The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares

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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.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Good morning, good morning. Welcome to the Monday morning coffee podcast for the week of June 14th through the 20th. Today is June the 15th, and I'm Mark. I've got my Bible open. I have a great cup of coffee. I'm rocking some Costa Rican today. One of our members from West Side went to Costa Rica. They make fabulous coffee. You don't make coffee? Do you make coffee? They grow wonderful coffee in Costa Rica. And that family brought me back a big bag of that. And I'm enjoying that tremendously. In fact, I'm enjoying, I just enjoy so much of the podcast. The opportunity to sit down with you and think about Bible reading, think about yesterday's sermon, just really, really a joy for me. And so I hope that you know what to do. Grab your Bible, grab your coffee, let's grow together. Yesterday

Sermon Notes

SPEAKER_01 1:44

at Westside was really all about daily Bible reading because in the 9 a.m. I talked about what to do when we don't understand Jesus. And I think there'll be some of that certainly this week as we move into some teaching sections here in the Gospel of Matthew. So you may want to listen to that if you weren't in the 9 yesterday. That will be helpful to you in your daily Bible reading. And then, of course, in the 1040, I preached on the parable of the tares, which we will read on Friday in that great chapter of Parables, Matthew the 13th chapter. And here's today's extra thought as we get the week started here. What do I do? What do I do if I discover I'm kind of being a tear? What if I'm what if I'm being a being a weed instead of being a wheat? Wow, try saying that three times real fast. Well, if if I'm beginning to realize that's me, that's a question I really didn't have time to explore yesterday. I don't want this to be discouraging. Oh no, I'm not wheat, I'm just lost. The remarkable thing about the parable is that Jesus tells it before the harvest. The tares are not being burned while Jesus is teaching because the harvest has not yet come. So the purpose of the parable is not merely to warn against being a tear, against being a weed. It also gives people time to change. And if you think about some of the people in the New Testament, Saul of Tarsus, how about Saul of Tarsus, not very weedy when he was persecuting the church, Zacchaeus, not very weedy when he was cheating people, the prodigal son acting like a tear out there when he's feeding pigs in the far country. Yet all of them changed. I think one of the devil's favorite lines is you can't change. You're a tear, you'll always be a tear. The gospel says otherwise. The power of Jesus, the gospel is all about transformation. So maybe Sunday morning sermon, yeah, maybe that made you a little uncomfortable. Well, good. Because sometimes discomfort is exactly what we need. But don't just be uncomfortable. Move toward Jesus. Examine yourself honestly, repent where you need to repent. And of course, if you're not a Christian, then fix that. Become a Christian. And if you're not the Christian you ought to be, fix that. You were wheat, and now you become a tear, fix it, get back to being wheat. Because as long as the harvest hasn't happened yet, there is time to come to Jesus and to be wheat, to be exactly what he wants you to be. Hope that helps you as we move forward into this week, especially as we continue to hear the reading, to continue to hear the teachings and read about, oh, what's the answer to that? Yep, more coffee. As we continue to hear the teachings of Jesus the Christ, let's open our Bibles to the Gospel of Matthew.

