Monday Morning Coffee With Mark Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, and welcome to the West Side 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 through each other and better work the applications into our daily life. Mark will then 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 comments from time to time. So grab a cup of coffee as we start the week together on Monday morning coffee with Mark.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for Monday, September the 7th. This is the podcast for the week of September 6th through the 12th. I'm Mark. I am drinking some amazing Papua New Guinea coffee. This comes out of my own roaster, and it is really, really good coffee. Just loving it. Just loving it a whole lot. And I'm loving our reading in the book of Hebrews. I hope you are as well. It's encouraging me to persevere on. And since we're talking about things that we love, kind of hope you love the sermon Sunday, or at least the title grabbed your year. Let's talk about it. 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 titled I Don't Want to Be Right. And yes, that's a pretty provocative title. I do that on purpose because I want people to think, hey, hey, wait a minute. That's why a while ago I preached a sermon entitled I Wish America Was More Pagan, and I did get some people who said, I had to go listen to that. What are you talking about? And I do, like I said, hope the title, I don't want to be right, would catch your attention. But I hope the development of that idea showed you that yes, sometimes people are saying that, maybe not articulating it, maybe not verbalizing it, but they don't want to be right. And I'll add one additional reason why folks don't want to be right. Sometimes we don't want to be right because the cost is just too high. And that does kind of go with being on the hook that I talked about yesterday, but I'll sharpen it out of Matthew chapter 21, beginning in verse 23, Matthew 21, 23. When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priest and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and they said, By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority? And Jesus answered them, I will also ask you one question. And if you tell me the answer, then I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from men? And they discussed it among themselves, saying, If we say from heaven, he will say to us, Why then did you not believe him? But if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd, for they all whole John was a prophet. So they answer Jesus, we don't want to be right. Well, it's not exactly verse twenty-seven. So they answer Jesus, we do not know, but what they mean is we don't want to be right. It would just cost too much. They thought through that answer and they thought about the political implications of that. So they're not asking what is true. They are asking, what will this answer cost us? How can we answer this question with the least possible price tag attached to it? And they decide we don't know. We'll just say we can't tell. We're not sure. You've heard that when you've talked with someone about the gospel, about the existence of God, about the claims of Scripture. Sometimes people won't answer you because they don't want to be right. They don't want to pay the price for following the truth. But you can't put a price tag on truth, and if truth costs too much, well, even if you don't say it out loud, what you mean is I don't want to be right. Let's turn our attention then to the book of Hebrews and keep being encouraged to persevere in this wonderful book. It's Hebrews that we're reading this week.

Monday Hebrews 4

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Now, the Hebrew writer has certainly said a lot about failure. Israel failed, and we can fail. That's Hebrews 3 that we read on Friday. So maybe somebody's wondering, can it be done? Can we get there? And so chapter 4 contains a lot of reassurance. And the reassurance is found in the word rest. And you need to watch carefully how the Hebrew writer uses that term. Literally, the rest here would be Canaan, the land of promise. And then the Hebrew writer extends that to think about God's rest. Look at verse 4, God resting after creation. But ultimately, of course, by rest he means heaven. And this is very common in Hebrews. It's a very common way of discussing matters and arguing matters in Jewish thought in the first century, to make wordplay, to use a word and just walk it down through its application. And that's what's happening here in chapter four. So, therefore, verse one, while the promise of entering, now enter is the word that connects back to 319. It's used eight times in this chapter. And what we need to do is fear, let us fear. They didn't fear, we need to fear. So, verse 2, for good news came to us just as them, but the message did not benefit them. Now, here's the change, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. Or some manuscripts have it did not meet with faith in the hearers. And going into the technical discussion of the Greek here is beyond a podcast and candidly quite beyond my abilities. But I like what the ESV has. You have to join together in faith. And I think that's saying something here to the Hebrew recipients. They need to work together. We'll get more of that in chapter 10. But we are in the process, verse 3, of entering into that rest. And the Bible does use the idea of eternal life both now and yet to come. But some, look at verse 6, they didn't enter into that rest, and that's leaving the door open for the rest of us. Now that rest can't just be the land of Canaan, verse 8. When they got to the land of Canaan, it wasn't a time of rest. I've been teaching the book of Joshua, and it wasn't any rest when they got there. There were a whole bunch of ites, the Amalekites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and all the other termites that were opposing them. Hope you're paying good attention and got that. Okay, I worked for that one now. Come on, give me a smile there. Let's have a little bit of coffee. Got to get the week started right. But there were a lot of nations there that opposed them entering into the land of Canaan. There were a lot of battles and there was a lot of fighting. But the rest then remains a Sabbath rest. That's not the literal Sabbath, that's not the land of Canaan, that's heaven. God's Sabbath rest becomes a symbol of our own rest. And that's important in verse 10, because in verse 10, God rested, and so we rest. And that's the rest that God had after creation, not exhaustion, not weariness, but resting in fullness, peace, well-being, security. So because of that, we need to strive, verse 11, that's make every effort. In fact, Peter uses that in 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 5 and verse 10 to say exactly that. And we make every effort. Why do we do that? Because the word verse 12 judges us. And maybe to get all of that rounded into form, the Hebrew writer knows some of you are thinking, I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to enter into that rest. I don't think I can get there. Sure you can. Because verse 14 and 15 and 16, we have a great high priest. This really picks up and bookends the thought of 3-1, Jesus, the high priest of our confession, 3-1. Now Jesus, our high priest, 4-14, 15, and 16. So this is a unit. It's all holding together. Jesus has passed through the heavens. What does that mean? That's just tabernacle language. Go in to do your priestly work. And so there is a lot in chapter 3 about God judging sinners and judging the disobedient. But by the time we get to the end of chapter four, we have Jesus, our high priest, who wants to help us and who gives us grace and mercy. One of our questions, remember, one of our supplementary questions. What does this passage show me about Jesus? Jesus is my high priest. He sympathizes with me. He's helping me to draw near with confidence. That makes it a lot easier for me to endure and persevere. The reading for Monday. Hebrews 4.

