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Daily Transcripts

10/16/2015
Jeremiah 28:1-29:32 ~ 1 Timothy 1:1-20 ~ Psalm 86:1-17 ~ Proverbs 25:17
Today is the 16th day of October. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is great to be here with you today and excited for all that God will show us through his Word. And so, let's dive in. We're reading from the International Standard Version this week.

Introduction of a New Book

Okay, we finished 2 Thessalonians yesterday, which brings us to 1 Timothy. Timothy is a character in the Bible that literally grows up in the shadow of the apostle Paul. We first meet him in the book of Acts. His mother's name is Eunice, his grandmother's name is Lois, and they were early believers in the Roman province of Galatia, what is now modern day Turkey. Paul leads Timothy to Christ and Timothy becomes a loyal follower of Paul, a companion and servant to Paul. And Paul calls him his spiritual son and directly mentors him up in the faith and into church leadership.

Timothy travels all over the place with Paul. He's mentioned in six of Paul's other letters. When Paul can't travel, it’s Timothy that he sends in his place often to serve and assist the churches. So the apostle Paul is now nearing the end of his ministry and he’s nearing the end of his life and Timothy has become the pastor of the church in Ephesus. This letter is written to his son in the faith to guide and counsel him and it’s full of love, it’s full of hope. And after a life fully dedicated to the service of Christ, it gives us clues into what the apostle Paul was thinking, what he thought was most important to transfer to the coming generation. It’s the letter that teaches us to fight the good fight of faith. And so we begin, 1 Timothy.

Commentary

Okay, let's start with Jeremiah 29:11. I don't know about this year, I believe last year, that was the most looked up verse on Bible Gateway, like the most popular verse in all of the Bible. If there is such a thing as the charts for Bible verses, this was a very popular verse.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord; plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future.

Now I love that verse. I love that verse as much as anyone else does, and apparently lots of people love that verse. And I have heard that verse quoted for several years and we pass it around to each other because it’s incredibly encouraging. It’s also incredibly pulled out of context when we pull it out of its context, which is why for the last couple of days I’ve said, hey, we’re going to get to this place, but pay close attention to how this plays out.

So for the last couple of days we’re reading in Jeremiah and he’s getting into all kinds of trouble because what he’s prophesying is that God is in the exile that they are experiencing and that the best thing that they could do would be submit to it, which is essentially for them to say to submit their identity as God’s chosen people and their nationalism as Judah, or the throne of David, and submit themselves to this Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar. And this just doesn’t compute even though they’ve been warned for a long time that things like this would happen if they continued to abandon God. It’s like they want to do what they want and worship all of the other gods that they want to and do even detestable things, and yet still be able to claim their identity as God’s chosen people, in covenant with the Almighty and One true God. And God’s kind of like, yeah, that’s not how this works. I have given a covenant to you people and you have broken it. So, you don’t get to run around the countryside using me as your brand. That’s not what we’re doing here. You can’t use me as your brand and claim my name and that you are my people when you have broken the covenant and you are anything but my people.

But I love you and that’s a fact. I can’t help myself from loving you and all you’ve got to do is come home, my precious. All you’ve got to do is return to me. All you’ve got to do is repent, change your mind, change your inner person, reframe this whole thing. You’re looking at it wrong. You’ve got to come home.

But it’s all twisted up and Jeremiah is in all this trouble for saying these things. So, we wind our way into today’s reading and before we get to this most ever popular verse, there’s this prophet, Hananiah, who is directly contradicting everything Jeremiah has been saying. And he’s telling everybody two years and this exile is over and Nebuchadnezzar will be broken and all of things that were stolen out of God’s temple and all of the people that were taken into exile will be back. And Jeremiah diplomatically handles the situation by saying, man, if that could be right, that really would be awesome. I’m not prophesying or being a prophet of the Lord so that I can be right because everything that he’s telling me to say are things I don’t really particularly want to be saying. So, if you could be right, that would be great; but you are not right and you are leading people to believe a lie. And so, Hananiah dies and Jeremiah sends a letter and it’s in that letter that we find this most popular verse.

