How Can We Know God?

But this morning we’re going to be in the Old Testament, and so if you have your Bibles, please do turn with me to Psalm 19. We’ll be thinking about something very closely related to what we’ll be thinking about tonight; the two sermons will hopefully complement one another. It’s a familiar psalm. If you’ve grown up in church or around Christianity, you will perhaps know parts of it well, but I trust as we look at it together this morning, they will come together as a whole and we’ll understand what God would have to say to us through it.

Let’s begin at the start of the psalm with the superscription. The capital letters in the beginning.

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

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. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

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. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. 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.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Why don’t we come before the Lord in prayer now before we consider his word together.

Father, we recognise that we could do much worse than take those very words of David and put them on our own lips this morning. We pray that the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts would be acceptable in your sight. We pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, in a world where we are constantly confronted by competing demands, it is increasingly important for all of us to get our priorities right. In a world where we are constantly confronted by competing demands, it is increasingly important for all of us to get our priorities right. To understand what really matters, and what is actually quite trivial. What is a must-have in life and what’s a nice-to-have. When it comes to priorities, the Bible leaves us in no doubt, for it teaches us that there is one thing above all others that deserves our time and attention, our sacrifice and service. As it puts it in Jeremiah chapter 9:

Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man boast in his might. Let not the rich man boast in his riches. But let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me.

Understands and knows me. The Bible teaches that if you can only get one thing right in life, if there’s one thing that you need to focus on above all else, it’s not accumulating wealth or wisdom. It’s not storing up health and strength. It is knowing God, understanding who he is and what he is like.

Unsurprisingly, the famous Christian author J.I. Packer agrees. In his famous book entitled Knowing God, he explains, “Knowing God is crucially important for the living of our lives. Just as it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square, and leave him as one who knew nothing of English and England to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing the God whose world it is. This world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it an unpleasant and disappointing business for those who do not know about its God.”

And I imagine most of you here this morning at least agree in your head with such statements. Why else do you come here to church instead of relaxing at home or heading off for the weekend? You’ve gathered here to learn about God. You’ve come here because you want to know him more and because this is a priority, indeed the priority, for you. We’ve already heard that knowing God is the greatest task, the most important activity we could ever give ourselves to. And so that should naturally lead all of us to ask a very simple question, the question we will be considering together this morning. How?

How? How is it that we can know God? How can we first get to know God? How can we grow in our knowledge of him? If knowing God is so important, how then can we actually do it?

Well, this morning we’ve turned to Psalm 19, which C.S. Lewis famously described as the greatest poem in the whole Psalter. And perhaps one of the reasons that it’s such a great poem is because it addresses this great question: how can we know God? We’re going to see that Psalm 19 provides us with two answers to this question. How can we know God? Well, first of all, in verses 1 to 6, it tells us that we can listen to God’s world. We can listen to God’s world. And then secondly, in verses 7 to 14, it will tell us that we can know God by learning from his word. How can we know God? We can listen to his world and we can learn from his word.

Let’s think about the first one together.

1 We can listen to God’s world

You know, if you’ve been following the news closely, you’ll know that an historic event took place in London over the last few months. For the first time in almost 1,000 years, the Bayeux Tapestry returned to England. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a piece of embroidery depicting key events of the Norman conquest, including the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It was taken back to France by the Normans shortly after it was made, but has now returned to England for the first time since the 11th century and will be shown in the British Museum until next year. One of the most impressive things about the tapestry is that it’s not just an intricate work of art, but it’s also an important and informative work of history. For it’s one of the earliest retellings of the key events in that period.

It’s 68 metres long, not 628, but 68 metres long, an extraordinary length for a piece of cloth. And if you were to follow it the whole way along, it would tell you the story of all the main characters in that era. William the Conqueror and the English King Harold Godwinson, who it depicts dying when he’s struck by an arrow through his eye. The Bayeux Tapestry is a picture that we can look at, but more importantly, it’s also a story that we can learn from.

