Day 276: Psalms 73-75 | 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 thebaldapartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (upbeat music) Bible department family, welcome to day 276. I'm super excited. We are crossing over from book two of the Psalms into book three of the Psalms. If you don't know Psalms is divided into five individual books because these Psalms or these songs of praise and prayer are supposed to be creating a Torah for the people of God everywhere they go. The presence of God is not supposed to only be experienced in the temple, but the presence of God can be experienced anywhere where you create an altar onto the Lord. So that's what Psalms is designed to do. And so now we are getting into book three. So today we are looking at Psalm 73, 74 and 75. Hey, if you've done the reading, everything I'm gonna say is gonna make perfect sense. I'm gonna give you context clues and I'm gonna give you as many nerdy nuggets as I can fit into this episode. I got a lot today and we're always gonna leave with a timeless truth so that you can apply the word of God to your daily life. So for anyone who has not done the reading,

this is a great place to stop the video, pause the audio and go get the reading done, okay? Psalm 73, 74 and 75 is what we are tackling today. For everyone that's done the reading, let's dive in. All right, book three, okay? Everybody say book three, book three. Book three of the Psalms is actually gonna include 17 Psalms total. This is Psalm 73 all the way to Psalm 89, all right? You'll probably immediately notice that the five books that encapsulate the five books of the Psalms are not evenly split, right? Like book one is massive, right? Book three is obviously small. One of the things that you're probably gonna notice immediately as soon as you pick up your Bible and look at Psalm 73 is that we're gonna get a Psalm of Asaph, a Psalm of Asaph. Now, we've had a Psalm by my brother Asaph in the past. I believe that it was Psalm 50. Somebody can fact check me, let me know in the comments if that is right. I think it was Psalm 50, but I'm not 100%. I guess I could check it. I could fact check myself, let's go, let's go, let's go. Let's see if I can find Psalm 50 quick. Lee, that's Psalm 44, Psalm 50. Yeah, Psalm 50, a Psalm of Asaph, all right? So Asaph's back, Asaph Rocky, not his blade. My man, Asaph's back, all right?

And so let me give you context because all three of the Psalms that we're gonna look at today are written by Asaph, okay? So if you've got your Bible or if you've got maybe Bible software like I do, okay? You can go to first Chronicles, first Chronicles chapter 16, verse five, and second Chronicles chapter five, verse 12, okay? I want you to remember these, I'm gonna give it to you as a literation so you can remember it, okay? Asaph the architect, okay? Asaph the architect. So David, King David, is going to reimagine what temple worship is gonna look like. Before King David, there is no singing or instruments or musicians. That's not a part of worship. Worship was offering your animal sacrifice. It was serving in the temple, but it did not include singing. So this is why David is a man after God's own heart. He's like, man, we should really sing to God. Like nobody before David was thinking to themselves, God likes music, all right? But David is like, man, worship isn't just practical. It's not just taking care of the guilt or getting forgiveness from God or sacrificing an animal to God. But man, singing has a way of connecting us emotionally to God and David begins to incorporate singing, okay?

So we see this in first Chronicles chapter 16, okay? First Chronicles chapter 16 verse five, I'm actually gonna start reading in verse four. King David appointed some of the Levites to minister before the ark of the Lord, to extol, it's a good word. Thank and praise the Lord, the God of Israel. Asaph was the chief, okay? So Asaph is important. And next to him in rank, where is Zechariah, then Jaziel, and then a bunch of other names But they were to play the liars and harps. Asaph was to sound the cymbals and Baniya and Jehaziel, the priest were to blow the trumpets regularly before the ark of the covenant of God. So David is gonna institute these people to what? Ex toll, thank, and praise the Lord with singing and with instruments, okay? So Asaph is literally a part of the foundation of architecting this new way of worshiping Yahweh. So Asaph the architect. You can also read about this in Second Chronicles, Second Chronicles chapter five verse 12, okay? It says this, "All the Levites who were musicians, Asaph, He-Man, "Jedithin, and their sons and relatives stood "on the east side of the altar dressed in fine linen "and playing cymbals, harps and liars. "They were accompanied by 120 priests sounding trumpets." Okay, so this is a disacquire. This is a lot of people, all right?

The trumpeters and musicians joined in unison to give praise and thanks to the Lord, accompanied by trumpet, cymbals, and other instruments. The singers raised their voices and praise to the Lord in saying, "He is good, his love, and ders forever." Then, oh, that's good. Then the temple of the Lord was filled with the cloud. Okay, what's the cloud? The glory cloud of Yahweh. And the priests cannot perform their service because of the cloud for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God, okay? The singing and the musicians and the thanks and the praise that was offered to God props the cloud of glory to fall so that the priests cannot even perform the service. And by service, that means offering up animal sacrifices to the Lord. So we begin to see in second Chronicles that this isn't just descriptive, this is prescriptive, that there's something about singing, there's something about playing music that connects our hearts to God and that God responds to it. God's about it, that God likes it, okay? So David isn't just some rogue, crazy person who's trying to implement a form of worship that God's not about. God likes this and God responds to this with his glory cloud resting.

