Author: Daily Audio Bible Transcripts

Genesis 16:1-18:19, Matthew 6:1-24, Psalms 7:1-17, Proverbs 2:1-5

Today is the 7^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It’s great to be here with you today at the threshold of a sparkly, shiny, new week. And we’re about to head together into the first full week of this brand-new year. And I’m excited for all that this week will unpack and unfold for us as we take the next steps forward through the Scriptures this year. And we’ll take the next step forward by picking up where we left off yesterday. This week we’ll read from the Christian Standard Bible. Genesis chapter 16 verse 1 through 18 verse 15.

Commentary:

Okay. So, Abram becomes Abraham today. This is all part of Abraham entering into a covenant with God. And, although in the Scriptures we will read through Abraham’s life and find it he dies and then follow along with future generations, Abraham’s presence will be felt throughout the rest of the Bible. In fact, there aren’t very many people who have ever lived that would be considered more important than Abraham. Even today, nearly half the world’s population would trace their religious convictions back to this man. It is through Abraham that the children of Israel will come to be. So, what we see is that God has promised Abraham and his offspring a specific piece of land. And we’ve talked about the importance of that piece of land. And God had promised him that his offspring would outnumber the sands of the seashore, the stars in the sky. The problem was, Abraham was too old for this, and his wife, Sarah, was too old for this, and they didn’t have any kids, so, it was pretty unclear how that was going to happen. And, so, we see an instance of Abraham and Sarah trying to force the promise to come true by Sarah giving Hagar, her maidservant, to Abraham as a surrogate wife, which didn’t work out so well in the marriage. But God reiterated that what He was talking about was the union between Abraham and Sarah, and they would have a son in their old age. And this was an impossibility. And they laughed and they couldn’t figure out how this could be. But Abraham believed God and that’s actually you become a big deal later when we get into the writings of the apostle Paul, because this promise is going to be fulfilled, and there is going to be a great people. We’ll read the entire story. This is the origin story of the Hebrews. The apostle, Paul, will use what we’re reading about right now, this promise of Isaac and Abraham’s belief that it could happen even though he has no idea how. Paul will argue that it is Abraham’s faith that brought him into covenant with God. And by faith, that’s how we enter into covenant with God as well. Because Abraham believed God, and God credited that faith as righteousness. And, so, Paul will argue that it’s the same, we are made righteous through faith, because Abraham didn’t have a Bible to read. And Abraham didn’t have any rules to follow. None of that happened yet. He wasn’t doing that. He was just believing. And that’s a very, very big deal in the teachings of the apostle Paul. So, I’m not trying to get us ahead of ourselves or muddy the waters so that we’re confused. I’m trying to point this out now because we’re right here in this story, we’re right at the beginning. And this, what we’re reading right now, affects everything else that comes later. So, when see this coming up in the Bible, we can remember, this was the story. We’re reading it now.

And then, in the book of Matthew, we’re working our way through the Sermon on the Mount, and we encounter one of the most well-known, well memorized passages in all of the Scripture, known as the Lord’s prayer. Most of us could probably recite it from memory right this second. However, Jesus concludes the Lord’s prayer with some thoughts that get us into some difficult territory. And it’s actually good that we get into this territory at the beginning of the year because, if we’ll listen to what Jesus is saying, we can live a much more free this year than maybe ever before. But it’s going to take some work. But, if we’ll do the work, we’ll be honoring the Lord’s prayer. So, immediately following this prayer, Jesus says, ‘for, if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well, but if you don’t forgive others, Your Father will not forgive your offenses.’ Yeah. I know. Kind of hard to wiggle around that one. Why is Jesus instructing this? And we can turn to our own defense and say, well, you don’t know what she did to me, you don’t know what they did to me, you know what he did to our family, you don’t know what they have done over years. I can’t do it. But then that makes us look at our faith itself. Right? So, we go back to the book of Genesis and we see that Abraham believed God, in an absolutely impossible situation and it was credited to him as righteousness. So, we have to start there, because as we’ll be told later in the Scriptures, it’s impossible to please God without faith. And Jesus is telling us that when we release people from their offenses against us, we are actually activating our own forgiveness. So, we have to wonder, is Jesus laying down rules or is He offering the keys to freedom? How much unforgiveness would you say that you are carrying around in your life? And I’m saying it’s not legitimate. I’m just saying how much are you carrying around? And if you had to imagine it, what would you imagine that it looks like? I mean, would you say it looks like a nice flower patch in the springtime? Or would you say it’s more like a polluted pond? Probably the latter. The places of unforgiveness in our lives are attached to, probably, pretty significant wounds. And we try to insulate ourselves from those things. We don’t even want to think about those things. But what we’ll find as we move deeper into the Scriptures is that unforgiveness is like drinking from a polluted pond. It’s like poison in our lives. It’s like cancer for our souls. Jesus isn’t threatening us by telling us that we have to forgive and if we don’t we won’t be forgiven. He’s telling us that forgiveness is the way of the kingdom of heaven. And isn’t that our whole story of faith? Isn’t it that God was merciful and kind enough, that even while we were estranged from Him, even as an enemy to Him, still, He died for us, still, He was merciful, still, He forgave us? Isn’t that the example of Jesus as He’s being nailed to a cross by calling to His Father for forgiveness for those who were killing Him? So, we can see, forgiveness is a very, very important thing to God. And I’m sure that even as we’re talking about this right now, things begin to bubble up. Places that are wounded and maybe have unforgiveness involved, they begin to come up, we begin to remember. And forgiveness doesn’t mean that an injustice wasn’t done to you in some way or that you’re supposed to gloss it over like it wasn’t a big deal. Forgiveness means that we release those events and those involved to God. It means that we take these things that are polluted inside of us and that lead us into all kinds of different directions because were acting out of woundedness and release it to God. It means we pull the plug on the polluted pond and let it drain out. We begin to realize just how much grace it has taken to get us to this point, just how much we have been forgiven, and realize, holding on to all this, it is tearing us up inside. We’re leaving a pipeline for the evil one to exploit directly into our hearts. What Jesus is offering us here, at the end of the Lord’s prayer, is certainly counsel and certainly the fact of the matter in His kingdom, but it’s also permission, permission to offload all of this. We don’t have to carry this around inside of us anymore. I mean, imagine what it would be like to not be holding anything in your heart toward anyone else. What kind of freedom would that be? That’s what were invited into.

Prayer:

Jesus, we hear You. We hear You and it brings up all kinds of things. And this is going to take some work, but were starting this work now by just inviting Your Holy Spirit to bring these things up. And some of these things we haven’t thought about in years and we don’t want to think about. We don’t want to go there, but You’re saying give that person, give that event to Me. Let Me come to that place that has become a scar or that place that has continued to seep poison and infection into your soul. Give that to Me. Let Me come to that place. Let Me begin to heal You there. You don’t have to carry that weight anymore. So, we’re hearing You Jesus, and we’re opening our hearts to You. We trust You and we invite You into these areas of unforgiveness. And we see that You are offering us our freedom. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Song:

Matthew West – Forgiveness

It’s the hardest thing to give away

And the last thing on your mind today

It always goes to those who don’t deserve

It’s the opposite of how you feel

When they pain they caused is just too real

Takes everything you have to say the word

Forgiveness, forgiveness

It flies in the face of all your pride

It moves away the mad inside

It’s always anger’s own worst enemy

Even when the jury and the judge

Say you’ve got a right to hold a grudge

It’s the whisper in your ear saying set it free

Forgiveness, forgiveness

Forgiveness, forgiveness

Show me how to love the unlovable

Show me how to reach the unreachable

Help me now to do the impossible

Forgiveness, forgiveness

Help me now to do the impossible

Forgiveness

It’ll clear the bitterness away

It can even set a prisoner free

There is no end to what its power can do

So let it go and be amazed by what you see through eyes of grace

The prisoner that it really frees is you

Forgiveness, forgiveness

Forgiveness, forgiveness

Show me how to love the unlovable

Show me how to reach the unreachable

Help me now to do the impossible

Forgiveness

I want finally set it free

Show me how to see what your mercy sees

Help me now to give what You gave to me

Forgiveness, forgiveness

Forgiveness, forgiveness

Genesis 13:5-15:21, Matthew 5:27-48, Psalms 6:1-10, Proverbs 1:29-33

Today is January 6^th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is a pleasure and an honor to be here with you today for the next step forward. And we’re completing our first week in this new year. So, one week from today, give it another week, and we will be settling into a rhythm. And as we move through the rest of this month we’ll be seeing how we are starting to look differently at things, simply because the Bible is counseling us, and correcting us, and cheering us on, and pulling us forward. So, let’s dive in and take the next step. We’ve been reading from the New International Version this week, which is what we’ll do today, and then we’ll switch to something else tomorrow. Genesis chapter 13 verse 5 through 15 verse 21.

Commentary:

All right. So, we’ve got some things going in the book of Genesis, some battles, some moving around, some parting of company, and probably we should get our geography in order. So, Abram, and I don’t think this is a spoiler alert, Abram is going to have a name change to Abraham. He starts his journey in what would be modern day Syria and he moves his way into the land where the Canaanites live. And this is the land he is promised, the land that becomes Israel, the land that most of the Bible happens in. And this area of land isn’t that big, like, maybe the size of the state of New Jersey in the United States. It’s not that big. But for its lack of size, it has huge significance, because the land goes all the way to the Mediterranean Sea on its west and in its southwest it leads into the Sinai Peninsula, which leads to Egypt and the African continent. So, for trade to flow between Africa and into the Middle East and Asia, this was the only land route that wasn’t completely desert. And because it borders the Mediterranean Sea, it was also invaluable for sea trade. So, Abram comes into this land and God promises this land, but it’s very important land. The nations had to travel through there to trade with one another. So, later, when the children of Israel do become a nation, and the children of Israel at this point in the book of Genesis haven’t even been born yet, but when they do come into the promise land and conquer the promise land, they really are proverbially in the center of the world and control the flow of trade. So, we can see why this land is so valuable and why so many people have wanted to control it. And today Abram and his nephew Lot, they have to split up and go in different directions, simply because the land can support all that is required of both of them. So, Lot chooses the Jordan Valley. So, the Jordan River runs basically between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea and those are two very different bodies of water. The Sea of Galilee is a freshwater lake while the Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth. So, everything kind of flows down to that point, but there’s no way to get out. From the Dead Sea, moving inland toward the Mediterranean Sea, the land begins to rise and rise and rise all the way to the point that Jerusalem is. It’s a pretty steep climb. So, Lot is going down into the valley and Abram is staying more in the high lands. And Lot gets taken as a prisoner of war and this happens near the city of Sodom. There’s been lots of conjecture about where Sodom and Gomorrah actually were, but, I mean, we can just, as a ballpark, say, somewhere in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. And, so, they’re carried northward and then eastward toward Damascus, through the city of Dan. So, from the Dead Sea to Dan. And the ancient ruins of the city of Dan are still in existence today. I’m going to guess, about 100 miles. So, Abraham has to go in pursuit to recover his kin and he goes through the city of Dan. What’s interesting about that is that, in this ancient city of Dan, an even more ancient city gate has been uncovered. And the ruins of this city gate are Canaanite, dating back to the time of Abraham. So, it’s likely that Abraham and his men, Abram and his men, moving in pursuit of rescuing Lot, pass through those city gates. So, there’s your geography lesson for the day. If you see this on a map, it can help. Just kind of being acquainted with where things are is helpful so when things happen you kind of see where they happen, how they had to travel to get to that place. And at the end of next month when we go to Israel, we’ll be posting lots and lots and lots of pictures on social media and staying connected to that pilgrimage. And a lot will happen in the Bible between now and then that is all situated in this land. So, it will start coming alive and it’s very exciting when it does.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. And we see that Your word is situated on planet Earth among earthlings and it’s rooted in a geography. And we thank You that we can see these places and get an understanding of what life was like in these times because this gives us context and we see that context is important in Your word. So, come Holy Spirit, plant what has been read today in our hearts, and may it sprout and yield the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here.

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that the next time we’ll be out on the road we will be in Louisville, Kentucky on the 14^th of January and I’ll be speaking at New Song Christian Fellowship Louisville. So, if you are in the area, love to see you, love to say hi. You can get all the details for this at dailyaudiobible.com in the Events section, and all the details that you would need to know. So, looking forward to that.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible App, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

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 Daily Audio Bible, this is Rebecca from Michigan and it’s January 2^nd. Happy New Year. I have a verse for us since we are doing the word Hope. For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you not to harm you, plans to give you hope __ and in future. Jerimiah 29:11. And I want to say, one, realize I’m not God, I admit that I am powerless to control my tendencies to do the wrong things and that my life is unmanageable. Happy are those who know they are spiritual poor. Matthew 5:3. Have a happy New Year Daily Audio Bible and I hope that God uses me to minister to other people and win them to the Lord. Thank you. Bye. I love you.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family. This is Shelia calling from Massachusetts. Happy New Year to all of you. Brian, Jill, China, I just want to say, thank you so much for the work that you do. This is Bob’s and my 10th year joining you on our trip through the Bible, out of your 13 years. And China, this year I am adding your version of the Chronological reading into my daily spiritual life. So, I’m very excited to go through that with you. And the dedication that your family has for spreading the word of the Lord is truly amazing. And your there to sit with them day after day after day serving the Lord. It’s such an inspiration, it’s such a blessing. I lift you up Lord. Lord Jesus, I just, I say prayers to the Hardin family, continue to provide them with the strength and the wisdom and the courage to spread Your name, Lord. They’re such a __ of Christians out there, such a role model. We love you. Thank you.  

