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You've made some notes. What are you talking about? Look at this, audience. You would think it's a coloring book. That's right.
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[laughs] I love how you have feasted upon the w- word and the energy that you bring to the podcast week after week. I do need my Yermum and Thummim, though. That's pretty good.
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Let me continue with Mike's false doctor joke. Because you've been so righteous, you are granted one wish. Are you living your vows? Are you living your promises? Everything I had to offer you is still on offer.
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Would you like to receive it? It sounds kinda like an abstract i- idea to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Does that just mean that when I mess up, I feel bad? Does it go deeper than that?
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It's possible for someone to go a week, a month, a year, a decade without sinning. Welcome to Scripture Insights. I'm Taylor Halverson.
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I'm Mike Harris. Welcome to the second of three episodes on Psalms. This one will ca- cover chapters 49 through 86, although not every chapter is, uh, required reading in the Come Follow Me curriculum.
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And what we didn't talk about last time is, like, probably 10 really important words that get repeated throughout the Psalms.
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Um, in the Hebrew, we can talk about what those words are in the English, and so as people are reading the Psalms, they can look for, like, these really important words.
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One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. So maybe it's nine words. So these words are hesed, so God's everlasting, enduring love. This is a word people have heard a lot recently in scriptures.
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Uh, betah, this is a Hebrew word that means trust, and God uses this a lot about how He invites people to trust Him, that He will be their God. The word hen in Hebrew has to do with, uh, God's grace.
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The Hebrew word raham is His compassion. It's related to the word for womb. It's kinda like the protective, nurturing place. If you ever hear the phrase, "the bowels of mercy," the underlying Hebrew word is raham.
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The word zakar, which means to remember, but this is more than just, like, my brain, like, woke up one day, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I remembered I had to take out the trash." It's actually covenantal remembering.
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It's remembering all the good deeds God has done for us, and us remembering our obligations to be faithful back to Him. He's been faithful to us. The word Torah, or instructions.
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Uh, the word amen, which means to be faithful or believing. A related word, which is emet, which means truth, and of course, the Hebrew word for covenant, which is berit, which means to be actually bound to somebody.
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More particularly, cleaving. You cleave things in half in order to cleave things together.
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So those words actually, in the English, show up all over the Psalms, and that gives you a good sense, um, of what is going on in the text.
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If you're looking to get prepared for the 25-minute classroom, I have two books that can help. Check them out on the QR code, and now back to the Come Follow Me lesson.
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So let's go back and open up to Psalm chapter 49, and this one, I've actually labeled it as a wisdom psalm, that it's actually focusing, like, singing, uh, praises about the power and goodness of, of being a wise person, and ultimately, the wise person is the one who trusts in the Lord.
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And what's interesting about this one, Mike, is I made some notes here that- You've made some notes. What are you talking about? Th- th- Look at this, audience... is, you would think it's a coloring book. That's right.
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[laughs] I'm not very good at, uh, stick figures. I know, but in s- in all seriousness, Taylor, I love how you have feasted upon the w- word and the energy that you bring to the podcast week after week.
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Anyhow, yeah, let's, let's look at some of these sweet insights.
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It actually was a lot of work to go through, uh, all these chapters and kinda mark them with different colors, but now that I've done it, I'm like, oh, I can easily and quickly see things that are otherwise hard to see when it's just black words on a white paper.
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I do need my Yermum and Thummim, though. Yeah, I got one. I have an extra one. Yeah. I got it down at the DI. It was just, like, donated.
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I can't read the h- the, the comments in the margins, but I think it's gonna be good. They're true. [laughs] Okay, w- we'll see. So I'm gonna actually jump down to verse 10.
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This, verses 10 to 12 is about the fate of the self-confident rich. Now, have we ever seen anywhere in our society people who get enough resources, they suddenly think, "All right, I'm above the law.
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I'm above the need for God or anybody else in my life"? And notice what God says or what the psalmist says in verses 13 to 15, what happens to the people who choose to trust in their wealth.
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Actually, back in verse 10, it calls them the fool. But in verse 13, it says, "Their way is their folly, yet their posterity approve their sayings. Like sheep," verse 14, "they are led in the grave.
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Death shall feed on them, and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning," meaning everybody dies.
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You can't take your wealth to the grave, and when you die, the people who are still alive are gonna be s- walking around, and they'll have access to all the resources. Don't trust in your resources.
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Verse 16, "Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased." Verse 17, "For when he dieth, he shall carry nothing away. His glory shall not descend after him."
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So this is both a song and a reminder to people living in ancient Israel that some people would get more material resources. Mm-hmm.
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Don't immediately think God loves them more or they're better than you are, that their lives are somehow, like, 10 times happier. But you can trust in God that He will be faithful to you.
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And I love how they point out, like, your riches will not go with you to the grave. And you and I have traveled places around the world. I've been to a lot of cemeteries, and like, we do honor our dead.
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That's the whole point of All Saints' Day on November 1st, right? We cast every, all, all the bad demons out on Halloween, at least the Western world. But there's nothing going on at graveyards.
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It's just a bunch of dead people who they, their resources are no longer of any use to them. Well, I don't know if that's true. The rich man was, uh, but he was also righteous.
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Before he died, an angel appeared to him and said, "Hey, you've been so, uh, righteous that..." [laughs] Sorry. I love how you just kind of- Just tried going deadpan. I couldn't do it. That's pretty good.
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Let me continue with Mike's false doctrine joke, which the angel comes to the rich man and says, "Listen, the Lord loves you because you paid so much tithing.
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You're gonna get the first class ticket into the celestial kingdom." [laughs] Well, actually, Taylor, uh, there was this rich man, but he was also righteous.
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He didn't succumb to the, the, the vanity of riches, and so, but he's getting ready to die, and an angel appeared to him and says, "Hey, because you've been so righteous, you are granted one wish."
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And he kind of sheepishly said, "Well, I know I can't take the riches with me, so if I only got one rich, or one, one wish, then I wanna be able to take my riches with me."
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And so the angel said, "Wow, that's quite a request, and, but okay, uh, granted."
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And so what he did is he took all his riches and, uh, and sold all his property and all his Ferraris and all his mansions, and he had created a massive,
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solid bar of gold, and he told everybody to put it in his casket with him, and he was gonna take them with him to the other side.
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And he, he died, and they put the bar of gold in his casket, and when he gets on the other side, sure enough, he's got his gold with him, and he goes up to the pearly gate, and Peter's like, "Hey, we've been waiting for you.
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W- we're, we're so impressed that you're here. What'd you bring?" And he shows him the gold, and he's all proud. And Peter looks at him and says, "You brought asphalt?" [laughs] Oh my gosh. That's a good one.
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[laughs] I don't know if, editors, you wanna keep that in there, but there you go. That's a lot of fun.
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So this gives you a sense that each Psalm might have a slightly different perspective, and we, this one is all about, like, trust God and don't get distracted by how much wealth everybody has. Psalm 50 is interesting.
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It begins with God doing what we call a covenant lawsuit. So Mike, we, we might remember back in Exodus chapter, uh, 19 to 24, the people decided to join God in a covenant at Mount Sinai.
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And God sends prophets to basically tell them, "Hey, you're not living the obligations of the covenant. I'm gonna keep giving you some chances," God says, "but you need to step up."
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And that's effectively how sect- uh, Psalm 50 functions, is that it is God calling on the people to remember not just what he's done for them, but their obligations to be faithful back.
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So it begins with saying, "The mighty God, even the Lord, has spoken, and called unto the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof." So everything in creation stands within the view of God.
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Nothing can get away from his reign and his sovereignty. "Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined." So there's this metaphor that God is an expressi- i- is beautiful. Isn't that beautiful?
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The perfection of beauty. That's, that's a beautiful description of, of God, I think. So verses three and four, he calls all the heavens together 'cause he wants judges. He wants witnesses for this lawsuit.
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He gathers the saints together, and that's, uh, verse five, okay? He says, "Those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice," right? Those are all the people who are part of God's kingdom.
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So the first six verses are about let's gather, um, the courtroom together. And now what we have is in verse seven, "Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, and I will testify against thee. I am God, even thy God.
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I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds.
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For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine.
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If I were hungry, I would not tell thee, for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows unto the Most High.
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And call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." Isn't that a powerful lead up?
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Think about these are hymns sung in the temple, where all these sacrifices are happening of these animals, and God's basically saying, "Hey, everybody, the mechanics of sacrifice is not truly what saves you." Mm.
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"It's where your heart is. I need you, actually, more importantly, you need to have your heart turned to me, and your prayers need to be devoted to me.
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Don't just show up with a goat and think that the goat has died on your behalf. We just call it good. Your heart needs to be in the right place." Explain to us how you read, it says in verse 14.
