Welcome Monday Morning Coffee with Mark

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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 its others 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.

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Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for the week of August 23rd through the 29th. It's Monday, August the 24th, and I'm Mark holding a great cup of coffee. This is some Columbian. Really enjoying this good solid flavor. Columbian coffee is just a good cup of Joe, and I'm loving that. I've got my Bible open. I've got some notes from yesterday's sermon, the heaven-bound theme. Loving that. And then we are going to talk about Thessalonians and maybe some of those difficult verses in Thessalonians. How about all of that? That's what's in front of us. So it's time. Mm-hmm. It is time. Grab that cup of coffee. Grab your Bible. Let's grow together. Yesterday

Sermon Notes

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we talked about strangers and exiles, foreigners being heaven-bound out of Hebrews chapter 11. And Hebrews really spotlights that idea, uses Abraham, for example. I talked about that. He lived in tents because he understood something important, that he he was traveling. This world was not his home. But there's something in Hebrews 11 that I didn't get to cover, can't say everything. It's why you listen to the podcast, get extra content, extra ideas. Hebrews 11 and 9 says that Abraham lived in tents, but it's verse 10 says he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Tents and foundations. Those things do not go together. Nobody, nobody's pouring a concrete foundation under a tent. You put up a tent because you're not staying. You drive down some tent pegs, you spend the night, you pull them up in the morning, you roll that tent up, and you move on. And what Hebrews 11 is saying is that Abraham lived in something temporary because he was looking for something permanent. Now here's the challenge today. I wonder sometimes if we get that backward. Have we ever tried to pour a foundation under our tent? We just want everything here to last. We want our health to last, we want our possessions to last, we want our circumstances to be just like we like them. We want the people we love to always be here. We want security, we want stability, we want permanence, we want a foundation. But but we're living in a tent. And that is not to say that those things don't matter, they do. Abraham took care of his family, he did have possessions, big flocks, and he dug wells and he lived his life, but he never got confused. He never confused the tent for the city. Hebrews 11 tells us that we need to look for the city whose foundation and builder is God. Maybe that's something to think about on this Monday morning. Don't put a foundation under your tent. Enjoy the blessings that God gives us. Take care of what He's entrusted to us. Love the people around you, do your work, serve the Lord. But don't demand permanence from things that God never promised would be permanent. The tent is not supposed to last. The city will. And that's where we're going. We are heaven-bound.

