Have you ever read a book that was simply too hard for you? You open it up and you get a couple of chapters in and you go, I just don't understand. I bet many of our young people have had that experience at some point or another where you go, I can read this book. I can do it. And you start and you get some words in and you maybe get a little lost or every once in a while. holding a little bit of a funny with some of my children, they'll come up and say, read to me. And I'm sitting there reading some big book and I start reading to them and they lose interest pretty quickly. Why? Because the book is too hard for them. It's not because they've done anything wrong, but they're all these words that they don't know what they mean. And the sentences are very long and hard to follow. Perhaps if it's an older book and it was written in English, the grammar is unusual. It's just a book that's too hard for them and they don't understand it. And as you grow up and get older, eventually you'll get, you know, as a young person, you kind of say, well, I don't understand it now, but one of these days I'll learn more words and I'll be a better reader and I'll understand it then, or I'll have more knowledge of the other things around this book and it'll make more sense. But eventually you get to the point where you're old enough and there's some books you open and you say, I'm never going to understand this. It's on a topic that's too far out of my field, or I've read it four times and it's not made any sense. I'm never going to get it. You know, a lot of people will look at scripture and say exactly that about it and say, you know, it's just too hard. It's too difficult. I need it to be simplified, brought down, or I can't believe in the Lord because I can't understand scripture. It's just too difficult for me. And as we consider God's word tonight, that is one of the things I want us to consider. Is this complaint that scripture is too hard? People don't necessarily come out and say it, but they act like it. They will go for the simplest translation they can find, or they don't even bother to open it and read it. Or they read it very dependent upon their favorite interpreter. Or for those who don't believe, they just say, oh, it doesn't make any sense. It's too old, too distant. It's not scientific enough. You fill in the blank. Are these valid complaints? Is God's word really too hard for us? And so as we look at verses 11 through 14 tonight, I want us to see that we really do have God's word in his word. We've been emphasizing this already. So I'm going to emphasize less tonight the divine origin, which it absolutely is a divine origin, but focus more on how the Lord is adapted or given, probably given is the right word, given his word in such a way that we can understand it. So it's understandable and that we actually have it. It's his word, not just to other people, but it's his word to us. It's accessible to us, both in the fact that we have it in our hands in his word, but also that it's a word that is actually written to you and to me, not to other people. And then finally, to remind us that even though God's word to us is understandable and accessible, yet we must always remember we are dependent on the work of God's spirit to rightly understand it. The first understandable, note how Moses starts, for this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. And in times past, as you look at this, you might say, well, what does Moses mean here? Doesn't he just mean that this commandment that you've been given, it's not too hard for you to complete it. You can keep God's law. And that might make sense if we didn't have a broader context. But we do have a broader context. One, I would remind you from the last time we considered this text, that Moses has already been talking about the fact that he expects Israel to break this law. As we reviewed in the verses just prior, he said, all these things, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I've set before you and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you. There's already anticipation. of failure. We see more of that in the following verses. And I've got a citation here that I don't know what it goes to because it's wrong, so I will keep going. But we know as Moses continues that he is anticipating and hearing and expecting There is going to be rebellion within the land. There will be those who turn away. Indeed, the Israelites are going to turn away. I'm struck how Joshua speaks to God's people at the end of his life. Joshua 24, he's gathered the people together to call them back to covenant. And what does he say? They say, we're agreeable. We want to keep this covenant. Joshua said to the people, you are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. And so there's more going on there, but still, even in that language, it's an expectation. This law is hard. It is beyond your ability. Or perhaps we go to the New Testament and we just remember Romans chapter three. None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside together. They've become worthless. No one does good, not even one. And so in the broad context that remind us that as Moses presents the law, he's not doing so naively. It's not as if he hasn't walked with his people for 40 years and seen their sins and seen their rebellion. And he's not expecting, oh, I've given this law and now everything's going to be better. There is built into Deuteronomy. There's built into this covenant. an expectation that God's people are sinners, they are at heart rebellious, and that God will have to intervene if they will receive the benefits of the covenant. But I'd remind us that these very words are actually cited by the apostle Paul in the book of Romans, Romans chapter 10. And we pick up in verse five, for Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And so we see here, Paul actually take these words