SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.
SPEAKER_01: I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.
SPEAKER_01: Embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Today, be encouraged with a word from my guest speaker.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_02: We're going to be in Psalm 19 today, and this is a revelation of God's revealing, his self-revelation through his creation, through his kingdom, through his word, and then even through our own humanity.
SPEAKER_02: And it's David's writing this, we're going to kind of journey through this passage together.
SPEAKER_02: Our lives, based on the world that we live in today, creature comforts, technology, have created a divide, really a distraction to knowing and feeling the God of creation all around us.
SPEAKER_02: We miss the constant effort to grab our attention, to hear him whisper his love and affection over us.
SPEAKER_02: We are missing moments to meet with him in the cool of the day and walk in his garden.
SPEAKER_02: Yet we all have to do is walk outside, look up around, and we can see his hand over our lives.
SPEAKER_02: And I think this is not anywhere more true than in this beautiful city of Colorado Springs.
SPEAKER_02: And there's just moments where I'm grabbed, he grabs my attention.
SPEAKER_02: I had the benefit of growing up in a flat land where it was cool when corn was there, but when it wasn't, it was pretty flat and boring.
SPEAKER_02: And so when I would come out to Colorado as a young man with my father, we'd come and we'd take ski trips out here every springtime.
SPEAKER_02: And I would just always be captivated by the Rocky Mountains.
SPEAKER_02: And I and I still crack up.
SPEAKER_02: Like I'm I can't help this.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02: Pastor Brian's talked about watching The Simpsons.
SPEAKER_02: If you've been to the roadmap, and so I can throw this one out there.
SPEAKER_02: I still crack up sometimes in the movie Dumb and Dumber when they're driving out, and he's like, definitely still in Kansas.
SPEAKER_02: And he's like, I thought the Rocky Mountains would be rockier than that.
SPEAKER_02: That John Denver is full of crap.
SPEAKER_02: You know, you're like, and so there's this point where you do cross the threshold of the Midwest, and the majesty of the Rocky Mountains grabs us.
SPEAKER_02: And I just am so reminded with the sun rises and even seeing uh glimpses of Pike's Peak, and it captures me.
SPEAKER_02: It captures my imagination, it captures my heart.
SPEAKER_02: And those are the moments where like I feel this connection to God and his creation.
SPEAKER_02: And so let's let's dive into our first passage because I think this is so much of Psalms is David making his personal declarations, right?
SPEAKER_02: He's down in the domps and he's like, yeah, I'm gonna declare out of this.
SPEAKER_02: I know that God's word is true, he's faithful, he's just, and I'm gonna stand on that.
SPEAKER_02: But now, 19 is a little different because now he's actually saying this is God's declaration.
SPEAKER_02: This is God declaring things over my life, over my reality, over my situation.
SPEAKER_02: Number one, the heavens proclaim the glory of God, the skies display his craftsmanship, day after day, they continue to speak.
SPEAKER_02: Night after night they make him known.
SPEAKER_02: See, beauty reveals something about God, and beauty reveals something about each of us.
SPEAKER_02: We see God's heart revealed in the sparkling night sky, and he loves beauty.
SPEAKER_02: First point today is as we look through this scripture, we're we're pulling out the revelation of God in our lives and how He is He's coming alive in our world.
SPEAKER_02: And beauty is in all of God's creation.
SPEAKER_02: God's design for humanity is to be captivated by the beauty found in creation around us.
SPEAKER_02: As a young man, my dad would invite me with him, even like as a young boy.
SPEAKER_02: He would get me up before the sunrise, and for some reason he thought the fish would bite better than I don't know what it was about like getting on this boat and being in the middle of like this pond in the Midwest, and it's cold.
SPEAKER_02: It should be summertime, right?
SPEAKER_02: It should be warm.
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't, it was cold, and there was no sun.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, why are we doing this?
SPEAKER_02: I and I couldn't, I couldn't see the beauty in it yet, but he was he was starting to cultivate something in me.
SPEAKER_02: He also thought that there was something honorable in the first tea time on the golf course.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I don't, I can't focus.
SPEAKER_02: First of all, the sunlight's not even up yet, really, and I can't see the ball.
SPEAKER_02: This game's hard enough as it is, and I can't even see it yet.
SPEAKER_02: But there was something about for him, he was showing me and inviting me into this journey that he had realized about the value and the glory of the sunrise.
SPEAKER_02: And so beauty is to captivate our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: We're God's creation.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, because we know in the scriptures where we land in that creation, we're the last piece of it, we're God's final exclamation point of his design, we're to give him glory, and he puts us in this setting that we are to be invited in and share with this understanding of him, his design, his glory, where we fit into all of that.
SPEAKER_02: And we're at the pinnacle of his creation, his value on us.
SPEAKER_02: We have freedom of choice, we'll get into that in a minute, about what he gives us inside of that.
SPEAKER_02: But he wants to meet with us in his creation.
SPEAKER_02: That's become clear.
SPEAKER_02: And so we were on a hunting trip, I want to say it was like back in 2020.
SPEAKER_02: It was one of the last years we actually got to hunt in this place that had produced a lot of animals.
SPEAKER_02: That's just awesome.
SPEAKER_02: And we had pulled up, we had unpacked, and it was the first night.
SPEAKER_02: And I've been in Arizona, we grew up, um, I didn't grow up, but I've spent 10 years down there.
SPEAKER_02: They're actually known for having a lot of observatories, and you can see the Milky Way, and it's a great place to study the stars and all that.
SPEAKER_02: And I had seen really great skies in the desert, like beautiful night skies and the stars, and I mean, just amazing, right?
SPEAKER_02: You're like, wow, this is awesome.
SPEAKER_02: Um, but in this particular part of the flat tops up by Meeker, the Milky Way, I don't I don't know what was happening in the heavens that that that particular weekend, but the Milky Way was so bright.
SPEAKER_02: It was so illuminated, and it just captivated us.
SPEAKER_02: I think um Josh was doing a film and he was trying to capture kind of the way the sky would move and the movement of the moon, and he was gonna do a time ellipse.
SPEAKER_02: But then we were all one guy noticed it, and then the rest of us, and the next thing you know, we had stepped away from the fire, we had walked away walked as far as we could to get to the darkest place on the hill to look up, and and I gotta tell you, in all the years that I've looked at the sky, I've never seen the Milky Way look this way.
SPEAKER_02: It was just, it was the definition, it was crystal clear.
SPEAKER_02: And I felt like I had just upgraded to like 8K on my TV, and it was like and it was right there, and we're like 10,000 feet on this mountaintop, and it was brilliant.
SPEAKER_02: It was just captivating, and it and it drew us in.
SPEAKER_02: It drew us into the adventure that we were already there.
SPEAKER_02: We were far away from any medical help.
SPEAKER_02: There is some inherent danger about where we go and hunt because we're pretty far.
SPEAKER_02: If you get in a bad spot, you're gonna be in a bad way.
SPEAKER_02: And so, this adventure that draws us in as boys, as men, we're coming into it, and we're excited to be there, we're setting up camp, we're having our first meal, and then this sky, this sky that just opens up, and it's like God saying, I love you.
SPEAKER_02: I think about you, and I've given you this to think about me, and let's connect and let's meet.
SPEAKER_02: Let's meet on this mountain.
SPEAKER_02: And instantly, from the beginning that was a special hunting trip for me.
SPEAKER_02: Um, we did get an animal, and that was just kind of like icing on the cake for Sam and I, but it was like that moment I knew was going to be a special time of connection with God and those mountains and his sky and what it was revealing to my heart and what he was saying to me in that moment.
SPEAKER_02: And as you guys search, all of us in this room can remember a time where you looked at the sky and you were drawn in.
SPEAKER_02: You were drawn in by its beauty, wonder, there's mystery up there.
SPEAKER_02: We're always pursuing, trying to get the Hubble telescope look, like what's the latest image?
SPEAKER_02: What can we continue to define?
SPEAKER_02: What how can we continue to know the unknown up there in the heavens?
SPEAKER_02: And as a pursuit of our humanity, there's just something that continues to draw us in, and so we keep going for it.
SPEAKER_02: We keep launching rockets and missiles, and we're still trying to pursue that and understand it more when God's just saying, I put it up here for you because I love you, and I want you to know that my hand on creation is here, and my hand of your creation is over your heart.
SPEAKER_02: And be reminded that I am for you, I'm with you, I've never left you alone.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what the night sky is there to remind us of.
SPEAKER_02: As we get into the second part of this, God's beauty draws us in, and Adam understood this.
SPEAKER_02: God didn't build creation, and then he set up a tabernacle, a temple, you know, a sweet house.
SPEAKER_02: Adam lived in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_02: David lived in the wilderness, right?
SPEAKER_02: We covered this as a shepherd boy, so he knows the night sky, he's familiar with this.
SPEAKER_02: And so Adam in his in God's first creation, it was a it was the table in which he communed with humanity.
SPEAKER_02: Still, so, God's still wanting to meet us there.
SPEAKER_02: For me, because of my dad's initial uh invitation to get drawn into the wilderness and go and meet God.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, as a young boy, I'm running through the woods and around where I grew up in farmland and you know, trying to be home before the streetlights came on.
SPEAKER_02: That was kind of the rule.
SPEAKER_02: Like, go explore, go have adventures, but don't be late for dinner.
SPEAKER_02: That was the kind of the golden rule.
SPEAKER_02: And um I got lost out there, played in the rivers, grew up near Mississippi River, and um just had a blast doing all the stuff that Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn did, right?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that was kind of my existence.
SPEAKER_02: Um, I probably would have fit in well with Mark Twain's novel and me and my buddies, but it it's like I was learning things about nature and also God's design in my heart and my life at that time, and not really even knowing what it was, but I knew that I was drawn into it, and then the adventure that the mountains offer us here.
SPEAKER_02: I have to say that nothing speaks to God's beauty deeper to me than my wife and the gift that she is, and God's perfect design and the beauty, her beauty, not just her physical beauty, and she is certainly that for me, but even more the mysteries of how her mind works, and it draws me in, and the things that she thinks about and how she crafts conversation.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm drawn in by that.
SPEAKER_02: It's like God is speaking to me through her beauty as well.
SPEAKER_02: And so we got this house, and um, the last place we lived, she gave me a pretty, pretty large uh uh freedom to design and do some things, and it kind of looked like a dude's layer at one point.
SPEAKER_02: It was kind of like, okay, this looks like a cabin in the woods where a guy would live, and she would add her beauty touches.
SPEAKER_02: But with this, with this house that we just moved into, the conversation was like, okay, thank you for that, and letting me do that.
SPEAKER_02: But I kind of wanted to give her kind of carte blanche, and I've been amazed with her draw for beauty and the beauty that she brings into our house and how she looks at things and how she's creating different rooms and environments, and I'm like, I would have never thought about that.
SPEAKER_02: That that does not, that's not where my mind goes, but when I go into that room and I can see her hand and fingerprints on things, it draws me in it because it's her, and I love her, and I'm and I'm drawn and attracted by her beauty in that way, and now she's she's putting that in my house, and I can see God's reflection in all of that.
SPEAKER_02: We did have an interesting, funny conversation about the different shades of white.
SPEAKER_02: This is a true thing.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm looking down, and she has this, she's on the table, she spreads out this color palette, and she's like, What do you think about this white?
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, it's pretty white.
SPEAKER_02: And then she comes over here, she's like, but this one's a little more subtle.
SPEAKER_02: There's some picking up some tans and the little hint of yellow, and I'm like, looks pretty white, you know?
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, you know, most guys are pretty much colorblind, so white's white to me.
SPEAKER_02: And then, and then so then she comes all the way to the other side.
SPEAKER_02: She's like, but this is kind of a warmer tone, and it kind of cools it off.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm going, If you if you say so, I mean, you're kind of the expert on the white color scale.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, blue's blue, green's green, and white is white.
SPEAKER_02: But I mean, there was like a hundred choices of white at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_02: And so that was fun to kind of go through that.
SPEAKER_02: And these as we understand even more about each other's personalities.
SPEAKER_02: Jump into verse three.
SPEAKER_02: They speak without a sound or word, their voice is never heard, yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world.
SPEAKER_02: Point two, God's love is for everyone.
SPEAKER_02: The whole earth shares in the splendor for all to see, and no one is excluded from its message.
SPEAKER_02: Generations of humanity have shared the same sky.
SPEAKER_02: I thought about this.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know my great-great-grandfather, but I know that he saw the same sky that I see today.
SPEAKER_02: And there's a connection there.
SPEAKER_02: There's a connection that we have with the people that walked before us, because they too got to partake in God's humanity.
SPEAKER_02: We have this in common with our ancestors, families, and friends who are now gone.
SPEAKER_02: Our children's children will have the same majesty to behold if the Lord tarries.
SPEAKER_02: So our great-grandchildren will look up at the sky and see God's mystery and wonder and be drawn in too with their hearts if they allow it.
SPEAKER_02: And so there's something universal about sharing this sky here in the United States, in Colorado, Colorado Springs, that people in Beijing, China can also participate in and feel God's delight and love and invitation into his wonder and kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: I was talking with Ricky Bobby right before the service, and we're kind of talking about our favorite like animals in nature.
SPEAKER_02: And um, a couple years ago I gave a little devo at Tuesday morning about elephants and all that.
SPEAKER_02: And he's like, Is that still your thing?
SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, I dig elephants, they're pretty cool, um, especially as we learn more about them.
SPEAKER_02: But he's like, I'm a bear guy, I'm kind of like a wolf guy.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, well, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, like, I can totally see the bear and wolf thing there, it's good.
SPEAKER_02: And then uh he's like, is that still your thing?
SPEAKER_02: The owl, you know, the elephants?
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, you know, I mean, I've always been a little fascinated with owls.
SPEAKER_02: They're kind of weird, uh, they're mysterious.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't mean like the whole like pagan owl thing, like with the shape of DC.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not like talking about Moloch and all the owl stuff.
SPEAKER_02: I'm saying just the owl in nature itself.
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of a cool nighttime predator, it's got a lot of cool things, its head swivels, which I think is wild all the way around.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I like to see what I look like from the back.
SPEAKER_02: It does, it does all that, and so we're walking out, we're moving out of our house, and the thing that I probably missed the most about the old neighborhood was all the wildlife.
SPEAKER_02: And I walk out and we're just moving, and there's this tree right in front of our um deck, which is where we hung out.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we hung out in the front yard.
SPEAKER_02: It was kind of NASCAR.
SPEAKER_02: I liked it.
SPEAKER_02: And we would sit on the front yard in the front deck, and in this big tree in front of us, there was this uh decent branch, and there were four owls just sitting there.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we were probably 30 feet from them, if that.
SPEAKER_02: And we walked up and they just they just sat there and they let us get pretty close, and we got to take some pictures, but there were four owls, and I was like, whoa, that was like really cool.
SPEAKER_02: Like God knew that that was gonna bless me as I was saying goodbye to the wilderness of this.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we where we live now is a pretty much an urban community and and neighborhood, and that's cool, but it doesn't have the same wildlife, and I'm not interacting with with God and nature in the same way that I used to, but these owls were just lined perfectly, and they were looking at me, and it was kind of it was kind of cool, it was kind of intimidating because I was outnumbered.
SPEAKER_02: They had me four to one.
SPEAKER_02: I was like, whoa, and then all my kids were running out and checking them out too.
SPEAKER_02: But um, that's how he shows up.
SPEAKER_02: It's these little moments in our creation, our design where we get to connect with him, and it was him just saying, like, hey, this has been a good time here.
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Thank you, God, for just this opportunity to be here in nature with you, with our family, bringing kids up and watching lynx in the backyard and black bears everywhere, and deer like dogs in your front yard.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was just, you know, like we had to shoo them out, but that's that's how it is over there.
SPEAKER_02: All right.
SPEAKER_02: Number five, it bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom.
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I back up.
SPEAKER_02: God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.
SPEAKER_02: Missed that part.
SPEAKER_02: The sun, this is critical.
SPEAKER_02: It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding.
SPEAKER_02: It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race.
SPEAKER_02: Third point is God is constant.
SPEAKER_02: With every sunset, night sky, and sunrise, we are reminded of God's constant care over us.
SPEAKER_02: If our world, if we woke up one day and the sun did not rise or the sun did not set, we would instantly go into panic.
SPEAKER_02: But yet we take it for granted.
SPEAKER_02: We kind of live our lives by we're like, okay, it's sundown, it's time to eat, sunrise, probably time to eat, and then we live our day and the sun shine, and then it goes down, and then the sky comes out.
SPEAKER_02: But so quickly, because of our pace and our schedule, if we're being honest, we don't stop long enough and linger in the majesty of God's creation, the beauty that's there.
SPEAKER_02: I think about all the colors of a sunset and where we've had those opportunities in the desert, on mountain lakes, over a river stream where it starts to fall behind the canyon, and then in the mornings where it's coming up over the sun.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we had some of the most amazing sunsets in Arizona.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know what it is about the elevation, the thin air, there's like not a lot of moisture down there, but the colors that come out in a desert sunset are just captivating.
SPEAKER_02: It's like everything.
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, you're getting, you know, in that moment, you're getting a picture of God's perfect perfection.
SPEAKER_02: It's his perfection in creation, it's his fingerprint, and it draws you in if you just linger for a moment.
SPEAKER_02: And then we would see down there, hot air balloon culture.
SPEAKER_02: They would launch hot air balloons in the morning, and then they would have the nighttime thing.
SPEAKER_02: And so people were trying to get up and around and experience the sun rises and the sun sets down there.
SPEAKER_02: And you could always see hot air balloons in the distance wherever you were driving around in Phoenix.
SPEAKER_02: That was really cool.
SPEAKER_02: So he's constant, and we're drawn into the moments that are fleeting but are completely beautiful.
SPEAKER_02: And we think about those right now.
SPEAKER_02: If you guys were to think about some of the best moments, whether you're on the beach with your beloved, maybe you're with your your brothers in the mountains, and you're just you're drawn in even for that moment, and you're reminded.
SPEAKER_02: You're reminded, and like everything stops, bills, tax season, you know, where the kids are gonna go to college, how's the 529 plan?
SPEAKER_02: How's my 401k?
SPEAKER_02: All that stuff, right?
SPEAKER_02: You pause for a minute, and all that stuff just fades away.
SPEAKER_02: And God is drawing you back in.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what David is talking about here.
SPEAKER_02: He's being drawn in.
SPEAKER_02: The sole connection to the truth that this beauty speaks about, our creator and his affinity towards us, his pinnacle of creation.
SPEAKER_02: Sunrises also captivate our souls, and the warmth of the heat on a very crisp fall morning, kiss our face, the warmth of it.
SPEAKER_02: So, one more brief hunting story is where we go up, we sit in this kind of ravine, and there's this um there's this saddle to where you can sit on one side of the hill, and then the animals typically will run down uh through the valley, and you can sit on the other side of the hill.
SPEAKER_02: But where we sit so that first shots and first light aren't in our face, we have to sit to where the sun's coming over us.
SPEAKER_02: So we get to see the sun long before it hits us.
SPEAKER_02: And we're generally in place around five in the morning, and it's crisp and it's cold, and we're at elevation, and it's you know, middle of October up there, it's it's pretty cold.
SPEAKER_02: And you're just sitting there and you're waiting and you're waiting.
SPEAKER_02: And we've done this year after year, and we're both like Sam and I are sitting there and we're like kind of just shivering.
SPEAKER_02: We're like, it's gonna come, sun's gonna come soon.
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, you know, trying to get warm, you're thinking about the warmth, and then the sun, you see it come over behind you, and you start to see it on the hill.
SPEAKER_02: And then you see the sun line, the shadow start to come towards you, and come towards you, and come towards you, and come towards you, and then finally, by the time it hits you, you can actually at one point sit there on the side of the hill, and everything looks warm and nice, and you can still see frost right in front of you, and you're like, it's coming, it's coming, and then the sun comes and it warms everything up and the frost melts off, and then you feel it, like you feel it all the way through your bones, in your in your skin, and your in your hunting, like your your coat gets warm, and then you start to get actually kind of hot, and you're like, oh, the feeling of heat and warmth.
SPEAKER_02: And there's this this this moment of the sun and the value of it.
SPEAKER_02: But we take it for granted when it rises and sets sometimes.
SPEAKER_02: But I challenge us here today.
SPEAKER_02: Let us be more intentional with when we see the sun rise.
SPEAKER_02: What is that saying to your heart?
SPEAKER_02: What is that saying about who you are?
SPEAKER_02: What is that saying about God's love over you?
SPEAKER_02: And you feel that warmth on your skin.
SPEAKER_02: It's the warm embrace of the Father.
SPEAKER_02: We as children never feel more loved growing up than when we have love and affection from our parents, right?
SPEAKER_02: That's when you feel the most a part of the family, and you're like, I am a child in this house, like I have a place, I have a part here to play.
SPEAKER_02: I'm part of something as a family.
SPEAKER_02: When we have those moments in creation and God's design, that's when he too is showing up for us and loving us in that place.
SPEAKER_02: And we're like, oh, okay, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_02: I am a child of God.
SPEAKER_02: I am a beloved creation.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, I know what Paul says now that there's no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus, and nothing in all of his creation will ever separate me from his love because his creation was made to show me his love.
SPEAKER_02: But we forget about it and we walk through creation and we miss it time and time again, and he's always laying out like gifts for us, he's always laying it out.
SPEAKER_02: He wants to remind us of our value, our beauty, his belovedness over us, and we'll walk by it, we'll step over it, we'll miss it, we'll get distracted.
SPEAKER_02: And we miss that inner part of our hearts where he's trying to connect with us.
SPEAKER_02: David switches gears here, and we move out of the in the middle of the chapter, but from verses seven to nine, there's six points about the qualities of Christ, the qualities of God in our lives, and he brings them.
SPEAKER_02: To he brings them right to the forefront about these are foundational pivotal points.
SPEAKER_02: Bedrock, I'm talking like bedrock, this is a cement.
SPEAKER_02: You guys build houses, you put the foundation down.
SPEAKER_02: These six points from verses seven through nine, these are the foundational pieces.
SPEAKER_02: And as we go through them, I'm gonna have you highlight or circle the specific words that are the qualities of God that David is highlighting as he speaks the declaration over our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: We know God by his creation, and now we're gonna know him by his word, the very written word of God here.
SPEAKER_02: He is self-revealing in his word.
SPEAKER_02: And so in verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect.
SPEAKER_02: Converting the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure.
SPEAKER_02: Making wise is simple.
SPEAKER_02: Let's pause here.
SPEAKER_02: Next point, and I would say circle, underline if you're in your Bibles, perfect.
SPEAKER_02: 7a.
SPEAKER_02: 7B, the testimony of the Lord is sure.
SPEAKER_02: Circle highlight, sure.
SPEAKER_02: God's laws were designed perfectly for our souls and refreshment for us.
SPEAKER_02: There's something here that when we think about God, we get confused and we mix them up with our own parents.
SPEAKER_02: And so laws, restriction comes to mind, like, oh man, we're being like covered, we're like, oh, this is rough.
SPEAKER_02: No, no.
SPEAKER_02: What he's saying here is that the law of the Lord is perfectly designed for us.
SPEAKER_02: It actually refreshes our souls.
SPEAKER_02: When we follow his design for us, which we were created by his design, and then he sets up these laws, we call them laws, it feels a little bit heavy-handed, but when we live inside of those, it actually rejuvenates and refreshes our souls, the internal part of us, the part that lives on and goes forever.
SPEAKER_02: We were created as eternal creatures, but very often, very far too often do we ever actually think about eternal things.
SPEAKER_02: We're caught up in the moment with what's in front of us.
SPEAKER_02: And God's saying, No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you more of an eternal perspective.
SPEAKER_02: This is temporary.
SPEAKER_02: You're not staying here forever.
SPEAKER_02: There's a much bigger story and a much bigger picture that you will go into.
SPEAKER_02: And so his laws are perfect and convert the uh that they they are refreshing to our souls, New King James, converting the soul.
SPEAKER_02: The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise is simple.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, next point under that is God's testimony gives us wisdom.
SPEAKER_02: We can put our trust in it because of the very nature of him and who he is.
SPEAKER_02: When we read Proverbs and we look at Solomon's life and the wisdom that he gives us, this play-by-play.
SPEAKER_02: And our family, we've started this habit where in the last several years we'll go through Proverbs three or four times a year just digesting and digesting.
SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't matter to me, I will just say this.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't matter how many times I go through it, I'm still always picking up nuggets.
SPEAKER_02: I have not arrived, and I don't plan to ever arrive until I get to the other side.
SPEAKER_02: But Solomon is still speaking to me about everything in this world that we face, in the world of finance, temptation, our mouth.
SPEAKER_02: How much does he talk about what we say about our mouth and being ignorant as a fool?
SPEAKER_02: There's so much in there, and yet I still catch myself walking around and talking and sounding like a fool.
SPEAKER_02: And I've and I've read Proverbs again and again and again.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, okay, sometimes a little bit harder to get in there, I guess, for me.
SPEAKER_02: But picking this up, and it's his wisdom that takes us from being simple to a deeper understanding of his mysteries of his kingdom in the areas of wisdom.
SPEAKER_02: Number eight, the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
SPEAKER_02: Underline, highlight right.
SPEAKER_02: When we abide by God's kingdom regulations, they align our heart with his and they bring us joy.
SPEAKER_02: Think about the Ten Commandments that he gives Moses and those people.
SPEAKER_02: This is this is where David's going with this.
SPEAKER_02: They step out of bounds so many times, even in the middle of them trying to get out of the wilderness into the land of milk and honey, and they're stuck.
SPEAKER_02: He goes up to give the Ten Commandments, comes down, and sees Aaron participating with the golden calf.
SPEAKER_02: And he's like, he destroys, he destroys God's laws.
SPEAKER_02: But we know in the story that God is putting these out there.
SPEAKER_02: That when we do that, just like our soul was refreshed, now our hearts rejoice when we can stand in the statutes.
SPEAKER_02: These are time-tested, concrete statutes of the Lord, that when we can stand in that, our heart is full, our heart is pure, our heart is good.
SPEAKER_02: Then he goes on, the second part of eight the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
SPEAKER_02: God's commandments are pure light for our eyes to see situations in their true form.
SPEAKER_02: They illuminate the truth for us.
SPEAKER_02: The commandments of the Lord are doing that.
SPEAKER_02: And when I think about that, when I read this chapter, and I was kind of going over that again and again, I started to think about this time, and you guys remember in Lord of the Rings, Frodo's on his journey, he gets the light, the pure star light from the Lady of the Realm, right?
SPEAKER_02: So to bring light wherever there is no light, pure light to see when all other lights go out.
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what God is saying here to us.
SPEAKER_02: He's like, listen, when you stand in my commandments, if you can step out of the world's understanding, out of your sinful nature in that time, and you can align yourself with me, you're gonna see the field in a whole different way.
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna see the landmines of the enemy, and I'm gonna give you light for your eyes to see the path, and I'm gonna make crooked paths straight.
SPEAKER_02: And he's always making crooked paths, he's always making straight paths with crooked sticks.
SPEAKER_02: Josh gave me that one this week.
SPEAKER_02: It's good.
SPEAKER_02: I was like, dude, I like that.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna recycle that man.
SPEAKER_02: Um, and he does, that's what he does.
SPEAKER_02: We're crooked sticks, but when we align ourselves with God's truth and his commandments and his statutes, we become straight, and he straightens out our paths, and then we have light on that.
SPEAKER_02: And you've heard me say this before, but he never gives us the like tractor beam from the place that we're at right now to our personal finish line.
SPEAKER_02: When we're done with this world, when we're done with this journey, and we graduate to the final destination of our glory and eternity and righteousness, he doesn't give us that complete playbook.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, his scripture says he's only lighting my path.
SPEAKER_02: It's like this lantern, this lamp unto my feet.
SPEAKER_02: You guys have been in the woods, you could only see a few steps in front of you because he knows that we'll screw it up if we get the whole, you know, the whole tractor beam of the whole journey.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna blow it.
SPEAKER_02: It's just it's just what we do.
SPEAKER_02: Wish it was different.
SPEAKER_02: Wish we could get, I want the whole tractor beam, but I know I would blow it.
SPEAKER_02: Because I would have to at some point think that my way was better.
SPEAKER_02: And so he's always working through us.
SPEAKER_02: Chapter or verse 9, and this is where he lands the plane, and I love this.
SPEAKER_02: This is for me on the qualities of God.
SPEAKER_02: Again, we're touching on the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: The fear of the Lord is clean.
SPEAKER_02: I looked at a lot of different translations of that.
SPEAKER_02: New King James says clean, and I like that, and it endures forever.
SPEAKER_02: Fearing the Lord in us produces clean hands, a clean heart, and a clean mind.
SPEAKER_02: It will sustain us through our trials and hardships when we fear the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: And the fear of the Lord, for the way that I've come to define it in my own life, is being out of the will, abundance, mercy, and love of God by my sinful nature.
SPEAKER_02: When I choose, this is a choice I make to step out of that.
SPEAKER_02: And I step away from God's covering mercy and grace and love, and I make sinful decisions in my life.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not fearing God.
SPEAKER_02: Not that what he's gonna do to me, and that my sin has consequences.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, those are the things in their very nature and the and the design and the equity of God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: That happens anyways.
SPEAKER_02: But the fear of being far from him, the fear of, and we hear David cry out, God, I don't see you, I don't feel you, I don't know you, where are you at?
SPEAKER_02: Lord, time and time again, he's asking for God to come and come back and give him that rescue.
SPEAKER_02: When we stay in the fear of the Lord, because we desire to stay in that place where he is over us.
SPEAKER_02: We're loving, he's loving us, we're experiencing him, we are in that perfect place.
SPEAKER_02: I think that's the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: The judgments of the Lord are true, and I would also circle true and then highlight righteous all together.
SPEAKER_02: The judgments of the Lord are true.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't make wrong judgments.
SPEAKER_02: When we get up and we stand before him, and it's just me and God, it's just you and God, and he's laying the book open, everything he's gonna say about you is true.
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing false in his book as he sends and he's like, All right, let's look at the resume.
SPEAKER_02: How'd you spend your years down there?
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02: Yep, okay, got offline there, got really out of bounds there.
SPEAKER_02: But oh yeah, I see, yeah, this is where you turn to me, this is where you called on my son.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, great.
SPEAKER_02: And so his judgments are pure, they are righteous, and there's gonna be no debate, there's no argument, that's gonna be a one-sided conversation.
SPEAKER_02: We won't really get a chance to open up.
SPEAKER_02: Does the defense have a reply?
SPEAKER_02: Not really, because it's all right there, and we're just gonna get the resume of our lives, and so how are we spending those moments?
SPEAKER_02: Now we don't spend them out of fear, we should spend them out of love and fullness, because that's what he has for us.
SPEAKER_02: God's perception and discernment are true, they encompass his righteousness.
SPEAKER_02: The last point on nine.
SPEAKER_02: He goes on to say that based on these six things, seven things, if you circled the righteous and the truth, they are more desirable than gold, even the finest gold.
SPEAKER_02: They are sweeter than honey, even the dripping from the honeycomb.
SPEAKER_02: They are a warning to your servant, and a great reward for those who obey them.
SPEAKER_02: So he's out of love.
SPEAKER_02: This isn't a surprise to us because he's putting it out there.
SPEAKER_02: This shouldn't be a surprise to where when we show up, we're like, well, I didn't know that was ever, I didn't know that was the expectation of me.
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that's what you meant.
SPEAKER_02: He's laying it out in his word, and he's saying, This is who I am, and this is who I want to be in your life, and if you do this, your servant, be warned by this, but then also there's a reward by stepping into this.
SPEAKER_02: Last point on that is there's nothing more valuable nor rewarding on this earth than the knowledge and understanding of God's ways.
SPEAKER_02: As we step into the full aspect and beauty of the sonship and the adoption that we have when we accept him in, and he calls us sons and daughters, we get this reward and journey of knowing him.
SPEAKER_02: We know his great forgiveness, his great refreshment, his mercies.
SPEAKER_02: Where he wipes it all away and he calls us white as snow because his son has done the blood over us.
SPEAKER_02: And he doesn't see that in us anymore.
SPEAKER_02: He just sees us as a loving father who wants his children to get it right.
SPEAKER_02: We as parents want our kids to do it better than we did.
SPEAKER_02: We want them to not have to step in the same landmines, miss the heartache, miss the pain that this world can give us.
SPEAKER_02: And we and we desperately try to give that communication, that message in many different ways so that they will hear our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what God's saying to us.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying the same thing in the same ways like, I want you to hear my heart for you, because you don't have to experience that pain, that disappointment.
SPEAKER_02: There's a better way.
SPEAKER_02: It's in my word.
SPEAKER_02: Follow me, come to me, I'll meet with you anytime.
SPEAKER_02: We are designed to desire this knowledge.
SPEAKER_02: We were created with a void and a deep longing to fill that void in our hearts and minds and souls with a lifetime pursuit of God's heart.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what we see, David.
SPEAKER_02: God gave us David as a lifetime example for a young man to a sage who ran after God's heart and pursued his kingdom mysteries.
SPEAKER_02: He desperately just wanted to be face to face with God.
SPEAKER_02: He wanted to see his face.
SPEAKER_02: He wanted to be in that sonship and feel that delight over him.
SPEAKER_02: God is continually rewarding us along the way as we journey the adventure and pursue his heart.
SPEAKER_02: We know God's self-revelation by our own hearts.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 12.
SPEAKER_02: See, this is the thing.
SPEAKER_02: I'm talking about sin and the decisions that we make, the free choice that we have.
SPEAKER_02: David's very much aware of that.
SPEAKER_02: And he goes even one step further.
SPEAKER_02: How can I know all the sin lurking in my heart?
SPEAKER_02: Cleanse me from these hidden faults.
SPEAKER_02: This is where he invites God into his imperfection.
SPEAKER_02: And he says, Step into this place where, even in my own design, the sin that I'm going to do tomorrow, cleanse me from that.
SPEAKER_02: I desperately don't want to be apart from you.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to do anything that's going to separate me from your love, from your presence.
SPEAKER_02: Keep your servant from deliberate sins.
SPEAKER_02: Don't let them control me.
SPEAKER_02: Then I will be free of guilt and innocent of great sin.
SPEAKER_02: Such an honest plea from him.
SPEAKER_02: These two verses.
SPEAKER_02: One, he's saying, Protect me and keep me clean from things that I don't know I'm going to do.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to do them.
SPEAKER_02: That's not my heart.
SPEAKER_02: My heart is to run after you have your heart, God.
SPEAKER_02: I want to chase your heart.
SPEAKER_02: And then secondly, keep me from the things that I blatantly have issues with, where I struggle, where the enemy grabs a hold of my heart.
SPEAKER_02: And he gets invited in.
SPEAKER_02: He's inviting God into that space with him.
SPEAKER_02: Talk about the greatest bloodstained ally of your entire lives is when you give permission to God to join you there in that place and say, I want to be holy and righteous, and I need your presence in my life because I am tired of making those decisions.
SPEAKER_02: I'm tired of the addiction.
SPEAKER_02: I'm tired of trying to figure it out my way.
SPEAKER_02: I want all the things that you give me.
SPEAKER_02: My heart gets refreshed.
SPEAKER_02: My soul is renewed when I stand in those truths of you.
SPEAKER_02: And so he's acknowledged who God is, and now he's inviting God to be that in his heart and life.
SPEAKER_02: Know my heart, God.
SPEAKER_02: Know my anxious heart.
SPEAKER_02: God's gift of free will in our creation gives him so much delight in us when we invite Jesus to father us with the dark parts of our heart.
SPEAKER_02: He just wants the opportunity to step in and show you what you can overcome in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_02: Because he despised all the things that we do in this world on the cross.
SPEAKER_02: He rejected the shame of that.
SPEAKER_02: So we don't have to carry that shame.
SPEAKER_02: We can walk in complete freedom as a new creation with a new mind and a new heart that we get when that transaction happens, and Jesus can come in and be made perfect in our lives.
SPEAKER_02: And this is the exclamation point.
SPEAKER_02: O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
SPEAKER_02: He opens with a declaration of the Lord's glory and creation, and he's closing with his private declaration, and again, this acknowledgement and invitation to God to say, Let my mouth.
SPEAKER_02: And we know what Matthew says in 1234, out of the mouth speaks the abundance of the heart.
SPEAKER_02: I want my heart to be after God, so that what comes out of my mouth is a reflection of God's heart.
SPEAKER_02: James 3, who can tame our tongue?
SPEAKER_02: We hear that out of the tongue is life and death in Proverbs 18, right?
SPEAKER_02: So it's these, it's this balance, and the tongue is an evil thing.
SPEAKER_02: It can give life.
SPEAKER_02: And James even goes on to say in the next passage in James 3, he says, out of one hand, you're praising the Creator, and then out of the next part of your day, you're flipping around, you're tearing somebody down.
SPEAKER_02: That convicts me.
SPEAKER_02: Where I can be in my car and have moments of just desperation and praise and worship, and I'm connecting with the Father, and then I come in and I have a moment to meet with somebody.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe I don't give them good counsel, or I come home and I wound my kids.
SPEAKER_02: You know, maybe I'm a little sharp, or maybe I'm discrediting something and I miss their heart on something.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, wow, what?
SPEAKER_02: It's true.
SPEAKER_02: The tongue is the hardest thing to control in our bodies because it runs on our emotions, and our emotions betray us.
SPEAKER_02: Our emotions betray us.
SPEAKER_02: And so where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_02: What are you meditating on?
SPEAKER_02: What are the meditations of your mind and your heart?
SPEAKER_02: What is your heart full of?
SPEAKER_02: Because when we delight and focus on Jesus, our meditations are pure and our hearts and minds are clean.
SPEAKER_02: I want to leave us with this because Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: We were in the Old Testament largely today, but Jesus is wrapped into that.
SPEAKER_02: We see him coming through in the old and the new, and so God answers our cry for forgiveness in his greatest act of self-revelation.
SPEAKER_02: We see God revealing himself through creation, his word, and then even the design of our hearts, the cry of our hearts to connect with him because of our the way he made us.
SPEAKER_02: He just made us to do this.
SPEAKER_02: And more than creation and more than the law, Jesus is the full and final self-revelation of God.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is God Himself in the flesh.
SPEAKER_02: Colossians 1:15.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is the image of the invisible God, and in Jesus, God was pleased to have the fullness of himself dwell.
SPEAKER_02: In this fullness of God's self-revelation, he died on the cross for both our secret and our blatant sins.
SPEAKER_02: And because of that sacrifice, we who treated the gold of God's revelation as if it were worthless, and the honey of God's law as if it were tasteless, we get to receive a forgiveness we do not deserve.
SPEAKER_02: I pray right now that the Holy Spirit would open our eyes today and that we would see our God who graciously reveals himself in creation and in his law.
SPEAKER_02: May you see Jesus as the full and final self-revelation of God, who shows how loving and merciful and beautiful he is in both his death and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.