Think of all he's done for us before we even knew him.
It's the LifeSpring One Year Bible Rewind and podcasting since 2004. I'm your OG Godcaster,
Steve Webb. This is the daily podcast where we're reading the entire Bible in a year.
Welcome. Thanks for joining me today. The website is lifespringmedia.com.
This is Psalms Wednesday. We'll read Psalms 48 through 50. And since we are in the Psalms today,
I'll give you an introduction to each chapter before I read the chapter.
We'll also have our On This Date in Church History segment, which we'll have a little fun extra today.
Here's a hint.
What do Rocky and Bullwinkle, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and Disney's Haunted Mansion have in common?
Hmm.
And since it's Wednesday, we'll also have a time of prayer.
Let's begin.
Our Heavenly Father, Lord, we love you and we thank you for your word.
We thank you, Lord, for revealing yourself to us through it.
We pray, God, today that you would open our eyes and soften our hearts.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
The title of chapter 48 is A Song, A Psalm of the Sons of Korah.
The Hebrew word for song in the title is shir, which conveys the idea of a joyful song.
The same word is used in Genesis 31, 27, which says,
Why did you flee away secretly and steal away from me and not tell me?
For I might have sent you away with joy and songs, with timbrel and harp.
It's also in Psalm 33, 3.
Sing to him a new song.
Play skillfully with a shout of joy.
And I've told you before that the sons of Korah were Levites, the tribe of priests,
and they seem to have been a part of the music ministry of temple worship, sort of the worship band.
Psalms chapter 48.
The Lord is great. He should be highly praised. His holy mountain is the city of our God.
Its beautiful peak is the joy of the whole earth. Mount Zion is on the northern ridge.
It is the city of the great King. God is in its palaces. He has proved that He is a stronghold.
The kings have gathered. They marched together. When they saw Mount Zion, they were astonished.
They were terrified and ran away in fear.
Trembling seized them like the trembling that a woman experiences during labor.
With the east wind you smashed the ships of Tarshish.
The things we had only heard about we have now seen in the city of the Lord of Armies,
in the city of our God.
God makes Zion stand firm forever.
Selah
Inside your temple we carefully reflect on your mercy, O God.
Like your name, O God, your praise reaches to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with righteousness.
Let Mount Zion be glad and the cities of Judah rejoice because of your judgments.
Walk around Zion.
Go around it.
Count its towers.
Examine its embankments.
Walk through its palaces.
Then you can tell the next generation, this God is our God forever and ever.
He will lead us beyond death.
The title of Psalm 49 is, To the Chief Musician, a Psalm of the Sons of Korah.
Of this psalm, G. Campbell Morgan wrote,
The teaching of the song is simple and sublime, present and perpetual.
And I love this from Alexander McLaren.
This psalm touches the high-water mark of Old Testament faith in a future life.
Psalm 49
Hear this, all you peoples.
Listen, all who live in this world, both low and high, rich and poor alike.
My mouth will speak words of wisdom.
The meditation of my heart will give you understanding.
I will turn my ear to a proverb.
With the harp I will expound my riddle.
Why should I fear when evil days come, when wicked deceivers surround me,
those who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches?
No one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them.
The ransom for a life is costly.
No payment is ever enough, so that they should live on forever and not see decay.
For all can see that the wise die, that the foolish and the senseless also perish, leaving
their wealth to others.
Their tombs will remain their houses forever, their dwellings for endless generations, though
they had named lands after themselves.
People, despite their wealth, do not endure.
They are like the beasts that perish.
This is the fate of those who trust in themselves
and of their followers who approve their sayings.
They are like sheep and are destined to die.
Death will be their shepherd,
but the upright will prevail over them in the morning.
Their forms will decay in the grave,
far from their princely mansions.
But God will redeem me from the realm of death.
He will surely take me to himself. Do not be overawed when others grow rich,
when the splendor of their houses increases, for they will take nothing with them when they die.
Their splendor will not descend with them. Though while they live they count themselves blessed,
and people praise you when you prosper, they will join those who have gone before them,
who will never again see the light of life. People who have wealth but lack understanding
are like the beasts that perish. Psalm 50 is entitled, A Psalm of Asaph.
