SPEAKER_00 0:05

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

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for the week of June the 7th through the 13th. Today is Monday, June the 8th. I'm Mark, and I have my Bible open to the Gospel of Matthew so we can do some daily Bible reading. I've got a quick extra note from yesterday's sermon about being careful with Scripture, all of it rolled together to help us continue to walk closely with the Lord this week. You know what you need to do. Grab your Bible, grab your coffee. That's what I've got. So let's grow together.

Sermon Notes

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yesterday's lesson was designed to help us think about how to encourage someone who does not see the Bible the way we see the Bible, as the authoritative word of God. How do we deal with that? How do we cope with that when somebody says you're just making too much out of that, you guys are crazy, picky about things, what are we doing with that? I hope that lesson was helpful to you and you're thinking about the Bible and how we need to be careful with it, how we need to obey the Bible. That comes off our vacation Bible school theme for the year, and that just seemed like a very timely kind of thing for us to discuss. But more than anything, if you haven't listened to that sermon, go and listen to that sermon, or if you heard it yesterday. I hope it helped. This is really where I'm trying to go with all that. I hope it helped us all see that we really don't want to argue about the instrumental music issue or to debate women preachers. What we want to do is discuss the authority of Scripture, what the Bible authorizes us to do, how it does that. Because for so many people, the Bible is simply a collection of moral tales and good ideas, but they have never even considered taking it seriously as an authoritative guide. And so what we want to do, what we want to get people to think about, what we want people to see the consequences of is failing to take the Bible seriously the way it means for us to do. And the truth of the matter is, I agree with that Bishop Thunder person I quoted yesterday. You probably didn't expect to hear that on the podcast, did you? But if the Bible isn't God's word, then it's way past time to update it with some new ideas. But if it is, as it claims, to be God breathed words, then we dare not change them, and we must follow and obey them carefully. Keep thinking about that, and I hope you'll have an opportunity to help somebody else think about that today. Open your Bible now to the Gospel of Matthew, it's Matthew chapter 4.

