The Story of the Tree(s) - Wisdom and Prophets

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And thank you for being part of what God is doing at His Hands.

Well, if it's your first time here, welcome to His Hands.

We are really glad you're here.

We're a big group of people, a big family that loves Jesus, and our passion is really loving people so that they get a taste of God's love.

And that's what we hope happens every single Sunday morning here is that this is this is a taste of his love for us.

It's a little preview of what we have waiting for us for all of eternity.

And so we're glad that you're here with us this morning.

If you ever want to know more about us, head over to the info desk.

We've got some brochures and stuff that'll give you some more info.

I've got a few announcements this morning.

There's a lot of things going on.

First off, I want to start with just saying a big thank you to everyone who's giving financially.

And just to talk about that for a second, because it's so important.

It's something that God has challenged me in my life and he's blessed it.

We don't pass a plate or anything like that if it's your first time.

We don't put any pressure.

But but I think a few things that I would always say anytime we talk about this are number one, it's it's needed.

It's easy for us to look at this building, this facility, and sort of go, is this something that's really needed?

And it is.

It absolutely is.

But even more importantly than the need is that God, just like you saw in that video, God is using it.

I learned a long time ago, there's this phrase that a guy used to teach at a church I was at, and he said, Whatever percentage that you decide to give to God, just know that he can do a lot more with that than you can do with 100%.

And that's something that God's proven true in my life.

And I've learned that every single thing that my wife and I give here has a greater effect than anything I would spend it on myself.

And so it's things like baptisms that we just saw, that God is using that, and the things we're doing here are leading to that.

If you're new, you may not know this, but we do uh we have three local charities that we sponsor.

There's Papa's Pantry, there's the Cherokee Family Violence Center, and the Hope Center.

And every single week we give 5% of every dollar given to each of those charities.

So 15% total of every dollar given every single Sunday, we give to those.

And we'll have an update for you guys soon about the amount we've been able to give this year, but it is it is significant, and we get letters from them all the time that just tell us, man, if it wasn't for for that check that we got this week, this family wouldn't have been able to escape the situation they were in.

So God is using it in the community.

It's exciting.

And honestly, just in in other areas, I mean, you guys are so generous.

Last last two weeks we had Christmas Angels.

245 kids were taken for Christmas Angels.

245 kids are gonna have Christmas because of your generosity and because of what you guys did with that.

That's exciting too.

And and just as kind of a small announcement on that front, uh, if you did take a star the next two Sundays, next Sunday and the week after, that's when you can start dropping your stuff off.

And then delivery day will be December 15th.

We'll talk about that more to come.

Uh just another thing, and I'm not trying to just keep harping on this, it's just something that gets me excited personally.

Uh, I get to work with students, I get to work with young people here, and so just so you know what what you're doing and supporting us and what it's doing for our young people, if that was all we were doing, it would be worth it.

Because God is doing some incredible things in our young people.

We have we have a group of high school students that are very loud and they're always here, which is.

And I and I'm not just saying this because they're in the room and they're listening, they're the most incredible group of young people that I have I have ever known.

I've ever known.

And so uh they really are.

They love Jesus, they love each other.

And so I just want to focus on them for a second.

A couple of uh about a month and a half ago, we had this little event, and uh, there's a little slideshow little play, but it kind of might be hard to see on the screens.

But basically, there's a family here in Woodstock that that has this ministry called the Turnaround Kids Ministry.

And what they do is they they they take in kids that are coming from absolutely horrible situations, situations that you couldn't even imagine, and they completely take care of them.

They're not they're not being paid by the government for it, they're they're getting nothing financially for it, they're just taking them in, and if they need to, they adopt those children and raise them as their own.

Their goal is to get them back with their families, but sometimes that doesn't happen.

They have 35 children.

35 kids, and they do this all themselves.

And so they have four homes that they split the kids up between, and our high school students took a weekend a month and a half ago and gave their entire weekend to serving this family.

We went to their house, we completely uh we worked on their yard.

Yard work, if you anyone ever needs yard work, I can tell you who to go to.

It's our high school students, all right?

Because they renovated this yard.

