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[0:00] Please turn into your Bibles to Psalm 139, our sermon text for today. If you do not have a Bible, you're welcome to take one from the back table and keep it as our gift to you. Psalm 139.

[0:10] To the Choir Master, a Psalm of David. O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar.

[0:22] You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it all together. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

[0:36] Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your spirit, or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there.

[0:47] If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take to the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

[0:58] If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

[1:10] For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well.

[1:21] My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me.

[1:35] When as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I would count them. They are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.

[1:47] O that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?

[1:59] And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred. I count them as my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts.

[2:09] And see if there be any grievous way in me. And lead me in the way everlasting. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you, O God. Thank you. All right.

[2:21] It is really neat for me to be here. I know Pastor Mike got to share a little bit about our relationship. Our church and our leadership loves this church. Our leadership loves Pastor Mike.

[2:32] He is a dear brother in Christ to me. And so it is really neat to be here. Last summer, when I was on sabbatical, came here a couple of times, actually. One with none of my family, and then one with all of my family.

[2:44] And both times, it was an absolute treat to be here. Just wanted to ask, because I was thinking, as he was doing the Lord's Prayer, who, even though the words were up here, started saying some of the thines and thows anyway, as you were doing it?

[2:59] Okay. I did that as well. Just have it. A couple of Decembers ago. This is just free. I hadn't planned this. We were doing a Christmas Advent service, and we had readings.

[3:10] And we had this guy in his 80s that we had given a scripture reading to. And it gets to him, and he starts reading it, and he's not reading what's up on the screen. And we're like, who gave him the wrong version?

[3:21] And afterwards, we went up. He had just started from memory, saying the scripture. And it was an obscure scripture. And we're like, that's what we want, right? So anyway, it's really neat when you can start saying it from memory, even as it's up there.

[3:36] I love that. We continue in the series on the Psalms. If you're new with us, as we continue through the Psalms, just a couple of word pictures to help understand what we're doing in the Psalms.

[3:47] The Psalms are, on the one hand, kind of like a medicine cabinet, okay? We have Psalms for lots of different things. You read the Psalms, and you get praise.

[3:59] You get lament. You get imprecatory. That's like cursing. Not bad language, but like wishing curses upon people. And the Psalms are meant, the Psalms are meant for us to go and to use them for particular heart conditions.

[4:17] And so you don't go into the medicine cabinet and just grab whatever you want. Like, you don't go for Advil when you need amoxicillin. You go in for the thing that you need.

[4:28] And so the Psalms address a variety of heart conditions, and they're gifted to us by God so that we can go and get what the current condition of our heart needs. The second thing is that the Psalms are like a mirror.

[4:41] And you can say that a lot of Scripture is a window into the story of God. You're seeing, you're peering into what he's done, who he is, what he's doing, what he will do.

[4:52] You window into the story. The Psalms are a lot like a mirror because they give us the words better than we could ourselves for what's actually going on inside us.

[5:04] And so as we turn to the Psalms for whatever the particular need is, as we read the Psalms, and I would suggest even out loud when you do this personally and privately, that it's meant to express what's going on inside you as a mirror for your soul.

[5:20] So with that, today, we are in Psalm 139. And my main point for us today is this, that we are intimately known and incredibly loved.

[5:34] This is where we're going today, and we're gonna hit this from multiple vantage points throughout this Psalm. Children, let me get your attention for a second. Children, can you repeat after me, please? When I say intimately, kids, can you say known?

[5:48] All right, kids, say known. Known. Known, all right, now say loved. Let's do that one more time. Kids, say known. And then loved.

[5:59] Okay, we are both intimately known and incredibly loved. And as we go through this Psalm together, what we're gonna do is we're gonna focus in on particular attributes of God's nature, and then we're gonna see echoes of that nature throughout other parts of Scripture.

[6:15] As his nature ripples throughout the redemptive story. That's where we're going today. Okay, we're gonna begin. I'm gonna read the first stanza, Psalm 139.

[6:27] You heard it before, we're gonna read it again. It says, O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar.

[6:38] You search my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it all together.

[6:49] You hem me in behind and before. Lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain it.

[7:00] Now, just a little thing. If you're new to the Psalms, we get this thing called a merism. A merism. And what that means is the psalmist will use opposites in poetry in order to communicate totality.

