Exodus 13:17-15:18, Matthew 21:23-46, Psalm 26:1-12, Proverbs 6:16-19
Today is the first day of February, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible, I am Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you today. Add another beginning, the second month of the year. So, this is our second reading of a new month of 12 and as has been proven over and over many years those of us who make it through this month are likely to make it through the whole year. So, let’s buckle up and move forward together and do just that, make it through the whole thing together in community around the Global Campfire. So, on this first day of the second month we will do what we do every day and pick up where we left off yesterday, which was last month and in the Old Testament we are moving our way through the book of Exodus, the children of Israel and we’re pretty clear on who they are now and where they came from and the fact that we’re reading their story. They’ve reached a monumental moment. They have been cast out of Egypt. Their days of slavery seem to be over and they have moved into the wilderness where we pick up the story, Exodus chapter 13 verse 17 through 15 verse 18, today.
Commentary:
Okay so, on this first day of this second month of the year, also known as February, we have encountered a lot of things we could talk about, not the least of which is these things that the Lord hates from the book of Proverbs. I mean, some of them we can go, okay, yeah, I see that and some of them might land pretty close to where we live. So, it’s certainly worth further contemplation. Then we turn backwards into the book of Matthew from our New Testament reading today, Jesus is in Jerusalem, He’s in the temple complex and He’s teaching so, He’s not out in the villages, He is where the elite scholars and scribes and priests are, the clergy, right, like the ministers the pastors. They called them different things then and it was set up in a different order. But people who were leading this spiritual health and well-being of the population, people who were charged with the responsibility of leading people into the truth and revealing God. So, for us to understand the context here, Jesus is there. Jesus, God made flesh. And so, they’re asking Jesus, who gave Him permission to do the things that He’s doing. Like, by what authority does He have any right to do the things that He is doing. So, when we take one step back and look at the situation, we have people who are responsible for the spiritual well-being of the population and to lead them to God and they’re asking God how He has permission or authority to do what He’s doing. Jesus just cuts through all of it and says I have a question myself and it’s about John, right. Was he from heaven or was his authority from humans? Well, we have read enough of the book of Matthew to know the story of John the Baptist and his coming and his ministry to prepare the way of the Lord. So, from our reading we know that he was ordained and sent by God but the people who were responsible for leading people into the truth didn’t believe he was sent from God, nor did they believe in Jesus, God made flesh. So, if they can’t answer that question then there’s no point in Jesus trying to explain His authority. It wouldn’t matter what He said, they wouldn’t believe it. So, they had a little side meeting and decided they had an answer, they didn’t know. And so, Jesus said, well then there you go, you’ve given the answer, there’s nothing that I could say, so I’m not answering your question either. And then He starts telling a story, which he often does, a parable. And we can look at it and feel like He just dismisses the scribes and Pharisees, etc. and He turns back to a crowd and starts telling a story and continues to teach but He’s giving an illustration. It is really important and one that exposes the religious power of the Pharisees and Sadducees. So, as the story goes, there’s two sons and a father comes to each of them. He comes to his firstborn son and says, need you to go work in the vineyard and the son says I’m not gonna, like he just rebels against his father, I’m not going to do that. But then he thinks it over and he obeys his father. The father goes to the second son and says, I need you to help in the vineyard today and the sons like absolutely dad, I’ll go right now. But then he doesn’t go and Jesus question after the story is which one did the will of the father and the religious leaders answered that the first one had done the will of the father. So, the first one said he wasn’t going to obey but then did obey. The second one said he would obey but then didn’t obey. So, both of the sons said things that were incorrect. Talk is cheap. The one who actually got up and instructed his body to get up and get moving and obey, the one that put the instruction into action and lived it, is the one who did the will of the father. This is a fundamental thing that Jesus continually spoke of when He was interacting with the religious leaders and underneath it all, its lip service isn’t going to cut it right. Just saying, you can say anything, it’s what you do that reveals your heart and character. Jesus sums it up, saying, I assure you, I assure you, the tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God’s kingdom ahead of you. And so, to boil it down we add something very important to our lives because we wear all kinds of masks and we may adjust our personality into any given situation. We can become whatever we need to become, we can say whatever we need to say but there is a character and a posture of hearts that will eventually reveal what’s going on because our actions say much more than our words and when our words and deeds are in alignment there is great peace and freedom there because we’re not pretending to be anything but what we are. In another passage that we will encounter Jesus unpacks it by saying let your yes be yes and your no be no. Certainly this can be very, very difficult and challenging in the culture that we live in in the world where nuance and spin are everywhere. But what Jesus is doing here is giving us permission to be true and that is a vital thing to learn on this faith journey.
