A Walk Through The Word

May 4, 2022

The Daily Audio Bible Reading for Wednesday May 4, 2022 (NIV)

Judges 19-20

A Levite and His Concubine

19 In those days, when there was no king in Israel, there was a certain Levite living as resident foreigner in a remote part of the hill country of Ephraim. He took a concubine for himself from Bethlehem in Judah. ²Yet his concubine became angry with him and went away from him to her father’s house at Bethlehem in Judah. She was there for four months. ³Her husband got up and went after her in order to speak tenderly to her and bring her back. His servant and two donkeys were with him. When he came to her father’s house, the girl’s father saw him and was happy to meet with him. ⁴His father-in-law, the girl’s father, prevailed upon him to stay with him for three days. So they ate and drank and spent the night there.

⁵On the fourth day they woke up early in the morning. He got ready to go, but the girl’s father said to his son-in-law, “Strengthen yourself with a little food, and then you can go.” ⁶So the two of them sat down to eat and drink together. Then the girl’s father said to the man, “Please spend the night and let your heart be merry.” ⁷The man got up to go, but his father-in-law urged him until he turned back and spent the night there. ⁸He got up early in the morning on the fifth day to go. The girl’s father said, “Please, strengthen yourself and wait until later in the day.” So the two of them ate.

⁹Then the man got up to go: he, his concubine, and his servant. His father-in-law, the girl’s father, said to him, “Look! It is getting dark. Spend the night! Settle in and spend the night here, let your heart be merry. You can get up early tomorrow and go home.” ¹⁰Yet the man did not want to spend the night, so he got up and left and approached Jebus (that is, Jerusalem). Two saddled donkeys and his concubine were with him.

¹¹When they were near Jebus, it was getting very late. The servant said to his master, “Come, let us turn aside to this Jebusite city and spend the night in it.”

¹²His master said to him, “We must not turn aside to a city of foreigners, who are not children of Israel. We will continue on to Gibeah.” ¹³He said to his servant, “Come, let us go to one of these places. We will spend the night in Gibeah or Ramah.” ¹⁴They continued and went on. The sun went down when they were near Gibeah in Benjamin. ¹⁵So they turned aside there to go and spend the night in Gibeah. They went in and sat in the city square, but no one took them in to spend the night.

¹⁶Just then, an old man came in at evening time from his work in the field. The man was from the hill country of Ephraim and lived as a resident foreigner in Gibeah, but the townspeople were Benjamites. ¹⁷He looked up and saw the traveler in the city square. The old man said, “Where are you going, and where do you come from?”

¹⁸He said to him, “We are traveling from Bethlehem in Judah to a remote part of the hill country of Ephraim. I am from there. I went to Bethlehem in Judah, and now I am going to the house of the Lord. No one has taken me into his home. ¹⁹Yet there is enough straw and fodder for our donkeys, with bread and wine for me, your maidservant, and the young man who is with your servant. We do not lack anything.”

²⁰The old man said, “Do not worry. I will take care of whatever you need. Just do not spend the night in the city square.” ²¹So he brought him into his house and gave food to his donkeys. They washed their feet, ate, and drank.

²²While they were enjoying themselves, the men of the city, who were wicked men, surrounded the house and pounded on the door. They said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house, so we can have relations with him.”

²³The master of the house went out to them and said, “No, my brothers, do not commit this evil act, not after this man has come into my house. Do not commit this disgrace. ²⁴Here are my virgin daughter and the man’s concubine. Let me bring them out to you. Ravish them and do to them what you please. But do not commit this vile act against this man.”

²⁵The men were unwilling to listen to him, so the man seized his concubine and brought her out to them in the street. They knew her and abused her all night until morning. As the dawn began to break, they let her go. ²⁶The woman came back at daybreak and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, lying there until it was light.

²⁷Her master got up in the morning and opened the doors of the house. He went out to go on his way, but there was the woman, his concubine, fallen at the door of the house with her hands on the threshold. ²⁸He said to her, “Get up, let us be going,” but there was no answer. So the man put her on a donkey and went home.

²⁹When he got home, he took a knife and seized his concubine, then cut her body into twelve pieces. Then he sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. ³⁰Everyone who saw this said, “Nothing like this has been done or seen since the day the children of Israel came out of the land of Egypt until today. Consider it, take counsel, and speak up!”

The Children of Israel Punish the Benjamites

20 All the children of Israel from Dan to Beersheba, and also from the land of Gilead, went out and gathered together in an assembly as one man before the Lord at Mizpah. ²The leaders of all the people from all the tribes of Israel presented themselves in an assembly of the people of God, who numbered four hundred thousand infantrymen bearing swords. ³(The Benjamites heard that the children of Israel had gone up to Mizpah.) The children of Israel said, “Tell how this evil happened!”

⁴So the Levite, the husband of the murdered woman, answered, “My concubine and I came to Gibeah, in Benjamin, to spend the night. ⁵Then the leaders of Gibeah rose up against me. At night they surrounded the house where I was staying. They wanted to kill me; instead they ravished my concubine so that she died. ⁶I seized my concubine, cut her into pieces, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel, because they committed an infamous and disgraceful act in Israel. ⁷Now, all of you are children of Israel. Give your advice and counsel here.”

⁸All the people arose as one man and said, “Not a man among us will go to his tent, and no one will turn aside to his house. ⁹Now this is what we will do to Gibeah. We will go against it by lot. ¹⁰We will take ten men out of every hundred, from every tribe of Israel, a hundred from every thousand, and a thousand from every ten thousand, to bring provisions for the troops. Then when they come to Gibeah in Benjamin, they may repay them for all the evil that they committed in Israel.” ¹¹So all the men of Israel gathered at the city, united like one man.

¹²The tribes of Israel sent men throughout the whole tribe of Benjamin, saying, “What is this evil that has been committed among you? ¹³Now hand over the wicked men in Gibeah, so that we can kill them and purge the evil from Israel.”

Yet the Benjamites were not willing to listen to their fellow children of Israel. ¹⁴The Benjamites gathered from their cities at Gibeah in order to go out and wage war against the children of Israel. ¹⁵That day, the Benjamites mustered twenty-six thousand armed men from the cities and seven hundred specially chosen men from Gibeah. ¹⁶Out of all these people there were seven hundred specially chosen men who were left-handed, all of whom could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.

¹⁷The men of Israel, apart from Benjamin, gathered four hundred thousand armed men who drew the sword; all of them were men of war.

¹⁸The children of Israel arose, went up to Bethel, and asked God, “Who should go up first to wage war against the Benjamites?”

The Lord said, “Judah first.”

¹⁹The children of Israel got up in the morning and camped against Gibeah. ²⁰The men of Israel went out for battle with Benjamin, and the men of Israel lined up for battle at Gibeah. ²¹Then the Benjamites came out from Gibeah and struck twenty-two thousand Israelite men down to the ground. ²²The people, the men of Israel, rallied and lined up for battle again in the place where they had lined up on the first day. ²³Then the children of Israel went up and wept before the Lord until evening. They asked the Lord, “Should we advance and fight our brother-tribesmen the Benjamites again?”

The Lord said, “Advance against them.”

²⁴So the children of Israel advanced against the Benjamites for the second day. ²⁵And on the second day, the Benjamites went out from Gibeah to meet them and again struck eighteen thousand men down to the ground, every one of them armed.

²⁶Then all the children of Israel, all the people, went up to Bethel where they wept and sat before the Lord. They fasted that day until evening and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. ²⁷The children of Israel asked the Lord (because the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days, ²⁸and Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it then), “Should we go out again to wage war with our brother-tribesmen the Benjamites, or should we not?”

The Lord said, “Go up, for tomorrow I will give them into your hands.”

²⁹So Israel set an ambushing force around Gibeah. ³⁰The children of Israel went up against the Benjamites on the third day and lined up at Gibeah as before. ³¹The Benjamites went out to engage the people and were drawn away from the city. They began to strike the people down as before. On the main roads that go up to Bethel and Gibeah and in the field, they struck down about thirty children of Israel. ³²The Benjamites said, “They are struck down before us like at the beginning.” But the children of Israel said, “Let us retreat and draw them away from the city toward the main roads.”

³³So all the men of Israel rose up out of their place and assumed their battle positions at Baal Tamar. Then the men of Israel in ambush charged out of their places, out of the meadows of Gibeah. ³⁴Ten thousand specially chosen men from all of Israel came against Gibeah. The battle was fierce, and the Benjamites did not know that disaster was upon them. ³⁵The Lord defeated Benjamin before Israel, and that day the children of Israel struck down twenty-five thousand one hundred Benjamites, every one of them armed. ³⁶The Benjamites saw that they were defeated.

Now the men of Israel had withdrawn from Benjamin, because they relied on the men in ambush whom they had set against Gibeah. ³⁷So the ambushing force rushed on and attacked Gibeah. They struck down the whole city with the edge of the sword. ³⁸The men of Israel had made an agreement with the ambushing force that when they sent up a large amount of smoke from the city, ³⁹the children of Israel would turn around in battle.

When the Benjamites had begun to strike the children of Israel down, about thirty men, they said, “Surely they are struck down before us like at the beginning.” ⁴⁰Yet when the smoke began to rise up from the city in a column, the Benjamites looked behind them and suddenly noticed the whole city going up in smoke to the sky. ⁴¹Then the men of Israel turned around, and the men of Benjamin were horrified because they saw that disaster had come on them. ⁴²So they fled from the men of Israel toward the direction of the wilderness, but the battle overtook them. Whoever came out of the cities destroyed them in their midst. ⁴³They surrounded the Benjamites, chased them without rest, and trampled them down near Gibeah toward the east. ⁴⁴Eighteen thousand men from Benjamin fell; all these were men of valor. ⁴⁵The rest turned and fled toward the wilderness to Rimmon Rock, and they cut down five thousand men on the main roads. They pursued them relentlessly until they reached Gidom and killed two thousand of them.

⁴⁶So the Benjamites who fell that day numbered twenty-five thousand, every one of them armed, valorous men. ⁴⁷However, six hundred men turned and fled toward the wilderness, to Rimmon Rock. They dwelled at Rimmon Rock for four months. ⁴⁸Yet the men of Israel turned back against the Benjamites and struck them with the edge of the sword—city inhabitants, animals, and everything that could be found. Indeed, they set on fire every city that could be found.

Modern English Version (MEV)

John 3:22-4:3

Jesus and John the Baptist

²²After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea. He remained with them there and baptized. ²³John also was baptizing in Aenon toward Salim, because much water was there. And people came and were baptized. ²⁴For John had not yet been put in prison. ²⁵Then a dispute arose between some of John’s disciples and the Jews about ceremonial cleansing. ²⁶They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness, look, He is baptizing, and everyone is going to Him.”

²⁷John answered, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven. ²⁸You yourselves bear witness of me, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but ‘I have been sent before Him.’ ²⁹He who has the bride is the bridegroom. But the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled. ³⁰He must increase, but I must decrease.”

He Who Comes From Heaven

³¹He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. ³²He bears witness of what He has seen and heard, yet no one receives His testimony. ³³He who has received His testimony has certified that God is true. ³⁴For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without measure to Him. ³⁵The Father loves the Son, and has placed all things into His hand. ³⁶He who believes in the Son has eternal life. He who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

4 Now when the Lord learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John ²(though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), ³He left Judea and departed again to Galilee.

Modern English Version (MEV)

Psalm 104:24-35

²⁴O Lord, how manifold are Your works!
With wisdom You have made them all;
the earth is full of Your creatures—
²⁵so is this great and wide sea,
which is full of innumerable creatures,
living animals both small and great.
²⁶There go the ships,
and there is Leviathan, which You have made to play in it.

²⁷These all wait upon You,
that You may give them their food in due season.
²⁸When You give it to them,
they gather it;
when You open Your hand,
they are filled with good food.
²⁹When You hide Your face,
they are troubled;
You take away their breath,
and they die and return to their dust.
³⁰When You send forth Your Spirit,
they are created,
and You renew the surface of the ground.

³¹May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
may the Lord rejoice in His works.
³²He looks on the earth, and it trembles;
He touches the mountains, and they smoke.

³³I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.
³⁴May my meditation be sweet to Him,
for I will be glad in the Lord.
³⁵Let sinners be consumed from the earth,
and let the wicked be no more.

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Praise the Lord!

Modern English Version (MEV)

Proverbs 14:22-23

²²Do they not err who devise evil?
But mercy and truth will be to those who devise good.

²³In all labor there is profit,
but mere talk leads only to poverty.

Modern English Version (MEV)

May 3, 2022

5/3/2022 DAB Transcript

Judges 17:1-18:31, John 3:1-21, Psalm 104:1-23, Proverbs 14:20-21

Today is the third day of May, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is great to be here with you today as we continue the journey, the journey moving into this month, brand-new as it is, and the journey that we have been…been on since the 1st of January, the journey through the Bible, the journey through a year together and so let’s continue that journey. We’re reading from the Modern English Version this week and we’re moving our way through the judges the Book of Judges, which tells us about the judges of Israel that follow Joshua’s leadership. Today, Judges chapters 17 and 18.

Commentary:

Okay so, in the Book of Judges, we have this, kind of odd story, about a man named Micah who, who has prominence and he ends up hiring a Levite to be his priest from Bethlehem. Then later, the Danites get mixed up into the story because they’re looking for land of their own. They’ve kind of been within the other tribes and they’re looking for land of their own and as their scouting for land, that’s when they come upon Micah and see his carved idols and his…his priest, the Levite from Bethlehem. And so, that’s one of the things that they scout out and see and then they go on to the city called Laish, and they see a group of Sidonia people who are living peaceably in a really, really beautiful area, but they’re undefended, they have no allies. If they were to be attacked, no one could get there in time to help defend them. They were just living peaceably, all by themselves and the tribe of Dan, made a decision to go and take that land. And so, they left to do exactly that and that’s when they come upon Micah again. They steel his carved idols, they take his Levitical priest from Bethlehem and kind of seduce him away by saying ‘you want to be this priest for this one household or do you want to be a priest for an entire tribe of Israel’, of course, the Levite wants to be the priest for the tribe of Israel. And so, the Danites make it to Laish, where they conquer the people and changed the city’s name from Laish to Dan. That place is still there, like the ruins of that place are still there. It is more toward the extreme northern part of what we now know as modern Israel but even in ancient Israel, once things are all established the territory is known from Dan to Beersheba. So, from Dan, in the north to Beersheba in the South. Today, we see where the city of Dan comes from and how it came to be.

Then, when we flip the page into the Gospel of John, we come to perhaps very, very, very likely, the most famous verse in all of the Bible, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever shall believe in Him will not perish but have everlasting life’. And that very important verse, in the Gospel of John, really lays out a framework for God’s love for us and our response in believing and once we do, eternal life becomes a reality. What is like, not always apparent or always known about this most famous of all verses is that, Jesus said that verse. He said it while having a conversation in the cover, under the cover of night with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. So, by this time, in Jesus’ ministry, there is animosity going on, Jesus is not understood and there are people who are very against him and other people are plotting against Him. So, this Pharisee, Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cloak of darkness to have this conversation because he sees what’s going on. In fact, everybody can see what’s going on, they just don’t know how to interpret it. They know that Jesus is drawing a crowd, they know that His words come with authority, and they know that signs and wonders are following what He is doing. And so, some people can say clearly this man is from God and other people say He gets His power from the devil so, that’s how divided the whole thing is. But it’s in this conversation, between Jesus and Nicodemus that this concept of being born again. comes from. And being born again, is like almost cliché for becoming a follower of Jesus, or converting to Christianity. But what Jesus is unpacking here is that, a person is born into the flesh, we are born into a human body, we are human beings of flesh, but there is a second birth of the Spirit, the awakening of this spirit, the reunification of the spirit with God, so that the separation isn’t there, so that God is within us or as the Scriptures say, it isn’t me who lives anymore, it’s Christ who lives within me. This spiritual awakening, this spiritual birth, if we want to use the term that Jesus is using, is what being born again is and it is explained in this verse; for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him, will not perish but have eternal life. Of course, Nicodemus is confused. Like, how does a person get born again, like how does a person, when they have become old, then get born again? Do they, how can they go back into their mother’s womb and be born again. That’s when Jesus explains, that we are born of the flesh and born of the spirit and we are born of the spirit, when we believe. And according to Jesus, when we believe, we are no longer condemned, but when we choose not to believe, we are experiencing condemnation already, which does make perfect sense, doesn’t it, because when we feel the most condemnation in our lives, is usually the time that we believe the least. Which gives us a glimpse of the fact that there really does seem to be a war within between darkness and light, clean and unclean, good and evil. And Jesus says as much, the light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. In other words, their deeds were in the darkness so, they don’t want the light. For everyone, and I’m quoting Jesus again, “for everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed, be he who does the truth comes to the light that it may be revealed that his deeds have been done in God. So, yes, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, and we who believe are not condemned anymore. But as we believe we have an inherited, we have inherited eternal life, which brings us into the light where there isn’t anything to hide anymore. So, the pertinent question for us then becomes well, what do I not want to be exposed to the light because that, whatever that is or whatever those things are, those things are actually pulling us toward and into the darkness. One of the beautiful things about the Gospel of Jesus and one of the really difficult things to live among other believers, is that the more we become like our Savior, the less there is to hide, the less there is to hide, the more truthful we can live, the more true that we can live, the more freedom that we can experience and yet we still choose darkness often. We still choose the darkness often, either out of fear of exposure or well-worn tired trails that we keep walking. God loved us enough to come for us and demonstrate for us what living in the truth, and in the light looks like and then going to Jerusalem and laying His life down to make this possible, for we who believe. So, why would we choose the darkness. Why do we choose the darkness? Maybe we know less about ourselves than we think we do, which means we know far less about God than we think that we do. But the one thing that we do know is that He loves us and desires our freedom. And if the gospel is correct, and the cross and its work is correct, then it’s all available to us. We are simply choosing otherwise.

Prayer:

So, Jesus, even thinking about that, even thinking about choosing otherwise, almost feels like it’s another slap in the face. But you haven’t come to keep condemnation upon us, You have come to continually encourage us forward and comfort us forward so that we can move toward the truth, move toward the light. And that is our desire, that is the desire of our heart, in a world of darkness, in a world full of dark people and a world where we’re battling it ourselves, within ourselves. We need the light more than ever, we need to be awake, and alert, and aware, and seeing more than ever. But we can’t open our eyes and we think it’s all up to us, and it’s all about us. Our eyes open in surrender. So, we surrender to You, we believe that You are changing and transforming us, in a world full of transformed people, living in the light is a transformed world and You have invited us to be a part of that story and it begins in our own hearts. So, come Holy Spirit, show us the things that lead us into darkness, show us the things that we do not want to be exposed. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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And that’s it for today, I’m Brian, I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here, tomorrow.

Prayer and Encouragements:

Good morning, my beautiful DAB family, this is Livy from Queensland in Australia. A few weeks ago, I prayed God would, from Psalm 51:10, create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew my spirit within me. Well, it’s been a rough couple of weeks and my faith has been sorely tested. This morning as I prayed, God showed me to read a passage where Jesus is praying prior to the ascension, John 17:3, This is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and the one you sent - Jesus Christ. That’s it, to know Jesus and to know God. Well, with the light of a thousand suns spoke to me. My goal has been to read the Bible through and to read it again, through and through and through. And to get to know God and Jesus so that I might love them. I’ve struggled with doing what I think is right and what my faith in Him leads me to know what is right. I’m not going to do the things out of guilt. My goal is to do what I’m led to do with love because of love, the goal is love. May you all have a blessed day. Thank you so much Brian and the Hardin Family for this beautiful family, with the DAB community.

Good morning, everyone, this is Janelle in China. It is currently 6:57 on April 29th, I just listened to the April 28th recording and I wanted to call in response to the gentlemen who is celebrating his 18th birthday. I am praying for you; I am praying that the Lord will give you peace and discernment during this time. But I wanted to call and give you some unsolicited advice. That feeling of being totally unprepared, I’m sorry to tell you but that’s part of being an adult. Cause, I can’t tell you the number of times that that’s happened to me and what I’ve found is that it’s how you deal with that feeling and you respond to it which really defines how you are as an adult. There’s gonna be so many times where God will push you out of your comfort zone and He’s trying to grow you as a Christian. And this is one of those times, right now, I’m sorry but welcome to adulthood. There’s lots of joys as well as the anxieties, so focus on the now and trust God and He’ll get you through.

Hello DAB, this is Loyalan in Hohan in China. I’m calling because I listened to April 28th and I heard Owen, just had his 18th birthday. Doesn’t feel ready to be an adult. Dude, I feel ya, I just turned 27 recently and I still don’t feel like an adult a lot of the time. It’s hard, it’s hard to know what to do. But the good news is, even when I don’t feel like I know what to do and everything seems like a huge mess, God’s still there and He’s still taking care of it, even when I can’t see it or when you can’t see it. So, I’m definitely praying for you. In other news, I had posted on the Prayer Wall to pray for my friend Domin, who was really searching for God, having dreams. And praise report, he says he wants to become a Christian. It’s really amazing to just watch this unfolding. I don’t think that I helped very much but it’s not my job. So, thank you DAB for the Chinese that I could play for him. Thank you for praying, those of you who prayed. Praise God.

Good morning, Daily Audio Bible, this is Sharon in Southern California. I hope everyone is well and doing prosperously in the name of Jesus. I just heard a call from a young man named Owen. He just made 18 years old and he’s feeling anxious about being an adult. Owen, I just want to say, I think you calling the Daily Audio Bible was a very adult decision. You were asking for guidance; you were asking for God to be there for you and I am 56 years old and I do the same thing every day. So, Owen, I pray, my prayer for you is that the Lord will answer your prayer and help you, guide you through life’s ups and downs, you know, through happiness, joy, sadness, triumphs and obstacles, that is what He’s there for. I commend you for calling, I think that was wonderful. You made my day actually to know that there is still some young people out there seeking the Lord. So, I’m really happy for you. My prayer is that you find what you’re looking for. I pray that the Lord keep you in his protective care and loving arms always. In Jesus name. Amen.

Hey Owen, this is People on the Water from Indiana and I’m also 18 and in the last few weeks of my senior year. Looking into college and what it is being an adult. So, first of all, welcome to the club, it’s a good age. And there’s people around you, you’ve made it this far and you just trust that God does have your back. There is a good people around you, I just pray that God might give you eyes to see them. Alright, see ya.

Hello, Debbie DAB DABers, this is Trixaleena. I haven’t called in a while and I’m calling in cause I need prayer. I’ve been involved in my ministry for two years now and it’s been wonderful, just falling deeply in love with God, serving His people and finding people that love God as well, just spending time with them. But it turns out the pastor has not been paying rent on the houses, the ministry people have been living in. In exchange for work, they get free rent. We can house about 70 men that are coming out of prison, that are getting sober in their living. It’s the least of these that we serve in these houses. And it’s really sad to think about them losing their homes, is what it’s looking like. And so, if I may, please have prayer that may the Lord’s will be done in all of these men’s lives may the worlds, the Lord’s will be done in the path and where they go. And it’s obvious that it just, it got over the Pastor’s head and he didn’t know what to do and then it just got to the end. And I pray the Lord’s will be done over my path and where I go, I’m just kind of like, I don’t know where to go now. I don’t know what to do but I know that I follow the Lord and He has a plan. I know He has a plan; I don’t know what it is. But may the Lord’s will be done, in the name of Jesus. And I just pray peace, happiness, hope, joy are over all these people in this transition and thank ya’ll, ya’ll have a good day.

May 3, 2022

The Daily Audio Bible Reading for Tuesday May 3, 2022 (NIV)

Judges 17-18

Micah’s Idols

17 There was a man from the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. ²He said to his mother, “The eleven hundred shekels of silver^[a] that were taken from you, on which you put a curse, even speaking the curse in my ears—here is the silver with me. I took it.”

Then his mother said, “May the Lord bless my son!”

³Then he returned the eleven hundred silver coins to his mother. His mother said, “I certainly consecrated the silver to the Lord, for my son to make a carved idol and a metal idol, so now I return it to you.”

⁴When he returned the silver to his mother, she took two hundred shekels of silver^[b] and gave them to a silversmith to make a carved idol and a metal idol. And they were put in the house of Micah.

⁵This man Micah owned a shrine. He made an ephod and household idols, and he hired one of his sons to be a priest for him. ⁶In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his eyes.

⁷There was a young man from Bethlehem in Judah. He was a Levite from Judah, and he stayed as a resident foreigner there. ⁸The man went from the city of Bethlehem in Judah to stay wherever he could find a place. He came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, to do his work.

⁹Micah said to him, “Where do you come from?”

He said to him, “I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to stay wherever I can find a place.”

¹⁰Micah said to him, “Live with me, and be a father and a priest for me. I will give you ten silver coins^[c] a year, a set of clothes, and food.” So the Levite went in. ¹¹The Levite decided to live with the man, and the young man became like one of his sons. ¹²Micah ordained the Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in the house of Micah. ¹³Then Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will do good for me, for I have a Levite to be my priest.”

The Danites Settle in Laish

18 In those days there was no king in Israel.

And in those days the tribe of the Danites was looking for an inheritance in which to live, for no territory had come into their possession among the tribes of Israel up to that time. ²So the children of Dan sent out from their families five valorous men from Zorah and Eshtaol in order to spy out and explore the land. They said to them, “Go, explore the land.”

They came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and they spent the night there. ³When they were at the house of Micah, they noticed the speech of the young Levite. They turned aside and said to him, “Who brought you here? What are you doing in this place? What is your business here?”

⁴He told them what Micah had done for him, saying, “He hired me, and I became his priest.”

⁵They said to him, “Please ask God if we may know whether our mission will be a success as we go to do it.”

⁶The priest said to them, “Go in peace. The Lord is watching the way you are going.”

⁷The five men went away and came to Laish. They saw the people who were there, living securely according to the culture of the Sidonians. There were no rulers in the land who might put them to shame for anything. They were far from the Sidonians and had no ties with anyone.

⁸When they came back to their brothers in Zorah and Eshtaol, their brothers asked them, “What do you have to say?”

⁹They said, “Get up! Let us go up against them, for we have seen the land. It is very good. You are silent, but do not hesitate to go to take the land. ¹⁰When you go, you will come to a secure people and to an expansive land. For God has given it into your hands: a place where there is no lack of anything on the earth.”

¹¹So six hundred fully armed men set out from the family of the Danites, from Zorah and Eshtaol. ¹²They went up and set up camp in Kiriath Jearim in Judah. Therefore they call that place Mahaneh Dan to this day. It is west of Kiriath Jearim. ¹³From there they passed the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of Micah.

¹⁴The five men who went to spy out the land of Laish said to their brothers, “Did you know that in these houses are an ephod, household idols, a carved image, and a metal idol? Now think about what to do.” ¹⁵So they turned aside there and came to the house of the young Levite, to the house of Micah, and greeted him. ¹⁶The six hundred men armed with their weapons of war, who were the children of Dan, stood at the entrance to the gate. ¹⁷The five men who went to spy out the land went in and took the carved idol, ephod, household idols, and the metal idol. The priest was standing at the entrance to the gate with the six hundred fully armed men.

¹⁸When these men went into the house of Micah and took the carved idol, ephod, household idols, and the metal idol, the priest said to them, “What are you doing?”

¹⁹They said to him, “Quiet! Put your hand over your mouth and go with us. Be a father and priest for us. Is it better to be a priest for one man’s house or for a tribe and a family in Israel?” ²⁰So the priest’s heart was glad. He took the ephod, the household idols, and the carved image and went among the people. ²¹So they turned and left, putting the children, livestock, and valuables in front of them.

²²They had gone far from the house of Micah, but the neighbors of Micah assembled and caught up to the children of Dan. ²³They called out to the children of Dan. So they turned and said to Micah, “What is wrong that have you assembled together?”

²⁴He said, “You took the gods that I made, and the priest, and then you left. What do I have left? So what is this that you say to me, ‘What is wrong?’ ”

²⁵The children of Dan said to him, “Do not let us hear your voice again. Otherwise bitter men might meet you and you will forfeit your life and the lives of your family.” ²⁶So the children of Dan went their way. And when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back to his house.

²⁷They took what Micah had made and his priest, and came to Laish to a quiet and secure people. They struck them down with the edge of the sword and burned the city with fire. ²⁸There was no one to save them because the city was far from Sidon and had no contact with anyone. It was in the valley by Beth Rehob.

They rebuilt the city and lived there. ²⁹They called the city Dan, after their father Dan, who was born to Israel (Laish was the former name of the city). ³⁰The children of Dan set up the carved idol for themselves. Jonathan the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the time of exile from the land. ³¹So they displayed Micah’s graven image that he had made, for the whole time that the house of God was in Shiloh.

Footnotes:

Judges 17:2 About 28 pounds, or 13 kilograms.
Judges 17:4 About 5 pounds, or 2.3 kilograms.
Judges 17:10 About 4 ounces, or 115 grams.

Modern English Version (MEV)

John 3:1-21

Jesus and Nicodemus

3 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. ²He came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher who has come from God. For no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

³Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a man is born again,^[a] he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

⁴Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

⁵Jesus answered, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ⁶That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

⁹Nicodemus said to Him, “How can this be?”

¹⁰Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, but you do not know these things? ¹¹Truly, truly I say to you, We speak of what We know and bear witness of what We have seen, but you do not receive Our testimony. ¹²If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? ¹³No one has ascended to heaven except He who descended from heaven, even the Son of Man who is in heaven. ¹⁴Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but may have eternal life.

¹⁶“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. ¹⁷For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. ¹⁸He who believes in Him is not condemned. But he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. ¹⁹This is the verdict, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. ²¹But he who does the truth comes to the light, that it may be revealed that his deeds have been done in God.”

Footnotes:

John 3:3 Or born from above.

Modern English Version (MEV)

Psalm 104:1-24

Psalm 104

¹Bless the Lord, O my soul!

O Lord my God, You are very great!
You are clothed with honor and majesty,
²covering Yourself with light as a garment,
who stretches out the heavens like a tent curtain,
³who lays the upper beams of His chambers on the waters above,
who makes the clouds His chariot,
who rides upon the wings of the wind,
⁴who makes His angels as winds,
His ministers a flaming fire.

⁵You laid the earth on its foundations,
so that it should never be moved.
⁶You covered it with the deep as a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
⁷At Your rebuke they fled;
at the sound of Your thunder they departed away.
⁸The mountains rose up;
the valleys went down
to the place that You appointed them.
⁹You set a boundary that they may not pass over,
that they may not again cover the earth.

¹⁰You send the springs to gush forth in the valleys,
which flow between the hills.
¹¹They give drink to every animal of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
¹²By them the birds of the heavens have their habitation;
they sing among the branches.
¹³You water the mountains from Your lofty chamber;
the earth is satisfied with the fruit of Your works.
¹⁴You cause the grass to grow for the cattle
and plants for the cultivation of man,
that he may bring forth food from the earth
¹⁵and wine that makes glad the heart of man,
and oil that makes shine his face,
and bread that strengthens his heart.
¹⁶The trees of the Lord are well watered,
the cedars of Lebanon that He has planted,
¹⁷where the birds make their nests,
where the stork has its home in the fir trees.
¹⁸The high mountains are for the wild goats,
and the rocks a refuge for the badgers.

¹⁹He set the moon to mark the appointed seasons;
the sun knows its time for going down.
²⁰You make darkness, and it is night,
when all the animals of the forest go forth.
²¹The young lions roar after their prey
and seek their food from God.
²²When the sun arises, they gather themselves together
and lay down in their dens.
²³Man goes forth to his work
and to his labor until the evening.

²⁴O Lord, how manifold are Your works!
With wisdom You have made them all;
the earth is full of Your creatures—

Modern English Version (MEV)

Proverbs 14:20-21

²⁰The poor is hated even by his own neighbor,
but the rich has many friends.

²¹He who despises his neighbor sins,
but he who has mercy on the poor, happy is he.

Modern English Version (MEV)

May 2, 2022

05/02/2022 DAB Transcript

Judges 15:1-16:31, John 2:1-25, Psalms 103:1-22, Proverbs 14:17-19

Today is the 2^nd day of May welcome to the Daily Audio Bile I am Brian it is great to be here with you around the Global Campfire today together to take the next step forward as we get ourselves moved into this brand-new month in front of us. And that next step forward leads us back into the book of Judges, where we are meeting the judges of Israel, but in particular we’re getting to know about the judge named Samson. We’re reading from the Modern English Version this week. Judges, chapters 15 and 16 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we have moved through the story of the judge Samson now which is a pretty famous Sunday school story as well. And one of the things that we should be getting loud and clear as we move through the book of Judges, especially, is that all of these people that rose up to lead Israel into freedom were very very flawed people. I think in this day and age we would look at any of them pretty much and say they aren’t fit for ministry or leadership. And yet they were. And yet they were empowered. And yet they did what God called them to do and lead His people back into freedom so that they could immediately turn around and go in the other direction back into bondage. And, so, we could say that’s one of the views that we get here, is that everybody is doing what is right in their own eyes. And what is right in their own eyes a lot of the time is not right in God’s eyes and is leading them into destruction. The other thing is just to see the humanity of these people. But in the case of Samson there was an announcement that he was going to be born, and that he would be a Nazarite and that he would free his people and that he should never drink alcoholic beverages and that he should never cut his hair. And, so, he was raised that way, raised to know these things, raised to know the power of his strength and where his strength had come from and what the purpose of his strength was. And instead, we see him giving away the secret of his strength to a prostitute who had been hired to betray him. Notice the humanness, the humanity here. The Bible doesn’t shy away from these things. We’ve had plenty of stories. And some of them are stories we’re like, man I which that wasn’t in here because it disrupts me, makes me think in ways that I don’t want to think. That’s how it’s supposed to be. The Bible leaves the flaws in because we are all experienced being flawed. Despite that God continues to work through people to get his purposes done. So, on the one hand, we should be extraordinarily grateful because that includes us. We’re broken and flawed. We don’t deserve to be doing anything in the name of God. Outside of Jesus we are nothing, but God still wants to use us and still loves us. And our brokenness can certainly break other people and cause brokenness around us, but our brokenness isn’t our place of residence. We are moving through this place, day by day step-by-step in a process called sanctification. We are moving away from that into fullness into wholeness. But as we see through the judges and for that matter through the entire Bible, God will work with a willing heart. And He came to make right the things that are broken .

Prayer:

Jesus, we thank You because we can look in judgment at the judges. We can look in judgment at our next-door neighbor. We can look at judgment at the person in the grocery store with us. We are all broken but we certainly like to point out each other’s brokenness and disassociate from our own. And yet You make beautiful things out of things that are broken, and You are making something beautiful out of us and there is hope for us as we surrender to You. And, so, we do. We surrender to You and Your service and ask that You might use us in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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And if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, which you can…you could…you should be. You can download it free from wherever you get your apps, whatever’s connected to your device. Look for Daily Audio Bible and you’ll find it. And then you get to the Prayer Wall from within the app as well in the Community section. You just push the little Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and that opens up the drawer and in there you’ll find the Community section. So, yeah, be familiar with the Prayer Wall whether it’s something…I mean…it’s something that you go to every single day or whether you’re just aware and when things get a little sideways in life it’s good to know we’re not alone, day or night we’re not alone. We can reach out. So, check that out. It’s in the Community section.

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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning this is Keith from Canada, and I was listening today 28^th of April and I heard the prayer request from Owen and my heart is just moved for you. Owen, I want to bless you into this next stage of your life. It’s so important in our lives to just know who we are and who we are in God and I am praying that for you today. 18 is just a number Owen. It’s not that a switch is flipped and you’re suddenly supposed to have everything figured out and be just confident in everything but I bless you two journey and to learn and to grow and to grow in the Lord, to know that He is with you and that He will take care of you. So, Owen, I bless you in Jesus’ name to become the man of God that He intends you to be one day at a time one step at a time. And I pray that he would raise up men and women around you that would give you godly council direction and support and that you would just be surrounded by good friends that could encourage you and help you to grow in the Lord.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible it’s Dr. Kanaya calling from London and I wanted to call to pray for the young man who just turned 18, happy birthday, and is worried about now becoming an adult. And I want to encourage you that even though we’ve entered this, you know, status of being an adult at 18 our Lord God still sees us as His children no matter what age we are and we can rest in Him and we can run to Him for comfort as we would our earthly fathers we can do the same with our heavenly Father. As you enter this new phase of your life, I pray that the Lord will equip you with wisdom and as you are heeding to His word, listening to His word every day you will find that this new season of adulthood will be a breeze for you. I really pray that He will order your steps and give you His peace in Jesus’ name. And honestly adulting isn’t that bad.

Good morning, dear DABbers this is Christopher AKA I’ll go buy Daredevil from Indy Indianapolis IN and I want to first of all just give a really sincere vote of thank you and confidence in our brother pastor Brian. What an amazing…an amazing incredible community the Lord has built here in the midst of all the chaos in this world. I praise you Lord God for this family the Hardin family and their faithfulness. I pray that you would reward them richly now and in heaven Lord. I also want to quickly share that I am praising God for the ways that my travel situations have worked out recently. Not long ago I posted on the app about…on the Prayer Wall about my need for travel mercies as a blind man living in a new area with more limited bus access and I just want to give praise for that, that I have been blessed. And lastly, I just want to pray for Liz from Louisiana. I am out of time on this message but know that you are being covered in prayer by me and many others for your upcoming board exam. The Lord will provide, and you will receive His favor.

Hey Daily Audio Bible this is New Eyes in Tennessee and I’m calling in for a young man who called in today. It’s April 27^th I believe…no it’s the 28^th and his name was Owen and he had just turned 18. And Owen I just want to say hi. I am a mom of a 19-year-old a 17-year-old or soon to be 17-year-old and a 13-year-old and I just want to let you know Owen that there is a huge community of people just like me who are praying for your generation, and we care about you guys so much. We care about your future we care about your destiny we care about your talents we care about how you’re going to get to where you need to be, all the things that you lay awake at night wondering about and all the dreams that you may have we are also praying for that. So, first of all I just want to pray against any fear that the enemy is sneaking into your brain about being an adult. I’m 45 years old. I still don’t know how the adult some days. I still wake up feeling like I’m 14. And, so, Owen first of all first of all I just want you to cast all your cares on Jesus for He cares for you and that you have a long life to live in Jesus and that He will take you on many adventures. My 19-year-old has already been to Hawaii, Uganda, and Mexico in six months, and he just had a blast and now he’s navigating how to have his first girlfriend. So, Owen I just know that you are gonna figure things out, that God is on your side and there’s so many of us praying for your generation. Be blessed Owen. You’re awesome. Child of God.

I just heard a prayer request from a young man named Owen. Owen, you said that you just turned 18 years old and you’re not so sure that you’re ready for adulthood. Well let me tell you I’m almost 60 and I don’t know that I’m ready for adulthood either. But you are one step ahead of the game young man. Most men your age wouldn’t even think to reach out for prayer. And there’s a verse in the Bible, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight. Let me tell you, you are way ahead of the game, and I am so proud of you for having the courage to call and ask for prayer. And you will be successful. I will be praying for you every day as I know all the other members of this community will be praying for you as well. You take care and give us an update OK. Bye-bye.

May 2, 2022

The Daily Audio Bible Reading for Monday May 2, 2022 (NIV)

Judges 15-16

Samson’s Revenge

15 After a while, during the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, taking a young goat. He said, “I’m going in to my wife in her bedroom,” but her father would not let him go in.

²Her father said, “I thought that you thoroughly hated her, so I gave her to your best man. Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, let her be your wife instead.”

³Samson said to them, “This time I cannot be blamed by the Philistines when I do them harm.” ⁴Samson went and caught three hundred foxes. He took torches and turned the foxes tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. ⁵He set fire to the torches and sent the foxes into standing grain of the Philistines. He burned the harvested grain, standing grain, vineyards, and olive trees.

⁶The Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because the Timnite took the bride of Samson and gave her to his best man.”

So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father with fire. ⁷Samson said to them, “Because you have done this, I will take revenge on you, and afterwards I will stop.” ⁸He struck them down with a mighty blow, then went to live in a cave in Etam Rock.

⁹Then the Philistines went up and set up camp in Judah. They deployed against Lehi. ¹⁰The men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?”

They said, “It is to take Samson prisoner that we have come up, to do to him what he did to us.”

¹¹So three thousand men from Judah went to the cave in Etam Rock and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are ruling us? Why have you done this to us?”

He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”

¹²They said to him, “We have come to take you prisoner, to give you into the hands of the Philistines.”

Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me.”

¹³They said to him, “No, we will bind you securely and give you into their hands, but we will not kill you.” They bound him with two new ropes and took him away from the rock. ¹⁴He came to Lehi, and the Philistines shouted as they approached him. Then the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. The ropes on his arms became like burned flax and the ties on his hands dissolved. ¹⁵Then he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and with it struck down a thousand men.

¹⁶Samson said,

“With a jawbone of a donkey,
heaps upon heaps.
With a jawbone of a donkey
I have slain a thousand men.”

¹⁷When he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone away and called that place Ramath Lehi.

¹⁸He was very thirsty, and he called out to the Lord, “You gave this great deliverance through Your servant, but now may I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” ¹⁹So God split open the basin at Lehi, and water flowed out of it. He drank, was refreshed, and revived. Because of this he called the place En Hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.

²⁰Samson judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

Samson and Delilah

16 Samson went to Gaza. There he saw a prostitute and spent the night with her. ²The people of Gaza were told, “Samson has come here!” So they surrounded him and laid in wait for him all night at the city gate. They kept quiet all night, thinking, “In the morning light we will kill him.”

³Samson lay until midnight, then at midnight he got up. He grabbed the doors of the city gate and the two gateposts and pulled them out along with the bar. He put them on his shoulder and brought them to the top of the mountain near Hebron.

⁴After this Samson loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. ⁵The Philistine rulers came up to her and said, “Trick him! Find out about how his strength is so great and how we can overcome him, bind him, and humiliate him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred silver coins.^[a]”

⁶So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me how your strength is so great and how you could be bound in order to be subdued.”

⁷Samson said to her, “If they bind me with seven fresh bowstrings that have not been dried, then I will become weak and be like an ordinary man.”

⁸So the Philistine rulers brought her seven fresh bowstrings that had not been dried, and she bound him with them. ⁹They lay in wait in her inner room. She said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson.” Then he split apart the bowstrings like a single thread is split apart at the touch of fire. So the source of his strength did not become known.

¹⁰Delilah said to Samson, “You have deceived me. You have told me lies. Now, please tell me how you can be bound.”

¹¹He said to her, “If they bind me with new ropes that have never been used, then I will become weak and be like an ordinary man.”

¹²So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them. Then she said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson.” For men were lying in wait, remaining in the room. But he split apart the ropes on his arms like a thread.

¹³Delilah said to Samson, “Up to now you have deceived me. You have told me lies. Tell how you can be bound.”

He said to her, “If you weave seven locks of my hair into the fabric on the loom and fasten it with the pin, then I will become weak and be like an ordinary man.” ¹⁴So Delilah lulled him to sleep and wove seven locks of his hair into the fabric on the loom. She fastened it with the pin and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson.” He awakened from his sleep and tore away from the loom pin and the fabric.

¹⁵She said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have deceived me these three times and have not told me how your strength is so great.” ¹⁶Every day she nagged him with her words and pleaded with him until he was tired to death.

¹⁷So he told her all his secrets and said to her, “No razor has touched my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I were shaven, my strength would leave me, and I would become weak and be like all other men.”

¹⁸Delilah saw that he had told her all his secrets, so she sent for the Philistine rulers, saying, “Come up this time, for he has told me all his secrets.” So the Philistine rulers came up to her and brought the money in their hands. ¹⁹Delilah lulled Samson to sleep on her knees and called for a man to shave off the seven locks of his hair. Then she began to humiliate him, and his strength left him.

²⁰She said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson.”

Then he awakened from his sleep and thought, “I will go out as before and shake myself free of them.” He did not know that the Lord had left him.

²¹The Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They took him down to Gaza, bound him with bronze chains, and he ground grain in prison. ²²Yet after it had been shaven, the hair on his head began to grow back.

The Death of Samson

²³The Philistine rulers gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate. They said, “Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hands.”

²⁴The people saw him and praised their god, for they said,

“Our god has given into our hands
our enemy,
the one who ruined our land
and killed many of us.”

²⁵When their hearts were merry, they said, “Call for Samson, so he can entertain us.” So they called for Samson from the prison, and he entertained them.

They placed him between the pillars. ²⁶Samson said to the young man who held his hand, “Let me rest and touch the pillars on which the temple is set, then I can lean against them.” ²⁷The temple was full of men and women, and all the Philistine rulers were there. There were about three thousand men and women on the roof watching Samson entertain. ²⁸Samson called out to the Lord, “Lord God, remember me, I pray! Please strengthen me just this once, God, so that I may get full revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes!” ²⁹Then Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the temple was set and leaned against them, one with his right hand and one with his left. ³⁰Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” He pushed with all his strength, and the temple fell upon the rulers and all the people who were in it. At his death he killed more than he had killed in his life.

³¹Then his brothers and all his family came down, carried him, brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the grave of his father Manoah. He had judged Israel for twenty years.

Footnotes:

Judges 16:5 About 28 pounds, or 13 kilograms.

Modern English Version (MEV)

John 2

The Wedding at Cana

2 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee. The mother of Jesus was there. ²Both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. ³When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”

⁴Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.”

⁵His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”

⁶Six water pots made of stone were sitting there, used for ceremonial cleansing by the Jews, containing twenty to thirty gallons^[a] each.

⁷Jesus said to them, “Fill the water pots with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.

⁸Then He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the master of the feast.”

And they took it. ⁹When the master of the feast tasted the water that had been turned into wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who drew the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom, ¹⁰and he said to him, “Every man serves the good wine first, and after men have drunk freely, then the poor wine is served. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

¹¹This, the first of His signs, Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and He revealed His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.

¹²After this He, and His mother, and His brothers, and His disciples went down to Capernaum. They remained there a few days.

The Cleansing of the Temple^(A)

¹³The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴In the temple He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers sitting there. ¹⁵When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. He poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. ¹⁶He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” ¹⁷His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.”^[b]

¹⁸Then the Jews said to Him, “What sign do You show us, seeing that You do these things?”

¹⁹Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

²⁰Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” ²¹But He was speaking concerning the temple of His body. ²²Therefore, when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them. And they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.

Jesus Knows All Men

²³Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did. ²⁴But Jesus did not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all men, ²⁵and did not need anyone to bear witness of man, for He knew what was in man.

Footnotes:

John 2:6 Gk. 2 to 3 metretes, or 75 to 115 liters.
John 2:17 Ps 69:9.

Cross references:

John 2:13 : Mt 21:12–17; Mk 11:15–17; Lk 19:45–48

Modern English Version (MEV)

Psalm 103

A Psalm of David.

¹Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me, bless His holy name.
²Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all His benefits,
³who forgives all your iniquities,
who heals all your diseases,
⁴who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,
⁵who satisfies your mouth with good things,
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

⁶The Lord does righteousness
and justice for all who are oppressed.

⁷He made known His ways to Moses,
His acts to the people of Israel.
⁸The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.
⁹He will not always accuse,
neither will He keep his anger forever.
¹⁰He does not treat us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
¹¹For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;
¹²as far as the east is from the west,
so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
¹³Like a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord gives compassion to those who fear Him.
¹⁴For He knows how we are formed;
He remembers that we are dust.
¹⁵As for man, his days are as grass;
as a flower of the field he flourishes.
¹⁶For the hot wind passes over it, and it is gone;
the place where it was is not known.
¹⁷But the mercy of the Lord
is from everlasting to everlasting
upon those who fear Him,
and His righteousness to children’s children,
¹⁸to those who keep His covenant,
and to those who remember to do His commandments.

¹⁹The Lord has established His throne in the heavens,
and His kingdom rules over all.

²⁰Bless the Lord, you His angels,
who are mighty, and do His commands,
and obey the voice of His word.
²¹Bless the Lord, all you His hosts;
you servants who do His pleasure.
²²Bless the Lord, all His works,
in all places of His dominion.

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Modern English Version (MEV)

Proverbs 14:17-19

¹⁷He who is quick-tempered deals foolishly,
and a man of wicked devices is hated.

¹⁸The simple inherit folly,
but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.

¹⁹The evil bow before the good,
and the wicked at the gates of the righteous.

Modern English Version (MEV)

May 2, 2022

5/1/2022 DAB Transcript

Judges 13:1-14:20, John 1:29-51, Psalm 102:1-28, Proverbs 14:15-16

Today is May 1st, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is great to be here with you as we greet a brand-new, shiny, sparkly week and a brand-new shiny, sparkly month, the fifth month of the year. What a joy. It’s like a whole reset, it’s all out in front of us and we have been informed by the Scriptures for four straight months now, and if we’re still on this train, like if we’re still day-by-day, step-by-step we should be beginning to feel like we’re getting our bearings and feel like things are shifting inside of us. We’re starting to see things in a new light, in a different way. So today, is the 121st day of the year. Congratulations on making it to this point. There is so much adventure out in front of us, in the Scriptures. And so, let’s dive in, we’ll read from the Modern English Version this week. Picking up the story in the Book of Judges, which is introducing us to the generations of judges that followed Joshua’s leadership. And we’ve met some…some judges that only have like a couple of sentences and we’ve met judges like Gideon that have an entire story and back story and…and even the story that came after. Today, we will begin one such story, the story of the Judge Sampson, Judges chapters 13 and 14 today.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for bringing us this far into the Scriptures this year. And we’re here, greeting a brand-new month and a brand-new week. And so, we take this time to reflect and look back at all that You have brought us through, even this year alone. And all that it is beginning to settle into our spirits, transforming us. And we look forward to all that You have yet to speak to us. We look forward to be being transformed. This is what we call sanctification, this is us being set apart as holy and made into the image of our Savior and we welcome this, we desire this, we need this. So, come Holy Spirit into this brand-new month, and lead us, as we surrender our will to You. In the name of Jesus, we pray this. Amen.

Prayer and Encouragements:

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family. This is Amanda Neel in Nebraska and I have a huge praise report. Ya’ll have been praying for our daughter Celia with her anxiety, intestinal issues. We have concluded that it is most likely anxiety related. This week, she missed all of last week cause we were trying to figure out which meds were working and which ones were not. Got that figured out but she missed an entire week of school because of the vomiting that the lack of med caused. Got ready to go to school yesterday, Monday and she was hysterical, bawling, said she couldn’t do it, couldn’t do it, couldn’t do it. I actually had to have the counselor help me get her out of the car. Made it through the day. Yesterday, it was a lot of work to get her into the car, get her to school but in the process, I was rebuking Satan off of her and praising God for what he had not done yet. And by the time we got other kids to school, got her some breakfast, she got out of the car and walked into the school on her own. And that is only by the grace of God and His almighty power and I just thank you for your prayers and ask you to continue to do so and we continue to praise her and praise God. It’s just, it’s amazing, God is so, so good. Thank you all.

This Abundantly Blessed Tanya from Massachusetts and I just would love to just give a prayer of thanksgiving to our beautiful Father, our gracious Daddy, our Abba. I listen to all these wonderful requests and testimonies and I know they go up to Him like a fragrant scent. Like a bouquet of flowers, I think of a time, I know it’s like oil, the oil of incense going to Him. Just if, if we would give it to Him, that we would give Him the praise and we would give Him the petitions, that we recognize who He is, He is Lord God. And I’m so grateful that He is. And we just thank You Daddy for this day and all that You’re doing and how You’re working on our behalf. We are never forsaken, You are always with us, Emmanuel, God with us. When things and the world is swirling about, we have an anchor, we need to hold onto the anchor and look at the anchor and not at what is going on around us. So, I am just so grateful Father that You are reminding us of that through this time that I am speaking to you but I’m also speaking before my brothers and sisters in Christ, to encourage as well. So, Father, thank You for this day, help us each to walk a little slower so that we can heart your voice, that we can hear how you’re directing us. Help us to stop for moments where we could receive Your hug, Your embrace. You know, that is there, that tangible feel that you can have if we just stop long enough to ponder Your word and what You say. So, Father, thank You for this day.

Good afternoon, everybody, this is God’s Smile here. It’s a beautiful day and the Lord blessed me to be able to get up, I’ve not done that for months and to come downstairs and spend a few hours, it was absolutely wonderful. I have on my mind to pray for the babies in the womb. I don’t know why, it’s been coming to me all day, so I’m just gonna pray. Father God, we thank You for the gift of life when we conceive Lord, and that child, You’re child, grows within us, Lord. Father, we pray for its protection. Father, if there is a mother worried about something going wrong within that womb, Lord, we…we turn to You. And the scripture that came to me was about the Lord knitting us together in the womb. So, Father, I pray as you knit those children together, that anything that would raise it’s head up against You, in regards to health, ill health, Lord, that You would knit it away, in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You for the powerful blood of Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, we pray for the mums, for their peace as they carry. We pray for their health too Lord and if anything is worrying them Lord, I would ask that, as they sit quietly with You, that You would fill them, Lord, with Your comfort, and grace and mercy. Lord, encourage them, speak to them in Your word, through songs Lord, and Your scripture Lord. Bless these moms and children. In the mighty name of Jesus, we pray. Bring them forth in safe delivery, Father, help them not to worry. Times ticking away, I better go. Kiss kiss everybody.

Hello DAB family, this is KD out of Atlanta. Calling in, asking for prayer for my youngest son, Kayden. Kayden is on the autism spectrum. He’s on the low end but he’s yet, still he’s been diagnosed with having autism and they are testing here in Georgia, the Georgia Milestone Test. And I just pray that he does well on the test and I’m asking for prayers for that as well. And also, he’s going through puberty now, he’s 12. As well as dealing with autism he has to deal with puberty and he’s just been dealing with a lot of issues right now. And I can just imagine his heart to try and navigate through all of that so, I’m just asking for prayer for that. And also, there’s a young man at school that’s been bullying him and we’ve been having a few instances with that so I’m praying, asking for prayer for both of them. The young man and my son and that we’re able to navigate through that as well. But I’ve been told the young man has anger issues which is why he picks on my child, I guess. So, yeah, I’m just asking for prayer and that you cover him, that he’s covered by the blood of Jesus as he goes to school everyday and that he does well on his testing. Thank you so very much. Love you family. Good night.

May 1, 2022

The Daily Audio Bible Reading for Sunday May 1, 2022 (NIV)

Judges 13-14

The Birth of Samson

13 Again the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord gave them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.

²There was a certain man from Zorah, from the tribe of Dan. His name was Manoah. His wife was infertile and had borne no children. ³The angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Indeed, you are infertile and have borne no children, yet you will conceive and bear a son. ⁴Now be careful, I pray, that you drink no wine or strong drink and that you do not eat anything ritually unclean. ⁵For you will conceive and bear a son. No razor may touch his head, for the boy will be a Nazirite to God from the womb. He will begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines.”

⁶Then the woman went to her husband and said, “A man of God came to me. He looked like a very fearsome angel of God. I did not ask him where he was from, and he did not tell me his name. ⁷He said to me, ‘You will conceive and bear a son. So now, do not drink wine or strong drink, and do not eat anything ritually unclean, for the boy will be a Nazirite to God from the womb until the day he dies.’ ”

⁸Then Manoah prayed to the Lord, “O my Lord, let the man of God whom You sent come again to us, so that he can teach us what we should do for the boy who will be born.”

⁹God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman. She was sitting in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her. ¹⁰The woman hurried and ran to tell her husband, “The man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.”

¹¹So Manoah got up and went after his wife. He came to the man and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?”

He said, “I am.”

¹²Then Manoah said, “Now may your words come true! What will be the boy’s way of life and his work?”

¹³The angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “Your wife must observe everything that I said to her. ¹⁴She must not consume anything that grows on the vine. She must not drink wine or strong drink, and she must not eat anything ritually unclean. She must observe everything that I commanded her.”

¹⁵Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, “Please let us detain you, and let us prepare a young goat for you.”

¹⁶The angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “If I stay, I will not eat your food, but if you want to make an offering to the Lord, you should offer it.” (For Manoah did not know that he was an angel of the Lord.)

¹⁷Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, “What is your name, so that we can honor you when your words come true?”

¹⁸The angel of the Lord said to him, “Why do you ask my name? It is too wonderful.” ¹⁹Manoah took the young goat and the grain offering and offered them to the Lord upon a rock. Then he did a wondrous thing while Manoah and his wife watched. ²⁰When the flame went up from the altar toward the heavens, the angel of the Lord went up in the flames from the altar. Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell face down on the ground. ²¹The angel of the Lord did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was an angel of the Lord.

²²Manoah said to his wife, “We are certainly going to die, for we have seen God.”

²³Yet his wife said to him, “If the Lord wanted to kill us, He would not have taken the burnt offering and grain offering from us. He would not have shown us these things, nor let us hear things such as these at this time.”

²⁴So the woman bore a son, and she called him Samson. The boy grew, and the Lord blessed him. ²⁵The Spirit of the Lord began to move upon him at Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

Samson’s Wedding

14 Samson went down to Timnah and saw a woman from the daughters of the Philistines. ²He came back up and told his father and mother, “I have seen a woman in Timnah from the daughters of the Philistines; now get her for me as a wife.”

³His father and mother said to him, “Are there no women among your relatives, or all of our people, that you are intending to take a wife from among the uncircumcised Philistines?”

Yet Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, for she pleases me well.” ⁴His father and mother did not know that this was from the Lord, for He was seeking an opportunity to act against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines were ruling over Israel.

