Psalm 19

If you were to take 3 minutes and write down words that you associate with Scripture, what would pop onto your page? We all have thoughts and feelings when it comes to Scripture, probably both positive and negative based on past experiences with it.  Even the way people talk about it or use it in our lives can shape our view of God's word. David offers us a beautiful way of understanding the value and power of Scripture in our lives.  It can truly be as life giving as the warmth of the sun after a cold night. 

Transcript

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If you were to take about three minutes and just write down the words, the thoughts, and the feelings that you associate with scripture, what would pop onto your page? I took a minute here before I started recording this, and I wrote down my own list, uh, just here on a just a little notebook. And uh this is what happened for me. I wrote down things like instruction, inspiration, guidance, revelation, hope, information, understanding, faith, study, connection, divine, and God breathed. Your list might look completely different than mine does, and by the way, that's perfectly okay if that's what happened for you. And the point of this little exercise is to just recognize that we all have different thoughts and feelings when it comes to scripture, and most of us have both positive and negative responses and reactions to it, maybe from things in our childhood, maybe from just our own attempts to understand or whatever it might be. One of the main reasons that I began this podcast and am continuing to do it is I'm hoping to provide a meaningful positive way of relating to the scriptures. And that's actually something that I think David did for us and for himself in Psalm 19 in his own beautiful poetic way. So go ahead and open up your copy of the scriptures to Psalm 19 and we'll walk through that together. But let's pray first. Jesus, thank you for this good day that you have given us. God, thank you for your word and for the way that it impacts us and changes us. God, we want to learn more about who you are. That's part of why we're here. So God, would you speak to us through your word and through your spirit? Amen. All right, Psalm nineteen and we're gonna go all the way through it together. For the director of music, a psalm of David. 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 reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words, no sound is heard from them, yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, 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 deprived of its warmth. The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul, the statutes 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 decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold, they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. By them your servant is warned, in keeping them there is great reward. But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my fault my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins, may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression. May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord my rock and my redeemer. Let's just take a moment to pause and pray and listen to what the Lord has for us. You can pause this podcast if you'd like. All right, let's uh observe the text together and hopefully get a good understanding of what's taking place. Uh after the opening part, uh, the whole bit about connecting with scripture, you might have wondered where this was going in those first six verses. And it does feel like there's a very interesting, like kind of a shift that happens between verses six and seven, uh, this look at nature, and then this shift over into the word of God. But I actually think uh that there is a really kind of a cool uh connection that's there for us, and we'll explore a little bit of that together. So let's start with those first six verses that talk about the heavens uh proclaiming the glory of God. I love the way that David makes those connections with what he observes in the world around him. And as he considers what seems to be both the nighttime sky and the daytime, uh, he really connects all of that with with God and his understanding of who the Lord is and and what's taking place. So again, the heavens proclaim the glory of God, and the night skies declare it with without sound. I thought that was really uh just kind of a like it's an obvious thing, you know, like but but it's true. Uh they testify. Uh verses one and two, 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 reveal knowledge. And then verse three, like they but they have no speech, they use no words, no sound is heard from them, and yet their voice, verse four, goes out into the all the into all the earth. And just this reminder and this recognition of the beauty and the the incredible, like the depth and the breadth of God's intricacy and his creativity, the things that he uses in our world, including the creation that we're living in, to reveal himself to us. And that's uh for me, it's a it's a really neat um reality that whenever I get to go outside, I'm reminded that I'm walking in God's creation, that he's brought this beauty all around us and around me. Uh, and then the second part of that where uh David talks about the sun emerging uh and warming the earth along its circuit, and the and the circuit, of course, is is global. He makes that again, that poetic sort of a connection in verse five. Uh it's like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course, and just you know, seeing the sun for all of its glory. But notice that David doesn't worship the sun. He's just connecting that with who God is and part of God's glory. So he's seeing the glory of God in creation and celebrating what's there, and yet his worship moves towards the Lord Himself and not to anything that has been created. But that is a cool picture, isn't it? Like the sun kind of emerging from uh the tent that's been pitched, so to speak, or from the nighttime sky and making this journey right across that we get to appreciate. By the way, uh we're here in the Pacific Northwest, which means right now that that trajectory of the sun uh takes a lot longer than it does in the middle of winter. And I know a lot of you are in a similar situation, but for those of you who aren't, for those of you who live in other parts of the world, like we get uh sunlight here well before 6 a.m. now, and it goes until like nine-ish or so. I mean, it's it's actually pretty, pretty fun. It's a pretty cool thing. All right. Verses seven through nine. Uh the law of the Lord is perfect. And this is that shift, right? Like we go from verse six, we're talking about the sun, the sun making its circuit, and then he just jumps right in. Verse seven, the law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. And and it does feel like, okay, um, yeah, that was a great start to this thing. Maybe we just kind of treat those first six verses on their own and then move on from there. But I I believe that David is making a connection. He's uh he's bringing it into us and letting us kind of make it in our own minds a little bit. Uh so David is, I think, wanting us to have the idea of the sun warming us, the night skies declaring God's goodness as we then think about the scriptures. And verse 8 in particular highlights this. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. Uh, NASB and a couple other translations have like enlightened there instead of giving light, but it is that sense of like this radiant, beautiful, joyful light that is there for us. And that connection, even though he doesn't say, you know, exactly, you know, the scriptures are like the sun, he doesn't actually say that, but he talks about the sun, he talks about the declaration of the heavens, and then in the next moment talks about this beauty and this declaration that comes to us from the law of the Lord, from the scriptures themselves, and they give light to the eyes. You know, both the law and the heavens show us the brilliance and the goodness of God. And so that's it's actually I I like that. So I hope that that encourages you as well. And then we move into this last portion, uh, verses 10 through 14. And for me, this is a recognition that while the heavens do reveal God's glory, the scriptures are more than that. They're a revelation of God's glory, but they're also the pathway to connection and the pathway to relationship with God. And David talks about these different things, and I wanted to highlight verses 11, 12, and 13 for us. So 11 helps us to recognize that in the scriptures we're we're warned, and keeping them brings about a goodness for us, a richness for us. I think that's what the great reward is. We have a connection with God, a relationship with God. We're we're doing the things, we're living our lives in a way that is pleasing to the Lord, and that brings about goodness in our lives. But the scriptures also show us, you know, what to stay away from. And I believe that the law, whether we're talking specifically about the Ten Commandments or the law of Moses, uh, kind of throughout Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, if we're talking about all of that, they all of those words are intended to bring us into a life that is better, and into a life that is better than what we would do if we were just kind of reckless in doing whatever we wanted. There they are words of care and concern for us. So they warn us about uh wandering and about that rich good life that we can have when we keep God's commands, and then they show us our sin, even hidden parts, things that um that we then can confess and experience forgiveness. So if we read verse 12 there, who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults. I can relate to that. I don't always know the stuff or think about the stuff that I've done that's wrong, unless it's pointed out to me at times. And we're all in that space, aren't we? So God forgive my my my hidden sin. The stuff that I was just kind of bumbling about and and I ran into error and I I didn't even like think about it. Or God, would you forgive me of that stuff too? And then finally, uh, the sin that we know about, right? We ask for strength to to not stay in our sin. Verse 13, keep your servant also from willful sins. May they not rule over me, then I'll be blameless, innocent of great transgression. And again, we we all know what they are, right? And then sometimes we do them anyway. I was thinking about uh the way the Lord Jesus taught his disciples to pray, right? And one of those lines in there is like, you know, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Because we go there sometimes, right? We we see the thing, we hear about the thing, we know that it's wrong. Like we know, we know from from the very beginning, and yet we're like, but I still want to do that thing. Why? What's going on there? And so there's this request that comes in in the context of of appreciating and loving the scriptures of God that just says, No, keep me from that. Keep me away from those things that will rule over me because I don't want to stay in that space. I have two questions for you in reflection. The first one is where, literally, where? Where do you find it easiest to talk to God? It might be in your living room, it might be outside in your backyard, it might be somewhere else in the course of your day, but I'll bet that there is somewhere that you've noticed, you know what, when I'm in this particular spot, it's just it's just easier, it's more natural for me to connect and talk with God. Just inviting you to explore that a little bit. Um, David certainly did that. He looked up into the heavens and he connected with God. So where do you find it easy to talk to God? And then secondly, what is it that gets in the way of you spending time with God? What is it that gets in the way of you spending time in the scriptures themselves? I'll bet you there are probably some uh identifiers that you can you can put in there and go like, oh, you know what? Yeah. I don't like reading the scriptures sometimes because maybe you get bored. Maybe um you just feel like you're doing it out of obligation or to maintain some kind of a, you know, like a streak that you're on or something of that nature. My hope for you and for myself is that we'll keep coming back to the Lord, coming back to the scriptures, not just out of obligation, but out of a recognition that they are life and light, that in the scriptures we can find ourselves connecting to and relating uh with God and having that good, um, that good relationship, that good friendship with Him. Let me pray for us. God in heaven, thank you for this uh good time that we've had together in your word. God, would you renew for each of us, Lord, uh a love uh for your scriptures, but more than that a love for you. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.