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Daily Transcripts
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08/20/2015
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Esther 8:1-10:3 ~ 1 Corinthians 12:27-13:13 ~ Psalm 37:1-11 ~ Proverbs 21:23-24
Today is the 20th of August. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It's wonderful to be here with you for this time that we have together as we continue our journey through the Bible and we’ll finish up the book of Esther today, reading from the Names of God Bible.
Commentary:
A beautiful conclusion to the story of Esther, which is a beautiful story in its own right, but it also gives us so much understanding of how things played out in a way that would give favor to the Jewish people and the way that God rescued them. A little word about Esther, the book itself, that is fascinating if you love this story. I love this story. There is more to this story. Let me explain.
Although the earlier manuscripts of the book of Esther were written in the ancient Hebrew language, Greek became the language of the people. So the New Testament is largely written in Greek; whereas, the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew. When St. Jerome was working on translating the Bible into Latin, which is a fascinating story in itself because he worked for 30 years translating the scriptures between Hebrew and Greek into Latin and this became known as the Vulgate, he did most of his work in the chambers beneath the Church of the Nativity where Christ was born. This was a long time ago, in the 300s and this is 2015, so a little over 1600 years ago.
Anyway, back to Esther. So as he was comparing the Hebrew and the Greek together, it was found that there were like six more chapters to the story of Esther that were found in the Greek manuscripts and those are now known as the Editions to Esther. They are very old, obviously, but they bring out a lot of nuance to the story, a lot of what Esther was going through while everyone was fasting and she was preparing to go to the king, a lot of what Mordecai was going through as he was realizing what was actually going on – this plot to destroy God's people, and the prayers, the beautiful prayers individually as they cried out to God. It's fascinating.
The Editions to Esther I have actually read, not just like I personally read them, but I recorded them a couple of years ago as I began to (I'm not done yet, don’t have a ton of time) read the additional books, the apocryphal books. You can find the Editions to Esther if you love that story and want to hear all of that at the Daily Audio Bible Shop at www.DailyAudioBible.com. It's fascinating and definitely well worth the read, so check it out.
Then, of course, we come today to…I mean, I don’t know what would be considered the most famous portion of scripture, as if even that could be quantified, but we do come to 1 Corinthians 13 today which is known as the love chapter and certainly one of the most historically important and popular pieces of scripture. And this comes in the context of Paul's letter to the Corinthians. A lot of times we’ll quote from the love chapter. We’ll even just go there and it does stand alone, but it does have a context as well. It is a part of a letter. Paul is describing unity in the church. He is like, “Look, nobody is more important than anybody else in the grand scheme of things because we all make up one body. So whether you're seen or unseen, you're part of a body and the body can’t really function correctly without you, no matter what it is. God has given gifts to the body, so different people do different things, but a lot of times what you're doing” as he speaks to the Corinthians, “is you're just looking for the flashy stuff. You're looking for the magic, trying to be the notable gift. But I’ve got to tell you. Something even more important than all of this, the best thing you need to understand about being a part of a whole as the body of Christ in this world, where everyone is necessary, the best thing that you can understand is that the glue that holds this whole thing together is love.”
And then he begins to unpack that – what it looks like by first saying all of these gifts that God has given to the church, to his body, if they are used without love, they have no value and they have no meaning. Then he says what love looks like – it's patient, it's kind, it's not jealous, it’s not looking for its own glory. It is not arrogant. It is not rude. It is not self-absorbed and thinking about itself. It is not irritable. It is not keeping track of rights and wrongs and weighing them out on a scale against each other. It's just not happy with injustice. It is happy when the truth is present. And it never stops. It never stops being patient. It never stops hoping. It never stops believing. It never ends. It never gives up. It never surrenders. Love conquers all, as one translation puts it. Everything else, all these beautiful gifts that God has given to the church for certain times and certain circumstances, they will all end up coming to an end because they won't be needed anymore. When perfection comes, there won't be a need for this. And the way he describes that is “when I was a kid, I acted like a kid. When I became an adult, I put away my childish things and started acting like a grownup.”