__ calling from California. I’m calling because I have a few different prayer requests. The first one is that we have been under steady, heavy, attack from the enemy. I have been sick for going on two months now. Constantly different things, strep throat, infection in one of my teeth, flu, cold, but now my voice is gone. We’ve also been heavily under attack with our financial situation. As I remain sick, I’ve been in and out of work. So, we’ve been struggling financially and I’ve been just praying. And because of the financial struggle, me and my husband have been in constant battle. We’ve been constantly fighting __. Now, my husband’s bi-polar, so, any issue when he’s stressed triggers an additional anxiety attack with him. So, it’s been very hard to not only stay positive but to stay focused. So, I pray and I ask for prayer that God turns it around. It’s the second of the year and we are barely able to pay December’s rent now and we have all of the new bills coming in this month. I just ask that God __ focus on the other side. That we’re not behind but ahead. We had to borrow money from someone and I was very uncomfortable with it. This person is very…he’s just someone I don’t feel comfortable with in my husband’s life. So, I pray that either God changes him or my husband’s able to influence God into him. My husband has between wavering between God because of the situation. So, I ask for prayer for that as well. Thank you for your time. Thank you DAB family for always being there for me. Brian thank you for this podcast.

Hi this is Scottish Tom calling from the Cleveland Ohio area. I’m actually calling for prayers for my mother. She called me from Scotland on Friday and has told me that she’s been diagnosed with Leukemia. The good news is she’s got kidney transplants a few years ago and they do regular blood tests and they had caught it almost right away and she’s had no symptoms. So, we’re very hopeful that we can, she can beat this. And they’re saying that she’s very healthy. She’s 66. So, She’s not to old. So, they’re doing the most intense treatment. So, she’s going to be going to hospital for five weeks starting tomorrow. So, the first day to that treatment and I think she gets out for a week and then goes back in for another five weeks. So, if I could just ask you to pray for her and to pray for my dad and the rest of our family, that the Lord will keep us strong, strong for my mom, and that she’ll get through this and have a full recovery. Thank you for your prayers in advance. And I pray for you guys all the time, although I don’t always call in. Thank you. God, bless. Bye.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family. This is Chris from London. I haven’t called in in forever. I’m just calling with a praise report. I want to thank God for China and Daily Audio Bible Chronological. I listen for the first time and it’s just crazy…I’m just…oh my goodness…China’s reading the Bible. It’s just mad. So, I’m just so grateful to God because I remember meeting China and Brian at the Daily Audio Bible retreat, family retreat, in London, it was probably around 5 years ago, way before I was working, probably 5 years ago. And now I’ve got…I’m, married. I’ve a married. I’ve a daughter as well who is three months old. I just took it like how that she’s growing and I’m just like…wow…God…I pray that my daughter Ava will grow in the same way, in the way of the Lord. __ pray for. Just praise report. Praise God.

Genesis 11:1-13:4, Matthew 5:1-26, Psalms 5:1-12, Proverbs 1:24-28

Today is the 5^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you today as we close in on our first week of the year together. I’m excited to take the next step forward. We’ve been reading from the New International Version this week. And the next up forward in the book of Genesis will take us through chapter 11 verse 1 through 13 verse 4 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Matthew we’re hearing for the first time from Jesus. We’re not hearing about Jesus, we’re hearing from Jesus. And what we began today and what we’ll continue with for the next several days in the book of Matthew is known as the Sermon on the Mount. And this is where Jesus lays out his worldview. This isn’t the only thing Jesus teaches, but most would agree this is his central message. And, as I mentioned about the book of Matthew when we began it, way back at the beginning of the year, like two days ago, the writer of Matthew seeks to root Jesus in His Hebrew context because Jesus was Jewish. Now the Sermon on the Mount occurred very near ground zero for Jesus ministry, which was the city of Capernaum, where he made his adult home. And Capernaum sits right on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, about 90 miles north of Jerusalem. And there is a lovely sloping hill that has commemorated this spot for about 1700 years called the Mount of Beatitudes. But we see right from the get go in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus is flipping the paradigm. And part of that flipping is in who He’s ministering to, who He’s choosing to talk to. He’s not down in Jerusalem trying to cozy up to people in power. Rather, He’s up in Galilee among common people who are having a difficult time making life work, people who were struggling, people who felt the oppressive weight of a system that was pushing them to the margins, people who were trying to find a more modern context for their ancient religious views. And the Galilee area was known for its zealotry. A century and half before Jesus was born was fraught with uprisings. So, these people had experienced loss. They had experienced what they certainly perceived as injustice. They were struggling to survive and they didn’t see any way out. So, we should at least point out, this is who God came to. This is where everything that we know of as the Christian faith started and this is who it started among. And Jesus didn’t stroll up a nice little rise overlooking the lake and give little platitudes, little pats on the back, little ‘God will come through for you, don’t worry, he has plans to prosper you.’ He didn’t do that and make it easy on them. He simply told them, you don’t have to live like this. Your circumstances may not change, but your heart can. And if you change from the inside, then the way that you look at the outside will be different. And when we understand that and hear the words of Jesus. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Jesus was showing them how backward things had become, how the sense of God’s peace and order in their lives that they were seeking wasn’t going to come through their rage and their flailing attempts to reorder their circumstances. It was actually going to begin to come when they could pry their hands-off control and surrender, not to the injustice or the oppression, but to God. And those things are no less true this very moment than they were when they were uttered from Jesus mouth. We feel it. Right? It’s all over the world, this bubbling tension. It’s in everything. It’s woven into our cultures because the idea of dissatisfaction is really good marketing. You’re dissatisfied, but if you will buy this, then you will be satisfied. We get hammered all day, every day, with this kind of messaging. But it’s still true today, we cannot find the peace and order inside of ourselves by moving things around outside of ourselves. It begins with our hearts. And if we’ll keep that in mind, then the Sermon on the Mount will open up to us.

Prayer:

Jesus, that’s our prayer, that’s our prayer right now. Things can get pretty crazy in life and we can find ourselves sideways or off the road. And then we start making lists of all the things we’re going to change and were just moving pieces around in our lives, rather than understanding this whole thing originates from our hearts. So, come Holy Spirit into our hearts, into our identities, into the places that have been wounded, into the places that are most true of us. Come Holy Spirit and speak through Your word. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here.  Couple things are going on around here.

We’ll be back out on the road the 14^th of January. And we’ll be in Louisville Kentucky at New Song Christian Fellowship Louisville. So, if you are in the area, love to meet you, love to shake your hand, hug your neck. Come and say hello. You get all the details for that at dailyaudiobible.com in the events section - times, phone numbers, websites, all that kind of stuff, maps. So, check that out. Hope to see you.

Also want to invite you to follow Daily Audio Bible on social media. Not only so that you can interact with each other and places like DAB friends on Facebook, but also for things like announcements. So, for example, when we were going through a little bit of a meltdown here a couple of days ago because we were just completely overloading the system, we were posting updates, you know, we were tweeting updates and posting updates so that the word could get out. So, that’s a good way to stay up on stuff like that. Don’t worry, we’re not going to post a meme a day that’s going to flood your feed. That’s not really our style, but we do try to keep you informed and that’s one of the ways. So, you can find all of our social media channels by going to dailyaudiobible.com and then clicking Community at the top and then you’ll see social media in there.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link that lives right on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

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, my name is Stan Sr. and this is Stanley Jr. and we have a praise report. Yesterday, we had a Daily Audio Bible party and we celebrated the last day of the year that we listened to the Daily Audio Bible together and it has been such a blessing in our lives. And Brian, I just want to say you really brought me to tears that day you had China on interviewing her about the chronological version. China is my new hero and I’m looking forward to trying to share that with some other young people that I work with, that they might be inspired that a young woman will be so committed to the Daily Audio Bible. And I’ve called in two or three times. This is Stanley from Maryland. But I just want to say thank you for a great year and all the prayers that have been prayed. And it’s really nice to have his community be a part of. 2018 will be my third year listening to the DAB. So, healthier than ever taking my vitamin DAB every day and thank God for you Brian. Thank God for you and I love the music that lays in the background all of the time.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family, Brian, Jill, it’s Katherine M. from __. Happy New Year everybody. We’re in for another year. How wonderful. Thank You Father and blessings to You for giving us Brian to read this to us. I’m just ringing to say hello to everybody and I wrote to myself here ___ your ringing and ___ and to let them know how wonderful it is that I play the Daily Audio Bible when I’m going to sleep at night. I do it in the morning and play it at night. And if I’m ever wrestles and can’t sleep, I put this on, and if the enemies harassing me, he never hangs around. He can’t stand listening to the Bible. So, anyway I thought I’d just give you that praise. Hope…that’s all I’ve got to say. Bye. Bye- for now. Bye.

Hello DAB family. I hope you all had a blessed Christmas season and cheers and blessings as we bring in 2018. My name is Jill and I am calling from Des Moines Iowa. I am a long-time listener but first-time caller. I’ve always thought about calling in and never did. So, I decided to start the new year and call. So, here I am. I wanted to share a big praise to God and gratitude I have for Brian, Jill, and the DAB team for all that you do. It’s such a blessing to have you all in my life. I’ve been to the More conference twice in the last three years, which has been so phenomenal and I’m so excited to go back in April. I also wanted to share a couple of other things. I was in a three-year relationship. I was an alcoholic and that journey recently ended, early December. Although there were good times, tough times and a lot of grief. I am thankful to God for the growth I’ve had these last three years and thankful for the wonderful people and support that God has placed in my life, including the DAB family, Al-Anon, celibate recovery, and other friends and family. Also, I’m excited to share, I have found a few ladies to join me in a support life group to read the Bible with the new DAB mobile app. We are going to get together and pray for one another. If anyone has suggestions on discussion guides, please let me know. I have been praying for you family and I hope that 2018 will be a great year. I love you. Jill in Des Moines.

Good morning or afternoon or evening Daily Audio Bible. Happy New Year. We are in 2018 and it’s so exciting. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that I’m going into my 6^th year. I’ve been listening to the Daily Audio Bible, it will be 6 years in July and I cannot even believe it. I am so excited. And with that being said, I just wanted to welcome all the new members. Oh my gosh, you guys are in for a ride of your lifetime. Just wanted to encourage to stay on course. Do not discouraged. You will notice that some days you will miss. Don’t get discouraged. You can always play back and, you know, get caught up. Just go with the flow and eventually you will see that this will become part of your life. I usually do this when I’m getting ready for work, when I’m driving to work. I have a 30 minute drive to work and I get…there’s lots of time to get caught up. So, you are going to be just fine and we are so excited that you joined us. You’re going to meet allot of our members here. We have a lot of dedicated members that call in to pray for you and we encourage you to call in. One of my New Year resolutions is to try and call in and participate in just praying for everybody. So, hopefully I’ll do a lot better this year. So, yeah, I just wanted to let the new members…because I know when I first started listening it was very encouraging to hear like people calling in and encouraging us and just giving us tips on really how to stay on course. And wanted to thank Brian and Jill for the commitment. And, yeah, let’s do this guys.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible community. This is Diane Olive B. from Newburgh Indiana and it is 6:20 AM, January 2^nd. Happy, happy New Year to everybody. I wanted to go over this again, First Peter 3:4-5 in the Modern English Version. ‘I do not let my adorning be the outward adorning of braiding my hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine clothing, but I let my adorning be the hidden nature of my heart that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a gentle and quiet Spirit, which is very precious in the sight of my heavenly Father.’ Think about that. Sela, pause, and calmly think about that. Did you hear where it said, ‘the adornment of a gentle and quiet spirit.’ That is my goal in life, to have a gentle and a quiet spirit, to be something that is precious in the sight of my Father. Oh, I’ve got a little bit of work to do on that though. Just yesterday we were all in the car and I wasn’t gentile and I wasn’t quiet, but, I shall overcome. I shall succeed in my goal because I am Christian and Jesus lives in me. Shalom, Shalom everybody. Nothing is missing. Nothing is broken.

Genesis 8:1-10:32, Matthew 4:12-25, Psalms 4:1-8, Proverbs 1:20-23

Today is January 4^th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it’s great to be here with you today as we move through our first week together this year. And as you can probably see, the Bible launches us like a rocket, like, we just take off, and there’s so many interesting things going on. And, so I’m excited. I’m excited about today, I’m excited about this first week, and I’m excited about this year. So, we’ll pick up where we left off yesterday and read Genesis chapters 8 through 10. And we’re reading from the New International Version this week.

Proverbs:

Okay. So, we’ve come to our reading from Proverbs today. And, true to what we been doing the last couple of days, we’ve been just doing a little bit of an overview of what the book is that we’re reading and where it comes from. And so, we did that with Genesis, we did that with Matthew, we did that with Psalms yesterday. And, so, today, Proverbs. And I’ve mentioned this, Proverbs is an invaluable book of practical wisdom. In the structure of the Old Testament, Proverbs is the main book in what is called the collection of wisdom literature. The others being, Ecclesiastes, the book of Job, and part of the Psalms. And these portions of Scripture are called wisdom literature because they’re more intended to speak a direct lesson, rather than to be a narrative where the reader follows a story and then gleans meaning from it. The wisdom literature, or the books of wisdom, speak directly what they are trying to teach. So, most of the Proverbs are attributed to the great wise man, King Solomon, although there are a couple of other characters involved that lend their wisdom to the Proverbs. It seems that the Proverbs may have been collected all along, but weren’t really put into a collection until the time of around King Hezekiah. And most biblical scholars think that some of the Proverbs could predate Solomon and were a series of oral traditions and oral wisdom that had been handed down from generation to generation and, finally, placed into the collection of Proverbs. And the Proverbs all address the human experience and transfer wisdom that has stood the test of time to what we, as people, experience both with each other, and with God, and inside of ourselves. And it gives us the ultimate roadmap to life. It’s the ultimate book of wisdom, the greatest collection of wisdom that mankind has. Proverbs tells us, whatever you do, get wisdom because wisdom is more valuable than anything else. If you have wisdom everything else can be achieved. And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And, so, our reading from Proverbs today will be from the first chapter, versus 20 through 23.

