure that fatigue is the lead dog in the pack when we're talking about the suffering of Jesus, but it is part of the equation here. Jesus is just being hustled, hustled, and jostled all around Jerusalem all night long, and that's not easy walking by any means at all. So Jesus then is taken in front of the council. Verse 66. This is against the law, by the way, against Jewish law. And verse 69 is probably the most important verse here. The son of man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God. Jesus identifies himself as the Son of Man from Daniel chapter 7 and verse 12. He claims Psalm 110, which we did so much work with last year in December. And he says, The one that you are judging will judge you. And that seals the deal, verse 71. Please be mindful. Jesus could have said, Oh, no, no, no, no, not me. You misunderstood everything. Um, no, I'm certainly not trying to be the Messiah. I don't know where you got that, and tried to get out of this scrape. Jesus embraces the cross. Jesus makes sure that they can't miss him in the garden, and he makes sure that they're not gonna miss him in the trials as well. So our reading for Tuesday is Luke chapter 22. There's no Zoom tonight, Westsiders, because I'm in Florida for the FC Lectures. If uh you're listening to the podcast and you went to the lectures, look for me in the author's expo area in the afternoon, and I'd love to get to meet you and we'll talk about the podcast and books and everything else. But I'm not here, so there'll be no Zoom tonight. I'll see everybody on the podcast tomorrow. Luke 22, the reading for Tuesday. Welcome to Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday, and our reading today is the 23rd chapter of Luke. Luke chapter 23. Once again, long chapter, so much material here, 56 verses. The charges change. We notice right away. The charges change in verse 2. We're not talking about blasphemy. Now we're talking about perverting the nation. Hey, he's just a bad guy. He won't pay taxes. That's a lie, but tax protesters will always get Rome's full attention. And he says he's a king, and you're never going to get anywhere claiming to be a king when there can be one king, and that is Caesar. Now, if you pay attention, you will see an innocence theme driving so much of what happens in Luke chapter 23. Over and over again, Luke makes sure that we notice, in fact, six times in this chapter, someone says, Jesus is innocent. And the first one of those happens in verse 4. Pilate says, I find no guilt in this man. He is innocent. And that's important for Theophilus. In the first century, there would be people uncertain about all this business with Jesus being the Messiah, but he was also executed by the Roman state. What's the deal with that? Well, Luke is helping people see that it was it was wrong. It was a miscarriage of justice. He did not deserve it. No. Instead, Jesus is innocent. Then Luke, and Luke is the only one who tells us this, tells us about Jesus being taken before Herod Antipas in verses 8 to 12. This is Herod Antipas. Son of Herod the Great. Herod is, like so many people today, just interested in seeing something exciting in the guise of religion. Now then we go back to Pilate, verse 13. More Pilate, more discussion with this. And Pilate once again says he's innocent, verse 14. He's innocent, verse 15, he's innocent, verse 22. So lots of innocence going on here. And it is very clear, verses 24 to 25, who Luke holds responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. And that doesn't make Luke anti-Semitic. And there's no way that we should be accusing all Jewish people. Oh, you're the Christ killers. That's outrageous. That's outrageous. The truth of the matter is, we are all responsible for the death of Jesus because we are all sinners. That's what's happening. And I think the release of Barabbas maybe gives us the gospel and miniature in a powerful way. The innocent man dies, so a guilty man can go free. Isn't that what the gospel's all about for all of us? Then Jesus is crucified. Beginning in verse 26, Luke gives extensive coverage to the crucifixion. And it is only Luke that tells us of the people who are following and mourning him. Only Luke records the conversation between the thieves on the cross. Only Luke has Jesus' words of forgiveness on the cross. And if you're paying attention, there's a lot of threes in the crucifixion narrative. Jesus is thrice mocked, the malefactors are thrice called criminals, three groups of people mock on and on and on. There's lots of threes happening here. And maybe I should give some attention to this whole business of crucifixion. There are there it's really hard to talk about the crucifixion. It's very, very difficult to put into words everything that's happening here and that this occurred to our Lord and Savior. But we are not certain of the exact crucifixion practice that was used with Jesus because those were not standardized in Jesus' day. He may have died on a conventional cross, the plus that we always see could have been a T, could