Isaiah 22:1-24:23, Galatians 2:17-3:9, Psalm 60:1-12, Proverbs 23:15-16
Today is the 16th day of September, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian, it’s wonderful to be here with you today, it is a joy and a privilege to come by my place around the Global Campfire together with you as we exhale and release all of the stress and all the stuff that’s going on and just allow the Scriptures to speak into our lives. Today, we will move back into the book of Isaiah, as well as the letter to the Galatians. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. Isaiah chapters 22 through 24 today.
Commentary:
Okay, super famous passage in the letter to the Galatians today. We probably have all heard it. Most of us probably can quote it. I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. That is, I mean, that is a statement of a reality, that is a statement of what Paul believes and what we as Christians believe. It’s a part of a paragraph though and it gets lifted out of the paragraph a lot. So, let’s explore just for a second because what Paul said there, that we are all shaking our heads up and down and going yep, yep, yep I know that verse and yes it is Christ who lives in me. This is an incredibly controversial statement, heretical statement even for Orthodox Hebrew believers. So, bringing just a…one sentence more context helps us a lot. So, I quote “forth through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and a life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” This is kind of an abbreviated version of things that Paul unpacks more at length in the letter to the Romans. So, Paul is saying that he died to the law, God’s law, the Mosaic law. The law that pulled the people together cohesively as Hebrews, the thing people were trying to live up to, or live into in order to be made righteous in some fashion before God, only to know that they couldn’t and so they would offer also sacrifices to atone for their sin to become made righteous before God. Paul is undermining that understanding and as was laid out in the book of Romans. Paul’s view is that the law revealed a person’s inability to obey it. The law revealed a person’s failures and their inability to become righteous before God and so the law condemned them because they couldn’t live up to it. So, if the law is what makes you righteous before God, then nobody could be righteous before God, because nobody could fulfill the law. But Jesus did and God raised Him from the dead, no longer to die. So, Paul responds by coming to the understanding that we’re to die to the law so that we can actually live for God. The old person that we were bound by sin and unable to achieve any kind of righteousness before God. That person dies, is judged by the law, guilty, dies and is resurrected in Christ who has fulfilled it all. We glory in these realities, we do all that we can to accept and live into these realities, it is Christ in me that animates me. It is Christ in me that restores me to God. It is by grace alone, through faith alone, that this is a reality and I believe it we…we rejoice in these things from the early people though hearing the good news. How would you even get your mind around not having the law when it’s all you’ve ever known, and you’ve aimed your entire life and your entire culture is aimed in that direction. It’s indeed, the good news but it’s also existentially disruptive, right, it up-ends a lot of things that have to then be rethought and even thinking those things would feel maybe even sinful. But in this case Paul is writing to a group of people, an established church. The churches in Galatia and saying “hey I never told you all that stuff, I didn’t entangle you in all of that stuff. It’s these people who are coming in behind me that are causing this disruption and confusion. I came with the message that showed you complete freedom and now you’re trying go back and become a slave to this thing that you died to.” And so, I quote Paul “O foolish Galatians who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes, that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this” and this is actually where the rubber meets the road on his argument, “did you receive the Spirit by works of the law?” in other words, did the Spirit of the Lord come upon you because you were so righteous by obeying the law, or was it by hearing, and then you had faith, “are you so foolish,” I’m quoting Paul again, “having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” In other words, you receive this by faith. Are you not trying to be perfected by obeying the law, a law that you’ve not really been familiar with and those of you who have never been able to even come close to achieving and then once again we see Paul do a move that he does a lot which is to go back before Moses and go to the origin story with Abraham and unpack the fact that Abraham was made righteous before God through his faith in what God said, not in his adherence to a law that did not exist? That idea is a profoundly foundational tenet of what Paul teaches. And we can, I mean, this brings us up to speed on what we read today and will continue the journey forward in the letter tomorrow. It’s easy for us to get lost in the theology or the doctrine of it, trying to understand and unpack what this actually means for us. Ultimately, like we were talking about yesterday. Ultimately, what Paul is arguing for is spiritual freedom. The freedom to understand that you have been made righteous before God and so you can have a relationship with God personally, unmediated, directly. A relationship with God who has grafted you into His family. There aren’t hoops, there aren’t levers, there isn’t a law other than the law of love. And so, as believers we should rest in that, we have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives within us, through Christ we have been made perfect before God, we have achieved what we could never achieve, through Christ who achieved it for us and gave it to us freely. All we have to do is believe it. This is the good news.