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So I don't want the mechanics. I mean, it was important to live the law of Moses to offer up the animal sacrifices. Right.
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But the point he's trying to make, and correct me if I'm wrong, is as important as that is, what I really want is your thanksgiving- Mm-hmm... and for you to pay thy vows. Okay, I think I can understand thanksgiving.
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I want a grateful heart. Um, what comes to mind when you hear the phrase, "Pay thy vows?" 'Cause that also appears in Doctrine and Covenants Section 59. Yes That on the Sabbath we're to pay our vows.
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It's fascinating you bring this up, Mike. It's- I, I, I can understand making a, a vow- Yeah... or an oath- Mm... but to pay a, I don't know. What?
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So when you make a vow, it means you've made a commitment to f- follow through with something. And so when you make the payment on the vow, it's like you are fulfilling the commitment you had made.
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So think about when people get married, they make marital vows. Yeah, yeah. To pay their vows, we don't really say it like that, but really what it means is are you living your vows? Are you living your promises?
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And by the way, since you mentioned it, Doctrine and Covenants Section 59 is a very powerful section because God reinstates
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the very Sinai covenant w- I had mentioned a bit earlier when we talked a- uh, beginning at Psalms 50. It follows the same six-part conditional covenant that God laid out for his people at Mount Sinai,
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and the conditions are... Well, first, God reminds people of all the great things He's done for them. He says, "I wanna give you land." 'Cause they just arrived in Missouri.
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They just arrived in the quote-unquote Promised Land in Zion, and he uses the same, God uses the same covenantal structure that He gave to the ancient Israelites when He wanted to, when He wanted to promise them,
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uh, land and posterity and prosperity in the land in exchange for their loyalty. Mm. That's exactly what happens in Doctrine and Covenants Section 59. It's, uh, very stunning. So that's how those things all connect.
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By the way, we're gonna skip over to chapter 51. We'd had this whole lead-up that God does not need sacrifice, as He has everything already. Look at verse 17 of s- uh, Psalm 51. "The sacrifices of God
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are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, thou wilt not despise."
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And that little last phrase is about somebody who's just so humble and realizes, "My broken heart and contrite spirit is such a small offering,
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and yet God will not despise the meagerness of the total offering I have to offer Him." So I like to read s- uh, Psalm 50 and 51 together. And in, in fact, I could highlight a couple things that go on in Psalm 51.
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They're related to what leads us into having a broken heart, uh, and a contrite spirit. Actually, here it says a broken spirit and a contrite heart, which is typically opposite of how we say it.
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How do we normally say it? It's the other way around? We usually say, "Give me a, a broken heart and a contrite spirit." And this one says, "A broken spirit and a contrite heart."
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So look at how we get to this point of what it says here in verse 17, "A broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart." Verse seven, "Purge me with hyssop." Verse eight, "Make me hear joy."
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Verse nine, "Hide thy face from my sins." Verse 10, "Create in me a clean heart." Verse 11, "Cast me not away from thy presence." Verse 12, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation."
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13, "Then I will teach transgressors thy ways." 14, "Deliver me from blood guilt," no, uh, "blood guiltiness." So all these claims like, "Lord, I need, I need to be fixed."
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So no sacrifice of any animal that we saw listed back there in Psalm 50 could do any of these things.
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This is a person who truly has come up to the Lord at the tabernacle truly ready to receive God, and they have expressed a broken spirit and a contrite heart, which again, we mentioned before, that's almost never the way we hear it.
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It's always the opposite. It's normally, uh, yeah, in 3 Nephi chapter 9, the Savi- the, the Savior just died on the cross, and the survivors are in darkness, the pitch black, and they hear the Savior's voice.
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And he says in verse, in 3 Nephi 9 verse 19 to 20, "I will accept none of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings." Okay. Right? So which is back to Psalm 50. And then he says, "What do I want?
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As important as it was to keep the Law of Moses, this is what I've always really wanted from you." Verse 20, "You shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit."
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Okay, and so it actually says it opposite. Here it says, "Broken spirit, contrite heart." Jesus says- "Broken heart and a contrite spirit."
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So that's an interesting connection, that Jesus is making a quote from Psalms, but he's quoting it kind of in verse.
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And there's, like, a Hebrew literary form where one prophet will quote other prophets, but they'll do it as an inversion.
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So if the original prophet, like the Psalms, is A, concept A, B, and C, the later prophet, now Jesus, will quote that C, B, A. Yeah, and that reversal is a literary signal.
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Uh, w- in our vernacular, we say it's quotation marks. Oh, interesting. Uh, it's called Seidel's law. Okay, so that's the German scholar who came up with this. He, he's the one who noticed it- Okay... and wrote about it.
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And yeah, so when Jesus quotes this in 3 Nephi chapter 9- Hmm... that's his way of indicating, "I'm, uh, I'm referring to Psalms here." Yeah, very fascinating.
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So if you ever in your life, you ever do this with your fingers, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see me putting my fingers up and down, we call those quote marks. Mm-hmm. Or we'll say verbally, "Quote, unquote."
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Yeah Anciently, can you imagine Jes- Jesus showing up and saying, quote, unquote, and then he makes the sta- statement.
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He literally just says what he needs to say, but everybody understands anciently f- because they're familiar with ancient scripture, "Oh, we know this is a quote 'cause we're familiar with what happens here in Psalm 51:17.
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God wants a sacrifice of a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart." That's a great connection.
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And then to your point, what you were saying earlier, and then the plea in Psalm 51 to have this transfer transformation, the spiritual renewal. How does it come?
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Well, yes, ultimately it's through the blood of Christ, but then Jesus says, "But I still need you. You, you just can't be a passive o- observer. This is what I need from you."
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And then what happens if you bring this broken heart and contrite spirit? 3 Nephi 9:20 says, "And then will I baptize you with fire and with the Holy Ghost,"
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which brings the transformation of all these That is super powerful how you've brought this all together, Mike.
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And it makes me realize, um, we've talked about two important covenants in the Old Testament, and I see them operating here.
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You have the unconditional covenant that Jehovah, God himself, the premortal Jesus made with Abraham and all his descendants, and then the conditional covenant that he offers the people at Mount Sinai.
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And what did the Nephites and Lamanites do? They had the conditional covenant. They also had the covenant of grant, the Abrahamic Covenant, where God said, "I'm gonna give you land.
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I'm gonna give you posterity and prosperity in the land." But the people decided not to receive it. They violated expectations. They broke... They're under the agreement, which was all laid out in the Law of Moses.
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And now Jesus is showing up, the enfleshed, or this voice, it's, it's actually just his voice, Jehovah himself saying, "Listen, the Abrahamic covenant," He doesn't say it like this, but that's what's going on, "is still operative.
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Everything I had to offer you is still on offer. Would you like to receive it? Here's how you come to the table and partake. You need to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit.
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That is the conditions upon which you can receive everything that you need." So all that is actually coming together.
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Those, the, the, the, the operating system of the scriptures are those two covenants, God's unconditional nature of hesed to always offer us everything we need, and the conditions by which we can actually show up and receive those things, by us pr- proactively reaching out our hands and partaking of what he's offered.
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And so maybe we should explore just for, just for a second, Taylor, um, 'cause I know our listeners, and I know you, and I know myself, that we sincerely want to have this transformative experience.
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What, what were they again? Was it, uh, Psalm 51? "Purge me with hice- hyssop?" Hyssop. Hyssop. Verse eight, "Make me hear joy." Isn't this what we want? "Hide thy face from my sins. Create in me a clean heart.
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Cast me not away from thy presence. Restore unto me the joy," uh, ability to teach transgressor- transgressors in verse 13. "Deliver me from blood guiltiness." All these righteous things. So how do we get, uh...
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'Cause it sounds kind of like an abstract i- idea to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Does that just mean that when I mess up, I feel bad? Does it go deeper than that?
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Well, you've worked with a lot of people over the years, both in your capacity as a bishop. You've taught in seminaries institute for a lot of years.
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How have you helped people to grapple with the lived reality of doctrinal principles? A- and I'll just say this, and I want to be really careful how I say it. Doctrine alone does not save.
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Lived doctrine invites us into God's salvation. If I declare doctrine, that's a good thing, but me declaring doctrine is not sufficient for me to fully access God's full salvation.
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I have to do something to receive salvation. I can't just speak it. Right. So yeah, what have you seen where people have
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practically, like, done something active, where it's not just words on a page like, "Oh, I get the concept"? What have they done? How have they been different? Ah. What an inspired question.
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The thing that comes to mind is, I remember I was in a training meeting with President M. Russell Ballard. A bishop raised his hand. He says, "President Ballard, how can we know if someone is truly, sincerely repented?"
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Mm. Because we're supposed to be the judge in Israel, and this... [laughs] And he says, "You know, that's the perfect question for every bishop to ask." And he says, "The only thing...
