God's profound interest in humanity far surpasses His concern for the vast cosmos, as demonstrated in Psalm 147. While the universe, with its countless stars and intricate celestial mechanics, is a testament to God's power, the psalm prioritizes His healing of broken hearts and binding of wounds. The sermon contrasts the cosmological argument for God's existence with the experiential argument, emphasizing that God's focus is on individual human experience and relationship. This is illustrated by the order of the psalm, placing healing before astronomical details, and by the narrative of creation where humanity, with its capacity for volition, is infinitely more valuable than the stars. Ultimately, God's love is shown to be so great that He sent His Son to redeem humanity, prioritizing spiritual healing and eternal life over physical ailments or cosmic grandeur.
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Now I think this morning we'll turn to Psalms one hundred and forty seven. One hundred and forty seven. Then I wonder if we might not read this Psalm responsibly. I'll read verse one please and you'll read verse two and we'll go down the Psalm because it will do us good. Psalms one hundred and forty seven. Praise ye the Lord, for it is good to sing praises unto our God, for it is pleasant and praise is comely. The Lord doth build up Jerusalem.
He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel. He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds. Great is the Lord and of great power. His understanding is infinite. Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving. Sing unto the Lord with thanks upon the heart unto our God. He give us to the beast his food and to the young ravens which cry.
He give us to the beast his food and to the young ravens which cry. The Lord take of pleasure in them that fear him in those that hope in his mercy. For he has strengthened the bars of thy gates. He has blessed thy children within them. He has blessed thy children within them. He sends forth his commandment upon earth. His word runs very swiftly.
He casteth forth his ice like mortals, who can stand before his coals? He shows his word unto Jacob, his statutes, and his judgments unto Israel. God not have our focus in the name of Jesus. And therefore, his guardians, they have not known him. Praise be to the Lord. Thank you. The Lord will bless to us his holy word. Now, Psalms one hundred and forty-seven is in the last five Hallelujah Psalms.
These last five begin and end with the words, Praise ye the Lord, or Hallelujah. When you come to these closing psalms, the long and loud groaning of Israel is over. Their cries to God for deliverance, their cries for vengeance, as we call them, the imprecatory psalms are hushed. Israel's troubles are over and there's nothing but praise, nothing but hallelujahs rising to the Lord.
Now in this Psalm there is the constant mingling of God's power in creation and His providence. in meeting the need of his creature man. If you read the Psalms carefully, which I hope you will again sometime today, you'll see the constant intermingling of God's benevolence in the laws of nature and God's particular providence in the individual needs of man.
But I want you to notice, please, particularly verses three and four from which I'd like to speak today. He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth a number of the stars. He calleth them all by their names. Now you would imagine that in these days when we are made so conscious, of space travel. And we have seen in our day man making a couple of journeys to the moon and safely back again when there's all this interest and expense and risk on the behalf of man to invade the solar system of which he is a part.
You would imagine all this interest in astronomy would make it imperative that verse four should come before verse three. That is to say that it's far more important to tell the number of the stars and to learn their names than it is for God to heal the broken in heart and bind up their wounds. The theologians would tell us that verse four is the cosmological argument for the existence of God.
That is to say, that God's eternal power and Godhead are understood by the things that are made, and that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament show us his handiwork. That's the cosmological argument. The argument from the cosmos, from the world. And that the other, in verse three, is the experiential argument. The argument from experience. man's inner consciousness of the existence of God. Someone has said that while man has proof of the existence of God as he looks about him, he has something which is infinitely better and he has the inward consciousness of God.
He has inside information. that there is a God and that he is tremendously interested in him. So that instead of the cosmological argument coming first and God directing our attention to astronomy, to telling the number of the stars and giving them names, the order here is the order of experience. and then the order of astronomy. Which leads us to say, and what I'd like to show this morning, is that God is infinitely more interested in meeting individual human beings than in creating a universe of stars.
Now, of course, astronomy is a great If what they tell us is true, as we are sitting here this morning, we are traveling, that is our earth, is traveling at seventy-two thousand six hundred miles an hour at this very moment. And at the beginning of the year, we began to make one journey around the sun. and it will take us three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days to make one orbital journey, traveling at seventy-two thousand six hundred miles per hour.
Now you and I can scarcely take that in. We've got so used to astronomical figures in our day. that the mention of them fails to awaken us the consciousness, awaken in us the consciousness that they should. For instance, we say that the moon that man has made a safe journey to is, we say, well, it's two hundred and forty-three thousand miles away. And man has made the journey. But we fail to realize that if you were to get into an airplane today and the airplane were to be able to go five hundred miles an hour with no stops, day and night, it would take us twenty days at that incredible stage to get to the moon.
