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God Speaks
November 25, 2007 Rev. William “Buck” Day
Today we are going to look at Psalm 19:1-14 and I want to invite you, if you have a red pew bible in front of you, to pull that out and invite you to have that open because we are going to be referring to it quite a bit today. So for our scripture I want to start with just the last verse of our scripture. It is Psalm 19, verse 14. God’s words for us this day.
May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
Would you pray with me, please?
Lord that is our prayer this day that we would be able to hear what you have for us and Lord we ask that your Spirit would quicken our hearts to hear what you are saying and that we might be moved to walk closer with you as a result of it. In your name, Jesus. Amen.
Well the T.V. show Lost is one of the most popular T.V. shows that’s on the air right now. It is a story of a group of people that gets stranded on a desert island in the middle of the Ocean. Does that sound familiar, that story line? You know it, come on, you know it. “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful ship, that left from a tiny port aboard a tiny ship.” I messed that up completely didn’t I? Who knows it better than I. It was a three hour tour, wasn’t it? What’s the name of that show? Gilligan’s Island, of course. It was Gilligan’s Island. This notion, somehow, of being lost at sea must be a good concept for Hollywood. We’ve seen that in other pictures as well, so it is something that goes pretty well; but it also once again proves the verse from Ecclesiastes that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Well let me ask you this. Have you guys ever lost anything? Only that many?..... When you’ve lost something whether it is your keys or important papers or a code, whatever it might be, cell phone, we typically, well guys anyway, turn to their wives anyway and go, “Honey, where did you put my…? Right? Guys you’re getting the elbows right now, right? Or if you are kind of in a hurry or maybe you are just not having a good day, you go, “Hey, what did you do with the…(and then whatever it might be).” We lose things. Any of you here directionally challenged is the correct way to put it? If you are directionally challenged I have good news for you. The city of New York is coming to your rescue. If you are traveling on the subways, the city of New York is beginning to embed compasses in the concrete as you come up out of the subway, with north, south, east and west so you know where you are going, and also the name of the closest cross streets just so you don’t get lost.
My wife Les and I have this thing that we do whenever we are going home or going somewhere and maybe have a little extra time. I will frequently say to her, “Hey, do you want to get lost?” Meaning, let’s find a new way to get to wherever we are going. Sometimes getting lost can be fun, can’t it? But there are also other times when being lost is of severe consequences. There can be problems that can come out when you are lost. When we are lost, we are not where we want to be, are we? That is also true in a spiritual realm as well. Spiritually the condition of being lost is not the same as the outcome of being lost spiritually. Let me say that again because I think that is an important piece to hold on to. The condition of being lost is not the same as the outcome of being lost. Dallas Willard, one of the great Christian thinkers of our day, puts it this way about being spiritually lost. He says “We are not lost because we are going to wind up in the wrong place. We are going to wind up in the wrong place because we are lost.” In a spiritual sense, that wrong place is hell, that’s what it is called. In Jesus’ day whenever he was going to talk about hell, he used the word gehenna. Gehenna was an actual place in Jesus’ day. It was a valley outside of Jerusalem. It was actually called the Valley of Hinnom. Gehenna was basically the city dump for Jerusalem. All the garbage got hauled out to the valley, to gehenna. All the dead animals that came across the city got hauled out to gehenna. Executed criminals didn’t get burials; they got hauled out to gehenna. As a result, in order to keep the disease down and the stench, there were fires burning in the valley all the time. As the fires were burning, you can imagine the smell and smoke and it wasn’t that far from the city of Jerusalem. Talk about a metaphor. Jesus is giving us a metaphor for what might be called a cosmic garbage dump. That is the outcome of being lost.
