[Randy Stiver] I have a lesson today, a story actually and the lesson's in the story. But before I can tell you the story, I have to go through something in Scripture to kind of bring us up to speed on that. This is something we used to talk about a lot. You can turn to Revelation 12 if you'd like. Going back, now, many years in the Church, a few decades, it has to do with the end of the age and some of the events that transpire during what is called the Great Tribulation and ultimately, the Day of the Lord and then which culminates in the return of Jesus Christ to the earth, the event that we are working toward in anticipation of the Kingdom of God being established right here on this planet and ultimately, forever here on a new earth, when you think through all the elements of God's marvelous plan.

What we have in chapter 12, we have a conflict that the Church has always faced. And when I say the Church, I mean God's Church, the true Church that worships God in spirit and in truth and is the body that Jesus Christ Himself established and trained and commissioned and ordained the apostles to direct during their lifetimes and on down through the ages to our own time. And the first part going up to verse 6 talks about those centuries.

Then we move to verse 7 and we have an event when you read through the whole chapter, it's called the war in heaven. This is a second battle in heaven. There was an original one, when Satan tried to take over God's throne. It is not recognized, by the way, as being his original rebellion necessarily when it's recorded in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14. We see it there very clearly; why it is not clear to some of Christianity, I don't know, but we do see it, that Satan originally rebelled, but he again attempts to take the throne of God.

Now, it's interesting, there was a time… and you can read this story. This is really separate from what we're going after today, but it is an important aside. See, Luke 10, that Jesus sent... that you don't have to turn there right now, but make a note, you'll want to read it this afternoon or this morning or this evening, depending on where you are, where you're listening to the sermon. You want to read about where Christ sent the 12 apostles actually and some of the other... there were actually 70 disciples that He worked closely with, but then the 12 that were being trained to be apostles were the ones that were closest. He sent them out on a practice mission, to preach the Kingdom of God in some of the communities and villages there in Judea and Samaria, and He gave them the authority to heal those who were sick and to cast out demons. And so they went out and they did that and then they came back.

Now, for how long they were out is not entirely clear, but Christ evidently was waiting by Himself, waiting for them to return. And when they all gathered, they were excited about their experience. And they weren't all that excited about preaching the gospel; they didn't mention that. They weren't even particularly excited about healing those who were sick. What really energized them was that they were able to cast out demons. And that's what they told Him about, and they were all anxious to tell Him their adventures. And Christ sat and listened, or stood and listened as the case might be. And finally, they ran out of steam and they stopped and it was His turn to speak and He said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." So whatever demons they cast out were small guys compared to the archdemon which Christ cast out of heaven directly.

The devil is not given the same respect at the end of the age. Notice this paragraph in verse 7, "Then war broke out in heaven, and Michael and his angels fought." Now, Michael we know; he's mentioned in Daniel, he's an archangel. He actually has a responsibility for the Church of God in this age in a sense as the guardian angel of the Church. It's made clear in Daniel. Michael confronted the devil once before and that was inspired to be recorded by Jude who was a half brother of Jesus Christ, just like James who wrote the book of James. But Jude recorded that, that when Moses died, the devil wanted to get the body of Moses and Michael prevented him. And you think, "Well, what in the world did he want the body of Moses for?" Well, a relic, so people would worship it instead of worshiping God. It's the usual thing. I mean, false religion has its typical patterns. That's why he wanted the body of Moses. But Michael did not rebuke him directly; it says there in Jude that he said, "The Lord rebuke you." He appealed to the higher power of God Himself to rebuke the devil, which makes you wonder if Michael was not a peer, that he was dealing with another former archangel who became to us known as the devil and Satan.

So war broke out in heaven and this is in the end time, this is sort of... this is a prophecy ahead of us. How soon, how far ahead? It can't be that long based on world events and other trends, but it is apparently still ahead of us. "Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought." See, Christ does not go and take over this battle. He dispatches Michael to deal with them. "But they did not prevail," the demons did not prevail, "nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer." They're not allowed to come back. "And the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world. He was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him." Well when that happens, it will not be a happy time on earth as the next verses explain.

"Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, 'Now salvation and strength in the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ have come." We are on the cusp of Christ return. "For the accuser of our brethren..." And by the way, devil is translated as accuser, that's what the word means, slanderer or accuser, either one. "Who accused them before God day and night has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death." There will be martyrs. There have been martyrs in the past among our brethren historically. "Therefore rejoice, O Heavens, and you who dwell in them and woe to the inhabitants of the Earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you having great wrath because he knows he has but a short time."

We will have an inkling, I believe, when that happens, an intensity... you know, we've been increasing in intensity and the anger and the hatred in the world, but I think we see, we'll see at the time a quantum leap forward or backward, depending on how you look at the intensity of the anger and violence of humanity. There's certainly plenty of it going on right now if you're watching the news, and we should be.

Now, the devil, "When the dragon saw," we're in verse 13, "dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman," meaning the Church. It says in this chapter that the woman is the Church. "Who gave birth to the male Child." But that would be a reference back to the early part of the chapter we didn't read, referring to the birth of Christ at the time of His human lifetime and ministry. "But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness," you know, away from the center of action as it were to wherever that is, "and be nourished for a time, times, and half a time."

Now, in the book of Revelation including earlier in this chapter and also in chapter 11, there are time frames listed, 1,260 days being one of the prominent ones and also 42 months. And if you account the average of 30 days to the month, then 42 months is 1,260 days. And you say, "Well, yeah, but some months have 31 days and some months have 28 days and it doesn't really make any difference technically. The astronautical month is 29.5333338, whatever." You know, it's like we're memorizing pi. And so, just a shade over 29 and a half days, rounded off, a prophetic month is the 30-day month. So, we have 1,260 days is 42 months is a time and times, one year and two years and a half a year, three and a half years of protection. This is not, by the way, this is not our understanding only. This part of this prophecy is understood by many conservative Christian groups that there is a place where the Church is protected.

"So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth," in verse 15, "like a flood after the woman," and that could be literally water in a flood or it could be a flood of an army. That sometimes is used to describe an army invading. "That he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and it opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood." And either way, it doesn't make any difference whether it's an army or water, God promises an intervention here.

And then finally, "The dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went out to make war with the rest of her offspring who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." And as we said, there will be martyrs. But there is a promise here of protection for a great deal of God's Church during the end of the age. We call it the place of safety.

We had a late evangelist, but a very illustrious, dynamic speaker, long speaker. I have 40 minutes to finish my sermon, and he typically took about 3 to 3 and a half hours. Fortunately, he didn't pastor any particular church area, he was often on a tour from one congregation to another. So we looked forward to Gerald Waterhouse's visits. And, you know, firing our imagination about God's Kingdom and some of these events that lead up to it in the urgency of the times, which we certainly are in. So with this background, a place of safety and recognizing that this, right here, there is going to be one. We don't talk about it extensively. We're not in the process of trying to save our skins to get in the place of safety, we're in the process of saving our lives spiritually so we can be in the Kingdom of God. That's what our focus is, which is what it should be. But there is this promise that there will be a time that many will be protected supernaturally by God.

So, the lesson. Here's a story that goes back to the beginning of the sermon and then we'll get into the main message. And by the way, the... well, no, I can't give you the title right now because it's the punchline of the story. As we go back to the 1970s, late '70s when Herbert Armstrong was living in Tucson, Arizona, for a while or mostly living Tucson, Arizona. And Mr. Waterhouse went to visit him and they went out to dinner together. In those days, Mr. Armstrong was in his late 80s, approaching 90 years of age and he couldn't see very well, so he didn't drive, which was good. So the chauffeur was driving them down to a restaurant some place in Tucson, as Mr. Waterhouse told the story. And they got to talking about the end time. And we saw events happening then that made it look like we were getting very close to the time immediately before tribulation, which leads directly to the return of Christ. But that was not unlike 20 years earlier in the 1960s, we were seeing challenges and events, and we are not seeing any less. We're seeing more of them today. So the intensity is picking up and building as time goes forward. So they were talking about this passage and discussing it, and Mr. Armstrong, so the story goes, said, "Gerald, how do you think God will gather all His people from all over the earth to bring them to the place of safety?” or place of final training, as Mr. Waterhouse liked to call it. So, Gerald Waterhouse thought about it for a few moments and finally he said, "Mr. Armstrong, I think that just shows how great God is." That was his answer.

