Jeremiah 19:1-21:14, 1 Thessalonians 5:4-28, Psalms 82:1-8, Proverbs 25:9-10
Today is the 12th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you as we move into our work week together, spending day by day time…time around the Global Campfire no matter what’s going on, releasing, reorienting, refreshing. And, so, let’s dive in. We’re reading from the New International Version this week. Jeremiah chapters 19, 20, and 21 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Jeremiah today we…we do get very, very clear perspective on why people would speak against Jeremiah and why they would be upset with Jeremiah. We also get some pretty profound perspective on God’s willingness to be as counterintuitive as He wants to be including dismantling what one would think was un-dismantlable. I’m not sure that’s a word, but to tear down something that seemed to be indestructible, basically in order to achieve His purposes. That shouldn’t be surprising because we see examples of it over and over and over in the Bible. But we usually try to kinda gloss over and not look at it because it’s so disruptive and uncomfortable. Basically, what God is telling the prophet Jeremiah to tell the people, all the people, including the royalty, including the leadership of the country that God’s intention is that Jerusalem will fall. Okay, so those inside of Jerusalem who are seeing themselves as God’s chosen people even though the prophets have been coming to them and talking about spiritual adultery and idolatry and all of the things including child sacrifice and all of the things, they still at an identity level believe there God’s chosen people and that Jerusalem is the footstool of the Lord, like His temple. This is non-destructible; this is God’s place and nothing is gonna tear it down. So, the closer they are to that orbit, no matter what they do, the safer they feel. Kind of a “too big to fail” sort of scenario. Of course, we…we in our time…we should be wise enough to know that nothing is like that. Nevertheless, God has made it clear that because of all the goings-on that have profaned what He had in mind in the first place that Je’s gonna tear it all down and He’s gonna use the Babylonians to do it. So, Jeremiah is trying to tell the people this in a time where things are generally peaceful and prosperous. And it’s only over the course of a couple of decades that these things…like that things heat up. So, the people are against Jeremiah, because he’s saying things that they can't…that they don’t believe can happen and that he’s just disrupting their good culture and their good peaceful time. And, so, they want to do away with him. And finally, God says, and I quote from Jeremiah here, “this is what the Lord says: See!” I love that because we’ve been trying to do that all year. So, for the Lord to say “see” is like saying, “open your eyes. Have eyes to see.” So, “this is what the Lord says. See! I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death.” In other words, you are at a critical crossroads, “Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine, or plague, but whoever goes out and surrenders to the Babylonians who are besieging you will live. They will escape with their lives. I have determined to do this city harm and not good, declares the Lord. It will be given into the hands of the king of Babylon and he will destroy it with fire.” Okay, that is disruptive if you live near God’s temple and believe that it’s indestructible, that God put His name there and he would defend it, For God to come and say I have chosen another nation to come in wipe this place clean because I have been warning you and warning you and warning you and warning you about your spiritual adultery about your idolatry about you…you have abandoned me. You have broken the covenant. And, so, now your own actions, the choices you made to walk away, you’re about to reap what you knew the curses of the covenant would be, here’s where it gets really disruptive. God is saying basically you’re at a crossroads. I’ve put a choice before you and it’s a life and death decision. If you want to live surrender to the enemy. Yeah! You see how hard what’s being said here is. Not only for Jeremiah the prophet to say it, to deliver the message but for the people to believe it because it sounds utterly wrong to them. It’s going to require something that they don’t want to do. It’s going to require them to take a very big, very counterintuitive, very disruptive step of faith. They’re gonna have to believe the word of the Lord through the prophet over what they believe brings them security, their city, their nation. And we will continue to see this struggle as we continue through the…the books of prophecy but specifically the book of Jeremiah as we continue this journey. But it should give us clues, as if we haven’t been given them already throughout the entire Bible this far, that when God decides that time is up, that His patience has run out in a certain direction and that wherever mankind would go from that point, will never circle back around to good, only evil, so He is starting over again, that that’s going to happen no matter how secure people feel in their environment. So, we could take this on a macro level and just, you know, look into the world and look for the clues but we can take this at a micro level, at a personal level and understand how much disruption makes us squirm, how much the interruption of the status quo makes us angry, how willing we become to focus all of our energy to keep things the same when God is wiping the slate clean because we’re not gonna circle back and we need to restart again. As it turns out in the story that we’re reading, Jerusalem is invaded by Babylon is conquered by Babylon and the city is destroyed. The temple is burned and destroyed the people are carried into exile. Oddly enough, it’s from that very context that we will see very soon the most famous passage in the Scriptures right now, “behold I know the plans that I have for you”, right? This is in the book of Jeremiah. And it’s within this context of God saying, “we have got to bulldoze. Like we have got to start over, the foundations are fragmented, we have got to start over again.” So, let’s ponder that as we move through the weeks ahead, the months ahead, around the world, in our own country, in our own hearts, in our own lives.
