Rooted 5 – The Fertile Soil of Scripture

We're really sorry we had some technical difficulties with our video this week, so we just have the audio for you. Hope you enjoy.

All right, while you're standing, would you open your Bibles with me to Second Peter in the New Testament? If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand, and one of our ushers will bring you one. Second Peter is right after First Peter, just before First, Second, and Third John, right near the very end of your Bible. Open to Revelation, the last book, and turn left a few books; you'll find it.

Second Peter, chapter 1. We're going to begin again at the passage that we've looked at several times over the last few weeks, verse 12. Second Peter 1:12 says, "For this reason, I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as the Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover, I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease."

Now look down at verse 20: "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation. For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit."

Father, we pray for the presence of Your Spirit this morning. We know that wherever two or more are gathered in Your name, there You are in their midst. Jesus, You promised that You would be with us always, even to the end of the age. So we thank You for Your presence today. We pray that You, by Your Spirit and through the working of Your Word, would transform us by the renewing of our minds, that we would be able to show in our daily lives this week Your good and perfect will. We ask this in Jesus' name.

According to Peter, there are certain things that need to be repeated, certain truths that need to be stated again and again, over and over, because we have a tendency to forget. We have a tendency to lose sight of things that are important. So Peter writes here that he is not going to...

Be negligent, but I’m going to continue to remind you of these things, even though you know them and you are established in the present truth. This morning, I want to go back to a passage of Scripture that we studied before. It may be familiar to many of you, some of you back in the Old Testament, a three-thousand-year-old text found in the Psalms.

So, if you’d open to the Psalms, it’s the biggest section of the Scriptures, right about the middle of your Bible. Go to Psalm 19. Psalm 19 is a psalm of King David. As he was probably out in the field, maybe while he was a young shepherd boy considering his surroundings, looking at the sky and all that was around him, he writes these words:

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows forth His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them, He has set a tabernacle for the Sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices like a strong man to run its race. Its rising is from one end of heaven and its circuit to the other end, and there is nothing hidden from its heat."

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandments of the Lord are pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping them, there is great reward. Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and I shall be innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.

Outspoken atheists of the 20th century include some notable figures, one of the most famous being Bertrand Russell. Just prior to his death, he was interviewed, and the interviewer asked him a simple question: "Mr. Russell, what if when you die, you come to realize that you were wrong and your atheism was not true? What if you happen to stand before God one day?" Russell responded, saying, "Well, if that happens, which of course I highly doubt, I will simply say, 'Sir, you did not give us enough evidence.'"

In contrast, a young man, probably a shepherd boy at the time, who would become King David, sat among the flock in the fields near Bethlehem, close to Jerusalem. As he looked at the earth and the sky, night by night he saw the stars, and morning by morning he witnessed the sun rise and go through its course. He declared, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth His handiwork."

Was David wrong? Was Bertrand Russell wrong? One of them has to be wrong; they can't both be right. Was it that David was simply influenced by the monotheistic culture he grew up in? Did he just have a confirmation bias that tended towards theism? Or perhaps Bertrand Russell was highly influenced by his naturalistic culture of the 20th century, leading him to have a confirmation bias towards naturalism.

Two thousand years ago, the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 1, "Since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes have been clearly observed, being understood by the things that are made, even God's eternal power and Godhead, so that man is without excuse." Although humanity knew God, they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They would not glorify or worship Him as God or give Him thanks. Instead, they became foolish in their imaginations, and as a result, their minds became dark and confused. They began to glorify the creation instead of the Creator who made it.

Thus, we have these three perspectives: Bertrand Russell, who would tell God, "Sir, you did not give us enough evidence," and David, who saw the glory of God in creation.

Give us enough evidence, or you have David: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth His handiwork." Or you have Paul: "His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being observed in the things that were made."

A couple of years ago, just before Christmas, an American author, speaker, and radio host by the name of Eric Metaxas wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal. It said this: In 1966, Time magazine ran a cover story asking, "Is God dead?" Many have accepted the cultural narrative that God is obsolete, that as science progresses, there is less need for God to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God's death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively recent case for His existence comes from a surprising place: science itself.