You know, the psalmist says something very similar to us here in Psalm 19. For he tells us that this canvas of creation, that the tapestry of this world, isn’t just something that we can look at, but it’s something that we can learn from. We’re used to that in those David Attenborough TV documentaries, aren’t we? We have these programmes that film aspects of nature and show us things that we didn’t know about spiders and hedgehogs and wombats, whatever else. And yet the psalmist here tells us that we go beyond that. For he tells us that we’re living not just in the middle of a nature documentary, but we’re living in the middle of a divine documentary. That what we see around us in the natural world can not only teach us about the natural world, but can actually teach us something about the supernatural world. There in verses 1 to 2, he begins:

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.

The psalmist says that when you look at creation, you learn about the Creator. That you can observe the outline of the divine in the natural things of this earth. Brothers and sisters, when we look at the world around us, we can go beyond David Attenborough and his documentaries. When we look at the sun in the sky, we can go beyond that fiery mass in space, and trace its rays back into the divine mind itself, the one who designed it and put it there. When we stare at the countless stars in the sky, we shouldn’t simply be moved to wonder, but we can be moved to worship, for we know the one who made them. Nature teaches us about God. We can learn about the Creator through his creation.

Indeed, did you notice that the lessons we learn from nature seem to be so clear and compelling that the psalmist repeatedly uses the language of speech and words? He doesn’t tell us to look at creation, he tells us to listen to creation. The heavens declare, the sky above proclaims, day to day pours out speech. It’s as if the sky itself speaks to us, that the heavens are calling out in an audible voice, a voice we’re told in verses 3 and 4 goes out across the whole earth, words that are heard from east to west on every part of the planet.

My friends, this whole world is a tapestry that talks, that tells us something about God. When we look at a sunset, we realise that these aren’t just things that we can look at, but we can almost listen to. Whether you’re here on a Sunday morning for a sermon or not, that psalmist is telling you that you can hear a sermon every day of the week, for this planet is preaching to you, proclaiming to you about the excellencies of its Creator. How can we know God? Well, first of all, we’re told that we can listen to God’s world.

Well, if all that is true, what is this sermon saying? What is it that is being preached about God in heaven’s declaration? What is it the sky says to us? Well, that’s what the psalmist draws out there in verses 5 and 6, where he gives examples of the different things that creation tells us about its Creator. At the end of verse 4, he picks up the sun as an example. There at the end of verse 4, we read:

In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

There, in just a few short sentences, the psalmist weaves together at least three images, three things that we can see straight away in the sun. The first one is a beautiful eagerness. He says it’s like the eagerness of a bridegroom on the way to his wedding, going to meet with, be with, his beloved bride. And he points out that that’s how our sun appears in the sky every morning. It bursts forth with the same energy and eagerness every day. The sun never gets tired or worn out. The sun never gets up on the wrong side of the bed. The sun never has a slow morning. It appears full of energy, ready to embrace another new day every single day. Even today it came up, we just can’t see it because the clouds are in the way.

And the second image we have is one of joyful strength. It’s like a strong man, he says, running its course with joy. You could think of an Olympic sprinter who’s powering down the track and smiling as he crosses the finish line. Growing up, that was Usain Bolt, wasn’t it? He would fly away and know that he had won the race in those last few strides. You could see the smile on his face. That’s what the psalmist says the sun is like. As it flies along through the sky, nothing can stop it. It’s pounding out the pace that it knows will mean it wins the race. Arises on time, every time. Nothing we do can prevent the sun. When we need a little bit more daylight in our lives, it’s us who have to change. We can’t just wind the sun back. No, we have to wind our clock back because the sun is so strong, so steady, so consistent. It keeps going round and round and round, and nothing we do can prevent it. We are all subject to its steady strength. We have to reorder, reorientate our lives around it.

The final image is one of lavish generosity, for the psalmist points out how the sun does not discriminate. Jesus would pick up on these words in verse 6, when in the New Testament he talks about it shining on both the evil and the good, how it provides heat and light, gives life to all parts of our planet. Even the Eskimos are given enough light and heat to survive in the harshest of conditions.