This is the first psalm we see from Asaph in the book of Psalms. We know from 1 Chronicles 15,
16, and 25 that Asaph was a great singer and musician in both David and Solomon's time.
In addition, some of his psalms were prophetic.
Psalms chapter 50. From the rising of the sun to where it sets, God, the Lord God, speaks,
calling out to the earth. From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines brightly. Our God is coming,
He won't keep quiet. A devouring fire is before Him. A storm rages all around Him.
God calls out to the skies above and to the earth in order to judge His people.
Bring my faithful to me, those who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.
The skies proclaim his righteousness because God himself is the judge.
Selah.
Listen, my people, I will now speak.
Israel, I will now testify against you.
I am God, your God.
I am not punishing you for the sacrifices or for your entirely burned offerings which are always before me.
I won't accept bulls from your house or goats from your corrals,
because every forest animal already belongs to me, as do the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know every mountain bird.
Even the insects in the field are mine.
Even if I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you, because the whole world and everything in it already belongs to me.
Do I eat bull's meat?
Do I drink goat's blood?
Offer God a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Fulfill the promises you made to the Most High. Cry out to me whenever you are in trouble.
I will deliver you, then you will honor me. But to the wicked God says,
Why do you talk about my laws? Why do you even mention my covenant?
You hate discipline, and you toss my words behind your back.
You make friends with thieves whenever you see one. You spend your time with adulterers.
You set your mouth free to do evil, then harness your tongue to tell lies.
You sit around talking about your own siblings.
You find fault with the children of your very own mother.
You've done these things and I've kept quiet.
You thought I was just like you.
But now I'm punishing you.
I'm laying it all out right in front of your face.
So consider this carefully, all you who forget God,
or I'll rip you to pieces with no one to deliver you.
The one who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving is the one who honors me,
and it is to the one who charts the correct path that I will show divine salvation.
Let's talk for a moment about Psalm 50.
God, who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, does not find pleasure in the sacrifice of bulls or rams, or in our modern time, money.
What He desires is our heart, our devotion, our thanks, our praise, our us.
He wants a people who acknowledge Him for who He is and what He has done for us.
He wants us to desire to know Him, not to go through religious motions with no heart.
As you've heard me say, and maybe you're getting tired of it, but I never get tired of saying it,
I am deeply in love with the lovely Lady Leanne.
Of all the people on earth, she is the one who gives me a reason to get up in the morning.
She is my world and will be celebrating 32 years of marriage on New Year's Eve,
and I still tell her multiple times a day that I do love her.
But more than that, I still look for ways to show her that I love her,
not because she requires it, but because I love to make her happy.
And I would never dream of doing something that I know would make her unhappy,
even though sometimes I do.
And when I become aware that I've disappointed her, I try to be quick to apologize.
Maybe that's one of the reasons we'll be celebrating our 32nd anniversary.
She works outside the home, and most of the time I do my work from home.
On the days when she has to leave early in the morning to go to work, I usually get out of bed to make breakfast for her.
I don't do it because I have to or because it's an obligation.
I do it because I love her, and it helps to make her day just a little bit better.
The relationship that I have with Leanne is a type or example of the relationship God wants to have with us.
He desires that we love Him and that we tell Him so, that when we do things for Him it's because of love, not because it's a requirement.
As I find joy in doing things to make Leanne happy, God wants us to find joy in the things we do for Him.
Think of all He's done for us, before we even knew Him.
He gave us the gift of life.
He gave us a beautiful planet on which to live.
He gave us music.
He gave us sunshine.
He gave us rain.
He gave us puppies and kittens and the giggles of little children.
And as a grandfather, that's one of the greatest sounds in the world.
And he gave us his son, who so selflessly gave his life
so that we could have fellowship with God for all of eternity.
For the life of me, I can't understand people who reject such a God as this.
What are your thoughts?
Our reading tomorrow is Job 33 and 34.
Here's the verse of the day.
Today's verse of the day is Psalm 48.1. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of
our God. Psalm 48.1. Our associate producer today is Lifespring Family Berean, Brother Michael
Hainer, who came in with his weekly $7.77 donation. Thank you, Brother Michael. God bless you.
