Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119 - Introduction

Hidden Treasures of the 119th Psalm. So, we are going on a treasure hunt, and the gold we are seeking in this treasure hunt is actually the face of God, pure light. And how fun to actually mine this treasure with King David, a man who sought God with his whole heart. And his understanding of God's expression of the Hebrew language itself as he goes through the 119th Psalm, letter by letter, giving us eight verses, which the Jews teach as eight faces, of each letter of expression. So, join us taking this deep dive mining with King David in the 119th Psalm. So, let's dig in first of all in this first episode, and I realize this is not for everybody because we are diving deep and we are going to be digging in, and I do mean digging going deep, into the 119th Psalm. So, I don't know about you, but I have determined that a lot of times the best discipling comes from the best questions. Like, what are the questions that you have?

Have you read through the 119th Psalm? I just came up with all these things like, man, I just do not understand why we are repeating all these things. And why is it that each of these are in a particular order? Why did he do it to the alphabet? Does this have to do with memorizing it, or does it have to do with something deeper? And since the word commandments shows up so many different times, how do commandments differ from precepts, differ from statutes, different from the law, different from the word?

All those things were questions that I had to ask. And so, as you begin to just set out with me on this mining expedition, I think it is important, and I really feel like God gave me something really beautiful as I began to study this, that I had a chance to go to chabad.org, and I am going to put it in the show notes. The same video that I watched that went into what is going on with these eight verses in each letter, and what are these words that are repeated over and over and over again, because to understand those certainly gives us a key insight into the culture of what King David was talking about. The Jews considered this Psalm to be completely for Jews. In other words, here we are going to be talking about all these mitzvah, which the mitzvah are the 613 what they consider to be laws, but that word in itself may be a misstatement. There are 613 mitzvahs that the Jews believe are in the Torah. So, we need to figure out what do they mean by Torah? And we need to figure out what do they mean by mitzvah or law?

And we've got to figure out what do they mean by statute? And what do they mean by precept? And what do they mean by judgment or even when they say that they're going to walk in his ways? What's the way and what are his ways? So, you can see that all these questions are part of what a disciple is going to be going into this study to go, how can we understand this when we got to understand these words? And so, as you might imagine, knowing me, if you know me, is that I love to study words and I love to study expression. And so, as we get an idea of where King David is going with all this, we're going to get a better look, in my opinion, of not only what the face of God looks like, but how to relate to that face of God as King David himself is using these letters to show us how to communicate, how to share what is on our hearts, and how to discern what is on God's heart.

In other words, as we get a better look at God, we also get a better look at ourselves. So, I find it more than fascinating that the Jews teach there are 613 mitzvah, or commandments, which, if you hear them normally, they use the word good deeds. So, wait a minute, the word law means good deeds? Well, that's what if you hear the Jews speak of, these mitzvah, what they talk about are good deeds. And interestingly, they count them, according to their own writings, as 248 positive mitzvah and 365 negative mitzvah. Now, the fascinating thing, although they will tell you there's 613 of them, none of their writings are specific as to what those 613 are, exactly.

There's all sorts of opinions about what they are. But the cool thing, when you think about it, is the Jews themselves don't know. And that's part of what David was actually getting at, is in the Torah, they know this exists, but how do you find it and how do you learn it?

And they certainly have studied it and studied it and study it, but I find it more than sad that one of the key ingredients would be to actually find the way. And Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, as those of us who are in Christ understand those particular things. But I think it's also really good to understand King David was in this culture. And so, when he is talking about commandments, statutes, et cetera, et cetera, he is trying to relate to what his understanding of the Torah is. And so, as we go through this study, and today's episode is just a short introduction to tell you, these are the questions that we're going to go into, and we'll begin by each one of these commonly repeated phrases, statutes, precepts, et cetera. We'll go into an episode on each of those particular phrases before we head off into the Psalm so that we can have an introduction to begin to speak the same language so as we study these faces of each of these particular letters, that we have a common language or a common culture with what King David was looking at when he talked about a statute or a precept or the Torah. So, stay tuned and buckle up tight, this is going to be a deep dive. But I think we're going to come away with a phenomenal way to pray and feel like we're touching the heart of God in ways that we never have before.