Category: DAB Transcripts

Genesis 35:1-36:43, Matthew 12:1-21, Psalms 15:1-5, Proverbs 3:21-26

Today is the 17^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian and it is a pleasure, it is a joy, and man we’re so fortunate, right, we’re so fortunate to be able to get together around this global campfire and live in a time where this sort of technology…I mean…like we’re living in science-fiction world to our brothers and sisters who were here just 100 years ago. So, it's…I mean…look at what God has done and allowed us to find each other and to be in each other’s presence as we take the next step forward. And that next step forward will take us back into the book of Genesis and back into the story of Jacob, whose name has become Israel. And, so today we’ll read Genesis chapter 35 and 36.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Genesis we said goodbye today to Isaac and Rachel. So, this is Jacob’s father and Jacob’s beloved wife. And, of course, Jacob’s name has been changed to Israel and his kids are now the children of Israel, literally, and that Rachel has died giving birth to the final of those children and his name is Benjamin and this won’t be the last time we interact with these kids. Now, as we go further into the Bible we’ll be interacting with their progeny, right, their descendants who become tribes but this isn’t the last time we’re actually gonna be dealing with these actual kids, the original children of Israel, the true vintage ones. We’ll continue to follow their story in the coming days.

And then we get the book of Matthew and we’re beginning to see what we were talking about yesterday. Remember when we talking about bearing the burden of light in a dark world and the fact that we are not gonna intellectually be able to figure out our faith simply in our mind without our heart being involved and engaged and intertwined in the process, like every relationship? We begin to see what this actually and practically looks like. So, let’s just go with Jesus. He’s moving around the Sea of Galilee. He is announcing the good news of the kingdom. He is touching people and they are finding wholeness and healing. Whether that be a physical thing or a mental thing, He’s healing people wherever He goes and it’s causing quite a stir and we would think that a person like this, right, a person who’s going around and being kind and healing people miraculously and speaking words that are igniting something that are like, unified, are actually speaking to a person’s heart. I mean, you’d think this would be celebrated. So, why is Jesus finding himself in trouble everywhere He goes, especially with the religious people? And let’s pay attention to this as we go through the Gospels. The people who have a beef with Jesus are the people who are the religious Jews. Like, the people who are the keeper of the religion are the people who have a problem with Jesus. And as we continue to go through this story throughout the year we’ll find out, I mean, things have changed but things haven’t changed that much. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Jesus is moving around the countryside doing good and revealing the kingdom and announcing it. And, so, He’s walking along on the Sabbath day. And this is where we begin to see light in the darkness and we also begin to see what happened, what it is that Jesus is coming into because in the book of Genesis we’re reading this origin story and as we continue through the book of Genesis and further we’re gonna meet a man named Moses, and I don’t want to be a big spoiler here, but we’re gonna meet a man named Moses and a law is going to come from it and now we’re going to zoom into the book of Matthew and come a couple thousand years to the future and we’re to begin to see what became of that law. In effect, the heart connection to the law that was baked in to the giving of the law, and we’ll read all this as the days unfold before us in the coming months, that heart connection, that integration that we’ve been talking about a was broken. And, so, the law became all law. So, you go to library and you get a law book and you open it up, you’re gonna read laws and it’s gonna be some seriously boring stuff, but it’s going to be the letter of the law. This is exactly what happens when this particular behavior happens. Like, this is how we have ordered our society. And yet the law of God, right, the law of God revealed through Moses, that can’t be just about behavior modification can it ? Like, did Jesus come to earth in the flesh, God in the flesh, to die for the sins of the world so that we could behave better, like, so that we could obey the rules better? Like, is that what a relationship is like? He would give His life for that? No, He wouldn’t. And that’s what we see revealed throughout His ministry. So, we rub up against this today. The law had become a means of controlling the population and the threat, right, of course, was God’s judgment. And, so, they are diligently trying to obey the letter of the law and they have forgotten their heart. Along the way. So, Jesus is walking along and his disciples eat a couple of kernels of grain because they’re hungry and they get chastised and persecuted because of it because they worked on the Sabbath day. And the next thing you know, Jesus is about to heal a person with a hurt hand, with the deformed hand. And the religious leaders are watching for whether or not He’s gonna do it so that they can come against him for healing someone on the Sabbath. So, that’s how far off things have gotten. And Jesus does heal this man and what do they plan to do? They go out and plot to kill him. So, this is bringing light into the darkness and what Jesus is doing is bringing light back to the people that were given a promise of a promised land. Like, these people that we’re reading about in the book of Genesis, we’re going through all of these genealogies and getting to know all these children of Israel. They’re promised this land and they’re promised that God will be their God. Now we’re 2000 years ahead in the book of Matthew and the law has become a means of control and His people have forgotten who they are and Jesus is coming into the scenario to announce the kingdom of heaven, and to remind them of who they are. And part of the way He’s doing it is by flying in the face of what they thought was the religious obligations handed down by God. And Jesus is saying that this was…what has become of this law was never what it was intended to be. And, so, of course, you can do good on the Sabbath, of course, you can do God’s work on the seventh of course, you can heal someone on the Sabbath, which is exactly what He did. He flew right in the face of, in fact, what they thought and what they assumed was that Jesus was committing a grave and evil sin for working on the Sabbath, which is how backward things had gotten. So, I say all that to say, this is the stuff we want to watch as we’re watching Jesus in the Gospels because we can know the Bible stories and just go, yeah, there were people who were jealous of Jesus and they were evil and they crucified Him and He died for the sins of the world and that would the story but there’s a whole back story going on here that informs our lives. And, so, let’s pay attention as we continue forward with Jesus in the Gospels and what it is that Jesus is willing to invade. Like, what territory, even what theology is Jesus willing to step into and break in order to set people free?

And then last, ahhh, there’s so much to talk about in today’s reading, is what we read in the book of Psalms because a major question was asked at the beginning of Psalm 15, “Who may worship in Your sanctuary, Lord? Who may enter Your presence on Your holy hill?” So, in other words, who gets to be where you are? That’s an important question, right? Isn’t this what we’re pursuing the presence of God in our lives, a true and intimate life-giving relationship that we can understand so that we can move through life as we were intended to, right? So, the question’s an important question and the question was answered. So, who gets to do this, who gets to be where you are? Those who lead blameless lives and do what is right. Now there’s more. I’m pausing so we can think about how much of this applies to us - those who speak the truth from sincere hearts, those who refuse to gossip or harm their neighbors or speak evil of their friends. Ok now we’re starting to touch some sensitive spots in our heart, right? Because the description we’re being given is who gets to be in the presence of God? “Those who despise flagrant sinners and honor the faithful followers of the Lord and keep their promises even when it hurts. Those who lend money without charging interest”, right, so those who are doing a good thing to take advantage of someone and “those who cannot be bribed to lie about the innocent, those people. Such people will stand firm forever.”

Prayer:

Father, once again, You have given us so much to think about just from a few minutes in Your word and You have again continued to press in on us and touch sensitive areas that make us have to stop and consider. And, so, we’re thankful for that even though some of this is heavy lifting, some of this is hard work and some of this we don’t want to deal with right now. And for sure, some of us, are going to just five minutes from now we’re gonna forget what we’ve read and we’re gonna be back into our day. But You will not let up, You will keep coming after these things in our lives until we will face them because You will have Your way if we will surrender and Your way will set us free even if we are fighting You for the things that are hurting us. So, we humble ourselves and we invite Your Holy Spirit to all that we’ve read today, plant it in our lives, use it for Your good purposes of sanctifying us and making us whole. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

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If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link that lives on the homepage and I thank you humbly and profoundly with all humility for those of you who have clicked that link. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t doing this together. And, so, thank you for your partnership. 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, there are a number of numbers that you can use depending on where you live in the world. Of course, it doesn’t really matter, you can use any of these from anywhere in the world but if you are in the Americas, 877-942-4253 is the number, that’s 877-94Bible, if you still dial numbers like that. If you’re in the UK or Europe 44-20-3608-8078 is the number and if you are in Australia or that part of the world 61-3-8820-5459 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 everyone, my name is Doug, from Alabama here in the United States. I’m going to have to talk a little bit more quickly because I initially started listening back in college around 2008 - 2009. I believe I called in once then but, you know, over the years I haven’t listened, you know, on and off, I was never able to totally make it through. The point being I need, you know, when you call it tells you you only have two minutes so, you know, I have to be a little quick here. So yeah, today is the 13^th of January and I was listening to the 12^th of January’s reading and I was planning on calling in at some point, you know, for myself with some problems I have but I believe there was a lady, I want to say her name was Janet and she has a son named Jared. And listening to her, you know, her problem I guess, you know, her son has a substance abuse problems with alcohol and as someone else who, you know, also has addiction problems, I just really felt moved to call in and just let you know that I can definitely empathize with what you’re going through and also for someone who’s on the other end like your son that I will definitely keep you in my prayers every day as long as I can remember because I can get a bit busy. But I will definitely keep you in my prayers. And then the call that was right after yours, I believe David, I think that he had a son that was going through a separation. And David, you mentioned that you have anger problems. And I have much the same, nothing where, you know, I’m throwing tables and things like that but, you know, a lot of times you have those anger problems, you know, problems with anger where it’s totally up inside of you and you’re just like…arrrr…you know…and…but I do believe me…I call just for both of you Janet and David and Janet your son Jared to let you all know that I’ll…as long as I can remember…I’m going…I’ll keep you all in my prayers. And I do hope to call again soon, but I believe in…

Hi this is Apple of His Eye from St. Louis, it’s Monday, January the 14^th and __. I’ve had vertigo since last Thursday and I’m worse and worse with hours and hours of literally spinning and nausea. I have been to the doctor __ in the middle of the year so it’s been a year, but it is getting worse. I take some anti nausea pills but it’s extremely hard to live with. I have __ to help comfort me though as __ Daily Audio Bible and over again including the community prayer. So, I am lifting you up in prayer even as I am lying here spinning __ . Thank you, thank you for your love and care and prayers. Goodbye.

I’m calling for prayer for my 26-year-old son, Matthew, who wrote a suicide note on the 10^th of January and he has not been seen since and we’re looking for him. Please lift him up in prayer that he will come back home safe and sound and God would keep a hedge of protection about him and pray for my strengths and his brother strength, his family and siblings. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Hi, this is Beth calling from Canada and it’s my first time calling. I used to listen to this beautiful community years ago and then I stopped, and I just felt a tug in my heart to start up again this year and then today I just really felt compelled just to call to ask for some prayer. I have an immigrations situation and I’m trying to get my green card and it’s been pending for over a year now and I really need God’s supernatural hand on my case to have it turnaround in the next two weeks before one of my documents expires. And definitely looking at the timelines it looks like, you know, it’s not gonna happen but I know with God all things are possible. So, I know He wants what’s best for me. So, I just ask…reach out to everybody just asking if they can just pray for me. I just felt this overwhelming anxiety of this situation and I just want to be a permanent resident of America finally so bad. I just love this country and I would like to also pray for anybody else that is struggling through a similar immigration situation and also thank God for this trial in my life because even though it’s been really difficult it’s helped me realize I can’t rely on my own strength and that I just have to rely completely on Him. And that it also got me closer to Him and it really helped me just kind of burn off some of the impurities in my life and, you know, bad habits and bad attitudes and bitterness and things like that. So, I just thank God for allowing this trial and I also just pray that He will have His divine and on the application and that everything would be turned around with no more delays or denials or any other problems. In Jesus’ name. Thank you all so much and God bless you.

