The Perfect Revelation of the LORD
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.
19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.
• Verses 1-6 – the book of the creatures, in which we may easily read the power and godhead of the Creator (MH)
• Any part of creation has more instruction in it than human mind will ever exhaust (TOD)
• The eminent saints of ancient times were watchful observers of the objects and operations of nature. In every event
they saw the agency of God; and therefore, they took delight in its examination (TOD)
• Firmament – another word for heavens (JFB)
• If the heavens declare the glory of God, we should observe what that glory is which they declare. The heavens
preach to us every day (TOD)
• The heavenly lights are not divine, nor do they control or disclose man’s destiny. Their glory testifies to the
righteousness and faithfulness of the LORD who created them (NIV)
19:2 Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night shows knowledge.
• The lesson of day and night is one which it were well if all men learned. It should be among our day-thoughts and
night-thoughts to remember the flight of time, the changeful character of earthly things, the brevity both of joy and sorrow,
the preciousness of life, our utter powerlessness to recall the hours once flown, and the irresistible approach of eternity.
Day bids u labor, night reminds us to prepare for our last home; day bids us work for God, and invites us to rest in Him;
day bids us look for endless day, and night warns us to escape from everlasting night. (TOD)
• The day past is instructed by the day present; every new day does afford new doctrine. Mystically Christ is this
“day” and His twelve apostles are the twelve hours of the day (TOD)
• Utters – pours forth as a stream; a perpetual testimony (JFB)
19:3 There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
• Their teaching is not addressed to the ear, and is not uttered in articulate sounds; it is pictorial and directed to the
eye and heart (TOD)
19:4 Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them has
He set a tabernacle for the sun,
• Line – voice – cord – musical note or chord (Z)
• All people may hear these natural immortal preachers speak to them in their own tongue the wonderful works of
God (MH)
19:5 Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices as a strong man to run a
race.
19:6 His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it; and there is
nothing hid from the heat thereof.
• Circuit – its turning point in the west (Z)
19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making
wise the simple.
• Six words for the law of God:
o Law
o Testimony
o Statutes
o Commandment
o Fear
o Judgments
• Six evaluations of the law:
o Perfect
o Sure
o Right
o Pure
o Clean
o True
• Six results of the law:
o Converting the soul
o Making wise the simple
o Rejoicing the heart
o Enlightening the eyes
o Enduring forever
o Righteous altogether
• If nature reveals the glory of “El” the Creator God, then the law reveals the will and moral character of Yahweh,
the covenant God of Israel who gave the law (Z)
• Verses 7-11 – the book of the scriptures, which makes known to us the will of God concerning our duty. He shows
the excellency and usefulness of that book (MH)
• The word of God is first written in hieroglyphics in the heavens and the earth. The second was written on tables of
stone, and in many rites and ceremonies. The third is to be written on the heart by the power of the Holy Ghost (AC)
• Perfect – perfectly free from all corruption, perfectly filled with all good, and perfectly fitted for the end for which it is
designed (MH)
• Converting the soul – making the man to be returned or restored to the place from which sin had cast him (TOD)
• Sure – a sure fountain of living comforts and a sure foundation of lasting hopes (MH)
• Humble, candid, teachable minds receive the word, and are made wise unto salvation (TOD)
• It is not enough for us to be converts, we must continue to be disciples; and if we have felt the power of truth, we
must go on to prove its certainty by experience (TOD)
• If wisdom enter into your heart and so goes on to do more and more; not unto your head only – a man may have
all that and be a fool in the end, but when it enters into the heart, and draws all the affections after it, and along with it,
when knowledge is pleasant to your soul, then a man is converted; when God breaks open a man’s heart and makes
wisdom fall in, enter in, and make a man wise (TOD)
• This verse, and the two next following, which treat of God’s law, are in Hebrew, written each of them with ten words,
according to the number of the ten commandments, which are called the ten words (TOD)
19:8 The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure,
enlightening the eyes.
• Right – exactly agreeing with the eternal rules and principles of good and evil (MH)
• Pure – it brings us to a sight and sense of our sin and misery, and directs us in the way of duty (MH)
• The commandment – what God has ordered man to do, or not to do. (AC)
• It is by God’s commandments that we see the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the necessity of redemption (AC)
19:9 The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the LORD are true and
righteous altogether.
• Fear of the LORD – the reverence we owe to the Supreme Being (AC)
• Fear of the LORD – the sum of what the law requires (NIV)
• Clean – it subject is to purge away all defilement, to make a spotless character (AC)
• The doctrine of truth is here described by its spiritual effect (TOD)
19:10 More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey
and the honeycomb.
• Bible truth is enriching to the soul in the highest degree; good, better best. Spiritual treasure is more noble than
mere material wealth. (TOD)
• Honey just out of the comb has a sweetness, richness and flavor far beyond what it has after it becomes exposed
to the air (AC)
19:11 Moreover by them is your servant warned; and in keeping of them there is great reward.
• We are warned by the Word both of our duty, our danger, and our remedy (TOD)
• Servants of God not only find His service delightful in itself, but they receive good recompense (TOD)
• Keeping – implies great carefulness to know, to remember, and to observe (TOD)
19:12 Who can understand his errors? Cleanse You me from secret faults.
