Month: January 2020

Genesis 16:1-18:15, Matthew 6:1-24, Psalms 7:1-17, Proverbs 2:1-5

Today is the 7^th day of January, welcome to the daily Bible I’m Brian and it is a joy, every day it is a joy to come around this Global Campfire that…that we all share, where the fire is burning and no matter what time of day or night it is we can kinda come…come out of the cold, come out of the heat even and just come to this place, this space that overtime just kinda becomes an oasis. It’s like this one space, this once period of time a day that we kinda step out of all of the chaos that’s swirling around and just simply allow God’s word to wash over us and then we go back out into it. It’ll still be there, but we may go back out into it with some perspective and some transformation in our lives, And, so it’s a beautiful thing to be here with you today for the next step forward. And we have been reading from the New International Version this week. And we have, in the book of Genesis, been reading about this guy named Abram who has entered into a covenant with God and God has given him a promise for lots…like an innumerable amount of offspring, but he doesn’t have any kids at all. And he has followed this God into a land that is not his homeland, a land that God has said will become his ancestral homeland, but that hasn’t happened either and God has just told him yesterday that it’s gonna be like for centuries of mistreatment before that stuff starts to happen. And all of a sudden, we see, “oh… the stories in the Bible are full of ups…ups and downs just like my life is. There’s no straight line to anywhere. It goes through all of the issues of life” and where we arrive is how we respond to those things. And, so, we continue with that journey. Today we’ll read Genesis chapter 16 verse 1 through 18 verse 15.

Commentary:

Alright. There are a few things we should touch base on in our reading today. I’m trying to think of the fastest way to go about this. So, let’s go into Genesis. And we read within the last couple of days of Lot and Abram separating. Like, they’re close relatives, but their…their households have grown too big to sustain them in one place. So, they go in separate directions and subsequently Lot is captured in sort of a nine-king battle and Abram goes and reclaims Lot and retakes all of the things that have been stolen and those get divvied up and Abram takes nothing. He won’t let anybody claim that they made him rich, it was only God. And then we have up person, like right after that battle a person kind of comes in and his name is Melchizedek. Okay. So, pause for a second. Some of the things that we’re doing in our time going to the Bible this year is to try to look below the surface, not to find hidden Bible codes or secret messages and stuff like that, but because we need to be below the surface at the level of our hearts to allow the Bible to begin to speak to us deeply. And, so, every time one of these little, strange kind of references show up, and it’s happened several times in the book of Genesis so far, where we get a peek into the spiritual realm, most of time we just kinda move past, go like, “that’s weird. That’s something. That’s something spiritual but it’s weird. I don’t understand it.” And we just kinda move on trying to find the things that would apply to our lives today, which is okay. But since we’re realizing that as we follow Jesus and as we look at Jesus in the Gospels we’re looking at a whole person who is their Spirit and their soul and their body integrated and they’re working through the world and realizing that we are spiritual beings and there is a spiritual realm. I guess we should look at that when it peaks up. So, Melchizedek shows up. This strange figure who is the first named priest of the most-high God. I’m gonna go into all kinds of things about Melchizedek right now because he will show back up for us later when we…when we wind our way into the book of Hebrews, but to connect it to the story that we’re in in Genesis, Melchizedek blesses Abram. And this incident that we witnessed at the Tower of Babel a couple of days ago where the…the earth’s languages were confused and people went off into their language groups, that actually has significance because we’re moving one story to the next, to the next, to the next and it can seem like, “well, maybe that was a thousand years, or maybe…who knows how long that was” but there does seem to be a cohesive story being told underneath it all. And we are most definitely watching apparent spiritual beings communicating and being seen on the earth by humans. We see that in today’s reading alone. So, we see that a flood happened on the earth because everyone on the earth had only evil in their hearts and the Bible talks about them essentially kind of a devolving into animals, which I guess is a really decent way of describing what happens to us when we are separated from God. And, so the flood goes away, but the evil in the hearts of people is still there. And then we move right into God calling Abram who has today become Abraham and has today entered into covenant with God and the outward representation of that covenant is circumcision. This idea of circumcision is gonna carry us because it’s from a Hebrew perspective through the rest of the Bible, but now God’s saying, “okay. There is a mark, a very intimate mark, one that will be observed in the most private and intimate times of life, and for that matter, one that will constantly be a reminder of the covenant and who you belong to, and who you are submitted to.” And what God is doing with all of the language of Abram whose name is turned to Abraham is to tell him, “a new people will be raised up and they will be my people. There are lots of people that are in absolute rebellion and disobedience. These people I’m raising up through you, Abraham, my covenant partner to be my people.” And that’s gonna become more and more important as we go on and that is actually gonna cause problems that need to be worked out when we get into the letters of the New Testament’s early church era. Okay, so we know Hagar, you know, Sarai gave Hagar to Abram. And, of course, Abram agreed. And, so, a child was born. His name was Ishmael. And we read of the tension that happened between Sarai and Hagar and that’s pretty understandable, but Hagar was mistreated to the point that she ran away and she had an encounter with a spiritual being upon the earth that she could see, the angel of the Lord. And often among biblical scholars, the angel of the Lord means the Lord. This is like a physical visible representation, but God. So anyway, after they have this conversation, she says something really, really profound. It's…it’s fairly famous, but it’s pretty profound, “you are, the God who sees me. I have now seen the one who sees me.” This is actually quite beautiful, because we will remember back in Genesis chapter 3, that as soon and Adam and he realized the separateness from God that rebellion had made them aware of this and even caused this, that they realized they could be seen, and they hid. And that has really been a fundamental reality of a fallen mankind existing until today. We still struggle. We don’t want to be exposed. We don’t even want to be exposed before God. The thing is, people, like when you’re in a relationship with somebody, they only know of you what you’re willing to reveal to them. They can only know of you, what you will let them see. So, if we understand that we understand how much we are hiding and how pretty much nobody really sees us, no one really knows us. And here is Hagar in ultimate distress, a really difficult situation and what we’ll find in the Bible and what we’ll find in our lives is that this is where God dwells a lot of the time, when we…when we have unraveled ourselves to the point that we, in our own strength cannot move forward. So, she’s in distress but she is also saying that she is seen. And if we could all just understand that the more we are willing to reveal…we could say, “well, God knows everything about me. I don’t…like…He sees it all” but that’s different than opening your heart and revealing it all. We can be seen. We can be seen by one another. We can be seen by God. It’s all really hinging on how vulnerable we’re willing to be.

And man, I feel like I…I…I should…I could stop there, but there’s more and can’t really skip this because Jesus gave us the Lord’s prayer today. Maybe we even recited it as we were reading it. And, so, the Lord’s prayer is certainly very, very famous. But Jesus kinda comments on portions of the Lord’s prayer as soon as He ends the prayer, right? So, like, “forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors.” This isn’t just debt, like you owe somebody some money. Like this…this is a transgression against you or a transgression that like you are indebted to somebody because you’ve done them wrong and it needs to be made right. So, we get through the Lord’s prayer and then immediately Jesus says, “if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Okay that is certainly a posture of heart. But if we’re looking at what Jesus says and we’re looking below the surface then we begin to realize that the underlying truth is that when you set someone free you are being set free. And when this is the way you live then…then you live in freedom.

Then we get into the Psalms today and we read, “whoever is pregnant with evil”, right? And I mean, let’s just like stop there. “Pregnant with the evil.” How do you get pregnant with evil? So, the language is out of the Bible, pregnant. Pregnant is that you’re incubating something within you that has been put…put their very intimately. “Whoever is pregnant with evil conceives trouble and gives birth to disillusionment.” We can say a ton of stuff about it, but there is one of those sentences that we can ponder and invite God into as we meditate upon it.

Prayer:

Father there’s…like there’s plenty of other things that we could…we could maybe talk about just from today’s reading alone, but it feels like this is…this is where we’ll land today. And, so we thank You for all the many facets in today alone that…that gives us pause and gives us a chance to reflect, gives us the opportunity to invite Your Holy Spirit, gives us an opportunity to…to just observe ourselves and the past that our lives are on, understanding now that it doesn’t all have to be pure confusion, it doesn’t all have to be a mystery. There is a way. There is a way that leads to life. And as we interact with Your word every day it is revealing that path. And, so, come Holy Spirit and lead us into all truth we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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

Genesis 13:5-15:21, Matthew 5:27-48, Psalms 6:1-10, Proverbs 1:29-33

Today is the 6^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today. This is the first Monday we are experiencing in this new decade and I’m glad to be here to share it with you. This will be our first full week together as we journey into this new year and into the Scriptures. So, kind of a set sail and we’re kind of getting our bearings, moving in and by the time…by the time we complete this week we should have established a rhythm that will carry us through this year and I’m excited about that. I’m excited about the journey that we’re on. I’m excited about all we’re gonna see and the way the Bible is going to show up and give us what we need each day. So, let’s get to that, let’s get into this first full work week of the new year. We’ll read from the New International Version, which is what we began yesterday. And today, Genesis chapter 13 verse five through 15 verse 21.

Commentary:

Alright. So, in the Gospel of Matthew we’re working our way through what is known as Jesus Sermon on the Mount, which really is the…a foundational piece of the teachings of Jesus. And, so, we kind of talked about the Beatitudes a little bit yesterday because we were moving through them and we…we noticed that it’s almost like Jesus is describing up an opposite way of living in the world that we live in, right? So, we were saying like, “how can…how is it that blessed are the poor in spirit? How are the poor in spirit blessed?” Like, it’s almost like the opposite of what we would think. And we talked about the disruption of…of pure wisdom kind of flowing into our lives in the way that often happens in disruptive ways that we have to stop and think through, like meditate upon, consider, contemplate, deeply allow things to move past only our minds comprehension and allow our heart to be a part of that conversation. And we will notice this in pretty much all of the teachings of Jesus. And, so, we’re continuing the Sermon on the Mount today and it’s like, “okay. Jesus is saying some pretty interesting difficult things to read about adultery and divorce and oaths an eye for an eye and the posture that we should have about that and the way that we should…the way that we should love our enemies.” So, like there is plenty of disruption to go around, but a lot of that tension arises in our, like, five physical sense-based experience of life. So, it’s like, “okay. Wow! I thought Jesus was coming to bring me freedom, but now I’m reading what He’s saying and it’s just like more rules. Who can live up to this standard?” We must realize that Jesus is also waking up our hearts. I mean here’s an interesting truth for us to consider. I mean we know we have a body. We can look in the mirror and see that we have a body. And we know that that body moves around and has a being some way. Like, if we want to move our finger, we move our finger. And…like…like just move your finger for a second. Like, that just kinda happens, right? Like you’re not thinking, “okay, I need to engage my mind and I need to fire off certain synapses that will…will travel toward my finger and it will move.” Like, it just happens. So, somewhere within you is the will for your finger to move and then…and then your mind and body collaborate in this seamlessly and you never really think about the distinction between your mind and your body. And we know that we are made up of a body and we know that we have a mind and we also know that we have sort of the deep core truth of who we are called our heart, our identity and yet functionally, we…we sort of live as if those components are all…like they don’t necessarily work together, they’re just compartments. Like, we can be in the compartment of our mind thinking or we can be in the compartment of our body eating or working out or whatever, we can be in the compartment of our…our heart and feel. But what if all of those – body, soul, and spirit - what if they are all made to be in harmony with one another making a complete and comprehensive whole person? And what if we began to realize as a whole person, we become aware that we are irreversibly interconnected with every other person because this is what Jesus prayed for. This is what Jesus prayed for, “make them one as we are one” is what Jesus said. So, you can be like, “this is kind of interesting. I’m just not sure what it has to do with the Sermon on the Mount.” It’s really interesting that the Sermon on the Mount reads quite differently if you’re looking through that perspective, a perspective of union and unity and wholeness. Let’s understand that when we…when we observe Jesus in the Gospels and when we hear his words flowing out of the Gospels, we are certainly seeing God made flesh and dwelling among us, but we are also seeing humanity in a perfect state, right? Remember that little glimpse that we got when we began this journey in the very first pages of Genesis? That kind of wholeness and perfection contained within one human being hadn’t existed upon the earth until Jesus arrived. And, so, a lot of what we see in Jesus, even things that we might find confusing or that we’re not quite understanding, we’re seeing depicted for us what wholeness in a broken world even might look like. And I think…I think we would all agree that Jesus operated in a way that was misunderstood by many but was also out of sync with the world he was in in the same way that it’s out of sync with the world we are in. If your heart and your mind and your body are submitted to Christ and, as Paul said, “it’s no longer you live, it’s Christ’s in you” the hope of glory and the hope of us living whole and complete then we can understand that adultery shatters everybody that it touches, right? You can participate in adultery with your body and be seeking bodily pleasure or excitement or…or to ease your mind from of the difficulties of working through a very difficult relationship, like, but you can’t do it whole any more than you can love your neighbor and hate your enemy whole. So, we can be frustrated about, you know, new categories of rules and behaviors that we have to modify to try live up to the standard of Jesus or we could understand Jesus is showing as what our lives could look like if we would embrace wholeness in Him. And we will not be able to do that by just attempting to try get our mind and bodies to cooperate or try to integrate our hearts and allow us to kind of feel and process and be where we are, wherever we are, whenever we are. We will not be able to do this without the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the voice of wisdom’s counsel. And the further that we get into the Gospels and the more that we look at Jesus, and when I say look at Jesus, I mean, like, really. Like, we can go through the Bible stories again, like we go through the Sunday school stories again. We can smile and go, “I haven’t heard that story in a long time. I really love that story” or we can really look at this Jesus. We can really, really look at what He’s saying and what He’s doing and…and how He’s behaving and how He’s navigating life on earth. And if He is our Savior, the Son of the living God most-high, which I believe He is, and if we are to be imitators of Christ then we need to look really closely at what He’s doing and…and understand that we will not be able to understand without our hearts and our minds and our bodies in collaboration with each other, with the goal of being Christlike and whole. And we will need voice of wisdom to do that.

And, so, like even in our reading from Proverbs today, the voice…like the voice of wisdom actually sums up everything we were just talking about. The voice of wisdom today in the book of Proverbs said, “since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord, since they would not accept my advice”, “my” being wisdom, “since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. Sounds ominous, but all that’s said…that’s being said here is, “okay you want to go that way. That’s fine. You will reap what you sow. But you…but you could sow other things that would actually lead you to life.” Wisdom goes on to say, “the waywardness of the sinful will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease without fear of harm.”

Prayer:

Father, once again we’re inviting Holy Spirit, that we might hear the voice of wisdom and see wisdom in action all around us, see You moving in and among us, transforming us, making us whole. And we pray Father that we will recognize this and that we will open our hearts, that we will open ourselves to Your work within us, as difficult as it may be. Come Holy Spirit we pray. We have been told there is a narrow path that leads to life and we ask that You lead us on that path. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, and its where you find out what’s going on around here. And we’ve been spending the last few…few days getting into this New Year’s talking about different things that are going on and how to get connected, how to stay connected, how to just move through the year in this rhythm that we have, that we’re in together.

So, I’ve talked about the website and maybe you’ve kind of glanced around there and see what’s going on. I’ll mention the Daily Audio Bible Shop is at dailyaudiobible.com and in the Daily Audio Bible Shop are a number of resources that are specific to the journey that we’re on together. These have all been created to either directly affect the journey that were on or just to create a sense of community and that…that we’re in this together because that becomes important. A lot of things happen in a year. We can look back over year and go like, “wow, that flew by”, but a lot of things happen in a year and we face highs and lows that can be extreme and unexpected and it’s so good to know that we are rooted in the Scriptures and that we aren’t alone. And, so, there are a number of resources that are aimed at in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There’s a link on the homepage and I thank you with all of my heart for your partnership. We’re just getting ourselves launched into year 15 and this has been a community project from the get-go. Daily Audio Bible just kind of rose up out of the dust of the Internet and here we are. And it’s just…we’ve figured it out as we’ve gone, and we’ve been in this together and we wouldn’t be able to do this if we didn’t do this together. So, thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Given 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 just hit the Hotline button. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, that’s 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’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Genesis 11:1-13:4, Matthew 5:1-26, Psalms 5:1-12, Proverbs 1:24-28

Today is the 5^th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you and this is the first time we get to do this, we get to turn the knob as it were and swing open the door and step through the threshold into a brand-new week and this would be our first full week of this new decade. So, I am excited to share it with you as we move forward on our journey that we have begun moving through the Bible this year and this week we will read from the New International Version, brings up another little thing to explain. You’ll notice when we began the year and worked through last week we were reading from the New Living Translation and now we’re reading the New International Version, next week we’ll be reading another translation, and the week after that another one, and we do this, working our way through the year for a number of reasons, but the primary reason is…is this, we may not ever think about this or we may know this, but not really think it matters that much, but the Bible’s native tongue isn’t English. It’s Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. So, every single one of the words of the manuscripts that the Bible has been translated from are a different language than English. And, so, every word has to be poured over or translated or brought into the language for which its intended. Not necessarily an overwhelmingly big deal unless you are creating theological formulas and doctrines that…that affect the human soul and its eternal life, like it becomes more of a big deal. And it’s kind of at this time that some people raise their hands and I go, “I just stick to the good old tried-and-true King James. That’s the real one. That’s the inspired word of God.” But it’s actually it’s actually a translation into English, like all other translations into English. And…and I’ve sat…I’ve been able to observe biblical interpretation and translation in my…been able to watch teams of scholars around the table discussing the kinds of things like verb tense and obscure Hebrew words that have fallen out of use and what do they mean. And that’s just scratching the surface. I mean, there’s a number of ways to do this kind of interpretation. So, you could go like, “well why don’t you just look at one word in Hebrew, and then say what is that word and English? How do you say that word in English and then just put that down and then go to the next word? And there are translations that do that, that seek to do that, and we read from them. There also biblical translation teams that…well…basically every biblical translation team would acknowledge that oftentimes one word means more than one thing, depending on its context. And, so, if you try to port a word for word translation you can see this word and know that it has five or ten equivalents in another language, depending sort of on the nuance of the context and so then you get into interpretation, “what is this trying to say? What does this mean?” And, so, often biblical translation teams will then look at a complete thought. “Like what does the sentence mean? What is the point here?” Because word for word when you read it back in English doesn’t convey the depth of the meaning and maybe even obscures it. And, so, then teams of linguists and historians looking at the context of the time that a particular passage might have been written try and get into the minds of the original hearers will then looking and go, “what is the complete thought? Like, how would what’s being said here in Hebrew or Greek, how would that complete thought be said in English in a compelling way that would carry the same weight that it does in its native language?” And, so, there are translations that seek to work from this perspective and there are all kinds of hybrids in between. And, so, allowing ourselves to receive thousands and thousands and thousands, probably tens and tens of thousands of scholarship hours for us to be able to rotate and appreciate and receive all of that as we continue the rhythm of the year is the goal so that being English speakers we get the most comprehensive view of the word of God that we can…that we can short of learning all of the biblical languages and then, not only just understanding how, maybe for example, to read Greek but all the slang and all of the cultural reference…like all of the stuff that you would have to immerse yourself in. We have this scholarship, and this is why we rotate through so that we can appreciate this. And, so, this week we will be reading from the New International Version. And let’s get to it. Let’s get back into the book of Genesis. Today we will read chapters 11…well chapter 11 verse 1 through 13 verse 4.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we have already…we have already done some talking about some things, so I don’t want to spend a bunch of time because we’ll have plenty of opportunity. I just want to point out a couple of things, three things in particular that we have begun talking about. Alright. So, let’s begin with what we what we were reading in Matthew today, the Sermon on the Mount and in particular the Beatitudes. And. they’re very, very famous, this is Jesus central core teaching. And it’s interesting to read it as His core teaching because it’s like everything that He talks about we don’t quite understand exactly how that could be. It’s like He’s saying bad things are good things, right? “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Just…I mean…that…that one is…that one beatitude, that’s disruptive because that seems out of sync with the world that we live in. “Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek”, right? So, what is Jesus telling us here? Like are we supposed to be week, feeble, cast down human beings with our shoulders slumped and our heads facing the ground as we move about the earth? It’s disruptive and it forces us, if we want…I mean…we can blow by all of this, but if we are seeking what the Bible says and trying to understand what’s going on in the Bible then we have slow down and go, “Okay. That does not look like the world I live in. The advice that I’m being given is to live almost backward to the world I’m living in.” And that is the point. So, we talked about Proverbs. We talked about wisdom. And listen, I believe Jesus is the son of God. He is my Savior, right? So, like, there’s no problem there but let's…let’s like step aside from that understanding and just look at Jesus appearing on the scene in the first century. Like, he just starts calling people together as a rabbi and starts teaching. And we could say that the reason that the people flocked to Jesus was because He was a miracle worker and that would be true, that would be part of it. We could also say that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, like He spoke of the end of things, He spoke of the kingdom of God, He spoke of an ultimate reality. So, people would’ve also understood Him that way. But Jesus also used a specific teaching style. We know them as stories or parables. We look often at the words of Jesus, and it seems as if He may not be answering what He’s being asked or He may not be talking about what it seems like He should be talking about and this is also because Jesus was known as a wisdom teacher. And, so, when you see a story or something that’s disruptive and you have to stop for a second and go, “what are we talking about here?” “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven?” We have to stop and go, “Okay. How does that work? What are we talking about?” It’s disruptive because the ways of wisdom are disruptive. You have to be shaken awake, right? You’ve got to see something clearly all of the sudden and then it comes to you clearly. This is the way, walk in it, right? But if we look at our lives, we see that…that like that rarely happens when everything is perfect. Like when things are super great and we’re sort of like sailing with the wind at our back downhill, like everything is moving in the right direction. It’s wonderful to enjoy those times, but wisdom usually comes in disruption and we will find that this theme and these ideas, they are everywhere, everywhere in the Bible. We will not be able to turn a page when we start reading the apostle Paul, without coming face-to-face with these themes of enduring and looking deeper, like not just looking at what we can see but understanding that there is a vast reality beyond it and we are being transformed and that…that Jesus says this, Paul says this, Peter says this, John says this, James says this. Like, disruption is actually part of it. Like, being shaken awake from our slumber is part of the journey. So, as like we are just getting going, we are just in the first pages of the first gospel, so we’ve got a lots of time before we go through Mark and Luke and John to look for this, to begin settling in and looking for this when we listen to the words of Jesus.

Okay, then the book of Genesis we have another of these weird like stories that… “where did this story come from? And why is it situated here? And it’s just a really short story and then we just kind of move on. And what’s happening here?” And that is a very famous Sunday school story, the tower of Babel. So, we member a couple days ago we were talking about the sons of God and the daughters of Eve and just, you know, just exploring some of the different ways that that has been talked about or viewed or understood and this tower of Babel story is kind of a weird one like that. So, here’s these people and they’re…they’re moving and they’re coalescing together, they decide to build a city and they decide to build a tower. And this is going to stabilize them, and they all speak the same voice there and they’re all on the same page. And God comes and He’s like, “yeah. this is not a good idea because if they stay here and they’re allowed to do this, then, you know, they’ll be able to do anything. Nothing…nothing will be impossible.” So, He confuses the language and then people have to disperse into their language groups from there. So, we could say, “well, you know, the point of the story here is that this is where the languages on the earth came from, but many theologians would say, “no. this is tied to the sons of God and the daughters of Eve…like these…and the Giants. Like this is…there’s like this other kind of story happening before us. And, so,…so the thought here would be that the people come together at Babel and decide to exalt themselves because they are…are fully…they…they have fully inherited the knowledge of good and evil, the…the price that was paid for eating the fruit, and disobeying God and that awareness that conscious shift or whatever we want to call it, the Bible because it their eyes being opened, made them realize they were naked and separate from God. So, all of a sudden this is…and this is really interesting because we know this in child development, right? So, there is a certain period of time where a child doesn’t have an awareness of themselves as a separate thing, as a separate being from their parent. And that grows and then we cultivate and then we work really, really hard to get our children to be individuals. And when out back out to the garden in Eden, we see man and woman and God, and they have no awareness of a separation. They have one understanding of their reality and it is them and God together and then eat this fruit and they become aware of all lot of things that make them sense a separation. They are…they are…I need to be careful how to say this, that they are the same as their parent, that they are separate. And, so, it’s traumatic for them. And, so, we zoom forward all the way here to the Tower of Babel and see the repercussions that have happened since that event. We’ve read these repercussions and we’ve moved through a terrible flood on the earth. We’ve seen these repercussions. So, the people are exalting themselves and fully embracing their otherness, their separation and God’s like, “no. No. This isn’t going anywhere.” And, so, many theologians would say, “okay. You got…you got the lower gods or lower Elohim, you have the spiritual family of God, and they interact in different ways with the human family on earth and we see those types of interactions happening repeatedly throughout the Scriptures. But Gods not going to cooperate with His fallen spiritual family and His fallen human family attempting to exalt themselves. And this will not be the first time we see this kind of thing. God does not put up with that for very long, ever. And, so, one way of theologically looking at this is a disinheritance. God confuses the languages of the people and spreads the people out so they cannot be successful in sort of like deifying themselves. And, so, an end is put to that. When people begin to coalesce around their language. Then, immediately…immediately after that story we introduced to Abram. So, it’s like not out of place. This story happens, the people are spread out. Immediately we get interest to Abram who will become Abraham who will affect the entire rest of the Bible. So, God sends the people across the earth and then we get introduced to Abraham and it is through Abraham that God is going to do a new thing upon the earth and we’ll be watching that story and its challenges and victories for the rest of the year.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You. We thank You for the richness of Your word and we thank You for the opportunity to explore and to be disrupted and we ask Holy Spirit that You would come among us and help us to get comfortable with the idea of being disrupted or interrupted because we need to get used to this idea because this is one of the primary ways that Your word works within us. It challenges us, invites us to think, but it also invites us to tune into the ears of our hearts and understand that it’s much deeper than what are five physical senses can become aware of. There is a lot more going on than we ever perceive. And, so, we invite You Holy Spirit into this week into everything that we’re going to do, all the choices that we’re going to make, all the words that we’re going to speak. May they be good. May they be honoring to You. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, and its where you find what’s going on around here, so be sure to stay tuned and stay connected in any way that you can and in any way that you will.

I will mention at dailyaudiobible.com in the Community section you will find links to all the different social media channels that the Daily Audio Bible level is on. And that is a great place to get connected.

I means, some of the pages, you know, you’ll want to follow because if we, you know, send out an alert, “there’s a problem with this or here’s what’s going on or whatever” then you’ll be able to be alerted. Others are groups, You can just interact with other brothers and sisters who are working their way through the Bible, like the Daily Audio Bible women’s page that my wife champions. If you are a woman then…then it is her mission to encourage you and you find tremendous encouragement by staying plugged in to the women’s group there. Then there’s DAB Friends, which is kind our loving free-for-all where conversation is continually happening. So, check out those links in the Community section at dailyaudiobible.com and stay connected.

Another thing about social etc. is like, once in a while, you know we read the Scriptures and talk about them, but there are times when it’s like our hearts…the Scriptures have opened our hearts and the only way to really respond is in song or just to drive the point home it would take me, you know, 20 minutes and a bunch of words or it could be just this one song that moves beyond our intellect and just starts to speak truth into our hearts. And, so, we do that from time to time. And invariably, you know, we get asked, “who was that?” We post all that is to our social media channels so just if you’re following that you’ll always kind of know how that all works when it happens. So, there’s today’s tip.

And if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link that lives on the homepage and I thank you with all of my heart 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 the mailing address, if that is your preference is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment you can now press the Hotline button, the little red button in the app at the top and just start talking or you can dial 877-942-4253.

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello Daily audio Bible family this is Stephanie from Bangalore and I just wanted to call in. Its Friday, December 27^th and I thank you all for praying, those of you who have been praying for me and my in-laws. This was my first Christmas, of course, as being married and my first Christmas away from my parent’s household as far as going there and celebrating and it really was in a lot of ways better than I could’ve ever imagined which is really, really great. So, thank you for praying and we were able to have a couple of my in-laws over for the afternoon and evening and that was actually just a really good time. So, praise God, thank you for praying. Please keep praying that I can build relationships there. And, of course, there’s always the next thing, always the next thing, always the next prayer request but thank you for that. Quick update on the little girl who got the kidney transplant. For the first time in 15 months she was able to go to bed the other night. She came home Christmas Day and she was able to go to sleep without any tubes at all. No catheter for dialysis, nothing. So, please just, you know, keep her in your prayers, keep the donor in your prayers as she is recovering from the surgery as well. But praise God for that. Thank you so much family and I am sure I’ll be calling back soon. Five.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family this is Rhula from the Sidney Australia. I was just listening to 27^th December reading and prayers at the end of the reading. Anonymous called and she said something that really prompted me to call immediately. Anonymous, I’m just praying for you right now because that feeling that you feel where you’re in despair and you don’t know why you’re in a relationship with God because why, like you said,  He’s always good and you’re not good and He’s always right and you’re wrong…you’re always wrong. Anonymous this is exactly why…why we need Him, because we can rest in his goodness and we can rest in his…in the comfort of knowing that the Lord Almighty who’s always right and who’s always…always knows everything, that He loves us unconditionally as we are. So, come to Him as you are anonymous, come to Him as you are because that is who He loves, you with all your flaws and all your mistakes and all your errors and everything that you feel like you’re just not good enough. Our Lord loves you as you are and that is the most profound and most amazing love that you could ever experience in the world, where it’s…He doesn’t judge us and He doesn’t condemn us and He’s a forgiver and He’s merciful and He’s grace and He’s good and his goodness will last forever and He will work all things for good because He loves us and He calls all things according to his purpose. So just remember that Anonymous. And remember that it’s not about you being as good as God. We will never be as good as God no matter what we do. He is enough, his love for us is enough and that’s what we need to know. And I just pray for you Anonymous. I pray that you get that strength for…from God…

Hi this is Marylin calling from the inland Northwest. This is my second call. I just started listening in October, somewhere around there. I do have an answer to prayer and that I asked prayer for my son who is in isolation in the psych ward, the hospital, he’s had a severe frontal brain injury back in 2002 and also mental illness. He is now out of isolation and actually they are wanting to release him, and he is very demanding and doesn’t listen, thinks he’s the medical professional and is going to be released. The problem is that I need prayer that he would be willing to…willing and understand that if he keeps doing the same old same old is insanity. He needs to be in a group home or something. He’s on very heavy-duty psych meds and he probably should be in a group home or some situation where somebody can be taking care of him and he can be monitored, and he can be also out of a very moldy sick apartment. So, I really appreciate it. I really appreciate everybody’s honesty on this podcast. I am so thankful for this program for everybody’s honesty and the vulnerability of everybody and I do pray for others as well and am so thankful I know I’m not alone being in a family with mental illness. So, thank you so much for your prayers and I am praying for everyone else that calls in. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. Bye.