Genesis 32:13-34:31, Matthew 11:7-30, Psalms 14:1-7, Proverbs 3:19-20

Today is the 16^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian and, of course, it’s a pleasure to be here with you. I can’t think of anywhere else, and this is the true, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be right now than here, together with you, taking the next step forward through the Scriptures and that next step forward, at least from the Old Testament perspective will take us back into the book of Genesis where we’re learning the story of Jacob and where we left him yesterday was that he had just dealt with his father-in-law, Laban, who had been in pursuit of him because he fled but now he’s got his brother Esau out in front of him. And the last thing he knew of his brother Esau was it his brother Esau want to kill him. So, off we go to find out how the story continues to unfold. Genesis chapter 32 verse 13 through 34 verse 31 today and we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Genesis today, pretty monumental things have happened. We’ve gone through the story of Jacobs father-in-law Laban chasing him down. So, kind of the past following him and then the peace being made there and then Esau is out in front of him. And, so, they meet today, but as we begin our reading Jacob has this wrestling match, that kind of lasts all night and he ends up getting his hip out of the socket and Jacob won’t let go, like he’s trying to find out who it is he’s been wrestling with and he won’t let go. And there has been plenty of scholarly speculation about this particular passage over the millennia with something that Jacobs wrestling with - an angel or with God - something from the divine, while others would say that he’s wrestling with his brother Esau who has tracked him down and they kind of fought it out. And this comes from, as the narrative tells, the story of their actual meeting. Jacob says to Esau, “seeing your face is like seeing the face of God.” Either way, what happens to Jacob is fairly profound. Like his grandfather, Abram, whose name was changed to Abraham and his grandmother whose name was Soraya and that was changed to Sarah, Jacobs name was changed and the name that replaces Jacob is really important. Jacobs name changes to Israel. And we’ve gone through the story of the development of Jacobs family, right, the two sisters that are married and then they give their servant girls to have more children. And, so, all of these children have been born and we’ve seen all of their names and it’s at this point that it should all begin to make sense. Jacobs name being changed to Israel now very literally makes his children, the children of Israel. And that’s exactly who they are. Each of those child’s names we should recognize, and they should be familiar because they go on to become the tribes of Israel. Of course, a daughter was born in amongst all of those sons and her name was Dinah and we read of her story today, of the family coming through Shechem. Shechem is still an actual place. It is now called Annapolis and it’s the biblical Shechem, a place that we’ll visit often in the Bible. Some really, really pivotal things happen in this in this city, Dinah’s rape being one of those things. And, of course, then we see her brothers rise up and defend her honor as we leave our reading from Genesis today.

And then we get into the book of Matthew and Jesus has a conversation about John the Baptist and He questions what the people are actually looking for, like what is it that they came to see when they came to see John the Baptist. What Jesus is beginning to do in this particular dialogue that we read today is to reveal that we won’t be able to figure out our entire spiritual journey intellectually, it will have to be a collaboration between our heart and our mind, which is how we were created to be in order to walk with God. So, just trying to sorted out by reason will come up short. And listen, we’re at the beginning of the year, we’re getting to know each other, but my natural state is an introvert and as a student. I need to know why things work the way that they do. And, so, I turned to theology thinking that that would have all the answers and just, you know, like, you know, at some point in your faith you’re like, how, just tell me exactly how this works, like, exactly how does this work and exactly what am I supposed to do so that I have some sort of gauge to know whether I’m doing this right or not? Unfortunately, that can’t be achieved through a theological formula that makes a declarative and dogmatic statement about God because we don’t know what we’re talking about when we’re talking about God. We know what we’ve observed, and we know what we’ve experienced, but we also acknowledge that He is vastly beyond our comprehension, right, so vastly beyond our ability to reason out and make a statement about that is definitive and covers everything. And then we have to ask ourselves where, how, how it is we know, where is God? Like, how is it that we’re relating to God? Is that all in our mind or is it in our heart. I mean, like, do we accept Jesus and begin to believe? I mean, does he come into our mind, or does he come into our heart or is it both? Like, we don’t…it starts to break down, our semantics, but we would say, we accept Christ into our heart. We would say that our heart, this is the source of our love, this is this is the core, the truth, the real person, or however you want to say it. We would agree that in terms of spirituality in our believes, that our heart is involved in the process, so can’t be done just with the mind. And, so, Jesus begins to discuss things like this by praying. “Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever and for revealing them to the childlike. Yes father, it pleased you to do it this way.” So, we begin to realize that the message Jesus is unfolding, the way that He is being in the world as a human being and the invitation that he is beginning to offer humanity is a different way of looking at how you are being in the world. And one of those first lessons is you’re not going to be able to figure it all out with your knowledge, which we’ve already talked about. It takes us back to the beginning of Genesis where the forbidden fruit was eaten and the exchange that was made was an exchange for the knowledge of good and evil and that’s what we’ve been using to try to make ourselves sovereign all this time. And then here comes Jesus, a perfect…a perfectly human person saying, “you’ve separated yourself from your own heart and that these are repercussions of the fall, but I am announcing the good news of the kingdom, a new thing is going on here and I’m looking for those eyes to see and ears to hear”. So, I don’t think I’ve just said anything that we don’t all already believe as Christians, but we may not have thought about it in this way, but since we’re going to go through the entire Bible it’s important for us to examine and try to till into our lives what is actually being said here so that we can actually live into it. And what we’re learning today is we’re not gonna figure it all out in our mind any more than we can figure love out in our mind, right? We have to engage ourselves in something that’s mysterious to us, but that we know is true and that we believe is true like when we talk about love. How do you know you love somebody? I mean, you can give all kinds of reasons, but when you’re trying to describe what love is you have to move into the territory of art and poetry, you have to move into the ways that we speak about realities that are mysteries and that are beyond us and Jesus is beginning to unpack this as he announces the kingdom. And then Jesus instructs us or invites us, “come to me all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” So, I’m signing up for that. I hope you are too. And then Jesus invites us to take His yoke upon us and allow Him to teach us because He is humble and gentle at heart and we will find rest for our souls. And then Jesus tells us. “For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” And that’s a famous passage of Scripture, so we all know that. But let me let me just invite you to think about something today. As believers in Jesus we are supposed to be like Christ our Savior. That’s really the point of our faith, right, to become like our Savior. And we can look at a passage like this, “My yoke is easy, My burden is light” and just simply think, “well what Jesus is supposed to do is make my life easy. I’m supposed to accept Jesus and then He will make my life easy”, but all throughout Jesus teachings, we will find that He’s not inviting us to anything that’s easy, He’s inviting us to something that’s hard, that will become easy if we are living integrated with our hearts and our minds intertwined with the mind of Christ and with the Holy Spirit’s guidance. And yet bringing light into the darkness is a struggle, it is a burden. And, so, maybe another way to consider this Scripture is that His yoke is easy to bear, and the burden that He is inviting us to share in is light not on heavy, but light into the darkness. And, so, we can consider today how much we’re willing to carry the burden of bringing light into the darkness as we move into this year. Is this going to be another year where we live defensively, right, all huddled up in this in kind of a fetal position just hoping that Jesus is surrounding us and will make things easy and will make all the difficult things go away or are we beginning to understand that Jesus is inviting us to collaborate with Him in bringing His kingdom and revealing it in this world. To bring light into dark places, that’s not going to be an easy thing. It wasn’t an easy thing for our Savior; however, it is noble to be a part of changing the world and isn’t that the kind of purposeful, meaningful thing we spend our whole lives trying to find? And yet here it is, all in front of us. We are invited into the great dance of collaboration and relationship with God. We are invited to reflect His glory upon the earth as image bearers. We are invited to do the same kinds of things and even greater things, according to Jesus then He did. We are invited to bring light into the darkness, that’s purpose but it’s nothing that we can achieve on our own. We have to go back to square one, have the faith of a child, and understand that our reason isn’t going to get us there alone. We’re not going to figure God out all by ourselves intellectually, we have to re-integrate our spirit and our heart and walk with God as we bring light into the darkness. What that looks like for each of us will be different because each of us has our own story and we’re all over the world, but it looks like something. What does it look like for you?

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, we invite You into that question because all kinds of simple questions become very complicated questions when we begin to actually ponder them and when we begin to realize how much is actually being touched inside of us. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit into the questions that the Scriptures bring up. We invite Your Holy Spirit into this as we contemplate it today. Come Jesus. We ask in Your mighty name and lead us into all truth, which is what You promised to do and we trust You to do. Come Holy Spirit 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. So, be sure to check in and check it out.

Check out all of the resources that are available in the Daily Audio Bible shop including all of our journal and writing…like…journal your way through the Scriptures this year and you will have that for a lifetime to refer back to. Or other resources, like the Promise Land films. So, for example, we visited the city of Shechem today and I said a lot of biblical things happened there, and they do. Shechem is a place we’ve gone and filmed, it’s in the Promised Land films. And, so, you can kind of see some of these places that we’re visiting as we visit them in the Bible. So, check out those resources, they’re there for the journey through the Bible in a year.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com, there is a link that lives 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.