What God says is incredibly counterintuitive to the people that it’s written to, people who have been taken from their homeland, people that are royals, nobles, highly talented, the best of the best, the cream of the crop, that have been taken away from their homeland and placed in exile in Babylon and are crying out for deliverance and return. They’re like, okay, we get it. We get what you’ve been saying. You know we understand now. We’re sorry. We want to be back with you. Bring us home. And they even have priests and prophets that are telling them, you know encouraging them that it’s right around the corner; it’s right around the corner. And Jeremiah sends a letter on behalf of the Lord saying here’s the thing, it’s not right around the corner. It’s coming. It’s a generation away. It’s going to be 70 years. So here’s what I want you to do, if you really are returning to me, then here’s what I want you to do: Where you are, there in exile, build houses and live in those houses, plant gardens and eat their produce, and marry and have kids, raise your families and even have grandchildren, and seek the welfare and not the destruction of the city that I have exiled you into. Pray to me on behalf of and for the welfare of the city that I’ve sent you to because your welfare depends on its welfare. Don’t let these prophets and diviners, who are among you, tell you lies and deceive you. Don’t listen to them when they tell you their dreams. They’re not telling you the truth. They’re telling you lies in my name and I didn’t send them. When the 70 years are over, I’ll remember what I’m telling you now and I’ll take note and I will fulfill the good promise to you by bringing you back because I know the plans that I have for you, they are plans for wellbeing. They’re not for calamity, in order to give you a future and a hope. When you call out to me and come to me and pray to me, I will hear you. You’re not abandoned here. You’ll seek me and you’ll find me. When you search for me with all of your heart, I’ll be there. I will be found by you, declares the Lord. And I’ll restore your security and I’ll gather you up and I’ll bring you back.

That’s the context. God is saying, I’m actually going to use this exile to save you, to keep you protected and I’m going to bring you back. But the people that are still in Jerusalem, it’s not going to be a good day for them. That’s not going to work out. They remain in rebellion.

So that the people that are in exile in Babylon, they can take this one of two ways, if they believe it, if they don’t reject it. Let’s just say they believe it, they can take this one of two ways, this is a hardship, this is a horrible thing. All they want to do is go home and what that means if this is a 70-year thing, i that most of us won’t get to, it’ll be our kids. And so it can disrupt them and cause divisiveness and all of the angst that would come from losing your identity. Or they can say, okay, okay, that explains a lot and so now we have permission to not fight this. God is in it. So now we have permission to find the comfort that we can have as a people who are in exile. We can live in homes. We can have gardens. We can have a life, a life that we would have lost had we still been back in Judah. Even though we’re being chastised, even though we are being punished, we are also being redeemed. Even though this is difficult, we are also being preserved. Even though this is disruptive and it’s going to take an adjustment, we are being rescued. We are not abandoned in the least. If we search for God with our hearts, we will find him. He knows what he’s got planned and we are still a part of that plan. And that plan is that we won’t have calamity, we’ll have a future and a hope.

And it’s fascinating because it is as if God is saying long before he comes in the person of Jesus, this kingdom that you built by brute strength and kind of used me as a brand for, that’s not really the kingdom. It was always in this covenant. I gave you this beautiful land to live in and be my people and I would be your God; but you’ve made it something different than that, something that can’t last. Something that only eventually pulls you away from me and then you only have me in name only.

Jesus gives his Sermon on the Mount and he’s saying the same kinds of things. It’s totally different than what you think it is, this kingdom. This kingdom that I’m talking about, it’s different than you think it is and you’re in the same position: You’re in exile because you have people in your land that I’ve brought you back to that you don’t want here and they’re in control. But it’s still not going to happen the way you think it will.

So how do we work this out in our own lives? Well, first of all, we see that this is what people do, trying to co-opt God into our plans, being mad at him when we follow the recipe and it doesn’t work, and then get estranged and find ourselves in exile. I mean, there’s lots of hardships that we go through in life. There’s nobody that doesn’t experience a bad day or a bad year, a bad season, a difficult time. We have an idea of what it would look like if that weren’t so, if we weren’t going through whatever that is. We have an idea of how we’d like to feel and how we’d like things ordered and we can’t possibly see how God is in any of the hardships. So, we just thrash all over the place, throwing God’s promises in his face. Trusting in them, but accusing him with them at the same time. Whatever happened to: I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord; plans for wellbeing and not for calamity in order to give you a future and a hope? I’m standing on that. It’s in your Word. It’s what you said. Where is it?