Tuesday Hebrews 5

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It's Tuesday. It is Tuesday, and we will have a Zoom call tonight, West Ciders. Can't wait to study the Bible with you over Zoom. This is an encouraging chapter, at least up through verse 10, it most certainly is, because it talks more about the high priesthood of Jesus. And the point here, verse 2, is that the high priest should be able to deal gently with the ignorant and with those who are wayward. Literally, the word for wayward is wandering around. I think I've been in that place. Maybe you have been too, where you're just wandering around. You don't know what you're doing. Compassion here in verse 2, he is able to deal gently or with compassion is to feel in the middle. Feel in the middle. That's pretty good for compassion, isn't it? Jesus feels for us, he cares for us. But you can't just take on the high priesthood. You don't run for high priest and put campaign signs up in people's yards and shake hands and kiss babies. That's not how you get to be high priest. Well, by the time of Jesus, some people did get to be high priest that way. They had money and they paid off the Roman governor. If you had enough money, you could be high priest, but that's not the way it's supposed to be. You have to be appointed high priest. And I love what's being said in verse 5. Jesus, who certainly deserves that honor, he did not exalt himself. He didn't say, Hey, I'm Jesus. I'm going to be the high priest now. Who would argue with Jesus? Of course, he can be the high priest if he wants to be the high priest, but that's not how Jesus does anything. Instead, he humbles himself. And there's two proofs then that God has appointed Jesus as that high priest. Let me have a little coffee here. One is Psalm 2, and then the second is Psalm 110. You're preached forever, verse 6, after the order of Melchazedek. So then there is this beautiful reference to Gethsemane. Please remember that the Gospels, this is verse 7, loud creers. How about that? Well, I need another dose of coffee right there. Loud cries and tears. This is a reference to Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Please be mindful. The Gospels never show Jesus as being in agony on the cross. Now, don't mishear that. That doesn't mean Jesus wasn't in agony on the cross. But it does seem to say some things about the real agony for Jesus was making that decision, praying that prayer. Let this cup pass from me, but not my will, thine be done. And that's how he was heard. Not every line of Jesus' prayer is answered in the affirmative, but his desire for God's will to be done was certainly granted. And so he learned obedience through the school of suffering. He learned obedience. Now verse 9, and is perfected. That's like consecrated in chapter 2, verse 10. He is consecrated to be, he's set apart to become the source of eternal salvation. Eternal salvation, not annual salvation. And so the writer really here works with Jesus in his darkest hour, which I think you can make, as I said, a good argument. That's the Garden of Gethsemane. He really makes an argument here on Jesus consummating the plan of God by saying, Thy will be done, and that Jesus knows what it is to hurt, Jesus knows what it is to struggle, and Jesus identifies with us. One writer said, Christians need to understand this because a lot of how we live our Christianity is determined by our view of Jesus. That's just true, isn't it? If you see Jesus as just completely different from us, his feet don't touch the ground when he's walking, he never perspires, he never gets tired, he never gets hungry, he's so different from us, then you won't think that I should follow after him. He identifies with me, he can help me. He doesn't know anything about my life, he's just so different. And the Hebrew writer is taking that image and demolishing it. What does this passage show me about Jesus? Need to be asking that question. Then, of course, there is this ending section. The Hebrew writer would really like to talk a lot more about this because if we're talking Jesus being the high priest, someone is thinking when this is being read in the assembly, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Jesus can't be the high priest, he's not from the tribe of Levi. And so the Hebrew writer will deal with that and fix that little problem, but he can't because verses 11 to 14, they aren't ready for it. And so here the Hebrew writer just stops and does a little preaching on the need to grow spiritually, and that runs all the way through chapter six. Verse 11, by the way, is a mess in the NIV. The NIV calls them slow learners, and there is a big difference between being a slow learner and being indifferent. And the problem here is they're indifferent. We'll talk more about that. Maybe that's the answer to question two what danger or discouragement is being addressed. Maybe that's what they need to be thinking about, what I need to be thinking about, and we'll talk about it more tonight in Zoom. The reading for Tuesday, Hebrews chapter 5.

