Hello, and welcome to the West Side Church's special Monday morning coffee podcast. On this podcast, our preacher and Mark Murphy will help you get your weak one with a little black weekend. So we're up a cup of coffee.

Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for Monday, February the 23rd. I'm Mark and I am all about it. I am ready to talk about daily Bible reading. I'm ready to talk about what we did yesterday in church together. This heaven-bound theme is incredible. This is a huge week. I'm coming off a big weekend. I was with the Dallin Road Church in Beaumont for their weekend in the Word event. Very, very cool. Enjoyed doing that so very, very much. And just really looking forward to this whole week because this is the week, Thursday and Friday of the Westside Preaching Conference here at Westside. So there's tons of preparations being made for that. We've got 50 preachers coming in. It's a great couple of days. Everything is just, yeah, everything's just looking up. I'm excited. I'm fired up and I am ready to get this podcast going. Got sermon notes, got my Bible, have my coffee. Grab your coffee, grab your Bible. Let's grow together. So yesterday was the second in the preaching theme, Heaven Bound for 2026. And I talked maybe about something that you didn't have on your radar when I first announced this preaching theme, and that is what do our kids think about heaven? Parents, what are we telling our children about heaven? And one of the things that I did not get to speak to yesterday is the idea, sometimes kids are afraid of heaven. What if your child isn't excited about heaven? It doesn't make them feel safe and secure. They're all worried about it. Well, don't be surprised by that. Don't be surprised, parents. Sometimes that'll even make sense. Children love what is familiar. Heaven is, heaven's pretty unfamiliar, isn't it? But here's what we want to say about that. We trust the Lord. That's that's that'll be the answer to so many questions that you have, that your children have. We trust the goodness of God. My favorite passage in the Bible is Psalm 34, 8. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. That is my favorite verse in the Bible because it sets before us the goodness of God. And we don't know everything about heaven, but we know what we need to know. It's God's home. God loves us, God will take care of us. If God is doing it, it will be great. And we can trust all of that because God is good. Heaven is not stepping into something cold and strange and unknown. It is being gathered to eternal safety by someone who knows us completely and loves us anyway. And maybe we should remember, parents, that children will trust God more easily than adults do, which is why Jesus pointed to children as an example of what it is to be in the kingdom and receiving the kingdom, Matthew 19, the passage I started with yesterday. So we don't have to get real philosophical about all that. We just need to set it on the grounds of trust. You might say, you know how you feel safe when you're with dad? How good you feel when mom is in the room. Heaven is being safe with God forever. That's what kids need to know. Heaven is safe, heaven is joyful, heaven is being with our God who is good. We don't want to talk about heaven in a mysterious, abstract kind of way. That is intimidating. We want to talk about heaven being home, home with a loving father. That's how we help our kids say, if God is there, I want to be there too. And that is how we help our kids be heaven bound. They are we are homeward bound. Let's think about our Bible reading. Turn your Bible to the book of Acts. Please be ready for the summary statement in verse 24, which will indicate there will be a shift in the story because the apostolic circle is being broken. This is the last time Peter is really significant in the book of Acts. Luke is ready to take the story in a new direction. But let's talk about why that happens and how that happens. Acts chapter 12 begins with the death of James at the hand of Herod the King. Now, which Herod is this? This is Herod Agrippa I. He reigned from AD 41 to 44. He had quite the checkered political career. In AD 36, he offended Caesar Tiberius terribly, but then he was good friends with Caligula and he got a bunch of land when Caligula became the emperor in AD 37. When Caligula died, Claudius, also his friend, gave him even more land in AD 41. So he rules over almost as much as his grandfather had. And he was really loved by the Jews. And you can see here that he is trying to curry favor with them. By the way, Josephus does have an account of the episode at the end of the chapter involving Herod Agrippa and a bunch of worms. More on that in a moment. So that places when it says about that time when Luke says that in 12.1, that's about 4344, somewhere around in there. Some very violent terms are being used here of the arrest of James, laid hands. Some translations say ESV does have violent hands. And there are, there are parallels here to the arrest of Jesus. It sounds a lot like the arrest of Jesus. Note, for example, verse 3. And interestingly, there's a ton of information about the death of