Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119 - The Way

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. Well, let me just start off on this dig and to tell you how much I just appreciate you listening. Like, this is so much fun to share, and I am so grateful, really, that you would share it with me.

And today, I love what we're sharing. So, we're still on these 10 words, and we're up to the word way, like, he keeps his ways, or, you know, in the concept of a path, right? And so, the way you would normally see this translated in the King James Version, it's even in the first verse, right? It says, blessed are the undefiled in the way.

Well, what's the way? Well, those of us who know Jesus know that he is the way, the truth, and the life. So, that's the beautiful thing that we can add to the 119th Psalm, right, as Christians coming out of the gate. But to get into the word, the way that the Jews understood it, and I think it's absolutely beautiful to understand the Hebrew behind it on all those kind of things, and maybe even have a friend named Derek. And so, you could tell them today, I know that your word, your name means path, or it means the way.

And so, you know, the word Derek in Hebrew is the word way. And so, when the Jewish people look at this word, they're going to say, you know, this is a path, this is the way to the tree of life, that kind of thing. And it really is a way to the tree of life. And so, when, again, John Bunyan was talking about that, you know, Christian had to make his way, you know, he came through the narrow gate. And this word, when you really look at it, it is, in fact, the narrow gate. It's not just a path, it's a gateway, it's a doorway. And you could tell that immediately if you looked at it in the Hebrew, because in the Hebrew, it starts out with a dalit. And the reason it starts out with a dalit, because it is a door, right?

And so, just like when they put the blood over the posts of the door, this narrow gate is a huge thing. Like, this is Jesus. He is the way. And this is what he meant by when he said, I am the way. I'm the Derek.

I'm the path to life. And you'll see this throughout the Psalms that David made reference to it a lot, that almost you can take your pick of Psalms, you're going to find this word, Derek, completely throughout them. So, when you think about it, let's look at the actual Hebrew letter. So, it starts out with this dalit, and then it's a reish. And that reish, in this particular case, would mean head, right? So, this is like the door head. This is the gate head, so to speak. And then this last word is, I mean, excuse me, it's a letter, but it also is a word that means cough.

And what it is in a regular word, in the middle of a word, it looks like a crown. But in this way, it's the final cough, which has this concept of God's kingdom essentially coming down to service. So, when you look at this idea of the kingdom itself, so you've got the doorway, the head of the door, and here we have this royal crown coming down. In other words, this is how we get into the way, is through Jesus.

And think about that first line, we're going to talk about it later on when we get into the first part of the 119th psalm, but blessed are those, or happy are those, undefiled that are in the way. In other words, they are, made their way to this narrow gate. And so, when we look at this, know that, again, as the Jews would translate this, this is a path, or it might be a road, but really, really when you think about it, in order to be in the way, you've got to be in the way. You've got to come through the narrow gate. That's this narrow passage that, you know, when Jesus talked about it in the Sermon on the Mount and several other places that, you know, in the sheepfold, you've got to come in through the gate. And the straight gate, some people would say, but the idea of straight there is like the Gibraltar straits. It's a very narrow way, and that narrow way is Jesus himself.

He's the only way in. And so, as we see this as Christians, oh man, just maybe with me, just rejoice that God has made a way where there seemed to be no way. Thank you again for digging deep with me today. We've got the rest of these ten words are all on that PDF, and we'll be getting into the next one here very soon in another episode. Thanks for listening.