Bible Guys Classics: Psalm 7

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in

practical ways.

Well, good morning, good more morning.

Yeah, we talk all right, Chris is coffee is kicking in.

That's what I'm said seeing right now.

In the morning in the motor I never I never

go past that.

Mark. Okay, So dude, you really livened up. Dude, caffeine

hit send a couple of nice text messages. Feeling good.

He's referring to in between the All right, hey, today

this if you don't know, if you're just joining us today,

this is Kyler is standing in for Jeff because Jeff

is out of pocket. And so we are delighted, thrilled, nay,

we are privileged to have with us this week.

The Bible Guys with Kyle and Chris. Yes, it was

pretty terrible then. First, I don't know how that happens.

Yes, yes, deserved, but you deserved.

I don't know about that, not at all. But thank you.

Well. Hey, today's desiree wants us to do two truths

in a lie. Yep, and the way she wrote it is,

oh I lost my place now, it says Kyle, we

always enjoy having you as a Bible guy.

She had to write that that's good getting.

To know you more.

Let's play two truths and a lie to see how

well Chris knows you?

All right?

Can he figure out which statement is a lie? And

she put exclamation mark question mark as if that's so intense?

Can he find out? I figured us see if we

can figure it out. Okay, we got three things for you, Chris,

Two truths, one lie. First thing is this is that

I graduated from the same high school that your kids

graduated from.

Yeah, I know that's true, buddy.

Wait for me to say all three Yeah.

Well, I'm I'm just calling you out.

Okay, there you go. I am the youngest of my

older of the three siblings in my family, I'm the youngest.

That's the second thing. And then the last is.

That the last one's a lie.

Okay, the last thing, the last thing, son of a gun.

I already knew you.

Okay, I married in Hawaii, So there are two truths

and a lie in that I was married in Hawaii.

I'm the youngest of Uh.

Hey, I'm proud. I'm really proud because you know we

know each other. But I but you know. Obviously I

don't know you nearly as well as some other staff

members because you run staff well before me, right, And

so I'm really proud that I got this.

I knew both of those things.

Yeah. So the truth is I did go to Troy

Athens High School, graduated away before his kids, but went

to the same high school as them. The other truth

is that I actually have six siblings. I'm not the youngest.

I'm right in the middle.

I get it wrong, I get it wrong.

You said that you said you thought that was the truth.

No, no, no, I said, I said the last ones. Uh, oh,

so you are wrong.

Let's go totally misunderstood you. Yes, it's right. So I

actually was married in Hawaii. I really was two thousand

and seven, got married in Hawaii. And uh, and no,

I'm I'm not I'm not the youngest. I am right

in the middle of the six siblings.

I said. I said, I know you're the youngest, but

you're not.

No, I'm not, no right, no middle. So wow, yeah,

I have two older siblings and then and then three

younger than me. So six of us six. It's okay.

You were getting a little confident, and I actually trusted

your confidence. That's the worst part is also you know

he's right, He's got me.

Did you ever see Willie Walker at the end when

he goes wrong, sir wrong?

Yes, you get married in Hawaii.

Yeah, So we basically we had the opportunity. When we

were planning our wedding, we were just broke as a joke, yeah,

and we were like, you know, we were talking about

what are options where we could have done a big

wedding in the area and probably spent too much money

that we didn't have. We could have done a small

wedding in the area and left out a bunch of people,

or what we decided was another option was what if

we go to Hawaii and we just invite whoever wants

to come and uh, and then we we stay there

and we get married there. So we ended up inviting

whoever wanted to come and thirteen people joined us. It

was really great two thousand and seven. So my family,

her family, close family. We didn't have anybody stand up

in the wedding. It was just on a beach and

the couple that did we basically a couple that was there.

She did the photography, he performed the wedding and it

was really sweet. It was out in the on a

beach with like nobody around us. It was awesome, very cool,

very cool. It was it was a guy we found

like a like a online pastor. We found rent a pastor. Yeah,

yet very nice guy.

Wow. So a pastor at our church hired a rena

pastor in Hawaii.

Was before I actually wanted to go in the ministry.

So I was just like, I just need to get married.

We just gotta figure this out. There's got to be

somebody we could, uh we could find to do this.

