Sunday, July 31 - Refreshed by God's Word
2022-07-31
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkFT0CMRuzE

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and keeping them there is great reward. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. God, we thank you so much to be able to gather here today, and to worship you together, and to be revived by your word and your ways, Lord. And we thank you for those that are watching online, and we pray that we're an encouragement to them as well. And we just ask that you be with our service today, and allow it to glorify you. In Jesus' name. Amen. All right, we're going to be starting with "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." Alleluia. Raise your joys and triumphs high. Alleluia. Sing ye hands and earth reply. Alleluia.

Live again our glorious King. Alleluia. Where, O death, is now thy sting. Alleluia. Once he died our souls to save. Alleluia. Where's thy victory, boasting grave? Alleluia. God's redeeming work is done. Alleluia. For the fight, the battle won. Alleluia. Death in vain forbids him rise. Alleluia. Christ has opened paradise. Alleluia.

All right. We're going to be moving into our prayer and share time next. If you're watching online, there will be a phone number up that you can text if you have any prayer requests or anything you'd like to share with us here. Please text that number, and then we're going to be muted here during that time together. And so give us a few minutes, and after that, we'll be back to move into our time of communion. And we're going to be singing "Who You Say I Am." Who am I that the highest King would welcome me? I was lost that He brought me in. Oh, His love for me. Oh, His love for me. Who the Son sets free. Oh, is free indeed. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. Free at last He has ransomed me. His grace runs deep.

While I was a slave to sin, Jesus died for me. Yes, He died for me. Who the Son sets free. Oh, is free indeed. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. In my Father's house, there's a place for me. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. I am chosen, not forsaken. I am who you say I am. You are for me, not against me. I am who you say I am. Who the sun sets free. Who is free in me. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. In my Father's house, there's a place for me. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. You may be seated. You may be seated. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thanks, Russell. As we move into our time of communion, we're going to be singing "Above All."

Above all powers, above all kings, Above all nature and all created things, Above all wisdom and all the ways, as man. You were here before the world began. Above all kingdoms, above all thrones, Above all wonders the world has ever known. Above all wealth and treasures of the earth. There's no way to measure what you're worth. Crucified, laid behind a star. Live to die, rejected and alone. Like a rose trampled on the ground. You turned the bow and thought of me above all. Above all powers. Above all kings. Above all nature and all created things. Above all wisdom and all the ways of man. You were here before the world began. Above all kingdoms. Above all thrones. Above all wonders the world has ever known. Above all wealth and treasures of the earth. There's no way to measure what you're worth. Crucified. You laid behind the stone. You lived to die. Rejected and dead. Rejected and belonged like a rose. Trampled on the ground. You took the fall and thought of me above all.

In our world, it's often, I think, very easy for us to focus exactly on what we are doing in our world. Whether that is good, we look at what's around us, and we see joy, or in some cases, we look around us and we see the hurt and brokenness of this world, and we find ourselves in sort of a stage of discouragement. And so I want to read this morning as we pair together around the table from the seventh chapter of the book of Revelation and sort of remind us this morning that as Christians we have a different perspective on the world in which we live than many of those who surround us, that our perspective is based not upon those things that are temporary, but those things that are eternal. And I'm going to begin reading in verse 11. It says, "And all the angels were standing around the throne, and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne,

and worshiped God, saying, Amen, blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might be to our God forever and ever." Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?" And I said to him, "Sir, you know." And he said to me, "These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." And there you have a picture of rejoicing and worship in heaven. And then this group shows up in white. He said, "Where did all these people come from?" They're those who have lost their lives, given their lives for their faith. And then this song of worship from Isaiah is present in Revelation chapter 7.

"Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on His throne will shelter them with His presence. They shall hunger no more, neither shall they thirst any more. The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. The Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." And so there is this picture of those who have sacrificed for the good news of the Gospel. And from the world's perspective, they are those who have maybe thrown their lives away for something that maybe in their eyes doesn't matter. But then you see the perspective in heaven. And you see this perspective where there is no longer any suffering.

There is, in fact, joy. There is refreshment. There is peace. And they are with their great shepherd Jesus, and God Himself wipes away every tear. And so as we remember the Gospel this morning through this bread and through this cup, we're reminded that our hope is not in the physical things of this earth, that our hope is in Jesus, who gave His life for us. The God who saves us and who has prepared a place for us. Let's pray. Father, help us as we so often get focused on the temporary, whether those things are good and joyful or whether that is suffering and difficulty. Help us to see that there is more. That we have a hope that lasts not just in this life, but for all eternity. Thank you that you are the one who refreshes us, the one who protects us, the one who comforts us.

