The Heavens are Telling
Scripture: Psalm 19:1-6 (NIV)
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.
Devotion:
Psalm
nineteen is clearly divisible into three sections. Verses one through six speak
of the heavens declaring the wonders of God in creation. Verses seven through ten
focus on the torah and how wonderful it is. The third section verses eleven
through fourteen focus on the psalmist. Therefore, we will treat each section
separately. It is important, however, to take in the whole psalm because the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
As one
commentator has said he considers, “Psalm 19 to be the greatest poem in the
Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world. As remarkable as the
lyrical quality of Psalm 19, however, is its extraordinary theological claim.
In essence, Psalm 19 affirms that love is
the basic reality.”[1] The Psalm
and its three parts together make it one of the best known of all the book of
Psalms.
The
first section famously starts out with the line, “The heavens declare the glory
of God.” Lifting a hymn of praise to the God who created the universe and
everything in it. The heavens speak without making a sound. (Although now
scientists say that the heavens have a hum that is outside the range of human
hearing.)
The
psalm then continues with an ode to the sun. Not making the sun into an object
of worship but centering its greatness in God the creator. The psalm says that
the sun is like a bridegroom who arrives at his wedding with great pomp. It
goes from one end of the heavens and goes to the other end affecting
everything with its presence.
The
church has seen this part of the psalm as a foreshadowing of the coming of
Jesus into the world. Christ’s presence changes everything for Christians. His
life, death, and resurrection/glorification have gone out to every corner of
the earth. There is nowhere his presence has not been felt. All creation hums
along with a song of grace as Jesus the Eternal Son makes His way through this
world.
[1]
J. Clinton McCann Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” in New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck, vol. 4 (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1994–2004), 753.
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