Reflecting on Psalm 19 with CS Lewis

‘I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.’ CS Lewis

The heavens and the skies – the stunning beauty of a sunrise or sunset, the child’s wonder at the sight of a rainbow (or even a double rainbow), the awesome power of thunder and lightning (especially during the snowfall this winter), the quiet brilliance of a clear but moonless night in the mountains when every star seems to be visible, the vastness and apparent closeness of a harvest moon in late summer - all declaring the glory of God.

Day after day and night after night they speak the glory of their creator. It is as though their purpose is to produce awe in us that is then to be directed not to them but to the one who made them.

The mistake of the pagans is misdirected awe – worshipping sun, moon, stars and planets instead of their creator. The mistake of the secularists is misdirected awe – preferring to worship a random series of unrelated events than the person who brought it all together.

The voice or language of the skies is heard in every part of the earth where people can acknowledge it, ignore it or reject it.  And then there is the greatest of the heavenly bodies – the sun – completely magnificent, utterly unequalled in the physical universe of the Hebrew believer and completely dependable – rising and setting more regularly than clockwork. Nothing is hidden from its heat – this isn’t the mild heat of an Irish summer – this is the strong, penetrating 40-50 degree heat of Israel. ‘…the cloudless, blinding, tyrannous rays hammering the hills, searching every cranny.’ (Lewis)

Turning to the law of the Lord is a natural link from the searching, penetrating rays of the sun to the searching, penetrating light of God’s word.

CS Lewis at first seems to struggle with the idea that someone could delight in the law as the psalmist says he does. He gives the example of a hungry but penniless man in a shop where he can smell freshly baked bread or freshly ground coffee who may respect and obey the law that says you shall not steal but can hardly delight in it.

Lewis suggests that someone can only delight in God’s law the more they read, study and meditate on it. It is as we spend time with God’s word that it becomes to us more precious than gold and sweeter than honey.

When I was at Dundee University I fell in love twice. Once was with Paula, the other was with the Bible. I was already a Christian but it was only through teaching and study and preparing for things like Hall Bible Study groups that I really began to see how much treasure is here.  I truly believe that we want children and young people to get that long before they get to university age. And we don’t want to do it so that we can produce great theologians; ‘One is sometimes (not often) glad not to be a great theologian; one might so easily mistake it for being a good Christian.’ (Lewis again).

Look at some of these images of delight in God’s law

·        More precious than gold

·        Sweeter than honey

·        Like feeling solid ground under your feet after ploughing through muddy fields

·        Like pure mountain water

·        Like fresh air after a dungeon

·        Like sanity after a nightmare

Half a century ago Lewis gave us a description of the emptiness, uncertainty and general lostness of the society in which we exist today. It is a description of a society which desperately needed the solidity of God's unchanging word.

'Christians increasingly live on a spiritual island; new and rival ways of life surround it in all directions and their tides come further up the beach every time....Some give morality a wholly new meaning which we cannot accept, some deny its possibility. Perhaps we shall all learn, sharply enough, to value the clean air and "sweet reasonableness" of the Christian ethics which in a more Christian age we might have taken for granted.'

That was Lewis writing over 50 years ago. Tell me that this is not a description of the western world of the 21st century.

There is a danger here, (and Lewis recognised it) that we who recognise and delight in God’s law somehow begin to think ourselves superior to all those around us who don’t value or care about it. To guard against that danger we have the last few verses of the psalm.

Forgive my hidden faults – those things that the word relentlessly searches out.

 Keep me from wilful sins – my constant tendency to do what I know is wrong (the Romans 7 problem). May they not rule over me – my unceasing ability to let pride or bitterness or disappointment or anger or pleasure take the place of God’s word in setting the course of my actions must be guarded against.

Above all v. 14 needs to shape all that we are and do. ‘The best have their failing, and an honest Christian may be weak. Nevertheless, the goodness and sincerity of their hearts will entitle them to pray the petition of this verse. No hypocrite or cunning deceiver can ever use this prayer.’ (Thomas Sherlock - Bishop of London mid-18th century).

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