Month: January 2020

Genesis 32:13-34:31, Matthew 11:7-30, Psalms 14:1-7, Proverbs 3:19-20

Today is the 16^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today as we continue the voyages that we have begun just days ago. So, we have set sail and we are moving our way into and through the Bible this year. We’re working our way through the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, in book of Matthew in the New. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Today Genesis chapter 32 verse 13 through 34 verse 31. And we’re talking about Jacob right now. We have met Abraham. We have met Isaac. And now we are encountering the life of Isaac’s son Jacob who had to flee away from his brother Esau because of his conniving. Now he is on his way home and he has experienced the other side of his conniver-y with his…his uncle Laban. So, where we pick up the story, Jacob has left Laban and is returning to his family. It’s been two decades. Laban found out about it and chased him down and there was a confrontation and a treaty was made. Now Jacob is continuing south toward his family and he sent some servants out in front of them to make contact with his brother Esau. And Esau is now on his way to meet Jacob with 400 mercenaries. So..so, Jacob has split his camp into two hoping that if one gets attacked the other might have a chance of survival. And that’s where we are. Genesis chapter 32 verse 13 through 34 verse 31.

Commentary:

Okay. There’s a few things that we need to talk about in order to keep our place in the story and in order to keep the Bible speaking…speaking into our stories. So, in the book of Genesis, we’ve been working…working our way through the story of Jacob. Jacob’s on his way back toward where his family has been dwelling to the south and Esau finds out he’s on his way and before they all meet up there’s this really interesting story where Jacob wrestles with somebody and that somebody has been a point of theological conjecture for a long, long, long…centuries, where some biblical scholars would say he's…he’s actually wrestling with God, like actually wrestling with…with an embodied version of God on the earth. And other people would say, “no. He’s wrestling with his brother Esau who found him and them they kind of fought it out because later on Jacob’s like, “seeing you is like seeing the face of God.” And…and, you know, we could try to really dig deep there, but what happened there is what is so important to where the story is headed because Jacob who is the grandson of Abraham, right? So, Abraham has Isaac his son, who then has Jacob his son. Jacob does this wrestling match and then in the process is given a new name and that new name is important. That new name is Israel and that shift actually bestowed identity upon his children as well because…well…from this point forward, we will begin to start seeing them as one people, the children of Israel.

Okay. Then in Matthew we have to look underneath the surface and see how people are responding to Jesus teachings and what people are thinking about Him Because we can read it from a couple of thousand years into the future and just, you know, try to pull out Jesus good moral teachings, and, you know, people today can read Jesus and be like, “who…who doesn’t agree with all this?” But the people during Jesus time, they did not agree with all that he was saying, in part because Jesus was describing the plot behind the story. Like He’s describing how things really are and nobody comprehends it. He’s revealing a kingdom that nobody can see and yet He’s talking as they would have expected the Messiah to talk. So, we know that John announced the way and even baptized Jesus and we know that John was arrested, and he was imprisoned. And at the end of our reading yesterday he had sent some of his disciples to Jesus with an important question, “are you the one or should we be looking for somebody else”, which is a fascinating question when you were the prophet that announced the arrival of the Savior. So, now John’s in prison going, “is He the One?” Like…and that gives us a lot of clues about what people were expecting, including John. The idea of a restoration of the people to God, where they could come under their own governing rule and be their own sovereign people set apart to God once again, that was an old story. It hadn’t been that way for these people for a very, very long time. So, this…this person, this miracle worker, wisdom teacher, prophet figure named Jesus shows up on the scene. We know who He is so I’m not saying only a wisdom teacher or whatever, but they didn't…like…He shows up on the scene and He sets their hearts on fire, but they don’t fully comprehend. And even John is like, “hang on. Are you the one, because we were, you know, like, I want…I need somebody to bust me outta here in time for the revolution?” And Jesus says, “look. Go back and tell John what you’ve seen. Go tell Him what I’m doing, that the…the eyes of the blind are being opened and the ears of the deaf are being able to hear and the dead are being raised and good news is being told to the poor and disenfranchised people. Go…go tell him that.” So, Jesus is saying, “what do you mean am I the one? I’m revealing the kingdom. Everywhere I go the kingdom is revealed. The kingdom is touching people’s eyes. The kingdom is touching people’s ears. The kingdom is touching people’s lives.” Right? So, we get this clear understanding that what the people were expecting in a Messiah was different than what God was revealing to them and the kingdom that they were hoping would come was already among and within them and they couldn’t see it. And Jesus is trying to show it to them, to reveal it to them, to open their eyes to it, which is the kind of things He says all the time. In other words, that their consciousness will become aware of something greater than they were already perceiving, that they would become intimately aware of something greater than themselves right there as opposed to the God that they had put in the box called a temple. So, as we begin in Matthew today Jesus is still talking about John. His disciples have left to go give John the message but He’s talking to the people. “Why did you go…why did you go out into the wilderness to see John? What was…what was…what were you looking for? Looking for a read swaying in the wind? Then what we looking for? Were you looking for somebody in nice clothes? Then you went to the wrong place. You need to go to the royal palace to find place…people like that. Why did you go see John? Did you go to see a prophet?” There you go. He is a prophet. And then he says something really, really interesting. “Among those born of women no one greater than John the Baptist has appeared, but the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he, for from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been suffering violence and the violent been seizing it by force.” Okay, is a super popular passage of Scripture, but it feels confusing until you understand what’s going on here. Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven and He’s not talking about it as a future thing. He’s revealing the kingdom and inviting those with ears to hear and eyes to see to step into it and the first step is to become aware of it. And, so, He’s saying like, “there’s no one greater than John the prophet in the world except those who have stepped into the kingdom.” But this will remain confusing throughout Jesus ministry because it remains confusing now. Jesus is revealing a kingdom that exists now and the journey to it is inward and all they were looking for was external. And, so, here Jesus words, “let anyone who has ears listen.” He says it all the time. And then he keeps commenting. He’s basically saying, “it’s been sitting here in front of you in a number of ways, and you can’t see it.” So, He’s like, “what should I compare this generation to? This generation’s like kids sitting in the marketplace and they call out to other kids. We played the flute for you, but you didn’t dance. We sang a lament, but you didn’t mourn.” In other words, “we gave you the song and you ignored it.” Jesus said, “John came and neither eating nor drinking and everybody said he has a demon. And, so, then I come and I eat and I drink and you’re like you’re a glutton and a drunkard and you’re a friend of sinners and tax collectors.” So, what we’re watching here is pure truth, pure wholeness be completely misunderstood and mis-judged by people living backward to the way they were designed. And Jesus is like, “it’s right here calling to you and your labeling it the wrong things. Your labeling John as a person who has a demon. You’re labeling me as a son of Beelzebul. You’re claiming I’m a glutton because I eat and drink. You’re claiming I’m a drunkard and a friend of sinners because I hang out with people who need help.” So, what is it underneath all this that Jesus can see? What is it he can see that nobody else can see? What is he trying to get them to understand? We touched on this earlier. Jesus is walking the path of wisdom and revealing it with anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. In fact, He’s, like, “you say John is a demon because he doesn’t eat or drink. You say I’m a glutton because I do, yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” In other words, Jesus is saying to the people the same things He said to John’s disciples, “look at what I’m doing.” In fact, Jesus goes on to pray to the Father. “I praise You Father, Lord of heaven and earth because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent.” In other words, those who think they know. “And have revealed them to infants.” In other words, children. And He goes on to pray, “this is the good pleasure of the Father” and that “all things have been entrusted to Jesus by the Father” and…and “nobody knows the Son except the Father” and “no one knows the Father except the Son” and “anyone to whom the son desires to reveal Him.” And then He has does reveal Him. “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me because I’m lowly and humble in heart, and you’ll find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy, my burden is light.” Again, super, super famous quotable stuff there. We’ll recite it like a mantra when were in the chaos of life, “His yoke is easy, His burden is light. He’ll give me rest for my soul.” We don’t understand this is a whole conversation that Jesus is having, one in which He’s telling His friends essentially, people aren’t gonna get you and that can get really nasty at times, even to the point where you get hauled into court and not know what to say, but if you will trust God He’ll tell you what to say. But they’re not going to get you. You’re the light of the world and the darkness doesn’t like the light. It exposes what’s in the dark and nobody wants that. Everybody’s claiming they just want the truth but what they want is just a better way to curate their lives and keep hidden what’s hidden and what’s exposed exposed. But Jesus is saying like the truth will set you free. I’m here for all light everywhere, nothing hidden. Everything that’s hidden will be revealed. And that is going to infuriate many people along the way because they won’t necessarily see it as an invitation to their freedom. The same kind of principles apply in recovery programs, right? Like you need to reach the end of yourself. You need to reach your rock bottom. In other words, all your shenanigans and all your games and all the things you’re trying to make life look as if it’s working, that all has to come crumbling down until you’re at the very very bottom and then you can begin. Jesus is fundamentally saying, all the constructs that you have made about yourself and all of the darkness that you’ve hidden in those places, that all has to come down and then you can begin. And if you realize that most of your life is built in pride and fear and constructs around that, and contrast that with Jesus who is lowly, humble in heart, we can see the plot that Jesus is telling is to a different story than the one we’re living. We’re so often seduced by our culture. It’s got to be bigger, it’s got to be better, it’s got a stronger, it’s gotta be faster, it’s got to be more individual, it’s gotta be more noticeable, it’s gotta throw us up the charts, it’s gotta put the spotlight on us, it’s got to reveal to the world what one single person can do. We gotta keep clawing, we gotta keep scratching, we gotta keep not taking no for an answer, we gotta out do those around us, we’ve gotta be superior to them, we’ve gotta be above them. It’s says, if that’s the goal we gotta put…put ourselves in a position where we have no vulnerabilities. And we remember that you can’t be known without vulnerability. And remember that Jesus said, there’ll be people who prophesied my name and I’ll say I never knew you.” And, so, what we’re seeing is Jesus saying, “there’s a different way to be human in this world. Your Father knows what you need and if you are only looking around you at everybody else. If you are only looking at what you can experience with your five physical senses, you will only ever experience lack because that’s not all there is. You have a heart made for God and you can let the mind of Christ open in you, or you can chase the chaos and keep trying to make your own self in your own image. It’s up to you.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into that. These…these themes, they’re…they’re so constant in the Scriptures that we invite Your Holy Spirit to continue to bring them up in us because they will change us. Like, we will either come to the place where we close the Bible and set it down and walk away and say, “that is not where I want to go” or will say, “this is…this…this is what I’ve been looking for my whole life and I embrace it fully.” But this half and half out that we continually try to live, it doesn’t work. It won’t. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit to come and show us what “all in” looks like with You. And we have what we need to see because we are seeing You go “all in” on our behalf as we read the Gospels. So, come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, home base, its where you find what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay tuned and stay connected.

