Psalms 119:146 Calling On Our Salvation

This is the Truth Network. Hidden treasures of the 119th Psalm.

How fun. Today we get to do verse 146, which would be the understanding of the letter Kuf, as yesterday we did the wisdom, so today is looking at the Isaiah 11 template that we use. The second anointing would be understanding, and I think you'll see how that fits together. So verse 146 in English reads, I cried unto thee, save me, and I shall keep thy testimonies. And so, what's happening here, just like that word would be the same word that God used when He called the daylight or when He called the Adam in the garden. In other words, you're calling on the name of the Lord. And this is what the psalmist is talking about is when you call the days time to the earth, you're calling on the name of the Lord.

on the name of the Lord, obviously he turns his face towards you and we get this idea of closeness, right? And so as he cried, save me, well that word save in Hebrew is the root word of Jesus or Yeshua, right? And so it's kinda neat that he cried on the name of the Lord and then he cried, save me, which is salvation, which is Yeshua, which has all that stuff to do.

It's just an absolutely beautiful idea. And then he says, I shall keep thy testimonies. Well, the idea of testimonies, as you know, is there's a New Testament and an Old Testament and so the entire Bible is no doubt what the Psalmist is talking about here, but it's also your own testimony, where you've been an eyewitness to what God has done.

And as John Bunyan's character, Christian, would keep his testimony close to his bosom so that he would use it time and time again. But the beautiful thing about this, as we keep the testimonies, they do in fact, you know, save us to some extent, because as I learned this morning, I was really thinking about it, that Jacob's ladder, if Jesus is in fact the word of God, which he is, right, according to John, so if Jesus is the word and the word is God and the word was with God, well, then as we climb the ladder of the word, in other words, each verse is another rung towards a better understanding of God. And so as we climb this ladder, we get closer to an understanding of God by studying these testimonies, right, and by keeping them. And so as we get closer, then we can actually come to the point where, you know, we understand that Jesus died for our sins and thus be saved. And we can understand that when we are not capable of doing something, he's capable of helping us do it, which leads me to the story of, again, you know, it's always good to apply these things, so what does this actually look like? And as we talked about last time, about I cried with my whole heart, I will keep thy statutes, this time, you know, he is going to keep the testimonies. And so I have this friend, his name was Lester Cranville, I did an episode before about him, he's the man that was prayed up and packed up and ready to go, but one of the things that Lester prayed for every single day, he called on the name of the Lord and he asked him if he would have an opportunity to share his testimony with somebody that day, and he had a particularly powerful testimony, and the way that it went was that Lester was a big bully, he was about six foot four, he weighed about 270 pounds, he was a truck driver, this was not fat, he was a big guy, and he was a obviously very strong man, he was, like I said, a truck driver, and apparently he used to have a problem with alcohol, and when he would, he would become a bully and he would get in all kinds of fights, and even worse than that, at times, he'd been known to beat up his wife, which was just a petite, beautiful young lady, and so it was unbelievable to me, knowing Lester as I did, as being one of the sweetest old men, you never know, I can't imagine him beating up Lucille in any way, shape, or form, but apparently, with alcohol, that's something that had happened, and so the way he described it is one day, when he was struggling with all this, his wife was a Christian and she had been praying for him, but he was not, and one day he picked up a drink and he heard clearly an audible voice of the Lord, and he knew it was the Lord, and that voice said, Lester, this is your last chance, and he said it sent chills down his back, like he knew that if he took that drink, that it would be over for him, and so he believed that voice, and he began to call on the name of the Lord, he began to read his word, he began to study and find out about God, and he received Christ as his savior, and he completely stopped drinking, I don't think Lester ever took another drink the rest of his life, he was an amazing man, but the thing that always amazed all of us that knew Lester is that man, every single day, he prayed that he would have a chance to share this testimony with somebody, and it was amazing that that happened all the time, and he would tell us these stories, which were testimonies of themselves, of how he shared his story with so many different people. Again, the fruit of this verse, right, that as he called on the name of the Lord, that God would turn his face and give him this opportunity to keep and to study and to learn these testimonies, it's so absolutely beautiful, and so as we think about climbing this rung of this particular verse and the opportunity that we have to keep the testimonies, is just an opportunity to share God, the best news of our life is sharing, as we get closer to God, we get more light so that we can share God, and if we could get ourselves out of the way that we would literally be a window from which people could see God and see his goodness as you could see it in Lester. Thank you for listening.