Psalms 119:107 - Real Living

Hidden Treasures of the 119th Psalm. Oh, I never had, or maybe I have had so much fun being afflicted, but this is particularly fun, as we're in verse 107 of the 119th Psalm today, and it is the third verse in the nun section.

The letter nun, often thought of as a servant, it certainly is the first letter in the word nafesh. And so since this would be the third verse, it is going to tell us counsel, right? Because the third anointing of the seven anointings that Jesus gets in Isaiah 11 is counsel. And it's amazing to me how these always line up so well with those anointings. And so here we're going to get the counsel for our souls.

So here you go. It says, and it reads in English, I am afflicted very much. Quicken me, O Lord, according unto thy word. And I can't help but just note that yesterday when I realized the mistake that I had made, I was afflicted very much.

And I very much needed to be quickened. And the interesting thing, when you look at that word afflicted in Hebrew, clearly it starts with a nun, as the idea here is every verse in this section of the nun is going to start with that letter. But the idea of afflicted is you've got this servant or the nafesh. It's when you have your eyes on yourself, essentially, because it's got this eye in. And the idea is that if I have my eyes on myself rather than on God and on what his purposes are, then essentially I'm afflicted. And so once I realized I'd made the mistake in the first verse, immediately, oh, it was all, you know, I can't believe I did this and everything was about me, which made me very much afflicted.

So the good news is, here's the counsel. How can we not be afflicted? Well, it says, quicken me, right, is what it says, according unto thy word.

And so you might wonder, as I did, you know, where does he get that? Where does he get quickened unto thy word? And I think the more I study this, the more that I think you'll agree with me, that the whole 119th Psalm is like one of the fundamental building blocks of it, is Deuteronomy 4.1. In Deuteronomy 4.1, we can see where we're going to get quickened, because the way that that word quickened is spelled in Hebrew is the same thing as live, L-I-V-E, live. So when you read Deuteronomy 4.1, I think you can see this is according unto thy word. This is where we hear these same words time and again during the 119th Psalm. So Deuteronomy 4.1, now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto thy statutes and unto thy judgments, which I teach you. I mean, think how many times throughout the 119th Psalm we hear the psalmist say, teach me your judgments, teach me your statutes, you know, and that here, O Israel, has to do with the sama, you know, the sama that they say.

So, I mean, how cool is that? So to finish it up, it says, which I teach you, for to do them ye may live. In other words, to do them ye may be quickened. And one of the things that I really have been blessed in studying with different rabbis that are Jewish, is to get the idea that what they believe about commands, about what God's commandments, I think may be misunderstood at times that it's all about performance, when really what it's about is from their perspective, when you are doing a mitzvah, when you are doing one of these commandments, one of these judgments, one of these statutes, one of these chukum, that when you are in the process of that, you are literally connected with God. And that's part of the ways that the Jews feel like they connect with God, either through studying his word in the Torah, or by doing mitzvahs. Well, by doing mitzvahs, they feel like that's where they get connected with God.

Well, think about it. When we are on this adventure together with God, then we're in union with God. And when you look at this word live, or the word quicken, as the sama says it, you know, this is ahet, which means union with God, right?

We've talked about how it's a vav coming down and a zion coming up with a hetric across the top. It's a union with God. And then the yud, which is, you know, this idea of the hand of God, which is united to God.

And so when you put those two together with a hei, you have the word quicken, or live. So as we're united with God to be his hands, it's very much to be a nun. It's very much to be his servant is how we live. So the idea of being united with God is what happened, why Adam died when he sinned immediately. It wasn't when his physical body died, but he was separated from God. And as soon as he did that, you see, he was no longer living. He may have been living, but he wasn't living in union with God. And so when you think about the idea of when have I been doing something that I knew were within his commandments, or knew where I was serving him, and I was on this adventure with him where I felt like I touched him, and like I was connected with him, and I was quickened.

What did that feel like? Well, I thought back, and I've told this story about Joni Hendrix in previous episodes about my friend that was dying. And I had an opportunity to witness to him, and we went through the book of Jon, and he was quickened. And his candle got lit, and he came to see that God had given him four days in the hospital in a coma. But right on time, he was awakened, and he was experiencing the resurrection. And as he did that, he accepted Christ in his heart, and he became a new creation.

It was an unbelievable thing to see. Well, as a result, again, at the time, I was a car salesman and by no means a preacher. But based on what had happened and my opportunity to witness to Joni, I was asked to speak at his funeral. And when I did, somebody from one of the churches there in Mocksville heard what I said at the funeral, and they asked me very shortly thereafter to come speak some Sunday at their church to give the sermon based on what had happened with Joni Hendrix, the same story that I related to you in a previous episode about how Joni was quickened, okay? So as I get up to tell this story about Joni that day, and the church was relatively full.

For the size church it was, it probably had about 300 people, I would guess, that morning in worship. And as I told the story, I had sort of an interesting adventure with God that he asked me to actually do an altar call. And ask, you know, because the idea was that we don't know where our friends are and the people that we know, how close they are to God. And part of that story, you may recall, was I asked Joni's wife, Geraldine, if she knew if Jesus had accepted Christ, and she didn't know that. And my altar call was, how many people here know somebody in your life where you don't know where they stand? And would you come up forward right now and pray with me that God will give us the boldness to ask people, if you die, do you know where you're going and, you know, that you'll be in heaven? Because this is going to be a vital question, right?

Someday you're going to know that your friend might be in a bad way, and you want to know where they are. And interestingly, that day, talk about being quick and being feel like that I was in union with God. Literally the entire church, everybody in that church, came forward that Sunday. And if you had seen this movement of God, at this hand of God, as all these people responded to him in a desire for their friends and loved ones to know Jesus and to ask them into his heart, I mean, oh my goodness. I mean, it was, if there was ever a mitzvah where I felt connected to God, it was one of those moments that clearly goes down in my memory as this unbelievable opportunity to be quick.

And you see, I was afflicted in the Joni Hendrix story, if you remember, I was afflicted that I did not know where Joni stood, and I'd never spent the time with him I needed to be. So I went to God with that in prayer, and he quickened me. And he continues to quicken me to this day, right? So what amazing counsel that when we get our eyes on ourself and we feel afflicted and we feel like, man, I'm so self-conscious and worried and all these different things, God quicken us, quicken us and think about Deuteronomy 4, right? He's saying, if you will do these commandments, if you will do these judgments, if you will do these statutes as we do things, not as for the performance of them that we check them off the list, but as we do them, we get to, as we're in the process of that, experience God in it as we share Jesus. We experience God in it as we help that person that's been robbed and sitting on the side of the road. However that works in your life, be sensitive to our opportunities to be, to live, to really live for God. Thank you for listening today to the 119th Psalm.