Bible Guys Classics: Psalm 91

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Hey today, Oh wow, todayda Hey everybody. I was just gonna say happy Monday because today's Monday. Oh, it's everybody's favorite day except for Garfield. You sound a little too excited about it. It was happy Monday. Well, I'm trying to manufacture energy, okay, Ring, I'm trying to tell myself that I'm excited because it was It's nine a. I'm in the studio. It was believable, and today's actually Wednesday. Wednesday. But happy Monday to the listener. If you're listening on those days, they could be archiving this. I bet they are. They could be at the gymnasium. I can't believe I said gymnasium. They could be at the gym working out jimsium. How old are you, dude? Well, you know. The red Wagon. So no, they could be at the gym at two in the morning. I just got that in the lobby too. Okay. God came up to me and says, you know, I'm the guy that works out at two am and every day, And I said, you work at at two am, he said, listen to the Bible. Guys. Why so happy technical morning. Okay, well, good morning to you. Yes for sure. Well, hey, we have a special for our two. Am listeners because we have a very special segment this morning as we're doing. Yesterday was Easter, and so we're going to do an Easter draft for our favorite things about Easter. Yeah, what do we like the most about Easter? Easter traditions? What do you like the most about Easter? Yeah, the same. All right, we're gonna do rock paper scissors, so you get to go sure, okay, ready rock two three? Oh he had rock, eye had scissors, So you get to go first. I'm superior. You always beat me, right you cheat? Did you cheat? No, no, you don't, Liz, I know your mind's or Liz. So here's scary thought. Here's my favorite favorite thing about Easter. And it has to be and I'm going to take still your thunder. Uh, the Christmas services at churches? So right, because I know Christmas services at churches. What did I say? You say, Christmas Easter services at church? Easter services at church are your favorite thing about Eastern No? No, no, wait a minute, you didn't say it has to be number one is trumps. Number two, you know, but I mean, I get it. It's so it's traditions, it's all your favorite it's in the things that you like in the top. But you're going to steal my thunder. Because that's what you're going to say. Okay, right, no, oh right, We'll go ahead and like. So yours is all the gajillions of services. So we did like twenty two services across our campuses. Yeah, I love that. You love love the camaraderie. I love the people. I love the energy, the chaos. I love the chaos. I love all the people, the artistic moments, all of it. Yep. Yeah, So favorite things about Easter? So that was your first draft pick, number one draft pick. You used your draft pick on Eastern Service. Hush, are you going to make fun of me because of my family staff? So nope, My favorite thing about Easter is Jesus the Resurrection. The Resurrection. You left the best player on the board, dude, So the resurrection is kind of a big deal about Easter. Okay, I didn't know that you were meaning what that. I thought you you experiencing the holidays. You said your favorite thing about Easter. Why you're doing so much setup you set me at the fail. I was just hoping, I was hoping you'd choose anything other than that. So I got the Resurrection. Big fan, big fan by the way, big fan of the Resurrection. One of my favorite things. That's a journey Christian love. All Right, I'm gonna go with, Uh, Okay, anything besides. Is out. I'm gonna say, he's your basket, Resurrection Salvation, Okay, right, So I'm gonna. Go with you know, I just I just drafted Tom Brady. You know that, right, Okay? Okay. So here's the thing. Uh, did you just compare Tom Brady the Resurrection, well the goat? Okay, I would say this. I would say I enjoy very much. So the tradition that I have with my family that most people who know me know this. Yes, we hide Easter baskets. And my kids are in their twenties, and I even have one that's in her thirties. And she said, she said, I will never get too old for Easter baskets. I said, oh, trust me, there will be a day where I mean, I'm not going to be eighty and you're going to be fifty coming home for you know, Easter, and then say, Dad, hide my Easter basket. I said, that's just not going to happen, right, But currently I can't believe I'm still doing it. But here I do. Here, I find myself hiding Easter baskets every year. It's a big deal. I mean, like very big deal. You have epic videos the whole night. Yeah. I figured you'd say that. So after my first draft pick, I'm going to take a flyer. No, no, no, no, I'm going to take a flyer and say, Reese's peanut butter eggs. Wow, resurrection. I don't want you to steal those from me. I don't want you to steal those from me. Yeah, so I don't want you to steal those because I was afraid you would punish me. That's what I was afraid you would. I should, I should, So I needed to grab that one. Thank you. Okay, this is the. Third thing that I'm going to choose, as I'm going to say that, my family does another big, crazy thing and it's and it's it's massive. It's just as big as the Easter baskets. And that is we do an egg fight. And so we do egg fights just like the Greeks or the Italians. Uh, it's it's tradition. If you ever seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Yes, the movie, I remember they walked by and they did it and they cracked the eggs. Well, we have brackets. I'm glad you explained it because most people were envisioning like flinging eggs. At each other. That's correct, Thank you, thank you, you're welcome. So we do. We do egg fights. And so like my Youngstown family growing