I mean, it was a lot of work.

They they cleared out massive amounts of of weeds and and cleared the way for dirt to be put in and leveling their yard so it can be something that buildings can be put onto so they can expand in the future.

One of the side yards is the the grandma that that does so much for that family told me that the kids love to play soccer on the side yard, but there just isn't any grass that that will grow.

And so we got together with our high school students, put some money together, got a turf and installed that turf professionally that day.

And so now they have this turf that the kids can go play soccer and not come in all muddy.

If you've ever given one child a bath, you can imagine giving 35 children a bath.

You know, that family is awesome.

And and the more we get to know them, the more we love working with them.

But I just want you guys to know that our our students, they're not just coming here and yeah, it's worth it's worth clapping for.

Our students aren't just coming here on Sunday mornings and and Wednesdays and consuming and getting excited for themselves.

They're serving.

Every single week.

We've got you know 15 plus high school kids all over the church that are serving and his kids and volunteering in all these different areas.

Our junior high kids, God's doing amazing things through that.

Last Friday night.

Uh, my whole week's kind of blended together as a result of this, but last Friday night we had an all-night event for our junior high students, and we had over a hundred junior high kids.

If you've never seen a hundred junior high kids worshiping, that was it.

That was us last Friday night.

100 plus junior high kids worshiping all out for Jesus at 2 a.m., mind you, 2 a.m.

That's them at 2 o'clock in the morning worshiping.

Just so you know that.

We all we we were all dead the next day, but they they were loving it.

They were loving it.

And what we're seeing happen to that is that even in our junior high kids, even in his kids right now, they're doing worship right now, they're getting excited about God and the result of that.

For those of us that it took a long time for us to really get that excitement, and we've experienced that now, to just know that they're having that in their life now, what that's gonna do for them for years to come.

It's awesome.

So I just want to say thank you.

Those of you that are helping out, volunteering, serving, supporting us financially, whatever, God is using it.

Great things are happening, so so keep it up, because I think we're about to have the biggest year that we've ever had coming up this next year.

If you do want to give, we got four columns in the back, you can give that way.

Uh, there's electronic giving, there's there's, you know, the old school pen and paper stuff you can do too.

It's all good, but uh, but it's all going to a great thing, and God's using it in incredible ways.

Uh a couple other short announcements.

Christmas is coming up extremely soon.

That's the response I expected.

Yay! It's a reminder of all the things to do.

The young people all clap, like, yay, I get stuff, and all of us are like, oh no, I have so much thank you for the reminder.

But anyway, it's coming up.

And you know, it's funny because uh if if you're a church and you can't go all out for Christmas, there's something wrong, right?

We we it's the whole reason that we exist.

You know, Jesus came, and so we are gonna have an incredible, an absolutely incredible Christmas gathering.

Christmas Eve, December 24th, if you didn't know, um 4 and 6 p.m.

We have two get-togethers, two worship get togethers that day, 4 p.m., 6 p.m.

Now, there's one thing I wanted to talk to you real quick regarding our website that you can do to help us spread the word.

You know, we're not gonna send a big mailing, we're not gonna do billboards or anything like that, but we've got a lot of great people that are excited, and we actually need your help to spread the word about our Christmas Eve get together.

A lot of people come for the first time at Christmas every year, and they get to experience that taste of God's love that we just talked about.

So if you go to hishandschurch.com, this is what the homepage looks like, and you see Christmas Eve at His Hands, if you click the little link below that, or if even if you go to the calendar and click the link there, it's gonna take you to our Christmas Eve page.

Nothing you know super exciting, a picture and some descriptions, nothing there.

But this is the the cool thing is that in the top left corner, you'll see that there's a few things that you can click can click that are gonna spread the word for us.

And so there's a few things there.

There's a Facebook link, it says share.

Twitter's really lagging behind there, but that's okay.

I don't use Twitter, who does?

Um Facebook, if you click that Facebook share button, what it's gonna do is if you're already logged onto your Facebook page, it'll just put it right on your wall.

And it'll say, hey, here's a link to this event, I'm going, it's exciting.

