12/12/2018 DAB Transcript

Amos 7:1-9:15, Revelation 3:7-22, Psalms 131:1-3, Proverbs 29:23

Today is the 12th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is a pleasure, a joy, an honor to be here with you as we take our next step forward. And, obviously, this will be our 12th step forward in this month and our 347th step this year. And, so, this week we’re taking our steps using the New International Version, which is, of course, what we’re gonna do today. And we’ll go back to the book of Amos chapter 7 verse 1 through 9:15 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, as per usual we’re following a number of threads as we work our way through the Scriptures. And in the Old Testament, so, in the book of Amos, God gave the prophet visions of His plans and those plans were to send locusts and fire upon the land. And Amos interceded before the Lord – like, Lord, forgive us, like, if You do this we won’t survive, we’re too small. And this touches on some of the other times that we’ve talked about this angry God phenomenon, right? So, there’s this prediction of all of these bad things - locusts and fire upon the land - that are going to come, and we read them as if it did happen, but this is a prophetic word. This is what is coming. Amos interceded before the Lord, saying, like, we wouldn’t survive this, have mercy on us and God did and gave instead a third vision. And the third vision was of a plumb line and God revealed to Amos, I’m relenting from what was coming, but I’m going to test my people with this plumb line. I am not gonna ignore…I’m not gonna ignore the flagrant breaking of the covenant anymore.

And then we moved into the New Testament, to the book of Revelation where we have kind of concluded the first act or the first movement. I don’t think scholars would call it that but this first section of Revelation is interesting because we have been reading short letters for a while. And what we’ve just done in the first few chapters of the book of Revelation is read seven brief letters from Jesus, but to different churches, the churches of Ephesus, Smirnoff, Pergamum, fire Tyra, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Now, all those churches were in the province of Asia and these letters were offered to the churches to encourage them and to warn them and to give them a message from Jesus about endurance. So, like we said, lots of times this theme becomes really important in the New Testament and carries us into the end of the Bible.

And then in Psalms, King David offered us language for what a humble heart looks like. And we have to remember, David was a king, right? So, he had enormous power over pretty much everything and you can only imagine the pull toward pride and arrogance. And we understand from the Scriptures that David didn’t always win the battles but the pull toward pride would’ve been huge for someone in his position. And yet he writes, “my heart is not proud, my eyes aren’t haughty, I don’t concern myself with things that are too great r awesome for me to grasp.” “Instead”…and we should remember this image as we move through the rest of this holiday season, “Instead I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within.” And, so, these words from the poet, King David, offer the sense, the feeling of inner contentment that humility brings instead of the way of pride and pridefulness. So, David gives us up a poetic picture, a feeling.

Proverbs, on the other hand, gives us the facts. “Pride brings a person low but the lowly and spirit gain honor.” Right? So, the irony is that pride will eventually humble you, but if you will humble yourself you actually legitimately get the honor that your pride was after. So, let’s take the ancient wisdom to heart. It’s God’s word to us. And arrogance and pride, they will not bring us to a place like a weaned child, a content place of humility. Rather, it will lead us on a path that will humiliate us in the end. And if we want a life of honor then humility is the path that we have to walk.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into that because our culture invites us to pride continually. It pits us against each other and makes everything a competition. And, so, everything is about comparison and it pulls us to pride, it pulls us to arrogance, it pulls us to envy, it pulls us to jealousy. And yet that is nothing like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. And the truth is we want to live a contented life. And the only way that this will happen is if we live a humble life. So, come Holy Spirit, show us how to do that in this season and in the cultures that we live in. Show us how to live as You did in this world. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

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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.