Isaiah 25:1-28:13, Galatians 3:10-22, Ps 61:1-8, Proverbs 23:17-18
Today is the 17th day of September. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s great to be here with you today. I hope you’re doing well and that you are as excited as I am for what the scriptures will bring into our lives today and throughout this week as we continue our journey together forward. And that journey forward will take us back into the book of Isaiah. And we’re working our way through Isaiah now and we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Isaiah 25:1 - 28:13 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, as we get our week going today, we come to an important doctrine in the Christian faith that is found in this letter to the Galatians. Have you ever heard the term justification by faith? This is how we get here. So, Paul says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus so that we could receive the promised Spirit through faith. So,, those two verses from Galatians today pretty much encapsulate the crux of Paul’s theological position for presenting the gospel to his fellow Hebrews and the hope that he had for the Gentiles. And it outlines what we just said. It outlines the doctrine of justification through faith. So, since Paul ended up dying for his convictions, we know that he fully believed that Jesus had given him this revelation personally. And because we know Paul was trained in the mosaic law as a Pharisee, we can surmise the spiritual disruption this revelation brought to his personal life way before he ever became a controversial figure in the early days of the church. So, before Paul became a disruptive figure, he had to first be disrupted. Paul’s experiences with Jesus definitely disrupted him and flew in the face of what he thought he knew about God. Because, remember, Paul was trying to stamp out, wipe the name of Jesus from the lips of anyone who would speak it. So, he was disrupted, not only in what he thought he knew about God but also in his theological training. Which forced Paul to go back through the whole story of the Hebrew people, which were his own people. Forced him to deeply consider Moses because mosaic law was the centerpiece of their entire religious experience. So, Paul had to think this whole thing through. And he came to some conclusions. So, it was Moses who led God’s people out of Egyptian slavery. And it was through Moses that the law was given. But Paul wanted to know the story before the story. And he looked to what happened long before Moses for the answers, which brought him to Abraham where the whole thing began. God made a promise to raise up a people through Abraham through which all the nations of the world would be blessed. So, for Paul, all the nations of the world being blessed explicitly must have been referring to non-Jewish people as well, right? Gentiles. And he realized that the whole story, the whole Hebrew story, began with a promise and not a law. This is a big deal for Paul. It would have been a big deal for any Pharisee or any Sadducee. So, Abraham believed the promise through faith. And God considered him righteous, not because he obeyed a rule, but because he trusted God. He put his faith in God and in God’s promise. So, in thinking that through, Paul realized when that promise was made and Abraham believed that promise, there was no law to obey. That law wouldn’t come for 430 more years. So, if we follow the logic, the law couldn’t be the means by which a person could be made right with God because Abraham and everybody who believed the promise after Abraham, including Moses, they didn’t have a law to obey in the first place. And this is what made Paul a controversial figure, right? Because it sounded heretical. It even sounded blasphemous. People tried to kill him over this. And he was simply trying to tell his fellow Hebrews their own story and revealing how Jesus intersects and is a part of that story. He’s just trying to help them to understand that the law was never the thing designed to make them right before God. It was faith in a promise. And so Paul summarized it by saying, Is the law, therefore, contrary to God’s promises? Absolutely not. For if the law had been granted with the ability to give life, than righteousness would certainly be on the basis of the law. But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin’s power so that the promise might be given on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe. And this is how we arrive at the doctrine of justification by faith that has been passed on through the generations.
Prayer:
And so Father, we put our faith and our hope in the promise. And You have promised that You will never leave us or forsake us. We put our faith and hope in Your promises. And we invite Your Holy Spirit to increase our faith and lead us into all truth. And we ask this, knowing that You will answer. And we put our faith and hope in You and You alone. 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:
Good morning fellow DABbers. This is Joanne and Marie from Southern California. Today is Thursday, September 13th and I’m calling for prayer for wisdom, for discernment. I have been anxious for a couple of months cause I foolishly went off my meds and I’ve been back on them for two weeks; however, my anxiety is peaked! My psychiatrist has retired and I am trying to get into a psychiatrist, but the soonest I can get there is October. So, I am on the waiting list. And, so, my prayer is that I please get on…get to a psychiatrist sooner so I can get my meds straightened out. Right now I am on a leave of absence to take care of my dad who has dementia. And I’m sure that is why my anxiety is spiked. So, there you have it my friends. Again, my name is Joanne and Marie. I do covet your prayers and I thank you very much. God bless you and have a fabulous day. Thank you.
Hello family. This is Verna from Gainesville Florida. I am GG’s mom. I hardly ever call but I listen and keep up with DAB friends on Facebook. I’m calling today because I just heard Annette Allison mentioned Nana Jones. When she said that name my ears pricked up as I recently __ I was still on the DAB. Nana, the last time you call you were feeling discouraged about your daughter Tiffany who was working as an exotic dancer. I called and told you I was putting Tiffany on my list of people I pray an expanded version of the Lord’s prayer over. It’s a little different every day but it covers all the primary bases. It’d be great to hear an update on your daughter and also how your granddaughter’s is doing. I imagine she’s in school now. I’ve had and still have some rebel children, so those like Tiffany and Elizabeth Joy have a special place in my heart. I love this community and I look forward to meeting each of you one day. Thank you for your prayers for our family. The Lord is good. Bye-bye.
Hi you guys this is Chris calling from Canada and I just wanted to take a minute to pray for those affected with the North Carolina and the Florence hurricane and that Lord You would just keep those people safe there and that Lord You would just keep Your hand and Your love upon all of them. So, hope those who are affected are safe and we hear about your stories on the DAB. Thanks. God bless.
Hey, this is Janet from Georgia, hopefully soon to be Alabama. Today is 14th September. I can’t believe I’m actually calling but I wanted to reach out to Candice from Oregon regarding her son Micah. I absolutely love the way that you worded the prayer for your son to come to God and I need to write it down and start praying that for my son. He also struggles with addiction and with doubts about God. But anyway, I just really love the way you worded that and I pray for your son and his court date. And yes, I love this podcast and I love this group. It’s the safest group that I know of where I can share myself and I think Brian and Jill get a lot of the credit for that. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye.