See. Hear. Speak.

Sometimes, it’s good to start at the very beginning; I’m told “it’s a very good place to start.” But there are other times when it’s helpful to start at the end and work your way back. Start with what’s clear. Start with what you know.

Now Psalm 19 isn’t difficult to understand. It’s pretty straightforward. What’s confusing about this psalm is how it fits together. Several scholars argue that this is actually part of two different songs.

“Verses 1-6 are clearly one psalm,” they say, “and verses 7-14 another.”

I had a hard time with that line of thought; granted the men and women who assert such things are much more educated and much, much smarter than this guy, but I couldn’t shake the thought that these two seemingly different parts had to go together somehow, that this had to be one psalm.

One Bible professor, J. L. Mays, gives a very helpful tip for the study of Psalm 19. He suggests that we start with the end, with the confession of faith in verse 14 where David says:

Psalm 19:14 NIV

14 May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

The words and meditation contained in this psalm, then, seem to compose an act of worship to the Lord Yahweh. This psalm, this song of worship, starts at the top—David, in awesome wonder, looks heavenward and worships the Creator as he views the visible and extraordinary creation around him.

After that, David comes down, so to speak, to proclaim the glories of the Lord’s verbal revelation (no Bible was compiled yet, so David sings to the Lord because of the Lord’s powerful words spoken to His people).

And then, as is fitting, David expresses the urgent need of his own soul in light of the creation and word of God. It’s worship “from the top down”, this psalm. It’s worship; it’s seeing and hearing and speaking.

The great literary master, C.S. Lewis, called Psalm 19 “the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.” It’s easy to see why:

Psalm 19:1–6 NIV

1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. 3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. 4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. 5 It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. 6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.

SEE

I love the psalms for so many reasons, but maybe none more than the fact that they draw my attention to what I tend to ignore.

The heavens keep reciting the glory of God and go on highlighting the works of His hands. And yet we miss it, don’t we?

The old expression goes, “Stop and smell the roses.” That’s pretty good advice, and it’s the same principle. David would have us “stop and see, stop and look up.”

Go outside and look up more often than when there’s a solar eclipse or super moon; look at the heavens and ponder the God who placed all of it there. Attempt, with your finite brain, to comprehend the Creator of all things, the Architect of the cosmos who spoke into existence all you can see and all the many light-years worth of territory you and I will never lay eyes upon.

Ponder. Wonder. Worship. Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above, their dance cards are full, always in their scheduled spot or waltzing across the sky, whatever the Lord tells them to do, wherever He tells them to go.

Ponder. Wonder. Worship. And realize: “all this vast, enduring monument to the creative power and art of God is but child’s play to the divine Creator - spun off the tips of His finger without even breaking a sweat.”

The heavens declare the glory of God...

The root of the word glory has to do with weight, and so to use it of a person could refer to someone who is weighty—important, impressive.

The heavens tell us how weighty and impressive God is.

And the skies proclaim the work of His hands...

Power and ability, care and precision. Intricacy. God spoke and in that instant: Light. Sky. Water. Land. Sun. Moon. Stars. Fish. Birds. Animals. Man.

Everything just exactly as He wanted. It was perfect. It was good.

The heavens declare…the skies proclaim...

This cosmic preaching goes on repeatedly. God has clicked “play” and “repeat all” on the soundtrack of the heavens. And so it is. The heavens are declaring. The skies are proclaiming. It’s their task. Their job. Their commission. They were created for just exactly this. And they never stop.

Day after day they pour forth speech...

The heavens and skies are simply bursting at the seams to tell us of their Maker and they keep pumping out testimony about Him.

The heavens and the skies bubble-up with praise. “Creation cannot contain itself, but constantly proclaims the glory of God.”

[Show first picture on the screen; Jimmy’s testimony]

The heavens, in fact all of creation has a lot to say. They won’t shut up about it. They keep on yapping, proclaiming, declaring.

Strange thing is: it’s totally silent.

Psalm 19:3 NIV

3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.

