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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 268 here on the Bible Department podcast. Today we are looking at Psalms 48, 50. It's gonna be incredible. If you've already done the reading, then you are ready to dive into this episode. If you have not done the reading, then you are not ready. You gotta stop the video, pause the audio, go read these three psalms. I personally find reading the Psalms to not just be inspiring, not just be like an easy read, like a light read, but to be a fun, enjoyable read. Who doesn't like reading poetry? So do the reading and then come on back if you've already done the reading, like every day, we're going to dive into context clues, nerdy nuggets, and then a timeless truth. Because the point of reading the Bible isn't just to read a history lesson. It's to apply it to our personal lives so that we can grow in our faith. So no further ado. Let's dive into some context. As you know, if you've been rocking with us for the last several days, especially as we've been in book two of the Psalms, we have been looking at psalms that have been written by the sons of Korah. And the first two Psalms that we've got today, Psalm 48 and Psalm 49 were written for by the sons of Korah. Right here on the title. On Psalm 48, it says a song, a psalm of the sons of Korah. Same on Psalm 49 for the director of Music of the sons of Korah, a psalm. However, once we get to Psalm 50, okay, once we get to Psalm 50, that is going to change. Once we get to Psalm 50, we have a Psalm of Asaph. So the heading is going to change, which is a contextual clue that we've been using to try to figure out what what is going on in the actual Psalms. Is there context that we can use that will help bring the message of each individual psalm to life? Okay, now although Psalm 49 is the last psalm of the sons of Kor that we're going to get for right now, it is the last psalm of book two of the sons of Korah, okay? But the Psalms written by the sons of Korah will return in the third book of Psalms. And we are going to get those in Psalm 84, 85, 87 and 88. So we got four more Psalms written by the sons of Kor that we will get to when we get to book three of the Psalms. And Psalms has five books. So kind of. I'm saying that as context, but it's kind of a nerdy nugget. But just want to give you context. Okay? Now Asaph was a leading Levite in David's reign, okay? So we got a lot of context for Korah or the sons of Korah. You may not have a lot of context for Asaph, but if you need context, okay, Asaph was a leading Levite in David's reign who was appointed as David's chief musician. You can read all about this in 1st Chronicles, chapter 16, verse 5, and 2 Chronicles 5:12. When David reformed Israel's worshiped and formed the Levitical choirs, can he appointed a man named Asaph. Asaph, along with King David, was one of the architects of this revolution, a worship revolution. Remember, prior to David implementing music, worship was simply service and sacrifice. Okay? Worship meant that you sacrificed an animal and that you served in the tabernacle or in the temple. Sacrifice and service. David revolutionizes worship. And that revolution is still felt to this day. He adds a third S which we know as singing. Okay? So worship up until David's time was sacrifice and service. But David revolutionizes worship and adds this new thing called singing. And Asaph is right there at the foundation of of this shift. While David is King Asaph along with King David was one of the architects of this worship revolution that we are still a part of. Can you imagine going to church and there being no singing? Right. Honestly, when we think about the word worship, we don't really think sacrifice and service in the modern age. We really think singing, we think music, and we think singing. And so that is all because of King David and his. His chief musician, Asaph. Okay, so that's context for Psalm 50. Also just God. This is kind of a nerdy nugget. We also read in Ezra, chapter 2, verses 41, that Asaph's descendants formed a company of singers and composers in a similar way to the sons of Korah, and played a part of Ezra's. Played a vital part in Ezra's rebuilding of Judaism in the Second Temple period. Remember, Judaism had to be completely reimagined because their temple had gotten destroyed in the exile. And so Ezra not just rebuilt Jerusalem in the wake of coming back after exile, but also reimagined what Judaism would be and gave us. A lot of people think that Ezra is the final editor of the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. So Ezra's a massive figure. He's definitely on the Mount Rushmore of Old Testament characters, but doesn't always get that kind of credit or that accolade because I don't think a lot of people know exactly how foundational, informational, Ezra is in reconstructing and rebuilding Judaism as a whole after the people come back from exile. All right, let's dive into some nerdy nuggets. Okay. Psalm 48 is a Psalm that celebrates Yahweh's defense of Jerusalem. Okay? So the main focal point is going to be Jerusalem as a city and Yahweh's ability to defend and protect Jerusalem. Jerusalem is going to be the city of God. Okay? So that phrasing is going to get used over and over and over again that Jerusalem is the city of God. Now, if we want to create like a kind of a sub genre of psalms, this would kind of be a Zion psalm, that Jerusalem is really going to be known as Zion as the place where God dwells. And so I would say that this is a good Zion psalm. The first few verses highlight this in a big way, especially from verse 4 to 4 to verse 8. And so we get this idea especially so we get this. This tension. Okay, I'll kind of map it out for us and kind of explain what I just read and why I read these verses. There's