Genesis 5:1-7:24, Matthew 3:7-4:11, Psalms 3:1-8, Proverbs 1:10-19
Today is January 3rd. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is a pleasure and an honor to have these moments together with you as we take the next step forward in our adventure that will lead us through the entire Bible this year. Of course, this is day three so we’re still not quite out of harbor yet, but we certainly have set sail and in the two days that we‘ve spent together so far we’re already seeing how quickly and how deeply the Bible can speak. And, so here we are at day three taking the next step forward and just kind of moving into our new year. And, so, as we mentioned a couple of times, the way that the Daily Audio Bible works is that we’ll read a portion from the Old Testament and then a portion from the New Testament and then some Psalms and some Proverbs each day moving us a little bit forward as we move through the entire Bible. And, so, we talked about Genesis on January 1st and then we kind of talked about the book of Matthew that we’re reading now, yesterday. And, so, when we to the Psalms today we’ll talk about Psalms and then tomorrow we’ll talk about Proverbs and then will kind of be moved into the books that we’re going through currently. So, let’s dive in and take the next step forward in Genesis. And we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Genesis 5 verse 1 through 7 verse 24.
Introduction to the Book of Psalms:
Okay. So, this brings us to the third section of our daily reading, which is from the book of Psalms, and since we haven’t talked about Psalms yet this year let’s just kind of give ourselves a little context for what will be spending time in the whole year. We’ll be spending time of the Psalms every day for the whole year. So, kind of understanding what we’re reading’s helpful. So, the Hebrew word for Psalms would probably be translated best as praises. It’s a collection of 150 songs and hymns and congregational singing’s and liturgical prayers and individual songs and poems, poems of worship. It’s basically five books in one and they’re classified by who wrote them or their theme or their purpose. Some of them give praise to God, of course, and others speak of His character or His actions or His power, some are songs of lament or repentance and others are songs of thanksgiving. And we’ll notice as we move through the Psalms why they stood the test of time because they are brutally honest, whether in questioning or in full-blown worship because no matter the start circumstances the book of Psalms is meant to bring praise and glory and adoration and reverence and honor to God in every circumstance in all of the issues of life for every purpose. And, so, it’s an invaluable collection that gives language to what we feel in our hearts. Literally, the Psalms will touch every nuance, every emotion that we experience as we go forward in the year. And Psalms is a beautiful book. It contains some of the most heartfelt musical poetry that’s ever been written and like I just said, every human emotion is explored in the Psalms. David, who we haven’t met yet, but we will get to know David who is a shepherd boy that will become a king and we’ll understand that story in all of its detail, he was a master musician and he composed most of the Psalms and even though we have a large amount of like biographical information about David throughout the rest of the Bible, the Psalms are what reveal his heart. And what we find is that he’s utterly human and he brings his humanity to the table when he’s crying out to God and the back-and-forth or the ebb and flow of his humanity is always in his compositions. And, so, they speak to us so eloquently and so deeply because they’re so honest and they’re coming from the human heart so we can find ourselves in the Psalms. And then other writers of it in the Psalms include David’s son Solomon, the sons of Kora, Asaph, Ethan and then there are a number of Psalms whose author is unknown or they were anonymously written and collected. But ultimately the purpose of the Psalms was to bring the people together and to enrich their worship experience and to tell their story, their Hebrew story. And these songs would’ve been sung in public and they would’ve been sung in private as people went about their daily lives not unlike how we use of modern worship music. But the Psalms, they’re ancient, they’ve stood the test of time for thousands of years and we still sing and quote them now and their power and beauty is unmatched in literature, they’re absolutely unrivaled. And biblical scholars believe that the Psalms were written over a fairly long period of time between about 950 B.C. until about maybe 165 or 170 B.C. so, you know a period of about 800 years and three major periods in Israel are covered in the Psalms, and the first will be during the reign of David and Solomon and then the second would contain songs written when the children of Israel were taken into exile and we’ll get to know and understand that story pretty well and then the third section would contain writings from when the exiles were freed to come back to their to their homeland after the exile. So, it’s a long time span and a lot of different culture points that are represented but the Psalms are very cohesive in their purpose of bringing glory and honor to God in a very authentic and beautiful way. And, so, that’s what we’re reading when we’re reading the Psalms. And today we will read Psalm chapter 3, which is titled Confidence in Troubled times, a Psalm of David when he fled from his son, Absalom.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we covered a lot of territory in the book of Genesis as we went through the generations of the first people and their lifespans culminating in the fact that humanity after the fall of man in the Garden of Eden took its knowledge of good and evil and created an evil world, devoid of God, separated from God. And God looks down upon the earth and sees the wickedness of every creature. In fact, it defines pretty starkly, they basically became like animals and only participating in wickedness, which brings about the flood and introduces us to this person named Noah. And, of course, the Noah and the ark story is about as famous as it gets. So, we don’t need to retell that story other than that we should notice that God finds Noah to be righteous and wants to start over with Noah and enter into a covenant and this is the first time that we see this kind of language in the Bible, but certainly won’t be the last time. Covenant will be a thread that runs all the way through all of the Bible. And in terms of like dating Genesis, like some of the things that we can look at, like how do biblical scholars come to the conclusion that Moses had a hand at least in and collecting some of these stories? I mean, so what we read in the book of Genesis today is about clean and unclean animals. That theme or that idea, at least in the Bible, isn’t introduced or expanded or expounded upon until Moses shows up on the scene and we began to get the law, the Mosaic law, which we’ll get to soon enough So, that’s how Moses gets into the picture, that’s how some of this material becomes part of the books of Moses.
