Zechariah 1:1-21, Revelations 12:1-17, Psalm 140:1-13, Proverbs 30:17
Today is the 21st day of December, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian, it is great to be here with you. It is wonderful to be enjoying Christmas week together as we move step-by-step and day-by-day toward Christmas day which is how we will wrap up this week together, celebrating Christmas. And today, it’s another one of those days that gets stuck in my memory, it would been my parent’s anniversary today. I don’t know what they were thinking because I wasn’t around but they decided to get married a few days before Christmas. So, it’s days like this that I miss them because they have both gone on and so I would be Facetiming or calling them or whatever with a happy…happy anniversary. But that’s not possible. So, I guess I share with my community here. Nevertheless, we have some work to do. We have the next step forward in the Scriptures and we have been moving our way through the minor prophets which brings us today to the beginning of the 11th of the 12 minor prophets. And it might seem like the last week and ½ or whatever has been kind of a blur, we’ve been moving fast through a lot of territory. Now, we will begin the book of Zechariah, but we won’t read it in its entirety today, nor will we complete it tomorrow. The book of Zechariah is gonna take us right up to the last two days of the year and then those last two days will be spent in the final book in the Old Testament known as Malachi, the final of the minor prophets. But that will be several days from now, over a week from now. So, let’s orient ourselves to what we are going to be spending the next space of time reading the book of Zechariah. There was another minor prophet named Haggai and we read that work. Zechariah and Haggai were contemporaries with each other. Although Zechariah continued his ministry long after Haggai and they were actually in the same place and generally at the same time uttering prophecies for the same reason and that reason was rebuilding the temple. So, Zechariah is grandpa, his grandfather was named Edo and he was among the first leaders of the priestly families that came back from the Babylonian exile with Zerubbabel. And remember Zerubbabel’s name, probably because it’s memorable but we read of Zerubbabel reading Ezra and Nehemiah, but Zechariah coming from a priestly family and that being named and probably means Zechariah was a priest as well, or at least part of the priestly family. And the name Zechariah means God remembers and actually God remembering the covenant, that is central to the theme of the book of Zechariah. Now, when we read Haggai, we read it rapidly. Zechariah is a lot longer than Haggai. And it’s got a lot broader scope. For example, Zechariah had a lot of visions, 8 of these visions are written down. They were night visions, and they have an apocalyptic literature type of feel to them, which won’t be all that different than what reading in the book of Revelation. And in light of the subject matter, which is the rebuilding of the temple, we see even through these visions that God wants the Temple rebuilt because it sort of inaugurates, it unleashes part of what he wants to do next which is broad hope and restoration upon the people, but it wouldn’t just fall out of the sky, like it would be a collaboration, the people would have to respond and that’s why we hear words and Zechariah like return to me and I will return to you, which is not dissimilar to any of the prophetic utterances that we’ve read. Zechariah is also a text that reveals that there would be a coming Messiah, part of the foretelling of a Messiah to come, comes from Zechariah, and those those passages we would recognize them. We will recognize them and there’s language about a humble servant riding on a donkey, we find Zechariah quoted in the book of Matthew and in the book of Mark, and in the gospel of John and in in the book that we’re reading in the New Testament right now, the book of Revelation, all drawing corollaries or making reference to Jesus as this Messiah. So, as we read this over the next days, we will see a sovereign God who is absolutely sovereign in all times and all places and in all things. So, as we continue to get the message that really, really becomes front and center, especially in the New Testament as we reach the end of the year, the theme of enduring, let’s also embrace, even in the theme of enduring that God is sovereign overall and God sees us as his children, and so we begin Zechariah chapter 1.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word and now we have reached a place where we will settle in for a few days and move through the same books as we’ve been doing all year and so we invite Your Holy Spirit to speak to us Lord and it’s not as if you aren’t. Perhaps a better way to say it is, we pray that You would help us be aware of what You are speaking, that we would intentionally pay attention, that as we move toward Christmas and then through Christmas in the week in between, that we would focus our attention upon the Scriptures and focus our affection upon You. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. 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.
