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Hello, and welcome to the Westside Church's special Monday Morning Coffee Podcast. On this podcast, our preacher, Mark Roberts, will help you get your week started right with a look back at yesterday's sermon so that we can think through each other and better work the applications into our daily lives. Mark will then look forward into this week's Bible reading so that we can know what to expect and watch for. And he may have some extra bonus thoughts from time to time. So grab a cup of coffee as we start the week together on Monday morning coffee with Mark.

Monday Morning Coffee With Mark Intro

Sermon Notes

Monday Galatians 1

Tuesday Galatians 2

Wednesday Galatians 3

Thursday Galatians 4

Friday Galatians 5

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Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for the week of May 17th through the 23rd. I'm Mark. I do have my Bible here. I have some wonderful notes from the book of Galatians. I'm thinking about yesterday's sermon, love to think about heaven. And I'm holding a brand new coffee cup. This is a camping cup that I'm going to use when I'm on the road. It's kind of cool. It's titanium, which means when you pour coffee in it, it really gets very, very warm in a really big hurry. But I, it's just a neat cup. You know, your cup can really help you get the day started in a great way. And I hope that you're having a great cup of tea or cup of coffee or even a cup of Mountain Dew. Oh, you know who I'm talking about. But whatever it is, grab your Bible, grab your coffee. Let's grow together. Yesterday I continued the preaching theme for the year, heaven bound. I hope you are getting half as much out of that as I'm getting out of it. It is wonderful to think deeply about our eternal home. Now, here's a passage as we are thinking about continuity and will myself continue? Where will I be when I die? And will I still be me? Here's a passage that I didn't get to use yesterday. Romans chapter 8, verses 29 and 30 says, For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom he justified, he also glorified. So when we think about who we are, a lot of what we think of is tied to things that change with time. Our bodies, our memories, our roles that we play. But what we need to see from this text is that God is changing us, but he is changing what won't ever go away or be erased. Our essence, our soul, our very identity in Christ. What God is preserving is not the temporary packaging of life, but the person that he is ceaselessly working to make more into the image of his son. Now, where am I going with all of that? What that means is that heaven is not the loss of everything familiar about you, it's the removal of everything that is distorted about you. So in heaven, you're not less you than you are now. In heaven, you are more you than you have ever been, more stable, more whole, more consistent, more fully alive than anything ever experienced here. Salvation really is God moving us forward toward that final completed version of who we really are, which means God is not rubbing out who you are, He is restoring who you are meant to be. So when we talk about heaven, we're not talking about becoming someone else. We're talking about finally becoming without struggle and sin and all that goes with that. We're talking about becoming exactly who God intended for us to be all along. And that means the best version of you is not the best version of your life now. Sorry, Joel Osteen, it's not now. No, the best version of you is not in this world, it's still ahead of you in Christ Jesus in eternity. Hope that helps you to continue to think about heaven and how we are heaven bound. Let's open our Bibles to Galatians and do some daily Bible reading. This is quite a book of the Bible. Galatians is the place where we read of Paul's fight with false teachers, we learn what the Old Testament is good for, and we even learn how to avoid being controlled by evil. This book has a giant impact on our Christianity. It is the book that secures the gospel for Gentiles. It's very tempting to just dive in and start it, but I think if we are helped, if we understand why Paul wrote it and who he is attacking and what is happening in Galatians. So let's think a minute about the background to this wonderful, wonderful epistle. Mostly when we're talking about the gen talking about the Galatians, we're talking about Gentiles. Galatians 4.8, Galatians 5, verses 2 and 3. These folks are Gentiles, and they are probably the folks in the southern part of the province of Galatia, where Paul went and established churches on the first missionary journey. There is an argument that it is the northern part of the province that is really under consideration here, that has some effects and some ripples across the book, especially the time that it is written. But I think probably the southern theory makes the most sense. It's where Paul went, it's the churches that he had established. That means this is one of the earliest letters in the New Testament, maybe 5051, somewhere around in there, maybe even earlier than that. I'm going to argue that this is pre-Ac 15, the Council in Jerusalem. So this is a very early book of the Bible along with early book of the New Testament, along with the Thessalonian letters. And Paul has come here, there's been great success with the gospel, but then some tension has arisen now. Do you have to be a full-fledged circumcised Jew to