Prayer:

Thank You Father for Your word and all of its facets and nuances and for the way it speaks so relevantly into our lives and our stories. And, even though we’re only four days into this year, Your word feels so safe and so familiar, and we grant it access to our hearts and invite Your Holy Spirit to speak through Your word into our lives as we take a step forward every day through the scriptures. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here.  Let me tell you what’s been going on around here.

We have been experiencing some growing pains and you’ve probably been experiencing them too. So, yesterday I got up to find that we had a complete systemwide outage that was affecting all of the Daily Audio Bible programs. And that’s very unusual. And it’s kind of a big deal. Oh, but guys, we have such a good team. Chet’s team up in Indiana figured it out, isolated it, and worked on getting everything restored, while Daniels team in Kansas City found workarounds and got us back up and running. This isn’t the first time that we’ve experienced growing pains, but it was definitely the first time in 12 years we’ve experienced something like that. So, we were back up and running pretty quickly. And, so thanks to the dedicated people who work so hard to make this happen every day. When we launch our app or go to our web player and push play and hear the Daily Audio Bible every day, it takes…I mean…there’s just a lot of things that happen to make that happen, including nearly 20 servers, simply to handle the data. So, it’s no small feat. And I appreciate…appreciate what we have here as a team and as a community.

Now, you also may have experienced inability to register an account or getting errors on the website or that kind of thing. That’s just a result of system overload. We’re getting 5 to 10 requests per second on the system. So, we’ve been experiencing some overloads, which is, you know, giving you errors. And that should be going away. We’ve put some measures in place and are putting some additional measures in place to kind of handle all that’s going on. So, things should be starting to smooth out there. The downside is that the upgrades that we’ve had to make is going to increase our monthly costs to support of platform by 30 fold. So, 30 times as much, which is a little scary, but the upside is that the Lord invited us to do this, to create all of this and to give it away. So, I don’t think the Lord spilled His coffee when he realized we had some growing pains, like I just about did. And he has provided every single step of the way for the 12 years that we’ve been at this. So, I have no doubt that this is no problem for Him. But over the next couple of days everything should smooth out and work more like it is intended to. So, like I say a lot, where in this together. Thank you for your prayers. Things should be smoothing out and will continue to smooth out over the next couple of days.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There’s a link that’s on the homepage. If you’re using the new Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And as always, we are a community and we are in this together. If you’re shouldering burdens that are best not carried alone, there’s a number you can call and a community, all of us together behind that number, and we are praying people, and we are a loving people. So, there are some numbers that you can call. If you are in the Americas, 877-942-4253 is the number. If you are in the UK or Europe you can call 44-20-3608-8078 and if you’re in Australia are not part of the world. Call 61-3-8820-5459.

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 family. This is His little Cherri from Canada and I’m really enjoying Brian read the last of Revelations. Finally, the happily ever after that is coming for us. But as I’ve been thinking about how wonderful it would be to finally experience complete shalom, it occurs to me that this life here and now is my only chance to love God in the middle of a mess. Because when I’m in heaven, I’ll see Him as He is. I’ll love Him as He loves me. But it will be too late then to offer Him what I can give Him now, which is to worship Him, thwarts and all, to trust Him before I’m healed, to come to Him even in the middle of my addictions. And I know that we’re in the process of being saved. We do experience redemption hear and now, but none of us are perfect yet. I know I’m not. And so many times I feel that my feeble attempts to love and obey God must just be a joke to Him. But, actually, I think it’s the exact opposite. I think He must treasure every offering that I bring, weak and broken as it is, because it’s a rare and precious thing to Him. So, family I just wanted to remind us that we don’t have to wait to come to God until we get our act together. Let’s run to Him now in the middle of our mess because this is our chance to give Him something we can only give Him now, our brokenness. God bless you family.

Hey family. This is Jordan from Michigan. December 31^st, __ the end of another year. This is the second time I’m finishing the Daily Audio Bible and the second time that I’ve read the Bible because of the Holy Spirit and by God’s providence finding the Daily Audio Bible. And, so, I’m just so grateful for all of you and all your prayers that you’ve been praying for me over the past couple of years. And it’s really made such a huge difference. And, if I could, I would like to request that you would just pray for me for the next year that God would transform my teaching. This is the first year that I’m ever going to be in the same job for a whole year. And I’m a teacher. And I really just need…I really need the guidance of God because I am really struggling with that. So, thank you and happy New Year. Love you guys. Bye.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family. This is John calling from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It is the 31^st day of December 2017, the final day of December 2017, and I just got through listening to the 31^st of December program and finishing up the last transcript for the program of the year. And I couldn’t make the call here right away because I was just crying…just tears of absolute joy over being able to get here…not that though…but it was just being here with all of you and getting to know you. So, Brian, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for your dedication and commitment and loyalty and integrity and truth and for everything you do in your ministry here in sharing the word of God. Thank you to the family, the Daily Audio Bible family and your family, Brian. You folks are amazing. This community has changed my life forever and I know it’s doing work in your hearts as well as it’s done in mine. So, I can’t thank you all enough. You’ve been such an inspiration and a blessing to me. I’ve cried with you, I’ve laughed with you. And I just want to leave Brian with the same words that he left us this morning. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make his face to shine upon you, Brian, and be gracious to you. May He lift up his countenance on you and give you peace. May the strength of God go with you. May the wisdom of God instruct you. May the hand of God protect you. May the word of God direct you. May you be sealed in Christ this day and forevermore. Amen. And God bless you. We’ll see you next year guys.

Hi family. This is Purely Pampered of Maine. I’m calling in for prayer requests for a few of you that I continue to pray for regularly but haven’t heard from in a long time, some of you, years. If you’re still listening, will you call in and give us an update as we continue to pray for you? Marie with your daughter, Elizabeth Joy, and your now toddler, how are you doing? I’m praying for you. Valerie, you used to call in regularly for you and your husbands physical health and for the situation where you were being taken advantage of by your grandchildren. You’re in my prayers. Nana Jones, I’m still prying for you, for your daughter Tiffany, who was an exotic dancer and your now, must be, eight-year old grandchild. Crystal, you had seven children and you contemplated abortion or adoption for your eighth. But you decided to keep that baby who now must be a preschooler. You’re in my prayers. And Kevin of California and your three sons, Levi, Moses, and Takoa that you hadn’t seen in two years. Now it might be close to three. I’m praying for you all. Oh, Creator and Sustainer of all, I lift up each of these brothers and sisters in their situations to You. I pray for healing, for restoration, and for Your supernatural peace that goes deeper than their painful situations. Fill each of them with hope Lord. I lift them up to You. Amen. Love you family. Bye for now.

Good evening. It’s Beloved for Him from Gloucester in the UK and it is Sunday the 31^st of December 2017. Just going to read a couple of words from Hebrews that I got read at my church today. Keep your life free from love of money and be content with what you have. For He has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So, we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me? Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever. And that’s from Hebrews 13. Yes, you know, the old year is done. The new year is coming. And I just wanted to take a few to say thank you for all of your prayers, love, and support this year and bring on the next year. And just a reminder for us to pray for our leaders. Pray for Brian and those involved behind the scenes in the Daily Audio Bible. But also pray for our local churches as well, that they’ll be encouraged. So, I’m just going to pray now. Father God, thank You so much for what You’ve done for our lives in 2017. Thank You so much for placing this burden on Brian to read the word…and it’s like 12 years that he’s finished Lord and that is amazing. Father God, but we’re not focusing on what’s happened Lord. We’re looking ahead. Lord, thank You so much for 2018 and this new app that we have and I Pray Lord that You be bringing people to find the app and find the podcast and to get through the Bible and join us. Lord, help us spread the message of Daily Audio Bible and how important it is to be reading Your word, but also help people find it Lord. Bless this coming year Lord. In Jesus name. Amen.

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’s, of course, wonderful to be here with you today from the rolling hills of Tennessee, where it is a cold. Not as cold as many of you further up in the north. I get it. I know that. But cold for us nonetheless. But, thankfully, we have a nice, warm, global campfire burning that is this community and we can all come in out of the cold and warm ourselves with some time in God’s word as it opens up its stories and wisdom and inspiration to us. So, today we’ll do what we do every day, pick up where we left off yesterday and continue the story forward. So, we’re reading from the New International version this week. Genesis chapter 5 through chapter 7.

Psalms:

Okay. So, we have talked about the book of Genesis as we began this year. And then the next day, which was yesterday, we talked about the book of Matthew. Now let’s talk about the book of Psalms. So, the Hebrew word for Psalms is Tehillim, which means, praises. And that’s what this book is. It’s a collection of 150 songs, hymns, congregational and responsive singings, and individual songs and poems of worship. It’s basically five books in one. And they’re classified by who wrote them or there theme or purpose. Some of them give praise to God, others speak of his character or actions. Some are songs of lament or repentance, while others are songs of thanksgiving. In other words, they’re songs about life and the life of faith. And no matter the circumstances of life, the book of Psalms is meant to bring praise, glory, adoration, reverence, and honor to God in all circumstances and for all purposes. Psalms is a beautiful book containing some of the most heartfelt musical poetry ever written. And every conceivable human emotion is explored in the Psalms. There are heart cries that are so passionate and broken that you can feel them across the boundaries of time. And yet, there are also some exalted mountaintop experiences where the glory of the Lord is tangible and present. David, who we haven’t met yet, but we will, he was the second king of Israel and he was a master musician and he composed most of the Psalms. And, although we have a large amount of information about David throughout the rest of the Bible, the Psalms reveal his heart. And what we find is that he is completely human and the ebb and flow of his humanity is ever present in his compositions. But David didn’t write all the Psalms. Other writers include Solomon, who is David’s son, the sons of Cora- Asaph, Ethan - and then there are a number of them whose authors unknown or they were anonymously written. But ultimately, the purpose of this Psalms was to rally the people and to enrich the worship experience of Israel. And the songs would have been sung in public and private homes as people went about their daily lives. And these songs have stood the test of time because we sing and quote them now. Their power and enduring beauty is unmatched and they’re absolutely unrivaled in terms of literary and spiritual value. Scholars believe that the Psalms were written over a long period of time, between roughly 950 BC until about 165 maybe 170 BC. Three major periods in Israel are covered in the Psalms. The first would be during the reign of David and Solomon. The second would contain songs written when the children of Israel were taken into exile in Babylon, a story that we’ll get to later. The third would contain writings from when they were freed to go back and re-create their land after the exile. Also, a story that we’ll get to later. We have a long time span and various culture points that are represented here in the Psalms, but the Psalms are very cohesive in their purpose of bringing glory and honor to God in a very authentic and beautiful way. And today we’ll read Psalm 3, a Psalm of David when he fled from his son Absalom.

Commentary:

Okay, so in the book of Genesis we’ve traveled many generations from Adam and Eve and we’ve begun to see the wickedness that is happening in the world because humanity was separated from divinity. And all of that is leading us to the man, Noah, and an ark, and a flood. But just before we got to Noah and basically right in between some genealogy and Noah, we come across this strange passage. ‘The sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.’ Then we were told 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.’ And we reach passages like this throughout the Bible where you go, wait, what is going…what is being said, what is happening? And every year as we go through the Bible, we dive into some of these. So, who are the sons of God that saw the daughters of Eve were beautiful and took them? And who were the Nephilim, who were apparently their children? Well believe it or not, we’re not the first people to ask this question on the face of the earth. This has been being pondered for millennia. So, from a biblical scholarship perspective there’s basically three interpretations here, three ways of looking at this. The first would be that the sons of God or the Nephilim, these are angelic beings but they’re part of the spiritual realm. The second way of looking at it is that these were the rulers, they were tyrannical people, but kind of smaller kings of clans that would roam about trying to conquer and build up their kingdom. And then the third way of interpreting this would be that these are the descendants of Adam and Eve’s son, Seth. So, two of these ideas are humanly based and one of them is rooted in the supernatural. And they each have their own challenges to overcome, which is why there’s different ways of looking at this. So, let’s look at the Seth idea first. Basically, the thought is, Adam and Eve had three sons - Cain, Abel and later Seth. Cain killed his brother Abel and then was cursed and sent away by God. Abel had died. He had been murdered by his brother. And then Adam any of had Seth. So, when we get to today’s reading and we’re moving ourselves through how the world became more and more wicked, leading to a massive flood, we read of Adams family line. But it’s Adams family line through Seth. So, the idea here then, is that Seth’s offspring would’ve been similar to Abel’s offspring. They weren’t murderous and tyrannical people, they weren’t cursed and sent away, and they weren’t supposed to mix in with those who were. So, the Sethites weren’t supposed to be mixing in with the Caneites, but they found them beautiful and did. And we’ll find that later on as we get further into the Bible that this idea of mixture is kind of a big deal. It causes massive amounts of problems for the Israelites. And, so with that explanation, then the Nephilim are the offspring between Seth’s family line and Cane’s line and then being heroes of old and men of renown is just ancient memory, legend, and myth that everybody knew at the time of this writing. The problem is that the Nephilim get referenced later, when the 12 spies go to spy out the promised land, which would mean that they survived the flood. So, those following, then, this Seth model would say that that was just a reference, when the 12 spies spied out the land. The legend of the Nephilim as a species of Giants was still well-established in the culture. And, so, they weren’t really the Nephilim, they were just being referred to that way because the spies likened themselves to grasshoppers in in their midst, which is figurative language. Okay, the other human option here is that these were the judges and rulers and kind of kings of the time that they just attacked each other and were trying to build kingdoms and they would rape and pillage and do what they did. So, they were referred to as sons of God because they were part of the human family. And their bloodline was thought of as powerful because they came from powerful people even though they were evil. And a lot of that thought comes from the fact that what Genesis is doing is leading us toward the flood. So, it’s going through some genealogy, showing generations have passed, with the intent of showing how each generation became more and more evil. So, immediately following the passage about the sons of God and the daughters of man and the Nephilim, we read, ‘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’, which led God to regret that he had made people and the earth was flooded. So, in light of that, these were just powerful but evil people who became legendary. And then the third way is to look at them as spiritual beings, which would make us become acutely aware that there is much more going on in the cosmos than what we can perceive with our five physical human senses. And this would’ve been the common worldview of ancient readers. This is how they would’ve understood their existence. And it is, in fact, how we as believers view our existence, that we are, in fact, spiritual beings wrapped in human flesh. But we have a much more difficult time absorbing that a spiritual being, an angelic being of some sort, could take on human form, or even human flesh, and participate in the world. But from this way of thinking we would have to acknowledge the incarnation, we would have to acknowledge that God came in human flesh in the person of Jesus and transformed the world by participating in the world. So, the idea here is that God has a spiritual family and although not tethered to physicality, is nonetheless at work in the world or wherever it is that God’s work needs to be done. And they can interact with humanity. So, for example, a little later in the book of Genesis when we meet Abraham, we’ll see that he interacts with two divine beings in the physical flesh and they eat a meal together. And then they go down to Sodom and Gomorrah and they physically rescue Lott, Abraham’s nephew. And even later, when we meet Jacob, he’s going to have a wrestling match. And it appears that he’s a wrestling with a spiritual being, or even God. It’s after this wrestling match that Jacob gets a name change, and his name changes to Israel. So, this is a divine experience that affects the world after this. Or Jesus, when he’s tempted by the devil in the wilderness, once those 40 days are over angels come and minister to Him, which probably means more than just floating around Him invisibly. And the apostle Peter escapes from jail because an angel comes and unlocks the door, setting him free. So, then, if you’re following along with this, then these are spiritual, angelic beings that have become infatuated with the beauty of the women of earth. So, the extrabiblical book of Enoch talks some about this. So, we read about Enoch, I think it was yesterday. Enoch was one of people that didn’t live to be like most of thousand years old. He lived like less than 400 years and then he was no more, because God took him. And the only other person mentioned in this way is the prophet Elijah who was taken up in a whirlwind and chariots of fire, which is just another example of the divine realm interacting with the physical realm here on earth. So, the book of Enoch isn’t in the Bible but it is ancient and it’s within the context of the Bible. And, so, in it, Enoch talks about, after his translation, going to some of these angels, warning these angels, and even angels that are under God’s judgment and restrained. So, that’s not like, hey, run out and find the book of Enoch and start digesting that, although it’s very interesting. It’s just that through ancient writings you can begin to tell what people were thinking in a certain period of time, how it was they understood their existence. And if this kind of stuff intrigues you, another good resource would be to read The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser, who is a very decorated scholar. And he moves through the Bible and the ancient cultures showing how the spiritual realm is very, very much at work in our existence. So, there’s some thoughts on the sons of God and the daughters of Eve and the Nephilim. But one thing that we can say for certain is that the book of Genesis is leading us toward Noah. And we see that after Eden, as things spread out upon the earth, it became more and more and more wicked. Mankind was trying to use the knowledge of good and evil to achieve what it had lost. But what it had lost was true penetrating intimacy with God and that could not be restored by the power of human ingenuity. And mankind became like animals. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord, and a redemptive thread emerges, one that we’ll be seen throughout the entirety of the Bible.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. And here we are at day three and already it is opening up to us, awakening our spirits, awakening our minds. And we invite Your Holy Spirit to continue that work throughout every single day of this year. We want to be awake and aware. We want to partner with You and participate in Your work in this world. So, we invite the transformation, the transformative power of Your word to wash over us. And we invite Your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.  

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here.

So, a few things to talk about today.

January 14^th, which is a week from this Sunday, we’ll be back out on the road and will be speaking in Louisville, Kentucky. So, if you are in the area, we would love to meet you, shake your hand, hug your neck, hear a little bit of your story. I’ll be speaking at new song Christian Fellowship, Louisville and you can get the information for that at dailyaudiobible.com. Just go to the events section and you can get all the details, even a map, websites, phone numbers, all of that. So, if you are in the area, come say hello. We’ll look forward to seeing you.

We’re also talking a little bit each day about how the Daily Audio Bible works. So, we’ve talked about the website. One of the things that you will notice at the website is the Daily Bible Shop. There are a number of resources there that kind of let you wear your colors as you go through the year, but also resources to help you move your way through the year and not forget the year. We have Daily Audio Bible journals in the Daily Audio Bible shop as well as a lot of writing utensils that can accompany you through. I mean, if God’s speaking to you, take notes. Journal your way through this year. One of the themes that we’ll find emerging through the Bible is not forgetting where you have come from. So, as you take the journey through the Bible and as you Journal your life as your interacting with the Bible and are able to talk about the things that are going on in your life, those will become invaluable as you go back to previous years and are able to read through what was going on and how God was faithful. And then this emerging theme of redemption that we find in the Bible, we begin to see it in our own lives. So, we’re big on journaling around here, which is why we’ve put a journal in the new Daily Audio Bible app, so you can just kind of write some thoughts down as you think of them, things you don’t want to forget. But if you want to kind of Journal your way through your life, then we have a perfectly…I mean we worked really hard to come up with the perfect pairing, the perfect things to take you through that journey and you can find them in the Daily Audio Bible Shop.

Another thing to point out is our Tumblr account. Every day, the things that are said on the Daily Audio Bible are transcribed and uploaded there. So, you can go back and read what was said. And you can find that link by going to dailyaudiobible.com and you’ll see some tabs up at the top to help you navigate, like a lot of websites. One of those tabs is called Community, and in the Community tab you’ll see Social Media, which will show you all the social media channels that we’re on, but one of those is Tumblr, and that will take you to the transcripts.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There’s a link that’s right on the homepage. If you’re using the new Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

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:

Well hello from beautiful Cincinnati, Ohio, and happy New Year. This Daniel J. Jr. and I want to give a special shout out to all of my fellow Cincinnatians and those that live around the greater Cincinnati, northern Kentucky area. We need to meet up in the new year some time. Reach out to me on social media, just look for Daniel Johnson Jr. But that’s not why I’m calling. I want to wish everybody in the Daily Audio Bible community a Happy new year, especially those of you that are listening for the first time. What a trip this is going to be for you as it has been for me. I’ve been listening for quite a number of years now and I never wind up being the same at the end of the year as I was at the beginning of the year. And I’m so grateful that we have this new Daily Audio Bible app, the new Daily Audio Bible mobile app, and great functionality. I can Journal right there, to read along with the passages there, even mark that I’ve been or started an episode. What a phenomenal thing and I’m just really excited about the new year. My word…my new three words for the new year for me it’s, joy, write, I’m going to do a lot more writing in the coming year, and dream. And that kind of correlates to the word for the Daily Audio Bible, a community of hope. So, I praise God for all the work he’s been able to do in 2017, but I’m excited about what’s going to happen in 2018. Come, let’s celebrate all that God has done and let’s celebrate all that God is about to do. From beautiful Cincinnati, Ohio. This is Daniel J. Jr. Make it a great day.

Hi. My name is Derek from Vancouver, BC. This is my third time calling. And I just want to ask you, my DAB friends, to pray along with me and agree with me on this request. Heavenly father, I want to start a new year by surrendering to You completely. I have procrastinated so much in the past and I have lived in regret. I’ve complained and moaned about everything and I want to just start fresh. I’ve been tied up with doing so much stuff, getting busy doing things that do not matter, and I want to give those up. Father, I ask for Your help. There are addictions in my life that I want to break free from and just the guilt and shame that then goes along with it. So, Father, I ask you in Jesus’s name to help me to recover what the locusts have taken from me. I ask You this Father in the name of Jesus. My brothers and sisters, I ask you to pray and agree with me on this. Okay. Thank you so much. And the Lord bless you. Happy new year to you all. Bye-bye.

Happy New Year Daily Audio Bible family. It’s Jubilant Perseverance from Indonesia. Today, I am blessed and really happy to be calling you from Thailand. I have left Indonesia for my winter break and spent the last few days in a healing center shedding 2017 and preparing to walk into 2018 with clear vision, clear sight, and ready to see what God is up to and how I can be a part of it. So, I just wanted to call in and pray for that to be a part of all of our perspectives as we cross over into a new year and ask that the Father give us wisdom, and that He continue to guide us as we surrender ourselves to Him. And just pray for the blood of Jesus to cover all of His people who have just surrendered to Him and given our lives over to Him and confessed that He is Lord. It’s been a really, really difficult year, but I am excited about what’s to come as the old passes away and the new is finally here, literally a brand-new year. Thank you all so much for continuing to be a part of this and support one another and Brian and your family, thank you for your work that the team is doing there to make this community possible. I’ve been very blessed listening to the word and listening to your commentary on it as well as the prayers. Have a wonderful 2018 everyone. By-bye.

God Your so faithful that I’m forced to confess
That I’m wonderfully made and abundantly blessed
And as we draw closer to the end of another year
Some things in my blindness have become abundantly clear
Two months ago I had anguish every single day
Blisters and excruciating pain that never went away
Now two months later I’m sending up praise
Halleluiah, thank you Jesus and my spirit just stays and replays
Over and over I can’t thank him enough
Things seemed so hopeless excruciatingly tough
Now I’m ebullient like a bottle of uncorked Champaign
Free from anxiety free from all pain
We can endure for a moment, a minute, a night
But when that joy comes in the morning it’s an incredibly welcome wonderful sight
Halleluiah, thank you Jesus I have to say it again
Like I told you before his praises within me don’t end
I know there’ll be other problems other ailments and fights
Other days filled with anxiety as well as other sleepless nights
But I know that the Father has given me the power to win
Jesus and the Holy Spirit advocate, healer, and friend

blindtony1016@gmail.com. Happy New Year’s everybody. I’d like to give a shout out to Walter. Hope everything’s going good with your mother. Keep burning girl. Keep burning. Haven’t heard from Blessed Like Me. You still there brother? And Shannon, with the spiritual nuggets. Where you all at? And Gigi, haven’t heard from you either. And, also like to give a shout out to Slave of Jesus. Alright, love you all. You’re in my prayers every day. And, once again, Brian, thank you for this won…

Genesis 3:1-4:26, Matthew 2:13-3:6, Psalms 2:1-12, Proverbs 1:7-9

Today is the 2^nd day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it’s great to be here with you for the 2^nd step of 365 as we make our way into and through the Scriptures this year. So, we set sail yesterday and have just left the harbor, as it were, on our voyage this year, and what an adventure it will be. So, yesterday we began the book of Genesis, and the book of Matthew, and the book of Psalms, and the book of Proverbs, which is the trajectory we will take this year - a bit from the Old Testament, a reading from the New Testament, a bit of Psalms, and a bit of Proverbs, each and every day. So, we talked about Genesis yesterday as we began, and today, when we get to the New Testament, we’ll talk about the book of Matthew. And at the end, I’ll talk a little bit about Daily Audio Bible and the community that we share here and some good things to know as we get out into the open seas on this grand adventure. And by the time we’ve finished a week together we’ll all be on the same page. But the primary thing that we do here is to read from God’s word. And, so, we’re reading from the New International version this week, Genesis chapter 3 and chapter 4.

Matthew:

Okay. So, I mentioned that we began the book of Matthew yesterday, obviously, and we read from it - the genealogies of Jesus and of Jesus birth. So, let’s get our bearings with the book of Matthew. Like the book of Genesis, the book of Matthew is also a part of a grouping of books known as the Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And each of them give us an account of Christ’s life, who is our Savior, but they were written at different times and by different people to different audiences for different reasons. So, understanding the back story a little bit helps us get some facets and nuances that we might completely miss. So, most Scholars would place Matthew as the second of the Gospels written with Mark being the first and Matthew coming maybe a decade or a little more after Mark. Matthew, the person this gospel was attributed to was one of the 12 apostles, or disciples of Jesus, and he was a tax collector in his former life. So, he wasn’t the most liked person socially, but when Jesus called him, he left everything. So, from that perspective, this is a man who gave up a life that he knew and that was definitely providing for his needs and making him wealthy in exchange for a great leap of faith to follow a man that he came to believe was the son of God. And the book of Matthew was written for Jewish people. And that’s kind of an important thing to understand. Jesus was a Jewish person and His ministry was primarily to Jewish people. So, that was the context for His ministry. And after His death and resurrection, the apostle Paul came onto the scene. And we haven’t met the apostle Paul yet, but we will, and you’ve probably heard of the apostle Paul. It was Paul who began to unpack the fact that God was drawing all people back to himself through Jesus and the work of Christ wasn’t just an ethnic thing. The reason that that became so influential is that some of the letters of the apostle Paul are the earliest Christian writings that we have. So, Matthew, the gospel of Matthew, is a bit younger than the gospel of Mark, and the gospel of Mark is a bit younger than some of Paul’s writing, some of Paul’s letters. In other words, the New Testament isn’t laid out in chronological fashion. That was never the point. Which brings us to another point that we have to pay attention to as we move through the New Testament. These writers weren’t trying to compose books of history. Rather, they were trying to impart truths to specific people that they were writing to. And Matthew was writing to Jewish people, especially Jewish believers in Jesus. And we know this because of the Jewish nature of the book. For example, the gospel of Matthew quotes the Old Testament more than any of the other Gospels do. And the intent was to show how Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament Mosaic Law and the fulfillment of many Old Testament prophecies, which we’ll see constantly. So, we’ll be reading along in Matthew and it’ll be like, ‘Jesus did this to fulfill this particular prophecy’. We’ll see that over and over. And we have to remember, at the time of the writing of the gospel of Matthew there was no New Testament. It hadn’t all been written yet and it wasn’t collected together until much later. So, what the Jewish people did have was the law and the prophets. So, Matthew is using the Scriptures of the time to reveal why Jesus is the Messiah. And of course, we’ll get to know Jesus pretty well in the book of Matthew. We’ll get to understand a bit of His style and personality. There are over 20 parables that we’ll encounter. Jesus uses symbolic picture stories that are rich and have deep meaning and He uses His words to craft a sense of feeling and emotion that’s beyond just words and it’s quite striking and quite beautiful. But Jesus often uses stories and figurative language. And if there’s one thing that comes out of all this as we move through the book of Matthew it is that we begin to hear the first rumblings of the kingdom of heaven that is coming, and that is near, it is now, and Jesus is the King. And, so, with that, we’ll pick up where we left off yesterday, Matthew chapter 2 verse 13 through 3 verse 6.

