[0:00] Good morning. Oh, that's about as good as the weather. Good morning. Good morning. That's better. My name's Chris.
[0:11] For those of you who don't know me, I'm on the pastoral staff here. And I'm just, it's great for me just seeing people kind of coming back from holiday. Some of you have been away.
[0:22] I know some of you are heading off. But there's something about being part of a church, I think, which, you know this, we don't go to church, right? We don't go to church.
[0:34] We are the church. You know that? We are the church. Which means that when we come together, this is only 20% of what we are as a church.
[0:49] Sunday is only 20% of actually everything we do as a church. Because there are community groups. There are things that people are doing throughout the week. St. Barnabas, connecting with youth.
[1:00] There's lots of things that are going on in the church. Because church is not just a meeting. It's the people. And it's a people who are gathered in the name of a God who is worthy to be praised.
[1:13] And today we're going to talk about praise. And this morning my goal is very simple, really. I want to lead us to praise. I want to lead us to praise.
[1:25] To praise God. Not to praise me. Not to praise anybody else. But to praise the one who is worthy of praise. Maybe if you just bow your head in prayer for a second.
[1:37] Father, this for me is a huge topic where I feel inadequate.
[1:50] I don't have words. I don't see just how great you are. But I pray this morning you would open my eyes.
[2:02] You would open our eyes to see you. To see your greatness. To see and to praise the one who is worthy to be praised this morning. In your name.
[2:14] Amen. Amen. So we're finishing off today. We've been looking at a series in the Psalms. And if you've been here, if you've not been here, we've been going for about eight weeks looking at how we worship in all seasons of life.
[2:30] Today it seems like we've got one season outside. There are different seasons that we go through. And the Psalms kind of take you on this journey. On this kind of roller coaster of emotions.
[2:41] Going from happiness that we talked about right at the beginning. And then going through all this fear, awe, stress, worry. And it's just this cycle of life that all of us, I think, can relate to.
[2:53] Particularly in Hong Kong. Things are constantly changing. Everything's constantly happening. We go up and we go down. The weather goes up and we go down. And that's what life is like.
[3:06] And the Psalms are here to teach us in the roller coaster of life how to worship God. And the really interesting thing about the Psalms is this. The Psalms are explicitly organized with a trajectory.
[3:20] There is a direction to the Psalms. Because they go through all of this stuff in life. There's 144 Psalms they go through. And then the last five Psalms end with praise.
[3:34] And that is deliberate. It's deliberate. Because the Psalms are trying to point you to the fact that whatever season you're going through.
[3:44] Whatever circumstance you're facing. Whatever is happening moment by moment. Everything that God brings into your life is ultimately always meant to lead you to praise. That's the purpose of it all.
[4:00] And so today I want to look at three just very simple things to kind of talk about this. I want to talk about we praise greatness. We praise greatness.
[4:13] But we often live, secondly, with copy greatness. We praise greatness. We live with copy greatness. And then thirdly, the greatness of God's grace.
[4:24] Okay? So that's where we're going. Three things. But before we kind of get into this passage, I just want to say something about praise. Did you know the reason God created you, the reason he chose you, if you're a Christian, the Bible says, is he chose you to praise him.
[4:46] In Ephesians 1, it says, in love, in love, God predestined you. That means he thought about you and he chose you. If you were a Christian, he chose you before he made anything else for adoption as sons.
[5:01] That means he brought you into his family, into relationship with him through Jesus Christ. And it then says, according to the purpose of his will. If you want to know what God's will is, here it is. The purpose of his will is that you and I and this church is to be for the praise of his glorious grace.
[5:21] That's the whole deal. That's why you and I were created. The reason that you breathe today is to the praise of his glorious grace.
[5:32] The reason God has given some of you kids is to the praise of his glorious grace. The reason you have a job, the reason you're single, the reason you're married, the reason we have air conditioning is for the praise of his glorious grace.
[5:47] That's the deal. That's why God created us. Now, I don't know about you, but I've thought about that, and that sounds a little egocentric of God.
[6:02] I mean, how can a God who says he's so great, he needs nothing, and then turn around and say, well, you've got to praise me, and even creates us to praise him.
