Monday Mark 4

Tuesday Mark 5

Wednesday Mark 6

Thursday Mark 7

Friday Mark 8

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for Monday, April the 20th. I'm Mark. I'm home from a wonderful gospel meeting with the Ellisville Church in St. Louis. Came in last night. So I'm ready to start the week with you. Can't talk about any preaching yesterday because, uh, like I just said, I was preaching in Ellisville, not at Westside. So it is straight to the Gospel of Mark this morning. You know what to do. Grab your Bible, grab your coffee. Let's let's grow together. The reading for Monday is Mark the fourth chapter. We're reading Mark 4 today, and I need to emphasize here how famous Jesus is. He is super famous. Verse 1: a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it in the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. Jesus can hardly walk. There are so many people around him, so many people pressing on him, so many people asking him for something, wanting to be around him. So what Jesus does is deploy a powerful tool that is parables. And that's what we have in our reading today. We're going to read several parables. And what these parables do, as we'll see when Jesus explains the purpose of parables, is they sift the crowd. They help Jesus see who really is interested. They help the hearer as well, see who is interested in the kingdom and who's just there to see a celebrity, who's just there as a hanger on, or who's just there to try to get something out of Jesus. So that starts with the parable of the sower, pretty straightforward stuff. The key here is verses 10 to 20, where Jesus explains the parable of the sower, and the major emphasis here is on listening. Verse 9, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. Verse 12, they may hear but not understand. Look at verses 21 to 25. It's all about hearing. Verse 23, if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. What kind of hearer am I? Sometimes we ask the question, what kind of soil am I? And that's a good question to ask, but this is about hearing. Am I listening to the master? And so people come, verse 10. I love this verse and they say, hey, what was the deal with the parable? And I love that because it shows how Jesus wants people to understand. But the parable sifts the crowd. A bunch of people just go home. They don't ask, they're not really that interested. But these people are, and so Jesus explains the parable to them. If you ask Jesus, if you show genuine interest, Jesus will work with you. So Jesus says to you, verse 11, has been given the secret of the kingdom of God. But for those outside, everything is in parables, so they may indeed see but not perceive and hear and not understand. And of course, that kind of freaks people out. Hey, what's the deal? I thought Jesus was here to preach the gospel and get everybody on board. But Jesus says, the kingdom, the mysteries of the kingdom are a secret. Now, it's a secret if you don't ask Jesus to tell you the secret. But if you say, hey, Jesus, what's the secret? He will tell you the secret. So it's not much secret. You can get the secret if you want. The secret, of course, is that he's the king, he's bringing the kingdom, and that's what these parables are all about. But a lot of people don't ever get that because they do not ask. And so Jesus then explains the parable of the sower, and it discusses the reactions that people have to the word of God sown in their hearts. Long time ago, I was in high school and I heard D. Bowman, first time I ever heard D, and he preached the parable of the Sower. And I can still remember big chunks of that sermon. It was incredible. Brother Bowman was a phenomenal preacher, one of the best ever. And he brought this parable to life. I've never forgot that. And the whole point, Dee makes this point, Mark's making this point, Jesus is making this point, is I need to ask myself, where do I fit? What kind of hearer and follower of Jesus Christ am I? So that is followed then with a parable with about a lamp under a basket. And that may be kind of humorous. I mean, who would light a lamp? There's an open flame there, and then put a basket over it. Get the parable of the seed, verses 26 to 29. That's only in Mark's gospel. And that does tell us things happen in a way that we may not understand or completely see. Things grow. We don't even realize they're growing. And that does describe God's kingdom in a really wonderful way. And then that concludes with the mustard seed 30 to 34. And maybe what these last two parables say is that Jesus' teaching is working. The kingdom is coming. It doesn't look like what we think it's going to look like, and it may be happening slowly. Sometimes we want whiz-bang in a hurry. That's not how the kingdom grows. And we just need to trust the word of God. And of course, we need to keep asking ourselves, what kind of listener am I? Then the story of Jesus here, and this is a really terrible chapter division. You