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Daily Transcripts
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07/01/2015
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2 Kings 18:13-19:37 ~ Acts 21:1-17 ~ Psalm 149:1-9 ~ Proverbs 18:8
Today is July 1st, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian, it is awesome to be here with you beginning the 7th month of the year together. So we have completed six months and we're digging into the 2nd half of the year. And this is going to be, well it’s going to be epic. That's what it’s going to be. Because the Bible is this epic story of God's involvement in mankind's life, which means our lives. And so I can't wait to see all that He will do in the second half of the year. We're still in the same week we were in yesterday, so we’re reading from the Common English Bible this week. And we're reading today from the Old Testament, 2 King Chapter 18:13 through 19:37. Yesterday, we saw the end of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, it’s gone now. The people have been taken into exile. What it was, it will never be again. But the Kingdom of Judah still remains.
Commentary:
Alright, we finally have a king in Judah that’s a good king, that is a reformer king, Hezekiah. And he is obliterating and obliterated the shrines and the idol worship and the mixture. And he is restoring the culture back to God, but he’s under great duress in the process. There is no northern ally; there is no northern enemy for that matter. Israel has been carried off into exile so he is the king of a small territory with a great empire breathing down his neck, trying to go ahead and conquer Judah, as well, and take the entire land. And the Assyrian King Sennacherib is doing that. All of Judah’s fortified cities are falling. The capital city of Jerusalem hasn’t fallen. But at the point in the narrative that we read today, Lachish or “Lacheesh” has fallen; which is the 2nd most fortified city next to Jerusalem.
The ruins of Lachish are still there. Pieces of its ancient wall, the foundations from its palace are there. When you climb up that mount and stand there, kind of where the palace would have been, understanding that this great Assyrian King Sennacherib had taken this city and all really that was left to do was to conquer Jerusalem and the entire land would have been overrun, you see the predicament Hezekiah is in and so you see the urgency of his prayers before the Lord.
As Sennacherib sends his people, his messengers to the wall threatening and essentially saying ‘it doesn’t matter what god you put your trust in, that god is not more powerful than the Assyrian king. What god has ever saved anyone from the Assyrians?’ you see the threatening dilemma, the intimidation, all the things coming against the people, the fear, the doubt, the anxiety. It’s into that climate that King Hezekiah goes before the Lord, spreading out this letter in the temple and saying ‘there is no hope but You. There is no hope at all for our survival but You.’ Because pretty much Jerusalem is all that’s left of all that we have known from of the beginning of the Bible until now. Jerusalem is pretty much all that’s left in the ‘promised land.’
In Jerusalem, there’s a small section – the way that archaeology works in a big city like that is that for thousands of years, society just builds over the top of society. So really whatever was before just gets knocked down and built over the top of and that’s still true today. So when something new is being built, something old is discovered. Since it’s such an ancient land, archaeologists are brought in to kind of do the archaeology, find out what it is, what’s going on and then make decisions and choices, and most of the time, the ruins are preserved and whatever is going to be built has to be built over the top, like on stilts, literally, so that the archaeology can be accessed – and there is a place like this in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem that reveals a portion of the original city wall of Jerusalem from king Hezekiah’s time. These aren’t small walls they had to guard big cities; it’s 20, 30 feet thick. It doesn’t rise to the height that it once did. I’m sure you’d have to dig way down into the earth to follow the wall all the way down. But you are able to look upon it, realize people were on these walls looking down, listening to these people taunt them, and curse God and understand that things haven’t changed that much; there is all kinds of opposition in this life.
Hezekiah’s gesture of going into the temple and spreading out the letter before the Lord and praying and asking for protection and to place themselves in God’s sovereign will, it’s really nothing new. That’s the thing about the Bible, we’ve talked about this before: The heart of mankind and what he’s after, what he’s after with God, and what he’s after in his own strength, that stuff hasn’t change much. It’s just got different clothes, but it hasn’t changed much.
We see the prophet Isaiah showing up on the scene for the first time, making his first appearance, and he has remarkable words of encouragement for this good king, Hezekiah. After all of these generations in the north and the south, kings just did not follow their heritage in any way and did not follow God other than culturally, in any way. We finally have someone who’s given his heart to God and we have this prophet Isaiah telling him ‘all is going to be well, against all odds, all is going to be well.’ And it is, because from Lachish (which is not too far away from Jerusalem, and like I said, was a fortified city like Jerusalem; it was in fact the second most important, strategic city in Judah, second only to Jerusalem) God invaded and the army was struck down.
