Hey guys, welcome across all of our locations. Man, I want to tell you, Jennifer Weisman is a really interesting person. I got a chance to know her through a Science and Faith Forum that was hosted by our Seminary and they brought in different scientists from all over and different pastors from all over and I got a chance to hear from her.
So check out the rest of that interview. That's gonna be on our YouTube page and you'll be blessed by it. But man, what she was talking about and even the songs that we sang, God of Wonders, that is exactly where we're going today. So if you have a copy of scripture, take it out and turn with me to Psalm 33. As you guys are turning to Psalm 33, let me do this. I got to do two things real quick and then we're gonna get to the scripture and get to the get to the text, alright? The first one is, we've been trying to get the time to talk about this and finally we're just gonna have to do it now, alright? And that is, many of y'all have seen the rotating slide and people have been asking me about is Mercy Hill going to go into Israel, taking a trip to Israel and we are in 2026, alright?
Really cool. I've never done this before. I know some of you have but virtually, if not literally, every mentor in the faith that I have in terms of like pastors of churches that we learn from, they have all done this and they all push me to do it and I've never done it. I'm not a huge travel bug kind of guy but they all say the same thing about going to Israel and that is, after you go you will never read the Bible the same again and so we're gonna do it, y'all. We're gonna do it in 2026. If you have any interest, we have an interest meeting on June 1st and July 20th, alright? So June 1st and July 20th.
I should have had that as a slide but it's not, that's my fault but June 1st, July 20th at 2 30 you can check that out and make sure that you get a chance to just hear what it's all about. I think this trip, listen, this trip is not a mission trip, okay? Just be clear. It's not a mission trip. It's a maturing trip. It's about our own faith. It's about our own kind of spiritual journey and we want to kind of go from the pages of Scripture to the places themselves, alright? So if you want to step into that story and kind of see it for yourself and be immersed by that, I'd love to have you go with us next year. The other thing I need to do real quick is I need to celebrate something that we have just not done.
It's been a couple weeks. We've got a lot going on. Guys, Easter was amazing and God did so much through us preparing the jars. Easter at Mercy Hill is not something we do. It is something we do, all of us, in terms of preparing the jars for what God's gonna do and that's what happened, man. We need, I told you we needed 1200 people to step up and serve if we were going to see the type of numbers that we thought God would bring and we did and we did, alright? And so, guys, we saw well over 7,000 people attend Mercy Hill that weekend. Over 200, praise God. Guys, over 200 people got baptized that weekend, the week after, and we had over 400 first-time guests.
Yeah, let's praise God for it one more time. Hey, people say this all the time as Mercy Hill grows. They're like, man, it's kind of getting all about the numbers.
I'm like, oh no, you have it wrong. It's always been about the numbers, okay? Since the first day I moved to Greensboro, it was about the numbers because every number represents a person and people are priceless to God and that's what it's about, man. It's about the mission.
It's about opening up the doors so that people can come in. So make no mistake, God loves numbers. He named a whole book of the Bible after numbers, okay? He loves numbers because numbers represent people.
It's not about the number. It's about the people that are represented and so when I see what God is doing here, man, my heart is just thrilled and we can't, you know, we want to see more. We want to see God grow everything that we're doing. Every person has a story. Every story matters to God.
There's a plan, a purpose, a destiny for every single one of them. You guys remember last week, they showed this really embarrassing video of me getting dusted in a race. Do you guys remember that?
Now, to be fair, I have boots and jeans on, okay? Which probably doesn't matter when you're literally racing an Olympic athlete but you guys know Daniel. He's the two-time, he's the, you know, won the silver medal this summer and he kind of introed our sermon last week. Guys, he got baptized at Easter.
How cool is that? Praise God, right? And he beat me so bad in the race, if I'd have been the one baptizing, I might have kind of held him down a little longer to give him a little scare but no, he was awesome guy and man, this is crazy.
Him and his family have signed up on the launch team and they're actually going to Greenhouse Church so it's just an incredible story. So hey guys, Easter was great. Alright, Psalm 33, this is where we're gonna be. Man, I love this Psalm. I love the Psalms in general. The Psalms speak a language that we almost can't even, we need the words of the Psalms to help us form the things that are in our hearts before God. Y'all, the book of Psalms and the book of Proverbs, I feel like are, they're totally different but they are two of the greatest treasures in all the world to me and I think hopefully they will be to you.
We have got this thing at Mercy Hill. I've been here for 12 years and I have this vision of preaching something out of every Psalm in the whole Bible and so we're doing, we're going back to that now. We're gonna do six or seven of these this summer and so we're gonna be diving into Psalm 33. Here's the book of Psalms in a nutshell. Y'all, the Psalms help us respond rightly to a world that we don't control. Alright, things happen and those things end up down the line creating feelings and emotions in us.
Stuff happens, the way we think about it creates feelings and in those feelings, they are sometimes, they're the right response, sometimes they're the wrong response but much of our response to God is emotive and this is the thing, y'all, we live in a world that says follow your feelings no matter what but that fails to take into account that every single part of us, every square inch of us, soul and body, y'all, we are fallen creatures and so there's there's nothing that we can just follow blindly. We can't follow our logic blindly. We certainly can't follow our emotions and our hearts blindly because we are fallen creatures.
The culture says follow your heart. The Psalms try to form our hearts. They try to form the right responses before God.
The world says you need to let your heart lead out. Well, the Bible I think kind of helps us see maybe our heart needs to learn, not just lead us but learn and learn the right responses before God. This is what the Psalms help us do. They help us do emotions in a God-honoring way. The Psalms do not silence our emotions.
They don't silence our feelings. I think that is an immature view of the faith that you just slap a smile on it and keep moving because we're all sort of the happy-go-lucky Christian. I don't find that in Scripture. What we find in Scripture is a deep hope that ends up forming and reframing our thoughts and that ends up reframing the way that we feel in this world. We can do joy, gratitude, anger, grief. We can do those things in a God-honoring way or a non-God-honoring way and I think much of the God-honoring way has to do with us learning how to do those emotions as we as we learn from the Psalms and are shaped by the Scriptures.
Now, the Psalm that we're coming to today that I think will help shape us in great ways is Psalm 33 because here's the big idea of Psalm 33. God's greatness shines in His creation and as God's greatness shines in His creation, guess what else happens? We shrink. The things that we think are so big and grand and right in front of us, the things that we can't even see God, we can't even see others because this thing is right in front of me and it's huge. Well, when we begin to understand the vastness of the universe that God spoke into existence, there is a what one theologian called a holy shrinking effect where we begin to kind of reframe the way that our our life fits in, we begin to reframe the way that our kids, our jobs, everything starts getting put in perspective when you start to realize how big and grand God is and how He has created everything including us for His glory. I don't know about you guys but I have had times in my life and I was thinking about this going all the way back to being a kid, I've had times in my life where hitting a home run was the biggest thing in the world.
You guys remember that? Remember times in my life where fitting in was the biggest thing in the whole world. I remember times in my life where getting the grade was that, well actually that was never really the biggest thing, okay, so you know making a team, biggest thing in the whole world.
You move on and it moves on, it matures, getting the approval of a boss, having children, getting married, seeing those children succeed, getting maybe maybe getting a raise, starting a business. I don't know what it is but you understand what I'm saying, right? There are times in our life where there's a thing and it is so big in our life. You know how that happens?
You know how a thing becomes that big? Some kind of way we forgot that God is big and all of a sudden that thing begins to get really big and now, man, God is kind of shrinking away. You know what Psalm 33 does? It enters into that moment, disrupts kind of the thoughts and feelings and introduces the truth and that truth is, man, we are all here for Him. He's not here for us, okay? We, you know, He created us in His image, not the other way around.
This universe is so vast and every single part of it is there to breathe out the glory of God and testify to His greatness as the Creator and if we get that in our mind, I think it will help reframe some of the other things in our life. Psalm 33 says this, shout for joy in the Lord, oh you righteous. Praise befits the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Make melody to Him with the harp of ten strings.
Sing to Him a new song. Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts for the word of the Lord is upright and all His work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.
And this is verse 6 and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna break this up but I'm gonna give him a six, seven, eight here in just a minute. But look what it says. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and by the breath of His mouth, all of their hosts. Now, look what it says.
You still got your eyes in the text. I want to show you something verse five. He says this, verse four, sorry. For the word of the Lord is upright. All His work is done with faithfulness.
He loves righteous righteousness and justice. The earth is full of steadfast love and by the word of the Lord, the heavens are made. Now here there's, there's four things in this.
Okay? You have the word of the Lord, you have the work of the Lord, you have the love of the Lord, and you have the world of the Lord. Now those four things shine through this part of the Psalms, this part of the Psalm I should say, and those four things should cause in us a reaction. They should cause in us a response.
Why? Because God is a creative God. His work, His word, His steadfast love, His world. What the Bible is saying here is because of what we have seen God do in His greatness.
As a creator, not just for the creation, but that God is a creative God. That what should happen in our life is we should sing a new song. We should respond by singing a new song to the Lord. Now there's one thing I want to mention in this, and I've taught our church this before, this passage is about a response that comes from thinking about God and His greatness, but you know what else, you know what else is true? Worship songs and singing and praise also help us remember that as well.
So I don't want to think it's always response. Sometimes it is a pathway to remembering, you can say it like this, we worship to remember and respond to God's marvelous works. Sometimes our worship, our singing of a new song, as what verse three said, some of that is a product of I'm overwhelmed by who God is.
Some of it is a pathway to get back to the place of being I know who God is and I'm blown away by who He is. You guys know our story with our fourth child, adopted daughter, Faith Ann, you know, just a bright star in our life, but she deals a lot of things and one of the things that she deals with is, well she has Down syndrome, she has other things going on too, that creates a lot of delays in her life. So she's three or four years old, she's never walked, she's kind of, no she's eight, she's walking now, but at three or four years old she wasn't, she kind of scoot around and crawl and that kind of thing, but man she's three years old and not really ever standing up and one night we prayed in our community group earnestly for my daughter to walk and we got home and if I'm lying I'm dying, the girl popped up and took three little wobbly steps like Frankenstein right across the floor, okay, and then she sat back down for the next three months, alright, because it wasn't her time, but then she popped back up and now you guys see her at the ridge at least, you see her running around on Sundays and stuff like that. The weekend and praise was robust. Man, I was remembering the faithfulness of God, remembering what he has done for this little child, remembering all the things that she faces and all the doors that seem like they've been slammed, but God keeps opening them and opening them and we praised God for that and then, you know what happened?
A couple years ago she got really really sick, she was sick for a month. We were in and out of the doctor, in and out of the doctor, finally man, Tess comes back, she's got pneumonia, we're down, we're at the at the hospital, man she goes way downhill the second we get to the hospital and we're there for three days and it was just really hard, it was a scary time, a dark time and during that time when I come into the congregation and to the assembly, I'm praising and singing to remember God's faithfulness. It's not even a response, I don't even have that. I'm broken but I'm singing to remember who God is. Now this particular passage, I want to talk more about the response side, is more about the response. What it's saying is in verse 1, you saw here's what it said, praise befits the upright. What that's saying very simply is, and I'll give you another translation here, another translation makes it easier, it is fitting for the upright to praise God.
What he's saying is, if people are right with God, if people are in an upright way, if people are trying to walk with the Lord, you know what's going to happen in their life? They're going to be a praising people. They're going to be a people who are so excited about praising and worshiping, why? Because they understand the greatness of God, what He has done in their life. It is befitting them. It fits them.
It's not contrary to who they are, it fits exactly with who they are. I've shared with you guys before, like my wife, Anna, is awesome but listen, she is from South Carolina by way of New York City, okay? The way she looks and the way she will dress and stuff and I tease her about it. She's like that country song, feels like Carolina, looks like California sometimes and what's funny is, she's a Southern as you can get, okay? I mean the girl won the beauty contest, the girl was Miss Anderson County, South Carolina. That makes you the queen of the South, in my opinion, okay? But she kind of has this flare where she can, you know, real modern and all that kind of stuff.
What's funny is, if something's going on with our vehicles or something like that and I've seen it and she'll laugh about this, how she'll pull up somewhere to the grocery store where we've had to switch vehicles and all of a sudden she jumps out of my 20 year old absolutely muddied up, scratched up, head-to-toe Chevy 2500, you know, big truck and she jumps out and people can see and they got this look on their face like, man, that doesn't match. That just doesn't quite fit up, you know? And what they're saying is, what Psalm 33 is saying is, that idea of not matching up, that happens when someone who claims to be upright is not a praising person because it says a praising, an upright person, they're befitting of praise. Praise is something that flows from them.
There's no, there's no mismatch. It should be, man, an upright person, praise is befitting of them because something is flowing out of them. Now, they've seen some things in what God has done and it makes them want to sing.
Look what it said. I told you the four things. For the word of the Lord is upright, all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice.
The earth is full of his steadfast love, number three. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth, all their hosts and the world is created. Now, in this message, I'm going to focus more on this idea of how understanding that God is the star breather, that he is the one who has made the vastness of the oceans and the grand state of the universe, that that is going to reform our heart. But what the Bible is saying here is these things, including creation that we're going to talk about, these things should make us a praising people. They should make us come to the assembly on the weekends and want to sing a new song and this is what you got to understand about new song too.
This is very important. Guys, you can sing a new song even if it has old lyrics. I see it every single week.
Man, we come in this place, we come in the ridge or you come to all of our different campuses and I'm going to tell you it's a mixed bag of people. You know why? Because some people are singing a new song with old lyrics. Some people are kind of acting as if they're singing a raggedy old song even if that song actually does have new lyrics. My point is we can sing a new song every time we come before the Lord because those songs before the Lord can even take on new meaning. We can praise our God in a new way. People sing a new song with old lyrics every single week right here in this place and you know what?
Every single week right here in this place, people also don't do that. I want to call you to it. I want to invite you into that. Man, some people you're newer to the faith, you're trying to figure it out. We've got people at our campuses every single week that are not believers and coming in with a group of people and singing, that feels weird to you and it should.
Okay, it's alien. It's from a foreign world but I'm going to tell you as you become a believer, as you step into the community, you know, your citizenship the Bible says actually switches to that foreign alien world and you begin to come and you begin to love that part and not just come for the sermon, you know, but you want to come and you want to hear and you want to listen and you want to sing and you want to join in the assembly. Y'all, we are wired to sing. It taps into us in a different way. Now, I'm going to do something here and listen, a lot of you guys, you come from a different tradition. I'm not alienating you. I don't want you to feel weird at all but I also know where we live and I know a lot of people that come to our church. If I asked you, hey, I want you to regurgitate word-for-word some sermons that you heard as a 10 or 12 year old kid, I bet you'd have a real hard time but if I do this and I want you guys to do it with me, okay?
Alright, you ready? Now, I know everybody's not gonna know this but if you do, join in with me, okay? Because he lives, I can face tomorrow. Because he lives, all fear is gone.
Because I know he holds the future and life is worth the living just because he lives. You give yourself a hand, guys. Y'all did great. Y'all did great.
I know not everybody at our campuses too. I know not everybody knows that song but here's the thing. You guys remember that.
You know why? Because God stuck something deep in your soul with that song. That's a song that I go back to all the time when I'm in fear, when something's hard.
