Psalm 139. Go ahead and read the whole chapter, 1-24, and I'll read from the ESV. O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path in my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue. Behold, O Lord, you know it all together. You hand me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold on to me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night. Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day for darkness is as light with you, for you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious to Me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. O that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from Me. They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. I do not hate. Those who hate you. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred. I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Let's pray. Father, as we've just sung about the Lord Jesus Christ, Lord of all, reigning above all, we celebrate the fact that we worship a God who controls all things, including the weather. And Lord, with all this flooding What's going on? We pray for our brothers and sisters who are in trouble. Lord, some of them stranded in places up in the mountains where they cannot get anything in or out, and they don't have food or water, electricity, phone service, and having to make decisions about what to leave behind. All these difficulties, Lord, We pray for the saints along the front range, Lord, who have suffered loss or who have loved ones in trouble. We ask that you would help them. But Lord, even more, we pray for those who are in the midst of this flooding and they don't even know the God who controls the weather. They don't have any high rock to run to. They don't have any sense to meaning to make out of all this. They are just at the mercy of the floods. And they don't have any capacity to run to the one, the God who is the only one that can save them. Not just from floods, but from the far greater calamity of sin. Lord, I pray that you would use all these things you've been doing in the weather to bring people to their knees. Lord, bring them to a fear of the God who can fill up in one day an entire canyon that you have created, one drip at a time, and crack down hundred-year-old trees, huge, mighty oaks that have stood for so long and snap them off like toothpicks right down the river, crushing our dams and roads strongest efforts to keep ourselves safe. Lord, I pray that people would fear you and through that love you, come to know you, bow the knee and see what a glory it is to be cared for by the God who is mighty and above all and yet nearby. And so it's no There's no better place we could be in your word now, Lord, than Psalm 139, which shows us your greatness and your nearness. Teach us this morning, Lord, both. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, in this church there is one question that is more important to us than any other question. We spend more time on it than any other thing, and that is the question, What is God like? That's what we love to study. The most important commandment is to love the Lord your God, then the most important question is, what is God like? Because you cannot love what you do not know. And so, we study a lot about the attributes of God and our primary goal around here is to increase our knowledge and experience of God. And you would have a hard time finding a place in the Bible more densely packed with truth about what God is like and how to experience him than Psalm 139. This psalm we've been studying starts with the amazing fact in the opening verses that God takes an interest in his children. He is omni-interested in us. We talked about that last time. Verse one, O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You're familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, behold, you know it completely, O Lord. That's where we left off last time. God takes an interest in every detail of your life, and not just a distant interest. He's nearby. It's a personal, close interest. Verse five, You hem me in, behind and before. He is in front of you, He is behind you. If you are a believer, you cannot move a hair's breadth forward or backward without bumping into God. God goes in front of you, preparing the path before you, blasting into oblivion any lurking threat that might violate His plan for you before your feet reach that place. He goes behind you, blotting out the memory of your past sins. He guards you, from threats that would overtake you from behind, catch up to you and overtake you. He guards you from the front like a windshield, sheltering you from oncoming harm. He's got you surrounded. His surrounding presence protects you from ever breaking out of his perfect plan for you. And not only does his encompassing presence shield you from external threats, even it shields you from internal threats as well. threats that come from your own heart. God protects me from the disaster of unrestrained self-determination, which if it were allowed would lead me into total destruction. And all of this shielding and protecting is done in a very personal way and that's the flavor of this psalm. It's not like being protected by a tank or a bulletproof vest, you know, or a bomb shelter or something like those are all impersonal things. A bomb shelter doesn't care about you. It can't help protecting you. It doesn't really care. But God's protection of you isn't like that. It's described so beautifully at the end of verse 5. You have laid your hand upon me. Isn't that great? Don't you love that image? Picture yourself. Imagine you're a soldier in Israel's army. You're fighting at the time of David. You're advancing into battle and it's not going well. It's this horrible hand-to-hand combat and it's just all around you're seeing fewer and fewer Israelites and more and more Philistines and things are getting rough and you're getting tired, you're exhausted, you can barely lift your sword and you're just expecting any moment you're gonna feel a blade just run you through from some angle. And instead of feeling that, what you feel is a hand on your shoulder and you look over and it's King David who has, he saw in this battle, he saw you were faltering, he saw you were weak and about to give And so he comes alongside you, and he's got his sword now in his left hand, still mowing down Philistines and cutting down people up in front and behind you. But his right hand, he's got it laid on your shoulder, just reassuring you and strengthening you and letting you know you're okay. That's the image we have here. You've laid your hand upon me. Very personal image. God is personal. He's a person. He's not an it. He's a he. It's not like the force in Star Wars, you know, just this floating thing out there somewhere. He lays his hand upon you. And one of the most important things you can ever do in your life is learn what that feels like. What does it feel like when God lays his hand upon you? And I assure you, it is something you can feel. It's not just an abstraction. You can feel it. Not physically. But it has an impact. If you understand what this metaphor means, you can feel it in your emotions. When God lays his approving, protecting, comforting hand on your shoulder, you can feel it. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, let me explain it this way. Let's start with, think about how it affects you differently when different people lay their hand on you, when different people touch you. It matters who's touching you, right? I mean, there's some people, if they put their hand on you, it would make you uncomfortable. There are other people, they put their hand on you and you don't feel anything, it doesn't mean anything, they're just getting your attention or whatever. But aren't there certain people in your life that they put their hand on you? It has a powerful effect on how you feel. For me, it's my wife. Tracy, there are times when I'm about to come up here and preach, and Tracy knows, she can tell I'm struggling, I'm sick, or I'm distracted, or I'm upset about something or whatever. And she'll, just before I go up, she'll reach over and she'll put her hand on me. And every time She does it without exception. It has a huge effect on how I feel. Anytime Tracy ever puts her hand on me, she instantly has 100% of my attention. It goes unnoticed by me, ever. And just as instantly, it fills me with warmth and comfort and pleasure. Especially if she does it right before I'm about to do something hard, because I know what that means. It means I have her support and she's behind me and it just fills me with strength. What does it feel like to you when God puts his hand on you? It's a sensation of being accepted by him. It's an awareness that right now God approves of me. He's looking down on me right now and he is expressing his love right now. It's not just a theoretical abstract knowledge of his approval, but an enjoyment of it. The fact that it's happening right now. It's being expressed right now and I'm enjoying it right now. An enjoyment that causes me to feel strengthened and feel encouraged and feel empowered and feel loved. That's what it's like. And you know, you might hear that and say, why is it then that there are so many Christians that never feel that? And in many cases, I would say it's because they don't realize it's God's hand. They don't understand what it is. They don't realize when it's happening. You know, if Tracy touched me and I'm facing the other way and I didn't think it was her, if I thought it was somebody else doing it, it wouldn't have the same effect, right? I have to know it's her. I have to realize it's her hand. Many people don't enjoy God's hand on their shoulder simply because they don't know how to interpret it. They don't realize it's God who's touching them. When they experience blessings and pleasures, their ability to enjoy good things all through the day, all these things, these blessings that God gives, which happens numerous times all through the day, God expressing his love to you, expressing his And when that happens to them, they don't interpret it as God expressing anything towards them. They don't interpret it as gestures of God's love. They maybe have the ability to understand something in scripture for the first time, and their eyes are opened and lights come on, and they don't interpret it. They just think, oh, I'm thinking clearly today. And they don't interpret that as God laying his hand on them. And they have the ability to resist a temptation, or to use their spiritual gift to serve God, to respond to a hard situation in a godly way. They don't interpret it for what it is, God expressing his love and laying his hand on their shoulder. Every time you can enjoy good things, that is a gift from God. Ecclesiastes 5.19, when God gives any man wealth and possessions and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work, this is a gift from God. It's God laying his hand on you. It's him giving you a gesture of his love. Enjoy it for what it is. Interpret it for what it is. It's a marvelous thing, not only because of how it makes you feel, but because of the assurance it gives you of how He feels about you. Now, you have to be instructed by Scripture to be able to interpret it properly, but it's an experience. In verse 6, David is so overcome by that experience, and he's so overcome with everything that he's been saying about the interest that God takes in his life, that He just has to stop and respond. Verse six, such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. This is more than I can take in. It's beyond what I can appreciate. If I filled my brain to capacity with information about God's concern for me, I would still be, I wouldn't grasp it all. I am in over my head whenever I think about God's attention that he pays to me. It's kind of like when David says this, it's too wonderful for me, too much for me, it's kind of like if you were In some beautiful place, suppose you're in Rocky Mountain National Park and somebody said, you've got one hour to explore this place. Well, I mean, if you looked at the map, you'd say, well, I can't scratch the surface. That's kind of what this is like. This is the doctrine of the unfathomableness of God. He's unfathomable. Or if you like the seminary word, inscrutable. The inscrutability of God. He is beyond our understanding. So, what is God like? He is interested in your life, He is attentive to you, He is personal, He lays His hand upon you, and now, fourth, He is beyond comprehension. Romans 11.33, how unsearchable your judgments and your paths beyond tracing out. God's ways and God's wisdom and God's love and God's knowledge and everything else about God are unsearchable. They are unfathomable, inscrutable, incomprehensible, inconceivable beyond tracing out. beyond understanding. But, that's not to say God is unknowable. Don't make that mistake. Some people have made the mistake, they think, they look at this and they say, well, God can't be known at all. Don't try and tell me you know something for sure about God. You can't, that's arrogant for you to say you know things for sure, or truths about God. God is unknowable. If there's a God out there, he would be so huge, he'd be so massive, we could never, people like us could never comprehend him, we could never know him. That's a mistake. That's wrong. Not only is it wrong, it's ridiculous. In fact, it's self-refuting. It's a self-refuting doctrine. When somebody says, you can't know anything for sure about God, my first question I want to ask them is, are you sure that you can't know anything for sure about God? Because if you're sure about this thing that you're saying about God, then you know something for sure about God and your whole doctrine is false. And so they say, well, okay, I'm not so sure. You're not sure? that you can't know anything for sure about God, you might be wrong, so maybe it is possible to know something for sure about God, so your doctrine is wrong again. It refutes itself either way. The unfathomableness of God, the inscrutability of God, doesn't mean it's not possible to know true things about God. That is possible. If God is infinitely wise and infinitely powerful, surely He's capable of revealing things about Himself that are true, right? Even to us. The fact that He's unfathomable simply means we can't figure out anything about God that He hasn't revealed. That's why we don't revert to human wisdom. Anything that God has not revealed is unknowable. But anything He has revealed is knowable. That's what revealed means, right? By definition. If it's revealed, it's knowable. So we can know what He's revealed. He's revealed more than we can ever finish learning in a lifetime. But we should also keep in mind, even the things that He has revealed and we can know for sure, there's a limit to how much depth we can know, right? We don't know everything about anything. You can keep going in any direction of learning about God. Every fact that we know about God is a tip of a giant, unknowable, hidden iceberg that we'll never know. We can never see the whole iceberg, but the tip that we can't see is real, and we can really know it, and we can know it with accuracy and with precision. So the doctrine of the unfathomableness of God should never cause us to just, you know, throw up our hands and give up and say, well, it's no use trying to learn anything about God. Just the opposite, the exact opposite. It should fill us with joy because we can never run out of new things to explore. We can keep learning forever. I mean, if you don't have enough time to fully explore every nook and cranny of Rocky Mountain National Park, that doesn't make you throw up your hands and say, oh, well, I'll just go home. No, you say, I should make use of every minute I've got so I can explore as much as possible in the time that I have. See, so David is just blown away by this doctrine. And he says, this is more than I can take, but he still wants to delve into it. So what is it exactly that blows his mind? Because if you look at the first four verses, they're not really