Daily GNT Bible Reading Podcast

GN-Day067 Numbers 1; Psalm 25; Luke 17:20-37

  NUMBERS 1:Numbers is the 4th of Moses' 5 books. In this book we will see that unbelief hinders God's blessings for Israel. HC Mears says, "Numbers might be called the Wilderness Wanderings," because it chronicles the journey. And "Numbers might be called the book of the March and the Roll Call. ... It might, too, be called the Book of Murmurings, because from beginning to end it is filled with the spirit of rebellion against God." "Leviticus dealt with the believers' worship— Numbers deals with the believer's walk. In Leviticus we see the believer's privileges— in Numbers the wilderness is the drill field." Important lessons from the Book of Numbers: We must trust God, not people. God will supply all we need, including food, meat, water, leaders, and land. We must worship God according to his instructions. PSALM 25:Psalm 25 is the first acrostic poem we encounter in the psalms. An acrostic poem is one where every line starts with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In older translations which followed the KJV, verse 14 contains the word 'secret', but that word is better translated as 'friendship/friend'. Here we read of the privilege of an intimate relationship with the Lord. I am reminded of a few years ago when things were not going well for me in relation to the leaders of my organization. Psalms like this were very comforting to me. LUKE 17b: Yesterday in Luke 17a Jesus taught about the importance of forgiving others, the importance of believing fully and being humble servants. Then we heard of the healing of 10 men who had a contagious/dreaded skin disease.

GN-Day066 Leviticus 26-27; Psalm 24; Luke 17:1-21

LEVITICUS 26-27:Yesterday in Leviticus, we heard about the Sabbath year and the year of Restoration/Jubilee. Before the Year of Restoration, property could be bought back//redeemed. In the Restoration year property was returned to the original owners and poor people who had become enslaved were set free. I suspect these laws were never done in all of Israel's history. If they were, perhaps only once— fifty years after Israel entered the land of Canaan. In the final two chapters of Leviticus which we read today, we hear the LORD's prophecy that the people of Israel would fall into sin and rebellion against God. They would be warned many times and be sent into exile. In exile, God said that they would repent and God would still remember his covenant with the people of Israel. The book ends with a list of regulations. PSALM 24:Today we read one of the most majestic psalms, Psalm 24! This ends with the song for welcoming the triumphant Messiah into Jerusalem. The words of the fourth and final section of Psalm 24 are sung in Handel's Messiah, "Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle." In the first line, "Lift up your heads, you gates," we have a poetic personification of the gates. This has been translated in the NET as "Look up, you gates." But gates don't have heads and they can't look up. I like the GNT in that verse: "Fling wide the gates, open the ancient doors, and the great king will come in." LUKE 17a:Yesterday in chapter 16 we heard two longer parables— both very insightful: The parable of the shrewd manager, and the one about the rich man and Lazarus. Both of them show this lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they (those friends) will welcome you to an eternal home.

GN-Day065 Leviticus 25; Psalm 23; Luke 16

LEVITICUS 25:Yesterday in Leviticus we heard about the seven important yearly celebrations of the Jewish religion. Then we heard about oil and bread for the tabernacle. Following that, we heard about the example of a law-breaker who was stoned to death for his crime of blasphemy. PSALM 23:Today we read the most famous psalm of all. My wife has often said: Psalm 23 is so often quoted at funerals, but this is a psalm about living, not dying! LUKE 16:Yesterday in Luke 15, we heard the three-part parable of the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son. There is much treasure to dig for there! Consider taking some time to reflect on that wonderful chapter.

