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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 259. We've got three Psalms to cover today. Psalm 21, Psalm 22, and Psalm 23. These Psalms are going to grow in popularity, like Psalm 21, you may or may not be familiar with Psalm 22. You are definitely familiar with in Psalm 23. Even heathens are familiar with Psalm 23. All right, like, it's like the one Psalm that everybody knows. So our psalms are gonna grow in popularity today. I'm glad that all three of these psalms are bundled together. If you have not done the reading for the day, make sure that you stop the video, pause the audio, go do the reading. Really, really, really rich and meaningful psalms that we get to read today. We don't have to read them, we get to read them. And I'm super, super excited that I get the privilege and the honor of kind of, I don't know, unveiling, maybe some of the truth, some of the hidden truths that are in these psalms. So without further ado, like every day, let's dive into some context. I'll give you context clues, and then we'll dive into some nerdy nuggets. And then we'll always end with a timeless truth. So let's Dive into some context clues first. All three of these psalms are psalms of David. So the one thing that all three of these psalms share in common is that is that they are all psalms of David. Okay, Psalm 21 is our first psalm of the day. But to just kind of give context on Psalm 21, Psalm 20, and Psalm 21. So we ended yesterday with Psalm 20, and our first Psalm for the day is Psalm 21. Okay? So Psalm 20 and Psalm 21 are most likely a pair. So I want to kind of read this to you. This is Psalm 20, chapter 20, verse 4 says, May he grant you your heart's desire and fulfill all your plans. And then Psalm 21, verse 2 says, this, you have given him his heart's desire and have not withheld the request of his lips. So there's all these little, I would say, corresponding, matching verses from Psalm 20 and Psalm 21. Okay. It's kind of. I want to think. I want you to think about it as, like, these are matching royal psalms. Okay? So there's fulfillment happening in Psalm 21 based on prayers or faith that happen in Psalm 20. Psalm 20 sees a king asking Yahweh for salvation from his enemies. And Psalm 21, then, is a psalm of a king who has seen the salvation that by Yahweh from his enemies. The psalm begins with the king rejoicing in Yahweh's strength and exalting in his salvation. So I guess a modern equivalent to this. I remember one of the things that I love about Hillsong Church. I don't know if they still do this. They used to do this a lot when I was attending, like, Hillsong campuses on a regular basis is when the MC went up to just kind of transition worship, they would always do prayer requests and praise reports. So they would have a couple of praise reports. They would read like, man, you know, we prayed recently for someone to be healed from cancer, and here's a praise report that they were healed. Or we prayed recently that somebody would get a job, and they got that job, and it built faith so that we could then go into prayer requests. Something about reading praise reports helps you to have faith for prayer requests. Right? They're corresponding. And so these psalms work the exact same way. You begin to see in Psalm 20 the prayer request, and you begin to see in Psalm 21 the praise report of that prayer fulfilled. So Psalm 20, Psalm 21, go together. They're a matching pair. All right. The big theme of Psalm 20 and Psalm 21 is that the king trusts in Yahweh okay? The King trusts in Yahweh. So that, that is the driving point of both of those psalms. Okay, Psalm 22, the way that I would naturally say this as our context clue for the day is that the context for Psalm 22 is Mark 15:34 in Matthew 27:46. Well, it's because Psalm 22 starts out with these words, these iconic words. David says this, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So naturally, the natural way that I would communicate this is that Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46 are the context for Psalm 22, but actually it's the opposite. Okay? So I'm gonna say it in an unnatural way or a counterintuitive way because that's actually more accurate. Psalm 22 is the context of. For the word spoken by Jesus on the cross. And those words are, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now we're going to get into kind of a context clue and a nerdy nugget because a lot of people begin to preach these words by Jesus and they begin to create this idea that God the Father forsook Jesus on the cross. That. But the problem with that is that that's very anti trinitarian, okay? No member of the Trinity can turn its back on or forsake another member of the Trinity. That that literally is not possible. But people preach it all the time. And so I kind of want to bring some helpful context for what is this psalm doing. So I'm gonna kind of mix in a nerdy nugget with a context clue. And I wanna just alert you of the fact