Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119: Verse 23- Great Persecution

Hidden treasures of the 119th Psalm. Today we are mining in the 23rd verse, still in the gimel section.

And as we've talked about, that g sound that is of the gimel has, like, this whole concept of great starts with that G sound. And so you can kind of see that this is the seventh verse in this particular section. So to some extent, this is the, you know, Sabbath for them.

The day that quite often you'll find him praising or meditating. And once again, we find him doing that in the seventh verse. But it starts out with a gimel again, like all the verses in this section. And it says, princes also did sit and speak against me. But thy servant did meditate in thy statutes, which is interesting.

The contrast here that you might remember in the last verse, it was just like Easter morning and the stone's been rolled away and he's going to remove the reproach and the shame. And now he is coming in for a landing again on this idea of the gimel in that the great people out there, the princes are sitting, right? They're not servants like he makes himself out here to be, but he's sitting and they're speaking against him.

And one of the very interesting things here is the Jews teach that this psalm is very much a spiritual warfare psalm, that they believe that when someone's involved in spiritual warfare, they need to recite the hundred nineteen psalm. Well, this is one of those places that you can't help but think what princes is King David talking about here? And certainly one of the things to consider is the prince of the power of the air is sitting and speaking against him. And it's fascinating to me how he would know that, you know, that they would know that the accuser is out there speaking against him.

And is that the prince that we know is always speaking against us? And so as we pray this particular verse, it's fascinating to me this particular verse. You don't hear the prayer so clearly because if it says princes sit and speak against me, but your servant has meditated on my statutes.

It's hard to hear the ask in that particular statement. But, you know, as you sit there and actually meditate on what he might be saying here is he's saying, I'm trusting you, God, so completely. I'm not even ask you to deal with these princes. I trust that you will speak for me because I am going to do what your servant knows he needs to do. In other words, I'm not going to consider what these people are saying over there about me.

I'm not going to be concerned with it. What I'm going to be concerned with is actually taking in your word, your statutes and processing them and talking about them. Because that word meditate is not just a singular like I'm going to sit there and process this on my own. Quite often, meditating has to do with, in the case of this word in Hebrew, speaking about these with other people, which is kind of cool because this is Shabbat for them. This is the Sabbath day. And so, you know, they quite often would be sitting in the synagogues. And like in a good Sunday school class, you know, they're discussing these statutes and giving a chance to process them.

And I hope you're as blessed as I am that and actually today is Thursday for me. So I have just come back from, you know, the Bible study that I do. It's actually a Christian Businessmen's Committee meeting, which there aren't very many of us left in business that come to that meeting. But nonetheless, you know, that group, we discuss the scriptures. And as we do, quite often I see things I've never seen before.

Because when you start to get other Christians point of view, you get to other people who are in God and they have seen things that you haven't seen or they have questions you haven't come across. You see some beautiful things. And it absolutely is invaluable to me as I meditate on any scripture that I share often with all the people that are in my circles where I get a chance to totally be myself and totally say, you know, I don't understand what this means. I heard a preacher one time years ago talk about when you go to meditate on scripture, it's kind of like the Levi Garrett chewing tobacco commercial where you just put a pinch between your cheek and gum and you just let it kind of ruminate there. Or, you know, the same idea of, you know, the clean animals.

They chew the cud and they keep chewing it and chewing it and digesting it and digesting it. And since we're supposed to eat the word, it only makes sense that, you know, the more you think about it, the more you fall in love with God. Right. The more we think about God, the more we consider his words, we consider these commandments, things that he's asking us to do. It's all his thoughts for us are responded back to him. And so as we meditate, this was what King David is saying here is a response to these princes talking about him. He's going to meditate on the statutes being the high, hard, the more difficult ones that he really doesn't understand. And so that takes meditation. And the more I do that, the more I am falling in love with God and not concerning myself with what the princes say against me.

I'm trusting God, you know, with where that goes and how that goes. And I also find it absolutely beautiful that here in the seventh verse, when we're getting ready to come in for a landing on the idea of Gimel, you know, he he often is here at this point of rest. Where is he going to rest when it comes to the Gimel, when it comes to these great things that are going on around him? And you can appears that he rests by saying your servant.

In other words, I'm I'm not the great ones here. I'm just the servant. And I'm here meditating on these things that I'm trying to understand.

And this is how much I love you. Again, he is the king of Israel at this point in time, not necessarily somebody that you would think about being a servant. But this is where he goes to when he rests. He rests in this place here of, hey, I'm just here to serve. And what a beautiful place when people are speaking against us, whether that be our enemy or whether that be those that are standing around us. They consider themselves greater than us. However, they can go about thinking that. Then the neat thing is that your servant will just meditate on your word. Thank you for mining with me today on verse twenty three.