Genesis 31:17-32:12, Matthew 10:24-11:6, Psalms 13:1-6, Proverbs 3:16-18

Today is the 15^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and, of course, every day is a joy and a pleasure to be here with you and in your presence and in the presence of our brothers and sisters all over the world. And we lovingly call this activity the global campfire. And I don’t really know where that started, honestly, it just kind of stuck a few years ago, I guess I was just sitting here right in front of the mic just picturing us all coming in out of the cold, you know, because we begin the year, at least here in the northern hemisphere in the wintertime. So, we’re just coming out of the cold. And, you know, it can be like dark and cold out there and to be able to come in and warm yourself with friends and know that you not alone, know that this journey isn’t a solitary endeavor, that we’re in this together. I just…I guess…it just kind of caught on from there. So, just through another log on the global campfire, and off we go. And man, here we are halfway. This is like the halfway point of the first month of the year and it happens just like that because it was just Christmas, right? Like it just was Christmas but this is…time just kind of moves and before we know it we’ll be in another season and the year will move by and we’ll realize just how much God’s word is speaking into our lives and just how profoundly it is affecting the way we make our decisions and that happens day by day, step-by-step around this global campfire. So, let’s dive in. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Today, Genesis chapter 31 verse 17 through 32 verse 12, and reminding you we’re following the story of Jacob and his wives and their children, and they want to leave and head back to Jacob’s homeland. And, so, there’s some drama brewing. Genesis chapter 31.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the Old Testament in the book of Genesis we’re following the story of Jacob who…well…we don’t have to review every little detail of the story because we just read it in the last couple of days, but he’s on his way back to his homeland and we need to remember that he had to flee from his homeland, right, because he’s the one that stole his brothers birthright and then he and his mother kind of colluded to get this family blessing. So, when Esau, the older brother, finds out what has happened Jacob has to run for his life and Esau decides, like, after I’m done mourning my father I’m going to kill my brother, right? So, like, they have to separate each other, separate from each other. And, so, it’s been a couple of decades now. So, that’s, you know, some time for this to all cool off, but Jacob doesn’t know, I mean the last thing he knew was that his brother wanted to kill him, but he doesn’t really have a great scenario where he’s at with his father-in-law Laban because Laban, I mean, Jacob and Laban, they both have been like tricking each other and we can’t forget that Jacob’s a bit of a trickster himself. I mean he did get the birthright from Esau, he did get the family blessing under trickery and he did have to run away for it. So, Laban’s given him a taste of his own medicine but there’s no future there and God is calling him to go back to his Father. So, what we saw in today’s reading was this man and his wives and his family and their whole entourage leaving secretly to try to do just that. And in a very, very short time we have Jacob and his family in the middle of a pretty nasty situation that could turn really volatile really fast and destroy them all because behind him he’s got his father-in-law Laban and their family and surely, they’re going to figure out that he’s gone. So, they’re going to come in pursuit, but out in front of him he’s got his brother Esau also wanting to do him harm. So, he’s kind of like in between two bad situations. And you may find yourself in a similar position in life. And we see Jacob responding in a very, very human way, in a way that we would understand. I mean Laban does arrive and there is a pretty big confrontation and then Jacob is able to kind of unload some of the things that he’s been carrying around. And in the end, a monument is set up, a covenant is entered into, and they have agreed that they will not pass that boundary line with the intent of hurting each other. So, Jacob’s able to navigate and find favor in that situation that was behind him, the one haunting image from his past as it were, but he’s still got his future out in front of him, which is a big circle from the very distant past, his brother. And, so, he sends word just the sort of test the temperature and the next thing he knows his brothers riding toward him with 400 mercenaries and that’s kind of where were left today. So like, let’s get it really clear that in biblical times these people didn’t just float around, you know, a foot off the ground with halos and, you know, like they actually had to face some pretty difficult things, and as we do. So, we can look into these stories and say, okay, yeah, I mean proverbially I got the same thing going on, I’ve got something going on behind me, I’ve got something going on before me, I feel like I’ve been caught in the middle, I’ve got to navigate this. Probably not to the extreme of Jacob. And we get to watch Jacob navigate and learn from it.

Then we get into the book of Matthew and Jesus is saying some pretty provocative stuff. Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth. I came not to bring peace but a sword. I’ve come to set man against his father, daughter against her mother, daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, your enemies will be right in your household. Okay. So, what happened to the loving baby Jesus in the manger and peace on earth and goodwill towards men? Like, Christmas hasn’t hardly worn off. What is this? What we have to begin to realize about Jesus message and Jesus way is that He is fundamentally reminding human beings what they were created to be and He is living a life as a full human being, certainly, the son of God as we believe, fully divine but also fully human as the Scriptures teach us. And, so, we’re looking at Jesus and we’re seeing a person like people are supposed to be, like what they were created to be without the black weight of sin involved. And light comes into the darkness, certainly the darkness flees, right, but the shadows are cast and it’s like a cosmic battle because mankind had been spending its time trying to organize itself in such a way that it could be its own God, which is what we saw as we started this story back in the book of Genesis chapter 3 with the fall of man and betrayed. Like, eating that fruit gave mankind the knowledge of good and evil, but what mankind lost in the trade was an intimate fellowship with God. And, so, mankind became very evil but tried to use the knowledge of good and evil to become its own God. Well when God shows up in the middle of that story then we’re talking about the clash of kingdoms and people are notoriously famous for not wanting to give up their freedom of choice and will. And yet that is exactly what…that is exactly what Jesus message is. And maybe kind of taking this journey this year, first time through the Bible just kind of wanting understand what it is actually saying so you can determine whether you’re going to follow this path or not, this is fundamentally the Jesus way, is that there is a better way of being a human being, one that is restored to the way that human beings were supposed to live. And we get to watch that in the person of Jesus, but we also notice that those with power and influence only feel exposed by Jesus. Like, they can’t cozy up to Jesus and get him to collude with them because He won’t, because He’s pure, because He’s true and He can’t be bought. We’re watching a person live in this world true and everywhere He goes it disrupts what is false even to the point of dividing family. So, the Scriptures tell us there’s a narrow path that leads to life and only a few find it and those who do disrupt things. And all you have to do is just think about it, think about, well okay, what if I were absolutely truth? Like, what if there were no falseness in me? When we start thinking about that we realize that all of the ways that we relate to each other has a falseness to it. We are presenting an image so that we can all find a way to get along, but we have an inner monologue of things that are really going on that we wouldn’t let out. Some of that’s because we wouldn’t let out the embarrassing dark thoughts that we have, but what if we didn’t have any darkness either, right? So, what if we weren’t hiding anything because there wasn’t anything to hide and everything that we did, everything about us was true, everyone knew exactly who we really are and that was good, that was true and good. Well then, we would be Christ like, right, then we would be like Christ. Then we think, well, that kind of person could really lead people into the truth, that kind of person…that kind of a leader would really, really pull us forward, but that’s not how it worked out for Jesus, right? Those in power and authority killed Him. The darkness does not want the light because you can’t hide in the light. And, so, understand that as we take this journey and truly give ourselves over to allowing a relationship with God, an intertwining of spirits, a transformation from within us, so that we are experiencing actual life, not a fabricated version full of stuff that we have to maintain, but actual life, then that is not going to just disrupt us, that is going to disrupt everything around us

Prayer:

Father, we pray for wisdom as we continue to take these steps forward. Its intriguing to understand that the life that we want, the truth that we want, the way that we want to walk into life with You, our hearts cry for this, but as the layers begin to get peeled back we begin to understand, following this way on the narrow path that leads to life will be costly and will cost us everything that we think we are because everything that we have been is changing and everything that we are in You. So, we invite Your Holy Spirit to come. We’re here at the beginning of the year and Your testing our motivations, You’re revealing our hearts to ourselves, You are allowing us to see things as they really are and we are swept into this, we have pulled forward. So, Holy Spirit show us how to navigate. With Your wisdom we pray. In Jesus name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay connected and check it out.

Check out the Daily Audio Bible resources that are in the Daily Audio Bible shop, visit the Prayer Wall at dailyaudiobible.com or in the app, pray for your brothers and sisters around the world or maybe you need your brothers and sisters to pray for you. This is a community that prays for each other and shoulders one another’s burdens. And, so, the Prayer Wall is a certainly one of the places to do that.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage and it just lives there. 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. 

Genesis 30:1-31:16, Matthew 10:1–23, Psalms 12:1-8, Proverbs 3:13-15

Today is the 14^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is a pleasure to be here with you today as we move into this workweek and, you know, continue to move into this new year although I imagine we’re starting to find the rhythm of things. This week we’re reading from the New Living Translation and will take the next step forward, which will take us back into the book of Genesis. Today chapter 30 verse 1 through 31 verse 16 and we’re learning the story of Jacob who has found himself married to two sisters, which has caused considerable amount of family conflict, but we should watch this story very, very closely because we’re still following the story of Abraham and his descendants. And Jacob’s descendants couldn’t possibly have a more profound effect on the Bible. And, So, with that we’ll read from Genesis chapter 30.

Commentary:

Okay. So, as we are following the story of Jacob in the Old Testament. And just by way of reminder, Jacob is the grandson of Abraham and we talked about the significance of Abraham and we’ll be talking about the significance of Abraham pretty much the rest of the way through the Bible because he’ll come up, but he had a son of promise named Isaac who had a couple of sons and one of those sons is named Jacob and then Jacob had to flee from his brother Esau, right, back up into the north country to find his family and this is how he came to marry the two sisters, Rachel and Leah. Now, we kind of…we saw a battle of who could have the most kids in our reading today, but each of those sons that were born had names at each of those names should kind of seem at least a little familiar. And if that we understand we are tracking a family and its growth as we move through the book of Genesis we’ll understand that a larger story is being told instead of like discombobulated genealogies of people that we may or may not have ever heard of and can’t really figure out exactly where this is all going. We’re following the story of a family and this family affects the world until today and through this family line comes Jesus who we are spending some time with as we spend our time in the New Testament. So, the Bible often offers us some pretty penetrating things to think about in terms of adjustments to our own lives and the way that we are living in this world, but the Bible is also telling us a story of a family of promise, a family that we as believers have been grafted into or adopted into. So, we’re kind of getting close to half way through the first month of the year. Now that we’re establishing a rhythm we should begin to understand that we’re reading the story of how we got here and who we are. And, so, as deeply penetrating as the Bible can be it is also deeply compelling. This is how we got here.

And speaking of Jesus, in the book of Matthew Jesus sent his disciples out among the Jewish people and He give them interesting instructions and those instructions basically look like it like instructions to not prepare. Like, I mean He told them, like, not to take an extra change of clothes, not take any money, like just go and that gives us a pretty compelling picture towards our own lives because, here we are kind of at the beginning of the new year, we’ve got some New Year’s resolutions we’re trying to live up to, we’re far enough into the year to understand now that the idea of the resolution was a lot more fun than actually the work of the resolution, right? So, if it’s 20 pounds you’re trying to dump, yeah, I mean, there’s a bunch of discipline involved in kind of changing the way you do things, but it could be anything, it could be any health-related goal, you know, a spiritual related goal, a vocational related goal. Whatever it is were going for, when we think about the goal it’s a lot more fun to prepare then to do the work. And, so, when we think about our spirituality we’re like, okay, I’m just gonna get myself strong, you know, I’m gonna get my vocabulary right, I’m gonna know what it is I believe, I’m gonna get my theology right and then I can share that with the world when I’m all nice and ready and knowledgeable to do it. In the example Jesus gave to his disciples, it wasn’t like a big theology lesson or like, make sure you’ve got this all right. He essentially told him to go, like, go now, go with whatever you have, go and don’t be surprised that its disruptive when you do. So, interestingly enough, Jesus is saying, like if you’re going to go on some sort of mission or become some sort of missionary however it is wherever you’re going that you shouldn’t be completely unprepared and just kind of figure it out as you go. What Jesus is telling us is you’re already in the process of going no matter what you are doing so, be where you are and live on mission as it comes to you. And yeah, if you’re planning something more extravagant, you’re being called to do something that’s in another country or, you know, that requires a lot of planning and preparation then, yeah, do that but remember, while you’re doing that not everything else stops. Wherever you are and whatever you have and however it is that you can offer it, you are offering the good news of the kingdom, right? So, you don’t have to spend your whole life preparing so that you can offer the good news of the kingdom, just do it. And friends, that can be as simple as a smile at a stranger today, right? That changes everything. When that person who you have no idea what their story is or what they’re going through, when their eyes lock to your eyes for some random reason and you offer back kindness, that not only changes their day, that changes your day, that changes your posture of heart. If we’re walking with God we have these kind of touch point opportunities constantly. And when we get into the habit of them then we find that what we’re doing, when we’re simply kind that we’re bringing light into darkness and it’s changing the atmosphere. But if we will intentionally change the atmosphere everywhere we go then we’re going to live in a different atmosphere, one of peace and hope and joy and kindness and wisdom.

