A Walk Through The Word

Deuteronomy 34:1 - Joshua 2:24, Luke 13:22-14:6, Psalms 79:1-13, Proverbs 12:26

Today is the 10^th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian and it’s a…it’s a joy, Its an honor to be here with you today. Today…today’s kind of a big day. Today is Good Friday. It’s a day that we commemorate the death of Jesus our Savior. It’s kind of one of the darkest days on the Christian calendar. It's…it’s a somber day but we’ll talk about that more in a little bit. Today is also the 100^th day of the year if you can believe it. 100 days we’ve been journeying together, and in our reading today we will finish the book of Deuteronomy which means we will complete the Torah. And we will also be saying goodbye to somebody that we’ve been journeying with for quite a while, Moses and entering a new book, Joshua and a completely new season, a completely new era. Actually, in the Old Testament like we’ve been mostly in the wilderness since we began this year and now, we’re about to cross over the Jordan into the Promised Land leaving the wilderness behind, which could not be a more appropriate metaphor for Good Friday. And even as we leave the Pentateuch or the Torah, like I mentioned yesterday, we’ve got a brand-new, very very large update to the Daily Audio Bible app. And as we move through this day. If we’ve been kind of checking off the days as listened, as we’ve gone through the year this far, we will…we will complete the first section of the Bible, the Pentateuch, the Torah. And the app will tell us, will show us we’ve achieved that, we’ve moved through that and we can see the achievements, we can see the sections of the Bible that we’re moving through right now and the ones that we will be moving through and the app will now show us kind of where we are on this journey. So, make sure to update that. But we’ll get to that soon enough. Let’s conclude the book of Deuteronomy and then we’ll talk a little bit about the book of Joshua before diving into it for a couple of chapters. But we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Deuteronomy chapter 34.

Introduction to the book of Joshua:

Okay. So, that concludes the book of Deuteronomy. That concludes the Torah or the Pentateuch. And, so, in just a minute we’ll begin the book of Joshua and we’ll see that…well…Joshua kinda picks up right where Deuteronomy leaves off. But We’ll see that God doesn’t waste any time affirming His promise to Joshua and then Joshua doesn’t waste any time preparing the people to do what they been waiting for like almost since the beginning of the Bible. Like finally, here we are with the ability to cross the Jordan River again and enter the Promised Land. And by now, you can imagine the people’s minds, but even in our own minds we’ve been moving toward this place that’s almost mythic, the Promised Land, this land promised to Abraham and Isaac and then Jacob over all of these generations and this hope that was a thread through all of their formation and all of their slave years. I mean this promise of this land and this God that was choosing them and guided the Exodus into their freedom in the wilderness. This was the hope they were holding on to, the hope of this land that would be theirs. So, we are in fact about to leave the wilderness portion of the story and then leave that kind of in the rearview mirror…mirror as we move across the Jordan into the Promised Land. And it’s like we’ve spent a lot of time in the wilderness now because we spend a lot of time in the wilderness in our lives. But the wilderness for the children of Israel, at least as we’ve read through the Bible taught the people several things - who God is, who they are and where they’re going. And that seems to parallel what the wilderness can teach us if we’ll let it. And, so, they’re gonna cross the Jordan, but we’ll soon see that they don't…they don’t just pack up their bags, cross over the Jordan River, move into the land, and just start building cities. They’re gonna have to contend for this promise. They’re going to embark on a mission with God and God is going to instruct them in very counterintuitive ways at times, which is not unlike our own life as we follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our choices, in our decisions. And, so, the Bible will continue to read back to us our own lives through the lives of the people who have gone before us. And, so, let’s dive in. Joshua chapters 1 and 2.

Commentary:

Okay. So, today is Good Friday. In our reading from Luke today. Jesus talked about entering by the narrow gate. Jesus told us that there’s a narrow path that leads to life that few find and we’re seeking that path. That’s why we’re here every day. But today, today, this 100^th day of the year, Good Friday, this is one of the darkest days of the year. A lot of times we might go to a Good Friday service in the evening or whatever and obviously most of these kinds of events, so strange, but have…have moved into the virtual world, or we’ll just kind of blow by it all and just skip to Sunday morning, all the festivities of Easter and all of the pretty dresses, flowers and chocolate and all the things that kinda go with that celebration. And again, this is gonna be a different year, a little different than we’ve ever experienced before. But Good Friday, today is the day that we commemorate the death of Jesus and the way to…to practice this appropriately is that that’s what this day means. It doesn’t mean Sunday. It means today Jesus was nailed to a cross. We can’t even imagine. Like it’s hard to even fathom. Although there are films stuff that depict all of this very well it’s hard to fathom being there having followed Him, like if you put yourself in the position of a disciple, which is what we are friends. If put ourselves in the position of the people who were there, who had walked to Jerusalem with Jesus, who had run away and abandon Him in the garden of Gethsemane, who were sitting around the margins waiting to see what was gonna happen, expecting that something supernatural, something big might happen and that Jesus would emerge victorious even though He had said otherwise. To face the reality of seeing Him beaten so badly, swollen so badly, bruised so awfully, bloodied so horribly, wearing a crown of thorns, but this is…this is the one you put your faith and hope in. And then to watch him be laid down on a crucifix and hammered to the crucifix with nails attaching His body to the cross and then raised up for everyone to see and ridicule. What…I mean…what are the words? How…how…what words can we use to put ourselves in that position? Like, how…how…what…how do you describe the indescribable there and just to hear Him panting, to hear Him gasping, to see blood dripping from the side of His mouth, maybe. To see Him bleeding out, to see Him suffering. Yeah. What do you say to that? And then to hear Him cry out, “my God, why have you forsaken me?” And then to hear him cry out, “it is accomplished. It is finished.” And…and then and then to see his head drop as His Spirit departs, like as He dies. Then He’s just…He’s hanging there. His corpse is just still hanging from the cross. He’s dead and then permissions are granted to have this body. And, so, somebody has to pull the nails out, right? And somebody has to take the body down and wrap it up. And all hope is lost. Like it seems like all is lost here. And because of the festivities of…of the holiday they warp him up and He gets put into this tomb and that’s kinda Good Friday ends because…because Jesus laid in that tomb. And yes, indeed hope is not lost. Like we will go through this process and we will rejoice on Sunday but so often we don’t pause here on Friday and realize He was dead, not somebody we don’t know. Someone who knows us better than we know ourselves died and that death was to eradicate what kept us separate from God, sin. And, so, on this Good Friday we sit with that. We allow that to be a part of what we think about today. We allow these thoughts to begin to fuel gratitude within us that will build us to the moment that we can truly rejoice at the resurrection that we will commemorate on Sunday.