Now the moon is Shall I say the Sun is ninety-three million miles away. And if you divide ninety-three million by two hundred and forty-three thousand, you'll discover that the Sun is three hundred and eighty times further from the Earth than the Moon is. Now if you go along with me a little further, let me say that The Earth makes its safe orbital journey, one journey around the Sun safely, never losing a minute in a hundred years.
If it did, it would begin to work havoc in the universe. We must keep in our own orbit century after century, keep up the speed and not get any closer to the Sun. The attraction of the sun is a tremendous thing. And the pull of the sun is determined by the weight of the earth, the mass of the earth. If the earth weighed more than it does now, the pull of the sun would be greater, we are told. Or if the earth weighed less than it does now, the pull of the sun would be less.
so that the pull of the sun and the weight, the mass of the earth, must be in perfect equilibrium. Does that not remind you of something in Isaiah which tells us that God weighs the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? And it's because of the perfect balance of these forces that we remain in our proper orbit century after century. Now that's tremendous. Now, because of the pool of the sun, it's necessary for our great heavy earth to travel sixty-two thousand six hundred miles an hour.
Now, closer than we are to the sun is Mercury, which in contrast to our ninety-three million miles is thirty-five million miles from the sun. Now, being that it's so much closer, the pool of the sun is greater. So it has to go faster to balance up. It's so much faster than we are. It has to go a hundred and sixty-five times faster than we do to maintain its equilibrium. And they tell me that Neptune is at the other end of our system, twenty-one hundred million miles away.
It will take, no, I was wrong, thirty-five million is Mercury, twenty-one hundred is the other. And it takes one hundred and sixty-five of our years to make one journey around the sun. Now all that's tremendous. Now when we say all that, we've just been talking about the immediate family of the sun. We've just been talking about the planets in our system. The Earth is making its journey. Neptune is making its journey. Mercury is making its journey. And all the other planets. And we've just been talking about the immediate family of the sun.
We haven't been talking about the stars as such yet. And then when we begin to talk about the nearest star, you begin to talk about light years. Now, in case you have forgotten, a light here is the speed that light will go in the distance in a year. Light travels a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. And you have to multiply that by sixty to get what light travels in a minute. And sixty by what it travels in an hour. And twenty-four, what it travels in a day.
And three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter, what light travels in a year. And when you've added all that up, you've got a tidy sum, I assure you. And they tell us that our nearest star is four light years away. And then they begin to stretch out. And out. And out. until after a while, they're not only talking about three hundred thousand light years away, but they're talking about groups of stars, constellations. There are three hundred thousand light years away from each other.
It staggers the imagination. None of us can take it in. And yet, when the Bible describes it, the making of those things, it describes them in five words. He made the stars of them. That's all. God was not greatly concerned in making stars. And the reason that he made a universe at all was just that the world and that which surrounds it would just be a theater, a stage upon which he would portray the actors in time to come.
This present earth that you and I live on is just the stage. Upon which God was going to portray the great drama of life and unfold the plans that he had made from all eternity. And that's why God only spent five words, really, to tell us what he did that morning. He made the stars of life. It's a tragedy that mankind will bend its energies and spend most of its life in studying the stage and fail to learn the drama that God portrayed upon that stage.
Now that is why I think that it says here. that God is more concerned about healing broken hearts and binding up wounded people than he is in telling the number of the stars and calling them all by their names, you see. And so I want to emphasize that today. When God created a man, and when God set that man on his feet, on the earth. With the earth beneath him and the stars above him, God had created something infinitely greater than all the universe.
Because when he made that man, he gave him something that the universe didn't possess. And that was volition. That was free choice. That was a will. which he could put on the side of good or evil as he chose. When God made that man Adam, he made a man who could say no to God Almighty if he chose to do so. The universe was just a machine, just obeying inexorable law.
But when God put a man on the earth, and presently a woman, by his sight, God endowed that pair with something tremendous. He endowed him with volition, free choice, will. Sometimes people say, why did God not make Adam incapable? of choosing evil. Why did God not make him so that he could only do the good and thus save us from all the trouble we've had ever since?
