1 Kings 15:25-17:24, Acts 10:24-48, Psalm 134:1-3, Proverbs 17:9-11
Today is the 16th day of June, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is always a privilege and always a joy when we gather together around the Global Campfire and become a community, all over the world, and join hearts and minds together and take the next, the next step forward in the Scriptures. So, it is with joy that we come together today for exactly that, the next step forward. And that next step forward will lead us back into the book of First Kings and we are at the point now in the books of Kings, we’re kind of back and forth. And we’re getting some long stories, some very, very short paragraphs about kings and that’s kind of how this will go. The kingdoms have split into two, as we know. There’s the northern kingdom of Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah. They each have their own king now, they’re separate nations who are continually, even though they’re family, are continuing, continually at war with one another. So, since there’s two kings, they don’t like, pass away all on the same day and then a new King is anointed in the, like they pass away at different times. And so, we’re kind of keeping up with the overlap of who’s King where, at what time, who is loyal to God, who is disloyal to God and leading the people into idolatry. When do they have animosity with each other, when are they at peace with one another. These are the kinds of things that we are moving through now. And it’s unlikely that we’re gonna remember every single one of these kings names and what they did and what they were known for. But if we will just remember, as we move through this territory, there is the kingdom of Israel, it’s the northern kingdom and there is the kingdom of Judah, where Jerusalem is, that is the kingdom of Judah. So, if we’re talking about Israel, we’re talking about the North. If we’re talking about Judah, we’re talking about the southern kingdom. And so, let’s dive in and continue learning the life and times of Israel’s kings and Judah’s kings. Today, First Kings chapter 15 verse 25 through 17 verse 24.
Commentary:
Okay, so yesterday, in the Book of Acts, we started this story that we continued forward today. And I was mentioning, in an understated way, the Bible is telling us in one of the most monumental stories that we can find in the New Testament. And we talked about the goings-on that we had read yesterday. Cornelius, a Roman, a Gentile, a soldier, a stentorian, a God fearer who loved the Lord and was generous to the poor, was praying in Caesarea, a Roman city on the Mediterranean coast. I’m gonna guess, a hundred miles maybe from like, like northwest of Jerusalem. The ruins of this ancient city exist until today and it was a spectacular place, a jewel, a place that Herod had built to be a truly Roman place, a place that the Romans would want to come and find familiarity and like sort of a place for holiday, to come to this land. But this is also the seat of governance of the entire province on behalf of Rome. And so, Cornelius is there as a stentorian, and as a Roman soldier. He has a vision, the vision tells him to send for this guy named Peter, who’s in Joppa, staying with a man named Simon the tanner by the sea. And so, he does that. Meanwhile, Peters having a vision of his own, where this sheet comes down were unclean animals are there and he’s told to kill and eat them. And he has a problem with that because he’s never done anything like, never done anything clean, unclean like that. But he hears a message that God is declaring. Like, don’t call unclean what God declares clean. And at that point, that’s when the messengers from Cornelius arrived to collect Peter. Peter is instructed to go with these people back to Joppa. And he does do that and that’s kind of where we pick up the reading, today. He arrives in Joppa. Cornelius has gotten his entire family and friends, like they got a large group of people there at the house. Peter arrives. Cornelius greets him by falling to the ground in honor. So, this is a very, very weird situation for Peter to be experiencing: a Roman Gentiles stentorian, a soldier in power is humbling himself before Peter, of fishermen from Galilee, who also happens to have been the disciple of Jesus Christ. So, an odd situation right at the front door. And peters like get up, like, I’m just a person. Get up. And then Peter goes ahead and says what the problem is, you know I’m not supposed to be here, we’re not supposed to be here, we’re not supposed to be mixing and intermingling with the Gentiles. We’re not supposed to be here, but I had this vision, and I was told to come here. So, here I am and the tension of this weird situation because I was instructed by the Spirit to come here. So here I am, what can I do for you? And Cornelius is like, wow, this is so weird because I had a vision too and I was told to send for you, which I did. And so, I’ve gathered everybody here hoping that you would come and it’s really nice of you to come. Thank you for coming. So, we are all here to hear whatever it is you have to say. So, both of these guys are like pushed together in this odd situation and neither know exactly what’s going on or what they’re