Genesis 11:1-13:4, Matthew 5:1-26, Psalms 5:1-12, Proverbs 1:24-28
Today is the 5th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today as we continue to get moved into the year and moving out away from the shoreline of the new year and into the year. And, so, we…we’ve moved into all the books that we’re reading, the four different books - Genesis, Matthew, Psalms and Proverbs right now. So, we have some orientation. So, let’s get into the Scriptures together. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Genesis chapter 11 verse 1 through 13 verse 4 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, there’s so much that we could talk about today from…from our reading. Let’s start with the Proverbs. Let’s remember that this voice is the voice of wisdom. This feminine voice of wisdom who introduced herself to us, In fact, she’s continuing to introduce herself to us in today’s reading. And we read today that, you know, if you don't…if you neglect the counsel of wisdom and don’t accept correction then wisdom will mock and laugh at you when your calamity comes upon you like a whirlwind and stress overtakes you. And can we look at that and go, “well, that’s not very nice of wisdom.” But here’s the key. Seeking wisdom after the fact, after you’ve already destroyed something in your life that wisdom could’ve counseled you around, but instead you ignored wisdom and went straight into this thing because it’s what you desired more than wisdom, then yes it can feel like wisdom is laughing. The voice of wisdom says basically after that happens, they’ll call me, but I won’t answer, they’ll search for me but won’t find me, right? When you’re in the middle of something that is destructive, and you have ignored the voice of wisdom and the counsel of the Holy Spirit and maybe even the counsel of friends and community and you’ve walked right into it then you can’t blame wisdom for where you are. You are where you are because that’s where you went when the voice of wisdom was always there, counseling you away from that series of decisions that made whatever it made. So let’s remember, retroactive wisdom may indeed give us wisdom for the future but we should be consulting wisdom about all of the choices that we make because they all matter and wisdom is always available.
Okay, let’s move back to the book of Matthew, because now we have been introduced to Jesus. We’ve seen His baptism. We’ve kinda got the lay of the land, but now He opens His mouth to teach. And, so, just like wisdom, the voice of Jesus is something we…we should be paying attention to the things that gets said here and tilling them into the soil of our lives because in a few months we would like them to yield of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. We would like transformation to happen because we’re spending this time around the Global Campfire letting God’s words speak into our lives. We want that…like the reason that we’re doing this is to be transformed. And, so, Jesus begins today what we famously know of as the sermon on the Mount. And this is Jesus central teaching, no question about it. And it’d lengthy. We’ll be spending a couple of days in it. But He begins to speak today with what is known as the Beatitudes, right? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the humble. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. Jesus is laying out, like the…it…as soon as He opens His mouth in the Bible to teach this is the first thing that He teaches. And what He is essentially saying is all of the things that…that you think are the way to go aren’t. You are living an almost backward life to the way that life was intended to be lived. And what we are beginning to see Jesus lay out is an argument for freedom through surrender. In other words, if you aren’t grasping on to things and defending your lines and your circles and your territories. If you understand that it’s all a gift and it’s all yours and it’s all from the hand of your Almighty Father, then you can let go of everything and be utterly dependent upon God. It’s just that our lives and our culture is so backward that. Very similar to what Jesus is saying in the Beatitudes, that to truly raise our hands in utter surrender and fall into complete trust in God, yeah, I mean we’ll do that as long as things are working right but the second that our expectations aren’t met, right, the second that things are not going the way we thought they should go then we simply expose that we are the ones that want to be sovereign over ourselves and we don’t fully trust God unless…unless we can predict the outcome, unless it’s really really clear and we can telegraph what’s gonna happen, which is a backward way of being a human being. And this is in part what Jesus is laying out today by calling out the truth. “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” So, Jesus describes these two things. “If the salt loses its taste, how can it be salty again. You can’t hide a city on a hill. Nobody lights a lamp and puts it under a basket. You put the lamp on the lampstand so that it can light the room.” And then He says, “in the same way let your light shine before others so they may see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven.” So, we see is that Jesus is very kind and very compassionate but has zero tolerance for the deception that has fogged and clouded the world. And, so, that He cuts right through and just like wisdom, we should pay attention. And we heard a term today for the first time a term that Jesus will use over and over, a term that will follow us through the rest of the year and that we will be considering for the rest of the year, “the kingdom of heaven”. Jesus is announcing things, revealing things, exposing that things that we are waiting for are already here among us. And we’ll see that begin to unfold in the next couple of days.
