Monday Morning Coffee with Mark
Monday Morning Coffee with Mark. A spiritual boost to start the week.
Monday Morning Coffee with Mark
The Questions Jesus Asked - #5 Mark 10:51 - What do you want me to do for you?
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Welcome to the Westside church’s special Monday Morning Coffee podcast with Mark Roberts. Mark is a disciple, a husband, father and grand dad, as well as a certified coffee geek, fan of CS Lewis’ writings and he loves his big red Jeep. He’s also the preacher for Westside church.
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Speaker 00: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 it further 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.
Speaker 01:Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for Monday, September the 22nd. September the 22nd. How is September going away so fast? I'm Mark. I'm holding a really great cup of coffee, and it is a great cup of coffee. Carson's Coffee Roastery, the little roastery that me and a good brother in Christ are working on, working with, and doing some coffee roasting with. We managed to get our hands on some Chinese coffee. I'm not even making that up. I'm not making that up. I didn't even know they grew coffee in China, but This is pretty good coffee. I would say this, it's most certainly not Folgers. Hope that you are starting the week in a really good way on this Monday morning. I hope that you have a good cup of coffee and that you've got your Bible ready to read over in 2 Kings. But let's think about the sermon yesterday, and then we'll get everything going. So, pour that cup of coffee. Let's get ready. Let's get set. Let's go.
Unknown:Let's go.
Speaker 01:Yesterday, I preached again in the preaching theme this year, on the preaching theme this year, questions Jesus asked from Mark chapter 10 this time. Mark chapter 10 and verse 51, when Jesus asked blind Bartimaeus, what do you want me to do for you? I really like the preaching theme this year. It's been great to work with these questions. Sometimes we think about the questions we want to ask Jesus. It's been great to see what Jesus focuses on and what Jesus asks. And I wonder, here's a bonus note from yesterday's sermon, I wonder if anyone else thought about the importance importance of saying something out loud. Bartimaeus, I nearly said Barnabas, nope, it's Bartimaeus, Bartimaeus needs to articulate what he wants from Jesus. And in some ways, maybe, that seems almost absurd. You know, come on, Jesus, I'm blind. What do you think I want from you? But there is power in speaking. A lot of passages in the Bible talk about the mouth. If you confess with your mouth, Paul says in Romans chapter 10, saying it out loud just proves extra oomph behind it. It makes us own it. And I wonder if sometimes that couldn't help us in our praying, and especially when we confess our sins to the Father. If you need forgiveness of sins, say so. And maybe think about saying it out loud to your Father in prayer. We can pray silently. There's no question about that, no doubt about that. But sometimes we may find that it helps us a little bit to hold on to those great promises of forgiveness just a little better because we have been clear and honest about what we need from the Father, and we said it out loud. If Jesus asks you, what do you want me to do for you? And the answer is, I need you to forgive my sins, then say it. Go ahead and say it. And let's think now about daily Bible reading. Open your Bible to 2 Kings 23. Welcome to Monday. Monday's reading is 2 Kings chapter 23, verses 21 to 37, and there is plenty for us to work with in our reading today. To start with, Josiah restores the Passover in verses 21 to 27. This is an impressive celebration, and while I think the compliment in verse 25 is a strong compliment, I don't expect we should take that literally, but it is an amazing Passover. Hezekiah's Passover lasted two weeks, but at Josiah's Passover, the people offered almost twice as many sacrifices. And this does seem to represent his serious dedication and devotion to the Lord. There's more about this in 2 Chronicles chapter 35. If you have time, you might step over there and read some of that. But God's wrath is still going to focus upon the people. Verses 26 and 27 say something about that. And I'll probably deal with this a little bit more tomorrow in our reading in chapter 24. But I think a big key here is that the people don't seem very penitent. They don't seem to be wholly converted. Josiah makes them serve the Lord, but there is an anxiety and a wishfulness here for idolatry, which will return in short order, I'm sorry to say. The outward acts are good, but apparently this is a very