And, you know, we have lots of pursuits that we’re going to go after this year, but speaking of wisdom the book of Proverbs offers us the opportunity to consider what is most important in our achievements this year. “Wisdom”, we’re told, “is more profitable than silver and her wages are better than gold.” In other words, having wisdom is more important and more profitable than having money. “Wisdom is more precious than rubies. Nothing you desire can compare with her.” So, that gives us the opportunity to consider whether or not that’s true. Is wisdom the thing that we value more than anything else? Are we understanding the truth that whatever we may desire nothing can compare with wisdom. Some good food for thought today because if we’re gonna live into what the Bible is telling us this year then some of these really important things at the beginning of the year are monumental. And wisdom and acquiring wisdom and being in a relationship with wisdom and being intertwined with wisdom and walking through this world using wisdom is one of them.

Prayer:

Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit to help us know how to open ourselves fully to the voice of wisdom in our lives. We’re being counseled and we will continue to be counseled throughout the year that wisdom is more important than any other thing that we could acquire in this life because wisdom will show us how to achieve anything else. And, so, this is a foundational, fundamental piece of our existence. In fact, the voice of wisdom told us that You Father used her, when You created the world You used wisdom. And, so, making this wisdom available to us, why would we ever not pursue this with all of our hearts? That’s the great mystery. But come Holy Spirit because we’ve pursued all kinds of things in all kinds of directions and most of those directions have been wrong directions. And as we reflect back on it, we realize wisdom was the thing to sort of left in the dust. So, come Holy Spirit we want to wise as we move through this year and we won’t be able to do that on our own. We need Your help. There’s too many distractions, there’s too many things pulling us in too many directions. And, so, we need You. Come Holy Spirit we pray. Show us the path of wisdom we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

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

I will remind you of the sister programs to the Daily Audio Bible because we talked about wisdom again. And, so where talking about the book of Proverbs. And the Daily Audio Proverb is available every single day. We go through the entire book of Proverbs, a chapter a day and so, through the whole book each month. And just kind of pouring that into your life is one of the ways to get wisdom, right? I mean to understand the voice of wisdom and the kinds of things that wisdom wants to talk about is something that we find the book of Proverbs and it takes two minutes a day. Like adding two minutes of Scripture more than you already are into you are into your life, maybe like listening to Daily Audio Bible in the morning but taking two extra minutes at some point in the day to pour unfiltered wisdom, like the wisdom of the ages into your life. What will that do for you? So, check that out, Daily Audio Proverb. There’s also the Daily Audio Psalm where we’re going to the Psalms, just like we are on Daily Audio Bible but in a nice, compact, five minutes. You know, whatever you can pour into your life is a helpful thing because you’re pouring the words of life into your heart. So, these resources are available. Of course, Daily Audio Bible Chronological is a channel and then we have the foreign languages, and I say foreign because English is my native tongue. So, it’s foreign to me, but if English is a second language or third language or fourth language for you and you speak another native tongue, maybe we have a community using that language. So, we have Daily Audio Bible Spanish for Spanish speakers in Espanola. So, there’s the Daily Audio Bible as we’re doing but they also have Psalms and Proverbs in the in Spanish. We have Daily Audio Bible, Chinese, Arabic, French - and French has Psalms and Proverbs as well – Portuguese…oh I don’t have the list in front of me…but all of those channels are available in the Daily Audio Bible app in the Daily Audio Bible player and I wherever it is that you get your podcasts. So, just want to make sure that, you know, these resources are available and ongoing. It is our mission to bring God’s spoken word to anyone who will listen to it and that’s been the rhythm of this community. And, so, there are number of ways to do that. And Daily Audio Bible Proverb was created for no other reason than to make it simple. Like wisdom isn’t as complicated as we might make it out to be or is mysterious as we might make it out to be, its calling from everywhere and if we start the book of Proverbs that’s what it’s telling us, it’s calling to us from everywhere. So, we need to learn it’s voice and reading through the book of Proverbs gets us very familiar. So, check these resources out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is 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 DABbers, this is Slave of Jesus in North Carolina, all right, Holy Spirit let’s roll. Justin from SoCal welcome back to the DAB, good to hear from you. The first of the year some of us get some automatic raises. Gotta take the time to go in and update your donations to the DAB. Doing it monthly. I actually changed the __ , it’s really easy, took about 12 seconds to do it. Lord we ask you to watch in and all the prayers for longtime marriages, especially those who have been separated and separated now. We know the enemy wants to destroy these marriages, so he can take away the shining example of your love in a marriage. And in all the prayers from Nick and Alex the wrestlers. Lord, we ask you to give them the motivation to do things in their life and help their family deal with that of their doing. Amen. All the prayers from the Prodigal, but prodigal, waiting for you to call and for others. I mean, calling in on New Year’s Eve. But it sounds like the enemy is telling you a bunch of lies because I am hearing you repeat some of those lies and the biggest what I heard was you don’t have a family. You have a huge family. You know, you have hundreds of DABbers, probably thousands of DABbers praying for you out loud, out loud. There are pastors and priests that wish they had thousand people praying for them out loud. But you’ve got to realize that this DAB is a family. For those of you that have the family Christmas’s, I download those and keep those on my phone. You listen to a few hours of a family Christmas and you are this heaven on earth…this is what a true family is, not our biological messes that we deal with, this is a true family, spiritual family that we all have. You’ve got that prodigal. So, you are definitely part of our…brother prodigal. So, I love you brother. You’ve got tons of brothers and sisters right here in the DAB. So, just please don’t forget that. Don’t let the enemy lie to you about that. Don’t let the enemy lie because he puts it in your head and you repeat it you’re putting a curse on yourself. So, I hope you say I huge family. Love you all, have a great day. Bye.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family it is a blessing and a pleasure to continue on and on and on. This is my third-year in, I’m fairly new, but it feels like I’ve been doing this for a very long time. I’m so happy to be a part. I just want you all to pray for me, pray that God would continue to lead, guide, and protect me. God also, heal. I’m going through some medical situations, but surgery is required. I’m asking you all to pray, pray together for me that God would heal me or His will it be done and whatever His decision is it will be well done. If He allows me to go through the surgery I’m thanking Him that He would be the operator, He would be the surgeon. I thank you for highlighting me in your prayer and acknowledging that I am a part of this family. Thank you so much. My name is Marjorie.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family, this is Jay from Nashville Tennessee. I want to welcome all the new listeners this year. This is such an amazing community. I’ve been through some things, I’ve done a lot of things that I shouldn’t have done and throughout it all this community has been there for me, has prayed for me, has encouraged me, has pulled me out of darkness. Sometimes when we do things that we know we’re not supposed to do and it’s time to face the music, to face the consequences, sometimes it’s hard to bear and in my case I nearly lost my mind. I’m a firm believer that if it were not for the Daily Audio Bible and this community of people around the world that are praying every single day, I’m not sure exactly where I would be. If it wasn’t for the numerous people calling out my name and saying we hear you, we love you, and we’re praying for you. Even in times where I didn’t hear my name I felt the prayers. It’s just a feeling that you…you really can’t describe. And we’re not just only on the Daily Audio Bible, we’re on Facebook and we’re also on the Daily Audio Bible website. So, if you are dealing with something and you don’t want to do it alone, call, we’re here for you and we love you.

Good morning DABbers, today is January 9^th, my name is Brandon, I’m from Maryland. I’m calling with a broken heart for my wife, my family, myself. I’ve hurt my wife badly enough to where she needs to go…she feels she needs to go to a support group. We’re each seeing therapists, we’re starting marriage counseling on the 16^th and I’m just asking you guys, my family, whom I don’t know, I’m asking you guys just to pray for my wife and I, that I recognize what I have done to her, the wife of my youth, the love of my life, and I’ve completely screwed it all up. I just pray Father that You lay that on my heart and You fill that piece of my broken heart up with your love, your grace, your mercy Father, and I show that to my lovely wife. Thank you all for your prayers and I look forward to all the miracles done in 2019.

Genesis 28:1-29:35, Matthew 9:18-38, Psalms 11:1-7, Proverbs 3:11-12

Today is the 13^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is a pleasure and an honor to be here with you as we greet a new week and together we stand at the threshold and turn the knob and step through into a shiny and sparkly, new one. And like every brand-new week, it’s out in front of us. And, so, everything that has gone before is something that is now a part of our past and here we are, but we’re looking into the future and how we live into it, right? Like, I mean, if last week was chaos and everything is blown apart in some of your relationships, I mean, that can be perpetuated into this new week or we can just decide that we don’t have to live that way anymore, we can make things right and move forward peacefully as we continue with the rhythm of the Scriptures and allowing God to pull us forward, away from all of our pride and arrogance and all of the things that are lower and less than we were created to be and we can live into all that God has for us. So, it’s a shiny, sparkly, new week and we’ll read from a shiny, sparkly, new translation. This week we’ll read from the New Living Translation and we’ll pick up where we left off in the book of Genesis with the story of Isaac and Rebekah and their children Jacob and Esau. Today Genesis chapter 28 and 29.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for this, the beginning of a new week and we look forward to all that You will speak to us through Your word in this week and we pray, Holy Spirit come, we remain open to You because we can hear Your word and not do it or we can hear Your word and allow ourselves to be open and allow You to lead us and transform us. And, so, this is our hearts posture and I we commit to this, we open ourselves to You Holy Spirit into this new week lead and guide us we pray in all of our conversations, in all of our relationships, in all of our choices and decisions, and all that is before us in thought, word and deed, we invite You come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, its the website, of course, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay tuned and stay connected.

And I remind you that at the community section at dailyaudiobible.com you find all of the links to different social media channels. So, if you are on social media you may want to be involved in one of the groups like DAB Friends where you can continue to interact with for your brothers and sisters as we take the journey through the Scriptures this year. So, check that all out at dailyaudiobible.com.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link that’s on the homepage and I thank you for those of you who have clicked that link over the years and thrown another log on the global campfire and we continue to move forward day by day. 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.

