Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 104 | Date: June 15, 2025 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Praise to the Lord’s Majestic Greatness

Turn your Bibles with me, if you will, please, to Psalm 104.

“Bless the Lord, O my soul. 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 the wings of the wind. He makes his messengers winds and 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 waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke, they fled. At the sound of your thunder, they took flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you had 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. Besides 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. You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and 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. Trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them the birds build their nest. The stork has her home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats. The rocks are for refuge for the rock badgers. He made the moon to mark the seasons, the sun to know its 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. O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. 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. These all look to you 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. May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works, who looks on the earth and it trembles, 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 sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord.”

Thank you, you may be seated. Well, as I’m sure you can recognize just from reading it through here quickly, this is a psalm of praise. It is framed with praise, verse one. And then again at the end, verse 35, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” At the verse 35, it concludes with that and then adds, “Praise the Lord.” This is the psalm’s message and theme. It is a praise psalm. We have the call to praise in verses one and two. And then we have the reason or the cause for praise beginning from verse three onward through the bulk of the psalm. Then in the closing verses we have a final meditation and then his own praise that he gives.

This is not just a generic praise psalm, but specifically his theme is praise to God the Creator. And that’s what we’ve noticed already, reading through all of these verses. Verse 3, he lays the beams of his chambers on the water. Verse 5, he set the earth on its foundations. Verse 6, you covered it with the deep, that is, the seas, as with a garment. Verse 10, you made the springs gush forth in the valleys, and so on through the psalm. He’s praising God, but specifically it is praise to God, the Creator, and praise him for his greatness displayed in creation.

Verse 1 tells us the theme a little bit more precisely. “Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with splendor and majesty.” So he’s giving praise to God the Creator, but if we can go more narrowly than that, it is praise to the greatness of God as displayed in his creative works. He is very evidently, through his work of creation, a very great God. And that’s his theme. Praise to the Lord’s majestic greatness, verses two and following, as displayed in his creative work.

Verse 34, almost to the end, the psalmist here identifies his psalm as a meditation. “May my meditation be pleasing to him.” By the way, the psalmist here is probably David. We don’t have that in the superscript. The Septuagint does have it in the superscript. So does the Dead Sea Scrolls have it there, the older manuscripts there. So it’s probably right. We’re able to judge from the Book Four of the Psalter. The superscripts are accurate. They reflect more the original. So this is probably then a psalm of David.

In verse 34, he identifies his psalm as a meditation. So he’s pondering, verses 2 and following, he’s pondering God’s work of creation and he’s thinking on it. Verses 1 to 4, he meditates on God’s creation of the heavens. Verse 2, “stretching out the heavens like a tent.” Verses 5 to 23, all through there, he’s meditating on God’s creation of the earth and the earth’s creatures. Verses 5 and 6, he set the earth on its foundation, covered it with the deep. And then verses 24 to 26, he’s meditating on the seas and their creatures. Verse 25, “here’s the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great.”

A Meditation on Genesis Chapter 1

So he’s giving praise to the Lord’s greatness as demonstrated in his creative work. Now if we can identify it a little bit more precisely, what we have in Psalm 104 is a meditation on Genesis chapter 1. And what we have in Psalm 104 is essentially a poetic rendering of Genesis 1. You’re familiar with Genesis 1? The Lord said, “Let there be light.” The Lord said, “Let the waters teem,” and so on. And “Lord, let there be the heavens, the mountains rise, let there be the earth bring forth,” and all of that God commands in Genesis chapter one through the successive days of creation.

David here is tracing all of that out. He’s rehearsing Moses’ narrative, but he’s rehearsing it in terms of declarative praise. So, as you might remember, in day one, in Genesis chapter one, in day one of creation, God says, “Let there be light.” And so here in verse two, “covering yourself with light as a garment.” In day two, creation day two of Genesis chapter one, God says, “Let there be an expanse to separate the waters.” So here, verse two, at the end of the verse, “stretching out the heavens like a tent.” Day three, “let the dry land appear and let the waters be gathered together.” That’s verses eight and nine here. “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 cover the earth again.”

