Scripture Reader:

Psalm 19 (NIV)

For the director of music. A psalm of David.

¹ The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
² Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
³ They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
⁴ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.

In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
⁵ It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
⁶ It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.

⁷ The law of the Lord is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
⁸ The precepts of the Lord are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
⁹ The fear of the Lord is pure,
enduring forever.
The decrees of the Lord are firm,
and all of them are righteous.
¹⁰ They are more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the honeycomb.
¹¹ By them your servant is warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.

¹² But who can discern their own errors?
Forgive my hidden faults.
¹³ Keep your servant also from willful sins;
may they not rule over me.
Then I will be blameless,
innocent of great transgression.
¹⁴ May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

This is the word of the Lord.

Bart Garrett:

In God, all lost children become found. And so she was found. We rejoice. My favorite New Year’s Eve tradition is going to bed before midnight. So fun. Well, as Ryan said, Merry Christmas, everyone. As well, because we’re living into the 12 days. So two more days. And also happy New Year. And if I haven’t met you yet, I’m Pastor Bart and we’re delighted to have you with us. I love first Sundays. I love having our elementary students in the room. I have a wonder truth for you in just a second. But as we think about this new series in this new year, it reminded me of back in 2007, 2008, there was this band who had a meteoric rise and the 20-something lead singer and all the fame was really struggling with success and identity. And through a mutual friend, I was connected to this person because it seemed as if I might be helpful in a conversation. So we talked for about an hour and it was a great conversation. But one of the things that stuck with me is he was lamenting the shuffle feature on all music platforms because he said it just rips the story right out of the album. And our lives can be like that. We can lead stories on shuffle day to day. We flit and float from event to event, from activity to activity, maybe even from job to job or city to city or relationship to relationship. And distraction and confusion can rip the story right out of our life. So we forget or we don’t consider a story that’s grand enough to address our biggest questions. Who am I? Where am I going? How am I going to get there? And so we’re taking one year to consider one story that’s compelling enough to shape our one life. And to do so, we’re gonna dive into one book, the Bible. And if you don’t feel this way, I know you have a friend or neighbor who does. They think about the Bible and they think, how bizarre that we’re drawing wisdom for life today from this book. And it makes me think of a story I love to tell about the turn of every year. When we moved to Berkeley 20 years ago, and I’m sitting in a coffee shop with my fair trade, single origin bean, vacuum pressed cup of caffeine, and there’s someone sitting right next to me. And we’re looking outside and this man walks by wearing a pink tutu and carrying a Bible. The guy sitting next to me turns to me and says, was he carrying a Bible? Because Bibles are bizarre. Like, who would be carrying a Bible? However, now you’re getting it. Now it’s rolling. Here we go. So 40 authors, 66 books written over 1600 years, yet one. One story. So the children’s Bible we use, the Jesus Storybook Bible, describes this story as the never giving up, unbreakable, always and forever love of God. It started with creation, that God created the heavens and the earth with you and me in mind. But there was this relational break, this rupture in our relationship. And the rest of the story is God’s rescue. This children’s Bible refers to each story as one whispering the name of Jesus. And so when Jesus in his resurrected state is walking with these strangers on the road to Emmaus, they didn’t recognize him. And so it says, starting with Moses and the prophets, he says that all of these stories are about him. Revelation, the last book in the Bible. John, who wrote it, says that Jesus is the beginning and the ending. So, elementary students, here is your wonder truth. This morning you do this in your classes. Write it down, take it to the Connect table. Get a prize. Think about it. This year, here it is, the whole Bible, the whole Bible is about Jesus. And so we as a church, this one church, WCPC, we’re gonna spend a year exploring that. Maybe you’re brand new to the church, maybe you’ve been here for 50 years, maybe you’re exploring Christian faith. You’re not sure what you think of Jesus. Maybe you grew up reading the Bible every day with your family. But for our community groups, our middle hours, our cohorts, our classes, our resources, our podcasts, the Bible reading plan we’re providing for you, we’re asking this question, what if one year in this one book allowed this one story to shape my one life? Because that’s all I get. Now, there’s an obvious question that I’d be asking if I were you. So why are we starting in the middle of the story in Psalm 19? I mean, we’re going to Genesis next week, which is the beginning, but if you place your finger right in the middle of the Bible, chances are you show up in Psalm 19. Why are we there? Well, I have an answer to that question. With the exquisite poetry of this psalm, it unveils a story of the world, a story of scripture and the story of Jesus. So before we begin in Genesis, I want to allow this text to briefly, very briefly this morning, ask and answer three questions. And here they are. What is the story of the world? Well, it’s a story that is beautiful and broken. What is the story of scripture? It’s a story that is precious and penetrating. And what is the story of Jesus? We learn in this psalm, even by way of echo, that Jesus is rock and redeemer. So quick word on each. The story of the world. We experience nature and all of its grandeur. Whether it’s a Sierra sunrise or a Pacific sunset or a hawk soaring on the thermals, David experienced. King David, who wrote this psalm, who wrote many of the Psalms, who was the great king in Israel. He experienced nature the same way. There was wonder and awe and amazement that pushed his pen and prompted the poetry of these first few verses. And he’s writing about the very same sun that we sit under today as a groom coming out of its chamber, as an athlete who delights in running a race. So why is this such an awe inspiring, beautiful experience for us? Because nature is like great art isn’t moves us, it knocks us off our feet. It finds it inspires our imagination, it captivates our desire, it extracts us out of ourself. And great art points to an artist, if you know art, maybe it’s the sensual style of Rubens or the subdued realism of Rembrandt. Well, Psalm 19, this poem about the art of nature, is about the great divine artist. The cosmos is God’s canvas. Nature is the product of this artistic vision. Vision and delight and design and passion and intentionality. And yet we know it’s also broken, isn’t it? This is only part of the story. This is half of the story. Because there are tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes. And as Tennyson says, nature is red in tooth and claw. And we survive by hook and by crook. So which one is the story of the world? Is it beautiful or is it broken? And frankly, we get mixed signals. And for some of us, it causes us to begin to question God. Some of us think, is God even there? Or is belief in higher power just some sort of wish fulfillment? Or some of us feel like maybe God’s on vacation. He’s on a chairlift in Tahoe somewhere. Or maybe God is just capricious or he’s weak. He’s got toothpick arms. He can’t do anything about the brokenness in the world. And some of us, maybe most of us in this room, as churchgoing people, believe that God is somehow still at work. And what was started as this new construction, demolished by our autonomy. When we turned away from God. And we started living life all by ourselves. Now God is in this loving, intentional renovation of this broken world. To make it beautiful again. And frankly, when it comes to the story of the world, the story of nature, what you choose to believe in either direction is kind of up to you. That’s actually the nature of the revelation of God in nature. So as a college student, I was a river guide on the Klamath River. And I spent many nights out under a canopy of gazillions of stars. Watching thousands of shooting stars go by every night. And I had to decide which story I would inhabit. A story of sheer terror, of trivial loneliness in the midst of vast nothingness. Or a story of the heavens declaring the glory of God? The choice is actually ours. Yet the implications for which story we choose to live in do have effect. They affect our purpose. They affect the way we relate to people. We see our purpose. Our meaning in life is either something that we must make up. We have to kind of maintain the fiction. So any admirable work we give ourselves to, whether it’s cultivating or preserving our creation. Or dealing with the restoration of a broken relationship. Or finishing a project at work all of those things. If there is no God, if there is no design, just sort of live in the fiction that we’ve got to keep it alive, that any of this matters, or when it comes to people, if there’s no God, if there’s no design, we’re just sort of lucky mud, right? We are survivors who made it to the top of the food chain. But if there is a God, if there is design, if the heavens do declare the glory of God, if the skies do proclaim the work of his hands, if day after day they do pour forth speech, if night after night they do reveal knowledge, then there is meaning and value. And we aren’t just lucky mud, we’re not just survivors, but as people, we’re actually stewards of every single organism from oleander to the duck billed platypus. We as a species have a capacity to know God in such a way that we can lead the song of hope in all creation that God is not finished with this world. This is the piece of the story that I think you know that you know. I think it resonates and it reverberates more deeply than words can explain when beauty knocks our socks off and truth aligns deeply in our soul and goodness can melt even the most callous heart. But it’s only a piece of the story. It’s only a fragment of the story, a snippet of the story. And this is why David’s poetic praise of God does not crescendo with the first half of his poem with the praise of creation. It actually crescendos with his praise of Scripture. Notice what David does in the rest of Psalm 19. The law, the statutes, the precepts, the commands, the ordinances of God are refreshing and trustworthy and right and radiant. And I use the word for our purposes, precious. And we think, well, that’s odd. I mean, what’s really going on here? When I see the law, when I see a wet paint sign on a park bench, I say, ah, it can’t be wet. And I touch it. When I see a no parking sign, I say, oh, well, that can’t mean me. That’s someone else. But David, what is David doing here? He sees all of this law as more pleasurable than all the honey in the world, more valuable than all the gold in the world. Why is this? Well, I think it’s because David knows that Scripture shows us who God is and shows us who we are. That’s why it’s such a precious gift. You may not have noticed this in the English. But in the first half of this psalm, the story of nature, the story of the world, God shows up twice. And the Hebrew term for God is El, which is the generic term. It’s just to say, yeah, we can see through nature that God exists. But in the second half of the psalm, God shows up seven times. And the word in Hebrew is Yahweh. Yes, God exists. Now, let me tell you God’s name. That’s the precious gift of Scripture, that we learn who God is through it. But secondly, we learn who we are through it. We are people that need wisdom and joy and light. So what does