Genesis 26:17-27:46, Matthew 9:1-17, Psalms 10:16-18, Proverbs 3:9-10

Today is the 12^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian and it’s great to sit down here and take a deep breath and slowly exhale and take a sip of coffee and scooch up to the microphone and cozy around this global campfire that is the community here. And I see that some of you have thrown some logs on, we’ve got a nice warm fire going and we’re just kind of coming in out of the cold, coming in and out of the dark and warming ourselves and feeling each other’s presence. And, so, here we go, altogether, taking the next step forward. And we’re reading from the New International Version this week, which obviously ends today. We’ll read something else tomorrow, but we’ll pick up where we left off no matter what day it is, no matter what translation we’re reading from. And today we’ll read Genesis chapter 26 verse 17 through 27 verse 46. And once again what we’re following now, because Abraham passed away yesterday, we’re moving into the generation after Abraham and beginning to follow the story of Isaac. And Isaac has had some children, Jacob and Esau. And, so, we’re beginning to know their story and these particular names, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, we need to know these names and we need to know their origin because they will shape how the story unfolds as we continue through the rest of the year. So, Genesis chapter 26.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for bringing us this far into this new year. And as we release the first full week of this new year we feel like we’re starting to settle into the rhythm of this new year and we can see that this can be a very, very overwhelming year for us or there’s an alternative path, a narrow one that leads to life and we’re beginning to learn about that path and You are beginning to teach us of that path and we’re beginning to realize we may need…we may need to change some things. And You are so kind, and You are so gracious and gentle with us that You allow us to become aware and You gently lead us in the way that we should go. And, so, our part in this at this point is to remain open. And we have an open heart to You. Nothing is off-limits from You God. We trust You. There are many things we may be skeptical of in this world, but we trust You. You are our only hope. And, so, we declare this, we speak it out loud, we say it, it’s our reality. There is no other one. There is no other way. And, so, we put our hope in You and we trust You and by doing this, our heart begins to open to You. Come Holy Spirit, plant the word of God that we read today and all that we’ve read so far this year into our lives continuing to till the soil and plant the fruit of the Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, its the website, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay connected and find out find out what’s going on around here, and explore.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the mission that we share in common, which is to bring the spoken word of God read fresh every day and to present it and make it available to anyone who will listen to it anywhere on this planet, anytime of day or night, and to continue to build community around that rhythm so that each of us know that we’re not alone, if that resonates with you and that brings light and life and good news into your life, then thank you for being life-giving. There’s a link on the homepage of dailyaudiobible.com. 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, this is Victoria Soldier just calling tonight to pray for some of the DABbers. I just want to pray for some of the DAbbers who are going through, especially some of those who are affected by the government closure. I want to pray for those who are going through stress and who have a need in their lives. Lord, in the name of Jesus You have Your way. Lord You’re a God who can supply all our needs. You said that You are the way, the truth, and the light. You said that You would not hold any good thing from us. Oh Lord, somebody needs You tonight, somebody needs some strength, somebody needs some guidance, somebody needs some direction, somebody needs some protection. Oh Lord, You have Your way in the name of Jesus. Lord, You supply their every need. Oh Lord in abundance You come that we might have life and we might have it more abundant. You said You would never leave us nor forsake us. You said You are the way the truth and the light. You’re our Alpha and Omega. You’re our beginning and our end. Father we thank You, we thank You for Your presence, we thank You for Your spirit, we thank You for Your power, we thank You for the victory, we thank You Lord for You delivering power, we thank You for Your miracle working power. All those strongholds, every stronghold that comes to hold us down, every wicked sin from the enemy that comes to take away our joy, to come to take away every good thing that He has for us. Lord, You have Your way. Oh Lord, in the name of Jesus You continue to bless Brian and Jill and his daughter China and all the people of God. You continue to bless Blind Tony, Sharon, and the lady that lost her daughter. Lord __ for Joe the Protector, You pray for him and his daughter Lord. Oh Lord in the name of Jesus, Lord You touch Pastor Gene, You touch Your people Lord, You touch those who are going through, You touch those who lost everything Lord, You provide, You open doors no man…

My beautiful family, this is Pastor Gene from Bradenton Florida, and I am calling rejoicing for China’s engagement. Congratulations China, congratulations Ben, praise God for your engagement, congratulations Jill and Brian. You have done an extraordinary job with your little girl whom I met when she was 16, which is how old my daughter is today. So, I look at her and I just glorify the Lord for everything that she is and now an extra reason to thank God for his faithfulness towards her and toward you guys. Bless you, bless you, bless you. We are going to continue praying more than ever for you guys and now we have to __ of prayer. Praise the Lord. And my beautiful family, particular for the newcomers, one of the wonderful things about the DAB, particularly the prayer line, is that we came here only to listen to the word but we get to pray for one another and that is an excellent exercise. Sometimes, the Daily Audio Bible has been a life saver for me not only from the perspective of the word but because it forces me to look outside of myself into the needs of others. So, you will find that when you pray together with your brothers and sisters, whether on the line or later, that you are strengthened just because God intended for us to pray and intercede for one another. And now join me in prayer. Father, we pray for Sean from South Carolina. We ask for Your blessing for Your strength oh God. Oh Father we pray for our brother prodigal. We believe that he is gaining his strength and that he knows that You are with him and that he has heard Your words of love by just listening to this podcast. Father, I pray for Demarius and for Enesto, two individuals that we shared the word with and we are expecting and anticipated results…

Good morning DAB family, my name is Janet. I am calling __ year on the Daily Audio Bible. I enjoy every minute of it, in awe of the community and the prayer warriors out there. I myself am not very good at prayer but I am in desperate need of prayer for my son Jared who is 23 and he’s an alcoholic. I found out earlier last year that he was drinking. He was drinking for about two years and he kept it from me and my family kept it from me. I’ve done everything I can to get him help. I have had him in a 30-day program. He just got out and am getting ready to send him off to California for his next sobriety program because he had a drink on Saturday. I was away for him for three hours and he had a drink. I don’t have the money for these programs. So, to take the train system in there and no work and so the money is…it’s hard for me and __ for him and he is a wonderful loving person with a disease and I just want to know if you’d pray for Jared. Pray for me that I can get through this so that I know how to help him. And I pray the Lord for direction, I pray for strength, I pray for Jared __…

So, good morning my name is David and I live in in Indianapolis Indiana in the United States and I am carrying a burden, have been carrying it for a little over 2 ½ years. And what it is is my son is really going through a…a very nasty long separation from his wife and he’s living with us currently and I have…get to see the three grandkids occasionally. So, anyway that’s been very hard for us…my wife and I. We just especially appreciate prayer for that and then for my…I have a problem with anger. It wells up inside me. So, as a grandfather I feel helpless sometimes but…so anyway Daily Audio Bible family, I hadn’t been listening in a good solid two years, and now I’m back at it so please pray for me. Thank you. Goodbye.

Good morning, I am Peggy in Texas and for this moment I invite you to join me in prayer. Father, on this Monday morning I thank you for your word read so beautifully and strongly to us and for the commentary causing us to ponder the way you’re speaking to us this day. May we not forget the challenge. I thank you for that same Spirit heard in Rudolph’s strong and clear voice from Toronto as well as from Sherlock in New Jersey and from, I think it was, Denise in Cleveland. Their voices gave strength and brought gratefulness to my heart. Thank you, Father. At the same time, I recognize at times like these that is easy to become fearful and weary and restless, to have a soul that is lacking in joy, for problems are real and life is often hard. Father, remember with your healing touch all those who are in pain, pain due to illness or rejection, tragedy, loss, death, or hunger, or who cannot find place whatever that might mean. Have mercy on all of DABbers who are suffering at this hour. Please, meet needs. We often fail as it’s easy to identify with Easy in Georgia who spoke of failure and maintaining as well as Denise’s desire, not only to maintain but to obtain and to sustain in order to be good witnesses to your power. We identify there and ask that all of us will be faithful in our seeking, for you tell us if we seek we shall surely find. We praise your name this Monday morning. In the name of Jesus…

Genesis 23:1-24:51, Matthew 8:1-17, Psalms 9:13-20, Proverbs 3:1-6

Today is the 11^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is always a joy to be here with you to take the next step forward on our journey through the Scriptures this year. An we’re coming to the end of our first full work week of this brand-new year. So, hopefully you’re feeling kind of moved into the new year. Hopefully the rhythm of the Daily Audio Bible is a part of that journey and I think we’re getting kind of getting moved into this rhythm of the year that will carry us to the center of our souls because the Bible has a way of doing that and will also influence the way that we conduct our exterior lives this year. So, well done for making it this far. We’ve been reading from the New International Version this week and we’ll take the next step forward in the book of Genesis, which is the first book of the Bible. Today Genesis chapter 24 verse 52 through 26 verse 16. And by way of reminder, Abraham has sent his servant because Abraham is now in his old age and he’s lost his wife Sarah, he sent his servant to his own family to find a wife for the child of promise named Isaac. And that’s what happened and we’re in the middle of that story. And, so, we’ll pick up where we left off in Genesis chapter 24.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Genesis today, we said goodbye to Abraham and, of course, we’ve been following the story of Abram who heard from God and followed him into a land that he had never been in and entered into covenant with God. His name was changed to Abraham and he influences the world until today. And so, we just read of his life in the book of Genesis. And now he has died and been buried in the cave of Makpella where he buried Sarah, but the isn’t the last we will hear of Abraham, we’ll hear of Abraham for the rest of the Bible and he influences the world until today. In fact, we could easily say Abraham is more influential as far as a patriarch as far as an ancient one over the world’s religions of today than anybody else and that would be true. So, we should take a moment to send and give honor where honor is due, we’re saying goodbye to Abraham, he’s laid his head down in death. Now, there were two sons, right, Ishmael and Isaac and we went through some of their family tree. So, Ishmael goes off and has his own…the generations that follow become their own people and we’re kind of tracking with the Isaac story. And that will be the story that we chase the rest of the Bible. So, Isaac has married Rebecca and we read of how Rebecca came to be Isaac’s life and they have had twin sons, Jacob and Esau. And it’s very easy, especially if is the first trip through the Bible to go, “these are very fascinating stories and interesting things and, yes, I can see that there’s a lot to think about but I don’t know how all the stories connected”. It’s all connected, which is why we kind of take time to pause and go, “let’s remember how we got here”, because all of these stories and all of these generations are going somewhere and we’ll be following that story throughout the Bible.

We get into the book of Matthew and we’re continuing to kind of observe and get to know Jesus and His personality and His ministry style and places that He went and things that He did. And certainly, there were miraculous things in today’s reading, but maybe more important is the fact that Jesus began to reveal that if you want to follow him it’s gonna cost you everything. And as we continue forward that will become more and more apparent to us not only as like a concept but also in practical ways. We’ll learn the faith that we have placed in Christ and this journey of faith that we are walking on will be the continual journey of ridding ourselves of all entanglements that would hold us back from union with God. And isn’t that ultimately the pursuit of our faith in Christ? Is it not to be transformed and become Christ like and operate in this world on this planet where mankind is no longer separated by a chasm of sin between God and man but that is been bridged and we are reunited with God, as was always intended for mankind? But we will find that the things that have attached themselves to us, the things that we bow down and worship to that aren’t God, I mean every single one of those things is going to be confronted and at every turn we will have the opportunity to make a choice and that choice will get to matter and if we will follow Jesus then we’ll find that we have to be willing to release and let go of plenty of things, but we will find that these are the very things that would make it impossible for us to become who we were created to be. And, so, we’ll be continuing to take that journey throughout the whole year but we’re still kind of here in the beginning and just reading these stories and maybe this is the first time that you’ve systematically gone through the Gospels and just really, really paid attention to the stories. Like, yeah, we have all the Sunday school stories and we know all of the different things, but maybe this is the first time just front to back going through. And, so, it’s important to just get to know Jesus in the stories that are found in the Gospels and then just simply ask ourselves, “does my life resemble in any way the life that Jesus lived”? And in some areas I we’ll be able to say, “yes, I think so, I think in this area I continue to grow forward and become more like my Savior” while in other areas we would have to say, “no man, there’s a lot of work to do here.” Once that is exposed though, a lot of times we’ll just cover it back over, don’t have time, can’t maintain all these responsibilities, just trying to get my spiritual fix and stay in touch with my heart. We’re gonna have to find out that some of the other things that are in our lives may have to go so that we can pay closer attention to the things that are going to absolutely deeply matter and can transform the way we live our lives.