Well, the answer to that is that God could have done so. The reason that he didn't do so was probably because if he had done so, man would have been not any different really from the universe. He would just have been a machine, ever moving in one direction, having no power of choice. God would just have made a machine. And you can't have intelligent fellowship with a machine. But God wanted to make something, somebody, with whom he could have intelligent fellowship, who would obey him because he was worth obeying.
who would love him because he was worth loving, who would serve him because he was worth serving. You see. And so God made that man, and he placed him upon the earth to do his will. He could have prevented the importation of sin into the earth. Sin had its rise not in the earth, but in the heavens. It was conceived there. It was conceived by a being whom God had equally endowed with volition, choice, will.
And that being, as he watched the angels rushing to do the bidding of God, said, I will exalt my throne like the most high. I will be at God. And he who sought to do so was deposed. becoming the prince of the power of the air, and later imported that disobedience into the earth and inoculated humanity with his own disobedience. And so sin has come into the world. And all that we see today, adversely, is the outworking of that sin which entered the world that day when that pair listened to the voice of the serpent instead of the voice of God.
Satan was very cunning, as we remember. He waited evidently until Adam and his wife Eve were separated, probably at extreme ends of the garden. He approached the woman. and instead of her running to the shelter of her husband where together they might have stood and replied to Satan she took upon herself to reply to him alone and he attacked her in the way that he attacked our Savior later and that he attacks every one of us sits in the lust of the eye in the lust of the flesh and in the pride of living, in the pride of life.
And John tells us later that that's all that's in the world. Satan, you remember, first of all, inserted a doubt as to the Word of God. Has God said? And then he followed that with a denial, ye shall not surely die. And then he followed that with a declaration that if they did partake of the trade, they would be as God, as big as God. For the word rendered gods, in Genesis three is the same word in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
It is God in plural, not in dual, singular or dual, as the Hebrew language has three numbers, but in the plural God. And so sin was brought into the human race, inoculated into our veins, and is the cause. of the unhappiness of the world. Now this is the great day of science. People are prepared almost to fall down and worship at the feet of science, which has given us so much. But science doesn't make homes happy.
Science doesn't lower the divorce rate. Science doesn't lower the crime wave. Science doesn't lessen the unhappiness and unrest and rebellion of our colleges and universities. Science can make us more comfortable sitting on foam rubber cushions in our home, but makes us uncomfortable by what we see on the television. In the unrest and crime and weapons and germ warfare and everything that man is piling up against the day, of total universal confrontation. Now, according to this psalm, therefore, God is more interested in healing broken hearts in that little spot called the earth and in binding up wounds than he is in creating stars.
That's why I want you to get hold of today. They say that our earth is represented by any grain of sand that we might pick up on the seashore as we walk along. That one tiny grain of sand is represented by our earth in the expanse of the universe. And you say, you mean to tell me that God is more interested in that grain of sand and what lives on that grain of sand than all the rest? Yes. Yes. I heard a story one time about a German astronomer whose observations told him that on a certain night, something would be seen in the heavens that would not be seen again for two hundred years.
And he resolved that he would be on the job early, and he was hoping for a clear night when he might see the position, the juxtaposition, the relation of two heavenly bodies. So he was early on the job. So early that he paused for a moment to speak to the old caretaker who sat at his table reading. And the great man said, well, John, I see your reading. It's a lovely night for what I'm about to say. What are you reading? Well, he said, I'm reading the Bible, sir. He says the Bible, eh?
He said, yes. He says, you know, there's a statement in there that I, as an astronomer, can't receive. He says, what's that? He says that God so loved the world. and that he gave not just a thought to it, but a son to it, that he gave his only begotten son. My, I find that hard to believe. And away he went upstairs. But present when the old man heard a commotion, he heard a sound of hurrying feet.
He heard the man coming down the stairs and bursting into his room. And he said, hurry up, man. Help me. I was adjusting a screw in my telescope. I had the window open. I was adjusting the lens and the screw came right out in my fingers. It fell on the ledge and it has fallen outside on the cobblestones. Help me find it. For if I don't, I won't save a sight. But I've set my heart to see and to tell the world about tomorrow. Help me. So the two men rushed out. And they began to search.
And the minutes were passed. And after a while the great astronomer was down on his hands and knees. Searching among the rough stones and the dirt. For that little tiny adjusting screw. But he found it. And he was in time to rush up the stairs, insert it in the lens, adjust the lens, and see that great sight. So he came down greatly pleased. And John was still reading. Well, he said, John, I saw it. It was a marvelous sight. I'll tell the world about it tomorrow. And John said, Well, sir, if you'll excuse me, I'm very much surprised at you.