Monday 1 Thessalonians 2

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The reading for Monday is 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. And it is quite clear as you read down through this chapter today that Paul and Silas are under fire. People are making false accusations against them. And this will sound an awful lot like 2 Corinthians, because the problem here is that people are trying to say Paul is just one of those traveling philosophers. These philosophers moved from place to place, they'd be brought in, and they were not nice. They were very harsh and very abusive. Their idea was that people's lives were corrupt and they were here to straighten everybody out. And as a big part of that, lots of times, they'd get money. They would pass the collection plate and get folks to support them while they were in town doing their teaching, spreading their philosophy. And so you'd get things like stoicism, cynicism. There's all these different philosophies that are circulating. And people are now saying Paul is one of those kind of guys. He comes here, he tears you out of your community. Used to be a good Jew, used to be a good pagan. Now you can't be part of that anymore. He got money, or he's going to get money from you. Now you mark it down. He's never coming back. He doesn't really care about you. Like I said, this sounds an awful lot like 2 Corinthians, because that's just a New Testament problem. That's a cultural problem that Paul will face all of his preaching life. And maybe to make that more relevant or to make that application, it reminds me, many of you will remember the televangelist scandals, Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart. These guys were very, very public, high-profile teachers and preachers. And then they were involved in every kind of ridiculous sin. Jim and Tammy Faye went to prison. And a lot of that was about money and getting money, extracting money out of their audience. And during all of that, maybe some of you remember it was it was almost embarrassing to take up a collection on Sunday. There'd be a lot of explanation to visitors. We're not just trying to get your money because the air had been poisoned by these false teachers and the way they acted. And that's what Paul's having to deal with here and all the controversy that goes with that. There was a lot of problems in Philippi, verse 2, the demon girl and the uproar with that, the Philippian jailer, they got beat, and that was a violation of Roman law, and there was all that conflict then. The rest of verse 2 in Thessalonica, things got pretty heated there. But Paul says, We've been approved by God and we've been entrusted with the gospel. And so we're not deceivers. God trusted us. You can trust us. In fact, you did trust us. And he begins to talk about how the preacher should behave. Look at verse 7. We were gentle among you. Preachers don't always bring a baseball bat to the pulpit, pounding everybody, and everybody's doing things wrong. Nobody's going to be saved. Everybody's a fake Christian. That's not how, that's not how gospel preachers act. This is, by the way, an allusion out of Isaiah 49 and verse 15. It's a rather unusual expression to be used, a nursing mother. And then in verse 11, Paul will say he's like a father with children. And all of this just underlines how dear these brethren are. Notice verse 8. We just love you and we care about you. We have a relationship with you. We're not misusing you. And then as Paul moves into verse 9 and the rest of this chapter, that the ethic of the day is that honest and good people work for a living. Everybody agreed on that. Greeks and Jews didn't agree on a lot of things, but good people work. And Paul says, Hey, I worked with my hands. I did that while I was there. And you know the kind of person that I am. And I know the kind of person that you are, the kind of people that you are, verse 13, because you receive the word of God as it is, the word of God. One of the big questions of life is what happens when the word of God is preached, when the word of God reaches your ears, when it reaches your heart? What happens next? Do you receive it as the word of God? And notice that the word works. The word works. It is the sword of the Spirit. It is the living word of God. Don't let someone sell you short on the power of the gospel, the power of the word of God, as if it needs something else to be effective. It's just dead words in some ways. No, it's the word of God that works in you when you believe in it. And Paul gives some stress there to being an imitator, as he did in chapter one and in verse six. And that's going to be difficult because there's a lot of persecution. I think about verse 16, the Jews certainly did. They limited and hindered the gospel in so many ways in the book of Acts. And Paul says something there. He says, wrath has come upon them at last. And what exactly does he mean by that? Some have tried to find a specific historical event. There was a massacre in the temple courts and the Passover of A.D. 49, or maybe the expulsion of the Jews from Rome. There was a lot of hubbub and all kinds of controversy, and the Caesar just kicked all the Jews out. Everybody just get out. That's covered in Acts chapter 18. I'm not certain that we need to look for something specific. I think Paul is just saying that those who oppose the gospel come under the wrath of God. And God will take care of that, and God will take care of that in his time. And so Paul says, I really want to come see you again. And he begins to talk about his plans for a second visit. Chapter division here is not really very good. Verse 17 really starts that next thought that goes, Oh wow, need a little coffee here. That next thought that really goes all the way through verse 13 of chapter 3. And the reality is, Paul wants to be in Macedonia. In fact, God called him to Macedonia. God wants him to be in Macedonia, but Satan, notice the work of the devil here. Satan hindered us, verse 18. And Paul doesn't say everything about how that happened, all the mechanics of that exactly. He's not spelling all that out in detail, but we need to be mindful. The devil is at work. Yes, God is at work, and God's will will be ultimately done. That is exactly right. But in the meantime, the devil's doing everything he can to stop that and foil that. And Paul is aware of that. We need to be aware of that as well. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. That's the reading for Monday.

