Speaker 1: Hello everyone.
Speaker 1: This is Pastor Damian.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando.
Speaker 1: At New City we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life.
Speaker 1: For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Jesus, by your Spirit's power, give us eyes to see his glory.
Speaker 1: Through Christ, we pray amen.
Speaker 1: Our scripture today is from Psalm 27, 8.
Speaker 1: Please remain standing, if you are able.
Speaker 1: You have said seek my face.
Speaker 1: My heart says to you your face, lord, do I seek.
Speaker 1: This is God's word.
Speaker 1: Thanks be to God.
Speaker 1: You may be seated.
Speaker 2: Yesterday I took my kids to Blue Jacket Park and we were walking around.
Speaker 2: There's some big open fields there and there were some people playing some sort of a sport or an activity and my five-year-old Augie looked at me and said Dad, what are they doing?
Speaker 2: And I looked and usually it's like soccer, frisbee, lacrosse, football, none of those things.
Speaker 2: I looked and I kind of did a double take and said could it be?
Speaker 2: I saw these three poles with loops at the top and realized they were playing Quidditch and I was actually pretty amazed by it.
Speaker 2: I was thinking whoa?
Speaker 2: And as soon as I realized that real humans were playing Quidditch without broomsticks or flying, the second question I had was who's the seeker and what do they do for a golden snitch Like that just seems important, right for the game.
Speaker 2: And then I thought you know, it actually would be kind of fun to be the guy who gets to fly around a drone that's like painted gold and you're going to fly it around like head level, no higher, and then just zip around and you got two seekers on either team, just like chasing a drone around the field or something like that.
Speaker 2: Right, and then I thought I wonder if that's what's been going on in New Jersey for the last month, like is are we just playing Quidditch?
Speaker 2: Is this a real thing now?
Speaker 2: Oh, you see, in in Harry Potter, in that game in particular, the seeker is actually a significant role on the Quidditch team.
Speaker 2: It it's a big deal.
Speaker 2: The one who seeks and the golden snitch is elusive, evasive, and it takes a whole total concentration of one's mind and will and energies in order to catch this prized snitch right To win the game, if you will.
Speaker 2: And you got to ask the question why is it that we like stories of seekers?
Speaker 2: Like, what is it about a story of a seeker that draws our attention?
Speaker 2: So it could be some of the stories of explorers that go out and look for uncharted territory, or stories of treasure hunters that are seeking out the things that are hidden and finding these things that are of great value and precious.
Speaker 2: It could be detective stories where they're seeking clues to try to solve the puzzle of the crime.
Speaker 2: It could also be the stories of great romance, where there's these incredible acts of love for another person to seek the object of one's affection, of love for another person to seek the object of one's affection.
Speaker 2: It could also be stories of athletes who are seeking glory and fame and pressing in as much as they can, disciplining their lives around the pursuit of a goal.
Speaker 2: All of these are stories of seekers, and they do something to us, they evoke something in us.
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 2: Well, if you've ever sought anything like really truly sought anything, marshaled all of your energies and your focus, your attention towards a goal, towards attainment of something, then you know you very rarely feel so alive as when you are a seeker, when you're seeking after something or someone.
Speaker 2: But the inverse is also true.
Speaker 2: If you've ever experienced being in a state of just kind of sleepwalking through life, going through the motions, as we say, passive and apathetic, aimless, disoriented, you know, there's few times in your life when you feel more dead or just dissipated, like your life doesn't seem to matter that much.
Speaker 2: In fact, there was a study done by Harvard that showed that three out of every five young adult, that's, an 18 to 25 year old three out of every five young adult reported feeling purposeless and meaninglessness in the last month.
Speaker 2: 58% of young adults feel purposeless and meaninglessness sometime in the last month, and this is actually correlated with anxiety and depression.
Speaker 2: And so there's something about us as human beings that need to seek.
Speaker 2: It's innate to us as humans.
Speaker 2: One philosopher says it like this human beings are like existential sharks.
Speaker 2: We have to live to move.
Speaker 2: We have to move to live.