And the key question that the psalmist is prompting us to ask when we see such things in the sun is, what does this tell us about God? What does this reveal to us about God? How can we see the glory of God in such things? For, as verse 4 pointed out, it’s God who sets the sun up like this. It’s God who places the sun in the heaven, wakes it up every morning, and sends it on its way like you would send a child out to school. It’s God who ensures this strong man runs his race, finishes his course every time. It’s God who cares so much about this planet that he ensures the warmth of the sun extends even to the lowest and the least.

You know, when the pagans looked at the sun and saw these things, they turned the sun into an idol, didn’t they? They would worship the sun for the way that it acted. What the psalmist is saying here is, instead of turning the sun into an idol, we should see it as nothing but an illustration. Instead of transforming it into a god, we should be looking through it to God. That when we wake up in the morning and we see the sun appearing over the horizon with the same eager beauty that it has every single day, we should be saying with Jeremiah in Lamentations:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercy never comes to an end. They are new every morning. Great is his faithfulness.

Or when we observe the relentless strength of the sun’s passage across the sky, and we feel our inability to slow it down or to extend our days on earth, our hearts should echo the words of Psalm 31 and acknowledge:

You are my God. My times are in your hand.

Or when we reflect on the sun shining on both the evil and the good, we should follow Jesus’s own logic in Matthew 5, and see that as nothing but the grace and generosity of God.

Brothers and sisters, what the psalmist is saying here is that you can not only learn about God when you come to church on a Sunday morning, but you can also learn about him when you’re out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon, or you’re driving along in your car on a Monday morning, or you’re sitting in the garden later in the week, or frankly, whenever, wherever you want. For all day, every night, this planet is preaching to us about God. This tapestry of creation is talking to us about its Creator.

Parents, grandparents, I wonder if you’re using this as an opportunity to teach your children about God. Ephesians 6 calls us to bring them up in the instruction of the Lord. We’re all maybe quite good at teaching our children about the knowledge of God that is in his word. Memory verses, Bible stories. But are you also teaching your children about the knowledge of God that can be seen in his world? When your daughter picks up a pretty flower, are you telling her that it’s God who clothes the lilies? Or when your son swoops down to pick up some seed, are you reminding him that it’s God who feeds the sparrows from his hand? When you’re at the beach, when you’re looking out at the sand on the seashore, are you talking to them about the God who knows how many grains there are? Or about the God who can cast all their sins into the depths of that sea? Those are just some of the explicit examples we see in Scripture of how creation can speak to us about its Creator. I wonder what others you might be able to come up with as you walk and talk with your children and grandchildren along the way.

How can we know God? Well, first of all, the psalmist tells us that we can listen to God’s world.

2 We can learn from God’s word

You see, having spoken about what is usually termed general revelation, that is, revelation that is available to all, we now turn to what is commonly called special revelation, a specific revelation that’s given specially in Scripture. Having dealt with the words silently spoken to us in creation, we now turn to the words physically written for us in the Bible. I’m not sure how you experienced it, but verses 7 to 9, I think, come at us a bit like a machine gun. Line after line follows the same structure, hits us one after another after another. The first half of each of those sentences, in 7 to 9, tells us what God’s word is:

The law of the Lord is perfect. The testimony of the Lord is sure. The precepts of the Lord are right. The commandment of the Lord is pure. The fear of the Lord is clean. The rules of the Lord are true.

The first half of the sentence tells us what God’s word is. The second half of the sentence tells us what God’s word does: reviving the soul, making wise the simple, rejoicing the heart, enlightening the eyes, enduring forever, and righteous altogether. Here the psalmist is taking up Scripture and describing both its essence and effects, both the reality and the results. And from those results it gives us, we can see that God’s word is good. It’s good for every part of us. It’s good for our heart. It’s good for our soul. It’s good for our mind. See here that Scripture is soul-reviving, wisdom-imparting, joy-inducing, light-bringing, forever-enduring, justice-bearing.