Good morning this is Sally from Massachusetts and I’m calling for anonymous. Today is Friday, December 27^th and I heard your call this morning. You were thinking about how you could meet Jesus if you pulled your car in front of the 18-wheeler. And I know what you’re saying when you say you feel like you’re very far from God. And when I feel that way, I remember that it’s me that’s turned away. God is still right there. And if you don’t know what to pray, sometimes “help me God” is the best prayer because that lets God know that you want Him to help you and He will help you. He will meet you wherever you are. And I know what you mean about how you don’t feel that you can go to anyone in your church or any of your friends to talk about your feelings. You know, you can call the suicide hotline. I did that myself. I was not suicidal but I just wanted somebody to listen to me cry and I had spent hours on the phone with a treasured friend but I still needed to talk and when I called them they didn’t offer advice or try to fix me the just asked me questions to keep me talking. And, you know, we as people, we want to offer advice, we want to help you and we want to reach out to you. Sometimes, just having someone listen and not judge is fantastic. So, I urge you to give them a call. And, also I’ve started journaling because I can get my thoughts down on paper and there out…

Hello, I’m calling myself “I am a Child of God”. I’m from Central Florida. I’ve listened since 2007 and this is the first time I’ve ever called in. I have two important requests. Sorry. I have two important prayer requests today. I’m praying for my father’s health. He has other issues that are causing him to have kidney problems. Of course, I pray that he be healed and not have surgery at all but if he does have surgery, I pray he is a very quick recovery. I’d like to have help from people that aren’t as stressful. I also pray for his salvation. He’s __ towards God. I pray God brings people into his life that he will listen to and that God talks to him in his sleep, in his dreams. I hope to call back again and get better at this. Thank you for your prayers. God bless you.

Genesis 8:1-10:32, Matthew 4:12-25, Psalms 4:1-8, Proverbs 1:20-23

Today is the 4^th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you as we are round…round the corner and move through the first weekend in this new year and decade. So, it’s good to be here with you as we continue moving into our new year. And, so we’ll take the next step forward and continue…continue…well…explaining things and moving into our new year. But let’s get into the Scriptures. We’ve been reading from the New Living Translation this week. As we go back into the book of Genesis for today, we will recall a great flood upon the earth that we read about yesterday. And today we will read Genesis chapters 8 through 10.

Introduction to the book of Proverbs:

Okay. So, we…this is our fourth day of the year, so we’re moving into the year and on day one we talked about the book of Genesis that we were beginning then on day two we talked about the first gospel, the Gospel of Matthew that we were getting into, then yesterday we talked about the Psalms. And, so, today we will complete the four books that we are involved with right now, the book of Proverbs. And ironically, I think Proverbs is, in today’s reading going, to do a far, far better job than anything I could say. I mean I can say the book of Proverbs has traditionally been attributed to King Solomon as the notorious wisest person to ever live. It’s likely that he collected these proverbs and sayings and wisdom from…from all over the known world of his time. He was a king with…with perhaps more influence than anyone else at his time. And, so, these sayings are indeed really profoundly helpful, practical advice, but there is a distinction that we need to make and the Proverbs will make that distinction and that distinction will become more apparent as we move through the year and that is this, the advice, the words that we will find in Proverbs those are not wisdom. Those are sayings and advice that come as a result of wisdom’s presence. The distinction will become important in a myriad of ways as we move through the Bible, but practically where we sit right now is that we can certainly immerse ourselves in the sayings of wisdom and even obey the sayings of wisdom, like take the good, practical advice and implement it into our lives so we would be heading the voice of wisdom, but we can also live in wisdom, understanding that there is a wisdom that is beyond any human wisdom, that there is the wisdom of God flowing through all of creation and that we can learn to walk in wisdom, as opposed to just looking for wisdom’s advice. So, I’ll just kind of leave it at that and just move into today’s reading understanding that we are beginning today and we will continue forward into the next several days, but we are hearing today a voice that is claiming to be the voice of wisdom speaking to us. And, so, today we read Proverbs chapter 1 verse 20 through 23.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for bringing us in the first weekend of this new year and decade, and we thank You that as we conclude this week we are introduced to this voice calling out of the pages of Proverbs, the voice of wisdom, the voice that’s telling us that she is…that she is a she and that she is shouting everywhere for anyone who will listen to her, that she is available and that she is present to us and that she’s asking how long we’re gonna stay asleep, how long we’re going to be simpleminded, how long we’re going to stay stuck. And we hear her saying, “come and listen to my counsel. I’ll share my heart with You and make You wise.” And, so, we become aware of Your presence in our lives and we will continue to do this each and every day. We will invite You to lead us into all truth, and we invite You Holy Spirit to help us to begin to tune the years of our hearts and listen for the voice of wisdom. And may we recognize as we begin to even kind of put…make this a category as something that we should pay attention to, may we recognize our Savior Jesus as He begins His ministry in and may we look for the times that He says things like, “if You have eyes to see or ears to hear”, that may we understand that this is how wisdom works. Come Holy Spirit w pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website and it its home base and it’s always where you can find out what’s going on around here. And these first couple weeks of…of the year we’re just talking about different aspects and little things that are good to know for the journey along the way.

And, so, one of those things we’ve kind of talked about, we talked about the fact that we are a community of prayer and that we shoulder one another’s burdens together, and pray for one another, and love one another. And we’ve moved through several days. So, you know, we’ve heard the voices of our brothers and sisters as they come…come in on the end…at the end. Ands, so, there’s always way more calls than we can ever get to during the week. And, so we, for several years have had a weekend prayer and encouragement program, which is just all of those voices that came in during the week. And, so it makes this really, really wonderful time together just hearing voice after voice after voice and just kinda bopping all over the world as we’re doing it. And that happens every weekend, every Saturday evening, which will be this evening. So, watch for that. When you wake up tomorrow, you’ll see a program that’s called Community Prayer along with the next day’s program. So, just watch for that, be aware of that, engage with that. It is…it’s really interesting because a lot of times the journey begins with Daily…Daily Audio Bible. Just looking for the Bible. “Just…read me the Bible. That’s all I want, that’s all I need.” And, so, that’s what happens and that’s 100% and then maybe…just…it…it lingers on, keeps playing and so you begin to see there’s more things going on, there’s a community aspect and then you hear the prayer requests and realize, “wow, there’s like…I’m not alone…I’m not alone. I can do this as alone as I want, but I don’t have to be alone. This is the Bible in community.” So, just watch for that later…later tonight

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 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 dial 877-942-4253 or you can just press the Hotline button, it’s at the top in the app. Can’t miss it, little red button up at the top. Just push that and off you go.

