Genesis 24:52-26:16, Matthew 8:18-34, Psalms 10:1-15, Proverbs 3:7-8
Today is the 11th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you today as we continue our journey and sail out of the harbor and into the deep. And right now we’re kind of sailing through the territory of the book of Genesis and the book of Matthew. So, we’re just getting going but we are definitely on our way. So, let’s get to it. We’re reading from the New Living translation this week and by way of reminder we’re in the book of Genesis, obviously but we are hearing of the story of Abraham’s family. And this family although we…we get to know a lot of people and maybe at times it seems tedious or whatever, this shapes the Bible. This family is an important piece of the story, irreplaceable piece of the story for that matter. So, we have Abraham and his wife Sarah, and they were old, too old to have children anyway, as we recall. And a miracle baby was born. His name was Isaac. Now Isaac has grown up. Abraham is very elderly and it’s time for Isaac to have a wife and that’s where we are. A servant has been sent back to Abraham’s people to find a wife for Isaac. And the servant has found someone that meets the criteria completely and her name is Rebekah and the family has agreed to let Rebecca go back and become Isaac’s wife and that’s kind of where we find ourselves. Genesis chapter 24 verse 52 through 26 verse 16 today.
Commentary:
Okay. As I have said already many times this year, but as we say many times during our journey the book of Proverbs really can say in awful lot in a sentence or two. It just…all of the trimmings, all of the trappings, all of the nuances are largely not there. The direct, unfiltered truth of wisdom’s voice is usually what cuts through. And, so, today, “don’t be impressed with your own wisdom”, right? Like, don’t think you know more than you think you know. Don’t think you’ve experienced more than you think you have. That’s not really wisdom. Wisdom actually knows when it doesn’t know. So, wisdom says instead of that, “fear the Lord and turn away from evil.” Now, we know that. Like we all know that. So, we can be like, “that’s just common knowledge. That’s common wisdom.” But what wisdom is saying here is that that leads somewhere. “Fear the Lord and turn away from evil”, that is a path, that’s a trajectory and where that road leads is “healing for your body and strength for your bones”. So, we probably hadn’t put that all together before. But when we walk the path that reveres and holds in awe and esteem the fear of the Lord and we turn away from what we know is evil then we’re bringing healing to ourselves, healing to our bones, strength for our bones, healing for our bodies. And you could go, “I don’t know how those things all work, how does that even…how do they have anything to do with each other?” What harm is there in testing this? What harm is there in fearing the Lord and turning away from evil and seeing if the byproduct is healing for our body and strength for our bones?
And then let’s go back to Genesis. This is the point now where we have met a number of people obviously in the book of Genesis, but we have begun to focus our attention on the family and the family line, the descendants of Abraham. And I’ve said many times, like this guy Abraham and his wife Sarah and their son of promise Isaac, like they…they are a part of the rest of the story. And, so, it’s very important that we not forget that and as these descendants, as the coming generations are introduced to us, at this point it’s really vital that we remember and pay attention to who they are. So, Abraham had children. We’ve read about his children, but the firstborn, like the one with the rights, the one that was inheriting everything, the one through whom the promise would continue, his name was Isaac. He’s the one that was on Mount Moriah with Abraham, right, where God said, “bring your son and give him…give him as a sacrifice. Like, we’ve gone through that story. That’s Isaac. As Abraham was getting old Isaac needed a spouse and a servant was sent back to the people, the family of Abraham. And Rebekah became Isaac’s wife. So, this is second-generation now. The children of Abraham, the child of Abraham. Today Rebekah had twins and there was an early prophecy, prophetic word basically, they’ll