If you're not on Facebook, it'll just have you log in, but right there, it's posted on your wall for every single person you're connected with on Facebook to see.

And it's kind of a crazy world we live in when you think about it, but if a thousand of us, which is really, you know, it's not that unreachable of a goal, but if a thousand of us shared, just click that one button, took five seconds, got online, shared it, a hundred thousand plus people are gonna see that.

That's how simple that is.

Just just all of us going home, getting on Facebook.

If you're not a Facebook person, there's Twitter, there's also that little invite others button that you can click, and what that does is just opens up a screen, you can put any email addresses in there, and it'll send an evite to people via email.

So I just want to say that that we've we've got about a month to really spread the word.

So anytime you're thinking about it, just log on to hishandschurch.com, go to that Christmas page, share it, spread the word.

Let's get this place full of some people that need to experience the love that we've experienced.

Does that sound good?

Because I I think we can do that, okay.

Everyone 25 and under is on their phone right now doing it, but the rest of us, you know, we'll we'll figure it out.

All right, so that's that.

The only other announcement that I have is actually related to Christmas.

We were just talking about Christmas, and it's coming up.

We're gonna decorate this church and go all out and have a have a big celebration for Christmas, but we need some help this morning with Christmas trees.

We need some Christmas tree staging going on.

So I'll just go ahead and categorize this a couple different ways.

Some of us do not enjoy decorating for Christmas.

It's just it is what it is, right?

We don't we don't look forward to that, but we're not doing that today, so it's okay.

We're we're just gonna be putting up trees.

So even if you're not a a decorator, if you're like, I don't like the ornaments and I'm terrible at that, I'm I'm the worst at that.

But but we're just gonna be grabbing some trees, setting them up so that they're ready to be decorated tomorrow morning.

Um so if you're if you're a man that can lift things, that's that's what we that's what we do.

That's what we do.

In fact, I used to, this is a tangent.

I'm really sorry, Ben, I'm taking forever.

Um I used to I used to tease my wife, and we and this is not the way I feel, but I used to say, like, well, you know, men are better because we can lift things.

My wife looked at me one time and said, Well, who's better?

The person that lifts the heavy things or the person that gets someone to lift heavy things?

And I was like, There it is, there it is, yes.

But ladies, you can help too.

We need as much help as we can.

And here's how it'll work.

If you want to help us get some tree set up, it'll take an hour, no more.

Um, we're gonna have a lot of fun doing it.

We'll be playing some Christmas music, it'll be a good way to kick off the season.

Classroom two, room two, it's if you if I could run through that wall right behind the sound booth, I'd be in classroom two.

So it's in the main hallway, right by the prayer room, right across from the his kids exit.

Just go there as soon as the last song is done.

Brian and Britney will both be standing outside of there, and they will tell you what to do.

And you are all really smart people, and it's not hard.

You'll figure it out.

But let's just have as many of us that can stay after, and we'll get it done fast, and it'll be a blast.

Does that work?

All right, let's pray, and let's go ahead and welcome Ben up as he's gonna share with us this morning.

Uh Daddy, thank you so much for this.

Thank you so much for this church.

Lord, I love everyone here so much, and I know for me personally, uh, if it wasn't for this place and experiencing you in this place, I would not be the person I am today.

So I want to thank you for for me just to have this family.

And God, I pray that this uh this morning you would speak to our hearts, that you would speak through your word, through every word that Ben speaks.

Holy Spirit, just fill this place with your presence and pour into us and reveal things to us and show us your love.

Show us how throughout the entire history of this world you've been working everything together to bring us into a relationship with you.

Lord, we love you, we praise you, we ask that you uh you just bless us, help us be a blessing to this community, and we love you so much again.

Amen.

All right.

Good morning, Ben.

Good morning.

Well, how are y'all?

Good to see you.

Make sure I don't run over his laptop here.

So, first of all, let me just say how much we all enjoyed hearing uh Danny Warriffle last week.

How many of y'all here were here to see him?

If if you weren't here, uh Danny is a famous, you know, retired football player, played for the Florida Gators, uh, for the Saints, I think.

