Rev. Terence Gray: Good to see you guys. Good morning to everyone online. Good morning to our friends over at our Farmington Hills campus. I have an update this morning regarding our beloved pastor Dave Owen. It is with sadness and deep gratitude that we share the news that pastor Dave Owen went home to be with the Lord on Friday, July 3 at the age of 95.
Pastor Dave faithfully served Ward Church for decades. And his life leaves a legacy of steadfast faith, humble service, and unwavering love for God's people. If you interacted with Dave at any point, if you spent any time with pastor Dave, you knew that love and that contagious joy. We rejoice that he has now heard these words. Well done, good and faithful servant.
He's heard that after a lifetime of faithful ministry to us all. You will soon get details in regards to funeral arrangements. Those will come out very soon at the top of this week. But, we just ask you to continue to keep the Owen family in your prayers and pray for one another because he made a huge impact on this church. I wanna go before the Lord and pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of Pastor Dave's life. Thank you for the decades he faithfully served your church, proclaimed your word and point pointed countless people to Jesus Christ. Oh God, thank you for his steady encouragement, his gentle spirit, and the wisdom he shared with so many. We praise you that your grace sustained him throughout his years of ministry and we rejoice that he is now entered into the joy of his Lord. Lord Jesus, today we worship.
We worship you as the resurrection and the life. Our hope is not found in death having the final word, but in your victory over the grave. Because you live, all who trust in you live also. Until the day that we see you and to the day that we see pastor Dave again. God, we set our eyes on you.
It's in the name of Jesus Christ that we pray together. Amen. Yesterday, our nation also marked its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. And I want to reflect on that milestone by sharing this quote with you all. It says, our love for people starts with those in our families and extends to those in our local associations, towns, counties, cities, states, and finally to our country.
When we see The United States flag, we know that it is not just a piece of fabric, the flag is a sign. It represents the individuals who make up the nation. Those who are dead, those who are living, and those who are yet to be born. When we think of the American people, we include our ancestors, actual people who stewarded our country and handed it down to us as an inheritance. We consider that it is our responsibility as the living to take care of the inheritance and to hand it down to our children and grandchildren.
The category of the American people starts with the people I actually see in the kitchen as I make coffee in the morning and extends outward in proximity as I go about my day. Thus, the abstract expression of the American people becomes concrete from the perspective of proximity. The people I live with in my home, church, school, ball league, and town are my people. I know my people well because I see them, work and play with them, suffer together with them, rejoice with them, teach them, and are taught by them. Forgive them and seek forgiveness from them in small and great ways every day of my life.
So too are our loves ordered starting with God who is one in three persons and as real as the air I breathe. My country consists of real people like me who are as real as I am. We also come to know the stories about our ancestors when we are children and we learn those traits that are worthy of emulation and those that are not. We come to understand that the people who went before us made us who we are. As we grow, we learn how to live with individuals who are not like us, who do not always agree with us, and who do not see the world as we do, but with whom we can nonetheless enjoy friendship and cooperation.
Both love of God and love of country involve actual and active love of real people. God as the ground of all being is the source of both our existence and our salvation. We love him because he made us and he saved us. Oh, God, we come before you thanking you, for the gifts of living in this nation. Thank you for the liberties, opportunity to worship this morning in a free space.
God help us to love one another and to be an example of Christ to all that we share this land with. God, pray that you would move me out of the way now. Move me out of the way this morning. I pray that I would decrease and that you would increase and be made much of in the lives of your people. God bless your word.
It's in the mighty name of Jesus that we pray together. Amen. What did God say to Israel when Israel asked for a horse? Nay. He said, nay.
But have you ever noticed in the scriptures particularly in the old testament the way that God talks about horses? If you didn't know any better, you you would think that God just didn't like horses. He never seems to have anything good to say about horses. He says things like this, the king must not acquire great a great number of horses in Deuteronomy 17. In Psalm 33 he says, a horse is a vain hope for deliverance.
In Isaiah 31, woe to those who rely on horses. Hosea 14, we will not mount war horses. Micah five gets very direct, I will destroy your horses. Zechariah nine, he will cut off the war horses. And I'm like, I get it.
I get it. I get it. No horses. God doesn't want us to have any horses. But it's not because God dislikes horses, it's because he doesn't want us to place our confidence in anything other than him.