• By the law is the knowledge of sin, and in the presence of Divine truth, the Psalmist marvels at the number and
heinousness of his sins (TOD)
• The law of the LORD is so holy that forgiveness must be prayed for, even for hidden sins (TOD)
• Secret sins, like private conspirators, must be hunted out, or they may do deadly mischief (TOD)
• A secret sin may be one that apparels itself with some semblance of virtues; when they are kept off the stage of the
world – that is, so as the public eye is not upon them; when we see them with the eye of conscience, but not with an eye
of natural sense. The heart of man is a scheme of wickedness; a man says that in his heart which he dares not speak
with his tongue, and his thought will do that which his hands dare not to execute. Sin is a malignant humor and a fretting
leprosy, diffusing itself into several secret acts and workings within the mind, and then it breaks abroad and dares
adventure the practice of itself to the eye of the world. (Obadiah Sedgwick) (TOD)
• By ‘errors’ he means his unwitting and inconsiderate mistakes. There are sins, some of which are committed when
the sun shines - i.e., with light and knowledge; and then, as it is with colors when the sun shines, you may see them; so
these, a man can see, and know, and confess them particularly to be transgressions. There are other sins which are
committed either in the times of ignorance, or else (if there be knowledge), yet with unobservance. Either of these
maybe so heaped up in the particular number of them, that as a man did when he did commit them, take no notice of
them; so now, after the commission, if he should take the brightest candle to search all the records of his soul, yet many
of them would escape his notice. And, indeed, this is a great part of our misery, that we cannot understand all our debts.
We can easily see too many, yet many more lie, as it were, dead and out of sight. To sin is one great misery, and then
to forget our sins is a misery too. (Obadiah Sedgwick)
• But this is the comfort: though we cannot understand every particular sin, or time of sinning, yet if we be not idle to
search and cast over the books, and if we be heartily grieved for these sins which we have found out, and can by true
repentance turn from them unto God, and by faith unto the blood of Jesus Christ, I say that God, who knows our sins
better than we can know them, and who understands the true intentions and dispositions of the heart – that if it did see
the unknown sins it would be answerably carried against hem – He will for His own mercy sake forgive them, and He, too,
will not remember them. (Obadiah Sedgwick)
• Secret sins are more dangerous to the person in some respects than open sins. For a man does, by his art of
sinning, deprive himself of the help for his sinfulness. Like him who will carry his wound covered, or who bleeds inwardly,
help comes not in because the danger is not descried nor known. A man does by his secrecy give the to corruption; the
mind is fed all the day long either with sinful contemplations or projectings, so that the very strength of the soul is wasted
and corrupted. Secret actings do but heat and inflame natural corruption. (TOD) (Obadiah Sedgwick)
• These are not sins of omission, but acts committed by a person, when at the time, he did not suppose that what he
did was sin. Although he did the thing deliberately, yet he did not perceive the sin of it. So deceitful is sin, we may be
committing that abominable thing which cast angels into an immediate and an eternal hell, and yet at the moment be
totally unaware. Want of knowledge of the truth, and too little tenderness of conscience to hide it from us. Hardness
of heart and a corrupt nature cause us to sin unperceived. (Andrew Bonar – TOD)
• Finding himself unable to specify all the particulars of his transgressions, he cries out; not secret to God, so none
are, nor only such as were secret to the world, but such as were hidden from his own observation of himself. (MH)
• It is not possible, without much of the Divine light, to understand all our deviations from, not only the letter, but the
spirituality, of the Divine law. (AC)
• Secret faults – from those which I have committed, and have forgotten; from those for which I have not repented;
from those which have been committed in my heart, buthave not been brought to act in my life; from those which I have
committed without knowing that they were sins, sins of ignorance; and from those which I have committed in private, for
which I should blush and be confounded were they to be made public (AC)
19:13 Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me;
then shall I be upright, and I shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.
• This earnest and humble prayer teaches us that saints may fall into the worst of sins unless restrained by grace (TOD)
• When sin grows up from act to delight, from delight to new acts, from repetition of sinful acts to vicious indulgence, to
habit and custom and a second nature, so that anything that touches uon it is grievous and strikes to the man’s heart;
when it demands other vices pay homage, demands all his concerns to be sacrificed to it and to be served with his
reputation, his fortunes, his parts, his body and soul, to the irreparable loss of his time and eternity – this is the height
of its dominion – then sin becomes “exceeding sinful” (TOD)
• The distribution of sins into sins of ignorance, of infirmity, and of presumption, is very usual and very useful, and
complete enough without the addition of sings of negligence – all such sins being easily reducible to some of the former
three. The ground of the distinction is laid in the soul of man, where there are three distinct prime faculties, from which
all our actions flow – the understanding, the will, and the sensual appetite or affections. (TOD)
• Sins committed not through frailty or surprise, but those which are the offspring of thought, purpose and
deliberation. Sins against judgment, light, and conscience. (AC)
• Let me never be brought into a habit of sinning. He who sins presumptuously will soon be hardened through the
deceitfulness of sin (AC)
19;14 Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in Your sight, O
LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.
• David could not bear it that a word or a thought of his should miss acceptation with God. It did not satisfy him
that his actions were well witnessed unto men on earth, unless his very thoughts were witnessed to by the LORD in
heaven (TOD)
• He takes occasion humbly to beg the divine acceptance of his thoughts and affections (MH)