Monday Matthew 9

SPEAKER_01 4:48

The reading for Monday, Matthew chapter 9. This is the bushelbasket of miracles interlaced with some teaching, some very challenging teachings along the way. That starts with the healing of a paralytic. Notice here that you can see faith, verse 2. And one of the things that I really like is that Jesus accepts their premise, verse 5. Hey, which is easier? No one can see that you have been forgiven of sins, so that's a pretty easy thing to say. It's not like all of a sudden purple stripes break out on your face when you're forgiven of sins, or maybe you had purple stripes because you're a sinner. Well, I'm not sure where the purple stripes came from, but then when Jesus says you're forgiven, they would go away. And this may, this may actually link to this idea of sin and sickness being tied together. That's a very common thought in Jesus' day. And so if sickness comes from sin, the person who has the power to heal would also have the power to forgive sin. We may see more of that in a minute in the call of Matthew in verses 9 to 13. This is probably right outside of Capernaum. And Matthew was also named Levi when you do some comparison to Mark chapter 2, verse 14, and Luke 5, 27. And look at verse 12. There is the sin and the sick theme once more. They expected, I think, in some ways, a Messiah who would crush wicked people, the sinners, and glorify the righteous. Jesus has room for sinners who want to come from him, come to him. And verse 13, go and learn. That's a very common rabbinic phrase in Jesus' day. It's like saying, go do your homework. Hey, didn't your mama teach you anything? Very common kind of phrase like that. And then Jesus gets attacked, verses 14 to 17, now because of not eating. He got attacked with who he eats with, and now it's an attack on you, you, you don't fast, you, you don't eat at all. And what Jesus says here is that it'd just be inappropriate. This is not the time for that. Sometimes there's comparisons made here that the Old Testament is worn out, and don't go there. Don't go there. Jesus is just saying it's not the time for this. It's the time to celebrate and rejoice because I am here. There'll be plenty of time for mourning later on. Then we get the healing of Jarius' daughter, verses 18 to 26. And this narrative is really only about a third of what we had when we read this in Mark's gospel. We know this is Jarius, Mark 5, 22, and it's very tightly condensed here. I think Matthew is just piling on with the healings. We get this business of ridiculing, verse 24, they laughed at him. The New King James there has ridicule, which is probably better. And I am sure they're thinking there is no chance here. No way, no how. But this very much reminds us of the prophet Elijah and Elisha, the prophets there and the healings that they did. Jesus is a prophet. That is something that is sometimes overlooked, prophet, priest, and king. I've mentioned that before on the podcast. And this looks like the things that a prophet would do. And then there is more healings. He heals a man unable to speak. And he's very concerned. Jesus is always concerned. Notice verse 30. Don't tell people about this. Jesus does not want to be known as a wonder worker and as a healer. He wants to be known as the teacher of the gospel. And then we conclude verses 35 through the end of the chapter here with some discussion about the need to preach and teach. That's what Jesus is really all about. The reading for Monday, Matthew chapter 9.

Tuesday Matthew 10

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Welcome to Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday. And today our reading is Matthew 10. The reading for Tuesday, Matthew the 10th chapter. We do get a Zoom call tonight, Zoom Bible study tonight for Westsiders. Going to be exciting to work on this chapter, 42 verses. That's quite a bit for us to be reading. And it will be it'll be good for us to talk about this and work through this. The chapter begins with the calling of the 12, and here we get the idea of apostle. Apostle is one sent with authority. It sometimes is used in the New Testament just to mean a messenger, and sometimes means just preachers. There's a couple of places where it's used in kind of a generic sort of way, but it comes to be a technical term for the 12, for the for those special men who Jesus calls here to be with him and who will begin the preaching of the gospel. A couple of notes here on these names. Simon is a contraction of Simeon. He and his brother Andrew are fishermen. They may, in fact, have been disciples of John the Baptist at the outset. James and John are the sons of Zebedee. That's a prosperous Zebedee has a prosperous fishing business. And we just see a lot about James and John in the text. Zebedee's wife comes and asks Jesus for a favor for her boys, and James and John are known as the sons of thunder. Philip always starts the second four, and he was a disciple of John the Baptist as