And Herbert Armstrong smiled and reached over and slapped him on the leg and he says, "Gerald, I think you're finally getting it, how great God is." You know, to find wherever God's people are scattered on the earth—and there will be scattering that takes place with the civil unrest in different locations and that sort of thing—and yet God always knows where we are. And in the danger of the days ahead, it's important for us to realize how great God is. Now that's the title, "How Great God Is".

It's easy to get burdened down with our problems today or other people's problems. It's dangerously easy to let ourselves get angry or even bitter about things sometimes. So this sermon is designed and hopes to be an antidote to trouble and depression, the solution to problems and fretting, and to be able to turn the stove down on the stewing in high anxiety. Let us marvel for a few minutes and wonder at how great God is. And we'll look at some amazing poetic word pictures that God inspired a man after his own heart to write down long ago, and they're called psalms. Each one of these is a psalm of David.

So, let's turn to the Psalms. The number for the first one is Psalm 139. That's not in the hymnal. The hymnal's songs are numbered separately. But this is Psalm 139, and it is also a psalm of David to the chief musician. Right under the number, you'll have a, what is usually in smaller font in most Bibles, that's called the superscription. It's also part of the inspired record. It says, "For the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David." So David wrote it. David wrote more psalms than anybody else wrote. There were number of other authors, but he wrote the bulk of them. Let's just wander through this beautiful piece of divine poetry and marvel at how great God is.

"O eternal, You have searched me and known me." You know, the Greeks had a point of wisdom—and some say this was their greatest wisdom, and I would suspect, having read some Greek history, that this might be true—their greatest wisdom was, "Know thyself." Now I’d kind of rather know God, but it's important to know yourself. I understand that. What is more important is that God knows us, inside out and backwards, frontwards and backwards. "You have searched me and have known me." Now, that's good. One of the key things we fret about when we're young is being understood, especially if mom and dad are a little short on patience or had too much sugar and they don't have a short attention span like they did when they were in primary school. So they don't listen well. You gotta listen well if you're a parent. And sometimes the child doesn't feel understood. They don't feel like anybody really knows them and that translates in, "Nobody cares for me. Nobody loves me. I just want to eat worms and die." [audience laughs] You know that old saying long ago.

"You have searched me and known me." God knows us whoever we are, wherever we are. God knows us, He has searched us. If you're a science-fiction fan, then back in ancient times when it was Star Trek that was popular, they would have these probes they would send out so they could search another ship that was light years away. When you're arguing from ignorance, you're unshackled by facts and they could just do that, you know? It was a story. But they were searched and known then. Well, God… God's known us from before long-range probes. He has searched us and known each one of us. "You know my sitting down and you know my rising up." He noticed on His watch when you sat down after the last beginning hymn, He knew when you stood up to sing the one just before this sermon. He knows all that stuff. "You understand my thought afar off." A long-range probe for sure, He knows exactly what we're thinking. And sometimes, we give God a break, we don't think very much. He likes a challenge, though. So it's good to think, and He understands those thoughts.

"You comprehend my path and my lying down. You are acquainted with all my ways. There is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Eternal, You know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before." I think that was the inspiration for part of the lyrics in one of the hymns the ABC choir was singing. "You have hedged me behind and before." He's in front of us and He's behind us. "You have laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge," David said, "is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain it." It's marvelous. How can God know all of that? And I mean, know all of that for all of us who are just right now sitting here in the ABC lecture hall and the dining room and I don't know where else, we might have a little bit of overflow today, and all of those that are watching the webcast and all the rest of the brethren. And frankly, He knows this about every human being on earth, and we're closing in on seven and a half billion people. Now, He already has a record for everybody who's lived and died in the past. The mind of God comprehends all of that in intimate detail. He knows us backwards and forwards.

"It is high, I cannot attain it." And then verse 7 through 12 is quite beautiful. "Where can I go from Your Spirit?" From your spiritual presence. "Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven," you fly up in the sky, "You're there. If I make my bed in hell," and it doesn't mean in Gehenna, the hell fire; it means here the grave. "Behold," or in a cave or in a hole in the ground because that's what hell means. "You're there." And you can see me there, too. "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell at the uttermost parts of the sea," go sailing out across the sea, the wings being the sails on your ship, and you can sail and sail and sail all six of the seven seas, and what do you know? God's been watching the whole time. He's right there.

