Book of Psalms - Psa. 25, vv. 1-2

Hebrew Word Studies and the Design of Psalm 25

So today we are going to continue in the psalms. We've been going through the psalms Just verse by verse chapter by chapter. We are at chapter 25 and I will I Will try to get through some of it. It's not gonna go very fast because I really did just kind of keep going Deeper and deeper into it.

Let's just Let's just read through here psalm 25 Hold on one second. I forgot something. There we go. Since I promised Ben I'd go a little bit deeper. I Want you to see something that I think is really cool.

I've been studying a little bit of Hebrew and I've been learning about each letter. The Hebrew alphabet is a Extraordinary language, it's. You've got words made up of letters. That doesn't seem very extraordinary in and of itself except that each letter means something in and of itself.

So like for us the letter B wouldn't necessarily mean anything by itself it's just the letter B and it gives you the sound but but in the Hebrew alphabet It would mean something it would mean something like house.

And when you take each letter You can actually break down the letters. I've seen Meyer and Golden do this you can literally break down the letters themselves each piece of the letter means something but then the letter itself means something and then When it's all grouped together you get a word and the letters the meanings of the letters Will help you understand the word better.

And so Hebrew is just a really fascinating thing and I'm way behind on my on my lessons in Hebrew I'm going through a course and Just hasn't lined up well for me to just be in it very much. But what little I have learned has been mind-blowing and so I'm gonna I'm gonna help Break down a little bit of Hebrew in this because it really makes for some cool lessons, but also one of the coolest things that I've learned about the Bible is There is a lot of design in the Bible there's design in the structure of the Bible there's design in how it's written like We serve a great designer, right?

We look around us and we see creation we go. Wow. There's definitely a designer because this creation has design but when he gave us his word Which by the way, he used to create the design there is design within the word as well and When we look at that it can be easy to go and begin making Weird doctrines out of it, but you don't need to it's really there just to show you Man could not have done this, right?

This is a divine book. One of my favorite pamphlets I've ever read was by Dr. Rocky Freeman called amazing evidence and he breaks down some of the numerology of the of the scripture and he says be real careful because Some people look at this and start trying to make Theology out of this but really it's just to show you it is a divine book it's miraculous and he broke down the the odds that some of the Design that's in that book could even exist and it's truly impossible.

It's impossible the amount of design that's built in so I'm going to show you just a little snippet of something. That's really cool in Psalm 25 it is an Acrostic does anybody know what an acrostic is?

All right, so it's like a way to remember things right and If you have an acrostic like.

Okay.

God I like that pop grace God's riches at Christ expense. Is that what you said. Never heard that. I don't think that's cool. An acronym, right. That basically goes a B C D E F G, right. So it's it's a similar concept because.

Right.

It's something it's something weird like that, but essentially what you're looking at is you're looking at a form of Literary design that's supposed to help you remember The song so and the way it's done in Psalm 25 is with each Hebrew letter.

So each verse starts with the next letter in Hebrew. And so it's really cool and there are other Psalms that do the same thing that shows design but also. This one is really more of an almost acrostic.

There are some of the verses where? The acrostic is broken. You'd say oh, well, then it's not an acrostic. But what's cool is if you take the verses where the acrostic is broken the reason why it's broken is it takes a Hebrew letter and repeats the same Hebrew letter or it just it omits Another Hebrew letter because there's 22 verses.

There's like 22 Hebrew letters. And since there are some that are repeating there are some missing.

And.

What's cool about that is that the design it shows is that if there's something missing. But it seems to follow an acrostic form. It makes you go. Well, why? Why is it like it's it's an acrostic form, but then it seems to be missing.

Especially when you realize it's the Holy Spirit that wrote the scripture and Holy Spirit's perfect. So you would want the acrostic to be perfect. You're like, why is it broken that that kind of stinks?

But if you go and you look at the verses that are miss missing the acrostic they're breaking it. They include these four phrases. Let not my enemies triumph over me. You are the God of my salvation. Forgive all my sins and Redeem Israel out of all their troubles all of them.

Salvation verses. So it brings a special attention to the concept of salvation in Psalms. Now one scholar got really nerdy over it and he said well, let's look at the.

