Word of Salvation – Vol. 44 No.35 – September 1999
Praise the Creator
Sermon by Rev B Hoyt
on Psalm 104
Scripture Readings: Genesis 1
Brothers and Sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ.
[If relevant… I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that it’s holiday time. Many of you have had a week or two away enjoying yourselves and taking a break from your ordinary work.]One of the special things about holiday times is the opportunity to go out with family and friends for a tramp in the mountains or to spend few days fishing or relaxing.
When we have time away from our usual work, we can enjoy the creation of God and reflect upon His greatness. And as we enjoy and reflect, we can say with the psalmist, “Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, Thou art very great.” Our God is great and glorious. We are reminded of that as we reflect upon and observe His creation. Some of you will go back to school and study the creation of God. Studying and reflecting on the creation causes us to stand in awe before Him who has made all things in their wondrous intricacy and complexity.
He made the sun. The astronomers and the physicists still don’t know very much about how it works. They certainly do not know how it was made though they put forth all kinds of theories about its supposed evolution. He made the moon. The same can be said about the moon. We don’t really know very much about the moon even though a few dirt samples were brought back by the astronauts for testing.
He made the planets that wander through the sky. He made the stars, the millions, perhaps billions of galaxies, each with their hundreds of millions of stars in them. God made them all. And he made this earth with its marvels; wonders that are awesome as we view them. And God filled it with life in its teeming and almost frightening abundance. And yes, brothers and sisters, he made you and me, last of all but not least.
So we ask with the psalmist, “What is man, that God should take thought of him, that He should care for him?” As we read our Bibles we learn that man is very special in the eyes of God. God created us in his own image, male and female he created us. The other creatures bring glory to God by being what they are, by living according to their nature. Man alone gives glory to God by responding to God’s works. He is able to do that because he is made in the image of God. Man responds to God’s providential care from the heart in praise and obedient service.
Heartfelt praise, that’s what this Psalm is all about. In it the psalmist gives praise to God; he stands in awe as he thinks about all that God has done, and he calls us to do the same. This Psalm is written for our instruction. The psalmist says, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.” That’s the kind of praise that we are called to give to our Creator.
Let’s consider three things that this Psalm teaches us.
1. God’s People Give Praise to Jehovah as Creator of All Things
First of all, God’s people give praise to Jehovah as Creator of all things. You see, this praise that the psalmist calls us to give is praise to “the Lord my God”. If you look in verse 1, the word ‘Lord’ is written with all capital letters. Remember this means that it stands for the Hebrew ‘Yahweh’, or ‘Jehovah’ as we often pronounce it in English. It is God’s covenant name, His personal name by which He relates to his people.
The psalmist speaks as one of God’s people, one of God’s covenant people, the people whom God has loved and whom He has bound to Himself in His great love. He responds with praise to God as his Creator. He says, “O my soul Bless Yahweh my God… He is great and awesome. How many are Thy works, O Lord.”
Only God’s people can give him this kind of praise. As God’s people we praise Him when we go out on holiday and when we study the creation because of His grace toward us as our covenant God. Just ask yourself: isn’t it true that very few people give praise to God like this? Do you hear on television, do you read in the newspaper words like these: “O Lord, my God, you are very great?” You don’t read that do you? You don’t hear that on TV do you? Not at all!
People today praise nature, with a capital ‘N’. They worship the creation, the sun, the moon, the living earth as some think of it. Today people in our society are reverting back to tribal paganism. They regard the mountains as sacred. They regard the trees as having a spirit, they regard certain locations as inhabited by the spirits of the ancestors. And why? Why in our society are they doing this? A society that has known the Gospel, that has had the Word of God? Why is the Lord no longer regarded as holy but nature is regarded as holy?
The reason is simple: the Word of God has been closed and put on the shelf to collect dust. In fact, in many homes you cannot even find a Bible. O brothers and sisters, may this not be the case in our homes. Rather may God’s Word be an open book that is read day by day in the morning when you rise up and in the evening when you sit down to the dinner table.
There are other people in our society, who are turning to pantheism. This is the belief that the whole universe is God. All is God, and God is all. So we should stand in awe before the universe.
How very different is the message of this Psalm. In this Psalm we are taught to worship and give praise and stand in awe, not before the creation, not before some part of creation, not before some creature, but rather before Jehovah, the Creator. “O Lord, how great you are… Bless Jehovah O my soul… How many are Thy works.” And why is such praise given? Because it is the praise of God’s people who know Him.
Yes, I’m aware that there are still some in our society that hold to vestiges of Christian teaching. They acknowledge that there is a God in some formal sense. That is a good thing as far as it goes. They may even believe that this God created everything, but they don’t really know him. He is a distant God. He is far away. He doesn’t interfere with His creation and certainly not with us humans. He created the world. Then He wound it up like one of those old alarm clocks, and He let it tick. Such people don’t know God. For them He is a God far away. And since they don’t know Him, they never think to praise Him for all that He has made.