well. Bartholomew means son of Tolmai, Bar is son of son of Tolmai. So that may not be his only name. Sometimes he's identified with Nathaniel. Thomas, known for his doubting, but it should actually be known for courage. Matthew, don't know a lot about him. His dad was Alpheus, and he was a tax collector. James, the son of Alphaeus, is named so as to distinguish from the other James, the brother of John. And then Thaddeus, who's also called Judas, largely, we do some process of elimination to get to that. He may have been the one that wrote the book of Jude. Then there's Simon the Zealot. Zealots were a revolutionary group, maybe a little bit on the terrorist side. And of course, Judas Iscariot. There's a lot of interest in the name Iscariot. It may mean man of Chirioth. It could be a transliteration of the Latin word Sicarius, which would mean he's a zealot and one of those terrorist types. It can also mean man of Jericho or even Judas the redhead. So Jesus sends them out to make a proclamation of the gospel in verses 5 to 10. And there's a lot of discussion about how this fits with the sending of the 72 in Luke 10. But the apostles may be, maybe, part of that larger group, or this may be two separate sendings. And of course, they only go to Israel, verse 6. And I think that's just a practical consideration on the part of Jesus, because if they go to Gentiles, that will stir up a lot of animosity and probably, let me just mark an end point for too many people. It can't be part of this new movement if they're going to include Gentiles. Think about it, we get to the book of Acts, and a lot of time goes by and a lot of great things are happening. And even then, when Peter goes in Acts 10 and baptizes Cornelius and his household, there's a lot of dust thrown in the air. That's a major, major barrier for a lot of people, ends up getting hashed out again in Acts 15. It's a huge issue. Not the time for it yet. And Jesus is very careful here in these instructions that they don't look like they're in it for money. There were traveling philosophers in this day who moved around and took advantage of people. So beginning in verse 16, we get a long section here on persecution, all the way through about verse 33. And really, when you read 5 to 15, that expects a really good response. They're going to put you up in their house and so forth and so on. But there would be a time when you wouldn't get a good response. And Jesus is looking ahead to the time when Judaism and Christianity would cleave apart and you would not be welcome in the synagogue anymore, which would be, oh, that would have dramatic, dramatic implications for a Jewish Christian, not welcome in the community, maybe not able to do business, lots of trouble, persecution, and the things that go with all of that. This Sunday, I'll be preaching in the 9, Lord willing on Revelation, the sixth chapter, and talking a lot about the battle between Jesus and the devil. And I think sometimes, sometimes maybe American Christians have lost sight of that because we have civil rights and liberties. We don't worry about being arrested for going to church or cast out of society, those kinds of things. Well, that's that's an anomaly. That's an anomaly. And Jesus says a lot of things about persecution because that has for so long been part of what it is to be a disciple, and that may heads up be a part of being a disciple yet even again. Verse 23 talks about Jesus will come again, and that gives a lot of people just fits because they're looking for the second coming. But every time the Bible talks about a coming of God does not mean that it's the coming coming, the second coming, capital S, capital C. I talk about this a lot because you just need this vocabulary if you will understand Jesus and if you'll understand the gospels. There's lots of talk of the coming of Jesus. And then, of course, people look around and say, and, and where is he? Well, this is a coming in judgment. This references the AD 70 destruction of Jerusalem here. And there will be persecution. Verse 32, everyone who acknowledges me before men, Jesus probably means in an earthly court of law right there. And then there is some final admonitions beginning about verse 37, where Jesus says to love family members more than God would disqualify you. And taking up your cross means to consider yourself already dead, die to self. It's not a tragedy, it's not troubles. Oh my, you know, I'm a Dallas Cowboy fan, but that's just my cross to bear, Jerry Jones. Yeah, that's okay, that's a lot of suffering. There's no question about that. But that's not what Jesus is talking about. Even unbelievers have that kind of suffering. So that's certainly not the cross. And verse 40 sets this back in the mission setting again. Jesus stresses how important it is that we receive his messengers. Matthew chapter 10, that's the reading for Tuesday. See you tonight, Westsiders, on the Zoom Bible study. Everybody else, see you on the podcast tomorrow.

