[0:00] Please open your Bibles to Psalm 104. Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great.
[0:17] ! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light, as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent. He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters. He makes the clouds his chariot. He rides on the wings of the wind. He makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire. He set the earth on its foundations so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment. The water stood above the mountains.
[0:46] At your rebuke they fled. At the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they may not again cover the earth. You make springs gush forth in the valleys. They flow between the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field. The wild donkeys quench their thirst. Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell.
[1:15] They sing among the branches. From your lofty abode you water the mountains. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and the plants for man to cultivate that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man. Oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man's heart. The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly. The cedars of Lebanon he planted. In them the birds build their nests.
[1:43] The stork has her home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats. The rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers. He made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun knows its time for setting.
[1:57] You make darkness and it is night when all the beasts of the forest creep about. The young lions roar for their prey seeking their food from God. When the sun rises they steal away and lie down in their dens. Man goes out to his work and to his labor until evening. Oh Lord how manifold are your works.
[2:16] In wisdom have you made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. Here is the sea great and wide which teams with creatures innumerable. Living things both small and great. There go the ships and Leviathan which you form to play in it. These all look to you and give them their food in due season.
[2:39] When you give it to them they gather it up. When you open your hand they are filled with good things. When you hide your face they are dismayed. When you take away their breath they die and return to their dust.
[2:53] When you send forth your spirit they are created and you renew the face of the ground. May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works who looks on the earth and it trembles.
[3:04] Who touches the mountains and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have being. May my meditation be pleasing to him for I rejoice in the Lord. Let the sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord oh my soul. Praise the Lord. This is the word of Lord.
[3:25] Thanks be to God. Good morning. Good morning.
[4:00] In fact when we look at this fourth book of the Psalter here that we are going through this summer. These 16 books from 90 to Psalm 106. These last four in particular. 103, 104, 105, and 106 are all Psalms of praise.
[4:20] They kind of contrast the first section of this book where we see a little more lament in the Psalms preceding it.
[4:32] And Pastor Rick mentioned a few weeks ago that this fourth book of the Psalter is actually, was likely composed during the Babylonian exile. A time of the Psalms preceding it. A time of course when the people of Israel were away from their homes.
[4:46] They were taken. They were enslaved. They are under the rule of a harsh king who does not allow them to worship their God. It was a time of despair, of hopelessness for the people of Israel.
[4:59] And many of them had questions around the providence and the care and even the presence of God. And so when we come to Psalm 104, I think it helps us to understand the mindset of its original audience.
[5:17] That this awe-inspiring hymn of praise was given to a people who don't really see much to praise.
[5:29] And so I think that as we imagine having this mindset, and many of us might not have to search that far, right? Some of us may feel today like God might have abandoned us.
[5:45] But let's come to this psalm, this robust praise that shouts that God is not only present, but He is actually, actually everything you see and touch and feel around you is His handiwork.
[6:03] You can't escape God. He has not abandoned you. He has not forgotten you. And in fact, here's an even more bold proclamation that this psalm is making, that He actually is still sustaining you.
[6:18] An amazing thing happens when you pause to think about the providence of God, particularly in creation as this psalm does. I think of when we look down at our feet, and there's that little ant crawling by in the dirt around us, and He's carrying that crumb, that crumb that seems so much bigger than Himself, and He's taking it back to His colony to eat.
[6:46] And if we pause to think, as this psalmist kind of does in this psalm, if we pause in that moment and think, God created this vast universe where there are stars laid in the vastness of the universe that are larger than our solar system, yet to us appear like little specks, God created all of that, and yet He gives this ant food to bring back to His colony.
[7:18] And that kind of forms the basis for this psalm. God not only has created powerfully everything in this universe, but He cares for everything in that universe.
[7:32] I was reading a book to my daughter a few weeks ago, my oldest daughter, Eliza, she's four years old, and we get done with the book, and she asks a random question.
[7:45] Well, not a question, she actually just made a statement. Very random. And she says this, she says, Daddy, one day we're going to die, but Jesus is going to raise us back to life.
[7:56] Isn't that amazing? And I say, okay, yes, that is really amazing. But I play along with her, and I say, yeah, and you know what?