Stephen. And what you get for the death of James is a very short summary. I'm not sure what to make of that. There is no discussion here, for example, about why the Lord did not rescue James. There's just no conversation about that at all. Verse 2, he got killed. That's the end of that. And now we're going to kill Peter as well. But Luke loves escape stories, and he tells this story to remind us that God is still in the rescuing business. And Peter does. He is rescued. There's a ton of overkill in verse six. Look at Luke and overkill. Think Peter's going anywhere? Peter's not going anywhere. He does not actually seem very worried about anything. And the word in verse 7 is a very strong word. Verse 7, he struck Peter on the side, struck there, is the same word that's used of the angel striking down Herod Agrippa. So he's quite asleep. And ironically, he gets out of prison, but then he can't get into the home where Christians are praying for him. Note verse 12: time has passed because now people are being marked. They are being dated off of second generation Christians like John Mark. Enough time has passed. There's another generation of Christians. And I wonder here in verse 12 if they are at the house of Mary, which might be the scene of the Last Supper. I wonder if they are there because they can't worship in the temple anymore. Verse 17 then says, Peter departed and went to another place. We don't talk about that a lot, but Peter didn't say, I'm not afraid. The Lord will get me out of jail. The Lord got me out of jail once. The better part of valor, the wise thing to do, is to get out of Dodge. And Peter does exactly that. We are left then to wonder what happens to this one who dared to lay his hands on the Lord's church. And the answer to that is he dies horribly. Verse 20 to 25 tells us about the death of Herod. And he is. Verse 23, eaten by worms. And that would it that would reference intestinal round worms. They grow as long, get ready for really gross details that boys love. They grow as long as 10 to 16 inches. They feed on the nutrient fluids in your intestines, and then bunches of them obstruct your intestines, and that causes severe pain. And you vomit worms and then you die. That's a really bad way to go. That is a really bad way to go. And that is exactly what happens to this one who tried to stop the gospel, who tried to put an end to the church. Over and over again, we're seeing in Acts, you can't stop the gospel. Herod, you tried it. How'd that go for you? Not real well. By the way, this probably happened, this oration in the chariot, uh, in the chariot theater, in the chariot stadium there at Caesarea Maritima. And that's a beautiful, beautiful place to be. And I have sat exactly where Herod would be sitting, which made me nervous. And I did, yes, I looked around to make sure there were no worms there attacking me. So verse 24, the word of God increased and multiplied. The word of God increased is the marker in Luke's outline. This is the third time we've seen that. 67, 9, 3. I'm sorry, 931 is the other two occasions of that. No, I did not just say 6-7 at 6 colon 7. And we're ready to start some new stuff. And we're going to start that with Barnabas and Saul and John Mark. Later we'll come to know that John Mark is Barnabas' cousin. What we need to focus on right now is that we're about to have a missionary journey. Our reading for Monday, Acts chapter 12. Welcome to Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday and Acts the 13th chapter. Our reading for Tuesday, Acts chapter 13, and I should say, hello, Luke. Here's one of those long chapters. We're looking at 52 verses today in a monster sermon. Let's get to it. Please be careful in your Bible and note the use of the Holy Spirit. Verse 2, verse 4, verse 9. The Holy Spirit is active. The Holy Spirit is the one that is moving the church to do this sending and to get people out. We don't know very much about the men named in verse 1. Some people want Lucius of Cyrene to be Luke, the writer of Luke and Acts, but I I that just seems very, very doubtful. There is a lot of diversity here. You've got some men from Africa, you have a Greek Jew, a privileged person, a Pharisaic Jew. There's a lot going on here. And Paul is chosen, Paul and Barnabas, they will do this work. In fact, Paul is now Saul here in verse 1. He will be called Paul in verse 9, and that's a permanent change of name for him. Paul's preaching is exciting and troublemaking all at the same time. You should expect fireworks whenever Paul opens his mouth, and you won't be disappointed. He is the one that announces the temple is out of business. Gentiles can be fully integrated into God's plan, into God's kingdom. You don't need to be a Jew anymore. All of that creates all kinds of problems everywhere Paul goes. And that begins right away when they are withstood by a magician. Verse 6. Notice the devil's trying to stop the gospel, and that doesn't work out at all. You can't do that, won't do that. They're here on the island of Cyprus. That's a very important island, and it is Barnabas' home, which is probably why they went to Cyprus first. John Mark is helping them. Verse 5, he is