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[Music]
0:48
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:53
Let's get into it.
0:54
Welcome back to The Forging Table.
0:56
The mission of Undaunted Life is equipping men to push back darkness,
0:58
with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:01
At The Forging Table, you'll see a group of regular guys forging spiritual resilience
1:05
by digging into God's Word.
1:06
And we're welcoming all of you to come along on that journey with us.
1:09
That's Dagan, that's Eric, that's Matt.
1:10
And a little bit of a house cleaning or something from the last episode.
1:15
You might have wondered, you know, why did Matt walk in 45 minutes late
1:18
to something he knew was on the calendar?
1:20
Well, I will just tell you the reason why he showed up late was not because he's a
1:24
weird person or he's a bad person or he's a bad adult.
1:26
It's because he was being a good husband because his wife was off on a girls weekend,
1:30
you know, where they're doing some things, hanging out, like talking about whatever,
1:33
you know, check stuff, spending your money, spending, spending money and doing all that.
1:36
And so he in order to be a good husband, he wanted to make sure that she did not feel rushed
1:41
coming home on Sunday.
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So the girls that she was with, they all went to church that morning.
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They went to lunch, they took their time getting home.
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Once they got home, you know, once she got home,
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you made sure the kids were all settled and good to go and squared away.
1:52
So I forgot to mention that last time.
1:54
So can we just give Matt a round of applause for being the best husband out of all of us?
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God, you're such a big deal.
1:59
Matt, gosh, I'm just feel so.
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Oh, man, I so I appreciate that.
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Yeah, I feel so weak in your presence.
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But here's what we're going to do, guys.
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We're digging into Psalm 34 today, and I just got to tell you right from the jump.
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That is my favorite psalm.
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When I think about the psalms, that is the one that jumps out to me.
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And it might have my favorite verse in the entirety of the Old Testament.
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Okay, and we'll get there.
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But to set the stage for Psalm 34.
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So the, I guess the title of it is taste and see that the Lord is good.
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Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech so that he drove him out and he went
2:28
away.
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So what this is referring to.
2:30
So Abimelech, that's very likely an alternative name for Akish, which is the King of Gath.
2:36
Okay.
2:37
So Akish or Akesh.
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So those are all kind of the same things.
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Everyone basically agrees that King of Gath, Akish and Abimelech are the same person.
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And what this is referring to is a story in 1 Samuel, Samuel 21 verses 10 through 15,
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where King David, right?
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He feigned being crazy.
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Like that he was a mad man, that he was losing his mind, you know, fuming out the mouth.
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And in this story, he feared the King of Gath more than he feared God.
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That's why he did this.
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It was all an act, you know, it was, it was to basically save his life.
3:04
And the interesting thing about that is he did this whole charade before Abimelech in
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Gath, which is the hometown of one Goliath, right?
3:14
So this is after he had hit Goliath in the face with a rock and then took Goliath's own
3:18
sword and chopped his head off and held it up and showed it to everybody.
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This is in Goliath's hometown, right?
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So imagine killing the, the everyone's favorite son of a particular hometown and now you're
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in that hometown.
3:30
Okay.
3:31
So I'm not saying, obviously I'm not co-signing what he did before the king and basically
3:35
lying via fiat, but this was a very important thing and this kind of gives you an interest
3:39
as to kind of why he did that.
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But at the time of the writing of the 34 Psalm, David is living in a cave.
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He's hiding.
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He's being chased.
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His men are with him.
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So we, we think there's about 400 of his own soldiers that are there with him.
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So he's not alone, but gosh, this, this psalm is just dripping with fear and just you can
4:00
feel the situation that he's in, but at the same time, the theme of Psalm 34 is Thanksgiving
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for God's protection for those who trust him.
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And really the foundation of the psalm is that, but again, we know this in light of what
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he did before Abimelech.
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Again, thanksgiving for God's protection for those who trust him.
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He didn't trust him, which leads us to where we get this psalm here.
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So I just want to read the first three verses and then we'll kind of go out from there.
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I will bless the Lord at all times.
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His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
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My soul makes its boasts in the Lord.
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Let the humble here and be glad, oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name
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together.
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So a few things are so much there in those first three verses, but the very first thing
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is he's pre-deciding that he will bless the Lord.
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I'm a big fan of pre-decision, like you don't decide in the moment whether or not you're
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going to throw your hand in your pants and you look at porn, like you pre-decide that
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you're not a person that does that.
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So he presides that he's going to bless the Lord, but then also in verse two, he's boasting
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in the Lord and not anything that he's doing, right?
5:04
So you know, he's going to boast in the Lord.
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So that's a big thing for a lot of guys.
5:08
And then in the third thing, worship is contagious.
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So I'll magnify the Lord with me again in a cave with 400 of his other guys that would
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give up their life to save his life.
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So again, I feel like I've taken too much time because I'm so getting excited to talk
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about the 34 song, but anything in terms of foundational work on the 34 song that y'all
5:25
would want to add or hopping into the first three verses ready, set it up.
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Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, David really didn't have much to boast about him.
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He was acting like a mad man, like a crazy guy.
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So there's that and I was just thinking like when we were going through this just several
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weeks ago in our Sunday school class, we're talking about the word Ebenezer.
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And it looks to me like this.
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So just so you know what Ebenezer is, it's first Samuel seven is when it kind of comes
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up and what it is is it's taking something to kind of help remind you of something that
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God has done.
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So maybe a rock or whatever, build an altar.
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It's something that then anytime you see it or walk by it or whatever, you can be children
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or like, well, what is that, you know, that you have something you can tell.
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So it's a reminder of what God has done.
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So one of the things that that David's doing is he is being reminded of what God did for
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him and worse than saying, I have nothing to boast about except my Lord.
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Yeah, I think of Paul and Silas like in prison and they're in prison and they've probably
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been beaten, right, Paul's a citizen and he's in a Roman prison, not in a great spot.
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They probably aren't real comfortable, but they so they have to go from that place of
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discomfort and I'm beaten and I and I'm not in a, I'm not in a place where I feel like
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I want to worship.
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So they had, so they sing, right, and it kind of transitions them into this place where
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they can kind of restore and get focused back on God's goodness for them.
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And, and I see the first couple of verses of this, maybe even David doing the same kind
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of a thing, right?
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He's almost convincing himself, you know, I will bless the Lord at all times.
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His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
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My soul makes its boast in the Lord.
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It's almost like, like, like where you are like having to build yourself up and build
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your spirit up to a place where you're ready to actually make those things true.
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Well, he's with his buddies too, the guys that are fighting for him, he said, let the
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humble hear of it and be glad.
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So all those guys are kind of in humble circumstances, not in their homes, they're not sitting
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by their fire.
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You know, they're, they're hanging out in a probably a dark, damp cave.
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Yeah.
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I think one of the things that's cool about the, the Davidic Psalms, I don't know if you
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guys talked about this last time, but like he's this messianic figure, right?
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And he's the king of Israel and it's, it's, these Psalms are like a, they're his experience,
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but they're also an invitation to all of Israel on how to worship God.
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And so as the king of Israel goes, so does, so does God's people.
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And it's, it's so interesting that he, you know, it's magnify the Lord with me, like,
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let us exalt his name.
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And like this is an invitation, not only to himself, but to all the people of Israel.
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And then, and then obviously later, that is Jesus, you know, inviting us to walk with
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him as well.