Wow.

So yeah, it was not. I mean I had I

had other pastor friends I could have invited.

But let's pretend that you were single up until now. Uh,

and let's just say you just met Kristin right, and

you guys are gonna get married.

Uh.

My question is, would you be okay hiring a rena

pastor now or would you like say, gosh, I just

can't do that.

I have to have whoever special in your life.

So you're saying you want to go to Hawaii? Is

that what you're saying? No, I'm just no, oh no, no,

My mindset is definitely different. But you have to I

was very very young we did not, like, we didn't

have much like, so I'm trying to think of, like

what's the most easy and efficient way to get this

thing legally take care of.

That's why people hire rena pasters.

Yes, yes, so now I would say I definitely want

to fly out somebody who'd be important to me and

have them do the wedding one.

Yes, yeah, okay, yeah, even though that'd be a more

expensive Yes, absolutely that point you might as well stay

at home and yes, so but but wow, that is amazing.

So so yeah, you probably have incredible photos.

Yes, it's great and also was it was before the

age where like everything's digital, right, so we have a

lot of great printed photos, we have a few digital

photos and some really just good good memories from that. Actually,

I'll tell funny. I know we were probably run out

of time for this segment, but we were on this

beach and it was like totally like like the rent

to pastor helped find us the spot, and it was

beautiful beach. No one's around, and there's this guy in

a speedo that's ceremonies about to start runs by a

speedo and my dad is like kind of, I mean,

he's a very nice kind guy, but he also has

an agressive side. Don't want to mess with him. So

sure enough, like the guy runs by and we all

kind of got to laugh, right then the guy runs

by again, second time. By the third time, he's just

running laps. My dad was like, I honestly might tackle

this guy in the speed home and into the ocean.

And so just funny thing because we were just like

a memory that we have is just some guy making laps.

He'd run like a football field link running back. And

finally Mike had to say, can you please leave? There's

a wedding happening because we're standing up there about to

get married, about to exchange bowls and some guys running

behind him.

Did he say please?

Yeah, I think he said in a more firm way

than that. But and then the guy did not come back,

that's for sure, but it made for a really funny

Dad's also muscular. Yes, yes he's not. He's not messing around. Yeah,

he's not messing around. Your dad said to me leave, Yes,

I would leave, yes, yes. And this guy, I mean again,

we're in the middle of nowhere, in this beautiful spot,

and this guy thought it was a good idea to

run across where the photos were being taken so many times, yeah,

three different times, yea.

Yeah.

So anyways, all right, we should probably talk about the Bible.

Yep, yeah, Well, I mean, hey, we did good. We

were within our talk of time. A right, So David,

as we know, many of us already know that David

wrote many of the psalms, right, almost exclusively, all of them,

and many times.

What he did was he.

Wrote them, you know, throughout his journey and and and

it'll literally tell us when he wrote them, right now,

each psalm had a tune. They were actually songs, right

and we don't have the charts, we don't have the

chords of the melodies. But he actually would write music.

He was a musician. And this one says a psalm

of David which he sang to the Lord concerning Cush

of the tribe of Benjamin, which is right where we

are chronologically in his life.

All right, So right there in Psalm seven, i'll read

it today. It says, I come to you for protection,

O Lord, my God, save me for my persecutors. Rescue me.

If you don't, they will maul me like a lyon lion,

tearing me to pieces with no one to rescue me.

Oh Lord, my God. If I've done wrong, or I'm

guilty of justice, injustice, if I betrayed a friend or

plundered my enemy without cause, then let my enemies capture me.

Let them trample me into the ground and drag me,

drag my honor in the dust. Arise, O Lord, in anger,

stand up against a fury of my enemies. Wake up,

my God, and bring justice. Gather the nations before you

rule over them from on high. The Lord judges the nations.

Declare me righteous, o Lord, for I am innocent almost

high End the evil of those who are wicked, and

defend the righteous. For you look deep within the mind

and heart, Oh righteous God, God is my shield, saving

those whose hearts are true and right. God is an

honest judge. He is angry with the wicked every day.