And then going back to Genesis we’re starting to fall into the rhythm there as well and we met some people, some people, desert dweller nomadic people who were moving around, but who ultimately hear God’s invitation into the…into the land of Canaan where we will find that God will promise this land. And the people that we met were Abram and Sarai and Lot. We will be traveling with them for a while and Abram will have a name change to Abraham and Sarai will have a name change to Sarah. I don’t think that’s too much of a spoiler, but that’s who we’re talking about. And we’ve probably all heard the names Abraham and Sarah before. This is who we’re talking about right here in the book of Genesis and the covenantal relationship between Abraham and God is also something that is going to permeate the rest of the Bible. So, it’s important that we pay attention to the details of their story as we go through it because that story is a fundamental part of the rest of the story of the Bible including the story of the Christian faith. So, we’re getting taught and we’re getting context, and that is a beautiful thing as we continue to sail out into the deep because we’re gonna need both as we move our way through the Bible and seek the transformation that the Scriptures bring as it counsels and corrects and comforts us.
Prayer:
Father we are so thankful. We are so grateful to be here today to be on this planet that you have created breathing oxygen that sustains our life, reminding us that each inhale is inspiration each exhale is an expiration. We have to trust you. It’s baked into who we are. We draw in that breath as a gift and then we have to let it go. We can’t hold it. We’ll die. We have to let it go in faith and utter dependence that the next one will come. So, at the baseline of our existence You are there, and we are grateful and when we feel lost, when we feel like you’re gone or we can’t find what to do or things have gotten confusing, we can come back and remember that we are breathing. We can come back to our breath and understand the breath of life is within us. You are here. And, so, come Holy Spirit into all that we’ve read and all that’s being presented and laid out for us as we move into this year. We ask that you would lead us into all truth. This is what we find as a promise in the Scriptures. We ask that you lead us on the narrow path that leads to life. And we began to get in the habit of being aware of your presence in the moment so that we might hear the voice of wisdom instead of just blasting through and causing mayhem and some sector of our lives. We are learning and we will continue to learn of our utter dependence upon you and how that this is the most freeing thing that we can ever realize, is that we must trust you and that there is no other place to place our hope. Come Holy Spirit into all of this we pray. In the 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:
Well happy New Year Daily Audio Bible family this is Jeff from Scepter and I just finished up listening to day one of my ninth year and also my wife Lita just finished up her very first of ever here at the Daily Audio Bible. So, that’s really cool. And I just wanted to share that. So, everybody just pray for us. If you don’t mind pray for us to gather wisdom and for Lita, my wife to get something out of this. And hopefully she’ll enjoy this as much as I have throughout the years. Looking forward to hearing everybody talking and over…over the next few weeks as always. And it’s good to be back. And love you all. And…
Happy New Year family this is your sister Julie in Idaho. Please pray with me. Father, our Father may this new year You set before us being dedicated to You Lord in advance. Bless us God. We ask in deep gratitude and we know that You go before us preparing our hearts and minds to see and hear You supernaturally more than we can ever ask or imagine. Please forgive us of all our brokenness and aspirations and shortcomings but being more like Jesus and throw them away as far as the east is from the west. Mend us Lord. Start something new in our lives and our hearts this year, today even. May we not look behind us at our failures but focus forward on each new day as it comes knowing full well that You are good, and You’ve created us in Your image Lord. Make us good. Fill us with Your Holy Spirit that we might fill others around us. Mend us and make us whole this year Lord. Abba bless us that we might be a blessing to all those You put in our lives. Please make Your presence known in every aspect of our lives. May we reflect Your glory onto this world as You mend us. To You Abba Father be all glory honor and praise. In the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Happy New Year family. And I hope that all of our original family is still here and that we’re welcoming all of our new family that is coming aboard. Welcome aboard this most beautiful platform that the Hardin family has provided for us. Thank you, Brian and may God bless you as you lead us and shepherd us this year into 2021 and may we all grow stronger in our faith and as a family. Welcome and well done. In Jesus’ name.
