04/19/2021 DAB Transcript

Joshua 19:1-20:9, Luke 19:28-48, Psalms 88:1-18, Proverbs 13:12-14

Today is the 19th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a joy and a privilege and an honor every day to come around this Global Campfire together, take the next step forward and move our way into and through all of the weeks that we get to share. And, so, let’s dive in. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. We’re in the book of Joshua and as I mentioned…I think it was yesterday…we’ll be concluding the book of Joshua during this week. Right now, in the book of Joshua the…the different allotments of land are being divided up for the tribes of Israel to live in, in this land of promise. So, we continue that story. Joshua chapters 19 and 20.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the gospel of Luke, Jesus is making His…well…His final journey to Jerusalem where He will be arrested and we…we kinda know how this story will go in general. And once again, I remind us that we come through this territory and then we move beyond the Gospels and we move beyond this territory and what comes next. And, so, it’s really important while we’re walking alongside Jesus that we really embrace…really embraces as much of it as we can. So, today something really, really sad, really sad, actually there’s a place that commemorates this…this spot. So, Jesus has walked from the Galilee down into the Jordan Valley where it's…it's…it's…it’s downhill. And, so, it’s flat there and they can kind of move around a little easier. It’s a more direct path that ends up in Jericho. And then from Jericho, because they’ve moving south, from Jericho they have to than turn eastward and upward. So, it’s an 18- mile climb from Jericho to Jerusalem, and it’s all uphill the whole way. So, Jerusalem sits at the high points. So, you can only…you can only go up to Jerusalem, which is why you hear that in the Scriptures and why…why you may have heard that in the past, up to Jerusalem. For example, even in the…in the Psalms, there are the Psalms of Ascent the Psalms, the songs that will be sung on the way uphill up to Jerusalem. So, this is a totally uphill, pretty treacherous walk that Jesus has to take, and the pathway is essentially following the Kedron Valley. And the Kedron valley is in the Bible. So, it’s a geographical landmark that runs right through Jerusalem actually separating the Mount of Olives from like Mount Zion or where the temple was or where the Temple Mount is out today. And, so, the Mount of Olives is a pretty big hill and runs along and their villages on etc. etc. And, so, we see Jesus passing through some of those villages and getting this colt. And as it’s told in the gospel of Luke once they crest the Mount of Olives and begin to come down the downward side, into Jerusalem Jesus starts to cry and it’s really really sad. There is a place. You can walk down the Mount of olives kind of following the ancient road. It doesn’t look anything like an ancient road now. It looks on one side like a massive, massive graveyard where people are buried awaiting resurrection and just different compounds that are on the Mount of Olives while you walk your way down. And there’s a place called Dominus Flevit, which is Latin, which means “the Lord wept.” And there’s a Byzantine chapel there. I belie a crusader era, small little chapel there. But from there you can look down upon the Temple Mount and you sort of can see what that view would’ve been like. That would’ve been the quintessential view of looking out over Jerusalem and kind of cresting Mount of Olives and seeing the temple of God there. And Jesus begins to weep. He says, “how I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace, but now it’s too late. Peace is hidden from your eyes.” And then He goes on to talk about how it would all get tore down. Here's…here’s the situation. We’re in the book of Joshua now in the Old Testament, right? So, we’ve gone through the Torah, the formation of a people set apart to be a nation of priests to bless the whole world and we’ve gone through their struggles and how quickly and how often they lose sight of their purpose of the main story, right, and get lost in the subplots of their own lives and where that leads them and how we had a wander in the wilderness because the wilderness journey, this…the message of the wilderness hadn’t been learned. And, so, now we get to cross the Jordan River and seen the conquest and now the division of the land and the assignment of the land to the people. These are the set a…set apart ones, the chosen people. And their capital city, as we will read from the time of King David, forward will be Jerusalem. The very first temple, like the very first permanent temple, not a Tabernacle that’s portable and moving around, but a permanent fixture, a building is in Jerusalem, the temple of God, the place where the people come to commune with God, the place where they believe communication happens between God and people. So, Jesus who is God incarnate, right, who was incarnated into human flesh and dwelt among us as one of us participating in the human story and in the human condition, God with human eyes crests the Mount of Olives and this place, this…this what He…what He sees is His temple, the temple made for the worship and communion with God among the people set aside and set apart as holy to be a nation of priests to remind the world who God is. God’s cresting the Mount of Olives and looking down on the entire enterprise and God begins to weep about it. Like, that’s the magnitude of what we’re seeing here. “How I wish that you of all people would understand the way to peace”, right? So, here’s God who’s walked through all of the things we’re reading about in the Torah and in Joshua and everything else that we’re going to read for the rest of this year in the Old Testament. This same God who is the lead these people is about to be killed by His own people, His own creation. His own creation will reject Him on religious grounds. So, He’s crying about it. It’s sad and He speaks prophetically. “Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. They will crush you into the ground and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place because you did not recognize it when God visited you.” Ah…and the thing is, we’ve talked many times about what…what the Hebrew people of the first century were looking for when they were thinking about a coming Messiah. They were looking for a righteous anointed one certainly, one that would communicate the ways of the Lord and bring people together with the intention of revolt, of cleansing the land of the Romans, and everyone else and restoring it back to God. And Jesus, God in flesh came saying. “the kingdom that you’re looking for isn’t coming at all. The kingdom of God is already here already among you already within you already underway. Do you not see it? Can you not perceive it? Do not have eyes to see? Do you not have ears to hear?” And they just couldn’t get on board with that. That’s not what the Messiah’s gonna do. The Messiah’s gonna…gonna overthrow Rome and this Jesus, He might get a mob together but it’s only gonna get us in trouble. And, so, we know how the story goes. Jesus was betrayed, Jesus was crucified, they thought they had gotten rid of Him. So, a little bit later, like within the next 50 years-ish from this moment where Jesus crests the Mount of Olives and weeps they decide they have their Messiah. They decide to rise up and revolt. They all do get together and…and…and do revolt against Rome and they do take over for a brief period of time of a couple of years. And this is interspersed in the story of the great fortress, the great Herodian fortress Masada, where this rebellion at least traditionally is understood to have ended because although they did take over and although they did mint their own coins and although they did have some autonomy there for a couple of years, Rome the Empire, basically got the forces of the Empire together and sailed for Jerusalem and when they got there they were merciless and they destroyed Jerusalem utterly, tearing down the temple of God, destroying Jerusalem completely and forbidding Hebrew people to even enter the ruins of the city. And then they rebuilt it and then let Jews go in. So, Jesus is crying about what’s gonna happen and He’s crying about how it didn’t have to happen. And I mean this helps us enter the story greatly, to just see the emotion of God, God who came for us, God among us, God with us, Emmanuelle being rejected. Also gives us an opportunity to think about how many times we decided by force by own will and strength we’re going to make God’s will happen, that we’re just going to jump out here because we know what’s supposed to happen and we’re gonna go make that happen when it’s not, when God’s not in it as was the case in the story that we are in and the gospel of Luke.

