Psalm 19: 1-14 (links validated 8/28/23)

Colleague Deborah Haarsma is an astronomer and the President of BioLogos. Some years ago she and I made a presentation at a conference and I share here a couple PowerPoint slides she prepared that illustrate the wonders of the first part of Psalm 19. I particularly like the time lapse photo of the sun across the course of a day!

People have always considered gold to be one of the most valuable minerals in the whole world. So the psalmist may have shocked his contemporaries when he insisted that God’s law is “more precious than gold.” Yet in the last decade alone the price of gold in American dollars has risen about 450%, from about $260.00 to over $1200.00 an ounce. One analyst predicts the price of gold will jump as high as $2200.00. So can God’s people still insist God’s law is “more precious than … much pure gold”?

As Ryder and Josh set plates and forks on the table for lunch, a dog started barking outside. “There Sarge goes again,” said Ryder with a sigh. “He’s always barking.” “This bark sounds different than usual,” said Mom. “Maybe one of you boys should go check it out.” “Aw, Mom, we’re busy,” said Josh. “Besides, Sarge barks at everything–squirrels, people, cars. You name it, he barks at it.” Since Mom didn’t insist, no one checked to see why Sarge was barking. When Josh and Ryder went out to ride their bikes later that afternoon, they stopped and stared at the empty garage. “Where are our bikes?” asked Josh. “I don’t believe it!” cried Ryder. “They’re gone! Who would have the nerve to come into our garage in broad daylight and take our bikes right out from under our noses?” “After all the work we did mowing lawns to buy those bikes,” said Josh. “Now this!” The boys rushed into the house. “Our new bikes are gone! Someone stole them!” Everyone hurried out to see for themselves. Dad returned to the house to call the police department and report the loss. When he came back outside, he stopped to pet Sarge. “Didn’t we hear Sarge barking a couple hours ago?” he asked. “He was trying to warn us, and we didn’t listen to him.”...

Fred Craddock talks about his first church, a little church in a rural area. When a highway was built nearby, a trailer park sprung up for the workers and their families. He was a young minister and I guess he didn’t understand about tribes because he suggested to his deacons that they should do something to invite those people. After he pushed on the issue, the church met to discuss it. They voted on it, they voted to require that anyone own property in the county before they became a member of the church. Craddock moved on. Many years later, after he retired, he was in the area and he went looking for that church. He found it and the parking lot was full, there was a neon sign and a crowd of people. The church had closed long before; it was a barbecue restaurant...

Perhaps it is a bit of a silly joke—and it may or may not relate as well as it might to the subject at hand—but here goes: A man newly arrived in New York City hails a taxi. He gets into the backseat and gives the driver his destination address. The driver takes off on the streets of Manhattan and as they approach a red light, the taxi driver sails on through. “What are you doing!?” the passenger cries out. “Don’t worry” the driver says, “My brother Felix does it all the time!” Soon they come up on another red light and again the taxi drives through the intersection. “You’re going to get me killed” the man sighs. “Don’t worry—my brother Felix does it all the time!” Finally they come up on another intersection and as they get to it, the light turns green. The passenger breathes a sigh of relief even as the taxi driver screeches to a halt. “Now what are you doing?” the passengers asks. “Hey,” the driver replies, “My brother Felix might be coming from the other way!” There is a certain inescapable logic to the existence of most laws. We can flout some laws, break some laws, ignore some laws but not only do we do so to our peril, the orderliness that laws make possible has a funny way of reasserting itself too. It seems to have something to do with how the world got made in the first place.

A man newly arrived in New York City hails a taxi. He gets into the backseat and gives the driver his destination address. The driver takes off on the streets of Manhattan and as they approach a red light, the taxi driver sails on through. “What are you doing!?” the passenger cries out. “Don’t worry” the driver says, “My brother Felix does it all the time!” Soon they come up on another red light and again the taxi drives through the intersection. “You’re going to get me killed” the man sighs. “Don’t worry—my brother Felix does it all the time!” Finally they come up on another intersection and as they get to it, the light turns green. The passenger breathes a sigh of relief even as the taxi driver screeches to a halt. “Now what are you doing?” the passengers asks. “Hey,” the driver replies, “My brother Felix might be coming from the other way!” There is a certain inescapable logic to the existence of most laws. We can flout some laws, break some laws, ignore some laws but not only do we do so to our peril, the orderliness that laws make possible has a funny way of reasserting itself too. It seems to have something to do with how the world got made in the first place.

Although I will never be counted among the world’s biggest fans of Hillsong, their song “So Will I (100 Billion X)” is a fine encapsulation of Psalm 19 and of a celebration of God’s creation just generally. The accompanying video on one version of the song is also lyrically beautiful. In preparing a sermon on Psalm 19, this is an inspiring video to watch. And if your congregation is a place where showing a video is possible, this would also be a good one to set up or to follow a sermon on Psalm 19.