[8:06] When Jesus does raise us back to life, in fact, our bodies are going to be perfect. We're never going to get sick again. We'll never get boo-boos again. We'll never get tired again.
[8:17] We won't even be hungry again. We won't even need food. And instead of finding that fascinating, like I thought she would, her face falls. And that little bottom lip comes out, and I'm thinking, oh no, here we go.
[8:31] Because a couple months prior to this, she said the same thing just about, that we're going to die, and Jesus is going to raise us back to life. And then she started crying, saying, I don't want to die, Daddy. And I was like, oh, this is going to break my heart.
[8:42] She's going to say it again. But instead, instead she says this, but Daddy, I really love pesto noodles. I said, okay.
[8:58] Well, thinking quickly, I said, well, honey, the Bible does say Jesus is preparing a wedding feast for us. So she says, yeah, he'll make me pesto noodles. Sure.
[9:09] He might do that for you. And it was certainly funny, and it was cute. But it did make me think, am I missing something here? Because I can be pretty cynical when it comes to this world.
[9:24] I've taken that phrase, I'm just a pilgrim, and I've taken it to the extreme. Just, Lord, get me out of this world, please. I love my family.
[9:36] I love my friends. But, Lord, this world can be a dump sometimes. But I think I'm missing it. Because while our eyes should firmly be fixed toward heaven, because we are pilgrims, we are sojourners, we are not citizens of this world.
[9:55] We are citizens of heaven. That is true. But there is still so much to enjoy and to appreciate about this world. My daughter can see that even in pesto noodles.
[10:09] God made this earth and declared it is good. And this psalm indeed declares the same. So the title of my message this morning, if it's not already up there, is creation made for God's glory.
[10:28] And I'd like us to see three truths in particular that the psalmist is singing about, because this is a song, right? That he is singing about, that I believe can transform the way that we view the world around us and not miss the opportunity to give God the praise and the glory and the honor that he deserves for his work.
[10:49] And so I'd like us to see God's power in his creation, I'd like us to see God's love in his creation, and I'd like us to see God's glory in his creation.
[11:00] But first, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father God, help us. Lord, teach us through your word. Lord, your inspired word that perfectly shows us who you are.
[11:18] Lord, that gives us reason to praise. Lord, we pray that your spirit would lead us, would let truth prevail, Lord, and would not let opinions of man find their way through.
[11:30] Lord, let those words fall to the ground if they are spoken. Exalt yourself today. In Christ we pray. Amen. So what is unique, again, about this psalm, as you may have noticed during the reading, is that it actually kind of retells the creation account in a poetic form.
[11:51] It moves through each day of the creation account, all six days, in this vivid detail. It actually even goes beyond just relating the makings of the earth, but also goes into describe how God cares for and sustains His creation.
[12:11] We begin with section one, seeing God's power in His creation in the first nine verses of this psalm. So just as the Bible began in the creation account with God, so does the psalmist.
[12:26] And like Psalm 103, He begins with this doxological shout that opens the song. Bless the Lord, O my soul, O Lord my God, You are very great.
[12:39] Why does He start it that way? Because He knows, of course, that the Creator always precedes His creation. He is the one that we exalt in the greatness of creation.
[12:53] Because especially in the time that this was written, in ancient cultures, worship of the creation was so prevalent. They were worshiping everything, the sun, the moon, plants, animals.
[13:05] And the psalmist makes it a point to say, no, before all of that, and above all of that, is the Lord. Now the Hebrew word, which we see translated as bless in this verse, is barak.
[13:18] And it is used here, it is actually, literally means to kneel, or to kneel in adoration, and in thankfulness. The psalmist is starting off the psalm really by saying that his very soul, literally the deepest parts of who he is, he wants them to kneel before God like a servant before his king.
[13:42] And that for nothing more than the simple fact that he's overcome with the greatness of the Lord from his creation. He goes on to describe this king, and he describes him using earthly terms, right?
[13:54] He describes him by his clothing, that he is clothed in majesty and splendor. And that's intentional, because earthly kings, especially in the ancient times, their robe and the adornment that they would put on themselves was every bit as important as their actual authority in describing their greatness.