I go back there. It's a weapon in my spiritual battle and God has given us that and what the Bible I think is trying to say here is for his word, for his work, for his love and now for his world, he has given us the ability to praise and it hits in a different way. We remember things. We express things in a different way and I pray and that'll kind of unlock something in you. Hey, let's praise our God over what he has done.
Now let's think about the world. One of the greatest ways that our hearts can be awakened to the reality of the greatness of God is when we see creation. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth all their hosts. He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap. He puts the deeps in storehouses and for that, look at verse 8.
Think about that. Okay, because of the vastness of the creation, because of the storehouse of the deep, let all the earth fear the Lord. All the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him for he spoke and it came to be.
He commanded and it stands firm. Creation should inspire awe in us. It is fitting for us to see what God has done and feel the holy shrinking of all of those different things that were in our life and allow our vision of God to grow. I could talk about mountains and I could talk about beehives and I could talk about all kinds of things that are jumping a tree.
I can talk about all kinds of things that are just unbelievable but I don't have to because the text talks about two that are pretty unbelievable and the first thing that he talked about was what? The vast expanse of the stars and the heavens and the magnitude of what God has created. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made. By the breath of his mouth, all their hosts, everything that is. And I want you to understand, I want to go through some things here that really matter. Guys, if this is true, we serve an uncontested God.
If he has spoken these things into existence, then there is no rival as the song sings, as we sing in the song. I don't know if you guys know this, the Sun is one million times the size of Earth. If Earth were a golf ball and I forgot to get a golf ball, I want to get, you know, this land we're standing on right now at the ridge was the golf driving range and some of you guys have never forgiven me for it, okay?
Because you love to hit the golf balls out here and we find them all the time. If the Earth was the size of a golf ball, okay, I want you to understand, you could fit nine hundred and sixty thousand of those golf balls in the Sun, that would mean like this, it'd be like the Earth is a golf ball, the Sun is about the size of a school bus. That's just one star. Then you think about just the galaxy. Guys, how big the galaxy is. So you got this Sun that is one million times the size of the Earth. If you took that Sun, I want you to think about the vastness of the distances that God has spoken and breathed in to creation. If you took that Sun one million times the size of Earth and you took it and shrunk it down to the size of one singular cell in your body, our Milky Way galaxy would span from East Coast to West Coast in the United States.
Now I want you to think about how big that could be. I mean, it's just unfathomable. It's like that the thing we talked about with Dr. Wiseman.
I mean, it's just it gets you into like, how could this, I can't even comprehend it. Y'all, light travels at a hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second. I want you to think about another galaxy, Andromeda, all right? And here's the deal, light travels at a hundred and sixty, a hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second. That means, that means, you know, that that means the speed of light lapsed the Earth in one second, seven times. Okay, that's how quick we're going around.
How fast, you know, how far can that speed go in one full year? That's what we're talking about when you start talking about a light year. And the Bible, not the Bible, science tells us, not the Bible, science tells us, man, this, the next galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away from us. Here's what that means.
If you just took a flashlight and you just shined it out at Andromeda, it would take it two and a half million years to get to Andromeda. And this is something that God has breathed out in one breath. And the Bible says that He holds it and sustains it by the word of His power. It ain't nothing to Him. It doesn't take His energy, it's nothing. He holds it all.
He sustains it all. He has created it all. The Bible also says, if you look back at verse 6, He says, He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap and puts the deep in its storehouses. It's not just the vastness of the stars that we are supposed to see. Y'all, the ocean floor just right here in our own world is less than 80% mapped out because it is so vast and it is so deep.
Now put that in perspective. We have mapped out in Ultra HD every square inch of the moon. And 80% of our own planet is so deep under the water that it has not been mapped out at all. It is so deep in some places that if you were to put Mount Everest at the bottom of something like the Mariana Trench, once you got to the top of Mount Everest, you would still be covered by one mile of water. That's how deep it is. And the creatures that it contains are unbelievable.