[7:13] So when it says, when it says, you know when I sit down and when I rise up. Those are opposites. It's just saying, you know me all the time. Okay, you search my path, which is your activity, and my lying down, which is your rest.

[7:27] That's the poetic way of saying, you search me out all the time, no matter what it is. And so this first stanza is communicating this first attribute of God, which I'm going to call intimate omniscience.

[7:44] Now, omniscience, fancy word. Kids, can you say omniscience? Omniscience. That's a fancy word. Just means you know everything. But intimate omniscience means you know everything about me.

[7:58] And there's a difference there. Omniscience is God knows all. When we're talking about in this particular Psalm, there's an intimacy attached to that omniscience.

[8:09] Now, for many of us, as you read this, you're like, I would love to talk about a power, authority, God, whatever, that knows everything about other people.

[8:21] Ukraine, Russia, that's great. The person next to me, my spouse, co-worker, that's awesome. It gets a little scary when that God, for some of us, is the one who knows all the stuff going on in here.

[8:33] He knows all the stuff going on in here. And here, his knowledge, it is not just immense, it is deeply intimate. And David, as he responds to this, and he's going to do this throughout the Psalm, he uses language like, wonderful, it is high, I cannot attain it.

[8:49] David is not just informed about the knowledge of God, he's overwhelmed by the knowledge of God and by these other attributes of God that we're going to see throughout this. Now, just think about this for a moment.

[9:02] If a friend of yours had this kind of knowledge of you, saw you when you were sleeping, when you were awake, knew when you laid down, knew when you were active, you got a stalker, you file a restraining order.

[9:21] If an enemy had this knowledge of you, you'd probably call the authorities, get them involved, get some protection going, when you'd have a problem. How do we, God's people, how are we supposed to respond to a God who has this intimate omniscience, who has this total knowledge of us, the truth of what we see in this particular text?

[9:46] In John 4, we get a glimpse of that. In John chapter 4. And in this chapter, we're not going to read the whole thing, I'm going to read a few scriptures from it. Jesus has an encounter with a woman at a well.

[9:58] And she's a Samaritan woman. If you don't know anything about Samaritans, just know that the Jews and the Samaritans did not get along. Very long, complicated, ethnic, political, religious history there.

[10:10] They didn't get along. And so Jesus stops to have a conversation with this woman, and they have a back and forth. They're talking about living water, they're talking about Messiah.

[10:21] And at one point, I mean, he's asking questions. At one point, he gets personal with her. And when he gets personal, John 4, verse 16, he says to her, Go, call your husband, and come here.

[10:35] And the woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You're right in saying I have no husband. You've had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.

[10:47] What you have said is true. Now, how does she respond to a knowledge that is immense, and in this particular case, very, very intimate?

[10:59] They have a back and forth, and in verse 28, it says, The woman left her water jar, went away into town, said to the people, Come, see a man who told me all that I did.

[11:10] Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town. They were coming to him. Verse 39, Many Samaritans believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me everything I ever did.

[11:22] Now, the Samaritan woman had options on how to respond, and I just, when you have an exchange with someone, and they call out your mess, if you're talking with someone, even if it's someone you love, and they call out your mess, they know it, you think about a posture of pride will respond in one of two ways.

[11:45] Either you'll get defensive, or you'll be humiliated. Both of those things are rooted in pride because they focus on, How do I look right now? And so you get defensive, you fight back, you get humiliated, you withdraw.

[11:58] Both of those are self-focused. A posture of humility responds with surrender. In this particular case, in relationship, open to receiving what Jesus has to offer her.

[12:13] And this surrender, this humility, leads to transformation. How, how is it, how is it, or, sorry, what this woman is experiencing here is both a Jesus who knows her and loves her.

[12:32] And Tim Keller, in his book, The Meaning of Marriage, he describes this love so beautifully. He says, to be loved, but not known, is comforting, but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear, but to be fully known and truly loved well is a lot by being loved by God.

[12:49] It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, fortifies us from any difficulty life can throw at us. The woman at the well didn't go away hiding and ashamed.

[13:02] She left feeling truly known and fully loved. And so, here in this opening part of the psalm, as David is acknowledging the intimate omniscience of God, he knows all things and it is truly wonderful.

[13:17] God knows everything about you and it is truly wonderful because he doesn't just know you, he loves you in the knowing.

[13:29] Okay? He loves you in the knowing. All right. We're going to continue. Continue in the next stanza. He goes on. He says, Where shall I go from your spirit?