Check out the resources that are available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. They have been created for the journey through the Bible in a year in community.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, I deeply and humbly thank you. Thank you profoundly. We wouldn't…we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t do this together. There’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. 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 if you have a prayer request or comment, just 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 will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Genesis 31:17-32:12, Matthew 10:24-11:6, Psalms 13:1-6, Proverbs 3:16-18

Today is the 15^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible, I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you. And I suppose at some point halfway through today we…we cross the center of month number one, halfway through the first month of a new year and decade. So, well done…well done. And let’s just take a moment here to reflect on the first two weeks of the Bible. Like the Bible has been speaking to us. It is an amazing voyage that we have embarked on together. And, so, let’s continue that journey. Today…well…this week we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible. And today Genesis chapter 31 verse 17 to 32 verse 12. And we continue to read of the great drama of the patriarch Jacob.

Commentary:

Alright. Let’s look at what Jesus is talking about in the book of Matthew today. He’s still commissioning, He’s still instructing His followers as they’re being sent out and He’s basically telling them, “this is what you can expect.” So, “a disciple isn’t above the teacher. A slave isn’t above the master. It’s enough for a disciple to become like his Teacher, which is why we aspire to become Christlike in our faith. But that’s not Jesus point. Jesus point is, “don’t expect to be treated differently then you’re watching me be treated. If you want to become like your Master, then you should see the things that your Master goes through. This is what you ‘e gonna go through.” And, so, He says, “if they call the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household?” This word, Beelzebul or Beelzebub. We’ve probably heard it before. We’ve probably heard it Beelzebub like referring to the devil. Although this wouldn’t have been a name, I suspect that the evil one would’ve chosen for itself. So, Beelzebul, means Baal the Prince. And we’re just a couple weeks into the Bible but we’re gonna see Baal worship a lot. So, Beelzebub is probably a distortion of this, and it means the Lord of the flies. More…more specifically like Lord of…of the…the manure pile. Alright. And, so, the subjects would be the flies. So, Jesus is saying like, “you’re becoming a part of this divine family, this household and I am the head of the house and if they’re gonna call me that how much more are they gonna call you that.” And this is another opportunity for us to pause right at the beginning of this journey because it clicks so many things into place about our own personal faith journey because we believe that when we…when we come into a relationship with Jesus and begin to follow that path then we become children of God and so blessing becomes apparent all around us and this is what we have to look forward to. And, so, it becomes really confusing then when we have to face supreme struggles in life. And what we have to become aware of is that Jesus, God made flesh dwelling among us as a human being faced and predicted of the struggles of life that we’re going to face. This idea that the opposition will come our way and that it that…that it must be endured and that we must press into and press through these things. This isn’t hidden in the Bible, it’s like blinking all over the place, and ultimately where going to find out how necessary challenge is to our growth. But nevertheless, Jesus is preparing His first friends to go into the world, and this is what He’s telling them to expect. So, after we talk about the Lord of flies He says, “don’t be afraid of them. There’s nothing covered that won’t be uncovered and nothing hidden that won’t be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the light. What you hear in a whisper, proclaim to the house tops. Don’t fear those who can kill the body but aren’t able to kill the soul. Fear the one who can do both. Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not even one of them falls to the ground without the Father’s consent. And even the hairs of the head…the hairs of your head have been counted. So, don’t be afraid. You’re worth more than many sparrows.” So, what are Jesus fundamental instructions here. He’s telling His friends, “people are gonna say some pretty bad things about you. They’re gonna make all kinds of weird and awful references about you because they’re doing that to me and you are a part of me. So, this is what you can expect. They’re gonna…they’re gonna say all kinds of stuff about you, but don’t worry. Nothing that’s covered is gonna stay uncovered and there’s nothing that’s hidden that won’t be made known.” In other words, keep going, keep being true, keep announcing the kingdom. In the end what’s in the dark will be drug out into the light. Keep enduring, keep moving forward, keep going. “Those that acknowledge me before others, I will acknowledge before the Father in heaven and those who deny I’ll deny before the Father in heaven.” Okay and then this is where it gets really, really challenging. I’m quoting Jesus. “Don’t assume that I came to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I came to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his household.” And that’s Jesus quoting from the prophet Micah when He goes on. “The one who loves a father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. The one who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever doesn’t take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it, and anyone who loses his life because of me will find it.” If those words are disruptive to you, like if…if they kind of shake you a bit and you’re like, “okay. How…how would I…how do I even think about doing that successfully? Then good. Then Jesus has spoken words that have gotten your attention. And you can imagine that if you were standing in a crowd around Jesus as these things were being spoken that they would have your attention. But how do we do this? Like, how do we love father or mother less and love him more so that we’re worthy or how do we love son or daughter less so…so that we’re worthy? Is that even quantifiable, right? Like, could you ever think to yourself, “okay. I love my daughter with all of my heart but a little less than I love Jesus and I see that on my love gauge meter.” What’s underneath all this? What is Jesus getting at? Why is He saying disruptive things to get our attention? What are we supposed to know here? Basically lets just remember our journey and its beginning, like on day two, when we were crossing through Genesis chapter 3 and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the rebellion and the eyes of Adam and Eve being opened and their shame and their awareness of their nakedness. The way that we describe this in the Christian faith is often like a canyon or a chasm, a separation from God. Like, that’s very, very common imagery. Let’s go into that for a second. If you are separate from something, then you are aware that you are other than that thing, right? But that separation was never intended to be the way we viewed reality. And awareness of our separateness from God was not our created state. So, anyone who’s ever gone through a situation where the reality that you thought you understood was not the whole picture, like there was a whole lot more and it’s overwhelming. Like, that can be devastating. For example, if you’re a married person, you find out your spouse has been unfaithful, that is a complete shift in consciousness and awareness, and a complete reframing of the reality that you thought you knew. And when something like that happens, the union that you thought you had is blown apart, and you couldn’t feel more separate than you do. We could say you become acutely aware of the separation between you. When these sorts of things happen, what do you hear? We’ve decided to separate. So, you can imagine Adam and Eve becoming aware for the first time of these categories, that they even exist. And we see from the Scriptures, they’re…they’re eyes are opened, and they feel ashamed and they feel naked and they hide and then…then they’re covered and then they’re covering themselves from then on. When our natural state is naked and unashamed and unafraid, like a child. After this, a reality that wasn’t the intended one was made manifest, became their reality and required them to create an identity that was shaped around themselves because this is all they need to do. And at some point, along the line we began to call this our “self”. It’s the thing. It’s the construct of that we have that tells us we are separate from somebody else and we have our own way of looking at things. Okay, let’s go back into our story here. Jesus is saying all of these things. Like why is He telling His friends, “they’re calling me Lord of the flies, Lord of the manure pile. They’re gonna call you that too.” Like why would anybody call pure light and love and graciousness, why would anybody call a true, fully, whole human being like Jesus anything like that? Truth and true humanity came into the world and were modeled and humanity had fallen so far from God that it could not not only recognize God, but rather confuse God with Beelzebub and eventually plot and succeed to assassinate God. The religious leaders who were doing the work of stewarding the souls of the people in their relations to God could not see beyond themselves in order to acknowledge God. To maybe put it more in the vernacular of the Bible, “the light came into the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. Couldn’t understand, couldn’t become aware.” So, this “self”, and we all have one of those, right, this awareness of our separateness, this “self” and all these things that we attach it to in order to have an identity can actually serve to reinforce our separation from God. The very thing that this Jesus that we are learning and reading about came to bridge; however, in crossing that bridge…and again this is Christianity 101…in crossing that bridge we have to leave something behind, ourselves. We’re instructed in the Scriptures to die to ourselves and become alive unto God and in the process become awakened and aware of who we really are in Christ, which we will explore very deeply as we move through the New Testament. So, fundamentally what Jesus is saying is that anything you are holding onto, any attachment that you have in your life, whether that’s to a person or to a place or to a thing, if you are more attached to that, if you’re looking for that to be your source of life then you aren’t worthy of me. This…this isn’t something new. This is the whole Bible. We’re just gonna repeatedly watch different people over different periods of time try to create a world that they can control and live in only to find it destroys them because we do not live in a godless world and this world will not work without Him. And the only way forward is into full and utter surrender. And when that comes into our lives, when we think about Jesus and surrendering to Him, we might be able to get our minds around surrendering to God but then when we look at our lives functionally, we realize we’re not doing a whole lot of surrendering or sacrificing. And people don’t like to be told to do. People don’t like to submit and surrender. People don’t want the truth enough to search for it with all of their hearts no matter what it might bring them to. The truth will and does set us free, but not before it confronts what is false. And we as people are notoriously not good at accepting that. So, that brings Jesus words, “don’t assume that I came to bring peace on the earth. I didn’t come to bring peace but a sword.” What we’re talking about here is the truth, the truth of how things are. And the more we listen to Jesus and His teachings and explore this, the more we will see how distant from that reality the world is. And it’s easy for us to think like, “why can’t everybody just get on the same page? Why can’t we just figure out hunger? Why can’t we just figure out peace? Like, we’re people. We’re in this together. Why can’t we figure this out?” That’s kind of what God has been saying all along and that’s kind of what he says throughout all of the Bible. “You guys. Return to me. The whole story can change.” One kingdom does not replace another kingdom without conflict and disruption though, and that happens in our own hearts. In fact, it happens here first. And so, let’s embrace it.

