Monday Morning Coffee Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:05

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 of each other and better work the applications into our daily lives. Mark, we'll just look forward into this week's reading so that we can know what to expect and watch for. And he may have some extra bonus clouds from time to time. So grab a cup of coffee as 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 21st through the 27th. It's Monday, June the 22nd. I'm Mark and I do have some great coffee here. It seems like despite my efforts to keep that on the down low, people have discovered that I do like coffee. And the result of that is that very nice brothers and sisters in Christ have brought me coffee when they are traveling. Today in the cup is some wonderful Colombian. I really like a good, strong coffee. And this is a wonderful coffee came from Panama. And I appreciate, oh, just appreciate that so very much. It's making my day go so much better. Nothing like starting the day with a great cup of coffee and your Bible open, thinking a little bit about the sermon from yesterday, and just getting the week started right by focusing on spiritual things. Let's do that. Let's talk about that sermon yesterday. Let's talk about the gospel of Matthew. You know what to do. Grab your Bible, grab your coffee. Let's grow together. Yesterday's

Sermon Notes

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sermon was for fathers. It was for dads as we thought about Father's Day and celebrate them in every way that we can. Such an important role, such an important part, both of the family and in many ways, even of the church. Talked about true beauty when it was Mother's Day, so it was appropriate to talk about true manliness, true manhood on Father's Day. And I'll just give you a bonus thought here. Maybe you were wondering as you listened to that sermon, whether you were there yesterday or maybe you've listened to it online. Hey, how come Mark didn't read 1 Corinthians 16, 13? Because 1 Corinthians 16, 13 says, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. That seems like the best possible verse for a Father's Day sermon. But actually, that verse doesn't speak specifically to one gender. That passage applies to both men and women, all disciples in Corinth and to all disciples today. So what exactly does 1 Corinthians 16, 13 mean when it would apply to everyone in Corinth and it applies to all of us today as well? I think Paul here has two main ideas that are at the core of true manhood, but in reality, all disciples will need. They're not unique just to men. First and foremost, I think he is talking about courage to be like Joshua and to be brave to do what is right. Everybody, men and women, needs to have courage. See the book of Esther. And then probably he's just talking about growing up and being an adult. That's one of Paul's favorite themes, put away childish things. Let's act like adults. And Paul covers all of that by saying, be a man. And so that would certainly reinforce what? Yes, courage and maturity, acting like an adult are two key pieces to authentic manhood, because Paul goes to that to get those ideas for everybody. I hope that helps you. And I hope that sermon was of value to you as you pursue authentic manhood or help a young man, a boy, maybe your spouse, to pursue authentic manhood.

