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Daily Transcripts
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11/27/2015
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Daniel 4:1-37 ~ 2 Peter 1:1-21 ~ Psalm 119:97-112 ~ Proverbs 28:17-18
Today is November 27th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It is a pleasure and a great honor to be here with you today. I hope those of you who are in the United States had a wonderful time celebrating and rejoicing and being thankful yesterday. Today is known around the world as Black Friday so I'm sure a lot of people are shopping. Maybe you're shopping while you're listening to the Daily Audio Bible today. The Daily Audio Bible annual Christmas Box is available at the Daily Audio Bible Shop as well as the 2015 Daily Audio Bible Christmas Cards. Those are available as well. So be sure to check those out. We can talk about that in a little bit. But let's take a step forward in the scriptures like we do every day. This week we’ve been reading from the English Standard Version. We’ve gotten into the book of Daniel. We’ve gotten into the book of 1 Peter. We read that, so when we get to the New Testament reading, we’ll begin 2 Peter, but first, Daniel 4:1-37.
Introduction of a New Book
The second letter of the apostle Peter is the final writings of the old saint. Over the years some scholars have believed this text to be pseudepigraphical or a text written in the name of someone who has already died. If we are to accept 2 Peter as the inspired Word of God, then we have to accept that Peter claims authorship of the text. If this is the case, it was probably written in the late 60s AD just prior to Peter's martyrdom where he was crucified upside down. Church tradition tells us that the apostle Paul had been arrested for the second time and somewhere around this same time Peter was killed.
He does not say explicitly who he is writing to, he just says this, my second letter to you, so we can assume that he is writing to the same people that he was writing to in the first letter, that being Gentile Christians who had been scattered throughout the Roman provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia Minor, and Bithynia, all these in modern day Turkey, and he is writing to remind Christians to strengthen their faith that has been born in hope and to guard what they had learned and not be swept away or carried away by every false teacher that comes along.
Rather than just blowing by this, it is important to know that Peter knows he's about to die. He says as much. This is the man who walked with Jesus along the Sea of Galilee. This is the man that saw Christ perform miracles, laughed with him, cried with him, lived with him, ate his last supper with him, denied him and overcame the regret of that denial. He watched Jesus being nailed through the hands and feet to a cross. He watched him die. He saw him raised back to life. Jesus said to Peter, “Upon this rock, you, Peter, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”
Peter was there in the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit came and transformed him. He preached that first sermon where 300 people came to Christ. He was an early church father and devoted his life to the Savior. These are the final living words of the apostle Peter and they should carry great weight in our lives.
So we begin 2 Peter 1.
Commentary
Do you take supplements? And, no, I'm not about to tell you that we have a new line of Daily Audio Bible vitamins that you should be taking, but do you take a multivitamin or a supplement? Some of you do. Some of you don’t. But you know what they are, right? If you're deficient in something that you're not getting from the foods that you eat, you're maybe needing more of this or more of that, you may take vitamins so that you can have the proper nutrition in your life. So you know the concept.
It's very interesting what the apostle Peter says today. It's very interesting to watch what people say when they know they’re going to die. We don’t get that a lot. We have that with Paul in 2 Timothy and we have that with Peter with 2 Peter and so kind of having that knowledge, as melancholy as it is, it should make us sit up and pay attention. These are the things they are choosing to say at the end of their lives. He is saying we have such precious and great promises through Jesus and they have allowed us to partake of the divine nature of God. That's huge right there. Because of Christ, we enter in and partake of the divine nature of God, having escaped the corruption that is in the world. How many of us actively actually partake or even believe that is true? This Jesus that we love and that we believe, he changed the paradigm of humanity. We’re different. How often do we walk around with that kind of confidence that is available, according to the scriptures?
Peter says, “Because of all that, for that very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith, to bolster it, to give it it's proper nutrition. Supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love, for if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, for whoever lacks these qualities is so near-sighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.” So in other words, if these things aren’t growing and supplementing our faith, then we have forgotten completely who we are.
Think back over our lives. We have faith in Christ, but have we supplemented that faith and is it growing, or have we forgotten who we are most of the time? Have we forgotten that we are joint heirs with Jesus in the kingdom? That we get to partake of the divine nature of God? This is huge. This is massive to us. But yeah, we forget all the time. We live less all of the time. But it's not just us. This has been a long time struggle. Peter wouldn’t have chosen his last words to encourage the brothers and sisters of the time he was writing to it if they weren’t struggling with it too. So Peter encourages them and he encourages us. “Be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities, if you supplement your faith with these qualities, you will never fall because it is this very thing, it is by this way that it will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
This is exactly what Peter is trying to say and it is exactly what he is trying to say as he knows his life is about to end because he says “therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it is right as long as I'm in this body to stir you up by way of reminder since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon because Jesus has made that clear to me. So I'm making every effort to tell you now so that after I do depart you're still able at any time to recall these things.”
May we not forget who we are. May we supplement our faith. May we live into this and be strong. It's available.
