Psalm 01: The Soundtrack Of Life

Psalm 1 starts with a decision, not a slogan: which path are you walking today? Pastor Brandon launches our journey through the Book of Psalms by calling it The Soundtrack of Life, a collection of songs and prayers that meets you in every mood and every season, from celebration to crisis. If you’ve ever loved Psalms but felt unsure how it all fits together, this conversation gives you the map.

We zoom out first and get the background that makes the book come alive. Psalms isn’t one long book written in one sitting; it’s a worship anthology compiled across centuries, with many contributors including David, Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Moses, and anonymous writers, spanning wilderness years, temple worship, exile, and restoration. That bigger story matters because it shows why Psalms can hold both raw lament and fearless praise, and why Israel’s devotion to Yahweh alone stands out against cultures that sang to many gods.

Then we talk about how to read Psalms well. Hebrew poetry isn’t built around English-style rhyme. It repeats and contrasts ideas to drive meaning, and it leans into metaphor to express what plain words can’t. That’s why Psalms teaches us how to talk to God honestly, bringing the good, the bad, and the ugly into prayer without pretending.

Finally, we read Psalm 1 as the doorway into the whole collection: the narrow way that leads to joy, the wide way that ends in destruction, and the picture of a life rooted like a tree by water, bearing fruit in season. If you want a deeper Bible study of Psalms and a more real prayer life, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a five-star review so more people can find the journey.

Transcript

Welcome To Bible Breakdown

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us and let's get into breaking down the Bible together.

Why Psalms Matters So Much

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Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Psalms chapter one. Today's title is The Soundtrack of Life. The Soundtrack of Life. I gotta tell you, from the very beginning of doing this podcast, way back when we started with the Book of Leviticus. I mean, there's a long story attached to that. You can go back, look at our archives for all of that. People have been asking me about the book of Psalms. It is one of the most read books in the entire Bible. It is the longest book of the Bible. And I think sometimes it is one of the more misunderstood books of the Bible. And we're going to get into all of that today. And people have been asking me for this for a long time. And it is not because I didn't want to. It's just, it's a lot. And I'm excited to get into this with you. And my prayer is this by the time we are finished with the book of Psalms, not only will you love it like never before, but you won't read it the same way ever, ever again. Okay. So with all of that, I want you to get your Bibles out. Go to about the middle, somewhere in there, is where you're going to find the book of Psalms. And if not, if you just open it up, statistically, you're likely to open up to the book of Psalms, but work your way all the way back to Psalm number one. And while you're doing that, make sure you take just a moment, like, share, subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure to leave us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help. And make sure you go into the Bible breakdown discussion on Facebook. There's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job. And as always, you can get all that information at the Biblebreakdown.com because the more we dig, the more we find. Well, let's dive into this because, as always, when we begin any book of the Bible, we want to take a minute and put ourselves in the time and history where this is. Because this was real stuff that happened in real time. The problem is this is going to be a little hard for Psalms because the book of Psalms is it's really five books in one. And it's not really a book, it's a collection. And so we're going to jump into this and kind of look at this. We're talking about the book of Psalms, and here's some background

Who Wrote The Psalms

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information. Now, first of all, who wrote the book of Psalms? Well, a better way to think about this is the book of Psalms is actually a collection of the greatest hits of Israel. These are songs that were written. So just like, you know, we have people like Taylor Swift and different ones who will have these big collections, you know, and they'll re-release all their albums, and you'll have like the different eras, you know, throughout, you know, her musical career. That's what the book of Psalms is. It is a collection of the greatest songs of the people of God. And so they were written by several different people. And I know that my graphics got this a little messed up, but we'll try to see if we can do it like this. The graph, the uh the reality of it is, is not every song was written by by David, but a lot of them were. So almost half of the Psalms were written by David, about 73. Also, about 12 songs are written by a guy named Asaph, who was a worship leader in the temple of David. You also have 11 songs written by a guy named Korah. Solomon wrote two songs, Moses wrote one. We've actually already read it before. And then we have some anonymous ones. Ones we're not entirely sure who wrote them. A lot of times when you don't know who else to tell, you usually just give them to David because he wrote so many of them. But there's a lot of them that are anonymous. But at some point they were written in such a way that they realized these were going to make the cut, and the Holy Spirit had inspired them. That most likely a guy named Ezra, who has a book of the Bible named after him, wrote a few of them as well. All right, now where were they written?

When And Where These Songs Formed

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That's also hard because they were written everywhere, all the way from the wilderness of Judah to Jerusalem, temple worship during the exile in Babylon, and then post-exile Jerusalem. So they were written once again all throughout the different eras of the nation of Israel. They were written primarily for God's people to be able to sing, and they were written over the course of about 1,400 years. So 1400 BC is about when Moses would have written his, you know, when they have crossed over the Red Sea on dry ground. And then right there at the time of Malachi, at the end of the Old Testament, would have been about the time when all of these were finally finished being compiled because these were once again the greatest hits of Israel. And here's something else that's really cool. A lot of the different religious groups and different ones, you know, around paganistic, they would have songs that they would sing, but they would sing to the different gods of their culture. What's amazing about Israel is they sang to one God and one God alone. They sang to Yahweh. And when they were singing to Yahweh, not only were they uplifting the name of Yahweh, but they were also disgracing the other gods. So many of these other nations were polytheistic. They had many different gods. And so when they would sing songs, they would include the names of all these other gods because they didn't want to offend any of them. What we love about Israel is they worshiped Yahweh alone. They worship God, Yahweh alone. And so they would purposely say, Our Lord reigns. God is sovereign over all. And so when we read through these, you're going to see that they are absolutely putting their thumb in the eye of every other God and saying, You are not God, only God is God. So there's a little bit of rebellion against all the other so-called false gods when every time we read a psalm. And rightfully so, right? Because there's only one true God, and he is God, right? Okay, here's some more background.

Five Books Inside One Collection

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Here is the big idea, and that is once again, that there were five different books within the book of Psalms. There's a collection of five of them, and that's why we have them. Okay, that book one, which is of course the first ever, we'll get to these in a minute. The the big idea is that God blesses the hearers and hears our prayers. The next one is God rescues. Book two is all about God rescuing his people and that he reigns. When we get to book three, we're gonna have a lot of things where it's talking about difficult times and that even in collapse, God stands. And that'll be the what the overall Psalms will be, the overall idea within this collection. Book four is that the Lord reigns as eternal king. And book five is that God restores his people and deserves universal praise. And so I don't, if you didn't know this, now you do that when you get into the five books, they are collected by not just date or by author, but by theme. And so they had books for all different or songs rather for all different kinds of things. Here's some things to notice the Psalms teaches us how to talk to God honestly. We're gonna get into that in just a moment. Many Psalms are messianic. So they they they prophesy about the coming king, which we know is Jesus. Okay, here's one that's really important.

How Hebrew Poetry Actually Works

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Hebrew poetry repeats, uses repeated ideas or contrast rather than rhythm. This is something that we got to cover. So, do you know, like in whatever language is your native language, you know, different things rhyme in different ways, but most poetry, not all, I get this for English people out there, most poetry is uh recognized as being rhyme. Like, you know, roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and you are too. You know, just things that rhyme. That is not the basic idea of the way Hebrew works. That is why when we will read things or Hebrew poetry, that's why when we will read things, and we're going to, we're gonna be reading this and we're gonna be saying, How is this a song? I mean, it doesn't rhyme, it doesn't seem to go together. What's the deal? Well, we got to deal with a couple things. First of all, Hebrew poetry, rather than rhyming, it would repeat things or contrast things. Like for instance, there was one that would say, you know, son of the king, king who belongs, um, or son of the king, son who belongs to the king, son of the one who reigns. You know, like three different ways of saying the king's son. But that's the way their poetry works, or contrasting different things is a way that they would write poetry. Second thing is, is when you read poetry, are you reading it thinking it's literal? No. Most of the time, when we read poetry, we realize that metaphor and allegory is open. We are not trying to be specific. We are talking about certain themes and ideas. Like, think about your favorite song right now. When it's talking about these different ideas and themes and the emotions and the feelings that they have, they're not being literal when they're saying, Oh, I could just go kill everyone. I'm so mad. They're not saying they literally are going to do that. They're trying to express deep emotion. And so that's what the poetry of the Psalms are doing. They are most of the time not intended to be taken literally. They're trying to express something that is hard to be expressed in words. So that's why we

