1 Chronicles 28:1-29:30, Romans 5:6-21, Psalms 15:1-5, Proverbs 19:18-19
Today is the 19th day of July. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it’s always great to be here with you. So, it’s great to be here with you today as we as close down a workweek, move ourselves toward the weekend. We’ll be concluding the book of first Chronicles today with our Old Testament reading. So, let's…let’s begin. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. First Chronicles chapters 28 and 29.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Romans, Paul…Paul writes, “when we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time.” And we can just…we could…maybe even should just sit there and…and consider the implications. Like, the absolute relief of that statement being true changes everything because it’s not just describing salvation it’s the context of our lives. When we were helpless Jesus came. And, so, this is where Paul’s focusing as we continue through this letter, essentially telling us that God has invited us to be in a relationship with him. Again, we’ve got to stop. It’s like we say this stuff all of the time. We are talking about the Almighty God, who has invited us to be in a relationship even while we were completely His enemies. So, let me not put it in my words, let’s just read it from the Bible. “Since our friendship with God was restored by the death of His son while we were still His enemies we will certainly be saved through the life of His son. So, now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.” I mean, come on! This is such good news! And then Paul talked about the law and he talks about the law a lot because it’s something that he understood, and he also understood what it represented in the Hebrew culture. And, so, he talks about it a lot and he says, “it was a way, it was given to reveal, essentially how far away we had drifted from God and how deep the chasm actually was.” So, without the law there’s no way to gauge that, there’s no way to know that we had…we had it so backward, but with the law we could finally see our helplessness to achieve perfection on our own. We could finally see like, no we can’t get there from here, we don’t have the power. And that was the purpose of the law, to show us our desperate need for God. And then in the person of Jesus, God in the flesh we saw God’s passion to meet that need. So, I mean, Romans is a highly theological book, but I mean, the underlying reality underneath that theology, yeah, we…we should be…we should be humbled. God didn’t need to do any of this. He didn’t need to care. Like, once we had gone our own way, He could’ve just washed His hands of us and made new people on some new planet. Like, God doesn’t owe us anything and we…we made and we continue to make choices that if they run their course, they’re going to lead to our destruction. We can’t be our own God. Even though we try it all of the time, we are not equipped to be God. So, according Paul the laws given so that we can we can see the direction that we we’re headed in and that we can wake up, we could see the direction that we’re headed in and become aware of where that’s can end up. When we realize it’s hopeless and we are helpless to do anything about it then we begin to see how overwhelming God’s love is. So profound that even when we were His enemies, He wouldn’t give up on us. He would not allow us to pass into the darkness, which basically leads us back to where we started. When we were absolutely helpless Jesus came at just the right time. So, let’s take some time today to think about how massive this is as we move into the weekend, not only in our own lives but for…but for all of humanity. So, no matter what circumstances we’re facing, no matter what kind of chaos is swirling around us, as we read the book of Romans all we can come to conclude is that we absolutely assuredly have a good Father.
Prayer:
Father, You are good, and Your mercy endures forever, and Your mercy reaches out to us even when we are alienated or estranged from You. Your kindness reaches toward us even when we are Your enemy. This is beyond comprehension. We don’t have the capacity to do that. We can live into that by the power of Your Holy Spirit, and that is what sanctification is doing within us, but on our own it’s hard to even comprehend the kind of love that were talking about here. This is good news. And, so, we receive this good news. We love You, we thank You for Your kindness, we thank You that You came for us and would not let us be destroyed by the darkness. So, we worship You and we pray these things in the mighty name of Jesus our Savior. Amen.
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