It’s a privilege to be with you this morning. My name’s Cory and I serve as the executive pastor here on staff. And it’s a blessing to continue our summer series through the Psalms with you today.

But before we jump into things this morning, I wanna share a personal story if that’s okay with you. My wife, Kelly and I, we have been married for 23 years. And yes, thank you, I’ll take it, right? So I married up and she puts up with me well. It’s a blessing. But during those 23 years, I would say, I kinda have developed this amazing skill. I gotta be honest with you.

Men, okay guys, I’m gonna talk with you for just a second. Men, I think we would call this a superpower, okay? Ladies, you might call it something else. So just hear me out for a second. What is this skill? What is this ability? What is this superpower, right? Well, it’s this ability to be fully engaged with what’s happening on the TV, right? To have Kelly enter the room, to tell me something, me never break concentration on what I’m watching. Never make eye contact with her. Never say a single word. And you already know where I’m going with this, right? And then have her say, you’re not paying attention to me. You’re not even listening to me. And I respond with, I heard you. She says, oh yeah? Then tell me what I just said. Engage superpower, all right? And I’m able to repeat back to her absolutely everything she just said to me. And then we’ll just leave the rest of the conversation inside our household for you guys to guess where that goes. So do I recommend this superpower in premarital counseling or marriage counseling? Probably not. Is it the approach that I would say is the wisest debatable at best? Still a superpower? I think so guys, I think so.

Well, this morning, maybe you’re not married and you have never had an interaction like that, but I bet almost all of us have been in a conversation where someone is talking the whole time and you haven’t been really listening. Or you’ve been talking and someone really hasn’t been listening to you. Maybe it’s your parents, a coworker, a friend, or someone you’re dating. Maybe it’s not a person at all, right? Maybe it’s our phones. Always buzzing, always calling for our attention. But somewhere in the background, something more important is getting drowned out.

So before we open up our Bibles this morning, here’s the question I want to ask all of us today. When was the last time you felt like God was actually speaking to you? Some of us today would say, hey, I don’t know if that’s ever happened. There’s others in the room that might say, it’s been a while. And still some that might say, actually it was this week. And here’s the thing that I hope we see today. The answer to that question has less to do with how much God is speaking and far more to do with how much you and I are actually paying attention to Him.

Which leads to our big idea for today. This big idea is there in your notes. We’re gonna put it up on the screen here. And it’s this, that God is constantly communicating through creation, through His word. And the question is not whether He’s speaking, but whether we’ve learned how to listen and respond.

And today we’re gonna be in Psalm 19. And after you fill those in, I invite you to go find Psalm 19 with me in your Bible or your Bible app. The Psalms are located kind of right in the middle of your Bible. And so as you’re making your way there, I wanna let you know that the Psalms are filled with poetry. They’re filled with imagery. They’re filled with a realness that’s relevant and relatable to you and I today. And in Psalm 19, Psalm 19 is a Psalm of David. David who was a shepherd turned king. David who spent time, a lot of time outside, a lot of time watching the sky. A lot of time reading the scriptures. And what he does in this Psalm today is actually lays out two ways that God communicates with you and me still today.

So I wanna walk through this Psalm together and we’re gonna start in verse one, where David writes, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the expanse proclaims the work of His hands. Day after day, they pour out speech. Night after night, they communicate knowledge. There is no speech, there are no words, their voice is not heard, their message has gone out to the whole earth and their words to the end of the world. In the heavens, He’s pitched a tent for the sun. It’s like a bridegroom coming from His home. It rejoices like an athlete running a course.” Verse six, he says, “It rises from one end of the heavens and circles to their other end. Nothing is hidden from its heat.”

So in these opening verses, right, we see some of that poetry, some of that imagery that I just referenced that the Psalmist like to use. And as we work through these verses this morning, this Psalm this morning, I wanna let you know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna kinda expound on some of the words David uses. Why? Because the Bible wasn’t written in English, News Flash, okay, the original language that it was written in, carries more depth than some of our translations show us on the surface. And so I wanna make sure this morning, we don’t rush past something that God intends for us to grasp.

