Great Verses of the Bible: Psalm 19:1-2

This morning when I turned on my computer, this random screen saver appeared, pictured above. The caption reads: “You’re looking at a spiral galaxy containing upwards of 400 billion stars and 100 billion planets. Ahhh….”

Immediately my mind went to one of the great verses of the Bible, Psalm 19:1-2. “The heavens declare the glory of God, And the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge.”

Charles Spurgeon, in The Treasury of David, writes that “the heavens are plural for their variety, comprising the watery heavens with their clouds of countless forms, the aerial heavens with their calms and tempests, the solar heavens with all the glories of the day, and the starry heavens with all the marvels of the night.”

The word “firmament” is translated “expanse” in other versions. It speaks of “the literal sky that stretches from horizon to horizon…the vaulted ceiling that stands above.” As we look above, what do we see? The sun. The moon. The stars.

Where did it all come from? What was its origin? How did it come into being?

The Psalmist declared it is all the handiwork of Jehovah God. It is said there are two books revealing the Supreme Being. One is the book of revelation, the Bible. The other is the book of nature, the Cosmos.

The naked eye alone surveys the wonder of all it. But today with modern equipment, we’re able to learn some incredible facts about the universe that amaze and astound us with the immensity of the cosmos.

How big is the universe?

The Milky way galaxy in which we live is a spiral galaxy with a 100,000 and 180,000 light years. It is estimated to contain 100 to 400 billion stars. Furthermore, Hubble reveals an estimated 100 billion galaxies in our universe.

Consider this. The earth is 93 million miles from the sun but the nearest star is 24 thousand million miles away! To illustrate, suppose you ran a 4-minute mile from the day you were born without stopping. It would take you 700 years to reach the sun. To reach the nearest star, it would take 182 million years!

One writer for The Institue of Creation  Research made this salient observation about Ps 19. “What may often be overlooked by the “day unto day” routine (Psalm 19:1-2) of our existence is that the very dependability of each day’s processes are a wonderful testimony to the design, purposes, and faithfulness of the Creator. The whole core of evolutionary naturalism, however, is randomness, an unknowable, undependable chaos and disorder. The universe, on the other hand, is very stable!”

• The sun rises in the east and sets in the west—always.
• The earth turns on its axis and cycles through its “day” at the same speed every time—always.
• The dependable clockwork precision of the tides regulates much of our life—always.
• The seasons come and go, the planting and harvesting follow each other dependably, life is conceived and born with regularity, even “natural selection” preserves and conserves the vast species of earth—always.

The “wordless language” of the universe powerful and daily declares the awesome nature of our Creator. He’s omnipotent and omniscient. His glory is witnessed with each marvelous sunrise and is viewed with wonder at each specular sun set.

The German Physicist, Albert Einstein, known for his influence on the philosophy of science once wrote, “The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”

God’s glory is witnessed in the incredible grandeur of the universe. Indeed the cosmos declares His invisible attributes–His eternal power and His Divine nature.

–Ken Weliever, The Preacherman