this kind of idea, okay, that Psalm 48, starting in verse four. Okay, you can see this idea highlighted, that this is a zion Psalm. Verse 4 says, when the kings joined forces, when they advanced together, they saw her and were astounded. They fled in terror, trembling, seized them there pain like that of a woman in labor. You destroyed them like ships of Tarshish shattered by an east wind. As we have heard, so we have seen in the city of the Lord Almighty, in the city of our God. God makes her secure forever. Okay, so there's this idea, it's this Zionist principle that Jerusalem is the city of our God. Okay? It's the city of the Lord Almighty. And since God dwells in the city, the dwelling of the Lord in the city is the defense of the city. Okay, Now I'm gonna kind of. This is also gonna be a timeless truth, but we'll kind of introduce. The idea here is that the people are singing this and this is true. Okay? Obviously the Bible's true. Okay. This psalm is true. However, what's happening with this psalm is that the people have too much faith, too much confidence in the fact that Jerusalem can never be conquered. So what's going to happen when the Babylonians finally do siege Jerusalem and do conquer it is that God stopped dwelling there because of the people's sins. And so this idea needed to be held in tension. And it was not held in tension. They just kind of went from a religious idea, which is hate. God established a covenant with us, and if we're faithful to that covenant, God will dwell in our city. And because God dwells in our city, it'll be defended. Two, it doesn't matter what we do to what I would say that's a religious idea. They then move to a superstitious idea and superstition begins to say, you know, it's almost like luck. It's no matter what happens, God is going to defend it. And once they move from religion to superstition, they begin to realize that no God can stop dwelling here. That the same way that God chose to dwell, God can chose to not dwell. And if he doesn't dwell, the city will be sieged and will fall. And that's exactly what happened in history. Okay, so we have to take this psalm. We have to take the idea of the ideal that's being sung about, which, by the way, we always have to do that with music. We're singing about ideas, but we have to hold them in tension. Yes. The song says God will heal, right? God's our healer. Okay? But sometimes God doesn't heal. So what is the whole truth? The whole truth is God is a healer regardless of if you personally get healed. And even if you're not healed, that doesn't mean that he's not a healer. And I know that can be hard for people. We like to make extreme statements about reality. But the but the truth of the matter is that truth is typically found in the middle, not in the extreme statement. So this is an example where the people are singing something about God that is true, but they've taken it out of tension. I'll talk about this in our timeless truth that this concept right here that we see in Psalm 48, it's not incorrect, but it is incomplete. And sometimes when we have an incomplete truth, it can be just as harmful as an incorrect truth. 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 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 in 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 mrpn.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. All right, let's go to. Psalm 49 is a wisdom psalm. You probably noticed that immediately, okay. That it sounds a lot like Ecclesiastes. Wisdom psalms are a whole genre of psalms, okay? Wisdom psalms can carry the themes and the language of wisdom literature. So books like Song of Songs, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. Wisdom psalms are songs that teach, okay? So the song is teaching a lesson. And these songs give lessons to those who sing them. The lessons of wisdom, such as the fear of Yahweh, how to live in excellence, how to live in harmony with God's creation, and the contrast between the wise and the foolish life or lifestyle. Okay? This particular wisdom psalm focuses on a very similar theme to that of Ecclesiastes. Its instruction is a warning about the vanity of life, how fleeting life is, and the vanity of life that chases after glory and wealth, but not wisdom. That is the big, big theme of Psalm 49, that if you chase after glory and wealth, but not wisdom, then you'll be no different than the beast that perishes. This can be seen in the repeated stanza of verses 12 and verse 20. Verse 12 and 20 say this, I'll read it out of my Bible. Verse 12. People, despite their wealth, do not endure. They are like the beasts that perish. And then verse 20 says, People that have wealth but lack understanding are like the beasts that perish. Okay? That the psalm is really like wisdom. In the wisdom literature is trying to communicate how important understanding really is, how important it is to attain wisdom, and that money and wealth and glory cannot be compared to the real wealth and the real glory that comes with being a wise person. The message is really clear. Glory and wealth do not matter in the end. In the end, a human that strives only for those things dies just like any other animal. His riches and glory do not follow him in death. They do not matter at that point. Rich and poor, they die the same. True wisdom then, is to look to God, the only one that may ransom my soul from the power of Sheol. Okay? What does God have the power to do? Ransom our souls from the power of Sheol? Only he can do that. Wealth cannot do that. Riches cannot do that. Whatever glory you amassed while you were on this earth cannot do that. Okay? It says this in verse 15. But God will redeem me from the realm of the dead. He will surely take me to himself. That's being contrasted, right? To a person who had a phenomenal life on earth, was very wealthy but then God did not redeem them from the realm of the dead. And that leads us to the last Psalm, Psalm 50. Okay, this Psalm is very similar in theme to actually things that we've seen in the prophets. How sacrifice and religious rituals are useless for those who do not live according to the Torah. Okay, so the psalm begins with an image of Yahweh. He's appearing. And this is. We're gonna get a lot of Deuteronomy language here. Okay, so let's go to verse four. Yahweh appears. Okay, there's essentially a theophany right here at the beginning of the psalm. And. And then verse four hits. He summons the heavens above and the earth that he may judge his people. Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why do we have the heavens and the earth? Well, remember in Deuteronomy, when the people of Israel signed a suzerain vassal treaty with Yahweh, the witnesses of that treaty was the heavens and the earth. That's right. So the implication is clear. The witnesses from the Deuteronomy treaty, the covenant that the people of Israel make with God, those witnesses are back. Those witnesses return at this moment when Yahweh will call his people to account. And here's the question that the witnesses want to know. Have they followed the terms and the conditions of the treaty that they made with Yahweh? That is why this language is here. Okay. In the presence of the original witnesses, Yahweh testifies against Israel. And the test is the sacrifices and rituals that the treaty called them to fulfill. The test is not whether or not they do them, but whether they do them for the reason they were instructed to as a sign they were keeping the treaty. This is why there are allusions to the Ten Commandments throughout the the Psalm, okay, verse 7, verses 18 to 20, are all a call back to the Ten Commandments. Are they keeping the treaty as they sacrifice? Big, big, big question. Okay? We can even get some timeless truths out of that. But here's our big timeless truth for the day is this idea. And I want to put it under the banner of incomplete versus incorrect. There's a lot of times where I hear things in church and what I think to myself is, that's not incorrect, but it is incomplete and incomplete versus incorrect. So we've already touched on this earlier, but Psalm 48, verse 8 says this. As we have heard, so we have seen. In the city of the Lord Almighty, in Jerusalem, in the city of our God, God makes her secure forever. And then we get a Little Selah, okay, Verse eight. God makes her secure forever. Okay? And selah means pause. Think about that, meditate on it, consider it. And I would say that the people actually don't meditate on it. They don't consider it, they don't pause, they don't think, they don't dwell on that. They just sing it. And had they meditated on it, they would have realized, yes, Yep. You know what? This. In the city of the Lord Almighty, in the city of our God, he makes her secure for sure. Unless we rebel against the covenant, and unless we force him out, and unless we lose his presence and his power. And in that case, then, yeah, Jerusalem can fall and we're going to go off in exile, which is exactly what happened in human history. So a lot of times, I think we create theology in church that is not incorrect. It's simply incomplete. An incomplete biblical, theological, or even philosophical ideas have the power to do real damage. And so I want you to think, are there things in my life that are not incorrect? But they're definitely incomplete. Whenever I come across people who come from the Word of Faith movement who believe in, like, hardcore, like, if you have enough faith, anything can happen and anyone can be healed and anything can be attained, I'm like, man, that's not incorrect, but it's. It's incomplete because there are people throughout the Bible who had great faith who still suffered. And so it's just incorrect. It's not incorrect, but it is certainly incomplete. And I think tension's hard for all of us. But if there's anything that I want you to get by watching and listening to this podcast every day, is that I hope I talk about holding two truths or holding multiple truths intentionally quite often. And I talk about it a lot because honestly, when you read the entirety of the Bible, not just cherry pick your favorite verses, but when you read the entirety of the Bible, it becomes really, really, really clear that we have to hold multiple truth intention if we're going to engage with the Bible in a meaningful way. And that's not just true for the Sons of Korah or for Asaph. That's true for you and I forever. Like, we are gonna forever have to hold multiple truths in tension with one another, because the Bible has multiple truths that we're gonna have to hold in tension. The Bible says that suffering is inevitable, but the Bible also says that God will rescue you from suffering. So which one is it? Well, sometimes it's A, and sometimes it's B. You've gotta hold multiple truths intention. If you're gonna live a life of wisdom. And I think since our middle psalm today, Psalm 49 was a Psalm of wisdom. It's good for our timeless truth to be one that inspires and motivates us towards wisdom. All right, tomorrow we've got day 269. We're gonna be in Psalms 51 to 53. It's gonna be great. I've been loving our trek through book two of the Psalms. I'll be right here tomorrow. I hope that you're on a streak. If you are, I'm so proud of you. If you're not, come on, what are you doing? Let's go. Let's get on a streak. Let's start to rack up win after win after win after win after win. Guess what? You make it a part of your daily routine. You'll look up in a couple of weeks and you'll realize, wow, like I'm on like a 30, 40, 50 day streak. All right, I'll see you tomorrow. I love you so much. 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.