Prayer
Father, we come before you humbly, with a grateful and thankful heart. We also come before you boldly as your children and you as our Father. And as you are our Father, you have bestowed upon us your fatherly nature and invited us to participate, partake, to live in this world as we were created to be and not less. We’ve chosen less in so many ways. We don’t want to choose less. We want to be exactly who we were created to be. That can’t happen without you. So we invite you. Once again Holy Spirit, come into all of this, all that this implies, all that this exposes us to. Come fully. Come into every part of our lives, nothing is off-limits to you. We want all of this. All of this is available and we want all of it. Help us to supplement our faith by your guidance and by your hand. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Announcements
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website. It is home base. It is where you find out what is going on around here. What is going on around here is that I guess we can declare officially that it is the season of Christmas and it's around the world one of the most blessed times of the years and also one of the most lonely times of the year, blue times of the year, happy times of the year, rejoicing times of the year. It is a lot of things. We get to the end of the year and it's like a sprint to the New Year full of wonderful moments and a lot of anxiety. So here we are. We do have to make that choice that we’re not getting bowled over by the season. The season is just reminding us of how fortunate we are to be here because through the birth of Christ and his life and his death and his resurrection and his ascension we are able to partake in the divine nature that Peter was talking about.
So here we are and this is kind of when everybody starts their shopping and every year we try to enter into the season by providing resources that we have created to remind us of our year together and to keep us in the rhythm of the scriptures every day. So the Daily Audio Bible Christmas Box 2015 is now available. You can check it out at www.DailyAudioBible.com. Click the Shop, go into the Store and you’ll find it and it is always a pleasure because there is stuff in there that you're going to want for yourself and there is stuff in there that you're going to want to give away. I love it.
So in this year's Christmas Box we have Promised Land, The Essential Pilgrim's Edition, 2 DVDs, 4 hours of content taking you right smack into the places where the Bible happened. We worked for 4 years on this and it is a one-of-a-kind. There is nothing else like it in the world. It just kind of allows you to drop in and see these places as we go through the Bible in kind of a 360-degree view. Beautiful land but also connects directly to the stories that happen in the Bible. So that is in there.
Our Windfarm coffee or Windfarm tea that we have roasted specifically for Daily Audio Bible, that's in there and you can choose whether you want tea or whether you want the Windfarm blend of the coffee that is in there.
The annual Christmas bulb for 2015 is in there. This is the only place you can get the Christmas bulb. We’ve only done it for 3 years and I’ve got 3 hanging on my tree right now. I love that because it reminds me of the community that we are and it also sits there at the most important rejoicing time of the year and reminds me I’ve been through the Bible for these 3 years, even though we’re about to finish our 10th year. It reminds me the revolutions that we’ve taken through the Bible. So that is in the Christmas Box as well.
Then there are all of the Reframe resources. So we released the Reframe book just a couple of months ago and the feedback has been overwhelmingly affirming. I'm so grateful for that book because it changed my paradigm. It reframed everything, which we’ve been doing all year. So if you haven’t had a chance to read Reframe yet, this is a great opportunity. The Reframe book is in the Christmas Box. It is a signed first edition. It is in the Christmas Box. Or you can choose the Reframe CD audio edition instead of the book if that is what you prefer. The Reframe Films DVD is in the box as well as a pack of 25 of the Daily Audio Bible 2015 Christmas cards with the envelopes and everything. I’ll talk about that in a second. But those are in there.
In addition to all that, while supplies last, and I love this, we have a handful of bulbs from last year that we’ll throw in as long as they last and we have the original Promised Land, the first edition of Promised Land on blu-ray that we’ll put in the Christmas Box as well as long as they last. That is packed full, literally. It's all we can fit in the box and I'm thrilled. It is our best of the best and I think just fantastic resources. So check them out at the
Daily Audio Bible Store at www.DailyAudioBible.com.
Speaking of the Christmas cards, you can get those separate from the Christmas Box and get as many as you want and they’re like $5 for 25. So yeah, you can go to your local store, wherever it is you shop and get your Christmas cards for the year, but you won't get them cheaper and this is a wonderful way to invite those that you care deeply about to take the journey with you next year through the Bible. Now the Christmas cards for the Daily Audio Bible, they’re not like an advertisement piece. The only place that they say Daily Audio Bible on them is on the back like where you would see Hallmark or whatever. They’re beautiful. They are designed just for the Daily Audio Bible community. There is a generous space for you to write, a verse from the book of Matthew from the nativity story is in there and they’re wonderful. We do them every year so you can order as many of those as you want at the Daily Audio Bible Store as well. So definitely partake, participate in that. We sell out of them every year so grab them now while they are available.
Super excited. SUPER excited to launch the Daily Audio Bible Christmas Season together in community. So check out those resources at www.DailyAudioBible.com in the Daily Audio Bible Store.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at www.DailyAudioBible.com. There is a link. It is in the upper right-hand corner. It's red. It lives there. Thank you in this season for your partnership. The Daily Audio Bible does not exist outside of the Daily Audio Bible community. We’ve just always done what we’ve done together and it has given us an amazing amount of freedom to do what we do and not be sidetracked into a lot of other things. If this is life-giving to you and the community around it means something to you, thank you for your partnership in this season. If you prefer, the mailing address is 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.
