Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119: Verse 31 - Shameless - Vaccination

Hidden Treasures of the 119th Psalm.

How fun today! We're in verse 31 of the 119th Psalm as we're digging away. Verse 31 is also the seventh verse in the Dalud section of, you know, the psalm, which the Dalud we've talked about is this door of humility that we go to in in order to engage with God, get in our place, so to speak. As we get a better look at ourselves, often we can get a better look at God.

And so the 31st verse, again, it has some huge meanings, and it has some very practical meanings, but it is being the seventh verse, it's kind of wrapping up, you know, the seven, you know, finishing up before we get to the fruit of all this idea of the Dalud section. And so here we have, the verse reads in the King James version, I have stuck unto thy testimonies, O Lord, put me not to shame. Now, the word stuck there that's translated stuck in the King James is actually the word debak, which starts with a Dalud, like all the verses in this section start with a Dalud, and that word debak, that cleave is the same debak that we heard in the very first verse, where he said, my soul cleaves under the dust. Well, here, he's cleaving to testimonies. And when you think about testimonies, these are the places that we literally were an eyewitness to something that God did.

Or, again, since the Bible itself is all a testament, neither old or new, it's all testimonies, eyewitnesses to all this stuff that God is teaching and God is saying, but it's also stuff that happened in your life. And so to cleave is sort of a holy word, because it's got this cough at the very end of it. And that letter is the letter that begins holiness. And it's a sense of actually that, again, we've gone through the door of humility and through that, you know, we have this soul that wants to cleave to things. Unfortunately, we have a tendency to cleave to all the wrong things. But the idea of soul ties, again, is very much here because he's talking about cleaving, in this case, to testimonies, things that we're eyewitnesses to.

And I'm sure that John Bunyan, when he wrote A Pilgrim's Progress, was very familiar with this verse and showed us, as Pilgrim would pull out his testimony from time to time and use that to comfort himself. And I hope that you do the same. And it's so practical advice, like this very morning, okay?

And to be completely transparent. I know there's a lot of opinions on this and I understand completely because I have really struggled with it. But yesterday, I got my second Pfizer vaccination, and I really struggled whether or not to get vaccinated for a long time.

I had all sorts of data on both ways. And I'll just be flat honest that I, the main reason I didn't get vaccinated before was I read somewhere that it possibly could affect your relationship with God, that this was some kind of a process where they were trying to get rid of your God gene or whatever. And that had me really, really worried that, wow, if I take this vaccination, you know, I don't want to do anything that would hurt my relationship with God. Plus the fact that they used, you know, parts of aborted babies. And there were just so many things that just made it very scary to even consider getting the vaccination from my perspective. And, but there were other factors.

There just are. And one of those factors was that the nursing home that I do a devotion at wouldn't allow me to come in unless I was vaccinated. And, you know, that's been on my heart, Avi, I've sent them my devotional jokes and all that stuff every week, but it's not the same as going and visiting these poor people who haven't had a visitor for a long, long time. And they were all my friends and I love them dearly. And I'm so sad that I haven't seen him in almost two years. And so one of the things that by getting vaccinated, you know, I can, I can go do this devotion, which I felt compelled to do many times, but then the killer and the kicker, whatever you want to call it, the thing that really pushed me over the edge was my wife.

Right. And, and she was like, do this. I'm so worried.

You know, I want you to get the, you know, she loves me and, and I, and I really didn't want my wife to worry. And I'm like, okay, you know, I'm, I'm going to cave on this, but I was still very concerned about my relationship with God. And so you might imagine that this morning, having gotten my second vaccination yesterday, I was, you know, still Satan was going to use that little piece of stuff against me to like, Whoa, am I still in a relationship with God? And so as I went into my, um, devotional, um, series of things that I do every morning when I pray, you know, I was really looking to see, was God going to be there? And he showed me something so beautiful and it's hard to explain what he showed me, but at the last boot camp that we do through Masculine Journey, and I hope you come to the boot camp that we're, that we're going to have here in the fall.

You can find out more about that at masculinejourney.com. But at the last boot camp, God showed me some things with my spiritual eyes that can only be seen through spiritual eyes. And what he did this morning was he showed me those same things. And as I saw them with the spiritual eyes, so to speak, I knew that this isn't something you're going to see with your physical eyes. And as I saw them with my spiritual eyes, he was saying, Oh yeah, I'm right here, Robbie. And so my testimony to where I was an eyewitness, right, to these things that I had seen with my eyes, then comforted me amazingly as I began to get back into my study and go back to my scripture and just get right where I needed to be, right?

Because I was going to cleave onto that testimony, which was really, really helpful, right? And the second part of the verse is really even maybe more remarkable and it's got longer term things to think about because it says, Oh, Lord, put me not to shame. After he's cleaved to the testimonies, he's saying, Oh, Lord, put me not to shame. And this is an interesting thing because this verse, the seventh verse, when you track it along the other letters that we've gone through, usually this is going to have to do with delight.

It's going to have to do with worship. But here he's talking about shame. And the reason I believe he is, is because shame has to do with the fear of the Lord. And the seventh anointing of the Holy Spirit in Isaiah 11 is a delight in the fear of the Lord. And so this idea of being more afraid of God than being afraid of man is really huge. And it was certainly huge for David. So the word shame, which is really translated almost bus.

So I always thought about when I look at shame that, you know, they're throwing me under the bus. That's just my comment on the letter in Hebrew. But anyway, I mean the word in Hebrew, but in this particular case, David just doesn't put bus. He throws a tav, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet at the beginning of it. And it's really subtle, but it's there.

Okay. And what that letter is, it's like God's stamp because it's the end of the aleph bet. And you know, when Jesus said, you know, I'm in the aleph and I'm the tav, you know, this is a big, big letter because it's saying at the end of the story, we are going to know what the truth is. And so when you put a tav in front of the word shame, it's almost like, God, don't stamp me among the goats here. You know, so, you know, I think it's a really beautiful little subtle thing that's there. If you look in the Hebrew, it's there, that tav is there before the word shame. And of course, they're translating that put. But the other thing is you can't help but think about, don't stamp me, right?

Because everybody's going to get a stamp. It's either for good or evil. But what David is asking here is, as I cleave to these testimonies, right, I'm going to keep the faith, I'm going to keep believing, and I'm going to share these things that are so powerful, these stories that I know. And in doing that, you know, you're going to keep believing. You're you know, you are marking me, actually, with the other mark that would be the one that's not shame, but the one to say that you are his son. And so a beautiful thing as I think about both the, you know, day by day effect of this verse, right, of cleaving to testimonies, and then the not being put to shame part being, at the end of the story, right, I want to be counted, you know, among the sheep. And so I hope you've enjoyed this today on the 31st verse of 119 Psalm.