Zechariah 12:1-13:9, Revelation 19:1-21, Psalms 147:1-20, Proverbs 31:1-7
Today is the 28th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s awesome to be here with you today in these final days of the year. We start every year with 365 steps out in front of us and we are down to the last four steps. What a journey it has been. And we can do this, four steps, we can do this and complete the entire Bible. So, let’s dive in. We’ve been reading through the book of Zechariah. So, it was like a blur there for a little while. We were moving through the shorter letters of the New Testament and then bam, we’re right into the minor prophets and we’re moving through one of those a day. And then finally we’ve reached Zechariah, which has slowed things down for the last week. And we’ll be in Zechariah today and tomorrow before moving into our final book in the Old Testament. But even though the end is in sight, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Today Zechariah chapter 12 verse 1 to 13 verse 9. And we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week.
Commentary:
Okay. So, have you ever noticed that at this time of year, like, this point between the holidays, that it’s like the whole world starts to get reflective? In fact, if you’re like…if you’re brand-new…so many brand-new brothers and sisters come around the Daily Audio Bible between Christmas and New Year’s, in part because a lot of new technology gets given out for Christmas, but it’s a time where, like, the whole world gets reflective and we start to think about our spirituality and our goals. And, so, welcome but even for those of us who have taken this whole journey, like, we’re this far in the year and we started last year or maybe even years ago, this is still time where the world gets reflective. Like, there’s all kinds of TV shows, like hours and hours of programming that offer us the opportunity to look back, right, look back at all that has happened in the last 12 months. And, like, we can be in the grocery store and there’s magazines dedicated to the biographies of those that we’ve celebrated this year and lost, events that have happened this year. And we’ve been reflecting too over the past few days about what it is that’s gonna inform our choices, our decisions, our resolutions for what comes next in the new year. And the book of Psalms today offers us some insight, actually something powerful to contemplate as we do the kind of contemplation that we’re doing, the reflection, the look back, the look forward. So, the psalmist says, “the Lord’s delight is in those who fear Him, those who put their hope in His unfailing love.” And this whole year has been a year where we’ve kind of focused ourselves on that word, “hope”. And, so, here at the end of the year we see it showing up in crystal clarity. “The Lord’s delight is in those who fear Him, those who put their hope in His unfailing love. And, so, I mean, the obvious question is, okay, who are those who put their hope in his unfailing love? Like, how do I become one of those people? And why is that important as I consider my New Year’s resolutions and what that should look like? So, the word hope here in the Psalms is referring to an expectation, right? Like waiting expectantly for a specific desired outcome. So, if we think of it, like, with a modern analogy, if you put a little bit of money away every paycheck, if we can do that, if we invest a little bit of our income into maybe a retirement fund, then we will weight in expectation that it will grow over the years and produce the desired outcome that will offer us financial stability in our later years. So, the kind of person that’s being described in the Psalm is a person who has invested all of their hope in the unfailing love of God. And what was their desired outcome? That the Lord might delight in them. So, that contrasts with a lot of our normal New Year’s resolutions because a lot of our normal New Year’s resolutions are self-focused, right, whether they’re focused on our interior lives or exterior lives, they’re focused around ourselves. This is normal. I mean we’re resolving to make changes about ourselves for the better. So, yeah, this is the time we focus on ourselves and where were going. However, a wholly self-focused posture leaves little room for things that they may matter even more, things that may even matter most, things like becoming the delight of the Lord. So, as we’re thinking, you know, there’s only a couple days, the hours are winding down on this year and whether we like it or not, we will spring forward into a new year. And as we consider what that’s gonna look like, maybe we should consider investing all of our hope in God in this coming year, all of it, and fear Him with awe and respect and wait expectantly in His unfailing love because if we’ll do that, according to psalmist, the Lord will delight in us. And, I mean, if we boil it all down, what else is there? What, else is there? What else are we looking for? We can continue to try to create, you know, whatever kind of destiny we want, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever we achieve, we’re not contented for long. Like, we think we might think, if I can just get that job, if I can just get that promotion, if I can just get that weight off, if I could just, if I could just, if I could just…but then even if we discipline ourselves and achieve those things it only leads us to the next achievement, right? What if we invested all of our hope in God and let all that other stuff kind of diminish and fade away and find itself in our lives in its proper orientation and make the goal of our hearts to be delighted in by God. What would a year of that be like? Like if that was our goal and we set it now and we come to this day one year from today and that’s what we’d done, we’d invested all of our hope in God and we wait expectantly in His unfailing love, the Scriptures tell us that the Lord will delight in us. I would…I think I would like to sign up for that. What would a year of the Lord’s delight be like? Something to consider as we make our resolutions for the new year.
Prayer:
Father, we invite You into that here as we come to the final moments of this week and enter into a new week that will bring us into a new year. We thank You for all that You’ve brought us through this year, all that You have taught us, the ways in which You have transformed us, we thank You. And, so, now from this place of transformation after a year in Your word, we invite You to lead us forward into what the new year should look like. Last year we made resolutions and we followed through on some of them. And this coming through the entire Bible has been one of those. And, so, here we are, but here we are with a new perspective because coming all the way through the rhythm of this year has changed us. So, we invite You Lord. We want to be Your delight. And, so, we put our hope in You, all of it, and we wait expectantly in Your unfailing love. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.
