Sermon series: A SUMMER IN THE PSALMS

Psalm 19 THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD
or
THE PERFECT REVELATION OF THE LORD

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices like a strong man to run its race.
Its rising is from one end of heaven, and its circuit to the other end; and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is true, making wise the simple; the statutes 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, and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them Your servant is warned, and in keeping them there is great reward.
Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and I shall be innocent of great transgression.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer."

Message: The book of nature has three leaves, heaven, earth, and sea, of which heaven is the first and the most glorious, and by its aid we are able to see the beauties of the other two.
THE HEAVENS! Of the hundreds of occurrences of the word HEAVEN in an English Bible, almost all of them are translations of the Hebrew word SHAMAYIM and the

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Greek word OURANOS. The Hebrew word means literally "the heights," while the Greek word has a related but slightly different meaning, "that which is raised up."
Considering all the various shades of meaning which may be said to attach to the original words, and to the English word, it is undeniable that the primary meaning of the actual word HEAVEN is THAT WHICH IS ABOVE."
The word HEAVEN in the Bible may refer to one of three major realms: (1) the atmospheric heavens which are immediately above us, in which we live and move; (2) the stellar heavens, which ultimately must include the entire universe; and (3) the heaven of heavens, the abode of God.
The first of the three heavens depicted for us in the Holy Scriptures is the atmospheric heaven, specifically the atmosphere which surrounds our globe. The blanket of air that surrounds the earth, that which we breathe, is contained within the space known as the troposphere, which does not extend more than twenty miles above the earth.
All normal clouds are within a distance of seven miles above the earth. From twenty to thirty miles beyond, the space is known as the stratosphere, while the space from thirty to fifty miles high is known as the mesosphere. "The ionosphere ranges from fifty, up to three hundred miles. The exosphere, beginning at two hundred or three hundred miles, can be argued as extending anywhere from eight hundred to twenty thousand miles."
THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD!
The HEAVENS are plural for their variety, comprising the watery heavens with their clouds of countless forms, the aerial heavens with their calms and tempests, the solar heavens with all the glories of the day, and the starry heavens with all the marvels of the night; what the Heaven of heavens must be hath not entered into the heart of man, but there is chief all things are telling the glory of God!
Our earth is one of nine planets revolving around the sun, and has a diameter of 8,000 miles. Its mass is estimated to be 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons! The distance from the earth to the moon is 250,000 miles; while the distance to the sun is 93,000,000 miles.
The sun has a diameter of 866,500 miles, and a mass 330,000 times that of the earth. The sun--and here the mind begins to stagger at such enormous distances and

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innumerable masses--is only one star in a galaxy of some one hundred billion other stars (100,000,000,000!), a galaxy that has a mass of about seventy billion times that of the sun.
Distances now become so great that we will find it so cumbersome to use the measure of a mile that it is necessary to construct a more practical unit which is called a LIGHT YEAR. Light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second (generally referred to as m.p.s.) or 11,160,000 miles in one minute. (The sun is eight light minutes away.) A LIGHT YEAR, then, means the distance light will travel in one year, or 5,880,000,000,000 miles. Our solar system has a diameter of 660 light minutes; but the galaxy of which it is a very small part has a diameter of 100,000 light years!
THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD!
Enormous as is the galaxy in which our solar system moves, it is only one of innumerable other galaxies, possibly one thousand million of them, the nearest of which is the Andromeda galaxy, 1,500,000 light years distant!
If in each of these thousand million galaxies there are, as astronomers believe, 100,000 million stars, then in the entire universe there are some 150 million million million (150,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars!
THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD!
On a clear night as many as 2,000 stars can be seen with the naked eye by a person standing at one spot. The total number of stars visible in the entire sky is estimated at about 6,000. By the one-inch telescope, some 225,000 stars can be observed. With the one-hundred-inch telescope about 1,500,000,000 stars. However, with the two-hundred-inch telescope nearly one billion galaxies are brought within observation, which includes objects as far away as two billion light years!
"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained (put in place), What is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." (Psa. 8:3-5)
Probably the most frequently quoted volume on cosmology is the one by Dr. E. A. Milne, the late Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, who concludes his work with the simple statement: "I

