SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Eastridge.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Justin.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the senior pastor here.
SPEAKER_00: And I am, you know, we're we're we have a lot to talk about today, okay?
SPEAKER_00: We're three weeks into the second half of our series where we're talking about the uh the the who God is, what is God uh who he is, what he's like, um, all these questions.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, two weeks ago, we stood in Isaiah's throne room and saw that God is holy, that he is other, that he is completely set apart from anything that we can even comprehend or know.
SPEAKER_00: And then uh, you know, last week we sat in the ashes of Jerusalem and learned that God is faithful, that he never changes and he never fails.
SPEAKER_00: And uh both of those are enormous truths about who God is and how he works and how he is working here on this earth, and stuff that we can't fully comprehend.
SPEAKER_00: And we talked uh, you know, the first week about things that we share with God, attributes that we share with God, and then attributes that we also do not share with him.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, today we're going to uh uh understand that uh that this attribute that we know who uh God is is getting closer and closer to uh being more like us.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and what I mean by that is we have attributes that are we will never share with God.
SPEAKER_00: We can never be holy like he is, we can never be as faithful and unchangeable as he is.
SPEAKER_00: And this one is a little, is, is still, you know, what we're gonna talk about today is still out there as far as we can't get there, but it does not take away from the fact that we can still worship him.
SPEAKER_00: So today we're we're talking about uh a God who knows you, a God who knows who you are, knows, and uh not a God who knows about you, but a God who knows your history, your habits.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the thought that you had at 2 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: that you never said out loud to another human being.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the uh uh the theological word for this uh is omniscience, all knowing.
SPEAKER_00: And the here is what I want us to land on this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So let me say it very up front that God fully knows you and he loves you anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So I'll say that again, that you are fully known and fully loved.
SPEAKER_00: That is that is this whole message.
SPEAKER_00: And I know you know Easterge exists to uh to lead people to know God, but this morning I want you to see the other half of that.
SPEAKER_00: I want, you know, the the half that we almost never talk about.
SPEAKER_00: Before we you ever went looking for God, he already knew you completely.
SPEAKER_00: And we can uh help people know God because he first knows who we are.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll have to excuse me for a moment because I this there's allergies that that popped up this week.
SPEAKER_00: So, or just yesterday, so excuse me while I you know grab a tissue here.
SPEAKER_00: Um I will promise I will return that later.
SPEAKER_00: But uh, but yeah, that that's also happening this week.
SPEAKER_00: So keep on praying for allergies and allergy season to come up and go.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to start out with something honest, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Um there's there's a part of me that that you know really sees that and understands that God knows everything and it's genuinely comforting.
SPEAKER_00: And and I and I've you know can sleep well at night from it.
SPEAKER_00: But really, uh there's part of me that thinks that it that it's also terrifying that God knows everything because it is a it's a strange thing.
SPEAKER_00: We want it and we run from it at usually at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Think about how carefully we manage the people that we see.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's the version that uh of me that stands up here on Sunday and you see me delivering this message and greeting people and and praying with people.
SPEAKER_00: Then there's the version of my neighbors who see what I'm like when I'm snowblowing.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's it's loud and uh and and I normally have a uh you know a more of a grim face, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Um anyone else with me on that one?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to you don't want to talk about snow right now, do you?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, good.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and then there's the version of me that only my family gets.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the the the the one who's maybe short-tempered, or when he's when he when I'm tired, or who says things that I wish I could take back, or who apologizes at bedtime more often than I'd like.
SPEAKER_00: You know, my wife sees every one of those versions.
SPEAKER_00: You know, she's she works full-time, she's in grad school right now, and she still knows me better than anyone else on this earth.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing about that: the people who know us the most have the most power to hurt us.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's why being fully known feels a little bit risky.
SPEAKER_00: The people who know us the most had the most power to hurt us.
SPEAKER_00: That's just true.
SPEAKER_00: You can't really be wounded by a stranger, uh, which is why most of us keep a little distance from almost everybody.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to get too close.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to get too known.
SPEAKER_00: We let people know enough to be liked and enough to be hurt.
SPEAKER_00: So when Scripture says God knows me completely, every version all the way down, my first instinct isn't always comfort.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a little bit of flinch.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, I like being known, but I'm also knowing that I can be hurt by this.
SPEAKER_00: So let me make this uncomfortable for you for just a second until I make it uh quite beautiful, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that right now we put your phone up on this screen, okay?
SPEAKER_00: We put it up, unlocked, all of it.
SPEAKER_00: Your search history, your uh your text messages, including the ones that you deleted, okay?
SPEAKER_00: The things that you typed out and then thought better and re-erased you hitting send.
SPEAKER_00: What just happened in your stomach?
SPEAKER_00: Because it happened in mine too, where where it kind of feels like, okay, uh this something dropped in there.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, this is exposing me a lot.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the harder thought that on everything on that phone, God has already seen.
SPEAKER_00: He has seen all of it.
SPEAKER_00: Every search, every message, every TikTok video, everything that you've said, oh, you know what, I should buy that, I should look at that, I should, I should search for that, everything.
SPEAKER_00: He has seen all of it.
SPEAKER_00: There's no version of you that God is going to discover later and then also be disappointed by.
SPEAKER_00: He knows all of it.
SPEAKER_00: So he has already read the entire file on your life.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you have led your entire Christian life with a low, quiet fear underneath it.
SPEAKER_00: The fear that if God ever really saw all of it, he'd be done with you.
SPEAKER_00: That he would say, I don't want to have anything else to do with that person.
SPEAKER_00: That if the people in this room knew the real story about you, they'd think differently about you as well.
SPEAKER_00: So you perform, you manage, uh, you keep the good version out front and the rest of it locked behind a screen.
SPEAKER_00: That is an exhausting way to live.
SPEAKER_00: And so Psalm 139 is written to set you free from that way of living.
SPEAKER_00: So let's let's go to Psalm 139 today.
SPEAKER_00: If you brought your Bibles, that's great.
SPEAKER_00: You can follow along with me, okay?
SPEAKER_00: It says here, starting in verse 1, O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
SPEAKER_00: You know when I sit down and when I rise up.
SPEAKER_00: You discern my thoughts from afar, you search up my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.
SPEAKER_00: Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it all together.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to stop right there because I want to slow down here and look at a couple words that are in the Hebrew language, the original language that this was written in, uh, because the first one is the word for searched.
SPEAKER_00: You searched me.
SPEAKER_00: You have searched me and known me.
SPEAKER_00: That word search is chakhar, which uh means to search out, to examine, to dig into, to explore thoroughly.
SPEAKER_00: This is a mining word more than it is a searching word.
SPEAKER_00: It's used in the Old Testament for digging into the earth to find what's buried in it.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't a searching for your keys kind of word.
SPEAKER_00: This is a, I need to examine this, I need to get down deep into this thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word for exploring a land, investigating a matter, getting all the way to the bottom of something.
SPEAKER_00: So verse one isn't saying God glanced at you or mildly searched for you.
SPEAKER_00: It is saying that when you know when he has mining for you, he is searching for you diligently.
SPEAKER_00: He has gone down through every single layer to search who you are.
SPEAKER_00: And then comes a second word, the one the whole message uh rests on.
SPEAKER_00: Yada.
SPEAKER_00: Yada means to know personally, experientially, relationally.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a word for knowing a fact.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word for knowing a person.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word scripture uses for the deepest intimacy between a husband and a wife.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word God uses in Amos when he says to Israel, You have only have I known of all the families of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Which obviously doesn't mean God had no information about other nations.
SPEAKER_00: It means you are the ones I have loved and bound myself to.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't know facts about you.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew, he yadaz you.
SPEAKER_00: So when David says, You have searched me and you have known me, he is not describing a God with a very large database.
SPEAKER_00: He is describing a God who has dug all the way down into his very soul.
SPEAKER_00: And the knowing that results is the knowing of intimacy, not the knowing of surveillance.
SPEAKER_00: It's the knowing about how you work, what's going on in your mind, what what what what do you love, what what makes you unique.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the difference.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, a stalker knows facts about you, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Uh a spouse knows who you are and how you work, and what's going to um, you know, get get you going, what's what's going to help you uh motivate you, what's going to get you to, you know, really kind of be a better you for other people.
SPEAKER_00: God is not the first one.
SPEAKER_00: He is infinitely the you know the the the one who is always going to know you.
SPEAKER_00: He is uh the the the the spouse that you know that you're a part of is going to know you here in this earth.
SPEAKER_00: He is going to know you infinitely, infinitely more.
SPEAKER_00: So he goes on.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go uh skip to verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: It says here, For you formed me in my inward parts, you knitting me together in my mother's womb.
SPEAKER_00: I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well.
SPEAKER_00: My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Knitted together, intricately woven.
SPEAKER_00: That's the language of craftsmanship, uh of someone leaning closer over the work.
SPEAKER_00: And and notice verse 16 God saw you before you were finished being made.
SPEAKER_00: He knew who you were, he knows who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you you you you knew you before your mother even felt you move, is how he know he knows who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Before you had a name, a personality, a single accomplishment, or a single failure.
SPEAKER_00: God knew who you were.
SPEAKER_00: God said the same thing to Jeremiah using the same Hebrew word.
SPEAKER_00: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.
SPEAKER_00: And before you were born, I consecrated you.
SPEAKER_00: That's the same word, Yada.
SPEAKER_00: Before I formed you, I knew you personally, intimately, relationally.
SPEAKER_00: This matters enormously for how you understand your own worth.
SPEAKER_00: Because most of us build our sense of value on what we produce, what we do, how we manage it, what we what we perform, and how we how we uh what that looks like, what we accomplish, what we contribute, how useful we can be.
SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of worth come from what we think about ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: But God knew you and loved you before you had produced anything at all.
SPEAKER_00: You were fully known and fully loved when you had done exactly nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Which means nothing you can do now can add to it, and nothing you can you've done can subtract from it.
SPEAKER_00: Because when we look at you know uh the rest of the psalm, we see you know how how much uh he loves us by uh just a quick visual.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it says later in 17 and 18, how precious to me are your thoughts, O God, how vast is the sum of them.
SPEAKER_00: If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
SPEAKER_00: I awake and I am still with you.
SPEAKER_00: So I brought a jar of sand with me today to show you exactly what that looks like.
SPEAKER_00: There's a jar of sand.
SPEAKER_00: And uh David says, God's thoughts toward him outnumber the grains of sand.
SPEAKER_00: So let's take him seriously for a second.
SPEAKER_00: There's uh, you know, somewhere around uh a million or more uh grains of sand in this jar right here.
SPEAKER_00: And there are somewhere, you know, if we if we looked at a different jar, there'd be more.
SPEAKER_00: If we took, you know, if we had a big bucket of it, there'd be a lot more, but that there's about a million in here.
SPEAKER_00: So if you tried to, and it's very difficult to do, just pull up one single grain, it's it's difficult to do.
SPEAKER_00: You you almost can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: Many stick to your your your finger as you're trying to do that.
SPEAKER_00: And that is just one single thought that God has toward you.
SPEAKER_00: Just one.
SPEAKER_00: Now try pulling out another and another.
SPEAKER_00: One per second.
SPEAKER_00: One grain of if you know if there were only a million in there, it would take about 11 and a half days to take all those grains of sands out of there.
SPEAKER_00: 11 and a half days.
SPEAKER_00: And this jar isn't even the full illustration.
SPEAKER_00: This David didn't say, you know, that God's thoughts for you are more than a jar of sand.
SPEAKER_00: He said that they are more than the sand of every beach, every shoreline, every desert.
SPEAKER_00: If you go stand at Park Point, you know, you're going to and look down at the shorelines as far as you can see, and then remember that's one lake in one single state.
SPEAKER_00: That's one shoreline.
SPEAKER_00: Every grain is one thought God has had toward you.
SPEAKER_00: This jar will run out.
SPEAKER_00: But God's thoughts toward you will never run out.
SPEAKER_00: That is the volume of God's thoughts toward you.
SPEAKER_00: And notice the adjective David uses.
SPEAKER_00: He says, How precious to me are your thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: These are not neutral thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: They are not a running tally of your failures.
SPEAKER_00: The word carries the sense of something weighty, costly, valuable, like treasure.
SPEAKER_00: The thoughts he has for you are treasures.
SPEAKER_00: God is not thinking about the way that, you know, uh thinking about you the way an auditor thinks about, you know, a file.
SPEAKER_00: He's thinking about the way that a parent thinks about their child.
SPEAKER_00: And then David ends with what might be my favorite line in this whole psalm.
SPEAKER_00: It says, I awake and I am still with you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm awake and I am still with you.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning, you know, I uh David fell asleep and God was still thinking about him.
SPEAKER_00: I woke up and he had not stopped.
SPEAKER_00: You have never once had a moment in your entire life when God was not thinking of you with his love.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if we go into the New Testament, which is where we find Jesus, in this New Testament, we have to think about, okay, what does that mean for God to know us if Jesus is there and understanding how we can know him more?
SPEAKER_00: In uh the the Greek New Testament uh is is uh is has a word for it as well.
SPEAKER_00: It's gnosko, to know by experience and relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It's the the the Greek cousin of the word yada.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul does something with it in Galatians that should stop us cold in our tracks and understanding.
SPEAKER_00: He is writing to Christians and he starts to say uh in Galatians 4 9, he says, but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?
SPEAKER_00: He says, but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God.
SPEAKER_00: That word or rather, that phrase or rather.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul says, actually, let me flip that.
SPEAKER_00: The main story isn't about, isn't you knowing about God.
SPEAKER_00: The main story is God knowing you.
SPEAKER_00: Your grip on him, your understanding of God will vary.
SPEAKER_00: Paul knows this.
SPEAKER_00: God knows this.
SPEAKER_00: That as we go from mountaintop to to valley, that that we will uh have a different understanding of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: Some weeks that some weeks that's really strong, and then other weeks we can barely hold on uh to who God is and what he has done for us.
SPEAKER_00: But his grip, God's grip on us and the thoughts that he has for us never fails.
SPEAKER_00: It is a faithfulness that we have to understand.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul intensifies it uh later with the with a with a prefix that is also in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: So it's this Greek word epignosco, to know fully, thoroughly, completely.
SPEAKER_00: First Corinthians 13 12 says, For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face, now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even I has been fully known.
SPEAKER_00: Even as I have been fully known.
SPEAKER_00: Right now, your knowledge of God is dim.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not calling you dim, I promise you.
SPEAKER_00: But your knowledge of him is dim.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's partial, it's like a foggy mirror.
SPEAKER_00: But his knowledge of you right now already is complete.
SPEAKER_00: He knows everything.
SPEAKER_00: And there's one more Gonosco word, this knowing word that I'm gonna talk about.
SPEAKER_00: It's prognosco.
SPEAKER_00: Pro-gonosco, to know beforehand.
SPEAKER_00: In scripture, uh, it it's it means to set love upon in advance.
SPEAKER_00: So Romans 8.29 says, for those he he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.
SPEAKER_00: This is the crucial part of it.
SPEAKER_00: In scriptures, God's foreknowing, his his him knowing before everything else, is never merely advanced information.
SPEAKER_00: It carries the whole weight of yada behind it.
SPEAKER_00: It means love set on someone ahead of time.
SPEAKER_00: God didn't look down the corridor of history, gather some data, and then decide.
SPEAKER_00: He set his love on you in advance.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to love you before anything else was even written.
SPEAKER_00: And everything since has been bringing that love home.
SPEAKER_00: Because we have to deal with the hard part honestly.
SPEAKER_00: Because being fully known would be terrifying news if God were not also gracious in his love.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture does not soften this at all.
SPEAKER_00: Uh in Hebrews 4 13 it says, And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
SPEAKER_00: Naked and exposed.
SPEAKER_00: No file is completely sealed, no search is deleted, and every one of us has things in that file that we would not want to be read aloud in this room.
SPEAKER_00: So, how does a fully known sinner like us survive a holy God?
SPEAKER_00: A holy God who knows all things and is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: This is where the gospel becomes unbearably good.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus came, he knew people completely, the only way that God can know them.
SPEAKER_00: John writes that Jesus never entrusted himself to the crowds because he knew all people, and he himself knew what was in man, he knew what was in man.
SPEAKER_00: Was in us, all of it.
SPEAKER_00: And he came down to this earth anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Think about who he chose to spend his life with.
SPEAKER_00: He looked at Nathaniel and said, I saw you under the fig tree, a private moment that nobody else witnessed.
SPEAKER_00: And Nathaniel was completely undone by that interaction with a holy person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He looked at Judas and knew from the beginning exactly how it would end.
SPEAKER_00: And he washed his feet anyway.
SPEAKER_00: He looked at Peter and told him plainly, Before the rooster crows, you will deny you ever met me.
SPEAKER_00: And he still went to the cross for him.
SPEAKER_00: That is the point.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus went to the cross with full knowledge of all of our flaws in the past and in the future.
SPEAKER_00: And he still did it anyway.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't die for the version of you he hoped you might become.
SPEAKER_00: He died knowing the whole file, everything on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: And on that cross, something happened that we can barely take in.
SPEAKER_00: The one who had known perfect intimacy with the Father from eternity past cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: The Son experienced the horror of being cut off so that you and I would never have to hear the words.
SPEAKER_00: And he was bleeding for us.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to even fathom that a God who fully knows us, his son who fully knows us, the Holy Spirit who fully guides us and knows us as well, would still go to that cross and bleed and die for us.
SPEAKER_00: Because there is one sentence in all of Scripture more frightening than being fully known.
SPEAKER_00: It is Jesus saying, I never knew you.
SPEAKER_00: And he went to the cross so that he could be with us because he fully loves us.
SPEAKER_00: Now watch what happens after Peter fails, because we know that he failed.
SPEAKER_00: We know that he denied him those three times.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus finds him on a beach after Jesus has risen from the dead and asked him three times if he loves him.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter, out of options with his failure fully public now, because people know that Mo knows that he's denied him, reaches for the only thing he has left.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you know everything.
SPEAKER_00: You know that I love you.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see what Peter just did there?
SPEAKER_00: He appealed to the omniscience, the all-knowing power of Jesus as his comfort.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't his fear.
SPEAKER_00: The very attribute that should have condemned him.
SPEAKER_00: You know everything, Lord, including how badly I have failed you.
SPEAKER_00: Peter turns it into his defense.
SPEAKER_00: You know everything.
SPEAKER_00: So you also know that underneath the failure, I love you.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you know everything.
SPEAKER_00: You know all of it, and you still love me.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we need to pray this morning.
SPEAKER_00: If you have never come to Jesus, the invitation is very simple.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have to explain yourself, he already knows everything about you.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to clean up first.
SPEAKER_00: He has already seen all of it.
SPEAKER_00: Your past and your future failures.
SPEAKER_00: So turn from your sin.
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the one who died, knowing everything, and be known by the God of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we need to do, knowing that we have that in our mind and in our hearts and our thoughts?
SPEAKER_00: We need to know something, we need to feel something, and we need to do something.
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing we need to do is know you are fully known and fully loved at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: At the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us have experienced being partly known and partly loved.
SPEAKER_00: And that's by our human experience.
SPEAKER_00: We're loved by people who don't know the worst of us and avoided by some who do.
SPEAKER_00: And God, for the first time, those two things are complete all at once.
SPEAKER_00: Fully known, fully loved.
SPEAKER_00: There's no gap between that.
SPEAKER_00: We need to feel this in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Security instead of hiding.
SPEAKER_00: Hiding is exhausting, and it has been our instinct ever since the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve heard God coming and reached for leaves.
SPEAKER_00: But you cannot hide from someone who has already searched you out.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the freedom in that.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to.
SPEAKER_00: Forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: It's already been done for you.
SPEAKER_00: You can stop managing your image before God.
SPEAKER_00: You can stop hiding from a God who already found you and decided to stay with you, to be faithful to you, to allow you to be holy and set apart as well.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing that we need to do this week.
SPEAKER_00: One thing we need to do this week.
SPEAKER_00: Pray the last two verses this week of Psalm 20, of Psalm 139, 23, and 24.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Search me, O God, and know my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
SPEAKER_00: The same two Hebrew words that we talked about, the Shakar and Yada, search me, know me.
SPEAKER_00: But now they're invitation.
SPEAKER_00: That is the whole arc of this psalm, and if and it should be the arc of our lives here today.
SPEAKER_00: Moving from God searches me as a fact you can't avoid to God search me as a prayer you actually want answered.
SPEAKER_00: That you actually want to have him answer.
SPEAKER_00: And nobody invites that search unless they are certain that the searcher loves them.
SPEAKER_00: So we can be assured of that.
SPEAKER_00: So see this week, pray those two verses every morning.
SPEAKER_00: Every morning.
SPEAKER_00: Then be still for 60 seconds and let him answer.
SPEAKER_00: That is what putting down deep roots looks like.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe Easters exist to help people know God and become lifelong learners of Jesus, not just Sunday attenders.
SPEAKER_00: That is where that starts, not in a classroom.
SPEAKER_00: It's in an honest 60 seconds with an all-knowing God.
SPEAKER_00: Maturity is moving from God searches me to God search me.
SPEAKER_00: Know me.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what happens when we all do that together.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we start to understand that God has searched you out every layer, all the way down.
SPEAKER_00: He knew you before you were formed, before you had done anything right or anything wrong.
SPEAKER_00: His thoughts toward you outnumber the sand on every beach that you have ever walked.
SPEAKER_00: And he proved every bit of it at a cross where Jesus died with full knowledge of exactly who he was dying for.
SPEAKER_00: Fully known, fully loved.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to close by singing today.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to sing a song called In Christ Alone.
SPEAKER_00: So the team can come back up here.
SPEAKER_00: And as you sing it, listen for what that song is actually about.
SPEAKER_00: It's about a foundation that holds because it doesn't depend on you.
SPEAKER_00: It walks all the way from the cradle to the cross to the empty tomb.
SPEAKER_00: And it ends with the promise that no power on earth or under it can pull you out of his hand because he loves you.
SPEAKER_00: Because he knows you.
SPEAKER_00: That is the promise of a God who knows you completely.
SPEAKER_00: He knew everything about you before he took hold of you.
SPEAKER_00: So there is nothing left to discover that could ever make him let go of you.
SPEAKER_00: Let's stand, let's pray, and then let's sing.
SPEAKER_00: Father, you have searched us and known us.
SPEAKER_00: You know when we sit down and when we rise up.
SPEAKER_00: You know the words before they reach our tongues, and you love us still.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you knew us before we were formed, before we had done anything to earn or forfeit your love.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that your thoughts toward us outnumber the sand.
SPEAKER_00: All the sand.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, thank you that you knew everything.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of my failures, every one of my denials, every hidden thing on me.
SPEAKER_00: And you went to the cross anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you were forsaken so that we would never hear the words, I never knew you.
SPEAKER_00: For everyone here who has been hiding, exhausted from managing what people see, let them rest today in being fully known and fully loved.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, make us a church where people don't have to pretend.
SPEAKER_00: Search us, O God, and know our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Try us and know our thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: So if there be any grievous way in us, and lead us in the way everlasting.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, amen.