know, I will call it out when the break is bad. I read recently that the guy who divided the Bible into chapters was riding on a mule, and every time the mule stopped, he called that a chapter. So maybe we're bumping along here on a mule, and this is what we got here. The things, a couple of things to keep track of here. First and foremost, the Jews are just terrified of the sea. I mentioned this preaching in the book of Revelation in Revelation 4. The sea is calm there before the throne of God. The Jews do not like the sea. In the Bible, sea is bad. It's hostile, it's dark, monsters come out of it. You can see that in the Psalms and several places, Psalm 65, Psalm 89. The other key here, you only get this on the podcast, is Mark saw this. The account bears the marks, pun intended, of an eyewitness. Jesus is doing this, the precise notice of the time, the reference to other boats, everything here, the vivid detail. Mark saw this. And it all points, verse 41, to how the disciples need a whole lot more faith. And so Mark will build that faith and move forward, but they need to get a hold of this. Who is this who can control the wind and the sea? It's Jesus, the most powerful man ever. He's the Messiah, he's the Son of God, He's the King, and He's bringing the kingdom. The reading for Monday, Mark chapter 4. It's Tuesday. It is Tuesday. And tonight we do have Zoom Westsiders. We'll be really interested to talk with you about Mark chapter 5 in our Zoom Bible study this evening. That has gone extremely well. Great attendance, lots of interest, really good conversation, good questions, good discussion. And of course, we pray before we even begin with our Bible reading. So it's a time in prayer. It's just a wonderful hour. See you tonight on the Zoom call. Now, I mentioned yesterday that Mark 435 is a bad chapter division. Why is that? Because Mark chapter 4 is full of parables, and then you get this calming of the storm set on the end of that. And this goes with the material in chapter 5. What Mark is doing here is showing us some hard cases, situations that are beyond our ability to do anything about. And of course, the storm at sea fits that precisely and exactly. All of these cases show utter hopelessness until Jesus arrives with his awesome and incredible power. And so we get the storm in the sea, the calming of the storm. And now we have chapter five, our reading for what is today, Tuesday? Yes, yes, Tuesday. That's nothing but jet lag from the meeting in St. Louis. Can you have jet lag from flying home from St. Louis? That's a really good church. I enjoyed being with them. It's a third time I've been with them. There's really good people there. It was a great, great meeting. Let's get on to Mark chapter five. That's the reading for Tuesday. Mark chapter five. And we get the demoniac man here, the Garrison Demoniac. And this is a story that it is so easy to get lost in. Notice there's no mention made here of the disciples ever getting out of the boat, which is not surprising because there's a wild man on the beach. He is completely uncontrollable. And Mark makes sure that we see what a hard case this really is. And it, of course, is all about the work of demons. Now, we don't know everything that we'd like maybe to know about demons. One writer said, this account, more than any other in the gospels, indicates the function of demonic possession is to distort and destroy the image of God in man. I think that's probably right. That's what we see demons doing whenever Jesus encounters them, whenever the apostles encounter them. So Jesus heals this man, and a bunch of pigs end up going for a swim. And what happens whenever I teach this is people cannot stop talking about the pigs. They always want to know about the pigs, and there's somebody who had a pig, and they're crying, and it's wow, it's it's it's unbelievable. It's all about the pigs in so many people's minds. And this is a great time to look and learn how to read the Bible. We read the Bible to see what the main thing is, and the main thing here is not the pigs. The only reason the number of pigs is given to us is so that we realize how terrible this man's demon possession truly was. They have, he has many, many, many demons. Legion in a Roman army was 6,000 men. Here we've got all these pigs. This man is just in a terrible state, and Jesus absolutely exercises authority over them. Jesus is in charge. So don't let your worry about the pigs and what happened to the pigs. I guess I should say this about the pigs. The fact that they die clearly shows what the demons intended to do to that man. Why are we not more concerned about the man? These demons are horrible. They are horrible. They destroy and they kill and they mar and they twist and destroy the image of God in man, and Jesus is not stopped, bothered, or worried by that at all. Unfortunately, verse 18, the people from the town come and ask Jesus to leave, and he's out of there. I preached a couple of