07/27/2022 DAB Transcript

2 Chronicles 19:1-20:37, Romans 10:14-11:12, Psalms 21:1-13, Proverbs 20:4-6

Today is the 27th day of the month of July welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to gather around the Global Campfire and take the next step forward together as we navigate and continue to move forward in the Scriptures. We are navigating the book of second Chronicles in the Old Testament and the letter to the Romans in the New. And that’s what we will obviously continue to do until we finish one of them and then we’ll move forward. But for now, this is kind of where we’re camped out. So, let’s take that next step forward. We’re reading from the Contemporary English Version this week. Second Chronicles chapters 19 and 20.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of second Chronicles we have an interesting story about King Jehoshaphat. And certainly, Jehoshaphat is chronicled in the books of Kings. And, so, we’ve heard of him before, and even some of the stories like this one with the prophet Micaiah and all of the other prophets prophesying that King Ahab will be successful. And Micaiah has the bad news that he’s gonna die in battle. So, we have crossed that territory before but we have this other story with Jehoshaphat today that doesn’t show up in the book of Kings, and it’s an interesting one, because three nations, the Moabites, the Ammonites and Meunites from on the other side of the Jordan River, so the east side of the Jordan River. They have gathered together at the lowest point on the earth which is the Dead Sea and they’ve crossed over, and they’re at En-Gedi, which is a place and I’ve been there many times. There’s just a beautiful little tiny waterfall there but it’s such a barren desert we really are like so close to the lowest point on earth that the Dead Sea, it’s very very barren there. So, freshwater coming down from the hills from Jerusalem is not only beautiful, but certainly life-sustaining and lifesaving, especially at the time that we’re talking about before, you know, water could be pumped anywhere or anything like that. So, they’re gathering where they can have access to fresh water with the intentions then of following the Kedron Valley up to Jerusalem to attack. And that’s when Jehoshaphat finds out about it. Like they are already in his land. They are already on their way. They are a massive army, and the Israelites and King Jehoshaphat are not prepared. And, so, in some ways it’s kind of interesting to think about a figure like Israel’s first king, King Saul, because we spent so much time getting to know King Saul to think about like how he would respond to this because typically any kind of crisis that came against him or anything that was going to make him look bad he hind of freaked out in all kinds of directions. We even have to think kinda like, how would we be? Hard to put ourselves in the position of royalty with three allied nations coming against us, but we can put us ourselves in a position where unexpectedly we have opposition coming against us that we didn’t see coming. And, so, where does our heart turn in that moment. Like Jehoshaphat could’ve just tried to figure out what sort of defenses they had, tried to bring the Army is close to Jerusalem as possible so that they could at least defend the city. They could’ve sent ambassadors down to the other armies to ask, you know, what the problem is, what is going on. Or as we’ve seen in other stories, and in other cases, maybe they could of got all the gold that was in the Lord’s temple and sent it down to the Dead Sea and said just go home. This is what you were to have fought for. Here you go. Go home. Just none of that happens and Jehoshaphat was afraid, like terrified. The Bible says Jehoshaphat was afraid. That’s kind of an important point, especially as we consider our own lives because when we are in terror or we are afraid we’re not always thinking the most clear, we’re not making the wisest decisions all of the time, maybe none of the time. So, Jehoshaphat has gotten some pretty bad news that his country is being invaded. And that’s kind of a life or death piece of information. He’s been told the size of the forces that are coming against him, and he is afraid. Typically, a bad time to make wise decisions. And what Jehoshaphat does is not hide it from anybody, not try to spin it in some sort of way, not try to figure out how against all odds, they might be able to save themselves. He invites everybody to fast. And they fast before the Lord and then the king and the people come together at the Lord’s temple and the king has humbled himself, and he prays. You, Lord, are the God our ancestors worshiped and from heaven you rule every nation in the world. You are so powerful that no one could defeat you. And he continues praying and pours out before the Lord. These armies that are coming against us are people that we’ve encountered before, and we were not allowed to attack. We were not allowed to fight. They were spared and now, now that we’re in the land that you promised us they’re coming against us to take it away. Not only from us but to take it away from you, Lord. And he confesses that they’re outnumbered and then he says we won’t stand a chance when this army attacks. We don’t know what to do. We’re begging you for your help. So, here’s a king who has an invading army and he’s not blustering, he’s not posturing, he’s not spinning. He is humbling himself before God and his people confessing the truth. We don’t have any hope outside of you, which is really the ultimate lesson, right? Remember when we were learning the lesson of the wilderness. We are utterly dependent upon God, ultimately. And with all of the other judges and kings that we have met this is a rare occurrence. And how this works out is that people are praying, they have fasted, they are worshiping and the Lord speaks to someone named Jahaziel who was a Levite and he speaks up the prophetic utterance that essentially says, I hear you, you don’t have to be afraid, you don’t need to be discouraged. I will fight for you. Here are your instructions for the battle. And they’re told to march down from Jerusalem to a town called Ziz and the enemy army will be coming up from the Dead Sea in that direction. And the Lord said he would be there for them. And, so, Jehoshaphat doesn’t go like, whew…great, awesome, let’s feast, let’s dance, let’s just party now. He stays humble. He bows down with his head to the ground and everyone worships. And the ultimate outcome of the story is that the children of Israel obey the utterance from the Lord. They go to the place that they’re supposed to go. But what they find is that it’s really a good place to be a spectator. And what king Jehoshaphat ultimately does is have worshipers in front of the army leading the army. And, so, they are marching into battle while worshiping the Lord. The three enemy nations become confused. The Ammonite and Moabite armies band together and completely destroy the Edomite Army. And once that’s done then they turn on each other until everyone is wiped out. It’s an amazing story. But as we consider our own responses to bad news and the terror that arises because of the bad news we need to remember this story, a posture of humility confessing what is a reality, no matter we’re feeling. The reality is we are utterly dependent upon God. Everything that we try to do in our own strength ultimately fails. We can fake it all we want but we eventually crash. We are utterly dependent on God, which is the way we are made, which is the most healthy and safe place to be. What king Jehoshaphat and the Israelites learned was, although they had a tremendous amount of fear and terror about what was going to happen, what they feared wasn’t actually about to happen. And, so, when we find ourselves in that kind of a circumstance a lot of times we turn to anxiety. A lot of times we let our mind race. A lot of times we can’t get the sleep that we need, which just compounds the problem. What we see king Jehoshaphat and the children of Israel doing is moving to worship and utter humility, humbling themselves and not only crying out to God for him to come save them but worshiping the Lord, which is truly good advice to us the next time we face the unexpected fears that come our way.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for this story that we were able to read today about King Jehoshaphat and his posture. And we ask Holy Spirit that You let what we’ve read, and what was discussed here to become our posture. We begin to think about what directions we get pulled into when we become afraid or intimidated. And give us the insight into how that’s worked out for us and help us follow this example, to humble ourselves and worship You, knowing that we are utterly dependent upon You. We pray this in the beautiful name of Jesus our Lord. 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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi DAB family this is Rob Still worship dude and Nashville TN. I haven’t called in a while but I listen every day and pray along with you guys and I’m so very very grateful for all of you intercessors who are praying for those who call in. Thank you guys for calling in it’s an encouragement and to hear from you. Hey, I want to lift up the sister who called herself Broken. She’s a concert organist and played piano for church worship services. I have been in that role of working with church organists. And you said you had a car accident a couple years ago and had many broken bones and problems with your wrist. And the same thing has happened to me. I’ve broken both my wrists and my arm at different times and had not such great prognosis sometimes. So, I just want to pray God healing for you and we just come against fear and the name of Jesus. And I pray for healing for the loss and the grief. And you also mentioned you have an estranged relationship with your daughter. And right now, Lord we just pray for the God of hope just to fill her and fill all who are dealing with loss of relationships, loss of health. And God you are almighty, and your essence is love. And Lord we know that you want each one of us to do well. So, we call upon the Lord and we ask for divine healing and supernatural participation in our regular everyday lives Lord. I pray that she would be blessed my brothers and sisters and especially for Broken in the name of Jesus. Be encouraged. He is the God of hope.

