1 Chronicles 19:1-21:30, Romans 2:25-3:8, Psalms 11:1-7, Proverbs 19:10-12
Today is the 15th day of July. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. I was just thinking this is about closest to the center of this month as we’re gonna get. I guess like noon today is the middle, smack middle of the month. So, here we are in the middle of another month as we move our way through this year and through the Bible. So, it’s great to be here with you today and I am excited to dive in and see what the Scriptures have for us today. We have kinda gotten through all the introductions and we’re getting into the meat of the book of Romans. And, so, we will pick that up when we get there, but first we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. First Chronicles chapter 19, 20, and 21.
Commentary:
Okay. So, as we as we move into this new week, let’s just kind of orient ourselves to where we are. In first Chronicles we’re continuing to experience the reign of King David and, of course, this can sound like, haven’t I heard this…I mean…haven’t I read this already?” And we have read these stories when we were reading through the books of Samuel and Kings. And just reminding you that those books looked at these stories from the Royal perspective and now we’re kind of looking at the stories from the perspective of the priests. But yes, you’re not losing your mind. We are reviewing same territory. So, like in today’s reading, David bought land and built an altar to God and the land belonged to a man named Araunah who offered to give David everything that he was going to need, give him everything he was gonna need for this altar and this sacrifice and David said, “I cannot give to God what cost me nothing.” And we should perhaps consider our own lives in light of that. Are we offering God what costs us nothing in time and in talent and treasure or have we offered all that we are and all that we have?
And then we moved into the New Testament and the letter to the Romans. And, of course, this is the first letter of the apostle Paul that we are reading. So, we’re kind of getting to know his personality and we can see that he is…he is forthright. And we should understand this. We can look and say he's…he’s kind of aggressive, but he’s a Pharisee. Like this is a guy who’s trained up in the law. Like he’s…he’s absolutely educated religiously. And, so he’s speaking with some authority because he’s talking about what he knows, what he’s been trained in, what his Hebrew listeners would and should understand. So, in the passages that we read today, Paul was addressing questions that had arisen out of distortions of the messages that he was giving about grace, specifically. So, the first argument was sin actually is a valuable thing, right? It’s good. It’s actually…if you look at it in a certain way it’s kind of good because it ultimately shows God’s righteousness, right? Like you can contrast it. Of course, that’s an argument that doesn’t really work very well. That’s sort of like saying cancer is a good thing because you can compare a person who is about to pass away from this disease to a healthy person and just see how good health is. And then the second argument was, the more…the more I sin actually, the better it is. Or the more dishonest I am, the more God’s truthfulness can be seen. And, so, this is like ends justifies the means stuff. And we can laugh at it. Like I’m poking at it a little bit because it obviously doesn’t work and yet you’d be surprised, I would be surprised….we would be surprised if we actually observed ourselves how often we’re trying to do these kinds of arguments. They may not be like this direct, but the ends justifies the means is everywhere. And Paul, in the in these cases, absolutely renounces utterly this line of argument for good reason. It’s unthinkable that God is unjust or unfair, and God's…God is merciful, obviously, but that’s not a license to destroy ourselves, destroy what He has created through sin
And then the Proverbs gave us some things to think about. “Sensible people”, right? So, let’s just kind of pause there. “Sensible people control their temper. They earn respect by overlooking wrongs.” I mean, there’s a lot…there’s a lot in that sentence. I mean because isn’t it our inability to overlook wrongs that is usually what…what triggers us to lose our temper? So, let's…let’s stir that into our coffee and drink it today. Let’s pay attention. If something is starting to arise within us, if anger is welling up and we’re about to lose it, we can pause and we can remember this proverb. We can consider maybe what overlooking the wrong might…might actually bring to the situation and way out what us just jumping in and blowing things up is going to do, which isn’t to say that no matter…that there aren’t matters that we have to step into and actually deal with. But if we want to be sensible about it, because this is where the Proverbs going. If we want to approach these things sensibly then according to the Bible, sensible people control their temper. They earn respect by overlooking wrongs.
Prayer:
Father, we invite You into all that we’ve read today on a number of fronts. I mean we’re following a number of different stories and their stories are winding through differing…differing territory that speaks into our lives and so we don’t want to miss a thing. We want all that You are speaking to us and all that You have for us. So, come Holy Spirit and bring back to memory all the things that we need to remember today, the things that…that we can observe ourselves doing today and we invite You into it fully and completely. We give You absolute and unimpeded access to our hearts and lives today. We want to walk with You this week in lockstep. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus’ we ask 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.