Sermon Transcript
Today’s scripture is in Psalm 19.
The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech. Night after night they reveal knowledge. Yet they have no speech.
They use no words. No sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the others, nothing is deprived of its warmth. The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, give light to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold. They are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward.
But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression. May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord my rock, my redeemer.
This is the word of God.
We are beginning a new series today in the Psalms, looking at when and how to pray, which all of us to some extent, whether we subscribe to a particular faith tradition or not, all of us pray. Not all of us in the same way, some of us will be more formal than others, but we all pray. So for instance, at a minimum, in moments, you know, in extreme duress, or uncertainty, we might just pray involuntarily without even thinking about it. We’re waiting to hear back after a job interview. It’s been days, maybe it’s been a week.
We’re getting more and more anxious if we will ever hear back. And then finally we see the little email heading come in from the HR department of the company where we interviewed. And as we go to click on the email, we say Please, please, please, please, please, please, please. We may not have even planned to say it, but there it is. It’s a petition, a spoken petition to someone.
We must think someone is listening, someone who will hear us, who also has the power to respond to this request. And so, you know, we know we’re not just talking to the computer, or we don’t think we can be talking to the HR department because the computer couldn’t do anything about it, and HR department can’t hear us as we’re just sitting, you know, looking at our screen. But we think somebody’s listening, someone who can do something. And we all think that because we all do that. We do the same thing when we’re waiting to hear about a diagnosis and the phone rings and we see it’s our doctor.
As we answer, we’re like, please let it be good news. We all do this. The interesting thing is we all do this regardless of what we believe about God. Even atheists do this. I’ve asked them, you know, who are my friends and we can talk about things in a real way.
I asked them, do you ever catch yourself praying in moments like that when you really want something, you’re really hoping for something, and you just kind of involuntarily ask for it out loud even though you don’t believe anyone that is there listening. I’m like, do you do that? And they all— they kind of laugh and they’re like, yes, I actually do that even though I don’t believe anyone is there to hear it. I still do it for some reason. Sometimes.
So we all pray, at least sometimes. We all talk to God. It’s already something every single one of us is currently doing in our lives, which means our series on prayer isn’t really about how to start praying, it’s about taking the next steps in prayer, building on something that we are already doing, how to make it richer and better. And to help us we’re studying the book of the Psalms because Psalms are a collection of ancient prayers. In the Psalms we read from various authors but we read their prayers, it’s like they have opened up their prayer journals for us making it possible for us to see how they talked with God.
Now there’s 150 Psalms so of course we are not going to cover all 150 in our series. But to pare them down, there’s been numerous scholars who have attempted to categorize Psalms into different types of Psalms under different numbers of headings. So some people categorize the Psalms into 5 types, some 6, 10, 12. Regardless of how you categorize them, there always ends up being a couple of outliers that can’t fall into any of those groups. But we’re going with 6.
Our series is 6 weeks. We’re going to try to cover 6 major types of prayer within the Psalms: adoration, trust, wisdom, lament, repentance, thanksgiving. We’re doing this, one, in order to give a fair summary of how the Bible depicts prayer, how these ancient people prayed, but then also for us to learn from them how to pray. As people wiser than me have noted, us learning how to pray is much like how a baby learns language. A baby doesn’t learn language, a little infant doesn’t learn language by going to school, getting out the flashcards, studying the vocab terms.
It’s not how a baby learns language. Instead, a baby learns language just by listening to people who speak the language, And then I mimic it, I’m going to attempt it, I’ll practice, fumble through it, and then eventually the baby begins to do it. And prayer is like that. If we want to get better at praying, we should listen to prayers, which is exactly what the Psalms are. And the more we listen to them, the more we will know how to pray ourselves.
That’s our series, Listening to the Bible Pray, basically. And today we start with Psalm 19, of which on Psalm 19 C.S. Lewis commented, this psalm, I take this, quote, I take this psalm to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world. That’s C.S. Lewis.
But we’re not starting with Psalm 19 because it was so applauded by C.S. Lewis, we’re starting with Psalm 19 because it is filled with praise and adoration of God, which is the appropriate place to start with prayer. It is appropriate to start prayer with praise and adoration of who God is and what he has done, because praise and adoration is a sign of any good relationship. All relationships require words of appreciation for one another. Including ours with God.
I know sometimes skeptics like to ask, why would we need to praise God? Is God so insecure that he needs affirmation all the time? Is that what he is? Okay, no, he doesn’t need it. He doesn’t need it, but our relationship with him does.
You know this if you’ve ever been in any kind of serious relationship with anyone— spouse, parent, friend, kid, anyone— none of those relationships can survive without large amounts of praise and adoration for one another. You know, if a relationship is categorized only by making requests and demands of the other person, it’s not going to be a healthy relationship. Even boss-employee, if the only conversation a boss ever had with the employee is do this, do that, do it again without ever expressing appreciation, gratitude, praise, even that type of relationship won’t be healthy. It’s not a good work environment. Employees probably going to quit.
So every relationship between any 2 parties, for it to be healthy, there needs to be large amounts of affirmation of the other. Each side needs to say, I like you. You’re great. Way to go. Life is better with you around.
Every relationship needs that, so of course our relationship with God needs that. If we only view him as some kind of genie who grants wishes or a vending machine that’ll drop our treat if we push the right buttons, if the only thing we ever say to God is, Give me, give me, give me, I need this, I need that. If that’s the sum total of our prayers, we will have no depth in our relationship with him. It’ll be exclusively transactional, you know, I punch the buttons, you give me the thing. We don’t feel very connected to our vending machine.
It’s not personal, which hey, God loves us so much he may put up with that if that’s how you pray. But you probably want more than that. You probably want more than just a transactional relationship with God. You probably desire an actual relationship with the Creator of the universe, intimacy with him, to know him, to walk with him. Okay, so we’re starting our study about prayer today with adoration in Psalm 19, and as we look at this passage, we’ll see what the psalmist praises and the psalmist’s problem, and then who he trusts to resolve it.
What he praises, his problem, who he trusts to resolve it. So first, the psalmist praises the goodness of God’s design. He tells God, you are perfect in all your ways, and he says it with this flowery, over-the-top language. It’s almost like what you’d write your sweetheart in a love letter. It’s full of metaphors, possibly even some hyperbole, poetry, obviously.
He’s enthralled with God, and specifically he praises God for what appears on first glance as 2 unrelated things. But as we will see, these 2 seemingly unrelated things actually end up having a good bit in common. So first he praises God for creation, the majesty and glory of the physical universe, the heavens, the sun, the earth, how it all fits together and works. He’s amazed by it, like that someone could design that and pull it off and it all works. It’s this incredible feat, combination of art and engineering, and he’s blown away.
Probably similar to how we’re in awe when we look up at the night sky and we’re filled with wonder. We look up at those stars and we have no words. That’s what he’s like. And he didn’t even know half of what we know about the stars. He didn’t know how far away they were, he didn’t know how big the universe was, he just thought it was all pretty.
Well, we on the other hand, we know it’s a lot more than pretty. The depths of space are unfathomable, how galaxies spin, how unlikely it is that we should be here, but here we are. And then if you’re a Christian, you believe that the God who made all of that knows your name, loves you so much to die for you to bring you to him. We know a lot more than him, so we should be at least twice as amazed as he was. I mean, if he could praise God for the night sky, we even more so, right?
That’s his first praise, the universe, creation. And then he goes on, and this is what we might think is unrelated. He next praises God for God’s moral code of conduct, the law. He says the way God says to live is the right way to live. The law is flawless, beautiful, sweet as honey.
His precepts give life. Again, his language is over the top. And then switching so quickly from talking about beauty of the universe to how God says to live, it’s like it’s a little bit of whiplash. It seems It seems so unrelated, except it’s not. It’s not totally unrelated because while creation is certainly distinct from the law, they do share common threads of God’s goodness and design, of his precision.
Like whatever God designs works. The universe works. It runs right on time every time. And the moral code works. It’s how we’re designed to live in relation to one another, to God, to creation around us.
It works. It’s precise. So they have this utility functionality in common, but not only that, they are also both inescapable, meaning we can’t choose whether they apply to us or not. We are subject to the laws of nature whether we like the laws of nature or not, whether we agree with them or not. The natural laws are there, they are inescapable.
