[0:00] In a few days, Catherine and I will be heading to the States for a holiday, and one of the first places we'll be going to is the camp where we met.
[0:18] We met there eight years ago, and it's the camp that I grew up going to, and we'll be going back for the first time since we've had kids. And I know that during our time there, I'll find myself in the company of people I know I'm supposed to know, or think I'm supposed to know, but I know I just don't know them.
[0:41] And it can turn into quite an awkward situation, can't it, with people that you think you know, or you think you're supposed to know, but you just don't know.
[0:52] You could spend your entire time dancing around them, trying to avoid those whose names you didn't quite catch, or come up with very awkward and obscure ways of addressing them, maybe to hide just how much you've forgotten about them in the last 30 seconds, or whatever it happens to be.
[1:23] It's times like these when I'm especially thankful for Catherine, who will subtly place herself between me and this person, and let me know their names, and what I'm supposed to know about them, and catch me up to speed on who they are.
[1:44] For a lot of us, though, Jesus is this type of person. We know we're supposed to know him, or we think we're supposed to know him, but the fact of the matter is, oftentimes we just don't know him.
[2:00] And for many of us, if we're honest with ourselves, we spend our lives dancing around, trying to avoid him, or at best coming up with futile little ways of keeping the relationship as obscure as possible so that things don't get overly uncomfortable for us.
[2:16] We just don't know him. And it's times like these that we can be especially grateful for having someone like Mark on hand to step in and remind us of who Jesus really is, and what we're supposed to know about him, and how we're supposed to know him.
[2:36] In many ways, this is what our passage today is all about. There was a buzz going around about Jesus in the years after his death and his supposed resurrection, but not many really knew who he was.
[2:52] So Mark steps in and says, you know that Jesus you've heard about? Let me tell you about him so that you can stop sidestepping him every time he seems to be getting uncomfortably close.
[3:05] Mark is the earliest account of its kind, recording for us the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And in verses 1 to 15 of this chapter, he's catching us up to speed on all that we're supposed to know about Jesus.
[3:21] You see, this Jesus had at one point been an itinerant preacher, having given up his day job as a carpenter to wander homelessly around the countryside, calling the world to repentance up until he died an untimely death by execution, a misinterpreted death by execution.
[3:46] But that wasn't the end of the story. Word began to get out that this Jesus had not remained dead, but had been raised to life again.
[3:59] And his followers were now facing death every day as they continued to call the world to see him as their king and conqueror.
[4:10] Word got out about Jesus and his name was becoming known around the world. But for many, they didn't know much more than his name. So Mark steps in to catch us up to speed.
[4:25] And what's important to note is that Mark, when Mark begins to tell us about Jesus, he doesn't start where others would start after him. He doesn't tell us that this is Jesus, the one born of the virgin.
[4:40] Or that this is Jesus, the one whose kings came to worship at his birth. He doesn't tell us through his lineage of the place that Jesus held within the history of Israel.
[4:53] There's no Christmas story at all. When Mark begins to tell us about Jesus, he focuses every ounce of attention on one single solitary matter.
[5:06] He says, you want to know about Jesus, Jesus Christ, the son of God. Let me tell you about his gospel.
[5:18] For Mark, there's not a whole lot of room for the minute details. For Mark, what's important is that we understand the gospel. Have you heard that word before, gospel, the good news?
[5:33] Well, tonight we're going to look at what the gospel is, because if you want to understand Jesus, if you want to understand his beginnings of the scene that he was stepping into, you have to understand what the gospel is all about.
[5:49] And Mark is going to break this thing called the gospel down into three parts. Mark tells us, if we want to know Jesus, we've got to know that the gospel is first all about our deep need.
[6:07] Verse one opens up. The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the son of God. It is written in Isaiah, the prophet. And here's these two quotes that we've already focused on earlier.
[6:20] He says, it is written in Isaiah, the prophet. And he introduces it with a quote from Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way.
[6:33] That's from Malachi chapter three. And then Isaiah's quote, a voice of one calling in the desert. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight paths for him.
[6:44] You've got to see what Mark is doing by juxtaposing these two quotes from Malachi on the one hand and Isaiah on the other. Malachi was the last book of the Old Testament.
[6:56] It was Malachi's words that rung over 400 years before Mark's day. Malachi's words anticipating the day God would come back to his people.
