Day 260: Psalms 24-26 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Welcome to the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (upbeat music) - Hey, Emily. Welcome to day 260 here at the Bible department today. We've got a handful of Psalms. We've got Psalm 24, 25 and 26. And I'm just gonna call this another bundle of Psalms by King David. Psalm 24 probably a Psalm that most of us are familiar with. So we'll tackle all three of these Psalms today. We'll get context, we'll get nerdy nuggets. We'll always leave the episode off with a timeless truth. So then you can apply God's word to your life. It is better to apply one word from the Lord than to understand every word from God. So we always wanna get a timeless truth so that you can apply the word of the Lord to your life. All right, if you haven't done the reading for today, stop the video, pause the audio, get the reading done, shouldn't take you long. It should take you probably maybe 10 minutes. I mean, I did the reading pretty quickly. So let's dive into the episode, okay? Psalm 24 starts out, the earth is the Lord's in all that is in it. I memorize this verse as a kid as the earth is the Lord's and the fullness there of the world and all who live in it.

That's actually my number one verse for tithing, okay? Now you may think to yourself this verse and say anything about tithing. Well, the Bible says that the earth is the Lord's. That means my house, my car, my job. Everything belongs to the Lord. It's all his. And so I am only attaining wealth in his world with his resources, with the breath that he's given me. So the earth is the Lord's, okay? The generosity starts when I realize he owns everything. The Lord owns everything. I actually don't own anything. I'm an owner of nothing. I'm a steward of everything. And that mindset really starts with Psalm 24. The earth is the Lord's in all that is in it, the world in all who live in it. It's funny, I was at a restaurant this past Sunday and invited the waitress at the restaurant to church. Why? 'Cause I believe that the earth is the Lord's and everyone who lives in it. God wants to have a relationship with every single person that's a part of his creation. She ended up coming to church and I'm super excited. Why? Why am I allowed about the invitation? 'Cause the earth is the Lord's, the world and all who live in it.

Everybody, whether they're a heathen or whether they're Christian or whether they hate God or whether they love God, they actually belong to God. They are the Lord's. So, and we as believers want to help them to realize you belong to God. Okay, I know you've leased yourself to sin, but God owns you, okay? And he bought you with a price and that price is the precious blood of his son, okay? The earth is the Lord's, such a good verse. The earth is the Lord's on the fullness thereof, the world and all who live in it. For he founded upon the seas and established it on the rivers, okay? If you've been rocking with us as Genesis, right? God takes that which is chaotic. The spirit of the Lord's hovering over the waters, over the surface of the deep. And what does God do? Move the creation from chaos to order. So we can see here in the Psalms, this exact same worldview that God founded on the seas. He established it on the rivers. What do seas and rivers represent? Chaos, all right? Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Here's where we're gonna get into some context. Okay, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place?

Those who have clean hands and a pure heart. That's actually what these three Psalms are all about. That question, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Now the context here is that Jerusalem is on an incline. Okay, so it doesn't matter what direction you're coming from the north-south, east of the west. In order to get to Jerusalem, you have to ascend. You have to ascend through the hills in order to get to Jerusalem, okay? So there's a whole section of Psalms that we'll look at later called the Psalms of ascent. And they were supposed to be read while you were on your trek to pass over ascending up to Jerusalem. Okay, so Jerusalem is a high altitude, high elevation. You've got to ascend to get there, okay? So who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? So this asking the hill of the Lord is Jerusalem. Those who have clean hands and a pure heart who don't lift up their souls to what is false, who don't swear deceitfully, they will receive blessing from the Lord of indication of the God of their salvation, such as the company of those who seek Him, seek Him of God of Jacob. Now, this next part, the context that a lot of people believe, a lot of scholars believe is surrounding Psalm 24 is 1 Chronicles 13, 8, okay? So 1 Chronicles 13, 8, David realizes

that the arc of the covenant is actually in an area called karyath jerene. You can read all about this in 1 Chronicles 13. And in 1 Chronicles 13, 8, they actually put the arc of God on a cart, which is gonna be a bad idea. But that's a whole 'nother, timeless truth, nerdy nugget, context, slew for another day. They put it on a cart and it says this in verse 8. David and all Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with song and liars and harps and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets. They got instruments and they've got music and they're dancing before the arc of the Lord. Why? 'Cause they're bringing it up to Jerusalem. So a lot of people would say, this is actually a psalm of ascension, not the same as the psalms that we'll study later, which are literally, you know, to be sung as you climbed through the hills, not those songs of ascent that we'll study later, but that this is about the king of glory ascending. So this is gonna become a psalm that's then gonna get transposed under the person of Jesus, that the ascension of the king is to be parallel with the entronement of that king. So this is a worship psalm. So here we get, getting to verse seven. Lift up your heads, O gates and be lifted up,