Scripture do for us? Verse 7 makes wise the simple. If we allow it, it grants us wisdom for relationships and decisions we’re making. It gives, in verse 8, joy to our heart. And in Scripture, that’s not just happiness, but it’s this deep, settled confidence that God is in control in every aspect of our life. It gives us light to our eyes, verse 8, insight, illumination for a life well lived. But there’s a third thing Scripture does. It tells us who God is. It tells us who we are, but also shows us who we are in light of who God is. And this is where Scripture is not just precious, but it’s also penetrating. It cuts deep. Look what David writes in verses 12 and 13, this sobering reality. Who can discern their own errors? Who can see their own hidden faults? Who can keep themselves even from willful sins? What David is saying, the human plight and predicament is that we have mind, body and soul problems. We have head, heart, and hand problems. We have thinking and feeling and doing problems. We have junk in our heart and refuse in our life. There is stuff that is messing us up, stuff that we can see and stuff that we cannot see. And all of this stuff David says in verse 13 begins to rule over us. So in that moment, whatever modicum of control that you thought you had over the situation is now fully relinquished. What made us alive and awake begins taking away that very life. One of the most haunting, moving performances of any song I’ve ever seen live was when Marcus Mumford and his sons sang the song Awake My Soul at the Greek theater in Berkeley 10 or 15 years ago. And Marcus Mumford has this raw passion of awakening tortured soul. And a lot of his lyrics are some kind of hodgepodge of Shakespeare and Steinbeck and Scripture. And I imagine that he was looking at Psalm 19 when he wrote the words of this song. He says, how fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes. But then he gets to the chorus and he screams, awake my soul. And this is verse 7, Revive my soul. Or in English, refresh. Or maybe the best word for verse 7. Convert my soul, God, turn me back to you. Help me do an about face from all the masks that I’ve been wearing and all of the characters that I’ve pretended to be. Show me who I really am in light of who you really are. And then Marcus Mumford sings. For we were made to meet our maker. And this is what scripture does to us if we allow it. The author of Hebrews and the most majestic Greek and all of the New Testament says that the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart. And so we hear this and we think, do we really want that? And frankly, again, like with nature and I’m almost done here, the choice is ours. We can kind of dismiss scripture as crude and regressive and primitive, or we can see it as a surgeon’s scalpel that will lay us bare. That sounds terrible, but there’s great hope in this. And that’s the third and final question. What is the story of Jesus? Well, David concludes this psalm and you’ve heard me say it a lot in prayer. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. And what David is saying is, I want my walk to match my talk. I want my insides to match my outsides. And David, if you don’t know his story, is a murderous adulterer. So do we have any murderers in here? Do we have any adulterers in here? Don’t raise your hands. But David knows something that we often forget in our modern age. David knows in verse 14 that his horizontal problems with other people begin with the vertical dimension. He has a broken relationship with God and to be acceptable and pleasing in that relationship with God in his context involved intricate keeping of a sacrificial system that was at the center of every life in that day. But David also knew he needed more than a lamb to be made right with God. This is why he says, my Lord, my rock, this is the altar, rock of the sacrifice and my Redeemer, this is the high priest of the altar. He needed a lamb, he needed a high priest. We get to see the rest of the story, that Jesus is rock, the Lamb of God, and Redeemer, the high priest of God. So much of God’s speech to this point is piecemeal and fragmented. He speaks out of a cauldron to Abraham and a cloud to Moses in a still small voice, to Elijah, in a whirlwind to Job and Amos cries social justice and Isaiah preaches holiness and Hosea wonders about the forgiving love of God. And all of them are pointing to, or ultimately a portrait of Jesus. And I conclude with two quotes, one from the Book of Hebrews, that sums all of this up.

Hebrews 1:1–3 (NIV)

¹ In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways. ² But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. ³ The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

Now, if you have no resolutions for 2026, please consider one. Wherever you are in the spiritual journey, make this a year to get to know God better. And I would suggest the best way to do that is to get to know Jesus better. And I would suggest the best way to do that is to find yourself in the Scriptures more. And finally, I said that with nature, the story of creation, the choice is yours, which story you want to adopt with Scripture. In some ways, the choice is yours which way you want to view it. In some ways with Jesus, the choice is not yours. And I say that because you’re in this room, which means you’re probably searching for and looking for something. And that’s why I conclude with this wonderful quote from the Dominican priest Simon Tugwell.

So long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we often lose heart. But it is the other way around. God is looking for us. And so we can afford to recognize that very often we are not looking for God, far from it. We’re in full flight from him, in high rebellion against him. And he knows that and has taken it into account. He’s followed us into our own darkness. There, where we thought finally to escape him, we run straight into his arms. So we do not have to erect a false piety for ourselves to give us the hope of salvation. Our hope is in his determination to save us. And he will not give up.

— Simon Tugwell

In the name of the Father, Son and Spirit, we pray. Amen.