It’s just like what we read in Proverbs today, “do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and shun evil.” So, that’s an instruction, and that is a trajectory or a direction to head in and we should, but the Proverbs goes on to tell us why. “This, if you do this, if you do not be wise in your own eyes and fear the Lord and shun evil, then it will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones.” So we’re seeing in Proverbs that if we pay attention to what’s going on within us it is absolutely going to affect the health of what is happening exterior. So, plenty to think about today as there is every day.

Prayer:

And father, we invite you into all of it. We can think about it all we want but without your Holy Spirit’s guidance we can’t plant these words in our hearts, we can’t cultivate and water them so that they become the fruit of the Spirit. We can just become fertile soil. And, so, we do and ask your Holy Spirit to come, plant the word of God in our lives and as we continue forward may we see new fruit of the Spirit sprouting up, a new way of thinking, a new way of being in the world, a transformed way where we are daily being sanctified, daily becoming set apart and made holy. These are things that only you can do but we come with a willing heart and surrender and ask you to do this work inside of us as we continue to sail deeper into the year and deeper into our adventure of life with you. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, its the website, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay tuned and stay connected.

The Prayer Wall lives dailyaudiobible.com. If you haven’t had a chance to visit the Prayer Wall, please do. There’s always someone in need of prayer and there’s always people praying. And, so, this is a great way to reach out in prayer whether you need it or whether you want to offer it at the Prayer Wall. Of course, the Prayer Wall is also available in the Daily Audio Bible app. Just press the little navigation, sort of like the drawer in the upper left-hand corner and that will open up a drawer where you can get to the prayer wall as well as other things. So, stay connected, that’s one of the beautiful distinctives of the Daily Audio Bible community, is that we are willing to love each other, accept each other where we are on the journey, and pray for each other and kind of stay in each other’s stories, rooting each other along, just realizing I’m not alone…I mean, I’m not alone. Even some of the things that I think are dark inside of me that I’m confessing, I’m not the only one struggling with these things, I’m not alone. And that makes so much difference. It doesn’t give us permission to keep harming ourselves in some way, but it does give us permission to know, “I’m not in this struggle by myself and so I don’t have to make it all by myself, my brothers and sisters are here.” And, so, the Prayer Wall is a great resource for that. Be sure to check that out at dailyaudiobible.com or in the Daily Audio Bible app.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that it dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link and it just lives 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.

Genesis 23:1-24:51, Matthew 8:1-17, Psalms 9:13-20, Proverbs 3:1-6

Today is the 10^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian like every day and it’s great to be here with you like every day and got a nice steaming cup of Windfarm coffee to my left, which is pretty normal, very normal. And off we go forward for our next step forward through the Scriptures this year. This is, of course, our 10^th step, so only 355 more steps and we’ll be completing the Bible but this is our 10^th step. We’re reading from the New International Version this week. Today we’ll read Genesis chapter 23 verse 1 through 24:51.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Genesis we’re saying goodbye now to a very, very important figure, Sarah, the wife of Abraham, who bore the son Isaac to Abraham in his old age. She passes away today. And, so, obviously, Abraham is morning and he goes to the Hittites and he needs a place, he wants to buy a place where, you know, he can have his own kind of a burial site for his family. And we get a little bit of a glimpse into the negotiations of the time, right? You know, Abraham’s like talking to all the leaders of the city in the city gate saying, “ask Ephron to sell me this”, right? Well Ephron’s sitting right there but this is more of a communal negotiation and Ephron’s like, “I’ll just give it to you, you can have it”, you know, and Abrahm’s like, “you know, just…just tell me the price.” And, so, we see this negotiation going on and Abraham buys Ephron’s field and cave, the cave of Machpelah near Mamery in the Valley of Eshkol. I wish that might all just like a bunch of biblical, you know, site names or something that have no relevance but remember this, remember this day, remember that Abraham bought this cave because as the story goes in a couple of months this particular site will become important. And incidentally this particular site, this burial ground is still in existence until today and can be visited in the city of Hebron, which, you know, at times can be a tense place. And this particular burial site for Abraham and his offspring is one of the most holy sites in the world to people who are Muslim, to people who are Jewish, and also to Christians and those groups of people don’t always see eye to eye on things. So, it can be a pretty tense place, which is kind of funny when you think about it. Some of the most holy places in the world are also some of the most contentious places in the world because everybody wants a piece. And as we continue our journey forward we’ll just have to decide whether that’s good, it’s a good thing or whether it’s not, but nevertheless the place actually does exist. The structure that is over the top of the cave was built by King Herod. So it’s very, very old. Of course, when Abraham bought it was much more old, it’s a very ancient place and you can see this place in the Promised Land films. I’ve mentioned the Promised Land films I think once this year. It’s a great resource in the Daily Audio Bible shop. It’s two DVDs and then you can also download all the content digitally. But it’s over four hours of content letting you zoom into these places. And they’re just short films, like two to five-minute films of the location where you can kind of come in, find out what happened there biblically, but also get a good 360° view, like a good understanding of what that place looks like. So, when we went and filmed we had to, you know, we went into the mosque and had to have permission to go in there and film. Then there’s a synagogue on the other side, we had go through some pretty high security to get in there and, you know, there’s lots of soldiers around that place. And as it turns out, we got permission from the military to do some aerial flights over it. And, so, you know, we’re flying a drone and filming and everything but we’ve got guys with machine-guns standing around watching what we’re doing, but we got that footage and it’s some of the only aerial footage from there. So, that’s included in the Promised Land films as well as some of the other places like Gerar, we talked about in the book of Genesis today, we’re, you know, Abraham is again saying that Sarah’s his sister instead of is his wife and stuff. That’s filmed. Like Beersheba is another place where Abraham spent so much of his time and where Ishmael and Hagar were sent away to wander in the wilderness of Beersheba. Like, these are real places. And, so, if you kind of want to…if you’re curious enough to go, “okay, I’m in, I want to know what these places look like”, the Promised Land is a great resource for that. So, you can check that out at the Daily Audio Bible shop.

Announcements:

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. And I thank you, thank you for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you like the mail, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And a as always if you have a prayer request or comment you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that’s it for today other than other…other than to remind you of two verses that we just read, the last two verses that we just read from the book of Proverbs. Take this into your day. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.” Now that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Genesis 20:1-22:24, Matthew 7:15-29, Psalms 9:1-12, Proverbs 2:16-22

Today is the 9^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is a joy to be here with you today and taking the next step forward. And I think we’re far enough into our new year to kind of begin to understand that there’s a rhythm and to begin to understand that the Bible isn’t this static old-fashioned book that is irrelevant, that there’s a bunch…a bunch of things that it is willing to speak directly and truthfully into our lives. And if we will and heed it that it will change the way that we live our lives. And, so, welcome back for the next day forward. And that will lead us back into the New International Version, which is what we’re reading from this week and back into the book of Genesis chapter 20, 21, and 22 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, you know, we encountered a pretty harrowing story yesterday with the destruction of Sodom and Gomora and we talked about that and the way that we subtly move toward judgment, even judgment of God and how that that can estrange us in our journey that we’re taking through the Scriptures yesterday. And, so, today, we kind of encounter another one of those types of stories where God tells Abraham to take is a promised son Isaac to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him. And we’re not gonna get into all of that because that story will unfold very, very clearly over some time, other than to just point out God and Abraham had entered into a covenant with each other and covenantal language is something that we will, you know, we will encounter quite a bit. So, we understand that the two of them joined together in covenant, which meant that nothing was off-limits from the other. So, when God tells Abraham to go and take his only son, and He’s very specific about this with Isaac, Abraham is in covenant he cannot withhold anything. And, so, he does. Of course, his trust and faith is in God and Isaac is the son of promise, so Abraham can simply say, “I must follow God even though I don’t know how this is gonna work out, but I do know that my son is a son of promise and through my son many generations will come. This is what God told me. In fact, he marched me outside and had me look up the night sky and try to count the stars. So, there’s this promise and I need understand what’s going on, but I do trust the one I’m in covenant with.” We know how that story worked out but what we may not have paid attention to is the thread of redemption that begins to show itself at all kinds of points in the Bible and this is one of them because Abraham did not withhold his son from God and God didn’t take the sacrifice of a human being, instead He sent his own son, His own only son. Now if you’ve been a believer for a long time, then you know, you can connect those dots pretty easy. If this your first trip through the Bible and encountering the stories of the Bible, this one is one that kind of touches a lot of things and will become more and more apparent as we move forward because Isaac is going to have a son of his own, a couple of sons of his own, and they’re gonna change the whole story, but let's…let’s go back into the book of Matthew.

Jesus is saying some very important and very forthright, like, non-ambiguous things that we should pay attention to, “judge not, lest you be judged.” That was yesterday. And again, like if you’ve been a believer for a long time you’ve probably encountered the stories of Jesus before. And, so, it’s really easy to just encapsulate them into their story form and not really listen to the words Jesus is teaching. What Jesus is saying is revolutionary and when he said it in the first century it was fundamentally revolutionary. We’re used to hearing the words of Jesus now, so it’s not quite like…has that kind of impact unless we slow down and listen to what He’s saying. So, let’s just examine what He said today. “Many will say to me on that day”, Jesus says, and He’s talking about Judgment Day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons, and in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly. I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers.” Okay. So, this is another big deal on our faith journey because we can spend our whole lives trying to get our beliefs correct and our theology airtight and waterproof. We can think that every day that we learn more about God or learn something else about Jesus, then we are drawing closer and closer to Him when Jesus is saying, “there’s going to be people who call on the Lord and prophesied in His name and have even cast out demons in His name, and even performed miracles in His name, and He will still say, I didn’t know you.” So, what have to realize is that all of our flurry of activity that keeps us busy, that keeps us thinking that we’re drawing closer to God, all the stuff that we might do around our faith that’s great, it’s just not the point. What Jesus says He will say to those people is, “I never knew you”, which must mean that the point is that we can know Him and not only know about Him and that is a pretty big distinction because if you zoom out and apply these principles to any relationship in your life you would have to say that knowing about somebody is not the same as knowing them. And that should prick us a little bit because when we think of our spirituality and our faith journey, you know, then it’s centered around acquiring knowledge most of the time, trying to dial it in, know what to believe, know the spells and incantations, know the potions. Like, I know that’s not literal, I’m just saying, like, that’s what we boil it down to. If I can say the right mantras, If I can pray the right prayer in the right order doing the right things with the right attitude then God will do something for me, like, just give me the recipe, show me how the recipe works, what I can add and what I cannot add and how to make this whole thing work, just somebody tell me how to do this. Relationships do not work that way. You can read every marriage book that has ever been published…well…you probably couldn’t because there’s too many that have been published to read in a lifetime, but you could read, I don’t know, the 20 most popular books ever written on marriage and still not know how to be married because it is a relationship and that happens in the spoken and in the unspoken and that does not happen based on the rules. Like, if you’re living a rules-based marriage, then you’re probably not very happy in it. When you are in a life-giving relationship the rules become apparent and you obey them. Like, I’m not going to commit adultery because I will not break the heart of the one that I love. I’m not going there because of what it would do to the person that I have given my heart to. And you obey the rules because you are in love. Jesus speaking in the first century is speaking to a people that have taken the law, and I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself…ahead of ourselves…because we haven’t gotten to the law yet, but these people had taken the law and made their relationship with God all about obeying the rules, which bypasses the idea of a relationship other than just a relationship by proxy because you are behaving a certain way. Jesus is saying to that mindset, you can do all of the right things in it and still not know me. And, so, once again, and I mean, we’re not quite, you know, only just a little over a week into this journey so you can still jump off this boat and swim back to shore probably but it won’t be long before we’re so far in the deep that these things that come along and you have to sit with them and really begin to examine your faith and understand what it’s made of and where it’s headed because my story and the story of thousands and thousands of people that I have spoken to over these last 13 years doing this is one of confusion about faith. Like, how do I know when I’m doing…like how do I know that I’m doing the right thing and believing the right thing? And, so, we’ll redouble our efforts to get the knowledge. And man, that’s my story, that is even how I’m wired, to acquire knowledge to truly understand what it is that I’m talking about, but I have found that even if we could know everything there is to know about God that is still not the same thing as being in a relationship with God because I can know everything there is to know about my wife and not be in a relationship with her. And we human beings are wired to be relational people. So, it’s like already baked into our DNA, we know when we’re in a relationship and we know when that relationship is life-giving and we also are aware when we are in a bad relationship and it is life taking. So, we know this intuitively, we’re made for relationship. It’s just the ways we try to relate to God are by acquiring knowledge about Him and that’s only part of the story. Actually being together in a relationship is what we’re invited into. So, there’s some things to think about and examine. Like, what is the status of your relationship, because maybe the state of your life mimics the state of your relationship with God.

