Psalm 104 (Rejoice in His Works, Jeff Kliewer)

Rejoicing in God’s Glory Through Creation

God, your love is ineffable. There are no words that can describe your love for us. It's demonstrated in the giving of the Son of God to die on a cross in our stead.

What love is this?

You have loved us first, and so we love you. And we thank you this morning for your mercies new. Thank you for the opportunity to gather and to hear from your Word. And we pray that you would change the way we think.

By the hearing of your Word.

Give us eyes to see. Help us to behold your glory. And help us to delight and rejoice in you. In Jesus' name, amen. Is God a megalomaniac? That's a question that is asked because many people feel that if God is so concerned about his own glory and being worshipped and followed, he must be some kind of megalomaniac.

Anybody who is self-absorbed is doing wrong, the thinking goes. Well, the answer to that question is that if one of us were absorbed with ourselves, we would be idolatrous. We would be putting glory on people who have no glory in and of ourselves.

We are simply dust. Made of dust, but made in the image of God. But for God to delight in his own glory is right and good and just and glorious because God, in fact, is the creator of all things. He is the infinite one.

So we are not God.

He is.

For him to delight in his own glory is good and right. I'm going to ask you a question that's been asked for ages and ages. And behold, I will solve the mystery. If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a noise?

The answer is yes, it does. Because this world exists for him and for his glory. He's the maker of every tree. And even if no one were there to see anything, all things exist for his glory. The works of God, the creation, were made by him and for him.

So, if there's no human person there to see the tree fall, guess what? The tree never existed for the human in the first place. With or without us, the flowers that bloom on distant mountains that no eye will ever see, they're there for his delight.

The creatures at the bottom of the ocean that none of us could ever imagine, let alone see, are there for his delight. He is God, and he alone deserves glory. So he is right to delight in his works. And here is the thesis statement for today, that God rejoices in himself, and he rejoices in the things that he has made.

Therefore, we do well to rejoice in the things that God has made. Now I find that, maybe like you, the older I get, the less wonder I feel about the creation of God. I remember growing up in Washington State, you could see Mount Rainier from my house.

And as a kid, on a clear day, you could just see that mountain peak over Seattle. And how glorious it was, and every once in a while we would go to Mount Rainier, and just the glory of God's creation was incredible.

Other parts of Washington State, there's a certain road, maybe you've been out there, called Chuckanut Drive. Last summer, I got the chance to drive back from northern Washington to Seattle, and there was a choice.

If you go to the right, you can take Chuckanut Drive along the Pacific Coast, with Puget Sound, and you can see these amazing sights. Or if you go left, you can stay on the highway and save about 20 minutes.

You know, as I was driving, I thought to myself, I'd really like to see Chuckanut Drive, but it's not worth an extra 20 minutes to have to go take that detour. But knowing that the kids hadn't seen it before, I made the right decision.

And as soon as I got there, I was reminded of the glory of God's creation. But isn't it true that the older we get, sometimes the wonder of creation wears off? One of the effects of the fall is that we get bored with glorious things.

A tree so big that you can't put your arms around it. What a glorious thing that is. As a child, I remember one of the parents sharing that they went on a hike and tried to get to a waterfall that was like four miles away.

And the youngest son, on the way to that waterfall, was distracted by every glorious creation along the way. Every crevice of rock, every tree. It was taking forever. It was almost frustrating because they wanted to get to the waterfall.

But that boy had it right, didn't he? To notice the creation of God. Psalm 104, this morning, is all about God's creation. And specifically, it goes through and talks about the earth and the waters, the streams, the rhythms of sun and moon and day and night, and all things that we can see with our eyes, the works of God.

They don't point to themselves. They point to a creator. And they speak to us if we're willing to listen. Let's begin. Psalm 104 begins with, Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, you are very great.

I want you to repeat that in your mind. All week long, I've just been saying this phrase again and again. God, you are very great. Open my eyes to see your creation. As I'm driving in the car and it's a beautiful day, and I notice the blueness of the sky, to just say, Oh God, you are very great.

You are very great. This is what the song calls us to do.

O Lord, my God, you are very great.

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. Here we have the personification of God in the sense of him being like a person and waters being like a foundation for his dwelling.

And the wind being like clouds that are for his chariot. He's making the clouds his chariot. Here is God riding on his creation. The imagery is meant to tell us the same thing that we see in Psalm chapter 19.

