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Episode 815: In this episode, we focus on Psalm 29. We explore the themes of God's power and the peace He offers to His people. The psalmist calls us to honor God for His glory and strength, emphasizing the might of His voice as it echoes through nature. We reflect on the imagery of storms, earthquakes, and the beauty of creation, all of which serve as reminders of God's incredible power.
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Join Jeff and Chris for honest conversations about Scripture, faith, and the everyday stuff we all navigate. With humor, personal stories, and plenty of back-and-forth, The Bible Guys explore what the Bible says and how it connects to your life.
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You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Hey, good morning everybody, or good afternoon or good evening or good night. We're back. How about that we are And it's Friday, Jeff oh man, it's so good. Yes, it's a good day for most people because it's their last day of work and they're looking forward to the weekends. Yeah, Friday is amazing. But I mentioned this just the other day. You and I view weekends differently than most people. Our friends would think like work. Week, and then we can well, we have Saturday and Sunday services. Yeah we're preaching one of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so's it's more like us. It's more like it's almost backwards. Back in the old days when we did Saturday services, I preached on Saturday two times and then two or three times on Sunday. Yeah that was so hard. But now it's I'll preach one and you preach the other. So yes, and that's that's Yeah, it is way better. Thank God for Chris star Ball. That's all I can say. Oh, that's the application. You go right there, take it? Okay, Well you know our longtime listeners. If you're a new listener, this is going to be a special moment for you. Yeah, for our longtime listeners know how important good news is. Uh. And then we scour the internet. And we assess every news channel and every news source, and we picked we think is. The most reliable and I think the most reliable, the most useful news source on the planet, with almost no close second placer is the Babylon. B Yes, which is a satire news source. Yes, and it feels about as legit as all the others. So everyone's while, we'll bring you some real news and other things, and sometimes we bring you a special interest points. And this one strikes particularly close to home for several reasons for you, especially for me. So this one is man replaces personality with new smoker, which is hious. October twenty first, beautiful Utah. And I love this picture this guy looking at the camera. Local man James Larson made a significant life change after deciding to replace his entire personality with his affection for his newly purchased smoker. Have I shown you my smoker? Larson asked no one in particular, that smoker's a great smoker, you can smoke fish, bacon, chicken, hot dogs. Some people say you can't smoke corn bread on there, but nope, you can smoke corn bread too. Larson spent the better part of Tuesday afternoon telling anyone who would listen about the features of his new smoker and how he planned to smoke this year's Thanksgiving turkey, which I'm working on right now. That's hilarious. I'm going to use an injection basing system because brining is what peasants do. Larson continued, Hey, look, my mom's calling. I bet you'd like to hear about my methods for cleaning the racks and what sort of woodchips I'm using the sixteen hour brisket I've got going right now. Larson's wife, Jenny, said she was getting a little tired of the smoker talk, but admitted to humoring her husband because he'd been cooking so many more meals lately. I want to tell him he needs to talk about something else, but I haven't had to make dinner in two weeks, so I'm just gonna ride this gravy t as long as I can't, she said, and I mean that literally. James told me he's trying to figure out to smoke a literal greed gravy train whatever that is. Wow publishing time, Larson could be seen quietly singing to a smoker and covering it with a blanket on the cold night, a move that concerned his family, but they said they'd wait until after he finished the next batch of ribs to bring it up. So what did I do? Just before this episode? You told me all about your brand new smoke, my brand new smoker, and you said, you said it could be the best thing since you got married. You should even better than my kids. Even you're better than the day you had your kids. That's so funny. This is so funny, And that I read the article. Oh my gosh, that's funny stuff. You know what I think we should do, Chris? We should do We should do over your house. We should do like to smoke something for desert. Yeah, exactly, that'd be fun. Yeah, but we should do Bible Guys episode on your porch. You and me. We should do a cooking show on my