1 Kings 18:1-46, Acts 11:1-30, Ps 135:1-21, Pr 17:12-13
Today is June 17th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is great to be here with you as we cross the threshold into a shiny, sparkly, new week that we get to walk into together and allow God’s word to speak into this week. And this week we will read from the Contemporary English Version. Of course, we will pick up where we left off yesterday. And we’re in the book of first Kings and we’re kind of, survey style, going through the different kings of Judah and Israel, but we’ve slow down for a minute because we’ve met this person and his name is Elijah and he is dealing with the king, Ahab, of Israel, the northern kingdom whose capital is in Samaria. So, we’ll pick up with that story. 1 Kings chapter 18 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we’re in the middle of some pretty dramatic stories in both the Old and the New Testament. And we started them yesterday and we talked about them yesterday. We met Elijah the prophet yesterday and we can kinda see now why he’s such an important prophet and such a famous one. And God is obviously speaking and working very powerfully through him. And as we move further forward in Elijah’s story we’ll learn some things about ourselves through him. But today we read of the great showdown on Mount Carmel, which is actually a real mountain in Israel. And, so, when Elijah asks his servant to go look out over the sea. It’s not too far, like, he could look out toward the sea. There’s a monastery that sits on the top of Mount Carmel now to commemorate this very story.
In the book of Acts, we talked about Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit, Gentiles beginning to follow Jesus and God beginning to pour Himself out on Gentiles, which was somewhat confusing to the Jewish believers in Jesus because their social structure did not have them intermingling whatsoever with Gentiles. So, when the story begins to get back to Jerusalem ahead of Peter, that he had gone into a Gentile home and stayed there, he was a little bit on the hot seat until he was able to share the story. And it was then the people began to understand that God was pouring His Spirit out. In other words, God was making this choice. No matter how it flew in the face of their constructs, their traditions, their rituals, and their culture, God was pouring out His Holy Spirit on Gentile people. So, at some point in time you have to go, like, yeah, this doesn’t seem to measure up to what I thought that I knew but I’m not the one that gets to pour out the Holy Spirit. And if God pours out His Holy Spirit on someone that I didn’t think He should have or that I didn’t think He would have, who am I? Which is basically Peter’s posture. But it at least invites us to consider the same thing because we have our own constructs and our own rituals and, you know, the different flavors of the faith. And, so, we can look at somebody who, maybe, doesn’t think the same way that we do about something and yet the Holy Spirit is present in their lives. And we have to say, like, this really reframes what I think I know, but I’m not the one issuing the Holy Spirit. So, who am I? We are a essentially reading about the first issue that’s going to be a big issue in the early church, and one that needs to get worked out. And we close our reading from the book of Acts with the gospel spreading around, spreading outside of Jerusalem, and this guy, Saul being sent for. And we already know, he’s the apostle Paul and we’re about to start to follow his story in the book of Acts, but we will be talking a lot about Paul because will be spending the generous portion of the rest of our year working through his letters in the New Testament. So we’ll have…we’ll have plenty of time for that.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for this shiny new week. We thank You that Your word will be a part of this shiny new week and it will inform and guide us by the power of this same Holy Spirit that we’re reading about in the book of Acts. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit to lead and direct and guide our every step to lead us on the narrow path that leads to life, to lead us into all truth, and to bring about the fruit of the Spirit in our life’s. We ask these things because we can’t do them. We can’t do them on our own. We have to collaborate with You. We do this by opening ourselves to You fully, surrendering ourselves to You fully. Come, Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to check it out.
Check out the resources that are available in the Shop, like the Promised Land films that I mention from time to time because we encounter a place that we filmed, like Mount Carmel, where the showdown with Baal worshipers, Baal’s profits, and the prophet Elijah took place. We filmed all that and you can see it for yourself in the Promised Land films. So, swing in and check that out as a resource in the Shop.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for here is tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hi. My name is Don. I just need prayer. My wife and I are going through marriage counseling and we’re…it’s been revealed that there are traumatic things that’s happened in both of our pasts that are playing in our marriage today and coming forward and just praying that God would help us process through the healing, both my wife and I, and that’s pretty much it. Thank you. God, bless. Bye-bye.