I think as we live in this world, in our increasingly secular Western societies, we begin to take on this assumption that God’s word is not good. It’s dangerous. It’s something that maybe shouldn’t be shared at work, or we need to be careful about how we teach it to our children. That’s what many in our society might want us to consider today. Yet we see here that God’s word is a good thing, that we do people good when we share it with them, that we don’t need to be embarrassed or nervous at work, that we should be strong and clear in our family life, that the Bible is good, that God’s word does us good.

I wonder how you feel about those benefits this morning. And maybe take some time this week to read through those three verses and think about how you need God’s word to work in your life right now. Maybe you’re here this morning and you need to be revived. You’re feeling spiritually lethargic and lifeless. Well, here in verse 7, we see the Bible is like a spiritual defibrillator. It shocks us and shakes us back to spiritual life. It’s able to revive our souls. Maybe you’re at a crossroads. You’re not sure which way to go. You have a decision or multiple decisions resting on you, and you know you need wisdom. We see here that the testimony of the Lord is able to make wise the simple. Maybe you’re here this morning, you’re with us looking for something that lasts, something that you can really rely on, something that’s not going to let you down, something that’s clean and whole, won’t leave you feeling dirty or filled with guilt and shame. Well, we see here that the fear of the Lord is clean and it endures forever. This book is the best book we can read. It’s really the only book we need.

And so is it any wonder that the psalmist goes on there in verse 10 to declare what he does, to speak of how the Bible is godly gold and heavenly honey, of how the benefits of God’s word are blessings that money cannot buy? Perhaps you can now understand why the preacher John Wesley would once cry, “Oh, give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God!”

We could spend all day meditating on the blessings of Scripture, which the psalmist lays out for us here. If you come back this evening, we’re going to be thinking a little bit more closely about Scripture, what the Bible is. And yet there’s one blessing in particular that the psalmist wants us to dwell on, one blessing that he’ll go on to spend the rest of his sermon on. For in verse 11, he says, “Moreover,” that is, on top of all those other amazing things I’ve just said, there’s another blessing, another benefit I want to talk about. “For by them,” that is, by your rules, “your servant is warned. In keeping them, there is great reward.” As one commentator puts it, “here we see that God has given us a book that not only points us in the right way but sounds warnings when we’re about to take the wrong one.”

And the psalmist continues dwelling on this as he moves on into verse 12, with his psalm transforming into a prayer. He asks, “Who can discern his errors?” That is, who is able to really see their own sin? Who’s able to work out their wrongdoing right to the bottom? None of us. We all have our blind spots. And yet God can see. God is able to know. Which is why the psalmist goes on to pray to God, the one who can see our hidden faults. Prevent us from presumptuous sins. Stop us from coming under their dominion by showing us our shortcomings, warning us away from earthly and, even more importantly, eternal danger, through his law, the lessons he has for us in his word.

Brothers and sisters, do you see what the psalmist is saying here? He’s telling us that one of the greatest blessings of God’s word is not only that it brings us to a knowledge of God, but it brings us to a knowledge of ourselves. One of the greatest blessings of God’s word is that it not only brings us to a knowledge of God, but it also brings us to a knowledge of ourselves. That Scripture not only presents us with a lovely picture showing us the perfections of God, but it also holds up an honest mirror showing us the imperfections of our own heart, showing us all the sins we already knew about, as well as the ones we’re completely blind to. Just as nothing is hidden from the rays of the sun, back in verse 6, here we see that nothing is hidden from the X-ray of God’s word.

And so is it any wonder that the psalmist finishes as he does in verse 14, crying out to the God who sees all, to the one whose word reveals all, that he may make the words of our mouth and the thoughts of our heart acceptable in his ever-perfect, all-piercing sight.

And you know, in some sense, we could finish right there. How do we know God? Well, Psalm 19 teaches us that we can listen to God’s world and learn from God’s word. And as we do so, we’ll learn about ourselves as well. And yet, I find it so intriguing that the psalmist has one last thing to say, one last phrase to finish off this great psalm. For the words he chooses to close his composition, to punctuate this prayer, are these: “O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” My rock and my redeemer.