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[laughs] The best way I know how to know if somebody's really repented is to ask them a question." And I got my pen and paper out. I'm like, what is this golden question? Is it really that easy? Yeah, and I'm all ears.
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Me. And he says, "I don't care how you ask it, but it's... This is the idea. You... After the person confesses their sin, you ask them something to the effect of, 'How do you feel about Jesus Christ?'
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Or, 'What do you think about Jesus Christ?'" And then he says, "Then bishops, you need to shut up. [laughs] It's not time for you to preach.
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You need to be quiet and get that person to talk as much as possible about how they feel about Jesus Christ. And while they're expressing their feelings, you're praying for the gift of discernment to discern is w- is...
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do they have a superficial relationship with Jesus Christ, or do you sense that there is some substance there, some depth?" Mm.
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I think that's, I think that's profound, and I, I wonder if that ties into having a broken heart, contrite spirit, because it's possible for someone to go a week, a month, a year, a decade Without sinning and not have...
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Okay, no, technically it's not possible, but let's imagine- Right... that they go a decade without sinning.
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But if there's no connection or love or feeling towards Jesus Christ, then that's just called behavior modification. Right. But there's no... Repentance is bigger than that. It has to be connected- Mm-hmm...
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uh, to him, and feelings of adoration and appreciation for what he's done to transform us. I don't know, what do you think? Well, I notice how your hands are coming together. It's about the relationship. Yeah.
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He wants to be completely bound to us. He wants to cleave to us, and if we're hard-hearted, he cannot cleave to us. But when we have brokenness, he can fully fill in and become one with us.
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If we feel like we are completely one already and don't need God in our lives, how can he become one with us? There's nowhere for him to fit in to our puzzle piece. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, nice.
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So just as a, um, kind of a review so far, we hope for everyone listening that there's just a lot of joy in engaging in the Psalms. There's just really, really great doctrine here. We're gonna jump ahead.
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There's a lot of great Psalms, but we're gonna jump ahead to section... Good. [laughs] We're not in the Doctrine and Covenants. Let's go to chapter...
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We're gonna go to chapter 69, and then we'll go to chapter 77 and 78, but definitely 69. So s- uh, Psalm 69 is a national and Messianic psalm, and Mike, when I...
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You might remember when we went to Israel, we went to a place called St. Peter in Gallicantu.
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It was a place, it's a Catholic cathedral now, and I'm so grateful for the Catholic Church for 1,600 years has lovingly preserved so many- What city was that in again?
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It was just south of the walls of Jerusalem on a place called Mount Zion.
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And the Catholics for centuries have so lovingly preserved all these significant religious sites, and they've built this church over the remains of what is likely the palace of Caiaphas, and there's a pit that's carved out of the rock.
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Remember we went to that? Yeah, yeah. We had to go down a bunch of stairs, and eventually we get to walk down into the pit.
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And it's very likely this is the very spot that Jesus was lowered into during the nighttime, uh, w- Ri- right after Gethsemane. Right after Gethsemane. He would've had to walk through the Kidron Valley.
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It's April, or late March, early April. It's cold. He's already bled out. I mean, you're gonna be freezing.
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He has to go walking all the way up Mount Zion from the Kidron Valley, which is quite steep, and then there's this
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circus court against him, and while they are debating his situation, they put him into, um, this cistern, this carved-out rock that would've been kind of muddy and wet and totally dark.
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And when I take groups there, we read portions of this psalm. Okay, let's... Yeah. "Save me, O God," I'm in verse one, "for the waters are come into my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing.
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I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying. My throat is dried. My eyes fail while I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head.
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They that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty. Then I restored that which I took not away. O God, thou knowest my f- my foolishness and my sins are not hid from thee.
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Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel." Then jump into verse nine.
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"For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." By the way, um, that scripture is quoted, I think, by Matthew when Jesus goes and cleans out the temple. They quote from right here.
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So you can read this chapter and think about that last night of Jesus' life where he's stuck in this cistern that's got water and mud at the bottom and mire, and he's completely alone, freezing cold,
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and you get a sense of some of the things that he, he suffered. Verse 14, "Deliver me out of the mire. Let me not sink. Let me be delivered from them that hate me, and cast... And o- and out of the deep waters.
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Let not the water flood overflow me. Neither let the deep swallow me up. And let not the pit shut her mouth upon me." Verse 16, "Hear me, O Lord. For thy loving kindness," hesed, "is good." That's the word tov in Hebrew.
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So, "Thy loving kindness is good. Turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies." And verse 16, that tender mercies, that's Nephi's thesis statement in 1 Nephi chapter 1 verse 20.
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He says, "I will show unto you the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen because of their faith to make them mighty, even unto the power of deliverance." Mm.
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That's exactly what's being asked for here. And what's powerful here is that Jesus eventually goes fully into the pit. Not just that cistern of water and muck and mire, but he goes into the grave. Mm.
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And he comes out of the pit, and he breaks the pit open. So ver- verse 15 says, "Let not the pit shut her mouth upon me." He's the one who breaks open the pit. Very powerful.
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So h- you hear his humanness coming out, but his deity, his divine nature, is what breaks the bonds that are placed upon all humans at death. He breaks them. This is really powerful. Yeah.
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So isn't, isn't pit often also representative of hell or Sheol? Yeah. Explore that further. Yeah, so I mean, you just said, you know, Jesus, he conquers the pit. Mm-hmm. He conquers death. That's spot on.
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So as you read this psalm, you can think about these concepts including the symbolism of the pit representing hell or Sheol, the underworld, where nobody ever returned from there, ever, until Jesus did.
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Very, very powerful story. You actually find some other connections to the story of Jesus. Verse 21, "They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."
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That's exactly what happened to Jesus on the cross. So, uh, one of the powerful things about Psalms is that we see echoes to the life of Jesus throughout these Psalms. Why do, why do you think it's significant?
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I've wondered about this, and if we don't know the answer, that's fine. Uh, but, I mean, this is about a...
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Depending on when, and people argue when this was written, but let's say 500 years, 1,000 years before Jesus will be crucified. Why is it significant to say that Jesus is gonna be offered vinegar while he hangs on
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the cross? I mean, that just seems like a, a detail, but I don't think it's there just to entertain us. Yeah, I think you're right.
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I mean, well, Jesus doesn't need to taste vinegar, vinegar to overcome sin and death, but there's gotta be something to it. Well, definitely vinegar.
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If you're super thirsty, vinegar does not usually quench your thirst, uh, not long term, because it just puckers your mouth a lot more. Yeah.
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And this is a great symbol of how if you're already suffering, and if somebody comes along and amplifies your suffering, they offer you something that looks like salvation.
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They offer you a cup of liquid when you're so thirsty, and instead they're actually making your suffering worse. Mm. And this psalm, I think, does two things. Well, actually three.
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First, for ancient people who did suffer, it gave them solace that God understands our suffering. Second, it pointed to Jesus, and He fulfills this.
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And third, we read it today and we see, oh, I actually can be disciplined. If I'm a disciple, I'm willing to be disciplined by the suffering of life, that I might sometimes also have to drink the bitter cup.
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Even when I'm suffering, things might get worse for a while.
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But like Jesus, trust, trust the Lord, and eventually resurrection happens, or symbolically, we are lift out of the mire of our circumstances where we have, uh, relief. Okay.
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All right, let's, uh, switch over to Psalm 78. Another beautiful psalm. Actually, let me just back up to Psalm 77. That one's an amazing one as well, uh, because it actually starts as a lament. It's a cry of despair.
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You can see that in verse one of 77, "I cried unto God with my voice in the day of my trouble." Verse two, "I sought the Lord." And then there's this massive turning point. Verse six, "I call to remembrance my songs."
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Remember we talked about the word for remember means covenantal memory of both God's good deeds as well as our need to be faithful to God. Look at verse eight and nine. "In his mercy... Is his mercy clean gone forever?
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Doth his promise fail forevermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?" So these are questions that the psalmist is asking. This turning point right here in verse 10,
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moving into 11, is notice what the psalmist is saying, what they will do. "I will remember the works of the Lord." When we go to sacrament every week, we are not supposed to be thinking about what we did or did not do.
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We're supposed to be thinking about what God has done for us. That's exactly what this person is doing. "Surely I'll remember the wonders of old. I will meditate," verse 12, "also of all thy work and talk of thy doings.
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Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary," the temple. "Who is so great a god as our God?"
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So you've gone from all this cry and lament in the first eight or nine verses to remembering this hesed, or meaning the everlasting love, the kindness, the tender mercies, and suddenly we, we see this ongoing turn.
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Verse 14, "Thou art the God that doest wonders." So when we go to sacrament, we might feel like this person, to lament something that's happened in our lives, but instead we should be remembering God's ultimate goodness.
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Remember his wonders, and then we experience the exodus. Notice how that's how this psalm ends.
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Just like the ancient Israelites experienced exodus and salvation, were brought into God's presence at Mount Sinai, that's verses 16 to 20. It's the whole exodus story summarized.
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That the people were taken out of the water, they were taken to Mount Sinai, and they... Verse 18, "The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven. The lightning lightened the world. The earth trembled and shook.
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Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." When we go to sacrament, we can have that same experience.
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We can show up with the first part of Psalm 77, feeling sad possibly about maybe our [chuckles] past week, but we should focus on God is the great savior.
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Friends, um, for the sake of time, I'm going to just give a kind of high-level overview. Psalm 78's quite a long psalm, and this is a historical wisdom psalm.
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It's a review of God's covenant purposes and work with his covenant people.
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So as you read the psalm, you can see kind of a review of the story of God's interactions from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, down into Joseph and Ephraim, and them taking the people out of, uh, Egypt and their rebellion and, um, the, the challenges that God had working with them in the wilderness.
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Uh, and all the way until... well, including giving them the covenant Sinai and then bringing them into Promised Land, um, the rebellion of the Promised Land. Um, have jumped all the way down to, like, verses 50, 60, 64.
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The fall of Jerusalem. It's basically a massively long summary. It's a long hymn. It's, it's actually in history form a hymn about God's history with the people.
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And it concludes, it concludes in verses 65 to 72 That the Lord is going to awaken himself.
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The people are in ex- exile, and he will bring Judah and a Davidic king, and he'll bring them back to Jerusalem, rebuild Jerusalem, the temple, and put a Davidic king back on the throne.
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So it's kind of this big, long arc of Israelite history. Okay. So that is... Like, if you want, like, in hymn form, the history of the Israelite nation, that's the hymn for you, Psalm number 78.
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We'll conclude today with Psalm 85 and 86.
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And these are very powerful because they just consistently talk about these major concepts we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, about God's mercy, his truth, his goodness.
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So when you're looking at section, or Psalm 85, you can hear how these people were building on God's core covenantal characteristics that we find expressed in Exodus 34:6-7.
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Mike, do you want to read some of those verses for us, and we'll just kind of talk through some of these? "Lord, thou hast been favorable unto thy land. Thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob."
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What does it mean to bring back the captivity? Yeah, I read this as, uh, the people have been taken out of captivity, meaning they are no longer stuck in Babylon captivity. Yeah.
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And this might be a psalm that was added to the Bible, um, during or after exile. Very good. Verse two, "Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people. Thou hast covered all their sin."
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Verse three, "Thou hast taken away all thy wrath. Thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger. Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thy anger towards us to cease. Wilt thou be angry with us forever?
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Wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? Wilt thou not revive us again that thy people may rejoice in thee? Show us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation."
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So I made a big note here, like the word hesed, it kind of... main concept there in verse seven is God's everlasting love. And it continues in verses 10, 11, 12, 13.
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Uh, it says right here in verse 10, "Mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other." It's a really powerful metaphor that I don't think shows up anywhere else in the Bible.
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"Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven." We actually have used verse 11 of s- Psalm 85 to reference the Book of Mormon, of truth springing out of the earth.
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And remember, God's love endures forever. His hesed endures forever. The Book of Mormon is a witness of that.
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And it goes on in verse 12, "Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good, and our land shall yield her increase." Now, we often just pass by the word good, but it's actually a deeply important covenantal word.
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It's about all that God has to offer, and it began with the creation story. Mike, you taught us in one of the very first lessons that God uses the word good seven times, which seven is, equals perfection.
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During creation, he identified his creation as good. And that is what happens when we're in covenantal league, covenantal connection with God. We experience the good things that he has to offer.
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And I've mentioned this before, it's worth repeating. Nephi's name in Egyptian means good. Nephi's own name is a signal that God's goodness is available to anybody who reaches out to receive all that God has to offer.
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Uh, Taylor, I'm noticing... I'm seeing that throughout the Psalms, that these phrases that we read in Psalms are found all throughout the scripture canon. Uh, here's just another example. You just read verse- 11...
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11, "Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven."
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That's clearly what we find in Moses 7:62, which says, "And righteousness will I send down out of heaven, and truth will I send forth out of the earth, to bear testimony of my Only Begotten, his resurrection from the dead."
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By the way, I never noticed this before, but you taught everybody right here and live, I'm learning from you, Seidel's law. That's exactly what's going on there. Is it again? Yep, right there.
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It's righteousness comes down from heaven. That's the first phrase. And then the next phrase is truth shall spring forth out of the earth. That's an inversion of the structure of verse 11 in Psalm 85. Oh, it is. Yeah.
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I, I, I didn't real- I'm g- glad you got it. Yeah. So you're a good teacher. So right there live, everybody, uh, Seidel's law is at work, that it's clear the Pearl of Great Price...
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Well, actually, we're not sure who's quoting who. It could be Psalms is quoting the Book of Moses back when they had access to it- Right... or vice versa.
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But definitely Seidel's law is at work, that one scriptural passage is quoting another.
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That just seems to speak to how in Ezekiel, chapter 37, the stick of Judah and the stick of Joseph, the Book of Mormon and the Bible, and we could add the Pearl of Great Price talking. Mm-hmm.
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The Lord wants the scriptures to grow together. Yeah.
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And if we truly want to understand scriptures, and granted that we're gonna spend our whole life and beyond trying to, but as we look at all the scriptures together as a unified whole, that's when we can really start seeing the true meaning of scripture.
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Amen. How about we end the episode with s- uh, Psalm 86? Let's do it. And before we jump in, you might, I might, I encourage everyone just to press pause and open up to Exodus 34:6-7. And as you're...
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Um, now if you've come back, you might remember, here's the, the story. God has done these tremendous deeds of salvation, brought the people to Mount Sinai. They've all covenanted to be his people.
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And he goes back up the, uh, he goes To the mountain to talk with Moses. Moses is gone and the people create the golden calf. They basically apostatize against God right after they get married to him, right, spiritually.
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And God is legally, um, he can legally like remove the people out of his presence and kill them all off. And Moses says, "Hey, remember your characteristics. Maybe not do that." And God says, "I'm not going to."
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And he cr- and he gives his own divine autobiography. We spent a long time talking about this in a former episode right there, Exodus chapter 34, verses six to seven.
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And you can see the key themes of God's core divine covenantal characteristics expressed throughout this psalm. We're just gonna hit a couple of highlights. So listen to the things that we, we hear about God.
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Uh, we have the word hesed that shows up in, uh, actually right here in verse two, "Preserve my soul, for I am holy." And actually the word holy there actually has to do with the word hesed.
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It's kind of, uh, ironic that we translate it that way. Will you just verify that for me, Mike? I looked it up when I got prepared. I want to make sure that's- Hesed Is that correct? Yeah.
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So where it says, "I am holy," it's actually, "I am full of loving kindness and everlasting mercy." Verse three, "He is merciful unto me."
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Uh, again, you find the word of everlasting kindness and love and mercy right there in God's divine autobiography of Exodus chapter 34, verses six and seven.
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Uh, verse five, "For thou, Lord, art good and ready to forgive and plenty, plenteous in mercy."
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That is one of the major themes you have in Exodus chapter 34, verses six to seven, God's own self-declared covenantal autobiography. Uh, verse, uh, 10, "Thou art great and doest wondrous things. Thou art God alone."
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Verse, uh, uh, 13, "For great is thy mercy." That Hebrew word there is hesed. Uh, then in verse 15, it's almost a quote from Exodus chapter 34, verse six.
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"But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth."
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And throughout the Pearl River Price and the New Testament, the fr- the Hebrew phrase hesed ve-emet, or mercy and truth, becomes full of grace and truth.
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So for all of us, any time you hear the phrase full of grace and truth, the Hebrew is hesed and emet, full of everlasting love and full of, uh, and full of faithful truth.
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So those are the core characteristics of God as a covenant-making, covenant-keeping God. He is full of grace, or hesed, and truth. He cannot lie.
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And by the way, in Exodus chapter 34, verses six to seven, it turns out that the word hesed, everlasting love and kindness, functions as a chiasm that binds the word truth between the two r- uh, the two times hesed shows up, which means God's truth or justice is completely circumscribed
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by his love. His justice cannot fall outside the boundaries of his everlasting love and kindness. Everything that he does is bound within his everlasting love and kindness.
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And that's exactly what we have being spoken by this ancient psalmist who knew God, witnessed of God, and has declared these things for us to be uplifted.
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We hope that as you read the Psalms, you are renewed in your own soul, that God knows you individually, he loves you, and everything he does is for your uplift, and you can praise him just like people in the past, so that future generations can hear your words as psalms of praise.