[7:09] The day a messenger would show up to announce his coming, to purify and to refine and to put things right. Isaiah is on the other end of the prophetic stream.
[7:22] He was the one to first preach of the coming of the Lord. To first preach the hope of a day to come when God would return to his people.
[7:34] To abide with them and bring them back to be his people once again. When he talked in Isaiah 40 about a voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way of the Lord.
[7:46] Make straight paths for him. He was talking about the return of God. He was talking about blazing a highway straight through the Arabian desert, aimed at God's city for the entrance of the king.
[8:03] He was saying, take the road that wind through the wilderness and run them anew. Take the mountains and flatten them out. Take the valleys and fill them in.
[8:15] So that when God comes, he can come without hindrance, without obstacle, straight into the company of the people that he loves. It's like if we were to say, from here to Aviemore, take the winding roads over the lect and straighten them out.
[8:35] The switchbacks and the passages around the cliffs, the inclines and the declines, and flatten them down. For one is coming who must have nothing obstructing their entrance into the highlands.
[8:49] All that we've known, all that we've lived with, it's time that it was undone for the coming of the Lord. You see, when Mark puts Malachi and Isaiah together, he's wrapping up the entire prophetic tradition of the Old Testament and saying it's all the same story.
[9:14] It's time. It's time. It's all about God coming back to make all things right. But wait a minute.
[9:26] If God's coming back to make all things right, then somewhere, somehow, things must have gone wrong. Mark tells us if we're going to understand, if we're going to know Jesus before anything else, we've got to understand that things have gone terribly wrong.
[9:48] Our world is not the way it's supposed to be. It's broken and in need of fixing. Jesus is a little bit like a parachute, tucked underneath a lot of people's seats, and that's where they prefer he'd stay.
[10:05] If the plane is smoothly sailing along, there's little reason to even take note of where the parachute is or how to put it on.
[10:17] But if you look out the window and the engine's on fire and you see that the horizon is not quite as far away as it's supposed to be, that's a bit of a different story, isn't it?
[10:29] Jesus doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you can't come to grips with the wreck that we've made of the world, with the failure of our attempts to fix it ourselves and the end for which we're destined unless God steps in and saves us.
[10:51] Mark tells us that Jesus only makes sense, the gospel only makes sense, if we recognize our deep need. What's perhaps even more startling is what Mark says in verse 4.
[11:03] After Isaiah's words, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, Mark says, John, John the Baptist, appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
[11:18] You see, the voice of one crying in the wilderness was that of John the Baptist, a leathery-skinned preacher preparing the way by calling people to repent of their sins, to recognize their deep need.
[11:32] What Isaiah saw as one calling for the straightening of paths, Mark tells us, was fulfilled in this wild-eyed man's proclamation of our deep need of repentance.
[11:43] The problem, that highway that Isaiah said needed to be blazed straight into God's city, John the Baptist said, needed to be blazed right into our hearts.
[11:57] As much as the problem is seen in the brokenness of the world, it's actually centered in the brokenness of our lives, of my life, of your life, of the life of every man, woman, and child who has ever turned away from God.
[12:16] Our deep need is a personal need that we have whether, that we have whether we like it or not. And if we're going to understand who Jesus is, of what he came to be an answer for, Mark says, we've got to first recognize our deep need.
[12:35] each of us has to look out the window of our own lives and see that we're not just sailing along like we thought we were.
[12:48] Our altitude is dropping, our engines are on fire, and we and the world we live in are plummeting downward, spiraling out of control.
[12:59] You can't just shrug off the parachute any longer. Whoever put it there knew that this plane was destined to crash before it even ever took off.
[13:21] And it's there for a reason. It's there for your deep need. In Mark's day, it wasn't hard to convince people of their deep need.
[13:32] By verse 5, we read that the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him confessing their sins. For a people with 1,500 years of turmoil wrapped up in a national identity like theirs, those who lived in the Judean countryside and those who called Jerusalem their home understood their deep need.
[13:57] personal and communal. And maybe for us, we're now not too far off from realizing our need with the way our world is headed, the direction we see it going.
[14:16] Mark tells us if we want to understand who Jesus is, his beginnings, and the reason for which he came, we first have to understand that his gospel is all about our deep need.
[14:28] Second, if we're going to understand who Jesus is, Mark is going to show us that we have to understand that the gospel is all about Jesus' unique identity.
