“Praise Songs” –Psalm 104

I am a firm believer in giving credit where credit is due. I believe that if somebody has talent or works really hard, they should be recognized as such. And when it comes to music, we all have our favorite songs and favorite singers but I want to give credit to 3 guys that may surprise you. Now, I’m not talking about anything but musical talent and ability to entertain with music, not values, morals or lifestyles or anything like that. But it is my opinion, and it has been for a long time, that the top 3 talented musicians of our lifetime are Elvis Presley, Garth Brooks and Michael Jackson.

 

You may not agree but that’s my opinion. And I will admit to having a little bit of Elvis on my mp3 player. I have a little more Garth. But I have no Michael Jackson! Never will. But I have to admit he had talent. He had a good voice. He could entertain. He invented moon walking. Gotta give him that. So who do you think should be included in that list?

 

The reason I bring that up is that we are starting a series entitled, “Praise Songs” from the Book of Psalms. That’s what the psalms were. They were songs or poems used in worship sort of like our little gray hymnals. The book was written by any number of people and we don’t know who wrote most of them. King David wrote as many as maybe half of them and his son Solomon wrote some and many others over the course of maybe as many as 500 years.

 

And most of them are praise songs so I thought it would be appropriate, as we close in on Thanksgiving, to study some Psalms or songs about praising or being thankful. And you want to talk about talented musicians? I don’t know how good their voices were but their writing ability surpasses anything written today, I can tell you with confidence. Yes, even better than Garth’s “Friends in Low Places”. That’s right. And I don’t pass out compliments like that every day.

 

But seriously, I can’t imagine how it sounded originally but I don’t know how Psalm 104 could have been written any better. I would like to think that either David or Solomon wrote it but we don’t know. I say that, not just because I’m partial to my friend David, but because it sounds like something he might write in that it is so full of lofty and majestic word pictures that make you feel like you are seeing the incredible things he is describing.

 

Or it may be Solomon because it is all about creation and nature and we know how wise Solomon was in all those ways so maybe it was him. But whoever it was had a God-given talent for song writing. We miss out on a lot by reading it in English with our punctuation and paragraphs. But one of the things that make Psalm 104 so incredible is how it is written. The author didn’t just want to make words rhyme, and he didn’t fill in the blanks with, “Ooh, ooh, baby, baby” like artists do now. Every word not only means something but it was written with a rhythm and meter that is even pretty to see, not just hear.

 

It is an envelope psalm which means it starts and ends the same way. After the introduction, he designed it to have stanzas of 3-5-9-5-3 verses. Can you picture it? It actually looks as pretty on paper as it sounds to the ears. Not only that but it is a reflection of the Genesis 1 creation story as if the author was there to see it all unfold. He was very creative and he obviously put a lot of work into it and so I want us to read the whole thing. Yes, it’s long and I don’t normally try to have us study such a long passage but if you chop it up you just lose so much of the beauty of the song.

And another thing I want us to do this morning as we read together is to all read from the New International Version. There should be one there in front of you if you are not carrying it. It’s not that the NIV is necessarily any better in this case. It’s just that I want us all to be reading the same thing as we allow ourselves to get totally taken in by everything the author wants us to experience. Just allow yourself to feel the wind and see the clouds. Picture the animals and the grass. Smell the ocean as he talks about it. You get out of it what you put in and there is a lot to get from this beautiful psalm. Let’s read Psalm 104.

 

 

 

 

 

¹ Praise the Lord, O my soul.

O Lord my God, you are very great;
you are clothed with splendor and majesty.

² The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment;
he stretches out the heavens like a tent
³ and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot
and rides on the wings of the wind.
⁴ He makes winds his messengers,
flames of fire his servants.

⁵ He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.
⁶ You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
⁷ But at your rebuke the waters fled,
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;
⁸ they flowed over the mountains,
they went down into the valleys,
to the place you assigned for them.
⁹ You set a boundary they cannot cross;
never again will they cover the earth.

