Judges 8:18-9:21, Luke 23:44-24:12, Psalms 99:1-9, Proverbs 14:9-10
Today is the 28th day of April, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today. Every day it’s great to be here together as we gather and take another step forward in the Scriptures. And our next step forward leads us back into the Book of Judges and we have been working our way through the story of the judge named Gideon, which we will continue today. Judges chapter 8 verse 18 through 9 verse 21.
Commentary:
Okay, so in the Book of Judges today, we do indeed come to the end of Gideon, the judge of Israel, his life. But before all of that, the Israelites came and attempted to make Gideon and his family the leaders over the tribes due to his…his leadership and his victory over Midian. Gideon refused. Gideon refused that he would be leader, that any of his sons would be leader. It was the Lord who would lead them and then they had peace for 40 years and then Gideon died and then it’s just like, immediately they switch gears and go in another direction. And so, the Bible tells us that as soon as Gideon died, the Israelites started to prostitute themselves by worshiping Baal, Baal-berith witch became their God and they forgot the God who had rescued them from…from the Midianites. And then to come take things to another level, Gideon had 70 sons, one of his sons was named Abimelech, he was born of a concubine of Gideon in the city of Shechem. And so, he goes and asks the people of Shechem who are wanting to appoint a leader. Shouldn’t he be their leader, basically? He’s one of them, he’s their own flesh and blood. He’s a real brother of theirs, shouldn’t he be the leader? And they basically, they say, yeah, he should be the leader. And so, what ensues is that Abimelech goes and tries to assassinate, kill all of his actual brothers, like destroy the whole family of his father, Gideon, and only the youngest one escaped. Like this is a picture of unbelievable injustice, after what God had done for them. But if we’re talking injustice, than we just flip over to the Gospel of Luke and we see it on full display. By looking upon a Savior nailed to a cross, dying. And obviously, this is…this is the Easter story, the story of the passion of Jesus and his death and burial, and resurrection, all of which we read about today. So, we should have an enormous joy in our hearts that having the opportunity to see this story come around once again and remind us of our salvation. We can also see just what was going on because the Gospels tell us they were confused. The women go to the tomb. They don’t know what’s going on. Some men tell them he’s not here. He’s among the living, and they go back and tell the apostles and then Peter runs to the tomb because the apostles had all heard the women and thought that they were talking nonsense. And so, Peter goes and sees that the tomb is empty and is amazed and they have to believe, as we do that with the Gospel of Luke tells us, He isn’t here, He is risen from the dead, is true. Imagine when they began to believe that, even though they had been told that when they began to believe that when they began to be able to see that. Imagine the hope that came out of complete hopelessness. And may we remember that the same hope in the face of hopelessness is available to all of us. And may we spend this day as a day of gratitude, continually being reminded of our rescue and continually offering gratitude to Jesus for that rescue, in the face of profound injustice, life sprang forth and changed the world and we are the recipients of this, as our lives are transformed. So we have moved through this territory in the Gospel of Luke, which leaves one more gospel for us. We’ve experienced this story three out of the four times that we get to. So let’s spend some time today immersing ourselves in the fact that we were hopelessly lost and we were rescued when we didn’t deserve it. And now our lives are spent revealing the Good News to all who will hear that rescue is available that there is a better way.
Prayer:
And so, Father, we invite You into that. Holy Spirit, plant this reality deep in the soil of our hearts. May it be unshakable. May we cling to it, our hope is in You. We are utterly dependent upon You. And we ask that You lead us into all truth today, as we consider and meditate upon the fact that You came for us to rescue us and You were victorious and all we need to do is believe You. And so, lead us, we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask, Amen.
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And that is it for today. I’m Brian. I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here, tomorrow.
Prayer and Encouragements:
Hello, I’m a fairly new listener. You can call me Early Bird if no one is using that already. I’ve been giving myself whiplash on trying to decide to call in or not. But there were a few people who called in that felt like little nudges, so here we are. I have just felt like so many things in my life are currently on fire, that I get overwhelmed just trying to think of what to ask for prayer for, if that makes sense. But I feel nudged to just start, just do something instead of waiting to feel better able to articulate my requests. I don’t want to feel like I’m always waiting on something to finally feel better or be better and miss out on living. All of this to say, I had to quit my job before having a plan ironed out due to it becoming a very unhealthy environment. But I also run an animal rescue out of my home and my income was basically funding everything. So, I have all lives that I’m responsible for and only a couple of months worth in my savings to get something figured out. My second request is prayer for sleep. My sleep aid that I’ve used for years recently stopped working and I’ve probably slept 6 hours in the past three days. And I’ve also been sick and so my body aches. And I’m just, I’m constantly miserable. So, yes, I would appreciate your prayers. Thank you.