Prayer:
And so, Jesus, we thank You for this good news and it is definitely through this Hebrew centric lens that we read of it and unpack it and understand it. And for many of us, we don’t have that background and so thank You for allowing us all of the different context and all of the letters and all of the narratives found in the New Testament that allow us to understand how radical, what a shift in reality, in awareness and in understanding. It’s something that we very easily take for granted because we’ve only known it a certain way and yet the Scriptures show us the moving forward of the gospel, the good news that has come into our lives and shaped us and changed us irreversibly. So, come Holy Spirit and help us to dive more deeply, drink more freely from this precious gift of salvation. Come, Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian and I love you. I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Prayer and Encouragements:
Hi this is Nelly calling in and I want to call in for a few people. First of all I wanted to call in for Susie. She was talking about the situation from Haiti and God I just pray for Your peace to be on that land. I pray that the gains would be dismantled. God, I pray for protection. I pray for Stanley who was killed on his way to work God, for his family. I pray you give them comfort in the name of Jesus. I also want to lift up Stephen John, John from Sudan had to put a restraining order on him God. That must’ve been such a difficult decision but God, I know you’re in the midst of it all and I just pray in the name of Jesus that You would just comfort that family for a complete transformation of the mind of John Stephen. John God, I pray that You would just touch him, that You would minister to him and that You would just be with those who are working with him. I also want to lift up Gary who is struggling with anxiety. God, I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to wake up in the night and thinking about things. God, I pray that you remove that heaviness and that You would replace it with Your comfort and Your peace, in the name of Jesus. God, You are a strong tower and I pray fear would be gone. I pray that You will give him direction. I pray that You would give him endurance and God that You give him rest. We love You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Saul, one day was willing to kill his own son, but the next day he was unwilling to kill the heathen king, Agag, even though God demanded it. We must not be two sided. Plants must be tied to a stick as they grow to keep them straight. And likewise, we must remain tied to the Lord for it is only He that can keep us straight as we grow. It is the sail and not the Gail that determines our course. And don’t let comfort overshadow commitment for the tempting without works closely with the trader within to ensure our defeat. The spirit will always cry out for faith, while the soul will always reach for unbelief. What’s in your wallet? BlindTony1016@gmail.com. I like to give a shout out to Victoria Soldier, haven’t heard from you lately and also Michelle for LA, know that you are both in my prayer list daily and thought of often, very much loved. And once again, Brain and the Hardin Family, thank you for this wonderful podcast for God’s Holy Spirit to flow. Keep it flowing ya’ll. All right, bye bye.
Hi John Alpar, I heard your message about Stephen John and you needing to commit him to the hospital for mental health for bipolar. This is Radiant Rachel; I am praying for you and your family and I just wanted to let you know that you’re not alone. This weekend, this week, my dad is manic and he had to go on medical leave from work and we were scheduling a family meeting. And, you know, concerned, he’s not making proper decisions to be safe driving on the road, things like that. And, God did a miracle for us, He put it on my dad’s heart to want to commit himself to go into the hospital to spread the word of God to those inside the hospital. So, he is there now as well. And, God is working, I know that He is working on Stephen John also. And I just…Lord, we lift up all those who are struggling with mental health and all those who are caring for those with mental health. We pray that You will just guide them, work in their hearts, give them peace, give them rest, give them sleep. And, just use these trials for Your good. Have Your way Lord. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
[singing] Low in the grave He lay, Jesus my savior
Waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord
Up from the grave He arose, with a mighty triumph for His foes
He arose a victor from the dark domain,
now He lives forever with His saints to claim
He arose, He arose, Hallelujah, Christ Arose.
Good morning DAB, God Bless all of you, you’re all in my prayers constantly. This is Patrick from Seattle. If you could, I would appreciate your prayers. I have been a police officer in law enforcement for over 32 years. And right now, I am on the precipice of change and the message I keep getting from God is be still and I will fight for you. But as a driven, action-oriented person, that’s not easy for me. So, I ask for prayers for guidance and patience and discernment and courage as I try to find out and determine what I’m going to be doing next in my life to support my family and to continue to serve God. So, if you would please join me. Heavenly Father, I thank You so much for allowing me for the last several decades to be able to serve You in the capacity that allows me to support and honor my family and honor my faith, my beliefs and my ethics and now as I’m trying to figure out what I’m gonna do next and where I’m gonna go and where You need me I can’t hear what it is that you’re telling me if You’re speaking at all and I feel like Elisha in the cave waiting for all the storms to pass to hear Your quiet voice. So, I just ask that I can hear Your voice and I ask that You can help me to find a way to continue to serve You and support my family. Please help all those people out there that are in a similar circumstance asking for Your prayers. It’s in Your heavenly, holy name we pray. In the name of Jesus Christ our Savior and our King. Amen.