And then we flip back into the book of Exodus, the children of Israel have moved into the wilderness and they’re camped by the sea. The Egyptians are kind of getting their wits about them after the devastation that is happened to Egypt, culminating with the death of the firstborn throughout all of Egypt. They start asking themselves, what did we do by letting them go because the repercussions aren’t just that they let a bunch of people leave the territory of Egypt, the repercussions were that the entire society, the entire economy, everything is built on having this slave labor. And so, Pharaoh one more time decides I’m not letting them go, let’s go get them. And they do, they go. Children of Israel, 600,000 people on foot plus children, so like a million people and all of the livestock like a moving city, a good-sized moving city are camped by the waters. When they hear the rumble in the distance. And probably a fairly large dust cloud indicating that an army is coming and they see the Egyptians and they freak out. Moses why didn’t you just leave us alone. We were better off being slaves to the Egyptians, we told you just leave us alone, it would’ve been better to be a slave and to be dead here in the desert. So, their grumbling and they’re going to grumble the whole time, there’s a lot of grumbling in front of us, but it’s a mirror. If we can remember this, it’s a mirror, we have an awful lot of grumbling in our lives too. Which is not to say that that wouldn’t be a terrible and terrifying circumstance, here behind you, you have the sea and in front of you, you have an army approaching you. You don’t have anywhere to go, you’re in the middle of the wilderness, you’re not even going to be able to hide. But let’s let that be a mirror for a second because there are times in life where we feel pretty well boxed in right. There’s no way to go. There’s nowhere to move, the sea is behind us and the enemy army is racing toward us and we’re totally freaked out and panicking. What God said to them, He says to us through the Scriptures and it might be what we really need to hear when we’re in panic mode. God said, don’t be afraid, stand your ground and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today, you will never ever see again. The Lord will fight for you. You just keep still.
Prayer:
And so, Father, we invite You into that. That sounds wonderful. It is actually much more hard to do, to simply be still and trust. Instead of getting frantic and trying to do something to fix the situation. Sometimes our fixing of the situation is to dig the hole deeper and make it more impossible. But to trust you to listen and obey and keep still, maybe what we need to hear. So, come Holy Spirit, we pray in the name of Jesus, we ask. 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.
Prayers and Encouragements:
Hello there, my name is Dave, I’m from the UK, small market town between England and Wales. Just asking for prayer cover. I’ve got three kids and married, 21 years. I got two, I’ve got twin boys of 18. One with special needs all his life, he’s a wheelchair user. He has Cerebral Palsy. He’s in awful pain at the moment and the amount of drugs we’re giving him to try to…to provide some sort of normality of life. He has around 3 hours, 4 hours tops of sleep, the rest of the time he’s in pain and he’s crying and there’s nothing I can do but take him to the specialist and I can’t, we can’t seem to stop the pain. I’m just praying for healing, for endurance and pray he doesn’t lose his connection and faith with God. Cause obviously, after 18 years of continuous pain, it wears you down. My other son, last year, developed, never had it before but has developed seizures and tics and he was a ___ level ___. He was extremely ___ and he has about 25-35 seizures a week. And as you can imagine, their whole world has stopped and turned upside down and flipped. Just pray for my family. Pray for me so I can lead them, patience and perseverance. Just pray, thank you.