Prayer and Encouragements:
Good morning, this is the Greatest Trucker from Way Out West, it don’t take much to be the greatest trucker and sometimes the greatest trucker well, he ain’t so great. I wanted to call in this morning and thank you all for your prayer requests and praises. I got a prayer request for my wife Terri. She’s sick and been sick, off and on. Has been tested for COVID, it’s not COVID but just kind of a bad cold that just kinda keeps coming back. I’m away in the truck, we have a very good church family there in South Dakota, where we moved about six months ago. And they’re supporting her but I’m not able to be with her when she’s sick like this, it’s really hard. I’m just putting out a prayer for all these people that are away from their family and can’t be with them when their sick. She’s so precious to me, I love her so much. It’s just asking ya’ll to pray for her to just get back her health, in full, full heath. And I’m praying for all the people that ask for prayers on the prayer chain and I thank you for sending in your prayers and I’m sorry I haven’t called in a long time but I’m calling now, so. Love you all, in Christ and pray for ya’ll when I hear your request. Thank you, adios.
Good morning Daily Audio Bible family. I just want to share, I think my best known experience is throughout this year. It’s been a year of ups and downs where there are times when our faith, my faith, has been put into tests. And sometimes you would meet people who would challenge you, what you believe in and it’s really difficult sometimes to put up an argument and no matter how much you what to push them away with their ill intentions and teachings that are earthly and that contradict our Christian faith, what gives me comfort is the fact that scripture actually foretells that there will be individuals who will be like this who will come up with these things. And it gives me hope that it’s actually found in the bible and that it was foretold and these are things that actually gives me strength. But in a nutshell what I would want to say is to encourage anybody listening, even in my next life or even if I died today and I noticed that Christianity isn’t real or heaven isn’t real, I would never ever regret it because my faith, the word, my belief in Christ, every single day that I’ve been listening to the Daily Audio Bible has given me faith. I has helped me through my difficult moment, it does help me through situations that I feel like that I couldn’t have coped. Listening to how people have overcome their experiences, all of these things tells me, this is real you know. So, I just wanted to share that.
Good morning, DAB family, greetings from South Africa. My name is Olephela. And I’ve just listened to now, today the 17th of December and there was a young, young chap who I think his name is Mandy or is it Mandy, yeah or Bandy I’m not to sure, it was quite clear, lost your grandfather and your really touched me. And, you know, condolences, deep condolences to you and your family from Africa with love, really. We are moved by your prayer request. And nothing like spending Christmas without your grandfather. Let’s pray, pray in the name of Jesus that Lord, that you just come along side this family, that you would comfort them in the name of Jesus. We ask that you just come along side them, this morning, this day, may they feel Your presence through and through. In Jesus name. Amen.
Hello, good evening to everyone in the world. I am coming to everyone to ask for prayer for my marriage. I have been married for a year and ½ now and we got married in a pandemic. So that was a struggle and we continue to struggle with communication and we to continue to struggle with…with giving each other grace and…and keeping our hearts soft, I pray that the Lord continues to help us and show us how to keep our hearts soft for each other and my husband is a believer and I know that the Lord is speaking to him and I just pray that he is in the right space, in the right mind to hear the direction from the Lord and to keep his heart soft for me. I am fighting for my marriage because I love my husband and I feel that the Lord brought us together for a reason and I want to continue having this…this kingdom marriage so I can so we can both glorify God and His creation of marriage. So, I ask for prayer. Thank you so much in advance I believe in prayer, but I need more of it, thank you.
It’s me again, Saved by His Grace in Happy Valley. A while back one of my favorite people, Blind Tony called in with a poem about seeing a drunk and maybe laughing at him. But if that drunk were your son you wouldn’t laugh. Or a woman who was prostituting herself for drugs and you feel uncomfortable and look down on her but if she were your child, you wouldn’t. And then, Brian talked about how broken we can become and today, I read a devotion that used Psalm 31:12: I am forgotten as though I were dead, I have become like broken pottery and it occurred to me that we all start with a clean slate and then life attacks us, the world attacks us and were all broken, but take heart, dear DABers, God can and will make us whole again. Just like the broken pottery that they use gold to fill in the cracks, we will be more and precious then ever when He’s finished with us. Love you all. Bye.