Good evening, if you would, open up your Bibles and turn with me to Psalm 19. If you're using one of the Bibles in the chairs, that's page 380, Psalm 19. And as you're turning there, and by way of introduction, many of you know that coming up on a long time ago now, I went to school at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. And one of the things I remember most and I enjoyed most about my time in Colorado was hiking in the Rocky Mountains. And at risk of being in hot water with my wife, the Smoky Mountains are great. But when you hike in the Smoky Mountains, you spend all day going uphill, and it's hot, and it's sweaty, and you're expecting at some point to round the corner and see something beautiful. And when you get to that point in the Smoky Mountains, there's always a bunch of trees in the way. It's not like that in the Rocky Mountains. There are rocks in the Rocky Mountains. And so of the vast miles of trails, first of all, you usually feel like you're alone, even though there might be some folks nearby. But there are many places where you round the corner, and it always felt like this to me, and this is why I remember it, it feels like you're the only one or you're the first one to ever see this thing, this panorama that you're seeing. You can see for miles. The mountains above you are so high. The valley below you is so low. The river is so beautiful. The trees and the rocks and the quiet. And again, that's a feeling, but it feels like you're the only person or the first person who has ever seen this. So even though I wasn't a Christian then, when I spent time hiking in the Rockies, when I read the first verse, especially of Psalm 19, this is the thing that always comes to mind first, is this feeling that I remember of seeing something that I knew was from the hand of God. And so if you're with me there, Psalm 19, we'll start at the beginning. It says, to the chief musician, a psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament, or the expanse, shows his handiwork. Now, we could stop right there, and we could dive deep, and we could never leave this verse, and we could be here for hours. We could look at the big things, like we've already talked about, the mountains, outer space, the powerful waterfalls, the depths of the sea. These things show the Lord's handiwork. We can look to the small things, like the eyeball of a flea. and we can see God's handiwork. We could ponder what some might call the first principles of science, questions like, how could something come from nothing? And what other way could life come out of not life? We could evaluate the irreducible complexity of even the simplest creatures in our mind And all of this would point us right to God's eternal power and his divine nature. And David takes us a little bit different route. That's why we're not going to park there. Verse two, he says, Day unto day, utter speech. Night unto night, reveals knowledge. It's this pattern, day, night, day, night, that shows God's glory. Verse three, there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out throughout all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In other words, without a sound, without words, the creation declares the glory of God. And there's nowhere that hasn't received this message. No people, no nation, no tribe, no language, everyone has received it. There in verse 4 he continues and he says, in them, that is in the heavens who are making these declarations of glory, in them he has set a tabernacle for the sun. which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices like a strong man to run its race. It's rising from one end of heaven and its circuit to the other end and there is nothing hidden from its heat." Now many of us can probably remember one or two or maybe a handful of sunsets that we would label awesome. in the proper sense of the word, right? The kind of sunset that just screams glory to our Creator. But David is talking about sunsets, but actually he's more particularly talking about sunrises and the whole course of what the sun does. And these two analogies are really good, so we're going to park here for just a moment. Think about these with me. When the sun shows itself in the morning, it doesn't just Turn on. It makes an entrance, like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. Now, I know most of you men, I wasn't at all of your weddings, but I bet it was at least like mine in this sense. On my wedding day, I spent a lot more time getting ready than I normally do. And it was a little bit, but not completely, about me walking out of that chamber and looking glorious. It was because I was meant to look like I had a purpose. I'm going to marry that woman today. That's what I should have looked like coming out of the chamber. This is the analogy. The sun doesn't just rise, it gives heat to everything that it reaches, it sets, it establishes the seasons. And as David says, when it completes the circuit, the sun is like, here's the second analogy, the sun is like a strong man who rejoices to run its race. And this is a great analogy, a great runner rejoicing to run the race. And think about it. Why does a runner rejoice to run the race? I'll go off script a little bit and give you the antithesis here. When someone who's not in shape runs a race, joy is not the word. David's using the opposite analogy. The great runner, the one who is ready, the one who is great, his muscles, his lungs, have been formed to go fast or to go far. This one is doing the thing that he was built to do. He has purpose. And so the fact that day comes after day and that all the days have happened on schedule ever since the beginning of time, this is because God created the sun for a purpose and he set it in his tabernacle to govern the days. The sun did not just happen. Now most of you know there are plenty of people in this world who will say otherwise. They'll say that it is not the creator who always was and is and always will be. They'll say the stuff. was always here and it will always be here the creation or the cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be and there are probably hundreds of theories of how the sun just happened but in the same way we don't see the great athlete do the great athletic thing we don't look at that and we say oh that was lucky oh the fates are upon him today we don't say that we say things like He was born