spiritually, I was in a desert. This is the LifeSpring One Year Bible Rewind,
and coming to you from Riverside, California, podcasting since 2004, I'm your OG Godcaster,
Steve Webb. This is the podcast that comes to you seven days a week, and we're reading the entire
Bible together. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome. The website is lifespringmedia.com. It's
International Lego Day, because who hasn't stepped on one of those confounded plastic bricks?
Man, that hurts.
This is Psalms Wednesday.
We'll read Psalms 42 through 44.
I'll have some commentary on what we've read.
We'll find out what happened on this date in church history, and we'll have a time of
prayer.
So let's begin.
Our Heavenly Father, we love you so very much, and we thank you so much for your word.
We pray, God, that as we read today, you would touch our hearts.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Psalm 42 is the first psalm of Book 2 of the Book of Psalms.
And there are certainly differences between Books 1 and 2.
One difference is the Hebrew word for God.
Commentator James Montgomery Boyce wrote,
According to Franz Delick, in Book 1 the name Jehovah occurs 272 times and Elohim only 15.
But in Book 2, Elohim occurs 164 times and Jehovah only 30 times.
In Book 1, David is the author of all but four of the 41 Psalms, with those four having no attributions.
In Book 2, which contains 31 chapters, David wrote 18, Asaph and Solomon each wrote 1,
the sons of Korah authored 7 or 8, and 3 have no attribution.
The title of Psalm 42 is, To the Chief Musician, a Contemplation of the Sons of Korah.
So who were the sons of Korah?
Well, they were Levites from the tribe of Kohath, and according to 1 Chronicles 20.19,
they stood up to praise the Lord God of Israel with voices loud and high. They did this in the
temple so it appears that they were part of what we might call the worship band.
Psalms chapter 42. Like a deer drinking from a stream, I reach out to you, my God.
My soul thirsts for the living God. When can I go to meet with Him? Instead of food,
I have only tears day and night, as my enemies laugh at me and say, Where is your God?
My heart breaks as I remember the pleasant times in the past when I walked with the crowds as I
led them up to God's temple. I remember the happy songs of praise as they celebrated the festival.
Why am I so sad? Why am I so upset? I tell myself, wait for God's help. You will again
be able to praise Him, your God, the One who will save you. In my sadness I say,
I will remember you from here on this small hill where Mount Hermon and the Jordan River meet.
I hear the roar of the water coming from deep within the earth.
It shouts to the water below as it tumbles down the waterfall.
God, your waves come one after another, crashing all around and over me.
By day the Lord shows his faithful love, and at night I have a song for him, a prayer for the God of my life.
I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me?
Why must I suffer this sadness that my enemies have brought me?
Their constant insults are killing me.
They never stop asking, Where is your God?
Why am I so sad?
Why am I so upset?
I tell myself, Wait for God's help.
You will again be able to praise Him, your God, the one who will save you?
Psalm 43 has no title, and there's no indication of who the writer is.
G. Campbell Morgan wrote,
This psalm is either part of the previous one or is closely connected with it.
As a matter of fact, many ancient Hebrew manuscripts have Psalms 42 and 43 combined
into just one psalm.
Psalms chapter 43
Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation.
O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man.
For you are the God of my strength.
Why do you cast me off?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
O send out your light and your truth.
Let them lead me.
Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your tabernacle.
Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy.
And on the harp I will praise you, O God, my God.
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.
The title of Psalm 44 is, To the Chief Musician, a Contemplation of the Sons of Korah. So this was
written by the sons of Korah, and they speak of a time of defeat for the nation, and they ask God
to deliver them, to rescue them. We don't know the specific time this was written, so it could apply
to any of them. Psalms chapter 44
Our God, our ancestors told us what wonders you worked, and we listened carefully.
You chased off the nations by causing them trouble with your powerful arm.
Then you let our ancestors take over their land.
Their strength and weapons were not what won the land and gave them victory.
You loved them and fought with your powerful arm and your shining glory.
You are my God and King, and you give victory to the people of Jacob.
By your great power we knocked our enemies down and trampled on them.
I don't depend on my arrows or my sword to save me, but you saved us from our hateful enemies,
and you put them to shame. We boast about you, our God, and we are always grateful.
But now you have rejected us. You don't lead us into battle, and we look foolish.
You made us retreat, and our enemies have taken everything we own. You let us be slaughtered,
like sheep, and you scattered us among the nations. You sold your people for little or nothing,
and you earned no profit. You made us look foolish to our neighbors. People who live nearby insult us
and sneer. Foreigners joke about us and shake their heads. I am embarrassed every day, and I
blush with shame. But others mock and sneer as they watch my enemies take revenge on me.
All this happened to us, though we didn't forget you or break our agreement. We always kept you in
mind and followed your teaching. But you crushed us, and you covered us with deepest darkness
where wild animals live. We did not forget you or lift our hands in prayer to foreign
gods. You would have known it because you discover every secret thought. We face death
all day for you. We are like sheep on their way to be slaughtered. Wake up! Do something,
Lord! Why are you sleeping? Don't desert us forever. Why do you keep looking away?
