Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 24, 2019 | The Names Of God - HaTsur

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November 24, 2019 | The Names Of God - HaTsur · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone, how you doing?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is the final and climactic sermon in the Names of God series that we've been doing this fall.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have not run out of names, but run out of time.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's Christmas.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So uh this last name has a wonderful tie to Thanksgiving, and it's best started by me asking uh you a question, and that is um, what do you think of rocks?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you like rocks?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I like rocks.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've always collected rocks.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Ever since I was little, I collected cool rocks.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And from all over the world, I collect big rocks, small rocks.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I like agates, I like the shiny ones.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Melody and I, when Mel and I go someplace special, we did a month ago, we went to Oregon, for example, we're on the beach, and and uh those are the angels.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I asked them to be here during my final sermon on the names of God.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: So um that's gonna be interesting this morning.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope they sing well downstairs, because if they have bad voices, I'm gonna really be messed up.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we and we go to places when we you know, what was I talking about, Reagan?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Who was I talking about?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So when we go places, we don't buy souvenirs anymore unless something really cool.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: We uh sorry about the spit there, I just got you what.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: We uh we collect rocks.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean we uh, you know, when we're on the beach, it shells, and when we're hiking someplace in Canada, whatever, we bring back uh cool rocks.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Melody makes a little display in the bathroom.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And um and uh it reminds us for a few months of the place we've been.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to talk this morning about not little rocks, but big rocks.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Did any of you have a favorite big rock that inspired you when you were a kid?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you grew up in Georgia, I'll bet it was uh the number one tourist attraction in uh in Georgia, right outside of Atlanta.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Stone Mountain.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen that?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Five miles around, it's I think 800 and some feet high.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that is a monolith.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: A lone stone stands alone that makes an impression.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're from California and been to Yosemite, maybe it's El Capitan.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you're from Wyoming, it may be uh the devil's uh tower, yeah.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't like talking about the devil stuff.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So so but there have been three big rocks in my life, and I want to tell you about them.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: The first one, in the first third of my life, the big rock in my life was called, it was one of the it was the largest monolith in Oregon, one of the largest in the world.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Haystack Rock on the Oregon Coast, in the most famous town on the Oregon Coast called Cannon Beach, and that rock is uh 200, about 250 feet high, and two or three times a year, my parents would sort of shoehorn all of us kids into the station wagon.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: We'd drive the hundred miles to the beach where they'd let us out, and we could run around and play all day, and we'd play in the sand, and we'd splash in the water, and we would always wait until the ocean receded when low tide you know came, because then we could actually walk out to Haystack Rock.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And there we could, you know, climb the rock and we could look at the little pools of water that had that were still on the rock and poke at the crabs and the CMM CM Cemones, whatever that word is that I can never say.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, there's an M and an N and a couple of M's and N's in it.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there's starfish, and we'd play with those, and we'd just have a great time.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this was long before Haystack Rock became famous in Hollywood for kindergarten cop and Goonies and stuff like that.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Back then, uh, it was the great symbol of strength and impregnability and immovability because the Pacific Ocean gets pretty rough at times, and then it'd be dark, and the rain would be banging down and it'd crash against Haystack Rock, but it never budged.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was the rock in the first third of my life, and we had our picture taken, Melanie and I did, with Haystack Rock in the background this fall.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Middle third of my life, the big rock in my life was very famous big rock, one of the great big rocks in the world, the rock of Gibraltar, which stands guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it sort of separates about halfway in between Europe, continent of Europe in the north, and the continent of Africa in the south.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the first decade or so that I was at Topeka Bible Church, we were really invested in an underground church ministry that one of the earliest missionaries of this church had in Morocco.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so every year I would take over a group, a small group of people, and we would go to the Arab country of Morocco and North Africa, Northwest Africa, and we would encourage this little church and spend time with Isla Davis, but we would always get, we'd always go up Tangier and catch a ship and go up to Spain and Southern Europe there because uh coordinated with the ministry in Morocco was a radio station associated with Trans World Radio in southern Spain, and it broadcasts then and still does now uh television as well as radio broadcast all across North Africa, has a profound evangelistic effect.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you should be proud that Teka Bible Church is still deeply invested in this ministry this fall.