Tuesday 1 Thessalonians 3

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Welcome to Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday. Our reading today is a short one. It's 1 Thessalonians 3. The reading for Tuesday is 1 Thessalonians, the third chapter. This is a very personal chapter for Paul and tells some of his travel plans and some of the woes that went with some of that. He was in Athens, chapter 3, verse 1, by himself. Apparently, Silas and Timothy are not there. He evidently sent them back. Acts chapter 17 covers some of this. And so then he sends Timothy, our brother, verse 2, and God's co-worker. What an exciting idea that is. You can be a fellow worker, a co-worker with God. How about that? And Timothy has come now, verse 6, and says, things are great. He reports that their faith is real and that they still care about Paul. They are not rejecting Paul. They're not writing him off as one of those horrible philosophers that just uses and abuses people. So all the loneliness, verse 7 of Athens, the abuse that went on in Thessalonica, it's all worth it now. So Paul calls for them, verse 8, to stand fast. That's a very common theme in Paul's writing. Very often he'll say, You need to just stand strong, stand fast. Galatians 5, 1, Philippians 1 27, 1 Corinthians 16, 13. And then he is praying, verse 10, that they, that he can get there again, that he can get back to the Thessalonians. And the natural question is, did that ever happen? And the answer to that is, yeah, yeah, maybe. Maybe, Acts chapter 20, verses 1 and 2, maybe he does get there. But really, verse 10 forms kind of the other bookend off of the prayer idea that begins in 1 2. Chapter 1, verse 2, we give thanks to God always for you. And so verse 10 is we pray most earnestly night and day. So that really all of that material hangs together. And I would like to come see you again, supply what is lacking, maybe some of the knowledge that they need. He was not there long enough to ground them as much as he would like to. And then the chapter ends with a little doxology. These kind of things kind of bring a close, and they allow Paul then to take a breath and to move into the other areas, to the other ideas that he wants to discuss. Watch how there's a theme of growing, verse 12. That's big for Paul, of course, at all times. 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, that's our reading for Wednesday. Westsiders, yes, we will zoom tonight. Get to talk about 1 Thessalonians chapter 3 at greater length. See you tonight on Zoom. See you if you're a Westsider. Everybody else, see you tomorrow on the podcast. 1 Thessalonians 3, that's the reading for Tuesday.