And so with that in mind, Psalm 19 opens up here in verse one, right, showing us that creation is a megaphone. It’s a megaphone that is pointed at and it’s communicating with every single human being on the planet. In verse one, David says, The heavens declare the glory of God. And he goes on to say, The expanse, that’s another word for the sky, proclaims God’s work. The words declare and the word proclaim in the original language, check this out, mean to recount. It means to tell a story. It means to state something both emphatically and authoritatively. In these opening verses, David is saying, “Hey, the sky is not passively existing, rather it’s actively testifying.”

And that activity carries right into verses two and three, where David says, “Day to day pours out speech. Night after night,” he says, “they communicate knowledge.” David clearly tells us, right, that creation does not have an audible voice or audible words or audible speech. However, David is saying creation communicates a universal language, one that crosses every single culture, every language barrier, every generational divide, and reaches every single human being.

And then in verses four through six, David uses the sun as an illustration. He says, “The sun is like a bridegroom coming from his home. The sun is like an athlete that runs a race, and the sun rises from one end of the heavens and circles to the other end.” And he says, “The sun, nothing is hidden from its heat.” Why does David use the sun? Because it goes everywhere. Because nothing is hidden from its light. It’s not subtle. Everyone everywhere is aware of the sun.

So what David’s doing in these verses, his description of creation in verses one through six is this theological concept known as general revelation. Let me tell you what that means in plain terms. It’s the idea that God has embedded enough of himself in the fabric of creation that every single human being, regardless of where they grew up, when they grew up, what language they speak or what they were taught, has access to some knowledge of God just by existing in the world he made.

Romans chapter one says it like this. It says, “Since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power, his divine nature, have clearly been seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse.”

I wanna share a short story with you. This past April, NASA launched the Artemis II space mission, right? They launched a four-person crew on board the Orion spacecraft. They went 10 days and their task was to go around the moon and come back. Now, here’s what I want you to think about as I share this with you, right? Astronauts, okay? They’re not ordinary people, right? They’re the most rigorously trained, analytically minded. They’re scientifically credentialed. They have that more than any of the rest of us on the planet. And they’ve spent their entire careers learning to explain the universe through data and physics and what can be measured and what can be proven. But check this out. When they came back, they were interviewed by the media. And here’s what one of the astronauts said. He says, “We saw the sun eclipsed by the moon.” And he pauses. And then he says, “I’m not a religious person at all.” He said, “But what I witnessed was amazing.” He said, “It was otherworldly.” And then he described what happened next. He said, “When they got back to Earth, he sought out.” The only thing you could think to do was seek out the Navy Chaplain. How cool, right? And he said, “When the Chaplain walked into the room, he saw the cross on the Navy Chaplain’s collar. And this astronaut’s only response is he said he broke down, weeping in tears uncontrollably. Why? What happened to him up there?”

David tells us exactly what happened to him. And he wrote it 3,000 years ago. And it’s our first key point this morning. And it said, “Creation is not just beautiful. It’s communicating something.” Creation is not just beautiful. It’s communicating something. Creation is speaking, the skies, the stars, the complexity of a single cell. The fact that anything at all exists without words, without a voice, speaks loudly and clearly. And it tells us that God is there, that he’s powerful, that he’s creative, and that he’s worth paying attention to.

That’s general revelation. And it’s available to every single human being who has ever lived just by being alive in the world that God has made.

But here’s the deal. Although creation points to a creator, it does not provide the complete picture that we need. General revelation is real and it matters, but it has limits. Creation can tell us that God exists, but what it cannot tell us is his name, what he’s like at a character level, how he loves, how he wants us to live, his instructions to us. Creation cannot tell us what to do with the mess that we’ve made of our lives, with the guilt that you and I carry, with the relationships that we’ve broken. It cannot tell us what to do with the sin that separates us from God himself. For that, we need something more specific. And that’s exactly where David goes next.

Look at me with verse seven, please. He says, “The instruction of the Lord is perfect, renewing one’s life.” He says, “The testimony of the Lord is trustworthy, making the inexperienced wise. The precepts of the Lord are right, making the heart glad. The command of the Lord is radiant, making the eyes light up. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are reliable and altogether righteous.” Verse 10, he says, “They’re more desirable than gold, than an abundance of pure gold.” He says, “They’re sweeter than honey, dripping from a honeycomb.” Verse 11, he says, “In addition, your servant is warned by them, and in keeping them, there is abundant reward.”