"And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall fall on me,’ even the night shall be a light about me." If the darkness comes, it's like I'm standing in broad daylight. “But the night shines as day, the darkness and the light are both alike to you.” Even on the darkest night, it's just like noon day for God. He sees in the dark; we can't, we have to have nigh vision scopes or flashlights or candles or whatever. But God can see in the dark like we can see in the day, better.

Verse 13, "You formed my inward parts." Another description now. "You covered me from my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." God knows us down to the molecular and the atomic structure and how they came together, made the molecules and ultimately formed the parts of the cells and every cell. He knows us, every bit of us He knows. "I praise You for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works and that my soul,” my life, my inner being “knows very well. My frame is not hidden from You, When I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth," which is a poetic reflection to the womb, "Your eyes saw my substance." And the Hebrew word for substance is the embryo. "Being yet unformed." It kinda does away with the abortion argument, doesn't it? God sees the life, right there. "And in Your book they are all written. The days were fashioned for me." God has a plan for each of us and for all of us together. "And when as yet there were none of them. How precious are Your thoughts to me, O God. How great is the sum of them. If I could count them, they would be more in number than the sand. And when I awake, I'm still with You. Oh that You would slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men, for they speak against You wickedly. Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I not hate them, O Eternal, who hate You? Do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with a perfect hatred." And the perfect hatred is not hatred of the person as much as the hatred of evil. Romans 12:9, "I eschew evil." I don't think they render it "askew" in the modern translations, but eschew means to hate.

"I count them as my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties. And see if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting." God knows us to the core of our beings. That's how great He is. He knows everything about each one of us and always has and always will. God is, when we say "great," that implies a phenomenal power. In America right now, we're worried about the power that the government is beginning to take as far as gathering information on the citizens. Very un-American. It's not the way that we have been as a nation. But get used to it; it looks like it's the way we're going to be for the duration. But they couldn't hold a candle to having information about people, about us that God already has. The level of what God know about us is vast, beyond vast. He's greater than the fanciest, danciest, high-speed technological computers that they can come up with; faster than any of those. He understands more, He can gather more. He knows what's going to happen before it happens because He's been sitting there reading the thoughts of those who want to do it.

So, God is great. And we need to appreciate that marvelous greatness and realize how well He knows our life and knows our challenges. It's okay that all the joys what we have, all the things that go well, but we worry about the things that don't go well. Don't worry about it, God knows about it already. All we have to do is look to Him and yield to Him to give us guidance and wisdom, and a positive spirit and attitude to move forward through it. But let's notice the beauty of meditating on God's greatness, thinking about His greatness in more depth.

Let's go to Psalm 145, just a few pages. Psalm 145. Now this one is what would be classified as—the psalms are all classified under certain categories—wisdom psalms is one of them. This is a wisdom psalm and a praise psalm because it has both elements. There is great wisdom to be obtained from it. There's wisdom in every psalm for that matter, but some of them are more proverbial in nature in the way they're constructed. And under the wisdom psalms, you have some that are what we would call creation psalms from... You think, "Well, what wisdom do I get from knowing that God is a Creator?" Well, none if you don't think about it, or a vast amount if you stop to think about it—God made everything. We did not just happen. There is meaning. And if there's meaning, we need to know it and we need to seek it. There's meaning to life.

So knowing that God is the Creator is meaning seeing how everything is put together. And we begin to develop, scientifically, understand that in our age more than maybe the ancients did, definitely more in many respects. But unfortunately, the scientific investigation is done under the auspices of thinking that there is no God. So mankind in general really doesn't profit from it. However, we can, because God made all those things, all the interesting behaviors and symbiotic relationships between various animals, fish, birds and things like that. Marvelous to wonder at, to see how God designed it all, and then we begin to appreciate what God has done.

But let's look at and think about that, this beauty of meditating on God's greatness. Starting in verse 1, and it's another psalm of David by the way. A praise, technically it's called A Praise of David, hence, it's a praise psalm. He is praising God. "I will extol Thee” or bless Thee, praise Thee, “my God, O King. And I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You." And we understand from that that every day we should bless God in the sense of praising and thanking God. It's not pronouncing a blessing, "May You live long and prosper," that's a blessing that the Vulcans, an ancient Star Trek lesson. I say ancient because I have to explain those Star Trek details to our ABC students, except for the few and the chosen, you know; they know. The rest of them don't know. Well, they knew the new Star Trek, but it's got a whole new timeline. So, they don't have those same things in them.