¹⁰ He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
it flows between the mountains.
¹¹ They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
¹² The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.
¹³ He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
¹⁴ He makes grass grow for the cattle,
and plants for people to cultivate—
bringing forth food from the earth:
¹⁵ wine that gladdens human hearts,
oil to make their faces shine,
and bread that sustains their hearts.
¹⁶ The trees of the Lord are well watered,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
¹⁷ There the birds make their nests;
the stork has its home in the junipers.
¹⁸ The high mountains belong to the wild goats;
the crags are a refuge for the hyrax.

¹⁹ He made the moon to mark the seasons,
and the sun knows when to go down.
²⁰ You bring darkness, it becomes night,
and all the beasts of the forest prowl.
²¹ The lions roar for their prey
and seek their food from God.
²² The sun rises, and they steal away;
they return and lie down in their dens.
²³ Then people go out to their work,
to their labor until evening.

²⁴ How many are your works, Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
²⁵ There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number—
living things both large and small.
²⁶ There the ships go to and fro,
and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.

²⁷ All creatures look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
²⁸ When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
²⁹ When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
³⁰ When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.

³¹ May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works—
³² he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,
who touches the mountains, and they smoke.

³³ I will sing to the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
³⁴ May my meditation be pleasing to him,
as I rejoice in the Lord.
³⁵ But may sinners vanish from the earth
and the wicked be no more.

Praise the Lord, O my soul.

Praise the Lord.

 

Johann Sebastian Bach said, "All music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the soul's refreshment; where this is not remembered there is no real music but only a devilish hub-bub."

No other end but the glory of God.  That is exactly why this psalm was written and for nothing else.  We are big believers in praising God around here, even in the difficult times and even when He doesn’t answer our prayers as we have asked.  We still praise God.  But most of the time we praise Him for something that He has done for us.

We praise Him for His mercy, His grace, His forgiveness, His generosity.  We praise Him for allowing us to be here, for the freedom and the ability to praise Him.  We praise Him for the peace and joy that a relationship with Him through His So Jesus brings to us.  And we should do that.  To not praise Him is a sin.  And He says if we don’t do it the rocks will.

 

But do you ever praise God just for being Who He is?  Do you ever praise Him for His power or His creativity in creation?  That’s what the psalmist is doing here.  He never gives God praise for doing anything towards him necessarily.  In fact, he hardly talks about man at all except in passing in just a few verses.  We pray or sing sometimes about making our worship “all about You, God”.  And that’s what is written here and that’s what I want us to see today.  It’s all about God’s glory.

I want us to see

 

 

·         The glory of God’s person

·         The glory of God’s power

·         The glory of God’s purpose

 

You can see the glory of God’s person from just verse 1.  Let’s look at it again.  O Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty.  He calls God Lord here and that name or title could be used several ways.  It can mean “sir” or “teacher” or just a sign of respect or even be misused mockingly.  But here it only means one thing.  It means Jehovah, the God of the covenant.  The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Literally self-existent or eternal.

 

John Phillips said, “The essence of all true worship is to be taken up with what God is in and of Himself.  There is no higher or holier occupation which can engage a rational mind.”  The first 4 words of Genesis say, “In the beginning God…”  Years ago in Sunday School we started going through Genesis and it took us 6 weeks just to get past the first 4 words and that was an abbreviated look at it.  When you look deeply at it you see order, you see God’s character, you see context for the Gospel.

 

I think a lot of our problems could be solved by a deeper look and a deeper understanding of those 4 words and of this psalm.  How many times down through history has man lost his moral compass in one way or another and God showed grace and mercy and patience until something happened and God just had to show up.  And just by God showing up, people immediately have a change of heart and start to see God as He truly is.  He is not the great Santa Clause in the sky.  He is not a genie in a bottle who will grant our wishes if we treat him nicely.

 

He is God.  He has always been.  He will always be.  You don’t have to believe it.  But if and when you take your eyes off of Him He will show up.  He will make you see Him and if you look you will see that He wears splendor and majesty as clothes.  The invisible God wears the visible of creation as his clothes and He will be worshiped, now or later or both.  God will not be mocked.  He will not be ignored.  He will not be forgotten, taken for granted or taken advantage of.  You can choose to remember Him and worship Him for Who He is or he will show up and demand it.  It has been proven from Genesis all the way to Revelation and in our lives even today.