In these verses, David makes a significant shift. And I want us to notice it. In verses seven through 11, David uses six different expressions to describe the Word of God. And here’s what we’re going to see. Each description is paired with something that it does. And what it does is not abstract. What it does, it has concrete outcomes in our lives. And what David shows us is that the Bible isn’t just impressive, but the Bible actually does something in us when we engage with it. It’s why Hebrews 4.12 says the Word of God is living and it’s active. So I want to walk through verses seven through 11 together and look at each description one by one.

The first description David gives us, expression that he gives us, is the instruction of the Lord in verse seven. The word instruction means to point, to direct, to show the way, or to guide forward. It conveys the meaning of receiving instruction from someone who is trusted. And check this out, someone who knows the path ahead. And David says this instruction is perfect, which means it’s complete, it’s whole. It’s without blemish and it’s without defect. And David says that when it comes to God’s instruction, nothing is missing, nothing is broken, nothing will let you down when you and I put our full weight on it. He goes on to say, what does this perfect instruction do? He says it renews or it revives one’s life or soul. And the word for renew is worth pausing on because it means to restore. It means to turn back. It means to bring back into something’s original existence what it was made for. It’s actually the Old Testament word where we get the word repentance from. So what David is describing isn’t just a nice emotional lift here, rather he’s describing restoration for us. He’s describing the experience of something that has wandered and it finds its way back home to what it was intended for. And he’s saying that the soul that engages with God’s instruction doesn’t just feel better, it gets revived, it turns back to what it was made for. And so I don’t know where you find yourself today. Some of us walked in here feeling pretty steady this morning. But I know some of us, some of us have walked in here exhausted in a way that’s hard to explain, right? Not from a lack of sleep, not from just being tired, but exhausted and worn out at a deeper level. That’s a soul that needs more than a good night’s sleep. And what David is saying is that the perfect complete will not fail you instruction of God is exactly what brings that kind of soul back to life. Not a program, not a formula, the word of God itself doing what it is designed to do for us. So that’s the first expression David uses.

The second is the testimony of the Lord, still in verse seven. And this word testimony carries the picture of a witness stand. It’s what God has confirmed and attested to regarding himself and all of us. It’s his account of how things actually are. And the word trustworthy here means not only what is firm, but what has been confirmed. It’s established, it’s reliable. Again, it’s the kind of thing that you and I can lean our full weight on without it giving way. Interesting side note, the word trustworthy here is where we get our word amen from. And what does this trustworthy testimony of the Lord do? David says it makes the inexperienced wise. Inexperienced means someone who is naive, easily influenced or pulled in different directions. David’s telling us that the reliable, sure witness of the word of God brings wisdom into our lives in anchor or a direction. Because we live in a world where nothing feels settled today. What’s true seems to change depending on who you’re listening to, what platform you’re on. And if we’re not careful, right, let’s just be honest, it’s easy to get pulled in different directions, to kind of get blown around on a day to day basis. It’s in those moments we don’t need another opinion or a fresh take on things. Rather we need the trustworthy testimony of the Lord, that his word is the answer to all of that. And access to God’s word doesn’t just inform us, rather it actually stabilizes you and I when things are getting crazy. Because it’s confirmed, it’s reliable, it’s true. God’s word is the fixed point that we should get everything else from and like measure everything else against. God’s word prevents us from getting tossed around by every new voice that gets introduced to you and I. That’s the second expression David uses.

The third is the precepts of the Lord in verse eight. A precept is a rule of personal conduct intended to guide our behavior and our decisions. It carries the meaning, this is so neat, of receiving specific instructions from someone who’s looked at your exact situation and knows exactly what you and I need. And David describes the precepts of the Lord as right. This word right is a road building word. It pictures a path that has been cleared, graded out, leveled and it’s straight so that walking is actually possible. Not necessarily easy, but navigable. Listen, I’m winning a bet right there. The team said there’s no way I’d pronounce navigable right when I was up here. So I got one. So pride comes before the fall. I’m sure I’ll mess up something here later. What do God’s precepts do? They make the heart glad, David says. They provide specific right instructions to know how to navigate our behavior and our life decisions. Because I don’t know, if you’re like me, I find myself all the time in something that feels generally complicated or confusing. It could be our relationships, a decision we need to make, a season of life where there’s no obvious path forward. What David’s saying is God’s specific instructions aren’t vague, they actually level the ground in front of us and they give us somewhere to put our footing to make the next right step. And that’s precisely what makes the heart glad because you know as well as I do, right? When we finally know what to do in a situation that’s been troubling us or confusing to us, right? All of a sudden, our heart settles. We’re unburdened all of a sudden. We’re kind of, we’re glad and there’s something worth to celebrate and have joy about, right? There’s freedom all of a sudden. That’s why David said the precepts of the Lord are right and make the heart glad.

