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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 family. Welcome to day 294. We are in Psalms 123 to 125. And if you haven't gotten the reading done, how about you go do that? Go ahead and get business. Go get the reading done. Short psalms. I mean, honestly, in my Bible, it's one page. Like literally just this little page. And all three psalms fit with some room to spare, actually. So three short psalms. How about you get the reading done and watch the episode? So for everybody, or listen to the episode. For everyone who's listening to this, not watching this. All right, for everyone who has done the reading for the day, we've got three more psalms or songs of ascent. If you weren't here yesterday, I explained that the context of all 15 of these Psalms, from Psalm 120 all the way to Psalm 134 all the way are psalms of ascent, okay? And so these psalms would have been sung as pilgrims traveled from the Jewish Diaspora or from the land of Israel to Jerusalem for three annual festivals. And those three festivals are Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. All right, that is the context. That's going to be the context for the next couple of days, to be honest. So now let's dive into some nerdy nuggets, maybe some. Some concepts or some thoughts or some facts just about the verses that you may not have come to on your own. Okay, so let's start with Psalm 123 says this. I lift up my eyes to you. All right, so that should immediately perk up our ears, right? Our antennas should be going off. I lift up my eyes. Well, that sounds really, really, really familiar to Psalm 121, which, as I lift up my eyes to the mountains or to the hills, where does my help come from? And remember, we decided yesterday that the help does not come from the hills. It doesn't come from the mountains. It comes from Yahweh. That these two things are not synonymous, but whatever the opposite of synonymous is antonymous. Is that a word? Is antonymous a word? I don't know. They're not synonymous, but they're actually juxtaposing each other. So the hills are not yahweh. Most times we merge them and we just assume that Yahweh is coming on the hills to help. Okay, so now we get the juxtaposition of Psalm 121. In Psalm 123, I lift up my eyes to you, to you who sit where? Enthroned in heaven. Not on the hills. You are enthroned in heaven. As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord, to Yahweh, our God, till he shows us his mercy. Just talk about utter dependence on the Lord. As a slave looks to the hand of his master, so so do your servants look to your hand, God. And so where is Yahweh? The. The. Now, at this point, the pilgrim has made it to Jerusalem, the pilgrim has made it to the Temple, and there's now a clear contrast where in Psalm 121, there's a temptation to look to the hills. In Psalm 123, the focus of the eyes is where? To the throne of Yahweh, which is in heaven. The focus of our eyes should not be to the hills, but to heaven. Not to the mountains, but to Yahweh himself. Not to idols, but to the throne, where God is in power, where he governs. Okay? Now have mercy on us, Lord. Have mercy on us, for we have endured no end of contempt. We have endured no end of ridicule from the arrogant, of contempt, from the proud. All right, beautiful psalm. We don't look to the hills, but we look to you who sit enthroned in heaven. So that's clear contrast. Hills versus heaven, hills versus heaven. All right, Psalm 124. Now, this is an earlier psalm of David from a time in Israel's history where he defeated the Philistines. Okay? And that defeat of the Philistines and the words that were written as a response to the defeat of the Philistines have been taken from that time in Israel's history and have been put here in the Psalms of Ascent or in the Songs of Ascent. Okay, here we have another earlier psalm of David that had been interwoven into these pilgrimage psalms. In the original context, this psalm was written by David after defeating the Philistines, who had continued to be an existential threat to Israel despite Saul and David's clear victories over them. Here, David gives thanks to Yahweh for the victory and leads the people in response to thank Yahweh in turn. Together they clearly state that Yahweh provided the victory in battle. And here's what's fascinating. The poetic license here likens the situation between Israel and the Philistines to the flood waters or the chaos waters of Genesis. Here's what it says. If the Lord had not been on our side, let Israel say, if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us, they would have swallowed us alive. What swallows people? Well, the earth can swallow people, but also the sea can swallow people. So it starts. This imagery starts when their anger flared against us. The flood would have engulfed us. So if you're. If you were questioning whether or not swallowed was about to see. Here we go. The flood would have engulfed us. The torrent is another word for chaotic. Sea waters would have swept over us. The raging waters, another synonym, would have swept us away. Praise be to the Lord who has not let us be torn by their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the fowler snare. The snare has been broken and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord. And by the way, our help, that word is azer. Okay? That's also the word that God uses for Eve. I will create a suitable helper for you. So when women are called the help mate of the man, that is not a disrespectful or denigrating term. Because if it was disrespectful or denigrating, then we couldn't call God our help. Okay? God is our help because he's strong. He's our help because he's mighty and majestic and awesome. My wife is able to be my help because she's strong, not because she's weak. My wife is able to be my help because she's brilliant, intelligent, strategic. And so this is not at all a disrespectful or denigrating term. And we have to rid ourselves of our own social location or our cultural context and enter into the world of the Bible. When interpreting the Bible. All right, it says the maker of heaven and earth. So again, we get creation verbiage at the top of the psalm, and then we get creation verbiage at the end. Okay, the maker of heaven and earth. So what's going on here? Okay, Yahweh, as always, is sovereign over the floods of chaos. And the God who brings order into chaos defeats the chaos of the