porch. You and Chad can on me. I think it'd be fun. You and Chad could pull it off. It would be fun. I could be teaching you how to griddle or grill. I've got a griddle, I've got a pizza stone, I've got a smoke, I've got a grill. Oh yeah. If I'm the if I'm the novice and I'm there to learn, yeah, I could represent the viewers, the viewers to tune in, who say, show me how to do stuff? Yeah, because because you don't do a ton of cooking hardly any I love it. I love cooking because it's so different from everything else I do. So so here here's here's a confession. And whenever I say this, everybody is actually shocked at this. In fact, you may not even remember this because it's so against who you are as a person. But when we first got married, Liz did all the cooking, and she worked the day shift and I worked the night shift. Okay, so we had this grill, this very tiny grill, outside of our dorm at Baptist Broba College. And because she prepared one hundred percent of everything for the first year that we were together, she began to grill. And so she did a one hundred percent of all the grilling because I was gone, literally, And so what ended up happening was we moved into our new little apartment of efficiency apartment, and then she just continued to grill. And then it got to the place to where I just wasn't even having to grill, and so she took over the grilling. And our marriage it just started that way because of our jobs. And now she one hundred. Percent of the stuff life. No, no, I love it because she goes out and makes everything and brings it in and I eat it. Yeah, you love it? Yeah, okay, and so don't. I don't miss it at all. So people, obviously guys are like, hey, do you ever grill this? You ever grill this? I'm like, I don't grill. Wow, I don't. My wife does all the grilling. But when you come to my house and you can smell the smoke. Oh, it's it's awesome. Now, by the way, I've grilled before. I mean it's not like I've never done it. I've grilled and I'm decent at it. But honestly, my wife is so good at it. I'm just like, why. Every once in a while, every once in a while, just being nice, Liz will bring me gifts from like if you guys have been up north or something, Yeah, a little specialty stories. She'll bring me some sauces or something. Everyone and I always know that's from Liz. It's it's like, uh, you know, grillers know each other. We we just we have that look and we got the usually smoky eyes. Our eyes are ye. That's funny. That's awesome, man. Yeah, well we should do it. I think we should do like the Jeff and Chris Cooking Show. Okay, wouldn't it be fun? Oh yeah, of. Course, yeah, anything anything like that would be fun. Sure. Well it's fun for me because even as you're explaining, like for the podcast, before we started filming, you were explaining what you were making. Oh yeah, I was totally enthralled. I made on my griddle. I was telling you I have this new griddle. And so I made cheese steaks, and then I made for lunch, and then I made some uh garlic garlic, but steak bites from from uh Delmonico steaks. They were so good. Yeah, potatoes and so and so. When I hear that I don't want to grill, I think, Jeff, I want you to make that fetish. I yeah, what are you doing sitting around here? Get out there? Yeah that's correat. So anyways, did you think of a of a transfer? I forgot? Did you forget to look at it? I did so, So we're in a quandary if you're a new listener, we're in a quandary because for a while we worked really hard at having give me a second transitions, and then we got so bad at it. We started targeting having the worst possible transition out of the chit chat part of the thing and into I got it conversation. I got it. So now Chris is trying to transition back to meaningful transitions. Yeah, so here's what I would say. I would say, I bet you that you give Bonnie a lot of peace because she knows that when you step up to that grill, even if you have important guests, even even the most important guests, if Liz and I were coming over, Yes, she would feel the most important, That's correct. She would feel at peace because she just knows you've you've got this. Yes, if it's if it's on the grill, you've got it, and they get Let me tell you something. It reminds me of Psalm chapter twenty nine, verse eleven, where God promises to give his people peace along with power. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah, And by the. Way, that that's a true statement. I bet you when you get to the grill, body feels complete peace because you have important people over, you have people from the church over. Sometimes it's an important meeting. Yeap. You have things to accomplish. We do a lot, and she's probably have a bunch of people from the church coming over. Some of our leaders are coming over. Yeah. Nine. And she always thinks they're gonna love this. It's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. So I had to name my grill on my app. Oh, so I knew what grill I was operating. So I got a couple of my ground on my app. Yeah, and so my new ones called Holy Smokes. Of course. Of course, what else would it be. Exactly, Yeah, here we go. Anyways, we're in Psalm chapter twenty nine, and it says, Honor the Lord, you heavenly beings. Honor the Lord for his glory and strength. Honor the Lord for the glory of his name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. The voice of the Lord echoes above the sea. The God of Glory thunders. The Lord thunders over the mighty sea. The voice of the Lord is powerful, and the voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord splits the mighty cedars. The Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon's mountains skip like a calf. He makes Mount Herman leap like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord strikes with bolts of lightning. The voice of the Lord makes the barren wilderness quake, and the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadish. The voice of the Lord twists mighty oaks and strips the forced bear in his temple. Everyone shouts glory. The Lord rules over the floodwaters. The Lord reigns his king forever. And the Lord gives his people's strength, and the Lord blesses them with peace. So there you go. That's it. So Verse number eleven is our verse that we're focusing on. The Lord gives his people's strength, the Lord blesses them with peace. This is a psalm of David, and David is starting the chapter by talking about honoring God. Honor God and everything in his glory and his strength and his might. He's the God of thunder. He rolls over the mighty sea. His voice is powerful, his voice can do very specific things. Yes, right, I mean, I mean like even mentions Mount Hermon, which, by the way, is in Lebanon. Yes, it's a modernity Lebanon. I love the fact that that is a real place and here it is what seven hundred Well, I don't know when Songs was written. It would have been three thousand years ago, a thousand years really, so it was written before well yeah, yeah, but I'm saying songs was written before Isaiah then yes, okay, So so anyway, and here he is mentioning, you know a real place, you know, Mount Hermon. And by the way, Mount Hermon is so high, even though it's in the Middle East, it has snow on us. Yes, it's so incredibly. Have you been in Lebanon. I have not. I was just just there several months ago with my wife. But where where Jesus Smith? The woman at the well, I did drink from that well and they said that it was from the snow caps of Mountain Hermit. That's yeah, yeah, yeah, which which was unbelievable, isn't it neat? It was it was ice cold. Well. The reason why, I mean we the listeners might go, why are you guys talking about this. Here's why, because your faith is rooted in real place and in a real person. That's right, right, It's important. Your faith is not some esoteric concept or some philosophy that you're trying to live by. It's rooted in a real place with a historical book that tells us about the real Jesus Christ, who was a real person who lived in a real time, in real place. Yea, And our entire event or our entire faith is based on an event that is grounded in history, which is the death, Beryl and resurrection of Jesus Christ and h you know, the ultimate action of dying for sins, paying for sins, and then proving he has power versins. Right. So then when I read this passage, and I remember thinking about this before, you know, after the flood, with Noah's flood, God put the rainbow in the sky and he said, hey, every time you see the rainbow, you can remember that I will never flood the earth again. Yeah, which is his problem. Which is incredible, which, by the way, you'd be surprised how many people I talked to don't realize that that is what the rainbow means. You know, they see the rainbow in the sky. They're all pretty after a rain. It's consistently after a rain because in Genesis chapter nine, God said I will never again destroy In other words, hey, it's gonna stop raining, right, it's raining. Oh no, it's raining. But don't worry. It's gonna stop. That's right. And so God says, when you see the see the rainbow, just remember I'm you know, I'm not gonna destroy the earth again with a flood. And then he starts off saying, honor God, right, honor the Lord for the glory of his name. And then he begins to unpack the power of his voice. When you hear the echo of the echo, or the noise of the sea, let that remind you of God. If you live near an ocean and you hear the roll the waves rolling in, they say, when you hear the thunder, let it remind you of the glory and the power of God. Right, that's what he's talking about. And then he unpacks the idea the Lord splits mighty cedars when major storms blow through, Just let it. Let it remind you. That's just a small glimpse at the power of God. He talks about the the the barren wilderness, quake and in the mountain of Mount Hermon shaking and leaping. You know, earthquakes should remind you of the power of God. These are all just