be a Christian? Paul preached liberty in Christ. But now, as we read in the letter to the Galatians, some people have arrived from Jerusalem. They claim they are from James, the brother of the Lord, and they bring a different gospel. Paul calls them false brethren. And those false brethren are saying that Paul's not a real apostle. He didn't communicate the true gospel. He didn't tell you everything. He trimmed the message to fit the hearer. He left out circumcision, living according to the law of Moses. And as a result of that, this gospel that Paul preaches is going to lead to a lot of loose living. The other end of that, of course, is there's some division. It's not just tension. It seems like there's some division happening in these churches. And Paul needs to address that as well. I should say something here about legalism. We use that today, or we hear that term used today to reference somebody who is very picky sometimes about every kind of detail, or often it's used to say you're trying to earn your salvation. That's been a very popular thing to say through the years about Judaism. They were trying to earn their salvation with their works. And there may be some of that. And I think Paul hints at that in some places. I'm thinking about Romans chapter 9, but mostly as we work with Paul and we follow Paul's line of thought here in Galatians and we see what these false teachers are saying, it's important to remember that Jews weren't trying to earn their salvation. They believed they were saved because they were Jewish. It's about participating in the covenant, being the covenant people of God. How do you get in that relationship with God? And the Jewish answer to that is you need to be circumcised. You need to keep the law of Moses. That makes you a person of the covenant. And Paul, he's really not talking about earning salvation, but he's talking about whether salvation is found in Judaism or whether whether there's a whole new thing happening here that Judaism gave rise to or blossomed into, grew into. And that's Christianity, an entirely different way of doing business with God, of being in covenant relationship with God. And part of that is Gentiles are allowed to do that. They are allowed to be in covenant relationship with God without being circumcised. So let's get into the letter here. First five verses, there's a salutation. What we notice here is that right away the tone is very defensive and uptight. Paul starts with his apostolic designation instead of saying, I'm a slave of Christ, and there is no thanksgiving. In all of Paul's letters, he will say something in here about I give thanks to you, I'm praying for you all the time. I'm so thankful for this. Nope. Not in this letter. Paul's not thankful. Paul gets right down to business. Verse 6, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ. You're turning to a different gospel. Now, what is the gospel? Get a little of that coffee working here. What is the gospel? Well, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul defines the gospel, at least the facts of the gospel, in terms of the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Jesus the Christ. I'm not certain that anybody here is tampering with the core facts of the gospel, the life of Christ, his death, burial, resurrection. That's not what's happening here. So we need to think about how the gospel is not just the message preached, but it also includes responding to the gospel. And that is what's under fire. That's what's being tampered with here. If you're going to respond to the gospel, you need to do that in circumcision. You need to do that by keeping the law of Moses by being a good Jew. That's how you're in covenant relationship with God. And so Paul then develops some autobiographical material beginning in verse 11. And a lot of that seems to be answering these Judaizing teachers, these false teachers who are saying he's not a real apostle. You do get a sense here, like verse 13. You want to compare resumes. Hey, I'll drop my resume on the table. I got a resume. You want to see a resume that really parallels some of the stuff that we'll read later in Paul's life out of Philippians the third chapter. And the point here for Paul is that he didn't do anything to become a Christian, to be in line to be a Christian. He didn't inherit this. He didn't see this as a way to advance his career. No, no, no. This has just cost Paul everything. He didn't get his gospel from anyone in Jerusalem. And so he's explaining who he is and what he is theologically. It's not the result of where he grew up. It's not the result of being in a certain family. No, Paul got his gospel from Jesus. I wasn't checked out by Jerusalem. I didn't get my gospel there. I have the authentic gospel that comes from Jesus. That is where Paul is in Galatians chapter 1. The reading for Monday, Galatians 1. It's Tuesday. It is Tuesday, and the reading is Galatians chapter 2. The reading for Tuesday is Galatians chapter 2. The first 10 verses here, not that complicated. We see pretty clearly that no one is adding to Paul's gospel and that he had been received, and the right hand of fellowship had been given to him. Everything is good. So Paul is clearly saying to these false teachers, you guys don't know what you're talking about. I'm preaching the true gospel. Everybody knows what I'm preaching, and everybody signed off on it. I didn't need anybody to sign off on it, but it's all good. The real question in these first 10 