Day 299: Psalm 142-145 | 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) Family, welcome to day 299 here at the Bible Department. Today, we get to wave bye-bye to our beloved King David, which is honestly pretty sad. I've kind of fallen in love with David as we have studied the Psalms together. But we get to wave by because these four Psalms, Psalm 142, 143, 144 and 145, are the final four Psalms of David that we've got, bringing our total number of Psalms that David contributed to the book of Psalms to 73. 73 Psalms and I don't know about you, but sometimes when I read through 1st and 2nd Samuel and I hear about all of the, might I say, these questionable things that David did. You kind of can, when you just look at a historical account of David's life, maybe come away from the scriptures going, I don't know about that guy, but then you read the Psalms and you're like, I quite love that guy, that guy's passionate, he's amazing, he loves the Lord. And I think that honestly probably is what the scriptures are designed to do. They're designed to help us to fill in the great, right? My son is four years old and for my son,

they're only good guys and bad guys. But what the Bible is actually doing is helping us to understand that there's a lot of bad in good people and there's a good amount of good in bad people that people don't neatly or nicely fit into categories of good people and bad people. But there's way more than 50 shades of gray in the middle. And I know that may make you feel uncomfortable, that makes me feel uncomfortable, but my honest, just, I don't know, my honest conclusion after reading Psalms about David at least is love that guy, what a good guy. Anyway, today, unfortunately, we get to say goodbye to David. If you have not done the reading, this is a good time for you to stop this video, pause the audio and go get the reading done. We got four Psalms that we are diving into today. Honestly, I think these Psalms are incredible. Let me give you some context clues for the four Psalms that were assigned to us on our Bobberding plans today. For Psalm 142, 143, 144, and 145, these are all written by David, okay? Both Psalm 142 and Psalm 143 are going to be individual laments, okay? So you already, you've been rocking, we've been rocking together for a long time. You know exactly how an individual lament works. It's one person who has a plea, a complaint, an issue that's happening in their life, okay?

The context around Psalm 142 is actually debated, okay? You're gonna get, we're both, we're all gonna get this little heading at the top of 142 that says a maskle of David when he was in the cave, a prayer. Now, there are two moments that could serve us context for Psalm 142, two moments where David was in a cave, okay? I'll give you both options. It's either 1st Samuel chapter 22 or 1st Samuel chapter 24, okay? 1st Samuel chapter 22 or 1st Samuel chapter 24. It is either just after David escaped from the Philistines by pretending to be insane or pretending to be mad and he hid in the cave of Adulum, that's 1st Samuel chapter 22, or in 1st Samuel chapter 24, when after Saul had broken off his pursuit of David to deal with the Philistines, that he returned to chasing David and then just so happened to go to relieve himself in the very cave David was hiding in. So either way, the context of this psalm is once again David for no fault of his own being hunted like an animal by his envious king and that would be none other than King Saul, okay? So that's Psalm 142, Psalm 143 is another individual event, and then Psalm 144 is essentially gonna be a new song. We're gonna see that verbiage, a new song with lots of old material, okay? So Psalm 144 is actually going to contain

tons of material from older psalms, okay? So we're gonna kind of get a remixed psalm, okay? David's gonna take elements from other areas or other psalms that he had written, they're gonna get reworked. And then last Psalm 145 is our final Psalm of David, okay? In the entire book of Psalms, this is the 73rd Psalm attributed to King David in the very, very, very, very, very last one that we will study together. All right, so that's as much context as I have for you. The Psalms are always a little light on the context and heavy on the nerdy nuggets and the timeless truths. So with no further ado, let's get into some nerdy nuggets. I hope you got your Bibles. We're gonna go to Psalm 142. - 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 book's 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. - Psalm 142 says this, this is an individual lament. So these words are not gonna shock you. I cry aloud to the Lord, that's right. Of course you're crying, it's a lament, okay? I cry aloud to the Lord. I lift it up my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out before my complaint, before him I tell my trouble, okay? Just verses one and two should tell you this is a little lament, right? We've got crying, we've got pouring out, we've got complaints, we've got trouble, okay? This is a classic individual lament. Then I want you to drop to the end of verse four. It says this, I have no refuge. No one cares for my life. I want you to study those words. I have no refuge, I have no refuge. No one cares for my life. And then verse five, I cry to you Lord. I say you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. I wonder if you can see that juxtaposition. From the end of verse four to verse five.