This is why. It says, you, the great German astronomer, down on your hands a maze, searching for a tiny screw, not worth a penny. I could buy one tomato for a penny. And you were on your hands a maze, your smooth hands on the rough stone, searching for a thing not worth a penny. And the great man said, but don't you see? I needed that screw. It was part of my scheme. It was part of my machine. I had to have it. To see that first. John says, I understand. And he says, God so loved the world. That little tiny insignificance.
That for his plans. And for his scheme. He sent his son into the world. And his son came into that world. I was going to say on his hands and knees amongst the filth of human depravity. to find people for the great plan and scheme of God. Let it be today. Now, God is tremendously interested in the drama portrayed on the stage, because after that drama has revealed entrance of sin, with all that sin is brought.
The scene shifts and there's another man who comes on the stage. And what a man. He's called the second man. He's called the last Adam. And on that stage God portrays something that creation could never show. He portrayed his love for dying lost humanity. Humanity that suffers in wounds received by sin. Humanity that has broken hearts because of the ravages of that which sin has produced.
Crime, murder, wars, pride, ambition, divorce, broken homes, disease, pain, undead. And God wants to bind up wounds and heal broken hearts. And more than that, God is more interested in giving people a life that is unseen and spiritual and that must be received by faith than he is even in healing the diseases of humanity.
And we have that portrayed, don't we? When those four men brought their fellow to the Lord, when he was in the house and when the crowd filled the house to the very door, And the men saw that they were not going to be able to get their friend in who was ill and helpless on their couch. Each one had carried a corner to the door. And when they saw they couldn't get in. They went up on the roof and uncovered the tiles and let the man down in front of Jesus. They had to make room for him then. Otherwise they'd have to hold him on their heads.
So they all squeezed back. And the man got down in front of Christ. And you can see the eager faces of the four men on the top of the ceiling. And as they look down, you see their faces change. And a look of keen disappointment coming into their faces. For Jesus, instead of saying, Rise up and walk, what do you think he said? He said, Son, thy sins be forgiven. Can you see the disappointment? We didn't bring him for that. We weren't really interested in spiritual things. We were interested in physical things. We thought he would make him well again. And now he says, I sinned before you.
But look around and you'll see other kinds of faces standing around Jesus. They're not disappointed faces. They are scowling faces. And they're saying, how can this man forgive sins? And Jesus our Lord says, But that ye may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. He said to the sick of the body, Rise of the walk. And the man rose and went away, not simply with healing of the body, but healing of the soul with his sins forgiven. And it was our Lord's way of telling us To lose your wealth is much, to lose your health is more, but to lose your soul is such a loss that no man can restore.
And the Lord is anxious to heal the inward diseases of the soul than he is to heal the physical diseases of the body. That must come first. And yet, after that, now we are in the family of God. We have to learn, and we do learn it, and we rejoice in it, and we join this psalm, and hallelujah, for this. But after meeting our deep spiritual needs, God is tremendously interested in meeting our physical needs day by day. And God is interested in the smallest detail of your living and my life.
I want you to know that. So let me give you some illustrations of it. People begin with bigger things and go down to smaller things. There was a man in Los Angeles years ago had a vision. He had a vision before the Lord of building a Bible school. He said, Lord, I'd like to see a Bible school. Stars within Los Angeles. And he began to pray that God would make it possible. He began to make known to just a few friends his vision. And they joined him in prayer. That God in his greatness would enable them to build a Bible school.
And one day a man came into his office. A man whom he had never seen before. And the man says, I hear you're interested in the Bible school. He says, yes, that's our prayer. He says, well, there's something to start it off. And he threw a check on the table. And he walked out. And a man lifted up the check. And it was a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Quasper of a building. Thrown on his desk. By God who was interested in building Bible schools. There was another woman in California who had the vision. She says, you know, Lord, what I'd like to do?
I'd like to build ten little cottages for returning missionaries, whether they come and stay for a week or a month or a more, and just rest. Lord, that's my vision. It'll take fifty thousand dollars. And she says, Lord, I haven't got fifty thousand dollars. But I do have a lot. And you're welcome to the lot. It's not worth fifty thousand dollars. That's worth a few thousand. But you can have it, Lord. You can have it. And she prayed and prayed. That man came to see her one day. He said, Do you own that lot such and such? She said, Yes, I do.