Prayer:

Jesus, we invite you into this. We enter into this story again. It…it tears our hearts to think of you standing there weeping, weeping over what might’ve been, what could have been. But it was too late and we have to wonder in our own lives, how many times that you’ve been a gentleman and patiently waited and watched us and what could have been if we hadn’t gone our own way. And, so, forgive us Lord. We repent, we return to you and ask Holy Spirit to continue to illuminate the narrow path that leads to life that we might walk it pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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And that’s it for today on Brian. I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning DABber family this is the Burning Bush that will not be Devoured for the Glory of our God and our King. Today I listened to the reading from proverbs speaking of the sluggard who desires but doesn’t get what he desires because he’s lazy. And…and then it speaks of the diligent who gets abundance just due the hard work. And I know this sounds like something so simple and it’s like…dah… right? But I am struggling in certain areas of my life, certain things, certain projects, personal projects that have been placed on the back burner of my life. Dreams deferred, you know, due to, some barriers that were thrown in my way in life in general. And not to get too too deep into this but when I heard that it really hit hard. And, so, I just want to share this with you guys. It is a prayer request but it’s also sort of encouragement, that, you know, some of us have had some traumas in life that has caused us to be discouraged and caused us to forsake some projects and plans and ambitious desires in our lives. And I just want to say to all of us that dreams deferred make the heart sick but be encouraged because the Lord who has started a good thing in us, He is faithful to complete it. He is faithful to complete it. And I pray that God will remind me of this every single morning that I wake, that I am a word of God…

