Bible Journey Final Preparations Pentateuch Sermon Series Kenwood Baptist Church Pastor David Palmer October 11, 2020

Bible Journey Final Preparations Pentateuch Sermon Series Kenwood Baptist Church Pastor David Palmer October 11, 2020 TEXT: Psalm 19:1-14 Good morning, beloved. We are delighted to be in God's house this morning, and I want to say thank you for those gathered here in person safely. You look beautiful with your masks on, and I thank you for observing COVID-19 protocols in the sanctuary. A warm welcome to those gathered outside and also joining from home. We’re grateful to God and continue to ask you to pray for us. We have no known COVID cases as a result of our physical gatherings, and that's been a result of your diligence and safety. This is a community that loves each other. I'm a hugging pastor, so this has been particularly challenging for me, but I'm really getting into the elbow bump, and I’ve managed to do that safely now. So, if you want to bump elbows, I’m available, and I praise God for that. We are in the middle of a sermon series. We finished a portion of Bible Journey in the Gospel of John to test out this amazing digital resource as a companion for us in this study. We are now making final preparations to begin at the beginning. This week is a transition week, and it's really an appeal to you to decide to join us for Bible Journey. We are going to go back and begin the Pentateuch study. This week we’re going to look at a key passage as we prepare to start reading the Bible and, in a sense, ask the question: “Why should we read the Bible?” Why should we care so much about reading the Bible? There is not an obvious answer to this question. There may be a church answer: “Oh, I'm supposed to read the Bible.” There may be a question in your heart of what makes the Bible different from any other book. It may be a populous question. You may be a marketing person and think: “Wow, the Bible is the best-selling book, year after year after year. Why do people continue to buy and read it?” We're going to try to answer that this morning. Page 1 of 12 As we begin, we want to look at Psalm 19. Of all the places to choose as an entry point in the field guide to prepare for Bible Journey, Tim Laniak, my good friend from Gordon-Conwell, recommends Psalm 119 or 19. Psalm 119 is the longest of Psalms. It's a very long Psalm that celebrates the power of God's Word. Psalm 19 shares many features with the heartbeat of Psalm 119, but it’s more accessible in length, and it is our focus this morning. Why should we care so much to study the Scriptures? We begin Psalm 19:1 with the statement: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork.” The visible heavens are communicating according to Psalm 19:1. They are communicating something very specific. It's not the vague word of nature. Still far less is it the word of “Mother Nature.” It's a declaration of the glory of God. Psalm 19 invites us to see that the visible world around us is communicating to us. In Hebrew parallelism, the heavens declare the glory, the sky above His handiwork. And the works of His hands that you see around you are not the result of an impersonal universe, but a personal one. It is the glory of God on display. I love the night sky. I love to get in environments where there isn't ambient lighting. I love the city, but cities are bad for looking at the stars, aren’t they? And so we go out into the countryside. Sometimes I love to just lie down on the ground and look up and see what I can see. It's amazing what you can see. When you look up at the night sky, you see the Milky Way galaxy, and it’s spectacular, absolutely spectacular. You can see 100,000 million stars above you, stunning in beauty and glory. I have a big heart for international students. My wife became a Christian as an international student. Coming from Greece, she came to United States. She was exposed to the gospel in a direct way through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship ministry. When students come to new environments, sometimes they are open to new things. There are 6000 international students in Cincinnati, and COVID has been very challenging for them. Some of them have not been able to go home. They've had to stay; they have been isolated. That's a population of very bright people in our city. We were on a retreat a couple of years ago, and a young graduate student from Shanghai, China, came on the retreat. We were out in the wilderness and looking up at the sky. The retreat was three days and two nights, and I noticed on the third day that she was looking just a little bleary-eyed, and I realized that can happen on a retreat. People stay up late, they talk, and I asked how she was doing and how she enjoyed the retreat. She said, “You know, I haven't slept the whole time.” So I thought about all the activities like volleyball and the compelling teaching from pastors that can keep people up. And she said, “I never saw the stars like this, and I didn't want to miss a second of it. My whole life has been in a Page 2 of 12 very urban environment.” Shanghai is a huge city, and she had never seen the stars like this. And that sight of the visible glory of God in the night sky was pointing her away from everything she'd been taught growing up in her education system: that this is an impersonal universe and that change happens through impersonal market forces and revolutionary ideologies that speak to an inevitable turn of history. And as she looked up at the night sky and saw 100,000 million stars, it began to awaken in her that maybe this universe is personal. That doesn't look random – it’s too beautiful. When you look up at the night sky and you see the Milky Way galaxy, if you could just lie there and keep staring straight up, you would notice that the stars seem to be sweeping around you, and there's just one fixed point. Of all the ways the heavens could declare the glory, the sky above to proclaim the work of His hands, I think the North Star communicates powerfully. When you look up at the North Star in the summertime you see in the night sky the sweeping rotation of the stars. Everything seems to be moving except this one spot in the middle. It's extraordinary. If you just lie in that field from summer to fall, you would see the leaves change and fall, and yet you would see the stars continue to sweep in this breathtaking rotation day after day. If you move into wintertime, creation is changing, but the heavens are still declaring God’s glory. In the springtime, the earth begins to renew itself. Psalm 19:2 says that day to day pours forth speech. It's not just a little bit of communication. It is a bubbling forth. It is an overflowing. Jonathan Edwards said it's not a mark of deficiency for a fountain to overflow. The heavens are communicating, day after day, night after night, pouring forth speech, revealing knowledge as the sun comes up and as it sets. The world around us, the skies, proclaim the work of His hands. Page 3 of 12 This communication is far more impressive than your Wi-Fi. It just is. Can we concede that point? I'm really ready to concede that point. As impressive as our devices are, they pale in comparison with a global network that never goes down. It never needs to be repowered. It communicates. It’s accessible to all, and you don't have to buy anything to see it. You don't have to renew a subscription. There are no limits on the data. It communicates day after day, night after night. It's global – you don’t have to live in an affluent country to access it. You don’t have to have a cell tower near your home. There is no speech, according to Psalm 19:3, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. There is no place that you can go to not receive the communication. There are no dead spots in this network. I love this. I don't know why, but in my cell plan, I have one dead spot in Cincinnati, and it happens to be when I'm on Ronald Reagan Highway, looping around to get onto I-71. Some of you are smiling, and I'm feeling some homiletical sympathy with you. Maybe you're experiencing this. Others of you are looking at me like, “I don't have that plan; I don’t have that problem,” and you give me the cold postmodern stare of people who say, “I don’t have that technological problem; that must be user error.” What happens to me, since I pastor here, is that I often get on calls with people, and I start to talk with them, and then we just have a little hiatus.

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