Exodus 8:1-9:35, Matthew 19:13-30, Psalms 24:1-10, Proverbs 6:1-5
Today is the 29th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a joy and a pleasure and an honor to be here with you today doing what we do, taking steps forward. We’re not taking steps backward or sideways. We are on a path that’s going to lead us one step after the other straightforward through a year and a through the Scriptures. And we are well on our way. So, it is a joy and an honor to be here. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week, picking up where we left off. The plagues are descending upon Egypt. The man Moses is leading his people although this is not his favorite thing to do. This wasn’t on his radar. This is what God has invited him into and he is being obedient. And Pharaoh the king of Egypt is having a hard time with it. So, let’s pick up the story. Exodus chapters 8 and 9 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, there’s plenty for us to touch on today. In the Old Testament the book of Exodus we are reading of the plagues. And obviously very very famous story. But the plagues are starting to amp up and Pharaoh he keeps changing his mind. And, so, we are watching like systematic dismantling of the power structures that were holding God’s people. Pharaoh could’ve said okay like the first request. It was within his power but his heart…his heart was hardened, and it continues to be hardened because he cannot get his mind around the fact that there may be a God more powerful than himself or the gods of Egypt. And, so, he is convinced that the…the local gods are more powerful than the Hebrew God’s because after all they have enslaved the Hebrew people. They sustain their economy. So, of course they would think that their God is more powerful. But one thing after another after another day by day it’s becoming more and more clear to Pharaoh that this is a problem. But at the same time, he’s got all these officials and his people looking at him like he’s the son of God and a God himself and descended from the gods. So, this is like a problem to surrender to another God. And, so, every time these plagues go away then he reconsiders, hardens his heart and steps back into the ring to get punched again basically. And we will continue with that story as we continue in the book of Exodus.
We get into the book of Matthew today are just watching Jesus. There’s this is beautiful scene where He …He…the little children want to come to Him. The people want Him to bless their children. They’re kinda being held back, they’re just kids and stuff. And Jesus is like, “let em’ come to me. Don’t keep the kids away for me. Don’t keep the children away from me. The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” That is…that is something to consider because it’s something that is said more than once in the Bible from the lips of Jesus, that if you don’t have faith like a child, right, then you can’t enter the kingdom of heaven. And, so, we have to begin to think and ponder, “what does that look like?” And those of us who have children we know, like they’re…when they are little children, they look at us like we know everything and can do anything, and they can do anything, and they believe. They believe what we tell them. Then…then we begin to teach them a reason and they begin to go to school and learn reason and out to adapt themselves into their environment around them and we grow skeptical and we lose…we…we lose mystery, and we can’t lose it. Like that’s the thing. It’s not faith when we know it. It’s faith when we don’t but we do if that makes sense. Children. Children are like this. And we should learn that lesson. And then right on the heels of that is a man who is rich…this is like up famous story…would be called the story of the rich young ruler. But this is a wealthy person who actually is a devout servant of God, actually has been trying to obey the Mosaic law and live for God. And, so, he comes to the Rabbi Jesus because at this point in Jesus ministry there’s healings going on, there’s teaching with authority that the people hadn’t experienced before. And, so, he’s coming and saying, “what…what…what else do I need to do? What do I lack?” And this is an instance where we can look at the narrative, look at Jesus, look at His personality, look at how He operates in this world and we can see that He’s going right after the thing that is holding this person back. And in this case, it’s his possessions, his riches. And, so, Jesus tells him, “sell everything, give to the poor and come, follow me.” That’s significant because that is the language Jesus has used to call His disciples, the people that are His inner circle. He’s inviting this person to come follow Him, to come be a part of the story, to divest himself of the things that would hold him back because that’s his question, “what do I lack?” And Jesus answers his question honestly. “What you lack is the ability to let go of your identity as a wealthy person.” And, so, on so many levels, the story becomes about identity. It becomes about what is it that we are surrounding ourselves with or trying to collect and amass to have an identity, right, to make ourselves look good, to be out there in the world and respected? And we’ve talked about…I mean we’re still in January, but we have talked about the masks and about being naked and ashamed and hiding and this is what we’re talking about. What is it that gives you your identity outside of God? That is something that is going to get challenged as we continue our journey because what we will find is that the faith that…that we’re claiming is an all or nothing proposition and nothing that we hold more dear than our relationship with God can survive it because it becomes an idol. It’s the thing that we’re looking to to give us life. We’re gonna watch this over and over and over in the Bible and we’ll…we’ll find that God has no patience for that. He is the author of life and wants to live in relationship with us. And, so, if we’re gonna give our hearts in worship to something else then that’s essential essentially adultery, spiritual adultery. It’s like cheating. It’s turning to a false God in order to get life when the most-high has given us life and we’re giving that life to something else. God hates that. And we’ll watch that. He hates it because it only leads away from Him. And walking in a direction away from Him only leads to destruction.
