This is the meditation of a true worshipper of God, honoring Him both in His works and His word. The Gentiles should (but did not, Rom. 1) have known God from His works, and Israel should (but did not, Rom. 2) have kept His word or His law. The true worshipper here, therefore, condemns both, and glorifies God in His two great ordinances or testimonies.
The works and the word of God have these two qualities—they glorify God and bless the creature, as this Psalm shows. Thus: the firmament declares the divine handywork, but it also carries the sun which gives its heat to all creation. So the law is perfect, thus glorifying its Maker like the firmament, but it also converts the soul. God’s glory and His creatures’ blessing are equally cared for in the great scenes of divine power and wisdom. But there is no effort, no indisposedness in the earth to receive blessing from the heavens; but man is to stir himself up, as the Psalmist here does, to get the blessing to his soul which the law or the word carries for him.
This Psalm is referred to (Rom. 10:1818But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. (Romans 10:18)) by the Apostle for the purpose of gloriously identifying the ministries of the heavens and of the gospel. The service which one renders the earth is like that which the other renders the world, both so diffusing themselves everywhere that nothing may be hid from either the fertilizing or saving heat thereof. The ministry of the heavens to the earth, in its universality, is the pattern of that of the gospel to the world. And the Lord in His own divine ministry was just this also. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men; and that light lighteth every man in the world (John 1:4,94In him was life; and the life was the light of men. (John 1:4)
9That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9)).
NOTE—We get notices of presumptuous sins in Numbers 15 and Deuteronomy 17, and I believe that when we come to the scriptures of the New Testament we see them in Hebrews 6 and 10.