the assistant, and there is a considerable amount of debate about what that means. It could be used of a synagogue attendant, causing some to wonder if John Mark is carrying the Bible. He's carrying scrolls for them. It probably just means that he is their helper. And we note some intelligent people, verse 7, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence, wants to hear the word of God. Luke likes to show intelligent people becoming Christians. And there is then this confrontation between magic, verse 8, Elemus the Magician, and the gospel. We saw this in Acts chapter 8, and we see it again here. Once again, the devil's trying to stop the gospel. That does not work. The spirit versus the devil, the spirit absolutely wins. So when we get to verse 12, we now have two Gentile converts. Both of them are important and powerful men. Unfortunately, John Mark leaves in verse 13, and we don't know why. We just don't know why. Was he homesick? Had he only planned to go as far as Cyprus? Some have offered that he wanted to go to Alexandria, and when they turn north, that was all for him because he wanted to take the gospel south. We just really don't know. I think if we needed to know and spend a lot of time speculating about that, the Holy Spirit would tell us. Instead, we're moving north into what is now modern-day Turkey, and we get a standard synagogue service here, and Paul gets asked, Would you like to preach? Never ask Paul, would you like to preach unless you're ready for a real sermon. This is a typical pattern for all of Paul's work. They come to town and they go to the synagogue. Somehow evangelism has become something that we do where we're supposed to grab strangers and go door knocking and all of that. And I'm certainly, that's certainly not wrong or sinful in any way, but that is not how Paul did things. Paul went where there were religiously minded people who were in sympathy with the things that he wanted to say. And that is exactly the pattern over and over again in the book of Acts. And so you ask Paul to preach, and he will preach. This is a wonderful sermon. It divides into two parts. There's a survey of history, verses 16 to 25, and it sounds like Stephen. And then there is a sermon about prophecy and fulfillment. The second part of the sermon is about prophecy and fulfillment, 26 to 41. And the emphasis through this entire sermon is on what God has done. He chose, he made the people prosper, he led them out, he endured conduct, he overthrew. If you underline in your Bible all the things it says God did, God made, God gave, God gave them, you'll just have a lot of underlining here because this is about the work of God. And it is about the work of God that culminates in the promises to, that begins with the promises to Abraham in verse 26, and it culminates in the amazing promises to David. And David is the one that is serving the purposes of God. He is the one who was promised. He is the one who is a man after God's own heart. That should ring some bells with us at West Side. This is where that phrase comes from. But what does that mean? Look at verse 39. Everyone who believes is freed. The gospel is for all. And Paul has been subtly working that all along the way. Verse 26, brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, who is that? That's those Gentile God fearers sitting in the synagogue, Gentiles who had not fully converted. The gospel is for you. And forgiveness, forgiveness is really an unusual concept for Paul. Verse 38. Let it be known to you, therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Paul likes legal metaphors, and usually he'll talk about justification, but here he uses that term forgiveness. He can say that. And again, verse 39: everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. That's a summary of the book of Galatians and the book of Romans. That's a pretty good summary of those two books. You can see where Paul is already. And the result of this is Jewish jealousy, those Gentile God fears that they kind of have under their thumb. You're not fully integrated, you'll never be as good as us, but you can sit in the back, kind of thing. They they love the gospel. They're all about it, and they're losing those people, and that's driving them crazy. And so the Jews, verse 45, start saying crazy things and contradicting them. And so Paul says, you have thrust this aside, verse 46. That is the same term that Stephen uses three times in Acts chapter 7, 727, 739, 745. That is what Stephen said. Look at Paul. Paul is acting as the replacement for Stephen. Stephen is the one who was saying Gentiles can be in the kingdom of God. That's what got him into trouble. Now Paul's saying it, it's getting him into trouble. He says what Stephen said. And then finally, I'll tie this together, verse 48. When the Gentiles heard this, they began to rejoice. Of course they rejoice. Everybody's rejoicing. In Luke's writing, Luke is so always happy, always happy. They glorified the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life, believed. That does not mean that they were predestined. It just means that God chooses those who choose Him. So our reading for Tuesday, Acts