Leviticus 1:1-3:17, Mark 1:29-2:12, Psalms 35:17-28, Proverbs 9:13-18
Today is the 16th day of February. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is a pleasure and an honor to be here with you at the close of another week. And yeah, as we begin next week, tomorrow we’re going to be beginning our pilgrimage to the land of the Bible and we’ll talk about that a little bit more at the end, but here we are the beginning. And yesterday we finished the book of Exodus, which brings us to a new book in the Old Testament that were beginning today.
Introduction to the book of Leviticus:
Leviticus is the third book of the Pentateuch or Torah and it’s written to the children of Israel and we’re in the middle of the desert at this point, right? So, we followed the children of Israel out of Egypt and slavery and into the wilderness and we’ve been kind of camped out at Mount Sinai, out in the middle of the desert for a bit and that’s where…that’s where we are at this point in the story. God is establishing the terms of the covenant between himself and the people that He set apart and chosen to be holy. And it’s been about a year since they’ve been out of Egypt and now the law is being given. And as we pay close attention we’ll sort of see a sub theme emerge out of the laws and statutes. Everything that they are commanded to do and obey and observe all has a spiritual underpinning. Everything that they do is to remind them of their spiritual reality and their holiness before God and their covenantal relationship with God. And holiness is a huge, huge thing to God. In fact, God tells them, “I am holy therefore, you will be holy”. And, of course, holy means set apart to God. So, God is saying, “if we’re gonna be in a relationship, right, if we’re gonna be communing together and enjoying each other’s company and fellowship with each other than this is gonna only happen through holiness.” So, you know, Leviticus, we get to this point in the year and this is when a lot of the New Year’s resolutions start wearing off. And we’re just a couple days post Valentine’s Day and that is usually the point where the community for the year is established, those who are gonna make it have decided to do it and it usually kind of corresponds to how well you’re doing with your other New Year’s resolutions, right? Some people are like, “I’m not reading Leviticus and I’m not eating any more boiled chicken and salad.” And that’s fine. I mean, we get to choose…we get to choose our lives, but what I’ve found over the years is that a lot of those people, a lot of that, if that’s you, if you’re like, “okay I just can't…like I just gotta get off this train”, pretty good chance that one year from today you may be right where you are right now. So, I’m telling all of us, we can do this, we can take this journey, we just have to understand the territory that we are moving through as we move through the Bible. Yeah, not all of it is like sit at the edge of your seat riveting page turner stuff. Some of it’s like we’re reading laws and laws aren’t the kind of literature that’s meant to be narrative or edge of your seat, but all of our societies would fall apart without our law books. And, so, we’re going to move through the law and understand its context so that when we come out the other side of the law and begin to move toward the Promise Land ee understand the lay of the land. And, so as we move through Leviticus and we talk about sacrifices and stuff like that we’ll find a lot of blood in this book because there’s a lot of sacrifice in it. And if we approach the Old Testament, a work that was inspired thousands of years ago from the perspective of the culture that we live in right now, right, back reading our culture into an ancient culture, then yeah, it’ll seem somewhat barbaric and certainly antiquated and perhaps even irrelevant, but it certainly wasn’t then. And what it all represents is certainly not all relevant now. It’s as relevant now as ever. And we may wonder why they would just start sacrificing animals and why would God want animal sacrifice. And to find that out how we’ve gotta go back to the beginning. It’s been six weeks. We read the account of the garden of Eden. We read of Adam and needs fall. And from that moment all of mankind was separated from God and worthy of destruction spiritually and physically. And remember that story when God came to the garden in the cool of the evening looking for Adam and Eve. They were hiding, and they eventually told God that they were afraid because they were naked. How God responds to that is telling. He covers them with the skins of animals. So, it was God who set this precedent of atonement and covering. It costs something to cover man and woman. It cost the life of an animal. And now we live in a culture after Jesus, where this idea of an atoning sacrifice isn’t something that we think about that much other than to just know that Jesus was a sacrifice once and for all. Okay, well, that sacrifice once and for all, we just…just read of that story in the Gospel of Matthew. It was barbaric, it was ugly, it was bloody, it was sad, and the more that we fall in the Jesus the more that we see Jesus at work in our lives, the more we realize that this didn’t happen to somebody we don’t know, this happened to our closest friend, but His sacrifice was once and for all. All that we needed, He took it all, blameless, willingly and we no longer need any other atonement. That’s the reality that we currently live in but the children of Israel back in the book as we start Leviticus, they don’t have that luxury. God is showing the children of Israel that to cover their sin comes at a great cost and requires the shedding of blood. It is a constant living cultural reminder for them that sin leads to death and we’ll see God sewing this into the fabric of the culture that He’s establishing, we’ll see the burnt offering, the grain offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, the trespass offering and how they’re to be given. And we’ll see the way things are to be consecrated and the consecration of priests and priest’s families and we’ll learn what’s considered clean and what’s considered unclean in the culture and we’ll discover the different festivals and feasts that have to be observed and the blessings and cursings, all against the backdrop of the utter holiness and sovereignty of God. And so, let’s embrace this journey as we move forward into and through the book of Leviticus. We’re reading from the Contemporary English Version this week and today we’ll read Leviticus chapters 1 through 3.
