We invite those of you who enjoy our sermons to join our church community for worship whenever you are in Galena on a Sunday morning. We would be happy to see you.
The Beauty of God’s Grace
Psalm 19
September 15, 2024
Several months ago, Delight and I were driving through Wisconsin on our way to give our grandson his birthday presents. It was a beautiful late spring day. The sun was shining; there was a light, pleasant breeze and the traffic was flowing freely. You couldn’t ask for a nicer day. Then, all of a sudden, we saw a semi in the opposite lane weaving back and forth and seemingly tipping slightly.
My initial thought was that there must be something wrong with the driver, but it quickly became apparent that he was fighting against some powerful wind shears and struggling to keep his truck in his own lane. Interestingly, I noticed that the tops of the trees lining the road were perfectly still, even though the lower branches were actively dancing in the wind.
That truck driver must have been dealing with a sudden and highly localized gust. I’d never seen anything like that before and it made me think of the many ways that nature continues to surprise us even in our deeply-scientific world where so many mysteries have been laid bare in carefully detailed explanations of the natural laws producing those effects.
The author of the 19th psalm took a similarly close look at the working of nature around him or her. However, instead of focusing on the natural laws that governed its behavior, the author focused on the fingerprints of the Creator who etched those laws into the atoms of our universe.
The psalmist saw the power and majesty of God in every aspect of nature. We modern Americans are so deeply connected with our technological devices that our relationship to nature is far more removed than that of the ancient Israelites.
If we want to make say a 100 mile journey, we jump in our climate-controlled car, turn on the GPS and we’ll probably arrive in less than two hours, after being entertained throughout our trip by the radio or a CD player. In fact, if we’re wealthy enough, we might even travel by a self-driving car.
The experience of the ancient Hebrew traveler was far different. A 100 mile journey would take five or six days. It was likely to be done completely on foot since few people could afford an animal to ride.
Before leaving home, they would almost certainly arrange to find a group of others who were going in the same direction to offer a measure of protection from bandits and wild animals. And most or all of their evenings along the way would be spent camping out under the stars. Unlike us, they were not largely distant from the outdoor elements; instead, they were immersed in them.
Those hours laboring along the road and those additional hours sleeping under the stars would likely lead to observations about the breath-taking beauty and vast expanse of the natural world. And for the psalmist, that led immediately to thoughts of the awe-inspiring grandeur of the God who created it all.
I had an impactful experience like that in junior high while attending a Presbyterian church camp at Lake Okoboji in northwest-ern Iowa. All the campers and counselors had been gathered on the beach one night. We were far away from any electric lights.
The only light at all came from the roaring campfire, whose flames were dancing hypnotically in the inky darkness, and from the innumerable stars whose pinpricks of light leapt out from the jet-black night sky.
As I thought about the massive amounts of time and vast distances of space that starlight had traveled to reach my eye, one of the counselors read Psalm 8: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”
That may have been the first time that I actually thought about the Creator lurking behind the majesty of his creation, even though that thought seemed to come effortlessly to the authors of Psalm 8 and Psalm 19. Perhaps like me, it was the tremendous scale and variety of nature that turned their thoughts to God.
That vastness is a reminder that life is bigger than our day-to-day routines and the issues we may be battling with. Nature can indeed show evidence of the gifted Creator behind it all. However, as the author of Psalm 19 recognized, that is not enough.
Nature can only guide our thoughts toward God; it can’t tell us many details about God beyond implying the existence of a Creator. How can you learn about a loving God merely through observation of a world beset by the brutally cold blizzards of winter; the blazing heat of summer; the eruptions of volcanos; the terror-striking devastations of tornados, hurricanes and earthquakes, and even the fearsome power of certain summer thunderstorms?
In order to understand who God is, we need to hear from God directly. That’s the reason the psalmist makes a somewhat abrupt transition from talking about nature to talking about God’s law. Most people think of laws as being burdensome restrictions on their ability to act however they want.
However, the psalmist has come to see a moral beauty in God’s law that can rival the beauty of the natural world. And in God’s law, he or she sees the key for living a joyous life and for building a genuine relationship with God. Speaking about a similar situation, my father once wrote:
“I think many people rebel against the law simply because it is the law. It is the will of another asserting itself over our will. We seem to have an inborn arrogance that says, ‘My will, my wants, my desires are going to be supreme for me.’ But we cannot live that way.
“If there were no traffic laws; if everyone could drive on the right, or the left or in the middle of the road; if there were no traffic lights to control the flow of vehicles we would live in a universal demolition derby in which no one’s life would be safe.
“So it is with the moral law. When we learn to live in harmony with the teachings of God we find that they are a fence shielding us from evil, enabling us to have joy and pleasure behind their protection. No wonder the psalmist said ‘they are sweeter than the purest honey’ and we are ‘rewarded for obeying them.’”
As the psalmist contemplates God’s law, he or she recognizes that the law isn’t intended to be burdensome, rather it is intended to align us with God’s design, providing for richer human life, not hobbling limitations.
In the modern world, we might say that God’s laws are woven into our DNA so that when we disobey them, we are only hurting ourselves. Therefore, like a jeweler examining a precious diamond, the psalmist focuses on various aspects of the law, piling superlative upon superlative in praise of the dazzling beauty of the law.
And in the process of doing that, the psalmist comes to a stark realization of his or her own failures in keeping the law. That leads to the third and final section of the psalm in which the psalmist implicitly asks for forgiveness and overtly requests that God provide guidance away from temptation so that they may live fully within God’s will and their life will be pleasing to God.
Wheeler Robinson once wrote about a man who stood in the back of a church sanctuary as the choir was practicing a song that included the words, “Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us...”
Another man came and stood next to him, listening to that song and began to moan over and over again, “Oh, God, if only he could! If only he could!” And with that he ran out of the church. Clearly that man never understood the message of forgiveness that is interlaced like a golden thread throughout all of scripture.
A far more common response from those who believe in the promises of the Bible may be found in a prayer that appears in a modern Yom Kippur liturgy. It says:
“Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red to orange. The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the south. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter. For leaves, birds and animals, turning comes instinctively. But for us, turning does not come so easily. It takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong, and this is never easy. It means losing face. It means starting all over again. And this is always painful. It means saying I am sorry. It means recognizing that we have the ability to change. These things are terribly hard to do.
“But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday’s ways. Lord help us to turn, from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith. Turn us around, O Lord, and bring us back toward you. Revive our lives as at the beginning, and turn us toward each other, Lord, for in isolation there is no life.”
Then, when we turn toward one another, we then have the opportunity to bestow our forgiveness, in turn, on those who have hurt us, just as God offers his forgiveness to us so freely.
Perhaps the most amazing example of that comes from a prayer written by an unknown prisoner at Ravensbrueck concentration camp and left by the body of a dead child. It said:
“O Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted on us; remember the fruits we have bought, thanks to this suffering — our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all of this, and when they come to judgment let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness.”
That prayer perfectly fits the spirit of the psalmist, who wrote, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Amen.
by Jim McCrea
Pastor
Rev. Jim McCrea
WORSHIP
Sundays, 10 a.m.
SUNDAY SCHOOL (Sept – May)
Adults: Sundays, 9-9:45 a.m.