<p>10:18 <i>But I say: Did they not hear? Yes, truly, their sound went out into all the earth and their words to the ends of the world</i>- Paul is doubtless alluding to the great commission here. But he says that it is fulfilled by the preachers spoken of in Ps. 19:1-4, which he quotes. This speaks of the &quot;heavens&quot; declaring God's gospel world-wide. In the same way as the sun 'goes forth' all over the world, so will the &quot;heavens&quot; go forth to declare the Gospel. The 'heavens' do not just refer to the twelve in the first century; the New Testament says that all in Christ are the &quot;heavenlies&quot;; we are all part of the &quot;sun of righteousness&quot;. The arising of Christ as the sun at His second coming (Mal. 4:2) will be heralded by the church witnessing the Gospel of His coming beforehand. The enthusiast will note a number of other preaching allusions in Ps. 19: &quot;The firmament <i>sheweth</i> his handiwork&quot; (v.1) uses a word (in the Septuagint) which occurs in Lk. 9:60 concerning the publishing of the Gospel. &quot;Their <i>line</i>&nbsp;is gone out through all the earth&quot; (v.4) is picked up by Paul in describing his preaching (2 Cor. 10:13-16 AVmg.). The idea of 'going out' throughout the earth was clearly at the root of Christ's great commission (Mk. 16:15). Yet, as we have said, the &ldquo;heavens&quot; to which this refers in Ps. 19 are interpreted by the New Testament as referring to <i>all</i>&nbsp;believers in Christ. We have to ask whether David really had this interpretation in mind when he wrote Psalm 19. Probably not, but New Testament quotation of the Old is clearly at liberty in taking words out of context and applying them to Christian themes. We are not permitted to wrest Scripture from its context as we are not inspired; but the Spirit within both Paul and David was the same and can rework the words as needed. And yet on a human level, David was one of Paul's heroes; to the point&nbsp;that David's words are quoted by him with the preface: &quot;<i>I</i> say...&quot;. But it was the same Spirit working through both men. See on :20.</p><p>Israel 'heard' the word, and yet they did not ''hearken&quot; to it (Rom. 10:16,18)- we can hear but not hear. Yet if we <i>really </i>believed that Scripture is inspired, we wouldn't be like this. It is awesome to reflect how those Hebrew letters, those Greek ciphers written on parchment 1950 years ago, were actually the very words of God Almighty. But this is the real import of our understanding of inspiration. Israel literally 'heard' the words of Ezekiel, knowing that a prophet had been among them- but they weren't obedient. We too can pay such lip service to the doctrine of inspiration- and yet not be truly obedient to the word we know to be inspired.</p>