Genesis 5:1-7:24, Matthew 3:7-4:11, Psalms 3:1-8, Proverbs 1:10-19
Today is the 3rd day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian, and it is wonderful to be here with you on our third day of our adventure, our first week of the year, kind of our move in week as we establish the rhythms of our lives for the coming year. And one of those rhythms will be to incorporate the Scriptures into our lives each and every day of the journey through this year. And we’re two days in and the Scriptures have told us an awful lot in just two days. And we have also been acclimating ourselves to the books that we’re reading. And, so, we talked about Genesis on day one, the first of January and we talked about Matthew yesterday. And, so, when we get to the Psalms portion of our reading today, we’ll talk about the Psalms. But first we’re reading from the New International Version this week and our next step forward in the book of Genesis will be chapters 5, 6, and 7 today.
Introduction to the book of Psalms:
Okay. So, this brings us to our Psalms reading. And as we continue to move into this year we’re moving into the books. We’re about to read the third chapter of Psalms. So, we have a couple days behind us. And we’re reading book 1 of Psalms. And that might sound funny but Psalms is actually made up of five different books and we’ll notice when we move into another book because it’s announced in the Psalms. Psalms is a collection of poetry and song, song lyrics. And the Psalms, they basically touch every kind of circumstance that we encounter in our lives. These were the songs of the Hebrew people. These were the songs that they saying to reorient themselves to God. This…these were the songs that reminded them of who they were and where they came from and who God is. We may not have a songbook like this Psalms in this day and age, but we certainly have the songs that we keep writing to do that very thing, orient us to God, remind us of who we are, remind us of who God is, remind us of the story that we are telling. And, so, we can find hymns and congregational singings, and individual songs, and cries of the heart, and poems of worship. And we may notice that the books, the five different books, they’re kind of separated by author or by theme or by the purpose for the poetry or for the song. And these works have been revered for thousands of years. They speak the depths of the human soul, even by those who may not believe in the Bible or in the gospel. The psalms are still known to be some of the…some of the greatest collection of literature the world has ever known. And although there are several authors that contribute to the Psalms, one voice that we will get to know is the voice of King David. He’s responsible for many of these Psalms. Some of the most true, heartfelt cries of the heart come from the…the pen and the lips of King David. And David, you know, David and Goliath, this David who grows to be the king of Israel, he’s a very very popular biblical figure. And, so, we may have heard of, or be aware of David, but whether we are or not we will be. The Bible gives a very detailed, intimate portrait of King David and we’ll begin to enter that story once we reach the book of first Samuel. So, we’ve got a little ways to go before we meet David in the Bible, but we are becoming familiar with his voice and we are becoming familiar with his work in the Psalms. So, whereas we’ll get this pretty detailed biographical sketch in first Samuel, the Psalms reveal King David’s creative heart. And through his art he reveals his heart. And so many of the things that he felt in his heart and memorialized them, wrote them down, are things that we can deeply identify with. And, so, Psalms is a very very valuable resource for us in our spiritual journey. And, so, let’s dive in today and read the third chapter of Psalms.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Genesis today we encounter, obviously the next step forward in the story that’s being told but some weird twists and turns today. A number of people are named. These are the first people, and we notice that they live for centuries near a thousand years even. And what the book of Genesis is beginning to unpack for us is that progressively people became more and more wicked as time went on, which ultimately introduces us to a man named Noah who built an ark. Another very famous story in the Scriptures. But let’s look at this for a second. I quote from Genesis. “When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.” And it also says, “the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” Who are these people? Are they people? Passages like this inspire tremendous mythology and conjecture and speculation. Theologically basically what we’re looking at here is the fact that God had a divine family of created beings that predate humanity. Beings, and often we’ll sub classify these beings into the angelic realm, beings that were to watch over humankind, but desired relations with human women. And we just get…just a handful of glimpses of this along the way when we talk about the Nephilim or Rephaim. And a lot of times these get boiled down into a subcategory, the Giants. And these giants survive the flood because they are still seen after the flood. For example, once the children of Israel are a great people, and we haven’t got to the story of how that comes to be, but once the people are a great people and they leave slavery and they go to spy out the land of promise, what are they afraid of? The Giants are there. We look like grasshoppers to them. Or who is it that David before he’s a king is so incensed by when he goes to visit his brothers at battle with the Philistines? The giant, Goliath defying the most-high God of Israel. And, so, there will be points along the way that we will notice these references and we’ll probably talk