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, a Moroccan couple that we support, they came to Christ about the first trip I took back there in 1980.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: This couple, Arab, Muslim converts to Christianity, lead, help lead this TV and radio ministry from southern Spain, take trips every year to Morocco.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And every single month, uh these funds we give support the fact that that Arabs, Muslims are coming to Christ in North Africa.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because this ministry, when Boaz was here this fall, I introduced him in one of the services.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Rock of Gibraltar always stood for something really significant as going and coming a dozen times, maybe.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: I went past this rock.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Very famous.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's been famous for hundreds of years as a place of refuge.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's got miles of tunnels inside of it to hide people.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's just remarkable.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the second third of my life.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: The third third, the most recent third of my life, the big rock for me in my life, has been what's called Matsada, which is a rock that rises about 1,500 feet out of the hot desert next to the Dead Sea in the land of Israel.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I get to see it nearly every year because Melody and I lead a tour over there.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we would never miss that.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's famous not because of how high it is, of course, but it's famous because it was the scene of the final battle in the war between the Romans and the Jews, the war that Jesus predicted 40 years before it happened.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: He predicted it in 30, happened in 70 AD.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: That war raged for several years.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Jews fought hard, but finally the Romans had only one more place to capture as 900 Jews fortified themselves at the top of Mitsada.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then the Romans, using 1,000 soldiers to push a battering ram up a steep mound that they had built, were able to get the battering ram up, knock over the walls, and those Jews committed suicide rather than submit to the Romans.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's the rock that I think of most in the final, these most recent third of my life.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk to you this morning about a big rock, the biggest rock of all in the entire universe.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a name of God.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Every other name of God, every other description of God that is capitalized in the Old Testament is something animate, something personal.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's a shepherd, he's a king, he's a father, he's a mother, he's a husband, he's a Lord, you know, things like that.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now we come to the one inanimate object that God allows himself to be named.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's capitalized in the Old Testament.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful picture of Matsada here with the climbing path up to it that you can't walk on anymore because uh uh American girl fell and died a couple years ago from there.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: So uh why did I even throw that in?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's so negative.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive me for that.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the names of God, and and and let's just review the first 11 before I spring the the 12th one on you.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, if you can pronounce these, say them with me.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: The very first one we did was Elohim, which reflects God as creator.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Adonai was next, Lord and Master.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: The personal name of God, used more in the Old Testament than all of the others combined, is Yahweh, God who is here for us, followed by Elroe, the God who sees me, and then El Shaddai, God Almighty, Yahweh, Yahweh will provide, El Olam, the everlasting God, Yahweh Tzva'ot, Yahweh of armies, Yahweh the Lord of hosts, okay.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Emmanuel, God with us, Abba, Papa.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, Yahweh Tsid Kenu, that is Yahweh, the Lord our righteousness.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: This morning, all in stones.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hatsuur, say that with me.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hat suer, H-A-T, pronounced H-A-T-S-O-O-R.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hatsur, but this is the way you'll always see it in uh Jewish and Hebrew script and so forth.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hatsur means the ha, H-A, it's why it's a small A.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: It just means the, that's the Devon article.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: The rock.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Tsur is rock.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big rock.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Tsur means rock, tsuri, a little line past it will be my rock, used very often in the Old Testament.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you leave here this morning calling God Tsuri, my rock.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Hatsuer is the rock.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the main passage, the central passage about that uses tsur in the Old Testament, one of my favorite passages, the last words of Moses at age 120, when he calls all Israel together and he gives them what the Bible calls a song.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not this famous song of Moses that Miriam wrote, but this is the true song of Moses.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: We learned from the previous paragraph in chapter 31 that God actually dictated this to Moses and there and told them to write it down so they would remember it.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, these are the word for word, the words of God Himself.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Such a beautiful passage, by the way.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that you'll take your Bible and maybe make a mark on this and read this chapter this week.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's just gorgeous.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: There was a time several years ago I fell so in love with this chapter that I spent a month and memorized it, and I've never regretted it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: You'll just you'll be amazed.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: But open your Bible if you have it to Deuteronomy 32.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: It begins with Moses calling all of Israel and saying, and then crying out, pay attention, heavens, pay attention, heavens, and I will speak.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, earth, to the words of my mouth.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: So he's calling.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever you see heavens in one line and earth in the next, like in Genesis 1.1, God created the heavens and earth.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Don't think of two separate things.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's heavens and then there's earth.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Think of the fact that this is a statement of opposites to indicate the whole universe.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: So like, you know, all the people came, both small and great, not just short people and tall people, but everybody came, right?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Heavens and earth means Moses is calling for the entire universe to come and pay attention.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is a holiday season, and this is gonna happen quite a bit, isn't it?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: That you're gonna hear words like this.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody, come here, come here, hear.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: How little Jenny can say papa or grandma or how how Jackie can can can hum Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer through her nose, or something like that.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody come and listen.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is more serious and noble, in which God tells Moses to say, call the whole universe.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Sun, hey Saturn, hey South America, hey, hey Mount Everest, hey Milky Way, come and pay attention.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm about to say something phenomenal and important.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 2.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let my teaching, this is in a dry and dusty and thirsty ground, let my teaching fall like rain.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And my words settle like dew, like gentle rain on new grass and showers on tender plants.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, will you listen to me and just take it in as refreshment, take it in as life, take it in and let you grow in grace and grow in trust and faith in God?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to what I'm about to say, because you're not gonna believe how refreshing and wonderful it is, verse 3, because I'm about to tell you Yahweh's name.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna proclaim Yahweh's name, declare the greatness of our God.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now he tells them a name of Yahweh.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's the next word, it's the first word in verse 4.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: It stands all alone by itself.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is the word, say it with me.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hot Seur.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: He says, the rock.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: His work is perfect.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: All his ways are just, a faithful God without bias.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: He is righteous and he is true.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: This noble verse in which he points to God and uses this inanimate object to describe him.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's thinking of a big, noble rock and a rock that inspires us with its greatness.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the reason I call this the rock chapter is that he keeps on coming back to Hot Sur as he goes through this chapter.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because as he goes through the chapter, Moses, he's gonna go down to verse 15, he tells the story of how God loved and cared for his people.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in verse 15, he quotes God as calling Israel Jesurun.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, which you've never heard before.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's only used rarely, but you know how you have a pet nickname for your maybe your child or your grandchild, like crab cakes or or pumpkin or or or or or you know what doesn't know why, you know, I call her honey, but that's not the same thing.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is like a name for a child, gesturing.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Tootsie Pop or, you know, something like that.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: So this is God's favorite peck nickname for his people.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, you know, the baby, you cried as a baby, and you're always wanting food when you were growing up, and I gave it to you.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I gave you whatever you wanted, I gave you all the food you needed, and what happened is you grew fat, and then you kicked out against me.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then God stops what he's saying and he looks right at Israel and he says, You've grown fat and thick, and the Hebrew word means obese.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you know what?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says he but he's abandoned the God who made him and he rejected Sewer, the rock as Savior.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a cry that many parents have who just shower their children with everything their children want and need, and if their children whine or beg, they they love them so much, they give things to them, and then and then sometimes those children, when they get in high school or even later, they abandon their parents and they spurn their parents and they and being ungrateful, they turn against them.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, that's the story of my life.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: With you, the people I have chosen and brought to myself.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, three verses later, the cry of every mother, you know, at one time in her life, you deserted sewer me, who bore you, you forgot the God who gave you birth.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, the the statement of the Bible is chauvinistic.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: The Christian religion in the Old Testament and so forth is the only ancient Near Eastern religion in which the deity is compared to a woman.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of three verses in the Old Testament, one of three verses where God compares himself to a woman, to a birthing mother.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I bore you, I gave you birth, I labored with you, and yet you've forgotten me.