And that is it for today and that is it for our…well…we haven’t really had a first full week yet, but this is the end of our first week of this new year and decade. And, so, that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

This is Valery calling from South McDonagh. I am currently three hours into a 5-hour drive to go see my brother who is in Sacred Heart trauma unit with a severe brain injury. He is an alcoholic and a drug user and has become increasingly abusive to our mother. Today there was an altercation and when my mother was trying to get away from him, he fell off the top of her car and landed in the middle-of-the-road and now has a severe brain injury. It’s very hard for me to feel sympathy and compassion for my brother but my heart is breaking for my mom. As you can imagine, she is full of guilt and devastated and feels like she killed her son. So, I’m asking the family to please keep my mom Shirley in your prayers. Help me to minister to her. Help me to find the words to say that can somehow bring her comfort even though I know that nothing I say will bring comfort. Help me to feel love and a compassion toward my brother. Help the doctors to be able to figure out what they can do to help him recover from this injury. At this point we don’t even know if he’s going to survive and then if he does what type of life…quality of life you will have. My time is running out, but I do ask for prayers again for Shirley and Anthony. Thank you.

Hi Anonymous my name is Cricket from Colorado and my heart broke when I heard your prayer request today. I will be praying for you until I hear you call back and update us on your situation. First of all, God loves you and He knit you together in your mother’s womb. Yes, it is true that apart from God, listen to that, apart from God, there is nothing good in us. All that is in us, good is from God because He dwells in us. But let that not bring you fear, let it bring you joy and hope because God also says He promises to finish this good work in you and that His children cannot be snatched from His hand. So, you are His and will walk in heaven with Him someday. But for now, the purpose of your walk here on earth is to love others as He loves you and to help them find Him so that none will be lost. Anonymous, there is nothing good in me except for Him. Daily, I fail horribly, and I am encouraged when he reminds me that He is there, and He picks me up again. I see Him in the good things that He prompts me to do. So, focus on the good, not the bad. You are His precious child and He loves you. Strive every second to become His best friend. Seek Him in all that you do, and He will change you and you will start to see the right choices and the good that comes from Him in you. He loves you. We love you and I will be praying for you for a very long time. Please let us know how you’re doing. Goodbye.

I am praying for the young woman, the anonymous young woman that called in about her desperation. I just would like you to know that when I heard your call for help, I broke down in tears and in fact I am still shaking because I’ve been there just very recently. And I want you to know, I mean I was looking at that semi-truck and I was looking at bridge abutments and I was dark, I was at the end of my rope and it seemed there was no way out. It’s so dark down there, but I want you to know that things turned around for me and they will turn around for you as well. Just very recently a huge change came in my life, one that I’ve been longing for for years and years. And I’m new to audio Bible. When I heard this message this morning, I felt right reaching out to you and am praying for you praying for you. Do not give up. Trust God. I know that’s hard…very hard for you right now but just trust Him. I love you.

Hi, I’m a new listener and I’ve enjoyed this so much, so I want to say thank you and how grateful I am that this type of app exists. I also would like to send a prayer for my friend Sabrina whose brother passed away unexpectedly. He was only about 30 years old and it…it shouldn’t have happened. So, I want to pray for her and her family they find peace. Thank you. Have a blessed day.

Good morning DAB family this is Lady of victory from Chicago. Today is Friday, December 27^th hope everyone is having a great day. As I was listening today, I listened to Anonymous who said as if she drives into a truck nobody would miss her. Jeanette who has a sick mom and who is also dealing with some ills…ills with neuropathy. I know my daughter has that as well and it’s very painful…I mean difficult to maneuver life. And then Daniel who was praying for commuters and/or drivers. My husband drives for a living and so I do understand what all of that means. So, I wanted to send up a quick prayer. Anonymous, I am a trained mental health counselor and please realize that you do not have to go through this alone. Seek help. Do not separate yourself or distance yourself from loved ones. You will be missed if something…if you’re not here. So, please seek out help. Colossians 1:16 says that you are made with a purpose and for purpose. Everything that God made He does it on purpose. And, so, your purpose in the world would be missed if you’re not here. So, please seek out help. Jeanette we are praying for you. Realize that your anchor is in the Lord and everything else is sinking sand. So, seek out God as you go to be with your mom. I lost my mom April 13^th of this year. So, I know the pain of going through the holidays alone for the first time, but God has been my anchor as He will be yours. So, seek the face of God. We all have a lot of things for 2020, a lot of different words. Ours is…for our family is to endure 2020 but I’d don’t just say endure…

This is Joanne from Happy Valley it is December 27^th. I just heard anonymous. And honey, please, don’t drive in front of a truck. For one thing, you’ll impact another life forever. But the main thing is, we know God is good and we know that we are all bad. But His love for us is so strong that He took on human flesh with all its frailties, suffered beatings and a horrible death on the cross to pay for our sins and all the bad that is in us. When I look back over my life, I saw that even though I never acknowledged Him He was watching over me all the time and loving me and keeping me from getting into danger because of my sinning. And in spite of all the bad I did He still loved me more than I can imagine. And that is how He feels about you. Anonymous, he adores you. I can’t talk to my family about the things I’ve done. Church is full of sinners just like me and they’re trying to pretend they’re not. So, can’t talk to them. But He loves you no matter what. Please know that. And if you need to…to dump on somebody, my email address is jomiller3380@gmail.com. There’s nothing that would cause me to not love you. You’re safe with me. Please, reach out and I’ll share God’s love with you. God bless you.

Genesis 5:1-7:24, Matthew 3:7-4:11, Psalms 3:1-8, Proverbs 1:10-19

Today is the 3^rd day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you for day three of our new decade in our third day on our journey that will lead us through the entire Bible this year. So, we’re still moving in. It takes a good week to kind of get moved in and find the rhythm and get into all the new books and talk about all the different things that…that are going on in the Bible as we encounter them. So, we’ve had a chance in the last couple of days talk about Genesis and Matthew and so today when we get to the Psalms, we’ll talk about them, but first let’s continue our journey. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Genesis chapters 5 through 7 today.

Introduction to the book of Psalms:

Okay. So, like I mentioned at the beginning, over the last couple of days we’ve begun to understand, or at least talk about the context for the book that we’re reading. So, we talked about Genesis. We talked about Matthew yesterday. So, let’s talk about Psalms today. And Psalms is actually not a book per se. It’s like five books in one and we’ll notice when we’re moving into the next book because it announces itself in the Psalms. And these books are…are kind of grouped, separated by the author or by the theme of the…of…of the prayer or song of worship or liturgy or by their purpose and…and certainly dating all the way back into deep antiquity these Psalms have stood the test of time and then carried forward. They have been considered from within the faith, and for that matter from without the faith as a priceless collection of beautiful poetry and songs and hymns and congregational singing’s and individual songs that the world has ever known. This is the prayer book of the of the Hebrew people and of Christians alike. And…and certainly more enduring than any of the pop songs that we may be hearing today. And one of the voices that we’ll get to know really, really well in the Psalms will be that of the second king of Israel and his name is David. And he’s famous, like you’ve probably heard of King David before we haven’t met him in the Scriptures yet, but we will, actually quite intimately we’ll get to understand David and how he became who he became when we get to the books of Kings and the books of Samuel the books of Chronicles. And, so, that will tell us about David but it’s the Psalms that reveal the heart of David that can be found in the outpouring of his heart into his art. And the Bible tells in quite detail that David was a skilled and gifted musician, among other things. And, so, we are currently reading in the Psalms book 1. And today we’ll read Psalm chapter 3, a Psalm of David regarding the time David fled from his son Absalom.

Commentary:

Okay. Let’s talk about a couple things. Let’s talk about something in Genesis today and let’s talk about something in Matthew today.