So help us remember the Gospel this morning. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. If you would take the bread with me, and as Jesus with his disciples said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." If you would take the cup with me, as Jesus says, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." And Jesus will say this, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." All right, we are going to spend just a few minutes this morning in sort of the second section of the 19th Psalm. We're talking about how God has refreshed us and how God revives us and how God restores us.

We saw last week Hagar in the wilderness feeling unwanted, taking advantage of, full of hurt and grief, and there in the midst of the wilderness she sees the faithfulness of God. And so this morning we're going to take a look at the Word of God and how that strengthens, refreshes us, and also points us toward the hope of the Gospel. So we read this together earlier, but I'm going to read it again one more time. We'll pray and dive right in. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart, and the commandment of the Lord is pure, and lightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, in keeping them there is great reward." This is the word of the Lord. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the hope and the transformation that has worked through your word and through your spirit applying the word in our lives. And I just ask this morning that you would help us to see this treasure, that we would be refreshed by it and encouraged by it. Just be with us this morning during this time, and it is in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So one of the things that I learned early on is that I learn better with things. I can see a practical application for things.

So in school, you would be given an assignment, and if I could see the practical application, like how I would use that in the future, I understood it, and it was great, and I enjoyed it. Now, if I looked at that and said, "I see no way that this applies to my future," my thought was, "Well, this really doesn't matter. Why do I even need to bother with it?" And probably many of us are like that. I noticed that this year as we were finishing up school with our kids, and we got to fractions, and it was like, "Why do I need to know this? Why does it matter?" And thankfully, I understood that objection because I had been there as a kid as well, and I was like, "Well, let's bake a cake," right?

You've got one cup. You've got a fourth cup. You've got a third cup. These are all fractions. Or when you go to count out your money and it's $1.25, you grab a quarter, right? Because it's one quarter of a dollar. And so I think sometimes when we think something is just sort of simply an intellectual exercise, we have a tendency to sort of take it for granted. But if we can see how that has an impact in our life and in the world, all of a sudden it becomes more important. And I think one of our struggles as Christians is that many of us sort of see the Bible as sort of just facts to be memorized or information to be absorbed, rather than something that is incredibly practical, that is something that is incredibly applicable, something that matters and changes your life.

And one of the reasons that I love the 19th Psalm, we talked about the first part of this several weeks ago on a Wednesday night, how God declares His glory through the creation that He's made, and then He talks about how God has spoken to us through His Word. And that's what we want to take a look at this morning. And I'm going to sort of do it in reverse. I'm going to take the last two verses first, and then we'll go back to verse 7 and kind of walk through 7, 8, and 9. So just to remind you of verses 10 and 11, familiar? If you've ever sung, there's a song that takes these words almost verbatim that we have sung from time to time. It says this about God's Word. "More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warm, and there is great reward."

And so you start off by the psalmist saying here, after he's talked about the characteristics of the Word of God, that the Word of God is a treasure. And our minds are captivated by the idea of treasure, right? So the Mega Millions this last week was like, right, a little over a billion dollars. And when we hear that kind of money being given away, right, it sort of captures our imagination. And then there's television shows, books, and movies that have all focused on treasure. Maybe it's lost treasure, maybe it's following a map to treasure, it's figuring out the clues to treasure. And we even have shows like, for example, Antiques Roadshow, where you go raid your grandpa's basement or attic and try to find treasure there, right? You show up and hopefully you find something that's worth a whole lot of money.

We as a people are fascinated with the concept of treasure. And look at what the psalmist says. He says that the Word of God is worth more than gold, and just in case we don't get that, he says more than much fine gold, right? Because gold is rated based on how pure it is, and so he says it's not just some random gold, but it's a giant pile of very pure gold, pure gold, incredibly valuable, a treasure to be guarded and protected, and one that brings joy to us when we see it. The second thing that he tells us about the value of the Word of God is that it is sweet. And this idea of honey for us, you find it throughout the Bible. In fact, when the Israelites were getting ready to go into the promised land,

bring you into a land flowing with milk and honey. And there's a two-fold picture there. One is of raising animals, right? If you have enough space for cows and goats, creatures that produce milk, it's good farmland. But also, if you're getting honey, it means that you're able to plant flowers, and you're able to plant crops, and those bees come and they pollinate. So what he's saying is that this land is a rich land, right? You can raise crops, you can raise animals, and then you have this wonderful blessing that just overflows with milk and honey. But more than just sort of the abundance of the land, honey is a picture of something that's delicious and sweet. And for us, a couple thousand years later, that's a hard picture because we have a very good access to all kinds of sugar, right?