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And we leave this with you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. [outro jingle]
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You've made some notes. What are you talking about? Look at this, audience. You would think it's a coloring book. That's right.
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[laughs] I love how you have feasted upon the w- word and the energy that you bring to the podcast week after week. I do need my Yermum and Thummim, though. That's pretty good.
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Let me continue with Mike's false doctor joke. Because you've been so righteous, you are granted one wish. Are you living your vows? Are you living your promises? Everything I had to offer you is still on offer.
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Would you like to receive it? It sounds kinda like an abstract i- idea to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Does that just mean that when I mess up, I feel bad? Does it go deeper than that?
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It's possible for someone to go a week, a month, a year, a decade without sinning. Welcome to Scripture Insights. I'm Taylor Halverson.
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I'm Mike Harris. Welcome to the second of three episodes on Psalms. This one will ca- cover chapters 49 through 86, although not every chapter is, uh, required reading in the Come Follow Me curriculum.
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And what we didn't talk about last time is, like, probably 10 really important words that get repeated throughout the Psalms.
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Um, in the Hebrew, we can talk about what those words are in the English, and so as people are reading the Psalms, they can look for, like, these really important words.
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One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. So maybe it's nine words. So these words are hesed, so God's everlasting, enduring love. This is a word people have heard a lot recently in scriptures.
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Uh, betah, this is a Hebrew word that means trust, and God uses this a lot about how He invites people to trust Him, that He will be their God. The word hen in Hebrew has to do with, uh, God's grace.
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The Hebrew word raham is His compassion. It's related to the word for womb. It's kinda like the protective, nurturing place. If you ever hear the phrase, "the bowels of mercy," the underlying Hebrew word is raham.
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The word zakar, which means to remember, but this is more than just, like, my brain, like, woke up one day, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I remembered I had to take out the trash." It's actually covenantal remembering.
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It's remembering all the good deeds God has done for us, and us remembering our obligations to be faithful back to Him. He's been faithful to us. The word Torah, or instructions.
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Uh, the word amen, which means to be faithful or believing. A related word, which is emet, which means truth, and of course, the Hebrew word for covenant, which is berit, which means to be actually bound to somebody.
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More particularly, cleaving. You cleave things in half in order to cleave things together.
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So those words actually, in the English, show up all over the Psalms, and that gives you a good sense, um, of what is going on in the text.
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If you're looking to get prepared for the 25-minute classroom, I have two books that can help. Check them out on the QR code, and now back to the Come Follow Me lesson.
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So let's go back and open up to Psalm chapter 49, and this one, I've actually labeled it as a wisdom psalm, that it's actually focusing, like, singing, uh, praises about the power and goodness of, of being a wise person, and ultimately, the wise person is the one who trusts in the Lord.
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And what's interesting about this one, Mike, is I made some notes here that- You've made some notes. What are you talking about? Th- th- Look at this, audience... is, you would think it's a coloring book. That's right.
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[laughs] I'm not very good at, uh, stick figures. I know, but in s- in all seriousness, Taylor, I love how you have feasted upon the w- word and the energy that you bring to the podcast week after week.
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Anyhow, yeah, let's, let's look at some of these sweet insights.
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It actually was a lot of work to go through, uh, all these chapters and kinda mark them with different colors, but now that I've done it, I'm like, oh, I can easily and quickly see things that are otherwise hard to see when it's just black words on a white paper.
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I do need my Yermum and Thummim, though. Yeah, I got one. I have an extra one. Yeah. I got it down at the DI. It was just, like, donated.
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I can't read the h- the, the comments in the margins, but I think it's gonna be good. They're true. [laughs] Okay, w- we'll see. So I'm gonna actually jump down to verse 10.
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This, verses 10 to 12 is about the fate of the self-confident rich. Now, have we ever seen anywhere in our society people who get enough resources, they suddenly think, "All right, I'm above the law.
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I'm above the need for God or anybody else in my life"? And notice what God says or what the psalmist says in verses 13 to 15, what happens to the people who choose to trust in their wealth.
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Actually, back in verse 10, it calls them the fool. But in verse 13, it says, "Their way is their folly, yet their posterity approve their sayings. Like sheep," verse 14, "they are led in the grave.
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Death shall feed on them, and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning," meaning everybody dies.
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You can't take your wealth to the grave, and when you die, the people who are still alive are gonna be s- walking around, and they'll have access to all the resources. Don't trust in your resources.
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Verse 16, "Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased." Verse 17, "For when he dieth, he shall carry nothing away. His glory shall not descend after him."
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So this is both a song and a reminder to people living in ancient Israel that some people would get more material resources. Mm-hmm.
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Don't immediately think God loves them more or they're better than you are, that their lives are somehow, like, 10 times happier. But you can trust in God that He will be faithful to you.
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And I love how they point out, like, your riches will not go with you to the grave. And you and I have traveled places around the world. I've been to a lot of cemeteries, and like, we do honor our dead.
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That's the whole point of All Saints' Day on November 1st, right? We cast every, all, all the bad demons out on Halloween, at least the Western world. But there's nothing going on at graveyards.
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It's just a bunch of dead people who they, their resources are no longer of any use to them. Well, I don't know if that's true. The rich man was, uh, but he was also righteous.
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Before he died, an angel appeared to him and said, "Hey, you've been so, uh, righteous that..." [laughs] Sorry. I love how you just kind of- Just tried going deadpan. I couldn't do it. That's pretty good.
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Let me continue with Mike's false doctrine joke, which the angel comes to the rich man and says, "Listen, the Lord loves you because you paid so much tithing.
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You're gonna get the first class ticket into the celestial kingdom." [laughs] Well, actually, Taylor, uh, there was this rich man, but he was also righteous.
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He didn't succumb to the, the, the vanity of riches, and so, but he's getting ready to die, and an angel appeared to him and says, "Hey, because you've been so righteous, you are granted one wish."
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And he kind of sheepishly said, "Well, I know I can't take the riches with me, so if I only got one rich, or one, one wish, then I wanna be able to take my riches with me."
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And so the angel said, "Wow, that's quite a request, and, but okay, uh, granted."
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And so what he did is he took all his riches and, uh, and sold all his property and all his Ferraris and all his mansions, and he had created a massive,
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solid bar of gold, and he told everybody to put it in his casket with him, and he was gonna take them with him to the other side.
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And he, he died, and they put the bar of gold in his casket, and when he gets on the other side, sure enough, he's got his gold with him, and he goes up to the pearly gate, and Peter's like, "Hey, we've been waiting for you.
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W- we're, we're so impressed that you're here. What'd you bring?" And he shows him the gold, and he's all proud. And Peter looks at him and says, "You brought asphalt?" [laughs] Oh my gosh. That's a good one.
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[laughs] I don't know if, editors, you wanna keep that in there, but there you go. That's a lot of fun.
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So this gives you a sense that each Psalm might have a slightly different perspective, and we, this one is all about, like, trust God and don't get distracted by how much wealth everybody has. Psalm 50 is interesting.
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It begins with God doing what we call a covenant lawsuit. So Mike, we, we might remember back in Exodus chapter, uh, 19 to 24, the people decided to join God in a covenant at Mount Sinai.
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And God sends prophets to basically tell them, "Hey, you're not living the obligations of the covenant. I'm gonna keep giving you some chances," God says, "but you need to step up."
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And that's effectively how sect- uh, Psalm 50 functions, is that it is God calling on the people to remember not just what he's done for them, but their obligations to be faithful back.
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So it begins with saying, "The mighty God, even the Lord, has spoken, and called unto the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof." So everything in creation stands within the view of God.
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Nothing can get away from his reign and his sovereignty. "Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined." So there's this metaphor that God is an expressi- i- is beautiful. Isn't that beautiful?
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The perfection of beauty. That's, that's a beautiful description of, of God, I think. So verses three and four, he calls all the heavens together 'cause he wants judges. He wants witnesses for this lawsuit.
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He gathers the saints together, and that's, uh, verse five, okay? He says, "Those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice," right? Those are all the people who are part of God's kingdom.
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So the first six verses are about let's gather, um, the courtroom together. And now what we have is in verse seven, "Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, and I will testify against thee. I am God, even thy God.
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I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds.
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For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine.
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If I were hungry, I would not tell thee, for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows unto the Most High.
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And call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." Isn't that a powerful lead up?
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Think about these are hymns sung in the temple, where all these sacrifices are happening of these animals, and God's basically saying, "Hey, everybody, the mechanics of sacrifice is not truly what saves you." Mm.
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"It's where your heart is. I need you, actually, more importantly, you need to have your heart turned to me, and your prayers need to be devoted to me.
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Don't just show up with a goat and think that the goat has died on your behalf. We just call it good. Your heart needs to be in the right place." Explain to us how you read, it says in verse 14.
