Ezra 3:1-4:23, 1 Corinthians 2:6-3:4, Psalms 28:1-9, Proverbs 20:24-25
Today is the 6th day of August. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian like every day and it’s great to be with you like every day here around this global campfire that we call our community as we come in out of whatever and join hearts and minds as we allow God’s word to speak to us. This week we’re reading from the God’s Word Translation and we’re kind of just getting going in the book of Ezra and in the letter to the Corinthians, Paul’s letter known as first Corinthians. So, we’re at the front part of both of those books. And off we go. Today, Ezra 3 verse 1 through 4 verse 23.
Commentary:
Alright. So, yesterday when we were reading from first Corinthians, Paul’s started talking about the nonsense of the gospel and we kind of explored that a little bit but as we continue through the letter Paul continues on with his discussion and basically Paul said that God’s plan to redeem the world was something that was ancient and had been hidden but was revealed in Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, but only for people with eyes to see and ears to hear, which is basically what Jesus said throughout His ministry. If we think about this from our own perspective, like from our own human understanding of the world that processes information through five physical senses then what we’re reading doesn’t really make any rational sense, that God’s plan to redeem the world was ancient and hidden, but was revealed in this person named Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit’s but the only people who would be able to find it would be those with eyes to see and ears to hear, right? And most people are like, “I have eyes and I see, and I have ears…”, like it doesn’t necessarily make sense. However, once you’ve felt the truth of it, once something has come awake inside your soul, you can’t see the world any other way, which is like what we said yesterday - incredibly difficult to describe to somebody who doesn’t see, who doesn’t hear, who doesn’t experience the world as a spiritual being. And Paul commented on that. He said, “not one of the rulers of this world has known it. If they had, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory. God has revealed those things to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, especially the deep things of God.” So, for those of us who are mostly rooted in rationalism, which would be me, I need to know how things work, then how do you reconcile this apparent disconnect that happens between our own reason and this awareness that somehow there is a spiritual reality more tangible than anything else in the world? This is what Paul was trying to explain. It’s like not a new question. And, so, here’s what Paul said. “Who knows everything about a person except a person’s own spirit? In the same way no one has known everything about God except God’s Spirit. We didn’t receive the spirit that belongs to the world. Instead, we received the spirit who comes from God so that we could know the things which God is freely given. A person who isn’t spiritual doesn’t accept the teachings of God’s spirit. He thinks they’re nonsense. He can’t understand them because a person must be spiritual to evaluate them.” So, basically, according to the apostle Paul, our human mind by itself on its own can’t reason the ways of God. We need something more than our own mind. And, so, for Paul there’s only one way to reconcile this and in reconciling this and explaining it he gave us one of the most quoted verses in all of the Bible, “we have the mind of Christ.” So, as we experienced in Paul’s letter to the Romans, his writing is highly theological, highly technical, so, you know, we could go intellectual and just try to understand what we’re talking about here today or we can try to boil this down into something that we could live into today and thankfully words, much older than Paul’s letter to the Corinthians gives us advice. From the Proverbs today, “the Lord is the one who directs the person’s steps. How then can anyone understand his own way?”
Prayer:
Father, as we enter into that, we see that there really is a constant battle between what we believe and what we perceive, and this is simply exposing the line inside of us where we are of the world and where we are not. So, we invite Your Holy Spirit to help us today to see things spiritually and not to see them as something, a problem to figure, but as a way to enjoy life with You. Come Jesus we ask. In Your mighty name we pray. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is the website, it is where your find out what’s happening around here.
And in short weeks, very short weeks from now before this month is up, we will be excitedly hosting the Daily Audio Bible Family Reunion for 2019 here in the rolling hills of Tennessee. And we are looking for to that and you are indeed invited, and I hope you’re coming. I hope you can come here to the beautiful Nashville area and experience the rolling hills for yourself. You can get all of the details at dailyaudiobible.com in the Initiatives section. There is…well…you’ll see, Family Reunion 2019 and you’ll click in there and every detail that you would want to know or need to know is in there. While you’re in the Initiatives section you may also…well you’ll see the other initiatives but one of them is Israel 2020. And we will be going back to Israel in 2020, although we will not be doing the More Gathering or the Family Reunion in 2020. We’re taking a little bit of a break from such an aggressive pace that we’ve been keeping for 14 years. Taking a little break. So, we won’t be doing the Family Reunion next year. So, this one is one that we’re really looking forward to kind of hold us over, get enough hugs and enough handshakes and enough conversations and that will hold us over for a little while. So, we’re looking forward to that, but we will be going back to Israel and there are precious few spots left for Israel 2020. So, if that’s been on your list, you can look in the Initiatives section where you are already looking at the Family Reunion and you’ll see the Israel 2020 and you can get all the details there as well. So, hoping to see as many of you as possible. That is the next couple of things that are coming up.
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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.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Brian I’ve been with you every day for nine years. You inspired me to write the book “Jewels of the Bible”. I took the Bible line by line, I pulled out the stories and I made them alive because I have cancer, breast cancer and it’s moved to stage IV and it went to my brain and I just got a new oncologist who basically told me to put my affairs in order. I have two autistic boys ages 19 and 22. King David said, I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread. I am not righteous but Jesus is my righteousness and I just would like prayer for the boys, Michael Josiah and Elisha Benjamin. My husband after 25 years when I got cancer he left. I know this is a two-minute call but when I wrote the book, when I made the Bible alive for kids for the next generation it’s like that when the attacks started. So, Satan’s trying to get my brain. I left it for the world and I want you guys to know that it’s there and I love you all so much and I trust Jesus to go with __ these babies…well they’re not babies, they’re young men…I would be happy to go see Jesus and I know Jesus will take care of everything and I know this is more than two minutes but God bless you all. I love you Brian. You’ve helped me through so much of my life. God bless.
