Psalm 19:1-4
"The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language Where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world."

(Note from Danny): The other day I was in a burger joint getting some breakfast and this lady asked me which Psalm was Psalm 19. (It happens to be my license plate on my car.) And I told her how it starts to refresh her memory of which one it is. When she left I got to thinking about the chapter as a whole. It has a definite progression. The psalmist starts out observing the sky and sees God's glory in it. Then he starts to reflect on God's Word and is brought to a realization that he is lost without God. And he ends by saying, "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing and acceptable in Your sight, oh Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer."

I believe that the psalmist is basically trying to teach us that as we look at creation around us, it should draw us into a realization of God's glory and that we are lost without Him. Thus leading us to have a stronger desire to walk uprightly before Him and to listen to His voice even closer.

The end of that chapter has been my theme for decades. "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing and acceptable in Your sight, oh Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer."

Read the rest of the article to see how I believe that the heavens declare the glory of God.....

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I have noticed that people are searching for the meaning of this passage. I don't think I have ever taught on it specifically. So I am going to try to explain my thoughts on what this passage means. I mean, how can stars sing? They are huge balls of burning gases and stuff, right? And in what way do they glorify God?

"The heavens declare the glory of God", how? Have you ever looked up into the night sky and thought, how does that glorify God? I used to. But then my second year in college, I got interested in astronomy. I would look at the pictures of various objects in the Messier catalog. And as I got older and looked at them more, I really began to be struck by the beauty of it all. I recommend you spend a few days, or weeks (years even) looking at the archives of the Astronomy Pic of the Day website by NASA. I can almost guarantee that after a few days you, too, will be struck by the beauty of the night sky. See I had a bit of an edge on most people who live in cities. I grew up in a very small town in south central Ohio. There were no cities near enough to me to create any city lights to block the night sky. So every evening when the sun went down and I happened to still be outside (which was most everyday in the summer), I could look up at the sky and see the extremely dense strip of stars and nebulae that make up what we can see of the Milky Way galaxy going right over my house. That started the love of the night sky in me. It just didn't really settle in until I joined Pegasus, the astronomy club at my college. Then I got to see the night sky through a telescope. Nothing like that in the whole world. (To the best of my current knowledge anyhow.) And once you begin to see the beauty of it all, you realize that only a loving creator could have done anything like that. And that is only looking at it. We aren't even talking about the physics of it all. Did you know that the core of the sun is 27,000,000 degrees Farenheit? And it burns up approximately 4,000,000 tons of its own mass every second, yet scientists believe that it is so large that it could last another 5 or 6 billion years? That is thoroughly amazing!

But still how can it say, "There is no speech nor language where there voice is not heard"? I want you to check out 2 pages. Well, make it 3. The first is from Stanford University and the second is from University of Birmingham UK. The first one is a page on Stanford's site that talks about the song of the sun. It is amazing what you can hear when you have the right equipment. I would listen to all of the files that they have. I found them very interesting. And actually very musical. (Be looking for a musical piece from me centering on these sounds.) Next go to University of Birmingham's solarsound page. And listen to their recordings. They have some amazing recordings as well. And remember that what you are hearing is recordings of the sun. Not wind or instruments, but that big yellow, burning ball in the daytime sky. Finally go to University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank site and listen to some pulsar's.

So as you can see the stars do sing. They do have a voice to declare the glory of God. Just as the Psalmist said many times and in many ways. "And the heavens shall declare his righteousness: for God is judge himself." Psalm 50:6 "And the heavens shall praise thy wonders, O LORD: thy faithfulness also in the congregation of the saints." Psalm 89:5 "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof." Psalm 96:11 "The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory." Psalm 97:6 "Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the LORD from the heavens: praise him in the heights." Psalm 148:1 "Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens." Psalm 148:4 These are just a few examples of the scriptures and of the songs of stars. Search the web and you will find many sites on radio astronomy. There is even an internet radio station that is nothing but radio astronomy sound. It is Radio-Astronomy.net. If you click on the little speaker on the top of the Listen page, it should play in whatever you use to stream mp3's. It is some interesting listening. May not make the Top 40, but it is kind of cool.

Hopefully this clears up how a star can declare God's glory. How it can have a voice to be able to sing His praises. If it does, then the rest of the passage is pretty self-explanatory. Music is a universal language. It evokes pretty much the same emotional responses in everyone regardless of whether they can understand what the person is saying or not. We can not understand what the stars are saying, but we can listen to the music of their song and understand how the music makes us feel. Now if one believes that the stars were merely created by the big bang and there is no God that had a hand in their creation, then their song is meaningless. But if one believes that a loving, creative, and intelligent God created the stars to sing His glory, then their song becomes something of great beauty and love.

There are two things I want to leave you with. One is a video of a song/musical arrangement that I did a few years ago. I had seen a picture of Orion's nebula just after having read Psalm 8:3-4 "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?" And that started the spark for Psalm 19 Records, et al. And then I went to the International Worship Institute that summer and heard Matt Redman speak on the Wonder and Majesty of God. And the whole thing just came together. I knew then what the Psalmist was trying to say. Take a look at this video, please. If you want to know exactly what stellar noises I used in the piece email me and I will send you the list. Then take a look at this one last thing. Just 'below and to the left' of the 'leftmost' star in the handle of the big dipper is a galaxy known as M51, the Whirlpool galaxy. Scientists have discovered what they believe to be a black hole in the center of M51 that has caused a structure of dust and gas that forms a large 'X' that may be around 100 light years across. Now if you look at the image, do you see an 'X' or do you see what I see? A cross. I believe God placed a reminder of the gospel within M51 for when we could finally see it, to remind us of His love.

Does this help clear up Psalm 19? Feel free to email me if you have any other questions about this or any passage. I will do my best to answer them or steer you to someone I believe can answer them.

Go on to Part 2