[14:41] And it is his unique identity that makes him the only fitting remedy for our deep need. unlike John described in verse 6 as your everyday camel-clothed, leather-touting, locust-eating preacher, Jesus was unique.
[15:00] And what I mean is this, look at verse 6, it says, John wore clothes made of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. But this was his message, after me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.
[15:19] I baptize you with water, but he, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And he describes Jesus' uniqueness as threefold.
[15:31] John says this, first, Jesus is mightier than I. He's functionally unique. He can do what I can't do. John, John's in the wilderness.
[15:42] He's forsaken all earthly comforts to show that they've gotten us nowhere. Are things bad? Does everybody have to sew themselves up some camel's hair, clothes, and eat grasshoppers and honey?
[15:57] No, that's not what John's saying. John's saying, look, they haven't gotten us anywhere. The world's answers haven't worked. NATO, the UN, the Peace Corps, fame, prosperity, parliament, money, toys, power, they haven't solved our problem.
[16:16] They haven't answered our deep need. More catastrophes have hit in the past century than ever recorded before in history. Wars have wiped out more people than the plagues of the dark ages.
[16:31] We might as well be living on locusts and wearing camel-haired clothes. Nothing we've done has seemed to help.
[16:41] So John says what? He says, repent. Turn back. Seek forgiveness because it's the only option left.
[16:54] But John knows that in the end he's not the answer. He can't do anything about our problem either. He can only call people to recognize their need.
[17:07] But he himself is powerless to help. But he says, he says, one is coming who is mightier than I. He's capable. He can do what I can't.
[17:20] He can do what you can't. Jesus is functionally unique. John says Jesus is mighty.
[17:31] He also says he is worthy. Not only is he functionally unique, he's positionally unique. And there's an old story of two prisoners who had in their youth gotten tangled up in a life of crime and were eventually caught and thrown in the clink for the sum of their offenses against the state.
[17:54] Now while in prison these two both came to their senses in a way and they acknowledged their guilt and repented of their ways.
[18:05] And one of them who was the more simple minded of the two got it in his heart one day to ask for a moment with the warden of the prison. And the scene would almost make you want to go down to the prison and just find this guy and hug him because this is how it played out.
[18:25] When he got before the warden he, in the best sentences he knew how to formulate, said this, Mr., we done wrong and we sorry for it.
[18:36] But there ain't no reason both of us should be stuck behind these bars. So I offer myself in place of my friend that he could go free.
[18:48] It kind of makes you feel bad for him. Right? It kind of makes you feel bad for him. But the problem is that no matter how sincere this fellow isn't worthy of taking the punishment for his friend.
[19:05] He sure can call his friend to join him in repentance but he can't in the end serve as the sacrifice on his friend's behalf because he has his own sentence to serve.
[19:19] John the Baptist knew well enough that he was just a fellow prisoner like one of us. But he says, there's one coming after me whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.
[19:37] Back in John's day, untying the sandals of somebody wasn't a job anybody would volunteer for. If you got stuck untying sandals it wasn't saying much of you.
[19:51] It was reserved for only the lowest of the low, the servants of the servants. And here John says, one's coming who I'm not worthy to be the servant of his servants.
[20:06] He's positionally unique. Jesus isn't stuck in the muck and the mire of our brokenness. He's not down here in prison with us.
[20:18] He's the only one who can save us because he's the only one among us who isn't in need of being saved. So Jesus is functionally unique.
[20:33] He's mighty. He's positionally unique. He's worthy. And third, John says, he's instrumentally unique. He's equipped. Not only can he do what we can't do and is what we can't be, but he's got what we don't got.
[20:52] He has what we need. John says, I have baptized you with water as a sign and a symbol of your washing, or at least of your need for being washed.
[21:03] But he, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. You see, a baptism of repentance, a cleansing is alright.
[21:14] Forgiveness is alright for the moment, but that doesn't, in the end, change anything. The world is still broken. We're still broken.
[21:26] And if we had anything to do with the breaking of the world, we need more than forgiveness. We need more than water, more than a sign.
[21:36] We need a seal. We need something to transform us from the inside out and be a promise to us that someday we are going to be transformed definitively.
[21:52] How many have you have ever found yourselves in one of those moments in life where you've broken something but just can't fix it? You knew you did it, you're sorry for it, but beyond that, there's no way for you to make the reparations that are needed to fix what you've broken.
[22:14] You just don't have what it takes. I remember one holiday we had several families over our place for dinner. We were celebrating with them.
