Judges 19:1-20:40, John 3:22-4:4, Psalms 104:24-35, Proverbs 14:22-24
Today is the 4th day of May. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It’s great to be here with you today as we take the next step forward in the Scriptures. And we’ve been moving our way through the book of Judges. Today will be our last full day in the book of Judges. Tomorrow we’ll complete Judges and move forward. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Today we’ll read Judges 19 and 20. And we’ve been reading from the Names of God Bible this week.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we’ve been spending some time in the book of Judges, moving our way through it with and we’ve come to the end of it. We’re not…we’ll concluded it tomorrow. But we notice that it’s very different than any of the things we’ve seen before. Story after story that is convoluted and mixed up in so many ways and so much tragedy. And what we’re simply seeing is what happens after people begin to abandon God. What we’re seeing is generations of slippage, generations where everyone’s doing what they think they should, doing whatever is right in their own eyes. And we see all kinds of mixture, all kinds of idolatry, all kinds of the things that these people were clearly warned against. And some of the most brutal and perhaps horrific stories that we’ll find in all of the Bible are contained in the book of Judges. And we can easily ask ourselves, what’s going on here? Why’s this stuff in the Bible? For example, the story that we read today is a horrific story of a woman being gang raped to death. And over the years of reading this particular story, I’ve talked about it on a number of occasions because it’s such a troubling story, a woman who is a concubine of a man in the backwaters, basically, is unfaithful and runs back to Bethlehem and then everything just spins out of control from there until we have the near total annihilation of the tribe of Benjamin and a substantial loss of life. And this story alone shows us that our choices matter. Our insignificant choices can lead to big outcomes. These people were unknown. This concubine was unknown. She had no idea was can happen. And in no way what I say what happened t her is just…it’s not just…its complete injustice, so much so that it riled up the entire nation of Israel so that they assembled together a ½ a million people almost, outraged over this. And they went, they went to Gibeah, they went to the people of Benjamin for justice. But the people of Benjamin wouldn’t give up the perpetrators. And, so, things just catapulted out of control until we have this devastation before us. What we do certainly does matter and certainly does compound upon itself to create an outcome that we didn’t likely intend. And that is one of the great lessons of the story that we read today. But I also want us to zoom out. We’re at the end of the book of Judges and some of us might be like, you know, that’s welcome, I’m ready to move forward. But what we need to understand is this is what happens when people walk away and rebel against God. This is where that road goes. It goes into stories that we don’t want to hear. It goes into stories that we don’t want to tell. It goes into things that should never have happened. So, we can try to avoid the book of Judges saying, yeah, it’s just too violent for me or there’s just too many weird stories in there for me, I don’t get it. Or we could understand now, this is how convoluted and crazy things get when we walk away from God. And then all the sudden, maybe we don’t have the same kinds of stories to tell but the same confusion and disruption clouds our lives in the very, very same way. And, so, although Judges has some dark stories in it, we’re simply reading the stories of what God’s chosen people who He had worked for generation after generation after generation, right? We’ve said this before. We started following the trail of Abraham in the book of Genesis and worked our way all the way up to here. And all we’re doing is reading what it looks like when people who are in covenant with God break covenant and walk away. So, let’s keep that in mind. Let’s remember, we’re not done with Judges. Is there anything redeemable about the story that we just read? We will find out tomorrow.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word because it doesn’t flinch. We love the stories of triumph and blessing and will hold onto those all day long. But we don’t like it when a mirror is put up in front of us and we get to see the dark side of where the path leads. But how we need to know it. And so we’re grateful and thankful for the way that Your word will look us in the eyes and tell us the truth. And, so, we ask Your Holy Spirit to come, plant the words in our lives and help us remember, every choice matters. And when we systematically choose rebellion we’re going to reap a dark story. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to live like that. We can live righteous before You, in fellowship with You, united with You, collaborating with You in every thought, word, and deed of our entire existence. We can. And this is the invitation to walk with You, to be with You, to live with You, to operate in life with the confidence of knowing we are in fellowship with You. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. 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 Prayer and Praise:
Hello Daily Audio Bible. My name is Terry. I ask for prayer for assurance of my salvation and for my addictions. I accepted the Lord as my Savior around the age of 15 if I’m not mistaken, 15 or 16. Then I got into drugs and alcohol at a later age, around 18, 19. I will be 50 years old in June and I still struggle with alcohol problems and drug problems. I drive a truck. It’s lonely out here. I feel like God has given up on me. I want to make my Lord happy and I want to be in heaven. Please pray for me. Thank you and you all have a blessed day.