external restoration. Jeremiah chapter 3 verses 6 to 10 may help us some there. Then shockingly, Josiah ends up dead. In verses 28 to 30, Josiah dies. Now, let me give you a little background here. Ashurbanipal died in 626 BC, and the Assyrian Empire began to collapse. By 625, Nabopolassar had gained independence for Babylon. Babylon's coming on. Assyria is declining. And in fact, in 612, Nineveh fell to a coalition of the Chaldeans and the Medes. Now, in the help Assyria, probably trying to use that as an excuse to gain world power. And I wonder here if Josiah is pitching in with the Babylonians because he's thinking a weak Babylon way over there is a whole lot better than a strong Egypt on my doorstep. Maybe he's trying to maintain independence here. Josiah's motivation here, one scholar says, must have been that anything bad for Assyria was good for Israel. But there is no evidence that Josiah was in any way formally allied with Babylon. However, he goes out to stop Pharaoh Necho and that ends up badly. In fact, in 2 Chronicles 35 and 22, Necho claims he had a message from God which Josiah either ignored or maybe he didn't understand or he didn't believe that it really was from God. We don't know whether Necho was just saying something to get Josiah out of his way. The Chronicles account sounds sort of like maybe Pharaoh Necho had a word from God. I guess the answer to that is Josiah should have asked a prophet. Jeremiah is on the scene. Ask Jeremiah, should I go into battle? And the message in Jeremiah, in fact, the message in all of the prophets at this time is don't get involved in international affairs. Don't get involved in international politics. Stay home, serve the Lord, do what's right. Josiah rolls into battle, pays for it with his life. The rest of the chapter then covers the reign of Jehoahaz, who's also known as Shalem in verses 31 to 33. And then Jehoiakim in verses 34 on into chapter 24. And here, I think we probably see why Josiah was opposing Egypt. Israel and Egypt are not friends. And so as Pharaoh Necho comes home from the battle, he grabs Jehoahaz, puts him in bonds, verse 33, takes a bunch of silver and gold, and sticks Eliakim, verse 34, on the throne. So he's an Egyptian vassal at this point in his reign. His name is changed to Jehoakim, and Jehoahaz disappears in Egypt. Jehoiakim has a long reign. He reigns, let's see here if I can do the math, for about, excuse me, let me have a little coffee here, make this work, about 11 years. from 609 to 598. And that breaks down into three parts. From 609 to 604, he is a vassal for the Egyptians. And then in 605 to 601, he's a Babylonian vassal. And then in 601 to 598, he's in revolt and ends up, yeah, revolting against the Babylonians never ends well for anybody. So that's his reign, and we'll pick up more about him as we talk about what he's doing and, in fact, that he's not doing what's right when we read into chapter 24. But today's reading, Monday's reading, is 2 Kings 23 verses 21 to 37. It's Tuesday. It is Tuesday and today we read 2 Kings chapter 24, the entire chapter. 2 Kings 24 does bring us to the end of our journey. Hezekiah's reforms have been ruined by Manasseh. Manasseh and Ammon bring idolatry right into the temple, in fact. Josiah makes many reforms, but as I mentioned yesterday, Jeremiah's writings particularly show us that people's hearts had not been changed. So when Josiah dies, the kingdom disintegrates spiritually and and politically. Let me give you a couple of dates here. Some of this is helpful to write in your Bible just to have handy, maybe to get some fix on where we are in relationship, for example, to the New Testament. In 612, 612, 612, Nineveh falls because the Assyrian empire is collapsing. And then in 609, Babylon defeats an Assyrian-Egyptian alliance. That's the battle where Josiah gets killed trying to stop the Egyptians from getting to that battle. The Egyptians are unable to make any headway, and they end up withdrawing. So finally then in 605, at the Battle of Carchemish, Babylon whips everybody and establishes itself as the ruling power. And this is the battle that's mentioned in 2 Kings 24 verse 7 in our reading today. Then what we get is a series of revolts against Babylonian power under these different Judean kings. So in 605, Babylon makes its first appearance, making Judah a vassal state of Babylon, taking it from the Egyptians, and and that's when Daniel and his friends go into captivity. Then in 597, there is a revolt, and so there's conquest, and there's the deportation of thousands and thousands, including Ezekiel being taken into Babylonian captivity. And then there's another revolt in 586, and that's when the city is absolutely destroyed, and