Title: The Revelation of God (part 1)
Scripture: Psalm 19:1-6
Speaker: Nate Pickowicz
Now, over the last century, we have seen the steady increase of atheism around the world. What was virtually unthinkable in the Western world a few hundred years ago, the notion that God does not exist, has since become an acceptable view in some circles made popular by the influential thinkers and writers such as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and so on. The publication of his book, The Origin of Species, in the 19th century, Charles Darwin gave atheism the fuel that it needed to invalidate the existence of God as creator and moral lawgiver.
After all, if God doesn't exist, then I'm free to determine my own morality and my own reality. I can do whatever I want without any fear of consequences. That's the allure of atheism.
However, we read in Psalm 14.1 that the fool has said in his heart that there is no God. It is in man's pridefulness that he does not seek the Lord, Psalm 10.4. Furthermore, with the denial of God, Psalm 53 says that unbelief produces only corruption and an abomination of justice. And history has certainly proven that to be true as well.
The most oppressive, deadly atrocities of the 20th century were carried out by atheistic regimes. Atheism is not just foolish and corrupt, it is also wicked. But how can we know that there is a God? I think that's a question that plagues so many people today, so many younger people today.
Where is God? They look around, where is he? How can I know that there is such a God? And the answer is revelation. Revelation. And what is revelation? Well, very simply, if I could define it, it is the act of God revealing himself to human beings.
And this takes place primarily two ways. One through something called general or natural revelation, and the second one is through something called special revelation. General revelation consists of God's self-disclosure through what he has made.
And this occurs through three primary vehicles when we talk about, again, general revelation. First, he reveals himself through the creation itself, through what he has made. The second way he reveals himself in general revelation is through acts of providence, how he interacts with the events of the world.
And the third way is through human conscience. Special revelation, on the other hand, is God's specific words that are given to us. It is his revealed Word, his commands, his declaration of truth and wisdom.
Hebrews 1 says that it comes through the written Word, which is Scripture, which then reflects God's ultimate revelation, which is in his Son, Jesus Christ. Every word uttered by Jesus Christ is pure revelation, which was written down and added as the Holy Scripture. But we might add one caveat here, as we consider this topic of revelation, that general revelation does not and cannot lead anyone to a saving relationship with God.
Well, why is that? Well, because neither the creation or providence or conscience can convey God's law to us. It cannot warn of divine judgment. It cannot reveal Christ.
It cannot express the truths of the gospel or exhort a person toward saving faith. Only special revelation can do that. But thankfully, God has given us both.
And as we see the brilliance of this revelation expressed in many places, there are very few as beautiful and as impactful as what we find in Psalm 19. And so I would invite you to turn with me this morning to Psalm 19. Psalm 19, and I'm just going to back up and kind of give some general comments here.
If you're like me, just as a regular Christian living out the life, it's very easy to look at books like the book of Psalms, 150 Psalms, and have a hard time distinguishing 1 from 10, verses 49, verses 53. And the only solution to get through that and to figure that out is to really zero in and focus on the key themes and the temperament and the style of each individual one. And I do believe that as you grow in your faith, as we grow in our faith, our affinity towards certain Psalms will increase, and then over the course of time, you begin to love them for what they actually are.
Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, that's a favorite one of many. I know I've shared with you before, when you're feeling down and blue, go to Psalm 42, helps you in your spiritual depression. There's lots and lots of Psalms that can minister truth and comfort and illumination.
But Psalm 19 is really, if I'm allowed to say this, in a class all in its own. Again, it's been a favorite of many throughout the course of human history. In fact, C.S. Lewis deemed it to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.
And frankly, it is hard to disagree with that. But Psalm 19, if you were to look at it here, it bears a superscription, something at the beginning telling us that it was indeed written for the purpose of being sung. If you look at Psalm 19, right at the top there, it says it's for the choir director.
This is an ancient worship leader, music leader that would lead God's people in song. And then it also tells us that it is a Psalm of David. It was written by David, the king of Israel, sometime in the early 10th century, right around that period.
But in this Psalm, we see both expressed revelation, both general revelation and special revelation, expressed together in a simple and poetical brilliance. And so we look at this together. This is Psalm 19.
The heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands. Day to day pours forth speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words.