complicated, right? There's nothing very, there's no paradox in there. There's nothing hard to understand. A child, I mean, he's saying God is interested in you. God pays and he searches you. He knows everything about you. What's so hard about that? He can explain it just fine in those four verses. A child can understand that. So what is it that's so hard? I think the thing that's mind-blowing to David is not the meaning of it, but the why of it. Why? Why would an infinite God have genuine interest in a speck of dust, on a speck of dust, in a speck of dust in the universe like me? I mean, is God unfathomable? Is He inscrutable? Yes, but that's not David's point here. I think his point here is that not just that God is inscrutable in general, but that God's interest in me blows my mind. That's what's inscrutable. It's inconceivable. I mean, with all that God has created, with all the wonders, all of His immense ability to enjoy and observe everything in heaven and all through the universe, it's astonishing beyond measure that He would have any actual interest in such a speck as me, especially given the fact that this particular speck has so provoked Him and so dishonored Him and disobeyed Him and rebelled against Him. Why would He show so much interest in me when I have shown so little interest in Him? And so David's blown away, and you know, most of us, if you've been a believer for very long, you've probably experienced this, where haven't you had those times where you just, it's something you've known for years, ever since you were a little kid in Sunday school, you've known this, and then one day you wake, and your eyes are open, and it just explodes with meaning, and you're so thrilled with it? That's what's happening here with David, about God's interest in him. Verses one through five, he just has to, he writes those verses, and then verse six, he just has to stop, and talk about how this just floors him. It just knocks him to the ground. He's so amazed by it. But by the time we get to verse 7, David's back up and running, and he's ready to look into another great truth about God. So let's move on. Verse 7. Where can I go from your spirit? And where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, and your right hand will hold me fast. These verses are the typical place where theologians go to prove the omnipresence of God. If you want to prove the omniscience of God, God knows everything, you go to verses 1-4 of Psalm 139. And if you want to go to prove the omnipresence of God, you go to these verses. Omnipresence, that's the doctrine that God exists everywhere at all times. Which is another doctrine that really blows the human mind. It's impossible for the human brain to conceive of. We could imagine God just being so big that he fills all of space, right? That's the way I thought about when I was a kid. When I was a child, I remember they would talk to me about God is everywhere, and I'd think about how that could be, and I just pictured him as just being so immense that he just filled up all of space. That is not the doctrine of omnipresence of God. If God were just some massive creature that was so big he took up all of space, then that means in each particular place, you'd only have one tiny portion of God, right? So in the space where you happen to be right now, then maybe all that fits in this room is just one little tiny fragment of his left ankle bone or something like that, and that's all that fits. That's not how it is. That's not the doctrine of the omnipresence of God. There is no place where only a portion of God exists. God is not only present in every place. But all of God is fully present in every place. You take a tiny little matchbox or a thimble or a little BB, inside that BB, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in that little space all the time. The pantheists say that God is just sort of the sum total of all the parts of the creation. You just put, you know, the trees, that's part of God. The clouds, that's part of God. The stars, that's part of God. You put it all together, you got God. That is false. is not made up of parts. God has no parts. We're made up of parts, right? And we're assembled together by parts. You take away parts of me and you take too many away and I'm gone, right? God has no parts. He's a simple unity. He's just one thing, one part. Wherever God exists, He exists in all of His fullness to the point where He is aware of every single thing that's ever happening firsthand. So Jeremiah, listen very carefully to Jeremiah 23, 24. It says, can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him, declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth, declares the Lord. So he fills heaven and earth, but he doesn't just fill heaven and earth. He fills heaven and earth in such a way that he's aware of every secret place, every single thing that's ever happening in every single place at every time. That's the omnipresence of God. That's the doctrine that theologians call omnipresence. And the doctrine is true. I mean, God is definitely fully present in every place in all of his fullness at every time. I believe that. However, I also believe that the doctrine is misnamed. I don't think omnipresence is the best word for it. I think omniexistence would be a better word for that doctrine. Because when we say the word presence in English, we typically just mean you're there. He's present means he's there. In the Bible, though, the word presence is used in a different way. It means more than just the person is being there, existing there. The word translated presence in the Bible is just the normal everyday Hebrew word for face. It's the word face. So when the Bible talks about God's presence being in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle, it doesn't just mean he existed there. God exists everywhere and they knew that. What it means is, that's the place where God's face can be found, where you can have a personal interaction with God. It's the place where God is available for personal interaction. So in these verses, David's not saying, he's not talking about God's omni-existence. He's not saying, God, wherever I go, you exist in that place. That's true, but that's not what David's saying. What he's saying is, wherever I go, There's no place I can go where you won't turn your face towards me in a personal way and become available for personal interaction with me. See, David's not talking about omni-existence. He's talking about omni-presence in the biblical way, in the biblical sense. And to communicate that in English, I think the only term I can think of is it's not God's omni-existence, but God's omni-favorable personal presence. So, if we can coin a word. So make sure that's on your list of attributes of God. God's omni-favorable personal presence. David's saying, everywhere I go, wherever I go, I can personally interact with you as you turn your face toward me. I never escape that. I never get so far that I'm out of reach of your guiding, strengthening presence. And it is his guiding, strengthening presence. It's a positive thing. It's not a negative thing. Some interpreters have read this and assumed that David actually wanted to escape God's presence. They say that this is a complaint. You know, David is tired of God always watching him, always scrutinizing him, and he wants to get away. He's got sin in his heart, and he wants to avoid judgment. And so he's running, and he can't escape. He can't escape judgment. Now, is it true that you can't escape God's judgment? Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean, for sure. That's Amos 9, 2 says that. Though they dig down in the depths of the grave, from there my hand will take them. Though they climb up to the heavens, from there I will bring them down. Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, there I will hunt them down and seize them. Though they hide from me at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them. Though they are driven into exile by their enemies, there I will command the sword to slay them. I will fix my eyes upon them for evil and not for good." So yeah, it's true. You can't outrun God's wrath if you're trying to escape judgment. It's not going to happen. But that is not what David is saying here. This is not a complaint about being unable to escape God's judgment. It's a celebration that he's never cut off from God's kindness, from God's favorable presence. And if you doubt that, all you have to do is look at verse 10 where David himself defines what he means by presence. Verse 9, if I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. The definition of what David means by God being present is God guiding him and holding him fast, strengthening him. Guidance and strengthening. David's saying, no matter where I go, your guiding, strengthening grace will always be immediately available to me. If you're a child of God, you can never escape God's presence to bless. And you know, you hear me say that and I know some of you might be scratching your heads and say, wait a second, wasn't it just a few weeks ago that you preached a whole sermon about how we have to seek God with all our heart, all our soul, otherwise we won't be able to find him. It's hard, we have to put all kinds of effort into it. Yes. And then now the scripture is saying, no matter what you do, you couldn't escape it? Which is it? Is this a contradiction? No, it's not a contradiction. The point of verses seven to 10 is not that it's impossible to ever be separated from God's presence or have distance between you and God. The point is, there's no geographical location that can cause that. There's no place, there's no circumstance in life that can put you out of range of His presence. Sin can do it, but geography can't do it. No circumstances in life can't do it. They can't put relational distance between you and God. There are places where you can't get a signal on your cell phone, but you're never out of range of God's presence. Which is a remarkable statement when you remember this is an Old Testament saint here. This is David talking. And in the Old Testament, God had taught them the way to approach God is in the tabernacle, right? You have to go to the holy place. And that's the way they had learned, and yet even the Old Testament saints knew. The tabernacle is the primary center where you can experience the face of God. But anyone who's a believer, to some degree, can experience fellowship with God anywhere. Anywhere in the world. And they understood that. It's not restricted to the tabernacle. Verse 8, if I go up to the heavens, you are there. David couldn't go up to the heavens, he didn't have a rocket, he didn't have an airplane, he couldn't go upward very far. I don't know what his vertical leap was, but that's about it for David as far as going up. But no matter how far, even if he could imagine himself just rocketing all the way up to the heavens, it wouldn't be out of range. And then the other direction, verse 8, if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. And I don't like this translation. For some reason, the NIV always leaves out the beholds in the Bible. It just leaves them out, which is sad because in the Hebrew, it reads this way. Behold, it means to look, look at this. Here's what it says. If I make my bed in the depths, behold, you, doesn't even say you are there, just you. I mean, no matter how high I get there, how high I go, you're there. I go all the way down, all the way, even into the grave. And I get down there and I look around Oh, look at that! You! You're there! The word translated depth is sheol, the realm of the dead, the grave. That's as far down as you can go, right? God is with you even at the lowest point, even on that day when you make that transition from this life into the next, when no one else can be with you. You have to leave your spouse behind, your wife, your husband, your children, your family, your friends. Nobody can make that journey with you. You have to pass through. without anybody else except one person. There's one person who will be with you even then. The Lord Jesus Christ, if you're a believer, will be with you the whole time. When you cross over from this life into the next, he'll never let go of your hand. He'll be with you. There won't even be a split second when he lets go. He'll be with you in death, and he'll be with you in life, no matter how bad things get. He'll be with you in your darkest day, in your hardest desert, Even when you're under his rod, even in times of severe chastisement, God is displeased with you and you're tasting his rod, and you're out there in the middle of your driest desert, your hardest, darkest time, still, even then, God's tender, gracious, life-giving, life-supporting, strengthening, encouraging, motivating, awe-inspiring, healing, upholding, guiding, enlightening, delightful, joy-giving, soul-satisfying presence is there supplying you with everything you need. Even if you traveled down to hell itself, he would be with you, hypothetically. You can't do that as a Christian, but if there's some way that you could, as a Christian, visit the Lake of Fire and travel there, you'd be the only happy person there. you would be the only person experiencing God's favorable presence. God's presence is so wonderful that it can transform any place into paradise, even hell itself. See, the reason you could never actually go to hell as a Christian, if you're a believer, you could not be in hell, is because if you did go there, the moment you got there, it would cease to be hell. You'd ruin the place. It would no longer be hell, because hell is the place where it's devoid of God's presence, and you would bring God's presence into that place so it wouldn't be hell anymore. If God's presence is so good that it could make even hell into a paradise, how much more this room? How much more even this dark time in your life that you might be going through right now? It feels so dark. So David, he talks about height and depth in verse 8, then in verse 9 it's east and west. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me and your right hand will hold me fast. The far side of the sea, if you're in Israel, the sea is west. The farthest extremes of east and west, not out of range. And that phrase, the wings of the dawn, mounting the wings of the dawn, it seems to me that's talking about riding on the very rays of the sun. As the sun comes up and the light shoots across the earth from east to west, David's saying, even if I were riding on that, even if I were rocketing across the earth from east to west on the very rays of sun, going the speed of light, If I look behind me, I would see God gaining on me so fast that it would seem like I was standing still, and he would overtake me with all of his gracious, upholding, guiding, strengthening hand. Now, I know for some of you it doesn't seem like this is true. It seems like you are alone in the darkness, God has abandoned you, God has forsaken you, and you're by yourself. But to think that that's true because it seems like it's true and feels like it's true is to think like a child. That's the way children think. If your father is with you there in the room and then somebody walks in and clicks off the light, that doesn't mean your father is gone. He's still there. Just because you can't see him doesn't mean he's not there. If you're a believer and you're crying out, where is God and all this? The answer is, he's right here. You're in his arms. I did say a minute ago, there is one thing that can put distance between you and God, and that's sin. And I know that troubles some of you. You think, oh, that's me. I'm a sinner. I'm separated from God. But keep this in mind, too. When we sin against God, it does put relational distance between us and Him. However, if you're a believer, it never cuts you off completely from His presence. Never. It's only to some degree. No matter how far down into sin we fall, if you are truly saved and you are genuinely trusting the Lord Jesus Christ, There is some degree to which you are always experiencing God's presence, even while you're sinning. He never totally cuts you off. He'll turn His face away some, but never completely. We need to seek hard. When He does turn His face away some, we need to seek hard with all our heart and soul in order to get a great experience of His presence again. But you always have some experience of His presence. That's what it means in places like Psalm 73, 23, when the psalmist says to God, I'm always with you. Always. There's never a time when a true follower of Jesus Christ, who genuinely trusts Christ, is shut out totally from God's presence. Never. So David says, no matter how far I go east, no matter how far I go west, you're with me. You say, but what if he tells me to go east and I go west? What if I'm in the midst of disobedience? Well, if you want to know the answer to that question, you can ask Jonah how that works. God told him, go east. Jonah said, nope, I'm going. And he went the exact opposite. He ran as far as he could from God, went the opposite direction, went into the sea, the Mediterranean Sea. He finds himself at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. But the moment that Jonah finally let go of his rebellion and he cried out for help from the bottom of the sea, how long did it take God to send a fish to go rescue him? How long? Less time than Jonah could hold his breath, right? Because he didn't drown. That fast. Jonah says, help me, and boom, there's a fish. Even way out, as far from God as Jonah could run, out in the middle of the sea, even there, the moment he cried for help, God saved him. God was there. You can't run away from God. Even if by some insanity you wanted to, you couldn't. Those who desire to escape my love, Typically, they can do it if they try hard enough. That's the weakness of my love, but not God. You cannot escape His love. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you're never, ever, ever alone. Never. There's no such thing as alone for a believer. If you feel like you're alone, actually, that's insanity. Technically, the definition of insanity is when what you perceive doesn't match reality. The world that you think is real isn't actually real. That's insanity. And if you ever feel lonely, that's insanity trying to encroach on your life. That's not real. There's no such thing as loneliness for a believer. If I'm tempted to sin because I think I'm alone, nobody will see and I can do this, that's insanity. If I'm wallowing in self-pity because I'm feeling loneliness, it's absurd. It's a denial of the very nature of God. There's no such thing as alone for a Christian. I could be in the farthest, most extreme, obscure place in the universe, the farthest possible distance from every other human being, and I would still be standing in the greatest, most massive audience there is. God would be there. And what a horrible calamity it would be if he weren't. What a horrible thing it would be if there were such a thing as aloneness. If it were possible to be alone, can you imagine? I'll tell you, the worst fear I ever remember experiencing in my lifetime was when I was hunting once with my dad, and I got separated from him, and I was lost. And I was terrified. I was going home, trying to retrace my steps in the snow, and they crisscrossed, and I was totally lost. I couldn't find him. I'm yelling, I'm shouting, I'm firing off my gun. I couldn't find him. And it was getting dark, it was the end of the day, it was evening, and I was terrified. I knew I wouldn't survive the night and I was terrified because of the threat of coldness and darkness. Those threats are nothing compared to the spiritual threats that are around us. There are way more severe threats than that all around us at all times. And if we were ever left alone, spiritually, we would be ravaged. Our souls would be ravaged by the devil and his demons to where we'd be eternally destroyed. Now if you're not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, that could still happen to you. You're vulnerable to that. But it can never happen to a child of God. Because our Father never leaves us. So we've seen God's omni-interest, we've seen God's omni-attentiveness to us, we've seen that He's personal and He lays His hand upon us, we've seen His inscrutability and the unfathomableness of His love for us, and we've seen His omni-favorable personal presence. One more, and I really love this one. Verse 11, David brings up one more fascinating and wonderful attribute of God. He says this, if I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me. Even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you. This is the doctrine of the self-sufficiency of God. Notice all the things that threaten us that don't threaten God, mostly darkness. Surely, verse 11, if I say, surely the darkness will hide me, your Bible might say, cover me. Literally that word translated to hide or cover, it's actually the word, literal meaning is bruise, to bruise or to crush. It's the word in Genesis 3.15. It's a very strong term. It's the sort of thing a snake does to your heel or your heel does to a snake's head. So it's a severe thing. And David is saying, darkness can do that to us. Darkness can have a crushing effect on us, can't it? Don't we talk that way? If you're at your rock bottom, the hardest time in your life, and you feel like you're being crushed, you might say, this is a dark, dark time for me. I'm going through darkness, or something like that. Darkness is a threat to us, which is amazing. I mean, think about that for a second. What is darkness? What is it? Nothing. Literally, nothing. It's not something that exists. Darkness is just a word that we use to describe a situation where light isn't there. Nothing's there. And that's a threat to us. Nothingness is a threat to us. We have to have light, right? Without light, we would all die. That's how fragile we are. I'm so fragile. All it takes to totally destroy me is nothing. Nothing. No hostile power is required. It doesn't take any power at all to destroy me. All it takes is nothing. That's how dependent I am. I'm such a dependent being, I depend on so many things. I gotta have water, I gotta have food, I gotta have light, gotta have warmth, gotta have shelter, gotta have rest, all this stuff. You take any of that away and I'm dead. You take me to a place where there's nothing, just take me out to outer space where there's no air, no warmth, I instantly die. I depend on so many things just to exist. And not only do I have to have those things, and not only do I have to have access to those things, I have to also be able to see them or I get scared. If the light turns to darkness around me, I become terrified. If I can't see these things that are going to protect me, I become terrified. You know, it's not just children who are afraid of the dark. We're all afraid of the dark. We're all afraid of what we can't see. What happens when they announce another round of layoffs at work? We don't know what's going to happen to our future and fear comes, right? We're afraid. What happens when you find a mass under your skin and you don't know what it is? Fear. What happens if it's a blizzard and your spouse is four hours late and you can't get a hold of them? Fear. Why? Because of what you don't know. We're all afraid of the dark. We're all afraid of what we can't see. When we can't perceive what's going on, we're afraid. Sometimes even literally, I mean the literal darkness. You can be afraid even in your own house. Doesn't that happen to you sometimes? You'll be at home and you hear a noise or it's the middle of the night and maybe you watch a scary movie or something You're spooked in your own house? Think about that. If you turned on the light at that moment, what would you see? All you would see is that you're surrounded by all kinds of things designed to meet all your needs. Just food and clothing and water and things for your comfort, couches and chairs and all These things you spend thousands of dollars on to provide all your needs. You're surrounded. You can be literally surrounded with a thousand things