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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. 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. 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. (Psalm 19 NIV)
I am not old, I'm a classic sort of guy! A few minutes ago, my bride handed me her cell phone on which to read an article. I was reading comfortably when she asked, "Where is my phone?!" I did not panic, I simply told Siri to call Nellie Valverde, and I have to say it a certain way so that Siri understands. And the phone started ringing! Bear in mind I'm holding my phone on my left hand and in my right hand, Nellie's phone started to ring! "Uh, I have your phone!" We both laughed. We were not embarrassed, we were reminded of our human frailties.
We are people who learn early how to communicate, which usually means we speak and we listen. Sometimes all at the same time, but to better understand we know there is a time to speak and there is a time to listen. And it applies to our interactions with God that we will examine with today's passage.
Step outside on a clear night and look up. Go ahead — the psalm is basically asking you to do exactly that, and it has been asking people to do it for three thousand years, which suggests it's good advice. The heavens are declaring the glory of God, David says, and the skies are proclaiming the work of His hands. Day after day they pour out speech. Night after night they reveal knowledge. And then the line that is both scientifically interesting and theologically provocative: they have no speech, they use no words, no sound is heard from them. The heavens are communicating constantly and doing it entirely in silence, which is either a profound mystery or the universe's most successful marketing campaign, depending on how you look at it.
The point David is making is one that the New Testament will pick up and run with — that God has been communicating with humanity through two channels, not one. There is the voice of creation, which speaks without words in every direction simultaneously, to every culture and language and person who has ever tilted their head back and looked at the sky and felt something they couldn't quite name. And there is the voice of the law — the specific, verbal, written-down revelation that God gave to Israel and that we hold in our hands when we open Scripture. Both are genuine. Both are necessary. Neither is sufficient alone. The sky tells you there is a God. The law tells you what He is like and what He wants. You need both, and Psalm 19 gives you both in sequence.
The move David makes from the heavens to the law is surprisingly smooth, because he treats them as two expressions of the same generous communicating God rather than as competitors for the title of primary revelation. 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. He stacks them up with an almost musical repetition — the Lord's this, doing that; the Lord's that, doing this — and the cumulative effect is the portrait of a God who has not left His people to figure things out in the dark. He has spoken. Clearly. Persistently. Through everything He made and everything He said.
The phrase that always stops me is "making wise the simple." Not making wise the already-sophisticated, not giving insight to the theologically trained, but making wise the simple. The word for simple in Hebrew suggests the person who is open, impressionable, easily led — and God's word, rather than taking advantage of that openness, fills it with wisdom. This is one of the most democratizing things in the entire psalm. The wisdom that the law produces is not reserved for the people who already have significant intellectual equipment. It is available to the person who comes simply, openly, without pretense, and receives what God has been saying all along. Which is, not coincidentally, exactly the posture Jesus will commend when He says the kingdom belongs to those who come as children.
Then David says something that is remarkably self-aware for a poet in a good mood: they warn your servant also; in keeping them there is great reward. The warnings of Scripture, he is saying, are not a wet blanket on the joy the law produces — they are part of the gift. They keep you from the hidden faults, the presumptuous sins, the errors of the person who is so confident in their own judgment that they stop checking it against anything outside themselves. David knows himself well enough to know that he needs both the delight and the warning. He needs the honey sweetness of the law and the protective edge of its boundaries. He has probably already experienced what happens when he ignores one or the other, and he knows which version of himself he prefers.
The psalm ends with a prayer that has been prayed by preachers and writers and ordinary people every time they try to put something true into words: may the words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. It's a prayer that connects everything the psalm has said — the wordless speech of the heavens, the life-giving precision of the law, the humble awareness of our own capacity for error — and brings it all into a single act of offering. Take what I say and what I think and make it something You would actually want to receive. Which is, when you think about it, one of the better prayers any of us could offer on any given morning before we say anything at all.
The same Spirit who breathed the law into being and who hovered over creation when the heavens were made is the Spirit who now dwells in us, helping us read the law with new eyes and look at the heavens with renewed wonder. He connects the two revelations in the person of Jesus — the Word who was with God in the beginning, through whom all things were made, who became flesh and declared the Father as clearly as the heavens declare His glory.
PRAYER: Lord, open our eyes to Your glory in everything You made and everything You said, and make the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts pleasing to You today. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Go outside today — even for two minutes — and look up, deliberately and without your phone, and let the heavens say what they have been saying since the beginning, and let that be the beginning of your worship.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me. Make your life matter more by listening to others and teach them to listen to God!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