Their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth and their utterances to the end of the world. In them he has placed a tent for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber.
It rejoices as a strong man to run his course. It's rising as from one end of the heavens and it's circuit to the other end of them. And there is nothing hidden from its heat.
The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true.
They are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them your servant is warned.
In keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of my hidden faults. Also, keep back your servant from presumptuous sins.
Let them not rule over me. Then I will be blameless and I shall be acquitted of a great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer." Beautiful Word of God.
Now, in many ways, when you read this psalm, it feels almost like you've taken two psalms and smooshed them together. The tone of both of these parts is a little different. Verses 1 through 6 really extols the glory of God's creation, or the glory of God in His creation, while verses 7 through 14 expound on the power of God's written Word to convict and to sanctify.
But really, both are greatly needed. And so, for our purposes today, we're only going to look at God's general or natural revelation in verses 1 through 6. And then, Lord willing, we're going to consider verses 7 through 14 next week when we get together here. But if you were to look at verses 1 through 6, the first stanza of this psalm, it paints two distinct pictures.
There's really two things here. The first one is of the skies in verses 1 through 4, and then the other is of the sun at the end of verse 4 going through verse 6. However, both of these pictures of the sky and the sun, they function as something known as metonymy. Metonymy.
Well, what is metonymy? Well, it's a fancy way of talking about a… it's a figure of speech where one specific thing is meant to represent the whole of something it's a part of. So, let me just give you an example of a metonymy. When we talk about the crown, we say the crown represents the entire monarchy of a nation.
The White House represents… it's one house that represents the entire government of the United States. So, it's one small little piece that represents the whole. That's metonymy.
And here, we see the sky and the sun doing the same thing, functioning to represent the whole grandeur of the created order. Here, David begins with this sweeping declaration here. Verse 1, he says, the heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
And so, immediately, David begins here with a parallelism. Well, what is a parallelism? It's just like you might expect that parallel word to mean. We see that there are two things paralleled here in the heavens and the expanse.
Those are parallels. They're almost the same thing. And then we see these words telling and declaring.
Again, parallels. And then we see another kind of parallel. They're not exactly the same, but we do see them alongside one another.
He parallels the glory of God expressed through the work of His hands. But I want to look a little bit deeper into this verse here. This Hebrew word for heavens is shamayim, excuse me.
And in some uses here, this word, the heavens, refers to the dwelling place of God. So, you could say that the Lord is dwelling in the heavens, and you're talking about really the throne room of heaven, the dwelling place of God in His transcendent space here. But here, we see that the heavens and the expanse here are talking about the sky, namely, the realm that contains the sun and the stars and the planets and the space and so on.
So, essentially, it's the creation that we see above us, the sky, the expanse. When you look up into the sky and you see everything that is contained in it, that's what we're talking about here. In fact, these are the heavens that God created on the second day, Genesis 1.8. God created the great expanse, and the Bible says He called that expanse heaven.
Of course, numerous cultures have looked up into the sky, and they've looked up into the heavens, and they've seen that, marveled at it, and they've taken opportunity to then go ahead and worship those elements. They worship the sun, they worship the moon, they worship the stars. In fact, it's in this false worship that Romans 1.22 says, professing to be wise, they became fools by exchanging the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of, essentially, the created order.
They look up into the sky, and they don't see the work of God's hands. They see the things He's made, and they say, those are our gods. It's just like when Israel was led by the hand of the Lord through the Red Sea and into the wilderness, through the wilderness, and yet they go create a golden calf and say, that's our God.
It's the same concept. So, the heavens and the created order are not gods to be worshipped, but rather, the heavens declare the God that is to be worshipped. You see the difference? The heavens and their expanse, they proclaim, they tell, they declare the glory of God.
Interestingly enough, if you look at verse 1 here, verse 1 does not use, in the Hebrew, it does not use the covenant name for God, which is Yahweh, and again, in the Hebrew. Instead, it gives the more general use of God, El. So, it's, again, a generalized reference to God.
Now, this doesn't diminish the Lord at all, but rather, it's talking about the creation versus the Creator. It's talking about God. It's used to declare His deity.
More than this, the heavens declare His majesty. They even declare His glory. But what is His glory? The word glory in Hebrew is kabod, which is a reference to heaviness or weightiness.
