02/05/2020 DAB Transcript

Exodus 21:22-23:13, Matthew 24:1-28, Psalms 29:1-11, Proverbs 7:6-23

Today is the 5th day of February, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible, I’m Brian and it’s great to be here with you today as the journey continues forward and we collectively come in around this Global Campfire and allow God’s word to begin to wash into our lives and speak to us for today. So, we’re reading from the Voice this week and in the Old Testament we’re in the book of Exodus and we find ourselves with the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, the mountain of God, where God has descended and terrified the people indeed. But Moses is hearing instructions from God on the top of the mountain while the people wait below. So, today Exodus chapter 21 verse 22 through 23 verse 13.

Commentary:

Okay in the book of Matthew today, we…we wrub up against why Jesus was also known as an apocalyptic prophet, somebody to prophesy about the end of all things, the end of the world. And, so, this is first time we’re rubbing up against this, but we need to talk about the apocalyptic world view, because we have one of those, as did the people in the first century at the time of Jesus ministry. So, basically to like boil this down to some kind of core it's…it’s this awareness that we have that things don’t seem to be as they should be. And, so, we are moving, and we can’t move backwards, we’re moving forwards and we’re moving toward something, right? And that’s something is probably at some point going to bring about the end of things as we know it and a rebirth of something new will transpire. This is like essentially in an apocalyptic worldview and we could say that Jesus had an apocalyptic worldview. And He shared that today and this…this all starts because the…the disciples and Jesus, they’re walking away from the temple and everybody is looking at the temple complex and how amazing it is. And this would’ve been the second Temple. So, a temple built by Herod. It would’ve been relatively new and immaculate and beautiful. And, so, the disciples are just like, “look at…look at all this.” And they’re asking Jesus what He thinks about it all. And He tells them, “it’s basically…it’s all gonna get smashed to the ground. There’s not gonna be one stone left.” This is somewhat inconceivable to the people that heard it and it would come up again later at Jesus trial. But the words turned out to be prophetic. So, just a few decades after Jesus life Jerusalem itself was completely destroyed, including the temple buildings and no stone was left standing on another. And the evidence of that destruction, which came at the hands of the Romans can still be seen in the archaeological record in…in Jerusalem today. It’s kind of interesting what happened, because Jesus came into the world bringing light and life and good news and awakened many, many hearts. The reverberations of His ministry on earth are still being felt today in our own lives. And yet in the end it seems as if the people, especially the religious leaders, they weren’t looking for somebody to come and ignite and awaken the hearts of the people to God, they were looking for a messianic figure who could be a military leader to defeat Rome. And, so, they get rid of Jesus and within a couple of decades there is a rebellion. So, like they try to take matters into their own hands and rebel against Roman and make this happen. And in A.D. 70 Rome crushed them and destroyed Jerusalem in the process. So, throughout this journey that were on…just day by day step-by-step working away to the Bible we’ll have plenty of time to speak about these kinds of issues. And yeah, I mean, you start thinking about the world as you know it disintegrating and everything that holds societies together and all of that, things beginning to come unglued and come apart, bringing about unbelievable hardship on the human race upon the earth, and that it’s all headed towards an end, that can be a terrifying thing to think about. So, let’s just take note about how like Jesus posture toward it is. Basically, what He said in today’s reading is that the end is something that will unfold but it is not something to panic about. We shouldn’t panic. It’s something that is necessary. The world, the one that we’ve made with all of our knowledge of good and evil, this is not the intended way for us to be in this world. It's…it’s going to come to an end. It’s going to be broken apart. And as shaky as that time might be and as hard as it might be to endure it, the understanding is that these are the birth pangs. Like the time has come now for the new to be given birth. All things made new. And the greatest thing that Jesus warns about in terms of this process is being deceived. And, so this gives us some context of how Jesus views this and, at least for me, that’s what I’m hanging onto as opposed to the kind of activity I’ve observed most of my life. I was very, very fascinated with eschatology, the study of the end times trying to name and date and place everything that’s going to happen next. I can definitely remember…I don’t know one or two times as a child somehow it kind of make got traction, some of these predictions got…made traction. Like this this date Jesus Christ will return to earth and then…then He didn't…causes lots of confusion and lots of people’s lives where Jesus is saying this is unfolding. You will be able to…I’m telling you kind of what you’re going to see. This is…this is giving birth to what’s coming next. So, Jesus equipped us with a posture toward where the world is headed, and it seems like for all generations every generation thinks that all this will take place in their lifetime. Nobody’s been right about that. So, in terms of this and in terms of everything else we might be better off espousing the posture of Jesus.

Prayer:

Jesus, we thank You. We thank You for giving us advance words about things that are yet to come and we thank You for giving Your hearers advanced words about things that would be experienced in their time with regards to the temple and we invite Your Holy Spirit into helping us interpret and understand the times that we are living in. We can look for all the evil in the world. It’s easy to see. It’s being broadcast 24 hours a day seven days a week. It’s not hard to try to piece things together. But we’ve focused so often on the things that are not Your kingdom that we’ve gotten really good at finding that when we would do very well to have eyes to see and ears to hear Your kingdom because this is the kingdom that we belong to. And as all things are made new this is the kingdom, we will be in. So Come Holy Spirit and rather than us obsessing about the trajectory of our lives or the world, give us eyes to see and ears to hear Your kingdom and we ask this in the name of Jesus, in a year that we’re looking for this, in a year of vision to see the goodness of God upon this planet. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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I’ve been mentioning for a couple days, we’ll be heading to the land of the Bible here in a couple weeks. And, so, just asking the community to raise a canopy of prayer over all of that. There are so many moving parts to a…to a pilgrimage like this one that it would be hard to identify the mall. There’s a lot going on. A lot has to happen with technology in order for the Daily Audio Bible to continue every single day no matter where we are. A lot has to happen with travel and logistics and just moving and whether and all kinds of stuff, all kinds of variables. And, so, yeah, every time we do this it’s…it’s a call to the community to bathe it in prayer from start to finish. And one thing that I admire so profoundly about this community is our willingness to shoulder burdens and pray for one another and love one another. So, asking you to begin praying now over all the…all…all that happens to go to the land of the Bible with a couple of buses full of brothers and sisters from all over the world who are taking this journey through the Bible together. So, thank you for your prayers.

I mentioned yesterday, the Promise Land…the Promise Land film series, that is a fantastic resource for going through the Bible, especially the way that we are, but it is really a beautiful resource as we are physically going to be in the land of the Bible and posting all these pictures on social media and videos and stuff. It’s just really a beautiful thing to be able to have that film series and look at the different places and get some context for that. So, it really does make the Bible come alive. So, that’s a resource that’s available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. You can check it out. It’s a two DVD series plus digital download, like digital version of the…of the films as well. So, check it out.

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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.