⁵Samson went down with his father and mother to Timnah. As they came to the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. ⁶Then the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and though unarmed, he tore the lion in two as one might tear a young goat in two. However, he did not tell his father and his mother what he had done. ⁷So Samson went down and spoke with the woman, and she pleased Samson.

⁸After a while, when he returned to take her, he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion. And a swarm of bees and honey were in the carcass of the lion. ⁹He scooped it out into his hands and ate it as he went along. He came to his father and mother and gave some to them, and they also ate. Yet he did not tell them he had scooped the honey out of a lion’s carcass.

¹⁰Then his father went down to the woman. Samson put on a feast there, for this is what young men would do. ¹¹When the Philistines saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him.

¹²Samson said to them, “Let me tell you a riddle. If you can explain it to me within the seven days of the feast, then I will find thirty linen robes and thirty sets of clothes to give you. ¹³However, if you are not able to explain it to me, then you will give me thirty linen robes and thirty sets of clothes.”

They said to him, “Tell us your riddle, so we can hear it.”

¹⁴He said to them,

“Out of the eater came something to eat,
and out of the strong came something sweet.”

They could not explain the riddle after three days.

¹⁵On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, “Trick your groom into telling us the riddle, or we will burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us to steal what we have? Is that not so?”

¹⁶So Samson’s wife wept all over him and said, “You must hate me. You do not love me. You have told a riddle to the young men and did not tell it to me.”

Then he said to her, “I have not told it to my father and mother. Why should I tell it to you?” ¹⁷She wept on him for the seven days of the feast, then on the seventh day he told it to her because she had nagged him. Then she explained the riddle to her people.

¹⁸So on the seventh day before sunset, the men of the city said to Samson,

“What is sweeter than honey,
and what is stronger than a lion?”

Then he said to them,

“If you had not plowed with my heifer,
you would not have solved my riddle.”

¹⁹Then the Spirit of the Lord mightily came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down thirty of their men. He took their clothes and gave them to the ones who had explained the riddle. His anger burned and he went up to his father’s house. ²⁰So Samson’s wife was given to his companion, who had been his best man.

Modern English Version (MEV)

John 1:29-51

The Lamb of God

²⁹The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. ³⁰This is He of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who is preferred before me, for He was before me.’ ³¹I did not know Him, but for this reason I came baptizing with water: so that He might be revealed to Israel.”

³²Then John bore witness, saying, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on Him. ³³I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘The One on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁴I have seen and have borne witness that He is the Son of God.”

The First Disciples

³⁵Again, the next day John was standing with two of his disciples. ³⁶Looking upon Jesus as He walked, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

³⁷The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. ³⁸Then Jesus turned, saw them following, and said to them, “What do you seek?”

And they said to Him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are You staying?”

³⁹Jesus said to them, “Come and see.”

So they came and saw where He stayed and remained with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.

⁴⁰One of the two who heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. ⁴¹He first found his own brother Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means the Christ). ⁴²Then he brought him to Jesus.

When Jesus saw him, He said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).

The Calling of Philip and Nathanael

⁴³The next day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee, and He found Philip, and said to him, “Follow Me.”

⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, as well as the prophets, wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

⁴⁷Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him and said concerning him, “Here is an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.”

⁴⁸Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?”

Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”

⁴⁹Nathanael answered Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

⁵⁰Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” ⁵¹And He said to him, “Truly, truly I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Modern English Version (MEV)

Psalm 102

A Prayer of one afflicted, when he is overwhelmed and pours out his complaint before the Lord.

¹Hear my prayer, O Lord,
and let my cry come unto You.
²Do not hide Your face from me
in the day when I am in trouble;
incline Your ear to me;
in the day when I call answer me quickly.

³For my days are consumed like smoke,
and my bones are burned as a furnace.
⁴My heart is struck down and withered like grass,
so that I forget to eat my bread.
⁵Because of the sound of my groaning
my bones cling to my skin.
⁶I am like an owl of the wilderness,
like a screech owl of the desert.
⁷I stay awake and am
as a sparrow alone upon the housetop.
⁸My enemies reproach me all the day,
and those who taunt me curse my name.
⁹For I have eaten ashes like bread
and mixed my drink with weeping,
¹⁰because of Your indignation and Your wrath,
for You have lifted me up, and cast me down.
¹¹My days are like an evening shadow that vanishes,
and I wither away like grass.

¹²But You, O Lord, shall endure forever enthroned
and Your reputation to all generations.
¹³You shall arise, and have mercy upon Zion,
for the time to favor her,
indeed, the appointed time has come.
¹⁴For Your servants take pleasure in her stones,
and have pity on her dust.
¹⁵So the nations shall fear the name of the Lord,
and all the kings of the earth Your glory.
¹⁶For the Lord shall build up Zion;
He shall appear in His glory.
¹⁷He will regard the prayer of the destitute
and will not despise their prayer.

¹⁸Let this be written for the generation to come,
that a people who shall be created shall praise the Lord.
¹⁹For He has looked down from the height of His sanctuary;
from heaven the Lord looked down on the earth,
²⁰to hear the groaning of the prisoners
and to set free those who are appointed to death,
²¹that they may declare the name of the Lord in Zion
and His praise in Jerusalem;
²²when the peoples are gathered together,
and the kingdoms, to serve the Lord.

²³He has weakened my strength in my midlife;
He has shortened my days.
²⁴I said,
“O my God, do not take me away in the midst of my days—
Your years endure throughout all generations.”
²⁵From before You have laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of Your hands.
²⁶They shall perish, but You shall endure;
indeed, all of them shall wear out like a garment;
like a robe You shall change them,
and they shall pass away,
²⁷but You are the same,
and Your years shall have no end.
²⁸The children of Your servants shall be secure,
and their offspring shall be established before You.

Modern English Version (MEV)

Proverbs 14:15-16

¹⁵The simple believes every word,
but the prudent man considers his steps.

¹⁶A wise man fears and departs from evil,
but the fool rages and is self-confident.

Modern English Version (MEV)

April 30, 2022

04/30/2022 DAB Transcript

Judges 11:1-12:15, John 1:1-28, Psalms 101:1-8, Proverbs 14:13-14

Today is the 30^th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is wonderful to be here as we conclude our fourth month of 12, which means we’re one third of the way through the year. And even as we end this fourth month of the year, we will be beginning the final gospel in the New Testament, the gospel of John when we get there. But first, we are working our way through the book of Judges. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. Judges, chapters 11 and 12 today.

Introduction to the Gospel of John:

Okay. So, this brings us to the opening of the final gospel, the gospel of John. So, we have read Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And those are known as the synoptic Gospels because even though they were written to different audiences the stories are very very similar, and in some cases, word for word the same. And, so, basically as far as the timeline goes, we think of the gospel of Mark being the first gospel written with Matthew following about a decade later, and then Luke somewhere in that same general time and then the gospel of John being the final gospel written, maybe 15 years or more after the gospel of Mark. And of course, some of the letters of the apostle Paul even predate the Gospels. They are the earliest Christian writings that we have. And, so, in terms of time, the gospel of John would be the most recent. And the gospel of John is very different than Matthew, Mark, or Luke. It's…it’s like 90% different from the synoptic Gospels, which gives us an entirely new perspective and context and interpretation of Jesus life and ministry. So, for example, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke one of the central questions that we are being led to as we read those Gospels is Jesus’ question, “who do you say that I am?” Whereas John’s gospel is written to people who already have answered that question and already believe. Of course, John was one of the disciples of Jesus and had seen Jesus in person and knew…well…I mean what we have in the Gospels is only a fraction of what Jesus life and ministry would’ve contained day by day, step-by-step, and John was there taking those steps. So, he had an understanding of the back story and some of that is brought forward for us in the gospel of John. And, so, let’s enjoy this. John is writing this later in its life, and it’s beautiful to behold. And, so, with that we begin. John chapter 1 verse 1 through 28.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we have already talked about moving into the book of John and kind of flying over that and just getting a little bit of an overview of where were going and we’ll have plenty to talk about as we move into the gospel of John.

But in the book of Judges, we have a pretty disturbing story about the judge Jephthah who was the son of a prostitute and so was excluded from his family and run away until the people came under distress. Jephthah was a mighty warrior and so they went and brought him back in made him the leader he became the judge of Israel and went to battle. He just made this vow to the Lord, that whatever came out the front door of his house when he got home if he was victorious, he would sacrifice a burnt offering to the Lord whatever came out the door. And of course, as we know what came out the door was his only child, his daughter, which is a terrifying thing to think about, and it’s supposed to be. That’s the thing. Some of these disruptive things in the Bible are supposed to be disruptive. They’ve been disruptive all along because they shouldn’t have happened. God didn’t ask Jephthah to sacrifice anything in exchange for victory. He didn’t ask for a vow that a human being would be sacrificed. God says the contrary, in the Scriptures. He talks about people’s who sacrificed their children to false gods and how that had never even crossed His mind. One of the things that we’re supposed to be kind of understanding as we move forward through the book of Judges is that everybody’s doing what they think is right in their own eyes. Moses had been a mighty leader. Joshua had been a mighty leader. Now there is no mighty leader and we’re going through centuries before the children of Israel finally want to standardize things under the common rule of the singular king uniting the tribes. And, so, one of the things we see in the times of the judges is the back and forth and up and down and erratic behavior and just the way that they are thinking about things. And we are also to note that although they have abandoned God, God continues to rescue them when they come home. And, so, this story of Jephthah is a story of what Jephthah did, not what God told him to do. And there are plenty of people that just can imagine that this actually happened, that Jephthah actually sacrificed his daughter to God. And, so, it’s sort of made into that she was never able to marry, that she was dedicated to God and to God’s service. And, so, she went on the mountains, and she spent some time alone morning her virginity and so she remained a virgin the rest of her life in the service of the Lord. Maybe so. That’d be great. That’d be a way better ending to the story than that she got sacrificed. It’s just the way that the Bible reads it sounds like Jephthah did exactly what he said he was going to do, which is revolting as it should be. And if we take a good glimpse into the times of the judges, where everybody is doing what is right in their own eyes then we get a good picture of just how sideways things can get, just how good and evil can get blended. And that should be a very unsettling thought because it’s a very unsettling thing. And, so, the story becomes similar to like the story of Lot and the daughters who decided they needed to have children with their father. And often we can do is, you know, get this subtle kind of animosity or distrust for God because a story in the Bible is disturbing. And we can think, like well it’s in the Bible so it’s something that God wanted when the truth is there are all kinds of things in the Bible that God warned against and people went ahead and did. He didn’t want those things, but the will of the people did and it brought all kinds…well…it brought everything that he warned them that it would. And, so, when we encounter a disruptive story, our objective is to normalize it, make it, “okay, that’s how they did things back then.” It’s to be disrupted and to look closely at our own path and where it is going.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and another week. We thank You Father for Your word and another month. We thank You that You have brought us to this point, and we are grateful. And we are learning, and we are growing, and we are becoming rooted and anchored in You and You alone. Come Holy Spirit as we close this month and prepare for next month and what comes next in our story and our adventure of life with You. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning DAB this is Learning to Let Go from North Carolina. I was calling today just to send some love to all the parents who have called in for prayers for their children, underage children dealing with suicidal ideations and cutting, friendship issues, adult children who have strayed from the ways that they were taught, struggling with substance abuse or marital issues or pretty much the gamut. So, parenting is hard. I have one child who’s young and I just feel for all those whose children that we have the best intentions for just have not been able to right themselves yet. So, I want to pray for you and your strength and being there for your children and continuing to uplift them, support them, and love them whether it be from afar or nearby. And I just pray that you remain steadfast in that. I’m also calling for prayer for myself. I am again going through a legal situation that started last year and I’m just believing that it will end soon so that I can move on with my life and that of my child so that we are safe and free of this person that we’ve been dealing with for some time now. So, if you all could just say a prayer for me for that freedom believing that this court situation would remove that person from my life totally. I wish them the best, but I don’t want them tied to me any longer period thank you. Love you. Amen.