[13:42] Where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. Just real quick note on there. Heaven, Shemayim, it's just a word referring to up there.

[13:55] Okay? It could be the sky. It could be the atmosphere. It's up there. Sheol is referring to down there. Their conception of underworld or like the home of, you look in the lexicons, the abode of the dead.

[14:07] They use fancy words in lexicons like abode. All right? It's down there. But this is a merism again. He's just saying that no matter what, however high, however low, God is there.

[14:17] He keeps going. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, again, if you're in the sky like a bird or if you're in the depths like a fish, even there your hand shall lead me, the hand of protection and care and comfort.

[14:32] Your right hand shall hold me. All right? The song that we held earlier of holding fast. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night.

[14:46] Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day for darkness is as light with you. Go ahead and leave this up. What's interesting here is as he talks about no matter where I go, God's there.

[14:59] But then he mentions darkness and he mentions darkness because the dark is where we conceal. The dark is where we hide things. And so for normal people, if you want to put your mess somewhere, you put it in a dark place where they're not going to see it.

[15:14] And David says, even the dark is light to you. There's no such thing as hiding, hiding things in the dark. Now, a bit of a nerdy point for the Bible nerds in the room because I love this kind of stuff.

[15:28] Where it says, surely the darkness shall cover me. that word only occurs two other times in your Old Testaments. In Genesis 3.15 and Job 19.

[15:39] And in Genesis 3.15, you can put it up there. It says, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head. That's that word, bruise.

[15:50] Okay, go to Job 9.17. This is the only other place. For he crushes me with a tempest. And so a number of Hebrew scholars will say that word cover is a bit too soft.

[16:01] It has to do with doing damage. The darkness is crushing him, overwhelming him. And for David, darkness isn't just about concealment.

[16:13] Darkness is a place of dread. It's a place of harm. It's a place of hurt. And this stanza in the psalm is making a very simple point.

[16:24] There is no place you can go beyond God. There is no place you can go beyond God. Now, I told you we're gonna see this, the nature of God ripple into other parts of Scripture.

[16:39] And so now, we're gonna go visit Jonah for a moment, okay? Because Jonah tried to get beyond God. God goes to Jonah and he says, hey, you're gonna proclaim the truth, you're gonna proclaim judgment to Nineveh.

[16:55] Again, if you're new to the Bible, this is what he does. Jonah doesn't like that plan. And the reason he doesn't like is he knows God is so gracious and so loving that his enemies in Nineveh, he's like, they're gonna change their hearts.

[17:06] I don't want them to change their hearts. So I'm not gonna go. So Jonah goes in the opposite direction. And as Jonah flees, he ends up in the belly of a fish in the deepest, darkest, scariest place any of us could probably imagine being.

[17:26] And if you think about, I mean, we got a lot of people who work subs in this part of the country. I mean, for me, mad respect. You get into a sub, it's deep, it's dark, it's even scarier, I imagine, when you're in a fish, okay?

[17:40] And so Jonah, in the fish, he cries out in chapter two and he writes, when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you and to your holy temple.

[17:55] Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love, but I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you what I have vowed, I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord and it says, and the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

[18:14] Now, most of us have never been swallowed by a fish, but you probably know what it's like to feel stuck, to be stressed, the palpitations of your heart, the panic attack, the mounting worry, the deadline approaching, the external pressures, at times feeling like you're alone in the dark, and yet God is just present, intimately present.

[18:48] He's there. The beauty of the story of Jonah, though, isn't just that God was with Jonah in the belly of the fish, but that God's presence extended to Nineveh as well.

[19:01] Nineveh was always within his grasp, and the end of the story, I mean, Jonah ends up having a really bad attitude, all right?

[19:12] You don't really learn a lot from his character in the story, unfortunately, but despite his bad attitude, people in Nineveh, their hearts change, and there's people that were wicked and opposed to God, the presence, at no point were they beyond the powerful and personal presence of God.

[19:31] His presence is both powerful and personal, personal, and one more closing example of this before we move on in the psalm, because I was thinking about this this week.

[19:42] In John chapter 13, I love that Pastor Mike mentioned John, love the gospel of John, and John, I'm sorry, not 13, that's a foot washing.

[19:56] In the gospel of John, Jesus goes and he stands at a tomb and a man that had been buried for three days, wrapped in the tomb, is called out.

