Genesis 11:1-13:4, Matthew 5:1-26, Psalms 5:1-12, Proverbs 1:24-28
Today is the 5th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is fantastic to be here with you as we gather around the Global Campfire for day five, our fifth step together in a row. And in our first four days we have covered some significant territory in the Bible. And, so, we see just how remarkably poignant it can be, but we are also finally…we’re finally kinda moved in. We’ve got…we’ve got a rhythm established now and we’ve flown over all the different books that we are engaging with right now. And, so, we get to settle in and take the next step forward, which will obviously lead us back into the book of Genesis. Today, Genesis chapter 11 verse 1 through 13 verse 4.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we covered some pretty significant territory in the Bible today, any of which we could camp out and talk about for an hour, but let’s just kind of recap where we are in these stories. It’s important to understand that it’s unfolding before us. So, in Genesis today we had the story. It’s a famous story, the story of the Tower of Babel. And what we began to see is that the world got broken. We saw that happen. We watched things spin out of control all the way to the point where there’s a flood upon the earth. A reset. We begin to watch this redemptive thread be sewn into the story of God putting back together what has been broken, but then we also get a glimpse of people deciding to take the knowledge of good and evil and be their own God and try to put things back together without God, which is not something that God stands for for very long because it’s not going to work. And again all we gotta do is take a few steps back, make a circle, just kind of do some inventory in the world that we live in right now. We can say it’s an amazing place. We have so many conveniences, the technology is like science fiction to the people who lived a century ago. It’s an amazing place, but it is still very very broken. And, so, we continue to try to build ourselves into our own God and God keeps trying to put the world back together. And the way that these things are trying…are attempting to be accomplished are very different. We as people, we build these great monuments to ourselves. We build all the sufficiency. We build a world externally when God wants to put the world back together by putting people back together. And, so, we saw all the confusion of languages as people spread out throughout the world. And then we met somebody. We started moving through some genealogies and we can be like, not that again. But those genealogies were leading to a name, Abram. And we will get to know Abram a lot better tomorrow but a lot better in the days to come because this is the beginning of the story of the Hebrew people. So much of the rest of the story of the Bible finds its origin story in this guy, Abram and his wife Sarai. But more about that tomorrow.
We then turned into Matthew’s gospel and Jesus began to teach one of the central foundational pivotal irreplaceable teachings of Jesus, known as the sermon on the Mount, which serves so eloquently to illustrate what we were just talking about. Jesus begins telling them the world is upside down and backwards. The things that you are putting your hope in are not going to get you where you’re going, but when you realize that you have reached the end of yourself and your knowledge of good and evil and realize that you are utterly and completely dependent upon God then you begin to realize that you have what you need and you always will. Much like the people at the Tower of Babel, we’re not going to be able to build something enough to fill the void within our hearts and make us content. Like our entire culture is predicated upon creating the feeling of lack so that it’s just more more more more more. That all of the financial resources that we throw at things to make us happy, it ultimately cannot work. We are utterly dependent upon God, and we will see throughout the rest of the stories of the Bible that this theme, this is…that the stories bring us back to this theme over and over again. So, beginning to realize that, beginning to examine our lives in the way that we conduct ourselves and are living so much of our lives from the outside in, as opposed to from the inside out. We begin to realize all the things that we’re trying to accomplish, all the things we’re trying to do on our own or all the things that we’re trying to do on our own on behalf of God when what He seems to want is for us to realize that we’re not going to pretty up enough to be righteous before Him. He wants to be involved in our restoration and our transformation and that begins when we open our hands and our hearts and say come Holy Spirit, nothing is off limits to you.
Prayer:
Lord that is our prayer today. Nothing is off limits to You. Our hearts, we may have sections of them that are even guarded toward You, we invite You into those places. Those are the tender places in our lives, the places that we’re still confused about, the places that we still have a lot of questions about, and we hold You suspect. And, so, we keep ourselves from realizing that You have always been with us, and we have resisted in so many ways. We are coming to the knowledge that there is no hope outside of You. You are the source of all things. And, so, we humble ourselves before You and invite You to take leadership in our lives. Guide and direct us in the ways that we should go. Put us back together. Restore us. Transform us, we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian and I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hey God’s Life Speaker. Girl, thank you for that word. Guys this is Manita from Lambar. I am so emotional right now. I get like this during the New Year’s Eve. I just get very very very sentimental and I just…I just want to tell you how much I love you guys. Happy new year to you guys. You are amazing. You are…you’re amazing. My celebration…my sharing Brian’s podcast…podcast, you know that may the light of God shine upon you and all that. It was just so beautiful. I’m sorry I can’t remember everything, but I heard it and it just blessed me and I just get so emotional to listen to this beautiful movement of God. I love you guys and I pray that God anointing be upon you and give you a great new year. God bless you. Thank you so much for taking the time to…to bless others to bless this Daily Audio Bible community. Oh my gosh you guys, you guys are amazing. You ladies are amazing. I love you. You take care and happy new year to you. Thank you for taking your time and…and sharing that beautiful word. Thank you I love you God bless you. Happy new year baby. Take care. Bye bye.