The heavens declare the glory of God. All things speak to his glory. So you can't see God, he's invisible. And yet when you see clouds in the sky, should remind you that these are like a chariot to God.

They speak to him, they reveal his glory. He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters. Makes the clouds his chariot. Rides on the wings of the wind. A picture of all creation declaring his glory. Notice in verse 2, covering yourself with light as with a garment.

It's a beautiful image of who God is. Then the second part, stretching out the heavens like a tent. Do you know that before 1960, scientists used to mock those who believe in creation for us saying that there was a beginning point.

That God at some point spoke the world into existence. Their theory is that all mass and energy in the world and the universe as it is, was uniform. It had always existed the way it exists. But with the development of science, now every scientist, even the atheists who reject God, will tell you that the universe as we have it began from a singularity.

They call it the Big Bang, right? But they recognize that the universe has been expanding from a singularity. From some dense creation of mass and energy. They don't know where that mass and energy began from, but they will confess and admit that the world began from a singularity and has now expanded out.

This is what the Bible has been saying all along. If you look at verse 2, stretching out the heavens like a tent. That phrase appears in Isaiah and the Psalms and 17 times in the New Testament. Stretching out the universe like a curtain or like a tent.

The Bible is right to describe creation that way. All of it points to his glory. But who are the winds and the ministers, the messengers like wind and the ministers of verse 4? He makes his messengers winds, his servants, his ministers, a flaming fire.

Well, we can understand from the context that wind and fire, that these things point to God. But there's something more specific being said here. We would need to go to Hebrews chapter 1 to recognize what this is.

According to Hebrews chapter 1, the messengers are angels. These are unseen beings that are like wind. These ministers are a flaming fire. God created unseen beings called angels. Some are called cherubim, some are called seraphim.

There are some that have eyes all over them. Some of them have multiple sets of wings, two to cover their feet, two to fly and two to cover their faces. There are some that have faces like an ox, some faces like a man.

But we know that angels in the presence of God sing, holy, holy, holy again and again. Isaiah saw a vision of this in the sixth chapter. We see it again in Revelation chapter 4 and chapter 5. Angels are like wind.

How so? They're sent from God. They're blown forth from God to deliver messages. They will come in the Old Testament, they would deliver messages. According to Hebrews 2 -2, if we neglect the message delivered by angels, that's a bad thing.

How much more if we neglect so great a salvation? Angels are like winds, messengers. But they're also like, what does it say in verse 4? A flaming fire. In the presence of God, angels worship God with light and with heat.

The emotion of the angel is not tepid, it's strong. The angels in the presence of God delight in his glory. They are filled with joy. And they sing holy, holy, holy from the depths of their heart with fire in their hearts, proclaiming his glory, these unseen beings.

And according to Hebrews chapter 1, it is right for us to ascribe this kind of praise. Bless the Lord, you are very great, not only to the Father, but also to the Son. In Hebrews chapter 1, it says, let all God's angels worship him.

In the context of Hebrews 1, the Son is the radiance of God's glory. He upholds all things by his powerful word. The Son is made in the image, or is the reflection, not made, but is the image of God. Reflecting back to God the glory of who he is, the Father and the Son.

And the radiance of Jesus' glory is a reflection of the radiance of the Father. The Son is like the Father. According to Hebrews chapter 1, let all God's angels worship him.

Why?

John chapter 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. Colossians 1 says that Jesus is the creator, that all things were made through him.

The Father did this by him and for him. Jesus is God, come in the flesh. He makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire. The angels worship Jesus all day long and all night. Jesus is the exact image of the Father.

Moving on to verse 5. He set the earth on its foundations so that it should never be moved. You covered it. Notice the transition here from he to you. The psalmist is getting personal. He's beginning to pray.

He's speaking of God, and now he's speaking to God. Verse 6, you covered it with the deep as with the garment. The water stood above the mountains. At your rebuke, they fled. At the sound of your thunder, they took to flight.

The mountains rose, the valley sank down to the place that you appointed them. You set a boundary that they may not pass so that they might not again cover the earth. Here we have a retelling of Genesis 1, the third day.

When God separated the water from the dry land, he made valleys for the water to flow into and mountains to escape the water, higher ground and lower ground. Did you know that if there were no valleys or hills on earth, if earth were perfectly spun as a sphere without any ups or downs, the earth would be covered by 6 ,000 feet of water all around.