The.

Hebrew letters that are missing and See which ones those are. And let's look at the Hebrew letters that are repeated and see which ones those are. And he said that you can take the Hebrew letters that are missing and.

And.

They form a word they can they can be arranged to form the word hell and The letters that have been repeated can be arranged to form the word healer. So hell is missing from the psalm and the healer is present.

I Thought wow, that's pretty cool. When you look at the design of God's Word. There are no mistakes, even the ones where you go that kind of seems like a mistake, you know. It's not it's there by design.

To just make you think make you ponder and what I love about reading the word is. Sometimes you can think I I got what this all means and you you might. But there's always another layer deep that you can go.

I don't know if you've ever seen the movie inception it's a really interesting thriller movie where there's this man who can go into other people's dreams and He's trying to fight a bad guy and they fight in the dream world.

But in order to gain an advantage you have to be in a deeper dream than the other guy. And the way it happens is you have to fall asleep in the dream. And then you have to start dreaming within the dream.

So it's in a dream and a dream and a dream. And so you'll have this it's a really it's kind of hard to follow but the the guy who made the movie did a great job of it and the concept of dream within a dream within a dream just showed all these different layers to the story and I think that's kind of what we get is this form of inception with God's Word.

Is that you can get a good surface level story, but if you'll just go one level deeper. It'll blow your mind go two levels deeper and you'll be like wow. Look at all the design that's within the story.

And so that's what we'll do as we go through Psalm 25. We're gonna try to go through it a little bit slowly. So Psalm 25 verse 1 a psalm of David. Pretty simple. We now know who wrote this psalm. David wrote most of the psalms.

This is a psalm in which he is going to be asking for deliverance and for a Sense of peace or confidence.

So.

This psalm is really cool in the fact that it helps in times of when you you are Experiencing doubt or trouble or tribulation and we see this throughout all the psalms is that David will start from a place of doubt or a place Of worry and he'll begin writing the psalm and then by the end He's just praising God.

And so I think these are very useful for us when we begin to doubt or to worry. To just read David's words as if they're our own. Because if we will make them our own, I mean they're given to us for that reason.

If we'll make them our own it will bring us on that same kind of journey out of a dark place and into a place.

Of light.

Lifting Up the Soul to the Lord

Okay unto thee. Oh Lord. Do I lift up my soul? This seems to indicate a couple of things first. Man has the ability to lift up his soul. What would that look like. What do you guys think. What would it look like to lift up your soul?

Okay offering yourself. It's good answer any other answers.

Well, it's your person that maybe down or. You know really. Maybe it's maybe maybe it's Like press but maybe it's also just a motion. Yeah in general and They are directing that back to the Lord. So David's saying soul.

Perhaps just his way of saying, you know. All of my emotions that I'm dealing with right now all of these feelings deep down inside. You know, I'm going to refocus back to you rather than on whatever may be positive feelings perhaps.

That's a really good answer. You're gonna see that it that is it feels like that's the part That man goes through Inside his head as he's doing what he's supposed to do. Like you you follow the word you do what it says and there's a change in the emotions.

It's going to go on in place of that. Also, I think that's a phrase that a cool young preacher would say. Is you feeling all the feels? I'll be repeating that one sometime. You're so relevant. Yes youth class he's getting his getting all his terminology read up on getting into that urban dictionary and stuff.

That's not new. Okay, so lift up. Doug Neville, I haven't heard it his name in a while. I'm gonna go see him. I know. He fired as a customer at least he said he could so. The the phrase lift up here means to raise or exalt as if holding up in an offering.

Right, so think of it like this. Here it's for you, right.

This is yours.

Does that seem like something good to do? Well James 4 17 tells us therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not to him it is sin.

Therefore.

That's true. Wouldn't it be true of us that it would be sinful not to lift up our soul To God if that's a good thing to do and we decide not to do it. It's kind of a responsibility here isn't there. It's not just a you can it's a you should.

Have you ever. Yeah, yeah, let me let me ask you this. Have you ever thought about the word responsibility.

It is.