and apply them explicitly to the proclamation of the gospel. I say a lot to say, as you hear those, read those words, what the question at hand is not the ability towards obedience, but it is rather the comprehensibility of what is proclaimed. Indeed, Calvin says on this, For Moses merely encourages the Jews and commands them to be diligent disciples of the law because they will easily understand whatever is enjoined as commanded by God therein. But the power of performance is a very different thing from understanding. Besides, Paul, with very good reason, accommodates this passage to the gospel because it would profit nothing to comprehend the doctrine itself in the mind unless reverence and a serious disposition to obey be super added. And so I just want you to see that there's a lot of good reason to think, as Moses says, it's not too hard. The emphasis, it's not too hard for you to understand. You can comprehend it. You can grasp it. I think in the broader context, this makes sense. For as he pairs up this language, he says, the commandment that I command you today, it is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that you should say, who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it. And so there's this emphasis on it's available to you. You've got it. It's right here. You have it. And then he actually finishes with a purpose. The word is very near to you. It is in your mouth and in your heart so that or for the purpose that you would do it. And that's where he addresses why this word is given and the obedience to it. But there he begins with the understanding. This is really an important topic to consider because we have God's word written to us. We don't have a book that is written in order to be obscure, hard to follow beyond us, but rather we have a book that is written explicitly the purpose of being understandable, that one of the driving priorities of scripture is not confusion, but clarity. Our confession speaks this way. Those things which are necessary to be known, believed and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or other that not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use, the ordinary means may attain into a sufficient understanding of them. That which you need to know for salvation is clearly expressed in scripture somewhere. Indeed, I would be quite willing to say not just one somewhere, but quite likely many somewheres in scripture. And so as you hear this, I want you to have confidence. What you need to know to find life in Christ Jesus, to know how to live before him in holiness, is not hidden away somewhere in some secret knowledge. It is not as if you need to get just the right understanding to figure it out, but it is plainly written. And as we hear this, I do want to emphasize a couple of things. Moses is not saying here it will always be easy to figure it out. He is not saying you can sort of read a couple of verses once and bang, I've got it. Our confession speaks both of the language of in some place or other. and the due use of ordinary means in some place or other. What that's reminding us is that there are places in scripture that are harder and easier. There are places in scripture where truth is taught very clearly, and some places where that same truth may be taught in a way that we don't understand it as well. What I find even more interesting is that because scripture is designed to be understood by a wide swath of people, it very often says the same thing but in different ways. So for example, you have the gospel expressed very doctrinally and in terms of clear propositions in Paul's preaching or in Paul's writing in Romans. You turn around and consider Mark or Luke, and you have the same gospel expressed, but this time expressed through the actions of Christ Jesus and his teaching and his self-expression. Are they teaching two gospels? Of course not, they're teaching one. But one of the advantages of this is that for some of us, the doctrinal statements are easier to get our mind around and believe. And for others of us, the stories and the accounts and the teaching of Christ is either easier to get our mind around and believe. Certainly you should go to both and listen and hear to both. But the different genres, the different ways the same truths are communicated help us to have some place where we can understand them. But this language also of the due use of ordinary means would remind you that understanding God's word, you can do it, but it will, you cannot expect it to happen without effort, without actually investing yourself in doing the work as it were. Even here in Deuteronomy, you can imagine Moses giving this God's word. And there'd be certain Israelites who are sitting there who are spaced out. They're looking at butterflies or counting grass, you know, leaves of grass. Are they going to understand God's word then? No, because they're not attending to it. They're not hearing it. They're not doing the work. I'm reminded of how we read of Israel gathering to hear the word again in the book of Nehemiah, right? Nehemiah 8, the people gather and the word is read to them and they put great effort in being there. And then we read also that the scribes then also came and gave the meaning of it. helping them understand, expecting that they will be doing the work and asking the questions, but also listening attentively and working through the issues. As we read God's word, we should not expect some magical thing to happen where we just get it immediately. We should expect that it is the same general methods and tools you would have to use to learn something else, to understand some other writing. We're not surprised when you kind of have to do the same thing. You gotta read the whole book to understand it, right? You don't go read a novel halfway through and say, I know it, I understand it. That's kind of silly. You could say I've read half of it and I think I know where the story's going, but I don't know where it ends. Same with the Bible. You've gotta read it and know it and keep coming back to it and processing it, just like someone who wants to know Plato or Shakespeare well is going to read and read a lot and read over and over again. So we have to expect, if we're gonna know the Bible, we'll have to do the same thing. This is actually something I do want to emphasize, is that one of the best things you can do to help your knowledge of scripture is maintain the habit of reading broadly. What I mean by that is sometimes we can get into reading just little bitty segments, a few verses at a time and try to understand just from those verses all that's going on. And then perhaps walk away frustrated when we don't understand. And I encourage you that time it's okay to read God's word, read the whole chapter, read the whole book. And there'll be areas where the first and the second or the third time you say, you know, I'm not sure I really understood that because a lot of times where we get the understanding is not necessarily just in camping out on a few verses, but as we keep reading or read in other sections, the Lord helps through the way our minds work to make the connections. This piece explains that piece. I didn't understand it here, but now I understand it over here. And very often times just the coming back to it, over and over as you build that familiarity, you see and understand things you didn't understand before. And so my encouragement to you is yes, study deeply and look at those few verses at times, but also don't become discouraged if it doesn't make sense once or twice or three times. Keep reading much of God's word. Keep reading broadly. On the one hand, I think things will begin making more sense because the way God's word works. On the other hand, if you are knowledgeable about a wide swath of scripture, if you understand how scripture is structured very broadly, it makes you much harder to take in. You know, one of the places that error and heresy is bred is in taking a couple of verses, pulling them out of context and imposing meanings on them that the authors did not mean. And if you have only really studied scripture in terms of snippets and bites, you're vulnerable to that. But if you've read lots of scripture, if you've read the books through and you're familiar with the way that God speaks and the way these books work, it's not telling you to be a scholar, this is just reading God's word and being familiar with it very oftentimes, you may not know why a certain interpretation sounds wrong, but you will say, I've heard God's word. I've read a lot about it. I heard my Lord speak. That's not how he speaks. As Christ says, the sheep know their shepherd. If you've listened to your shepherd much, the foreign voice sounds foreign. If you've only listened to your shepherd a little bit, It's hard to discern if the foreign voice is foreign. So God's word is understandable. I still have to emphasize, I think one of the most important things we can do to understand it is just get into it and read it. There are helps to reading scripture and like you might have helps trying to know Plato or Shakespeare. It's good to use those helps to help you understand context, to give you clues. You've already watched me rely on John Calvin. I like John Calvin. Because part of what he does is you read him as he helps teach you how to do what he's doing. He's giving you all the clues of how he got to where he got. And so he helps you learn. So those are good things to do, but it's really scripture we need to breathe in, scripture we need to meditate on, scripture we need to intake. But second, I want to talk about the accessibility of God's word. Moses doesn't just say that it's not too hard for you. That's just the, that's really one phrase. The next one is the one he really spends a lot of time on. Neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that you should say who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it. Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say who will go over the sea and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it. You know, if you read ancient, um, old literature you might think of the odyssey Or you think of Beowulf, these great pictures of ancient non-Christian literature. What's the story? The story is always a quest. The hero gets up and he has to go somewhere. And I think this is part of what Moses is saying is, put out of your mind the idea that you have to go on a quest. You have to go to some oracle somewhere, as they did in the ancient world. I have to go travel across the sea and go visit the oracle in her secret place, and then hear God's word. Part of what Moses is saying is put that ancient thinking out of your mind. The word is not far off. It's not across the Mediterranean Sea. You don't have to go up to some mountain to go get it. It is with you. In fact, Moses himself recounts, I think, the most vivid picture of this happening, as he remembers in Deuteronomy 5.22. After recounting the Ten Commandments, these words, the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness with a loud voice, and he added, no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. And as soon as you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders. And you said, behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness. We've heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we've seen God speak with man and man still live. Now, therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us if we hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore, we shall die. For where is there of all flesh that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fires we have and is still lived? Go near and hear all of the Lord our God will say and speak to us all the Lord our God will speak to you and we will hear