OPEN: According to “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” the longest love letter ever was written by Marcel de Leclure in 1875. Marcel was an artist in Paris France and his letter contained the 3 word French phrase “je vous aime” (pronounced “shavou same”) which means “I Love You.” This wasn’t just written down once… it was written 1,875,000 times. And he didn’t EVEN write the letter. He hired a scribe. He dictated that message - word for word (all 3 of them) - and then had the scribe read it back to him (remember, this was the same phrase written 1,875,000 times).
Reflecting on this love letter, Robert Ripley (the creator of “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not”) said “Never was love made manifest by as great an expenditure of time and effort.”
(PAUSE) One person observed “That’s ridiculous. How loving is it to just write the same thing a million times?” (Joel Pankow, Sermoncentral.com)
But that’s how some people think sometimes.
By contrast – when God showed his love for David - David realized that God did far more than write down “I love you” a million times. In Psalm 19 David tells us HOW God showed His love.
David starts out telling us: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” Psalm 19:1-2
David looked up at the heavens and saw God’s love filling the night sky.
ILLUS: Abraham Lincoln said: “I never behold (the stars) that I do not feel I am looking in the face of God.”
In our culture, where we spend so much time inside, we rarely get to experience the majesty of a starry heaven like David did. But – when we do – sometimes it’s overwhelming.
In one of his Psalms, David wrote: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” Psalm 8:3-4
The heavens are so imposing that David wondered why God even gave him a 2nd thought. (pause) But God DID give David a 2nd thought, and David knew it. That’s why he tried so hard to be a man after God’s own heart. But, if he’d only known how much God did for us in the heavens. David would have written far more of his Psalms. Because - you see - the heavens might be pretty, but they’re more than just a pretty face.
ILLUS: Over the centuries, STARS have served as way to measure seasons (a fact taught us in the first chapter of Genesis). From the structures of the Aztecs to those of the Egyptians and perhaps even with Stonehenge – the ancients used the stars to chart the stars and determine the best times to plant and harvest their crops. Stars were also used sailors to find their way across uncharted oceans.
Many of the PLANETS (a few of which have mistaken for stars) have served as a protective shield to deflect meteors, asteroids, and other space debris from our earth.
And of course, there’s the closest star in our universe. Do you know what that closest star is? That’s right – it’s the SUN. One scientist marveled “In many ways, the sun is just an ordinary star. But in other ways, it is clear that the sun was designed for life to be possible on Earth.”
The sun’s temperature and distance from Earth is ideal for LIFE. If it were closer or hotter, LIFE would be burned away; and if it were farther away or colder than it is, last week’s cold snap would seem like summer day. Earth would just be too cold to sustain life.
In addition there are scientists out there who mock our Sun because it’s smaller and weaker than some of the more impressive stars in the universe. But those bigger and hotter stars produce huge amounts of harmful radiation. And they tend to fling devastating flares far out into their solar systems. These flares – would incinerate any life on our planet (not to mention what they’d do to our cell phone reception).
Yes, our star was DESIGNED by God to make life possible.
Back in 1968 there was an Astronaut named Bill Anders who had the privilege of flying over the earth in space. He said: “(The earth) was the only color we could see in the universe…”
So, the starry heavens are more than just another pretty face. They’re a declaration of God’s loves us and that He has made a beautiful planet for us to live on.
As Romans 1:19-20 declares “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”
You see - that’s what David saw. When David looked up into the heavens he saw a God Who was not only powerful, but a God Who also loved HIM enough to show Him the beauty of His creation
But David didn’t stop there. While the heavens may declare God’s majesty and power, God’s WRITTEN WORD reveals what God really thinks about us.
David wrote: “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.” Psalm 19:7-10
Now, bear in mind, David’s Bible was much smaller than yours and mine. There was no New Testament (this was centuries before Christ was born), and less than half the Old Testament had been written at that time. There were just a few books of Bible history at that time… but most of what David knew and studied were the Books Of The Law – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
And THAT was what David was praising here: The LAW, the PRECEPTS, the COMMANDMENTS, and the RULES. He declared that they were more precious than fine gold, and sweeter than the sweetest honey.
(PAUSE) But now, wait a minute… that doesn’t make any sense. Those books are boring. They were filled with long tedious rules and regulations. And they spoke of an angry and vindictive God who doesn’t seem to love anyone.
OR… at least that’s what some scholars have said over the years.
There’s been a heresy lurking around for centuries that said the God of the Old Testament was different than the God of the New. The God of the Old Testament was mean and harsh and spiteful, but the God of the New Testament was loving and forgiving. Now, that’s all pure hogwash (it’s the same God), but I can see where someone might get that impression.
I mean the Old Testament does talk a lot about RIGHT and WRONG, GOOD and EVIL, SIN and MORALITY. And, of course, it talks a lot about judgment and condemnation of wickedness. There are folks who read the Bible and struggle with God being… so JUDGMENTAL.