The condition of being lost, on the other side of that, is the result of not listening or not following when God speaks into our lives and that is what we want to look at today, Psalm 19. Psalm 19 is the example of a person, David in this case, who listened to God when He spoke and then responded to it. What I want to do today, I want to take a little bit of a different track with this message. I want to look at it in a little bit more exegetical fashion. How many of you have no idea what exegetical means? Exegetical basically means a way to interpret scripture in a more systematic and more intentional approach and that is what we are going to do and that is why I asked you to have your bibles open. We are going to be going back and forth and working through this text together. What we are going to do is we are going to look at how God speaks in this text and what David’s response is to that. So have your bibles open and we are going to dig in. As we dig in we are going to start by looking at the whole Psalm and begin to break it down into sections. All the Psalms that are in the book of Psalms were songs that were sung in worship for the nation of Israel. They were sung in worship, just like we sing songs. We don’t have a good record of the music that was set to them. Some people have tried to add music to some of the Psalms; in fact, some contemporary people have actually taken some of the Psalms and set them to music for our day as well. But basically what we are looking at when we look at a Psalm is we are looking at lyrics to a song. That is a way to think about it. So as we are looking at this song or this Psalm, it breaks down in three sections; and I put them up here for you, verses 1 through 6, 7 through 10 and 11 through 14. Each of those I think talks about a way that God speaks, and you can see there. The first 6 verses talks about how God speaks through creation, the next one is how God speaks through His word and then finally how God speaks through His work in our lives. Experts point to the Psalms and they say this particular Psalm is considered a wisdom psalm; that is kind of a category that they have made up. They have categorized the different types of Psalms. Within this wisdom psalm category there are sub-categories. One of those sub-categories is a creation psalm which we can see here. Also another sub-category is a Torah or a law psalm. So what we have here is a wisdom psalm which is a conglomeration of both a creation and a Torah psalm. That kind of gives us an idea of what is going on, so what we are going to do is walk through each of these three sections.
Psalm 19:1-6 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.
The first one, and this is the text of the first 6 verses, you don’t necessarily have to read it, but I wanted you to see it. I have highlighted a couple pieces that I am going to point out. If you want, as I am talking, compare it to your own bible or to the pew bible because this is a different version. That kind of helps you get a flavor for what is going on here. This is the first 6 verses and with it David is talking about how God speaks through creation. Here he is kind of taking a big overview, a cosmic view, of creation here. He is saying when we are looking at the sky they reveal God’s glory don’t they? Then he continues on and says – look at the paradox here – how creation speaks of God but there are no words that are used here. Then he moves on and says this notion that the created order is just engaged and it is just laid out very precisely. He gives a picture of the sun rising and the strength that comes with the rising sun; and how the sun, its heat, just penetrates everywhere. He is saying in all of this, this is the creation by God. All of us who have spent any time outside know that when we look at a sunrise or a sunset, we know that’s true, don’t we? It speaks. It speaks but it doesn’t say anything. There aren’t smoke signals from the sun or the clouds saying, “Hey, this is me, God.” But it still speaks to us doesn’t it? This work is the work of our Maker and how wonderful is it to know that our Creator, our Maker, is behind all that we see, whether we are out in the woods or whether we are just watching a sunset from a high point even here in the Cities.
Yet with it all, Creation has no words, but it speaks, doesn’t it? Some people look at creation and they try to make it say more that it actually does, don’t they? Think about those who study astrology. They look at the skies and they try to make it say much more than what it is saying. There are others who look at creation and say, “You know what? It doesn’t say anything.” It doesn’t say anything because it is simply just the result of a mechanism that is at work in our world. That it is just something that has just come together by chance. Yet, even that notion among the scientific community particularly, is coming under more scrutiny and it is changing. A lot more scientists are thinking differently about creation. They are pointing to things that they call the anthropic principle, which is way over my head, but what I understand it to say is that there is just too many coincidences that line up for humans to exist. If one of those things didn’t line up, if just the oxygen molecules or one of those things didn’t line up, we wouldn’t even be here. But those things all did line up and they were all here to sustain life. So they begin to say that there is someone or something that has brought this into existence.
Sometimes you think of the words intelligent design, that’s another way they talk about it and even point to the big bang as part of this big picture piece. There are a lot of scientists that are thinking about this and making comments about it. One in particular, an astronomer and a mathematician by the name of Sir Fred Hoyle, says this. “The probability of life arising by chance is the same probability of throwing a 6 on a dice 5 million times consecutively.” That’s what they are looking at folks. I love what he goes on to say. “You know, man tends to struggle with the concept of a creator simply speaking the universe into existence.” He says, “That’s because we aren’t God.” He says “You know that’s evidence that we aren’t God, because by our words, the kids don’t even take out the trash.” So here is the God of Creation and He speaks through it, sometimes it is called general revelation. It points to God but it doesn’t necessarily reveal too much of who He is, just what He’s done.