O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in. Come in aware, Jerusalem. Who is his king of glory? The Lord got strong and mighty. The Lord got mighty in battle. What does the Lord do before he rests in his temple? He defeats all of Israel's enemies. That is salvation in context. Salvation in the context of the psalms is not from sin. It's from Israel's enemies. And what does Jesus do? He defeats the enemy, Satan. So that you and I don't have to pay the penalty of sin. And so he defeats his enemies and then what gets ascended to the right hand of the father to sit on his throne, okay? So a defeat of the enemy is preceded is the thing that precedes the entronement of God, okay? So this is psalms. Who is the king of glory? The Lord got strong and mighty. Lord got mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates and be lifted up, O ancient doors that the king of glory may come in. That the arc of the covenant is going to come into Jerusalem. Who is this king of glory? The Lord of hosts, who is this king of glory? Seilah. So a lot of scholars actually believed that this moment

in 1 Chronicles 13 verse eight, when they are singing and dancing with song and lyre and harp and tamarines and cymbals and trumpets, that what they're singing would have been Psalm 24, okay? So that's the context of Psalm 24. Psalm 24, I know I'm kind of skipping Psalm 25. I'll give you one dirty nugget for Psalm 25. What you're not gonna ever realize when you study this in English is that Psalm 25 is actually in acrostic, okay? And acrostic, and acrostic is, let's take, say you would take A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, element of P, K, all the letters of the alphabet and you'd have A, would stand for something and B, would stand for something. So if I say, you know, ah, man, an acrostic, we would think of like an acronym, okay? Where every letter actually stands for something. So on acrostic, you would take the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and that would give you 22 stanzas, that's exactly what you get for this Psalm, okay? The Psalm of the full acrostic, and acrostic is the form of writing in which the first letter in each line or stand a spells out some specific kind of pattern. The most usual pattern would be the Hebrew alphabet. So here's what acrostic are designed to do. Here's a nerdy nugget for you. Acrostic were usually used to show some full range of emotion or theme.

It's very similar today where we say from A to Z or let's take John the revelator in the book of Revelation. Says that Jesus is referred to as the Alpha and the Omega. He's the beginning in the end. The point being is that God was there at the beginning and at the end and is there for there at every step in between, okay? So full range, full range from A to Z. That's what acrostic poems in Hebrew are. So chapter 25 is showing a full range of this one theme of Yaba defeating enemies, giving guidance that when God defeats enemies and he allows you to approach, there's a guilt over sin and a trust in him that proceeds when we realize that Yaba's defeated our enemies and that he's allowed us to approach him. So verse 24, chapter 26, kind of mirror each other and that if chapter 24 is all about how the Ark of the Covenant ascends up the hill and approaches Jerusalem and then comes to rest in Jerusalem, Psalm 26 is actually a psalm of how the worshipper is to ascend, enter and approach. I want you to remember that pattern, ascend, enter and approach. So the Ark of the Covenant has ascended, entered, ascended the hills, entered Jerusalem and approached the resting place where the glory is gonna dwell. The worshipper is now supposed to follow that same pattern, ascend, enter and then approach. And so Psalm 26 is gonna give a layout of how the worshipper is supposed to do that.

So Hambley, the weight is over. My brand new book, "Crushing Chaos" is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book and if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. I'll read it the way that I've got it in my notes. Psalm 26 then is a Psalm of approach. In Psalm 24, we saw Yahweh approach Zion to being thrown upon it as king. But now in Psalm 26, we see one of Yahweh's subjects approaching the king's throne or palace to petition him for salvation and sanctuary. This then is another example of how the Psalms tell us so much of how Israel was meant to interact with Yahweh their king. Another nerdy nugget, okay, I'll drop one more nerdy nugget.

The reason that David is a man after God's own heart is because David, and you can hear it in all these Psalms, David doesn't really consider himself to be the king of Israel. He considers Yahweh to be the king of Israel. He doesn't consider himself to be the shepherd of Israel. He considers Yahweh to be the shepherd of Israel. Like for David, he very much so sees himself as a lowercase K king, a lowercase S shepherd. At no point does David try to take any kind of glory or credit from Yahweh. David is incredibly careful to consistently place Yahweh in the king position, even though David is king. And so David becomes the archetype for what a king is supposed to be because the earthly king is supposed to enthrown the heavenly king as king. That is his job. And David is the one that establishes this pattern that the earthly king is really just there to not even be a king, but to establish Yahweh as king. And that is incredibly counterintuitive. Most humans would think, "Oh, God, I'm running me to be king. Let me go ahead and be king." But no, David is saying, "Well, God, I'm running me to be king so that I could enthrown him as king." That's my job, to enthrown him as the king. And so Yahweh is going to vindicate David, not because David is always insanely moral,