minor blips compared to God's incredible power. And he said, whenever natural forces happen every time, if that's possible on this planet, just think how incredibly powerful the creator of this planet is. Right, He's the creator that made this world possible to have that storm, or to have that earthquake, or to have you know, the rolling of the waves and carving a way. I was just watching some video of a bunch of houses there was last two weeks ago along the outer banks as the storm was coming in, and a whole bunch of houses just crashed into the ocean because hey, all these rich people decided to want to build their house there. But you cannot stop the ways, can't do it, right, It's really amazing. Yeah, the glory of God in the power of the earth, and you know, just in all the you know, the majesty of the ocean, I mean just the ocean alone, right, you have to respect it. And it reminds me of did I were you there on a Sunday when I shared when I prayed in front of like one hundred thousand people on that one day. Thing. Well, what I didn't share was the night before it had come through, like a monsoon. Had come through camping. Yeah, we're all camping in tents, and so it was lightning right above us and it was scary. Right, Well, two things are my favorite things, getting wet and then you. Know you hate being wet. I hate hate. And so we were soaked to the bone. Everything we almost soaked. It was like taking our luggage and throwing it at a lake and then pulling it up, And that's what our luggage was like. I'm not lying, So anyway, the point is is that you know, we're all super scared. One kid, you get hit by lightning. It was terrible. I mean like it was just it was just awful. It was just like this months it was like the biggest storm ever and we're right below it. But anyway, so the next day we all get up, the sunshining, and then a helicopter flies above. We all know it's Louis Giglio, right, he's flying above taking footage. And then finally the day starts, we're still a nasty, soaking wet with rashes everywhere and everything else. And he stands up on stage, dry as a bone, coming from his hotel. And he stands up there and the first thing he says to one hundred thousand students who'd been suffering all night long, and he goes, God displayed his mighty glory last night. I'm like, I want to say, shut up, shut up. You were at a hotel room and you were not out of here suffering and. Ready to die. You know. But he is right, though, he is right, because that is God's glory. God is God's glory is displayed in the mountains and the sea, and the thunder and the lightning and the monsoons even right, Yeah, it is God who creates. You know, we never even talked about it. But yesterday's podcast he said he places them. Was it yesterday, No, it was two days ago in Isaiah where he says he puts all the stars in the sky and he knows them by he mentions them by Nate. And then he says, then have confidence that God knows you. Don't say that he's not going to care for you because God, I mean talk about glory. So then this there's a note in my life. You should get a life application study Bible or a good study Bible, but love the life application study Bibles. We always are reading from the New Living Translation, So if you get one, that might be great. But there's a note here that says the cedars of Lebanon were large trees that could grow to one hundred and twenty feet tall and thirty feet in circumference. Thirty feet, dude, that takes like five or six of us to reach to old hands reach all around it, right, yeah, huge, And a voice that could split the cedars of Lebanon would be a truly powerful voice, only the voice of God. Even the most impressive parts of nature are under God's complete control, which I love. It also mentions here. That's a thirteen story building, by. The way, Yes, yeah, yeah, lightning. He talks about that. He talks about the voice of the Lord twists mighty oaks and strips the forest's bear. He's talking about tornadoes. So this idea that even the most impressive parts of nature are under God's complete control. They have to submit to God. God's voices like that, and people go, man, I wish I could hear God's voice, wouldn't it be amazing? Hear God's voice. What's amazing is he gave us his word. Right, we have the power. So that kind of power, we don't even think the pause to crack open. And you know, we're just like man, if only I could have the power God in my life. He gave you his word, and it tells us how powerful his voices. Right, And the point of a voice is not to make noise. The point of the voice is to communicate, right, right, And he's communicated with you. He's given you sixty six books, and he's pointed you in the direction of Jesus. And let you know that he is the conductor of the symphony of time and we're living in it, and he has all the power and he has all the ability. And then it's in that context when even nature is only an echo of his voice. It says that God gives his people strength and