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Daily Transcripts
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11/24/2015
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Ezekiel 47:1-48:35 ~ 1 Peter 2:11-3:7 ~ Psalm 119:49-64 ~ Proverbs 28:12-13
Today is November 24th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It's great to be here with you today. This will be an interesting program for me because there is a visitor sitting to my right and it's not baby Ezekiel. We’ve got this new little puppy in our house who is in her little bed right next to me because her mommy, China, isn’t here. So if you hear any whining, it's not me. It's the puppy. I guess I can have that as my excuse forever. So with all of that said, we’re reading from the English Standard Version today.
Commentary
In 1 Peter, the apostle speaks from a macro level right down to right where you live level and gives an order and a context or a posture that we are supposed to live with. He starts at the macro level, at the level of national authority. In this case it would have been the emperor in his time. In our time that may be a king. That may be a prime minster. That may be a president, whatever. Peter says honor that person.
That is an interesting thing to say because (do I even go into this?) it is one place that I stay out of completely. There are several places, but politics is one of them. It is not my mission to tell you what I think. It is my mission to read you the Word of God. In this case, though, it is fascinating how many believers who disagree with the authority, their national authority, are willing to flame it, absolutely outspokenly destroy their leaders on social media, etc., etc.
What Peter doesn’t say is agree with all the things that they do. What he does say is honor this position. Honor this person. Peter goes so far as to say for this is the will of God.
You have to understand that Peter is in the Roman Empire and persecution is starting to heat up. He is not in a position where he agrees with what the Emperor is doing. He isn’t agreeing with the fact that the people who are following The Way, who are following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ are being marginalized and essentially made to look like the riff-raff, the low, low, lowest of the low which is shifting the culture to allow them to be marginalized and then have no value so they can be easily taken advantage of and persecuted and even killed. In the face of that, Peter writes this:
Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good for this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.
I’ll just leave that hanging because it speaks for itself. We’re either doing that or we’re not, but we need to pay attention to it because it is a posture of heart and a posture of where it is that we live and the tension of that. We need to hear God speak from his Word.
Then he moves down to servants and masters and so where this would especially apply today would be our boss, our vocation, those that we work with who are in authority over us. Peter says:
Give the position respect not only to the good and the gentle, but also to the unjust for this is the gracious thing. When mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.
So he is clearly speaking into a posture of heart and how it is that we conduct ourselves. So maybe you’ve got a bad boss, maybe you’ve got a self-serving one, maybe all of that and maybe you do leave that job and find another one, but will you be divisive? Stir up all kinds of slanderous things? Or, for that matter, just speak the truth as you see it without knowing the other side of the story? Or will we take the bluntness and the directness of the scriptures from Peter who is saying, look, if you get disciplined for something you’ve done and you endure that, that is not that big of a deal. You deserved it. It is a different story, though, when you do good and suffer for it and then endure. That is a gracious thing in the sight of God, according to the scriptures, for to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you can follow in his footsteps.
He committed no sin. There was no deceit in his mouth. When he was reviled, he didn’t revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten but continued in trusting himself to him who judges justly. He bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we can die to sin and live to righteousness. It is by the wounds or by his stripes that we’re been healed. The implication, because of the context of what he is saying – because we pull that out all the time – by his stripes you are healed, but if we place that back into its context, its context is servants and masters. Its context is bosses and employees. Its context is that he didn’t have to do that. He was receiving within himself the whole process of his persecution. It was unjust, every moment of it, from the time that the ropes were thrown around him in the Garden of Gethsemane to the moment he was nailed to a tree and gasping for breath, humiliated and naked, crying out it is finished. That whole process – there was no justice in it. He endured it all and by his stripes you are healed. That's not an easy posture to maintain, but according to Peter, that is the model.
We were straying like sheep but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of our souls.
And then he moves down right into the family and reveals a posture for wives with husbands. Wives, be subject to your own husband so that even if some do not obey the Word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Again, not always easy to do.
And he moves into the husbands. Live with your wife. Understand her. Show honor to her. She is an heir with you of the grace of life.
And then he puts this almost cryptic thing, something that we could easily skip over but is absolutely poignant and huge.
Do all this so that your prayers may not be hindered.
That should explain a lot. That should allow us to reflect on a lot because we’re always looking for the reasons and the steps and what we did wrong and why it's not working in certain areas. We just have to go back to 1 Peter. We just have to go back to James and go, okay, am I hearing this but not doing it? Because if I'm hearing this but not doing it, then it exists, but it is dead. If I'm hearing this and I'm living into it, then it's alive. Am I living with these postures or am I actually flying in the face of them because that should explain a lot. I may have to change the way that I'm doing some things or I have to settle for the fact that my prayers are being hindered.
