Exodus 10:1-12:13, Matthew 20:1-28, Psalms 25:1-15, Proverbs 6:6-11
Today is the 30th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian. It’s great to be here with you. Man…we are that close to the end of the first month, right? Tomorrow…well…tomorrow’s the last day of January. So, yeah, we’re rounding the corner on our first month together. It’s hard to believe but that’s how quick it goes. And I never get to this point in the in the month of January where I don’t look back and go, man so much as happened in the Bible, so much has been said. Like, we just launched out of the gate and the Bible just goes right after our hearts and has given us so much already. And I’m so excited for the journey ahead. And let’s dive in. We’ve been reading from the English Standard Version this week, which is what we’ll do today. Exodus chapter 10 verse 1 through 12 verse 13.
Commentary:
Okay. Let’s talk for just a second about what we read in the book of Matthew and just come back up alongside Jesus as He’s ministering and He began His teaching today by saying something that we should pay attention to because it’s something that we should be looking for, “for the kingdom of heaven is like.” When Jesus says that we should pay attention to what He’s saying because we are looking for this kingdom of heaven that we claim to be a part of. So, He’s like, “the kingdom of heaven is like a master of the house.” And then He tells a story. A landowner goes into the marketplace to hire day laborers to work in his fields and they make an agreement in the morning about a certain price that they will receive and then those people go to work. And then the master then goes back out into the marketplace and finds people over the course of the day, even getting to the end of the day sending them into the field to work. And then at the end of the day they all get paid the same. And then those who had agreed to the denarius and got paid the denarius are angry because they feel like they worked harder than anybody else. When the master simply says, “yeah but didn’t we make…like you got exactly what you agreed to. So, now you’re trying to judge my generosity. Do I not get to do with the resources that belong to me what I want to do with them? So, if I want to be generous then I can be generous. This story can be a little bit disruptive because it’s like well that doesn’t seem exactly fear. Like I kinda get the…I kinda get the point of the people who worked out in the hot sun all day. It’s supposed to do that. Like the story is supposed to be disruptive because it shows us how easily we can sit in judgment of God because the master in this story is the God figure in this story. We know this because Jesus started out describing the kingdom of heaven is like, right? And then we pay attention to what it’s like. What we find is that the fortunate thing is to be able to come into the field at all no matter what time of day we got there. And God wanting to be generous reveals to us that nobodies better than anybody else in the kingdom of God, which is very different than the…the world system or the cultures that we live in because we inflate people and throw people up and worship people and admire success even if it’s ruthless success. In God’s kingdom there’s not this hierarchy where you get the mansion up on the hill looking down on the people who were sinners until their last breath who just barely get to get into God’s kingdom. That’s not how this works. In is in all the way. And for all of the things that we like to spout off about what God does and does not do, what he will and will not do, this story shows us that we don’t have that say. God can do what God wills to do no matter what. He’s the most-high God. Everything is His. Everything in all of creation is His, which leads us to what Jesus ended the story with. The last will be first and the first will be last. We have plenty to explore about the kingdom of God from the lips of Jesus as we navigate through the Gospels, but every time that we come to this talk of the kingdom, we should pay attention because it all begins to fit together. And the way that the kingdom works is very different than the way the systems we have designed as humans work. And what we should be understanding is that Jesus is God made flesh modeling what humanity without sin is…is capable of and is supposed to look like. And He is describing the kingdom that was intended to be upon this earth as His children. And He will claim that it’s still here, but it’s actually really here now and happening. And if we would have eyes to see and ears to hear, we would be able to see that. So, anytime we hear Jesus talking about the kingdom of heaven is like something, let’s have eyes to see and ears to hear. It’s an important part of our journey. It’s vital that we understand what we are actually a part of instead of continuing to navigate through life believing that we have faith, but having no idea about why it works one day and doesn’t work another day and how to actually make this something that’s a part of who we are. What we begin to understand going through the Gospels and listening to Jesus and then into the writings of the apostle Paul is that it’s different than what we think and more immediate than we could ever imagine.
Prayer:
Jesus, we…we invite Your Holy Spirit as we continue in the days and weeks and months ahead of us, as we continue to move through the Scriptures, that You would plant them deep in our hearts, change the way that we look at things that we might be actively participating and the transformation that…that is happening in us known as sanctification. Come Holy Spirit 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.