that Lord blesses them with peace. So it's interesting he talks about storms, he talks about natural natural events, but then he ends it with that same God that can cause all those things is also the one that gives his people peace. Well, it reminds me of that promise where it says, then whom shall I be afraid If God is what is it? And whom shall I fear? Whom shall I be afraid? If God is my refuge? And so it's it's a it's the idea that like, if you're super powerful and you have the power of God in you, and you know He's gonna work through you, then then really you're gonna have peace because what who if God before us? Who could be against us? Right? That's that's what the Psalmist says. So I think that it definitely is. You know, there's peace knowing that you're on the right side. You know you've you've picked the right team. You know you picked the winning side. God is gonna have victory in all things, even even victory over evil, right, even the bad things of life, if you think about all the really truly scary things. I actually saw a clip of a it was just a movie. It was just a goofy movie, but it was a nun who could actually have the she has the power to see the spiritual world. Right, it was. It was it was kind of neat. I don't I don't even know what this movie is. I don't even know if it's a good movie, but you know, it was it was definitely a clip that I saw before anyway, But this uh, this like demon, the scary looking demon was talking to this nun and and he says something like to her, and he goes, you're gonna have to fall asleep eventually, which is pretty creepy, right, And she goes, oh no, she goes, I'm good, and she's like this old or nun you know, and he goes, he goes, it's not going to end well for you. And she goes, I have God with me, so yeah, I think I'll be fine. So she's just totally talking to this you know. Now again it's just a goofy little you know movie clip. Right. I don't even know if it's a good movie, but it just again, it just displays the confidence that every Christian should have, knowing that even against the scariest things, you can have total peace. Yeah, because that's what Jesus promises, right John fourteen. He says peace, I leave you, peace I give to you. I do not offer peace as the world gives, where as the world offers. Right, God gives us peace beyond understanding. If he's just says right, beyond comprehension, beyond circumstance. So it talks about all these natural events and says, hey, those hint at the power of God, at the voice of God. But then I think it's interesting. Jesus did miracles where he got it. One told the wind stop and it just stopped like glass. Right, yeah, peace be still. Yeah, he would overcome it, just his his power. And that's why the God that can create all that ruckus is also the one who can give peace. And there's another note here. It says throughout history God has revealed his power through mighty miracles over nature, such as the Great Flood in Genesis chapter six. He promises to continue to reveal his power. The apostle Paul urges us to understand how great God's power is. In Ephesians chapter one, the same power that raised Christ from the dead is available to help us with our daily problems. When you feel weak and limited, don't despair. Remember that God can give you strength. That's what this verse promises, right, the Lord gives his people strength. The same power that controls creation and raises the dead is available to you. And that amazing. That's great, and that's the message he's sending here. So both when you see the storms. Just let it remind you of God. I can remember one time watching a storm roll in. I especially love the fall. In the fall. My wife does this too, she's the one who point out, but I love it. I love in the fall when in the north where we live, the colors, the trees are all bright colors, and then you get that black sky. There's clearly a storm rolling in, but you've got the sun behind you, so you've got blue sky behind you and black sky coming in. And what happens is when the sun is setting, it just makes the trees just come alive right, just so bright in color, and then you know, oh, here comes the storm. Storm is rolling in. You know. And I've been in some pretty crazy storms in the fall. It always seems like the end of October beginning of November, there's usually some big storm that comes through, blows all the leaves off the trees, one really big one. Yeah, And I remember watching some of those come rolling in and just in that moment, thinking, boy, this is incredibly powerful and at the same time shockingly beautiful at the same time, you know. And that's what I think of when I read this passage. Is incredibly powerful and shockingly beautiful. There's a peace even in that storm. Yeah, that's great. Well, hey, that is our time, and I hope you've enjoyed this week about God's promises of power in our lives. And we'll pick up with another theme of God's promises next week. Hope to see on the Bible, guys,