How can we know God? (Psalm 19)
This sermon was preached to Ballymena Baptist Church on 19 July 2026. The manuscript for the sermon can be found below.
‘Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and [the knowledge] of ourselves.’ Those are the opening words of one of the most influential books not only of the Reformation period, but indeed of all history. From the very beginning of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin leaves us in no doubt of the importance of knowing God, having a true and sound knowledge of the divine, if we are to live wisely and well in this world. Another theologian, J I Packer, made the same point much more recently. In his famous book entitled Knowing God, he explains that,
‘[Knowing God] is the most practical project anyone can engage in. [It] 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 or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is. This world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God.’
And I imagine most of you here tonight agree with such statements. Why else would you come here to church on a Sunday night in the middle of summer? Rather than stay at home to watch the build up to the World Cup final, you’ve gathered with us here to learn about God. You have come here because you want to know him more. As we have heard, knowing God is the greatest task, the most important activity, that we could ever give ourselves to. And that should naturally lead us to a very simple question. How? How is it that we can know God? How do we first learn about hims? How can we grow in knowledge of him? If knowing God is so important, how do we actually do it?
This evening we turn to Psalm 19, which C S Lewis famously described as the greatest poem in the whole book. And perhaps one of the reasons it is such a great poem, is because it addresses that great question. How can we know God? Well, this evening we are going to see that Psalm 19 provides us with two answers: How can we know God? (1) Listen to God’s World (19:1-6): and (2) Learn from God’s Word (19:7-14).
(1) LISTEN TO GOD’S WORLD (19:1-6)
If you have been following the news closely, you will know that an historic event took place in London last Friday. For the first time in almost 1000 years, the Bayeux Tapestry returned to England. If you don’t know what that is, it is 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, and has now returned to England again for the first time since the 11th century, to be shown in the British Museum until next year. Tickets have already sold out for 2026. However, those who are lucky enough to get one for 2027, will be able to see what many consider to be a masterpiece.
One of the most impressive things about the tapestry is that it is not only an intricate work of art, but it is also an informative work of history. For it is one of the earliest retellings of the key events of that period. It is 68 metres long, and if you follow it along it will tell you the story of all of the main characters, including William the Conqueror, and the English king, Harold Godwinson, who it depicts dying when struck by an arrow through his eye. The Bayeux Tapesty isn’t just a picture we can look at, it is also a story we can learn from.
And the Psalmist says something very similar here in Psalm 19. For he tells us that the canvas of creation, the tapestry of this world, is not simply something we can look at, but it is something we can learn from. We are used to that in David Attenborough programmes, aren’t we? We have TV documentaries that film aspects of nature and teach us all about the natural world. And yet, what the Psalmist says here goes beyond that. For he tells us that we are living in the middle of a divine documentary. That what we see around us in the natural world can teach us about the supernatural world. In 19:1-2 he begins: [READ].
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 must go beyond David Attenborough in his documentaries. When we look at the sun in the sky, we should trace its rays not just back into that fiery mass in space, but back into the very mind of God. When we stare at the countless stars in the sky, we should not simply be moved to wonder, we should be moved to worship. For nature teaches us about God. We learn about the Creator through his creation.
Indeed, the lessons that we learn from nature are so clear and compelling, that the Psalmist repeatedly uses the language of speech and words. [READ] It is as if the sky itself speaks to us, that the heavens cry out in an audible voice. A voice, we are told in 19:3-4, that goes out across the earth, words that are heard from East to West, on every part of this planet. Friends, this world is a tapestry that talks, that tells us about God. Sunsets are not simply something to look at, they are something to almost listen to. Whether you hear a sermon on Sunday or not, the Psalmist says you hear one every day of the week, for this planet is preaching to us about its God. How can we know God? Listen to God’s World.
Well, if all that is true, what is this sermon that is being preached? What does the sky really say to us about God? What do the heavens declare? Well, that is what the Psalmist draws out in 19:5-6, where he gives examples of the things that creation can tell us about the Creator. At the end of 19:4, he picks up the sun as an example, there we read: [READ]. In just a few short sentences, the Psalmist weaves together at least three images, three things we see in the sun.
The first is a beautiful eagerness – the eagerness of a bridegroom on the way to his wedding, going to meet with, to be married to, his beloved bride. Which is how the sun appears in our sky every morning. It bursts forth with the same energy and eagerness every morning. It never tires or gets worn down. The sun never gets up on the wrong side of the bed, or has a slow morning. It appears there full of energy ready to embrace another new day every single morning.