[14:18] They attempted as much as they could to show that they have majesty and they are splendor. But God exudes that in his very essence, is what the psalmist is saying, that he is majesty and he is splendor.
[14:34] He doesn't need to simply wear a fancy robe or a crown to do so. And then in verses 2 through 4, the psalmist kind of pulls back the curtain between heaven and earth, revealing, again in this earthly language, a breathtaking truth, that God is not a distant deity.
[14:56] He is the sovereign king, actively, majestically ruling over his creation. And there are some within Christianity, even today, who in an attempt to probably absolve God, right, of being sovereign and being in control of even bad things that happen, they try to say something like, God, he's not really working things right now.
[15:22] He's not pushing the buttons. What he did was he set creation in motion and he stepped back to let it unfold and play out until the end of time. Almost like a clocksmith would place the gears and timing mechanisms in a clock and then put it on a wall and just let it go.
[15:40] But that's not what we have here. The psalmist dismisses that completely because God is not passive. He stretches out the heavens like a tent. He rides on the wings of the wind and makes the clouds his chariot from realms that we can't reach.
[15:59] He commands with unstoppable power and authority. These verses awaken us to a reality here that every force of nature is under his command, even today.
[16:15] The winds are his messengers. Fire and flame obey his voice. He does whatever he pleases with his creation. Not from far away, but in glorious, purposeful sovereignty.
[16:31] So in the beginning was God and then there was the formless world. God set its foundations and to this day, it obeys.
[16:43] Right? It does not move. It was not the product of a cosmic accident and random chance or coincidence. It is intentional. We weren't just a rock floating in space that God said, that looks like a good one to put life on.
[17:02] He doesn't just remodel the earth. He created it from nothing. He laid the foundation where none existed and out of nothing he spoke and matter obeyed.
[17:15] And he fixed the earth in its place with a stability that cannot be shaken. The same is true with every object in the universe.
[17:26] All the planets, all the stars, they're held in place by this unseen force. And the earth, we can say, is no fluke.
[17:39] Because when we look at where it is placed, when we look at the measurement, the distance from the sun, it is perfectly placed. Because any closer, and we'll be incinerated.
[17:51] Any further away, and we'll freeze to death. It is perfectly balanced so that ecosystems can thrive, even the most delicate of ecosystems. We have a complex atmosphere.
[18:06] And every breath of living creatures, including human beings, is sustained sustained by the exact balance of this earth.
[18:17] That level of design is, it screams intelligent design. But even today, even within Christianity, and it's continuing to gain a foothold, we have kind of traded that testimony of Scripture for science, and really speculative science.
[18:35] Because it's not really confirmed in any sort of sense. science. The science of what is the most prevalent theory, the Big Bang theory, is laced with words like mystery, and proposed mechanisms, hypotheses, nothing definitive.
[18:56] And ironically, the one thing about creation that most proponents of the Big Bang are certain of, that is not a mystery to them, is that God didn't create the universe. But still, we are told that this is the way it happened, and we have to accept it.
[19:13] And many Christians have followed suit, and they try to baptize the theory, right? They try to say things like, well, I believe in the Big Bang, but I believe God created the, or He caused the Big Bang.
[19:24] It's like, it still doesn't jive. Because that's not what the Bible says happened. The Bible says, God spoke. He didn't spark a cosmic explosion.
[19:36] He spoke, and everything went to its place. It obeyed. The earth went right to a place, right before a perfectly sized star, and hung there for life to be formed.
[19:51] It wasn't, it wasn't some space dust that fell in water that was then struck by some, some solar lightning. No, God says, I spoke, there was creation, creation obeyed.
[20:09] And that matters because if we deny that there was a creator, we deny that it happened the way the Bible says it does, then we sever this, this link between moral responsibility and accountability.
[20:22] responsibility. And if we are cosmic accidents, then so is our purpose. And then, if this is all, if that's all true, then I echo Paul's words here.
[20:34] Now, he was speaking of the resurrection, but we can say it's true of this as well, that if these things aren't true, then we're the biggest fools ever. to deny our flesh, to resist temptation, to have this wrenching discipline to wring out our hearts in repentance and expose the most vile parts of ourselves to God for forgiveness.