And, so, to dovetail that really nicely we move into the book of Psalms that we read today and this question, these two questions are asked that are vital questions. “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord” and “who shall stand in His holy place?” In other words, who gets to be in God’s presence? Who actually gets get there? And the question is answered. “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of His salvation.
Prayer:
Father, in all of these struggles we see identity kind of at the center of it all. Pharaoh’s thinking he’s a God descended from the gods and that…that there is none higher. And this is his identity and he also needs to kind of keep that image up because that’s one of the things that keeps him in control and in power and it is leading him to destruction. So, Holy Spirit, come help us to realize the things that we have been building up to make ourselves look good, this personality that we keep constructing and modifying and tweaking, the possessions that we try to gather for the sole purpose of…of elevating ourselves above somebody else, these are going nowhere and we can…if we sit and meditate upon this we can find all kinds of ways in which we probably should repent, which in its truest basic form is to change our mind and walk in a different direction. Come Holy Spirit into this we pray. In the mighty name of Jesus, we ask because we all need to tweak this out. We all need to surrender. We are all trying to present some kind of false identity out there and it’s going nowhere when we are a city on a hill when we are the light of the world. That’s our identity. Come Holy Spirit and help us to remember and live it we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Commentary:
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Check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop there are a number of resources there for the journey, different sections of the Shop, like the Global Campfire section. We have an entire line of Global Campfire themed items that are just…they’re…they’re there as a reminder that we are a part of a community as we move through the Scriptures this year. And we see that precedent set so many times in Scripture where God is like don’t forget what happened here. Pile up stones so you don’t forget what happened here. Make an alter so you don’t forget what happened here or we even think of Jesus at His last supper, “don’t forget. Do this in remembrance of me.” So, remembering is that inherent in the Bible in a lot of settings. And, so, just…isn’t that the thing? We forget. We react to things because we don’t take a moment to remember and calm ourselves in the moment and invite the Holy Spirit. So, remembering. Then beyond that is in the Lifestyle section of…of the shop, the Daily Audio Bible journals that have been perfected over the years, the Black Wing…all of the Black Wing pencil stuff, this is…this is what I journal with, this is what I write with every day. I have found…and I don’t know if I’ve said it this year, but I have found that I’ve kinda picked up the old school way of sharpening a pencil, actually sharpening a pencil and writing with a pencil in my own hand and that makes a difference. And, so, we searched for the best stuff we can find so that we could write down things so that we won’t forget the days of our lives. So, the Daily Audio Bible journals there, all kinds of things to write with are in the Shop. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg There’s many many other things to take this journey deeper. So, check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop.
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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, I’m here in California. Today I listened to woman call in who has insomnia and deals with depression and I believe she said diabetes. And my heart goes out to you for those issues and I am…I am right beside you in prayer regarding them. But something you said today really hit home for me. You talked about having this deep, deep, deep longing and desire to have a partner, but you haven’t seen it come to fruition yet. And you wonder why God would do that to you. And I just got to tell you, you could have…you could have been reading my mind. I literally feel like that all the time. I’ve been dreaming of who I might marry since I was a little girl. I still strongly desire a partner, but it hasn’t come to fruition yet and I’m a single parent to a toddler right now. I awoke love before it was time and I wonder why God would allow such a deep longing to still be in my heart even though, you know, the…the fruition of it doesn’t seem closed like at all. But then I remember that we serve a good God who loves and delights and seeks desires…to satisfy the desires of our hearts with good and lovely things. And that He is the perfect lover of our soul. And I know you have heard that many times in your life, but I pray that today it would still be a comfort and that you would seek closeness to Him tell Him you’re at angers tell Him your worries and your frustrations. He’s here for it all and He loves you. God bless.