Here's the story. The same year that Time featured the now-famous headline, the astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life: the right kind of star and a planet at the right distance from that star. Given that there were roughly one octillion (that is, one followed by 24 zeros) planets in the universe, there should be one septillion (one followed by 20 zeros) planets capable of supporting life, according to Carl Sagan. With such spectacular odds, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, a large, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects launched in the 1960s, was sure to turn up something soon.

Scientists listened with this vast radio telescope network for signals that resembled coded intelligence and were not merely random. However, as the years passed, the silence from the rest of the universe was deafening. Congress defunded SETI in 1993, but the search continued with private funds. As of 2014, researchers had discovered precisely bubkis—zero, nothing.

What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than the two that Sagan had proposed. His two parameters grew to ten, ten grew to twenty, and twenty grew to two hundred fifty. Consequently, the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting. Today, there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life. Every single one of these parameters must be met for life to exist.

The odds of life in the universe are simply astounding. Point number one: God is not silent. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth His handiwork. David says, "Day unto day they utter speech." Who utters speech? The heavens and the earth. Every single day, they are speaking; night unto night, they reveal knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Every single day and every single night, creation is crying out that God is. It is declaring that there is a God, and you don't have to be all that intelligent to see such things in looking at creation.

Not only that, there is no speech nor language, no place on the earth, where the voice of creation is not calling out to the people to behold that God is. In Psalm 19, verse 4, it says, "Their line has gone out throughout all the earth." The line of creation, the voice speaking that God is, and their words to the end of the world. Another translation says, "Yet their message, the message of creation, has gone throughout the earth, and their words to every place in the world." What is the message of creation? Simply this: God is. God is, and He is not silent. No one is beyond the reach of this message from God.

Now, this is what we refer to as general revelation. General revelation is that by which God reveals Himself, and that which has made the heavens declare the glory of God and the earth show forth His engineering handiwork. When we see these things, we are hard-pressed to say that there is any other source from which they came than the One who put them into place.

Two thousand four hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote, "Should a man live underground and converse with the works of art and mechanism, and should afterwards be brought up into the open day and see the several glories of heaven and earth, he would immediately pronounce them the works of such a being as we define God to be." In other words,

Any thinking person looking at what has been made would surmise that it is actually something that was created. This goes for something as simple, which is actually not very simple, as this phone here. When you look at this, you know that there is a designer, a creator, some source that made it. It didn't come about by random chance or mutation over billions of years. The heavens declare the glory of God.

John Boys, who was a priest and a Dean of Canterbury in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD, wrote that the preaching of the heavens is wonderful in three respects. First, it preaches all night and all day without intermission. Secondly, it preaches in every kind of language. Thirdly, it preaches in every part of the world.

Point number two on your outline: man is without excuse. I think it's important to remind you of these things, though you know them and are established in the present truth. God is not silent, and man is without excuse. It's good that I remind you of these things because we live in a culture that totally goes against them. In fact, we live in a culture where, if you believe what the Bible says—and many of you here today do, I assume—you are looked down upon as a simpleton or an idiot. It’s not that you are just the village idiot; you are part of a village of idiots in the culture we live in today.

This discussion has risen to a fever pitch in the last twenty years in our nation, especially as there has been a debate in politics and education about the issues of intelligent design. Should it be taught alongside biological science? Should this mechanism of creation or intelligent design be included? We are constantly told by our culture that if you think this is the case, then you are the fool. This is phenomenal because if any person were to ever propose that this phone came about by random chance and mutation, they would be laughed out of the room as a simpleton or an idiot. Yet, when we look at the structures—whether they are subatomic structures or astronomical structures—through the microscope or the telescope, what do we find? We find...

The intricacy of design at the deepest levels is profound. Among biological scientists, many believe that evolutionary science and the random chance of mutation over millions and billions of years led to our existence. However, you will also find many scientists in mathematics, physics, and other fields who assert that there simply has to be someone who ordered these things. It couldn't have happened just by random chance of mutation.

