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.
I am the god of dive mining. Verse 10 certainly has several nuggets we get to dig into today. Psalm 119 verse 10 reads, With my whole heart I have sought thee. Let me not wander from thy mitzvah or from thy commandments, which is one of the nuggets that we are definitely going to get into in a minute about what is the difference between the word commandment and mitzvah. It's a huge thing.
It's really, really fun to study. But first off, let's go back to the just with my whole heart, I have sought thee, right? And the beautiful thing of that, if you remember back to the second verse of the section on Aleph, because now we're in the section on Bet, but that was with, you know, blessed are those who keep his testimonies.
Then seek him with a whole heart. So interestingly, here we come into Bet, and the second verse again goes back to this whole heart and knowing King David as we do, he was a man after God's heart and he served him with a whole heart. And it's fascinating to me that this idea of this hoof that is the letter that has to do with whole and the lamed is this idea, even though the word is whole, it really is a focused type of thing. It's like blocking out everything that's keeping me away from my focus. And so even though the word is whole, and it does mean whole, but the idea is everything that isn't in value, everything that isn't in importance is being blocked out. And when you think about, like, when you think about autism, right, as I get a chance to work with special needs people all the time, the autistic, one of their struggles is trying to block out that which is keeping them from being able to focus on something.
So, you know, if there's a fan running in a room, an autistic person can get caught up in the fan, or all sorts of different things. But the idea is we have to block out that which is unimportant so that we can seek God with a whole heart. And the reason is, is this, this huff is like the letter huff that begins the word whole is like the palm of your hand. And the idea is to kind of, like, that when you look at a hat that the little, you know, head covering that Jewish people wear, it's kind of like a crown. But the idea is that there's this pressure on your intellect to focus on what's important.
And this is the idea of the huff. So the idea of whole is, again, is very cool when you think about it, is blocking out everything that isn't of God. So when I'm seeking me with a whole heart, you know, it's an idea of focusing on that which is God with my heart.
And so this huff in this word is absolutely, you know, a critical aspect of what King David is explaining here. But then I don't want anybody to miss the beautiful relationship that I have seen in my own life, in fact, I thought about it all week, about people that I know that are whole hearted, that have somehow an ability to see people in need more than other people, which gets into the whole situation of what's the difference between a mitzvah and a commandment, you know? And so it's important for us to really dive into what is a mitzvah?
What is it that King David is referring to? He says commandment as far as what the English translation is. So why is this different than like the Ten Commandments or some of those other things?
And so that's what I wanted to dig into for a minute. So the idea of a mitzvah, when you look at it, it's beautiful that in Leviticus 27, you see both words used for commandments, where it says these are the commandments which the Lord commanded Moses for the children of Israel in Sinai, okay? And the good news is in Leviticus 27, they show you some of these mitzvah to get an idea of why the Jews say a mitzvah is a good deed. Because this really, I guess simply put, you could say tithes and offerings.
It's like when Boaz, you know, was helping out Ruth, this was a mitzvah. Because the idea is it's a commandment because when it says that the Lord commanded Moses, that's just a sava, not a mitzvah. So you put the mem in front of the sava, when you take your commandment and you put a mem in front, which means the Messiah or Jesus, when you put that Jesus in front of a commandment, then all of a sudden you get the Jesus aspects of things. In other words, you get grace and you get truth. When you put those in front of a commandment, then all of a sudden things look really cool. So when you think about the grace that Boaz showed for Ruth, you get a picture of what a mitzvah is, or if you again look in Leviticus 27, or you look in Numbers 15, and I'm going to put these links at the show notes, or Deuteronomy 14 and 15, where they talk about lending and not borrowing and all these are the mitzvah, right?
These are commandments that has Jesus in them. Well, have you noticed that the most generous people that I know, I've noticed, are the people that I would say are the wholehearted people? Like the people that are really wholehearted tend to be this way. I've got people in my life, I could name names, I will. Gather is one of my dearest friends, and you will never meet a more generous man, but to know him is to know that it comes from a whole heart, and he sees people in need like nobody else.
When I was in Jamaica, I went on a mission trip with the Carolina Boys Academy, and we were doing sort of a boot camp for them up there in Teen Challenge on Jamaica. And we had with us a man that I call Corn. His name is Ricky Corn, but I just call him Corn. Well, if you didn't know Corn, he can spot somebody in need like nobody I've ever seen. Like every time we went somewhere, he would spy someone in need, and the next thing you know, he was giving them French fries, giving them money, doing something.
Because it was all about his whole heart. He could see as he sought God, then these mitzvah apparently just came more naturally to him. And so, it's really a beautiful thing. I have sought thee with my whole heart, right? Let me not wander from these opportunities to serve you, Lord, these mitzvah, these opportunities to be you to somebody that is in need. I mean, it's absolutely a beautiful thing that King David illustrates so well for me here, and I've thought about it all week. And maybe you can think about people in your life that are wholehearted like that, that can spot somebody in need, whether it's a prayer need or physical need and all those things. It's a beautiful thing to see and understand what's in your energy just a commandment and a mitzvah.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-09-14 08:09:01 / 2023-09-14 08:12:22 / 3