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And so like the Psalms of that David writes, they're just, they're just so fun to sit in
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and think of, not, I mean, not all of them, because, you know, he's going through some
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really rough times, but it's really cool to think about all the things that he went through
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and the Lord was still there, even though he did some, I mean, told the gingu is crazy.
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Like that's dumb.
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Well, in saying, saying the Lord will still be there again, obviously, even at this time,
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they didn't have the language for the Trinity, you know, God, the father, the son, the Holy
8:50
Spirit, again, the prophecies are pointing towards a savior, but they didn't know how
8:53
he would come.
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They thought I was going to be a conquering hero, but I got to be honest, all the times
8:57
that have read Psalm 34 again, this is my favorite of the 150 Psalms.
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I never caught the meaning of verse seven, never once.
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So verse seven, the angel of the Lord and camps around those who fear him and delivers
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them.
9:10
Yep.
9:11
Okay.
9:12
Yeah, that, that great.
9:13
And then I went to commentaries from people that apparently can read and those people were
9:17
basically like what, what most of these people said, again, this is not, you know, universal
9:20
agreement in the theology world, but that was pointing to the presence of the pre incarnate
9:26
Jesus, that this is an Old Testament appearance of the pre incarnate Jesus, because I'd heard
9:31
before that, okay, pre incarnate Jesus was at like Sodom and Gomorrah and you know, there's
9:36
other places in the Old Testament that people have said, but I was like, wait a minute.
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Like Jesus is there, like the Godhead, I guess you could say all of it is there in this moment
9:48
with David.
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Again, David, Jesus comes from his line.
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So doesn't that make sense, but again, that that's kind of weird that you keep going down
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David's line and you get Jesus, but, but Jesus is already there pre incarnate.
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So I don't know if you guys, you guys all seem smarter than me.
10:03
So I don't know if y'all like knew that before, but when I read that, it absolutely blew my
10:07
mind when I was reading the commentary.
10:08
That's something that is a theme throughout a lot of the Old Testament.
10:12
The Old Testament just pours out salvation and grace and patience from the Lord from,
10:19
Genesis three, like the salvation message is all over the place.
10:24
And it like, it's one word, but it's really important.
10:27
It's the angel of the Lord, like there's a lot of times when an angel of the Lord and
10:32
angel or they name the angel, but the angel of the Lord and you talk about Sodom and Gomorrah,
10:38
it talks about God is in heaven, raining fire down while God is also standing next to Abraham.
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And so it's like, you could miss that.
10:47
So, yeah, you definitely can, but yeah, it is very cool to see Jesus is being preached
10:54
from the beginning to the end of the Bible and he's right there standing next to David.
10:59
And we have another appearance later on that, well, I guess we can go and get there now
11:03
since we're kind of making that point, but jump into verse 20.
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He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken.
11:09
So this is a prophecy of Jesus.
11:11
So we see in John, you know, 1936 to describe basically the crucifixion of Jesus.
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And in John 1936 is basically like none of his bones were broken.
11:20
But the thing is, is you could even read that.
11:21
And if you have a very limited understanding of the historical precedent of that, the majority,
11:27
my understanding, the majority of the Roman people or the people that Rome crucified,
11:32
they broke their legs because they didn't want them to be sitting out all day, suffering
11:37
to to a degree.
11:38
It's like exactly.
11:39
And it wasn't because they were compassionate.
11:40
It was because let's get this over with.
11:42
So you broke their legs so that their body would sink down more so that they would finally,
11:46
you know, be suffocated to death.
11:49
And so the fact that Jesus, because again, they didn't think Jesus was any different.
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This is just another day, right?
11:55
Another Roman day.
11:56
We're going to throw three people up on these crosses and then we're going to go set up
11:58
the next ones, right?
11:59
But they didn't break his legs and it doesn't make any sense why until you go here and it's
12:05
just like, well, that's what was prophesied like it would have gone against the prophecy
12:09
and the will of the Lord if his bones had been broken.
12:12
And so again, just the whole mind blowing thing, whenever you when you look at the lineage
12:17
of David and we talked about earlier, like David, a murderer, a rapist, like this is
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the man who's from line from his line comes the savior of the entire universe, right?
12:28
Like that's a huge deal.
12:30
I was preparing for this and came across Luke 24, 44 words of Jesus.
12:38
He said to them, this is what I told you while I sat or why I was still with you, everything
12:44
must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of the Moses of Moses, the prophets
12:49
and the Psalms.
12:50
And I was like, Oh, interesting.
12:52
And then I wonderful quote.
12:53
I cannot remember who said this.
12:55
I'm sorry, but I'm going to read it anyways.
12:57
It says the Psalms are full of Christ.
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There is a more complete picture of him in Psalms than in the gospels.
13:04
The gospel tells us that he went to the mountain to pray, but the Psalms give us his prayer.
13:09
The gospels tell us that he was crucified, but the Psalms tell us what went on in his
13:15
own heart during the crucifixion.
13:17
The gospel tells us he went back to heaven, but the Psalms begin where the gospels leave
13:22
off and show us Christ seated in heaven.
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I just think that's beautiful.
13:27
That's amazing.
13:28
And the Psalms of David are, I mean, they're obviously just full of the picture of Christ
13:32
and what Christ has done for us and what Christ will do for his people and the prophetic language
13:39
that's used.
13:40
I agree.
13:41
That's just such a powerful visual.
13:42
Well, isn't it part of the problem?
13:44
Because again, I didn't grow up in church.
13:46
And so like my boys are going to grow up with a wildly better understanding of just the
13:50
Old Testament stories because I didn't know do Jonah and the whale was like I knew about,
13:54
you know, Noah's Ark because that's kind of a culturally significant thing.
13:58
I didn't know about any of these other Old Testament stories and all these different things.
14:02
But that's where I think you get a problem where you have these pastors like Andy Stanley
14:05
who thinks we should unhitch the Old Testament from the New Testament when you have these
14:08
movements of Gnosticism or any things where it's like, okay, you know, or Marcianism where
14:13
it's like the Old Testament, that's not really applicable.
14:17
There's a new order.
14:18
There's a new covenant.
14:19
We don't really need to look at that.
14:21
But look at what you just said, like, you know, Eric, like what you're talking about when
14:25
it comes to you're seeing Jesus in the gospels pointing back to Jesus in the Psalms.
14:30
That was, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years before what we're saying and it goes
14:34
right to what you're saying.
14:35
Matt, go ahead.
14:36
Oh, Jesus is everywhere.
14:37
Like Jesus is the Ark.
14:38
This book is about him.
14:39
Jesus is all of it.
14:40
Like Jesus is the Ark.
14:42
Jesus saves his people.
14:44
How many doors are where on the Ark?
14:46
Only one.
14:47
Jesus says I am the door.
14:48
There's only one door and it's like when you understand that, like you start to see where
14:58
Jesus is literally everywhere.
15:01
And if you understand that he's the Ark, he's the way to salvation.
15:06
Like it changes how you look at the Bible.
15:08
And so that's just really cool to think about.
15:11
And then towards the middle of Psalm 34, again, this is where we get the name of the psalm
15:15
again.
15:16
The name of the psalm is Tays and see that the Lord is good.
15:17
So verse eight, "O Tays and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man who takes refuge
15:22
in him.
15:23
O fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack.
15:28
And then I want to say verse 10, but O Tays and see that the Lord is good."
15:31
Again, going back to the point we were just talking about, if you go to 1 Peter 2, 3,
15:36
you get direct reference in 1 Peter 2, 3.
