A sermon based upon Psalm 19, CEB
By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
July 14th, 2019
“Firefall”, is an astounding natural phenomenon which takes place in Yosemite National Park in California only one time of the year. When the setting of the February sun hits the water fall coming down the side the mountain named El Capitan, at just the right spot, there is a stunning display of nature in all her glory. It’s a sight that only lasts a few minutes each day, just a few weeks of each year in February. The glorious brilliance of this natural event depends on everything coming together just right; the light of the sun hitting a good flow of water, and people, along with their cameras, hiking a mile to reach the remote area at just time, and looking toward the mountain at just right angle. When you get the angle and timing just right, it looks like just like ‘fire’ falling off the mountain into the valley below.
Nature does many beautiful things; some of them once in a while like this ‘Firefall’ illusion in Yosemite National Park, and some of them every single day, when the sun rises and appears to faithfully travel across the sky. Could you dare imagine what would happen if the earth or the sun were off just a fraction of a degree? When the physicist Sir Isaac Newton, in 1665, for the first time, scientifically contemplated how an apple always fell downward, and never sideways, he not only understood the law of gravity so that he came to formulate the three most basic laws of the whole universe, he also that the gravity would not work, and the stars in the sky would not stay in their orbits, unless it God, who was the force outside of nature, was holding everything together. He said, and I quote from his ground-breaking work, “Principa”: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being…This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all..”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newton).
Today, I find it not coincidental that the more modern lights and human inventions dim the basic realities of nature and sky, the more belief in a creator also becomes dim and diluted. What the Psalmist contemplates in the sky as the natural revelation of God, is far from what most people see today; and many are not even looking. But the Psalmist did look, and the words of this grand Psalm majestically begins: “The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork” (19:1 KJV).
This summer, we have been preaching from the Psalms. Today we look at what C.S. Lewis called the most important Psalm of all; to Lewis the 19th Psalm was even more important than the 23rd Psalm. His point is that if we don’t understand how God speaks to us, how could ever know God as the true Shepherd. Psalm 19 is a majestic, poetic and rhythmical way of celebrating how God reveals himself in the world. On the one hand, the first part of this Psalm celebrates how God reveals himself generally, through nature; particularly, it speak of how God speaks to us through the sky. More specifically, and especially, Psalm 19 also celebrates how God speaks to his people through the Law; that is through Scripture or the Bible, the Law being the only Bible people had at that time. In this Psalm, the writer, David or whoever else helped to write this Psalm, for it seems to be in two or three different parts, the Psalmist is rejoicing because God doesn’t leave himself without a witness in this world, either in nature, or the law of Scripture.
But this Psalm concludes with one other way divine revelation, which was made possible by the other two. Because God is heard in both nature and law, now God is also able to reveal himself even more directly to the human person, through depth of the mind, the ‘heart’ or what we today would call the ‘conscience’. When allow yourself to ‘wonder’ in nature, or when you learn God’s laws for wisdom, then you develop a heart so that you can now hear God speaking directly within you. God reveals himself, so that you can begin to grasp, through nature, through the Bible, and also in your heart, why’ we are here, what life means, and what do should being doing with this miracle you’ve been given, called ‘life’. Now, for a few moments, let’s look deeper into this magnificent psalm that can make even ‘the simple wise’.
THE HEAVENS DECLARE….
Interestingly, the Psalmist is not lost in ‘wonder’ when he looks up into the sky. He is not like those people ‘ooohing’ and ‘ahiing’ when they see the ‘firefall’ on El Capitan, nor is he like all those people staying up to watch a comet, or an eclipse? The Psalmist not the least bit ‘lost in wonder’ about the night sky or the daytime sky either.
The wonder the Psalmist feels and expresses in this text, is not based on what he sees with his eyes, or what he observes in a telescope, but he feels ‘wonder’ because of what he hears with the ears of his heart. Do you see how this text flows? The Psalmist says the “Heavens ‘tell’ the glory of God. He says ‘day to day’ they ‘pour out speech’, and night to night ‘they’ declare knowledge, or perhaps better, insight.
Do you hear it? If you are willing to listen, there is no place on earth, where their speech is not heard. What is the sky saying? The apostle Paul gave us his own interpretation in his letter to the Romans, ‘Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they (and we) are without excuse… (Rom. 1:20 NRS). He also preached on his mission in Asia, that God “has not left himself without a witness in doing good-- giving rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling (us) with food and (our) hearts with joy." (Acts 14:16-17 NRS). Perhaps Paul’s greatest words about natural, or general revelation comes from his sermon at Athens, when he explained how God “allotted the times of (human) existence and the boundaries of the places where (humans) would live, so that (we humans) would (naturally) search for God and perhaps (feel) him and find him-- though indeed he is not far from each one of us (Acts 17:26-27 NRS).
Many years ago, just after the Great War, and not long before World War II, in 1934, there was a serious debate going on between two of the greatest German biblical scholars in the world at that time; Karl Barth, the academic, and Emil Brunner, the scholarly pastor. While both of the great thinkers were dedicated to Jesus Christ as the full and greatest revelation of God, they disagreed over one point. Brunner, the pastor accepted, as the Psalmist says, that God can speak clearly to human hearts through nature, called ‘natural revelation’. Barth, on the other hand, fiercely disagreed. Barth said that the human heart has been made so corrupted and made ‘tone deaf’ by sin, humans are now unable to hear God speak at all in this world, without hearing the Word. By ‘the Word’ Barth meant both God Word written in the Law which was finalized as God’s Word made incarnate in Jesus Christ. For Barth, because of sin, natural revelation was no longer reliable, because, as the apostle Paul said, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Without the Word of the man from Heaven, we can’t hear a single word from the Heavens.
If the Psalmist had stopped here, with God speaking only through nature; Jews, and Christians too, would have ended up ‘sun worshippers’ just the rest of the pagans around them, especially the Egyptians. But what the great scholars were really debating about is whether or not there is enough of the image of God left in us, after the sin came into the world. The pastoral scholar, was probably right to say that there has to be some of God’s nature left in us, even as sinners, or we couldn’t hear God speak at all, either in the world or in the Word. But the academic scholar, was also right to say that the best of ‘nature’ won’t have any eternal impact upon us, unless we allow it to point us to the voice of God that was also speaks both in the written and spoken word of God, supremely revealed, not as the S.U.N., but most perfectly as the S.O.N---that is God’s son, Jesus Christ. If the Sun doesn’t point us toward the Son, then, SIN is still dominate and deafens the sound of God’ speech.
THE LAW OF THE LORD IS…
The point the Psalmist is making here, is the point that life also makes, that the natural world we live in is to point us, not just to the laws of the universe, but the wisdom of the laws of nature in the universe should point us to the wisdom of the law of God. This is where the Psalmist ends up in this Psalm; the glory of God in nature, leads us to the glory of God in God’s law, which he says, ‘are more to be desired than gold,…and more also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb’ (10).
Honey was the most desirable ‘sugar’ before there sugar was discovered, and it is still healthiest form of sugar for a human diet. But prescribing a physical diet is not the Psalmist point. The Psalmist is point us to the pure ‘delight,’ the perfection, the wisdom, the purity, the rightness, and the reward of hearing, learning, and living by God’s law. It is through the written Law that the Lord gave, and still gives God’s people the clearest ‘sound’ of truth.
Since God’s law, not only leads us to wonder and to worship, just like nature should, it is also important to realize how God’s law should speak even more clearly. Only through God’s law, are we taught about ‘who’ we are (our potential for good), and how we should live our lives. This is what the Psalmist means when he says, that God’s law ‘revives the soul’, makes the soul rejoice, because we are given the most important perspective in life. It is only God’s law that teaches us ‘the fear of the Lord’, meaning that we should gain a pure, humble ‘reverence for life’ and ‘respect for ourselves and a respect for others. For this creator God, who not only gives us life and his law, he also stands as the final judge how we should live. Just like we have to learn how to live by his natural laws, such as gravity and motion (recall those skinned knees). Just like we find the joy of life by respecting these laws, why should we not also find the spiritual and written laws of God worth ‘rejoicing’ about? As the Psalmist clearly shows, the law of God is not to stop us from living, or from having fun, but to keep us alive, both physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
In this short Psalm of Praise concerning God’s law, both in nature and in spirit, we don’t find any detailed description of what this Law is. The Law was already clear to this Psalmist, as it had already been written down in the first five books of Moses.