One of the ways that I communicate this on stage a lot is that we think about worship as inhale and exhale, right? That when we worship the Lord, it's like incense rising up to God and we want God to breathe in our praise, to breathe in our worship. And anytime God breathes in, that means he's going to breathe out. And when God breathes out, his cloud, his wind, his breath begins to fill our sanctuaries, begins to fill the rooms that we're in and the presence of God falls as a response to us lifting up praise and lifting up adoration and lifting up worship to God. So I want you to think when you are in praise and worship, if you're tired, if you're weary, if you're burnt out, if you're anxious and you need the breath of God, then how about you offer incense to the Lord so that he breathes in praise and then breathes out his presence into your life and into the sanctuary. So often that's counterintuitive. We think to ourselves, man, I'm drained, I just need God. Well, in being drained, what you need is to worship the Lord so that you can begin to get renewal and refreshing from God. All right, family, 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 & Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes & 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. So here's the context, okay? The descendants of Asaph are going to be the ones who collect the Psalms that we're looking at today and most of the Psalms for book three, okay? The descendants of Asaph. Why do we know that the descendants of Asaph are the ones collecting Asaph's Psalms? And so the context for these Psalms, not in their writing, but in their assembling, is going to be when the exiles from Babylon return to Jerusalem and start rebuilding Jerusalem. So the context for these Psalms is return and rebuilding, return and rebuilding. I could preach and teach on this right here that hundreds of years after Asaph has lived, his descendants are still a part of the worship, part of the fabric of the worship. Talk about a legacy that you lived such a life of worship and praise that your descendants are still musicians. So this is what it says in Ezra chapter 2 verse 41. Remember, Ezra is tasked with the job of helping to rebuild the temple as Nehemiah is rebuilding the wall.

Here we get Ezra chapter 2 verse 41, the musicians, the descendants of Asaph are listed as people who are helping to rebuild Jerusalem in the wake of the return from exile. So I want you to just know that's the context, that's the context for who Asaph is, the context for his descendants. So these Psalms are being assembled in a time where the people are happy that they're back in the land, but it's a little bittersweet because although they're back in the land, the land has been ruined, ransacked, ravaged by the Babylonians and by other raiding groups that have continued to come in to Jerusalem and tear it to peace. So these Psalms come at a pivotal point in Israel's history. Okay, that's context. Let me try to give you as many dirty jackets as I can. Okay, first of all, Psalm 73 is a wisdom Psalm. You can tell as soon as you start reading Psalm 73, it sounds a lot like questions that are being asked in the book of Job, Psalm 73. Asaph is going to confess, okay? "For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." Like, man, why do the wicked prosper? Verse 13, "Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in essence." I don't know if you've ever felt that way. Like, man, it's not even worth it to live righteously because there are people living ratchet who are winning at life. And so Asaph is being honest. He's like, wait a second, man. The arrogant and the wicked, they're prospering. So it's in vain that I've kept the commands of God and kept my heart pure. And I'll say two things to kind of connect that to modern day life. Actually, one is from my wife. I remember when we got married, my wife was a virgin. And I remember her saying like, it was kind of hard to stay a virgin because she just felt like there were all these girls who weren't honoring God with their physical bodies. And it was almost like they were getting rewarded by getting married and being in these awesome relationships. And again, my wife almost began to take on this idea. It's in vain that I've kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. Like, man, there are people out here who are not sacrificing to the Lord to the level that I'm sacrificing to God. And then they seem fine. Okay. And so this is a wisdom song because Asaph is asking and presenting God with the same kind of questions that Solomon and Job and Ecclesiastes and the wisdom literature of the Bible is presenting to God. Why is it that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people? It's an age-old question. And what we are going to get is God's not going to answer that question. He's not going to answer it in Job and he's definitely not going to answer it here in Psalm 73.

