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Howdy. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jonathan Houston, and I'm up here because I'm doing a program called Sermon Junkies, which is where just kind of lay people like me and members of the church can be coached on how to expound God's Word.

And tonight's text is going to be Psalm 19, and the title of tonight's sermon is Lessons from Psalm 19. We're doing the whole thing, verses 1 through 14. Alright, so to start off, I'm going to ask you guys to play along with me a little bit, and I'm going to give you 10 seconds to close your eyes and imagine the most beautiful nature scene that you've ever seen or that you can remember.

All right, 10 seconds, go. Alright, that was the full 10. Alright, so hopefully you've got that picture in your mind. Just kind of save that and pin that for later. Just for the record, mine is a sunset from the coast of Spain when we live in Germany, and we were on vacation before I took a year deployment to Iraq.

So that was mine. It's a beautiful sunset there over the coastline. But again, hold yours, and that will come up later. So now imagine a shepherd boy who spends much of his life outdoors in God's creation and be witness to God's works day after day. Day and night after night.

This shepherd boy was charged with keeping the flock and ensuring that the flock had food, water, shelter, and protection. And of course, the shepherd boy I'm talking about is David. And being in God's creation would have been a big part of David's early life and seeing lots of beautiful nature scenes.

Now imagine the same David as king of Israel and what his daily life would have been like then. Since a king's duties include keeping the peace in his kingdom, this means that much of David's life as king would have been spent dealing with the application of laws, including God's law, and becoming very familiar with how the carrying out of man's laws and the carrying out of God's laws have different results.

So in Psalm 19, we'll see that it's broken into three distinct parts. David first begins by writing about what he dealt with directly in his early years, which is God's creation. And we often call this general revelation. And general revelation reveals general truths about God through nature, such as his power and his divinity.

General revelation alone is not what saves us, though. In God's great mercy, David then writes the second part of Psalm 19, which deals directly with the things he dealt with later in life, which would be God's words. This is often what we call special revelation, and special revelation came To specific people, at specific times, in specific places.

And now, special revelation is only found in the Bible. And so, the truths revealed in special revelation can't be known by just looking at nature or looking back in history or even looking in your own conscience. They can only be found in the Bible. So, general revelation communicates God's existence and makes us without excuse for knowing God.

But only special revelation is sufficient to save, because it's through God's Word that we're truly born again. And then finally, David's third section of Psalm 19 closes with a poem and prayer that I hope we can all meditate on and strive toward in our lives concerning that which we all deal with every day of our lives, and that is sin.

So, let's pray, Lord Jesus, you're the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and the source of all faith and truth. Studying your truth has deepened my love for you while also showing me how incapable I am of carrying the weight of delivering your truth. And Father, that's why I'm asking you to carry it for me.

Please help me to be the willing vessel and a mere facilitator of ears hearing your truth today, because if I try to deliver truth on my own, I'm only capable of corrupting it. I'm humbled and deeply thankful that you allow sinners like me to hear and understand your word and expose.

It before others, so that our love for you and our faith in you may increase. Lord Jesus, I don't know what needs to be said, but you do. So I pray that these words from my mouth and these meditations of my heart be acceptable to you and edifying to your flock, your saints, and the subjects of your kingdom.

Amen. All right, so let's start with verses 1 through 6. This is the part with General Revelation, and this will be the first of our three points: which is, point number one is that God is undeniable. God is undeniable. So, listen and follow along in verses 1 through 6, please.

It starts off: 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 display knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words, their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

In the heavens, he 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 other. Nothing is hidden from its heat.

So, in verse 1, immediately what we see is the word heavens. So, just to explain real quick the Hebrew idea of the heavens, it's a layered concept where the first heaven is considered to be up to the sky, the second heaven. Heaven would be what we call outer space, and then the third heaven would be where God lives or dwells.

That would be the third heaven. So, Psalm 19 is dealing with the first two heavens. Alright, so the overarching theme in this first part of Psalm 19 is that God has made Himself known through creation. And the implication here is that everyone, everywhere, at all times, is aware or has heard the declaration of the glory of God just because we're part of creation.

And also in verse 1, David immediately attributes the heavens and the skies to the work of God's hands. He doesn't have any thought process, and there's no weighing out of the options of how the heavens got here. Credit is immediately given to God. And so, to illustrate this, come back to that nature scene that I asked you to remember or to think about in the first 10 seconds.

And now, imagine that you're walking through an art gallery, and you come across a painting in that art gallery that is exactly like that image that you had in your mind, that memory of that nature scene. And now, the question is: how long would it take you to decide how the paint on that canvas found its way there?