Don't forget our sufferings and all our troubles.
We are flat on the ground, holding on to the dust.
Do something.
Help us.
Show how kind you are and come to our rescue.
I'll comment on Psalm 42.
More years ago than I care to remember, I was an apprentice carpenter.
And the first job I worked on was building condominiums in Palm Desert, right here in
Southern California.
Palm Desert is just next door to Palm Springs.
so as you might think from the name of the town, Palm Desert is indeed in the Southern California
Desert. And as luck would have it, this project I was working on was in the summer. I looked up to
see what the temperatures were in July and August of 1978, the year I had this job, and most every
day the temperature reached 110 degrees. We'd usually begin our day's work, if I remember right,
at about 5 o'clock in the morning, when the temperature was only about 85, but once the sun
came up, the mercury would quickly rise. Verse 1 and 2 in the New Living Translation more accurately
captures the author's meaning than our translation today, the easy-to-read version. The New Living
Translation says, As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God,
the living God. In my mind, this verse is inextricably tied to my time as a carpenter's
apprentice in Palm Desert. I know what it's like to long for fresh, cold water. And there have been
times in my life where I felt that, spiritually, I was in a desert, separated from God. And, of
course, when I feel apart from God, it's my fault, because God doesn't change. If someone is drifted
away, it's me that does the drifting. But God is faithful. He lets me do what I do, and, as a good
Father, He lets me feel the consequences of my wandering ways, and without fail, I begin to thirst.
I begin to long for His presence again. And can I tell you something, beloved? This Christmas
season I'm feeling a bit heartbroken. There's someone in my life who has wandered away from God,
someone I love very, very much. They think that they no longer believe in God, so my fervent prayer
for them is that they would experience this same longing for Him that the authors wrote about,
and that I myself have experienced. The deer is driven by thirst to that cool stream of water,
and my prayer is that my loved one will be driven to the refreshing arms of a loving God.
Is there someone in your life like this? Don't give up praying for them. I prayed for my dad for
many, many years. I began praying for him when I became a Christian as a teenager, and it wasn't
until about thirty years later that my dad finally surrendered to the Lord, just before he died.
So don't ever give up praying for your loved ones who don't know the Lord.
I'd love to know your thoughts.
We'll be back in the book of Job tomorrow.
We'll read chapters 29 and 30.
Today's verse of the day is actually two verses, Psalms 42, 1 and 2.
Like a deer drinking from a stream, I reach out to you, my God.
My soul thirsts for the living God.
When can I go to meet with Him?
Beloved, just as Psalm 42 speaks of the deer thirsting for water,
I hope this show quenches your thirst for the Word.
If you've found refreshment here,
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Pray for the show.
Tell a friend.
Stream Satoshis, boost, or donate dollars.
However you feel led, in proportion to the value you've received,
Here's a place to do that.
Lifespringmedia.com slash support
Well, what do a dying king and a legendary island missionary have in common?
They both left a mark on the world on this very day.
It's January 29th, and history is shifting.
First, let's go back to 1547.
A massive, controversial King Henry VIII has just died.
For years, Henry played a tug-of-war with the Pope, but it was mostly about power.
When he died, the crown went to his nine-year-old son, Edward VI, and that's when the real fire started.
Edward's advisors didn't just want a new boss.
They wanted a new church.
This transition flipped the switch, moving England from a political dispute into a full-blown Protestant Reformation.
The Bible was finally coming to the people in their own language.
But history isn't just made in palaces.
Jump to 1907.
Today we remember the death of John G. Patton.
This Scotsman didn't just preach the gospel.
He lived it in one of the most dangerous places on earth, the New Hebrides.
We're talking about a man who stood his ground among cannibals,
lost his family to disease, and he kept digging.
He famously told his critics that he didn't fear being eaten by cannibals because he'd
be resurrected just the same.
By the time he passed away on this date, he had seen thousands trade fear for faith.
Think about that.
One day, two massive legacies.
One changed the laws of an empire.
The other changed the soul of a people group.
Whether it's a throne room or a tropical beach, God is always at work in the timing of history.
Amen?
Amen.
Every now and then we come across a Bible verse we think we know so well that we stop really hearing it.
Be still and know that I am God is one of those verses.
On the newest episode of Verses We Missed, I take a closer look at Psalm 46.10
and discover that God isn't whispering comfort here.
He's speaking into chaos.
This verse isn't just about calming your heart.
It's about recognizing who truly reigns when everything feels like it's shaking.
Join me for Verses We Missed, Be Still Is Not a Whisper,
available now at VersesWeMissed.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Praises and Prayer Requests
Joy Kurtz sent in this note along with a prayer request.
Steve, please remind the lovely Lady Leanne that we walk by faith and not by sight.
And she put a laughing emoji there.
Yeah, very funny, Joy.
That's good.
Then she said that's 2 Corinthians 5, 7.
And verse 8 reads in the Net Bible,
Thus we are full of courage and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
Amen to that, Joy.
Amen.