Monday: Matthew 14

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It is Monday, and our reading today is Matthew the 14th chapter. We've seen a lot of hostility toward Jesus, particularly in chapter 12. He and the Pharisees are just into it constantly. They're not happy with anything that Jesus is doing. He's told some parables now in chapter 13. We read that on Friday. Some parables to illustrate people who don't want to receive the word and aren't going to receive the word as a result, they'll be gathered up like the tares and burned. Don't forget, I preached on the parable of the tares last week in the 90, no, in the 1040. So if you have questions about that coming out of Friday's reading, go and listen to that sermon. And then there's just this rejection at the end of chapter 13, 53 to 58. That sets us in this context. People are not accepting Jesus. Where will that kind of hostility lead? Well, some of that, some of that leads or is tied to the death of John the Baptist. We're getting the idea here that the messengers of God are being rejected. And so it is at this time, 14.1, that Herod the Tetarch heard about the fame of Jesus, and he said, This is John the Baptist, verse 2, raised from the dead. Well, at that time is pretty hard to pin down. Antipas is the Herod that is being talked about here, and we know that he's the son of Herod the Great. That's the Herod that killed the babies in Bethlehem, and he ruled Galilee and Perea from 4 BC to 39 A.D., ended up getting in all kinds of trouble and got banished. And he does seem to have liked trouble because he he stole another man's wife, which is the detail given to us in verse 3, and that John the Baptist had preached against that in verse 4. The story behind that is that Herod's first wife was the daughter of an Arabian king whose land adjoined Perea in the south. He got rid of her, he divorced her. Whoa, can't be doing that. That's politically explosive. And he married his half-brother Philip's wife, Herodias. Now, that's not the Philip that's mentioned as Philip the Tetrarch in Luke 3, verse 1. And so he marries Herodias and her daughter, Salome, verse 6. And we know her name from Josephus because Josephus actually records this event in his history. You can read the annals of Josephus online for free. The copyright is long past expired. And so she dances, and the next thing you know, Herod is making a terrible mistake, and Herodias, shall Herodias, she exploits that, and John the Baptist is murdered. And I think you can't go through this without saying something here about the power of seductive dance. And that ought to be a real caution to Christians today that we don't want to be a part of that. Don't want to be in you don't want to be any place where that's going on. That causes people to do foolish, stupid, and sinful things. And then it's just fair to say men can be captivated by a pretty woman. And that sounds like the kind of thing you're not supposed to say on a podcast about the Bible, but the Bible is saying that this young lady dances in a seductive fashion, and the next thing you know, Herod Antipas is just totally taken over by this, and as I said, is doing stupid, dumb, and sinful things. So need to think a lot about that, particularly in the internet age when you can see Salome on your phone with just a few taps. This moves on then, the reading moves on to the feeding of the 5,000 in 13 to 21. And we ought to ask ourselves here why Matthew is recording this. It is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels. And I do think each gospel has a little different emphasis. John, for example, uses it as he sets up the bread of life sermon, but Matthew doesn't have the bread of life sermon. So what's this doing here? And there's probably a couple of good answers to that. One is there's a real focus on the compassion of Jesus. Jesus is very compassionate. He cares about people. And then there is a focus on the miracle of creation that Jesus can make bread. And that ought to contrast or get our attention because Jesus refused to make bread in Matthew chapter 4. He wouldn't do that for himself. And there may be, and this would certainly fit with Matthew's purposes, there may be a messianic sign here because the Jews believed that in the Messianic age there would they would see the return of bread from heaven, like as in God's gift of manna. And so there may be some things here where Jesus is trying to do something that would cause people to begin to piece it together and say he is the Messiah. It is interesting to me, always interesting to me, to read what liberal scholars will say who are trying to get out of the Bible being literally true. And of course, that means there can't be any supernatural, miraculous kinds of events. One scholar said that Jesus gave everyone a pinch of his meal, kind of like the Lord's Supper. Well, I just know that filled them up. How many times have you gone to church and Sunday morning you didn't even have breakfast? You said, hey, I'm just, I get that pinch of the Lord's Supper, get that little bit of wafer and a little bit of grape. You said, fill me up. I don't want to overeat here before I go to church. That's outrageous. That's outrageous and foolish. That's the kind of thing that people say who are determined not to believe. The miracle then is finished in the account in Matthew with Jesus walking on the water. And once again, we need to be asking, why is Matthew telling us this? Especially because 28 to 32 is only in Matthew's gospel. Matthew is the only one that tells us Peter got out of the boat. And once again, I'll I'll just give you a little tongue-in-cheek note, everybody needs a smile on a Monday morning. What about what about allegorizing this and saying that the boat is the church? That that was a common kind of thing. It's a period of time when people tried to make everything in the Bible have some kind of symbolic meaning. Well, if the boat is the church, why'd Peter get out? That kind of thing just fails. We don't want to do that. We want to look at this miracle and see what they got out of it. And I think that's verse 33. Truly, you are the Son of God. That is the emphasis here in Matthew. That's where Matthew is going with this. And this miracle is so powerful because before Jesus has calmed the storm, and now Jesus walks on the storm. He is the Son of God. The reading for Monday, Matthew 14.