Speaker 2: Rather, we have to be moving towards an object, towards a destination, towards an aim, towards something that's put in front of us, a purpose, a goal, something that we are oriented towards, and we have to be moving towards that in order to live truly, live truly, be fully alive.
Speaker 2: So, listen, what I want you to hear me say this morning is that you are a seeker.
Speaker 2: It's innate to your humanity to seek and, hopefully, to find, and so what I want to do is look at Psalm 27, verse 8, just this one verse this morning, and I want to talk about what it means to be a seeker.
Speaker 2: If you have a Bible or device, you can get Psalm 27, verse 8, out in front of you, because we're going to look at it very closely together.
Speaker 2: Now, one of the things I want to just kind of billboard for you is that this text is going to tell you that seeking God is the point of your existence.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate concern, it is the highest goal, it is the thing towards which a total concentration of your being towards the aim of seeking God.
Speaker 2: It's worth everything.
Speaker 2: In fact, you will never live fully alive until you've experienced what it's like to give your all in pursuit of who God is.
Speaker 2: But as soon as I say that, what I don't want you to hear me saying is some sort of hyper-spiritualized monastic detachment from the world of real life.
Speaker 2: I mean seeking God in the warp and woof of everyday life, and it's important to state Psalm 27 was written by David, who was a king.
Speaker 2: He was an ancient Near Eastern monarch.
Speaker 2: He had armies to lead, he had legal matters, disputes to adjudicate, he had policies to write, he had people to govern, he had a lot on his to-do list.
Speaker 2: He didn't have email, though, so I do think that we get a leg up in that regard.
Speaker 2: We're probably a little busier than he was, but this is why I say that David wrote this psalm, and he was a man on the move in the real world, not some abstract, distant philosopher.
Speaker 2: This is a man who had a lot of responsibility more than you, I can almost guarantee that and yet he didn't compartmentalize his faith.
Speaker 2: Seeking God wasn't something he did over here, and then he did the rest of his life over here.
Speaker 2: In fact, seeking God was the motive, the impulse, the animating reality behind all of the things he had to do, all of the tasks he had to get done.
Speaker 2: In fact all of life, you could say, was oriented towards and energized by this pursuit of God.
Speaker 2: So that's important.
Speaker 2: Just to kind of clear my throat before we get into the text, because I don't want you to hear me say seeking God is what you were made for and you think I mean become more disconnected and detached from real life.
Speaker 2: I mean orient everything you do in real life towards this one high and worthy goal of seeking God.
Speaker 2: Now let's look at the text together.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to break the actual passage into two points.
Speaker 2: The first point is the first line of Psalm 27, verse 8, which says this you have said seek my face.
Speaker 2: That's point one.
Speaker 2: You have said seek my face.
Speaker 2: Now, as we look at this text, I want to model meditation to you.
Speaker 2: The reason why is because the Bible has nothing good, no promises for you in it about reading the Bible.
Speaker 2: All the promises in the Bible about how to engage this book is through what the Bible calls meditation.
Speaker 2: It's this turning over the words, the phrases in your heart, in your mind, applying them meaningfully.
Speaker 2: So I want to model meditation for you as I draw 12 sub points out of this one verse.
Speaker 2: Okay, here we go.
Speaker 2: Point one Seeking God is a combination of desire and discipline.
Speaker 2: Desire and discipline I get that from the text saying seek my face.
Speaker 2: That's the command, that's the call Seek.
Speaker 2: What does it mean to seek?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a combination of wanting and willing, of passion and pursuit, of longing and intentionality.
Speaker 2: You need both of those together to truly seek anything.
Speaker 2: Now, this is really important because if you have low want and low will, you have what's called apathy.
Speaker 2: If you have low want and high will, you have what's called duty.
Speaker 2: If you have high want and low will, you have what's called idleness.
Speaker 2: But if you have high want and high will, you have seeking.
Speaker 2: Now, this isn't just spiritual, this is anything.
Speaker 2: If you're seeking a romantic partner, if you're seeking a promotion, if you're seeking some sort of status, you need to have high want and high will together, combined.
Speaker 2: Both of those are essential for seeking.
Speaker 2: Now, there's two kind of alternatives on offer in the world today to what I'm proposing as a biblical understanding of seeking.
Speaker 2: The first one is what you could call the postmodern approach to seeking, where the journey actually is the destination.
Speaker 2: The seeking itself is the goal.
Speaker 2: It's process over product.
Speaker 2: You're not really after anything, because there's not really any truth out there or destination out there.
Speaker 2: The questions are the answer.
Speaker 2: The pursuit itself is worth itself.
Speaker 2: Now, there's truth to this.
Speaker 2: There really is.
Speaker 2: But biblically, we take the object of our seeking very seriously.
Speaker 2: In this case, that's seeking God.
Speaker 2: And so, because we take the object seriously, there is a truth.
Speaker 2: There is the truth, there is the destination, there is the object of all of our desires, namely God himself.
Speaker 2: Then that means that discipline, intentionality will, as I'm calling it, really matter in seeking God.
Speaker 2: But there's a flip side.
Speaker 2: There's another approach to seeking, which you could just call the Eastern approach.
Speaker 2: This is popular in religions like Buddhism, for instance, which would say actually, the problem is your desire, the longing, the ache, the desire itself is what causes your pain and suffering.
Speaker 2: There's truth to this.
Speaker 2: If you've ever lived with unmet longings, there's few things more painful.
Speaker 2: And so oftentimes you deaden those desires, you shut them down, you numb them, you turn to addictions in order to get rid of them, because holding out unmet longings is really painful.
Speaker 2: And so there's enough truth to this eastern view.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing the Bible takes your desires very seriously.
Speaker 2: The Bible actually makes it clear that you were made to desire God.
Speaker 2: This is why Saint Augustine can put it like this the man who has, the man who is lost in his passions is less lost than the man who's lost his passions.
Speaker 2: Let me say that again the man who's lost his passions is less lost.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, the man who is lost in his passions is less lost than the man who has lost his passions.
Speaker 2: In other words, romantics have something to teach us about God, because they haven't lost their passions.
Speaker 2: They're lost in their passions, maybe, but they have something to say about the importance of desire.
Speaker 2: And so, contrary to the postmodern view, there really is an object worth seeking, that's God.
Speaker 2: Contrary to the Eastern view, your desires are not the problem.
Speaker 2: Your desires are actually a pointer.
Speaker 2: They direct your attention and orient you towards the object of your desire.
Speaker 2: And so biblical seeking is this combination of want and will, desire and discipline, longing and intentionality, passion and pursuit.
Speaker 2: We have to hold these things together.
Speaker 2: Now, one of the things I need to say when you hear me say seeking God.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we have this idea that to be a seeker is a not yet Christian.
Speaker 2: That's not how I'm using this term.
Speaker 2: That's not how the Bible uses this term.
Speaker 2: In fact, the Bible does talk about seeking God as a part of the process of coming to know Jesus for sure.
Speaker 2: That's Acts 17.
Speaker 2: But the idea of seeking God is there's a paradox here, because those who seek God best are those who've already found him.
Speaker 2: It's the paradox of love.
Speaker 2: Right, those of you who are married or are getting married, you know that one of the worst things you can do is seek a spouse, find a spouse and then stop seeking that spouse.
Speaker 2: Your love dies out, it grows cold.
Speaker 2: You have to seek and find and continue seeking the object of your desire, the one that you love.
Speaker 2: But there's another, maybe, illustration here, which is God has actually made you to seek.
Speaker 2: You only come alive in the process of seeking, like a bird that's hatching from an egg.
Speaker 2: If you peel the eggshell back and help it get out, it will never fly, because the process of coming out of that egg actually strengthens that bird in order to be able to have wings strong enough to fly.
Speaker 2: In a similar way, the process of seeking to never stop, never give up.
Speaker 2: Pressing into no more of who God is is actually the only way to become fully human, to get ignited completely entirely, to come fully alive.
Speaker 2: The next 11 will not be that long, I promise.
Speaker 2: Number two seeking God starts with God's gracious initiative.
Speaker 2: I get this from where the text says you have said seek my face.
Speaker 2: You hear God's going first.
Speaker 2: In Romans 2 and 3, paul marshals evidence and builds a case against all of humanity, basically arguing that every human being that's ever lived stands guilty before God.
Speaker 2: And one of his most devastating critiques of humanity is this phrase there is none who seek God.
Speaker 2: No one seeks God.
Speaker 2: That's the way that Paul says it, and so what that means is is that, left to your own devices, on your own, you will never seek God.
Speaker 2: God must go first.
Speaker 2: God is always previous.
Speaker 2: If you're seeking God now, it's because he sought you first.
Speaker 2: Cs Lewis said it like this man's search for God is a silly idea.
Speaker 2: That's like saying the mouse's search for the cat.
Speaker 2: God's after you.
Speaker 2: He goes first, he initiates.
Speaker 2: It's his grace that moves towards you and says seek my face, which gets to the third point, which is seeking God, is rooted in God's revelation.
Speaker 2: When we say revelation.
Speaker 2: All that means is God disclosing himself, letting you in on who he is making himself known to you.
Speaker 2: I get this idea from this fact that the psalmist says you have said past tense spoken.
Speaker 2: God said seek my face.
Speaker 2: Where does he say this?
Speaker 2: Where in the bible is David referring to?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 2: You could say that you could say there's specific texts, maybe, but I'm going to argue that god is everywhere, always, all the time, beckoning, summoning, calling to humanity, saying seek my face.
Speaker 2: Psalm 19 says that creation, that the heavens are declaring the glory of god.
Speaker 2: Romans 2 says that your conscience bears witness that there is a God.
Speaker 2: Romans 1 says that you're shoving that down often if you don't know him.
Speaker 2: So not only creation, not only conscience providence.
Speaker 2: Acts 17 says that God determined the times and the boundaries of where you live, right here and now.
Speaker 2: You don't live here on accident.
Speaker 2: God's determined these boundaries and these times for you.
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 2: That you might seek him and find him?
Speaker 2: Because he's not that far from any one of us.
Speaker 2: That's what Paul argues in Acts 17.
Speaker 2: So not only creation or conscience providence.
Speaker 2: And then, finally, scripture.
Speaker 2: God clearly says in scripture seek my face.
Speaker 2: Listen to how he says it in Deuteronomy 4, verse 29.
Speaker 2: You will seek the Lord, your God, and you will find him if you seek after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Speaker 2: Listen to Hebrews 11, 6.
Speaker 2: Without faith, it is impossible to please God.
Speaker 2: For whoever would draw near to God must believe.
Speaker 2: Here's the two things you have to believe.
Speaker 2: Would draw near to God must believe here's the two things you have to believe to draw near to God that he exists and that he is the rewarder of those who seek him.
Speaker 2: And so God is beckoning, summoning, calling out to us all the time, saying seek my face.
Speaker 2: But some of us reject, resist, push that aside, so we don't.
Speaker 2: We choose to seek after other things instead of God, which gets us to the fourth point, which is seeking God is relational.
Speaker 2: It's relational.
Speaker 2: God says seek my face.
Speaker 2: Throughout the storyline of scripture, a person's face is their relational gate.
Speaker 2: It's how you get to know them.
Speaker 2: Neuropsychology has shown that this is true as well.
Speaker 2: For instance, human beings.
Speaker 2: Of all primates, we're the only primates that have the whites around our eyes.
Speaker 2: So people have reflected on this.
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 2: Well, because seeing someone's face is so essential to knowing that person.
Speaker 2: You read someone's face based on the direction of their eyes.
Speaker 2: The face is the relational gate.
Speaker 2: Human beings, unlike any other creature on planet earth, we are face-to-face creatures Even so, much so that a newborn has the eyesight that can see about 8 to 12 inches, which is the distance from her mother's breast to her mother's eyes, so that, as a newborn is feeding, can look up and make eye contact with their mother right out of the womb.
Speaker 2: In fact, there's these endogenous opiates that's the language endogenous opiates that are dumped into both the mother and the baby's brain when they make eye contact in that moment.
Speaker 2: Two of the opiates are oxytocin, which is called a bonding hormone.
Speaker 2: It's the cuddle hormone.
Speaker 2: It makes you feel good when you're with people that you know and love.
Speaker 2: The other one is dopamine, which is the internal hormone that kicks into this idea of reward.
Speaker 2: Remember what Hebrews 11 said you got to believe that God exists and that he's the rewarder of those who seek him.
Speaker 2: He's hardwired your neurochemistry to respond to a face.
Speaker 2: Kurt Thompson said it like this every one of us comes into this world looking for someone, looking for us, and we never stop that search.
Speaker 2: You're on that search right now, hardwired into your neurochemistry, looking for someone, looking for you and God says seek my face.
Speaker 2: This is fundamentally relational.
Speaker 2: Fifth seeking God is a universal call.
Speaker 2: It's hard to see this in the text, but when it says seek my face, that word seek is plural.
Speaker 2: It would be better translated this way you all seek my face.
Speaker 2: It's a general call.
Speaker 2: God is not exclusive, hiding his face from people.
Speaker 2: He's saying everyone, everywhere, get in on this, it's available.
Speaker 2: Which brings us to our second point, point two my heart says to you your face, lord, lord, do I seek?
Speaker 2: So if God's call is general to everyone, everywhere, why doesn't everybody respond?
Speaker 2: Well, because your response to God's call has to be personal and individual.
Speaker 2: It has to be true to you.
Speaker 2: Notice, the psalmist says my heart says to you your face, will I seek?
Speaker 2: So the general plural call is responded to in the second line with an individual, singular response.
Speaker 2: So you all are hearing God call you this very moment to seek his face.
Speaker 2: Some of you will respond from the heart, others of you won't.
Speaker 2: Responsiveness is evidence of being alive Like.
Speaker 2: It's not good if you're in a hospital and you hear any doctor say the patient is not responsive.
Speaker 2: That's evidence of death.
Speaker 2: Emotional or relational life is built on what would be called attunement, which is a responsiveness to one another.
Speaker 2: They put a bunch of kids in front of TV screens with a video of their mom talking to the child.
Speaker 2: But because it was a video, these young children looked at it and they got confused real quick because they were thinking, wait, my mom's not actually responsive to me.
Speaker 2: This is just a recording.
Speaker 2: You see, responsiveness is core to relational life, to biological life and to spiritual life.
Speaker 2: If God says seek my face and your heart responds your face, lord, do I seek, it's because he's made you alive to God.
Speaker 2: But if, even this morning, you hear God say seek my face and there's a non-responsiveness, it's because you're dead.
Speaker 2: You're spiritually dead to God.
Speaker 2: So what makes the difference?
Speaker 2: If seeking is, as I said, a combination of want and will, or discipline and desire, if that's the case, does that just mean that some people have more want, like you got to want it, bro?
Speaker 2: Is it that some people's desires are just better than other people's desires?
Speaker 2: Is it that some people just have the willpower to seek God and that's why they find him?
Speaker 2: That's why they respond?
Speaker 2: Some people believe that, not me.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's true.
Speaker 2: I think that steals glory from God.
Speaker 2: I think actually, what happens is what our catechism calls effectual calling.
Speaker 2: This is what it says in Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 31, which some of you were reading this morning devotionally, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: It says this effectual calling is the work of God's spirit whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ and renewing our wills.
Speaker 2: Is that you this morning?
Speaker 2: If so, god has worked a miracle in your life on par with creation itself.
Speaker 2: That's what 2 Corinthians 4 says.
Speaker 2: God saying let light shine out of the darkness is what happened in creation and the miracle of new creation in your life.
Speaker 2: Because you desire God, you seek God is because God let that light shine into your hearts, letting you see and desire the face of God in Jesus Christ to your hearts, letting you see and desire the face of God in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: You see, because we have to have an individual, personal response to God's general call to us.
Speaker 2: Number seven seeking God is from the inside out.
Speaker 2: Notice what the psalmist says my heart says to you, not my lips.
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 2: Well, because in the Bible, heart proximity is of the highest priority.
Speaker 2: This is the way Jesus says it.
Speaker 2: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
Speaker 2: That's a lack of heart, proximity, god.
Speaker 2: It matters that this is not mere externalism of seeking God, going through the motions.
Speaker 2: It has to be something that comes from the inside out, from the heart, as we say Eighth.
Speaker 2: Seeking God is personal.
Speaker 2: You're relating to a person.
Speaker 2: Now this is similar to relational.
Speaker 2: But notice, the response is it's this personal response of you've said seek my face.
Speaker 2: My heart says to you your face, all caps L-O-R-D, is God's personal name.
Speaker 2: Your face, yahweh, do I seek.
Speaker 2: God has made known his name to his people and they take up that name in their response to him.
Speaker 2: Because seeking God is not an I-it relationship, it's an I-thou, an I-you relationship, it relationship, it's an I thou, an I you relationship.
Speaker 2: You're not studying an object, you're getting to know a person when you're seeking God.
Speaker 2: That's core.
Speaker 2: That's essential, because some people can build up a mass theological knowledge about God, but they don't actually know God and it does them no good.
Speaker 2: In fact it might do damage.
Speaker 2: You see, seeking God is a personal endeavor.
Speaker 2: We're seeking a person.
Speaker 2: We're seeking someone who has thoughts, desires, a will, enjoyments, loves, hates, actions.
Speaker 2: God is personal and all of the Christian life is wanting to think God's thoughts after him, feel God's feelings after him, love what he loves, hate what he hates.
Speaker 2: That's what it means to seek God, to become more like God in that pursuit of him.
Speaker 2: Ninth seeking God is through dialogue.
Speaker 2: It's through dialogue.
Speaker 2: This might be the most practical kind of what do I do?
Speaker 2: Notice the text?
Speaker 2: It says this you have said my heart says to you Do you see the dialogue here?
Speaker 2: Do you see the back and forth, the conversation?
Speaker 2: God says seek my face.
Speaker 2: Our hearts reply in conversation and say your face, lord, do I seek.
Speaker 2: If you want to know God, you have to converse with God.
Speaker 2: You have to have constant interchange back and forth with God.
Speaker 2: This is how you come to know any person, right?
Speaker 2: I used to do this thing when I was in student ministry, where I would put a student on a stool right here and a stapler on a stool right here and I would say how do I get to know this stapler?
Speaker 2: And somebody inevitably would say you gotta take it apart.
Speaker 2: And I'd say great, let's do that, take it apart.
Speaker 2: Now we get to know the stapler a little bit better.
Speaker 2: Then I'd turn over here and I'd go how do we get to know this student.
Speaker 2: Can I take him apart?
Speaker 2: You can't, why?
Speaker 2: Because a person, unlike an object, can only be known through self-disclosure.
Speaker 2: You could take that person apart and you'd learn a lot about the human anatomy and you'd lose everything there is to know about that person.
Speaker 2: Because they're personal, they have to disclose themselves.
Speaker 2: How do they do that?
Speaker 2: Through dialogue.
Speaker 2: The only way to get to know the student would be to ask questions, to draw them out, to reply.
Speaker 2: This is how we get to know God.
Speaker 2: This is how we seek God.
Speaker 2: God says seek my face.
Speaker 2: Our hearts reply your face, lord, do we seek.
Speaker 2: This constant conversation with God will eventually make it so that your heart habitually returns to God, like a needle on a compass, habitually turns north.
Speaker 2: That's the goal of seeking God.
Speaker 2: Number 10.
Speaker 2: Seeking God is never ending.
Speaker 2: It's never ending.
Speaker 2: I get this from, if you have various translations, the NIV, the NLT, all these other translations they translate the end of this verse differently.
Speaker 2: So it says this my heart says to you your face, lord, do I seek?
Speaker 2: I am seeking or I will seek.
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 2: What's going on there?
Speaker 2: Well, in Hebrew, this verb of seeking God, it's in the imperfect tense, which means it's an incomplete action that's the only thing you got to hear in that it never ends.
Speaker 2: Seeking God never ends.
Speaker 2: It's an incomplete action.
Speaker 2: That's why you could say your face, lord, do I seek, will I seek, am I seeking?
Speaker 2: There's ongoing, never-ending pursuit of God.
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 2: Well, because you are a finite creature trying to know an infinite being.
Speaker 2: You will never plumb the depths of God.
Speaker 2: In both Ephesians 3 and Colossians 1, there's a phrase that Paul uses that haunts me in the most delightful way.
Speaker 2: This is the phrase the fullness of God.
Speaker 2: Like my life is oriented towards reaching for more of that fullness of God.
Speaker 2: I don't have enough.
Speaker 2: Do you?
Speaker 2: Are you fully satisfied with all that you have of the God you're seeking?
Speaker 2: Have you arrived?
Speaker 2: In fact, one theologian named Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century is known for this concept, called epiktasis.
Speaker 2: Epiktasis, it's a Greek word, and the Greek word basically means that, even in eternity, even in heaven, even in glory, you will never fully comprehend all that there is to God.
Speaker 2: How could that be?
Speaker 2: You'll still be a finite creature, you'll be immortal, of course, but how could a finite creature ever contain all that there is in the fullness of an infinite God?
Speaker 2: Why does that matter?
Speaker 2: Well, because God is both satisfying and desirous at the same time.
Speaker 2: You're both full and satisfied and hungry for more of him at the same time, and there's a delight in that, there's actually an enjoyment in that, and that will be your experience for an eternity if you belong to Jesus.
Speaker 2: Always stretching, straining, growing in your capacity to know, to receive more of the fullness of God, seeking God is it's never ending.
Speaker 2: So what do you do this morning?
Speaker 2: If you hear me talking about this and you're just like I just don't desire this, I don't want it, I might not say that out loud.
Speaker 2: Or you might say you know what?
Speaker 2: I think I want this, but I just don't have the discipline, I don't have the intentionality.
Speaker 2: I haphazardly just kind of walk through life, letting things happen to me.
Speaker 2: What do you do?
Speaker 2: Well, let me tell you a story.
Speaker 2: It's a story called the King and the Poor Maiden by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.
Speaker 2: He tells the story about a great king.
Speaker 2: This king had all the power you could imagine.
Speaker 2: This king could control armies.
Speaker 2: Statesmen bowed before this king because of his almighty power as a king.
Speaker 2: And as he was cruising through his kingdom, one day he saw a beautiful poor maiden, a poor young woman, and he fell in love with her.
Speaker 2: And so he went to his castle and he started thinking what will it take for me to have her love me which is a good question?
Speaker 2: He thought for a moment.
Speaker 2: I could command her.
Speaker 2: I could roll up with my army and chariots on horses, with the banners waving.
Speaker 2: I could roll up to her house and I could say you come, you're my queen, live with me.
Speaker 2: But love can't be forced.
Speaker 2: Option two is I could go to her and I could say listen, I'm the king, I've got it all, I'm bankrolled.
Speaker 2: Come live with me.
Speaker 2: I will elevate your status and the status of your whole family.
Speaker 2: You'll be the queen, you'll sit at my right hand, you'll be crowned with a beautiful crown, robes, you can have everything you've ever desired.
Speaker 2: But while love can't be forced, how will he ever know if she loves him or his gifts?
Speaker 2: Will he ever know if she loves him or his gifts?
Speaker 2: Does she love me for me or does she love me for the status I just gave her and her family?
Speaker 2: So option one, option two, won't work.
Speaker 2: Option three, the king decided, was the only way forward.
Speaker 2: It was to lay down his status, his rights.
Speaker 2: It was to lay down his status, his rights, his rule and reign, and to come to this woman as an equal.
Speaker 2: To come to this woman and say, dressed in the cloak of a beggar, and to woo and to win her affections not as a disguise truly laying down his rights to the kingdom so that he could have the one that he loves.
Speaker 2: You see, this is the story of the incarnation.
Speaker 2: This is what Christmas is all about.
Speaker 2: The king, in his glory, left his throne on high and from heaven he came to seek the one whom his soul desires.
Speaker 2: Jesus is the king of all kings and yet he is reduced, infinity, dwindled to infancy in a manger, becoming like us, laying aside the status, the rights, all that is truly his, in order to pursue us, to seek us.
Speaker 2: Jesus told us his mission statement In Luke 19.10.
Speaker 2: He says the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.
Speaker 2: That's why he came To seek us, that we might actually want to seek him.
Speaker 2: In return, there's a saying about Helen of Troy, and the saying is that Helen of Troy's face launched a thousand ships.
Speaker 2: Listen, your face launched the son of God from heaven to earth so that you, being sought and found by him might seek him for an eternity, so that his face would launch you into a lifelong pursuit of seeking his face, which is point 11.
Speaker 2: Seeking God is the desire to behold God's face.
Speaker 2: You notice this in both lines.
Speaker 2: You have said seek my face.
Speaker 2: My heart says to you your face, lord, do I seek.
Speaker 2: But there's a theme and I wish I had time to unpack this throughout scripture which is no one can see the face of God and live until that face got skin on it in the man, jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: And so my 12th point seeking God is really seeking the face of Jesus.
Speaker 2: It's Christ-centered.
Speaker 2: When we're seeking God, we're seeking God in Christ.
Speaker 2: Now listen, kenny already talked about seek first.
Speaker 2: In two days from now, from 8 to midnight, we're going to be seeking God, and the theme for that night, all four hours, are themed around the throne of God, and we're going to seek God as he is exalted right here, right now, on the throne.
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 2: Revelation 4 says that there are angels around the throne of God right now who have eyes.
Speaker 2: They're all seeing Eyes all around.
Speaker 2: They're all seeing eyes all around.
Speaker 2: And it says that they never cease to say holy, holy, holy is the Lord, god Almighty.
Speaker 2: They're staring at Jesus, the King, in His beauty, and they cannot help but say ongoingly, for thousands of years, they have still not gotten bored of saying holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, who was and is and is to come.
Speaker 2: They can't get enough.
Speaker 2: The angels, for thousands of years, have not ceased to say that and they have not exhausted the excellencies of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: This is the aim of your existence.
Speaker 2: You were made for this to behold the face of Jesus in his glory.
Speaker 2: Theologians will say one of the reasons why you need a new resurrected body is because you would get wrecked by the pure beauty of Jesus' face if you saw it in your mortal body right now.
Speaker 2: Can you comprehend that?
Speaker 2: Can you imagine that?
Speaker 2: So the reason why I want to call us to seek the face of Jesus is because it's so much better than all the other amusements we give ourselves to.
Speaker 2: Thomas Watson said it like this If there be enough in Christ to satisfy the angels, then surely there is enough to satisfy us.
Speaker 2: Fresh joys spring continually from his face.
Speaker 2: He is as much to be desired after millions of years as at the first moment.
Speaker 2: God is a delicious good.
Speaker 2: His words, not mine, if a Puritan didn't say that, I wouldn't have said it.
Speaker 2: God is a delicious good, you see.
Speaker 2: Beholding the face of Jesus, though, is a goal that only a lover would want.
Speaker 2: If you don't love him, you don't want to see him.
Speaker 2: If you don't love him, you don't seek him with all of your total concentration of your mind and will and emotions, all of your total concentration of your mind and will and emotions.
Speaker 2: And yet, if you love him, you can understand how seeing his face in his infinite loveliness, will draw you, woo, you win you over to him in everything, in every part of your life, because the lover, seeing the face of their beloved, is the highest reward.
Speaker 2: You have said seek my face.
Speaker 2: Our hearts, lord, say to you right now, in this moment your face, lord, do we seek.
Speaker 2: Let's pray, spirit of God, you have to awaken this in us.
Speaker 2: Left to our own devices, we are dead.
Speaker 2: We're far too easily pleased with lesser pursuits, lesser objects.
Speaker 2: Would you set our hearts free?
Speaker 2: You have said seek my face.
Speaker 2: You've said it for years, millennia.
Speaker 2: You're saying it for years, millennia.
Speaker 2: You're saying it again, fresh new, right here this morning.
Speaker 2: Would the hearts in this room respond your face, lord, will I seek.
Speaker 2: It's in your name.
Speaker 2: We pray Jesus Amen.