Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119: Verse 11 A Corner Stone of BET

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. So here we are in verse 11 of the Beth section of the 119th Psalm, still digging around in this foundation of our house as we talked about bait means house or bet.

That letter in the Hebrew alphabet is a picture of a house. And so the foundation is kind of critical. And the 11th verse, I am sure you can see with me is a foundational issue, as was the 10th verse that we talked about where we saw him with a whole heart and we didn't wander from doing those good deeds or doing the mitzvahs or wander from his commandments. It's fascinating to me that the next one is a very well-known verse, thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against thee.

And I am sure you can agree with me this is foundational. And again, since the bet idea is that of understanding as well as house, and understanding means that we're going to do something. And so here he is literally hiding the word in his heart and the word hide there is beautiful in Hebrew and it really has much to do with treasuring up. But also when you think about the first places we find this is that Moses was hidden in the bull rushes.

I mean, what a treasure that was. You know, the whole word itself ends up coming through Moses at the beginning there and he was the one that was originally hidden. And then the slave, I mean, excuse me, the spies were hidden by Rahab. And so it's a word that obviously was near and dear to David's heart for a lot of reasons because his mom, excuse me, his great great grandmother was Rahab. So here he says, I'm hiding the word and we talked about this a little bit in the beginning that there are two ways that word is translated and the one being debar, which was in two verses before where it says, you know, that I'm going to take heed according to thy word. But here in verse three, he says, I'm going to hide thy amira, a different word for word, which is really a more poetic and it's also the feminine gender. So amira is fascinating to me that it is of the feminine gender, when it when it's spelled like it's spelled, which essentially it starts out with an aleph and then it's a mem and then it's a race, which, again, these letters are all pictures of things. And so aleph, you would normally associate with the Father, right, like Abba and Abraham, and mem, you would normally associate with Jesus, like Messiah. And then the race, you would normally associate with the Holy Spirit. And so when you hear this amira, then you got the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and then the hey at the end would mean that it's expressed.

And so all that together, interestingly, is of great comfort. And so when when David talks about hiding this in his heart, it's not like the door to the house that we talked about earlier that he was going to use the word. Here we have more like the expression of God himself.

And sometimes it is the same thing as Torah. But in this case, King David is saying, I am treasuring these things up in my heart. And again, he's doing something, he's showing his understanding.

And in doing so he's treasuring up these words. The beautiful thing is he's not only doing it, but this whole Psalm was meant to be memorized. I mean, he did it in this acrostic form, he did it with this tempo, he and if you begin to memorize it, and I couldn't recommend enough to you that you do it. If you begin to do it, you'll note that there are things in it that make it easier to memorize them. One of the simplest being that the way that it's all done with the out of section and the bet section and you know that there's eight and you can begin to see the rhythm of the verses as you begin to memorize it. But then as you're treasuring these things in your heart, you know, it's not just a matter of knowing the words, it's a matter of knowing what the words represent to your heart, right?

And treasuring those things up and spending time thinking about them. And so this, this very verse, you know, thy word I've hidden in my heart that I might sin against thee is clearly a treasure that many people have memorized already. That the treasure that it is. So Jesus shows us exactly how this works. Clearly when he's tempted in the desert by Satan, that he's got all these verses right there at his disposal. You know, when Satan comes that he can see where is what's right and where is what's wrong. And what lines up with the word of God, we always know is what's right.

So as we treasure these things, we've literally changed the story that we're telling ourselves. And it's been my joy really has this year to work harder on my scripture memorization. And as I think about these verses, so often they change the story I'm telling myself about how God loves me, about the things that are available to me about grace, and actually about law too, about this is, no, this is the right thing to do in this circumstance. So this verse itself is a treasure into itself as we treasure this verse that we clearly would not sin against thee. And I love obviously the Psalmist's heart that this is, this is his hope that he would not sin against him. And this is definitely one of the foundational verses of our house.