[21:03] Those are hard things to do. And if we're doing it, and God did not create the universe, and Christ did not rise from the dead, then we are fools. But if God is our creator, and He is, then every breath we take is borrowed from Him.
[21:23] And every life is ultimately His. We have a powerful and an intimate God, one who creates with intention and rules with authority and holds us responsible for how we respond.
[21:39] And His ways are ordered, very intentionally ordered. They're not random or chaotic. And the rest of this section shows how God brought intentionality to this formless void of the earth.
[21:55] The poetry of verses 6 through 9 create a picture of disorder being brought into order with majestic authority. I mean, He commands the waters, and their chaos is restrained, and He sets them in their place.
[22:11] He puts a boundary that they cannot cross. And many have pointed that these verses also echo kind of the flood narration, right? That the waters recede after the 40 days and after God's judgment.
[22:28] Now, the language, the Hebrew makes it a little more intentional, right? That it's actually speaking of the creation account. But we can still find that allusion to Genesis 7 and 8 and the flood because really, it's a reminder that this chaos that was the waters before, that these boundaries that God set, if He takes those away, if God's hand is lifted, everything is destroyed.
[22:53] We are wiped out. And because without God's grace and His mercy and His sustaining hand, the world would collapse into ruin. But God is not just powerful in forming creation and setting boundaries and all of these things, but He exhibits complete and total love for His creation.
[23:17] He provides, He sustains, and He blesses it as a loving creator. And that's our second section here. It highlights the loving kindness of God in verses 10 through 26.
[23:29] So first, He begins once again with the waters. And now, the preciousness of these verses, 10 through 13 here, might be a kind of, they might be a bit lost on us.
[23:43] I know it was lost on me at first because as Americans in the 21st century, water is not a scarcity to us. We can, in this building alone, we can find five different places where we can get water, every single one of us.
[23:57] But in the ancient Near East, water was precious. Water was, water was hard to come by. They praised God for rain.
[24:11] Most of us just become curmudgeons when it rains. Now this gives immense weight to the details of these verses because it says, not only does God provide that water, but He makes springs gush forth.
[24:26] He fills the valleys so that even donkeys can quench their thirst. The psalmist is, is exclaiming here that this availability of such a life-giving resource is beyond what we could chalk up to as, as simply natural processes.
[24:45] This is the fruit of the work of a generous creator. And the creation responds with satisfaction. Not in the water, but in the works of God.
[24:58] That's important. One of my favorite quotes, I think it was A.W. Pink, but I'm not going to quote him, I'm not going to say entirely, it might not have been him. But it was, one day God gives us a brook that may be filled, or may be filled one day, but the next dried up.
[25:14] Why? So that we can rest, not in the blessing, but in the blesser Himself. So why, why does the psalmist say the earth is satisfied?
[25:27] Why doesn't he just say the earth is upheld, or the earth is sustained, or just simply provided for? Well, I think the language of the next four verses in 14 through 18 really, really show us why the earth is satisfied with the fruit of God's work.
[25:45] He says, You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and the plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man's heart.
[26:00] The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that He planted. In them the birds build their nests, the stork has her home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats, the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers.
[26:16] You want to know why the psalmist is so adamant about the goodness and greatness of God from just a simple observation from nature about Him providing food and water?
[26:30] This is why. It's because He owes us nothing. It would be enough if He simply just provided one bland food for all of humanity to just share and be fed with that would provide all the nutrients we need.
[26:43] He could have given us the means to just make one type of garment in one color and it would have been enough. We wouldn't have any complaints to raise against God if He had done that because we would have what we need.
[26:59] But He never just gives us enough. He does exceedingly and abundantly provide. He gives us joy in His provision. He not only gives us everything we need, He gives us the joy in what He provides.
[27:17] John Calvin put it this way in his Institutes. He says, If we study, for instance, why He has created the various kinds of foods, we shall find that it was His intention not only to provide for our needs but likewise for our pleasure and for our delight.