One of the most stunning and now famous pictures ever snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope is this one of what some have dubbed “The Pillars of Creation”. These gaseous structures are mammoth—they are over a light year in height (that’s 5,880,000,000,000 miles high). And what is wondrous about these structures is that they are nurseries for newborn stars. Although very distant from earth—and so we are looking very far into the past when we see such a picture—this is evidence, as astronomer Deborah Haarsma notes, that God’s act of creation was not something that was long ago over and done with. God is still making new stars today. Creation is ongoing. And day after day it pours forth speech....

It wasn’t just the ancient Near East that believed in the divinity of the heavenly bodies and their power over our lives. While not exactly naming the Sun, Moon and Stars as gods, folks who believe in horoscopes look to the positioning and alignment of those heavenly bodies for life advice. And mega-events like the recent total solar eclipse arouse great enthusiasm about the possibility of life change. One person interviewed in national TV before the eclipse opined that the event might bring a whole new day to America, causing a renewal of hope and goodness in our broken and desperate country. On the other hand, who can ever forget the scornful words of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. As he orbited the earth very early in the race to space, he said, “Well, here I am in the heavens and I see no signs of God.” Both the superstitious and the skeptical need to hear the message of Psalm 19. The heavens are not God, but they do proclaim his God’s glory.

In 1888 the Gifford Lectures began in Scotland. Lord Gifford was a judge who cared more about religion and metaphysics than the law, so upon his death he endowed a lectureship that has become the most important theological lectureship in the world. Lord Gifford’s sole aim in setting up this series was to prove that God could be known through natural theology without any reference to the miraculous. Over the decades great philosophers and theologians were awarded the Gifford Lectures. People like William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Albert Schweitzer, Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich have all spoken to Lord Gifford’s quest to discover a natural theology based on observation and reason. However, in ways that might make Lord Gifford spin in his grave, many of these scholars have determined natural theology is a dead end. In 2001, Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School was awarded the Gifford Lectureship. Hauerwas declared that the God one would discover through natural theology was not a God he could worship...

Have you heard the story of Josh Hamilton? He's the center fielder for the Texas Rangers. He started his baseball career with Tampa Bay in 1999, fresh out of high school. He skyrocketed for two years, then hit bottom – addicted to drugs and alcohol. He was suspended and sent to the minor leagues. He was in and out of baseball for several years, as he tried to kick the habit. He finally got his life back together and, in 2007, signed with the Cincinnati Reds. They traded him to the Rangers in 2008 and, ever since, he's been at the top of the leader board in hits and home runs. Last year, he was voted Most Valuable Player of the American League. Josh is quick to tell the story of his recovery. He says, "It's a God thing." He talks about it in his autobiography, Beyond Belief. He freely admits that he was hopelessly lost until he turned to the Lord and put his life in God's hands...

("If Haydn's Creation deals with the sublime, the Grateful Dead's Truckin' deals with the mundane, but one stanza captures a sense of wonder, and even confusion, that everyone feels from time to time. In fact, if Jesus had been familiar with the lyrics, they might have been running through his mind as he stumbled along the Via Dolorosa carrying the cross...")

("At the first church I served, the senior pastor called me into his office. He opened a cupboard door under his bookcase. There, on a shelf, spanning more than the length of my arm, were manila file folders. They stood upright, tightly stacked together. He gestured toward the files and mentioned that yesterday a clergy colleague's widow brought the files to him. They represented forty years of sermons from her spouse. The widow had asked him: 'Would you like them?' Does it matter, this thing we do? Do the 'words of my mouth' make enough difference in the world?...")

Perhaps you have seen the Extreme Makeover TV series in which a team of experts does an extraordinary renovation on a house. When the project is finished, a huge bus blocks the family and friends’ view of the house. The show’s host leads the crowd in chanting, “Move that bus!” The bus moves out of the way to reveal the handiwork of the team of designers and builders. Were we to watch the show enough, we would begin to see a design and know something about its designer, based on how they work with molding, window treatments, or cabinetry. Now imagine standing in a crowd with the psalmist, whose hymn is about to reveal God to us, as we chant, “Move that bus!” As fun as this thought is, Psalm 19 does a ‘God reveal’ so much better than a bus does. It is God who has chosen to reveal himself to us. The Holy Spirit breathed this psalm through the psalmist as part of God’s self-revelation. In Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis declared, “I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.”...

“The Spacious Firmament” (Words by Joseph Addison, 18th century and Music by Herbert Sumsion, 20th century)

includes several quotes

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