January 27, 2025 • 34 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
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to the Westside churches
special Monday Morning Coffeepodcast on this podcast, our
preacher Mark Roberts will helpyou get your week started
right. With look back atyesterday's sermon so that we
can think through it furtherand better work the
applications into our dailylives . Mark will then look
(00:28):
forward into this week's Biblereading so that we can know
what to expect and watch for.
And, he may have some extrabonus thoughts from time to
time. So grab a cup of coffeeas we start the week together
on Monday Morning Coffee withMark.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday
Morning Coffee podcast forMonday, January the 26th. I'm
Mark. I do have a great cup ofcoffee in a red mug with a big
block o on it . It's gonna be along time before I drink coffee
out of anything else but thismug. 'cause I am still feeling
that national championship fromlast week. Just wonderful, just
wonderful. And even morewonderful than that is the
(01:15):
beginning of the preachingtheme for the year . Really
love this idea. Love that yougot to participate and select
those verses and loved where westarted yesterday in Luke 1428,
all of that, an extra note fromLuke 1428 and all kinds of
stuff about King Saul. It's allhappening on the podcast. So
get ready, get set, let's go.
(01:39):
So yesterday was the first inthe 12 lesson series, the top
questions that Jesus asked. Andif you're not familiar because
you're not a member at WestSide , but you're still
listening to the podcast, whichwe are awfully glad to have you
on the podcast, then let mejust fill you in a little bit
of details. Jesus asked a tonof questions by some counts,
hundreds of questions. And sowhat we did was we narrowed
(02:02):
that down. Two elders and metook all of those questions,
went through them carefully,tried to find the best
questions, the most interestingquestions, the most provocative
questions, and we gave thecongregation a ballot with
about 29 questions on it andsaid, Hey, rate these, rank
them one to 10, and then theones that do the best, the ones
(02:23):
that get the most votes, thoseare the questions that Mark is
gonna deal with in thepreaching theme this year. And
so coming in at number 12 wasthe question, have you counted
the cost from Luke 1428, forwhich of you desiring to build
a tower? Does not first sitdown and count the cost,
whether or not he has enough tocomplete it. And I'm a big fan
in preaching and not opening abunch of doors and people just
(02:45):
going off on tangents andgetting lost and getting away
from the main track of thesermon. I don't want to open a
bunch of cans of worms and haveworms climbing all over my
pulpit. That's, that's alwaysugly and, and uh, that did not
do well for Herod. So let mejust say this, I think there's
something to be, something tobe said for maybe a nuance in
(03:07):
the two illustrations thatJesus uses of counting the
cost, the first of which isbuilding a tower in the second
of which is going to war. Andsome scholars have noted that
in the first, in the firstscenario, you have all the
options I can build, I can notbuild, where am I gonna build,
what am I gonna do? How big amI gonna build? Where do I wanna
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put in , all those kind ofthings. But in the second, in
the second option, thesituation is forced on the
king. Now he doesn't have achoice. He has to make a
decision about what he will dowhen a greater power invades
his territory. So some havenoted that maybe the point here
that Jesus is making, maybeit's a subtle point, is that
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God is the greater power and weneed to decide to sue for peace
and make peace with God. Maybethat's an underlying note or
something that as, as theaudience had thought about that
a little bit on the way home,maybe someone would've said,
Hey, is Jesus talking aboutthat God is invading and that
we are not able to defeat God?
(04:12):
And so what we need to do isask for terms of peace. Verse
32. Maybe so, maybe so maybethat's just making too much of
that parable. Maybe that'spushing the details a little
bit too far. Like I said, in asermon situation, you're trying
to hold together some big mainideas and, and introducing a
bunch of extra question marks.
I'm , I'm a big fan of sermonsbeing exclamation marks, not
(04:35):
question marks. Probablyprobably asking a whole lot of
extra questions and hey, maybethis, and what about that? And
could it be this? That probablydoesn't work real well on the
flip it , but I think on thepodcast you get a good
opportunity here to think alittle bit further to look at
that text, just look at alittle bit more, let that work
on you a little bit and seewhat you think. Maybe Jesus is
challenging us to realize Godis the great king and we need
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to sue for terms of peace.
However that works. You need tocount the cost. You need to
count the cost of serving JesusChrist. That's where Jesus is
in this great question. Haveyou counted the cost ? So the
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reading for Monday is oneSamuel chapter 14, verses 24 to
52 we're rejoining the greatbattle victory that Jonathan
wins by storming thePhilistines, taking them
completely unawares andcatching them off guard. They
panic, they're fleeing, and theIsraelites follow up on that
and they are just routing thePhilistines. And then we get
(05:54):
some more notes about thatbattle. And already this soul
thing is going south on me in abig hurry. I don't like verse
24, Sal says, cursed be the manwho eats food until his its
enemy . Wow , I can't evenstart the day. How about some
coffee? Let's see if we can getsome coffee here. It's gonna be
a two cup day, isn't it? Cursedbe the man who eats food until
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it is evening and I'm avengedon my enemies. What is this? My
enemies thing, Saul, it'sstarting to get more and more
about Saul all the time. And sothere's this vow and it's a
foolish vow. Some have wonderedif maybe this is an attempt to
merit the Lord's favor withsome kind of gesture of
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self-denial. And he just, heends up creating all kinds of
problems. In fact, in verse 29,Jonathan says, my father has
troubled the land and troubledis a very ominous word. It is
used heavily in the story ofAiken. And Joshua seven, you
are the one Joshua says, who'stroubled Israel. And then in
one kings 18, Elijah and Ahabmeet up and Ahab says, Elijah,
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you are the problem. And Elijahsays, no, you have troubled
Israel. So this is a strongterm, it carries a lot of
freight with it in the Bibleand really just seems like
things aren't going well withsa verse 35. Here's another
note. This is the first altarhe built to the Lord. Really,
really, you've been reigning acouple of years now. You're
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just now getting around tobuilding altars. What's the
deal with that? And so God doesnot answer solve verse 37. Why
not? Because there's sin in thecamp. And so then we get the
casting of lots and we get theyur and thumb and and you're
gonna ask, are people gonnawrite this down for q and a
morning ? Don't do it. Becausethe answer is we don't know. We
don't know exactly how yurmanthumb worked . And there's a
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variety of different kinds oftheories about what to do with
the y and thumb . And thepriest would shake out some
these y and thumb stone. Somehave said it was a yes no kind
of thing. And and then youwould shake out. And if this
stone came out that meant no.
And if this stone came out,said meant yes. And some have
said that you had to get thesame thing three times in a row
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to know for sure. And theanswer is, we do not know how
the priest used Y and thama .
But God was willing to do that.
He did do that. He used Y andthumb . And the next thing you
know it Saul and Jonathan , andthen Saul realizes Jonathan has
violated the oath. And so Saulthen says, you are gonna die.
