Exodus 28:1-43, Matthew 25:31-26:13, Psalms 31:9-18, Proverbs 8:12-13
Today is the 8th day of February welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and it is wonderful to be coming to you from the land of the Bible as we are here in Israel for our annual pilgrimage. And, so, we were able to have dinner last night and get together and get oriented. And, so, today will be our first day out and about but we’ll talk about that in a little while. We have all gathered around the Global Campfire to take the next step forward in the Scriptures. And, so, let’s dive in. And diving and leads us back into the book of Exodus. We are around Mount Sinai and God is issuing to Moses the laws and statutes that will organize this people who were formerly slaves into a cohesive people of God with a mission and a land of promise out in front of them. Exodus chapter 28.
Commentary:
Alright. So, in the book of Proverbs today wisdom is speaking and she began speaking yesterday with the eighth chapter of Proverbs, and she’ll continue speaking as we continue to navigate forward tomorrow. And I say she because she is identified in the feminine voice, but she is identifying herself as the voice of wisdom. And, so, she began the chapter by saying, “do you hear wisdom calling out?” We could…we could pause there and let that be the question of the day. “Do you hear wisdom calling out? Do you hear understanding raising her voice?” And what she goes on to explain is that she is at the crossroads. She is at the place of decision. And we face these crossroads constantly in our lives. We are constantly making decisions about the trajectory or the direction that we are going to go in. What we discover here is that wisdom is there at that…at that junction, at that crossroads. Wisdom is there crying out, raising the banner. This is the way, listen to me, go this way. And she tells us, all the words from my mouth are righteous. There is nothing twisted or crooked in them. All of them are clear to those who have understanding, and they are upright to those who find knowledge. Accept my discipline accept the discipline of wisdom instead of silver. Accept knowledge rather than gold because wisdom is better than gems, and anything you can desire cannot equal her. And then we turn into today’s couple of verses that we have from Proverbs. “I wisdom dwell with good judgment. I discover knowledge and foresight. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” What we discover here…a couple of things that we discover here. Number one. If wisdom is the most valuable thing that we can attain, then we ought to pay attention to it and we ought to do whatever we can to attain if it’s the most valuable thing that is. So, first of all, it has to be a category. It can’t be this like nebulous concept that boils down to our experiences and what we’ve learned and what we know because we don’t know all that we think we know. And life has a way of teaching us that lesson on a regular basis. But walking in wisdom is walking the ancient paths that God has revealed, which leads us to the second point. Wisdom is available. She’s not hiding. In fact, it’s like she’s got a giant sign at the crossroads. She’s shouting out, “listen to me.” Wisdom is available to us. So, wisdom is the most desirable thing that we can attain because wisdom will lead us to everything else that we desire and will also teach us what proper desire is. And I’m not saying desire in like a sexual or attraction kind of term, like what we want, what we’re after, what our hearts pull us toward. Wisdom will warn us we’re being pulled in the wrong direction, this will end in destruction. So, wisdom needs to be a category in our lives, something that we are actively pursuing. But wisdom isn’t hidden. Wisdom is in plain sight for those looking for. And, so, on just a practical plane, just trying to look for something that we can go okay, could we flesh this out a little bit? What does this look like? Because I’m gonna make this the category and I’m going to pursue this. Like where do I begin? The Scriptures tell us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And we were told today that those who fear the Lord hate evil. But looking back into the eighth chapter of Proverbs, I quote from wisdom, “listen, because I am speaking noble thoughts.” So, noble thoughts. “I open my lips to speak upright things.” Wisdom speaks upright things. If we are walking in wisdom, we do the same. She says, “for my mouth, declares the truth, but wickedness is disgusting to my lips. All the words from my mouth are righteous. There is nothing twisted or crooked in them.” Just looking at those little handful of things gives us a jumping off point. Do we look like those things? Is this how we are navigating our days? We’re still here pretty close to the beginning of the year. Like, we’re moved in and we’re sailing along in waves. We’ve come all the way to Israel and we’re going through this pilgrimage, but we’re still kind of here in the beginning part of the year and making wisdom a primary category, something that we are really truly seeking to understand and live and walk in will change the way we live this year, which will change the way we live our lives.