You know, if we jump off a bridge, we may want to fly, we may strongly disagree with gravity, but we still fall. We’re bound by that natural law. We didn’t have a choice whether it applied to us or not. It’s just there. I mean, if we’re on the edge of the bridge, we’re about to attempt to launch ourselves, and our friend yells to us and says, hey, don’t jump!
You’re gonna hurt yourself!
We can’t really respond, well, friend, thanks. Maybe gravity is your truth, but my truth is that I will fly to the moon!
That doesn’t work.
We can’t escape the laws of nature. They are there, even if we don’t agree with them. I mean, you can’t avoid them, and if we push against them, which we can, I mean we can decide not to follow the natural laws, we can jump, we have agency, we make decisions, but if we jump in defiance of the law, it’s not like the law, it’s not like we break the law, the law of gravity doesn’t break, it’s us who breaks. We break us if we push against the way creation is. The moral law is like that too.
Usually not with as dramatic consequences as gravity, but sometimes whenever we push against it, we will— something in us will break because God’s law is absolute. It applies to everyone regardless of background and beliefs. It’s there. It’s inescapable. It’s like gravity.
It doesn’t change based on the person or circumstances. We don’t get to pick and choose what parts of it apply to us. It’s not relative. It’s universal for everyone, always, which perhaps these days is not as objectionable of a claim as it used to be. You may know not very long ago, and for the past many decades before that, the claim that such a thing exists as a morality that applies to everyone was quite objectionable in our society because we were at least leaning toward a form of relative truth, right?
We would say things like, everyone needs to find and live their own truth, figure out what works for them. You do you. Live and let live. Go along to get along, right? That’s what our culture said for basically my entire life, and that’s still there.
People still certainly say that. Which is why a claim of morality that applies to everyone was so objectionable. However, times are changing if you listen, because in addition to people saying those kind of pluralistic ideals, we increasingly hear all kinds of groups, all kinds of groups all over our society, all kinds of groups will look at another group and tell that group Your truth is dangerous, and no one should listen to you. And everybody’s saying that kind of thing. It’s not just religious groups.
In fact, it’s primarily not religious groups. It’s from every ideology, totally secular ones, far right, far left. These groups, they are petitioning us to adopt their way of thinking as if it were absolute, right? It’s listen to us. We are the way.
We are the truth. And simultaneously then they’ll say about their opponent, whoever they’re mad at, they’ll say, don’t follow that truth. Don’t listen to that guy over there. That guy over there, his ideas will cause the downfall of civilization. They argue as if everything is at stake.
You must agree with them. Living your own truth in this instance would be wrong. You must follow me. That’s the kind of thing that we hear. Now, which whatever that is, it’s not relativism.
We’re in a different cultural moment than we were even 10 years ago, and since it is so new, it hasn’t solidified into whatever it’s going to be yet. Maybe we’ll go back to the way it was before, or maybe not, who knows? But it is notable— pay attention to this— that the outlets and the pundits who used to like pound the table for relativism You know, the pundits who used to say, you can’t expect others to follow your morality. That’s your morality. That’s what they used to say.
They are— they’re now— they’re the same ones who are now saying, everyone must listen to me because I am right.
They’re making absolute claims, right? People are doing it all over the place. So perhaps Okay, when the Bible steps in and says there is such a thing as a moral code of conduct that applies to everyone whether they agree with it or not, perhaps that claim isn’t as dismissible as it used to be. Because these days the Bible is just one voice out of many saying its morality needs to apply to everybody. We’re used to those kind of claims now, right?
Which Which means our cultural debate has switched from, can morality be absolute, to which morality should be absolute. Our debate now is who is right versus, you know, can’t we just all get along? People are wondering, who can we trust? Whose values are good? Which truth is the best truth?
That’s their question today. You know, for instance, if you listen, you might notice people’s objections to Christianity today are less about if Christianity is true and more about if Christianity is good for the world and for themselves. Now, if you go searching, you can still find a debate between people out there somewhere talking about if Jesus really rose from the dead. You can find that debate, but it’s not as common. And you especially won’t really find that among young people because that’s not what’s keeping them back from Christianity.
In fact, they probably won’t even argue the point. If you go to somebody and say, hey, Jesus rose from the dead, they— instead of like they used to saying, that’s not scientific! Right? Instead of that today, you say Jesus rose from the dead, they might say, so?
What does that matter?
