2 Chronicles 1:1-3:17, Romans 6:1-23, Psalm 16:1-11, Proverbs 19:20-21
Today is the 20th day of July, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is fantastic to be here with you today, as we continue our journey through this month of July and continue our journey, step-by-step and day-by-day through the Scriptures. We concluded the book of first Chronicles yesterday in yesterday’s reading. And so, today we open with the beginning of second Chronicles and we won’t do a whole flyby with this because first and second Chronicles were one text and so we’re not moving into new territory, we’re just moving into what comes next. Very similar to the way first and second Kings worked and so, when we got the second Kings we began with Solomon’s reign, that’s where we find ourselves as were moving into second Chronicles. Whereas the book of Kings the books of Kings, kind of look at this piece of history through the lens of the royalty. We are looking in the books of Chronicles through the view of the priesthood but it’s the same point in history, and so a number of these stories may sound familiar to us, like maybe I’ve heard that before, probably we did in first Kings or second Kings. But we’re looking at it through just a little bit of a different lens. And so, as…as I just said we’re moving into second Chronicles, which moves us into the reign of King Solomon. And if we remember, from…from the books of Kings, Solomon brought the children of Israel to their finest hour. He was able to build the temple of God, he was able to deeply develop the infrastructure of the nation and he was the final King to have a united monarchy where there was Israel, the United tribes altogether. After Solomon, we remember that the kingdoms break into two, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. But we’re jumping into second Chronicles before all that and beginning with Solomon’s reign. So, let’s begin, second Chronicles chapters 1, 2, and 3 today.
Commentary:
Okay so, we have come to a point in the book of Romans now, where we can kind of look back and see what Paul has been laying out and what the implications are. And let’s remember that although Paul certainly did believe and agree with the fact that Gentile people were being welcomed into the family of God. Paul is a Jew. And so, what Paul is speaking is through a Jewish lens or from a Hebrew perspective. And Paul is connecting Jesus to the Hebrew story because the work of Christ, what Jesus did in rescuing humanity, came through a Hebrew context and was a fulfillment of promises made to the Hebrew people by God. Let’s just pause there for second like, if we hadn’t, if we had no knowledge of the Hebrew culture in the Hebrew customs in the Hebrew religion in any way, which we do from the Bible, but if we didn’t, we’d have a hard time making sense of it because it would be a foreign culture, with foreign customs, foreign rituals, foreign holidays like, a whole different way of doing things. But we would be hard-pressed to truly understand. Paul is a Jewish Pharisee. What he believes Jesus to be, which is what we believe Jesus to be, is the promised Messiah. So, Paul doesn’t attempt to divorce Jesus from the Hebrew story, he’s smack in the center of the Hebrew story. He’s a major fulfillment in the Hebrew story. Because the main goal here, was to obey God and become righteous before God by obeying the law of God. But as hard as Paul and others had attempted to do exactly that, the conclusion was nobody’s righteous, nobody can obey this. So even though this may be a pathway to righteousness before God, what it ultimately does is reveal our inability to get there on our own, in our own strength. None of us are good enough. There is none righteous right, no, not one. That hasn’t changed Paul desire to be righteous before God. And so, he’s searching and he sees when the law of Moses was given and he understands that there were things going on before that and he goes back to Abraham and realizes that according to the Hebrew Scriptures, Abraham became righteous because of his faith in God, because he believed God. Not because he obeyed God or did anything specific or followed a law that didn’t exist yet. He believed God. He had faith. And for Paul this faith is key and it allows Paul to say like, even while we were the enemies of God, even while we might have been making any attempt that we could to be righteous before God, but failing, even while we couldn’t possibly have a hope of becoming righteous before God, God still came to rescue us, through Jesus our Lord. Revealing that Jesus fulfilled the law of God and our faith, like Abraham’s faith in God, our faith in Jesus allows us to participate in the fulfillment of this promise. So, that we are made righteous before God, not by anything that we have achieved but through our faith in Jesus. Just like Abraham had faith in God in the promise. We believe this to be true and it becomes true. And the implications of that are, that we are made righteous before God and are being made sanctified to before God, and sin that leads to death has no claim to who we are anymore. We are set free from transgression, through faith in Jesus. Our faith in Jesus, actually brought to an end, the sinful person that we were. And in the waters of baptism, we experience this death, burial and resurrection movement. We are made new again. We’re not the person that we once were. That person died, we have been resurrected as a new creation, a new preacher. We’re not who we were, we are a new creation before God. So, then the obvious question is, okay great, I’m free from sin like, sin has no claim to me anymore. So now, I can do whatever I want like, whatever happens, any mistake that I make, whether accidental or willful, can be forgiven. Like, I have achieved this place of righteousness before God, through Jesus. And so, sin isn’t a problem anymore and I don’t have to worry about it anymore. And Paul essentially says in today’s reading, not so fast, little buddy like, not so fast. That’s not what’s going on here. Jesus rescue of our souls and setting us free from the claims of sin in our lives, doesn’t give us permission to sin even more, because we think the debts paid and it’s all taken care of. Sin leads to death, that has been true all along, sin leads to death. And if you’re going to obey the pathway of sin, then you’re going to become a slave of whatever you’re willing to submit to. The point is, not that you have lost your ability to transgress against your brothers and sisters or against God, the point is, this is not an inevitability. We don’t have to live that way, we don’t have to try to walk this fence and at half of ourselves in the darkness and have of ourselves in the light and then we just turn around backwards the next days, bur we’re still in the darkness right, we’re still halfway in each place. We don’t have to live that way anymore. There is no claim to us. The person who used to have that story has died. We have been made new. So, we have been granted freedom to sin, we’ve been granted freedom from sin and that might be a really good thing to ponder today. We have been given freedom in Christ to sin, we’ve been given freedom in Christ from sin and that is a big difference.