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So I don't want the mechanics. I mean, it was important to live the law of Moses to offer up the animal sacrifices. Right.
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But the point he's trying to make, and correct me if I'm wrong, is as important as that is, what I really want is your thanksgiving- Mm-hmm... and for you to pay thy vows. Okay, I think I can understand thanksgiving.
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I want a grateful heart. Um, what comes to mind when you hear the phrase, "Pay thy vows?" 'Cause that also appears in Doctrine and Covenants Section 59. Yes That on the Sabbath we're to pay our vows.
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It's fascinating you bring this up, Mike. It's- I, I, I can understand making a, a vow- Yeah... or an oath- Mm... but to pay a, I don't know. What?
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So when you make a vow, it means you've made a commitment to f- follow through with something. And so when you make the payment on the vow, it's like you are fulfilling the commitment you had made.
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So think about when people get married, they make marital vows. Yeah, yeah. To pay their vows, we don't really say it like that, but really what it means is are you living your vows? Are you living your promises?
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And by the way, since you mentioned it, Doctrine and Covenants Section 59 is a very powerful section because God reinstates
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the very Sinai covenant w- I had mentioned a bit earlier when we talked a- uh, beginning at Psalms 50. It follows the same six-part conditional covenant that God laid out for his people at Mount Sinai,
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and the conditions are... Well, first, God reminds people of all the great things He's done for them. He says, "I wanna give you land." 'Cause they just arrived in Missouri.
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They just arrived in the quote-unquote Promised Land in Zion, and he uses the same, God uses the same covenantal structure that He gave to the ancient Israelites when He wanted to, when He wanted to promise them,
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uh, land and posterity and prosperity in the land in exchange for their loyalty. Mm. That's exactly what happens in Doctrine and Covenants Section 59. It's, uh, very stunning. So that's how those things all connect.
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By the way, we're gonna skip over to chapter 51. We'd had this whole lead-up that God does not need sacrifice, as He has everything already. Look at verse 17 of s- uh, Psalm 51. "The sacrifices of God
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are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, thou wilt not despise."
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And that little last phrase is about somebody who's just so humble and realizes, "My broken heart and contrite spirit is such a small offering,
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and yet God will not despise the meagerness of the total offering I have to offer Him." So I like to read s- uh, Psalm 50 and 51 together. And in, in fact, I could highlight a couple things that go on in Psalm 51.
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They're related to what leads us into having a broken heart, uh, and a contrite spirit. Actually, here it says a broken spirit and a contrite heart, which is typically opposite of how we say it.
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How do we normally say it? It's the other way around? We usually say, "Give me a, a broken heart and a contrite spirit." And this one says, "A broken spirit and a contrite heart."
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So look at how we get to this point of what it says here in verse 17, "A broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart." Verse seven, "Purge me with hyssop." Verse eight, "Make me hear joy."
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Verse nine, "Hide thy face from my sins." Verse 10, "Create in me a clean heart." Verse 11, "Cast me not away from thy presence." Verse 12, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation."
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13, "Then I will teach transgressors thy ways." 14, "Deliver me from blood guilt," no, uh, "blood guiltiness." So all these claims like, "Lord, I need, I need to be fixed."
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So no sacrifice of any animal that we saw listed back there in Psalm 50 could do any of these things.
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This is a person who truly has come up to the Lord at the tabernacle truly ready to receive God, and they have expressed a broken spirit and a contrite heart, which again, we mentioned before, that's almost never the way we hear it.
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It's always the opposite. It's normally, uh, yeah, in 3 Nephi chapter 9, the Savi- the, the Savior just died on the cross, and the survivors are in darkness, the pitch black, and they hear the Savior's voice.
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And he says in verse, in 3 Nephi 9 verse 19 to 20, "I will accept none of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings." Okay. Right? So which is back to Psalm 50. And then he says, "What do I want?
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As important as it was to keep the Law of Moses, this is what I've always really wanted from you." Verse 20, "You shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit."
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Okay, and so it actually says it opposite. Here it says, "Broken spirit, contrite heart." Jesus says- "Broken heart and a contrite spirit."
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So that's an interesting connection, that Jesus is making a quote from Psalms, but he's quoting it kind of in verse.
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And there's, like, a Hebrew literary form where one prophet will quote other prophets, but they'll do it as an inversion.
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So if the original prophet, like the Psalms, is A, concept A, B, and C, the later prophet, now Jesus, will quote that C, B, A. Yeah, and that reversal is a literary signal.
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Uh, w- in our vernacular, we say it's quotation marks. Oh, interesting. Uh, it's called Seidel's law. Okay, so that's the German scholar who came up with this. He, he's the one who noticed it- Okay... and wrote about it.
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And yeah, so when Jesus quotes this in 3 Nephi chapter 9- Hmm... that's his way of indicating, "I'm, uh, I'm referring to Psalms here." Yeah, very fascinating.
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So if you ever in your life, you ever do this with your fingers, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see me putting my fingers up and down, we call those quote marks. Mm-hmm. Or we'll say verbally, "Quote, unquote."
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Yeah Anciently, can you imagine Jes- Jesus showing up and saying, quote, unquote, and then he makes the sta- statement.
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He literally just says what he needs to say, but everybody understands anciently f- because they're familiar with ancient scripture, "Oh, we know this is a quote 'cause we're familiar with what happens here in Psalm 51:17.
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God wants a sacrifice of a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart." That's a great connection.
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And then to your point, what you were saying earlier, and then the plea in Psalm 51 to have this transfer transformation, the spiritual renewal. How does it come?
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Well, yes, ultimately it's through the blood of Christ, but then Jesus says, "But I still need you. You, you just can't be a passive o- observer. This is what I need from you."
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And then what happens if you bring this broken heart and contrite spirit? 3 Nephi 9:20 says, "And then will I baptize you with fire and with the Holy Ghost,"
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which brings the transformation of all these That is super powerful how you've brought this all together, Mike.
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And it makes me realize, um, we've talked about two important covenants in the Old Testament, and I see them operating here.
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You have the unconditional covenant that Jehovah, God himself, the premortal Jesus made with Abraham and all his descendants, and then the conditional covenant that he offers the people at Mount Sinai.
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And what did the Nephites and Lamanites do? They had the conditional covenant. They also had the covenant of grant, the Abrahamic Covenant, where God said, "I'm gonna give you land.
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I'm gonna give you posterity and prosperity in the land." But the people decided not to receive it. They violated expectations. They broke... They're under the agreement, which was all laid out in the Law of Moses.
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And now Jesus is showing up, the enfleshed, or this voice, it's, it's actually just his voice, Jehovah himself saying, "Listen, the Abrahamic covenant," He doesn't say it like this, but that's what's going on, "is still operative.
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Everything I had to offer you is still on offer. Would you like to receive it? Here's how you come to the table and partake. You need to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit.
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That is the conditions upon which you can receive everything that you need." So all that is actually coming together.
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Those, the, the, the, the operating system of the scriptures are those two covenants, God's unconditional nature of hesed to always offer us everything we need, and the conditions by which we can actually show up and receive those things, by us pr- proactively reaching out our hands and partaking of what he's offered.
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And so maybe we should explore just for, just for a second, Taylor, um, 'cause I know our listeners, and I know you, and I know myself, that we sincerely want to have this transformative experience.
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What, what were they again? Was it, uh, Psalm 51? "Purge me with hice- hyssop?" Hyssop. Hyssop. Verse eight, "Make me hear joy." Isn't this what we want? "Hide thy face from my sins. Create in me a clean heart.
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Cast me not away from thy presence. Restore unto me the joy," uh, ability to teach transgressor- transgressors in verse 13. "Deliver me from blood guiltiness." All these righteous things. So how do we get, uh...
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'Cause it sounds kind of like an abstract i- idea to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Does that just mean that when I mess up, I feel bad? Does it go deeper than that?
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Well, you've worked with a lot of people over the years, both in your capacity as a bishop. You've taught in seminaries institute for a lot of years.
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How have you helped people to grapple with the lived reality of doctrinal principles? A- and I'll just say this, and I want to be really careful how I say it. Doctrine alone does not save.
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Lived doctrine invites us into God's salvation. If I declare doctrine, that's a good thing, but me declaring doctrine is not sufficient for me to fully access God's full salvation.
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I have to do something to receive salvation. I can't just speak it. Right. So yeah, what have you seen where people have
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practically, like, done something active, where it's not just words on a page like, "Oh, I get the concept"? What have they done? How have they been different? Ah. What an inspired question.
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The thing that comes to mind is, I remember I was in a training meeting with President M. Russell Ballard. A bishop raised his hand. He says, "President Ballard, how can we know if someone is truly, sincerely repented?"
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Mm. Because we're supposed to be the judge in Israel, and this... [laughs] And he says, "You know, that's the perfect question for every bishop to ask." And he says, "The only thing...
