Genesis 5:1-7:24, Matthew 3:7-4:11, Psalms 3:1-8, Proverbs 1:10-19
Today is the 3rd day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you for day three of our new decade in our third day on our journey that will lead us through the entire Bible this year. So, we’re still moving in. It takes a good week to kind of get moved in and find the rhythm and get into all the new books and talk about all the different things that…that are going on in the Bible as we encounter them. So, we’ve had a chance in the last couple of days talk about Genesis and Matthew and so today when we get to the Psalms, we’ll talk about them, but first let’s continue our journey. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Genesis chapters 5 through 7 today.
Introduction to the book of Psalms:
Okay. So, like I mentioned at the beginning, over the last couple of days we’ve begun to understand, or at least talk about the context for the book that we’re reading. So, we talked about Genesis. We talked about Matthew yesterday. So, let’s talk about Psalms today. And Psalms is actually not a book per se. It’s like five books in one and we’ll notice when we’re moving into the next book because it announces itself in the Psalms. And these books are…are kind of grouped, separated by the author or by the theme of the…of…of the prayer or song of worship or liturgy or by their purpose and…and certainly dating all the way back into deep antiquity these Psalms have stood the test of time and then carried forward. They have been considered from within the faith, and for that matter from without the faith as a priceless collection of beautiful poetry and songs and hymns and congregational singing’s and individual songs that the world has ever known. This is the prayer book of the of the Hebrew people and of Christians alike. And…and certainly more enduring than any of the pop songs that we may be hearing today. And one of the voices that we’ll get to know really, really well in the Psalms will be that of the second king of Israel and his name is David. And he’s famous, like you’ve probably heard of King David before we haven’t met him in the Scriptures yet, but we will, actually quite intimately we’ll get to understand David and how he became who he became when we get to the books of Kings and the books of Samuel the books of Chronicles. And, so, that will tell us about David but it’s the Psalms that reveal the heart of David that can be found in the outpouring of his heart into his art. And the Bible tells in quite detail that David was a skilled and gifted musician, among other things. And, so, we are currently reading in the Psalms book 1. And today we’ll read Psalm chapter 3, a Psalm of David regarding the time David fled from his son Absalom.
Commentary:
Okay. Let’s talk about a couple things. Let’s talk about something in Genesis today and let’s talk about something in Matthew today.
And the thing in Genesis is not something that we can just unpack here, it’s something that we just need to start noticing as we go forward because weird, seemingly strange things like this, kind of peak their heads up in the Bible with no explanation leaving on an incredible amount of speculation among biblical scholars over the millennia. So, let me just read the first couple of verses of Genesis chapter 6. “Then the people began to multiply on the earth and daughters were born to them in the sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives. Then the Lord said, my spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future their normal life span will be no more than 120 years. In those days and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times.” Okay, so, awesome. Tat’s in the Bible. What in the world does that mean? And that’s been asked for millennia and that’s one of these places we’re fanciful things begin to grow extra biblically - traditions and legends begin to grow. So, like there’s…there’s definitely interpretations that these sons of God were perhaps a different version of humanity that fell and that were still upon the earth and then the Lord made new humans. There’s other traditions or speculations that these…these are fallen…fallen spiritual beings who were obviously upon the earth and mated with human women. The last one is probably more likely because from a theological perspective we understand that God has a human family upon the earth. And we also have glimpses in the Bible that God has a spiritual family that is beyond flesh and blood humanity. And that’s not so hard for us to get our minds around. We believe that we are a part of God’s spiritual family in spirit, but we’re, you know, humans here upon the earth. But we are told of beings like the angelic messengers sent by God, they’re all throughout the Bible as well as battles that are fought in the spiritual realms, including the one that we saw in the book of Matthew today when Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted. So, the idea that there is a spiritual realm is pretty much bedrock to our spirituality and we have some awareness that there are beings in this spiritual realm, some of them that serve God and some of them that are lost in the darkness and are trying to deceive humanity, God’s family upon this earth. Like, I realize we don’t think about this stuff necessarily all of the time. But what I’m saying here, this isn’t a stretch, this is all in the Bible. It appears that these beings in the spiritual realm who are created beings have a will and some chose rebellion against God in some fashion. So, a scenario then that theologically works is perhaps that God has and had a divine family, created beings who were not the most high God but beings that were also created in His image and were His family, perhaps sent here to steward and care for his earthly family. Okay. So, could be like, “alright, wait a second, let me think that one through here.” But let me just remind us that when we get to the writings of the apostle Paul, and that’s