All kinds of sweet things. In fact, if you start reading labels, you'll find just about everything contains some kind of sweetener, right? We are swimming in things that are sweet. But if you're living in David's time, do you know how you sweeten things? There's no sugar cane, there's no artificial sweeteners, you have honey. And honey is hard to be raised, it has to be found, it has to be collected, and so honey is this rare commodity. And so, it's just like if you're as a kid, you never get candy, and then all of a sudden you get candy, it's like the best thing in the world. Imagine you've never had anything sweet, and you get your first taste of honey, and it is something wonderful that you've never experienced. It's something to be treasured. But more than that, you see in Scripture, honey revives and restores. There's this passage where Saul and his army,

they're pursuing the Philistines in 1 Samuel 14. And Saul gets a little rash, and he goes, "Until we've defeated the army, nobody eats." And if you've ever heard the saying, "The army marches on its stomach," that's a really bad call to make. Because all your soldiers are going to be tired, they're going to be depressed, they're going to be, depending on how long you go, they may even become weak from this. And his son Jonathan has not heard this command, so they're moving through this forest. And they're in pursuit of the Philistines, and Jonathan sees honey, and so he takes his staff that he's been walking with, dips it in the honey, and eats it. And the Scripture will say in 1 Samuel that his eyes were brightened. And the picture there is like he was energetic, right? Just

like when we're tired, and we're very, very hungry, and we eat a meal, and we feel refreshed and revived, and we have energy again. That's what happens to Jonathan, and everybody begins to say, "You know you're not supposed to eat." He said, "Well, I didn't hear that. Don't you see the benefit that this has had to me? This honey has restored me and energized me." And so you have, at the beginning, three pictures of the Word of God, verses that we're in. The first is that it's valuable. Secondly, is that it's a picture of abundance, a picture of sweetness, a picture of being energized, and then third, it will talk about how God's Word protects us. When it talks about how your servant is warned, that word warned literally means to shine a light upon. The reason we have headlights in our cars is so as we're driving, we can

see the dangers, and we can see the obstacles, and we can navigate clearly. And the third picture of value at the end of our text this morning is that the Word of God shines a light so that we can see dangers and obstacles and see the path upon which we are to walk. So in this second part of our text, we find this beautiful, practical value. Right? That it shows us the world as it is. By this we're warned. The light of the Scripture is shown upon it. That it's sweet. It revives. It restores. It encourages us. It's a picture of abundance. And that it's valuable like gold. Now in the first part of our text, these three verses, seven to nine, David lists. And they're not just for our intellectual understanding, because they lead to the treasure, and to the

sweetness, and to the protection of the Word of God. And David, in these first three verses, seven through nine, that we're going to look at, he has a lot to say. It doesn't seem very long, but he says a lot about the Word of God. In fact, in these three verses, he gives us 18 things about the Word of God. He gives us six names for the Word of God, six descriptions of the Word of God, and six impacts of the Word of God. Now, I don't think we have time to unpack every detail, but I want you to see these sort of glittering facets of the Word of God. And they're all sort of connected and support each other. So I don't know if you've ever used a kaleidoscope. When I was a kid, you know,

it's a plastic tube with a little lens in it, a little filled with little bits of plastic, and you put your eye up and you twist it, and because of the mirrors, it creates all kinds of amazing patterns, and you twist it again, and a different pattern appears. You twist it again, and a different pattern appears. All the same parts, just as you look at it a little differently, it changes the beauty of that pattern. And what David does as he praises the Word of God is he holds it up, and he shows us the beauty, and then he'll turn it a little bit, and then we'll see some more beauty, and then he turns it again, and we see a little more beauty. Some people have compared this to the facets in a gem that sparkle as you shift and