Monday: Matthew 4

SPEAKER_01 3:51

This is Monday, June the 8th, and our reading is Matthew the fourth chapter. Matthew 4 is our reading today, and this comes into a couple of pieces here for us. First of all, the temptations of Jesus in verses 1 to 11. And then Jesus begins his ministry, verses 12 to 17, calls his first disciples, and there's a wonderful summation summary. Wow, what's the answer to that? Mm-hmm. More coffee. There's a wonderful summary statement then that sets up the Sermon on the Mount beginning in chapter 5. I've talked a lot about this temptation business recently in my Bible class on Wednesday nights in the Gospel of Matthew. Let's just work on this right quick here. First and foremost, please notice that this comes right out of the triumph of the baptism by John. And sometimes we need to think about that, that a moment of spiritual high, we're all excited, things are going really, really well, can be followed by a moment of great testing, something for us to be mindful of. And I do think this is a very private moment for Jesus. The only way Matthew and Luke know about this is if the Holy Spirit directly inspired them, certainly possible, or Jesus just flat told them. And it is significant that all of Jesus' quotations here come from one sermon in Deuteronomy, where Moses is expounding on the importance of obeying the law of God. So Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, verse 1, and he is hungry, verse 2. And I think we're getting a lot of parallels here to Israel and Moses in the wilderness, 40 days and 40 nights, all of these kinds of things. Moses fasts on the mountain with God for 40 days. There's lots of Moses-Israel parallelism going on here, and we'll talk more about that as these temptations unfold. The devil says, Hey, you're hungry. How about making some bread? And I think he is calling Jesus to doubt his sonship, verse 3, if you are the Son of God. There certainly seems to be a piece of that working there. And Jesus says, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that because man, verse 4, shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And sometimes that causes a little confusion, which is what the podcast is designed to clear up. Sometimes people say that just shows Jesus did not use his miraculous powers improperly to benefit himself. I certainly think that's the case, but I'm not sure that that's what's happening here. Others have argued that Jesus is saying there is more to life than satisfying one's physical desires, and I'm pretty on board of that too. But in the context here, the hunger of the wilderness, Moses says, was to teach Israel obedience and dependence upon God. And Jesus has been led into the wilderness by the Spirit. One scholar said, Jehovah gave them manna in order to show them that their continued existence did not depend on a gift of God to which they had grown accustomed, bread, but on God Himself, who had given manna when there was no bread. So the point of all of this is I depend upon God, and I'm doing God's will, and that is what I will do rather than take matters into my own hands. The second temptation then, the devil quotes scripture, verse 6, way out of context. Jesus says, I'm not jumping off the temple here because it's just wrong to test God. And I mentioned this in my Bible class, and I'll mention it again here. I preached a couple of months back a lesson about why doesn't God appear miraculously? Various times atheists have dared God. I'll believe in God, if he'll just show up right here, or if God will even strike me dead, that's got a lot of play in various debates that gets a good audience response. Woo, daring God to strike him dead, oh boy. And so then, of course, the atheist says God didn't appear, God didn't strike me dead, there is no God. And as I worked in that lesson, one of the things that I said is it's just inappropriate to test God. We just don't do that. You can't do that. You don't say to your husband, you know what? If if you'd buy me a new car, then I know you would love me. You don't say to your wife, hey, if you just you just get me that really expensive $18,000 set of bespoke shotguns, then I'll know you love me. There's so many things wrong with setting up a hoop and saying, jump through it and prove that you love me. And Jesus says, I am not doing that. The third temptation, then, I think this is probably the clearest of those temptations here. The temptation to cheat, to gain the crown without a cross. So at the baptism, at Jesus' baptism, God has announced Jesus as the suffering Messiah, and here is the chance to be the king. This is my beloved son. That's the whole idea here out of Psalm 2, the ruling king, without, without the problem of suffering, the business of being the suffering servant. And of course, Jesus utterly refuses that temptation. The chapter continues then by saying that it's time for Jesus to begin his public ministry. The Forerunner has done his work, verse 12. So Jesus begins. He's based out of Capernaum. There's some really good archaeological remains there, including a house that may well be Peter's house, and Jesus may have lived in that house during this time. Catch the emphasis, verse 15, on Galilee of the Gentiles. For such a Jewish gospel, a little coffee there, for such a Jewish gospel, Matthew loves to go out of his way and say Gentiles are included. And then we get the first disciples being called. And this is a very radical move. And I don't think I had appreciated this before, but there were students who would attach themselves to a rabbi or in Greece, for example, to a philosopher. I'm going to be your student. I want to follow Plato, I want to follow Socrates, I want to follow Rabbi Gamaliel. But the student chooses the teacher. And Jesus upends that as the teacher, yes, he chooses the students. And I do think there's something wonderful here about Jesus choosing some working people. Oh, more coffee here. And that what Jesus is saying is that regular people are going to be part of his work and part of his kingdom. And I love that very, very much. Then Jesus goes everywhere teaching the gospel of the kingdom, verse 23. And if you're interested in the gospel of the kingdom, stay tuned because that's what we'll be covering tomorrow as we begin the Sermon on the Mount. But the reading for Monday is Matthew chapter 4. Welcome to