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you've talked with women, maybe even in our church, who just are heartbroken because their children uh, you know, have gone away from home and they never call, and it's as though mom doesn't matter anymore.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And God says that's again, that's the story of my relationship with you.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: You walk away from me and abandon me, and yet I'm your rock.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in verses 30 and 31, he uses the word, I think, three more times.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And what he says is what you do is you go, you go after other gods, you go after the gods of other nations, you go after Hollywood, or you go after money, or you go after popularity or pleasure or whatever.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he has this great line right in the midst of 30 and 31.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I want you to know that that the gods of those religions and the gods of Hollywood and the media and and and and and and you know stuff like that, their rock is not like our rock.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Can you say amen to that?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Their rock's not like our rock.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a rock which is just remarkable in so many ways.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let me show you why he's why our rock is so remarkable.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're a geologist, feel free to tell me later that I'm all wet, okay?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know the three kinds of rock.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Can you name them?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's igneous, right?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: What's another one?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sedimentary, and then there's one starts with M.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Metamorphic.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, igneous rock, I'm just just this is a very shallow way of describing it, it's flowing rock.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: At least it starts out that way, 50 to 100 miles below the crust of the earth.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's always, it's it's sort of molten.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's lava.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: When there's, you go to Hawaii, the main island, right?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been there, haven't been there, but there's a volcano and it's lava and it's and it moves and it's it's like flowing rock.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then it comes up to the surface and it hardens.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: The second kind of rock is sedimentary rock.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's the rock that Kansas is pretty much made out of.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of sandstone in the west, but it's all almost all limestone in Kansas here in the east.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's crushed rock.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's you know, like when the when the igneous rock breaks up, it's like pebbles, it's like sand, it's like stuff like that.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: It all gets crushed down, right?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's broken rock and it's crushed, and then it becomes, it becomes beautiful and it's all blended like this.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and eventually it produces great wheat fields, corn, everything else, sedimentary rock.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's the third kind of rock is the rock that gets transformed, so much more pressure and heat that that gets turned into things like diamonds and gemstones and so forth, agate quartz and so forth.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just mention that it seems to me that you can, and maybe this is super shallow, you can think of God and rock as making the deliberate comparison for God, you see, like Igneous Rock, flowed out of heaven and he came to earth, and he flowed onto earth in the person of Jesus Christ and solidified himself so that we could touch him and we could see him, John chapter 1 says.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he lived here on earth, exemplifying solidly the person of God.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then he said in John 7 to all of us who trust in him, I want to flow into your life, and I'll make you part of me, and I'll be part of you.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And out of you will flow rivers of living water.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul said, What happens then is I'm no longer living, but Christ lives in me, like igneous rock.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: But but then he was crushed, wasn't he?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: On passion.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was just beaten and he was he was decimated and he was crushed and he was pressed down and so forth.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and this blended, already blended character, he was fully God and fully man.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: This beautiful blended character was crushed down, and he became producing the life of the world.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he was transformed, coming up from the grave and then promises, doesn't he, to transform us.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: This very word, metamorphic, is the one used in Romans 12, 1 and 2, what the Holy Spirit does in our lives to transform us.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's just a picture for me of the fact that God in many ways is like the three kinds of rock that we know.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: But this is not Bible teaching, this is just, you know, basic junior high kindergarten or junior high uh uh geology.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to share with you the three things that do come from the Bible that God does for us as our sewer, as our rock.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, He is present.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: So Haystack Rock always was there.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: We knew it was gonna be there and present when we drove there.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: We were amazed at how it stood immovable and impregnable against the waves.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: We could count on it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Shall we say, faithful.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And here at Thanksgiving, we're thanking God for how he's been present with us this last year, right?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: And how he's been faithful with us and how he's been there anytime we wanted him, right?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: I had to put this in because I know some of you carnal guys have been thinking about this the whole time.