The OG Playlist: Songs of WORSHIP | 10/12/2025

All right, welcome back notes again are available on the back

table. If you want to grab those either

now or on your way out, they're ready for you.

And you know, I, I mentioned often that I would be the type

of person that probably wouldn't get the notes while the guy's

teaching because I want to see it unfold and be surprised.

But if you want to see where I'm going, but certainly on the way

out, grab them and it'll be a great tool for you to utilize.

I mentioned, I mentioned this again for service, I said Kath,

Catherine was here. She's not here.

This service, though. Catherine, who's so dear to us

in our church, has been here for so many years.

Catherine asked me a couple maybe a year or two ago, a

couple years now, if I would send her my notes.

And usually my notes are like 16-18 pages long for a message,

But I started so I would send her those.

And then I thought, well, maybe I could consolidate them.

So then I started consolidating them down and now it's like I've

never been to a church where they have 4 pages of notes for

you to take home with you, you know, in a message.

But we really want this to be like a Bible study.

We value God's word, we value it greatly.

And my hope, my hope is that when I teach you the Bible that

it raises within you a hunger for and high expectations for

how God's Word is going to speak to you.

So now it's just become the culture of our church the last

couple years that we hand out this 4 pages of notes.

I don't feel like you're going to school, but I do want you to

grow and your understanding and knowledge of God's Word.

And I'm very honored to have that role of teaching God's word

on Sunday mornings here. All right, if you're watching

online, grateful that you are here with us N Life Church.

We're at right on Main Street in downtown Gaylord and you can

join us in worship services at 9:00 and 10:30 AM on Sunday

mornings and other events that we have going on, which you can

find on our website, nlifechurch.org.

But with this is your invitation.

Come and be with us sometime soon.

All right, let's take our Bibles if you have them or your device,

however you access. Got the Word and let's turn to

Psalm chapter 16. This is going to be about 1/3 of

Psalms 16 · chapter mention

the way through your Bible. Psalms is 150 chapters long,

short chapters. Many of them are very short, but

Psalms contains 5% of the Bible. So a lot of the Bible is

contained in these 150 chapters in the book of Psalms.

OK, so I'm going to read you out of the English standard version.

It's in your notes and on the screens or wherever you see it.

But we do want you to see it when I read it to you.

So this is Psalm chapter 16, and I'm going to start reading to

Psalms 16 · chapter mention

you in verse 8. And the psalmist writes, I have

set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand,

and I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and

my whole being rejoices. My flesh also dwells secure, for

you will not abandon my soul to shell or the place of the dead,

or let your holy One see corruption.

You make known to me the path of life, and in your presence

there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures

forever more. The psalmist starts this part of

of these verses by saying I've set the Lord always before me.

And he's doing that by focusing, giving attention, meditating on

who God is. And what I want to present to

you this morning is that the psalms give us lots to go on, on

who and what God is. So this morning I want to talk

to you about this idea of setting the Lord before you, and

I want to talk to you specifically about when you do

so, finding who and what God is. Let me pray for us, God, again,

it's such a great, wonderful thing to be together, to worship

you on Sunday mornings, to sing, to be together with our church

family, to give to you. And now as an act of worship, we

open our hearts to your word. We value and treasure and lean

into your truth that we find in the Bible.

And as we're now in these weeks, particularly looking at the book

of Psalms, we pray that you would expand our love and our

understanding of who you are and what you're like and give us a

growing discipline on going to your word in order to grow and

our understanding of who and what you are.

We pray this in Jesus name and everyone together said Amen,

We're in the series and I had the idea for this this past

summer and we're calling it the OG playlist.

And if you didn't know, the OG means like the original, right?

Somebody told me what my son said, dad, sometimes OG means

like original gangster like, well, I don't think it's that

we're just going to go on OG like the original, right?

So this the Psalms, I look at the Psalms as the original

playlist. And what do I mean by playlist?

Well, if you're old enough to remember like me, back in the

day, like in the 80s, we had cassette playlist players,

right? And you would, you'd listen to

the radio and you try to catch songs coming across radio.

Some of you were laughing and smiling or you remember those

days, right? And you'd even call the radio

station and suggest request, can you play the song?

You'd sit there waiting and when you captured it and you had a

mixtape full of songs, both sides, cassettes had two sides,

remember? And when you had both sides of

cassette full of songs you love, you felt so rich, right?

So that was back then, but now we have playlists and you can go

to Spotify and Apple Music and YouTube and, and just find

endless, endless, endless options for playlists that

people create. And I present to you that the

Psalms is God's playlist of songs that were written in the

Old Testament era. And particularly they were

written over 15 year period, 1500 year period of time.

So from Moses all the way to after the, the period of like

Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Esther, if you get to

that part of the Bible, Nehemiah, after the, the Jews

had been dispersed throughout that part of the world by the

Babylonians and the Assyrians. I don't want to get too deep in

the weeds there, but just know that for 1500 years, songs are

being written to honor God and through the Holy Spirit.

The book of Psalms is it becomes a compilation.

It's not by 1 songwriter David writes a whole bunch of them.

Moses writes Psalm ASAP, the sons of Korra, They're written

by a variety of different writers, but it's a playlist

compiled, compiled by we believe the Holy Spirit.

OK, so I call it the original, the OG playlist.

And here's my hope for these weeks to come is that you will

dig deeper into the Psalms maybe than you ever have before.

So each week I want to just give you an option.

This is in fact, Taylor and Alex from the first service.

And they'd ordered one of these also.

So you can go to amazonorchristianbook.com.

And this is the book of Psalms. But it's as big as most of your

Bibles, maybe even. But it has really thick paper

and one side is blank where you can make notes.

And then the other side is much bigger words and it's thick.

So you can write on it. And it's really like a journal

for Psalms, right? And it's like 7 bucks.

You can order from Amazon, 7 or $8.

But this one, but you could be the ESV one, which I use, but

there are multiple, the ones out there now just Google Psalms

Journal and you'll see that there are many that are out now.

And I put it in this beautiful leather sleeve and I try to

visit them daily. OK, so for me, I'm not always

consistent in this, but for me, like Psalm one, if there's 150

Psalms, then you can read like Psalm 1, Psalm 30609120 and kind

of get through the Psalms that way.

Or you can just move around and you could Google like, oh, I

want to read a Psalm about giving voice to sadness.

Or I want to give a song. I want a Psalm of celebration,

great joy, a song of lament. I'm going to be teaching a few

weeks to come on the songs of lament.

They're very valuable. And what is a lament?

It's like a very sad emotional song.

They're in the songs. They're ones that are very

joyful. The first week I gave you an

introduction to Psalms and the last week I talked about the

like the greatest hits, the essential songs, and we talked

about Psalm 23 and Psalm one. If you missed that, you can find

it on YouTube or Facebook, wherever you find your podcasts

for everywhere. So this week I'm going to talk

to you about finding who God is in the Psalms.

But in the weeks to come, I would be looking at songs of

repentance and songs of lament. I said we'll look at songs that

are difficult to get your head around because some of the

Psalms when you read them, if you don't quite dig in, then you

might think, wow, this seems to contradict the teachings of

Jesus. OK, what?

What about that? What about when you read Psalms

that that are about violence and judgment and wrath?

OK, so so the next in the weeks to come, that's what I want to

do. But this morning I want to show

you that many of the Psalms address who God is and what he's

like. And when you set before you the

Lord and you could do it in any part of the Bible and the Psalms

are wonderful for it. You went Psalm 16.

It says I've set the Lord always before me.

So when you're setting the Lord before you, what is God like?

If you're not careful, you can let man man's ignorance and

traditional sometimes tradition that's shallow and inaccurate.

You can allow people to shape your view of God that's twisted

and wrong. So what do you want to do?

You want to? I want to keep the Lord set

before me at all times and I want to grow in my understanding

and knowledge of who God is. So the Psalms are great for

this. Now I want to remind you that

the Psalms are mentioned over 100 times, either quoted or

referenced or mentioned in the New Testament.

This is important to know because there are some

Christians that promote the idea.

You might hear, if you hear someone promote this idea that I

encourage you to be cautious. Some Christians will say, oh,

I'm just a red letter Christian. And what they mean by that is

that I'm only going to focus on, I'm only going to value the red

letters in the Bible, which are the words of Jesus.

On the one hand, you're like, OK, well, I can see that you

want to Revere the teachings of Jesus, but all Scripture is

valuable and pertinent. So some Christians negate even

the rest of the New Testament. They're just, I just want to be

about the red letters. I discourage that.

Then there are other Christians who say, oh, the Old Testament,

I don't need the Old Testament, I just need the New Testament.

OK, so I'm a New Testament believer.

Well, it is true we're in the New covenant, the New Testament,

but the Psalms again, being quoted 100 times in the New

Testament and being referenced by Jesus and referenced by other

writers. And I'm going to show you here

on occasion where Peter uses the Psalms.

It it lets us know that the Psalms are still important and

valuable in our life. If they were mentioned 100 times

in the New Testament, it's nodding at the fact that they're

valuable. Jesus mentions them and also

Peter mentions them. Maybe you didn't know that on

the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts, Peter, who was one of

Jesus's disciples, he references and quotes the Psalm that I just

read to you, Psalm chapter 16. I'll give you if you're new to

Psalms 16 · chapter mention

the Bible, I'll give you the history of where this lands.

Jesus, it lives on earth. Then he's he has his ministry

for three and some years. He is God in flesh, Emmanuel.

We say God with us. So God puts on human skin and he

comes as Jesus and Jesus lives among his followers, discipling

them 33 years living, but like 3 and some years he is, you know,

presenting himself as the Messiah and giving us his

teachings. Then Jesus is crucified, then

he's buried. It's important to remember that

Jesus is crucified and buried. He didn't just faint or soon

know. He died for our sin, for the

forgiveness of our sin. So he's dead and then he's

buried, and then he's resurrected.

And after he's resurrected, he spends like 4 years some days

with his followers, with his disciples, continuing to teach

them, OK, now then Jesus ascends to heaven to be with God, to be

with the Father. And Jesus tells his disciples

that you should go and wait for, I'm paraphrasing, but he says go

and wait for the Holy Spirit. The comforter is going to come.

And the comforter, now the Holy Spirit is going to abide in all

believers. He's available to all of us.

God can abide in us now, all of us who surrender our lives to

Jesus. So the Holy Spirit is going to

come in Acts chapter 2 into this upper room where the followers

Acts 2 · chapter mention

of Jesus have gathered and they're praying.

And the Bible says that when the Holy Spirit comes upon them,

he's like a mighty wind and he settles on them with like, like

fire in their tongues. And they go out and they're

preaching in real languages to others who are in the city of

Jerusalem to celebrate the Pentecost, OK.

And so they go out preaching the gospel of who Jesus is and these

other tongues or languages. Now, in that context, this is

where we are. Peter gets up that first day

that the Holy Spirit comes upon them and he preaches A sermon.

And when he does, 3000 people are immediately added to the

Kingdom of God as followers of Jesus.

And if you've read this, maybe you missed that in Acts chapter

Acts 2 · chapter mention

2, Peter is going to quote the Psalms.

Look at your Acts chapter 2. And I'm going to start reading

Acts 2 · chapter mention

in verse 22. This is Peter and you would have

imagined he is preaching to 3000 without a sound system.

So he would have been shouting this really loud.

So they would get and he says, man of Israel, hear these words.

Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with

mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him

in your midst. As you yourselves know, he's

referencing, you know Jesus, He did these great miracles and he

said this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan

and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the

hands of lawless men. He's like you crucified him.

He was God, but you crucified him.

But it was his plan. God raised him up, losing the

pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held

by it. For David says concerning him

and in this occasion, watch Peter is preaching and he takes

Psalm chapter 16 that I read to you at the beginning and he just

Psalms 16 · chapter mention

quotes it. Now it's translated in the New

Testament. So but it's it's it's that Psalm

watch. He says, I saw the Lord always

before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken.

Therefore my heart was glad. Why is my heart glad?

Because I put the Lord before me at all times, and my tongue

rejoiced, my flesh also will dwell in hope.

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades or the place of the

dead, or let your Holy One see corruption.

You have made known to me the path of life.

You will make me full of gladness with your presence.

Watch this on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit

comes. Peter's preaching the 3000 and

he reads this part of this long song to let them know who God is

and what he's like. So the original sermon, the

original sermon, when the day of Pentecost happens, the Psalms

are there. So the Psalms are valuable.

Peter uses them. We can and should also.

And the Psalms are especially valuable in learning what God is

like. So what I want to do is I want

to go of the Psalms and I want to I'll show you what God is

like in the Psalms and I encourage you to find time to

read them to listen. However you get the Psalms.

Maybe you just want to get the Bible app that that is on your

iPhone or your Android device, or maybe you want to a journal

or maybe you want to go to YouTube and just say read

Psalms. You can get them either hearing

them or reading them. There's so many places where you

can access the Psalms. Now our thinking about God and

who he is shapes our entire world view, shapes our choices,

shapes our life. And our thinking about God can

be greatly shaped by the Psalms, and we should welcome that.

One of the authors that I'm really fond of, his name is AW

Tozer. He pastored in the Christian

Missionary Alliance tradition and died in 1963.

I pastored in Chicago and he said this.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most

important thing about us. What you think about God, how

you view him, is the most important thing about you.

It shapes every part of you. And if you let the traditions of

man or the world around you paint who God is, you likely

will miss him. But if you dig into the Psalms

and say, God, speak to me, show me through these songs, these

ancient Psalms, then God, show me who you are.

How much of the Bible is story? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,

First and Second Samuel, Chronicles, those are all the

story in the New Testament. The stories of Jesus are in the

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So sometimes the stories do jump

into the Psalms, but mostly there are short songs that talk

about who God is and I want to show you that.

So one of the first things I want to show you and you

understanding what God is like is Psalm 145 verses 8 and 9.

Psalms 145:8

The psalmist says the Lord is gracious and merciful.

He's slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

The Lord is good to all and His mercy is over all that He's

made. I mean, think about that.

It's only 2 verses. You can read that in just

seconds. And there's so much in this

short 2 verses and in the entire Psalm 1:45 that shows you who

and what God is like. So the psalmist says God is

gracious and merciful. He is slow to anger.

He's good to all, and He has mercy for all that He has made.

This is what God is like. So when we read the Psalms and

you find moments like this where it's like, oh, this is talking

about God, what he's like, then it's a good moment for you to

pause and then pray it back to God and you can say, God, I

thank you that you're gracious and you're merciful.

God, I profess that you are slow to anger.

You're good to all you have bursty for all that he's done.

Now there's a side of God in the other Psalms where you'll see

that yes, there's the judgment of God.

God also has wrath, judgment, righteousness, justice.

Those are talked about on occasions also, and these are

all facets of who God is. Another occasion, Psalm 99

Psalms 99:3–5

verses 3 through 5. What is God like?

Well, the psalmist writes, let them praise your great and

awesome name. Holy is he exalt the Lord of God

worship at his footstool. Holy is he, what is God?

God is holy, and by holy we mean he's perfect.

He's pure, he's unblemished, He's completely perfect.

And Charles Spurgeon, the famous preacher from Britain who lived

in the 1800s, he said that the holiness of God is the crown of

all his attributes. The greatest attribute of God is

His Holiness. Now this that you're seeing on

the screen here, this is great. Jason and I were at a marriage

retreat this past week in on Mackinac Island and she she

mentioned the first ever she was here and she's like we were

telling we didn't stay at the Grand Hotel.

We didn't we stay at another hotel, but we went to this

retreat that was at the Grand Hotel.

They let us in to the Grand Hotel.

We felt so, you know, fancy, right.

So we were there at the Grand Hotel and in the hallways back

at the like conference room where we were meeting for this

marriage conference. They had a whole bunch of these

like they were their covers or prints from Vanity Fair

magazine. Now think about that.

Vanity Fair like vanity means Bane, right?

So Vanity Fair, if you think about Vanity Fair today, you

wouldn't think of it having a preacher in the magazine Vanity

Fair. But we're walking on the hall

and they're like 100 or more of these portraits.

And I'm just kind of out of the corner of my, I see this and I

looked over. I was like, that looks like

Charles Spurgeon. And I laughed at it.

I'm like, oh, it's Charles Spurgeon.

Wow, that's funny. And I knew Charles Spurgeon was

kind of a full gospel preacher. He's kind of big dude.

And so I looked and so then I, I, I put the photo in chat Chi

BT and lo and behold, it spit it out said, Yep, this was this is

Charles Spurgeon. And it's December 10th, 1870.

Can you imagine a day when preachers showed up in Vanity

Fair magazine? Not odd.

We wouldn't be common today, man.

But in the 1800s, Spurgeon was having such a great impact.

And it says men of the day on the bottom.

It says no one has exceeded like him in sketching the comic aid.

Of repentance and regeneration. So the sketch artist says

they're finding the comic in this, that he promoted the idea

of being regenerated and repenting.

My point is showing this picture this, I just love that he showed

up in the hallways of Mackinac Island.

But also again, that Spurgeon said the holiness of God is the

greatest attribute of who he is. So who is God?

He's holy and putting that before you at all times.

When the Psalm 16 says I put this before, I put the Lord

before me at all times, we get to put before us this attribute

of God, His Holiness. And that's why we sing often

about the holiness of God. We're keeping it before us.

Now you may think of course God's holy, but in the ancient

world it was a shocking idea because if you don't know

anything about Greek mythology or anything about 8 ancient

Pagan gods, they weren't holy and they weren't perfect.

So you think about Greek mythology, the gods would come

down and they would meddle and they would poke at and they

would disturb man. I recently this past year wrote

a book by CSO. It's called Until We Have Faces,

and it's a retelling of the Greek, but it's a retelling of

this ancient myth. And you saw in the in this

mythological story how twisted and unholy and unrighteous were

these gods that the ancient world worship false gods.

So when the writer of the Psalms comes along and says God is

holy, it is different. It sets him apart from the Pagan

gods that were around them. And in Isaiah and in Revelation,

Isaiah has a has a moment where he sees into the heavenly

courts. And John in the Book of

Revelation has the same experience.

And both of them say the same thing of God.

They say that they were around the throne of God.

They're heavenly creatures and they're continually singing.

Watch that. God is holy, holy, holy.

Now think about that. If they're continually singing

holy, then it would just be holy, holy, holy, holy.

But it's like they're continually saying holy.

But no, Isaiah and John say that God is holy, holy, holy, and

they say it continually around the throne of God.

So you want to find out who God is and what he's like.

Then remind yourself, keep it before you, that God is pure,

He's perfect, He is holy. He's not like the ancient gods

who meddled with human beings and we're greatly imperfect.

He is holy. What else?

What about God? Psalm 19 One, this is another

occasion. It says that the heavens declare

the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

In this occasion the psalmist is saying the heavens not like not

not the place it will go to after we die, but he's saying

no, the heavens meaning that all that God has created, the

galaxies and the stars and the universes and the planets,

everything is God's handiwork. He is the creator and the

heavens declare his glory. And Psalm 33 verse 6, it says by

Psalms 33:6

the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of

his mouth all their hosts, who is God?

He is Creator of all things. He created the heavens and

keeping this before us is a good idea.

Psalm 24 verse one says the earth is the Lord's and the

fullness thereof the word and those who dwelled therein, for

He has founded it. What did he found?

The earth and all its fullness. He founded upon the seas and

established it upon the rivers. You know, our, our, our lakes

here really more like seas. Aren't they Lake Superior?

I understand it's technically a sea.

I had friends, some for some years.

I lived in California between 2002 and 2000 and 2006.

And when I was going to move back to Michigan, I told some of

my California friends, I'm moving back to Michigan.

And the couple of them said, oh, man, I'm sorry.

And you're like, what are you sorry for?

And I lived in Monterey, right near the ocean there.

So it's beautiful. It's really pretty.

But I was like, man, you don't understand.

Michigan is beautiful. And like Michigan, it looks like

an ocean. And I had people in California

ask me this, you're going to love this.

They said like, you can't see across it.

Meaning like you can't see across like Michigan.

Like, no, you can't see across it.

They're like, but it's a lake. I'm like, yeah, look at a map.

It's bigger than states, right? So when you think about God

creating the seas and the rivers, all his handiwork is

around us. What is God like?

He's a great creator who's made all things, and we want to keep

that before us. Then Psalm 20, 4, seven through

10 says lift up your heads. Oh, you gates.

So he's like, he's referring to the city gates, that he's like,

lift them up, lift up the city gates.

Let God in, He says, and lift up your heads, O gates, and be

lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.

Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the

Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates, and

lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come

in. Who is the King of glory?

The Lord of hosts. He is the King of glory.

Say LA. Whatever you see the phrase say

LA. It's a, It's a term.

It implies that there was probably a musical interlude and

it's a time to pause and reflect on what was just said.

So the psalmist is saying that God is the king of glory, who is

the Lord. He's the King of glory and we

are to open up the gates of our hearts.

It's a metaphor. We open up our mind, the doors

of our mind, and we welcome him in as the king of glory.

And seeing God in this way becomes very important.

We we don't have kings now like they did in the ancient world,

but we could say God come and rule and reign and me, you are

the king of glory. I open the gates of my heart.

I open the doors of my mind to welcome you in.

This is who God is. And then I'm going to show you

Psalm 139. What is God like?

139 verse one, David writes A Psalm and he says it's to the

choir master. I love that he's saying the

choir master should be teaching this to the choirs.

They're going to perform in the temple.

And he writes, O Lord, you've searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my

thoughts from afar, and you search out my path and my lying

down, and are acquainted with all my ways even before a word

is on my tongue. Behold the Lord, you know it all

together. Who is God and what is he like?

He knows us. God is the one who knows us

intricately before words even come out, come out of our mouth.

God knows it. He knows the hairs on her head.

He knows every detail about who you are, which implies that God

is close. And this is an important truth

to know in the Psalms because you likely know people who say,

oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe in God.

I, I, there's a God. I believe in God.

But the people who just say they believe in God, often we would

say that they are agnostic. And on the one end, you have,

let's say you have someone who believes in evolution.

OK. They don't believe there's a

God. There's no afterlife, and

everything just emerged from a piece of cell or something,

right? And so that takes a lot of faith

to believe evolution takes a great amount of faith, right?

So there are people with a great amount of faith believing that

the world just became what it is without agnostic.

And they'll say, well, I believe there is a God, but you can't

know him and he doesn't know us. He's distant.

We just don't know. And many Christians live like

agnostics. They might say it, well, I

believe that there's a God out there, but but they're not,

they're not aware that he knows us intricately and closely

according to the psalmist. So agnostics, again, God's

distance, he's out there somewhere, but they wouldn't say

Jesus is God. So you might have some friends

say, oh, I believe in God. But then the next question is,

will do you believe that he is the King of glory and that he

knows us intimately? And then he is Jesus and he has

redeemed us? All these attributes that we get

from the Psalms, do they see that in him?

So God is close and he knows us. And this is important to me at

for the culture of our church. One thing that's a really high

value for me personally is, is that I personally want to know

you and I want to know your names and I want to know your

stories because God, we're an extension of God and God takes

the energy to know us. So the church being God like,

should give attention and discipline to knowing each

other. So I want to model this in our

church and I want to encourage you to be that same type of

person where you're like, I want to know others and I want to be

willing to be known in a community, a church where people

are known and being willing to be known.

Because if you shut off your heart and and just stay in the

background and you won't be known.

But if you're willing to be known and you're willing to know

others, then we become more God like because God knows every

intricate detail of who we are. And This is why Jesus in Matthew

Matthew 6:9

chapter 6, verse 9, he wants us to pray to God.

He teaches us to pray to God in like a way where we're close

with God. And This is why he says, pray

then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Jesus doesn't say, though it's true.

Jesus doesn't say most holy God or King of glory or, you know,

there are all these different titles for God that Jesus could

have encouraged us to pray. And God is all of those things.

But Jesus promotes the idea of coming to God and saying our

Father, our Father. We get to know God intimately in

that way. Good fathers know their children

well, right? Parents, mothers, you know your

children. You know their the way they

breathe. You know their their quirkiness.

You learn your children and God has done this with us.

I love a book by John Orkberg written in 2005.

It's called God is closer than you think, and it encourages

building disciplines that keep us aware of how close God is.

It's a discipline you build and you keep this before you God,

you're close. You're not distant.

Sometimes I I might feel you distant God, but I remind my

heart, I keep it before me that you were close and you know

every detail of who I am. We keep that before us.

Now I want to do an exercise in looking for who and what God is

in the Psalms. So I'm going to look at Psalm

one O 3 and I want to show you how to do this.

So when you read the Psalms, my encouragement would be that you

you pause in them and you can say the things back to God.

And when you're you, when you read the Psalms, maybe even

before you read 1, you want to pray God, show me who you are.

Reveal yourself to me, God, as these psalms talk about your

character and your attributes, who you are, show me.

So watch this Psalm one O 3 is a great one to do this with.

The psalmist says bless the Lord, O my soul.

He's talking to himself, soul curt, worship God.

He's stirring himself to it. Bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

When we follow God, there are benefits that we receive.

It's beneficial in our lives to follow after Him.

And who is God and what is he like?

Well, verse three, Who forgives all our iniquity?

What is God like? He forgives and heals all our

diseases. God is a healer and he's still

healing today. Amen.

And I have to mention this every so often.

Maybe I try to mention this a couple times a year, not to get

super deep in reason this, but there are many Christians that

would call themselves cessationists who love God

deeply and are well educated and well studied and very sincere.

But there are many in Christianity that believe that

the gifts and the miraculous gifts particularly have ceased.

So thus they would say they're cessationists.

The gifts have ceased. So in the New Testament there

are the gifts of the Spirit that are listed and many well meaning

Christians and many, I have friends, some I have some

friends that are cessationists, OK, Now they believe in the

goodness of God. They believe in the sovereignty

of God, but they don't believe that the miracles are still

available to us today. And they get that from in First

Corinthians where Paul says when things become perfect, then

prophecy will pass away and tongues will pass away and these

other miraculous gifts. And they interpret that to me

when things are made perfect, meaning like when the Bible is

finished, OK, so the Bible is done.

When the Bible is done, we won't need the miraculous gifts

anymore. But I read that and others who

are continuationists who believe that the gifts continue.

Well, we read that to think, well, when things are made

perfect, that's like when we get to eternity with God, when we

die, when Jesus comes back, well then things are made perfect.

Until then, the supernatural gifts I still believe are

available to us. And this is important for me

personally, personally, but also for our church, that we are

people that believe that God is still doing supernatural

miracles. And you can often tell when

you're around Christians that don't believe this, that are

cessationists. And again, they love God, well

educated, well learned. And the extremes of both to me

are are wrong. OK.

And there's there's, you know, those who are cessationists

would say, well, continuations, they're just all they want is

miracles. They're not seeking after God.

They're just seeking after miracles.

And I would say, man, if that's true, I don't want to just seek

after miracles or the supernatural.

I want to seek God. OK, so the extremes are both,

but cessationists, the extreme of them is they would they would

pray things like and who wouldn't pray this?

But you'll hear them pray things like God, thy will be done.

Whatever is your will, God let it be done.

Now Jesus said to pray thy will be done on heaven as an earth,

right? So, but there, if your cessation

is to a point where it's just like you can get to a point

where it's like, que Sarah, Sarah, whatever will be will be

God, whatever your will is. They don't pray for miracles.

They don't believe for miracles because they don't believe that

God is still doing supernatural miracles.

And in my opinion, when you're a cessationist and you approach

and see God, what is God like? He's a healer, He's forgiving

and he heals all our diseases. God is still supernaturally

healing. And yet God is sovereign.

And there are times that God doesn't answer our prayers like

we hoped and prayed that he would.

But in those occasions we still come back thinking God, I still

believe that you do supernatural miracles and believing in the

miracle working power. God is a big part in my faith

and without it I think I would view God much differently.

Removed, not close. I believe that God is still a

healer and is still doing miracles.

Now verse 4 says, what else about God?

Who redeems your life from the pit and who crowns you with

steadfast love and mercy? God redeems.

And what does redeem mean? If it's not a term we use often?

It means to regain by purchase. So God created us for

relationship with him. We were distanced and separated

from God through our sin. And So what did God do?

He came up with a plan to redeem us, to buy us back, to regain

us. And in Psalms it's saying, who

redeems your life from the pit, whatever pit you might be coming

through, God can redeem you out of it miraculously.

Verse 5 says who satisfies you with good so that your youth is

renewed like the eagles? Who is God?

What is he like? Well, God renews us and he

brings us satisfaction. He satisfies us all the things

in the world that you can, if you want to, you can try them

all and still just be very discontented and very

unsatisfied. The psalmist is saying of God,

he's the one who satisfies. So what I just did is I just

unpacked Psalm one O 3. That's how I would encourage you

to read the Psalms before you read it.

You're going to read one or two or ten a day.

Psalm 119 is really long. That takes a lot longer to read.

If you're going to read that one like, you know, eat your

Wheaties, get ready for a long read, right?

But there's lots of characteristics in Psalm 119

about the word of God. So when you read the Psalms,

just start by saying, God, reveal yourself to me.

Show me in the Psalm what you're like and then you might even

want to pray it back as you go verse by verse.

OK, now why is this basic to me? This is a kind of a basic

message. Why is it so important?

If you've been part of our church for some time, you'll

know that one of the I I don't like what I call low hanging

fruit When I go to teach the Bible, I love to mine the Bible

and find stories that are not just the ones that are told all

the times. So I teach often from the Old

Testament. I taught several weeks ago the

week that Charlie Kirk was killed and the woman in

Carolina, Irena Zarutzka, I thought that we could a very

obscure story from the end of judges.

It's very violent story about a Levite and a concubine.

So that's not low hanging fruit, right?

If you got to pick fruit off a tree, the, the easy stuff is the

low hanging, But as a teacher of God's word, I want to reach high

man. I want the best fruit, right?

So I'm looking for depth and I want you to come to church ready

to learn about God's word. And so I, I, I take it very

seriously, right? So this message this week when I

was preparing, I'm like, wow, is this too basic?

And then I realized, no, this is this is not low hanging fruit.

Us setting before us the Lord and here we is continually is a

very important part of being a follower of Jesus.

So I'll go back where I started Psalm 16, eight through 11.

I have set the Lord and knowing accurately who He is before me,

and because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

I set the Lord before me accurately again, viewing him as

the Psalms painting and the rest of Scripture.

But certainly the Psalms have these short, wonderful, dense

pictures, illustrations of who God is and what He's like.

So some application to close with the psalmist give us so

much depth. And so my encouragement to you

is to read or listen to the Psalms often to get to know who

God, who and what God is. So these can become devotional

tools for your lifelong. You read them over and over.

Listen to them over and over and over again.

Whether YouTube, Spotify, you can find God's word everywhere

now. It's great.

OK. So I would say add the Psalms to

your discipline if you're hungry to get to know who and what God

is. And then #2 I would say knowing

and knowing who and what God is leads us to loving and

worshiping God in even more meaningful ways.

If you want to feel close to God, well, you have to know him.

And a great way to get to know him is through what you find

about him in the Psalms. And then finally, when you read

or listen to the Psalms, look for who and what God is.

When you read through them. You can start, you know, by

again, by praying God. As I'm reading, listening,

reveal, show me who you are. Let me pray for us, God.

I do thank you for how we find you, who you are, what you're

like in the Psalms, and for many of us that are new to

Christianity, new to faith particularly, we need to know

and see you. So meet us in the Psalms and all

throughout Scripture. And then for some of us who have

been following you for decades and decades and decades, we

still can grow and our worship of you and our understanding of

you. So meet us in this original

playlist that you've put together for us.

That is our prayer in Jesus name and everyone said Amen.

Before we leave this morning, I do wanted to give you just a

moment before we leave. And I want to give you a moment

to present your life to Jesus. Hey, John, Jamie, you want to

sit down for one quick minute? There you go, right before we

close. So before we leave, if you're

here this morning and you've never surrendered your life to

Jesus, maybe you've been wrestling with the claims of

Christianity for a while and I don't know, and you've been

around North life for a while or other Christians and they've

been sharing with you, but you've never made that decision

to to just say I'm in. I want to give you a moment to

do that in our worship time this morning if you're watching

online. And what does that mean?

Well, God created us that relationship with them, but we

were separated from our from God by our sin.

So God redeemed us. He bought us back.

He regained us through putting on human skin, coming and living

a sinless life and offering himself as a sacrifice on the

cross for us. Then he's dead, He's buried,

he's resurrected, conquering sin and death.

And now when we surrender our lives to His Lordship, we can

have relationship with God. And you don't have to understand

all the doctrines or theology of Christian that you just need to

believe. What do you do to become a

Christian? You believe that the Lord Jesus

Christ is the Lord Jesus is Lord, and you surrender your

life to him. And then we encourage you to

confess that with your mouth and to be baptized there.

Our next step. But the original step is simply

saying, God, I want to receive you Jesus.

I want you to come and reign in my life.

So this morning I'm going to pray.

And my encouragement to you is to echo the prayer that I pray

and to tell someone, today's the day I made a decision to follow

Jesus. I'm going to pray and I

encourage you to echo this with me.

You might pray, Heavenly Father, I come to you in Jesus name and

I want to surrender the lordship of my life to you.

So I repent of my sin. I say no longer do I want to

live with me as the Lord of my life.

I want you to come and be my King and reign in me.

I welcome your forgiveness that comes to the cross and the

resurrection of Jesus. I welcome it.

I welcome your forgiveness. And now I say I want to follow

you all the days of my life and eternally I receive your eternal

life now on this side of eternity, meaningful life and

purpose. And then I look to spend

eternity with you. So Jesus reign and rule in me.

I present my life to you in Jesus name and everyone said

Amen. Hey, I'm so grateful to see you.

Let's all stand together before you go.

And ladies, don't forget Wednesday night 630 is your

gathering. And man, if you want to camp

with me Friday night in the Pigeon River, please either text

me if you have my number, e-mail me [email protected].

And before you go, I want to say blessing over you.

So if you'll prepare your heart to receive this blessing.

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you, and may he make

his face to shine upon you. And may the joy of the Lord that

is unspeakable and full of glory, may it abound to you.

And may the peace of God that passes all understanding, may it

surprise you in the midst of all of the challenges that life

brings. And then may the mercies of the

Lord, in other words, the forgiveness of God, that's new

every morning. May it be especially new to you

now and your mornings to come. And now may the Lord Jesus

Christ guard your heart and your mind.

You are salt and your light. Go now and be salt and light

under the world. You are blessed.

We'll see you soon.