The sense is the transcendent greatness of God. Imagine looking at a large, large mountain and trying to wrap your arms around it and pick it up. I mean, the greatness and the magnificence of such a mountain, such a structure would just be too heavy.
Or even we consider the gravitas of something when you realize that there's a truth or a mystery or a secret or a knowledge or a doctrine or an idea that's just too grand for you. You say, oh, that's weighty. That's heavy.
We use that word in our slang, don't we? And so, that's the sense of it. That God's glory is His heaviness, His weightiness, His transcendence. But what exactly is the glory itself? In one sense, and scholars have talked about the sense of God's glory, but in one sense, God's glory is the compounded manifestation of all of His attributes.
I used to say in years past, I used to define the glory of God as the sum of God's attributes, but that kind of dips its toe a little bit across the lines of divine simplicity. It's not that God is all of His love plus His holiness plus His righteousness. It's not that He's the sum if you could add up all these things and end up with God, but rather it is the totality of who He is.
Again, this doctrine of divine simplicity is that all that is God is God. There's a wonderful book by James Dalzell, who's actually currently, he's in the hospital. He's had a terrible accident.
If you think to pray for Dr. James Dalzell, please do so. But he's written a wonderful book called All That Is in God. I think we actually have a copy downstairs in the basement, but wonderful book about just the nature of the existence of God as pure God, pure being.
And that's the sense of it is that all that is the majesty and the wonder and the glory of God, that is the expression of who He is. His love, His justice, His power, His holiness, His wisdom, His grace, His kindness, all of who He is displayed is His glory. To behold God is to behold the glory of God.
We might call this His intrinsic glory. But we also consider something else called His ascribed glory. It is the majesty of who He is through what He has done.
Let me just give you an example of that. Psalm 8, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth, who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens. This concept of taking the resplendent glory of God that's been painted on the canvas of the creation and seeing that as a display of what He is or who He is.
It's not that the heavens don't contain the glory of God, but rather they bear witness to it. You see the difference? It's not that the mountains and the trees and the sky and the clouds, that that is the containing of His glory, but they paint the picture. I don't want to keep on pushing the distinction here, but it's really important because there's some heresies that creep up if we get this wrong, but we'll talk about that.
So all of these things, the heavens, they don't, again, contain it themselves, but they ascribe glory to God. And furthermore, it says they testify to the work of His hands. Here, David is using what's called an anthropomorphism.
It's God's hands. Now, we know that God doesn't have hands in the way that you and I have hands. God is Spirit, the Bible says.
He has no hands that we might consider. But the image here of using hands and ascribing that to God, hands convey power, hands convey capability, workmanship, that God rolled up His sleeves, so to speak, and got down and dirty with His hands and made things and gave life to them. There is a power and a brilliance of the work of His hands that we can see His glory.
And so, that's the sense of it. That's why the psalmist would use this concept of God's hands. It's to show the workmanship, the capability, the power of God.
Verse 2 continues the language of the creation account from Genesis. Specifically, the institution of the day and the night. Look at verse 2. David says, day to day pours forth speech and night to night reveals knowledge.
And so, here we see this timeline that's progressing here, this repeated concept of day to day and then night to night. And so, the imagery that we see here is this concept of the days and the weeks and the months and the years and the centuries and the millennia just rolling on and on and on. And as they're rolling on and on, day to day to day to day to day, the glory of God is being displayed continuously.
In other words, it's not just a big flash and explosion and then it's gone. Day to day, night to night, over and over again, continuously, the creation is declaring and expressing and professing the glory of God. But David turns an interesting phrase here.
He says, day to day pours forth speech. The word translated pours forth literally refers to the bubbling of a raging river. If you ever stood and listened to a river, if you can ever get alone quiet enough away from all the noise of the world and just go sit by a river or a brook and you just sit there and you listen to the sound of it just bubbling and gurgling and ever notice that it doesn't stop.
There's never a time when it stops. I have two small streams that kind of abut my property and I could go over and just listen and just constantly. And it's been there for probably a long time, a long time.
But it just keeps on bubbling and bubbling and it's this constant dialogue that you hear in the water and it's endless. It doesn't stop. It's day and it's night.