Hello, Brian and Daily Audio Bible Family. I am a long time listener, off and on. And when I’ve been off, I’ve been off. So, it’s been really good to be back in the house of the Lord with people who are moving toward being better versions of themselves. Today, I was listening to Book of Joshua. As you read through on April 13th I believe, talking about Achin taking the gold and how we have to choose who we’re gonna serve, either serve God or whatever else distraction in our lives are. And for me that happened through the lens of adultery. And I made a huge mistake that is impacting my family, it’s impacting me and my children and of course it’s mostly impacting my wife the hardest. And so I’m calling for prayer. This happened quite a bit ago like over a year ago and it’s just now coming out and like there hasn’t been any contact. I cut off all contact and I’ve been seeking the Lord, and trying to turn right when I turned wrong. And it’s not easy – and this is my first time calling, although I’ve known about you for the entire 18 year. And I just really need prayer, not only to get past this, but to really understand deep within me what caused this trauma and how I got to be in this place, because trying to figure it out but I appreciate everybody. I appreciate the prayers and thank you so much for the opportunity to have folks alongside you in prayer. And again, I’m sorry to my family, to my wife and so on and so forth. Thank you.
Hey DAB, it’s J from the Bay. Victoria from Louisiana, thank you. God, I’m gonna cry. Thank you, so very much for your prayers for my little brother Nick. And everybody else to whom which called Victoria, my mom boo hoo’d cried, I just told her, you just have to give it to God. Nonetheless, I’m asking for prayers again for my little brother. As we all know he was shot. The detectives believe that his friend shot him. He’s saying that it was three men, three in total, including my little brother. So, they don’t know if it was the friend or the friends friend, that shot him. But nonetheless, I’m just asking for prayers for him because even though he was shot and doctors said like, it could have went a smidge to the left or the right and he would have been dead. He’s not taking Him serious. He never wore the sling; he’s still hanging out with these boys because they grew up together and just, I don’t know. We got into an argument this week and I have to ask God for forgiveness but I just have to give it to God. I…I…I, even though I’m the big sister, I can’t deal with this and can’t keep allowing my mom to deal with it, so I told him I’m done. If you want to throw your life away, go for it. I’ll continue to pray for you but there is absolutely no reason why he should be acting like this. My mom and his dad did a great job of raising him and made sure that we had everything and anything that we could ask for. Whether it was when we asked for it or it was delayed, we got it. So, I just want to ask if you guys could keep him in your prayers or in your thoughts. And his friends, just keep praying for them all. Thank you and I love you all so much and I hope you all have a blessed day.
This is Tom from Texas. I’m in desperate way. I’m in a place I’ve never been before; the last several years just going down and down and down. Wife, divorced, kids don’t have much of anything to do with me. Family, even all my supposedly close friends aren’t around. I’m completely alone. Even God seems far away. I know he has me but He doesn’t seem to be speaking or giving me any guidance. Physical health has gone down the last couple years, things that have happened, not even working. Seems like everything’s been taken away. Can’t figure out why, is it me and my sin, is just attacks of the devil. But I am alone, hanging on. Reading God’s word every day, praying, wondering what I’m supposed to be doing.
Hello, Daily Audio Bible Family. Thank you for all your lovely prayer requests and prayers and blessings and care for each other. Thank you Brian and family for continue faithfulness of this amazing Audio Bible program. Just want to ask a few things because our Savior says all you have to do is ask and you shall receive and I firmly agree when something special happens. So, I just ask for your blessing on my family situation. My wife is in a psychiatrist unit, my daughter is just about to be discharged from an eating disorder unit, coming home. My wife’s mother, my mother in law has cancer and just got a blood clot in her lung. So, I pray that You would heal my wife, she had a nervous breakdown really over our daughter’s situation. Will You heal her, would you heal our daughter and You’d heal my mother in law. And Your peace would be with her as she’s 80 something and nearing, you know, not that long. I pray that everyone would be blessed who listens to this and that Jesus would share everyone with His blessings. All keep abiding and strength from him. In Jesus name. Amen.