Let's go on. In verse 2, "I will praise Your name forever and ever." Then verse 3, "Great is the Eternal and greatly to be praised." That's out of one of our hymns that we often sing. "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. His greatness," talking about how great God is, "His greatness is unsearchable." You won't find the depths of it. "One generation shall praise Your works to another." Oh, so when we discover this greatness of God for which we give Him praise, we have a responsibility to hand it on, and hopefully we're doing that. The older, are you teaching the younger? Younger, are you learning from the older generation, from your parents, your grandparents, or your grandparents in the faith? There is this transmutation of God's praise and greatness from one generation to another. The stories and the lessons learned in real life terms, kind of like the story I just started the sermon with, do we hand those on? We should. Those are stories of faith, strength, in our own experience and relative time in history. And to have the older generation hand those stories on to the younger is valuable for the younger ones. They have to listen. They have to be interested in learning that. Of course, you can always text it and be sure you misspell a lot of things because then then they have to think for a while to get it. Hold it, we misspell everything when we text. I do, not because I believe in the text language, but because my thumbs hit the buttons... too many buttons at a time.

"From one generation shall praise Your works to another." We need to see that we're doing that. "And shall declare Your mighty acts. I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty and on Your wondrous works." For how many centuries did Israel focus on God's intervention at the exodus, and what He did with Egypt and how He broke them out of jail, so to speak, and brought them to freedom? Of course they had a few issues along the way, but He brought them ultimately to the Promised Land. And that was a formative element, a formative storyline, a history line that guided the nation of Israel for centuries and centuries until they began to forget it for the most part and then they had to go find a new storyline, which was called conquering death and captivity by the Assyrians and later the Babylonians, and then they begin their wandering again. History has its cycles and repetitions.

"I will meditate on the glorious," in the middle of verse 5, "meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty and on your wondrous works. Men shall speak of the might of Your awesome acts and I will declare Your greatness." Now what do you know about the Creation? That's a good place to start in considering God's awesome acts. What do you know about history? God has intervened periodically in history, often and particularly because many of us study it a little bit in the history of the nations that descended from the ancient tribes of Israel. And there are lessons to be learned from that fact that God has made those interventions to bring about His purpose in history ultimately. That's a part of God's greatness.

We go back in the Bible, we read about how He intervened for His nation that was supposed to be His model nation, and it was—it was a poor model. It wasn't what God intended it to be, but it was what it ended up being. "I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty." Think about how great God is. "Men shall speak of the might of Your awesome acts and I will declare Your greatness." I mean, it's not something that we can kinda keep within; it needs to be talked about. "They shall utter the memory of Your great goodness." The blessings He poured out upon His servants in history; they're in the Bible, but we have modern experiences not unlike that. The interventions in the lives of many, for healing or provision as the case might be, as people begin to find out about God's truth as they were being called to the Church and their eyes were opened and they begin to obey His laws they were ignorant of before and God blessed them for that obedience. Those are the stories we should feed on and marvel at.

Verse 8, "The Eternal is gracious and full of compassion. He is slow to anger and great in mercy." And we are deeply thankful for that fact. Verse 9, "The Eternal is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works." As one commentary summarizes, God has a heart to love His creation and love His people. "The Lord is good to all." If He's good to all, that means He's good to you and He's good to me. Don't focus too much on traumatic experiences or things that we consider to be traumatic experiences in our lives; focus on the things where we have seen God's love. Usually, even in those traumatic times, you knew God was there or you found out He had been there all along watching over you and protecting you, and ultimately paving a road for you to follow.

"All Your works praise You, O Eternal, and all Your saints shall bless You." This is the end of verse 10 and beginning of verse 11. "They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom and talk of Your power and make known to the sons of men His mighty acts." See, sometimes, David is talking to God; sometimes he speaks about God as he goes through this psalm.

You know, we stop and think about, "They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom, and saints shall bless you." Well, we're among those who are the saints, the ones that are called out of this world at this time to be a part of the true Church of God, and that is one of our most powerful tools for promoting the gospel of God's Kingdom. Over the years and we've had statisticians who kept track of this kind of thing because we also know we have to preach the gospel formally. Paul said, "Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel." We must do it. But it hasn't been our preaching, whether on radio or television or even in print, that has been the primary vehicle of God's calling. Historically, in our experience in God's truth over the many decades, between 50% and 70% of those in the Church came here because of friends and family. Somebody they knew told them about God's way and how great God was. I mean, when you understand God's plan and why humanity was born, each and every human, you know, that's proclaiming the greatness of God, 50% to 70% over the years. And one of our most powerful tools there for the gospel is simply ourselves, living God's way faithfully and being willing to talk about it when people ask, giving that answer the hope that lies within us.

Go on to verse 12, "To make known to the sons of men His mighty acts." Some of those mighty acts are just His quiet interventions in our lives. "And the glorious majesty of His kingdom." And then, when we think about the Kingdom of God and we pull all that we learned in our Feast sermons and sermons that cover the theme of the millennial age and the Great White Throne Judgment and beyond, we understand how everybody who ever lived will come under the calling of God to His truth and their minds will be open, which means that God is going to be intimately involved in every life. Nobody will be left out. God is so great that He will have everybody involved. They have to choose of course, but they will understand what they're choosing.

"And Your dominion endures throughout all generations." And in verse 14, "The Lord upholds all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look expectantly to You, and You give them their food in due season." Now, this would include the creation. I worried about the birds here in Ohio. The other week, we had four or five inches of snow and then we got the freezing rain on top of it. And fortunately, I didn't have to worry about the birds in our neighborhood because we have a dedicated birder who lives next door on one side and, of course, he has feeders. And then we have a dedicated bird feeder. I don't think he's a birder. A birder by the way is a person who has a pair of binoculars in his hands all the time and looks at the birds, "Oh, that's a such and such," or he has his ear cocked to the wind listening to the call and then he can identify what it is that he hears. That's a birder. Bird watcher in other words.

So, our birds were fine, but you wonder about birds that don't have cover and where do they get their food and where do they roost on those subzero nights? Well I happen to know—I did a little research—evergreen trees, holly trees, things like that. So then I look around our woods and I thought, "We don't have very many evergreen trees except for one spindly-branched spruce which is out in the open." But they get back into those trees that have the thick branches and they fluff out their feathers. It's like a down vest. Who would've thought? That keeps them pretty warm, but they need some kind of cover. And then they have to be able to get to the food that's out there.

The deer were fine. They could't find any grass to graze because it was all covered with the icy snow and it was hard packed, they’re ice-covered, so they couldn't break through with their hooves. But they're sort of a dual purpose thing; they can eat twigs, they're browsers. It's why we try to keep them away from the Internet because they'd use up all our bandwidth. [audience laughs] Deer eat twigs. They can live on twigs quite nicely. And so I watched them, they go through a ravine in our backyard every so often and sure enough, they're going along nibbling twigs until the snow melts and they go back eating grass. So, you know, we didn't have to worry about them.

But some of the other smaller animals, you did have to worry about. But somehow, God feeds them, He provides for them, places of shelter for them. And if He can do that for the birds, like Christ said, He knows when a sparrow falls out of the nest, just one, and He knows how many are left in the nest, by the way. How many do we know that are left in the nest, of the sparrows' nest way up in the tree? We don't, but God does, keeps track of that. He knows how many hairs are on your head. Some of the gentlemen amongst us try to make it easy on Him. Maybe all of us will eventually if we live long enough. He knows all that and He updates it constantly. God's mind is so phenomenally great just in that way.

"He gives them their food in due season," in verse 15, and then verse 16, "You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, gracious in all His works. The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth." Ah, so there is a condition. We call upon God in truth. We don't worship God in falsehood. And when we find that we are operating in falsehood, the Spirit, God's Spirit and His inclination in our minds is to reject that which is false, proven false, and go back to the truth. We worship God in Spirit and in truth. The guidance of His Spirit working on our minds, leading us to conversion. After conversion, it works in our minds.

We live in an age where truth is being challenged as never before. We are seeing, it's already happening, it is well underway, the second sexual revolution. The first one was in the 1960s, devastating to the morals of the nations. America is certainly included, very much included, in fact. This will be worse. Considerably worse. Much more militant, much more pervasive, much more spiritually deadly, as well as physically deadly. This will be a same-sex sexual revolution and a pornographic sexual revolution because of its ubiquitous availability on the Internet. We're in the middle of the second one.