Commentary:

Okay. So, let’s go back to the book of Genesis, just for a second because, really, we encountered one of the saddest stories in all of history in the book of Genesis chapter 3 today. And this story is known as the fall of man. We had the briefest glimpses into a world that was perfect and then we saw what happened. God had given His children made in His image the earth to flourish upon and had given everything in it to them. He simply asked them to abstain from one thing, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were not to eat from that. But they were deceived. And we’ll find, as we read through the Bible and get ourselves all the way to the last books of the Bible, that deception is the primary tool that the evil one, and the forces of evil use in this world. Deception is what gave dominion to the evil one, but we also learn some remarkable things about God and His heart toward those He has made in His likeness. Adam and Eve were allowed to make a choice and their choice was allowed to matter. And we might wonder about that tree in the middle of the garden. What’s the point of that? Why even have that? Why give them the choice? But love and relationship are funny things, because they cannot be forced. No one can force you to love someone else. They may have some power and control over you and maybe even severe enough to make you pretend, or fake act that you love them, but no one can make you give your heart to someone else. Love isn’t love if there’s no way out. If there’s no way out you are enslaved. Adam and Eve made a choice. The choice mattered. And we’re going to meet a lot of people as we travel through the Bible and they will be making choices and those choices will matter. And God will be there in the midst of it all, simply calling out to his people, come back to me, return to me. And we’ll see this over and over because He’s still doing it today.

And then we get into the book of Matthew and we’ve already talked about that, but after we talked about it we could clearly see, Jesus is, like, fulfilling some kind of prophecy, practically every time he turns around, which makes Matthew a great beginning to the New Testament because it bridges the gap. We end the Old Testament and start with the book of Matthew and all these references back to the Old Testament are building a bridge, telling a story of how Jesus is the next chapter in the story of God and man. And this will continue to unfold as we continue in the book of Matthew.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for another day, day 2. We thank You for Your kindness. We thank You for Your patience with us, Your long-suffering towards us. And we pray that you see our hearts turning toward You, that we are running toward You with arms open wide, knowing that Your arms are open wide to us. And we invite Holy Spirit to continue to speak to us through Your word. Come, Jesus. We pray in Your name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, a couple of things to talk about.

Let’s just talk about the website. The website is a portal. It is where you find out what’s going on around here. I mention it quite a bit because the events calendar is there. Resources are there. The Prayer Wall is there and there are people praying upon that wall all of the time. So, if you’re carrying some burdens, you can post them there, and people are praying all of the time. So, just checking out the Daily Audio Bible website and spending some time there will familiarize you with what it is that we do as a community here.

While you’re at the website you’ll see that there is a web player that plays the Daily Audio Bible every day and allows you to read along and Journal along if you like. And you’ll also see the links to the Daily Audio Bible app, which does the same thing, just in app form. So, just getting familiar with the tools will help you get the most out of the journey that we’re on together this year. So, check that out.

While you’re at dailyaudiobible.com you’ll see at the top, a Community tab, and in there you’ll see the Prayer Wall, that’s where the Prayer Wall is, but you also see Social Media and that will give you all of the connections to where we are on social media. And that is a great thing to follow because then you’ll kind of find out what’s going on as it’s going on. And you’ll find groups there where discussion is continually happening in and among the Daily Audio Bible communities. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. We’re a community, and what we’ve done over the…well…this is into year 13 now…what we’ve done for all of these years we’ve done together. In fact, this couldn’t be happening if we didn’t do this together. So, thank you for your partnership in this new year. As I said, there’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial. But that’s not the only number you can dial. We have a couple of lines in different places in the world. If you are in the UK or Europe you can call 44-20-3608-8078 and if you are in Australia or the lands down under, you can dial 61-3-8820-5459.

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:

Good morning family. This is Cherry Chase Cherry Pie. I hope everybody’s holiday is going well. Today is Friday, I think it’s the 29^th. So, I’m calling…I just heard a caller today. I didn’t get her name but she’s a new caller but she has three sons, she’s praying for two, they are prodigal sons. One just really touched me, I believe Grant, she said, now he’s atheist. I called to tell you, rest assure honey, he will turn back around. My daughter kind of did the same thing. She didn’t say she was atheist but she did say she was worshiping the stars and the moon. As long as you know you know Jesus and continue to show your light, he will come around. I think when they get to a certain age they go through this change we’re they are trying to figure out life their self. But I want to tell you that I am praying for Grant. And I’m telling you to hold on. Just be still and hold on and let God do the work and both of your kids will come back around. I love you sister and just knowing that not only I’m praying for you but you’ve got thousands of other people praying for you as well. You guys have a great wonderful and a marvelous day and have a happy New Year. And Brian and Jill, thank you so much for all that you do for us. You guys have a great day and have a Happy New Year. Love you guys.

Hi DAB family. This is Marilyn in Houston. I would really appreciate your prayers. I have four vertebrae or four ribs __ that come out on a regular basis – two up on my rib cage and two on the lower part of my rib cage. I also have a constant headache. And right now I’m having problems with the vertebrae between my cervical and my thoracic. Right now I know that they are out. So, that’s adding to my headache and then I have a hip that needs replacement. And its very arthritic. I’m seeing a physiotherapist to help me with my __ muscle and right now it’s just very mad. I’m having that discomfort in my right __. I’m leery about getting a hip replacement because I need upper body strength. So, I’m trying to go to the gym to strengthen my upper body and I see my orthopedic surgeon the first Friday of the year. So, I would really appreciate your prayers. Thank you ever so much. Oh, I love you dearly. Thank you.

Hi. This is Suzanne calling from Albuquerque. And today I’m calling…so…I don’t know why I don’t call in more. I pray a lot with you and I think of things that I want to call in and say to support somebody and then….I think I’m just a very…kind of quiet. So, I’m going to try to be a little more involved and just take the risk of letting all of you know me more in the next year. Anyway, today I’m calling because I do…I am asking for prayer…I am the only Christian in my family and as you could imagine that’s very difficult. I want to lift up my brother and especially my nephew and my sister-in-law, but especially my nephew. He is…I think he’s just very depressed. He’s very lost. And he has a beautiful heart. And they both are very insistent that Christians are just crazy people and…you know…and…that I…you know am of the attitude that…just…you know…don’t listen to her.  So, I work very hard at just loving them. Anyway, I’m just going to try to make this as short as possible. I’m asking that you lift up my nephew. His heart is very depressed. He’s very lost and he still lives at home. He’s 29. And he doesn’t have any self-confidence or self-esteem. And I just love him so much and I really want all of them to come to know Jesus. So, that’s what I’m praying for, that you all lift them up. His name is Ben. Thank you.

Hi family this is Alberta from the UK. I haven’t called in a while but I’ve been listening and I’ve heard all the prayer requests. But I called today because I wanted to remind everyone that no matter what’s taking place in our lives, we are still children of God. And as evil and wickedness around us we must keep holding onto the word of God, seeing His light through our faith. So, please join me in this prayer. Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, we call Your name seeking Your grace. Father, You’ve given us the weapons with which we can destroy the work of the enemy. By the power and authority in the name of Jesus every principality and authority exulting itself above You, oh Lord, we cancel by fire. Every __ of cancer of blood and boil affliction, we arrest you in the name of Jesus. __ of depression or any kind of oppression, we stand up against you and subdue you. We command you to be destroyed, never to rise again in the name of Jesus. Any yokes and limitations, we cancel you in the name of Jesus. Father, we open our hearts to you and commit all that we have into Your hands, asking You to pour over us holy anointing. Father, we ask that as we enter into the new year that which is not of You will remain. Father Lord, we put on our garments of praise and glorify Your name for upholding us with your rightful right arm throughout the year and __ us to know Your purpose and will for the year ahead. We ask this as a family and community in the name of Jesus. Amen. God bless you all and happy New Year. Bye for now.

Genesis 1:1-2:25, Matthew 1:1-2:12, Psalms 1:1-6, Proverbs 1:1-6

Today is January 1^st. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It’s great to be here with you today. Happy New Year, by the way. What a difference one day can bring. Right? Yesterday we were in a different year and most of us woke up this morning with the intention of walking into a new life in some way. Right? So, you’re getting all the right groceries because going to change your health habits. It’s like the first day at the gym for some of you, while others have different goals and resolutions. And some of you have turned toward your spirituality. This is the year I’m going to read the Bible cover to cover. And you’ve made that commitment to yourself, which has landed you here. Welcome.

You can certainly meet that objective. And in meeting that objective you’re going to find out there’s a lot more going on here at Daily Audio Bible, there’s a whole community, hundreds of thousands of us taking this journey through the Scriptures this year. And if you’re back, if you were here yesterday as we concluded the 12th year of the Daily Audio Bible, then welcome back. Whether this is year 13 for you or this is your 10^th year or 5^th year or 2^nd year, welcome back. This year is going to be epic because the Bible is epic. And as we begin to take this journey together we’ll begin to peel back the layers and begin to understand who these strange people with strange names are, but they won’t be strange for long. We’re going to meet a lot of people, ancient people in ancient cultures with ancient customs, but we’re going to find that they weren’t looking for anything different than what we are looking for. They were trying to find God. And it won’t take long to realize these are antiquated and forgettable stories. They are us and we are them. And rather than forgetting them, we’ll realize that they are our spiritual ancestors and their stories have influenced the world as we know it. So, buckle in. This will be an epic journey. But before you buckle in you should take a look in the mirror. Take a good long look into your own eyes. Look at yourself. Think about how life is right now, because 365 days from now, and it will happen faster than you think, things will be different. Make a commitment to look at yourself in the mirror 365 days from now and you’ll see what I’m talking about. And, so, with that we begin a brand-new year.

And the way that the Daily Audio Bible works is that we’ll be moving through a little bit of the Old Testament, a bit of the New Testament, a bit from Psalms, and a bit from Proverbs every day as we move our way through the entire Bible this year. And, so, as we begin this brand-new year, I mean, we’ll be starting Matthew, we’ll be starting Genesis, we’ll be starting Psalms, and Proverbs today. Over the next few days I’ll be talking about the different themes of these books and then we’ll, kind of, do a flyover every time we come to a new book, just to give ourselves a little bit of context for what it is we’re going to read.

Genesis:

Let’s talk about Genesis. Genesis is the first book in the Bible, but it’s not just that. It’s also the first book in a series of books known as the Pentateuch or the Torah. These are the first five books in the Bible - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And these are known as the books of Moses. It’ll be little while before we meet Moses, but we will, soon enough. And Moses isn’t necessarily the person who wrote these books, but the traditions around these books and Moses’s go way, way, way back into antiquity. And often when we’re thinking about the book of Genesis and we here the book of Genesis, we think about the creation story and the origin of mankind. And, although this is one of the key components of Genesis, Genesis covers more history than any other book in the Bible. Millennium are covered in the book of Genesis. Actually, Genesis covers more time than the rest of the Old Testament put together. So, we’ll see, at the start, the creation, and go all the way until the children of Israel will meet, arrive in Egypt, and they grow into a mass of people that are becoming a nation. So, inside the first 11 chapters of Genesis we’ll cover a couple thousand years and a couple thousand miles. And then we’ll slow things down and cover a couple hundred years to the end of the book.

And, so, we begin. And we’ll read from the New International Version this week. Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2.

Commentary:

Okay. So, day one, we are often running. We have launched ourselves into an epic adventure that will lead us through the entire Bible and conclude 364 days from now, just 364 steps. And they go by so fast. It’s crazy how that works. We’ll blink a couple times and then it will be Valentine’s Day. And then we’ll blink a couple of times and will it it’ll be June. But we’ve taken the first step in. And there is so much for us in the first step alone.

We were told our origin story. We were told that we are made in the likeness and image of God as human beings and we get a brief glimpse at Eden. We get to peer back into a time when nothing is broken and nothing is lost and all is as it should be. So, we get the briefest glimpse of how things were always supposed to be for us. But, unfortunately, it’s only a brief glimpse. Today we get to peer into how things were always supposed to be for us and tomorrow we’ll begin to find out what happened.