up Youngstown, Ohio, what they would do is they would literally, like you would have a fights in your own home and then you would meet together. And so like my uncle would have egg fights with his family, and then the winner of that egg he would bring to the final round right right, and then he would bring it all over. And then we would just do winners against winners, and everybody has to submit names for their eggs and everything. I mean, it's pretty crazy. Okay, So can you give us the ground rules very quickly on how to do an egg fight? Yeah, see hardbowed egg and then one person holds it and the other person depends on you know, who's on the bracket on the draft. But one person holds it and one person strikes pointy gets pointy. Only one's going to crack. Always two don't crack. That's just one. Then you flip it and you do the other side. And if it's one in one, then the third one wins. And sometimes if you have one end cracked and one and not, I've seen a limp egg make it all the way to the end, like one end is cracked. One is not, and he wins. How is there a limit to how hard you can hit? Just hard enough to crack the shell? Okay, tap, not a smash. I'm sure if you smash smashed, both of them probably would bring and then they're both out. Yeah that would be okay. Okay, So you're trying to crack the other one. You're hitting just hard enough to crack the other one, but not crack yours correct? Okay, good, it is riveting. This is riveting material, by the way. Okay, so was that your number three? We got to get hurrying. Then. I love gathering the family around after a great Easter church services. And having a big Easter dinner. Yeah. I love it and I love it, and I would say, uh, another tradition for us. Is I would say I love. Well, ge whiz, I'm gonna go with our Easter dinner too, okay, yep, okay, so yours versus mine? Yes, okay, better I doubt it. And then actually. Then I would say around the Easter time, I love the My wife is usually starting to fill every everything with flowers. So yeah, the daffodils and all the stuff coming up in Michigane, she loves that. So we're done. Okay. Was that it was that in our five? Okay? Well it was four at least, so at least four. Good. Well, Hey, we have. Been going through chronologically through the Old Testament, and we kind of have been a in a Isaiah chunk. But then you did a bunch of proverbs and psalms, you. Right, speaking of chunks of chunklate, there are also chunks of scripture. Yeah, okay, good, good, because I was having trouble with a with a bad thing. So for this chunk of scripture that we're going to talk about is Psalm ninety one today? Chunks of scripture? Well it is, yeah, it's okay. Well, so when God wrote it, had it written, He didn't have it written in verses and chapters, correct, right, which people actually so then people chunked it up. Okay, leader or not. Most people don't know about the verses in chapters right right, Yeah, they don't really know that they came in the form of you know, mostly let and the long manuscripts. So we are in Psalm ninety one today, and the Bible doesn't necessarily say who the author was. No, so it says anonymous actually a ninety mouse, So here you go. It says those who live in the shelter are the most high, will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. This I declare about the Lord. He alone is my refuge, my place of safety. He is my God, and I trust him, for he will rescue you from every trap and protect you from deadly disease. He will cover you with his feathers, he will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection. Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night, for the arrow that flies, nor the arrow that flies in the day. Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at midday. Though a thousand fall at your side, though ten thousand are dying around you, These evils will not touch you. Just open your eyes and see how the wicked are punished. If you make the Lord your refuge, If you make the most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you, No plague will come near your home, for he will order his angels. To protect you. Wherever you go. They will hold you up with their hands, so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone. You will trample upon lions and cobras, and you will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet. The Lord says, I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call on me, I will answer. I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue and honor them. I will reward them with a long life and give them my salvation. I love that those who live in the shelter are the most high will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. Yeah. I love that. Yeah, it's one of the most poetic verses in the Bible. Yeah, I agree. So we love the Life Application study Bible and the first note here underneath that says God is a shelter. A refuge when we are afraid. The writer's faith in God as protector would carry him through all. The dangers and fears of life. This should be a. Picture of our trust, trading all of our fears for faith in Him, no matter how intense our fears. Then we must live and rest with Him. By entrusting ourselves to his protection and pledging our daily devotion to him, we will all be kept safe. You know, when it says refuge, uh, in the Old Testament, there were actually cities of refuge, right, And I'm not sure anybody really grasps the fact that you know that word refuge is you know, there were places where you could run and claim refuge. So if you were being hunted. Or if you were being you know, unlawfully chased, you could actually go. To and and it's very similar to sanctuary. Right, yeah, it's exact same. Yeah, So so