When I have thought about of it mom's like tried not to when I have tried. When I have thought about responsibility, I thought of it from the perspective of Well, what am I supposed to do? What do I have to do?

But I really started thinking about the word responsibility in a different light after reading this because.

One.

We know that David is doing this because David belongs to God. He actually can't do this unless he belongs to God, how do we know that? Apart for me you can do nothing, right? So then I started thinking about the word Responsibility.

It's a compound word. Yeah response ability. So you have a response that is required of you that you are given the ability to do. You can only respond because you've been given the ability. So in other words When you have a responsibility it starts with something outside of you.

It doesn't start with you. It starts outside of you because it's a response. How can you respond to something? With this to nothing. Hey, you respond to nothing is what I mean to say, right and so In a large portion of the Christian Church would tell you that it is your responsibility to accept Jesus and therefore your fate is in your hands.

But the very word they would use responsibility Implies that something happened. Something was there someone was there That did something that you now have to respond to.

So.

It's not necessarily in your hands. Your fate is not necessarily in your hands. You have an ability now that you didn't have an ability to have before as a response to the outside source. So it implies the existence of a preceding action performed by an outside force.

That you should respond to. So David here is making a declaration of what his response will be. Unto thee. Oh Lord. Do I lift up my soul? People lift their hands to God in worship. They lift their voice to God in praise.

They lift their finances to God in donation. They lift their works to God in service. They lift their words to God in preaching and in teaching and in testimony. And. Would we all agree that those are good things to do?

Yes, however. Unless they lift their soul to God. Unless their inner most intimate being is offered up as a sacrifice of self giving Him their deepest darkest part of being like Ben mentioned. That that part of you that is unknown to the rest of the world really.

Unless the life of man is lost to the son of man. These other liftings are meaningless there's the The Pharisees did these things all the time is an outward lifting up. But there was no inner lifting up.

So I think it's really cool that David starts there. Like let's let's go right to the heart. Let's get right to the kernel of the matter. I know there's a problem and it's me and I have to lift me up.

So here it is. Yeah the soul. Yeah, I like that pop like taking note that the soul is the innermost part of you. Not the lifting of the hands or even the deeds. We tend to like to focus on the deeds, right?

Let's see how much good stuff you can do and. Even if you believe in the doctrine of grace, we would say things like we'd quote scripture faith without works is dead, right? That's true, but why is that true?

Because the works are supposed to be a showing of what's going on in the heart and. So you can fake it. You can show a lot of good works, but if inside You have not yielded your life to Christ.

Then it's meaningless.

That's why in the end times man will come to the Lord say Lord Lord. Did we not prophesy in your name? Like that's that's gonna be all those people who lifted their hands and did a lot of work in the church and paid their tithes.

But they never yielded their innermost being their soul To Christ, so how important would we say that piece is lifting your soul to Christ?

Yeah.

Good work.

Right.

Part of the purpose of this lesson today is to focus entirely on what you just said, which is The action fruit versus attitude fruit. I like how you said that that's pretty cool. Cool old preacher cool old preacher.

I like that. The reason why I want to focus so much on that today is because it's gonna show us the true benefit of lifting up your soul. Myron teaches a lot of stuff to sales people about like how to become better at sales and business and marketing stuff.

And he talks about how you have to become the person who will do the things to have the stuff. You can't just try to do the things. There has to be a change in you first that's so true with everything in life because I mean if you think about it.

You go and you want to pick an apple. Do you go to an orange tree? No, you're never gonna get an apple out of an orange tree. No matter how many times you go out trying to pick an apple off in an orange tree.

It's never gonna happen and for an orange tree to try to produce an apple would be pretty impossible. Right, and so if you are a Christian who is trying to produce the action fruit. But you don't have the attitude fruit.

You're gonna be working extremely hard your entire life. To try and get it to to appear as though you are a Christian. But if you are a tree planted by the rivers of water, right? It's gonna just flow from you the natural thing for an apple tree to do is produce apples and.

A natural thing for Christians to do is to produce good works and it will be a lot less work it will feel less like work and more just like living and so that's the benefit of Lifting up our soul because what we're doing is we're changing The innermost part of ourselves.