Think about the book of Job when it talks about these things. I mean the creatures like the blue whale. It's a hundred feet long, it's 33 tons, its heart weighs 400 pounds. It's the largest creature to ever live on earth, including the dinosaurs, okay?
This thing is huge. The arteries in a blue whale are big enough that a child could run around and play in them like they're at a play place at a McDonald's. That's kind of gross, okay, actually.
Speaking of gross, look at the Hadal snail fish, okay? The Hadal snail fish lives 8,000 meters below the surface of the water. That means it lives constantly with 12,000 PSI of pressure. Just to put that in perspective, this dude lives, he lives with the pressure on him where you took three of that truck that I told you about, my truck, you take three of those trucks and stack them on top of each other and put them on a postage stamp.
All of the weight. And that's what he's living under every single day. He's living at a place that would bend steel but God sustains him in the depths.
Now I could go on and on and on with all of this but here's the point. God is awesome and he creates awesome things and there is something that is supposed to happen in our heart when we see those awesome things. Let all the world, let all the earth, fear the Lord, let the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. Do you know what's supposed to happen when I talk about Hadal snail fish and blue whales and Andromeda and the Mariana Trench and the Sun and when we talk about the speed of light and two and a half million years to get there and God is holding it all in the palm of his hand sustaining by the world of his power.
This is what's supposed to happen. A holy shrinking. Now it doesn't mean that we're not important.
It was so awesome that Dr. Wiseman brought that out and I'm gonna talk about in a minute. I mean what's crazy is as small as we are, we are still considered the crown jewel of creation. We have come last. Psalm 8 tells us who is man that God would be mindful of him but he is.
I mean it's just unbelievable. God is mindful of us. It ain't because we're a big deal. Look at the creation. We are small and frail and our life is a vapor and yet God is mindful of us.
You know what this does when I begin to think about Psalm 33? Man it just provides the ultimate shrinking gun. You guys remember there's nothing better 90s Americana than Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Okay you guys remember this?
Denim shorts. You know dad tinkering with stuff. You got you know it's about latchkey kids.
Come home when the lights turn on on the street. You know awesome. No CGI. Okay so you got to go back kids and watch this.
You're just gonna laugh and laugh that all of us thought it was cool back then but what happens in that movie? Guy makes a shrinking gun. This and he shrinks his kids with it obviously the name. Okay and this is what happens in Psalm 33. Man you just get hit with the shrinking gun and you begin to realize man at the very bottom at the very heart at the very center man that is not me.
This world is so much bigger than me. God is mindful of me but I am just one who is fitting in to all of these things in creation that praise. I join the chorus of these stars and these blue whales and the Mariana Trench and all that God has made in his handiwork and I just join in to that chorus and yes God is mindful of me.
Man all those problems that I was talking about earlier and all the things that become can become so big man they can become really small too whenever we begin to see this for what it is and Psalm 33 does this. It awakens the drowsy heart by helping us realize he doesn't love us because we are a huge deal and we're not the center of the world. He loves us y'all because he's given us his image and he has made us by his own volition the object of his eternal affection.
I mean it's just it's just awesome. He doesn't love us because we're a big deal. He loves us because he loves us. Man he created us in his image. The God who creates the space between the stars and the vastness of the ocean Psalm 8 4 says he is mindful of us. He is a universe shaper.
He is a universe maker but he is also the heart maker and the heart shaper. This is who he is and in his love for us y'all in the gospel he has bridged the distance between us and God. I've thought about these massive distances that we've talked about hundreds and hundreds I mean hundreds of millions of light years and all this kind of stuff and you think the distance between us and God because of our sin is greater than any vastness we see in space.
I mean it's deeper and more crushing than any trench in the ocean. It was a chasm that could not be crossed but Jesus Christ came and God sent him. Jesus Christ the Son of God came to take our sin, to take on what we owed. Man to go to the cross and pay the penalty for it and three days later to raise up from the dead and give us a pathway back in to relationship with him. One pastor that did a lot and a guy named Louie Giglio he did a lot around stars.
