|
|
Daily Transcripts
|
10/21/2015
|
|
Jeremiah 37:1-38:28 ~ 1 Timothy 6:1-21 ~ Psalm 89:38-52 ~ Proverbs 25:28
Alright, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Today is the 21st day of October. I’m Brian. It is my pleasure to be here with you today and excited for this time that we have together in God’s Word. We’ve been reading from the Modern English Version this week, which is what we will continue to do today.
Commentary
Okay, so Paul is giving some really, really good advice to Timothy, who is the pastor of the church at Ephesus, who is his son in the faith and his protégé when he counsels him about being distracted and kind of drawn into controversial arguments, just for the sake of argument. He kind of prefaces it all by saying, the gospel is something that we’ve presented clearly and it’s not for our gain. It’s the gospel. It’s the good news for humanity. We’re just unpacking it for people and presenting it so that they might believe and be set free. It’s for others’ good. It’s not for our gain. You’re doing something good. What we’re teaching and instructing people -- promote a godly life, there’s really no hidden dark side to that. You’re doing something good. But people who come in and want to parse it all out with arrogance, they just don’t have an understanding. They lack it and they have these unhealthy desires just to start arguments, parse words and quibble and stir up arguments. This only promotes jealousy and division and slander and suspicion. These people are troublemakers.
The funny thing is this is like a couple of thousand years ago and that is so still going on in the church. Right? I mean I’m a pastor’s son and I’ve seen it my whole life. As a pastor I’ve seen it my whole ministry. You who are pastors out there, yes, you know; and you who are congregants, you know this kind of stuff goes on where you get these little kind of clubs and power grabbing and all of the posturing and all of the stuff that can go on that ultimately wounds people, breaks hearts, divides communities, destroys fellowship. This is going on in the early church. This has been going on all along. And Paul’s calling it out to his son in the faith, Timothy, who is a pastor at the church of Ephesus. We’re talking about a foundational church, here. And he’s saying nothing good can come from this and nothing good can come from you entering into it. Just don’t even go there. Let the weight of your life be the testimony of who you really are. Posturing for power or trying to angle for money or whatever it is that is going on, nothing good can come from all of that. We’ve brought nothing with us when we came into the world and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it, Paul says. So if you have enough food and clothing, then let’s be content.
This is certainly a message to a pastor from a spiritual father and leader and the founder of this church, but it’s also a message to all of us, whether it be in our faith communities or whether it just be in our lives. Trying to parse everything and quibble and argue and debate endlessly and use our theological prowess in a way that kind of promotes pride and arrogance in us just simply shows how we lack understanding. To have no grace, to be so divisive, to not be willing to enter into another person’s story, to understand that they have an opinion for a reason and that there are fundamentals to our faith that are unshakeable, those are the essentials things, but they boil down to one essential: Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God, who died to take away the sins of the world and came back to life on the third day victorious over death, hell, and the grave and has given us the opportunity for intimacy with God and eternal life. That is the crux, the core, the foundation, the essential. Most everything else is nonessential. Yet so much of the divisiveness that we have found in community, especially faith communities, it’s all over nonessential things. If we step back we realize when we participate in that kind of stuff, we are exposing ourselves for what’s really going on. We want affirmation. We want power. We want recognition. We want to defend a hill that isn’t worth dying on. We want to plant a flag that may not matter.
I love theology. I’m a theology major. I love it. But if we forget the core, if we forget the essential, then we don’t really have a posture of heart that’s worth fighting for. If we go back into our church history, we see, man, we’ve done some remarkably bad things along the way. For all of the things that we may have gotten right, we’ve gotten plenty of things wrong along the way. And when we forget the essential that Christ, God in human form came to this earth and lived among us and died for us, not some nice guy, not a good rabbi, not a revolutionary, all of those things, but God in flesh allowed his creation to kill him. God allowed his creation to kill him to redeem us. Then you can only approach everything from a posture of unbelievable humility. You don’t belong here. You haven’t earned this. You’re lucky to be here. We all are. There has been unspeakable grace and mercy given to us, offered to us out of a well of love by our creator that we cannot possibly even begin to comprehend, the mercy that has been offered to us who were destined for certain destruction and separation from God forever. A lifeline has been thrown. We have no position, no posture, no toehold at all for arrogance and pride in the things that we do to our fellow believers, who may not see things as exactly as we see them, in big and small ways. We have no ground for it. We’re all just lucky to be here. We’ve won the cosmic eternal lottery, somehow. God still loved us and came for us and we should be absolutely, completely laid out, flat on the ground, prostrate, face down, weeping with relief from his unspeakable mercy, longsuffering, grace, kindness, love for us.