Wednesday Matthew 11

SPEAKER_01 14:44

It is Wednesday. It is Wednesday. Have you got your coffee? Matthew chapter 11 is the reading for Wednesday. Let's get some coffee going and let's sit down in the Word of God. This begins with some discussion here about John the Baptist. And it seems to me that really there's a pivot in Matthew chapter 11 where there's just more hostility towards Jesus. That begins a theme that I think carries forward from here. There's a lot of conflict with the Jewish leaders, and that begins to get very, very harsh. We'll see some more of that in tomorrow's reading in chapter 12. But John the Baptist here is concerned that Jesus is not the Messiah. And some people really go bonkers about all of that. They deny that he could lose his faith and that he just sent his disciples to ask this question for their benefit. I remember years ago, there was a dear sister, and she would ask questions for QA mornings. She'd write something down and she would press it in my hand. She'd say, Now, now I really know the answer, but I think other people need to hear this. And of course, she did not know the answer. She wanted to know the answer. Um, I don't think John the Baptist knew the answer here, and I don't think he's sending his disciples so that they would get the answer. I think it's I think it's easy to see that John the Baptist could doubt. Jesus had not brought the promised judgment, Jesus hadn't even bailed him out of jail. What's going on? I I thought the Messiah would bring revolution and armies, and you're nothing like what I thought. And Jesus' answer to that is verse 5, a quotation from Isaiah 29 and Isaiah 35 and Isaiah 61. These verses speak of the work of the Messiah. And so John had spoken for Jesus, and now Jesus bears witness to John and says, He is the prophet. Verse 9, he is a prophet. He's the greatest of the prophets. And sometimes we wonder, verse 11, how can we be greater than John? But of course, John never saw the kingdom fully. He did not know all of its blessings like you and I know. So we have the opportunity to be in the kingdom and to be part of the kingdom. There is a lot of discussion in verse 12, until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence. And if you read different translations, which is exactly what you should do when you don't understand a text, you get different translations. The New King James says, until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence. And the New International says the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing. And it turns here on a Greek tense, whether it suffers violence, which is a passive voice, it's being acted upon, or what's known in Greek as the middle voice has been coming violently, and we don't even have a middle voice in English. So it's very, very difficult to thrash through all of that. But it seems best to see this as the kingdom has been enduring assault. Violent men, the Pharisees, Herod, Romans, etc., attacking the kingdom. And then there's more of this hostility theme in 16 to 19 when Jesus talks about you're just never happy. You're never happy. And he's talking about how kids play. The girls would play wedding. And of course, uh, we played the flute for you, verse 17, and did not dance. Men don't forget, dance at weddings, and you see the big circle, and it's not Lascivious dancing in any shape, form, or fashion. Uh, but of course, in this society, there's that celebration. And so we're playing wedding, but the boys won't dance. And then the boys sing a dirge, but the girls won't cry. And women's responsibility at a funeral was to be a wailing woman. All you do is criticize verse 18. You just attack, attack, attack. But wisdom, Jesus says, will be justified by her deeds, verse 19. And that probably means wisdom is proven right by her actions, and that their actions show they're not wise. They don't want to accept Jesus. And that just transitions right into these cities that are unrepentant, verses 20 to 24. These cities listened, but they didn't do anything with what they heard. Many of the miracles that Jesus did, just so many miracles occurred right, verse 21, in this area. You think everybody and his brother would have been following Jesus when these miracles were being done right before their very eyes. Finally, the chapter ends, verse 25 to 30, by talking about the ones that will be accepted. And I want to work on this tonight for Bible talk, but I'll just say this right here. We need to be careful not to make too much of concealing the truth. Anyone who wants to see will see. But Jesus talks about the kind of person who will see. Verse 28, the meek, the humble. By the way, that invitation in verse 28 is only found in Matthew. The reading for Wednesday, Matthew chapter 11.