And with that, Colorado brought clearly to our minds, when they passed their legislation, that we're also in the middle of the second drug revolution, which also occurred, the first one, in the 1960s. 

We are right now seeing history repeat itself. Human nature operates in cycles. So does the demonic nature, and so does God's nature. Those in the Church then rejected those immoral values and followed God and lived His way. We have to systematically reject the temptations that will arise in these two revolutions and live God's way today. We must call upon God in truth. Technology isn't gonna save us. In fact, technology is part of the reason why these revolutions are gonna be so pervasive and deadly, part of the reason. The fundamental reason is because of the lust of mankind and the influence of the devil who we talked about at the beginning, that's the primary reason.

"The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, who call upon Him in truth. And He will fulfill the desires of those who fear Him, and He will hear their cry and save them." Either in helping them overcome or helping them just to be able to find food to eat when trouble really comes. "And He will also hear their cry and save them. The Lord preserves all who love Him, but all the wicked He will destroy. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Eternal, and all flesh shall bless His holy name forever and ever." David had an inkling is to how great God was.

Now I have two more, but they're short because I'm noticing the time ticking by here. Psalm 133. And you think, "I like that one." All of me likes it. In fact, I think I'm unified that others also all like it. It is, it's a unity psalm and it's marvelous. It is a Song of Ascents, ascents. A song of climbing hills, technically, is what an ascent is. This was a song David wrote for the Israelites when they were going to Jerusalem because wherever you lived in Israel, it didn't matter if you were up in the mountains up by Galilee in 4,000 feet in elevation, Jerusalem is only 2,500 feet in elevation. By the time you got close to Jerusalem, you had to go up to get there because there were, the mountain ridges dipped and then you rose to get to Jerusalem. So it was always, you were always ascending to Jerusalem at the last part of your travel. If you came from Jericho down by the Dead Sea, you lived at 1,300 feet below sea level. And well, maybe not 1,300 feet, that's the Dead Sea's level. So you were like 10 feet higher than that up in Jericho or 50 feet. So you had to come way up to get to Jerusalem.

So David wrote a Song of Ascents, and some of the other psalmists wrote them. They're all collected toward the end of the book of Psalms, 133 is one of them. "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." That's what we seek, to be unified, unified in spirit and in truth. Reflecting the greatness of God in all that we do. This unity is a testament to God's greatness. And when we work together as God's people in His Church and find a way to be unified in our efforts and to be faithful and fair in serving each other, then we paint this marvelous picture. "How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."

And here's what it's like. And so there are two things that it's like. "It's like the precious oil upon thy head." So it's “oil poured on the head that runs down on the beard.” Okay, so this isn't for a lady. "The beard of Aaron." Aaron was the first high priest in the Levitical priesthood. He was the brother of Moses. We know Aaron. "Running down on the edge of his garments." And you think, "How did they get that out?" Well, I don't know that they did, but it would drip off the end of his beard and you follow the oil coming from his head down his beard, it'll follow the beard and then it'll be dripping off the end of the beard and probably hitting the hems, so you don't have that much to wash. You know, sometimes you think about those things, if it got on his garments.

Now, what in the world was that? Well, you can read about it. It was the anointing oil. Yeah, I can even give you the recipe. I can't tell you exactly how to cook the recipe, but I can tell you what was in it, the ingredients. There was myrrh, which was basically the sap of a thorny tree in the Middle East, but very, very fragrant sap. Then there was sweet cinnamon, which would be genuine cinnamon. It came also from the bark of a tree in the Middle East as well as in the Orient. And then there was sweet cane. That would be not unlike apparently the sugar cane that we have in the Americas. Something similar to that. Specifically in Exodus 30, it's called sweet smelling cane. And then cassia. Now cassia is what we make cheap cinnamon out of. It's not as healthy to eat as genuine cinnamon, especially if you're trying to manage your blood sugar level. Cinnamon is great for that apparently. Cassia is not as good. But it has the same fragrance as cinnamon, slightly different, but still quite cinnamony in fragrance, which is a marvelous. And then this is all mixed and somehow emulsified into a certain amount of olive oil. That was the anointing oil. That's the ingredients and it was... And you say, "Well okay, well, I want to know how to make it." Well, I don't know. It says back there, "according to the perfumer's art." So go find out what the perfumer's art was back then and you'll know. At least you know the ingredients. That was the fragrance.