[6:13] That sounds a little bit like what C.S. Lewis said, like an old, vain woman seeking compliments. Doesn't it? But C.S. Lewis goes on to say, and I'm going to quote along this passage, but this is very, very perceptive.
[6:30] What C.S. Lewis says, He says, He says,
[7:30] Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent? The Psalms, in telling everyone to praise God, are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.
[7:49] Do you get what he's saying? He's saying this. He's saying this. He's saying this. God made you and me to praise him because he is the most valuable.
[8:01] He is the most praiseworthy. He is the greatest, most satisfying joy, and he wants us to find enjoyment in him because that is most satisfying.
[8:14] Because what is the most great and valuable thing that you can think of in this world? Because anything you can think of where you put God in the category and he always comes out better.
[8:28] That's why he says, I want you to praise me. But what is praise? What is praise?
[8:39] Praise is exalting, boasting of, speaking highly of deep down what you think is great. It's our natural response to greatness. I don't know what you praise on a regular basis.
[8:51] You know, this week I've been watching the Olympics. And there's been a certain amount of praise coming out from my mouth because Britain is second in the medal table. And my wife is Chinese and we're beating them.
[9:02] And that's a great source of joy for me. But we praise what we think is valuable and great. You know, Usain Bolt, the 100 meter winner, one of the greatest athletes.
[9:16] Do you know what he said yesterday? After he won his ninth gold medal, he said, there you go. I'm the greatest. Now, what is he doing? He's praising what he thinks is great himself.
[9:31] Right? And that's what we do all the time. You know, I've been praising Britain for winning the medals. You know, I'm praising greatness. When I hear people talking about how many steps they did on their Fitbit, they're praising their greatness if it's more than 5,000.
[9:48] But here when we come to this psalm, David, who writes this psalm, is the king of Israel. He's the greatest king that Israel ever had.
[10:02] And when you look at this, he could have said, I am the greatest, and everyone would have agreed with him. But look at the first line.
[10:13] Take your bulletin out. Follow along. I'm not going to go verse by verse, but I want you to pick out some key verses here. First verse, he says, I will extol you, not me, you, my God and king.
[10:30] He's saying, I'm not the center of this. My greatness is not from me. It is a gift from a king who is greater. The true king of Israel.
[10:44] God himself. That's the true great king. And godly praise always flows out of this humility of recognizing where you stand before God.
[10:57] And then, when you do that, praise begins to overflow when you see who God really is. I mean, just skim over this psalm from me.
[11:09] Because this psalm, he's not just telling you to praise. It's like an overflow of praise. Look at the verbs for the speeches. He says, verse 1, I will extol you, bless you. Verse 2, commend your works, declare your mighty acts.
[11:22] Then, verse 5, meditate on your glorious splendor. I'll speak of the might of your awesome deeds. Declare your greatness. That's verse 6. Pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness.
[11:32] Sing aloud of your righteousness. That's verse 7. Give thanks to you. Verse 10, bless you. Speak of the glory of your kingdom. Tell of your power. Verse 11, make known your mighty deeds.
[11:43] Verse 12, this is joy that is overflowing. He can't hold his mouth. It's got to come out. Now, this isn't a man like me who, you know, I've been in church a while.
[11:56] And I've been taught certain things about praying. I don't know if any of you have heard the kind of ACTS acronym for how to pray. It kind of goes adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.
[12:08] And so what I have often done, I've kind of tried that. And I kind of sit down and I go, okay, now I've got to adore God. And I'm like, okay, God, you're good. God, you're great. God, you're kind.
[12:19] I'm getting hungry. But God, you're loving. I think I better go on to confession now. That's often what praise has looked like in my life. But the words in verse 7, pour forth, that word, I will pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness, that word literally means bubbles up.
[12:42] It's like, you know when you turn on the shower, and you hold the shower head, and if you try and block some of the holes in the shower, water just gushes out of another hole. You block another hole, water just kind of comes out.
[12:54] You just can't stop it. It's bubbling forth. It's irrepressible. It's unstoppable. There's this cascade of praise, he's saying. It just bubbles up from within you. That's a man who is intoxicated with God.