How different are the words of this Psalm. How different are the responses of God’s people who know Him. We know Him because He has revealed Himself to us in His Word and in Christ Jesus, our Lord fully, who is God incarnate. We know Him as the creator of all things, as our Creator. And we love Him as our Redeemer who has made us His own people and revealed these truths to us. For this reason we praise Him as our Creator, just like the psalmist does.
You see, brothers and sisters, we should never have the idea that the Bible is only a spiritual book having nothing to do with this world. It is a spiritual book, but the Bible begins with the creation of the world and it never loses sight of the creation through all the 66 books. This is foundational. We praise our God first of all because He is our creator and then we praise Him perhaps in a greater way and with more thankfulness as our redeemer. But we begin with praise to our creator.
Let us not fall into the kind of pietism that has no place and no time for praising God as creator, no time for rejoicing in His creative works. Scripture does not teach us that we are always to be spiritual and only think about redemption and heaven. That’s not the Biblical picture. That’s not the picture of the psalmist. He rejoices in all that he sees around him and he does so with his Bible in his hand.
In the last book of the Bible, Revelation chapter four, we have a scene of worship. it is worship in heaven, the perfect pattern for our worship. And there in heaven we have the four living creatures around the throne of God, representing the life and power of all creation, and there also surrounding the throne we have the twenty four elders, twelve representing the twelve tribes of the Old Testament people, and twelve representing the twelve apostles who founded the New Testament church, all gathered around the throne, worshipping God.
How does their praise begin? “Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honour and power.” Why is He so worthy? “For Thou didst create all things and because of Thy will they exist and were created.” Brother and sisters, God’s people praise Jehovah as creator.
2. God’s People Observe, Study and interpret God’s Works Through the Perspective of Scripture
Secondly, God’s people observe and study and interpret God’s works through the perspective of Scripture. That is, with their Bible in their hands or at least in their minds. We can regard Scripture like bifocals. The bottom part of the bifocal glasses is used to enable you to see things clearly that are close up. The Word of God is like that. It enables us to see clearly close up – into our own hearts – to discern our motives and the intents of our heart. The Word of God is like a mirror reflecting to us what God sees when He looks at us.
There’s another aspect of the bifocals of Scripture. The top part of bifocal glasses is used when you are looking at a distance. Scripture also enables us to see the creation at a little distance away from us more clearly. Scripture enables us to understand it rightly, to know that God created it, that He sustains it, that He provides for every living thing in it, that He cares for it, that He is intimately involved with all that He has made, that He loves what He has made, that He rejoices and takes delight in what He has made.
In this Psalm we never get the impression that God wound creation up and let it go. Quite the contrary. He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the clouds. He walks on the wings of the winds. He established the earth so that it will not totter. He limits the seas to the deeps and causes the mountains and the dry land to appear. He sends forth the springs in the valley to give water to every beast. He causes the grass to grow for the cattle. You see how intimately God is involved with his creation. We know this because we have the Bible in our hands as we go on holiday, as we do our science, as we study what God has made. Because so many in our own culture have discarded the Scriptures, they do not know these things. Because they have closed their Bibles and they don’t see the creation as God’s handiwork.
This Psalm was clearly built on the first chapter of Genesis. If you follow it through you will see the parallels. In verse 2a, we have the Lord covering himself with light as a cloak. This is a reference to the light which God created on the first day. In verses 2b and 3, the heavens are stretched out and the clouds are in the expanse, referring to what God did in creating the expanse on the second day.
On the third day the land is separated from the waters. We see references to that in verse 5 and following: He established the earth and He covered it with the deep. He rebuked the waters and they fled, they hurried away, the mountains rose, the valleys sank down and He set a boundary that the sea couldn’t pass over and He made the dry land appear, as we read in Genesis – day three. On that day also he caused the vegetation to sprout. This is mentioned in verse 14 and following: He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, vegetation for the labour of man.
Day four of creation when the sun and the moon and the stars are created, is reflected in verse 19 and following: He made the moon for the seasons, the sun knows the place of its setting, and so forth.
And then on day five in Genesis, God caused the sea to swarm with the teems of life in the seas. We see that reflected in verse 25: There is the sea, great and broad, in which are swarms without number, animals both small and great, and the Leviathan. What is he? We don’t know. You can turn back to Job chapter 41 and read about him. The whole chapter describes this great sea beast. Then Job is asked some questions by God. Will you take a fish hook and snag this one? No way! Will you take your spears? Why he just laughs because the spears bounce off his hide. This is a mighty, mighty sea beast that causes man to tremble. In fact the very word Leviathan puts that deep, dark trembling in the hearts of men. And yet God created the Leviathan, to play in the sea, to sport there for the enjoyment of the living God. Maybe this is one of those beasts that became extinct many years ago. We don’t seem to have any beast presently on earth that fits this description. We can only stand in wonder and awe at the description that is given to us in Job 41.