You can think of the fragrances mixed together and the hint of sweetness, the myrrh, the sort of earthy sap scents, but a fragrant, fragrant sap, and then the cinnamon and the cassia, the cane and the olive oil. That's what was going down in Aaron's beard. It is like unity. That's what unity is like, that wonderful fragrant oil. And it was only used for anointing. It was not allowed to be used as a perfume for anybody. This was a specific recipe that was used for anointing all the items, all the furnishings in the tabernacle and later the temple and it was used for anointing priests into the service. And that was all that it was allowed to be used for. So because of its rarity and the rare usage and the rare fragrance that could be picked up on the breeze as it wafted out from the temple area, it was one of those wonderful fragrances.

It is also this unity that reflects God's greatness when we're together. "It is like the dew of Hermon." Now, Hermon is a snow-capped mountain peak on the border today of Israel and Lebanon. And it forms the head waters of the Jordan River, which feeds the Dead Sea. And from the Dead Sea's evaporation in addition to some moisture coming in from the Mediterranean, there is a dew fall in Israel that is used for growing vegetables, especially melons. They get, up in some parts of the nation there today, even that get four to six inches a year of dew fall. We don't even think about dew fall as far as irrigation goes in America. We might, depending on how much water we start exporting to other people or feeding to an endangered fish somewhere so that the farmers don't get to grow their crops like in California right now. You know, the dew fall might become something we worry about. But the dew coming down off of Hermon, which is the water source, is beautiful and wonderful and fragrant on the early morning breeze, and it grows delicious foods.

"Descending upon the mountains of Zion." The dew fall on the temple's battlements and in the gardens perhaps in that area. It's all a reflection of unity. And you think also, "Why is unity between people so beautiful? How does that reflect the greatness of God?" This psalm is a reflection or is a synopsis of John 17. John 17 is where Christ is praying. The whole chapter is a prayer of Christ and He's praying and marveling that He and the Father are one, that they may be one unified as we are one, unified. We read that at Passover time. So you go back and you read John 17 in conjunction with reflecting on Psalm 133. This reflects, again, the greatness of God. And ultimately, it is a portrait of the Kingdom of God going off into eternity. The greatness of God, all of us together in harmony and peace. What a picture. Barely imaginable for us human beings who are used to warfare and constant strife in this world and this world's history, but that will all change and this psalm indicates and anticipates that.

Finally, we go to our conclusionary psalm. It's two chapters earlier or two psalms earlier, 131. It's another one of David's Song of Ascents. He only wrote four of the Songs of Ascent. These are two of them, 133 and 131. And this is what we need to have in our minds I think as we come away from thinking about how great God is and how we can go to God and ask Him for help and intervention. He has the power to help us, He wants to help us, He loves us, we're His children. This is what we call a trust psalm because it focuses on faith and trusting God. And if God is great, then we can trust Him. We can trust Him together, everybody up wherever they are, that are going to be taken to the place of protection during the terrible time at the end of this age. It doesn't matter, whatever is needed, He can organize it and transport people there however He chooses. He has that great power. Nothing limits God in that way.

"Lord, my heart is not haughty," David starts. "Nor my eyes lofty." No, I'm not haughty, my eyes aren't lofty thinking about how great I am. "Neither do I concern myself with great matters nor with things too profound for me." In a sense, you could summarize this as, "Dear God, this is just me." David was a great king, a phenomenal king in the world standards, a great warrior, incredible organizer of the nation of Israel. And we read that in Chronicles, went through that in class the other day. And yet he always strove to have this humble attitude before God. "Dear God, this is just me."

"Surely," in verse 2, "I have calmed and quieted my soul." Not his immortal soul, that's not what it is; that's naphesh, my inner being. I have calmed myself from the inside. "Like a weaned child with his mother." Little child is weaned, no longer nursing and so he calmly is leaning back against his mother's leg as she's sitting and chatting or doing some chore. "Like a weaned child is my soul within me." Content. Content and satisfied and safe recognizing that the greatness of God surrounds us. And so he ends with, "O Israel, hope in the Eternal from this time forth and forever." Hope in the Eternal, look to the greatness of God to carry us forward through the joys to come, through the fire to come, the danger and challenges. And ultimately brethren, look to the greatness of God that carry us in to the Kingdom of His dear Son, our Savior Jesus Christ.