that the way that things get titled in the Jewish world is based on the first words of something. So we can see this with a book like Genesis and Exodus, okay? So in Hebrew, okay? Not in English, okay? Not for Christians, not for Americans. But in Hebrew, the book of Genesis is actually called When God Began. That's the name of the book. When God Began. Why is that the name of the book? Well, that's the name of the book because that's the first line, that's the opening lines line of the book of Genesis. So when, when a Hebrew person wants to title something, they just take the first line and make that the title. Okay? That's not what we do in English, okay? In English, a title is a title. It's not just the first lines of a song or the first lines of a book. Exodus, same thing in Hebrew, the book of Exodus, what we call Exodus is not called Exodus. It's called. These are the names. These are the names. Why is that the title of the book of Exodus in Hebrew? Well, it's because that's the first line. The book of Exodus begins in Hebrew with these words. These are the names. And so therefore, in Hebrew, you just take the first line and you make it the title. That's what you do. Okay? So the first line of Psalm 22 is, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And the way that we would abbreviate that would just be to call the psalm my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So in English, we would call this Psalm 22. But in Hebrew, you would call this my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So when Jesus is on the cross and he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What's probably happening is that he is reciting the entirety of the psalm. Him saying, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Would be the equivalent of him saying Psalm 22. Okay. Instead of us taking Jesus words literally, we need to put Jesus words in context. Now, as we put Jesus words in context, you begin to realize a couple of things. Let's read through the word, the psalm. It says, all who see me mocked me. They hurl insults shaking their heads. Is that a good way to describe the crucifixion of Jesus? Yeah, let's keep going. Verse 11. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. By the way, this is a personal lament of David at some point in his life when he's going through deep anguish and suffering. Okay. Jesus recognizes that this ain't just about David. This applies to me on the cross during the crucifixion verse. Verse 12. Many bulls surround me. Strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. Roaring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against me. Sounds like the crucifixion to me. I'm poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax. It has melted within me. We know that this is the literal. You know, if we were to do an autopsy on the body of Jesus post crucifixion, this is exactly what would happen. Like, his heart literally broke under the pressure. Okay. His heart actually did turn to wax and melted within him. My mouth is dried up like a potsherd. What does Jesus say on the cross? I'm thirsty and they give him vinegar. Okay. My mouth is dried up like a potsherd. My tongue is stuck to the root of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of the earth. Dogs surround me. A pack of villains encircles me. They pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display. People stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots from my garment. Guys, this is 100% a messianic psalm, but it's also a psalm of lament, personal lament that David doesn't realize is going to be a Messianic psalm. And then how does it end? And this is why I get annoyed when people just preach, you know, God, you know, forsook Jesus on the cross. First of all, that's just not possible based on our Trinitarian theology. Second of all, here we go. Verse 19. But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength. Come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life, from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lion. Save me from the horns of the wild oxen. I will declare your name to my people in the assembly. I will praise your name. Like all psalms of David, they end on a high note. All you descendants of David, honor him, revere him, all descendants of Israel. For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one. He has not hidden his face from him, but has listened to his cry for help. So all these sermons about how God turned his face away from Jesus on the cross, it's like, no, the end of the psalm literally says, he has not hidden his face from him, from the anointed one, from the Messiah, from the afflicted one, from the suffering servant, but has listened to his cry for help. And then how does. How does it end? The psalm ends with these words. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to all people yet unborn, he has done it. He has done it. And what does Jesus say on the cross? It is finished. It is completed. It is done. It's done. Okay, so Psalm 22 ends the exact same way that Jesus is going to end his time of crucifixion, his time of suffering. It is done. It's finished. It's completed. The penalty of sin has been paid for. The price of sin has been paid for. The atoning work of Jesus on the cross is done. And this sin issue has been dealt with. What does Hebrews say once and for all? Okay, so if you want to understand everything that's happening in Jesus's word spoken in Mark 15 and in Matthew 27, while he's on the cross, then you gotta actually read the entirety of Psalm 22. And why do most of us not read the entirety of Psalm 22? Well, because we're not used to the fact that Hebrews take the first line of a song or a psalm or a book and use that for a title. So if I were to hold up a title of a book and just say the title of that book, you know, one of the books that I'm about to start reading is Three Ring Circus. I'm really, really excited about it. It's about Shaq, Kobe, and Phil Knight. Anyway, Phil Jackson. Sorry, you know, I'm about to start reading this book, Three Ring Circus. If I was to say Three Ring, Three Ring Circus, you wouldn't think to yourself that the title is a statement that I'm making. You would think to yourself, there's something in that book that the person who just said that wants us to read. And the contents of the book is the message, not the title. And so, so often we take Jesus words and we turn that those words, instead of it being a title, it becomes the content of the message itself. And it's not actually the entirety of the Psalm is the content of the message. All right, let's get down to our next nerdy nugget. Okay. And we're transitioning out of context clues officially now into nerdy nuggets. Let's go to Psalms 23. The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his namesake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil. Why? For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they bring me comfort. They comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Okay, this. Something really, really cool is happening with Psalm 23. This is probably the most famous of all the Psalms that David. Right. And the really, really cool thing is that David is using a real experience from his life and then attributing that to Yahweh. So what do we know? What's the context? What do we know about David? He was a shepherd. That's what we know about David. That my man has firsthand experience with leading sheep, loving sheep, guiding sheep, following, feeding sheep, protecting sheep, defending sheep. Okay, that David knows exactly how to shepherd a flock. And now David begins to look at his life and looks at the Lord and say, well, the Lord's a shepherd. Okay, so two things. Number one, David now is going to become the archetype for leadership. That what it means to be a good leader is that you are a good shepherd and a king, that you're a shepherd king. This is also going to be the archetype for Jesus. Jesus is a shepherd king. But David then says, man, God is a shepherd king. Not only am I a shepherd and a king, but Yahweh is a shepherd. Okay, so this metaphor of Yahweh being a shepherd comes from the personal life of David. David is a shepherd and he's like man. As I'm guiding the flock, there's something about what I'm doing that's making me realize something about who God is. And this is really, really powerful, that this isn't like something that starts with God and then David copies. It's actually something that starts with David. And then in David being a shepherd, he learns something about God. And this is the two fold nature of leadership. I would say, you know, the, the heads and tails, the, the flip side of the same coin of leadership. That in order to be a great leader, you've got to be gentle and soft and nurturing like a shepherd. But you also have to be tough and dominant and aggressive and, you know, decisive like a king. And obviously God models this perfectly. Yahweh models this perfectly. Jesus is both the lion and the lamb. And if I could just be honest and vulnerable for most of my career, being a ministry leader or church leader, and I use that word career lightly, you guys know what I mean? For most of my vocational life, it's been very easy for me to be a lion. It's been really easy for me to be a king, to be an authoritarian, decisive, aggressive leader. What's taken a lot of time is for me to learn how to be a shepherd. Woo. But guess what? The more I act like a shepherd, the more I begin to see the ways that God is shepherding me. So it's not just that when I see God shepherding me, I then act that way towards others. It's actually counterintuitive. When I act that way towards others, I begin to see God acting that way towards me. 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 correct crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. 