Reflections on the Psalms: Revelation and Response [Psalm 19]

The word of God is central in our worship of God. I’ve heard of churches where the pastor doesn’t even take a bible with him to the pulpit and he just gives a 20 minute speech with no mention of the word of God. This is not acceptable! A foundational truth of Christianity is worship involves a rhythm of revelation and response. We are going to see that unfold in Psalm 19, these two facets of worship…revelation and response.

Psalm 19 is an incredible psalm. C. S. Lewis said it was his favorite of all the Psalms—said the lyrical poetry here is incomparable anywhere else in the world. It is just an incredible picture here is Psalm 19. It is really a microcosm, a condensed version, of Psalm 119 which is the longest chapter in the bible that emphasizes the word over and over and over again.

Stand for the reading of the word of God… Psalm 19.

Revelation

Revelation and response—there is an interplay between these two things throughout the psalm. Think with me first about revelation. In this psalm it is talking about how God reveals Himself in two primary ways, through two primary avenues.

God reveals Himself clearly in the world

First of all, God reveals Himself clearly in the world. That is verses 1 through 6. We get a picture of nature and how from the very beginning “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Ps. 19:1). The picture is of nature shouting of the greatness of God, continually shouting of the greatness of God. There is no place on this planet where nature is not shouting of the greatness of God.

It is the same thing we see in Romans 1:18–20 talks about since the creation of the world, “God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). The purpose of creation is to shout the glory of God. That is why in Luke 19 says if we don’t shout about the glory of God who will do it for us. The rocks will cry out for us. That is the whole purpose of creation, to shout of the glory of God.

It is divided in these first 6 verses into the skies proclaiming His greatness and then the sun. There is a focus on the sun, an incredible picture of the sun rising on one side of the earth like a bridegroom coming from his pavilion, a bridegroom excited about his wedding, rises and it make its circuit to the other side like a champion running its course. There is no place on the face of this planet that is apart from its heat, that doesn’t feel the heat of the sun in some way. This is the picture of how God has not left His identity up in the air in all the world. He has shown who He is.

The only problem is the way God reveals Himself in the world is limited. Yes, God shows His power and His greatness through creation but the way this whole psalm is structured when you get to verse 7 it is hitting a crescendo. The psalmist, David, almost doubles in his joy and then he begins to talk about the law of the Lord and the precepts and the commands of the Lord.

God reveals Himself comprehensively in the Word

What we see is that God has revealed Himself clearly in the world but second, God has revealed Himself comprehensively, in other words in an even greater way, in the Word. What we see from verses 7 through 11 is a focus on God’s revelation in His Word and the greatness of the Word. What you see is different titles for the Word that are almost interchangeable: law, statutes, precepts, commands, fear, ordinances.

These different words that we see in the Old Testament to describe the Word. Then after each of those titles we see descriptions: the law is perfect, the statutes are trustworthy. We see all these different descriptions and then we see the effects of the Word, which we are going to get to in a second.

But I want us to think about each of those phrases. There are 6 successive phrases starting verse 7 that talk about what the law of the Lord is. I want you to see 6 attributes of the word of God. There are attributes to the Word that we need to see because they go right in the face of much of our contemporary worship philosophy; contemporary worship trends.

First of all it says, “The law of the Lord is perfect” (Ps. 19:7). What that is saying is that the Word is sufficient—this idea of the law of the Lord, the Torah, the instruction of the Lord being perfect. It is not just saying that it is without error, without flaw, that we know. What it is talking about though is that it is complete. It is comprehensive. It is all that God desires for it to be. God is not up in heaven thinking I wish I would have added a 67th book to the Bible that would help people out in the 21st century. This is complete. This book is sufficient. It is all we need.

This has been the cry of saints throughout history. Puritans at a time in England when it was illegal to have a copy of God’s word and the authorities were threatening to take copies of God’s Word away. The Puritan believers would rise up and say take our houses, take our lands, take our churches, take our children but don’t take our Bibles. It is all we need; that the priority in our lives, that the priority in our worship, the Bible, the Word of the living God is all that we need.

