Ezekiel 27:1-28:26, Hebrews 11:17-31, Psalms 111:1-10, Proverbs 27:15-16
Today is the 13th day of November. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is a pleasure and an honor, like always, to be here with you and take these next steps forward in the old and new Testaments, in the Psalms, and Proverbs. Those all equal one step forward in our adventure through the Scriptures this year. So, let’s go ahead and take that next step forward. We’re reading from the Voice Translation this week. Ezekiel chapter 27 verse 1 through 28 verse 26 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, yesterday in our reading from the book of Hebrews we started walking down what we often refer to as the hall of faith, which, I guess is a little cheesy, but the point and the content are anything but. The writer of Hebrews started in the book of Genesis. So, at the beginning of the story and then began to point out instances in the Hebrew Scriptures where faith was required for the story to be told at all. And, so, in our reading today we spent the whole time walking down the hall of faith and walking through further examples of faith from the Old Testament. And, so, what the writer of Hebrews is trying to do here is to point out what had always been obvious, but hadn’t been seen from this perspective before, especially as it had anything to do in Jesus. So, we walked down this hall of faith, right? It’s by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him or it was by faith that Isaac promised blessings for the future of his sons or it was by faith that Jacob, when he was dying blessed Joseph’s sons. And then we had the example of Joseph and then Moses and his parents and his family and then Moses leaving Egypt and not fearing Pharaoh. And that was through faith. And it was by faith that Moses commanded the people of Israel to keep the Passover and begin these traditions. And it was by faith that the people of Israel went smack through the Red Sea on dry ground. And it was by faith that the Israelites marched around Jericho and the walls crashed down. And it was by faith that Rahab the prostitute wasn’t destroyed in all of that because she put her faith in God and aided the spies as they were spying out Jericho. So, the intention here for the writer of Hebrews in making a list like this and chronicling the faith of their ancestors, this wasn’t just like a random thing, right? And, so, it was by faith is repeated over and over as we walk down the hall of faith for a reason, to lock in the understanding that faith was always the essential component for any of these stories to work. And that’s correct as we can see in the examples from the book of Hebrews. We’ve worked our way through the Hebrew story from Genesis to Joshua and without faith that story couldn’t have been told. So, I mean, imagine what the Bible would look like if all of those people didn’t have faith, right? We would be reading, like, a completely different Bible than the Bible that we have. If faith hadn’t been exercised in each of these people’s lives, they would’ve lead to radically different outcomes and it would be a completely different story, which is the writer’s point. Faith has always been and will always be the essential and necessary component to a life with God. Without faith, we can’t please God. And in each of the examples that we’re working our way through in the hall of faith, God responded to them, but His response didn’t always meet their expectations. It didn’t always mean that hardship was going to be removed. And we’ll see that as we conclude the hall of faith tomorrow. God…God responds to our faith. He responds to our faith in the same way He has always responded to faith. It’s always been this way, which is so deeply ingrained in the writer of Hebrews and in the apostle Paul’s writings. And, as we kind of talked about yesterday, we are a people of faith. Like we believe in all kinds of…like we put our faith in all kinds of things. So, we can get all cross eyed and go like…why can’t I just see God? God why can’t I just see, why can’t I just hear you? Like, why this faith bridge? Why do I gotta access you through faith. It has always been this way. And we can place our faith in whatever we want to. And whatever that is, it’s our God. And as we’ve seen in Hebrews, faith in God alone is what has propelled this story forward. And it is the only thing that can propel our story forward. Anytime this changed…and we’re so far in the Bible we have to be able to see the rhythm of this…anytime this changed disaster was soon to follow. So…so let’s think about it again because this is the intention of the writer of Hebrews. What, exactly, in whom or in what have we put our faith?
Prayer:
Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit once again into this question. Seems like a simple question. Seems easy enough to say, well, my faith is in Christ alone or my faith is in God. And these things would be true but often…often there’s other things going on. And when we feel the anxiety beginning to well up inside of us or the depression beginning to flatten us or any other number of emotions or experiences that we have in life, we can stop when those things start and begin to consider exactly where it is that our faith is at, exactly what it is that we have put our faith in. This isn’t a magic elixir thing. You’re not gonna take all our problems away, but it is the invitation to reconsider the trajectory that we are headed in and where that is going to go and reconnect with You Father and put our hope and our faith in You alone. So, come Holy Spirit. Thank You for these examples that we were given in the book of Hebrews in what we call the hall of faith. All of these examples of people who went through a whole lot of very, very difficult things, but by faith…by faith You showed up, by faith the story was told. And this is exactly what’s happening with us. So, come Holy Spirit increase our faith. We ask 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.