Deuteronomy 32:28-52, Luke 12:35-59, Psalms 78:56-64, Proverbs 12:24
Today is the 8th day of April, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today as we continue our journey through holy week. We move toward…we…we move toward this weekend, which is I was is one of the most important days in the…in the history of the world, Easter and today is the day of Passover. So, we just observe that, mark that as we continue our journey forward through this week, through this month and through this year. And turning to the Scriptures we pick up where we left off yesterday no matter what’s going on and that's…that leads us back into the book of Deuteronomy and I believe we’ll be concluding the book of Deuteronomy on Good Friday this year. So, let’s get to that. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 28 through 52. And by way of reminder we’re in the middle of a big song that Moses is teaching the people.
Commentary:
Okay. So, some of the most important advice about how we are supposed to live our lives right now right here is…well…comes from the lips of Jesus through the gospel of Luke today. So, Jesus says, “you are to be like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks, they can open the door for him at once. Blessed will be those servants the master finds alerts when he comes.” Okay. So, who is the one who is alert, right, the one who is awake with their eyes open to see, eyes to see because there awake and not asleep? And a lot of the time when we read a passage like this we think in terms of like cosmic destiny, like return of the Lord. We should be ready at any time for Him to split the eastern sky and come riding on a white horse and the end of all things and the beginning of new things and all of this…this is what we’re thinking. We should be ready for this at any time. But is this the only time the Lord comes? How often are we raising our hands in worship and moving back and forth on Sunday and asking for more of His presence and for us to be able to see what we need to see because we have generally become unaware that we can never escape His presence and all we can do is become aware of it, it’s always with us. I mean we’re always needing to go into His presence but what…what about went on about when He comes for us as a Father, as a friend, as a counselor, as a comforter? What about when He comes for us? Are we even paying attention? Do we at all have eyes to see? Are we alert at all? And isn’t this central to what Jesus has been saying all along? “Wake up, open your eyes, open your ears. Something is happening among you now. Don’t miss this. Don’t sleep through this.” Jesus goes on to tell us, “blessed is the servant, whom the master finds doing his job when he comes.” And then listen to this, “truly I tell you”, which is Jesus saying, “I’m telling you the truth”, “He, God will put Him in charge of all His possessions.” In other words, if we are awake, if we have eyes to see, if we are looking for the movements of God and His kingdom in this world and we are able to see those things and we are awake and we are aware we are collaborating and we are participating then we will fully begin to realize we lack nothing. The God of all things is entrusting His possessions to us. That’s pretty huge. Then Jesus says some…some other things that are pretty huge. “I came to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already set ablaze, but I have a baptism to undergo.” And He’s referring exactly to what we’re going through as we go through this holy week. He says, “how it consumes me until it is finished. Do you think I came here to bring peace on the earth? No. I tell you, but rather division.” So, how does this work because we see Him as baby Jesus, the Prince of peace? How can He be saying these things? What does this mean? As we’ve learned, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, then we can see the repercussions of the light coming into the darkness and the darkness first, not comprehending it then rejecting it, then trying to destroy it. Jesus then becomes this living metaphor for our struggle forward to wake up, to be aware of what’s going on, to be light in the darkness and stand as a witness against the darkness exposing the darkness, knowing that the darkness is going to try to stamp out the light. But if lights keep flickering, if lights keep going on all over the world then at some point the light overcomes the darkness. And Jesus is telling us to be awake, alert, ready because the light is going to bring fire on the earth. And the funny thing is, these are the kinds of things we also pray for. We sing about them. “Send your holy fire upon us.” It’s just going to consume everything that is in the darkness, including everything that is false within us. This is what we’re asking God to do and He’s saying “I’m doing it and I’m going to continue to do it” but we just so rarely embrace it. We run for comfort. We run into hiding. We want to go back to sleep. But Jesus comments on that. He’s like basically, “you can…you can tell when rains coming. You can tell when it’s gonna be hot. You know how to read those signs, but you can’t see the sign of the present time all around you. You just keep looking for somebody to tell you what time it is. Wake up.” And then He goes on to talk about a judge, like “if you’re…if you’re gonna go with somebody that is your adversary before a judge, own it, fix it, don't…like fix it before you go before the judge. Like, own this. Be awake. Stop waiting for everybody to do everything for you or to get into a position where a decision is made for you that is not the one that you are after, but now there’s nothing you can do about it.” And fundamentally what Jesus is telling us in today’s reading is, “own it. This is your life. It is a gift, wake up. It’s not happening to you. You’re happening to it. The darkness cannot…no matter how it rages against you…cannot come against you as long as you are in the light. Don’t let the light go out.” In another passage, Jesus said, “you are the light of the world.” Own that, be responsible for that, be awake and alert. And I can’t think of anything more poignant for a day like today as we move through Passover and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday as we move toward the end of this season of Lent where we’re sitting with the cost of our sin and what it took to set us free for Jesus then to be telling us, “own this, live into this, be awake, be alert, have eyes to see.” There’s nothing more poignant for us.
Prayer:
Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit into that. We’ve been asking over and over for eyes to see and ears to hear, and we thank You for the way that You are waking us up. But what we see in the Gospels is that light is a disrupting agent to the darkness. It shakes things up no matter what. And although people are drawn to the light, the light exposes the darkness and normally we slink back into the darkness because everybody else is hiding too. And, so, come Holy Spirit as we move through these days, these days that have so significant of an impact on our hearts because of the things that we’re commemorating and observing. We invite Your Holy Spirit to shake us fully awake and let us own our lives before You knowing that You are not withholding anything from us, but we are withholding plenty and that…those things that we are withholding from You are the things that are the chains that, they’re things that are enslaving us when we are free. So, come Holy Spirit shine the light of truth within us, into all of the dank corners and the deep basements of our lives. Bring Your light. We trust You. Awaken us we pray. In Jesus name we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is the website, it is home base, is where you stay connected. So, in…in times like these it’s really important to stay connected and that’s always possible.
So, the Community section of the website or for that matter, the app, just press the little drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and you can get to these things as well, but the community section has all the different links to the different social media channels that we’re on. It’s also where the Prayer Wall lives and that is always on that is always happening. Prayer is always happening there as well. So, be sure to stay connected in any way that you can and any way that you want to.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. Thank you profoundly. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the 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 encouragement can dial 877-942-4253 or just hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top and you can begin to share from there.
And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.