Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119:4- What Are Precepts?

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. Oh, I can't tell you how happy I am today that, once again, I followed the directing of the Holy Spirit and waited to record this episode till this morning, because last night I had an opportunity to do it, and I thought, well, let me just study this particular verse a little bit more, and I'm so glad that I did, because God gave me just a phenomenal, phenomenal understanding this morning, oh my goodness.

And I'm so excited to share it with you, like, wow, how cool is this? I don't think I'll ever look at this verse the same, or a lot of things the same. So in the 119th Psalm, for some reason, when we get to the fourth verse, in each of the eight sections on all the 22 letters, the fourth verse, it seems like in my study so far that King David is leveling up. In other words, he's taking the concepts he taught in the first three, and he's going up one. Or even like you're on a motorcycle and you're shifting gears, like you're in first, second, and third.

Now all of a sudden, wow, you're going to go to seventh gear, like somehow or another. So this fourth verse, he definitely levels up, and the language changes and a lot changes, which really had me confused, like, where is he going? And so interestingly, as I had studied the Deuteronomy 6 passage, I backed into the understanding I'd really been seeking ever since I started studying the Psalm. The very first questions I had for God, what does the word precept really mean as far as what the Psalmist is intending in here?

And it just didn't seem to be what I'd heard about precept all my life. And so this question has been burning in my heart, and I'm so glad it remained burning until this morning when finally I think the Holy Spirit kind of guided me to how to get there. So the actual verse reads, thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently.

That's the way it reads in the King James Version. And so I was like, how did we go from this idea of blessed to all of a sudden thou hast commanded us? And this word command that's used in this verse is not a misfit type of command, which we talked about are good deeds, are not a misfit kind of which are judgments.

This is actually something that someone would command you, tell you, okay, it's time to go take out the trash. This is a command. And so when he's saying studying commandments and all these things throughout the Psalm, those are all the different kind of commandments we've talked about. But this command is like he's directing you to do something, which has to be a critical piece of the puzzle when you're trying to back into what does the word precepts mean. So I knew that here we had this word command in Hebrew, which was different than any of the other words that he uses about commandments.

They're very specific, like I told you to do this right. And then it says to keep my precepts diligently, which that is the Hebrew word miyod. And so the word precepts in Hebrew is pakutim. And I still, you know, and the first time you'll find that word is in the Psalms in the pakut, that would be a single type of precept. But here he uses a plural, which is pakutim.

When he put that um on the end of a word like that, it's making it plural. So he's talking about precepts, not just precept. And so I thought, well, this would be interesting. Let me see if I can find something that was commanded, that was to be done diligently. Well, interestingly, if you go back to Deuteronomy six, which is actually where I was looking for something, because I know so much of especially the Allah verses is based on Deuteronomy six. And again, what the father would want his son to teach his sons. And so what was told that was commanded to be done diligently, that miyod word? Well, the beautiful thing is, here's the commandment, so that you'll know that this apparently is a precept or pakutim, all right. And here it is, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might, is the way it's translated in the King James Version, that word might right there.

That's the same word as diligently, right? And here finally unlocked for me, okay, pakutim is something that's in the Bible that tells us how to do life. And actually, the rabbi that explained this word pakutim used it in the way he explained pakutim are the things of life that make life worth living.

And he said that there was this rabbi, very famous rabbi, that was also a psychologist and all this stuff that went into Auschwitz. And he noted that the people that died quickly were the ones that didn't hang on to their faith in any way, shape, or form, didn't hang on to God in any way, shape, or form, that they didn't really have much living to live for, and so they immediately almost died. And so it was like he understood that these pakutim are the things that are worth living for. So all of a sudden, this concept of love, and so I really could not say this any better than Robin Williams did. And so as you listen to this clip from Robin Williams in the movie Dead Poets Society, I want you to recall what he's saying, and he's explaining something about a pakutim, and he's telling you what a pakutim is, all right, in his own way. But the beautiful thing is, at the beginning of it, he says huddle up, which, when you look at the word pakut, which is the root word of the idea of precepts here, it has to do with mustering, coming together, and it really has to do with the face of God. Well, when you think about loving God, you really have to go into a relationship with him. So as we are going to, as God has commanded us to love him diligently, in this case, love him with all our might, the interesting thing about that command is it really, really levels you up.

So listen to Robin Williams as he explains this way better than I could. Keep ripping, gentlemen. This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls. Thank you, Mr. Belton.

Armies of academics going forward, measuring poetry. No! We will not have that here.

No more of Mr. J. Evans' pictures. Now, my class, you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. Now, see, that look in Mr. Prit's eye, like 19th century literature, has nothing to do with going to business school or medical school, right?

Maybe. Mr. Hopkins, you may agree with him, thinking, yes, we should simply study our Mr. Pritchard and learn our rhyme and meter and go quietly about the business of achieving other ambitions. I have a little secret for you, huddle up.

Huddle up! We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion, medicine, law, business, engineering. These are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life, poetry, beauty, romance, love.

These are what we stay alive for. So now we're given this understanding that the Pecudim, these particular type of commandments, because he's commanded him to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul. And again, that word diligently, with all my might, I'm supposed to keep these Pecudim, which is love. And so when we think about it, these Pecudim are all through the Bible, right? When Paul was explaining to husbands to love their wives, right?

This is a Pecudim. This is a mustering together. This is something to make life worth living. Or when Jesus gave us the commandment, here's this commandment I'm going to leave with you, love one another.

Right? Again, this whole mustering, this whole, this is what makes life worth living. Or the commandment, right, don't forsake your gathering of yourself together.

That's a Pecudim. These are the things that King David is saying here. Do this with all your might, and then add to this when you think about it, right? This is something that King David was saying, this is of the father, that fathers were to teach their sons and their sons were to teach their sons, et cetera. Can you imagine your own children, right?

Teaching their children to love with all their might, right? With diligence, like with all you've got. Give it to your marriage. With all you've got, give it to your kids. With all you've got, give it to God. If you start there, man, you will certainly, right, you're shifting into seventh gear by all means as we come into this fourth verse in Psalms 119.