Again on day three, God brings forth vegetation from the earth. “Let the earth bring forth fruit.” And so here, verses 10 to 18, he follows the last part of day three. Verse 10, “you make springs gush forth in the valleys. You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate.” Verse 16, “the trees of the Lord are watered abundantly.” So days one, day two, day three.

You might remember then in Genesis one, creation day four, God creates the luminaries to provide light in the seasons. And so we have that here in verses 19 to 23. “He made the moon,” verse 19. “He made the moon to mark the seasons, the sun to know its time for setting. You make darkness and it is night,” and so on. And then we come to day five of creation week, where he creates the creatures of the sea. And that’s verses 25 and 26. “Here’s the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things, both small and great.” And then we come to day six of creation week, where God creates animals and man and food appointed for all of them. That’s verses 27 through 30 here. Verse 27, “these all look to you 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.”

So David is meditating here. That’s the word he uses in verse 34. And his meditation is on Genesis chapter 1. He clearly has familiarity with it. And so he’s [celebrating] God’s creative work. He does that also, you’ll remember, in Psalm 8. And there he contemplates the magnificence of creation. And then in contrast to that, little man that God has made to rule over that magnificent creation. But here his focus is not merely to repeat the words of Genesis chapter one, but he reads Genesis chapter one and he’s struck with the majestic greatness of the Creator. And so here he responds then with praise.

Psalm 104 then, in turn, if you can fast forward 18 centuries or so—well, 28 centuries from David—we have our own hymn writer, Robert Young, who has written his own reflection on Psalm 104. So Psalm 104, David reflects on Genesis 1. Actually, I think in the history of the hymnody, it was William Kethe who wrote a popular rendering of Psalm 104 and his psalms that he had written for song. And then later, Robert Grant picked that up and wrote his own hymn from Psalm 104, and it’s what we know as, “O Worship the King, all glorious above, and gratefully sing his power and his love. Our shield and defender, the ancient of days, pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise.” That’s verses 1 and 2 here. And then the second stanza of this song goes, “O tell of his might, O sing of his grace, whose robe is the light, whose canopy space, his chariots of wrath, the deep thunderclouds form, and dark is his path on the wings of the storm.” That’s verses three and four here. And you’ll find that we’ll sing that hymn after the message today and you’ll see how he unpacks this psalm very well and crunches it into the six stanzas that we’ll sing after the message.

Over the last 150 years or so, Christianity has been caught up in a controversy, not with science. You don’t want to say it that way. Christianity has been caught up in a controversy with evolutionary scientists. There’s a difference. And that controversy has been very great, and it’s an important controversy. We have to do it. We’re caught up with discussions of naturalism. We’re caught up with discussions then of what’s called theistic evolution. And then the question becomes, can we have evolution and still be a Christian? We can have evolution and be a theist. Can we be an evolutionist and be a Christian? Does the Bible allow that?

And so we’re caught up with questions on the narrative of creation. We read Genesis chapter 1 and what immediately comes to mind is arguing with the evolutionary scientists and pointing out the differences between the biblical account of creation and what theistic evolution would affirm. You have Eve created from Adam, and you have the distinct kinds in Genesis chapter 1, all of that militating against a biblical view of creation. So you can be a theist and be an evolutionist, but it becomes very difficult to be a Christian and be an evolutionist. And so on goes the debate.

And important as all of that is in the right place that it has, I think if somehow we could delete that entire debate from our thinking, we would read Genesis 1 differently. If you look at Genesis chapter 1, and we’ve done this before—we don’t have time to go there now—if you read Genesis chapter 1 and delete from your mind the debate with evolutionary scientists, I think you would read it very differently. Instead, what you’d find is something that’s just stunning. “In the beginning,” right from the outset. “In the beginning, God.” And then you move this way through time. So here’s God who, before the beginning, already was. And already you have the Creator-creature distinction. And already you have God above time and creating time. And God creating all that is. And then God says, “Let there be light.” And there was light. How does he do that? Or, “Let the earth bring forth its fruit.” All he does is speak. And it happens.

