10/25/2017 DAB Transcript

Jeremiah 48:1-49:22; 2 Timothy 4:1-22; Psalms 95:1-96:13; Proverbs 26:9-12

Today is the 25th day of October. Welcome to the daily audio Bible. I am Brian and is great to be here with you today for the next step forward in the scriptures this year. And it’s a special day because we will conclude Paul’s second letter to Timothy in today’s reading and, as we mentioned when we began this letter, this is the final writings of the apostle Paul’s life. So, we will come to the final word written by the apostle Paul in today’s reading. But first, reading from the names of God Bible, Jeremiah chapter 48 verse 1 through 49 verse 22.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we concluded Paul’s second letter to Timothy, which is also the final writings of the apostle Paul’s life. And, you know, these are the final things that he has to say to Timothy. Obviously, it’s full of melancholy because Paul knows he’s going to die and he’s hoping to see Timothy again and Paul is sending Tychicus to represent him at the church in Ephesus, to give Timothy the opportunity to come, if possible. And he’s even asking Timothy to bring the warm coat that he left with Carpus in the city of Troas. Right? So, winter’s coming and he’s in a dungeon and his execution is eminent. And ya, so, there’s just a lot of melancholy in all that. And it’s within that that we have the famous quotation, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race’. And, so, Paul’s, kind of, final instructions to Timothy are, listen, things aren’t always going to be good. People will abandon you. People are going to say all kinds of things and teach all kinds of things and you need to be patient and just continue to teach the truth even when people, you know, even when people shop around looking for someone to tell them what they want to hear. You need to just patiently continue to teach the truth and you’re going to have to endure some suffering. It may get rocky out here. Consider yourself a missionary and devote yourself to this work and keep your head clear. And then Paul says, my life is coming to an end and it’s now time for me to be poured out as a sacrifice to God. I have fought the good fight, I have completed the race, I have kept the faith. That verse has always flattened me ever since I really began to understand the context of this letter. When I began to understand that it had come down to abandonment, that this great apostle, Paul, who we revere and who is responsible for so much of the New Testament that we read, that it all came down to a dungeon with winter coming on and pretty much everyone gone. And Paul warns Timothy and he talks about these kinds of things in his other letters, that this is not an unopposed life, that even though the good news of the gospel is the hope of the human species and the integration of God and people can once again happen and this world could begin to flourish, most people are going to ignore this and some are going to be hostile. And Jesus warned the same thing. And, so, Paul’s words are humbling and give us a lot to contemplate. Because this is a guy that is going to be executed, who was able to say, I did what I came to do, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race. And the way that I did that wasn’t through grand spectacles, it was that I kept the faith until the very end. I want that to be true of my life. Don’t you? Like, at the essence, at the core, no matter what happens, I want that to be true. And it’s pretty clear that Paul wanted that to be true in his life and he wanted to transfer that conviction to Timothy so that it might be true of him. And that as this letter spread around that it might be true of all. And, so, here are the final words of the apostle Paul and may they be spoken over us each. The Lord be with you. His is goodwill be with all of you.

Prayer:

Father, we come into that. It is a baseline heart cry - that we can fight the good fight, that we can finish the race, that we can keep the faith. And we have to also acknowledge that so many times we’ve measured that by how much we feel You are blessing us, like, that has become our measure, when we see that that is isn’t the measure at all, when we look at the apostle Paul and we look at your life Jesus. That isn’t the measure at all. This isn’t a fight for how much exterior blessing we can have. It is a fight for our heart and soul. And, so, as battered as we might be, with the circumstances that swirl around us, we regroup and center ourselves in you once again. We stand up once again and start fighting the good fight and we will finish this race and we will keep this faith by the power of your Holy Spirit, and by no other power is it possible. So, come, Holy Spirit, and help us to move forward as we honor those who have gone before us and finished the race, those who have finished the race by giving their lives so that we might have this treasure. Come, Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayers and Praise Reports:

Hello my Daily Audio Bible family. My name is Rayna here in California, Los Angeles area. I’ve called before. I listen daily. I don’t call in often but I do pray and listen and pray along with all of you. Today, I have to reach out. Again, I’ve called before. I’ve gotten really sick with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and other ailments in my body due to severe stress that I’ve ensured over the years and especially this one long year. It’s now taken its toll on me. The fibromyalgia pains are just extreme to the point where I can’t even think and work right. I draw blood for a lab. So, I have to be steady. I have to be focused. And I’ve found it very difficult to go to work lately. And it’s just been really hard to focus and feel like I’m worth anything. I don’t like to hear questions like, what’s wrong with you? Because it makes me feel like I’m not good enough anymore. So, I’m just asking God to just take this away from me completely. I’ve been liberated from it before but it’s just come back with full force and…I just…sometimes I wonder why I am still here. I struggle with also being alone in the house. I just want to go to work. I really love my job and ask you to please pray for me. I’m beginning to feel worthless. That God would just give me a new body and reinvigorate me and give me health again. Thank you, my Daily Audio Bible family, for just being there.

Oh God, I thank You for our churches and our church community. Thank You Lord so much for what they are doing and Father God thank You so much for the work you’ve laid upon their hearts to do. Father God I pray especially now for the children’s relief work of our church communities of our Christian communities Lord. Whether it be part of the DAB or DAB Kids or DAB teens or whatever or whether or it be the midweek Friday clubs or Tuesday clubs evening clubs or the Sunday morning clubs that people can learn, get to learn about You Lord. Thank You so much for what you are doing. Thank you for people who you’ve laid on their hearts to be a children’s worker or relief worker in their spare time to volunteer Lord. Father God, I pray that you’d be leading those people that you be leading those churches, giving them wisdom on how best to help children find you, how best help them grow, how best to disciple them. Please be blessed in these works Lord. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Hey family. This is Melissa again. I have a prayer request. My oldest daughter, her name is Darion, we call her Pudding. She would kill me if she knew I told ya’ll this. She will be going to China for a year to work. So, I need you all to pray for her. Me and her dad are, kind of, ya know, iffy about this, but this is something she wants to do. She’s 28 years old. She’s a good girl and I need to ya’ll to please keep her lifted up in prayer. Joselyn, you called in and were talking to a lady about her kid being sexually abused, and you said you didn’t let your kids spend the night, go to sleep over. I’m so glad you called in and said that because I don’t let Gabby spend the night with people and it’s just cause of things that happened to me. Allot of times when ya’ll call in to talk to other people and encourage them you don’t realize you’re encouraging other people too. So, thanks for so much for that. I love ya’ll. Ya’ll have a great day. Bye-bye.  

Hello Daily Audio Bible you make this family such a big, big lovely family. Brian, I just want to say thank you. For the last 5 years five years that I’ve listened to the Daily Audio Bible I love the fact that you get to this point in Jeremiah 29:11 and to take a pause and expand and expound and just tell us how great it is to have context. Yes, that’s one of my favorite versus as for many I know it is. It is great to understand context. In the bible, it will give us a big picture of what God is trying to tell and teaching us. So, I just wanted to say thank you Brian. And it’s great to know God has plans for us but whatever situation He has placed us, whether we like it or not, He is going to use that. So, we should try our very best to praise God, to flourish in all those moments. I am very happy that I am a member of this very wonderful family. Each one of you are loved by God. I really mean that. God loves us. And if God never did anything else for any one off us more than he has already done, the death of His son, Jesus Christ on the cross is good enough. It is the best gift anyone of us could ever receive - the gift of salvation, the gift of His undying love. Her pursued