Psalms 119:161 The Wisdom of The Shin

This is the Truth Network. So, before we dive into all that, we ought to dive into the Shin just a minute and talk about the letter. You see it, it's so beautiful. In fact, if you've ever seen Mr. Spock say, live long and prosper, that's the sign the Jews make when they're talking about that letter because, again, that letter begins the word peace, the Shin does, and it has a lot to do with judgment.

But when you look at it, you know, you can't help but note that two things. For one, you can't help but see that it looks like a flame of fire, and that has a lot to do with what the Shin does, and it also has a look of two teeth if you kind of look between the lines because that's the two pictures because every Hebrew letter is drawing a picture, and so what do teeth and fire have in common? Well, both oxidize things, and so that gives us a real good picture of the letter Shin and gives us this idea of actually the refiner's fire and the idea of rust and all those things that Jesus taught about in so many ways that have to do with judgment, and so it's really, really a cool, beautiful, amazing letter. Starts out the word Shabbat, which gives you this idea of Shalom, you know, that's both peace and the Sabbath, and so we're going to see this in so many different ways, and here we're going to talk about the wisdom of this letter in the first verse, which reads in English. It's verse 161 of the 119th Psalm, it says, princes have persecuted me without cause, but my heart standeth in awe of thy word. And so, this is very neat, the verse begins with that word princes, and princes actually begin with the letter Shin, and then it has a race, and we've talked about, you know, for the last number of verses what the race means, and so it's kind of cool that the first place we go is here's this idea of Shin race, right, which has to do with a choice, and so these particular princes have clearly taken the wrong choice because they're persecuting the psalmist without a cause. In other words, if people, you know, are in the judgment process, they are either judging for nothing or if they're with God, you know, they're part of what's making everything come in the kingdom, and so here, clearly King David gives us wisdom that all princes are not necessarily working for God, and so we know that Satan is the prince of the power of the air, so you get an idea of the princes that maybe were persecuting the psalmist here, and certainly if you're like me, you've been persecuted without cause and without a reason of refining. And so, in a way, it still refines you because all things work together for good, right, and is being made into the image of his son, and so the psalmist is trying to work through that, and then, but the end of the verse says, but my heart standeth in awe of thy word.

It's the idea of a comparison, and so here he's comparing how these princes persecuted him versus how the word is actually oxidizing him and getting away the dross, and so, you know, the best way I know to do this is to paint a picture of the wisdom that's in this verse is to just look at my life yesterday versus this morning when I was trying to pray, right? I don't know if you're like this, but so many times when you're trying to pray, you can't get to God because you can't get your mind off of things that are happening. So, back in March, I got a parking ticket. Can you believe that? The Christian car guy got a parking ticket at Carolina Beach in the space that didn't look like it.

You had to pay to park, but apparently, according to the city, you were supposed to pay to park there, and so they gave me a $100 parking ticket, which I couldn't believe the amount of that parking ticket for, you know, staying there for just a couple hours, but anyway, I had a $100 parking ticket, and since there was no sign there, I did this little objection thing on the website that they had, and then for days, they didn't give me a judgment on how it was, was it still going to be a ticket or not a ticket, and I'd given my email, so I assumed they'd tell me when they had it decided, but they never sent me an email, and so I went back to check on the ticket yesterday. Because I hadn't paid it in the first 10 days, they doubled it to $200, so now, oh my goodness, and so I felt like, you know, number one, I didn't park there illegally, so I felt very persecuted without a cause, and my mind could not get off that as I began to pray this morning, but then God was talking to me about this very idea of judgment and how these things are working together in his judgment as opposed to this judgment, here's princes persecuting me without a cause, this ticket as far as I'm concerned, and then if you compare that to, oh my goodness, take a look at Philippians, if you want to, you know, see some real judgment, go to the word, right? Philippians 2, 3, let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in the loneliness of mine, let each esteem other better than themselves. Well, you know, I don't know about you, but I just struggle with that particular one, and the refining process of that verse is something that gets my heart to stand in awe like, oh my goodness, how can I reach for this particular goal, and you see that I am so much better off from a standpoint of becoming more like Christ by meditating on those kind of things and seeing how God's word is judging me rather than the world, and princes that are, you know, obviously not part of what God is doing, and so here's the idea of, like, there's all kinds of oxidation going on, there's all kinds of chewing going on, which is the idea of the letter shin, and some of it is clearly what God's doing, and to some extent to perfect us, and so we're going to get down through this as we go through the wisdom of this letter shin, like, oh my goodness, you begin to see that all things work together, right? But at this point in time, the psalmist has just given you this idea of some princes are not necessarily on your team, and they are persecuting you without a cause from the standpoint of what they say their cause is, but again, it's all God's cause in order to perfect us according to His word, and there's the beautiful thing is that the real refining process comes through the study that you're doing with me right now, so thanks for listening.