How long would that take you? And I'm going to go out on a limb here of a happy little tree and say that you didn't decide. There was no decision-making process. It was automatic that you knew that there was a painter who put the paint on. On that canvas, somebody like Bob Ross.

Happy little trees. So the point is, you didn't decide. You didn't consider the options. It was automatic because we know that if there's a painting, that there's a painter. If there's a book, there's an author. If there's a building, there's a builder. And God is no different. So David looked at God's works all around him and said, This is creation.

There must be a creator. There is a creator. So just as painters, authors, and builders are undeniable to us, so God is undeniable as well. And anyone who says otherwise is at odds with Scripture. As God says, and Paul writes in Romans chapter 1, verses 19 and 20, it says, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. So Scripture makes it clear that God is undeniable because God made it so. God made Himself undeniable.

And suppressing this truth is to do so in unrighteousness. So can't you imagine David the Shepherd sitting out in a pasture and watching his sheep and his eyes drifting up to the sky and wondering at the power of the great I Am who created everything? I know a lot of people in this room who have spent a lot of time in God's creation and experienced those inaudible words.

And through David, the Lord gives us Specific example to show us how the heavens declare the glory of God. And that example in Psalm 19 is the sun. So notice the word choice here in that line. It says, God pitched a tent, which gives us the idea that making a place for the sun was really, really easy for God.

As easy as pitching a tent is for us. And that, of course, demonstrates God's power. And then there's the image of the bridegroom. Now, there are a lot of men in here who have been bridegrooms before. So imagine or remember what it was like when you were waiting to come out of your chamber, knowing that in a few minutes you would see your bride.

You were probably really well dressed and had a big smile and bright eyes. The sun is like that. Or even like a champion runner who loves to run his race. If you've seen the movie Chariots of Fire, you might remember the image of Eric Liddell running and the joy on his face as he ran.

And that is the image that David is painting of the sun here. Determined and deliberate, full of joy to be doing what it does best and following the natural laws that God gave it. Rising at one end of the heavens and making its circuit to the other. So this is just a drop in the ocean of evidence that supports the truth that we have of a creator, or supports the truth that we have of a creator.

So paintings and books, though, are only in front of us for temporary times, as long as we look at them. But God's creation, and especially the heavens. Heavens are always proclaiming his glory day after day and night after night. So, quick side note as we wrap up on point number one here.

Verse 6 says of the sun, it says, Nothing is hidden from its heat. Now, the first time I read this, I don't know about you, but my mind was expecting it to say nothing is hidden from its light. And so, because I was expecting that, when I read heat, my mind just equated that to light and I kind of moved on.

But I think that there is an important difference between the way that light behaves and the way that heat behaves that make the idea of nothing hidden from its heat a really profound truth. So, think about how with light there is a way to hide from light. There is a way.

You can go into your house, you can go into the deepest closet you have, you can shut the doors, and you can hide yourself from any ray of light that there is. But heat is not like that. The heat of the sun persistently penetrates into every corner of the earth.

And so, even if it's only a little bit of heat that reaches you, you can never go far enough to outrun the reach of the sun's heat. So, creation reveals God's presence and even imitates his persistent love for us because nothing is hidden from the sun's heat, and no one is hidden from God's love.

But again, it's not creation or general revelation itself that converts the soul. It's God's words that convert the soul. And that brings us to our second point, which is that God's law is life-giving. So to sum it up again, point one was that God is undeniable. And point number two that we're moving into is that God's law is life-giving.

And this is in verses 7 through 11. So if you notice, when you read Psalm 19, there's an abrupt change here, and it shifts immediately without much transition at all to verse 7, which starts off by saying that the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving 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 commandment of the Lord is radiant, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous.

They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold. They are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. By them is your servant warned. In keeping them, there is great reward. So, for the grammar nerds in the room, here's a quick side note. There's a pattern that emerges in verses 7 through 9.

And each verse is a set of two couplets, and each couplet flows in this pattern. It starts with a noun, followed by the name Yahweh, which is then followed by an adjective, then a participle, and a noun. So, in grammar nerd moment, that's it, just throwing it. Out there, that's kind of a bonus.

But to jump into verse 7, verse 7 again says, The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul, and the statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. So, this concept of laws reviving the soul, how can laws revive the soul? Because I think our relationship with human laws can skew our view of the Lord and His laws.