gonna be a few months from now, but when we get to the writings of the apostle Paul and he begins to flesh out theologically what is happening because of the work of Christ in this world, we will find that we are being transformed in, basically into a new species that the divine nature of God is something that we partake in, and that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells…indwells us, lives within us, has become a part of who we are. And, so this idea of a divine family is interwoven all throughout the Scriptures. So, perhaps this divine family of God, stewarding the earth, and this is all in the Bible, God sending messengers to do things to get things accomplished, to tell things, like this is all over the Bible. But then when we read Genesis 6 it’s not so strange – “the sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives. And the great Nephilim or the Anakim, the giants of the land, the great warriors and heroes of times untold comes from this.” These kinds of traditions are found in all kinds of the world’s ancient religions. The one distinction here in the Hebrew Scriptures is that there is only one most-high God. God may have divine lesser beings and those beings may have been worshiped as gods, but there is only one most-high God. And, so, if one of these divine beings in God’s family, who were sent to be caretakers and watch over God’s human family stepped over the line and engaged in sexual activity with human women then we at least get a little glimpse, some sort of an understanding of this undercurrent that has just popped its head up in the Bible. And we’ll note that these…these giants right, these giants in the land. Those of you of you…you’re like…you’re familiar with all the stories in the Bible, when we get to the Jordan River and we’re gonna cross over into the promised land and it’s going to be taken. Who is it, they were afraid of, right? They were afraid of the giants. And who was it that they had to conquer? It was the giants, right? So, like, we see this theme that’s not apparent but is in plain sight and we see traditions like this one continue through the Bible. So, like when we get to the writings of Paul, he instructs women to…to wear headdress, to cover their heads because of the Angels, coming back to this tradition. This understanding…so I’m not trying to give anything definitive here. I…in fact, it’s rare that I will do that. What I often try to do is give us things that we need to wrestle with, and that we need to think through because when we are willing to wrestle with something then it’s something that’s going to become meaningful and have value in our lives as opposed to just another nice piece of encouraging content that, you know, we can find anywhere. So, I’m not trying to definitively explain the sons of God and the daughters of Eve and the giants and like…I’m just trying to say, “note here that something has peaked its head up in the Bible that we’re like, what is that?” And it won’t be the last time, but every time we encounter something like this, it will be referring to this divine spiritual realm that we’re speaking of today.
Okay then, in the New Testament in the book of Matthew, Jesus is led into the wilderness where He’s being challenged, we’re He’s being tempted and the evil one’s tempting Jesus, essentially with the easy way out, with the invitation to just get what you came for, be done with it, not have any difficulties, just abort the mission. There’s just…there’s only one thing that needs to be done. You can have all of it if you bow down and worship me. This is what the evil one is saying to Jesus. And, of course, Jesus rebukes the evil one in this temptation and sends him on his way and once He’s done that then He receives the ministering Spirits, right, sent from God…God’s divine family sent to minister to Jesus. What we need to understand though is that we go through the same kinds of things on a daily basis. There’s always the temptation for the easy way out and there’s always the narrow path that leads to life. And we respond in…in either way, and we can look at our own lives and see where those paths choose. Each of us will choose to eat forbidden fruit or we will choose to know God by walking with God. As fundamental and baseline as this is, this really is the pattern of life itself. We’re either going to eat forbidden fruit and sink further and further into the darkness away from our father, away from our source of life itself or we’re going to run into Him in these times of temptation and reject the path that will lead to our destruction. The thing is, we all get to choose that today, not just at some point in the future. This is a choice that we make every day, sometimes every hour, sometimes every minute, but the choice toward righteousness will always lead us on the narrow path that leads to life, and the choice toward consuming the forbidden fruit will always lead us to our destruction and we get to pick. Our choices matter. So, what are you gonna choose today?
Prayer:
Father, we invite You into that. In fact, we invite You and all of this. In fact, we invite You into everything that will be said in this entire year. Come Holy Spirit and lead us into all truth. That’s what we’re here for. We didn’t come here to find further deception. That’s easy. We came here to find truth and You’ve promised that You would reveal it to us if we seek it with all of our hearts. And we do. So, come Holy Spirit. Show us even today how the choices that we make will construct this day and when we go to bed tonight, we will have lived what we honestly believe about You no matter what we say. So, help us Father to see the choices that we’re make…we’re making and give us eyes to see where those paths are leading. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is the website and that is home base, its where you find what’s going on around here, as we say most every day because it is where you find out what’s going on around here.
