Isaiah 25:1-28:13, Galatians 3:10-22, Psalms 61:1-8, Proverbs 23:17-18
Today is September 17th welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you today just like it is great to be here with you any day. It is a great to be alive upon the earth no matter how crazy things get upon the earth. The life breath of our Father is within us. We are here. Our ears are open, and we invite the Holy Spirit to speak through the word of God as we do every day. And, so, let’s dive in. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. Isaiah chapter 25 verse 1 through 28 verse 13.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Galatians, the letter to the Galatians from what we read today we…we arrive at justification by faith. And that’s a theological term for sure. And…I mean…you know our eyes can glaze over with theological concepts easy enough. I like them…I love them actually, but it’s easy enough to…that it becomes cliché - justification through faith. But what is the essence here? And…and we’ve been talking about how Paul was controversial and we’ve even been kind of putting ourselves in the position of his hearers to understand like how complex and how difficult it would’ve been for them to embrace what Paul is saying and why they thought he was a heretic, but we should understand that this could not have been an easy road for Paul. We met Paul when his name was Saul and when we met him he was persecuting people who believed in Jesus trying to stamp this message out, even being present at the first…the first recorded martyrdom, that of Stephen, where Saul’s there holding everybody’s cloak while they’re killing, like throwing rocks at Stephen until he dies, which cannot be a good way to go. Paulk’s on his way to Damascus to continue the same, right, when he meet…when he meets Jesus. And, so, you can only imagine like the complete rewiring of a whole system that you have given your life to, the just…the complete disruption of it all for Paul so that he has to go and just really examine what it is he believes as it’s being revealed by Jesus. And, so, we can see why Paul would start at the beginning with Abraham and move forward. And we can see why things would start to click for Paul, once he does that because he begins to realize there isn’t any action, there isn’t any kind of obedience to a certain rule or set of rituals that is gonna make us righteous before God. Maybe if somebody could actually live into those things, maybe God is saying, “okay, if you can do all this then you can be righteous, but nobody can, nobody could. So, that can’t be the endgame.” So, Paul goes back to the beginning of the story, he goes back to Abraham, he finds out Abraham believed and that belief, that faith in God and what God had said, that trust in the experience that he had had, that this was real and wasn’t gonna be stolen from him, that God had spoken to him, and he believed it, that was counted to him as righteousness. And righteousness was Paul’s goal. That’s why he was such a strict Pharisee. That’s what they were trying to do, obey the law and be made righteous before God ultimately. So, Paul’s like, “hang on”, basically, “hang on. Abraham didn’t have a law to obey and he still was made righteous before God.” In fact, and as we read in our reading today, “the law didn’t come for 430 more years. So, what about all those people? Like were they able to be made righteous through faith in God? Because that was the only way. There was no rituals, there was no system of organization…organizing the people around something. They believed and were made righteous. This is the origin of justification by faith.” And, so, then, having that laid out, having that perspective unpacked, then Paul says, and I quote him, “is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” It’s back to his original, his…his constant argument. The law shows you that you are impossibly separated from God and dying that way unless you can achieve it, like unless you can live a perfectly. But you can’t and Abraham didn’t either. He believed. He believed. He trusted God. And, so, for Paul, he’s like “that’s all we have to do here. Like, that’s the long and short of it. We have to believe and allow that belief to transform us because we are experiencing the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is transforming us from within and leading us forward into life.” I mean we could just…you know…put an exclamation point there or whatever, and just go, “there, that’s the story, like that’s what he’s saying”, because that is what he’s saying. We just have to acknowledge based on all of the back story that we have…that we’ve entered into is that, as good of news as this was it was like too good, right? Like too good, too simple. Like “really, that’s it. I believe and then I die, and I’m resurrected, and I relax. I…I…I fall into the soft pillow of grace and I am then enveloped by the arms of the one that I can now call Father, Abba, God, the God that I’m so afraid of, that I’m following all of the rituals to try to…to try to stay on His good side. The hoops that I’m jumping through, the levers that I’m pulling, the recipes that I’m building, the stew of my life that I’m trying…trying to whip up, all of that’s not gonna get me there, like that doesn’t do anything? All I have to do is believe and let God transform me?” That is good news friends. That is the good news. And it was difficult good news for many to embrace. And then we gotta look in the mirror. What recipes are we making? What rituals are we following? What hoops are we jumping through? What levers are we trying to pull to get the same thing to get the attention of God and try to stay on His good side when it’s all done? All we have to do is believe and fall back into it, ease back into it. Yes, yes, we have to fight the flesh. Yes, we have to live into sanctification. Yes, it requires a lot of things, primarily endurance, but we’re not in this alone, we’re not navigating alone. It’s done. Our Father loves us enough to…enough to be so intimate with us that He dwells inside of us. He is within us. It is His work of sanctification. It is His work of conversion. It is His work of restoration and renewal. It’s not our work. We keep trying…we keep trying to be made righteous. We can’t. We can’t be made righteous. We can believe and become righteous because of the gift of God that is constantly at work within us. May we live into this good news. May this good news accelerate inside of us the transformation happening, moment by moment, day by day step by step as we continue our journey through life with our Father.