When we pull stuff like that out of context, we’re missing the point. God will not abandon you. It cannot and it will not happen. You can only abandon him. It’s all about you and what you do next because what you do next, and the next, and the next, and the next is going to set the course where your life is going to wind up. It’s going to select the path you are going to walk and God, as he has always been saying throughout all of humanity, is: Walk with me. Come to me. Return to me. Trust in me and I will give your life, eternal life. Come back, precious one. I can’t help myself but love you. You’re not abandoned. Stop pushing me away. It’s time to come home now.

May we finally, may we finally get this through our heads. May we reframe what we think we know because we don’t know all there is. We have God who has created us in his image. He knows us. He’s here and he is ready to collaborate in the next turn of the page in our lives. May we take him up on it.

Prayer

Father, O Jesus, this is our story. The Bible is our story – all of the twists and turns and the drama; all of the ups and downs; all of the misunderstandings and assumptions – this is our story. We’ve done the same things. We get a taste of you and then all we want to do is bottle it up and control it. We want to enter into a covenant or a relationship with you that’s intimate, but then control it. And you are uncontrollable. And so we invite you because by trying to control things, what we’re doing is saying we don’t actually trust. We don’t actually believe and that is really, really hard for us to process when we’ve been trying to jump through the hoops and follow the recipe. So you have just been blowing apart so many things this year and we need whatever’s left to get blown to bits. Everything that we think we know can be blown apart as long as we end up with you. And so, once again, we’re just asking your Holy Spirit to come and lead us into all truth. Lead us deeper into Jesus. Guide our steps forward. Come into the dark places and come into the good and healthy places. Come into everything. We’re just flat out lost without you and so we invite you once you again. Come Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Announcements

Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website. That’s home base and it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And I can’t stop talking about Reframe because it’s the word of the year. It’s exactly what we’ve just been talking about and I wish I had enough money to give all of you that don’t have it yet. I wish I did. I wish I had the $7.00 or $10.00 that it takes, but I don’t, but I wish for everyone in this community, anyway, to have it because it’s only when we finally wake up to intimacy with God and what walking with him is going to look like that any of it is ever going to make any sense. And God has offered himself to us completely and he came and sacrificed himself on our behalf to be in relationship and if we could just glimpse it; if we could just finally wake up, if we could just stop going back to sleep, if we could just stay awake, life is out there waiting for us. And it’s beyond description and it’s beyond good and it’s also different than we try to arrange for. It’s different than what we try to control. We have to ask ourselves do I really want this and I pray that we do. May we walk with God today.

I love you. I’m Brian. I’ll be waiting for you here, tomorrow.

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports

Good evening, my DAB family, Mark from Sydney Australia. I wanted to reach out to all the parents having issues with their children. I don’t have time to tell you everything. My older son went off the route at 14 and refused to go back to school. He got into drugs, trashed my house, and showed me no respect. You’ve come to the right place. Prayer is so powerful. May I suggest that if you don’t have a prayer diary, go and get one. Write out your prayers and date them. You’ll be surprised how many prayers get answered. I want to tell you one of those prayers that were answered. My son was unemployed for 15 weeks, was becoming depressed. I had written in my prayer diary for that God to help him get a job. About 10 weeks after I had written in my prayer book, I decided to take a day from work. This is unusual because I haven’t taken one in two years. I dragged my son out of bed one day as he was complaining he was sick and tired. I sent him down and he found three jobs that he was suitable for and helped him write resumes for him. About two days later, he had three interviews, and five days later, he was offered two jobs. He took one 10 minutes from home. I also talked him into starting an online course and signed him up for the one year course. A few days later, I was looking through my prayer diary again, rereading what I asked God for, a job and something I had forgotten about, to start a course. God had answered by prayers perfectly. I’m not saying that God answers all my prayers because many have not been answered, but there are many that have been. I hope that my sharing can help other people believe in the power of prayer. If you wish to speak to me more about this, you can contact me msdstreet@hotmail.com. I love you all and thank you so much for this community, bye.