But in creation, God made contours, and the land to come up and the sea to go down and the gravity of the earth would pull the water and set boundaries for the earth. The greatest miracle recorded in the Bible is Genesis 1, verse 1.

In the beginning, God created. Now, there's many in the culture that reject this concept. They think things just evolved. One famous atheist named Richard Dawkins was on the Charlie Rose show, and Dawkins was debating John Lennox, who's a brilliant Ph .D. and mathematician from Oxford.

I like the way Eric Metaxas introduced him. He said he's got his Ph .L., his Ph .D., his notorious B .I .G., and all these letters behind his name. He is, that one kind of went over like a lead balloon, but you get the point.

He has all of these doctorates behind his name. He can compete with the greatest scholars, and yet John Lennox confesses the God of the Bible.

He believes.

So when Dawkins got up to speak, he began to mock Lennox, and he said, here's a guy who actually believes that Jesus walked on water. Ha, ha, ha, began to laugh to himself, look for laps until Lennox spoke up and said, excuse me, sir, if Jesus created water, why would it be so hard for him to walk on it?

Point taken. The real issue is did God create? If God created, then no miracle recorded in the Bible is any difficulty for us to believe because God created everything that is. He spoke it into existence.

He set the earth on its foundation so that it should never be moved, covered it with the deep as with a garment. You guys are lucky I don't have the clock back there, but I did bring my cell phone to check the time here.

We have plenty of time. 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 might not again cover the earth.

The power of God in creation, scientific heads puff up when they look at the world because they're able to create theories that describe the way things are. I like what Lennox said about a car. He said, ask any 12-year-old, I have a 12-year-old daughter, ask a 12-year-old, show them a car, and say, what explains this car?

A, the law of internal combustion or B, Henry Ford. And any 12-year-old would say, the law of internal combustion could never create a car. It takes the intelligent, organizing mind of someone like Henry Ford to use those principles that God has built into the world to bring order and design to create a car.

How much more complex is the human body than a Model T? How much more complex is the universe than a Model T? Our galaxy has 250 billion stars. I Googled that. Interestingly, Google said plus or minus 150 billion.

So anywhere from 100 billion to 400 billion, Google can't tell you that. But did you know that God says in his word that he knows every one of those stars by name? The closest one is something like 25 million, million light years away or miles away, miles away.

I think it's called Alpha Centauri. See, I'm out of my league here talking science today. But I want to paint this picture for you of how big the universe really is. We are positioned at a certain arm in the Milky Way, which by the way, happens to be the best place in the Milky Way to see the galaxy.

We're far enough removed that we can actually not be blinded by too much light. We can see and observe with telescopes the way things are. But we are positioned in such a place to behold the glory of the heavens.

All that you see when you look up at night on a clear night declares the glory of God. Sometimes the older we get because of our sin nature, we become bored with seeing that. Yet we need to renew that wonder.

So what else? There's gonna be seven things. That's the first, the Earth itself. The second, if you keep reading verses 10 through 13, is water. 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. They sing among the branches. From your lofty abode, you water the mountains.

The Earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. The water of Earth. 1 .5 trillion tons of water falls from the sky every day on planet Earth. And my brother, who's a scientist, reminded me that it's a net zero game here.

That means that 1 .5 trillion tons of water evaporates from the Earth every single day. The power of God in creation and the beautiful design that he's made, the waters rise, the mountains collect them, and funnel these waterfalls down through the hills and through the valleys and give life to the entire Earth.

You make springs gush forth. They give drink to every beast. The birds in their lofty abodes. The Earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. Just stop and consider that again. I've been to a great waterfall.

It was called Snoqualmie Falls. Anybody here ever been up near Toronto to see the great waterfall there?

What is that called again?

Niagara Falls, right. I'm struggling this morning. But when you see Niagara Falls and you hear the sound of that waterfall, does it not testify to you that God is on his throne? Does not your soul say, God, you are very great?

You are very great.

Our eyes need to be awakened to the glory of God by the things that he has made. Let's continue on, verse 14. You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate that he may bring forth food on the Earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man's heart.

God brings vegetation up from the Earth to feed man and beast plentifully. There's so much food created in this country, it's enough to feed us without having to think about it and export food to the ends of the Earth.

I think less than 1 of people in America work in the farming industry. And just with that amount of labor, it produces enough food from the Earth.