In the same way, the creation bubbles forth. It dialogues with us. This constant refrain of speech as if to say, the creation as if to say, there is a God and He's glorious.
There is a God and He's glorious. There is a God and He's glorious. It's just the refrain is over and over and over again and it never stops day to day, night to night forever.
Just like in verse 1, we have a parallelism here. In verse 2, whereby the day pours forth speech, the night it reveals knowledge. In other words, the creation isn't just talking.
It's not just babbling. It's also revealing the knowledge of God. In other words, the knowledge that God exists.
And then we see this surprise twist here in verse 3. Look at verse 3. David says, there is no speech, nor are there words. Their voice is not heard. Well, wait a second.
I just spent three minutes telling you that the creation's talking. So here's a riddle for you. What preaches sermons and yet has no voice? The creation.
The creation does that. He says, even though the heavens and the expanse are declaring and telling of the glory of God, even though they speak and they reveal knowledge, they have no discernible speech. There are no words.
And so unlike the Disney movies, unlike the fantasy books and stories that we hear, there are no audible voices in the woods. You can't go outside and all of a sudden the trees are talking to you. The mountains don't talk to you.
There is no voice. In fact, a talking forest is the religion of animism and spiritual ecology that's worked its way into our culture. It's essentially pantheism that God is the creation.
That's why I made such a stink about differentiating between the creation declaring and displaying and ascribing the glory of God and actually containing it itself. God is not the creation. The creation is not God.
And so for pantheism to say that the creation is God, the Bible actually says quite the opposite. Again, Romans 1.20, since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made for what purpose so that they are without excuse. And so the creation, it displays the Creator.
The creation talks to us every day and it says, there is a God and He's glorious. There is a God and He's glorious. There is a God and He's glorious.
Are you listening? Even though the creation does not have an audible voice, it still speaks. Verse 4, their line has gone out through all the earth and their utterances to the end of the world. Now, some of your Bible translations, if you're using maybe an ESV or an NIV, you might see a different word here in verse 4. In fact, many Hebrew scholars, they go back and forth about the original text, whether or not it's referring to the word line, which is what the NASB, New American Standard, contains, or if it's the word voice or cry in ESV or NIV or other verses.
So, for example, ESV, I think it's ESV, says, their voice has gone out through all the earth or something like that. And so on the surface, that actually tends to make sense considering we have, for the third time, a parallelism. Both lines in verse 4 say essentially the same thing.
But other scholars will actually argue to the opposite. And they'll say, even though that makes sense on the surface, that yes, the voice goes out to all the earth, the utterances to the end of the world, yes, that makes a lot of sense logically in the English, but they would argue that line is the correct translation because the line is referring to a measuring line. And they connect that concept of a measuring line to something kind of like Isaiah 28.10, which speaks about the Word of the Lord being that which is line upon line, precept upon precept.
So, they connect it to the line, the lines of Scripture, essentially. Now, we're not going to be able to settle the textual debate here and now, and frankly, I'm split. I really don't know which is the more correct translation, whether it's supposed to be the voice of the creation or the line upon line of expression of God's Word going out, but the testimony is going to be the same here.
Whether we're talking about the voice of the creation or the line of God's Word, it's the same truth. You see what I'm saying? That ultimately, the testimony of God goes throughout, through all the earth to the ends of the world. It is interesting, though, that the Apostle Paul quotes this verse in Romans 10.18 as a proof text, essentially saying that the whole world cannot claim ignorance of God.
In fact, he ties it to special revelation. He says in verse 17 of Romans 10, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. He was talking about special revelation now, the Word of Christ.
But then he kind of answers an objection, a hypothetical, because an opponent would say, well, surely they've never heard, have they? Then he answers in his own verse, he says, well, indeed they have. And he quotes Psalm 19.4. Their line or their voice has gone out to all the world. The utterance is to the end of the earth.
So essentially, he's just saying there's no excuse for humanity. When humanity wakes up and says, oh, I didn't know that there was a God. I didn't know that He was going to come and talk to us and do things and save and, you know, I didn't know.
And Paul says, no, you do know, because He's here. We can see the evidences. The creation itself is screaming at us that there is a God and He's glorious.
