Day 301: Psalm 149-150 | 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) Family, welcome to day 301. We're at the end of the book of Psalms. Come on, that may be bittersweet. It's bittersweet for me. We've been in Psalms for like 50 something days. I have fallen in love with the book Psalms. Honestly, I will say, I think that before recording all these episodes with the Bible department, I liked individual Psalms, but I don't know that I liked the entire book as a whole. I can honestly say on the other end now, you know, recording day 301, having studied for every single day that I have a newfound personally, I have a newfound appreciation for the whole book of Psalms and hopefully by the end of today's episode and today's reading, you will as well. So I hope I hope and pray that you've enjoyed our trek through the book of Psalms. It's the biggest, like longest book of the Bible that we will study on this podcast journey. So I'm glad that you stuck it out. Good job making it through Psalms.

If you can make it through Psalms, you can make it through anything. So I'm super, super excited. Hey, like I say every day, if you have not done the reading for the day, stop the video, pause the audio, go get the reading done. All right, today we've got Psalms 149 and 150, just two Psalms to end the entire book of Psalms and then tomorrow we'll crack open Proverbs. Okay, we'll go from David to Solomon. So I'm super pumped about Proverbs, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's go out with a bang. Okay, let's run the race. Let's finish. Okay, let's get Psalms done. All right, context clues, okay? Just two bits of context. Okay, Psalm 149 naturally flows out of Psalm 148. Okay, the big idea for Psalm 148 is that everything is gonna praise the Lord, okay? If you remember Psalm 148, right? There was this tiered journey of everything that was gonna praise the Lord versus one through four, okay? The heavens praised the Lord. And then verses seven through 10, the earth praised the Lord. And then verses 11 through 12, humanity praised the Lord.

And this is supposed to set us up to want us to go, wait, wait, wait, what about Israel? Is Israel ever gonna praise the Lord? And that's where Psalm 149 comes into play. We can read it right here in verse one. Sing to the Lord a new song. His praise and the assembly of his faithful people. And we're gonna look at the words faithful people for one of our nerdy nuggets when we dive into our nerdy nuggets. So the context for Israel having a Psalm where the nation God's faithful people can offer praise to him comes out of Psalm 148. Because of Psalm 148, everything is praising the Lord. And it should kind of get you on the edge of your seat, like wait a second, if everything's praising God, why is it Israel praising God? Well, that leads us directly into Psalm 149 where Israel does praise the Lord. And then Psalm 150 closes out all of it. And we'll really dive into Psalm 150 when we get into our nerdy nuggets. And honestly, no need to wait. No need to wait for the nuggets. Let's go, let's dive into our nerdy nuggets, okay? I got a lot for you. First, Psalm 129 verse one says this, sing to the Lord a new song. That's a good verse right there, a new song. Sing to the Lord a new song. You want to know what I've had to say

to a worship leader or a time or two? Hey guys, let's sing a new song. I don't know if you realize this but songs are attached to seasons, right? I don't know if you've ever realized this that like there's a season where like a song, it's almost like God releases songs from heaven that he wants us to declare on the earth. And so songs aren't timeless, like songs have seasons. And there are times where a song has the power to create an anointed atmosphere, like in a room or in a sanctuary or across a nation, right? And then you ever get to a point where a song that used to just like hit, doesn't hit anymore. That's not just because you got tired of singing it. That's because I do think songs have a shelf life. And right here, we get this phrase, a new song. Sing to the Lord a new song. Number one, I just want to tell you, your past was not just being annoying by asking you to sing new songs. God's a God of creativity. He wants a new song. I don't know if you've ever been a worship leader who like, you're introducing a new song to the congregation on that first Sunday and everybody's just kind of like, ah. Seeing the old stuff. It's kind of like you can't please everybody, right?

Sometimes it's like, we're tired of old songs and then we want the old songs, I get it. But this is a tension that we're all gonna have to deal with all the time of realizing that part of leading God's people in the worship is prophetic. And what you have to prophetically discern is like, all right, when is it time for the old faithful songs and when is it time for a new song? What is it time to introduce a new song? But God wants a new song. Also, I'll say this, that each person's testimony is a new song, that the life book, the hymnal, I want my life to be a hymnal. I wanna say Lord, I may not be able to offer you a new literal song, but I can offer you a new metaphorical song because there's always new things that you're doing in my life. So a new song, a new song. I always wanna have a new song on my heart. I always wanna have a new song on my lips. I think that that's a good thing. I think it keeps a church fresh and relevant, but I also think it ministers to the Lord, okay, to offer him a new song, okay? So that language, that's not just the worship leader wanting to be creative or the pastor being picky. No, that's like biblical language, I think it's good. Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise and the assembly of his faithful people. One of the repeated verses or repeated words that we're gonna get in Psalm 149

is that phrase right there, faithful people, faithful people. You'll see it right there in verse one, but then you're gonna see it again in verse nine. It's gonna say to carry out the sentence written against them. This is the glory of all his faithful people, but then we're gonna get it in the middle of the song in verse five. Let his faithful people rejoice in this honor and sing for joy in their, on their beds. So three times in this song, we're gonna get faithful people, faithful people, faithful people. And what is the number one thing that Israel struggles with? You guessed it, being unfaithful to Yahweh. That's it, get some eggs out out of the land. Being unfaithful to Yahweh. And how would we describe God? Faithful, that's right. So the people are kind of marked as unfaithful and Yahweh is faithful. So what does this song do? It calls the people based on their identity, not their behavior. If you call someone faithful, even when they're not being faithful, guess what it'll do? It'll force them to be faithful. You know, as a senior pastor, guess what I do? Every time I stand up for our people, I thank them for their generosity. Well, guess what? I know the numbers.

