Daily Bread: April–June 2019

By David Bracewell, Ben Green, Penny Boshoff and 4 more

Daily Bread is the Bible reading guide that aims to help you hear from God as you read the Bible. If you've ever asked the question, 'What possible relevance can this verse have for me today?' or 'What difference does this passage make to my life?' then read on...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scripture Union
• Release date: Jan 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781785067136

David Bracewell

On retirement, David Bracewell established 'Zoe Ministry' which aims to encourage church leaders in their task of building healthy churches. He has five grandchildren, three children and one wife. He continues to teach and preach as required and is the attentive owner of a Mazda sports car.

Book preview

What is Daily Bread?

Daily Bread is the Bible reading guide that aims to help you hear from God as you read the Bible. If you’ve ever asked the question, ‘What possible relevance can this verse have for me today?’ or ‘What difference does this passage make to my life?’ then read on…

Why read the Bible?

Reading the Bible is about developing a relationship with God, through dependence on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us to engage with the Bible and to face God’s challenge in the here and now. He will always point us to Jesus Christ, the heart of God’s Word to us, the one who shows us who God is.

Why read Daily Bread ?

Everyone needs a little help when reading the Bible. Sometimes the poetry and prose, history and revelation, or parables and proverbs need some explanation. Daily Bread provides real inspiration each time you read it. Our writers are from all kinds of backgrounds with all kinds of perspectives. We’re sure you’ll be challenged, encouraged, surprised and inspired as God uses the notes to speak into your life.

How to use Daily Bread

Way in

This page introduces both the notes and the writer. It sets the scene and tells you what you need to know to get into each series.

A day’s note

The notes for each day include five key elements: Prepare, Read (the Bible passage for the day), Explore, Respond and Bible in a year. These are intended to provide a helpful way of meeting God in his Word.

Prepare yourself to meet with God and pray that the Holy Spirit will help you to understand and respond to what you read.

Read the Bible passage, taking time to absorb and simply enjoy it. A verse or two from the Bible text is usually included on each page, but it’s important to read the whole passage.

Explore the meaning of the passage, listening for what God may be saying to you. Before you read the comment, ask yourself: what’s the main point of this passage? What is God showing me about himself or about my life? Is there a promise or a command, a warning or example to take special notice of?

Respond to what God has shown you in the passage in worship and pray for yourself and others. Decide how to share your discoveries with others.

Bible in a year

If your aim is to know God and his Word more deeply, why not follow this plan to read the whole Bible in one year?

Editorial

Resilient

faithfulness

‘How shall we sing the

Lord

’s song in a foreign land?’ (Psalm 137:4, ESV). This was the cry of the exiles in Babylon, longing for home, for Jerusalem, the Temple and the presence of God. For many Christians in Western countries today, that feeling of ‘foreignness’ in our own countries is growing. Nations that were once ‘Christian nations’ are increasingly uncomfortable places for Christians to be. However, for the rest of the church, in fact, the majority of the church, this is the norm. In the twentieth century, more Christians were killed for their faith than in the previous 19 centuries put together. Martyrs. Thousands – hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters killed for their faith. Clearly, though they were in ‘foreign lands’, these fellow Christians did not conform, they didn’t blend in, they didn’t hide. So how will you sing the Lord’s song when feeling like a foreigner in your own land?

Let this quarter’s readings give you courage to stand firm: Daniel gives the lead for resilient faithfulness in exile, 2 Kings shows us the God who calls his people to stand firm when spiritual liberalism is rife, Revelation helps us persevere as we’re assured of the outcome – the God who is worthy of all worship wins. And let them encourage you that the good news is worth sharing: Galatians is a wonderful reminder of the freedom gifted to us in the gospel, Deuteronomy is there to stir our hearts to love God and anticipate Christ, and in Luke’s Gospel, behold Jesus in all his power, kindness and challenge (chs 7–9), and his grace poured out for you at Easter (chs 22–24).