Good morning Daily Audio Bible my name is Oyen from London and I am a first time DABber. I am now 25 days in, and I want to say thank you to Kaneo who shared this on Twitter without whom I probably never would have found this. I also want to pray for Isabel from Georgia who has health issues with her brain and seizures. I just wanna pray that the Lord will heal you, that He will make you whole, that He will increase your faith for healing and that your faith will also make you whole. I pray that wherever you are you will feel the arms of God around you. I also want to pray for whoever is feeling alone or lonely in this period, that God will reveal himself to you as a comforter. Thank you, DABber family. I’m so grateful for you. You have been such a blessing.
Good afternoon DAB family this is Marsha I am calling from Minnesota. It’s a beautiful day the sun is shining, and we have a fresh coat of snow on the ground. Today is January 25th and I am calling as a new person who’s joined your family. I started the first of the year. And when I first started and it got to the prayer request time I thought, “oh I’m just going to skim over this.” And now I found myself I can’t wait to hear what people are calling in with for requests or phrases. And, so, it’s actually moved me greatly. I’ve heard a lot of or a few parents who have called in to say their children have abandoned their family. Unfortunately, I too am dealing with this situation. My first and only grandchild lives 10 minutes from me and I have not seen him or my son for six months. And, of course, I would love to ask for prayers for him to reunite with his parents and his brother and sister. That would be awesome, and I hold tight to that promise that that will happen someday but even more so DAB family, just pray that my son would come back to the Lord. I know he gave his heart to Jesus during high school camp and I believe that he did believe at one point. And, so, I think if he could come back to that it would make such a difference in…in the situation. But I pray for all the other people who have called in with similar situations. It's…it’s so hard to explain. There are times when you think about a death, and I know that I’m grieving the loss of him, but he’s still here so I have hope and I have hope that…that things will soon be back to what they used to be. But I thank you for your prayers. Have a blessed day.
Hello everyone, it’s Tooty Toots His precious scene one from the UK. Today is the 25th of January and I’ve just listened to the prayers from the 23rd of January and I’ve just heard from a young lady, I think her name is Isabel and I just wanted to pray for her because I know what it’s like to have seizures at a young age. I’ve got lupus and when I was first diagnosed, I had seizures as well. So, her prayer really connected with me. Just, so yeah, I just want to pray for her and just lift her up in prayers. So heavenly Father we bless You we thank You for Your daughter. We thank You for her life. We thank You for the fact that You have breathed life into her. And we just thank You for Your awesomeness Lord. We just pray for Your daughter. We ask that Lord You will wrap her in Your warm embrace Lord almighty, that she will feel the fullness of Your joy. And we just pray that God almighty in her life Your name would be glorified. And we speak to anything in her body that doesn’t work well, and we just ask in the name of Jesus that You perfect everything that concerns her. From the crown of her head to the soles of her feet I just pray that Your anointing will be upon her. And I just pray that God in everything that she remembers that she is fearfully and wonderfully made by You, that she is made in Your image and that You delight in her. So, I just pray that God in her life that she will come to know You in such an intimate way Lord and that God You will give her complete and total healing because You are the God who is Jehovah Rapha. Heavenly Father we bless You we thank You we just give You all the glory. Thank You so much Lord Jesus. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. I may not see you I hear you and I love you all so much.
Good day brothers and sisters I would just like to echo the prayers spoken by the mouth of Brian on the 23rd of January, it’s Saturday. And I just pray the Holy Spirit would intercede. These thoughts in our head may they not just be thoughts in our head, but may they be footsteps, may they be steps in which we walk in faith. Holy Spirit I pray that you would come upon each and every one of your children. God show us the way you want us to live. Let us take away the fig leaf’s, take away the shame and let us be naked in your glory God not being ashamed because we are fearfully and wonderfully made in you God. Hallelujah. Come on. God I just lift up each and every one of Your children. May we become more like You. May we present to the world the people You have made in Jesus’ name I pray. God bless.
Hi Daily Audio Bible family I am so grateful to be part of this ministry and found it and be on this journey with you all. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had a faith family due to various reasons. But mostly just being very hurt in the Christian Community. And it’s been a very hard year for all of us. I think 2020 it was so hard. And…but I am __ getting engaged and I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel like I should be happier, but I am, but I just feel like nothing good happens to me. And, so, this can’t be right either. So, I just really need the help. I don’t know what to do and I need to feel God’s peace in this waiting. So, if you could help me with that, I would appreciate it. I…I love you all and I am praying for you in my heart. Thank you. Bye.