Prayer:
We thank You Father for another week in Your word, we thank You for all that You’ve spoken and it’s like every week You speak volumes into our lives, every week You touch soft tender places inside of us, either to correct us or to comfort and heal us, every day Your word has something for us and we are so deeply grateful. And, so, as we and this week You’ve brought us into new books in both the old and new Testaments for us to camp out in and enjoy as we move through the remainder of this month. And Father as we prepare to go back and experience the places where so many of these stories occurred in Israel in the land of the Bible we certainly pray Your protection, Your health, Your stamina, Your wisdom over all of it. Come Holy Spirit we pray in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is the website, it is where you find out what’s going on around here and there are a couple of things going on around here.
The registration for the More Gathering for women, which will take place in the mountains of North Georgia just about an hour outside of Atlanta. Registration is open for that. You get all of the details at moregathering.com or go to dailyaudiobible.com and scroll down to the Initiatives section. Of course, you can see the Initiatives section on the Daily Audio Bible app as well, just got click the drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner. So, we are anticipating and excited and prayerful and hopeful for all that God is going to do on that mountaintop. And any of the you who have ever been, then you know that the God shows up for each of us in the way that we need Him to and it’s pretty remarkable. So, if coming…come this spring you feel like you might be looking for new life as new life comes to the earth, if maybe it’s been a long stretch for you and you need some perspective, this could be exactly what has been put in your path for a reason. So, pray into that. Hope to see you…hope to see you there.
And I mention we’re going back to the land of the Bible, that is upon us. I will be flying out on the big plane tomorrow and I it’s a long way, it’s a long flight. It’s not my favorite thing to do but I guess it beats walking, especially since I’d have to walk across the ocean, but jet lag can be difficult and logistics can be challenging. I mean there’s a lot of moving parts when, you know, you have buses of people who are all from all over the world and it has always been such a beautiful dance to see it all come together, but it has never happened without the intercession and prayer of God’s people in this community. And, so, wouldn’t dare get on that plane and go back over there again without knowing that there was a canopy of prayer being raised over that. And, so, I ask for your prayers, prayers of safety and travel, prayers for on time delivery of all of our guests who will be arriving on all kinds of different flights, prayer over stamina and health, and jet lag and logistics and all of these things as we prepare to pilgrimage around the land of the Bible. Now, yeah, this is gonna happen for a bunch of people in person but it’s always a community experience, it’s something that we do together, whether virtually or in person. And, so, we’ll be posting pictures and videos several times a day on our social media channels. Just as things happen we’ll be posting them up. So, be sure to stay connected that way so that you can kinda look in, not only to get a glimpse of what’s happening in the Daily Audio Bible community, who’s actually going to be in Israel, but also looking into sites that you’ve heard of, like names that you’ve heard of in the Bible, places that we’ve been to in the Bible. Those places are real places and they can come alive and we do everything that we possibly can to make that happen. And we’ll also be doing a live broadcast. We always do this once we reach the sea of Galilee. And we all get together and kind of debrief each other and invite the community in to ask questions and spend about an hour just together as a community virtually even though were spanning across time zones and even international datelines. And, so, we’ll keep you posted on that but thank you for your prayers. And if you are interested in perhaps being one of the of those who actually get to experience the land of the Bible in person next year in 2020, registration is now open for that, You can go to dailyaudiobible.com in the Initiatives section and find Israel 2020 and get all of the details that you would want to know, and get yourself registered. These trips always, at least for the last five or six years, they’ve always filled up and they’ve always been sold out, and we’ve always had a waiting list. So, I wouldn't…you know, if like, if it’s something that you’re like, “seriously, I do want to do that” then I wouldn't…I wouldn’t wait, but certainly there is time to pray into that. But you can you can now register for Israel 2020 at dailyaudiobible.com.
