1 Chronicles 9:1-10:14, Acts 27:21-44, Psalms 8:1-9, Proverbs 18:23-24
Today is the 10th day of July welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you. What a joy to have another day. Here we are at the end of another week. So, yeah, congratulations on that to all of us. We have made it day by day step-by-step all the way to the 10th day of July, which is, you now, a third…a third of the way through the seventh month of the year. So, we’re…we are indeed moving along in our voyage, and yet…and for all that we’ve seen there is so much out in front of us. So, let’s dive in. We’re in the book of first Chronicles. We’ve been reading through the genealogies, which are famous and we’re working our way through these names and these families and the story that’s told through those names of exile and separation and hope and defeat and everything else involved in human life. But most importantly, they’re here so that they will not be forgotten. I means, this is one of the ways. The genealogies is one of the ways for the people to know who they were and where they came from and for that matter who their God was. And, so, let’s dive in. We’ve been reading from the English Standard Version this week. First Chronicles chapters 9 and 10 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we are, you know, in first Chronicles we’re moving into the narrative part of this book and we’re revisiting some of the story of Saul and his death today and we will continue that story and like…like I said when we began it may sound familiar, because we are moving through the same stories, but we are moving through the stories from a just…a different perspective. When we were going through Samuel and Kings, we had this focus on the kings but now we’re looking at the same stories through more of a priestly viewpoint. And, so, that’s what’s going on. And, so, we’ll kind of continue our way through some of the stories that we have become familiar with as we’ve read through the books of Kings.
Paul, in the book of Acts is…is back on a ship but he’s not on a missionary journey per se. He’s on a journey to Rome to stand trial before the Emperor. And there has been some problems with the travel indeed. And, so, you know, basically what we’ve gone through now as they’ve been drifting in the open sea, and a storm that will not stop for the last couple of weeks and pretty much hope has been lost for survival but then they realize they were approaching land. And, so, we are going to find ourselves shipwrecked on an island that we will soon discover is called Malta. And, of, course Malta is still an island. It still exists until today.
Then we get to the Psalms, and David is just pondering the vastness of God, the power of God, the Majesty, “how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory of above the heavens.” Just worshiping God for his vastness for the unfathomable power, the unfathomable creativity. “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?” Right? So, he’s just like finding his place in humility before the Lord. Like, “how is it that you who I can’t even comprehend, how could you pay any attention to me at all?” And then he goes on to say, “you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings”, talking about humanity, talking about us. And this “heavenly beings”, this has been translated a lot of ways, probably for an obvious reason. Like it’s been translated, “angels, a little lower than the angels” in the Septuagint. It’s translated “heavenly beings” here but the earliest manuscripts are “God, you have made him a little lower than God and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet.” Could we consider what he’s saying here for a second? I mean even if even we…even if it bends our mind to say, “you have made him a little lower than God”, which is what the Hebrew says. Even if we’re like, “okay. I can’t do that, but I can be a little lower than the angels, that we have been crowned with glory and honor from God and He has given dominion over the works of his hands. Like we are stewarding what He has made.” Well, that’s quite a responsibility across the board because He has made people, He has made the world, He has made the animals and all of the species. And we’re supposed to care. We’re supposed to steward all of this. And what an invitation. I mean what…what an invitation from God to collaborate in His creation, and the maintenance of what He has created. What gift that He would entrust that to us, that He would entrust the fact that we should care for each other because we are created beings in His image. What a gift. What an invitation, that we should care for the world that He’s given us, or that we should care for the bodies that He’s given us, or that we should care for the beauty all around us. What an invitation from God. And, so, of course, if…if we open our hearts to this, we come to the same conclusion, we come to the same place as David. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Prayer:
Father, that is our declaration. That is what our hearts cry out when we become aware of Your presence and the vastness of Your power and glory that is crying out from the universe itself. We look into the night sky and we look thousands and thousands of…if not hundreds of thousands of light years away at light that has been burning from something that You set there for us to see it. You are vast, You are almighty, You are the most-high God. And, so, our hearts join in across time back thousands of years to join hearts with David’s words as they were being penned, “how majestic is Your name in all the earth O Lord! How is it that You would pay any attention to us? And yet You do and we are humbled and we want to join You in Your work of caring for and collaborating with and in Your creation. Come Holy Spirit and show us what that looks like, what that looks for each of us because we all have all kinds of stories and we’re all over the world in different places and come from different persuasions and different cultures. And yet we are all created in Your image. And we open ourselves to Your use today. Come Holy Spirit lead us we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Song:
How Majestic is Thy Name - Keith Green
Oh Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is thy name in all the Earth.
Oh Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is thy name in all the Earth.
Thou has displayed thy splendor
above the heavens.
Thou has established strength from mouths of infants,
To show all thine enemies.
Oh Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is thy name in all the Earth.
Oh Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is thy name in all the Earth.
For when I consider the heavens
the work of thy fingers.
The moon and the sun which thou hast appointed.
For what is man, that thou dost take thought of him,
And the son of man, that thou dost care for him.
Hallelujah Lord our Lord,
Oh how I love you.
Hallelujah Lord our Lord,
Oh how I love you.
You’ve made man a little lower
than all of the angels,
And crowned him with glory to rule over your creation.
And under his feet,
You’ve put the beasts of the field,
The birds of the heavens and what passes through the seas,
The birds of the heavens and what passes through the sea.
Hallelujah Lord our Lord,
Oh how I love you.
Hallelujah Lord our Lord,
Oh how I love you.
Hallelujah
Lord our Lord,
Oh how I love you.
Hallelujah Lord our Lord,
Oh how I love you