Psalm 19:7-10 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statues of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.
That moves us into our next section, verses 7 through 10. If God speaks through creation then He begins to take another step towards revealing Himself in this next passage of scripture of revealing who His is in His word. It is here that God reveals His will for us. This is called special revelation. God reveals in His word all that He wants us to know about Him. He doesn’t want us to wonder about who this God is. He lays it out in the law. For David, in the Old Testament, it was basically the Torah, the law. For us it is all of chronicle scripture, all of what we call the bible, all the books of the bible. It is here that David begins to take this and kind of lays out the law. He comes up with five other parallel nouns to help define it a different way, then he gives an adjective that helps describe it here and then a result that comes out of that.
Noun Adjective Result Law perfect revives soul Statute pure makes wise the simple Precepts right brings joy to heart Commands clear enlightens the eyes Fear pure lasts forever Ordinance true fair
As we look at these things we typically don’t think about the law reviving the soul, do we? I think that’s because lots of times we are thinking of it from a post-Jesus perspective; but if we can get back to how David looked at it, and I think how Jesus looked at it, because Jesus said “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.” As we begin to embrace this, it gives us a chance to know who this God is and it gives us a chance to know about Him, so it become a source of delight. Look at this last paragraph. That’s what David is beginning to discover, and what I think this Psalm is calling us to discover; that as we begin to understand and embrace what is in the Old Testament, it can not only revive the soul but it becomes “more desirable than gold…. and sweeter than honey”.
As you view these ideas, particularly if you look at them from another bible, you see different words that come up here. As I was doing some studying I came up with other versions for these different words here. Instead of statutes under the nouns, others say testimonies or decrees. Precepts are also statutes. For the statutes is pure, some others say they are simple or they are trustworthy. Under commands where it says they are clear, another one says they are radiant. This notion of enlightening the eyes, or some others say give insight into life. Jesus says that “the eye is the window into the soul.” When we take in the words, it clears our eyes so we can begin to see more clearly. The word pure also gets translated as purify or shine. And the last one I like because instead of true some translates as righteous and instead of fair it is righteous altogether, meaning all the law together is altogher. It is righteous. It is right. It is holy. It is all those things. As we take a look at these things it is an opportunity for us to meditate on these, to take them in, to think about them, to pray over them. I like the word that Eugene Peterson uses for meditate. He says “to chew on”. Isn’t that a great word? I want to chew on this. Meditate on these, I invite you to do, that because I think if we take time and embrace this we will get a fuller and deeper picture of who God is. John Stott, one of the major theologians of our times says “that we must allow the word of God to confront us. We must undermine our complacency; overthrow our patterns of thought or behavior.” Then if you notice in our text again here, when we were talking about creation we were talking about God, weren’t we? You look here now, the word God is not used anymore. It is the word LORD, all in capital letters; whenever you see that, that is God’s personal name. That is the name Yahweh. It speaks to how God is further revealing Himself, He is further saying “This is who I am. I am personal. I am knowable. I am Yahweh.”