The second image is one of joyful strength, like a strong man running a race. You might think of an Olympic sprinter powering down the track and smiling as they cross the finish line. Nothing can stop them as they fly along, pounding out the pace they know will mean that they will win the race. And again, this is what the Psalmist says we can see in our sun, as it crosses our sky everyday. Nothing can slow it down, it always wins the race, it always gets to the finish right on time. Nothing we do can prevent its. Indeed, when we do need to have a bit more daylight in our lives, it is us who have to change. We can’t wind the sun back an hour. And so, we all wind our clocks back. We have to reorder and reorientate our lives around it. We are all subject to its steady strength.
The third image is one of lavish generosity, for the Psalmist point out how the sun does not discriminate. As Jesus would go on to put it in the New Testament, it shines on the evil and the good, provides heat and light, gives life, to all parts of this planet. Even the Eskimos are given enough light and heat to survive in the harshest of conditions.
And the key question the Psalmist is prompting us to ask when we see such things in the sun, is what does this say about God? How does this reveal God? For as 19:4 pointed out, it is God who sets the sun up like this. It is God who placed the sun in the heavens. It is God who wakes the sun up every morning and sends it on its way, with the beautiful eagerness of a bridegroom. It is God who ensures that this strong man runs its course, wins the race, is exactly on time every time. It is God who cares so much about every part of this planet, that he ensures the warmth of the sun extends even to the lowest and least.
You know when the pagans looked at the sun and noticed these things, they turned the sun into an idol. Worshipped the sun for these kinds of wonderful traits. I think the Psalmist is telling us here than instead of making it into an idol, we should be turning it into 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 see the sun appearing with the same eager beauty that it has every day, we should say with Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:22, ‘The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning, great is his faithfulness.’ Or when we observe the relentless strength of its passage across the sky, and we feel our inability to slow things down or extend our days here on earth, our hearts should echo the worlds of Psalm 31:15, and acknowledge you are God ‘my times are in your hands’. Or when we reflect on the fact that the sun shines on the evil and good, we should follow Jesus’ logic in Matthew 5, and see that as 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 are out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon. Or driving along in the car. Or sitting in the garden. Or frankly wherever whenever you want. For all day, every night, this planet preaches about God, this tapesty of creation talks to us about the excellencies of its Creator.
Parents, I wonder if you are using this opportunity to teach your children about God? Ephesians 6:4 calls us to bring them up in the instruction of the Lord. Are you teaching them the knowledge of God that is not only in his Word, but also in his world? When your daughter pick up a pretty flower, are you telling her that it is God who girds the lilies? When your son sees a bird swoop down for seed, are you reminding him that sparrows are fed from God’s hand. When you’re at the beach […] are you talking about the God who knows how many grains of sand are on the shore, or who can cast all their sins into the depths of the sea? Those are just some of the explicit examples we have in Scripture of how creation speaks of its Creator. I wonder what others you will be able to come up with as you walk and talk with your children along the way?
Sometimes people make much about the impact and influence certain subjects can have on our Christian young people at school, for example when they are exposed to the idea of evolution or told the theory of the Big Bang. However, what if, long before our children ever listened to those terms on the lips of their science teachers, we taught them how to listen to the lips of creation? That before they ever know how to use a microscope, we make sure they know how to look through the lens of nature to the God behind it all. That they learn how every true field of human knowledge is simply another ray of wisdom from the intellect of the divine. That science (when done properly) is just another way to trace the hand of God, to access the one subject that has always been known as the queen of the sciences, theology, the knowledge of God itself. […]
(2) LEARN FROM GOD’S WORD (19:7-14)
Having spoken about what is usually termed general revelation, we now turn to what we call special revelation. Having dealt with the words silently spoken to us in creation, now we turn to the word physically written for us in Scripture. 19:7-9 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 sentence tells us what God’s Word is: […]. The second half tells us what God’s Word does: […]. The Psalmist describes both its essence and effects, first the reality and then the results. From those results we can see that God’s Word is good for every part of us, heart, soul and mind. That Scripture is soul-reviving, wisdom-imparting, joy-inducing, light-bringing, forever-enduring, justice-bearing.
Brother or sister, do you need to be revived? Are you feeling spiritually lethargic and lifeless? Psalm 19 reminds you this evening that the Bible is like a spiritual defribulator. It can shock and shake you back to spiritual life! Maybe you are here tonight and you are looking for something that lasts. That you can really rely on. Something that is clean and whole, doesn’t leave you feeling dirty, filled with guilt or shame. If so, then this is the book for you. This is the best book you can read, the only book you really need. Friends, is it any wonder that the Psalmist goes on in 19:10 to declare what he does? To speak of how the Bible is godly gold, heavenly honey. That the benefits of God’s Word are blessings that money cannot buy. Perhaps now you can understand why the preacher John Wesley would once cry, ‘O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! …Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri.’.