supposed to be doing. Peter knows, at least in his tradition, that he’s not supposed to be there, but he’s not supposed to be hanging out with Cornelius. And if people find out about this, this is gonna cause problems for him, but he had been instructed to go. So, all he knows to do is to tell the story. And he begins to tell the story of Jesus and the good news of the Gospel. And while he’s doing this, the Holy Spirit falls upon Cornelius and his household. That is the monumental thing. It’s understated and we can read through it and go like, why is that a big deal? It’s a big deal because Cornelius was a Roman Gentile, the oppressor as it were, and the Holy Spirit fell upon them. So, Peters like well, then there’s no reason for them to not be baptized. The Holy Spirit has fallen upon them, as the Holy Spirit has come upon us. What we’re seeing here is a massive, exponential increase in awareness of what God was doing among the people in the Book of Acts. It’s not that it’s so monumental that it was like a change in God’s plans. God, if we remember, all the way back to meeting Abraham and going through all of the development of the children of Israel, we knew that they were to be a nation of priests, through whom the entire nations of the world would be blessed. So, it wasn’t like they were never going to have interaction. But they were not supposed to be mixing. And we’ve seen enough of the story to see that the mixture did cause their downfall. Now were in the first century, where they’ve all been in exile and they are back in the land, but they’ve never controlled the land again and they want these Gentiles, the Romans, the Greeks, they want them out. They want God to restore the land. And God comes directly to restore the land and restore the story and they miss it and crucified Jesus. So, the early believers in Jesus were largely Jewish people. The New Testament is written by Jewish people. Jesus was the Hebrew Messiah, the Jewish Messiah they believed in. There really wasn’t a separate kind of faith, this separate conversion process. And so that caused all kinds of debate in the early church. And this thing that happened with Cornelius is a big, big deal. Because what’s being indicated here is that all are welcome. And it wasn’t really going to be a matter of human debate. The Holy Spirit had spoken, and Peter saw this, with his own eyes. And we’re gonna see that Peter’s gonna go back and report all this and we’ll see that this causes problems. And Peter is gonna have to say the truth. Like, what are we supposed to do? The Holy Spirit fell upon these Gentiles, just like the Holy Spirit fell upon us Jews. So, what are we supposed to do here because God is making a decision and we can’t fight against the decision of God. We have to figure out a way to get on board. And that wrestling will cause division in the early church for those who believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, and in order to worship Jesus and appreciate and follow Him as a disciple, then you would convert to Judaism and then follow the Messiah. Where there was this other argument, like nobody’s been able to obey all of the laws of God, even as Hebrew people who grew up with this in the water, when it’s been the tapestry of our culture. How are we supposed to expect Gentiles, who don’t know anything about the fabric of this culture, to all the sudden come in here, learn all of the culture and then perfectly obey the law to follow Jesus. God is doing something new, and he is welcoming these Gentiles. And that will lead us, before the Book of Acts is over, to the first church council, the first time that people had to really get together, who had very, very differing opinions on things, to try to seek God and understand what was going to happen. And we’ll see that the Gentiles, because of what God is speaking through the Holy Spirit, are welcomed into the story. But not everybody welcomes them. And it causes division and a split and persecution later on in the story. But at least for me, I’m not sure I can understate how big of a deal this is. I read this story and I am a Gentile, and I am humbled, I am grateful this story welcomes most of us into the family of God. Grafts us in as it were, which is something that this guy, Saul, who hated the name of Jesus and then met Jesus and became Paul, the apostle Paul. He becomes really the champion for this argument that everybody in the world, the Gentiles are included in this story, and all are welcome. So much of what we will read when we begin to read the letters of Paul have this point in mind. And Paul does not have an easy go of it, as we will see. His message of inclusion and that Jesus is the Messiah, is going to put his life, well, it’s going to tip it upside down. He’s gonna find great joy in it, but it’s not going to be anything like he ever knew before. In fact, he will look at his previous life and say, it’s just all filthy rags. Just to walk with Jesus is the joy of life and we’ll see that many people want Paul dead. And that this Gospel, eventually costs him his life. And so, what we see here in Caesarea by the sea in the home of Cornelius the centurion, is a monumental move in the story that we are reading as we read the New Testament.