15:38
And now that you have tested that the Lord is good.
15:42
So I guess my argument, I don't want to get into a big deal about people that just dismiss
15:46
the Old Testament because it's kind of foolish.
15:48
But to these people that think the Old Testament has nothing, it can teach us.
15:52
You have to ask like, what is the foundation of everything?
15:55
So when you say, hey, the foundation of our faith is a resurrection of Jesus, yes, and
15:59
the most simple sense, yes, but why were we even looking for a Savior?
16:04
Where do we get that idea?
16:05
Where do we get the idea that we need that?
16:08
That there is some sort of a sacrificial system that God has to have, you know, there needs
16:13
to be propitiation, you know, a debt, you know, this is a payment that satisfies like, where
16:17
do we get that idea?
16:19
We get that and we're able to look at the things that happen in the New Testament because we're
16:24
looking through the lens of what is foretold in the Old Testament.
16:27
And so I'll tell you, I'll taste and see that the Lord is good.
16:30
This was spoken again, hundreds of years before Peter said it, before Peter wrote it down,
16:36
but it's enough of a message to the people that are going to read his letter to point
16:40
back to it.
16:41
It's a big deal.
16:42
Right.
16:43
Right.
16:44
I was just thinking like, what a shame if you went to, I don't know what the listeners
16:49
are, the nicest restaurant in their area, imagine going to that nicest restaurant, ordering
16:55
the, the best playmates, the lobster, I don't know, and then they bring it out and you just
17:00
sat, you sit there and look at it.
17:02
That's all.
17:03
You just look at it and you haven't taken away.
17:05
I mean, what a shame that would be.
17:06
And so we see here just real practically that Jesus is meant to be experienced, right?
17:15
So when we take that first bite of food and it's going down and I can't wait to have
17:20
another one for you.
17:21
It's like, it's going to be a wagyu steak and, you know, well, yeah, absolutely hook it
17:25
up.
17:26
Yeah.
17:27
I mean, it's, we are meant to experience Lord and not just to know about him, but to experience
17:30
him.
17:31
So to you.
17:32
Oh, go ahead, dig it.
17:33
Oh, I thought you said something.
17:34
Sorry.
17:35
To taste, to say something.
17:36
You're getting too comfortable over there listening to all these guys, all these veterans.
17:40
You're happening next.
17:41
So get ready after Matt's done.
17:42
You have to say stuff like verse eight is my favorite verse of this psalm of taste and
17:47
see that the Lord is good.
17:49
It's talking about affectionately and thoroughly considering and it's like, to your point about
17:55
food, you don't just take a bite of that food either.
17:58
You eat the whole thing like you taste all of it and you were, we're to thoroughly consider
18:05
God's goodness through our experience and the experience of others.
18:10
And so again, David here is saying, like experience that with me, pursue God with me.
18:18
And what better sense than taste is there to point out, like usually you don't just look
18:22
at it.
18:23
Right.
18:24
You got to eat it.
18:25
Or, you know, I mean, I'm just thinking like, sometimes we'll be like, Hey, I ate at this
18:28
restaurant last night.
18:29
And this was what I had.
18:30
They start describing it and I can literally feel myself start to salivate.
18:34
I'm like, Oh man, I want to get out there and have that right now.
18:37
It's that same thing.
18:38
I want to taste and see with me.
18:40
So I mean, I want to go try that restaurant out.
18:42
You know what I mean?
18:43
Well, and I feel like, you know, that we have lots of different types or Christians at different
18:48
depths, right?
18:49
We have Christians that, hey, they will go to the restaurant, but they're not going to
18:53
order anything.
18:54
But like, Hey, this is, this is what it means for me to be a Christian is I am in the presence
18:59
of this amazing meal.
19:00
And then there are Christians that go a step further than that and they sit down and they
19:03
order the food, right?
19:05
And then a step beyond that is, Hey, I'm not going to take a bite, but I'm going to plant
19:08
my face an inch from this steak, and I'm just going to smell it, right?
19:12
And then there's the taste and don't swallow, right?
19:15
Like I'm going to put it in my mouth, but, and I'm going to taste it and I'm, it's like
19:19
all of these different levels of enjoyment, but really at the end of it, like that food
19:24
is meant to nourish your body, like the experience can be wonderful, but it has to go through
19:30
all of those things to ultimately give you nourishment.
19:33
And it's like, that it's, it's, Hey, don't, don't go to church on Sunday and then have
19:40
God have, have the God's word not be an active part of your week in your home, right?
19:48
Like that's, that's just showing up at the restaurant and spending the rest of the time.
19:52
That's actually, that's actually just tripped something in my brain that's a really, really
19:55
good point.
19:56
There's a difference between consuming the word and letting the word nourish you, right?
19:59
And so, because I remember the first time someone said something like this, it was Matt Chandler,
20:03
he did a sermon series and he goes, Hey, do you guys realize how much of a blessing taste
20:06
buds are?
20:07
I was like, where's he going with this?
20:09
He's like, when you take that bite of medium rare filet, like it tastes like something,
20:16
and that brings you pleasure and happiness, like God didn't have to do that, right?
20:22
And even if you're like, you know, a humanist and you think we're all just highly evolved
20:25
chimps that, you know, used to be fish and then used to be stardust or whatever, like
20:30
this doesn't have to do anything for you because you should just know instinctively, I am an
20:35
animal that needs nourishment and this is where I'm going to get the nourishment from,
20:38
from this plant or from the liver of this animal or something like that.
20:41
But when you're drinking, you know, a single mall, Ila scotch or, or that wagyu steak or
20:46
that whatever you're into, like, that is a gift that you're receiving it in that way,
20:52
which makes the nourishment almost moot because you're enjoying it so much.
20:56
And the same thing with like sex, your sexual organs don't have to give you pleasure in
21:01
order for you to procreate, but God gave you the pleasure centers and the nerve endings
21:05
to make that a pleasurable experience, not so that, again, if you're a Darwinist to where
21:09
it's like, well, you, you want to keep coming back to do that so you can propagate the species.
21:12
It's like, no, so that you will enjoy taste and see that the Lord is good.
21:17
So I think that's a really good thing because as you're reading the Bible, you know, and
21:20
I've, I've been very open about it on this podcast, I've gone years where I don't read
21:24
the Bible at all, right? Oh, I'm doing other stuff from a busy army, any of those types
21:27
of things. So it's one thing just to get to the table to read it. But then when you're
21:32
reading just to eat versus reading to where it'll nourish you, like, dude, that's like
21:37
being marinated in the scripture. You know what I mean? Like it's completely different
21:40
ballgame.
21:41
We used to live in North Carolina. I remember my, my granddad and me mall wanted to come
21:47
out and see us. So they lived in Brady, Texas, I mean, smack dab in the middle of Texas.
21:53
So they had to travel, of course, east to get to us. And so they took a couple of days
21:57
to get there. But when they showed up, of course, they were worn out and tired and long
22:01
trip, travel trip. And, and we asked them, of course, why was your trip? You know, what
22:04
did you do on the way? Because you took the time. And granddad was like, yeah, you know,
22:08
we stopped here, stop here. And we, and we went to Dollywood and then, and then came on
22:13
from there. And I mean, right when he said that and started to pass, pass by it, my, my
22:17
me mall just went with her elbow, right into his side. And she was like, we didn't go to
22:23
Dollywood. We drove to the parking lot of Dollywood and took a picture and then kept driving. I
22:32
was like, I was like, granddad, not cool. Like, you know, so he said, been there, done that.