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And that is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hello to my Daily Audio Bible, this is Diana calling from Virginia and I feel so bad because I was meaning to call for the holiday greeting but, you know, I let the __ and everything take a hold of me and I missed that. So, I just wanted to give a shout out to all of you here and I wanted to say thank you for all the contributions, the prayers, and just making this Daily Audio Bible so meaningful. I adhere to the Daily Audio Bible every morning when I’m starting my day and it’s been so instrumental to my life. And since I cannot send a holiday or Christmas card to everybody I just wanted to call in and give a shout out to all of you and wish you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous new year. I did want to give a shout out to some people here like Asia from Munich, I haven’t heard from you in a while. Slave of Jesus, Viola from Maryland, and Pastor Gene in Florida. I wanted to give a shout out to Walda in North Carolina, Jay from New Jersey. There are so many of you here I cannot even remember to give a shout out by name but I wanted to just let you know I’m thinking about all of you and I hope that this holiday season is a time for you to just take a minute and be joyful. It may be sad. If you’re like me, I know some of us during December and it’s always hard, but I always take a minute to think about what my mom would say and she always wanted me to…she always loved to celebrate Christmas. So, I find joy in knowing that she would want me to take a moment and remember what Christmas is all about and hopefully that we can get some peace and some joy from that. Merry Christmas to all of you and a happy new year.
Hi beautiful family, this is Pastor Jenny from Bradenton Florida and I want to speak directly to any woman that is listening and I want to recommend the More Conference. I am praying. I really want to go. I’m not sure if I’m gonna be able to afford it to be completely honest but I want to tell you guys __ that I went to years ago. It was one of the best decisions I could’ve made. I’m 50 years old. I’ve been walking with Jesus since nine. So, I’ve walked with the Lord for 41 years and I still learn things in that conference and discover things about myself in that conference that I have not experienced before. I will tell you that the fellowship is fantastic, the preaching is fantastic, but most importantly it is __ at times. __ pray for Brian, pray for this conference because God is __. One of the most important things that I learned in that conference that has stayed with me and will probably stay with me __ is that sometimes the enemy speak lies into our life and we buy those lies and we believe those lies and we give them the category of truth in our lives. And when we do that, although they’re lies, they can control us, they can enslave us, they can bind us. And family, the Lord delivered me from some of those lies in that conference. And every time Satan would start to come and enslave me again I have been able to speak the things because I remember __. So, I want to encourage you to attend the conference. I want to encourage you, if you’re a man and you have someone to send, I want to encourage you __ . I love you family this is Pastor Gene from Bradenton Florida.
Hi this is Sherry from Kansas, I called in and you played my prayer request from December the 8th and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who prayed for me and to Pamela for the Scripture from Isaiah. And it really helped and one of the things I said is I really needed to feel…know God’s love and I have seen God’s love in the outpouring of prayer. So, thank you all very much. While my situations are not yet remedied, I feel much stronger and much more able to stay connected with God in the process of all this and I love you all. Thank you so much again and I am now hooked on Daily Audio Bible. So, I’m sure that I’m going to been praying for others as well that call in. I hope you all have a blessed holiday, and may this new year see us all drawing closer to God, each other, and seeing our prayers answered for those around us. Thank you very much. Goodbye.
Greetings my beloved friends, this is Angel from California. It’s Friday, December 21st, 2019. I’m sorry, it’s 2018. I’m ahead of myself. Anyway, this year was a wonderful year for me, for my husband, my children, and I have three puppies, Murphy, Luna, and Lucky. I love them so much. I want to wish you all a blessed Christmas and a very prosperous new year, 2019. I want to say thank you Brian and Jill and your family. May the Lord bless you for everything that you do. I pray always for the people who call in . And recently, Kevin from rolling hills from Arkansas, he called in and I want to say that I’m praying for him and also a gentleman by the…he goes by the name of the Prodigal. And I want to say to you, thank you for calling and I know that God has wonderful things for you. I want to say that our words have creative power. Whenever we speak something either good or bad we give life to what we are saying. Too many people say negative things about themselves, about their families, and about their futures. They say things such as, I never will be successful, or that sickness will get the best of me, business is slow, I don’t think I can make it, Flu season is coming I’ll probably catch it. They don’t realize they are prophesying their futures. The Scripture says we will eat the fruit of our words. That means we will get exactly what we we’ve been saying. So….
Hey Daily Audio Bible friends, I’m calling from my brother in Christ, Prodigal. Thank you for reaching out to this community brother. I believe you just blessed yourself by engaging the community of thousands of believers all over this world that are now gonna be praying for you. Man, life all too often crashes down upon us and leaves us feeling like there’s just no way out. I’ve been there too brother and like you I found myself researching whether or not I be forgiven or end up in hell for my final sin. But either way we find ourselves face-to-face with our Creator who would then ask us, did you know that your life is not your own for I bought you for a price? But He did that because He loves us immensely no matter what we’ve done. I believe that He has much bigger plans for our lives than just the hundred or so years that we’re here on this planet. I mean, think about it. If we’re gonna live forever with Jesus then this life is just the blink of an eye no matter how terrible it gets. So, hold on brother. And God‘s surely gonna reward you for the suffering that you endure. And remember, there’s now literally of thousands us praying for you. Love you brother.