1 Chronicles 1:1-2:17, Acts 23:11-35, Psalms 3:1-8, Proverbs 18:14-15
Today is the 5th day of July. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is great to be here with you as we all assemble around the global campfire coming out of the darkness we warm ourselves together in community and allow God’s word to wash over us and into our lives. And today we will be beginning a new book, the book of first Chronicles.
Introduction to the Book of First Chronicles:
So, let’s just kind of fly over this for a second. Not completely sure who wrote the books of Chronicles. There’s a first and a second Chronicles, but Jewish tradition, going pretty far back, has Ezra as the author. The books of Chronicles date to about 450 to 425 BC. So, there about four centuries, roughly before Jesus came. But in first and second Chronicles, I mean, we’re going to be recovering a lot of the same territory that was covered in first Samuel, second Samuel, and then first and second Kings but we’ll be looking at it from a different perspective. We’ll be looking at the stories, and we’ll be looking at the same stories, but we’ll be looking at them through the eyes of the priests and kind of get their take on what happened. As we just completed the book of second Kings, we see that the children of Israel are in exile and they’ve been taken away by the Babylonians and it’s been pretty brutal. The books of first and second Chronicles were written from the exile. They were written to remind the children of Israel who they are, who God is, how to worship Him, and what to do when they return. So, the first nine chapters will cover a lot of genealogy and, you know, we’re kind of at that point in the Bible. And all the genealogies can be tedious. And we wonder why we’re reading names. Once we understand why they’re there, to tell a moving story. The children of Israel are in exile. Many families have been torn apart. Many will never see each other again due to death, slavery, forced relocation. So, these names, these genealogies, their knit together so that the people can remember where they came from and who they are and each name has behind it a story of life and loss. Of course, this won’t be the last time this happens to the Jewish people. So, these genealogies matter. And as we go back to some the territory we’ve already covered, once again we’ll see God’s faithfulness, God’s forgiveness, His mercy, but also His righteous justice. The children of Israel know firsthand what it looks like to serve God and the repercussions of their own actions as they turned their back on Him. And none of this has changed. We all face the same things in our own lives. So, as we read through these stories, the echoes through history can remind us of who we are and encourage us deeply to follow God and walk in His will and His ways. And, so, we begin. We’re reading from The Voice Translation this week. First Chronicles chapter 1, verse one through 2:17.
Commentary:
Okay. So, as we get going in first Chronicles we can see that we are retelling the generational history of the people, and this certainly gives a backdrop of the people and players in the stories that will be told.
In the book of Acts, we can see that Paul, had he not had the protection of the Roman government, of which he was a citizen, he’d be dad. He would’ve been beaten to death by the Jewish people. What is this all about though? Like, it’s really easy to get lost and say, okay ,Paul was a devout Pharisee, then he became a follower of Jesus. There were other followers of Jesus and there were not assassination plots. I mean, why such rage against Paul? It’s a pretty complicated issue on a number of levels. First of all, Paul’s back in the holy city, Jerusalem and this is not an unfamiliar city to Paul. Paul has been a trained up Pharisee, living in Jerusalem for his life, his adult life. He’s not unknown to all of these people. He’s not to some kind a rogue person who keeps traveling around the empire saying things and shows up in Jerusalem. Like, they know who he is. The problem is what he appears to be doing is heretical to them. He seems to be an apostate, a person who is left his faith. And as we can see with these devout Jewish people, that’s worthy of death. So, we can understand why a mob would form or, you know, an oath of allegiance – I’m not gonna eat or drink until I kill this guy – you can see where that comes from. But why though? Why do they think Paul is an apostate. This is because, to them, that’s exactly what he is. And it boils down to two reasons and neither one of them directly relate to Jesus. I mean, everything in Paul’s life relates to his encounter with Jesus, but at this point in time people who believe in Jesus are just kind of a sub- sect of Judaism and so they’re tolerated by religious Jews, at least to a degree. Paul has done a couple of things that are a step further. For starters, he’s gone to the Gentiles, a people that the Jewish people insulated themselves from. Anyone who was non-Jewish was a Gentile and the Jewish religion was a separatist thing. You had to be a Jew, You had to convert if you wanted to worship God. For Paul to go out among the Gentiles speaking of this Jesus was separating him from his Jewish heritage and customs. And to make matters significantly worse, his language was that the law of Moses had been fulfilled in Jesus and was no longer something that they had to adhere or live under because it would only reveal their inability to be in relationship with God in a righteous way because nobody could obey the law. So, Paul had to spend a lot of time, a lot of theological wrestling as a Pharisee. And as he’s converting to Jesus, looking at the story of the Jewish people. And we’re looking at the story of the Jewish people in first Chronicles as we read down the generations. And we found a name in the genealogies today, Abraham. Abraham started everything, not Moses. And that was Paul’s really long-running argument. Abraham is the origination of this story. Abraham didn’t have a law to obey. Abraham believed God, he put his faith in God and God considered him righteous because of it. That was like a game changer for Paul. We all know how things go, right? You tell somebody something and then it gets rebroadcast and told out of context. Without the full context it seems like it’s something different. That’s kind of what’s going with Paul. He’s got this reputation going around that he is an apostate, that he has left his Jewish heritage, that he is preaching against the law, that he is claiming that Gentiles can be included in this new covenant. And, so, to the religious Jews. He has become a heretic. They don’t leave this at all. So, now we kind of can understand why a couple hundred people need to escort Paul out of Jerusalem, like, armed military soldiers to get him out of there. And they take him to Antipatris, which is about halfway. Basically, from Jerusalem to Caesarea is a journey to the north west. Caesarea is a coastal town right on the Mediterranean coast and it was very Roman, whereas Jerusalem was obviously a very ancient city. Antipatris still exists today. Some of the Roman roads that go through there are still in existence. You can still see chariot tracks on some of those roads. And, so, it’s interesting to be there and just understand the apostle Paul came through here on his way to Caesarea. But now we kind of understand why he’s under such heavy guard, it’s to protect his life, not because he’s that big of a criminal. It’s to protect his life. God is using the Roman army to protect Paul from his own people, but still allow him to speak to them, to tell them the story. And we’ll see this continue as we move forward.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for the way that it sweeps into our lives and informs us and counsels us and corrects and rebukes us and pulls us forward each and every day into relationship with You. We are grateful for that. And, so, we invite You, Holy Spirit, to come, plant the words that we’ve read today in our lives. Lead us into all truth, we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
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Just a couple days for now, day after tomorrow, is the Daily Audio Bible long walk. The 7th of July. It’s our 11th annual. So, make plans for that. Go somewhere beautiful. Take a long walk with God. Let Him speak to you. Speak to Him, worship, enjoy nature. And take a picture or video wherever it is that you go and you can post that to the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page Facebook.com/dailyaudiobible and we will all enjoy each other’s long walk. And it’s always been a beautiful thing. So, plan for that on the on the 7th.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hey Daily Audio Bible family. This is Billy from Montgomery. I wanted to put a prayer request out there for my wife. She had a colonoscopy today and everything went fine with that but then they did an x-ray on her lung. She has some issues in her chest and then they found a spot in her lung that was questionable. That’s what the doctor said. They do not know what it was but it was questionable. Anyway, that is all we know now. We just need to be covered up in prayer and hope that it is nothing. Anyway, I just want to put that prayer request out there. My wife’s name is Natalie and I will talk to you all later. All right, bye for now.
Hey everybody, this is Pelham in Birmingham calling. I just finished listening to June 30ths reading. Brian, you just finished reading Acts. Brian, I don’t know if it’s just your voice this year or if it’s just the world and I know it’s happening in everybody’s life, but Brian, I was in tears saying goodbye to Paul. That was one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever experienced in the Bible, his departure, and them hugging him in a circle, crying, knowing they aren’t gonna see their friend again. The way you read it man, it was like I was there. I felt like I was saying goodbye to one of my best friends. And it made me think, what if I couldn’t contact you guys? Or what if I didn’t have any connection to anyone that knew anything? And then, I can thank my Lord, I can fall down on my knees and I can thank Him for giving you a mission 14 years ago and for you just taking that one step in the right direction and look at what that decision has done to the world. Brian, thank you. Everybody, thank you. The Daily Audio Bible is a revolutionary thing and that decision that you made 14 years ago Brian was a revolutionary decision. It caused and causes revolutions of light and its increasing. Just as fast as the darkness seems to be increasing the Army is being encircled. Thanks for your prayers guys. Blind Tony thank you. I love you everybody.
Hi Daily Audio Bible family. It’s Jim, the teacher from LA. Summer break has been good to me. Sorry I’m out of breath. I was out for a run. Only the second…second time since February cause teaching and having a family and getting a Master’s degree is not always good for your health but you can get back into it and maybe that’s encouragement for someone out there but that’s not why I’m calling. I’m catching up on old broadcasts, listening to prayer requests back to back and a woman called in about her daughter’s baby and not having a proper umbilical cord, having only two chambers and not three. You know, it says in the book of Ecclesiastes, a strand of two cords is stronger than a strand of one and a strand of three is not easily broken. As I know that they speak that to couples at weddings often times to say that you need both partners and the Holy Spirit. That that baby needs mom and dad and the Holy Spirit. And God can work miracles and He can certainly work in the uterus, the heavenly secret place where we are woven together. So, pray with me family. Father God, as you are weaving this baby together in her mother’s womb in the secret place of the earth, weave a new chamber to that umbilical chord, we pray that this cord will be a three stranded cord, unbreakable for this child who has been attacked by the enemy even before coming into this world. She’s already in this world. You’ve already given her life, you’ve already given her breathe and spirit in your kingdom. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Love you family.
Hi fellow DABbers. It’s Lanna calling from Canada and I desperately need your prayers. I’m going in for surgery on the July 9th at 1 o’clock. I have to have a wisdom tooth extracted which has a cyst lying underneath it and I’m asking for your prayers. I’m quite anxious about this. And I guess, since my mother’s passed away I have to face everything alone now, except I do…I do have Jesus, and I have you as a family. I have no other family except I do have a cousin, yes, that lives out west but I have no family here, just my friends and you guys. So, please pray for me that everything will be okay. Thank you. God bless.