2 Chronicles 1:1-3:17, Romans 6:1-23, Psalms 16:1-11, Proverbs 19:20-21
Today is the 20th day of July welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and it is an honor and a joy to be here with you today as we settle into this brand-new week that we’ve got before us. And in the Scriptures yesterday we concluded the book of first Chronicles. So, that obviously means we’ll be beginning the book of second Chronicles today.
Introduction to the book of Second Chronicles:
And as we’ve already talked about at length as we were going through Samuel and Kings and first Chronicles, this delineation, like there’s nothing to really describe here as far as like this is the brand-new totally different context for where were going. It’s the same thing. We just basically turned the page. These delineations between first and second Chronicles were for ease of reference. But second Chronicles does begin in the same way that second Kings does. We finished the reign of King David yesterday. And, so, David died at a ripe old age as we concluded first Chronicles. And, so, now as we begin second Chronicles we’re moving into the reign of Solomon and all that comes next. And I guess I could also say what…what…what I’ve said all along as we’ve come through this territory, first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles, they both kind of cover the same stories in the same time period with the same Kings and the same situations and they sound very, very familiar because they are very familiar bur they’re just coming from a little bit of a different perspective whereas first and second Kings is kind of coming from the royal perspective versus second Chronicles is coming from the priestly perspective on the same material, the same stories. And, so let’s dive into another book. We’ll read second Chronicles chapters 1, 2 and 3 today and we’re reading from the New English Translation this week.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we are, you know, moving into the thick of Romans, not that Romans doesn’t kind of start out in the thick because it does, but we’ve been kind of moving through the different arguments or persuasions Paul is laying out in order to reveal the truth that he’s trying to communicate. And, so, a number of really important things have happened. Paul has not redefined the Mosaic law, but put it in a different perspective by saying, “things were happening on this earth before the law was given and those things were happening among our people, like our patriarchs, like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whose name became Israel of which we are the children. There was no Mosaic law. Moses was not going to be born for a long time.” And, so, Paul goes back to Abraham, the start of it all, the beginning person for the Hebrew people and said, “he didn’t obey a law. He was circumcised, but not before he was declared righteous before God because he believed and followed God and trusted God. Like, his circumcision was a sign of the covenant.” So, Paul in part is trying to refrain the Mosaic law and saying, “like this isn’t the end all be all. This is the pathway to righteousness, but nobody can do it. Nobody’s gonna earn their way into righteousness before God and stand before God righteous and there’s nothing God can say about it because they just have achieved perfection. And all of a sudden they are almost divine in the presence of God made righteous before Him on their own.” Ans, so then Paul argues, “the law is what revealed our transgressions. Like it was the line in the sand, this measuring rod that revealed how sinful we are, how rebellious we are toward God because we can’t achieve it and it exposes that fact. But even while we were estranged, even while we were enemies of God falling deeper and deeper into the fact that we cannot possibly achieve a righteous life before God fully and perfected on our own, even in our inability, even while we were estranged from Him, he wouldn’t let us go. He came for us to rescue us.” And, so, as we move into today’s reading then Paul is discussing sin, this essence of rebellion basically, this interruption of the shalom that God offers and desires for the people of the earth. I mean, these obvious questions arise then, “okay. So, I don’t have to…I don’t have to try to become righteous by obeying these rules. These rules are good and ethical and upright and they provide a context for my life but they aren't…like I’m not gonna achieve perfection before God and I can’t, but God is going to make me righteous by His grace. So, sin doesn’t have a place in my story anymore. So, then I guess I can sin and do whatever I want because it’s not my own attempt at righteousness that’s going to do anything. It’s God’s grace that’s gonna do everything.” And, so, Paul’s kind of addressing this, “then should we keep sinning so that God can show more and more grace?” Of course, Paul’s like, “absolute not!” He says that a couple of times in our reading today, “absolutely not, because that sinful nature, that sinful self the separates us from God estranges us from God, that person was crucified with Christ so that sin loses its power. We’re not slaves to it anymore”, which actually kind of confronts us with the…with the fact that we must consider our reality then because we’re kind of kind of in the same boat knowing when we have willingly done what we know is wrong and interrupted relationship through sin. And, so, like we’re constantly aware of our shortcomings. But what Paul’s trying to reveal here is that sin really isn’t supposed to be category in our lives anymore because we have been resurrected with Christ and have been made a new creation. This is where things start getting mind boggling. We are not who we were before Christ in any way according the apostle Paul. Like the transformation at the spiritual level, at the essence of our identity, we have been made new, a new creation. Interrupting the shalom that God offers us, right, interrupting the relationship that God offers to us isn’t just a foregone conclusion. For Paul, he’s like, “this all boils down to who you’re going to obey. You’re going to be a slave or a servant of whatever you obey. So, you have the choice, the volition to be a slave to sin, but how many more times do you need to be told where that road goes. It leads to death and destruction. But you now have a choice as a child of God choose to serve God which leads to righteousness and eternal life.” And the point is that we don’t have…like we live our lives, certainly feeling regret and guilt for the transgressions of our lives. We understand that we are forgiven. We embrace that forgiveness and step into a relationship with God but then we fall down and then we get up and we fall down and we get up and over time can accumulate until we have so much condemnation upon ourselves that we can’t