And on through Genesis chapter 1, we find God saying, “Let it be this way.” And it was that way. “Let it be this way.” And it was that way. And “Let it be this way.” And it was that way. And the whole created order set in place by God’s mere spoken word. This massive, immeasurable, created order effortlessly put in place by a sheer act of his will. And then when it’s all done, he pronounces it good. Marvelously well-ordered creation, and all he did was speak. And there it was. All of that is intended in its first instance not to provide us with a textbook for arguing with evolutionary scientists. All of that in its first instance is to give us a sense of the greatness of God.

And David now is reading Genesis 1 and he’s moved to praise for the Creator. Verses 1 and 2, here he’s struck with God’s transcendent majesty. “Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with splendor and majesty.” So he praises God’s transcendent majesty. In verse 24, he praises the Lord’s wisdom. “Oh Lord, how manifold are your works. In wisdom you have made them all.” So the entire created order coheres together in this providential harmony that God has put in place.

Verses 10 through 30, David contemplates the goodness of God the Creator, the kindness of God, providing now for every part of his creation. Verses 10 and 11, “you make springs gush forth in the valleys, they flow between the hills, they give drink to every beast of the field.” So God has not only created the animals, He’s provided for them food. Verse 13, “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 plants for man to cultivate that he may bring forth food from the earth.” Verse 16, “the trees of the Lord are watered abundantly. In them the birds build their nests. The stork has her home in the fir trees.” Verse 18, “the high mountains are for the wild goats. The rocks are for refuge for the rock badgers.”

And then in the following verses, we have the changing seasons, the day-night cycle, the marvelous balance of nature that God has set in order. And in all of this now, David is marveling at God who is all-powerful, all-wise to set all of this in order. And not just all powerful and all wise, but as the gracious benefactor as well, who in kind providence provides for this world that he has made. And David’s marveling at it. We have actually another hymn that is taken from Psalm 104, a hymn that we sing now and then. Isaac Watts: “I sing the mighty power of God that made the mountains rise, that spread the flowing seas abroad and built the lofty skies.” That’s Psalm 104. “I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day. I sing the goodness of the Lord that filled the earth with food.” All of that is Psalm 104.

So David reads Genesis 1. He’s contemplating it carefully. He’s not having to sort out questions of evolutionary science. He just reads the text. And he’s struck with what a marvelous God he is. Commentators have routinely pointed out some similarities here with a religious poem from ancient Egypt. Akhenaten, a pharaoh of Egypt, 14th century BC—so this is like 400 years before David—wrote a hymn to the sun. You might know that the sun god was the all-important god in ancient Egypt, the sun god Re. And so Akhenaten wrote this hymn to the sun. And some have pointed out that there might be some similarities here with Psalm 104.

Well, if there are those similarities, and there probably are, it’s what we have seen many times both in Moses in Genesis and in David in the Psalms. This is another piece of what we call polemic theology, where he brings up some similarities with the pagan neighbors around him to show the stark difference between what they believe and what God has said and how he has revealed himself. On this level, the big difference then is simply there is all the difference in the world between writing a hymn to the sun and worshiping the sun and worshiping the God who made the sun. And so Moses’ polemic in Genesis chapter one and David’s polemic in Psalm 104, if we can call it that, is simply one of praise. It’s doxology throughout, praising the greatness of God for his work in creation.

Typically today, I’ll say it again, our reading of Genesis 1 and the doctrine of creation is defensive and we’re eager to delve into science to compete with the evolutionary scientists and point out the errors of their ways and so on. There’s a great place for that. I’m not faulting that at all. There’s an important place for that. But in all of that, we must never miss and never lose the sense of wonder that Moses has, that David has as he reads Moses’ account. What a great God to do what he has done. All of this created order and all of its magnificent majesty and its beautiful harmony, God has spoken that into place.

We should note then that David here is not adoring creation. He’s marveling at it, but he goes beyond that. He clearly feels dwarfed by the created order, but what he’s marveling at is not the created order, but the God who could make it all and set it all in place. Here’s a God of transcendent greatness. No blurring of the lines of Creator and creature here. No pantheism here. There’s God and there’s everything else and the everything else is what he made and it’s not him. He’s a God of omnipotence. He just speaks and it’s done. He’s a God of transcendence above it all, but he’s also a God of immanence. He’s immanent in the created order. He’s active in it, keeping it all and directing it all to his intended ends. He’s a God of omniscience and a God of wisdom, placing it all in order. He’s even a God of omnipresence. He’s there in every detail of all of the earth and all of the created order, maintaining its function that he’s given to it. And also David notes he’s a God of goodness as well, providing for the creatures that he has made.