We’re all moving toward this. We’re all growing up. We’re all maturing. This is what God wants, for us not to remain immature but to mature as he fathers us and as we are sanctified, transformed into fully grown men and women of God, children of the Most High. That's the context where this love chapter happens and it is very important.
He concludes that by saying, “Look, the reality is we’re looking at a blurred image in a mirror” or, as a more popular translation will put it, “we see through a glass darkly,” but the day is coming when everything will be complete. Everything will be perfected. In the meantime, there is going to be three things left standing at the end of all this, even when we’ve reached that perfected place, three things will be left standing – faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. May we never, ever forget this. I know I'm not saying something you haven’t heard before. I know you know that our Christian charity, our Christian love is important not only within the body of Christ and within ourselves and within our families and beyond. I know we know this intellectually and I know that we even have some of this in our heart, but we have to understand, though, that this has to be practiced. This has to be the banner of who we are because Jesus said this is how the world will even know we belong to him. This is how the world will know that we are even a part of this body. We will be known by our love.
That has gotten so twisted in so many directions over so many hundreds of years, even thousands of years that we can become a caricature. We can become a stereotype, but true love, true love is apparent. It doesn’t have a lot of prequalifiers and it doesn’t have a lot of add-ons. It just is what it is. So may we think about that and certainly invite the Holy Spirit into that, but may we go do that. Love is the most powerful force in all the world. This is our greatest weapon against the forces of evil. May we unsheathe that weapon today and go do some serious, irreparable damage to the kingdom of darkness today and every day.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, you are good. You are gracious. You are kind. You are merciful and you are love. You have given us the gift of your Holy Spirit to counsel and guide us into all truth and you have spoken to us that it is by our love that the world will know we belong to you. So we invite your Holy Spirit now to speak to us, to speak the words of love to us, but to also empower us by the great mercy that you have shown us. May we show the same mercy to those within our spheres of influence. By your great love for us, may we love and wage war against the kingdom of darkness through that love, not through rhetoric or any other kind of action, but because you have loved us first and you now dwell within us. May we love the world as you do and that includes our families, our spouses, our communities and church, our workplaces, our educational facilities, our neighbors, those we have a hard time tolerating and those we have an easy time getting along with, those we agree with, those we disagree with. Come Holy Spirit and may we be the body of Christ and may we be known by our love. We ask this in the name of the Risen Christ who loved us first, Jesus. Amen.
Announcements:
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is home base. It is our website. It is our collective little home place so that wherever you are you can always go there and find out what is going on around here. What is mostly going on around here is Reframe. I just had a great time beginning to speak into that message in Michigan. What a great time. Thank you for all of you who came, some of you from long distances. It was an honor to meet you. It was just great to kind of feel what I’ve been working on in my own heart, like some of the heavy lifting in my own life for the last couple of years, to finally feel that coming out of my mouth and seeing it connect. It is I believe an important work, certainly for me anyway, probably one of the most important works of my life. And it is coming. I think it is important, so I’ve been asking you to get involved and get a copy. You can do that at www.ReframeBook.com. It doesn’t come out for a few weeks, but www.ReframeBook.com is the place to go. We have some stuff that we will give you to get you going while you're waiting. So check that out.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible and keep everything moving forward here, then I certainly can’t thank you enough. There is no other way that we exist and so thank you for your partnership. Profoundly thank you. There is a link at www.DailyAudioBible.com, upper right-hand corner. Or if you prefer, the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.
As always, if you have a prayer request or comment, (877) 942-4253 is the number to call.