22:38
But all he did was take the picture. They didn't experience it. He's like, Oh, I've been to
22:41
I've been to Atlanta. It's like, no, you've been to the Atlanta airport. Like you haven't
22:45
like hung out with people from Atlanta. But I remember even just. So, so there's a couple
22:50
stories that I want to kind of go through. And I think I've said this before. Taste is
22:53
a very important thing. But when we take in too much artificial flavoring, it affects
22:58
how we taste things. And so one of my favorites, Vody Bockham was talking about strawberries.
23:03
And he was talking about this father that was walking his son through a strawberry field,
23:07
or other fields are orchards. I don't know. Strawberry field. And so he's picking out these
23:11
strawberries and little boys eating these, these fresh strawberries right off the vine
23:14
or whatever they grow on. You can tell I'm not a farmer. And so he's eating these and
23:18
the boys just overwhelmed at how sweet and delicious these strawberries are. But then
23:23
after they leave there, over the years, his boy starts eating things that are artificially
23:28
flavored to taste like strawberries, strawberry pop tarts, strawberry slushies, strawberry
23:33
soda. And that's what his taste buds have kind of, you know, bent towards is this artificial
23:38
flavoring. So much so that when the sun started eating the actual strawberries again, they
23:44
weren't sweet enough. And there's a corollary there. So when people try to add stuff to
23:50
the gospel, again, we talked about that a lot when we were in the book of Galatians, when
23:54
you're trying to do gospel plus, yeah, gospel plus all this other stuff. Or when you have
23:57
these churches that are so afraid of offending people by talking about their sin, when when
24:02
the understanding should be, you don't understand how to how sweet the strawberry is until you
24:07
understand how depraved you are to even be offered such a strawberry is that is is astonishing.
24:13
And then you get to points in life where you're so desperate for the real thing. One of my
24:17
favorite fighters, he's retired now, he's a commentator, his name is Paul Felder. And
24:21
he was doing a he got a really short notice fight where he was like fighting a real killer
24:26
like that weekend. I think it was a Javier de Sanjos. I can't believe I remember that,
24:30
but it was like four or five days out, he's wildly overweight at this point. But he's
24:34
got to, you know, make weight so they can save this event. So because that's the main event,
24:38
right? And he's literally killing himself, destroying his kidneys, sucking every amount
24:43
of water out of his body, doing bass, doing cardio, all that. And his, I forget where
24:48
he was, I think it was in Vegas, but his wife's back in Philadelphia. And they're doing FaceTime
24:53
or something like that. And he's like, babe, can you go to this YouTube channel? It's it's
24:57
this guy that's he's got this big cup and it's got like ice cubes in it. And he's just
25:02
opening up soda and like pouring it slowly over ice in slow motion. And he meant it. He's
25:06
like, babe, can you, can you please just? I just want to see the video. And because that's
25:11
where he was, he was in such desperate need of the real thing that he was willing to get
25:17
an artificial thing that he knew instinctively he couldn't consume. But I feel like again,
25:22
that's a kind of a long way with Vodie story and then Paul Felder story of for us, we get
25:26
to these moments where we're absolutely drowning or we're absolutely completely sunken in. We
25:31
need nourishment like we can't even fathom. And yet we keep going to the fake. We keep
25:36
going to the artificial and we're not going back to the original. He's not popping open
25:41
to soda for himself, right? He's not actually going to get in the strawberries from the
25:44
vine himself. And I feel like, you know, I feel like all of that is in this song and
25:48
all that's brought up to me because again, it's taste and see when we are always typically
25:53
worried about seeing right being seen in church or seeing our eyes move across the pages.
25:57
Yeah. And I was thinking about the just the dopamine response that we get the releases
26:02
that we get with some of those things, those artificial sweeteners and whatnot. Sometimes
26:08
it's our phone, we're looking at our phone and we just continue to scroll through, right?
26:11
We're getting those dopamine kind of surges that keep us locked in. We know that the brain
26:18
literally physically changes in those in those over time when we continually focus on things
26:26
like social media. So that then the smaller things, the things that instead of getting
26:30
the dopamine surges, the things that should give us dopamine drips are less, less restored.
26:36
They don't, they don't feel like they're enough, just like you were saying earlier.
26:39
And so part of the part of just becoming restored and finding that restoration is sometimes
26:45
it's getting rid of that artificial, you know, at one, it's artificial. It doesn't fully
26:50
satisfy, you know, in two, you know, there, there is something better and it may come in
26:56
the small rhythms of the day. It may not come in the huge bursts, but it certainly is much
27:01
more satisfying. And I think John Eldridge speaks to that. We just finished his study
27:05
called get your life back. And that's a fantastic study on just being able to recognize how
27:11
you can get into a rhythm and stay in union with, with God.
27:15
Right. So this is a new guy question. Some relatively new. Are you sponsored by McDonald's
27:22
in any way? No, okay. So like, we don't do McDonald's. I just want it to be a great
27:28
segue. I have no idea where this is going. So I'm excited just like you guys. I didn't
27:32
want to get a look across the table like, Oh my gosh, he's bashing McDonald's. Like we
27:37
don't do McDonald's, you know, we do Chick-fil-A. It's not that like fast foods, fast food,
27:43
right? But we, we, we do not do McDonald's. But the, the, the weakness comes in like on
27:49
road trips. Like we go pick up the kids from camp. We're going on vacation somewhere. And
27:53
it's just quick and fast and they are everywhere. So that seems to be when we relent is we're
27:58
tired. We're hungry. We need something fast and convenient. We get McDonald's, but I've
28:02
never eaten at McDonald's. Maybe when I was a kid, but certainly the older I get, you
28:06
know, in my constitution, can't handle it. It's, I don't, I don't go through those McDonald's
28:11
drive-throughs and then eat everything and think, you know what, I'm glad I ate that.
28:17
Yeah. Great decision. It's like, it's, it's the difference between, you know, it's, there's
28:22
a lot of calorie there, but there's no nourishment, right? Like I get eat, I get eat a whole orange
28:27
or a pinch of a donut and they're both calorie dense, but one is nourishing, right? And to
28:33
Eric's point, man, we just, I was it, I think it's Jim Gaffigan that has a joke that just
28:38
correlates everything to McDonald's, you know, it's like everything's McDonald's. Oh, you,
28:42
play on apps all day. That's McDonald's. And it's like, we are like McDonald's-ing everything.
28:48
And to your point, it's like we, we have lost like the satisfaction of the nourishment because
28:56
it's not satisfying. It just, it makes us full, but it also is regretful.
29:01
Yeah. Well, with the donors, you mentioned known as, I mean, Jocko Welling calls those
29:04
sugar-coated lies because it's like you're tricking your brain into something that you
29:08
may get once a month or something like that. It was maybe honey or some natural like berry
29:13
or something like that. It's like you can literally go and get a dozen of these things
29:18
just for you. And there's, there's, there's no food in a donut that you realize, like there's
29:23
no part of that that your body's like, I can use that for energy. I can, I can run this
29:26
marathon. Like no, that is just mouth pleasure. Like that is just you getting in there and
29:31
like, and again, it goes back to the, you get the dopamine hit and I got, I know on this
29:35
the show, I've talked a lot about, about mega churches and big churches and things like that.
