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Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible Department podcast. Powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. Let's be honest, a lot of us are still treating digital ministry like it's a backup plan from 2020. But discipleship isn't just happening on Sundays anymore. People need gospel centered connection every day of the week. And if you're stuck juggling five different platforms, one for giving, another for sermons, something else for events, it's no wonder engagement feels off. That's not ministry. That's a mess. Subsplash changes that one platform. Everything you need. Media, giving, events, messaging, your app, your website built specifically for churches. No hacks, no workarounds, just clarity and simplicity. Because every day you wait, families scroll past your sermons, new guests click away from clunky sites, and real people miss real moments with Jesus. Don't waste another summer stuck in digital survival mode. Use it to get ahead, simplify, upgrade, get back to what matters. Head to subsplash.combible-dept and schedule a free no pressure demo. And let this be the summer your church gets focused and fully equipped family. Welcome to day 253 on the Bible Department podcast. I'm super, super excited. Let's dive in today. We've got three Psalms on the docket. Psalm 3, 4 and 5. I'm super pumped. If you have not read these three Psalms. Stop the audio. Stop the video. Go read the Psalms. Two of them are actually Psalms of Lament. We're actually going to talk about what a Psalm of Lament means later on in the episod episode. If you have done the reading, I'm proud of you. And if you're on a streak, I'm super, super proud of you. Like I said Yesterday, we got 50 days in the Psalms. And so my hope and my prayer is that over the next 50 days that you learn the heart of God, that you begin to learn more about worship, that you learn about wisdom. I'm pumped to spend 50 days camping out in the Book of Psalms. I also think that we're going to camp to know David even more. Obviously we covered a lot of David material as we went through the former prophets, but I think we're gonna even get to learn more of David's heart as we go to the Psalms, since so many of the Psalms were written by him. All right, let's dive in. Like, every day. I'm gonna give you some context clues, gonna give you some nerdy nuggets. We'll always leave off the episode with the timeless truth. Today we got Psalm 3, 4, and 5. By the time we get to Psalm 4, we're actually gonna start to see something that we're gonna see a lot, that's gonna add a lot of context for the Psalms that we are reading the individual psalms. And that is a title. Okay, so Psalm 4 and 5 are gonna have titles. Here. We begin to see something that we're gonna see throughout the Psalms titles. These are thought to have been added later than the original. So this would be an editorial addition. So we could probably think people like Ezra, okay, who. Let's say David. David wrote Psalm 4, but it's probably Ezra that put this title on it. And there's three categories that these titles fall into. First are gonna be musical. Okay, these will give directions of which instruments should accompany the psalm or sometimes which tune the psalm was sung to. Okay, so we're gonna actually see a difference here. Okay, so for Psalm 4, it tells the director of music or the choir master the md. Let's go, you know, hey, make sure that stringed instruments accompany this psalm. And then for Psalm 5, we're gonna see that. That the director of music is supposed to use not stringed instruments, but a flute or flutes or pipes. Okay, so there's gonna be a little instruction for the MD for the. You know, typically, you know, at church, the MD plays keys. So there was also an MD back in the Bible. And so the little title there is gonna give musical instructions to the director of music. All right, the second category that these titles fall into is gonna be the author who wrote the psalm. There are debates about this one as whether a psalm of David or Solomon, which is written in the style of the author, and blah, blah, blah. But anyway, those. These titles up at the top, sometimes there is a debate. And when there are debates about Psalms and whether or not, you know, people. Same with Paul's writings. Some people think, you know, Ephesians wasn't written by Paul. Some people claim that. No, it absolutely was written by Paul. Nothing's different with the Old Testament. So that title is also going to tell you authorship and then last context. So the title will describe the situation in which the psalm was written. The famous one would probably be Psalm 51, which says, like, David wrote this after he killed Uriah and impregnated Bathsheba. Right. So it's A. It's his psalm of repentance. And the context really makes a massive difference. So don't skip those titles. Don't ignore those titles. Those titles are really, really important. Okay? So that's the first kind