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[laughs] The best way I know how to know if somebody's really repented is to ask them a question." And I got my pen and paper out. I'm like, what is this golden question? Is it really that easy? Yeah, and I'm all ears.
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Me. And he says, "I don't care how you ask it, but it's... This is the idea. You... After the person confesses their sin, you ask them something to the effect of, 'How do you feel about Jesus Christ?'
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Or, 'What do you think about Jesus Christ?'" And then he says, "Then bishops, you need to shut up. [laughs] It's not time for you to preach.
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You need to be quiet and get that person to talk as much as possible about how they feel about Jesus Christ. And while they're expressing their feelings, you're praying for the gift of discernment to discern is w- is...
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do they have a superficial relationship with Jesus Christ, or do you sense that there is some substance there, some depth?" Mm.
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I think that's, I think that's profound, and I, I wonder if that ties into having a broken heart, contrite spirit, because it's possible for someone to go a week, a month, a year, a decade Without sinning and not have...
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Okay, no, technically it's not possible, but let's imagine- Right... that they go a decade without sinning.
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But if there's no connection or love or feeling towards Jesus Christ, then that's just called behavior modification. Right. But there's no... Repentance is bigger than that. It has to be connected- Mm-hmm...
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uh, to him, and feelings of adoration and appreciation for what he's done to transform us. I don't know, what do you think? Well, I notice how your hands are coming together. It's about the relationship. Yeah.
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He wants to be completely bound to us. He wants to cleave to us, and if we're hard-hearted, he cannot cleave to us. But when we have brokenness, he can fully fill in and become one with us.
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If we feel like we are completely one already and don't need God in our lives, how can he become one with us? There's nowhere for him to fit in to our puzzle piece. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, nice.
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So just as a, um, kind of a review so far, we hope for everyone listening that there's just a lot of joy in engaging in the Psalms. There's just really, really great doctrine here. We're gonna jump ahead.
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There's a lot of great Psalms, but we're gonna jump ahead to section... Good. [laughs] We're not in the Doctrine and Covenants. Let's go to chapter...
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We're gonna go to chapter 69, and then we'll go to chapter 77 and 78, but definitely 69. So s- uh, Psalm 69 is a national and Messianic psalm, and Mike, when I...
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You might remember when we went to Israel, we went to a place called St. Peter in Gallicantu.
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It was a place, it's a Catholic cathedral now, and I'm so grateful for the Catholic Church for 1,600 years has lovingly preserved so many- What city was that in again?
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It was just south of the walls of Jerusalem on a place called Mount Zion.
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And the Catholics for centuries have so lovingly preserved all these significant religious sites, and they've built this church over the remains of what is likely the palace of Caiaphas, and there's a pit that's carved out of the rock.
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Remember we went to that? Yeah, yeah. We had to go down a bunch of stairs, and eventually we get to walk down into the pit.
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And it's very likely this is the very spot that Jesus was lowered into during the nighttime, uh, w- Ri- right after Gethsemane. Right after Gethsemane. He would've had to walk through the Kidron Valley.
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It's April, or late March, early April. It's cold. He's already bled out. I mean, you're gonna be freezing.
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He has to go walking all the way up Mount Zion from the Kidron Valley, which is quite steep, and then there's this
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circus court against him, and while they are debating his situation, they put him into, um, this cistern, this carved-out rock that would've been kind of muddy and wet and totally dark.
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And when I take groups there, we read portions of this psalm. Okay, let's... Yeah. "Save me, O God," I'm in verse one, "for the waters are come into my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing.
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I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying. My throat is dried. My eyes fail while I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head.
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They that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty. Then I restored that which I took not away. O God, thou knowest my f- my foolishness and my sins are not hid from thee.
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Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel." Then jump into verse nine.
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"For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." By the way, um, that scripture is quoted, I think, by Matthew when Jesus goes and cleans out the temple. They quote from right here.
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So you can read this chapter and think about that last night of Jesus' life where he's stuck in this cistern that's got water and mud at the bottom and mire, and he's completely alone, freezing cold,
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and you get a sense of some of the things that he, he suffered. Verse 14, "Deliver me out of the mire. Let me not sink. Let me be delivered from them that hate me, and cast... And o- and out of the deep waters.
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Let not the water flood overflow me. Neither let the deep swallow me up. And let not the pit shut her mouth upon me." Verse 16, "Hear me, O Lord. For thy loving kindness," hesed, "is good." That's the word tov in Hebrew.
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So, "Thy loving kindness is good. Turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies." And verse 16, that tender mercies, that's Nephi's thesis statement in 1 Nephi chapter 1 verse 20.
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He says, "I will show unto you the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen because of their faith to make them mighty, even unto the power of deliverance." Mm.
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That's exactly what's being asked for here. And what's powerful here is that Jesus eventually goes fully into the pit. Not just that cistern of water and muck and mire, but he goes into the grave. Mm.
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And he comes out of the pit, and he breaks the pit open. So ver- verse 15 says, "Let not the pit shut her mouth upon me." He's the one who breaks open the pit. Very powerful.
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So h- you hear his humanness coming out, but his deity, his divine nature, is what breaks the bonds that are placed upon all humans at death. He breaks them. This is really powerful. Yeah.
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So isn't, isn't pit often also representative of hell or Sheol? Yeah. Explore that further. Yeah, so I mean, you just said, you know, Jesus, he conquers the pit. Mm-hmm. He conquers death. That's spot on.
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So as you read this psalm, you can think about these concepts including the symbolism of the pit representing hell or Sheol, the underworld, where nobody ever returned from there, ever, until Jesus did.
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Very, very powerful story. You actually find some other connections to the story of Jesus. Verse 21, "They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."
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That's exactly what happened to Jesus on the cross. So, uh, one of the powerful things about Psalms is that we see echoes to the life of Jesus throughout these Psalms. Why do, why do you think it's significant?
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I've wondered about this, and if we don't know the answer, that's fine. Uh, but, I mean, this is about a...
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Depending on when, and people argue when this was written, but let's say 500 years, 1,000 years before Jesus will be crucified. Why is it significant to say that Jesus is gonna be offered vinegar while he hangs on
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the cross? I mean, that just seems like a, a detail, but I don't think it's there just to entertain us. Yeah, I think you're right.
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I mean, well, Jesus doesn't need to taste vinegar, vinegar to overcome sin and death, but there's gotta be something to it. Well, definitely vinegar.
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If you're super thirsty, vinegar does not usually quench your thirst, uh, not long term, because it just puckers your mouth a lot more. Yeah.
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And this is a great symbol of how if you're already suffering, and if somebody comes along and amplifies your suffering, they offer you something that looks like salvation.
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They offer you a cup of liquid when you're so thirsty, and instead they're actually making your suffering worse. Mm. And this psalm, I think, does two things. Well, actually three.
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First, for ancient people who did suffer, it gave them solace that God understands our suffering. Second, it pointed to Jesus, and He fulfills this.
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And third, we read it today and we see, oh, I actually can be disciplined. If I'm a disciple, I'm willing to be disciplined by the suffering of life, that I might sometimes also have to drink the bitter cup.
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Even when I'm suffering, things might get worse for a while.
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But like Jesus, trust, trust the Lord, and eventually resurrection happens, or symbolically, we are lift out of the mire of our circumstances where we have, uh, relief. Okay.
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All right, let's, uh, switch over to Psalm 78. Another beautiful psalm. Actually, let me just back up to Psalm 77. That one's an amazing one as well, uh, because it actually starts as a lament. It's a cry of despair.
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You can see that in verse one of 77, "I cried unto God with my voice in the day of my trouble." Verse two, "I sought the Lord." And then there's this massive turning point. Verse six, "I call to remembrance my songs."
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Remember we talked about the word for remember means covenantal memory of both God's good deeds as well as our need to be faithful to God. Look at verse eight and nine. "In his mercy... Is his mercy clean gone forever?
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Doth his promise fail forevermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?" So these are questions that the psalmist is asking. This turning point right here in verse 10,
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moving into 11, is notice what the psalmist is saying, what they will do. "I will remember the works of the Lord." When we go to sacrament every week, we are not supposed to be thinking about what we did or did not do.
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We're supposed to be thinking about what God has done for us. That's exactly what this person is doing. "Surely I'll remember the wonders of old. I will meditate," verse 12, "also of all thy work and talk of thy doings.
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Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary," the temple. "Who is so great a god as our God?"
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So you've gone from all this cry and lament in the first eight or nine verses to remembering this hesed, or meaning the everlasting love, the kindness, the tender mercies, and suddenly we, we see this ongoing turn.
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Verse 14, "Thou art the God that doest wonders." So when we go to sacrament, we might feel like this person, to lament something that's happened in our lives, but instead we should be remembering God's ultimate goodness.
