Joshua 15:1-63, Luke 18:18-43, Psalms 86:1-17, Proverbs 13:9-10
Today is the 17th day of April. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you today as we move into the center of our week together and I guess we’re moving through kind of the three-quarter mark through the book of Joshua, which is what we’re reading in the Old Testament right now. So, let's…let’s get to it…let’s take the next step forward. We’re reading from the New Living translation this week. Joshua chapter 15.
Commentary:
Okay. So, here we are just days away from all that this weekend represents, right? So, this Friday, day after tomorrow, is Good Friday, a day when we commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus, one of the darkest days, the darkest day on the Christian calendar. Of course, we know that Sunday comes but a day to truly, truly, truly, observe and reflect upon the kind of love that it would take to lay your life down and be tortured to death on behalf of the human race. And, so, as we’re reading through the Gospel of Luke at this time, we enter the story today and Jesus is passing through Jericho and He’s on His way to Jerusalem where all of His passion will unfold. And, so, we can put ourselves in this story. And we’re also coming to the end of the season of Lent. So, those of you who observe lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter that are intended for many things, one of them certainly reflecting upon the price, the cost of sin. It’s a time of fasting and lamenting and repenting. It’s also a time of completely opening our lives, our hearts, everything that we are, our entire identity to God, and just asking Him, “what do you see in my life that does not belong in my life? Where are the nooks and crannies that I’m hiding things and they’re poison and they’re seeping into my life and affecting everyone around me and affecting my relationship with you and affecting how I live in this world. I just keep them around. I don’t know why. Show me where they are so that they can be gone. And even the good things. What are the good things in my life? How does my life need to be ordered as I enter into the resurrection and commemorate your resurrection and understand that that brought me new life and I am resurrected with you into eternal life? How do I approach Easter after coming through this season of Lent new, ordered, properly ready to go into the world?” Which brings us to the story of Jesus walking through Jericho. And just as a little aside, so many of the places that we read about in the Scriptures today are places you can see in the in the Promised Land films. When we’re talking about all these different territories in the book of Joshua, so many of those places are places and Jericho where Jesus is passing through in the gospel of Luke, that’s a place, it still exists. And, so, Jesus has reached this point now where He’s been moving south out of the Galilee deep into the Jordan Valley to Jericho where He’s going to be making a right and heading west and going uphill the whole way to Jerusalem. So, He knows what is upon Him, right? He tells His disciples in the gospel of Luke. He pulls them aside and instructs them on what’s gonna happen when they get to Jerusalem and they don’t understand, right? According to the gospel of Luke they didn’t understand any of this. “The significance of his words was hidden from them, and they failed to grasp what he was talking about.” That’s a quote from the gospel of Luke. So, Jesus knows what’s going to happen to Him in Jerusalem on every level, is walking toward Jerusalem isolated, no one understands. And that may have been our cry through this season of Lent or through the last five years. Nobody understands. That’s not true. Jesus actually does understand what it means to be isolated and misunderstood and we see that as He’s moving through this inside of himself. You can only imagine. What do you do when you’re walking with a bunch of your friends but you know that at the end of this trail you’re going to die and you’ve tried to tell people that but they don’t understand, but you must continue to walk forward because it is what you were born for. And, so, off you continue alone and misunderstood toward this with no one to shoulder the burden with you. Imagine that. And, so, imagine when Jesus is walking by Jericho, possibly preoccupied, I mean this would have to at least occupy a portion of your thoughts as you’re walking toward your death and through the noise of the crowd and all of the hustle and bustle around them He hears someone in the distance, yelling, “son of David! Jesus, have mercy!” And Jesus stop’s and He asks a question. And we may know this question but what will we need to do today is personalize this question. Jesus is on his way to die for the sake of the world and has a blind person asking Him to have mercy upon him, and He stops what He’s doing and allows the man to be brought to Him and He asks him, “what do you want me to do for you?” As we move through this day and into Monday Thursday, and Good Friday, and Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, may we carry this as a leading torch forward as we continue this contemplation on what it cost to make us free, allow Jesus question to penetrate your soul where nothing is off limits. “What do you want me to do for you?”
Prayer:
Jesus, we sit with the question and before we even speak because our initial reactions would probably be how we would like You to make life easier for us, how we would like an obstacle removed from our path, how we would like the treasury of heaven to open up and shower us with blessings. We would try to design for ourselves what we perceive to be an abundant life because this is what we believe that You have promised to us. And somewhere we wrote into the text that we get to define what that’s gonna look like and that we don’t have to surrender to You and just flow through life with You. Instead, we get to constructed it of our own accord. And then when You don’t show up and give us the abundant life we’ve defined then it turns backwards on us. We’re not doing any of that. We’re not even answering the question yet. We’re allowing the question to begin to peel back the layers of our lives. What do we really want You to do for us? And we invite Your Holy Spirit into the question as we seek the answer, the answer that is true, the answer that is what we really need. The blind man on the side of the road, he knew what he needed. He needed to see. And maybe that’s what we need. Maybe we need to see things as they are because we’ve been looking so narrowly at our own lives. But we feel the question continuing to penetrate, “what do You want me to do for You?” And, so, as we go with this into the next days, we invite Your Holy Spirit to reconnect us with our own hearts so that we can see what it is that we really need. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
Song:
Your eyes, they opened
And love was spoken
The tears came tumbling down
Your heart was broken
The words was spoken
The tears came tumbling down
And the blind gain sight
As we met our Light
All the joy and fight
The gift of life
Your hands, the creases
Your feet, Your breathing
You’re mine, You’re perfect light
And the blind gain sight
As we met our Light
All the joy and fight
The gift of life
I can’t take my eyes off of You oh my Light
I can’t take my eyes off of You