Isaiah 1:1-2:22, 2 Corinthians 10:1-18, Psalms 52:1-9, Proverbs 22:26-27
Today is the 8th day of September welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you today like it is every day because we come together and we take another step forward on the journey that we have committed to for this year, which is to move through the entire Bible together in community, day by day step-by-step, month by month. And, so, here we are at the threshold of some new territory in the Scriptures. We finished Song of Solomon yesterday with Jill and that was the wisdom literature of the Bible. We will fully conclude the wisdom literature and poetry of the Bible when we…when we conclude the book of Proverbs. But now we’re turning the corner in the Old Testament into the category known as the major prophets and we will begin with the book of Isaiah. And, so, before we do that let’s just fly over it. It’s good to get our bearings as we go into these prophetic books because they are full of symbolism and allegory and all kinds of interesting imagery.
Introduction to the book of Isaiah:
So, Isaiah, like we were just saying, is a part of the category known as the major prophets. And they’re not known as major prophets because they have more importance than the minor prophets. They’re considered the major prophets because of the amount of material that is in…in the major prophets. So, the major prophets are Isaiah, which we’re about to launch into and then Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel. So, for example, Isaiah contains 66 chapters and it’s one of the longer books in the Bible where some of the minor prophets, a lot of the minor prophets we’ll read through in one single day. But we’ll see as we begin to move into Isaiah that he is very passionate about what he’s saying. And we will also find a number of passages that we move through to be familiar, some of the passages in Isaiah are some of the most famous passages in the Bible. Isaiah is used fairly extensively to as it’s quoted in the New Testament. Jesus quoted from Isaiah 8 times in the Gospels. It was Isaiah that Jesus used to announce His ministry, like to launch His ministry in Nazareth when he’s like, “the spirit of the Lord is upon me”, right, “for He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” And if we remember right, Jesus does this declaration, He reads from the book of Isaiah and He says this prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing and all of the people wanted to throw him off of a cliff after that. So, we can see Isaiah has some significance certainly rooted in the Old Testament, but very influential in the new Testament. As far as trying to place Isaiah historically, we’re probably looking around the second half of the eighth century BC. So, I guess if you kind of think of King David and…and then you think all the way to Jesus, I think that’s approximately 1500 years. So, Isaiah is like halfway between, roughly. And it seems like Isaiah was a person of prestige in some sort of way. Like, maybe part of a part of the upper-class, part of the aristocracy because he had access to kings and royalty and if he didn’t, you’re not just gonna get a crazed peasant coming in out of the countryside and having access over a long period of time to a number of kings. So, he was probably well educated and well connected. He prophesied during the reigns of five different kings and all of these kings we moved through their stories when we were going through the books of Samuel and Kings and Chronicles. So, Isaiah brings us back into that time, specifically among the reigns of certain kings, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah and Manasseh, and then it’s under Manasseh that…that the tradition of the Christian faith as well as the Jewish tradition was that Isaiah was martyred by Manasseh who ordered him to be…who ordered him to be sawed in half. There’s no biblical reference to that. Like, there’s nothing verifying that tradition. I guess the closest we would have is a reference in Hebrews that says some…some of the prophets died by stoning, some were sawed in half others were killed with the sword. And the tradition is that Manasseh was so fed up with Isaiah that he had him killed in this way. Now as we launch in, we’re gonna see like the parts of the Bible where you’re like, “this is the angry God part, He’s working through the prophets and doom and gloom and judgment.” And we will see some sobering things that get set, especially in the first half of Isaiah and then the whole complexion changes and the comforts and the promise of restoration and the promise of hope begins to emerge and it becomes one of the more encouraging parts of the Bible. And we must remember, these prophetic books, plenty of symbolism, plenty of metaphor, plenty that can be taken allegorically, plenty of allegorical language. And that’s what we’ll experience in Isaiah and throughout the rest of the prophets. So, there are different lenses to approach these texts through but it’s interesting just to kind of watch ourselves as we hear it or as we read it. Like, “what are we…what do we notice as symbolism? And then what is it that we’re taking literally and how and why are we doing that?” It’s good to…it…it’s good to exercise those muscles especially as we move closer and closer to the end of the year and like books like Revelation. How do we determine what we’re taking literally? How do we determine what is symbolic? And how can we determine what the symbol…the symbolism is about? And, so, let’s just kind of watch ourselves as we’re hearing things and invite the Holy Spirit to lead us where we need to be led as we go through these books together and how they apply to our lives. So, we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. And let’s dive in. Isaiah chapters 1 and 2.
Prayer:
We thank you father for your word and we thank you for the many complexions that it brings us through. And as we enter the books of major prophecy now, we invite your Holy Spirit to lead and guide us. And as we continue through the letters of Paul we ask that you take us deeper in our understanding of our relationship with you, deeper in our understanding of what the transformation that you are doing within us looks like and how to live into that and apply it to our lives. We love you. We need you. We worship you. Our hope is in you and you alone. Holy Spirit well up from within and lead us deeper into Jesus today we ask in the precious name of our Savior. Amen.
Announcements:
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It’s a birthday in the Hardin house today. My son Maxwell who….who read Daily Audio Bible kids for a couple years when he was much younger leaves his teen years today and becomes 20, which, you know, these birthday’s, they go by and you start thinking, “ha…how did that happen. I still feel like I’m 20 in some areas of my life. Like I have a lot of growing up to do in my own self. How did this happen?” But congratulations to Max. And we rejoice and celebrate that today.