And 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
Hi family. This is Pastor Gene from Bradenton, FL. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for my sister, Bonnie, and I thank you for her daughter Heather and her __________. Father, I pray in the name of Jesus that you will be with her every step of the way, that you will protect her, and that you will use her for your glory. I thank you for my sister Bonnie's 17-year-old son. He needs to walk with you, O God. Draw him to you with cords of love. Father, I thank you and continue to pray for my brother Jason and his depression and anxiety and I pray that you will take absolute control over that situation. I thank you for my brother Jay and my sister Rose's transparency and encouragement to Jason, talking about depression in Christians. I pray that the same compassion and passion that you have poured over my brother and sister, you will pour over the rest of us that we may withhold judgment and instead apply compassion, Father, to a situation that is as real as any other __________. Give us, O Lord, wisdom in how we pray and encourage those who suffer with mental illness. Father, I thank you for Keisha. She has to __________. Her mom cannot carry this by herself. She wants her daughter back. Father, in the name of Jesus, I thank you for this mom's desire to reach out for help and I also pray for her daughter and I pray for a miraculous work in her life, O God. Father, I thank you for Chris from Belfast. His son is messed up, in his own words. I believe that you can restore his son and that you can restore the relationship. And Father, I pray that you will deliver Scott from any guilt. We all are sinners and we all are going to make mistakes, but we are forgiven in you if we repent. I pray that you will give Scott a brand new start together with his son. Father, I pray all these things in Jesus’ mighty name. I love you guys. Pastor Gene from Bradenton, FL. Bye.
Hi, this is Charlene calling from the greater Knoxville, TN area. I'm calling for…I just listened to the Community Prayer for August 15th and I'm calling for the massage therapist from West Virginia, I think it was. Your daughter had left and now she is living with a boy that you feel is not good for her. I wasn’t quite in the same situation, but my daughter went to college and I found out probably about six months after she was in her sophomore year of college that she was living with her boyfriend and it just devastated me. That was probably about six or seven years ago. She is now married to him. They’ve been married for about 10 months now and even though I still feel like he's not necessarily the best for her, she is very happy and I know that how I raised her is still in there, so what I have had to do is I’ve had to let go and all I can do is pray for her, so I hope this will help you in that you pray for her. You let her know that you are there for her, that you love her no matter what and you will be there for her if she needs you, but you have to let go. I don’t know how old your daughter is. Mine was 22. If she is an adult, she has to make her own choices, but that is no reflection on how you raised her if you raised her in the church to be a follower of Christ. I love you. I'm praying for you. I hope all goes well and please give us a call back and let us know.
Hey fellow Dabbers. It's Joe the Protector from Georgia here. It's August 16th, 10:54 in the evening, just calling to __________ for more prayer requests. I'm still on August 8th. Byron in Florida, hey brother, way to plant those seeds and minister to others. That is what God has placed us here for, to be salt and light and be that continuous burning light that is out for everyone to see. God will bless you and honor you for putting your personal tasks to the side so that his will is done and more names were written in the Lamb's book of life. Johnnie from South Alabama, we lift up your mother-in-law Patricia and this news she received and she responded to the ER after having some tests done. We pray Jesus’ healing hand covers her and that nothing is found. Cory in Newhaven, WV, we do agree with you in prayer over your brother-in-law Aaron and the medical issues he is facing. We anoint him with the powerful blood of Jesus for ultimate healing. We also ask God to pour his love over you and your wife during the issues of you all's marriage that is going on. Ruben in Canada, we agree with you in this choice your daughter has taken to __________ and move forward in pursuing her medical degree. We ask that the Lord fill her full of the wisdom that is needed for the test and future practice. To the lady in Columbia, TN, I could not hear your name, but we do pour out and pray over the young man who was involved in the motorcycle accident and ask for complete healing over every part of his body. That's it for now, Dabbers. Love you all.