We're not changing it. We're offering up to God for him to change it and. So I really want to focus on the word lift for a second. I told you I've been studying this Hebrew stuff, right? The word lift is Nesha and it's composed of three Hebrew letters.

Nun.

Shif sorry. Noon shin and Aleph noon shin and Aleph. I Don't know that I'm saying those exactly right because I'm not very deep into my Hebrew yet. But I do know each one of those letters means Nun is a fish.

If you just write that letter you are literally writing like the word fish. But it has another connotation. It's interesting that Christians have a fish as our little symbol, right? It means life.

Okay.

Shin means teeth. All right, so if you just wrote shin that letter you're writing Teeth. But it has an action connotation to it, which is to consume or really consume isn't the perfect Way to say it. It's more like holding on to with great tenacity.

All right, and.

Then Aleph is. Probably the coolest Hebrew letter. It's the first Hebrew letter. We say Aleph to describe it, but it's not really how it's pronounced. You don't actually pronounce it in Hebrew. It sounds like a breath like the proper pronunciation is.

And.

It is when you think about that First its meaning is God. It is the letter that depicts the The divine and it means God Almighty specifically El Shaddai and So what's cool about that is when you're firstborn the first Words off your mouth is the name of God when you take a breath when you die the last Word on your lips is your last breath.

It is the name of God and that's for every human being whether they know him or not. So God's gonna get the glory. That right there blew my mind. I was like, whoa, you know but when you start taking the letters and you start putting them all together and you start to see what they mean we have here Lift or Neshah, which is fish teeth El Shaddai or a life Held in great tenacity by God a life some might would say consumed by God.

Except we are not consumed. Are we not those of us who he loves and so think of it almost like a Like a dog with a bone you think of how a dog holds on to something with his teeth with great tenacity.

We have this little pug at home. His name is biscuit. He doesn't even have much in the way of teeth. Like if he bites you it doesn't even hurt. They're itty bitty little pins like tiny things and they are a little sharp because he's a puppy.

But as he gets older No bite will hurt anything. I mean, I worry he'll be able to chew his food someday. But if you play tug-of-war with him, you got to be careful because their teeth can come out there.

It's something with pugs, but that's side note. But if you pick that rag up that he's holding on to you'll pick the dog up with it. He holds on with great tenacity and he will just. He'll be growling and stuff and he won't let go like that is the type of tenacity Depicted by this letter for teeth, right?

So think of it as a fish in the teeth of God. He is not going to let you go but what I find interesting is that this is David saying I Lift my soul unto thee, right? Well There's a different connotation there because it's God holding with great tenacity his servant.

But it's his servant Lifting his life to God at the same time and I was really pondering that like what is a what is a picture? That that looks like Because the rag doesn't hold the dog so that analogy just kind of breaks down for me but then I got to thinking about movies again because I see life through movies and you know There are a lot of movies where the hero saves the damsel in distress right and what always happens in that moment when the hero fights through all of the enemies and He's getting blown up left and right but he's surviving and there is nothing that is going to stop the hero.

There is great tenacity there, right and he gets to the damsel what happens in the moment that he gets to the damsel. Before maybe even she is like before the end of the movie. I'm not talking about the big kiss scene here.

It's maybe what first goes in your mind. They're reunited kiss. Sometimes that happens even in the heat of the battle, right? But what actually happens is He grabs the damsel, right? He embraces her usually like arm around her grab the rope like romancing the stone, right?

And he swings off with her, but he's got her and there is determination in the face of the hero. There's still just chaos going around but the hero has determination. Cool, but not what I really want to focus on what happens with the damsel.

She.

Equally embraces sometimes with much more vigor the hero right like she is. There's desperation on her part. There's mostly fear in her face. But there's a glimmer of hope as well because the heroes here.

Surrendering to mercy.

Surrendering right to the salvation that she's receiving. And I think that's why that scene is in so many movies because it's a human condition piece That God created and man doesn't even know why it's so cool.

But it's because it depicts something that God has taught us about himself. He Tenaciously grabs a hold of us. He's not gonna let go but at the same time She has to let go of the building and grab on to him.