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Verse 44, God do so to me andmore also, you should surely
die, Jonathan , that God do. Soto me that's a, that's a
promise, that's a self invokingcurse. If I don't do this to
you, may God do this to me. IfI don't kill you, may God
strike me dead. Is is what he'ssaying there. And the people
just say, no, no. That's a dumbthing to do and we're not gonna
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let you do that May maybethere's something to be said
here when people make rashvows, somebody's who's right
thinking and and has got clearheadedness. Sometimes somebody
just like that needs to say,no, Saul , we're , we're not
keeping that vow, that vow wasfoolish. We repent of that vow
and we're not keeping that jha, I'm looking at you. You
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needed to not keep the rashvow. Don't keep stupid vows. So
the people, they stop frompursuing the Philistines and
and maybe the net result ofthis is the Philistine threat
is gonna go on instead of beingfinally taken care of. And then
47 to 52 in a verycharacteristic summary of a
king's reign. And I think thewriter of Samuel is
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transitioning us, there will bea lot more about King Saul, but
as far as the reign of KingSaul, this is kind of the end
of it. This is, this is how youend a king's reign. You say who
he fought against and then youlist his family and some of his
commanders and then you move onto the next king. And you know
what? That is exactly whatwe're doing. We are moving on
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to the next king and see youtomorrow, the reading for
Monday. First Samuel 1424 to52. Welcome to Tuesday. Today's
reading is First Samuel the15th chapter. We're gonna deal
with what bothers us in oneSamuel 15. And then I wanna
talk about what bothers God inone Samuel 15. What bothers us
in one Samuel 15 is that Godsays, go verse three and strike
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amek and devote to destructionall that they have. Do not
spare them, but kill both men ,women , child and infant, ox,
sheep, camel, and donkey. Theidea of putting people to
utterly to the sword isreprehensible to us. And we
have a problem with that. I'vetalked about that a couple of
times in the pulpit, in variousapologetic sermons, and I've
done some q and a stuff withthat. I think the thing for us
to remember here is that thesena , these nations, they are
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being treated as a cancer inthe land of Kenan . And that
cancer has to be cut out let'sthey infect others with their
sin. And I would add, we don'tknow, most people don't know a
lot about the culture and thetimes and the way these nations
acted, but if you do someresearch, you'll find out
pretty quickly that they were aviolent and perverse people.
(11:06):
These are not , uh, happycampers and everything is just
wonderful. And Saul and theIsrael artery falls upon them
and just mows them down. It'sjust terrible. Some of the
idolatrous practices and thesacrifice of infants just ,
there's just some bloodcurdling things going on in
these nations. Maybe the mostimportant thing to say about
all that is that God is God andthat we are not, and God knows
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what he's doing and we , weneed to trust in the Lord. We
need to trust in the Lord. Ifthat bothers you and you wanna
talk more about that , um, sendme a message. Go ahead , get
ahold of me and I'll give yousome references to some of the
other things that I've donewhere I've treated that and at
greater length , the thing thatmatters the most here in one
Samuel 15 is what bothers God.
And I wanna talk about this onzoom at great length tonight,
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but I want you to notice inverse 24 that Saul said to
Samuel, I have sinned for Ihave transgressed the
commandment of the Lord andyour words because I have
feared the people and obeyedtheir voice. One of the key
words in first Samuel 15 is theword voice or hearing or
listening. They're all in thesame word, family. And if you
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work down through this chapterand watch for those words,
listen voice, you'll see thatthis is about who you listen
to. Who are you hearing andwhat do you listen to and how
does that command you? SoSamuel said to Saul, the Lord
has sent me verse one to anointyou king over his people. So
listen, see, there it is. Verseone to the words of the Lord.
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Unfortunately, Saul does notlisten to the words of the
Lord. He does what he wants todo. And in fact, I am concerned
in verse 12 that Saul has set amonument up for himself. How
about giving God the credit forthis victory? This is truly,
truly troublesome. And evenmore troublesome is verse 13
where soul says, I haveperformed the commandment of
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the Lord. He just seems to beable to rationalize and excuse
anything and there is aignorance of what God wants and
how to obey God. That is very,very troubling. And Samuel
said, what then ? Verse 14 isthe bleeding of the sheep and
the loing of the oxen that Ihear. I'm not a big fan of
original language and talkingabout the Hebrew and Greek a
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whole lot, as you well know. Ithink many times we get that
way out of place and we missthe point of that. You can't
prove it in the English, youcan't prove it in the Greek .
We need to be super carefulabout that. But one of the
things that Hebrew does show usis the nuances. And sometimes
it'll pick up a theme. Soyesterday's reading the word
troubled, Jonathan says, myfather has troubled Israel. And
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that's the word that's used ofAiken , and that's the word
that's used of Ahab here, theword voice. Listen, look at
verse 14. What then is thebleeding of the sheep and the
loing of the oxen in theHebrew? That is the voice of
the sheep, voice of the oxen.
That theme goes on. What areyou hearing? I hear something.
I hear something, Saul, I hearthe voice of the sheep, and I
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know that you have obeyed thevoice of the people. That's
where this is going. And infact, in verse 17, Samuel
purposely uses that little inyour own eyes expression to
remind Saul of how humble hewas when things started. And
he's lost that humility. Hesees himself as important .
He's building himself amonument. He does what he wants
to do rather than what God hastold him to do. And the
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centerpiece of all of this thenis in verses 22 and 23, where
the Lord wants him to do what'sright, has the Lord is a great
delight in burnt offerings andsacrifices as in obeying the
voice of the Lord. Behold , toobey is better than sacrifice.
And to listen than the fat oframs, you need to do what God
tells you to do. If you don'tdo that, that's rebellion.
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Verse 23, that's like the sinof divination. Presumption is
as inequity and idolatrybecause you've rejected the
word of the Lord. He's alsorejected you from being king.
This man cannot be the leaderof God's people because he
obeys the voice of the peopleinstead of the voice of God.
And as we work through the restof that chapter, it just gets
brutally difficult here becausein verse 30, then finally Saul
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is able to say, I have sinnedyet, honor me now before the
elders are my people. Beembarrassing if you're rebuking
me in front of people likethis. So let's all pretend like
everything is good. It takesSamuel to finally fulfill the
word of the Lord. And he doeskill a gag . Verse 32, there's
a textual variant there, A gagcame to him cheerfully. That's
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probably not cheerfully, that'sprobably a gag . Came to him in
chains. And Samuel says, youare a terrible king. You've
done terrible things and Godhas decreed your death. And
Samuel executes him. And thenverse 35, Samuel will not see
salt again till the day of hisdeath. But Samuel grieved
oversaw, and the Lord regrettedthat he had made Saul king over
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Israel. Don't get lost here inin questioning God and so forth
and so on. It is just clearfrom that passage that that
Saul had every opportunity tobe the king that the people
needed and that God wanted himto be. And and verse uh ,
chapter 15, like chapter 13 hasclearly solidified that Saul is
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never going to be that person.
And so God is looking for theright king. Tomorrow we will
find the right king. A readingfor Tuesday for Samuel chapter
15. Welcome to Wednesday.
Today's reading is First Samuelchapter 16. The entire chapter,
Wednesday's reading is FirstSamuel chapter 16. And once
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again, we have a key word thatwill appear a couple of times
in this chapter and that drivesthe major theme of the chapter.
And that is the word looking orseeing in the ESV verse one
says, how long will you grieveover Saul? This is the Lord
talking to Samuel. I haverejected him from being king
over Israel for I have providedfor myself a king among his,
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among his sons. The term forprovide here is the term I have
seen. I have seen. So seeingand looking. Verse six, when he
came, he looked on eab . Andthen verse seven, which of
course is the key verse, don'tlook on appearance because the
Lord looks not like men. Look,men look on the outward
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appearance, but the Lord lookson the heart. So looking is a
huge key here in this wholeidea. And maybe then when we
end up choosing David. And thenext thing you know it says
about David is that David verse12 was ruddy and had beautiful
eyes and was handsome. By theway. There's all kinds of
translation issues there withbeautiful eyes and all the
things that go with all ofthat. But it is clear that,
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that David was not some homelylooking , awful disfigured,
terrible looking boy. No, he's,he's handsome. But that may
cause you to say, well, hey, I,I I I thought the Lord doesn't
look on the outward appearance.