verses is which visit is this? After 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem, verse 1, with Barnabas taking Titus along with me. When, where, how? Verse 1, after 14 years of what, and which visit is this? If you go to the book of Acts, Paul makes a number of visits to Jerusalem that could fit this particular section, chapter 2, verses 1 to 10 in Galatians. The two best candidates are the visit in Acts 11, carrying famine relief funds, and then of course the visit in Acts 15, the famous Jerusalem Conference. I don't want you to write this in your Bible, especially don't write this in ink, but it seems to me the best fit is that Galatians 2 fits Acts chapter 11. This seems to be a very private meeting, not a public meeting. Acts 15 is a very public debate. And if it's after Acts 15, why doesn't Paul just say, We worked this out, we talked about this, you got a letter from us, we sent this. Why is he going through all this trouble to deal with all of this when Acts 15 emphatically solved it? Furthermore, it's hard when you get down to verse 11 to find Peter falling into this sin after he speaks so clearly and so boldly in Acts 15 for Gentile freedom from the law. So I'm going to place this in the Acts 11 bucket, but there's plenty of discussion about that, and you may decide otherwise. What's most important, verse 3, I went to their home turf. They didn't make Titus be circumcised. Verse 6, they did not add to my gospel. So then he talks about Peter's hypocrisy, and unfortunately Barnabas is caught up in this as well. Be mindful here of how important food and eating together is to Jewish people, how important eating is in the first century. In fact, it's not just the first century. Remember Daniel in Daniel 1, he won't eat that food. What you eat, where you eat, who you eat with can mean a lot in that culture. And Peter gets caught up in all kinds of problems here. Remember when he goes to Cornelius in Acts chapter 10, he says, it's not lawful for me to even come into Gentiles' house. Well, he's fallen back from that, and that just shows us the power of peer pressure, and that just because we know what's right doesn't mean we always do what's right. Paul then begins to develop his primary argument, and that is faith and law. And that begins in about verse 15, and here he's talking about how you become a covenant person, a person in the covenant with God. How can I be justified, verse 16? That's the first time that Paul uses that term. He uses it heavily in the book of Romans, which he will write much later. But Galatians is kind of many Romans in so many ways. Well, uh, great use of the word many, M-I-N-I, many Romans, and many, a whole lot, M-A-N-Y, there. Justified just means pronounce righteous, not guilty, forgiven. How can we be justified? Well, it's not by being a good law-keeping Jew. That's not going to work. And Paul will go on to say that you can't get it all right, and so you need forgiveness. Where is that coming from? And how are you getting that? And that real forgiveness in Jesus Christ is far better. Notice that he says, verse 17, if our endeavor is to be justified in Christ, we're found to be sinners. And that may hint at the real issue here. If Jews decide that Gentiles, yeah, okay, okay, okay. Gentiles can come in, they can be part of the people of God, and they don't have to be circumcised, Jews lose their status. They lose their status. We want to be better than them. How can we be better than them if they don't have to do anything to get in the club? If they don't have to learn the secret handshake. Well, we're not going to put up with that, Paul. They'd better learn that secret handshake. Paul says, no, that's not it. What we need to do is use the law for the right reasons. Verse 19, the law taught me sin. The law killed me. That led me to live in Jesus. So I learned that I deserve to die. And I'm so glad that Christ died for me. And so now I no longer live. Christ lives in me. Sometimes we will say after somebody's had surgery, he's a different man after that surgery. That's it. Paul no longer controls his life. Paul is no longer in charge of Paul. He is following Jesus. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith, the way of faith. That's the way to be in covenant relationship with God, the way of faith, not the way of circumcision and the law of Moses. It's time to be Christians, and everyone, Jew and Gentile, can be a Christian. The reading for Tuesday is Galatians chapter 2. Great chance for us to talk a lot more about that tonight in the Zoom call, Westsiders. That'll be really, really good to get the chance to visit, to think through some of this, and to talk about this. So we'll be in the Zoom call tonight at 7. See you then, West Siders. See everybody else tomorrow as we journey further in Galatians, the reading for Tuesday, Galatians 2. It's hump day. It is Wednesday, and the reading for Wednesday is Galatians, the third chapter. This is a technical chapter. It is a detailed chapter. You may need to read it slowly and carefully to work through everything that Paul is doing. Because Paul knows someone will say, All right, Paul, you say we don't need the law, circumcision, all of that. Can you prove that from the Bible? This is Paul's scriptural defense of the gospel. And part of this is the people who are teaching circumcision don't seem to understand the full implications of that, but Paul wants them to see the full implications of that. And so he sets out a series of