So, when we have the core, the essential implanted deep within and it’s ever present, what’s really going here, man, we can only then walk with a posture of humility toward everyone because what we’re trying to do is share the good news. When we get lost trying to find an identity in an argument, we have lost our core. We have lost our identity in Christ and we’re just trying to find it by battling each other and nothing good can come of it. And Paul’s telling Timothy, just don’t even go there. Nothing good can come from this. Just understand what it is and stay away from it.
May we heed the counsel of this saint of the faith, the apostle Paul, and walk with humility and contentment as we journey through the life of faith together with our brothers and sisters.
Prayer
Father, this is a problem because it’s always been a problem. It’s been a problem for all of these thousands of years. And yet, the counsel has been clear all along and so we’ve ignored it basically. We’ve lost our core and we’re looking for identity. And we’re looking for identity by wielding the sword of argument rather than wielding the sword of the Spirit. So we invite you, come into all of this. Go after those things in us. Show us those insecurities that are causing this. Show us that need for affirmation that is skewing and clouding our vision of the Kingdom. Show us the ways in which we’ve caused division and been divisive and nothing good has come of it. Help us. God, help us. There will be no unity any other way than that we submit to you and that we return to the core essential of our faith - that you have been merciful and that you’ve rescued us and that we are lucky to be here. Come Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Announcements
www.DailyAudioBible.com, that’s home base. It’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And mostly Reframe is going on around here. We’re on the Reframe Tour, so looking forward to being on the West Coast this weekend. Tomorrow, we’ll do our third Periscope as a group – a large small-group that we’re having and just one more after this and we’ll be through the book, I think. And so this has been fun. Plan for that 7:30 p.m. tomorrow.
All of this month, we are offering a way for you to get the Reframe Films, which is our small group resource that we’ve created around Reframe, for free. The Reframe Films are five films that are devotional, but dramatic in nature, and they do pack a punch and definitely foster an unbelievable conversation or the opportunity for great conversation. But they can be watched alone, they’re thought provoking. And you can get those at www.ReframeBook.com, but you can get them free. We’ll send you the DVD and the leader’s guide and give you access to download them free if you’re willing to form a group. If you’re not a group person, if you just kind of get some for friends and pass the message out and maybe have a conversation about it, if you get 7 or more Reframes to give away, we will send you the DVD and give you the downloads free, postage paid, the whole works to your door. If you get 10 or more, we’ll throw in another book, another Reframe; but this one’s a little bit special in that it is a signed first edition copy. And you can get those at any of the retailers, at www.ReframeBook.com. All you got to do is get them and then forward your receipt to Reframe@DailyAudioBible.com and we will hook you up. So definitely check that out. That runs through the end of this month.
This Sunday, Reframe comes to Washington State, to the Tri-Cities, to Richland, WA, where I will be speaking at Columbia Community Church. Their website is www.familyfaith.com where you can get the address and the service times. They have are several services there. So looking forward to that. November 1st, Louisville, KY; November 8th, Chattanooga, TN; November 15th San Diego, CA. Looking forward to seeing you at one of these cities in the next few weeks.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at www.DailyAudioBible.com, there’s a link in the upper right-hand corner of the home page. And I thank you profoundly for your support of the community here. If you prefer the mailing address, it’s P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.
