Hey, welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up? It's Wednesday and we got youth tonight. We've got yeah, we've got community groups meeting every night pretty much during the week, aside from Wednesdays. So I was talking to somebody else this morning about that and if you're not part of a community group, we want you to get involved in a community group. It's a key part of what it looks like to be a part of our church here. And so Wednesday nights are unique. Because we want our students to be involved and we also need volunteers to help with our student ministry. And so we don't have small groups, community groups that meet on Wednesday nights for that purpose. But Monday night, Tuesday night, Thursday night, Friday night nothing on Saturday either. But Sunday, there's two or three groups that meet on Sundays as well. There's a plethora of groups out there for you to join and get a part of. And we'd love for you guys to do that. We've got a great team of leaders that that shepherd them and lead our community group ministry.

Yeah. It goes without saying, but I'm gonna say it anyway, that if you're going to live a faithful Christian life, you have to do it in community. Yeah. There is no such thing as a Christian who's doing it. Oh, I'm just doing it, me and my family, or I'm just gonna do it, on online, or I'm gonna do it through books and I'll commune with the puritans. That's. Not the good way to do it. In fact, everything in the Christian life, with few exceptions is oriented corporately. Let us consider how to stir up one another toward love and good deeds. And in fact, many of the things that you see and you might think are singular. Under the language is actually plural. So when Jesus is saying for instance the Lord's prayer, and this is the one that comes to mind. Even forgive us our debts as we forgive others. He's teaching them how to pray and he's teaching them how to pray corporately, which I mean, I guess it is a corporate group of. People, but he's talking to believers who probably more naturally are inclined toward a group communal mindset. We as Westerners are just not that. I love my alone time, I love my quiet time, and we probably. As a civilization idolize that time more than we ever have in probably our nation's history. I think that's fair. So yeah, be aware, th this mindset is not Christian. It is a worldly mindset, and you would do well to fight against that tendency and to stop being, I don't know to stop imbibing the world's water and saying, I just need my alone time. I need my me time. And that's, I guess that's true. Get your sleep, get all the things that you need to have, but man, prioritize pe. Prioritize time with the body. You need that?

Yeah. And it's, it kind of building off what you're saying. I don't know that it's possible to be an obedient New Testament Christian without community, without the body of Christ. When you look at the one another commands that are given in scripture, those are to be lived out with one another. And that's a broader context than your family. It's a broader context than, your closest friends. It's meant to be lived out amongst people that it. Honestly, it's difficult to love that way. In fact, that's part of God's design, I think, is he puts us, we're difficult to love, other people are difficult to love, and he puts us all together and says, Hey, love each other. And to do that is gonna make you more like Jesus. 'cause you're gonna have to die to yourself a lot. And you're also gonna have to be humbled by other people who love you when you're unlovable. And there's just a lot of elements to where. To be like, Jesus requires community and you can't do it. You can't do it on your own. Get in community.

Yeah. That's why we started our first men's retreat on the topic of a brotherhood what do you call it? Something about band of brothers. Band of brothers. That's the one we started that way. 'cause we knew that men, especially more than women, have a tendency to isolate and just do, Hey I got my wife, I got my kids, I got my church friends. Yeah. Or I got my work friends and that's good enough. We need to fight the tendency to be alone and to be isolated. And that's why we're doing it again. We're doing another men's retreat this time. It's not band of brother. There's this one is a different topic, but such a pivotal one for every man. Ladies, gentlemen, if you're not signed up yet, ladies, get your men signed up. Men, if you're not signed up, please do it now. In fact, the sooner you do it, the better because we need we need your help planning this well and making sure that we have sufficient food and accommodations, yada, yada, yada. Please sign up for that. This is gonna help encourage and deepen your relationships. You need that, we need that, and we promise you, you will not regret it. It's always gonna be a good