I am concerned in our worship we have seen it necessary, maybe to use the Bible in our worship but the Bible plus other things. We need the Bible plus some good practical tips from the preacher about how to deal with this or that. We need the Bible plus pop psychology. We need the Bible plus the world. The Bible claims in and of itself to be sufficient. It is all we need. It is complete. It is perfect. The Word is sufficient.

Second, the Word is relevant. The next phrase, “The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy” (Ps. 19:7). This is David saying the statutes, the words of the Lord, are a rock upon which everything in my life is based. Now it is at this point that we have had a tendency to think in our day, “You know … the Bible is so far removed from the 21st century—does it really apply to us?” There is a tendency to think, “You know you preachers, you think everything is so simplistic, it goes back to the Word; you don’t understand real life and the real struggles I am going through.”

Well, I won’t pretend to understand all the struggles that are represented across this room, but I will say this the Bible is a rock. It is a timeless rock. The Word is relevant. I don’t have to make the Bible relevant. I don’t have to spice up the Word as some would say that I need to do. The Word is relevant. I simply show its relevance. It is a rock.

David who is writing this, think of all that he had been through his struggles with sin, his struggles with marriage, his struggles with children, he had a child who died, he had children who disobeyed him, rebelled against him. All the struggles and he says in the middle of it, “The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy. They are the rock upon which my life is based.” The Word is sufficient. The Word is relevant.

Third, the Word is good. “The precepts of the Lord are right” (Ps. 19:8)—in other words, good. This is where I would plead with you to put down the magazines and to put down the novels and turn off the TV and to get off the internet and get into the Word of God because all of these things no matter how much they help us in practical things are simply the words of man. This is the Word of God.

The God of the universe who created all things, who knows you and me better than we know ourselves, who knows our family, who knows where all of eternity is headed toward, knows where all the future is headed toward, knows all that is going on in our culture; that God has chosen to speak to us. We are fools if we don’t sit at His feet and listen to what He has to say. The Word is good because it is God’s Word. He has spoken to us and we need to listen. The Word is sufficient. The Word is relevant. The Word is good.

Next, the Word is clear. “The commands of the Lord”—the authoritative decrees that He gives—“are radiant” (Ps. 19:8). They bring a light. They are clear. What a corrective this is when one of the most common questions we ask in the church today is, “What is God’s will for my life?” “Preacher, how do I know God’s will for my life?” I’m not pretending this book will tell you exactly what career decision to make. It won’t tell you exactly when to make this move or that move. It won’t tell you exactly what to do in every single specific family situation, however, I am convinced that 95% of God’s will for our lives is right here in this book. He has shown us His will and I’m convinced that if we are faithful to give ourselves to the 95% He has shown to us maybe just maybe He will be faithful to show us the 5% that we don’t know.

God has not left us. This is good news. He has not left us to wander around in the fog of human opinion trying to find out who He is and how to lead our lives. He has shown us. He has given us His Word and it is clear. He has shown us His character over and over and over again. God’s character whether it is His justice or His patience or His wrath or His love, His omniscience. He is clear. He has shown us who He is in His Word. The Word is sufficient, relevant, good, clear.

The Word is holy. This is one of my favorite parts of this chapter, verse 9, the fear of the Lord. We have seen the law, the statutes, the precepts, the commands and now the fear of the Lord. That is the title that is given to this book. “The fear of the Lord is pure” (Ps. 19:9). The Bible is described as the fear, the awe, of the Lord.