Is He adding goodness to the world? Will it benefit me to follow Him? Can I trust His people with all the scandals and abuses and inappropriate uses of power in the church and the way I see church people act, especially to the marginalized? Is His system a good system? Is Christianity good?
That’s their question. They aren’t so much asking for philosophical proofs of God or historical accuracy of the Gospels. Not that those don’t matter, they do, and not that Christianity can’t stand up in those debates, it can, it has for 2,000 years. It’s just not much of the conversation right now. What our culture is very concerned about is finding a morality that is good.
Is the truth that you’re telling me to follow Is it any good? That’s the question. And what we find in this psalm is that the psalmist has found God’s law is very good. Not only is God’s law mandatory for everyone, it is also the means to live a thriving life. It is sweeter than honey.
It is more precious than gold. Now, how did the psalmist know that? How did the psalmist know that the law is not only true it is also good. He seems to have learned it from personal experience, which brings us to the psalmist’s problem, which is breaking the moral law would ruin him. It would not be good for him if he strayed away from God’s commands.
He phrases it in verse 13, don’t let these sins rule over me. Rule over. In other words, he knows he’ll experience some kind of oppression if he steps outside of God’s boundaries. He’ll have diminished life if he’s outside of God’s laws, which could likely be, as we’ll see, why he started praying in the first place. He’s worried he’s going to go over there and get into something that he shouldn’t do, and he’ll be all messed up.
He’s worried about failing morally, so he’s praying about it. Now, it’s possible he has never strayed away. And just knows it’ll be bad for him if he did. You know, it’s possible he could pray, keep me safe from that. Don’t let that sin rule over me, even though he’s never been entangled in it himself personally.
That is possible, but it is more likely that he has been over there before. He has strayed off course before. He pushed against the moral law and it pushed back. He’s probably like all of us, right? We think disobeying God’s law will bring us pleasure, happiness, success.
He probably thought it was God’s law that was keeping us back, keeping him back, and if only he could break free from God, then he would finally find peace, joy, contentment. That lie is as old as time. It goes all the way back to the garden. It’s what the first man and woman thought. They said, God’s law is keeping us down, and if we break free from it, that’s where we’ll find real life.
But for them, Like it probably did for the psalmist, that idea quickly turned on them. They realized escaping from God’s laws is what is oppressive. It’s like a fish in your aquarium. If the fish in the aquarium thinks it’s oppressed by the water, it’s like, I’m going to jump. It gets out of your bowl and lands on the table, and it’s suddenly going to realize, oh, the water wasn’t so oppressive.
It’s breaking free from the water that was oppressive, right? So similarly, it seems the psalmist had disobeyed God’s laws at some point in the past. It started to destroy him, and now God looks pretty good, like the water would look pretty good to the fish when it’s out there.
That’s a more likely scenario than the one where he just never strayed in the first place and he understands the danger of straying without getting messed up. It’s more likely that he had burned down his life and now he’s coming back. And I’ll give you 2 reasons. First, have you noticed the times God looks sweetest, best, and brightest are when you return to him? After you’ve wandered off, after you went your own way, not his, it ruined you, it broke you.
That’s when you realize most acutely, oh, God’s ways are perfect. They revive the soul. They are to be more desired than gold. Say it’s sweeter than honey. Following him is the best life that I can live.
That’s when we say, you know, God, you are flawless in all your ways. You are good all the way through. In fact, God, no, everything you do is perfect. Sun runs right on time. The universe is held together with magnificent perfection.
It’s often when we’ve strayed from him, it cost us, and now we’re returning, he shines the brightest. In fact, it’s almost as if the farther we stray off course, the more we celebrate and enjoy God when we return. Jesus says this, it’s Luke 7. Jesus asked Simon, Jesus visiting Simon’s house, Luke 7. He says, hey Simon, 2 people owed money to a certain money lender.
One owed 500, the other owed 50. Neither of them could pay the lender back, so the lender forgave both debts. Now, which— Jesus asked, which debtor will love the lender more?
Simon replied, well, I suppose it’s the one who had the bigger debt forgiven. Jesus says, you have judged correctly. Then Jesus goes on to say, he who has been forgiven little loves little. He who has been forgiven much loves much. So good news, none of us are ever too far gone from God’s goodness.
