So we're going to be looking at Psalm 78. You can look on in your bulletin, or if you have a Bible, you can check it out there. We're reading the first eight verses. There are actually 72 verses, so if we read all of them, we'd be here for a while. It's written by this guy, Asaph. It's attributed to him. He was a contemporary of David, and he was a guy who had a choir and led worship in the temple. So it's attributed to Him and His choir, but that can kind of actually span all these different generations. So we don't know the exact time period of it. But what it talks about, it talks about God's story, about what He has done in the past, how that helps us understand where we are, where we're headed. And this isn't something that, you know, is just kind of a nice story you might read to a kid at bed or say, oh, that's good. But this is actually true. God says, not just true for me or true for you, but true truth. God Himself speaking to us in His Word. So let's give our attention here. I'm going to read the first eight verses. If you'd follow along, that'd be great. Emmaskel of Asaph, give ear, O my people, to my teaching. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from of old. Things that we have heard and known that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from our children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and His might, and the wonders that He has done. He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach their children. that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments, that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. O Lord, your presence fills the deepest reaches of countless galaxies. Your eyes pierce the midnight darkness. Your face shines with the brightness of a thousand blazing suns. Lord, our words, our thoughts, the reaches of our imagination, they are not sufficient, they are not adequate to reach you, to know you as you are. And Lord, if you did not speak, if you didn't show yourself, We would not know You. We would be left in ignorance, in darkness, in misery and in pain. Yet You have come down. You've come down clothed in robes of grace. Your Word tells us that in our weakness, in our fear, in our sin, in our ruin, that You move towards us. That You don't turn away. Lord, whether we are here and surprised to be at church or we've been here Sunday in and Sunday out, we need to hear the voice of Jesus Christ speaking in truth and in mercy. Whether we're not sure if we believe or we've had faith as long as we can remember, Lord, again, we need to come into your presence to hear from you. So Lord, we ask with confidence, with hope, that You would pour out Your Holy Spirit, that You would meet us through Your Word. We need Your work in our lives. We also, Lord, see the need for Your work in this world. We think of friends, of family, of neighbors, of work associates, and pray for them as well, Lord, that you would work, that your kingdom would come, that your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. We ask this all in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Have a seat, yeah. So for many of you guys, the name Slobodan Milosevic will be familiar. He was on trial somewhat recently with the International Criminal Court in The Hague. And the reason for that, he was president of Serbia and Yugoslavia in the 90s and into even late 90s, and even before that, political roles there. And what happened is, as Yugoslavia broke up, there was a bunch of ethnic conflict. Bosnia and Herzegovina was trying to secede. So there's all this ethnic conflict. Milosevic has a key role in it. I want to talk about, there's the city Sarajevo, which is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And forces surrounded it. And there's, you know, snipers trying to shoot and kill people. They're cutting off power, electricity, water, you know, all these terrible things. And one of the things that they do is they shell, which means they shoot, you know, artillery shoots in. And they shoot incendiary shells. So when they land, they burst into flames. And basically they destroy the national and university library of the city. And you'll see this in ethnic conflicts, is what they did is they say, look, what we're going to do is we're going to destroy your past. We're going to take away your history, your sense of who you are, so that you won't exist. So if we wipe this out, you won't know who you are, where you're coming from, where you've been, where you're headed. It's like if someone, you know, were to come to Washington D.C. and to just level the Library of Congress, and to go around to the major universities of the United States and to burn them all down. And what we see happening on this big level there happens on an individual level as well. I heard this interview of this woman whose husband had very advanced Alzheimer's. And she was talking and she was saying, you know, I go to him and it's like he's another man. Because everything that held us together, all these memories, all these times that we had, they're gone. And it's like he's a stranger. And the thing is, if we lose the past, If we lose it as an individual or as a broader culture, we lose ourselves. It's terrible, it's devastating. And this is true in our relationships with God as well. And there's this sense in which we can be even more prone to forget there. If you think about it like this, if you've been a Christian for any amount of time, you've prayed. You say, God, would you please do this? And he does, and you forget. It's so common. God says, look, if you forget, if you lose the past, if you lose what I've done, you will lose yourself, you will lose each other, you will lose so much. And what he says then, what he says in this psalm, is he tells us, he says, listen. He says, listen, refresh your memory. Listen. And that's actually, it's how it starts. In verse 1 it says, Give ear, O my people, to my teaching. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from of old. And the psalmist here is speaking, and he's kind of got the voice of both the prophet and the sage. He's speaking on behalf of God, saying, look, you must listen. But he's also unfolding these deep mysteries, saying, come and look and see. And what we need to do is we need to listen. We need to listen. And if we listen, there are gonna be two general things that we're gonna hear. There's this general context, that's what we wanna look at first. When it says listen, there's this general context that the psalmist is speaking with, and he's saying there are a couple things. The foundation of this all, what this all comes down to, is that there is a God, there's a God who made us, who sustains us, and that God speaks. that there's a God who speaks. And everything else, everything else hinges on that fact. If there's not a God who speaks, everything else will say, you know, we can just go home. It says there's a God who speaks, and because He speaks, here's what's going to happen. He's gonna say hard things that will challenge you. Because God is not a 21st century American. He wasn't an ancient Israelite. He's above and beyond every culture and time and place, and will say things that were hard for ancient people, and will say things that are hard for modern or postmodern people. How this starts, it says, there's a God who speaks. And he speaks to us in the Bible. Say, you know, well, why trust the Bible? There are a couple different things in this psalm that we see. First, there's history. There are these events. And God says, look to these things that actually happened. There was this thing called the Exodus. God says, seeing people in the wilderness, brought them into the promised land, raised up a king, built a temple. There are these things that actually happened. We can't be like, oh, well, you know, that's nice for you if you believe that the American Revolution happened. No, it's like in 1776, something happened or it didn't. And God says, look, there's history here. There's also this unity all through the psalm, and even through the Bible, you see God telling this one story of what He is doing. Of coming into a broken world with His truth and His mercy and His power. It says, look, there's this unity. Trust it. And what's interesting too, if you read through here, you'll see this honesty. This isn't something people would make up. In verse 8 it says, it talks about their fathers as a stubborn and rebellious generation. That's not how I would want to be remembered or how I'd like to describe myself. There's this honesty in here that we don't find elsewhere. And last of all, we see that God speaks. He speaks in the Bible. And what happens is this passage, this whole Psalm, it explains life. It says to the Israelites, look, this makes sense out of your experiences, out of life in this world. God speaks, He does so in the Bible, but it's not something you can just kind of rationally be like, oh well yes, I agree, check that box. In verse 2 it says, I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark sayings from of old. Jesus, when he's teaching, he quotes part of this. And what's interesting, he tells parables, he tells stories, he talks about farmers and seed, tree and fruit, washing cups, old tombs, you know, all these things. And he quotes this verse and he says, look, there's a hiddenness, there's a mystery to what I say. And if you don't want to believe it, there are plenty of reasons not to. God says, if you don't want to believe, there's a mystery, there's a hiddenness here, and you won't see it. that ultimately we believe that God speaks by faith. It doesn't mean we check out mentally, but it's not just some sort of neutral thing that we can approach and say, oh, objectively, what should I do? There's this story that I heard about a pastor. He was saying similar things. And after church, this guy came up to me and said, look, I want to have lunch with you. I want to have lunch with you. And I want you to prove to me that the Bible is true. So the pastor says, okay, so if I proved to you that it's true, will you do everything that it says? Will you do everything that it says? And the guy was somewhat taken aback and said, no. And the thing is, if God speaks, if He speaks authoritatively, truthfully in His Word, none of us are neutral. None of us come to this as an objective observer. If God speaks, there's an incredible stake that every single one of us has in that statement. And what you need to do is acknowledge, where are you? Where are you? Are you coming with faith, saying, yeah, I