Wednesday 1 Thessalonians 4

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It's hump day. It is hump day. It's Wednesday. Today we're reading 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. And this follows the pattern that Paul will often use. I was about to say has used, but this is some of his earliest writing. So this is the pattern being established and then gets followed in other works. And that is that Paul will deal with some doctrinal matters and then in the latter half of a book get very specific and very practical. And so this is all about how to live as a Christian. And you think about the Thessalonicans and where they are and what their culture is like, they would need all of this material, particularly the stuff about sexual morality and what is right and what is wrong. And Paul puts great stress on this. This is your the will of God, your sanctification, verse 3, abstain from sexual immorality. Sexual standards were extremely lax in the Greek and Roman world. So for example, there's a quotation from the fourth century BC, so it's well before this time, but I think it illustrates people's thinking. And this quotation says, we keep mistresses for pleasure, concubines for our day-to-day bodily needs, and wives to produce legitimate children and serve as trustworthy guardians of our homes. So that kind of just outrageous promiscuity is not seen as being outrageous at all. And so Paul calls Christians to a separateness, to a holiness, to a different way of doing living and being. This is holiness that's set apart for God's use. That's very important. Not just set apart, sit up on the shelf and don't do anything, set apart to be used by God. And I love this idea of vessel, verse four, control his own body, or you may have the, you may have a note there, control his own vessel is the Greek there. We need to control ourselves so that we can be used by the Lord. We're not going to live like heathens, verse five. And particularly we want to be careful not to wrong our brother, verse six. Now, some people have jumped that over into the idea of business relationships and not defrauding somebody, but I think the context here is very much still sexual immorality. And there would be a temptation in a group. We're tight with one another, we know one another, and so someone could enter into a wrong relationship with someone else's wife or even a wrong relationship with a brother's daughter. Don't do that. The Lord is an avenger. That's a very judgmental kind of thing. It's the kind of thing that maybe you would read in the book of Revelation. God will avenge sin, he will take care of wrongdoing. So God expects more of his people than that they will live like everybody that surrounds them. And I love verse 11. Aspire to live quietly. The King James Version says some things about study to be quiet, and that's led people down that Elizabethan language has led people down a path about quiet Bible study, and you should have a quiet time every day. And that's not what Paul is saying. You should have a quiet time every day, then read your Bible every day. That's what we're doing here on this podcast, but that's not the point here. The idea is to just live a decent civil life, be a good citizen, be below the radar. We're not tearing things up, we're not revolutionaries, we're not acting out in all kinds of rebellious sorts of ways. No, we're going to walk properly before outsiders, verse 12. The outside community does not set our standard, but we have to think about how our actions have what effect that they will have upon people who are not Christians. Then Paul changes gears here. He, I think maybe has had some questions about those who have died, and there is some concern that they're missing the whole thing. They died, the Lord hadn't come back yet. I guess they're just going to be out. And of course, Paul says that's not the case at all. They will return with the Lord. And if you don't have that hope, you would really grieve, verse 13. But Christians, Christians do grieve, but not like people who don't have any hope. Those who, verse 15, for this we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep. So Paul says, you haven't missed it. That's the great encouraging word here. Some have tried to say that this means Paul expected the second coming in his lifetime. And I think there's plenty of places in his other writing that show he absolutely knew that that could happen, but it might not happen. That's not where Paul is on that at all. By the way, coming in the clouds, verse 17, that's very much a metaphor of judgment. In the Old Testament prophets, coming in the clouds is right, the cloud rider is God as he comes in judgment. Daniel chapter 7, for example, verse 13, Revelation 1, and in verse 7. But it's also a common way of expressing the presence of God, the cloud of glory filling the tabernacle, clouds on Mount Sinai. So encourage or comfort one another, verse 18, with these words. The dying, the dead have not missed it. I think that's very, very important. And I'll just add this as a bonus note here. I'll give you this for free. Paul is not afraid to say that people are going to go to heaven. Sometimes I've seen some reluctance as a brother passes away, a sister passes away, very faithful, really love the Lord. We all know that individual is not perfect. Nobody is perfect except Jesus. So then someone says they've gone to be with the Lord, and someone will say, Well, well, as far as we know. No, I think that just undermines people's confidence. I don't think that brings comfort. I don't think that encourages people. I certainly realize there can be secret sin. People can be hypocritical and so forth. But Paul doesn't say, as best we can know, you Thessalonians are okay. He has confidence in them. And we can have confidence in our brothers and sisters in Christ. Don't be afraid to speak of that. The reading for Wednesday, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. It's

