Sermon for January 24th

Today, we are going to study Psalm 19. So, I think that it would be appropriate to begin with a prayer taken from the very last lines of that psalm. Let us pray together, Dear Lord, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.” Amen

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and sky proclaims its maker’s handiwork.” The opening line says that God’s creation declares God’s glory. The apostle Paul in Romans says this: “what can be known about God is plain because even since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.” How does creation declare God’s glory to you?

What do you see in God’s creation that astounds you? I’m reminded of a commercial I saw many years ago where a father and his daughter were sitting and watching a sunset. As the dark reddish orange sun went under the horizon he whispered to her, “Going . . . going . . . gone!” and the sun disappeared. Then she said, “Do it again daddy!” Not only are the colors and the hues of a sunset gorgeous and a credit to God’s great artistry in creation, but the performance of sunrise and sunset, day after day, is just as astounding. It is such a normal part of our lives, something that we have grown so accustomed to, that we may only grasp the awesomeness of it a few times in our life.

In his book The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker maintains that most people, in order to defend ourselves from the sheer terror of the natural world, build up psychological defenses against it. We must escape reality somehow and someway, or else we would live in fear constantly. In fact, those who are most aware and hypersensitive to this reality are often considered to have psychological problems, such as the man who shuts himself off from the world because there are billions and billions of little germs just waiting to infest his body and kill him off. When you think about it, he is exactly right and that is terrifying. Most of us have to get past this reality by forgetting about these little organisms or pretending that we are invincible to them in order to step out of our own doors and go to work every day. We don’t have the courage to ponder these wondrous microorganisms any more than we have to. God’s glory can be scary.

The writer of Psalm 19 connects God’s handiwork, the work of God in creation, to God’s law. God has not only revealed himself in creation with all its glory and terror, but he reveals himself in his teachings, his commandments and his judgments. In fact, creation and the law are very much related. Throughout the Bible, God binds himself to his creation in order to point out that just like you can trust how he orders the rising and setting of the sun, you can trust how he orders the ways of the family or of the church or of society. The order of creation is often called God’s natural law in relation to his revealed law in scripture, but they both point to the same God, the same Lord and the same creator. And just like creation, God’s law can be both glorious and terrifying.

Psalm 19: “The teaching of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure and gives wisdom to the simple. The statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean and endures forever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” Do you give glory to God both for his creation and for his Law? If you give glory to God for the fact that your heart beats day in and day out, then you can also glorify the God who commands, “You shall not kill.” If you stand in awe of the birds that migrate to exactly the same spot on the Earth without ever looking at a map, then please stand in awe of your God that teaches you to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. If you clean your chimney regularly because of your fear of chimney fires, please do not neglect to clean your heart and mind before God whose wrath is like a consuming fire. This is the same God and he cares as much, if not more, about the trash filling your life as he does about the trash filling up our landfills. I’m not setting up discipleship in opposition to environmentalism, but while you’ll hear about living green every day in the newspapers, on the radio and on the TV, you will probably only hear the need for your repentance before God here at church or written on the pages of your Bibles.

Psalm 19 describes God’s law three ways: as a teaching or testimony, as a statute or commandment, and then finally as fear or judgment. These three manifestations of the law are connected in our lives as well. For instance, with my children, I try to teach them many things. Sometimes, in order to help them understand I’ll use testimonies from my own life in order to help them when they deal with similar situations. When my children ride their bikes, their mother and I teach them to wear a helmet, I testify to them that when I was in elementary school, I got a bad head injury (a slight concussion) in a bike accident because I wasn’t wearing a helmet.

However, this teaching doesn’t always work and so we must move to the next phase of the law: creating a commandment or a statute, what we might call in our house: a rule. Because my children do not always see the importance of my teachings, I must command them to never ride their bikes without a helmet. Whether inside or outside, training wheels or not, you must always wear a helmet. And if they break this commandment, the third phase of the law comes in: fear and judgment, what we might call consequences and punishments.

I hope that my children wear their helmets because they have been taught how important it is; however, if they don’t wear them because of that reason, they had better wear them because they are afraid of me and their mom (both because they would disappoint us and because we might get mad). Also, if we catch them disobeying our commands, they may lose bikeriding privileges for a little while and, most terrifying of all, if they disobey us and get away with it, they might feel the judgment and consequence of getting into a bike accident and sustaining an awful head injury. The law has teachings, commandments and judgments. And all are worthy of our praise.

God’s laws are beautiful. The psalm calls them perfect, sure, just, clear, clean and true. God tries to teach us and then testifies through stories about those who have benefited from following God’s law and those who have been hurt by not doing so. When people think of God’s laws, they often think of the ten commandments, but they forget about all the teaching that happens in the Old Testament stories and letters in the New Testament. God doesn’t just command: Do not commit adultery, but he tells the story of King David and Bathsheeba who have an affair that destroys their lives in many ways. God testifies to the truth, he commands us to obey and then, if we go against his rules, there are consequences. God promises that even if we do not see those consequences in our own lives, our actions affect others, and there will be a final judgment where we will have to account for all of our deeds, both good and bad, before God—the judge.

In John’s first letter he writes, “Whoever says, “I have come to know God,” but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist.” It is so important to know God’s law not only to help you take care of yourself and others in this world, but also because it makes you aware of how much you need forgiveness. That you couldn’t make it without God’s rule and that you need to be cleansed, forgiven and freed.

You have broken God’s law through your sins. But today, I declare to you the glory of God: in the name of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. The God of creation, the God of the sun, moon and stars, the God that has commanded you to love your neighbor as yourself, is the same God who redeems you from the judgment of his law. There is no law that can separate you from Jesus Christ. There is no judgment that can condemn you forever. To those who believe in Jesus, he has given the power to be called children of God and bestowed on them the riches of his glory. This is your inheritance: eternal life forever and ever.

Before Jesus ascended into heaven, he gave this command to his disciples, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit AND (yes there is a second part!) AND teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. That joy of forgiveness, that joy of having Jesus as your Redeemer is only joy if you know the law—if you have heard this teaching and the commandments—if you understand the judgment. Because once you have learned all that God has freed you from, saved your from and redeemed you from, only then can you see how perfect, how sure, how clear, how clean and how true God’s law is both for you and for those around you. Then God’s law and God’s creation can truly be gifts for you. Then you are free to praise God no just for his creation but even for his commandments. Amen.