“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words,whose voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” - Psalm 19:1-4

Two primary means of revelation spoken of in this beautiful psalm - the creation and the Word of God. Revelation is not some mystical concept, it is the means by which we earthly beings can glimpse or understand that which is heavenly and eternal. Jesus told Peter “Blessed art thou - for flesh and blood has not REVEALED this unto you, but my Father which is in Heaven.” Matthew 16:17 It is the Father that reveals, through the Holy Spirit, of the Lord Jesus, His perfect and Holy Word sent down from Heaven. It is perfectly understandable that He is the source and the author of revelation, for He created all things, and all things are made for Him. We could say that God is in the business of revealing His Son in eternal glory to the entire universe, to His own Glory!

Therefore we have revelation of Him in the creation pictured here - the heavens, the sky, and the seasons with which the heavenly bodies (sun, moon) provide - namely, night and day.

Verse 1 says - The “heavens” declare the glory of God. Glory literally translates “weighty splendor” or “honorable brilliance”. Interesting that David remarks about the “heavens” plural. If you meditate on the concept of the heavens, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12 (most commentators believing that he was speaking of himself) - “I know a man in Christ … caught up the third heaven and shown marvelous things.” Third heaven? What does that mean? We have a clue from the latter part of verse 1 in Psalm 19.

“The sky” is also translated “the firmament” which means a divider or a partition. A partition is something that divides one thing from another. Since “the heavens” is plural, we know there is more than one, and since it is also translated to mean “the air”, we start to get a picture here of what Paul means by “third heaven”.

If the third heaven is the very throne room of God, where Paul heard “wonderful things not permitted to speak of” than the second heaven would be the space below it, or the place where the sun and moon are in orbit, the celestial bodies that dictate day and night on the earth. From here then, the first heaven would be below that, namely the sky above where the clouds roam about to and fro and where we fly our planes! Amazing how far our very prayer travels - above the clouds, above outer space, into the throne room of God, which no telescope can grasp a glimpse of!

We get confirmation of this in verse 6 when the Word talks about the sun, the correct translation is that the sun goes “from one end of the heaven (singular!) to the other”. The KJV has this correct - because although we can see the sun, it is not really “in the sky”, but more in outer space, the second “air” or second “heaven” that is above the earth. It is distinguished specifically.

This is important to realize because the different “heavens” each “declare the glory of God”, because each display different things, and I’d be willing to say that each is a different and higher degree of revelation. We know that Paul was revealed unutterable things in the very Throne Room of God, so much so that God sent him a thorn in his flesh to keep him from “being exalted beyond measure due to the exceeding revelation.” That’s intense! What incredible revelation of God’s glory and His splendor in the most Holy Place of Heaven did Paul receive when taken to the third heaven! Wow! Wow! Wow! Amazing!

If that was given Paul in the third heaven, the place of greatest revelation, where the Bible says we will “fully know even as we are fully known”. (1 Cor 13:12) If thats the case, then what is available in the first and second heavens that speak of the glory of God?

The second heaven below is where the sun and moon regulate day and night, which is mentioned next in verses 2-4. Day to day pours out speech, night to night reveals knowledge. Perhaps this speaks of the constancy that God wants to reveal His glory to us, both day and night, continually, forever! Notice that it isn’t merely one day that pours out speech, but in the sequence of days, day to day, and in the sequence of nights, night to night, that revelation comes. We should not therefore expect to “come to revelation” all at once, but progressively as time goes along.

Just as it would be silly for us to eat all of our food at once and expect it to last us for months or years, we must come into revelation gradually and continuously. The good news is, day and night its available to be had, through the person of the Holy Spirit bringing light to our minds and hearts!