Monday Morning Coffee with Mark
Monday Morning Coffee with Mark. A spiritual boost to start the week.
Monday Morning Coffee with Mark
Why Won't The Instrumental Music Issue Go Away?
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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.
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
SPEAKER_02:Mark.
SPEAKER_01:Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast for Monday, June the 2nd. I'm Mark. I'm holding a great cup of coffee. I'm looking at some sermon stuff from yesterday, and I've got my Bible open so that we can do some daily Bible reading. I'm glad to welcome you to the Monday Morning Coffee Podcast. We're thinking about how to integrate yesterday's sermon into our life effectively, and we are getting ready to read in our Bibles all week long in Kings. We want to start the week right with a sharp spiritual focus. I've got coffee. Do you? Pour that cup of coffee. Let's get ready. Let's get set. Let's go. Yesterday, I preached a sermon with the upfront title of Why Won't the Instrumental Music Issue Go Away? And that is exactly how I feel about that issue. I am ready to lay that to rest. But I'm under no delusions that the sermon yesterday or the sermon that I'll preach again in six months or next year is finally going to put all that away. It just keeps coming up. And we talked about that yesterday. But maybe if we're thinking about how to integrate that into our lives, I would say this. You could share that sermon with people. Send an email link, post it on Facebook. But maybe even better than that might be to take a positive approach to church music. Brother Doyne Moyer did some writing on his Facebook page entitled, Five Reasons Why I Love Singing Together. And I think he makes a good point that sometimes when we're discussing the authority for a cappella singing over and against playing instrumental music in the worship assembly, there's lots of back and forth and it becomes a debate. Sometimes maybe a better approach is just to notice some great things about the the New Testament pattern. For example, Doyne noted, it encourages everyone to participate in mutual edification as we speak to one another. And it highlights the unity of the saints as we worship God together with one voice. And it helps create a bond between our emotions and the truth that's being expressed through the poetic words that we are singing. I like all of that. He had several other things to say, but I think that's a very good starting point. Maybe people who are confused about instrumental music, kind of not sure why we're not doing that. Maybe the difficulty is they've just never come to the assembly of a New Testament church and heard and seen what can happen when you put away the instruments and everyone makes melody in their heart. Think about making that play, giving people that option. Hey, come and see. Just come and try it. Think it's so strange. Hey, just come. You'll see something. You'll hear something. You'll be part of something out of Ephesians 5.19 that you could never be a part of as long as the band is blaring away and some soloist up front like we're at a rock concert instead of worshiping the Lord. I think that is worth considering. Hope you'll give some thought to making use of that sermon and making use of the positive case for acapella music in the worship assembly. All that said, we're going to talk a lot about the pattern because this week we're in 1 Kings chapter 4 and it's not going to be very long and we'll be talking about the pattern for the temple that Solomon wants to build. Get your Bible Let's talk about daily Bible reading. The reading for Monday is 1 Kings chapter 4. Our reading on Monday is 1 Kings chapter 4. Let's get situated in the text. Where are we? In chapter 3, Solomon is given the opportunity to ask of God anything, and he shows himself to be a wise person already by asking for more wisdom and understanding mind in 1 Kings 3 verse 9. Then, the rest of that chapter demonstrates Solomon's wisdom with the famous case of the two women who are both claiming the same baby. Now, once we move into chapter 4, the stuff that we're reading today, the question is going to be, what's this doing here? And the answer is, this is still about wisdom. Notice chapter 4 verse 29, God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding. In fact, that theme continues into chapter 5 and verse 12. There's lots here about wisdom and how God has fulfilled his promise. So we begin with a long list of all the various court officials and court provisions, all the things that are going on in this court, which is wisely arranged by King Solomon, shows his great wisdom here. And there's a couple of things as we're working along that give us a little bit of a pause