But but please remember, pleaseremember, David doesn't look
right. He does not look right.
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He is not like Saul. Saul hadthe look tall, handsome, he
looked like people wanted theirleader to look. But David
doesn't look anything likethat. Yes, yes, he is handsome.
He is handsome, but he's tooyoung. He's so young. Daddy
didn't even call him for theprophet to, to possibly choose
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him. He's too young and he'soff with the sheep. What, what
do you think he looked likewhen he came into the house?
He's been out in the field,he's keeping sheep. What do you
think he smelled like? Thisisn't the guy. There's no
chance this guy can be the nextking. Oh yeah, he can be the
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next king. And the spirit ofthe Lord came upon him. In
verse 13, David is anointed.
This is the first time, by theway, that his name appears in
the book of Samuel and hereceives the spirit. It is
clear that the spirit isoperating to equip a man to do
God's work. A prophet, forexample, to speak for God or as
a king needs to, to lead God'speople. They are anointed. This
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happened to Saul. God empoweredhim. And we ought to remember
that there is no completedBible in one Samuel 16. If
David wants to do the will ofGod, he can't sit down and have
a Bible study. So the Spiritequips him in a unique way,
maybe, maybe in a different waythan you and I because we have
the spirit's ultimate tool, thescriptures. But the Spirit
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equips him. And I think it'simportant to note here that the
David does not constantly talkabout the spirit or claim to be
spirit led at every juncture oralways being. He's not always
saying, you know, the Spiritlaid this on my heart, or I
just had this feeling thatthat's not how David operates.
Here is somebody who definitelyhas the spirit of God, the
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Bible says so yet, yeah, hedoesn't act like a lot of
people who claim to have thespirit today. I I I, I think
that's worth considering. Iwonder, is David even conscious
of this? Is, is he aware of theempowering spirit of God? The
key then of course is that thespirit departs from Saul verse
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14, and a harmful spirit fromthe Lord tormented him. People
will have questions about that.
What does that mean? And and Ithink the , the short answer to
that, which is what you get ona podcast is there are things
that God allows. And sometimesin the Bible it will say
specifically, the devil didthis. And sometimes it will
say, you know, God did that.
Because what that means is thatGod allowed the devil, for
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example, to take on job , totake job's, family, and to take
away job's, possessions, orhear that God allowed a harmful
spirit to come to Saul . I wishI knew more about this harmful
spirit. It's, it's an odd deal.
I don't think I know of anyother place in scripture where
a harmful spirit can be calmedwith music. But it , that seems
to be the case here. Not sure Iunderstand about all of that,
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but verse 15, verses 13, 14,and 15 are really the hinge
verses in for Samuel. From hereon the story is about David,
not about Saul. That's wherewe're going. It's going to be
about David. And so David endsup in the court and there's
going to be a slew of questionsabout that. Wow , this is one
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Samuel 16 is like q and amorning just on overload
because David comes to thecourt. And then if you're
familiar in one Samuel 17,which we're about to read, when
David shows up to beat up onGoliath kings Saul is like, who
is this guy? Well, hey, he'sbeen in your court and there
are some chronological issueshere. Maybe this material's
(21:34):
just out of orderchronologically, it's giving a
summation of some things thathappened here. The Tugen has a
very different take on some ofthis, some of the material in
chapter 17 in the SubT . Someof that material is not part of
that translation. We're we'rejust not sure. Maybe Saul had
many people in the court andcouldn't keep up with everyone
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that's going on there. All thethings that are happening
there, we don't know about allof that. Lemme just leave you
with this last passage to thinkabout as we consider Saul and
we consider this harmful spiritcoming upon him. The verse that
I want you to think about is inthe New Testament. I hate to
take you outta Samuel, but justleave a marker there and just
go read with me over in SecondThessalonians. In Second
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Thessalonians, if we ever havea preaching theme, the scariest
verses in the Bible, I'm, I'mnot certain that this verse
isn't gonna win because SecondThessalonians chapter two says
this in Second Thessalonianschapter two, talking about the
lying activity of Satan andSecond Thessalonians two in
verse 10, there'll be wickeddeception, second Thessalonians
two 10 for those who areperishing because they refuse
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to love the truth and so besaved. Therefore, God sends
them a strong delusion so theymay believe what is false in
order that all may be condemnedwho did not believe the truth
but had pleasure andunrighteousness. That's Saul.
That is Saul. And we know thatis Saul from what happened in
one Samuel 15. And now we'rewatching that play out in King
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Saul's life. The spirit of theLord for Samuel 1614 departed
from Saul and a harmful spiritfrom the Lord tormented him. He
failed God in chapter 13,miserable stupid oath in
chapter 14, disobeyed Godflagrantly horribly in chapter
15. And now since he doesn'twant to listen to God, he
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doesn't want to serve God. Godhas left Saul, Saul left God.
Now God has left Saul and wehave a new king in the making.
That man is David a man afterGod's own heart. Our reading
then for Wednesday is FirstSamuel chapter 16. It is
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Thursday. And today our readingis the first half of one Samuel
chapter 17. We're reading oneSamuel chapter 17 verses one to
23. And of course, this is thefamous David and Goliath story.
I wanna say a couple things maybe kind of off, off the usual
track about the story of Davidand Goliath. First and
foremost, that's a terriblename for this. It's really not
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the story of David and Goliath.
In fact, Goliath's name onlyappears twice in the text in
verse four and in verse 23.
Other than that, he's just thePhilistine. He's not that
important. This is the story ofDavid and Saul. That's what
matters here. Think about thecontext. Think about what we've
been talking about. What havewe been reading about? It's
been about Saul, about Godrejecting Saul, God finding a
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new man. What can that new mando? How is he different than
Saul? Why is God choosing Davidinstead of Saul? First Samuel
chapter 17 answers all of thosequestions, checks all of those
boxes. So you wanna payattention here to what Saul is
doing and how different Davidis, than Saul. Don't, don't
worry about the Philistine ,he's just a big, tall bully.
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David will take care of him. Itis a powerful place to visit ,
uh, the valley of Eila there inverse two. I've been there
tremendous blessing. Dean and Igot to go there. It's a very
wide, broad flat valley, andthere's hills on each end of it
kind of makes a naturalstadium. And it is a , it's a
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spine tingling place to stand.
There's still a brook there.
And just pretty incredible tothink of the events that
occurred there so long ago. Theother thing that I wanna say is
in evangelical circles, indenominational circles,
several, several years ago, itgot really popular to say
everything in the Bible isabout Jesus. And you have to
make everything about Jesus.
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And so David and Goliath, forexample, which was a prime
example of this kind of newmove in preaching and this new
sophisticated approach, Davidand Goliath isn't about
encouraging us to be faithful.
