Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119: Verse 36 - Tune My Heart To - WGOD

Hidden Treasures of the 119th Song Oh, how precious, precious is the verse that we get to dig around in today. And I think this may be one of my favorites, but of course I say that every morning as I do these.

I just land these places and go there. But this one I use quite often as I've memorized it in spiritual warfare setterings. In other words, I feel myself being tempted and this one gives me great hope. It is verse 36 of the psalm itself, but it is the fourth verse in the hay section. So it's really amazing to me, obviously, that God would express that word hay.

This is the expression. And here we're hearing what I believe to be the fourth anointing of the letter hay, which would have to do with might and strength. And so yes, it very much will give you strength if God will answer this prayer of David's heart. So the verse reads, I won't hold you up anymore. It reads, incline my heart unto thy testimonies and not to covetousness. Now this word incline there is just a beautiful word. David uses it a couple times in this psalm. And the idea almost is that you're bending the bow and it has everything to do with good potential.

Okay, it's got this letter test, but either way, it's the number nine, which has to do with babies. There's all kinds of potential in this idea of inclining. So inclining my heart, like, wow, how cool would that be? And God's going to do that through expression here, because here's what he's saying, that there's things that God says to us through his word and through us tuning our hearts to W-G-O-D, to God. He can incline our hearts to these testimonies. This is not only his old and new testimony, and so the Bible itself is a book of examples, but other places that he has come through for you before when you feel yourself being tempted, because here's what we're climbing away from and not unto covetousness. And so once again, I say that this psalm, the sages of Judaism have taught that this is the ultimate spiritual warfare psalm, and this verse certainly has got that kind of potential because, oh my goodness, as God can incline our hearts to how he's come through for other people in the past, how he's come through for us in the past, and simply put, how much he loves us. The whole thing testifies to that, and not unto covetousness. Now this word covetousness is key to the verse, in my opinion, in that this is not the covetousness that's in Exodus 20 and what we normally think of as the Ten Commandments and coveting thy neighbor's house and wife and all that kind of stuff, although I'm sure the words are related, but this particular word covet is that of sort of profit. Like the first place that you find this word in the Bible is when Joseph's brothers were talking about killing him and they say, well, what profit would that be to us?

You know, we need to sell him into slavery. And so the idea is unjust gain. And that kind of, I think it's called weefy, what's in it for me?

Weef me or something, I forget how it's pronounced. But anyway, what's in it for me? So incline my heart to these kinds of things and not unto unjust gain.

So I want to give you an example of this, which I know you're going to think, wow, Robbie, you're pretty depraved. Well, I am, you know, thank God for Jesus. And thank God that he's made me a Baal teshuvah, we've talked about before, that's the master of return. Unlike the prodigal son, I had to come back from a really bad place.

But in order to illustrate this verse, I think it's good to think about this one. So I, um, I've never been a big person, even though I was a car salesman for 40 years, you know, of getting unjust gain from a set standpoint of selling a car. But one time I found myself in a, in a gigantic test, and I'm going to be honest, I failed it.

And here's how it was set up. I got fired, actually, for having a Bible study. And, and doing a whole bunch of stuff that had to do with God at the one dealership I was working at, and they just did not appreciate my faith. Or maybe they thought I was a nut. I don't know. And maybe I was, or maybe I was bad for their business. I don't know. But what I do know is I got fired.

Okay. And as a result, like anybody, you know, that's hard on a man, and I'm trying to find my next career path, whatever that may be. And I was the general manager of Bob Neil, Chrysler, Plymouth, Jeep, Eagle and Winston Salem, North Carolina. And I got a call from Chrysler and Chrysler said to me, Robbie, I don't have any idea why you why they fired you because we never sold Chrysler's that the dealership had been very, very successful from a standpoint of selling new cars, because we were selling like 200, you know, cars a month out. And, and, you know, when we took it over, it was like selling 30. And so we'd been there about five years and really, really grown the business from a standpoint of selling new cars, probably not to the standard point of profit that the owners would have wanted.

So maybe that had something to do with it. But nonetheless, what happened was Chrysler said, you know, if Robbie, if you will buy this dealership that is right near you, where you live in Clemens, North Carolina, you know, we will get you the money. And I was like, Well, I don't have any money. And they were all Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna help you get it. We'll get Chrysler financial Maloney, the money.

And here comes the test. So you know, I go thinking that I can trust this situation or thinking I understand the situation and I go to the people who are selling the dealership. And I get what's called a buy sell, which legally binds me to buy this dealership. Because, you know, they make all sorts of plans when they're going to sell their dealership as far as laying off people and all these things. So I'm legally bound at this point in time to buy this dealership, I go to Chrysler financial expecting to get the money.

And they say, Robbie, you don't have any money. And I said, Well, I kind of told you that, you know, going into this, and they go, Oh, we can't do that, you're gonna have to come up with another hundred thousand dollars in cash in order for us to have that kind of leverage. So I was in a horrible bind. And you see, I was scared. And so all of a sudden, what's in it for me becomes in this case, not necessarily, you know, just planning to come up with some unjust gain, it was just to save my bacon, because I was scared that I was going to get my rear end suit off if I didn't do something about this situation. So I went to an attorney that was very shrewd one that used to work for a very, very shrewd businessman that I used to work for. And he gave me this plan, which was essentially to sell stock in the dealership to raise $100,000.

But the stockholders that were buying the stock, they were did not know I didn't have any money, according to what his plan was. Okay, so here's the test, right? I could feel in my bones, this wasn't right. I was definitely a Christian when it happened.

The year is actually 1998. I remember it vividly because it this test when I failed it radically changed my world. So I knew in my heart that Jesus had come through for me so many, many, many times and oh, I wish at that point in time, my heart would have been inclined to his testimonies on all the places he's come through for all the Bible characters that are in the Bible, which I knew at this point in time, to some extent, and as well as I wish I'd known it. And I knew how many times he'd actually healed me from cancer in 1996. So, you know, I had really good testimonies to lean on. But I didn't.

I leaned towards what's in it for me. And I took the bait and I went out and sold this stock. I not only sold the stock, I sold it to my family, to some extent.

And I sold it to one man that was in our Sunday school class, who I knew to be a seeker, he had not accepted Christ. And, but he was a friend. And he bought the stock. Well, he came to work for us. And it just so happened he was the one that discovered the fact that I didn't have any money in the dealership because he was pretty smart with money. And it blew up big time. But that wasn't the, and of course, you know, certainly, I looked foolish and all my friends and my family said, Robbie, why didn't you just trust us? Why didn't you just tell us? And they all didn't pull out.

They didn't leave me hanging. But that was the foundation that that dealership Westside Chrysler Plymouth was built on. And so, years later, in 2007, when all the money was stolen, not by me, but by somebody else, I realized that, you know, the, the building had been, I mean, the whole transaction had been built on deception. And so Satan had a foot in, because I had not inclined my heart to God's testimonies, I'd inclined my heart to covetousness, this kind of covetousness, you see. And so I say all that to say now, just like in Joseph's brothers case, okay, I wouldn't be talking to you on this podcast right now had all this not taken place.

In other words, what Satan meant for evil God used for good. And certainly God has blessed me with an unbelievable career in radio and whatever. But I don't want to miss, miss what God, you know, took my mess, all these things clearly hurt a lot of people financially hurt my family in so many different ways that there's no way I can undo what my sin did.

However, hopefully you can learn from what I'm saying. And hopefully we can all pray the prayer of King David, right? Incline our hearts for incline our hearts to your testimonies. You always come through and not under what's in it for me because what's in it for me ultimately is you, Jesus. And that's my prayer for all of us today in Psalms 119.