Photo of Angus Moyes

Angus Moyes

Editor

Bible background

Lifting the veil on

power and glory

Wedding dress shopping. Sooner or later, the question of the veil will arise. When it does, it’s crucial to do the bit that often still happens in weddings: lifting the veil to reveal the radiantly joyful face of the bride. I write from experience – our middle daughter was doing exactly this the day before yesterday on the first day of her wedding dress shopping. And 34 years ago, her Mum lifted back her veil and looked – to me and to the rest of the congregation – radiantly joyful.

There are some parts of the Bible that often bemuse or confuse. The ‘apocalyptic’ writings – think Revelation and parts of Daniel – tend to do it for many of us. Apocalypse means ‘unveiling’: drawing back a veil that has been hiding unseen realities so that more sense might be made of what’s being seen. It’s an opening of the obscure.

Which is where, for most of us, the wheels come off! The way of writing apocalypse is so weird that it makes everything even more obscure for most Westerners. ‘What on earth does that mean?’ is the phrase most often used in connection with parts of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the minor prophets, Mark’s Gospel and nearly all of Revelation (apart from the seven letters to the seven churches in chapters 2 and 3).

Not that the church has been slow to try and make sense out of it all, though not always by letting the text speak for itself. Collectively, the church in the west has tended to approach the texts with a pre-set grid of controversies over various historical timelines of events that seem to be described. Knowing that such controversies have surrounded the texts, many Christians have found apocalyptic literature even more obscure.

So here are a few keys. These keys come from the period when apocalyptic literature was being commonly written, read and, crucially, understood: roughly 200

bc

to

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150. Most apocalyptic literature from this period is not actually in the Bible, but forms part of the religious culture that much of the biblical material speaks into. Within that tradition, a set of conventions was commonly understood; they can help us to let the texts speak today as they spoke long ago.

Numbers

First, numbers aren’t numbers in the mathematical sense, so our calculators may mislead us. Numbers are images not integers. Thus seven is fullness and perfection, and usually in apocalyptic conventions, divine perfection. Six is imperfection, which in turn means powerful but not divine and is therefore often associated with evil power. Combining or even multiplying these ‘numbers’ simply means compounding whatever they stand for. So, if three is also a number that signifies completeness, three sixes together (666) is ‘completely evil and very powerful’. Four signifies universality, completeness and solidity in apocalyptic conventions (eg the four corners of the earth). So a cube, a 3D square, is really, really complete and unshakeable. One thousand just means a lot – too many to count. Twelve is usually connected with either the 12 tribes of Israel – the Old Testament people of God – or the 12 apostles – heading up the New Testament Church, or both. So 144,000 means that Old and New Testament people of God, compounded, makes a big, a really vast crowd. It never meant that only 144,000 people (and definitely not 144,001) will be in heaven.

Colours

Second, colours aren’t to be taken literally either. White means purity and in some cases victory; gold means the same with preciousness added in; red generally signifies violent power and bloodshed; black, disaster and death. Green can also be used to signify death.

These are conventions with which we have never been particularly familiar in our modern western traditions. More positively, over the past 20 years or so we have begun to recognise the importance of allowing the different types of literature in the Bible (genres) to inform our reading and preaching of God’s richly and gloriously varied Word.

Hold on

Here’s why it’s so vital to give the apocalyptic literature of the Bible the thinking time it needs to speak in its unique, if seemingly strange, way. Most of it is written to explain what’s happening with power ‘behind the scenes’; much of it inevitably focuses on whose power will ultimately be victorious. Therefore, much of it points us to the end of all powers other than God, in his victorious sovereignty and to the eternal triumph of ‘the Lamb that was slain’. The point is not to answer speculations about ‘end times’ but to help God’s people to hold on to him by faith while under oppressive and troubling powers in the present time.

Apocalyptic literature is in the Bible to sustain you through apparent chaos, when earthly powers seem to dictate false ideas of what’s true and good and determine the course of history. It is there to give you hope and endurance. It is there to save you from being duped by the true power of visible evil by unveiling the truer power of God who is invisible. It is in the Bible to unveil a radiant, joyful and glorious future. Image by image, chapter by chapter, book by book, it says, clear and strong, ‘Hold