Tuesday: Matthew 5

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Tuesday. It is Tuesday, and our reading today is Matthew chapter 5. We begin the greatest sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount. I must tell you, I'm more than a little intimidated to try to encapsulate the Sermon on the Mount in a podcast episode of about five to seven minutes. I'm not sure even how to begin here. I preached through the Sermon on the Mount, including spending a year on the Beatitudes, and I wrote a book on chapters five, six, and seven. So how to get all of that into a podcast episode is quite the challenge. Let's just start by thinking about where Jesus is. He went up on the mountain, chapter five, verse one. And I do think that Matthew is making a very clear attempt to show Jesus going up on the mountain like Moses went up on the mountain. So here's a new Moses, a new prophet. Remember, Moses is a prophet? Jesus is a prophet. He's prophet, priest, and king. We don't often think of Jesus in the prophetic kind of way, but a prophet is the spokesman, an inspired spokesman for God. He speaks the word of God. Jesus is the ultimate prophet. And what he will say here in this sermon, in a word, is different. Everything here in the kingdom will be different. This is the constitution of the kingdom. It is what it is like to be a Christian, to be in the kingdom of heaven. But it will be a very different kind of kingdom, and its citizens must live very differently. And that begins with these very different sayings, beatitudes. The beatitudes here are not something brand new. Jesus did not invent a beatitude. There are beatitudes, for example, in Psalm chapter 1, back in your Old Testament. But they are beatitudes, by the way, it's not the be attitude. These are attitudes that you should be. It comes from the Latin word beatific, which means, and I probably didn't say that right, that means blessed. And so let me say a word here about blessed. Blessed is a word that means God approves of your life. It is the deep feeling of joy that comes from knowing I am approved of God. And it certainly does not mean happiness in any sense that Americans think of happiness. And as we journey down through these, you'll see very quickly, this is not about some recipe for temporal kinds of happiness. In fact, there's discussion of being persecuted, verse 11. That's not happy making in the sense that we think of happiness, but there is joy that comes when we know we are living the way God wants us to live. And there is a Zoom call tonight, so we can talk more about this this evening. And we'll think more about maybe specific parts of the kingdom message here. But blessed are the poor in spirit. Very briefly, the poor in spirit person is the person who's utterly dependent upon God. Blessed are those who mourn. Well, there you go. Happy are the unhappy. No, this is mourning for sin. Blessed are the meek. Meekness is can is something very hard for the first century world. It was not considered in any way to be a virtue by Greeks and Romans. Meekness is seen as a weakness, but this is the one who is controlling himself because he's waiting on God. Waiting on God. Psalm 37, verse 11. Psalm 37, verse 34. It is the strength that we keep under control because we trust God to take care of things. We're waiting on the Lord. Then there is the idea of hungering and thirst for righteousness. This is not salvation nearly so much as personal righteousness. This is I want to do what is right. And then there is merciful. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Forgiveness and compassion come together here. Pure in heart is the idea of singleness of mind, sincerity, pursuing one thing. And then blessed are peacemakers. That's not people who are able to negotiate a successful into a war. This is those who help people make peace with God. And then don't retaliate. Don't retaliate, verse 11. Don't act that way in any way at all because God's going to take care of all of these things. There's discussion then about influence, and maybe verse 13 should surprise us because we would expect people who are living the Beatitudes to have very little influence, but Jesus says they'll have a ton of influence. People will look to them, and they ought to look to us and see the kingdom in us. Then the sermon really takes, really takes off here in verse 17 when Jesus begins to talk about his relationship to the Old Testament. And maybe some of these Sabbath controversies are erupting and people are saying you're here to destroy the law, and Jesus says that's