Prayer:

Jesus our worship is to You and You alone. Our gratitude…our hearts are broken in this moment if we will let them be that it had to come to this, but also that You wouldn’t abandon us. You wouldn’t let us go. You loved us. When we were still Your enemies You loved us. So, forgive us. We didn’t know. And so often we’re not paying attention to what we’re doing. We love You and we reach for You, You are our only hope.

Song:

Forgive Us – The Many

We try, we fail
Do too little too late
We wish we could walk away

We hurt. We’re hurt
Nothing seems to work.
We don’t know what to say

Forgive us
Forgive us.
We know not what we do.
Be with us
Be with us.
We don’t know what to do.

What’s wrong. What’s right.
Hard to see without sight.
Blindly we come to You

Forgive us
Forgive us.
We know not what we do.
Be with us
Be with us.
We don’t know what to do.

We don’t know how to pray here.
stay here.
All we hope is You’re here.
Help us
Seek Justice.
Love Mercy.
Walk humbly, here.

Forgive us
Forgive us.
We know not what we do.
Be with us
Be with us.
We don’t know what to do.

Deuteronomy 33:1-29, Luke 13:1-21, Psalms 78:65-72, Proverbs 12:25

Today is the 9^th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you today as we take the next step forward in the Scriptures and the next step forward in this week. This is a week that’s known as holy week and it leads us to Easter. And, so, on this day, this Thursday, this Maundy Thursday as it’s known, we take time to commemorate to consider that Jesus had a last supper, like the last meal, right? The last meal before He would suffer. And at that meal He would disrobe and get down on his knees and wash the filth from the feet of His disciples setting about a precedent that is supposed to be our normal, one in which we step down and understand that the position here of our heart and of our lives is to be the servant, to wash the filth from the feet of those around us, as it were. And, so, that's…that’s today and that’s kind of what we put in our hearts today as we move through this week. And, so, let’s do that. Let’s have that in our hearts as me move through the Scriptures today and into our day. So, we’re reading from the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, which we will conclude tomorrow on Good Friday and move into the next book, which is called Joshua and really the next generation, the next era of the story that we’ve been telling from the beginning, the origin story and the formation story of the ancient Hebrew people that’s found in the Hebrew Scriptures. And today Moses’s will pronounce some final blessings. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Deuteronomy chapter 33.

Commentary:

Okay. So, Jesus said a number of things as we read through the 13^th chapter of Luke today and all of it is so poignant for the time of the year that we’re in as we’re moving toward the end of the Lenten season and toward Easter. And I’ve mentioned lent a few times along the way. It’s just a…it’s a season on the Christian calendar that lets us sit with the sin of our lives and what it cost to bring us freedom, but it’s also a time of fasting usually. It's…it’s a time of openness before God. The way that it’s supposed to work is that we sit before God, wide-open. “Lord, I sit humble, I sit repentant. I realize what you have done for me and I realize how I’ve taken that gift and try to make something of it out of my life. I’m sitting here open before you. Whatever you want to remove from my life, nothing is off limits. Whatever you want to put into my life that I need, to have eyes to see and ears to hear and walk the narrow path, then insert that into my life. Whatever needs to be arranged in my priorities however they have been pulled out of whack because the chaos of life just does that to me, I’m inviting you in this season to…to rearrange my life however it needs to look so that as I celebrate resurrection, and as I realize that I am a participant in resurrection that I go out of this season reoriented to the truth of who I am because of your sacrifice.” That’s basically what we’ve been doing for this season and that’s coming to a close on Saturday and then we celebrate Easter and resurrection morning. So, what words can we hear from Jesus that aims us in this direction from the gospel of Luke today. First, He talks about a couple of incidents that I…the word viral is the word that I’ve been using for the last few years because it’s something that we can understand. Some things happened that were bad things and they went viral because word-of-mouth spread all over the countryside. This is the stuff people were speaking of. Basically, in the temple, Pilate had his eyes on some people that were seen as zealots, kind of a version of terrorists for their day and they were following him around and this stuff still happens today, and they took him out. They took him out in the temple and their blood, because they were killed, he was interspersed with the sacrifice that was happening and this was like a very big deal. Kind of stuff that people would be talking about. Another was the tower in Siloam fell and 18 people died. And like, I’m thinking to last month, you know, we had lots…we had tornadoes come through here and roughly the same amount of people died. And, so, you can see kind of the kind of impact that has on a community. And, so, people are talking about it. We have a lot more advanced technology and different ways of talking about it now but people were talking about it. Jesus response to these things is, “were they worse people? Like is that why this happened, they were worse people?” And He denounces that, “no I tell you.” So, no this didn’t happen to them because they were worse people. But then He does something interesting, He doesn’t then explain why it did happen, which is like the cosmic question of the ages. He didn’t go there at all. He simply said, “repent, repent. Unless you repent, you’re all gonna perish in some way. There is no one way greater than another way and it’s not because of the how bad these people were that tragedy fell upon them. We’re all headed for the same place unless we repent.” That could not possibly be more poignant to our lives in this week where we are observing Easter. Repent. Remember that you are ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Remember that there is no way for you to save yourself but in repenting. And repent is…it’s a heavy word because it should be. But what it means at its core is that you have become willing to reverse course, that you are willing to change your mind, that you are willing to allow change to happen within you that changes the trajectory of your path. So, Jesus says, “do you think that these Galileans were more sinful than all the other Galileans, because they suffered these things. No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as well.” Next, Jesus told…tells a parable about a barren fig tree that…that the owner of the vineyard wanted to cut down because it had gone for years without bearing any fruit. And the gardener comes and says, “let me work with it. Give it one more year. Let me work with it and see if we can’t get this to bear fruit in the next year.” And Jesus is showing us the patients, the kindness of God as we move toward repentance. So, yes He’s calling us to repent but He’s also giving us a glimpse into the fact that our Father has been cultivating the soil all around us and feeding it and making it nourishing out of His patients and kindness when we should’ve been cut down long ago. And all this disruption that we’ve been facing, all the stuff that we’ve been shaking our fist at the sky, all the sudden we realize God has been doing these things. He’s been disrupting the soil around us and feeding it and nourishing it so that one day we could repent and one day we could bear fruit for His kingdom. The very next scene is Jesus in this synagogue and there’s a woman and she’s been bent over for 18 years. That’s our story, my friends. Life has doubled us over. We’ve been walking around bent at the waist, looking at the ground with our arms behind us trying to make it through but all we see is the ground before us. We don’t have eyes to see. And here’s Jesus saying, “straighten up. Stand up straight. You’ve got this. Stand up straight. Even if this is on the wrong day, even if this is breaking the rules, stand up straight. I have been cultivating the soil all around you for so long so that you could come to this moment where you can change your mind, where you could repent. Now, stand up straight. You don’t have to be in this bondage anymore.” And the thing about the story of Jesus healing this woman is that the synagogue people were mad. They were like, “there’s six other days to do this. Don’t come over here on this day and try to get healed.” And Jesus calls out the hypocrisy, the same kind of hypocrisy we display when we see God moving in ways that we don’t understand or through people that we do not agree with. And Jesus just doesn’t seem to give a care at all. So, we can deduce then that doing of the will of God to bring freedom and healing will not abide by the rules that we’ve made, the box that we’ve made for God to dwell in. He has no interest. He will heal and restore as He pleases no matter what we think about it. And then He ends with, “what is the kingdom like? How do I describe the kingdom?” And He describes it like a mustard seed, a little tiny seed the grows up into a tree and birds can build nests…nests in that tree or it’s like a woman who put Levin in 50 pounds of flour until it was all mixed in, which will completely change the composition of whatever is made with that flour. So, there’s a lot for us here today. Some of the struggles that you may have been going with may need to be reinterpreted. Maybe your Father has been gardening. Maybe He’s been cultivating the soil all around you so that you might come to a sense, a moment of clarity where you can repent and wake up and realize you don’t have to be stranded doubled over with your face to the ground anymore. You can stand up tall and straight and be the light of the world that you were created to be. And that might get you in hot water with some people who don’t understand you or understand what you’re doing. They may even reject you or come against you in some way, but that’s just because you’re not obeying their rules. But once you’ve stood up straight and have eyes to see, and you can begin to see this kingdom that is thriving and growing up all around us then you stop caring about those sorts of things. You realize that the darkness is always going to try to negotiate in some way to diminish the light because the light exposes what’s in the dark.

Prayer:

Father, so much here just for the way that we should be in this world and we thank You for the gift of it arriving right here at this time where we contemplate You living all of this out by having this Last Supper and breaking this bread and saying “this is my body that is broken for You” and passing the cup and saying “this is the cup of salvation” and lowering Yourself before Your friends and washing their feet. This day alone gives us an entire trajectory for our lives where we should be aiming, and it gives us permission to walk that path. And, so, come Holy Spirit forgive us for all of fear of stepping out of the boat and onto the water and walking with You. We’ve been too busy on the shore trying to stay with the pack, trying to stay with everybody else but the thing is, You’re inviting us into the deep. You are transforming us, and we believe that. And, so, come Holy Spirit we pray into all that we’ve read and all that we’ve discussed today we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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And, you know, we’re talking about it being Holy Week and today’s, you know, Maundy Thursday, a day celebrating the last supper. Tomorrow is Good Friday and we commemorate and observe the…the crucifixion of Jesus’s death on the cross. And then we’ll move through Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday and it might look a little different this year than in any other year. I know it’s gonna look different than any other year than I can remember. The world is trying to go virtual and yet we’ve been virtual all long for these 15 years. And, so, we’ll be here. We’ll be moving the next step forward to the Scriptures, but we’ll be here together as a community commemorating these events and focusing and aiming our hearts in the directions that we should be contemplating on. So, I don’t suppose I’m any less looking forward to moving through this. It’s the most important celebration we have as believers in Jesus. And, so, I’m excited that we can continue our journey forward together as a community and observe Good Friday and Easter Sunday together like…like we always do.