It's saying that we are thecowardly Israelites. We're with
Saul. Jesus is David. Jesus issaving us. And so this was the
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new emphasis on Christ-centeredpreaching. And and I got a
little pushback every now andthen from people who had drunk
a little bit from some of thesedenominational books and heard
some of these denominationalwriters, oh, you , you're
missing it. It's all aboutJesus. Well, what , what are
you gonna say about that? Well,of course the Bible is all
about Jesus, how , who couldargue with that? But is this
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story specifically told to saythat Jesus is our savior and
that there's nothing here inthis story to say when we face
giant obstacles, when we faceall kinds of temptations, when
we face threats to our faith,instead of being fearful and
cowardly, we can copy David'sapproach and be like, David,
that that's outrageous. Romans15 four tells us explicitly and
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specifically that the Bible,which in Romans 15 four, that
is really looking at the OldTestament scriptures, that the
things written a four time werewritten for our instruction.
That through the endurance andthrough the encouragement of
the scriptures, we might havehope. The Bible encourages us.
And in Hebrews chapter 11, allof those people who exercised
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faith, they are not said to beweak. And oh, that's really a
story about Jesus. No, we areencouraged to imitate their
faith. And there are plenty ofillustrations of exactly that.
In one Corinthians chapter 10,Paul uses the Israelites and he
doesn't say that's actually astory of Jesus. No. He, he
talks about the Israelites andis drawing some moral lessons
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from their failures. So we candraw lessons from these great
heroes in the Bible and learnfrom them. Don't let somebody
tell you. And , and thatapproach got really obnoxious
and the people who were pushingit really had that , I'm so
much better than you kind ofthing . Oh, you, you rabble
down there. You think you canlearn something about David so
you don't see, please stop withall of that. It's again, the
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Bible is all about Jesus. I Iknew about that. But it also is
teaching us how to followJesus. And what we're seeing in
one Samuel 17 is that David isfaithful. And this is what that
looks like. This is what itlooks like to be a man after
God's own heart. Goliath is, infact, he is a monster. His
armor would weigh verse five,probably 120 pounds, which
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think about how big a guy thisman is when he can easily walk
and fight in armor weighing 125pounds. The head of his spear,
verse seven, would weigh 15pounds. So he's carrying a
spear that weighs 15 pounds. Hecan chuck that thing, he can
throw that thing. And what isgonna happen to David if he
throws that thing right throughthe center of David's chest?
(28:27):
This man is terrifying. He issome nine feet tall and nobody
wants to take him on . And ofcourse, that is what the
passage is about. Saul verse11, heard the words of the
fiddle team , and he's dismayedand greatly afraid. Saul is
tall. Saul is tall. Rememberthat? That's why the Bible
(28:50):
tells us that Saul is the oneguy who ought to say, I can
deal with this. I can take thisguy on. Everybody's looking to
Saul. He's supposed to be theking who delivers them from the
hand of the Philistines. Saulought to pray. He ought to seek
the Lord. He ought to march outthere and he ought to kill this
(29:11):
guy. Can you imagine for even amoment if Saul says, I need to
be faithful to God. Get Samuelup here. Samuel comes, he says,
Saul says to Samuel, I've, I'vejust failed and it's, I need to
repent. I need to return toGod. I need to lead God's
people. Samuel, pray for me andseek God. Will God give me the
(29:31):
victory? Saul would've gone outthere and wiped the floor with
this guy. But of course, for 40days, this goes on verse 16,
and Saul does nothing. Whatdoes his leadership look like
after 40 days of hiding Davidarrives and David here at the
(29:51):
fateful moment by God'sprovidence. What's God doing
here? God is giving David astage so that he can step
forward at the very moment thatSaul is shrinking backwards.
Pretty hard to stop reading inverse 23. I'm not , not sure
I'm gonna do that. I may get mesome more coffee here and
finish this chapter, buttomorrow we move over like we
(30:12):
always do on Friday to the bookof Psalms. Thursday's reading,
first Samuel 17, one to 23.
Welcome to Friday. We made itthrough another week, and it is
Psalm six that we are readingon Friday. Friday's reading is
the sixth Psalm. There is somuch in this six Psalm to
really, really like, and Ithink in many ways this is,
this is kind of symbolic of howmuch of the Psalms works. In
(30:36):
the Psalms, men talk to God.
It's not so much a revelationof God to man. It's us bringing
our needs and our problems andour concerns and our praise and
our thanksgiving before the,before the throne of God. And
there, there is a greatillustration of that in Psalm
six, because what we get inPsalm six is a confused
psalmist. I'm being chasten bythe Lord, and I'm not sure why
(30:58):
my soul is greatly troubled.
Verse three, I'm trying to befaithful to God, but things
aren't going the way I thoughtthey ought to go. And maybe
this is another great place tosee the inspiration of
scriptures. Nobody would writetheir own so-called Bible their
own so-called Holy Book. And inthe middle of it have one of
its biggest heroes say, God, Idon't understand what's going
(31:19):
on. I feel kinda like I'm beingmistreated here. That is not,
that is not how people wouldwrite this. But the Bible is
honest. And the Bible tells usthat there were times in
David's life when he wasuncertain. And this is a lament
Psalm. It's a cry fordeliverance. And it breaks down
into a couple of parts. There'sa prayer for the favor of God
in verses one to three. And youdefinitely get the concern and
(31:41):
the confusion. My bones aretroubled. I'm languishing.
Verse two, I feel like I'mbeing rebuked and chastened . I
don't understand what'shappening. So then there's the
prayer for deliverance verses4, 5, 6, and seven. Note that
David knows that he's beingrebuked and chastened, verse
four, but he does not turn awayfrom God. He is turning to God.
(32:03):
And we get a very old Testamentview of death in verse five.
Death silences a man you , youcan't do anything after death.
And of course, in the NewTestament, we learn an awful
lot more about death. But inthe Old Testament, that's a
very common viewpoint. Onceyou're dead, you , you go to
the realm of the dead where youcannot praise God anymore . And
so that kind of silences you.
(32:25):
And then verses eight, nine,and 10 proclaimed victory.
Something has changed here .
Maybe a word came a victory ordeliverance or the psalmist
went to worship, but he'striumphant again. Notice verse
eight, depart from me all youwork as of evil. Yeah, that's,
that's what Jesus says inMatthew chapter seven. And in
verse 23, Jesus says , echoingthe Psalm there. So this is a
(32:46):
Psalm that deals with confusionand ends in victory, and that
reminds us that even when wedon't understand everything
that God is doing, we don'tturn away from God. We turn to
the Lord as he will surelyanswer us. Hope that's helpful
to you from Psalm six. Ourreading for Friday is Psalm
six. Well, thank you then forlistening. That's the podcast
(33:10):
for the week. If it's helpingyou, of course, tell other
people about the podcast andleave it a rating and review.
Until next week, then, whenwe'll open our Bibles together.
Again, I'm Mark Roberts and Iwanna go to heaven. I want you
to come to I'll see you onMonday with a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Thanks for listening to the Westside Church of
Christ Podcast. Monday morningCoffee with Mark. For more
information about Westside, youcan connect with us through our
website, just christians.comand our Facebook page, our
music is from upbeat.io. That'supbeat with two P'S
(33:54):
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share our podcast with othersand we look forward to seeing
you again with a cup of coffee.
Of course, on next Monday.
Hello, and welcome to the Westside churches
special Monday Morning Coffeepodcast on this podcast, our
preacher Mark Roberts will helpyou get your week started
right. With look back atyesterday's sermon so that we
can think through it furtherand better work the
applications into our dailylives . Mark will then look
(00:28):
forward into this week's Biblereading so that we can know
what to expect and watch for.