And finally, on day six, God created the land animals and man. We see this referred to in verses 21 and following: the beasts of the forest prowl about. The young lions roar after their prey; they seek their food from God. When the sun rises they withdraw. Man goes forth to his work and his labour. Chapter 1 of Genesis ends with God’s provision of food for all the living creatures, for the beasts and for man. He said, “I have given you every green thing for food.” The psalmist takes this up in verse 14 and following: He causes the grass to grow for the cattle and the vegetation for the labour of man, and so forth.
Brothers and sisters, we see that the psalmist observes the creation, but he does so with his glasses on. He recognises that it is God’s creation, that God has made all of this wonderful world and that God provides and cares for and delights in all that He has made. When the psalmist goes on holiday, he doesn’t forget his Bible. And when he does his science, he does so with his Biblical glasses on. In this way the psalmist is teaching us that we are to observe the creation and do our science theologically.
You may say, that sounds pretty heavy. Well, it just means that we are to study the creation from God’s perspective. We must always remember that God is the beginning of all knowledge. Our culture continually presses us to think non-theologically. No reference to God is made when people go on holiday. Do the travel agencies talk about the living God as they advertise holiday plans? No, they may talk about the night life in the cities but they don’t talk about the night life in the forests, where God directs the lions and the beasts, as it says in verses 20 and 21. This is non-theological thinking as it relates to the creation.
A very non-theological scenario is painted. In the beginning there was BANG! All things exploded fifteen billion years ago. And then as things went on in their chancy way, the stuff of the universe began to cool down. The stars and planets clumped together. The seas appeared on the earth and the chemicals congealed. Suddenly, by chance there was a spark of life and the earth began to fill with life. That life had energy and vigour and purpose and design, and finally grew into man. Man at first was stooped and bent over, his hands dragged on the ground. But now he stands straight and tall and he looks back through fifteen billion years of evolution and observes his history. Now that he has discovered his own history, man plans his destiny. He makes plans to direct his future. That’s the story. It’s thoroughly humanistic. It’s utterly false and it’s completely godless.
How different are the words of Psalm 104. How different is the teaching of Scripture. How different is the perspective of God’s people as a result, who study the creation and do their science with their Bible in their hands. Jehovah, our God, who has loved us and cared for us, has created all of this and we praise Him. The psalmist says, in verse 24, “the earth is full of Thy possessions.” God’s presence and activity in the world extends even to the giving of life to every creature, as it says in verse 30, “Thou dost send forth Thy Spirit, they are created.” God is involved with His creation. He is concerned about it. He cares for it and He delights in it. That is what we learn from the Bible.
3. God’s People Praise God for His Wisdom and Goodness Seen in Creation
Thirdly, God’s people give praise to God for the order and the design in creation, for its abundant provision for man and beast, and they praise Him for His wisdom in all of this. You see, the universe is not a mechanism, it’s not a machine. That’s the view most people have today. Scientists look at the stars and they try to explain how they function. They try to explain how they got there. They look at the earth and they see all the strata, the layers in the earth’s crust, they see the fossils. That’s good, but then they try to tell us how it all happened saying it all came about by the workings of the machinery of the universe and they ignore what God says in Scripture. They look at the cell, that marvellous building block of all living things. They have discovered all kinds of intricate complexities there and they try to explain how each protein molecule fits in the long, long strings of DNA and explain how the cell functions as a chemical factory. They tell us every living thing is basically just a chemical machine. Some even argue that our minds are nothing more than chemical machines. They discover that various chemicals effect our minds and then they say that our moods and our ups and downs are really nothing more than the activities of a chemical machine.
In all of this there is not a single reference to the Spirit of God who gives life to all creatures. No acknowledgement of the fact that men and women are made in the image of God.
Brothers and sisters, as the psalmist teaches us, what God has made, the whole universe that he has made and all of its inter-relating parts, is not a machine but is the handiwork of the living God. And it is the handiwork in which He delights and rejoices and in which we are to delight and rejoice likewise. It is almost as though the psalmist looked ahead three thousand years and saw the secularism of our age and the viewpoint of our age, then wrote this Psalm to counteract it.
We would do well to spend some time meditating upon the words of this Psalm to counteract the secularism and the godless humanism that pervades the thinking of our day. This thinking easily affects us. As the psalmist contemplates the creation, as he thinks of its order, its design, how God provides for every living thing, he bursts out in praise, “O Lord, how many are Thy works! In wisdom Thou hast made them all.”
Yes, “In wisdom Thou hast made them all.” Brothers and sisters, how do you respond to the works of God? As the psalmist does? “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live, I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.”
How shall we respond to these things? As the apostle Paul does at the end of Romans chapter 11? I want to read those few verses as we close, “On, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways, for who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became his counsellor? Or who has first given to him that it might be paid back to him again? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him (not the creature), to him be the glory forever and ever.”
Amen.