29:38
And I've gotten more careful about describing just because your church has a huge parking
29:42
lot with a lot of cars and it doesn't mean your church is unhealthy. But there are churches
29:46
like that that are very unhealthy. But that's my concern. And I call them spiritual skittles
29:50
because it's like you go to this church, you see the rock show, you see the TED talk with
29:54
a few Bible verses and then you bounce before you leave the parking lot, whatever discipleship
30:00
you've received has worn off a la skittles. Like you eat those, they taste great. There
30:05
is no value. Your body's just like, ah, we got to deal with this again. They blow it
30:09
out at some point. But it's like that, that is what we do all the time with our spiritual
30:13
journey because there's all these other things in our life that are more important. I've got
30:17
my kids XYZ. I've got, Matt, you want to hop in here because I mean, you and I have talked
30:21
about this a lot. So go ahead.
30:22
Well, I was just going to say, I think that before you said that, that is the danger of
30:27
where we live and making it to where it's easily consumable. It's, it's convenient. It's
30:34
efficient. And Jesus talks about in at the end of his sermon on the mount that there will
30:41
be many people that say, Lord, Lord, we did all these things. And we're going through
30:47
Matthew in my Sunday school. And he, and he says, and he says, I will say to them, I never
30:51
knew you. And before that talks about the, the gate is narrow. That leads to life. Why
31:00
does the gate that leads to destruction? And I think about the modern church in that sphere
31:06
of we have all these people who go in and they see this and they go, okay, Jesus. Yeah, Jesus
31:15
got it. I'm good. Or Bethel, we are raising people from the dead. Or we are healing. God
31:23
doesn't want anybody to be sick. He wants healing for everybody. I think those are the
31:28
people that he's talking about. And it's because we've, we've said, I mean, like you're talking
31:32
about gospel plus, or we're not getting the whole word that, which is food and we're, we're
31:39
taking little bits and pieces out of it. And we're, we're having little samples. And when
31:44
it talks about tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, it's not a sampling. It is, it
31:49
is all of it. All of this is spiritual food. And that is a danger of the modern church.
31:56
And it, it really scares me. Well, it's almost like that. We'll go ahead, Browning. Yeah.
32:00
No, I was going to say, and part of it is just tasting and seeing that he's good also
32:05
assumes that you are realizing you're not good. You know, I don't remember where it was in
32:10
the Bible, but in the gospel, some, you know, Jesus said, why do you call me good? There's
32:13
only one that's good, you know, that, that I had that same idea, you know, we're, we need
32:17
to understand that we are not good. We're not good enough. There's nothing we can do
32:20
to be good enough. There's only one that's good. And that's, that's the one that we should
32:25
be partaking of, right? And there's the attitude of self-sufficiency that runs through all
32:29
that, which does segue us to, again, probably my favorite scripture and all of the Old Testament
32:34
and it's Psalm 34 verse 10. The young lions suffer want in hunger, but those who seek
32:39
the Lord lack no good thing. So I've got, you know, the first time, you know, shout out
32:43
to Joel who designed our undaunted life logo and all that. He did that for free just to
32:46
help us out way back in the day back in like 2016. But whenever we did the lion head with
32:52
undaunted life, that was the scripture. I put Psalm 34 10, like I've got all the original
32:57
artwork and all the original renderings. And the reason is is because there's so much
33:01
in this verse because what is more powerful and self-sufficient than a young lion? So
33:09
young powerful lions at this time were roaming Palestine. Okay, so it is very likely that
33:15
he's writing this hiding in a cave. There are lions around that they have to reckon
33:19
with. And these young lions don't seem to want in hunger, right? Because they're young
33:26
lions, they're growing, they're strong. There's nothing that can stop them from, from, you
33:30
know, from eating or anything in that area. But this is even saying the young lions suffer
33:35
one hunger that even young powerful creatures don't have at all. They can't fully satisfy
33:41
themselves. They can't. But those who seek the Lord lack no good thing, not, you know,
33:48
they just don't lack or they have most of the stuff that they want. Like when I tell people
33:52
about my childhood, it's like, you know, we didn't about all the money in the world,
33:55
but I had everything I needed and almost everything I wanted, right? There were some, there were
33:59
some gaps, some things that I would have wanted, but the young lions suffer wanting to hunger,
34:03
but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. So inherit there, there is lack, but not good
34:10
things.
34:11
That's the difference. Yeah, I was, I was just thinking like Romans 12, nine and 10 came up,
34:17
surprisingly I turned right to have no idea how that happened. And he says, but he said
34:21
to me, my grace is sufficient for you for my powers made perfect in weakness. Therefore,
34:26
I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power Christ may rest upon me.
34:32
Is that in Romans or in Second Corinthians? Okay. Yeah. So like, but I guess that's the
34:38
thing for me is because I'm so worried about the good things, but then when we make our
34:42
own categories of what's good, then we're going to miss. We were absolutely going to
34:46
miss because again, the young lions suffer again, I keep repeating it because even the
34:51
young lions, even the most powerful, most, most graceful, like most efficient killing
34:57
animal possible can't possibly satisfy itself. And that young lion will not always be young,
35:03
right? And when you talk to these people that are that are advanced in age, and they
35:07
look back on their, their old days and they look back and they're so sad about their station
35:11
in life because they're not that young lion anymore. And it's like, they're not worried
35:15
about, oh, I should be worried about being a sage now and like passing on all my wisdom
35:19
to the next generation. They're just lamenting that they're not the young lion anymore. Could
35:22
it be that they've been focused on things that aren't good this entire time? I mean,
35:27
I don't know about for you guys because I don't know anybody else who that's their favorite
35:30
like Old Testament verse, but man, that's been, that's been a banger for me for five, six
35:33
years. I was thinking of the quote says, you know, live your life right the first time.
35:39
And then when you're old, you'll get to enjoy it a second. I mean, kind of what you're talking
35:44
about, you know, we don't have to screw up half our life just so we can try to make up
35:48
for it later on. I mean, you're right. We, when we become older, we may not be able to
35:53
physically do what we could before, but we certainly have a lot more wisdom. And there's
35:58
something very valuable in that for the younger generation.
36:00
For sure, the thing that sticks out to me in this is no good thing. It doesn't say thing
36:06
that I want. And like you were saying, like we don't get to define what is good. God is
36:11
a good father and he works all things to good for those who love him. But what's missing
36:18
there is what I want. And so sometimes like the things that he gives us that are good
36:22
or the things that are happening that happen to us that are good, we might look at that
36:26
and go, Oh man, really? Man, I saw that exact same thing, but you know, right before that
36:32
it's for those who seek the Lord. So that recalibrates what you consider good, right?
36:38
The closer you get to the Lord, the more it changes what you see and perceive as good,
36:44
you know, and you're exactly right. It's not you get what you want. It's what is good.
36:50
And it is good because you are seeking the Lord and he's changed your mind about what
36:55
you're after. Absolutely. Like you were talking about the rich young ruler who says, you know,
37:03
I'm good or Jesus says, who are you to say that I'm good? Like his point there was you
37:08
are not sufficient in yourself and you have you say you do all these things and you've
37:14
followed the law and you've done all the right things. What do you have to do left to give
37:18
up everything and follow me? And that guy was like, no, I don't think so. I don't think
37:22
I can. I don't think that I can do that. And so he traded what was good for something
37:26
that he wanted because he just he couldn't see. Money is not good. I mean, it's not there's
37:33
nothing wrong with money. I was don't don't hear what I'm not saying. But like the point
37:37
of Christ saying that to him was give up what you want or what you what is your God. God
37:44
is money and follow me. And that was good, but he didn't want that. So he wasn't seeking
37:49
after the Lord, like Dagnos saying, and then he didn't receive what was good because he
37:54
defined that in his own mind.
