Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119: Wisdom & Understanding ALEF - BET Overview

Hidden treasures of the 119th Psalm. So we are going on a treasure hunt, and the gold we are seeking in this treasure hunt is actually the face of God, pure light. So join us taking this deep dive mining with King David in the 119th Psalm. Today we are going to take a little break from mining, and we are going to get on the elevator, and as we are finishing the Aleph and fixing to go to Bet, I thought it would be a good time to take a little break, go up a little higher, and get a sort of overhead view for a minute of what we have been looking at.

I think there are some details that are really only found sometimes by looking from above. And so now that we have finished all eight verses of Aleph, I wanted to review the Aleph a bit and then move on to Bet, because there is something that I think is an absolute treasure, and is part of clearly what the psalmist was getting at when he did this. So in order to go into that, I want to look at Deuteronomy 4 for a minute, specifically Deuteronomy 4, 5, and 6, and look at these verses, because I think they speak volumes into what King David or the psalmist was working at when he did this psalm.

So Deuteronomy 4, 5 says, Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded you, that you should do so in the land where you go to possess it. And 6 says, Keep therefore and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding. So you notice that the word keep is connected to wisdom. And the word do, in other words, you're supposed to keep these things for wisdom, and your understanding would be that you actually did them in the sight of nations. Well, when you look at the first two letters of the Aleph bit, they're very much connected to wisdom and understanding.

And if you think about it like this, if you're a father, you know, there's nothing like having kids that have wisdom, right? And clearly King David taught this to his son, right? Because there's several Proverbs about how you shame your father when you do foolish things. Now, it's clear when you go above the verses of Aleph that David was all about trying to make sure that he was not foolish to his father. Because when we look at these, I think it's absolutely beautiful that King David used that word keep in so many of the verses in the Aleph section. So we get through the first blessed are those that walk in the way of the Lord, but then the second verse, right? Blessed are they that keep his testimonies. And then we get down to the fourth verse says, thou has commanded us to keep thy precepts. And then fifth verse, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes, eighth verse, he actually lands there, right where he says, I will keep thy statutes or forsake me not utterly. You can see that here, he is trying to show his father that he has seen the wisdom, right? In being able to keep all these different things. And again, the very things that are in Deuteronomy four, when you look at it, and you go, Oh, this is interesting.

So clearly, here he is saying, how can I make my dad proud? I can keep these things. And so it's fascinating to me that even wrote it as an acrostic so that people would memorize it. Well, as they memorize these verses, guess what they are doing, they are keeping them, they're guarding them in their heart, right? And I'm clear that David knew these things that if you want to really keep this, which is really the practice that I've been doing myself, you know, for about six weeks now, as I've been attempting to memorize, and I actually have gotten through the first 24 verses.

But it's amazing, as you memorize these things, you really do keep them. And I can't help but note that also, you know, have you ever tried to throw away a Bible? You know, that was even before I was a Christian, I had a Bible that I lugged around with me. One of the only things I have from my childhood is this Bible because it's, it's wisdom to keep that kind of thing. So one of the things that we are clearly charged with here is, Dad, how can we keep these for the next generation?

I mean, think how beautiful it is. For generations and generations, the Jews kept these. And so then when Christ came on the scene, there was something for him to speak to that people could all make reference to. And so after Christ, think of all the monks and all the different people who kept this word, the wisdom of that is really remarkable. And so as you look through this aleph, and you think about, gee, how can we make Dad proud?

By keeping them, right? And then it says that understanding is to do so as we make the turn from aleph to bet, right? We think that aleph has to do with father and again, all these items, but when you think of Abba, that the next letter in Abba, which has to do with father is abet, which also means house, which is also the very first letter in the Torah itself, right, is bereshit. So you know, there are so many nuggets coming our way in these next eight verses, but I don't want you all to miss that the relationship between wisdom and understanding that we're going into and understanding itself begins with a bet. And it has to do with doing things. So as we look into these next eight verses, I bet you're going to see, now that we've had a chance to keep, we got to start doing some stuff. And we're going to get there in the upcoming verses as we get back in the mind shaft and go back digging into these verses now that we've had a brief look from above at both the aleph and the bet.