Hi, my name is Jessica I’m calling from Michigan. It’s August 1st. Actually, it’s August 2nd but still not officially because I haven’t gone to asleep yet. I am a college student, I’m 19. I started listening to the DAB when I was 15. I have an interesting spiritual journey throughout my childhood and I really needed to feel close to God and DAB was one of the ways I was able to do that because I didn’t really have any spiritual friends, or my family really didn’t go to church very much. But I got a campus ministry college. That was great. I got some great fellowship opportunities and made some good friends but a few months ago when I started fighting a doctor in a few and it really confused me and made my relationship with God kind of uncomfy and in seeking out answers and trying to understand this side of things and I ended up finding way more questions than I thought and not many answers and it really made my relationship with God kind of bad. So, I reached out…not reached out…but decided to listen to DAB again today and that was great because I haven’t listened in a while. I’ve been reading the Bible chronologically more for historical contextual study __. But I really found what Brian said about not fighting people on doctrine to be helpful and I guess I felt inspired by that and I just wanted to reach out and ask you to pray that I can have a better relationship with God because I miss Him a lot…
Hi Brian, hi Daily Audio Bible community. I just want to…this…my name is Norma…and I just want to thank you so much for your…this app and this community. I know that the Lord led me to you as I was praying for deeper study in the word and I know that I have found that with the Daily Audio Bible. And I also would like to…I was led by the Holy Spirit to call in to offer some words of encouragement to all of those who have called with problems with her health and finances and those that have had lost a loved one. I just wanted to share a couple of Scriptures with you and just…reading from John 14:2. He says, “in my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” And in second Corinthians 4:18, He says, “while we do not things which are seen but at the things which are not seen for the things which are seen are temporary but the things which are not seen are eternal.” So, I want to encourage all of you community that are going through some things, that what we are going to see here on earth, as it says in the word, is just temporary and I know that during this time of suffering it’s really difficult but remember also that as the word says in John that God is preparing mansions for us and we have so much to look forward to when we are raptured and I just encourage all of you…my heart and compassion call out to all…
Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is Treasured Possession coming at you from the blessed lake state of Minnesota and I’m calling to encourage other believers to give up. I want to thank Pastor Brian for all of his dedication for years and years of speaking the word every day. I have been listening for a long time but this year, first year consistently all the way from January 1st up until today. And I want to say I am so excited. Second Chronicles 32:7-8 pretty much describes our marriage of 33 years. My husband and I will be married 33 years of the 9th of August and it is because of exactly what pastor Brian talked about today, the one thing that has changed in our marriage is just what he talked about. If Satan can get us discouraged full of self-doubt, blaming others for what we’ve done, he’s stolen our faith. And often Satan uses the past, debts, results of previous sins we’re still experiencing to try and convince us that God wasn’t enough then and He won’t be enough now, so just give up. But that’s only the story from this world’s point of view. Our faith says God was there then and He’s there now. We live in Christ as a people resurrected from death, the death of our past sin. We are made completely new and alive in Christ, that every spiritual blessing and the power to obey with joyful and peaceful hearts. Jesus gives us His authority to overcome the enemy as we step forward in faith, learning to trust the Holy Spirit’s guidance through suffering, missing the mark, confessing, getting back up, and going deeper into faith with Jesus. Praise God. I love you all. Be blessed.
Hi, good day, my name is Marcia from Jersey. It’s been a while since I called the line. It’s been like about four years. I know when I called first, I mentioned I was diagnosed with lupus and I was able to experience a miracle. The Lord has healed me. I went on to have a baby boy. His name is Joseph. But the reason that I’m calling today is because I heard the prayer request from Gary from northern Idaho. He was saying that he was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. Gary, today I’m calling to say to you that you’re under a spiritual welfare. I want to say to you that I admire your strength. I listened to your call and you said you…you know, I’m saying to you that I admire your strength and your stance. I want to reiterate what you said, that you are throwing down the gauntlet and your fighting side-by-side with Jesus. Keep it up. Keep it up my brother. You’re going to win. I’m am declaring today that your cancer free. You said you’re following in the great commission. I love it. I love it. I love it. I want to pray for you. Today I’m going to pray for you. So, father today I come before You. I say it today God, Your name is Jehovah. You’re Jesus Christ, the one that sits at the right-hand side of God the father. I am declaring today God that Gary is healed and delivered from metastatic prostate cancer. I’m binding up and chaining up and am casting in the pits of fire every demonic force that is standing against him. In the name of Jesus, I destroy right now the authors of the enemy that have him tied. I break every yoke in the name of Jesus. God…I am speaking of God…I am setting him free right now in the name of Jesus. Father, I thank You for him oh God, every record keeping instrument with his location and identity I’m destroying it in the name of Jesus. I rebuke the devourer, I reverse every agreement now made against him. I’m destroying every evil work from its root and severing the ties of the enemy. I’m speaking to him oh God and I’m saying who the Son set free is free indeed. John 8:36. The Lord bless and keep you in the name of Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus.