Church on Morgan
June 7, 2015 | Psalm 19
Our reading today is Psalm 19. "The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech nor are there words. Their voice is not heard, yet their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy and like a strong man runs its course with joy. It's rising as from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them and nothing is hid from its heat. The law of the Lord is perfect reviving the soul. The decrees of the Lord are sure making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous all together. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Morever by them is your servant warned and keeping them there is great reward. But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from the insolent. Do not let them have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. The word of God for the people of God. Thank you, Bridget. In the band and Kylie, I don't know if I think I'd like to pay them to come get me out of bed in the morning, especially that whole prayer bit thing we did. I don't know if it was as strong back there as it was right here, but I needed that this morning and God's good. So Bridget just read for a Psalm 19. We're beginning a brand new series as you see here. Beautiful things. The summer series about God's good earth. C.S. Lewis who wrote The Chronicles in Narnia and lots and lots of other incredible works said that Psalm 19 is the greatest Psalm ever written. I don't know if we're supposed to judge scripture against scripture, but he had no problem doing it. He said this is the best. This is David's finest work. What you just heard read and he even said I think it may be the greatest lyric in all the world. This was C.S. Lewis take on the passage that we just heard read to us this morning. It opens up with a phrase that maybe you've heard before and it closes with the phrase. It opens with the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament, his handiwork, right? It's a powerful idea that the created order speaks about God's goodness. It says, "A poor's fourth speech day and night." It never stops. Creation is always telling us a message. It is always telling us a story and the story is that God is good. Sometimes we fail to hear it, but that story is present and so for the next the summer really, for the next two and a half months, we're going to slow down and pay attention to the story that creation tells. Each week we'll pick up a different artifact, a different thing that God has put in this amazing place that we call home. We're going to slow down long enough to see the beauty in it and what God might have to say to us through these things that he's put around us. When I started thinking about this series I was reminded of, and guys check this out, I got a new toy, so I'm good because I got a lot of slides this morning. I know, I'm sorry. You guys have been doing a good job, but here we go. I want to tell you, this here is some artwork from my son Levi. A year ago he hated drawing. He's like me as OCD type A. I've got to get it right and if it can't be right, I'm not going to do it at all. He got so frustrated and so we got him in an art class and for the first month they were like, "You may need to put your kid in counseling." He would come and throw chairs and kick stuff and we just hung in there and a year later he loves art. I should have taken a picture of his room, but he's covered every surface in his bedroom with drawings and paintings and this is kind of what he wants to do all the time now. A couple weeks ago someone in our community has cancer and is going through chemo and the rest and so Levi drew a picture for him, much like one of these. It was time to give it to this family and my wife says to Levi, she says, "You know, Levi, don't you want to write your name on it so they know who it's from?" And without sort of a moment's hesitation, Levi said, "Mom, he's going to know who it's from." Everybody knows I'm like the best drawer, right? And when I heard that I thought, you know, I think that's kind of like sort of what we're getting at. Like the swagger that God has in creation is I don't even need to sign my work, you should know where this came from. And so Elizabeth Gilbert, any of you all read Eat Pray Love, this sort of big memoir. The truth is she's a great novelist. I heard a podcast this last week that she did with Rob Bell, but one of her, a novel that came out after Eat Pray Love that not as many people read, but it's probably twice the work. It's over 700 pages long, but it's called The Signature of All Things and she gets the title for her novel from this ID here. I wanted to give you a quote from her work. And it says this, she's telling the story, she says, "The old cobbler believed in something he called The Signature of All Things, namely that God had hidden clues for humanity's betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Bame claimed. Bame was a sixteenth century German mystic theologian, but this was his idea, The Signature of All Things, containing proof of our creators' love, creating proof of our creators' love. There's a sense that God's signature is on every created thing that we look around if we would just have eyes to see it. It's more than just a tree, it's more than just a flower, it's more than just a piece of fruit. There's a message here for us. And be careful what you put on social media because I will follow you and steal it. I told Corey when he walked in the room today, I got, I'm featuring you. But about a month ago, it was, I don't even know, it felt like it was the middle of the week or something, but all of a sudden I get this, I see this pic from Corey and like paradise. I'm like, "Where the heck are you?" And apparently for us who haven't lived here our whole lives, I'm going to give away the secret. Locals already know about this, but there's a place called Shell Island. It's on the northern end of Ritesville Beach and at Low Tide, it sort of, it's this beautiful sort of, I don't really know how to, so I went a week later. But this was a picture that Corey had taken, it was like the cheapest trip to paradise ever. And this is just Corey's dog playing out there in the ocean. And what grabbed my attention about this is that he left a comment and the comment says there's a lot to be thankful for in this life. Right, you think about that, that's fascinating. Like he didn't say, "This is my dog, what's your dog's name?" This is my dog Coco, right? Or having a good time at Shell Island, or, you know, what a clear day. Look at these waters. No, he says there's a lot in this life to be thankful for. It's like what is the connection? Right, there's like how in the world does a picture of the ocean lead to this deep sort of sentiment about sort of gratitude and the life that we've been given. It's a reminder, right, that there is a signature on all things. And if we would slow down long enough to see it, we might learn something about God and this world and ourselves. So this morning for a couple of seconds, we're going to kind of do this together. It's just so this this may totally bomb, but it's all right. We're going to we're going to work through it, fail big. But I'm going to show some pictures of creation. And I want you to do some crowd participation. I want you to just call out. What does this image reveal about the character of God? There's no right or wrong answer. So all the type A, OCD engineers in the room, this is going to kill you. All the poets, we need your help. All the artists join in, right? But we just got a few here. So what does this image tell us about the character of God? Somebody be brave and help us out. Get us started. Peace. God is peace. Majesty. Intricate. Strong. What about this picture? What does this tell us about the character of God? Yeah. Sensitive, beautiful. Freedom. Freedom. What about this picture? What does this tell us about the character of God? Overwhelming, powerful, vast. A lot of sand. What does this picture tell us about the character of God? Peace. Constant. Gentle. What about this picture? What does this tell us about the character of God? Detail. Creative. Deep. What about this? Showing off. Yeah, just. Okay, okay, we get it. So in this morning, I kind of want to just introduce the series, right? And there's two, everybody in the room is going to fall into, I think most of us will fall into one of two camps and I kind of want to challenge both of those camps and convince you that this is a worthy sermon for 13 weeks, right? So first, to my dearly beloved, I've been in church every Sunday since I was six months old and I've taught 47 Bible study people, right? I know that when we start sort of getting into this realm of looking at creation and how creation might reveal something about God to us, some of us get real nervous, right? We get kind of like geeked up a little bit about like, what about scripture, right? And when are we going to talk about the Bible? And that seems like a little bit sort of out of maybe what's prescribed or safe or what we should be doing, right? Why would we spend so much time thinking about rocks and trees and you're starting to make me nervous? It sounds kind of liberal, right? So here, I want to just sort of prove to you a couple of things. One is that God invites us into this. This is actually God's address to Job in the 12th chapter. He says, here's what he tells Job, he goes, I want you to ask the animals and they will teach you. The birds of the air and they will tell you, ask the plants of the earth and they will teach you. And the fish of the sea will declare to you, who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? And his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being. This sounds a whole lot more like Pocahontas, right? It's just you can sort of, and yet here it is. In fact, one of the great sort of Indian sort of proverbs I've heard is the Native American culture really wants to cultivate a sense of reverence for creation. So one of the questions that a leader in that culture will often ask sort of a younger person to gauge where they're at on spiritual maturity is they'll take them over to a tree and they'll say, now you know you didn't make this, right? And depending on their response to whether they made the tree or not or what they think about that or how much of a rebuttal they make, that will give them a big indication of how mature they are. Somebody who's stopped and listened and paid attention to the place, ran in and realized the