June 9, 2025 • 22 mins
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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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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 00 (00:01):
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 alook back at yesterday's sermon
so that we can think through itfurther and better work the
(00:24):
applications into our dailylives.
Mark will then look forwardinto this week's Bible reading
so that we can know what toexpect and watch for.
And he may have some extrabonus thoughts from time to
time.
So grab a cup of coffee as westart the week together on
Monday Morning Coffee with Mark.
Speaker 01 (00:52):
Good morning, good morning.
Welcome to the Monday MorningCoffee podcast for Monday, June
the 9th.
This is a special week atWestside, a busy week at
Westside.
It's Vacation Bible Schoolweek.
I'm Mark.
I am holding an extra great cupof coffee.
This is some Black Bear coffeefrom Stumptown Roasters.
I love Stumptown Roasters, andthis was brought to me by a
podcast listener who was onvacation and thought about me
(01:14):
while she was on vacation.
How great is that?
I always appreciate kindnesslike that.
So I have got notes fromyesterday's sermon.
I'm looking at stuff for Biblereading.
I'm thinking about VacationBible School tonight.
Pour that cup of coffee.
Let's get ready.
Let's get set.
Let's go.
Let's start with a quick lookback at yesterday's sermon, a
(01:37):
sermon in which I talked aboutloneliness and isolation and how
that is kind of reaching acelebrated status in our culture
and society today.
And biblically, Being byyourself is not such a great
thing.
You don't want to be the onesheep.
So the only extra thought, theonly extra thing that I got for
you is to say at the end of thatsermon, I challenge you to
(01:59):
spend 15 minutes this weekmaking a connection with
somebody.
Text somebody, call somebody,and then go and be with someone
face-to-face.
Did you do it?
Have you done it?
We all thought yesterday, yeah,that's right, I need to do
that.
Now, it's Monday.
Let's go do that.
and maybe an opportunity tomake some connections.
(02:19):
Tonight at Vacation BibleSchool, Terry Slack is going to
be talking about Joshua andsetting up the stage for some of
the things that go on in thebook of Judges.
Come to Vacation Bible Schooltonight at 7 at the Westside
Church, and that'll be anopportunity to hear a great
lesson and, yes, to make someconnections.
Before we get to VBS tonight,though, we need to do our daily
(02:39):
Bible reading.
We are in Kings, and it's timeto talk about 1 Kings 7.
Let's go do some daily Biblereading.
It is Monday, and the readingfor Monday is 1 Kings 7, verses
(03:10):
1 to 22.
If you get a sense of deja vulike I do when I'm reading 1
Kings 7, it is because I ampreaching through 1 Kings, and I
just preached on 1 Kings 7very, very recently.
So if you need moreinformation, I'll try to keep
the podcast here a little bitshort on 1 Kings 7 because we've
just been through this.
Just go back and listen to thatsermon.
I worked through itexegetically and talked a lot
(03:32):
about some of the issues thatare going on there.
Notably, I would add this incase you don't remember or you
didn't hear that sermon, don'thave time to go back and listen
to it.
because it's Vacation BibleSchool week.
There's a lot of discussionabout Solomon's house taking so
long to build while his ownhouse, verse 1, is 13 years of
building, and the temple is onlyseven years in building.
(03:54):
And I think, as I said in thesermon, that may not indicate
that there's a heart problemhere with Solomon.
David got the plans from Godfor the house and set aside all
the materials necessary, so thatmade that project go a lot
quicker.
And it is important to notethat Solomon's palace is part of
the temple complex.
It is affixed to it, so this isis all kind of going on
(04:14):
together here.
And it does seem like this is20 years of building, which
would be half of Solomon'sreign.
It may be that he is spendingtoo much time on his own house
and not nearly enough time onGod's house, but that is not
necessarily the case.
in the text itself.
The other issue in this text isthese amazing pillars that get
built, Joachim and Boaz, and no,we don't know why they're
(04:38):
there, and no, we don't knowexactly what that means.
Joachim means he willestablish, and Boaz means in his
strength.
What they symbolize is simplynot known.
There are tons and tons ofsuggestions about all of that.
Some people want there to besomething burning on the top of
the pillars, and I'm not surehow anybody could climb up on
top of this 27-foot high pillar,and it's got a capital on top
(04:59):
of that that adds another 36inches or give or take or so to
the top of the pillar, howyou're getting up there to fill
that thing with oil or to offera sacrifice.
I don't see them being set onfire, but again...
We're just not sure whatthey're there for.
But it is clearly part of thetemple, and it is clearly
ordained of God.
(05:19):
And I would add, I gave youthis note last week, there are a
number of examples offreestanding pillars at the
entrance of temples all throughPhoenicia and elsewhere in the
biblical world.
So that old business aboutGod's people can't ever do
anything that looks like whatthey're doing over there with
fake religion, that just doesn'thold water.
The temple does look like...
other temples.