have been an axe, could even be an I. Lots of different means, modes were used here. There is a Jewish victim of crucifixion that has been unearthed north of Jerusalem. His legs were turned to the left and bent at the knee so that one's spike could be driven through the ankle. Sometimes people will say that Jesus was crucified naked, and that certainly did happen in Roman times, but Jewish scruples usually demanded a loincloth. So a lot of uncertainty about that. But what we are sure of is that it was utterly horrible. Cicero says on the shame of crucifixion that the very word cross should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his very thoughts. It is the worst way to die. And in verse 34, Jesus says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The condemned person was supposed to say, May my death atone for all my sins. Jesus confesses other people's sins, not his own. And that doesn't mean that they were all forgiven on the spot. That passage gets used that way all the time. Be mindful in Acts chapter 2, when Peter says, Hey, you people crucified Jesus, no one jumps up and down and says, Oh, don't be bringing that up. We were all forgiven. No. What Jesus is praying for here is that the Father will not send 12 legions of angels and destroy everything and everybody right now because of this horrible thing happening to the Son. Give them a chance to repent that they may be forgiven. That's what's going on in verse 34. And then we get a great illustration of that with the thief on the cross. And people ask all the time, hey, can I be saved like the thief on the cross? And the thief on the cross has become a favorite prop to prop up the idea that I don't have to be baptized. And the answer to, can you be saved like the thief on the cross is sure you can. If you're dying next to Jesus, go for it. Jesus wants to save you, he's going to save you. Who's arguing with that? I'm not arguing with that. But if you aren't dying beside Jesus, what you really ought to do is you ought to make use of the provisions that he made for the rest of us. And we'll read about those in Acts chapter 2. Verse 44 tells us it's the sixth hour, that'd be about noon. The ninth hour would be about 3 p.m. And the veil of the temple, verse 45 tears. And the Hebrew writer tells us that's to make way for a new way to have fellowship with God. By the end of the chapter, Jesus is buried, and he's in the tomb. A pious Jew, like we met in the first two chapters, buries Jesus. And where are we right now? Let's just put ourselves in Theophilus' sandals. Where's Theophilus at the end of chapter 23? Jesus has died, but we don't really know why or understand why. We'll need the rest of the New Testament, particularly the preaching in the book of Acts, to flesh that out and tell us what we just saw, what it means. That's what will happen in the rest of the New Testament. The reading for Wednesday, Luke 23. It's Thursday. Welcome to Thursday. And today we read Luke chapter 24. In many ways, this is a relief. After a couple of chapters that are dark and very difficult and super long, we get Luke chapter 24, which is as good as it possibly can get. And it's only 53 verses. How about that? It seems to me that Luke is making a couple of things work here, a couple of things that are emphasized. First and foremost, the appearance to convince disciples. The disciples don't believe this, and they will need a lot of pushing to get to the place where they believe this. And then once again, we get a ton of the fulfillment of scripture. So Luke 24, 6, he's not here. Remember how he told you. Verse 21, verse 25, 26, 27, the Old Testament is interpreted. Verses 44 to 49. This is what Moses and the prophets and the Psalms said. So the Bible is coming to pass right here before our very eyes. And I do want to give you this, I think this is an important note here. What's the resurrection do? What's the resurrection do? First and foremost, it divinely overturns the false verdict on Jesus. Humans say Jesus is a fake and a fraud. God says no, he's not and vindicates his son. And so, secondly, it shows that Jesus is both Lord and Christ. This is the point that Peter makes in Acts 236. It was necessary as well to show that death could not hold him. Fourthly, it gives us a living Lord that we can pray to. He's not in the tomb somewhere. He is alive and active and working on our behalf. And then it does assure us that God can raise us from the dead someday for the day of judgment, the point that Paul makes in Acts 17 and verse 30. So let's dive into Luke chapter 24. We get the role of women in Peter at the empty tomb. Then we get disciples on the road to Emmaus, meeting of the whole group, and then the ascension. It's important maybe to notice none of the none of the gospels describe the actual resurrection. And over and over again, what we see here in Luke is that everybody expects a body. No one says, Oh yeah, it's the third day. Let's go out to the empty tomb because Jesus is probably hanging out there. You know, we know he's going