Tuesday: Matthew 15

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Welcome to Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday. And our reading today is Matthew chapter 15. The reading for Tuesday is the 15th chapter of Matthew. Now there won't be a Zoom call tonight, Westsiders, because I'm in Houston. I'm with the Southside Church in Pasadena doing their lectures. Wonderful, wonderful lectures. They are streaming those online. And if you're in the Houston area, would love for you to come and say hello. Just always good to meet people who listen to the podcast. That's a great church, and there's four speakers this week. I'm very privileged to be one of those. Let's get started on our daily Bible reading. It's Matthew 15, as I said, and we're going to talk about traditions here. And there is a lot that could be said about all of that. The key thing to remember here is that the Pharisees are seen as the most religious people in the land. They are very well respected. Look down at verse 12. The disciples are a little put off that Jesus was so tough on them. And we should also remember the Pharisees did not set out to be wicked. Nobody is having a backroom meeting and some smoky backroom. Hey, what can we do to be the most wicked people around? That's not it at all. They're trying to be super righteous and cross every T and dot every I. And the result of that super careful approach to Scripture has led them to develop a whole bunch of rules. And by the time of Jesus, those rules are being bound on par with and equal with the law of Moses. In fact, some some teaching existed that Moses received two sets of laws. He received the written law and he also received the oral law, and that those rules were the oral law. So they take this very, very seriously. Jesus says, This is crazy. Your entire approach to God is all off because you're concerned about hand washing. And I'll just give you a note, there's a whole, there's a whole book written about hand washing. And it reads sort of like this if a man poured water over the one hand with a single rinsing, his hand is clean. But if over both hands with a single rinsing, Rabbi Mir declares them unclean unless he pours over them a quarter cup more. Washings then, it goes on to say it had to be done with the fingers up, so uncleanness would flow off of the wrist, and then it had to be repeated with the fingers pointing down. And there's even more there's even more than all of that. Goodness, I need some coffee just to just to have get through that. It's just outrageous that all these teeny tiny rules are being bound as if God gave those rules. We need to be so careful with traditions. Traditions are the way we do things. For example, meeting on Sunday morning. That is a long-standing tradition. And usually behind traditions is some functionality. Why do we meet on Sunday morning? It just works. That's a great time to meet. I guess we could meet at 10:30 at night on Sunday, but that would be difficult on people. But we just have to be very careful with our own traditions. And I'm not speaking, of course, here of apostolic tradition. I'm speaking of our own customs and ways of doing. Because especially if it's motivated by, I want to do what's right, I want to be extra careful, extra scrupulous, we can end up binding our own traditions as if they come from God and not from us. And that's happened here with the Corbin thing, verse five. The Corbin laws allowed you to say you had given this money to the temple. And so I can't, I can't give, I can't take care of you, mom and dad, because these finances are sacred and it's going to go to the temple when I die, so I can't use that for your care. And Jesus says, this finding of a loophole, you're just like the people in Isaiah's time. You're preserving the spirit of those wicked people during the time of Isaiah. And what Jesus is saying is that God's word, not human tradition, is the basis for our worship and our activity before the Lord. And then I do think he wants to say some things here about inner purity and that that needs to come before external ceremony. External ceremony is of no value if there is not inner purity. And that's where Jesus goes, beginning in verse 10, as he talks about how important the heart is, and that works down through about verse 20. Look at verse 16. Jesus is a little shocked that they can't get it. And last week in the nine, I talked about what to do when we don't get Jesus. And one of the points that I made there is sometimes we don't get Jesus because Jesus wants us to think. He wants us to think deeply. And that is something we're not real keen on. And as a result, we can miss Jesus just like the disciples did here. Think about it, boys. Try to catch up, try to pay attention. Then we get some very Canaanite stuff. And in this pass in Matthew, I have really been impressed. I'm always saying Matthew's the most Jewish gospel. I'm probably going to quit saying that after reading Matthew this time with you, because Matthew has so much about Gentiles. And here's this Canaanite woman, and she comes and she needs a healing for her daughter here. Jesus is very much in Canaanite country. Verse 21, Tyre and Sidon is Canaanite country. He would not be as well known here. And notice verse 22. She's called a Canaanite woman. Nobody's using that term anymore. There aren't any Canaanites in Jesus' day. That's an Old Testament term. You can't talk about Canaanites. Well, Matthew uses that term so that the Jewish audience will get exactly what's going on here. And this is hard for us. Verse 28 is very emotional. She, she, um, Jesus, it's the O here, where Jesus says, O woman, great is your faith. That's very strong. And that's a tough story, like I said, because this doesn't seem like Jesus very much. But we should remember that we cannot see Jesus' face and we cannot hear his tone. He is testing this woman, and she passes with flying collars. The chapter ends then with Jesus feeding the 4,000. And this is not the same as the feeding of the 5,000. And this may be Gentile country. This may be Jesus feeding Gentiles. And Jesus will reference this feeding again in tomorrow's reading. But the reading today for Tuesday is Matthew 15. Remember, no Zoom call tonight. I'm out of town, but work on it. Work on this text. Think about this text. Pray about this text. Work through those questions on the back of the daily Bible reading schedule. We'll resume Zoom next week. The reading for Tuesday, Matthew 15.