Tomorrow’s also…I mean its Good Friday, but it’s also kind of a special day in this community. So, like a couple days ago is soft launched a major, major huge update, like a six month long huge update to the Daily Audio Bible app and infrastructure, one that finally brings us to a place that we been dreaming of getting to for like nearly 5 years and that's…that’s not an understatement, like that’s how long it’s been and just kind of building up this platform centered around the rhythm that we have is a community here. So, tomorrow where gonna reach a milestone. Tomorrow we will finish the Torah or the Pentateuch, and now if you have the latest update to the app and if you don’t, you should get it right away, like it’s gonna stabilize so many things. But built into this, if you’ve been kind of checking off the days that you’ve listened to as we move through the year, if you’ve been checking them off then tomorrow we’ll finish the Pentateuch and within the new app you’ll find…like you’re gonna get a badge. It’s gonna tell you you’ve achieved this. And, so, like in the upper left-hand corner of the app, the little drawer icon in the app, when you click that drawer icon after you’ve updated to the new app, you’ll see a new line. It’s called achievements. And if you click that you can see your own personal progress as we’re moving through the different sections of the Bible. So, you can see the sections that we’re in and where we are in them. The sections…the sections that are yet to come and those that haven’t begun yet. But it just helps us see where we are in the story, see how we’re moving through the Scriptures and every time we reach one of these milestones or these piles of rocks as the Bible calls them we can commemorate the fact that we’ve moved through another section and we’ve achieved completion of that section and the app will show us that we’ve done that by giving us the badge. So, if you’ve been checking off those days as we go through them, then yeah, we’re set to earn the first badges tomorrow. So, the newest latest version of the app is 1.1.40. And you can go to your app store, whether that is, you know, an iOS device, Apple device or its an Android device, download the latest version. That brings a huge amount of stability, like really the responsiveness of the app should be significant. We’ve worked for a couple of years after launching the first version of the app to get our feet under us and learn, you know, how to expand and contract and how to grow. And some of that work, it’s been long long labor. And, so, now we’re here and starting to see some of the fruit of what we’d dreamed of in the first place, and continuing to build the app to be sort of the community center, the hub of what we do here as a community around the Global Campfire. So, enough said about that, that’s coming tomorrow but you should update your app to the latest version because that’s paving the way for a lot of technology in the future. So, check that out.

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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.

Deuteronomy 32:28-52, Luke 12:35-59, Psalms 78:56-64, Proverbs 12:24

Today is the 8^th day of April, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today as we continue our journey through holy week. We move toward…we…we move toward this weekend, which is I was is one of the most important days in the…in the history of the world, Easter and today is the day of Passover. So, we just observe that, mark that as we continue our journey forward through this week, through this month and through this year. And turning to the Scriptures we pick up where we left off yesterday no matter what’s going on and that's…that leads us back into the book of Deuteronomy and I believe we’ll be concluding the book of Deuteronomy on Good Friday this year. So, let’s get to that. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 28 through 52. And by way of reminder we’re in the middle of a big song that Moses is teaching the people.

Commentary:

Okay. So, some of the most important advice about how we are supposed to live our lives right now right here is…well…comes from the lips of Jesus through the gospel of Luke today. So, Jesus says, “you are to be like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks, they can open the door for him at once. Blessed will be those servants the master finds alerts when he comes.” Okay. So, who is the one who is alert, right, the one who is awake with their eyes open to see, eyes to see because there awake and not asleep? And a lot of the time when we read a passage like this we think in terms of like cosmic destiny, like return of the Lord. We should be ready at any time for Him to split the eastern sky and come riding on a white horse and the end of all things and the beginning of new things and all of this…this is what we’re thinking. We should be ready for this at any time. But is this the only time the Lord comes? How often are we raising our hands in worship and moving back and forth on Sunday and asking for more of His presence and for us to be able to see what we need to see because we have generally become unaware that we can never escape His presence and all we can do is become aware of it, it’s always with us. I mean we’re always needing to go into His presence but what…what about went on about when He comes for us as a Father, as a friend, as a counselor, as a comforter? What about when He comes for us? Are we even paying attention? Do we at all have eyes to see? Are we alert at all? And isn’t this central to what Jesus has been saying all along? “Wake up, open your eyes, open your ears. Something is happening among you now. Don’t miss this. Don’t sleep through this.” Jesus goes on to tell us, “blessed is the servant, whom the master finds doing his job when he comes.” And then listen to this, “truly I tell you”, which is Jesus saying, “I’m telling you the truth”, “He, God will put Him in charge of all His possessions.” In other words, if we are awake, if we have eyes to see, if we are looking for the movements of God and His kingdom in this world and we are able to see those things and we are awake and we are aware we are collaborating and we are participating then we will fully begin to realize we lack nothing. The God of all things is entrusting His possessions to us. That’s pretty huge. Then Jesus says some…some other things that are pretty huge. “I came to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already set ablaze, but I have a baptism to undergo.” And He’s referring exactly to what we’re going through as we go through this holy week. He says, “how it consumes me until it is finished. Do you think I came here to bring peace on the earth? No. I tell you, but rather division.” So, how does this work because we see Him as baby Jesus, the Prince of peace? How can He be saying these things? What does this mean? As we’ve learned, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, then we can see the repercussions of the light coming into the darkness and the darkness first, not comprehending it then rejecting it, then trying to destroy it. Jesus then becomes this living metaphor for our struggle forward to wake up, to be aware of what’s going on, to be light in the darkness and stand as a witness against the darkness exposing the darkness, knowing that the darkness is going to try to stamp out the light. But if lights keep flickering, if lights keep going on all over the world then at some point the light overcomes the darkness. And Jesus is telling us to be awake, alert, ready because the light is going to bring fire on the earth. And the funny thing is, these are the kinds of things we also pray for. We sing about them. “Send your holy fire upon us.” It’s just going to consume everything that is in the darkness, including everything that is false within us. This is what we’re asking God to do and He’s saying “I’m doing it and I’m going to continue to do it” but we just so rarely embrace it. We run for comfort. We run into hiding. We want to go back to sleep. But Jesus comments on that. He’s like basically, “you can…you can tell when rains coming. You can tell when it’s gonna be hot. You know how to read those signs, but you can’t see the sign of the present time all around you. You just keep looking for somebody to tell you what time it is. Wake up.” And then He goes on to talk about a judge, like “if you’re…if you’re gonna go with somebody that is your adversary before a judge, own it, fix it, don't…like fix it before you go before the judge. Like, own this. Be awake. Stop waiting for everybody to do everything for you or to get into a position where a decision is made for you that is not the one that you are after, but now there’s nothing you can do about it.” And fundamentally what Jesus is telling us in today’s reading is, “own it. This is your life. It is a gift, wake up. It’s not happening to you. You’re happening to it. The darkness cannot…no matter how it rages against you…cannot come against you as long as you are in the light. Don’t let the light go out.” In another passage, Jesus said, “you are the light of the world.” Own that, be responsible for that, be awake and alert. And I can’t think of anything more poignant for a day like today as we move through Passover and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday as we move toward the end of this season of Lent where we’re sitting with the cost of our sin and what it took to set us free for Jesus then to be telling us, “own this, live into this, be awake, be alert, have eyes to see.” There’s nothing more poignant for us.