[27:34] In clothing did He not only keep in mind our needs but also propriety and decency. In herbs, trees, and fruit, besides being useful in various ways, He planned to please us by their gracious lines and pleasant odors.
[27:53] That is something, isn't it? It isn't necessary to have pleasure. It isn't necessary to have enjoyment. In fact, if we are simply products of evolutionary, biological processes, it wouldn't even make sense for us to be interested in pretty things or things tasting good.
[28:17] But when the psalmist looks at creation, he sees this overflowing kindness of its maker in His love for us in that He has provided and done so to our delight.
[28:29] And in case you forgot, I'm going to say it again many times, we're reminded of God's design that nothing is done by chance in God's creation.
[28:42] Again, to the original audience, the strange and unknown cosmic bodies that hover in the sky, the sun and the moon, were, they brought much amazement to ancient people.
[28:55] Right? They didn't know as much as we know now. We've been to one of those, right? We've been to the moon. But many ancient cultures worshipped the sun, worshipped the moon because they were, they were so amazed by them.
[29:08] They were so mysterious. They thought there must be some sort of divine thing about these two, this rock and this star in the sky. But the psalmist here reminds them the sun and the moon are simply part of a creation upheld by a creator.
[29:27] The moon marks the seasons. The sun knows when to rise and when to set. They simply obey the God who created them. Even the rhythm of day and night serves His purposes.
[29:40] Wild beasts roam at night. Mankind works by day. It's not random. We didn't just one day wake up and choose to do that. We didn't say, Lions, you go and you stalk your prey by night.
[29:53] We're going to build houses and do that during the day. You stay out of our way, we'll stay out of your way. You don't eat us. We won't shoot you with spears or arrows.
[30:03] Don't really shoot a spear. Then, in the vastness of the sea, containing life beyond number, we meet this interesting creature that's mentioned a couple times in Scripture, the Leviathan.
[30:22] Majestic and monstrous, yet here described as playful. Now, if you know of any of the other instances in which Leviathan is mentioned in Scripture, you would think he's kind of a terrifying creature.
[30:36] Typically, symbolizes chaos and this unconquerable power. We saw it in Job 41 and in the Psalms also in Psalm 74, but here in Psalm 104, the Leviathan just plays at God's command.
[30:53] He's just a silly goose just playing in the water. The deep waters of the ocean itself they're so uncontrollable to man, but to God they're just another playground.
[31:12] And to no end in this entire realm that we exist in will you find or will you not find God's sovereign hand. From the heights of space to the depths of the ocean to the waves the atmosphere the prowling lion and all of it obeys the commands of God and they all sing of His glory.
[31:36] And it is that glory which creation was made to express. In our last section, God's glory over His creation, verses 27 through 35, end this Psalm by bringing our eyes back to God specifically, back to the heavens, ending where we started.
[31:56] it. The psalmist draws our eyes to this miracle that undergirds all of life. Every creature, great and small, looks to God, not just for food but for its very existence.
[32:15] Life is not self-sustaining. It is upheld second by second by the hand of God. And if His hand were to be removed, as we saw with the flood, life would be gone in an instant.
[32:33] When God gives, creation flourishes. We see that in 27 through 30. When He hides His face, there's dismay. When He withdraws His spirit, there's death.
[32:48] But when He sends forth His spirit, we have life, we have renewal, it's not an exaggeration. It's truth. The Holy Spirit is not merely present at creation's beginning.
[33:06] He is the ongoing breath behind all of life, the unseen actor of preservation and resurrection. And this rhythm of giving and taking we see here in these verses, this death and renewal, people, it shouldn't point us to this kind of cruelty.
[33:25] That's typically what the world tries to point to when it comes to their denial of God. God is good and God is loving. Why is there death? Why is there evil?
[33:38] This is not to make us think of that, but it is to remind us that God has divine wisdom over this creation. It reminds us that our lives are not accidental and it reminds us that we are not autonomous.
[33:54] All of creation depends on God with open hands and He delights to fill them. But we are not merely sustained on this earth.
[34:05] We're also compelled, compelled to yield and to worship and to trust the one who holds our breath and our destiny in His hand.
[34:17] Yet this call is radically countercultural because we live in an age all about autonomy. It is my body, my truth, my worth, self-care, self-love, self-esteem.