If the foundation isn’t solid, then the structure will not stand the stresses and the tolerances that the storms of life demand. It's hard to build on granite or any kind of rock, even with the proper tools and work around the clock drilling, boring, shaping, pouring, bracing, propping up and shoring and lots of other stuff that I'm ignoring, but there is one rock that is worth exploring. Jesus is that rock, the rock on which I stand. Forget about the storms of life and all that they demand. The winds may blow, the waters rise, all on earth may die. You’ll still be safe in Jesus, the rock that is very high. BlindTony1016@gmail.com. I want to thank everyone for their love and prayers and support and calls. God is definitely the master healer. My sister is healing and good and she is back home. And my grandson is back on the job. The saxophone player is back playing music. God can heal. Pastor Gene, tell your husband John that God is the rewarder of those earnestly, diligently seeking him and the fervent, effectual prayer of the righteous availeth much with God. Keep your head up, sister. We’re lifting you up in prayer. And tell your husband to do the same. Keep the faith. And I would like to send a shout-out to Blessed Like Me. Blessed Like Me, I love your messages, brother. Soaking in hope and keeping an attitude of gratitude, both very good messages. Thank you. Keep them coming. And thank you Brian and your family. I really appreciate this wonderful forum for God's love to flow around the earth from heart to heart and breast to breast. I would also like to give a shout-out to the brother in China and our brother in…
Hello Daily Audio Bible. This is Scott in Alaska. It's a rainy gray day in Alaska. Let me tell you, though, what is nice about rainy days in Alaska is we know that behind the clouds is some incredibly beautiful country. It is incredibly beautiful behind the clouds, kind of like life is. So here are a few prayer requests from some of the Daily Audio Bible prayer lines and some other just prayer requests. Kimberly in northeast Nevada, your husband has a precarious job situation, retired military. I, too, am retired military. It took me about 10 years to get demilitarized after retiring. I know how difficult that is to get used to being a civilian again. Praying for you and for your husband, that he goes through this process with peace and dignity and with the peace of Jesus. There was a praise report. Someone was listening for three years and your family reunited. You were supposed to be divorced August 12th. Wow. That made my day. It was just amazing to hear how God works in all that. And then what was really amazing was talking about your wife going for a promotion on that same day and that your prayer was that you wanted God's will and you trusted God's will in all of this. In the remarriage, you trusted God's will, and in the promotion. Thank you for that call in. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Drew in the Bay Area, I was praying for you when you were taking your boy to the ER, young Drew, and I'm happy to hear that the trip to the ER went so well and also now praying for you and your son, that you work out the problems you're having there. Well Daily Audio Bible, that is about all the time I have. This is Scott in Alaska. I will talk to you later and I pray all the prayers with you all. Have a good day unless you have something else planned.
Hey guys. Hey, this is Annette A. from Oklahoma City. Hey, I have an immense, huge, gi-hugenous praise report. The 17th of August, my husband and I will have been married for 10 years. I am just amazed how good the Lord has been to us because, boy, we have had some struggles. We have had hard times. We have had separations in the early years. I mean, anything the bad guy could have thrown at us, we went through it. When I found the Daily Audio Bible, my life changed. It changed so much that my husband wanted to leave me. I just gave it up to the Lord and I said, “Look, Lord, this is all yours.” He was just like “I don’t even know you anymore.” And I'm like, “Good, because what we’re doing is not good and somebody here has to take charge.” I said, “So the Lord is going to do it.” And he did. I can tell you that there is hope. There is hope. There is hope. There is hope. I'm telling you. He has changed our lives. Where he didn’t even want to hear anything about God, he didn’t want to hear the Bible, he didn’t want to hear nothing, and Chris from Tulsa, you gave me hope when you told me that even after decades your husband turned to the Lord. I want to let you know I’ve never forgotten that. Now my husband is a praying man. He is a man of great faith. And he is becoming a leader in our home. I'm telling you, it is by wholly the grace of God this has happened. So I want to say thank you, Lord, for being faithful to us and honoring our commitment and I hope that we have done a good job honoring you as well. I love you guys. Have a great day. Bye-bye.
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Tamarie 08/19/2015 23:02 |
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