Author: Pastor Paul A. Bartz
Note: Creation Moments exists to provide Biblically sound materials to the Church in the area of Bible and science relationships. This Bible study may be reproduced for group use.
God has created the stars for a number of reasons. The stars are to serve His purposes, and serve man. This Bible study will allow you to explore how the stars and other heavenly bodies serve God’s purposes.
1. Read Psalm 19:1. This passage mentions the purpose served by the stars and other heavenly bodies for God. What are those purposes as listed here? Which two attributes of God do the heavens attest to? In handling this question you may wish to compare several translations and then add some synonyms of your own to better understand what is being said here.
Do you think that our growing knowledge of the great variety and power of the many different objects in space helps us living today to have a greater appreciation for the great power and wisdom of God? What views of the stars and the sky above the earth did people hold in the past, especially during Biblical times?
2. Besides declaring God’s power and wisdom to man the stars and other heavenly bodies also praise God. This praise, as alluded to here in Psalm 19:1, is a glorious song which was sung long before man could hear it. But now that man can hear it, it becomes an additional reminder to believers that we, too, have been created to praise and glorify our Creator. The music of which we speak here is electronic music, created by the stars and other heavenly bodies, which we are now able to tune in and play through speakers, just like any radio station. It is interesting that the sounds created by these, the largest inanimate objects, sound very similar to the sounds created by the largest animate objects, the whales. We can even see a faith-strengthening evidence of design in this arrangement!
Now compare what you have been told the people of Biblical times believed with what the Bible actually says. Take a look at Job 22:12. Does this verse seem to support the idea that Eliphaz (see verse 1) thought that the stars were just above the earth’s surface?
What is he really comparing here? Who is above what? In modern terms we might restate Eliphaz’s point something like this: “If you think the stars are so high above us that they cannot be reached, remember that God is, in a very real sense, far above any of the stars.”
3. Now look at verse 13. Which attribute of God is mentioned here that you also found in Psalm 19:1?
Now read on through verse 20. What additional attribute of God is now being mentioned? When we look at the size, distance and power of the stars and then think of the God Who made them and gave them His power, we are impressed by God’s power, wisdom and might. We are nothing in comparison. But these verses now contrast that greatness of God with what?
Is God so far above us that He is not intimately involved with the circumstances of our lives here on earth? Whom does He favor? How? Why? Because of our goodness and power?
4. Now turn to Job 26:7. This verse describes the Earth and its place among the heavenly bodies. How does this verse compare with pictures of Earth you have seen which have been taken from the Moon? How does this Scriptural statement compare with what other peoples of Old Testament times believed?
Now read verses 5 through 14. Which of the attributes of God that we looked at in Psalm 19:1 are being spoken of here?
5. In Job 38:4 we see the very same pattern again. This whole section of Scripture contains the questions which God asked of Job out of the whirlwind. Move up to Job 38:31-33. What are the Pleiades? Orion? The Great Bear? We know today that these constellations are made up of stars which are separated by billions of miles. Only God, with principles and powers so far above ours that we could not even understand them, could do these things!
6. How does Job 38:31-33 illustrate Psalm 19:1? Now compare Psalm 19:1 with Romans 1:20. What primary service to God, can we conclude, have the stars and other heavenly bodies been created to serve? What benefit to man is this service to God?
You may wish to conclude this Bible study with the reading of Psalm 19 and a prayer of thanksgiving for the personal attention and love that our great God gives to each of us.
Footnotes:
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