10/29/2020 DAB Transcript

Lamentation 1:1-2:22, Philemon 1:1-25, Psalms 101:1-8, Proverbs 26:20

Today is the 29th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today as we continue the journey. And this is kind of a special day, doesn’t happen too often where we are beginning new territory in both Old and new Testaments. So, in the Old Testament we’re about to move into the book of Lamentations and then we get to the New Testament we will be encountering the final of the Pauline material in the New Testament, the final letter of Paul to Philemon. And we’ll talk about that when we get there. But since we’re at the beginning and we’re going into Lamentations…Lamentations let’s just orient ourselves because this is a different kind of territory than we've…we’ve really been in before.

Introduction to Lamentations:

And lamenting isn’t something that we…well…it’s probably not even a word we use that often and it’s certainly not something we are on a waiting list to get into usually, although lamenting and having language for what is brought up when we are lamenting is very important for our lives. So, basically as we move into Lamentations, we’ll find poetic language. Lamentations is essentially five poems, poems of sadness, poems of lament, the kind of gut-wrenching things that are almost beyond words. And in specific here, these laments come out of the realization that Jerusalem is gone. Like God’s holy city, the temple of the most-high God, it’s conquered and burned and destroyed and it’s not something that’s just being heard from far away and, you know, like suffering in a land far away where you just kind of shake your head and go, “that is so sad”, and even pray that the Lord have mercy but we don’t really have an actual connection to what’s going on. But in this case, it’s like the smoke is still rising from the burned-up city and ashes everywhere and the blood of the slain is still visible. In Hebrew, this this book Lamentations is called Ica, which means “how”. Like how can this happen? And we know how it could happen. The Babylonians finally broke down the wall and broke into the city and destroyed it. That’s how it could happen but it’s a deeper question than that, right? When we find out like our lives have been turned upside down sometimes, we have those questions, “how could this happen?” And we may understand the process, like the circumstances that coalesced together to bring such pain, but just knowing the parameters you still have that deeper, deeper heart cry, “how? How can this happen?” And that brings up even more grief because how it could happen was really what we read about all through the book of Jeremiah. For decades the prophet was warning that this could happen that this will happen if there isn’t a change. And, so, now as we move into Lamentations those prophecies have become realities. And limitations doesn’t self-reveal the author inside of the text. Traditionally it…it’s attributed to Jeremiah. He was the one that was in Jerusalem prophesying before there was even an inkling that this would happen. He was saying this is coming and all during it he was speaking. And, so, this is one of the reasons why Lamentations follows Jeremiah in the Bible because it’s thought that Jeremiah wrote these words of lament. This whole story had been his whole prophetic ministry, his entire prophetic life. But…but scholar’s debate this like everything else. And, so, there’s plenty of compelling theories that…that would name Jeremiah as the author but there’s lots of compelling reasons why he couldn’t be the author. But the one thing that everybody does agree on is that whoever wrote Lamentations probably saw what they were talking about, probably felt what they were saying. They were an eyewitness to the destruction of life as it had been known. And, so, the Babylonians conquered and then leveled Jerusalem, and this is in 586 B.C. And it’s likely than that these words of lament, they’re fresh words, that they came soon after that. And even today in the Hebrew culture on the ninth day Ov Lamentations is read. It’s a day a fasting. It's…it's…it’s the commemoration of the fall of Jerusalem. And it still matters in the culture today. And the reading of each of the poems then gives a backdrop for lament, for deep personal heart wrenching honest reflection. And sometimes we have to go there. It’s the place we avoid, but as we’ve seen, Job brought us through some of this territory, Ecclesiastes brought us through some of this territory and Lamentations will. And, so, we could say that this is a…the Bible spends a lot of time in this portion of life, the lower, the darker places of life. They must matter. They must not be there to avoid. They must be there to embrace because in those places we actually find the truth, the truth about our faith, the truth about ourselves, the truth about our convictions, the truth, the truth about our beliefs. It’s in those places that we find out what’s really real. And that’s hard and I hate that too, but we have a tendency to say the right things but not actually be able to live into the right things. And Lamentations, this language, going into the depths of our hearts and facing what’s there, that’s what brings what we do and what we say together into a cohesive conviction that we live. Because when we’re grieving, like when we’re crying out, there really aren’t words. Have you ever been in that place where you might’ve said everything you could say? It wasn’t enough and so you sit in silence and it’s just very, very painful or you just cry because the words aren’t there. But then later after that’s done, like after you’ve emptied that out for a while then there’s a calm that comes after that, right, sort of a sense of peace. The whole thing hasn’t fixed itself but there’s this sense that we’ve released something and we’re in this space and there’s a bit of calm because we’ve released something, we’re being washed, its cleaning, it’s clearing, it…it…it strips us down. Like, it takes all the varnish off and gets down to the wood. It sands off all the paint and gets us down to the wood. It strips away everything that isn’t bedrock. And…yeah…I …t’s intensely…intensely painful, but it’s also unbelievably freeing. Like when we’re at the bottom in the depths of our own sadness then there’s hope there. It’s that calm we feel even in the midst of it all. And lamenting gives language to that suffering and it helps us let go, it helps us name things and see them and let them go. And, so, the backdrop here is certainly going to be a terrible destruction of Jerusalem and the complete upheaval of the people, but as we go into this we just have to think, “what is our Jerusalem? Like what is that place in us as we give language to this kind of suffering?” And, so, we’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. Lamentations chapters 1 and 2.