you could actually and and uh, you know what, I went to Cuba one time. Well, you were in Cuba too. You probably saw the doors. Did you see how thick the doors were? They give you that speech. So there's this. Really big cathedral in Cuba, and and and as they were giving us this tour, uh, they had opened these doors. And this is from the same sixteen hundreds, and so this seventeen. Yeah, because that one tower was built in seventeen seventy six. That's why I remember that. Oh there you go, that's funny, seventeen seventy six. Anyway, they opened the doors, and this door was I mean probably three inches thick, and it was it was solid wood. And to move the door even it wasn't he look like an incredible amount of strength. And you could see how somebody would run into a church and claim sanctuary and they would shut these doors and both them and it would quite frankly keep out like I wouldn't say an army, but raging hordes. I would definitely say, I would say, you know, definite you know, groups of bandits and thieves and mobs, mobs and things like that. Right, and so, but in the Old Testament, they actually had cities that were like this, And so didn't David run to Gath. Yeah, that wasn't a sanctuary city. That was a philistine city. There was a philistine city. But he found sanctuary there. Okay. So the premise behind the Old Testament sanctuary cities was God set those up as places to be able to get a fair trial. So if you were riding your camel and you accidently ran over some guy and he dies. There wasn't like the sheriff in town. So the families would choose a blood avenger, somebody to hunt down the guy who killed the family. And you know, it couldn't be the whole family. It just had to be the one blood avenger, and he would be then like deputized to be the sheriff, but he'd also be the judge and the executioner, so he'd try to he'd hunt you down, he'd find you and execute you. So they so they set up these cities of refuge in the north and the south, the east and the west of Israel, and if you felt like it was an accident, you could run to that city claim refuge. They would protect you until they could do a legal trial. So that was the original idea behind the cities of refuge. It's in the law. I'm not sure if we talked about that when we when we were in that part of the Bible. But then in this one, refuge in general is just a safe place, right. It's a it's a castle if you're thinking, or it's a it's a high spot. When the flood is is, you know, pouring in It's it's all those things. It's that the safest place you can possibly be. And that's what it's trying to explain, is that God is our safest place in the middle of the storm or the problems. Can you imagine being slow enough to where you couldn't get out of the way of a camel? Yeah? Or if you're the writer, oh no, I'm. A lot of There were a lot of camel accidents back then. If you just read the old newspapers, it was pretty pretty horrific. So yeah, exactly. So I love the imagery of those first four verses right, that He alone is my refuge, my place of safety. He's my God. I trust him. He will rescue you from every trap, protect you from deadly disease. He'll cover you with his feathers, He'll shelter you with his wings. His paint faithful promises are your armor and protection. Have you ever seen a hen that will drop down and pull all of her baby chicks underneath? And if you've ever come in and startled a hen with a bunch of chicks, the chicks will immediately turn and run from you, and the hen will run towards her chicks, throw out her feathers, the chicks will run. Underneath, and she'll use her body to protect her. Shall we share with our listeners the goose that's outside. Yeah, you've got just outside. Well, that's how we keep the riff raff out of the studio. So we've got a couple of geese. Yeah, and one is nesting and the other is protecting. And so literally, if you walk too closed. And I was walking in with my buddy Jeff Miller and who's here of this today, And so as we were walking in together, I said, don't don't even go near that side of the parking lot. He goes why, and I go, oh, it'll get you. I've been gotten yeah, yeah, yeah, you got got several times last year. Yes, yes, and so, and that goose keeps on coming back. And it's in the landscaping of the building. And for some reason they. Think make a big nest in the mulch. Yeah, that's that's where they wanted. That's what they wanted. That's because they found a bunch of cowards they can bully us, so they just keep coming back, I guess. But so there's this this imagery that the farmers, the agricultural type people. You know, most people get their chicken in a bag handed out the window now in our in our culture, right, But back then chicken was was you know, you kept chickens and then you'd have your eggs, certainly, and then eventually you'd make you so because of that, they would have chickens everywhere. This is one of those images that everybody would have known. Everybody would have understood this one, right, that she'll she'll die protecting her chicks. Right. She provides the shelter and the protection for those chicks is under her wings, under her care. And that's what it's talking about here, is that's how God views his people. So those first four. And by the way, I love how God connects his nature to motherhood, right because you know, he created both Adam and Eve both in his image. And so you know, we all you know, twenty twenty five nobody wants to well not nobody, but culture is trying to make men and women less different than they are, right, and so we have to understand, like, you know, God created men completely different than women. So if you look at all the differences, it's pretty striking, right, right. But you