chapter 13. I'm excited, West Side, to talk with you about this text tonight in Zoom. Our Zoom calls the last couple of weeks have been crazy good and super well attended. Everyone's participating and learning. Remember, you don't have to cut your camera on. You don't have to cut your microphone on. You don't have to say anything. But if you come, you're going to be blessed as we think through and read through and pray about Acts chapter 13. Reading for Tuesday, Acts 13. It's hump day. It is hump day, and we are reading Acts 14. The reading for Wednesday is Acts the 14th chapter. In Acts 14, we'll notice a change in how things work. There's a new theme beginning here. The theme of some believe and some disbelieve. We've seen a lot of success with the gospel so far, but now we'll see much more limited visible results and more opposition as the gospel begins to spread out. Iconium is a city that's about 90 miles up the road. You do have to climb about 3,000 feet to the plateau that it was on. It's an important commercial city. It's a thriving town today. And please notice here that the theme of unbelief works right away. Verse 2, unbelieving Jews straight up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against their brother. So it's not really a racial thing. There are unbelieving Jews, there are believing Jews. There are unbelieving Gentiles, there are believing Gentiles. But the city is divided, verse 4, all kinds of problems. And sometimes you stay and sometimes you don't. Sometimes the best thing to do is to move on to the next place. And so verse 6, they fled to Lystra. That's 18 miles down the road. Derby, 55 miles down the road. Lystra, a Roman colony. Its people were largely uneducated native people from that area. It was viewed as kind of a backwater, and the people here were thought of as being, as one scholar puts it, largely rustic. I think the Mark Roberts International East Texas version here would say they're hicks in the sticks, which ought to make all of us in Texas feel very, very comfortable with this reading because, yeah, that's how the rest of the world looks at all of us all the time. Please realize there's no synagogue here. Nothing is said about a synagogue. So this is the first time that we get preaching straight up to Gentiles. And that preaching happens because Paul heals a man, verse 8, 9, and 10, who was crippled and had never walked. Look at the Lucan overkill in verse 8. He couldn't use his feet. He was sitting, he was crippled from birth, he had never walked. Hmm. Not sure what this guy's problem is. Tell me again, Luke. And Luke tells us that Paul raises him up and he is healed immediately, and that gathers a crowd. And that, if you're looking at that saying, wow, didn't I read that before? Yes, you did. This is exactly like what Peter did in the temple in Acts chapter 3. Luke will give us kind of a running narrative where whatever Peter did, Paul did, because whatever Peter did, Jesus did, and the work of Jesus goes on in the New Testament church. There was a local myth. This is bonus content. Only you podcast listeners get this. There was a local myth here that Zeus and Hermes came down to the area. They were not welcomed. Only one poor old couple welcomed them. And so that old couple was blessed and everybody else was destroyed. And if that myth is circulating, you can see why the town is out saying, We've got to do better than this. The gods have come down to us, verse 11. We need to welcome them. So Paul vigorously denies verse 15. We are not gods. He's got a very simple sermon, three-point sermon. The real God is the creator of everything, verse 15. He governs history. Verse 16, he is the source of all good things. And I really just give me a moment here. Look at verse 17. God did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. God is good. And God is kind. One writer said God not only provides plenty of food for all of his creation, but he fills man's heart with joy. Even if sinful man neglects or refuses to express thanks for all of God's blessings, God gives the sinner's heart pleasure and delight. Man doesn't create joy. God grants him this gift. God supplies man with everything he needs and makes him happy too. That's a beautiful verse, and that's a great starting place in evangelism. These people don't know anything about the Messiah. They don't know anything about the Old Testament. Paul does not get out of the Old Testament and read that to them. He talks to them about what they know, creation, and about the good God who is blessing them. And unfortunately, that looks like that's going to go real well, and it doesn't go well because verse 19, Jews come from Antioch and Iconium. Antioch is 80 or 90 miles away. Iconium is 20 miles away. Let me ask you this what kind of false teaching would upset you enough that you'd walk 80 miles to go refute it? That's what's happening here. These people dog Paul for the rest of his life. He ends up being stoned. It looks kind of like a miracle, verse 20. What happened to Barnabas during this stone? We don't know. Luke loves these. Is that a miracle? Is it not a miracle? Did he just get better? It's hard to know. They