to rise from the dead. They bring spices. The women are bringing spices, verse 1. Why? Because they expect a body. No one believes what the women tell them in verse 11. And I should add here that this is the wrong place for the gospel to begin because women were not believed in this day. Josephus tells us that women were not acceptable as legal witnesses. So the first people to see Jesus risen from the dead wouldn't even be allowed to testify in court. Once again, the Bible does everything backwards, not the way that we would expect. We would expect Jesus to go to the Sanhedrin Council and say, nya nya nya, here I am, and make everybody back. No, that's not how it's going to work at all. And the story on the road to Emmaus may encapsulate that better than anything else. The story is unique to Luke. Some have speculated that Luke was one of the participants here. But as these two disciples walk on the road to Emmaus, look at the rich irony here in verse 18. Oh, you don't know what's happened. Jesus is the only one who knows what's happened. They don't know what's happened. Verse 19, Jesus is the prophet. So much of that prophet theme in the Gospel of Luke. And then there is, I've said this several times, the most amazing Bible class ever, beginning verse 27, with Moses and the prophets. Jesus interpreted to them all the things in the scripture concerning himself. What a class that would be in. As Jesus walks through the Old Testament and shows how all those things point to him. That'd be Genesis 3, Genesis 12, 2 Samuel 7, Micah 5, 2, Bethlehem, Zechariah 9, the triumphal entry. What about the Psalms? Psalm 2, Psalm 110. Wow, I would love to have been in that Bible class. And once again, we get people who are not ready to believe, who are not expecting the resurrection. That goes on in the appearance to the 11, verse 37. They thought they saw spirit. We've heard about Jesus being resurrected, but is he still in the realm of the dead? We don't really know what's going on with any of that. And then Luke's gospel concludes with the divine mandate. Verse 44, this must happen. This is what was written about me in the law, in the prophets, and the Psalms. Thus it was written that Christ should suffer, verse 46, and on the third day rise from the dead. Now here's the keynote, 47. Repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations. Luke is the gospel of all nations, Gentiles, Samaritans, always doing well in this gospel. And you go back to Jerusalem and you sit down and you just wait until power from on high arise. Verse 49, that's the Holy Spirit. And so Luke's gospel ends. Jesus' earthly work is completed. He's entered into his glory. He's exalted and seated at the right hand of God. And, and, and, and what? What happens next? Do these guys go back to Jerusalem? Do they get power from on high? Do they tell anybody about Jesus? What will happen next? If we had not read this a gazillion times, we would be on the edge of our seats and we would be saying, Where's the sequel? And I'm glad you're saying, Where's the sequel? Because tomorrow we'll start the sequel, but the reading for Thursday is Luke 24. It is Friday. It is Friday. Reading today is Acts chapter 1. You made it through the week. I made it home from Tampa. And now we're beginning the sequel that I talked about so much yesterday to the book of Luke. We're beginning Luke 2. I wish that's what the book of Acts was called. It ought to be called Luke 2 because it just it completes everything that Luke has started in the first book. And it is, without any question, the most important book in the Bible. You can take almost any other book out of the Bible, and we would be much the poorer for it. But if you take Acts out of the Bible, we're just lost. We would never understand the purpose of Christ's life. What was he doing? How did all that work? We wouldn't know how to become a Christian. We wouldn't understand what the church is. We wouldn't understand who the Apostle Paul is. So now you're reading all the stuff he wrote. Who is this guy? He's not in any of the gospels. Acts ties up all of that. Luke and Acts complement each other perfectly. Luke is about Christ. Acts is about Christianity. In Luke, it's the kingdom at hand. In Acts, it's the kingdom established. In Luke, it's the Savior. Now it's salvation. The gospel happens in Luke. The Gospel's told in the book of Acts. The apostles are trained. Now the Apostles work. The Great Commission is in the Gospels. Now it's being carried out. This is Acts is just the complement to everything that happens in the Gospels. And that makes it the most important book in the New Testament, the most important book in the Bible. Now, one of the questions I love to ask people when I'm talking about Acts, all of us are into Acts. Acts is so important. We all know Acts is, oh, it's a great book. It's so important. Well, okay, what's the purpose of the book of Acts? Yeah, that's what I usually get when I ask that question. A lot of, hmm. Sometimes people will say Acts gives us the history of