Hi. This is Ruthie from Aurora Colorado. And thank you everybody for your prayers. I like to have a special prayer request for my daughter, Katya. She’s in jail and she has her court date on Friday the 15th. Please pray that she would find Jesus when she’s in jail and that His love would free her, that she would accept that freedom. And I pray for my friend Hank who’s just diagnosed with prostate cancer. I pray that he would be healed and that he and his wife and his son, his wife Sherry and his sons David and Seth would have the Lord’s peace and comfort. And thank you everybody for your prayers and for the gift of being brothers and sisters. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Father God, thank You so much for Ramadan this year. Thank You Lord, so much for everything You have been whistling to Muslim hearts. Thank You Lord for all of those seeds planted. We pray Lord that You’d water them as we move forward and that they would flower into faith in You, to a knowledge of Your son, and the acknowledgment of who He is and of what You’ve done, that they might to become our brothers and sisters. Father God, thank You for bread or the Arabic word for bread, I think also means life or similar to life. Lord, as citizens in communities hold bread very high regard, may they come to know the true brad of life, that they would be able to come and eat at Your table and know exactly what that bread represents and acknowledge that sacrifice that Jesus made on their behalf for their sins, and that they are loved, and that they are forgiven. Lord, thank You for our brothers and sisters working in Muslim communities. I pray Lord that You would be giving them wisdom and insight into You. Mend them culture, give them symbols so they can better understand the language, all those local things, the local things and ways that we have of saying things, that they can better communicate the gospel. In Jesus’ holy and precious name. Amen. __ Michaela from Gloucester in the UK. All right. Have a good day. And have the most blessed and __ week. Bye.
All is well. Father thank You for Your mercy today. I am grateful for my extraordinary DAB family. All is well Cherry Chase. Father, You are our creator. You made us in Your image. You are the most high God. Thank You father for Your blessings that rain down from the windows of heaven that chase us down and overtake us. We receive them today. All is well Cherry Chase. Father, we are the family of God. We are who’s who we are, children of the most high God. We are blessed indeed. All is well Cherry Chase. I am Daniel. I am whose I am. I am a child of the most high God. I am blessed indeed. Father, thank You for Your faith today. All is well Cherry Chase. You are an extraordinary child of the most high God, a masterpiece made in His image. We thank God for you exactly where He has You this moment, standing tall with your head held high and your shoulders back, knowing that you are the apple of his eye, held in the palm of his hand, where nothing in your path is bigger than the most high God. We’re in deep my sister. All is well. My sister in Christ, Cherry Chase, believe and praise Him for exactly where He has You right now, this moment, and every moment you ask Him to be in with You. You thank Him. I thank Him. We thank Him as one body in Christ, the bread of life, the living room God. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Hi. My name is Brick and I live in Arizona at this moment. Thankfully, through my wife Cheryl I’ve been having a great pleasure of listening to the children of God lift their voices up in unison and for one another. As I’ve listened to the children of God some time now, it is laid heavy on my heart that I would encourage every single child of God to be of good cheer, that His yoke is easy. Regardless of the things which we’re going through, keep in mind we’re never alone. It is truly our Lord God who is in control and wants to take things, our burdens, from us. Please, allow the Holy Spirit to speak with you. Have an open mind, a willing Spirit, and a tender heart, and ears that hear. Allow God to do His will in His time, not in man’s. That is what a father does. Please, I beg of you, let God take your burdens. Truly release them to Him. He’s there waiting for you. In the true and living Christ Jesus’ holy name. This is my sincere wish for every child of God. A wonderful day. Bye-bye.