37:57
Yeah, there there's so much there that I mean, that's the thing guys is when you start peeling
38:02
back the layers on this, yes, you have your lived experience. You have the stuff that that,
38:06
you know, you've learned that you bring to the table, but that's the other thing about
38:10
guys when you spend time in the word, there will be things that stick out to you that don't
38:13
stick out to anybody else. But then that also leads to the fact that you need to be in community
38:17
with other men having these discussions. Again, I've been blown away by the emails and messages
38:21
we're getting about guys starting their own forging table, right? That's awesome. Their
38:25
their own thing where they're getting together. Maybe they're doing the same, you know, Bible
38:28
readings that we are maybe they're doing their own thing. But again, I think my way, right?
38:34
That's why when I asked when it's your first time on the table, how did your how's your
38:37
brain work? Because that's a filter through which everyone should be listening to your
38:41
commentary, right? Oh, well, he quickly came to this decision. Well, you know, he slowly
38:45
came to this decision. Oh, this guy became a Christian as an adult. Like this is going
38:48
to kind of tinge, you know, he was 35 before he ever thought about things and deed the
38:52
ethereal or or the divine or something like that. But that's why when you can come to
38:55
something like this, how many of you guys have read through Psalm 34 before and just
38:59
pass right through verse 10? Because yeah, it's a good line. But I mean, is it fundamentally
39:04
different than the previous one verse nine? Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints for those
39:08
who fear have or fear him have no lack. But I think the important thing about this is
39:14
going back to verse nine a little bit, those who fear him have no lack. We live in an era
39:19
where we do not fear God at all. God is a genie. God is a convenience maker. God is the guy
39:27
that he's he's the cosmic killjoy to some people. And you know, there's a great book
39:32
by Matty Montgomery called scary God and Matty Montgomery, you know, he used to lead one
39:37
of the best Christian metal bands of all time for today. But he wrote this book scary God.
39:42
But the thing is, is like, people think scary, they think, you know, scream, they think, you
39:47
know, Friday the 13th, they think nightmare on Elm Street. And it's like, no, this is,
39:51
we're talking about actual fear, not someone who can just kill kill you, right? Not someone
39:55
that can just kill someone that you love. We're talking about if you do not align yourself
40:01
with the all judgmental and all loving God, you don't have a future after this life regardless
40:08
of whether you believe that or not, whether you believe that when you die, it's just lights
40:11
off and you go back into the ground and you become a butterfly or whatever the thing is
40:15
that you believe. Like if you're not aligned with God, if you don't have a proper understanding
40:21
of who God is and what he is about, it's a very big problem, which goes back to some
40:27
of the churches that kind of do this gospel light type style. It's like, you're talking
40:31
about Jesus, like he's your home boy, you're talking about God as if he's just, again,
40:36
that's why I get so fed up with these worship songs that treat God as if he's just this
40:39
cutesy, wootsie, you know, a little deity or that this Jesus guy is just so I just want
40:44
to embrace him and kiss someone in his nose like, no, like that is the God of the universe.
40:48
Have some respect. Like imagine somebody coming into your home, a stranger, and they disrespected
40:53
your wife, like, or your mother, maybe that maybe that's another thing like your mother
40:58
or your me mall or your peephole or your whatever that people call their, their grandparents.
41:02
But imagine someone coming in and like, you don't have to physically assault that person.
41:06
You just say, Hey, have some respect. I remember there was a crew that I was running with right
41:09
out of college and some of the kids were still in high school. And there was this one kid,
41:13
he was kind of a knucklehead. We're all in the kitchen hanging out. His mom comes walking
41:17
in. He calls his mom by her first name. And you could have heard a pin drop in the entire
41:23
county. And there are three guys are these three brothers that were all way bigger than
41:28
me. And we all surround this kid. And we literally were just like, if we ever hear you talk to
41:36
your mother that way again, all he did was call her by her first name or Christian name.
41:40
It's like you were gonna have massive problems. Don't you ever do that again? But Jesus is
41:46
our home boy. You know, God is just this part in the song that we sing. You know, we don't
41:50
have any reverence for God. We certainly don't fear. I would agree. There is there is a lack
41:54
of reverence in there is, and I think that's why most of the songs or a lot of the songs
41:58
start with like magnifying the Lord and like blessing the Lord and like speaking to his
42:04
reverence. And you're right. Like you there has to be some respect. And you know, this
42:10
this I watered down gospel that you're talking about, like that talks about one of the things
42:17
they do is they talk about God is he's he's this like psychotic, angry God in the Old Testament.
42:25
And the New Testament, he's this lovey dovey teddy bear guy. And it's like, man, that's
42:29
not the case at all. Just look at just look at Genesis three. Like he says, don't eat
42:33
that fruit on that day. You'll surely die. And then they eat the fruit. And he's like,
42:37
I love you so much. I'm so patient with you. I have this whole plan of redemption that's
42:43
going to carry out through you. I could just kill you. Yeah. But I am merciful and full
42:50
of grace and patient and like God is God. And he's the same all the way throughout what
42:57
is isn't that like raising kids, right? It's like, Hey, don't eat the fruit. Okay, I guess
43:01
we'll do it the hard way. You know, it's like he knew that we're going to do that. You
43:06
know, and I think I would, and we had a previous house and my little girl, she was probably
43:11
to kind of walking up to turn the light switch on. And it was, it was one of those like, it
43:17
was a different light switch. It's like didn't come with the house or something. And, you
43:20
know, it's like a cartoon character. And as she walked up to it, she went and touched
43:25
it. And it like, I guess, and it was my fault. I guess I had screwed it in too tight and
43:29
it kind of cracked it a little bit. And as soon as she touched it, it like the little
43:33
protective plate fell off the light switch. And so she kind of looked at it and I was like,
43:38
Oh, that's okay. And then she started to reach up for that light switch. And all of a sudden
43:43
it's like, I mean, she thought I would have gone lost my mind, like run to her grab her
43:49
arm and move her, right? Because I, I have a fear of the power of the electricity, right?
43:57
Like we have all of these wires and cables and stuff running through our home and our
44:01
kids are running around and it's all safe because, because we respect it. And we actually put
44:06
it inside the walls where we don't have to touch it, right? But it's like, that's, that's
44:12
the same with God. It's like, he is a, he is a powerful, the most powerful. And you have
44:18
to respect it. And it is that fear of what he is and who he is that, you know, is, is
44:26
that plate between us and, and, you know, literally life and death.
44:32
Yeah, he does want a relationship with us, but like even the, even the Bible it talks
44:35
about, you know, his relationship with us is his coming, is him coming down. And he is
44:41
the God of the universe. And it, I mean, the, the one time the human race was like, I'm
44:46
going to go up to God. He was like, all right, cool. Y'all are scattered. Y'all are going
44:49
to speak different languages because I don't want you so prideful, but it is God coming
44:55
down to relate with us and not the other way around. And I think yes, God wants a relationship
45:03
with us, but it's on his terms and it's not us and anything that we do and us going towards
45:07
the heavens. It is him coming down and revealing himself to us through his word and through
45:13
his son. And I, like, so reverence should, I think should always be on our, on our minds.