[20:13] And Jesus, while in his humanity, is physically present with the dead body in the tomb in front of him, Jesus in his divinity is present with the spirit of that person wherever it is.

[20:28] Okay? So you have, again, the presence of God, powerful and personal, all right? Absolutely vast. And so Jesus, in that moment, when he says, come out, the power of God and his presence there is not just powerful, it's personal because when he calls out that body, he does it by name.

[20:50] Lazarus, come out. And so, again, the presence of God, powerful and personal in the midst of whatever it is that you might be going through.

[21:01] In my life right now, personally, there's some really weird family tensions that exist amongst my extended family. And so you enter, some of you have been there, you enter into certain environments and you're like, do I have to walk on eggshells here?

[21:14] What am I going to say? All right? For some of us in our homes and in our marriages, there's weak spots, there's difficulties, there's challenges you're trying to overcome. Some of you, your children, okay?

[21:25] Trying to guide them. Some of us, adult children, trying to guide them. difficulties in the workplace. Whatever it might be, that God's presence is both powerful and personal and because of this intimacy is offered to us, with it comes transformation.

[21:42] We are incredibly loved, okay? We are both intimately known and incredibly loved. Okay, we're going to continue. Let's see. I click down here to look at the time because you all do timing a little differently here than we do at Ground Bible Chat.

[21:59] We're good. All good. All right. I know there's kids in the room, which I said, I found out about that two days ago. So it's like, does that affect the length of my sermon at all? Okay. We're going to keep going.

[22:11] All right. We're used to long sermons. All right. Verse 13. That's where we're at now. Verse 13. Psalm 139. It says, For you formed my inward parts.

[22:25] You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well.

[22:36] My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. So we get, there's an intimacy around God's involvement, not just his awareness, but his involvement in the process by which you came to be.

[22:52] Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God.

[23:04] How vast is the sum of them. Almost done. If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake and I am still with you.

[23:14] Okay. Now this may be a new word for some of you. Go ahead and put this next one. We're getting fancy again. This is intimate omnificence. Okay. This is the omnificence of God.

[23:26] All right. That means all creator. He is the maker of all things. And so we have a God who is, knows all things. We have a God who is around all things.

[23:37] He is everywhere. And we have a God who is the maker of all things. Our God is aware. All right. But he is also involved. And so this is the intimate omnificence of God.

[23:50] He didn't just create the world. He created you. He created you. And so just follow this with me. The beauty of this particular stanza, which chances are, if any part of this psalm is familiar to you, it's this one.

[24:08] The beauty in it lies in the fact that the preciousness and value of David's life. David, King David, is the one writing this. The value and the preciousness of David's life, it did not begin when he became king.

[24:24] It did not begin when he beat Goliath. It did not begin when he beat the lion and the bears he shepherded. It didn't begin when his mom discovered his existence in her womb.

[24:37] The preciousness and the value of King David's life began in the mind of God. Okay? Before he was around. And because of that, I can say your preciousness and your value did not begin with a career plan.

[24:56] Okay? It does not hinge children on your grades. It was not accomplished on the field or the court, but has always been within the mind of God.

[25:10] Okay? We live in a world that increasingly is naturalistic. Okay? And I have conversations with people all the time. In fact, just had a conversation with someone last week to this end in which they have objections to Christianity.

[25:27] They have objections to the Bible. And sometimes those objections have to do with the way the church has historically treated a particular group of people. And so I'm sitting across from a young woman just last week who's really struggling and she's like, because this group, and I'm not going to go into this group of people, the church isn't treating them well.

[25:47] And so I listen and my question to this young woman was this. I said, if the Bible is true, if you're made in the image of God, if God wove that young, that person together, because we're talking about a very specific person, if God wove them together, and if they bear God's image, if the Bible is true, I can justify treating them really well and loving them.

[26:13] If the Bible is not true, how can you justify us having to treat them well? Like, give it to me. Explain it to me. And we just went back with some questions.

[26:25] And at the end of the conversation, this young woman basically said, I don't know. If the Bible isn't true, there isn't a justification. If naturalism is true, if we're all the result of this purposeless, chaotic, random process, then at the end of the day, how do you justify having to treat anyone well, let alone particular people groups?

[26:49] But if this psalm is true, if we can say about people that God formed your inward parts, that he knitted you together in your mother's womb, right, that your frame wasn't hidden from him, that you're intricately woven, like if this is true, then we can look upon any particular person.