weeks ago on putting God on trial. And one of the points that I tried to make there is that God will not compel faith because that's not what God wants. And here's a great illustration of that. You ask Jesus to leave, Jesus will leave. The chapter then has two incredible healing stories. First, with Jarius, Jesus crosses back to the western shore of the lake where his ministry, most of the ministry that he's involved in, is taking place. This is very unexpected. Jarius is a ruler of the synagogue. That's the guy in charge of physical arrangements, the speaker, the books, getting things set up. And he can't be comfortable going to Jesus. There are people who would be very unhappy with him. Maybe he's going to lose his job, but when your daughter is sick like this, you're pulling out all the stops. And of course, along the way, we get this woman with this hemorrhage. And Mark, notice verse 30 points out, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him. There's Mark's theme. Power had gone out. And Jesus stops and reveals the whole matter. Why? Because when Jesus does a miracle, he wants that to build faith in him. He could have just kept going, not had to say anything. He wants people to know he did this so that they will have faith in him. Along the way, Jarius must have been beside himself. Can we go? Can we go? Can we go? She's better. Jesus, Jesus, please. My daughter is so, so sick. And of course, when they arrive, she's not sick. She's dead. As a dad of daughters, it's just it's rough. This is so hard. And Jesus takes the inner circle. Maybe that's all that would fit in this room. Jesus speaks in Aramaic, which Mark preserves so often, like Eloh, Eloi, Lama, Sabakhtani, that Jesus is saying on the cross. I covered that in QA last month. And that's Aramaic. That's the language of the common person. And Jesus raises her from the dead. Immediately, verse 42, she gets up. Immediately they're overcome with amazement. It's incredible what Jesus can do. Only Jesus can do this. I would remind you, this gospel is written to Romans probably. They knew power. They held power. They understood power. And Mark is saying to them, You want to see some power? Take a look at this. He calms the storm. He casts out legions of demons. He heals a woman. Nobody can heal. He raises the dead. Jesus. Unbelievable, awesome power. We need to believe in him. And I'll remind you one more time, we do have Zoom tonight. And I can't sign off today without saying, happy birthday to my beloved Dina. Happy birthday to you. It's a wonderful, wonderful day to celebrate you. And of course, what Dina wants to do the very most on her birthday is have a Zoom call. How about that? We'll see everybody on Zoom tonight. Happy birthday, sweetheart. And of course, the reading for Tuesday, Mark chapter 5. It's hump day. It is Wednesday. Climb on that camel and open your Bible to Mark the sixth chapter. Our reading today is Mark chapter 6. One of the things I love about the Bible is how honest it is. I think many times Bible critics don't make any attempt to understand or work with some of this. But when you read these first six verses where Jesus is rejected in his hometown, think about it. Who would make that up? Why would you make that up? If you're trying to put Jesus out there, you would say he came home and they threw a ticker tape parade and everybody said he's great and they just loved him. And that's not the case at all. One writer said the tragedy of the townspeople in Nazareth is that they asked the right questions with the wrong attitude. That is powerful. And notice here, the problem, verse five, is not Jesus. He did miracles. He did some miracles. The problem is their unbelief. Then Jesus sends out the 12 apostles, 7 to 13. This is an extension of Jesus' ministry. I think it says something about how popular he is. He can't get everywhere and do everything. And this is this is a limited commission sent to Jews. I think verse 11 is a big key. We're seeing rejection. Get ready for rejection. That's going to be a thing. Need to be prepared for that, need to know what to do when that happens. The chapter then includes the John the Baptist story, verses 14 to 29. This is a really sad story. There are a number of Herods here in the Bible, and this is Herod Antipas. He rules in Galilee from 4 BC to A.D. 39. Josephus mentions this marriage. He had seduced the wife of his half-brother Philip. And so Herod is overcome with guilt and he gets played. He absolutely gets played. This woman is some kind of wicked. She knows, verse 25, exactly what she wants, but asking it in front of everybody else puts pressure on him. And Mark does give some details here that no one else has, that no one else has given to us. Herodias is the real enemy, and that Herod had kept him some time from her. And Salome consulted with her mother, and that Herod sent a special executioner to behead John. It's a terribly sad episode. Really, really disappointed that this