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Daily Transcripts
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12/20/2015
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Haggai 1:1-2:23 ~ Revelation 11:1-19 ~ Psalm 139:1-24 ~ Proverbs 30:15-16
Today is the 20th of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. Man, it's great to be here with you today. This is Christmas week, the final Sunday in the season of Advent and what a day of rejoicing it is and what a week of rejoicing and celebrating but deep contemplation as we consider what has happened here, that God has come for us and come for us in person. So may we spend these days as we move into Christmas Day, contemplating that mystery and that great victory on our behalf.
So we’ve got this new week before us. We continue the rhythm of the scriptures in our lives and we’ve been kind of blazing through the minor prophets. There are three books left in the Old Testament that we need to cover before the end of the year. Of course, we’re in the final book, the book of Revelation in the New Testament. This brings us to the book of Haggai.
Introduction to a New Book
Israel was carried away into exile by the Babylonians and we followed that journey as we’ve gone through the scriptures this year. This was terrible. It was a terrible time. It was a time of great sorrow, perhaps the lowest moment for the children of Israel in all of Bible. About 540 BC, Cyrus, King of Persia invaded and then conquered Babylon and then in 538, a couple years later, he issued a decree allowing native Israelites to go home, to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple and worship their God and rebuild their culture. This is obviously a great day of liberation for God's people and the book of Haggai comes about 18 years into that process.
So it is like a snapshot that is immensely relevant to us today because it takes a hard look at motivations. Through the prophetic words of Haggai, God challenges his people about what matters most to them and this couldn’t have come at a better time, this particular week of festivities and all of the stuff that goes with it. God offers hopeful promises to those who will take courage, even though they have grown weary because of the realization that Jerusalem and the temple may never be rebuilt to the splendor that Solomon had built it. Haggai invites us all to turn the spotlight on ourselves and see whether it is God's work or our own satisfaction that we hold highest in our lives, our own comfort, and basically invites us to man-up in the face of discouragement, knowing that God is supremely faithful and sovereign. Once the light of the truth comes crashing into our lives, it invites us to repent, to reconsider, to reframe and live pure lives and it shows us that we can live courageously for God, building his kingdom because he is always with us, which is the message of Christmas, Emmanuel, God with us, ever present. Regardless of circumstances, we are secure and as we’re faithful to God, he is unspeakably faithful to us.
So we’ll read from the Modern English Version this week, Haggai.
Commentary
It is impossible not to love Psalm 139 for just what it unpacks in terms of our reality. So often we can just read and wax into this sort of, I don’t know, prosaic literary mist with all kinds of religious veneer over it, but what is being said here is profoundly revealing about who we are and what we are.
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.” And known me – not you’ve searched me and you know everything about me. You’ve known me, which lets us know for sure it is possible to know and be known by God. It is possible for us to be in relationship with him, which is what we’ve been talking about all year. This is the whole purpose of Reframe. We can be known by God and we can know God personally, intimately, in a relationship.
David says you know when I sit down and when I get up. You understand my thoughts from far off, which isn’t to say you know what I'm thinking. It is to say you understand what I'm thinking. You understand where I'm coming from. You search my path, my lying down and are aware of all my ways. There is not a word on my tongue that you don’t know. You have put yourself behind me and before me and you keep your hand on me. What is being described here is God being present. I mean, you can’t be before and behind and keep your hand on something if you're not present to it. God is here. He is with us.
But David comes to the same conclusion that we all must – such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is lofty. I can’t fathom it. In other words, I don’t know all I think I know. It's too big. It's too wonderful. It's far beyond me. I have only begun to scratch the surface of the depth and breadth of your presence in my life, but I want it. I want it. I'm making myself present to your presence.