Prayer:

Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit into that. We’ve been asking over and over for eyes to see and ears to hear, and we thank You for the way that You are waking us up. But what we see in the Gospels is that light is a disrupting agent to the darkness. It shakes things up no matter what. And although people are drawn to the light, the light exposes the darkness and normally we slink back into the darkness because everybody else is hiding too. And, so, come Holy Spirit as we move through these days, these days that have so significant of an impact on our hearts because of the things that we’re commemorating and observing. We invite Your Holy Spirit to shake us fully awake and let us own our lives before You knowing that You are not withholding anything from us, but we are withholding plenty and that…those things that we are withholding from You are the things that are the chains that, they’re things that are enslaving us when we are free. So, come Holy Spirit shine the light of truth within us, into all of the dank corners and the deep basements of our lives. Bring Your light. We trust You. Awaken us we pray. In Jesus name we ask. Amen.

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dailyaudiobible.com is the website, it is home base, is where you stay connected. So, in…in times like these it’s really important to stay connected and that’s always possible.

So, the Community section of the website or for that matter, the app, just press the little drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and you can get to these things as well, but the community section has all the different links to the different social media channels that we’re on. It’s also where the Prayer Wall lives and that is always on that is always happening. Prayer is always happening there as well. So, be sure to stay connected in any way that you can and any way that you want to.

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

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement can dial 877-942-4253 or just hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top and you can begin to share from there.

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

Deuteronomy 31:1-32:27, Luke 12:8-34, Psalms 78:32-55, Proverbs 12:21-23

Today is the 7^th day of April, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today coming from the rolling hills of Tennessee and moving out across the Internet into all of the different regions of this earth. It’s such a joy, such and honor, such a marvel that this can even happen and that we can be here sharing this patch of history together. Like even that could have been off, right?  You were born 100 years ago and I was born a hundred years from now and we would’ve missed now together on earth allowing this rhythm of God’s word to transform us in our lives. So, we’re fortunate, we’re fortunate to be around this Global Campfire. It could’ve been different and yet it’s not. We’re here taking the next step and I’m glad we can do it. So, we’re continuing to work our way toward the final things that Moses has to say in the book of Deuteronomy before he dies, and a new leader emerges. And, so, we’ll pick up with that story. Deuteronomy chapter 31 verse 1 through 32 verse 27 today. And we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week.

Commentary:

Okay. So, yesterday in our reading from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was not making friends, right? He was using His light and shining it, aiming it at the religious establishment. In particular, the scribes and the Pharisees who were there listening to what he had to say. And, so, what He was doing is basically calling out their hypocrisy and revealing how they were perpetuating this, that they were basically teaching everybody to be a hypocrite, to not be true, to be one way on the outside and another way on the inside. So, as we kind of come that…and of course Jesus shined the light on them and they didn’t acknowledge…they didn’t say, “oh thank…like thank you for showing this to me, showing my falseness to me. How can I live in the light?” Instead, they got together and started plotting against Jesus, right? The darkness hating the exposure of the light and wanting to extinguish the light so that everything would remain hidden in the dark. And they were in such darkness that they didn’t know what they were doing, which is why Jesus will ask for them to be forgiven, even as He’s being nailed to a cross. And, so, in our reading today, that story is continued and Jesus is saying basically, “there…there is only one way, there isn’t this false way that you present to the world and then this other thing that’s going on inside of you that’s a relationship with God. Like there’s…there’s only one way and you have two acknowledge me as that way inside and outside because some challenging things are in your future.” And He goes on to tell a story of a of a rich person who built bigger barns, basically. But on the tails of that He’s saying like, “you can prepare for every eventuality you want. You can store up so that you can have an easy life, all that you want, but what if today is your last day? Like what if you’ve got all that built up and you’re like, ‘ahh…now I can coast for a while and you die that day?” And He’s continuing to starkly show us like, “you cannot just external…you cannot just prepare for external eventualities or external pleasures. Like, you have to grow from within and what is within you is what is true and then that will form what happens in your exterior life. You’ve got it backwards.” And we still do today. We think that a bigger house, better this, better car, more reliable this, more money, more bank account, more pleasure, more travel, more experience, more wine, more good food or whatever, that’s going to make our lives great. And Jesus is teaching is a fundamental truth about how we were created - if you are at peace within yourself you are at peace in any circumstance and everything can be received with gratitude. So, on a very, very fundamental level what Jesus is after is the reintegration, like so that there’s not this hiding, that there’s not this duel self, like this one we present and this one that’s real. We just keep trying to make changes from without hoping that they will seep inward into our hearts when it is the change of heart that changes everything else. And, so, to end today all you really need to do is go back over the words of Jesus at the end of our reading. So, let me just read this to us and let’s receive this as if Jesus were speaking to us right now, not because I’m reading it but because these are His words that I’m reading. Let’s take these and apply them to our day-to-day.