do appoint elders, verse 23. There's no setting up some kind of church hierarchy. There's no denominational headquarters. There's no tie back to the mother church. There's strong, independent local churches. This is the first reference, by the way, to elders outside of Jerusalem. And they come home, and people are just really excited that a door, verse 27, has been opened for the Gentiles. But the question is, how can how can Gentiles go through that door? Is that door labeled Law of Moses and Circumcision? Or is that door something else entirely different? Acts 15 will settle that question, but our reading for Wednesday is Acts 14. It's Thursday. It is Thursday, and today the West Side Preaching Conference begins. And today we're reading about the Jerusalem Conference. I'm not sure about how those two things go together. This conference is a history-making conference. It is the watershed event in the book of Acts for certain. What we do at the West Side Preaching Conference is by no means anything even close to that. It's just an attempt to learn the word of God and be more effective in preaching. But this uh I I just couldn't help but notice the similarity in the names in our reading for today. But the question before the church here in Acts is what about Gentiles and where do they fit? How do they get saved? And what kind of relationship can Jews and Gentiles have once they are saved? So we're talking about terms of admission for Gentiles into the church because Judaizers, verse one, are demanding circumcision and obedience to the law. And then how can we get along? Can we eat together? That's what's happening here. And in many ways, what these men are saying in verse one is a direct attack upon Peter's mission to Cornelius and especially Paul and Barnabas' mission, mission to Gentiles out in modern day Turkey in the area where we just read the first missionary journey headed to. Remember, circumcision here is virtually a non-negotiable for Jews. They can't imagine anybody being right with God without the sign of being in Israel. It is a sign that one is keeping the law fully. And so there is, verse two, a ton of tension in the room. Luke, of course, inserts joy in verse three, always joy. And pay attention to verse five. We have believers who belong to the party of the Pharisees. We are, I don't know, 4950 AD here, almost 20 years since the church began, and we still have people who are good Pharisees who see themselves as good Jews and Christians. They do not see those as being incompatible or two separate religions like we see that today. And underlined in verse 5, it is necessary to circumcise them. This is not a preference, it's our opinion. We think it'd be kind of nice, it'd be very cool. No, it is a salvation issue. They must do this. And so there are three speakers that rise to answer this. The first is Peter, and Peter's argument here is that God has settled this via his example with the command to go to Cornelius and what happened when they got there with Cornelius. Circumcision is not what purifies people. Verse 9, it's faith. Maybe some Jews are saying those Gentiles, they're so dirty, they're idolatrous. How can they be clean if they're not circumcised? Faith is what cleanses. Verse 11, grace is what saves, not circumcision. And four times, one writer says, in Luke's report of Peter's speech, the theme of us, them, we they is repeated. God gave the spirit to them as to us, verse eight, made no distinction between us and them, verse nine. Why do we lay on them a yoke we cannot bear? Verse 10, we conclude we are saved by grace as they are, verse 11. And the silence there in verse 12 would say, Peter scored. Peter scored. Hard to answer that. So then Paul and Barnabas jump up and talk about signs and wonders. And then the brother of the Lord, James, steps forward in verse 13, and he offers scriptural proof. He's quoting here from Amos 9 and then quoting from Isaiah and saying that this is what was prophesied. The rebuilding of the tabernacle, the raising up of the temple, all of that, rebuild the tent of David, verse 16. James sees that in terms of the gospel mission. He sees that in the terms of the church. That's what we're talking about here. That's the fulfillment of those passages. And so we can't trouble the Gentiles, verse 19. In other words, stop demanding circumcision. And then if they really are Christians, if they really are saved without being circumcised, what do we do with them? How do we get along with them? I can't eat with an uncircumcised person. Well, there'll be some things that they need to do just to make relationships possible and for it not to be such a difficult issue for Jewish brethren. So verse 20 encapsulates some of those ideas. And the church then is going to write that down. We get verse 22. Hey, look, there's Silas. He becomes important in just a moment. And the church sets out these ideas as to what Gentiles need to do. We're going to ask them, verse 29, actually, the Holy Spirit is asking them to abstain from what's been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what's been strangled and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Working through