2 Chronicles 30:1-31:21, Romans 15:1-22, Psalms 25:1-15, Proverbs 20:13-15
Today is the 1st day of August. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you today as we greet the new month, as we step into it, this eighth month of the year. How exciting is that? We have made this journey seven full months and now we step into the eighth month of the year. Of course, where in the middle of the week basically. So, we’re still in the same week, brand new month, picking up where we left off yesterday. We’re reading from the common English Bible this week. Second Chronicles chapters 30 and 31.
Commentary:
Alright. So, yesterday from the book of Romans we were talking about unity and uniformity and the postures we should hold toward each other as brothers and sisters in the faith, and that thought is kind of carried over today as we continue through the book of Romans. As we mentioned before, this gives us insight into some of the struggles that the church was grappling with at its formation and some of struggles that we’re still grappling with today, if not even worse today. Like, in Paul’s time there wasn’t a plethora, like literally over 40,000 Christian denominations and very divergent worship styles. Church had just begun to form, but as we’ve mentioned on a number of occasions, there’s plenty of discussion, vigorous discussion happening about exactly who’s allowed to be in the church and exactly what they would need to do to achieve inclusion in the church. Paul’s argument…and Paul’s argument was controversial, by the way, at least from a Hebrew perspective. Paul’s argument was that anybody could be in the church, like anybody could become a disciple of Jesus Christ, anyone who believed, even people who weren’t Hebrew or Jewish, which meant Gentiles. And we’ve kind of unpacked that on a number of occasions. Not everybody agreed with that. There was a heated disagreement about it. There was a church council about it that had unbelievable implications because once the church decided that Gentiles could be included without converting to Judaism first, they were no longer considered a sect of Judaism, like, they were a standalone thing, rejected by the Romans and rejected by the Jews. Like, it because an incredible amount of persecution. So, it was an incredible struggle early on. And we’ve talked about how the Jewish believers, they saw Jesus as the savior of the Jews, and He was continuing to Hebrew story of God with his chosen people. So, that’s why you would need to convert to Judaism and follow Jesus. But as a trained Pharisee, Paul knew all of those arguments. He had lived and studied and had tried to live within that context but then Paul began to realize Jesus wasn’t just the savior of the Jews, he was the Savior of the world. So, quoting Paul from our reading today, “I’m saying that Christ became a servant of those who are circumcised for the sake of God’s truth in order to confirm the promises given to the ancestors and so that the Gentiles could glorify God for his mercy. As it is written because of this I will confess you among the Gentiles and I will sing praises to your name,” which is a quote from Psalm 18. So, they were wrestling with this, we are wrestling with this. And it kind of comes down to a core question that we just have to ask ourselves. Can a person who believes in Jesus but doesn’t see things theologically the same way that I do on certain points or does things that I wouldn’t or will that I would consider wrong or the lives in a way that I don’t approve of, can they still be a believer, a Christian? So now, unlike the early church we have many flavors and many stripes - 40,000 Christian denominations on the planet today - and most of the reasons that there is division is over theological points of disagreement and worship style and pretty much everybody believes their holding on and defending the true faith. So, even as this conflict was so small in its infancy, Paul considered that to be basically a waste of energy because we can judge each other all we want, it has no consequence. We can tell somebody they’re going to hell or we can tell somebody they’re not and it has no consequence. We have no say. There is only one final judge and us spouting off at the mouth, especially in condemnation and judgment like that is dangerous, because Jesus said, “we’ll be judged by the way we judge.” So, Paul gave us a posture and I’ll quote him straight from Romans 15, “May the God of endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude toward each other, similar to Christ Jesus attitude. That way you can glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, together with one voice. So, welcome each other in the same way that Christ also welcomed you for God’s glory.” So, remembering the guidance of the apostle Paul can help us when our grace has run out, right, when our patience is done for our brothers and sisters who are doing whatever they’re doing that we do not agree with. What we find in those moments is, yeah, things well up inside of us and we do want to argue it out and wrestle it out and that’s fine, but we understand very quickly that what we’re arguing about is our theological interpretation. Like, every time we win one of those battles, we haven’t saved God’s life. Like every doctrinal battle that we fight, whether we win or lose that battle, we haven’t rescued God from the brink. So rather than fighting those battles all the time so that we can find out what it is that we really think, we can fall on God’s mercy as we must. And Paul suggests that we should join together with one voice giving praise and glory to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Prayer:
Father, the reality is interesting in this community because we truly are as diverse as Your church is on planet Earth today. We swim in every stream imaginable in many different expressions all over the earth and yet we come together every day and find common ground and love for each other. I have never seen this happen before outside of this community. And, so, I worship You for that, we thank You for that because we’ve all come here for one thing, to allow Your word to speak for itself and then to do our own wrestling about it. But what we find over and over and over is that we have to tread lightly, that Your Holy Spirit must be present, that there is a narrow path that leads to life, and that we won’t find it by looking at what everyone else is doing. We will find by following You and not comparing how we are following You to have someone else might be. We are not the judge, and neither are they. We are responsible to follow You and I love that we do that here, that we love each other. Father help us to not only experience that here inside this community but that we would turn outward with this same love and perpetuate it all over the earth replacing darkness with light by the very fact that we are present and present to You and Your leadership. Come Holy Spirit we pray. Breathe on Your church anew we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.