The fourth expression David uses to describe God’s word is in verse eight. He says the command of the Lord. And this is the most direct word David uses in this whole list. It means to authoritatively commission or instruct. It’s the language of a commanding officer giving an order or a king issuing a decree. It carries personal weight behind it. This isn’t a suggestion from a distance. It’s a direct word from someone with both the authority and check this out, the relationship to speak into our lives. And that commandment David says is radiant, which means pure, clean, unmixed or uncontaminated. Think of water that has had all of the bad things filtered out from it. No sediment, no pollutants, no hidden agenda. And David says, here’s what this does. He says this purity produces clarity of vision. See in the ancient world when it came to failing eyesight or dim eyesight, it was a picture of confusion. It was a picture of being lost and not knowing what’s going on around you. So when David says, hey, the eyes are enlightened, it meant all of a sudden you can see the danger that’s around you before it arrived and that you can recognize the path in front of you that you should go. Here’s why this matters. The reason myself included, a lot of us struggle in our situations. We struggle to see clearly many times because we’re running them through filters that has too much mixed in. Often the things speaking into our lives, right? Sometimes there’s good intentions, but it’s mixed with a limited perspective. There’s wisdom sometimes, but it’s mixed with self-interest from someone else. There’s love, but it’s mixed with another person’s unresolved junk. There’s things that give us what we want to hear, but not necessarily what we need to hear. And that’s not a criticism, that’s just what it means when you and I go seek guidance from other human beings, the world, or in this day, AI, right? Contaminated input produces cloudy vision. You and I cannot see clearly when what we’re taking in is mixed with things that distort, but the radiant commands of the Lord do the opposite. They cut through all of the noise, they bring clarity, they sharpen our focus, they enlighten our eyes to see what’s actually in front of us rather than a distorted version of it. And David says it’s God’s word. God’s word is the one source with nothing mixed in. No ulterior motive, no hidden angle, just radiant, clean, uncontaminated direction from someone who knows you and I completely and wants our good entirely.

The fifth expression David uses is the fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord, this is the only entry here that describes an orientation toward God rather than a specific form of his word. And David’s not talking about terror or dread, it’s not that kind of fear. Rather, it’s a posture of someone who understands exactly who they’re standing in front of. It’s the feeling you and I would have if we walked into a room and suddenly realized that the most important, the most powerful, the most trustworthy person you and I have ever encountered is in the room and he’s fully aware of us. That orientation, David says, is pure. This word pure is the Old Testament word used for being set apart, being uncontaminated or fit for the presence of God. And David says, hey, this orientation toward God, it endures forever. David is letting us know that every other source of guidance in your life and in mine has a shelf life. Advice from a friend, it’s well-intentioned, but it’s limited. Cultural wisdom, always shifting, always changing, right? Even our own gut feelings change as we grow and as we change through the years. But David is telling us a great truth here that whatever was true in God’s word a thousand years ago is true today and it will be true a thousand years from now. In a world where everything feels like it’s changing faster than you and I can keep up, God’s word doesn’t move. God’s word doesn’t expire. God’s word doesn’t get outdated. It does not fade, it does not corrode, it doesn’t diminish. There is no shelf life to God’s word.