time. May 16th and 17th are the dates for that. Yeah. May 16th and 17th. So be a part of that. Yeah. I remember one of my pastors growing up made the comment. He said you can't say I love Jesus, but I hate the church. It's equivalent to telling. For example, you Pastor Rod hey, pastor I love you, but I can't stand Kristen. I don't wanna be around her. Or you telling me that with Amanda, it's at the end of the day, you're gonna be like, then you don't love me. If you're trying to argue with me that you love me, but you hate my bride, then we've got problems. And the Bible makes it abundantly clear that the church is the bride of Christ, all of her warts and everything else. But just like you wouldn't show up at somebody else's house and sit there and be like, Hey, you're a pretty cool guy, but lemme tell you everything wrong with your wife right now. That's what we do to, to in, in the presence of God when we sit there and we're like Jesus, I love you, but the church is full of hypocrites in the church is, imperfect for this reason, that reason. And I'll never be able to forgive the church for what they did to me when I was younger. And you're right, the church is far from perfect. But she's the bride of Christ. And Christ died to purify her and make her holy for himself. And if we love Jesus, we need to love his bride. You can't have it any other way than that. Let's jump into our daily Bible reading for today. Psalm 1 0 2, 1 0 3, 1 0 4 1 0 2. The title of the psalm gives away what it's gonna be about, and it says A prayer of the afflicted. And so here we have a lament psalm again beginning focused inwardly on the psalmist troubles. But this one ends in great exaltation of God and his mighty and sovereign power. And the pivot point really for this psalm is Psalm 1 0 2, verse 12. So he's laying out his afflictions. He's talking about everything that is leading to his suffering. I. And then he gets in verse 12 and he says, but you oh Lord are enthone forever. So I highlighted the but you, because it reminded me of in Ephesians two the, but God. And that's the psalmist bemoaning his circumstances. But then it turns right there in, in verse 12 with this, but you oh Lord, are enthone forever and rem remembering that, reminding him. Himself of that preaching to himself of that changes his perspective for the remainder of the Psalm.

Verse 17, he says, he regards the prayer of the destitute. He does not despise their prayer. This sounds a lot like Matthew chapter five, where Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit. This is not about your financial situation. This is about the humility of your heart. And so if you want God to hear your prayer, be sure that you are coming as a destitute person who is desperate for God to inter intervene on your behalf. This is not a matter again of financial resources. It's a matter of the soul's resources. And perhaps the greatest resource that you can build up in your life. The greatest resource that you can bring to the Lord is humility. He loves that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. If you want more of God's grace, man, be sure that you are praying that God would keep your heart humble, so that you are drawn near to him as often as you're able.

Yeah. And a great way to, to gain that perspective and that frame of mind is to meditate on who God is. And that's what the psalmist does there. Towards the end of the psalm he praises God as the creator. He says, you of old laid the foundation of the earth, the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain. They will wear out. You will change them like a robe that will pass away, but you are the same and your years have no ended. So that's such a helpful frame of mind for us to get to, to remember that we are the creature, he's the creator, and that will will pro produce a lot, hopefully rightly understood. Produce a lot of that humility that we. We need to be modeling.

Yeah. One more quick note on the psalm here, verse 18. He says, let this be recorded for a generation to come. In other words, he's not just thinking about his own life as he reflects on how God has been faithful to him and what God has done for him and his generation. He's thinking about the next generation we as Christians would do well, especially those of us who are older in advance in years to say, okay, what about the next generation? How do I support them? How do I love them? How do I ensure. That the people yet to be created may praise the Lord. That's future thinking. That is future focus. And that's the kind of mindset that we ought to we ought to cultivate as we go about our day.

Yeah. Yeah. Psalm 1 0 3 probably one of my favorite psalms. Just a encouraging psalm here. It's, it praises the theme of this one. So the last Psalm of affliction, this one is a psalm really of praise. And it's the theme of the Davidic psalm here the psalm is David calling on the reader to bless the Lord with. All that is in him for all the glorious and wonderful things that God has done. It's an immensely encouraging Psalm, but I, that jumped out to me in verse one. Bless the Lord oh my soul and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. It's a, it is a holistic devotion to worshiping God. For all the good things that he's done, and he starts with forgiveness. In verse three, who forgives your iniquities? He heals your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. I'm often convicted reading the Psalms about just how little David knew compared to what we know and yet how much what he knew still drove him to his praise and worship of God. And so when David talks about forgiveness, man, how much more do we understand about forgiveness, having the fullness of. Revealed scripture and knowing the cross and the empty tomb and everything else. And so when he is talking about in verse 10 saying, he doesn't deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. And then he goes on and he says, as far as verse 12, the east is from the west. So far. Does he remove our transgressions from us? What an encouraging reality and thought that is. And how much more should we worship him in response, if David understood, but a, a, a. The edges of his, the cloak of his grace. With this, we have been able to understand so much more and it should cause us to worship him in response.