I’m telling you, don’t worry about your life what you will eat and about your body, what you’re gonna wear. Life is more than food. The body is more than clothing. Look at the ravens, they don’t sow or reap, they don’t keep a storeroom or a barn, yet God feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than the birds? Can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying? If then you are not able to do even a little thing, why worry about the rest. Consider how the wildflowers grow, they don’t labor or spin thread. Yet, I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. And that’s how God clothes the grass which is in the field today and is thrown into the furnace tomorrow. How much more will He do for you - you of little faith? Don’t strive for what you should eat, what you should drink. Don’t be anxious. The Gentile world eagerly seeks all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. So, seek his kingdom and these things will be provided for you. Don’t be afraid little flock because your Father delights to give you the kingdom.

Prayer:

We thank You for that encouragement Jesus. We receive that into our innermost selves, into the truest place that we know of within our hearts. We invite You fully to plant these words deeply into our lives. And we also acknowledge that You ended this by basically saying get rid of everything that is holding You back, money if that’s what it is, anything else, whatever it is understand that there is inexhaustible treasure in heaven where no one and nothing can steal it away from You. And, so, we acknowledge, we’ve lived a lot of our lives, most of our lives, from the outside in hoping that if…that if we just keep moving things around, if we just keep on the run, if we just keep motion happening that we’ll be distracted enough to think that something good is happening when we’re just moving around stuff. But You’re telling us from within can grow depths of living water. You’re telling us that where our treasure is that’s where our heart will be. And, so, we set our affections on You and we seek Your kingdom and we ask that You give us eyes to see and ears to hear it. Lead us into all truth Holy Spirit. Show us the changes that You are making in our lives so that we don’t fight against You because we acknowledge that we see in the Scriptures and what we have experienced in life is that You have no problem disrupting us in order to set us free. It’s just this we usually reinterpret disruption as some kind of inconvenience. And, so, we’ll ask You to take it away when You brought it to us in the first place. What You are doing in our lives, let us see this, let us embrace it, let us flow with it we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what is going on around here. So, stay connected.

Reminding you now that the entire book, Sneezing Jesus, all of the chapters are available if you just kind of scroll back in your feed. We finished that over the weekend with the final chapter on Saturday, Sneezing Jesus, which is…yeah…which is very poignant for the times that we are in right now. So, be sure to take advantage of that check that and check that out. It’s a gift in these times of…yeah…unrest and disruption. I guess if you want a hard copy of Sneezing Jesus, you can get that anywhere you can get a book, including at the Daily Audio Bible shop at dailyaudiobible.com.

And speaking of the Daily Audio Bible shop, there are a number of resources there for the times that we’re in. And the times that we’re in isn’t specific to a virus or something like that. It’s day by day step-by-step forward, one step at a time through the Scriptures. And, so…yeah…like this is a…this is a good time where we have a little bit of extra time to…maybe to start journaling, to start writing things down as we go through the Scriptures and as we go through unique times in the world, to chronicle this in our own hand and write down the things that we’re seeing and feeling and saving this for our future generations, showing God’s faithfulness in our lives. And, so…yeah…journaling is a big thing around here because remembering is a big thing in the Bible. Like remembering what happens so that you won’t forget God’s faithfulness. This is all throughout the Bible. And, so, you know, a more modern iteration instead of piling up a bunch of rocks so that when you pass by the road you can say this is what happened here, maybe a more modern way would be to journal, to write things down. And we have a way of trying to type things down a lot in this modern era, but there's…there’s something special about sharpening a pencil, sitting down with the Journal, writing on some good paper and you’re kind of using your body to say what you need to say instead of just kind of typing it on a screen. There is something beautiful about that. And we’ve found the best stuff we could find to do it, stuff that I use most every day myself. And, so, you can find that in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. Some of our Black Wing pencils, our journal that is custom developed, made for us as a community. So, check those things out. Also check out the Global Campfire section of the website. This is stuff that we can use and wear and carry and just remind ourselves, we’re not alone. We have a community. We are going somewhere together as we move through the Bible and…and we can weather these things together. So, check out those resources in the Daily Audio Bible shop as well.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage. And I thank you profoundly now and always. Thank you for your partnership. That’s how the Global Campfire keeps burning and I am humbled and grateful. So, there’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you’ve a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline button in the app, the little red button 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.