064: Reader: Take Note! Pointers for understanding parables

Today I would like to give pointers for understanding Jesus' parables. I consider the parable to be one of the greatest of all teaching devices, and a legacy of the Greatest Teacher. I will end this episode by sharing a non-Biblical parable. One little detail to understand is that the word 'parable' (Greek paraboles) had a wider meaning than we normally think of in English, and you may see this sometimes in the New Testament. In English, we normally think of a parable as a story that points to some deeper meaning. However, as an example, the word 'parable' is used for a one-sentence figurative teaching in Mark 7:17 where it refers back to Jesus' statement in verse 15:  GW "Nothing that goes into a person from the outside can make him unclean. It's what comes out of a person that makes him unclean." In verse 17, the disciples ask Jesus to explain that 'parable'.  With that footnote, I want you to know that I will really just be talking briefly about what we normally think of as parables, the story type. In the episode notes, I give links to more complete and scholarly information than what I will present to you. In particular, I recommend viewing the 6 minute video from bibleproject.com entitled The Parables of Jesus. Also in the episode notes, I have links to both a video and a good summary about Interpreting Parables by Bob Utley.   ======= Bob Utley's Special Topic page on Interpreting Parables:http://www.freebiblecommentary.org/special_topics/parable_interpretation.html Bob Utley's video on Luke 15:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f76EvjGy7Jw Don't miss the cool video from BibleProject.com! Title: The Parables of Jesus   I appreciated the original thinking and humorous examples in this short article:https://www.1517.org/articles/understanding-jesus-parables =======   As I was thinking about what to mention to you, I was reading a historically-interesting commentary by Christopher Wordsworth from 1856, and I almost stumbled into a common error in interpreting parables, which is thinking of them as allegories. An example of this is Luke chapter 15, where we have the parable of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son. Wordsworth gives an allegorical interpretation, assigning an identity to all the characters. In this case, the shepherd is Christ, who searches for his lost sheep. That's not too bad. But seeing the woman who loses one of her coins as a picture of the church, is definitely stretching things. Similarly in the Parable of the Lost Son, the father is interpreted as God, the younger son as the Gentiles who repent, and the older son as the Jews.  One of the things that leads people to take an overly allegorical approach to the parables has to be Jesus himself, in his foundational teaching about the parables found in Mark 4, Mat. 13, and Luk. 8. In Jesus' explanation of the Parable of the Sower, He might almost contradict my last point about allegorical interpretation. It just happens that the Parable of the Sower (also called the Parable of the Different Kinds of Soil) has clear allegorical elements (the birds, path, rocky soil, etc), whereas for many other parables it doesn't help to seek an allegorical identity for the various participants. A second thing that is unusual in the Parable of the Soils is that it has clear multiple teaching points, whereas most parables have a single, simple point. I have mentioned all this heavy stuff to bring us around to this simple point: When we get too fancy in our interpretation of parables, we tend to miss the main point, which is to ask, "How does this apply to me?" The cool thing about parables is that Jesus intended them to be multi-purpose. People who were ready to believe in Jesus would get one interpretation, and the religious leaders criticizing Him would understand Jesus' meaning very differently. Both groups got a correct interpretation, as Jesus intended, even though the interpretations were different.  This propensity of parables to be interpreted differently has a plus side and a negative side. On one hand, we must remember that parables are not good for determining doctrine. Let's not decide the timing of Jesus' second coming based on parables, but some of the parables clearly illustrate something about Jesus' second coming. The plus side is that the Holy Spirit may use Jesus' parables to say something very pointedly appropriate for you. I have been amazed that in the Parable of Different Kinds of Soil I sometimes find that I am dangerously close to living amongst thorns, way too concerned with the cares of this life. But in a few months when I come across the parable again, I find that I have moved over to the rocky soil, meaning that I might glibly say that I love God's Word, but on that day if I am honest, I have to admit that my roots are dangerously shallow. Another illustration of a personal application for me is this, which I don't think I have ever shared with anyone before: When I read the story of the prodigal son, I am reminded that I acted like the prodigal son, when I was young and thoughtless, by asking for part of my inheritance early. I didn't realize that this was tantamount to wishing my father dead. How this must have hurt him! I wish I could tell him how sorry I am that I ever did that. Don't look to parables for decisions about moving to another city, quitting your job, or selling your house. That's not what I mean by a personal application.  Finally, here are three final pointers: Understanding the context and the audience Jesus was speaking to is key to understanding what Jesus was saying. You can see a progression in Luke's Gospel that leads from more general parables about the Kingdom of God, to Jesus' identity as the king who will return, and to whom everyone will give an account. Look to see if the Gospel writer or Jesus himself tells what He was driving at. And also take note of any surprising twist in the story. Such twists often give an important clue to the meaning. Let me illustrate that idea of a surprising twist found in some parables. One of my favorite booklets that we printed to display our translation in Indonesia is a collection of 25 parables. If I am in Indonesia, I like to have that booklet handy in my bag. There was one devout Islamic taxi driver that took me to my home at least six times. Because of frequent traffic jams in Jakarta, a 20 minute trip can take two hours on bad days. So I started reading the parables to him. He was interested, and it was way better than trying to debate with him about our religions. After many of the parables he would say, "OK, yeah. I think we Muslims could agree with that one." That continued until we got to the Parable of the Vineyard owner in Matthew 20. That's the one where the vineyard owner gives all the workers the same pay for a full day's work, even though some workers only worked for one hour. He responded, "What?! He did that? That's crazy. That's unfair!" This gave me an opportunity to talk about God's kindness. We call it grace. God wants to be generous with us, because none of us can manage to earn our salvation. God designed this counterintuitive situation so that all glory would go to our Savior, and none would go to us. As I will not be living in the same place in Jakarta when I go back (in July 2022), it is not likely that I will take that route again with the same taxi driver. It is not appropriate for me to share his name. But you can join me in praying for that taxi driver that I read parables to. To give you a chance of hearing a parable for the first time (like Jesus' followers had), I'll read The Innovator by G. Williams Jones, from his book with the same name, published by Abingdon Press, copyright 1969.  The complete name of the book is The Innovator and Other Modern Parables. Announcement: If anyone knows of any of the heirs of G. William Jones, please ask them to contact me. May the Lord bless you 'Real Good'! Phil

GN-Day064 Leviticus 23-24; Psalm 22; Luke 15