Introduction to Philemon:

Okay. So, now we’re moving into the New Testament and we’ve got this second…second writing that we’re gonna enter into today. And actually, we’re gonna enter into it and complete it in one day, and in one reading. It's…it’s a note and it’s the final of Paul or the Pauline corpus, the Pauline material that’s in the Bible. And this letter to Philemon, it’s…it’s a personal letter to a man named Philemon. And just about all biblical scholars are on the same page. This is an authentic…authentic letter of Paul, he wrote this. And Philemon, the one he is writing to, was…spear…appears to be one of the more wealthy and influential churchmen living in Colossae. I mean, according to the…the letter itself, there’s a congregation that met in Philemon’s home. And Philemon had a servant and that the servant’s name was Onesimus and Onesimus ran away from Philemon and he was…he probably stole from Philemon in the process and these offenses were like…these were capital offenses punishable by death. So, Onesimus then fled. Don’t know exactly his path, but he ended up in Rome and probably ended up in a big city to disappear. But as it turns out the apostle Paul happen to be in Rome too. And he wasn’t there visiting. He was in prison awaiting trial. And just the beautiful serendipity of it all. Onesimus came in contact with Paul and became a follower of Jesus and then…then began to serve Paul in Rome and…and care for his needs while he was…while Paul was under arrest. So, then…then later, Paul, who wrote lots of letters…we’ve been reading his letters for a while now…wrote a letter to the church in Colossae, probably the one we know as Colossians. And he was going to send another helper Tychicus on the journey to hand-deliver it. And in the process of sending Tychicus to deliver Colossians to the church in Colossae he wrote a little note, a second little note, personal note to Philemon and then he sent Onesimus along with Tychicus back to his hometown and back to Philemon his master. And you can…you can imagine the position that put Onesimus in, like the kind of step of faith that he was gonna need to take because this…like his life could be taken. Like he could be executed for what he did. But Paul’s imprisonment and the way Paul was…was preaching the gospel in spite of the predicament certainly had an influence on Onesimus who subsequently had to leave his life in God’s hands in order to do the right thing. I think I should say that again. He had to leave his life in God’s hands in order to do the right thing. And, so, even though this is just a note, even though we’re gonna read it right now and finish it today it does reveal a lot, the importance of forgiveness when you’ve been directly wronged. But then just a kind of reconfiguration of how it was that you were wronged because it shows that our authority over somebody else is never total and complete. And if they’re a believer in Christ then they are a brother, they are a sister in the family of God. But we also see in the story of Philemon and Onesimus a living example of God truly working things together for the good of those who love Him. And, so, we began and read in its entirety the letter to Philemon. And by the way, this does end Paul’s letters. So, those of you that have the Daily Audio Bible app, etc. and are checking off your days as we listen to them then you’re gonna get the letters of Paul badge because we are completing that territory in the Scriptures today. So, let’s read Philemon.

Prayer:

Father we thank You for Your word. We thank You for this new territory that we are entering into, even as we reach the conclusion of another month. And we thank You for Lamentations. It’s again, not the kind of thing we really think about as a…as a good cleansing clearing purifying thing, but as we go through this territory we ask Holy Spirit that You accompany us, that You lead us into whatever steps we need to go into and lament and let it out and allow Your healing balm to come into those places that have been sore and bruised and infected for so long and we've…we’ve crushed them down and hidden them in the dank basement of our life. And we don’t go down there. But You’re inviting us and You are good and we trust You. And, so, Holy Spirit, accompany us, lead us where we need to go. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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