about it along the way. If this is something that you’re intrigued by and want to take a deep dive into there is a written resource called The Unseen Realm. This is written by Dr. Michael Heiser. That is probably the only book recommendation that I’ll give this whole year…like it’s so rare, but for me it’s pretty much at the top of the list because it’s an academic work simply trying to answer the question, what do the Scriptures, what does the Bible actually say from cover to cover about the unseen realm or the spiritual realm? And the implications are profound. And, so, there is a way to take a deep academic dive that is sort of devoid of conjecture and speculation. All of this leads us to Noah and the state of the world at that time. And the state of the world at that time, and I quote from Genesis. “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time and the Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” And this is another good thing for us to look at right at the beginning. Was God so mad at people that he regretted making them? Was it people that he had the problem with or was it the fact that humankind made a decision to rebel against God in the garden, and a thousand years later because we’re jumping about a thousand years to get to Noah, it’d only devolved, it’d only gotten worse as mankind tried to grapple with the knowledge of good and evil in order to make his own standards and become his own God until the point that God looked upon the human race and realized, this is only evil all the time. It’s not the people. It’s the evil. Evil exists in this world. We all know that. We can call it whatever we want, but the forces of evil exist in this world and people can give their lives over to evil, and if they completely give their lives over to evil, then all that they think in all they do becomes evil. Evil is out of sync with shalom. Evil is out of sync with the order that God intended humanity to live in. The deception in the garden led to evil everywhere all the time. God will fight against evil all the way through the Bible all the way to the last page of the book of Revelation, where we witness the end of evil. Evil destroys people. And the world had become completely evil. And it’s here that we begin to see the first glimpses of a redemptive thread that will wind its way all the way through the Bible. There was one righteous man, Noah. He and his family survived the flood, and the story of humanity continues.
Now the deception and opportunity to fall away that Adam and Eve that we witnessed in the Genesis chapter 3 with Adam and Eve is also being visited upon Jesus in the book of Matthew where he is being tempted, right? Where a deception is being floated by Him to see if He’ll take the bait. Once again, it’s the evil one trying to offer a distorted version of reality that will continue to distort humanity. And let’s remember, Jesus was the first sinless, perfect person, a person as people were intended to be. He was the first one to walk upon the earth since Adam and Eve. We saw a different response from Jesus. He rebuked the evil and the sent it away, which sets up for us right here on day three, this incredible contrast, something that the Bible does often. Each one of us faces deception. Each one of us faces the choice to do good or evil. We might call that temptation. We have an example in the book of Genesis about what it looks like if we take the bait. It will only continue to devolve us like until the point that we become animals. And we can see that in the world today. That’s where the road will go if we give ourselves over to deception and evil. By contrast, we have Jesus’ modeling humanity for us, knowing that what was being offered to Him, even though he was being offered everything. To achieve it by becoming evil is only perpetuating the problem. Instead, we have the example of Jesus using Scripture and casting it away. We each have these choices to make on a daily basis and we’ve been given a big picture of where these roads lead.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for day three. We thank You for helping us get moved into this rhythm. We thank You for all that is coming up already in this year, just three days in. And, so, we open ourselves to You. Come Holy Spirit into all that we read this year from the Scriptures, into all that we discuss throughout this year about the Scriptures. We open our hearts to You and ask that You begin to plant seeds into the soil of our lives. And as we learn to tend the soil, the field of our own hearts, just begin to understand our own hearts may the fruit of the Spirit abound in us. Help us to see clearly the decisions that we are making. Help us to see evil clearly and avoid it we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hi this is Man of Wrath in the US and I’m calling in for the first time. I had actually was going to call in before the holidays and ask for coverage over my family and just pray for good interaction. And I didn’t get around to it and I’m feeling…feeling that I really should have because once again I’ve ruined a holiday. And…and I just would ask that you would cover my family, my wife, and my children because of my emotional abusiveness and verbal abusiveness, and the havoc that it’s wreaked over my family. And I just pray that…that I can be forgiven. I know that my God Forgives me but, just that I could forgive myself and be forgiven by my family and the damage that I have done again can somehow be rectified. I pray that I can control myself, which I don’t, a clear definition of a fool. I obviously don’t fear God because I don’t do what He wills and I do exactly the opposite, what I know is wrong. So, I just ask for your…your prayers over my family, that they would…they would be resilient and be able to not be affected. But I know I’ve broken their hearts again.