that has provoked no end of discussion and debate. It seems like this is mostly about just social relationships. And the front part of that would fit in that box very neatly. I'm Jewish. I've never eaten anything that's not kosher prepared. I certainly have never eaten anything offered to an idol. That would be so offensive. I go to my Gentile brother, he's a Christian. I go over to his house and he serves me some meat that's been served, been sacrificed to Apollos, and he's serving me that meat, and I'm freaking out, and there's a rift and there's hard feelings. Don't do that. Don't serve stuff sacrificed to idols. Don't serve blood soup. Don't serve something that's been strangled, not kosher prepared. All of that fits in there very, very neatly. Blood and strangled seem to be two examples of the same thing. The problem is the last one: sexual immorality. That's not just a good idea. That's not just something that we do so that our Jewish brethren aren't offended. That's just wrong. And in fact, Paul will write about these matters in Romans and in 1 Corinthians and say that if you are strong in the faith and you understand that idols are nothing and it's not important, you can eat that meat. So, but Paul never writes and says sexual immorality is okay. That's never going to fly. Well, some have argued that all of that just references to abstaining from idolatry and all of its forms and practices. Gentiles, you need to stay away from idols. Don't get involved in that. You're new in the faith. Stay away from all of that. Others have thought that maybe this is about offending Jewish brethren. And the reason sexual immorality fits in there in a section of things that just don't do this, it's going to cause people to have hard feelings and get queasy, is because sexual immorality was not viewed as a moral issue by Gentiles. They didn't even think about it. It wasn't even a problem for them. You went to church, you went to see the temple prostitute. And what's what's the issue? Hey, that's going to be an issue. It's going to be an issue on several levels, but it's going to be an offensive issue to your Jewish brothers in Christ. Finally, then I should add this: Paul and Barnabas get in a serious tiff at the end of this. And the word here is sharp disagreement, and that is a very strong term. And we don't know who's right and who's wrong here. John Mark, spoiler alert, will come back later and Paul will be reconciled to him. So that's a very, very good thing. But it is a sharp disagreement, and that ends Barnabas here in the book of Acts. By the way, this is Peter's last appearance in the book of Acts. It's Paul, it's Paul 24:7 now from here on in. The reading for Thursday, Acts 15. It's Friday. It is Friday. Let me get a little coffee here. Let's see if we can work in Acts chapter 16. The reading for Friday is Acts the 16th chapter. Paul sets out on this missionary journey. He travels overland to these churches that he has been to before. This is a journey of hundreds of miles, maybe as many as 800 miles. Think about walking that far. And along the way, he picks up Timothy. Timothy will become extremely important to Paul. He calls him his dear son in 1 Corinthians 4 and verse 17, causing many to speculate that maybe Paul converted him, perhaps on that first preaching tour. Paul circumcises him so that Timothy can preach in the synagogue. Notice the sacrifices that Paul and Timothy are willing to make so that they can get a hearing for the gospel. Verse 5 then is that summary kind of statement that Luke likes to use, and that concludes this section. The churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily. That in section four, we are beginning a new panel of material, the Macedonian call. The gospel is leaving Asia. It is crossing into Europe. And it does so by the work of the Holy Spirit. 6 to 10 gives us some insight into the life of an apostle. I think sometimes we imagine that because Paul is divinely inspired, that he knows everything about everything all of the time, every step to take, what exactly to do, where to go, what to say. And it is clearly here in Acts 16, 6 to 10, it becomes very clear that that is not how it works. We tried to go here, the Spirit said no, we tried to go there, couldn't go there. Finally, we get a vision, which we conclude, verse 10. Don't let anybody tell you that thinking doesn't matter. We concluded that that meant we should go to Macedonia. So they sail across to Macedonia, and verse 10 says, We, we sought to go to Macedonia. That's the first of many we sections in the book of Acts, and it tells us that Luke is now traveling with Paul. And they come to Philippi. Philippi is an important city. It's a little Rome settled by a bunch of Roman army veterans. It's on the Ignatian way. It had been named for the father of Alexander the Great. There's a famous medical school here. Many have wondered if Luke is a native of Philippi because he is a physician. But apparently there's no synagogue here because you only need 10 men to have a synagogue. And when you don't have 10 men, what the Jewish women do is they meet in a place of open sky near water. And there, there we meet