If a person does not repent, God will sharpen his sword,

he will bend and string his bow. He will prepare

his deadly weapons and shoot his flaming arrows. The wicked

conceive evil. They are pregnant with trouble and give birth

to lies. They dig a deep pit to trap others,

then fall into it themselves. The trouble they make for

others backfires on them. The violence they plan falls on

their own heads. I will thank the Lord because he

has just I will sing praises to the name of

the Lord Most High. It was a good, good psalm

of David.

Yeah, it is, yes, And you know it's interesting to

me how whenever you read a psalm like this, we

today on the other side of the cross, we try

to obviously apply that.

We try to say, Okay, what.

Does this mean for me not to be selfish because

we're trying to you know, obviously, you know, sort.

Of become like Christ, become like God, what God wants

us to be.

Yeah, yeah, I guess what I was going to say is,

you know, we're trying to receive it. You know, when

it was written with what intent was it written for?

What did it mean to David? Right?

Oh, you're saying that's the correct way to approach it.

Yeah, I'm saying, yeah, that's we have to understand the context.

The stuff that doesn't relate to us, it's they're still important.

I guess is what I'm trying to say. There's a

lot of stuff in the Old Testament. Remember Yesterday's story.

He stabbed into the gut and split out his guts.

You're like, what does this have to do with me today,

in my life in twenty twenty four, Right, So we

have to appreciate it for what it is and what

it means and how it applies to the life of David,

is what I'm saying. But then also you sort of

have to short of apply and say, Okay, God, what

does this mean for me? Because every verse, you know,

there's there's a sermon in there somewhere, right, every verse

can lead you to Christ. But anyway, what I was

just going to say is, sometimes when we are trying

to receive a psalm for us today in twenty twenty four,

we come across things that could be a little discouraging.

You know.

Sometimes it says He's angry with the wicked every day.

God is an honest judge. If a person does not repent,

God will sharpen his sword, he will bend and string

his bow, he will prepare his weapons, the weapons and

shoot his flaming arrows.

And it's like, holy cow, it's.

Like those of us who have a past, those of

us who currently struggle. You know, I can imagine that

there are probably some people listening to the podcast even

right now, They're like, that's me. I'm the wicked person, right,

Like I try to be good, I just can't.

Or I try to be.

Good, I'm just not as disciplined as I want to be, right, Ye,

And so let's just be reminded. Here's the here's the

statement of the day that God still does hate wicked

things every day. So the Bible says that, you know,

God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So God

does not change God. Whatever sin that God hated in

the Old Testament, God still hates in the New Testament. Right.

There's nowhere in.

The Bible does it say that God has changed his

stance on sin, nor does he feel about sin any

differently than he did even back then. The only difference is,

and trust me it is a massive difference, is God's

response to sin changes greatly. So God's response to sin

is different because of Jesus Christ. Right.

So in the Old Testament we see.

The God of wrath, right, you know, like you know,

God executes his judgment on the spot.

For sin, you know, and he just boom, just lays

it out.

You know, We're going to strike people down and again,

he struck people down in the New Testament and in

Aisi and Sephirah in.

The Book of Acts.

Right, like, there's still execution, you know, happening in the

New Testament post Christ. But for the most part, we

have to understand that God's response to us in twenty

twenty four for our sin is radically different than it

was before Christ, because Jesus Christ came to pay for

our sins.

Right, So what happens in the Old Testament.

Is, you know, they would live trying their best to

please God, and obviously because of their sin, they would

sacrifice an animal. The Bible says in the Book of Hebrews.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no repentance for sin.

There's no forgiveness of sin. And so they would excuse me,

they would have to offer a blood sacrifice. In those

blood sacrifices they would have to offer continually. But the

Bible says that Jesus Christ was the one and only

an ultimate sacrifice.

He was the Lamb of God.

John the Baptist said that takes away the sins of

the whole world. When his blood was shed, it covered

all of our sins, not only all the sins that

we've committed in the past, but all the sins in

the future, all of our future sins. God's one sacrifice

is enough to forgive everything that we will ever do

for our lives. So I just want to say, as

we receive this psalm, just know this God is still

a God of justice. He's still a God who hates sin.