know, somehow culture wants to. Say, you know, and by the way, equality is different. We believe that you know equal rights versus you know, different roles. Right. So anyway, the point is is that the motherhood role, which is usually you know, fulfilled by the motherly instinct, that that is also a god instinct. Right, That's a God that's part of God's nature, which is pretty cool, I think. So it is. Yeah, So this is I think the most important phrase is in verse two. He alone is my refuge, my place of safety. He is my God, and I trust him. Then everything else in this chapter it talks about terrors of the night, arrows that fly in the day, diseases that stalk in the darkness, disaster that strikes at midday, a thousand falling at your side in some war, right, punishment for evil plagues, all those things. He says, those things aren't going to touch you as long as God's on your side. So it really does come down to trust. Terrors in the night. We taught our kids to pray these verses, right, those who live in the shelters the most high, I'll find the rest in the shadow of the almighty mighty. He alone is my refuge. My place of safety is my God. I trust him, especially that verse we taught my daughter to pray he. Is my God. I trust him as we talk, right, because she'd have those little terrors at night, she'd be afraid or whatever. And so if you totally trust him, those terrors of the night don't have to be as terrifying. Are they still there? Sure? You know? Right, Sometimes it's scary to be in the dark, and there's bumps that happen. Yes, wars happen, Arrows do fly, diseases do kill people, certainly, But if you are in God's will and it's fulfilling his purpose in the moment, nothing can hurt you. Right. Then on occasion you read through the Bible, there are martyrs. There are people who die for the cause of Christ. One that's a great privilege. And two there are times when God says, Okay, your race on this earth is done, and so I'm going to use you for my purpose for this amazing moment, right, this really important thing, and then something will happen there. But when it comes down to He's my God and I trust him, then whatever happens to me is going to be okay, yeah, right, because I'm trusting him for my safety. Well, when I was you processing this chapter, I started thinking about the application of the arrows, you know, think about I mean, I can't imagine being in a war. But again, I'm a movie guy, so I certainly have seen my share of movies. And if you're in a war back then I would guess running around on the battlefield, it would be much easier to worry about a guy in front of you with a sword, as you could assess those kind of risks as opposed to arrows randomly flying through the air. Arrows flying through the air can come at any given time from anywhere and strike you down. And so I would imagine the. Scariest part of being on the battlefield are the arrows, like by a million times, right, because you don't know, and you can't defend, and it's just unbelievable and you can't see and you can't react quick enough and so you know, you know you and I have no idea how you know that must have been, you know, to be on guard against those kinds of things. Well, anyway, I'm thinking about the application of that, and I'm taking, man, what are the scariest things in our lives? What are the things that we think are going to come out of the blue. Sometimes it's even worry and anxiety. You know, we create those arrows. Sometimes we're like, oh, no, what if this happens, What if this happens that Aaron's going to come right out and just you know, destroy my future or my financial future, or or something will happen with health and we'll get up, oh at the doctor or whatever it is. And so there could be worried anxiety about something that hasn't happened yet. But whatever that is, whether it's we create them ourselves or whether it's a reality, you know, think about what God is saying. He's saying, I'm trying to describe the most terrifying thing, and I'm telling you that if you trust in me, it'll be like a chick underneath the wings of its mom. It'll be like going into a city where you finally make the city. Am I going to make the city? I made the city a refuge or sanctuary? Or he's saying it's like a suit of armor. You know, you can feel confident, and he's making all these you know, metaphors, and so imagine what your scariest thing is and God's saying, you'll feel safe if you have me there with you. I'll be your God and you can trust me. That's that's what he's saying. So then he says in by the way, I'm going to send my angels right, So you've got guardian angels. We don't pray to our guardian angels. We pray to God. He's one who sends them, right. But he uses his angels to protect us all those kinds of things. But then he says in verse fourteen, the Lord says, I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call on me, I will answer, I'll be with them in trouble. I will rescue and honor them. And so the appropriate thing to do when the night terrors calm, or when the angel when the arrows are flying, or when the battle is raging, or when the plagues are you know, wiping out the population, he says, run to me, and those that love me, those that call on me, I'll rescue you. And so if you find yourself in the middle of some kind of crisis or some kind of fearful moment, the best thing to do is to run to God. And he'll protect you. Yeah, I'm sure you've given advice before. When somebody has fears in the night about scary things, to yell at the name of Jesus. Yeah, all the time. Just claim the name of Jesus and rebuke everything else. Well, that's a great place to end, what a great chapter, and hopefully we will see you next time on the Bible. Guys,