01/15/2021 DAB Transcript

Genesis 31:17-32:12, Matthew 10:24-11:6, Psalms 13:1-6, Proverbs 3:16-18

Today is the 15th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is great to be here with you today. I guess we’re pretty much as close to the center of the month as we can get. So, we can pat ourselves a little bit on the back and say we meet halfway through the first month of the year. And takes about that long to kind of settle into the rhythm. But we’ve got a good rhythm going and this rhythm is actually a strong rhythm, it will carry us all the way through the year, day by day step-by-step. And, so, let's…let’s take the next step forward. We’ve been working our way through the book of Genesis, which is what we will continue to until we finish the book of Genesis. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Genesis chapter 31 verse 17 through 32 verse 12. And by way of reminder, we are working through the story of Jacob right now. And Jacob has a desire to go back to his homeland after all of the years of serving his uncle Laban and he’s got a family now, quite a family, in fact, a very important family, one of the most important families if not the most important family in the world. This family is going to grow up to be the children of Israel and the tribes of Israel and their story permeates most of the Bible. So, let’s take the next step beginning in Genesis 31.

Commentary:

Okay. So, this I guess is as good of a day as any to talk about something pretty important for us, expectations. We can think that we don’t have expectations about our spiritual life are our physical lives or our relationships or whatever but even if we think that we don’t have expectations we actually do because if we didn’t then we would have completely let go and any set of circumstances that presented themselves would be okay. It would be just part of the flow of things and we would just keep moving. We didn’t expect anything to happen. But when our expectations go unmet. Even if they’re, like not conscious expectations, when things don’t go the way we had hoped or planned that usually sets us sideways depending how big of the issue it is. But in any way, even small, it just sets us off or it can set us completely sideways and ruin our day or month or year. So, here we are pretty much dead center of the month, the first month and we came into this journey with expectations. I mean the spiritual journey that we are on through the Bible may be dovetailing with other resolutions - diet, health, whatever, job, whatever - but we have expectations. And a lot of times when we think about our relationship with God and we think about our expectations we think that God is supposed to make life easier for us. It's…that’s like His job. His job is to make the trouble or the trial or the challenge or the thing that we have to endure just to make it easier to make it go away. In fact we can make a complete mess of our lives and expect Him to just make it all go away and then still get mad at Him for what we’ve done. So, we have expectations, and we may be expecting that life by default since we’re reading the Bible every day is gonna get easy. So, let’s just read a little bit from the Scriptures today, starting with the Psalms. This is from David, the king of Israel. “O Lord how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul with sorrow in my heart every day?” So, like I know there’s thousands of us hearing those words and saying, “that sounds like my life.” And then there are thousands of us that are like, “I know what that feels like.” And then there are thousands of us going, “I’m glad that’s not what’s going on with me right now”. But we generally understand what’s being said here, the cry of the heart. So, this is an ancient king of Israel voicing these things. So, another way of looking at it is that he faced unexpected challenges, even as the king and a man that the Bible tells us was a man after God’s own heart.

Let’s go to Genesis. Jacob is in the in between. He has fled to Laban his uncle in Padanaram and he has spent over two decades building up his household and he is going back to his homeland where his father is. And he’s right in between. Laban his uncle finds out that he’s fled and so he gathers his men, and they go in hot pursuit of Jacob. And we see that confrontation and we see that showdown and we see a covenant being made. And as soon as that’s over Jacob…Jacob continues his journey and sends word to his brother Esau. The last time those two guys saw each other they were mortal enemies. Like Esau was planning how he was gonna kill Jacob. And the next thing Jacob knows there’s a 400-person army in hot pursuit of his household. Like he’s getting it from both angles from behind him in his past and coming at him in his future. He’s like stuck in the middle.