happens. And it just says something about people's hard hearts. And it says something about people getting locked up in a relationship, and they value that relationship so much, it just controls everything that they're doing, and they just can't see their way to the kingdom of God. And that I use the word can't there advisedly. They could if they wanted to, but that relationship becomes so important they don't want to. So we need to be careful about our relationships. Then Mark covers the feeding of the 5,000. This is the only miracle in all four Gospels. And I do think you get some of Jesus' compassion here in verse 34. And that concludes with Jesus walking on water. Wow, this is this is so powerful and so impressive. Verse 48, the fourth watch of the night, probably somewhere between three and six o'clock in the morning, according to the way that Roman soldiers tell time. It is interesting to me that the chapter begins, and Jesus isn't doing a lot of healing, and Jesus moves to a different place, and Jesus is doing a ton of healing. The people immediately, let's see, one, two, three, four, five. That's the fifth time the word immediately occurs in chapter six. Mark is the gospel of power. Mark is the gospel of things happening right now. And people come and Jesus is doing a lot of healing. These people don't have preconceived notions and prejudices against Jesus like we saw in his hometown. The reading for Wednesday, Mark chapter six. It's Thursday. It is Thursday. I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful week. We are in Mark 7. The reading for Thursday is Mark the seventh chapter. I will trust that most of my listeners are fairly familiar with the rebuke in the first 13 verses here. Pharisees have all kinds of crazy traditions, things that they have layered on top of the law of Moses. Verse 3 talks about that. The key here is to remember they hold these things equal with the law of Moses. To violate their traditions is to sin. Jesus has had all of that that he needs. And while in verse 6 he does not directly answer their question, he critiques their emphasis on man-made traditions and doing what the rabbis say and have developed over all of this time. And the quotation from Isaiah talks about this is vain. And verse 7, in vain do they worship me. Vain is the word for resultlessness, uselessness. Your worship is accomplishing nothing. Jesus calls out the Corbin practice, verse 11. That would be sort of like willing your assets to the temple. You don't have to give them up right then, and you don't have to use your assets to honor your parents and take care of them. You can continue to enjoy your lifestyle because you have given that to the temple. I can't use that to help you, mom and dad. And then when you die, the temple could come and get those assets. So it was a way of getting around all the things that God wants us to do, honoring our parents, for example. And Jesus says, that's just crazy. Your traditions, you create all kinds of loopholes, you add all kinds of stuff to the Word of God. That has to stop. From there, Jesus makes a huge emphasis on the value of the heart, and that's where everything starts. We need to start internally. Please get verse 19. Mark is noting to the Gentile audience that kosher restrictions will be abolished and that those are no longer in play. I think we do well here to understand that Jesus is making a strong break with the religious leaders. He will withdraw, verse 24, gets out of there. Maybe this true squad that keeps showing up and dogging his footsteps and they're always asking him questions and trying to trap him. Maybe that true squad's going to become a hit squad, and that's not the right time for that. It's not timed yet. So Jesus moves north, goes to Tyre here, meets this woman. This story doesn't get a lot of airplay because I think it's easy to misunderstand what's happening here. Maybe we should be mindful that Jesus is testing her, but we can't hear the tone of voice he's using. We can't see the twinkle in his eye. And then Jesus heals a deaf man, 31 to 37. Really important here. Verse 32, they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. That's a very rare word, but it is found in the Greek translation of the Old Testament in the book of Isaiah, in Isaiah 35, verses 5 and 6. The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. And the crowd connects that up, verse 37. He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. That's an allusion to Isaiah 35, 5 to 6, and they are seeing he is the prophesied Messiah. Mark is getting that in front of us and helping us think about that. Our reading for Thursday, Mark chapter 7. It's Friday. It is Friday. How about that? Mark chapter 8 is the reading for Friday. Today we are reading Mark chapter 8. I'm always amazed when liberal modernistic commentators scholars try to cut things out of the Bible. And it's very, very common if you're reading after those guys that they will say the feeding