A little story I have to illustrate this was when I was in the Army, I was in a platoon, and the other 11 platoons in our battalion had a mission, and in the military, the law, or the mission is the law, a mission that required us to get lumber from a battalion supply yard and complete the mission that same week.

There was another law that said that we needed to submit a formal request for that lumber, and these requests would often take two to three weeks to get approved, and our higher-ups were showing no signs of speeding up that process. So, you can see the problem. We had to complete the mission in a week, and it was going to take two to three weeks to get supplies.

Well, I got into a disagreement with my subordinates because they wanted to just jump the fence into the battalion supply yard and just go steal the lumber so we could complete our mission. And I wasn't letting them do that, and so they said, fine, sir, in frustration, and they said, We'll submit the request, and we'll get the lumber in three weeks.

So, I had to admit that they had a point because the laws of man here were pointing in two different directions. We could put the law of the mission first and ignore the law of the formal request system, or we could flip it and honor the request system and not the mission, and either way, we were going to fail one way or the other.

So we were stuck. And these man-made laws were not perfect and did not revive our souls. In fact, they crushed our souls. They were life-taking because they pointed in different directions. And I suspect that y'all might have many stories like this where law is pointed in different directions.

But this is different from God's law because God's law is life-giving as it always points in the same direction. Jesus gives us the reason that God's laws never contradict each other when he's responding to a lawyer in Matthew chapter 22, verses 37 through 40. He says, In response to which commandment is the greatest, he says, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all of the law and the prophets. So the law of the Lord is perfect because they all come from the same perfect and holy God who has no conflict in him.

I think this is also part of the reason that Jesus said in Matthew chapter 11, verse 30: Take your yoke to yourself. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

So everywhere we go on earth, we are bombarded by laws, laws, laws. There are laws everywhere. And we're forced to play by different rules and laws depending on what situation or what location we're in. So I did an internet search for about 20 seconds, and it gave me this list of different types of laws.

This is going to go fast for all you type A note-takers. Animal law, maritime law, bankruptcy law, banking and finance law, civil rights law, constitutional law. Is that still a thing these days? Anyway, corporate law, criminal law, education law, entertainment law, employment law, environmental law, family law, health law, immigration law, international law, intellectual property law, military law, personal injury law, real estate law, and everybody's favorite, tax law.

So that was 21 different types of laws. Now, as I read that list, I wonder about the possible stress and weight that might be building in some of you remembering things that these might evoke, like, shoot, that rental property that I need to do something with, or this IRS letter that I got, or a medical bill, or a workers' comp claim, or hunting license, or court date.

Now, imagine the relief and the revival that your soul might feel if you could follow just one law, which is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart. With all of your soul and with all of your mind. That is how God's law is life-giving.

So, verse 8 goes on to say, The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commandment of the Lord is radiant, enlightening the eyes. So, I'm going to look at these two in reverse order. Okay, so I'm going to encourage everyone to try this at least once.

Go on a run on the darkest night that you can and take a light with you. While you run, have it on, but while you're running, turn that light off and keep running, even if it's just for a second. Okay, at man camp, we did this recently. We went running in the morning in the dark.

There were trails through this pine forest, and running without a light would have been utter stupidity. And turning a light on is what made it possible for us to run without bumping into things. And it brought to mind Psalm 119, verse 105, which says, Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

That flashlight would have really had no effect in the daytime if we'd gone running in the daytime, but in the darkness, it was radiant. It gave light to our eyes and allowed us to see where we were going, to avoid the trees and fallen branches and low-hanging branches and potholes, roots, and rocks.

God's law helps us to avoid sin in all of its forms, but it doesn't come in branches and roots, but in temptations of all kinds. So, God's law is that light that shines in the light of the light. The darkness of temptation, so that we can find the narrow path that leads to life.

And not only does the flashlight or God's law give light to the eyes, it also gives joy to the heart. The moment after that flashlight came back on, you know, while you were running, and while we were running in the woods, joy actually flooded my heart that we had light to run by.

Because darkness distorts images, and light reveals their true form. Darkness does not show you reality, light does. The precepts of the Lord are right, they reveal true reality, and this indeed gives joy to the heart. So go running in the dark at least once to help you appreciate how God's law is life-giving.

Verse 9 says, The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. Now, the word fear doesn't mean that God is something scary that we should run away from. It's a healthy fear, kind of like the fear or respect we have for fire.

And it endures forever. You don't lose your salvation. Once you truly fear the Lord, it never leaves you. God's ordinances are altogether righteous. In other words, they're never wrong. God is the standard for what is right. He literally can do no wrong. It's just like when a teacher draws a circle and says, draw a circle exactly like this.