And so, therefore, we have no excuse. The revelation of God's displayed glory is everywhere, all around the world. Every tribe, nation, every culture can see the glory of God.
And what's amazing about this is that the display that we see from country to country, continent to continent, climate to climate, changes. That's why we like to travel, right? We go to this place and we see this display and we go, wow. Then we travel to this place and we go to see this display and we say, oh, that's really cool, right? Why do we like to travel? Because we like to see different displays.
But guess what? It isn't about the display. It's about the glory of God that we can perceive through what He has made. That's why we like it.
It's because we can see the fingerprint of His hand on the creation and yet no one can claim ignorance. Now, at this point in verse 4, at the end of verse 4, David sort of pivots here. Now, if I were to renumber these verses, now the numbers aren't authoritative, that's just a system that we've devised in the course of human history.
But if I had to choose, I would stick verse 5 where it says, in them He has placed a tent for the sun. It's a slightly different concept, but I'm not going to split hairs. I'm thankful for how the Bible has worked.
But here's the idea. There's a shift here in David's thinking. He moves from the revelation of God displayed in the heavens, in the sky, to the witness of the sun, the sun.
End of verse 4 here, he says, in them, in the heavens, He has placed a tent for the sun. This is highly poetic language to describe the day-night cycle here. Now, at night, our perception is that the sun is in its hiding place.
I mean, on the most simplistic level, like when your kids ask you questions for the very first time, they might say, hey, Dad, where did the sun go? And what do we say? Oh, it's sleeping, right? We're not going to say, well, there's actually an axis and we don't do that. We have very simplistic ways of thinking about it, and most of culture in human history has. We just think about it in a general sense.
Well, the sun comes up, and then it goes down, and it's gone, and it'll come back in a couple hours. There's this concept here, this poetical concept that the sun shows up, and then at a certain point, it goes and it hides. It goes into its tent.
It goes into a different dwelling place, but then it's going to rise again the next day. We've always understood this concept here, and so in its rising, David here, he uses two metaphors. Because you might say, what is that cycle, this day-night cycle? What is that like? And verse 5 says, in the morning, it is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber.
Now, interpreters have viewed this verse in two different ways here. On one level, this could be referring to a bridegroom leaving his chamber or his pavilion before the wedding day to go and retrieve his bride because he's about to go get married that day. And so in that way, in that sense, he's excited, and he's energized, and he's looking forward to what's coming.
So in that way, there is an excitement about the coming day. However, other interpreters have seen this verse as the bridegroom leaving his chamber after the wedding night. If that's the sense of the imagery, then he is both gratified, but he's also energized about the new day.
He wakes up the next morning, and he's very happy. He's very excited, and he just has the energy, the strength of 10,000 horses, and he just wants to go start his day. So either way here, whether it's one interpretation or the other, and there are conservative scholars who interpret it both ways.
I don't want to split the difference here and say, oh, it's this or that. I think the imagery here, again, is clear that there is a joy here, that the bridegroom is modeling. There's this energy, there's this excitement that is inherent in each new day.
And we feel that, don't we? At the end of the night, when we're about to go to sleep, we don't feel very energized. I mean, I go to bed every night, and I'm just done. That's it.
I can't do anymore. My brain can't work. I don't want to deal with any problems.
I can't do anything. There's this joke. My wife's downstairs teaching, but they kind of have this joke where we go to bed, and we get it.
We pull the sheets up, and we're settled for the night, and she always does this. She does it to get my goat. She says, oh, honey, is the door locked? The first time she did it, I was like, oh, I don't know.
And I got up, and I got out of bed, and I went, and I checked, and oh, it's locked. And now she does it, I'm like, I don't care. I don't care if the door is locked.
But there's a sense in which, when you get up in the morning, it's a very different thing, right? It's a new day. It's a new day. I've got energy.
I'm going to have breakfast. I have all these plans for the day. I mean, there's so much promise in the new day, right? That's the same idea here.
The rising sun, it has this energy. It's like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like I'm going to go face the day. And then similarly, he says, the rising sun is also such that it rejoices as a strong man to run his course.
Well, at the start of each new day, the sun is like a supercharged athlete before a competition, right? He's done all of his exercises. He's done his stretches. He's got his diet.
He's got his protein smoothie. He's ready to go. He's amped up.
That's the sense of this new day beginning, right? And then we see verse 6. It's rising. It's from one end of the heavens, and it's circuit to the other end of them. There is nothing hidden from its heat.
And so now the sun, it's made its way. It's ready to rise, and now it's rising. And the sun rises from one end, and we know its course, right? It's a predictable path.
It follows the same path across the sky, and then it disappears into the line of the earth, the sunset. But while the sun is out, it's shining. And David says there's nothing hidden from its heat.
How does this connect to general revelation? What does this have to do with what David is talking about here? Well, in the same way that the heavens and the sun are on display to every single person on the planet, so is the evidence for God. In other words, God isn't buried in some cave, and some small handful of experienced adventurers have to go and find Him. There isn't any kind of a human elite that's going to go dig up God somehow, and then have to come back and report to the rest of us, oh, there's a God, and we just found Him.
It doesn't work like that. The evidence of God is as bright as the sun, and it's expansive as the sky, and nobody has any excuse not to believe that He exists. In fact, Romans 1.18, a passage you've already cited a couple times, says that the unbelieving world has gone the other way, where the evidence of God is so expansive and so prevalent that they have to turn around and suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
Because the fingerprint of God is everywhere, and the unbelieving world says, oh, He's not really there. That's just nature. That's just evolution.
That's just this. It's a denial of the existence of God. But the logic here is that to deny the existence of God would be like denying the existence of the sky or the sun.
How would you do that? You'd have to look down at the ground and say, there is no sky. You'd have to close your eyes all the time and say, there is no sun. But Psalm 19 is clear that all of creation exists for the purpose of declaring the glory of God, and yet there's even more for us to consider here.
Because how does this connect to the rest of the revelation? This is just one psalm, right? This is a psalm that's existing in the Old Testament. How does this connect? Is there more going on here? I believe there is. Because Colossians 117 says that it is Jesus Christ who in fact holds the creation together.
He holds the whole cosmos in His hands. John 1 says that not only did He create everything, but He uses it to display the glory of the Father. The Son is doing this.
Hebrews 1.3 says that Christ, who is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His nature, upholds all things by the word of His power. So the creation isn't just sitting out here by itself, on its own, with its own power and its own strength. It's actually the Lord Jesus Christ who upholds all of this in the work of His hands, by the word of His power.
And so in a very real sense here, the creation which functions as general revelation to bear witness to the glory and the existence of God, is placed there and sustained by the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus has placed this here to point us to the Lord, the Lord God, the Father. The heavens belong to Christ.
The sun belongs to Christ. In the very same way John 1.18 says that it is actually Christ. Christ explains the Father.
And one of the ways He does that is through what He has made. But I think there's even more going on here than even just that. Because even if you consider the symbolism of Psalm 19, it's really hard to ignore some of the parallels even to who we know or what we know about Jesus Christ.
Think about the sun for a second. When the Apostle John beholds Christ in Revelation 1.16, he says His face was like the sun, shining in its strength. Matthew, Mark, and Luke describe that very same thing.
When they talk about the mount of transfiguration, when Peter, James, and John are up on the mountain, they see Christ transfigured before them. It says in the same passage that His face was shining like the sun. John calls Jesus the true light which is coming into the world, John 1.9. And so in many ways, symbolically, Christ is like the sun.
What about another symbol here? Well, Psalm 45. Psalm 45 describes a royal wedding scene, a royal wedding scene. And Hebrews 1 verses 8 through 9 attributes certain details of that psalm, Psalm 45, of the royal bridegroom as being Jesus Christ.
In fact, Ephesians 5 likens the same imagery here, likens Christ to the husband of the church, the bridegroom of the bride here. Even John the Baptist says the same thing. He likens Jesus to a bridegroom.
And so in many ways, Christ is like this bridegroom that we see here in the psalm. What about the strongman, the warrior? Psalm 24.8, the King of glory, the Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. That's referring to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Even the imagery of the creation's voice going out to the end of the earth. The scripture refers that that word belongs to Jesus. Ultimately, He's the one.
It's His voice that we hear speaking through the Word of God. It's ultimately His voice that speaks to us through what He's made here. One more, Proverbs 8 verses 22 to 31.
