Genesis 24:52-26:16, Matthew 8:18-34, Psalms 10:1-5, Proverbs 3:7-8
Today is January 11th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s wonderful to be here with you today. Hopefully you’re keeping warm and cozy as we move our way through the winter. I’m sure that’s true if you’re in the southern hemisphere. Hopefully you all are keeping cool. Either way, the global campfire is burning and off we go into our next step forward. We’ve been reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week, which is what will do for the rest of the week. Genesis chapter 24 verse 52 through 26 verse 16 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Genesis, we reached the end of Abraham’s life and we’re moving into the next generations story. And it’s easy to get lost in all of these names and trying to piece together who all of these people are and where the story is headed to. So, if we’ll just keep track of what’s going on there, we’ll see how the story unfolds, we’ll find out who the children of Israel are. We’ll find out how it is they got to Egypt and became enslaved. All of these things will begin to unfold. But understanding who the people are will help us see it unfold. So, this particular story that were in right now that is going to influence the rest of the Bible begins with this person Abram. Right? And, so, he follows God into this land. And we talked about the significance of this land. We know that at this point its Canaanite land, but Abram and then when his name changes to Abraham, he stays in the land, he raises his family in the land. And today we said goodbye. After 175 years, he dies and is buried in the cave of Machpelah, where he had buried his wife Sarah. So, Abraham and Sarah are now buried in this cave of Machpelah, which is in Hebron. Hebron still exists until this day. In fact, it’s very much a functioning city until this day. And the cave of Machpelah still exists until this day. Half of it is like a synagogue and half of it is a mosque. As I said earlier, a lot of people in the world trace their religious history back through Abraham. So, this place, where the cave of Machpelah was, is now called the Tomb of the Patriarchs. And as we move a little bit further into the story, we will revisit this field, this cave, and it will have significance. But I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. So, Abraham, the patriarch of this new family that is promised to be as big as the stars in the heavens and as many as the grains of the sand on the seashore, and to have this particular land that God was promising them, reaches the end of his life. So, he didn’t see this promise fulfilled, but he believed God every step of the way that it would be fulfilled. And what he did get to experience was a miracle, the child of promise, the next generation, Isaac. And then we read the story of Abraham sending his lead servant to go in pursuit of a wife for Isaac. And he goes back to his family’s ancestral land where he finds Rebekah, who agrees that she should come and become Isaac’s wife and she does. So, Abraham and Sarah become the next generation, Isaac and Rebekah. Isaac and Rebekah then have twin boys, Jacob and Esau. So, the next generation, the grand children of Abraham are born. And we see that, although they are twins, they are very different from each other. And we begin to notice that Jacob has the cunning streak that his father, Isaac, and his grandfather, Abraham, had possessed. And we’re just beginning to see that story unfold. And we’ll watch that happen. The generation of Jacob and Esau becomes very, very pivotal, and we’ll see that in the coming days.
Then in the book of Proverbs, we’ve moved past all the words of introduction and what this book is about and the voice of wisdom that speaks and have begun to be challenged by wisdom. And, so, we’re challenged today to fear the Lord and turn away from evil. So, that’s a piece of wisdom that we can get our heads around. It sounds like something we’ve heard before, ‘fear the Lord and turn away from evil.’ But, how do we do that? The beginning of the verse gives us some clues. ‘Don’t be wise in your own eyes.’ ‘Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.’ And then the wisdom attaches a promise. ‘If you do that this will be healing for your body and strengthening for your bones.’ So, if we will just come to terms that we don’t know all that we think that we know. And, so, much of the time what we’re depending on are things that we don’t know. But, rather, we set our affections and our reverence and awe on the Lord. It will expose evil. We will be able to see it and we will be able to turn away from it. We will be living in wisdom. And if we live in wisdom then this will be healing for our bodies, this will strengthen our bones. We will be living in wisdom.
Prayer:
Father, we acknowledge that we try to do things, maybe even most things, in our own strength, by our own ingenuity, and we look for you to come alongside of that, and bless it, and protect it, when so often it was never wise to begin with. And, so, we acknowledge that we don’t know all that we think that we know. And we also acknowledge that we need to set our affections, our attention, our awe, our reverence, our relationship in daily moment by moment interaction with You. And Your Holy Spirit will show us how to turn away from evil. And in systematically turning away from evil, we will find strength and we will find health. So, come Holy Spirit, this is what we’re asking for. We turn our hearts to You and You alone. All these circumstances, all this stuff that’s swirling around that has carried over from the old year and is bringing anxiety into our lives, that is keeping us awake. The beginning of a new year and the hope for something better brings its own sets of anxieties, we turn away from those things and turn to You. As Jesus taught us, this reverses the paradigm, this puts us in proper alignment, where You are first and foremost in all things. Come, Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name, we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
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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 Prayer and Praise:
Well, hello there my DAB family. This is Mark Street from Sydney Australia. Today is Sunday, the 7th of January. Happy New Year everybody. Look, I’m calling today, I just finished listening to the podcast today and I just want to stand in agreement with Brian, that forgiveness changes everything. And I know I’ve called in on it before, but I cannot believe since I’ve been listening to God and forgiving people in my life He has been restoring I’m restorable relationships all around me. I’m amazed what’s happening. And I realize now, what Brian’s saying as well, that the release of sin has all got to do with forgiveness. And the anger that was in me, that you’ve been praying for me family, has almost totally disappeared. And there is still some more forgiveness that I need to do in my life as well that happened in childhood time, in growing up, which has been bound in sexual sin. And I know this year, if I forgive, it will be a year of moving forward even more. Family, I love you all so much. And what can I say? I mean, it’s hard to forgive but the rewards God gives you when you do forgive are amazing. And that’s my love to you. I want to see all of you experience what I’ve experienced and build relationships and coming back and God honoring every word he says in his Bible if we listen to him. I love you family and I’m looking forward to another year with all of you and hopefully supporting more people as well. Love you. Bye.