And any student that draws, say, like a square or a circle that's too big or too small would be considered substandard because it doesn't match the example. That the teacher drew. But on the flip side, you couldn't say that the teacher's circle was substandard because it is itself the standard.

It can't be wrong. And so it is with God. How awesome God is to give us ordinances that are altogether righteous. This is another way that God's law is life-giving. In verse 10, it talks about how, or it says that they are more precious than gold, than much pure gold.

Sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. Now, I think two things are going on here to describe the value of God's words. And David starts by saying that God's words are more precious than gold, but not just gold, but much gold. So you have a quantity being multiplied times the value here, which is God's word.

And then he also says, not just much gold, but also pure gold. So there's also a quality being multiplied times the value. And you have this quantity of gold being multiplied by the quality of gold, and you get an exponential, exponentially large value beyond. That's how valuable God's word is.

And as for honey from the comb, consider how food tends to lose its value or lose its taste with age. And if you've ever had honey from the comb, you know how much better it is than even when it's been sitting in a jar for a little while.

And basically, God's words are sweeter than honey when it's at its sweet. Sweetest, which you can't even really imagine. How could you imagine honey sweeter than it actually is off the comb? Moving on to verse 11. By them is your servant warned. In keeping them, there is great reward.

Now, that them refers to the ordinances of the Lord, and they do indeed warn us, like a parent telling a child not to run into the street to chase a baseball. The child has no concept of the consequences, but the parent does. And we often have no true concept of our sin, but the Lord does.

The parent can't reason with the child, so the parent gives the child life-giving commands to help save its life. And the Lord is too high above us to reason with us, so he gives us life-giving commands to preserve our lives. And the great reward? Life itself and getting to be with God in heaven.

So, one thing here is we shouldn't confuse this verse with talking about something like the prosperity gospel, which teaches that God rewards his followers with material wealth. That's deception, and it's easy for us to hear the word reward and think of those things, but God's laws are life-giving, not money-giving, not material wealth-giving.

Money and things are part of this world, and Jesus teaches us in Matthew again, chapter 24, verse 35, that heaven and earth will pass away, but he says, My words will not be. Pass away. So, in contrast to man's laws, which are life-taking, God's laws are life-giving. So, to close out this point, God's words, his special revelation, are what save us.

And that takes us to the third point, which is to follow David's example in Psalm 19. So, again, point one is God is undeniable. Point two is God's law is life-giving. Point three is to follow David's example and also be willing to let God root out your sin and get rid of it.

So, we read in verses 12 through 14, Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from presumptuous sins. May they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.

So, these concepts of discerning my own errors and needing forgiveness for my hidden faults, I originally imagined hidden faults as kind of piddly little sins that people may not even think of sins. Kind of like I borrowed a book from a guy one time, a co-worker, and it took a long time for me to read it, but by the time I read it, he took another job and moved away, and I didn't give him the book back by the time he moved.

So, in effect, I stole something from him, right? I was imagining hidden faults. Faults as things like that. But I think John MacArthur's book, Saved Without a Doubt, captures the idea of us having sins that are hidden when he writes this. He says, The first step to victory in warfare is identifying the enemy.

If you don't know what to shoot at, how are you going to hit it? How can you eliminate from your life what you don't even identify as needing to be eliminated? Sin is not only wicked, it's deceitful. And it's there. Believe me, it's there. Perhaps it's no great shock to you that sin is present in your life.

Realize, however, that it likes to hide, it likes to make itself at home in you so it doesn't appear at all out of the ordinary. I think that captures it really well and kind of brings back home who can discern their own errors. Or, in other words, who can smell their own stink?

Right? So, to illustrate that point, I have a story to tell you about smelling your own stink. So, we live in Bryan now, my family and I. But when we first moved to College Station about three years ago, we lived in this townhouse off of Harvey Road. And I started teaching in the construction science department at AM, and I shared an office with another guy named Randy.

And one day in the spring of 2019, I came home from work at AM, and Angie goes, It smells like something died in our house. You smell that? So, I had like. Three thoughts. First was, no, I don't smell anything. The second was, she's probably exaggerating. And the third was, maybe one of the kids just threw a banana peel or something behind a couch, and it'll be that easy.

So we tore the house apart looking for this stinky source, right? And we couldn't find it. And it did smell like a dead animal. So I chalked it up to like a mouse dying behind the wall, and after a few days, it'll go away. But it didn't. And Angie reported it was only getting worse.