Prayer:

And, so, Holy Spirit come, we invite you into that question and we’re again thankful. I mean, yes, yes, with your word you are pressing into us, you are you are pushing us back. Like, we came into this boldly thinking we may have had much more figured out than we do and you’re using your word to kind of push us back and humble us and we’re now beginning to feel the truth flow into us and ask the right questions of us and of our faith. And this is the beginning place, this is the place where wisdom begins to be planted and flourish and the fruit of the spirit begins to be cultivated within. So, we invite you Holy Spirit to show us. What’s our relationship like? Are we unhealthy with you? What needs to change? What needs to go? What needs to stay? What needs to be moved around? You can answer these questions because you have promise to lead us into all truth, you have promised us that there is a narrow path that leads to life. And, yes, few find it but we want to be one of those people. So, we’re humbling ourselves before you and saying there is no question that is off-limits, you can press in on us in any way that you want to. We are hungering and thirsting for your righteousness, we are hungering and thirsting to live in this world as we were intended, and we don’t want this confusion and this stress and this anxiety that you’re telling us that we don’t have to have. You told us yesterday, we don’t have to worry about anything, we don’t have to worry about tomorrow, it’ll take care of itself. And, so, we want to live in that place, but we won’t be able to live in that place with a bunch of knowledge, we’ll only be able to live in a place walking with you in deep intertwined relationship. So, come Holy Spirit. We pray into these questions and may their answers be honest, and may they be life changing. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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

One thing that I’ll mention today that’s been mentioned in the past is the Daily Audio Bible shop. There are resources in the Daily Audio Bible shop that we’ve assembled specifically for this journey, the journey through the year and through the Bible. And, so, you can check those out and there are also other resources, other writings and stuff. What we were just talking about in terms of a relationship with God, there’s a longer conversation about that contained in a book that I’ve written called “Reframe” and you can get that anywhere, but you can also get it in the Daily Audio Bible Shop and that really is an exploration of what we are talking about when we say we’re in a relationship with God. What does that even mean? One of the things any relationship means is that you know the other person, which is what Jesus is saying. I’ll tell them plainly, I never knew you. Like, you did all this stuff in my name, but I didn’t know you. So, relationships are knowing and being known. And, so, we go into a conversation that’s much more lengthy then we can do just in one sitting here. And, so, if that peeks your interest you can check out that resource, it’s called “Reframe, from the God we’ve made to God with us.” And that’s in the Daily Audio Bible Shop as well as bunch of other resources. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage and I thank you profoundly and deeply, humbly for your partnership. What we’ve done we’ve done together as I’ve said so many times. And so, as long as we do this together we’ll continue marching forward. And, so, thank you for your partnership. 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.

Genesis 18:16-19:38, Matthew 6:25-7:14, Psalms 8:1-9, Proverbs 2:6-15

Today is the 8^th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and, of course, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today, we are past the week threshold, of course we’re in the middle of a week, but we’re a full week now into this year and we’re sailing strong and out into the deep and we should be all getting kind of moved in and understanding what’s going on. And about another week and we’ll be like locked in and sailing strong with our daily rhythm in the Bible and in the year. So, let’s go ahead and take that next step. We’re reading from the New International Version this week and we’re working our way through the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis and today we’ll read chapter 18 verse 16 through 19 verse 38.

Commentary:

Okay. So, there’s so much to talk about in our reading today and that’s the case often where it’s like, wow, that was one days reading, but, wow, there’s a lot going on there for me to contemplate and consider. In the book of Genesis today, the first book of the Bible, we have finally reached a point where we enter into a story and we’re like…wait…wait…what is going on here? We have cities being destroyed, we have daughters having sex with their father, and this is the first book of the Bible, and I’m halfway through it, and what is going on? And this is a good time to point out the fact that we will encounter stories in the Bible this year that will make you scratch your head and say, what is going on here? And what you need to notice, what you need to notice when we encounter those stories is the subtle judgment that comes up in our heart toward God. That might sound odd but it’s what happens, especially if we’re on our first trip through the whole Bible, like this is the first time going, like where we’ve made a commitment and we’re like, okay, I place my faith in this in this book, but I’ve never read it and now I’m gonna read every word and now I’m gonna understand what’s in this book. We begin to realize that if we’ve never been on the trip, on the journey through the Bible, that we have sort of these prejudices. We think that there is an angry God who’s vengeful and wants to smite humanity. And we more we need to meet him and find out how to fear him properly. And then we have a dichotomy, we have Jesus showing another way of actually being in the world altogether and we’re trying to mash those together because father, son and Holy Spirit, these are the same being. And, so, how does this all equate? And we get this angry God thing going on and we fear the Lord because He’s gonna be so angry. And, so, this is the first time today, we come up against one of those notions, we see a story in the Bible that just rings all the wrong bells. So, let’s just go back and look for the story real quick and try to find a place where it is that our hearts have turned toward judgment at God or maybe we’re looking at a story that tells us something completely different. So, let’s begin with the fact that God comes to meet the person that He’s in covenant with, Abraham, and they have this meal and then God is leaving to go see what’s going on in Sodom and Gomorrah down in the valley. And God’s tops, according to the story in Genesis, and thinks to Himself, should I keep this from Abraham, should I keep this from the one that I’m in covenant with. And He decides that he shouldn’t keep it from the one that He’s in covenant with. And, so, He tells Abraham what his intentions are. And then what do we see? A man, a human being, Abraham approaches God, the Creator of all things, the All Powerful One and begins a negotiation, right? Would you go down there and wipe that city, those cities out if there are 50 righteous people? And the Lord reveals His heart. No, I wouldn’t do that. Well, what about 45? No, I wouldn’t do that. What about 40? How about 30? How about 20? How about 10? And we see that God is revealing His heart in the story because this is where God is speaking for Himself in the story. I’m not about the business of destroying people, I’m about the business of eradicating evil and wickedness. And as the story progresses we get a sense of the wickedness that he’s talking about. I think that, like no matter what else we might say, that we would probably all agree that if you’re going into a village and the outcome is that you are going to be gang raped by the men of the city that that’s, you know, like, that’s evil. And, so, we just read the stories, so we know how the story goes. And we have this, you know, Lot trying to protect the Angels who he know are beings sent from God, but the only thing that he thinks he can barter with is to throw his virgin daughters out the door and let them endure the gang rape, which makes you go, “hold on a second…hold…what in the world is something like this doing in the Bible? Like, this isn’t the right way to live. Why would Lot do something like that?” And then the story goes on, right? The girls as it turns out are betrothed, they’re engaged to be married. And, so, Lot’s trying to get everyone that is connected to him out of the city, but the guys, they won’t go, they don’t believe him, they think he’s joking. And, so, it ends up that Lot and his wife and his two daughters are the only ones that escape the city and their running and then, of course, this story is famous, so Lot’s wife looked back, she turned into a pillar of salt and so there’s only Lot and his two daughters fleeing for their lives and everything that they had, all of their possessions, all of their wealth, all of their standing, everything is wiped from the face of the earth along with their home and everyone that they knew. So, they are completely on their own in this valley and they end up in a cave in the mountains, right? We know the story. The two daughters decide that the best course of action is to have sex with dad and see if they get pregnant. So, it’s a pretty disturbing story that we can go, “why is this in the Bible? And, you know, where is God in all of this?” Well, God was in the beginning of the story speaking to Abraham, telling Abraham that he wasn’t going down to Sodom and Gomorrah to destroy righteous people. In fact, had there been 10 righteous people the story would be like that, the destruction wouldn’t have happened. And, so, it was. There weren’t the people who could maybe be considered righteous. Lot and his two daughters and his wife, they got out. Of course, mom isn’t there anymore. And, so, the daughters are thinking, “what are we supposed to do?” And if we kind of get contextual here we can understand the dilemma that they were in. This family that had been reduced to poverty, like everything was destroyed. They were foreigners, these two daughters were foreigners and Lot was the only family member that could protect them, especially in the culture of that time and he’s getting older. So, there’s no one for them and if a Lot were to perish, and they were obviously in a pretty precarious situation, they had lost everything and were hiding in a cave in the mountains. So, things were pretty bad. And, so, they’re thinking to themselves, “this isn’t the desirable choice, this is the only choice. We need another male heir. We need someone that can speak for us and can have property.” And, yeah, we get into patriarchy, we can get into all that stuff, but why don’t we just say, “this is what was going on then, this is how they understood the world to be. This is how it was to live at this time in the book of Genesis, which is a long time ago.” And, so, the outlook for the daughters was to either have a male heir somewhere or what was gonna happen is their Father would be killed or would die and they would be taken and probably live a life of prostitution. So, they did what they did. And, yeah, we can look at what they did and say, “that’s just that’s not how it’s supposed to go. And yes, it’s not, but we need to look at a story like this and say, “why am I judging God about this story? Why am I saying there, I told, you see, this kind of stuff is in the Bible?” I mean, when Lot fled and only had his daughters why didn’t they finish climbing up the mountain that they were hiding in to get to the top where their uncle Abraham was living? Why didn’t they go back to the family that they had? We don’t have the answer to that question. But why would we blame God for the choices that they made? Remember back earlier in the story when Lot and Abraham got together because they had grown too wealthy to stay together and everybody was kind of fighting and so they decided to part ways so that there would be room enough for them both. It was Lot who picked what he thought was the best option for himself. He picked the best of the land and went and lived in it and this is what happened. Why is it God’s fault? Was God anything but a Redeemer in this story. He told Abraham what He was going to do and then He went and did it. And why would Abraham being…why would Abraham ask these questions of the Lord if its not to protect his own family? So, what God did was go down into the midst of this debauchery and rescue Abraham’s family and get them out. What we don’t see in the story is how they fell down and worshiped the Lord and asked for counsel on what to do and were led on the path that they should go, right? They went their own way and what happened happened. Which brings us to a little touchy point where we’re gonna have to realize as we continue to take this journey that it is absolutely going to touch all of the soft spots of our lives. And this is a good time to realize how much blame we place on God for things that He hasn’t done. It’s incredible, the trash heap of things that we throw upon the Lord that He had nothing to do with. And we can say He is Sovereign and He knows all and so He could like preempt things, and yet there was that story back at the very, very beginning, the second day together where Adam and Eve were in the garden staring at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they were instructed not to eat from it and then they did and they were allowed to make that choice and that choice was allowed to matter. We are each created in the image of God and God is a Creator and He creates things and because we are created in His image and it is hardwired into who we are, so do we. And every day we are writing that story and creating what our destiny is going to look like. We get to make choices and they get to matter. And this story that we just read in the book of Genesis shows us once again this reality. Not everything’s God’s fault and when we just throw everything that we get ourselves into onto God like it’s his fault, then how is it that we can have a trusting loving relationship with Him? How is it that we will walk through this year with a God that we do not trust and do not know?