(05:40):
When people come to Jerusalem,pagan people come to Jerusalem,
they look at the temple.
They don't say, hey, I don'tknow what that is.
No, they know exactly what thatis because it looks like other
temples throughout the knownworld at that time.
They are incredible pieces.
They are probably hollow.
Otherwise, they'd be enormouslyheavy and just be very
difficult, I understand, from anengineering standpoint to get
(06:01):
the things up.
And they are cast down at theJordan River.
Because there's a reference tothis later in the text.
We'll read some of thistomorrow in verse 46.
In the plain of the Jordan, theking cast them in the clay
ground between Succoth andZarethan.
And they're super importantbecause Jeremiah, when he
covers...
Wow, that's probably not theright word for Jeremiah.
(06:21):
It's not like he's a reporter.
But when he talks about thedestruction of the temple and
the destruction of Jerusalem, hegives a lot of attention to
these pillars.
They matter and they areimportant to the Jewish people.
And they are, spoiler alert,completely destroyed by the
Babylonians.
So our reading for Monday is 1Kings 7, verses 1-22.
(06:41):
See you tonight.
Stephen Baxley, no, no, that'snot right.
Terry Slack will be talking tous about Joshua.
And I'll see you tonight at 7,7 o'clock west side for Vacation
Bible School.
The reading for Monday, 1 Kings7, verses 1 to 22.
It is Tuesday.
It is Tuesday, and we do haveVacation Bible School tonight,
(07:02):
so there'll be no Zoom meeting,of course, Westsiders.
Our reading for Tuesday is 1Kings 7, verses 23 to 51.
We're finishing up thischapter, and there's a couple of
enormously important piecesthat are being put together
here, starting with this brasssea.
It's the molten sea, verse 23.
And my understanding is thiskind of circular vat or tank to
(07:26):
hold maybe as many as 10 or12,000 gallons of water.
There's nothing easy aboutcasting one of these or the
metallurgy behind it.
This is a very important itembecause the priest will need
this water to purify themselvesand to do the washings and all
that goes with that.
Then there's some mobile basinsthat are also poured and made.
They're very large, and theywill help support all the
(07:47):
sacrificing going on in thetemple.
Finally, verses 40 to 46 kindof summarize a bunch of this.
Again, lots of costlymaterials, lots of things being
done here.
that just must have boggled theimagination.
People saw all that was beingdone for the temple.
They must have I can just seepeople coming down just to see
(08:07):
it, just to see the stuff beingwheeled in.
Wow.
Can you believe that?
Verses 47 to 51, then thegolden table and the lampstands.
Please remember the averageIsraelite never went inside the
temple.
So if you wanted to see thisstuff, you'd need to see it when
it was being installed becausethe average Israelite, as I
said, is not going inside.
It is incredible buildingunlike any other building.
(08:31):
Verse 51 tells us all the workthat King Solomon did in the
house of the Lord is The houseof the Lord was finished, and
Solomon brought in the thingsthat David his father had
dedicated, the silver, the gold,the vessels, stored them in the
treasuries of the house of theLord.
So they didn't even useeverything that David had put
aside, and yet it is anincredibly expensive and
enormously elaborate building,all of which says God is
(08:55):
special.
I use this quote when Ipreached on 1 Kings last month.
One scholar said, I want tosuggest that the splendor of the
temple...
He says, ample informalworship, biblical scholarship,
(09:37):
or the quality of our dailywork.
I like that a lot.
I like that a lot.
I like for us to think aboutwhat we are building.
Is that saying what we arebuilding with our lives, what we
are building with ourpriorities, with our time, and
especially what we are buildingas a congregation, what we are
doing together?
Is that reflecting ourpriorities, and does that say
God is special?
(09:58):
Our reading for Tuesday is in 1Kings 7, verses 23 to verse 51.
See you tonight at VacationBible School, 7 o'clock.
Stephen Baxley will talk to usabout Samson, and we'll learn
more about Samson the judge.
See you tonight, everybody.
Welcome to Wednesday.
(10:21):
Welcome to Wednesday.
Today we read 1 Kings chapter8.
verses 1 to 21.
1 Kings chapter 8 containsSolomon's dedication prayer at
the dedication of the temple.
It may be the greatest prayerin the Old Testament.
It is magnificent, and thereare two big themes in this
prayer, one of which we get inour reading today, which is that
(10:41):
God does what he promises.
God fulfills his word.
If you will underline everyplace it says fulfilled in our
reading today, you'll be busy.
Everything about promises andyou did what you said, much of
that In tomorrow's reading, wewill still see some things about
fulfilled, for example, inverse 24, verse 25, verse 26.
But then the big theme becomesforgive.
(11:03):
So we have fulfilled andforgive.
So we start our reading todaywith the bringing up of the Ark
of the Covenant, verse 1, out ofthe city of David over to Mount
Zion.
I think sometimes we operatewith maybe a very modern view of
cities.
