Exodus 12:14-13:16, Matthew 20:29-21:22, Psalms 25:16-22, Proverbs 6:12-15
Today is the 31st day of January and we all know what that means. This is the last day of the first month of the year. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. Congratulations by the way. We’re about to complete our first full month together and I don’t know about you but God is speaking to me through His word this month. I have pages and pages of journal notes and I am eager, I am hungry for all that God will speak to us throughout the rest of this year, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves or behind ourselves. Let’s be here now doing what we’re doing, which is taking the next step forward and allowing God’s word to open up to us. We’re reading from the common English Bible this week and we’re picking up the story of the plagues and the Egyptians and we’re coming to a conclusion on that pretty dramatic retelling of God freeing his people from slavery. Exodus chapter 12 verse 14 through 13 verse 16 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Exodus the final plague descended upon Egypt, which was the death of the firstborn, which certainly caused the Egyptians to drive the Israelites out. So, we’re just completing our first month together, like our first month in the Bible. And, so, we can stand here together around this global campfire and look backward and see just how much ground we have covered in 31 days. And we end this month on a pretty high note, freedom. So, let’s, look at the lay of the land as we close this month and begin to begin the second month of the year. Let’s just kind of orient ourselves. So, the children of Israel have just been set free from slavery and almost immediately God is handing down traditions that they are to follow in all of their future generations. So, all of the sudden ritual begins to come into the story immediately and this gives us a pretty good opportunity to talk about the Old Testament and the New Testament and what’s going on. So, here in the book of Exodus we’re millennia from the birth of Jesus. So, where we sit in the book of Exodus is a couple of thousand years before Jesus was born and where we sit today is a couple of thousand years after. So, where we are in the continuum is that Jesus is kind of in the middle of the scenario, which is a great metaphor. We could probably come up with something cool to talk about that, but that’s just where it is in time. Jesus, from where we are to where Moses was, Jesus was kind of in the middle there. So, the children of Israel are just walking into their freedom, but before they will have their promised land they have to completely be transformed, right? They’re slaves, this is all they know. For 430 years all they’ve known is slavery. So, they have to be washed clean of that identity and set up a whole infrastructure and culture that would allow them to be free people, independent people. So, what’s going to come later is that God is going to give them the law, right? And it will be extensive, and we will read it in its entirety. And that Mosaic law will govern the culture and the people, and this will still be going on when Jesus comes, which moves us into the book of Matthew.
And we get to the opportunity to look at this law, this thing that kind of encompasses how they are to behave and relate to God and one another. Jesus was born into that system and He grew up and began to minister from that context, that paradigm. And yet His entire ministry, He’s critiquing the religious system, right? Like that’s what he’s critiquing. And, so, Jesus, God in the flesh, comes and critiques what has become of the law and what has been…and how it has been used to, in some ways, re-enslave the people, but that was not its intention. And we get clues about that in today’s reading from Exodus because the people have just been set free and they are walking out of Egypt out into the desert and God begins to give them traditions. This is what you’re supposed to do every year on this day. And the reason is so that they won’t forget what happened. So, he’s baking in ritual into their culture and He flat out tells them, the reason is so that in future generations when your children ask you, “why are we doing this stuff”, you can tell them, “it’s because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.” So, God is instituting rituals and customs and He will institute laws. And, you know, some of them will be archaic to our way of living in the world today, but they weren’t at the time, they were contemporary at the time. So, God will give these laws and we can read them and go, “the law, the law, man there’s just so many rules regulations, who could ever live up to this”? And that would be true, no one will be able to perfectly obey the law because the law wasn’t only about behavior modification, like this is what you can do, and this is what you can’t do within your physical body. This is how you are to behave, right? God was instituting the laws that were connected to the heart so that the Hebrew people could live their lives and have constant reminders in every conceivable way about where they came from, who they are, who God is, and where they’re going. It was baked in. By the time that Jesus had come the children of Israel had been through exiles, many of the tribes were utterly gone, they disappeared, they’d been assimilated into other people groups. And the law remained but it wasn’t this thing connected to the heart that continually reminded people of their identity. It was the rules, it was the rules that you must obey so that a vengeful God will not come down and smite you and it was also used to control the population.
So, Jesus, God, the same being who gave the law came in person at a specific time and used His ministry in many ways to critique what had become of the law. So, Jesus comes in and starts saying things and starts breaking traditions and starts rattling the cages and getting people angry with Him, but what does He have to say about it? “I’m looking for people with eyes to see and ears to hear”. And, of course, it was the religious establishment that didn’t have either of those. And they conspired and successfully killed Jesus, which is the territory that we’re moving into in the book of Matthew and that we’ll be seeing for the first time in the coming days.