The heavens are proclaiming, but they can’t verbalize anything. They aren’t speaking aloud.

And yet, we read,

Psalm 19:4 NIV

4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.

There are no words (v. 3) and yet their words [go out] to the ends of the world. I think the psalmist is trying to make us think. It shouldn’t trouble us when the psalm says there are no words and then says that there are.

Another way to describe this would be “non-verbal communication”—mute communication that still communicates.

It’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re married for a few years. You might be out to dinner with some friends, and without her saying a word, you know it’s time to leave. It might be a glance, a look, or maybe a hand on the knee.

Meghann and I started communicating somehow unintentionally with our own form of Morse Code. I’ll be sitting with my arm around her and she might tap twice on my leg, meaning ‘Let’s go.’ And I’ll know it’s time to head out.

Sometimes she’ll tap three times, and I know that means ‘I love you’. (I know; we’re the cutest).

Nothing is said. And yet the message is quite clear.

David gives us an example of this non-verbal communication in the heavens. He speaks about the sun, and the sun’s “daily run” across the sky, like it’s some kind of daily distance runner, an all-day, every day marathoner.

As someone on earth would view it, it seems to be the sun running each day from East to West,

Psalm 19:5–6 NIV

5 It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. 6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.

It’s doing its job. The sun isn’t meant to be worshipped like it was by many of that day (Egypt and Mesopotamia and other countries surrounding God’s people worshipped the Sun).

But the psalmist knows the sun isn’t to be worshipped, it’s meant to lead you to worship the Creator, the One who stuck it right smack dab in the middle of our galaxy. As you watch it doing its morning stretches before it heads out for its jog, as it warms everything during the day, you’re not merely to think, “Yep, well...that’s the sun.”

We should think, “Thank you, Lord, for letting the sun wake us up and bid us goodnight, for warming us (even if sometimes it’s a bit much), for making the crops grow; what an incredible God you are!”

Look up. Look around. See what God has made, and give Him praise.

God’s work of creation lets us see His silent splendor. True, we need to know more than what creation will tell us. But the heavens do declare truth to us, and does so in a way that nothing else quite can.

Words can’t express certain truths. But the constellations in the night sky, the majesty of Grand Canyon, the wind-blown wheat fields of Kansas, the lakes and trees of the Ozarks, the splendor of the Rocky Mountains, the Joshua Trees of Mexico, the Painted Desert, the Rain Forest—they do a pretty good job. They’re all very quiet, but they speak volumes.

We’re meant to see.

See. And worship.

Psalm 19:7–10 NIV

7 The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. 8 The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. 9 The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. 10 They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.

We need to see what God has made, the wonders and works of His hands, but we must also hear.

HEAR.

There are no words when God speaks in creation. But there are most certainly words when God speaks in Scripture.

Notice, if you didn’t already, the repeated uses of the Lord’s personal covenant name. To us, it’s probably just LORD in all caps; but remember, that’s Yahweh, the personal, covenant name of God.

We’re not dealing with a deity who stays at a distance. He’s not merely the Creator; He’s the God who has come near, Yahweh, the One who is present among His people. He has drawn near and He has spoken.

God has spoken for us to hear. His law, His statutes, His precepts, His commands, His ordinances are for us. To listen to and to hear His voice—it’s perfect, trustworthy, right, radiant, pure, sure, righteous.

The law of the Lord, the Torah, is all there; it has and offers everything you need. It’s restorative. And it’s reliable, providing stability like training wheels on the back tire of a bike (except that you’ll never get to the point where your dad will remove it because you don’t need it any longer). We never outgrow our need for the testimony/statutes of the Lord.

We could break this down, phrase by phrase, and I’d love to do it. There’s a sermon in each phrase (you’re thinking, “Oh, please, no. Don’t!”). I won’t.

David’s not trying to get us to distinguish one phrase from another. Rather, he wants to build up for us a total picture of the Lord Yahweh’s true, reliable, soul-renewing, life-preserving, joy-inducing, energy-giving Word to hit us like a ton of bricks so we can hopefully say something like verse 10, so our desire will match David’s.