Prayer:
So, Holy Spirit, we invite You into that. You have given us enormous freedoms, plenty of volition, plenty of opportunity for us to make choices, and for those choices to matter. So often, we find ourselves dabbling in things that are going nowhere, things that we have ultimately been set free from. We ask Holy Spirit, that You would come and open our spiritual eyes, give us eyes to see and ears to hear, what it looks like to truly be free, to walk away, to cut ties from the things that will ultimately destroy us and ultimately pull us apart, estrange us yet again, from You. You have set us free. May we live to find out what that really looks and feels like in this world. We pray this in the mighty 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.
Prayer and Encouragements:
Hello family, Drew from the Bay Area. Calling in today, I know it’s been a while. You are my family, we’re one in Christ, even though we don’t feel like it very often. I want you to pray, pray for a man named Eron: E-R-O-N. And then, I also wanted to pray with you. A long time ago I prayed something like this: heavenly Father, Lord God, Jesus, if You’re there, come into me. I know I don’t deserve You. And I’m looking to find joy in this world. But Lord, I can’t find joy in anything that I do or anyone. Lord, I’m happy here and there but I realize my life is not, is not a good life, not what it could be, not what you could make it. So, Lord, if You’re there, prove it to me, walk with me so that I can be better at what You want me to do. Give me your power, Lord. I can’t do it on my own. It’s in Jesus name, I call on Jesus. Jesus come into me.
Hello, Caleb from New Mexico. I just wanted to welcome you to the Daily Audio Bible. And I heard your request for prayer on podcast July 17, 2022. And you said that you wanted a prayer because your battling discouragement and you feel that you will always be alone. And I just wanted to let you know that that is Satan because that is a lie, it’s a deception from him. Because Jesus promise in Matthew 20:20, that He will always be with you. And so, I wanted to encourage you to keep on going and you have a lot of us praying for you and wishing you the best. You can always reach me in the Prayer Wall. And many people who are new, do not know that you can go into the Prayer Wall and post your request. So, thank you for calling Caleb. And we love you and may God richly bless you and your son. And continue on because the Lord loves you and so do I. Blessings to you Caleb.
Good afternoon Daily Audio Bible family, this is Janet from the UK and I need your prayers, family. So, my mom and a really bad fall a couple days ago. She was found in the morning by the care-er and now she’s in ICU. She has two areas of bleeding on her brain, she is constantly having seizures. So, they’re not able to do an MRI scan to see like, where the bleeding are or what is actually bleeding. So, they’ve been given her medication but she’s still bleeding and she’s still bleeding, she’s still having seizures. I spoke to the doctor, the doctor said the only, the last resort is to put her on life support and do the MRI scan to find out what is going on or where the bleedings are. But then if they put her on life support at 85 with all her, all that she’s going on with her, there not sure if they’ll be able to bring her back. As her power of attorney, as her legal guardian basically, I now have a decision to make as to what I want done. I am flying to the U.S. from the UK on Wednesday. So, I’m asking you family, to please pray safe journey and for me to make the right decisions for my mom. And not get scared and more trust in God. I’m scared, I’m very scared, I’m trusting God that He, cause He knows about my mom before she was even born, so He has all her lifespan in His hand. He knows exactly what is gonna happen. I just need your prayers for a good decision. Thank you, family, thank you so much.
Hey fam, it’s Sparky. It’s the 17th and I’m finally doing my Long Walk. And it’s been a good one. God has been talking to me and He tells me “When you met your wife, you’ll had a small flat apartment. When ya’ll got out of that small flat apartment and got rent house, that was when she told you that you need to find God.” And, I was a blasphemer, I was. And what God has told me through this, I’m walking through my neighborhood and I’m not kidding you on when I met my wife, I lived in a camp trailer, a camp trailer. And she pretty much gave me a place to stay. And the last time I got thrown in jail she said, this is gonna be the last of it. You need to start praying, you need to find God. And then I found God. And I walked through this neighborhood an I said, here I go. Oh my gosh, can I, would I ever imagine this? I was so sorrowful, so negative, so depressed. I still fight depression. Would you ever dream that you could make it all up? And you could make it out of your slump and have a better life once you make it out of that slump? I love you guys, you’re the best church family in the world. Be well.
Hello my DAB family, this is Jamie in New Jersey, Standing on the Word of God. Please pray with me. Dear Father in Heaven, we come into your presence so aware of our human frailty and yet overwhelmed for Your love for us. We thank You that there is no experience that we can walk through where Your love cannot reach us. We climb the highest mountain, You are there. And yet, if we find ourselves in the darkest valley of our lives, You are there. Teach us today to love You more. Help us to rest in that love that asks nothing more than a simple trust as the heart of a child. Help us to get our eyes off the mountain before us and put our eyes on You, the God who moves the mountains. Turn our lives into a powerful demonstration of what trust in You looks like. Father, help us to grow that mustard seed of faith that You have given us, that we may have a testimony for Your kingdom. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you for praying with me my brothers and sisters. I love you all dearly. May God move the mountains in your life. Have a good night.