Maybe we're thinking of Dallas,Fort Worth, and it's all just
one giant city.
It's all grown together.
But at this time, the city ofDavid is over on one hill, and
(11:25):
the temple is over on, andSolomon's palace is with that,
over on a different hill.
Now, by Jesus' day, it will allgrow together, and there'll be
one wall that surrounds all ofit and so forth.
But at this time, there's thecity of David, and then there's
Mount Zion, where the temple is,and the ark is brought over
there.
And of course, pretty quickly,we get into some questions.
How come the poles of thecherubim, the poles of the ark
(11:47):
of the covenant are so long,verse 8, that you can see them?
What's the deal with that?
Did they not make the room bigenough?
Why do we have poles that wecan see?
One writer suggests, and Ithink this probably works pretty
well, is that it was not anoversight or a miscalculation on
the size of the Most HolyPlace.
Instead, being able to see thepoles was to emphasize the
(12:09):
portable character of the Ark ofthe Covenant.
When you think about it, youdon't need poles anymore on the
Ark of the Covenant.
The Ark of the Covenant isgoing to sit here in the temple.
We're not moving it anymore.
During the the time of thetabernacle, we needed the poles
and it had to be moved every dayand all the things that go with
all of that.
It will never move again.
It is sitting right here fromnow on, but God has the poles
(12:32):
remain to remind them of thattime of the wilderness and maybe
to make sure they don't get toocomfortable with the idea that
the ark is going to remain hereat all times.
That's not how God's presencecertainly works.
So then in verses 10 and 11,the temple is filled with the
glory of God, which of course isexactly what God did with the
(12:52):
tabernacle in Exodus chapter 40.
So we get the same kind oflanguage and God is approving of
the temple and everything thatis about this.
just wonderful, God moves in tohis house.
And then Solomon begins toaddress the people in verses 12
to 21, and that address is justfull of praise for God keeping
(13:13):
his promises.
And 2 Samuel 7 is just all overthis opening to the prayer.
Just every bit of this is Godpromised and God has done, God
has fulfilled, God told myfather, and God is doing and
confirming exactly what he saidhe would do.
David has a son on the Maybethe thing to say about that is
(13:37):
that would point us toward thefulfillment of the promise that
the Messiah will come, thateverlasting king in the dynasty
of David.
If God has done all of thesethings, God will surely keep his
word.
We can expect the Messiah,which of course...
is exactly the point the NewTestament makes in the coming of
Jesus.
Our reading then for Wednesday,1 Kings 8, verses 1-21.
(14:00):
See you tonight at 7.30 forVacation Bible School and our
special Vacation Bible Schoolassembly.
Welcome to Thursday.
Welcome to Thursday's readingin 1 Kings 8, verses 22-53.
This is the magnificent part ofSolomon's dedicatory prayer.
(14:21):
all of it is wrapped around theidea that God has given us the
temple as a way for sinfulpeople to approach a holy God.
And in 2 Chronicles 6, wherethere is the parallel account to
this, we are told that therewas a scaffold built above the
people.
And in Solomon, he's standingin verse 22, but at some point,
He kneels to pray.
(14:42):
And verse 54 of our reading in1 Kings 8 reminds us that at
some point Solomon the king,think of the impression that
would make upon the people, heis kneeling.
Once again, there is thefulfillment then of God's word,
verses 23, 24, and 25, 26.
There's the praise of God inthis prayer.
I just love that.
Let's talk about what God isdoing.
(15:03):
Let's talk about how good Godis.
Let's praise God for who thathe is.
But then verse 27, what's thistemple about?
What's this temple about?
Is this really a box for God?
Now we've got him.
Oh, we built this golden trap,and now we've got God contained.
No, Solomon clearly knowsbetter than that.
Solomon prays, though, that thetemple could be a meeting place
(15:27):
for human need and divinemercy, notes one scholar.
And I love how verse 27 saysthat God is awesome and great,
and then in verse 28 it says...
We can talk to him and helistens.
What an amazing God we serve.
The rest of our reading thendetails seven requests, seven
situations where God's peoplewill need God.
And a ton of this is drawn outof Leviticus 26, the various
(15:51):
blessings and cursings.
If you do things that arewrong, this is what will happen
to you.
Some of it comes fromDeuteronomy chapter 28.
So there's defeat by the enemy,verses 33 and 34.
What about no rain, verses 35and 36?
Canaanites prayed to Baal.
the storm god, for rain.
When Israel did that, God madesure it didn't rain to teach
(16:12):
them a lesson about who truly isGod.
And so Solomon just worksthrough these situations and
over and over again, he says,forgive, forgive, forgive,
forgive.
And I should say this, at theend of this, 2 Chronicles 7
verse 1 says, fire from heavenfell.
So God accepts this prayer.
God accepts this temple.
God is pleased with whatSolomon has done.
(16:34):
And I should add here, maybetwo quick notes.