And I want to begin to teach you this idea. You can find this in verse 23. You can find this in verse 25. And you can find this in verse 28. Chapter 73, Psalm 73. This is kind of where the psalm begins to shift. It says this, when I try to understand all this. Okay. So this isn't a psalm of praise. It's a psalm of wisdom trying to understand something. When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply. Like what benefit is there to being a Christian or to being saved or to living righteously till I entered the sanctuary of God, then I understood their final destiny. Okay, and then I entered the sanctuary of God and in drawing near to God began not to bring answers, but began. and appreciate God's presence. So I wanna give you this framework. The thing that we are now gonna see through Psalm 73 is that answers are not what humans need. The presence of God is what we need. And so the psalmist is gonna begin to realize that I thought I wanted answers for these questions, but really God's presence is more important than answers. Okay, so I wanna read verse 23 to you. Verse 23, "Yet I am always with you." You hear that? "I am with you, and you hold me by my right hand." Psalm 25, I mean verse 25, sorry. Psalm 73 verse 25 says this, "Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you." You see that?

That the psalmist is beginning to realize, I don't really need answers to all these questions. What I really need is intimacy, is closeness, is proximity to Yahweh. Verse 28 says this, "But as for me, it is good to be near God." The real conclusion of Psalm 73 is not answers to the questions. Is it beneficial for me to maintain righteousness? No, what's actually the thing that we need more than answers is the presence of God. Because once we experience God's presence, we begin to realize, man, his presence is better than everything. And so the lifestyle that I've chosen to live is actually giving me the best gift that I could ever get, which isn't answers or clarity, but it's his presence. And I just wanna leave you with that. The presence over answers, his presence is greater than answers. And sometimes we desire answers more than we desire his presence. And you know that you've gotten a spiritual maturity. When like the psalmist here, like Asaph, you begin to appreciate his presence more than you are demanding answers from him. Not that we never stop desiring clarity, but at some point you have to realize the chief thing that I need is God's presence. And if I have his presence, I can do without answers. But if I have answers, I can't do without his presence.

I'd rather have presence than answers any day of the week. All right, let me give you some nerdy nuggets really, really quick for Psalm 74 and 75, okay? Psalm 74 is a corporate lament of the fall of Jerusalem. How do we know that? Well, it says it right here in verse seven. They burned your sanctuary to the ground. They defiled the dwelling place of your name. So obviously we're compiling these psalms, post destruction of Jerusalem. And these psalms are intended to help the returnees from exile have inspiration to rebuild Jerusalem, okay? So verse seven gives us context and helps us to understand why the context of the descendants of Asaph beginning to compile these psalms is even important. Okay, second nerdy nugget from Psalm 74 is that Psalm 74 is a chiasm. So verses one through 11 of Psalm 74 are all about corporate suffering. Versus 18 or 23 are all about corporate suffering. So the end and the beginning all about corporate suffering. Again, Psalm one to 11, it's not Psalm one to 11. Why do I keep doing that today? Verses one through 11 of Psalm 74 are all about corporate suffering. Versus 18 or 23 are all about corporate suffering. So we begin and end with corporate suffering. And you know how chasms work,

the good stuff's in the middle. In the middle, we are gonna have verses 12 to 17. And it's all about individual hope. But the author is going to talk about hope in a way that many of us on this podcast are gonna be familiar with because it's gonna, the author is gonna talk about the order that God established when he was creating the cosmos. Remember, if you think about Genesis chapter one, like a Westerner, you're gonna think about Genesis chapter one as God making something out of nothing. But if you think about Genesis one, like a good Eastern, hebraic, ancient person in Genesis chapter one is all about God bringing order to the chaos of the cosmos. So creating and ordering comes synonymous ideas, not salataneous, synonymous. So let me read verses 12 to 17 for you. But God is my king from long ago. He brings salvation on the earth. Okay, how does God bring salvation? It was you who split open the sea by God. The dragon and that dragon is going to get named in verse 14. It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan. By the way, if you want to know by my last book is called Crushing Chaos. It's because of this verse that Yahweh crushes the head of Leviathan. Leviathan is the symbol of chaos and gave it to the, and gave it as food to the creature of the desert. It was you who opened up the springs and streams and dried up the ever-flowing rivers. The day is yours and yours also the night. You established the sun and the moon. It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth. So what God does in the beginning, he does not eradicate all chaos. He gives chaos boundaries, okay? Boundaries of the earth and made summer and winter. So