As Christians, we don’t add anything to those Laws, because Jesus didn’t add or take away from them either, but we do reinterpret these laws because Jesus ‘fulfilled the law’ so that the meaning and sum of all the law was explained once and for all, as ‘to love God with all our heart…’ and to ‘love our neighbor as we also love ourselves’. So, when we start respecting and reverencing God, as our creator, our sustainer, and our redeemer too, we learn to care of each other, as we take care of ourselves. Love, both in word and in deed, is why the Law of God can still give us life’s greatest joy. This law, God’s law, is the most important ‘law’ the world will ever know.
Last year, when Mark Harris, the Baptist Preacher from Charlotte’s First Baptist Church, ran for Congress, I cringed. I didn’t cringe because of who he was. I also didn’t cringe because of the platform he was running on, or the political party he was a part of. What made me cringe, was something my Father, as Baptist Sunday School teacher told me, after I informed him that I was going to become a Preacher and a Pastor; Minister of the Gospel, as my Ordination Certificate says. My Father looked at me and said, “Son, remember, as a minister, the call to serve is the highest calling there is. Don’t ever think about stepping down, even to become the President.”
I thought about what my Father told me, all through Mark Harris’ campaign, and also during the controversy which followed about voter fraud. I even wonder whether or not Dr. Harris, still believes that stepping into political fray of this world was best? The world, even a broken world, can’t be fixed by the laws of people; if the gospel means anything, if the Bible means anything, the world can only be redeemed through the law of God. As my Dad reminded me: There is no higher calling, because there is no greater law, than the Law that is from God, and is intended, not just to be written down on paper, but is to be written down in our ‘hearts’.
LET MY HEART…BE ACCEPTABLE
Speaking straight to our hearts, the Psalmist concludes this grand Psalm with a ‘warning’ and a prayer; ending with one of one of the greatest prayers ever put in human speech: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”
Here we can see the point, most clearly of what God’s word in sky law are finally about: they aim toward hearts that can become ‘tone deaf’ because of human sin. This is what the Psalmist meant in verse 12, when he wrote: ‘who can detect their errors?’ He means, that while there are no ‘errors’ to be detected in God’s speech, there remain ‘hidden faults’ and inward rebellions that can transgress against God’s goodness. So, when the Psalmist prays, ‘let the meditation of my heart be pleasing’ in God’s sight, he is not praying to a God who is hard to please, but he is praying for God to be his ‘rock’ and ‘redeemer’ to live up to the wonders that surround and call forth the living of his ‘best’ life.
Did you know one of the details lost amidst the tremendous historic and scientific achievements of the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first two human beings on the moon in July 1969 was that it also marked the first occasion on which a Christian took Communion on an astronomical body other than Earth. This event took place in the interval between the lunar module’s landing on the moon on 20 July 1969 and Neil Armstrong’s taking his first steps on the lunar surface several hours later; during that period, with the cameras and microphones off, astronaut Buzz Aldrin privately observed Communion using elements he had brought with him to the moon. Why would he do that? What was going on in the heart of that Astronaunt?
Perhaps the best answer came from Another astronaut, Jim Erwin, who later talked about the experience he had when he went to the moon. He said: "When I looked out and saw the earth, only as big as a little marble, I thought, How big am I? I'm just a speck of dust-if that big-compared to the universe. And yet, this little speck has the capacity to know God! To know the One who holds the universe, to know His love, and have His direction. For the first time, I saw felt God's love for the earth...I realized then that God loved that little blue marble, that little planet. He loved all the billions of people on it, and He loved me! I realized at that moment that my relationship with Jesus Christ was the most precious thing I had.”
For you see, nobody loves the sky like an Astronaut, who risks his life to travel into it. But believing Astronauts like Erwin, and Adwrin, also know that the sky can’t forgive your sin nor can the Law make you do what is right and good. While the sky can inspire you, and the law can warn you, only a personal, loving, redeeming, and saving God, can give you the eternal love you need to become all you are created to be. Now, that that can ‘make the simple, wise’ and is still worth singing about. Amen.
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