believe in a God who speaks? Or saying, no, I really don't want that to be true. And if you're not sure where you stand, listen. Follow along because this is gonna interact, we're gonna see what he says, what that means. And if you're here, you know, you're a Christian, you're saying, yeah, that's right, this is good, God speaks, that's right, everybody should believe this. Do you listen? Because here's the deal, there's a lot of skepticism in the world about whether this could be true. And there would be much less if you and I did what it said. If we did what this said, there would be much less doubt and unbelief in the world. How it starts out, God says, look, I speak. I speak in my word. It comes by faith. None of you are neutral. Not one of you is neutral. So that's the general context that we're stepping into. He says you need to listen. But then he unfurls it a little more. And what we'll see is when we look specifically, what does God say? What is he saying here? There are two things he wants us to listen to. The first, it shows up in verse four. Talks about not hiding these from our children, telling the coming generation. It says, the glorious deeds of the Lord and His might, and the wonders that He has done. These terms kind of all inform each other. These glorious deeds, these wonders, His might. You know, okay, what is that talking about? And we find out, if we have the whole psalm in front of us, you can kind of look through. I'm just going to point you to a few places. It talks about a couple of different things. It talks about the exodus. This is in verses 43 to 53 of the psalm. Where the ancient people of Israel are in bondage in Egypt. They're being oppressed as a minority group. Religious freedom, issues with family, I mean work without pay, all this stuff. And God shows up and He rescues them. And He brings them out in this powerful way. These plagues come upon the Egyptian oppressors. God leads them out. And then if you can imagine the ocean. You know, there's this thing called the Red Sea. And God, this wind comes up and He parts it. And there are these towering walls of water. And the Israelites pass through to safety. And the Egyptians in their pride say, no, we will not let them go. And as they pass through, God brings the waters crashing back down upon them. Talks about his exodus. About the exodus of God's people. Then talks about their time in the wilderness. That they're out in the desert, in the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere, and God sustains them. He brings a cloud for shelter from the sun during the day. Fire at night to keep them warm. That manna, this bread from heaven, comes down to feed them. That water breaks out of a rock. This doesn't happen normally. God provides for them. And then he takes them from the wilderness into a land of promise. It's a place of safety, it's a place of rest, of prosperity, and a place where God will dwell with them. And he says, look, I bring you into this land. What I do is I give you a king. Someone who will lead you, who will guide you, who will be like a shepherd. And what He will do is He will build a temple where I will dwell in you. I will dwell among you in a way that you could not have imagined before. And the psalm recounts this all and says, look, these are His glorious deeds. There's this delight. These are His works of power, the wonders that He has done. It speaks of His strength. It also talks about His patience. We read in our Confession of Sin, it's right from the psalm, it's around verse 36. They flattered Him with their mouths. They lied to Him with their tongues. Their heart was not steadfast toward Him. They were not faithful to His covenant. Yet He, being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity and did not destroy them. He restrained His anger often and did not stir up all His wrath. We see these glorious deeds are not just God's power, but His patience. His bearing with, His long-suffering for weak, for fallen people who turn aside. And when we read this as Christians, We say, yes, that is our history, that is where we come from, but there is so much more. Because what the Bible says is that all of these things reach their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. That Jesus Christ is the one who truly brings his people out of the freedom of sin and death. He brings them into the very presence of God, into a rest which has no end. Speaks of the manna in the desert. Jesus in John chapter six says, I am the living bread who comes down to give life to the world. If you feed on me, you will never hunger, you will never thirst. Also says, look, there was a king, David. Jesus said, I am the true son of David. There was a temple. Jesus said, I am greater than the temple. God is in your midst through me in a way that is greater than anything has ever happened before. And Jesus says, I am the true Israel. I am the Son of God that all of you should have been and never were. I am the atonement. I am the one through whom God forgives. And what we see here is we listen. God says, listen, take it all, and he recounts all of this. so that we would listen, so that we would have confidence. That's what it says in verse 7, that they would set their hope on God. That's confidence. That