[13:10] He's captivated by him. He's not going through some kind of religious ritual, like I've got to praise. This is overflowing. This is from the heart. Because he's captivated by God, who he is, and what he's done.
[13:25] I don't know if you noticed how many times he talks about things like wondrous works, mighty acts, awesome deeds. I mean, it just repeats it again and again and again.
[13:37] You think he's like, what are you on? But because when David thought of mighty acts and awesome deeds, he thought of a couple of things. Because every Jew would think like this. God's awesome acts and mighty deeds were shown in creation.
[13:51] Because God creates and sustains everything. If you look out when you walk down, and you can't see it well today, but you look out on creation, you see the handwork of someone awesome.
[14:09] Creation. Redemption is the other thing that you would see with God's mighty acts. But I want to just think about creation to start with. And I thought about this, but I don't have adequate words to describe the greatness of God in creation.
[14:28] I just don't. When it says God's greatness is unsearchable, it means you can't Google it and find the answer. You have to look at it. You have to meditate on it.
[14:38] You have to consider it and just look in wonder. And so that's what I'd like us to do now for a minute. There's a great video that Francis Chan has, or pastor, has put together.
[14:49] And I just want to show you this. I hope the quality is okay. I want to show you this. And I want you just to look at it. And I want you to think, what does this tell me about God?
[15:02] What about what you're seeing right now? First of all, this is the Earth. Okay? Then just take it off from the Earth from Southern California. We're going to rise out for a little bit here.
[15:13] Okay? We're going to pull away from it. We're going to pull higher. Now this is at about 10 kilometers. Like if you climb Mount Everest, this is what you'd see. You'd see the curvature of the Earth from that distance.
[15:26] Now you're going to climb even higher. This is at 100 kilometers. And you're a fourth of the way to the space station now. This is what you'd see. If you get to this level, you're going to insert an astronaut.
[15:38] Get right there. Okay? Now we're going 100,000 kilometers. 100,000 kilometers. If you're a fourth of the way to the Moon, that's what the Earth will look like.
[15:49] Now we're going to pull away to a million kilometers. At a million kilometers, there's the Moon. Okay? There's what you'd be really seeing there. There are a million kilometers now.
[15:59] You're past the Moon. And now we're going to go to 100,000,000 kilometers. 100,000,000 kilometers. There's still left to the Sun. The Sun is not in three million kilometers.
[16:11] Okay? But now we're going to go to 10,000,000,000 kilometers. Okay? There's the Sun. Okay? It just passed the Sun. Now we can see all of the planets. 10,000,000,000 kilometers.
[16:21] And now we're at 10 to the 15th power. I mean, it's 10 to the 15 zeros. I don't know what I'm saying. 15 zeros. And the Sun's like a bright dawn on the other stars.
[16:34] And now we're going to 10 light years away. 10 light years away. And there you go. 10 light years away.
[16:45] Now you can see the Sun. And by the 1100 stars, they're kind of the same person. You know, that's our Sun. And now we're going to go a thousand light years away.
[16:58] A thousand light years away. You wouldn't see our Sun anymore. These are just a bunch of stars close to it. That's a cluster inside the Milky Way. Now we're going to do now even further. And that's the Milky Way we live in.
[17:10] See that cluster of stars? Those are about 100,000 stars that are closest to us. We can't serve Sun anymore this morning. Now it's our Milky Way down. We forget about here. Okay, there's our Milky Way galaxy that we live in.
[17:25] And we're just buried in there somewhere. And we're going to pull out even further. And you'll see that our galaxy is actually, it's a big galaxy. And almost other things that you're seeing now are galaxies.
[17:38] And we're going to pull away 10 million light years now. The next thing is 10 million light years. Those are all galaxies you see. Amidst our million away.
[17:49] Several hundred galaxies. Now we're going to go 100 million light years away. It's the last one. And zoom out to 100 million light years. Those are all clusters of galaxies.
[18:02] Galaxies and clusters of galaxies. You wouldn't even see how Milky Way galaxy anymore. It's that. We don't have telescopes that go beyond that. That little sphere there.
[18:15] What you're seeing right now. First of all, this is the earth. Okay? And then just take it off from the earth. Southern Cal. Does that give us a little perspective?
[18:34] When it says your greatness is unsearchable. And it says God is the creator. Do you begin to see why we should praise him?
[18:53] Because if God is that great, why is my life not more filled with praise?
[19:05] I narrow my life down to a very small perspective. But God is great and greatly to be praised.
[19:19] When you see that kind of majesty, and yet that is the God who is our God, who can create all of that.
[19:31] And he's not even in the picture. He's further beyond that. Doesn't that make you wonder? Yeah. So I want to ask us a question.
[19:44] Why would I ever think that God was my personal assistant to simply tap on my needs and supply everything that I want just for me?
[19:54] Why would I ever do that when that is the God that we serve? I want to move on to think about why it is that, if I'm honest, I often don't live my life with that kind of perspective.
[20:13] I want to talk about copy greatness. We praise what we think is great, but there is something that I call copy greatness. David says in verse 3, every day I will bless you.
[20:28] Every day I will bless you. On your wondrous works, I will meditate. And yet, how often is that true of me?
[20:41] Because I don't know if you ever walk down Nathan Road in Simpshire Joy. If you walk down there, you have a load of guys who every time I walk past are always saying, copy watch, copy watch, Rolex, cheap price, copy watch.
[21:00] And I think every day we are bombarded by what I call copy greatness. because copy whatever is always an inferior version of the real thing.
[21:16] It's always an inferior version of the real thing. And I get so focused on copy greatness because we've forgotten there is an original. How does this work?
[21:27] One of the main reasons I think I don't overflow with praise in my life is because I think the world revolves around me, to be honest. It should do.
[21:39] I'm great. At least I'm so focused in my mind. I don't know if you get like this. I do. I'm just so focused in my mind. I'm wrapped up in the week. My mind's going.
[21:50] All the time revolved around my plans, the things I want to fix, the things I want to sort out in my world. And it kind of, everything kind of shrinks down to my little world that I'm trying to manage.
[22:02] My little problems, my things that are going on. And that's why I stress. That's why I fear. That's why I worry. Because, I mean, does anyone know what I'm talking about? Because this, the world is kind of this, and I've got to handle it.
[22:17] Because I've got to make sure that I'm great. And I can't even handle my own world. But I don't know what's been running through your mind this week. What's been stressing you out this week?
[22:27] I don't know whether it's deadlines, whether it's job decisions, whether it's kids, whether it's Pokemon Go. I don't know what it is. But, how much of what stresses you out in the light of a God who really is eternal, the Bible says, everlasting, His kingdom is from everlasting to everlasting.
[22:45] That's a long time. How significant is what I stress about compared to that? But I do. Louis, Louis XIV, was the greatest king of France.
[23:04] He proclaimed, I am the state. Everyone had to call him Louis the Great. He was the greatest celebrity of the time.
[23:15] He built huge palaces. I don't know if you've been to Versailles, any of you. I studied just outside of there for a year. It's an extraordinary place. He constructed monuments in his honor. He'd have his own TV show if he was here today.
[23:28] And he wanted his funeral to be as dramatic as his life was. Do you know what he did? He ordered, for his funeral, he ordered the lights in the cathedral to be dimmed.
[23:40] Okay? And one giant candle, like a shining star, to be placed on his coffin, which was made of gold. His gold coffin, and his candle to be there, so that he would be the centerpiece.
[23:54] He would be the one lighting up the cathedral. Because he wanted everyone to focus on him. The funeral came, the candles there, thousands were in the cathedral, all struck at this incredible event.
[24:11] And the bishop, Bishop Marion, stood up to give the sermon. And then he did something which was not in the script.
[24:23] He went over to the coffin, and he snuffed out the candle. And then he said these words, As the cathedral was in darkness, my brothers, only God is great.
[24:44] Because you see, Louis XIV had lived a lifetime trying to make his self, his things, the center of the world. Trying to make him the main thing.
[24:58] And you know, in the light of true greatness, it's just snuffed out in an instant. So I don't know about you, how do you try and make yourself great?
[25:12] You probably don't even think about it like that. But where in your thought life are you the one who is the center of attention? I don't know if you ever daydream.