be at odds with one another throughout their lifetimes. Their names were Jacob and Esau, right? And Esau saw…sold his birthright. So, now we are at the grand children of Abraham. There’s also some things that we are beginning to start to observe about some of these people. With Abraham, we saw him twice claim that his wife Sarah was his sister to protect himself from harm. And certainly, this is part of the culture, this is part of what was necessary to do to survive the kinds of things that these men feared. However, we see trickery here. We saw that Abraham went to King Abimelech at Arar and tricked him that his wife Sarah was his sister and that brought about a big scandal. So, today Isaac and Rebekah, the next generation, go to the same town with the same King making the same claim, “she’s my sister.” And, so, there’s like a little bit of trickery going on here. And then when Rebekah has the twins, and they get old enough we see that Jacob practices some trickery of his own with his brother Esau. That trickery isn’t going to turn out to be a good thing. And in the end that trickery will be revisited upon Jacob. And I want to kinda give a spoiler, not because…because this isn’t like a novel that we’re reading, this is the Scriptures, and so understanding who these people are and how they play into the grand scheme of things does become important because so many of these stories, we will revisit them as they are revisited in the future in the Bible. So, we may jump a thousand years forward in the Bible referring back to the times that we are reading right now. So, I’m trying to keep us on track. So, Jacob and his trickery and the trickery that eventually is visited upon him actually creates a people that we will recognize. Here’s why. Someday Jacobs can grow up…and we’re gonna watch this all happen in the Scriptures…this will all play out in detail, but it’s nice to know where this is going. Jacob will eventually be married and will eventually have children, 12 of them to be specific. Jacob’s name will eventually be changed. His name will become Israel and his kids are the children of Israel and they indeed permeate every page of the rest of the Bible. That’s where we are and that’s where this is going. And, so, it’s important for us to hold on to the story, hold onto the context because it brings out so much meaning, it clicks so much of these disjointed feeling stories together. We begin understand we’re talking about the same family here. We’re going through many, many, many generations of this family. But it is this family, the family of Abraham that touches the rest of the Bible and touches the rest of the world up until today.
Prayer:
Father we thank You for Your word and we thank You for context. Context in life brings clarity, understanding, meaning, and purpose. And Your word has plenty of context it’s just that we’ve never really taken the time to really dive into it and understand it. It’s a big book full of all kinds of confusing things but that’s not the case this year. As we sail across this year, we look to Your Holy Spirit to give us context as well as teaching and correction and rebuke and truth and comfort and healing. You have always loved us, and we will see that as this story continues to play out. So, come Holy Spirit we pray and plant the words that we read today deep inside of our hearts that they might one day yield a crop, that they might bring fruit into our lives 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:
Hi this is Leanne calling from northern Michigan. Hey, I am calling in response to the woman who called from London who was Muslim and converted to Christianity and is doing chronological and the daily readings for…with Brian and I am doing the same thing. And sister, I just want to say welcome to the family. O…you just got me in the heart and you’re asking for prayer for support. And, so, Father God I lift this woman up to You. I don’t remember her name but Father You know her, and I thank You that You have freed her that You are growing her. I just pray for Your hand of protection upon her Father, that You would help her to eagerly seek You, that Your word would come alive and speak truth into her life. Just bless her, bless her may she feel supported and feel Your love. And we just ask this in Jesus name. Amen.