One of the things that I have heard in some contemporary discussions of worship is that if we put too much emphasis on the Word then we will begin to worship the Word. The question I want to ask based on Scripture is, “Is that a problem?” Psalm 56:4 says, “In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust.” It says I will praise the Word of God. Psalm 56:10, “In God, whose word I praise.” It repeats the same phrase. You get over to Psalm 119, which is the development of Psalm 19 expanded. It says, “I love your law.” It says, “My flesh trembles in fear of you; I stand in awe of your laws” (Ps. 119:120). I stand in awe of your laws. You get to Psalm 138:2. That verse says that God has exalted above all things His name and His Word. He puts His Word on the same plane that He puts His name in Psalm 138:2. Why? Because the Word is the revelation of who God is.

It is why Jesus when He came to the world and was introduced in the Book of John, it said in the beginning was the what? The Word. Jesus is the Word. He is the revelation of God. This is the picture of the Word being holy and inciting fear in us; reverence and respect and awe for who He is. I don’t think we’re in danger of putting too much emphasis on the Word in our worship today. If we’re going to err on any side let’s err on the side of taking God at His Word and putting it at the center of our worship and our lives.

It is sufficient, relevant, good, clear, holy and finally the Word is true. “The ordinances of the Lord”—this is a reference to His verdicts and decrees—“are sure and altogether righteous” (Ps. 19:9). They are true. This is one of the reasons why the Word must be central in our worship because we live in a culture that is increasingly skeptical of truth and throwing out the idea that there is no absolute truth. There is no rock upon which we can stand on. Nothing we can know for sure. It is only true for you. What is true for you may not be true for me. Truth is all relative. That is not what the Word claims. The Word claims to be sure and altogether righteous, altogether true.

All of these are characteristics of the Word of God: sufficient, relevant, good, clear, holy and true. Now that is the title of the descriptions, attributes, of the Word of God. What I want you to see is what happens after every single one of those descriptions what we see are a result or an effect of the fruit of the Word. We have seen revelation. Now let’s think about response.

Response

The effects of God’s revelation…

What happens in response to God’s Word? Well in verse 7, it said the law of the Lord is perfect. We saw there that the Word is sufficient, but look at the response—“reviving the soul.” Think about this effect of God’s revelation.

The Word transforms us—reviving the soul, restoring the soul, refreshing the soul, transforming the soul. The picture of soul throughout the Old Testament—when this word is mentioned in the Hebrew it is a picture of the whole person. This verse is showing that the law of the Lord is comprehensive. It is complete. It is sufficient and it is sufficient to restore us, revive us, transform our souls. We cannot grow into the image of Christ apart from God’s Word.

That is why; don’t miss it that is why we are destined, to live defeated Christian lives if we try to live it apart from God’s Word. Because this is the avenue through which God transforms us. If we try to live the Christian life apart from God’s Word then we will end up trying to meet all the rules and regulations and do the right things but it will be empty because God is not transforming our soul through His Word. The only way we can have victory over sin is for God to transform our souls through His Word. That is what He does. That is one effect.

Second, the Word makes us wise. That next phrase in verse 7—“the statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple” (Ps. 19:7). Wisdom all throughout Scripture is based on the application of God’s Word and God’s will to daily living. This book is enough to make us wise. I remind you again that it is not this book plus the wisdom of the world that will make us wise. It is not this book plus Dr. Phil that is going to help us out. It is not this book plus this Christian book from the Christian bookstore that is going to help us out. The Word is enough to make us wise for godly living. We have got to believe this. We have got to see the claims that the Word is making. It is able to make wise the simple, the simplest of us. It makes us wise if we trust in it. The Word makes us wise.

Third, the Word satisfies us. “The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart” (Ps. 19:8). It fills our heart with joy. That is what the Word claims to do. You get down to verse 10 it says, “… more precious than gold, much pure gold.” Think about that with me—more precious than gold, than much pure gold; more precious than money. The psalmist here, it is only like he has inherited millions of dollars but it is just the Word that he has in his hands. What a picture we need to see in our culture of materialism where everything is aimed at more and more and more money and more and more and more comforts.