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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:
Hey Daily Audio Bible family, this is Darrell, this is my second time calling, Darrell Georgia and absolutely love this. I drive a truck at night and this is absolutely a perfect way to get my food, get my daily soaking in God’s word. And Brian I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you and appreciate your passion for God. I am so on board with that passion. There’s no one like our great God. There is nobody like our Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit is sustenance for our lives, which brings me to my point. I think your name was T, I think that’s what you said, T, you’re young man and you called in and you’ve been listening since Thanksgiving of last year and you’re struggling with sensing the presence of God or you said the peace of God, you’re battling that. My encouragement to you is dwell on what the word of God says. Believe what the Bible says and what the Bible says is that God’s promises, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” So, the presence of God is there. He is there by your side, never doubt that. My encouragement to you, I believe, what I have experienced for myself is, if I’m feeling maybe empty or feeling like I’m not sensing His presence, I just talk to Him and I worship Him. I tell Him everything that He is to me, I tell Him how amazing He is, and I thank Him for all the little details in my life and that causes me to sense His presence. I hope that’s encouraging to you. My time is just about up. God bless you my brother.
This is a Lynn Song. I just started Daily Audio Bible this year. It’s very hard to call, I feel very vulnerable, but I need prayer for my husband. I wrote what I would say because I was afraid I would go blank. So, my husband has battled depression for years. He’s a musician and feels like a failure because his music has not taken him where he hoped it would. He is very gifted and talented, has made 20+ CDs. He writes things, composes, produces, plays multiple instruments but living in the Midwest makes it difficult. He struggles socially as well so it is challenging for him to market himself. Long story short, I prayed for him for years to for God’s will for him including that he would accept these circumstances if that is what God wants. I want us both to accept God’s will for our lives and I want him to be happy. I need help lifting my husband up in prayer and feel like I am Moses in need of assistance to hold my hands in the air until the battle is won. He came home tonight very depressed and discouraged. So, thank you. And I can’t stress enough, married 21 years and how long we’ve struggled with this. I don’t know if my time will run out, but I wanted to say I’ve been feeling __ hearing how many men are involved in DAB. So, calling for prayer and calling to pray for others. For some reason it’s given me hope for the body of Christ. So, I thank you for praying. I am praying for you all. Thank you so much.
Hi everybody it’s Margo from Australia and I’m now in Uganda. This is actually a bit of a test call to see what the lines like and whether it’s very clear and not working out which number to use. But I just wanted to let you know that I’m going quite well. Still have moments of being homesick but that’s __ and in between I have lots of joyful moments. I wanted to say thank you very much for everyone that’s praying for me. I did start writing down the names so I could thank everyone but I didn’t want to use up all my time just saying a list of names. So, if you’ve prayed for me, thank you so, so much. I did specifically though want to mention Treasured Possession. That word from the Lord, ahhh look, I cried. That was beautiful and encouraging and I’m so __. So, I’ve got a bit of a cold but other than that I’m doing well. I’m down…Uganda is an amazing place. There’s a couple of people who I did want to say that I’m praying for. Carl from Canada, you called, the quadriplegic __ it sounds like you’re having an awful time. I’m praying. Teresa in Texas with the alopecia, I really feel for you sister and I’m praying for you. And Karen from Pennsylvania, it sounds as though you’re having a very rough time and I’m praying for everyone and these couple of things are things that really made me…really touched my heart. I had a moment the other day where I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I was standing in the supermarket and I just couldn’t work out where everything was and what to buy and everything was so different, and I didn’t understand the money. And I got so overwhelmed I cried out to Jesus in my heart. I had this beautiful image of Him standing beside me with His arm around my saying, “it’s okay Margo, we’ve got this” and I nearly cried right there. It was beautiful. And I wanted to share that because that is what your prayers are doing, allowing me to feel his peace. Okay. Love you all heaps. Bye.
Hey DAB family this is Byron out in Florida. I need you guys to pray for my son, Caleb who’s 12 years old. We’ve discovered that he’s picked up some fairly disturbing habits concerning his sexuality and we’re really concerned and worried about him. God is good because he felt bad enough about these things to confess them to us but still there’s a lot of work to be done for him to understand why these things are wrong and what he needs to do to walk the right path. We put a really tight rein on what our kids watch, what they read, and who they hang out with, but somewhere and there there’s a leak in the system for him to be doing some of the things that we’ve heard about. And he hasn’t really come forward with us about where he might’ve gotten some of these ideas from and that’s a concern. But I just need the warriors to come out and pray because the devil’s trying to take my boy. He knows the Lord, loves Him, and he’s just trying to separate him from his family and separate him from his God and separate him from himself and I can’t stand for that and I need my family pray. A lot of other stuff going on too but just if you could focus your prayers on that I’d really appreciate it. Love you all. Bye.