Prayer:
Father, we invite You into this. Lead us on the paths of wisdom. Holy Spirit come and show us how to not just blow through every crossroads because life is too busy for us, that we may realize we are reaching a point of decision and seek wisdom in the decision instead of just blowing by through all of the yield signs and danger warnings. Help us to reduce the speed limit of our lives. Help us to slow down and incorporate wisdom as a category, knowing that slowing down so that we can seek wisdom will only be helping us speed up. Come Holy Spirit into all of this we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
Okay. So, we are off. Today will be our first official day of touring around the land of the Bible. We will be heading southward today, southeast a bit I guess, leaving the Mediterranean coast. And then we will be heading into the wilderness. And we will be touring around and experiencing for ourselves this biblical wilderness and will end our day to day at another body of water. So, we’re leaving the Mediterranean Sea and tonight we will be on the Red Sea. But I can’t tell you about it because it hasn’t happened yet. We did have our welcome dinner last night kind of everybody gathering and getting to get oriented talking through the jetlag, talking to the process of travel and just adding to know each other a little bit and it…man…when the Daily Audio Bible community gets together it’s such an interesting thing. I have seen it over years and years and years. Like, you can walk into a place…you can walk into place a by yourself and you don’t know anybody but your here because everybody’s going to the Bible together or whatever, and but in just a few minutes, within a few minutes, it’s like everybody’s old friends because we’re taking this journey together. And, so, that was what was experienced last night. It’s almost like a little family reunion, kinda…something. It’s just like a reunion. It just feels like it’s so nice to be actually physically in each other’s presence. We’re together every day but it’s so nice to actually be here together. And, so, we’re getting ourselves acclimated. Jetlag has a way of being a difficulty. It's…and it’s definitely a challenge for me. It takes several days for me to really kinda feel like right side right. And but it’s still all on adrenaline and it’s just so exciting. And, so, that pumps us full and keeps us going. But we are off and thank you for your prayers, the prayers of the community over our travel, over our stays, over all of the things that we will see and experience, over all the things we will hear and learn, and to bring us back to our homes with hearts full and overflowing so that it spills out into our communities where we live. Thank you for your prayers over that.
And we will be posting pictures along the way throughout each and every day. And depending on where you are in the world depends on where they will show up. Some of the stuff will be posted…like if you’re back in the United States we’ll be posting stuff in the middle of the night because it be the middle of the day for us. And, so, like going to the…like following Daily Audio Bible on Facebook or following Daily Audio Bible on Instagram or whatever so that these things can just show up in your feed, that might be helpful, but you may just have to go to like the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page. If they’re not showing up in your feed they’ll be there. But we will post as things are happening.
And then this Saturday the 11th of February a few days from now we will gather together as a community and to do a Facebook live and just kinda let everybody who’s on the trip, all the families kinda be able to see everybody and the entire Daily Audio Bible community being able to come together and see everybody, hear the different stories from the experiences that we have had, or that we are having. And that will be taking place at about 7:30 PM and that will be local time. And we’re a global community here so we’re in all the different time zones. So, you might have to like Google the time in Tel Aviv and then figure out the time where you are and figure out the time difference. But we’ll be going live on Facebook. And that is always fun. It is always so fun. We feel connected back to the community. We feel back connected back to home and are able to just share a little bit about what we’re experiencing. And, so, looking forward to that. Put that on your calendar. You’ll be able to participate in the trip whether you’re here or whether your virtual we’re doing everything we can to make this a community experience as we move through the land of the Bible. And, so, thank you for your prayers over us. We certainly do love you.
And that is it for today. I’m Brian I love you I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Coming soon…