Wednesday: Matthew 16

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It is Wednesday. It is Wednesday, and today our reading is Matthew 16. The 16th chapter of Matthew is the reading for Wednesday. I would remind everyone that our VBS still goes on on Wednesday nights for our kids. Come to Westside tonight for VBS Wednesday night as we continue to develop the theme of obedience and help kids to think about that biblically. And of course, our summer series continues as we bring in guest speakers to talk about if I had one last sermon to preach, what would I say? Before all of that happens this evening, of course, then we are reading Matthew 16. I guess that reflects the fact that I'm reading in the morning with a cup of coffee. Maybe you're reading at bedtime, but plug it in here as you need to. So the Pharisees come 16, 1 to 4, and ask for a sign. They can see the signs of the weather. I'm huge about the weather. I'm a big weather geek and think that's really important. And they can get the weather, but they can't put two and two together and figure out what Jesus is saying and what Jesus means. In fact, verse 4: an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign. That's language that's used in Deuteronomy of people who refuse to do what's right and follow after the Lord. And Mark's gospel tells us that Jesus sighed right there. He's just worn out with this endless controversy. So he warns the disciples in 5 to 12 about the yeast of the Pharisees. And this is, I should tell you, the last time that Jesus withdraws before heading to Jerusalem. And it seems yeast here is hypocrisy and especially the attitude that demands a sign to compel faith. And we still get that today. We have people who want God to do something miraculous, and then I will believe. When you are demanding a sign, then you should know that you are not doing what God wants you to do. That's just where that is. Don't try to compel God to give you a sign. And that then leads to this wonderful confession, 13 to 20, that Peter makes. And this is made in Caesarea Philippi. It's Caesarea Philippi to make sure that we don't confuse that with Caesarea Meritima, which is on the coast. This was built by Herod Philip the Tetrarch at the base of Mount Hermon. It's in a beautiful part of northern Israel. There was a temple there that's carved into the side of the Mount, an idol temple there. And so Jesus may be talking about some rocks because this is a place where rock carving had been done. And Jesus begins the conversation by asking, Who do people say that I am? And all the answers reflect that people see Jesus as a spokesman for God. But that's not sufficient. That's not nearly enough. And then Peter jumps in there and says, You're the Christ, you're the Messiah, you're the anointed one of God. And then Jesus says, Peter, that was great. Blessed are you. Flesh and blood is not revealed this to you, my father who's in heaven. What Jesus means there is that's just a common Jewish expression to refer to God-given revelation. You didn't figure that out on your own. That's not something that you would have you would not have come to that decision on your own. That's something that God had to reveal to you. And of course, it's been revealed in the teachings, the words, and the miracles that Jesus has done. And then the controversial part of the text. On this rock, you're Peter. On this rock, I will build my church. Now, let's work with this in a couple of important directions. We want to make sure that we have clarity here. First and foremost, nothing in this text is ever going to prove that Peter is the first pope. We can't let, however, Roman Catholicism and their mistakes with this text drive us to some extreme position where we aren't getting everything the text says because we're afraid that's going to let the Roman Catholics in the door. Nothing in this text, nothing in the New Testament will make Peter the first pope. And nothing that I'm saying here today makes Peter the first pope. He's not the first pope. But unfortunately, about 90% of what is written by brethren on this text is designed to make sure everybody knows Peter's not the first pope. Do we all know he's not the first pope? But Jesus does say he's building something on Peter. And a very common thing to say