Many of those who study the human genome at the deepest levels have come to the conclusion that there must be a creator. Even Richard Dawkins, the foremost atheist of our day and a prominent evangelical atheist, appeared in a documentary by Ben Stein several years ago that addressed the issue of intelligent design. In that documentary, he is the last person to speak. When pressed by Ben Stein about the intricacy of design and the fine-tuning of the universe, he admits that perhaps the planet was seeded by aliens. How is that not an acknowledgment of an intelligent designer? Call it what you will—seeding by aliens, an intelligent designer, or God—something had to bring about creation in the way that it is. Humanity is without excuse; there is deep complexity in creation, from the subatomic to the astronomical.

Point number three on your outline is that creation proclaims God's existence and glory. It is good to be reminded of these truths because we are often pressured by our culture to remain silent. If you believe in the teachings of the Bible, that there is a God who spoke creation into existence, you are considered a fool by the prevailing culture. Therefore, it is essential to remember that science often confirms what the Scriptures reveal about the intricacy of design and creation.

We should not be afraid of science. The fear that science might prove there is no God is unfounded; it will never prove that there is no God. Instead, it continues to affirm that there is a designer. For over 3,000 years, this truth has been evident.

A long time ago, a simpleton, a guy who would become king in Israel, said, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the earth shows forth His handiwork." Aristotle said the same thing. The Apostle Paul, one of the greatest intellects of all time, echoed this sentiment. If you go down through the list, you find this constant theme: creation proclaims the existence of God and His glory.

David continues in the second half of Psalm 19, verse 4. He says, "In them," that is, the heavens, "He has set a tabernacle for the Sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices like a strong man to run its race." Its rising is from one end of heaven and its circuit to the other end, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

In beholding creation, David observed a scientific reality that he speaks of in poetic metaphor. Sometimes, people get a little baffled by poetic metaphor, but what is David saying here? When he says the Sun follows its circuit, it's like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. What does that mean? It means that it comes up every day at the right time, and it follows its course all the time. It is like an incredible mechanistic clock, at the greatest detail, like a Swiss watch; it always follows its pattern and its course.

This was reminded to me in a simple way just in the last couple of days. Our daughter Addison was assigned a project in her first-grade class. She needed to watch the moon rise and sketch a drawing of the moon. This weekend, that was her homework, and my wife and I were talking about it last night. I said, "Well, there might be a problem."

"What's the problem?" I asked. "The moon doesn't rise until 2 AM." How do I know that? Because you can search it on Google and find out when it's going to come up in this place. Why do we know that? Because everything follows its course as God created it to do. Unfortunately, she didn't get to stay up until 2 AM to watch the moon rise, so we had to figure something else out.

This is what we refer to as general revelation. When we look at God's revelation through His creation, there are at least three things that we can learn about God through general revelation. First, we can learn that God exists. Secondly, we learn that God is intelligent. Third, we learn that God is powerful. The same is true when we look at something like this device here; we know that there are some companies, some group of designers, that made this. They exist.

We also know that they have intelligence. They have the ability to architect and engineer the devices and the software to make this thing run, and they have the power and resources to make it all come to pass. God, in the same way, has intelligence; He is powerful. Through general revelation, you can come to the lowest level of faith, which is what the author of the Book of Hebrews describes in Hebrews chapter 11. He says in verse 6, "Without faith, it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." The lowest level of faith is this: God exists, and He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Now, here's the dilemma. Humanity, man in his fallen state, and every single one of us are in our fallen state. When looking at the evidence of creation, general revelation, in our fallen state, we will nearly always default to idolatry. This is what Paul spoke of in Romans chapter 1, where he says, "They took the glory of God and they worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."

Do you see? Man in his fallen state, when presented with general revelation, will default to idolatry. I'm here to tell you that atheism is idolatry; it's simply the worship of nature. It's worshiping all the processes of the universe and saying, "Look at all this amazing thing that the universe has been able to do." It is just a simple idolatry of the creature rather than the Creator. It is a denial of God, most often because of a hatred of God or an unwillingness to want to submit to Him.

If I can say that He doesn't exist, then I don't have to follow His word. Virtually every single atheist, when pressed, always comes to that point where they say, "I don't want there to be a God." Man in his fallen state will default to idolatry because man does not want to retain God in his mind. He does not want to glorify Him as God or yield to Him. Therefore, it is necessary that there not only be general revelation, but that there also be...