the church. And yeah, okay, maybe a little bit, but not really. There's all kinds of history of the church that's not being told. It's a very specific kind of thing, Jerusalem, some of the areas outside of it. Then all of a sudden it's missionary journeys and everything goes west. How about the history of the church in Egypt? There was church in Egypt. How about the history of the church going east? There was. Acts doesn't say anything about that. Sometimes someone will say Acts is to show the growth of the church. And there is some of that in the book of Acts without any question. But again, it's got to be more than that. We don't even get growth statements about these churches that Paul and Barnabas found on the first missionary journey. How many people are there? You don't get any numbers there like we got early in the book of Acts. And sometimes people will say Acts is to give a pattern for the New Testament church. And that is partially true. It is our pattern, but it is certainly not a pattern like you read in the book of Exodus about the tabernacle. If Luke is trying to show how to organize the New Testament church, it lacks that first do this, second do this, third do this. Oh yeah, and here's elders and their qualifications. It's not like that at all. So what is happening here in Acts? I'm going to fall back to what I said at the outset of today's episode, which is Acts completes Luke. And I believe Acts is designed is to show that what God began in Jesus Christ is continued through the disciples. Acts says that God's work goes on in Christians who make themselves available to the power and purposes of God. In other words, those who walk with Christ, those who are disciples, they continue his mighty work of bringing salvation and forgiveness, preaching about grace and mercy. That's what the book of Acts is about. Jesus started this. The book of Acts shows disciples continue this. So look at Acts chapter 1 with me and notice how much emphasis there is here right away on the Holy Spirit, verse 2, verse 5, verse 8. This is not the Acts of the Apostles, verse 16 as well. I should have mentioned that. In fact, most of the Apostles make very make no appearance at all, at least not after they're named here in verse 13. We don't read anything ever again about Bartholomew or any of these other guys. It's really the Acts of the Holy Spirit through Peter, some John, and mostly Paul. That's what we will see. And so we get a repeat here of the ascension narrative. Luke is tying the book of Acts into Luke. Some have tried to use chapter 1, verse 8 as a kind of outline for the book of Acts, but that really doesn't work. That's not the structural marker that Luke will use. We'll note that as we come along in the book of Acts. And the truth of the matter is, it's really not the gospel in Jerusalem and Judea and then Samaria and to the ends of the earth. It's the gospel in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and then Antioch and then west to the capital of the world, Rome. That's really where we're headed in the book of Acts. We get the replacement of Judas, and this just really sets the stage. Something big is happening, something will happen. The Holy Spirit is going to come, verse 8, you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit's come upon you. But the apostles need to be 12 again. They need to be 12 again. And I mentioned verse 13, we don't know about Bartholomew. We don't know about Matthias either. And in fact, this is the last time, verse 14, that Mary, Jesus' mother, is mentioned. Peter's back in a leadership role. He quotes the Psalms, verse 20, lots of Psalm 69 here. And they ask God, who knows the hearts of all. We've seen Jesus as the heart knower. And so they want Jesus to appoint this apostle as he had appointed them. And they cast some lots, lots of lot casting in the Old Testament. They cast lots. It's Matthias. And now we're ready for what's next. Really hard to stop reading right there, isn't it? Really hard to stop. What is next? Is the Holy Spirit coming with power? What will that look like? All of that for next week. Our reading for Friday, Acts chapter 1. That concludes the podcast then for this week. I think this is probably the longest podcast I've done in quite a while. So much material to cover, such important material to cover. I appreciate you reading the Bible with me and giving me an opportunity to talk with you about it. Love doing these podcasts. Just love doing it an awful lot. Looking forward to seeing you on Sunday. We'll continue the Preaching Matters sermons and that mini-series. Continue to talk about some of that, have something important to say out of Isaiah 6 and the 9 a.m. It's going to be a great Sunday at Westside. But until then, I want to thank you for listening to the podcast. Urge you to share it with someone else and remind you, I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come to. Podcast listeners, I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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