Hi, my name is Eleanor this is my first time listening to the Daily Audio Bible and I was really moved by the community of prayer that you guys apparently have after the podcast. I started to hear prayer requests roll in and I hope that someone can pray for me. I have two young children and I have thoughts of taking my life often because I feel like I’m not a good mom, I’m not a good enough parent. And I feel so disappointed in myself all the time. And I know that the Bible says that…that God is bigger than these problems and that He’s big enough to sustain me and I try to lean into that. And…and it’s hard. So, I would really like prayers for…for that, to be able to lean on the Lord and to do so for my mental health…for my mental health and for my children as well and for God to just make me the person that he needs to be. And I hope that on the other side of this it can be a testimony it can be my testimony that I could share with other women and other moms that probably go through the same thing. But thank you. Happy new year.
Hello family it’s Sean 3:16. Have you ever made a mistake and the fear of that you feel for the possible consequences of a mistake is crippling? That’s where I am right now. Only God can do it for me. And I’m praying. I hope you will pray along with me that God will deliver me from the consequences of a mistake and that He will make everything alright. Thank you for your prayers. Sean 316.
Hello DAB family I’m calling anonymously today because I have something on my heart, and I’m concerned, and I really need your prayer. I’ve been working for almost two decades for a Christian organization that I love but a number of months ago I was pushed out of my role in one area of the organization, and I’ve never felt so devalued and demoralized in my life. At the same time, I was rescued by the director of another department who saw my value and didn’t wanna lose me in what he saw as my worth in my history with the organization. And, so, I’ve assumed a new role learning it from scratch while I’ve still had to cover in my former role because they didn’t get my replacement until just recently. But now I’m training this person in all the things that I used to do. And I know that his salary is much much higher than mine. This is really humbling but I’m asking you to pray for me for my heart to be grateful for what I have and to be able to honor my new boss who’s been so kind to me and that I forgive those in leadership who made me feel so devalued. And I’m gonna take on that challenge that Brian gave to read the full chapter of proverbs each day in 2022 in addition to the daily reading because I really need wisdom and I want the Lord to set a watch over my lips that I might speak wise words and not grumble about my circumstances. I really want to spread the fragrance of Christ where I am. So, thank you so much for your prayers. I love you all.
Father God thank You so much for this time we’ve had together. Thank You for the opportunity we’ve had to celebrate Christmas and to remember the birth of our savior Jesus Christ. Thank You, Lord for all that represents. Thank You for the hope we have because of what You have done and what Jesus has done. Father God thank You for our friends and our families. And we pray that You would be watching over them and that You would be healing them and that You would be at work in their hearts and minds, that they may come to know You more or they may come to know You first off. Father God as we look back on this year, we thank You for how You have blessed us, and we pray that You’d help us to learn from what we need to learn from and help us to move forward into the new year. Thank You for all that this new year entails. Thank You for all the new opportunities. And I pray Lord that You would be inspiring us and helping us to be the best version of ourselves. Lord You know what is concerning us at this time. You know what is worrying us and we just commit that to You and ask You to be at work. Thank You that we can trust and rely on You. Help us to walk with You each day. In Jesus’ holy and precious name. Amen.