September 6, 2026 - The Words That Form Us

And for the empowering of the Holy Spirit and the faithful and fearfulness of the world around us.

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Let's lean in together as we hear today's sermon.

Hi.

Am I on?

I am on.

Let's stand up again for the reading of God's Word.

I was trying to catch you before you sat down.

We're going to read out of Psalms 139, verses 1 through 10.

Psalms 139:1–10

And I should put my glasses on in my white tall.

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise.

You perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down.

You are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before.

You lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go to the heavens, you are there.

If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me.

Your right hand will hold me fast.

Thank you.

You guys can actually sit down now.

It's okay.

Well, good morning.

Again, I get to bring the word this morning.

So before we jump into the word, I have have you ever heard something and thought that's definitely too good to be true?

Has anybody thought that before?

Like an infomercial.

How many of you remember infomercials like like Shamwell?

Based on the laugh, a few of you.

I remember being on TV all the time.

Pretty much any Saturday morning that I'd wake up and watch cartoons, I would see the Shamwau commercial.

And it always seemed like it was trying to make it seem like it is the best product ever, the best product in the world, right?

Like you have to have one of these towels.

Showing off this towel that it's just so great and that it's better than any other towel or paper towel or sponge, and then it's actually all of those things, all in this one thing.

And it claims that it could do a bunch of things.

One one, for example, was that it could hold 20 times its weight in liquid.

Which is a pretty ridiculous claim for a towel.

And then you get to the price.

And they they would give you the price, and then be like, boom, wait, there's more.

And then they'd tell you that if you called soon, that you'd get twice the amount for your money.

And then they'd be like, oh, but we're only for the next 20 minutes because we can't do this all day.

Right?

As as if there's actual people all the time doing this.

But then somewhere on the screen, there would be tiny little writing.

The fine print giving all the disclaimers of this product.

Like you might be able to get this towel, but there's but they're actually pretty small.

They're not quite as big as what we're making them seem.

Or that the shipping isn't included and the shipping is actually three times the price of the product itself.

Or that there's extra taxes that you weren't aware of for some reason on this product.

The commercial shows this amazing product for a s for a certain price, but there's a catch.

And there's so many things like that nowadays, isn't there?

That we're being presented with all of these things that just seem to be so amazing, but then there's a catch.

And now we often find ourselves accustomed to believing if something sounds too good, there must be a catch.

And I wonder if sometimes we approach God that same way.

We hear the good things about God, and then we wait for the catch, for the fine print.

So this morning is our last week talking about the words that form us.

And this morning I want to talk about it in a little bit of a different way.

The past uh number of weeks over the summer, we talked about specific scripture verses that have formed us.

And scripture is incredibly powerful, and it is absolutely the way that shapes and forms us.

But there are also other words that form us, and that's the words of others.

So this morning I actually want to talk about a number of words that were spoken by others over me that have formed me and shaped me.

There are two truths in particular that I want to talk about.

Two things that people have spoken into my life that I have learned to believe are actually true.

The first is that the father wants to have a relationship with me.

And the second is that I am loved.

And maybe, like me, when you hear those things, as I just said those things, something inside of you immediately starts to look for the fine print.

Something inside of you is like, ah, but is that fully true?

So this morning I want to ask, is there actually a catch?

So we're gonna start in Psalm 139.

If you have your Bible, I'd invite you to open it there.

So we're gonna start with the father who wants to have a relationship with you.

So although I so when I when I was growing up, this was one of the things that was spoken over me.

I was in high school, and uh it was just a Sunday morning.

I don't know what the pastor was talking about, I don't have a specific passage that he was saying, but his phone was all about how the father wants to have a relationship with us.

And although I don't know what that passage was that he was speaking on, I think that this passage is a perfect representation of what was spoken over me that Sunday.

So it starts this way in verse one to five.

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar, you discern my going out and my lying down.

You are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely.

You hand me in before, behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.

The beginning of this psalm, David is pointing out that God is omniscient.

God knows everything.

He's aware of when we sit, he's aware of when we get up, he knows our thoughts, and he knows all of our words before they're spoken.

He knows everything that I was gonna say this morning before it's come to my lips.

And he he just knows everything.

For some of us, that is incredibly comforting.

To know that there is a God who is so good who knows everything, to know who knows everything about us.

But for some of us, to have God know everything, that might feel like a little bit too much.

Maybe a little bit worrisome even.

He knows that I wasn't honest with this person, he knows my actual thoughts about this or this other person.

He knows the things that I'm tempted with and that I'm struggling to turn away from.

Sometimes it's worrisome to know that God knows those things.

And then that can spiral further.

It goes from I don't want God to know this stuff, but then we turn that.

But then we our relationships with others begin to inform us as well on this.

Of how God might look at us.

That if if other people in the room were to know these things about me, if other people in the room knew these truths, this is how they would react.

And if God knows everything, how is he gonna react?

Our relationship with others begins to inform the way that God might look at us, which can then lead to standing in front of God to be really uncomfortable.

And some then continues in verse seven, where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there.

If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even though your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you.

The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

David's asking this question, where could I possibly go where God wouldn't be?

If he goes to the highest place possible, God's there.

If he goes to the depth, God is there.

If he goes to the far side of the sea, God is still there.

And even with darkness completely surrounding him, God is still there.

David doesn't actually tell us that he's trying to run away from God because he's ashamed, but I know what it's like to want to.

And maybe some of you do too.

Where David is expressing wanting to flee from God but not having a place, to want to flee from his sight.

Because when somebody knows everything about us, our instinct isn't always to move closer, right?

When somebody knows everything about us, our instinct isn't always going to be, I want to push in with this person.

Sometimes our instinct is to hide, to run away, to pull back.

But look what David says in verse 10.

Even there, wherever there happens to be, your hand will guide me.

Your right hand will hold me fast.

The God who knows David completely is also the God that holds on to David.

God completely, God's complete knowledge of him doesn't cause God to withdraw.

And then we see this beautiful line.

You created my inmost being.

You knit me together in my mother's womb.

God doesn't merely know facts about David.

God doesn't know David because he made him.

You knit me together in your mother's womb.

There's an intimacy to that language.

David isn't just an anonymous face in the crowd to God.

God knows him completely intentionally and personally.

How many parents in the room would agree that regardless of what your kid does, you'll still have love for them?

Right?

Yeah, lots of hands went up.

Even if they go completely off the deep end, and it feels like they're tearing your heart out, you would still have love for your kid.

Right?

Your child can frustrate you, they can disappoint you, they can make choices you desperately wish they wouldn't.

But you don't simply stop caring about them.

And even the love of the best human parents is only an imperfect glimpse of the heart of our father.

Psalm 139 shows us that there is a God who knows us completely and still moves forward towards us.

And that matters to me because I found myself wanting to do the exact opposite of that.

I found myself in a kind of similar reality to David.

I grew up hearing about God, going to church, reading my Bible off and on and praying.

But I've been in a space in my life where I felt like the people around me didn't like me.

Where I did things that I am not proud of.

And because of that, I didn't think that anybody around me loved me.

Nor did they care about me or who I was.

And I started playing the story inside my head that if people knew everything about me, there'd be less love for me.

And there were spaces in my life that I found that to be true.

I didn't have people at school that cared about me.

Genuinely.

I had a hard time finding people that actually wanted to spend time with me at school.

And there were things that would happen, I'd get sent to the principal's office or whatever.

And that would maybe not get back to my parents, I don't know, but my parents would never say anything.

They wouldn't touch anything that happened at school to me.

And so it led to this belief of, okay, there's nobody at school that cares about me, and these things are happening.

My parents aren't saying anything about these things that are happening.

There's no love and there's no care for me.

And then that translated to my relationship with God.

I started playing a story in my head that if nobody here on earth wanted to have a relationship with me, if nobody here loved me, not even my family, then why would the God of the universe care about me?

Why would the God of the universe love me?

And I fell away from my faith.

I tried to hide and I tried to run.

Then one Sunday I was sitting in service.

I was still doing the whole church thing because my dad was a youth pastor, so I'd still show up and play the Christian role.

So I was in service one Sunday and I was sitting there, not fully paying attention.

But I heard the pastor mention that God wanted to have a relationship with me.

And for some reason I heard that and it kind of caught my attention.

And he said that regardless of my life, that he's not scared.

That God already knows everything about me.

And he's not just waiting to throw the book at me and punish me and be like, look at everything you've done wrong, here is your punishment.

That that's not what God was waiting to do.

But that he's gentle and wants to have a relationship with me.

And from that Sunday I started to ask my A3 questions.

I was like, man, what does that even mean?

What does that mean that God wants to have a relationship with me?

It doesn't make sense.

And I began to reflect on these words.

Trying to figure out why God would want a relationship with me, because it just didn't make sense.

If everybody in my life that was human, that was around me didn't want to have a relationship with me that didn't love me, how could it make sense that God would want a relationship with me?

Sure, he knows things about me, but why would he want a relationship?

But then that truth, as I slowly pondered it and asked questions, began to change something for me.

The God who already knew everything about me still wanted me.

But that led me to another question of why?

Why did he still want me?

Why would he care about somebody like me who has all of these flaws?

And I started to look through scripture, trying to understand how God sees me, and I kept running into other truths.

One specifically is that I am loved.

If you've ever looked through scripture trying to understand how God sees you, you know that there are some amazing things written about who we are.

But as I would sit there and read them, they always sounded too good to be true.

And so without realizing it, I would add my own fine print.

God says, I have loved you with an everlasting love.

As long as I don't give you a reason to stop.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God.

And I would add on, although God probably wishes that he got a better child.

He forgave our sins.

And I would play my mind, except for the things that I still can't forgive myself for.

He will take great delight in you.

And again, I would say, once I've become the person he wants me to be.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who does this.

God speaks and then we add our own asterisks.

God tells us what is true, and we start writing our own conditions underneath it.

Romans 8, 35 to 39 says this.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword, as it is written, for your sake, we face death all day long.

We are conquered as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor neither angels nor demons, neither the presence nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ our Lord.

Paul is asking this question: who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Would it be trouble or hardship or persecution, famine, danger, death, life, the present, the future?

Paul asks us if any of these things can separate us from the love of God.

And he comes to this conclusion that nothing in all of creation could possibly separate us from his love.

Yet we might still be tempted to add our own fine print to this too.

Nothing can separate you from the love of God except maybe you.

But it doesn't say that.

There's no asterisk, there's no exception hidden at the bottom of the page.

There's no fine print.

It's simply you are loved.

And a handful of years ago, I had a battle, had to battle against a tough false belief that I had told myself.

It was while I was pastoring in Beaver Lodge and I had moved there not knowing to anybody.

I moved there totally alone, no relationships.

And when I got there, there wasn't really anyone in the same stage of life as me.

Nobody around my age, and those that were closest in age to me were either married with kids or still in high school.

And that weighed on me.

I would go to work in youth and small group where I was surrounded by people who had other people.

And when everyone else went home, they would go home to somebody else.

Except for me.

I would go home to nobody.

Just an empty space.

Just me.

I knew that I was someone that God said was loved, but I hadn't actually started believing that I was somebody who was worth loving.

I knew what scripture said, I knew God loved me.

I knew all the right answers.

But somewhere along the way, going home alone, day after day, I started to believe that something was different about myself.

I knew I was loved, but I didn't believe that I was actually somebody worth loving.

Then one year at DTP, which is a youth conference in Grand Prairie, the whole thing we were talking about was being loved by the father.

He started the weekend off by telling a story of someone in his life that would always affirm to him that he's loved simply by saying, You are loved.

And then he encouraged us.

To actually start saying that to each other.

He actually like paused and was like, turn to the people around you and just say you are loved and declare that over each other.

One of my youth leaders at the time was in a similar space as me, and I didn't realize it, desperately wanting to be loved, knowing what scripture said about God's love, but struggling to believe that was actually true about ourselves.

And so we started to just say over each other, affirming, you are loved.

Through simple words.

But they began pushing against the false story that I had been telling myself.

You are loved.

And this morning, I want to affirm that in you as well.

I don't know where most of you are at.

I don't know what you're struggling with, but I want to affirm that you are loved.

For someone here this morning, you might be asking yourself, but how do I actually know?

Because sometimes I don't feel loved.

Sometimes my circumstances don't make don't feel like I am loved.

Sometimes I look at myself and don't see somebody who is particularly lovable.

So how do I actually know?

Invite the worship team to come up.

John says this in 1 John 4 verses 9 and 10.

1 John 4:9

He says, this is how God showed his love among us.

He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and has sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

God showed his love by sending his son to the world that we might live through him.

Love doesn't always begin with our love for God, but his love for us that was demonstrated by his son's sacrifice on the cross for our sins.

This is how God showed his love.

You can't measure God's love by how your weak went.

You can't measure God's love by whether you feel close to him.

You can't measure God's love by whether you think that you have earned it.

We measure God's love by looking at the cross.

Romans 5.8 says this.

God demonstrates his love for us this way.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

We measure God's love by looking at the cross.

Look at the timing here.

It's while we were still sinners.

Not once we got to a certain point in life, not once we've earned it, but while we were still sinners.

God moved towards us.

The Father didn't wait for us to make the first move.

He came to love.

He came to us.

You are loved.

And maybe there's something inside you that still says, there has to be a catch, there has to be fine print.

So how do I know there isn't?

Look at the cross.

God didn't just tell you that he loves you, he showed it.

John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son.

He loved, so he gave.

And I think the cross trains both of these truths that we've talked about this morning together.

That the Father wants to have a relationship with you and that you are loved.

At the cross, God doesn't remain distant.

He moved towards us.

At the cross, God doesn't merely tell us that he loves us, he shows us.

And maybe for some of us this morning, then, the invitation isn't to try harder to make God love us.

Maybe it's to simply stop running.

To let yourself be known by the God who already knows you.

To receive the love he has demonstrated in Jesus, and to respond to the God who has moved towards you by moving towards him.

So in a moment, we're going to come to the table.

And Jesus has given us something incredibly tangible to remind us of what we've been talking about.

The bread, his body given for us, and the cup, his blood poured out for us.

So I'm going to pray for us, and then in a minute, I'll invite you to come for communion.

So, Lord, we just thank you for who you are.

Jesus, we thank you that you have such great love for us, and that there's nothing that can separate us from that.

And Lord, I just pray that that would be something that we feel and can see as truth this morning.

To know and experience the great love that you have for us.

That as we come to the table this morning, I just pray that we would just feel that renewed this morning.

That if we still have questions or thoughts or adding our own fine print, that Jesus, you would hope take that away.

Lord, we thank you for the cross.

And that we can still come before you in that way.

In your name we pray, Lord.

Amen.

So this morning, as you come to take the elements, I want to invite you to remember.

Remember the Father's heart.

Remember that there is no fine print.

Remember the cross.

Remember the God that who knows you completely still invites you near.

And hear this one more time that you are loved.

So I'm going to invite those who are serving communion to come forward.

And this morning, as you come, I just invite you to come down the center aisles and then to go along the side.

And then take communion as you feel led.

I encourage you to, once you grab your elements, to find your seat and then just pause and allow Jesus to speak his love over you once again.

So we're just going to play, and you can come forward.