Hi DAB family this prayer is for Jonathan from Denver. He called in on July 23rd and there was a woman who called and just said that how important it is to listen to the prayers and that sometimes they speak directly to you. And he called in and it just spoke directly to me. So, I don’t call it often, but I wanted to call in and pray for him. So, Lord I lift up Jonathan to You right now. He said he’s feeling down and he’s not serving You Lord and I just want…just want him to feel Your love, Your grace, Your peace, Your mercy right now God. Just lift him up, strengthen him. Strengthen him so that he could do what You called him to do. Not because he has to but because he loves You so much that he wants to and he’s doing it and Your strength and not his own. And don’t let him stay in that shame or condemnation. There’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So, help him to not stay in that place Lord and just lift him out of that and give him opportunities to love others and to serve You. And also, just thank You for his faithfulness in listening to the DAB and help him just to continue to do so Lord and just soak in Your word and spend time with You and grow closer to You in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hey Daily Audio Bible family it’s Travis from Alberta Canada. Last summer for my internship for Bible school I was given the opportunity to pastor a church in a little town in Alberta called Nordic and it was a life changing experience. And I love that place so much and I love the church family there. And right now, they just really need your prayers. They are on a town evacuation right now because of forest fires and a lot of…a lot of…of the families that were in my church at Nordic are having to flee their homes and don’t know if they’re gonna come back to a home or not. And, so, just be praying. Be praying for them. Be praying for Nordic Alberta. And, yeah, thank you all so much. God bless you. Bye.

Hi Daily Audio Bible this is Hopeful from Ohio. I’m actually calling to share both a praise and a prayer request. Praise is I’ve just been so encouraged. I’ve only been listening for a few weeks after my coworker shared with me this ministry and I just feel so encouraged. It’s been a part of my morning routine and I just really love the community. I love getting the word spoken over me as I get ready for the morning. So, I just want to thank you for all your faithful prayer and just wanted to let you guys know that I’ve been praying with you in all these things and hurting with you. And yeah…so thank you for this ministry. I also wanted to submit a prayer request both for myself and for my husband. I just felt the Lord’s prompting and calling me to get uncomfortable. I’m very fearful by nature and have felt He wants me to take steps of bravery but haven’t done that and I don’t want to sit in fear I want to be faithful. So, I pray for that. I also pray just for my marriage. My husband has been struggling with addiction to pornography and just this past week I had to kick him out for a night and set some boundaries due to the repetitive nature of it. And I just feel very worried for my marriage. Worried for him, sad for him, sad for me. And I know there are lots of other couples probably struggling with this or even singles. And, so, I just ask that you lift him up in prayer, lift us up in prayer. We need your help. We need the Lord’s help and just a miracle to happen to help here. Thank you…

Good evening Daily Audio Bible family my name is Betty I’m calling from Hamburg NY offering a praise report I have to share. I just heard Standing on the Promises praying for my son and others. My son is Nathan and I have to share that earlier this evening I got a call from the hospital and Nathan woke up. He’s been asleep for two weeks or in a state of catatonia…whatever…for two weeks and today he woke up. And isn’t it just like God because I heard the prayer today for him. So, thank you Lord for answered prayers. It’s a step in his journey of healing period. And, so, sometimes we forget to share the praise. So, that’s what I wanted to do today. Thank you all for your prayers for my son Nathan. His journey continues. Praise the Lord.