2 Samuel 9:1-11:27, John 15:1-27, Psalms 119:49-64, Proverbs 16:1-3
Today is the 26th day of May. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it’s great to be here with you as we begin to close the books on another week. And we have spent this week moving through David’s life and we’ll continue to do that in 2 Samuel. And we are reading of Jesus final days for the final time in the book of John. So, we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week, which is today. 2 Samuel 9, 10 and 11 today.
Commentary:
Okay, so in 2 Samuel we’re working through David’s life and we come to this pretty horrible story of David’s sordid affair with Bathsheba. And as sordid of a story as it is, it’s maybe even worse than we might see on the surface. And we can’t go all the way through the story because we’re not finished with the story, but David has sent the army to war and he stays back in Jerusalem and he wakes up from a nap and there’s Bathsheba. He can see her as he looks down from the palace. She’s beautiful, she’s naked. He wants her. He has her. He’s the king. But she becomes pregnant so then there’s all of the cover up, right? Because she’s married to Uriah the Hittite. And this is actually where the story takes a turn for the worst. Because Uriah the Hittite was one of David’s top thirty warriors. In all of the military, he was one of the top thirty. A man loyal and sworn to loyalty to the king. So all of the sudden, this affair that David has with Bathsheba isn’t just a betrayal of some (commoner) around Jerusalem. It’s one of David’s most loyal warriors he betrays by taking his wife. But that’s not the end of the story. He’s gonna take Uriah’s life over this and Uriah did nothing. David sends for Uriah so he can come home so that he can send him home to Bathsheba so that they can sleep together so that she can show up pregnant and the whole thing be covered up, which is sordid enough. But Uriah won’t go home, right? He’s one of thirty most loyal warriors. He won’t even go home, not while his brothers are sleeping in tents out in the open in battle. So, David writes a letter to Joab, rolls it up, gives it to Uriah. Uriah doesn’t know that it is his death sentence. He takes it back to Joab, the instructions are read, Uriah is killed in battle. We get it. This is a horrible, horrible, horrible thing David has done. But just to pour salt into the wound here, this is exactly what Saul was trying to do to David over and over and over, right? Send him into battle where he can be killed. Try to arrange for his, sort of, murder by war. David was always stealthy enough to escape. Uriah was killed. So we’ve been following the story of David and his humility and his approach to leadership, but when we get to this story, and it’s like David has perpetrated an evil that is as evil as anything in the Bible. And we’ll have to hang on until tomorrow for the conclusion of the story because we’re not done.
Then in the book of John, we’ve been talking about it for days. That we’re covering territory, the last final days of Jesus life for the last time this year so that we can give it gravity and honor it. So Jesus has been telling his friends that the Holy Spirit will be sent, the advocate who will lead us into all truth and that we should love each other. That’s gonna be the distinctive in this new thing that God is doing in the world, it will be love. And this is the last conversation that he’s going to have. This is it. This is the last teaching with his friends before he loses his freedom and everything moves toward the cross. And so that’s part of that conversation in our reading from today. Jesus is instructing us to remain in his love. This whole thing is built upon love. So I wanna re-read a paragraph from today’s reading so that we can personalize it and actually take it within ourselves and make it a part of our lives and make it a part of this day. And all of these words, these are Jesus words. So this is what he spoke I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow. This is my commandment, love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends since I have told you everything the Father told me. You didn’t choose me, I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name. This is my command. Love each other. So, it’s almost as if… What else is there to say? What else can I say to expand upon that because it’s very clear. Jesus is saying that if our lives are going to make any sense then we have to remain in his love and the only way to remain in his love is that we obey him. So, in other words, when we are in rebellion, then we are not remaining in his love. But the reason that Jesus was sharing this wasn’t that he could lay down the final law and lord it over us. It was, as he said, so that we could be filled with his joy. That we could experience joy that will overflow. So, if we obey his commands, then we are remaining in his love. And the byproduct of remaining in his love is that we can experience overflowing joy. We follow that pathway by loving one another as he loved us. And there is basically the context for our lives. I have spent years wanting to understand what this intimacy with God is like. I’ve written books about this. To be a friend of God. To not be just an adherent to a religion. To actually experience the intimacy and friendship that is spoken about in the Scriptures. And Jesus talks about that in this paragraph that we just read. These final things that he’s saying. I no longer call you slaves. A master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends since I’ve told you everything the Father told me. You didn’t choose me, I chose you. Man, those words change the dynamic and change the atmosphere, right? Because we feel like we’ve chosen to accept Jesus, now we’re hanging on for dear life and he’s seeing all the effort we’re putting in to try to obey his commands and is he gonna shower those blessings down us? Man, the dynamic changes when you realize you didn’t choose anything. You were chosen, right? All those things we think that we deserve to have because we’ve chosen to live a sacrificial life in love with God, that sort of melts away when you realize you didn’t do the choosing. You were selected. You were chosen. You were invited by God to participate in the renewal of all things. So, we weren’t chosen like we won the lottery, we weren’t chosen so that blessings could shower down upon us. What Jesus is saying here is, I chose you to become a part of this story. Remain in my love and you do that by obeying my commandments, you do that by loving one another like I’ve shown you what love looks like. You love like I loved and you’ll experience overflowing joy. But that’s not gonna make it easy. If the world hates you, Jesus said, remember it hated me. The world will love you if you belong to it, but I chose you. You’re no longer part of that system. It’s a whole new thing going on in the world and I chose you to be a part of it. And those who are in the dark aren’t going to get it. And they’re not gonna like you just like they didn’t like me. But you’re continuing the story. You’re replacing darkness with light when you remain in my love, when you obey me, when you love one another. This is striking. It’s beautiful to have that context for what this day is supposed to look like. It’s also humbling that Jesus was saying all of these things as this last reminder, like shake it up one more time to remind them, I’m about to be gone from you for a minute because I’m about to make all of this possible.