And, he may have some extrabonus thoughts from time to
time. So grab a cup of coffeeas we start the week together
on Monday Morning Coffee withMark.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday
Morning Coffee podcast forMonday, January the 26th. I'm
Mark. I do have a great cup ofcoffee in a red mug with a big
block o on it . It's gonna be along time before I drink coffee
out of anything else but thismug. 'cause I am still feeling
that national championship fromlast week. Just wonderful, just
wonderful. And even morewonderful than that is the
(01:15):
beginning of the preachingtheme for the year . Really
love this idea. Love that yougot to participate and select
those verses and loved where westarted yesterday in Luke 1428,
all of that, an extra note fromLuke 1428 and all kinds of
stuff about King Saul. It's allhappening on the podcast. So
get ready, get set, let's go.
(01:39):
So yesterday was the first inthe 12 lesson series, the top
questions that Jesus asked. Andif you're not familiar because
you're not a member at WestSide , but you're still
listening to the podcast, whichwe are awfully glad to have you
on the podcast, then let mejust fill you in a little bit
of details. Jesus asked a tonof questions by some counts,
hundreds of questions. And sowhat we did was we narrowed
(02:02):
that down. Two elders and metook all of those questions,
went through them carefully,tried to find the best
questions, the most interestingquestions, the most provocative
questions, and we gave thecongregation a ballot with
about 29 questions on it andsaid, Hey, rate these, rank
them one to 10, and then theones that do the best, the ones
(02:23):
that get the most votes, thoseare the questions that Mark is
gonna deal with in thepreaching theme this year. And
so coming in at number 12 wasthe question, have you counted
the cost from Luke 1428, forwhich of you desiring to build
a tower? Does not first sitdown and count the cost,
whether or not he has enough tocomplete it. And I'm a big fan
in preaching and not opening abunch of doors and people just
(02:45):
going off on tangents andgetting lost and getting away
from the main track of thesermon. I don't want to open a
bunch of cans of worms and haveworms climbing all over my
pulpit. That's, that's alwaysugly and, and uh, that did not
do well for Herod. So let mejust say this, I think there's
something to be, something tobe said for maybe a nuance in
(03:07):
the two illustrations thatJesus uses of counting the
cost, the first of which isbuilding a tower in the second
of which is going to war. Andsome scholars have noted that
in the first, in the firstscenario, you have all the
options I can build, I can notbuild, where am I gonna build,
what am I gonna do? How big amI gonna build? Where do I wanna
(03:29):
put in , all those kind ofthings. But in the second, in
the second option, thesituation is forced on the
king. Now he doesn't have achoice. He has to make a
decision about what he will dowhen a greater power invades
his territory. So some havenoted that maybe the point here
that Jesus is making, maybeit's a subtle point, is that
(03:52):
God is the greater power and weneed to decide to sue for peace
and make peace with God. Maybethat's an underlying note or
something that as, as theaudience had thought about that
a little bit on the way home,maybe someone would've said,
Hey, is Jesus talking aboutthat God is invading and that
we are not able to defeat God?
(04:12):
And so what we need to do isask for terms of peace. Verse
32. Maybe so, maybe so maybethat's just making too much of
that parable. Maybe that'spushing the details a little
bit too far. Like I said, in asermon situation, you're trying
to hold together some big mainideas and, and introducing a
bunch of extra question marks.
I'm , I'm a big fan of sermonsbeing exclamation marks, not
(04:35):
question marks. Probablyprobably asking a whole lot of
extra questions and hey, maybethis, and what about that? And
could it be this? That probablydoesn't work real well on the
flip it , but I think on thepodcast you get a good
opportunity here to think alittle bit further to look at
that text, just look at alittle bit more, let that work
on you a little bit and seewhat you think. Maybe Jesus is
challenging us to realize Godis the great king and we need
(04:57):
to sue for terms of peace.
However that works. You need tocount the cost. You need to
count the cost of serving JesusChrist. That's where Jesus is
in this great question. Haveyou counted the cost ? So the
(05:31):
reading for Monday is oneSamuel chapter 14, verses 24 to
52 we're rejoining the greatbattle victory that Jonathan
wins by storming thePhilistines, taking them
completely unawares andcatching them off guard. They
panic, they're fleeing, and theIsraelites follow up on that
and they are just routing thePhilistines. And then we get
(05:54):
some more notes about thatbattle. And already this soul
thing is going south on me in abig hurry. I don't like verse
24, Sal says, cursed be the manwho eats food until his its
enemy . Wow , I can't evenstart the day. How about some
coffee? Let's see if we can getsome coffee here. It's gonna be
a two cup day, isn't it? Cursedbe the man who eats food until
(06:17):
it is evening and I'm avengedon my enemies. What is this? My
enemies thing, Saul, it'sstarting to get more and more
about Saul all the time. And sothere's this vow and it's a
foolish vow. Some have wonderedif maybe this is an attempt to
merit the Lord's favor withsome kind of gesture of
(06:38):
self-denial. And he just, heends up creating all kinds of
problems. In fact, in verse 29,Jonathan says, my father has
troubled the land and troubledis a very ominous word. It is
used heavily in the story ofAiken. And Joshua seven, you
are the one Joshua says, who'stroubled Israel. And then in
one kings 18, Elijah and Ahabmeet up and Ahab says, Elijah,
(07:03):
you are the problem. And Elijahsays, no, you have troubled
Israel. So this is a strongterm, it carries a lot of
freight with it in the Bibleand really just seems like
things aren't going well withsa verse 35. Here's another
note. This is the first altarhe built to the Lord. Really,
really, you've been reigning acouple of years now. You're
(07:24):
just now getting around tobuilding altars. What's the
deal with that? And so God doesnot answer solve verse 37. Why
not? Because there's sin in thecamp. And so then we get the
casting of lots and we get theyur and thumb and and you're
gonna ask, are people gonnawrite this down for q and a
morning ? Don't do it. Becausethe answer is we don't know. We
don't know exactly how yurmanthumb worked . And there's a
(07:48):
variety of different kinds oftheories about what to do with
the y and thumb . And thepriest would shake out some
these y and thumb stone. Somehave said it was a yes no kind
of thing. And and then youwould shake out. And if this
stone came out that meant no.
And if this stone came out,said meant yes. And some have
said that you had to get thesame thing three times in a row
(08:10):
to know for sure. And theanswer is, we do not know how
the priest used Y and thama .
But God was willing to do that.
He did do that. He used Y andthumb . And the next thing you
know it Saul and Jonathan , andthen Saul realizes Jonathan has
violated the oath. And so Saulthen says, you are gonna die.