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Our audience here at the Bible department gets a special discount. Use code DEPARTMENT10 at checkout to get 10% off your entire order. David realizes at some point not only am I a shepherd man, the Lord is my shepherd, which leads us perfectly in our timeless truth that there is two sides to the leadership coin. Now there are some people who they are naturally very shepherdy, naturally very gentle, very patient, very kind. That's their natural disposition. They lead people gently. They know how to shepherd people's souls. And for those people, they've got to learn how to also be kingly. You gotta also be someone who knows how to make decisions, move the organization forward, so on and so forth. For everyone who can maybe relate to me, maybe you're naturally, you know, bold, naturally fast paced, naturally decisive man. What's, what's my process of sanctification has involved me learning how to be a shepherd. Me learning how to walk with people patiently, slowly leading them through the difficulties of life. And what's the big the big, big, big point is that sheep are scared of all kinds of things. They can't feed themselves, they can't protect themselves. Okay? The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. Why? Cause I have the shepherd. That's it. Why am I not scared? Why am I fed? Why am I protected? Cause I have the shepherd. The non negotiable element here is the shepherd. That as long as I have the God, I have everything. That by having the Lord in my life, I get everything else, man. This is why the New Testament can say, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and what? All these things will be added unto you. Because if I get the shepherd, I get provision. If I get the shepherd, I get protection. If I get the shepherd, I get comfort. If I get the shepherd, I get correction. If I get the shepherd, I get everything. But without a shepherd, sheep wander. They die. They get eaten as prey. They get lost. Sheep cannot exist without shepherds. And so two things as our timeless truth for the day. Number one, God wants to be your shepherd. Number two, God shepherds you through earthly shepherds. So this idea that you don't need a pastor, it's crazy. That's a crazy idea. You 100% need a pastor. You 100% need a pastor. And when we get to books like Ezekiel, you'll begin to see that God Yahweh is upset because the shepherds of Israel have failed in their job. You'll also see when Jesus commissions Peter, he'll say, A, I'm the good shepherd, and now B, feed my sheep. So I'm a shepherd, but I'm only a shepherd in the authority that God is a shepherd. And now he's allowed me to be a shepherd. So I can't say that I obey the shepherd. I can't see, but I disobey the shepherd. I do see. You need a shepherd in your life. You need a pastor. You need God. And typically, God shows up to shepherd you through a pastor. And that's timeless. That was true in David's life. David is the shepherd for the flock of Israel. David. That's true in Jesus's life. Jesus is the shepherd. And then entrust those sheep to Peter and the other disciples. And that's true today. God is ultimately our shepherd. And how do we access God as our shepherd? Well, we access God as our shepherd by shepherding other people and allowing shepherds to shepherd us. And shepherds are caring, they're loving, they are protective. And it's funny, I'm in the season of planting a church. And for the. Almost for the first time, there's this, like, protective nature that I have around sheep. I'm just kind of like, whoa. Well, like, the other day, somebody was like, oh, I listen to such and such podcasts. And I was like, I don't know if that grass is good. I don't. I don't know if I trust you eating that grass. Wait, poison. Don't, don't, don't eat that grass. You know, for the first time in my life, I'm just, like, overly caring and protective over, like. No, no, no. God's given me these sheep, and they're mine to protect, and God's going to hold me accountable for what I do with these sheep. So tell them the truth. If you're a shepherd, the more you act out as a shepherd, the more you begin to understand God's heart towards you. And second, if you're a sheep, you can't say that you trust your shepherd, who's God. If you don't trust the shepherd that God's placed in your life, that's timelessly true forever. All right, tomorrow we've got day 260. We got a couple of psalms that we're gonna actually go through. We got Psalm 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29. We got six Psalms. All right, that's our Thomas truth for the day. Tomorrow we're gonna dive into day 260. Can you believe it? We're already at day 260. That means, like, 105 days. I think 105 days left before the end of the year. One hundred and five days left before you can say you studied the entire Bible in a calendar year. Isn't that awesome? I'll see you right here tomorrow for day 260. We're going to dive into Psalms 24, 25, and 26. It's going to be fantastic. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at the Bible Department and on Instagram hebibledepartment. 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.