An Exposition of Psalm 19 (Part 2 of 4)

You may have heard people say things like, nature is my church. But that doesn't line up with what Scripture teaches. So how do we respond to that biblically? We'll find out today on Truth for Life as Alistair Begg is teaching from Psalm 19. We're beginning in verse 6.

He says, this rising is from the end of the heavens, its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. Life on our planet demands the existence of the sun. Without the sun, we're done. Now I'm writing my own poems.

Not as good, admittedly, but short. Despite, in my research, discovering a few folks who believe that we can actually survive on planet earth without the sun—I don't want to go into it, but you can find them, I hope you're not one of them—but they believe that we'll be able to live in some cave very close to the earth's, you know, essence, and so we'll be okay. And I have not signed up for that program, and I don't suggest you do either, because contemporary understanding of things is that without the sun, the existence of some kind of microorganism for a wee while near to the core of the earth is understandable. But in actual fact, nothing other than that would survive. Without the sun, all the plants die. There's no photosynthesis. The plants die, the animals that eat the plants die, and the homo sapiens who keep the animals in their yard who eat the plants will die as well.

Without the sun, it eventually proves to be impossible to maintain life on earth. And the psalmist here says that the sun, as it moves across the sky, is a picture of the life-giving power of the works of God. This is why, incidentally, in that little hymn where we sing that heaven above is softer blue, and earth around is sweeter green, and something lives in every hue that Christless eyes have never seen, and birds with gladder songs o'erflow, and earth with deeper beauty shine, since I know, as now I know, that I am his and he is mine—that the perspective of the believer in terms of the planets, in terms of science, in terms of the nature of the world in which we live, is actually understood within the context of God's revelation of himself.

It is the foolish man—not intellectually impoverished but morally deficient—it is the foolish man or woman who says, There is no God. Because the evidence is there for all to see. God has not left himself without a witness. Hence the song that we just sang. Creation sings the Father's song.

He calls the Son to wake the dawn and run the course of day. This is biblical theology. This is an understanding of the doctrine of creation.

Why, then, is it that since the evidence is incontrovertibly there in the sky, why is it that men and women do not see it? Well, don't you think that probably these opening verses of Psalm 19 are in the mind of the apostle Paul when he addresses that issue in writing the first chapter of his magnificent letter to Rome? If you turn there for a moment, I'll just remind you of it.

It's not unfamiliar territory, but it is timely for us to look at it once again. Romans chapter 1 and verse 18. And Paul writes, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. The inevitable response of holiness to sinfulness.

Because in their unrighteousness they, notice, suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. If we had had the opportunity to say, What are you thinking about here, Paul?

What do you have in mind? I think he would have said, Psalm 19. He said that, you know, day unto day utter speech, and night unto night shows knowledge. There's no voice, there's no sound, but the cry has gone out to the earth. Really?

Yeah! Because verse 20, his invisible attributes—namely, his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world. How? In the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. It is so clearly there, he says, the power of God, his invisible attributes, but in their unrighteousness they've suppressed the truth, they've exchanged the glory of God for that which is simply idolatry. And if you read the balance of Romans chapter 1, you realize that the result of this is the moral disintegration of human society. In other words, the suppression of the truth of the majesty of God's work in creation—to suppress that truth—has implications that are far beyond the intellectual dimensions of metaphysical thought. They actually impinge upon the way in which a culture finally crumbles. Because now that there is no creator to whom a man or a woman is accountable, then there is no reason to believe that man has been created in a certain way for a certain purpose.

Therefore, man is then free to choose his own destiny and his own plan, that there is no way in which this creator God should be controlling the nature of the formation of society, the multiplication of life, the framework of marriage, and so on. And as a result, foolishness, darkening of understanding, and the disintegration of a culture. Just a reading of history will make this point graphically for you. Where did the Roman Empire go? How did the Roman Empire finally collapse? How did Greece tumble in on itself?

How did Alexander the Great be so great and yet so hopeless in the end? The actual answer is to be found in the Scriptures. Now, you say, This is very, very important. Well, of course it's very important.