Morning everybody. It’s God’s Smile here. It’s a lovely still day outside. There’s some lovely clouds and the sky is a nice pale blue. I’ve got some tomato plants growing on my windowsill. There absolutely wonderful to watch them grow. They’re growing so fast. You know, they’re growing 10 millimeters each day. How awesome is that? I’ll soon be able to put them out. But my dad was a farmer and he used to say never doubt when May is out and especially here in England. We can get snow in May even, which it doesn’t usually last very long but still it’s enough to kill off the seedlings isn’t it? So, I just wanted to thank everybody who rings in with encouragement and prayer, what’s on their heart, and singing songs. I get ministered to so often. Sometimes it’s just one word and other times it’s just everything that that person was saying. I can see in the…in my mind’s eye and God does something beautiful doesn’t He? I’m sure you guys will experience that too. What a wonderful bloody ministry we have to reach each other and pray for someone else and that knock on effect touches so many in our obedience to love and care and pray for someone. I’m just…I’m just so thankful. I’m thankful to be sat up in the morning again because it’s been a bit tough of late. I was starting to get up a couple mornings a week and that fell by the wayside. Time’s ticking. I’ve been rappiting on, haven’t I? I’m going to send my love. This is God’s Smile here with a big yes.

Hi, it’s Donna from California and just finished Wednesday night Bible study and prayer group and got some very shocking news. A lady at our church, we have a small church, took her life and left behind her husband and her 12-year-old, I think she’s about 12-year-old, her daughter. And I am…I’m just absolutely in shock. I…I can’t even imagine this person doing that. And I know that there’s been prayer requests lately in our community concerning people who have loved ones who’ve taken their lives and people who are maybe pondering that as well as…and I…I just…I…I really don’t know…I…I don’t know what to say about it. I…I pray. Please join me in prayer for this family for this grieving husband and their…their daughter and our church. I didn’t know her that well. I just know that she was a bright, beautiful, vibrant woman with a strong faith. And it’s leaving a void in my heart. So, I can only imagine what it must be for her husband and her daughter. I'm…I’m just so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what kind of pain she must have been in.

[singing starts] Beloved let us love one another for love is of God and everyone I loveth is born of God and knoweth God he loveth not knoweth not God for God is love beloved let us love one another. First John 4:7 and 8 [singing stops]. O, Brian what a wonderful sermon this morning. That is so true. The Kingdom of God is within us. We’ve got to let his love out. We gotta live his love show. Father I just worship you this morning. Bless your people today. Let us show love amongst ourselves and everywhere we go let our light so shine before men that they see our good works and glorify you. O, Yeshua is within us people. Let us love one another. Everyone that we come in contact with is our neighbor. What a wonderful thing this morning Brian. That was so wonderful. It touched my heart so much. Thank You, Father. Thank You Yeshua. Have a wonderful day fellow DABbers. I love you and I pray for all of you everywhere. Yeshua’s mighty name. Amen.

Hey DABbers, all around the world this is Sam from Spain and I’m just so thankful and so grateful for your prayers and walking together through the wonderful stories of the Bible. And I am praising God for all the men that have been praying for their wives who I am joining you in praying for your wives. I think it’s so encouraging, the number of men that ask for prayers for their wives. And thank you. It’s wonderful. Bless each and every one of them and Lord strengthen the spiritual forces of each of those husbands Lord so they can continue loving and interceding for their wives in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.