Thursday 1 Thessalonians 5

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Thursday. It's Thursday. We're tidying up Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians today, the reading for Thursday's 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, 1 Thessalonians 5. That's the reading for Thursday. And Paul continues to talk a little bit here about the coming of the Lord, how that will work. And he says we have no need about times and seasons to write you. He's using two different words here. I'm not great on diving into a bunch of Greek and so forth. Much of that is above my pay grade. But the word for time here is chronos. A watch is a chronometer. Kronos is time like you would measure. Kairos is seasons. That's the word for seasons. And a kairos event is a big event. A kairos event is a big event. So we're talking here about when it will happen, that's chronos, and what will happen, that's kairos. And they do seem, the Thessalonians seem stirred up about all of this. Maybe some have quit their jobs in anticipation of the coming of the Lord. But Paul says, what will happen is the day of the Lord is a Kairos event. It's a big event. It's a big event. The kairos event is not when but what, what will happen. And it will be the day of the Lord. Now that has a long history in the Bible. Amos chapter 5, Joel chapter 1, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zephaniah. The day of the Lord is the day of judgment, when God sets all things right. By the way, sometimes Jewish writing, especially between the testaments, would emphasize that that's the day when the Gentiles are going to get clobbered and the Jews are going to be exalted. And so oftentimes there need to be teaching that everybody gets judged on the day of judgment. And the New Testament uses the day of the Lord idea as well. Acts 17.30. Paul says he's appointed a day in which he will judge. It's in 1 Corinthians 5, 2 Peter chapter 2, the day of the Lord, and it will come unexpectedly like a thief in the night. Now that parallels Matthew 24, 36, but those are not the same events, by the way, not the same. And the problem is sometimes people get all tied up in when this will happen and forget that the point of this is the certainty of its happening should shape how we live. Right now. That's what we need to do. We need to live as children of day, verses 4 to 11. Don't be asleep. Don't be asleep. That's not death. I think he's talking about mentally asleep, not being watchful, not paying attention. Instead, we need to live sober lives belonging to the day, verse 8. Night's the time for wickedness and evildoing. No, belong to the day, verse 8. Put on the breastplate of faith and love, the helmet of the hope of salvation. I'm actually going to do some preaching out of 1 Thessalonians 5.8 and talk about faith, hope, and love and in regard to mental anxiety and worry. That's always such a big issue in our lives today. And I want to do some preaching about that. And I'll come out of 1 Thessalonians 5.8. So there's a preview of coming attractions for you. And so the message here is yes, the Lord will return. Don't ignore that. But don't get panicky and complacent. Live wide awake. Be alert. Be in a constant state of expect Wow, can't say that without coffee. Be in a constant state expecting that, but that doesn't mean that we're going to abandon everything about this life as we wait for the Lord to return. And so then the book concludes with a number of straight-up admonitions. For example, verse 12, respect those who labor among you are over you and admonish you. Those, the way that sentence works in the Greek, that's three participles, and it's all grouped together to indicate it's one group, and that's the elders. That's who that is. That's the elders. And there's urging or uh admonishing verse 14, the idol. Don't be lazy. That's very important in this culture. Pray without ceasing, be constantly prayerful, verse 17. Paul says some things about quenching the spirit in verse 19. And of course, the spirit is very active in a miraculous way at this time because there's not a written Bible. Paul is uh, yeah, he's writing the Bible right now. And so don't stop someone who has the spirit, giving a word from God, a revelation from God from doing that. And and don't just decide, yeah, I'm not gonna listen to that. No, that would be quenching the spirit and don't despise prophecy, same kind of idea in verse 20. And and the prophetic gift is important, but it could be counterfeited. So we need verse 21 to test everything. Hold fast what is good. Paul concludes then by saying something about the threefold view of man, your whole spirit, soul, and body. And some people have tried to develop a giant teaching and doctrine that man is a threefold being, not just soul and body, but soul, spirit, and body, and all kinds of conversation about that. It's very hard to make that argument. Paul is not consistent. He doesn't always use all three of those to describe who we are. Lots of times he just uses two, and I think it's just repetition. If I say put your heart and soul into it, I just mean all of you. I'm not making a distinction in your heart and in your soul or any of that. So Paul's just saying, I pray that God will preserve all of you, the whole man, everything that you are. And that brings us to a close in 1 Thessalonians 5, the reading for Thursday. 1 Thessalonians, the fifth chapter. It