First of all, if you thinkthere was no forgiveness in the
Old Testament, then you need toreview your thinking about that
because Solomon is talking aboutforgiveness and there is is
forgiveness under the OldTestament.
It is not the same as ourforgiveness today because our
forgiveness looks back to thecross, and this is forgiveness
(16:55):
that is done in light of thecoming of the cross someday.
And we could talk about thatfurther, but I've heard people
talk about sins being rolledforward and all kinds of crazy
ideas because they don't wantthere to be any Old Testament
forgiveness.
And all that's just nonsense.
There is plenty of forgiveness,and Solomon is claiming it
here.
The other thing, just to make anote, This building is so
special and so unique and sowonderful.
(17:16):
How do you think it felt forIsrael?
How do you think it felt forthe Jews to watch the
Babylonians show up and burn itto the ground?
What do you do then?
There's no provision made forwhat we do, and we don't have a
temple because we were wicked,and the place where we go to
seek God and ask for forgivenessis physically gone.
(17:38):
What do we do now?
The burning of the temple, bothin 586 BC and in AD 70, is an
enormous marker that things areway off the rails, and people
who had any inclination to tryto be godly must have thought,
what has happened and what do wedo now?
So think about that.
(17:59):
Tomorrow we'll be in thePsalms, but our reading for
Thursday is 1 Kings 8, verses 22to 53.
It is Friday.
It is Friday.
And that means we're in thePsalms.
We are in Psalm chapter 30 orPsalm 30 today.
This is a magnificent Psalm.
It contains one of my favoriteverses, Psalm 30 and verse 5.
(18:20):
I love that verse.
Let's talk about it.
It is a Psalm of praise andthanksgiving.
We always start with what kindof Psalm is it, but it is upside
down.
This Psalm is upside down.
Usually what you get in thiskind of song is a lament at the
beginning, discussing all theterrible things that are
happening, and then you cry outto God for help, and then you
(18:41):
praise and thank God fordelivering you.
Now, this time, if you wouldput this psalm in order, it
would be verses 6 and 7, thenverses 8 and 10, 8 to 10, and
then verses 1, 2, and 3.
But what happens here isthere's the praise of God.
He's wonderful.
He delivered me.
Then there's the discussion ofwhat got me into effects, and
then there is the crying out toGod in verses 8, 9, 10, 11, and
(19:04):
12.
So let's just kind of workthrough this a little bit.
You might notice the ascriptionthere that says, at the
dedication of the temple, and ofcourse, if David wrote this,
then it couldn't be used at thededication of the temple.
It's a place to be remindedthat those inscriptions are old,
but they are not inspired.
And it just may mean that thispsalm got picked up and used
later.
At the temple, there is atradition that Judas Maccabee
(19:27):
used Psalm 30 when herededicated the temple in the
time between Malachi and Matthewwhen the temple had been
desecrated and defiled byAntiochus Epiphanes.
So here, look at verse 2.
That really is the summary ofthe entire psalm.
And verses 6 and 7 are kind ofthe important part of this
because it contains a dumbremark, the silly boasting.
(19:50):
I can do it.
I'm on my own.
And nothing's ever going tomove me off of that.
And what happens then, ofcourse, is there's all sorts of
adversity and there's all kindsof problems.
And so now verses 8, 9, 10, 11,and 12, we're crying out to
God.
God, I need some help.
And God answers and has, verse11, Turn for me my mourning into
(20:11):
dancing.
You have loosed my sackclothand clothed me with gladness.
And that brings us back toverse 5, my favorite part of
this psalm.
Weeping may tarry for thenight, but joy comes with the
morning.
Thought about that verse somany times.
On Sunday, I mentioned how hardit is to have a sick child and
to do that shift, maybe themidnight to 4 a.m., midnight to
(20:34):
6 a.m.
shift.
You're so alone.
You're by yourself with thisSick child, and it just seems so
dark.
It seems so dark in the middleof the night when you're trying
to hold a sick baby.
And I think about Psalm 30 andverse 5.
Weeping may tarry for thenight, but joy comes with the
morning.
And isn't it true that when thesun comes up, everything just
(20:56):
looks a little bit better?
And what the psalmist says hereis, The sun comes up because
God makes it come up because Goddelivered me.
Notice verse 1, I will praiseyou or I will extol you.
Verse 12, that my glory maysing your praise and not be
silent.
That's the bookends in thepsalm.
This psalm is about praisingGod.
(21:18):
The reading for Friday, Psalm30.
And that concludes the podcastfor the week.
I appreciate your listening andyour kind encouragement.
People email me, stop me, andsay, hey, I listened to the
podcast.
It helped me this week.
I appreciate that so very, verymuch.
And until next week, then, ofcourse, when we'll open our
(21:38):
Bibles together again, you knowwhat I'm going to say.
I'm Mark Roberts, and I want togo to heaven, and I want you to
come too.
I'll see you on Monday with acup of coffee.