Father God thank you so much for this day that you have given us. Thank you for the place you have placed us. Thank you for our homes and our villages, cities, towns, wherever it is Lord that…that we are, our workplaces. Father God we…we ask you to bless and to protect our homes and our workplaces and our cities and towns and villages. We ask you to protect our countries Lord and we pray for wisdom for our leaders be they our workplace leaders our city leaders our area leaders or…or country leaders those…those who have to make decisions. I pray Lord that you’d be giving them wisdom on how best to combat whatever situation they’re facing. I pray especially in this time of coronavirus that you’d give them the wisdom on when to put measures in place and when to ease those measures. And we pray that you’d be giving them the strength to make those hard decisions and that you’d be guiding them Lord. Father thank you so much for our health services. Thank you for all those healthcare professionals. Thank you for their training and thank you for their experience and thank you Lord for our hospitals and our surgeries and our care homes and all those other places. We ask you to protect those as well into be giving our workers strength and energy and wisdom as they as their…as they face their…
Daily Audio Bible family this is David from Tyrone and this is my first time calling in but it’s actually my third year of going through the Bible with you. This community means a lot to me and I wanted to know that I pray for you every day and especially those that are hurting and have nowhere else to go. And I really want to thank Brian and his family for this ministry. It’s…it’s meant a lot to me over the years. A week ago, I was so looking forward to the new year and putting 2020 behind us but on January 1my mother of 78 years suddenly died of a massive heart attack. I bring this to the camp for two reasons, one I would really appreciate your prayers for my family and second, I just wanted to share something. My mom and I always ended our calls and goodbyes with I love you. So, the last thing I said to her the morning she died was I love you and the last thing she said to me was I love you. And what I’ve learned from this is just never wait until tomorrow to reconcile with people that you’re separated from or…or have disagreements from because you just truly never know if there’s going to be a tomorrow. And I just don’t want any of my DAB family to die or lose a loved one with regrets or bitterness. I know my mom’s in heaven just because of her walk and faith with the Lord and I also know that I will see her one day in heaven and my hope is that someday I will see all of you in heaven as well. And goodbye.
Hello friends and fellow children of the kingdom of God this is Sean here from Australia just checking in. This is my first prayer on the DAB. I want to give a shout out to Natalie for introducing me to this wonderful community and helping…helping put me toward the light of Jesus Christ and our Lord. Thank you. It’s been a long journey for me. I…I’ve managed to escape the clutches of the enemy and I give thanks to God every day for that. And the Lord has saved me…and very recently in fact. And I want to give thanks to all of you who for your ongoing support and all of you who struggle with drugs, alcohol, pornography, as I did. I want you to know that you’re not alone and God has a plan for you and just be patient and put your trust and your faith in Him because He will deliver you like He did for me. Thank you everyone. See ya.
Hello Daily Audio Bible family my name is Aretha and I’m in Taylor South Carolina and on September the 8th my mom died from Covid and I have had such a rough time just bouncing back. I feel stuck, I get angry. I’m just…I just feel hopeless at times. And I know God is with me but sometimes it seems like I can feel His presence but sometimes I can’t. Family, I need your prayers because I have my family that I need to take care of, and I can’t take care of them in this state. I can’t take care of myself in the state. And it’s like my mind is…just…I can’t get together. And I know that God has a purpose for me if I’m still here but I was very, very close to my mom and it just seems so hard, sometimes even unbearable to even go on. And I just think to myself, Lord how long will I be here suffering like this for my mom? So, I need prayers family. I need prayers. Pray for my nephew that my mom had since he was two weeks old. He’s living with me and he needs your prayers as well. His name is Denzil. Please pray for us family because we need you. And I just thank you for this…this opportunity to be able to share this with you guys and just please keep me in your prayers. Thank you.
Good morning Daily Audio Bible family my name is Victoria Overcomer and I live in __ Ohio. I found Daily Audio Bible online the beginning of last year and have been listening every day and it…it’s just awesome the way Brian reads and brings the word of God to life. But I have never called. But the reason why am calling today is because Zinab __ called from London and Zinab when I heard your name, I knew that you and I we come from the same country __ West Africa. Zinab I just want to let you know that you are not alone in…in this journey. I was also born and raised as a Muslim. My father built a mosque in our compound. I used to pray five daily prayers, but the Lord saved me, and I will never go back. I love the Lord Jesus and His grace and mercy upon my life. And all of my siblings, my brothers and sisters they’ve also come to know Jesus Christ. And I just…just keep want to encourage you. Keep the faith. I mean, it’s amazing what Jesus can do in your life when you walk with Him, when you just trust Him. It’s amazing at how He can transform your life and I’m just grateful in time for how He…