Prayer:
Jesus, we enter into that deeply. We drink deeply from that. We want desperately to remain in Your love. And what You’re telling us is that the way that we do that is to obey You. The way that we do that is to obey Your commandment to love one another. And we love each other when we look at the world through Your eyes and love in the face of hate and indifference we love. And so we declare that we love You. We love You, we worship You. We invite Your Holy Spirit, this advocate that You were talking about, to continually remind us of the things that You’ve said. And this is what You said the Holy Spirit would do and so we invite You, Holy Spirit, to continually remind us. Show us what it looks like to love as You love. Show us what it looks like to remain in You. 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 Prayer and Praise:
Hello DAB family. My name is Lillian. I’m calling from Tanzania. That’s in East Africa. This is my first time calling. I’ve been listening to DAB on and off for about 4 years now but beginning this year I made a vow to loosen daily and so far, I’ve been able to keep up. And I thank you very much for this community, Brian and Jill for creating it. And I thank each and every one who is a member of this community and your amazing unity and love. I’m calling in today to request for your prayers. I am going through a very difficult and dark moment of my life. Friends, I need your prayers guys to just lift me up to God, me and my family. We are going through a financial crisis and I’ve spent everything I’ve worked my entire life for. Please pray for me. Pray for strength. Pray for wisdom in all the decisions I’m required to make. And pray for the Holy Spirit to really guide my footsteps in this moment of my life. I thank you all and ask you to pray for me as I pray for you, each and every one, the ones who are calling in and the ones who are not calling in. Thank you. And God bless you all. I love you. Bye-bye.
Good afternoon Daily Audio Bible. This is prophetic intercessor from North Carolina and it is Tuesday, the evening of Tuesday, May 22nd. And, you know, it just was impressed on my spirit to call in and encourage someone. I was listening to the song that He is our strength like no other. And I remember calling in around this time last year as I was going through the process of a divorce and I was so broken and so disheartened and so disillusioned and I called in and so many of you called in and prayed for me. And I just want to thank you, for each and every one who lifted me up during that time and encouraged my heart. And, you know, I’m a testament that there is beauty for ashes. And, so, I wanted to return the favor and encourage someone this afternoon, that just hold on a little while longer. Hold through the pain, hold on through the frustration, hold on through the hopelessness because God is coming to turn it and He’s coming to give you beauty for your ashes. So, remember that [singing] He is your strength, He’s like no other, He’s like no other, and He will reach you. [singing ends] there is no pain to deep that exceeds the reach of God. He is reaching for you today. So, hold on. [singing] He is your strength, He’s like no other, He’s like no other, and He’s reaching for you. [singing ends] love you guys so much. Be blessed.
Hey DAB family. James here from the UK. Just calling to pray for Cherry Chase Cherry pie. You left a message, you left a prayer request with regards to your work situation and racial hatred and tension in the workplace. And, you know, we’ve been talking about the royal wedding this week at work, at my work, and just what a tremendous occasion it was. I’m guessing a lot of you have seen it. But it really struck me when I heard you call but, you know, that we can create situations that make things look like there changing. And it’s great that we believe that change is coming soon and change continues to happen in terms of the way that we look at integration. But I really felt your prayer request when you talked about what was happening in your workplace and the fact that it felt like it was a throwback to the 1960s. And I just wanted to say, the white man listening to request, I just felt this burden and desire to pray for Cherry Chase. So, I’m hoping that there’s many others that aren’t able to call in but will be feeling the same way. So, I just want to lift you up. Lord Jesus, I just pray for Cherry Chase in her place of work Father God. She is facing principalities and powers that may be hard for her describe or understand or for any of us to really get to grips with. There’s a terrible evil in this world that makes our skin color, our origin, our ethnicity something that we actually use as a way of differentiating against each other, of creating prejudice, which is just totally perverse. And Lord Jesus, You stand against that. Jesus, You stand against…
Hello, good morning Daily Audio Bible family. This is Jay calling from Tennessee! Yes. So, I have made it and I have been listening every day, and praying every day. But I heard Sean 316 say something that struck me because I’ve been…I’ve been…led by the Spirit to call so many times and I just never did it. So, Sean 316, thank you for telling us to call and if God has answered our prayers because it motivates others and it helps others. So, my prayer, before I left for Tennessee and before I even applied for a job was that God would send me to a place where I can openly be a Christian, I can openly share the gospel with people, I can openly, you know, work with people who don’t mind me talking about Jesus. And would you believe that once I started applying for jobs I got accepted, offered and accepted a job in Tennessee without even having to interview? I’m here now on my, what is this, my third day of work and all my bosses are Christian, all my coworkers are Christian. I ran into a couple situations where I needed help and the companies that I dealt with were Christian companies and they didn’t even charge me any money. It’s just, it’s amazing. And even going downtown, where the people are a lot younger and in that frame of mind where they really don’t want to believe in Jesus, they are very respectful of what you believe and they don’t, they don’t hate you for it, as I dealt with back in New Jersey. Anyway, I love you and I just want to let you know that when you pray, God does listen. He may not answer the way that you want him to because I wasn’t planning on moving to Tennessee but he will answer your prayers. Love you guys.