Psalm 19:10 NIV

10 They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.

David values deeply the Word of the Lord, it’s valuable to him and it’s sweet.

The language here actually says that the words of the Lord are to be coveted more than gold.

Coveted. Most of our Bible translations clean it up a bit and make it sound like “desire”.

But the word is the same as the 10th Commandment: You shall not covet.

One summer when I was in Mexico, a lady was pointing and using a word I didn’t understand. I was trying to work it out and kept asking her to use a different phrase. Bruce came up and said, “Oh, she’s saying she covets your mask.” (We made masks for some craft). In other words, she really wants it.

There’s a wrong coveting and there’s a holy coveting.

There’s a holy coveting, a pure lust that ought to consume us. An “I really want that”—to possess the written word of the Lord in all its truth and benefits.

“I want it more than gold. To me, it’s sweeter than honey.”

History tells us that Rabbi’s would give honey to their students, telling them to place it on their tongues, to savor and enjoy, and then remind them that God’s Word is sweeter still than any honey; there’s nothing like it.

William Tyndale, the man who had given England a Bible in its own language, was betrayed and handed over for execution because of his Bible translation work. He was kept in prison in Brussels and wrote the following letter as he was preparing for the cold winter months:

I entreat your lordship that if I am to remain here during the winter months that you would be kind enough to send me a warmer cap for I suffer extremely from cold in the head…a warmer coat also; what I have is very thin. Also, a piece of cloth to patch my leggings. I wish also for permission to have a lamp in the evening.

But above all, I entreat and beseech you to be urgent with this, that you may kindly permit me to have my Hebrew Bible.

A warmer cap, warmer coat, a lamp, but above all, he wanted his Bible. They strangled him and burned him, but his desire, his coveting for God’s Word remained to the very end.

This isn’t some strange or special attitude that only the William Tyndales and Billy Grahams have. This is the desire of God’s people, to hear from Him in His Word.

If the God who has quietly spoken in His creation has stooped to speak clearly in the pronouns, participles, adverbs, and adjectives of His law, surely I should meet such with a proper obsession.

Surely God’s excellent, perfect, flawless, trustworthy Word should be met by my unrelenting appetite. I should want to hear from Him more than I want to binge watch whatever’s on Netflix or read whatever new book is on my shelf.

Hear. And Worship.

Psalm 19:11–14 NIV

11 By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward. 12 But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults. 13 Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression. 14 May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

After seeing and hearing, we must speak.

SPEAK.

There’s two sides David picks up on. On the one hand, David is warned by the Lord’s words, precepts, testimony, and commands. And on the other, he knows there is great reward in keeping them.

Having seen and heard, David knows he must confess his sins, his known/willful sins and his hidden sins, the guilt he can’t pinpoint.

When confronted with the Creator God, confronted with the God who has spoken, the Christian knows it’s time to speak, to pray, to confess, to repent.

Hearing and seeing the majesty and perfection of God—His creation and His word—will lead His people to reflect on their failures (known and unknown) and to rely on God’s forgiveness.

When we come under the weight and impressive influence of God—His glory—we will humble ourselves and speak: “Who is man that you are mindful of him?”

And when we come under the perfection and rightness of God’s Word, we will be convicted, warned, spurred-on to repentance.

>All of this is very clearly worship. That’s what ties this psalm together. It’s worship.

We see what He has made. And we worship.

We hear what He has said. And we worship.

We speak in response to what we’ve seen and heard. And we worship.

We worship the Creator who has made us in His image, who has adopted us as sons and daughters, who has made us just a little lower than the heavenly beings and has crowned us with glory and honor.

We worship the Lord who speaks and who has spoken to us most directly, most vividly in His Son, Jesus—He who stooped down, who condescended to us, taking on flesh and blood—the Word of God among us, the Word seen and heard, the Word crucified and raised on the third at break of dawn.

Would this lead us to speak, to proclaim what He has done, to share how great He is. Would all this lead us to worship.

See. Hear. Speak.