Deuteronomy 29:1-30:20, Luke 11:37-12:7, Psalms 78:1-31, Proverbs 12:19-20

Today is the 6^th day of April, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great be here with you today as we do what we do every day, take another step forward into the Scriptures as day by day we move our way through the entire Bible in a year. So. we’re kind of rounding the corner on the book of Deuteronomy. We’ll finish that later…later in this week. And I feel like I’m getting redundant and reminding us every day this is…the book of Deuteronomy is the final things that Moses has to say which is why we’re covering ground we’ve already covered. He’s reviewing. Other than Jesus in the New Testament, Moses is somebody that was kind of been alongside with for the longest since we started the Bible this year. I mean he presided over the Exodus, right, in bringing the people out into the wilderness and over the formation of a new culture and his work is nearing its end. So, today Deuteronomy chapters 29 and 30. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the gospel of Luke today we basically sees Jesus un-making friends. Like He's…He’s confronting the religious establishment of His time among the Hebrew people and He’s doing it with force…a force of words and He’s making a very, very clear statement because Jesus has…the ministry has traction, people are flocking to see Jesus, including the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the scribes and their watching Him. He might be the next superstar rabbi, but He wants nothing to do with it. What He wants to do is reveal the kingdom of God that is happening right now, but they’re blinded from it. They can’t see it because they can’t see through their religion and they can’t see what has become of their religion which is what Jesus is commenting on. So, Jesus goes to dinner with a Pharisee. He doesn’t wash His hands ritually before sitting down to dinner. This gets noticed because everyone in this establishment is looking at what everybody else is doing to make sure that everybody else is obeying the commands and the laws as defined by the rabbinical tradition. And, so, Jesus comments, “you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and evil.” Basically, what he is saying is, “it is hypocrisy to present something outwardly that is completely not true of you inside.” That is false. That’s how you don’t have eyes to see and ears to hear. So, He’s like, “you give a tenth of mint, rue, and every kind of herb and you bypass justice and love for God”, right? “You do all of these outward things even being generous but ignore justice and love for God.” Again, hypocrisy, presenting something on the outside that’s not true on the inside. “You love the front seat at church. You love to be greeted and noticed and seen and identified in the marketplaces. You’re like an unmarked grave, people walk all over you and don’t even know it.” In other words, “people are encountering you and they’re encountering your mask. They’re encountering what you’re presenting, what you have curated to show, but it’s not true. It’s not true of what’s inside you. This is hypocrisy. You will never have eyes to see this way.” And, so, then the experts in the law hear Him kind of bashing the Pharisees and they’re like, “you’re kind of offending us too.” And these are like the…the Torah scholars, like the biblical scholars of the day. And, so, He just goes to them. “You are loading people with burdens, like all of the work and all of the rabbinical tradition and all of the interpretation, all of the burdens that have to be carried out in order to obey the law as you understand it. It’s impossible to carry and you’re not carrying it either but you’re going around expecting it everyone else.” I don’t know if you can see the parallels yet. Like I don’t know if you can see that this thread is still in the world today, that this stuff is still going on in the world today, but it’s still with us and Jesus denounces hypocrisy as strongly as He denounces anything. In fact, He tells them, “you’re responsible for the blood of the prophets.” He’s says, like, “I tell you, this generation will be held responsible.” Why would He make that declaration? Because by now they should’ve known better. And He keeps going. “You experts in the law, you biblical scholars, you have taken away the key to knowledge. You didn’t go in yourselves, and you hindered those were trying to go in.” In other words, “you’ve lost the plot. You’re trying to hold God in your mind and enforce the will of God through your mind. You’ve written down over centuries what God wants from you and you forgot to ask Him when you could open your heart, you could stop the game, you could humble yourselves, you could open yourself to complete freedom where you would see the kingdom is within you and among you, and among everyone else. But you have it on lock down. You’re not going in and you’re not letting anyone else in. You’re too busy identifying the rules and trying to present the image of one who follows them when you don’t.” So, that was kind to it. I mean after they’re against Jesus. They’re trying to find a way to take Him down. And this is what we see then. This is light coming into the darkness, illuminating the darkness, revealing the shadows, telling the truth, but those in the darkness not responding well to that light and scurrying for the darkness trying to figure out a way to destroy the light. And then later on Jesus talks to the disciples like, “be on guard against the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” In other words, “watch how they’re gonna try to get in here, puff things up, distort things, change the composition of things, try to get inside your own head, inside your own heart, change the composition of the recipe. Watch out. Everything that’s covered will be uncovered. Everything that’s hidden will be made known.” He’s essentially describing hypocrisy. “Don’t be like that because what you say in the dark is gonna be heard in the light. What you’ve whispered in private will be proclaimed.” So, what is He fundamentally instructing here, “be true, don’t be a hypocrite, be true, that’s where the freedom is, freedom comes when you’re not hiding in the dark because you don’t have anything to hide in the dark.” It’s hard to conceive of that in a society like ours, right, where we just simply accept the fact that everybody’s got a private life, which is…which is fine. Like not every…not everything is to be exposed to everybody. Like we do have individuality and we do have a private life but what Jesus is saying is, “in terms of your relationship with God, in terms of being light in the darkness, don’t go out there and pretend you’re a child of the light when you are not. That’s hypocrisy. Be true. You can. You’re invited. This is the narrow path. This leads to freedom. This leads to life, which brings us to what Jesus said to sum all of this up. “Don’t fear those who could kill the body and after that they can’t do anything. Fear Him who has the authority over life and death, now and forevermore. This is who you should fear. And believe me, you are valued. Don’t be afraid, be true.” That’s our encouragement for today, but before we end let’s just go back to Moses in the book of Deuteronomy and listen to how he’s saying essentially the same thing.

“This command that I give you today is certainly not too difficult or beyond your reach. It is not in heaven so that you ask who will go to heaven and get it and proclaim it so we could obey it. It’s not across the sea so that you ask, ‘who’s gonna cross the sea and get it for us and bring it back and proclaim it so that we can obey it?’. The message is very near you, in your mouth, in your hearts so that you may follow it. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, or death and adversity. What do you want in life? The choice is yours. I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you, life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you may live. Love the Lord your God, obey Him, remain faithful to Him, for He is your life and He will prolong your days as you live in the land the Lord swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Prayer:

Father we’re getting the message loud and clear coming out of the Scriptures in stereo blasting at us from Old Testament and New Testament. We have to own our lives. We have to be responsible for them. It is not okay to follow the status quo of hypocrisy. You are inviting us higher, further, deeper. That will require that we have eyes to see and ears to hear and fundamentally what You are telling us is we have permission to be done with the masks. We have been taught to hide our entire lives, to hide aspects of our…we have carved off different aspects of ourselves and kept them hidden so that we can better cope with the way that the world is. And we are all doing this. And they were all doing this. Whether it’s 3500 years ago or 2000 years ago or today, we have been doing this all along. And then You come, light in the darkness, and say “there doesn’t have to be that disconnect. You have permission to be true.” Show us what that looks like in our own individual lives. May we meditate upon this today. May this not leave us alone. Holy Spirit every time we step into hypocrisy, every time that we are stepping into the darkness where we are being untrue, show us so that we might begin catching ourselves, so that we can see all of the systems that we’ve been ingrained in, all the ways that we’ve built up to be false. Show us what it means to be true. We’re looking at it in the Gospels. Show us how that light can permeate our very beings from. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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

And, yeah, lots going on around here in the world, but in the Daily Audio Bible community, we’re a virtual community and that it’s so good to be able to be together.