here. For example, we notice that there's no mention of Judah here. And we wonder if they got favored treatment and didn't have to pay taxes, which may have contributed to some of the hard feelings that we'll see between the various tribes later on after Solomon is dead and gone. But what you get here is a growing kingdom. It's got a real palace, a real government. There's really a king. There's all kinds of officials. And of course, there's lots of taxes. And as you move into chapter... verse 20, you start getting an echo of Genesis 12, as many as the sand by the sea, but you start seeing all the provisions necessary to sustain this giant bureaucracy. Please remember, this is exactly the thing that Samuel said would happen. The king would take, the king would take, and I'm uncomfortable in verse 26 because you're not supposed to multiply horses if you're the king, Deuteronomy 17, verse 16, but again, I need to stay on track. The result of of having a wise king. Again, verse 20, is that the kingdom prospers and everyone ate and drank and was happy. How we should pray for wise rulers today. And our reading today concludes then, verses 29 to 34, by exalting the wisdom and fame of Solomon. He has incredible understanding, breadth of mind is how the ESV gives it. I think another translation renders it largeness of heart, comprehensive understanding of just many many things, all sorts of stuff. Plants, and he can write songs, and everybody hears verse 34 of the wisdom of Solomon. God has kept his promise to Solomon. I find that to be very encouraging. Our reading for Monday is 1 Kings 4. It is Tuesday. It is Tuesday. And our reading today is 1 Kings chapter 5, the entire chapter, 1 Kings chapter 5. And I would remind folks from Westside that we do have a Zoom call tonight. The elders are not meeting, so we'll meet tonight on Zoom for prayer and for Bible study. 1 Kings 5 is a technical chapter. Lots of details here, and it's easy to get lost in all of that or even decide this is not important. Of course it's important. It's in your Bible. There's a couple of places here where we really see the value. you of this kind of material. I think overall, it's saying an awful lot about how glorious Solomon's kingdom really was. We're a long way from that time when Nabal said of David, I've never even heard of this guy. No, right now, the house of David is running the show. They're the big dogs on the block. And in fact, kings come, verse 1, to Solomon to seek him out. And we get the promises of God to David, verse 5, the important promise in 2 Samuel chapter 7. It is clear that David has told Solomon about his dream to build the temple, and now Solomon is moving forward to make that dream come true. And once again, we get wisdom. Verse 7, 5, 7, he has given to David a wise son. In verse 12, the Lord gave Solomon wisdom. This is about how Solomon is walking in tune with God's will, doing God's word, doing what God wants. And we meet this Hiram, king of Tyre, fella. Maybe you It's important to remember that in Acts chapter 12, the people of Tyre are still dependent upon the people of Palestine for food. They're still trying to negotiate trade alliances. And there is another one of those little red flags. Verse 13, there's a forced labor force being forced. Wow. Okay, let's drink coffee and try to rethink that. There is a task force of workers being drafted out of Israel, verse 13, and later on that's going to be a problem. That will be a huge problem. We'll talk more about that as we journey along. And kings, just kind of file that in the back of your mind. That is the kind of thing that can cause all sorts of unhappiness in your kingdom. So Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders, verse 18, they're cutting and preparing stones and timber. What does all this mean? Thank you for watching. It's unbelievably valuable, beautiful, and immaculate, and the Bible pays attention to it and wants us to pay attention to it. God's house is important. We'll talk more about that tonight in our Zoom call. For the rest of you, I'll see you Wednesday on the podcast, and we'll start our podcast tomorrow with something special. See you on Wednesday. The reading for Tuesday is 1 Kings 5. Welcome to Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. Our reading today is 1 Kings chapter 6 verses 1 to 13. But before we get into that reading, it's time to do something special. I promised that yesterday, didn't I? What's special? What's special about today is that today we start our annual summer series. We'll be bringing in a guest speaker every Wednesday night, and this year they'll be speaking on the theme of the judges, which is our Vacation Bible School theme as well. And that will start with Stephen Russell. Here's Stephen to tell you about his lesson.
