Psalms 119:170 - The Grace To Be Delivered - For Real

This is the Truth Network. with the idea of emet, which is aleph, mem, tav, as we've been studying the letters in the alphabet, we understand that the aleph is the first letter and the mem, the middle, and the tav being the end, meaning that the truth is the truth from the beginning to the middle to the end. And the tav being the last in that is kind of like the fruit of everything.

In other words, at the end, we will know the truth. And so that letter, in of itself, means let, which is why these first two verses start with let, both the wisdom and understanding verses for the letter tav. And so here we are in the understanding, anointing of that letter, as we've talked about all through this, that the Isaiah 11 anointings, or wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, fear the Lord, and delight in the fear of the Lord.

And so to get an understanding of the letter tav, oh my goodness, what an awesome, awesome opportunity we have, and we could get the whole idea here, which I guess we'll probably only get in heaven, but we'll give it a shot today to get a little bit in here. So verse 170 in English says, "'Let my supplication come before thee, "'deliver me according to thy word.'" So again, the first word in the verse is always gonna start with the letter that it has to do with and that idea of let this happen. And that would be the fruit of all that we've done here.

And so I love that. And then the word supplication here, I think, deserves a little more translation because it's actually a tav version. In other words, it's the fruit of favor, or the fruit of grace.

There's probably a better way to say it because the word that's in the middle, it's a tav, and then the word grace. And so that word supplication is like the result of grace. And so, you know, like wow, what a neat word for supplication as we see God's grace all over so many things in our lives, especially if we are in Christ because it was his favor, right? That while we were sinners, yet he died for us. So, you know, our supplication is just a beautiful example of that grace.

And so I think it's absolutely amazing that it starts out there. And then, so he's asking for grace as an understanding of the previous verse, right? Because the other was the wisdom to ask these questions and now he's looking for grace. And then he says again, according to thy word. But again, that's really neat to me that in so many of these where we've seen him talk about the word in both the first and second verses of a section, he'll start out with debar and then he'll go to amira, which are two different versions of the word word.

And so debar has a lot to do with the path of the word. And amira has so much to do, in my opinion, of the obedience of the word. And so where debar has to do with wisdom and amira has to do with understanding because in obedience, you know, if you really understand something, you're gonna do it.

And you know, and that's the application. And so much that understanding is, you don't really see somebody who has understanding if they're not applying the information. So here he's asking for this understanding, he's asking for amira. So it's amazing how many times you'll see that the first verse in a section we'll talk about according to your word, and it will be debar. But the second one will be, you know, according to your word, and it will be amira, which is again, the difference between the two and getting to the application of wisdom, which is understanding.

It's an amazing thing. And those anointings, obviously, that Christ got from the Holy Spirit in Isaiah 11, we get a chance to dig into this because he's asking now, right, that let my supplication come before thee, deliver me. Which this word is different a lot, that word deliver is the word that's in Exodus six, when you go to a Seder dinner where, you know, these famous, famous words in Exodus six, six, and seven are quoted, you know, many, many, many times by the Jews, especially in a Seder dinner, because he basically says that he's gonna take you out of Egypt, and then he's going to deliver you from the bondage. And that word deliver here, you know, clearly King David is using that very word, and in that same context. Then he goes on to say, I'm going to redeem you, and then I'm gonna take you to be my people.

So those are the four cups of wine. But the second one is like, the idea is, I can take you out of Egypt, but getting Egypt out of you is the deliverance, right? So, you know, the old saying, you can take the Jew out of Egypt, but getting Egypt out of the Jews, a tough thing.

And so this idea of deliver is okay, if you, you know, and we see this all the time with people that are in sex trafficking, we're involved in something where you take them out of the situation, but they're not yet delivered, because they're still have this mental bondage that's still in there. And so, for whatever reason, we need 40 years in the desert, in order to, you know, you can't help but see the beautiful, beautiful journey that God gave them through the desert in order to get rid of this bondage that they had to these idols. And that is what it took.