but David never, and I mean never, practiced his idolatry and never robs glory from Yahweh. Yahweh is always king. He's always given the credit. He's always deferred to. And you can see that in these Psalms, okay? Last little nerdy nugget that I'll give you about Psalm 26 is that Psalm 26, 27, 28 are to be seen as a single unit, okay? We try hard not to break up. Okay, so Psalm 26, which is our last Psalm for today, is actually supposed to be a unit with the two of the Psalms for tomorrow. So Psalm 26, 27, 28 are seen as a single unit. Three Psalms are connected with the house of Yahweh, the big theme there is the house of Yahweh. These three Psalms together tell a story, a story of a petitioner and the house of Yahweh. Psalm 26, that petitioner approaches the house and is searched by Yahweh to see if he is sincere. That's the Psalm that we have here that is closing out our time together. Psalm 27, he finds safety and sanctuary in Yahweh's house. And in Psalm 28, he brings his petition to Yahweh and is given an answer. Okay, so Psalm 26, Psalm 27, Psalm 28 is the relationship of a petitioner and how they are supposed to ascend, enter and approach the throne or the palace or the glory of Yahweh. So Psalm 26 then is a Psalm of approach, which leads us perfectly into our timeless truth. My timeless truth today is that Yahweh and Jesus are both seen through the Scriptures as holy, worshiped, exalted, enthroned, fully other than us, yet fully approachable. I love this word for Psalm 26, a Psalm of approach. It's the petitioner approaching Yahweh. How do we approach the Lord with thanksgiving, with praise, with honor? Okay, a Psalm of approach. This holy, worshiped, exalted God is fully approachable, fully intimate and fully present. Okay, this God whose holy is not distant, this God who is holy is fully close and allows us to be to approach him. That's not just a new testament idea. That's an old testament idea and that is a timeless truth. There are a couple of verses that I highlighted. It says this, this is Psalm 25, this is verse 14. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him and he makes his covenant known to them. Friendship, friendship of the Lord are for who? Those who act casual? No. Friendship with the Lord is reserved for those who fear him. So, actually, the more I honor him, the more I worship him, the more God extends

friendship to me. And that's counterintuitive. We think that the way that we get friendship with people is by cheating them casually or by not being respectful or honoring, but actually honor creates a pathway towards friendship. And then there's one more verse that I saw. It says, it says this in Psalm 26, verse 8. Oh Lord, I love the house in which you dwell in the place where your glory abides. I love the place where you dwell. There's something that I want you know, to be contagious that I think David represents is zeal for God's house, a love for God's house. Okay, so approaching the throne of God, approaching the house of God, having reverence for the throne of God, the ark of the covenant, the place where God dwells, having reverence and passion and honor for that, but not having so much reverence for it that I don't form an intimate relationship with it. It's funny, a sister in Christ that's in my life, her name is Amanda. And, you know, Amanda's actually on a street. So, Amanda, hopefully you watch this and you hear the shout out. Okay, I hope you're still on a 260-day street. It's funny, because when I told her, you know, you want to mark up your Bible, like you got to get a pen, you got to get some colored pencils, like you got to mark it up. She's like, oh no, the Bible's holy. I can't do that. And I was like, holy doesn't mean that you don't engage. Actually, if it's holy, then you should be writing in it. If it's holy, then you want to get it on the tablet of your heart. And the only way to do that is to consume it, is to underline it. It's to, so God says, I'm not holy. I'm not, I don't want to be holy in a way that you don't engage with me. If I'm holy, come to my house. If I'm holy, come to where I'm dwelling. If I'm holy, approach my throne. Okay? Yes, I'm holy, which means that you value me, but you can't value me so much that you don't engage with me. And so I said to Amanda, so are you telling me that by not opening your Bible, and not- And you think that by not engaging with the Bible, you're honoring it. You're not honoring it because you don't have a relationship with the word of God. But guess what? A man is on a 260 day streak, which means she decided to actually honor it,

not just with lip service, but with life service. Like I'm going to actually, you know, engage with it. And I don't think it was maybe, I think it was maybe like Charles Spurgeon who said these words. A Bible that's falling apart typically belongs to someone whose life is not. Okay? So I don't exalt the word of God by making sure that my Bible's pristine and that, you know, it's clean. It's like on a shelf somewhere. No, the way that I show that the Bible's holy is by ripping it apart, man. I want to tear the Bible apart. I want to write in it. I want to color in it. I want to underline it. I want to take notes. Why? 'Cause I want to engage with it because it's holy. That's actually the way that I prove that it's holy is by getting it ingrained into the fabric of my life. And that happens by wrestling with the text that happens by marking it up. A Bible that's falling apart typically belongs to a person whose life is not. And my prayer is that as you've been walking with us for the last 260 days, or maybe you just started, maybe you've been

on this podcast or anything with us for 10 days, maybe five days or two days. I hope that eventually your Bible starts falling apart 'cause guess what it'll be proof of, that your life's not. And the more people engage the Bible, the less and less their life is a mess. And I'll say it this way. The Bible will either keep you from sin or sin will keep you from your Bible. Guilt and shame will either keep you from engaging with God's word or the word of God in you. I've hidden your word in my heart so that may not sin against you. The word of God in you will actually be the thing that keeps you from sin, not your willpower, not you grinning and bearing it, not you white knuckle disciplining your way to salvation. But you saying, no Lord, the path to being more like you is by actually being near you. And the more I'm close to you, the more I'll be like you. All right, that's our timeless truth for the day. Tomorrow, I'll see you right here, same time, same place for day 261. We've got Psalms 27, 28, 29 tomorrow. It's gonna be a good one. I love you. I'm so proud of you. If you're on a 260 day streak, I'm proud of you. If you're on a two day streak, I'm proud of you. I can't wait to see you tomorrow.

I love you guys. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. And if this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebobbledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]