Prayer:
And so, Jesus, we are grateful. Holy Spirit, we are grateful for this story that we see and for the events that underlie the story that You have invited everybody to come to you. That everybody has the opportunity to believe and be in relationship and right standing in fellowship with You forever. We are recipients of this gift, and we are humbled and are grateful. And we are sorry for the ways that we’ve taken it for granted. We are sorry for the ways that we have misrepresented the good news by the ways that we have tried to exclude. We are thankful that You were making decisions in the Book of Acts, and You continue to do what is right. And may we see what You are doing and follow. We ask in the 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:
Dear sister, Kristina in Oregon, this is Amber in California. And I just wanted to call and let you know that I’m praying for you. And that I related to your call so much. I have been addicted to just about everything. I have two years clean off everything and it was not an overnight thing. It was tough and God finally delivered me. I’m almost 38 and all these 36 years I was hooked on something every day. And it destroyed my life. But today, I praise God that He’s delivered me. And that’s what I will pray for God to do for you, is deliver you from anything that is not of Him. Just lean on Him and His strength will get you through. You just take those first couple of steps in faith and then He will catch you and hold you the rest of the way. That’s just how He is. And He’s proven that to me, time and time again. He’s saved me, rescued me, so many times. And finally, I got it. So, I’m praying for that for you sister. And I’ll continue to pray. God bless. I love you all. I listen to the prayers every day, and I pray for you all every single day. I cry pretty much every single day. And I just wanna let you all know that I’m praying for you guys. Love you, goodbye.
Hey, this is Micah in Awe, calling for Ethan in Texas. I heard your prayer request and I’m praying for you brother. I know what it’s like to be drowning in different problems and feeling like nothing is going well. Like, there’s no joy. There’s just times in life where we go through those seasons and I’m praying for you now. In fact, I’ll just pray right now. Lord, I just ask You that You please visit our brother Ethan, Lord. And bring some joy to his life, Lord. Bring some relief, bring help from various places. And we remember the Scripture, I lift my eyes into the hills, looking for where my help comes from. And we know that our help comes from You, Lord. We ask that You just bring him help now, Lord. Bring him encouragement, bring him a charm of great joy, Lord. Let the valley of this season of life be over. Let him be on the hilltops and the mountain tops, enjoying your favor and being a blessing to others, Lord. He loves you and he’s asked for Your prayer, and he’s said that he’s prayed for others. We just ask that You show up in a big way for him, Lord, please. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
I’ve been thinking about fathers. They are so important in God’s plan for the family. But there is so many difficult issues relating to them. I know stories of abandonment, abuse, neglect and indifference. It also seems like some men just don’t know what to do. So, instead of engaging with their family, they back off and don’t do anything. I’d like to pray for the fathers listening right now. Heavenly Father, children are precious gifts from You. May Christian men realize the responsibility and privilege they have as fathers. May these men embrace the challenge, rather than shy away. May they cherish their wives, be the kind of men their children look up to. May they teach their sons to be men of God and show their daughters, what a good man is like. May they be men of integrity, strong and yet tender, filled with grace and joy. Father, no man is able to fulfill that calling without You at the center of his life. I pray that Christian fathers will call on the Holy Spirit and depend on Him for strength and guidance to do the right thing. I ask that these men will dig deeply into Your word, where they will see how You relate to Your children. That they will learn from Jesus, how to love and serve, where there is a need for forgiveness, may they confess and repent before You and before their family. And then purpose to go forward in Your strength and for Your glory. In Jesus name. Amen.
DAB, this is Carpe Diem Driver calling from Maryland, once again. As I continue to pray and help others, I still need help myself. Please Father, show me the way. Show me what I need to do to get my situation turned around. I’ve just had my electricity turned off, I’m in the dark now. I can’t read, I don’t know what to do. The further I move towards Him, the further things more keep happening to me. And I don’t know what to do. Please God, send me an angel, send me guidance, help me to solve this situation financially. Help that I need to get my life turned around and get my life back together again. In Jesus name that I pray. I reach out to You; cause God is the only thing that I know. He’s the only thing that I know. The only one that can help me. And I hope and pray that your prayers will be heard. And I’m gonna get out of this situation, one day soon.
Hello DAB family. Papa D from Tennessee, currently in Texas. Praying for Ethan from Texas today, June 12th. Father God, we ask that You would break off every dominion of oppression and condemnation off of our brother Ethan. We ask in Jesus name, Lord God, that Your Spirit would rest on him. Any demonic stuff, we command it to go to the feet of Jesus and do what Jesus is telling you to do. In Ethan’s life, you have no power and no authority. Holy Spirit, would You lead Ethan out of this, where he feels like he’s let down a lot of people and himself. Lord, we ask in Jesus name. Help him get up, help Ethan Lord to be strengthened by Your Spirit, by all the prayers, Your angelic hosts released as we pray and lift our brother up. Your __ that breaks the yoke. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Blessings everyone. Shalom.