1 Chronicles 5:18-6:81, Acts 26:1-32, Psalms 6:1-10, Proverbs 18:20-21
Today is the 8th day of July. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is a great to be here with you today as we dive into our work week and as we kind of come off of the Daily Audio Bible long walk yesterday. And those pictures are still coming in, and I love it. I hope you had a wonderful time and were able to participate. If you weren’t, I mean, you can do this anytime. You can go for a long one with God anytime…actually…hopefully what’s happened is you just modeled for yourself what kind of peace could be available if you slowed the world on and actually just mark off a day. So, hopefully it was a wonderful time for you. It certainly was rich. It is every year that I…that I draw that circle around a day and set it aside. So, it’s good to be here with you refreshed and ready to go into this week. We’re working our way to the genealogies in first Chronicles at this point. We are also working through the drama that is in the apostle Paul’s life now that he’s been arrested. The Hebrew people, his own people want him dead. They’re trying to find some sort of way, either through the Romans or through an ambush, through some way, to kill him and he’s actually now being protected because he’s incarcerated. So, as things stand in the book of Acts, there’s a new governor in town. The religious leaders of the Hebrew people are petitioning for Paul to be executed. The governor asks if Paul will go to Jerusalem to stand trial and Paul appeals to Caesar. And we will pick up with that story when we get to the New Testament, but first we’re reading from the New International Version this week. First Chronicles chapter 5 verse 18 through 6:81.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in our reading from the book of Acts today. Paul again, and this is becoming a theme, he had the opportunity to share the gospel while he was defending himself against the accusations of the Jewish religious leaders, and he was doing this in front of very, very powerful people, people that Paul would not have been able to get a meeting with, right? So, in this case he’s in front of the Roman governor of Syria, so like a province of the Roman Empire and his name was Festus, but he’s also speaking in front of King Herod Agrippa the second and the king’s sister Bernice. And their together, but I mean there’s a ton of historical speculation that their together because they have an incestuous relationship, but it goes deeper. Agrippa and Bernice, they were both siblings of Drusilla. So, Drusilla was the wife of the previous governor, Felix. And as we read in the book of Acts, Felix would call Paul and talk to Paul on a continual ongoing basis for a couple years. So, Paul is like intimately sharing, like not just like a passing message, but intimately sharing the details of the gospel and his testimony to high ranking Roman officials as well as royalty while being protected from assassination by the Romans. It’s pretty incredible. And, so, he’s giving this testimony today in front of Bernice and Agrippa and King Agrippa’s like, “do you think you can persuade me to become a Christian so quickly?” And Paul’s like, “you know, like, quick or not isn’t the point. I just pray that you and everybody else here comes to know Jesus. I pray that you would be like me except for the chains.” So, it’s important to see what’s happening here. Paul was told by the Holy Spirit to go back to Jerusalem off of his missionary journeys and he was arrested, right? So, things look bad and people want to kill him, but Paul is also being allowed, and even in invited to speak the truth of the gospel to the most influential people in the entire region, in the whole world at that time. So, he openly shared the gospel of Jesus with two different Roman governors, with the entire Jewish high Council, with the King and two of the king’s sisters. That’s pretty big, like that’s pretty far up the ladder but Paul wasn’t starstruck by any of them. He didn’t try to bribe, he didn’t blubber, he didn’t try to mastermind his freedom or manipulate the situation. He just shared the good news even though he was a prisoner and it was his imprisonment that opened the door to this kind of interaction. And, so, what we have in the example of the apostle Paul is a pretty good look at…it’s a pretty good look at what complete devotion to Jesus, the kind of loyalty that could only be borne out of being fully convinced, right, and involved in an intimate relationship. He was willing to die over this and that is pretty devoted. And Paul’s testimony brought…I mean…it brought disruption everywhere he went, because it was forcing a reinterpretation of ancient customs and rituals. That was the problem. Paul wasn’t trying to say, “we all need to do away with Moses. We all need to forget about Abraham and just move forward. Let’s figure something new out.” He wasn’t trying to do that. He was a trained scholarly Pharisee who was looking at his own religion and then looking at his own religion through the eyes of a rabbi, right, with the Messiah, what Jesus had been saying and it was clicking, it was making sense, but it was disrupting everything because it was a reinterpretation. But in that reinterpretation, God’s loving heart and personal interests in restoring humanity was revealed. And it’s so weird, right, because we has believers, we can be like, “why…why wouldn’t the whole world want this kind of peace? Like, why wouldn’t the whole world want God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.” But we see that Paul experienced the same kind of things Jesus faced. And all we can really conclude from that is that Jesus was right. The light came into the darkness but people like the cover of the darkness better because they can hide. And, so, the disruptions we see around Paul are really simply the byproduct of what awakening does, like when a person sees the light and opens their eyes and can see. So, let’s remember again that it's…it’s the same Spirit, the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, same Holy Spirit that compelled Paul to bring light and good news even in spite of the circumstances which is the story we’re reading now. It’s the same story for us, we’ll bring light into the darkness. We’re supposed to be bringing light in the darkness wherever we step foot. Is that true of our lives??