move the gem. That's what David is doing with the Word of God. So we have these 18 different things, six different names for Scripture. You have law, testimony, precepts, commandments, fear, and rules. Six different descriptions: perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, and true. Six different effects: revival and restoration, wisdom, rejoicing, enlightening, enduring, and ultimately bringing us to righteousness. So we're going to take a very brief look at these sort of big six things that contain 18 sort of different parts. It starts like this: "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul." So I imagine probably most of us have never really been that excited when a new law is passed. We're like, "Hooray! New laws!" Now, Virginia, July 1st, a new law went into effect that your muffler on your car has to be the standard-sized

muffler for that car. And as a man who is getting older and more grumpy, older and more grumpy as I age, I'm all about this, right? It's like, you know, the guy who drives up and down the street just... It's like, "Hey, buddy, you can't do that anymore. July 1st, there's a new law." And I'm excited about it, right? But for most of us, we've never really been like, "Man, I'm really excited for some new." And so it seems a little strange to us when David says this: "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul." Right? We hear the word "law" and we think "rules." Now, that is certainly true of God's Word. He does contain very specific ways in which we are to live, very specific rules about life. But the picture of law here is more than just...

It does include rules, but it's more than that. Right? The picture here is also instruction. It's used over and over again in the book of Proverbs where fathers and mothers are taught to instruct their children in the way to live. Right? Part of that includes rules. Right? Don't do this. Do do this. But it's also a demonstration of how to live. And so the psalmist David, as he looks at the Word of God, he says, "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul." He's picturing a parent, a father speaking to his children and saying, "This is how you are to live. You avoid these things. You don't do these things. You do do these things. But let me show you, not just instruct you, but show you how to walk." And he says, "Unlike laws in our countries, this law is perfect."

Right? God is instructing us how to live. And look at what it says. It revives the soul. The picture there is that God's Word transforms us. Right? It's translated, depending on your translation, a bunch of different ways. Revive, restore, transform, refresh, convert. And all of these things carry with it the idea of changing our life. And not just in a superficial way. Right? Not just putting some paint on the house. Or changing the spark plugs and the oil in your car. But rather, a transformation at the very depths of the being. And David said, "One of the reasons we rejoice, and the Word of God is such a treasure, and it's so sweet, and it protects us, is because it instructs us on how to live." And it does so perfectly. And it transforms us in our soul.

The depth of our being. That the Word of God changes, transforms, restores, revives, strengthens, and helps us. You see, the purpose of the Word is not just to cover up the blemishes in our life or repair some small problems. But it's to completely and totally transform you. He'll say this next, "The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." And so David has now moved from talking about the transformation brought by the Word. He's going to turn us a little bit and see another facet of this, and he's going to talk about the truth of God's Word. And so what he says, "The testimony of the Lord is sure." Now, a testimony is simply a declaration of your witness, the things that you have seen or have done. And God, as He speaks, His words are sure.

And the picture behind this Word of being certain or being sure, the root of this Word is the picture of a pillar that supports a building that is made of stone and is strong, and it doesn't sway or move. And what David is saying is that God speaks His testimony as He speaks about life, as He speaks about creation, as He speaks about Himself, as He speaks about us. His words are like a pillar that cannot be moved. And what He is saying is the testimony of the Lord is sure, and it's so much different than ours. So when we talk about things, maybe we forget things. And not intentionally leave them out, but we forget. And then there's sometimes we do intentionally leave things out. And then there's sometimes we stretch the truth a little bit.

I've joked from time to time that I love going fishing because I can catch something this big, and by the time I get it home, I can get it up to being this big, right? And so sometimes, in order to make ourselves look better, we'll just stretch the truth a little bit. And then we've all experienced people who have completely disregarded the truth. And so when we hear somebody tell us something, usually we want proof. We want to verify, because we're used to things being forgotten, things being twisted, or things being outright lies. And what David says is that God's testimony is not like that. You can look at his track record of keeping his promises. You can look at how his word lines up with the world. You can look at the logic and the truth and the evidence that is behind it.

God's word is sure, and what it does is it makes us wise. What this simply means is it shows us how to live rightly in the world that God has given us. It shows us right. It shows us wrong. It shows us where we should be walking. It shows us how to live. Because we can trust God's word as a pillar upon which our life is supported, it shows us how to live. Third, he says, "The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart." And I don't know if you've ever been lost while you're driving somewhere. It's never a very good feeling to not know where you are. Probably two or three times a week, we'll go out of our house, or somebody will knock on our front door, and it'll be like a DoorDash food delivery driver or a pizza delivery driver, and they'll be like, "Hey, we brought food."