I know that they're not all generous, but I don't call stingy people stingy 'cause then they'll just continue to be stingy. Me as a leader, I've gotta prophesy that they're generous. Gotta speak it into existence. And so Psalm 149 is calling very unfaithful people, faithful people, which is just good old Bible. And here's what worship is designed to do. Worship is designed so that what you behold becomes, what you become, whatever you behold is what you become. And worship, you're beholding the Lord and He's faithful. And so the reason that the music or the song or the Psalm here saying the people are faithful, the people are faithful. The people are faithful because if they continue to behold the one that is faithful, they'll become faithful. But if they continue to behold their own lack of faithfulness, then they'll never be faithful. It's funny, I almost, literally last night almost teared up. One of my like, I mean, closest, closest, close, someone that I've discipled for a long time texted me. His name's Jesse Summers. He texted me, he said, I just want you to know, like I try my best to lead like you. He said, when you first met me, I wasn't a leader, but you called me one anyway. Said you were actually the first person to really call me a leader. Like you just spoke it into existence. And you know what? I think that's what we're called to do.

I think that we're called to look at people who go astray and say, you're faithful. We're called to look at people who are stingy and say, you're generous. We're called to look at people who are weak and tell them that they're strong. And I think our music should definitely be doing that. Our music should reflect the identity that we want people to have. Because again, whenever you behold, you'll become. And that's just a law of life. But that's also a law of worship. All right, let's keep moving. Family, the weight is over. My brand new book, "Crushing Chaos," is out now. And available everywhere books are sold literally 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 in 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. One other nerdy nugget that I wanna dig out is that Ezra is the one who's writing Psalm 149 and 150 and Ezra is definitely using David as a hero from Israel's history that the people can and should emulate. So we gotta know in order to interpret any Bible verse or verses, we have to know the agenda of the author. What is the agenda? Well, the agenda is that Ezra is dealing with some unfaithful people and Ezra is trying to get the people to be faithful. And so he's using David as a figurehead from Israel's history. And so a lot of this like prioritization on David as a character is definitely something that Ezra is doing, okay? Now, one of the things that I wanna show you with Psalm 150 are what I call the seams that prove the Bible has been woven together, okay? Tim Mackey says this a lot, that the Bible is a quilt. And you know how quilts work? There's these, let's say you make a quilt out of like individual shirts or something, okay? You've got all these individual squares and you take all the squares and you have to actually weave them together into one big quilt, okay?

A quilt is many pieces that get turned into one thing. And the Bible is that way, but you don't realize the Bible is like that until you look at the seams. The seams actually begin to show you, oh, no, no, no, this and this have been woven together. So I'll kinda show you, we'll pull the veil back and I'll show you some seams throughout the book of Psalms, okay? So if you kinda wanted to know, how do we know that Ezra edited all this together, you know? Well, I'll show you the scene that closes book one, the scene that closes book two, the scene that closes book three, the scene that closes book four, and then Psalm 150, which is the final scene that closes book five, okay? Let's look at this, okay? Remember book one of the Psalms is from Psalm one all the way to Psalm 41. So let's look at Psalm 41 verse three, 13, sorry, Psalm 41 verse 13, it says this, "Blessed be Yahweh the God of Israel from everlasting "to everlasting, amen and amen." How do we know that that's a scene? Well, we realize that that's not original to that Psalm that was added to that Psalm by Ezra the editor. Once you look at the scene that closes out book two, here it is, Psalm 72 verse 19 says this, "Blessed be his glorious name forever, "may the whole earth be filled with his glory, amen and amen."