of the 4,000 is just duplicating the feeding of the 5,000. That, of course, is entirely wrong, and it presupposes that Mark is an idiot and is unable to tell, hey, I just wrote this story. These stories are very different in a number of different ways, but here is the kicker. This story is necessary for us to understand what goes on with the disciples beginning in verse 14 to 21, which is necessary to understand the healing of the blind man in verses 22 to 26. So Jesus feeds everybody, and then we get in the boat, and the next thing you know, the disciples completely miss it. Hey, Jesus is mad at us because we don't have any bread. Jesus says, Boys, boys, I make bread. That's never a problem. You need to pay attention. Do you not yet understand? Verse 21. Jesus pushes people. Jesus is pushing you, he's pushing. Me. Put two and two together. Arrive at faith. See who I am. Come to believe in me and follow me. And then we get the very unusual miracle in 22 to 26, where Jesus touches the man twice. And this is the only miracle that is done in stages. This miracle is only contained in Mark's gospel. Why does Jesus touch the man twice? And I believe there's a lot of conversation about that. And you work on that, you think about that. We can talk about that. But I think 22 to 26 is for the disciples' benefit. They haven't figured it out. There was two feedings, a 5,000 and a 4,000, and they still haven't figured it out. They need another touch. They need another touch of Jesus. Can they see? Which leads then, verse 27 to Caesarea Philippi in Peter's amazing confession. Just a great moment for Peter. We say a lot of hard things about Peter, but he gets it here. He can see, at least for a moment, verse 29. Who do you say that I am? Peter said, You are the Christ. And the gospel pivots right there. From now on, Mark will show us what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah, that he is the one who will die for the world. He's not leading a military revolution. And of course, there's a lot of discussion about that among the apostles. And Peter says, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're getting this wrong. He's speaking openly about this, verse 32. And Peter says, Hey, this is not what you're supposed to be doing. And Jesus says, that's the voice of the devil. That's the voice of the devil. A minute ago you had it exactly right. Now you've completely missed it. In the temptations of Christ, don't forget this, Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world without the cross. And Peter is just repeating what the devil tempted Jesus with. So then there's discussion of discipleship, 34 to 38. What does it mean to follow Jesus? What does it mean to be his disciple? It means to take up the cross. Please don't let somebody tell you that taking up the cross is the burdens of life. Oh, I have an invalid mother I have to take care of. It's just my cross that I have to bear. Oh, I'm a Dallas Cowboy fan. They haven't won anything in 30 years. It's my cross to bear. No, if those kinds of things are crosses to bear, then what that means is non-Christians are bearing a cross. Because non-Christians have sick family members. Non-Christians cheer for the Dallas Cowboys. Everybody's got troubles in their life. That's not it. The cross here is the distinctive trials and tribulations we go through because we are following Jesus. Because we're following Jesus. And Jesus says, it will be worth it all. It will be worth it all. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Let me just leave you with this thought. Most people sell their soul for a whole lot less than the whole world. I've known a lot of people who gave their soul to the devil, and I don't know anybody yet who in exchange got the whole world. It'd be a bad bargain, Jesus says. If you did get the whole world, how much more is it a bad trade when you get less than the whole world and the devil gets your soul? Our reading for Friday, Mark chapter 8. That's the podcast for the week. Thanks for listening. It is my privilege to have the opportunity to work through the Word of God with you. I hope it's helping you in your daily Bible reading. Hope it's helping you draw closer to the Lord. I'm at the bottom of this cup of coffee. But I'll see you on Monday with daily Bible reading, some notes about the sermon this Sunday, and a big cup of coffee, of course. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven. I want you to come too. See you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Thanks for listening to the Westside Church of Christ podcast, Monday Morning Coffee with Mark. For more information about Westside, you can connect with us through our website, just Christians.com, and our Facebook page. Our music is from Upbeat.io. That's Upbeat with two Ps, U-P-P-B-E-A-T, where creators can get free music. Please share our podcast with others, and we look forward to seeing you again with a cup of coffee, of course, on next Monday.