And it's like, "Well, this isn't for us." And I'll say, "What address are you trying to deliver to?" And they'll say, "You know, 104." I can't remember the name of the street, but it's right there behind us. And their GPS takes them into our parking lot and says, "This is the address." When in fact, they have to drive down to the stop sign, take a right, drive down to the cul-de-sac, and there it is. They've tried to deliver lumber. This week, they've tried to deliver pizza and deliver Chinese food because they're lost. And when you tell them where it is, you can sort of see a sense of relief, right? I know where I'm going. And if you've ever been lost, and then you've found where you're supposed to be, you know it's a feeling of joy and of relief.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The idea of precepts are God's commands and directions for life, right? The world we live in is confusing. How do we address the things that we aren't certain about? God shows us where to go. And when we find where we're supposed to be, it is a joyful thing. That the Word of God keeps us from being lost and from facing this life with uncertainty. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. It's very similar to what he just said, that show us where we're to live and how to live, and that is a joyful thing. But now he's giving us this picture of warning, right? We see rejoicing because we're not lost. Now we see that we are warned about the difficulties on the way, right?

That God's Word enlightens our eyes, and the picture is that it brings light. The 119th Psalm, which is a whole lot of verses all about the Word of God, says this, "Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." And when we take the dogs out late at night, have a little flashlight on Dodgers' collars' remote, so we can kind of see and watch, because my greatest fear, not to worry about the bunnies or the cats, but we have some skunks that have been inhabiting the neighborhood, and that's the last thing I want to do at 1130 at night, is try to get an 85-pound dog who's just tried to play, not grumpy about, but tried to play with the skunk. I don't want it, right? So I want to be able to see. And in a world filled with darkness, what the Word of God does

is it lets us see, and it warns us of danger and struggle. The fear of the Lord is clean and doing forever. So we're people who change. We have different preferences. Our preferences change over time. We have different hobbies. From time to time, we'll switch favorite restaurants. And I was thinking about this, as we've had a lot of kids in our house this week, right? So one time a child will love chicken nuggets, and the next they don't ever want to see them again. One time they'll love french fries, and then they'll never want to see them again, right? And their tastes don't always last. It goes from this to this to this. And we're the same way, right? What's our favorite place to eat one month might be different next month, right? The hobby that we're all in on right now, next year we may be into something else, right?

The job that we love, we may change. The place in the house we love, we may move, right? We tend to change what it is we think will bring us joy. And what you find is that sometimes it's not just that we change, sometimes the joy in has spoiled, has gone bad. And specifically, think about food. The reason food spoils is because one of two things: either bacteria has been introduced that began to cause that meat to rot and go bad, or fungus somewhere has been introduced, and you open the bread bag that you just got two days ago, and you look and there's green mold growing in your bread, and you've got to throw it out because it's ruined. The problem isn't the thing itself, it's what gets introduced into it, right? So we go to our favorite restaurant, and we have a terrible experience,

and we say, "I'm never going there again," right? We eat something, and all of a sudden maybe it's bad, or it doesn't taste good, and we say, "Well, I don't want that for a while," right? The brokenness of our world takes those things that we find joy in, and oftentimes spoils them. What you find in these words, the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The fear here is not being scared of the dark or of spiders, but rather it's a picture of worship and reverence, that we see God's greatness in our smallness, and we fall on our face in worship. And what the psalmist says is that it's pure and that it endures forever, meaning that there is nothing that can cause the worship of God to spoil, right? It doesn't go bad like your bread. It doesn't rot like meat.

It doesn't go bad like vegetables that start to get bad spots in them. It's a worship of God. It's the one thing that will not change if we see Him for who He is and what He has done. Unlike our restaurants and our food preferences, our hobbies, even the places that we live that change, maybe because something is bad that has happened, the worship of God, the psalmist says, will never change. Because it's clean, it never spoils, it never fades, and it never wears out. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether, right? Think about the rules that we sometimes have to endure, right? Some stifle us. Some are there to maybe, in our eyes, take advantage of us. Some are for gain, to raise money. Some have an agenda behind them. And what I've come to learn as I've gotten older, just because something is legally right

doesn't necessarily make it morally right, right? And so laws all the time that are maybe unfair or unjust, or allow something that is unfair and unjust. Laws with a motive and agenda behind them. And so we become suspicious of all laws and all authority. But look at what the psalmist says, "The rules of the Lord, first of all, are true, and they're righteous altogether." These rules just aren't just true, but they're good, right? Just like we say to our kids, right? Don't play in the road because it's for their good, not to hamper their joy. But these rules aren't just true and righteous in themselves, but they lead us into truth and righteousness. That if we seek truth and righteousness, the place to do so is in the Word of God. And so you have these six pictures that contain three parts each.