And lastly, verse nine, David says, the ordinances of the Lord. An ordinance is a judicial term and it comes directly from the courtroom. These are judgments, these are verdicts or rulings handed down by a judge who’s examined all of the evidence completely and rendered a decision. But the judge David has in mind, this is so cool, isn’t a detached or distant judge, rather this judge is God who created the courtroom, wrote the law, knows every party involved personally and has never once gotten a verdict wrong. Therefore, right, his ordinances are reliable, David says, which carries a meaning of having a foundation that does not shift, a promise that will not be broken, a person who you can build your life on. I thought this was so neat, it means this, it means something that isn’t just factually accurate, like a math equation, but it’s something that actually ups the ante by carrying a relational faithfulness in it. And because these ordinances of God, and they come from a holy God, a sinless God, David says they’re altogether righteous, meaning perfectly just, perfectly calibrated, nothing’s out of balance. And here’s why this one lands different for us. A verdict from a judge we don’t trust feels like a threat. But a verdict from a judge who is completely just, completely knowledgeable, and completely for your good and mine, that feels like relief, doesn’t it? God’s rulings come from someone who has seen everything, knows everything in your life, and has rendered a judgment that is perfectly calibrated for your actual good. No fine print, no catch, no hidden clause working against us.

So what we have in these verses here are our six different expressions that David uses to describe God’s word that paint a picture, check this out, not of a rule book, but of a living resource to address every dimension of our lives. And this is relevant to us, because let’s just be honest with each other. How often do we approach the Bible like a menu, where we go, “Hey, I’m gonna take this section, and I like it, so I’m gonna receive it. This is kinda tough, I don’t like it, so I’m gonna quietly move it aside.” And David is saying, the parts that challenge us aren’t the parts that are broken. They are the parts often working hardest on our behalf, that we can trust. David is saying we can trust all of God’s word, not just the parts that we feel comfortable with.

And so here’s the key point I want us to grasp from verses seven through nine. It’s that God’s word is active. It’s telling us who he is, how to know him, what he’s done for us, and how we should live. And what David describes in these verses is what’s known as the theological concept of special revelation. Simply put, it means God didn’t just leave us clues in creation, rather he spoke directly through the Scriptures written by men who were inspired and carried along by the Holy Spirit. This is why 2 Timothy 3.16 says God’s word is God-inspired, or God-breathed. Special revelation isn’t just God giving us more information, rather it’s God closing the gap. He’s closing the distance. It’s the difference between having knowledge about someone and actually knowing who they are. So general revelation, right, it gets our attention. It introduces the idea of God, but special revelation introduces us to God himself.

And here’s what’s cool, when we understand these truths, we more clearly understand what David writes in verses 10 and 11 when he says, “Today, the Scriptures, God’s word, is more desirable than gold, that it’s sweeter than honey, that it warns us, and that it brings reward when we keep them.” And I gotta tell you, verses 10 and 11 are convicting every single time I read them. Because if I’m honest, I don’t always treat God’s word the way David describes it. Too often, my phone, my schedule, what’s streaming online, we’re sleeping in become more desirable than God’s word. But here’s why David’s words carry such weight. Some of you in this room right now, you’re 13, 14, 15 years old, and you’re still figuring out who you are. I’m 50 and I’m still figuring out who I am, right? But the world is throwing everything at you. A thousand voices every 15 minutes on social media or from your friends or the cultural pressures, all telling you who you should be, how you should be, what you should think, what you should not think. Here’s what David’s saying. He’s saying there is one source that will actually make you wise, not just informed, and it’s not TikTok. Some of us in the room, right, we’ve been in church our whole lives. And let’s just be honest, for some of us, the Bible’s become familiar. And sometimes familiar means we stop expecting it to do anything in our lives. And I wanna push back on that today because David is saying, hey, God’s word is still alive. It’s still active. It’s still renewing and reviving. It’s still enlightening. The question is whether we’re actually listening and paying attention and then letting it go to work on us.

So David has shown us in these verses how God speaks. And quickly, I wanna show you how he responds. Verse 12, David says, “Who perceives his unintentional sins? Cleanse me from my hidden faults. Moreover, keep your servant from willful sins. Do not let them rule me. Then I will be blameless and cleansed from blatant rebellion.” Verse 14, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

So here’s where this song gets personal. David has just spent 11 verses talking about how God communicates. And after listening, David responds. Let me briefly walk through his responses. There’s three of them.

