Psalms 119:138 Faith Comes From Hearing

This is the Truth Network. Hidden treasures of the 119th song. So today we get to dig into the understanding, the second anointing of the letter Zaddy, which has to do with righteousness. But now how do we apply that through understanding? And as we talked about yesterday, that God is righteous and upright are his judgments. And so how does that play out if we were to understand it?

And how can we actually make that happen? It's really, really cool that we get this example of why God taught or why Jesus taught in parables, because it has everything to do with stories. And so as we look at verse 138, which is the understanding. In the verse of the letter Zaddy, it says, thy testimonies that thou has commanded are righteous and very faithful. So testimonies, and it's just an interesting question immediately where he says thy testimonies that thou has commanded. And it's interesting that he commanded that we keep his testimonies.

He commanded that we essentially keep the Bible so that we would have these stories so that we could see how God actually interacts with us. And that these stories greatly increase our faith, because that's what it says. They are righteous.

In other words, here's the right way things happen. And they're very faithful. So it was right what happened with Noah.

It was right what happened actually with Lot's wife. We think about all these different testimonies, all these different stories that give us application of what righteousness looks like. So, and very faithful, meaning that as we hear these stories, we're very faithful. And as we hear these stories, we can see that the Bible is a book of examples, not a book of exceptions. In other words, all these people have this phenomenal walk with God.

And he's took them on these amazing adventures, which God, if you've walked with God much, I'm sure you're going to see that he does do that. And then it's all working towards being made into the image of his son, even in the case of Joseph. When you think about his testimony, his story, he went through a lot of trials and tribulations in prison and all of this.

So it's a very, very, very important book. that he went through with his brothers in order to be made more and more into the image of Christ. And you can see that in Joseph in so many different ways. And of course, as we see those stories, they all are very faithful, they build our faith. Well, I don't know if you're like me and you just wondered, you know, which story really brought you to faith?

How did it really happen? And in my case, I feel so blessed that I came to faith through the Bible and reading the Bible, and my biggest concern, as I had originally read the Bible, is why didn't Adam die, right? It said, the day that you will eat of this fruit, you will surely die. Well, to me, my immediate problem was that I didn't know the wisdom of the letters adding, that all, right, that God is righteous, and his commandments are, you know, very upright.

In other words, everything about him is exactly right. But I didn't see that. It seemed to me that he was lying, because Adam didn't die when he ate of the fruit. Well, as I began to study and study and look more at that story, and eventually get to the part of the New Testament where we see that Christ would die, that we would what?

We would be able to live, and what did life look like? Well, life looked like, as I studied the New Testament, that I was no longer separated from God. And so immediately, when Adam ate the fruit, you remember, he knew he was naked, so he hid. So here's the separation that he did die. He was no longer able to be in God's complete presence. In other words, God could no longer completely turn his face upon him, as we talked about in the previous section, and be himself, because Adam now was hiding.

And so was I, by the way. And so as Jesus died and covered us with his blood, and I saw that in his story, then I realized, oh my goodness, that by accepting this blood, I now can actually live. I can actually get to the point where God can turn his face, and he can be himself with me, and I can be himself with him, and that I can actually live from a biblical standpoint of life, right? To have life and to have it abundantly is actually to be able to be in God's presence, to actually have this relationship, to have him in my heart is the only way that I'm gonna be able to live. And so his testimonies are righteous, right? They're telling you how to get right and how to be right with Christ, and oh so faithful, because through that I understood, and my faith right came by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.