Seasons Of Life And Key Facts

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we got to talk about that. All right. The next one is these songs refer to many different seasons and circumstances, such as traveling. So there are some songs called the songs of ascends, ascending. So Jerusalem is a really high elevation. So almost any way you get to Jerusalem, you're going up, you're ascending. And three times a year, Jewish people were expected to go to Jerusalem to worship at the tabernacle and eventually the temple. And so they would sing songs about their journey to Jerusalem. So it's just a way for them to just celebrate that they were getting to take time off of work and their fields and go worship the Lord. All right. Background in the world. When these first started being written, it was about 1400 BC. That was during the Egyptian Empire time. That would have been when Moses is used by God to deliver the people of Israel, and they are singing songs on the uh edge of the Red Sea where God had just delivered them. Then you have a thousand BC, that's during David's kingdom. Then you have 900 AD, that's during the Assyrian reign. You have songs being written during the season of northern Israel being destroyed. Then you have them being written when Babylon is destroyed. Then you have them during the Persian conquest, and then they end with the people of Israel returning and rebuilding the temple and all the walls. Interesting facts about Psalms. The book of Psalms, once again, are the greatest hits of the people of God. These are the songs that would be sung for everything that they would have. All right, next is it is the longest book of the Bible because it is uh because it is five psalm books in one. So it's the longest book of the Bible. Psalm 119 within the book of Psalms is the longest chapter in the Bible. And Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter in the Bible. The mo it is also the most read book of the Bible. And listen to this, it says that many Psalms were written during seasons of crisis. And so the goal of these Psalms are not to try to, you know, reflect the best of times. It's just trying to be true to the time that they were living in. A couple more things, one more thing, rather that I want to talk about, we're going to jump into

Psalms Teaches Honest Talk With God

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this. Is here's the thing I want you to think about when you think about the book of Psalms and the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is what we will read next. And the book of Proverbs teaches us how to relate to people. It's going to talk about, you know, do this if you encounter this problem, do that if you encounter that problem. But here's the thing I love about the book of Psalms. The book of Psalms teaches us how to relate to God. What the book of Psalms is going to do is it is going to, it is going to sing songs that cover every human emotion. Someone once said that they studied it, and there's not a single human emotion that is that has been registered that we can put a name on that is not covered the book of Psalms in some way. The book of Psalms is intended to teach us how to talk to God. And can I tell you, it's raw, it's real, it's it's visceral, it's it's angry, it's happy, it's joyful, it's depressed, it's everything in between. And what God is teaching us through these songs is some of these songs were written during the height of life. Everything is great, and I just want to celebrate with God. Some of these songs are written in the depths of despair, where it ends with, God, I don't want to die, but I don't know what else is going to happen, but I choose to trust you. And some of these, the the songwriter's angry. He's asking God to break the teeth out of his enemy. You know, he's he's expressing his emotion. So as we read these, what I want you to really get from this is God wants all of us. He wants the good, the bad, the ugly. He wants to do life with us. Here's the here's this the secret. He already knows. So why are we hiding it from him? And so as we read through these, one of the questions we want to ask is what does this teach us about how we can relate to God? How can we know God more? So, with all that said, let's read Psalm 1.

Reading Psalm 1 Two Directions

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And here's kind of some of the things to know about Psalm 1: is we're not entirely sure who wrote this psalm. It is considered a wisdom psalm. And the reason why the Holy Spirit would have most likely inspired this to be the very first one is because it teaches us kind of the doorway into Psalms that this is going to lead us through. We have two directions. We can go toward God or we can go away. Let's choose to go toward God. So here we go. Psalm 1, verse 1 says this Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand in the seat of sinners, or join in with mockers, but they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit with each season. Their leaves neither wither, and they prosper in all they do, but not the wicked, they are worthless like chaff, scattered by the wind. They will be condemned at the time of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly, for the Lord watches over the path of the godly, and the path of the wicked leads to destruction.

Prayer Theme Verse And Tomorrow

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So how does this help us relate to God? It helps us relate to God because we realize Jesus said that there is a narrow road and there is a wide road. The narrow road leads to God, but it causes us to have to focus and pay attention so we stay on the road. The wide road is easy, but it leads to destruction. But the road that is narrow is where joy is. As we take this journey, we're gonna be encouraged, and we're gonna be challenged. We're gonna be challenged to truly bring to God the deep things in our heart. But that's where joy is. Because God wants to heal us of those hurts, but we got to bring them to Him. And I just want to encourage you, as we get ready to take this journey, let's lay it all on the line. God, I want to know you, and I want you to know all of me, only to find out He already knew and He loved us anyway. Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you, God, that you're with us and that you're for us. I pray, God, that as we take this journey through the book of Psalms, we will come to know you more and to realize that the more we know you, the more we can't help but love you. You are truly good, and we celebrate you today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And amen. Well, Psalm 34, verse 1, the theme verse of all of Psalms is I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. I look forward to this journey with you, and I'll see you tomorrow for Psalm chapter two.