03/07/21 Hearing God's Word: His Beautiful Creation & Rules
Scripture of the Week: Psalm 19
Lesson: Today's Scripture is a psalm which is another word for song. Speaking of words, in a way this song is all about words. Psalm 19 is written by David who was a shepherd that became a great king. He tells us about some of the ways God speaks to us, but not always with words we can hear. Lets look at this a little closer.
In Verses 1-6, David is telling us abut nature. We see the sun, moon, stars, birds and clouds in the sky. On earth there are people, animals, trees, plants, rocks, land and water. All of these things, EVERYTHING, was made by God. Together they are called the Book of Nature, and it its a really big book! When we look around at all the things in nature, we learn a lot about God and what he can do. Nature is all about sights, sounds, smells and so much more. (There are those senses that God gave us at work again.) God is so awesome!
Now, let's talk about Verses 7-11. In this part of the Psalm, David is telling us about the Word of God and this book is called The Bible. David calls God "Lord" in this part of his song because he is talking about how we learn to follow God. When we decide to follow God, we call him our Lord. This psalm is just a tiny part of the book we call The Bible. The whole Bible is a collection of words written by many people a very long time ago. It has 2 sections called the Old Testament and the New Testament. The writers were actually there when all these things happened. In the Old Testament, no one saw God, but some heard him speak to them and they saw the things he could do. Psalm 19 was written during that time. In the New Testament, many people saw and heard Jesus.
The writers of The Bible tell us all the ways the Lord wants us to act to be good people and please him. All of His rules are written in the Bible. The most important rule of all is to love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind. The next most important rule is to love your neighbor as yourself. Have you heard about the 10 Commandments? These are 10 rules God told Moses in the Old Testament that are still the same rules we should live by today. If you follow all these rules, you will be a good servant of our Lord. There is one problem though. We are all human and make mistakes called sins. Our Lord knows this and he gave us his only son, Jesus who died on the cross for us. Jesus never ever sinned. Never. When Jesus died, He took our sins away so we can be forgiven.
David tells us about some of the rules we should follow:
Always trust our Lord and put Him first above all else. When the Lord tells us to do something, it is always right.
Always tell the truth and don't cheat. Every day tell the Lord how awesome He is (worship him).
The words of our Lord are worth more than anything else, even the very best gold.
When you obey the rules of the Lord, good things will come to you. We can never be perfect, so sometimes it is hard to know when we have sinned. Ask the Lord to forgive you anyway.
Ask the Lord to stop you from having bad thoughts or wanting to do bad things. Never, ever do anything that you know for sure is really bad.
This brings us to the end of Psalm 19, Verses 12-14. David tells us that we must live a good life and try to follow the rules, but most importantly we must love God as our Lord. David calls the Lord his "rock and redeemer". Our Lord is our rock because he is solid and strong and He is our redeemer because Jesus died for us to take away our sins.
The next time you go outside, take a few minutes to be quiet and really look around. Look at the beautiful world around you that our Lord has created and listen to what He is telling you. Even though you might not actually hear him speak, He is still talking to you and this makes you truly blessed.