Speaker 00 (21:55):
Thanks for listening to the Westside Church of
Christ podcast, Monday MorningCoffee with Mark.
For more information aboutWestside, 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
(22:20):
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Please share our podcast withothers, and we look forward to
seeing you again, with a cup ofcoffee, of course, on next
Monday.
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 alook back at yesterday's sermon
so that we can think through itfurther and better work the
(00:24):
applications into our dailylives.
Mark will then look forwardinto this week's Bible reading
so that we can know what toexpect and watch for.
And he may have some extrabonus thoughts from time to
time.
So grab a cup of coffee as westart the week together on
Monday Morning Coffee with Mark.
Speaker 01 (00:52):
Good morning, good morning.
Welcome to the Monday MorningCoffee podcast for Monday, June
the 9th.
This is a special week atWestside, a busy week at
Westside.
It's Vacation Bible Schoolweek.
I'm Mark.
I am holding an extra great cupof coffee.
This is some Black Bear coffeefrom Stumptown Roasters.
I love Stumptown Roasters, andthis was brought to me by a
podcast listener who was onvacation and thought about me
(01:14):
while she was on vacation.
How great is that?
I always appreciate kindnesslike that.
So I have got notes fromyesterday's sermon.
I'm looking at stuff for Biblereading.
I'm thinking about VacationBible School tonight.
Pour that cup of coffee.
Let's get ready.
Let's get set.
Let's go.
Let's start with a quick lookback at yesterday's sermon, a
(01:37):
sermon in which I talked aboutloneliness and isolation and how
that is kind of reaching acelebrated status in our culture
and society today.
And biblically, Being byyourself is not such a great
thing.
You don't want to be the onesheep.
So the only extra thought, theonly extra thing that I got for
you is to say at the end of thatsermon, I challenge you to
(01:59):
spend 15 minutes this weekmaking a connection with
somebody.
Text somebody, call somebody,and then go and be with someone
face-to-face.
Did you do it?
Have you done it?
We all thought yesterday, yeah,that's right, I need to do
that.
Now, it's Monday.
Let's go do that.
and maybe an opportunity tomake some connections.
(02:19):
Tonight at Vacation BibleSchool, Terry Slack is going to
be talking about Joshua andsetting up the stage for some of
the things that go on in thebook of Judges.
Come to Vacation Bible Schooltonight at 7 at the Westside
Church, and that'll be anopportunity to hear a great
lesson and, yes, to make someconnections.
Before we get to VBS tonight,though, we need to do our daily
(02:39):
Bible reading.
We are in Kings, and it's timeto talk about 1 Kings 7.
Let's go do some daily Biblereading.
It is Monday, and the readingfor Monday is 1 Kings 7, verses
(03:10):
1 to 22.
If you get a sense of deja vulike I do when I'm reading 1
Kings 7, it is because I ampreaching through 1 Kings, and I
just preached on 1 Kings 7very, very recently.
So if you need moreinformation, I'll try to keep
the podcast here a little bitshort on 1 Kings 7 because we've
just been through this.
Just go back and listen to thatsermon.
I worked through itexegetically and talked a lot
(03:32):
about some of the issues thatare going on there.
Notably, I would add this incase you don't remember or you
didn't hear that sermon, don'thave time to go back and listen
to it.
because it's Vacation BibleSchool week.
There's a lot of discussionabout Solomon's house taking so
long to build while his ownhouse, verse 1, is 13 years of
building, and the temple is onlyseven years in building.
(03:54):
And I think, as I said in thesermon, that may not indicate
that there's a heart problemhere with Solomon.
David got the plans from Godfor the house and set aside all
the materials necessary, so thatmade that project go a lot
quicker.
And it is important to notethat Solomon's palace is part of
the temple complex.
It is affixed to it, so this isis all kind of going on
(04:14):
together here.
And it does seem like this is20 years of building, which
would be half of Solomon'sreign.
It may be that he is spendingtoo much time on his own house
and not nearly enough time onGod's house, but that is not
necessarily the case.
in the text itself.
The other issue in this text isthese amazing pillars that get
built, Joachim and Boaz, and no,we don't know why they're
(04:38):
there, and no, we don't knowexactly what that means.
Joachim means he willestablish, and Boaz means in his
strength.
What they symbolize is simplynot known.
There are tons and tons ofsuggestions about all of that.
Some people want there to besomething burning on the top of
the pillars, and I'm not surehow anybody could climb up on
top of this 27-foot high pillar,and it's got a capital on top
(04:59):
of that that adds another 36inches or give or take or so to
the top of the pillar, howyou're getting up there to fill
that thing with oil or to offera sacrifice.
I don't see them being set onfire, but again...
We're just not sure whatthey're there for.
But it is clearly part of thetemple, and it is clearly
ordained of God.
(05:19):
And I would add, I gave youthis note last week, there are a
number of examples offreestanding pillars at the
entrance of temples all throughPhoenicia and elsewhere in the
biblical world.
