Ezekiel 24:1-26:21, Hebrews 11:1-16, Psalms 110:1-7, Proverbs 27:14
Today is the 12th day of November welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you to take the next step forward. So, yeah, let’s just all fid our place around the Global Campfire, find a peaceful place within us, just kind of exhale the cares of life that would love…would love to interfere with this time. But this is the safe place. This is the oasis that we have together where we come together and just let God’s word speak however it speaks, just take a few minutes to catch our breath and allow God into the day. And, so, let’s get that. We’re reading from the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament right now. So, we’ll continue that. We’re reading from the God’s Word Translation this week. Ezekiel chapters 24, 25 and 26 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, yesterday we were talking about our reading from the book of Hebrews. We talked about being able to move into the holy place beyond the curtain, beyond the veil, so into the very presence of God. And again, like we’ve said so many times, this is all…this is all being fleshed out in a Hebrew context because Hebrews is written to Hebrews and if we don’t have the Hebrew context then none of its gonna make any sense much like the rest of the Bible. So, essentially what was being promised here is that we can go into the very presence of God as His children and that He will welcome us that way, that there is an intimacy, a relationship that is available with the most-high. Well, for the Hebrew people hearing this, the high priest could only go into the most holy place once a year. So, what was being described was something impossible. The impossible was possible which is…which is the good news, that there is no separation between us and God anymore. That’s the good news. So, as we turn the page and move into today’s reading what we’re seeing begin to be fleshed out is how to do it. Like, how it works. How might one begin that process of entering into some kind of personal interaction even relationship with the most-high God. How do you…how you start that journey. And the writer of Hebrews lays it out. Faith. And, of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard faith in the Bible this year. This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about faith since we started our journey so many months ago. We talked plenty about faith when we were working through Paul’s letters because it’s the centerpiece of the gospel that he was teaching but it’s Hebrews that gives us the famous definition, right? Faith is the substance of things hoped for, it is the evidence of things not seen. Or reading from the translation that we’re in now. “Faith assures us of things we expect and convinces us of the existence of things we cannot see.” So, I mean logic just dictate…dictates; if you don’t have faith in a God that you cannot see then how can you be in a relationship with that God? Faith is required unless we get bent out of shape, like, “well…I just don’t have that kind of faith …I don’t have enough faith…like I can’t get anything to get done because I have enough faith. And where do I go? Like, where is the well that I can get more faith? Where do I go to the store and buy more faith? Where’s the faith shop at? There isn’t one. You have what you need. We are all living by faith. As much as we are denying it, we are all living by faith. So you have faith in love? You can’t see it yet can’t really prove it other than its evidence and the fact that it’s ubiquitous everybody believes that there is love and we act in love, but you can’t see it. Do you believe in the wind? You can’t see it. It can blow down a tree, though. It can bring a flood. It can dry the earth. So, we have faith in its existence because we can see what it’s doing. Do you have faith in next Tuesday? Probably. Probably you’re expecting that next Tuesday will come. You may even have things planned for next Tuesday. Can you see it? Can you attain it? Can you grasp it? It’s yet to be. It hasn’t come into existence yet. But somehow our faith fleshes out and gives substance enough that we could write in a calendar what we planned to do at a time that does not exist yet. Do you believe that if you’re going to work today that you’re probably gonna get there, or if you’re on your lunch break do you believe that you’re probably gonna make it home tonight? Yeah, probably you have faith that that will happen. Do you know it will happen? You have no idea that it will happen other than that it keeps happening, and so would you believe that it will. And that’s just some random examples. If you just think about your life and the things that you have faith in that are not necessarily spiritual things but maybe spiritual things, we realize that we are operating in faith a lot because we’re made that way. And then we turn to spirituality and we turn to God and it all the sudden gets murky when we are made for this. Faith lets us see a reality and then begin to live into that reality like next Tuesday even though it’s not here, even though it hasn’t reached its fullness or its completion. It gives substance to what is not seen. So, there’s a bit of…just an argument, I guess, for the existence of faith, but we would have to acknowledge that it does exist because we employ it every day of our lives. The writer of Hebrews is simply trying to say, “this is the way forward. Your faith is the way forward. But don’t think that faith is a new invention. Faith has been the underpinning of…of everything all along. It’s the essential piece of the puzzle.” It preceded in the Hebrew story, any tradition any ritual any law, any culture any anything, it was the foundational piece of it all, which led us into a bunch of names. We started reviewing. Like we started at the book of Genesis and started forward, right? It’s by faith that Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God. It’s by faith that Enoch was taken without dying. He disappeared. It was my faith that Noah built a ship to save his family from the flood. It was by faith that Abraham obeyed God and left the land that he was in to a land that he would be shown. It was my faith that Sarah, even though she was too old to have children and they were both a Abram and Sarah, Sarai, were both too old to have children. They had a child. All those examples come from the book of Genesis, the beginning of the story that we read so long ago. And as we continue because we’re…we’re walking down a section of Scripture that’s famous, it’s famously called the hall of faith and the reason for this existing is…well…is for the author of Hebrews to show fellow Hebrews that faith was always the centerpiece of the story from the get go. It was always the essential piece. It’s a part of all of the stories. If faith gets removed from the stories than the stories…the stories don’t exist. So, the writer of Hebrews is essentially trying to say, “this has always been going on. It’s going on right now and for you to go forward, for you to go forward with God into an intimate relationship it is going to require faith. Faith is what will make you move fomrward. And what we should see from our reading today as we began the hall of faith and as we continue the hall of faith forward into tomorrow what we should see is that these were not superheroes. At the end of their story they did not get some kind of cape and some kind of special power. They were people, ordinary, normal people. We’re not reading the hall of faith as a list of names of people who were exceptions. We’re reading the story of people who serve as examples for us. And, so, we should consider then, what…what the readers of this letter would’ve had to consider - where is my faith then, what is my faith in then? If I’m struggling right now and it’s all falling apart my faith is in something somewhere. Where is my faith? And if our faith is…if it feels like it’s thin and frayed and ruffled and torn and…and God feels distant, if our faith toward God feels like it’s paper thin and we can see through it and somebody just poured water on it and it’s just starting to come apart maybe our faith isn’t in God. I mean I know that sounds kinda forward, but maybe it’s not. Maybe our faith is in what we thought He was going to do. Maybe we asked Him for something or expected things to go in a certain direction and we put our faith in that outcome and that outcome isn’t God. If our faith is in the expectation of what might happen then maybe it’s not in God. Because as we’ve seen from beginning the hall of faith so many of those people never saw the promise, so many of those people never saw the fulfillment but the story couldn’t have continued if they hadn’t taken their place and believed in faith. And, so, our stories aren’t only about us. Like, we’re one day gonna lay down in death and there will be generations that exist upon this earth because we were here. We carried the story forward, but can we believe for the future generations that are not future generations of the earth, but just future generations of our offspring, our family? Can we see beyond our own lives and believe that our faith is telling a story? And that story needs to continue forward because faith activates everything. And our faith has to have hope beyond us. And, so, let’s give that some thought today. Where is our faith? We need to locate it and know where it is because we’re going to need it.
Prayer:
Father, O we love You and we invite You into that. Where have we put our faith? Why are we so frustrated? Why are we spinning? Maybe we have put our faith and outcomes that continually leave us downtrodden and disheartened when our faith could have been and should have been in You wherever the road may lead. Because wherever the road may lead, if we are with You we are where we’re supposed to be and we are where we ultimately want to be. So, come Holy Spirit and lead us on the narrow path that leads to life, the path of faith. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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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.