Prayer:

Jesus, we…it’s hard to consider the disruption even when we know you are in it. It’s hard to consider it good until later…you…because it’s unpleasant, it…it shakes what we think we know, it…it causes us to…to feel out of sorts. And all you’re doing is exposing our need for control and all of the false constructs of our lives. And, so, we’re here and we trust you. You are God and we trust you. And, so, we invite your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. And this is a common thing that we pray for. We..we need it desperately, we need it daily, we need it hourly, we need it every minute. So, come Holy Spirit we pray. Lead us into all truth we ask 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. So, be sure to stay tuned and stay connected in any way that you want to.

The Daily Audio Bible Shop is available with resources for the journey that we are on, all kinds of different resources, from things to write to things to read and listen to. So, check that out.

One thing I have not mentioned at all, yet this year is our…our long-running relationship with coffee and tea. It might sound odd. It’s just kind of grown up in the community. I personally am a bit of a…a coffee snob and over the last couple of years have grown very fond of tea as well, but a bit of a coffee snob and that’s kind of where it all began. I was just looking for the best coffee, the best things to drink coffee with, all of this. I guess it’s been over a decade now since we formed our own brand of coffee and it’s called Windfarm. And that name, Windfarm, it’s on other things that we do as well. It…it’s just a little nod to the book of Ezekiel chapter 37. There is a story, it’s famous and there’s a valley of dry bones and God asks the prophet, “can these bones live again?” And the prophets like, “how? Only You would know that.” And God tells Ezekiel to call to the four winds, the breath of life and resurrection happens. And, so, Windfarm, just this ongoing, never ceasing calling the breath of life into the community into the world is…is kinda wear that name comes from. But anyway, we’ve been roasting our own coffee and importing our own raw green and…and tea…we’ve been doing this for a long time, partly because it was the rhythm of…of my life. Then I realized. you know what, morning coffee is a tradition around the world. Morning tea or coffee, that’s something that everybody, everybody does. What if what…if we could create a better product? What if we could…what if we could just be boutique-y and it’s really fresh and we send it out really fresh and all of the resources because this is like something that we’re gonna buy anyway, we’re gonna go through the drive-through and get a cup of coffee. We’re gonna do…we’re gonna do all this anyway. What if we could just channel that into…into what we’re doing here. And, so, that’s where coffee and tea were born, and you can find them in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. You can see all the different varieties that we have. You can have it sent to you every month, however many bags you want or drink or consume. And they can be shipped to you fresh every month. And man…when that little box arrives and that containers cut open, the fresh coffee comes flooding out and it’s just wonderful. So, we have that - coffee, tea. Coffee can be sent to you every month. We also found last year, so it’s a relatively new product, a way to steep coffee like tea. It might sound odd, but I had to try it for myself. Last year when I went to Israel, I had a bunch of these pouches to try to see to see if it was gonna be a decent cup of coffee because I travel a lot. And, so, end…end up drinking a lot of bad coffee. And this was good. So, got back from Israel and went about the business of…of creating Windfarm steeped coffee. And, so, that is great. Its Nitro sealed. So, it just…the thing about coffee is…it…it will go stale like food. Like it…it does get worse with time. And normally we’re drinking really old coffee and so you’re drinking bad coffee. But this nitrogen pushes the oxygen out and it keeps it in this state of freshness for months and months. And, so, the steeped version of Windfarm coffee, for those of you who travel or want to keep some at the office or whatever, those are available as well in the Daily Audio Bible shop.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that dailyaudiobible.com as well. There’s a link on the homepage and I thank you profoundly 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 comment, you can hit the Hotline button, the little red button in the app and begin to share or you can dial 877-942-4253.

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

Genesis 30:1-31:16, Matthew 10:1-23, Psalms 12:1-8, Proverbs 3:13-15

Today is the 14^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is a pleasure and an honor to be here with you today as we take our…as we take our places around the Global Campfire and just exhale. Has it been…how’s it been, the beginning of the year for you, hectic or smooth or whatever? Whatever it is there’s this place that we come to hear from God, and we let His word reach into our lives. And, so we have this one place where we can just exhale and just let the Bible speak to us. So let’s get to that. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. And we’ve got this drama, this considerable family drama happening in the Old Testament where this man Jacob who got married and woke up to the wrong girl and then a week later got the right girl, but now he’s married to two sisters and that’s not going so great. And that’s where we pick up the story. Genesis chapter 30, verse 1 through 31 verse 16.

Commentary:

Okay. So, yesterday in the book of Matthew we actually just kinda did a deep dive into the back story, like all the different things, the disruptions, the subversion that Jesus message was bringing, especially the disruption to those who were devout religious leaders. And we talked about how they were like, “you know, the reason He can do the stuff that He’s doing is because He’s empowered by the evil one to do these things”, which Jesus will address that plenty of times. And, so, we’ll talk about that when we get there, but the bottom line was that yesterday’s reading gave us a glimpse into what Jesus was seeing. He was seeing a human harvest on behalf of God bringing Earth’s people back to God and He was out in the harvest doing that. And we need to notice what He was doing, because what He wasn’t doing was coming up with an evangelism curriculum. What He was doing was talking about the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God and awakening people’s awareness to it. He was telling them that the thing they have been waiting for is already happening if they have eyes to see and ears to hear. And then He was demonstrating that reality through His ministry works. And then He’s kind of lamenting to His disciples, “this is a big harvest. The harvest is ready, but the laborers are few. Pray that they’ll be more, more to go do what I’m doing.” So, we moved into Matthew chapter 10 the day and Jesus is commissioning His disciples to go and do exactly that. He’s sending them into this harvest He was talking about. So, if this is the first opportunity for us to see Jesus sending out friends that He loves, His closest people, sending them out into the harvest, then we should pay attention. So, I’m quoting the Bible here. “Summoning His 12 disciples, He gave them authority over unclean spirits, to drive them out and to heal every disease and sickness.” May I point out that it wasn’t Jesus death and resurrection, His work on the cross that made this possible. He hasn’t gone there yet. These are just 12 people that Jesus picked who are ordinary human beings and He’s basically saying, “look, just go do what you’ve seen Me do.” So, He gave them instructions to equip them on this mission on this journey. So, let’s take a look at what He said to do or don’t do. “Don't”, he says, “take the road that leads to the Gentiles and don’t enter any Samaritan town. Instead, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Okay, so we can read that and go like, “well, the mission of the world of all the world’s people is try to tell the house of Israel that they’re lost sheep and should return to God.” And we could look at something like this, Jesus saying like, don’t go to the Gentiles, don’t go to Samaritans. Just go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and…and…and go like…scratch our heads and say, “what? Is this not like kind of in conflict with the apostle Paul, whose saying that the work of Jesus was to bring everyone, all nations together back to God. Isn’t that the story that God told Abraham, the story that we’re reading through now in the Old Testament now, that all nations of the earth would be blessed through Him? So, why is Jesus just being so exclusionary and so exclusive here?” And believe me, there’s plenty of different doctrines, different ways that people have interpreted and tried to live out what Jesus is depicting here. Since we know from the beginning of the story with Abraham, and since we know through the writings of the apostle Paul that yes, in fact, Jesus did come to restore all of the earth’s people back to Himself - no Jew, no Greek, no male, no female etc. etc., that Jesus isn’t giving an exclusionary instruction here, He’s telling them to go to their people. These are uneducated Hebrew fishermen for the most part, and tax collectors, zealots, like different kind of Hebrew people, but they have that in common. So, He’s not asking them to go without any education whatsoever into cultures they absolutely do not understand and have never had any kind of interaction. He’s saying like, “go into the harvest in the world that you live in in the culture that you understand and as you do it, proclaim that the kingdom of heaven has come near. And it’s interesting because Jesus pitch isn’t, “hey, your lost without me. Accept me. His pitch is, “the kingdom of heaven has come near, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This is the message that was awakening the hearts of Jesus hearers and there was a reason and they were misinterpreting it. They’d been waiting for this. They were waiting for a Messiah, a Redeemer, somebody to come and announce the kingdom of heaven is at hand and get everybody to rise up and revolt against these evil Romans who are occupying their ancestral land, which hadn’t been their own land for well over a millennia. So, Jesus saying, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” awakened things inside of them and they thought this was going to manifest itself in unified Israel when all Jesus was saying is, “if you have eyes to see or ears to hear you will see that God is never stopped working among you. You have silenced Him. Wake up and see what’s actually happening and what’s actually available right now if you simply have eyes to see it. And it’s no different for us today. We share in the same kinds of blindness is and Jesus came to awaken us. So, he tells them, “go. Like, go. Proclaim the kingdom of heaven has come near.” And then He’s like, “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, drive out demons.” Like…like just go do those four things. That’s just a whole complete sentence. It…I’m just like thinking to myself if I’m standing there in the crowd of friends and Jesus is like, “look go heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, drive out demons.” I'd…like you don’t even know what to do with a command or even an indentation like that. And He’s just saying it matter-of-factly because He’s just been doing it matter-of-factly. And e can think that He can just do it that way because He’s the son of the living God and yet He’s telling His friends who have no education, who do not understand theology, who are not practitioners of doctrine, He’s telling them to simply go and do what they’ve seen Him do. And then He tells them, “freely you have received, freely give” right? Like this is a wide-open posture. We’re not trying to carve off a little piece of the action for ourselves that we can hide in a tent somewhere under the ground. We’re not angling for how the optics of our ministry might look and who might be able to see us being all holy and pious. Jesus hated that kind of stuff. That’s the kind of stuff He goes after in the Gospels because it’s false. It’s a veneer of falseness. It’s a curated reality that’s not real that we can even deceive our own selves into believing but it’s not true or real. And Jesus can’t stand what’s false because it’s a lie, it’s a deception, it’s the cloud that plagues the human race. It’s the thing that’s been going on since the Garden of Eden and the deception of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When we look at Jesus we see a person who sees this clearly and is working diligently to do everything conceivable to get people to wake up to what’s going on so that they can become aware and change the story. And it’s a wide open story. “Freely you received, freely give. Don’t acquire gold, silver or copper for your money belts. Don’t take a traveling back for the road, extra shirt, sandals or staff. Everybody’s worthy of their food” and so on and so forth. And those…like…those last instructions we can be like, “He’s sending them out completely unprepared. Anything could go wrong and they won’t be prepared to deal with any of it.” So, what can we learn from this? I like to be prepared. In fact, I think obsessively so, like maybe at times even in unhealthy ways to be prepared to care for those who are in my charge, whoever they might be. And, so, I can look at this and see his would be really difficult for me to just walk out my front door and walk into completely unprepared. And that’s the thing, that’s the thing about Jesus. That’s what He was doing. And yet He never…there’s no stories of Jesus staring off into space completely lost, right? There’s never a depiction of Him sitting on a rock down by the Sea of Galilee, praying a prayer of like, “what the heck am I doing? I have no idea what the next step is.” He knows when He needs to know. He does what He needs to do. He’s always looking behind the false and finding the true and exposing the true. And that causes incredible amounts of disruption because we’re so used to hiding. People don’t like that. And yet it’s the truth that will bring us into the presence of freedom. So, there’s Jesus instructions. And…and then, like to put the little cherry on top of all of this, Jesus very, very clearly, after he’s telling his friends to simply go. He tells them what to expect. “I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. So, be shrewd as serpent and innocent as a dove. Beware of them, they’ll hand you over the local courts and flog you in their synagogues”, right? Like, that’s basically like saying, “they’re gonna…they’re gonna take you to court and they’re gonna drag you into church and beat you up. You’ll even be brought before governors and kings because of me to bear witness to them and to the Gentiles. But when they hand you over don’t worry about what you’re gonna say. You’ll be given what to say at that hour because it isn’t you speaking but it’s the Spirit of your Father that’s speaking through you.” And now we get some clues about our own preparedness in our own strength. Jesus is saying, “this kingdom work isn’t something that you can simply arrange for by your own brute force. It doesn’t work that way. You can begin to do this kingdom work, the kind of work you’re seeing Me do when you are out of the way and out of control so that the Spirit of your Father is speaking through you.” Like, I know that we’ve covered some serious ground here that can feel highly theological in nature. Jesus isn’t making it highly theological though. We just make it highly theological to try to understand what he’s saying to do. And what He’s saying to do and what He’s saying we are going to be experience as we do it, we should be aware of because, like it’s so easy to just sign up for the Santa Claus in the sky, that…that we just have to ask for what we need and He’s just gonna drop it in our laps and that’s how life is supposed to work and then we’re so angry when it doesn’t work that way. And yet here we are in the Bible, Jesus the son of God is speaking here and telling us what our realities are supposed to be like. And how is it that we have such a disconnect? So, He’s like, “I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves and and you gotta be smart about it. You gotta stay innocent. You don’t play that game. Just beware. You’re gonna face some opposition. You might be in court. You might…you might get beat up in church. You…you might be brought before governors and kings but you…you’re gonna bear witness. You’re gonna reveal the kingdom in that situation. So, don’t worry about what you’re gonna say. It’s not gonna be you speaking. You’ve simply become open and available to go into this situation so that God can speak through you to them. It’s not about you. Brother will betray brother to death. Father will betray his child. Children will rise up against their parents and have them put to death. You’re gonna be hated by everyone because of my name but the one who endures to the end will be saved.” That’s kind of Jesus pitch. So, why are we so confused when what H says would happen, does? There’s a concept that’s kind of being introduced here. There’s a theme that threads its way through the teachings of Jesus and through all of the teachings of the New Testament and that is that if you want to truly live then you first have to die to yourself. And now we are beginning to see what that might look.

Prayer:

Jesus, we love You, we trust You, we believe You, and yet what You’re saying it kind of disconnects when we actually experience challenge and opposition. We very, very much want to live into our identity as Your children so we focus very diligently on who are in You and what we can do because of You. And yet we are watching You in the gospel of Matthew. We are watching You, light in the darkness, people amazed and overwhelmed. We are watching this, but we are also watching the darkness envelop and try to smother You. And You are simply saying, “You need to be awake. You need to be aware. You need to be as shrewd as a serpent. You need to be innocent as a dove because the darkness is going to do everything it can to swallow You too.” And yet, we acknowledge that You have told us we are the light of the world. And, so, help us Father understand what that means and how important that is and how vital, how vital it is that we stay true and that we allow Your work to remove from us what is false so that we too can announce the kingdom and live in the light as You are in the light, no matter what the darkness may do. Come Holy Spirit we pray in Jesus, Your precious name, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay tuned and connected.