Here in this first days of the year we’re just trying to highlight different aspects of the community and what’s going on. So, we’re just moving into this new year. And today I just want to highlight the other…other channels that make up the Daily Audio Bible family.
So, this is the Daily Audio Bible and we’re moving through the Bible in a year by reading a little from the New Testament, Old Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs every day. But there’s also the Daily Audio Psalm. And this moves through the Psalms exclusively as we do in the Daily Audio Bible. Like, we talked about the Psalms today and about…I mean…this ancient prayer and worship book. And it is all of that, but inside the Psalms are so many of the issues of the heart that there…it gives language to the things that we are sensing or feeling but may not be able to put words to. And, so, it’s very, very valuable in our lives. And, so, we created the Daily Audio Psalm as a companion. So, maybe you listen to the Daily Audio Bible in the morning then before you got to bed or whatever you just get a little bit of the Psalms into your life and allow them to wash into your mind drift and let you drift off to sleep in peace. It’s a great resource.
Also, the Daily Audio Proverb. So, Proverbs we haven’t talked about. We’ll talk about Proverbs tomorrow, but we go through a little bit of the Proverbs each day because some…like I have said in the past, one sentence from the Proverbs can keep you thinking all day sometimes. And, so, we have that space to meditate upon it. But the Daily Audio Proverb goes through a chapter of Proverbs each day, going through the entire book of Proverbs each month. When we talk about Proverbs, we’re talking about pouring the unfiltered wisdom and advice of the ages of the millennia into our souls and into our hearts. So, imagine if you pour wisdom into your life every single day this year, what might be happening inside of you, especially if you begin to listen and obey the voice of wisdom in your life every day? So, that’s Daily Audio Proverb
There’s also Daily Audio Bible Chronological. So, my daughter China, who has been reading the Daily Audio Bible for a decade, herself, has launched a couple years ago, Daily Audio Bible Chronological. And, so, this is working through the entire Bible in a year chronologically, so reading through the events of the Bible in the order that they happened. And, so, that is available. And she’s my sweetheart, like, she’s my daughter. So, she does a great job. I love her with all my heart and she’s just killing it over there. So, Daily Audio Bible Chronological.
And then there’s all of the different foreign language…and when I say foreign, I just mean that to me, like native…my native tongue is English. But we also have Daily Audio Bible Española. So, our Spanish team in Texas and Nicaragua reading every day, building community in Spanish around the world. We also have Daily Audio Proverbios, the Daily Audio Proverbs in Spanish and Daily Audio Salmos. So, the Psalms in Spanish as well. We have Daily Audio Bible Kids. We have Daily Audio Bible Japanese, Arabic, French. In the French language we have the Daily Audio Bible pattern, but we also have Daily Audio Psalms and Proverbs in French as well. And then there’s also Portuguese and Chinese. And, so, those are all available in the Daily Audio Bible player or the Daily Audio Bible app. I just want to highlight those resources because they are there…they are there to serve you. So, check that out.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage, and I can’t thank you enough for your partnership. So, there’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.
And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment you can press the Hotline button, the little red button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.
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:
Today is Christmas day. It’s…I’m speaking from Washington. This is Karen and I just wanted to respond to you Brian. I really appreciate what you said today. You identified it, the longing. The fact that you opened up and said that your creative and you have the melancholic temperament. I know that there’s many of us that relate to what you’re saying right here right now. I mean I have everything to be thankful for. I have family, they’re all healthy. They’re not with me but there near me and I’m going…you know…I have friends and I have clothes on my back and I have place…a roof over me and I have a job and I’m so grateful, but yet just like you said there’s still this deep longing of something that’s not right and you identified it and I so appreciate that. Thank you so much. You just…whenever things are identified I find that you just…it…it like releases it. It has it go away because you know what, you understand it. So, I thank you and I appreciate you and I say Merry Christmas to you. And to everyone listening, I am praying for all of you. You’re very special to me. May this day be such a connection with Jesus. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Good morning DAB family this is Finding Peace. I am middle-aged and I feel so lost and stuck. I only know to have faith and trust God, but I know He’s doing something but I’m just stuck in this place of where I feel like my whole life is a failure and although I’ve been able to help others and get them into a better place, somehow I always end up going backwards and this time I just can’t seem to get forwards and I just don’t know what to pray for anymore. I just know to have faith, but it seems like…it just…this hole is never-ending. I don’t really know what to pray for anymore. I just want to be able to get on my feet and not be a burden and I just know that there’s power in prayer and maybe God can open up something that could help. Have a good day.
