[0:00] You are listening to a message from Southwood Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama. Our passion is to experience and express grace. Join us.
[0:11] I'll be back with you this week. I wanted to thank you for your prayers for me and for my family. God has been very kind to us through study leave and a little bit of vacation together.
[0:23] We have loved that. It's been a really rich time. Thank you for praying for us. And I'm back, but I'm back to introduce someone else to you to preach this morning.
[0:34] And I'm delighted. Many of you already know him. He's been here and preached for us several times. This is Reed Jones. Reed and his wife Kelly have been here in Huntsville for a few years now doing Reformed University Fellowship at UAH.
[0:49] That's our denomination's college campus ministry, Reformed University Fellowship. We have college ministers, campus ministers on these campuses, pastors who are ordained by our presbyteries and sent to these campuses to minister to our students and to other students to proclaim the gospel there on the campus.
[1:11] And Reed has been doing that and God has used him in great ways on the campus of UAH. He's also used him in the lives of many pastors in Huntsville. He's a friend to us. He's an encourager to us. He's a partner with us in ministry.
[1:27] And it's a real joy to get to do that together. So I'm delighted that he's going to open God's word for us this morning. But before I let him do that, I need to talk for a little while, don't I?
[1:39] One of the things we've been doing this summer is we've been talking through the different elements of our worship service. And why are these things a part of the worship service? This morning, I wanted to just talk to you for a minute about preaching.
[1:52] And you may think, well, that's silly. I mean, you may need to explain why you have a call to worship or a profession of faith. But we all know there's going to be a sermon. And what else would you guys do all week if there was no sermon coming up on Sunday?
[2:05] But it's actually an important thing for us to consider. What does it mean that we would come and that we would sit under the word of God regularly and week in and week out?
[2:16] Why do we do that as part of worship? It's because the God we've been worshiping as the great one, the mighty one, the king over all has spoken to us. He has a message for us, his people.
[2:30] He's given us his word. We are people of the book, we sometimes say. When we open up God's word, we are not opening it up to evaluate it, to give our thoughts about it.
[2:44] We don't come on Sundays to hear men speak. There's lots of places you can go hear people talk, say lots of good things and good ideas. In a worship service, we come and bow ourselves before God and ask him to speak to us.
[2:59] That his Holy Spirit would speak through his word. So Reed will at some point, you will, won't you? Reed, the Bible, he's going to read us from Psalm 19 and then he is going to explain God's word to us.
[3:15] He's not saying what Reed thinks would be a good thing to say. He's going to explain to us what God has for us. That's part of our worship. That's giving a lot of value when you think about placing yourself underneath someone and saying, I'm willing to listen to you and have my life shaped by the words that you say.
[3:35] That's a big act of trust and even worship, isn't it? That's what we do in worship when we come to God's word. He speaks, yes, through a man.
[3:47] But he speaks and we listen. We should expect that the voice we hear, even if it's a familiar one, someone we know well or one we haven't heard before, is God speaking to us by his spirit through his word.
[4:05] That's why we come week after week and sit under God's word. It has authority over us. God speaks to us through it. And so it's with great anticipation of hearing him speak.
[4:18] Sorry, Reed, to kind of let you down on that. But that we have Reed come and open God's word for us this morning. I wanted to tell you this on a week that I wasn't preaching. So that you would know I mean that no matter who steps into this pulpit, he's going to open God's word.
[4:36] And that's what we're looking forward to hearing. I hope that's your heart. I hope that's your joy and your excitement. Reed may bore you to tears. No, he's a lot more interesting than that. He's going to communicate God's word well, but what he's going to do is communicate God's word.
[4:50] And that's what's most important. So look forward to that as Reed comes and opens God's words for us. Thank you, Will. That was the most intense intro I've ever experienced.
[5:05] That's good. And we're going to pray for a minute and ask God to do exactly that. I did notice that Will did that on a week he's not preaching. I don't know if everybody else caught that, but that's good.
[5:16] God does speak in this time, so we'll ask him to do that in a moment. Before we do, let me just very briefly, I don't want to miss out on the opportunity to tell you thank you. Southwood, you remind me, I think similarly of you, of what I think Paul thought of the Philippians, at least in the intro to his letter to that church.
[5:36] He says, every time I remember you, I'm thankful to God for you because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And that is so literally true for your ministry to us and to RUF at UAH.