of piece of context. Clue the next kind of piece of context. I wanna go deeper into some Hebrew poetry, okay? I want us to really understand Hebrew poetry so that we can understand the Psalms. So let's talk about three forms of Hebrew poetry. We hinted at this yesterday. I just wanna dive deeper into it today, okay? The first is synonymous parallelisms. So we dealt with those with synonymous parallelism yesterday in Psalm 1. I'll give you an example in Psalm 19, verse 1, okay? The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork, okay? This is synonymous parallelism, okay? Which means heavens and firmament are synonymous words. That means that telling and proclaim are synonymous words. And it means glory of God and handiwork are synonymous words, okay? So that's pretty easy. I would say that's the easy of all the parallelisms. The second we kind of alluded to yesterday is antithetical parallelism. There's a clear example of this In Proverbs, chapter 15, verse 1 says this. A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. So you can hear, right? Gentle answer and harsh words are antithetical to each other, but they're running in parallel lines, okay? Turns away versus stir up are antithetical to each other. And then wrath and anger are the same thing. Okay? So a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger, so it becomes easy to memorize because there's antithetical parallelism. And unlike English poetry, it's not the words that rhyme, but the ideas that rhyme. And in this case, the antithesis of each other is what is rhyming. Okay, the last is probably the most complicated, but honestly, it's not that hard. It's synthetic parallelisms where the second line completes the thought of the first line. So a good example of this is going to be Psalm chapter 51, verse 13. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Okay, so transgressors and sinners. It looks like we've got synonymous parallelism, but the second line is actually completing the thought of the first. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Okay? So the. The. The thought of that entire psalm is not like, let's say, synonymous parallelism. Would be, then I will teach you transgressors your ways and instruct sinners. That would be synonymous. But this is synthetic, which means then I will teach transgressors your ways. Teach is not going to be parallel. It's and sinners will return to you. So sinners and transgressors are parallel words. And it's saying there's a cause and effect here. Sinners are going to return to you. If you teach sinners about God, they will repent and turn back to God. That. That's a timeless truth right there. That's amazing. You're not wasting your breath by teaching transgressors the ways of God. Because it could be that they're ignorant. Okay? Because people who are ignorant need to be taught. And if they're taught, they'll what? They'll return to God? That's an amazing little nugget. Okay, speaking of nuggets, let's dive into some dirty nuggets. Family. The wait 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 going to 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. Hey, are you looking for a really cool gift or just solid tools to support your faith and daily Life? Check out Mr. Pen. They've got no bleed Bible pens and highlighters that actually work on thin Bible pages. Journaling Bibles, Bible tabs and faith based journals. Even school supplies for parents, teachers and students. Mr. Penn was started by Christian teachers in Louisiana on a mission to serve the schools in their local community. And now They've got over 100,000 five star reviews on Amazon. I'm a huge fan of their Bible highlighters and pens. Super smooth and gentle enough to write notes in the margin of your Bible. Whether you're digging into scripture or stocking up for Back to school, Mr. Penn has you covered. Shop the best Bible journaling supplies on the market and fantastic gifts for the ladies in your life@mrpenn.com that's M r p e n dot com. And guess what? Our audience here at the Bible Department gets a special discount. Use code DEPARTMENT10 at checkout to get 10% off your entire order. We've got a word that I'm really going to focus on for our nerdy nugget. We're going to see this in Psalm 3. We're going to see this in Psalm 4. We're going to see this actually in Psalm 3, 3 times, verse 2, verse 4, and verse 8. That's the word selah. Okay, Selah, Here's a nerdy nugget for us, okay? This is the first example that we're going to get of one of the most repeated words in all of the Book of Psalms. And that is the word selah. And it's not translated into English. Okay? Selah is just a Hebrew term. This is usually found at the end of a verse at different points in the psalm. The main reason it is left untranslated is that its meaning is very uncertain. And I know there are a lot of people who claim to know exactly what selah means, but I'm here to burst that bubble. Nobody really knows what selah means, okay? But there are two main options