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Speaker 1: Hello, thank you for listening to your daily Bible verse,

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Speaker 1: the podcast that examines one verse each day to learn

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Speaker 1: more about God and his will for us. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Shaka Hines, and after this short word from our sponsor,

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Speaker 1: we'll dive right into today's Bible verse in Psalm 119,

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Speaker 1: verse 29. Today's Bible verse is Psalm 119, verse 29.

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Speaker 1: Keep me from deceitful ways. Be gracious to me. and

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Speaker 1: teach me your law. Years ago, I homeschooled our two

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Speaker 1: oldest boys for middle school. Now, homeschooling parents would sometimes

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Speaker 1: have field trips that they would take together, and we

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Speaker 1: had never done it, so I decided, let's do this.

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Speaker 1: Sounds fun, but I have a terrible sense of direction.

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Speaker 1: And this was before there was a Siri and I

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Speaker 1: didn't have any kind of GPS help. So one day, though,

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Speaker 1: we set out for this homeschool field trip. Going to

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Speaker 1: unknown places with my children when they were little was

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Speaker 1: probably one of the most terrifying things for me to do.

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Speaker 1: But I swallowed my fear. I got on the road

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Speaker 1: and we started going and we ended up in another state. Granted,

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Speaker 1: this other state was only about 30 to 40 minutes

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Speaker 1: away from my house, but we never made it to

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Speaker 1: our destination. I would have loved it if someone had

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Speaker 1: been able to guide me in the way I should go.

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Speaker 1: The Psalms are a book of poems, and Psalm 119

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Speaker 1: is the longest poem in the book. It's an acrostic poem,

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Speaker 1: each line beginning with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

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Speaker 1: The psalmist spends 176 verses recognizing the gift of God's

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Speaker 1: laws and praising him for them. Psalm 119.29, again, it says,

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Speaker 1: keep me from deceitful ways. Be gracious to me and

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Speaker 1: teach me your law. The Hebrew words for deceitful ways

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Speaker 1: can also be translated as false or lying ways or roads.

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Speaker 1: In essence, the psalmist is saying, Lord, don't let me

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Speaker 1: get lost down a road of lies, not the lies

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Speaker 1: of the world, myself, or anything else. He considered it

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Speaker 1: a kindness from God, his grace, to teach him God's truth.

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Speaker 1: Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God gave Moses

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Speaker 1: the law found in the Torah, and Moses gave them

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Speaker 1: to the Israelites. These laws were revolutionary, and they were

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Speaker 1: meant to set the Israelites apart from the idol-worshiping, child-sacrificing,

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Speaker 1: sexually promiscuous, rampant injustice of the cultures around them. God

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Speaker 1: established laws to direct them toward the reality of the universe,

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Speaker 1: the truth that He was the God they needed to worship,

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Speaker 1: and He was the one who would take care of them.

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Speaker 1: God protected the vulnerable. In Deuteronomy 24, verses 19 through 21,

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Speaker 1: you see him telling Moses, don't let them harvest everything

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Speaker 1: in the field. Make sure they don't glean it a

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Speaker 1: second time, but leave some for the orphan, the widow,

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Speaker 1: and the foreigner. In Exodus 23, verses 6 through 9,

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Speaker 1: he says, don't deny justice for the poor or oppress

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Speaker 1: the foreigners. The Torah forbade the Canaanite practices of women

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Speaker 1: becoming slaves temple prostitutes or a ritualistic child sacrifice or

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Speaker 1: sexual exploitation. The Torah protected married women from being cast

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Speaker 1: aside without a certificate of divorce, which gave them the

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Speaker 1: right to remarry without being considered an adulteress, which was

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Speaker 1: super important during a time when women had no political

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Speaker 1: clout of their own. The law enacted environmental protections, such

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Speaker 1: as a Sabbath rest for the land on the seventh year,

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Speaker 1: and it established fair business practices, ensuring honesty and mercy

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Speaker 1: in daily life. God's law and the Torah redefine righteousness,

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Speaker 1: shaping much of what the modern world still considers good,

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Speaker 1: loving your neighbor as yourself, or at the very least,

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Speaker 1: not harming them. This was not the norm before God

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Speaker 1: established the law. For those who heeded it, the law

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Speaker 1: became a map leading toward shalom, which is not just peace,

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Speaker 1: but completeness and wholeness. The psalmist understood this. He recognized

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Speaker 1: the law as a precious gift, a guide toward God's best.

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Speaker 1: But the law could only take them so far, and

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Speaker 1: that's where Jesus enters the story. Jesus fulfilled the law

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Speaker 1: and embodied it. The Word made flesh, the living map

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Speaker 1: towards God's shalom. God the Father declared in Luke 9,

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Speaker 1: verse 35,' This is my Son, whom I have chosen.

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Speaker 1: Listen to Him.' And Jesus himself said in John 14,

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Speaker 1: verse 6,' I am the way and the truth and

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Speaker 1: the life.' No one comes to the Father except through me.

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Speaker 1: The psalmist loved God's law so much that he wrote

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Speaker 1: 176 verses about it. How much more should we love

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Speaker 1: the lawgiver, the one who is the word? When we

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Speaker 1: follow Jesus, we don't just avoid deceitful ways, we find

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Speaker 1: the way himself. We don't just study truth, We walk

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Speaker 1: with truth. We don't just seek life. We live it

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Speaker 1: through him. So today, would you pray this prayer with me? Lord,

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Speaker 1: keep us from deceitful ways. Be gracious to us. Teach

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Speaker 1: us your truth and lead us in your way.