designed to meet all your needs and keep you safe. And it's not enough just to be surrounded by them. You have to be able to see them. Right? That is weakness. I mean, you talk about fragile. We're so dependent on light. But God isn't. He's not dependent on light. He does not need light. Why? Because verse 12, even the darkness will not be dark to you, for night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. Darkness, when God looks at darkness, he sees the same thing as light. He doesn't need it, he doesn't need light. Darkness is no threat to him because he's the source of his own light. Nothing is a threat to God because he doesn't need anything, he's the source of everything. If all the air and all the water and all the food and all the shelter and everything else just went out of existence right now, it wouldn't affect God in the slightest. in his ability to survive. You know, we can survive in a hostile environment, right? You take me to Pluto, I can't survive because that environment is too hostile for me because of what isn't there, right? Heat and air and all that. There's no environment that's hostile to God. Not even remotely hostile to God. It doesn't matter where he is. He'd be on the surface of Pluto, surface of the sun. None of those environments would threaten him. His infinite blessedness, one bit. To him, those places are no different than the Garden of Eden or heaven itself. He's his own light, he's his own warmth, he's his own everything. Everything God needs is supplied by God. All the infinite, unlimited, vast and fathomable riches that God enjoys are supplied 100% by himself. All of the riches I enjoy are supplied 0% by me. None of it. I mean, if you subtract all external blessing from me, I'm left with absolutely nothing. You subtract external blessing from God and there's no change because he's not supplied by anything external. He's utterly self-sufficient. And I love this doctrine because think of what it means for you. He's your caretaker. He's your provider. He's your protector. And he's got all his own supply. What a great thing to go through life with a caretaker who generates all of his own supply of everything. A caretaker who depends on some other supply, if his supply runs out or gets cut off, you're out of luck. If your caretaker is the source of all supply, then not even the worst imaginable circumstance in the world could ever make any difference in your level of blessedness. Even the most crushing darkness in the most horrible place makes no difference on your outlook for the future. Did you know your future outlook cannot change? It's unchangeable. If there was an economic collapse Total economic collapse, your outlook for the future would be unchanged. You say, wait a second, how could it be unchanged? I've got a million dollars in my retirement and it goes from a million to zero and no change. Because think about it, if there were an economic collapse, what is your hope in prior to the collapse? What hope do you have for the future? Your hope is in an infinitely rich and generous father in heaven who supplies all of his own gifts and who has promised to lavishly care for you. Now after the crash, after the collapse, what are you left with? An infinitely rich and generous father in heaven who supplies all his own gifts and has promised to lavishly care for you. No change. No change in your bottom line. You've got the same resource. You lose your job, you find a tumor in your body, you lose all your retirement savings, your future portfolio is unchangeable. Even if the worst imaginable disaster happens, even if the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, it doesn't even begin to challenge God's ability to take care of you. One reason why Psalm 139 is such a favorite is not only because it's packed with marvelous truth about what God is like, but it's packed with marvelous truth about what God is like to you. It's personalized. It's for you, if you believe. And again, none of this applies if you're not genuinely born again. And so I just want to close by saying this. If you're here today and you are one of those people where you're just going through the motions, you know it's not real, I want to implore you. There's no reason. to wait any longer to totally give your heart completely to the Lord. Don't wait. There's no reason to put this off. If you do that, if you commit yourself totally to Him, are you going to have to give up some things? Yes. Is it going to cost you? Yeah. Do you have to turn your back on sin? Yeah. It'll cost you. But nothing you're going to have to give up even begins to compare in the slightest degree with what you will get. You will get, if you repent of your sins and you place your full trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, God will, to you, be omni-interested and omni-attentive to you every moment, totally focused in your needs. He will be intensely personal, laying his hand upon you. God's knowledge of you, the more you learn about it, will blow your mind. And not just a theoretical knowledge from heaven, a distant knowledge. He'll always be close, nearby you, with his life-giving, joy-producing presence. And because of the fact that he's self-sufficient, you'll never lack anything you ever need to do his will and to fulfill his purpose for you. And your security and your outlook for the future can never be touched by any person, any event, any circumstance, any loss, any threat. Let's pray. Father, we bless your name for this, for such amazing promises. And I do pray for those who might be here who just Their eyes are just now opening. They're just realizing they don't know you like this, and they want to. Lord, bring them to the point of repentance. Make them, their hearts willing to embrace you. Father, I pray that, same thing Andrew prayed, that you would use this rain and this flooding to bring about awe. Boy, if there's anything we're missing nowadays, Lord, it seems like it's awe of our God. We pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are being ravaged by this flood. They're stuck in the mountains. They can't get out. They don't have any food or water. They don't have electricity. Their house is destroyed. All these things they're going through, Lord, we pray that you would walk closely with them and comfort them and reassure them provide for them and protect them, Lord. But even more than that, we pray for those who are lost. We pray for all these thousands, millions of people in Denver. And we think of these people, Father, some of these people up in these canyons who, they're facing these awesome forces, and they don't even know the God who controls it. They don't know any powerful source that can protect them. They have nowhere to run. They don't even know this God, this awesome God, who creates these canyons and can, in one day, fill up that whole canyon with water, one drip at a time, smashing to pieces our dams and bridges and roads and all our powerful structures, snapping 100-year-old trees like toothpicks, sending them downstream. Oh, this awesome power. Lord, I pray that more and more people during this flood would see that and would drop to their knees so that they could fear you, so that they could learn to love you. Teach us to fear you and to love you as we run to you as our refuge. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. All right. About six or seven minutes left. Any questions about the sermon before we dismiss? Yeah, seems like sometimes in the Old Testament they're afraid of God's presence and in the New Testament we want to seek his presence and what makes that change. In one sense I would say that's actually a little bit of a false dichotomy between Old Testament and New Testament because mostly the place, most of the places in the scriptures that talk about wanting to seek his presence are in the Old Testament. So it was in the Old Testament that they feared Him and desired Him simultaneously. And in the New Testament it's the same way. There's a fear of God and an awe and a desire to be near Him that are simultaneous. And so how do we understand that? How can you be afraid of someone and want to draw near to that person? And it's a hard concept and so the main way that God has given us to understand that concept is with the image of fatherhood. And you want, I mean, the ideal relationship a child has with his father, there's fear and desire both, right? So you want, a godly father will strike some fear in his, you know, his son is messing up and you want to have a relationship with your son where he, you look across the room and you give him a look and he can immediately, he's like, I gotta stop. And there's a fear there. He takes you seriously. That same day, after you get that worked out, you're at home, wrestling on the floor, and he's doing stuff to you that no one else would take liberty to do, and your son is climbing on your head and doing everything else, and he's got that familiarity, and he's got closeness, and he wants to be with you. Dad, come with me to the park. Let's play catch. He wants to be near you, even though he fears you. And I think that kind of relationship, where there's a simultaneous fear and taking him seriously and desire to be with him, is understood in the ideal father-son relationship, father-child relationship, which is one reason why we want to be good fathers, so that when our kids read the Bible, they'll be able to comprehend that, because they can have something to compare it to. Reconcile that with the commands to seek God? Yeah. So there's a couple of places in Scripture where it says no one seeks God, and then there's other places that we're commanded to seek God. I think the way to reconcile that is When it says no one seeks God, it's a reference to us in our sinful state, in our fallenness, without any grace. Without the grace of God drawing us, none of us naturally seek after God. That's describing us in our natural condition. It also says no one trusts, no one knows Him, no one loves Him. But that's, when there's grace introduced, God enables all that. What isn't naturally available in us, He makes it possible and He draws. Nobody seeks God without God drawing them. And so God draws us and we respond by seeking him. No, I wasn't saying that David was left-handed. My point was he's right-handed, but he's so concerned about, what I want you to picture is he's so concerned about comforting you that he'll put himself at a disadvantage and go to his left hand, even though that's still plenty, just so that he can use his main hand to comfort you. I think it's very clear in Scripture David was most certainly right-handed. Well, you see all the things he says about God's right hand. If he were a lefty like, say, Josiah, then he wouldn't be constantly talking about God's right hand being everywhere. He would be saying his left hand. That's why I think he's right-handed. No, I think, yeah, I think you can place yourself in a position to be more likely or less likely to have his hand upon you, or more likely or less likely to be able to perceive that his hand is upon you. Even if he's laid his hand upon you, you can put yourself in a position where you can't perceive of that, perceive it. You can't conceive of it happening, you can't feel it. You know, that's what that Ecclesiastes verse is talking about, when God gives you these gifts and enables you to enjoy them. And so sometimes he'll put his hand on you, but you don't have the ability to enjoy him. And so that's one of the reasons why we steer so clear of, try so hard to steer clear of sin, because we don't want to be in a position where if he puts his hand on me, I won't be able to know it or feel it. So. Well, I don't know. I think there's both, Scripture speaks in both ways. It speaks, the question is, when you get distanced from God, is it just, God removing himself from you, or is it you removing yourself from God and God never moves? I think you actually find both images used in scripture, language that goes both ways. Some places it says we are drifting or wandering from God, but other passages do talk about God turning his face away from us. And so I think there's value in seeing it both ways. But with God, it's more of him turning his face away rather than removing himself so that at any moment he could turn his face back. Okay, how did I make the connection between our ability to enjoy good things and His hand being laid upon us? It's because I interpret His hand being laid upon us as a blessing that is designed to reassure us. Any blessing that God gives that's designed to reassure us, and that verse that I read in Ecclesiastes, where it says, anytime you are able to enjoy good things, God's gifts, that is a gift from God, that's what the gifts of God are for, is for Him to express His love to us. Well, yeah, I mean, you have great godly men who experience depression, And sometimes people who are not in rebellion against God, and at that moment when they're walking with the Lord, unable to enjoy good things, we just have to understand, all of these promises are partial in this life, and we only get them in bits and pieces and in partial ways, and it's not the only factor. There are other factors that weigh in. Sometimes God tests us, and at the moment when Job lost everything, enjoying much. He was in agony. And there are some times where we're in agony by God's design, and that's the path that God is taking us through. So these are all general principles. Generally speaking, God continually grants gifts to his children and enables them to enjoy them. Even when you're depressed, you can enjoy something. You have some ability to enjoy. God's good gifts even in the depths of your depression. It's different from being in hell It's not as bad as if you if God gave you no ability to enjoy good things You'd be in hell and it feels like you're in hell sometimes when you're deeply depressed But it's not it's not as severe and there's some ability to enjoy Little things at least a little bit and that we need to interpret as God Showing us gestures of love even in the bottom of our depression even when you're having to go through a very hard time And I think the men you're talking about, Luther and Calvin, who went through such depression, Spurgeon, you read what they wrote, and even in the midst of their depression, they talk about being able to take delight in certain things on occasion. So we only get it in a partial way in this life, we get it fully in the next life. Does that make sense? Okay. Say that last part again. Yeah, well, no, it's not, you're saying you don't want to be fearful that if you're going through a hard time where you're not able to enjoy things, then that means God has left you? No, I don't, what David is saying is that never happens. That never happens. There's always some ability to enjoy good things in this life, always, even when it seems like it's not, There's never a case where we say, oh, I guess I'm not saved because I don't sense God's presence. What David is trying to teach us is if you feel that way, it's incorrect. You don't feel his presence, that's just incorrect. His presence is there. It's there to be felt. It's there for the experiencing, and if I'm not experiencing it, I'm missing something that I could be experiencing. What if your fear is a loved one not being saved and going to hell? That's in a different category, obviously, than being afraid that God's not going to take care of me. Mostly in a different category, but there are some similarities. The similarity is anytime I'm afraid, what I'm afraid is that something bad is going to happen, something ultimately bad. And the people who end up being saved or lost, God is ultimately in charge even of that, which is something that blows our mind. We can't understand it because we believe that there's and you're saved or lost depending on what you choose. But it's also depending on what God chooses. And we believe in the doctrine of election. And He decides who's going to be saved. And His decision of who's going to be saved and who's going to be lost is a good decision. And we can trust