Philistines and brings order to Israel. So I want you to begin to see, doesn't really matter what form chaos takes, God knows how to conquer it. And so there's a link between Yahweh as creator and creator as conqueror. And what does Yahweh conquer? He conquers chaos. He crushes chaos. By the way, if you haven't grabbed my book Crushing Chaos, you should. But because this theme is everywhere, all over the Scriptures, Yahweh is described as a chaos, conquering chaos, crushing God. And here the Philistines are just another form of that chaos. In terms of the pilgrimage, this older psalm fits perfectly into the story so far. The faraway Israelite returns to Israel, rejects the false places of worship, goes to the true temple in Jerusalem, and there he looks to the heavens and cries for mercy. And here in the psalm, we have a testimony of that mercy. Yahweh enthroned in heaven, creator of heaven and earth, is by the side of Israel and saves them from their enemies. Okay, Psalm 125. Okay, our last psalm to look at for the day. Let's see how many nerdy nuggets we can come up with. 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 angel 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. Psalm 125 is geographically coded. So it starts out with these words. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion. Mount Zion is the central mountain, the highest mountain in Jerusalem, where the temple is Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken, but endures forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so Mount Zion is in the center and mountains surround. This is true. If you go to Jerusalem, what you'll begin to see is Mount Zion. The Temple Mount is in the middle of the city, and the city is surrounded by valleys and surrounded by hills and surrounded by mountains. And so geographically, the city is very, very hard to conquer because it is. You've got any army that would invade the city has to go down into a Valley and up out of a valley and ascend a hill just to attack a city. That's very, very, very, very, very, very difficult. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forever. So think about how safe Jerusalem is because of his natural geography. The psalmist is saying, well, that's how safe God's people are, man. Even if we didn't have these mountains or natural defenses, even if we didn't have high walls, Yahweh would be enough. He'd be able to protect us. The scepter of the wicked will not remain over the land allotted to the righteous, for then the righteous might use their hands to do evil. Lord, do good to those who are good, to those who are upright in heart. But those who turn to crooked ways, the Lord has will banish with evildoers. Peace be on Israel. All right. Psalm 125 is communicating the safety and security that Jerusalem naturally has just because of its geography. And then saying that same safety, that same security that the people in Jerusalem have because of the hills and mountains, we have that same safety and that same security because Yahweh is our God, and he's a protecting, strong and mighty God. And that's a perfect, timeless truth, isn't it? That God is a protector. That God knows how to fight battles for us, that God knows how to keep us safe emotionally, that God knows how to keep us safe physically. That God knows how to keep us safe financially. And that God. The same way that God conquered the chaos of the floodwaters in order to establish land so that Adam and Eve could live, that same God crushes the chaos of the Philistines so that his people could be safe. And so, like a kaleidoscope, I want you to begin to ask, well, what chaos do I need this God to protect me from? What chaos do I need God to conquer so that I could be safe, so that I could be secure? Whether that's spiritually safe and secure, whether emotionally safe and secure, whether financially safe and secure, whether mentally safe and secure. God does want you to experience safety and security. Maybe not always comfort, but safety and security against forms of chaos that want to engulf you, that want to swallow you up. It doesn't have to be an army or an ocean for God to be able to conquer it. Like we've seen, the language of the wild sea gets transferred over to the Philistines because David is able to see that this isn't just an army, it's chaos. Paul actually gives verbiage to this in the New Testament, he said, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. He's able to see that behind the flesh and blood, evil that's real, there's an even more real puppet master holding up strings to this puppet with flesh and blood. And so no matter what you're dealing with, I want you to be able to put some lenses on, put a perspective on that says, oh, that's a force of chaos. God knows how to deal with chaos. Because for whatever reason, life can kind of convince us that even though the chaos is different, that God didn't know how to deal with it. Even though he helped you with foreclosure or bankruptcy before, but not cancer, Both. Bankruptcy, foreclosure, and cancer are all forms of chaos. And God is a chaos crushing God. By kind of understanding how all forms of evil are one thing, you begin to realize you don't need multiple gods to be able to attack this thing, because it's just one thing. And the same God that can bring prosperity is the same God that can bring healing. Because a lack of prosperity and a lack of healing are chaotic. And God brings order. And when he brings order, everything in our life that's full of chaos has to bend its knee at the name of, of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Yahweh, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ. That's not just true for the time period in which these Psalms are written. That's not just true for returned exiles or for pilgrims ascending the hill of the Lord to go up to Jerusalem. That's true for you. That's true for me. Tomorrow we got day 295 here at the Bible Department. We're gonna be looking at a couple more songs of ascent. We're gonna be looking at Psalms 126, 127, 128, and 129. So we got four Psalms to examine, study, look at, meditate on tomorrow. I can't wait. If you're on a streak, I'm so, so, so proud of you. For everybody else, I love you so much. I'll see you right here tomorrow. The Bible Department Podcast studios. Same time, same place. 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 at thebibledepartment.com 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.