Yeah. I think we ought to take verse two to heart man, forgetting not all his benefits. And again, David's counting a million, we can count 10 billion. Yeah, we can count 10 trillion. And it's a shame that we often don't do that. And what often prevents us from doing that is not that. There's not things we're just, especially today, we're just so focused on everything else, the short term things that are in front of us, or the things that have to get done, the dinner that has to be made, the person that has to be called. We're so consumed with the here and the now that we don't have time really to forget not all those benefits. So one of the things that you should do as you read through the psalms is to read them slowly. They take. A good amount of time to get through if you're reading them well and the temptation that you have, especially when you come up to, I think May 3rd, May 4th, lemme see here. May 2nd, actually. May 2nd. You've only got Psalm 1 33 to read, and the challenge for you will be not to say, great, I've got, I've only 30 seconds on my Bible reading today and I'm done. A read it slowly and read it meditatively because this will give you opportunity to reflect on all the benefits God has given you. And secondly we're gonna suggest you read something else on May 2nd as well. So maybe throw in an epistle or something else that would be exciting for you to read. As you make your way through the Old Testament, find a New Testament chapter small chapter book that would be good for you to read or the whole New Testament. Just read the whole thing. Yeah, the whole Bible. How long would that take? I, somebody

mapped it out. I need to find that graphic. It's 50 hours I think for the whole Bible. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah, great point. I've been working on that myself, just sitting down in the mornings, going through the word trying not to just focus on getting ready for the podcast but really letting it. M letting myself marinate in the word of God and try to really spend concentrated effort there. And not just saying, okay, how do I get ready for this podcast? But how do I benefit from this,

This passage? Dude, you always talk about having coffee and a good bible in your hand in the morning. Yeah. So I've been delaying my coffee intake and I've been trying to minimize it. Reading the Bible is much harder. Yeah. It's gonna tell you man. Yeah, that's, the flesh is weak. I don't like it. I'm still doing it. And it's working. In fact, instead of having a coffee in the morning, now I'll have a zip fizz. Yeah. Not the same. No, it's gonna tell you now. You could heat it up. It's good. Microwave it, fiz. It's good. It tastes like a Gatorade heated up. I dunno, man. I might, 'cause it's just not the same. I might even get me some decaf coffee. I'm just gonna tell you. 'cause I need the

Yeah.

That feeling like I'm doing it, yeah. Yeah. It's just not the same.

I, one of the missionaries that I was reading about recently, he. He had a place while he was growing up in his dormitory that was just a, it was a metal chair and a metal table, and it was in an empty room, and that's where he did his DBR as we call it. That's where he did his time in the word, and he said he ended up missing it, such that later on his life he revisited that dormitory and found that space again and went up to, I think it was CT stud, and went and found it again and sat down back at that table again. And it was just the sweetness of recollection of that time there, but he was like, it was a metal table and a metal chair in an empty room. And that's where he did his time in the

work. That's the way to

do it, man.

That's the way to do it. Yeah. Hey, one quick thing to point out to you. In Psalm 1 0 3, as you guys are reading it look at verse 11, 13, 17, 18. Okay. I just wanna point that out to you real quick. You're gonna see a repeated phrase. Notice that it is those who fear him. Those who fear him, those who fear him. God's benefits do not extend to everyone on the planet. This is huge. God's benefits are primarily geared. Toward those who are redeemed in Christ. So verse 11, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him as the father shows compassion to his children. Verse 13 says, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. Verse 17, the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him. Verse 18, his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant. So everything that we're reading here. Be reminded is a special and incredible privilege for those who are in Christ, those who fear him. Now, let's remind ourselves real quick. Pastor Pji, tell us about fearing God. Am I supposed to be afraid of him? Like I'm afraid of the dark?

Yeah. Yes you are.

Yeah. So

again, tomorrow, no, it's it's a reverential. It's that awe, it's the fear again. We talk about it so often. It's the fear that a child has for their father. They, it's not a fear that drives them away, that the child still will run to their father and be enveloped in a warm embrace by their father and hugged by their father and loved by their father. The child has an awareness also of the father's discipline that's going to, in instill this recognition of a need to respect and to obey and to fear the consequences of disobeying. So that's the fear relationship that we have with God our heavenly Father. It's not one that causes us to cower or to be afraid to approach him. That's right. But we approach him in the right way. That's it. Yeah. Psalm 1 0 4 is hits on another theme that I often will talk about and that often shows up in my own life, is just the way that God encourages me. And that is the way that creation drives us to praise. And in this Psalm, God is. Pictured as the one that is creating, he's stretching out the heavens, like a tent. In verse two, we went on our camping trip, and so those of you who got your tent set up well, hey, God stretched out the heavens just like a tent. Verse five laid the earth on its foundation, so it should never be moved. We talked about flat Earth recently. And I think in passages like this, we see that there's artistic language applied to the creation acts of God in a way to help us understand things that we wouldn't say, okay, this is exactly what happened here. When it says that the heavens are like a tent it's, there's no fabric in the skies. There's no dome universal fabric with a nylon, zip stop or nylon rip stop tent. Fabric up there. We know that this is poetic. This is metaphorical language. And and that's what the psalmist is doing here too. He's he's saying, this is like what God has done and he's trying to do that in a way that helps us to understand what it is that God created. I. That we would in the end not attribute the clouds to happenstance or the clouds to the God of the clouds, but that we would say, no, this is the God of the universe who's done