 

People are always trying to figure out the Book of Revelation.  They want a new revelation of God.  They want to see Him better.  This is where you start.  The psalmist is starting in Genesis 1 and we should too if we want to truly see God revealed.  Because God is revealed through His creation.  So, now let’s look at verses 2-31 and see the glory of God’s power.

 

I heard Dr. Jeffress from 1^st Baptist Dallas say the other day that you wouldn’t start in on a novel on the last page or you wouldn’t understand it.  The Bible is the same way.  You can’t truly and fully understand Revelation without understanding Genesis.  And just as Genesis starts with God and goes to creation, so does this psalm.  The psalmist proves God’s creativity by being creative himself as a created being.  He is creative by bracketing the earth as he talks about it. 

 

He starts with the celestial or heavenly realm, which is the top bracket and ends with the nautical realm, if you will; everything that is in the ocean.  That is the bottom bracket.  And in between, he describes the created things on the earth.  It is just one more reason this is one of the greatest songs ever written.  Not just because of its content but also the visual you get as you read it.  The order of the psalm is consistent with the order of the world.  It’s just amazing to me.

 

But in these 29 verses, the psalmist gives God glory for His creation and does so in great and orderly detail.  And it not only follows Genesis but it also reminds me so much of when God showed up in the Book of Job.  You remember when Job wanted so badly for God to show up and answer his questions.  What happened?  God showed grace and mercy and patience with Job but finally, when Job wouldn’t quit, what happened?  God showed up and His words were very much like what the psalmist repeats here.

 

It says in Job 38, “Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:  ² “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?  ³ Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.  ⁴ “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?  Tell me, if you understand.”

God then goes on to say, “Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, ⁹ when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, ¹⁰ when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, ¹¹ when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?

Do you see how God uses creation to prove Himself?  If you see that something has been created, then there must be a creator.  I don’t understand atheists.  I guess it goes back to the old English proverb that says, “There is none so blind as he who will not see.”

I used to work with a guy who was either atheist or agnostic.  He didn’t really like to talk about it or think about it.  But he was a big deer hunter and so we talked about that a lot.  He came into work one day after going deer hunting over the weekend and he started talking about how pretty it was where he was hunting.  He described the sunrise and the frosty dew on the grass; the beautiful animals he saw and the smells and sights and sounds of being deep in the woods.

And after he had talked about this for quite a while he said, “You know, I was looking at all that and just thought there has to be a God.”  I just laughed and said, “You think?”  Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”  God has revealed Himself and His glory in all of creation by His great power.

Blaise Pascal said, “The greatest single distinguishing feature of the power of God is that our imagination gets lost when thinking about it.”  How do you describe the power of God when He is omnipotent?  It’s like trying to describe the taste of water without using the word “wet”.  You can almost see the psalmist take a deep breath at verse 24 where he says, “How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.”  And then he goes back to describing it all some more.

 

God’s glory is seen in His person, His power and His purpose.  Look at verses 32-35.  A look or a touch is enough to make the earth tremble and the mountains smoke.  God created the earth and He can just as easily destroy it and that is exactly what He is going to do someday.  This earth as we know it is not God’s ultimate purpose.

Revelation 21 says, “Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. ² I saw the Holy City , the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

 

God is a God of power but He is a God of order as well and while this life is all that we know and all that we can see, we also know that this life and this earth and this order is not all there is to it.  Revelation 21 ends with these words at almost the very end of the book, “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. ²³ The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. ²⁴ The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. ²⁵ On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. ²⁶ The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. ²⁷ Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

 

The psalmist ends with verse 35 as he says, “But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more.”  He has described creation in all of its glory as it points to God’s glory; glory shown in His person, power and purpose.  But there is a problem.  Sin is the problem.  Sin has messed all of this up; His created has fouled God’s perfect creation.  But sin will not last any more than this world will.  One day we will all be held to account and when God asks why He should let you into His New Jerusalem; His new and perfect creation, what are you going to say?

 

The only thing we can say is that my name is written in the Lamb’s book of life because I accepted Jesus as my Substitute and my Savior and I have made Him Lord of my life.

 

Praise the Lord, O my soul.

 

Praise the Lord!