His first response here is the honest self-examination. We see that in verse 12, where he says, “Who perceives his unintentional sins? Cleanse me from my hidden faults.” The word unintentional here is this multi-layered meaning that communicates sins that are committed ignorantly without knowing their sins. It means sins that are forgotten or unrepentant of. It means sins committed in our hearts but not acted on. And hidden faults, those words mean secret information. It describes details that if they were made public, you and I would be ashamed of. Hidden faults means things concealed from everyone except the individual or individuals it’s concerned. David’s saying here, “God, you’ve been speaking and I realize there’s ways that I’ve drifted that I’m not fully aware of, that I’ve sinned unintentionally, that I’ve hidden things deep down and not addressed with you.” And after listening to God speak, David responds in this honest self-assessment of his life, repenting and trusting God to cover David’s sins that he cannot see.

And then in verse 13, David takes this response to the next logical step and he makes a request for help with his known struggles. That’s verse 13. He says, “Moreover, keep your servant from willful sins.” He says, “Do not let them rule over me.” The willful sins are the things we do see, the things we do know about, sinful patterns we are aware of when you and I know better, when friends have warned us, don’t go there. When God himself and his word has warned us, don’t do that. When we’ve warned others not to do the same thing we’re about to partake in or when we plan out our sin. David is talking about the moments that are pulling us away from God. And his response again is repentance, praying, “God, I need your help with the sins I know about too, not just the hidden ones.” And he says, “Please, please don’t let them rule over me.” And David knew that through repentance, God was faithful and just to cleanse and forgive.

His last response is a desire for alignment. Verse 14 says, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Listen, here’s what I love about verse 14. I know many of us have it memorized, right? This is the entire Psalm in one sentence. David is saying, “Hey God, you’ve been speaking. Now I want my life, my words, my thoughts, the things seen and the stuff no one sees to be aligned and surrendered with what you God have said.” This is exactly what Jesus taught when he said, “Hey, for out of the heart, right? The abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” This is what Proverbs 4 references when it says, “Guard your heart above everything else because everything in your life flows from your heart.”

In these closing verses, David’s been listening to God communicate and he responds with an honest self-assessment, a request for help with his known struggles and a desire for alignment, all of which leads to our last key point this morning. The goal for you and I is not perfection, it’s alignment. It’s bringing our whole lives into step with what God has said. So creation isn’t just beautiful, it’s communicating something. God’s word is active, telling us who he is and how to know him and what he’s done for us and how we should live. And the goal isn’t perfection, it’s alignment, bringing everything in our lives into step with what God has said.

So here’s the deal, we’ve looked at 14 verses in this Psalm 19. Now the question is, what do we actually do with it? What do you and I do with it as we leave here today? I wanna quickly give us three practical things you and I can take with us and they come straight from what we’ve gone through today.

Number one, the first application point for us today is pay attention to creation differently. Now it might be weird for you or different, but here’s what I wanna challenge you with. This week, at least once, stop and acknowledge what you’re seeing in creation isn’t random, whether it’s a sunrise or a sunset, whether it’s a clear night where you can see the moon and all of the stars, whether it’s when we hit spring and all of a sudden everything comes alive again and the grass gets green and the flowers bloom, whether it’s that first warm day of summer that we all long for. And then when fall comes, the coolness of the air and the leaves begin to change. Or that first snowfall that covers everything and looks beautiful. Let it be what David says it is, a testimony to God. We must remind ourselves that creation is telling us something about God. His attributes, his power, his divine nature are on display. And so here’s what I practically mean by this, most of us, right, let’s just say it, most of us are moving through the world on autopilot. We see a beautiful sky and we go, hey, that’s nice and we just keep scrolling, right? What David is asking us to do is to pause long enough to let it be what it actually is, not just scenery, but a sermon, one that God has been preaching since the first day of creation to every single human being who’s ever lived, regardless of language, background, or where they’re from. It sounds simple, but when we start seeing it, paying attention to it, listening to it, it rewires the way we move through the world. We stop experiencing life as a series of random events and start recognizing the fingerprints of God are all around us, the one who made it all, the one who’s present in all of it. So what if we don’t just see the world this week? What if we listen? What if we let it speak?