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hey DAB this is Kathleen in Mount Zion Illinois and I’m just calling today for an urgent prayer request. I’m sorry…I feel awful, you can hear me. So, my daughter…my whole family was just together in San Diego and things seemed….things seemed to be well and then everybody flew back to their own places and my daughter went to Dubai where she lives Abu Dhabi in Dubai, anyway that area and she’s been having migraines and found out that there is lesions on her brain and…and some odd shaped things on her brain, some oval-shaped things. They don’t know what they are and so they’re gonna do another MRI. They have to wait until February for some reason. And I just want everyone to pray that these things will go away, the way that this will be healed before her next MRI. And also, I need a way to get over to see her and so that she won’t be alone during this time. And any way so, we are working on all that and I just…I just pray people that…that this will be a miracle will happen here and that this will all be healed. So, I was just hoping you could pray with me and thank you so much family.

Good morning, this is Duncan Holmes from Fredericksburg Texas. I’m a first…I…I think I’ve sent recordings before, but I think only one was successful. So, let’s pray in the two minutes I have. I am totally blind, so I don’t know when this thing shuts off until voiceover tells me. And, so, when I’m recording, I don’t have voiceover. Let’s pray. Father God I bring Reed to you and any others on this community line that are hurting whatever is happening apply Father your balm of Gilead, apply whatever would take to comfort them, to walk them through whatever they’re all going through for Reed especially. It breaks my heart when people are…are…when I hear the needs and I hear the hurt. Father, the same…for the same for this one who calls herself Anonymous. Father may she find…she find comfort in your word and might she stay the path…the course. Father I don’t know what all to pray. I’m being general here. I don’t know to pray specifically. I thank you for this community. You’ve kept me in this group for five years now. My wife is now gone on to be with you back in October. She and I did this together every day except we didn’t always do the prayer…didn’t always go through the prayers. So, Lord I just ask you to…I just submit all of these to you Jesus and I know that time is limited so I better quit. Thank You Lord for hearing my prayer. Please…please be merciful. Amen.

Morning family I don’t normally do mornings at least not this early. It’s Paul from Wales. To the chap in Chicago whose voice was breaking, you were in my prayers straightaway. I could feel it in your voice. Please feel free, ring back with more. I’ll have a look on the Prayer While perhaps tomorrow see if there’s anything specific to pray about. Also just wanted to thank family whoever had those children that ring in with their prayers. Both my children are fully grown apples and it’s so lovely, it brought back memories of when they first committed their lives to God. And like so many young people, they go their own way. So, this morning Lord I just pray for all those people who gave their lives to you as youngsters and ask that they reconnect with you and come back and make this family so much bigger, so more effective and so more evangelical in your name so that mission might put some right back in this world. Amen.

Hi, DABbers this is Jean I’m calling in again with a prayer request for the persecuted church. If you remember I called in about Afghanistan and Algeria and I was going in alphabetical order, but I wanted to quickly step out of order to pray for Nigeria, the Nigerian church. I don’t know if you’ve heard but over Christmas there were 11 Nigerian Christians killed in an Isis Christmas video. The Nigerian church is extremely persecuted and suffering a lot right now and again I’m getting this information from the voice of the martyrs, but it is sharply divided along religious lines. There are about 80 million professing Christians in Nigeria. There are a lot of Islamic militant groups that are persecuting them and nearly Christians in northeastern Nigeria have lost family members to Bocu Huram ands and Islamic militants, Islamic violence. There have been entire congregations that have been displaced, pastors have been forced to leave the region. It takes immense courage to continue to serve Christ in this area. There is a need for Bibles in the north and there is an issue with famine as well in the North because of the jihadi activities. Farmers aren’t working because they’re afraid of being attacked and there’s just a lot going on for the Christians in Nigeria. So, I just want to lift them up. Lord Jesus, we pray that You would put Your hands on the Christians in Nigeria and comfort them, that You would encourage them Lord, that You  would fill them with Your spirit and meet all of their needs, provide for their physical, emotional, and psychological needs Lord comfort them as they grieve. Give them courage in the midst of danger. I pray that You would give them hearts of forgiveness towards their persecutors and that Your word and Your gospel would spread. I pray this in Jesus’ name.

Hey Anonymous my sister, this is Michael from Arizona. I’ve got a new name for you to call the Lord. Brian had…when Brian read it your face and thoughts of you came into my mind and it was thre name that Haggai referred to the Lord. She said, “you are the Lord who sees me, you are the God who sees me.” And I think that’s a beautiful, intimate way to to refer to the Lord. Not only is it acknowledging that He sees your innermost parts and every part of you, but it also acknowledges that you reveal yourself to Him and are vulnerable to Him and open yourself like a flower. It’s very intimate and draws you closer and I just I think it’s an awesome name for you to for you to refer to the Lord. I think it’s an answer to your prayer and I so admire your vulnerability in calling in and turning to the Lord, turning to the DABber prayer line and being vulnerable. Ahh…I have trouble pronouncing that word. Anyway, I love you sis. Hang in there and tell all that negativity to take a hike. You don’t have time for it because life is so full. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hi Brian and the Daily Audio Bible community family my name’s Diana Davis and I’m the one that wrote Jewels of the Bible. I took the Bible line by line. I pulled out the verses and made them rhyme. __ the Bible I took it line by line but I’m leaving it to the world and I just got the news that I thought I was gonna get today and my…my cancer started out in my breasts and it metastasized to my brain and I had __ head radiation and they laser __ each one but I went back for my CT today and they’re all over my head and they said the only thing that they can do is put a drill and then inject chemo into my brain but he said that he wouldn’t recommend that for his wife or…or whatever, that it would…I wouldn’t be the same afterwards. So, I did everything that I’m supposed to do, that they’re supposed to do, and it’s…it’s at a stop where there’s…there’s no more to go. So, my husband after 25 years, 2 weeks after I was diagnosed drank and drank and drank and got real…so I had to get him out. I have two autistic boys ages 19 and 22. My prayer is quickly, my son Elijah he’s 19 but he’s severely autistic but I’m so…I know God’s gonna take care of it, I know, but please pray that Elijah and Michael get to stay together because my older son who’s also autistic but highly, he’s been on the __ about three years but he said his biggest fear is getting separated from Elijah. I’ve got them all set up with everything that I can possibly do but I just need your help and prayers because there’s so many people that can listen and pray for my son Elijah. He’s autistic and he’s so sweet, such a sweet boy. And he’s going to be really sad. And I know this is more than two minutes, but Brian the Daily Audio Bible and Jill says the Bible, you inspired that. I’ve been listening to you every day for 13 years Elijah is…

Hey Lee in Chicago it’s your brother Bart in Kentucky. I heard your call today, your prayer request on January 7^th and I want you to know that I’m praying for you and I know many others are too. I’m sorry that you’re having to go through these tough times where everything seems like it’s falling apart. I understand completely. So, keep praying to the Lord. Keep asking him to hold your hand as you walk through this troubling landscape. He won’t let you go brother and we’ll keep praying for you. Call in and let us know how we can further pray for you in detail so that we know what’s going on with you. We love you. Have a good day. Have a great day everybody, all you DABbers out there. Thank you for your fellowship and thank you Brian and Jill for this podcast.

Genesis 28:1-29:35, Matthew 9:18-38, Psalms 11:1-7, Proverbs 3:11-12

Today is the 13^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you as we get ready and come in and out of the cold and the chaos that life can bring and just come around the Global Campfire where everyone has a seat and we just let this fire burn and warm us and it’s this other place, this safe space we have, to allow God’s Word to speak into our day and into our week and for that matter into our lives, transforming us from within. So, we’ll pick up where we left off yesterday which will take us back into the book of Genesis. And there’s a bunch of drama going on in this third kinda generation. So, Abraham’s grandchildren, Jacob and Esau, brothers, they’ve had…well…there’s been some deception, some significant deception on the part of Jacob and his mom, Rebekah. So, Jacob took the blessing and the birth right from his brother Esau. His brother Esau is not happy. In fact, so upset about it that he’s willing to kill his brother Jacob. So, Jacobs got to go. And that’s where we pick up the story. Genesis chapters 28 and 29 and we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week.