[singing starts] Beautiful, yes you are. Beautiful, yes you are. Beautiful, yes you are. Yes, you are beautiful [singing stops]. Good morning everybody this is God’s Smile from England and its boxing day and I’ve just sat here catching up. And I went to the dentist last week. Oh…it’s never easy with me, I’ll tell you. I was in the chair and they numbed all my face and then she gets in there and I went, “ahhhh…I can feel pain.” Anyway, this happened a few times and ended up having 11 injections just to numb my face. Anyway, the pain still…I’ve got to __ without a tooth now. It’s gonna take a couple of weeks to heal because I’ve got a dry socket but enough about me. Hey, enough about me. Let’s put our eyes on Jesus. I was thinking as I was catching up about Christmas and gifts. And had you considered that you are a beautiful gift to Jesus, to your Father God this Christmas? That He looks upon you and He opens you up and He looks inside, and He smiles because He sees the blood of Jesus Christ that’s covered you and that beautiful aroma of forgiveness. And He sees you washed, and He sees you clean, and He sees you enjoying Him and loving Him, and He looks upon His gift and He smiles. Isn’t that lovely? Hey, you are a precious gift to God and I just want to say I love you all and I look forward to seeing you in the new year and I enjoy your company so much. Bye-bye.
Hi Daily Audio Bible this Rebecca from Michigan it’s December 24th it’s about 7:52 AM Eastern time in the morning but you know what you guys? This morning I was listening to the Christmas party. I haven’t finished listening to it yet, but I get up at four in the morning or whatever…five and I was doing my laundry because that’s the only time in my apartment building that I can get a hold of a washer and dryer. And, so, I went to go back to the dryer and I accidentally locked myself out of my apartment and my phones in the apartment and my keys are in the apartment and I’m in the laundry facilities and then I started praying and I asked God, “please bring someone to help me. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to panic.” So, two people came, they called the maintenance emergency people for me. So, I started praying and I got all my laundry done doing that. So, I sat there and folded my clothes and started praying and the only prayer I could come up with is, “our father in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And I remembered Jill and Brian talking about trust in the party, Christmas party and I was like, “okay God, do you want me the trust you. I’m not a cry. I’m not going to panic. I’m gonna trust you with this, to wake up the maintenance guy emergency person and have my door unlocked.” And when he came…when he came and unlocked my door, he said 20 minutes later he would’ve been gone and wouldn’t have been able to help me. And I said, “I’ll go get my keys right now.” And I thanked him, and I said Merry Christmas to him. But I want you guys to realize the power of prayer is so awesome and just putting your trust in God…
Good morning Daily Audio Bible listeners. And Brian thank you so much for your Christmas message this morning. It’s December 25th, beautiful Christmas. And this is Denise, Louise mom, Louise is rescue-dog and his story of rescue and redemption is incredible. Lots of books and blogs based on. But I’m calling because of your message this morning. Brian it really touched my heart, just about that longing, oh that longing that we have. And I just…I know when you said it, when you spoke it and then your prayer…it just spoke to my heart. I have that longing as well. And I know in Ecclesiastes where it says, “that he set eternity in our hearts” that we do long for restoration. And it was such a perfect…just such a perfect message. So, my prayer and my prayer request is that people who are followers of Christ just continue to tap into that longing of our heart because He put it there so that we remain heaven bound and that we continue to look for Him and that we don’t see that restoration here on earth, we have a glimpse of it. And that gives me hope and joy of what we are going to see. So, thank you so much Brian and Jill thank you for your ministry and thank you for your hearts. Merry Christmas and Buon Natale.
Hey family this is Dave from Colorado. Hey, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve called. There’s been so many times that I wanted to call you to __ pray for various people but for some reason I end up just not calling. But that leads me to a confession I have. When I hear my voice on this podcast, honestly it makes me want to put a bag over my head and find a nice rock to hide her for a while, but you know I stopped thinking about that. This is the voice God gave me, so I guess, who am I to be ashamed of it. So, that’s going to be my New Year’s resolution to try to be a little a little closer to the group of DABbers. So anyway, moving on. Its Christmas day today. I hope you all are having a blessed day with your family and friends. I am actually at work. I just headed out in the truck. Got a nice snowy drive ahead of me going up to the Colorado Mountain, but you guys are all coming with me. So, I still have half of the Christmas party to listen to and maybe when I get __ you guys can help me put the tire chains on this truck. Yeah, probably not ha? Alright. But anyway, I just…right now my heart is just full of love for my DAB family. And I’m about to start my seventh year with Daily Audio Bible and I know I need to call in more. Anyway, we will talk to you next time family. Love you. Bye.