Has historically been ascribed to or describes the glory of Christ as the wisdom of the Lord, the wisdom and knowledge of God which existed before the world was created. And so what does this show? It shows us that the creation does not exist unto itself. God didn't just make all this, drop us here, walk away and say, well, that looks nice.
That's not why all this is here. All of this is here. The creation exists not to display its own glory, but to show us God's glory.
I remember having a conversation one time with a younger guy and I was just talking to him about the gospel and about Jesus. And I just asked him some questions and asked him, I said, well, you know, do you believe that God exists? And he says, I don't know. He kind of hemmed and hawed and he kind of thought about it.
He was being honest. I appreciated that about what he said to me. But he says, you know, I think I'd have to see Him.
I think you'd have to come down and show Himself to me for me to believe. And I kind of would, I just sort of froze for a second. I'm thinking, well, he already did that and nobody believed in him.
But in that moment, I says, well, I said, do me a favor. And I opened the window. I said, where do you think all this came from? He said, I don't know.
I said, God made this. Everything that has been designed has a designer. Everything that's been made has a maker.
Where did all this come from? He says, I don't know. And I said, God made all this. You want to see that God exists? Look at the creation.
That's why it's here. By the way, we're part of the creation. God created us for the purpose of displaying His glory as well.
Christ ordained the creation to testify about the existence of God to magnify His glory. And there's coming a day when according to Revelation 21-23, let me just read this to you. The city of New Jerusalem, He says, will have no need of the sun.
The new heavens, the new earth, the new Jerusalem will have no need of the sun or of the moon to shine upon it. Listen to this. For the glory of God has illumined it and its lamp is the lamb.
There is coming a day when we won't need the sun. We won't need the moon. We won't need any of this because God Himself will display all the radiance and brightness and light and glory that we would need.
One day the creation won't need to declare the glory of God because we will only see the glory of God displayed in the world. And what a day that's going to be. And I don't have any idea about what life is going to be like during that kingdom period of time, during the new creation.
I don't see the future into that. Scripture has a little bit, but we don't know what it's all going to look like. But there's something in the back of my mind that says whatever dwelling place we have, we open the door, the sun shines in, and we realize in that moment it's actually not the sun.
That we're actually beholding the majestic, glorious, brilliant face of Christ every day. And His glory shines on us and enlivens us. And not just on that one specific day, but day to day to day to day.
So the question then to consider is, do you know Him? Do you know the One who's created all of these things? The heavens and the earth, humanity, the sky, the clouds, the birds, everything. Do you know Him? Well, you know Him if you know His Son. His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who Himself is God in human flesh, who came to this world.
God in human flesh, truly God, truly man, lived a perfect life here and then gave up that life as a sacrifice, as an offering to pay for the sins that you and I have committed. Because on our own we would be condemned to death because of our sin, and yet the glory of God was displayed in Christ, that He came to seek that which was lost. He died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins.
He was buried, and then He rose again, bright and shining as the sun, to bring us new life and to ascend back into the heavens. And the Bible says that one day He will return, and the Bible says every eye will see Him. Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
One day everyone will see Him, but the question is, do you see Him now by faith? Do you know Him? Have you been forgiven of your sins? Have you confessed your sins to Him and found eternal life in Him? The Bible says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. Don't run away. Don't suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
Turn to Jesus Christ by faith. Confess your sins. Find your life in Him, and He will give you life eternal.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for the brilliance and the beauty of Psalm 19, and we haven't even started getting into Your Word, the doctrine of the Word of God yet.
And Lord, we trust that that will also be glorious to our eyes. But Lord, even what You revealed to us in the creation, the heavens and the sun and everything else, Lord, it displays the glory of who You are. Lord, it's very easy for us to feel like the world, the creation, the universe revolves around us, that we're the center.
But Lord, that's error. Ultimately, everything revolves around You and what You have revealed. And Lord, we are the clay.
We are the creation. And we were built and designed and created to worship You, to honor You, to glorify You. And so Lord, I pray that You would help us to do that this week.
As we look out to this beautiful creation around us, Lord, let our minds and our hearts repeat the refrain and join with the creation, telling us that there is a God and He's glorious. Help us, O Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.