Happy new year DABbers it’s Grace Filled DeCastro here. It’s the 2nd of January and I just want to say thank you Brian and the Hardin family for a wonderful, beautiful start to the new year. Yesterday was amazing and today doubly amazing. It’s just…it’s just so insightful how you could go through the year Bible year after year and always learn something new. That’s was so beautiful about this. I just want to say thank you to all of the prayer warriors that come on here and pray for everybody. And, you know, they’re just so fantastic, may God bless you all and may you continue to grow in what you do. I just want to ask for prayer for myself as I go back to work on Monday. I’m a high-level teaching assistant and basically most of our little babies…I work in a primary school, small children…and most of them will be at home but for a lot of us teaching assistants, you know, we will have to go in looking after groups of vulnerable children or key workers. So, just pray for covering over us and protection over us and also pray for the amazing doctors and nurses out there that are really being bombarded with lots of new cases of patients who aren’t able to breath. There lacking oxygen, you know. Just pray that God sends a miracle for strength for the hospital teams and just a recovery, a miraculous recovery for the patients that are in there. Thank you all. I love you. God bless you. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Hello, my beautiful DAB family Happy New Year this is Hope from the Heartland. Let’s lean into what God is doing in our lives. I just wanted to call and say thank you so much to each one of you. I love listening to the Christmas party. It was so fun. Like Rebecca in Michigan, I have started driving for intsacart. And, so, to drive around and shop with all of you along with me was so much fun and it just warmed my heart. I especially loved hearing everyone’s voice but when Carla called in it just brought this ministry into focus for me and kind of what it has done in my life when she said, you know, “this happened and you prayed for me and then this happened” and I remember like individually her calls and then just to look back and see the hindsight of where God brought her and how we were championing her and coming around her, that just I don’t even know how to express it…it just meant so much to me. And then when Victoria soldier called, I was feeling a little lonely and I just had this picture of when she said I am with you and I was like she is so dear to me and just I imagined having a cup of tea with her and it just really warmed my heart. So, happiest of new year greetings to each of you. I pray the Lord’s favor and blessing on you and I’m so excited to set sail with you this year in the Daily Audio Bible. Love you guys. Bye.
Hello wonderful DAB family this is Hope from the Heartland again. Immediately after I sent in my last message my dad called to tell me that my mom had just passed away just a couple hours ago now. And I just wanted you to know that as I was thinking about her and praying for her, she had been suffering with Alzheimer’s for…early onset Alzheimer’s for a few years and just to grieve each thing as it was happening it was hard, and it was sad at the end because her whole wing came down with the virus. And, so, no visitors were allowed and just to see her not looking peaceful just looking very much in pain was so hard on my heart. I just wanted to go scoop her up and be with her and pray with her and just tell her she was loved, and I wasn’t able to do that. And it was really weighing heavily on my heart. And when I thought about just calling that prayer request in to you and praying for all the people around the world that are in that situation both the people that are alone in passing and their family members who can’t get to them I was just reminded because of the discipline of and the community of listening to the Bible every day and hearing your prayers that God was able to be with her, that He is sovereign, that He has ordained her days, that He has promised to be with each of us and never forsake us. And, so, I pray that He would send people and His Spirit, and He would take her home to be with Him in peace and with style. So, I love you family. Bye.