Thursday Matthew 12

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Here we go, here we go, here we go. It is Thursday, and our reading today is Matthew chapter 12. The reading for Thursday is Matthew chapter 12, and we'd better dive right into it. I hope you have a big cup of coffee today, because this is 50 verses. This is a monster chapter. It begins with this Sabbath controversy about the wheat field. Season here would probably be late spring when the grain is ripe. And this is a violation of Pharisaic traditions and there are all their crazy rules and regulations. They would say the disciples are unlawfully reaping and winnowing and threshing and even maybe preparing a meal because they are eating. None of that is true. None of that is a violation of the law of Moses. We need to think about that a lot, particularly when people try to interpret this as saying what the disciples are doing is wrong, but it was okay to do it because, as one commentator says, human need must take precedence over ceremonial technicalities. There is so much wrong in that sentence. First of all, the idea that the Sabbath law was just a ceremonial technicality. Nope, that's absolutely not right. And then human need taking precedence over God's law. Where do you ever read anything like that? That's called situation ethics. And if you buy into that, then you can justify almost anything. Wow, I need transportation, and human need takes precedence over ceremonial technicalities. The law says don't steal, but you know what? I need your car, so I'm stealing it. You could justify just about anything. On top of that, these guys aren't starving to death. So what is the human need here? They're just snacking. They're snacking as they go along. So stop with all of that. Jesus makes a couple of arguments here. First and foremost, in verses three to four, he says it's ridiculous for you to attack my disciples about this. David was wrong. My men are not wrong, so you are not consistent in your attacks. This is selective prosecution. You would never say anything to David for his actual violation of the law. You're attacking my disciples over nothing. And then only in Matthew is verses five and six, which is the argument that says God can exempt whom he chooses. God exempts the priest from the Sabbath, and Jesus can do the same thing. He is greater than the temple. Probably most importantly here is verse 7, where, and that's, I think this is only in Matthew's account, if I remember correctly. And this is a quotation of Hosea chapter 6, which Jesus used, by the way, in Matthew 9 and verse 13. And what he says here is you just miss the whole point of the law. You just miss the whole thing. When you make up all these teeny tiny rules and burden people, then you just miss the point and you end up condemning those that are guiltless. That transitions directly into the man with the withered hand. And this time it's not what the disciples are doing, it's what Jesus does. And once again, we bump into all these rabbinical rules and regulations. There was a huge amount of writing, talking, debating about what you could and could not do for a sick person. On the Sabbath day, Jesus makes his classic how much more argument. Verse 11, he loves to make these. How much more? If you would take care of an animal, how much more should we take care of a human being? And the rabbis did allow that you could do something that would enable the animal to help itself. So maybe you've seen those reels on social media where there's an animal trapped in a dumpster, and so someone puts a ladder into the dumpster so they can climb out or a big stick. I saw the other day somebody put a stick in a dumpster, and about 400 raccoons came piling out of there, which was amazing. And so I guess the rabbis would sanction that. But Jesus says, listen, verse 12, humans are more important than animals. So if you would do something for an animal, you can do something for a human. And notice here, Jesus could have told the guy, hey, I'll I'll meet you tomorrow, and that way it won't create a kerfuffle. But Jesus intentionally provokes them. He heals the guy on the spot. We need to think a lot about not making rules that God has not made, binding rules that God has not made, building our own traditions that just keep people out. Need to be very careful about that. In verses 15 to 21, then Matthew develops that Jesus is the Messiah and he is tying miracles to the suffering servant prophecies in Isaiah. And I think there's a contrast here to the gentleness of Jesus, in contrast to the hatred of the Pharisees. Verse 20 talks about a bruised reed. You use a reed as a measuring stick. And so if it's broken, it's of no value. You pitch it. Think of the yardstick. Everybody has a couple of yard sticks in the closet somewhere. You pick them up at the fair, the giveaway kind of thing. If you break a yardstick, no one says, Well, we got to carefully glue this back together again. I'm going to send this to the furniture repair guy and get it all fit. You just pitch it. Get another one. It's of no value. Jesus says, I value. And notice verse 21, Matthew includes the last line of the prophecy of Isaiah 42 to get to the Gentiles. And it just keeps coming here in this chapter. Now there's a confrontation with the Pharisees about his Jesus casting out demons. And I think people are getting it. Verse 23, the Messiah was expected to perform miracles. This guy performs miracles. He's got to be the guy. And the Pharisees are saying, no, he's doing that by the power of the devil, which is a nonsensical argument. I think Jesus might take a poke at them in verse 26, when he says, um, if Satan casts out Satan, he's divided against himself. Remember, the Pharisees' name, as best as scholars can derive, means divided. So maybe there's a little double entendre there, the divided guys. How about that? And these exorcisms do prove, versus Jesus says, verse 28, Jesus says, there, whoa, what do we need? Yeah, coffee? Verse 28, Jesus says, that proves the kingdom of God's coming. That proves the kingdom of God is coming. And Jesus is pushing them, verse 29, to see what the exorcisms mean. And don't miss that harvest image in verse 30. We began with harvest talk. Are the disciples wrongfully harvesting? And then Jesus says, You can sin in such a way as you won't be forgiven, verse 32. And I've covered that many, many times. I'll just say very briefly here, if you're struggling with that, just come talk to me about that or message me about that. It's just the refusal to believe. It's a refusal to believe despite all the evidence available. And when people won't believe in Jesus, of course, they won't ask Jesus for forgiveness. That's why they won't be forgiven. They don't ask. You have not because you asked not. And Jesus just keeps working this. Verses 33 to 37. That what's needed here is a change of heart. What's needed is a change of heart. And wow, I can't believe this. There's more. 38 to 45, they show up and now they're all nice, nice, and act all proper. And they say, we just need a sign. Maybe they're asking for a prophecy that would be immediately fulfilled. But what they really want is Jesus to compel faith. And Jesus says, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing something that'll force you to believe, even though you don't want to believe. The men of Nineveh did better than you are doing. And there's a great contrast here between Jesus and Jonah. Jesus is a son of God. Jonah was just a man. And in fact, he's not even a big-name prophet. Jesus was perfect. Jonah, whew, not perfect. He is a stubborn, hard-hearted, rebellious person. Jesus preaches grace and mercy. Jonah preaches doom. Jesus did miracles. Jonah had no confirmatory miracles. Jesus preached to people with knowledge of God in the scripture. Jonah goes to the Ninevites. What do they know about God? And so Jesus says the Ninevites do better. They have a better heart. In verse 43, then, Jesus says, when the unclean spirit's gone out of a person, it passes through to waterless places. And I know everybody's going to ask about that. Why do unclean spirits go to the desert? What's up with that? Why are they doing that? And the answer is, we just don't know. We really don't know. One scholar said, if we associate God with all that is good, where do you think demons would naturally be? Certainly not in a lush garden. They would be in the dry and very barren kinds of parts of the world. And the chapter then ends with Jesus' own family, 46 to 50, and and and they don't get it. They don't get it. And people have wondered about Joseph. Where is Joseph? And maybe maybe this text tells us Joseph isn't on the scene anymore. Joseph has passed away. The reading for Thursday, Matthew chapter 12. It