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you're waiting to come up and say, hey, you know how Dwayne Johnson as a wrestler is called The Rock?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't want that to happen.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to be the first one to say it.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think Dwayne Johnson is called The Rock as a wrestler because he's always still standing when everyone else is down on the mat.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I really think that's he just looks like a rock, right?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: But he's always still there.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks, Dwayne, for being such a great picture of God the Rock.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, we'll move on from that.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: But he's he's just there, present.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have these other verses in the Old Testament that are all about the faithful presence of God.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: This verse, the one we just read, 32.4, Hatzur the Rock, a faithful God, righteous and true.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 1831.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Who is God except Yahweh?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And who is Hatzur the rock except our God?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's always there.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's no one else.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: He stands alone.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 61, 2.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: From the ends of the earth I cry to you, when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to Hatzur, the rock that is higher than I.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: We'll close our service singing that and just not, you know, we'll close this message before we have other cool stuff happening.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: With that, with a song that comes right out of that.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's just there.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we find that God as the rock is our provision.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: You say, how do rocks provide for us?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they provide shade, don't they?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they provide joy and pleasure to little children who get to go out to them when the tide is out and play with crabs and sea and starfish.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and they they they also provide, as you know, they provide water, don't they?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: They provided water in the Old Testament.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: When Israel was thirsty, he struck the rock, the sewer, and water gushed out, streams overflowed, and still today, when you're looking for waterfalls or when you're looking for streams, where do you go?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: You go to these big rocks, these great rocks, and you find this water that satisfies your thirst.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a hint of that in that famous song, Rock of Ages, cleft, that is broken, like sedimentary rock, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Here it comes, the water and the blood from thy wounded side, which flowed me of sin, the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And there it is, the rock, Jesus, the rock, being broken so that water and blood, so that salvation flowed out to the entire world.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's provision.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third and last is protection.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: His presence, his providing for us, and his protection.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is probably the main idea.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: When we think of rocks, we we think of the protection that rocks give.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Prudential for over a hundred years has identified itself as, you know, the investment counterpart of the rock of Gibraltar.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: It no longer uses that famous line, at least famous to those of us who are over 90 years old, get a piece of the rock.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: But still, it pictures itself as the security and safety and protection that you and I need, especially later in life.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's reflected in these verses.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Samuel 22, David saying, My God is Tsuri, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my stronghold, my refuge, and my savior.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the book of Psalms, he he repeats that.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: He says, In you, Yahweh, I have taken refuge.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Be my sewer of refuge, a strong fortress to save me.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And two more very famous verses, Psalm 95, 1.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord, or oh come, let us sing to Yahweh, let us shout joyfully to the Tsuer of our salvation.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Psalm 19, 14 ends so famously, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, Yahweh.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Tsuri, my rock and my redeemer.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Protection.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: God protects me.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this Thanksgiving, I challenge you to make your prayer, this morning at least, make your prayer related to the name of God, Hot Sur, and say thank you, Hat Sur, for being present with me this year.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Hat Sur, for providing for me throughout this past year.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Hatzur, for protecting me this past year.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And cry out to him during this holiday season.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Tell him, when my heart is overwhelmed, please lead me to Hot Sur, the rock that is higher than I.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Will you do that?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Bow your head with me in prayer.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we uh are often overwhelmed, especially at this time of year.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Our hearts are faint, our eyes at times swell up with tears.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're overwhelmed with all the work to be done and all the people that we need to be nice to.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: At hosting and going to places where we are guests, Lord, we would beg you and we would ask you that in those times when we are feeling overwhelmed, that you would gently lead us by the hand to the rock, to Hatsuor, who is higher than we are.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.