Friday 2 Thessalonians 1

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is Friday. It is Friday, and today we start 2 Thessalonians. 2 Thessalonians 1 is the reading for Friday, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. This is kind of encouraging if you've ever taught. Maybe you're a parent and you've said something until you're blue in the face and it just doesn't get anywhere with the kiddos, or maybe you've taught a Bible class, and when you got done, somebody came out of the class and they asked you a question about exactly what you had just covered, or somebody emailed you after you preached a lesson on Monday morning and you had preached a whole sermon on X, X, X, it's X, it's got to be X, and somebody emails and says, Is it Y? Were you saying yesterday that it's supposed to be Y? And you kind of just want to pull your hair out. Well, maybe get a little bit of that in 2 Thessalonians because the reason we have 2 Thessalonians is because they didn't get everything in 1 Thessalonians, did they? Paul is still in Corinth, that's Acts chapter 18. He's received further word, don't know everything about how that happened, but he's heard some good things about what's going on in Thessalonica, but he's also heard there's still some things that are not what they should be, particularly about the return of the Lord, some of those kinds of matters, they're off the track. And Paul's pulling his hair out a little bit, getting out some parchment, getting out some papyrus, doing some writing. Hey, need to get this fixed. But it begins with some Thanksgiving, verses 3 and 4. Notice in 1 Thessalonians 3:10, Paul talked about filling up things that are lacking. Here he seems to be more confident about their faith. And I like that. He's heard some good things, I guess, about what's happening in Thessalonica. And he then encourages them. Verse 5 to 10. This is about the judgment of God. It's super apocalyptic. You could pick up a bunch of this and drop it into the book of Ezekiel. Nobody would even blink. This would, you fit this into the book of Revelation, it would sound exactly like what John writes there. And this is about the righteous judgment of God, and their faith is evidence of that. Remember, judgment isn't always bad. Sometimes judgment, the fact that God is filling his people with fortitude and courage to continue under difficult circumstances, shows that they are the people of God. And Paul maybe kind of digresses here a little bit. Oh no, I you're shocked, aren't you? After reading 2 Corinthians, that Paul would take a little tangent here, but this is the kind of run-on Pauline statement that we are familiar with. And his idea here is that knowing that God has a plan helps us endure suffering. That is apocalyptic literature. We're suffering, we're we're getting beat up, we're getting killed for doing what's right. God, what's what's what's going on? Do you see what's happening to your people down here? And the answer in apocalyptic literature is yes. The Lord knows what's happening, and in his time, he will take care of it. He will deliver you and punish the evildoers. God will take care of it. So knowing the end while you're in the middle of the story can help you bear up. And this sounds a lot like Daniel 7, the Son of Man, coming, verse 7, to judge the world. The language here is heavily borrowed out of the Old Testament and all those judgment scenarios that various prophets spin. And there will be judgment that will come on those who don't obey the gospel, verse 8, and who don't know God. That's actually, I reversed them in order there, who don't know God, verse 8, and don't obey the gospel. Some people think that's one group, the same group. Some people say that's two different groups. And you study that and think about that where they are. Those who don't know God is is that people who just haven't obeyed the gospel? They're not openly opposed to God. And then those who don't obey the gospel, that would be people who just refused obedience, maybe more rebellious. Think about that. Is that one group? Is that two groups? They are judged. They're put away from the presence of the Lord, verse 9. Think about what that means for eternal torment. What's that like? It seems to me the worst part of hell is not the horrible fire, uh the terrible darkness, or even the kind of people that you'll be there with. The worst part of it is that you'll be away from everything that God is, which means you'll be in a place of absolutely no love, no joy, no peace, no light. All the things that God is, you'll be away from. And just watch here how Paul continually attaches people to Jesus Christ. He's not building his own community, he attaches people to Jesus the Christ. Talked about that a couple of weeks ago, about who we follow, talked about that in the 9 a.m. hour. Need to watch out for people who are building their own kingdom and not the kingdom of God. The chapter concludes with a prayer report, verses 11 and 12. Look at the emphasis on in verse 11, work of faith. Work is energized here. It's an intense word. Bring it to completion. And Paul has tied together doctrine and practical application. There's an encouragement to right living here because of the theology that Paul has developed, the coming of the Lord in judgment. The reading for Friday, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. Thank you so much for listening, then. That's the podcast for the week. I hope the podcast is a blessing to you that you are telling others about it. Leave us a rating or a review that helps more people find it. I am delighted to get to do the podcast, drink coffee and talk about the Bible. How great is that? Love doing that, love being with you. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven. I want you to come to see you Monday with a cup of coffee.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Thanks for listening to the Westside Church of Christ podcast, Monday Morning Coffee with Mark. For more information about Westside, you can connect with us through our website, just Christians.com, and our Facebook page. Our music is from Upbeat.io. That's Upbeat with two Ps, U P P 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.