absolutely not the case. And then then verse 20 really becomes the controlling text for so much of the rest of the sermon. For I tell you, verse 20, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you'll never end the kingdom of heaven. And of course, that must have caused people to just gasp. I mean, the Pharisees and the scribes are the most righteous people. They are super scrupulous. How can we possibly, Jesus, do better than them? And what Jesus will say is, when we engage the heart, when we have true religion, deeper religion, when we are concerned about our walk with God, not just how we appear to other people, we are engaged in real righteousness and we are doing better than the Pharisees did. And so then there are six sections here, all beginning with, You have heard, but I say, and Jesus is criticizing here much of what the rabbis are doing with the law and how they've made a farce out of it with all their ridiculous rules. And so it's okay to get angry and say certain words, but you can't go ahead and murder somebody as long as you don't do that. No, Jesus says, no, 21 to 26. That's not how this works. And then, of course, adultery, verses 27 to 30. Jesus moves from the sixth commandment to the seventh commandment. You can murder with words. Now we're talking about adultery in our hearts. And Jesus says very clearly, you need to do whatever it takes to get away from sin. And this is big language, obviously, pucking out eyes, hacking off arms. Jesus doesn't really mean that literally, but he means we need to do whatever it takes to conquer sin. And he is speaking here then 3132 about sexual immorality, and he's talking about physical sexual immorality here. And he's talking about this obsession with divorce, and I can do what I please and how I please, and it has no effect on my relationship with God, no effect on other people. No, Jesus says that's not how that works. That's not what truly serving God looks like. And then there are oaths, and the Pharisees had come up with all kinds of goofy rules. For example, you could swear by Jerusalem, and that wouldn't be binding, but if you swore toward Jerusalem, oh now, now you have to follow through. No. No. And there's a discussion here about personal injury and self-sacrifice. I should say something here about swearing. We should be careful about binding this. I know this gets taken into the courtroom, and a Christian isn't going to swear on the Bible that he'll tell the whole truth, nothing about the truth, et cetera, et cetera. Help me God. But God swears in the Bible, and a lot of people swear in the Bible. And I'm not certain that we should take this as an absolute prohibition of all swearing. Jesus is pointing more to trying to get out of our word, finding a loophole so that we can do what we want to do anyway, kind of that whole cross your fingers behind your back thing that we did on the playground when we were kids. That's not how kingdom citizens will act. Kingdom citizens don't have to swear, is the point Jesus is making here. Then there is discussion of vengeance in 38 to 42, and of course, we're never doing that. Not going to be involved in anything like that. And of course, once again, we need to be careful of the extremes. Some have turned these into all sorts of legal prescriptions, and yet there are times we should not give. We don't want to enable the lazy. I'm thinking about 2 Thessalonians chapter 3. But the other extreme would be to make this have no meaning at all. It is a radical teaching, and we are uncomfortable with it, and it does mean something, though, something about retaliation and about putting up with wrongs, and about always asserting our own rights. I would add this. I don't think 38 to 42 has anything to do with the war question. That's not where Jesus is. I don't think he has in mind the idea of can a disciple act as an agent of the state, or can a disciple be involved in personal self-defense? Those are important questions. It's just outside of what Jesus is addressing here. And then chapter 5 ends with 43 to 48, and here he discusses hatred and love and this important idea here of loving even those who are not lovable. And in verse 48, Jesus then sums up by saying the law all points to God, and we obey not because we love the law, but because we love God and we're trying to please God. The reading for Tuesday. See you tonight on Zoom, Westsiders. We didn't get to Zoom last week. The Vacation Bible School would be great to talk about Matthew 5 tonight. And so the reading for Tuesday. Matthew, the fifth chapter. It's