So that old business aboutGod's people can't ever do
anything that looks like whatthey're doing over there with
fake religion, that just doesn'thold water.
The temple does look like...
other temples.
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When people come to Jerusalem,pagan people come to Jerusalem,
they look at the temple.
They don't say, hey, I don'tknow what that is.
No, they know exactly what thatis because it looks like other
temples throughout the knownworld at that time.
They are incredible pieces.
They are probably hollow.
Otherwise, they'd be enormouslyheavy and just be very
difficult, I understand, from anengineering standpoint to get
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the things up.
And they are cast down at theJordan River.
Because there's a reference tothis later in the text.
We'll read some of thistomorrow in verse 46.
In the plain of the Jordan, theking cast them in the clay
ground between Succoth andZarethan.
And they're super importantbecause Jeremiah, when he
covers...
Wow, that's probably not theright word for Jeremiah.
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It's not like he's a reporter.
But when he talks about thedestruction of the temple and
the destruction of Jerusalem, hegives a lot of attention to
these pillars.
They matter and they areimportant to the Jewish people.
And they are, spoiler alert,completely destroyed by the
Babylonians.
So our reading for Monday is 1Kings 7, verses 1-22.
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See you tonight.
Stephen Baxley, no, no, that'snot right.
Terry Slack will be talking tous about Joshua.
And I'll see you tonight at 7,7 o'clock west side for Vacation
Bible School.
The reading for Monday, 1 Kings7, verses 1 to 22.
It is Tuesday.
It is Tuesday, and we do haveVacation Bible School tonight,
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so there'll be no Zoom meeting,of course, Westsiders.
Our reading for Tuesday is 1Kings 7, verses 23 to 51.
We're finishing up thischapter, and there's a couple of
enormously important piecesthat are being put together
here, starting with this brasssea.
It's the molten sea, verse 23.
And my understanding is thiskind of circular vat or tank to
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hold maybe as many as 10 or12,000 gallons of water.
There's nothing easy aboutcasting one of these or the
metallurgy behind it.
This is a very important itembecause the priest will need
this water to purify themselvesand to do the washings and all
that goes with that.
Then there's some mobile basinsthat are also poured and made.
They're very large, and theywill help support all the
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sacrificing going on in thetemple.
Finally, verses 40 to 46 kindof summarize a bunch of this.
Again, lots of costlymaterials, lots of things being
done here.
that just must have boggled theimagination.
People saw all that was beingdone for the temple.
They must have I can just seepeople coming down just to see
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it, just to see the stuff beingwheeled in.
Wow.
Can you believe that?
Verses 47 to 51, then thegolden table and the lampstands.
Please remember the averageIsraelite never went inside the
temple.
So if you wanted to see thisstuff, you'd need to see it when
it was being installed becausethe average Israelite, as I
said, is not going inside.
It is incredible buildingunlike any other building.
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Verse 51 tells us all the workthat King Solomon did in the
house of the Lord is The houseof the Lord was finished, and
Solomon brought in the thingsthat David his father had
dedicated, the silver, the gold,the vessels, stored them in the
treasuries of the house of theLord.
So they didn't even useeverything that David had put
aside, and yet it is anincredibly expensive and
enormously elaborate building,all of which says God is
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special.
I use this quote when Ipreached on 1 Kings last month.
One scholar said, I want tosuggest that the splendor of the
temple...
He says, ample informalworship, biblical scholarship,
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or the quality of our dailywork.
I like that a lot.
I like that a lot.
I like for us to think aboutwhat we are building.
Is that saying what we arebuilding with our lives, what we
are building with ourpriorities, with our time, and
especially what we are buildingas a congregation, what we are
doing together?
Is that reflecting ourpriorities, and does that say
God is special?
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Our reading for Tuesday is in 1Kings 7, verses 23 to verse 51.
See you tonight at VacationBible School, 7 o'clock.
Stephen Baxley will talk to usabout Samson, and we'll learn
more about Samson the judge.
See you tonight, everybody.
Welcome to Wednesday.
(10:21):
Welcome to Wednesday.
Today we read 1 Kings chapter8.
verses 1 to 21.
1 Kings chapter 8 containsSolomon's dedication prayer at
the dedication of the temple.
It may be the greatest prayerin the Old Testament.
It is magnificent, and thereare two big themes in this
prayer, one of which we get inour reading today, which is that
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God does what he promises.
God fulfills his word.
If you will underline everyplace it says fulfilled in our
reading today, you'll be busy.
Everything about promises andyou did what you said, much of
that In tomorrow's reading, wewill still see some things about
fulfilled, for example, inverse 24, verse 25, verse 26.
But then the big theme becomesforgive.
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So we have fulfilled andforgive.
So we start our reading todaywith the bringing up of the Ark
of the Covenant, verse 1, out ofthe city of David over to Mount
Zion.
I think sometimes we operatewith maybe a very modern view of
cities.
Maybe we're thinking of Dallas,Fort Worth, and it's all just
one giant city.