[5:50] It's a ministry that you started. It started out of your church and out of our presbytery when you called Brad and Caroline Tubasing. And then they were here for five years, and now we're beginning our fifth year at UAH, which means RUF is in its tenth year at UAH.
[6:07] And so this is a great year to celebrate all that God has been doing in and through RUF at UAH. And you are a part of that story. You have had hands-on ministry with us.
[6:17] You've had financial support, prayer support. And this year, I'm going to give you credit for something. And specifically, Chris Morris, I've told him this morning, I said, you get all the credit for this, all of it.
[6:28] Sarah gets a little bit too, Sarah Nemitz. But this year, you have really transformed the way that we have local church partnerships in our ministry, hands-on ministry, not just supporting us financially and prayerfully.
[6:41] But I came through a conversation with Chris a couple years ago where he said, you know, what can we actually do? What can we really do with you on the campus?
[6:51] And the Expressing Grace Conference or whatever it's called, Experiencing, Expressing, is it Expressing Grace? Okay. The whole emphasis of that conference is how do you as a church get involved in the ministries that you support?
[7:07] And I love it. And it's shaped us because now we've asked other churches to basically adopt events every year. Like you do the shrimp boil for us, our biggest event of the year. And we have hands-on.
[7:18] We have families who bring food to our events. We have families who host small groups in their homes. That all changed because of your conference. So thank you for shaping our ministry in a huge way.
[7:29] Really grateful for you. We're looking forward to this 10th year at UAH. Our ministry is growing and expanding and our staff is growing. You can pray specifically for JD as he raises money.
[7:40] This is a guy coming on staff with us this fall. So we'll have two interns and me on campus, which I'm excited about. You can pray for him. He needs to finish raising his money in the next three weeks in order to move.
[7:51] So that's a specific prayer need for now. Okay. Let me pray and ask God to do that exactly what Will introduced and said that God does. We're going to ask for the Spirit's help and then we're going to read Psalm 19 this morning.
[8:04] God, I'm so thankful for Southwood's ministry in my life and our family's life. Thank you for their ministry on the campus of UAH. Thank you, Lord, for your word for us this morning.
[8:17] It is your word. It is true and right and authoritative and applicable to our lives. I pray that as we consider a passage that really speaks to that truth, that your word is applicable in our lives, that you, God, would speak.
[8:34] That you would apply these truths to our hearts. We are in desperate need of your word this morning. And so we pray that you would make it new and reveal to us how it points us to your Son.
[8:48] We ask that the words of my mouth, the meditations of our hearts together, would be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and redeemer. We ask in Jesus' name and for his glory we pray. Amen.
[9:00] Psalm 19. To the choir master, a psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
[9:12] Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.
[9:24] In them he has set a tent for the sun which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the ends of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
[9:42] The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
[9:56] The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are right and true and righteous altogether.
[10:09] More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and keeping them there is great reward.
[10:23] Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me.
[10:35] Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
[10:48] The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our Lord will stand forever. Have you ever become friends with someone that you kind of knew from the distance, and then you really got to know them?
[11:02] Maybe somebody who had impacted your life, and you didn't really know them, but they had impacted your life, affected your life by their work, and then you actually really get to know them personally.
[11:13] And I've had this experience a couple of times since I've been an RUF campus minister. A couple of guys who kind of in the RUF world that I had known about for a long time and heard about, and their life had affected me by their work, but I didn't know them personally, and I've had the honor of getting to know them.
[11:29] The first is a guy named Kevin. And when I was in college quite a few years ago, I would have considered myself an amateur musician. Now I'm probably a former amateur musician.
[11:42] I think I've gone backwards. These guys are professionals. I would play a little music with our campus ministry. It wasn't RUF, but I would help lead the music back then. And one of the names that came up a lot on the sheet music that we were playing was Copyright Kevin Twitt.
[11:58] Copyright Kevin Twitt, Copyright Kevin Twitt. And we were leading a lot of songs. We just had one this morning, the last song that we sang sat at the bottom, Copyright Kevin Twitt. And so I saw this name for years, and I learned later that Kevin Twitt is an RUF campus minister.
[12:11] He still is. He's at Belmont, just up the road from us. And over the last few years, Kevin Twitt has moved from Copyright Kevin Twitt to my friend Kevin. There's a difference in knowing someone by their works and knowing someone by their words.
[12:25] The other is a guy that you've had in your pulpit, Les Newsome. Les was a conference speaker and an author. He wrote one of the best books I've ever read, and I still use it with students all the time, called The Enduring Community.