to run. She was made to dance like that. This is his moment. He was made for this. So similarly, David is saying, when the sun rises, it does so in a way that declares, I was made for this. And that glorious declaration of purpose gives credit to the one who made the sun to govern the days so brilliantly. Now this consistent and persistent schedule of days and nights and seasons, this purpose for which God made the sun, it's something that the Lord uses to declare his faithfulness. And you probably remember other passages, but I just have two here. Genesis chapter eight, Noah and his family come off of the ark. They built an altar. They make a sacrifice to the Lord. The Lord finds the sacrifice pleasing. And the Lord says, while the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night shall never cease. And this isn't a reversal of the curse of Genesis 3. This is a part of the promise that the Lord will never again destroy the world with a flood. This is a statement of the Lord's faithfulness. Similarly, in Jeremiah 33, Jeremiah is hearing from the Lord and prophesying about the new covenant. He's talking about the promises that he made to David. And if you're going to turn there with me, keep your finger in Psalm 19, but Jeremiah 33 verse 19 says, and the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, thus says the Lord. If you can break my covenant with the day, and my covenant with the night, so that there will not be day and night in their season, then my covenant may also be broken with David my servant, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne, and with the Levites my priests, my ministers." In other words, the promises to David are as sure as the cycle that the son has been ordained to govern. This cycle is the creation and the order of the universe, and it shows God's eternal power and his divine nature. And as we've seen, it does so without words. That's verse three. It does so to everyone. That's Psalm 19, verse four. And it does so in an unmistakable way, such that it is so clear God's eternal power and divine nature that only the fool denies it. And again, if you're gonna turn with me, keep your finger on Psalm 19. But this is Paul's point in Romans chapter one. Romans chapter one, verse 18. He says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness. Because what may be made, or sorry, what may be known of God is manifest in them. For God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. So God is telling us something with his creation and his order. He's showing us his eternal power and his divine nature. And all of what he declares in his creation, if we squeeze it down and package it up tight or we categorize it, We call this general revelation. Now back in Psalm 19 verse 7, we're going to continue. David turns to a different kind of revelation. He turns to what God has declared in writing. This is the kind of declaration made with words and sentences. This is what the Lord has breathed out. through the man he has commissioned to write the Bible. In contrast to that, what we just called general revelation, the written word, your Bible, is what we call special revelation. General revelation is what the creation declares about God's glory without a word. Special revelation is the Lord's written word to his people. General revelation shows us that we are the creature and he is the creator. We are not to be worshipped, he is. We cannot order the universe around, he has. We are subject to him, he is not subject to us. But we are the crown of his creation. And so even by our own very existence, we declare the glory of God. But in the Lord's special revelation, the crown of His creation, we learn how to do what the Lord created us to do. We learn how to fulfill our purpose. We learn how to serve Him and worship Him and live. And so in verses 7 through 9 of Psalm 19, we get a tightly packaged explanation of the law. And we'll go through this fairly quickly, but there's a lot in here, so keep up. Verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul. Now the law is not just the Lord's command. What David has in mind here is the whole Torah. Everything that the Lord has spoken through his prophets that David has heard. This is what's in his mind when he thinks of the law. And this word converting is big. Let's just park here just so that we understand the seriousness of it. In general, the word means turn back, return, restore. But as we'll see here when we continue, this is a big turn. This is a turn from death to life. God's word refreshes a soul, a dying soul, or even a dead soul. The law of the Lord takes a zombie-like physical living body into a whole person, one that is alive to God, one that is connected to the Lord by his life-giving spirit. The law of the Lord turns a body who is alive but dead to the Lord into the life of a living being like the healthy tree planted next to the river in Psalm 1. Going on, David says, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. What the Lord says about himself and about us is certain. You can put your weight on it and it doesn't give, it holds. You can build a house on it and it will not crack or crumble. And even those who don't understand much can be very wise by comparison to those who will not obey the Lord. David says, the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. What the Lord commands is true. He does not hold out on us. And remember the joy of that strong man, that great runner, how his being built and being made for the race gave him joy. In the same way, following the statutes of the Lord, give his creatures joy as we obey. The Lord's statutes go hand in hand with his purposes for creating us and our purposes in life. And just think, because many of the people we encounter on a day-to-day basis are like this. Without them, the statutes of the Lord, we are grasping for meaning. We are poking around in the dark for purpose. David continues, he says, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. Now, there's at least two senses that we should take this. The commands of the Lord enlighten our eyes in the sense that they show us the way, like as an example, Proverbs 29, verse 13, it says, the poor man and the oppressor have this in common. The Lord gives light to the eyes of both. But the second way that we should at least ponder is this idea that Enlightened eyes are pure. They are clear. They don't