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Psalms 27:1: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall  I be afraid.”

Well I was really in desperate need for  a Word from the Lord that I almost pulled out my Hebrew Alphabet cards.  My former students know I am talking about, so you know if I get to that point, I am really desperate for a Word from God.  But since it has been so long since I used them, I forgot where I put them.  So I went to the old Christian method, you know, the open your Bible and point method and my finger fell on Psalms 27:1 and the words: The Lord is my light.”

My spirit was quickened, I knew this was the Word I needed from God, and the only problem is that I do not know what the it means when it says that the Lord is my light.  Looks like God is going to make me seek this word with all my heart, soul and might.  Well, I am reading this in my Hebrew Bible and I find the word light is ’or.  How many times have I studied that word, it means light, illumination, to shine, and in some cases it is used for prosperity and comfort.  The Lord is my prosperity and comfort, that is good, I like that. But it does not speak enough to satisfy my spirit. My spirit is still crying out: “You know that, but there is more, dig deeper.”  Do you ever feel that, that is why (commercial break) I wrote the book Beyond the Lexicon.  For those who feel the need to just dig into a verse deeper than your commentaries and Scofield’s comments.   You must seek and search with all your heart to find God according to Scripture.

Of course I do exactly what you do when I find  a passage I don’t understand, I turn to other modern translations.  Well, that is no help here, they all render this as light.  Then I go to the commentaries, they are pretty much in lock step with Lexicons and thus, we are still dealing with “light, shine, prosperity and comfort.” 

So I turn to Jewish literature. Now the Kabbalah has plenty to say about  light.  I did study Kabbalah when working on my doctoral dissertation but most of what I read  for me personally seemed to have a higher crap content than fertilizer. But that is just me.  It works nice for new age stuff, but it really has nothing to say  to me as an evangelical Christian.

But soft, wait a minute, before I throw the baby out with the bath water.  There were some things that made sense.  The word light is spelled Alpeh, Vav Resh.  If you will forgive me I would like to quote the ancient mystical rabbis: “Aleph brings into form that which is formless,  it makes solid that which cannot be grasped.” That is just what my spirit needed  for God to make something out this formless mess I am in. Oh yeah I am not supposed to mess with this Jewish stuff.  Well tough, God is giving me some message here and I am going to continue, if you don’t like my sources, then you don’t have to read further.

Now the Vav, the second letter in light is the number six, the number of days in which the universe was created. That is my situation, I need a real creative miracle.  Jewish literature, which many Christians choose to ignore, teaches that the Vav  is a very powerful letter representing a connection between God and man.  I see this as saying that the Vav is a plug (me) being inserted into an outlet (God) and His power surging into me to perform the task needed.  Finally the letter Resh  teaches me about healing and compassion.  It is also the letter for the Holy Spirit.  I plug myself into God and I will be filled with the healing and compassion of the Holy Spirit.

Of course all this is just that bad old Jewish mysticism…wait a minute, I just thought of something, in John 8:12, Jesus said: “I am the light of the world.”   He is that outlet that I plug into to reach the Heavenly Father who will send the Holy Spirit into me to perform healing and comfort.  I can see my mystical rabbi friend throwing salt in the air over than one.  Now I have everybody mad at me, but I am desperate to hear from God, ok?  Although I am a student of the Old Testament, I still embrace the New Testament and to me Jesus is that light, the Messiah, the one who makes that connection with God.  It is not our works or our sacrifices that make that connection, it is Jesus and I have to go through Him.  I cannot hold up my good works, my hours of Bible study, my hours of prayer, my offerings and tithes, I can only come to Him on my knees with nothing to offer Him but a broken sinful life.  He then offers me his Life, His Light based solely on an event that took place 2,000 years ago when he died on a cross and rose again.

Well that is wonderful, but one question remains, when I play around with theses Hebrew letters, how do I know this is not just a game?  Am I playing some sort of mind game?  If this is truly a Word from God, I need confirmation.  I also need direction as I sure don’t feel the power of God right now.  What do I do to get it? How do I plug myself into this power.  I mean I am already a Christian, I settled that back at the age of twelve.  But I need to somehow receive that strength or power now.  I know the old Christian sound bite,  “Just praise God.“  That’s cool, but, well maybe there is something to that sound bite.

Ok back to that Jewish stuff again. Now I am going to play around with the Gemetria.  The numerical value of Light  is 27.  (Commercial break: If you want to know how I arrived at the number purchase my book Beyond the Lexicon).  I wonder, suppose I offer not just praise but my praise. This  word for this praise is yadah, the praise that is birthed out of simple love for Jesus.  This is the praise that cries out: “I love you so much I want to be intimate with you.“   To form this particular word for  my praise I must stick a Vav at the end of  the word shuffle some of the letters around so I have the word Yahvado.  I use a capital Y because, guess what,  the name of God is in the midst of this praise and the yad  in this word is the word for His hand or his power.  The O is the pronoun which tells us that this praise belongs to Him and Him alone.  When I praise God, just telling Him I love him and want to be intimate with Him He gives Himself and His power to me.  Oh, but I digressed and must return to the number 27, you know that number for light that you will discover how I arrived at by purchasing my book?   Ok, let’s just add up the numerical value for this type of praise:  We get 27 the same as the numerical value of  light.  You can call that Jewish mysticism, I call it a conformation from God.  Praise is what connects me to the Light of God.

Some people wonder how I can spend 6- 8 hours a day studying Scripture.  If someone can spend all day watching “Jeopardy” or “Who Wants to Be  Millionaire” (Are they still on),  then you should have no problem studying the Word of God because you are the contestant and you  are trying to discern God’s word for you and guess what?  You always win.