[12:36] I'd known of Les Newsome for a long time, and he had impacted me by his works. And now Les is literally my boss. He's my mentor. I'll have lunch with him this week.
[12:47] There's knowing someone by their works. There's knowing someone by their words. Why all the name dropping this morning? To show you how important I am. But also, because this psalm traces out that movement exactly.
[13:01] It traces out the movement of knowing someone by their works, knowing God by his works, and then knowing him by his words. And so I want to work through that movement this morning, and that's basically my outline.
[13:12] I want to go from creation's declaration to the law's revelation. The first six verses show how God's creation alone reveals his glory, and it is available for everyone.
[13:26] The heavens declare the glory of God in verse 1. The sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. When we look at the skies, we see God's glory on display.
[13:40] When we consider, as Will prayed this morning in the intro prayer, when we think about the ocean, and the mountains, and the trees, and nature itself, it screams that there's a creator.
[13:55] Charles Spurgeon, the famous megachurch Baptist preacher before there were megachurches, you know, the Lord used him in mighty ways. But one of the things that scholars have talked about a lot over the recent years is how Spurgeon dealt with depression in his life and as a result of some of the things in his ministry.
[14:14] And one of the ways that he dealt with his own depression is he would literally, this isn't the only thing to do to deal with depression, and we're going to talk a little bit about that in a second. But he would say, to fight against the depression that I felt, I would walk outside.
[14:28] There's something about nature that has this healing process in our lives. We start to see that life is much bigger. That's when you look at the ocean and the mountains, you see the distances.
[14:39] We have students, obviously, at UAH and people in this room who are studying space. You've committed your lives to exploring the distances. And the more we know, the more we just are in awe.
[14:54] Creation screams creator. That there's someone behind this whole thing. To deny that is to deny something that is natural and noticeable deep down within us.
[15:08] Paul says that to deny God's existence is basically to suppress the truth that we all have. And that's what creation does in our hearts is it shows us the creator.
[15:18] I had a seminary professor who illustrated that denial by saying to look out at nature and then to deny that there is no creator. It's like trying to sit on a beach ball in the middle of the ocean.
[15:32] Picture it. He said it's kind of like you're bouncing on the ball and acting like it's not there. And then eventually it's going to pop out. That's what creation does.
[15:44] It screams creator. It's the common language as David gets at here in verse 3. Ultimately, as we look at creation, we are without excuse.
[16:02] God is making us aware of His power and of His wisdom in His creation alone. This is what theologians often call general revelation. And it's something that everyone has been given. But just getting to know God by His works is one thing.
[16:17] There's also getting to know Him by His words. And that's where verse 7 begins to take us. I don't know if you felt this as I read through this earlier. Verse 7 to me feels like a very unnatural transition.
[16:30] Because David goes from all of this very excited creation revealing the bridegroom leaving the chamber. And by the way, have you read the Word lately?
[16:43] And it just feels like you're talking to someone who doesn't know how to carry on conversations. You have those people in your life where they just kind of keep switching subjects in the middle of every sentence.
[16:54] If you don't have those people in your life, you might be one of them. Psalm, we've got a few in our ministry. They're not here this morning, guys. I see some of our students out here. It's not you. But that's what verse 7 feels like to me.
[17:08] It just feels so unnatural. And so I want to take the time to work through this transition. Because I think the whole point of the psalm is in that transition. Here's the connection. Begin to paint it.
[17:19] David uses a lot of words in 7 through 10 that are a lot of synonyms. You picked it up. It's kind of like reading a small version of Psalm 119 in those verses, right? He talks about the law and testimonies and precepts and commandments and rules, all these things.
[17:36] So what are those words pointing to? They're all different words to some degree, but they're pointing to the same thing. They're all Old Testament designations for God's covenant document that He presented to His people in Moses' day.
[17:50] These are covenant language synonyms for God's revealed word to His people Israel. Let me build on that a little bit more. If you look at the first six verses, notice the name of God that is in those six verses.
[18:06] If you have your Bibles open, it's God. It comes up once. God. God. Behind that name is Elohim, which is really more of a common designation for the powerful one.
[18:20] It was actually used of false gods as well, the same word. But in 7 through 10, there's a different designation for God. Do you see the difference? Let's have a little audience participation.
[18:30] What name is given to God in verses 7 through 10? The Lord. God. God. And then a transition, the Lord. Comes up over and over again. The four letters in all caps in our translations typically.
[18:43] And as you know, it points us to God's revealed name to His people. It's Yahweh. Or if you're from a small town, southern Baptist church in South Alabama like me, Jehovah.
[18:55] Right? It's Yahweh. God's revealed name to His people. So here's the point. The God who created all of that, the God who's behind this amazing creation that screams that there's a creator, that God has a name.
[19:14] And He has a people. And His name is Yahweh and His people is Israel. What God is saying is, I've given you my creation to notice me by, but now I'm giving you my word to know me by.
[19:29] There's knowing someone by their works and there's knowing someone by their word. And that's what the testimonies, the laws, the precepts, the commandments are all pointing us to. They are God's character being revealed and recorded and passed down from generation to generation.
[19:47] And this is what we now have preserved for us in God's word. Now finalized and canonized, we have the laws of God, the commandments of God, the precepts.
[20:00] It is right and it is final. And as I tell our students every week in RUF, it is authoritative and it is applicable to our daily lives. Because God speaks here.
[20:11] Which is why we preach. You now get a chance to not just listen to the music, but to see Him compose the lyrics in your life. You now get a chance not to just read the final story, but see how He's continuing to write through His application of the word in your life.
[20:27] This is why we need verses 7 through 10. Notice which areas of our lives can be impacted by God's word and are being impacted. Look at just 7 and 8 if you have it there.
[20:38] The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. That's one area of your life that's affected by God's word. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple wisdom like mind.
[20:53] The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. Do you hear it? Heart, soul, mind, eyes.
[21:06] It sounds very similar to an answer Jesus gave. Someone asked Him, what's the greatest commandment? He said, the first is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength.
[21:23] God's word shows us how to do this, and God's word brings this out in us. Every part of you can be influenced and enlivened, invigorated, and awakened by God's words, His testimonies, His commandments.
[21:44] It is reviving, making wise, rejoicing. Now, I don't want you to just hear me say, now go read your Bibles. I want us to see the power of God's word in our lives, because I'm guessing you could use this more than you realize.
[22:00] And I could too. Let me give you some examples. Are you trying to figure out kind of the next move in your life? Something's going on at work, you're trying to figure out the next move with your career, the next position.
[22:14] You're trying to make ends meet, you're worried about your finances, you don't know what's ahead. We deal with this with students all the time. They are stressed out about their co-ops and their internships.
[22:28] Consider the testimony of the Lord. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. Maybe that's not you.
[22:38] Maybe your soul is anxious. You're fearful. You're not getting the rest you need. Your mind is always wandering and wondering, and you are worried.
[22:52] Or you're exhausted. Consider the testimony. The law of the Lord, actually. The law of the Lord is perfect. Reviving the soul. Or maybe you're going through a difficult season in your life.
[23:05] You're full of doubts. You've been hurt by someone. Or maybe you're in the middle of a season, like Spurgeon, of depression. Or deep anxiety.
[23:17] Consider the precepts of the Lord. The precepts of the Lord are right. Rejoicing the heart. Listen, these are not just band-aid solutions.
[23:28] Just covering up problems and pretending they're not there. But instead, God's Word goes underneath the problems and shows us what's actually behind them.
[23:39] Because the reality of the problem often behind our anxiety isn't a future issue. It's a present issue. It's a trusting God in the present problem. Or maybe the issue behind our relationship problem in our life is that it's not that we don't know what to do with this particular person.
[23:56] It's that we aren't really believing that God's put them in our lives so that we would know more of His character and love for us. Or maybe the problem behind our anger isn't just we don't believe God is in control.
[24:11] It's actually that we do believe He's in control and we wish we were. There's issues underneath the issues. Let me work it out this way. About a year ago, this time a year ago, our grass started turning brown, not green.
[24:25] When all of our neighbor's grass was very green, ours was very brown. And it wasn't a water issue. That's the case right now. But last year, it just turned brown very quickly.
[24:37] And Kelly kept noticing caterpillars in our driveway. And she was like, have you seen these caterpillars? They just kind of keep showing up. And I'm like, caterpillars? Is that even a thing this time of year?
[24:47] And I kind of brushed it off. And then like a couple days passed and she's like, I see them. And now I actually see them in the yard a little bit. And there's a bunch of them.
[24:58] Some of y'all might be ahead of me on this. We didn't have caterpillars in our yard. We had army worms. You ever had army worms? It's awful. It really is terrible. We have a very small yard and very quickly about 10,000 army worms ate our grass.
[25:13] You would look at like a square foot like this. Is that about a square foot? That's here. Square foot. And you would look and there would be about 150 army worms in a square foot. And what they do is they go underneath the surface and they start chewing on the root of the grass.
[25:28] And so it starts to turn brown. It's dying from underneath the surface. So we had to call somebody and pay them money to come and kill our army worms.
[25:39] Okay. That was our yard. And it's also our hearts, isn't it? Below the surface, there's something else going. On the surface, anger, lust, fear, whatever.
[25:51] All this is up here. Underneath the surface, something is killing us. How do we get underneath God's Word? It's what goes underneath and begins to dig away and tear away that which is causing us to miss the heart of God.
[26:08] This was the premise behind one of the books I read this last semester. It's called The Cry of the Soul. I would highly recommend this book. It's written by a theologian and a counselor together.
[26:20] It's called The Cry of the Soul. And the whole premise of the book is they talk about the emotions of our hearts are where we see where we have and where we are missing the heart of God, especially our negative emotions.
[26:31] Think about this. Our negative emotions like fear and jealousy and anger and despair and shame, those emotions actually show us where we are missing the heart of God in our lives.
[26:43] They're revealing something. They call them mirrors through which we see where we're missing the heart of God. And that's why I love these verses. They're pointing us to see how God's Word goes underneath the surface.
[26:55] It is perfect in reviving the soul, living and active, leaving nothing hidden. The psalm moves from creation revealing God's glory and power to His revelation revealing His power and direction, among other things in our lives.
[27:18] And it ends with this confession. Psalm 19 was C.S. Lewis' favorite psalm. I know that because he told me one time in his own words and the reflections on the psalms.
[27:33] And he said the reason he loved this psalm is because of that awkward transition that I brought up earlier. He made a point that I didn't see any other theologians make. He says the connection, the thing that helps us understand the whole meaning of this psalm, the answer to why David moves from creation to revelation.
[27:54] He says the key phrase on which the whole poem depends is verse 6. That there is nothing hidden from the sun's heat. Think about this.
[28:04] Nothing can ultimately hide from the sun's shine, right? The sun comes out. It scatters the darkness away. Everything is exposed for what it is. The sun reveals, but the sun also brings life.
[28:18] It heals that which is exposed. The sun reveals and the sun heals. So here's Lewis' point. He says, Then at once in verse 7, remember the weird transition, he is talking of something else which hardly seems to him like something else because it is so like the all-piercing, all-detecting sunshine.
[28:39] The law is undefiled. The law gives light. It is clean and everlasting. It is sweet. As he has felt the sun perhaps in the desert, searching him out in every nook of shade where he attempted to hide from it, so he fills the law, searching out all the hiding places of his soul.
[29:00] Do you hear it? As the sun reveals, scatters darkness, and heals, God's law expressed in his word for his people reveals, it scatters the darkness, and it heals.
[29:16] And that's why it is so sweet and desirable and so necessary for our lives. And so where our emotions start to point us to where we are missing the heart of God in our lives, God's word then comes and meets those very places in the void and shows us where we can find him.
[29:35] It brings light into those dark places. This is what the reformers taught, that the law of God shows us our sin, and it shows us what God has done about our sin. And David's response in these last few verses is him praying that God would do that in his own heart, through his word, that he would search him and heal him.
[29:55] The confession begins in verse 11. What is he saying?
[30:17] He is begging for God to send the all-detecting sunshine of his word to show him where he is missing him. And that he would bring healing and life into those very places.
[30:36] And I think for anyone who comes to God with that kind of honest confession, God responds. David believes that. There is this hopeful, almost a guarantee, that I know this is going to happen.
[30:51] And the reason I say that is because there's a lot of emphasis in those verses on declare me innocent from hidden faults, I shall be blameless.
[31:02] He believes that something is going to happen in order for this to happen in his heart. He's confessing that, yes, I need to be cleansed, but I understand that something has to come from the outside in for me to be cleansed.
[31:17] I'm in need of a declaration, but there has to be something provided for me to be declared innocent. So what is he counting on? He's counting on a sacrifice. These last few verses are sacrificial language.
[31:30] The whole thing about be pleasing in your sight. Declare me innocent. This is sacrificial language. In other words, David is counting on a future sacrifice being made for him so that he would be in right standing with God and that his heart would be clean.
[31:49] And we all need to come to God this morning with the same confession. Declare me innocent. Receive my offering. But the big question for us is how does God declare us innocent?
[32:04] What kind of offering does he receive? Well, David was looking for some future sacrifice to be made on his behalf, and there were literal sacrifices that were made on his behalf.
[32:15] But we look back on a final sacrifice that has been made on our behalf. Here's, I think, the point of Psalm 19. Psalm 19 thrusts us forward to see God's glory in his creation, but specifically to see the glory in the one to whom the creation points us toward.
[32:35] The glory and grace revealed in his son, Jesus Christ. Psalm 19 points us to see God's revealed word for his people, how he meets our deepest needs, but specifically how he meets our deepest need in the one to whom the word pointed to, the one who was the word, Jesus Christ himself.
[32:56] Isn't that how John's gospel opens up for us? In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God, and the word was God.
[33:08] He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
[33:19] The light shines in the darkness. Do you hear it? And the darkness has not overcome it. And later, of course, John tells us that the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.
[33:33] Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Work and word. Light scattering darkness.
[33:46] Revelation and healing. All there pointing us to one. The personification of God's work and God's word revealed in his Son, Jesus Christ.
[34:04] The covenant language of the Scriptures, as we said earlier, those words were pointing us to God's revealed word for his specific people, Israel. And now in Jesus, we have God's revealed word to his people, the church.
[34:19] Meeting our deepest needs in Christ. And so how are we declared innocent? What sacrifice can we put our hope in?
[34:31] It's been provided. What means has God given for us to be declared innocent and made blameless? Jesus Christ was innocent. And all of our blame was put on him when he was put on the cross.
[34:46] The source of all of our anxiety. The reason behind all of our fears. All of our guilt. Put on Jesus.
[34:59] So that we may be declared innocent. This is how our sacrifice is received by God.
[35:09] By a perfect offering through his Son. He is, as the final line says, our rock and our redeemer.
[35:20] Therefore, he is our only hope. He is our rock, which is our refuge. The thing that takes the hit so that we can stand up under it. And he is our redeemer.
[35:34] The one who secures our standing before God based on his own work and not our own. And so I don't know where you are this morning. I don't know where you're coming from or what you're coming here for.
[35:48] But I do believe God's Word can meet you there. You may have a heavy heart. You may be troubled by all the events in our world.
[36:02] You may be troubled by things going on in your own home. And you're looking for comfort. God's Word gives us comfort. There are verses, of course, that speak to how God meets our needs and comes alongside us in our suffering.
[36:18] But ultimately, God meets our greatest needs by comforting us with his own Son's death on our behalf. And he sends the comforter of the Holy Spirit to continually apply these truths, even in those dark days and those dark hours.
[36:35] Maybe you're coming with an anxious soul and you're looking for peace this morning. God's Word points us to peace and tells us the source of where our souls may find peace, but ultimately, it's revealed in his Son, the Prince of Peace, who settled all dispute between God and man when he took on the cross so that the Prince of Peace became our peace so that we can be with God.
[37:06] Or maybe you have a troubled mind. You are anxious, as we've talked about earlier. You need answers or direction, and God's Word gives it. God's Word gives direction for our lives, but ultimately, God's Word points us to the One who tells us the point and purpose of our lives in whom all of God's promises for us are yes through Jesus.
[37:34] O soul, are you weary and troubled? No light in the darkness you see. There's light for a look at the Savior, a life more abundant and free.
[37:48] Let us turn to Him more and more even this week. Let's pray. God, I pray that You would apply these truths to our hearts. I am so often anxious and fearful, and Your Word continues to show us not only how we can find Your Spirit meeting our anxieties and fears and all these other negative emotions in our lives on a day-to-day basis, but how You have ultimately met them through sending Your Son.
[38:29] Not so that we would have comfortable lives, but so that we would have the promises of God for us even in our discomfort, even in those troubling times. Apply these truths.
[38:40] I pray that as we walk into creation, we would want to express Your glory, and as we come to Your Word, that we would see how it points to Your Son. And that Jesus, You would be exalted as we wrestle with what these things mean on an individual level, on a family level, even as a church, as a light shining into the darkness of this community.
[39:04] I pray that You would use Southwood Presbyterian Church in the lives of each of these folks. That through Sunday school and studies and youth group and all the different opportunities in Sunday worship where we open up Your Word, that You would continue to speak to us in each of those settings.
[39:21] Apply Your Word, Your revealed Word to Your people whom You love. We ask in Jesus' name. For more information, visit us online at southwood.org.
[39:34] on a family Sunday florist. on a family visit here today. you