Deuteronomy 29:1-30:20, Luke 11:37-12:7, Psalms 78:1-31, Proverbs 12:19-20
Today is the 6th day of April, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great be here with you today as we do what we do every day, take another step forward into the Scriptures as day by day we move our way through the entire Bible in a year. So. we’re kind of rounding the corner on the book of Deuteronomy. We’ll finish that later…later in this week. And I feel like I’m getting redundant and reminding us every day this is…the book of Deuteronomy is the final things that Moses has to say which is why we’re covering ground we’ve already covered. He’s reviewing. Other than Jesus in the New Testament, Moses is somebody that was kind of been alongside with for the longest since we started the Bible this year. I mean he presided over the Exodus, right, in bringing the people out into the wilderness and over the formation of a new culture and his work is nearing its end. So, today Deuteronomy chapters 29 and 30. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the gospel of Luke today we basically sees Jesus un-making friends. Like He's…He’s confronting the religious establishment of His time among the Hebrew people and He’s doing it with force…a force of words and He’s making a very, very clear statement because Jesus has…the ministry has traction, people are flocking to see Jesus, including the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the scribes and their watching Him. He might be the next superstar rabbi, but He wants nothing to do with it. What He wants to do is reveal the kingdom of God that is happening right now, but they’re blinded from it. They can’t see it because they can’t see through their religion and they can’t see what has become of their religion which is what Jesus is commenting on. So, Jesus goes to dinner with a Pharisee. He doesn’t wash His hands ritually before sitting down to dinner. This gets noticed because everyone in this establishment is looking at what everybody else is doing to make sure that everybody else is obeying the commands and the laws as defined by the rabbinical tradition. And, so, Jesus comments, “you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and evil.” Basically, what he is saying is, “it is hypocrisy to present something outwardly that is completely not true of you inside.” That is false. That’s how you don’t have eyes to see and ears to hear. So, He’s like, “you give a tenth of mint, rue, and every kind of herb and you bypass justice and love for God”, right? “You do all of these outward things even being generous but ignore justice and love for God.” Again, hypocrisy, presenting something on the outside that’s not true on the inside. “You love the front seat at church. You love to be greeted and noticed and seen and identified in the marketplaces. You’re like an unmarked grave, people walk all over you and don’t even know it.” In other words, “people are encountering you and they’re encountering your mask. They’re encountering what you’re presenting, what you have curated to show, but it’s not true. It’s not true of what’s inside you. This is hypocrisy. You will never have eyes to see this way.” And, so, then the experts in the law hear Him kind of bashing the Pharisees and they’re like, “you’re kind of offending us too.” And these are like the…the Torah scholars, like the biblical scholars of the day. And, so, He just goes to them. “You are loading people with burdens, like all of the work and all of the rabbinical tradition and all of the interpretation, all of the burdens that have to be carried out in order to obey the law as you understand it. It’s impossible to carry and you’re not carrying it either but you’re going around expecting it everyone else.” I don’t know if you can see the parallels yet. Like I don’t know if you can see that this thread is still in the world today, that this stuff is still going on in the world today, but it’s still with us and Jesus denounces hypocrisy as strongly as He denounces anything. In fact, He tells them, “you’re responsible for the blood of the prophets.” He’s says, like, “I tell you, this generation will be held responsible.” Why would He make that declaration? Because by now they should’ve known better. And He keeps going. “You experts in the law, you biblical scholars, you have taken away the key to knowledge. You didn’t go in yourselves, and you hindered those were trying to go in.” In other words, “you’ve lost the plot. You’re trying to hold God in your mind and enforce the will of God through your mind. You’ve written down over centuries what God wants from you and you forgot to ask Him when you could open your heart, you could stop the game, you could humble yourselves, you could open yourself to complete freedom where you would see the kingdom is within you and among you, and among everyone else. But you have it on lock down. You’re not going in and you’re not letting anyone else in. You’re too busy identifying the rules and trying to present the image of one who follows them when you don’t.” So, that was kind to it. I mean after they’re against Jesus. They’re trying to find a way to take Him down. And this is what we see then. This is