Hi everybody. It’s Lisa the Encourager. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to call in lately, but I promise I’m going to do better. I just wanted to read something tonight to Brian because I’m sure all of you agree with me about what I’m about to say about how grateful we are. I don’t tell you enough, Brian Harden, but I thank God for you often and all that you have done to improve my walk with Christ in the last two years. I pray many blessings over you and Jill and your lovely family. I know I struggle to call and pray for others with all of our busy live stuff. And sometimes it’s just hard to be positive for so many people that are hurting with health issues, addictions, and insurmountable problems. It just makes my heart hurt so much. That’s why I am so very impressed with your persistence through your own personal life struggles, pain, sorrow, holidays, travel, birthdays, and sickness. No matter what it is, we can all depend on you to be there for us reading the word of God and sending it with your ‘I love you’ so well for all who will join the Daily Audio Bible family. Not to mention, always keeping it interesting free announcements like what’s coming next, like __ , Sneezing Jesus, tantalizing coffee, trips to Israel, the More conference with Jill, Black Wing pencils, or China reading the Bible chronologically. And all of this has just since I’ve been a part of Daily Audio Bible. So, I know there is so much more. But most importantly, bringing us all into a deeper relationship with our Creator. And that has honestly surpassed everything I’ve had in my entire Christian life. I thank God for you today and for giving us a man of God who has a passion for his flock. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Dear heavenly Father, I thank you God so much for Brian this family and Jill and his children and all of the people behind the scenes that work on Daily Audio Bible so we may be blessed and drawn closer to You. I thank You God from the bottom of my heart and I pray many blessings over this wonderful family and this wonderful team of individuals that bring us the Daily Audio Bible. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.
Hi Daily Audio Bible family. This is Vanessa from Oregon. I’m just calling because I just finished the January 7th podcast and, Brian, your commentary after was amazing. I listen usually in the middle of the night because I can’t sleep and I just close my eyes and just think about forgiveness and making sense of something that started bubbling up from my childhood that I haven’t even really thought about, that I really didn’t even really think there were things that were bothering me. That was just…coming to the surface. So, being a young girl of color in a small rural town, different things that happened to me…and…you know…I forgive and I give it to God. And I can specifically feel lighter sensations bubbling…I don’t know…it’s just very…new to me…and I just want to thank You for that because sometimes there’s things that we don’t realize that we haven’t let go of until we stop and pray about it. So, thank you for that. Thank you, family. I love you guys I listen every day and I pray for you guys all the time. Just want one small request. My husband’s mother is sick. Her name is Kathy. She’s in the hospital and she doesn’t have much time left. So, if you could just…I ask you to pray for her to have some peace and resting, I would appreciate it. Thank you everybody. Have a good week. Bye.
Hey DAB family. This is Byron out in Florida. Hope you guys are doing well. Need your help on something. My younger son, Nehemiah, is now three and half year’s old. Can you believe that? God has been good and he’s doing pretty well. He goes to school now, three days a week, in a special program for kids with special needs. At church, the ladies have been real nice to him, taking care of him in a nursery for all this time. But he’s getting kind of old and he’s getting kind of big and I feel that it’s time to move them out of that into the other children’s activities that they have there. But he still not speaking and, you know, there’s still issues with different transitions and things like that that, things that you have with kids on the autism spectrum. But I think it’s time for him to start moving forward. And it’s going to be difficult, and it’s just going to be a hard transition, not just for him but for people in the family, like my wife, who is having a hard time with it, and my son, __ for him. He’s having a hard time with it. So, it’s just one of things where we’ve just got a just jump in the water in figuring out how to swim. So, I ask your prayers on that, that we can do that, that we can have confidence doing it. We’ve done it before with my older son. So, it will work out, but I need your prayers and I need the Lord to be in this. And if this is something that I should be doing then just see it clearly. But I thank you that you guys are always with me and always supporting me and my family and I just love you all. Talk to you later. Bye.