[22:26] We had about eight adults, an extra four kids in our little two bedroom flat. And four of the, more than that, because we had eight kids.
[22:37] So four of the eight kids were Emmett's age. The other four were Aletheia's age, just happened to work out that way. So these four were in the other room, we're all around the table, not even thinking about it, chatting away.
[22:48] and the silence, which everybody was attuned to eventually from the other room where the kids were at, was in one moment broken by an enormous crash.
[23:04] And following that, the tears and cries of all four of Emmett's friends. friends. And we, you know, in a minute, all eight adults are in there with the kids and looking around saying, what happened?
[23:22] And what had happened was they had climbed up on a train table that I had built Emmett. And this wasn't your ordinary train table because I built it. And so they had climbed up on top, but Emmett knew that not even he, Emmett's built like a brick.
[23:38] So he's not supposed to be up on the train table. He knows this, but not only he, but all four of his friends were up on the train table. And it was flat.
[23:49] It was flat at this point. The holiday passed and that train table sat there for one, two, three, four weeks, a month.
[24:02] And every once in a while I'd come into Emmett's room and I'd catch him staring at this train table. And you could see in his little mind coming over and trying to lift up a piece of wood or whatnot.
[24:15] You could see in his little mind thinking, how, is there anything I can do to fix this? I've done it, I know I was wrong, I climbed up on it, I'm sorry, I regret it.
[24:31] But in the end there's nothing, there's nothing he could do to fix it. And honestly, if any of you were there with your power tools, you wouldn't have been able to fix it either, because this was built by me, and I was the only one.
[24:45] And I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I'm saying you couldn't fix it, because you don't know how it was supposed to be fixed. You'll only be fixed by the one who made it. He needed daddy to do it, to bring out the power tools, to design it new, and to safeguard it from ever happening again.
[25:06] When it comes to the world, even our little worlds, we just don't have what it takes to fix it. It's good and right for us to acknowledge our need to be fixed, but beyond that, we need someone stronger than us, and someone who's worthy to the task, and someone who has what it takes to do it for us, to fix our marriages, to fix our pride, to fix the mess we've made of our lives.
[25:38] And after John came one mightier than you and I, the strap of whose sandal none of us is worthy to stoop down and untie, but who himself, being equipped as he was, stooped down to untie our own bonds, and the mess we've made of his world, and even the bonds of our great big world.
[26:05] And he came to do it, to wash us clean and to make us new, and transform us from the inside out, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit, the one thing that we do not have apart from him.
[26:20] And he had it because of his unique identity. So what was it that made Jesus so unique, functionally, positionally, and instrumentally unique?
[26:31] Verse 9 tells us, it says, at that time, Jesus of Nazareth came from Nazareth and Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
[26:43] As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open, and the spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my son, and you you are my son, whom I love.
[27:01] With you, I am well pleased. You see, Jesus' unique identity is wrapped up with his being, the son of God. That's what Mark was out to tell us from verse 1.
[27:14] He said, this is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, the one who made this world in the first place. The only one able to fix it.
[27:27] But you know, this is the one thing everyone in Mark's gospel misses. Jesus' friends, Jesus' enemies, everyone misses that Jesus is the son of God until the day that Jesus is hung on a cross.
[27:48] And then, on that day, one soldier, one person gets it. A centurion standing at the foot of the cross who watched it all says, surely this was the son of God.
[28:02] You want to understand who Jesus is, Mark tells us that we've got to understand that he is the son of God. And as God's son, he's uniquely qualified to answer and to be the answer of our deep need.
[28:20] So the first point of the gospel is that we are in deep need of someone coming to fix us, someone coming to save us.
[28:31] The second point is that Jesus is uniquely fit to be that someone, to be the Savior functionally, positionally, and instrumentally.
[28:45] And Mark tells us if we want to understand who Jesus is, thirdly, we have to understand that the gospel is all about God's great plan. Our deep need, Jesus' unique identity, and God's great plan.
[29:00] This is how we can know Jesus. You see, an answer to a problem doesn't mean anything unless someone's got a plan.
[29:12] And for a month, I had what it took to fix Emmett's train table, but it took me a little longer to come up with a plan, especially if I wanted to safeguard it from ever happening again.
[29:25] For a problem the size of our deep need, of our walking away from God in the first place, God had better be the one with the plan.
[29:37] And Mark tells us that he is just that. So what's his plan? We start to see it in Jesus' baptism. we start to see that it's not just about Jesus' unique identity, but how he uniquely identifies with his people.
[29:57] I mean, what I mean, why was he baptized? This is the question. Why was Jesus baptized? Mark says John appeared baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
[30:15] Jesus had no sins. He didn't need to repent. He wasn't looking for forgiveness. Why was he baptized?
[30:29] Perhaps the answer is clearest or comes into focus in verse 12. Mark says in verse 12, at once the spirit, the spirit had come down and rested on Jesus at his baptism, the spirit sent him out, drove him out into the desert, and he was in the desert for 40 days.
[30:53] Not 30 days, not 50 days, he was in the wilderness for 40 days. Why 40? Why even waste the ink in telling us how long he was in the desert?
[31:10] Because Mark is trying to tell us something more about Jesus. Mark's saying, you see this Jesus? This is the man who got it all right where everyone else got it all wrong.
[31:30] This is the Jesus who came to do what no one else could do. For 40 years, the people of God wandered in a wilderness because of their hardness of heart, and at every point they followed their temptations further and further and further away from God.
[31:55] Now, for 40 days, Jesus Christ is driven into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan himself. that by triumphing in the wilderness he might go to the city and triumph on the cross.
[32:15] You see, it's not that Jesus, it's not just Jesus' identity that makes him the answer to our great need, our deep need. It's Jesus identifying with us.
[32:29] He walked the road we couldn't walk. As each of us, like the people of God before us, has been led further and further and further away from God by our own temptations.
[32:44] He stood temptation in the face and he beat it so that by the time he got to the cross he wasn't paying the price for his sins but for ours.
[32:56] God's great plan is that Jesus, who is uniquely fit for the task, would walk the road we didn't walk all the way to the death we deserved.
[33:06] Why? Why was Jesus baptized? Because he was identifying himself with those he came to save. He was stooping down in that moment to untie the chains of sin on our behalf.
[33:27] God's great plan. Mark tells us that after John was put in prison Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God.
[33:38] The gospel of God's great plan. The good news of what he was doing to answer our great need. And this is what he said.
[33:50] The time has come he said. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news. John had preached of repentance.
[34:04] Jesus brings it full circle when he calls us not only to acknowledge our need through repentance but tells us how we might overcome it.
[34:16] He says believe in the gospel. He says believe because only when you can put your faith in Jesus Christ only when you can believe in the gospel that you are in deep need of being saved personally that Jesus is uniquely fit to be that savior and that this is God's great plan that Jesus would be identified with you to the point of dying for what you deserved and that you would in turn be identified with him through faith to receive the sonship that only he deserved by the gift of the spirit only when you come to believe in the gospel do you truly begin to benefit from all it offers in bringing you back to the God you were created for in the Amargosi desert in Nevada there is a very long and seldom used trail that is cut right through the middle of it and on that trail there is a one lone pump a rickety rusty old pump that offers the only hope of drinking water along that trail this is the letter that was found in the tin can that hung from the handle of that pump this pump is all right as of
[35:54] June 1932 I put a new sucker washer into it and it ought to last five years or so but the washer dries out and the pump has got to be primed under the white rock I buried a bottle of water out of the sun and cork and up there's enough water in it to prime the pump but not if you drink some first pour about a quarter in and let her soak and wet the leather then pour in the rest medium fast and pump like crazy you'll get water the well has never run dry have faith when you get watered up fill the bottle and put it back like you found it for the next feller signed Desert Pete P.S.