it. and do it. So they propose. So there's a lot going on here. First is this reality that it is not that Israel went questing to find God's word, but right. God brought them out of Egypt. He met them in the wilderness, and then he didn't so much call them up to the mountain. He spoke from on top of the mountain down to them. So there's that first. But second, what is heavy in that text is this realization that God is accommodating his voice to the capacity of his people. So the first way we see that is in the fact that he doesn't speak in angelic tongue. He doesn't speak in some language they don't understand, but he expresses himself through sound waves. They hear his voice in their ears thundering. And so he speaks in a way they can hear. But then we see as he is teaching Israel, you can't interact with me directly. I am too great for you. It's too much for you. So then he brings them to where they say, we want a mediator. We need a prophet. And if you're familiar with the text, you know God grants this request. And who becomes that prophet? Well, the one who's already been acting as that prophet, Moses himself. And he goes up and down. And what is his job? His job is to do exactly what he says they don't need to do. Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us? What did Moses do? He ascended up the mountain where God was, a picture of the heavens. And he interacted with God and he brought the covenant down to the people. He brought the word to the people where they might have it. So as Moses speaks these words, I'm sure he's got that in mind. I went up, God came down, I went up, and now the word is right here in your hands. It is not far away. But then we should also hear how Paul speaks again in Romans 10. Do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down. Or who will descend into the abyss? That is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. What's amazing here. So Paul is telling us that what Moses did on that mountain, what occurred at Mount Sinai, what occurred is God continued to reveal his word to Moses. throughout that time in the wilderness was not the final act of revelation. It was an act of revelation pointing forward to a greater act of revelation. It is wonderful enough to consider that the creator of us all, the master of the universe, the one to whom we have alienated ourselves by our sin, accommodated himself to us such that we could hear him. And when he spoke to us, he spoke to us a covenant of grace that speaks life. But then to consider that Christ comes, right? And as John says, the word becomes flesh. Jesus comes down. God the Son comes down from heaven and speaks to us. In Christ Jesus, God is addressing us directly. Or you think of, I use that imagery of the quest. going across the sea. Paul uses language who will descend into the abyss. The sea, very much for the Hebrew, has that sense of abyss and death and destruction. Think Jonah cast into the sea. He is counted as dead, though he does not die. So who will go on the quest for us? It is not us who will do it, but Christ. He has gone into death and come out and he lives. Christ Jesus has put the word very much in your hand. It's easy to take God's word for granted. We are so blessed. You can go and buy a copy of God's word in your common tongue for $5 or less. You can get God's word for less than it costs you to get a meal at a cheap fast food joint. You can go online and get it essentially for free. in your own tongue, in a way that you can understand. It's easy to take it for granted. We forget the wonder of what has happened. That God has spoken to us, that he has come near to us for the sake of our salvation. We should hear and cherish God's word, remembering it is God who's spoken to us. And that's the second thing I want to emphasize is accessible. But it's not just that it's come near to you. I want you to be confident when you read scripture. You are not, as it were, reading somebody else's mail, but you're reading what God has addressed to us who are his church today. So that Moses says. This commandment that I command you today. or in verse 14, but the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart so that you can do it. I want you to have confidence when you hear those words. Those words, we shouldn't just hear them as, oh, that was said to Israel long ago. But what we have here in God's word and scripture is specifically designed and given by God specifically to you. The way I want to think about that is very briefly to think about how we go from Moses speaking these words in Deuteronomy to what we have in Scripture. How does the events that God does and the words that God says, either directly or through his prophets, end up in Scripture? One thing I want to emphasize is we know full well that we don't have a record of everything God did. We don't have a record of everything, for example, that Christ said, and we can Go on from there, everything that God spoke to his people. Consider how the Apostle John speaks. These are familiar words from chapter 20. Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, by believing you may have life in his name or again at the very end of his gospel. Now, there are also many other things that Jesus did. were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. But you see, as John says, I was selective. I didn't tell you everything Jesus said. I didn't tell you everything that Jesus did. I picked and chose and worked to bring the things that you need to hear so that you might believe in Christ Jesus. And that's something we need to be aware of. that what we have in scripture is not a record of everything God has done or everything that God has said to his people in all times past. It is something that is selected down. The skeptical credits will accuse the Bible of having editors. They will say, oh, they got together and they selected down the things that they wanted us to hear. In one sense, I say, of course, they're editors. Of course, there is work done compiling these books. In fact, we read of such things in the Old Testament, too. I think of Jeremiah 36, where we hear some of how the book of Jeremiah came to be. This is in the context of Jeremiah receives revelation from the Lord. He writes in a scroll. His servant Baruch brings it to Jehoiakim and Jehoiakim burns it. In the aftermath of this, in verse 27, after the king had burned the scroll with the words that Baruch wrote at Jeremiah's dictation, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, take another scroll, write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll, which Jehoiakim, the king of Judah's burned. And concerning Jehoiakim, king of Judah, you shall say, thus says the Lord, you've burned this scroll saying, why have you written in it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land and will cut off from it man and beast. He'll continue pronouncing the disaster that comes on Jehoiakim, but then in verse 32, Many similar words were added to them. This is giving us an idea, a sense of where did the book of Jeremiah came from? Well, He wrote down this message, and he wrote and added many more to it. There was a process of Jeremiah's scribe taking these words down, putting them into a form that can be read. Isaiah chapter 30 speaks also of some of this process. 30 verses 8 and 9. This is a prophecy, I believe, against... I don't know if I can turn the page. There we go. Verses 8 and 9. And now go write it before them on a tablet and ascribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. For they are rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord. So here we have this command from the Lord to Isaiah. Go, I want you to write these things down specifically and hear them. And so we hear up here God's commands and the ways that he gets them written. If you proceed through the books of Kings and Chronicles, you are probably familiar with how often the authors there say, and are not the rest of the acts of such and such King written in the books of the acts of the Kings or written in the books of this or that. And it's a way that the author there reminds us, here's my sources, here's where this has come from. What I'm saying here is we don't confess that these books came to us by the Lord coming to the author of Kings or the author of a gospel and dictating it to that person. Rather, we know and understand that these books came through processes that we would recognize. So that I've said before, we can read a book like Isaiah or Jeremiah and recognize what we're reading is largely a collection of the preaching of the sermons of these prophets set into historical context so we can understand what's going on. Or you think of the Gospels. Luke did historical research and made decisions as to how to structure and craft that book so it made sense. These things are true. We want us to recognize as the men who wrote this were as much engaging in prophetic work as the men who spoke these things. So that, for example, we believe fairly strongly that the books of Kings and Chronicles are shaped by prophets. I forget which one is, I think it's Chronicles. We're pretty sure either Nehemiah or Ezra was behind that work. But we recognize that the writing of these books was done by God's prophets, as much as the speaking of the prophetic words was done by God's prophets. And so one, when people come and say, well, the book came this way or that way, Don't lose your confidence in God's word because it was written through human means. We say, of course it was written through human means. God is accommodating himself to us so we might understand it. These men who wrote this are his prophets. They're speaking and writing and compiling and preparing these volumes at his command and by his control. And we've done this long rabbit trail. Why would God do it that way? Why would he not simply dictate verbatim, this is my word to my people for all time, there and that's it. Well, for example, for Moses, when Moses first spoke, who did he speak to? He spoke to Israel right there in front of him, before him. The events as they were played out were played out for the people who are right there to see and to learn and be shaped into God's people. But the work that the authors of scripture do to put it in scripture, to arrange it in ways that are designed to make sense, to choose to include this and leave that out in the ways they structure and speak are done very intentionally. That this word might not be the word that was to Israel so many thousand years ago, or the word that was in the first century when Christ spoke it, but is the word to you. What is contained there? What is in the scripture? Is God so working so that he is addressing specifically his church in all time? So that you can read these words and say, those aren't just to that people back then. They are to me. And I am to receive them as given to me. And God is so crafted and given his word in a way that's designed that I get God's word not to other people. I mean, it is to other people, but I'm included in that people. I am part of the group that receives God's word. And I emphasize this because I look at the ways that people try to interact with the Lord in these days. I recognize that many have this hunger to hear God speaking to them that they feel is not being satisfied, that God is not addressing me in my place, in my time. And yet we look at scripture, we see how it speaks, how it's designed. It is crying out to us. God is addressing you here in scripture. This is addressed to you. And we need to act on the basis on the belief, on the confidence that this God's word spoke to you is understandable, it's assessable, and it's directed to you. So you don't need to go outside of God's word to hear God address you. So much of what's cropped up in the