And the thing in Genesis is not something that we can just unpack here, it’s something that we just need to start noticing as we go forward because weird, seemingly strange things like this, kind of peak their heads up in the Bible with no explanation leaving on an incredible amount of speculation among biblical scholars over the millennia. So, let me just read the first couple of verses of Genesis chapter 6. “Then the people began to multiply on the earth and daughters were born to them in the sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives. Then the Lord said, my spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future their normal life span will be no more than 120 years. In those days and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times.” Okay, so, awesome. Tat’s in the Bible. What in the world does that mean? And that’s been asked for millennia and that’s one of these places we’re fanciful things begin to grow extra biblically - traditions and legends begin to grow. So, like there’s…there’s definitely interpretations that these sons of God were perhaps a different version of humanity that fell and that were still upon the earth and then the Lord made new humans. There’s other traditions or speculations that these…these are fallen…fallen spiritual beings who were obviously upon the earth and mated with human women. The last one is probably more likely because from a theological perspective we understand that God has a human family upon the earth. And we also have glimpses in the Bible that God has a spiritual family that is beyond flesh and blood humanity. And that’s not so hard for us to get our minds around. We believe that we are a part of God’s spiritual family in spirit, but we’re, you know, humans here upon the earth. But we are told of beings like the angelic messengers sent by God, they’re all throughout the Bible as well as battles that are fought in the spiritual realms, including the one that we saw in the book of Matthew today when Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted. So, the idea that there is a spiritual realm is pretty much bedrock to our spirituality and we have some awareness that there are beings in this spiritual realm, some of them that serve God and some of them that are lost in the darkness and are trying to deceive humanity, God’s family upon this earth. Like, I realize we don’t think about this stuff necessarily all of the time. But what I’m saying here, this isn’t a stretch, this is all in the Bible. It appears that these beings in the spiritual realm who are created beings have a will and some chose rebellion against God in some fashion. So, a scenario then that theologically works is perhaps that God has and had a divine family, created beings who were not the most high God but beings that were also created in His image and were His family, perhaps sent here to steward and care for his earthly family. Okay. So, could be like, “alright, wait a second, let me think that one through here.” But let me just remind us that when we get to the writings of the apostle Paul, and that’s gonna be a few months from now, but when we get to the writings of the apostle Paul and he begins to flesh out theologically what is happening because of the work of Christ in this world, we will find that we are being transformed in, basically into a new species that the divine nature of God is something that we partake in, and that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells…indwells us, lives within us, has become a part of who we are. And, so this idea of a divine family is interwoven all throughout the Scriptures. So, perhaps this divine family of God, stewarding the earth, and this is all in the Bible, God sending messengers to do things to get things accomplished, to tell things, like this is all over the Bible. But then when we read Genesis 6 it’s not so strange – “the sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives. And the great Nephilim or the Anakim, the giants of the land, the great warriors and heroes of times untold comes from this.” These kinds of traditions are found in all kinds of the world’s ancient religions. The one distinction here in the Hebrew Scriptures is that there is only one most-high God. God may have divine lesser beings and those beings may have been worshiped as gods, but there is only one most-high God. And, so, if one of these divine beings in God’s family, who were sent to be caretakers and watch over God’s human family stepped over the line and engaged in sexual activity with human women then we at least get a little glimpse, some sort of an understanding of this undercurrent that has just popped its head up in the Bible. And we’ll note that these…these giants right, these giants in the land. Those of you of you…you’re like…you’re familiar with all the stories in the Bible, when we get to the Jordan River and we’re gonna cross over into the promised land and it’s going to be taken. Who is it, they were afraid of, right? They were afraid of the giants. And who was it that they had to conquer? It was the giants, right? So, like, we see this theme that’s not apparent but is in plain sight and we see traditions like this one continue through the Bible. So, like when we get to the writings of Paul, he instructs women to…to wear headdress, to cover their heads because of the Angels, coming back to this tradition. This understanding…so I’m not trying to give anything definitive here. I…in fact, it’s rare that I will do that. What I often try to do is give us things that we need to wrestle with, and that we need to think through because when we are willing to wrestle with something then it’s something that’s going to become meaningful and have value in our lives as opposed to just another nice piece of encouraging content that, you know, we can find anywhere. So, I’m not trying to definitively explain the sons of God and the daughters of Eve and the giants and like…I’m just trying to say, “note here that something has peaked its head up in the Bible that we’re like, what is that?” And it won’t be the last time, but every time we encounter something like this, it will be referring to this divine spiritual realm that we’re speaking of today.

Okay then, in the New Testament in the book of Matthew, Jesus is led into the wilderness where He’s being challenged, we’re He’s being tempted and the evil one’s tempting Jesus, essentially with the easy way out, with the invitation to just get what you came for, be done with it, not have any difficulties, just abort the mission. There’s just…there’s only one thing that needs to be done. You can have all of it if you bow down and worship me. This is what the evil one is saying to Jesus. And, of course, Jesus rebukes the evil one in this temptation and sends him on his way and once He’s done that then He receives the ministering Spirits, right, sent from God…God’s divine family sent to minister to Jesus. What we need to understand though is that we go through the same kinds of things on a daily basis. There’s always the temptation for the easy way out and there’s always the narrow path that leads to life. And we respond in…in either way, and we can look at our own lives and see where those paths choose. Each of us will choose to eat forbidden fruit or we will choose to know God by walking with God. As fundamental and baseline as this is, this really is the pattern of life itself. We’re either going to eat forbidden fruit and sink further and further into the darkness away from our father, away from our source of life itself or we’re going to run into Him in these times of temptation and reject the path that will lead to our destruction. The thing is, we all get to choose that today, not just at some point in the future. This is a choice that we make every day, sometimes every hour, sometimes every minute, but the choice toward righteousness will always lead us on the narrow path that leads to life, and the choice toward consuming the forbidden fruit will always lead us to our destruction and we get to pick. Our choices matter. So, what are you gonna choose today?

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into that. In fact, we invite You and all of this. In fact, we invite You into everything that will be said in this entire year. Come Holy Spirit and lead us into all truth. That’s what we’re here for. We didn’t come here to find further deception. That’s easy. We came here to find truth and You’ve promised that You would reveal it to us if we seek it with all of our hearts. And we do. So, come Holy Spirit. Show us even today how the choices that we make will construct this day and when we go to bed tonight, we will have lived what we honestly believe about You no matter what we say. So, help us Father to see the choices that we’re make…we’re making and give us eyes to see where those paths are leading. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website and that is home base, its where you find what’s going on around here, as we say most every day because it is where you find out what’s going on around here.

Here in this first days of the year we’re just trying to highlight different aspects of the community and what’s going on. So, we’re just moving into this new year. And today I just want to highlight the other…other channels that make up the Daily Audio Bible family.

So, this is the Daily Audio Bible and we’re moving through the Bible in a year by reading a little from the New Testament, Old Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs every day. But there’s also the Daily Audio Psalm. And this moves through the Psalms exclusively as we do in the Daily Audio Bible. Like, we talked about the Psalms today and about…I mean…this ancient prayer and worship book. And it is all of that, but inside the Psalms are so many of the issues of the heart that there…it gives language to the things that we are sensing or feeling but may not be able to put words to. And, so, it’s very, very valuable in our lives. And, so, we created the Daily Audio Psalm as a companion. So, maybe you listen to the Daily Audio Bible in the morning then before you got to bed or whatever you just get a little bit of the Psalms into your life and allow them to wash into your mind drift and let you drift off to sleep in peace. It’s a great resource.