Verse four, here are the words, I have no refuge. Then we get into the very next verse. And the words are, Lord, Yahweh, you are my refuge. Man, just that juxtaposition. I wonder what's going on in David's mind, right? He realizes he's complaining, he's lamenting. He's got trouble, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, and he gets all the way down to the end of verse four and he says, I have no refuge. It's like I have no defense, I have no safe place to go. I have no refuge. And then it's almost like a light bulb goes off. And verse five, he goes, Lord, you are my refuge. And I think that can be a model for you and I. I don't wanna get into a timeless truth necessarily, but whatever you feel like you have none of at the moment, I have no patience, I have no money, I have no friends, I have no words, whatever that is, I wanna challenge you to then transition into verse five. Okay, so maybe you're saying right now, I have no peace. I want you to transition and go, the Lord is my peace. Lord, you are my peace. I have no words, Lord, you are my words. I have no money, Lord, you are my provision. Whatever you have none of, at some point you have to realize the Lord is that thing. The Lord a lot of times becomes the thing that you have none of in your own power and in your own strength. That's exactly what we see.

As we transition from verse four to verse five here in Psalm 142, but there's a nerdy nugget that I could pull out of this. Guess it's pretty devotional in nature. It's whatever you feel like you have none of, I have no resources, you know? I have no self control, I have no blank. Whatever that fill in the blank is, I want you to actually begin to confess not the opposite that you do have it, but confess, well no, the Lord is gonna supply that. And he already is that, he's the I am that I am. And the same God that can be peace for one person in provision for another can be self control for me. Lord, I may not have blank, I may not have refuge, but I have you. And if I have you, then I do have refuge. We live in a society that will always agree that you have no power or you have no influence or you have no resources or you have no joy. Whatever, whatever that fill in the blank is for you. I have no blank. But actually a biblical rule of view then challenges you and says, do you have the Lord? Do you have Yahweh? Do you have God? 'Cause if you have the Lord, then the Lord is your joy and the Lord is your power and the Lord is your, whatever that thing is that you think you don't have.

It's my nerdy nugget for Psalm 142, okay? Let's keep going, let's read Psalm 143. And verse four says this. This is another individual event, okay? So, you know, bad news, sad news, you know, it's venting. It's complaining, you know, it's teeters on the negative side. But even in the negativity, like David always shows us how to navigate our negative emotions to get to a place of faith. So here's what it says. Psalm 143, we're gonna read verse four. So my spirit grows faint within me. I circled that word, faint when I was reading, grows faint within me. My heart within me is dismayed. So my emotional state is faint and dismayed, broken, downhearted, you know, whatever. It's all under the banner of faint, like I'm fainting. Like you're imagining so overwhelmed that you're at the point of fainting. Like I'm fainting with exhaustion, I'm fainting with just feelings of overwhelmedness. And then we actually get a sense clue as to why there's fainting. And I wanna ask the same question to you 'cause I think this is where we get to. This is what David wants us to get to. It says this, "So my spirit grows faint within me. My heart within me is dismayed." Verse five, "I remember the days of long ago.

