Psalms 119: Review Miracle

Hidden Treasures of the 119th Psalm I finished up at the beginning of the week a couple verses left in the 119th Psalm and then, since I was preaching on Sunday on Mother's Day, I had been studying the four mothers and did Bible wonders for several days on that and waited for the Lord to show me what he wanted next in the 119th Psalm.

And so, as I finished up yesterday, this morning when I got up at four, as I normally do, and it had been a long weekend, so I was probably kind of tired, but I'm just praying and praying. And as I get in my position to just where I normally do after praying for 30, 45 minutes, I ask God, well, where do we want to go today? And he was pretty clear that he wanted me to go to Philippians Chapter 4. And I love Philippians Chapter 4, and so I thought, well, that would be interesting. I wonder where we're headed with that. Is that a Bible wonder?

Where are we going, Lord? And so I go over and I review Philippians Chapter 4, which is just spectacular. You know, rejoice the Lord always. And all the stuff on prayer, it's just an amazing chapter.

I've always just delighted in it. But actually, as I was reading it, and I read through it three or four times to see if the Holy Spirit would jump something out at me, and nothing kind of did. And as I was just reading it, I think I drifted off to sleep. I know I was certainly asleep all of a sudden from nowhere, and I use the Blue Letter Bible app.

And so my Blue Letter Bible app was on my tablet that I had in my lap as I was sitting there, I guess, dozing, having read Philippians 4 several times. And all of a sudden, God's sense of humor is J. Vernon McGee. Because one of the things in that app, as you're digging down into a verse, you know, you can get a commentary on it.

And one of the commentaries is the audio commentary. And so J. Vernon McGee is speaking, and I'm like, and it just woke me up, of course, because I'm not expecting anybody to be in the house but me. And all of a sudden, J. Vernon McGee is speaking on Philippians chapter 4.

And this is kind of what he said, which led me to where we're going. We'll eventually get to the 119th Psalm, you'll see how. But this is what… J. Vernon McGee, oh, what a brilliant… I've always loved him, and I listened to him for years and years.

And my friend Rodney, I know I'll be delighted in this. But what J. Vernon McGee essentially said was, you know, of course, Philippians chapter 4 is a critical chapter. And he said it is the power for Christian living. And he said that verses 1 through 4 are the source of that power, which is joy. And 5 through 7 were the secret to that power, which is prayer. And verses 8 and 9 are the sanctuary of power, or the contemplation of Christ. And then verses 10 through 23 are the satisfaction of that power, which is verses 10 through 23.

Well, as I heard that, it just launched me in. I mean, it was like the Holy Spirit just gave me that so that I could… I don't know how it worked, but that's what happened. And when it did, man, my soul just lit up like I know exactly where I'm going.

Once I put that down and got that a little bit organized, this has to do with power. And I thought about, you know, rejoicing the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice, that, of course, the joy of the Lord is our strength from Nehemiah 8. And so I said, well, there I can go dive into some Hebrew and see if I can get a feel for where the Holy Spirit's taken me. So I go to Nehemiah 8, 10, and oh my goodness, when I saw what that is, and then I looked at it in lieu of what all it says in Philippians 4, 8. And so just now to get to the part where we're talking about the 119th Psalm, when you look at the word joy in Hebrew, I'm just going to spell it for you. And then think about this from the, you know, each section of the 119th Psalm we've talked about has eight verses. And the last verse is the miracle verse, which kind of gives us an idea as if we can reach all the potential of that particular letter or all the anointings of that letter through Christ.

And this is kind of where we're going. So when we look at the word joy, that's a different kind of simcha. Usually I think of joy as the word simcha in Hebrew.

This one is not that word. This word is spelled that's the joy of the Lord is our strength, which clearly I'm sure when you look at this and all the applications has to do with what Paul was thinking, because, you know, of course, Paul fought in Hebrew because he was, you know, a Pharisee. So the word joy that is in Nehemiah 8, it starts with a het, right? And so when you think about the word, I mean, the last verse in the het section, it says the whole earth is full of thy chesed or loving kindness in English. Teach me your statutes.

Remember? I mean, it's just absolutely beautiful. And think about that when it comes to joy. So the fact that the idea of the het is that this is our marriage to Christ. OK, and it's and we know that the whole earth is full of thy chesed and there's all kinds of joy in that.

And the second letter is Dalit. And so when you think about the miracle verse in the letter Dalit, which is in the eighth verse, it says, I will run in the path of thy commandments when thou enlargest our hearts. Like, oh, my goodness. Like, OK, so as being married to Christ and again with this idea of the love that I have in serving, right, that I'm going to run in the commandments, that if you love me, you're going to keep my commandments. That's the idea. And we're running here in this love.

Wow. Do you see the sense of joy in that? And then you have a vav, which, you know, is just the continuation.

We talked about that many, many times. When you look at the last verse or the miracle verse in the letter vav, the last verse in the vav section is I'll lift my hands up to the commandments that I love and I will meditate on thy statutes. So here again, we're getting this idea of serving, right, because we're going to lift our hands up to the commandments.

And a minute ago, we're going to run when our hearts. Right. And so then the last letter is, hey. And you might remember in the last verse of the letter, hey, is just absolutely spectacular because it says, behold, I have longed after thy precepts, quicken me in thy righteousness.

And so when you put those all together and then you think about how. That these verses, when you look in Philippians four and you try to figure out why in the world was Paul putting this service of these two ladies together with the idea of rejoicing in the Lord, you can see how much service and precepts and statutes and commandments fit into the idea of rejoicing the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. So again, to read those first four, which again, J. Vernon McGee, if we read the first four verses in Philippians four and we go with what J. Vernon McGee was saying was here's, you know, essentially the source of the power of Christian living, which are that idea of the source being the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Here we go. Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for my joy and crown. So steadfast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.

I beseech Eudias and beseech Simcha that they be of the same mind in the Lord. You see the connection to service right there. And I entreat the also true yoke fellow right service people they're serving to help those women which labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also and with other my fellow laborers whose names are in the Book of Life. Then it says rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. You see the connection.

I never would have seen this before if I hadn't just went, wait a minute. That's what that's why that word rejoice is so important in that that idea of joy from the standpoint of the joy of the Lord is our strength. That has to do with this idea of service.

Oh, my goodness. And you can see where he's connected at all in this source of power from Philippians four. And so there you have the idea as we are digging around in the hundred nineteen psalm of going, OK, now we can begin to apply this in other places in the New Testament or the Old Testament as we go, as we're trying to understand why certain things are in certain passages, we can see how connected us serving the Lord in love is to our joy. And it's just spectacular from my point of view. I hope you enjoyed that this morning. Be interesting to see where God takes me tomorrow morning. We had some other wake up call from J. Peter McGee for me or what he may have. Thanks for listening.