God s Creation Sermons on the Psalms Psalms 145; 104; and 33: 1 12 Sermon Preached August 23, 2015 McCormick United Methodist Church, McCormick, SC Paul A. Wood, Jr. All biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version. My series on the Psalms continues, and, no surprise, the background for the sermon is the three psalms we have read. They are Psalms 33, 104 and 145. They are psalms about God s creation, and not just the natural world but also the character and nature of God. There is another creation psalm which is probably more familiar than any of today s three. It is Psalm 8. It begins: O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! It continues: When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? (King James Version) It goes on with the affirmation that God set us human beings over the things of the earth. God gave us dominion over created things. Some of what we are to care for goes this way in the King James Version: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. (King James Version) On a regular basis you and I say these words: I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. That s the Apostles Creed, of course, and lots of us have had it memorized for a long, long time. It s helpful to have that kind of statement memorized, but we might do well some time to slow down and say every word about God the creator with time for reflection. We say a lot in just a few words when we affirm that God is the Creator. And you might say that this sermon serves to elaborate on what we really mean when we state that God the Father is the maker of heaven and earth. Sometimes I think about some of the questions I would like to ask of God once I get to heaven. One would be: God, I know you created all things. I believed that through my whole life. So why did you create the appendix? The little things on t serve any purpose, but they can rupture and make all kinds of trouble.
You may have similar questions. And we might have deeper, more serious questions. How about congenital diseases and deformities. So much for wondering about the appendix. Now we are into deeper water and questions like that have a lot of importance to us. There are no easy answers to them. But I m not going to go into them today. That s for another day. And besides, the creation psalms don t ask those questions at all. Everything is glorious according to the creation psalms. They proclaim that God made all things in an orderly fashion. They proclaim that there is inherent balance and justice in the way God made the world. Those ornery questions about fairness and pain and earthquakes and disease don t come up in these psalms. They don t come up because the people who composed them were so filled with joy! Those questions could wait because God is so wonderful a creator. The words quickly tumble off of our lips. Creation shows us wondrous works and awesome deeds. (Ps. 145: 5) The world God created has marvelous heavens and clouds and winds. (See Ps.8: 1 & 3.) The psalms speak of mountains and valleys and thunder. They speak of trees and birds and springs and the streams which provide necessary water to all life. They speak of lions, which actually lived in Palestine years ago. They also speak of corneys, so I looked that up online. I learned that corneys are a kind of badger. Then I realized that Kay and I had seen some in Israel a few years ago. They were jumping around some boulders on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. So the lions might have gone back to Africa, but the badgers are still around thousands of years later. Psalm 104 mentions the oceans, and I love the poetry: Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it. (Ps. 104: 25 26) It s pretty amazing that the psalmist would have anything nice to say about Leviathon. That s because Leviathon was an imaginary, huge and horrible sea creature. The ancient Israelites dreamed up Leviathon. Leviathon didn t exist except in their imaginations. They had never seen him! But biblical Jewish people were afraid of the ocean and did all they could to avoid going to sea. They dreamed
up Leviathon who represented in their minds all that was dangerous and unknown about the oceans. Leviathon was sort of like modern vampires. They don t really exist; but for a lot of people vampires symbolize our fears about death and the dead. So the psalmist overcomes that cultural fear symbolized by Leviathon and proclaims that he frolics along in the ocean, having a good time. The psalmist makes out Leviathon to be God s pet dragon! So what I am saying is that this part of the Bible doesn t address anything negative or puzzling like appendixes which have no purpose and oceans which are thought to be dangerous and disease which strike innocent children. These psalms simply let us sing the praises of God. And I like how this part of the Bible doesn t deal with the negative. Maybe you do, too. Earthquakes and tornadoes are part of how this Earth of ours works. There are all sorts of frightful things about the natural world. But in worship, we can put them aside for a while. We can just sing the praises of the Universe s marvelous creator. We can read the great scriptures together with sheer jubilation. We can sing the great songs of the Church, many of which are based on one Psalm or another. We can go out of here happy. Of course, we can t always leave worship with smiles on our faces. In worship we also bring to mind the troubles and sin of this world. We bring to mind our own sins and confess them to the Lord. We can t expect worship to always give us happy feelings. That would be bad if every week we praised God and praised God and never dealt with other realities. But there are some psalms that let us put troubling things out of our minds. Did God set the stars in the sky and create gorgeous waterfalls just to entertain us? They are things of beauty, and I think we please God by studying the night sky, researching quasars and the millions of galaxies and traveling to see Niagara Falls and tropical islands. But the Bible reminds us through these creation psalms of something else. God provided for us by making the Earth as it is. It wasn t simply to fascinate us or entertain us that God created rainbows and whales and butterflies and badgers jumping over the rocks. And it wasn t only to entertain himself that God made all these things! We learn a lot about the character of God when we read the psalms. For example, God made the earth to provide for our needs. We say to God when we read Psalm 145:
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing. (Ps. 145:15) American culture tells us that we are independent, autonomous creatures with sole responsibility for our own welfare. But listen to how Psalm 104 directly contradicts that idea: 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 cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart. (Ps. 104:15) Yes, ranchers raise cattle, and farmers harvest the wheat. Vinedressers grow the grapes and turn them into wine, and bakers prepare the bread. But where does all of that abundance originate? Who provided the abundance to start with? Well, we know the answer. But sometimes we need reminders that God s handiwork is God s handiwork. It comes naturally for you and me to praise the creative works of people such as the watercolorist whose work decorates our walls at home. The sculptor Mrs. Huntington whose fascinating sculptures of animals at Brookgreen Gardens on the South Carolina coast? Of course! We sing her praises! There s the poet whose words lift our spirits and whose insights about human nature help us to better understand ourselves. That is human creativity for our benefit. There s the director and producer and team of other creative people who made the riveting movie we watched the other night. That is creation. There s the songwriter whose music stirs us to greater deeds. That s creative behavior. There s the architect whose training and talent allows us to live peacefully among the trees or on the edge of Lake Thurmond. We are surrounded by the works of creators. But the greatest creator of them all is the one who started it all. But that is not all which the psalms tell of the character and nature of God. The psalms tell us that God loves us. Now Christ was the finest sign of God s love
for us..no doubt about that! But Creation also tells us about God s great love. Psalm 145 proclaims that: The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made. (Ps. 145:8) Next, I want to praise Abraham. I know that sounds like a weird interruption. But it is Abraham who first encountered and identified the one God, the sole creator of the universe who offered to be in covenant with Abraham and Sarah and their offspring. Up until Abraham s time the globe was filled with enormous varieties of people who believed in enormous varieties of gods. Each tribe or people came up with their own gods and their own myths. When I have my gods and you have your gods, we are never going to really get along with each other. We are going to fight with each other over land and language and food and who has the best gods. So let s give a salute to Abraham. He realized that God wanted to be in covenant with him and his descendants. Thanks to Abraham s faith in the one true God, you and I and millions of other people can know of the one true God. We can serve that one God and know that we are all part of the creation of one creator. Dozens of pagan religions of the past and the present have myths about how the world came to be. My meager knowledge of them tells me that most of their dreamed-up stories involve conflict between various gods. The world from the pagan perspective is just the happenstance result of long-ago battles fought by creatures totally unlike us. They didn t love their creation. It just happened. They didn t make a place of harmony and beauty. How can harmony and beauty and peace come from argument and fights for control? Abraham helped us to know of one God whose love for us is without end. So let s hear it again: The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made. (Ps. 145:8)
Pagan religions like the ones which Abraham knew about (and which still exist in a lot of places) have gods who are mean and vengeful and downright unfair. Those imaginary gods demand that people satisfy them with offerings so they won t get angrier. It is so hard for us to fathom the idea of human sacrifice! Why would anyone do such a thing? we may ask ourselves. Well, the answer lies in the belief of some people that their gods are angry and have to be satisfied. These people think that substantial sin demands substantial sacrifice such as your own son or daughter. Our God, thank goodness (!) is not angry by nature. Yes, there are many things we humans can do which disappoint God. And God, we know, meets out justice. But God is ready to forgive, and God is eager to forgive and desires to be at peace with us. We say that Jesus s death on the cross was the final and perfect sacrifice. That s it! The deed was done on Calvary. You and I don t need to win God s approval, and frankly, there is nothing we can do to win or purchase God s forgiveness and approval. These things are gifts from a great and loving God who is also our Creator. I have chosen to preach a series on the Psalms for several reasons. One is my own desire to make them a bigger part of my prayer life. Another is my hope that I can open up the Psalms for us. The psalms might seem odd.strange. That s because in some ways they are. They speak of enemies who live right close by. Sometimes the psalmist will demand that God take out revenge on people nothing said about forgiveness or love for one another. And to make matters a little more confusing the psalms speak of musical instruments that are totally unfamiliar to us. Many of the psalms are complaints to God, the laments which I have mentioned already. They can make us uncomfortable. And we might shake our heads wondering how those ancient people could know of the pressures on us? What could they know of the enemies who face our nation at this time? And the psalms are odd because they are someone else s prayers. We are reading words of praise and requests for help from people whose lives we find hard to imagine. So the psalms can be odd, but they are there. Right smack in the middle of our Christian scriptures one hundred fifty of them. They are waiting for us. They speak to us, if we let them. They help us to speak to God, because they are prayers. The psalms are the prayer book of the Bible. I am inviting you to read them and soak in them. They help us to speak to God. I know they can help all of us do that to speak to God our creator. Amen.
Let us pray: Help us to grasp what nature proclaims about your character and love for us. Help us to grasp even more of the astounding beauty and mystery of your created world. Help us to better appreciate our creativity and the creativity of those around us. O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Amen.