Scripture memorization is so important. But you know I talked to many adults who say I can’t memorize scripture like children can…my mind isn’t young anymore. Or maybe you’re a young person who has never put much emphasis on memorizing scripture… I want to challenge you to start memorizing scripture.

I won’t pretend that all of us have the exact same ability, capacity, to memorize. I know that may be different. Let me ask you a question. What if I told you that between now and midnight tonight I would give you $1,000 for every single bible verse you can memorize, how many of you could learn to memorize pretty quick? Could you do that? “Jesus wept,” John 11:35. Just like that—$1,000. It is that easy.

God help us not to be at a point in our Christianity where money would motivate us more than the value of God’s Word would motivate us. The question is not can we memorize. The question is, is it valuable enough to fill our minds with. That is the question we need to come face to face with whenever we start to think that I cannot memorize. It is more precious than gold.

Then it says, “Sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb” (Ps. 19:10). What a picture there. That doesn’t seem to translate to our day. Let’s translate it—“more fulfilling than a great big porterhouse steak and loaded baked potato on the side.” This fills our souls in a much deeper way than that ever could.

We are pretty regular when it comes to eating. A few times a day every day this week, most likely, we will be eating. What if God’s Word was the sustenance of our souls like that? “Man does not live on bread alone but on”—what? “Every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). This is the sustenance for our soul and it satisfies us. Just like we crave food even deeper, God help us to crave your word. It satisfies us. The Word transforms us. It makes us wise. It satisfies us.

The Word enlightens us. “The commands of the Lord are radiant”—here is the result, the response—“giving light to the eyes” in a world of darkness and confusion (Ps. 19:8). In a world where there are many times when we find ourselves not knowing what to do, where to go, the Word is our light. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a” (Ps. 119:105)—what? A light to our path. It enlightens us.

Next, the Word awes us. “The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever” (Ps. 19:9). We talked about how the Word is holy, how we stand in awe of God’s laws. In Nehemiah 8 Ezra the scribe comes out in front of the people of God. They had all assembled. He comes out with the Book of the Law, which is the first five books of the Old Testament at that point. He opens up the book. All it says is, “Ezra opened the book” in Nehemiah 8 and here is what the people did.

As soon as he opened the book they all stood up. Everybody stood up just when the book was open they stood up. They started raising their hands. They started shouting out, amen, amen. Then they bowed down with their faces to the ground all because he opened the book. That is all he did. They stood up, raised their hands, shout out and then bowed down with their faces to the ground.

The question we need to think about a couple of thousand years later is, “In our worship when do we normally respond like that?” When do we stand; maybe raise our hands and shout out maybe if we are really extreme bow down with our faces to the ground? If we do respond we do that in response to what? In response to songs, in response to music. Is that a bad thing? No, they did that in Nehemiah 12

However, it does beg the question, “What would happen if we were the kind of people who stood in awe of God’s word like that?” What if it didn’t take the strum of a certain chord or a certain song to come on to cause us to rise up and to lift up our hands? What if all it took was the reading of God’s Word, the opening of God’s Word to incite such reverence and awe in us that we rise to our feet, we lift up our hands, we shout out amen, amen, and we may even bow down with our faces to the ground? “God make us a people who are awed by Your Word.” The Word awes us.

Finally, the Word makes us righteous. “The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous” (Ps. 19:9). The picture that unfolds is how the psalmist, David, sees his sin in the law. The law exposes his sin. It exposes his need for a redeemer. What we see is the picture of the law making us righteous through the redemption that God provides. It is a picture of the king to come after David, Christ, who would fulfill the law perfectly. He would redeem us from our sin. He would make us righteous. The Word makes us righteous.

Now we have attributes of God here, revelation. We have responses, effects, of that revelation. Revelation and response. The Word is sufficient, relevant, good, clear, holy and true. It transforms us. It makes us wise. It satisfies us. It enlightens us. It awes us. It makes us righteous.

If those things are true then why would we not want to put the Word at the center of our worship? Why would we come to the contemporary worship trends that we have seen over the last few years in the church to discussions about how we can spice up the Word in our worship; how we can use other means to make our worship more relevant to people?

