Psalm 25:1
1 A Psalm of David. [David]
Unto thee, O LORD, [Yahovah] do I lift up [nasa'] my
soul. [nephesh]KJV-Interlinear
A Psalm
of David.
1 To
Thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul. NASB
In other chapters and
books we have studied the contrasts between faith and works, between good and
evil, between worldly knowledge and spiritual knowledge, even between worldly
wisdom and spiritual wisdom.
And here we begin the
contrast study of the differences between the focus of the soul on God, versus ones
focus on the world.
Heaven is and has always
been referred to as up, while the world has always been referred to as below.
We always look up to God. We have to look down when we look to the
world.
And so it is when we
refer to the thoughts of the soul.
There are two types of
thoughts, those what are worldly, also called temporal thoughts, and then there
are those which are spiritual.
Worldly thoughts are
temporary, and yield little or no value. They are here today, and gone
tomorrow. And actually most thoughts are here now and gone in just a moment.
People spend most of their
life on thoughts that get them nowhere. They tweet and post and text. They watch tv and entertainment events. They absorb themselves in activities that go
nowhere, produce nothing, and give them zero advancement in their life. And they do this over and over and over,
minute by minute, hour by hour, day after day for months and years. And what do they have at the end of it
all? Nothing.
They fill up their minds
and thoughts with nothing, with empty activity, with empty filler. And when they arrive at the end of their
life, they discover or perhaps do not discover, that they have been nothing
more than historical filler with an empty life that has amounted to nothing and
certainly far, far short of that which God intended.
And this because they
ignored God, in favor of pursuing their own empty activities of life.
To lift up, ‘nasa’ is to
look at a higher level of purpose, to look upward permanently, to advance as
opposed to standing still, to succeed as opposed to failure, to contain, to
fill oneself up, to stir up, to yield, to complete.
And what is lifted
up?
Not the eyes, not the
head, not the arms, but the soul.
The soul is the real
living you. He soul contains thought,
and that thought comes from learning, not how to text, not how to sing or
dance, but from the scriptures. Real and
legitimate learning comes from the receiving of instruction of bible doctrine.
What is the beginning of
knowledge or wisdom? Fear of the Lord. But fear does not come by accident, and not
on a platter. Fear of the Lord comes
from the day after day of repetitious learning and hearing from instruction.
Building precept upon precept, verse by verse, word by word until what you learn
begins to gel and come together in real and coherent and organized thought.
And then you begin to
understand and know what you and life are all about.
God is the beginning. He
was the beginning of all that exists, even before there was an existence. God is the beginning of truth. God is the beginning of doctrine.
God should be your
beginning of thought. To turn your mind
away from a fixation on earthly things and turn your thoughts onto things that
are more eternal.
To look at the world is
to look no further than ones own nose.
To look at things eternal is to look at ones own destiny far out into
eternity.
Through thought, God
created all that is, the angels, the universe, the human race, even His very
own divine plan for all of history.
Everything in their individual and infinite detail. All of this came from Gods own thought.
Divine thought is the
origin of all that is possible, of all that is intuitive, of all that is
innovative, of all that is.
Imagine what you could accomplish
or even discover and know and do, if you replaced your worldly thoughts or
activities that yield nothing, with the thoughts of God which are the origin
and source of everything.