Be special revelation. When we make the turn here in Psalm 19 from verse 6 to verse 7, David moves from general revelation—"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth His handiwork"—to special revelation, where he says, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandments of the Lord are pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

More to be desired are they than gold, yes, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey in the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping of them is great reward.

So, David in Psalm 19, verses 1 through 6, gives general revelation—the heavens declare the glory of God. Then, when he comes to verse 7, he says, "But the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." We move from general to special revelation. What is special revelation? It's exactly what Peter talks about in Second Peter, chapter one, where he says holy men of God spoke as the Spirit moved them.

For us to know more about God than that He simply exists, that He is intelligent and powerful, we need to know the specifics about what God wants and what He is like. He has to tell us in a language that we can understand. This allows us to sing songs like we did in the very last song we sang today: "This I believe in God the Father, I believe in Christ the Son, I believe in the Holy Spirit, our God is three in one. I believe in the resurrection that we will rise again. I believe in the name of Jesus."

For us to be able to say all that, none of it comes by general revelation; it all must come by special revelation, where holy men speak as God moves them. There has to be this revelation, like we see here in Psalm 19, verses 7 through 11. The law of the Lord is perfect. In these five verses, David gives us six descriptive titles of the Scriptures, six characteristic qualities of the Scriptures, and six divine effects of the Scriptures. In talking about special revelation, he first gives us six descriptive titles that you can circle in verses 7 through 11.

First, the law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the statutes of the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, the fear of the Lord, and the judgments of the Lord are all described. Then, he moves from the descriptive titles to the characteristic qualities of the Scriptures. He says that the law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the statutes of the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, the fear of the Lord, and the judgments of the Lord are first perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, true, and righteous. This is the quality of God's judgments in His law and His testimonies. They are perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, true, and righteous.

Next, he moves to the divine effects of the Scriptures. What do they do in us? The law of the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, and the statutes of the Lord, which are perfect, right, sure, and pure, have several effects. First, they convert the soul. Second, they make wise the simple. Third, they rejoice the heart. Fourth, they enlighten the eyes. Fifth, they endure forever. Lastly, they bring warning and reward. They bring both a warning and a reward.

We cannot know who God is, what He is like, and what He wants through general revelation. Therefore, it is necessary for God to reveal Himself and speak to us in a language that we can understand. This is often where the naturalist objects and says, "I don't believe in revelation; I have a hard time with revelation." It is important to present these concepts in terms that we can understand, even for the naturalist.

You may remember, as some of you do, when this happened. I just read about it, but back in the late 1970s, there was a cover story in Popular Mechanics about the first new machine that would become the first personal computer called the Altair, developed by a company in Albuquerque. They sent out these articles in Popular Mechanics, discussing this great machine and the things they figured it would be able to do. However, all it was, really, was a gray box with red lights on the front of it. It was essentially a giant desk paperweight because it had no language; no one had written a language that could communicate with the computer, telling it what we wanted it to do.

There was a young guy at Harvard, a geeky-looking fellow with big glasses named Bill Gates. He and his buddy Paul Allen read that article and thought, "We could write a language for this." And they did. They flew out to Albuquerque to demonstrate how their language could communicate with the computer.

I wanted to discuss this machine, and now all of a sudden, the computer revolution has begun. Here we are, 35 to 40 years later, in awe of what has been accomplished. What is this? Here is this creation of man, this box that has potential, but without a language where we, the creators, can speak to it and say, "I want you to do this," it is worthless and can do nothing.

What is that? Well, there is some special revelation—man speaking in a language that the computer can understand—to be able to do that which man wants it to do. This is what God has done through special revelation. He has given us His law, His task, His testimony, His statutes, His commandments, His fears, and His judgments so that we would take that and know what He wants. We would be wise, we would be converted, and we would be rejoicing.

Hard point number four on your outline: God has gone to great lengths to make Himself known. David goes on in Psalm 19. Look at this verse: "Who can understand his errors?" You see, through general revelation, you would never know where you were going wrong. But through special revelation, "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from my secret faults."

How can we know the areas where we've transgressed? Only through special revelation. "Keep back Your servant from all presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and I shall be innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer."

How can we walk in a way that is pleasing to God? How can we speak in a way that is right before Him? Only by special revelation from the Scriptures. This is why we are so committed to the Scriptures here at Cross Connection. This is why we go through verse by verse, chapter by chapter, through the Bible.