distort. So if I have healthy, enlightened eyes, when I receive light, it can go in and actually affect my heart. This is like what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter six, verse 22. He said, the lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? In other words, if the law doesn't give light through your eyes because they're not pure or they're darkened, The only light that you have left is the light that's already on the inside. And Jesus is saying that that's not going to go well for anybody. So continuing on in verse nine here, we see the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. And you can say it with me if you'd like. You'll all remember the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, wisdom, right? What God tells us about himself and our relation to him cannot be perverted. A proper fear of the Lord will never be found to be foolish. Neither he nor his word will ever turn back on itself. It cannot contradict itself. It is coherent. It is pure like he is. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. What the Lord says about justice is as sound as he is. His judgments are just because they come from the one who is justice. And all of this explanation about the law causes David to say this certain and pure and trustworthy and enlightening word of God, this what the Lord tells us in his special revelation, the Bibles that we hold in our hands, this is precious. Verse 10, this is, more to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey in the honeycomb. So like the creation and the sun, which declare their divine purposes, the Lord's law also defines and guides a purposeful existence for the crown of his creation. The law of the Lord describes and it prescribes a life in which we know which way to go. Look there in verse 11. Moreover by them your servant is warned and in keeping them there is great reward. And then turning to the Lord, David says, who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and I shall be innocent of great transgression." Now, Dr. Joel Binkley's commenting on these couple of verses says something I think is pretty helpful for our thinking. He says, When David is asking for the cleansing from secret faults, this is akin to justification. This is a cry for forgiveness, a cry for atonement. David is asking the Lord to wipe away the sins that he may not even know he has committed. On the other hand, verse 13 is a plea for sanctification. David says, I want the Lord to rule over me, not the dominion of sin. Lord, please do not let King Sin have dominion over me. And underlying all this, and as with many of David's Psalms, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, is this huge theme of David's dependence upon the Lord. David, throughout the Psalms, David is always calling upon the Lord for deliverance, for redemption, for safety from something. And we know David. At least we know enough to say, I know what David's not saying. He is not saying, Lord, don't let me ruin my perfect record. Right? We know him. This is not the guy who's saying I got a spanky, spanky record. No, he's saying, Lord, don't let me fail you again. Don't let me be a wicked servant again. Keep me close. Guard me from the danger. And before we move on, we should address this distinction, at least for our own understanding, but it does help clarify the verse as well. The contrast here is secret faults versus presumptuous sins. Perhaps one of the most clear passages elsewhere that we can rest on for a good explanation would be in Numbers chapter 15. Again, keep your finger here if you're going to flip over there with me. But in Numbers chapter 15, the Lord is describing or prescribing atonement. And he says, he gives atonement processes for unintentional sins. And then he says, there is no atonement for presumptuous sins. Now, as I read this, listen for the two characteristics of a presumptuous sin. This is Numbers chapter 15, verse 30. But the person who does anything presumptuously, whether he is native born or a stranger, that one brings reproach upon the Lord, and he shall be cut off from among his people. because he has despised the word of the Lord and has broken his commandment, that person shall be completely cut off and his guilt shall be upon him. So the two criteria or the two characteristics there is that a presumptuous sin brings reproach upon the Lord and a presumptuous sin is committed by someone who has despised the word of the Lord. Now, if you have time in the near future to listen to the sermon, I would highly recommend it. Charles Spurgeon gave a sermon on presumptuous sins, 1850s, 1860s, somewhere in there. It's on Sermon Audio. Just type in presumptuous. I bet that'll be the only one. But he gives a whole 45 minutes on what presumptuous sins are. And he says presumptuous sins have at least one of the following characteristics. He says, a sin becomes presumptuous when you commit it willfully, that is, against the light or the knowledge that it is wrong. So you know that it's wrong, but you commit the sin anyway. Also, a sin can be presumptuous because of the deliberation and the planning that goes into it. If I am planning my sin, this is a presumptuous sin. Another characteristic that makes a sin presumptuous is sinning just for sinning's sake, as in, I like to be rebellious, so let's get it all done in one night kind of thing. And then finally, presumptuous sins are sins that we commit through our rash confidence in our own strength. Presumptuous sin presumes that God's grace will cover the guilt, and so the fleeting pleasure of sin is worth the risk. Or, well just think of this, what gets thrown under the bus when the presumptuous sinner takes God's grace for granted? It's the very thing we're talking about. The law of the Lord gets thrown under the bus when we take God's grace for granted and license to go presumptuously sin. Now, David continues with this theme of dependence upon the Lord. As we get to verse 14, he's going to give a request for help. You'll remember Jesus will later say that the that uncleanness is not caused by what goes in, but rather uncleanness starts here and comes out. David is going to ask the Lord to make both his mouth and his heart suitable before the Lord there in verse 14. He says, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. And so as we ponder this last line, we ought to be convinced that