Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
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 family. Welcome to day 279 here at the Bible Department podcast. And we are diving into Psalms 82 to 84 today. Psalms 82, or Psalm 82, rather. It's a pretty, like, famous psalm, especially if you have followed the ministry of the late Dr. Michael Heiser. I know, I'm a big Michael Heiser fan. Was honestly sad at his passing. But all that to say we're going to dive into Psalm 82 today, which a lot of his just scholarly work centers around. And I'm going to actually encourage people to go listen to a lot of that content. But if you have done the reading, everything that I'm going to say is going to make total sense. If you have not done the reading, this is a great chance. It's a great moment to stop the video, pause the audio, and go get Psalm, Psalm 82, Psalm 83, and Psalm 84 red so that you can kind of keep up with what we're talking about today. All right, like every day, I'm gonna give context clues. Then I'm gonna try to give as many nerdy nuggets as possible. I'm gonna try to give at least one per psalm. And we're always gonna leave off with a timeless truth, because we're not just learning history. We're not just here to learn the context of Scripture, but for the content of the Scriptures to transform our lives. So with no further ado for everyone who's, let's dive into our context clues. All right, Psalm 82 and 83 are the final Psalms of Asaph. And then Psalm 84 is a Psalm of the sons of Korah. Now, we have had some psalms from the sons of Korah before, so this is a return to some psalms of the sons of Korah who will provide three more Psalms in book three. Okay? Three more Psalms in book three. So Psalm 85, Psalm 87, and Psalm 88 are also going to be psalms of the sons of Korah. Now, I gave tons of context on the sons of Korah. You know, back when we kind of looked at previous psalms that were written by them, the cool gist or the gist of what I said, I don't know how many days or weeks ago that was. Was that it's cool that the sons of Korah almost redeem their family's name, because Korah is not a positive character in the Bible, that's for sure. We're talking about a character who's known for rebellion. So it's cool that the sons of Korah are, like, redeeming their great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great ancestors legacy. I just think that's awesome. So. All right. Psalm 82 and 83 are the final Psalms of Asaph. Psalm 84 is a Psalm of Korah. And we're going to get some more psalms from the sons of Korah as we continue to journey through the third book of the book of Psalms. Okay. Psalm 82 has no context, but we get the divine council mentioned in Psalm 82, and that's kind of a big deal. Like a. A really big deal. And so no context, but this is a really, really important psalm. So we'll kind of dive into what the divine council is once we get down to our nerdy nuggets in the middle of the episode. Psalm 83. The context for Psalm 83 is 2nd Chronicles chapter 20. Now, in 2nd Chronicles chapter 20, we are going to have a king by the name of Jehoshaphat, and there's going to be a coalition of Edom, Ammon, and Moab that are going to ally themselves against Jehoshaphat. This story can be found in 2nd Chronicles chapter 20. I want to read to you Psalm 83, 6, 8. And Psalm 83, starting in verse 6 says this. The tents of Edom. Okay, so the Psalm is going to give us some people groups, and the people groups match what we have for context in 2 Chronicles chapter 20. So Edom, the Ishmaelites of Moab and the Hagrites, Biblos, Ammon, Amalek, Philistia, and the people of Tyre. Even Assyria has joined them to reinforce Lot's descendants. So Psalm 83 is going to begin to match context. 2 Chronicles chapter 20. If you want to go to 2 Chronicles chapter 20, it would actually be really, really, really helpful for you because it provides the context for what's going on in Psalm 83. Okay. Second Chronicles, chapter 20, verse one starts like this. After this, the Moabites, the Ammonites, and some of the Meonites came to wage war against Jehoshaphat. Okay, we're going to go to verse 13. Okay. All of the men of Judah and their wives and children and little ones stood there before the Lord. So they're on the battle lines. And it says this. Then the spirit of the Lord came on Jahaziel, son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jael, the son of Mattaniah, a Levite and a descendant of Asaph. Asaph's back. Okay, so anyway. All right. Sorry I got so excited about Asaph just now. Okay, A descendant of Asaph as he stood in the assembly. All right, so the spirit of the Lord comes down on Jahaziel, and this is what he says, says, listen, King Jehoshaphat and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem. This is what the Lord says to you. Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army, for the battle is not yours, but God's. Okay? Tomorrow, march down against them. They will be climbing up by the Pass of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the gorge in the desert of Jerry or Jerry El. You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your position, stand firm, and see the deliverance the Lord will give you, Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. Go out and face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you. Okay, so we get one of Asaph's descendants, who the spirit of the Lord comes on him, and he begins to prophesy a word of encouragement. And here's what begins to happen. Okay? Jehoshaphat leads them out to battle and says this. Okay, this is verse 21. After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing, not fight, but to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army. Okay, so, hey, guys, this is like a football team being like, let's get the cheerleaders. Hey, let's use cheerleaders as our. As our defensive line, you know, so the quarterback doesn't get sacked. Or as our offensive line, so the quarterback didn't get sacked. Like, this is just ridiculous. Okay, so Jehoshaphat appointed men just sing. Hey, I know. I know. They've got bows and arrows put at your face. I know that they're throwing spears. They're out here with swords. I'd like you to sing. You know, can you please sing a choir? Choir? Can we sing? All right. I love this. Sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness. Okay? As they went out at the head of the army, not even behind the army, not next to the army, in front of the soldiers. How about you guys just sing, okay? Give thanks to the Lord for his love endures forever. That's what they start singing. Give thanks to the Lord for his love endures forever. As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah. And they were defeated. The Ammonites and Moabites rose up against the men of Mount Seir to destroy and annihilate them. So allies are fighting against allies. After they finished slaughtering the men from Seir, they helped to destroy one another. Okay, this is great. The only thing that the men had to do is sing and praise, and God fought the battle for them. What a good story. And honestly, what a timeless truth. I know you've probably been in church where we sing that song. This is how I fight my battles this is how I fight my battles this is how I. Right. This is how I fight my battles. Like man worship is warfare. I don't know if there's a better story like in the Bible. And by the way, there are a plethora of stories just like this all throughout the Bible, where singing, where praise, where lifting up of hands, where physical, expressive worship literally is the defining weapon in the battle. Because God is able to fight battles for us if we actually do the thing that elicits his presence, which is praise and worship. This is how I fight my battles. 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 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 the 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. So the context for Psalm 83 is Second Chronicles, Chapter 20. All right, just trying to give some context here. All right, Psalm 84. Okay. These. This psalm is written by the sons of Korah. This is a lament, and this is designed to be a longing for Jerusalem. Okay? A lament, a longing for Jerusalem. And this is another psalm for the feast of tabernacles. All right, we've seen this in Psalm 81, where Psalm 81 is all about desiring, longing for the feast of tabernacles. So we're going to get to Psalm 84, and we're going to get the same exact place. But there's a longing to be in the house of God. And there's this famous verse, okay, Psalm 84, verse 10. Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than. Than dwell in the tents of the wicked. I think that's actually one of the first verses that I memorized as a kid, because I just went to a church that did liturgy every week, and that passage was read every single week during the benediction or the opening. I can't really remember. I was really young, talking like 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years old. I grew up going to this African Methodist Episcopal Church called Charles Street AME in Boston, Massachusetts. And part of the liturgy was to quote this verse. And so this is one of the first verses that just got seared onto my memory as a young kid. And we're actually going to come back to it. Okay, now, now that we've kind of got context for all three of these Psalms. Psalm 82, Psalm 83, and Psalm 84. All right, now we're going to actually get into some nerdy nuggets and is probably going to require most of my time to really dive into Psalm 82. So if I don't get into any nerdy Nuggets from Psalm 83, 84, I'm so sorry, okay? But Psalm 82 is huge because we have the divine council. Psalm 82 says this. God provides in the great assembly. He renders judgment among the gods. Okay, now, this idea has stumped scholars for a long time. What? Who are these gods? And what's this great assembly? What is this divine council that's meeting in the heavens? Why does God have a conference room? Why does he have a board? Like, what's going on? Why is God having meetings with people? And who is he having meetings with? All right, there are three options for how to interpret this stuff, and I'm going to save the best for last and wink, wink. The last one is the one I agree with. But anyway, I want to give you all three so that you can come to your own conclusion and to be honest, do research, look this stuff up. All right? To be honest, I could do an entire course on just the ideas that I'm about to share in the next two to three minutes. I'm not even going to do them justice as I'm going to give a very cursory overview of the ideas for. For this segment. So, Psalm 82, we're going to have gods, okay? And I actually want to read this to you maybe in the nrsv, just so that you