That’s the lay of the land in the Bible. Now we’re 2000 years in the future. And we have to critique ourselves because so often it still does boil back down to the rules. Maybe we’re not following the Mosaic law anymore, but we’ve distilled Jesus teachings down to do’s and don'ts and somehow feel like it’s our responsibility to troll everything from the Internet to our church pews as appointed deputies to sniff out sin. And yet Jesus response to that would be sniff out your own sin. Believe me, it smells enough, you don’t gotta go smell the sin of everybody else or in his own vernacular, “get the log out of your own eye before you try to get the speck out of your brothers.” So, the month of January has given us a swift kick in the pants on a number of levels and has touched a lot of places inside of us and has brought us a lot of context for the story that we’re not only living through as we read the Bible, but the story we’re living in in our lives. And if we’ll just let it come like we are, day by day, wave after wave as every day we come in out of the cold and come into the warmth of the global campfire, each and every day were given something. We don’t have to assimilate all of this all of the time. Like, so much has happened in January alone in the Bible that we could just start over and keep doing January the whole year. There’s enough here. What we need to do is relax. God will bring us what we need to live into today. Let’s live into what the Scriptures bring us today. If we can live into what he brings us each and every day in the course of the year He will touch everything.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for this month. You are big on commemorating and remembering things. And, so, we commemorate and we remember that we have journeyed one month together in this year and we have 11 to go and we are committing ourselves because You are speaking to us and things are shifting and its unexplainable because You’re working from within. So, come Holy Spirit we mark this day. We have made it a month. Give us the strength the commitment the endurance and perseverance to continue for the next month. Come Holy Spirit we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay connected
You can visit the Daily Audio Bible shop. There are number of resources that are available to take you through this journey, like the Daily Audio Bible journals or the Blackwing writing paraphernalia that I’m a big fan of and use every day. These are resources to commemorate, to write down so that you can review remember who you are, where you’ve come from, who God is, where you’re going. God told the children of Israel, “write these things down” and He baked in rituals and customs so that they wouldn’t forget. So, this is just a modern version of that. And, of course, you can go anywhere you want, buy whatever journal you want and whatever you want to write with, that’s fine. We have these resources available for this purpose. God’s gonna speak, we should be taking notes, and if we’re gonna read the Bible then God is speaking.
There are other resources available, like some of the things we were just talking about as we were contextualizing where we are and looking at the life of Jesus. Yeah, I mean, there’s a longer discussion about this beautiful Savior and what He means to our humanity because we’re so often living our lives confused and waiting to die basically, when Jesus transforms the way we are supposed to be human. And that discussion can be found in the resource called “Sneezing Jesus”. And all of the resources that we’ve ever created at Daily Audio Bible have been to further the journey, to make it go deeper, to allow this transformation to be permanent, to create irreversible change in our lives. So, check that out.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible. If you’ve gone through this month and light, and life has come into your world and you’re beginning to find a rhythm that this is bringing life to you, then thank you for being life-giving because what we’ve done and what we are doing is something that we are doing together, right? Makes no sense for me to do this by myself. I could be my introverted self and just do it quietly. We’re in this together and what we’ve done we’ve done together, and it’s been pretty remarkable. And, so, if it’s been a life-giving thing to you, then thank you for being a life-giving source back to the community. There’s a link on the homepage of dailyaudiobible.com. If you are using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.
And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.
And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hello Daily Audio Bible, this is Isabel from Australia. The Lord’s just been really burning in my heart to pray for Margo from Australia who’s gone to her mission trip with her husband. Margo, the Lord is with you, don’t ever feel that you’re by yourself. He has called you and your husband, you’re not alone, the Lord’s with you, all your Daily Audio Bible family are praying for you too and we love you. You know, just keep your chin up, just keep on trusting in the Lord. I’ve been praying for you and I know that the Lord is with you and just don’t stress and just be happy and just see God’s heart through all of this, that you’re now doing the service for the Lord, you’re being obedient to Him and see God’s heart through all of this and God will bless you. In the beginning it’s hard but then later you’ll get used to the people and you’ll start loving the people the way the Lord us. May God bless you and your husband. I’ll be continuing praying for both of you and that the Lord keeps on, you know, healing your heart and your anxiety about everything because I know it’s a big change, but the Lord’s with you and where with you too. We love you Margo. Bye. God bless you
Good morning Daily Audio Bible family, this is Julie from Albany. Thank you for your prayers for my younger brother. This morning I’m calling…I’m calling for you Angela in California. Angela, as I was listening this morning to other prayers some things that Mike from London was saying I felt were…you just can’t replace these words. First of all, I’m just…shame…I just agree with this. God feels our pain. God can heal all. Always pray, lean on Him. Let Him be there for you. Just believe. He will take care of us but here’s the kicker, we have to let Him. Our prayers don’t go unanswered. So, pray, be in peace. I pray that the Lord heal your depression, I pray that He heal all those bad thoughts that you’re having, I pray that He bless you and lead you in the path to get the right help that you need to get you through this. And there is no…nothing bad in that. As a nurse of 35 years I say it’s okay and pray that the Lord…I pray that the Lord will direct you in that path because you are beautiful, you are irreplaceable. God doesn’t make junk. So, I hear you and I’m praying for you Angela and I’m gonna to pray and pray and pray and pray for you that all will be well. This too shall pass. Just believe, just pray to Him Angela with all of your heart and soul. We love you.
