Psalms 119:136 Cry Me A River

Hidden Treasures of the 119th Song.

How fun! We get to do the eighth verse, or the miracle verse, in the pay section today. And as we've talked about, the pay is the idea of the face, or God's face specifically, in most of the verses that we've talked about.

And here, in the miracle verse, we kind of change from God's face to the Psalmist's face, because in verse 136, this miracle, after we get the seven anointings, we get to this eighth verse, and it's number 136 in English. It reads, Rivers of waters, run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law. As we know, each verse of the pay section is going to start with a pay, so the word in this verse that starts with a pay is this idea of rivers. And what a beautiful idea it is, when you think about it, that rivers are the face of a lot of things. And, you know, even when they talked about, like when you were going to use water for certain offerings, like you would mix with the red heifer, it would say you need to use real water. And that real water had to be taken from a river that was permanent, because the permanent rivers like the Jordan and that kind of thing are always running, but they have a lot of what they call wadis in that area, which are rivers that dry up.

And so the idea was it not only needed to be living water, but it needed to be water from a permanent source. And that idea of rivers, you know, and you might remember when they described the Garden of Eden, that, you know, all these different rivers that surrounded it, again, with this idea of the presence of God. And you don't have to watch River of God, and we're going to get to that a lot when we get into the kush section.

But here I'm asking and wondering, you know, myself, you know, what does this exactly mean? Rivers of waters run down mine eyes. And, you know, I can't help but think of, you know, John Bunyan's of Pilgrim's Progress, that when the burden was lifted off of the Christian's back, or the character called Christian, you know, that again, he's hit this tremendous weeping. And I don't know how many people you've seen come to Christ, but there's this tremendous weeping and this idea of living waters coming out of your eyes is really, really cool. And it's always connected, you know, interestingly, that our eyes, when we have tears, there's endorphins that are literally life giving, that come out of our eyes.

And so I don't know if in your life, if you've ever had that experience, where you cried, sort of like rivers. And, you know, I remember when I came to Christ, and I remember crying, but at the time that I think about was recently, my wife and I went to see the chosen, the TV show, The Chosen, which is, you know, been phenomenally powerful. They did a Christmas special, and it was in the movie theaters. My wife and I went to see that actually three times, but the first time we went to see it was especially spectacular.

And you might recall that they have a lot of praise and worship that goes on before they actually share that episode of Jesus being born there at Christmas. But Brandon Lake did a song in that section called Gratitude. And I don't know what happened, but somehow or another, as I was watching that, all of a sudden, my eyes gushed water like I can never remember them gushing water. I mean, it literally, I understand what the psalmist is saying. It touched something in me. And when I go back and listen to that song with Brandon Lake, I can see that here was this total humility. It was talking about that all he could give his king, you know, what gift would I have that was fit for a king, except a hallelujah. And you could see the humility in Brandon Lake.

Like, I don't really have anything worthy of giving God. And so if we go back to the verse that we just studied, you know, previously, the last episode we talked about, make thy faith to shine upon me and teach me thy statutes, this idea of how do I love thee, how do I love thee, because what do I really have that's worthy of that. And as I saw, you know, Brandon Lake doing that, all of a sudden, it touched something in me. And I'm telling you, rivers of waters gushed out of my eyes. And I was like, Tammy, I can't even believe that because my wife was sitting next to me, I can't even believe what's happening with my eyes. They were literally gushing tears.

I'd never had that experience. But had I not seen this in the Psalms, I wouldn't even understood that it was a thing. But it was like a miracle that there's a place in us that it desperately wants to offer our King or Jesus something that is of value to them. You know, that whole idea of how can I love thee? How can I touch thee? So here's, you know, after King David comes the seventh time, right, to ask him to teach me thy statutes, then he talks about how rivers of waters run down his eyes, because he realizes, I just don't, I can't express all the love for you that I want to be able to express. And to me, that's a completely a miracle of a face to face, right? Because here we see this almost turning his face towards God's face, which we get to do, you know, when we would have rivers of waters run down our eyes to be face to face, you know, God is going to turn his face when there's rivers of waters going down your eyes trying to love him. I mean, it's a beautiful, intimate moment as we come to the crescendo of this idea of the pay. Thank you for listening.