45:19
Well, he's, he's still just. That's the other thing is like, we, we get to these moments
45:23
where it's like, Oh, God's being mean. It's like, no, he's being just like the, you're,
45:27
you're not supposed to like that. But we're just there. No, I'm just real quick. I was
45:31
just going to say, you know, the fear of the Lord is then it should be the, the catalyst
45:36
to removing fear of man. And when we learn to place our fear in the right, the right
45:41
spot, then we shouldn't have to fear anyone else. Because we understand just as you guys
45:47
have all said that God can literally do anything he wants. That means he can protect you. That
45:52
means he can take out your enemies. That means anything. And, and, and then couple that with
45:58
his love or you and I, it's like a, it's an easy home run.
46:03
Yeah. If you go make friends with the biggest bully at school, you're not scared of bully
46:08
number two, bully number three, you're right. It's just like, Hey, I'm rolling with, with
46:12
like the biggest, baddest dude here. You're still, it's still healthy to be fearful of
46:17
him and what he can do to you. But like, like that, that's exactly right. Like, Hey, hey,
46:23
you don't, you, you don't know the power of the person that I'm like, you guys are nothing
46:30
to me.
46:31
What is it when CS Lewis and Chronicles and Arnea when I forget which book it is, but it's
46:34
like, you know, they're talking about Aslan, the lion who is the God figure in that story.
46:37
And it's like, Oh, is he, you know, well, I, I forget, I'm messing it up with the magician's
46:42
nephew.
46:43
I think it's the magician's nephew when they first, when they first, is he good or is he,
46:46
is he dangerous? I think he's what he says. Yes, but he's good.
46:49
Right. And so that's the difference. And that's, you know, something we talked about
46:52
when, you know, what does the word meek mean? It doesn't mean that you're completely safe,
46:59
otherwise known as harmless, otherwise known as worthless. It's no, you, you know how to
47:04
be violent. You know how to be the lion, but no one gets to see that unless it's necessary.
47:10
And so I don't know this because I'm the only one at the table without a daughter. But that's
47:13
one thing when I hear pastors like like Mark Driscoll or anybody else talk about this to
47:16
where it's like, your sons will see the lion in you more because they've got the lion in
47:21
them a little bit. Your daughter should only see the lion when you're protecting them.
47:26
And that's kind of that difference is like you don't show the lion to your daughter.
47:30
Like that is not the proper right ordering, like she should see the lamb at all times,
47:34
but she should know that the lion is present. That if something were to go down, my father
47:40
will intercede for me to protect me. And I think that that's a really, really big deal.
47:45
But it also goes back because again, we have to remember where does what is the scaffolding
47:49
underneath which the Psalm hangs. And it's, you know, he's before the king of Gath, he's
47:55
pretending to be mad and pretending to be crazy. And what he does is very deceitful.
48:00
And I'm somebody that I cannot stand deceit. So some people call it lying. Some people
48:06
call it, you know, some people say every sin is theft. So if you lied to someone, you're
48:11
stealing the truth from them, you know, it's it's that type of thing. But it's deceit.
48:15
It's letting someone believe one thing when you know very well at that moment, the opposite
48:20
is true or there are some other actual capital T truth happening, which makes verse 13 of
48:25
Psalm 34, very, very interesting to me. They really, really stuck out as I was reading it.
48:30
Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking to seat. So the first time I read
48:34
this as I was preparing for this episode, I just highlighted that because that just stuck
48:38
out. Like it just it's not like the verses around it. It didn't really make sense while
48:42
that was there. That was before I learned, like, you know, about his, you know, performance
48:49
before a Bimalak and how that attached to first Samuel 21 versus 10 through 15. But man,
48:54
that's a big deal for us because all of us at this table, at our age, we can get by
49:00
with lying because we're good at it. We've had our entire lives to be deceitful and we've
49:06
practiced lying with little children, right? Because you're going to say like, Oh, you
49:11
know, I'm not lying to my kid. I'm just, you know, not giving them the full truth. It's
49:14
like, no, you're telling them a fat guy flies through the sky in a red suit and comes down
49:19
your chimney and puts presents under the tree. Right. I'm not going to kill saying on this
49:22
podcast. We'll save that for another one, but it's like you just probably be a disclaimer
49:27
on this one. Sorry. If you're listening with your kids, you know, you know what you signed
49:31
up with, you know, you've been rolling with me for this long, but it's like we practice
49:35
deceit in our everyday life. We show people a different version of ourselves than we actually
49:40
are. We describe ourselves to people in a different way than is actually true. We lie
49:44
to ourselves. That's kind of like the end of this, you know, macabre rainbow. It's like
49:48
we start lying to ourselves and then we're starting to get high on our own farts at some
49:51
point. It's like, oh, I actually am this awesome person that doesn't make mistakes.
49:55
Oh, I actually am this person that has it going in business or has, you know, all these
49:59
things squared away. And I think that this is a good reminder that in his struggle in
50:04
his lament, it's a reminder. Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking to
50:08
seat all the while knowing what he did before the king basically because he was scared.
50:12
So he's basically preaching the gospel to himself here. Yeah. And I, which, and my point
50:17
is we should be preaching to the gospel to ourselves daily. And he's literally saying,
50:22
keep your tongue from evil. Don't do this. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous.
50:28
There's examples in the Bible. I think the New Testament acts. It's, it's Ananias and
50:32
Sephira who they lie about like some piece of land that who cares and God just kills
50:39
them right on the spot. And here, here is David who lies and God, God sees fit to not
50:50
instantly judge him and kill him. And so he is considered righteous by the Lord, but not
50:59
because he's righteous because God sees him as righteous because God is merciful. So even
51:07
in this psalm, we see the gospel being preached and David preaching it to himself. And I think
51:14
that is something that we should be doing on a daily basis. Well, you know, David is super
51:20
sensitive to this, you know, because he, it could be one of those things where he gets
51:25
away with something. You know, in this case, he's like, gosh, I just God could have told
51:30
he's hanging me out. He did not. He's very merciful, but he could have gotten away with
51:33
it. And then the next time been like, well, I got away with it last time, I guess I'll do
51:36
it again. You know, and I think that's how that's just human nature, right? We will test
51:41
the waters. If we get away with it and nothing bad happens, we'll be like, yeah, maybe I
51:46
could do it again. You know, maybe take a little bit further, a little bit further. But but
51:50
David is clear here. He's very sensitive to the fact that he knows that he did something
51:54
wrong. He's preaching the gospel to himself. He's singing this song to his men, helping
52:00
them also and understand that was not right. You're painting. Yes, don't do this. I think
52:07
when you when you're talking about the gospel and how the gospel has three points throughout
52:10
the Old Testament, literally, I mean, y'all saw my page and all my notes here before we
52:14
got going, like there's not a whole lot of space left for me to write stuff on my page
52:17
of Psalm 34. But as y'all were talking probably about 30 minutes ago, I read Psalm 34 verse
52:23
22, the very last verse of the Psalm, the Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those
52:29
who take refuge in him will be condemned. That's the gospel. Yep. But reminds me of Romans
52:35
eight one. Yeah. Right. But again, like it's easy to see the gospel in the New Testament,
52:41
because you know, the people that were writing that saw a risen Jesus or were interviewing
52:46
people that saw a risen Jesus again, there's no reason why Christianity should have survived
52:50
the first century in Rome. There's no reason for it. Right. So historically, you may not
52:55
believe in Jesus as a risen savior, but you have to say that that's that's pretty odd.
53:00
That's something like that happened. But again, the Lord redeems the life of his servants.
