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- [00:00]
Paul
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Host
Hey, you're listening to A Year in the Bible with Daily Grace. We're glad you're here with us today. We also hope you'll leave us a review or a comment. Let us know what you enjoy. That means a lot to us to hear from you, Paul. Today we're looking at Psalms 31 through 35. Where do we want to go in our episode today? As you've been going through the psalms, you know, we're picking just a couple places to focus. So what's our focus for today gonna be?
- [00:28]
Paul
Yeah, so today's psalms overall kind of emphasize God's forgiveness, protection, provision, and they also kind of point us to Jesus in some pretty cool ways. So the first psalm I want to highlight is Psalm 32. And this Psalm really, I think, emphasizes the importance of confession for Christians. The heading in my Bible says, blessed are the forgiven. And confession of our sin is something that scripture emphasizes pretty frequently. But here it's really emphasizing confession before God especially. And I think it's important to state, talking about confession, that yes, when we put our faith in Jesus, all of our sins are forgiven in that moment, but there's also this movement of confessing our continual sins before God so that we can bring our sin into the light of that salvation that we already have. Right. And I think those of us that have held onto a certain sin for a long time and not addressed it before God can kind of relate to David in verses three and four, where he's basically talking about his spiritual strength just being completely drained. And it reminds me of a phrase that my pastor in college once said, that our relationship with God is secure through Jesus, but our fellowship with God is affected by our sin and our behavior. And so I think we all know this to be true. You know, there's seasons when, you know, you're just really struggling with sin and you feel a little more distant from God. And I think this is supported also by Jesus in, in the Beatitudes, where he says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And so there's seasons where I'm maybe not as pure in heart, and it's harder to see the truth of who God is, even though he remains constant in my life. You know, it's just not on the forefront of my mind. And so the way we restore that fellowship with God is through confession. Again, it's to bring the reality of our sin before God so that his love can shine on it and there's no further penance or punishment or, you know, self harm that we have to inflict upon ourself to pay the punishment because Jesus already paid it. Right. And so confession is actually a joyful thing. It's not meant to be this abundantly sorrowful. There is a piece of sorrow, but it's not meant to be only sorrowful. It's meant to be, hey, God, you love me so much, I want to be back in fellowship with you.
- [02:48]
Host
Yeah, I think that's super helpful. And I think that word confession probably triggers the automatic thoughts of sorrow or. I remember I had a mentor who even said, Christians might have this tendency when we realize a sin on ourselves, to put ourselves in, like, a spiritual timeout where we're like, well, I. I can't talk to God until I've given this enough time or space. And so I'm really glad that you reframed that for us. Okay, let's go to Psalm 34, because I know there's a few things we want to highlight in this psalm as well in today's episode.
- [03:19]
Paul
Yeah. So the first thing is that we have a direct connection to Jesus. Another psalm here that's mentioned in the gospels. So verse 20, he protects all his bones, and not one of them is broken. And this is quoted in John 19:36 as a prophecy of the way that Jesus would be crucified. And it's a bit gruesome to talk about, but essentially the Romans would break the legs of those who were crucified if they hadn't yet died to speed up their death, essentially. But Jesus, when they came to break his legs, he was already dead, and so they didn't have to break his legs. And so this is a direct fulfillment that was a direct fulfillment of this verse. But generally, this psalm, you know, it's a psalm of praise. And so we get a lot of language that points to God's greatness. But I really want to focus on verse 8. This line, it says, taste and see that the Lord is good. And it might be easy to kind of read over this as, like, just another metaphor that. That the psalms are using. But if we sit with it for a second, I think it's shows us something really important about faith. And it's that faith isn't just a menu of truth that we say, yes, that's true. No, that's not true. Yes, that's true. It's actually an experience. It's more like a meal that we get to eat with God. And so I think the thing to take away for me from the psalm is just that intimacy with God is not necessarily studying the concept of goodness, but actually experiencing that goodness in relationship with Him. Specifically through Jesus.
- [04:49]
Host
Yeah, absolutely. And that's gotta be my takeaway from these Psalms as well. That especially I feel like it's so important as we're going through a year in the Bible plan, that we're not just checking the box each day, but that we're communing with the Lord and that we are experiencing him in our time with Him. We know that God's presence is with us when we read His Word. We know that His Spirit is helping us understand Scripture. So it's coming with that expectation and communing with him there, rather than just skimming through and checking that. That box for the day. I wanna encourage you, if you are reading along with us and you wanna do more than just check the box, we do have the studies that go along with this reading plan. And so you can click the link in the show notes, you can grab those studies. That's gonna guide you deeper in the text. It's gonna encourage you to reflect and pray at the end of each day's reading. So that could be a way for you to dig in a little deeper if you haven't joined us in that yet. So thanks so much for being here for this episode. We're gonna be in Psalms 36:40 tomorrow.