(08:30):
Verse 44, God do so to me andmore also, you should surely
die, Jonathan , that God do. Soto me that's a, that's a
promise, that's a self invokingcurse. If I don't do this to
you, may God do this to me. IfI don't kill you, may God
strike me dead. Is is what he'ssaying there. And the people
just say, no, no. That's a dumbthing to do and we're not gonna
(08:53):
let you do that May maybethere's something to be said
here when people make rashvows, somebody's who's right
thinking and and has got clearheadedness. Sometimes somebody
just like that needs to say,no, Saul , we're , we're not
keeping that vow, that vow wasfoolish. We repent of that vow
and we're not keeping that jha, I'm looking at you. You
(09:14):
needed to not keep the rashvow. Don't keep stupid vows. So
the people, they stop frompursuing the Philistines and
and maybe the net result ofthis is the Philistine threat
is gonna go on instead of beingfinally taken care of. And then
47 to 52 in a verycharacteristic summary of a
king's reign. And I think thewriter of Samuel is
(09:36):
transitioning us, there will bea lot more about King Saul, but
as far as the reign of KingSaul, this is kind of the end
of it. This is, this is how youend a king's reign. You say who
he fought against and then youlist his family and some of his
commanders and then you move onto the next king. And you know
what? That is exactly whatwe're doing. We are moving on
(09:58):
to the next king and see youtomorrow, the reading for
Monday. First Samuel 1424 to52. Welcome to Tuesday. Today's
reading is First Samuel the15th chapter. We're gonna deal
with what bothers us in oneSamuel 15. And then I wanna
talk about what bothers God inone Samuel 15. What bothers us
in one Samuel 15 is that Godsays, go verse three and strike
(10:21):
amek and devote to destructionall that they have. Do not
spare them, but kill both men ,women , child and infant, ox,
sheep, camel, and donkey. Theidea of putting people to
utterly to the sword isreprehensible to us. And we
have a problem with that. I'vetalked about that a couple of
times in the pulpit, in variousapologetic sermons, and I've
done some q and a stuff withthat. I think the thing for us
to remember here is that thesena , these nations, they are
(10:44):
being treated as a cancer inthe land of Kenan . And that
cancer has to be cut out let'sthey infect others with their
sin. And I would add, we don'tknow, most people don't know a
lot about the culture and thetimes and the way these nations
acted, but if you do someresearch, you'll find out
pretty quickly that they were aviolent and perverse people.
(11:06):
These are not , uh, happycampers and everything is just
wonderful. And Saul and theIsrael artery falls upon them
and just mows them down. It'sjust terrible. Some of the
idolatrous practices and thesacrifice of infants just ,
there's just some bloodcurdling things going on in
these nations. Maybe the mostimportant thing to say about
all that is that God is God andthat we are not, and God knows
(11:28):
what he's doing and we , weneed to trust in the Lord. We
need to trust in the Lord. Ifthat bothers you and you wanna
talk more about that , um, sendme a message. Go ahead , get
ahold of me and I'll give yousome references to some of the
other things that I've donewhere I've treated that and at
greater length , the thing thatmatters the most here in one
Samuel 15 is what bothers God.
And I wanna talk about this onzoom at great length tonight,
(11:50):
but I want you to notice inverse 24 that Saul said to
Samuel, I have sinned for Ihave transgressed the
commandment of the Lord andyour words because I have
feared the people and obeyedtheir voice. One of the key
words in first Samuel 15 is theword voice or hearing or
listening. They're all in thesame word, family. And if you
(12:12):
work down through this chapterand watch for those words,
listen voice, you'll see thatthis is about who you listen
to. Who are you hearing andwhat do you listen to and how
does that command you? SoSamuel said to Saul, the Lord
has sent me verse one to anointyou king over his people. So
listen, see, there it is. Verseone to the words of the Lord.
(12:34):
Unfortunately, Saul does notlisten to the words of the
Lord. He does what he wants todo. And in fact, I am concerned
in verse 12 that Saul has set amonument up for himself. How
about giving God the credit forthis victory? This is truly,
truly troublesome. And evenmore troublesome is verse 13
where soul says, I haveperformed the commandment of
(12:56):
the Lord. He just seems to beable to rationalize and excuse
anything and there is aignorance of what God wants and
how to obey God. That is very,very troubling. And Samuel
said, what then ? Verse 14 isthe bleeding of the sheep and
the loing of the oxen that Ihear. I'm not a big fan of
original language and talkingabout the Hebrew and Greek a
(13:18):
whole lot, as you well know. Ithink many times we get that
way out of place and we missthe point of that. You can't
prove it in the English, youcan't prove it in the Greek .
We need to be super carefulabout that. But one of the
things that Hebrew does show usis the nuances. And sometimes
it'll pick up a theme. Soyesterday's reading the word
troubled, Jonathan says, myfather has troubled Israel. And
(13:38):
that's the word that's used ofAiken , and that's the word
that's used of Ahab here, theword voice. Listen, look at
verse 14. What then is thebleeding of the sheep and the
loing of the oxen in theHebrew? That is the voice of
the sheep, voice of the oxen.
That theme goes on. What areyou hearing? I hear something.
I hear something, Saul, I hearthe voice of the sheep, and I
(14:00):
know that you have obeyed thevoice of the people. That's
where this is going. And infact, in verse 17, Samuel
purposely uses that little inyour own eyes expression to
remind Saul of how humble hewas when things started. And
he's lost that humility. Hesees himself as important .
He's building himself amonument. He does what he wants
to do rather than what God hastold him to do. And the
(14:23):
centerpiece of all of this thenis in verses 22 and 23, where
the Lord wants him to do what'sright, has the Lord is a great
delight in burnt offerings andsacrifices as in obeying the
voice of the Lord. Behold , toobey is better than sacrifice.
And to listen than the fat oframs, you need to do what God
tells you to do. If you don'tdo that, that's rebellion.
(14:43):
Verse 23, that's like the sinof divination. Presumption is
as inequity and idolatrybecause you've rejected the
word of the Lord. He's alsorejected you from being king.
This man cannot be the leaderof God's people because he
obeys the voice of the peopleinstead of the voice of God.
And as we work through the restof that chapter, it just gets
brutally difficult here becausein verse 30, then finally Saul
(15:07):
is able to say, I have sinnedyet, honor me now before the
elders are my people. Beembarrassing if you're rebuking
me in front of people likethis. So let's all pretend like
everything is good. It takesSamuel to finally fulfill the
word of the Lord. And he doeskill a gag . Verse 32, there's
a textual variant there, A gagcame to him cheerfully. That's
(15:28):
probably not cheerfully, that'sprobably a gag . Came to him in
chains. And Samuel says, youare a terrible king. You've
done terrible things and Godhas decreed your death. And
Samuel executes him. And thenverse 35, Samuel will not see
salt again till the day of hisdeath. But Samuel grieved
oversaw, and the Lord regrettedthat he had made Saul king over
(15:48):
Israel. Don't get lost here inin questioning God and so forth
and so on. It is just clearfrom that passage that that
Saul had every opportunity tobe the king that the people
needed and that God wanted himto be. And and verse uh ,
chapter 15, like chapter 13 hasclearly solidified that Saul is
(16:09):
never going to be that person.
And so God is looking for theright king. Tomorrow we will
find the right king. A readingfor Tuesday for Samuel chapter
15. Welcome to Wednesday.
Today's reading is First Samuelchapter 16. The entire chapter,
Wednesday's reading is FirstSamuel chapter 16. And once
(16:32):
again, we have a key word thatwill appear a couple of times
in this chapter and that drivesthe major theme of the chapter.
And that is the word looking orseeing in the ESV verse one
says, how long will you grieveover Saul? This is the Lord
talking to Samuel. I haverejected him from being king
over Israel for I have providedfor myself a king among his,
(16:53):
among his sons. The term forprovide here is the term I have
seen. I have seen. So seeingand looking. Verse six, when he
came, he looked on eab . Andthen verse seven, which of
course is the key verse, don'tlook on appearance because the
Lord looks not like men. Look,men look on the outward
(17:13):
appearance, but the Lord lookson the heart. So looking is a
huge key here in this wholeidea. And maybe then when we
end up choosing David. And thenext thing you know it says
about David is that David verse12 was ruddy and had beautiful
eyes and was handsome. By theway. There's all kinds of
translation issues there withbeautiful eyes and all the
things that go with all ofthat. But it is clear that,
(17:35):
that David was not some homelylooking , awful disfigured,
terrible looking boy. No, he's,he's handsome. But that may
cause you to say, well, hey, I,I I I thought the Lord doesn't
look on the outward appearance.