Some on the outside may look at this and say, "What a waste of time!" They may think it is a foolish endeavor to go through this archaic passage of Bible literature from all those thousands of years ago. Yet through this, His servant is warned, and in them, there is great reward. So we are and will always be committed to the Scriptures.

Scriptures remind us that we need to be those who endeavor to make His greatness known. The heavens are not silent; they declare the glory of God. The inanimate Earth shows forth His handiwork every single day without intermission. They speak of the glory and power of God. Should it be any different that we, His highest creation made in His image, with minds and mouths, would keep quiet?

We must be those who work to declare the greatness and glory of God, making it known to every person we come in contact with. This is again why we are so committed to the Scriptures. We are not only committed to studying them together when we gather here, but also to making them known. We share them on TV, on the internet, and through audio messages going out throughout the world. Missionaries are going to their utmost parts, but we also make them known in a very special way.

In the time that I have remaining today, I want to introduce you to some friends of ours who have been partnered with our ministry for many years. Would you welcome with me Bill and Donna Davis? I first learned about this couple when I was about 14 or 15 years old in the youth ministry here at this church. There was a documentary, a short little video, that they showed in Sunday school about this couple serving God in the Philippines. They were just images on a screen, and let me tell you, they looked a lot different in those images back in 1994-95.

It wasn't until about five years ago that a friend of mine here in the church, many of you knew Ron and Mary Hendrix, invited me over to his house. God moved them out to Texas earlier this year, but Ron said, "Hey, I'd love for you to come over to my house and meet some friends of ours named Bill and Donna Davis." I did not put the connection together, but when I was at Ron's house having dinner, I was talking with Bill, who was sharing with me all the things he had been doing. It hit me in just a moment: wait a minute, you're the people in that video I saw when I was a kid. For most of their lives, Bill and Donna have...

I served the Lord in the Philippines among a group of people called the Palawan. They have been dedicated for their entire lives to translating the Scriptures into the language of their people. These individuals did not have the Bible in their language until Bill and Donna went there in the early 1980s. God has used them, and Bill is here to give a little bit of an update on what has happened in the last several years.

Bill, I’m glad you’re here. Thank you. We finally finished the New Testament. God's special revelation has been translated into the Palawano language. This church is one of our partners and one of the largest single donors toward the printing of this and the recording of the audio version. We wanted to take a moment this morning to present a copy of the New Testament to Cross Connection and to thank you from us and on behalf of the Palawano people. We have a plaque here for your huge part in seeing this come about. God's Word is now in the hands of the Palawano people, and they are no longer on the list of unreached people groups. Thank you.

I know from talking with you that early on, your plan was never to be a Bible translator. You’ve expressed that you weren’t the best at languages. How did that happen that you came to endeavor to give your life to this?

I had five years of Spanish in junior high school, and I hated it. However, we got into mission training and then went on to the Philippines. God led us to this group that needed a New Testament translation, and we thought that was what He had for us to do. We had training and consultant help along the way because it’s a huge job, and eventually, we were able to see it done.

Donna, what was it that God used to lead you to step out and leave everything that was comfortable and known here in Southern California to go with this lunatic? How did that happen?

I was looking for that lunatic out there. He had to be tall and want to be a missionary. I didn’t get saved until I was 16; I was raised in an unsaved home. God led me to an awesome church and a youth pastor who really preached the Word and taught us to make Jesus Lord of our lives, and I did that. Along the way, a missionary came and shared about tribal people in the world who had never heard the name of Christ. That seemed really unfair to me, and God...

Touched my heart so much that I was looking for a lunatic. Lo and behold, when we read the Scriptures, we have to grasp or understand things that are two thousand years old, from another place and another time, describing things we have never seen. We already have this translated for us, so it's about interpreting what's being said.

What are some of the difficulties in trying to take these concepts and translate them for people who live on an island, not in the deserts of the Middle East, and in a totally different time? Exactly. The Palawan people live in a rainforest and are close enough to the ocean to be familiar with that, but they have never seen a lake and have never seen a desert. The idea of sand that you would walk through for days and months is a very foreign concept to them.