Prayer:
Come Holy Spirit we pray into this. We fight what is disruptive to us would, what causes us angst, what causes us confusion inside. We fight these things because they don’t feel good. They don’t feel right, and we can’t see that they’re not supposed to. They are escorting us. They are causing us to get up and move and You are willing to continue to make us uncomfortable until we will get up and move because we are not where we are supposed to be. Help us to trust in You, Father, even when it doesn’t make sense to us. You are our ultimate source of life. We trust You. So, whatever we’re seeing the disrupts us is different than what You are seeing, and we will trust in what You are doing over what we think. Come Holy Spirit into this we pray. In the mighty name of Jesus’, we ask. 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 Howard, I would like to pray for you dear. You have three daughters and you have a mom and you have a wife that you just dropped off for a biopsy. Lord I lift You up my brother. He has all these women surrounding him in his life Lord and every single one is so important for him. And I know that all the family is important for You. So, Lord I pray that everybody’s gonna to be safe Lord. And the boyfriend and daughters and grandchildren, first of all I pray for that Lord. I pray that their just gonna have company a great company and they’re going to be choosing just companions for themselves, saved people as well. So, I’m praying for that first of all. And I’m praying second of all for the health of everybody Lord. I know You give trials. We are so stubborn Lord. We know that You also give us all good gifts Lord. So, I pray Lord that You will open our eyes and we will see what we need to do in our situations, that You will open the eyes of this family and they’re going to see what they have to do in this situation of sickness, isolation. And I pray Lord that You will comfort this family with a lot of good things and a lot of good news Lord, and they will be rejoicing in You and Your will be done Lord. Let us take what You give. Let us be joyful in the day. Pour the joy into that family Lord. Pour the joy in every situation. Let them open their eyes to trust You in this.
Hey DAB this is white as snow in Tennessee except today it’s from Canada. One of the advantages of being a truck driver even though the borders still close because of Covid it is open for deliveries and things like that. So, I came in from Buffalo in New York into Ontario. So, I wanted to say hi to his little Cherry and all those who call in from Canada. And I was thinking that it doesn’t matter where I am, I can still feel close to anyone who calls in and prays through the good, the bad, the ugly. You know, this community is just so awesome it doesn’t matter where we are, we can still be connected. And it’s such a blessing. And just wanted to lift up Terry the Trucker. I pray that you’re granddaughters doing well and recovering and that if you haven’t gone home yet that you will be able to get home soon. You’ve…you know…being stuck in your truck having to quarantine until things are clear. But I just pray that your drawn closer to God through this and just know that, you know, there’s tons of people praying for you and thinking of you. And I just pray that everyone has a blessed day
Hey DABbers, this is Slave of Jesus in North Carolina. All right Holy Spirit let’s roll. Amen to prayers for Teagan and Hagan and their parents. Ronald Taylor, thinking about killing yourself brother. You know the enemy is all in…in your call because you got your name out, you said that, and everything else got garbled. So, we know that it’s the enemy. We know that. But here’s the cool thing. You’ve got tens of thousands of people praying for you and it’s like, you know, if…if you’ve never watched It’s a Wonderful Life, it’s an old classic movie, go watch that movie and see the beginning of the movie where all these people are praying and they send the guardian Angel down to help him. So, I can just see that happening for you. So, that is…that is just awesome. Pelham, I love your call about, you know, Joe the Protector who’s calling about Terry the Trucker, you know. See how this works everyone? This is like a pandemic of prayer, this entire society. So, I don’t know. I think that is so cool. Amen to prayers for Samson and his…his getting through college and for those that are trying to get in that class in Samson’s prison there. Amen to prayers for Jaelyn’s mom recovering from a wonderful birth. Darrell from Atlanta, man you’ve got a great voice. You’ve got, you know, you’ve got a voice for radio or something. But I just I love your call about using God’s word as a sword. So, you know, I love that too. Not much time I got left but Paul from South Wales, why follow Jesus 365 man. I just loved your call. That was really, really cool. Now, this call was supposed to be about Joe. So, I got 25 seconds left. Joe, you know, when I first came to Christ God was like, yeah I had this atheist family that I portrayed and God was like all these Bible verses about hey if you don’t leave your family than you’re not a real Christian. That was the enemy trying to destroy my wife, my marriage. They are gonna be…the only Jesus they’re gonna see is you. That’s it. You’ve got a chance with them. So, stick in there, Joe. Love you all…
Hello everybody this is God’s Smile here. I’ve struggled for a day to call in because it’s been really not worth it __. The pain that I live through has been with me since my 20s and I’m 54 but I would say the last 15 years have been very aggressive and most definitely the last couple of years have…I didn’t think these levels would be possible and this is with morphine and morphine based drugs. It still leaks through and becomes overwhelming. I usually get a couple of hours where I can ring in and smile with you and pray with you but it’s less weak, it’s not really, it’s been relentless. So, I’m just trying to get through. And I love Jesus and I sing praises to Him with tears. I will never deny Him, and I trust Him. I’m just finding it so incredibly hard because my __ the pain. Time’s running. I’m going leave it there. Kiss kiss.
Hi this is Radiant Rachel and I am just praising God today on my second anniversary October 7th. And I would like to lift some people up in honor of my anniversary. Dear Lord, I pray that you will surround the community of listeners here and will bless them in their relationships with partners who are seeking you Lord with eyes wide open and hearts wide open. I also want to pray for Howard who called in today from North Carolina. I pray that you will surround the women in his life with your healing power. And Lord you know what each and every one of their needs are. I pray that you will be with them and guide them and that you will bless that family. I also pray for Rebecca’s heart and Skye, her husband from Michigan. I pray for healing over Rebecca for her jaw and neck and spine as well as the seeds that they are planting. I pray that you will send good soil and water for them and that those people will join your kingdom in your name I pray. Amen.
[singing starts] Oh, how wonderful Oh how marvelous is my Saviors love for me. Oh, how wonderful Oh how marvelous is my Savior’s love for me. More. More about Jesus. More. More about Jesus. More of His saving fullness see more of His love who died for me. My Jesus is the sweetest name I know and He’s just the same as His lovely name. That’s the reason why I love Him so for Jesus is the sweetest name I know. His name is Jesus and He’s so wonderful. His name is Jesus and He’s so beautiful. His name is Jesus and He’s so marvelous just to know that He does love me [singing stops].