Hello DAB family this is Sarah from London, it’s the 26th of January at 6:48pm. I just thought I’d send something quick because it was such a profound moment for me this morning actually from Brian’s reading. And it was a part that when God instructs Moses to tell __ that the people go and Moses asks God, who should he say sent him, then God says to Moses, that he should tell Pharoah that I Am Who I Am sent you. Like wow, I Am and that actually gave me chills it just literally woke me up. Gave me chills and it just makes me realize how powerful God is even though I know that. Even if I know that to have a God that does not have to explain Himself because of who He is. And that did hit me in a very different way today because it just shows how powerful and amazing and an all-knowing God that we serve. And He never changes. He is the same God, yesterday, today and forever. And although life has it’s challenges, we go through difficulties, ups and downs, just so much trauma can happen in our lives, but we must not forget that you know, that God will never let us down. You know, He is always there for us. And let’s be encouraged because the God that we serve is just so amazing and really, really loves us. So, I just thought I send something short, but it just shows how just great our God is. So, let’s be encouraged and I love you all.
Hello Daily Audio Bible. This is Irene, I wanted to call in and ask for prayer with a really, different kind of a prayer but I hope I can make it clear. I used to have really, really bad anxiety and my parents told me that at the end of the day, no matter how many therapists and whatever you can go to, which I’ve actually never been to a therapist, God is the ultimate being that can take your anxiety away and you need to learn to surrender your anxiety to Christ. I’ve been doing that for probably the last three years. I’ve just you know, come up with this phrase “Lord, I surrender my anxiety to you” anytime an intrusive thought comes in that’s what I’ve done. But I feel like I’m taking God’s grace and His kindness and His mercy on me, for granted. You know, when you’re so anxious and that anxieties pulling away and it’s barely there or you just feel it going away, you’re so thankful. You know, sometimes I would cry, thank you God that was so happy it was going away. But now that that really bad anxiety hasn’t been around for a while, I feel like I’m becoming one of the nine lepers that took God’s or Jesus’ healing and just jumped and leaped and just ran away and never came back to say thank you. And that one leper that is noted in Scripture came back and he, you know, he thanked Jesus. And I just, I feel like, or I just really want prayer about my heart and that I would come to Jesus thanking Him like that leper. I don’t think I do that enough and I want to have a much more grateful heart towards God. I know that I take His love for granted and I just need prayer. I hope that makes sense and I hope you have a great day.
Hey, DAB it’s Refined by the Fire in Ohio. Hey, this reading today, Brian, oh, gosh, I always know, I always know when my mind wants to race through what it is you’re saying. I know that I need to slow down, possibly back it up, listen to it again and then my whole entire fleshly being is screaming at me like, no, you got things to do, there’s you know, things that are more fun, sparkly shiny squirrel out the window. Man, but I knew that I should do that. And when you were talking about just how sad it is that Moses was given this great opportunity and he’s like send somebody else. And, man, that just nailed me today because I have been avoiding, procrastinating, I have just been, send somebody else God with this situation. And, you know what, I’m gonna stop, right now. I am gonna make the phone call that I need to make and arrange the appointment I need to go see somebody. So, thank you for being willing to listen to the Spirit and to share that with us. And thank God for the Spirit and how He works is such a gift. It’s just amazing. So, thanks everybody. Hope you’re well. Talk to you soon.
Good morning, this is Caleb from West Virginia. I’ve been a listener for several years, but this is my first-time calling in. Brian, I just wanted to let you know what a tremendous blessing your ministry is to me. You’ve been there through the birth of my children, you’ve been there through the death of my father, you’ve been there through major transitions in my life, through all of the chaos. I always knew every day that I could listen to the Word of God read around the Global Campfire and I’m so thankful for you Brian, for your family, for your ministry and for the DAB community.