We could spend all evening meditating on the blessings of Scripture, which the Psalmist lays out for us here. And yet, there is one blessing in particular that he wants us to dwell on, he goes on to spend the rest of the psalm on. For in 19:11 he says ‘moreover’, that is on top of all those amazing things I’ve just said, there is another blessing, benefit that I want to talk about, ‘for by them is your servant 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 path but sounds warnings when we are about to take the wrong one.’ (Piper) The Psalmist continues dwelling on this as he moves into 19:12, with his psalm transforming into a prayer. He asks, ‘Who can discern his errors?’ That is, who is able to see their own sin? Who is able to work out their own wrongdoing? None of us. We all have blind spots. And yet, God can see them. That is why the Psalmist goes on to pray to the God 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 in his Word.
Brothers and sisters, do you see here what the Psalmist is saying? He is telling us that 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. Do you remember that that was Calvin’s other category? ‘Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and [the knowledge] of ourselves.’ And Psalm 19 says that we can find both of these sources, streams, springs of knowledge in Scripture.
That Scripture not only presents us with a lovely picture, showing us the perfections of our God, but it also presents us with an honest mirror, showing us the imperfections of our own heart. Showing us all the sins we can perhaps already see, as well as all the ones that we are completely blind to. Just as nothing is hidden from the rays of the sun back in 19:6, here we see that nothing is hidden from the x-ray of God’s Word. And so, is it any wonder that the Pslamist finishes as he does in 19:14? Crying out to the God who sees all, to the one whose Word reveals all, that he may make all the words of our mouth, and the thoughts of our hearts, acceptable in his ever perfect, all piercing sight.
CONCLUSION
You know, in some sense, we could finish right here. How do we know God? Well, Psalm 19 teaches that we can know him by listening to God’s World and learning from God’s Word. 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, punctuate his prayer, are these: [READ]. ‘O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.’ If you had to distill down into two words what there is to know about God, what we will grasp if we listen to his world and we learn from his Word, those two things would be a pretty good summary.
That God is a rock. He is immovable, unshakeable, unbreakable. We can learn that from listening to this world, can’t we? The hand the shaped the mountains, must be a mighty hand indeed. He who holds up the canopy above our head, surely he lacks no strength. God is a rock. All our lives lean on him. He is the solid ground upon which we all exist. As the Pslamist puts it in Psalm 75, it is God who steadies the pillars of this earth. Our God is a rock, we can know that by looking at, listening to his world.
And yet, the second statement that the Psalmist makes does not come into our our knowledge by listening to God’s world. Yes, nature teaches us that God is a rock. But it is only Scripture that teaches us that he is also a redeemer. That he is not only strong, but that he also saves. That is why a Sunday walk can never replace a Sunday service. Why the book of nature can never replace this book of Scripture. As the hymn writer, Isaac Watts, puts 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 how we see that in a very literal way in Psalm 19. Read his name in fairer lines. For when it is speaking about the divine knowledge that we receive from nature in 19:1-6, the divine name it uses is simply God: [READ]. However, when it turns to the knowledge of God that we encounter in Scripture, from 19:7, the divine name changes to that of YAHWEH: [READ]. General revelation teaches us about the cosmic God, but we need special revelation if we are to know about the covenant Lord, 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 than knowing about God, is knowing about him through the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Friends, if you think that the sun in the heavens declares the glory of God, wait until you learn about the son who came down from heaven. The one of whom John would say in John 1, ‘No one has ever seen God, the only God, [but the one] who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known… we have seen his glory.’ As Paul would explain in 2 Corinthians 5, the ‘God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” [that is, who lit up the stars in the sky] has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ And the pinnacle of that knowledge, the peak of that glory, is summed up in the single word that ends this psalm.
The fact that our God is not only a rock, but that he is also a redeemer. That the one who sends the sun on its ways every morning across the sky, like a bridegroom going to its bride, is also the one also sent his son on his way down to earth, to claim his bride for himself. To be a strong man, who set his face like flint, as we heard this morning, to finish his race, complete his course, not only bear the weight of the cross, but the sin of the world on his shoulders. Oh yes, we see the grace of God in the fact that the sun rises on the evil and the good, the rain is sent for the just and the unjust. And yet, how much more do we see it in the fact that Jesus the just, would die for the unjust. That the good, would lay down his life for those who are evil. That all who turn from their sin and trust in him, would be saved from the judgement of God that is to come.
You know, this evening as we’ve meditated on Psalm 19, we have heard the words of famous thinkers and theologians. Calvin and Lewis, Wesley and Watts. And yet, in the end, the heart of what we see in psalm 19 is summed up by those simple lines that most of us learned when we were still on our mothers knee.
How can we know God? Well, ‘He made the stars to shine, he made the rolling sea, he made the mountains high, and he made me. But this is why I love him, for me he bled and died, the Lord of all creation, became the crucified.’