It's all grown together.
But at this time, the city ofDavid is over on one hill, and
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the temple is over on, andSolomon's palace is with that,
over on a different hill.
Now, by Jesus' day, it will allgrow together, and there'll be
one wall that surrounds all ofit and so forth.
But at this time, there's thecity of David, and then there's
Mount Zion, where the temple is,and the ark is brought over
there.
And of course, pretty quickly,we get into some questions.
How come the poles of thecherubim, the poles of the ark
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of the covenant are so long,verse 8, that you can see them?
What's the deal with that?
Did they not make the room bigenough?
Why do we have poles that wecan see?
One writer suggests, and Ithink this probably works pretty
well, is that it was not anoversight or a miscalculation on
the size of the Most HolyPlace.
Instead, being able to see thepoles was to emphasize the
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portable character of the Ark ofthe Covenant.
When you think about it, youdon't need poles anymore on the
Ark of the Covenant.
The Ark of the Covenant isgoing to sit here in the temple.
We're not moving it anymore.
During the the time of thetabernacle, we needed the poles
and it had to be moved every dayand all the things that go with
all of that.
It will never move again.
It is sitting right here fromnow on, but God has the poles
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remain to remind them of thattime of the wilderness and maybe
to make sure they don't get toocomfortable with the idea that
the ark is going to remain hereat all times.
That's not how God's presencecertainly works.
So then in verses 10 and 11,the temple is filled with the
glory of God, which of course isexactly what God did with the
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tabernacle in Exodus chapter 40.
So we get the same kind oflanguage and God is approving of
the temple and everything thatis about this.
just wonderful, God moves in tohis house.
And then Solomon begins toaddress the people in verses 12
to 21, and that address is justfull of praise for God keeping
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his promises.
And 2 Samuel 7 is just all overthis opening to the prayer.
Just every bit of this is Godpromised and God has done, God
has fulfilled, God told myfather, and God is doing and
confirming exactly what he saidhe would do.
David has a son on the Maybethe thing to say about that is
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that would point us toward thefulfillment of the promise that
the Messiah will come, thateverlasting king in the dynasty
of David.
If God has done all of thesethings, God will surely keep his
word.
We can expect the Messiah,which of course...
is exactly the point the NewTestament makes in the coming of
Jesus.
Our reading then for Wednesday,1 Kings 8, verses 1-21.
(14:00):
See you tonight at 7.30 forVacation Bible School and our
special Vacation Bible Schoolassembly.
Welcome to Thursday.
Welcome to Thursday's readingin 1 Kings 8, verses 22-53.
This is the magnificent part ofSolomon's dedicatory prayer.
(14:21):
all of it is wrapped around theidea that God has given us the
temple as a way for sinfulpeople to approach a holy God.
And in 2 Chronicles 6, wherethere is the parallel account to
this, we are told that therewas a scaffold built above the
people.
And in Solomon, he's standingin verse 22, but at some point,
He kneels to pray.
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And verse 54 of our reading in1 Kings 8 reminds us that at
some point Solomon the king,think of the impression that
would make upon the people, heis kneeling.
Once again, there is thefulfillment then of God's word,
verses 23, 24, and 25, 26.
There's the praise of God inthis prayer.
I just love that.
Let's talk about what God isdoing.
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Let's talk about how good Godis.
Let's praise God for who thathe is.
But then verse 27, what's thistemple about?
What's this temple about?
Is this really a box for God?
Now we've got him.
Oh, we built this golden trap,and now we've got God contained.
No, Solomon clearly knowsbetter than that.
Solomon prays, though, that thetemple could be a meeting place
(15:27):
for human need and divinemercy, notes one scholar.
And I love how verse 27 saysthat God is awesome and great,
and then in verse 28 it says...
We can talk to him and helistens.
What an amazing God we serve.
The rest of our reading thendetails seven requests, seven
situations where God's peoplewill need God.
And a ton of this is drawn outof Leviticus 26, the various
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blessings and cursings.
If you do things that arewrong, this is what will happen
to you.
Some of it comes fromDeuteronomy chapter 28.
So there's defeat by the enemy,verses 33 and 34.
What about no rain, verses 35and 36?
Canaanites prayed to Baal.
the storm god, for rain.
When Israel did that, God madesure it didn't rain to teach
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them a lesson about who truly isGod.
And so Solomon just worksthrough these situations and
over and over again, he says,forgive, forgive, forgive,
forgive.
And I should say this, at theend of this, 2 Chronicles 7
verse 1 says, fire from heavenfell.
So God accepts this prayer.
God accepts this temple.
God is pleased with whatSolomon has done.
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And I should add here, maybetwo quick notes.
First of all, if you thinkthere was no forgiveness in the
Old Testament, then you need toreview your thinking about that
because Solomon is talking aboutforgiveness and there is is
forgiveness under the OldTestament.