[34:33] These are all the buzzwords that have not gone away. We act as if we are self-made and self-sustained and self-secure, but the psalmist reminds us here that we are the creature who came from the dust and we're going to return to that dust.
[34:54] I think the book of Job demonstrates this well, what I'm trying to say. If you know the book of Job, we see through 37 chapters this questioning, this pain, this theological debate between Job and his friends, and they're wondering, why is this happening?
[35:14] what is God doing? What did Job do? They all want answers. But then we get to chapter 38 and God finally speaks.
[35:26] And he does not explain himself, shockingly. He does not justify Job's suffering or answer his demands. Instead, God unveils a breathtaking record of his work, primarily through his creation.
[35:44] the foundations of the earth, the constellations, the thunderstorms, the wild beasts, even that terrifying Leviathan. And with every question, he dismantles the illusion of human sufficiency.
[36:01] Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? In other words, God is saying, if you cannot grasp the workings of the natural world, you're how can you presume to grasp the mind of the one who exists beyond this world?
[36:21] Psalm 104, I believe, echoes this truth. Every creature looks to God for food, for breath, for life itself, and when he withholds it, they perish.
[36:34] When he sends forth his spirit, life begins again. the very cycles of life and death rest entirely in God's invisible hand.
[36:45] We do not control them. We live within them. Yet, in all of our striving, we keep trying to gain control of this creation.
[37:00] We try to eliminate death, trying to live forever. we try to conquer nature. I hear of cloud seeding that we're trying to do now to control the weather.
[37:13] We're trying to engineer immortality, but no scientific breakthrough, no lifestyle regimen, no technological advancement can bridge this infinite chasm between creation and the creator.
[37:29] We may prolong life, but we cannot create it. we may study the universe, but we cannot speak it into being.
[37:42] We can be as fit as we possibly can be. We can have the best diet. We can take the best supplements money can buy, but one distracted moment driving on the highway, and your life is over in an instant.
[37:59] do not presume your illusion of control to be what is sustaining you.
[38:12] We have a responsibility before the Lord to steward the life He has given us, absolutely. He didn't just give us the reins and say good luck, because if that were the case, it is ourselves who would get the glory.
[38:30] We could pat ourselves on the back in that case, and if my free will is such that I survive and thrive independent of God's providence, then I am the one I need to thank. But thankfully, that's not the case, because not myself or anyone else could survive or thrive apart from the will of God.
[38:51] And He will share that glory with no one. And these closing verses of this psalm turn to say exactly that. The psalmist kind of moves from observing creation to now longing for its ultimate purpose, that the glory of the Lord would fade, never fade, and that God Himself would rejoice in His handiwork forever.
[39:21] The psalmist lifts his eyes beyond the creation and he says, may this beautiful creation itself point to the unfading majesty of the One who created it all.
[39:33] The creation is not ultimate, God's glory is. Notice that line, may the Lord rejoice in His works.
[39:45] that flips our self-centeredness upside down because we often view creation and we see, what can I get from this? What about this can please me?
[39:57] Where can I go to get this experience and fulfill myself? But God or the psalmist is kind of pushing us to ask a deeper question.
[40:08] Not what can I get from the world, but does God delight in what He has made? The psalmist's greatest hope is not just that he would rejoice in God, right?
[40:19] Because bless the Lord, oh my soul. As Pastor Brent said last week, come on my soul, wake up, praise Him. Psalm 104 takes it a little further.
[40:34] Not just that he would rejoice in God, the psalmist himself, but that God Himself would rejoice and be pleased in His own works. This is staggering.
[40:46] That the purpose of creation is that the Creator would find pleasure in it. His glory becomes the anthem of creation.
[40:57] I will sing, I will rejoice in the Lord. In other words, when we see the world rightly, our soul joins in this song that creation is singing.
[41:10] our meditation becomes pleasing to Him because it is shaped by humble wonder. Not this grumbling or self-pity or looking at the world and just disgust, but to praise Him no matter what happens.
[41:32] And then we end on a very interesting note in verse 34. verse 34. The psalmist's cry for sinners to be wiped off the earth is an interesting assertion here.
