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Psalm 19
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This week in our daily services we're looking at Psalm 19, a wonderful psalm about how God speaks to us. Yesterday we reflected on God's word of creation. Let's read together the opening verses of the psalm:
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. 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 ends of the world.
On Saturday my family and I visited Hay-on-Wye, a small town just over the border in Wales, famous for its bookshops. We spent a happy four hours going in and out of the shops, browsing the shelves, and buying books. It was lovely to see my children excited by what they'd bought—they'd gone with a list of books they wanted and found them, and others too. In the evening they sat down and wrote their names inside their books, and then, of course, they started to read them.eg
Books are wonderful, and we know that what we read can have a profound effect upon us. We see that with children: some develop a love of reading that fuels their imagination and creativity. For some of us adults, an encounter with a book or an author set us on our particular career path.
Sometimes the effect is physical. Some time ago a friend of mine told me about a dieting book he had read. For some time he'd been feeling sluggish and tired, but after reading the book and cutting out some foods it suggested and adding others, he was a changed man—full of life and vitality again.
Sometimes the effect of what we read is much more personal—it affects our hearts. Perhaps you read a message in which someone tells you that they love you, and those words melt your heart. You see that person in a whole new light, and your relationship goes to a new depth.
In Psalm 19, the psalmist turns from God's word of creation to God's word of scripture, and he meditates on the profound effect God's word has on us. Let's read together our two verses for today:
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 law of the Lord is not so much legal rules—the word means teaching or instruction. It's a big term for all that God wants to reveal about himself. And God's law is perfect. There are no blemishes or defects; it is whole and complete, with integrity.
And its effect? It gives life. The Lord knows the highs and lows of our lives. When we're tired from daily pressure and grind, when we're weighed down by our sin and failure—just as water revives a plant, absorbed by its roots and refreshing its leaves and shoots—so God's word revives and restores us from the inside out. It gives life.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.
Those statutes are God's firm principles, which he confirms and verifies, and which direct and guide us. They're like the stabilisers on a child's bicycle—they help keep the rider upright, so that she doesn't fall to either side and hurt herself. So God's word leads us. It directs us and guides us. It makes us wise.
The final effect is that it gives joy.
The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.
These are God's precise rules, which he has appointed for us to obey, and which make us glad. Now, that seems a strange idea today—surely obeying the rules, and especially God's rules, makes us sad, that they're oppressive and restrictive and harmful. But God's words don't do that.
He is a morally pure and true God, and so his words are just and right. As we obey the words of the one who loves us and made us and saved us, their effect is not drudgery but delight. They don't make us joyless but joyful.
There is no more effective book than scripture. These words, because they are God's words, give us life and wisdom and joy.
And so let's respond to God's words by praying together this well-known prayer:
Blessed Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that through patience and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and forever hold fast the hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