[25:24] But if you daydream and fantasize about the kind of the life you'd like to have, what you'd like to have, have you ever noticed that you're the one who's usually the hero of the story?
[25:34] It's your kingdom that you're trying to build. Ever notice that? I don't daydream about everyone else getting the glory. It's always me. Why? Because I live with a copy greatness where I want the praise to come to me.
[25:48] when you think about your thoughts and your plans, what is the candle that you are lighting?
[26:00] Is it a candle to yourself or it is a candle to the one who is a floodlight, not just a little candle? Because at the end of the day, copy greatness always gets exposed as fake.
[26:15] Always gets exposed as fake. So now, I just want us to think about that. We were made for the praise of something great. We are the ones who try and shrink our world down to a little claustrophobic kind of center of us and our little issues.
[26:35] But I want to talk about, thirdly, the greatness of God's grace. the passage that we read says, the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
[26:52] The second thing that a Jew would remember when they talk about the wondrous works and the splendor of God would be redemption.
[27:06] God's great deliverance out of Egypt. God's setting people free by his mercy and his grace. That's what a Jew would remember when he heard this. But when we live with copy greatness we forget.
[27:19] We forget God's greatness in creation. We forget God's mercy in redemption. Because basically I think most of life I don't actually think I'm trying to make myself great.
[27:33] I don't. I'm just getting on with life. Like when I was teaching I was trying to be a good teacher. Okay, I was doing it for the student and I'd love the compliments. You know, it kind of strokes your ego when someone says, hey then, you were just the most amazing teacher ever.
[27:46] You know, and I'd like that and say, no, no, no, it's fine. No, no, no. But you know, really say more, please. You know, but you know, and we all like that, don't we? We all like it when someone approves of you and someone says, kind of strokes your back and gives you a little tap on the back.
[27:59] We all like that. But you know, I thought I was still trying to honour God in my life and trying to follow him and I knew the doctrine of God's grace and all that kind of stuff.
[28:10] You know, but I'm more and more convinced now that actually much of what I do is actually more about me trying to make myself greater than I am and less about just Christ in things because I deceive myself all the time.
[28:31] Much of what I do is like this. Much of what I do is about showing how great my wondrous works are and wanting the praise from people around me. because the thing is when you find your identity and your performance and that's your wondrous works, what happens is in verse 12 it says, the eyes of all look to you to give them their food at the proper time or in due season.
[28:58] But when you're looking for your own greatness, you don't see God as a source of grace. God is the source of the one who gives you everything. You think it's your hard work that got it. You think it was your performance that made it.
[29:09] You think that because I've been so busy I managed to put food or whatever it is on the table. I did it. I'm not perfect but I'm kind of great. And we don't overflow with constant praise of God because we don't see God's grace in his provision and we live under this delusion that we are great until something happens.
[29:34] Failure. Failure is one of God's greatest gifts. I hate it. I hate failing.
[29:44] But failure is one of God's greatest gifts to expose your copy greatness and to lead you back to opening your eyes to seeing what is original and true and real greatness.
[29:59] Because what failure does, I don't know if you've experienced real failure. But when failure comes, it strips away from you everything that you had based your sense of greatness on.
[30:12] Right? You know when you're made to feel that small because you've made a mistake, you've done something before other people, you know, whether it's you failed in your morality, you failed in your religiosity, you failed at your work performance, you failed at being a good parent, you failed at being the child that you should have been, whatever it is, when you get to that you can feel like about that big and it strips you of that idea that actually I was pretty good anyway.
[30:37] Right? Anyone know what I'm talking about here? J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, in a Harvard commencement speech, she said of her failed marriage being a single mother and living in absolute poverty because she became famous.
[30:55] Said, failure meant a stripping away of what was inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was. How does this connect to grace and God's grace?
[31:09] Well, verse 14, it says, the Lord upholds all who fall. Or as one preacher put it, those who are apt to fall.
[31:21] The Lord upholds, that means carries, lifts up, those who are apt to fall, who fall. Why does David in a psalm of praise write that?
[31:34] Because David knows what it is to fail and to fall. You know, he was an adulterer, a murderer. He was a failure as a father.