There is this Sovereignty of man and I'm sorry sovereign as a Freudians live when it was sovereignty of God and responsibility of man That happens at the same time. And we see that With David here like he can only do this because it's a response ability.

He couldn't do it without God First coming to the rescue, but then once God has rescued There is a responsibility to hold on tight. Grab on and that's what we see from David in just this very first phrase Unto thee Oh Lord.

Do I lift up my soul?

A.

Life clinging to God Almighty that is clung to by God Almighty. You might say so there are two things we can take from this beginning phrase. It's not even the whole first verse. Is it did it do the whole first verse?

I did. Okay. Yeah, it is the whole first verse. So two things we can take from this maybe should take from this if man has the ability to offer up his soul To be a life Tenaciously grabbed by God Almighty Who is good?

Then he must of course have the responsibility to do so and Because apart from him we can do nothing. It stands to reason that that ability was given by the very presence of God. Or how can one be consumed if there is no consumer, right?

So the first thing we see that David acts properly. The first thing we see here is that Dave at David acts properly in response to an ability He gains in the presence of God. He offers himself up. The second thing that we should take from this is That if man has the ability to offer up his soul to be consumed by God To be tenaciously grabbed Then it stands to reason that he could also do quite the opposite.

Right.

Like you have the ability to not grab on to God from moment to moment. That doesn't change the fact that hero is gonna hold on to you. He's he's the dog with the rag. He's not letting go and sometimes we are a limp dish rag.

Sometimes we're we're not doing the same thing back and there are even some movies. It'll depict this. You know, the the hero swoops in and the damsel she faints, right? He's got a like with all his strength just carry her.

That happens in movies sometimes too, but like There is a responsibility for us to wake up and hold on tight and That's what David is doing here, but there is the implication that he could just not do that or how about this implication you could lift up your soul your innermost thoughts and Beings and your in your state of mind right now to something other than God.

Now does that mean you can lose your salvation? No. Once once you have been saved by the hero. You have been saved. But you can certainly still get focused on something else and guess what? It's depicted in movies, too.

There's a scene and the analogy does break down in this movie. But there is a scene that I'm reminded of in Indiana Jones probably my most quoted series. Noah was telling me this last night. He's like you always quote Indiana Jones Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, Indiana has Essentially saved the girl.

He's got her by the hand and He's like give me your other hand. Give me your other hand and she's like I can reach the Holy Grail. I can reach it. I get he's like give it up and just give me your hand.

She doesn't do it. Ultimately she's lost because of it but like or was she yeah, I think she was She. Somebody died from it, but I need to go rewatch, Indiana Jones. It's been years since I've seen that one, but that scene it is stuck in my mind.

I can still get it and I think we get that way with God where it's like he's got us. All we gotta do is give him our other hand and just hold on for the ride. But sometimes we're like, but I can still get this other thing.

I can still do This worldly thing that I love let me get it and she's literally pulling away from God to get it, right. From the God figure the the salvation figure in the movie like we can do that. We can mess it up.

Trusting God and Not Being Ashamed

Yeah, oh my god, I trust in thee that's verse 2. Okay, so to lift up one soul to God to have your life consumed by him. How is that done? What practical way can we look at this to actually do it? Because It sounds like it's a pretty good idea.

Would you agree like we don't need to be the girl in the Indiana Jones reaching for the Holy Grail? We need to be like give him the other hand. We need to do that and We need to grab ahold of him tenaciously while he's grabbing a hold of us tenaciously.

So my question then is how would you do that? Hi Zoe. There is a trust factor here, right? Oh my god, I trust in thee. The first three words there are the are the perfect example of how you should do it.

The word O is literally just the letter O here, right, but we use this a Lot in the Mitchell family. It's oh my word her. Oh my soul. You know we say that.

To.

Provide.

Emphasis there's zestfulness there right like you hear it in. They use God's name in vain in the movies all the time. They use this exact phrase. But in a derogatory term the way they do it is to try and bring Drama to the scene, right?

Well that part that idea that concept is important you bring drama To the Lord like you come to him. Emphatically zestfully. Oh, oh My god the word my is personal. It's like that's that's my God. He takes ownership there.