But but please remember, pleaseremember, David doesn't look
right. He does not look right.
(17:55):
He is not like Saul. Saul hadthe look tall, handsome, he
looked like people wanted theirleader to look. But David
doesn't look anything likethat. Yes, yes, he is handsome.
He is handsome, but he's tooyoung. He's so young. Daddy
didn't even call him for theprophet to, to possibly choose
(18:19):
him. He's too young and he'soff with the sheep. What, what
do you think he looked likewhen he came into the house?
He's been out in the field,he's keeping sheep. What do you
think he smelled like? Thisisn't the guy. There's no
chance this guy can be the nextking. Oh yeah, he can be the
(18:40):
next king. And the spirit ofthe Lord came upon him. In
verse 13, David is anointed.
This is the first time, by theway, that his name appears in
the book of Samuel and hereceives the spirit. It is
clear that the spirit isoperating to equip a man to do
God's work. A prophet, forexample, to speak for God or as
a king needs to, to lead God'speople. They are anointed. This
(19:03):
happened to Saul. God empoweredhim. And we ought to remember
that there is no completedBible in one Samuel 16. If
David wants to do the will ofGod, he can't sit down and have
a Bible study. So the Spiritequips him in a unique way,
maybe, maybe in a different waythan you and I because we have
the spirit's ultimate tool, thescriptures. But the Spirit
(19:25):
equips him. And I think it'simportant to note here that the
David does not constantly talkabout the spirit or claim to be
spirit led at every juncture oralways being. He's not always
saying, you know, the Spiritlaid this on my heart, or I
just had this feeling thatthat's not how David operates.
Here is somebody who definitelyhas the spirit of God, the
(19:45):
Bible says so yet, yeah, hedoesn't act like a lot of
people who claim to have thespirit today. I I I, I think
that's worth considering. Iwonder, is David even conscious
of this? Is, is he aware of theempowering spirit of God? The
key then of course is that thespirit departs from Saul verse
(20:07):
14, and a harmful spirit fromthe Lord tormented him. People
will have questions about that.
What does that mean? And and Ithink the , the short answer to
that, which is what you get ona podcast is there are things
that God allows. And sometimesin the Bible it will say
specifically, the devil didthis. And sometimes it will
say, you know, God did that.
Because what that means is thatGod allowed the devil, for
(20:28):
example, to take on job , totake job's, family, and to take
away job's, possessions, orhear that God allowed a harmful
spirit to come to Saul . I wishI knew more about this harmful
spirit. It's, it's an odd deal.
I don't think I know of anyother place in scripture where
a harmful spirit can be calmedwith music. But it , that seems
to be the case here. Not sure Iunderstand about all of that,
(20:52):
but verse 15, verses 13, 14,and 15 are really the hinge
verses in for Samuel. From hereon the story is about David,
not about Saul. That's wherewe're going. It's going to be
about David. And so David endsup in the court and there's
going to be a slew of questionsabout that. Wow , this is one
(21:13):
Samuel 16 is like q and amorning just on overload
because David comes to thecourt. And then if you're
familiar in one Samuel 17,which we're about to read, when
David shows up to beat up onGoliath kings Saul is like, who
is this guy? Well, hey, he'sbeen in your court and there
are some chronological issueshere. Maybe this material's
(21:34):
just out of orderchronologically, it's giving a
summation of some things thathappened here. The Tugen has a
very different take on some ofthis, some of the material in
chapter 17 in the SubT . Someof that material is not part of
that translation. We're we'rejust not sure. Maybe Saul had
many people in the court andcouldn't keep up with everyone
(21:54):
that's going on there. All thethings that are happening
there, we don't know about allof that. Lemme just leave you
with this last passage to thinkabout as we consider Saul and
we consider this harmful spiritcoming upon him. The verse that
I want you to think about is inthe New Testament. I hate to
take you outta Samuel, but justleave a marker there and just
go read with me over in SecondThessalonians. In Second
(22:17):
Thessalonians, if we ever havea preaching theme, the scariest
verses in the Bible, I'm, I'mnot certain that this verse
isn't gonna win because SecondThessalonians chapter two says
this in Second Thessalonianschapter two, talking about the
lying activity of Satan andSecond Thessalonians two in
verse 10, there'll be wickeddeception, second Thessalonians
two 10 for those who areperishing because they refuse
(22:39):
to love the truth and so besaved. Therefore, God sends
them a strong delusion so theymay believe what is false in
order that all may be condemnedwho did not believe the truth
but had pleasure andunrighteousness. That's Saul.
That is Saul. And we know thatis Saul from what happened in
one Samuel 15. And now we'rewatching that play out in King
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Saul's life. The spirit of theLord for Samuel 1614 departed
from Saul and a harmful spiritfrom the Lord tormented him. He
failed God in chapter 13,miserable stupid oath in
chapter 14, disobeyed Godflagrantly horribly in chapter
15. And now since he doesn'twant to listen to God, he
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doesn't want to serve God. Godhas left Saul, Saul left God.
Now God has left Saul and wehave a new king in the making.
That man is David a man afterGod's own heart. Our reading
then for Wednesday is FirstSamuel chapter 16. It is
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Thursday. And today our readingis the first half of one Samuel
chapter 17. We're reading oneSamuel chapter 17 verses one to
23. And of course, this is thefamous David and Goliath story.
I wanna say a couple things maybe kind of off, off the usual
track about the story of Davidand Goliath. First and
foremost, that's a terriblename for this. It's really not
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the story of David and Goliath.
In fact, Goliath's name onlyappears twice in the text in
verse four and in verse 23.
Other than that, he's just thePhilistine. He's not that
important. This is the story ofDavid and Saul. That's what
matters here. Think about thecontext. Think about what we've
been talking about. What havewe been reading about? It's
been about Saul, about Godrejecting Saul, God finding a
(24:35):
new man. What can that new mando? How is he different than
Saul? Why is God choosing Davidinstead of Saul? First Samuel
chapter 17 answers all of thosequestions, checks all of those
boxes. So you wanna payattention here to what Saul is
doing and how different Davidis, than Saul. Don't, don't
worry about the Philistine ,he's just a big, tall bully.
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David will take care of him. Itis a powerful place to visit ,
uh, the valley of Eila there inverse two. I've been there
tremendous blessing. Dean and Igot to go there. It's a very
wide, broad flat valley, andthere's hills on each end of it
kind of makes a naturalstadium. And it is a , it's a
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spine tingling place to stand.
There's still a brook there.
And just pretty incredible tothink of the events that
occurred there so long ago. Theother thing that I wanna say is
in evangelical circles, indenominational circles,
several, several years ago, itgot really popular to say
everything in the Bible isabout Jesus. And you have to
make everything about Jesus.
(25:36):
And so David and Goliath, forexample, which was a prime
example of this kind of newmove in preaching and this new
sophisticated approach, Davidand Goliath isn't about
encouraging us to be faithful.