even find the sky anymore. And then we feel the crush of God’s mercy when we don’t deserve it and we realize how much He loves us and then we are restored only to maybe repeat the same pattern over and over and over, like we have one foot in one world and one foot in another world. And what Paul’s saying like, “you don’t have to do that. Like, it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a story and it’s called good news and it’s called the gospel. You are a new creature. You aren’t enslaved to the darkness in any way. It’s not mandatory that you’re going to just fall down and have to get up again, you’ve been lifted up as a new creation made righteous before God. There’s nothing you can ever do to earn this and when you choose to enslave yourself to the darkness it’s almost like you’re trying to go back and live within a corpse that is already dead and gone. It’s almost like you are trying to be a zombie in the darkness. When you do that you are a new creature.” The picture more fleshed out of what this actually…like the repercussions of this or the implications of this are fleshed out a lot in the letter to the Ephesians, which we will get to. And it’s so good. It’s like too good to be true. The good news is way better news than we may think or have thought. But even when we kind of see the vista and it comes crashing in and we see it for a second, it still does become, “how do I practically live this in my everyday life because I sin every day and it’s not on accident. I do things I know I shouldn’t do. I say things I know I shouldn’t say. And the Scriptures bear the truth that when I do…like when I say something I shouldn’t have said to my spouse or to my child or to my coworker or whoever, I see that that brings darkness that leads to death and destruction in some way. How do I escape this pattern?” We escape this pattern like we escape every other pattern, we stop doing the pattern. Like we…I have been married a long time and I have still found myself unsuccessful on many, many occasions where I find coming out of my mouth things I should not be saying and they are not fully things that I mean and they are in the heat of the moment and I regret them. What do we do with that or any other kind of transgression? What we do? And we can say, “well I asked God to forgive me. He forgives me and I move on.” But over time, like these things accumulate and you just start feeling like you’re a failure in every sort of way. So, what is…what is the antidote? It’s understanding that God is a God of radical reconciliation. When we trespass against our brother or sister, we seek reconciliation and forgiveness. When we have sinned against our neighbor, we restore it, we seek it out. God, while we were still sinners, while we were the enemies of God, desired reconciliation and provided it. We’re supposed to do the same thing every time. And over time, these things accumulate until we are living in the light with nothing between us or anyone else. We are living in the truth. We aren’t trying to be right. We aren’t trying to even demand our rights. We are trying to be the light of the world. It’s a bigger story that we have been swept into. And may we begin to see that. And may we begin to allow the Holy Spirit to flesh out, in a very literal way, flesh out within our own flesh what that’s gonna look like according to our own individual stories and relationships and locations.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit we invite You. Come Holy Spirit and help us understand that our failures are not the end of the story. We are moving toward the light. We are leaving into the fact that we have been created anew at the most deep level, at the spiritual level. We are new creations. And our mission is to infect this world with the knowledge of the good news, that we can all be new creations. There is a totally different way of being upon the earth, one that is reconciled and made righteous before You our Creator allowing us to become aware that we are Your children and all of the polarization of the world that tries to deceive and crush us can’t change the reality that we have been made new. And we don’t have to live as servants to anyone but You. Come Holy Spirit. Lead us into all truth we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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And that’s it for today on Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hi DAB family this is Joe from Pennsylvania. Just calling in to encourage the brothers and sisters that have been struggling with not feeling worthy. I’ve heard a lot of prayer requests come in about that and we just speak to that in Jesus’ name. And I just want to encourage everybody that…that I struggled with this for a long time. None of us are worthy on our own but through the power and the blood of Jesus we all become worthy. And that took me a long time to…to realize and to understand but there’s so many promises in the word of God. If we are…if we confess our sin, He’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us or from all unrighteousness. And just…I just want to encourage everyone that’s struggling with that just to think about the faithfulness of God. God is not a man that He can lie. And the Bible says to come boldly to the throne of grace. And we don’t do that on our own. We come boldly through His son who gave His life for us. So, I just want to encourage everybody to stand…that’s struggling with that to stand in humility and to resist the devil when he tells you that you’re not worthy because you are worthy through the blood of Jesus. And Father I just pray that you would lift up those thoughts in the minds of people that are struggling in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Hello, my DAB family this is Mark Street from Sydney Australia. Today is Thursday, the 16th of July and I am calling in for some prayer and to touch base as well but like everybody I suppose I haven’t been in a great mental state. This year has been a challenging year. I’ve lost 20% my wage but that’s not really what I’m calling in for. I’ve decided I want to start a business and I want to resign 15th of August. Now, I have run a business in the past. I know what the trouble of running a business __. I know what I’m up against, but I do want this to be kinda like God’s…what God wants for me. So, could you please pray? Before I put my resignation in, if God does not want me to do this that He makes it very clear to me before I put my resignation in. I also don’t want to be scared of man because I feel a little bit like the scouts of Moses that’s going out scanning the promised land and seeing the big Giants and I’m feeling fearful but I don’t want that to overrule my decision as well. I’ve done all the work but please pray for me and I’m listening every day. Thanks family. Love you. Bye.