logical arguments. That may be, that may be the trouble that we have with Galatians 3 and 4. We don't reason this way, we don't think this way. Lots of important issues now are just decided by sound blurbs. And who looks pretty, who looks handsome, who can make an effective commercial. That's not that's not something Paul has to worry about in his day. He doesn't have to worry about whether he can blow dry his hair and get makeup on before the TV lights come on. So let's get started. Galatians 3, verse 1. Oh, foolish Galatians, really strong start. Really strong tough language. Foolish Galatians, that's not the term moros from which we get our term moron, one who is mentally mentally lacking. No, it's a different word that means a person who's thinking, who can think, but just isn't doing a lot of thinking. And so Paul makes the argument here in the first five verses about the spirit. Did you receive the spirit from the law or from the preaching of the gospel? And I think that's tied very much to the gift of the Spirit. Acts 2.38, very much the preaching of the gospel. That's part of that. I think Acts chapter 19, Paul meets those disciples and he immediately has questions about them when they say they don't know about the Spirit. Knowing about the Spirit, receiving the Spirit is part of being a Christian. Then Paul runs out verses 6 to 14, the example of Abraham, and he's working here the question: what kind of person will God accept? And a huge part of this is knowing the timeline of Abraham, because Abraham was made right with God by faith, by trusting in God before the covenant of circumcision. Abraham was righteous before he was circumcised. So Paul can say righteousness comes by faith. And if you decide you want to go the law way, the circumcision way, that's how you're going to be a covenant person. You're going to be in the covenant with God, then you're going to have to do all the things, verse 10, that are written in the law. You'll have to keep all of that, which Paul, of course, knows no one can really do. And so he's working the sign of the covenant. Abraham, hey, Abraham was right with God, but he was circumcised. No, no, no. He was right with God before he was circumcised. Verse 11, the righteous shall live by faith. And so Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. Get a wonderful discussion here about cursed is everyone who's hanged on a tree. Here we get the idea that Jesus has taken the curse upon himself. The law was a curse. It pointed out our sin, but it was not a help to us. And so we need Jesus. We need Jesus. The law is a great way to regulate life under the covenant, but it was never meant to be the basis of the covenant. And we really need to focus on that. We really need to focus on that. Yes, there are rules. There's laws in the new covenant of Christ. There are things that we need to do, there are things that we must not do because we are disciples. But rule keeping, law keeping is not the basis of our relationship. I think about my relationship with Dina. There are some things that I would like for her to do, there's some things that she wants me to do. But I'm never walking in the door and saying, you didn't cook supper, I'm out of here. Our relationship is terminated. Our relationship is not based on doing, keeping certain rules and regulations. It's based on the covenant that we have made. And I should point out, since I'm talking about Christ being re uh redeeming us from the curse of the law, Paul doesn't back away from that. He doesn't say, No, no, Jesus wasn't cursed. He was cursed for us. And that leads then to this closing section in chapter three, where Paul starts talking about the blessing of Abraham as an inheritance meant for the seed. The seed or the offspring referring to one. And what's happened here is the Jews have taken that promise of Genesis chapter 12 and said, that's us. That's us. But actually, Paul says, not so much. Not so much. That is the promise that Jesus will come and be the blessing. Not that Israel will be a blessing to all people, the Jews will be a blessing to all people. Jesus is the blessing to all people. And as he's making that argument, you'll see that he starts to transition to talk about inheriting. Inheriting. Starting in about verse 15, Paul has changed his line of argumentation. I like how he's just throwing different arguments up here instead of banging his head against the wall, trying the same thing over and over again. And it's verse 16 where he starts saying, let's read the will. Let's read the will. Who's in the will? Not Jews plural, but Jesus, the one and only seed. And so, verse 18, if the inheritance comes by law, it no longer comes by promise, but it was promised to Abraham. Wills are a promise. God gave it to Abraham, verse 18, by promise. So there's a little digression here on the purpose of the law. Well, okay, if we don't need the law, if that's not the basis of our covenant relationship with God, then what's even the point of having the law? In verses 19 to 25, Paul says some things about the power of the law and what the law did. It was added because of transgression. That may mean to restrain sin. Verse 20 is a really tough verse, lots of difficulty there. It may be a playoff God's oneness and the need for a mediator between two parties. But the law's not bad. Paul never says, verse 21 that the law is bad, but the purpose of the law, verse 22, was to make everybody accountable to help us see that we are sinners and we need