Him even in that. This is the only hope we have when a loved one who didn't know the Lord dies is that God has wisdom even in that decision of who He chooses and who He doesn't choose. And so even that isn't something we need to be afraid of. When we can get to heaven and we can see the wisdom of God, we will rejoice even in God's choice of who was elect and who was not. And so we don't have to fear that, but I don't want to overstate that. There should be a great deal of distress in our hearts at the thought of someone going to hell, anyone going to hell, especially a loved one. And if you ever get to the point where there's not a lot of distress in your heart over that thought, then you've departed from the biblical attitude. So the distress that's in your heart, maybe it's not all fear, maybe it's not that you're thinking, oh God, you're doing something wrong here, you're choosing the wrong people, you're failing to choose this person, and it's not so much that you're afraid that something bad is gonna happen, it's just distress overseeing the effects of sin on a loved one, and that's shared by God. God feels that in his heart, and that's not a bad thing. that we have to fight. That's a good thing that motivates us to continue to share the gospel with them. So, fear might not be quite the right word for that. Does that make sense? Okay, good. Did Adam know more about God than we are capable of? No, I think he knew less. I think he probably knew less. I think our situation is better than Adam's. Because there are so many things... I assume you're talking about Adam pre-fall. Yeah. There are so many things about God that you can never experience unless you've experienced sin. Unless you've been lost, you can never experience what it's like to be found. You can never experience what it's like to be forgiven. Before the fall, Adam had no experiential understanding of what it would be like to be forgiven. No understanding. And no ability to even conceive of that. There are so many attributes of God that we can experience that the angels can never experience. I mean, the patience of God when we are persisting in some sin, the forgiveness of God, the mercy of God, the guidance that He gives us when we are blind. There's just so many things that we can know about God, so many attributes of God, so many facets of His person that can never be seen without the existence of sin. And so, I believe that's the answer to the question, why did God ever allow sin to ever even exist? And I think that's why. A ruined and redeemed world and a ruined and redeemed people is better than just an innocent person that never experienced sin. So, God knows what he's doing in this whole thing. And I think that we have an advantage over Adam in that way. Yeah, I think he experienced God's presence walking through the garden beyond the measure of what we can experience when we're weighed down with sin. But I don't think it's going to be anywhere close to what we will experience in heaven after the resurrection. So it's our situation here, then Adam, then us in heaven. Okay, so how is it that when I said last week you can't think about God all the time, actually what I said was you can't pay attention to God all the time, which is a little different than thinking about God, because you can think about God without paying attention to Him. But you can't pay attention to God all the time, all day every day, but you must pray without ceasing, So how do you do that? How do you pray without paying any attention to God? I think the command, pray without ceasing, does not mean every second attentiveness to God. I think it means that the conversation never has an end. When I pray during the day, I purposely avoid saying amen. When I pray out loud, I say amen so people know that I'm done. But for the same reason I don't say it in my own personal prayers, because I don't want any signal that I'm done. I don't want to signal my heart that I'm done. There's just times, you know, there's times that Trace and I go on a walk, and sometimes we're talking, and other times we're silent, but it's a one-hour conversation. If it's a one-hour walk, it's a one-hour conversation, even though there's some silent gaps. And that's kind of the way I think of praying without ceasing. There's some times The way God made us, there have to be these gaps in between attentiveness. But it's not a detachment of fellowship. It's just a different degree of fellowship. And there's ways, you know, Scripture speaks about all the various ways to have fellowship with God. One of them is through direct prayer where you're paying direct attention to Him. But there's some other ways to have fellowship with God, for example. through serving him in ministry, it's possible to have fellowship with him that way, and through helping, you know, showing love to his people for his sake, and various different things like that. And so, enjoying his creation as gestures of his love and things like that. So, you know, I've given the illustration before, when I play my trumpet, I can't, concentrate on anything else. It takes me so much concentration just to follow the notes. It takes a hundred percent of my concentration. In fact, even with a hundred percent of my concentration, I still sometimes get lost. So I just have to focus so much. So I cannot think about worship at all if I'm leading in worship. So whenever I come up here and I'm playing my trumpet, basically I say, when I get up here, I say, okay God, this next half hour is for you. Please take this as a sacrifice of worship. I'll see you in 30 minutes." And then I'm just, you know, and then I'm in the music, and then it's 30 minutes later, okay, I'm back, you know, and that's what I have to do. But I don't think of that as a disruption of my worship. It's just my human weakness. It's the way God made me, and I think he accepts that. Right. Yeah, God would have to turn his face. If God ever turned his face away completely from an unbeliever, the only way that person could ever be saved is if God turned his face back. Yes, that's true. What's that? Yeah, I think so. I mean, obviously we're dealing with metaphors here when we say turn his face completely away from an unbeliever. I think probably if we want to push that to its technical extreme, we'd have to say that's when they go to hell. That's when he turns his face completely when they go to hell. But I do think there's a point of no return sometimes in this life where somebody commits the unpardonable sin and God says, okay, you're done. And they're still breathing. But yes, to answer your question, in order for anybody to ever be saved, God has to initiate. He has to turn his face first. Why have people preached verses 7 and 8 in the negative where it's like David is trying to escape God's presence? You know, I don't know how to answer that question. It's not as easy as you thought it was, that question. I have no idea. I think the only thing— I have to guard myself from thinking ill of those commentators, because my natural thought is to think, what is wrong with their relationship with God, where they would read that and think it's bad? So I hope, you know, maybe there's— I don't know. I don't want to— I repent of that thought every time I have it. I don't want to pass judgment on them, but I don't understand. I understand how someone... It could be just a... You know, it's possible to know truth about God, but for it not to sink in. And when some people, they just think God seems to them, God is mean. And they know He's nice, He's loving and kind, but they just feel He's mean. And it's hard for them to get past that. That's all I could say okay one last one Yeah, and there's actually a psalmist there's I mean there's a verse in the Psalms where he says turn your face away from me for a moment so I can have some peace you know and and that's that's true, but still These scholars ought to be able to read ahead to the next verse where he says he defines presence by the guiding, comforting hand. But yeah, I can understand what you're saying.