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Songs of Greatness is a sermon series on the greatness of God from the Psalms. The Heavens Declare the Glory of God — How do we know what God is like? God's glory is revealed by what he has done, from creation to new creation. Recorded on July 18, 2021, on Psalm 19, by Pastor David Parks. Sermon Transcript For the next year, we’re focusing on The Greatness of God. After all the turmoil of the last year, it’s my conviction that many of the problems we face in the world and in the evangelical church today would be solved if we had a far bigger view of God. Way too many Christians have way too small of a vision of who God is. And for the rest of the summer, we’re in a sermon series from the Psalms in the Bible called Songs of Greatness. The Psalms are a collection of songs/poems that the people of God have used in the worship of God for 1000’s of years. And through this series, I hope to help you have a bigger, truer perspective, and a more compelling vision of God. Today, we’ll consider how the works of God declare/proclaim the glory of God. In other words, what God does clearly reveals his greatness. If you have a Bible/app, please open it to Ps 19. We’re going to unpack this psalm in three parts: 1. Creation, 2. The Bible, 3. The Gospel. So first, creation… Psalm 19:1-6, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. 3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. 4 Yet their voice[b] goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. 5 It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. 6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.”  Creation Declares the Glory of God. The psalmist, that is, King David, starts this first section of his song focusing on what? The works of God in creation, nature, in the physical world around us. And he says the heavens/skies declare/proclaim what? the glory of God. And what is the glory of God? The glory of God is the sum total of all the characteristics of God, what you get if you added up all of his love, justice, holiness, power, wisdom, and so on. It’s everything about who God is. The glory of God is beautiful to his people but is terrible to his enemies. David observes, as surely as we observe anytime we stop and really meditate on the created world around us, that even though the planets and stars have no voice, their message goes out into all the earth. In vv. 4-6, David poetically uses the sun as a case study: the sun is consistent, helpful, and life-giving. David imagines it enjoys the strength/task that God has given it. Many ancient peoples worshiped the sun. Ancient Israelites appreciated the sun, as we ought to today, but they were never to worship it. The sun was just one aspect of God’s creation. There was only one God, the maker of the heavens and the earth, including the sun in all of its glory/power. And King David is right. When I consider the big things that God has made, the planets and the stars, the vastness of space in our galaxy, much less in the whole visible universe, I’m blown away. As I said last week, we are so very tiny in the scope of all of that. But I’m also blown away when I consider the small things that God has made, the atoms and particles and quarks of the quantum world. And this is one of the reasons that Christians should love science and scientific discoveries. They give us countless observations and insights into the glory of God in creation. Let me give you one example from a book called The Body, by Bill Bryson. Writing on the amazing qualities of the human brain, Bill quotes neuroscientist, David Eagleman writing, “Each neuron [in the brain] connects with thousands of other neurons giving trillions and trillions of co...