And it's what it takes in my life. And so here, the psalmist is asking for the same thing, which he realizes is not gonna be necessarily easy, to be delivered from the bondage of the slavery of sin, okay? And, you know, this all over Romans six, by the way, it's another whole study in this idea, but just to show you the application of it. So, in my own life, you know, about, I don't know, 10 years ago, I had read the invitation of Christ by Thomas a campus. And one of the things that, you know, probably the only thing I remember from the book, although it was a beautiful book, was that he said, you know, if you can just work on one struggle that you have a year, you'd be making progress, because in 10 years, you'll have gotten rid of 10 struggles.

Well, I took him up on that. And the struggle that I wanted to be rid of was envy. And I knew, and you may not can relate to this, but I hope you can. But being a talk show host, I had a tendency to envy other talk show hosts were getting, you know, all the accolades or getting their shows put on more stations or whatever would happen.

And so I was envious of many different talk show hosts, especially in the earlier part of my career. And I realized that, you know, that this was something that was going in my heart and I knew it was a sin, but did not know how to be delivered from it. And so I prayed and I began to ask God, you know, show me, help me, you know, see where to go with this. And he delivered me according to his word. Okay, because that's where I actually ended up getting the deliverance in two different verses. So, you know, the one verse that really probably opened the door and then the other one closed it. Okay, so in Philippians 2, 3, you may be familiar with it.

It says, let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem the other better than himself. And so that began to say, okay, here's my struggle. I was clearly vain glory. But again, that's easier said than done, that that definitely opened the door to telling me, Robbie, this is clearly vain glory you're going after here.

But how do I esteem the other better than myself? Therein became the second question. So I had the first question, you know, let my cry come near before thee.

I don't wanna be envious. But then, you know, this was the second question. And so many times we get deliverance from the second question. I was like, okay, I get that, it's clearly a sin. Now, how do I esteem others better than myself? Well, that came from 1 Peter 4, 10. It's a little longer verse, but I'm gonna read it to you. And it's really, really helpful in my struggle with vain glory or my struggle with envy. So what it says is, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.

That's an interesting word there, varied grace. Whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to him belong glory and dominion forever and ever, amen. Again, my understanding of that verse or the application of that verse in my heart, which is what actually delivered me from this particular bondage that I was struggling with, was that, okay, that talk show host was given gifts by God that were gonna give him an opportunity, since all the people I was envious of were all other Christian talk show hosts.

But I should, you know, it applies for everybody. But anyway, the idea was, oh, oh, oh, people are gonna get closer to God because of the gifts that that person has. And the fact that they got a really good one is gonna lead more people to God, and like, yay, God, that's awesome.

I mean, that's awesome. You gave me the gifts that you gave me, and away I go, you know, hopefully you've given me an opportunity to help some people move closer to God in some way, shape, or form. But how cool is it that these other ones you've given these gifts to, and you've given them a platform, and when I really got back to the idea in my heart, again, getting the trip from my head to my heart is a struggle. But as I kept on working on these verses, kept thinking about it, kept processing it, God delivered me according to his word, right? As I freely understood it, then I could apply it to my heart, accepted it, and not saying I don't ever, ever once fall, I go, man, well, it's nice to have these verses where I can be delivered according to his word. Thank you so much for listening. I love this Tom section, and oh, the fruit that can be experienced as we grow closer to the truth, because when you think about the truth, you couldn't be closer. In fact, I would be remiss if I don't point this out. To me, what Jesus said, and when he showed up to John in the book of Revelations, because I know that John spoke Hebrew and Jesus spoke Hebrew, I think that Jesus said, I'm the aleph and the tav, and I wouldn't have been a bit surprised if Jesus didn't say I'm the aleph and the mem and the tav, but since he had to translate it into Greek for everybody at the time, that's what it ended up. But this idea of I'm the aleph and I'm the tav, I'm the beginning and I'm the end, I'm the beginning, the middle and the end says that I'm the truth, and of course, Jesus is all that. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.