So it's direct. It's in our face. It's in my face. It's not me telling you and it not being a mirror. It's in my face too. We’re all in this together. So have billions of people before us been in this together. It is the constant submitting our posture of heart, our will, our mind, our emotions, our ambitions to God. There is no way to do that without walking with God. There is no way to do it. It is hard to submit your will to something that is like a gray mist that you have no relationship with and you don’t know where it is. It's another thing to walk with God and allow the Holy Spirit to say hey, I'm giving you counsel that will lead you into all truth. I'm giving you counsel that will bring you to life. I'm giving you counsel that will explain things and how and why things are the way that they are and how you have a choice. It's all about you and all about your next choice.
You can always make the next right decision and you can begin to move out of these old postures that were crucified with Christ and live a righteous life. It's available. We can do this. We choose every day whether to do it or not. I mean, we choose every 10 minutes. We choose every 5 minutes whether to do it or not. This isn’t like I'm just making up some stuff here. We just went through our reading in 1 Peter, all in order, and that is what it says. So we either do it or we don’t. We get to choose. If we don’t then we need to know that if we hear and don’t do, then we have dead faith and if we hear and don’t do, then our prayers may be hindered.
I’ve got to just leave it there. It is what it is. I don’t have anything more to say. I'm challenged too. We’re supposed to be. So may we let this whole thing loiter in our heads today, just linger and invite us to consider.
Prayer
Holy Spirit, we come before you and ask you to aid in that, to counsel, to rebuke, to correct, to comfort, to move into those areas where we’re blatantly moving in the wrong direction and then for some reason blaming you for it or feeling abandoned by you for it when we’re the ones walking away. We need your help. We are like sheep. We are exactly like what Peter said today. We were straying like sheep. Now we’ve returned to the shepherd and overseer of our souls, so come, Holy Spirit. Walk this out with us. Show us how to change some of our behaviors from the inside out. We can certainly discipline ourselves for a while and not go on rants on the internet or any of the other things that are spoken of, not cause divisiveness in our churches or in our offices or with those who are in authority over us that we don’t agree with or with our husbands or wives. Yep, we can discipline ourselves for a while but fundamental change, the absolute shifting of the posture of heart so that we just don’t think that way anymore, we don’t behave that way because we don’t live that way, it's not even in us anymore, that we can’t do on our own, that we need you for. So we submit our heart, mind and will, our body, our ambitions, our goals, our dreams, our doubts, our fears, our nightmares, everything to you and invite you to continue to sanctify us, to change us, to reorient us, to reframe us. Come Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Announcements
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website. It's home base. It's where you find out what’s going around here and what's going on around here is it is almost Thanksgiving here in the United States and the day after Thanksgiving is always called Black Friday no matter where you are in the world. So we’ll have the Daily Audio Bible Christmas Box coming up in a couple of days. This puppy is chockfull of all of the resources that we have created in the last (I don’t know) 18 months. It will have the Promised Land, The Essential Pilgrim's Edition included. There will be some of our Windfarm coffee or tea, if that is what you prefer. It will have our annual Christmas bulb in it for 2015. I love those.
We started that 3 years ago, so this will be my third one on my tree. I love it. It's like the little bulb for the tree that not only in my heart represents this community and bringing it into one of the most joyous times of the year, but it also represents another revolution through the scriptures. It is like every time I put that up on my tree, the three that I have, even though we’ve been going longer than 3 years (we’ve just been doing these bulbs for 3 years), it reminds me yeah, I went through the whole Bible in that year. And you can only get the bulb in the Christmas Box. We have a few dozen, I think, of last year's bulb. While supplies last, we’re going to pop those into the Christmas Boxes too, so the one for last year, but the 2015 one is only available in the Christmas Box.
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And that’s it for today. This little puppy has done well. She slept some and she chewed on a little thing, a little yarn thing, whatever it is. She's doing that right now. But she didn’t yip and she didn’t whine, so maybe she can hang out with us more often.
