Daniel 1:1-2:23, 1 Peter 3:8-4:6, Psalm 119:65-80, Proverbs 28:14
Today is the 25th day of November, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian, it is wonderful to be here with you today in our neck of the woods or our part of the world here in the rolling hills of Tennessee and for that matter from coast-to-coast in the United States, this is Thanksgiving Day, so happy Thanksgiving. May your heart be full of gratitude today.
Introduction to the Book of Daniel:
And so now that we have observed that let’s observe the fact that we are moving into some new territory in the Scriptures. I thought we were gonna be finishing the book of Ezekiel today, but we actually concluded the book of Ezekiel yesterday. Which brings us to the book of Daniel and Daniel is indeed an intriguing book. We’ll enjoy the historical account in narrative form of the story and we’ll encounter really famous portions of the Scripture that we’ve probably known since Sunday school, like Daniel in the lion’s den, this is the Daniel that we’re talking about. Or Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego in the fiery furnace, we’ll be encountering those stories, but that’s not all that Daniel is, Daniel has visions and he writes these visions down and they have been consulted for thousands of years in terms of what they represent and what their timeline is. So, they are studied in eschatological studies all the time, eschatological studies or eschatology, being the study of the end of all things, the end time, so Daniel was contemporary with Ezekiel and we read, we’ve been camping out in the book of Ezekiel, but we concluded the book of Ezekiel yesterday. Daniel was one who was taken into exile when Jerusalem fell to Babylon, which is a topic that we have been on for a while in the Old Testament. We know that when the exiles went into exile it wasn’t a good time, it was a sad, depressing time when all seemed lost and so Daniel certainly had to experience this disruption in fear of the unknown. But through it all, Daniel was favored by God, and he was gifted and so it was recognized and he rose to become an advisor and then an influential advisor and an authority in the kingdom of Babylon. So, Daniel was exiled so he’s in exile, an exiled Hebrew so, he’s a Hebrew. He was also a prophet; it’s just a little different because he wasn’t assigned to be a prophet for Israel. His prophecies aren’t for or against Israel, and the visions that Daniel sees and writes down in this book there not, there not particularly Jewish. So, Daniel has a unique voice in the Bible and this book of Daniel is going to carry us, it’s gonna carry us into the final month of the year. We still have a lot of ground to cover, but Daniel is going to carry us over into the month of December. And so, let’s dive in, we’re reading from the New English Translation this week, Daniel chapter 1 verse 1 through 2 verse 23.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word, we thank You for this day. It’s a good day to be thankful. This is a celebration day in this country but it’s a good day to be thankful no matter where we are on this earth. So we do focus our attention toward gratitude. We are grateful, we are thankful that You have given us the gift of life and are allowing us to share with one another as we continue our journey through the Scriptures. We are also grateful for this new territory as we move into the book of Daniel and we invite Your Holy Spirit to lead us, to quicken us, to awaken us to the things that that we need to grasp, the things that we need to hold onto in our own lives as we continue this journey forward. Come, Holy Spirit, lead us into all truth, lead us deeper in our relationship with Jesus, light our way, guide us, we pray in the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here and there are plenty of things going on around here. It’s Thanksgiving, we’re being grateful today and I know that doesn’t affect everybody in the whole world, but it affects those of us who live in the United States.
For the last couple of days, I’ve been talking about our new Christmas album that is available: a beautiful contemplative modern composers production from my son Maxwell, a beautiful treatment. Very thoughtful treatment of the Christmas carols that we know and love. Very, very much appropriate for the time of day when you kind of winding down, everything is decorated, you’re getting ready for the season. It’s been a busy time and you just kind of shut the lights off and just leave the tree on right, or just like the Christmas lights on and just kind of wind down for the night. This is the album for that time of day, and it’s available for preorder right now, it will become the full thing will become available on the 1st of December. But when you preorder the album, you immediately get three of the tracks, and this is available for preorder on the iTunes store, somewhat like apple music, the iTunes store. So, I guess if you just go to Apple music and just look for Maxwell Hardin and Christmas time, you’ll find it. It’s also available for preorder in the Amazon store. So, I’m a proud papa but I mean music was my life and my vocation and record production is what I did before this fairly radical transformation into ministry that I find myself doing now. So, I’m pretty picky about that kind of stuff. But I love, I love what he’s done and I hope that you get the chance to love it too. And you can get it now at the iTunes store or the Amazon music store.
We’ve also announced the release of the Daily Audio Bible Christmas box for 2021 and I won’t go into all that today. You can check that out in the Daily Audio Bible Shop in the Christmas section.
And then the other item that we have been talking about is Promised Land, Photographs from the Land of the Bible. Another project that was long in the waiting, long in the making, but worth it. It is a beautiful coffee table or end table book that will stand up and will hold up to be passed down but allows us to kinda drop into the different regions of the land of the Bible and get a little glimpse of what it is we’re talking about when we read these stories so you can check that out in the Daily Audio Bible Shop as well.
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And that’s it for today, Happy Thanksgiving everybody, I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.