[31:45] His whole family became so broken that there was rape, there was murder, his own son tried to kill him. They were just copying what he had done. I mean, he was a failure. He knew what it was to fall and there was a shame on him.
[32:02] But just before David, at the same time of day, there was another king, a king called Saul. Saul also knew failure.
[32:14] He disobeyed. In 1 Samuel 15, God commands him to go and destroy an army, get rid of everything, don't keep anything for yourself. So what Saul does, he goes down, he defeats the whole army but he keeps the best animals for himself.
[32:29] And then he goes off and he builds a little monument to his own greatness. And then Samuel comes back and says, hey, what's going on here? And Saul's like, yeah, it's great, I've obeyed God, you know, I've disfeated the army and Samuel says, I'm sorry, but why have you disobeyed God?
[32:47] And Saul's kind of going in denial, he's saying, but I did obey God, I did obey, the animals here, they're all for sacrifice to God. And Samuel's not having any of it and Samuel says to him, you have disobeyed God and then Saul's like, no, no, no, it wasn't me, it was all my soldiers, they took it, it wasn't me, they took all the stuff, it wasn't me and he blames them.
[33:09] And then Samuel says to him, hey, listen, God's going to snuff out your candle and your kingdom and suddenly Saul is like, oops. And then he becomes, feels guilty, he's got caught, he's like an American swimmer issuing an apology and he says, please forgive me but now honor me now so that all the elders will like kind of, I won't lose face in front of everybody else, kind of, I want to have respect, I know I've done something a bit naughty but I want to keep face in front of everybody.
[33:42] Everything Saul did, even his own apology for his own greatness to make himself look good in other people's eyes, what David did was different.
[33:54] There is something that is very different between David and Saul because I don't know if you know, David throughout the whole of the rest of the Bible is called God's man.
[34:08] He is exalted actually in the Bible not because he was great but because he knew a God who was great. Saul is hardly mentioned anywhere else in the rest of the Bible.
[34:22] Hardly anywhere else in the rest of the Bible. Why is that? Well, when you see your failure, your sin, the mistakes that you make, you can respond in one of two ways.
[34:39] One will lead you either to try and keep making your own greatness great, the other will lead you to seeing the greatness of God. It's a key decision. You're either going to be like David or you're going to be like Saul.
[34:51] What Saul does, he denies, he blames, he tries to get out of it. He says, I'm sorry but, do you ever do that? I do that when I get caught. I say, oh, I'm sorry but, it was, you know, I was tired.
[35:05] You know, that's not an apology, okay? If somebody, if your spouse says to you, I'm sorry but, that's not an apology, okay? Don't accept it because what we're trying to do, we're trying to still defend ourselves. I wonder, have you ever lived with a fear of failure?
[35:24] Have you ever messed up where you're actually trying to cover up what you've done so that other people don't know? We can do this, church people are so good at this. We're experts at covering up because we've got to look good on Sunday.
[35:39] But all of us have elements of failure, of shame, of things inside of. There's not one person in this room who doesn't. and if you think you don't have, then I'd suggest you're probably living in denial because we desperately want other people to see that we're actually great when the reality is exposed by our failure.
[36:05] It's painful. I remember a friend once said to me, his, I think he was about three years old, his son, he told his son, there's some cookies on the table, don't eat the cookies.
[36:18] He went upstairs to do something, comes down a few minutes later and he sees there's one cookie gone from the plate on the table and his son has disappeared. He spends the next 10, 15 minutes looking around his house trying to find his son, can't find him anywhere.
[36:34] And then finally, he hears this little kind of coming from behind the sofa and behind the curtain which was behind the sofa and he kind of creeps up down round the back, round the sofa and there, curled up on the floor was his three-year-old son wrapped around the curtain hiding behind the sofa and my friend kind of looked at him like a little bit strange like, what are you up to?
[37:03] And, I mean, he's only three, but, and he said to him, why are you hiding? And the son said, because I can't face you from what you've done.
[37:22] And that is actually what it's like for us before God. When you see a God who's that great, throughout the whole of history, every single one of us, from Adam and Eve all the way till now, we always try and run and hide our shame, the things we, we always try to wrap that curtain around us.
