This is the Truth Network. Are you like me and you struggle in holding grudges or wanting to avenge? And what exactly is that in Hebrew does God show us in His Word how we can combat that? That's all happening today in what God showed me today.
So I want to start a new daily podcast based on the fact that I am currently homebound and have an opportunity to do that every morning since the accident. Hopefully I'll be able to make it back to the studio to do my show on Saturday. But I wanted to start this new Daily podcast on what God showed me this morning. The title is What God Showed Me Today, so every day will be what God showed me for that day. And so I have lately been focusing on what Victor Hugo said in Le Miserables, which is.
To love another person is to see the face of God. As it says in 1 John 4, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Some of the most amazing words ever written, right? And that picture that we see time and again as we study even the word love in Hebrew. Which, you know, I love to get into the letters and that idea. And so when I. was reading that and thinking about this idea of loving another person is to see the face of God.
I uh began to think about you know love your neighbor as yourself And so I went back to where we find that, Leviticus 19, 18, to be exact, and it says, You shall not take vengeance. Nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. And once again I was Taking it back to Think about that, love your neighbor as yourself, but I had forgotten about the stuff that comes before it. And so, as I looked at that, the Holy Spirit kind of.
nudged me to take a hard look at this word vengeance and then the word grudge. And as I did that, and it's going to be in the show notes, the Hebrew words that are described, Arian is. More than amazing because both. The idea of taking a grudge or holding a grudge and uh taking vengeance. Both words start with the letter nun.
And the letter none, as you may Now, as we talked about many times in our podcast, if you study this, the letter none... Has to do with that fallen seed. When you look at the letter itself, it looks like a seed that's just now come up out of the soil. And the idea of that is that. In order to for a seed to live, right, it has to die, it has to go into the soil, into the darkness, so to speak, and then it has to spring up, you know, back to life.
And Jesus is an amazing example of that, in that, you know, nobody went further down than Jesus, both as he, you know, went and spoke to those souls that were in the middle of the earth, but also he went down in humility in every way you could possibly. He was afflicted more, and the idea of going down and down and down, you see, he went all that far down, but then he was raised, you know, way above the heavens, as it talks about in Ephesians 4.
So he went way, way, way, way down, but then he came way, way, way, way back up. And so I thought, isn't that fascinating that both. The idea of you know, taking a vengeance and and and holding a grudge would start with this letter which has to do with that idea.
So just moving on to that first word, which is um to avenge or vengeance Um If we go through the letters, it it showed me something spectacular, quite convicting actually. Like we talked about, that first letter in the word avenge is that letter nun. And so here we are rising up, and the second letter is a kuf. And the kuf. Um m Is one of my favorite letters in the whole alphabet.
It has this idea of righteousness within it, and it. has to do with the proximity. The closer you get to God, The closer or the more holy you become, because obviously he's going to. Um Convict you and essentially purify you as you get close. And so you The word starts off spectacular with this idea of this none and then this kuff.
But here's where it goes. Back on itself because it ends in what's called a final mem. And a final mem is an enclosed. And the idea is, you're closing that all within yourself. In other words, you're going to make this right yourself rather than giving it to God.
And. The challenge with that is because it starts with that letter none. like that seed, you will continue to feed it. And so if you think about, as I did immediately, people that I felt like I needed to take vengeance on based on their actions towards me, unfortunately, I found many of those that I was continuing to feed, rather than turning it over to God, opening up that mem, so to speak. Uh and let that Let God's righteousness handle it.
So it's fascinating that here we have this root that's growing in our soil, right? Because we're good soil. And if you're listening to this podcast and you love God, I'm sure you're good soil. And so we got things growing down there, and we got to make sure that we do not feed them. And one of those ideas is a vengeance.
Like, how are we going to get even? And it's amazing sometimes when you even are letting your mind run with people that, for whatever reason, have harmed you, you know, you'll begin to think of all the bad things that can happen to them. And whether you realize it or not, you're taking vengeance almost by cursing them in your mind. And so do not feed that. And I'm talking from a point of experience.
Believe me, I was so convicted when I saw this, I immediately went, oh my gosh, I got to quit feeding that. And we'll talk about what we're going to feed here shortly, but we've got to get to these two words. Again, the first of those we're going to talk about is vengeance. And if you look in the show notes on this podcast, you're going to see this picture that I developed with artificial intelligence to show exactly what I'm talking about. And it's particularly helpful.
It's got the nun, the kuf, and the final mem, and you'll see how that's enclosed and it's turning on itself. Second idea is to keep a grudge. The Operating word in that idea of keeping a grudge against your neighbor is that it's something that you keep, right? Love keeps no record of wrongs.
Well, unfortunately, oh man, do I and again, I found myself so tied up in this particular one because it has similar ideas in it. And this one, again, starts out with that letter none. In other words, something's springing up. We've got a root in the ground, and that root. In the second letter of the word grudge is the letter tet, And that letter tet is normally the idea of goodness.