grandeur, majesty, mystery, peace, gentleness of God. God calls us to listen to these things, to pay attention to these things. And I love this quote by Barbara Brown Taylor in a book called An Altar in the World. If you've never read this book, this incredible read, I'd take this in your satchel to the beach this summer. But not only does God invite Job to do it, but Jesus models it for us all the time. And this is what she points out. She says, Jesus sermons were full of seeds and fish and lilies and birds. He had a knack for looking around him and using it to uncover, to reveal something about God's nature. Every created thing was fraught with divine possibility. Wasn't that what he was telling them? Every ho-hummed detail other days was a breadcrumb leading them into the presence of God, if they would just pick up the trail and follow. It was just this beautiful reminder that Jesus did this. Everywhere he went, he was fully engaged in his environment and he would go, you asked me a question, let me tell you about this rock. Let me tell you about that bird. It's kind of like a tree. Have you ever sat there and thought about this? This is how Jesus did this. I just, for the hyper-nervous, maybe not real sure what's this whole, this environmentalism and talk about earth and sea and land and sun and mother river and all that kind of stuff. I want to assure you that God has invited us into this, and there is a distinction to be made there. Psalm 19, a lot of scholars believe that it was David's riff on a pagan hymn to the sun. Some people worship these objects, the sun. That's not what we believe we believe they testify on behalf of God. We're going to listen to them. We're not going to worship them, but they are worth listening to. To the other crowd in the room, my tree huggers and my stargazers, you guys are like, get them. Finally, it's about time somebody paid attention to this stuff. But there is one challenge that I want to offer to that crowd. The truth is this may be lost because the folks that I'm really speaking to may not be here this morning. This is, I think officially the last sorry, not sorry, kind of text. These aren't my words or someone else's, but I think they do speak. Lillian Daniel is a pastor in Chicago. She wrote this letter. I think it was in the Washington Post. It was like an op-ed deal to this crowd that considers himself spiritual, but not religious. She kind of let them have it. She belongs to our generation, us millennials or whatever. But as a pastor, she said, I want to help you think about what you're saying when you say spiritual, but not religious. She tells the story of being in an airport and a man coming up to her and saying basically, I grew up in the church and the faith and the rest, but I'm not anymore. I'm spiritual, but religious. Let me tell you your story. Let me tell you my story why I don't go to church anymore. To which she sort of asks like, what's the deal with that? Do people come up to teachers and say like, I hate it first grade. Let me tell you why. But people just think they can come to pastors and say, hey, look, I hate a church and this is why I don't go. I just want you to know. Great. Okay. But anyway, so this guy, he tells her I used to go to a church and with my wife and then we got a divorce and she sort of got the church and I quit going and he says, the marriage ended and now that church really felt like my wife's. So he found himself spending his Sunday morning sleeping in, reading the New York Times or putting on his running shoes and taking off through the woods. This was his religion today, he explained, I worship nature. I see myself in the trees and in the butterflies. I am one with the great outdoors. I find God there and I realize that I am deeply spiritual, but no longer religious. He dumped this news in my lap as if it were a controversial hot potato, something that would shock a mild-mannered minister never before exposed to ideas so brave and different and daring. But of course to me, none of this was different in the least. This kind and well-meaning Sunday jogger fits right into mainstream American culture. He is perhaps by now in the majority, all those people who have stepped away from the church in favor of what? Running, newspaper reading, Sunday yoga or whatever they put together to construct a more convenient religion of their own making. I was not shocked or upset by the man's story. Naturally, I've heard it a million times before, so often that I almost thought I could improvise the plot line along with him. Let me guess, you read the New York Times every Sunday, cover to cover and you get more out of it than the sermon. Let me guess, you exercise and where do you find God? Nature and the trees. It's always the trees during a long hike, a long run, a walk on the beach and don't forget the sunset. These people always want to tell you that God is in the sunset. Like people who attend church wouldn't know that. Like we are these monkish people who've never heard of all those Old Testament Psalms that praise God and the beauty of natural creation. Like we never leave the church building. God in nature, really? It's all over the Bible. We hear it every Sunday, but these folks always seem to think they invented it. And this went viral and then it became