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, we invite You into that. We’re seeing examples of the formative years of the church, we’re seeing the kinds of things that people were dealing with and the kind of culture that they were in while they were dealing with it and we can begin to realize, yeah, “it’s a bit of a different, it’s a different part of the world and different customs, but not as distant as we might think” So, Father, we invite You into all of the things that we’re reading. Every day You’re bringing up something within us, every day Your touching something about us. And, so, we invite You into this. We’re watching the bravery and the courage but we’re also watching the conviction and the intimacy of the apostle Paul with You that would cause him to do this and we think of ourselves and we invite You to show us the entanglements, the things that would keep our loyalties divided, the things that would keep us from surrender to You. Come Holy Spirit we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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And that is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hi DAB family this is Lori from __ North Carolina, now traveling North America with my husband John, our cat Rosie and a truck __ . This is for Laura Lee from Boynton Beach who called on June 12th about her mom’s salvation, about the wounds that can be inflicted between a mother and daughter. I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to respond but I wanted you to know the story of my mom. I became a Christian in 1975 and began praying for her salvation from that day forward. But it seemed my prayers did nothing and in later years she developed Alzheimer’s and she lashed out at me in anger and hatred where I had once been the one closest to her and the heartache was almost intolerable. But we kept on praying for her salvation even though the disease ravaged her memory and her personality and eventually she stopped eating, began to lapse into delusions, and long comatose periods as if she wasn’t going to be with us much longer. Then the Lord moved the heart of a friend of ours who offered to come and pray. And I told him she’d likely wouldn’t even know we’d be in the room, but he came anyway. On that morning we walked into a room and were greeted by the miraculous sight of her sitting up in bed eating a hearty breakfast and fully coherent. Our friend shared the gospel with her. She asked questions to make sure she understood and to show that she just wasn’t just being polite for her visitors and she gave her life to Christ. She was born again 39 years after I began praying for her salvation. Even though it had appeared that Alzheimer’s had already stolen her away. Several days later my mom died in her sleep. I just wanted to share that story with you to let you know she’s with Jesus now, to encourage you and everyone else that’s been praying for a loved one for very long time. So, please don’t ever give up even when it looks like all has been lost. Our God is faithful and awesome and His word will never return to him void.
I’m struggling trying to find God’s will for my life. I feel like giving up. He tells us…the word says to not worry about what I’m gonna eat or what I’m gonna do but He doesn’t seem to answer my prayers. He seems far away and I’m giving up hope. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
Hi family this is his little Cherry in Canada and I would like to request prayer for myself. I don’t feel like I’m doing very well. I’m still full of gratitude for the miracle of the wedding weekend. I’m so grateful to God for how He answered all of our prayers for my daughter’s wedding, but I am really struggling now. I’m not even sure how they articulate exactly. Of course, I’m feeling sad that…that I have an empty nest. I’m feeling tired, which is to be expected after such whirlwind wedding after the last nine months of preparation but I’m also feeling really discouraged about my health. I’m having real trouble with my lower back and tailbone. I haven’t been able to sit, not for long anyway, for the past few weeks and I’ve had to give up driving because I can’t sit. It’s really hard to get comfortable. My lower tail…back and tailbone have been sore for, oh, probably over six months but it’s just getting worse and no one seems to know why. I went to the doctor today and she was very unhelpful. And basically, just said, “hmmmm…I don’t know.” So, I’m feeling really discouraged. I’m feeling down because I just don’t feel like I have much purpose anymore. All of the ministry stuff that I have been involved with previously, I’m not doing anymore mostly because of my health. So, I just would really appreciate prayer that God would encourage me. Thank you so much family. Bye for now.
Hi Daily Audio Bible, this is Rebecca from Michigan. It is 4th of July. Happy 4th of July everybody and happy birthday to Jill. Hey, you know what you guys? I was going up the elevator and this guy, he put something in my heart. Like, some people…it’s like an older guy…and he said, “like some people don’t know where their sleeping tonight, what they’re eating tonight”, all this stuff, “some people don’t have a place to put their head on a pillow.” So, like I was so like God has that on my heart like people that are homeless He has…like…once in a while I see this one guy with a dog, he’d even trying to get support for his dog and the dog and him are homeless. So, it’s like I always wonder how people get that way, how they end up homeless. And, you know, I didn’t think about it but it’s something to thank God for, that if you have a roof over your head, a meal every day, I car to take you to work, gas in it to take you there, and if you have cloths on your back, you basically are rich. I mean I know it’s like not millions of dollars, but you have things that you need, basic needs. And it’s like, wow! There’s something to thank God for, the fact that you have these things that get you where you need to go, to make an income, to put a roof over your head, and food in your belly, and cloths on your back, and a car to get you to work, and gasoline to put in it. This is amazing that God has truly blessed us lots of times.
Hi family, it’s Shannon from Texas and I have the very best news. The best day of my life happened about a week ago. Jadrian my son that I have been calling in for for about four years since I started listening to the Daily Audio Bible, I’ve called in for him many times. We have had…I could write a book about __. I shouldn’t even talk about it at this point but just leading up to what happened the other day when I felt compelled to…I’m sitting and talking with my boss and…there’s just so much going on we’re I felt like…and even my son has mentioned he’d felt like he had these demonic attacks lots of times. And so much has gone on that I’ve called in about before about my son __ , about murder and __ practically proclaiming that, you know, he hated God and, you know, just even talking about Satan and the things that __. Too much to tell right now but I just prayed and prayed and prayed that my son would give his life to and his heart to God and I just didn’t happen the way that it just did out of the blue because I didn’t see anything happening. And the other day, my mom and I were talking and all of a sudden, I felt compelled to call in…not call in but get on the Facebook page and put my son on there. And literally a few minutes later he came in and sat down and said he wanted to pray and gave his heart to the Lord. My time is up. I love you guys. Thank you. I love you, love you. Bye-bye.