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[0:00] I'm very excited to be with you guys here today. If you've been around the last month, you'll know things have been a little different with our sermons. Our church is very, very committed to preaching through the Bible.

[0:14] So usually, if you've been around for a while, you know it's through verse by verse, chapter by chapter, through the word. But we've had this really great time where Brent's done a fantastic job looking at the songs we've been singing at Christmas, giving us a little more background to the context they come from, helping us understand the archaic language, like, what's an archaic word?

[0:38] Buttresses, I don't know. Stuff like that, you know, yuletide, I don't know. But he's done a great job with that. And I think what I've been encouraged the most with, I don't know about you all, but how the gospel is central to Christmas.

[0:52] I think our church is really focused on that, how Jesus is eventual, not just being a baby, but being our savior has been really great. So Brent's done a great job on that. And we're about to jump into our study of the gospel of John.

[1:06] We're about halfway through. And then next week and following, we're gonna start back up that. And I believe we'll go through to the end of the book of John. This morning, we're gonna do, we're gonna keep with the theme of doing something a little bit different.

[1:19] So today's sermon is going to be on a subject more rather than on a passage. And the question we're going to ask today together is, how do we know God? We're doing a, this is a sermon based on our statement of faith.

[1:35] So we do this periodically, if you've been around for a while. Rick has been leading us through different aspects of how we're saved, different ways God's redemption, his justifying us, his saving us.

[1:46] Pastor Brent's done a great job talking through a lot of subjects, but also primarily what is the church, what is communion, what is baptism. And so I have the great honor and frighteningly reverent honor of asking the question, who is God?

[2:06] So I lucked out and also was kind of thrown under the bus because how do you answer that kind of question? Where do you even start? Where do you even begin to answer who God is?

[2:18] Because he's everything. He is massive, expansive, beyond our understanding. The whole of the Bible is about him. And so we're just going to start today. And a lot of really smart thinkers when they write a full book, you know, or a series of volumes on who God is, they start at a place you might not think makes sense.

[2:39] You know, you think you maybe start with God's creativeness, his love, his holiness, his righteousness. But a lot of smart thinkers start with this question because you and I, we gotta, before we get on the path, we gotta find where it is, right?

[2:53] And so we have to have a really good understanding of how do we human beings, finite physical creatures, come to know a transcendent being, someone who's beyond and outside of creation.

[3:07] And when we ask this question, it may come to mind, people think differently, right? So if you're kind of a concrete thinker, you're probably gonna be like, how do I know God? Well, my dad told me about him or my Sunday school teacher told me about him.

[3:20] You might think of like how you came to know about God, which is a really great story to tell and something we should remember and praise the Lord for introducing him to us. But today, we're gonna ask this question and think through a little more abstractly, practically, but in an abstract sense, how do we little people on this world filled with billions of us come to know God?

[3:43] And before we look into that, let's pray because we're not just talking about a subject. We wanna know God personally, himself.

[3:54] And so let's ask him to help us today. God, we recognize that we have no power to know you, God, without your strengthening us, Lord.

[4:04] We know that all we have has been given to us by you and we are so grateful that you love to know us, that you desire to know us and engage us and to save us and to tell us of that salvation, Lord.

[4:16] We are so grateful. I pray today that you would help us to know you better through our conversations with each other, through the word we're going to look at today, Lord. Please reveal yourself, build our faith, build our knowledge in you, Lord, because you are our hope, you are our salvation, God.

[4:33] In your name, amen. You can open your Bibles to Psalm 19 or scroll down, navigate to Psalm 19. We're going to look at three ways that we'd come to know God, all right?

[4:50] So this is a massive topic. This is gonna be very overview. We're gonna, if you go, it's like, how we know God is like the Pacific Ocean and we're just going to like dip a little finger into the Pacific Ocean.

[5:02] We're not gonna get into everything, but we're gonna look at three specific ways that we come to know God. And the first way, there's many other ones.

[5:13] God communicates vastly and expansively, but the first way that I think helps us orient how we think about this is creation. We come to know God through his creation. He's left clues and indicators in for the very fact that everything that exists was created by him.

[5:30] So let's look at Psalm 19. We're gonna read verses one through four right now. It says, The heavens declare the glory of God.

[5:44] The sky above proclaim his handiwork. Day to day, it pours out speech. It communicates. And night to night, it reveals knowledge. There's no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard.

[5:59] Meaning the creation communicates everywhere. It's all throughout the world. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. Now there's a lot going on here, but the creation we're gonna see shows us, teaches us two things about God.

[6:16] And this Psalm right here puts it right at the front. Creation teaches us that God is glorious. God is glorious. And the subject matter the psalmist chooses to use is the stars.

[6:30] And I hope everyone has had a moment where you've been able to get away from the light pollution, out of the city, turn off your lights, and look up.

[6:40] And even on a good night, you can still see these massive stars. But in a dark night, in a dark place, you can just see expanse and beauty and further and further out there.

[6:52] And whether you are a believer or not, I feel like there is no way not to think glory. Not to think, wow. Right? Wow.

[7:02] Whether you're a little kid, whether you're like, you're going through your days, you're an adult, and then suddenly you see the stars and you're like, holy cow, this is really truly. And I think the more that we learn about the stars, it just gets better.

[7:12] Right? That it's these massive gas factories burning, hurling together in organized chaos, expansive galaxies breaking down and reforming and bringing light, light years away.

[7:26] It's just massive and big and expansive. And the specific body in the sky that the psalmist focus is on is the sun. If you look at verse five, it says, and then he sent a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

[7:48] Its rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them. And there is nothing hidden from its heat. He's talking about how glorious the Lord is and he just takes one aspect of it and just says like, let's think for a second about the sun and how massive and powerful that is.

[8:07] How it creates everything we can see right now, we couldn't see without the sun. It creates the context for our entire existence. It gives us heat. It gives us, I'm not a scientist. Rick will do a detailed breakdown of the physical mechanics of the sun, but I know it's hot and I know it makes us happy when it's warm, but I also know that it's this thing that radiates and expands out its power and glory and it's big and it's massive above us.

[8:35] And what the psalmist is telling us right now is when we look at something like that and we say, wow, wow, we say, this is incredible. That's telling us that glorying right there is the glory of God.

[8:48] It's the glory of God. And I want to encourage everyone here who's a believer that this is a healthy habit to build, right? We're talking about how do we come to know God. That's not just how do you first immediately come to know God.

[9:02] This is how you come to know him more. It is healthy and a marker of like growth and maturity in your faith to appreciate creation more and more.

[9:14] And it's good news. And it's not just massive thoughts. It could be the sun. It could be molecular structure of concrete. I'm going to pick on Rick a lot. I'm sure you're like nerding out and you're like, this is glorious.

[9:27] But I don't understand it. It could be big thoughts. It could be small thoughts, right? Like I saw a tree yesterday and it had rained all day, right? It rained on Christmas. I don't remember. But there was a tree and it was overcast and the tree just had tiny droplets of water all through it and the light hit it and reflected and it was like it was lit up like a Christmas tree.

[9:47] I'm just like, wow. It could be that. It could be a blade of grass that God has created this life-making machine that has rolled on for decades, centuries, millennia, growing and dying and rebirth to bring about this one little blade of grass right here.

[10:08] Wow. God is glorious. Right? So now whether you're a believer or not a believer, I'm pretty sure anyone in the world is going to look at creation, unless they're just too busy looking at their phone.

[10:20] When they look at creation, they're going to say, wow. Is that enough though? So the heavens declare the glory of the Lord, but we know as believers that not everyone sees that glory and says God, that that's the glory of God.

[10:35] And I'm really quickly going to reference Hebrews 11 verse one just to kind of give us some context on there. I'll pull it up here.

[10:49] Should have it on the screen for you. Hebrews 11 one. Sorry, I'm not a professional.

[11:06] Not yet. It says, Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it, the people of old receive their commendation.

[11:18] By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word of God. So that is what is seen was not made of things that are visible. And I think that cuts through so clearly.

[11:32] You know, so we understand the nation speaks glory. Regardless, no one can avoid that. But then the question is, whose glory are you going to ascribe that to? And scripture tells us it is only by the spirit and by faith that we understand this is the glory of God.

[11:49] Now I want to take a small sidebar before we come forward because this is a topic in our conversations, right? This is a very prevalent topic, the relationship between like science and religion.

[12:03] This comes up a lot. Science and creation, how we understand the world. That's like, if we're talking, hopefully, I don't know. We don't talk shop religion and philosophy a lot with people, but when we are interacting with unbelievers, that's probably the kind of stuff we'll come up with.

[12:20] And I'm just going to touch on this very briefly and hopefully give you a tool for how to think through it that will not only help you evangelize, it will do that, which is awesome, but also help you grasp the knowledge of God through creation.

[12:35] God is, he is immaterial. We live in this physical world. God is, I can't think of the word. I said it earlier.

[12:48] He's a spirit. Absolutely. God is not something that you can tangibly, he's intangible. Maybe that's what it was. God's intangible. So the question is, how do we come as human beings and like interface with this intangible being, this transcendent being, this spirit?

[13:06] And a lot of people say, science can't do that. So God doesn't exist. Science, professor, don't correct me. It has to deal with things that are observable, measurable, testable, and repeatable.

[13:25] That's the scientific method. So a lot of people say, you can't observe, measure, test, repeat, God. And so he doesn't exist. A lot of other smart people who are also non-believers, even, who are more intellectually honest, will say, that doesn't mean there's no God.

[13:42] That means science is the wrong tool to come to know this God. Science is not something that you can apply to something that is outside of nature.

[13:53] Because science, by very definition, and this is, I love it, I love it when you can get to this kind of conversation. We'll get back to the word, but I like this. By this definition, science is not made to answer questions of beyond creation, of the immaterial, of the spiritual.

[14:10] And so if you are a non-believer in this room, I hope I connected with you on the glory of creation. And I hope I can challenge you to believe that it is the glory of God.

[14:21] It's the glory of the creator. And we know it is by faith that we come to understand this very truth. Creation reveals to us the glory of God.

[14:34] It also teaches us one other thing about God. It teaches us that we are to glorify him. We're going to look at Romans 1 right now. Now, the letter of Romans, we're gonna look at two passages in it.

[14:52] And I wanna just give you a quick context. Paul, this is his most thorough explanation of God, humanity, sin, and salvation. It's very thorough.

[15:04] It's very detailed. And so right now what he's doing is he's building an argument that everyone needs forgiveness. All right, and so in chapter one, verse 18, he says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

[15:25] For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

[15:42] So they are without excuse. So he says, all creation pours forth this speech. And he really ties back to that Genesis 19 passage where he says, you see his divine nature, his eternal power that he's able to create this system that goes on.

[15:57] And he says, this is clear to everyone, but they are condemned because what this is supposed to lead us to is to glorify the Lord. It's supposed to say, we are a part of that creation that's supposed to pour forth our speech and praise the Lord God.

[16:13] And he says, they suppress the truth. Now my Greek professor, I went to Bible College, Moody Bible Institute, and he was talking through this passage and he said, picture in your mind, close your eyes. You're in a pool, it's summertime, it's really hot and you're playing, you got a big beach ball, right?

[16:30] Beach ball floats on the water, right? And he said, if you try, you like push it down and you're holding it down and it wants to pop up. It wants to fly up out of the water and sometimes that's your game, but you're holding it down and he says, that's suppressing.

[16:44] And that's what this world is doing is creation is beautiful. Humanity is beautiful. Not just the physical things, but how we interact with friends, everything we enjoy, we love and delight in is created by God.

[16:59] And people say, that glory is not for God. They suppress that truth. And going on, he says, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

[17:16] Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

[17:28] And if that doesn't describe our society now, society hasn't abandoned religion. They've just exchanged transcendent religion for various forms of humanism.

[17:40] Right now, evolutionary humanism is gospel. Tolerance is our leading principle. And it's because he suppressed the truth and become futile in their thinking because there's no realm to bring this glory to God.

[17:58] There's no avenue for that. When you are engaging with your unbelieving friends, this is evangelistic tools. Engage with them on what they love, on what they delight on.

[18:10] If it's Marvel movies, God designed us to enjoy stories and CGI. If it's walks, you know, out in nature, if it's songs, if it's music, all these things we love, grow as a Christian by growing in your capacity to bring glory to Christ and then grow in evangelism by building your capacity to call out these things for other people and say, I love that you love that and let me tell you the one who gave it to you.

[18:38] Creation teaches us two things about God, teaches us he is glorious and that we are to glorify him. But that is not everything. That is not everything.

[18:50] You could get to various other religions just with that information. If you don't have faith, if you don't have the spirit, that may turn into Islam, that may turn into non-Messianic Judaism.

[19:02] So we need more. So let's continue to look. We're gonna look at another way in which we come to know God. And this way is through the way of the law. We come to know God through the law and the law is going to teach us two things as well.

[19:22] And you can just turn one page over to Romans 2. We're going to look at a passage here. Now when I talk about law, again, the law is the Atlantic Ocean maybe.

[19:33] There's a lot of different things you could talk about. It's a big word in scripture that's used to refer to. It could be specifically the Ten Commandments. It could be the first five books of the Bible, the whole Bible.

[19:44] So what we're going to talk very specifically here is how our consciences teach us about God. So by law, I'm talking about our moral internal compass.

[19:55] And I'm going to let Paul speak here. I thought of how to intro this verse, but am I going to do better than Paul? No.

[20:06] No one's going to do better than Paul. We're looking at Romans 2 verse 12. And he says, for all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law.

[20:18] So there he's talking about non-Jews. So Jews have the law and he says, if you don't have the law and you sin, you're condemned. Still. Then he goes on. He says, all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

[20:30] So then if you're Jewish, if you have the law, you've broken the law and you're condemned. He says, for it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be made righteous.

[20:44] And he says, here's key. This is a key verse for understanding God, the world, and society. He says in verse 14, for when Gentiles who do not have the Old Testament law by nature, do the things the law requires, they uphold truth, honesty, justice, all these things.

[21:07] When they do the things the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they don't have the Old Testament law. They show that the works of the law is written on their hearts.

[21:19] while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or excuse them. They feel morally, I did well, I did poorly, I feel guilt, I feel good.

[21:32] Excuse or excuse them. On that day when according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. Jesus. So what he's saying here is that every human being has been created by God and has the law of the Lord written on their hearts.

[21:49] Now we're gonna have some fun, okay? Everybody shake it out. We're gonna have some fun here. This is the only fun part of the sermon. Um, you're at Walmart or Target? Wow, I like Walmart.

[22:04] No one likes Walmart? All right. So you're probably at, Betsy's with me and we'll go to Walmart. There's some good deals there. But you gotta, yeah, anyways, I'm not gonna talk about Walmart for too long. Um, you're at Target, you do your shopping, go around the long loop, hopefully you don't wait too long, you go through the self-scan because you don't have time to like talk to a human being.

[22:24] You look at yourself on that weird camera. You go out and you put all your groceries in, close your trunk and you come over and you have this cart. And what do you do?

[22:37] What do you, what do you do? Put it away? What'd you say, Sparkle? Leave it by the car? I give Sparkle.

[22:49] So Brent, Brent comes and sees that Sparkle left a cart and takes it in. Do you return it to the corral or is that for shopping? Well, I take it all the way in. Take it to go shop. Yeah, yeah, but what if you were done and you just noticed there's, oh, you take it, you don't even wait for the cart grabbers to get it.

[23:05] You go, wow. Wow. So we have tiers, levels. All right. You could, you could return the cart, you could not return the cart, you could leave the cart there.

[23:26] What if you parked really far away? It's Christmas, I had to park in the Boardman parking lot, like in the middle where no one parks because there's no cart corrals and sorry, buggies. I call them carts. There's no, you call them buggies?

[23:38] Walmart calls them buggies. That's what it is. They call them buggies at Walmart. Anyways, there's all these different things you could do and we're going to take it one level deeper.

[23:51] Say you see someone leave their cart. What are you thinking about that person? I'm sorry, Sparkle. I appreciate that you brought it out there. You're going to, this is going to be some, some hard correction.

[24:03] Some people will back you up though. Some people are like, whatever, you know, it's fine. Someone will grab it. Bren will come and take it inside. Exactly. Or, if you, or if you see someone returning a cart to the cart corral, what do you think?

[24:18] You're like, all right. And my point is this. My point is not about carts. My point is, all throughout human history, from the very beginning, every single human being would have an opinion on what to do with the cart.

[24:32] We all have rules in our head, a sense of right and wrong. And it may be different. The Aztecs, it could be how you stack your stones. I don't know.

[24:43] But I can tell you, any point in history, every culture has these things where they change, right? They could be, they could be Germanic warring cultures, Vikings.

[24:54] They could say, it's the very right thing to do to kill your neighbors and pillage them and take their wives because that's just. You know, it can be radically different. My point isn't what the judgments are.

[25:05] My point is that we all have that. We all have that thing in our heart. And what Paul says right here is, every human being has the law written on their hearts. We're all sinful, so that's broken.

[25:17] So sometimes we say, it's right to do some terrible things. People think they're right in committing crime, murder. Society thinks they're right in upholding, approving of abortion.

[25:32] It can be broken, but the point is, we all have it. And so what that tells us about God is that God is a God of justice. He cares about right and wrong.

[25:45] He cares about what's good or not because we care. We, his creations, care about things. We think, we care about what you do with your cart when you go to Target, you know?

[25:56] We care about how you drive. We care about all these things and we know that the one who's created us cares about these things. But it also teaches us one other thing.

[26:07] It teaches us that God is just. God is a God of justice. It doesn't necessarily explain to us if he's good or not. He could be a wicked God. Some people think that. But it definitely teaches us that God is a God of justice.

[26:22] It also teaches us that we are not just. The next thing Paul says right here, he says, even their own consciences accuse them sometimes. So it doesn't matter who you are in that entire realm of the universe unless you're like a psychopath that we say something's broken in your brain because you don't think about right and wrong.

[26:45] You have that moral system and there's a time when you've broken it. There's a time when you've failed. And so believers, I encourage you to think through this.

[26:55] This sense of justice is an evangelistic tool. People want justice on all kinds of different issues. They want society to be better. They want this person in, this person out.

[27:07] They want these rules to be in place, these rules gone. That sense of justice is an indicator that could lead someone to know the Lord. And it also calls us, knowing that God is a God of justice and we aren't leads us to desire to emulate him.

[27:24] It's a healthy mark of maturity and growing in your knowledge of God to be growing in his understanding of right and wrong and you're following it. We're getting ahead of ourselves though.

[27:36] So the law teaches us these two things. God is just and we are not. But again, that's not enough. Our question is, how do we know God? And so far, we've got a glorious God who we're supposed to glorify.

[27:51] We've got a just God, maybe morally ambiguous, but a God who cares about right and wrong and we've got, we don't follow that system. We're not perfect in that.

[28:01] We need something else. What do we need, church? To truly know God. We need his word. The primary way we come to know God and to understand how creation glorifies him, to understand how he's righteous and we aren't, is through his word.

[28:24] And that's what we're gonna focus on for the next section. We're actually going to look at 2 Peter 1 16 through 21 first.

[28:35] Sorry, Dom. I got them out of order. This is the most cross-references you will probably ever see from me. We're gonna look at 2 Peter 1 16 through 21 if we can get that on there.

[28:49] Awesome. The word of God. This is a, there's so much in the New Testament to teach us about the word, about how God communicates to us. But we're just gonna look at three highlights that'll kind of give us a good orientation to how we come to know God.

[29:06] And 2 Peter 1 16 is one of those. It reads, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[29:18] But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. Now Peter is arguing against some people who are saying they made all that stuff about Jesus rising from the dead and Jesus being divine. And he says, these aren't cleverly designed myths.

[29:30] We actually saw the Lord. And he says, we saw him transfigured. We saw him crucified. We saw him come back to life. And then if you skip down, it says in verse 20, knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.

[29:49] For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This is hugely foundational to how we understand the word of God, that these are not the words of men.

[30:05] God in his divine wisdom and his power and authority decided to communicate through a written book. But these words come from the Lord. And we're going to look at 2 Timothy 3.16.

[30:21] As well, just as a kind of a companion piece to this one, I'll give Dom a moment. He can cool off his fiery fingers. It says, all scripture is spirited out by God, breathed out by God.

[30:36] Those are the same word for spirit and breath. All scripture comes directly out of God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

[30:54] So scripture, our books, these Bibles, these great gifts are not just intellectual exercises, they're not just history, these are the very words of God, that he has breathed out into human beings to communicate to us.

[31:10] The word shows us who God is because it is his very communication to us. We've been talking about how do we come to know a transcendent being, being creatures, how do we know a spirit, and in all, science can't get you there, he's not, he can't be handled by science, we need revelation.

[31:29] It is only by that being coming to us that we can understand him. So we know through scripture that God is a God who desires to be known.

[31:43] God is a God who desires to be known by us. So what do we do with that? We get into the word. That's all that we're here to talk about today. Glorify the Lord, grow in justice, but in all of these things get into the word because this is where we understand life, death, God, us, salvation.

[32:05] This is the tool that has the answers. If we want to go on to talk more about who God is, we have to be thoroughly grounded in this space. God has given us his very words, told us who he is, told us what he's done, and this is the best part.

[32:24] I'm so excited for this. I've been excited for this for a long time. The best part about this is that it is good news. It's good news. It explains to us the morality of our creator, that he is a just God, that he cares about righteousness, so he has to judge us, but he has given us hope to be made righteous.

[32:45] It tells us that our creator is not this absent being who set the world going and we say, good job, I give you glory, now I'm going to go enjoy your earth. He's a God who wants to come in and be present with us and delighting us in his world and knowing and being known by us.

[33:02] And we're going to look at one last passage. We're going to look at Hebrews 1. Some of you know where we're going with this and I'm so excited for it. Hebrews 1. The word teaches us about God.

[33:20] It's profitable for teaching, training, instruction, and righteousness, but it is more than that. The word is not just the way that we come to know about God. It's the way we come to know God.

[33:32] Let's look at Hebrews 1.1. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. The Old Testament. He communicated to Israel through all these prophetic words, through people writing, having visions, that sort of thing.

[33:49] But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed to be the heir of all three things, through whom he also created the world.

[34:00] Jesus was there at the beginning of creation. He's the heir of all things. And here we go, verse three. He is the radiance of the glory of God. Imagine the son again.

[34:12] He's calling back, I believe, purposely to Genesis or to Psalm 19. The son, it's an object and you can't separate it.

[34:22] It radiates heat, radiation, light, and it's all coming off from it. And where's the sun and where's the light? That's like, this whole room is lit up by the sun. It's no difference.

[34:34] It says, he is the radiance of the glory of God. Jesus is the glory coming out and being seen in the exact imprint of his nature. What Jesus is is what God is.

[34:45] What Jesus does is the heart of God. Different persons, we'll get to that in our study of the Trinity, but Jesus is exactly the same imprint of the Father.

[34:59] He upholds the universe by his word of power and here's the good news. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. This word tells us who God is.

[35:14] It tells us what he's done, but it also communicates to us Jesus. Jesus wisely decided to bring his word out into the world so that it could continue on for generations so that everyone can not just know about God but actually experience Jesus when we read about what he's done, when we meditate on the story of him, on the prophecies leading up to him, when we read about our sinfulness and his graciousness.

[35:45] Through the spirit and by faith, we actually meet Jesus. Jesus is the one by whom we know the Lord.

[35:56] Through the spirit working in our hearts by faith, we come to know Jesus through the word and he reveals the Father. how do we know God?

[36:06] We know him through creation. We understand him through the law but above all of these things, he has given us his word and I'm so excited because what week is it?

[36:19] What week is it? It's the last week of the year and what do we do before January 1st? resolutions. Resolutions.

[36:32] Resolutions. And I invite you today to make some resolutions with me right now. This is how we have life is by praying to the Father and hearing his words, coming to know Jesus.

[36:44] This is what brings us from being dead inside into a living spiritual creature with a hope for eternal glory seated right now at the right hand of the Father in Jesus Christ. Everything is available to us as blessings from the Lord in God and this is where we come to it.

[37:02] And so this next year, Brent did a great job talking about how we had this Bible plan. We loved it. It was good and we're thinking what could we do to engage more? What could we do to engage more?

[37:12] And so every month you're gonna get sick of hearing me talk about it. We're gonna restart that plan. We're gonna start in January 1st going through the book of John because that's where our sermon series is gonna pick back up.

[37:24] And so I love the idea of us reading through John being familiar with it broadly and then coming to the sermons but we're going to continue on after that reading book by book. And so this is amazing.

[37:36] It's a great app. It's got videos by the Bible Project that I went to grad school and some of these videos explain things more succinctly and better than I've ever heard it before.

[37:47] These videos are awesome. It's got your plan. It has a chat room that we're gonna light up. But church, Steel Valley Church right now, I'm so grateful for all of you.

[37:58] I'm grateful that this church is founded on biblical teaching and study and I beg of you everything you need is available in Christ Jesus.

[38:13] We come to him as a community by praying, by praising, by reading, studying. make this a priority in your life this next year. We're going to sing a song now.

[38:26] No, we're gonna read the rest of Psalm 19. Then we'll sing a song. Promise. We're gonna look at Psalm 19 beginning in verse 7. And then we're gonna sing a song called Speak, O Lord.

[38:39] I hope to sing it a lot this next year. It is before the sermon probably. It just orients our hearts to how God communicates to us. But we're gonna sing it as a reflection and a response today.

[38:51] But first, the worship team can come up. Look at Psalm 19, 7 through 14. He began by talking about how the universe communicates.

[39:02] The stars pour forth speech. And then he takes this funny right turn where he starts to talk about how the word of God is even greater than this. In verse 7, he says, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

[39:17] The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandments of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

[39:30] The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord, the laws, the word of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold.

[39:41] Even a whole lot of gold, even more than a lot of gold, these words are to be desired. Sweeter than any honey and dripping of the honeycomb.

[39:53] Moreover, by them your servants warns. In keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his own error? Deliver me from, declare me innocent from hidden faults.

[40:05] Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sin. We do these things, we don't even know we've done wrong. Keep your servant back from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me.

[40:16] Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgressions. And let this be our desire, our goal, our heart this next year. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

[40:32] Oh Lord, my rock, my redeemer. If we as a church desire that to be true, that our thoughts and our words are acceptable by the redeemer, let's get his words into our hearts and mouths.

[40:45]  Let's stand and sing together. I sociale to ache