is that we're building on Peter's confession. And sometimes people try to make a play off of some Greek terminology here that Peter means little stone, and then there's a turn that means big stone, and on and on and on. And that's actually entirely mistaken. In fact, Jesus is speaking Aramaic here, which would be the common language of the day. And in Aramaic it would be you are capa, and on this capa. So that's there's no word play being made there off. Of the Greek in any fashion at all. What I would like to say about this text, and this causes uh some people a whole lot of tummy upset, but what I would say is I think it means exactly what it says that Peter is this rock, and I'm gonna build my church on you, Peter. And what Jesus means by that is the church will be built on people who make this confession. Peter is the type of the disciple. Peter stands for the disciple. He is the rock in the sense that he is the first to identify fully and completely that Jesus is the Messiah. And that's the foundation the church is built on. People who acknowledge Jesus as Christ. So I think Jesus looks at Peter and says, You got it. And it's people like you, Peter, that the church will be constructed on. I think Peter is representative of the disciple upon which Christ will build his church. And I don't think that makes Peter special. And do I need to say it again? It doesn't make him the Pope. It just means that we want to, in at least in this sense, be like Peter. We want to make that confession. He figured it out. We want to figure it out. We want to make that confession as well. And really, there's so much controversy about all this, it obscures where Matthew's really going with all of this, because there Jesus talks about the church. And that term is the term that's used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to refer to Israel. It's not really a religious term. Sometimes you'll hear ekklesia means the called out, and it gets a bunch of religious freight stacked on top of it. And well, not in the New Testament world, it's not. It's not a New Testament, it's not a religious word at all at that time, but it does carry the connotations of Israel if you are familiar with the Old Testament. And then Jesus says, I'm giving you authority, and I think he's talking here to all the apostles, verse 19, that you'll have authority to preach and teach the gospel. And preaching and teaching the gospel is what's going to determine who is in the kingdom and who is not in the kingdom. That's where that lands. But the real point of all of this is that Matthew wants to show us that as soon as Jesus reveals who he is or endorses and condones what Peter just said about him, the next thing Jesus does is say. Verse 21, from that time Jesus began to show his disciples, he'd be killed. And then he would rise again. And they don't get that at all. They don't have a clue what he means by that. Now, they certainly get the business of being killed. And the fact that Peter rebukes him shows that he understood that completely. Hey, you're the Messiah. The Messiah won't be killed. The Messiah is going to lead a revolution and it's going to be great, and there'll be a crown and a throne and it's going to be amazing. You're certainly not getting killed. And then Jesus says, Get behind me, Satan. And we remember from chapter 4, verse 10, that Satan promised Jesus all the kings of the world without the cross. Just bow down and worship. And Jesus says, You're talking like the devil. You are talking like the devil. And then look at Jesus stacked more on top of that. Verse 24. Everybody needs to die. Verse 24, taking up your cross. In that world, you see somebody carrying a cross, they're not going on a picnic. Everybody in Jesus' world knows that man is going to die, and he's going to die awfully. So if you want to be in the kingdom, if you want to follow me, you have to acknowledge me as the Messiah and you have to die. Like I will die, you have to die. Verse 26, what will prophet a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his own soul? What shall a man give in return for his soul? Spoiler alert, you will hear Matthew 16, 26 on Sunday, a huge, huge important verse as we think about what heaven means for us today. The reading for Wednesday, Matthew chapter 16.

