Job 20:1-22:30, 2 Corinthians 1:1-11, Psalms 40:11-17, Proverbs 22:2-4
Today is the 26th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a wonderful to be here with you today as we continue our journey step-by-step day by day, week by week, month by month through the entire Bible in a year. And traveling a year together in each other’s lives as we go through this in community is…it is an awesome thing that we get to be alive at this time on the earth to share and fellowship and be the body of Christ all over the world. And, so, what a joy to come around the Global Campfire today together and take that next step forward. So, we are continuing to work our way through the book of Job and we concluded first Corinthians yesterday, which will bring us to second Corinthians when we get to the New Testament reading today, but we’ll talk about that when we get there. First, Job chapters 20, 21 and 22. And we’re reading from the Voice Translation this week.
Introduction to the book of second Corinthians:
Okay. As…as we said at the beginning, we…well as we knew yesterday probably, we concluded first Corinthians, a letter of Paul to the church at Corinth yesterday which brings us to the letter that we know as second Corinthians. And this is probably not the second letter the Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Like, it’s probably at least the third because there was a first one referenced in first Corinthians. Like in first Corinthians there was a letter referenced that was previous to that one, but that one’s probably not preserved or discovered but we’ll talk about that in a second. Pretty much among biblical scholars the authenticity of this letter is generally undisputed. And you may be like, “undisputed? This is the Bible. Of course Paul wrote it.” But there have been disputes ongoing…ongoing all the way back into the early church era about whether or not Paul wrote certain of these letters, which isn’t to say that they don’t belong in the Bible. They’re just certain letters and certain linguistics and certain things in letters that seem as if they…they happened at a later time because of the development of the church structure, things that wouldn’t have existed in Paul’s time or…or didn’t because they hadn’t been formed or fleshed out yet. And that used to bother me a little bit. It’s like, “well then that calls into question lots of things” but it doesn’t. I mean the author of the book of Hebrews has been unknown for a very long…there was a time that it was attributed to Paul, but there’s like no biblical scholars today pretty much that would say Paul is the author of Hebrews. So, the author is unknown and that’s what we get here when we come through some of these letters of Paul. They are Pauline for sure. And there are all kinds of explanations for why Paul may or may not have written a letter. Some of the explanations would be like, Paul dictated his letters, and somebody wrote down what he said. And, so, if he was using a different secretary a different scribe, somebody else to write down a different letter than the language would be a little bit different because it’s being written down by somebody else or as was common in the emerging early church schools around certain teachers and people would form. So, like maybe there was a Pauline school. Paul spent a lot of time in places like Ephesus where he’s doing the good work, where he’s teaching people in an ongoing way. And, so, they are being raised up in this kind of Pauline theology, this thought…the way that he sees things, the way that he received things from Christ and taught those things. And I guess this is a good time as any to just kind of go through those. This…this letter that we’re about to go into, second Corinthians, this is…this is an undisputed authentic letter of Paul. So is first Thessalonians and Galatians and first Corinthians, which we just read, as well as Philippians and Philemon, and Romans, which we already read. These are undisputed letters of Paul. And then there are the…kind of the disputed letters where scholars don’t agree, where there’s vigorous…and has been…like this isn’t new, this kind of biblical scholarship isn’t new at all. It’s very very old. Like it wasn’t invented in the year 2000 and we’ve been debating these things for the last 20 years. It’s ancient scholarship. This has been going on a long time. And, so, the letters that scholars aren’t in complete agreement that Paul actually authored although they’re Pauline in the thought would be, Ephesians, Colossians and second Thessalonians. And then the pastoral letters of Timothy – first, second Timothy and Titus – I mean they’re very few biblical scholars or historians that would…that would affirm that Paul wrote those letters, specifically there’s church structure etc. etc. in those letters that a historian could say like, “that hadn’t developed yet in Paul’s lifetime. So, this is of Paul’s thinking, but Paul probably didn’t write this.” So, does that make something not have any authority anymore in the Scriptures? Not to me, not to me at all. But I’m sharing these things because we’re going through the whole Bible together and we’re trying to get as much of the story, as much of the context of what’s being said as we possibly can so that we come out of a year in the Bible basically going like, that was the tip of the iceberg, I’m diving in so that we develop a relationship with the Scriptures throughout our lifetimes. So anyway, back to second Corinthians one of the authenticated letters of Paul. It’s just that second Corinthians has a few complexions to it. It almost seems like maybe more than one letter was stitched together to create this a cohesive thing that could be read among the churches. So, could be that this first letter that Paul is referring to in first Corinthians is actually stitched in…is a part of second Corinthians as well as…I mean some scholars think there’s almost up to like five different pieces of letters or notes or something that…that has been consolidated into second Corinthians. Others think it’s maybe a couple…a couple of different letters that were put together and consolidated so that they could be…they could be read. Nevertheless, Titus who was a son in the faith of Paul had visited the Corinthians and then later on met up with Paul during his travels, as he’s doing his missionary journey, and Paul then was able to hear from Titus some feedback on what was going on in Corinth and even some of the impact of his previous letter, which is what we just read. And, then, so Paul writes another letter, which we’ll begin today. And let’s not forget what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a cosmopolitan urban city in the Roman Empire and a church within that city. So, Corinth has everything that a big city has. It’s a sensual Roman city - many ideas, many persuasion…persuasions, it’s is a secular society, rebellion in a lot of ways - and as part of the culture some of these feelings, some of these persuasions they found their way into the church. And we can wonder like, “how would that happen?” And all you got to do is go to any church today and see that it’s the same…like we are informed by the culture that we live in. So, we live in one part of the United States, we’re gonna have certain convictions and certain persuasions because our culture is that way. And we can go to a different part of the United States and find that our brothers and sisters think very differently about things. And then we can go to another country and find out that the experience of Jesus is…isvery different because it’s contextualized in the culture, into the way we can understand things. And, so, some of this is coming into the church at Corinth. And we remember when we read first Corinthians, division was a big issue. And this big issue has not dissipated. And, so, there…there were members in the…the Corinthian church as we remember from first Corinthians who were like, “I’m of Paul. I’m of Cephas. I’m of Apollo’s s. I’m of Christ. So, there’s like these divisions and some of that has continued to the point that there are certain people trying to kinda take over. So, like church politics existed in the early church. So, some people are taken over, trying to take over, get power, even questioning Paul’s authority at all, even though he founded the church. They’re questioning his leadership, his rules, whether he’s really an apostle, even his gospel, even the gospel itself. And, so, Paul’s addressing these kinds of things and they are not unfamiliar. It’s just a different time. They just wore different clothes. They just had different technology. But the heart of the matter…yeah…the heart of the matter is still with us today. And, so, with that we begin second Corinthians chapter 1 verses 1 through 11 today.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for its ability to do what it says, to keep at the very low level of our identity and speak to us there and we need that and we are grateful for that because we’re searching for identity and we search at superficial levels. We search for an identity by seeing how well we’re doing compared to somebody else when Your word can speak identity into the depths of our souls. And, so we are grateful and we invite Your Holy Spirit to plant the words spoken each day into the soil of our hearts, that we may be fruitful, that we may bear the fruit of the spirit bountifully, overflowing, a harvest so rich that it spills out of our lives and touches everyone around us. This is our work. and this is accomplished by surrendering to You. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. 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.