03/13/2020 DAB Transcript

Numbers 19:1-20:29, Luke 1:1-25, Psalms 56:1-13, Proverbs 11:8

Today is the 13th day of March, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here. It’s great to be here with you today as we prepare to reach the conclusion of another one of our weeks together and draw our workweek to a close. And even as we do that, we’re going to be entering a new book today, the gospel of Luke when we get to the New Testament and we’ll talk about that when we get there, but first let’s continue our journey through the book of Numbers. We’re reading from the Contemporary English Version this week. And today, Numbers 19 and 20.

Introduction to the book of Luke:

Okay. So, this brings us to the gospel of Luke. And Luke is a little bit more of an intriguing gospel. It’s the third of the synoptic Gospels. And as we talked about as we encountered the other two Gospels, the synoptic Gospels are called that because they’re very similar in the way they’re composed and they definitely share some of the same stories, even some of the same phrases, very similar in the way that their laid out, so similar that it…it’s widely believed by scholars that one couldn’t exist without the other. And even though they were written at different times and by two different people, they were…well…especially Mark was used as source material for the others. And we’ll enjoy the gospel of Luke tremendously because it’s the tightest, most concise of the Gospels. It’s written well. It flows well and it’s a narrative style. Abd we’ll get used to this flow because we’ll see it again because Luke didn’t only write the gospel of Luke, he also wrote the book of Acts that we’ll come to after we finish the Gospels. Now, we’ve read Matthew and Mark. We’re now gonna read Luke and we’ll encounter some of the same stories from a bit of a different perspective because the Gospels have a different perspective and a purpose. So, for example, when we read the Gospel of Matthew when we started our year together, and in Matthew we noticed Jesus was fulfilling prophecies. Like that was the point. This was done because it fulfilled this prophecy. And, so, Jesus is fulfilling all these prophecies letting us know that this is a narrative established to speak to Hebrew people. Luke will take us through these stories again that we’re familiar…that we’re familiar with, but Luke is written to a Gentile audience. And, so, it’s revealing that the gospel is inclusive, is not a Hebrew only religion. It includes the whole world and welcomes all who believe into the family. And, so, with that in mind we begin the third gospel. Luke chapter 1 verses 1 to 25.

Commentary:

Okay, so it may not have seemed like it as we were reading through our…our reading from Numbers today but some pretty monumental shifts happened today in the Old Testament. So, let’s just look at those so…so we have context for where were going. The children of Israel have moved out. They’ve been disqualified from moving into the Promise Land. They’ve been turned back into the desert to wander until the whole first generation, the people who came out of Egypt dies leaving basically the conquest of the Promise Land to the second-generation, to the children who were supposed to grow up free in the land of promise. They’re gonna have to do what their parents didn’t. And that’s a pretty big deal. That’s why there’s a lot of this review going on about the laws. And one thing that we should gather is that God is expecting precision. He is expecting ultimate obedience here. They are in the wilderness where utter dependence upon God is being made more and more apparent to them and their complaining about it every time their faith gets stretched. And that sounds so familiar. Nevertheless, there out in the wilderness, and they need to get somewhere. And to get somewhere the best way that they can go that they’re being led is through the land of Edom, but the Edomites are like, “absolutely not.” And we could…we could understand why they would have concerns. “Like a million people are going to come on this main road and walk through and they’re gonna pay for their water and can do anything. Like that just doesn’t quite add up. So, you can understand why they would have some pushback but the important piece about this is what Moses said, “we are family.” And that is true. The Hebrew people were the descendants of Jacob, the Edomites were the descendants of Esau - Jacob and Esau. And if we’ll remember the misdirection and trickery of Jacob that was visited on Esau., well we can sort of see that the family rift is centuries old and the Edomites won’t let them pass. That’s a mistake on the part of the Edomites and there are other things along the way that they do, and an entire book of minor prophecy will be devoted to the Edomites once we get near the end of our year together. But this is important. They turned to their family to get where they needed to go, and they were rejected. And, so, there’s no water. The people are grumbling and complaining to Moses again, “we would’ve been better off if he died before the tent of meeting than to die of thirst out here in the desert. We would’ve been better off in Egypt.” And this becoming a recurring theme. “We’re in the wilderness going toward the Promise Land, but slavery was better. Let’s go back to slavery again.” Sounds so familiar because we walk in these footsteps so often. God tells Moses to go out to a rock and command it to give water. He gathers the people together and gets his walking stick as God had told him to do and then he basically yells at the people, “you rebels. You, rebellious people.” Right? “You stiff necked people. Do we have to bring water out of this rock?” And then Moses hits the rock twice and water comes out, but that’s not what God told Moses to do. He told Moses to go speak to the rock. He didn’t tell him to yell at the people and ask them if he had to bring water out of the rock for them, and what a nuisance and all this, and show anger and strike the rock. So, God gave them the water that they needed to survive. Unfortunately, the anger and rebelliousness in Moses heart disqualified him from leading the people into the Promise Land. That will also be left for the next generation. And after that Moses and Aaron and his son Eliezer climbed Mount Hor. Eliezer was installed as the high priest and Aaron passed from the story. One interesting thing, one thing that was pointed out to me when I was much, much younger, that I’ve always held onto because the exclusion of Moses from leading the people into the Promise Land seems pretty…pretty harsh. Like he didn’t get to go. Like he got to lead them, but he didn’t get to go. But we do find Moses in the Promise Land. We find him along with Jesus at His transfiguration speaking to Jesus in the Promise Land.

And speaking of Jesus, we’re just…just getting going in the gospel of Luke. And, so, what’s being set up here is the story of Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth who were very old but were foretold that they would be having a child in their old age. And, of course, there’s some clear parallels here with Abraham and Sarah. And Zechariah was told as a priest of God in the temple offering incense before the Lord, he was told by an angelic visitation that he would have a son, that his son would be named John, that he would be a prophetic voice that would prepare the way of the Lord. And this prophetic voice would be really the first prophet in 400 years, the time that passes between the Old and New Testaments. So, we can often think that John shows up out of the wilderness wearing camel’s hair and eating grasshoppers, and that’s true, that’s what the Bible says but he got there somehow. He’s the son of a priest, a vision and angelic vision happened in the temple. And when John emerged from the temple. He couldn’t speak. This wouldn’t go unnoticed until somebody just shows up out of the wilderness with a message of repentance. There would’ve been a lot of wondering about who this child might be, and we’ll pick up with that story tomorrow.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for its beauty in the way that it can touch so many parts of our lives, that it can touch us on so many levels and cause us to ponder and contemplate our own lives and our own path. And, so, we are so grateful for this and we are so grateful for one another. We are so grateful that we can do this together in community. So, come Holy Spirit and plant the words from the Scriptures into the soil of our lives today. And may they grow and yield fruit for Your kingdom. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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