Thursday: Matthew 17

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Welcome to Thursday. Welcome to Thursday. Matthew 17 is our reading today. Let's get right to it. Matthew the 17th chapter begins with the transfiguration. This is one of my favorite events in the life of Jesus. And notice verse one, it is tied very tightly to the things Jesus has just been saying about if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up a cross, because I am going to the cross. Matthew does not have a lot of time connectors. So when he does, we need to pay attention to that. Matthew is showing here that this all fits together. Jesus being the Messiah, Jesus being the Son of Man, Jesus being the Son of God, hear ye him. All of this goes together with the cross and resurrection. Now, there are things here that you will ask. I'm asking that we cannot answer, like where is Andrew? And we do not know the answer to that question. And we don't want to let, we don't want to let that distract us from what Matthew is showing us. Only Matthew, for example, really emphasizes the brightness of the cloud and the brightness of his face and clothes. And I think, I think there's a Moses theme going on there. Moses, of course, when he would talk with God, his face shone. And Moses now appears, Moses and Elijah, verse 3. And now what you have is you have three prophets together. Jesus is a prophet. He's the ultimate prophet. And both Matthew, I'm sorry, both Moses and Elijah had strange or unusual deaths, or non-deaths, as the case may be in Elijah, both received the word on the mountain. Jesus has preached on the mountain. There's just a lot of parallels, what's going on here. And maybe, maybe most importantly, both Moses and Elijah had an angel of the Lord experience on the mountain. And I think those angel of the Lord experiences, sometimes it's very difficult in the Old Testament to be certain, are you dealing with an angel like Gabriel or Michael, or are you dealing with a manifestation of God himself? And it seems like if you go look at some of those things, Moses and Elijah may have seen Jesus in his pre-incarnate glory. And they were comforted by that. And now they come and see Jesus in all of his glory. He appears glorious, verse two, and they are comforting Jesus. How about that? And of course, Peter opens his mouth. Peter, I sympathize with him an awful lot. And he says, hey, why don't we just camp out here and just stay? And the point here is this is my beloved son. Listen to him. Listen to him what? Listen to him when he says he's going to Jerusalem to die and rise again. Pay attention to Jesus. Listen to Jesus even when he speaks of his demise, even when he's talking about doing something you don't think the Messiah would be doing. And so then we get this business about Elijah. And verse 9, this is the last time that Jesus will tell the disciples to be quiet. They need to keep the story quiet. The crowds do not understand about the Messiah. The disciples don't understand about the Messiah. What would they do if they are told about this transfiguration? And so Jesus says, listen, John's mission was successful. Elijah has been here. But if John didn't get treated any better, then what do you think will happen to the Messiah? He's trying to set them up to understand. And they are starting to understand verse 13. But when Jesus gets to the bottom of the hill, the bottom of the mountain, not certain exactly where this is. Could be Mount Hermon, maybe not too high, very cold at the top, but Mount Tabor, maybe. It's uncertain exactly where the transfiguration occurs. But when Jesus gets to the bottom, there's a demon-possessed boy. And some have tried to make this into epilepsy. Don't do that. It's a demon, verse 18. And Jesus is unhappy at the lack of faith. And this has caused a lot of people to miss the point of where Jesus is. Verse 20, because of your little faith. I tell you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you would say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. That passage gets wrenched out of its context and just misused miserably. Removing mountains was proverbial in Jesus' day for overcoming great difficulties. It's a cliche. It's an idiom. Like when we say, I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse. I don't want Dina to fry me up some horse. That would, oh, I can't even believe I said that. It's an idiom. It's a proverbial expression. And what Jesus is talking about here is that you need genuine faith. And if you have genuine faith, it's not going to be measured. You don't need a pickup truck's worth of it. You just need the kind of strong faith that draws on God, strong faith that trusts in God. It's not a measurable commodity. You can't get on Amazon and buy three pounds of faith. I don't have enough faith. I need to have some delivered to my door. That's not how that works. You just need to have quality, not quantity. And then what's Jesus doing, 22-23? More predictions of what will happen when he arrives in Jerusalem. And then there is this unusual story, 24 to 27. Matthew's the only one who has this story where Jesus is trying to say that he is exempt from the temple tax, but he is being a good example. So he pays the temple tax and he pays it by Peter going and catching a fish who has the temple tax in his mouth. By the way, those of you who are into fishing, this is the only place in the New Testament where a fish is hooked, not committed. How about that? Matthew 17, that is the reading for Thursday. It's been a great week here at Southside, and I'm coming home. Tomorrow we'll be in the 18th chapter of Matthew. Today, Matthew 17.