But that’s not the way David saw it. David saw a God who defined what evil was. A God who hated wickedness. A God who punished evil doers and rewarded those who tried to do the right thing.
David wrote: “By (God’s laws) is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward…. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.” Psalm 19:11 & 13
You see, there’s something about God’s written word that changes people. If we take the Bible seriously it makes us into better people. In other words – God loves us so much that He’s given us a tool to transform us – His BIBLE.
ILLUS: Just as an illustration of this: the last major battle in WW2 in the Pacific Ocean was the Battle for the island Okinawa about 700 miles south of Japan. The Allies fought to take this island because it was close enough to Japan to establish airbases that would be within easy reach of their enemy’s homeland.
It was a terrible fight – 1000s of Americans and Japanese lost their lives in the struggle for this island, but the success of the Americans was never really in doubt. As Americans took the island many Okinawans believed the lie that the Americans were vicious conquerors who would mercilessly kill all their captives… so many of them committed suicide.
But there was one major exception. An advance patrol American soldiers approached a remote village of nearly 1000 people, and the GI’s stopped dead in their tracks. Barring their way were two little old men who bowed low and began to speak. The sergeant summoned an interpreter.
The interpreter listened to the old men and shook his head. "I don’t get it. Seems we’re being welcomed as ‘fellow Christians’. One says he’s the mayor of the village, the other’s the schoolmaster. That’s a Bible the older one has in his hand..."
The war correspondent who filed this report said “We’d seen other Okinawan villages, uniformly down-at-the-heels and despairing; by contrast, this one shone like a diamond in a dung heap. Proudly the two old men showed us their spotless homes, their fertile terraced fields, their storehouses and granaries, and their prized sugar mill."
They’d only seen ONE American before… 30 years before to be precise. An American missionary on his way to Japan had paused at their village. He’d stayed only long enough to make a pair of converts (these same two men), teach them a couple of hymns, leave them a Japanese translation of the Bible and exhort them to live by it. They’d had no contact with any Christian since.
Yet during those 30 years, they picked their way through the Bible. They’d adopted the Ten Commandments as their legal code; the Sermon on the Mount as their guide to social conduct. In their school the Bible was the chief literature; it was read DAILY by all students, and major passages were memorized. In this village, the precepts of the Bible were law.
Later, the correspondent and his driver returned to the village and took part in a worship service. The villagers only knew 2 songs - “Fairest Lord Jesus" and "All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” The hymns had “suffered some changes, but they were recognizable.”
And the worship was so powerful that – when the service over - his driver leaned over and whispered "So this is what comes out of only a Bible and a couple of old guys who wanted to live like Jesus!’
Then, with a glance at a shell-hole, he murmured, "Maybe we’re using the wrong kind of weapons." (Story by war correspondent Clarence W. Hall, in "Together" Magazine, October 1960)
You see…. THAT was what David saw. He knew the power of God’s written word to transform and to improve the lives of those who would listen to God. And in that truth, David realized that God believed in us. God had not given up on us. And God believed that we could be better than what we’ve been.
(PAUSE) And one more thing
As much as David understood the love of God there was one thing that David did NOT know about God’s love. He didn’t know the truth of John 3:16. Repeat it with me: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
God did something in sending His Son that neither stars nor the Scriptures could begin to describe for us. The stars may be beautiful… but they’re wayyyy up there (way above us) and we don’t know very much about them. And while the Bible is mighty and has the power to transform us, there’s things about the Scriptures that are hard to understand. Stars and words on a page can seem cold and impersonal - but when God gave His Son… that’s something else again.
Sing this song with me: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak, but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.”
Jesus loves you. He loves you just the way you are (though He loves you too much to leave you that way). He loves you in spite of what you may have done in the past or how badly you may have messed up your life. He LOVES YOU.
And it was in God stepping down out of heaven and becoming a man that we understand just how much Jesus did love us.
CLOSE: Max Lucado says this in a powerful way:
“When God chose to reveal Himself to mankind, what medium did He use? A book? No, that was secondary. A church? No, that came afterward. A moral code? No, to limit God's revelation to a cold list of do's and don'ts is as tragic as looking at a road map of Colorado and saying that you'd seen the Rockies.
When God chose to reveal himself, he did so through a human body. The tongue that called forth the dead was a human one. The hand that touched the leper had dirt under its nails. The feet upon which the woman wept were callused and dirty.
And his tears... oh, don't miss the tears... they came from a heart as broken as your or mine has ever been.
So, people came to him. My, how they came to him! They came at night; they touched him as he walked down the street, they followed him around the sea; they invited him into their homes, and placed their children at his feet.
Why? Because he refused to be a statue in a cathedral or a priest in an elevated pulpit. He chose instead… to be Jesus. There were those who mocked him, who were envious of him, who misunderstood him and there were those who revered him. But there was not one person who considered him too holy, too divine, or too celestial to touch. There was not one person who was reluctant to approach him for fear of being rejected.” (Max Lucado in his book "God Came Near")
INVITATION