Then of course, in the book of Matthew we’re getting to know Jesus now. And, so, Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist and He is in the wilderness being tempted and we see exactly what it is that the evil one goes after in Jesus, which is His identity, right? If you are the son of God, then do this so that, right? And, so, we find, okay, the voice of the accuser in my life is after the same thing, the question of who I am and do I know who I am. And as I’ve mentioned a number of times, as we go through the Bible, not only will that question be answered from every conceivable angle but we’ll see that this is one of the main, main, main tactics set against us, deception. It was deception in the garden of Eden and it is deception in our own lives that is our greatest challenge.
Of course, we talked about the Psalms, kind of did a little flyover to understand the context.
And then, of course, we’ll talk about Proverbs tomorrow.
Prayer:
Father, we thank you for your word, we thank you for this, the third day and we move further and further from shore and won’t be long before we’re all out in the deep together taking this vast journey that transforms us from within and we thank you that your word can do this in our lives, it can become the best friend we’ve ever had because it will just tell us the truth and it won’t pander to us and it won’t be false, it will simply tell us the truth, and then, then it’s in our lap and we can choose to believe the truth or walk away from the truth, but we’ll have a clear understanding of where the paths are going to lead. And, so, we are grateful, we are humbled, we thank you for bringing us this far, we thank you for all that you have yet to speak to us in the coming months. So, come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. And I’ll say that just about every day because that’s where we stay connected.
And, so, we’re kind of moving into our year and just explaining all of the little things that make us a community and one of those things is what you can find at the website in the Community section. In the Community section you will find all of the different links to all of the different social media channels that we’re on. It’s a good idea if you’re planning to take the journey to stay connected that way. Not so much like, you know, posting memes of cats and stuff like that, which we don’t do by the way, but following Daily Audio Bible on Facebook or twitter or wherever it is that you are, you know, if we’re having like a technical problem…this is a seven day a week thing so once in a while…there’s like 17 servers that are constantly spinning and sending out data…and so once in a while if there’s any kind of glitch, any kind of little anything we can just alert everybody and that’s what we do, just here’s what’s going on, don’t freak out, we’re fixing it, that sort of thing as well as just any sort of announcements that are community related as we take this journey. So, that’s a good place to stay connected. Then there are also other places like DAB friends, which is a Facebook group where you can talk about whatever you want. This is one of the ways where constant interaction with people are happening. And, so, check that out in the community section. Another thing about that is occasionally we’ll play a song. So, like on January 1st we played a song. Sometimes we’ll play a song that’s maybe gonna illustrate what we’re talking about in the Scriptures better than me spouting off another thousand words, right? Sometimes music, which is my background, which is my wife’s background, that’s where we come from and sometimes music can do the end run around your intellect and just speak to your heart and that is what we are here for, is to allow them God’s word to speak to our hearts. So, invariably anytime there is a song played then we start getting a ton of emails, “what was that lovely song, want was that song, where can I get”, it’s all posted on the social media channels, it’s always there, you can always find it there, including links to just go get it. So, another reason to stay connected that way.
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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.