And she says,
Even though I'm not living with my parents in Mayville, New York,
please pray for my father's diabetes and my mother's blood pressure,
which causes her to see black circles in her vision.
She said, I'm praying for the outreach of the one-year Bible, Steve, and thank you for your clear, smooth-speaking voice.
Well, Joy, I can't take any credit for that.
That is just something from God.
But thank you very much.
God bless you.
We'll definitely pray for your parents as we do continue to pray for you as well.
And I have a very personal praise today.
I have a family member that I have not spoken to in about nine years.
Without getting into the details, this is a person who hurt me very badly.
and though I forgave them years ago, I felt it was best just to avoid them,
knowing that their relationship with the Lord was non-existent,
and I saw no need to invite them in to hurt me or my family again.
But over the past several months, I began to feel like perhaps the Lord was calling me to re-establish contact with them.
At first, I just thought it was my own mind telling me to call them, so I pushed it off.
I tried to put it out of my mind.
But then I began waking up in the middle of the night with it.
It was then that I started thinking that this might be the Lord.
After all, He has spoken to me like that before.
That's actually how He told me to start the LifeSpring podcast in 2004.
You can read all about that at LifeSpringMedia.com.
Just look at the About Steve page.
But I want to get back to this story.
This time, though, I really argued with God about it.
I wrestled with Him a lot.
I'm not proud of it, but it's the truth, and I only want to tell you the truth on this show.
I thought that I would only reopen some very bad wounds if I contacted this person, but
a couple of days ago, again in the middle of the night, he woke me up again.
And again, at first, I tried to put it out of my mind, but he kept insisting.
And I need to tell you that all this time I never mentioned it to the lovely Lady Leanne,
because she too was hurt by this person.
But at the end of this last wrestling session, I told the Lord that I would call this person.
So in the morning, I told Leanne what I had been going through and that I was going to obey the Lord and make the call that day.
And as she always does, she said, if the Lord is telling you to do it, do it.
So she had to go visit her mom that morning.
And if you've been listening to the show very long, you know her mom as Grandma Noni.
So when she left, I very nervously dialed the phone.
hoping that they wouldn't pick up. But they did. And I said,
Hello, this is Steve. And with some hesitation they said,
Hello, Steve, with a bit of hesitation and almost suspicion in their voice.
To which I said, God told me to call you.
And then we went on to have about a ninety-minute very cordial and friendly conversation.
Nothing was said about what happened all those years ago.
we just sort of got caught up on what's been going on in our lives.
And I now have a basis to, in God's timing, tell this person about the Lord.
They're still very far from Him, but at least now the lines of communication are open.
And I know that, as hard-headed as I can sometimes be, I did what God told me to do.
The fears I had about being badly hurt again were all for naught.
And I gotta tell you, I am so glad that He was patient with me.
If this revelation about my, what I consider to be a spiritual weakness on my part,
if this disappoints you, I'm sorry,
but I want you to know that God still has an under-construction sign on my head.
Let's pray.
Our Heavenly Father, we love you, Lord,
and we thank you for loving us even before we were born
and even when we're stubborn and slow to obey.
You have a plan for each of us,
and you want us to know you, to love you, and to be with you in eternity. Thank you, Lord,
for making all of that possible through Jesus. Father, right now we lift up Joy and her parents.
Joy needs your healing touch for her brain injury. We're thankful that she has clarity of thought,
but the connection between her brain and her body is broken. In Jesus' name, we ask you to
reestablish the communication lines there, and we pray that her father's diabetes and her mother's
blood pressure would be corrected. You can do these things, Lord, because You are the great physician.
And, Lord, I confess my sin of putting off obeying You, and I thank You for not giving up on me.
You kept after me, and I am so very grateful that You did. Truly, a heavy weight has been lifted,
and I am thankful to really begin the healing process between this family member and me.
I pray that You would be in the middle of it all, and that You would use me to reintroduce them to
you. And if not me, that you would bring someone into their life that they would trust and listen
to. It would be truly wonderful to see them give their life to you. And I thank you, Lord, for the
Lifespring family. Lord, bless each one today and help us to walk close to you today. We want to
please you. Speak to us and lead us. For those who are sick, we ask that you would heal them.
For those who are depressed or struggling with loneliness, fill their hearts and encourage them.
For those that are going through hard times financially, be their supply.
Lord, you know every need and every situation, and you have an answer and a solution for each one.
We rely on and we trust in you, Lord.
We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Beloved, our next time of prayer together will be Sunday.
Send in your praise reports and prayer requests, and do it here,
prayer.lifespringmedia.com or email me at steve at lifespringmedia.com
or send a text or record a voicemail here.
Beloved, never give up hope for those that you care about.
As long as there is breath,
there is the opportunity to trust in
or return to the refreshing arms of our loving God.
Until tomorrow, may God bless you richly.
Thank you so much for being here.
My name is Steve Webb.
Bye.
All the programs in the Lifespring Media family are made possible by your value-for-value support.
Thank you.
The Lifespring One Year Bible Rewind is a Lifespring Media production hosted by Steve Webb, the OG Godcaster since 2004.