“The Flagpole Fixation”
Psalm
19
March 15, 2009
That God’s glory is declared in the heavens is accepted broadly in the Christian
tradition. God’s glory shines throughout creation in a multitude of ways.
In this morning’s Psalm, however, this commonly held belief is stretched to its
limits. The Psalmist challenges our understanding by saying that the heavens do not
simply reflect God, but even more so, creation “day to day pours forth
speech.”
Psalm 19 tells us that
the heavens speak words, specific communications, declaring who God is to humanity.
According to the Psalmist these words issued by the heavens themselves declare the true
knowledge of God.
Please listen for how the Spirit is addressing us this morning through God’s word
found on page 472 of your pew Bibles from Psalm 19….
1The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
2Day to day pours forth speech, and night
to night declares knowledge.
3There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not
heard;
4yet their voice goes out through all the
earth, and their words to the end of the world. In the heavens he has set a tent for the
sun,
5which comes out like a bridegroom from his
wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its course with joy.
6Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them; and nothing is hid from its heat.
7The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving
the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;
8the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes;
9the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring
forever; the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
10More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.
11Moreover by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
12But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden
faults.
13Keep back your servant also from the
insolent; do not let them have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and innocent
of great transgression.
14Let the words of my mouth and the
meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
This is God’s word to
us...
Skyscrapers are so twentieth century! Sure we still build them, we still marvel at
them, and the tourists crowding the streets of New York, Shanghai and Kuala Lampur still
crane their necks to take in their heights. But gone are the days when really big
buildings are really big news. Nowadays it’s another man-made marvel
that’s becoming the must-have, newsworthy symbol of modern ingenuity; the
flagpole. At least that’s the vision David Chambers wants us to believe.
For the past eight years Chambers has been in the business of building the world’s
largest flagpoles, with his small company at the center of a “monster-flagpole
boom” sweeping across Central Asia and the Middle East. His largest project, a
pole that is slated to stand some 532 feet tall, is located in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku.
When completed, it will hold the record for the world’s tallest flagpole—but not
for long. Clients are lining up, especially in the oil-rich states of the world,
each requesting that theirs be the last to hold the coveted title of “tallest.”
Our drive to build the biggest and the greatest—be it skyscrapers or
flagpoles—is nothing new. It’s a uniquely human “thing,” never
really going out of style but rather shifting its focus. Whether it’s the
undeniable magnificence of the Taj Mahal, or the curious accomplishment that is the
world’s largest ball of twine—found in Darwin Minnesota—one thing is
clear, something inside of us just loves to build big.
We are good at building things, after all. And yet surrounded by such achievements,
it’s all too easy to lose perspective. That is, when surrounded by the biggest
and best of what we, the “crown of God’s creation” have been able to pull
off, it’s relatively easy to gloss over what the Creator has accomplished.
The stars speak of a scope and size to
the universe that is beyond our grasp.
The mountains give hint to a maker more
powerful than comprehension.
The colors found in a single autumn day
display an artistry unmatched by the most skilled of human hands.
But all too often, apart
from the family vacation to the Grand Canyon or the occasional Discovery Channel Special
that catches our attention, even the “great and profound works of [God’s]
hands” (Psalm 92:4-6) just seem so … well … ordinary. We might as
well go build a flagpole.
No doubt the Psalmist
wrestled with the same lack of wonder that overtakes us all from time to time. As
tradition puts it, David too, occasionally came down with a case of
“build-it-bigger-itis.” After all he was King of Israel, a man with a
lust for the luxuries of life who harbored divine dreams of building God’s Temple.
One can only assume that
David, too, loved to press the limits of human engineering. But in Psalm 19, we
catch David in a far different mood. In this psalm we hear the voice of one
who—for at least a moment—is grounded in the limitations of humanity as he takes
in the wonders of God’s creativity:
The
heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day
to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no
speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through
all the earth, and their words to the end of the world (Psalm 19:1-4a).
David nails it: creation
does speak to us. Whenever we take the time to take in something bigger or more
beautiful than that which is built by mere mortals, there’s a proclamation that takes
place. There’s a declaration that surpasses the boundaries of language and says
something to every single soul. It says, “I am small. God is big. I
am weak. God is strong. The sun is always on time. I, however, am often
late. I am but a creature, but God, God is Creator.”
