Hidden Treasures of Psalms 119: Verse 30 - Growing In Truth- Amen

Hidden Treasures of the 119th Psalm. I have enjoyed digging in verse 30 today, and I hope you get as much out of this as I do. As we have been moving along through the Dalud section of the 119th Psalm, with the Dalud, as we've talked about, as the doorway, every letter in Hebrew is a picture, and the picture of the Dalud is like a door.

In fact, it looks almost, when you look at it, like the lentil that they would have put the blood on the Passover. So it's a doorway, but it's also humility. So the humility is the doorway in so many ways to God.

And here we have more of this. And it's fascinating to me that as you come out of verse 29, where we had talked about remove from me the way of lying and grant me thy law graciously. You know, clearly it takes a lot of humility to admit that you're a liar. We talked about how beautiful and how simple that verse is. Well, the next verse doesn't come off quite as humble unless you really dig a little bit. So the next verse is as a response to I have removed from me the way of lying. And he says, Now I have chosen the way of truth and thy judgments I have laid before me. Well, like all the verses in the Dalud section, Derek is the way, and that's the way that the verse actually starts. So to say that I've chosen the way is, you know, is a beautiful thing when we know that Jesus is the way and is the truth.

And so we're getting both of those in the same verse. But to say I have chosen the way doesn't sound all that humble unless you look at that next word, the way he said truth. You know, it looks in the King James Version like that's what he did. I bet in a lot of your Bibles it says I've chosen the way of faithfulness. Well, the actual word that they used or that the psalmist used here is a very humble word of way of saying truth. And what he actually said would be from the way most of us worship, he said the Amen. I have chosen the way of the Amen, which means, you know, so let it be or I am growing in the truth. OK, because what it is is the same first two letters that are in the word met, which is truth.

The met ends with a tough, but this letter has the nun in it and then a hey. So it's like an expression of the seed of faith. And so I'm what you're actually saying is I'm growing in the way of truth. Like I'm not necessarily arrived yet.

I'm growing into that. And it's sort of like I believe, but help my unbelief. Right. And so I love the what he said. I've chosen the way of the Amen of the I mean, I'm trying to grow into this truth. And and then he says, I have set thy judgments before me. Now, we talked about before that these mitzvah are judgments. And really what King David has done here is he's kind of quoting as he is. It's almost the whole thing is a commentary on the on the law, so to speak, is he's quoting from Exodus 21 where it says set these judgments before. So he's he's saying, you know, I have set these judgments before us. So it's an interesting thing.

Like, how do we grow into the fact of judgment? So I thought I'd share a story. Really, it's a testimony from my standpoint of how this happened.

Like for Robbie, a real point of I'm trying to grow into the Amman. So years ago, actually, I think it was in 2002. The people at Calvary came to me and asked me if I wanted to teach the Ham Sunday School class, which at that point in time was like one hundred and fifty people. And just a real honor to teach it. And I, of course, not in humility, but in complete pride, immediately just said, oh, yeah, sure, absolutely. You know, didn't pray, didn't ask my wife, just jumped on it. And actually, they moved forward from that, voted on it within a few days and made me the teacher. The sad news about that or it wasn't sad.

I don't know. God was really working on this. So I came home to my wife and I said, honey, great news.

We are going to teach the Ham Sunday School class. Well, we had been working separately. I had been teaching high school and she'd been holding babies, which she really, really loved. And what I did not know is she didn't want to be separated anymore. She wanted to be together.

But she felt like. And she told me she goes, well, you know, the other night I was at the special needs event that they had on Wednesday night. And God really told me that our ministry was going to be special needs. And so I really want to switch over. It's the time of year where Sunday school classes were switching over.

I want to switch over to special needs. And I thought, what in the world? Like here I have an opportunity to teach the biggest Sunday school class ever. And I'm going to go teach in special needs. So, again, you know, I thought I'd prayed about it. I thought, you know, clearly, you know, this this couldn't be the direction I want to go. And if I was completely transparent of how un-humble I was, I was actually said to my wife, you know, how can I teach all this wonderful Bible knowledge God has given me to people with special needs?

The arrogance of that statement has haunted me for years. But anyway, I went to my men's group that Wednesday. I mean, excuse me, Thursday morning, which is Christian Businessmen's Committee. And there was an old missionary there. And so as I told this whole story, I didn't, you know, say I hadn't prayed. I didn't you know, I just said I had this opportunity to do this.

And my wife wants us to do that. And this old missionary by the name of Archie Jones looks at me and he says, Robbie, under the least of these, my brother. See what he did? He set the judgment before me. In other words, this Mitzvahed, which is right, that Jesus shared that, you know, as as you do under the least of these, you do unto me. And so what a wonderful thing to realize that, oh, there is the judgment. And I looked at him and I said, you dog, because I knew immediately, because, you know, when you hear truth and you're growing in the truth and I'm trying to grow in the truth, then that seemed true. But I still had to grow in it because I was not at all comfortable going into special needs.

So we the next Sunday, I agreed. I backed I, you know, resigned from the hand Sunday school class. And I went, you know, eating my humble pie to the special needs class. But when I got there and these were adults with special needs, so most of them, you know, are going to be in their 30s, 40s, 50s, et cetera. And they really kind of scared me.

Some of them were swinging at the air. A lot of people with autism that didn't pay any attention, many of them not vocal. They didn't speak. And they made me really uncomfortable.

We had no special needs people, of course, people down syndrome and stuff. They in our family, we I had no experience with this whatsoever. It's really uncomfortable. And after. And so I'm needing to grow in this faith.

Right. I've set the judgment before me, but I am not there. OK. And so after about three weeks, the teacher whose name was Dawn at the time looked at me and she goes, well, I hear you're a pretty good teacher, Robbie. Why don't you teach next week? And I want you to teach the fifth commandment or honor thy father and mother.

And I thought, oh, good. I can't even teach that commandment to my own kids out in the world. Am I going to teach this? You know, but I think this is where God had me right where he wanted me, because when I set up to go, how am I going to study this? All I could do is just pray. And I say, God, I have no idea how I am going to teach this to people that don't talk, that don't seem to be paying attention.

I mean, I, I have no idea how to do this. And so as I prayed and prayed, God put it on my heart that the way that you honor people is that you kneel. And so that day, I very clumsily went in and and I showed the concept of mother and father every way I possibly could. And then I showed, you know, how you would kneel before your father and mother. And I thought that clearly I had done absolutely nothing because they were like I said, they're punching the air, looking out the window, you know, doing all sorts of things they aren't saying yet. They're not saying amen. OK. Oh, you know, I thought this was a huge failure until the parents showed up.

Right. The families of these students started to show up. And as they did, you know, the students began to kneel.

And then the parents, of course, why is my student kneeling as I'm walking up? And they were told. And then the tears came. And when I saw the tears of the parents is there. They realized that their children had understood some biblical truth. And all of a sudden, my tears came and I went, OK, you see, what had happened is I had said the truth, the amen. I'd said this way. I need to grow into the truth before me. And then God grew me into right setting those judgments. And I really think that when you think from a point of humility, this is where King David's coming from today. In verse 30 of the Dalit section of 119.