Also, the Daily Audio Proverb. So, Proverbs we haven’t talked about. We’ll talk about Proverbs tomorrow, but we go through a little bit of the Proverbs each day because some…like I have said in the past, one sentence from the Proverbs can keep you thinking all day sometimes. And, so, we have that space to meditate upon it. But the Daily Audio Proverb goes through a chapter of Proverbs each day, going through the entire book of Proverbs each month. When we talk about Proverbs, we’re talking about pouring the unfiltered wisdom and advice of the ages of the millennia into our souls and into our hearts. So, imagine if you pour wisdom into your life every single day this year, what might be happening inside of you, especially if you begin to listen and obey the voice of wisdom in your life every day? So, that’s Daily Audio Proverb

There’s also Daily Audio Bible Chronological. So, my daughter China, who has been reading the Daily Audio Bible for a decade, herself, has launched a couple years ago, Daily Audio Bible Chronological. And, so, this is working through the entire Bible in a year chronologically, so reading through the events of the Bible in the order that they happened. And, so, that is available. And she’s my sweetheart, like, she’s my daughter. So, she does a great job. I love her with all my heart and she’s just killing it over there. So, Daily Audio Bible Chronological.

And then there’s all of the different foreign language…and when I say foreign, I just mean that to me, like native…my native tongue is English. But we also have Daily Audio Bible Española. So, our Spanish team in Texas and Nicaragua reading every day, building community in Spanish around the world. We also have Daily Audio Proverbios, the Daily Audio Proverbs in Spanish and Daily Audio Salmos. So, the Psalms in Spanish as well. We have Daily Audio Bible Kids. We have Daily Audio Bible Japanese, Arabic, French. In the French language we have the Daily Audio Bible pattern, but we also have Daily Audio Psalms and Proverbs in French as well. And then there’s also Portuguese and Chinese. And, so, those are all available in the Daily Audio Bible player or the Daily Audio Bible app. I just want to highlight those resources because they are there…they are there to serve you. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage, and I can’t thank you enough for your partnership. So, there’s 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 the mailing address, if you prefer, 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, the little red button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Today is Christmas day. It’s…I’m speaking from Washington. This is Karen and I just wanted to respond to you Brian. I really appreciate what you said today. You identified it, the longing. The fact that you opened up and said that your creative and you have the melancholic temperament. I know that there’s many of us that relate to what you’re saying right here right now. I mean I have everything to be thankful for. I have family, they’re all healthy. They’re not with me but there near me and I’m going…you know…I have friends and I have clothes on my back and I have place…a roof over me and I have a job and I’m so grateful, but yet just like you said there’s still this deep longing of something that’s not right and you identified it and I so appreciate that. Thank you so much. You just…whenever things are identified I find that you just…it…it like releases it. It has it go away because you know what, you understand it. So, I thank you and I appreciate you and I say Merry Christmas to you. And to everyone listening, I am praying for all of you. You’re very special to me. May this day be such a connection with Jesus. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Good morning DAB family this is Finding Peace. I am middle-aged and I feel so lost and stuck. I only know to have faith and trust God, but I know He’s doing something but I’m just stuck in this place of where I feel like my whole life is a failure and although I’ve been able to help others and get them into a better place, somehow I always end up going backwards and this time I just can’t seem to get forwards and I just don’t know what to pray for anymore. I just know to have faith, but it seems like…it just…this hole is never-ending. I don’t really know what to pray for anymore. I just want to be able to get on my feet and not be a burden and I just know that there’s power in prayer and maybe God can open up something that could help. Have a good day.

[singing starts] Beautiful, yes you are. Beautiful, yes you are. Beautiful, yes you are. Yes, you are beautiful [singing stops]. Good morning everybody this is God’s Smile from England and its boxing day and I’ve just sat here catching up. And I went to the dentist last week. Oh…it’s never easy with me, I’ll tell you. I was in the chair and they numbed all my face and then she gets in there and I went, “ahhhh…I can feel pain.” Anyway, this happened a few times and ended up having 11 injections just to numb my face. Anyway, the pain still…I’ve got to __ without a tooth now. It’s gonna take a couple of weeks to heal because I’ve got a dry socket but enough about me. Hey, enough about me. Let’s put our eyes on Jesus. I was thinking as I was catching up about Christmas and gifts. And had you considered that you are a beautiful gift to Jesus, to your Father God this Christmas? That He looks upon you and He opens you up and He looks inside, and He smiles because He sees the blood of Jesus Christ that’s covered you and that beautiful aroma of forgiveness. And He sees you washed, and He sees you clean, and He sees you enjoying Him and loving Him, and He looks upon His gift and He smiles. Isn’t that lovely? Hey, you are a precious gift to God and I just want to say I love you all and I look forward to seeing you in the new year and I enjoy your company so much. Bye-bye.

Hi Daily Audio Bible this Rebecca from Michigan it’s December 24^th it’s about 7:52 AM Eastern time in the morning but you know what you guys? This morning I was listening to the Christmas party. I haven’t finished listening to it yet, but I get up at four in the morning or whatever…five and I was doing my laundry because that’s the only time in my apartment building that I can get a hold of a washer and dryer. And, so, I went to go back to the dryer and I accidentally locked myself out of my apartment and my phones in the apartment and my keys are in the apartment and I’m in the laundry facilities and then I started praying and I asked God, “please bring someone to help me. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to panic.” So, two people came, they called the maintenance emergency people for me. So, I started praying and I got all my laundry done doing that. So, I sat there and folded my clothes and started praying and the only prayer I could come up with is, “our father in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And I remembered Jill and Brian talking about trust in the party, Christmas party and I was like, “okay God, do you want me the trust you.  I’m not a cry. I’m not going to panic. I’m gonna trust you with this, to wake up the maintenance guy emergency person and have my door unlocked.” And when he came…when he came and unlocked my door, he said 20 minutes later he would’ve been gone and wouldn’t have been able to help me. And I said, “I’ll go get my keys right now.” And I thanked him, and I said Merry Christmas to him. But I want you guys to realize the power of prayer is so awesome and just putting your trust in God…

Good morning Daily Audio Bible listeners. And Brian thank you so much for your Christmas message this morning. It’s December 25^th, beautiful Christmas. And this is Denise, Louise mom, Louise is rescue-dog and his story of rescue and redemption is incredible. Lots of books and blogs based on. But I’m calling because of your message this morning. Brian it really touched my heart, just about that longing, oh that longing that we have. And I just…I know when you said it, when you spoke it and then your prayer…it just spoke to my heart. I have that longing as well. And I know in Ecclesiastes where it says, “that he set eternity in our hearts” that we do long for restoration. And it was such a perfect…just such a perfect message. So, my prayer and my prayer request is that people who are followers of Christ just continue to tap into that longing of our heart because He put it there so that we remain heaven bound and that we continue to look for Him and that we don’t see that restoration here on earth, we have a glimpse of it. And that gives me hope and joy of what we are going to see. So, thank you so much Brian and Jill thank you for your ministry and thank you for your hearts. Merry Christmas and Buon Natale.

Hey family this is Dave from Colorado. Hey, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve called. There’s been so many times that I wanted to call you to __ pray for various people but for some reason I end up just not calling. But that leads me to a confession I have. When I hear my voice on this podcast, honestly it makes me want to put a bag over my head and find a nice rock to hide her for a while, but you know I stopped thinking about that. This is the voice God gave me, so I guess, who am I to be ashamed of it. So, that’s going to be my New Year’s resolution to try to be a little a little closer to the group of DABbers. So anyway, moving on. Its Christmas day today. I hope you all are having a blessed day with your family and friends. I am actually at work. I just headed out in the truck. Got a nice snowy drive ahead of me going up to the Colorado Mountain, but you guys are all coming with me. So, I still have half of the Christmas party to listen to and maybe when I get __ you guys can help me put the tire chains on this truck. Yeah, probably not ha? Alright. But anyway, I just…right now my heart is just full of love for my DAB family. And I’m about to start my seventh year with Daily Audio Bible and I know I need to call in more. Anyway, we will talk to you next time family. Love you. Bye.