or two main ideas, two main contenders for what is meant by the word selah. And I'll give you both. Okay? The first idea is another musical one, that this is written into the text to instruct the director of music or the choir master, depending on the translation that you use. Some translations say choir master, some translations say director of music. So it is some kind of musical term probably indicating raising the tone or speed or something similar. Okay, the second option, or the second idea is kind of connected to that. And the second option for what selah could mean is that it is a pause for thought, okay? That the choir or congregation are required at certain points to pause and consider what has been said, though ultimately we do not know what this strange little word means. Okay? We don't know. But those are the two options, okay? That it's either a pause so that I can reflect, a pause so that I can contemplate, or it's actually a musical term that is telling the director of music that they need to raise the tone or speed up or something. Now, both could be true. It could be something for the MD or choirmaster to know that we need to pause. It could be a combination of the two, but we just can't say it with certainty. Okay, next nerdy nugget. We've talked about psalms of wisdom. We've talked about Messianic psalms, and now we get to talk about one of my favorite kinds of psalms, which is Psalms of personal Lament. And this is really relevant for today because Psalms 3 and 5 are both Psalms of lament. Lament, grief, mourning. If I could just get on my soapbox just for a minute. Okay? One of the things that I have found about Christians, generally speaking, I know I'm gonna paint with a broad brushstroke here. I'm gonna speak in a generality, okay? Generally speaking, Christians sometimes are really bad at grieving, mourning, and lamenting. So much of our faith hinges on joy and the fact that we're gonna live with God forever that I think that sometimes we ignore our own real human emotions. And lament is an entire category of the psalms. So number one, like, grief, sorrow, mourning, lament. This is like, God knows that people are going to have to lament. Like, this is not like, a shock to God. And here's what I'd say. If you don't lament by design, you will lament by default, okay? And because there's two extremes, most people are either going to ignore their grief, so they're just going to keep it moving like something tragic has happened, and they just keep it moving. Just act like nothing happens. I'm blessed and highly favored. You know, it's like, whoo, I hear you, but you just had a miscarriage. I hear you, but your parent just died. Like, I hear you, but you're going through a divorce. Like, and the reality is that if you got hit by a car, we would take you to the hospital, right? And a lot of us, emotionally are dealing with trauma, and we're just, you know, worshiping through it or praising through it or using church as a form of cathartic release for our lament. And not actually grieving, not actually mourning, not actually, like, taking sorrow seriously. And the reality is that you can't stuff that. It's going to pop up somewhere. And so the Bible actually gives a great roadmap on how to lament. Okay? So the first thing that I would say is the first extreme that we want to avoid is ignoring lament, ignoring sorrow, ignoring grief. Then there's another extreme, which is wallowing in grief, just being consumed by grief. Just mourning turns into depression, and it now becomes like, there's a spirit of heaviness that you carry. And to be honest, these two can be very connected. By ignoring the sorrow, the grief, or the mourning process, I actually get stuck in that mourning process. And man, the Bible actually outlines really, really, really helpful practical tools for how to lament. Okay, so Psalm 3 and Psalm 5 are Psalms of lament, personal lament. These are psalms in which an individual expresses suffering, a crisis, or some sort of disappointment to Yahweh. These can include a cry out to God, a lament or complaint, a petition to God, a statement of confidence in God, a thou of praise. I love that because it's saying, even though life is hard, I vowed to praise the Lord because praise isn't just something I do when I feel like it. Praise is something I vow to do. Psalms of lament can oftentimes include a confession of sin. That's huge because our sin should break our hearts. We should lament over our sin because sin breaks God's heart. So part of what happens through the journey of going through the Psalms is we're actually saying the point of the Psalms is for my heart to be aligned with God's heart, that if it breaks God's heart, it's gonna break my heart. If it doesn't break God's heart, I'm gonna work through my emotions. I'm not gonna ignore them. I don't align my heart with God's heart by ignoring my emotions. I actually align my heart with God's heart by acknowledging my emotions and by placing them on the altar and vowing