And it demands, you see, that we think biblically about these things. Some of us are afraid to—those of us who are no good at science—get frightened by scientists. I mean, I was frightened by my chemistry teacher, apart from anybody else. And the physics teacher, he was even… Well, he was on the same level. And the biology teacher, I could understand that. I mean, at least I had some kind of… Something I could look at that had to do with biology.

But beyond that, you tend to be frightened. You say, Oh, the great scientists have said, the scientists have said, the scientists have said. What do the scientists know? Science begins by the acknowledgment of phenomena that exists, which then has to be analyzed on the strength of what it is and whether it repeats itself and so on. Science actually has very little to say about the nature of divinity, about the notion of the establishing of the character and handiwork of God in the universe.

It's like walking in the dark with his hands out in front. And yet, despite that fact, that many within the framework of the church—and not least of all young people—have been cowed into fearfulness in our culture today, being prepared to give credence to all kinds of contemporary spiritualities, which are an expression of confusion, radical environmentalism, self-made New Age notions, all of which share this, that they are pantheistic, all of which are saying, somehow or another, that creation is confused with God and therefore that we may make contact with God if we look in on ourselves since we are part of creation. Now, what are we going to say about this when we have conversations? Well, we're going to say… My understanding of it is that the Bible makes it clear that there was no creation before the beginning. There was no creation before the beginning. In the beginning, God created. And until he created, there was no creation. So we teach our grandchildren, before there was time, before there was anything, there was God. And God made. God spoke, and it was. That's Genesis 1.

And he spoke, and it was, and he spoke, and it was. That's not a scientific explanation of the development of the universe. It is a declaration of the fact that behind the creation there is a Creator, and he is the one who has acted in this way. The creation is therefore not coeternal with God.

It's not coeternal with God. Before its beginning, God dwelt alone—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in perfect harmony, in perfect unity, in perfect security, in perfect fellowship, in need of no one and in need of nothing. And God created our world.

That's why we're saying this morning, this is my Father's world. He made this. The universe was made by him, it is providentially sustained by him, and it is utterly dependent upon him.

Okay? This is biblical theology. It was created by him, it is providentially sustained by him, and it is utterly dependent upon him. God is not in any way dependent on his created universe. God is not in any way to be confused with that which he has created. And if you're not alert to it, then get alert to it and pay attention to the message that is being conveyed on virtually a daily basis within our Western culture, and it is pantheistic from beginning to end—hence the inroads of Hinduism and so on in our environment.

Because it expresses all those things. As silly and as simple as it might be, let's see what Mother Nature has for us this morning. I don't suggest you start shouting at your television screen, but you should at least have read your Bible and be able to say, Oh dear, oh dear. Here we go again. The heavens declare the glory of God.

When Paul is invited to address the intelligentsia in Athens, after he's made a few introductory comments that are contextual and congenial, he starts right in on this, doesn't he? They said, Apparently, you've got some strange things going on in your head. And you're saying you are bringing some strange ideas to our ears. And we would like to know what these things mean. The question of meaning. Is there meaning in the universe? Are we simply a collocation of atoms? Are we just a bunch of molecules held in suspension? Is the world just an apple spinning tirelessly in space, you know?

You've got some strange stuff. Can you come and tell us about it? Paul said, Yeah, I'd be glad to. Where does he start? The God who made the world and everything in it. They're surrounded by all indications, covering their bases in the hope that somehow or another they haven't missed a God out, so they put one there for the unknown God.

Just in case we've missed one, let's have it here. And he comes, and he says, You've got all of this stuff around you. He doesn't live in places like this.

You can't turn him into a statue. He made the universe, and he made you. And as he progresses, he says, You know, if you think about it, if you listen to Paul Simon—no, he doesn't say that. He says, If you listen to your poets, the poets will tell you the same thing. And on and on and on it goes.