Some terms, like "God's grace," are thrown around casually. It's a very short word, but think of all the meaning packed into that term. It was a challenge to come up with the right word, and by the time we were done with the translation project, the younger generation didn't understand the word we were using for grace. We had to find a new, more current term. It was like a Bible study plus a language puzzle; that was my ministry to a great extent.

Now that this is complete, obviously, my work is not done. What am I doing now? What is God doing? The reason we went to the Palawan, as Donna mentioned in the first place, was that we believe everyone deserves to hear in their heart language. God has commanded us as the church to take His special revelation and make disciples of all nations. There are still thousands of groups like the Palawan who have not heard of Christ, have not heard the gospel, and do not have any Scripture in their language.

There are missionaries going out to do that, and we are involved in training them specifically in the areas of language learning and culture learning so they can do what we did. What's exciting is that many of these missionaries are now non-Western: Filipinos, Indonesians, Chinese, and Indians who feel like God is handing them the baton to run with it and take the gospel. They can go to places where we, with our American passports, would not be welcome or would cause a lot of excitement. We are involved in training them as well so they can take the name of Christ.

Everyone deserves to hear in their heart language. That's what we call our blog, HeartLanguages.org.

At this point, one of the things coming up later this year is a big trip for us to Thailand and then to India. In Thailand, we will be working with other missionaries in the areas of culture and language learning, trying to develop some course materials that will be really handy for people learning those languages that aren't on Rosetta Stone and similar platforms. There are no courses available for them.

In India, Bill will be going around training and consulting with missionaries who are trying to learn the languages there, with the idea of eventually training Indians to be missionaries. It's a big challenge for us, and we appreciate your prayers for that.

How can people connect with you aside from stopping by your table?

You can stop by our table afterward to pick up some flyers or a prayer card with a picture to remind you to pray for us. You can also sign up for our updates or go to HeartLanguages.org and sign up there.

After the first service, we met Tom and K. Olmstead. After the summer break, they are kicking off their Connect Group on Friday, September 9th, and they want to invite everyone to come for a meet and greet with us. If you all come, we might have to get a permit to spill out into the street! Details will be in the bulletin next week. That's brand new, and we'd love to have you come, meet us, and ask questions. In the meantime, feel free to stop by the table, flip through the New Testament, see what it looks like, and chat with us.

What we want to do now is pray for you guys. We're glad that you are here. If anyone wants to come up and lay hands on Bill and Donna for this next stage of ministry that God has for them, please do so. It has been a blessing for us as a church to be a part of this, to partner with them in seeing the Scriptures translated into the Palawan language. We will continue to partner with them, and who knows what other languages will be birthed from this as they minister to a new generation of missionaries.

So would you stand, and let's pray together for them. Father, we do pray for Bill and Donna. We thank You for the work that You have done in and through them for their entire adult lives, and we pray, God, that...

As you continue to use them, we ask that You bless and open doors that no man can shut. Direct their steps and provide for their needs. We thank You for the work of New Tribes and for Wycliffe and other groups that are translating the Scriptures. What a privilege it is to be able to partner with them in order to pray for the missionaries who are being trained right now or are on the field, translating languages to put the Scriptures into these languages.

In many of these languages, there isn't even a written alphabet. Not only are they figuring out how to learn the language, but they are also creating an alphabet and then translating the Scriptures. We pray, God, that You would be with them and strengthen their hearts and minds as they dedicate themselves to this work. We thank You for Bill and Donna, and we ask, God, that You would use this translation in a magnificent and powerful way. In Jesus' name, Amen.

It really is a blessing to be able to be a part of this work. As a church, we see the special revelation of God go to the uttermost parts. What you do here, serving as a part of this church and giving to this church, makes you a part of that work. It doesn't happen without our involvement in helping it. So, praise the Lord for all that He is doing through this church here in Southern California. Amen.

Father, we thank You for Your Word. Your Word is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. It transforms us. God, we have been transformed by the renewing of our minds as we have considered the Scriptures together. By Your Word, we have been warned and instructed in the ways we are to live and walk. We pray, God, that You would help us to live out Your Word this week.

We praise You for the presence of Your Spirit in our lives, enabling us to do just that. Use this church, Lord, to a greater extent. We praise You, Jesus. It's in Your name we pray. Amen.