And so, reading Genesis chapter one and observing the created order, David now is moved to praise. He sits down to write a psalm to express what he’s been meditating, to put it in poetic form. And he begins in verse one, summoning himself to praise. “Bless the Lord. From the depths of my inmost being, O my soul, bless the Lord.” And then in verses one through 32, he gives us six causes or reasons for praise. Now don’t worry, I’m not gonna work through all of this in detail. We’ll be here all day. But let me just note them for you quickly. He gives us a six-fold cause for praise.

God Is Great in the Heavens

Verses one to four, God is great in the heavens. “Bless the Lord, oh my soul. Oh Lord, my God, you are very great. You are clothed with splendor and majesty.” Splendor and majesty, that’s the language of royalty. And in the Psalms, particularly, it’s the language of deity, reflecting the splendor of God’s greatness and exalted royalty. You remember, that’s the theme of book four of the Psalter, that God is king. Verse two, “covering yourself with light as with a garment.” Oh, that’s Genesis one, verse three. Frequently the glory of the Lord in scripture is described as a brilliant light, a brilliant outshining of his glory. Here the light is simply God’s royal robes. Watts reflects that: “whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.” So it distinguishes God, then, as the royal king over all kings. Again, verses two and following, earthly kings build their temples and their palaces. God builds his, too. Only his is in the heavens. Verse two, “he stretches 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.” So verses 1 to 4, we have him celebrating here God’s greatness as displayed in the heavens.

Supreme Over All the Earth and the Seas

Verses 5 to 9 then, he tells us that God is supreme over all the earth and the seas as its transcendent Creator. Verse five, “he set the earth on its foundation so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment. The waters stood above the mountains.” Verse eight, “the mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you have appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass so that they might not again cover the earth.” So he’s transcendent over the heavens and in the heavens. Verses five to nine, he’s supreme over the earth and the seas.

Provider for His Creation

Verses 10 to 18, praise God as the provider for his creation. Verses 10 to 13, he has the water coming from below to feed the beasts and the animals. Verses 13 to 15, we have water from above feeding the vegetation so that in turn the livestock and mankind can feed on that. Verses 16 to 18, the trees, the high mountains, the rocks for the birds, for the animals to hide there. He’s providing for his creation.

Creator of Time Itself

Then verses 19 to 23, here God is portrayed as the creator of time itself. Verse 19, “he made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun knows its time for setting.” Verses 20 to 23, we have the day-night cycle. So all of this that we look at as time and taking up our lifespan, ticking away the hours and the days and the years and the decades and the centuries, all that’s God’s making. And he looks down on it from a very different perspective.

We come to verse 24. And here he just interrupts himself. A pause here just for praise. This is the focal point of the psalm. An exclamation of praise. “Oh Lord, how manifold are your works. In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures.”

Maker of the Seas and Its Creatures

Then he picks up again, verses 25 and 26. God is the maker of the seas and its creatures. Verse 25, “here is the sea, great and wide.” Okay, consider the vastness of the seas, the ocean. Stand in front of it and you’re just struck by the vastness of it all. So he’s doing that, verse 25, “here’s the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great.” Verse 26, “there go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.”

This is great. Leviathan, there’s been a lot of discussion as to what that is. It was certainly a feared sea creature, whether it was actual or mythological is what is sometimes discussed. A dragon, a monster, or just a great sea creature. Maybe it’s one that’s gone extinct before our time. Whether it’s actual or mythological—I tend to think it was actual, but that’s another discussion—but here he’s, this is more of the polemic theology. What seems so fearful to us, Leviathan, the great sea monsters, what seems so fearsome to us, God makes light of it. He put that there to play. He reduces this most feared sea creature to the level of a yellow rubber ducky in a bathtub. This is God’s—yeah, he put it there to play. I suspect that’s more of the polemic theology.

