01/14/2019 DAB Transcript

Genesis 30:1-31:16, Matthew 10:1–23, Psalms 12:1-8, Proverbs 3:13-15

Today is the 14th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is a pleasure to be here with you today as we move into this workweek and, you know, continue to move into this new year although I imagine we’re starting to find the rhythm of things. This week we’re reading from the New Living Translation and will take the next step forward, which will take us back into the book of Genesis. Today chapter 30 verse 1 through 31 verse 16 and we’re learning the story of Jacob who has found himself married to two sisters, which has caused considerable amount of family conflict, but we should watch this story very, very closely because we’re still following the story of Abraham and his descendants. And Jacob’s descendants couldn’t possibly have a more profound effect on the Bible. And, So, with that we’ll read from Genesis chapter 30.

Commentary:

Okay. So, as we are following the story of Jacob in the Old Testament. And just by way of reminder, Jacob is the grandson of Abraham and we talked about the significance of Abraham and we’ll be talking about the significance of Abraham pretty much the rest of the way through the Bible because he’ll come up, but he had a son of promise named Isaac who had a couple of sons and one of those sons is named Jacob and then Jacob had to flee from his brother Esau, right, back up into the north country to find his family and this is how he came to marry the two sisters, Rachel and Leah. Now, we kind of…we saw a battle of who could have the most kids in our reading today, but each of those sons that were born had names at each of those names should kind of seem at least a little familiar. And if that we understand we are tracking a family and its growth as we move through the book of Genesis we’ll understand that a larger story is being told instead of like discombobulated genealogies of people that we may or may not have ever heard of and can’t really figure out exactly where this is all going. We’re following the story of a family and this family affects the world until today and through this family line comes Jesus who we are spending some time with as we spend our time in the New Testament. So, the Bible often offers us some pretty penetrating things to think about in terms of adjustments to our own lives and the way that we are living in this world, but the Bible is also telling us a story of a family of promise, a family that we as believers have been grafted into or adopted into. So, we’re kind of getting close to half way through the first month of the year. Now that we’re establishing a rhythm we should begin to understand that we’re reading the story of how we got here and who we are. And, so, as deeply penetrating as the Bible can be it is also deeply compelling. This is how we got here.

And speaking of Jesus, in the book of Matthew Jesus sent his disciples out among the Jewish people and He give them interesting instructions and those instructions basically look like it like instructions to not prepare. Like, I mean He told them, like, not to take an extra change of clothes, not take any money, like just go and that gives us a pretty compelling picture towards our own lives because, here we are kind of at the beginning of the new year, we’ve got some New Year’s resolutions we’re trying to live up to, we’re far enough into the year to understand now that the idea of the resolution was a lot more fun than actually the work of the resolution, right? So, if it’s 20 pounds you’re trying to dump, yeah, I mean, there’s a bunch of discipline involved in kind of changing the way you do things, but it could be anything, it could be any health-related goal, you know, a spiritual related goal, a vocational related goal. Whatever it is were going for, when we think about the goal it’s a lot more fun to prepare then to do the work. And, so, when we think about our spirituality we’re like, okay, I’m just gonna get myself strong, you know, I’m gonna get my vocabulary right, I’m gonna know what it is I believe, I’m gonna get my theology right and then I can share that with the world when I’m all nice and ready and knowledgeable to do it. In the example Jesus gave to his disciples, it wasn’t like a big theology lesson or like, make sure you’ve got this all right. He essentially told him to go, like, go now, go with whatever you have, go and don’t be surprised that its disruptive when you do. So, interestingly enough, Jesus is saying, like if you’re going to go on some sort of mission or become some sort of missionary however it is wherever you’re going that you shouldn’t be completely unprepared and just kind of figure it out as you go. What Jesus is telling us is you’re already in the process of going no matter what you are doing so, be where you are and live on mission as it comes to you. And yeah, if you’re planning something more extravagant, you’re being called to do something that’s in another country or, you know, that requires a lot of planning and preparation then, yeah, do that but remember, while you’re doing that not everything else stops. Wherever you are and whatever you have and however it is that you can offer it, you are offering the good news of the kingdom, right? So, you don’t have to spend your whole life preparing so that you can offer the good news of the kingdom, just do it. And friends, that can be as simple as a smile at a stranger today, right? That changes everything. When that person who you have no idea what their story is or what they’re going through, when their eyes lock to your eyes for some random reason and you offer back kindness, that not only changes their day, that changes your day, that changes your posture of heart. If we’re walking with God we have these kind of touch point opportunities constantly. And when we get into the habit of them then we find that what we’re doing, when we’re simply kind that we’re bringing light into darkness and it’s changing the atmosphere. But if we will intentionally change the atmosphere everywhere we go then we’re going to live in a different atmosphere, one of peace and hope and joy and kindness and wisdom.

