07/18/2019 DAB Transcript

1 Chronicles 26:12-27:34, Romans 4:13-5:5, Psalms 14:1-7, Proverbs 19:17

Today is the 18th day of July. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is my pleasure and it is a joy to be here with you today and just move into the Scriptures and just move out of all the entanglements, all of the things that, you know, knot our stomachs and anxiety, all the responsibilities and obligations that are swirling at us. This is a moment to step away and let God re-center us in His word and give us counsel and direction for our lives. So, it is certainly a joy to be here with you today as we take the next step forward. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week and the next step forward will take us back into the book of first Chronicles. Today, chapter 26 verse 12 through 27 verse 34.

Commentary:

Alright. So, as we spent some time going through the book of Romans and just really seeing some of the foundational pieces of our faith explained we’ve also mentioned that this controversial stuff that Paul’s saying at the time, pretty disruptive. And, so, we have to imagine this for Paul because Paul was a pharisee, he was trained in this. So, you can only imagine the kind of disruption that had previously happened in his life in order to arrive at this place. I mean any kind of revolution, especially in matters of faith are usually unsettling experiences. So, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing Paul reframe faith and the Hebrew experience of faith by going back to the beginning as opposed to starting somewhere in the middle. And this is why we find ourselves exploring Abraham again because Abraham is the first person associated with the Hebrew story. And, so, thus is one of the reasons Paul references Abram so often in his teachings and why it’s so important and like foundational to what he’s saying. So, in today’s reading from Romans, Paul continued to discuss Abraham’s life and he’s doing this so that his position or his argument between a life of faith and a life trying to obey a law could be clear. And he says, “if God’s promise is only for those who obey the law, then faith isn’t necessary and there’s no point in having a promise because the law is what brings punishment on those who try to obey”. Like, you don’t know you’ve done wrong unless there’s some sort of law to tell you that you did do wrong and then you’re punished for it. Or in Paul’s words, “the only way to avoid breaking the law is to have no law to break.” So, for Paul and for that matter for us, faith is…is the essence for interaction with God. God wants us to come to Him through faith not by trying to obey a set of rules. I know that…I mean that can disrupt us even today because we spend so much of our time trying to obey the rules and frankly so little time living by faith. So, in a lot of ways it’s not so different. And Paul’s point was that if those who were reading this letter, if they would just go back to their own beginning story, the origin of it all and just look at what God did in the world through Abraham, then they would see that it was faith and that it was only faith that started that domino effect that created the Jewish people. And if that’s the case, which it is, then it was faith and not a law that actually held their true identity. Paul said it like this, “the promise is received by faith, it is given as a free gift and we are all certain to receive it whether or not we live according to the law of Moses as long as we have faith like Abraham’s.” So, I mean, we’re like biting this off a little bit at a time and there is so much, the book of Romans is no dense with things to contemplate that it it’s worth spending some of your own times just really trying to understand what’s being said here. But if you want to take something away from this and move into our day it’s that all of the hoops that we’re trying to jump through to get God’s attention so that He will answer our prayers whatever they might be, that’s never been the way it works, which is not to say, “well that’s a relief. Finally, I don’t really have to pay attention to anything that I do. I just have to have faith.” That’s not how it works in either. Faith transforms us and transforms the way that we think about things. And when the way that we think and understand things has shifted then our behavior shifts as well. So, may we live by faith today

Prayer:

Jesus, that’s really poignant as easy as it is to dismiss because it’s something that we hear often, and it is something we hear all the time. So, it’s easy to just to not even hear but we’re hearing it. We must live by faith, which means we must reach into the dark and see what we cannot see, and we cannot do that without the guidance of your Holy Spirit. And, so, come Holy Spirit, give us eyes to see and ears to hear as we reach in faith and live our faith today. Come Holy Spirit we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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