Hey Dabbers, this is Slave of Jesus in North Carolina. Alright, Holy Spirit, let’s roll. Lord, we pray for the Dabber that’s fighting fear and depression. The Dabber from College Station, TX, he’s fighting his unemployment. We ask you to bless his family, all of his family. Bless the entire Martini family in Jesus’ name, amen. We’re praying over Daniel J. We’re praying over his marriage. He’s been a strong prayer warrior. He’s brightened many of our days, Lord, so we ask you to honor that and give him strength and the wisdom on how to deal with his marriage. We’re also praying for his daughter and having her come back to you in Jesus’ name. We have Blessed Like Me, great little spiel about feeding the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is supposed to be our teacher. What a great way to feed him by reading the Word of God and speaking the Word of God. So, thank you for reminding us of that. Joe the Protector, we’re always praying over you, praying over your marriage and to give you strength and wisdom and how to deal with your transgressions in the past so you can have a strong marriage going into the future. Lord, we are praying over DX3 and ask that he return to the Lord and be a powerful witness of how you can fall away and come back even stronger, almost like a broken bone. Asian Jeff, Lord, we’re praying that he learns to trust in God, give him the strength, the wisdom of Solomon and how to trust in God. I think it was Michael from New Hampshire, Lord, we’re praying for you. You’re going into your personal trainer and we’re asking for to give him wisdom on how to deal with your own injury and Lord, we ask for provision. We know insurance in a good way to do that; but Lord, he can find provision in many, many ways. Lord, we ask you to heal him just supernaturally. He doesn’t need any surgery provisions. He can honor you in that, in Jesus’ name. Love you all. Have a great day.

Hey DAB family, this is Brian calling from Florida. I feel the Lord’s put it on my heart to reach out to you all for prayer support. I’m in sales. My quotas and those of all my peers have been dramatically increased about 6 weeks ago and I feel like the Lord, he wants me to pray from a position of victory on this. But it is much tougher to hit these much higher new quotas. And I’m asking for not only prayer that I will achieve, but achieve and exceed them and that I can glorify Christ as I am achieving and exceeding these goals as its very well known in my work that I do serve Jesus and I do pray with my coworkers and I do ask them about their faith. So this will bring fame to the name of Christ. I’m also led to ask you guys to please join with me in prayer for a meeting I have where I have to get customers to attend on November 6 – 7, that it will be not only well attended, but well attended with great customers and that it will be a record setting meeting. That it will be blessing and prosperous meeting. Now I want to offer my prayers for you. To all my brothers and sisters who are seeking to grow deeper in your faith with Christ, I pray God’s abundance on joy, prosperity, creative ideas and witty inventions for you that everything you put your hand to will prosper. As your spirit prospers, so will you. God bless you family.

Hey family, this is Kat in Texas. I don’t call in very often but I listen every day and pray along with you. I lift up those who call in and those who don’t and everyone that makes the DAB possible. I felt called to give this line a call and say hello to my brother Alphaio in Delaware. I miss hearing your voice and was praying that you’d call in again. So I was very happy to have you call in and share that prayer and hope that you will still call in. I also want to thank Blessed Like Me for the transparency of his testimony; that took a lot of courage and I thank you for trusting us with that and allowing God to use that to speak to us. There’s so many prayer warriors that I’m so grateful for and I’m so happy when you I hear your voice literally speaking into my life, and I wish I can name all of you and thank you individually. But I know that there’s not enough time and I would leave someone out, so thank you and please continue to let God use you as an instrument. And I’m praying for an extra measure of protection upon you and for your families. Well, hope you all have a blessed day, family. Love you all.

Hi, this is Jamie from North Idaho. I am calling because I have on my heart today that somebody is just really battling with fear. And so I was just spending some time with the Lord and what I felt like he put on my heart this morning was that it’s not what we do, it’s not the fact that we have fear in our heart that he does not commend in us; it’s if we measure our steps by the fear that’s in our hearts. And there’s an old movie, the African Queen, with Humphrey Bogart and Catherine Hepburn in it and the part that I have on my heart today is where Humphrey Bogart has been in the water and he’s had those leeches on him and he’s just totally freaked by it and gets back into the boat. And he says, “Fine specimen of a man I am;” and her reply to him is what I have on my heart this morning for somebody: “You are the brightest man that ever lived.” And I just want to say for somebody that is battling making the decision that the Lord has on your heart this morning; it’s not the fact that your knees are knocking together; it’s the fact that you, my dear brother or my dear sister, are going to make the right decision in spite of the fact that you knees are banging together. And so I just wanted to share that with somebody. You are going to make the right decision based on what God has called you to do. And so that’s what I wanted to share this morning. I’ve battled with fear myself so many times that I just wanted to encourage you this morning. Make the right decision. Choose what God said, even though it’s uncomfortable, like picking up the phone and encouraging someone else when it’s intimidating. That’s all I have to say. God bless.

Tamarie 10/17/2015 00:31

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