And when you’re in Lachish, and you’re looking out across the valley – and you understand we are talking about more than 100,000 people – you see the mob, you see it surrounding the area, you see sort of the siege ramps that it would have taken to conquer this city. And you even see siege works, like the remnants of ancient attempts to conquer this city and you understand this happened, this really happened. God really did invade on behalf of this people; and Sennacherib was humiliated, and sent back home to Assyria where his own sons killed him and saved Jerusalem.
May we, once again, understand there is no hope outside of God’s sovereignty, there is no hope beyond God’s strength. Where else can we turn to? We just are often misinterpreting and misjudging God’s will in our lives. We want what we want and we know that may not be what He does. And so it breeds all this doubt and mistrust. It basically reveals our hearts, it reveals what we’re afraid of. God is always pressing into that stuff; because he wants us freed from it, there is no hope outside of a connection and collaboration with Him in our lives. There isn’t. With Him, anything is possible. It is the grand adventure of life.
Paul seems to know this as he’s led by the Holy Spirit toward what everyone is telling him is chains, and it will be. But he’s on this grand adventure of trust. He knows what God is telling him to do and he doesn’t have a choice because he’s not departing into his own strength. He’s going to obey no matter what the cost, because there’s more than just what’s here; there’s a forever out there. And we’re in it and it never ends and we have that beautiful opportunity to spend that forever in relationship with God.
Prayer:
Father, we want nothing more and nothing less than that intimacy with You, conversational friendship with You, walking through life with You, trusting in You, hearing Your voice and obeying it. Walking through this life and forevermore with You, as we continue to grow and discover and learn more about You and know You more, and learn more about this unfathomable creation that You have made, that is all around us. So once again, we invite your Holy Spirit because it is something we have to constantly do; reorient ourselves. We can be out of this moment in five minutes as soon as something distracting happens; it’s our way, but we invite You, Holy Spirit, to continue to pull us back towards the narrow path that leads to life and show us how to walk in it through the power of Your word and the illumination of Your wisdom in our lives. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website; it’s home base, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And a little bit of a busy time around here. We’re doing this summer tour at the two big larger music festivals. So we did Creation last week; and we’ll be doing River Rock Festival up in Maine in a couple of days. So if you are in attendance, be sure to come and say ‘hello.’
The other thing that’s on the horizon is the 7th of July, so a little bit less than a week – a week from yesterday – is the Daily Audio Bible “Long Walk 2015.” We spent a week unpacking that, it’s quite simple, giving yourself permission to kind of check out for a day and consecrate it to God and go for a long walk. Go somewhere beautiful; just, maybe take a picnic or whatever you want to do, do it with God, like intentionally with God. Like you’re together and actually friends and spending the day together, because that’s what’s available to us. Time to just say it all, everything you just haven’t had time to say, and some space to hear back what God would say to you. And a good opportunity to kind of reset for the second half of the year, that’s July 7th.
We can all do it together, even though we do it individually. The way we do it together is to say, hey, wherever it is you go, whatever it is you do, whether you’re sitting on your back porch, or whether you drove a couple hours to somewhere that you love, take a picture, something that you’ll want to remember. Share it. Go to the Facebook page of Daily Audio Bible at www.Facebook/DailyAudioBible.com. Post it on and watch all of these little windows open into each other lives. It’s a really, really a beautiful thing that we do, a little beautiful tradition in the Daily Audio Bible world. That’s coming up the 7th of July.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you kindly, humbly, for your partnership here in the summer months. There’s a link on the home page upper right-hand corner. If you prefer the mailing address, it’s P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN, 37174.
If you have a prayer request or comment, (877) 942-4253 is the number to call.
That’s it for today, I’m Brian, I love you. I’ll be waiting for you here, tomorrow.
Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports:
Good morning family, this is Gary in North Carolina. I’m calling in response to a prayer request left by Jennifer in Boston regarding her daughter, who is 15 and has started cutting herself and is depressed. I just wanted you to know, Jennifer, that when I first started listening, about 4 years ago, I was in the very same situation with my son. He was 15 and going through a hard time, depressed and started doing the same thing. And I reached out to this community and was absolutely amazed at the responses that I got and the change that happened with the prayer that I know he was receiving. So Jennifer, we’re going to be praying for you and your daughter. Just keep praying for her and with her and you’ll get through this and she will too. We love you.
Praise God, I know He is able and I trust that this family will join me in praying for my son, Jake. He’s had epilepsy for 10 years, gone through a whole lot, is despairing of life (and let me just put it like that) and he’s talking suicide and we’ve had a really rough road with this journey and he knows the Lord, as do I. And, we trust that this Daily Audio Bible would just strengthen me day by day and I thank you for that, that this family will reach out in faith for my son, that he will live and not de and declare the works of the Lord. I know he has a great call on his life. My heart’s breaking. And to all the epileptic who have seizures, it’s a real hard struggle. And it’s really tough as a mom, but God is a great Father; and Jake lost his dad, my husband of 28 years, a couple of years ago. And please pray for us. Thank you.