Prayer:
Father You are so good. When we understand this, You are so good. And, so, much that You have made available to us through faith we’re still trying to earn and we’re still feeling guilty every single step of the way because we can’t earn it. When You have to find moments of exasperation, I suppose You don’t, Your God, but You have to have these moments where it’s, “like my darling, my son, my daughter, my precious one, You don’t have to do this, it’s done. Let’s enjoy being together. Let’s enjoy life together. And as You live into this and it transforms You then You will be doing what You’re supposed to be doing. You will be shining brighter than You can possibly know.” Help us live into this. Come Holy Spirit, well up from within us. Help us to live this today. We ask in the name of the risen Christ. Amen.
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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:
Hi everybody it’s Carla Jean from Promp Nevada I’m calling with praise report. Many of you remember that last year I was divorced from my husband of 25 years and at the beginning of this year I lost my job and I was homeless and he allowed me to stay in his guestroom and we rekindled our relationship and on Friday, September 11th on what would’ve been our 27th wedding anniversary we were remarried. I know that many of you had prayed and I’m just so thankful for this community. And today on the 13th Brian read from second Corinthians 13:11, “rejoice, strive for full restoration. Encourage one another. Be of one mind. Live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you.” Thank you, my brothers and sisters for encouraging me, for being of one mind, and for living a life of peace. Please know that I pray for all of you every single day. I love you and I’m just rejoicing. God bless. Bye.
Hi this is Paul from Wales my DABber name is Why I Follow Jesus 365 which I run on Facebook but today I was out on mission again. I’m just grateful for the way that following the DAB has absolutely changed my life over the last five years. And saw another two people saved this morning. That’s either the 28 or 29. Got three people in the message book waiting to discuss Jesus. Be praying for them for a while. And just want to give a praise report. God’s at work. It’s fantastic. It’s going brilliant and none of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t started with DAB. And it’s just changed my life to walk the walk and be encouraged. That’s were called to do. And as much as giving mission and telling people God loves you and has a perfect plan for your life it really is about us learning to be obedient. And until we do as He tells us people won’t be saved and it’s just hopefully an encouragement for somebody no matter the difficulties in the challenges. And the other fantastic thing is I learned this week to really follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance in my personal life over things like buying cars. And none of that what I even have attempted to consider before DAB. So, thank you bless you take care stay safe in America, terrible what I’m seeing on the news. You’re in my prayers. Take care.
[Singing starts] dear God please help all the people that are in the fire. Please help them to be safe and not to get hurt. Please help them to know that you’re with them. Dear Lord, we love you so much. Dear Lord, we love you. You’re in our heart. We’re in yours too. Please help other people to learn about you [singing stop’s]. Thank you.
Hi, DABbers this is Kari from California I am also a longtime listener in the first-time caller. Today is Monday the 14th I was just listening to the prayers and Sue’s from California I heard your prayer and just wanted to call and thank you for calling in for the first time to ask for prayer for your family. I was so touched by your message and will be praying for you and your family but also just encouraged by the faith that all of you have as you’re in the midst of all these challenges and a lot of unknown. You are standing strong in your faith and your encouragement has encouraged me and will encourage others. So, Lord we just lift up Sue’s and her family Lord. We lift up her husband who’s on hospice now and we just ask for Your intervention Lord. Be with the family as they walk through this time with him. Lord lift up Sue’s and ask that You would just take this depression away Lord, that You would flood her with Your peace and encourage her for her daughter and this cancer Lord. We ask for a miraculous healing. We rebuke this in Your name Father, and we claim healing for her daughter that she wouldn’t even have to start this chemo in October. And for her son, whatever is going on there that he’s not ready to share Lord that we also ask for healing for him. We ask for healing for Sue’s colon and we just ask Your grace and peace and mercy on this family. DABbers I love you all. Thank you for this community. Have a blessed day.
Hi, good morning this is Jeanette from Denmark. I’d really appreciate some prayer. I have recently had a virus and my body’s been trying to get back to normal after it. And I take some medicine to help keep my immune system up and when that is playing together with an infection it usually means I don’t sleep very well. I want to share what the Lord comforted me with last night while praying, that, yes, He is our God who sees us but He’s not a human being like people who only can look. He’s our shepherd who sees us through everything. When Abraham’s son Ishmael was together with his mother, the Egyptian slave in the desert, God didn’t just let them go. He sent an angel to provide water and encouragement. And our God is the very best shepherd we have. He’s more powerful than everything that is around us, no matter what it is. I love you guys over in the states. I am…I’m praying for you guys during the election season. Remember to guard the door of your heart. Be careful what goes in your eyes and your ears and have peace. The Lord sees you. The Lord knows you and He loves you.
Hi, Brian hi DABbers this is Emily in Seattle. I haven’t called in a while. I just wanted to let you know that things are good. Things are really good. I’m still dealing with my vision loss and that isn’t fun but everything else in our life can be summarized in one word, grace. The grace is abounding more and more in these last days and I pray you guys feel His grace as much as I do and are experiencing His grace even through all the hardships that we’re going through in these last days of COVID and everything happening in the world. And I just wanted to let you know that I love you all very, very much. God bless you guys so, so much. Keep listening to the DAB. Keep out there with your faith. Keep the faith going. You got this. I love you all. Bye.