Heisman Trophy winner.

It's incredibly impressive.

But you know, winning Heisman Trophy is is amazing, but serving other people like he does with Desire Street Ministries downtown is the greatest honor.

But you know, Heisman Trophy winner, kind of in similar news, uh, I don't want to brag or anything, but listen to what people say right before they're about to brag.

But uh you might not know this about me, but while I was digging around in the basement uh this past week and I I came across this gym, and I know it's not technically a Heisman Trophy, but uh in in in 1981, I won fourth place, and they give you a yellow ribbon for fourth place in the uh 10-year-old boys freestyle relay.

Right?

Thank you.

So I'm I'm sure I was the shortest the like the the slowest one in the four, you know, four people in the relay, but we still won fourth place of the five lanes in the pool.

So I'm just gonna put this down here in case you guys want to see it later or take your picture with it, you know.

I think I have the spiritual gift of insecurity, so so I actually didn't pursue my swimming any further for a career.

Uh I studied music, I was a worship director for a little while, but for most of my career, for like 20 years, I've been a software developer, like probably half of you.

And uh so but this particular story I'm about to tell, we we started our company like late 90s, but uh this particular story actually goes back a couple years before that.

So we do like uh tool tracking kind of enterprise stuff.

It's fairly common.

And so, but we started a couple of the same guys who started the company, we worked at a service shop, and so we wrote the software to track the tools there, and we had sold this software to a fair number of other small shops, but finally one day we got our first big sale, and we were really excited about that.

Like uh automotive company in Detroit.

It's installed at a bunch of their plants, it was a big deal.

So at this point in our you know, our small company, this was easily 50% of our business.

So we were really, really excited about getting this release out, and uh when we finally released it, we decided, me and this other lead developer guy, that we needed to take it up a notch and we needed to add an Easter egg.

So, for those of you that don't have experience with like old school compiled programming like this, an Easter egg is just something useless you'll put into the software, uh, usually like on the about screen or something, and only a few uh people even know that it's there.

And you have to have some secret six keystroke combination to even pull it up, and it'd be like a joke.

Like if you put in the right six keys, you see a dancing pig or something.

And you put that in there, I guess, just to prove forever that you know the software better than anybody else.

So we decided we we wanted to take it up a notch, and so this other guy, friend of mine, he found a freely distributable uh version of asteroids, the game, like a really small version.

And uh and so that's what we decided to put in.

And it only made the software just you know a few K bigger, believe it or not.

And we're real proud of this.

And we showed it to the rest of the company, it's gonna be our little secret, and it was great because the rest of the program is this boring tooling stuff, but then you get to play asteroids.

So everything was great with the product release, customers were happy, and birds were chirping, and the sun was shining.

Until one day we got a really angry support call.

And uh, I'll never forget the support guy.

He called me and he said, Uh, you know that big customer we have in Detroit that's about half our business?

And I said, Yeah, I certainly know them.

And he said, Well, uh, one of their foreman is on the line, and he's really, really angry.

And I said, Well, what's wrong with the software?

And he said, Well, it's not so much a bug.

It's, I think they just found asteroids.

I was like, oh.

I said, tell me exactly what he's saying.

And he said, Well, I've got him on the line.

He's basically saying, We didn't pay all this bleep bleep bleeping money for your software, so it could shut down an assembly line while my technicians choose to play bleep bleeping asteroids.

And you need to take out this functionality immediately.

And I was like, Oh, you know, when you say it like that, it just seems like so.

My first thought, of course, was to blame somebody else.

So I told the support guy, he said, There's no way he found that.

You have too many keystrokes, and there's a pause on the line, and he said, uh, well, you know, maybe I mentioned that to them in last week's support call.

I was like, ah, there it is.

So we actually did a fix on the software, we did an official release, and the only change in the release notes was removed undocumented asteroids feature.

And it was good times.

So to segue from that, if I can, uh, the last few weeks, uh, we've been taking the Bible and going all the way through.

We've divided it up into eight weeks, and so today finds us at the Wisdom and Prophecy books.

And if you're anything like me, this is the one section of the Bible that you've maybe skipped over a little bit, at least by comparison, and it maybe treated this section of the Bible like it's kind of the Easter egg in the middle.

It's great on its own and it's fun in small doses, but is it really key to the core functionality?

And wouldn't it be fine if we just maybe took out that section and just skipped right ahead, you know, because we're not really advancing the story in terms of history.

Why don't we just skip ahead to the New Testament and just get back to business?

Let's just skip back to assembling cars.

But it's gonna be my argument today that we need to really kind of fight that instinct, because these books are really, really important and key at the heart of the Bible, and they teach us something something about our relationship with God.

So this actually represents about a third of the Bible, so don't worry, I'm gonna try to be just really general this morning.

Uh 22 different books of the 66 in the Bible, and even in terms of just overall size, this is about a third of the Bible.

So this is five wisdom books, uh, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, five major prophets, just major because those books are longer, so they group them together.

Uh Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, and then twelve minor prophets.

They're all smaller.

So this section, if you're you're new to the Bible, this can be kind of confusing because there's not really much history going on here.

That's already kind of stopped in the sections that we've been through.

So if you've been here for the last few weeks, we did creation and fall, the beginning of Genesis, and then Abraham and the Patriarchs, Moses and the law, and then a couple weeks ago we had the kings and the exile.

So once you get to the end of that section, and especially a few of the books that take place kind of after the exile, like Ezra and Nehemiah, uh in Esther, those books after that, basically you're kind of ready in terms of plot points for the New Testament.

There's a big like 400 years in between that we don't have in the Bible.

But then you still got these 22 books in the middle.

That's right in the heart of our Bible.

And so they wind in and out of some of the prior history that's already taken place uh in the Old Testament.

And the books are grouped according to these sections, so you can't even necessarily read them in order historically.

But we're gonna emphasize a little bit more the wisdom books this morning, just in the interest of time.

Uh, so you'll notice there's no tree this morning, because we're we don't have a new, uh this is not necessarily a historical chapter.

I'm gonna give Marlon the week off.

But honestly, this was the one section of the Bible I needed the most review on myself when I was going through this process a few months ago.

Uh, and the way that happened, just I stumbled on it, is uh I like to read, to listen to the Bible on audio.

It's uh just kind of really natural for me.

Sometimes that forces a different a different flow to the Bible than what I'm used to.

And uh I especially like the message version on audio.

And so the particular version that I've got it has introductions to each book.

And the introductions are done by uh Eugene Peterson, the guy that did the translation.

Just a couple minutes for each one.

So as I was going through this section, I found I was really leaning on that because he kind of tells you where you are in the history since you're bouncing around so much.

Lots of different things coming at you, kind of like asteroids.

And and it was really helpful to me.

But as I listened, I just I was struck by how it seemed like each one of these books was like an old friend to him.

Uh and so, more than anything else, that's kind of what really inspired me to dive back in here.

Because all the best things in life that we learn are ultimately, you know, kind of caught and not taught.

So I especially like the way he organized uh these wisdom books, just to give him credit for this kind of analogy.

He said, Imagine these five books like uh like four uh compass points, like the different directions on a compass, north, south, east, and west, uh one direction for each book, and then for the fifth Psalms, just imagine that right in the middle of the compass.

I thought about doing a visual on this, but it's probably better if you come up at something in your head here.

So, two sets of polarities, uh, and then psalms right in the middle.

So on the right-hand position, I want you to imagine uh the book of Job.

So, Job, if you've ever read through that, uh Job starts the book, he's uh extremely rich, and he has a big family, and then he loses everything.

And as he's struggling through this, the middle of the book, you have this, all these so-called friends that surround him, and they do their best to try to convince him that all of this that's going wrong in his in his like his life is just all about him.

It's all his fault.

And in the end, Job finally gets the courage to just come right at God with all this, and just fearlessly, he just says, God, where are you?

My crisis.

Why would you possibly let this happen?

And God's not at all afraid to respond to Job.

And God responds to Job and gives him his God resume.

He just lays out all the things that he does in creation day in and day out that are so glorious that just totally undercut Job's argument that you're just absent and you're apathetic.

And so Job realizes, wow, God is with me in my crisis.

God is not afraid of my hard questions.

And Job says, you know, I've heard about you in the past, but now I've seen you with my own eyes.

So that's the first side.

That's the first poll here.

Job learns, God is with me in my crisis.

So the temptation is to say, I don't really need to engage in my relationship with God right now because my life is falling apart.

I'm in a crisis, and that must mean God's absent or he's mad at me or something.

But no, Job learns the opposite.

God has staked this ground for himself.

So the opposite pole to that would be the book of Proverbs.

And Proverbs is about God being in our everyday lives.

He's in every single thing that we do.

He's in our work, in our relationships, our marriages, how we relate to our kids, honest weights and measures.

It's just all in there.

And, you know, I think there's this common misconception that we can have that says, you know, we try to divide up life into two different piles.

Like there's all the stuff on one hand that is my responsibility that apparently God doesn't really care about, and that's the everyday stuff.

And then there's, on the other hand, the stuff that God does care about firsthand, you know, like reading the Bible and prayers and worship songs.

But Proverbs turns that misconception just completely on its head because God is all in our everyday activities.

He has, God made everything, and He wants us to have joy in each and everything that we do.

And so He's put this book in there to just show the glorious things that He does at each moment in our day.

And that's how we're designed.

So, you know, my my encouragement with you on this book would just be to pray to God about everything, no matter how small.

You know, God is not He's not so bored with your day, with your today, that He doesn't want to talk to you about it, every little thing.

He's not so bored with your job, even.

He wants to talk to you about it.

And if you do that, what I think you'll find, God knows your job so much better than you do.

He loves your customers so much better than you do.

And so we can learn so much from these conversations.

So this is the opposite temptation.

I don't really need to engage in my relationship with God right now because I'm just making dinner.

Or I'm just driving down the road.

God says, no, I want to be with you even there, also.

So this reminds me, by the way, this whole Proverbs thing, God in our everyday activities, God in everything.

This is how how this gets into our language too.

Have you ever noticed, like even the way we tell our stories, we can all be guilty of this.

Somebody will be telling a story, and they say, so you get to this next thing, this next thing that happened in the story, and this was a God thing.

Whenever I hear that, I want to stop the person and say, okay, so are you, do you really say, you're really saying that all the other actions previous in this story, that was you.

You doing your thing, and then all of a sudden God swooped in and did a God thing, and then I guess he left.

Now he's back in heaven, on his throne, he's taking the day off, he's spent.

Like, we're just so used to defining God as his default position, is he's absent.

But every once in a while, if you have eyes to see it, then he'll swoop in and he'll do a God thing as really cool, you know?

And I know that's we mean the exact opposite, actually, when we say that.

We're trying to underscore this action in the story, this is something I shouldn't take credit for.

But it, you know, it is possible that we can live our lives and tell our stories in such a way that God is present in every single action.

And that's what Proverbs teaches us.

So then the next two sets of polls, uh, imagine that you've got Ecclesiastes down in the south here.

And Ecclesiastes is uh a book about perspective.

But it's it's honestly kind of a brutal perspective, it's kind of cynical.

Uh and of all four of these different polls, uh, Ecclesiastes honestly is is probably my wheelhouse in in mostly a bad way.

It's a it points out the futility of all the different things that we do and the vanity that we can pop up in all of it.

But you know, after a while, all this cynicism, if you really struggle with that yourself, uh, or just personally, I've found my own cynicism.

It's usually a little bit more than uh just cowardice disguised as thoughtfulness, you know, because it's too easy.

It's too easy to point out vanity in everybody else and in every institution and in yourselves.

Uh why do we give ourselves so much credit for pointing out something that's that's obvious?

But the amazing thing is you get to the end of this book, Solomon wrote this.

And even at the end of this, all these cynical times that we can go through, and no matter how frequently you point out the futility of yourself or everybody else or every institution that's around you, eventually you're gonna be left with this question of, well, is God like this too?

Is God also gonna disappoint me?

And our answer to that, our honest answer by faith is no.

And so, even in that, when everything else is stripped away and we're left with our honest answer to that question, just makes us love God even more.

Just makes us want to be with Him because we realize only God is not gonna disappoint.

He never disappoints.

So that's Ecclesiastes.

So then the opposite poll to that would be uh Song of Songs.

Song of Songs or Song of Solomon is a book about romantic love.

And specifically, a lot of it is related to this uh infatuation kind of phase.

When your every thought is consumed with this other person.

And that could be really amazing.

Everybody loves that, right?

And it's so easy during those moments to just think, you know, God, for the first time in my life, I'm great.

I don't need anything from you, you know.

I'll be glad to check back with you in a little while when I need something, but this is so refreshing, God.

I don't have to have a relationship with you today, you know?

And that's, I'm exaggerating, but that's not at all where we end up, even in Song of Songs.

Because, kind of like infatuation, what we find is once you started a relationship with God, that even the best things in your life, they just serve to remind you of him.

Because he's made everything.

Because every good gift in your life, it comes from him anyway.

And you're just constantly reminded of that.

And it's like, wow, this is awesome, but God, you're even better.

And because of that, that's why it's so difficult to read through Song of Songs and not inevitably take it as some type of analogy between Jesus and his love for us and the church.

Because he loves us so perfectly.

And that's what we learn even in Song of Songs.

So then, in the middle is Psalms.

And Psalms is in the middle because it's big enough and wide enough to cover this entire breadth that we've just described, all four of these directions.

Psalms is by far the longest book of the Bible.

Uh, a majority of the Psalms are written by King David.

Like, I think 72 of them are attributed to David.

And you get another few dozen that are attributed to other priests and musicians, like the sons of Korah and Asaph.

And then you've got one from Moses and then a couple from Solomon.

The rest are anonymous.

So David was just a great example of what we're talking about.

He was an example of one guy that just lived his life before God, regardless of his circumstance.

And he had this really wide breadth to his life.

He's born poor, he's raised as a shepherd, then becomes a warrior, and he's a husband, a father, he's a king.

But he has this kind of brutal life too.

I mean, he's on the run from Saul for a long time in his life.

He he loses a newborn son, commits adultery, has another man killed to cover it up.

He has a second son that tries to steal the throne from him.

He's on the run for a long time.

He almost loses the entire kingdom.

And then on his deathbed, he has a third son that tries to steal the throne from his heir in Solomon.

So he has this messy, messy life.

But David was just this kind of guy that even no matter where he was and what he was doing, if he was at the height of joy, then he would be singing and writing a song about it, dancing before God.

And if he was in the bottom and he was in a ditch in a war, he was gonna write a song about it.

If he was angry with God, then he was gonna come at him, like Job finally did.

And that's why he had this just this huge collection of songs, because that's the way he lived his life.

And that's our model.

If you open up your Bible right in the middle, then right in the middle of your Bible is a songbook from King David and just his heart living before God.

So that's our lesson in this is that no matter where we are, if we're in a huge crisis, that's not an excuse to not engage with God.

We need to press in.

And if we're just doing our everyday activities, then that's a perfect moment for you to see the glory of what God's doing in every detail.

If you're in a cynical place and you're just struggling to find meaning in anything that you're doing, then you gotta lean in with God right there, because He's really your only hope of finding meaning.

And if you're on the top of the mountain, just infatuated with whatever, then you need to lean in because God's even better.

And why would you not want the best?

And then, so then lastly, just to mention the prophets real quick, if we ever neglect that whole uh thing I just described, you know, as we're as we're journeying down the road like this in life, and the road takes lots of different turns, north, south, east, and west, if we ever forget to engage with God, then the prophets are there to bring us back onto the road, back into the light.

So imagine, you know, like you're traveling down a road, like I just described, and it's it's at night, and you've got street lights shining down on the pavement, and the road takes all these different turns and different directions.

But imagine there's two ditches on either side, deep ditches.

You've got to pay attention to where you're where you're going.

The prophecy books, they're they are there when we fall into these ditches.

So the common themes that you'll see in all these books are these twin ditches of denial and despair.