the temple is burned down. So those dates help us get a fix on where we are, and our reading today starts with Nebuchadnezzar arriving in 605, and he is triumphant. He has won at Carchemish. and the world bows at the feet of the Babylonians. And Kings begins to use phrases like in his days to introduce these invasions because Judean kings are no longer important. They don't establish anything. If you want to date something, you have to date it off the world powers that are currently running the show. And while Nebuchadnezzar may not have been able to immediately act against Jehoiakim, verse 2, because there were some marauding bands, he will send some raiders and so forth, but eventually he will get there and he will take over according to the word of the Lord. Verse 2, he takes over and so from now on everything looks east to Babylon and they are paying tribute to Babylon. Joachim seems to have foolishly thought the Egyptians would help him. That's a running theme in the book of Jeremiah and of course they do not. The king of Egypt, verse 7, did not come again out of the land. Now I've been asked specifically about verses 3 and 4. This came upon Judah at What's the deal? Would not pardon. What's that all about? There's a couple of pieces to that. Some of that is punishment had been decreed and God must keep his word. God delayed that because of Josiah and his righteousness, so God didn't want to do that. But now that there's wholesale wickedness going on, there isn't any point in delay that any further. And I think a huge piece of this is Jehovah would not pardon because why? They wouldn't ask. They wouldn't seek him and ask. In fact, the New International Version has, the Lord was not willing to forgive, which is a terrible translation. I would take very sharp issue with that. That acts like a bunch of people were petitioning God for forgiveness and the Lord was, oh, I'm not forgiving you people. The Lord wanted to forgive. Look what happened with Josiah. Look what happened during the time of Josiah. The issue here is no one's asking because they're all busy serving idol gods. They're all busy serving everybody but Jehovah. So there's no asking and there's no pardon when there is no asking, which takes us then to Jehoiachin in verse 8. He was 18 years old when he became king. Now, this is difficult to keep straight. We got Jehoiachin and then Jehoiachin. If somebody has a mnemonic to help me with that, wow, you're welcome to suggest that. I would love to have some of that. And I think about what a time for him to get to the throne. This is 597, and there's a Babylonian invasion breathing down your neck. He's probably the one that's known as Jeconiah in some other places in Scripture, and there are a ton of archaeological records of this invasion, notably the Babylonian Chronicle. And if you look at verse 12, Jehoiachin, the king of Judah, gave himself up to the king of Babylon. His servants and his palace officials, the king of Babylon, took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign. They There it is again, this idea of dating things off foreign kings because they are absolutely in charge. And there has been some archaeology done that unearthed hundreds of receipts for oil issued in Babylon, and the name Jehoiachin appears on three of them along with the title King of Judah. And so you get a good look here at the kind of people who are taken captive. Ezekiel went because this is a time when nobles and princes are being taken, and finally Zedekiah is set up on the king. Jehoiakim reigned approximately 11 years. All of that is bad. He persecuted the prophets. He's the guy that burned the word of God. Jeremiah wrote out this long letter from God, and they would read it to the king, and after they read some of it, he'd reach over with his pocket knife and slice off from the scroll what had been read and throw it in the fire. He's a disaster. He is absolutely a disaster, and Zedekiah is not much better. Zedekiah is not not much better. And maybe the thing to hold on to here, verse 19, Zedekiah did what was evil on the side of the Lord. How is that possible? How is that possible when God is bringing all kinds of terrible judgments on them? Even this deportation of so many thousands of people off to Babylon doesn't change their hearts. These people don't want God, and God will evict them from His land. How about that? So, Westsiders, we do have a Zoom call tonight, and I'm excited about it because in tonight's Zoom call, we'll step away from Bible reading. I haven't made all the decisions about everything. We'll probably still do our daily Bible reading from 2 Kings 24, but what we really want to focus on tonight is the book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk, in