Daily Devotional – Aug 26, 2020

Here we are in the middle of the week already. How are you holding up? Have you wilted yet? Well, maybe if you're feeling that way, do what you did when you were a kid. Run outside, get the hose out and hold it up in the air and stand under it or get the sprinkler and do some running through the sprinkler or something like that.

Keep from wilting. Well, hang in there. Cooler temperatures are on the way. It's going to be hot the rest of this week, but coming weekend and then next week, cooler temperatures and they will be most welcome, I'm sure.

The Glory of God in Creation

Well, this week we've been talking about the Song of the Enlightened Mind, Psalm 19. And it's a fascinating psalm because of how it really praises God for his revealing himself to us. And the first six verses of the psalm praise God for his supreme power as the creator and how that creation communicates his supreme power.

The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament, sky shows his handiwork. So it's a song of praise to God for his supreme power. Then in verses seven through nine, the psalm shifts gears and shifts names to focus on the name Yahweh and speaks of what we call special revelation.

Creation serves to generally reveal God and show us his glory in a general way. But special revelation tells us more about God, about our Lord and his truth that will lead to salvation, if you will. So it's verses seven to nine.

And I just want to read those verses. And yesterday we talked about the nouns in those verses. And today I just want to focus on the adjectives. So listen to these again and see if you can pick up the adjectives as we go.

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 clean, or is pure, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. So when we listen to these descriptions of different aspects of God's special revelation, the nouns, they are described, that special revelation is described with seven different adjectives that I want us to look at today.

The Completeness and Surety of God's Word

The first of them is the adjective of completeness. The law of the Lord is perfect, or it is complete. And the reason we want to look at the adjectives as they describe God's special revelation is that the adjectives describing the revelation also tell us something about the revealer, the one who has revealed himself.

If the law of the Lord is perfect, or complete, and whole, then that indicates to us that the giver of that law, or that doctrine, or that teaching, is also whole, or complete, or perfect. So again, think about this.

The word law we mentioned yesterday refers to the teaching, the doctrine of the Lord, and that doctrine is complete. That teaching is complete. Now, I don't know if anybody listening is a teacher, but one of the things that we who teach know is that our teaching is never really fully thorough, fully complete.

What I mean by that is this. I can teach this today and in these next few minutes, but I know there's so much more that could be communicated in each of these different ideas. What I also know is that my ability to teach and what I know and can communicate today is deeper and broader than what I was able to teach 40 years ago when I started in the ministry.

So my ability as a teacher has been growing and my knowledge that I can teach has been growing for the last 40 years. I don't know how many more years I have of doing this. God only knows, but one thing I do know is I have to keep learning.

I can't say that my teaching is complete. I'm not complete, but the law of the Lord, the teaching of the Lord is perfect. It is complete because the giver is complete. The next adjective is the adjective in the King James.

It's translated sure. So in our text here today, the testimony of the Lord is sure. It is sure. That speaks of steadfastness, of stability, and the stability of the word of that revelation that the Lord has given is an indication of his steadfastness, of his stability.

Again, this just makes sense, doesn't it? Have you ever known somebody whose word equivocated? You ask them about something and they say, well, you know, this is the way it is. And a couple of hours later, you know, you get to thinking about that and it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

So you come back to them again and you say, well, are you sure that's the way it is? I mean, because what about this? And they say, well, yeah, I mean, it kind of is the way it is, but yeah, this. And so their word is not steadfast.

It's not sure. It's not stable. They've equivocated. Again, because of our imperfection in our knowledge and abilities and so forth, that kind of go with the territory of our imperfection. But when we're talking about the Lord, see, when we're talking about his word, his word is sure.

His word is stable. His word is steadfast. The next adjective that is used is the word right. The precepts of the Lord are right. And that term doesn't necessarily refer to right in the sense of moral right or wrong, but more in the sense of accuracy.

His words are accurate. So the accuracy of the word is a testimony to the accuracy of the speaker, of the giver. My teaching can only be as accurate as I am accurate. I mean, if I'm all messed up, what am I going to teach?

What am I going to tell you? Is it going to be right? Is it going to be accurate? You can pretty well count on it being messed up too, if I'm messed up. Well, God's word is accurate. It's right. And then it's pure.

It's pure. The purity of the word, the purity of that special revelation that the Lord has given, reveals his purity. So there are two words in this passage that speak of that purity. One is the word pure itself.

So the word is free from impurity. And then the next word that is used is the word clean. So being free from impurity, that word is therefore clean. Again, a reflection of the giver of that word. The Lord is pure and the Lord is clean.

And then another adjective describing the special revelation, the word of the Lord, is the word enduring. Enduring. This has to do with the permanence of the word. And that permanence of the word testifies to the permanence of the giver of that word.

Now, you might argue, well, there's all kinds of things that have been taught centuries, millennia ago, and we still have those words. Yes, we do. But how many of those words from human authors from millennia ago can be considered 100 percent reliable and right and accurate and so on and so forth in what they have and what they've given, what they've provided?

And why is that not the case? Well, because the person who lived at that time had a limited knowledge and limited ability to communicate what he understood and what he knew. And therefore, his teaching at that time was respected, was valued.

But as time went on, that person passed off the scene and his knowledge proved to be incomplete and so on and so forth. And his writings or his teachings had to be modified and changed and sometimes completely discarded.

Not true with Yahweh. His word is permanent, endures forever. And then the next adjective is the adjective true. The adjective is true. The rules of the Lord are true. That is speaking of the veracity of what is said, what is given.

So you think about the rules that are given. Oh boy, we could go into all kinds of things these days, right, with the COVID stuff and all kinds of rules being given down. And how many of those are, how many of those have proved already to be not true, to be not helpful?

I'm not going to get into all that and create all kinds of discussion about it. That's not the point. But you understand this, that human beings make rules that end up being proved to be harmful or at least not helpful at best.

Well, the Lord's word and his rules are true. There's a veracity that is due to his character and speaks of his character. And then the last description, they are righteous altogether. They are righteous altogether, completely, thoroughly.

This has to do with integrity. The revelation that the Lord has given to us is marked by integrity. There's a wholeness to it that is reliable, dependable, and even we could say places us under responsibility wholly in a complete way.

So you undermine one part, you can destroy all of it. So it's interesting, this section in verses four, five, and six that are a description, a poetic description of how we as human beings observe the sun rising and setting and so forth.

Back in the 1900s or the 1800s, there were critics of the Bible who tried to prove that the Bible is unreliable and did not have integrity and did not have veracity and so forth. Because after all, we intelligent, enlightened people know that the sun doesn't really rise and it doesn't really set and move through the sky.

It's the earth that's moving. We know that. See, the Bible is wrong. No, the Bible is absolutely right. There is an integrity to the word that as the writer observes creation, what he sees is the same thing you see every day when you get up.

You see the sun in the east, and as you go through your day, you observe it at different places in the heavens, and you see the sunset in the west. The writer is accurately describing what he sees every day, and that is a testimony to the creative power of God.

So, the character of Yahweh is seen in the character of his word. I hope you're trusting him today. He's absolutely trustworthy. So, Heavenly Father, I pray that we would appreciate the integrity of your word, and therefore, the integrity of you, the giver, and we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your hump day, your Wednesday, and hope you'll be back tomorrow. We'll be looking at further this song of the enlightened mind. So, have a good day. God bless you.