We see that in the ancient world that horses were a great sense of confidence. In the ancient Near East, horses were animals of the military elite and the ruling class. In general, Egyptians did not ride on horses, but they used them for chariots. They used them for war. So it's not that God just didn't want people to have horses, to ride on horses, to enjoy horses, but horses were a part of the military fleet and people would place a lot of confidence in these things.
And if they had them, and if they had the chariots, they felt safe. But I think that God is saying that that is a false sense of security. That is a false sense of security to place your confidence in these horses even though this represented military power. And so in the ancient Near East, if a if a nation wanted to feel safe, they needed three things. And they measured their security like this.
It was measured by these three things, high walls, large armies, horses, and chariots. If you had those, you believed that you were safe. If I have these things, my nation is gonna be safe. And so God is saying, don't have these things. And that puts Israel in a very, particular position where they feel like, God, what are you doing?
You're taking away our strength. If you look at the art in the in the ancient Near East, there was art like this where horses were dominating. And you see this horse over this person because horses represented strength and dominance. And God, it seems like you're asking us to get rid of our strength. A smart person in the room might be asking right now, what's what's wrong with having strength?
What's wrong with having the horses in the chariots? What's wrong with having the greatest military advancements? What's wrong with having a big army with high walls? God, it sounds like you're trying to make us weak. It sounds like you're setting us up to lose.
Here's what we know. God often stacks the odds against his people so that the victory can only be explained by his power. This is a meta narrative. This is a theme that we see all throughout scripture, both old and new testaments. God does this over and over again.
He stacks the odds against his people so that the victory can be explained by his power. We can look through scripture. We have some examples here. We see in the book of Judges, Gideon's army is reduced from 32,000 to 300. If you're Gideon, you're probably thinking, why do that?
I could use those 32,000 soldiers. That would be very helpful for me. But God says, no, I don't want you to have confidence in those 32,000. I don't want you to have confidence in in the strength and the size of your army. So I'm gonna reduce it all the way down to 300.
So when the victory comes, you can only attribute that victory to me. In Exodus, Israel is trapped between the sea and the Egyptian army. That Egyptian army who had horses and chariots by the way. In first Samuel, David faces Goliath with a sling. This little shepherd boy takes on this Goliath.
God is stacking the deck, stacking the odds against himself. This is a meta narrative, a meta narrative. And in John, Jesus feeds thousands with five loaves and two fish. A buffet would have been a little bit more comforting, right, if we we had the the full spread. But God says, no, I'm gonna stack the odds against myself.
There's a little boy over there with a little picnic lunch. We're gonna take that picnic lunch and we're gonna feed thousands. And of course the apostle Paul says, my power is made perfect in weakness. God often stacks the deck against himself. He he often stacks the odds against his people.
And the reason why is that you and I would be tempted to place our confidence in our abilities. You and I would be tempted to place our confidence in our resources, in our connections, who we know and what we know, in our degrees, in our accomplishments. And what the text is essentially telling us over and over and over again is that that would be a false sense of security. Here here's what we know. In the wilderness, the safest animal is the weakest animal.
And in particular, the safest bear is the weakest bear. The safest bear in the wilderness is the cub. And that cub is safe not because of its own strength, but that cub is safe because of its proximity to the mama bear. The mama bear is inclined to throw her full strength and effort behind the little cub because of the cub's vulnerability, because of the cub's weakness. The mama bear is a fierce protector that none of us want a problem with.
And so when you see the cub, you see strength not because of the cub's strength, because of its proximity to strength strength to the mama bear. Here's what we know. God's children dwell in safety not because we are powerful, but because of our proximity to the one who is powerful. We dwell in safety not because of our strength, but because of our God's strength. Blessed are the little cubs who have their mother near them.
And blessed are the people who are near their God. Psalm thirty three twelve says it this way, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance. I wanna do a little bible study with you this morning. I wanna do a little a little exegesis. That word exegesis simply means drawing out the author's original intent for a passage.
So we're gonna have a little bible study. When studying the bible, you always want to pull meaning out of the text. That's called I mean exegesis. Exegesis is pulling meaning out of the text. Eisegesis is forcing meaning into the text.
You never want to do that. You never want to do isogesis. You don't want to force meaning into the text. You always want to pull meaning out of the text. And so you want to answer two questions.
One, what did this text mean to its original audience? And two, what principles and truths are for us today. And what do those principles and truths mean for us today. So I wanna look at two words here. I think it's gonna be helpful because it sets the foundation of what this passage is all about.
I wanna look at the word blessed and I wanna look at the word nation. The word blessed in the original Hebrew is the word Asher. Asher means happy, flourishing, and deeply fortunate. And so when you're blessed, you are happy, flourishing, and yes, deeply fortunate. And so the Psalmist is saying, how deeply fortunate are the people whose God is the Lord.
The second word I wanna look at is this word nation. At first glance, we might assume that it's it's talking about a modern nation state like, United States Of America, Israel, Canada, Texas, you know, a nation state. But that's not what the psalmist has in mind. How we how do we know that? Well, in our exegesis, we have to interpret the text according to its genre.
And the psalms are part of a genre called Hebrew poetry. And Hebrew poetry uses a poetic device called synonymous parallelism. It's gonna make sense. Just track with me. Synonymous parallelism is when the author essentially says the same thing twice.
They say the thing, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. We might be a little confused on the nation so it makes it clear in the second line. The nation is the people he chose for his inheritance. And so that's synonymous parallelism. Or we can do it like this, it's kinda like do you know the muffin man, first line.
Second line, who lives on Drury Lane, that one. And so it's not just a general muffin man, but the second line gives you clarity on what muffin man, the one who lives on Drury Lane. And when we hear blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, which nation is that? The second line says, the people he chose for his inheritance. So the nation is not left undefined.
The psalmist tells us exactly which nation he's speaking of and this is the covenant people of God. For the original audience of this, that covenant people, is Israel. The covenant people of Israel that God has chosen. So what does that mean for us in 2026 who read in the same text today? When we come to the New Testament, we see that the covenant people is we are we're the covenant people, the church.
The covenant identity now belongs to the church. And we know this because first Peter says about the church, you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession. That means that this nation, this people that God chose for his inheritance is the church. And so blessed is the church, the people who God has chosen for his inheritance. What does that mean for you and me?
That means that you and me have dual citizenship. We have citizenship as a part of the country that we live in, that we are to serve and contribute to. But we also have an earthly I mean we also have a an eternal citizenship in heaven. And we also have an all powerful king who is seated above every government, who's seated above every throne and every position of power. And that's what verse 13 picks up.
It says, from heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind. He has this perspective where he's seated high above everything. He's up so high that he has to look down. It says the Lord looks down and sees all mankind from his dwelling place. He watches all who live on earth.
He who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do. He has this big picture perspective because he's seated up high. But he also has this intimate perspective because he can peer into the human heart. God sees everything. He reigns over everything.
He knows every human heart and he understands every motive. There's a funny video on social media of a guy sitting at an NBA basketball game. And as he's seated at the NBA basketball game, the camera zooms in on him and before you know it, he's he's on the on the jumbo screen. And this guy doesn't really wanna be on the jumbo screen and so he he he does something unique. The camera is right in front of him.
The cameraman is right in his face. He just walks up to the cameraman and covers up the lens so that he can't be seen. But then they zoom to a wide shot just like this, and they catch him on the wide shot as a way of saying, brother, you can't hide. We have eyes everywhere. We can see you from every angle.
And I believe God is the same way. We can't hide from him. He sees every angle. He sees into everything. He has a higher perspective on everything.
And for some of us that might be a little creepy. Oh my goodness, God sees everything. God is everywhere. I can't hide from anything. But it's also very encouraging.
The one who rules the universe sees what no one else can see. And he always judges with perfect knowledge, perfect justice, perfect love, perfect wisdom because he can see things that we can't see. And even when we can't see the full picture, we can trust that he can. That he's all knowing. He's always watching.
And that doesn't have to be a scary thing. That's a that's a very encouraging thing. The Psalmist continues in verse 16. It says, no king is saved by the size of his army. No warrior escapes by his great strength.
A horse, here it goes again, is a vain hope for deliverance. It can't deliver you. Despite all this great strength, it cannot save. As we established earlier, Deuteronomy seven seventeen sixteen expressly forbids the king of Israel to greatly increase the number of his horses, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to the end that he should multiply his horses. God never wanted his people to place their confidence there.
Here's the hard truth. And I experienced this, you experienced this. Some of us are so capable and self reliant that if God never allowed us to be broken, we'd mistake his blessings for the product of our own abilities. Some of you guys in this room and watching Farmington Hills and watching at home, you're so gifted, you're so talented, you're so smart, you're so capable. And if you're not careful, you would give yourself the credit for where you are because you are so capable, because you are so talented, because you are so smart, because you are so gifted.
And sometimes God has to break us weak. He has to make us weak. He has to take away the horses and chariots. He has to take away the things that we find our strength and our confidence in so that we can see that it is him holding us up. And it has been him holding us up all along.
But here's the truth, you've you never were the one holding it together. Every opportunity, every open door, every breath, every season, every victory has ultimately been sustained by the hand of God. And sometimes he breaks us and allows us to be put in a position of weakness so that we can see his hand. So we can be shown that it's God's hand all along. I know a thing or two about that.
Over the the past three months, many of you've asked me, Terence, how are you doing? And and you'll get in my face and you'll be really close and you ask me about something. Yeah, the weather, sports, how about them lines? How are you doing? And then you look into my soul.
I've I've had I've had a lot of you do that. Terence, how are you doing? All the change, all the loss, all the uncertainty, all of the activity. The truth is, it's been hard. It's been very hard.
It's probably been one of the hardest seasons of ministry that I've ever walked through. But boy has God been good. And boy has God been close. And boy has God showed himself faithful in my weaknesses and in my shortcomings and my flaws. He's been good.
In the places where I have lacked understanding, he has been my understanding. In the places where I have lacked experience, he has been my experience. He has supplied and daily supplies what I lack. And day after day he has given me exactly what I needed for that moment. And for that I am deeply grateful because I can see His hand.
Not my hand, His hand. I can see His big, steady, loving hand. And I find confidence when I fix my eyes on the Lord, but that's not where my greatest confidence is. My greatest confidence is in the fact that God's eyes are fixed on me. It's one thing to have my eyes fixed on him because I can get distracted very quickly and I can look in places or I can focus on myself too much or focus on other things too much and take my eyes off of him.
But I find confidence in the fact that God's eyes are fixed on me. And friends, you can find confidence in the fact that God's eyes are fixed on you. Verse 18 says this, but the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those who hope is in his unfailing love to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. Oh, man, that's good news for the soul. The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him.
It's like when your kid is playing in the park, you don't take your eye off of your kid, you watch them and you keep your eye on them and they are safe because your eye is fixed on them. And God's eyes are fixed on you just like that. And the Psalmist closes like this. He says, we wait in hope for the Lord. He's our help and our shield.
In him, our hearts rejoice for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love be with us Lord, even as we put our hope in you. In other words, God, our our hope is not in horses and chariots. Our hope is not in our abilities. Our hope is not in our connections and our networks and who we know and what we know.
Oh God, we put our hope in you. My final point for you guys today is simple. God has your back. You're like the little cub navigating the world, but mama bear is right there. God has your back.
God wants you to know that he has your back so that you can live like he has your back. The cub is not anxious or afraid of anything and neither should we. I want to speak to one person in particular, maybe this is a few people. Maybe you're here today and you don't have a relationship with Jesus. And everything we talked about today, it might either be going over your head or you might not feel like it's for you.
But here's the good news, God is inviting you into a relationship with him today. Apart from God, you like that cub navigating the wilderness trying to survive on your own. You're trying to protect yourself. You're trying to provide for yourself. You're carrying the weight and the anxieties of the world.
Trying to fight battles that you were never meant to fight. But God says, come home. Come home. I want to be your strength. I want to be your protection.
You've tried to figure it out on your own. Why don't you give me a shot? See friends on the cross, Jesus Christ defeated your greatest enemy. Sin, death, and Satan. And through his resurrection he offers you a victory.
A victory that you don't have to fight for. A victory that you don't have to earn. He offers you forgiveness that you can't buy. A place at a table with a feast that you don't have to prepare. And the invitation is simple.
Come home. Turn from trusting yourself and place your trust in Jesus Christ. Will you receive that gift today? I'm gonna pray for you my friend. Father, come before you in the mighty and the matchless name of Jesus Christ.
I lift up my brother or sister who who might be listening this morning. I pray that you would help them turn to you. God, pray that you would draw them near to yourself. Lead them in the path of repentance, which simply means to turn to you. God, I I pray that they would experience the forgiveness and a new identity as your children.
Never having to worry about navigating this world alone again. God help them to confess and turn from their sin and turn to you and experience new life. And God I lift up my brothers and sisters who do know you but are still living like orphans. God, they are not orphans. They are your beloved.
Let their face light up as they see your face shining down on them. Your eyes are fixed on them. May they walk with that level of confidence and assurance. It's in the mighty name of Jesus Christ that we pray together.