And even better news, the farther gone we are, the brighter and better God’s goodness will seem when we return to him again, which appears to be what is happening in this psalm because the psalmist is undeniably enthralled with the goodness of God. He’s using this over-the-top language which we’ve mentioned several times. I mean, God, your laws are the sweetest, or sweeter than honey, is better than all the gold in the world. You’re better than anything else, Lord. All your ways are just perfect.
He’s a lovesick puppy. He’s dripping with affection towards, towards God.
He loves much, clearly, which according to Jesus is what happens when someone has been forgiven much.
So that’s one reason we can assume the psalmist has broken the moral law, suffered the consequences, because of how much he loves.
But there’s another better reason to assume that his prayer with overflowing adoration of God was motivated by some kind of failure on his part, which brings us to our 3rd point, who he trusts to resolve his problem is his Redeemer. In the last verse of this Psalm, the author refers to God both as his rock and his Redeemer. Rock and Redeemer. Now, he could call God his rock if he had never gotten himself entangled in some mess that needed to be resolved. Rock meaning God is stable in a way that nothing else is.
On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. He could sing that if he had never been in the sinking sand himself. Maybe he just saw other people over there and realized, that’s not for me. I need to stay on the rock, and he never departed, right? If he only called God his rock, it’s possible he had never had anything broken in his life.
But he didn’t only call God his rock. He also called God his Redeemer. And he would only refer to God as Redeemer if there was something in his life that needed to be redeemed. He wouldn’t say, God is who picked me up and put me back together, unless he had fallen and needed to be put back together. So we know the psalmist at some point must have veered off course in his life.
It’s not hypothetical. If he pushed against the moral code and found out. It happened. We know it happened. But when it happened, he knew where to turn next.
He turned to his Redeemer. He trusted God not only to forgive him, verse 12, forgive all my hidden faults, but also to help him recover, get back on track. Verse 13, keep your servant from willful sins. In other words, even in the middle of his mess, he knew he didn’t have to hide from God. He could turn to God.
Even when he was at the bottom, he could call to him. Even when he was down and out, even when he had bailed on God, he knew God wouldn’t bail on him. He knew God would be there for him. He didn’t see God as some kind of angry judge who would reject his cries for help. He knew God, this God was the kind of God who would come get him out of his mess and failure, and not because he earned it, and not because he thought he could earn it back in the future.
Notice he does not try to prove himself in this prayer. He does not promise to do better the next time as some kind of bargaining chip that, you know, if I do better, God will rescue me. He doesn’t do that. He has no thread of pulling himself up by his bootstraps to make himself presentable to God again. Hoping if he does make himself presentable then God will help him.
There is none of that. He only says, forgive me and keep me from straying. Keep me close to you. He knew somehow that God’s goodness God’s perfection included that God would grant him unmerited favor and assistance. So he cries out for it.
Forgive me. Keep me. Save me. Not because of what I’ve done. Not because of what I will do.
Just because you’re a redeemer. He knew he could pray for that. And if he knew that about God, how much more should we know it? He lived before Jesus. He never saw the cross.
He didn’t know the full extent of God’s love, but we do. We know there is nowhere that God wouldn’t go to rescue us. We know there is no price God wouldn’t pay to redeem us, because on the cross Jesus went to the lowest low in our place, and he paid the highest price to reconcile us to God. We have seen to tangible evidence of God’s unmerited love for us. We know God will always come pick us up even when we don’t deserve it, and that’s what fuels our adoration of Him more than anything else, more than His perfect creation, more than His perfect law, more than— it is His perfect love for us when we have failed His law.
So, our prayers can always begin with, thank you for being my Redeemer. Thank you for not giving up on me, God. You’ve stayed with me through everything, and I love you. That’s how we start our prayers before we ask for anything. And we’ll talk about all kinds of prayer in this series, but before any of that, start with amazement and praise that he is your Redeemer.
Start with, you love much because you have been forgiven much. Let’s pray. Father, we do love much. We are so amazed, Lord, that you have stuck with us, that you will always stick with us no matter how far we’ve strayed off course. We give thanks, Lord, that you are perfect in all of your ways.
Creation, moral code, and most of all, Lord, Your perfection includes Your willingness to redeem us. We give thanks for it. May it fuel our adoration of You today and always. We pray those things in Jesus’ name, amen.