Friday: Matthew 18

SPEAKER_01 31:55

It is Friday. It is Friday. Let's read Matthew the 18th chapter together. Matthew 18 is our reading for Friday. This begins with some wonderful discussion of children. And it is Mark's gospel that tells us the disciples were disputing along the way. And that maybe helps us get the framework that Jesus is trying to develop here. Because Jesus calls a child and says you need to become like a child. Now, uh what happens in this text, verse three, is that kids get used as models of everything from purity to innocence, just all kinds of stuff. A lot of which isn't even true. Kids aren't always perfect little angels. But I think Jesus here is just speaking of a lack of concern for social status. Kids will play with anybody. They are not class conscious. They they don't discriminate based on skin color. You watch a bunch of kids in a room and and and they'll just all mingle together and start playing, and maybe in a minute not sharing like they ought to, but they'll play with just anybody, whether you came from high society, whether you come from money, whether your parents have an education and all kinds of degrees, doesn't matter to kids. And I think Jesus is trying to develop the idea here that the disciples need to be more like that, not so concerned about their status in the kingdom, who will be first. And the parable of lost sheep works with that. This is right out of Luke, but but this isn't told for the same reason. In Luke, it's about how great it is that the good shepherd goes to seek the 99. Here the idea is that people wouldn't do this. They don't care that much about that sheep. It's the idea of despising here. And that's verse 10. And maybe people despise children or despise people who don't have social status. So then Jesus develops that we need to care and show compassion and try to restore one who is in sin. Regrettably, this teaching beginning in verse 15 has been terribly misused. Sometimes if there is a false teacher and he's preaching and teaching and advocating something that is outside of the scripture, if you take that on in the pulpit or maybe in writing, writing a social media post or writing in your journal, I have a digital journal pressing on, and we sometimes have to write about these kinds of things to warn people about false teaching that's going on. Someone will surely say, Oh, did you talk to that brother first? And they make Matthew 18, 15 some kind of regulation where if there's a false teacher, you have to have some kind of personal meeting with him before you can say anything about what he is teaching. And of course, that is completely outside of any kind of parameters in the New Testament. Can you even imagine Paul talks about Hymeneus and Alexander? Does that mean he had a personal meeting before he could say anything about the how terrible they were? Did he meet with the man in 1 Corinthians 5 who's involved in sexual sin before he wrote to the Corinthian church? That's never how that works because this is talking about something that's among local brethren. It's not talking about a false teacher who could harm brethren with his false teaching while we're trying to set up some kind of private meeting. Think about it. Here's a preacher who's very influential and he's teaching error. For example, maybe he's teaching the direct operation of the Holy Spirit in order to be saved. And so you try to set up a meeting with him to say, hey, that's not what the Bible teaches, and that's not how that works. But he just keeps saying, no, I won't meet with you, I won't meet with you. Well, then you're muzzled. You can't say anything. I'd love to warn brethren against this error. He has a lot of influence with a lot of people, but I can't say anything because he won't meet with me. That's outrageous and certainly not what Jesus is teaching here at all. That would give the power to just checkmate the gospel if a false teacher just isn't willing to meet with anybody. If someone is teaching error, that can harm many souls. And yes, we are interested in restoring that teacher, but we are also interested and we need to be concerned about him affecting other souls, deceiving them with his error. So if public teaching is going on, then it can be handled publicly because Matthew 18, 15 is talking about a personal offense between brothers. If I want to say something about the Pope in the pulpit, I don't have to take a call with the Pope first before I can have any discussion about his error. Then the rest of Matthew 18, I think the linkage here is still the willingness to forgive. And we get this parable of the unforgiving servant. And it's this is very, very clear kind of stuff. The servant may owe as much as a billion dollars, and the other servant owes him a couple of months' wages. That's not an inconsequential amount of money, but it is certainly not what he owes, and he needs to be ready to forgive. We forgive because we are commanded to forgive, and because we have also been forgiven so much. That concludes the podcast for the week. Thank you so very much for listening. As I say every week, it's a joy for me. Pour a cup of coffee, open the Bible, talk with you about the Word of God, talk about the sermon from Sunday. Preachers always want that sermon to keep working in our lives, not get left in the building on Sunday. So I love that part of the podcast an awful lot. Thanks for listening. Thanks for your kind comments. People oftentimes email me or message me or stop by. They're visiting at West Side or they see me in a gospel meeting and they say, hey, love listening to the podcast. It's helping me stay in the Word of God. That just means a lot to me. 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.

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