Do you know, if you’re here this morning and you’re new to Christianity, or maybe you’re just trying to work out what this faith is all about, I think you could distil it down into those two words. If you were trying to explain to someone what it is they need to know about God, I think you could share just those two words with them. Rock and Redeemer. If you listen to God’s world and learn from his word, you’ll never go beyond these two things. God is a rock and God is our redeemer.

God is a rock. That means God is immovable, unshakable, unbreakable. It means if you set yourself up against God, if you throw yourself against God, you will break before he does because he’s a rock. We can learn that from looking at his world. The hand that shaped the mountains, that must be a mighty hand indeed. The one who holds up the canopy above all our heads, surely he must lack no strength. God is a rock. Creation tells us that. All our lives lean on him. God is the solid ground upon which each of us exists. As the psalmist puts it in Psalm 75, it’s God who steadies the pillars of this earth. Our God is a rock. We can see that by looking at the world around us.

And yet, the second statement that the psalmist makes doesn’t come into our knowledge by listening to God’s world. Yes, nature teaches us that God is a rock, but it’s only in Scripture that we find out that he is also a redeemer. That he’s not just strong, but that he can also save. This is why a Sunday walk can never replace a Sunday service, why the book of nature can never replace this book of Scripture, why I’m here to give you a Bible lesson and not a science lesson. As the hymn writer Isaac Watts put it, “The heavens declare thy glory, Lord, in every star thy wisdom shines. But when our eyes behold thy word, we read thy name in fairer lines.”

I wonder if you noticed that in a very literal way as we read through Psalm 19, how we read God’s name in fairer lines. For you see, when he’s speaking about the divine knowledge that we receive in nature in verses 1 to 6, the divine name that’s used is simply God. The heavens declare the glory of God. However, when he turns to the knowledge of God that we encounter in Scripture, from verse 7, the divine name changes to that of Lord, or Yahweh. The law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the precepts of the Lord, the commandment of the Lord, the fear of the Lord, the rules of the Lord. O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. It’s as if the psalmist is telling us that general revelation, the world, can teach us about the cosmic God. But it’s only special revelation, it’s only the word, that tells us about our covenant Lord, about Yahweh. Or if you want to put it plainly, you might say that science can teach you about God, but only Scripture can teach you about Jesus.

And the knowledge of the latter is even greater than the knowledge of the former. The only thing more important, the only thing that is a greater priority than knowing God, is knowing him through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Friends, if you think the sun in the heavens declares the glory of God, wait till you learn about the Son who came down from heaven. The one of whom we read earlier in Hebrews 1 is called “the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature.” The one who speaks a better word than was ever spoken through any prophet. And the pinnacle of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ is summed up by that one word we have at the end of Psalm 19, Redeemer. Redeemer.

It’s in Jesus, through Jesus, we see the glorious truth that God is a Redeemer. That he doesn’t just send the sun on its way through the heavens every day, but he sends his Son down to earth to claim his bride. To be that strong man who could set his face like flint, complete his race, run his course with joy. Not just bear the weight of the cross, but even the sin of the world on his shoulders. We see so much of the grace of God in the fact that the sun rises on the just and the unjust. And yet how much more do we see it in the fact that Jesus the just died for the unjust? That the one who is good laid down his life for those who are not, so that all who would turn from sin and trust in him would be saved.

Friends, can you begin to see why the Apostle Paul would be able to say of his priorities, in Philippians 3:

Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

Friend, this God of Christianity is a God worth knowing. Jesus Christ is a Lord worth sacrificing for, and doing everything to gain. For it’s in him and through him we see the glory of God declared most clearly, most brightly. We can learn much about the God of this world by looking at his world, but if you want to know the heart of God, you must see it in the death of his Son. And that’s that death we’re going to be thinking about in a few moments’ time.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you that you have spoken to us, that all heaven declares the glory of God, that the seas speak of your might, that the mountains tell us of your majesty. And yet, Father, how much greater that you have spoken in that middle cross, the Son dying for a sinful world. Father, we thank you that you are not only a rock, but you are also a redeemer. That your greatness is not just declared by the size and scale of creation, but by the strength of your love. We pray, as we consider it together around the table in a few moments’ time, that that would strike us all again. In Jesus’ name, amen.