I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done. I remember, I meditate, I consider." By the way, this is how Hebrew poetry works. It's not that the words rhyme, it's that the concepts rhyme, the ideas rhyme, okay? So remember, meditate and consider are all the same idea. And I just want you to get this one idea in your head, this one concept in your head. Maybe you're fainting because you're forgetting. Maybe you're fainting because you're forgetting. 'Cause immediately David realizes, "Ah, my spirit grows faint within me." And then verse five, realized the issue. Whoa, let me remember. I need to remember the days of long ago. I need to meditate on Yahweh's works. I need to consider what his hands have done. I could consider and meditate my problem or I could consider and meditate all the things that God's done. But that's gonna require me going back into my memory bank and remembering how faithful God's been. And if I do a good job of remembering, guess what? I won't fall into fainting because of forgetting. I'm fainting, I'm weak, I'm weary, I'm overwhelmed because really, I keep on forgetting. And all of us have spiritual amnesia from time to time. We just forget, we forget how faithful God's been. We forget how awesome he's been.

We forget that this isn't your first rodeo, like this isn't your first time facing a giant. It's not your first time marching around a wall. It's not your first time believing God for big things. It's not your first time I'm a preacher myself. And I'm in the middle of planting a church right now. I gotta remember. Wait, wait, wait, if the same God who got me and my wife miraculously pregnant with our son is the same God that called us to plant a church, man, what am I stressed out about? Why am I stressed? I'm preaching to the choir, all right, come on it. The same God who called me to start Armistudios with multiple employees now in my garage in the middle of a pandemic, it's called me to plant a church, man, the same God who led me through that is gonna lead me through this. And there are times in the church planting process where I have felt overwhelmed. I have felt myself fainting. When I look at a number, this a couple of days ago, you know, I realized, oh, we need half a million dollars. Whoo, all right, I've never needed half a million dollars before and well, guess what? The same God that provided $50,000 when we needed cameras for the studio is gonna provide $500,000. And when I remember what God has done, it gives me strength to not fate, faint,

now that I'm at a different obstacle or a different wall. That is my nerdy nugget for Psalm 143. Let's look at Psalm 144. This is taken from earlier material. Psalm 144 really highlights the thing that makes David David, all right? It says this, "Praise be to the Lord my rock who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle." David makes it clear, "Hey, it's not my own training that makes me a good warrior." No, no, no. "The Lord trains my hands for war. He trains my fingers for battle." All right, then I want us to skip all the way down to verse 9. It says this, "I will sing a new song to you, my God, on the 10-stringed liar. I will make music to you, to the one who gives victory to kings, who delivers his servant David, from the deadly sword to deliver me, rescue me from the hands of foreigners, whose mouths are full of lies, whose right hands are deceitful." What does Saul, to just have an issue doing? Saul actually robs Yahweh of glory and praise, whereas David, David wants to shower Yahweh with glory and praise. And you actually can begin to see the juxtaposition of a king who takes glory for himself versus David who gives glory to Yahweh. So Psalm 144 is a royal psalm, a messianic psalm. So this royal psalm is designed to celebrate the victories of the king. And what does David, the king, say, as we're supposed to be celebrating his victories? He makes it less about himself and more about Yahweh, more about God, okay? He sings, "Oh no, oh, hey, I'll sing a new song to you, to Yahweh on the 10-stringed liar. I will make music to you because this victory is not simply mine because I was a brilliant military commander." No, no, no. You are the one that's brought us victory, okay? You are the one who has protected your people. Psalm 145 is our last psalm of David.

Can you believe it? This is the 73rd psalm that David attributes is attributed to him that we have in the collection of the psalms. By the time we pick up tomorrow, we will be looking at Psalm 146, which is actually written by our good friend Ezra, all right? So today's it, okay? We get to wave. We not get to. I mean, we have to. It's kind of like, I, at least, emburgurgingly waving goodbye to David. And so we get to Psalm 145. That's the final hymn. This is a fulacrostic, okay? That means that every stanza is taken from a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. We have a fulacrostic here, but we're missing one letter. So that's the nerdy nugget. And I would say that Psalm 145 is a summary. It's a wonderful summary of David's life of worship, okay? For all his faults, David had one strength that was greater than any other character in the Old Testament. He was perhaps the greatest worshipper that ever existed, all right? So Psalm 145, I would say, is just a good legacy psalm for David. It says this starting in verse one, I will exalt you, my God, the king. Oh, don't you love that? My God, the king. King David is calling Yahweh the king. My God, the king. I will praise your name forever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your name forever and ever, every day. This is not something I just do, but I'm in a good mood.