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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.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hello my name is Michelle I’m on my third trip around the sun on the DAB family journey and I just wanted to thank all of you for the encouragement of coming back every day and standing strong when things are hard and being real and true and brave and faithful. So, thank you. I hope I can encourage you too in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Hello DAB this is Jeremy Naff with…in Oregon and I’m just calling for the first time. I’ve been listening to the DAB now for…since January when we started the new…new time through the Bible and really just appreciate this. Blind Tony’s poem today just struck a note with me it’s almost like he was reading my own story. It’s when I get up early in the morning before the sun is up and listen to the DAB and spend time of the Lord. I was diagnosed with cancer four years ago and I’m just asking for prayer regarding that. The treatments haven’t been working. It’s now spreading to my lungs and now I’m going back on a backup chemo pill because the trials didn’t work, and I was kicked off of it. And I just want to spend my time wisely that I have if I don’t have much time. So, I pray that you would include me in your prayers for that, that the Lord would help me to know what to do, how to spend my time so that I’m not wasting my time. And pray for healing two. I really don’t want to have my life shortened necessarily although I do have peace about everything that’s going on in my life. So, I thank you for all of you guys prayer request. I pray for each and every one as I hear them. Thank you so much for your love and for your care. Have blessed day.
Dabbers, Jordan in Texas. Let’s pray. Father, I pray for Ryan Kelleher in…in California who called in letting us know about his heavy heart and him just thinking about maybe a possible mental illness. Not sure…it sounds like what’s going on. But Father we just give You thanks for Ryan and that he is turning his attention to You and wanting to walk this life with You and through whatever comes his way. And, so, Lord I pray that You would hold his heavy heart, that You would be to him a light yoke, an easy burden in exchange for this heavy heart. And, so, Lord thank You for what You’re doing in his life. We pray against mental illness, we ask You Father for the mind of Christ Father that You talk about in Your word and just stability and Lord just a rhythm of grace in his life that maybe he’s coming out stuff or making changes in his life as You lead him but that, You know, that he’s just walking with You with Your rhythm, with Your pace and not looking at this person or that person in comparison but that he’s just looking to You Father, that You are the author and finisher of his faith. And…and, so, anyways we love You Ryan. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Okay so Tony the Narrator here hello everybody I love each and every one of you. Just a quick update. I’m in my new place. I’m still unpacking but it’s…it’s a lovely room. It’s a 20-minute walk from work and things are really calm. I’d like to thank everybody who prayed for me on Facebook. You all know who you are, and I love all of you. And I just want you to know that I’m praying for each and every one of you. Please keep praying for Vesna, Will, and the young Muslim man who I only got to share one message and it seems to have all disappeared off of Facebook now. So, I’ll probably never find out what happened there, but I sent him a challenge. I said you believe that God speaks to you in your dreams, ask Jesus to explain to you if He’s real or not. Hopefully that’s going to hit home. So, yeah, Vesna and Will they’re friends who I got to share the gospel…I had an amazing day…I shared the gospel with three different people at three different times. It was amazing. So, everybody, I’m praying with you, crying with you, laughing you, rejoicing with you. It’s…it’s an emotional roller coaster this Daily Audio Bible thing isn’t it? It’s been six years of suffering, tears, joy, and jubilance. So, God bless you all. Love you Brian and the Hardin family. China and Ben, we…I’m loving you guys too. God bless you all. Bye-bye.
Please pray for my baby boy. He was born at 26 weeks, three months early and…and he was doing really well for the first few weeks of life. But he’s had two emergency surgeries because he had an intestinal perforation and we’d just gotten to the other side of that and his stomach was healing up and was finally able to consume real food…I mean not real food but breastmilk and we found that he had a heart murmur which lead to us doing an echocardiogram where we realized that he had not one but three heart defects and that he’s gonna need surgery. Please pray for my baby boy Noah that he will be safe. That he’ll make it through this. God has been so faithful __ for us and having him be born. __ for him and pray for peace for me and my husband __ comfort…
I would like to ask for prayer for Chris. He recently dedicated or re-dedicated his life or Jesus but he has been under spiritual and physical attack. I ask that you pray for him. Plus, he’s starting a new career which has taken a while because our states been pretty closed up and it’s caused him to get kind of depressed, but I pray or I ask that you would keep Chris in prayer. I believe God has His hand on him and the enemy doesn’t want him to move forward. So, I ask that you would please pray for his physical healing, spiritual healing, and these attacks on him would stop. He also needs…is in need of finances. But again, his name is Chris and I appreciate the Daily Audio Bible. This is my first time calling. God bless all of you.
Yes, I am calling on behalf of my son 17 years old my wife and I and family adopted him when he was 7, 10 years ago. I’m just asking for prayer. My 17-year-old son is in a residential treatment center and he suffers with a mental disease called the DID, which is dissociative identity disorder and also a mood dysregulation disorder. My son has been in lots of trouble and had a lot of issues and it’s been very difficult. The last couple years have been extremely difficult. I’m just asking for prayer for him, that he would have angels do battle on his behalf. I pray Lord that he would focus on himself and focus on God and that he would learn…do a better job learning and accepting responsibility for some of the actions and some of the things that he needs to change with himself. I just ask that everybody here on the Daily Audio Bible would pray for Marvin. He needs to be healed. He needs to have a future that he can look forward to. Thank you so much.