On the other hand, we zoom forward into the book of Matthew and we have Jesus, who is God in the flesh here in a relatable way that we can understand speaking the heart of God to us by inviting us to understand specific realities, that all of the worry and the chaos and the stress that we carry around with us is not going to get us anywhere. In fact, Jesus is bold enough to say, I’m telling you not to worry about your life. The choices that you gotta make about eating and drinking, what you’re gonna wear, there’s way more going on, it’s a bigger story and can anyone of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life? And we can stop right there and say, “okay, okay, enough for today, there’s a lot going on”, but Jesus’s isn’t done, He’s saying, look, the way to do this right is to not estrange yourself from the Father. What you need to do if you want to do this right is to seek the kingdom of God first and seek His righteousness and then everything else that you are trying to arrange for will be given to you. You don’t have to worry about it. You don’t have to worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. What you should worry about, what you should think about, according to Jesus, is how you are judging things, right? And, so, we just talked about how we can subtly begin to judge God but we are doing this constantly to each other. And Jesus has some very clear, very choice words that we need to get into our minds before we get out of sight of shore, right? We’re one week into this journey and we’re getting absolute, pivotal, foundational instruction about how to navigate this world and our life upon this earth. Jesus says, “do not judge or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the same measure you use, it will be measured to you.” So, get 2 tablespoons of that and stir that into your coffee and drink that one down because that’s a big one, especially if you just love to fight on the Internet about what every leading Christian may or may not be doing or saying or how they may be conducting their walk. How we judge others is how we are going to be judged. So, if we can’t be merciful, we will not experience mercy. If we learn nothing else from the Bible this whole year, which will not be the case, but if we learn nothing else from the Bible this year but this one thing, if we stop living in judgment continually and instead see what is a right about a person and what is right about a situation as opposed to only what is wrong and needs to be judged, that’ll change our whole year right there. That one thing right there will change the way we interact with everybody. So, there’s plenty to think about today. And we could go on. I mean, there’s more, but go back and read it again. I mean there’s plenty to meditate on. Jesus leaves us with some thoughts. “Enter through the narrow gate. Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through that. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find that.” So, what’s it going to be? I want the narrow path that leads to life and I admit there are times that I feel like I’m walking on that narrow path and there are others that I feel like I’ve run down onto the main highway that leads to destruction and we all probably have those seasons and days, but the path that leads to life is narrow and there aren’t going to be a lot of people on that path. This is from God in the flesh. These are the words of Jesus. And if we’re gonna live judge mental lives then we can pretty much be assured about which path we are on. How much in judgment in your life has ever brought you inner peace and tranquility and an overwhelming sense of the presence of the Lord, right? When you’re tithing those nasty things out on social media and being in a war with somebody over some kind of theological point like some hill to die on or you’re saying things out of your mouth to the people that you love that you shouldn't…that are wounding them because you don’t like how they’ve done something and your judging them, how much…even if you are right and you pound them into mortar on the floor and they are absolutely destroyed because you have a powerful vocabulary and you’ve just…you’ve just torn them down…like what…what do you get out of that? You leave the room feeling overjoyed you were right? You got to judge them appropriately and they got what was coming to them? Jesus is saying this is not the way it’s done. For one to navigate humanity like we were intended we have to become like Christ. Christ-like. And when we watch Jesus in the Gospels we need to watch close because this is the example of not only what humans are supposed to be like, but exactly what it is that Jesus offers to us. This is the good news of the gospel, that we can be fully human like Christ revealing His kingdom on this earth and enter into a relationship with the Father that will never, ever, ever end.

Prayer:

Father, you have given us plenty to think about today. There are…on the number of levels you have you’ve touched some things within us and now we are seeing, now we are seeing just how deep this can all go and we can already feel you shifting things inside of us and in some cases it’s very uncomfortable because we have all the reasons for why we do what we do. And yet we are still confronted with the fact that there is a narrow road that leads to life and only a few find it. May we be one of the few Lord. Come Holy Spirit, we surrender our rights and our wrongs in our judgments and all the things that we are carrying around. We begin to release that, and we begin to become aware that what the Bible is going to do is invite us to release a lot of things. And, so, we start here with judgment. We release our judgments against you, we release our judgments against everyone who has ever wronged us, we begin to move toward a posture of forgiveness. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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

And we’ve been talking a little bit each day about different things that are going on around here. And, so, one thing that I’ll mention today is the Daily Audio Bible transcripts. For many years now, there’ve been volunteers that have transcribed, posted what gets said here on the Daily Audio Bible. And, obviously, if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible web player or the app, you can favorite it, an episode, so that you can go back and re-listen to what was said or even write some notes that you want to remember. So, that is certainly a way to go back because a lot…I mean we’re going through the whole Bible. So, we’re trying to unpack a lot of things this year and some of those things we need to remember because they’re life-changing things. So that’s one way to go back. But the transcripts are in written form, what got said. And, so there may be a day where you’re like, “okay, I want to go back and read that. I want to listen to that, I want to read that to consider that a little bit more deeply. So, you can get to the Daily Audio Bible transcripts by going to dailyaudiobible.tumbler.com. That’s just kind of a blogging platform that makes it easy enough for us to offer this. So, dailyaudiobible.tumbler.com. If you can’t remember that, just go to dailyaudiobible.com and click the Community section. It’s like in the navigation at the top and then click the Social Media button, which will show you all of the different places where we’re on social media so that we can, well, so you can stay connected. But one of the links is to the transcripts. So, there’s a valuable resource for you as we continue this journey.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is 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, there are a number of numbers that you can use depending on where you are in the world. If you’re in the Americas, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial. If you are in the UK or Europe 44-20-3608-8078 is the number to dial. And if you are in Australia or the lands down under, 61-3-8820-5459 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 family, this is His Little Cherrie in Canada. Happy new year. I’m calling with another creative way to pray from the banqueting table of prayer. And this one is one of the most hopeful things that I personally do every day, and that’s to use a prayer binder. And it simply is a normal binder that I put pages in, divided into either five days or seven days depending on how many you’d like to have, and each day I use as a reminder to pray for certain people. So, for instance, I have my binder divided into five days for the five days of the week. And the first day, on Monday, I have pictures of people that I’m praying for their salvation. Tuesday are couples, I’m praying for their marriages. Wednesday is family and friends and Thursday is people in ministry. And it’s just a reminder to me to pray for certain people because I think we’ve all been in the situation where someone has shared a concern or a prayer request with us and we’ve told them, “oh I’ll be praying for you”, with every intention of praying for them but life happens and we forget and then the next time we see them, they say, “oh thank you so much for praying”, and we smile and nod and realize we haven’t prayed for them because we’ve forgotten. Well, a prayer binder makes sure that doesn’t happen. When you tell someone, “I’ll be praying for you”, you put the picture or even just their name in your prayer binder and as you go through it day by day you remember to pray for them. So, that has been really helpful for me and I wanted to let you know about it in case you’d like to try it this year. Prayer binders, a creative way to pray from the banqueting table of prayer. Thank you, family. Bye for now.

Hi everybody this is Tony the Painter, really really happy to be starting this new year with you all. Brian, I just want to thank you for this opportunity and say that we love you too and thank you for doing what you do and China too. I’ve started listening to Chronological and congratulations on your engagement. That’s awesome news. Diane Olive Brown, we love you so much, you have no idea and your message from Christmas Day brought…I actually flapped my hands __ but it’s true. I was like oh, “you sound so happy.” So, yeah just so you know that I’m still praying for you. Also, Prodigal, yeah brother, I’ve recently gone through divorce this year and I’ve been suicidal myself. I love you, I empathize with you, I understand what…some of what you’re going though, and I just want to just let you know that I’m praying for you and that we’re all praying for you in this time. And everybody is bringing over baggage from last year and that’s fine, but I noticed in everybody’s voice who was speaking today on the 2^nd January, everybody it is that little bit hopeful. You know, so, we’re gonna maintain this year. We’re gonna, you know, that’s my job, its maintenance. So, I go and repair stuff. So, yeah, just keeping that…letting you all know that I’m praying for you all. You all have my love and God bless you. Dial back soon.

Hi this is Tito Ramirez calling from Southern California. I want to reach out to Prodigal. You know, I feel your pain so much because my life mirrors so much of what you’re going through. You know, I’ve been through divorce and business has just been terrible, it’s been so tough and I’ve fallen behind on so many important things - taxes and child support and trying to get health insurance for the kids and trying to make sure we have money to eat and just pay rent - and it’s just so, so, stressful and it feels like just a gigantic failure and you just…I’d never thought it could happen to me because I’m an educated individual, I should have a good job, like this shouldn’t be happening but I just keep trusting in the Lord. And prodigal, I’m reaching out to you because I need you, I need somebody that’s gonna be praying that’s in the same space that I’m in. And I can’t afford to lose somebody like that and I’m gonna pray for are you and you pray for me and the Lord’s gonna do wonderful things in our lives for us. I look in Romans, in Romans 7 and in Romans 8, I look about how sin trips us up and I looked about us just trusting in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit changing us. And I look in Proverbs 3 and it gives me so much hope, you know, that these old dry bones, these messed up bones would come back to life, you know? And I look in Psalms 51 when things don’t go bad or a when I feel like I’ve made a mistake again or when I feel like I’ve blown it again and I look at David crying out to the Lord and I think, you know, I did something, but it wasn’t what he did. I mean, what he did was so much worse, but I use that Psalm 51 as a prayer of confession sometimes and I love in that Psalm when David asks for a new clean heart and that’s something that I can’t do for myself and it mirrors so much what is being spoken about in Romans, that we can’t…we can try to change ourselves and do it. God has to do it for us…

Happy new year daily audio Bible, this is Isabel from Australia in Melbourne. Just want to wish is all a happy new year. May God’s blessing be upon you and your family. Just wanted to wish China and Ben a happy engagement and congratulations to the Hardin family. There’s a new addition in the family, soon to be married, so happy for you guys. Let this be a year of blessing to all of you. Thank you, Brian once again for all the amazing, you know, readings of the word and just for your teaching on the word of God and just thank you…I’m growing a lot through it and I know a lot of us are too in the Daily Audio Bible.  I just want to say hello to all the families just may this year be a year of blessings to all of you. Please call in and just say hello and I’d love to hear from all of you. Blessings. Love you all. Bye.