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
Hello Daily Audio Bible family. It's Sheila calling from Massachusetts. I was going through my prayer log today and a couple people popped out that are on my mind. Jennifer in Boston, you had called in about your 15-year-old daughter who was cutting and depressed. Sister, I want to let you know that since you called in way back in July, that I still keep you in my prayers. I keep your daughter in my prayers and all of us who have children who suffer with any type of mental illness and struggle. That brings me to a grandmother. Ethan was her grandson and Ethan moved. He was 14 years old and suffers from autistic and schizophrenia and you moved your daughter and her children to your home. Your daughter is leaving an abusive marriage. I want to follow up and have you call in and let us know how Ethan is doing and also let you know that I lift Ethan up in my prayers. I hope that you found services for him near your home, hope those prayers were answered. I would like us all to pray for the people in ISIS and ISIL. I pray for their salvation. I pray for a revival that these people come to know the Lord, the terror that they strike in Paris and the attacks. I'm praying for all the perpetrators of the hate and the crime. The victims get a lot of prayer, but I think we all need to lift up the perpetrators. We need to pray for them. We need to pray that God brings them into our family. I'm praying for a revival. Brothers and sisters, I love you all. Have a good day.
Good morning, Daily Audio Bible family. This is McKenzie from Massachusetts calling for your prayers today over the changes that have been happening in my life and in my relationship with my boyfriend of 3-1/2 years. Over the last year, largely thanks to the Reframe message and walking more closely with the Lord each day through the Daily Audio Bible, I’ve seen some pretty profound changes in my life in how I create my own identity. In the past it was through my job and in my career and in my success in that career. In the last year I’ve really seen a huge shift in that toward finding my identity in the Lord and in his grace and in his love. I ask that you help me or that the Lord can help me find peace in that and in the changes that have been happening through that. And to figure out whether I can either help my boyfriend find that place through the Lord's grace or whether that means that we should part ways. I see him continuing to identify or find identity for himself in his work and in his career. That is something we had always shared. I don’t want that for him. I want him to see this beautiful message that I found. I'm finding it difficult to share it with him. I'm finding it difficult to feel like he is actually hearing me when I say it. So I just ask for your prayers in that today.
Hello Daily Audio Bible. My name is Jose L. I'm calling from Rochester, NY. I just want to say thank you for all that you're doing. May God continue to bless you, find you pleasing to the Lord. He enjoys your fellowship and I just want to say I bless you in Jesus’ name. I also want to say God bless you to all of the Daily Audio Bible family and community. I just recently started listening to Daily Audio Bible and it has been a blessing to my life spiritually. I just want to ask everyone to pray for me. I just was recently appointed as the men's ministry leader at my church and I just want to pray that God blesses that ministry and is glorified through that ministry. I want to ask everyone to help me pray for that. Also, I want to pray for understanding for my father-in-law who doesn’t know Jesus and for him to understand the changes that are going on in me and my wife's life because we both recently have come to the Lord a few years ago. So he doesn’t understand what the changes are all about, but I just pray that he sees these and gets a glimpse of the love of God and how that love changes lives. So I just want to say thank you to you all. God bless you. Thank you for your prayers. I just want everyone to know that I'm also praying for this Daily Audio Bible podcast and ministry. Everyone is in my prayers. Thank you very much. God bless you in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Hello Daily Audio Bible family. It's Ozzie James in Japan again calling. Just wanted to let you know thank you so much for the prayers that you’ve been giving for the baptism today. Everything went really exceptionally well. We even had unseasonably warm temperatures. Up at the river it was about 15 degrees Celsius and nice and sunny and the water wasn't too cold at all. The baptism went smoothly so I just want to thank you again all for your prayers and just say how much I love you all and appreciate you all. Thank you. James in Japan. Bye.
Hi Daily Audio Bible family. It's James, the teacher in L.A. I'm actually calling to respond to Sarah in Ohio who said she is in a tough relationship and working, not sure where she is going to end up living. You know, I just want to share a really quick story from my own life. Fourteen years ago to the day I was a brand new believer just beginning to walk with Jesus and fresh out of college and unemployed, broke, going into debt trying to live on my own and my mom, God bless her, she didn’t walk with the Lord and still doesn’t walk with the Lord, by this point in the year, I was facing eviction within about a month and she said to me you need within the next week a job, roommates, and a new place to stay, is that what you're telling me? And I told her yeah. But I know Jesus is going to get me. He's going to take care of me. And she kind of looked at me with this look like I was out of my mind, and would you believe in a week it all came together? I had been looking for a job for months. I had been trying to get roommates together for months and in one week it happened. Because I was in a bad position because of some bad decisions I had made. I’ll be honest. But you know what? God wants us to make good decisions but there is a reason they call this thing grace. He gives us what we don’t deserve because of love, because of the love that Jesus poured out. So confess in that. I pray that you’ll experience that grace in your life really soon. Love you, family, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Bye-bye.
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Tamarie 11/24/2015 08:48 |
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