I've stolen some of this stuff today. He said you know it's crazy to think about the star breather became the sin bearer for us. That chasm was so wide man he stepped right into it. It gives us the chance to be reborn in this awesome world. Man this world is still broken you guys know that. I could talk about the beat I mean the cynic this might be where you are today you're arguing in your mind with things that I'm saying the cynic is like yeah but isn't isn't creation also really jacked up? Isn't creation also really broken? That same ocean that is so beautiful also creates tsunamis and thousands of people die and you're right but it will not always be so. Not according to our theology not according to what the word says. You're right this world is broken it was never intended to be this way but we are heading for a world where we can catch glimpses of it now in the beauty and vastness of God but we are heading toward a world that he is creating.
The Bible says that the Bible says that he is gone to prepare a place for us even in this very moment. Here's what I call you to do behold the greatness of God in creation. Don't let go of it. Allow it to be you guys can take bring out the the whiteboard here but hey be formed man don't don't don't allow don't allow our you know allow that truth to kind of interrupt the stream that's going on between thoughts and feelings and allow it to help you kind of reform some things. One of the things that I have known about and I have you know one of the things that I've kind of I don't know been a little bit it was interesting to me and it kind of caught me off guard but then I really understood it and I adopted it and I started practicing it myself is that I've gone through many rounds of biblical counseling myself. I mean I've done it as kind of a way to stay healthy and I think it's a good program and I do biblical counseling sometimes for others. The first time that I went through it and one of the pieces of homework that I had was notice something beautiful in creation and write it down and that was in the biblical counseling regiment that I had and I know it's like the first time I saw them I wonder why and then I begin to realize well because that's why Psalm 33 is pointing us to the vastness of creation that we would have that same moment that's something about the bigness of God and what he can do would interrupt some things in our life. I wanted to show you guys this here for just a moment but um you know I think we have a you think about the Psalms you think about feelings and here's the deal this is what many of us think many of us think that facts are what creates feelings okay and we live our life like this man we just think that happens so I feel this way that happens so I feel this way and what I want to tell you is that this this is wrong because it's missing a step in between facts don't create feelings thoughts about facts create feelings let me give you an example okay so you got two guys that grow up without a father one of them grows up gets married and then about halfway through the marriage leaves his marriage leaves his kids he's filled with anger and resentment and hurt because of the father wound that he got and it manifests in that way you ask him man what happened in your life why are you walking down this road why are you leaving your family why are you so angry what is he gonna say he's gonna say because my dad walked out of me when I was a kid of course you got another guy who had the same fact his dad walked out on him as a kid what happens in his life man he's at every single ballgame he can't he can't he can't imagine what life would be like break it you know breaking up his family he's gonna fight for his wife he's gonna fight for his marriage he's gonna be there with the kids he is filled with gratitude and joy over what God has given him and you say hey man what what what do you attribute in your life to why you're trying to fight so hard to be that type of dad and be that type of husband and what's funny is you know what he's gonna say he's gonna say the exact same fact he's gonna say man I didn't have a dad around when I was a kid and so I'm gonna make sure that I do the right things I'm gonna make sure that I feel gratitude and joy over what God has done and given me this don't you understand it's the way that we frame things it's the thought that we have about them it's not just facts in our life that produce feelings the psalm is about the Psalms are about helping us reframe guys some of the way that we move into our feelings so that we can get into joy and gratitude and grief and anger and sorrow but we can do it in a god-honoring way and here's what's got to happen facts happen things happen feelings happen there's a step in between that helps us to reframe that step is thoughts Psalms help us interject truth into those thoughts and as the Psalms help us interject truth into those thoughts man it can help us respond in feelings in the right way it helps us kind of interrupt that flow so here's what I want to call you to do today man I want to call you to think about how facts are moving to feelings what are the thoughts in between and how does the truth of the grand nature of God begin to interrupt some of the thoughts that we might naturally