Ezekiel 3:16-6:14, Hebrews 4:1-16, Psalms 104:24-35, Proverbs 26:27
Today is November 2nd. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s great to be here with you as…I guess we’re…I guess we’re…like fully moving into this brand-new month even as we’re kind of winding our way down to the end of another week. And I can’t think of a better place to be right this minute, then right here, right now, with you. And, so, off we go into our reading for today. We began the book of Ezekiel yesterday in the Old Testament and, of course, we will pick up where we left off. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Ezekiel chapter 3 verse 16 through 6 verse 14.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in our reading from Hebrews today we encountered another very well-known passage of Scripture that, like the verse that we read in second Timothy chapter 3, gives us a clear perspective on why we engage with the Scriptures every single day. And, so, the Scripture from Hebrews is, and you’ll probably be able to quote this, it’s very famous, for the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. And, of course, this is a memorable and very quotable verse but have you ever like…like just stopped for a second and considered an instrument that is that precise, something that can penetrate to where soul and spirit meet. I mean, where exactly even is that? So, if the soul is our moral and emotional nature and the Spirit is our essence or the animating life force that’s given to us by God that makes us alive then we’re speaking of very deep things. Indeed. This would be the place that contains our consciousness and our instincts and love and our emotions and our convictions. It’s where choices are made. And then our bodies are engaged to carry out those decisions. So, I mean, we might otherwise consider this to be our truest identity. And according Hebrews, this is how deeply the word of God can penetrate. It cuts through all the constructs of our personality, right? All of our coping mechanisms. All of our personal hopes and even all of our wounds, all of the things that have wounded and shaped us in our lives. It goes deeper than all of that and speaks directly to the truest spiritual self. So, you know, what else can do that? And, so, this is why day by day, every single day without fail we’re showing up here. And, so, lesser-known, not as popular, but the verse that immediately follows this popular passage about the word of God being sharper than any two-edged sword, we’re told nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before His eyes and He is the one to whom we are accountable. So, with that in mind, we can see the irreplaceable value of the Scriptures, right? They don’t expose our thoughts and desires to God. He already knows. He’s already aware of what’s going on inside of us. Instead, the Scriptures reveal what is hidden, even what we’ve hidden from ourselves and they speak the truth to and even about who we really are at the deepest, truest level. And, so, let’s be thankful that God would offer us such a gift and that that He would furnish us with the perspective of thousands of years of his involvement because we’re each a part of this ongoing work of God, this work of redemption and when we allow the Scriptures to speak to us where soul and Spirit meet, truth is being poured into our core identity and this is why the rhythm of the Scriptures in our lives is so vital. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires to the truth.
Prayer:
Father, we thank you for this. What can we say? There is there is nothing else like it. And as we’ve experienced for all of these months leading us until today, the Scriptures in our lives every day, we can see this. It’s continually pressing in, poking and prodding and directing and reconstructing, it’s continually inviting us to orient our hearts to you. It’s continually reminding us that we are not alone. It is continually forcing us to raise our heads to the horizon and see that there’s a bigger picture instead of whatever it is that the drama or chaos of our lives might bring us today. There’s more going on. And, so, we thank you for your word and we ask, Holy Spirit, that You plant it into our lives today, transforming us as you promise to do. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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