SERMON INTRO:

This morning, I want to begin by just posing a question. When was the last time, or can you even remember the last time that you have lain outside on a dark, clear night and you maybe laid in the grass or in a chair or something like that, and you just stared up into the sky, up into the wondrous canopy of the nighttime sky, full of stars, and just recognized that they were arranged and placed by the God of the universe. If you've ever been up to northern Wisconsin or some other rural area in the country or the world, you know what I'm talking about here. These aren't city stars at all.

These aren't clouded by the lights in the neighborhoods, buildings, or streets, but these are big, full, bright, vibrant stars. That's what I'm speaking of here. When you do this, you take this in a different way, right? There's almost an emotional response of your soul to this mighty and intricate display of God. It's spanning, I don't know if you know this, but approximately 4,000 light years from east to west. That's what your naked eye can pick up when you look up into the nighttime sky.

For me, it was about two, almost two and a half years ago. On my first retreat with FUEL, the leaders went tubing down this really awesome tubing hill and we went flying out onto the ice, all the way across the lake. We're all linked together and as we came to a stop, we were just lying there, looking at the sky and Terry said, how amazing is our God? How amazing is our God?

And so I bring this up because as amazing as the canopy of the night stars are in the sky and as amazing as the wisdom of King Solomon was (we're going to be reading about that today,) what I want you to know is that something greater than Solomon is here but we must look through the canopy of the night sky and we must look past the wisdom of King Solomon to see the God who is behind it all. Because behind it all is the surpassing glory of the Lord God.

His glory has been made visible through the Lord Jesus Christ. And if we don't get this right, if we miss this, if we get stuck in the canopy, we're going to find ourselves in trouble. We will find ourselves worshiping the wrong thing. We will be worshiping the stars. We will be worshiping government authorities just like King Solomon was in his day. Instead, we would be seeking our fulfillment in the wrong places, in what we only can find in God. So, we must know and we must know to look behind and through the things that God has created and ordained for us.

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