Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119: Verse 21- Rebuke WHO?

Hidden treasures of the 119th Psalm. So join us taking this deep dive mining with King David in the 119th Psalm.

Today's journey in the 119th Psalm. We are still in the Gimel section and things take an interesting turn again. We're shifting up and showing different aspects of the letter Gimel. And this one has a really different aspect than we've talked about thus far. So the language changes dramatically in the tone. So verse 21 reads in the King James Version, Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which do err from thy commandments.

You know, we come from this whole idea of bounty and the rich man running after the poor man. And now we find the other aspect of the letter Gimel, which unfortunately when you put God in any of these letters, you get the good side of the letter. But each of these letters also represents the evil side or, you know, what we do without God, you know, the godless side of that. And when you take the Gimel without God, what you get is pride.

And so here, King David takes a real shift. And it looks like he's praying. And I would agree he is praying that God would rebuke the proud that are cursed. And that idea of cursed would be that God has turned his back on them, right? Because God is like, man, I can't watch this.

This is going to be bad. If you love somebody, it's hard to watch them get into all kinds of trouble. And that's where pride leads, especially this kind of pride, because this is a little different kind of pride than, you know, the pride cometh before fall. This is more of a presumptive type of pride. Now, one of the big questions that this particular verse is, is King David talking about people other than himself? Or is he talking about himself? And when you study the Jewish sages, they are talking about the people that are, you know, anti semitic and, and that David is speaking against his enemies here? Well, I don't necessarily see it that way at all, especially when you see how the next verse connects to what I'm going to say here, when we talk about verse 22 tomorrow.

But I just want to think about it for a minute. I, you know, do I want God to rebuke me when I'm proud? And King David certainly had those issues, right? I mean, unfortunately, he was presumptive when he numbered the people.

He was presumptive with Bathsheba, no doubt. You know, there was some stuff that that really he was rebuked for. And so here is interesting a call now the call is for God to rebuke the proud that are cursed. And then I love the end of the of the way that he says that which do air but actually, if I were to translate that, I would say that those who ravish your mitzvahs, in other words, you know, when people are so arrogant, that they think that they know what they're doing. And we just take it as an example, because Bible is a book of examples, not exceptions. And so an example is King David thought he knew how to move that the arc of the testimony, right? He made a presumption that I know how to do this. And it ended up costing us his life, or King David thought he knew how to number the the the fighting men in Israel, and that ended up a definite curse.

I mean, how curse was that? And so when you look at these things, you go, Oh, my goodness, how easy do I ravish God's commandments, when I leave him out of the equation. And if he is dealing with me bountifully, then I tend to get puffed up, I must be special. I must be something if he's teaching me all this stuff.

And believe me, I go there constantly. And so I love, I love thinking about where does this verse really want me to land? What is where does God want me to land on this first and I don't think it has to do I personally don't think it has to do with asking God to rebuke other proud people as much as it has to do with asking God, right? To rebuke me to get me on the right path. I mean, if he doesn't, right, he rebukes those he loves. And so, you know, I really feel like in my heart of hearts that when I go ravishing those commandments, even in teaching the word, sometimes I undoubtedly get proud, because he is dealt bountifully with me.

And then I make assumptions, I make presumptions. And I really feel like this is at the heart of where King David is going in the gimel section here is we've talked about the great parts of the gimel. Now we got to deal with this part.

All right. And we got to get the air out of our windbag somehow. And so I think that again, rather than leaning our own understanding on how to do that, why not ask God, God helped me get the air out of my windbag. And what a beautiful thing to think about as we pray through this verse on the 119th Psalm, I think definitely a treasure today.