Good morning DABbers. This is Emily who was just delivered from the Houston traffic…yay!!! And I’m calling for a whole bunch of reasons. The first one is to remind you that God restores marriages. And I know this because four years ago DABbers prayed and God restored my marriage and my husband and I listen every day and we pray for everyone who calls and says…and is dealing with their marriage. Keep standing. Don’t listen to people when they say to give up. Keep standing. We’re standing with you. Secondly, please to pray for my sweetheart because he’s got shingles and it’s miserable. So, please pray for him. Thirdly, we did call and ask for you to pray for Christina who’s my stepdaughter in law who is suffering from an unknown autoimmune disease despite the bazillion tests. And she still really suffering and it started by…when she discovered that her son Miles, our grandson who is now five, has retinitis pigmentosa, and barring a miracle will go blind. So, we need to pray for hope for Christina and Miles and healing for Christina and Miles. And, so, please do that. We really need you to stand with us in prayer. And lastly, please pray for me. Even as a go into work I listen to DAB and I go Lord my tongue is gonna behave itself and it just goes off and does not show the love of Jesus. There it goes. So, please pray for me for strength. And I really appreciate the brothers prayer for anger. Love you guys. Keep on DABbing. God is good.
Hi. This is Melissa from Baltimore and I just want to thank you Lee. It’s amazing to me how your conviction, I’m sure has led to lots of us even just realizing a problem with anger. And I just wanted to share. I have been getting pretty frustrated with my kids and it’s lead to me yelling, trying to control them like you’ve been talking about Lee. And anyway, they’ve just encouraged me. They’ve actually like…just…just punch us before you get mad…before you yell…just give us a conference. And it’s just amazing to me to just see how the Lord uses our children to bring conviction and guidance to us. And it just encourages me how just like just amazing how the Holy Spirit can just move and just convict and change us. And anyway, I just wanted to thank you Lee and let you know I am praying for you and for all you guys out there trying to get a hold of your anger. Okay. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.
Hey what’s up everybody. This is Miguel from Santa Rosa. I’m calling to expand on my prayer request that I left for my mom Carolyn who was had back surgery now three weeks ago. She is still not out of the hospital but the prayer request now does expand as I talked with the her on the phone. Last night, and a little bit of context, I’m going to try to only leave the details that are necessary. But my parents are guardians over my oldest niece and nephew. My sister lives on the property and she has her youngest son, so I have a second nephew there, and my parents essentially take care of the kids. And ever since my mom’s been to the hospital my dad’s been going with her. The hospital that she’s at is three hours away from their home. It’s been very, very difficult on their home. And the only way I can really describe it briefly is it’s really descending into chaos. It’s not going well for my niece and my nephews. So, there’s a lot more details to it but that’s the main thing. So, I’m just asking for the Lord to show up here. And, so, for healing for my mom, for the love of Christ to be known, for there to be strength, for there to be salvation for my sister, salvation for my nephews, for trust in God for my niece, and just continue doing what you’re doing family and pray. I know that prayer works because God works. God is real. He’s breathing. He loves me. He loves my family. And I can…we just need God. So, thank you community for praying. I know you will and, yeah, I guess that’s it. Thanks everybody.
Hello, my name is Linda. I called once before requesting prayer. I was adopted in a small fishing village in Canada called St. John’s Newfoundland Canada, probably about 61 years ago. My story has a lot of hiddenness to it and I am now, at 61, open to God’s invitation to pursue what God has for me with my first family. They have never been in my radar most of my life and now, after sustaining a traumatic brain injury God has asked me to be still and know that he is God. And in that has invited me into this journey that has many emotions to it. But I am asking for prayer for my birth mom and my birth and if there is any birth family, I ask that you would prepare them as the government of Canada reaches out to them if they are even alive, so that I could reconnect and my family could reconnect. God has a way of redeeming every part of us, every aspect of us, every story. And He is doing that in my life and I am praying that He will do that and their lives also. So, if you could pray for my birth family, I only know my mother’s name and nothing else. Someone from Canada…