Hi this is Steve from Arizona I just want to call in with prayers for John from the Sudan about the loss of his brother and also about the gentleman from Kenya whose brother’s daughter was kidnapped. I’m glad they found her alive, but my prayers go out to all the people in Nigeria and Kenya who are being persecuted because of their faith. God bless you all. Bye-bye.
Hello DAB family this is Veronica. This is my second time I’m calling, and I want…first wanted to say thank you to everybody for this community. I wanted to say a special thanks to Victoria Soldier. I heard your prayer calling me by name and that really blessed my heart and I thank you for that and everybody that’s prayed for me. I really wanted to call because I…the thing that I should have been asking for prayer is I’m in an unequally yoked marriage. I’ve been praying for salvation from the husband for over 10 years. I also, due to infertility and the depression that comes with that, I have been on antidepressants and sleeping pills and I have a shopping addiction that I really want to be delivered from. And I just want peace. I don’t want to depend on something to wake me up in the morning and something to help me go back to sleep and to please pray for my marriage. And my husband and I to just accept God’s will for our lives and our marriage. Thank you DAB family. God bless all of you. Bye-bye.
Hey DAB family I’m just calling to say that I’m so thankful for you all. I listen every day and I look forward to hearing your voices especially during such an alone…a lonely time with the pandemic. In general, I just…I’m calling to bring awareness and ask for prayers for Armenia. Armenia, if you don’t know, is a very small beautiful Christian country in Western Asia. It is noticed Cilicia in the Bible and there’s said to be descendants of Noah, specifically Japheth’s grandson named Hike. But why I’m calling is because Armenia has been through a lot. They’ve been through genocide where 1.5 million Armenians were killed for being Christian and to this day is being denied. And right now, they are being attacked by a neighboring country and the people of that country are asking to caution on the side of the Armenians again. I ask that you keep Armenia in your prayers, that the war will stop. Armenians want this war to stop. We just want peace. Please keep Armenia in your prayers. Thank you.
Good afternoon DAB family this is Lady of victory it is Thursday, July 16th and I am calling in for Casey Short or is it Stacy Short, 13-year-old who says she listens with her family every evening at 8 o’clock. Such a precious young lady. She said in today’s society we can be easily influenced. And, so, she wanted to be prayed over. God what a precious, precious daughter that at 13 years old she recognizes that she could be influenced God by social media, by her surroundings, by her friends, by what she sees with her eyes God but she is recognizing Father that that stuff that she’s with her eyes is temporal but it’s only what is in the Spirit that is everlasting. And, so, I lift Your baby girl up to You or Your Young lady up to You God asking that You would just show Yourself mighty and strong in her life. She desires Lord God to be the Young lady that You have called for her to be, not to conform to what society wants her to be or thinks she should be. And, so God I lift up Your daughter up to You, Casey, I believe she said Casey Short. God I am lifting her up to You. You know her intricately God. You know her because You made her fearfully and wonderfully. And, so, I lift her up to You asking God that she will dare to stand out God, that she will dare to not fit in, that she would dare to even be ostracized God by standing up for what is right and not for what is popular. So, I ask Father that You will strengthen her, that You will give her all that she needs, surround her with friends that are going to encourage her in the Lord and not influence her with society. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Hi there this is Marie from Alberta Canada. And Marta I just heard your call and I will be praying for you. Marta from Alberta Canada, you said that your sons had just been diagnosed with autism and I have a son too and he was diagnosed a long time ago. He’s ten now, almost eleven and it’s been a long road. Lots of lifestyle changes but one of the things that has helped so much with his depression and depressive thoughts is listening to the Daily Audio Bible. He listens every morning and has been doing it for more than a year now and just memorizing the Scripture and listening to the Daily Audio Bible every morning and the word is just getting in him and at least those depressive thoughts about himself have almost disappeared. So, praise the Lord I will be praying for you because I know what you’re going through. Thank you.