A Guide for the Young at Heart

Psalm 119:9-16

June 29, 2008

This passage is talking about a make-over in the life of a person-even a young person. But who would think that a youth would need a make-over?

It comes from an Old Testament Book the book of Psalms. After giving the picture of a good man’s life, it asks the big question. How can a young man makeover his way of life. How can anyone do that? In a way, that might be life’s greatest question. It may be the very question you are wrestling with this morning.

I. BUT WHY SHOULD A MAKEOVER EVEN BE NECESSARY?

Because of the world we live in-it is beautiful the handiwork of God, but it is a marred world. Sin has entered it and with it the human spirit is defiled in some measure. There are areas of greatness in the human personality, but it is like a castle that once was sturdy and gallant and is now only a ruin of what it was. It is no longer a friend to righteousness or to a holy way of life. Instead it offers alternatives and holds them out as exciting, popular and satisfying to the soul.

Likewise all the creatures that God has put in the world have the same defect/disease which they have inherited from those who have gone before-sin. Not a one has missed it, except the Son of God who walked perfectly among us. And that is the problem-everyone needs a makeover, even if they are young and handsome and very promising.

The sins one has are on the way to becoming habits. Habits are made in youth and grow stronger and become our patterns. Habits are hard to break and for some impossible it seems. What is needed is a new beginning-an extreme makeover, a new birth!

II. HOW IMPORTANT IS IT THAT THIS MAKEOVER TAKE PLACE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE?

In youth one has the opportunity to shape his or her future. So much depends on what you do with your youth. The boy is the father of the man. The girl is the precursor of the woman. Not all of us still have the opportunity of shaping the future, but many do!

The Gospel in the Stars

Psalm 19:1-6

June 22, 2008

Centreville, MD, Conquest Beach

Exordium: We stand erect as human beings, the only animals to do so. God’s purpose partly is that we can gaze the heavens.

In this part of Psalm 19, we read that “day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge.” It is some of that knowledge that we are after now. Their message is the glory of God. The heavens declare the glory of God. He wants us to see what He has placed there. He wants us to look up to the works of His hands. To declare is to proclaim, to preach, to reveal. In the case of the heavens what they are proclaiming is the glory of our God.

Explication: In the New Testament God’s glory is found supremely in Jesus Christ. “He is the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 2:15)

So, in the Old Testament the heavens are preaching God’s glory to us. In a sense, they are preaching Christ to us. He is the glory of His Father, the glory of God’s creation and the glory of God’s work of redemption.

But how could the heavens preach Christ to us? When you begin to probe the depths of the heavens you find billions of stars and such enormous distances and size that it makes your head swim. But where is Christ in all of this?

You see His magnitude and His power and Godhead, but what of His redeeming love and great sacrifice for us? We are helped by the little word “sign” which is found in many places in the Bible. It is also in Genesis, chapter 1:14. And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and seasons and for days and years.”

A sign is one object pointing to another. It may look like that object or not. Or it may just be a sign that bears no resemblance to the object to which it points.

Since the heavens declare God’s glory, the heavenly bodies, and the moon and stars, the sun and the planets, may be signs that point to Him. This is also suggested in Romans 10:18 where Psalm 19 is quoted, “Their sound is gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”