People use the word my when they're talking about something they they take ownership of for instance. You say my things when you talk about stuff. You've worked to obtain. You say my friends when you talk about people you've invested in or who have invested in you.

You say my family when you talk about people that you have identified with and that's so it's it's very personal the word my and Then you have God. That's relational. Truly all gods are relational you'll have a lot of Christians who'll say that's not true our God is the only God who's relational.

Our God is the only God that has a really great relationship with his people. Everybody else all the other gods they have a relationship with their servants. It's just a terrible relationship. It's like you are going to die to serve me.

Right, but our God died to save us and As a response to that we will die to ourselves and serve him but it's from a loving relationship. It's not from a fearful Dreadful he's gonna destroy me if I don't do it type relationship starts that way, right?

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. It's the beginning though, and then as you learn more and more about our God it gets way way better. So it's relational. He loves and protects his people.

He has sacrificed himself to save his people. So we are not expendable servants to him like all other gods have they have expendable servants so the first thing a Practical way to lift up your soul is to really get zestful about your personal relationship with God.

Like get some energy into that. Start thinking about it start like making it all about that. Because that's what it really means to be tenaciously grabbed or to be consumed. Right. It's like if you have something new that you're very excited about.

For some of us it might have been like stock trading or something first time you ever got into stock trading. It's like wow, this is kind of cool and then It was like this could change my life and Then you kind of nerd out over it because it becomes To some degree like an obsession.

It's the learning process like I've got to know everything about this. That's how we should be with our relationship with God. I want to know everything about him. I want to know what he thinks. I want to know what he does.

I want to know where he goes and I want to be around him. I want to Think what he's thinking. I want to ask him what he's thinking. I want to ask him what he thinks about me. What do you think about me right now God?

What do you think about this area of my life? What do you think about that area of my life? Sometimes I don't like asking him that question because I know what he thinks. And I know that I know the answer already, but why do I know because I know him.

Goodness we are almost out of time here. We're gonna finish verse 2. Oh My god, I trust in thee. The word trust let's break it down in the Hebrew a little bit bet tet chet. The word is betah. Betah so the the letters bet tet chet.

Here's what they mean bet is house. I mentioned that at the beginning. It's the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Tet means surrounding and chet means the inner chamber. So to trust is to have a House surrounding the inner chamber.

To allow your inner chamber to be housed in or surrounded by another. Your innermost thoughts your innermost beings we say like I give you my heart. Okay, I give you my heart and I I am putting it in your hands.

My heart is in your hands, that's the that's what this phrase means. That's what this word means trust. It's to be housed to be surrounded by. And that's what David is saying is my heart is yours. When he says I trust it's not just trust in the way we think about it like Okay, you you say you're gonna do something and I think you are it's more than that.

It's You have me you have all of me. Let let me not be ashamed. What a perfectly human thing to say. Don't break my heart. Don't let me down God. I I'm lifting up my soul. My heart is yours. Let me not be ashamed and this means disappointed.

Don't don't disappoint me. Which is a funny thing for David to say because he kind of knows that God's not gonna disappoint him. That's why he is Lifting his soul up to him. That's why he's putting the trust in him.

Like we don't do that as human beings unless we think we're probably gonna be okay. People who do have have a a Relationship problem like they they think of relationships the wrong way and there are people that do that.

You know, they'll they'll put their heart out there In complete denial of something they already know about a person David's not doing that with God. He's more just saying it. All right, here it is it's it's so sincere the lifting up of the soul and the giving of the heart that it's almost like a Trembling of the hands like okay, you've got it.

You got it. All right, you got it. I'm giving it to you like it's that Sincere of a giving it's real to him. It's I'm giving it up to you. He expounds on his definition of being ashamed he says Let not mine enemies triumph over me in Battle if you win your God is considered greater than the God of your enemy.

That's been true so many times. In fact, that's been we think of that as like an archaic idea. But just not ten years ago on the news you had These these terrorists launching rockets into Israel, which of course they're still doing to this day but on the news they were interviewing some of these Palestinians and Over Israel they had on the camera.