Wednesday Hebrews 6

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Welcome to Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. The Hebrew writer continues to press his point in our reading today, Hebrews 6. The reading for Wednesday is Hebrews 6. And sometimes it's just a good idea to go ahead and get the main thing, and that's verses 11 and 12. We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness, to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, verse 12, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Come on, let's go, let's grow, get with it. He's already given one reason why they should do that, and that is, I can't tell you what I want to tell you about Melchizedek and Jesus. But he goes on then to say, you can't just keep laying your foundation, verse 1. And some of the things that he mentions there, notably washings, verse 2, that's an unusual word for baptism, but I think that's what he's probably talking about. The laying on of hands would be to commission someone to give them a work or a task, the resurrection of the dead, learning about what will happen when we die, eternal judgment, knowing that we will stand in front of the Lord. You can't keep talking about the first principles. You have to move forward. If you don't do that, you can end up getting stuck, and then you can end up in sin. And verse 4 contains one of several impossibles in the book of Hebrews, chapter 6, verse 18, chapter 10, verse 4, chapter 11, verse 6. And there are a lot of people who want to say that impossible here doesn't mean impossible, but it certainly means that everywhere else in Hebrews, and it means that here as well. These people can't be forgiven when they keep on renouncing Jesus. That's what he's talking about, verses 4, 5, and 6. The age to come, verse 5. They've tasted the powers of the age to come. That's a very Old Testament language referring to the coming messianic era. And these people have tasted the heavenly gift. Now, John Calvin said they tasted it and spit it back out. That's not what the Hebrew writer says. These people are Christians. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about that, but they have renounced Christianity. They are crucifying once again the Son of God, verse 6. They hold him up to contempt. And those people have fallen from grace, and the author is trying to persuade people, don't let that happen to you. It could happen to you, and the end result of that would be verse 8: that you would be burned. If you don't ever grow up, if you just stay in the nursery, then you may end up in sin and apostasy deciding Christianity is not for you. So to say the least, the impossibility of apostasy is completely destroyed here in Hebrews 6. Calvinism just completely torpedoed amidship with a direct hit. It sinks to the bottom of the sea of false doctrine in Hebrews chapter 6. And somebody says, Well, what are we talking about? Why can't these people be renewed? And the answer is because they don't want to be restored. They don't want to repent. It isn't that God won't forgive, it's that they will not turn and ask. I don't know where I picked this up, and I don't think it's original with me, but I think the way to phrase this is their repenter is broken. And when your repenter won't work, then you can't be restored. But it's not because God doesn't want to, but it's because you broke your repenter and you won't use it. So then beginning in verse 9, the Hebrew writer begins to push towards maturity. You need to grow. We don't think verse 9 this would happen to you, but it could happen to you. And sluggish in verse 12 is right out of 5.11, that ho-hum attitude towards spiritual things. That's just deadly. And you can count on receiving this because, verse 12, God doesn't lie. He does not lie, he does not change. And that's the basis for Abraham's hope. Let me get a little coffee here. That's why Abraham stayed strong, is because he trusted in God's promises. And so by two unchangeable things, verse 18, which seems to be the promise of God and then the double security of God swearing an oath, Abraham trusted in God. And we can have that kind of trust hope. We can have that kind of certainty. It'll be like an anchor, and the only place in the New Testament, verse 19, where an anchor is used as a spiritual metaphor for Christianity is just right there. We know in the catacombs in Rome there is some Christian graffiti, and the anchor with a cross as part of that is portrayed on those catacombs. Dina and I are traveling, Lord willing, to Rome at the end of this month, and we hope to see those catacombs and see a little bit of that Christian graffiti. The Hebrew writer then, verse 19, uses Old Testament tabernacle imagery, and that gives him the end to get back on track. Speaking of tabernacles, speaking of high priest, let's talk about Jesus, verse 20, as our high priest after the order of Melchizedek. And if you're saying Melhusedek, then stick around because chapter 7 will explain who that is. But the reading for Wednesday is Hebrews chapter 6. It is Thursday.