all likelihood, is speaking during this time, during these Babylonian invasions, during the Babylonians showing up, 605-597. And Habakkuk has some hard questions to ask of God about why this is happening and how this is happening and what should I do during this time. We want to talk about the book of Habakkuk tonight in Zoom. See you tonight, Westsiders, on the Zoom call and the rest of you, I'll see you on the podcast tomorrow. It's Wednesday. It's Wednesday and we're reading 2 Kings chapter 25. What a dismal chapter this is and indeed brings us to the end of the book of Kings. In the ninth year of his reign, 2 Kings 25, 1, in the 10th month, on the 10th day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came with all his army against Jerusalem and laid siege to it. This is the story of the end of the Judean kings and of Jerusalem and even the temple. There are six episodes that are recounted here. You can outline this chapter very easily. The siege that begins on the 10th month on the 10th day is actually the result of destroying all the other fortresses on the way to Jerusalem. Lachish, Ezekiah, and others were absolutely reduced to rubble. So, for example, there's writing here about the burning of lakish, whatever wood they could lay hand on, they dragged to the spot, stripping the whole area around lakish of its forest in thickets. Countless olive groves were hacked down for this purpose. In fact, the layer of ashes contains masses of charred olive stones. Day and night, sheets of flames leaped sky high, a ring of fire licking the walls from top to bottom. The besieging forces piled on more and more until the white hot stones burst and the walls caved in. Can Can you imagine being in Lachish and that kind of thing happening, seeing the smoke rise from the fires around your walls, knowing what waits when the walls finally collapse? And Jeremiah, of course, is the prophet during this time. He had counseled Zedekiah and his officers to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar to save the city and the temple. Jeremiah chapter 21, for example, Jeremiah chapter 38, but they refused to obey God's word. And the reading in Jeremiah helps us know that Zedekiah was a terribly weak king, just awful. awful, just awful. He refuses to do what's right, but he keeps consulting with Jeremiah, sometimes in secret because he is afraid to be seen with Jeremiah. It's terrible. At one point, he has Jeremiah cast into a cistern where Jeremiah would have died if some people hadn't helped him. This is a terrible time, and of course, this siege that goes on for so long would have been just absolutely unbearably awful. The suffering that must be going on in the city when it takes all this time, the siege begins in the 11th year, and then it goes on The ninth day of the fourth month, the famine, verse 3, is so severe that there was no food for the people. Finally, there's a breach made in the wall, and they run away. What a bunch of cowards, verse 4. The king and the army try to break out and get out of there and leave all the people behind. They're headed to the Dead Sea Desert to hide. You remember David hid from Saul down in the Dead Sea Desert, the ravines and canyons and caves. This is the only way Zedekiah is like David. He is a coward, and he is no leader of men, and he doesn't care for God at all. And they are captured, of course, and the result then is that the temple is burned. Verse 9, the Talmud says the Babylonians desecrated the temple with the two-day feast and burned it on the third day and that the fire burned for two entire days. And then we get all this detail beginning about verse 11, I'm sorry, about verse 14 that tells us about all the things that they destroyed. It's verse 13. I'll get it right in a minute. More coffee is the answer to this. Verse 13 begins to give us the detail, and in God's good providence, I've been preaching about the building of the temple under King Solomon, and we've talked about how magnificent it was, and here's the end of all of that. It's burnt, melted down, destroyed. It's just awful. It's just absolutely awful. And then, of course, verse 20 and 21, there's even more death for the people who were leading the rebellion. Gedaliah then is made the governor of Judah. This is covered in Jeremiah chapter 40 and 41. and he tells everybody, calm down. We're the people who are left here, and we're just going to do right and serve God, and that's because Jeremiah is counseling them to do that, and of course, they don't listen to Jeremiah, and Gedalia ends up being assassinated. The Babylonians hate that kind of thing because now there's anarchy and chaos and so forth, and the people panic when