Secondly, give God’s word a fair shot at doing what it says it does. Listen, a lot of us engage with the scriptures the way we eat fast food, quickly, on the go, not really tasting it, and then we wonder why our soul feels depleted. We wonder why our vision is still cloudy. We wonder why we can’t find our footing. Here’s the application step for us. What if this week you picked one verse, maybe one Psalm since we’re in the Psalms right now, and you moved slowly through it, slow enough to ask three questions. These aren’t in your notes, so I’m gonna move quickly through them, but just three questions when you go through the scriptures. What does this tell me about who God is? In light of who God is, what does this tell me about who I am? And is there anything here that I need to respond to? That’s it, just those three questions. Here’s what’s awesome about that. You don’t need a seminary degree. You don’t need a Bible with 4,000 footnotes in it. You just need to show up and actually taste it instead of rushing through it. Because here’s what David has been saying, this whole Psalm, the word of God is not just information. It revives the exhausted soul. It stabilizes us when we’re getting knocked around by life. It brings joy. It brings clarity for us. It brings the kind of deep settled trust that does not expire. But none of that happens if we don’t slow down long enough to actually engage with it. So give it a fair shot this week and see what it does in your life.

Lastly, pray verse 14 this week. Pray verse 14 this week. Just make verse 14 your daily prayer this week. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. You don’t need big words. You don’t have to have things all figured out in your life. You don’t even need to feel spiritual when you say this. So this is one verse. This one verse covers it. Your words, your inner life, your desire to be aligned with God, right? Because notice how David closes a Psalm. It’s easy to miss if we’re not paying attention. After all he’s brought us through, he doesn’t close with some big theological statement. He closes with a personal one. After 13 verses about the glory of creation and the power of God’s word, David lands the whole thing with getting personal. He says, what? My mouth, my heart, my rock, my redeemer. And here’s what’s so cool. That’s the move we’re all invited to make. We can admire the sky and never let it change us. We can read our Bibles and keep it at arm’s length or we could do what David does and make it personal. We, you, me, we can bring ourselves into it and say to God, I want my actual life, the words I say out loud, the thoughts no one sees to be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. So this week, pray verse 14. Not as a ritual, as surrender, and see what God does with that.

So here we are as we close. God’s not silent. He never has been. God’s constantly communicating through creation and through his word. And the question is not whether he’s speaking, but whether you and I have learned to listen and respond. And I gotta be honest, the gap is never on his end. The gap, the gap is always on ours. And most of the time I gotta tell you, it’s not a faith gap for us. It’s an attention gap. And so whether you’re that teenager still figuring out who you are, or you’re 70 years old and been following Jesus for decades, this psalm has something for you. The shepherd, David, who watched the night sky, the king who led a whole nation, looked at creation and looked at God’s word and said, “God, I want my whole life to be a response to what you’ve said.” And that’s the invitation for us today as we close. Not to try harder, not to have it all figured out, but just to start paying attention to listen, really listen, to slow down with God’s word and to make it personal. God’s voice does not get quieter as the world gets louder. He’s still speaking. Through every sunrise, we almost scrolled right past. Through every page of scripture, we haven’t opened in a while. Through this morning, right here and right now, we just have to learn, and maybe right now, relearn how to tune in and how to listen.

So as we close, that’s what I wanna do right now. I wanna close the way David closed, not with a summary, not with a challenge, but with a prayer, making it personal. So let’s bow our heads right now. And I wanna lead us in a prayer that just kinda goes through verse 14.

Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning and we come to the end of this psalm, the same way David did, not with all the answers, but with a desire to be aligned with you. God, we admit today, we see your signature in the world that you have made. We’ve heard your voice in the word, the Bible that you’ve given us, and we recognize that you’ve never stopped speaking, God. We confess, we just have a hard time slowing down long enough to listen. So today, we ask for that. We ask that the words we speak to the people we love, to the people who challenge us, to ourselves in the quiet moments, would be acceptable to you. We ask that the meditation of our hearts, the thoughts we carry, or the fears that we rehearse, the hopes we barely let ourselves feel would be acceptable to you. God, you’re our rock. You’re our Redeemer. God, you’re unchanging, you’re unmovable. You’re the one fixed point in a world that feels like it shifts underneath our feet constantly. But again, Lord, you’re our Redeemer, which means you’re not done with us yet. May our lives this week be a response to what you’ve said. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

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