[41:44] He's kind of saying that this creation is beautiful and it's a wonderful demonstration of God's glory, but remember tragedies do happen. There are natural disasters.
[41:56] There's destruction, there's decay, there's loss. They're not ignored by the psalmist here. But He has chosen to look beyond and to understand that our inability to fully see creation's beauty is the result of sin, not an imperfect design.
[42:18] May it be that sin no longer mars this earth, is what the psalmist is saying. But there's one massive problem that we find with this cry, right? Because if justice is served and sinners are wiped off the face of the earth, all of us would be swept away.
[42:38] All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Not some, not most, all. If God were to consume all wickedness without mercy, not one of us would stand.
[42:54] What a turning point. Because for 34, 33 verses before that, we see, yeah, 34 verses, 35, we see the psalmist pointing to creation as being obedient and following the commands of the Lord and falling in line with its creator.
[43:12] But then we get to verse 35 and he says, all but one aspect of creation does this. And that's man. We're the problem. But the psalmist knew, as all had hoped for so long in these Old Testament times, that God would bring redemption to his people.
[43:34] He would rescue from the bondage of sin. Creation is indeed a miracle or a marvelous, mighty work, but no miracle exists that is greater than the miracle of transforming a sinner into a born-again, spirit-filled creature.
[43:54] God creates with his breath by speaking. For as marvelous and complex and intricate as the universe is, as creation is, that was easy for God.
[44:06] He spoke. But do you know the lengths he went to for redemption, to remove sin from your record, to take a heart of stone and make it flesh?
[44:23] it's the greatest miracle of all of God's works. And it is a miracle. It is supernatural. It doesn't happen by a decision, by our own will.
[44:39] It starts from a supernatural work of God. Christ was not like the natural man, born with sin from the lineage of Adam.
[44:53] He was born of the Spirit. The virgin birth very much matters. It's so important to the Christian faith. Because by being born of a virgin, by being born of the Spirit, he is not born with sin.
[45:09] He does not perpetuate sin by sinning because he obeys the Father perfectly because he does not have that sin nature. He was truly the spotless Lamb of God.
[45:22] God. He was the perfect sacrifice to please God's justice forever. Not just temporarily, but permanently. Yet, God, it wasn't like the sacrifices offered by men, right?
[45:38] Because they were temporary. Even the most perfect land that man could find was still not sufficient. But God offered himself a sacrifice. And yet, we are the beneficiaries of it.
[45:51] Because Christ was fully God and he was fully man. So the wrath of God is poured out in full on Jesus on the cross because he was perfectly obedient and fulfilled the law so that not a single drop of God's wrath was left unsatisfied.
[46:12] And creation responded. Right? Darkness fell. The earth's foundation shook and the dead came out of their graves.
[46:24] What the psalmist longed for had come in that moment. Sin was defeated. And because Christ didn't stay dead, but rose three days later and ascended to heaven, the presence of sin that still lingers is on borrowed time.
[46:44] Because one day Christ will return. And all creation will be liberated from the bondage of its corruption. The new heavens and the new earth, a world without sin and without decay, will go away and we will be in the gladness of creation that is perfectly reflecting the glory of the Lord.
[47:09] We long for that day. We prepare ourselves for that day, continually worshiping him, seeking to praise him. But it is not only what God will one day bring forth that should elicit our praise, but it is what he has already done.
[47:25] It is what he is doing. It is this amazing creation and the care and the love that he has as he daily provides us with all that we need.
[47:37] And it is the salvation he has given us through Christ that brings us to our knees, crying out with the psalmist. Bless the Lord, O my soul.
[47:48] Praise the Lord. This world is not our home, but it is the handiwork of our Creator. And I may toil in this world and experience pain in this world and experience loss in this world, but a day is coming where no longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be here.
[48:13] And we will see his face and darkness will be no more, for the Lord will be our light forever and ever. And for now, as we wait for that day, we rejoice in the world he has chosen to make for us.
[48:30] We praise him for the shadows of this creation that reflects what will one day be perfection. perfection. We bless the Lord knowing he is not done creating yet.
[48:46] Let's pray.