And there we have it. Oh, you see, the quest for meaning is an understandable quest. And some of you are here this morning, and you're just exactly there. I mentioned Paul Simon, because we were at Paul Simon the other evening here at Antarctica. And what an amazing time it was. And yet, what a deep sadness for me when, finally, he comes clean about his attempt at understanding life and purpose and the universe. And he offers to us all to read a book by an eminent scientist who's now in his eighties that would explain our lives and explain the universe and explain how we can save everything and how we want all to be turned into this and that and the next thing.

I said to myself, You're better than this, Paul. How can you buy this? How can you? Do you know why? Because he's blind. And so are we, without the gospel. Because, you see—and we're finished, close—the idea that you can go up a mountain or sit by a stream or, you know, gaze up at the universe and get the answer to these questions is unfounded and is ungrounded. Because God's majesty in creation, God's revelation in creation, is sufficient to leave us without excuse when we suppress the truth. But God's revelation in creation is insufficient in bringing us to an understanding of his saving purposes in the person of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that takes his word. And that's why, although it's a fairly abrupt transition, it is understandable.

I think poetry helps us with it, doesn't it? And the rising of the heavens and the circuit to the end of there's nothing hid from his sight, and then, boom, all of a sudden, out of nowhere. And by the way, the law of the Lord is perfect. You see, this is why, incidentally, we teach the Bible. Because God's Word is not like the word of man. Let me end with Luther, since I started with Luther, and we'll have to come back to it later on. This is Luther in a little book quoted by Horatius Bonner, God's Way of Peace, page 105. And Luther says, We must make a great difference between God's word and the word of man. A man's word is a little sound, which flyeth into the air and soon vanishes. But the word of God is greater than heaven and earth, yea, it is greater than death and hell, for it is the power of God and remains so everlastingly. Therefore we ought diligently to learn God's word, and we must know certainly and believe that God himself speaks with us. In other words, it takes God's revelation in his Word, brought home by the Spirit to the heart of a man or a woman, to then look at God's revelation in his works and to declare, as the psalmist declares, This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Don't be afraid of the pushback in our culture. God's Word is true.

It's sufficient. And even though our voices are little tiny voices, and we stumble and bumble in trying to affirm the truths we profess, God's Word accomplishes its purposes. In fact, just as I say that now, I think of the lawyer who wrote the book, Darwin's Black Box, I think. I think it was him. But he tells the story of how he went to—he had an argument with his wife about who was going to the Vacation Bible School evening program for the parents. And she said, Well, I'm not going. He said, Well, I'm not going either. And eventually his wife won, and he came.

And he told me, he said, When I went there and I sat and listened—and I thought about this very much, because I did similarly this week. It was a dreadful, dreadful talk I tried to give one Thursday evening. It was hopeless. And he said, The fellow that spoke, it was hopeless. He said there was very little logical progression in what he was saying.

And I sat there and thought, This is terrible. And then he said, But I said secondly to myself, But you know what? I think he believes it.

And he said it was the fact that he seemed to believe it that was unsettling to me. And he said, And it was that terrible talk at the Vacation Bible School that God used as the first hook into my heart and mind, which brought me to an understanding of the written Word in the presence of the living Word and has enabled me to declare all these things about the nature and majesty of God's works. The heavens declare the glory of God, but it is God's Word that reveals and accomplishes his plan of salvation. You're listening to Truth for Life.

Alistair Begg will be back to close the program with prayer in just a minute. We just learned from Alistair that God's Word accomplishes God's purposes through the power and work of the Holy Spirit. That's why we're passionate about teaching the Bible with clarity and relevance every single day here at Truth for Life. In fact, that's our mission.

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Just search Alistair Begg Truth for Life in Instagram. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. God our Father, thank you that your Word is fixed in the heavens, that your Word accomplishes its purposes.

Otherwise, why would we ever spend the time like this just to listen to a monologue? Lord, we long so much that you will conduct that dialogue within our hearts, showing us our self and showing us our Savior and making the book live to us. Help us to this end, we pray. For Jesus' sake. Amen. I'm Bob Lapeen.

Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow, Alistair Begg explains why the Bible isn't an inspirational book full of helpful advice. It's the instruction book for our lives from our Creator. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.