And, 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
I am the burning bush that will not be consumed for the glory of our Lord and King. Good morning DAB family. This is Walta from Charlotte. I’m just calling to let you guys know that I’ve been praying with you. I’m here. But I had to call in today. Blessed Like Me - today is Monday and I just heard your testimony and it really, really blessed my heart. I am one of the parents dealing with a son who has had an addiction problem and he is in recovery, praise God. He has gone through his first phase of recovery and come out without a relapse, praise Jesus for that. But then as a parent, we do worry. And thank you for just the encouragement about how your mom prayed for you and seeing where you are today, I am praising Jesus. I’m praising God for my son. Yesterday, he went to church with one of his friends at another church. And I was just glad that he went to some church. Thank you all for praying for my son and for all of the parents’ sons and daughters who have left the fold and pursued whether it’s drug addiction, alcohol addiction, any kind of addiction, I’m just praying that God will bring them home, that they will hear his voice and turn back to our God. Thank you again, Blessed Like Me, for that testimony. I’m going to let go and let God. I love you all and Aliyah, I’ll be praying for you too – the depression. Bye.
Hi Daily Audio Bible family, James the teacher in L.A. First of all its October 19th and I believe, I heard Aliyah from Waxahachie call in this morning. You didn’t leave your name but it sounded like you. And it’s really good to hear your voice and I’m so glad that you have discernment in your time of anxiety and depression. I know I called in about it. It gets really, really hard and Aliyah, let me just assure you – as long as you walk with Jesus and the better you get to know Him and the more you trust Him to take you through all the ups and downs of life, just the more solid you get with Him, it doesn’t make pain go away, you know, because depression is just pain in your soul. It’s not pain in your body, but it hurts all the same. You know, family, I need to share something with you. About a year ago, I was sitting and journaling and once in a while I’ll stop and write things down as if the Lord himself was speaking, and I said that by this time I would be teaching 4 different classes, that I would be __________ training like I never trained before, and that I would be a new father. And all those things are coming true and that was dated October 24th. My wife’s not due until the 5th, but it looks like it could be sooner. That is prophetic. So, please pray for us that we would be ready when that baby comes. I love you guys and I will talk about that, too.
Hi good morning, my name is Lisa and I’m in Dana Point, CA. I’m calling today for prayer for anybody that is willing to pray for me. I need prayer for myself and my spouse. We had a falling out and he actually left our home and took everything with him. And this is a man that I planned on spending the rest of my life with and he with me and I think that as we get closer to the Lord, Satan gets in and tries to wedge between us because we’re stronger together than we are apart. And those of you who are in strong relationships with Christ, you know that. And I just ask for your prayer. My name is Lisa, his name is Ian. I thank God for each and every one of you. Thank you for the Daily Audio Bible, everybody who works on that and everybody whose just listening and praying. Need your prayers and I pray for you. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
Hello Daily Audio Bible, this is Greg from Fallbrook, CA. I first off want to say that I love you guys. I’ve been praying for all of you and I’m really excited that Brian is coming to La Jolla in November 15th, can’t wait to see it and see you guys. Listen I’m calling. I need prayers. I’ve been, in a nutshell, short story long, I’m a flight instructor. I’m a pilot and a year and half ago I had an incident that was not my fault, it resulted in no injuries or damage or anything like that, but the FAA has decided that they want to suspend my pilot’s license for 120 days, 4 months. And this is my only, my sole source of income to support my family. But they want to put me on suspension and when I went to appeal their decision, it was almost surrealistic, but this attorney that I had hired had forgotten to file the appeal in time and it got to the offices 5 days late and they just immediately said nope and threw out the appeal. And I didn’t get my chance to hear my side of the story. They didn’t give me a chance to appeal their decision and they are actually refusing. I asked them will you at least give me a penalty and I’ll pay the fine and let me continue to earn my income but they won’t accept it. They have never done that before in the past and they are not going to change. Ask the Lord and ask you guys to just pray with me that the Lord can do things, can change things and soften hearts, that he softens the hearts of the authorities that want to suspend me and allow me to just at least, I’ll pay the fine or whatever.
Hello, Daily Audio Bible family, it’s Sheila from Massachusetts. God’s pressing on my heart today to call in for all of us who sometimes wake up in the morning and think why do I want to get out of bed? Not necessarily from a clinical depression but just because life gets hard sometimes and there’s bumps and just want to remind us, this is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad. And every morning there’s a reset button. Every morning we can wake up and say, Jesus I love you. You are my Lord and I submit to you today. Whatever you want from me, I am open to. I want to walk with you Lord and walk in the light. Every day is a new day, family, so I wanted to offer some encouragement. Love you all, bye.
|
|
Tamarie 10/21/2015 18:38 |
|
|