[36:40] don't go drinking the water first prime the pump with it and you'll get all you can hold Mark sees that you're a little uncomfortable with this Jesus you think you know him you know you're supposed to know him but you just don't know him Mark says you see this guy this is Jesus he's the answer to your deepest need he's God's answer to the brokenness of the world the brokenness of your world he's done what no one else can do and then did what everyone else was supposed to do by dying on the cross for the sins he didn't commit but if you want to know him to know him as Lord and Savior you've got to have faith in him not yourself he may look rickety and rusty at first but he's the only one who can truly answer your deepest need it may be tempting to try and fix things yourself to take some of that faith and pour it into the answers the world's been trying to push for years don't do it you've got to pour out that faith fully on Christ if that pump is going to be primed
[38:09] Mark tells us this is Jesus Christ the son of God the well that has never run dry have faith in him don't go drinking the water first and putting that faith in something else alongside of him prime the pump he says and you'll get all the answer to your problem you can hold I just want to leave you tonight then with two questions first I want to ask you if you've put your faith fully and exclusively in Jesus if it was just us out for coffee no one else around I would ask you if you've moved out of the way yet in a lot of ways if we haven't put our faith wholly and completely in
[39:14] Jesus whatever else we might be putting our faith in in some way we're ultimately putting our faith in ourselves and that really becomes the greatest hindrance to God's great plan I remember as a kid I used to fix things with my dad and one of the projects we worked on together was replacing the carpets in our house and my dad had had the carpet delivered and stored up in a loft in our garage and I thought I could handle getting one of these rolls down and found out very quickly that I couldn't so my dad rushed over to save me but instead of trusting him to do it I continued to struggle with it myself and my dad ended up falling over me and I remember hearing the bones in his wrists crack as he was crushed underneath the carpet in a similar way with our great need we can no longer trust in ourselves and failing to put our faith wholly in
[40:36] Jesus as our only answer will ultimately undo even the hope that is in him the dissimilarities between those two pictures are huge but the fact remains if Jesus is to be savior lord and savior he requires complete and utter faith we must not divide it because if we divide it our faith is no good have you gotten out of the way and trusted him to do it second i want to ask you if you have recognized your place in calling the world around you to put its faith fully and completely in Jesus have you taken up your role as one who has recognized the deep need of the world acknowledge
[41:43] Jesus unique identity as the only one fit to answer it and put your faith in God's plan of saving his people through his son's identification with them too many of us myself included have bought into this story but are far too comfortable continuing to allow everyone else around us to live outside it i gotta tell you i find myself daily in situations where i take my faith my belief in god my belief in jesus as the only way the only answer the only hope i take that and i hide it i hide it where nobody else can see it and i can get into conversations really easy with people but too often far too often i never mention jesus i never challenge anyone i never question i never witness i never call out provoke i never engage far too often and the question that we're left with is when will we become those who live like this is the only answer there's someone in your life there's someone in your life that you will come into contact this week with who does not claim this as their story who's telling a story that does not compare and you and
[43:37] I have met this person and have never opened our mouths have never even tried to open our mouths have never even asked God for the opportunity to open our mouths what will you do with the position God has given you before that person this week when you meet them will the fact that this gospel that this Jesus who now you may know is all about a great need that extends to that person is all about a Jesus with a unique identity that is relevant for that person's need and is all about a God who's planned this from the beginning that we might just move out of the way when will our relationship with that person change when will we open our mouths have you taken up your role as one who has bought into this story what will you do with it we're going to stand and sing the words from
[45:00] Psalm 148 and sing Psalms it's found on page 194 of the blue book we're going to sing the whole of the psalm and I pray that the words of this psalm would be both true of us and challenging comforting and inspiring as we see our God as our rightful king and that changes us and how we live and how we engage the world around us Psalm 148 we'll sing verses 1-14 we'll stand and sing to the tune of Saint John would you stand and sing to the Lord praise him from heaven's sight all angels give him praise praise him you oh so praise him sun moon and stars all high new highest light and glory shine oh let them praise his name the name of
[46:30] God the Lord for he created them by his almighty word he set their place eternally forever face his great his degree the Lord praise from the air you creatures of the deep far hills to clouds and winds which is from and and deep new hills and trees he swiped and tame small creatures praise they sought his name all nations and earth kings praise princes and all who reign young men and men and men too old children and old men the
[48:14] Lord strength him for heavenly praise his name alone God high in his grace his glory shines abroad above the earth and earth and earth and earth and earth and earth and he glory to his own foe the mighty king has due let his life give praise to God they are his people praise the Lord the Lord the psalmist says all nations and earth's kings princes and all who reign young men and maidens too both children and old men the
[49:31] Lord's great name by them his name alone on high is raised it is our call there is an anonymous playwright playwright I don't know if he's even rightfully called a playwright or would be but an anonymous playwright of the 20th century said these words of Jesus from where did he come appearing on to this tattered stage of history unannounced and uninvited he came and stole the show and the script has never read the same since.
[50:11] Jesus showing up changes everything may it change everything for you may through him it change the world around you repent and believe in the gospel for the kingdom is near may this be the call that you've answered and the call that you echo that you echo to the world amen you you you you