Creator and Sustainer of All Creatures

Verses 27 to 31 then, the sixth. He’s the creator and sustainer of all creatures. Verse 27, “these all look to you to give them their food in due season.” Land and sea creatures, they look to God to give them their food. This is wonderful imagery. It’s poetic imagery for sure. But we’re led to picture here the lions of the jungles, the fierce animals, creatures of the sea, all stopping and saying, “Give us this day our daily bread.” And of course they don’t do that; they’re not the intelligent creation. But they receive their nourishment from God nonetheless. By the way, this will be reflected in the hymn that we’ll sing after the service, “the humbler creation.” That’s the animal creation here. “The humbler creation, though feeble its lays, with sweet adoration shall lisp to thy praise.”

We come then to verses 31 to 33. We have David’s prayer for the glory of God. “May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works. Who looks on the earth and it trembles. Who touches the mountains and they smoke.” So God is the creator. He’s also the ruler. He’s also the judge. So verse 33, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I’ll sing praise to my God while I have being.”

And then he closes the psalm in verses 34 and 35 with two more wishes. Verse 34, he prays that his poem will be accepted. “May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord.” That is, it’s as much as he’s saying, “Lord, I’ve expressed my praise as well as I can. I hope it’s acceptable to you. Accept my feeble lays, which can never adequately express the praise that is due you. But may it be acceptable to you.”

And then verse 35 he takes another step and this is interesting. There’s not been a note of this through the psalm yet. He’s praying now that God will eliminate all the wicked. Verse 35, “let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more.” So David has so sided with God that he views sinners and the wicked as undeserving of life. They’re a stain on God’s good creation. They’re rebels against this God who is deserving of praise, to whom they owe praise. They don’t give it. Erase them.

And here we’re brought to the theme of the Psalter that we see over and again through the Psalms, and that is the establishing of God’s kingdom in the earth. The twofold aspect of it: the vindication of the righteous, the destruction of the wicked. And here he focuses just on that, the destruction of the wicked. He looks forward to a time when God will be seen to rule all over the earth and the wicked are destroyed.

By the way, the editors of the Psalter in placing the Psalms in this arrangement that we have, have recognized this as well. Psalms 104 through 106 bring Book Four of the Psalter to its conclusion. And it concludes with a praise to God for his works. Psalm 104 is praise to God for his work of creation. Psalms 105 and 106 is praise to God for his works in history. And this Psalm 106 then concludes with a plea that God will return his people from the exile. And there it’s viewed in the broadest terms. Psalm 106 verse 47.

And then we have book 5, which anticipates the glorious culmination of the kingdom of God on earth, opening in Psalm 107 with a note of thanksgiving anticipating the establishment of God’s kingdom. In Psalm 104 now, David looks back to creation and he sees the glory and the splendor and the magnificence and the majesty of God. But he also looks ahead as well and he longs to see the day when the Creator will be recognized worldwide for the great God that he is. Wicked will be eliminated, the whole world unified in praise to God.

God made David a promise. He promised him that his son would come and he would rule over the earth and he would bring God’s kingdom to its final culmination in the earth. David recognizes that and he sees that this God is great over all and he longs to see that day when the kingdom has come in its fullness. One day he’ll see it and we’ll all see it. God the Son who’s himself the Creator, who in his incarnation became the son of David. And who you remember in his transfiguration displayed the dazzling robes of his deity. He’s already inaugurated his kingdom. Through his death and resurrection, he has brought his kingdom to earth. It is now advancing through the gospel throughout the earth. And one day, He’ll return and bring it to its grand culmination, and all of his enemies will be eliminated, and he will have praise from all the ends of the earth in one united voice, singing praise to the Creator as he deserves.

And so we see again that the Psalter is marked by hope. It leads us to pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” David prays here in essence like that in verse 35. Lord, you’re the majestic Creator—transcendent, omnipotent, wise, good, and kind. Hasten the day when all the world will recognize you as such. Amen.

Let’s bow.

Our Father, we join David in giving you praise. We recognize truly only something of your transcendent greatness. What we see staggers us. We love how you’ve revealed yourself in the created order, how you’ve revealed yourself in your word. And at each turn, we marvel at your greatness and your goodness to us. And so we give you our praise. Thank you that our Creator has become our Redeemer as well. And we look forward today to the day when that will be brought to its climax. Lord, make it soon, we pray. In Jesus’ name, amen.