Friday Matthew 13

SPEAKER_01 28:19

is Friday. It is Friday. Today is World Cup Soccer Day, as the United States takes on the kangaroos from Australia. I'm not sure how good kangaroos are at soccer, but I guess we'll find out this afternoon. And most importantly, of course, before we watch ballgame this afternoon, we need to think about our daily Bible reading out of Matthew chapter 13. The reading for Friday is Matthew chapter 13. I'm going to say some stuff here to introduce parables. And then I think I'm going to try to keep this short, especially because yesterday I went so very, very long. Let me just say a few words about a few words about parables here. And then Sunday, Lord willing, in the 1040, I want to talk about the parable of the tares. And I think that'll help explain an awful lot of what's going on in the chapter as well. So I'll just see if I can keep this kind of concise. This is the first time that we come in Matthew's Gospel to Jesus' favorite way of teaching, which is the parable. Parable is a Greek word that is the translation of a Hebrew term that means a wide variety of different things, has a wide semantic meaning or semantic range. It can mean proverb or metaphor or riddle or allegory. It's used in a lot of ways. But basically, the way Jesus uses parables is to take a simple event in daily life and use it to illustrate truth. And for a long time, the way to handle parables, people thought, was to try to allegorize them, make everything stand for something, and find some deeper meaning in every aspect, every detail of the parable, kind of the way people do the book of Revelation. And I think that's a terrible mistake and leads us to making more out of the parable than Jesus would ever want. As a general guideline, emphasis general, I'm going to look for one main principle for each main character in the story. That's about where I go with that. And that's that's my general approach to the story. And this is where Jesus explains why he tells parables. Verses 10 to 17, that's my focus in the podcast today. The parable of the sower is primarily about what kind of soil you are, Jesus is saying. And so he quotes Isaiah 6 here to say that your character, your character, your heart will decide whether the gospel, whether the word Jesus is teaching will have any effect upon you. The word never changes. It's the hearer that changes. And people who don't want to heal it, hear it, will not hear it. They won't receive it. And so Jesus is concealing the truth for a reason. Uh he's he's using it, he's using these parables as a way to sift or to filter out the audience. There's lots of hangar-honners and people who are curiosity seekers and folks who are just out to see the show. And Jesus uses these parables to sift the crowd. And that way he can find who genuinely is interested in the kingdom of heaven and who's just kind of out for a good time today and see what that new rabbi from Nazareth is telling. Remember, if Jesus simply didn't want his enemies to know the truth, he just would never have spoken to them. So he Jesus is not concealing the truth, he is using the parable to give everyone a chance, but there is a challenge here to think and to dig and to probe and to stretch, to ask hard questions about what that teaching is and how it applies to me. That's what parables do. If you're really interested in spiritual matters, they make you think. And I think a great illustration of that is the parable that Nathan tells King David. And it would have been very easy for David to just take that at a very surface kind of level and say, wow, we just need to do something here. There needs to be justice for this wrongdoing. And then Nathan says, you need to think again. You need to think about what that parable means. You are the man in the parable. And I would love to have seen King David's face in that moment as that spiritual truth hit him like a ton of bricks. Parables conceal and reveal, but they reveal to people who have a heart to hear the truth. Our reading for Friday, Matthew chapter 13. That concludes the podcast for the week. Certainly do appreciate you listening to the podcast, drinking coffee with me, thinking about the Word of God, thinking about the sermons on Sunday. It is a joy for me to have this opportunity to talk with you, to sit down with friends, people who care about the Lord, and talk about the things that matter most, the kingdom of heaven, Jesus, and his wonderful teachings. I'm Mark Roberts. I want to go to heaven, and I want you to come to see you Monday with a cup of coffee.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

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. U P P-E-A-T. Our creators can get free music.