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Remember his wonders, and then we experience the exodus. Notice how that's how this psalm ends.
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Just like the ancient Israelites experienced exodus and salvation, were brought into God's presence at Mount Sinai, that's verses 16 to 20. It's the whole exodus story summarized.
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That the people were taken out of the water, they were taken to Mount Sinai, and they... Verse 18, "The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven. The lightning lightened the world. The earth trembled and shook.
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Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." When we go to sacrament, we can have that same experience.
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We can show up with the first part of Psalm 77, feeling sad possibly about maybe our [chuckles] past week, but we should focus on God is the great savior.
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Friends, um, for the sake of time, I'm going to just give a kind of high-level overview. Psalm 78's quite a long psalm, and this is a historical wisdom psalm.
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It's a review of God's covenant purposes and work with his covenant people.
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So as you read the psalm, you can see kind of a review of the story of God's interactions from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, down into Joseph and Ephraim, and them taking the people out of, uh, Egypt and their rebellion and, um, the, the challenges that God had working with them in the wilderness.
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Uh, and all the way until... well, including giving them the covenant Sinai and then bringing them into Promised Land, um, the rebellion of the Promised Land. Um, have jumped all the way down to, like, verses 50, 60, 64.
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The fall of Jerusalem. It's basically a massively long summary. It's a long hymn. It's, it's actually in history form a hymn about God's history with the people.
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And it concludes, it concludes in verses 65 to 72 That the Lord is going to awaken himself.
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The people are in ex- exile, and he will bring Judah and a Davidic king, and he'll bring them back to Jerusalem, rebuild Jerusalem, the temple, and put a Davidic king back on the throne.
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So it's kind of this big, long arc of Israelite history. Okay. So that is... Like, if you want, like, in hymn form, the history of the Israelite nation, that's the hymn for you, Psalm number 78.
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We'll conclude today with Psalm 85 and 86.
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And these are very powerful because they just consistently talk about these major concepts we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, about God's mercy, his truth, his goodness.
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So when you're looking at section, or Psalm 85, you can hear how these people were building on God's core covenantal characteristics that we find expressed in Exodus 34:6-7.
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Mike, do you want to read some of those verses for us, and we'll just kind of talk through some of these? "Lord, thou hast been favorable unto thy land. Thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob."
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What does it mean to bring back the captivity? Yeah, I read this as, uh, the people have been taken out of captivity, meaning they are no longer stuck in Babylon captivity. Yeah.
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And this might be a psalm that was added to the Bible, um, during or after exile. Very good. Verse two, "Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people. Thou hast covered all their sin."
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Verse three, "Thou hast taken away all thy wrath. Thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger. Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thy anger towards us to cease. Wilt thou be angry with us forever?
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Wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? Wilt thou not revive us again that thy people may rejoice in thee? Show us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation."
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So I made a big note here, like the word hesed, it kind of... main concept there in verse seven is God's everlasting love. And it continues in verses 10, 11, 12, 13.
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Uh, it says right here in verse 10, "Mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other." It's a really powerful metaphor that I don't think shows up anywhere else in the Bible.
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"Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven." We actually have used verse 11 of s- Psalm 85 to reference the Book of Mormon, of truth springing out of the earth.
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And remember, God's love endures forever. His hesed endures forever. The Book of Mormon is a witness of that.
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And it goes on in verse 12, "Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good, and our land shall yield her increase." Now, we often just pass by the word good, but it's actually a deeply important covenantal word.
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It's about all that God has to offer, and it began with the creation story. Mike, you taught us in one of the very first lessons that God uses the word good seven times, which seven is, equals perfection.
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During creation, he identified his creation as good. And that is what happens when we're in covenantal league, covenantal connection with God. We experience the good things that he has to offer.
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And I've mentioned this before, it's worth repeating. Nephi's name in Egyptian means good. Nephi's own name is a signal that God's goodness is available to anybody who reaches out to receive all that God has to offer.
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Uh, Taylor, I'm noticing... I'm seeing that throughout the Psalms, that these phrases that we read in Psalms are found all throughout the scripture canon. Uh, here's just another example. You just read verse- 11...
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11, "Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven."
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That's clearly what we find in Moses 7:62, which says, "And righteousness will I send down out of heaven, and truth will I send forth out of the earth, to bear testimony of my Only Begotten, his resurrection from the dead."
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By the way, I never noticed this before, but you taught everybody right here and live, I'm learning from you, Seidel's law. That's exactly what's going on there. Is it again? Yep, right there.
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It's righteousness comes down from heaven. That's the first phrase. And then the next phrase is truth shall spring forth out of the earth. That's an inversion of the structure of verse 11 in Psalm 85. Oh, it is. Yeah.
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I, I, I didn't real- I'm g- glad you got it. Yeah. So you're a good teacher. So right there live, everybody, uh, Seidel's law is at work, that it's clear the Pearl of Great Price...
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Well, actually, we're not sure who's quoting who. It could be Psalms is quoting the Book of Moses back when they had access to it- Right... or vice versa.
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But definitely Seidel's law is at work, that one scriptural passage is quoting another.
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That just seems to speak to how in Ezekiel, chapter 37, the stick of Judah and the stick of Joseph, the Book of Mormon and the Bible, and we could add the Pearl of Great Price talking. Mm-hmm.
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The Lord wants the scriptures to grow together. Yeah.
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And if we truly want to understand scriptures, and granted that we're gonna spend our whole life and beyond trying to, but as we look at all the scriptures together as a unified whole, that's when we can really start seeing the true meaning of scripture.
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Amen. How about we end the episode with s- uh, Psalm 86? Let's do it. And before we jump in, you might, I might, I encourage everyone just to press pause and open up to Exodus 34:6-7. And as you're...
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Um, now if you've come back, you might remember, here's the, the story. God has done these tremendous deeds of salvation, brought the people to Mount Sinai. They've all covenanted to be his people.
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And he goes back up the, uh, he goes To the mountain to talk with Moses. Moses is gone and the people create the golden calf. They basically apostatize against God right after they get married to him, right, spiritually.
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And God is legally, um, he can legally like remove the people out of his presence and kill them all off. And Moses says, "Hey, remember your characteristics. Maybe not do that." And God says, "I'm not going to."
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And he cr- and he gives his own divine autobiography. We spent a long time talking about this in a former episode right there, Exodus chapter 34, verses six to seven.
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And you can see the key themes of God's core divine covenantal characteristics expressed throughout this psalm. We're just gonna hit a couple of highlights. So listen to the things that we, we hear about God.
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Uh, we have the word hesed that shows up in, uh, actually right here in verse two, "Preserve my soul, for I am holy." And actually the word holy there actually has to do with the word hesed.
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It's kind of, uh, ironic that we translate it that way. Will you just verify that for me, Mike? I looked it up when I got prepared. I want to make sure that's- Hesed Is that correct? Yeah.
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So where it says, "I am holy," it's actually, "I am full of loving kindness and everlasting mercy." Verse three, "He is merciful unto me."
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Uh, again, you find the word of everlasting kindness and love and mercy right there in God's divine autobiography of Exodus chapter 34, verses six and seven.
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Uh, verse five, "For thou, Lord, art good and ready to forgive and plenty, plenteous in mercy."
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That is one of the major themes you have in Exodus chapter 34, verses six to seven, God's own self-declared covenantal autobiography. Uh, verse, uh, 10, "Thou art great and doest wondrous things. Thou art God alone."
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Verse, uh, uh, 13, "For great is thy mercy." That Hebrew word there is hesed. Uh, then in verse 15, it's almost a quote from Exodus chapter 34, verse six.
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"But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth."
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And throughout the Pearl River Price and the New Testament, the fr- the Hebrew phrase hesed ve-emet, or mercy and truth, becomes full of grace and truth.
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So for all of us, any time you hear the phrase full of grace and truth, the Hebrew is hesed and emet, full of everlasting love and full of, uh, and full of faithful truth.
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So those are the core characteristics of God as a covenant-making, covenant-keeping God. He is full of grace, or hesed, and truth. He cannot lie.
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And by the way, in Exodus chapter 34, verses six to seven, it turns out that the word hesed, everlasting love and kindness, functions as a chiasm that binds the word truth between the two r- uh, the two times hesed shows up, which means God's truth or justice is completely circumscribed
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by his love. His justice cannot fall outside the boundaries of his everlasting love and kindness. Everything that he does is bound within his everlasting love and kindness.
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And that's exactly what we have being spoken by this ancient psalmist who knew God, witnessed of God, and has declared these things for us to be uplifted.
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We hope that as you read the Psalms, you are renewed in your own soul, that God knows you individually, he loves you, and everything he does is for your uplift, and you can praise him just like people in the past, so that future generations can hear your words as psalms of praise.
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And we leave this with you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. [outro jingle]