In fact, the word, you know, when God said everything was good, you know, it starts with that letter. And and so The word tov, which means goodness, is that idea. But its goodness often hidden inside of something, and it too is an enclosed. uh letter. actually not closed completely, but it has this idea of a baby's womb almost because it's the ninth letter of the alphabet.
And so something's growing in there, okay? And unfortunately it Has to do with the twisting that goes on inside, like an umbiblical cord. And when we begin to twist inside keeping that grudge, we're holding on to it. We're actually. Um You know, putting it in fetters of some kind or handcuffs, right?
We're keeping hold of this. unfortunately bad root. And then if you look at the last letter. it's a race, and that race has to do with your mind or your head or the head waters of something. But if you think about the grudges that you hold, oh my goodness, uh they affect your head.
You're constantly trying to make a case for why you're right. And you have every right to hold this grudge. I call it running scripts. Your mind is just running over and over and over again on how it is that I am right in order to hold this stuff on. And so both these ideas Art Excruciating from a standpoint of, oh my goodness, how in the world do I not build this kind of route?
And how is it that I get the right route going so that I'm feeding the right thing, right? And so it's fascinating that, you know, I thought about it and prayed about it, and I came to the understanding. That The opposite of these ideas to some extent, or the antidote for these ideas, is humility, right? And Jesus is the perfect example of that humility in that, right, he was humbled, he was afflicted. In other words, I'm not good enough to make these judgments.
It started with a judgment that helped me to keep a grudge or to avenge. In other words, I've judged the situation and I'm in no position to judge.
So the issue is actually pride. And what needs to happen is humility. And so it's fascinating that. The Bible tells us the most humble man of all, right, was Moses, other than Jesus. And you can see why Jesus was humble.
He humbled himself to come to earth, he humbled himself on the cross to take. Stuff from everybody and still say, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. But in Moses' case, right. He because of his humility. Uh because He you know, climb the mountain because he saw his need for God so desperately that he was willing to face his fears and go into that darkness that was on the cloud that day.
And because of that, because he was the meekest man, he was able to see something nobody else got to see. He got to see the backside of God. Mm-hmm. The amazing thing about that is we catch God's vision. In other words, the idea of the letter Ion, which is the first letter in the the Hebrew word for Humility.
And That Idea is vision. If you look at it, it looks like the letter Y. And again, I'm going to put a picture of that word on the show notes as well. But when you look at that letter I, It had, I mean, like the letter Y, when you look at the two stems of the I, the Y, why am I saying I? You know, you take a Y and it branches off.
Well, at the end of those two branches, if you can picture two eyeballs, and then those two points of view, so to speak, that come together. Right, where the two branches come together, that is the optic nerve which creates one vision, okay? And so that letter ion has a lot to do with being yoked, having the same vision as God. It's like he is leading us captive, so to speak, captivity captive, as Paul starts out Ephesians 4, actually, by talking about that he's a prisoner in Christ. And that idea is that he has Christ's point of view.
Which couldn't be more From a standpoint of humility, than Jesus, the most humble person that ever certainly walked. And so, when we get God's vision, when we begin to see that light that Moses saw, that clearly Jesus went to his father to get constantly, when we begin to see God, the natural result is we realize we're nothing. I mean, to have God's vision is literally to see nothing. Our You know, best stuff is rags and that kind of stuff.
So, the beautiful idea of humility in Hebrew in that first letter being Ion. The second letter is: we're going to go back to that letter new, and we're going to sink down that root.
So, now that we have an idea of what that really is, where our position is in things, we can now sink down a root. that is deep in the soil. Right? And that letter none, that faith. In other words, now that we've fallen down to that point, we can begin to put this root in.
And what a beautiful, wonderful idea that is. And fascinatingly, when you look at the word meek, you'll see the last letter is the letter Vov. And that letter vov Is literally a connector between heaven and earth, and it's a male energy that comes down. And so It's like Jesus is sending his light so that you can see. Right, which is exactly what happened to Moses.
He got tremendously humble, so then he was able to see. His Fallenness of the dead seed right down in the soil, and then down comes this light to bring it up to root. And that idea of meekness then is this. Idea as we think about it, as we study the scriptures more and more, we catch God's vision. We see our own humility, see where we really are in things, and so that God can then begin to sink our root deeper into the soil and bring his light.
And so, as we think about this conviction that I have of holding a grudge and wanting to seek vengeance, I am so grateful for Moses' example and even more grateful, of course, for what Jesus showed us. The more humble I get, the more I realize that God is in charge of this thing and vengeance is his, and he's going to keep all the accounts perfect. My job, as it points out in Ephesians 4, so clearly, and I can't recommend to anybody that they read Ephesians 4 in light of what we just discussed. is to Bring everybody together in unity to love one another To love your neighbor as yourself, which is what Leviticus says. But to love another person is to see the face of God in unity.
And so as we love everybody, not holding grudges. And not seeking to avenge, but love, love, love people.
Well, biblically, oh my goodness, then we can begin to see what God, what Paul was describing in Ephesians 4, what Jesus had in mind for us, the very reason. Um that he came to Earth. That he humbled himself like he did and now is exalted, praying for all of us that we would get it. Thank you for listening to what I learned today. God bless.