to give God praise. And sin breaks God's heart. So a confession of sin is a subgenre of personal lament psalms, a claim of innocence, cursing, enemies, reasons why God should act. So this is like a very, you know, lawyers argument for like, why God should act. God's response to the lament, self cursing. All right. The laments are actually the most common of all the Psalms. This gets into our timeless truth for the day. If you don't know this, let me make you aware, okay? Lament is actually the most common of all the Psalms, which in itself, in and of itself, teaches us a great lesson. Most of the book of Psalms, which is dedicated to prayer and to praise God, focuses on lamentation. This is telling us the legitimacy of genuinely complaining to the Lord. Not whining or being full of self pity, but crying out in genuine hardship and pain. Lament Psalms teach us that life is often hard, but Yahweh knows that this. Yahweh knows that life is difficult. Okay, I've said this on this podcast multiple times. What would be cruel is not that God would Make life hard. But if God wasn't willing to enter into the hardship of life with us, and the incarnation of Jesus is actually the proof that God is willing to suffer for us and suffer with us. What makes me, I hope, a good leader is that when my team is unboxing or unloading a box truck or setting up, even on those days where I need to teach, I'm still there early, building morale. So as a leader, I want to be incarnational. The team's emptying the truck. I want to be there with the team, okay? Even if I'm not that helpful, man, I'm there with the team. I want to be an incarnational leader. I want to show up with my people, okay? And why am I that way? I'm that way because I've learned that from God, that the question is not why do bad things happen to good people, but why did the worst thing happen to the best person? Okay? The question is not why do bad things happen to good people, but why did the worst thing, which is the crucifixion, happen to the perfect person, which is Jesus and the incarnation and then subsequent crucifixion of Jesus actually begins to reveal that God is not a God that will subject us to suffering, but then protect himself from that suffering. But he enters into suffering with us, which is why psalms of lament are normal. God's not far off or unaware or aloof or unable to empathize with our suffering. Yahweh knows that life is difficult. He knows it firsthand, actually, he knows that life is difficult. And he welcomes our lament. He listens to our cry. And as Psalm 57 tells us that because of the abundance of his steadfast love, he answers us in our misery. Okay? Chapter five, verse seven. I actually want to read it to you. But I, by your great love, can come into your house in reverence. I bow down towards your holy temple. Okay, I want to read chapter 5, verses 1 and 2 to even put that in context. Chapter 5, verse 1 and 2. Listen to my words, Lord. Consider my lament. Hear my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray. And the one thing that I always love is that these psalms of lament, they always end with a promise, a promise based on God's character. So you can read verse 12 right here, chapter 5, verse 12. Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous. You surround them with your favor as with a shield. Okay? So all this complaining, all this complaining, all this honesty around, what's going on, but then I'm not gonna let the psalm end without reminding myself and letting God know that I know who he is. Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous. You surround them with your favor, as with the shield. The thing that I love about these psalms of lament is that they always end with a conviction around the character in the nature of God which comes with it, a vow of praise. So tomorrow we've got day254. I hope that that timeless truth is helpful. I hope that you begin to lament and that that's not just venting, but that you begin to learn a biblical pattern for how to lament. Because stuffing your feelings away is not actually going to form an intimate bond between you and God. You can trust him with the worst thoughts that you have when you're angry at him, when you're disappointed, you can actually say those things to God. But by the end of the prayer, you need to talk yourself into. Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous. You surround them with your favorite, as with the shield. That's our Thomas truths for today. I'll see you tomorrow. As we dive into Psalm 6, 7, 8, it'll be day 254. If you're on a streak, I'm proud of you. If you're not on a streak, how about you start one? Because, you know, how about you get on a streak for all the days of the psalms? How about we do that? That'd be good. I love you guys. I'm proud of you. I'll see you right here tomorrow for day 102. 54. Love you. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram at the Bible Department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow. Sam.