And we move into the book of Matthew and walk alongside Jesus and we hear Him say, “I, the master of the household have been called the prince of demons. The members of my household will be called by even worse names.” Maybe you can see the theme here if you can see the theme screaming out of all the different sections of the Bible, that it’s not always gonna be easy. And that has nothing to do with whether we are growing spiritually. In fact, it’s in the challenging times that we do grow spiritually. Jesus goes on, says some really provocative things. “I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Your enemies will be right in your own household. If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you’re not worthy of being mine. If you love your son or daughter more than me, you’re not worthy of being mine. If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. If you cling to your life, you will lose it, but if you give up your life for me you will find it.” Wow. What is being said here? How do we live into this? Essentially what we see happening in the life of Jesus is borne out in the words that He says. Jesus is a sinless human being living true and operating in this world as God intended it. How do we know this? Because Jesus is God in the flesh. So, it’s obviously His intention. And what do we see Jesus doing continually? Calling the truth out of the shadows. In other words, calling the light out of the darkness or shining the light of truth into the dark shadows. But if you are hiding in the shadows and the light of truth exposes what you are doing, what do you do? You scramble for cover, you put up the smokescreen, you do all kinds of deceptive things to make it not be your fault that you were in the darkness. The Bible tells us, but we know this already, the darkness hates the light. That’s the most basic metaphor for the cosmic struggle of all things. The darkness hates the light. When the light exposes what is in the dark what is in the dark fights against the light to shut it down so that the status quo can remain the same, the darkness can permeate so that all of the devious deceptive things that happen in the darkness can continue forward. So, Jesus isn’t saying like, “I've…it was my mission to make a son be at enmity with his father and a daughter against her mother. Like I’m here just to make mayhem upon the earth.” What He’s saying is, “this is what happens when the truth comes.” And everyone who is not going to let go and surrender into the truth and live in the truth is going to be exposed. And the people that don’t want to be exposed, yeah, then you have a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And Jesus is saying, “if you love your father or mother more than you love me” in other words, “I am the way”…this is Jesus…”I am the way and the truth and the life. I am the light. I am showing you the way to go. If you love even the closest people in your life more than you love the truth, if you would rather stay in the dark and facilitate that instead of just dealing with the disruption of being true then maybe you are where you think you are.” And what fundamentally is going on here? Jesus is talking about expectations. And in the very next scene in the book of Matthew we have John the Baptist’s disciples coming to Jesus showing their expectations. “Are you, the one or should be…we be waiting for somebody else because you’re not doing what we thought you were going to do? Our expectations aren’t being met.” And their expectations were that a Messiah, the anointed one would come, and His mission would be very immediate to their situation. He would be a godly devout person who would be able to communicate and raise up a resistance that by the hand of God would succeed in defeating the Roman empire, at least in the region of Syria where Jerusalem and the Galilee were. So, John’s disciples are going, “are you the one or should we expect somebody different.” And Jesus said, go tell John what you see happening. You have got to stop with this military overthrow mentality. Go tell him what you’ve seen. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured the deaf hear, the dead are raised, good news is being preached to the poor. In other words, your expectations are clouding the fact that the kingdom of God is breaking in all around you. Everything foretold, this is what to expect. This isn’t gonna be some worldly military overthrow. This is gonna be an onslaught of the love of God descending upon the earth and revealing his kingdom. Go tell John what you’ve seen and heard. So, my brothers and sisters we’re exploring like from all over the Bible today this kind of theme of what we expect to happen. And what we do when that doesn’t happen reveals itself and its very, very penetrating. It actually goes to the bed rock of our faith, because if our faith is based upon our expectations, well, I guess we all know where that roads gonna go, not only from life experience but from the Bible itself. And, so, let’s do some re-adjusting as we continue to move into this year. Let’s re-adjust what we’re expecting to happen. What will happen if we will surrender is transformation. The way we look at the circumstances that are facing us, the way we face them and deal with them. But the circumstances themselves that life presents as challenges, those aren’t going to go away. It’s how we’re going to deal with them that will change. And that can change everything about the rest of this year in our lives.

Prayer:

Jesus, we come into that. It’s not our favorite topic. We like the stories that turn out “and they lived happily ever after.” And that is our story, but in between here and there is much learning and growing and resistance and endurance and challenge. And so often when we feel overwhelmed by the challenges of life it feels like we’re alone and its easy…easy for us to wallow in it. We get self-absorbed about it, we get angry about it, and we get angry at You about it when You have never left us. You have never abandoned us. And had we listened to You, had we listened to the voice of wisdom we may have been able to navigate much better. But life is full of challenges and this is how we grow. So, come Holy Spirit and reframe how we look at these things so that our expectations are growth and not ease. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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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 Daily Audio Bible this is Jeremy Neff from Southern Oregon. I just want to say thank you Brian and Hardin and family for all the efforts you put into reading this Bible like this. It always amazes me to hear that you’ve been doing this for 15 years and I just found out about a year ago. I can’t believe it. I always wanted to read through the Bible in my lifetime at least and this was the first year that I was able to complete that. And, so, I’ve appreciated this, and it’s helped me to get to the whole Bible and broaden my study time and getting into the word of God. And I just need this so bad. It’s hard for me to talk here. I…I talked earlier. I’m a cancer patient and I’ve been given just months before hospice and months to live and I really don’t have a lot of time to, but I just covet your prayers for everyone here and I thank you all for your prayers in the past. I’ve asked for prayer before and I just want to know I love you all and look forward to hearing you every day. And I just pray that God will bless each everyone in this year ahead. Thank you so much for your faithfulness Brian and…and I just pray that God will bless this country as we’re such in dire straits. And I worry about my family if I should go that my family will be left to deal with all this. So, I’m praying for my family and my wife and my grandkids. And I just pray that you’ll include them in your prayers too. Thank you. God bless each and every one of you.

Hello DAB family this is Abiola calling from New York. I called and once before, but I used a different name for 2021. Happy new year everyone. I’d like to be a lot more communicative with our community. You guys are such a blessing. For anyone that is new, stick with it. This is such an awesome community. The love that resonates through here is felt wherever you are. The growth that you will see is undeniable. Thank you so much Brian, Jill, and China for shepherding and leading this community the way you do. We are completely, completely blessed. So, I really like you guys to get to know me more. I like to pray with you and pray for you. 2020 was a crazy year and I was a little scared to listen because I wondered as a black female what I would hear, but the love, the outpouring of love, the overflowing of prayers and…and…and….and motivation and encouragement is incredible, and it was really, really a necessary tool in 2020. So, thank you guys. I would love to let you get to know more about me as time goes on. Tonja with a J, what I think you so much. God bless you for your enthusiasm finishing the Bible in a year. Thank you for reminding us that we should not be complacent about what we have here in this community. I want to pray that you keep up the strength. Do not lose heart. God bless you all.