And, you know, we have lots of pursuits that we’re going to go after this year, but speaking of wisdom the book of Proverbs offers us the opportunity to consider what is most important in our achievements this year. “Wisdom”, we’re told, “is more profitable than silver and her wages are better than gold.” In other words, having wisdom is more important and more profitable than having money. “Wisdom is more precious than rubies. Nothing you desire can compare with her.” So, that gives us the opportunity to consider whether or not that’s true. Is wisdom the thing that we value more than anything else? Are we understanding the truth that whatever we may desire nothing can compare with wisdom. Some good food for thought today because if we’re gonna live into what the Bible is telling us this year then some of these really important things at the beginning of the year are monumental. And wisdom and acquiring wisdom and being in a relationship with wisdom and being intertwined with wisdom and walking through this world using wisdom is one of them.

Prayer:

Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit to help us know how to open ourselves fully to the voice of wisdom in our lives. We’re being counseled and we will continue to be counseled throughout the year that wisdom is more important than any other thing that we could acquire in this life because wisdom will show us how to achieve anything else. And, so, this is a foundational, fundamental piece of our existence. In fact, the voice of wisdom told us that You Father used her, when You created the world You used wisdom. And, so, making this wisdom available to us, why would we ever not pursue this with all of our hearts? That’s the great mystery. But come Holy Spirit because we’ve pursued all kinds of things in all kinds of directions and most of those directions have been wrong directions. And as we reflect back on it, we realize wisdom was the thing to sort of left in the dust. So, come Holy Spirit we want to wise as we move through this year and we won’t be able to do that on our own. We need Your help. There’s too many distractions, there’s too many things pulling us in too many directions. And, so, we need You. Come Holy Spirit we pray. Show us the path of wisdom we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its homebase, its where you find out what’s going on around here.

I will remind you of the sister programs to the Daily Audio Bible because we talked about wisdom again. And, so where talking about the book of Proverbs. And the Daily Audio Proverb is available every single day. We go through the entire book of Proverbs, a chapter a day and so, through the whole book each month. And just kind of pouring that into your life is one of the ways to get wisdom, right? I mean to understand the voice of wisdom and the kinds of things that wisdom wants to talk about is something that we find the book of Proverbs and it takes two minutes a day. Like adding two minutes of Scripture more than you already are into you are into your life, maybe like listening to Daily Audio Bible in the morning but taking two extra minutes at some point in the day to pour unfiltered wisdom, like the wisdom of the ages into your life. What will that do for you? So, check that out, Daily Audio Proverb. There’s also the Daily Audio Psalm where we’re going to the Psalms, just like we are on Daily Audio Bible but in a nice, compact, five minutes. You know, whatever you can pour into your life is a helpful thing because you’re pouring the words of life into your heart. So, these resources are available. Of course, Daily Audio Bible Chronological is a channel and then we have the foreign languages, and I say foreign because English is my native tongue. So, it’s foreign to me, but if English is a second language or third language or fourth language for you and you speak another native tongue, maybe we have a community using that language. So, we have Daily Audio Bible Spanish for Spanish speakers in Espanola. So, there’s the Daily Audio Bible as we’re doing but they also have Psalms and Proverbs in the in Spanish. We have Daily Audio Bible, Chinese, Arabic, French - and French has Psalms and Proverbs as well – Portuguese…oh I don’t have the list in front of me…but all of those channels are available in the Daily Audio Bible app in the Daily Audio Bible player and I wherever it is that you get your podcasts. So, just want to make sure that, you know, these resources are available and ongoing. It is our mission to bring God’s spoken word to anyone who will listen to it and that’s been the rhythm of this community. And, so, there are number of ways to do that. And Daily Audio Bible Proverb was created for no other reason than to make it simple. Like wisdom isn’t as complicated as we might make it out to be or is mysterious as we might make it out to be, its calling from everywhere and if we start the book of Proverbs that’s what it’s telling us, it’s calling to us from everywhere. So, we need to learn it’s voice and reading through the book of Proverbs gets us very familiar. So, check these resources out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