SPEAKER_02:Hi, I'm Stephen Russell, and I'm going to be delivering an introduction to the judges of Israel. The stories of the judges are exciting, intriguing, and often disturbing. But these stories aren't included in our Bibles as mere colorful additions to the narrative. Like all of the stories in God's Word, they tell us about God, about His people, and ultimately, about Jesus. And that is what we'll be looking at together on June 4th. I hope to see you there.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Stephen. I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward very much to studying the Judges, and I'm excited about Stephen giving us a good introduction to that. I believe that will help us in a really good way. So let's talk about our Bible reading, 1 Kings 6, 1 to 13. Maybe you're looking at this and thinking, oh boy, a whole bunch of details and measurements and so forth. What are we doing here? There's a lot more here than just details, cubits, and how much gold. Notice, for example, in verse 1 that we get a wonderful chronology passage. The fourth year of Solomon's reign would be about 966 or 967 BC. That's 966 years before the birth of Jesus, give or take. The calendar gets wonky in places, which means the Exodus would date 480 years back behind that to 1447-1446. Sometimes I round that off to 1440, somewhere around in there. And we do get the actual size of the temple. It's It's 90 feet long. That's if you use an 18-inch cubit. It's 30 feet wide and about 45 feet tall. Could be helpful here, particularly as a family, to just go outside and pace it off because it's really not that big. It is about double the size of the tabernacle, but it's not that large a building. It is not something like the Parthenon in Athens or especially the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, which of course is not going to be constructed for another thousand years or so, but those are enormous temples. This is really not that large, but it's very carefully done. Verse 7, the stones are slid into place, cut perfectly to fit here, and all of this emphasizes how special God is. I recently preached in 1 Kings 6, and I just couldn't talk about that nearly enough. All of this material says God is special. You want to get that out of this? And that's what I need to get out of this. Verse 12 is helpful. Something there about the conditional nature of the promises. And that is important because hearts are more important to God than a beautiful building. But this is about how God is special and God needs to be treated as special. That's our reading for Wednesday, 1 Kings 6, 1-13. I'll see you tonight as we start our summer series. Welcome to Thursday, and today we'll read 1 Kings 6, verses 14-38. Let me just say a couple of things here as we look at the arrangement of the temple, and the internal things that are there, and the furniture, and some of the other details that were being given here. Please notice, this is a very standard blueprint for a temple. It is the same shape, size, and proportion of temples that are found throughout the ancient world. Those are called, by archaeologists, long-room temples. And there's lots of those that have been excavated all over Palestine and other parts of the ancient world. I point that out because sometimes someone will say that if a denominational group is doing something, we can't do that. We can't look like them. We'd better not do that. Look at them over there. They're doing this. We'd better not have that ourselves. And I think that's completely in error. I think that's a terrible mistake. I think it hamstrings much of the work of It's a false standard of authority, and it's defeated right here in 1 Kings 6 because Solomon is given the plan by God, and that plan is to build a temple that looks like any other temple you would have seen in the ancient world. So clearly God is not overly disturbed by someone, by his people, having something that kind of sort of resembles what they're doing over there in a false religion. Just think about that a little bit. I do think that the interior of the temple itself is designed to evoke the Garden of Eden, all the flowers and palm trees that are carved there. And the Holy of Holies is a perfect cube, verse 20. And that imagery is used in the book of Revelation, the city four square. And there are cherubim, verses 23 to 28. These cherubim are not... any kind of specific animal. Instead, they are super powerful angels. They serve as guardians to the way of the Lord, and they guard God's house. That's what they are doing here because the Holy of Holies is God's throne room. Again, all of this just says God is very, very special, which is why Verse 38, even with all the preparations that David had made, it still took seven years to build it because it was so elaborate, because it was so expensive, because it was so carefully done, because God is special. We need to get that from 1 Kings 6. I'll see you tomorrow. We'll be in the Psalms. A reading for Thursday, 1 Kings 6. It is Friday. We've made it to the end of another week. It's Friday, and today our reading is Psalm 24. The reading for Friday is Psalm 24. Now, the first question we always want to ask about a psalm is, what kind of psalm is it? What was it used for? We have invitation songs. We have Lord's Supper songs. We have songs of praise. What kind of song is this? This is a temple worship song, and it is about worshiping God as the king. It goes great with our reading in 1 Kings 6 as we're preparing the temple, the house, And if you look there, you see that it has about three parts. Verses 1 and 2, praise God. And then there's kind of an ask and answer back and forth in verses 3 to 6 about who can worship God. There's question, response, and affirmation. And then verses 7 to 10 sound like a song for the bearing of the ark itself. Verses 1 and 2 then have the idea of God bringing order out of chaos in his creation. There's a poetic image here. Verse 2, praise God. 2 of the solid earth rising up out of the waters. And that's a metaphor, a figure of speech for what Genesis says about how God separated the land from the waters. Please notice verse 4, he who has clean hands and a pure heart. That sets up the beatitude of Matthew 5 verse 8. And as well, it sets up James 4 in verse 8. And I like this idea of God being active. Verse 5, he will receive blessing from the Lord. One scholar said, this man has the smile of God upon That's why we want to seek the face of God. Verse 6, And the glory of the king is then extolled in verses 7 to 10. Even the doors are said to lift up. And look, the king of glory is coming in. God is so amazing. What did we say out of 1 Kings 6? God is special. Psalm 24 goes with that idea very well. Our reading for Friday, Psalm 24. That concludes the podcast for the week. Let's have a little more coffee as we're tying everything up here. I appreciate you listening so very much. Hope you're telling other people about the podcast. So until next week when we'll open our Bibles together again, I'm Mark Roberts, and I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come too. I will see you on 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.