Hi family, I’m just calling for Angela from California. Now, you called in saying that you had suicidal thoughts and you wanted to take you live. And I’m just calling to, number one, cancel the assignment over her life from the enemy and I bind him right now and I cast him out. All of you evil spirits, suicide spirits, spirits of torment, spirits of depression, out in Jesus’ name and I ask Lord for the peace that surpasses all understanding to come over Angela, that she may be strengthened and that she can get through this because with God all things are possible. Lord, thank You, thank You for the family, thank You for this Daily Audio Bible and we trust You and we love You. Amen.
Hello DAB family this is Shantae calling from Metro Detroit and I am calling in today to say hello to everybody. And I can’t stress it enough, if you are going through something and you have burdens, give them to the Lord, but also call into the DAB, let us pray for you because when I called in last time and many times previously as well with my prayer requests and I hang up the phone and instantly I feel God’s peace in such an intense level and it’s all of our prayers just joined together. There’s power in numbers and we don’t have to go to this alone. When you call in, that’s with Brian tells you when you call into the hotline or whatever you want to call it, our family line or whatever. But anyway, so I really encourage you all to call in and just want to let you all know that I’m doing much better. My circumstances haven’t changed all that much but by perspective and God’s peace is just upon me and each time I have anxious thoughts I just give them to the Lord and I just really encourage you all, call in, let us know how you’re doing and know that you are loved, know that there are thousands upon thousands praying for you. So, I will talk with y’all later. Love you all. Bye-bye.
Hi good morning, this is Bridget from New York City again. I just heard Angela’s prayer request. Today is January 24th. Angela, I’m just gonna to lift you up in prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, I just thank You for Angela’s life. I thank You that You’ve given her purpose on this earth Lord and I just I pray Father for her to see Your purpose for her life Father God. Father, You’ve chosen her, Your word says that You’ve chosen her to be a vessel of You light Father God. Your word says that Your Holy Spirit resides within her Father God. I just pray for Your Holy Spirit to give her strength, to give her mental strength, to give her emotional strength, to give her physical strength Father. Lord, Holy Spirit can revive what is dead inside of her. So, I pray for light. I pray that You would just desire light. I pray that Your generational legend would be light, that Your story would be a story of light, that Your children would see light, that You would want and desire light for God does not call the dead, He calls the living. You are living Angela. May the Lord bless You. The word says, “may the Lord bless You, keep You, You may not be harmed.” Father, God, calm her mind. Lord, surround her with warming angels, Father. Bless her mind Father that she may take every word captive and give it back to You Lord and that every word that comes to a at her Father that she will lift up the shield of faith and know that You are with her and that she would remember Your words and the love that You pour into her Father God. Angela, the Lord calls us to call out on…
He there this is a call for Angela in California. You called the prayer line on January 24th and you were talking about your mental illness with depression and your thoughts of suicide. And Angela, I am so thankful that you called in. It’s so good for those of us who don’t struggle with depression to hear what its really like so that we can have compassion. My mother struggles with bipolar disorder and I get really frustrated when I don’t understand when she’s in a depressive episode. So, thank you so much for your honesty and your vulnerability. Angela, I just pray for you that God gives you peace. You’re clinging onto Him and I promise you He won’t snuff you out. Continue to cling onto Him. And Angela amid a prayer of you Numbers 6:24-26. “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.” Angela keep holding on and keep putting one foot in front of the other. The Lord is there with you, and He loves you and He wants to take you into His bosom and heal you completely. Hang in there, friend, and call us back. Bye-bye.