God Has Revealed Himself
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There is a term theologians most often use to refer to the revelation of God in nature and it is called, General revelation, General revelation refers to the general truths that can be known about God through nature.
Psalm 19:1-4 is a perfect example of God’s general revelation of Himself to all mankind.
Everywhere we look and everywhere our ears may hear all we see and hear in these troubling days is COVID-19, fear mongers have risen, with shouts of doom and gloom with uncertains with messages of fear, along with confusion and doubt. What are we to do?
Well, I am here to tell you this morning what we all need to be doing. And that is to LOOK UP, LOOK AROUND and see the greatness of our God.
While the world cries out Covid-19, God cries out Psalm-19.
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,
Here the psalmist is thinking of the stars, which are visible by night, and the sun. His teaching is that the heavens, which contain these created objects, testify to the existence of their Creator.
But more than that, they also witness to his “glory.” The stars and the sun are so glorious that the one who made them must be more glorious still.
Alexander Maclaren notes this in his commentary, arguing that in this psalm glory has no “moral element.” That is, it does not testify to God’s moral qualities—attributes like justice, mercy, love, wrath, goodness, grace, compassion. Those revelations about God is what we would call Special Revelation, for example, God’s revealed WORD about Himself.
But the creation certainly testifies to God’s existence and power. Indeed, this is exactly what the apostle Paul writes in Romans 1, in a passage that probably has the nineteenth psalm in mind, even though it is not directly quoted.
In Romans Paul says,
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
This is the meaning of glory in Psalm 19—a revelation of God’s existence and power so great that it should lead every human being on the face of the earth to seek God out, to thank him for bringing him or her into existence, and to worship him.
But that is what we do not do. What Paul says in Romans is that, apart from God’s special intervention in our lives to save us, all human beings actually suppress the truth of God’s general revelation, either denying his existence altogether or else erecting a lesser god, an idol, in the true place of God.
As a result of this, the wrath of God has been revealed against us and our truth-suppressing cultures.
Now not only is general revelation found in Psalm 19, we also have some profound statements about its nature and extent. Verses 2 and 3 say three things about it.
First off is tells us,
God’s Revelation is Continuous
God’s Revelation is Continuous
The psalmist says of the heavens that “day after day they pour forth speech” and of the skies that “night after night they display knowledge” (v. 2).
2 Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge.
In other words, they are not an occasional revelation, as if God were to send a prophet once year and then let many silent years go by before sending another.
The skies reveal the glory of God every single night of the week, every week of the year, year after year, and they have done this since their creation.
There has never been a moment when the heavens were not testifying to us about God.
This is what Joseph Addison captured so brilliantly in the third verse of his hymn “The Spacious Firmament on High” based on Psalm 19.
What though in solemn silence all
Move round this dark terrestrial ball?
What though no real voice nor sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
Forever singing, as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”
God’s Revelation is Continuous - Can you hear it?
Secondly we see that...
God’s Revelation is Abundant
God’s Revelation is Abundant
In most translations of vs. 2 the Hebrew word is translated “utters speech” however it can be also translated “Pours out”
This word is stronger in the Hebrew text than it appears to be in English, for the image is literally of a gushing spring that abundantly pours out the sweet, refreshing waters of revelation.
This is true in two ways.
First, every individual part of nature testifies to its Creator
What it means is that whatever part you happen to be looking at will pour forth knowledge.
If you look at the stars, they testify to a God of great power who made them.
If you study the human body, you will find that the body testifies to an all-wise Creator.
The petals of a flower, a blade of grass, a snowflake, the intricacies of the atom, the nature of light, physical laws like gravitational attraction, the second law of thermodynamics, or relativity—all testify abundantly to a divine mind that lies behind them all.
As Paul says in the corresponding passage in Romans 1,
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
20 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. So they are without excuse.
However, there is a second way in which the heavens pour forth abundant revelation.
Whenever we do investigate them by scientific or other means, we soon find the testimony of nature even stronger than we at first suspected.
In other words, the more one looks a creation, the more the heavens gush forth knowledge.
This has been true even of the most recent investigations of the heavens by the greatest scientific minds the human race has produced.
Until well into this century the prevailing scientific cosmology was what is called the “steady state” theory, which holds that the universe had no beginning and is eternal.
That view has been entirely overthrown, and the inescapable conviction of today’s scientific community is that the universe did indeed have a beginning.
It began in 1913 with astronomer Vesto Melvin Slipher’s discovery that about a dozen galaxies relatively close to the earth were moving away from us at high speeds, up to two million miles per hour.
During the next decade a younger astronomer named Edwin Hubble carried Slipher’s observation further, measuring the velocities of scores of galaxies and formulating the laws for an expanding universe. Hubble discovered that the further away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving. By measuring the speed of these retreating galaxies and plotting them against their distance from us, Hubble was able to pinpoint a moment in the past when all the matter of the universe must have been together, in other words, the moment of creation.
That moment when God spoke those words of Gen. 1.1....
Many scientists did not like this discovery because it pointed to God and to a moment of creation.
Phillip Morrison of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology remarked of the big bang theory, “I would like to reject it.”
Even Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity itself predicted an expanding universe (though he did not recognize it at the time), said, “The circumstance [of an initial moment of creation] irritates me. To admit such possibilities seems senseless.” However, after examining Hubble’s work he declared himself convinced.
The more one looks a creation, the more the heavens gush forth knowledge.
Lets take for just a moment God who has revealed Himself as Three yet ONE. Does Creation show any signs that point to this fact?
World-renowned scientist Dr. Henry Morris believes that it does. He notes that the entire universe is trinitarian by design. The universe consists of three things: matter, space, and time. Take away any one of those three and the universe would cease to exist. But each one of those is itself a trinity.
Matter = mass + energy + motion
Space = length + height + breadth
Time = past + present + future
Thus the whole universe witnesses to the character of the God who made it (cf. Psalm 19:1).
God’s revelation is truly abundant...
Thirdly and lastly...
God’s Revelation is Universal
God’s Revelation is Universal
It is known everywhere. Psalm 19 says of the skies and heavens,
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world (vv. 3–4).
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,
This is the basis for the universal ascription of guilt to humanity by Paul in Romans 1.
For although everyone in every land and of every human language has “heard” this general revelation—no one is exempt from it—none have of themselves followed up on it in order to seek the true God out and worship him.
Instead they suppress the knowledge of the true God and make idols of a lesser god more to their liking.
It is because of this general revelation (and not a special revelation which, of course, numerous peoples and cultures do not have) that God is just in punishing the heathen as well as those who, having the special revelation, also sin against their greater light.
The stars are God's fingerprints. The sun is a mere smidgen of his radiance. The moon is to remind us that he doesn't sleep at night. The vastness of space proclaims the infinity of his wisdom, while the sand pebble indicates his thoroughness with the puniest details. The lion hints at his fearlessness, the bear at his power, the hawk at his keen insight. And yet, those possess only a tidbit of God's omnipotence and omnipresence. Every tree points toward heaven; every bird has a song to sing; even every moment of wind goes in some direction. There is nothing chaotic about our beautiful designed world. All creation has a message to tell. It says, "Listen, there is a God. There is a God! And He is Glorious!”