Wednesday: Matthew 6

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Wednesday. It is Wednesday, and our reading today is Matthew chapter 6, 6th chapter of Matthew. I will forego any kind of introductory comments about coffee, Tanzania, or anything like that, because there is so much to cover in Matthew the sixth chapter. Jesus turns his attention, beginning in chapter 6, verse 1, to the idea of a different kind of religious activity. Religious activity that is not designed to attract attention to me and make me look good in front of others, but instead serves the Lord. And so you get that in verses 1 to 4 with this idea of giving. And then there is the Lord's Prayer. That's part of the section 5 to 15. I could talk a long, long time about the Lord's Prayer. Mostly what I would like to say here is I've used a sermon that I have on the Lord's Prayer. I really love this prayer a lot. And I've used that sermon a lot in a bunch of different venues, did some stuff with young people with it. I've done some stuff with it in gospel meetings. And it really resonates with people. And I think what comes to people's mind is we're not praying this prayer. And Jesus says, verse 9, pray then like this. And because of the misuse of that, where people chant it like it's a magic formula, because of maybe some wrong ideas that we've heard about the prayer, verse 10, your kingdom come. We don't pray this prayer, and it's a wonderful prayer. Most of us have this prayer memorized, it's thoroughly scriptural. Um, it's Jesus' prayer, and it just covers so much and points us in the right direction. So pray this prayer. Our Father in heaven, it begins with wonderful reverence and a close association with God as our Father. The Jews don't often speak of God, especially He's the Father of the nation, but not in a personal kind of way. That is not something that they think of or that is used heavily in the Old Testament. Hallowed be your name. The idea there is that God's name would be seen for what it is. The name stands for God, that God would be seen for who he is and what he is. Your kingdom come, your kingdom come. That's the reign and rule of God in men and women's hearts. And I grew up being told we can't pray this prayer because the kingdom has come in Acts chapter 2. And that is certainly true in a sense, but we still want the kingdom to keep coming. And when somebody submits to the will of God, then the kingdom has come into their life. When I submit to the will of God, the kingdom is coming in my life. You can absolutely pray Matthew 6, verse 10. Notice how your kingdom come is in parallel. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Those two things are held in parallel. One petition here for physical needs, daily bread, that really grounds us as to how much we have, and that we need just enough for today. Then it goes right back to spiritual concerns. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. It's all about sin. And lead us not into temptation. Yeah, I said I wasn't going to say anything about coffee, but clearly today needing some coffee. Lead us not into temptation, verse 13, but deliver us from evil. That has given some people the queasies a little bit in verse 13. What do we mean lead us not to temptation? Why would God do that? And you can get lost in a lot of discussion about all of that. But contextually, what we just read in chapter 4, verse 1, Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And so what this prayer is saying is, God, don't lead me into some into a situation where I'll be in over my head. Jesus did great. I don't know that I'm going to do as well. Protect me from the evil one. And there is verse there's a footnote in my Bible, in verse 13, that there is a doxology at the end, and some, of course, translations have this idea of, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And that doxology is absolutely not in the better manuscripts. It is beautiful, but it is not authentically from the mouth of Jesus. And again, sometimes people get very, very concerned when there's something edited out of the text that has appeared in the beloved King James Bible, for example. But remember, it's just as wrong to write stuff into the Bible as it is to cut stuff out of the Bible. And if that is not authentic, and it's not, then it doesn't belong in the text of Scripture. It's not bad to take it out of there. We ought to get it out of there. So how about that? Then Jesus begins to talk about how kingdom people live. 16, 17, 18 is more of that different, a different way of doing religion. And then in verse 19, the idea of the heart. Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy. Instead, lay up spiritual treasure, verse 20, because where your treasure is, verse 21, there your heart will be also. And as we're doing that, that'll change our focus. Worry is connected to materialism in verses 19 to 24 and being all caught up in our stuff and in our things. And 25 to 34, Jesus just works over wrong worry. Worry about things that are unimportant. Worry about things that we can't control. All of those things. Let that go. Let that go. You did not think else it would be making an appearance on the podcast today. Instead, trust in the Father. And verse 33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Let me conclude today's episode by giving you a wonderful quote from Paul Earnhardt. Brother Earnhardt was a fantastic preacher, great writer. He wrote a lot on the Sermon on the Mount, helped me tremendously when I'm when I was working on the Sermon on the Mount. There, Brother Earnhardt says from verse 33, since the kingdom in this passage has reference to the sovereign rule of God over his people, what we must seek is the submission of our wills to his. Amen and amen. The reading for Wednesday, Matthew 6.