Lydia. Lydia is such an important person, the first convert in Europe. I hope very much, Dina, I hope very much this fall to travel to Greece and to be able to travel to Philippi. I hope maybe Lydia will be there. We can have a cup of coffee and talk about Acts chapter 16. But she becomes the first convert because she pays attention to what Paul said and the Lord opens her heart. Lydia has her heart opened by the gospel. Verse 14, the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul, and she is baptized. I think there's a divine element here. I think there's a human element here. I think the living word of God works on good and honest hearts, and the gospel opens her heart. So that all looks great. And what happens next? Verse 16, all kinds of problems occur because we have a woman who's a who is has the spirit. Wow. More coffee. She has a spirit of divination. Specifically, she has the spirit of the python. That's a serpent god who spoke at Delphi. And there were legends about Apollo fighting the python. And so the python gave him the ability to predict the future. Once again, we have the gospel meeting the occult, the gospel meeting magic. And this casting out of this demon looks exactly like what Jesus did in Luke chapter 8 with the Garusseen demoniac. She's screaming out, these men are the servants of the Most High God, verse 17. Hey, you don't want someone who is demon-possessed to be your front man advertising for you. Thanks, Paul says, I don't need that kind of PR. Finally, he gets exasperated and says, enough of this, and casts the demon out. As a result, they get beaten with rods. Verse 22. Paul says he was beaten like this three times, and that is probably that very Roman thing, the bundle of rods that the that various official attendants, magistrates, and so forth carried. It's a bundle of rods and there's an axe tied up in the middle of it. You can see that sometimes on coins, it's on the back of the Mercury dime, for example. Very common kind of image in government seals and so forth. And Paul could have said here, I'm a Roman citizen, don't do that. And we don't know why he didn't say that. Maybe there's a mob and he's trying to say it and he can't say it. But he gets thrown in jail. And what we get is a deliverance story like Acts 5 and Acts 12. And there's an earthquake, which is apparently quite common in Philippi, and the jailer thinks everybody's out of jail, which means I should just kill myself. That's the only honorable thing to do. And instead, just like Paul and Silas are saved by the earthquake, he is saved too. It gives him the opportunity to hear the gospel. And I am aware you probably are as well. Verse 31 is often used by people who want to evade the force of baptism. And here's a great question to ask somebody who's trying that. Why would Luke wait 16 chapters to tell us how to become a Christian? Maybe the controlling verse for that is Acts 2.38, not Acts 16.31, especially since verse 33, they were baptized in the same hour of the night. If baptism's not that big a deal, why'd they do it right then and there? Why'd they do it right then and there? And so this establishes the church in Philippi, a church that is very special to Paul, and that means so very much to him. We get a hilarious scene where the magistrates come and say, hey, get out of jail, get out of town, you're just troublemakers. And Paul says, We're not troublemakers, we're Roman citizens. And they come, verse 39, with their hat in their hand, and they have to apologize. So the gospel is not a bunch of renegades, not a bunch of lawbreakers. It's not being brought by people who are rogues and troublemakers. It's brought by Roman citizens who are law-abiding men who bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to Europe in Acts chapter 16. Our reading for Friday, Acts 16. That's the reading for the week. That's the podcast for the week. Thanks for listening. I really do love having the opportunity to study the Bible with you, talk about daily Bible reading, work the text, think about the sermon from Sunday. I got a really nice note this week from someone who said they don't like podcasts, but they got hooked on this podcast and they love it. It's helping them with their daily Bible reading and those kinds of things, those notes of encouragement, those comments that people make, that does mean an awful lot. You record all of this, and a team of people put it together for you and for me, and it goes out into the ether, and we wonder anybody out there? Is it helping anybody? And it's so encouraging when someone says, yes, yes, that's helping me. And I'm glad. It's helping me to read the Bible better. I hope it's helping you as well. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven. I want you to come to. I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

Thanks for listening to the Westside Church of Christ podcast, Monday Morning Coffee with Mark. For more information about Westside, you can connect with us through our website, just Christians.com, and our Facebook page. Our music is from Upbeat. Upbeat with two Ps, U P P E A T. Where creators can get three music. With a cup of copy of next month.