Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119: Verse 43 - The Long Truth

Hidden Treasures of the 119th Psalm. Digging around today, and every once in a while you come across a verse like we're digging in the 119th Psalm and we're in the voves section, and today we get the third verse, which is fairly perplexing really. We're digging around in verse 14. It's 43 today, and I'll go ahead and read it, and then maybe we can make some sense out of it.

I've got to admit that this one's hard. The verse reads, And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for I have hoped in thy judgments. So when I'm honest with that verse, I think sometimes I want to make God in my image, and he would do things like I would do them, or think like I think, but I just can't imagine ever taking the word of truth out of somebody's mouth on purpose. And the way he said it, the way King David said this prayer, it's just an interesting prayer to me that King David would obviously be praying this, that it's a possibility that God's going to rip the word of truth out of somebody's mouth. Because that word utterly there, that's the word me'od, which is the same word, you know, in the Shema, where they say, Hear, O Israel, the Lord is one right, and love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your might.

And what I mean with all your mind and with all your strength or all your might, that word me'od, that's might. And so when it says take the word of truth utterly, and when we're talking about with a lot of might taking it out of the mouth, and it says for I hoped in thy judgment. So one of the beautiful things about the verse is that word truth, because the first time we see it in the psalm, and the word truth is, that's used here in Hebrew is a met, which is a phenomenal word, because number one is Jesus, obviously, because he is the truth. But it starts with the aleph, which we've talked about through the olive section, it's the first letter of the Hebrew aleph bet, right? And so it also in so many ways means the father, because you know, all the Abraham, all the a words that were have to do with fatherhood.

So and again, you got the olive, which is the first letter, then you have the mem is the second letter, which is this middle of the aleph bet, which is also connected to the Messiah, because you hear that mama sound that that mem is very much the first word of the word Messiah or king. And then it ends with a tab, which is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which, again, is the beginning and the middle of the and the end of the story. In other words, he's the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And the end of the story, we will know the truth, right?

You'll know exactly what happened at the end of the story and who was who. And sometimes it takes that before you know it. But so when you see this word of truth, it's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful word. And no doubt, when Jesus shows up to John in the Book of Revelation, when he says, you know, I'm the Alpha and I'm the Omega, he's he's relating this idea of truth here and the same word that King David is not wanting ripped out of his mouth.

And so there's a challenge to me, right? Like God would take the word of truth, rip it out of our mouths and because that is something I just can't picture myself doing. And so then it says, For I have hoped in thy judgments. And so the reverse logic on this is like, OK, well, if I hope.

If I hope. In my judgments, and it's not going to be taken, so if I don't hope, then I could get the word of truth ripped out of my mouth. Well, the unfortunate part of that is, you know, you we think that with our hearts, we, you know. It's really trusted, but, you know, in our minds, we think that's true, but have our hearts really gotten there?

And so when I go back to think, where have I been in my life where I really clearly did not trust in his judgments? And I remember when we lost the dealership and we lost our house and we lost all our cars and we didn't have the money to to rent a house. Somebody lent us the money to rent a house.

But then we still didn't have the money to pay the deposit on the electric bill to get the electricity turned on. And so I took a job, you know, in my 50s throwing newspapers in order to get the money together to have the the the power turned on in our house. And at this point in time, I had three kids. It was a struggle.

And I'd served God and, you know, I was actually on the radio doing the Christian Car Guys show and I was teaching Sunday school and all this. And I was just did not understand why I was going through what I was going through. Many people in Mocksville thought I was a crook because all this money had gotten gone and people weren't getting paid. Oh, it was a hard time.

So as I'm running, running, running, throwing these papers, you know, you have to get the papers at like two in the morning and get them folded. And they all had to be out before five o'clock. And I had a really big route so that I could earn the money I needed to earn.

And part of it was apartment complexes. And so this was in the winter and I would have to run from apartment to apartment, run the stairs, get up to the top floor, hand out the papers, go back down the stairs, etc. And of course, I was a car dealer just a few months before that, a fairly important person in my own mind, which clearly was not.

And then now I'm a newspaper boy. And I remember it was an icy day one day and I slipped and I just busted my keister. I mean, I really took a hard fall, ripped my pants all the way through the skin, was bleeding. And as I was laying on the ground, I can remember clearly just looking up at God and going, really? Really, after all I've done? And so I can say at that moment, right, that my heart was not trusting in his judgments, right? That clearly, you know, there was a whole lot going on that I did not understand and I wasn't trusting. And praise God, he didn't rip the word of truth out of my mouth.

But apparently that's a possibility. And so, you know, had I not continued to trust? You know, my son was graduating that year from a Christian school and we didn't have the money to pay the rest of the tuition. And so they said he couldn't graduate. And it was really a burden because it was like $20,000.

I remember this is a crazy amount of money, money I couldn't even dream of coming up with. But he'd been in these Christian schools and I didn't want to take him out in his senior year. You know, but there I was and, wow, about a week before graduation, the headmaster had called and told us that he couldn't graduate. But then about a week before graduation, the same headmaster called us and said, I want to share the good news with you guys.

Your bill has been paid. They wouldn't tell us how or what, you know, I'll never know how it happened. But here's what I know. God is good, right? Even when we don't see what's going on, right?

We think we don't have enough to get by, but he knows what's really going on, right? And what we see with our eyes is not necessarily what we will end up knowing with our heart. And he taught my heart a lot about his judgments right then.

And I really would have missed out on it had I not trusted. But I want to think back to the idea of the vuv. And the idea of the vuv is that, right, and there's more, and there's more, right? And so when we look at the life of Isaac, we look at the life of Abraham, you know, the greatest blessing we can have is for our kids, in my view, is for our kids to take the Word of God on to new levels. Well, for Isaac and Abraham, it looked like they only batted about 50%, right?

Because of Ishmael was one of Abraham's kids, and clearly Esau was one of Isaac's kids. But in Jacob's case, you know, the Jews teach that he was a blessing, and there's more, and there's more, because when you think about the 12 tribes of Israel all came out of it, and there were a lot of shenanigans in Jacob's life, right? He went through all the stuff with his brother, with the hairy arms, and then he went, you know, and Laban, you know, didn't give him his wife and all that stuff he went through, and then his kids tricked him into thinking that Joseph was dead, and all that went on in his life. It was struggle after struggle after struggle, and those kids, you know, crazy stories, right? They sold their brother into slavery and all that stuff, but now think what happened, right?

I mean, they teach that Levi learned the Scriptures, and Moses ended up coming out of that, and Aaron came out of that, and then of course, you know, clearly David and Boaz, and of course Solomon and even Jesus came out of that line of Judah, and don't miss that, you know, out of line of Benjamin came, you know, Paul the Apostle, and on and on and on and on it goes from those 12 who were blessed of Jacob's in spite of the fact that there were a lot of shenanigans. But God knows it's not the end of the story, right? And there's more. And there's more. And so as we look at this, Lord, can we just trust, right? Your judgments so that you don't rip the word of truth, because the word of truth needs to stay in our mouths so that it can go on to the next generation, because what we really, really want is and there's more. Thank you for digging with me today in the 119th Psalm.