He's still a God who, by the way, will have

us answer for our sins. Right, we have judgment in

our lives. Judgment is still relevant. We have to answer

for our sins. The Bible says, our sins are going

to find us out right. Whatsoever we sow, we're going

to reap. We understand those things.

But just know that his.

Anxiousness to sharpen his sword and get you back because

of your sin, that is not the spirit in which

we live under the Blood of Christ. Right, God is

not out to get us. God is out to love us.

God pursues us, He loves us, He forgives us, He

invites us into a loving relationship with him, offering us

continual forgiveness for our sins.

Right, especially when you figure the context of who's writing this, right,

it's David, a man after God's own heart yet has

so much like things that honestly to feel a lot

of shame and regret and pain over of his own

sins and mistakes. And the verse that stood out to

me that is kind of a beautiful verse, but also

like a scary verse, kind of like you're saying, sometimes

people read this stuff and they're like, oh, my goodness,

this applies to me. But in verse nine, it says,

for you look deep within the mind and heart, you know.

Reading that, some people can take soul list in that.

They can say, man, the God, he just sees my

heart and he knows my mind, what I'm thinking, He

knows my intentions or pure or whatever. But then others

maybe read that and they're like, wow, that's that's scary

to know that that the God actually knows deep within

your mind and heart. He knows your motives, he knows

you know what you're thinking, he knows your temptations, your

struggles and that sort of thing. And that part of

it feels a little bit convicting. It feels a little

bit like, you know, a little bit revealing. It feels like,

you know, a vulnerable moment. But I think it's also

a reminder that as Christians we can kind of live

with like the mask off, pretending not you know, stop

pretending to be something or not, Stop pretending like you're perfect, right,

stop pretending like you know, all this rightciousness you walk around,

self righteousness you walk around with because end of the day,

no matter what it is, we have a God who

sees deep within the mind and heart, and that's what

matters most. And we see right here we have someone

like David who's considered a man after God's own heart,

and yet he's being completely real about the fact that

God sees him, knows him, knows all his issues, and

yet still deeply loves him.

Yeah.

Well you know, I mean, you know, he's not claiming

perfection right to you to the point he's just made.

But when he does say that, at the very beginning,

he says, hey, you know, if I've done wrong, if

I'm guilty of an injustice or portrayed a friend, then hey,

let the enemies capture me, tramp me in the ground,

drag my honor through the dust. What he's talking about

here is his reputation.

You know, I love this.

Note in the Love of Life Application Study Bible says

this have you ever been falsely accused or so badly

hurt that you wanted to take revenge. Instead of taking

matters into your own hands and striking back, David cried

out to God for justice. The proper response to slander

is prayer, not revenge, because God says I will take revenge,

I will pay them back, and then it give us

some cross references, and it says, instead of striking back,

ask God to take your case, bring justice, and restore

your reputation.

I'm not sure if you could relate to this, but

I could relate to this in a very massive way.

Something you know well.

I mean, I don't want to get into details, because

people who know me personally and they know the church

that I came from, they know that there was some

of that involved in leaving my other church. And as

long as you've known me, even personally in conversation, how

many times have you ever heard.

Me mention this?

And the answer is almost zero? Right, I never talk

about it. I certainly never say anything publicly. And the

reason why is because my goal isn't to slander other churches.

My goal isn't to say bad things about people. Right,

there's no good that'll come from that. You know, sometimes

when we leave churches, sometimes it's a really good leaving

and sometimes it's not.

And it's complicated, right and so and so my goal is.

Not to slander anybody listening who knows anything about my leaving.

But I will say one thing, and again, this is

one thing. This is a very it feels like a

very safe comment. Okay, a very safe comment. There was

there was a thing that happened where you know, I

spoke up against you know, leadership and had some attitude

issues against leadership and things. Well, anyway, I was put

on a leave of absence and and and all I

said was all I said was I just said this.

I just said, hey, listen, I said, do me a favor.

I said, just make a statement, and make the statement

that says, hey, the reason why Chris is on leave

absence has nothing to do with anything illegal, immoral, or unethical.

Because when you hear that a pastor gets put on

leav absence, that's where everybody's brain goes.

Right, I said, you filmed the gap.

I said, so yeah. I said, we don't have to

talk details, not have to slander.

