Psalm 104
Notes
Transcript
Praise
Praise
Praise the Lord, my soul. Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty.
The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent
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.
He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants.
He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
Introduction:
Psalms:
We’re starting a new series today. I’m extremely excited to jump in with you in a seven week series studying through the book of psalms/
Over the next several weeks we’re going to take a sampling through the books of psalms.
-I have a list of the different psalms we’re going to look at, and the different types of psalms we’re going to look at. Those are on the Back table
And normally I would say we’re studying through a book. But that’s not really going to be the case.
Because you can’t really study the psalms.
Think about other parts of the bible. When we go through an account of the gospel. Or if we look through one of paul’s letters. We can study those parts of the bible. We can take a verse and we can disect it, we can look at the historical context, we can look at how god phrases certain things.
-We can study those books of the bible. We can take one of paul’s letters and we can make an outline, and we can see the logical flow, and then we can use that information to inform how we live as christians.
-We can’t do that with the psalms.
-Because the psalms are poetry. They’re not meant to be dissected and parsed out and studied in the same way we might study other parts of the bible.
Example: Studying music, minor and major chords, etc. [Play minor, major, suspended, seventh chords, compare it with how it makes you feel, compared with the mathematical formulation of the chords)
It’s the same way with the psalms.
-You have to just kind of experience it.
I’ve decided to call this series “selah”
-Selah is a facinating word in the bible. It’s one of the few words in the entire bible that nobody knows what it means.
-We find it in, for example Psalm 3.
O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah
And if your bible might not even have the word there in the text. If you’re using the NIV, they put it down in the footnotes
-It’s there in the hebrew, but the meaning of the word has been lost to history.
-There’s a lot of things that we think it might mean.
-Sometimes people will compare it to other words that are spelled or sound similar and try to guess what it means.
-So there’s a word sulah, which means “praise” so some folks think that it’s a word which is instucting us to praise god
-there’s another word selal, with an L which means lift up.
-So some have said that it maybe means lift up your hands in praise.
-It could have been a musical term. meaning it was a signal to the band to lift up the volume of the music.
-There’s another word, salah, which means pause.
-So it could have been a signal the audience to pause and reflect on what hey had just heard.
-or maybe it was a signal to the singers. Now is the time to pause your singing, because the next part of the song is instrumental.
-But the amazing thing, is these are all just guesses. Because nobody knows.
-It’s a mystery.
-So part of the reason I wanted to call this series selah, is because I want us to reflect on the mystery of god.
-Sometimes when we’re reading the bible, we want to know all of the answers. What does God mean by that, why does he say that?
-I want us to be ok with just saying “I don’t know”
-There’s somethings you have to find out by head knowledge, and somethings you have to know simply by having that relationship with God. And the psalms is a perfect exampel of that.
-Also, with all of those meanings of that word selah, I want us to take the opportunity and do all of them.
I want us to be giving praise to God through the reading of his word.
-I want us to lift up to god, lift up our hands, our hearts, the songs we sing.
-And I want us to pause. I want us to reflect on our relationship with God.
-But ultimately I want us to experience God.
-So as we go through we’re going to experience 7 different styles of psalms.
And the first style of psalm I want us to experience is a praise psalm.
So if you have your bible, let’s open up to psalm 104.
And before I ruin it with sermon, I’m just going to read the whole thing, and we’re going to experience it.
And then we’ll come back and we’ll talk about it.
-I highly recommend as we read through these, close your eyes. assume a posture of prayer even. and really try to take in the fullness of the psalm.
Psalm 104
Psalm 104
Praise the Lord, my soul. Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent 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. He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth. He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the sky nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate— bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens human hearts, oil to make their faces shine, and bread that sustains their hearts. The trees of the Lord are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the junipers. The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the hyrax. He made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens. Then people go out to their work, to their labor until evening. How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number— living things both large and small. There the ships go to and fro, and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send 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— he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the Lord. But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the Lord, my soul. Praise the Lord.
-This is an example of a praise psalm. if you couldn’t tell by the language.
-A praise psalm has one job, and one job only, and that’s to give praise to God.
-In fact I’m going to do what they tell you not to do in preaching classes, I’m going to give you the main point of the sermon right up front.
-The so what of the sermon, the main message is this: Praise God.
-Praise God in all things for all things in all circumstances, even when it’s hard, praise God.
-That’s the take home, so if you’re in a hurry, and need to get out of here, we shortened the whole sermon into 2 words: Praise God.
Why do we praise God?
What is it about God that’s praiseworthy?
We know God just by looking around at what he made?
Everything that exists, everything that ever has existed, and everything that ever will exist is his and his alone.
Not only that, but the psalmist paints a picture of God who not only created everything, but is intimately involved in his creation.
-He didn’t just make the light, he wraps himself in it like a garment.
-He didn’t just make the clouds, he rides them like a chariot.
-He didn’t just create the heavens, he stretched them out like a tent. Like a tabernacle. His dwelling place.