light coming into the darkness, illuminating the darkness, revealing the shadows, telling the truth, but those in the darkness not responding well to that light and scurrying for the darkness trying to figure out a way to destroy the light. And then later on Jesus talks to the disciples like, “be on guard against the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” In other words, “watch how they’re gonna try to get in here, puff things up, distort things, change the composition of things, try to get inside your own head, inside your own heart, change the composition of the recipe. Watch out. Everything that’s covered will be uncovered. Everything that’s hidden will be made known.” He’s essentially describing hypocrisy. “Don’t be like that because what you say in the dark is gonna be heard in the light. What you’ve whispered in private will be proclaimed.” So, what is He fundamentally instructing here, “be true, don’t be a hypocrite, be true, that’s where the freedom is, freedom comes when you’re not hiding in the dark because you don’t have anything to hide in the dark.” It’s hard to conceive of that in a society like ours, right, where we just simply accept the fact that everybody’s got a private life, which is…which is fine. Like not every…not everything is to be exposed to everybody. Like we do have individuality and we do have a private life but what Jesus is saying is, “in terms of your relationship with God, in terms of being light in the darkness, don’t go out there and pretend you’re a child of the light when you are not. That’s hypocrisy. Be true. You can. You’re invited. This is the narrow path. This leads to freedom. This leads to life, which brings us to what Jesus said to sum all of this up. “Don’t fear those who could kill the body and after that they can’t do anything. Fear Him who has the authority over life and death, now and forevermore. This is who you should fear. And believe me, you are valued. Don’t be afraid, be true.” That’s our encouragement for today, but before we end let’s just go back to Moses in the book of Deuteronomy and listen to how he’s saying essentially the same thing.
“This command that I give you today is certainly not too difficult or beyond your reach. It is not in heaven so that you ask who will go to heaven and get it and proclaim it so we could obey it. It’s not across the sea so that you ask, ‘who’s gonna cross the sea and get it for us and bring it back and proclaim it so that we can obey it?’. The message is very near you, in your mouth, in your hearts so that you may follow it. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, or death and adversity. What do you want in life? The choice is yours. I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you, life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you may live. Love the Lord your God, obey Him, remain faithful to Him, for He is your life and He will prolong your days as you live in the land the Lord swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Prayer:
Father we’re getting the message loud and clear coming out of the Scriptures in stereo blasting at us from Old Testament and New Testament. We have to own our lives. We have to be responsible for them. It is not okay to follow the status quo of hypocrisy. You are inviting us higher, further, deeper. That will require that we have eyes to see and ears to hear and fundamentally what You are telling us is we have permission to be done with the masks. We have been taught to hide our entire lives, to hide aspects of our…we have carved off different aspects of ourselves and kept them hidden so that we can better cope with the way that the world is. And we are all doing this. And they were all doing this. Whether it’s 3500 years ago or 2000 years ago or today, we have been doing this all along. And then You come, light in the darkness, and say “there doesn’t have to be that disconnect. You have permission to be true.” Show us what that looks like in our own individual lives. May we meditate upon this today. May this not leave us alone. Holy Spirit every time we step into hypocrisy, every time that we are stepping into the darkness where we are being untrue, show us so that we might begin catching ourselves, so that we can see all of the systems that we’ve been ingrained in, all the ways that we’ve built up to be false. Show us what it means to be true. We’re looking at it in the Gospels. Show us how that light can permeate our very beings from. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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Community Prayer and Praise:
Good morning DABbers this is Brave from New Jersey today is April 2nd and I’m calling for help from the family for myself. I’m calling for the Lord to heal my heart and cover me with His love and His strength. I’m leaving a 20 year marriage of abusive and emotional, verbal and corrected information, slander and abusive and I pray to God that He will rescue me from this relationship and restore me fully into His joy, His life, His happiness, and everything that He has for me. I really do pray because I feel hurt, violated. I feel ashamed and I covet your prayer today family. Thank you. Amen.