Hi this is Verna from Gainesville FL again continuing my call in for James the Teacher from LA. I was talking about my daily To Do List that I make the day previous so that I don’t miss anything when I come in in the morning. I also highlight with yellow highlighter all the times whether it's…you know…on my To Do List I’ve got times for the meetings in the day and times for appointments because I have various appointments unrelated to work and highlighting helps a lot. And I…I think I during the day of things I need to remember to do when I get home and things I need to bring to work the next day. I take a sticky note. I wrote…I write all those things down and I stick that onto my phone case before I leave. That really helps me. Let’s pray. Lord, I pray that you’d help James to find the system that will work for him to stay abreast of each day’s challenges and be able to honor his ex-wife and his daughters by prioritizing their needs. I pray that his ex would observe a new level of responsibility and capability in James over the next month and that you would soften her heart and…and melt the bitterness that she holds. And I pray that a spark of desire reconciliation would be ignited and become a flame to reunite with her the good man she married in Jesus…
Hey, DAB fam it’s KB from Miami I’m calling because I need prayer in this season of my life. I need you guys to help pray for me as life has gotten harder the closer I’ve gotten to Christ. This year will be the first year that I’ve completely finished the Bible and learning all these stories in the Bible and all these ways in the Bible and the way that we’re supposed to be with each other. I just want prayers from you guys to keep my faith strong, keep my faith strong and help me resist the enemy and recognize my enemies because I have a loving heart. I always try to help, you know, even when I shouldn’t, and it’s lead me to places where I could have definitely made a better decision. In this past year I fell in love with someone that had a rough bringing up. They weren’t really loved the way that they should have been by family. They were always tossed from home to home. Mother didn’t care for them, made them drop out of school in middle school and never cared about their education. And their perception of love and how to care for people is all messed up. And I pray that you guys pray for me and pray for my significant other who’s struggling with emotions and struggling with mental illness. And I pray that you guys prayers help because truly I tell you it's…it’s hard to watch someone you love to destroy themself.
Hey DAB family it’s Sparky. This as many of you know, this is my favorite time of the year. I think I like it better than Christmas when we get all the way through the Bible. I think reflecting how many times through these years we’ve gone through it’s like I have a photographic memory of people I’ve prayed for who’ve prayed for me or they rung through wherever I was at. I can remember when I first got started in this app I had to remove myself from the job and go out to the restroom because I had tears in my eyes. And I realized how powerful this app was when I was going through, and I looked back at this year. We've…my family…we’ve gone through so much this year from…from being an electrician, being…just living in New Mexico, which, you know, is a long way. But I stayed in that hotel room listening to this. And my kids, the ball being dropped on me, their move to Portland and then me quitting my job and us nearly going broke and then me getting another job and it pays better and then the house floods and the car breaks down and you’re wondering why you’re getting paid better but you still got thousands of stuff coming at you and then Christmas comes and your kids can’t get home, flying home. But there’s been one constant, it’s a rhythm as Brian says of getting on here and focusing on God. And my life has changed from it. From surgeries to…I mean just everything that happens in my daily life doesn’t matter as long as I center on God and y'all.
Well good morning Daily Audio Bible family it’s big Mike here from sleepy little OBCA, Ocean Beach CA, here in San Diego CA United States. It’s 8:32 AM December 31st, 2022 and I just finished listening to Brian read the last portion of our holy Bible for the year and I’m feeling very grateful, happy and joyous to have been part of this with you all the last 365 days. This was the first year that I’ve ever gone completely through the Bible with you all and I don’t call in much. Actually, the only time I called in before was for the Christmas party. But I do look forward to another year with you all, another year of growing, another year of challenges, and another year of being close with our heavenly Father and Lord Jesus Christ. God bless you all in 2023. See you on the journey.
This is Tilly from Florida on December 31st and I wanted to thank Brian and Jill, China and people who prayed for me throughout the year, those that have prayed. One of the highlights, I think it was Kate who prayed for my AFIB. And I do have a lot better control over that right now with some treatments that I’m on and lifestyle changes. So, it’s a wonderful thing and I want to thank all the people on the DAB for all the prayers and consistency that call in and all that. And perhaps next year I’ll do some of that myself. Maybe…maybe I’ll call in more often to pray for other people. I ask that everybody consider supporting the DAB, you know, with your finances. That's…that’s a very important to me. So, God bless you all. Let’s have a good year. Let’s do this again. Again, for me this is…I’ve kind of lost count, I can’t remember what year I started but it’s probably 16…16 years, I think. I think I started the second year. So, I’m gonna do it again. God bless you all. Lord Jesus, we lift up this prayer to you for the DAB and the Chronological and the Kids and the Proverbs and the Psalms that the Hardin family so diligently pours into us. And maybe we pour into them with our prayers and finances this next year in Jesus’ name. Amen.