Heavenly Father I want to pray for those who are out there that are feeling despair, that are feeling hopeless, that are feeling depressed Lord or at the end of their ropes or not sure what to do or are at a point where they are…are just down and out. And we all have times where we feel that we are down and out. But I know Lord that You have given us Your spirit, You have given us Your comfort. And I pray for them today and I ask Lord that You be with them, that You comfort them, that…that Your Holy Spirit speaks to them, that You pull them out of these…that place of despair and hopelessness and…and feeling depressed and in a place where they are not sure, especially when we go through really difficult circumstances or experiences or don’t even understand why we’re going through those experiences. But Father I know You’re the God of hope. You have given us hope. You have given us Lord Your…Your…Your love Lord. You have…You have spoken clearly in Your word when You have said that You’ve not given us that spirit of fear Lord but, You know, of love and of a sound mind Lord. I pray Father that You would go ahead and touch all individuals that are feeling this way and may they experience Lord Your love. May they know You love Lord. May they know Father that there is nothing God that they can do on this earth in their past and their present and their future that can separate them from Your love. Father I pray for them in Jesus’ name.

Good morning and happy new year family brother Chad from JOMO. It is the 11th January and I just got through listening to the 10th of January and Tonja with a J called in and I want to tell you I sat here celebrating with you. I mean, I was crying, I was clapping because I remember the first time that I finished the Bible in a year. I read it in a year before, but I don’t know. It was something else about sharing it with everybody around the world, with…with Brian and his family. Pretty much when this all started, I think I started in the second year or maybe the third. Anyway, I’ve been doing it for about 12 or 13 years. So, it was about the third year. Anyway, and it was it was joyous it was joyous celebration it really was. I just…I…I felt it all over again with my sister Tonja with a J when she hopped on here it just put a huge smile on my face. She brought tears to my eyes and I wanted to call and tell you I love you and am celebrating with you. Congratulations and keep on go and sister. Pull out your Bible. Follow along in your Bible. It actually helps you grow and learn further when you’re seeing the words while he’s reading them to you. It’s actually a blessing. I highly recommend that. It’s just a…it’s…it will help you dive in deeper and grow stronger. And we’re in those days where it’s important that we have the word hidden our hearts and we have the understanding of the entire counsel of the Lord because there’s much much going on in the world today that’s…that’s not exactly on our side. So, you stay strong, stay faithful, keep on listening keep on reading and you, I bless you. I bless and I thank you sister. I…I…just you made me…you made me happy, put a smile on my face. God bless you all have a blessed week. Brother Chad from JOMO.

Hello, my beautiful family this is Suzanne calling from Albuquerque. I just want to call and share something what I’ve been going through the last could of months. As you know I’m the only Christian in my family and it was so hurtful last year and really there was a lot of verbal abuse and rudeness and the more time that went by where nobody acknowledged how they treated me, the deeper the wound got and I was digging the hole. It was festering. It was like a weed and it was growing and the more I focused on what they had done to me the worse it got. I was watering the weeds. So, anyway I…I had to pardon this big time because it’s really up to me as a Christian to…to take my eyes off of that pain and just focus on Jesus. And the whole process of forgiveness, it’s a process because you can easily go back and start thinking about whatever it is. But I realize the moment I take my eyes off of Him and start looking at all this other insignificant really, insignificant stuff that…and my heart’s in danger. And, so, I’m getting a real clear picture of what the proverb means, “above all else guard your heart.” So, the moment I chose to make forgiveness the mainstay of my day the…that pain just lifted from me immediately. And, so, I’ve got peace in my life again and it’s because of Jesus and it’s because of forgiveness. They don’t have Jesus. So, I really need to start praying for them. And thank you family for being there.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family it’s a daughter of the king in Australia just wanting to touch base with people and especially people who are struggling with depression and anxiety and those sort of things. I want to remind myself and encourage others to really to give thanks just praise God for anything, especially for those of us who are struggling with depression. It’s a __ that’s a really wonderful and powerful thing to do and I…and I really think that it’s got some real breakthrough power. And, so, I have found that to be helpful for myself. So, I’m just at the beach. It’s summer in Australia so it’s really beautiful and I’m enjoying creation. And, so, it is so easy for me to thank God and praise Him for His beautiful creation and this beautiful climate and the beautiful sea and the sunset, just…and the rocks. It’s just too easy. So, I just want to pray really quickly. Father God I lift up everybody who’s struggling with depression and anxiety. And Father I pray that You would really minister to their hearts and encourage them and really draw them closer to You and…and just help them to even look at things from a little bit of a different perspective. Help us all to do that and encourage us to praise You even if it’s for one thing just each day at least. Alrighty. In Jesus’ name. Amen.