Episode Transcript
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Please remain standing if you're able,
and let's all turn our attention to psalm
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one hundred and thirty nine. Psalm
one hundred and thirty nine, let's give
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our attention to God's word. O
Lord, you have searched me and known
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me. You know when I sit
down and when I rise up. You
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discerned my thoughts from afar. You
search out my path and my lying down
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and are acquainted with all my ways
even before a word is on my tongue.
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Behold, O Lord, you know
it all together. You Hend me
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in behind and before and lay your
hand upon me. Such knowledge is too
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wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Where shall
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I go from Your Spirit, or
where shall I flee from your presence?
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If I ascend to heaven, you
are there. If my bake, my
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bed and Shole, you are there. If I take the wings of the
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morning and dwell in the uttermost parts
of the sea, even there, your
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hand shall lead me and your right
hand shall hold me. If I say,
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surely, the darkness shall cover me
and the light about me be night,
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even the darkness is not dark to
you. The night is bright as
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the day, for darkness is as
light if you, for you formed my
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inward parts. You knitted me together
in my mother's womb. I praise you,
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for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My
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soul knows it very well. My
frame was not hidden from you when I
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was being made in secret, intricately
woven in the depths of the earth.
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Your eyes saw my unformed substance.
In your book were written, every one
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of them, the days that were
formed for me, when as yet there
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was none of them. How precious
to me are your thoughts, Oh God,
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how vast is the sum of them? If I would count them,
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they are more than the sand.
I am awake and I am still with
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you. Oh that you would swell. Lay The wicked, Oh God,
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Oh men of blood, depart from
me. They speak against you with malicious
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intent. Your enemies take your name
in vain. Do I not hate those
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who hate you, oh Lord,
and do I not loathe those who rise
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up against you? I hate them
with complete hatred. I count them my
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enemies. Search me, Oh God, and know my heart, try me
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and know my thoughts and see if
there be any grievous way in me,
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and lead me in the way of
everlasting Amen. Please be seated as you
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read this psalm, as you hear
it read, I imagine there's a lot
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of different thoughts that come to your
mind. There are for me, I'm
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part of that's because there's a lot
to the psalm. There's simply a lot.
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There a lot to think about,
a lot to to meditate on reflect
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on. I think one good question
to ask in light of David's a sense
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of the Lord, David being the
author of this Song, David Being God's
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servant, of the great kings of
the Old Testament, the one to whom
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God promised that he would establish a
kingdom, an eternal kingdom, through his
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son, which ultimately is Jesus.
This David. It's very close relationship with
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the Lord, doesn't he? He
has a very deep and personal sense of
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who God is and and how he
relates to him, and I think it's
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a good opportunity for you to ask, for me to ask myself, for
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us all to ask, who is
God to you? Who's God to us?
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Of course, that question, who
is God to you, is a
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question about perception. It's important to
remember that the asking that question doesn't change
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who God is. Right God is
who he is, no matter how you
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perceive him. But how you perceive
matter, how you perceive reality, is
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a thing that matters, right.
So though the thing itself that you are
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perceiving doesn't change, your perception of
it, still matters, doesn't it?
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Imagine if you perceive a rattlesnake as
not being dangerous and it's something to play
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with, right. Your perception of
that doesn't change the nature of the Rattlesnake,
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but it does affect you, or
at least it might, might kill
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you. Or imagine another situation where
you perceive a little tiny flames of fire
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as a threat to you, and
so you throw a bunch of water on
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your birthday cake, right you,
you perceived the fire sort of correctly,
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misinterpreted, misinterpreted it's danger and you
know you're on your birthday cake. There
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of course, worse things that can
happen. But most important, and as
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we go about our world and desire
to perceive things rightly, in accordance with
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reality, is who God is,
the one who made all of these things,
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everything from fire or two cakes to
rattlesnakes. I didn't mean to rhyme
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there, but God made this world, he made a beautiful, wonderful world
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and it's our job to interpret that
rightly. Sometimes we get it right,
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sometimes we get it wrong, but
it's not just the world that we are
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called to perceive correctly. We're to
understand God himself and who he is.
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What we think about reality doesn't alter
truth, but it does affect us.
