Knowing the One We Pray To
I said last week that the psalms give us a language to guide our prayers, that the psalms help us pray. That’s true, but they also help us know the One we pray to, and they help us know how we know the One we pray to.
How do we get to know someone? Through communication, both verbal and nonverbal. How can we know the One we pray to? Because he’s made himself known. The God who made us speaks to us, verbally and nonverbally. How does God speak to us? In our text today, Psalm 19, we’re going to see that God speaks to us through creation (vv. 1-6), through his word (vv. 7-11), and that his speech requires a response (vv. 12-14).
God Speaks through Creation
In verses 1-6, we learn that God speaks to us through creation. God speaks through the skies: “The heavens (everything above us) declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (v. 1). The whole universe is God’s wordless revelation, his nonverbal communication.
Ancient people were tempted to worship the sun, moon, and stars (Job 31:26, 2 Kgs. 23:5). Modern people see them as there by chance, serving no real purpose, or use astrology to discover a deeper meaning for their lives hidden in the stars. But the Christian looks at them with wonder and joy at the thought that God made them to show off his power and beauty.
These verses are saying that God designed the world to be a choir that sings his praise. God designed the world to be his witness, so that when we look at the world we see God. This wasn’t just the belief of ancient Israelites. The apostle Paul says the same thing in the New Testament: “His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20).
The world is God’s wordless speech, going out into the whole world, declaring the glory of God. One Old Testament scholar puts it this way, “It is all very mysterious and marvelous. The visible becomes vocal. Seeing is experienced as hearing. The imagination is in the midst of an unending concert sung by the universe to the glory of God.”[1]
Many people have created amazing things in the world. Plato turned the spoken dialogues of Socrates into a literary and philosophical masterpiece. Jane Austen created novels that have moved readers for hundreds of years. Hans Zimmer creates movie soundtracks that stir the soul. George Lucas created a universe of worlds and characters that are both entertaining and intellectually stimulating. Countless painters, writers, musicians, scientists, sculptors, designers, engineers, and architects have made a name for themselves by creating amazing things. They receive glory because of the splendor of what they made. How much more glory is due to the One who created all things, who created the creators?
Creation praises the Creator, showing us the worth of the Creator. God is speaking to us through the world he made. What else explains the fact that getting outside is one way to fight back depression and despair? Or the fact that many of us feel closer to God when we’re outside? Why do secular cities insist on having lots of parks? Why do we preserve vast amounts of land for state and national parks? Something in us is deeply stirred when we’re outside. Unplug and go outside so you can enjoy the choir of creation.
God Speaks through His Word
In verses 7-11, David says that God speaks through the Scriptures. God reveals himself through the world and through the word.
Verses 7-9 have six similar lines. Each line has a noun, adjective, and verb describing the word of God.
The six nouns are: law, testimony, precepts, commandments, fear, and rules. Taken all together, these six terms show us the practical purpose of the Scriptures, namely, to bring God’s will to bear on our lives.
The six adjectives describing the word are: perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, and true. These descriptors tell us just how different God’s words are from ours. Our speech is full of half-truths, compromise, hiding, and insincerity. God’s word is perfect, clean, and true. Whose words would you rather build your life on?
The six verbs describing specific qualities of God’s word are: “reviving the soul” and “making wise the simple” (v. 7), “rejoicing the heart” and “enlightening the eyes” (v. 8), and “enduring forever” and “righteous altogether” (v. 9).
These verses say that God’s words are good for us. They “revive the soul” and “rejoice the heart.” God’s word is meant to liberate, not enslave us, to bring freedom, not bondage.
Freedom doesn’t mean “I can do whatever I want.” Freedom doesn’t mean “no restraints.” It means finding the proper restraints. For example, a bird that swoops down into the water to get a fish will die unless it comes back out of the water. Why? Because it wasn’t designed to live underwater.
In our culture, we champion the idea of unlimited personal freedom, or the idea that we should be able to do whatever we want and no one should stop us. But freedom isn’t life without restraints.
Inside Out as a Modern Parable about True Freedom
Our family discovered the Inside Out movies this past week. They thoughtfully and powerfully illustrate the way our emotions work and the way identity is formed. Unlike most Disney movies, however, the message of “I can do whatever I want and no one can stop me” is turned on its head. In his review of the movie, specifically the second one, Samuel James writes:
“The Inside Out films offer a view of human nature that is far more realistic than most of the princess stories…Inside Out depicts a world in which teenagers like Riley cannot bend the world to their desires; in fact, they cannot even master the desires themselves. For Riley, redemption comes from giving up the ruthless pursuit to make her dreams come true. She learns that her most intense desires are not always righteous ones, and that she’s not the hero of her story in the way she has perhaps believed.”
James goes on to talk about how this messaging from Disney is all the more interesting given our current cultural moment. He says it’s good to hear a message about the folly and brokenness of our desires. He says:
“There is freedom in being liberated from the tyranny of my exalted view of myself. There is relief in being welcomed into grace, rather than cheered into self-determination.”
He talks about how many people are afflicted with a despair driven by performance and image. “This despair is lethal,” he says. “It drives many into friendlessness, into paralysis, and even into self-harm. I think Inside Out 2 could be a powerful parable for these souls. There could be a freedom that many feel for the first time in realizing, ‘Hey, I actually am not that good of a person, but there can still be love and grace for me.’ When the burden of self-creation is off, the quest for a love and a meaning that your own selfish nature can’t finally destroy is on.”[2]
True freedom is found in aligning our lives with the word of the Lord. The “law of the Lord” liberates us from slavery to our desires and “revives our souls” and “rejoices our hearts.”