can get a sense for some different language. Psalm 82, Psalm 82, verse 1 says this. God has taken his place in the divine council. So if you're wondering why I'm using that language, well, the NRSV uses that exact language. So the great assembly is how the NIV has it. Divine council is way more accurate. And so, you know, I love the fact I like this language. Divine counsel. That's why I wanted to read it in the nrsv. In the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. Okay, in the midst of the gods. Who are these gods? How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Okay. Give justice to the weak and the orphan. Maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy, Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. They have neither knowledge nor understanding. They walk around in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. Okay? I say, you are God's children of the most high, all of you. Nevertheless, you shall die like mortals and. And fall like any prince. Rise up, oh God, judge the earth, for all the nations belong to you. All right, that's Psalm 82. Let's give three options on what's happening here. First, option, first legitimate option. Okay? You don't have to agree with option number three, which is the one I agree with, which is the right answer. But I've genuinely, you can. I want you to come to your number one. This could be talking about human judges or leaders, okay? Humans, mortals. Humans who have great responsibility when it comes to leadership. Okay? So these human judges or leaders or gods here should not be understood in the like demigod kind of understanding, but rather this ancient term to indicate those in authority to judge others. Okay, this psalm then, would be a critique of Israel and Judah's failure of its judges and leaders to stop injustice in the land. All right? So perfectly legitimate way to exegete this. That's also important to let people know there isn't like, one right way to interpret a text. There could be multiple legitimate exegetical options for one text. There are oftentimes multiple legitimate exegetical options for any given text. All right? So human judges or leaders is what Psalm 82 could be talking about. Two, which I think is getting a little warmer. I'd say pagan gods. Okay. Pagan gods here are literally gods, like lowercase g. And the psalm paints a picture of God summoning all gods. Okay. This is what we would say when we say God, God, that Yahweh is King of kings, Lord of lords. Right. He's not just the only Lord. The idea here would be that the Old Testament specifically is not primarily monotheistic, but monolatrous. There's a difference. Monotheism is the belief in one God. Monolatry is the worship of one God. And I would honestly say I think that the. That the Old and New Testament. But for sure the Old Testament has a monolatous or reflects a monolithous worldview, not necessarily a monotheistic worldview. So God is summoning all of the pagan gods to a council where he critiques them for the injustice of their peoples, the ones that worship them and follow their ways. So God is putting some of the blame for idol worship on the idols themselves, the pagan gods themselves. Okay, that's number three. That's number two. Number three, which is the one I like, but that's got nothing to do with the presidency in China. Okay. It's third one. Okay. Option number three would be spiritual forces, which would mean gods are meant in the sense of the spiritual forces that oversee nations. This is part of a wider idea, mostly based on Daniel with the Prince of Persia. Okay. Which says that Yahweh has given regions of the earth. Regions of the earth, guardian spirits to oversee them. These then would be called the sons of Elohim, the sons of God, the divine council. They are in that sense responsible for what takes place in their jurisdiction. And so God critiques them for injustice that is found in their regions. This option, I actually think, is the best option. I think Paul is going to refer to this as the rulers of the age. I think Paul's going to refer to this as principalities and powers that there are spiritual forces, and maybe these spiritual forces are manifesting as pagan gods. So maybe we get a hybrid of 2 and 3. But I definitely would lean towards spiritual forces that are supposed to be operating according to God's will, but have clearly rebelled. Okay. Are in some kind of act of rebellion. All right, so those are the three options. Now, I don't really have much time left at all. If that idea intrigues you, that, like, there's a council of other Elohim, lowercase e, Elohim and that Yahweh is the Elohim of Elohim, he's the God of gods. And that he has appointed other spiritual beings to oversee nations, to oversee regions of the earth. And that maybe some of these have rebelled with Satan. Some of these spiritual beings have elicited worship from people and have become pagan gods. Like, if that whole idea is new to you, foreign to you, then I would say you should, you should Google Dr. Michael Heiser divine counsel and just dive in. Like, just start listening to the man. Cause he's brilliant and he's gonna have a lot more to say about this than I could ever share on a short, you know, 20 minute podcast. So that is what my encouragement to you is going to be. Okay, so Psalm 82 has three different interpretive options. They are all fair options. Psalm 83, the context behind Psalm 83 is 2 Chronicles, chapter 20. And for Psalm 84, we're gonna play it according to the same tune as Psalm 81, because it's the psalm of celebration. And the verse that I really, really, really, really, really want to highlight today, that's gonna be the verse for our timeless truth is Psalm 84. 