what we have in verses 12 to 17 is a little creation poem. And what we begin to realize is that the words salvation, creation, and ordering are all used synonymously. How does God create by bringing order? And how does he bring salvation by bringing order? And what is he ordering the chaos? What is he creating? He's creating order. And what is he saving us from? Chaos. Why do you say he gets from chaos? Because chaos kills, okay? You begin to realize, oh, this is a very, very, very Eastern way to think about the cosmos in the world. This is an Eastern worldview. All right. Last nerdy nugget and it's going to come from Psalm 75, okay? Our last Psalm for the day. Psalm 75 is a hymn of corporate praise, okay? We've got a hymn of corporate praise. Now, also let me back up for a second. Why is there a section while we are lamenting the fall of Jerusalem? Why does ASAP include a creation poem where God is creating order where there's chaos? Well, because nothing's more chaotic than the temple being burned to the ground, then your city being burned to the ground, and you being driven off into exile in the Babylon, okay? The people have experienced insane chaos. And so, ASAP is reminding the people the same way that God brought order, salvation, and that God brought his power to the earth by ordering the chaos. That same God is the God that we put our hope in. And yes, Jerusalem being burned to the ground and the temple being broken and torn down is a chaotic experience. But the same God who presided over the ordering of the cosmos in Genesis chapter 1 is the same God who can bring order to our lives again, okay? Our lives are not so chaotic that God can't fix them because the pinnacle of chaos was actually not the destruction of Jerusalem. The pinnacle of chaos was the, was Leviathan needing to be conquered, was the seas and the deep needing to be ordered in Genesis chapter 1. All right, Psalm 75, we've got a hymn of praise, all right? Now, Psalm 74 is a lament that the Babylonians have come and ransacked Jerusalem. So what's going to happen in chapter 75 or Psalm 75, we are going to get an entire hymn of how God is going to overthrow the nations, all right? And so this is a hymn that's really centered around God's wrath, okay? This hymn of corporate praise, it's going to say this in verse 7, but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another, okay? So it's, it's going to say this, in the hand of the Lord, there's a cup, okay? This is Psalm 75, verse 8, in the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices. He pours it out and all the wicked other earth drink it down to its very

dregs, okay? So God is forcing the nations to drink his cup of wrath. Now, the context for what we find in Psalm 75 is actually found in Isaiah chapter 63, where, where the nations are grapes and God steps on the nations to thresh those grapes to get wine. And then Jeremiah is going to pick up on this and that once God has trampled the nations to get wine, that wine is going to get emptied into God's cup of wrath and that he's going to pour that wrath out. And so this idea is pretty graphic, okay? It's saying that if you connect these two images, God treads nations in a wine press and then makes other nations drink the resulting wine. This is meant to show both God's wrath against those who have harmed This is going to lead us to our Thomas truth today, because obviously, wrath is not an element of God's character that we can ignore in the Old Testament. So the cup of wrath is an image that now gets brought into the New Testament. This isn't just important for Psalm 75 or Isaiah 62 or Jeremiah 25 verse 15. This is important for Jesus, because what does Jesus acknowledge? Let in the Garden of Gethsemane where grapes are harvested and threshed, okay, and olive press, sorry, not grapes, but olives are crushed. He realizes that he's about to get crushed, but he is in an olive press, but uses a grape metaphor, a wine metaphor for the Lord. And he says, let this cup pass for me. And so although the nations are threshed into wine in Isaiah, and then they are forced to drink it in Jeremiah, and we see the culmination of that in the Psalms, Jesus drinks the cup of wrath. And he says to the Lord, this is not my will, but I want your will to be done. Can I tell you the good news of the gospel is that the wrath of God has been satisfied. And Jesus has been treated with the wrath that you and I deserve, so that we could be treated like perfect sons and daughters of God. We get to be treated like Jesus because Jesus was treated like us. That is a timeless truth. You may be thinking to yourself, man, the Old Testament is so full of God's wrath. Like that's a massive theme. Where'd all the wrath go? It got poured out on the Son of God named Jesus. The cross is a picture, not just of the grace and forgiveness and mercy of God, but also the justice of God, because the wrath that you and I deserved got poured out on the person of Jesus. And yes, the cross was brutal. The word excruciating actually comes from the word crucifixion. So when we say I'm in excruciating pain, that word was designed to communicate. This is the level of pain that is experienced on the cross during a crucifixion. Jesus, his beard was pulled out of his face. He was brutally beaten. And the image that we're

supposed to see is that on the cross, we get forgiveness. We get grace. We get mercy. Why? Because the wrath, though, the cup of God's wine wrath got poured out on Jesus like a drink offering. And that is a timeless truth. You don't have to be worried or superstitious that God's up to get you, or that you have to pay the penalty of your sin. If you surrender your life to the lordship of Jesus, he will drink the cup of God's wrath for you so that you don't have to. And that's not just true for David or Isaiah or Jeremiah. That is true forever. That's a timeless truth. All right. Tomorrow, we're going to be in Psalm 76 to 78. It'll be day 277 here on the Bible Department podcast. I can't wait to see you. I'll be right here. Same time, same place. If you're on a streak, I'm insanely proud of you. If you're not on the streak, come on. Get it together. I love you guys. I'm so proud of you. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. 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 the Bible Department.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow. [BLANK_AUDIO]