This is Anne in North Carolina. Thank you Cherry, Cherry Pie for calling in to let me know you are praying and I know that means others are praying and encouraging me to go to my daughter’s wedding; even though I’m not allowed to sit with the family or talk to my children that don’t want to talk to me. I have 6 children and some of them are estranged from me. I just have been brought to tears and I’m so thankful for this community and many of you that suffer with depression and struggle with depression and anxiety, my heart goes out to you. My prayers are with each one of you when you call. In the morning, sometimes I feel so bereaved and hurting about my estranged children, I feel like I can’t get out of bed, I feel paralyzed. And the thing that helps me through lulls is turning on the Daily Audio Bible. If I can make myself reach for my phone and turn it on, start hearing the Word of God, it helps me to be able to get up and do my day and do the next thing and live that day one day at a time for Jesus. I’m so thankful for this community. This is my 6th year with Daily Audio Bible and it’s just continuing to change me being bathed in the Word of God. Thank you, Brian and Jill and the whole community. May God bless us and multiply us in every language and every land, in Jesus’ name.
Hi DAB family. Hi Brian, hi Jill, thank you so much for everything you do for us. And big hugs for Ezekiel. This call is for Walta. Walta, darling, it was so good to hear your voice and to hear your little man’s voice as well. I mean you sounded so happy and that call was just so uplifting. I listened to it before going to work, and it just put such a huge smile on my face. I’m so pleased for you. Isn’t God such a good God? And He that starts as good work in you will be faithful to complete it in Jesus’ name. Thank you so much for calling, that was actually really, really good. And a quick hello to Biola as well. Alright, take care, love you all. Bye.
Good morning family, this is Biola from Maryland. I hope you all are doing well. Jill, thank God for His healing upon your life. Brian, I pray that God will continue to strengthen you as you go around your tour. Griffin from Georgia, I’m praying that God will reestablish you and build you up and that His will, will be done in your life, in the name of Jesus. Keep trusting God, God bless you as you patiently wait on Him. Sally from Indiana, welcome. I’m praying that your desire to smoke cigarettes will cease, in the name of Jesus. As a matter of fact, when you think of it, you touch it, it will __________ you so much that you will stay away from it and God will finally deliver you from all addictions in Jesus’ name. Praying for you, Jeffrey from Virginia, praying that God will fully deliver you from every addiction in the name of Jesus. The Word of God says that who the Son has set free is free indeed. I say in the name of Jesus, I declare and decree that you are free as you desire to grow in Christ and will cause a separation between you and every friend and activity that draws you away from Him, in the name of Jesus. Nick from Bay area, I’m praying that God will completely touch your marriage and strengthen both you and your wife in the name of Jesus, that He will continually use Ephesians 4:33 in your life, out of the mouths of babes. God bless your girls and you. Mike from Canada, welcome. God bless you as you listen to the bible daily, praying for the success of your trip to New York. Leslie from California. Hallelujah! What a testimony about being cancer free!! What the Lord has done in your life will be permanent, in the name of Jesus. Daniel Johnson Jr., I’m praying for the Ramirez family, that God will touch your brother-in-law on that sick bed that is healed him in Jesus’ name. He’s the God that heal us up and pray that God will give the doctors’ wisdom and provide them with income and meet their needs in the name of Jesus. I’m praying for peace for your sister as she trusts God to carry them through this, in Jesus’ name. I’m praying, Jennifer, I thank God for the restoration in your life. I come against every spirit of harassment and confusion, even on your husband. I pray in agreement with you that God will draw your husband away from all negative influences, and focus his attention on God the Lord, in Jesus’ name. God bless you.
Hello Daily Audio Bible family, this is Dr. Kate from Washington State responding to Henrietta, the 3rd year medical student. Ah, dear sister, in that 3rd year of medical school, of course, you are well qualified for your craft; and of course Satan would like to derail you. I suggest Ephesians 2:10 as a scripture to help fight the enemy: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good work, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” The Holy Spirit has asked me to read this scripture from Matthew 25, starting on verse 34: “Then the King will say to those on his right, come you who are blessed by my Father. Take your inheritance the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ Then the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” Father in Heaven, we pray for medical students, Henrietta and Hillary, and also for other medical students who have not called on the prayer line. We ask for you to comfort and strengthen for them and for Your Holy Spirit to help them be equipped with Your armor. We ask for your bless...
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Tamarie 07/02/2015 08:05 |
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