And as we begin the book of Matthew, and I will talk about Matthew little bit more tomorrow, but we begin the Christmas story and that begins in the book of Matthew by a genealogy. And while most don’t consider reading lists of names to be riveting, this one’s kind of important. You actually might want to look at it again because every one of those names, every one of those people, we’re going to meet them, and  we’re going to get to know a bit of their story as we travel through the Scriptures this year and understand their role in our spiritual ancestry. What we also got to meet in the book of Matthew, the most important person in human history, Jesus. And we’ll be spending quite a bit of time walking alongside him, sitting at his feet, listening to what He has to say about our lives here on planet Earth. And as we travel through the Gospels in the coming months we’ll see why it is that Jesus was so compelling. We’ll see how it came to be that He influenced the entire world until today. And we’ll reacquaint ourselves with why it is that He has shaped our hearts and lives.

In Psalms, we were given two divergent paths and shown where they will lead. And the Bible will do this to us often. It will continuously bring us to a crossroads and show us where the paths are going to go. And then we get to choose which path we’re going to walk down. And then it should come as no surprise when we reach our destination where we’ve gone. Psalms shows us that those who live righteously, who walk in the ways of the Lord, those people will be like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in season, and leaves do not wither, and whatever they do prospers. So that’s one way of living and one picture of where that road leads. But Psalms also tells us that’s not the way of the wicked. Those people are blown around in their lives like wind blows chaff. And in the final analysis, things won’t end up well.

And we launched into Proverbs today, which gave us words of introduction about what the book is all about. We read it to gain wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in how to behave prudently, and how to do what’s right, how to be just and fair. And the Proverbs will deliver on its promise. It will be able to speak, in one sentence, things that touch the very, very motives of our hearts. Wisdom that has come through the ages and stood the test of time and that is not antiquated in any way whatsoever, just as immediate now as it ever was. And getting Proverbs into our lives in understanding what it’s telling us and allowing it to counsel us is like pouring unfiltered wisdom into our hearts. It will rescue us many times as we contemplate the weighty decisions that he year can bring.

So, we’ve set sail. And this thick book known as the Bible that has been confusing to so many as opened itself up to us. And we’ll find it’s not that confusing at all when it’s read in its context. And a whole new world will open up to us as we move through this together.

Prayer:

So, Father, we thank You for another day to be here together as a community and allow Your word to wash over us. We thank You for a new year and, with it, the reminder that we can start over again. And, so, we begin this new year inviting Your Holy Spirit to speak to us through Your word and to change us from the inside out. Come, Jesus, we pray in your name. Amen.

Announcements:

Okay. So, over the next several days, I’ll just be unpacking the Daily Audio Bible and how it works as we settle into the rhythm of this new year. But as we begin, I just want to say, welcome. Welcome to everyone that is here. I know many of you have stumbled over the new year line bruised and bloodied from all that’s been going on in your life and you’ve come here to make some sense of it all, to try to find out what the Bible actually says. And that was a good choice, because that’s what this community is all about. And some of you are here because you don’t feel you have anywhere else to go, either because of life circumstances or because of where you are in the world. Welcome. Some of you are here because of a New Year’s resolution, because you want to pay attention to your spirituality. Welcome. And so many of you, you were here yesterday, you were here all last year, maybe you’ve been here for years. It is so good to see you again.

This is a brand-new day. This is a brand-new year. And we can exhale and let go of everything that’s come before this moment and participate in what we know as sanctification, the daily step-by-step, moment by moment process of being made new again. This is going to be a year of hope and we’re going to find plenty of it in the Scriptures. And if we’ll stick with this rhythm, we’ll find it beginning to spill out over into our lives and out of our lives into the world. And I’m exhaling to. I am releasing the old year and I am breathless with anticipation over all that God will speak to us in this coming year through His word.

So, welcome. We have set sail and we’re all in this together. And our agenda is to read the Bible in its context and in its entirety and to invite God to speak through His word. So, no matter how it is that you ended up here, you are welcome here and you will find that to be true very quickly. No matter what has brought you here, it is a brand you day, and I am so excited to be on this journey with you.

I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Song:

Take Me Back - Urban Rescue

http://apple.co/2CkXnUG

It’s the way You always lead me
Through the fire and the flood
Your voice breaks the silence and I
I will respond

Oh my Love don’t let me go
Take me back to where we started from
Oh my Love don’t let me go
Take me back

It’s the way You always find me
Though You see my wandering heart
Your light shines through the darkness and I
I will respond

Oh my Love don’t let me go
Take me back to where we started from
Oh my Love don’t me go
Oh take me back

Into the light, into the light we come
With open arms and open hearts
Into the light, into the light we run
With open arms, and open hearts

Oh my Love don’t let me go
Take me back to where we started from
Oh my Love don’t me go
Oh take me back

Malachi 3:1-4:6, Revelations 22:1-21, Psalms 150:1-6, Proverbs 31:25-31

Today is the 31st day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it’s an honor and a pleasure to be here with you on the last day of the year. So, I guess 364 days ago we started this journey this year and I’ll probably talk about that little bit the end. But first we should do what we’ve come to do, what we’ve been doing all year long, taking one step forward. And it has led us to this place where there’s only one step left. So, today we start a brand-new, shiny, sparkly week. Tomorrow we start a brand-new, shiny, sparkly year. And right now, we will conclude our reading of the Bible for this year. We’ll read from the New International Version this week. Malachi chapter 3 verse 1 through 4 verse 6.

Commentary:

This concludes the Bible. And this concludes 12 years, seven days a week, that we’ve taken this journey together. And man, at least the last five years, probably longer, every time I’m reading the last reading of the year, I’m, like, I’m having to shut the mic off because I’m tearing up…just the monumental privilege of reading God’s word out loud…and just reflecting back over the year…and God’s faithfulness through it all just humbles me to tears. And, as I reflect back on this year, man, there have been some significant challenges. I’m sure that’s true for all of us. And some really significant joys. I lost several people that I loved very much last year, in 2016, and lost my mom this year, 2017. And, ironically, our journey through the book of Revelation this year was quite encouraging. I mean, I think it’s clear that we don’t know all that we think we know, but I think that it’s clear, those who endure and stay true will be with God. And I think that’s, literally, true. And I long for a time when there are no more goodbyes and there is no more death and I do believe that will happen.

So, we, speaking of goodbyes, are saying goodbye to the year 2017. And we will go on together into the new year. And I thank you for the privilege of being able to serve you like this. This is a beautiful thing that we have inside this community. And we shouldn’t take what we’ve experienced together for granted. It’s been a joy to move our way step-by-step, day-by-day, all the way to this point. And we’ve taken that final step and we’ve completed the entire Bible. And for some of you, this is the first time all the way through and for others it’s like your 50th time all the way through. It just…it just doesn’t get old because it continues to speak into our lives right where we are. And there’s always something new. The Bible truly is a gift and I’m grateful that we could share in that gift together this year. And I love this family more than I ever have, because, like all of us, when I’ve felt alone this community gives living proof that is not so. And, so I thank you for that.

Prayer:

And, so, having said all of that. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He lift up his countenance on you and give you peace. May the strength of God go with you. May the wisdom of God instruct you. May the hand of God protect you. May the word of God direct you. May you be sealed in Christ this day and forevermore. Amen.

And I leave you with the final words in the New Testament. ‘The goodwill of the Lord Jesus be with all of you.’ Amen.

I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here next year.

Song:

Mister Mr. – The Border

We, we must go on now, wherever people go who go on together

And now, try to hold on now, too many of us have run, run out of the circle

Can you hear me, are you breathing

I need you near me, no I’m not leaving

I’m in no hurry to do this alone

I am standing here with my arms open wide

I am waiting here, heart in my hand on the border

Dreams, dreams may seduce you

But sooner or later they’re gone and you’re back where you started

Oh look, look at these scars now

How many wounds does it take before we are healing

Can we go on now, from what we have done now

Yes we must go on, our questions unanswered

I know what we’re after is right here in our hands

I am standing here with my arms open wide

I keep waiting here, heart in my hand on the border

And every step we take gives us the strength to go on

And all the love we make gets us closer to home

I can see it all so clearly now, I can hear your voice in a song

And it burns down inside my soul, it takes me down this winding road

We can find our way back home

We, we must go on now, wherever people go who go on together

Oh, standing here with my arms open wide

And I keep waiting here, on the borderline

And every step we take gives us the strength to go on

And all the love we make gets us closer to home

Malachi 1:1-2:17, Revelations 21:1-27, Psalms 149:1-9, Proverbs 31:10-24

Today is the 30^th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is great to be here with you for the final two days of the year. I guess we can’t get much closer, just one day closer. So, we don’t have much territory to cover before the end of the year, but we do have some. And in the Old Testament, we have reached the final book, the book of Malachi.

Malachi:

The book of Malachi is that the final of what is known as the 12 Minor Prophets and it happens to be the last book of the Old Testament. And it will be 400 years from the end of Malachi before God sends another prophet, John the Baptist. Of course, a lot of things happen in those 400 years. And there’s all kinds of writings from those 400 years, but it will be 400 years until John the Baptist.  So, in the book of Malachi, as with all the other prophets, God’s central message is clear - come back, return to me, coupled with the promise of restoration. In Malachi’s case, he’s also speaking to the priests who have simply begun to not take the law seriously. For example, the Mosaic law required sacrifices that were pure and spotless, but the priests have begun using blemished and blind animals. Throughout the culture men had begun treating the wives of their youth disrespectfully and still expected God to accept their sacrifices. And on and on it goes. Same story, different writer, different book. Of course, the parallels are striking, and it doesn’t take a degree in theology to apply the circumstances to our culture today into our own lives. God isn’t pleased when we disobey Him. That is only leading us off the narrow path that leads to life and toward our own destruction. And that isn’t because he’s a self-absorbed tyrant. It’s because he knows what is best, how we’re made, he knows what is right for us. And He is right and best for us in all circumstances. And, so, we will conclude the Old Testament with an oracle of the Lord spoken through His servant Malachi. Turn back. Turn back to God. And, so, we begin. Malachi chapter 1 verse 1 through 2:17.

Commentary:

Okay, so it’s no secret that tomorrow is the last day of the year. So, obviously, we have come down to the final readings in the Bible, which means we have also come down to the final readings in the book of Revelation that we’ve been diving into this year. And in today’s reading we kind of turn the corner. What began as seven letters to seven churches turned into seven trumpets and seven bowls. And we spent a lot of time with a lot of disruption. And we’ve looked at many views from many angles that eventually led us to do the great white throne of God and the final judgment. And we passed through that yesterday in our reading. Now we get a picture of all things being made new and the imagery is riveting. And as we’ve gone through the book of Revelation, we’ve looked figuratively and we’ve looked literally in an attempt, simply to get behind all of the things that have been said about the book of Revelation, to try to get insight on what’s being said. So, we have to look at all things being made new from the same perspective as we prepare to end the book of Revelation and the Bible. So, let’s look literally at what we read today while doing what we’ve been doing all along, asking ourselves, is this literal? Is this a literal thing that’s being said or is this a figurative thing that’s being said that represents something bigger that can’t be said? So, after the great white throne judgment that we read about yesterday, we are greeted with the fact that a new heaven and a new earth have appeared. So, we need to stop and think about that literally. A new heaven and a new earth, which would tell us that our ultimate destination is earth, just, apparently, not this one. In the new earth there is no sea. The sea was gone. So, clearly that would be a very different earth. What we don’t know is if John is referring to, like, the Mediterranean Sea will be gone and how would that work? But if we just assume that there are no oceans than a very different earth. And on this new earth John sees the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth dressed like a bride ready for her husband. And a loud voice from the throne said, God lives with humans, God will make His home with them and they will be His people. And God Himself will be with them and be their God and He will wipe every tear from their eyes. And there won’t be any more death and there won’t be any more grief or crying or pain, because the first things have disappeared. So, on this new earth that has no oceans, God plans to actually dwell with people. And as this is happening, the one sitting on the throne says, I’m making everything new. I’m the first and the last. I’m the beginning and the end. And I’ll give a drink from the fountain filled with the water of life to anyone who is thirsty. It’s not going to cost anything. Everyone who wins the victory will inherit these things. I’ll be their God. They’ll be my children. And then He says, you know, cowardly, unfaithful, detestable, all of the people that have been judged earlier, they don’t get to go into this new rest. And then, continuing literally, one of the seven angels that had one of the seven bowls that were poured out on the earth at the end with the seven plagues came to John and said, come I’m going to show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And, so, John is carried by the angel’s power to a high mountain where he sees this new holy city, Jerusalem, coming from God out of heaven. And it’s, obviously, ornate with gates and jewels and angels and inscriptions. The names of the 12 tribes of Israel are on the 12 gates. There are 12 foundations and each foundation has the name of one of the 12 apostles of the Lamb written on it. And it’s coming down from heaven to earth. And it gets measured. And it’s a cube. It’s a big cube coming down out of heaven that is a cubed city coming down-to-earth. And it’s measured. And its measurements are 12,000 stadia long, wide, and high. And 12,000 stadia equates to about 1600 miles or almost 2600 km. And, so, from literal perspective, somehow this this will work. The atmosphere of this new earth must be different because on the earth that we currently live on, I mean, if we just get 60 miles up, we’re kind of in outer space. So, 1600 miles tall would be way out there in outer space. And the angel is telling John that this 1600 mile cube coming out of the sky down-to-earth is the bride. And there is no temple in this this new city because God himself and the Lamb are the temple. And the city doesn’t need any exterior light like the sun or the moon because the glory of God illuminates it. And apparently, because it has gates, you can go in and out of it. And Revelation says, the nations will walk in its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. So, you can go in and out of it, or at least some people can. And its gates never close. It’s open all day. They don’t close because there isn’t any more night. So, it never gets dark outside. And everyone who had passed through the great judgment and their names were found in the book of life, the Lamb’s book of life, would be able to go into the city. So, that’s kind of a literal look at what we read today. If we’re looking at this figuratively then there are a plethora of nuances, but indeed a new heaven and a new earth are established. But this doesn’t necessarily mean different planets. So, the idea of first and second or old and new are used throughout the Bible, So, like, you have an old covenant, a new covenant, a first Adam, a second Adam. Or language like, the latter will be greater than the former. And this is usually indicating the impermanence of the first and the permanence of the second. So, this second earth, this new earth certainly could be at a different planet, but from a figurative perspective, it would be a restored one, one in which evil does not exist, where pollution is gone, where corrupt political systems of governance do not exist, one in which the presence of God is immediate and tangible. Basically, an existence that is restored to shalom, where nothing is broken and nothing is lost. All has been restored to perfection. There are no more goodbyes. One in which death does not exist and God wipes every tear from our eyes. One in which there is no grief or crying or pain because those things do not exist anymore. This picture comes from the book of Isaiah, where it is said there will be a new heaven and new earth, and they will by no means remember the former. So, looking at that figuratively, the struggle to survive in a dark world while trying to remain true to Jesus unto death, that’s over. That will never happen again. But when we did read about this new earth, literally, we found that it has no sea. So, there are no oceans. From a figurative view, scholars just simply look at how this the sea was referenced in the rest of the book. So, it was seen as the origin of cosmic evil. It was referenced as the place of the unbelieving rebellious nations who attacked and tried to stamp out God’s people. It was referenced as the place of the dead. It was referenced as the seat of the world’s idolatry and evil trade activity. So, figuratively, those things aren’t a part of this new earth. So, sticking with this figurative view of the sea then, that means that on this new earth there is no longer a threat from Satan or darkness or evil. Those have been permanently judged. They can never be a part of the new creation and there won’t be any threat from political, or corrupt, rebellious nations. They’ve suffered the same fate is the devil. There won’t be any more death. So, there is no reason to have a place of the dead. And even the fear of the ocean itself as kind of a dark, murky, unpredictable place will be over. And this new city has 12 gates, each named after one of the 12 tribes of Israel with the foundation having 12 foundations, each having the names of the apostles, which would figuratively, basically, represent the completeness of God’s redemptive plan, that all who are within this city are essentially the true Israel, which is not an ethnic thing. And it’s not the structure itself, this 1600 mile cube, that is going to somehow, this cube that isn’t alive is going to somehow become a bride. It’s everyone within that sphere. And this is thought to be true because God uses marriage as a metaphor for His covenant with His people all throughout the Bible, even in devastatingly, heartbreaking ways. So, God is probably not interested in being in a covenant relationship with the literal structure. Rather, He wants union with his people - loyalty, allegiance and perfect intimacy. And God’s saying that He is the Alpha and Omega isn’t, you know, the Lord saying that He is two letters in an alphabet. It is to say that He is the beginning and the end. Right? So, we see that very clearly as a figure of speech. So, figuratively. But He’s saying it as a way of reassurance, that he called creation into being at the beginning and has remained sovereign. So, we can be assured that all things will be made new because He is the beginning and end of it all. And those who win the victory or those who overcome or are overcommers will inherit all of this. And as we’ve seen from one of the main themes of this book that we talked about several times, an overcomer is the one who endures through whatever until the end. And what we inherit is union and communion with God and all of the essentials that we need for an abundant life in his family are available. And it’s been pointed out that the look of this new Jerusalem, the way that is constructed with all of the precious stones, remarkably parallels the description of the great whore of Babylon. Right? So, on the one hand, John is told, come I will show you the judgment of the great whore and then he’s told, come, I will show you the bride. So, figuratively throughout this book Babylon was the dark, evil, world system consolidated into a city name. So, those who look at this figuratively would say the same thing is happening here. One was an attempt to dominate and demand worship and it was full of the world’s people who went along with that. The other is true and is full of those who remained true. And we talked about that a lot when we were talking about the judgment of Babylon. But in terms of looking at this new city figuratively and not as a structure, the allusions go to other parts of the Scripture that are used figuratively. For example, when Jesus is referred to as the cornerstone that the builders rejected. Well, I don’t think anybody thinks Jesus is a piece of rock, is a stone. That would be figurative language. Or when Peter says, in his first letter, that we as believers are precious living stones. We can take that figuratively, pretty easily, because no one thinks that their destiny, ultimately, is to become a stone. And, so, that’s why these things are seen figuratively, in terms of this new city. And there won’t be a temple in this new city. So, if the city isn’t about the structure of the city, but about the people within it, then perhaps there isn’t a third temple to be built. But that is hotly debated. But figuratively, the temple always represented the presence of God. Before there was a temple there was a tabernacle that represented the presence of God. So, in this new creation there’s no need for that. The presence of God is everywhere and is not hindered or impeded in any way. And what about the dimensions of this new city. I mean I said it was like 1600 miles, like, 15 or 1600 miles, I think, like,  7 million feet tall. So, an obviously amazing structure, but in Revelation it’s described as 12,000 stadia. And the number 12 is symbolic throughout the Bible. Right? So, there’s 12 tribes of Israel. There’s 12 apostles in this new city. There’s 12 angels at 12 gates. Earlier in Revelation there were 12,000 people from 12 tribes of Israel that made up 144,000. There were 12 precious stones in the breastplate of the priest. And we could go on and on. Many scholars affirm that the number 12 is a number signifying authority and completeness. So, when applied figuratively to the new Jerusalem, it would represent the entire family of God, as opposed to a cubed city. So, there are a couple of ways of looking at what we’ve read today. And, as with everything that we’ve talked about in the book of Revelation, this is just the tip of the iceberg. But man, man, no matter whether this is literal or figurative or whatever this is going to look like, this is the  unimpeded presence of God with no distractions in a world where evil does not exist and perfect union with God is completely normal. It’s a picture of how things were always supposed to be for us. And it’s a promise that all things will be made new. And if there’s one thing that I’m certain of in my life, it is that I want to be there. I want to stay true. I want to see all this and I’m sure in the end it will be completely different than I might imagine or that any of us might imagine, but what I want, more than anything, is that first moment of pure ecstasy of the full presence of God, followed by the awareness that it never ends. Don’t you? And we can all be there. We can all overcome. And we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. We get there by realizing that the end of what we think we know isn’t the end of anything. It is only the beginning.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for these pictures that describe what is beyond comprehension. And we take the book of Revelation for what it is, a promise. And we invite Your Holy Spirit to come, seal us in Christ, that we might endure whatever comes our way, whatever time we’re in. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudibiible.com is the website. It’s home base. It’s where you find what’s going on around here. And what’s going on around here is we’re about to switch into a new year. Tomorrow is the last day and we will complete this revolution through the Bible. And I hope that it has caused revolution in your life as it has for me, as it does for me every year.

And one of the ways that we’re going into the new year is with the new Daily Audio Bible app that I’ve been mentioning most days, just kind of getting us all migrated over. The new Daily Audio Bible app is free. So, you can tell everyone that you know. All you have to do is go to the Google Play store or the Apple App store and search for ‘Daily Audio Bible mobile app’. We have a couple of apps. We have our current app and we have the new one. The new ones called ‘Daily Audio Bible mobile app’. So, make sure you download it and get ready for the next revolution through the Scriptures.

Also want to remind you that the early registration pricing for the More Gathering, which is coming up this April, is available through the end of the year, which is tomorrow. So, be sure to check that out. If it’s something that’s been on your mind or on your heart, just go to moregathering.com or you can find all the information at dailyaudiobible.com in the Initiatives section.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible here in the last moments of the year 2017, then thank you. I mean, profoundly and humbly, thank you. There is a link on the homepage of dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the new Daily Audio Bible app, just press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner. If you prefer the mail, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

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:

Happy New Year everyone. This is Christi from Kentucky. I wanted to give you an update on Andrew, who, my nephew, who had stage 4 kidney failure. He is out of the hospital now and the pneumonia has compromised his lungs a little and he’s not behaving by staying inside out of this cold weather, but he is improving. And Kerri is out of ICU with a collapsed lung. And she has been taken to a private room and she is improving. Thank you. Thank you so much for your faithfulness to pray. I love you guys so very much. Annette, from Oklahoma, you know girl how much I love you, and I just wanted to tell everyone on DAB just a testimony of Christmas day. So very, very hard. Tim and I were here alone and we had no visitors and it was so hard that day. It was…I was in such a dark place. The hardest day that we’ve had since we lost mom and dad. In one year in my life…in our lives have just changed tremendously. And Annette, you came onto Facebook and you did a video and she was just speaking and just to see her beautiful face and hear her voice, which always cheers me up. I know it does to everyone. But she actually was talking about those people that were alone and she mentioned us. And Annette, you know, you know how much that just blessed us. It took this girl that was in a very dark place that day and shed light on her life again. And I thank you. I thank you sister. God bless you. Guys, we need one another. And I just praise God for this community. I love you all so very much and hope each of you are having a most blessed and lovely day. I’ll hit that prayer wall up soon. God bless you.  

Hi Daily Audio Bible. This is Paul from Houston. And I’m praying from the 11^th of December broadcast that had Jubilant Perseverance from Indonesia. And I just wanted to pray for her. I really liked how she started off her call - my God is my refuge and my strength, a very present help in times of trouble. And Jubilant, you were saying that your time was coming to an end in Indonesia and for some different circumstances you weren’t going to continue teaching there. And I just want to pray that God gives you wisdom and direction on where to go and that God would open the doors and close doors where He doesn’t want you. And I thank You Lord that You’d be with her, that You would give her direction, that You give her wisdom, that Your Holy Spirit will guide her, and that You would give her wisdom in different things. And I ask Lord that any hurts or wounds would be let go of. And I ask Lord that You would just show that You are sovereign and that You are in control of her circumstances. Whether it be in Indonesia or in the states or wherever she is Lord that You are with her and that You direct her and You guide her paths and that You go with her. And I thank You Lord for being with her this time, this time of year during this holiday season with Christmas and New Year’s, Lord, that she is present in…with You. And I thank You Lord for blessing her and being with her. And just, give her the peace that You have given all of us Lord. That Your Holy Spirit gives that present help, that comforter that comes to us in times where we don’t know understand why things are going the way they’re going. But Lord, You understand, because Lord, you have a bigger picture, a bigger…

This is Candice from Oregon. Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, Abba Father, Holy Spirit, thank You. Thank You so much for redeeming the world and thank You that the restoration of all things is coming, the new earth, even more magnificent than the one we already experience and see. Lord, thank You that You are sovereign, that You, the sovereign, have invited us into life that’s truly life. That You’ve called us to take every thought captive to the Lord Jesus Christ. You are a good, good Father. That’s who You are. And we are loved by You. That’s who we are. Oh Lord, may Your blessings cover 2018 above and farther than anything we could have asked for or ever imagined. We give ourselves completely over to You and knowing that that’s like coming home, that’s what we’re made for, that’s where we become truly ourselves, the person you knit together when we were in our mother’s womb.