53:04
None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. And again, we know the story,
53:08
but we take refuge in a lot of other stuff in this community that we live in. A lot of
53:13
people take refuge in their money. The amount of things they put up in their storehouses,
53:18
you know, just this morning, our pastor is going through the book of James, you know,
53:22
a few verses out of time. And it's talking, he talked about, you know, building a bigger
53:26
storehouse for the grains. And it's like, Hey man, you're going to die. Like, what are
53:33
you doing all this for? So we take a lot of refuge in that. Um, there was something I
53:37
saw recently, I'm going to get the details messed up, but I posted it on our Instagram
53:40
a while back. And it was this man that they found that was buried, you know, a thousand
53:45
or so years ago, buried with all of his treasure, gold, rubies, jewels, like all kinds of stuff.
53:52
He was buried with it, but he's still super dead, right? Super dead. Like he's super
53:57
duper dead. That's not his goal. That's whoever found it. Now it's the, you know, the property
54:01
that municipality or that, that museum or whoever did the excavation in the dig or something
54:05
like that. But we take refuge in so many other things. Some of us are really, really smart,
54:10
right? Notice how I didn't say me. Some of us are really, really smart. And they will
54:14
take refuge in that because no matter what happens in life, they can figure it out. Why?
54:19
Because they have a high IQ because they, you know, got a 34 on the ACT because, you
54:23
know, they were a national merit scholar because they were this side of the other thing. We
54:25
take refuge in our abilities, right? Maybe you're an athlete, you've been an athlete your entire
54:29
life. You'd never had to try so hard because you were so athletic and you were so gifted
54:34
in that way. But again, even in the Old Testament, we get down to this. That is a ringing bullhorn
54:40
now of this is a picture of the gospel. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking a million dollar baby.
54:46
Remember that movie came out? Yeah. I mean, what did she she tied her identity to boxing?
54:53
And then when when that was taken away, I remember she was like, telling her coach, take
54:57
me out. You know, I just want to die. Nothing left to live for. And the reality is, is that
55:05
we are at some point going to not be able to stand up underneath whatever we were taking
55:10
refuge in. You know, most likely the money's going to be fleeting. Your physical capabilities
55:16
are going to wane. You know, we may not be able to remember things like we used to. I
55:21
mean, what a tragedy if you build on that shifting sand. Well, I think talking about identity,
55:27
it's so important to have an identity in Christ and who does Christ say you are and who does
55:32
God say you are. And it's not this like shed off the skin to become who you are truly destined
55:40
to be. It's the God who is just looks on me, a sinner and sees me clothed in Christ's righteousness.
55:51
That's who I am. And if my identity is in that, like, like it says in verse 22, like
55:58
the Lord redeems the life of his servants, none of those who take refuge in him, who is
56:02
my identity in it is in Christ. And I was there like, I was really good at soccer. And that
56:08
was my identity. And when I I was so wrapped up in that, that's all I could see. And I
56:15
went through this period where I stopped playing. And I considered myself worthless because
56:22
my identity was so wrapped up in my ability to kick a ball that even if you're really
56:31
good, Cristiano Ronaldo, still playing at 38, still only 38, he's not going to be playing
56:38
until he's 50. And if that's where your identity is, and that's a sad way to live, think about
56:45
the Olympians, you know, these some of these guys are peaking at 18, 16, 22. Now what they've
56:52
literally won gold, how many times? And now what? Well, go ahead. Well, I was gonna say,
56:57
like, Eric, Eric Lydell, like one of one of my favorite stories is Eric Lydell. I mean,
57:03
an amazing runner, weird, weird looking running gate, like no one would say, try to run like
57:10
him, but he was really good at running. But he his his identity was so grounded in Christ,
57:18
he was gonna he was to be a missionary. And there's a there's a story where his sister
57:21
gets mad at him. Hey, you're supposed to go overseas and be a missionary. And he says,
57:27
I will get to that, because that is where my identity is. But when I run, I feel God's
57:33
pleasure. And there's this like dichotomy of, yes, I was I was made to run. But that's not
57:42
where my identity is. How cool is it that he knew that from a very early age and was able
57:48
to still have that thought like Olympic athlete, right? But that's not my identity.
57:52
Well, in our identity is tied to where we take refuge, right? It's exactly because I'm
57:57
reminded of the story of Dion Sanders. This was after when it was one of the the Cowboys
58:02
Super Bowls that they want or something like that. So it was the pinnacle, right? I believe
58:06
it was was that maybe when the 49ers doesn't matter. So Dion Sanders, his team just won
58:09
the Super Bowl, he gets back to the hotel. And he realizes this is the peak of my athletic
58:16
life. He had he, you know, again, he was very talented athlete, played professional baseball
58:21
at same time, he's profane playing professional football, just an absolutely gifted human being.
58:26
But the pinnacle of his entire life, his identity was being a Super Bowl champion. And he got
58:31
to the Super Bowl, one, and that was it. He was never more depressed. I've heard the
58:36
same thing about tennis champions. They went Wimbledon and they're like, is this it? Like
58:41
I, excuse me, I've worked my entire life to get to this exact moment. I've sacrificed
58:48
friendships, relationships, money, my body to get here. Think about, you know, you mentioned
58:54
Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Argentina, they just they win the World Cup, right? Lionel
58:59
Messi has won every team and individual award you could possibly win. Tom Brady, just, you
59:04
know, retired from from football again this year, the most successful he's being talked
59:08
about in the same way that Michael Jordan's talked about, right? It all ends. And then
59:13
it's like, well, my identity was my my super accurate deep ball. My identity was scoring
59:19
off of, you know, free kicks. My identity was being able to shut down the best wide receiver
59:24
on the other team. But they were taking refuge in that and they realized it's all gone. And
59:28
I guess as the story goes, as Dion Sanders actually in that moment, you know, got on his
59:32
knees in the hotel room and asked Christ into his into his life. And you know, you can judge
59:36
whether or not that the fruits there and whether or not that actually happened doesn't really
59:38
matter. It goes back to the eventual story. We all have a story like that. Now, there weren't
59:43
typically tens of millions of people watching us as our story was playing out on television.
59:48
But we all have that story, the thing we take in in our identity, like, you know, on the
59:53
podcast guy, you're the business guy, you're, you know, you're the person taking care of
59:56
people's bodies, you know, you're the person running a business or you're the person that
59:59
had all this athletic ability, it always comes back to where is your identity and where are
1:00:03
you going to take refuge? Because if it's not in Christ, again, the Lord redeems the life
1:00:06
of his servants, none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. That is your only
1:00:11
shot. Never missing a PK. That's not it. Right? Like, you know,
1:00:15
that's penalty kick. You know, it's penalty kick for all you Americans out there that
1:00:18
actually like real sports. Sorry, Matt, but like, like that's, that's not it. Your ability
1:00:22
to hit all your quarterly earnings goals. Your ability to never miss a sales quota. None
1:00:27
of that. You don't take refuge in that because you will be condemned. If that's where you
1:00:31
take your refuge. Guys, again, this is my favorite song. Thank you guys for being a part
1:00:36
of this. I'm so happy to be able to discuss this with you. There are certainly more there,
1:00:39
but we're going to go ahead and leave it there for now. But guys, come back next Sunday,
1:00:43
where we're going to be digging into Dagan's favorite song, which is Psalm 40. So guys,
1:00:47
make sure you read Psalm 40 so that you can be prepared for next week. And before we let
1:00:50
you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost. Add a dog to life for mission is equipping
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