Thursday: Matthew 7

SPEAKER_01 26:08

It's Thursday. It is Thursday, and today we read Matthew chapter 7 and conclude the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe the difficulty here is finding the common thread that weaves through all of this, and it seems maybe best to think of that in terms of relationships, how we relate to others, to relate to those who reject the gospel, to false teachers, even to our Father in prayer. So that begins with maybe the most famous verse in the Gospels, judge not that you be not judged. And I would certainly agree that, first of all, Jesus obviously is not urging us to suspend all judging, all use of our critical facilities in any way, always turn a blind eye and accept everything. Of course not. And I would also agree that Jesus is attacking the hypocritical judging that is often done, where we condemn others in what we ourselves are doing. But I think about this. I think Jesus is pushing for more than just that. Those are very standard answers that are said about this passage, but I think Jesus is talking about the highly critical spirit that always looks for faults and problems. The person who is nitpicking. Notice he says, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. The person who's always looking to find fault, always looking for something that they can complain and object to. That, I think, is in mind here, is in Jesus' mind in chapter 7, beginning in verse 1 down through verse 6. And then Jesus does talk about our attitude in prayer. And I think verse 11 is one of the most important passages on prayer because so much of our understanding about prayer is transformed by our understanding of God as Father, as Father. We should see God as good, as our Father who wants to give us what is good for us, who wants to answer our prayers, who wants to help us, just like a good earthly father does for his children. That's exactly the parallel that Jesus is making in verse 11. So many people think of prayer as I've got to just pound on the doors of heaven until finally God says, oh, whatever. I'll give it to you, I guess, and just make them go away. And that's an entirely mistaken view. That is certainly not how good fathers treat their children. Maybe some people think of God as owing them every luxury, everything that they ever ask for, that God's supposed to just ping that right up. And again, that's not that's not good fathering. That's certainly not what an earthly father would do for his children, spoil them. We should think of God as a good father who wants to answer our prayers with what is best for us and often gives us more than we even ask for. There is in verse 12 a so or a therefore, and that may look to the thoughts on prayer, saying that as God is good to all men, we need to be good to all men. Jesus talks then about false teachers, and this is so crucial, and yet so many people want to turn a blind eye when someone is teaching error, particularly if they are popular, particularly if in the past they have done a lot of good preaching and writing, for example, that has encouraged people, or maybe they're a really good speaker and they're funny and they're interesting. We they say something, they do something, and someone says, you know what, that that doesn't work. That's not really biblical. And instead of people being concerned about the teaching that's going on and how it's undermining people's faith in God and God's word and God's pattern of New Testament Christianity, all of a sudden somebody who dares to say, hey, hey, Jesus said something about false prophets and recognizing them by their fruits, verse 16. That looks like falseness over there. That's is falseness a word? Can you have falseness? I think you. Somebody says, hey, that's not true. That's not biblical. The person who dares to point that out gets viciously attacked. There are some brethren who are making shipwreck of the faith as fast as they possibly can, particularly as they want to move away from the New Testament truths about the work of the church, the worship of the church, and what the church should be. Want to pretend like Bible authority is not really a thing, and we shouldn't get that bent out of shape about that. And hey, everybody just kind of do your own thing out there. There's lots of teaching about grace that's very, very loose. And when someone says, wow, that sounds like John Calvin, then the people, oh, how can you say that? Well, I'll tell you how you say that. You recognize that verse 16 by their fruits. And then Jesus says some things about people who seem, verse 21, to be sincere, but they are not serving the Lord, and concludes with the wise man building his house upon the rock. Please notice in the wise man and the foolish man, you really can't tell much difference in those houses. Once they get up, get going. You can't see the foundation that's under a house. Where you tell the difference in the house is when the storm comes and their faith folds because it's not built on what? Built on the person who is wise is the person who hears these words of mine and does them. The conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount is that we need to be carefully listening to Jesus and obeying him. And people loved it. Verse 28 and 29, because Jesus teaches as one who has authority. The reading for Thursday is Matthew chapter 7.