And in a society where
the word “awesome” can be used to describe everything from the music of Handel
to a hamburger, we need to tune our ear to the power of creation. In a world where
the works of our own hands are not just to be admired but constantly outdone, we need to
be reminded of the unsurpassing wonder God’s hands have wrought. As a people
for whom a sense of true and total “stop what you’re doing, put down the
Blackberry and say ‘wow’” sense of wonder is hard to foster and so easily
lost, we desperately need to listen to God’s beauty.
What David grabs hold of
in this psalm is the fact that the wonder of creation, unlike the work of our own hands,
has the ability to draw us outward and upward toward the truth of God in a way that
skyscrapers, balls of twine and insanely large flagpoles simply can not.
Think about it for a
moment. The Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China and soon the Palm Islands of Dubai,
while magnificent, manage mostly to declare only our glory. And while soon we will
be able to say of Dubai’s rather curious accomplishment of their shores in the
Persian Gulf; “Humanity can make giant islands that look like palm trees seeable from
outer space!” it doesn’t’ carry with it the same power of the rising sun
that each morning chases away the moon (Psalm 19:5), does it?
Don’t misunderstand;
neither the psalmist nor I am trying to denigrate what we are capable of. After all,
our ability to create is itself a reflection of God’s ultimate creative power.
Being made in God’s image and likeness, we are “mini-creators” doing our
thing on a much smaller but still impressive scale (Genesis 1:27). But when we come
fact to face with the unmatched, creative power of God, words are spoken that—if we
allow them to—offer us a good dose of awe-filled humility.
Let’s be honest, you
and I spend a great deal of time proving to those around us and to ourselves
“who” we are. We fill our days building a professional reputation, raising
kids who will hopefully impress, and fighting to leave some kind of legacy that
matters. But sometimes the best thing we can do is “press the pause
button” on proving who we are and instead remembering whose we are.
That is the moment in
which we find David in Psalm 19. the speech of the sun and the message of the moon
have struck him deep, and just as the Law gives “light to the eyes” the creation
that surrounds him has revealed a stark contrast between Creator and creature (19:8).
The gaps, the faults and the inadequacies that we try to fill with everything from
flat-panel televisions to giant flagpoles are put plainly on display and we are reminded
once again to whom we truly belong.
And it’s in moments
like those that the real glory of God’s creation can be found. Through it God
brings us to a place where we’re ready to receive the gospel. Confronted by the
glory of God, we’re ripe for an encounter with the Son of God, who stepped into
creation and filled the gaps of our imperfect existence with the perfection of his.
In such moments we are ready to receive and able to appreciate the “firstborn of all
creation,” whose death on a cross forgives our constant attempts to put ourselves on
the world’s tallest pedestals (Colossians 1:15).
When we take the time to
stare at the stars that hang over our family’s tent on a camping trip; when we remove
our nose from the grindstone long enough to notice the picture of God’s faithfulness
that is the rising sun, we encounter a Maker who creates from nothing and has redeemed our
nothing, through the work of Jesus Christ.
Albert Einstein once
said, “He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand in rapt awe, is good as
dead.” Strong but poignant words; when was the last time you stood in
jaw-dropped awe at God’s creation? How alive is your sense of wonder for the
beauty of the natural world? Perhaps one of the best exercises we can do to refresh
our perspective and revive our faith is simply to sit back and stare at the stuff we
can’t comprehend and could never compete with and living in Idaho we are blessed with
much to take in.
David closes his song
with a simple request. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my
heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:4). The
work of God speaks. It tells of God’s power. When we listen, it declares
the depths of God’s love and the heights of God’s grace. David’s
desire in his closing words of Psalm 19 is that his work might do the same.
Let us never lose our
wonder for the One who has made the world and who has saved the world. After all,
when we live humbled by what God has done in our sight, we can be confident that all we
do—be it building skyscrapers or wiping noses—is pleasing in God’s sight.
Amen.
SOURCES:
RE: the monster flagpole boom:
wsj.com/article/SB121833827130345579.html.
RE: the Palm Islands of Dubai:
palmsales.ca/new_properties/index.html.
Paragraph 5.032 from the
Second Helvetic Confession
Chapter VII “Of the Creation of All Things”
GOD CREATED ALL THINGS.
This good and almighty God created all things, both visible and invisible, by his
co-eternal Word, and preserves them by his co-eternal Spirit, as David testified when he
said: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the
breath of his mouth” (Ps. 33:6). And, as Scripture says, everything that God had made
was very good, and was made for the profit and use of man. Now we assert that all those
things proceed from one beginning.