This is Sharon from Kansas City. I just heard Abigail’s or Abby from Arkansas perhaps. Anyway, she was asking for prayer for the senior class in…in the Air Force Academy at Colorado where there have been two suicides. So, Lord Jesus I come to you along with my brothers and sisters. And we come alongside of this group that is quarantined and we speak life to you in Jesus name. I take authority over the unclean spirit causing this…this deep, deep depression, causing suicide and I tell you to stand down in Jesus’ name. And I speak peace, peace to you. Lord Jesus come alongside each one of these. Let them feel Your tangible presence, let them cause, cause them in fact Lord to call on the name of Jesus, to speak Your name out loud. Let the name of Jesus be lifted high. Let life come, the spirit of life and truth come. Jesus, you are the way and the truth and the life. Let them experience more of who You are. Somehow Lord let them speak to one another and bring new life, new life, new life. I speak to you new life, new purpose, new reason to live, higher, higher purpose. Let them fix their eyes on You Jesus, the author and the finisher of their faith. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
Good morning this is Adrian…this is Adrian from Maryland and I just wanted to thank the young lady who prayed Matthew 6:5-8 this morning April 2nd and talked about how we didn’t need to pray long wordy prayers because God knows what we need. I often feel insecure about my prayers. I don’t feel like I’m a prayer warrior because I’m often unable to put words to what I need. So, I often just sit and…and concentrate on God and…and we sort of commune together. And I feel insecure. I often apologize to God. I say I’m not…I’m not a strong Christian the way…the way these other Christians are because they pray so much better than I do. And, so, the young lady today who…who…who came and who said that to me she…she really touched my heart. And I just want to say thank you so much. You have a great day. Thank you.
Hello everybody this is Carmen from Germany from sunny Germany. The weather’s been beautiful here. So, God’s really been blessing us with keeping our spirits up in that that way as we’re all kind of at home. I’ve been wanting to call in for weeks and I keep putting it off, I keep procrastinating. And then I listen to…I listen daily and I listen to prayer requests and, you know, I’m like, “oh…I want to right that down, I want to let that person know I’m praying for them.” I want to, you know, I started this list and if I keep on doing this list and not calling in, you’re not gonna see my voice or hear my voice as a familiar one. And you’re not gonna know that I have you on my mind. Anyway, first off because I’ve only got two minutes and I could probably talk a lot longer, I wanted just to say thank you so much to Brian for giving us the Sneezing Jesus book as a gift. I have this book, but I left it in the states at my mom’s house and I’m in Germany. So, I won’t be going there anytime soon to get it. So, I’m really encouraged, I’m really happy about and especially since it just comes in one-chapter portions daily. I had wanted to let Michael whose mother passed away. You had called a couple weeks ago or a month ago, shortly afterwards and it was just so encouraging to hear you and hear your voice and that you are doing fine. John, in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, Charisse, praying for your grieving progress…process. Kingdom Seeker Daniel and your lovely wife, I feel like I know all of you guys and I just want to say many blessings to you guys. I love you. It’s just so encouraging to be here every day around the Global Campfire with you and my times up. So, have a blessed day. Bye-bye.
Hi this is Rachel from Pennsylvania and this is for the lady who calls in every now and then with one- or two-minute encouragements. She called into comfort soaring on Eagles wings and has also lost her mom. I’ve been following your calls, waiting for a name so that I could pray for you out loud and thank you for your encouragement. And you shared that you were in an orphanage with six or seven other siblings as a three-year-old and separated from your family. And through a memorial service through your mom you were reunited with one of your precious sisters. I am praising God with you for the union. You also mentioned that you’re a double DABber listening to the kids DAB when China’s read as a child and recently sang Blessed Assurance which I really enjoyed. I want you to know that I appreciate you and that I’m praying for you. And since I don’t know your name I’ll call you, for now, I’ll call you Praising my Savior. Dear God, thank You for coming through for Savior…for Praising my Savior, protecting her, saving her, bringing her through life the way she is now. Lord You know what she needs, You know the pain that she’s in, You know her suffering and we know that You suffered for us Lord. So, we lift her up to You right now into Your presence and into Your hands and we ask that You take her pain away. Lord God and heal her for You are Lord of all and You are in control. Bless her Lord in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
Dear heavenly Father I’d like to lift up everyone who is going through this ordeal with being sick from this coronavirus Father and everybody who’s giving up hope. Please Lord, restore their hope, bring them to know You Father. And everyone who is in the front lines working, please keep them safe and if they don’t know You Lord I know that they’re praying in the hospitals and all and help this to be a great ministry for people that would not see You to see You Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.