Friday: Matthew 8

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Hey, oh, it's Friday. It is Friday. Matthew chapter 8 is our reading for today. Matthew the eighth chapter that begins with the cleansing of a leper, verses 1 to 4. Once again, Jesus really wants to keep that kind of on the down low, and I think that's because Jesus does not want to be known primarily as a wonder worker. Jesus wants to be known as a teacher. Then we have this wonderful story of the faith of the centurion, verses 5 to 13. Huge fan of this story. It focuses on authority. Verse 9, I'm a man under authority. Talked about that on Sunday. It's about authority. That's what that's the focus that we need to help people see in Scripture. And once again, we get that Gentile flavor here, working on the kingdom of heaven, and there'll be people in the kingdom of heaven, verses 11 and 12. This is the messianic banquet, spoken of in Isaiah 45, for example. They'll be invited when some people who think they will be invited not going to be invited. How about that? Then Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law, and Peter is married, 1 Corinthians 9, verse 5, and he lives in Capernaum, and there is a house right across from the synagogue. I showed pictures of this in my Bible class a couple of weeks ago. And there's a house right across from the first century synagogue in Capernaum. And the way this story tells, it's very bang-bang. Jesus' teaching, and then bang, Jesus in Peter's house. Maybe that's the house where Jesus lived during this time of ministry. Then there's discussion of the cost of following Jesus, 18 to 22. And this says a lot about the kind of disciple that Jesus wants, the kind of person he's looking for to follow him. I want to use the rest of my time in today's podcast episode to talk about the expression in verse 20, Son of Man. That's the first time it's used in the Gospel of Matthew. It is an expression that occurs 81 times in the Gospels, and most of those are in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus loves to refer to himself as the Son of Man. Outside the Gospels, it never refers to anybody but Jesus. Acts chapter 7, for example, Revelation chapter 1. And there's a couple of ways that you can see that and see how Jesus uses that and what he means by that. A lot of times he'll talk about the suffering and dying Son of Man. Sometimes it's almost a substitution for the word I, the pronoun I, the human Jesus. And sometimes Jesus will even use it as the apocalyptic son of man who comes at the end of the age. And we'll see that more in Matthew chapter 13, for example, as we come along a little bit later. Now, what's Jesus doing with that? Why does Jesus like to say, I'm the Son of Man? Well, some of that comes out of Daniel chapter 7, verses 12, 13, and 14. The Son of Man there is a messianic figure. However, there's a lot of intertestamental literature where the Son of Man, particularly in some stuff using Ezekiel as the narrator and driving force in that material, not inspired material, but here's this material being written. And in that material, Son of Man, Ezekiel is using that to mean me. It's just a pronoun me, and it's used that way in the book of Ezekiel, the inspired book of Ezekiel as well. And so there's discussion about what's Jesus doing with that. And I think the answer to that is I think it's another time where Jesus is being deliberately ambiguous. Jesus loves to do that. He loves to do that. Think about the parables. Think about the parables. There isn't anything in the parable of the sower, we're not to chapter 13, the famous parable chapter yet, but there isn't anything in the parable of the sower that's going to cause anybody to freak out or is going to get Jesus thrown in jail. But if you get to thinking about it, you start realizing there's a whole lot more to this than what I originally thought. There is some ambiguity there. You can take it as just a farming story, or you can see it as a whole lot more than that. So the title Son of Man could Conceal and Reveal, and it absolutely can carry the force of Daniel 7 without mistake. No ifs, ans, or buts about that. Jesus uses it in Matthew chapter 26 when he's on trial for his life in exactly that way and to make the point. I am the divine Messiah. But I think Jesus may have used it as well to keep those who were expecting a military messiah guessing. Just when they were sure that he would be this great leader of grand armies and political glory, then Jesus would say something about, I'm the son of man and I'm going to suffer, Matthew chapter 16, for example. And that would keep them a little off balance. Jesus can do that as he uses his teaching to filter the people who are genuinely interested in who he is and what it means, what it really means, not what they think it means, what it really means for him to be the Messiah. Son of man. Just keep your eye on that as Jesus continues to use that in the Gospel of Matthew. And with that, we bring the podcast to a close for the week. Thanks so much for listening. I hope the podcast is helping you in your daily Bible reading and as we try to implement and put into our lives the things we talk about on Sunday. It is my joy and my privilege to talk with you about the Gospel, particularly the Gospel of Matthew this week. What a tremendous place for us to be reading and studying. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven. I want you to come to see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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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, justChristians.com, and our Facebook page. Our music is from Upbeat.io. That's Upbeat with two Ps, U-P-P-P-E-A-T, where creators can get free music. Please share our podcast with others, and we look forward to seeing you again with a cup of coffee, of course, on next Monday.