Genesis 1:1-2:25, Matthew 1:1-2:12, Psalm 1:1-6, Proverbs 1:1-6
Today is the first day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian, it is awesome to be here with you today, as we gather around a place that we will gather for the next 365 days around the Global Campfire, where we gather in a nice, peaceful, oasis each day, to allow the Scriptures to kind of wash into our lives, orient us to God, and give us the direction and clarity that we need. Sometimes that is the rescue that we need. Sometimes it is the word that we need. Sometimes it is the correction that we need, but it will always be what we need. So, it is great to be here with you today, as we embark on our 19th voyage around the sun, our 19th voyage through the Bible together. This begins year 19 of the Daily Audio Bible. So, that is exciting. It is exciting to be here with you, those of you who have been here all these years, those of you who’ve been here for maybe half of these years, those of you who have been here for a year and those of you who are brand-new today, welcome to the family. Over the next couple of months, as we can settle into the rhythm here, we will become that, a community, a family showing up for each other every day, loving one another, praying for one another and involving ourselves in each other’s stories, as we find our story in the Bible. So, how this works, if this is brand-new for you, is that we will read a little bit of the Old Testament, a little bit of the New Testament. We’ll read from the Psalms and we’ll read from the Proverbs each day and we will make our way through the entire Bible, reading every book, every chapter, every verse as we move through and there’s so much treasure for life out in front of us and we need to dive in. We need to set sail or whatever it is, we’ve all landed here. Here we are. So, let’s begin.
Introduction to the Book of Genesis:
And obviously we have to begin every story at the beginning, and that’s how the story begins in the book of Genesis, that we will begin in a minute. In the beginning and it’s an important first step to us because it gives us the orientation about where we’ve come from and the context that we need to observe our lives and understand where it’s going. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and that will launch us into this adventure. And we’ll travel through all the miles. We’re gonna meet so many fascinating people who will become friends of ours, our spiritual ancestors, their stories and their hearts will be revealed to us, and we’ll find ourselves in their stories. And since we’re about to begin, we need to orient ourselves to the territory that we encounter in the Old Testament. When we think about the book of Genesis, normally we think about the creation story. The irony is that Genesis covers more time than any other book in the Bible. So, there’s the creation story and then about 2500 years pass within the pages of Genesis, which is more time than the rest of the Old Testament combined. So, as we begin Genesis, we have these first 11 chapters and we cover a couple thousand years and a couple thousand miles and then we’ll slow things down and we’ll meet specific generations of people and it’s the family that we watch get shaped in the book of Genesis that influences the rest of the Bible and influences our world until today. And then also, Genesis is a part of a larger grouping of writings that encompass the first five books of the Bible. That’s Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And this grouping is called the Torah. And so, we are beginning with the Torah or the Pentateuch, right now as we begin Genesis chapters 1 and two today.
Commentary:
Okay, so, this is day one of 365 days. And we’re just getting going and so, we talked about the book of Genesis. We probably noticed that we started four books, today, Matthew, Psalms and Proverbs as well. And it would just be a really, really long thing to try to orient ourselves to everything we’re reading all at once. And so, tomorrow we’ll talk about Matthew, just give ourselves little birds eye view of what reading in Matthew. And then we’ll do the Psalms and then we’ll do the Proverbs. And after a couple days here, we’ll be moved in and we’ll be kind of out into the deep and setting sail. And we’ll just get oriented to the community here and all that’s going on over the next few days. But on this first day, as we read in the beginning, we see that God was careful and intentional with His creation, and that our experience as human beings have been fashioned after the image of God. And that the life source within us is from the breath of God Himself. So, according to the Scriptures, we’re being told that this just didn’t all just happen by chance, this happened with intentionality. Each of us are supposed to be here. We each bare the image of God, who is, is intertwined as we’ll see from the Scriptures, so deeply intertwined with our story, that it’s deeper than cells and atoms. And also also, as we’re reading today, we got this amazing, rare view that will not last all the way. Like tomorrow, it’s all going to change. And so, today, on day one, we get this rare view of how things were supposed to be for us. How humans were supposed to be before the story got shifted, a perfect world, perfect people, created in God’s image. So, if we just take a small step back and look around us, then we get this sobering sense that the story somehow shifted over the last several thousand years. And we will get to that over the next few days.
Prayer:
But Father, we thank You for Your word, we invite Your Holy Spirit into this year, into every day, every verse, everything that we do and say, we invite You to lead us into all truth. This is what we have come for, to surrender, to orient ourselves to You, to get clarity and to fall in love with You, as You have loved us. So, come Holy Spirit into this year, into this community. Hover over us, lead us in the way that we should go. We ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Announcements:
Alright, so dailyaudiobible.com is the website, that’s where you can find out what is going on around here. The Daily Audio Bible app is also available, and you can download that from whatever app store works with your device, just search for Daily Audio Bible, put that on your phone and you can kind of track your progress. All kinds of things are in the app, so check that out and stay connected.
There are places to get connected when you go to the website or the app. One of those is the Community Section, and I’ll talk about that today. The Community Section is definitely where you can get connected on social media, but it is also the place where a very unique thing to this community lives and it’s called the Prayer Wall. And that is always there and it is always on and always available. So, as we begin our journey through the year, we always have a place to reach, we’re not alone. And if the bottom falls out, we can go and share our story, and our brothers and sisters will come around us and encourage and pray for us. And if we are having a mountaintop experience and we remember what the deep valleys feel like, we can go pray for those who are in the valleys, holding each other up, building each other up, loving each other. As we literally stay on the same page as a community, because we’re going through the Bible, and that’s what we’re here to do and that’s pretty much what we do. And so, get connected, stay connected in any way that you can, in any way that you will.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, and thank you, profoundly for your partnership. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t in this together. So, thank you for that.
And let’s just take a deep breath, here we are. We have just left the dock like, we can still see the land if we go out and look. We’ll be out in the deep soon enough, where we won’t see land for a long time, but we’re just leaving on this journey. And it’s gonna be, it’s going to be amazing because the Scriptures are alive, they tell us they’re alive and sharper than any two-edged sword, and that is true, they will become a mirror. They will force us to face ourselves and that is what we need, to face ourselves. We can go through the Scriptures and look at what everybody else should be doing, until we realize oh, this is about me. I should be making these changes. So, the Bible will challenge us to grow and so, I give the challenge on the 1st of January, go look in the mirror, give a good long look. Really look at yourself until maybe you want to look away. Just see where you are today, because this is where you are today. But if every day is immersed in the Scriptures, if you take that one-year journey every day, when we get to December 31st which was like yesterday. When we get there this year, you can look in the mirror again, and you will be looking at a different person. You will be shocked at how things have changed in the way that you view the world and your place in it. And so, I encourage you, buckle up. This is the adventure of a lifetime and I’m excited to be here. And it really doesn’t matter where you are or where you are in life. You may think I’m here, like I’m around a bunch of spiritual people. You’re not. Some people have been believers and reading the Bible for their entire lives, and some of you have just stumbled here. You’re so hung over from last night, you can’t believe what you’ve done. You can’t live with yourself as you go into the new year. So, you stumbled here looking for God for something, for someone, somewhere, for some kind of clarity. That’s great, you’re right where you’re supposed to be. Welcome to the family. All of us are absolutely, completely broken and we’ve come here because these words show us that there is a path to wholeness, and it doesn’t have to stay this way. And it doesn’t have to be this way. And so, let’s lock arms, let’s lock hands, let’s lock hearts, and let’s do this together. We don’t have to stay where we are. We can go forward from here, into a life that is beyond imaginable.