Psalm 19:11-14 By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
The previous section we looked at then serves as a transition into our last section. For God speaks into our lives through creation and through the law and then He invites a response. In our last section, in this first sentence in verse 11, we can begin to see that clearly David understands what’s at stake here. He knows what’s going on and he says that this creation and the law are a warning to us. It is a warning to avoid being lost, and the outcome of which is not considering who we are in light of God’s voice. If we don’t consider that, we will become lost. Or the other side of that coin is, if we do consider who we are in light of God’s voice, there will be a rich reward. So David here has taken a look at creation, has taken a look at the law and then he begins to consider the perfection of God. He sees himself against that perfection, against God’s voice and he understands who he is. He understands what Jeremiah will say later in his book when he says, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” And I would say David does. David knows, because he knows his heart. He knows that he is wholly imperfect, wholly imperfect against God’s perfection. So what does he do? He asks for forgiveness. He asks for forgiveness, on two fronts – on hidden sins and deliberate sins. Hidden sins are those things that come out of our human nature, out of our fallen nature still, those things that happen when we don’t want them to happen. They can be a word, a thought, or an action. What’s your first thought when you get cut off in traffic? Or perhaps that temptation when you see a co-worker get away with some unethical action at work? You begin to think, “Man, everybody’s doing it. It’s not going to hurt the company.” Those are hidden sins. Those are the things that I think Paul talks about in Romans 9 where he says “I do the very thing I hate. I don’t want to do it but I do it anyway. I don’t want to.” Then deliberate sins I think have the potential to be much more dangerous, much more dangerous because they involve the will. When we chose to do something that we know is wrong, it will not only hurt ourselves, it not only begs what C.F. Lewis called “cheap grace”, but it is also a form of self-idolatry, worship of self. For when we do something that we know is wrong what we are really saying is “God I got this one. I know better than you what’s going on here and I can handle it. Let me take this one.” Even if it is clearly laid out in scripture as something we shouldn’t do, when we choose to deliberately sin we take that first step towards becoming lost. After we have taken that first step, you know what? The next step gets a little easier; the next step gets a little easier; the next step gets progressively easier, until we get out to here and we go “Where am I?” And we are lost. If you have ever been walking in the woods and have gotten lost, how does that happen? It happens one step at a time, doesn’t it? Take one step and think I know where I am going. Take another step and think I can still see the cabin. Get out there and all of a sudden, boom. That’s what happens with deliberate sins. Before we know it we will end up in the condition of being lost. That I think is why think deliberate sins are so insidious, so dangerous, because it is so easy to take that first step away. It is just a little step, it won’t hurt anybody. But if it is not dealt with it will lead to the outcome of being lost. That is why David and we should be continually before God, asking for forgiveness. Our prayer needs to be the same as David’s here. Don’t let it control me. Don’t let it control me. You see, David sees who God is, the way he speaks into his life and who David is in relation to God. So he falls on bended knees, saying, “Lord you are the one that is in control. You are the one who knows what is best.” That attitude that permeates his soul allows him to say that last verse that we read at the beginning of this message. Those words, verse 14, come out of a humble heart, a heart that knows apart from God it is hopeless. When we are more focused on God than ourselves, that is the first step toward biblical humility. Our worth, our dignity, are not found in ourselves. They are found only in God. When they are found in God they have infinite worth, infinite dignity. True humility will not allow self-idolatry, pride, to take root. True humility brings as a result, gratitude, gratitude. You are thankful for all that God has done and isn’t that what this holiday weekend is all about, being grateful for all that God has done.
When is all is said and done, this Psalm is a song, it is perhaps even a prayer of gratitude for all that God has done. I invite you to take a moment to reflect on all that God has done for you and your family as we close with this video.
Thanksgiving the act of giving thanks a prayer of expressing gratitude a celebration of divine goodness
Thank the Lord for the creation of a new country. George Washington, 1789
Thank the Lord for His protection. James Madison, 1814
Render thanks to our Heavenly Father for these inestimable blessings. Abraham Lincoln, 1862
We owe humble and heartfelt thanks to the Author of all blessings. Theodore Roosevelt, 1904
Render thanks to Almighty God for the blessings of peace. Woodrow Wilson, 1916
We should accept these blessings with resolution to devote them to service of Almighty God. Herbert Hoover, 1929
Set apart a day of Thanksgiving to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938
May we add to our prayers of Thanksgiving a plea for Divine guidance. Harry S. Truman, 1949
Let us pray this year not only in the spirit of Thanksgiving but also as suppliants for God’s guidance. Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956
It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord. John F. Kennedy, 1961
We should ask what we can do as individuals to demonstrate our gratitude to God for all He has done. Ronald Reagan, 1981
we’ve been blessed beyond measure reflect on His blessings express your gratitude Happy Thanksgiving.
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