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do most fervently believe that this universe was created by Almighty God."
The second chapter of Genesis opens with a statement regarding this initial creative activity that contains a word not found in the earlier pronouncement: "And the heavens and the earth were finished and all the HOST of them."
Spurgeon writes in his great commentary: "The heavens declare, or are declaring, for the continuance of their testimony is intended by the participles employed; every moment God's existence, power, wisdom and goodness, are being sounded abroad by the heavenly heralds which shine upon us from above."
"He who would guess at divine sublimity should gaze upward into the starry vault; he who would imagine infinity must peer into the boundless expanse; he who desires to see divine wisdom should consider the balancing of the orbs; he who would attain some conception of divine power, greatness, and majesty, must estimate the forces of attraction, the magnitude of the fixed stars, and the brightness of the whole celestial train!
It is not merely glory that the heavens declare, but THE GLORY OF GOD, for they deliver to us such unanswerable arguments for a conscious, intelligent, planning, controlling, and presiding Creator, that no unprejudiced person can remain unconvinced by them. Scientists who have committed themselves to a non-biblical perspective have often used their platform as scientists to proclaim that the universe "could have come about by natural means," as astronomer Victor J. Stenger states, and that "the universe exploded out of nothingness."
Those scientists who have been honest about the question of where matter and energy originated have admitted two things: first, that the problem is impossible to solve through science, and second, that this state of affairs is exceedingly frustrating to the scientist.
Internationally respected astronomer (and self-confessed agnostic) Robert Jastrow admits that scientists have been "traumatized" by coming up against a problem that must forever remain beyond them. In his book, GOD AND THE ASTRONOMERS, Jastrow says, "The development is unexpected because science has had such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time."

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The situation violates a deeply held "religious faith" of scientists in science itself, the belief that science should eventually be able to discover the forces and laws to explain EVERYTHING. After all, Carl Sagan tells us that science is "applicable to everything. With this tool we vanquish the impossible."
But Jastrow writes: "Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proven that the Universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into the Universe? And science cannot answer these questions, because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the Universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination."
Jastrow says that the universe began "under circumstances that seem to make it impossible--not just now, but ever--to find out what force or forces brought the world into being at that moment."
Anticipating all such questions about the unknowable moment of creation, Isaiah tells us that no one can fathom the understanding of the Creator (Isaiah 40:28). But as to who or what is the cause for this effect, the Bible raises the question, Shouldn't we have known the answer all along? "Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created these?...Do you not know? Have you not heard? THE LORD IS THE EVERLASTING GOD, THE CREATOR..."(Isaiah 40:26a, 28a).
Compared to the alternative of supposing that matter and energy somehow always existed, British physicist Edmund Whittaker says, "It is simpler to postulate creation EX NIHILO--Divine will constituting Nature from nothingness."
Physicist Barry Parker agrees: "We do, of course, have an alternative. We could say that there was no creation and that the universe has always been here. But this is even more difficult to accept than creation."
After considering the discovery that our universe has a beginning and that science is incapable of ever discovering what went before, astronomer Jastrow concludes his book:
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the

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final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD!
and our Psalm continues...
AND THE FIRMAMENT SHOWS HIS HANDIWORK.

The N.I.V. translation says: "the skies proclaim the work of His hands." He who looks up to the firmament and then writes himself down an atheist, brands himself at the same moment as an idiot or a liar.
It is fascinating to observe the various astronomical discoveries of this century and see how they all lead us back to God and the Genesis account of this vast universe.
Discovery #1 In 1919, during a solar eclipse, Sir Arthur Eddington observed the bending of starlight passing the sun, matching the effect predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. If correct, this theory of gravity means that the universe must be expanding. Einstein eventually renounced his belief in an eternal universe and admitted that the universe must have had a beginning. Astrophysicist George Smoot says: "Until the late 1910's, humans were as ignorant of cosmic origins as they had ever been. Those who didn't take Genesis literally had no reason to believe there had been a beginning."
Discovery #2 In 1927, Astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the galaxies are all retreating from us. The more distant galaxies (which show us the more distant past) are retreating from us faster than the nearer galaxies, just as one would expect if the universal expansion is slowing down from an initial surge. Famed astronomer Robert Jastrow says: "The Hubble Law is one of the great discoveries in science; it is one of the main supports of the scientific story of Genesis."
Discovery #3 In the 1970's, astronomers observe that galaxies are distributed more densely--and quasars become abundant--as they look farther into space, indicating that the universe has changed with time. These observations argue against an eternal cosmos and for a creation event.
Discovery #4 In 1992, NASA's COBE satellite team discovered the predicted ripples in the cosmic background radiation. George Smoot, the team's leader, called these seeds for future galaxy superclusters "fingerprints from the Maker."