Commentary:

Okay. Oh…there’s a lot for us to…to look at today. Let’s go into the book of Genesis. There’s just a lot of things that are happening right now and they’re really important to the story that is unfolding. We can begin to read the Bible and read about different people’s lives like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and know that they’re important figures in the Bible, but not necessarily know how they’re all connected. And, yet, once we met Abram the story has been a cohesive story of Abram who became Abraham, his family, right? So, we are at the grandchildren level at this point, Jacob and Esau and we read the story of what happens. So, Jacob is on the run and he’s going back to Abraham’s family where he’s been sent. This is the same way that Abraham’s servant went and to the same people that Abraham’s servant went to get a wife for Isaac, right, Rebekah. So, this is where Jacob’s going and when he gets there, he meets Laban who is Rebekah’s brother. We already met him. He was much younger, when Abraham’s servant came but he would have been roughly the same general age as his sister Rebekah. So, now he’s grown up and in charge of things and Rebekah’s son Jacob comes to him and lives with him. But let’s not get ahead of the story. Jacob’s on the run and the sun sets so he finds place to sleep and it’s in this city that was known as Luz that became known as Bethel, which is biblical Bethel, a place that we’ll see many times on our journey through the Old Testament. And he is a dream and God appears to him. So, the third generation. God appeared to Abraham with a promise. God appeared to Isaac in Beersheba with a promise. And now He is communicating with Isaacs’s son and Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, reaffirming the promise. So, Esau gets up and says, surely God is here, and I was just unaware of it. Can I just tell you that that phrase out of the book of Genesis, that phrase right there much describes our whole lives? So often we live our lives as if we need to go through a certain set of rituals, kind of get ourselves into a certain state of organization or whatever within or without in order to approach God who is separate and apart from and distant and separated from us and then we can come into His presence and then…and then commune with Him and ask for the things that we need and offer our worship. When the truth is, as we are going to find out explicitly in the Bible that God is within us and never absent. We aren’t separated from Him. We have just become unaware of His presence. And, so, when we do become aware of His presence, which we can do at any point in time, we too, Like Jacob would say, “surely the Lord is here, and I was just unaware of it.” So, fold that up, put that in your purse or in your wallet and carry it around with you for the rest of this year. It can be a rescue when things get pretty crazy. And this place that Jacob spent the night, he’s got another night to spend in that place, but that is a story for another day. So, Jacob wakes up, you know, he’s realizing the presence of the Lord. And then he does something interesting and it’s something that we’ve already mentioned. So, he…he gets this rock and he…he stands it up and…and then he pours oil on top of it and he sets that stone as a standing stone. It's…it’s a marker the Bible says. And he does this, and we see this tradition throughout the Scriptures, he does this so that what happened there will not be forgotten. And one of the ways that we’ve brought that specific tradition into our rhythm of life in the Daily Audio Bible community is to encourage journaling. Write down the things that the Lord reveals to you in your heart as you move your way through His word. You don’t want to forget that. You want to be able to go back to that place and remember what happened there. So, then Jacob eventually does get to Laban as we mentioned a few minutes ago and he does become a part of Laban’s household and he begins to work as a shepherd because he’s fallen in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel. So, he does his work. He asks for his wife. He gets married. He has a wedding night he wakes up and finds out his bride is not the one he loves. It’s her sister. And, so, now he’s married to Leah but in love with Rachel. And a week goes by and then he marries Rachel. So, now he is the husband of two sisters and that, you just can’t imagine that’s gonna be a harmonious home, but I want to point out something here. Jacob had been a bit of a deceitful person all along. And in a very real way, the trickery that he used to deal with his father and his brother is the same kind of trickery that’s being used on him. And, so, we could say Jacob is one of the patriarchs, he is, you know, one of the pillars of the story that were telling and God used him, but the Bible goes to great lengths to show us the way that Jacob was a conniver. And we’ll see that it…it doesn’t ever really smooth out for Jacob until he learns that lesson and ceases that activity. And we will see that his…his trickery and deception, and his, you know, kind of trying to play the game, these things haunt him well into his adulthood, well into the establishment of his own household. So, we end our reading today with Jacob having married the two sisters and the sister that Jacob loves, Rachel, she’s not able to have children and meanwhile, the sister that Jacob doesn’t love, Leah, she has already given birth to four sons. Her firstborn was Ruben and then came Simeon and then Levi and then Judah. And those names, depending on how much you’ve ever been around the Bible, those names may sound familiar, and they should. These little children who are babies at the moment in our reading will one day grow up to have households of their own and we’ve met four of them, but there are more that we will meet. And these people will one day grow up and become tribes, 12 tribes making up one whole people called Israel. That’s the story we’re telling, the origin story of the Hebrew people who, for the most part populate the rest of the Bible

