Psalm 19
This is a talk I delivered in 2024 at a series of public Christian talks. It was my first public Christian talk.
Introduction
Have you ever heard someone say “if only God would speak to me”? Or ask “why can’t I hear God?”? If God were to speak, His words would be immensely precious and valuable. We’ll see today that God does speak, and in fact He speaks to everyone, all the time! He invites all people to listen, and those who do listen find a wealth of treasure and goodness, and a God to delight in. King David, the writer of this psalm, was a man who knew God well and who knew the value of His words; today we will hear what David has to say about a life spent listening to God. In this psalm, he shows us two places God’s voice is heard, and the first is in creation.
Creation shows everyone how glorious God is
We are launched right into the psalm with the profound statement “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork”. David gets straight to the point here: creation tells us about the Creator, day after day, night after night. And what is creation saying? It’s telling us—well, declaring to us—God is glorious and He has created all things.
What is glory? Consider how the psalm focuses on the heavens above, the high, open and beautiful sky. Picture majestic towering clouds, imposing thunderstorms, the milky way splashed across the sky in a million points of light, each itself a mighty star. Don’t just take my examples, listen to a poet far more eloquent than me—look how David describes the sun. From verse 5: at dawn, a bridegroom, glowing with confidence and joy as he emerges from his room before the wedding ceremony. And the sun commands its path across the sky, like an athlete who has trained for years to perfect their speed and strength. Aren’t the heavens glorious? David tells us that this isn’t just their own glory, it’s all revealing God’s glory to us.
Who is “us”? Is it only the astronomers and meteorologists? A few people who are looking closely at the sky for signs of God? Let’s see—verse 1: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork”. Verse 4: “Their voice goes out through all the earth, and the words to the end of the world”. And in verse 6, nothing is hidden from the heat of the sun—nothing can escape its radiance. You see, creation speaks to all men. It is visible to all. All can look up to the sky and marvel at it, and in doing so, all are seeing the Creator reveal His glory.
This is creation shouting “I have a Creator, and He is glorious”, and we, as part of that creation, are invited to join in with the chorus, proclaiming “we have a Creator, and He is glorious”. When people say “if only God would speak to us”, the Bible’s response is “look up!” “look around!” and “join in the praise!”.
Wonderful as it is that our Creator is glorious and that He displays that to all men in Creation, it doesn’t stop there. God’s doesn’t just reveal His glory as an abstract display of majesty for its own sake. Rather, it’s there for a purpose, and that purpose is to invite people to know Him and to listen to Him. That takes us onto our second point:
God’s word shows His people how good He is
God doesn’t just make known His might and power—to those who will listen, He speaks directly, through His law, and in doing so He demonstrates His goodness to His people. We will see this in verses 7-9.
By “law”, David is referring to more than just God’s moral commandments—although they are a major part of it, as we see in verse 8—in verse 7 he refers to the whole of the “testimony” or “covenants” between God and His people—in summary, the whole of the written word, which for us now is the entire Bible. This includes both God’s moral instructions for man, and His gracious promises of redemption from slavery to sin and death, fulfilled in Jesus.
David could hardly give it a more glowing review! Again, David launches us head-first into this second section of the psalm with the marvellous statement that “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” and in a similar vein, in verse 8 we are told that “the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart”. God’s word brings life and health to the feeble and weak soul, and it also brings joy. All of God’s creation is good and is to be enjoyed, but true, deep joy can only come from hearing, knowing and serving God. This is something which can’t be taken away, even by death. Everything else that gives happiness will come to an end—but not the restored soul that comes from knowing God.
Look at how coming to know God through His word is described in verse 7—His word takes the simple, the feeble of mind, and makes us wise. Wisdom isn’t just plain intelligence, nor knowledge of facts, not even facts about God. Wisdom is knowing good from evil, discerning right from wrong, being absorbed in God’s view of the world. This is what is most valuable. A man may be a marvellous scientist with a deep understanding of the mathematical secrets of matter, or a learned historian whose mind plumbs the depths of the past with ease, but what real, lasting value does that have? Compare that to the simple man, who never finished school, can’t do algebra to save his life, let alone quote Shakespeare, but who knows God and knows how to live properly in His world, and who is therefore heading for eternal life. He is truly wise.
Or think of it another way, from the end of verse 8—“enlightening the eyes”: God takes a people whose eyes were closed to Him and who were too blind to see the path of life and hence had wandered far from it, and by His Word He opens those once-dim eyes and enables them to see God and to see the path which leads to life with Him. Imagine camping in a dense, damp forest on a cloudy, moonless night. You’re completely lost, but you know there is a way home somewhere—but it’s hopeless! You can’t see an inch in front of your face. And then you stumble across a torch and a map. All of a sudden, you can see where you are and where you’re going and you know the way home to a cosy fire and a hearty meal. This is what this book here can do [hold up Bible]—but in a far more important way than recovering an ill-fated camping trip. Rather than being lost in the murky woods of life, this book shows us our path through the thickets, leading us home to be with God again.
So God does indeed speak to us—He reveals His glory to everyone, all the time, in creation, but He doesn’t stop with this display of majesty. He speaks through the Scriptures, revealing Himself to us, calling us to Himself, opening our eyes to Him and restoring our souls. In the Scriptures, we encounter God, and through them we can come to know Him.
Every book tells us something about its author, doesn’t it? And especially autobiographies. It’s the same with God and the Bible, which is essentially His autobiography. Just as His word to us is perfect, sure, right, pure, clean and true, and verse 9, righteous altogether, so is God Himself. His word reveals His character, and His character is good. This makes God’s word so valuable to us, because through it we can meet and come to know the good God who created everything, and in doing so we can be made wise, and have our souls revived.