He said, We release it to us. We're drilling for oil. We'd like to drill for oil in your lot. And we'll pay you so much a barrel. She had good enough. And she signed the lease. And they drilled for oil. And it proved to be a gutter. One of those things that comes in fast. And continues fast. And stops suddenly. And hers was a gutter. And she began to get checks and checks and checks in the mail. Until she had fifty thousand dollars in the bank. And it stopped. My, she said, I wish I had asked for a hundred thousand. I could just as soon have gone. See, God was interested, friends, in that woman's vision.
And the resources of the Almighty are infinite. Oh, you see, that's an awful big thing, Mrs. Well, I heard a Methodist minister tell this story about his sister. I heard this story in Virginia, Minnesota. Perhaps Elwood and Ellen heard this man, Dr. Valentine, for many others. It wasn't something he had read in a paper. It was concerning his sister. In southern Minnesota, she was going to have a dinner party one winter evening. She had made up her mind to have twelve guests. And she made up her mind that to serve twelve guests, one of the best things would be baked ham.
So she ordered ham and she got it baking that afternoon. And then it began to snow. And it snowed and snowed and snowed. And she said to herself, only half of my guests will turn up. And she was right. And as she was pleading away after supper, she said to herself, what will I do with all this? Oh, she says, I know. I'll take some to Mrs. Stonso who lives alone out the street. I'll take it to her tomorrow. And the Lord seemed to say, no, take it tonight. She said, I can take it tonight. I got guests in my house. I will take it tomorrow.
The Lord said, no, take it tonight. But she said, I can't take it today. And there's no use of asking my husband, he wouldn't be in sympathy with that kind of a topic. But Lord, I will take it tomorrow. He says, no, take it tonight. Did you ever try to expostulate with God? She said, and she had no peace until she got some of the big ham and wrapped it in paper and ran. and ran all the way to the neighbor's house and put it down beside the door and banged on the door and ran back to her guest. And the next day or the day after, when she could negotiate through the snow, she came to the neighbor and said, How did you like that hat?
She said, Did you bring that hat? She said, Yes. Oh, she said, Let me tell you about that. She said, You know, I was sick in bed. I was sick for several days. I couldn't eat a thing. But I began to feel better. I began to get hungry. And I began to think of the few things I had in the house to eat. And my stomach revolted against every one of them. But I just lifted my heart to my heavenly Father. And I said, Father, you know what? I could eat baked ham. She said, I could really eat baked ham. She says, make it big hand. I just laid back and said, make it big hand.
Make it big hand. And there was a knock at the door. I thought, well, who's that? And I came to the door and there was nobody there, but there was a package. And it was big hand. And I told you on Saturday night about my toothpaste and shaving cream and how God has provided it. Oh, friends, I want you to know. that God is more interested in you and me, just yours, however trivial, because he isn't greatly interested in stars, but he is greatly interested in his saints. And when you read the rest of the psalm, which I hope you will, you'll find that God feeds restless beasts, and God feeds ravenous raven.
And ravens were unclean to a Jew. And yet it says that God feeds ravens, even as he fed Elijah with ravens. Even as he fed the Apostle Paul and Malta with Gentile ravens. God does that sometimes. And it's all given to show us, dear friend, that nature is only made to subserve the need of man. We have a great God. Amen. Now we have a great Savior. Blessed be it. Amen. Let's sing number eight, please, together. And bring us number eight.
Shall we stand while we sing in the remaining standing, please, for the closing prayer? I'll ask my brother, Mr. Willie, please, to close in prayer. Verse eight, in number eight, and shall we just sing for our time has gone, verses one and two. And five, standing place to sing. Let's really let it go, shall we? Oh, for a thousand, thousand, recreate him as please.
My glory is of my glory. So the triumph of his glory. My gracious master and my God assist me to the temporal claim. Turns away to the miracle of the young earth of my name. Hear him, ye dance, His praise be to him, to lift the tongues and fly.
Yes, I may hold your saviour, come, kindly, ye live for joy. Brother Mr. Willie, please. Blessed God, our Father, we thank you for the words that we say, that I've been reading. We thank you. Blessed God. that thou hast created all things by and through thy flesh. Have in faith in the head of all things, and by him for all things created, things in heaven, things in earth, and in his mother-in-law.
So we thank thee, and we have heard the points of thy words, that are more interested in men than are interested in God. He laid the scars off, but God showed up the world that He gave His Son, that we might be saved. We praise thy name. We thank thee for thy interest in us. And we ask all this, thy interest in us. And each one with words from thy source might give us a greater interest in thee and in thy faith. Thank you, Lord, as we separate now, and may we carry these things with us in our hearts, and leave yourself over, and O God, teach us more of the wonders of thy love for us.