Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119 - ALEF

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. So join us taking this deep dive mining with King David in the 119th Psalm. On today's mining trip, we get to actually dig into the Psalm itself. We've covered the ten words, and so now let's just move into the very first word of Psalm 119, which is the word aleph, which is the first letter in the Hebrew language.

But as we've talked about many times, each letter is itself a word. So the word aleph is a word in Hebrew. It can mean a number of different things, very cool. It means a thousand, like when there was a thousand pieces of silver, that would be aleph.

It also means master, as you would see at the beginning of the word father is aba, right? So many times you see it that way, but also, you know, when you just see how it's used in the Bible, it's used as oxen, and sometimes in the really, really ancient Hebrew, that's the way they actually made the sign was to look like an oxen. But one of my favorite, and I think what King David was going for is the meaning of aleph, is teacher. So that is a really beautiful thing and a beautiful basis from which he starts this Psalm that he's asking to be taught throughout the Psalm. What he's asking you to be taught are the Scriptures, are the commandments, are the statutes, are the precepts, in other words, the whole idea and the love of learning. And so when you look at the aleph itself, the way that is written in Hebrew, it's a beautiful thing.

You'll see that it is a yud, just a little dot that is pointing down, and then there's a little yud that is pointing up, and in between them is above, which kind of separates the two. And if you've ever seen the picture that Michelangelo painted of the finger of God, it's this picture of this finger of God pointing down, trying to reach the finger of man reaching up, which is just, you know, absolutely phenomenal. Well, the beautiful thing about the letter aleph is that's exactly what it is. It is the finger of God pointing down towards man, and the finger of man trying to point up to God, trying to learn. And what's in the middle, that vav the Jews teach, is actually the Torah. It's the word of God itself. It is Jesus, okay? So the bridge between God trying to have a relationship with man and man trying to have a relationship with God is the word itself, is Jesus, okay? So when you look at this letter, and as we begin to study this very first eight verses, we're going to be looking into the eight faces of this letter, of understanding how it is that God is trying to reach out to us, and we are trying to learn.

What are the basis of that? What is the psalmist showing us in the different aspects of the way to learn the Scriptures with the intimacy that he had with all these different expressions? And so as we've talked about the number of eight, that it is that we try the very best we can through seven days of the week, and then on the eighth day, he pushes us over the finish line. Jesus was raised on the eighth day after the triumphal entry.

And so I'm sure you've seen a lot of things in your life where somebody tried and tried and tried, and then they were pushed over the finish line. So when we look at the Aleph, we're going to get an idea to see how we can work on it. Seven days a week, we can begin to study and think, how can we reach up and touch God? But then how is God going to push us over the finish line?

I mean, what a joy it is going to be to spend time in this particular letter. This letter is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and its numeric value is one, but the word for Aleph is a thousand. And so you can see the intricate connection between a day to God is like a thousand years. And so many times when we think of the alpha male and that kind of thing, we certainly think of Abba Father.

I mean, that whole idea of Aleph or Alpha, and the reason why in ox itself is this picture of the master, so to speak. But the master is everything to do with learning, and the idea that we see throughout the Scripture is your heart is yearning, right, to learn. Have you ever noticed that when you learn something, I mean, it just makes you come alive and you want to share it, and when you do that, you're sharing life.

And so it's a big, big precept, I believe, in my heart to understand that the letter Aleph is connected to the idea of teaching. And so as we learn, like you would fall in love with somebody that you were just dating, right, and those first dates, what are you doing? You're learning everything you possibly can about them. What are they like?

What do they dislike? You know, how can I connect with this person? How can I best serve this person?

How can I best love this person? How can I best call out their glory, the way that God is reflected? And again, God is trying to do that in us through him reaching down through the Aleph and us reaching up, you know, to touch Jesus, which gives us the ability to be into the presence of God. I mean, it's a phenomenal thing. And so as we look into these next eight verses, which we'll jump into next time, that first verse, we can be expressing, we can begin to process these different faces of the letter Aleph.