It's saying that we are thecowardly Israelites. We're with
Saul. Jesus is David. Jesus issaving us. And so this was the
(25:57):
new emphasis on Christ-centeredpreaching. And and I got a
little pushback every now andthen from people who had drunk
a little bit from some of thesedenominational books and heard
some of these denominationalwriters, oh, you , you're
missing it. It's all aboutJesus. Well, what , what are
you gonna say about that? Well,of course the Bible is all
about Jesus, how , who couldargue with that? But is this
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story specifically told to saythat Jesus is our savior and
that there's nothing here inthis story to say when we face
giant obstacles, when we faceall kinds of temptations, when
we face threats to our faith,instead of being fearful and
cowardly, we can copy David'sapproach and be like, David,
that that's outrageous. Romans15 four tells us explicitly and
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specifically that the Bible,which in Romans 15 four, that
is really looking at the OldTestament scriptures, that the
things written a four time werewritten for our instruction.
That through the endurance andthrough the encouragement of
the scriptures, we might havehope. The Bible encourages us.
And in Hebrews chapter 11, allof those people who exercised
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faith, they are not said to beweak. And oh, that's really a
story about Jesus. No, we areencouraged to imitate their
faith. And there are plenty ofillustrations of exactly that.
In one Corinthians chapter 10,Paul uses the Israelites and he
doesn't say that's actually astory of Jesus. No. He, he
talks about the Israelites andis drawing some moral lessons
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from their failures. So we candraw lessons from these great
heroes in the Bible and learnfrom them. Don't let somebody
tell you. And , and thatapproach got really obnoxious
and the people who were pushingit really had that , I'm so
much better than you kind ofthing . Oh, you, you rabble
down there. You think you canlearn something about David so
you don't see, please stop withall of that. It's again, the
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Bible is all about Jesus. I Iknew about that. But it also is
teaching us how to followJesus. And what we're seeing in
one Samuel 17 is that David isfaithful. And this is what that
looks like. This is what itlooks like to be a man after
God's own heart. Goliath is, infact, he is a monster. His
armor would weigh verse five,probably 120 pounds, which
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think about how big a guy thisman is when he can easily walk
and fight in armor weighing 125pounds. The head of his spear,
verse seven, would weigh 15pounds. So he's carrying a
spear that weighs 15 pounds. Hecan chuck that thing, he can
throw that thing. And what isgonna happen to David if he
throws that thing right throughthe center of David's chest?
(28:27):
This man is terrifying. He issome nine feet tall and nobody
wants to take him on . And ofcourse, that is what the
passage is about. Saul verse11, heard the words of the
fiddle team , and he's dismayedand greatly afraid. Saul is
tall. Saul is tall. Rememberthat? That's why the Bible
(28:50):
tells us that Saul is the oneguy who ought to say, I can
deal with this. I can take thisguy on. Everybody's looking to
Saul. He's supposed to be theking who delivers them from the
hand of the Philistines. Saulought to pray. He ought to seek
the Lord. He ought to march outthere and he ought to kill this
(29:11):
guy. Can you imagine for even amoment if Saul says, I need to
be faithful to God. Get Samuelup here. Samuel comes, he says,
Saul says to Samuel, I've, I'vejust failed and it's, I need to
repent. I need to return toGod. I need to lead God's
people. Samuel, pray for me andseek God. Will God give me the
(29:31):
victory? Saul would've gone outthere and wiped the floor with
this guy. But of course, for 40days, this goes on verse 16,
and Saul does nothing. Whatdoes his leadership look like
after 40 days of hiding Davidarrives and David here at the
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fateful moment by God'sprovidence. What's God doing
here? God is giving David astage so that he can step
forward at the very moment thatSaul is shrinking backwards.
Pretty hard to stop reading inverse 23. I'm not , not sure
I'm gonna do that. I may get mesome more coffee here and
finish this chapter, buttomorrow we move over like we
(30:12):
always do on Friday to the bookof Psalms. Thursday's reading,
first Samuel 17, one to 23.
Welcome to Friday. We made itthrough another week, and it is
Psalm six that we are readingon Friday. Friday's reading is
the sixth Psalm. There is somuch in this six Psalm to
really, really like, and Ithink in many ways this is,
this is kind of symbolic of howmuch of the Psalms works. In
(30:36):
the Psalms, men talk to God.
It's not so much a revelationof God to man. It's us bringing
our needs and our problems andour concerns and our praise and
our thanksgiving before the,before the throne of God. And
there, there is a greatillustration of that in Psalm
six, because what we get inPsalm six is a confused
psalmist. I'm being chasten bythe Lord, and I'm not sure why
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my soul is greatly troubled.
Verse three, I'm trying to befaithful to God, but things
aren't going the way I thoughtthey ought to go. And maybe
this is another great place tosee the inspiration of
scriptures. Nobody would writetheir own so-called Bible their
own so-called Holy Book. And inthe middle of it have one of
its biggest heroes say, God, Idon't understand what's going
(31:19):
on. I feel kinda like I'm beingmistreated here. That is not,
that is not how people wouldwrite this. But the Bible is
honest. And the Bible tells usthat there were times in
David's life when he wasuncertain. And this is a lament
Psalm. It's a cry fordeliverance. And it breaks down
into a couple of parts. There'sa prayer for the favor of God
in verses one to three. And youdefinitely get the concern and
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the confusion. My bones aretroubled. I'm languishing.
Verse two, I feel like I'mbeing rebuked and chastened . I
don't understand what'shappening. So then there's the
prayer for deliverance verses4, 5, 6, and seven. Note that
David knows that he's beingrebuked and chastened, verse
four, but he does not turn awayfrom God. He is turning to God.
(32:03):
And we get a very old Testamentview of death in verse five.
Death silences a man you , youcan't do anything after death.
And of course, in the NewTestament, we learn an awful
lot more about death. But inthe Old Testament, that's a
very common viewpoint. Onceyou're dead, you , you go to
the realm of the dead where youcannot praise God anymore . And
so that kind of silences you.
(32:25):
And then verses eight, nine,and 10 proclaimed victory.
Something has changed here .
Maybe a word came a victory ordeliverance or the psalmist
went to worship, but he'striumphant again. Notice verse
eight, depart from me all youwork as of evil. Yeah, that's,
that's what Jesus says inMatthew chapter seven. And in
verse 23, Jesus says , echoingthe Psalm there. So this is a
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Psalm that deals with confusionand ends in victory, and that
reminds us that even when wedon't understand everything
that God is doing, we don'tturn away from God. We turn to
the Lord as he will surelyanswer us. Hope that's helpful
to you from Psalm six. Ourreading for Friday is Psalm
six. Well, thank you then forlistening. That's the podcast
(33:10):
for the week. If it's helpingyou, of course, tell other
people about the podcast andleave it a rating and review.
Until next week, then, whenwe'll open our Bibles together.
Again, I'm Mark Roberts and Iwanna go to heaven. I want you
to come to I'll see you onMonday with a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Thanks for listening to the Westside Church of
Christ Podcast. Monday morningCoffee with Mark. For more
information about Westside, youcan connect with us through our
website, just christians.comand our Facebook page, our
music is from upbeat.io. That'supbeat with two P'S
(33:54):
U-P-P-B-E-A-T, where creatorscan get free music. Please
share our podcast with othersand we look forward to seeing
you again with a cup of coffee.
Of course, on next Monday.
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