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Among all the ancient peoples, only the Hebrews got their cosmology right. While the rest of the world believed in a magical, eternal universe that gave birth to the gods, only they believed in an eternal, transcendent God who gave the universe its beginning.
Like every cause, the Cause of the universe must be independent of its effect. Thus, the First Cause must be separate from the universe, not a part of it. From ancient times, the Bible has clearly presented God as non-physical, a Spirit who cannot be contained, even by the heavens. Unlike other ancient religious writings, the Bible prohibited the making of images of God, making it a point to teach that He is not a physical being.
The consensus of modern science is that the universe--and time itself--had a beginning. Nothing that is confined to time could have created the cosmos. God must not only be separate from His creation, but He must exist outside of time. Again, from ancient days, the Bible specifically defined God as the I AM, operating outside of time and existing before the universe He created!
BUT ONE MIGHT ASK...ISN'T RELIGION JUST A CULTURAL PHENOMENON, A FORM OF SUPERSTITION? For many it is. But perhaps the ultimate superstition is to believe that this physical universe is imbued with mystical powers that enable it to bring itself into existence and then to fine-tune itself.
In the matter of deciding who's running the universe, we all have just three choices: the universe itself, humankind, or God. Because a cause must precede its effect, the first two options violate logic, especially now that we know the universe did not exist in eternity past.
Atheism and pantheism are difficult to reconcile with modern findings. But the Bible perfectly, telling us that God is not just a force that's one with the universe, but who is separate from His creation. And like modern physics, the Bible points to a Creator who is super-intelligent, a perfectionist who cares about us a great deal!
THE FIRMAMENT SHEWETH HIS HANDIWORK!
and our Psalm continues:
"Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge."

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"Day unto day uttered speech" is better phrased..."Pours forth the story." The Hebrew habit of personifying the impersonal adds vividness to poetry such as this. Each day had a life of its own, and is pictured as coming forth from its dwelling to play its part at the appointed time, with a primary duty of declaring to its successor that God is glorious! Each new day brings a brand new sunrise, different, glorious, and full of new hope! Each sunset is different, gorgeous with radiant color or dulled by the mist or fog...but it tells its own story at the end of the day.
There is something majestic and exhilarating in the conception that each day is handing a trumpet to its successor to blow the same triumphant note; while as evening falls and the stars come out, each night does likewise!
As we gaze at the society of men, with their follies and their sins, the mind becomes confused and darkened; but if we turn to the day and to the night, we hear one unfailing song, "The hand that made us is divine."
Despite their endless speech, however, both day and night are enwrapped in silence. Indeed, their silence is part of their speech. For the heavens and the firmament are full of movement; the stars are not fixed points, but are "stars in their courses"; moreover, the movements are irresistible and inevitable. What does this speak of but power...God mighty and majestic power! The witnesses above cannot be slain or silenced; from their elevated seats they constantly preach the knowledge of God, unawed and unbiased by the judgments of men. Even the changes of alternating night and day are mutely eloquent, and light and shade equally reveal the Invisible One.
Spurgeon writes: "The lesson of day and night is one which it were well if all men learned. It should be among our day-thoughts and night-thoughts to remember the flight of time, the changeful character of earthly things, the brevity both of joy and sorrow, the preciousness of life, our utter powerlessness to recall the hours once flown, and the irresistible approach of eternity."
Day and night preach to us the value of TIME. Time wasted is existence used, it is life. Each moment is the meeting place of two eternities.