But of course, it’s not just reading the Bible that revives our souls automatically. Plenty of people study the Bible academically and come away with nothing—can’t see the wood for the trees. Think of all the theology professors who know everything about God, and yet don’t actually know Him at all. It’s as if they’ve found the torch in the woods, studied it in great detail and are able explain everything about how it works, but they’ve never actually turned it on! The problem they have is they don’t realise that God’s word is a living text, and it’s there to tell us about the living God. And the living God is not the solution to some philosophical conundrum, but is a relational God who has created mankind to relate to Him personally. So when we see the Creator God displaying His glory in the skies, and His goodness in the text of Scripture, He is inviting us to respond as children to a father. We see three responses in the rest of this psalm:
We respond with delight, humility and trust
I’ll deal with each of these three responses in turn. First off:
Delight
First, see how David speaks about Scripture—and who can blame him, given what we’ve just seen about it? In verse 10 he says it is “more to be desired than gold—even much fine gold”. We all know what he means when he says this. Gold is the precious metal par exellence. Silver is lovely, but it tarnishes—gold retains its glow indefinitely. Platinum doesn’t tarnish, but come on, you don’t get platinum medals at the Olympics. Gold is the universally accepted supreme standard of quality. Yet really we should be handing out Bibles to the Olympic victors, such is the worth of the word of God.
One of the main characteristics which makes gold so valuable is its stability. It doesn’t tarnish or corrode—a bar of gold seems like it will last for ever. Yet the treasure of God’s word is even longer lasting. Look at verse 9—listening to it and fearing God “endures for ever”. Of course, the other alluring quality of gold is its purity, particularly highly refined gold. But again, we have just heard how perfect, pure and clean God’s word is. God’s word surpasses even vast quantities of 24-carat gold in longevity, purity and worth. It is priceless.
And this isn’t just a treasure to be put on the mantelpiece and admired from a distance. No, like honey, we consume it and we find it sweeter and more delectable than the best manuka honey from deepest darkest New Zealand. It nourishes us and is a delight to take in.
Let’s move on to the second response:
Humility
Of course, if God is so glorious, good and righteous, and His word is so perfect, pure and true, we humans are in a bit of a difficult situation, given how unrighteous, imperfect and impure we are, day in, day out. Look at verse 12: “Who can understand his errors?” Who indeed? Errors here refers to unintentional sins, accidental trespasses against God’s commandments—we do not know how frequently we unthinkingly violate God’s good law. And then there are the intentional sins, or “presumptuous sins”, from verse 13. So often we flagrantly go against God and His good design for us, knowing what is right and ignoring it.
How can Christians, as God’s people, live with Him, sinful as we are? As well as delighting in His word, and letting it open our eyes and grow our wisdom, we must humble ourselves and rely on God’s forgiveness and mercy, and His strength to overcome sins. He has promised these things to us in His word, and we must humble ourselves and take hold of His promises to forgive and conquer sin. In verse 12, David speaks back to God, and asks Him to declare him innocent from his sins—that is, to forgive him, and to wash all the stains of sin away. In verse 13, David then asks God to keep him from disobedience—he says: “keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins”. To conquer sin, we must call out for God’s strength to restrain us from our wayward desires—lest sin conquer us.
David, mighty king though he was, knew that he must humble himself before God, confess his unrighteousness, and ask both for forgiveness and then, having been forgiven, for the strength to fight and conquer the sin that remains. And as Christians, as God’s people, we must do the same, humbly coming to the glorious and good God and relying on His mercy—and then, verse 13, we “shall be blameless” and “innocent of great transgression”. God promises to forgive those who ask for it, to give a clean conscience, and perfect innocence. But we must humble ourselves to receive it—pride stops so many people from coming to God. Pride makes us think we don’t need to ask this from God, that we’re doing just fine on our own thank you very much. But if the great King David humbles himself and relies completely on God’s forgiveness and strength, how much more should we.
Similarly, in verse 14, we see him asking God to make the words he speaks and the very thoughts he thinks clean and holy. Again, we have to depend on God for this—our own strength cannot come close to enabling us to do this! This is the pattern of the Christian life—God gives us free forgiveness of sins and a true innocence before Him. Then this gives us true freedom and enables us, by God’s strength given to us, to undertake the journey of fighting sins and seeking good, praising God with our thoughts and our words. Just as creation proclaims God’s glory, so we too should desire to proclaim it, yet in our own weakness we must rely on God for the strength to do this.
And we can rely on Him. We don’t need to come to Him doubting His willingness or ability to love us, care for us, forgive us and strengthen us. Our Father is the omnipotent Creator. And so the last response we will look at is
Trust
The very last phrase of this psalm sums up all that we have seen about God today. For those who know Him, He is our rock and our redeemer. Our rock: mighty, steadfast and unshakeable; yet also our redeemer: deeply concerned for His people, bringing them out of slavery to death and sin in order to be with them.
He is the solid rock: the mighty God who has created all things and who upholds all things and who directs all things. In Peter’s first letter, he tells us that Jesus is the living stone, the cornerstone, the foundation. He is dependable and unshakeable.
And He is the loving redeemer: the caring God who brings His people out of slavery, at His own cost. Paul tells us, in his letter to the Ephesians, that in Jesus we have redemption through His blood. God Himself suffered and died to redeem His people. And, having redeemed His people, He speaks to them in His word, making Himself known.
Does God speak? Yes, He is the living God who speaks! He is the glorious creator of the heavens and the earth, and the loving redeemer of His people, who speaks to them so that they will know that it is He who has saved them. Let us delight in His word, humble ourselves as we come to Him, and trust in Him as our rock and our redeemer.