You have the picture of solidness, of transformation, of refreshment, of learning, of being warned. All of these different things show us that the Word of God is a treasure, that it's sweet, and that it protects us. But this Word of God also points us to another way that God has spoken to us. In Hebrews, the first chapter, it says this: "That long ago, in many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by our Father, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He also created the world." And He will go on to talk about how He is, the radiance of His glory. All of these wonderful things about Jesus. John begins by saying, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

Alright, you want to see real truth, real righteousness, real justice? We see it in the Word of God, but that Word points us to Jesus. Our hope. Our salvation. The one who has loved us. The one who has rescued us. The one who is helping us. The one who doesn't command us angrily, but rather, as every great leader has said, "Follow me, and I will show you the path upon which you are to walk." You see, the call to love the Word of God is also, for the Christian, the call to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Let's pray. Father, refresh our hearts by your Word. Strengthen us through your grace. Give us hope. Thank you for the light that it shines upon our path. The firm foundation that it puts under our feet. And help us, most of all, through your Word, to see your Son, who loved us, who gave his life for us, who rose again, and in whom we are saved.

Help us to seek and to pursue righteousness and truth and goodness. Strengthened by your Word, following your Son, and empowered by your Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We're going to stand and sing about the faithfulness of God. And one of the remarkable things about the Word of God is that we don't just have a Bible, but we have a Bible that has been faithfully passed down from generation to generation. A great treasure. So let's sing about God's faithfulness.

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father. There is no shadow of turning with Thee. Thou changest not. Thy compassions, they fail not. As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be. Great is Thy faithfulness, Great is Thy faithfulness. Morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed, Thy hands have provided. Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. Pardon for sin and the peace that endureth. Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide. Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. Blessings all mine with 10,000 beside. Great is my faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hands have provided. Great is my faithfulness hold on to me. I want to thank you for being with us this morning. We are so grateful that you are here with us. We'll be back here on Wednesday night for our Wednesday evening Bible study. We won't have ladies class this week, and are we going to do the week after, or do you want

to do the week after. So, not this week, but next week, sort of getting back into our normal schedule. Also, coming up this coming Saturday, we are going to celebrate Holly and her master's degree and Theo. We just did in general because he is a good dog. So, come join if you need an address. You can talk to Cody and Holly or Russell or to me and Rachel. We have that. It's also in the email I sent out this weekend, or this, yeah, earlier this weekend. Also, two Sundays from now, August 14th, we're going to have a cookout after church. We want to sort of celebrate Derek and Chrissy and the new baby that's on its way here in probably about a month. So, we're excited for that. So, come and join us. We're going to provide the meat. So, if you have a side dish that you like to make, bring some sides

and come and share in a time of fellowship and sort of celebrating Derek and Chrissy. One more announcement. This is a little more long-term, but sort of in theme with what we have done today. One of the things we're starting in September is kind of a small activity. We're starting with the kids, but we want to invite any adults who want to be a part of it as well. It's called the Bible Memory Project. There's one verse to memorize sort of each week, and they send you some little cards with the verses on them and a little bit of art, a sticker, and a little kind of wristband that has the first letter of each word so you can kind of remember the verse a little easier. So, for example, this week is, "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit," from Psalm 34, and sort of some tools to help you memorize some Scripture. So we're going to start that with our young people. We'd love to have any adults who want

to participate. So if you're interested in doing this, we're going to start the first week of September. With that, just let me or Rachel know so we can get a count of how many people who are going to be participating in that. So we're going to go ahead and pray. We'll read a verse from 1 John, and then we will sing the doxology. Father in heaven, thank you for Jesus and for grace. Thank you that you have saved us, and you love us, and you have equipped us with your word. Be with us through this week. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In 1 John, the fifth chapter, it says, "We know the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true, and we are in him who is true in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life." Let's sing the doxology.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him, above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Thank you. Thank you.