It is not the same as ourforgiveness today because our
forgiveness looks back to thecross, and this is forgiveness
(16:55):
that is done in light of thecoming of the cross someday.
And we could talk about thatfurther, but I've heard people
talk about sins being rolledforward and all kinds of crazy
ideas because they don't wantthere to be any Old Testament
forgiveness.
And all that's just nonsense.
There is plenty of forgiveness,and Solomon is claiming it
here.
The other thing, just to make anote, This building is so
special and so unique and sowonderful.
(17:16):
How do you think it felt forIsrael?
How do you think it felt forthe Jews to watch the
Babylonians show up and burn itto the ground?
What do you do then?
There's no provision made forwhat we do, and we don't have a
temple because we were wicked,and the place where we go to
seek God and ask for forgivenessis physically gone.
(17:38):
What do we do now?
The burning of the temple, bothin 586 BC and in AD 70, is an
enormous marker that things areway off the rails, and people
who had any inclination to tryto be godly must have thought,
what has happened and what do wedo now?
So think about that.
(17:59):
Tomorrow we'll be in thePsalms, but our reading for
Thursday is 1 Kings 8, verses 22to 53.
It is Friday.
It is Friday.
And that means we're in thePsalms.
We are in Psalm chapter 30 orPsalm 30 today.
This is a magnificent Psalm.
It contains one of my favoriteverses, Psalm 30 and verse 5.
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I love that verse.
Let's talk about it.
It is a Psalm of praise andthanksgiving.
We always start with what kindof Psalm is it, but it is upside
down.
This Psalm is upside down.
Usually what you get in thiskind of song is a lament at the
beginning, discussing all theterrible things that are
happening, and then you cry outto God for help, and then you
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praise and thank God fordelivering you.
Now, this time, if you wouldput this psalm in order, it
would be verses 6 and 7, thenverses 8 and 10, 8 to 10, and
then verses 1, 2, and 3.
But what happens here isthere's the praise of God.
He's wonderful.
He delivered me.
Then there's the discussion ofwhat got me into effects, and
then there is the crying out toGod in verses 8, 9, 10, 11, and
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12.
So let's just kind of workthrough this a little bit.
You might notice the ascriptionthere that says, at the
dedication of the temple, and ofcourse, if David wrote this,
then it couldn't be used at thededication of the temple.
It's a place to be remindedthat those inscriptions are old,
but they are not inspired.
And it just may mean that thispsalm got picked up and used
later.
At the temple, there is atradition that Judas Maccabee
(19:27):
used Psalm 30 when herededicated the temple in the
time between Malachi and Matthewwhen the temple had been
desecrated and defiled byAntiochus Epiphanes.
So here, look at verse 2.
That really is the summary ofthe entire psalm.
And verses 6 and 7 are kind ofthe important part of this
because it contains a dumbremark, the silly boasting.
(19:50):
I can do it.
I'm on my own.
And nothing's ever going tomove me off of that.
And what happens then, ofcourse, is there's all sorts of
adversity and there's all kindsof problems.
And so now verses 8, 9, 10, 11,and 12, we're crying out to
God.
God, I need some help.
And God answers and has, verse11, Turn for me my mourning into
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dancing.
You have loosed my sackclothand clothed me with gladness.
And that brings us back toverse 5, my favorite part of
this psalm.
Weeping may tarry for thenight, but joy comes with the
morning.
Thought about that verse somany times.
On Sunday, I mentioned how hardit is to have a sick child and
to do that shift, maybe themidnight to 4 a.m., midnight to
(20:34):
6 a.m.
shift.
You're so alone.
You're by yourself with thisSick child, and it just seems so
dark.
It seems so dark in the middleof the night when you're trying
to hold a sick baby.
And I think about Psalm 30 andverse 5.
Weeping may tarry for thenight, but joy comes with the
morning.
And isn't it true that when thesun comes up, everything just
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looks a little bit better?
And what the psalmist says hereis, The sun comes up because
God makes it come up because Goddelivered me.
Notice verse 1, I will praiseyou or I will extol you.
Verse 12, that my glory maysing your praise and not be
silent.
That's the bookends in thepsalm.
This psalm is about praisingGod.
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The reading for Friday, Psalm30.
And that concludes the podcastfor the week.
I appreciate your listening andyour kind encouragement.
People email me, stop me, andsay, hey, I listened to the
podcast.
It helped me this week.
I appreciate that so very, verymuch.
And until next week, then, ofcourse, when we'll open our
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Bibles together again, you knowwhat I'm going to say.
I'm Mark Roberts, and I want togo to heaven, and I want you to
come too.
I'll see you on Monday with acup of coffee.
Speaker 00 (21:55):
Thanks for listening to the Westside Church of
Christ podcast, Monday MorningCoffee with Mark.
For more information aboutWestside, 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
(22:20):
can get free music.
Please share our podcast withothers, and we look forward to
seeing you again, with a cup ofcoffee, of course, on next
Monday.
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