And she was becoming more and more self-conscious by the day about how our family smelled. So, meanwhile, fast forward, I'm at work one day, and my office mate Randy turns around and he says, Smells like something died in here. Do you smell that? So it did not even cross my mind that there might be a connection between the smell at my house and the smell that was in our office.

So I casually and honestly, I told Randy that I didn't smell anything. Randy got up from his chair and he goes, I have a really good sense of smell. And he starts walking around, taking big whiffs like this. And he's on his part of the office over here, smelling.

And he starts coming over to my side like this. And he gets like three feet away from me. And he goes, it's really strong over here. Now, I still was oblivious to what was going on. So I went and got a ladder and I looked above the ceiling in our office to see if there was some dead animal up there, right?

Told Randy, hey, there's nothing up there. And so I was coming home from work one day, and Angie, she kind of got close to me. I think she was hugging me after work, and she recoils and she goes, Your clothes, they smell like a dead animal. And then I realized, like, the light bulb went on right then, that Randy had been smelling me, and I could not smell my own stink.

Now, I never did this, but if I had sought forgiveness from Randy, I would have had to go to him and say, It was me! And then I would have to say, Forgive me for my hidden fault. I couldn't even smell my own stink. I couldn't even see my own sin.

And so it is with sin. We need God's words to convict us of our sins that we can't even see ourselves because sin likes to hide and operate as kind of a background noise in our lives that we don't notice. So follow David's example and ask God to reveal your hidden sins so that you can ask Him for forgiveness.

Verse 13 says, Keep your servant also from presumptuous sins. May they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression. The definition of presumptuous, or some synonyms for presumptuous, are rash, arrogant, insolent, or taking liberties unduly. All of these definitions come with a connotation of willingness to do them.

So, if we're honest with ourselves, presumptuous, arrogant, insolent sins are the type that we have no intention of fighting hard against. Presuming that we know better than God and stubbornly holding on to our way instead of submitting to God's way. In a sense, telling God, I know I stink, but I'm not going to change, so deal with it.

Now, David knows that he cannot be called innocent, and we need to follow his example. Admit that we have hidden sins, that we don't even know are there, and admit that we are prone to presumptuous sins, that we have little to no intention of resisting, and ask God's help in keeping us from them.

So, finishing up with verse 14, it says, May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. What we say with our mouths matters to God, and God shows us that words do matter. He created the heavens and the earth.

Earth with words. Jesus, the Son, is the living word, and Scripture is his written word. God cares about words. And David shows humility in realizing that as a sinner, just because he says something, or just because he thinks about something, does not mean that it will be acceptable to God.

He's asking for God's help to reshape him so that when David does speak to God, or when David does meditate on God, that his words and his thoughts and beliefs are indeed acceptable in God's sight, because God is the one who determines what is acceptable, not us. So, how many times have you and I prayed with the leftovers of our energy, with the dregs of our day, and called that acceptable in our own sight?

I exhort you and encourage you to give God your best and call out that there is a connection between our mouths and our hearts. As it says in Matthew 12, 34, for out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. So, words from our mouth matter. What is in our heart matters.

And I think the end of Psalm 19 has a beautiful parallel to Romans 10:9. Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that he rose from the dead, you will be saved. So, if you're a believer, let this be a reminder that your words matter.

The meditations Of your heart matter. God deserves your best. Ask Him to reveal the sin in your life and allow Him to root it out. And if you're not a believer, let this be an invitation to turn to God, to soften your heart towards God, confess with your mouth that He is Lord, and also to follow David's example.

So, in summary, point one was that God is undeniable with General Revelation. Point two, God's law is life-giving, in contrast to man's law. And then, point three was that follow David's example by asking God to reveal your hidden sins, by asking Him to keep you from arrogant and presumptuous sins, and to humble yourself by realizing that God determines what is acceptable.

Let's pray, Lord Jesus, thank you for your creation and for your word. I pray that you would help us to hide your word in our hearts that we may not sin against you. Pray that you would help us to identify our hidden sins, those things that we don't even know that we do, so that we can ask you for forgiveness.

Lord Jesus, I pray that you would help and keep us from presumptuous, arrogant, and insolent sins. When we think we know better, I pray that you would help us to follow you and not the ways of the world or what is good in our own eyes. Father, thank you for the example that you give us in your word of David and his humility, and asking you for help and recognizing that you are the one who determines what's acceptable and what isn't.

And Lord Jesus, thank you for this church and people who are here wanting to know your word and honor your word with all of our hearts. In your name we pray. Amen.