And almost every one of the prophecy books has this pattern.

The prophets will first shine this light on the denial of the people, and then they'll shine a light on their despair.

So denial would be: I'm just, you know what, I'm not gonna have a relationship with God because I'm good.

Nothing really needs to change.

Uh and believe it or not, that was somewhat of the position of some people in Israel.

Even when they are in exile in different countries and they've lost so much, it's so easy at certain points for us to just say, you know what, uh, maybe things aren't really so bad.

And maybe this is just good enough in my life.

And to that, the prophets always come and they shine this strobe light in the ditch, and they say, You need to get back on the road because God's not done with you.

And you don't want to miss what he's doing.

And then on the other ditch that you know most of us can go into both of these ditches quickly, that's despair.

And despair says, I'm not gonna engage in my relationship with God because I'm just too far gone.

Things have gotten so bad, it's just there's no use anymore.

And I think that was really prevalent in Israel when they go into exile and they're in Babylon and Assyria.

That they've just given up.

God's given up on me.

And to that, the prophets come and shine this big strobe light in the ditch and say, You need to get back in the light, back on the path, because God's not done working with you.

He's not done with you, and you don't want to miss what he's doing.

And so the prophets give these pictures of what's happening, what's going to happen down the road as they move.

So that's our challenge.

Through the prophets, even when we neglect this perspective, to just stay in relationship with God at every moment.

That is absolutely the greatest gift that you have as a believer, is that at any moment in your day, whatever spot of ground God has given you, no matter how boring or exciting or how scary it is, you have the access, like Dallas said, to engage with God.

You can start coming back up, guys.

So the one passage I want to put up on the screen today, real quick, I know this is ironic that we tried to go through a third of the Bible and I'm only putting one verse on screen.

But, and this isn't even from the wisdom in prophecy books, actually.

This was spoken by the one man whose every word is true, the wisest person that ever lived, and the greatest prophet.

This was spoken by Jesus.

This is uh from John 3.

So, you know, you've got famous John 3.16, and then John 3.17 and 18, or famous too, you know, don't judge.

But this is the section right after that.

This is the why Jesus giving his wise and prophetic diagnosis about mankind.

And he says, This is the crisis we're in.

God light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness.

They went for the darkness because they're not really interested in pleasing God.

Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God light and won't come near it, fearful of a painful exposure.

But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God light, and here's the reason.

You welcome God light so that the work can be seen for the Godwork that it is.

Now I know that's something to think about, but that is not the comparison that most of us or any of us, I think, would make.

So wise.

So we're in the we're choosing to be in the dark and we're not engaging in all the stuff we talked about.

And the reason we do it, Jesus is honest with us, the reason you're not doing it is because you're you're scared that if I step into the light, then it's we fear the painful exposure.

Like I'm just gonna be shown as a fraud.

But we're all like that.

We don't have to fear that.

And so the opposite of that, that's choice number one.

The choice number two is not step into the light and find out you are a fraud, or step into the light or find out, hey, I'm not really so so bad, I'm doing pretty good.

That's not the alternative he says.

The option number two is you step into the light, and here's the experience.

The amazing experience you'll find is as you're in the light, you love it even more, more and more, and you crave it even more.

You crave even that exposure, as amazing as that will sound, and your reason for wanting it is because you you realize God's at work in everything that I'm doing.

And I want to see that even more, and I want everybody around me to see that this is the God work that it really is.

So you we're all gonna be obsessed one way or the other.

We're all gonna sing a song today.

We're gonna sing either a sad song in a dark place about our reputation, or we're gonna sing an amazing, surprising song about his reputation.

So that's our choice this morning.

Let's pray.

God, we just thank you so much for your love for us, how you're with us in every single thing that we do.

God, we just pray you give us eyes to see it.

Lord, send us prophets, and as we read in your word, just shine a big light on us and say get back on track.

Come engage with me.

I'm not scared by your situation, I'm not scared by what's coming up.

And I know the future that I have planned for you.

So just give us confidence in that today.

And uh, Lord, we just thank you that we can worship you because we belong to you.

Amen.