Did you see it? Let's look at Psalm 41 verse 13 again, "Blessed be Yahweh the God of Israel from everlasting "to everlasting, amen and amen." Then Psalm 72 verse 19, "Blessed be his glorious name forever, "may the whole earth be filled with his glory, amen and amen." Now let's look at the scene that ends book three. This is Psalm 89 verse 52, says this, "Blessed be Yahweh forever, amen and amen." See, these aren't original to the actual Psalms. These were added to close the books, okay? And then book five says this, Psalm 106 verse 48 says, "And let all the people say amen, praise Yahweh." You see, we get, "Blessed be Yahweh, amen and amen, "blessed be his glorious name forever, amen and amen, "blessed be Yahweh forever, amen and amen, "and let all the people say amen, praise Yahweh." And then how do all those scenes culminate into the final scene? Well, it culminates in a Psalm 150. Praise God in a sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power. Praise him for surpassing greatness. Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet. praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of symbols, praise him with resounding symbols,

let everything that has breath, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. That is how the final Hallel closes. And that is the last scene that we have for the Hebrew Bible. This right here, these seams are actually the number one proof that these psalms have been edited and intentionally woven together. And they all culminate with Psalm 150. So what's the point of the psalms to get everybody to praise the Lord, to praise him, to sing about him, to dance about him, to celebrate him, to honor him, praise. It's funny. That's all our team today. You know, we're planning launch Sunday at our brand new church plant, the garden. We are planning worship and planning services. And I said, I said, you know what, guys, one of the things I learned just through studying the psalms and then looking at chronicles and like just looking at the history of how David revolutionized worship for the nation of Israel is he had musicians and choirs at the temple at the tabernacle day and night. Like, you don't think there was a cause associated to that? Like, that's expensive man. And I said to the team, I said, I'm never going to apologize for how much I know it's going to cost for us to offer great praise to God. And I'm not saying praise has to be expensive. But what I am saying is that musicians and choirs and like that, that that takes production like it's a resource. Whether you like it or not, you know, there is no such thing as cheap sacrifices to the Lord. Like, actually, all throughout the Bible, God says, if an animal is blemished or broken or bruised, like, don't offer that to me. Like, no, no, no, we offer God our best. We offer him a new song. We offer him our lives.

Like, we offer him stuff that's worthy of his great name and let everything that has breath praise the Lord. It's almost like Psalm 150 isn't just a commissioning. It is the activity that all 149 previous Psalms lead us to do. Like Psalm 150 is Psalms in action. That's what it is. What is the book of Psalms supposed to get you to do? Praise the Lord. What is Psalms from Psalm 150 supposed to do? Get you to praise God in a sanctuary. It's supposed to get you to praise God in his mighty heavens. It's supposed to get you to praise God for his acts of power. It's supposed to get you to praise him for his surpassing greatness. All of the Psalms from 1 to 150 are supposed to get you and me and all of us to praise him with the sounding of the trumpet. Praise him with the harp and lyre. Praise him with the timbrel and dancing. It's supposed to get us to praise him with the strings and the pipe. To praise him with the clash of symbols. To praise him with resounding symbols. To let everything that has his breath. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. To my challenge to you is to live a life of praise. Praise isn't quiet. Praise isn't private. No, praise is pretty public. Praise involves other people. Praise is corporate. Praise is excellent.

Praise is skillful. Praise is emotional. Praise is expressive. Praise to praise. If you ever want to see praise, just go watch a football game, man. Because people are praising. You see a stadium of 30, 40,000 people and they're doing the wave. That's praise, man. You see how people rush a field after their team is one of victory? That's praise, man. It involves your whole body. It involves music. It involves all kinds of stuff. It may involve painting your whole face in belly blue. It's praise. It's what we're designed to do. And if church leaders don't direct people's energy towards praising Yahweh, they'll praise all kinds of things. They'll praise the Republican Party or Democratic Party. They'll praise their favorite football team. They'll praise everything but the one who gave them breath. What the end of this song is saying is, well, how about we return our breath to the one who gave it to us? Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. And that's what the book of Psalms is all about. So what's our timeless truth today? To go and praise God. To praise Him with everything that we got. To praise Him with all of our might, with all of our power, with all of our strength. To worship the Lord and that worship.

that begins to tear the strongholds of the enemy down. 'Cause that's what Psalm 149 is actually all about. Says this in verse six, "May the praise of God be in their mouths "a double-edged sword in their hands. "That when we praise God out of our mouth, "we have a double-edged sword in our hand. "The goal of praise is to offer something to the Lord "that activates His power to destroy "every stronghold of the enemy, because worship, "ultimately, is warfare." That's not just true for Ezra or David. That's not just true for the historical moment of Psalm 149 and 150. That's true for you, and that's true for me. I knew that when I got to Houston, a plan of church, that there were some spiritual forces of wickedness that had been set up in this city as a stronghold to the plan of God. And part of what I knew needed to happen is that we needed to offer a praise to God so that God will begin to destroy the proverbial walls of Jericho that were keeping Houstonians bound and trapped, because worship is warfare. So the legacy or the lesson that Psalm wants us to learn is to praise God with everything we got. 'Cause man, at the end of the day, that's what we're gonna do for each hundred E, praise God. So he may as well fall in love with doing it down here.

- Family, that's the book of Psalms. I'm so proud of you for making it through the longest book of the Bible that we've got here on the Bible department. I'm so proud of you. I love you so much. Tomorrow, we got a brand new book. We got Proverbs, chapters one, two, and three for day 302. Same time, same place. I'll be here ready to help you understand the book of Proverbs. I hope you'll be here too. Love you so much. 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 thebobaldapartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.