This isn't every seven days, like on Sunday at church, no, no, every single day, okay? Great is the Lord, most worthy of praise. His greatness in no one can fathom. One generation commends your works to another. They tell of your mighty acts. I just want to end our time together with a timeless truth that for David, he wants one generation to commend the work or the name or the glory of the Lord to the next generation. It says this, one generation commends your works to another. They tell of your mighty acts. Number one, that communicates to us that praise isn't just talking to God or singing about God, but it's telling other people about how great God is, okay? That's also praise. It's bragging about God. It's telling other people the good things that God has done. If there's a legacy that David leaves behind, it's there. from his generation to the next. It's funny, I was at a church recently that was really multi-generational, which by the way, multi-generational ministry is like, the bomb. And I was asking the pastor, how'd you get all the grandpas and grandmas to stay in church? Sometimes people can be so attached to like the color of the carpet or to singing hymns or to pews or to stained glass or whatever. And he said, well, that has challenged all the grandparents in our church. And I asked them, do you want your grandpa, do you want your grandchildren to come to this church?

If you want your grandchildren to come to this church, then we're gonna have to make some changes. And they'd rather their grandchildren have a legacy of worship versus a legacy of a style. And that's timelessly true. David says that the real goal of worship is that verse four of Psalm 145 is that one generation would commend the works of Yahweh to another. One generation would commend the works of Yahweh to another. So multi-generational ministry is actually like the point. Like that's the goal. What good is it if we win an entire generation for Christ and then that generation of the parrot doesn't carry or pass the baton of worship or faith to the next generation. And so I love this because David's legacy isn't style. David's legacy isn't. And that's why I love the fact that we don't know how any of these Psalms were actually sung. We don't know the melodies. I'm glad that we don't cause if we did, we would try to resurrect a style instead of resurrecting what we should resurrect, which I think what David's trying to pass along, which is his passion and his heart and his emphasis on the importance of the presence of God, the manifest presence of God. If there's something that I want my son to say about me, it's not that I loved a certain style of worship.

It's that I loved God. It's not that I liked a certain kind of music or I liked choirs or I liked gospel or I liked Hillsong. No, no, no, it's that I knew what the presence of God felt like and I talked to him about how awesome God was and I got him connected, not with a style of worship, but with the object of our worship, which is none other than the Lord. And I think that's the timeless truth. I don't think that's just true for David. I think that's true for all of us as we try to lead multi-generational churches, as we try to lead inter-generational churches, as we realize that the likelihood of somebody being a believer is in direct proportion to the amount of people that they worship with who come from other generations. I think it's easy to create churches with one generation present. But what we need is we need 70 and 80-year-olds to be commending the works of Yahweh to the next generation. And we need boomers to be commending the works of Yahweh to millennials and Gen X. And we need Gen X and millennials to commend the works of Yahweh to Gen Z. That's healthy, it's good. And that's not just true for David and Psalm 145. And the reason that we're sitting here today still talking about David, is 'cause guess what? His goal happened. We're gonna go to Psalm 146 tomorrow

and Ezra is gonna eventually write the last five psalms. Why? Because the legacy of what David instituted got passed from one generation to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next, finally to Ezra. And songs haven't gotten passed down, but a heart for worship has gotten passed down. And my question to you is, are you gonna keep the baton going? Are you gonna commend? You always works to the next generation. I know I am, at least I'm gonna try my best. All right, that is Psalms 142 to 145. I hope that you enjoyed day 299 tomorrow. We've got day 300. We're gonna be looking at Psalms 146 to 148. It's gonna be awesome. Same time, same place. I'm gonna be here. The only question is, are you? I love you guys. Pradi, see you 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 thebobledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.