Wrapping up Psalm 119

Wrapping up Psalm 119

This is the last 6 segments of this Alphabetic Acrostic Psalm. It covers Pey – Tav in the Hebrew alphabet.

Being container of God’s word, humility leading to the glory of Christ’ likeness, our need for our Creator and the rightness of our calling out to Him, turning towards God and away from wickedness, loving God’s law and the great hope His commandments offer and being marked by God’s sign which delivers from death. All of this and more are in these last segments.

As an additional treat, the final verses under Tav seem to summarize the entire 119th chapter in its emphasis on God’s words and our relationship to it!

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Palm Sunday 2025 Crown

How you see Him is how you will crown Him

How you see Him is how you will crown Him

Well it’s Palm Sunday, the day the church “celebrates” the national superficial recognition of Jesus as their King just before demanding His crucifixion 4 days later.

Yes, this celebration confuses me too – however, it does set the stage for a very good teaching on expectations.

The Jewish people as a whole rejected Jesus because He did not conform to their incomplete & incorrect understanding of who the Messiah was going to be.

They knew He was going to:
• come and establish God’s kingdom
• unite Israel &make sovereign their borders
• reign on David’s throne forever.

What they failed to see was His:
• Rejection by Israel
• Authority being challenged
• Lack of majesty or stateliness so as to captivate them
• mocking
• trial
• sufferings
• Death
• resurrection.

ALL foretold and predicted, but as Isaiah said God gave them a “spirit of deep sleep” and “blinded their eyes”.

Yet, an old man and woman, namely Anna and Simeon, knew & recognized Jesus and knew He was here to redeem Israel from their sins without ever hearing Him preach, seeing Him heal or even talking to Him for they knew it from His birth.

How? The Spirit of God gave them eyes to see and ears to hear, BECAUSE they were true worshipers of God who sought Him for Who He IS rather than for what they wanted Him to be!

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led renewed overcome

Led, Renewed & Overcoming

We tackled Romans 8 this week in all of its complexity and glory.

In chapter 7 Paul leaves the christian with a palpable awareness of our divided hearts. Once we have come to Christ in faith and allegiance to His Lordship our spirits are recreated in the image of God our Father and Maker. We are no longer spiritually dead. No longer beings of utter darkness, we are now alive to God in the spirit, children of light.

However there remains the law of sin and death actively at work in our flesh nature, warring for dominant influence over our souls. This lower nature or lower life as Jesus put it, attempts to lead us into actions which are in high rebellion against the God we love. So it is that Paul asked the question – “Who will deliver me from this death-ridden body?” He closes that thought with the answer, “Jesus Christ our LORD”.

We are left with our higher nature serving God, but our lower nature, the law of sin & death.

Chapter 8 is nearly all about the mind, which is where this war is fought.

The Spirit encourages the believer to set their minds on spiritual things and be led by the inward promptings of the Holy Spirit.

Though we are predestined to bear the image of Jesus Christ, the means of bringing this about is suffering in the flesh. We must put to death the deeds of the body, that we might live and that death is realized in suffering.

In the end though, not anything or anyone external to ourselves can remove us from the love of God or the victory we will realize in Him!

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