10 is really the anchor verse for our timeless truth for the day. Because this one verse has just echoed through the ages. I mean, this is a popular verse. We say it in church a lot. We quote this verse a lot. There's a recognition that hits at the heart of what it means to be human. This verse resonates with our humanity. We were made to dwell in the house of God. We are made in God's image. We are his idols, his icons. Okay? I don't know if you know this, but the word image, like God made us in his image and in his likeness is the same word for when God says, don't make any graven images. Okay? So in a real way, like an image or an idol of BAAL is made after the likeness of baal. Okay? So when you worship the idol, you're worshiping BAAL because the idol represents baal, okay? In the same way that when God made us in his image, our design was for worship, that we reflect the glory of God around the earth. And that when people are impressed with our intelligence or our ingenuity or our compassion towards other people, it reflects good on who God is. Okay? So we are images of God designed to reflect his glory out in the world, which is what an idol is doing for their God. Okay? We were made. We were literally designed for worship. We were designed to dwell in the house of God, images of Yahweh that he has placed in his temple, AKA the earth. Why does one day in his presence mean so much more than thousands elsewhere? It's a great question. Well, it's because his home, his presence, his courts truly are home for us, home for our souls, home in terms of we are living out our design and our purpose. We recognize in his presence that it is where we are meant to be. It's where we were designed to be. There's a book by St. Augustine called Confessions. And I think that right in the beginning, in the first part of the book, St. Augustine says. Says these words, they're really, really powerful. I'm actually just gonna read them from my laptop. It says, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Confessions. One, one. And I think the reason that Augustine says this and that Augustine's words resonate true is because Psalm 84, verse 10 is true. It's true in the highest sense of truth. It literally resonates with the fiber of our being because it's what we were designed to do. Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. It's funny. There's a girl on our launch team. Her name is Tati. I love Tati Tatiana Egbuna. And it's funny because Tati, when I met her, she was a. She was a women's health, birth and health advocate. And she wanted to be a doula, and she wanted to start a business for doulas. And I remember one time we were at Thanksgiving and I said, what's your dream? She kind of started sharing a dream. I remember the Holy Spirit telling me while she was talking, there's no way she's going to do that. Like, that's not what I put her on this planet to do. Well, over the course of a long series of conversations actually between her and a girl on our team who started really pastoring, her, mentoring, her name, Sarah, it became clear that Tati's creative. That, like, why she went to school for medicine. I don't know, maybe parents pressuring her or people trying to put their identity onto her. But God designed her to be creative. And right now she's actually the creative director at our church, and she's crushing it. She's doing an amazing job and she's helping other People launch podcasts, and it's almost like Tati began to come alive when she began to do the thing that she was created to do. And maybe you've just been living life feeling like, and it just feels like I'm wearing somebody else's clothes, like I'm wearing somebody else's purpose. I'm not doing what I've been designed to do. Well, can I tell you, that feeling is rooted in the fact that you've not yet taken your place in God's house. You've not yet enjoyed his presence. You are restless because you have yet to find rest in the One who made you. Psalm 84 is not just true for the sons of Korah. They're not just true in the context for which they were written. They're true forever. That better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. That you were made to be in the presence of God, same way that Tatiana was made to be a creative created by God to be creative. You were created by God to reflect his image and to live in his temple and to image Him. That's what you were made to do. And if you have yet to do that, your life will always lack purpose and meaning. And you probably don't need another career. But what you need to do is surrender to the lordship of Jesus so that you can actually take up your original design, which is to image and reflect the One who made you in his image. That's timelessly true. Tomorrow we got day 280. We're going to be looking at Psalms 85 and 86, and I'm super, super excited that we get to continue our trek together through the Book of Psalms. If you're on a streak, I'm proud of you. No matter what, I love you and I'll see you right here tomorrow for day 280. Same time, same place. 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.