And then we get into the book of Matthew and we’re very, very quickly seeing the ministry of Jesus and the stories in the gospel of Jesus are just fantastic to read, but if we actually want to get to know Jesus and not just know the stories about Him then we need to look under the surface of these stories because we find such interesting things there, things that challenge…challenge what we think we know. So, we begin our reading today and one of the leaders of the village that Jesus was in, he comes and he’s like my…my daughter just died. So, you can only imagine that, He didn’t just come up to Jesus and wait his turn and kind of, you know, “my daughter just died but come and lay your hand on her and she will live.” Like, nobody does that if their daughter just died. So, you can imagine the situation but it’s an urgent situation. So, Jesus and the disciples they get up and they follow this guy and on their way…so Jesus is on His way to this urgent situation when He gets interrupted because there’s this woman who’s been kind of following Him around and she's…she’s been bleeding for 12 years, right? So…so…the thing is, as we will learn when we go through the Mosaic law, we will understand that this woman who is a Hebrew woman, she is ritually impure, okay, because of the bleeding for 12…so that means for 12 years she’s been ritually impure and kept outside of God’s presence. She thinks to herself, “if I can just get to Him. If I can just touch…touch his robe, I’ll be healed.” And, so, we know this super famous story and that happens, but what we…what we usually walk away from is that we look at this story as Jesus, the miracle worker, the proof we’re looking for to believe upon him. Ironically, it doesn’t appear that Jesus ever was angling to be perceived of as a miracle worker. Obviously, if miracles are being performed in your presence word is going to spread so He couldn’t keep a lid on that but that does not seem to be in any way what he was after. And if you don’t believe me, then just keep watching Jesus as we go through the Gospels over the next several months and watch what He does when the stuff happens. Let’s just take the story that we’re telling right now. This woman, she has touched Jesus and Jesus realized He was touched, and according to Matthew, Jesus turned and saw her and I’m quoting Jesus, “have courage daughter, your faith has saved you” and the woman was made well from that moment. So, unless Jesus has been misquoted here and that’s not what He meant to say at all then we would have to deduce from what He said that this woman’s healing was not simply something that happened to her, but rather something that she also collaborated in. “Have courage daughter, your faith has saved you.” And the woman was made well from that moment. That’s what the Bible says. Okay. So, then that scene gets over and Jesus does finally make it to this leader’s house whose daughter has just died, and there are a bunch of people there because he was a leader, and this was the common practice of the timHe ge. When there’s a loss of life then, you know, mourner’s friends and people…people will come to mourn. A lot of times outside, even…even they would be hired at times to come and professionally mourn just to let everyone know around that there’s been this loss. So, Jesus comes into that kind of situation where there’s a lot of crying and weeping and noise. And He says, “leave.” Like, that’s what the Bible says. Verse 24 “leave”, He said. Okay. Because the girl isn’t dead but she’s asleep. And all of a sudden, their mourning turned into laughing, which is something that is a rich metaphor in the Scriptures, but this is not the kind of joy that we’re talking about, they start laughing at Him sarcastically. They are unaware of the situation. They have accepted the reality, this person, this girl is dead. And, so, now they begin all of the rituals of death when a completely different reality is available, and Jesus gets everybody out and after they’re out he goes and gets the girl and she wakes up. So, in this scene we see Jesus describing, depicting, engaging with a reality or the opportunity of a reality that everybody else can’t see and has dismissed. And when they’re presented with this reality, the idea that the girl isn’t dead, they dismiss that. Like, hope doesn’t rise. They laugh at Him instead. Okay friends. We’re looking at ourselves here in the Scriptures because this is what’s intended to happen, that we look into these stories we feel all of the different elements of these stories and we find our heart in these stories. We locate where we are, and we find our orientation and the reality is that all too often the presence of Jesus is with us, just like Jacob, completely unaware of it and then we do become aware of it, but the situation seems impossible. We can’t wrap our minds around any other kind of reality besides what we seem to be crushed by and instead of reaching out, right, for the hem of His garment, instead of just reaching out we hear him say it doesn’t have to be this way son, it doesn’t have to be this way daughter and we laugh at him. And do you see the parallels here? So, you remember the story of the promise in the beginning with Abraham and Sarah, she laughed too. And we begin to realize, this is a pattern, this is a theme, these things keep happening over and over. They keep happening over and over in the Bible because they keep happening over and over in my life and they keep happening over and over in my life because they’re happening everywhere in the world. And then we become aware of the fact that maybe we are living blinded to the fact that there’s another way, that there’s a way to be in this world, continually in the presence of God because His presence is never taken from us. We are simply unaware of it. And we are watching a person when we watch Jesus. We are watching a person totally dialed in. Jesus is modeling for us who we are and how we’re supposed to be. So, this girl is raised up. Everyone obviously doesn’t laugh anymore. The news spreads all over the place and the next scene we see is two blind men asking for mercy. And Jesus gets them aside and he simply asks them a question…like He doesn’t heal them, He asks them a question, “do you believe that I can do this?” And they say, “yes. I do believe.” And then…and then…here's…and I’m quoting Jesus again, “let it be done for you according to your faith.” And their eyes were opened. Right? You see, again, this isn’t something that Jesus did to them, it’s something that was collaborative. Faith arose within them. Their awareness of the presence of God rose up and they experienced God. And then…and then the miracle worker, Jesus has some words. I’m quoting Jesus here, “be sure that no one finds out.” That’s what Jesus said after He opened the eyes of the blind. But according the Scriptures they didn’t listen to Jesus, they went and spread the news about Him everywhere. And then we are taken immediately to a scene in which Jesus is dealing with a person possessed by a demon and was mute because of it. And Jesus throws the demon out, the man begins to speak, the crowds are amazed. Alright. So, now we are about to encounter the two different reactions that happen and swirl around just about everything Jesus does. So, this person who couldn’t speak is now speaking and the crowds are amazed and they say, according to the Bible, “nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.” So, they are effectively saying, “we are seeing a new thing.” God is doing a new thing and they believe that it’s God doing this thing because the Scriptures tell us that they are in awe and worshiping God about it. Jesus is definitely gaining momentum. But the Pharisees, right? So, the religious leaders, the people who are charged with guarding the souls of God’s people, their response isn’t, “nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.” Their response is, “He drives out demons by the ruler of the demons.” Those are two very different reactions to the presence of God in these stories and they reveal the different ways that we respond when we find ourselves encountering God. On the one hand, we could say, “I don’t know how to explain this. I do not know how to put this into language or words, but something has shifted, an awareness in me has changed. Something…something that wasn’t here is now here”, right? Like, maybe “my anxiety has fled, and I feel a presence of comfort with in me.” I mean…if we just begin to describe examples, we could go all day, but we realize that as much as we try to articulate this doesn’t need to be articulated, it’s something deep, it’s something true, it’s something that has shifted in us, and no one can take it away from us because it has been real to us, right? So, then we could say, “nothing like this has ever happened before.” Or we can have the same kind of experience and then immediately lose our body and soul and just go into our mind trying to figure out what the theology of our experience might have been, go deeply into our religion and go like, “do the rules say that this can happen?” And then we can easily find ourselves in the seat of the Pharisees. “This is an of God, this is of the devil.” Stuff happens all the time and we need to know what we’re seeing in the New Testament when it comes to Jesus. It’s religion and the keepers of God’s rules that are attempting to diminish and denigrate God and eventually to kill Him. Yikes! Like, that’s scary stuff and disruptive stuff and, like I’ve said, we need to get used to disruption because the Bible’s gonna shake us. So, after this encounter with the Pharisees where they’re like, “He drives out demons by the ruler of demons” Jesus continues to just move on doing what He…He does. Quoting from Matthew, “Jesus continued going around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness”, right? That’s what we would expect to find Jesus doing and that’s what we actually continue to pray that Jesus will do in this world. But what’s interesting is that Jesus comments on it. When He saw the crowds, He felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dejected. They were like sheep without a shepherd.” So, He felt…He felt bad about that. In another words He sees the plight of humans trying to navigate life, and yet Jesus is operating and navigating in and among these people and awakening something in them. He’s telling them about a kingdom that is within them. They are awakening to this and He sees…He sees this happening, but he realizes it’s not gonna happen with just one person with just Him alone. So, He said to His disciples, “the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” So, Jesus was seeing a human harvest, and He was in the harvest reaping the harvest. And we can look at Jesus as a wisdom teacher and miracle worker and prophet, and yes, divine son of the living most-high God, who was operating as a human being in some sort of special other nonhuman way, when Jesus continually is just operating as a human should be operating. And when we get to the writings of the apostle Paul this will become explicit. And in our reading today Jesus is saying, “I need…I…pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest…I need help. So, brothers and sisters. The harvest is still ripe. It…it will never not be. Humanity is asleep. We are still living backward, and help is still needed and that’s you and we’re gonna find what we usually lack is awareness. And that’s what we see in the Old and New Testaments today, and that’s what we need to begin to live into.

Prayer:

Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit because on our own we are blind, and we can’t see and we are like sheep without a shepherd, and we are floundering in life. We know that. We’ve experienced that. It's…it’s not a theory, we’ve lived it. And, so we come to You, You’ve rescued us, You’ve changed everything but so often we fall back into the patterns that we know and we look at the world in the way that it seems like everybody else is looking at the world and so we find ourselves at times even at odds with You because we’ll consult all the rules and all the regulations and all the things we think that we know and we miss when You do something new. And yet the Scriptures tell us it is the same Spirit that raised You from the dead, the same Spirit that You were operating in on this planet, the same, not a similar, the same one that lives within us. And, so, this idea of being Christ like isn’t a metaphor. This idea of being one body, the hands and feet, the physical representation of Christ on earth inside of us, this isn’t a metaphor. This is something we’re supposed to collaborate in. And, so, as we continue this journey that has just begun this year, we invite Your Holy Spirit to fully transform us from within, day by day, step-by-step so that the person that we see in the mirror at the end of this voyage is a different person, so that we are awake and aware in our lives. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, its the website, its where you find out what’s going on around here. I have highlighted some different resources that are in the Daily Audio Bible shop because they are…well…they….they’ve been created for the journey that we’re on. And one…one resource that I haven’t mentioned yet this year, but this is a good day to mention it, is…is a DVD…double DVD and digital download series called “Promise Land.” And we spent, I think six seasons in Israel filming so many of the biblical archaeological locations in all their beauty in an attempt to bring the biblical places closer to home. So, like we we’re talking about Luz today, Bethel, right, Bethel and this place where…where Jacob spent the night and a place where he’s going to come back to. So, we’ve…we’ve filmed that. So, like to get an idea of what he saw, what that looks like, you can see this. And so many of the different places around Jesus ministry, these villages and these places we’re Jesus ministered, they’re all filmed. And, so, it makes a fantastic resource to just be able to look in and actually see. And before I ever went Israel I never even wanted to go. It was like not the thing I thought it would be. I just kinda…I don’t know what I thought. I thought it would maybe ruin the Bible for me but it didn’t, it actually made it a real, like these things happened in real places. And I realized while all I’ve been looking at is, you know, pictures like static photographs on the Internet of these places, what it would it be like to try to provide a 360° view, like a real honest look at a place from the air and we using drones and from the ground and all of this. So, that’s Promise Land and it will serve as a fantastic resource throughout the year to refer to. It’s like, there’s over 70 different locations that we’ve filmed and are just, they’re short, like only 2 to 3 minutes in a place. So, real easy to access. Like, “okay. We were reading about Bethel today. Let me see that.” And in just a couple minutes you can see it and find out the significance biblically of what happened there. So, that is a resource that is available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. Check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage. 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 comment 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 will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Genesis 26:17-27:46, Matthew 9:1-17, Psalms 10:16-18, Proverbs 3:9-10