each of us would have confidence of his power. of His power to work on behalf of His people, confidence of His patience that despite our sin, He is there with mercy and grace, confidence that He will lead us, that He will be present among us, that He will feed us in the deepest and most soul-satisfying way. God says, listen, listen to my glorious deeds. But then it also says, listen to my law, to my testimony. This shows up in verse 5, it says, He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel. These terms generally can refer to the Ten Commandments, the first five books of the Old Testament. They can even include the glorious deeds that He's done. But here, what it is specifically, in verse 1, you see teaching. It's the same Hebrew word as law. And further on in the psalm, there's parallel lines, and it talks about keeping God's law, being faithful to His covenant. And what this means, when God says, listen to my law, listen to my covenant, it's about a response. When God says, look, I have entered into a relationship with you because of these glorious deeds. I have brought you out. I have rescued you from yourself. And because of that, I want you to respond in a certain way. Verses seven and eight describe it as faithfulness, as remembering, as steadfastness. And it's this broad perspective that all of life, Every single bit of life for the Christian is meant to be a faithful response to what God has done. And then it goes on and it talks about keeping his testimonies. And it later on talks about these specific requirements. That the Christian life, it is this general response of faithfulness, but it's lived out and very specific every single day. And the word that the Scriptures use is obedience. In verse 7, it talks about having confidence in what God has done and keeping His commandments. The Apostle says, look, here's what I want you to listen to. I want you to listen to my glorious deeds, to the wonders that I have done, to my might, and I want you to listen to my law. that every real relationship has boundaries around it, has ways that you respond to the other person. He says, look, you have to listen. Don't forget. Don't forget. Listen. And it's repeated. It's not like, I'm sure you guys have all seen the Charlie Brown Christmas special, and other Charlie Brown cartoons. Whenever an adult talks, it's like, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. It's just this noise, this static. And that's not what God's saying, it's more than just information flowing through our ears and out the other side. In verse six, it uses the word know, K-N-O-W, and it's this relational knowledge of embracing, of hearing, of letting it enter into you, penetrating all the way in and then extending all throughout your life. God says, listen, listen to my word. I want to tell you, there's this guy, George Woberman, and he was a German theologian in the late 1800s, early 1900s. And he was a modern theologian, which means he was part of this movement where these guys said, look, there's no supernatural ground for the Bible. There's not a God who speaks. And kind of what we need to do is just anchor all of our religion in the realm of feeling, in the realm of experience. And what happened is that he lost, and many others with him, lost the God who speaks. They lost the glorious deeds, they lost the law, the response. And he's in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s. And basically, he becomes an ardent supporter of the Nazis. He's part of this huge movement in German Protestantism, where all these people in the church say, look, we're going to give ourselves to the Third Reich. their complete claims for authority, the total submission, we're going to give it. And what happened? What happened? You're like, wow, that's messed up. It is. What happened is they lost the God who speaks. There was not this greater story that they were a part of, and they bought into another one. And that's what will happen with each of us. Either we will be shaped, molded by God's story or it will be another. And you're like, I'm not going to be like this guy who's a Nazi. Come on. What was it about? His story was about what? Becoming strong. The Nazis were all about strength. It was about a place of prominence, of influence. It was about safety. If you didn't agree with him, you know, who knows what might happen. Or maybe it's just about, you know, just let me mind my own business. And every single one of us will easily do something like that. We'll make our story, our life about having influence, about things just going well, about maintaining a certain sort of place or lifestyle. God says, look, unless you listen, unless you embrace my story, you will embrace another. And what will happen is that you will suffer. You will do that because God Himself will stand against you. Again, this is not an easy thing to say or to hear. It comes back to the fact that does God speak? And He does. And this is what He said, we read from it in the service. They provoked Him to anger with their high places. They moved Him to jealousy with their idols. When God heard, he was full of wrath and he utterly rejected Israel. He forsook his dwelling at Shiloh and the tent where he dwelt among them and delivered his power to captivity and his glory to the hand of the foe. He gave his people over to the sword and vented his wrath on his heritage. Fire devoured their young men and their young women had no marriage song. Their priests fell by the sword and their widows made no lamentation. And God says, look, you will listen. Every single one of you will listen to someone. You will embrace some story. And if you do not embrace mine, you will fall for another and you will suffer. God says, look, you need to listen. Okay, so how does this happen? One, there's an approach. There's an approach, and then I'll give you some specific actions. The approach is that you come underneath God's Word. You come underneath it. And what this is like, okay, it's, you know, back to school time and things like that. You can imagine, you know, think of some teenage girls going out shopping, they're at the mall together, and they're like, oh, that looks really cute, or oh, that's fun, or I like that. And they're judging all the clothes kind of based on what they like and on what makes them look good, okay? Now compare that with someone who's a model. Someone looks at them and they say, you know, I want you or I don't want you because you will make this piece of clothing look good. It's two totally different approaches. The teenager stands above the clothing and says, I like this or I don't like this. And the other one, the clothing stands above the model and says, I like or I don't like you. Do you see the difference? And there are two ways that we can approach God's Word. We can come underneath it and have it say, look, Jared, I like or I don't like you. Or we can say, I don't know about that. And what God says, how you listen, how you listen, the fundamental approach is that you come underneath God's Word. You come underneath the God who speaks and the God who speaks here. What I'd like you to do, grab everybody, everyone has a bulletin or something like that. You have a bulletin, grab it. You put it like this. You're like, oh, you look silly. So do you. It's physically. This is what we want to do with our lives. This is what we want to do with our lives. We want to come underneath. So that's the approach. Specifically, what sort of actions do you take? One is church. One is coming here. Not just in the sermon, but in the sacraments, in the liturgy, in the songs that we sing. It's all about coming underneath God's Word. About listening. I mean, let me just read what we said earlier. We said this, we have sinned even as our fathers did. We have done wrong and acted wickedly. We flattered you, God, with our mouths. We've lied to you with our tongues. But we also said this, you do not stay angry forever, but to delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us, you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. I mean, is that real? Every week we come here and say, God, we totally blew it. He says, I forgive you again and again and again and again. Every Sunday, come and listen. Even as the words we're saying, just pause and listen for a moment. When we say, oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise. God says, look, listen. It starts corporate worship. This psalm was written for the people of God to worship together. He says, listen in church. Listen as you cultivate relationships with each other. See, there's this unique thing that happens when another Christian knows you. when they love you, when they care for you, and there's an incredible ability that they have to put their finger on your life and say, look, you need to hear about His glorious deeds, about His might, about His power. You need to hear about His law, how you must respond. You have a relationship and there are boundaries around it. Don't cross them. Guys, let's look, cultivate relationships where you can listen to each other. This doesn't just happen on Sunday mornings. It's all about regular life. Cultivate relationships. Those are things that we can do together on our own. One thing that we can do is meditate on God's word. Meditating isn't the like, mm, emptying your mind of things. It's actually filling your mind with the word of God. It's like going out to dinner and having a great steak, or if you like dessert, a good dessert. And you take a bite, and all of your attention just focuses on it. and you're chewing it and think about it and it fills your mind. God says meditate. Meditate, chew on my word. And also, you know, use media. We live in an age that's just saturated with media. Wherever you go, you can listen to something, you can read something, interact with something. There are all sorts of ways to use that to grow as a Christian. Listen to music that lifts up your heart, that tells you of His glorious deeds, of the response that is required. Learn more about His ways. The opportunities are just boundless. God says, look, I want you to listen. There are real, simple, practical ways that every single one of us can do that. There's the general approach, but then all these ways in life where we can say, yes, God, I want to listen to you. I want your story to be mine. And God says, look, you must do it. You must listen. But you also must do something else, and that is to tell. You also have to speak. You see this, it runs through the psalm. It says in verse 4, We will not hide them from our children, but tell to the coming generation. It speaks about, you know, in verse 5, He commanded our fathers to teach your children that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children. And basically He's saying, every one of you, Every one of you is meant to listen to God's story, but also to tell it. See, the fun thing about this psalm is, as they're listening to this psalm, they're actually being called to sing it as well. It's meant for worship. Now at the exact same moment, everyone is a listener and a speaker. And what do we speak? We say the same exact things that we've heard. We tell first of His glorious deeds. that grace comes first, that God initiates the relationship, that He comes down. The Israelites are in bondage, they're saying, Lord, help us. He says, okay. Here I come. We're to tell of His glorious deeds. If you don't tell this, it's just some other list of things to do. It's just another religious code that we're supposed to, you know, be good and live up to. God says, no, first you need tell of my glorious deeds. tell of them, then also tell of my law, that every real relationship has boundaries. Every real relationship has a response. And if you cut out either one, if you cut out the wall, if you cut out the glorious deeds, it will leave you in ruins. And God says, look, what you need to do is you need to tell people what they should believe in, tell people how they live. We're like, oh, that's so offensive, that's so authoritarian. It comes down, look, it comes down. Does God speak? Does God speak? If He speaks, which He does, we must speak as well. And we don't have to be harsh. This is actually given to us in a song. It's given to us in a song. And God says, look, you have to speak. Why? I mean, He tells us. He commands us. He's worthy of it. We love Him. What else would we talk about? In the psalm, there's also some other things. What's interesting, you know, the whole like education thing where you learn 20% of what you hear. It says, you know, you learn about 90% of what you teach others. And the neat thing is, as we tell others about God's glorious deeds, about His law, you see it happening in this psalm. The language of our pops up. Where it's not just about something that happened in the past, but that God has done these glorious deeds and I am a recipient. Our fathers were rebellious and foolish, and I am like that. A law was appointed for God's people, and that's for me. You see, when we tell, when we speak, we identify. It becomes our own in this neat way that doesn't happen when we just listen. God says, look, you have to speak. And you have to do it not just for yourself, but for the next generation. For the children yet to be born, that they would even tell. And God says, look, you're either going to be a cul-de-sac where truth comes in and withers and dies, or you're going to be a conduit. Truth is going to flow from you into others' lives and keep on going, or you're just going to be a dead-end street. You'll be one or the other. God says, look, you can't let it end with you. You can't let it end with you. When I was in Uganda with Al and Henry Krabendam, Henry was telling us a story about a good friend of his that we got to meet. His name is Dr. Baturo. He's part of the president's cabinet in Uganda and is this amazing, neat, godly man, seeking to be a Christian in this position of influence that he has. And Henry was telling us about this conversation that he had with Dr. Botoro. Dr. Botoro, his father, was part of the East African Revival, this crazy thing that God did in East Africa. And his dad started 25 churches in his lifetime. And the thing that he would say, when people would say, how did you do this? How did you do this? And he would say, as a young man, I resolve to fully surrender myself to Jesus Christ." And Henry and Dr. Bouture were talking about his father. And Henry says to him, he says, do you have the faith of your father? And with sadness in his eyes, he says, I do not. And Henry says, if you do not have the faith of your father, and your son does not have your faith, and his son does not have his, eventually you will have nothing. You will have nothing. And Dr. Brattura wasn't offended. He said, you're right. He said, you are right. I must have, I must have the faith of my father. You see, there's a sense, truth cannot end with us. It must go beyond. God says, you must speak, you must be a conduit of my truth. And again, how does this happen? There's an approach. There's the approach where, you know, we talked about coming underneath God's Word. When we speak, it's got to come from underneath. Your Christianity can't be, you know, this nice veneer where you're like, oh, that's a beautiful piece of furniture and it's got a quarter inch of mahogany and junk underneath. You must be someone who has first listened to the glorious deeds of the Lord and say, yes, I have confidence. I have confidence in his power and his patience and his mercy and his leading. And I respond, I obey. And before you speak to others, you have to speak to yourself. You need to make sure that you have listened. And if right now you're speaking and nobody is listening, you need to ask yourself, have I listened? Have I listened? Am I the problem? You may not be. Jesus, people didn't listen to Him. He wasn't the problem. But that's where we need to start. Our approach is that we say, does this truth come from deep within? Is it coming from underneath? Is that from where I speak? And then what do we do? What do we do? Again, it starts in corporate worship. You're like, well Jared, I don't get to say a lot on Sunday mornings. Yes, you do. You sing. You read the liturgy. You say, the Lord be with you, and you say, also with you. Can you imagine some Sunday morning when everyone's just kind of feeling down, and I say, the Lord be with you, and everyone's like... That says something. on Sunday morning when you speak, with love, with conviction, with faith, when you sing with your heart, you tell God's story. God says, look, it starts in corporate worship, but it doesn't end there. Look, many of you guys have families. It talks in here specifically about fathers and children. This is something that God has given. This is a huge part of where it begins. Guys, You need to speak. Whether you have kids or not, if you have a wife, you need to talk to her. Wives, you need to talk to your husbands. Telling each other the things you already know, that God loves you, that He's in control, that He is power. If you have kids, you need to talk to them. You need to teach them. And some of you guys are like, well, I don't have a family. Yes, you do. We're all your family. This is the body of Christ. There are formal avenues. You can help out in nursery. You can work with explorers. You know, Christian education classes are starting in the fall. Community groups, covenant groups, small groups, Bible studies. And there are, again, a million informal ways where you can be like, hey, let's get coffee, and I need you to tell me about God's glorious deeds and about His law. Doesn't matter how old or young you are, you can speak. You can speak. And this part isn't as much in the Psalm, but some of you are here today because someone spoke to you. Where you didn't have a father or a mother or friends who told you about Christ, but someone stepped into your life and they spoke to you. And we need to do that as well. Is that we need to speak. We need to tell God's story. that He has done glorious things, and that there is a law, there is a response that must happen. And Gus says, look, the reality is that every single one of you is going to tell a story. There's a study by, I think it was a journalism professor at Temple. And she was looking at Facebook, which is a social networking site on the internet, if you're not familiar. And there are about, I think it's 3 million or 3 billion photos. Let me look. I have it written down. And there are about that many photos, more than 3 billion photos posted on Facebook. And what she did is she looked at college students, and this is what the study found. She said that she says, college students use Facebook photos to portray the ideal college life. The central objective among college students on Facebook was the recording and posting of their participation in the social rituals of college. The visual worlds that the students constructed for themselves were very interesting. It wasn't about reality, but the life that they wished for and idealized. There were no pictures of people studying, of people, you know, finishing that all-nighter, taking an exam, and with big blurry circles under their eyes. There's no pictures of family conflict. There's no pictures of aging relatives. This is what he said, he said, the photos are not about the reality of college, but building this idealized experience. And here's the thing, they are telling a story. They've bought into a picture of what college, of what life should be like, and they are telling a story. Every single one of you is going to tell a story with your life. It's going to be like Facebook with the college students. We're going to make something up that suits you, that suits the stories you've listened to, or it's going to be something else. We actually sang these words that I'm going to read in one of the songs. At the end of Joshua, this guy Joshua has been here for the whole thing. What we talked about, the exodus, moving into the promised land, this crazy time in the wilderness where bread comes down from heaven, where water gushes out of rocks. This guy Joshua has been there and he's been a leader all through it. He's at the very end of his life. He's an old man. And he says this, speaking to all the people of Israel gathered there together, he says, Now therefore, fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." And his house, it's not just this small family, big extended family, servants, workers. He's at the very end of his life. How can you say, look, we will serve the Lord? Because he has spoken. because he has told God's story. And people have listened and embraced it. And God says, look, you have to listen and you have to speak. We have to do that together as a church. We do that individually. God says you must. Will you do that? Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for your great and good story that has come down into our lives. Help us to listen. Help us to believe. Help us to speak. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.