To feed all of us.

God watering the Earth, bringing forth vegetation, this speaks to his glory. And I'm humbled by it because when I intentionally try to make myself a farmer and bring something up out of the ground, it comes out very badly.

Last year, I tried to grow things in my side yard and I had all of these things growing, of which I took a picture and sent to Eric and I said, Eric, what is this and what is this? And the answer kept coming back,.

Weed, weed, weed, weed.

I did grow one edible thing. It was a turnip about that big. And I literally cut it in four pieces for our family. And we passed the salt and we ate a tiny sliver of a turnip. The kid said, daddy, do we have to?

I said, if you don't, that's your dinner for the night. Which I was joking, but it was a pitiful display of farming on my part. And yet without our help, how much vegetation does God bring up from the ground?

As he waters it, the Earth producing bountifully, God making these things, making things grow and feeding the livestock enough for these cows to eat and chew the cud. Cows are amazing creatures, aren't they?

All made by God. Verse 16 and following, the trees, oh, the trees. I'm beginning to notice these again. Psalm 104 is opening my eyes. 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. You go to Israel, you'll see these little rock badgers, which are just little rabbit looking kind of, I don't know, rodent that runs around and they hide in the rocks and they find their home.

God provides a home for them. Have you ever seen mountain goats? I've seen that when I went to Switzerland. These things are just adept at moving about on high cliffs and they never fall. Amazing, they make their homes.

But this is the issue here. The stork has her home in the fir trees. Where do we make our homes? Do you realize that the home you live in, when you open your front door, is made of wood and stone and things that were put in this earth by God for us?

Could very well be very different. It could just be a big ball of sand with hardly anything growing on it. And yet all that we have, this building that we're in, it all comes from the materials of earth that God makes to grow.

When you drive down the road and you see trees everywhere, be reminded, God makes this wood shoot up from the ground so we can cut them down and make boards and build amazing houses to live in. This is our God.

He is just delighting in his works. And this is a phrase that I want you to see again and again. The delight of God in his works. Look at verse 19 and following. He made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun knows it's time for setting.

You have the moon and the sun brightening the world. But before I leave that point, I missed it here in verse 14. He brings forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man. All of God's creations make him happy.

And he's right to delight in what he has done. So much of our joy depends on recognizing God as the creation, the creator of all creation and finding joy in what he's done. It gladdens our heart. Oil to make the face shine.

There's a picture here of joy that comes from creation. So now let's look at the rhythms of life. In 19 to 23, we're almost done. He made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun knows it's time for setting.

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 the evening. God makes the seasons and he makes day and night. The sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night. We have these rhythms of life. How many of you struggled because the rhythm of your life was thrown off last night?

You had to get up an hour earlier because of daylight savings time. God makes these rhythms. So I'm all for this idea of abolishing daylight savings time. Anybody on that train? Saw a bumper sticker for that.

Actually, recently I saw I think the best bumper sticker that I've ever seen. Do you follow Jesus as closely as you're following me? The bumper sticker read. If you're close enough to read this print, you're following too close.

But then it's a reminder, you should be following Jesus that close. That's a little free aside for you. Verse 24. Oh Lord, how manifold are your works. In wisdom have you made them all. The earth is full of your creatures.

Let's talk about the sea. Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great. There go the ships and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.

The sea, the amazing sea. There's a song out right now that uses the word ridiculous differently than it's meant for years. Calls grace ridiculous, which is probably a stretch too far. But what it means by that is just so big and good that it just boggles your mind.

It's just ridiculous how it is that God has so much grace on us. In your notes, I said the sea creatures are ridiculous. And by that I mean just good and amazing beyond anything we could have ever imagined.

But it also means that if you look at the sea creatures, there are many of them that are utterly ridiculous. Have you seen the Dumbo octopus? An octopus that looks like Dumbo the elephant with these big flopping ears to move about the ocean.

Or the vampire squid. Or electric eels that can shoot electricity through themselves. Or these little leafy things that you would never believe is a living animal. It looks just like a plant and yet they swim around.

The beauty and the intelligence of our God to create the things that swim in the earth. What is Leviathan? It's not a whale. Read the end of the book of Job. This clearly is a dinosaur. Some kind of aquatic dinosaur.

It has scales on its body. It's so much bigger than anything that we can imagine from the animals that are still living today. You can't reel it in with a hook or a spear. There's nothing you could do to it.