Thursday Hebrews 7

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It is Thursday, and today we're reading the seventh chapter of Hebrews. The reading for Thursday is Hebrews chapter 7. There's a ton of stuff here about Melchizedek, but what really matters is that we keep our eye on Jesus. That's where the Hebrew writer's going with this. Now, the structure here of the chapter, I'll give you a little outline. It's Melchizedek verses 1 to 10. Notice how Melchizedek is in verse 1, and then again in verse 10. And then the idea of perfection in verse 11 through verse 28. And once again, perfection leads and closes that section. Who is this Melchizedek fellow then? Verses 1 to 3. Talk about him. He's not a ghost, he's not a legend, he's not a mysterious figure, he's actually in the Bible. Go read Genesis 14 if you're not familiar with the story of Melchizedek. And the point of that is that he is better than Abraham. By the way, Melech is the Hebrew word for king, and Tezek is righteous, so he is the king of righteousness. And Salem, Melchizedek of Salem, Salem ultimately becomes Jerusalem. So he is the king of Jerusalem. He is a king and priest. And the fact that it says he's without father or mother genealogy does not mean that he was an angel or some kind of divine being, anything like that. It just means that his genealogy isn't the way he became priest. That's what this is about. He's absolutely a human being, verse 6, this man. And I know verse 8 somebody says, well, you know, he still lives. Well, he still lives, and that the scripture does not recount his death. He just is on the pages of scripture, Genesis 14, and then he's just gone again. He is all of his life is not covered, but he is better than Abraham. And we know that because Abraham paid tithes to him. So he's a model. He's a type. He is a model of the priesthood of Jesus. And there would be people who'd be very impressed with the priesthood of Moses and Aaron, notably Aaron, of course, the priesthood of Levi, verse 5. And all of their lives and all of their families' lives, these people, Jewish Christians, would have seen their family paying tithes to the Levitical priesthood. Very important, very special, serving God, all the things that go with the temple. Really cool, really neat. And the Hebrew writer says, yes, yes, yes, that's all just right. But have you ever thought about it? Not as cool as Melchizedek. Not as great as Melchizedek. Someone says, oh no, no, it's the best. No, it is not. Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek. Melchizedek is greater, is greater. In fact, you could even say figuratively, verses 9 and 10, that Levi, since he's going to be one of the sons of Abraham ultimately, is paying tithes to Melchazedek. And that introduces then the idea of perfection now attained by Jesus. And Jesus is the one who has the perfect priesthood. He is the perfect high priest. And these Levite priests, they're not. They're just not, verse 11. They can't do what Jesus did. And of course, in order to have a change in the priesthood, verse 13, to have Jesus be that high priest, we'll have to have verse 13 a change in the priesthood because verse 14, Jesus isn't a Levite. And I'll just stop here and quickly add, this is a great place to show that just because the Bible doesn't say you can't, doesn't mean you can. There's no place in the Bible that it says you can't be a priest if you're from the tribe of Reuben. You can't be a priest if you're from the tribe of Ephraim. You can't be a priest if you're from the tribe of Neptali. No, it just says the priests are from Levi. Period. End of discussion. The silence of the scriptures is not permissive. If it were, then we wouldn't have this big argument in chapter 7 about how Jesus can't be a priest unless he's of the a different order, an entirely different order, which he is. He is of the order of Melchizedek, verses 15, 16, and 17, as prophesied in Psalm 110. So the old law is wiped out, verse 18. It never brought a person into full and right relationship with God. It was good and did some great things, but it would never accomplish everything, particularly without the blood of Jesus. And the Hebrew writer will talk more about that in Hebrews chapter 10. But there's a better, look at verse 19, hope, not a better law, a better hope, with Christ being our priest, and he becomes the mediator of this new covenant. And the word in verse 22 for covenant is a special word for covenant. It's not a covenant between equals. This is a unilateral covenant, a covenant from the greater to the lesser. There'll be more of this in chapter eight. But God says, this is what I will do. And then Christ comes along and he's the guarantor, we might say the cosigner. He's not a go-between. He's on our side as the high priest, but he's also on God's side as the executor of the covenant. And so God says, I'll forgive your sins and remember them no more. Jesus says, I'll guarantee it. And he does so by his blood. Remember the message of Hebrews. Jesus is better. So don't quit. And that's emphatic in verse 27. He did it once for all. The reading for Thursday. Hebrews chapter 7.