God created all things and said “it is good”
-We know that we can praise god just by looking around at what he made.
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.
-you want proof that we can praise god, just go outside and take a look around.
Look at what he made.
-a lot of times we think of science and religion as being opposing enemies.
-But what’s the general consensus among most scientists, there is no god. We don’t have proof, so therefor, there is no god.
-Well what do scientists do? in essence they study and observe the world.
-and what’s funny is that there is a growing trend among scientists re-thinking that attitude.
-Basically what is going on is that the more scientists learn about the world, more and more scientists are stopping and saying you know what, this world is too complex, too intricate, too perfect for it to have just happened by random accident.
-They’re looking at the smallest particles all the way up to the vast expanses of the universe and saying there’s just no way. Something or someone had to have planned all of this because it’s just too perfect.
-If you went all the way back to the beginning of the universe they’re doing the math and saying if this one electron would have just been a little bit heavier the entire universe couldn’t have happened.
-if this one particle would have been moving just a little bit slower or a little bit faster we would have never had life on earth.
-if the proteins that make up our cells in our body would have just ever so slightly longer or shorter, we couldn’t have existed.
-And once you realize that you can’t help but praise the god who created it all.
in fact the psalmist is so moved talking about God and his creation, he can’t even help himself.
Between verse 5 and verse 6 he moves from saying “he” did of these things, and he can’t help himself, he turns and starts singing directly to god.
You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.
-have you ever been so enthralled with talking about god that you just can’t help yourself and you turn and start talking to god?
-Our god is so magnificent he created all of the heavens and the earth, and the light.
-and the waters .
[look up talk to god[
-God you created all of
Psalm 104:7-9 “But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth.”
He’s talking about the flood.
-All of the sudden God’s creation points us to something different.
-God’s command over his creation is so great that with a single word, he can destroy it all.
-I’m not in the habit of encouraging you to live your life in fear of god. To be constantly walking around afraid that one day God’s just going to send a lightning bolt. But it makes you think, doesn’t it.
-I grew up in western colorado. And if you ever have a chance to drive in interstate 70 west there’s a stretch of highway called glenwod canyon.
-It’s truly one of the most magnificent places to drive. the highway winds through the canyon and there’s places where if you’re on the passengers side you can just look straight up and it’s just a sheer rock cliff above you.
-and every time I drive it, I’ll look up, and there’s boulders the size of a bus sticking out of the rock wall.
-and I think of myself, you know, any moment that boulder could decide to come loose, and if I’m driving my car and that boulder comes loose it’s over.
-you can’t predict that.
-So there’s this understanding that you know I’m not really in control of that boulder.
-If God decides that the exact time for that boulder to come loose is right now what am I going to do about it.
-And when you’re dealing with someone as magnificent and powerful as God, you almost have a sense of peace. He’s in charge.
-It’s not neccecarily fear of the lord, it’s just an understanding that he’s god, and he’s going to do what he’s going to do.
-The water that he created, he used used it to flood the earth. and destroy everything in its path.
But when we get to verse 10, it says
He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the sky nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
-That same water that 2 verses go caused destruction and death is now a cause of life.
There’s places in glenwood canyon where you can look up and you’ll see nothing but solid rock and then you’ll see one little pine tree that’s somehow just growing straight out of the cliff.
-That same boulder that could fall and crush my car and kill me before I have a chance to blink can also sustain that pine tree.
-and in that pine tree is a nest
-and in that nest are three tiny little eggs. Baby birds, haven’t even hatched yet.
-how can something so terrifying one second like that boulder at the very same time make it possible for those tiny little baby birds to hatch.
That’s like god.
-God can give and he can take away he can make life, and he can end it.
-the same water that we need to survive every single day can turn into a flood that wipes out everything in its path.
-The same clouds that bring rain to our crops can bring hail that decimates an entire field.
-The same wind that gives a nice gentle breeze through the house can
-How do we get ourselves to the place where we can praise God for everything he gives us, and everything he takes away from us?
-We’re good with the giving part. We’re good with praising God for the rain that waters the crops.
-We’re good about praising God when he blesses us.
-But when’s the last time you praised God for taking something away from you?
-When’s the last time you praised God for the flood?
-When’s the last time we praised god for the things that we don’t like?
-It’s all God.
How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
-If we can’t learn to yield to God’s wisdom, we can never truly praise him.
-Not just when things are convenient for us, but for all things, and through all things.
All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust.
When you send 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— he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the Lord. But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the Lord, my soul. Praise the Lord.
-And look, praising god, rejoicing in god in the middle of the storm is hard.
-Because we don’t understand everything that goes on behind the scenes. We’re like the animals who are just down at God’s feet, and he’s got his hand out to feed us.
-We don’t know anything.
And I think that’s ok. I think it’s ok to to not understand, and to simply praise God because he is ruler of all things.
-To sing our praises to him as long as we live, and let our meditation on his word be pleasing to him.
-To rejoice in him.
-Praise God