It laughs off every attempt to reel it in. This thing is monstrously big. But back in the day, they say there goes Leviathan. On the ships they had seen it stirring up the foam of the ocean. These creatures so big.

But even if you just talk about a whale, have you ever seen a whale surface and blow from its air hole? Where does it get its oxygen? Well it comes up and takes oxygen. But what about all those fish in the sea?

Do you know that if you take a cup of water from a lake in Michigan, there are over a million diatoms in that one cup? And among these million diatoms are 10 ,000 different species of plant life. And these miniature, microscopic, invisible creatures are producing the oxygen that's needed for the fish to swim and live without breathing, inhaling, and exhaling.

The way that we do.

Diatoms.

Who would have thought?

God delighted to create diatoms. Do we delight in that kind of creation? So these all look to you, verse 27, to give them their food in due season. 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. When you send forth your spirit, they are created. And you renew the face of the ground.

All of the creatures of earth look to God and he sustains them. He provides their food until it's his time to let them return to dust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And so for the final point, I want you to notice in verse 31 to 35 that the creation of God delights God and we worship him by joining in his joy, sharing in his joy.

Verse 31, may the glory of the Lord endure forever. Now that's a certainty. He's praying what will be. Likewise, may the Lord rejoice in his works. He will rejoice in his works. Amen to that. God rejoices in the things that he's made.

Who looks on the earth and it trembles. Who touches the mountains and they smoke. There's a picture of his power, the God who can just speak and it is complete control, complete power. 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. And there's the point this morning. Rejoice in God for the things that he has made. Let the things you see with your eyes always remind you of the one who made it, who delights in his works.

May my meditation be pleasing to him for I rejoice in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed from the earth. That's a strange aside there, but I think he recognizes that it's only humans that aren't getting this right.

All the rest of creation is praising him and doing their part, but we, because sin has entered into us, we're the ones that twist and pervert everything and so God says let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more.

But then he preaches to his soul, bless the Lord, oh my soul, praise the Lord. There's a quote from Scott Swain, the president of RTS, what is true happiness? Where does it come from and how do we find it?

According to the Christian scriptures, true happiness begins and ends with God. In the beginning, God's Trinitarian happiness overflowed into a universe of delights. In the gospel, God gladly owned our poverty and misery in order to make us happy again in him.

Now by his spirit, God himself dwells within his people, sharing his happiness freely and causing us to rejoice in him. So my closing thought is, if God makes his angels winds, his servants a flame of fire, if that's how the angels worship the father and the son and the spirit at all times in heaven, shouldn't we worship like that too?

Shouldn't we pray now that God would make us winds, that he would send us out like the wind to proclaim the glory of God to people who are repressing the knowledge of that? That glory is shown to all creation,.

But people suppress it.

We need to be sent out like wind, like the angels, but we need to be sent out like fire. There should be a fire burning in your heart, a fire to bring light because fire brings light, clarity, bring into vision who it is that Jesus Christ is, the son of God, to proclaim Christ as the creator and sustainer of all.

There should also be that warmth in your heart. Fire doesn't just create light, fire creates heat. There should be a rejoicing, a warmth, an emotion in your heart and in your life, desiring, loving the things of God and sharing that joy with other people.

Let's pray for that right now. And worship team, come on up. Oh, Father, I thank you so much for Psalm 104 because this Psalm changes the way I think. I get distracted by my cell phone and look down into little digits to read emails and to look at Facebook and all of these minor things.

Lord, I even run on a treadmill and look at scenery on a treadmill so easily distracted by the things that man has drawn together. But Lord, I pray this morning you would remind me of your creation and help me to see trees and grass and blue skies and snow on Friday night as I came out of this church and saw the snow falling and the beautiful steeple and the cross and the trees and the deer.

I was reminded that you rejoice in your works and I rejoiced in your works. And I pray that for every person who gathered here this morning. We also pray for those who weren't able to make it because of daylight savings time and because of the rain.

But Lord, I pray that in all of these things, we would see your glory. Open up our eyes to see you everywhere and open up our eyes to see Jesus. As John Owen said, nothing renders us so like unto God as our love unto Jesus Christ.

Make our love for Jesus like fire that burns within us, warm and rejoicing. And it's in the name of Jesus we pray, amen, amen. Let's stand and we're gonna sing God of Wonders, which is appropriate to this Psalm to think about the creation that God has made.