Hidden treasures of the 119th Psalm. Oh, there is so much more available today as we dig around in the, and there's more section, which is the vav, the Hebrew letter vav, which we talked about many times, is this idea of continuation, but in Jacob's ladder, so to speak, the straight line coming down from heaven.
And he keeps providing and he keeps providing and he keeps providing. And so if you missed that in this verse, I don't know what to say. But anyway, verse 45 says, and right in the idea of continuation, and I will walk at liberty for I seek thy precepts.
Oh man, what an amazing statement this is in so many different ways, right? You remember last verse, we were talking about verse 44, he said he was going to keep his law continually forever and ever. Well now, and there's more, and I'm going to walk at liberty, right? For I seek thy precepts. Now, King David is here going to give us a little lesson in his grandmother, his great grandmother, actually, Rahab, because that word for liberty in Hebrew is Rahab, which is really kind of cool because she's the only person that got liberty. You know, when you think about this verse, you can't help but think about Rahab because she sought thy precepts. In other words, she was the only one in the city of Jericho that sought, you know, God, so to speak.
And so how cool is that, that she was the one that got to walk at liberty. And I don't know how this works out in your own life, but I was certainly thinking about it that, you know, the precepts that we've talked about is one of them is clearly in the Shema that love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength. That's one of the precepts. So we know that that idea of loving God with all our hearts, you know, wholeheartedly is a big part of who King David was and how we get to walk at liberty.
Okay. So, you know, I can't help but think about this one story in my own life. As I have told you before, I worked at one point in time for Bob Neale, Chrysler, Plymouth, Cheeky Beagle. And actually, I've talked about when I got fired from there, but one of the reasons I'm sure I got fired has to do with this story where I walked at liberty. But at this point in time, I did get to walk at liberty, and I want to share it. So we, I was a baby Christian.
This is about 1993. I came to Christ in 91. And I became the general manager of Bob Neale.
And it was just everything. I saw God everywhere and just just wanted to find him. And so I started a Bible study.
It's kind of unusual, but I did. Right there in a car dealership on Saturday morning, which I had no concept that this would really upset the owners, but it did apparently. And we created a mission statement that was a big deal back then. And it had, with the help of God, we, you know, we will seek to, and since it mentioned God, and we put the mission statement right there is when people were on hold when they called the dealership. And so little did I know all these things were upsetting my management and the owners of the dealership. And it would be not uncommon at all for me to make some biblical reference in our sales meetings, as God was teaching me so much about leadership and so much about sales. And you might even heard me say, you know, it won't matter how many cars we sell it only matter how many people's we will help.
And so God had blessed I mean, we were selling cars like they'd never Chrysler's that had never been sold in this market. But they did not like what I was doing. And I really wasn't all that aware of it until the owner, one of the owners took in another owner, and they had a meeting with me one day, and they came in and they told me I had to fire my used car manager. And his name was Tim Sharp is good friend of mine to this day. And Tim was just very outspoken. And so he would tell people exactly what he thought, which was a little bit coarse, but he was a good used car manager, but they did not like him.
He wasn't making enough money per car and all those kinds of things. So they wanted me to fire him, which, you know, being that I worked for them, I was going to go along with this idea of firing him. Well, that was on a Friday afternoon, or it was a Friday morning, actually, when they told me that and Friday afternoon, before I had a chance to fire Tim, he had a heart attack, and they took him off to the hospital to be actually got a heart catheterization.
And so now I had a dilemma. In that, oh, my goodness, I was being told that I needed to fire this guy. But clearly, I could not do that with him in the hospital. It just wasn't anything, you know, and I prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and sought God in this. And it was very clear to me that this was just something I wasn't supposed to do.
In fact, it became so clear to me, it was kind of like the Blues Brothers, I was on a mission from God, it's like when something's clearly obvious to you, that you know, God does not want you to do something, it makes it pretty simple to walk in liberty. Because in spite of the fact that I realized that it could get me fired, I was not going to fire Tim Sharp in the hospital, this wasn't something I was going to do. So I called the owner that I that originally hired me and asked if I could have a meeting with him and the other owner, because I really didn't feel like I could fire Tim sharp that he'd had this heart attack, and he was in the hospital, and it just wasn't the right thing to do.
We'll do everything, you know that you want, but this is just something I can't do. And I just don't feel right about it. I probably even told him I prayed about it and did not want to do it.
Felt God saying this isn't the time to do such a thing. So what happened was, it wasn't long, about 45 minutes later, the owner, not both of them, just the one that originally hired me came in, he wanted to have a meeting with me. And he sat me down and he basically told me, he said, Okay, you don't have to fire Tim Sharp.
But here's what we require of you if you're not going to fire Tim Sharp. And these were the list of things that they told me. No more Bible study on the presence on the premises. No more, you know, God in the message on hold, no more talking about God in sales meetings. In fact, they wanted me to keep my references to God, the bare minimum. And so it was clear that obviously I had overstepped the liberty that I thought I had. But anyway, you know, it was interesting to me that God was just with this, because almost immediately I began to pray, Okay, God, what do I do with this?
I felt kind of like Hezekiah. You're like, here's the list of what, you know, Sennacherib is saying that you got to do, you know, and so God just was like, Oh, it's no problem. You know, they own this property, they have the right to tell you all those things. And so, you know, you can have your Bible study because we did it every Saturday morning before work, we just moved it off premises. And we took the stuff off hold. And I took the God out of the sales meetings and, and did all the things that I felt like I needed to do in order to meet their request.
And of course, we didn't fire Tim Sharp. Shortly after that, you know, I got cancer and a lot of things happened. And I ended up getting fired, you know, years later, a few years later. But at that time, and at the point of the story that I don't want you to miss, is that once I knew that God did not want me to fire Tim Sharp, once I knew that, then I walked at complete liberty. It was like, okay, you know, I, I know what God wants me to do here. And if I get fired, then that's just what God wants. And it must be along the plans, which eventually I did. But it's okay, because I walked at liberty in my own heart, because I knew exactly what I felt like God wanted me to do in this situation. And so I love, I love, love, love this Rahab verse. And I will walk at liberty, right? For I seek His precepts. Thanks for listening.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-08-12 08:52:09 / 2023-08-12 08:56:03 / 4