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The things we fear and the things
we don't, the things we love,
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the things we don't. All of
these and other consequences and other actions that
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we take are based on what we
perceive, how we perceive things. So
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how you think of God matters and
as we see in this psalm and throughout
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the scriptures, and I think no
simply by nature, is that our perception
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of this reality, our perception of
God, has eternal consequences. How we
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stand before him, how we perceive
him, how we treat him, how
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we act in light of him,
has eternal significance. Notice the end of
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this psalm, the way David says
and if there be any graveous way,
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and me see if there be any
grievous way in me and lead me in
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the way everlasting. There is something
beyond David's and our immediate situation that matters.
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That should matter to us. Or
think about Jesus's words that we read
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earlier from John Chapter Six. He
says, I'm going to give you the
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food that leads to eternal life.
You all care about living. Each of
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us spend many moments of our lives
thinking, consciously and subconsciously, about how
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to preserve our lives by to make
good decisions that keep us moving forward,
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that keep us alive, that keep
us flourishing. And even in those instances
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where we're feeling against that, when
we're depressed or maybe suicidal, it's still
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in there right, it's still at
work, those feelings of life as being
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something that's important, something that's valuable, something that matters not just here and
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now but forever. Well, we
just finished going through the book of Jonah
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and I think what a lot of
Jonah is about as helping us to perceive
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God and this world correctly. Jonah
is a good example of someone who isn't
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getting it, or at least isn't
getting it fully. His piety, his
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relationship towards God, is is kind
of a partial one, or a partially
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good one, at least the way
he thinks, or we the way it's
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his actions and his thoughts are described
to us, things don't all fit together.
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We talked about this a lot,
the way that Jonah, on the
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one hand, confesses that God is
the one who made the sea in the
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dry land and is ruler of the
heavens and the Earth, and yet at
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the same time tries to flee from
his presence right as the as, knowing,
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on the one hand that God is
merciful and slow to anger and he's
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gracious and desires a people to repent, and yet is angry about those things.
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It's so Jonah has this understanding of
God and his presence that's warped in
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a way. It's misunderstood or not
believed, and a lot of Jonah is
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about helping us to see things from
a true perspective by seeing Jonah's bad perspective.
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All right, so throughout the book
of Jonah, God is helping to
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helping us in our perception problems.
He warns us, he encourages us,
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he gives us promises. Well,
as we have come to a conclusion of
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that story, I thought before we
move entirely away from it, it might
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be helpful to see Jonah's piety,
his relationship with the Lord of the Heavens
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and the earth. In contrast with
David that we see here in Psalm one
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hundred and thirty nine, there's a
contrast of perceptions. Both deal with who
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we are, where we came from
an in particular, the presence of the
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Lord. Yo Jonah tries and says
that he desires to flee from the presence
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of the Lord. David asks this
question in Verse Seven. Where shall I
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go from your presence, or where
shall I fleet? or where shall I
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go from Your Spirit? Where shall
I flee from your presence? He even
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talks about the bed, is making
his bed and she old Jonah talks about
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that as well. The Sea is
also brought up, the depths of the
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earth. This language is a similar
between a Jonah and also a psalm one
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and thirty nine. And as we
see these similar questions and themes between these
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two books, we also come to
see two different ways of perceiving God.
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One is certainly much better than the
other, and I think by contrasting them
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and sort of exploring them a little
bit, it helps us to examine our
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own perceptions about God, to ask
ourselves some good questions about how do we
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relate to God, how do we
think about him? Are there ways in
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which we're partially understanding him, partially
trusting him, partially following after him,
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or perhaps not at all? Jonah's
perception is a partial piety. And what
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does it lead to? Danger?
Death, judgment. David's piety is not
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perfect, as we know from his
story, but the expression of it,
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the biblical God honoring way it that
it is expressed here, and no doubt
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experience Rience by David over and over
over again in his life, is a
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model for us to follow. It's
a promise of who God is and what
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he is to us when we stay
in his presence, in particular in the
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presence of His grace, in which
we go to the Lord and we say,
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check me out, open my heart, see if there is a grievous
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way in me parentheses, and when
you find it, lead me in the
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Everlasting Way David is depending on the
graciousness of the Lord. We know that
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not only from this psalm but throughout
all the scriptures and David's own confessions of
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Repentance of sin that we see in
this and other books. This contrast helps
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us to think about our perceptions of
God. But before I get too much
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into sort of thinking about these two
things and working through this psalm with you.
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I want to point out one very
important thing, and it's this.
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You don't get a clear perception of
God by staring harder through your greasy glasses,
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right. You don't just sort of
try harder and harder and then you
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know, maybe get there right.
The only way to get a clearer perception
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and be able to see the contrast
between a bad perception and a good one
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is to somehow see the good one. Now that's a difficult thing if your
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glasses are sealed to your eyes,
and that's all there is to it.
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But here's the good news for you. When God speaks in the scriptures,
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he gives to you that clear perception. We all came here this morning with
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Greece on our glasses or bugs on
our windshield, or however you want to
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think about that. We all come
here with a certain amount of blindness.
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Maybe some of you it's total,
maybe some of you it's partial, but
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we all have things that were confused
about, things that we don't see properly.
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But then that's one reason we come
here, so that we can hear
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a clear explanation, so that we
can hear God speak to us as he
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really is, apart from our misunderstanding, is apart from our confusion. Much
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of Jonah was about a wake up
call for Jonah. Much of the story
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there is about how God is waking
him up and US up in as we
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go through it, to what reality
is. And that's what we have now
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before us. So we're not just
going to stare harder through this perspective or
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that perspective, but our goal is
ultimately to see God as he has revealed
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himself. So that's how we're going
to approach psalm one hundred and thirty nine.
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So what do we learn in Psalm
one hundred and thirty nine about God?
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Is it teach us about him and
his relationship to to us? Well,
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first we know. We learn there's
God reveals it to us through a
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servant that God intimately knows us.
He intimately knows us. Listen to this
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in verses one through six. Oh
Lord, you have searched me and known
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me. You know me when I
sit down and when I rise up.
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You discern my thoughts from afar,
you search out my path and my lying
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down and are acquainted with all my
ways, even before a word is on
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my tongue. Behold O, Lord, you know it all together. You
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have me in behind before you lay
your hand upon me. Such knowledge is
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too wonderful for me. It is
high. I cannot attain it. So
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remember Jonah. Jonah seems to think
that this is not true. Jonah seems
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to think, or at least he's
acting on the basis of of a belief,
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that he can get away from God, that somehow he will be unknown
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by God. Jonah seems to think
that he could have hid from God by
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fleeing from his presence. That's not
true. David's perception of God is truer
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and very different. We know and
learn from Psalm one thirty nine that God's
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knowledge of us is active, right
verse one. He searches and knows US
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right. God doesn't just know you
in a passive way. You know,
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you happened to bump into you somehow
and Oh yeah, I kind of know
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what he looks like. You know, he searches you, he knows you.
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The knowledge of the Lord is often
described in these very active ways,
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these very intentional ways. In fact, a lot of times the verbs have
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those meanings inherently. But it's more
than active we can say other things about
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it. We also see that God's
knowledge of us is complete. Verse Two,
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when you, when I sit down, when I rise up, you
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discern my thoughts from afar, and
it's not bound by any particular time.
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All the ways of our all of
our ways, God knows. But he
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even knows things before they are,
things not amazing, even before a word
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is on my tongue. Behold,
oh Lord, you know it all together.
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And then, on top of all
of these things, the Psalm tells
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us that God's knowledge is a personal
one. It's purse. God is personally
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present in the way that he knows
us. Sometimes we think about knowledge in
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these very modern terms, right like
a scientist, you know, looking down
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through a microscope, the tiny little
Lens, very separate from the specimen,
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not having any involvement in it,
or trying not to. Everything very objective
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and sealed. That's not the way
David describes God's intimate, personal knowledge and
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for knowledge of you. What did
he say? Verse Five, you Hem
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me in behind and before you lay
your hand upon me. We often forget,
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I think, God's presence in our
distracted lives. Do you have a
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sense of God? Like David,
describes him here, of him being all
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about you, around you, in
you, beside you and not just near
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by, not even really, really, really close, but touching you.
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He says, your hand is upon
me. God's knowledge of David is not
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one of a spectator, sort of
looking and yet knowing. He is touching
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David in some way. We're Jonah
is distracted and running and trying to flee
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from God's presence. David is glorying, he's resting, he's wondering, even
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in a sort of celabratory way,
about God's knowledge of him. Notice,
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for six such knowledge is too wonderful
for me. It is high. I
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cannot attain it. The more David
thinks about how much God knows him,
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the more he just sort of throws
up his hands and says, I don't
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even know what to do with this. This is amazing. Your hand is
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upon me, you know me before
I even speak. This is the knowledge
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of God. So where Jonah is
believing this lie and where we often believe
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this lie that you know? I
just want what I want and I'm going
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to get away from God. He
won't know, he doesn't care. He's
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not present. He's busy about other
things. Or we just block at all
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and distract ourselves. David's piety is
much more true to godliness. He senses
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God, he understands who he really
is in his omniscitions and is allknowingness and
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the personal way in which that connects
with his servant. Well, that leads
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us to the next thing that we
learn about God, and that that is
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God is with us. This thought
between, or this connection between God's knowledge
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of us and his presence with us
is strengthened in the next section. David
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Asks, where shall I flee from
your or where shall I go from your
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presence? Where shall I or I'm
sorry, where shall I go from Your
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Spirit? Where shall I flee from
your presence? Well, Jonah says Tatarshash,
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that's exactly where. He has a
specific destination in mind, a very
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specific answer to those question. What
a fool. I say that with humility
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to because I've done the viary same
things that Jonah has done, having specific
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ways and which I know I'm going
to sin against the Lord and which I'm
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going to choose this ungodly thing over
something God has has required of me.
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We all do that. We do
these stupid, foolish things but that's not
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at the heart of godliness and it's
certainly not an accord with reality, as
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Jonah is soon found out, caught
up on the storm, in the storm
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and being drowning in the waters and
various other things that we examined and remembered
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from that book. Listen to David's
words instead, instead of to Tarshash.
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What does he say? He says, and you should memorize this, if
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I ascend to heaven, you are
there. If my make my bed and
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she'll you are there. If I
take the wings of the morning and dwell
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in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there, your hand shall lead
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me and your right hand shall hold
me. You're that touching language again.
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The Lord is leading him, he's
holding him like a father and a son.
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Here, take my hand, let's
walk together. That's how he describes
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his closeness with us. Jonah is
trying to get out of there, he's
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trying to fleez going to get on
a boat, he's going to get away
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from God. David wants nothing of
it, and neither should you. I
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want to explain as best I can
what I think is a good interpretation of
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verse nine, just so you have
a little better understanding of that. He
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says, if I take the wings
of the morning and dwell in the ottermost
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parts of the sea, it's a
it's a parallel in a way to verse
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eight. So verse eight has this
kind of vertical description of God's presence.
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If I go up to heaven,
you're there. If I go down to
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Shiol, you're there right. Verse
Nine is like that, except now he
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describes it in a horizontal way and
you can kind of think of it from
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east to West, especially from David's
perspective in Israel, West being the sea.
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Right. That's where Jonah was fleeing, right on the sea, away
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to tarshish. Well, David knows
that he gets out on the sea and
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God will be there too. The
wings of the morning describe the sun coming
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up, rising in the east and
the way that the light shoots across the
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horizon right those great wings of the
morning as it comes up. This great
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description of of God's sovereignty and Providence
in the world. And so David is
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sort of saying from up to down, from left to right, you know,
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any sort of direction you go,
God is there. He's present.
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At the end of this section he
talks about God's power in a way,
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this presence of God being close to
him and with him. He says,
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even if darkness, or if I
shall say right in these dark moments of
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our mind, surely if I say
the darkness shall cover me in the light
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be about me as night. It
reminds me of Jonah's words as he's descending
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down and into the into the sea, and he describes there in chapter two
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about the weeds wrapping around him and
the the the water is overwhelming him.
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David says this about darkness surrounding and
he says even the darkness is not dark
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to you, the night is as
bright as day. Can you imagine walking
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outside with no moon, let's say, and it's totally dark, no lights,
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power out, is something like that, and you see how dark that
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is, how intensely dark that is. You say to God, this is
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nothing. He can see as clearly
as I can when the sun is fully
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out. That's an amazing thing and
I think we can take this not only
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in visual terms, in terms of
God's ability to God's ability to see and
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to know and act, but in
spiritual terms as well. The way that
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sometimes we feel the darkness of this
world and of Satan's dominion overpowering us,
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coming upon us, feeling overwhelming,
swallowing us up and to death, not
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a problem for God. Even the
darkness is not dark to you. The
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night is as bright as the day. The darkness is as light with you,
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he says. So as this,
just as this knowledge in the First
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Section transitions to a revelation about God's
presence, now we see God's presence sort
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of transitioning into revelation about his power, which is something we see in the
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next section. So God is not
only very knowledgeable about your life and also
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intimately present there, but he's also
powerful and in again, intimately personally so
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versus. Thirteen through sixteen, or
perhaps eighteen, for you formed my inward
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parts. You knitted me together and
my mother's womb. Sometimes we think of
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God's power. When we think of
God's power, we think of Swirling Cosmos
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and, you know, sea's churning
and giant animals and these kinds of things.
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Totally true, but here the image
it just as powerful is that of
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God knitting us together, which should
be, I think, perhaps even more
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amazing to you than it was to
David. As much as we know about
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those tiny, tiny little processes that
go on. I learned to knit at
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one point. I don't know if
I remember anymore, but I know what
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that feels like to sort of be
focusing on those tiny little loops and you
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know you're doing your I don't know
the vocabulary, but you know your knitting.
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There you go and this is the
language. That focus right. That,
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especially for me, the focus that's
required to do something like that,
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that handy work, that personal touch. That's what David how David describes how
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God describes his own work of all
of us, formed in my inward parts,
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knitted me together and my mother's womb. Here David brings brings our perception
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of God's power down to the level
of our Gens, this chromosome and that
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chromosome all being perfectly placed and ordered
by God himself. God is not peering
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at us, you know, from
the High Heavens, with sort of a
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passing interest in what's going on.
He knows you. My frame was not
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hidden from you when I was being
made in secret, intricately woven in the
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depths of the earth. Your eyes
saw my unformed substance. Wow, in
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your book were written, every one
of them. That is the days that
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were formed for me. For me, God is doing all of this work
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for his servant. These days were
set these words that willed one day be
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on his tongue, all of it
in the great power and strength of God
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before it ever even existed. Well, you might say with all of this
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that in thinking in terms of scientific
disciplines, that God is a specialist.
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He's a specialist in you. He
knows you, every part of you,
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every aspect of you, perfect complete
knowledge of you. But the thing is
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is, when we talk about specialists
and knowledge, we are taught. We
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talked about them as that way,
as a way to honor and respect and
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recognize a person's knowledge in a particular
area, but also to say that there's
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a lot that they don't know.
Right they're focused in on this one particular
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thing, but first they don't know
any but everything. Who knows everything?
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Well, so it turns out God
does. He's not only a specialist in
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you, knowing everything about you,
God's a specialist of everything. That's what
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David says in verses seventeen and eighteen. When he gets into the sort of
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celebration of these things. He says
how precious to me are your thoughts.
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Oh God, how vast is the
sum of them? If I would count
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them, they are more than the
sand. I am awake and I am
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still with you. That brings us
to our next section. Not only does
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God intimately know us and is he
powerful in these other things, but we
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know that this knowledge of God is
connected with him who is holy, who
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is good. Sometimes people want to
think about God as a kind of abstract
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power. Yep, sure, he's
capable of throwing this storm around or that
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storm or bringing this or that thing, but is he good? Does he
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exercise his power for goodness? And
it's part of what verses Nineteen through twenty
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two you get at. It's from
the perspective of David Confessing The holiness of
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the Lord and wanting to stand on
that on God's side, saying that's I
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am with you in that. He
says Verse Nineteen. Oh, that you
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would slay the wicked, Oh God, Oh men of blood, depart from
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me. They speak against you with
malicious intent. Your enemies take your name
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in vain. Do I not hate
those who hate you, Oh Lord?
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Do I not low those who rise
up against you? I hate them with
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complete hatred. I count them my
enemies. There are a lot of different
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things that we can say about this, a lot of different applications and careful
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applications that we should think of,
but you have to start before you get
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to any of those things, you
have to start with a very simple set
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of two questions. First, is
God good? Is he good? And
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if he's good, is he good
to uphold goodness? I think the answer
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to both of these has to be
yes. God is good, God is
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holy. In part of goodness and
part of holiness is upholding good and holy
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things. A good way to understand
this is to take the opposite and consider
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how bad that would be, and
then you'll realize how good this is.
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So Verse Nineteen, Oh, that
you would slay the innocent. Oh,
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God, right, bad, really
bad. The people that slay the innocent
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are people that get our most extreme
judgment, our most extreme hatred and frustration.
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Judges that that take bribes, for
example, judges that take bribes and
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let the guilty go free and condemn
the innocent person. We hate that.
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It stirs us up inside, it
makes us mad, and it should,
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because that is bad. That's why
I mean it's a very simple thing here
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that's being described here and that's what
David is saying. It makes me mad.
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fact, he goes stronger. He
says I hate it. I hate
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them with a complete hatred. I
count them as my enemies, all those
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that pursue evil things. Should you
hate evil things? Yes. Should you
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hate those that pursue evil things?
Yes, you should. Jesus also tells
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us to love our enemies. Should
we do that? Yes. So how
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do those two things come together?
How do you hate wickedness, hate evil
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and those that do those such things, do those things, and yet also
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love them and desire good things for
them? Well, the answer can only
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come through another revelation of God,
that is, the revelation of His grace.
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The principle of hating wickedness and wanting
justice as a good thing. It's
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tied in with the character of God, but so is his graciousness, which
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extends to us and which he has
extended to you. His love, a
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love that you didn't deserve. It's
a love, as we have said at
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various times, that doesn't overlook justice, that doesn't ignore justice, because it's
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a love that is exhibited to us
and and made clear to us and confirmed
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for us in the love of God. Himself as he takes justice on himself,
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dying for sin and for us and
for our sins, that we might
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live and be declared just and righteous. The way these things to these things
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reconcile is on the cross, when
God dies for those who were yet his
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enemies. Now that's not ignoring justice, he takes justice on himself. Ignoring
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justice would be God coming into the
world and saying, you know what,
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everyone, I know your sins have
been up to the highest of heavens,
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but just forget about it, not
a big deal. Honestly, I never
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really did care. That would be
taking the Lord's name in vain right,
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attributing to things that are certainly not
true. That would be egregious, that
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would be terrible. That would be
God allowing evil to prosper and all of
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these things, and that's but that's
not what God did. Right. God
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didn't come into the world and the
in didn't come into the world, didn't
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send his son. And who said
they forget about it? Honestly, I
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wasn't that concerned. Thanks for trying. No, God came into the world
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and said Justice will be mine,
sins will be paid for, and then
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the son of God ascended up onto
a cross where the wrath of God was
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poured out on him for the sins
of the world. God did not ignore
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sins pass over them in a sort
of ignorant way or an uncaring way.
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He embraced those sins and poured in
this not in doing them, but in
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pain for them, as he,
as the father, poured out his wrath
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on his son. For us,
and because Jesus loved us in that way
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and has opened up this principle of
grace into the world. That is how
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we can simultaneously both hey evil and
even our enemies, and yet love them
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through this grace and desire their repentance. We can trust that the Lord will
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make all things right and will put
to death the wicked and the ungodly and
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all those that persecute him in his
church, all those that take his name
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in vain, all those that do
wickedness. He will accomplish that justice.
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It will either happen on the cross
or will happen on the last day.
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For we who have believed, we
who were the enemies of God, it's
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happened on the cross, thanks be
to God, and perhaps that will happen
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even for those who are yet now
our enemies, and that's why we,
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even as God, holds out grace
for them. We hold out grace,
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we extend to them the love of
Christ, not a blanket love that washes
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away things, that ignore sin,
and that's sort thing we least tell them.
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You are a sinner, and yet
Christ died for the ungodly. Believe
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on him and you will be saved
and I will no longer count you as
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my enemy, but as my brother. That's my friend. So what David
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says here is right and is good. To hate his enemies with a complete
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hatred, to hate wickedness, to
hate those who would slay the innocent,
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is to be on the side of
God. It's to be on the side
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of goodness, on the side of
justice, on the side of holiness.
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That is where we want to be. Well, finally, as we come
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to a clearer understanding of who God
is, what it lived means to live
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a life of true piety in him, we come to the last two verses
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we're David, reflecting on all of
these things, concludes by saying search me,
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Oh God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts
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and if there be any grievous way
in me, or and see if there
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be any grievous way in me and
lead me in the way everlasting. So
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we see that God is good,
but he's not only good, he's merciful
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and he leads us. That is, of course, if we follow him.
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Jonah did not want to follow.
God said you're a my prophet,
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you're my preacher, let's go to
Nineveh and preach repentance. Jonah didn't want
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to follow. Jonah wanted to flee. Jonah refused to and Jonah who was
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punished as a result. David,
on the other hand, looks at God's
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Gospel of Repentance, his promise of
mercy, his slow to anger, his
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abounding in steadfast love and instead of
running the other way, like Jonah did
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and like we often do, what
is David do? He sets before us
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a wonderful example to follow, where
he says, lead me in the way
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everlasting. He wants to follow after
God. This is what Jesus calls us
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to write. He says follow me, take up your cross and follow me.
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I will give you water that will
spring up to everlasting life. I
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will feed you with the bread of
life that comes from heaven, which is
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my body. He says, he
leaves needs us in a way, not
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only in a path of of righteousness
in general, not just a righteousness of
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00:41:30.739 --> 00:41:36.289
God, but a righteousness that he
imputes to us, a spirit that he
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strengthens us and enables us to follow
him, something that I believe Jonah experienced
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too, when his heart was inliven, when he called out to the Lord
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and asked for forgiveness, when sought
redemption and ultimately said you are the God
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00:41:57.360 --> 00:42:08.110
of my salvation. David struggled to
David's life wasn't perfect. David had moments
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of blindness, of anger of various
kinds, of immorality, of the testable
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and horrible things, of ways where
the Lord said go this way and David
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00:42:21.219 --> 00:42:29.300
said I'm going that way. We're
human. That doesn't make us inherently sinful,
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but the fact that we're fallen humans
does. Ever since we fell in
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Adam, this relationship, this beautiful
sense of God's presence, has been disrupted.
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It's been disrupted in our lives,
it's been disrupted in the world.
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But I am here to tell you
that God has sent his son into the
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world to establish our press his presence
with us again, and not just to
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take us to back to the garden, but to bring us into glory,
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00:43:07.070 --> 00:43:13.780
to bring us into something better,
something new or something everlasting, and that's
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00:43:13.780 --> 00:43:21.980
what he does. This contrast between
Jonah's perception of God and Jonah Book of
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00:43:22.019 --> 00:43:25.659
Jonah and Dave it's perception of God
in Psalm One and thirty nine provides us
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00:43:25.659 --> 00:43:31.530
a very helpful contrast to think about
our own perceptions of God. Do we
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keep God at arms length, sort
of admitting and sensing to some degree that
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00:43:37.210 --> 00:43:40.719
he's powerful and yet really not wanting
to have anything to do with him or
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00:43:40.800 --> 00:43:45.840
his ways? Or do we embrace
the God of the heavens and the earth,
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00:43:46.400 --> 00:43:50.079
the one who made the sea in
the dry land, as he has
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00:43:50.199 --> 00:43:54.000
come to us in forgiveness, as
he has come to us promising grace,
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00:43:54.039 --> 00:43:58.349
as he has come to us to
be with us, even in the person
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00:43:58.789 --> 00:44:04.869
of his own son, and follow
after him and cling to him and ask
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00:44:05.030 --> 00:44:08.949
for the everlasting life which we didn't
deserve and yet God gives to US anyway?
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This is the perception of him in
the life that he holds out for
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us in Christ. I implore you
to embrace it. The presence of the
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00:44:23.139 --> 00:44:31.889
Lord for those who know the Lord
is a wonderful thing. It's a pleasant
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thing, a comforting thing. Do
you hear fear in David's voice? Do
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your terror, anxiety, worry,
stress? No. The one who embraces
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00:44:49.840 --> 00:44:54.349
the presence and of the Lord as
he is present with us in Jesus Christ,
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00:44:55.550 --> 00:45:00.429
is one who can be at rest, as one who can lift up
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00:45:00.510 --> 00:45:06.429
his or her eyes into the heavens
and say this is too wonderful for me,
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00:45:07.260 --> 00:45:12.860
one who can say try me,
O Lord, test me and then
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00:45:13.019 --> 00:45:17.260
lead me in this way of everlasting
life. I am going to depend on
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00:45:17.500 --> 00:45:23.929
you and your strength and your life. Not Mine, not my ways,
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00:45:24.130 --> 00:45:30.409
not my will, not my desires, but you may God grant us the
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00:45:30.530 --> 00:45:38.079
grace to do just that and then
to experience a life lived in him that
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is close and intimate and filled with
joy. Let's pray