Hello, my Daily Audio Bible family. This is God’s tree. I have many branches, but I’m rooted by the word of God. You know sometimes as Saints we try to be perfect and have a perfect faith and we don’t want to show our weaknesses, but we fall short sometimes. I’ve been struggling in my marriage and my relationship, and I’ve been praying and praying and praying and ask God to restore the love in the relationship, but this seems like it never happens. And I think my spirit is showing me that God wants me to be more in love with him. And be truthful it’s hard to really really be in love with God in the level that you want to be in love with somebody and it feels good on a personal level. And, so, I’m asking that you pray that I would develop a stronger loving relationship with God so He’s more important to me than having a physical and intimate relationship here on earth. And I think that’s what God wants to have for me and hopefully He’ll restore my marriage and my relationship, and I ask that you pray for those same things for those who are struggling in their relationship as well, that we have a closer walk with God and he will add to it if we learn to fall in love with Him. It’s just hard when you just don’t have that physical contact. So, continue to pray for my strength as I pray for you and as we walk by faith and not by sight that God would restore all that the enemy has taken away from us. God bless. Love you. This is God’s Tree.

Hey Daily Audio Bible this is Missy from the Midwest. I’m calling with a prayer request. We had a horrific event yesterday in our community. A 10-year-old little girl was murdered on her way home from a relative’s house. The murderer is still at large. The police are searching. I’m just praying specifically that whoever did this would turn themselves in, that it would become unbearable and that they would have to turn themselves in. Would you join me in that? We are praying for peace for this little girl’s family. Her name was Lily, and she was beautiful. And our hearts are broken. Our hearts are broken for our children, her friends, her family. So, please just pray for the healing of our community for the safety of the rest of our children and our citizens and for this person to have to turn themselves in. Thank you, Daily Audio…

Good morning Daily Bible Audio my name is Francoise I am a second time caller and it’s my first year on this platform and I just wanted to pray for…I know yesterday there was a lady who called on the 24^th and she’s praying…asking prayer for her marriage. And I’d like to pray for all the marriages. I’d like to pray for those marriages who are one with God and one with each other and I’d also like to pray for those marriages who are in rough times. I pray for the wisdom of the Lord for patience and for the fire of the Holy Spirit to restore marriages, to change the lives, the hearts of the husbands or wives. I myself sit in a marriage that is in the rough waters yet that is not a fight for me to fight. That battle is for the Lord to take care. I will just have faith. I will love my wife and I will do whatever it takes to glorify the Lord our father God through our Holy Spirit who __ the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray for children of marriages that are going through __ be witnesses of hard trials and tribulations. May we have the heart of the Lord. May our hearts be turned to hearts of flesh. I am very thankful for this platform. I am a first-time member of this platform and I thank you so much for your prayers. And I say that we pray for each other, especially in this times that we’re going through. May God strengthen us as we await for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and as we carry his Holy Spirit that we will do it will be the best portion of ourselves as we carry the Holy Spirit. I pray for unity for restoration for understanding for love…

April 30, 2022

The Daily Audio Bible Reading for Saturday April 30, 2022 (NIV)

Judges 11-12

Jephthah Delivers Israel

11 Now ^(A)Jephthah the Gileadite was ^(B)a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead was the father of Jephthah. ²And Gilead's wife also bore him sons. And when his wife's sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, “You shall not have an inheritance in our father's house, for you are the son of another woman.” ³Then Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of ^(C)Tob, and ^(D)worthless fellows collected around Jephthah and went out with him.

⁴After a time the Ammonites made war against Israel. ⁵And when the Ammonites made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah from the land of ^(E)Tob. ⁶And they said to Jephthah, “Come and be our leader, that we may fight against the Ammonites.” ⁷But Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “Did you not hate me and drive me out of my father's house? Why have you come to me now when you are in distress?” ⁸And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “That is why we have turned to you now, that you may go with us and fight against the Ammonites and ^(F)be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.” ⁹Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, “If you bring me home again to fight against the Ammonites, and the Lord gives them over to me, I will be your head.” ¹⁰And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, ^(G)“The Lord will be witness between us, if we do not do as you say.” ¹¹So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people ^(H)made him head and leader over them. And Jephthah spoke all his words ^(I)before the Lord at ^(J)Mizpah.

¹²Then Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites and said, “What do you have against me, that you have come to me to fight against my land?” ¹³And the king of the Ammonites answered the messengers of Jephthah, ^(K)“Because Israel on coming up from Egypt took away my land, from the ^(L)Arnon to the ^(M)Jabbok and to the Jordan; now therefore restore it peaceably.” ¹⁴Jephthah again sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites ¹⁵and said to him, “Thus says Jephthah: ^(N)Israel did not take away the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites, ¹⁶but when they came up from Egypt, Israel went through the wilderness ^(O)to the Red Sea and ^(P)came to Kadesh. ¹⁷^(Q)Israel then sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, ‘Please let us pass through your land,’ ^(R)but the king of Edom would not listen. And they sent also to the king of Moab, but he would not consent. So Israel ^(S)remained at Kadesh.

¹⁸“Then they journeyed through the wilderness and ^(T)went around the land of Edom and the land of Moab and ^(U)arrived on the east side of the land of Moab and ^(V)camped on the other side of the Arnon. But they did not enter the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the boundary of Moab. ¹⁹^(W)Israel then sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, king of Heshbon, and Israel said to him, ‘Please let us pass through your land to our country,’ ²⁰but Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory, so Sihon gathered all his people together and encamped at Jahaz and fought with Israel. ²¹And the Lord, the God of Israel, gave Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they defeated them. So Israel took possession of all the land of the Amorites, who inhabited that country. ²²And they took possession of all the territory of the Amorites from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the wilderness to the Jordan. ²³So then the Lord, the God of Israel, dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel; and are you to take possession of them? ²⁴Will you not possess what ^(X)Chemosh your god gives you to possess? ^(Y)And all that the Lord our God has dispossessed before us, we will possess. ²⁵Now are you any better than ^(Z)Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever contend against Israel, or did he ever go to war with them? ²⁶While Israel lived ^(AA)in Heshbon and its villages, and ^(AB)in Aroer and its villages, and in all the cities that are on the banks of the Arnon, 300 years, why did you not deliver them within that time? ²⁷I therefore have not sinned against you, and you do me wrong by making war on me. ^(AC)The Lord, the Judge, decide this day between the people of Israel and the people of Ammon.” ²⁸But the king of the Ammonites did not listen to the words of Jephthah that he sent to him.

Jephthah's Tragic Vow

²⁹^(AD)Then the Spirit of the Lord was upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. ³⁰And Jephthah ^(AE)made a vow to the Lord and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, ³¹then whatever^[a] comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites ^(AF)shall be the Lord's, and ^(AG)I will offer it^[b] up for a burnt offering.” ³²So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the Lord gave them into his hand. ³³And he struck them from Aroer to the neighborhood of ^(AH)Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim, with a great blow. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.

³⁴Then Jephthah came to his home at ^(AI)Mizpah. And behold, his daughter came out to meet him ^(AJ)with tambourines and with dances. She was his only child; besides her he had neither son nor daughter. ³⁵And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, ^(AK)and I cannot take back my vow.” ³⁶And she said to him, “My father, you have opened your mouth to the Lord; do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites.” ³⁷So she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: leave me alone two months, that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity, I and my companions.” ³⁸So he said, “Go.” Then he sent her away for two months, and she departed, she and her companions, and wept for her virginity on the mountains. ³⁹And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, ^(AL)who did with her according to his vow that he had made. She had never known a man, and it became a custom in Israel ⁴⁰that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.

Jephthah's Conflict with Ephraim

12 ^(AM)The men of Ephraim were called to arms, and they crossed to Zaphon and said to Jephthah, “Why did you cross over to fight against the Ammonites and did not call us to go with you? We will burn your house over you with fire.” ²And Jephthah said to them, “I and my people had a great dispute with the Ammonites, and when I called you, you did not save me from their hand. ³And when I saw that you would not save me, ^(AN)I took my life in my hand and crossed over against the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into my hand. Why then have you come up to me this day to fight against me?” ⁴Then Jephthah gathered all the men of Gilead and fought with Ephraim. And the men of Gilead struck Ephraim, because they said, ^(AO)“You are fugitives of Ephraim, you Gileadites, in the midst of Ephraim and Manasseh.” ⁵And the Gileadites captured ^(AP)the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. And when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, “Let me go over,” the men of Gilead said to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” When he said, “No,” ⁶they said to him, “Then say Shibboleth,” and he said, “Sibboleth,” for he could not pronounce it right. Then they seized him and slaughtered him at ^(AQ)the fords of the Jordan. At that time 42,000 of the Ephraimites fell.

⁷Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then Jephthah the Gileadite died and was buried in his city in Gilead.^[c]

Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon

⁸After him Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel. ⁹He had thirty sons, and thirty daughters he gave in marriage outside his clan, and thirty daughters he brought in from outside for his sons. And he judged Israel seven years. ¹⁰Then Ibzan died and was buried at Bethlehem.

¹¹After him Elon the Zebulunite judged Israel, and he judged Israel ten years. ¹²Then Elon the Zebulunite died and was buried at Aijalon in the land of Zebulun.

¹³After him Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite judged Israel. ¹⁴He had forty ^(AR)sons and thirty grandsons, who ^(AS)rode on seventy donkeys, and he judged Israel eight years. ¹⁵Then Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite died and was buried at Pirathon in the land of Ephraim, in the hill country of the Amalekites.

Footnotes:

Judges 11:31 Or whoever
Judges 11:31 Or him
Judges 12:7 Septuagint; Hebrew in the cities of Gilead

Cross references:

English Standard Version (ESV)

John 1:1-28

The Word Became Flesh

1 ^(A)In the beginning was ^(B)the Word, and ^(C)the Word was with God, and ^(D)the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³^(E)All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴^(F)In him was life,^[a] and ^(G)the life was the light of men. ⁵^(H)The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

⁶There was a man ^(I)sent from God, whose name was ^(J)John. ⁷He came as a ^(K)witness, to bear witness about the light, ^(L)that all might believe through him. ⁸^(M)He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

⁹^(N)The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. ¹⁰He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet ^(O)the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to ^(P)his own,^[b] and ^(Q)his own people^[c] ^(R)did not receive him. ¹²But to all who did receive him, ^(S)who believed in his name, ^(T)he gave the right ^(U)to become ^(V)children of God, ¹³who ^(W)were born, ^(X)not of blood ^(Y)nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

¹⁴And ^(Z)the Word ^(AA)became flesh and ^(AB)dwelt among us, ^(AC)and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son^[d] from the Father, full of ^(AD)grace and ^(AE)truth. ¹⁵(^(AF)John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ^(AG)‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶For from ^(AH)his fullness we have all received, ^(AI)grace upon grace.^[e] ¹⁷For ^(AJ)the law was given through Moses; ^(AK)grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸^(AL)No one has ever seen God; ^(AM)the only God,^[f] who is at the Father's side,^[g] ^(AN)he has made him known.