a book and nobody had really stood up to the spiritual but not religious tribe. Most of us tried to cater to them. Lillian took it head on and the book's pretty fascinating. So I think in that context to the sort of New York Times, I am already out in nature instead of going to church on Sunday crowd. If somebody accidentally got dragged in here this morning off the wooded trail, I think my message to you in this series would be that on one hand you're right. And that's not news to us. We've got a great book, the Bible that tells us that God's signature is on all things. We've been sort of in this world for a long time, but that also doesn't mean that we don't sort of show up and worship. There isn't something meaningful here. We can take a walk in the woods this afternoon and many of us will. But the reason we arrive here is that while God may reveal God's self in all of creation indirectly, we also believe that God revealed Himself to us personally, directly in the Scriptures. That God reveals Himself to all the world in these two ways, all through creation but also through His Son, through the Scriptures. And so every Sunday we gather to remember that. And that's the beautiful part about Psalm 19. The first half is all about creation. And then there's this weird, like abrupt pivot. At verse 6 or 7, we're all about creation in the sun. And the next thing you know, the Psalmist is talking about the law of the Lord is so beautiful and wonderful and you're like, what? It's the deal. How do these two things go together? And David was making this sort of realization. The God reveals Himself to us in both ways, in Scripture and in nature. In nature, generally, we can grasp at it. We often don't have ears to hear it but in Scripture directly. He helps us. The Scriptures help us understand the profound nature of our lives. And so one of the ways that David does that is in the Psalm, he uses the same Hebrew word for speech, a mare. A mare is the Hebrew word. He uses it to talk about how the trees and the sun and the rest, how it speaks, it a mares. And the same thing, he uses the exact same word to talk about the Scriptures, that the Scriptures a mare. And they're complementary but they say different things. And so, for instance, in the first seven verses of the Psalm, it talks a lot about creation, but in the second seven verses of the Psalm, it names God's personal name, Yahweh, seven times. A tree can't tell you the name of God. Only God can, right? Only the son of God can. And so in this series, we're going to try and hold both together. We're going to pay attention to who God is and how God's revealed Himself in all of the created order, but we're going to use the Scriptures as we do so to enlighten our approach, to give us access to things we couldn't figure out on our own. That it makes sense that you still made the decision this morning to show up in church, even though all of creation is telling the story of God, right? It's a good and right thing for us to do this. And so the big point that I want to make this morning is just simply this, you don't have to choose. We don't have to choose. Whether we're people who love creation or we're people who love the Scriptures, whether we're people for science or we're people for God, right? We don't have to choose. You can have the Sermon on the Mount and the Magnolia trees. You can have both of them. And that's the kind of people, that's the kind of church that we want to be. And so my prayer for you this morning is that this week and over the course of the series, that you would slow down long enough to see and to hear the ways that God's speaking all around us every day, and that you would slow down long enough to open the Scriptures and to read and be reminded of God's good story, and that these two things would come to be seen by you as complimentary and not against one another. Does that make sense? So let me offer a word of prayer and then we're going to stand together. God, thank you for such an incredible place to live. What an amazing world that you made for us. It's just drenched with your glory. I'm reminded of this quote that Barbara Brown Taylor says that this whole world is full of divine possibility, so much so that it's any wonder that we don't trip over altars all day long, that we don't bang our shins on all the beauty you've laid out in this world. We pray that you would make us a people who have eyes to see that, that you would open us up over the summer, that we would walk slower. You would restore that child like wonder that turns a rock over and over and over again wondering about the one behind it who made it all the goodness of you God. We thank you that you didn't just put us in a place with no script, but we also thank you that you didn't just give us a script in no place, but that you've given us both that we don't have to choose and that you're using this world and your word to shape us and form us into the kinds of people who would more look and live like you. Thank you God. Thank you for this morning, all the beautiful moments we've already shared together and worship. We're reminded of just how good you are every time we open our eyes. We love you Lord and it's in your name we pray. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]