that happens, and even though Jeremiah tells them don't, they ask Jeremiah, ask God, should we run off to Egypt? And Jeremiah says, I will tell you what God says, and they say, we We are going to listen to you, Jeremiah. This is Jeremiah 42, and then Jeremiah says, don't go to Egypt. God does not want you to go to Egypt. God never wants his people to go to Egypt. He brought them out of Egypt, and what do they do? Yep, they up and go to Egypt. A bunch of faithless people who refuse to do what's right. But finally, there is a little light at the end of the tunnel. Jehoiachin, verses 27 to 30, is covered here. This takes us to about 561 when evil Merodach releases Jehoiachin. And one scholar says, what had been a note of dark despair is illuminated by the light of God's gracious concern for his own. Jehoiachin's release and renewed enjoyment of life stands as a harbinger of a future release and the return of the nations in accord with God's promise. There is, by the way, archaeological evidence that confirms Jehoiachin's existence. And I should say this, it's more than just the harbinger of good things for the nation. We are reminded God's promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 and God's promise to David in 2 Samuel 7 depends upon the Judeans not being exterminated, completely rubbed out, erased off the planet because the Messiah is going to come from them and they are not all gone and not all the Davidic kings are gone. There is hope. There is hope for the future. This is where the book of Lamentations fits, by the way. If you have additional time, read the book of Lamentations. Our reading for Wednesday 2 Kings 25. Welcome to Thursday, and it may seem like it's Friday. I guess there's nothing wrong with getting to the weekend faster, but it is just Thursday, even though we are reading in the Psalms. Today we are reading Psalm 41. This is a beautiful psalm, a powerful psalm. We actually read this psalm in week 16. It fit there perfectly with some of the things going on in David's life, and it is, of course, a psalm that is quoted by Jesus, and at that time we did jump over to the Gospel of John and read John 13, where Jesus makes use of this psalm. Today we'll just work along and talk about about how this psalm helps us see ourselves and to see the Lord. It is kind of a wisdom song. I think the first three verses have a wisdom introduction to them. And then there's a cry for help in verses 4 to 10. That's a lament. And then there is thanksgiving, being thankful for God's deliverance. And it does seem to have been written at a time when David was under great strain and great difficulty. And maybe some of that ordeal is over. And as he reflects on it, he discovers some things about himself and about the So verse 1, Now remember, we think of the poor in a very different way than people would have in David's day. In David's day, and in fact in New Testament times, in Jesus' time, being poor meant that you were financially impoverished, like starving to death. It meant downtrodden, on the bottom of society's ladder, no hope, no recourse, no chance for anything better. There is no welfare, unemployment, Social Security, no Medicare. None of that is helping those kinds of people. Our definition of poor today is very different than the definition of poor used in the Bible. And I would not, the Lord protects him, verse 2, and keeps him alive. The Lord sustains him, verse 3, on his sickbed. I would not take these promises literally. This is not guaranteeing you that if you become an advocate for the downtrodden, you'll never be sick. This is just David describing the kind of person that God will deliver because this is the kind of person who cares about God, who has God's agenda upon his heart, who wants to do what's right. And so God wants to bless that kind of person and use that kind of person in his service. And though it seems like David may be sick here, it's not enough that he's just going through sickness and trouble. Verses 4 to 10 show that he has enemies circling him like buzzards waiting for him to die, or maybe more likely like sharks circling him trying to get after him. Notice verse 4 and verse 10 both open and end with a request for God's grace here, and these bad visitors say things like, when he die, will his name perish? That's a disaster if you're a Jew, if you're an Israelite, because then your land gets out of the family. You can't have that happen. And verse 9 may reference the trusted friend Ahithophel, who's one of David's best and most trusted counselors, yet he joined Absalom's rebellion, as you remember. And Jesus does make use of that in the Last Supper as he speaks of Judas Iscariot. So, this psalm helps us see some things