God's Glory In Nature And Scripture

Sermon for January 26, 2026 - Psalm 19

This past Wednesday at the men’s Bible study we were looking at the song of Miriam and Moses from Exodus chapter 15 after they crossed through the Red sea.

It’s a song, though the melody is lost to us because they had no way to write melodies 3000 years ago and of course they couldn’t record music as we do so easily now on our Smartphones.

So when it came to Dave Buckley’s time to read his portion of the Scripture passage, he sang it, making up his own lovely melody.

That inspired me, so I did the same. It was an interesting, unexpected experience. Music, melody adds something that somehow takes the words to a deeper place in us.

Experiment:

Does someone here want to make up a melody for the first few lines of Psalm 19 that’s up on the screen?

[If people sing] How did that feel? How was the experience of the Psalm different when you sang it or heard it being sung?

[If people don’t sing] Ok. No problem. We’re a shy bunch.

[Either way] The point is, to remember that this was written, as inspired by God, as a song. So while it contains facts and important ‘data’, it is meant to be experienced, felt, appreciated at the level perhaps of art.

This is a beautiful song, a Psalm of King David. The word Psalm means: a song sung to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. It is a brilliant model for us for reflection and prayer.

Let’s dive in.

19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.

3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.

4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

My wife and I read and discussed this passage in our devotions this past Friday. Her thoughts included that all of creation reveals God.

‘And she said that science, far from replacing God, simply peels back the onion of all that God has made.

Francis Collins is acting science advisor to US Presidents and, a brilliant, renowned physicist-geneticist noted for his service for twelve years as the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

He is also known for his leadership of the international Human Genome Project, a team of over 2000 scientists who collaborated to determine the three billion letters in the human genome – our own DNA instruction book.

He said, ‘I cannot see how nature could have created itself. Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that.’

That’s interesting, the way he put that: “I cannot see how nature could have created itself”

That is the studied observation of a scientist. But of course, there are many who would say “I can’t see how God could’ve created creation”.

So it comes down to what we can see and what we can’t see, and of course that is incredibly personal and individualized for each of us.

A relative of mine who writes songs decided at a young age that he didn’t want to follow Jesus.

We wrote a song called: “I Go Wrong”, and these are a few of the lyrics:

“Where did I go wrong?

'Cause even though I'm low inside

I don't want the light

'Cause even with my open eyes

I can't see the light

So even though I'm low inside

I don't want your light”

When I was an atheist, I could appreciate the beauty of the creative order, I could see its loveliness, I could feel its splendor, somewhat.

But because of the orientation of my heart, because of my prejudices against the concept of God, because of the sin in my own heart, I could not see.

I could look but I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see because I didn’t want to see, kind of like my relative.

What does it mean when we cannot see? Well, someone who is blind suffers an impairment.

And someone who was born blind could and would never know that there was anything that could be seen, unless somebody told them, once they reached the age that they could understand. Pause

And I think that this is a good way to approach people who are agnostic, meaning they don’t believe that it’s possible to know if God exists, or for people who are atheists, people who say that they know that God does not exist. It is to realize that they are impaired.

They cannot or will not see the reality of God, and in the absence of being able to see what is real, the human mind hating a vacuum of acknowledge, seeks other ways to understand.