Better than Money and Pleasure
In verse 10, David says that God’s word is better than money and sensory experience. David understands that knowing God is the highest good, not getting gold, and that the Scriptures reveal God, so the Scriptures are more valuable than gold of the highest quality. Money can’t revive your soul like the Bible can.
He also says that the Scriptures are better than sensory experience, or “sweeter than honey.” Anyone who has encountered God through his word will agree with David, that the delight that comes from hearing God speak to you, from being in his presence, is far greater than the taste and rush of energy that comes from sensory experiences.
He’s saying that the word of God has transformed his desires. Because he’s met God in his word, he has a greater desire for his word than for money or sensory pleasure. As one scholar says, “The Bible has wooed David away from other sources of pleasure.”[3] Has it wooed you?
Responding to God’s Revelation
God has spoken through the skies and the Scriptures, and his revelation requires a response (vv. 12-14). David says in verse 12 that there are inadvertent “errors” in his life that he doesn’t see, as well as “hidden faults.” Derek Kidner says, “A fault may be hidden not because it is too small to see, but because it is too characteristic to register.”[4] There are “hidden faults” in us that we’ve lived with for so long that we don’t even see them anymore. They’re like our doormat, always there but we never see them. We don’t see them because they’re small, we don’t see them because they’re normal.
David says that, despite the Lord’s revelation through the skies and the Scriptures, there are still things he doesn’t know, that he doesn’t have the resources to know himself completely. So he asks the Lord for help. The Lord’s help is often through friends who bring the word to us to help us see what we can’t see.
David also asks to be kept back from “presumptuous (or “willful”) sins” (v. 13). These are probably open, public sins that are the result of a conscience that’s grown hard through living with hidden sins. If we sin long enough in private, we’ll eventually stop thinking of it as sin and then we’ll sin publicly, or in a way that’s known to others, but we won’t care because we no longer think of it as sin. This is the point when sin “has dominion” over a person. The sin is the master and the person is the slave; you do whatever you want, no matter what it costs you..
David is praying against this in his heart and life. He wants to be “blameless,” to be a man of integrity. This isn’t perfection. It’s an integrity that results from confessing private sins so that he’s restrained from egregious public sins. What private sins do you need to bring to the light?
First Purpose of the Law
David understood that the law was perfect and righteous but he also knew that he wasn’t. Verses 12-13 are his admission that he’s unrighteous, imperfect, even confused.
This is a really good place to be because the primary purpose of the law of God is to swamp us. We read it and we know we should be this or that, but we know we’re not, so we despair.
If you read the law and it makes you smug, you haven’t read it closely enough. The job of the law is to show you yourself as you actually are. The psalmist looks at the law and sees how wonderful it is (v. 7), but by verse 12 he realizes he’s full of flaws and errors, and then at the end he starts crying out for a redeemer (v. 14).
Second Purpose of the Law
This is the second purpose of the law, to help us see our need for a redeemer. Christianity is only for moral failures. Jesus came for sinners, not the righteous. So if you look at the law and it doesn’t swamp you, if it makes you feel like a moral success, you’re not a Christian. Jesus only came for people who know they’re moral failures, and the way you know that is when the law comes in and shows you how bad you are.
The law pushes us to see our need for a redeemer. Paul says, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5). A Christian reads the law and says, “Jesus has done all this for me. He lived the life I owe God and died the death I deserve.”
We all know we should be perfect. Apart from the gospel, there are only two ways to deal with it. We either try to kill it by saying, “No one’s perfect but I’m better than most people.” The other way is to be consumed with perfection, where you have to achieve the perfect record, the perfect job, the perfect body, live in the perfect home, have perfect moments. We either try to kill our moral sensitivity or it drives us into the ground.
The only alternative is to understand that Jesus fulfilled the law for you. Christianity says that there’s nothing we have done, are doing, can do, or will do to gain God’s acceptance. It looks at Jesus and sees him as the One who’s done everything needed.
Third Purpose of the Law
The third purpose of the law is to show us how to give pleasure to God. For the Christian, the law shows us how to please God.
Tim Keller illustrates this by asking, “How do you know if you love someone? You begin to experience their desires as commands. You want to know what pleases them and you love to do those things. You know you’re in love when the pleasure of giving pleasure is greater than the pleasure of taking pleasure. Men, if you’re in love with your wife, when she asks you to do something you don’t like, if the pleasure of giving pleasure is greater than the pleasure of taking pleasure, you do it. And as you do it, you change and your relationship deepens.”[5]
It’s the same with God. The law of God are the things that please him, that give him delight. If you want a relationship with him, if you want to know him more intimately, you obey him so that you get the pleasure of pleasing him.
The Father wants to pour the assurance of his love into your life, and he does so as we keep his law. So we obey to grow deeper with him, we delight in the law because it brings the Lord pleasure, and whatever brings him pleasure brings us pleasure.
When we understand the purposes of the law to show us our need and bring us to Jesus, we don’t ignore it and we aren’t crushed by it. Instead, we delight in it, and the prayer of our life becomes verse 14, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”
[1]James L. Mays, Psalms, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 97.
[2]The Disney Princess Whose Heart Isn’t Worth Following (digitalliturgies.net)
[3]James M. Hamilton Jr., Psalms, Volume 1: Psalms 1-72, Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2021), 261.
[4]Derek Kidner, Psalms 1-72: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 100.