Beloved, it is through the generosity of the Lifespring family that I can bring the Lifespring
One Year Bible Rewind to you each day. Have you donated yet? The show needs your support.
Would you miss it if it stops showing up in your podcast app? Time, talent, or treasure.
It doesn't really matter how you give, but that you give. And when you do,
you're helping to spread the good news to a world that needs it. God bless you.
On this date in church history, February 11th, Najima Shimita was born. His life was like an
adventure novel, and he later took the name Joseph Hardy Najima. Born in a closed Japan,
where leaving the country meant a death sentence, he risked everything at the age of 21 to stow away
on a ship bound for America. He eventually became the first Japanese person to be ordained as a
Protestant minister. He didn't stay in the West, though. He returned to his homeland during the
Meiji Restoration to found Doshisha University. He left a legacy that proved that the gospel could
take deep root in Japanese soil through the power of Christian education. And now, on this date in
1952, when Trans World Radio, or TWR, was founded. It started with a vision from Paul Freed, who
realized that while missionaries could be blocked by physical borders or political iron curtains,
radio waves could sail right over them. Beginning with a small transmitter in Morocco, TWR was grown
into a global powerhouse, now broadcasting the gospel in over 300 languages. It remains a
testament to the idea that the Word of God is not chained, using technology to reach the most remote
corners of the globe. Now, here's a bit of fun broadcaster trivia for you. When you hear the
name Paul Freed, some of you, especially those of you who grew up on classic cartoons or Disney
parks, like me, might think of the Man of a Thousand Voices, Paul Freese. They were both
masters of the microphone in the 1950s, but they lived in very different worlds. Paul Freese, with
an S, was the voice of the ghost host in The Haunted Mansion, and Boris Badenov in Rocky and
Bullwinkle. He even appeared on camera as the radio reporter in the 1953 classic film The War of the
worlds. The target for the A-bomb is this nest of Martian machines in the Puente Hills, where more
of these meteor cylinders came down early last evening. All radio is dead, which means that these
tape recordings I'm making are for the sake of future history. Yeah, do you recognize that voice?
Yeah, Paul Freese. But our man of the day is Paul Freed with a D, the missionary who had the vision
to send the gospel sailing over the Iron Curtain through Trans World Radio.
One was a master of Hollywood imagination.
The other was a pioneer of the Great Commission.
Just a little something to keep your D's and S's straight
if you're looking them up in the history books,
as if anybody uses history books these days.
Anyway, from secret stowaways to shortwave radio,
February 11th reminds us of the creative, courageous links
believers will go to share the good news of a risen Christ.
Praises and prayer requests. Joy Kurtz sent in an unspoken prayer request. We don't have to know it
because God already does. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, our Heavenly Father,
you are worthy of our love. Everything that we are, everything that we have,
everything that we will ever be is from you. We love you, but help us to love you more,
Lord, because you are worthy. Lord, right now we lift up our sister Joy to you. She has an unspoken
request, and you, Father, know all about it. We don't need to know, but we just want to bring it
to your attention as we agree together with Joy that we want your will to be done in her life,
and we leave this in your capable, loving hands. Father, I thank you for the LifeSpring family.
Bless them today. I pray, Lord, that you would meet every need according to your will and your
plan. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Beloved, when you send in your praises and prayer requests,
I'll pray for you in my daily private prayer time, and I'll rejoice with you, and I'll pray for you
on the show so that we can all agree together as we take our requests to God. To send them to me,
just go to prayer.lifespringmedia.com. You'll find an easy-to-fill-out form there.
If you want to remain anonymous, there's a place on the form that you can let me know.
comment on the show at comment.lifespringmedia.com or email me at steve at life springmedia.com
i'll read some of your comments on the show and i do really want to hear from you until tomorrow
beloved may god bless you richly thank you so much for being here and making me a part of your day
my name is steve webb bye
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Thank you.
The Lifespring One Year Bible Rewind is a Lifespring Media production hosted by Steve Webb, the OG Godcaster since 2004.