have that would be end up putting us in a camp you know that are that are that are in the camp of fallen they're bad they're bad thoughts they're creating bad feelings they're creating the wrong response now of course for some of us here today man you're not a believer and I'm gonna call you you got to allow the beauty of God to wake you up you know you've got to realize today that this this this chasm stands between you and God farther than the stars deeper than the ocean but Jesus Christ has come to bridge that gap for you and I pray that you would see the beauty that is in that it would wake you up if that's happening in your life or has happened man I want you to make sure you tell somebody tell us if you're ready to admit your sin believe what Christ has done confess him as the Lord of your life maybe today's the day maybe the beauty of creation wakes you up there is a creator he wants a relationship with you then come to him I pray that you will but Christian this is what I want to tell you just as we close y'all Christian there are a few different reasons that I think we can end up missing the beauty that is there and that and when we miss the beauty we're not taking it in we're losing one of the weapons that is supposed to interrupt the thoughts that will produce the feelings okay and so we've got to kind of ask ourselves the question am I standing in awe of God and his creation is Psalm 33 affecting my heart's affections when I see the mountain when I see the ocean when I see the beehive when I when I see you know these different things in God's creation that are just incredible what is so big to me right now I mean I don't know what it is for you maybe it's a child's health maybe it's something financial I mentioned earlier maybe you're starting a business maybe your marriage is on the rocks maybe there's something that's going on it is so big it feels like it's the biggest thing in the world it's really not and maybe the only way we see that is we get a better perspective and that better perspective can come from seeing God and the beauty of his creation a couple of different barriers here right so you know why some of us miss the beauty of creation because we can't stop looking at our cell phone I mean that's true man we miss what God is doing out here because all we are is right here I mean cell phones are like the new cigarettes none of us think we're addicted we think we can quit at any time we can't I mean it's just like man we're there alright what we got to do we got a break we got to break this have we got to break this cycle then are we practicing some time or we're getting away from that stuff we can actually see what God is doing in the real world are we distracted have we distracted ourselves to death parents and with our kids I'm not dude I'm not getting on a high horse about video gaming and all this coming out I'm not going there but I am saying like are we pushing our kids to experience life in the real world so that they can appreciate the beauty of a tree and a mountain so they can see what it looks like to have the seasons change understand there's a God who holds all of that I pray that we are guys I'm gonna tell you men in the room I think some of us and I could fall into this some of us made this whole idea about getting all gushy and mushy about the the beauty in the world and all that it can it can feel a little anti something like I I was sitting there I'm like man I don't know I don't know if John Wayne ever just sits and takes in a sunset you know and and it's like we got to get over some of that man we got to get over some of that and realize God has given us the beauty and creation that we are to take in and we are to have that holy shrinking happen in our life where we become small God becomes huge everything else becomes reframed and so I pray that we'll have that in our life moms y'all it's Mother's Day it's so awesome last thing I want to do is give you another thing to think about mom you know the our sermon planning team all the moms were like y'all mom guilt is a real thing you get on Instagram and all these kids on you know the influencers kid he's trilingual eats organic bananas and he's all this and I'm just trying to find where the kids shoes are you know that's kind of how a lot of moms are living I understand that life I am NOT trying to layer something on it's like man another thing for you or all that but let's just think about this many of you mothers are going to inspire the the longing for creation in your kids at a young age I mean you're the one you're gonna be the one with them many times and I just want to call you to think about this you know to think about what it looks like man to notice God on a walk to notice God in the growth of a garden to notice God when the bee or the little creepy crawly bug you know walks by and to it's a point out man that we need to live a life of amazement over God and his creation and I think when we do that it's one of the tools in the belt that helps us feel rightly before God all right let's pray father we come before you and God we are in awe of your creation today and we sing praise because of your creation allow us this weekend to respond in the right way because of who you are how awesome you are in Christ's name we pray amen