[37:49] Because we don't want to know, we don't want others to know what we're really like sometimes inside. Failure exposes us. We all have a secret, just think about this, we all have a secret that you don't want anyone else to know.
[38:06] Right? If I was to say now, tell the person next to you the thing that you don't want them to know about you. Is anything coming to your mind?
[38:17] What's your secret? Because that's your shame, that's the thing you want to hide away. But David, who has such shame, how can he come to the point where he overflows with praise praise in this psalm while Saul is just, disappears and he's left in denial, his candle is snuffed out.
[38:39] How can that happen? Here's the thing. David, we looked at Psalm 51 a few weeks ago, I think Eric spoke on it. David realized you have a choice.
[38:52] You either run from God or you run to God. And David knew something about God. David knew that the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
[39:09] David knew that. He knew that there was a God who was so great who could crush him in an instant, who could just turn his back on him. He's got the rest of the universe to play with.
[39:21] Why would he care about someone so insignificantly small in the light of all of his creation? And yet, he knew, like every single one of us, that this God is not distant.
[39:38] This God is near to all who call to him. This God is the one who reaches down. Because you know, it says, that verse says, he upholds all who fall, he raises up all who are bowed down.
[39:55] Do you know, if you're bowed down, how do you raise somebody else up? You have to come down to their level and pick them up. The God who created all of that universe, who didn't have to care a dot about anyone, he came down to our level.
[40:16] level. He came down to you, he knows where you're hiding. In all of that, he knows you. And he comes down, not with, you know, normally, when you, when you do something well and other people do terribly what you want them to do, what's your response?
[40:38] Normally, I think what we do is we look down on people or we try and give them advice on how to improve. You've got to work hard so you can improve that skill. Do you know, if you experience that in your office or you get scolded by somebody.
[40:50] Okay, you made that mistake, you did that wrong, don't do it better next time. Right? That's how we normally treat failure. We're just critical of people. But this God, this King, is so great, he's never failed.
[41:06] He does everything perfectly. He gets 150% in the marks, not 100. He's beyond the scale.
[41:18] And here are we, insignificant, tiny, small, hiding, shameful, sinful, the Bible will call it. And yet, this King came down to our level, saw you and me crouching in the shame.
[41:37] I don't know what it is in your life, but he sees it. And he's not there with a judging hand saying, you should do better. He's there, he comes down to our level.
[41:47] He dies on a cross. The scolding that we maybe deserved, he took from the Pharisees who mocked him. The criticalness, the shame, he was bowed down and humiliated on a Roman cross.
[42:05] For you. In the whole universe, he sees you. Right now. He sees you. He knows you.
[42:16] And his grace is calling you, come and enjoy the fact that I'm not a God who is distant, but I run to you and I want you to run to me.
[42:29] Right now. He's lavish in grace. And he calls us who are wrapped up in our puny little world to see that though we stick our middle finger up at God so often in our lives, I'd turn away if I was there.
[42:48] I'd say, I'd create another universe. But he doesn't. He says, I am gracious. I want you to come to me.
[43:03] If you get that, when you fail, if you see that God's bringing you to fail, this week, if you make a mistake, you get scolded, you go into work, things go wrong, God is giving you an opportunity for two choices.
[43:21] You can either be like Saul and start trying to cover up everything or you can be amazed that in spite of what you and I are like, you have a God who is gracious and who says, I accept you.
[43:37] I delight in you. You're mine. If you're not a Christian, you need to know that and you need to run to this God. God. Because you see, if you get the greatness of God in those two things, his creation and his grace, and it sinks from here to here, you don't have to just talk about grace as an abstract concept.
[44:03] You will know it here and it will bubble up in praise. Just check your prayer life now. Check your praise life now because that will tell you if you have really seeing the grace and the mercy and the goodness of God in your life right now.
[44:24] I want to leave you with one more video. Because I want to leave you as David overflows with praise, I want to show you a modern day somebody overflowing with praise.
[44:36] And I want you to just look at it. And I want you to think about whatever's going on in your week in the light of who our king really is. And I want us just to respond in praise.
[44:49] So...