Psalm 19: Learning to Listen

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
2 Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
4 Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.

In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,
5 Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoices like a strong man to run its race.
6 Its rising is from one end of heaven,
And its circuit to the other end;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat.

7 The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
8 The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;
9 The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
10 More to be desired are they than gold,
Yea, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
11 Moreover by them Your servant is warned,
And in keeping them there is great reward.

12 Who can understand his errors?
Cleanse me from secret faults.
13 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.

14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.

Psalm 19

Psalm 19 is one of the most beloved psalms, second only perhaps to Psalm 23. It has been said that Psalm 19 is like Psalm 119 in miniature—CliffsNotes on the largest psalm. Aside from its beautiful poetry and clear structure, what draws most of us to this psalm is the assurance that God is speaking.

Almost every believer will have an experience where God seems to be silent, not speaking at all. We then tend to get frustrated and become convinced that God needs to work on His communication skills. Psalm 19 insists that, in reality, we’re the ones who must work on a skill—our listening skills. And as hard as that can be to hear, it’s good news that all is not as we thought and that God does indeed share His words with us.

Creation as Evidence

For some, the most shocking part of Psalm 19 is the beginning (verses 1-6), which tells us that God speaks to us through creation. What can be hardest to learn, then, is that we must learn to listen to God through His creation.

The theological term for this is “general revelation.” God “reveals” truth to us through what He has made, even in its broken state. For example, “the heavens” are set up in such a way as to declare there IS a glorious God.

The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork.

Psalm 19:1

Think about it, God didn’t have to put anything above us. We could be on a blank canvas with nothing above us. But God has established us under outer space, and in doing so, He has generally revealed Himself. Though it’s a general revelation, it is a solid revelation. It’s communication. He’s saying, “Hey, I’m here!”

In fact, the created order is such clear communication that Romans 1 says we will be condemned if we do not respond to it; if we do not humble ourselves and listen to what the Lord says through His earth.

One year in college, I studied through a particularly long and brutal winter. I was taking 19 credits, participating in extracurricular activities, and barely ever left campus.

In April, around Spring Break season, my friends took me to the beach. I grew up in Indiana, so I hadn’t been to the beach very many times before, particularly after childhood.

I remember walking out onto the shore after months of battling Seasonal Affective Disorder, feeling the sun and the sand, seeing the vast ocean, and breathing in the clean air.

Within minutes, I was in the middle of a full-on healing experience like I’ve never had before—a revival of sorts.

I felt like the scenery was a great choir, and the ocean was like a great altar I could kneel on after hearing God’s great sermon, which was coming through each wave.

I was humbled before my Creator just at the sight of His creation. Have you ever had that experience? Most everyone has.

And just that experience alone is enough to reveal God to you, even if you haven’t read the Bible. If you receive that revelation and seek Him, you will find Him. If you walk away from that moment in pride and lack of interest, you can’t say, “God never spoke to me.” He did speak. With every sunrise, He reminds the world that He is present, dependable, and involved. Are you listening?

Creation as Instruction

Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge.

Psalm 19:2

Creation does more than just testify that God exists; it shows us what God is like. Creation even shows us what God is like in relation to us!

Most of us modern thinkers, even modern Christians, think of nature as irrelevant, don’t we? When we think of learning, we think of textbooks and computers. Nature is for vacation but not for wisdom. I’ve been in some churches where if someone were to say they learned something from nature, they would be accused of New Ageism.

But that’s not what Scripture says, and just FYI, that’s not what Jesus said. He believed in Psalm 19.

Think about Jesus’ teaching on anxiety. What does He base His teaching on? Nature!

The external world He created guides us as we deal with our internal world, which can be so unsure about who God is and what He’s like. How will God relate to me?

In Matthew 6, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says this:

 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Matthew 6:25-30

How do we deal with anxiety over whether or not God is good and will provide? Jesus says to look at the birds, the grass, and the lilies. His underlying assumption is that you should be able to know something about the Father by looking at the creation of the Father, because the Father speaks through His creation.

Do you want God to speak to you in the middle of your anxiety? Take a sabbath from screen time and just go observe what God created and ask Him to use it to reveal something to you about Himself. Mark a day, put it on your calendar, and go somewhere beautiful. Who knows what you’ll hear?

If you don’t feel like you hear anything, then go back out there. If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again. Learn to listen to God through observing creation.

Of course, this isn’t the only way in which God communicates, and thus it’s not the only way in which we listen. There is also special revelation, which is God’s Word, as expounded on in Psalm 19:7-11. There we find God’s perfect communication. The Scriptures contain the specifics we need to know about God and life. We must read the Word, meditating on it day and night.

However, the main point remains the same. Whenever we’re tempted to believe that God needs to improve His communication, we must calm our hearts, trust Him, and accept that we’re the ones who must work on listening.