We don't have to say anything bad, orbout anything about anybody.

I said, just do me a favor and make sure

that you're able to say this. Well, you know, they

refused to make that statement. And I won't get into

the reason why. I have my opinions as the reason why,

but anyway, but that statement was not allowed to be said.

And so consequently, I remember doing a funeral down way

down in Saint Clair Shores, which is, as you know,

like forty five minutes away, right. I remember a funeral

director heard me, heard my name, and he says, hey,

are you Chris Arbo? And I said yeah, and he goes, oh, man,

he goes. I heard from a from a good friend's

daughter's friend who used to go to the who said

that you had an affair with your secretary.

Oh gosh, yeah.

And I was like, and there it is, right.

So it's it's the false accused part, right, It's the

it's the it's the it's the part that says, you know,

it's exactly what we're talking about here, And it's like, hey,

we could have avoided everything just by being able to

say the reason why he was on leave absence has

nothing to do with anything illegal, immoral, or ethical. Just

please make that statement, because people are people, right. Uh,

and so I I have dealt with a lot.

I have dealt a lot with this, Yeah, being falsely accused.

Yeah, because even though I wasn't technically accused, I was,

I was not given the chance to so so yeah,

there was a lot of defeiding that went on. And

uh and and I again, I don't want to get

into it, but uh and so again I've not said

anything bad about previous leadership at all. The one thing

that I've said is I've dealt with feelings like David

has right, which is like, hey, if I if I've

done these things, hey, God, then go ahead and drag

my honor through the dust. But if not, then do

me a favor God, through your power, restore my reputation.

Yeah.

And you know what, I've always believed. I have this

on my desk for years, years and years and years,

like twenty years. Woodrow Wilson, our former president, said something

that I'll never forget, and I've lived by this my

whole life.

And here it is.

He says, if I take care of my character, my

reputation will take care of itself.

That's really good, that's great quote.

Right. Yeah, And so I have no choice in that

situation to say, hey, it's not my job to go.

Public and say hey, blah blah blah blah.

No, it's not my job to do that, right, my

only job is to love God and to take care

of my character. And if I take care of my character,

my reputation is going to take care of itself.

And I really do think, you know, reading this scripture,

you see David, I think God is going to bless him.

He's gonna bless you, he's gonna bless me, He's going

to bless our listeners. When our first response is to

speak back or try to you know, to try to

make things right or try to you know, do that.

But instead David completely surrendered it over to God and

cried out to him and asked for the evil to

be the wicked to be dealt with. And he's asking

for God's judgment. And that's the best way to go

about it, right, to try to talk to God, to

like to cry out to God, pray to God, release

it to God, and try not to take retribution into

your own hands. I think that's that's a really good

takeaway from this from this section here.

Yeah, and you know what, there's nothing too much we

can do.

There's so many things that are out of our control,

and ultimately we have to get to that point to

where he's like, God, I can't fix this.

I can't control this. I can't.

Can you imagine had I tried to, you know, fix

it in some way in my own.

Power, it might have made it worse.

I would have made it worse. I would have made

it worse. And so the best thing I could possibly

do is, you know, here it is, you know, five

years later and never once publicly, this is That's the

most what I just said. And I didn't say anything.

The only thing I said was I wanted a statement

to be made and it wasn't made. That's the only

thing I said here. But that's the most I've said

publicly since I've been gone five years. And uh and

and so in those kinds of cases, we just say, Okay,

it seems incredibly unfair and undeserving, but God, please just

do what you're gonna do. You take cand of that,

You handle this, you take care of it. And that's

the only thing we can do is just to say, God,

please just step in on my behalf and take care

of it, because you know that's that's all I can

hope for.

Yeah, that's really good. That's really good wisdom right there.

Yeah.

So, hey, well that looks to be our time. And

my wife's gonna be mad that I said all those.

Things, but nah, it's okay. Just forgive him. Forgive him, Liz.

He's gonna be mad.

I can't believe he's that guy.

But you know what, Hey, I didn't think I said

too much, So no, it's all good, buddy. All right, buddie,

let's let's go ahead and sign off, and we'll see

you next time on the Bible.

Guys, see tomorrow