about ourselves, the kind of person that we need to be, and the kind of person that God will bless and that God wants to hear from, the kind of person that God will deliver from Verse 11, by this I know you delight in me. My enemy will not shout and triumph over me, but you have upheld me because of my integrity and set me in your presence forever. That final verse, verse 13, is the closing benediction to the first collection of Psalms, the first book of Psalms, Psalms 1 to 41. Our reading for Thursday is Psalm 41. It is Friday. It is Friday, and today we read the 9th Psalm. Today we're reading the 9th Psalm. This seems to me to be very appropriately placed in our reading schedule. I'm looking at verse 7. The Lord sits enthroned forever. He has established His throne for justice. Verse 8, He judges the world with righteousness. He judges the peoples with uprightness. It's easy in this reading that we've been doing about Babylonian power and might. They just smash Jerusalem, kill everybody, and drag the rest off into slavery. I guess you can't drag people off into slavery if you kill every They kill most everybody, okay, and drag the rest off into slavery. And it's easy to be impressed with Babylonian power, but it's important that we hold on to who the true king of the earth is and that we understand who sits enthroned forever, and that is the Lord. Probably the most important issue to acquaint you with when you're reading the 9th Psalm is does it belong to the 10th Psalm? Both of these psalms are acrostic psalms, and of course that means sometimes an acrostic psalm is kind of jumpy because the writer needs to get another line that matches the letter of the alphabet that he's on. These acrostic psalms, if you will, go A, B, C, D, of course in Hebrew, not in English. And so it's hard to outline these, but both Psalm 9 and Psalm 10 are acrostics. And in the Septuagint, they are bound together as one psalm. And the 10th Psalm doesn't have a title, which is pretty unusual in this early part of the psalms. So some people think they go together. However, they don't deal precisely with the same theme. Psalm 10 is concerned with the wicked man. Psalm 9 is different. It's much more community-oriented. You take a look at that and see what you think about that. Maybe read both of these psalms today. I love these I wills in verses 1 and 2. Despite some difficulties and some problems, I will do this, and that gives me confidence, verse 3, confidence and anticipation that God will act. And again, the heart of the psalm is verse 7. The throne of the Lord lasts forever, and these enemies will not. The ground of all hope is that our God is sovereign. He is the king of kings. He is the one who is ruling. And I do like verse 15 where you get this boomerang effect of evil here. Bad things will come back around on bad people. They dig a pit and they're the ones that fall in it. They spread the net. It catches them. And verse 17 says something about Sheol. The New King James here has hell and that's a terrible translation. This is just the idea of the grave death and the idea that you're going down into death, which is not clearly everything about the afterlife is not clearly understood in the Old Testament, so this is the worst thing that could happen to you. But an understanding of hell and heaven is simply not in this psalm. And I do like how the victory here is viewed as an accomplished fact. True trust in God looks upon wickedness and says, you know what? That'll never last. I'm not joining up with that. That will be brought down. I don't want to be with the losers. Things can't continue as they are because God is at work, and evil like this will be brought to an end. What an important thing to to think about at a time when we've just read about the temple being burned or a time when we look around us and see open hostility to Christian faith. Don't give up. Don't give in. Evil will be put down. Our reading for Friday, Psalm 9. That concludes the podcast for the week. I certainly do appreciate you listening to the podcast. I hope you'll share it with others, tell more people about it so it will help them with their daily Bible reading. I look forward then to seeing you on Monday when we'll open our Bibles together again. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven. I want you to come too. See you Monday with a cup of coffee.
Speaker 00:Thanks for listening to the Westside Church of Christ podcast, Monday Morning Coffee with Mark. For more information about Westside, you can connect with us through our website, justchristians.com, and our Facebook page. Our music is from upbeat.io. That's upbeat with two Ps, U-P-P-B-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.