Jerimiah 4:19-6:15, Colossians 1:18-2:7, Psalms 77:1-20, Proverbs 24:23-25
Today is the 5th day of October, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and it is great to be here with you today as we continue our journey forward. And our next step forward on the journey will lead us back into the book of Jeremiah. We’re reading from the New International Version this week. And today Jeremiah chapter 4 verse 19 through 6 verse 15.
Commentary:
Okay. So, there is something profoundly helpful for us that can be found in our reading from Psalm 77 today. And the psalmist Asaph, who wrote this song asked six questions and they are questions that circle around our lives. Like, they are questions that are really difficult spiritual questions, but they’re questions that creep into our lives, especially when we’re facing a season of endurance or hardship. And, so Asaph asks, “will the Lord reject forever? Will He never show His favor again?” Like, I don’t know if this all starts sounding…we’re just two questions in, but they start sounding familiar. “Has His unfailing love vanished forever? Has His promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has He in anger, withheld His compassion?” We find these questions in the Bible and we may think, you’re not supposed to ask questions like that, you’re not supposed to say things like that but we’re just quoting the Bible. The Bible is asking these questions so that we might read them and ask them ourselves. They’re there for us to ponder and consider. It’s just when these kinds of questions arise in our lives there’s already usually something going on that’s making us uneasy because something isn’t working the way we thought it was supposed to work. So, first of all let’s just simply acknowledge. These questions are in the Psalms which are in the Bible. They’re being asked out loud. We just read them out loud. They’re fair questions to ponder but when those type of questions arise in our lives, we have the answers or the ability to conceive of the answers directly from the psalm. And, so, Asaph says, after he asks these questions, he says, “to this I will appeal; the years when the most high stretched out his right hand. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds. So, basically what we see here is when these questions…and again…repeating them, “will the Lord reject forever? Will He never show his favor again? Has His unfailing love vanished forever? Has His promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has He in anger, withheld His compassion?” Asaph suggests that when we face those kinds of questions in our lives that the response is to stop and remember what God has already done. So, like this becomes super helpful to those of us who like journal our way through the Scriptures or journal our way through life because we are literally setting up a memorial stone for ourselves and for future generations. We are writing the story of what happened. And as with Asaph, we can look back into our own lives and see that God…like we’re still here. God brought us through the thing we didn’t think we were going to go through. He brought us through in the way that He brought us through. It was counterintuitive as He normally is, and all of our expectations were met in ways that we never expected and we see God’s hand in our lives through looking back and remembering what God has done in our life. And the Scriptures give us the same thing, a broad ability to look back and see what God has done so that we know that the answers to these questions are that God has not rejected forever, that He will show His favor, that His unfailing love has not vanished, that His promises have not failed, that He has not forgotten to be merciful, and that He is not withholding His compassion because we can look back into our own lives and get clarity for the fog we are facing now. Because these kinds of questions come up when were in the fog. We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know where we’re going. We don’t know which…which we way is up in which way is down. We’re confused. And, so, these questions arise. But when we stop and review and look back at God’s faithfulness in our lives and in the Scripture over thousands of years then we begin to understand, yeah, I can’t see right now, it’s foggy right now, I’m confused right now but that’s not all that’s really going on. I will continue to trust in the Lord and move through this season and when I can look back on the season, I will see that God had never departed from me and was compassionate and merciful to me, did show me his favor, did not reject me, but brought me through. So, let’s remember this lesson. It’s not a problem to ask the questions, but in order to find the answers to the questions we have to be willing to stop, to stop what we’re doing, the frantic behavior that we’re doing. Stop and remember what God has done and then we can begin to see what God is doing.
Prayer:
Father, we welcome you into that. We find ourselves confused more than we would care to admit and more than we would like. And when we find ourselves tremendously uncomfortable, we start to wonder about where you went and whether or not you still are powerful and whether or not you still love us and have compassion and mercy upon us when the truth is those things will never fail. You haven’t gone anywhere. We’ve just lost our site. Restore our site by helping us remember what you have brought us through so that we can look at what we are going through knowing that this too shall pass, and we will navigate this, and you will direct us. We ask this in the precious and 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.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Coming soon…