forgiveness. And Paul then uses the famous illustration of the law being a tutor to bring us to Christ, verse 24. The ESV has guardian, and there's different schoolmaster, I think is how the King James has that. There's different words being translated there because we don't have a good word for that. It's a special slave that was in charge of conducting the young master to school so that on the way he didn't decide to run off and play hooky. The law brought us to Christ. Then Paul comes back to that idea of inheriting. For as many as you, verse 27, I'm sorry, verse 26, for in Christ Jesus you are all, all, Gentiles included, sons of God, through circumcision? No, through faith. And so there's neither Jew nor Greek. You've been baptized, verse 27. There's neither slave nor free, male nor female. So you are now, verse 29, heirs. And that is such an important verse because women couldn't inherit under Jewish law, and slaves couldn't inherit either. But through faith in Christ, we can be a son, we can be identified with Christ, we can be in God's family, and we can inherit if you are Christ, verse 29, you are Abraham's offspring, offspring. More coffee is the answer. Welcome to Thursday. Our reading today is Galatians chapter four. The reading for Thursday is the fourth chapter of Galatians. Please make certain that you have connected chapter four, verses one to probably down to verse seven at least, to the argument that was being made at the end of chapter three. The key here is being an heir, verse one. I mean that the heir, as long as he's a child, is no different from a slave. Think about that. A child doesn't look any different than any of the slaves that are running around the house. In fact, that schoolmaster, that special tutor, that slave that takes the boy to school, he could discipline the boy who would someday, in fact, own him. So Paul is talking about status here. Notice verse 3, we, that's the Jews here. And then he talks about the time of the pox romano, and that the Romans verse 4, the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so we might receive adoption as sons. This is the pox romana, a time when the world was at peace. There was great roads, there was a mailing system, you could travel, there was a common language, there are Jewish synagogues everywhere. It was the right time, the fullness of time, the best time. Jesus came at the right time. And so because you are sons, verse 6, see this inheritance idea. God has given us his spirit. And that means the acid test of being a Christian is can you call God father? Are you in the family of God? And it is the Spirit that guides us and leads us to that relationship with God as Father. So then you're no longer a slave. You're a son. You're a son, then you are an heir. There's that idea of inheritance. Now, before Paul mounts his last argument, he has a couple of asides here. There's some concern for the Galatians, verse 10. It seems like they're observing Jewish holidays here. And then he makes a very strong appeal, verses 12 to 20, based on his relationship with them and the fact that he got sick when he was there, verse 13. We don't know how Paul got sick, but that certainly has not stopped people from speculating. There's a lot of options put on the table: malaria, maybe an eye disease, maybe epilepsy. We're thinking verse 15. Is there something there with his eyes? Now Paul says, You cared for me, you love me, you helped me when I was sick. What has changed, verse 16? You have been converted by these legalists that just dog Paul's steps everywhere he goes. These opponents of Paul, they are zealous to get converts. They're trying to build their platform. They want people to praise them. Verses 17 and 18, he says, I brought you into this world, and now I'm having to do it all over again. It's like I'm having to reconvert you. The chapter closes then with the allegory of Sarah and Hager. This is a final appeal to the Galatians to rethink how you get to be a covenant person with the Lord. The allegories contained in verses 22 to 27 and the allegories applied in verses 28 to 31. This is, again, not a way that we discuss matters or that we set up reasoning and logical debates. But the points of contrast here is that Hager, who of course has the child Ishmael, and Hager's given to Abraham by Sarah. She's not bearing any children. She says, Take my handmaid. Maybe you can have a child with Ishmael. Abraham listens to the voice of his wife and does this. And so Hager is the slave woman. And Ishmael then is born naturally. Natural process, natural functions. He represents, Paul says, the old covenant. Now that must have wrinkled some Jews. What do you mean, Ishmael's an Arab? Nope. He represents the old covenant. He represents earthly Jerusalem and Judaism and being in slavery. Sarah, she is free. She's not a slave. And Isaac was a supernatural birth. And that represents the new covenant, heavenly Jerusalem, something that we'll hear more about, for example, in the book of Revelation. That represents Christianity and that represents freedom. Freedom. Freedom from the old covenant, freedom from circumcision, freedom from all of that. So as one writer said, on the most superficial level, Isaac and Ishmael were alike, in that they were both sons of Abraham. But on a more fundamental level, they were completely different. Christians then are children like Isaac with a supernatural birth and the right to inherit. That's what Paul is doing in Galatians chapter 4, our