Today is the 12^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s wonderful to be here with you today. How are you as we enter a new week? Can you believe it? Before this week is over, we will have passed through the center of January. Like, that’s how quickly…ahh its like hard to believe, just a couple…couple weeks ago we’re in like the last decade, it’s Christmas time, its…how quickly, how quickly we just…life just moves us forward and here we are about to cross through the middle of the first month. But it’s good to know where we are. It’s good to know, like, this is the 12^th day of the year, but a lot of time that pulls us forward, right? Like, that keeps us from being here and gets us out into the future. And, so, let’s be here. We’re beginning a brand-new sparkly shiny week and we’ll cross into this week together we’ll Let God’s words speak to us and then the reality is this week hasn’t been lived yet. So, we may be carrying all kinds of baggage into this week, but the choices that we make, the way that we conduct ourselves and live our lives in this week, that’s going to be the story of this week and it’s really good at the beginning of week to remind ourselves of that. This is a new day. This is a new week and we can make the next right decisions right now. And one right decision is to allow God’s Word to speak to us, which is what we’ve come here to do. And, so, let’s get to it. We’re…we’re in a new week. This week we’ll read from the Christian Standard Bible, and we’re picking up the story of Isaac and Rebekah, and Isaac has basically done the same thing his father Abraham had done in the same city. Like they went to this city called Gerar and Abraham had told the people there that his wife Sarah was his sister. So, Isaac has gone to this same place and said that Rebekah, his wife, is his sister, which has caused some unrest. And, so, we’re seeing a little bit of tension beginning to build as we move into the new generations. Today we’ll read Genesis chapter 26 verse 17 through 27 verse 46.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for bringing us into a new shiny week and we invite Your Holy Spirit into every aspect of our lives, ever thought, every word, every deed that is out in front of us. As we live into this new week, we cannot do this without You. Why we have ever tried to do anything without You is remarkably foolish, but we are learning. And, so, we invite You in advance into every aspect of all of our interactions this week and we take note, even in today’s reading from the book of Matthew, but in general now that we’re reading of You, Jesus, getting to know Your personality and getting to observe Your behaviors and the way that You moved in this world and the way that You were willing to be disruptive, especially to the people who thought…who thought they had control over the worship of God. And, so, we see You in today’s reading alone healing a person who couldn’t walk by saying Your sins are forgiven, which only served to disrupt the scribes who are thinking You’re a blasphemer, and using the whole scene to reveal its…its not about obeying the rituals of religion, its about how we are in this world. And You did that by quoting from Hosea, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” And, so continually, even…even we who love You, even we who are following You, are trying to be a disciple in this world, to be Your hands and feet in this world, we find ourselves continually invited to look at the motives of our hearts. And we do everything that we can to curate a life that looks religious and looks pious and looks like maybe we know You or do we not care about any of that because we actually know You and know Your will and know Your ways? Come Holy Spirit into that question we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, home base, its where you find out find out what’s going on around here as I say most every day. So, stay tuned and stay connected in any way that you can, and in any way that you want to.

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

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, you can press 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 will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi this is Gary speaking I’m from South Carolina and I’ve just completed 12 years of listening to the Daily Audio Bible. Today is January 5^th and I’m starting my 13^th year now. This is actually my first time calling in. I’ve been listening for so long hearing so many different people call and leave requests, I’ve finally gotten around to call in myself. I’m not really calling you with a prayer request. I just wanted to call and encourage anybody joining this year for the first time or maybe if you’ve been on a few years I just want to encourage anybody to stick with it. In fact, I would say stick with it indefinitely for years. I have found that…and it’s easy to do. If you’re commuting to work it’s easy to fit into your life, just to commit to listening to the hearing, to have the hearing of the Word happening in your life daily, it will do amazing things to you. It starts to sink in in a very unique way. After listening for a few years, you start associating parts of the Bible with months of the year. The stories of the Old Testament start to happen in ways where you know at certain times of the year what to expect. You start to memorize the flow of the Bible. And over time you start seeing how the gospel is clearly displayed throughout the Old and New Testament. And listening to all the people call in you can hear how it’s changing lives. You can also see that really everyone, all lives are broken and need saving. And just hearing that and being a part of that for this many years has really…it’s really it’s really deepened my faith. And Brian and Jill I thank you for having this ministry and I pray you continue it as long as well as long as I’m alive. I intend to listen to it indefinitely as long as it’s available…

Hello DAB family this is Alicia My God is Abundance and I just got finished listening to the January 3^rd broadcast on today, January 3^rd. And I heard Finding Peace sounding broken and asking for prayer and clinging to faith and right after that I heard God Smiles with that beautiful message. And I know, God Smiles, that you had that message for all of us and I thank you for that message. But Finding Peace, I…I couldn’t help but think the minute that I heard that message that that message was a message that you needed to hear, that you needed to hear and cling to. I mean we’re starting a…we’re starting the Bible over again. We are in Genesis and man oh man it’s…we are so quick to hear the serpent hiss and to listen to his voice and to ignore the loving whisper of our God, you know? So, I just pray for you, Finding Peace, that you can hear the loving whisper of our God and I think today that loving whisper might have come to you in the voice of God Smiles and I think that whisper came to us all God Smiles, so thank you so much for that. Finding Peace, I do pray for your peace, your wholeness, your shalom. Thank you DAB family and thank you Brian for being so faithful and continuing to read is God’s word every day.

One of the reasons I love this podcast is because Brian talks about choosing the narrow path to life and this has been a pretty big theme in my life. This is Cindy, by the way, the Silver Lining Miner from Seattle. I have been struggling with a couple things in my life, one was my job that, thank God I have a job and I start on January 20^th and I thank all those who prayed for me. The other one is choosing relationships and people and bringing people into our lives that will lead us toward the narrow path that leads to life. So, I would love to praise Brian for his reminder about choosing the narrow path. And, are you going to choose the…the way to sin and to desires, giving into your desires and things that you know might not lead to that narrow path or are you going to choose the narrow path? And, so, for everybody out there who has maybe been in a relationship that’s…they know is not healthy or they’re walking a line right now where they are close to choosing a relationship that’s not healthy or doing something that is not healthy for their current relationship, I just want to say that I stand with you and I pray for you. I made a choice today to avoid an unhealthy path and I knew I could do it because of my family that I have here and other family members in my history that have been strong and actions that I’ve taken that show that I can walk that narrow path and be strong. So, I stand with you all and I pray for all of you to make those right choices with me. Amen.

Hi DAB family, I’m…this is Anonymous, I’m calling in because it’s January 4^th and I just want to praise God for hearing prayers outside of time. I tell you what, I have never been so encouraged in my entire walk with Christ. You know, I grew up in a in a Christian household and, you know, I got saved at 14 and I’ve never felt so encouraged and I know it’s because God has heard everyone’s prayers outside of time. Everyone who heard the message I left that got played on the 27^th and I didn’t hear it, I didn’t know I got played, I thought it might’ve have been have been played on the community prayer or maybe not…not really in anyone’s hearing. And today, January 4^th, I heard a woman pray. The first prayer was for…for Anonymous. And I thought, “oh yeah. You know what? Anonymous prayers are always really…they’re really…they touch my heart because those are prayers of people who don’t have anything left to try to hide what they are dealing with, they don’t have any…any layers left.” And, so, I prayed for Anonymous. And then the gentleman who prayed next prayed for anonymous and I thought. “oh.” I thought, “that sounds familiar. I don’t know why that sounds familiar but that’s something that I…you know…that fel;t familiar to my heart.” And then the third woman who prayed identified the day and I was like, “Lord God. I’m gonna go back and listen but I think…I think these people are praying for me.” And I know that God hears prayers outside of time and I want to thank everyone who has prayed for me since the 27^th. I’ve felt that. God has done work in my life. So, thank you so much. I love every single one of you.

Hey this is PG from NC. Brian thank you for reading. While you are reading, I had a thought. All my life I have heard the fact that Jesus called us to be fishers of men. The reality was He was calling fishermen to be fishers of men. It was a metaphor. He was allowing them, helping them to see themselves with a kingdom purpose and vision. There’s our word for the year. And I think if He were walking the earth today, I think He would be calling people and using a metaphor for which they could truly understand and wrap the purpose and a vision of themselves around. If He were calling a waiter or waitress or server, He might be calling them to serve the bread of life to individuals. If He were calling a fireman, He might be calling them to help people…help people escape the fiery situations of life there in or protect them from perilous situations. If He were calling a pilot or a flight attendant, He might be asking them to divinely help transport people along the journey of life to their ultimate kingdom destination. I think that each of us has a way that we see, we identify ourselves by our occupation or by our skill set and I think that God would want to use of metaphor that to allow us to see the kingdom purpose behind how He created us and how we function. So, Lord I pray today for every DABber who’s listening. God, I pray You’d give us vision of ourselves with a metaphor or a thought or an understanding of how You designed us to function. And I pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.

This is Michaela from South Carolina. I’ve called a few times over the 14 years that I’ve been listening. Each time it has been for my sister Susan who suffers from bipolar. She’s currently in ICU having a medicine overdose. She almost made it through the holidays but just finally couldn’t cope. I’m asking for prayer for her recovery and her restoration. I am believing God for her to be an icon of His healing power. Thank you all for your prayers and support. My husband and I listen daily, and we pray for all of you.

Hello Daily Audio Bible this is Heather and my son Judah, hi. So, I’ve been listening to the Daily Audio Bible and this is my first time calling in. I’ve been listening for the past seven years and for this eighth year my son Judah, he’s now 10 years old, he’s committed to live…listen to the Daily Audio Bible with me daily. I’m excited to see him go through the whole Bible in a year with me. I’m glad I finally called in. I listen to prayers and pray for the prayers as they come in and it’s just been a part of my growth the past seven years. And, so, I’m finally glad to be able to call in. God bless you.