[27:07] And I'm not saying the church has done this well, but what I'm saying is we can at least justify it using this. Because people out there are saying we're not doing a thing, and we're saying we can do the thing because of what God says.

[27:22] Okay? And so, this comes down to the fact that our preciousness and value, it begins in the mind of God. And David here, he doesn't claim to grasp God, he's content in being overwhelmed by God.

[27:36] I love this, I love understanding, I'm a nerd, I love researching things, I want to know all the stuff. David, throughout the Psalms and other psalmists, usher you into a place where you're just like, whoa, there's a lot I just don't know.

[27:53] And that should give you a sense of awe and marvel. Thinkers in the room, I know we got some thinkers, we need to feel this sometimes. We need to feel the bigness of our God and this psalm is all about the bigness of our God.

[28:10] And so, again, the intimate omnificence of God. One other thing about this. Alright? I'm going to pivot real quick. My wife and I, very different people.

[28:23] I am an introvert, introverts, raise your hand, we got some, okay? My wife is an extrovert, extroverts, raise your hand, alright? I'll have more introverts raise their hand than extroverts, that's a first.

[28:36] I love non-fiction, my wife loves fiction, okay? My wife, very, very tidy, I'm more of a, we store things on the ground kind of person. She's worked on me 16 years of marriage, I've changed quite a bit, but that is for her, not for me.

[28:50] I tell her regularly, if you, not regular, that makes it sound terrible, okay? I've told her in the past, if you die, I'm not squeegeeing the shower anymore, okay? I do that for you, I don't do that for anyone else, okay?

[29:04] But we're very, very different, we are both custom made by God. I have six kids, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, and a 7 month old, they're radically different.

[29:15] There's a lot of kids in this room, parents, you raising these kids, you see, they are very different, they're wired differently, and one of the hard parts of being a parent, is when your kid gets old enough, to look out at others around them, and to think to themselves, I want to be more like them, not how do I become more like Jesus?

[29:37] That's a hard thing to navigate. There's a lot of pressure, social media and phones make it significantly worse, YouTube makes it worse, that kids look out, and instead of thinking, ooh, how do I become the version of me, that's most like Jesus, instead it's, how do I become more like them?

[29:57] And part of our role as we disciple within the church, even if you don't have kids, you have a responsibility to the kids, part of our role as we disciple people, is getting them to see, you were made by God, uniquely, you came custom, and your goal isn't to become like others, but to become the version of you that looks most like Jesus.

[30:19] That's what we're after. And so, and we can say that's true because of what we get in this psalm, that from the beginning, you, in God's mind, beautiful, custom made.

[30:33] All right, so we got the intimate, we got the omniscience, all right, he knows everything, we got the omnipresence, he's everywhere, we got the omnificence, okay, for some of you, hopefully that was a new word, when I came across, I was like, well, that's interesting.

[30:46] All right, good old Latin. Moving on, we get to this next section in the psalm, and it pivots and it becomes imprecatory and that's a fancy word because theologians love fancy words for wishing evil on people.

[31:02] You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, can you do this and it be godly? Yes. That sounds strange. We're going to read it, okay? Let's see, starting in verse 19, it says that, I got to find it, oh, that you would slay the wicked, oh God, oh men of blood, depart from me, they speak against you with malicious intent, your enemies take your name in vain, do I not hate those who hate you, oh Lord?

[31:29] Do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred, I count them my enemies, okay? Now, up till now, David has been aligning his heart with God's heart.

[31:44] He's been making it very clear, God, I'm on your team, we're on the same team, he's been aligning himself with the Lord and he gets to this part in the psalm in which that alignment continues but it now, instead of facing God, it faces outward because David was a guy with a lot of problems.

[32:01] David made a lot of mistakes, we're not going to go into him here, he made a lot of mistakes, he also had people in his life that did not like him, including family, and so he had a lot of issues, he had a lot of enemies.

[32:13] And in this psalm, what we see is that David calls out, asks God to intervene. Now, if you know anything about David's story, you know that David, we get a beautiful glimpse of this with King Saul.

[32:31] David, when he was younger, he was anointed king and he had opportunities to kill King Saul when Saul was trying to kill him. King Saul was trying to wipe him out and David, on one particular occasion, he was in a cave, he got so close to King Saul, he was able to chop off a piece of his clothing so that he could wave it at him from a distance, be like, I could have taken you out, but I didn't.

[32:57] David kept telling his men, I will not lay a hand on the Lord's anointed. He entrusted his enemy to God. And in this particular part of the psalm, this is what I want you to see.

[33:09] David is not writing this out of space despite, he's writing this out of zeal for the Lord. There's no hint of vengeance in this text.

[33:20] He is entrusting his enemies to God. And I just want to point out that Jesus himself, as he walked this earth and loved the marginalized, spoke truth, brought healing, that he himself, at least once, maybe twice, depending on how you read the gospels, went into the temple and flipped tables to teachers.

[33:46] He called them a brood of vipers. He took the time to weave, to braid a whip in order to go in and get a little aggressive and violent. That's Jesus.

[33:57] And so, in the person of Jesus, what you see is on the one hand, as God loves, if he loves what is godly, there is a hatred for what is ungodly.

[34:09] And this is where I want us to go for this. It's very, very simple. The world needs us to love what God loves, but that comes at the cost of despising what he despises.

[34:23] It means grieving what God grieves. And as we pray, and as we look into a world that's just full of so much mess and murkiness, as we see wickedness, as we see evil, to look upon what is wicked and what is evil, and to pray a prayer similar to what David said, like, Lord, that stands in total opposition to you.

[34:46] Will you take it down? Will you end it? Will you mobilize people to stop it? Like, that is a prayer that's patterned for us in the Old Testament, but without a heart that seeks vengeance, and without a heart that angers in sin.

[35:05] Right? All of that with a posture of humility knowing that God is ultimately in control. So all of this, all of this leads to David aligning his heart with God's heart.

[35:18] And the final two verses, final two verses, okay, 23 and 24, it says, Search me, O God, and know my heart.

[35:30] Try me and know my thoughts. This is, I love this prayer because David is like, Lord, test my authenticity here. And as you read these Psalms, one of the things you should consider is, do I ever pray like that?

[35:44] I thought to myself earlier in this Psalm, God, do I ever pray just acknowledging what I don't understand? Do I ever just acknowledge how beyond my understanding you are in my prayers?

[35:55] It happens throughout the Psalms. Here he's saying, Search me, know my heart, try me and know my thoughts. See if there's any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

[36:09] David is inviting God, God's knowledge of him, God's presence, he is inviting all of that to lead to a transformation in his life.

[36:21] He says, Lead me in the way everlasting. You can put up the last slide, that this intimate presence would lead to transformation. Now, final thing, final thing.

[36:35] All right, I've been nerding out recently. I read this book called Connected, which I think is a fascinating book by a guy from Harvard and UC San Diego, professor, sociologist, and it's all about how you become who you spend time with.

[36:49] It's a very interesting book and so, like when your close friends start voting, your likelihood of voting goes up. When your close friends stop smoking, the likelihood of you smoking goes down.

[37:01] Okay? If you have a friend who becomes obese, your odds of becoming obese go up 57%. Okay? If you, happiness, if you have a friend who is happy, every happy friend increases your odds of being happy by 9%.

[37:15] Okay? Anxiety, same thing. Anxiety, there's emotional contagion. This book just tracks through 12,000 people, 50,000 interconnections. You become like the people with whom you spend the most time.

[37:29] Here's what's really neat about that. If we spend time with Jesus, we become like Jesus. And this whole psalm tracks through David talking to God who knows all things, who's with him no matter what, who created him and knows him better than he knows himself and he's spending time with him and at the end he asks that he would lead him and when we spend time with Jesus, like Moses on the mountain, we spend time with Jesus, we become more like Jesus.

[38:06] Just like happiness and health are contagious in a very interesting sense, godliness is contagious when we spend time with our savior.

[38:17] And so, all of this to say, all of this to say, we are intimately loved, we are intimately known, incredibly loved, God is big and immense, he's powerful, but he's personal.

[38:33] And if we let it, that, everything out there should lead to transformation in here. All right? That's all I got. Let's pray. Let's pray.

[38:43] We're gonna worship. All right, Lord, I thank you for your servant David and the fact that his mess of a life gets to teach us lessons. Lord, we do come to you marveling at who you are and at what you've done and the fact that you would, man, that you would invite us to be a part of it.

[39:05]  We love you, we praise you, you are worthy of our worship, Lord, we look forward to continue praising you now in Jesus' name. Amen.