Zechariah 14:1-21, Revelations 20:1-15, Psalms 148:1-14, Proverbs 31:8-9

Today is the 29^th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian and its pleasure and, of course, an honor to be here with you in the final days of the year. So, the end is in sight. We have well-rounded the corner and there’s just a few things to finish up here, but they’re the word of God so they’re very important things to finish up before we regroup and start it all over. So, let’s dive in. We’re reading from the Gods Word translation this week and today we will finish up the book of Zechariah, which will leave only one book remaining in the whole Bible that we haven’t touched and that’s the book of Malachi, which we will begin tomorrow and finish on the last day of the year. But first, Zechariah 14:1 through 21.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we have come to a point in the book of Revelation where Satan meets his end, and then there’s a thousand years we’ve got to talk about, this millennial reign, and then the final judgment. And over the course of church history, this section of Revelation has been hotly debated by biblical scholars, which means that it has been viewed and taught differently by different segments of the church, all who support their views by the Scriptures. And the problem of time, of sequence, of chronology that is apparent throughout the book of Revelation comes into play, as does the problem of whether to look figuratively or literally come into play. So, we read from Revelation chapter 20 today, but we were just continuing a longer segment about the final judgment, the fall of Babylon, and we talked about all of that. And as the world system comes unglued, and its foundations shaken, it falls apart. We saw some of the repercussions and implications of that, in light of Jesus judgment of the dark, ungodly forces of the world at the end of time, at the end of history as we know it. So, as we begin today. There’s an angel that comes from heaven, holding the key to the pit, the bottomless pit, and he’s got a large chain and he finds and overpowers the serpent, the devil, Satan. And, so, Satan is thrown into the pit for a thousand years. And this thousand years is traditionally known as the millennium. And there are so many views about the millennium that I’m not sure there’s any way to catalogue them all in one place, but most of thoughts about the millennium boil down to: when will the millennium happen, and is the millennium, literally, 1000 years? So, at its core, there are three ways of looking at the millennium from which all of the other views spring. And they all seek to place the millennium in time so that the order of events can be understood. So, some take what is known as a premillennial view. And this is the view that the millennium begins at the second coming of Christ. Then there are those who take a post-millennial view. And that is basically the view that when Jesus came He inaugurated what we would call ‘the church age’. The church sprang up after Christ came and we are now in that age, the church age, and the millennium will be at the end of the church age. And Jesus second coming will be at the end of the millennium. And then the third line of scholarship would take an a-millennial view, which is basically to say that the millennium began at the moment of Christ’s resurrection and will then conclude at His second advent, at his final coming. And part of the reason for these differing views comes from trying to figure out what is to be taken literally and what is symbolic and then applying that discernment to the 1000 years. And this is certainly not the first or second time we’ve encountered this. So, basically, you start with the author, John, who is exiled on an island in the Roman empire at a specific time in history. And since he’s living at a certain point in history, that’s his influence, it’s what he knows. But all of the things that he is seeing in the book of Revelation, he is seeing by way of vision. So, he’s seeing things that he doesn’t have a reference point for. He’s never seen this kind of thing before, but he has to filter it back through what he does understand. And because we, as the readers, do understand that what he’s seeing is in a vision we have to determine what is literal and what is symbolic. So, some interpreters begin with the literal view and then work their way towards the symbolism, while others say most of this book is symbolic and begin with symbolism and work their way toward literal. And they don’t always end up in the same place. So, for example, when John talks about 1000 years, he also talks about an angel with a chain, he talks about the abyss, the dragon, the serpent, the beast. And most commentators would say this is symbolic language, the same kind of symbolic language used throughout the entire book. And there have been plenty of other numbers used in the book of Revelation that have been looked at both from a literal and a figurative view. So, you know, John has this vision that we’re talking about right now in which a thousand years is made mention of, along with a bunch of some symbolism. So, it has to be determined, is the thousand years a symbol as well? And what is it a symbol of if it is a symbol? So, all kinds of divergent thought and problems arise in the midst of all of this. So, the angel captures the devil, throws him into this bottomless pit for a thousand years, and the Scriptures tell us why. ‘The angel shut and sealed the pit over the serpent to keep it from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were over.’ So, the question becomes, when? When is Satan bound and thrown into this pit? Some would say that this has not yet happened but is something that will happen in the future, while others would say this happened as a direct result of Christ’s resurrection. So, Jesus death, burial, and resurrection were a decisive defeat of Satan and the dark forces of evil. And Satan’s defeat at the cross is supported all throughout the Scriptures. So, if that is connected to what we’re seeing in Revelation 20, then Satan was restrained in this pit and Jesus triumphal resurrection. So, with that way of thinking then Satan is restrained currently and will be restrained between the first and second coming of Jesus. So, if you’re following that line of reason, the question becomes, in what way is Satan bound? Revelation says that the angel shut and sealed the pit over the serpent to keep it from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were over. So, that would mean that its ability to completely deceive has been restrained. And some theologians have defended that with many scriptures, but Jesus saying in the Gospel of Mark, ‘no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strongman, then indeed he may plunder his house’, is one of them. So, if this view is correct then Satan was defeated at the cross and restrained in his ability to deceive. So, why is deception still all over the place if that would be the case? This would take us all the way back to the first deception, where Adam and Eve made a choice. They had an uninhibited relationship with God, but they believed a lie. So, in that case we could say that the deceiver, the serpent, was victorious and was able to dominate humanity through deception. But then Jesus came and defeated the evil one, restoring humanity, and like Eden, can only be successful at deception if we allow it. In other words, Satan has no dominion over us that we don’t give him. Or as Jesus says in Matthew 18, ‘truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ So, following this forward, in the end, Satan will be released for a short time from this restraint. Right? So, in this pit. And this is where you go, like, is this this is allegorical or is this literal? Is Satan going to be or is he currently, actually, in a bottomless pit that is actually locked with a key? Or will he no longer be restrained in his deceptions? If it’s the figurative view, then this short time that the evil one is released or unrestrained in his deception will have a polarizing effect, the sheep and the goats will be clear because Satan will be doing everything that he possibly can to make life very, very trying for those who are true to Jesus, who are keeping their lampstands burning, who are holding true to their witness, so that those who are not so deeply in love with Jesus, that they’re willing to physically die because they know this isn’t the end of anything will be clear, while those who have maybe nominal faith or, you know, socially engaged in their faith or whatever, they’ll be unwilling to endure these difficulties. And this is part of Jesus’s sovereign plan, which could, on the one hand, look harsh, and on the other hand, we’d have to say, Jesus is not asking anyone to do anything he didn’t do first. In other words, God isn’t asking anything of anyone that he wasn’t willing to do Himself. So, then this whole plan of restoration, of making all things new, starts to become apparent. Satan gained dominion over humanity because of his deception of Adam and Eve and their falling for it. God chose Abraham and raised up of people that were set apart to him. But because of Satan’s deception, they were unable to be a light to the nations. Through deception, Israel had an on-again, off-again relationship with God, whereby they broke the covenant, which led to spiritual and physical oppression. They were conquered and carried into exile by foreign nations and ruled over by foreign nations as Satan continued his work of deception in the world. And then Jesus came. Satan attacked Jesus and it looked like he was victorious because Jesus was put to death. But then Jesus was resurrected, taking dominion back from Satan. So, from this view then, Jesus is building His church. That began with his ministry. It is being built currently and the gates of hell will not prevail over it because the keys of the kingdom have been given to the church. And the power of the Holy Spirit enables us to overcome the deception of the evil one, but at some point, Satan is unrestrained and does everything possible to stamp out God’s people on this earth. And without God’s intervention would be successful, but God intervenes and Satan is thrown into the lake of fire forever. Satan is restrained from deceiving the nations because we’re supposed to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. So, what about the millennium? What about the thousand years? This gets contentious, depending on whether it’s a literal view you’re taking, or a figurative view. If we’re taking a straight up, straight literal view, those who had been beheaded for the cause of Christ will rule with Him for a thousand years, and the rest of the dead will live after the thousand years are over. So, even those taking a more literal view of this don’t take it to mean, literally, only beheaded Christians. Rather, they would look more figuratively and say, martyrs. And this view certainly has its place in church history. During times of open persecution some longed for martyrdom, but they certainly weren’t all martyred, they certainly weren’t killed all by beheading. Right? So, some were stoned, some were thrown to the wild beasts, while others were crucified, just to name a few. So, there have been those all along, including today, who would long for martyrdom because of the apparent promise in Revelation, which says this is the first time the people come back to life. ‘Blessed and holy are those who are included the first time the people come back to life. The second death has no power over them. They will continue to be priests of God and Christ and they will rule with him for 1000 years.’ So, the idea is that if you die a martyr’s death, you’ll be the first to rise, will reign with Christ, and you have no fear of the second death, nothing can ever touch you again. If you’re taking a more figurative view, then the thousand years isn’t a literal, chronological number. And the reason that many theologians and scholars think this is because they believe that numbers are used figuratively elsewhere in the book of Revelation. The language like the bottomless pit etc., seems to be figurative. So, most of what John is talking about here seems to be figurative. The book of Revelation itself seems to be largely figurative. The number 1000 used in the Old Testament is used figuratively. And in early Jewish and early Christian writings, 1000 years was used as a metaphor for eternal blessing. So, if you take that figurative view and follow it out, then Christ defeated Satan at the cross. Satan was then restrained. Believers experience the first resurrection at the moment they believe, or some would say at the moment of their baptism. Right? So, the person that you were before you knew Christ has died and you have been resurrected into new life with Christ, no longer dominated by the deception of the evil one and you are now reigning with Christ. The thrones, then, wouldn’t be literal pieces of furniture, but, rather, the status of believers who are in Christ. And if we’re continuing to look figuratively at the martyrs then we’re not just talking about only those people who died by being beheaded. Or, for that matter, we’re not just talking about people who were martyred in any way. We’re talking about those who were obedient to one of the main themes of this book, those who endured to the end, no matter what. They will not experience the second death. So, in other words, those who are in Christ have already died to who they were without Jesus and were raised to new life in Him. The second death is eternal separation from God, or the fiery lake, or outer darkness, or however you view that, but believers will experience it because Jesus is the firstborn of this new family of God, and we have followed Him. We are in His kingdom. We are His kingdom. Okay, so moving us forward, no matter how you view this, Satan is set free for a short time to deceive as many as possible, which results in an attempt to stamp out God’s people for good. Fire falls from heaven, whether literally or figuratively. Satan loses the battle and is thrown into the fiery lake of sulfur forever and ever. And then we find ourselves before the great white throne of God. And the first thing that we see is that the earth and the sky fled from his presence, but no place was found for them. So, this is striking imagery. And most agree that this is the passing away of the world as we know it, making way for a new heaven and a new earth, all things being made new. And this is the final judgment. The books are opened, whether literally or figuratively, and the final judgment occurs. So, what we call the book of life is actually the book of life of the lamb who was slain, or the book of life of the lamb. And those whose names are in that book are those who have been sealed in Christ. Right? They have the seal of God on their forehead. These people go through the judgment but do not suffer what they would otherwise deserve because Jesus suffered that on their behalf. And that is about the best news I have ever heard. In pulling together all that we’ve read in Revelation, those are the ones who were true, those are the ones who endured into the end, and no matter what happened, those who were willing, or did lose their lives on account of the gospel, those who kept their witness burning, those who are pure and true to Jesus.

Prayer:

Jesus, we want this to be a description of who we are. And we are well aware of the deceptions we have fallen for and continue to fall for. And yet, clearly it doesn’t have to be that way. You have promised that Your Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth. And, so, that’s what we ask for. You would lead us into all truth, every step we take, every thought we have every, word we speak, everything about us. May everything about us radiate Your glory into this world. May our very lives be a living testimony to who You are. And may we be true to You no matter what happens, no matter what comes our way, may we endure. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudibiible.com is the website. It’s home base. It’s where you find what’s going on around here.

And we’re about to flip into the new year in just a couple of days and start all over.

And we’ll be starting all over with the brand-new Daily Audio Bible app. So, if you haven’t gotten it yet, do. The new Daily Audio Bible app is completely free. You can get it at the Google Play store or at the Apple App store. Just search for ‘Daily Audio Bible mobile app’. That’s what the new ones called, so that will get you to the right place. And tell everybody about it. It’s totally free.

The other thing that we’re mentioning here for a couple of days is early registration for the More Gathering that’s coming up this April. Early registration pricing will end on the 31^st of December. And you can check that out by going to moregathering.com or at dailyaudiobible.com in the Initiatives section. And, of course, you can see all of that in the new app as well. So, check it out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible here in the year 2017, then there’s only a couple of days left for that. Just go to dailyaudiobible.com and there is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the new Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

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:

Hey DABbers, this is Matt from Cincinnati. First time calling in. Been listening since about January or February and I’ve been really amazed by the prayer request line and how gracious and loving you guys have been with all the prayers being sent out. And I just want to offer a prayer request on behalf of this family who happened to lose the father of the family unexpectedly last night. And right now it’s Christmas eve. And it’s a family with four children. And it’s really hard. It’s a family from our local church. And I just want to lift them up because that…it’s just…a very tragic thing that no one wants to experience, especially during the holiday time. So, not only should we lift that family up, but also others who experienced unexpected losses this year, especially with, like, all the mass shootings that have been happening. I just definitely want to urge you guys to just reach out and pray for those people as well and those who are experiencing loneliness during the holidays, because that can be tough and I’ve been through that before. But God is a God of restoration and redemption and He is good. He’s a good Father. So, if you guys don’t mind doing that, that would be awesome. Thank you. Merry Christmas.

Hello everybody in my wonderful Daily Audio Bible family. This is Meg from Rhode Island and today is December 25^th, Christmas. And I was at the gym and I turned on my iPod and there, just like clockwork, is the Daily Audio Bible broadcast for Christmas day. And I got to listen to Brian read the scriptures today, Christmas day. And I just wanted to say thank you, Brian, and Jill, and the whole team for everything you do. I wanted to say Merry Christmas to you and just let you know that this one person here, I sure appreciate having God come into my life through the scripture readings every day. And I want to thank you for your loyalty…for just…your devotion… for being so diligent…keeping…and every day, sticking with it. I know it must be hard. So, anyhow, that’s all. Just thinking of you guys everyday like I do every day. And I’m still here. I think this is my 7^th year listening. And I just love everyone in this community. And it’s changed my life and I’m looking forward to a new year with you all. Okay. Bye.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible friends and community. This is Diane Olive. B. from Newburg Indiana. Shalom, Shalom. That means nothing is missing, nothing is broken. It is December 26^th at 2:19 in the morning and I just listened to about half way through the Christmas wishes and I just felt the presence of the Lord in my heart and I wanted to call and thank Brian and Jill and thank the Daily Audio Bible community because this has been one of the hardest seasons of my life and I have really been struggling. I want to share my prayer request and praise report. I have bi-polar and I have suffered with depression and anxiety. I’m over 100 pounds overweight and my son, who is 37, my youngest son and only son - I have a daughter who is 38 and a daughter who is 40 - but my son has struggled with drug addiction from when he was in junior high until now. And he went back into drugs again. We had to ask him to move out of our home and we haven’t been able to give him things because we were enabling him and I just ask for your prayers because it breaks his mother’s heart to see…

Hi. My name is Angelique. And I am from Washington State. I am a new listener. A friend of mine let me know about your program. So, I am a newbie in the last week and I am grateful. I have a prayer request for my two sons. I have three sons, but my first two sons are prodigals and I would like to ask for you to be praying for them. First son is Joshua and my second born is Grant - 23 and 20 years old. They accepted Christ when they were boys. They have chosen to walk away, they’ve gotten older. I will begin praying. Father God, I lift up Joshua and I ask You Father that you would open his spiritual eyes, that he would see that the world is not satisfying. I pray that he would look to You for guidance and not to himself. I also ask that You would take his desire for fast cars away from him Lord. You know that he has gotten in two car accidents this last summer with 2 corvettes that he totaled. Thank you for sparing his life. I pray that you’d reveal Your purpose and plan for him. Also lift up my second born, Grant, who’s 20 year old, Lord who professes to be an atheist. And God, I ask that You would reveal Yourself to him in an amazing way so that He could not deny Your existence Lord. I pray that he would commit his life to You and live for You and, again, not for himself. And I ask this in Your name, Jesus. Amen. Thank you.