Friday Hebrews 8

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It's Friday. It is Friday. You made it to the end of the week today. We're reading Hebrews 11. Short reading. Powerful reading. Hope the podcast episode today can capture a little bit of that. Hope your coffee is helping you have a good day. So the advancement of the argument. Jesus is our high priest. He can be that because he's of the order of Melchizedek, not of the order of Aaron. Well, where is he serving as a high priest? He's at the right hand, verse 1, of the throne of the Majesty in Heaven, Psalm 110 again, a minister in the holy places. Where is he talking about? He's talking about verse 5. He's talking about being in heaven. That's the real holy of holies. That's what the tabernacle was a type and a shadow and a copy of verse 5. It was a miniature version, if you will, of the real holy place. And so verse 4, Jesus couldn't be a priest here on earth because he's not an ironic priest, but he's in the real tabernacle, the real holy place. And I should say something right here about all that stuff in the book of Exodus and Numbers about Levitical rules and regulations and especially all the stuff about the building of the tabernacle. Maybe, maybe somebody said, Why do we have to be so careful? Why does this have to be so precise? Why does it have to be exactly this way? Hey, it would be a whole lot better if the Ark of the Covenant was sitting out here in the middle of the camp and everybody could see it. That'd be very neat. High priest comes and sprinkles blood and we'd all see that and know that our sins are atoned for. Stop. Stop. It all had a purpose, didn't it? Even if they didn't understand that purpose, it was a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things. It was pointing to a greater reality. Even if they didn't understand that, their obedience set the path so that we would understand the work of Jesus, the work of Christ Himself. See, obedience to God always serves a purpose, even if we don't understand that purpose. And then the chapter concludes by talking about the better covenant. And the quotation here is out of Jeremiah 31, which, if you've seen me work on the five key passages of the Old Testament, that's not something that I came up with on my own by any stretch of the imagination. Oh all of that to a Bible professor back in Florida College when I was a freshman there. His name was Dr. Roberts, Dr. Phil Roberts, not physically related to him. And he had this amazing structure in the Old Testament, and that just helped me so much. I rely on that even to this very day. I've taught it a zillion times. And one of those passages, the last passage, number five in that list is Jeremiah 31, because Jeremiah 31 replaces the covenant that was weak and useless, as we saw in chapter 7 and verse 19, with the better covenant. That doesn't mean that God messed up. It just means that the old covenant was never the ultimate means of bringing us to God. It was to teach us some things and to prepare us so that we'd understand the work of Christ and want Jesus. But the law had a limited function. And so I'll just summarize here the law. I'm sorry, I'll just summarize here the new covenant, not the law. Gracious, how about some coffee to try to figure that out? The new covenant, according to Jeremiah 31, would be three things. It would be a covenant of assurance. Six times God says, this is what I will do. So the new covenant depends on what God is doing. And then the new covenant is a covenant of obedience right on your heart. On your heart. A covenant of the heart is one in which we want to obey. We know it by heart. We love God. We want to do it. And it is a covenant, thirdly, of grace. I will remember their sins, verse 12, no more. So this is a covenant about relationship, not just knowledge, being in a relationship with the Lord. And this idea of better covenant, new covenant, flows naturally then into the ideas the Hebrew writer wants to introduce in Hebrews chapter 9. But we need to say that for next week. The reading for Friday, Hebrews chapter 8. That will draw the podcast to a close for this week. Certainly have enjoyed working on the book of Hebrews with you. I love this book more every time I read through it. It's so encouraging. Helps us to endure and persevere. We need a big bucket load of that. So thanks for listening. I hope you're recommending the podcast to others. Just appreciate the kind comments and feedback I get all the time about the podcast. I'm Mark Roberts, and I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come too. I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

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