And he goes on. Where shall I go from your spirit? Where will I flee from your presence? If I go to heaven, you're there. If I go to Sheol you're there. In other words, if I go down into death you're there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell at the end of the sea you're there. Your right hand shall take hold of me. Even if I say surely the darkness is going to cover me. This time surely I'm going down and the light is going to turn into night and it is all going to go black, even darkness is not dark to you, but the night shines as day for the darkness is like light to you. You brought my inner parts into being. You created me. You knit me together and I’ll praise you for that. You made me with fear and wonder, marvelous are your works and you know me completely. That's huge. He knows us. We know him.
This can go deeper. This can go further. We’ve been talking about this all year, but this is the start of something that goes on forever, a deepening relationship, deepening intimacy with God.
David is saying it doesn’t really matter where I go, I can’t get away. Wherever I go you're there. So in other words, where is God not? We have to become aware of this because we spend so much of our lives trying to figure out where he is. He is here wherever you are. He is here with you as you drive down the road. He is here with you as you ride on that train. He is here with you as you put on your makeup. He is here with you as you pour that coffee. He is here with you as you lay on that pillow. There is nowhere he is not which means his presence is there wherever you are and available. There is never a moment we have to be out of contact with God. There is never a time that we have to be estranged and distant. He is present to us. We just choose to ignore it and shut it down and then doubt him and then falsely accuse him.
Why though? What is the point? There is no outcome. What is the point of falsely accusing God for circumstances that we’ve gotten ourselves into? He has come for us. And in this week, when we celebrate the mystery of that invasion of earth, that condescension of infinity into a human form to be here with us, we need to continue to finish this reframe. There is nowhere God isn’t. There is only us ignoring the fact that he is here. There is nothing that God wouldn’t do for us. He was willing to come and die. According to the Psalm, he is before us, behind us, with his hand upon us. He is present. He is engaged. He is in this thing. It is time that we reciprocate. It is time that we get as invested into this relationship as he is because then there is nothing that can’t happen, nothing. Because then we’re looking at Jesus and then we’re hearing Jesus say you can do all of this, all of this. You can have this kind of relationship with the Father.
So where it boils down, where it really actually gets invasive and disruptive is whether or not we really want that. Do we like the idea of intimacy with God or are we willing to give up everything to have it? Because it becomes an all or nothing proposition. That is what intimate relationships look like – you're either all in or you're not. A compromised relationship that is not all in is on its way to a slow, tortured death. We just look at our own marriages and we know this is true. We’re either all in, because if we’re not, it is a slow growing apart. We say, ‘well, people change’ and we just move on. It's the beauty of life together forever can be. But we can’t just move on to another God because there is no other God. So it is best that we go all in with him because going all in with him shows us how to go all in with everything because he is present in everything, leading and guiding and directing us. So may we, I don’t know, memorize Psalm 139. Write it down. Put it in our back pocket. Put it in our handbags. Carry it with us. Remember there is nowhere that God isn’t and he has come for me and that changes everything.
Prayer
Father, what do we say? Because this moves beyond words. It moves into actions. It moves into an opening of our heart fully and allowing you fully in. It moves beyond anything we can describe because it speaks of eternity, something that we can scarcely even get our minds around. It speaks of a relationship that will go on for millions of years, billions and billions of years and then that is not even the start. We don’t have a way to comprehend the breadth and depth of your love, but we sense it. We believe that you have come for us. So as we move into these days ahead, we ask your Holy Spirit to come and keep us focused on what is going on here and what we’re celebrating. Yes, may we enjoy friendships, intimacy with our family, rejoicing and being together when we’re usually not together. Traveling, all of those things, but may we constantly remember that you are here. You are here right now. You are in all of this. As we stay present to you, you stay present to us. This is what you’ve come for. This is Emmanuel, God with us. So help us to stay present because we’re very distracted. We really are like sheep. We really do go astray. We need you as our Shepherd. But we know your voice now. We feel your love. So we invite you to come. Father us, shepherd us, lead us forward. We ask this in the name of Emmanuel, in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Song played on today's DAB: Wexford Carol, Orla Fallon.
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Tamarie 12/21/2015 09:53 |
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