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
This is Rita and I just want to ask the saints to pray for my family. Satan is attacking. I'm scared to say my last name or where I am from, but I am a born again believer Christian, I am a child of God and I desire only to live for him and be a witness to my family and Satan is attacking severely. I just need to know somebody is praying for our family. I love God. I’ve listened. I'm a little behind and I listened in James this morning. I want to live the life that everyone that I come in contact, I don’t want to lead them to my church, I want to lead them to my Jesus. I am pleading for prayer from somebody for my family today. Thank you so much. God bless you.
Hi, good morning family. Today is November 23rd. However, I just finished listening to September 19th podcast. First, I just want to say thank you for your reading, Jill. I love when you read. I mean Brian is wonderful, but it is a nice refreshment when you read once in a while and clearly you're giving him a little bit of time off, which the man obviously needs. Listening to Ezekiel is always just a joy. Him laughing at the very end just really put a smile on my face today which I really needed. That is the other reason I'm calling. I just need some prayer for myself. I had been asking for prayer for my fiancé that got in a car accident that his car got totaled on October 21st and I have been taking care of him as best I can. I’ve been spending about 5 hours a day driving him back and forth to work and doing everything I could possibly do, I feel, and I know he is going through a lot because he doesn’t know if there is anything wrong with his heart at this point, but he's been snapping at me and he's been very short-tempered. I just felt really sad. I just need your prayers right now. I just need God's strength to fill my heart and know that he loves me and that I know he's going through a hard time right now. So I just need your prayers. Thank you so much for being there. I love you all. I want to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving. May you all be blessed. Thank you. This is Kim from California. Have a blessed day.
Hi, g’day Dabbers. Richard from Albury-Wodonga here. Listen, I’ve been listening to you guys. I have been listening to everyone and joining in with the prayers of everyone in the past few months. God has given me time to be able to do that. I’ve been listening to those of us that find it hard to see God and the way he sees us with mental health issues and God has laid it on my heart that there are a lot of scriptures that talk to how God sees us. So if time commits and as I can, I wanted those of us that struggle with depression and anxiety and stresses in our lives to search the scriptures first of all for ourselves to find in God's Word where he talks to us about us and that we would start seeing ourselves as God sees us. The first scripture that I’ve got here is 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 that says do you not know that you are God's temple, that God's spirit lives in you? If someone destroys God's spirit, God will destroy him, for God's temple is holy which is what you are. I just pray that God would be speaking to someone right now. Someone may even be doubting these words. I would pray that you would just rest in the fact that God is good and he has said it. So if he said it, there is no amount of you unthinking the Word saying that you're not worthy of it that is going to undo it.
Hi DAB family. This is Asia calling from Munich. I know it has been a while but I have been listening. I am behind. I was in July but this week God spoke to me and said you know what? Start today. Start today. So I started this week and it just was amazing to be caught up and to be able to hear the praise reports and prayer requests of today. While there is nothing wrong with being behind, it just didn’t work for me, so I'm going to start again and pray that this time there will be no lapse now that Mr. G., Baby G. is old enough to be in daycare for a couple of hours, that it gives me some time to get refocused on the Word of God and refocused on this community. I have missed you all. I have thought about you daily. I’ve tried to keep up on Facebook and email, but as many of you know who have small children, sometimes it is just out of our control. I just want to say to all of you, Blind Tony, James R., the passing of your father, my prayers are with you. I pray that the birth of your child has happened. I'm not sure as I'm behind, so please forgive me for anyone that I’ve missed. Biola and Annette A., Becky of Orlando, Becky formerly of Norway, Nancy in Seattle, Tony the truck driver, there have just been so many of you. Lisa S. who has just prayed for me and you’ve been on my heart and on my mind. I promise to be a better steward of Christ as I had been with this community and calling in my prayers. I want to continue to lift up Brian Hardin and his family. As Christmas is approaching let's just remember to give glory to our Father. I love you all. Cheers, Asia in Munich.
Good morning Daily Audio Bible. This is Casey in Calgary. I have some exciting news I would like prayer for. I'm getting married to a wonderful Christian man I met online. Not only has modern technology brought me you, the Daily Audio Bible, but it has also brought me a friend that I want to be with the rest of my life. For the last 4 years over Skype we’ve talked and sang and prayed. We’ve watched movies. We’ve done Bible studies together. The last year he's joined my Bible study from church via Skype so they know him too and some of them will be coming to our wedding. Now here's the tricky part. He lives near Nashville and I live up in Calgary Alberta, so we have to decide where we’ll get married. Close to me? Close to him? Or partly in the middle? And then, of course, we’ll have to apply for immigration papers so we can move and work in the same country, so I'm just asking for prayer that God would give us wisdom as we make our plans. I give thanks for the Christian women in my life who are helping me keep it all together. I also pray for my 4 children, ages 18 to 23 who say they don’t want anything to do with it. Anyway, that's okay, but I just pray that God would just give me such wisdom and help us to honor him through all of this, in Jesus’ name. Thank you.
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Tamarie 11/27/2015 12:02 |
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