David has properly understood both general revelation and special revelation. He's the one teaching us how God's creation declares the glory of God without a word, and he's the one teaching us that this creator is the personal covenant-making covenant-keeping Lord Yahweh who has spoken to his people and who has graciously given us what we need to know to serve him, to worship him, to glorify him. In other words, he has given us what we need to know to do the thing for which we were made. And in this last line, David calls the Lord his strength, again showing his dependence, and he says the Lord is my redeemer. I don't think I have to convince you that that word redeemer is a weighty word. You might even be able to make a good argument that redemption is the major theme of special revelation, right? It's at least a top contender. We often talk about biblical events with regard to their place in the history of redemption, right? Redemption is a big theme throughout all of what God has told us. And because we have the whole of God's written word in our hands, in our Bibles, we know a lot about redemption. Now there are two Hebrew words that generally get translated into redeem or redemption and they're pretty close synonyms so we won't park on that idea for very long. but redeem. To reclaim as one's own, to take something that was yours, but somewhere or another became under the ownership or the rule or dominion of someone else, and to redeem it means to bring it back to where it's yours again. As an example, when Jacob was on his deathbed and he's giving his blessing to Joseph in Genesis 48, he says, God had redeemed him from all evil. When the Lord told the Israelites that he was going to take them out of Egypt, he said, I will rescue you and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. You were my people. You went under the dominion of the leaders of Egypt and now I'm going to bring you back under my dominion. In Leviticus the Lord lays out a bunch of laws about how to redeem property or how to get back property that belongs to your family or to your tribe including people who had sold themselves into slavery because they were poor. So even if it's property or redeeming a person because of what they had to sell to somebody else because of their situation. And so, when David talks about redemption, and when we think about redemption, the real question is, redeemed from what? Or from whom? If God was redeeming David, or if God had redeemed David, in what way had David been lost? And so in passages like 2 Samuel 4 or 1 Kings 1, David says things like, the Lord had redeemed his life from all adversity. So the dangers of his situation had consumed him and he was asking the Lord to deliver him, to protect him, to redeem him from those dangers. In Psalm 130 at the end, we looked at this last week, David asked the Lord to redeem Israel out of his iniquities. Redeem Israel out of their sins to forgive them. And this is where we start to recognize the kind of redemption we're used to talking about, right? Because we know the whole story, we know that our redemption, our redemption price, the work of Jesus Christ that he accomplished for us, was the death that he paid the price to buy us back From what or from whom? To buy us back from the penalty of God's own justice. We went willingly out of God's dominion into and under the dominion of sin. What Jesus did was to pay the price to buy us back, to redeem us and bring us back to the Lord. David had seen the Lord do this a bunch of times. David had seen the Lord rescue him from certain danger, certain death. David had seen the Lord forgive him. Now, in David's mind, he's thinking, redeem me back into surety of the Lord's promises. The Lord had promised David that he would never be without a son on the throne. And David encounters life, and he sees all these reasons that that's just not going to happen. And so when he asked the Lord to deliver him, he's asking the Lord to redeem me back to where it looks like your promises are sure. And as we read the word redeemer, even when David is praying it, we think more, and rightly so, we think more specifically of the redemption accomplished by Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, of our Redeemer. Now, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, is not the main point of this psalm, and I don't think we need to see the primary application of Psalm 19 as a lesser point than the glory of our greater redemption in Christ. But here it is. Because of what God the creator has shown us in general revelation that is his eternal power and his divine nature and Because of what the Lord has written to us in his law and his Bible and his special revelation We see who he is and we see who we are. And so the primary application here is to do what David does at the end and to identify with David, for lack of a better term, and with him cry out to the Lord in the same way. We understand that we have the Lord's law. We understand that applying it to our hearts will fulfill the purpose for which we were created. And even though we know that our redemption The price that Christ paid is paid. It's done. It's secure. We know that our hearts are prone to wander. So we could totally get off track here, but I'm not going to. There are certainly many. earthly powers of all sorts and kinds that would love to have dominion over you and me. And they spend their energy trying to convince us one way or another that they are Lord, whether by false arguments or whether by the use of force. But whether it's earthly powers, or the dominion of sin itself, like David, we should cry out to the Lord, our strength and our redeemer, to implant his word deep in us, to bring us to our ultimate purpose, to conform us to the image of his son, Jesus Christ. So, in closing, we should pray just like David, And so we'll do so now. Please pray with me. Lord, we see your eternal power and divine nature displayed throughout what you have created. And we hold in our hand your law, your rich word. Without your gracious revelation, who among us could understand our folly and our need for redemption? Lord, cleanse us from our secret faults. Keep back your servants also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over us. Then we shall be blameless, and we shall be innocent of great transgression. Let the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.