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Daily Transcripts
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07/28/2015
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2 Chronicles 21:1-23:21 ~ Romans 11:13-36 ~ Psalm 22:1-18 ~ Proverbs 20:7
Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Today is the 28th of July. I'm Brian. It’s good to be here with you today, great to be here with you today. I trust and pray all is well with you, but no matter what is going on, this is the moment where we step aside away from all of that and just exhale and place ourselves in this beautiful place of serenity where God can speak to us through his Word. We’re reading from The Message this week.
Commentary:
What Paul is telling us today in the book of Romans is essentially we’re all lucky to be here. Don’t get arrogant about the fact that you’ve been grafted into this tree. Or, in other words, the all-powerful, almighty God has adopted you into his family, this spirit of adoption that Paul was talking about a couple days ago in our reading. Don’t get arrogant and start looking down on other people. That is not going to work. You are lucky to be here and your desire should be that all are so fortunate.
For Paul, he is contrasting this between Jew and Gentile. Where we are now in history, we have all kinds of applications for this and none probably more obvious than all of the flavors and stripes and styles of the Christian faith all around the world. Do you realize there are more than 40,000 Christian denominations? It gets really tricky when one starts looking down their nose at another one as a lesser branch or not even a branch. One of those branches down on the ground.
I'm not against denominations just as tribes of people swimming in a stream using a certain style and a certain vocabulary to awaken faith within them. That’s fine. But I know that Jesus isn’t Baptist or Pentecostal or Anglican or Catholic or Church of Christ or Lutheran or Presbyterian or Methodist or Episcopalian or Orthodox or whatever. Jesus isn’t going in any of those boxes. Jesus is the Son of the Living God who died to take away the sins of the world.
We’re all lucky to be here. When we overly identify to the point that our theological nuances are now looking down in judgment on someone else, we’ve got some problems, whether we’re right or whether we’re wrong. We’ve got some problems because all of a sudden the air of superiority rises up in us and now our tribe, our persuasion is elevated in our minds and so we’re looking down at someone else going they’re either one of the dead branches at the bottom of the tree or they’re just missing out on all God has for them and if they would just see things the way we see them and worship the way we do, then they could have the fullness, this perfect experience that we have. None of that is true.
We’ve been spending days in the book of Romans as Paul unpacks and unpeels all of that, that posturing, that posing, that false sense of identity, all of this stuff. It comes down to this. God has extended grace to us. He hasn’t extended grace to us because we have finally tuned and crafted over hundreds of years our belief system. He has extended grace to us because he loves us. He is not proud that we’ll get in some kind of theological war so that we can bash another brother and sister because they don’t see things the way we do. I don’t imagine he is on the great white throne shedding tears of pride as we theologically assassinate each other.
Paul breaks it down. We’re all lucky to be here. We have nothing to boast in. Where much grace has been extended, we must extend the same grace, hoping that everyone everywhere on this big blue ball of a planet that we have to live on as a gift in and of itself from God, breathing oxygen provided by God into lungs crafted by God, accepting him into a heart that he made, we should want this for everyone. It comes down to whether or not it is more important that we’re right or whether it is more important that we are redeemed. When we realize just what would have been waiting for us without the rescue of Jesus, how could we want anything less for anyone else?
May we spend more of our time simply sighing in awe that we hit the cosmic lottery, as it were, and have been grafted into eternal life, into the family of God, that we are so profoundly, unspeakably fortunate to be here and do everything we possibly can to extend the grace that has been given to us into the world so that more might find this grace and be grafted in along with us.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, we repent. We fall to our knees in repentance for the way that we’ve actually inhibited people from experiencing you with our thoughts, words and deeds, whether they are religious in nature or not. Forgive us, Lord, for all of the ways in which we have stood in judgment with some sort of superiority complex as if we have this all figured out and we have a right to be here. The only reason we have a right to be here is that you have extended your grace and invited us to be here. This is your desire for everyone everywhere. You have bestowed upon us the authority to go and preach the gospel to everyone everywhere, knowing that the weight of our very lives is the greatest testimony to your work in our hearts. We just haven’t always been so good at that. We’ve often taken what we’ve been given for free and hoarded it. Come, Holy Spirit, into this, humbling us, diminishing our pride and arrogance and superiority so that we live as you lived, a servant king. Come, Holy Spirit, we pray. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Only Thing That is Beautiful – by Rush of Fools
Just like the ocean waves, you crash on me.
Just like a tidal wave, you ruin me.
Just like a hurricane, you devastate
everything that needs to change.
And you are the only thing that is beautiful in me
That is beautiful in me
You are the only thing that is beautiful in me
That is beautiful in me
Just like a mountain peak, you lift me up.
Just like a desert stream, you fill my cup.
And like a heart that beats, you are the blood that covers me.
You cover me.
And you are the only thing that is beautiful in me
That is beautiful in me
And you are the only thing that is beautiful in me
That is beautiful in me
And all I can say is thank you.
Thank you.
And all I can say is thank you.
Lord, thank you.
And all I can say is thank you.
Thank you.
You are the only thing that is beautiful in me
That is beautiful in me
And you are the only thing that is beautiful in me
That is beautiful in me
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Tamarie 07/28/2015 08:12 |
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