charismatic and Pentecostal word goes beyond God's word. It says, I need to hear God speaking to me or addressing me or interact with me in some other way. I need a vision or a dream or a word for God, or perhaps I need a high and excited experience to know that God has addressed me. No, you need God's word. You need to look and seek God's word. I would remind us. that Paul does not direct Timothy to seek new revelation, but what does he say? Preach the word in season and out of season. He directs him back to the word. Moses here directs Israel to the word that they already have. He doesn't say go seek a new one. So I want you to have confidence in this book that you can understand it. There's God addressing you. It's made accessible so that you can hear it and understand it. Then finally, we must touch on this, that as we come to God's word, we must know how dependent we are. My fear is that sometimes we can come to God's word and say, here are the words. If I just study it hard enough, I'm going to get it. I can, in my own strength, attain to this. Moses says in verse 14, but the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart so that you can do it. And that's where the problem is, isn't it? We can know the word very well. We can have it in our heads. I am just amazed at the tragedy of the great Bible scholars of many different ages that had God's word memorized who could navigate it very proficiently, who could parse all the Greek and Hebrew and tell you the doctrines. And it was here and not there. It was in the head and it was not in the heart. I think of the tragedy of the Pharisees and scribes and lawyers in Jesus' day. Who knew God's word better? Well, I would suspect it was the Pharisees and scribes who on a much more professional basis reviewed God's word and not the fishermen like Peter that Jesus called. What's the slander against Peter that the scribes bring up? They are unlearned. They are untaught. And yet, who knew it in the heart? Who believed it? Who responded to it? Who benefited from it? It was Peter and not the scribes. You know, we are reminded of Jeremiah 31, will write my law on their heart. You know, when we think about understanding God's word, I am perhaps less concerned with how much of it you're able to intellectually explain and how much it has come into your heart. Yes, you need to know the doctrines. You need to learn your catechism. It helps. It helps you understand. It helps you express. But more than that, you need to see Jesus. You need to meet him in scripture. You need to see him as the one that you trust for your salvation and your eternal future. And that will not happen merely by study alone. It will happen only if God's Holy Spirit enlightens your eyes to the knowledge of Christ and renews your will. You have to have the work of the Spirit. And so there's this funny thing about God's Word. What we have before us in scripture is an amazing book. It's an amazing thing just to study God's Word as the literature that it is. And yet we recognize it comes to us and it looks very ordinary. It's printed in normal script. It can be understood at an intellectual level using means and tools the like we would use with other works of human authorship. But there is wonder in it, first, for Mr. Umberto's source. It is not man speaking. It is God speaking. And it is in fact wonderful that it is so, as it were, ordinary or mundane, because what God has done is taken the wonderful and the amazing and that which is too much for us, and he's put it in scripture so that we can understand it, and we can be amazed at it and wonder at him. And then the second wonder is that God does this great accommodation to us, brings his word down to us, and what does man in his sin do with it? He at best ignores it or doesn't get it. And if he understands it for what it is, he hates it. And God is not content for that to stand, but he by his spirit comes and changes you so that now you hear God's word, you understand it intellectually and you believe it so that you find there not just interesting facts, It's a tragedy to many. The Bible is just interesting facts. But you see God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You see Christ died and risen for your salvation and you believe and you find life. So read this word and have confidence in it. God has addressed to you life. So cherish his word, read it, learn it, be in it. Seek it not just to show how smart you are, but rather seek it to meet the Savior there, the God who has saved you. Amen. Let's pray. Father, your word is wonderful. It is hard to express rightly and clearly just the amazing thing that you have done and that you spoke at times in past to the prophets and many times in various ways, as we read in Hebrews, that you've now spoken in your son and that you have given us this record of your speaking and your doing, which is not merely a record, but is you addressing us, your people. Lord, it is a wonderful thing and we praise you for it. We thank you for it. We pray that you would teach us to cherish your word, that you would make us eager to be in it, that we would read it because we love it, because we love you. And in it, we find you, that you are speaking to us, that it is your word to us. Lord, We have sung and we will sing about how your word is a lamp and a guide, how it is sweet, how it directs. Lord, we live in a day where so many are so lost and confused. Their lostness and their rebellion against you is plainly evident. We would pray that you would send your word forth in this land, in this time, that many who are lost might be found. we would ask your special favor to us that we might in some small way be a part of that word going forth. That you might be pleased even through us that one or two or perhaps many who do not now know your word might know it and through it might know Christ Jesus to their salvation. It is in his name we pray.