So, check out the Community section at dailyaudiobible.com. That’s where you’ll find the Prayer Wall that is always happening. That’s where you’ll find connection points on social media, which is also always happening. So, be sure to stay connected in any way that you can, in any way that you want to.

These are things we’ve been doing all along, but they become more poignant in times like…well like the times that we’re going through in the world right now. So, stay connected.

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

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or you have an encouragement you can just hit the Hotline button in the app and begin to share from there 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.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning DABbers this is Brave from New Jersey today is April 2^nd and I’m calling for help from the family for myself. I’m calling for the Lord to heal my heart and cover me with His love and His strength. I’m leaving a 20 year marriage of abusive and emotional, verbal and corrected information, slander and abusive and I pray to God that He will rescue me from this relationship and restore me fully into His joy, His life, His happiness, and everything that He has for me. I really do pray because I feel hurt, violated. I feel ashamed and I covet your prayer today family. Thank you. Amen.

This is Sharon from Kansas City. I just heard Abigail’s or Abby from Arkansas perhaps. Anyway, she was asking for prayer for the senior class in…in the Air Force Academy at Colorado where there have been two suicides. So, Lord Jesus I come to you along with my brothers and sisters. And we come alongside of this group that is quarantined and we speak life to you in Jesus name. I take authority over the unclean spirit causing this…this deep, deep depression, causing suicide and I tell you to stand down in Jesus’ name. And I speak peace, peace to you. Lord Jesus come alongside each one of these. Let them feel Your tangible presence, let them cause, cause them in fact Lord to call on the name of Jesus, to speak Your name out loud. Let the name of Jesus be lifted high. Let life come, the spirit of life and truth come. Jesus, you are the way and the truth and the life. Let them experience more of who You are. Somehow Lord let them speak to one another and bring new life, new life, new life. I speak to you new life, new purpose, new reason to live, higher, higher purpose. Let them fix their eyes on You Jesus, the author and the finisher of their faith. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Good morning this is Adrian…this is Adrian from Maryland and I just wanted to thank the young lady who prayed Matthew 6:5-8 this morning April 2^nd and talked about how we didn’t need to pray long wordy prayers because God knows what we need. I often feel insecure about my prayers. I don’t feel like I’m a prayer warrior because I’m often unable to put words to what I need. So, I often just sit and…and concentrate on God and…and we sort of commune together. And I feel insecure. I often apologize to God. I say I’m not…I’m not a strong Christian the way…the way these other Christians are because they pray so much better than I do. And, so, the young lady today who…who…who came and who said that to me she…she really touched my heart. And I just want to say thank you so much. You have a great day. Thank you.

Hello everybody this is Carmen from Germany from sunny Germany. The weather’s been beautiful here. So, God’s really been blessing us with keeping our spirits up in that that way as we’re all kind of at home. I’ve been wanting to call in for weeks and I keep putting it off, I keep procrastinating. And then I listen to…I listen daily and I listen to prayer requests and, you know, I’m like, “oh…I want to right that down, I want to let that person know I’m praying for them.” I want to, you know, I started this list and if I keep on doing this list and not calling in, you’re not gonna see my voice or hear my voice as a familiar one. And you’re not gonna know that I have you on my mind. Anyway, first off because I’ve only got two minutes and I could probably talk a lot longer, I wanted just to say thank you so much to Brian for giving us the Sneezing Jesus book as a gift. I have this book, but I left it in the states at my mom’s house and I’m in Germany. So, I won’t be going there anytime soon to get it. So, I’m really encouraged, I’m really happy about and especially since it just comes in one-chapter portions daily. I had wanted to let Michael whose mother passed away. You had called a couple weeks ago or a month ago, shortly afterwards and it was just so encouraging to hear you and hear your voice and that you are doing fine. John, in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, Charisse, praying for your grieving progress…process. Kingdom Seeker Daniel and your lovely wife, I feel like I know all of you guys and I just want to say many blessings to you guys. I love you. It’s just so encouraging to be here every day around the Global Campfire with you and my times up. So, have a blessed day. Bye-bye.

Hi this is Rachel from Pennsylvania and this is for the lady who calls in every now and then with one- or two-minute encouragements. She called into comfort soaring on Eagles wings and has also lost her mom. I’ve been following your calls, waiting for a name so that I could pray for you out loud and thank you for your encouragement. And you shared that you were in an orphanage with six or seven other siblings as a three-year-old and separated from your family. And through a memorial service through your mom you were reunited with one of your precious sisters. I am praising God with you for the union. You also mentioned that you’re a double DABber listening to the kids DAB when China’s read as a child and recently sang Blessed Assurance which I really enjoyed. I want you to know that I appreciate you and that I’m praying for you. And since I don’t know your name I’ll call you, for now, I’ll call you Praising my Savior. Dear God, thank You for coming through for Savior…for Praising my Savior, protecting her, saving her, bringing her through life the way she is now. Lord You know what she needs, You know the pain that she’s in, You know her suffering and we know that You suffered for us Lord. So, we lift her up to You right now into Your presence and into Your hands and we ask that You take her pain away. Lord God and heal her for You are Lord of all and You are in control. Bless her Lord in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Dear heavenly Father I’d like to lift up everyone who is going through this ordeal with being sick from this coronavirus Father and everybody who’s giving up hope. Please Lord, restore their hope, bring them to know You Father. And everyone who is in the front lines working, please keep them safe and if they don’t know You Lord I know that they’re praying in the hospitals and all and help this to be a great ministry for people that would not see You to see You Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.