this. Yeah, the goodness of creation ought to testify to us as it does, that God is good and he does good things for us. In fact, something stood out to me that I always see, and I think I might understand it better this time as I've read it. I don't know how many times before verse 15. In fact, verse 14 he says, you cause the grass to grow for the livestock plants for man to cultivate that he may bring forth food from the earth. In verse 15 says, and wine to gladen the heart of man oil to make his face shine bread to strengthen man's heart. So the psalmist here is celebrating the fact that God made wine and he didn't just make wine as a Hey, do you better not enjoy this? This is gonna taste funny. He says no, he made wine and glad in the heart of man, which I think you might first think doesn't the Bible say don't get drunk? Yes it does. But the Bible doesn't say, don't enjoy God's good gifts. You can enjoy and you can partake in such a way that you can derive the benefit without being enslaved to and becoming inebriated. And I think that's the idea here. God gives us creation to enjoy and Christians of all people. Should be able to take creation and say, I'm gonna enjoy this to the glory of God. Of course there's illegal substances, things that the government says, not good. We're not gonna allow these things. And we, by and large honor that. But where scripture says you should enjoy creation, we're gonna say, man, we enjoy that. We enjoy wine. The glad in the heart of man everything that God makes is for our enjoyment, for our good, for our pleasure. In so far as it not, it has not become an idol, and it's not breaking the law in some way. So here's something to encourage you. Enjoy God's creation. Savor it. Relish it because it's God's goodness toward you.

How about verse 31 where it says, may the glory of the Lord endure forever? May the Lord rejoice in his works. Do you think God rejoices in beholding his creation, the beauty of the things that he's made?

I heard I read a book once that, and I can't even remember the book. I just remember this particular part where here's something fascinating. Okay, so Hebrews chapter one says, God upholds the universe by the word of his power. We attribute the natural order of things to. A mechanical oh, the sun rises, the sun sets the moon rises, the moon sets, and we have four seasons, and yada, yada, yada. This is just how it works, and this is the reason why gravitational pull and waves and yada. But this, I don't know if it's a commentator or just a book. He, he acknowledges that what Hebrews once says is that God is actively involved in creation to the point where he's willing these things to continue happening. And then he makes a connection. What kind of person sees the same thing over and over again? And continues to delight in it. And he pointed to the fact that children tend to be this way. Children can see the same movie over a thousand times and they wanna see it again. The thousandth. And first he says God has a child likeness to his nature in that he wills the same thing over and over again because he rejoices in his creation. It is good, even though it's marred, it is good. And God, like in childlike fashion, is filled with wonder and awe at his glory being displayed in creation. Yeah. And I think. That perfectly encapsulates what you just brought up.

That's awesome. That's awesome to think about, man. Just God watching the sunrise now. God exists outside of time and yeah there's layers there, but we also have to reconcile, reconcile verses like this that he rejoices in his works and what you were just talking about too. Such a cool concept of God, one that we don't often entertain. Yeah. Amen of that. Yeah. Let's pray and then we will be done with this episode. God, we are grateful for the depth of your character in all the different shades of who you are. And so many that we don't know at this point, so many that we will come to know during eternity and yet in our. Creatureliness, our finiteness. We will never fully comprehend the infinite God. We will never know everything there is to know about you. And yet, by your grace, you've revealed so much to us already, and even in creation as we were just reading about in Psalm 1 0 4 Lord, certainly through your word, your written word that we read on a daily basis and we come to to learn more about you. We are grateful for these. Measures of revelation that we have of you. Help us to marinate in them like we were talking about earlier too. Not to rush through anything, but to really learn as much as we possibly can about who you are and to take that and apply it to our lives. So we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Keep reading your Bibles. Tune in, get tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you. Bye. Thanks for listening to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about ourChurch@compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review to rate to share this podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening on, and we will catch you against tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said