I am convinced that what we have done in contemporary worship trends is that we have taken this biblical picture of revelation and response and we have completely thrown revelation out the window. What happens is we come in for our worship and we sing songs that our sung many times because of the way they sound and what they incite in us as opposed to the biblical or theological foundation that roots them.

We have created a system where we put words on a screen and we all sing them without even giving second thought to whether or not they are biblical; whether or not they square with the Word of God.

We sing songs and then it is all too common to come to a time where we study God’s Word and maybe if we do bring a Bible up we read a verse or two and then we go into saying our thoughts, our opinions, our stories—the entertainment value of that—and maybe every once in a while come back to the word and at best take the Word and help it support what we desire to say.

Then to end we have response times in our worship but the question we have to ask is, “At that point what are we responding to?” The danger is that we are responding to ourselves because we have minimized the revelation of God and we have nothing left to respond to. Our worship has all of a sudden become self-centered, hollow, and I am convinced offensive to God if His revelation is minimized.

When the Word is absent in our worship all that is going to lead to is a manufactured response. Don’t miss it. With what we sing and what we say in our worship we will teach each other about God, but if His Word is not the center of our singing and His Word is not the center of our praying, if his Word is not the center of our preaching in worship then what we will do is we will sing and pray and talk about God like we think He is.

We will give our thoughts and our opinions about who God is and we will create God to be who we think he is a god who thinks like us, who looks like us, who acts us, a god who is a lot like us. The danger there is, when that happens and when we come together for worship we think we are worshipping God but the reality is we are only worshipping ourselves.

When the Word is absent in worship then the response will only be manufactured and the result will be pleasing to self. Stripping worship of the revelation of God and focusing on our response and thinking that God is most honored in that is a huge mistake.

However, when the Word of God is at the center of our worship, when it is apparent in our worship then the response is not manufactured. The response is authentic. I would even say automatic. Here is the beauty of this whole picture. When God’s revelation, when His Word, is exposed then response flows from that. We don’t have to manufacture anything because He is leading the response. He is directing the response. In His Word we have seen it over and over again in these different attributes, in these different effects. It will transform us. It will satisfy us. It will make us wise. It will awe us. The Word will do the work for us if we let it.

If we trust the Word to do the work for us then the response will be authentic and the result will be pleasing to God. When we get to the end then like the psalmist we will say, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Ps. 19:14). As a result if we want to experience true biblical worship and response to God in worship then we must maximize His revelation. His Word must saturate our worship. This is where our worship will go so much deeper than we ever could have accomplished trying to do it through our own means.

Do you want to know God? Do we want to know the God we worship? Are we willing to be a church that trusts God to do the work through His Word in our worship; to relieve ourselves of the pressure to manufacture something week by week in corporate worship and simply to say we are going to be clear about God’s Word in what we sing. We are going to be clear about God’s Word in what we pray. We are going to be clear about God’s Word in what we preach. We are going to let God show His power through His Word. I am praying that God will use us as a faith family to show what happens when a people trust in His Word and put the Word at the center of our worship. It is supreme.

So the foundational question is this, “Will we, as a faith family, will we ignore the Word in our worship? Will we minimize it, or will we let the Word ignite our worship? Will it be the clarity, the foundation, which provides the framework for everything in our worship and lives?

God help us to see that the Word is good and the Word does the work. God make us a people who trust in that, who believe that. As a result, make us a people who cry for the Word in our worship, who say we don’t want entertainment, we don’t want stories, and we don’t want this or that. We want to know God. We want to see His glory. We want to magnify His greatness. We want to be transformed. We want our souls to be revived. We want to be restored in the image of Christ. We want to be satisfied in a way that nothing in this world could ever satisfy us.

Only His Word could do that. We want to be in awe of it. God make us a people that tremble at His voice and that flows into singing of His greatness.