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:

Hi DABbers, this is Slave of Jesus in North Carolina, all right, Holy Spirit let’s roll. Justin from SoCal welcome back to the DAB, good to hear from you. The first of the year some of us get some automatic raises. Gotta take the time to go in and update your donations to the DAB. Doing it monthly. I actually changed the __ , it’s really easy, took about 12 seconds to do it. Lord we ask you to watch in and all the prayers for longtime marriages, especially those who have been separated and separated now. We know the enemy wants to destroy these marriages, so he can take away the shining example of your love in a marriage. And in all the prayers from Nick and Alex the wrestlers. Lord, we ask you to give them the motivation to do things in their life and help their family deal with that of their doing. Amen. All the prayers from the Prodigal, but prodigal, waiting for you to call and for others. I mean, calling in on New Year’s Eve. But it sounds like the enemy is telling you a bunch of lies because I am hearing you repeat some of those lies and the biggest what I heard was you don’t have a family. You have a huge family. You know, you have hundreds of DABbers, probably thousands of DABbers praying for you out loud, out loud. There are pastors and priests that wish they had thousand people praying for them out loud. But you’ve got to realize that this DAB is a family. For those of you that have the family Christmas’s, I download those and keep those on my phone. You listen to a few hours of a family Christmas and you are this heaven on earth…this is what a true family is, not our biological messes that we deal with, this is a true family, spiritual family that we all have. You’ve got that prodigal. So, you are definitely part of our…brother prodigal. So, I love you brother. You’ve got tons of brothers and sisters right here in the DAB. So, just please don’t forget that. Don’t let the enemy lie to you about that. Don’t let the enemy lie because he puts it in your head and you repeat it you’re putting a curse on yourself. So, I hope you say I huge family. Love you all, have a great day. Bye.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family it is a blessing and a pleasure to continue on and on and on. This is my third-year in, I’m fairly new, but it feels like I’ve been doing this for a very long time. I’m so happy to be a part. I just want you all to pray for me, pray that God would continue to lead, guide, and protect me. God also, heal. I’m going through some medical situations, but surgery is required. I’m asking you all to pray, pray together for me that God would heal me or His will it be done and whatever His decision is it will be well done. If He allows me to go through the surgery I’m thanking Him that He would be the operator, He would be the surgeon. I thank you for highlighting me in your prayer and acknowledging that I am a part of this family. Thank you so much. My name is Marjorie.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family, this is Jay from Nashville Tennessee. I want to welcome all the new listeners this year. This is such an amazing community. I’ve been through some things, I’ve done a lot of things that I shouldn’t have done and throughout it all this community has been there for me, has prayed for me, has encouraged me, has pulled me out of darkness. Sometimes when we do things that we know we’re not supposed to do and it’s time to face the music, to face the consequences, sometimes it’s hard to bear and in my case I nearly lost my mind. I’m a firm believer that if it were not for the Daily Audio Bible and this community of people around the world that are praying every single day, I’m not sure exactly where I would be. If it wasn’t for the numerous people calling out my name and saying we hear you, we love you, and we’re praying for you. Even in times where I didn’t hear my name I felt the prayers. It’s just a feeling that you…you really can’t describe. And we’re not just only on the Daily Audio Bible, we’re on Facebook and we’re also on the Daily Audio Bible website. So, if you are dealing with something and you don’t want to do it alone, call, we’re here for you and we love you.

Good morning DABbers, today is January 9th, my name is Brandon, I’m from Maryland. I’m calling with a broken heart for my wife, my family, myself. I’ve hurt my wife badly enough to where she needs to go…she feels she needs to go to a support group. We’re each seeing therapists, we’re starting marriage counseling on the 16th and I’m just asking you guys, my family, whom I don’t know, I’m asking you guys just to pray for my wife and I, that I recognize what I have done to her, the wife of my youth, the love of my life, and I’ve completely screwed it all up. I just pray Father that You lay that on my heart and You fill that piece of my broken heart up with your love, your grace, your mercy Father, and I show that to my lovely wife. Thank you all for your prayers and I look forward to all the miracles done in 2019.