reading for Thursday, the fourth chapter of Galatians. It's Friday. It is Friday. That makes coffee taste extra good because we're headed into the weekend. All kinds of great things happening on Friday. Let's get into the Word of God. It's Galatians chapter 5 that we are reading now. Tons of theology in the first four chapters, lots of doctrine. Now Paul gets really, really practical about some things. And the question here is: if we are free from the law, does that mean we don't have to behave? Anytime you start talking about the way of grace and that our basis for our relationship with God is forgiveness. And that's how we're in the covenant. Someone will say, Oh my, you're minimizing sin. People are going to go crazy with sin. That's exactly what's happening in Galatians 5. Now, I preached on the fruit of the Spirit last Sunday in the 9 a.m. hour and talked a lot about how this is a church that's dividing. There's dissension, there's trouble, there's strife here. And the fruit of the spirit directly answers some of that. And Paul is working all of that to settle this church down. Let's get the false teachers out of there and let's be a united body of Christ. Because the liberty that Christians are called to is not a liberty that will lead to evil and sin. Some may say that, but that is just not right. It will lead to holiness before God because Christians are walking in the spirit. I think we need to get the contrast here to how we think as Americans of liberty. That means no restraint, absence of oppression. I can do whatever I want, no rules, just right. I can clear outside the lines. You hear that all the time. Paul doesn't know of anybody who's living outside the lines. Everybody is serving someone. Go read Romans chapter 6. What he's thinking about here is who's your Lord? Are you serving the law or are you serving Jesus the Christ? That's what this is about. And if you're trying the way of circumcision, verse 2, and they clearly are thinking about it, then you'll have to take everything that goes with that, the whole law. So some people are saying Paul didn't tell you the whole gospel. Hey, did these false teachers tell you everything that goes with being circumcised? You need to think about that because if you are involved in cutting circumcision, then you are cut off from Christ, verse 4. And yes, that verse absolutely proves that a Christian can fall from grace. In fact, the term to be estranged, fallen away, alienated is a term that means a relationship is nullified. And if you need a good laugh, just pull down any Calvinistic scholar, try to read their commentary in Galatians 5, 4, and watch them squirm when they try to explain how a Christian can't fall from grace, when Paul just said, You fell from grace if you accept circumcision. So then he really gets down to thinking about this false teacher or the false teachers that are there, verses 7 to 12. And verse 12, really tough language. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. It is literally to castrate yourself. And for Jews to be castrated meant you were cast out of the nation. You couldn't even go into the temple. For example, Leviticus talks about that. And so Paul is saying, hey, you want to cut? You're so big on cutting? Well, let's just get on with it. Let's just really cut. And it's strong language and it's designed to get people's attention, and it does get, I think, the Galatians' attention. That leads then to this closing section, 13 to 26, where he talks about how we live because we are Christians and that we're not under the law, but that doesn't mean we're going to go crazy with sin. Verse 16, I say, walk by the spirit, you'll not gratify the desires of the flesh. Paul then enumerates the desires of the flesh. They're called the works of the flesh in verses 19, 20, and 21. Notice how much is being said there about division. And then the answer to that is the fruit of the spirit. Walk in the spirit, you'll be a different person, and that will lead to a different kind of church. Notice the fruit of the spirit, I pointed this out in the nine on Sunday. Part of the fruit of the spirit is peace. And that's not individual and personal peace. That is the peace that comes when I'm living by the Spirit, and so I'm in harmony with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I'm not teaching false doctrine. I'm not binding man-made rules on others. Our reading for Friday, Galatians chapter 5. Well, there you go. That's the podcast for the week. And what a week in the book of Galatians. That's not an easy book in many ways, but it is well worth reading and considering as we make certain our relationship with Christ is based in the covenant that He won for us, and we trust in Him by faith, and we receive forgiveness. We are justified as we are in relationship with Him. Thanks so much for listening. I appreciate so many kind comments about the podcast. It's super helpful and super encouraging. I love doing it, and I love hearing from you that it's helping you in your walk with God. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven. I want you to come too. Look forward already to seeing you on Monday with yep, a good cup of coffee. See you on Monday.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

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 P's, U-P-P-P-E-A-T, where creators can get free music. Please share our podcast with others, and we look forward to seeing you again with a cup of coffee, of course, on next Monday.