07/03/2020 DAB Transcript

2 Kings 22:3-23:30, Acts 21:37-22:16, Psalms 1:1-6, Proverbs 18:11-12

Today is the 3rd day of July welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today as we continue the journey that we set sail on so many months ago. And now we’re out in the middle. We’re out in the deep. And, yeah, the second half of the year has some depths for us. So, let’s get to it. We are in the book of second Kings in the Old Testament, and we’ll be finishing up second Kings in the next couple of days. But today we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible. Second Kings 22:3 through 23:30.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the Old Testament, the book of second Kings today we read of the King Josiah and of his phenomenal, like very, very comprehensive reforms in the land of Judah. This came because the book of the law was found. So, it’s interesting. The book of the law had been hidden in the temple because the temple and been used for all kinds of things for a while, even bringing other deity worship, like idol worship into the temple. So, king Josiah’s having the temple repaired and the book of the law is found and its read in his presence and he has it read in everyone’s presence, essentially saying, “this is the direction we’re gonna head into. We’re gonna obey the law. We’re gonna obey the law that was given as our origin story, one of the things that pulled us together and knit us together as a people.” And, so, we read of him moving throughout the land and destroying the worship of any false God and restoring the worship of the God of Israel to the people.

Then we get into the New Testament, the book of Acts. We traveled with Paul all the way back to Jerusalem. Then we saw what the fuss was about yesterday because he…he gets arrested and we didn’t get much further than him getting arrested today. He had to be carried out by the guards because the people were trying to get at him. So, all we did was basically get to the steps of the barracks where Paul is having a conversation with a one of the officers that had taken him into custody and they think he’s somebody else but he’s like, “no, I’m actually a citizen and I want to address the people.” That’s where we are right now. Paul has waived his hands on the steps and this mob that’s been trying to get at him even to kill him hushes and then he begins to speak to them in Aramaic and they hush even more, and he begins to tell his testimony. This is where we see Paul was a Pharisee, he grew up in Jerusalem, he studied under Gamaliel, he was very very strict, he was very very much against the way of Jesus until he met Jesus. That’s essentially what he’s sharing today and we will continue with his testimony tomorrow.

And then in the Proverbs we read, “before his downfall a person’s heart is proud, but humility comes before honor.” In other translations we find instead of pride, haughtiness. A person’s heart is haughty before his downfall. What we’re essentially pressing into in Proverbs is the arrogance that we can feel when we feel as if we are in control, like that we…like everything’s going our way and we have made it that way and we are in control and then we look around at everybody else who isn’t, like everybody else whose…whose struggling and things we’ve mastered and our heart grows proud and we then demand honor. And this leads us to a downfall. Conversely, as the Proverbs does, we flip the coin and find out if we had just been humble in the first place honor would’ve come without our pride and arrogance and demands and suppressing people and looking down on people, which is only gonna lead to our own downfall. So, the trick here then is, if we want to be honorable then we have to be first humble.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into that. If we want to be honorable, we need to first be humble. And we are instructed in Your Word to humble ourselves under Your mighty hand so that in due season You will raise us up. And, so, all we can do right now is to say it. But even as we say it, we begin to shift our hearts posture. We humble ourselves before You God. We humble ourselves before our brothers and sisters. We repent of our arrogance. We repent of the constant feeling of competition, that we’ve got to be doing better than somebody else to even have an identity. We don’t have to be anything. We are Your children. We have it all already. We are just unaware of it. So, come Holy Spirit. May we walk in humility today and may that be honorable in Your site. We ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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And it’s coming up, the 7th of July is just a few days from now and that’s what’s immediately on the calendar. That is the Daily Audio Bible long walk. A day that that is our own little community event. Every seventh of July we just acknowledge where at the middle of the year and a lot has been going on and that has never been more true than this year, but it’s always true. A lot has been going on and probably if we acknowledge it, we’ve been more frantic then…then we would like, and we need to regroup. And the best way that I have found for that kind of thing is to go for a long walk with the One who knows me better than I know myself and just to get out into beauty to get quiet, to get silent, to hear the song of the birds, to hear the wildlife or the crickets, the insects, to just become aware that life is bursting out everywhere and I am mostly unaware of its because I am preoccupied with the cares of this life. And it’s very easy over time to just get lost, right? And then we’re just kind of…just trying to get through the day, just trying to get through the week, just trying to get to the next thing, to the next place, to the next goal that seems like it’s gonna bring wholeness when it was available. So, we do this every year and it’s very personal, very individual, but it’s something that we’re doing together. So, wherever you go, whether that’s that you just walk out your front door and go for a walk or whether that’s that you make some preparations and go and have a picnic with God and the whole 9 yards or whether you drive hours to a place that so…means something to you, it doesn’t a matter, Just wherever you go, maybe snap a picture. You’ll want to remember that you did this. Like you’ll want to remember your long. Take a little video or whatever, but you can post that as a comment to the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page and then we’ll post it up on the page and we’ll have these windows that open up. But even just looking at the pictures, just looking at the different places in the world, the beauty that is out there is also rejuvenating and healing. And to know that we did this together as our brothers and sisters around the world, it's…it’s beautiful and it resets some things that need resetting. We need to hit the reset button on some stuff. And, so, let’s make preparations for that on the 7th.

We have this new resource. It’s called Heart, a contemplative journey and it is a guided prayer and musical exploration of some of the things, some of the emotions, some of the things that we’ve been facing and it just invites God into those places and it will open our hearts to him as we spend the day together on the 7th of July going for a long walk with God. So, Heart is available for preorder now. Like at the iTunes store just search for, “Heart, a contemplative journey” or my name or whatever and you’ll find it or same with Google…Google Play. Just search for it and you’ll find it and you can preorder it. It releases on the 7th of July, so it’ll be there waiting for you as we move into the long walk. So, check that out as a companion to this journey, And I am really looking forward to hearing…to hearing the stories. Really, I love it every year but this year we have a specific resource. It’s like the conversation starter and really really looking forward to that. So, check that out.

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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.