The Testimony of John the Baptist

¹⁹And this is the ^(AO)testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ^(AP)“Who are you?” ²⁰^(AQ)He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” ²¹And they asked him, “What then? ^(AR)Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you ^(AS)the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” ²²So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” ²³He said, “I am ^(AT)the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight^[h] the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”

²⁴(Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) ²⁵They asked him, ^(AU)“Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” ²⁶John answered them, ^(AV)“I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, ²⁷even ^(AW)he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” ²⁸These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

Footnotes:

John 1:4 Or was not any thing made. That which has been made was life in him
John 1:11 Greek to his own things; that is, to his own domain, or to his own people
John 1:11 People is implied in Greek
John 1:14 Or only One, or unique One
John 1:16 Or grace in place of grace
John 1:18 Or the only One, who is God; some manuscripts the only Son
John 1:18 Greek in the bosom of the Father
John 1:23 Or crying out, ‘In the wilderness make straight

Cross references:

English Standard Version (ESV)

Psalm 101

I Will Walk with Integrity

A Psalm of David.

101 I will sing of ^(A)steadfast love and justice;
to you, O Lord, I will make music.
²I will ^(B)ponder the way ^(C)that is blameless.
Oh when will you ^(D)come to me?
I will ^(E)walk with ^(F)integrity of heart
within my house;
³I will not set before my eyes
anything ^(G)that is worthless.
I hate the work of those who ^(H)fall away;
it shall not cling to me.
⁴^(I)A perverse heart shall be far from me;
I will ^(J)know nothing of evil.

⁵Whoever slanders his neighbor ^(K)secretly
I will ^(L)destroy.
Whoever has a ^(M)haughty look and an ^(N)arrogant heart
I will not endure.

⁶I will look with favor on the faithful in the land,
that they may dwell with me;
he who walks in ^(O)the way that is blameless
shall minister to me.

⁷No one who ^(P)practices deceit
shall dwell in my house;
no one who utters lies
shall ^(Q)continue before my eyes.

⁸^(R)Morning by morning I will destroy
all the wicked in the land,
^(S)cutting off all ^(T)the evildoers
from ^(U)the city of the Lord.

English Standard Version (ESV)

Proverbs 14:13-14

¹³Even in laughter the heart may ache,
and ^(A)the end of joy may be ^(B)grief.
¹⁴The backslider in heart will be ^(C)filled with the fruit of his ways,
and ^(D)a good man will be filled with the fruit of his ways.

Cross references:

English Standard Version (ESV)

April 29, 2022

4/29/2022 DAB Transcript

Judges 9:22-10:18, Luke 24:13-53, Psalm 100:1-5, Proverbs 14:11-12

Today is the 29th day of April, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you today, as we, man, as we take the next step for the end of this month right, we’re close. Tomorrow’s the last day of the month. But also, as we do what we do, no matter what week or month it is, the next step forward in the Scriptures and our next step leads us back into the Book of Judges. We have spent a couple of days going through the story of Gideon as a judge of Israel who redeemed Israel and we witnessed his death and then the assassination of his sons and the one remaining son that, sort of takes over, his name is Abimelech and we’ll continue with that story today. Judges chapter 9 verse 22 through 10 verse 18.

Commentary:

Okay so, in the Book of Judges, we see that Abimelech, who was the son of Gideon, who had assassinated and murdered his 70 brothers so that he could be in control, finds his end today, when an upper millstone is dropped from a tower and smashes his head and it was a woman who dropped it and he didn’t want to be known as the guy that was killed by a woman in the time that they are in and so, his servant finished the job and killed him. And so, he reaches his end. And once again we see, just kind of how erratic things were in the times of the judges, the times between Joshua’s leadership and the first appointment of an actual king of Israel. And that is actually something to notice as we go through the Book of Judges, just the time, the way that it was, the erratic and disruptive nature of things, the way that the Bible describes it is that everybody did what was right in their own eyes and what we see being right in their eyes quite often, is the worship of other gods, the gods of the regions that were around them. The peoples that were around them. The very thing that they had been warned over and over and over about. They don’t seem to be getting the lesson and that becomes a lesson for us, because how many things are we stiff-necked and hardhearted about and we’re just getting the lesson, and so we’re stuck.

Then, we move to the Gospel of Luke and we concluded the Gospel of Luke today, which means that we have concluded Matthew, Mark and Luke, the three, well, the first three Gospels, but the Gospels known as the synoptic Gospels. And of course, the story ends with Jesus showing up on a walk, to a place called Emmaus. It’s such an interesting story, such an interesting way that Jesus was spending His time after His resurrection. Coming to his friends secretly, they don’t recognize Him. He teaches them, then they asked Him to stay and He’s like, I can’t stay I gotta go. He stays with them and breaks bread and then their eyes are open and they realize, this is the resurrected Christ and poof, Jesus disappears. And then He reappears. It’s almost as if there’s a lesson there, that He is teaching one of the final lessons that He may be teaching to his disciples, and that is, He is there, whether they can see Him or not. And so, as we bring to a close, the third of the four Gospels and prepare to enter the final gospel tomorrow, may our hearts be overwhelmed with joy, He is with us whether we can see Him or not. He is within us, more intimately intertwined with us, then if we could see Him. He is a part of us and we are a part of Him and we are a part of each other and He is the head of the body that we are a part of, and we all belong here and everyone matters.

Prayer:

And so, Jesus, we love You and we thank You for revealing this, showing us that there are other ways to look at things, that we don’t just have to follow the course of the river of humanity, wherever it is leading, that we can actually follow You and You will navigate us where You are going, and that is where we want to be. So, come Holy Spirit and seal what we have read in Matthew, Mark and Luke into our hearts, irreversibly changing us. We pray, in the mighty name of the risen Savior. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com, that’s home base, that is certainly where to dive in and find out what’s going on around here. You can do that right in the palm of your hand if you have the Daily Audio Bible app, which is free and you can download from the App Store that works with whatever smart device that you may have. So, just search for Daily Audio Bible and download that and enjoy. Check out the Community Section, that is where you can get connected, different links to the different social media channels that we participate in. That is also where the Prayer Wall lives, which is a resource just for us, here in this community, a place that we can go and ask for prayer, a place that we can go and offer prayer, a place that we can follow each other’s stories and be together in, in prayer, so that’s why it’s called the Prayer Wall. So, check that out, it’s in the Community Section.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. Thank you, humbly and profoundly for your partnership. There is a link at dailyaudiobible.com. If it’s if you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, TN 37174.

And of course, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, that’s the little red button up at the top, or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that’s it for today, I’m Brian, I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here, tomorrow.

Prayer and Encouragements:

Hello DAB-C family, it’s Anderson here from South Africa. It’s my first time calling in and I’m calling in with a prayer request. I’m looking for a job and I’ve just returned from the Department of Tourism to submit my job application forms. And I’m praying in to ask you to stand in with me, prayer on this. I have been looking for a job for a while now. And I’m asking for God’s favor in this. It would mean a lot for, for my family and I. And thank you family, I appreciate you all. And it’s such a blessing to be a part of this community. Have a good day everyone, thank you. Bye.

Hi, this is Becky, this is the first time I’m calling in and I just wanted to say, quickly, thank you to Brian and his family for everything you do. And I listen to the prayer requests daily and I pray for you all. And sometimes situations stay in my mind for longer but this is the first time I’ve been prompted to call in. This message is for Aaron who phoned in his, well it was aired, his prayer request on the 8th of April. You said on the 24th of December you’d been diagnosed with Leukemia. And then later you’d found fungi lesions on the brain and that you had to stop chemo. And I just wanted to say to you not for me personally but I’m sure many people, what a huge and incredible witness you are, what a man of faith. In the light of this situation and everything that’s happening to you, you’re not angry or bitter. You say, you know God has a plan for you. And you’re talking about your own life but you say, if it’s God’s will and you accept that no matter what that means. That’s huge, huge faith and an example and I think that we should all follow God’s will for our life. And I’m personally am praying for healing for you, as long as that’s in God’s will. And I feel the need to say it’s gonna be okay. I don’t know what that means but Aaron, it’s all gonna be okay.

Hey DAB family, this is Tammy from the Adirondacks. I’m calling in and asking my DAB family, brother and sisters to, can you please just pray for me. I spend so much time over thinking this journey that I’m on with the Lord. And I just, overthink, am I spending enough time in His word, am I pleasing to Him. I’m my husbands care giver and praise God, I’m a year and two months today actually, it’s the 25th in remission from my ovarian cancer. And God has answered so many of my prayers and I know He’s with me and I know He’s for me. But sometimes I just can’t get it to sink in. I don’t know if any of this is making any sense to anybody. And sometimes, I love my husband but being a care giver is hard. So, I over think and I feel guilty about that and I just want my brain to rest and I just want to rest in the peace that the Lord has given to me or trying to give to me. And know that I am His child and He loves me and He is for me. And even if I make a mistake, I can still come to Him and stop comparing my life to others because my life not like other peoples. And I know all this, it’s just the days of over thinking. I love you all and I pray for you all and I just thank you for your prayers. Love you, God Bless.

Hi family, my beautiful family. This is Jesus’s Worshiper from Del Rae Beach. And I wanted to pray for Josh. For Josh, he’s the young man and his mom, her heart is broken that he might go to jail and I would like to call in for him because I was in his place. My grandmother told me about God and she was bringing me to the church and she was the church. But I wanted to be free from that, I thought that it was a chain that I need to follow some goals and I didn’t really want to do that. But God had mercy on me, even I didn’t deserve it, He showed up and He rescued me in the time of the need. So, I pray and I know that those things are happening to him. So, he will return because this

This is Madison from California. I wanted to pray for the mom who is asking for prayer for her son, Josh. She was asking for God to have great mercy on her son who has been caught up in some things and it sounds like might be, potentially, looking to jail time. I just wanted to pray for you and your son. I have a Josh in my life who also needs great mercy from God. And I’m convinced that it is in God’s will to bring His children home to Him through great mercies, like the one that you’re asking for, for your son. And that one I’m asking for, for my friend. So, Jesus, I just ask that you would have mercy on this young man, who has been caught up in some trouble. I pray that despite any shame or fear, You would speak so directly to his heart. I pray that You would reassure this young man and his mom, that you are with him, regardless of what he’s done. And I pray that You would demonstrate such a great mercy, that it would become a testimony for this young man. That his faith would be so ignited because of the great mercies You have in store. But Lord, above all, I just thank You that You promised to be with us no matter what. You promised to take…

Judges 19-20

A Levite and His Concubine

The Children of Israel Punish the Benjamites

John 3:22-4:3

Jesus and John the Baptist

He Who Comes From Heaven

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

Psalm 104:24-35

Proverbs 14:22-23

Judges 17-18

Micah’s Idols

The Danites Settle in Laish

Footnotes:

John 3:1-21

Jesus and Nicodemus

Footnotes:

Psalm 104:1-24

Psalm 104

Proverbs 14:20-21

Judges 15-16

Samson’s Revenge

Samson and Delilah

The Death of Samson

Footnotes:

John 2

The Wedding at Cana

The Cleansing of the Temple(A)

Jesus Knows All Men

Footnotes:

Cross references:

Psalm 103

Psalm 103

A Psalm of David.

Proverbs 14:17-19

Judges 13-14

The Birth of Samson

Samson’s Wedding

John 1:29-51

The Lamb of God

The First Disciples

The Calling of Philip and Nathanael

Psalm 102

Psalm 102

A Prayer of one afflicted, when he is overwhelmed and pours out his complaint before the Lord.

Proverbs 14:15-16

Judges 11-12

Jephthah Delivers Israel

Jephthah's Tragic Vow

Jephthah's Conflict with Ephraim

Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon

Footnotes:

Cross references:

John 1:1-28

The Word Became Flesh

The Testimony of John the Baptist

Footnotes:

Cross references:

Psalm 101

I Will Walk with Integrity

A Psalm of David.

Cross references:

Proverbs 14:13-14

Cross references:

The Cleansing of the Temple^(A)