God is Our Creator and Provider
Perhaps you saw this week that physicist Stephen Hawkings’ book “The Grand Design” hit the market. In an act of brilliant publicity to boost sales Hawking announced that God wasn’t necessary for the creation of the universe. I’m sure God was shocked and almost choked on the morning toast reading the news. The predictable hubbub that followed reminded me of a T-Shirt I saw once that said, “God is Dead.” Nietzsche. Below that it said, “Nietzsche is dead.” God. It really isn’t news when someone says that God isn’t necessary to the creation of the universe or the world. That has been said by some people for centuries.
September 5, 2010: Psalm 104 – God is Our Creator and Provider
Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
For several thousand years the Bible from beginning to end takes the position that there is a Creator. Paul in Romans 1:20 writes about how the creation reveals and points to the presence of a Creator who is to be worshiped.
“Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.” Every person has to come to her or his own conclusion. While the scriptures affirm the existence of the Creator of the universe, nature itself in the Bible is seen with some ambivalence, which we can understand after Hurricane Earl also known meteorologically as “The Big Nothing,” just passed by. Psalm 29 praises the God of the storm and declares (verses 4, 5, and 9),
“The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. The voice of the Lord makes the oaks to whirl and strips the forest base; and in his temple all cry, “Glory!”
In the Psalms there is awe for the power of God displayed in nature as well as reverence for nature as the handiwork of the Creator and as a means of revealing and knowing God. In the poetic words of Psalm 19:1- 4 about the beauty of the sun, moon, and stars,
“The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
4 yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.”
In other words, the silent witness of the sun, moon, and stars tell of and point to something beyond themselves and beyond ourselves every day and night if we just have eyes and ears to see and hear their message. Some people get the message and some don’t see or hear it.
Psalms 65 and 67 praise the God of the harvest who provides food for people to eat in abundance. Because much of the religion of the peoples around them was centered on nature and things in the natural world, the writers of scripture didn’t want to be accused of idolatry so they didn’t talk about it too much and there was a lot that remained a mystery to them that we now know. Yet the Psalmists also recognize that we are part of God’s creation, part of a web of life that begins with God and the sun, moon, and stars, as well as the wind, the rain, the mountains and valleys, hills and plains, the sea, the fields, birds and animals – all of it is connected and all living creatures look to God for life.
You have heard part of Psalm 104 earlier in the service so listen to the rest beginning at verse 19:
1 Let all that I am praise the Lord.
O Lord my God, how great you are!
You are robed with honor and majesty.
2 You are dressed in a robe of light.
You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens;
3 you lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds.
You make the clouds your chariot;
you ride upon the wings of the wind.
4 The winds are your messengers;
flames of fire are your servants.
5 You placed the world on its foundation
so it would never be moved.
6 You clothed the earth with floods of water,
water that covered even the mountains.
7 At your command, the water fled;
at the sound of your thunder, it hurried away.
8 Mountains rose and valleys sank
to the levels you decreed.
9 Then you set a firm boundary for the seas,
so they would never again cover the earth.
10 You make springs pour water into the ravines,
so streams gush down from the mountains.
11 They provide water for all the animals,
and the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
12 The birds nest beside the streams
and sing among the branches of the trees.
13 You send rain on the mountains from your heavenly home,
and you fill the earth with the fruit of your labor.
14 You cause grass to grow for the livestock
and plants for people to use.
You allow them to produce food from the earth—
15 wine to make them glad,
olive oil to soothe their skin,
and bread to give them strength.
16 The trees of the Lord are well cared for—
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
17 There the birds make their nests,
and the storks make their homes in the cypresses.
18 High in the mountains live the wild goats,
and the rocks form a refuge for the rock badgers.
19 You made the moon to mark the seasons,
and the sun knows when to set.
20 You send the darkness, and it becomes night,
when all the forest animals prowl about.
21 Then the young lions roar for their prey,
stalking the food provided by God.
22 At dawn they slink back
into their dens to rest.
23 Then people go off to their work,
where they labor until evening.
24 O Lord, what a variety of things you have made!
In wisdom you have made them all.
The earth is full of your creatures.
25 Here is the ocean, vast and wide,
teeming with life of every kind,
both large and small.
26 See the ships sailing along,
and Leviathan, which you made to play in the sea.
27 They all depend on you
to give them food as they need it.
28 When you supply it, they gather it.
You open your hand to feed them,
and they are richly satisfied.
29 But if you turn away from them, they panic.
When you take away their breath,
they die and turn again to dust.
30 When you give them your breath, life is created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
31 May the glory of the Lord continue forever!
The Lord takes pleasure in all he has made!
32 The earth trembles at his glance;
the mountains smoke at his touch.
33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.
I will praise my God to my last breath!
34 May all my thoughts be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
35 Let all sinners vanish from the face of the earth;
let the wicked disappear forever.
Let all that I am praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord!”
In the Bible God tells us that the created world and all that is in it and the heavens are good. The Creation story in Genesis 1 features the repetition of, “And God saw that it was good,” after each aspect of creation climaxing in 1:31, “and indeed it was very good.” Psalm 104 is almost like a poetic commentary on the Creation story as it describes all that God has done to create and sustain life and how all living creatures look to and depend on God for their life and food. I have been helping my father clean out his house in Brookline and I’ve brought home dozens of bags of books. It is amazing how many of my mom’s books were about some aspect of nature – birds, trees, the ocean, the stars, atlases, maps, stories of people in nature and stories about animals. Through my mom I learned to look at nature as an expression of God’s creativity, artistry, and power. Throughout Christian history, in addition to the scriptures and Christian writing, nature has been seen as a significant venue for learning about the Lord and the spiritual life.
One of the sayings I like from the Desert Fathers is, “A philosopher asked Saint Anthony: Father, how can you be enthusiastic when the comfort of books has been taken away from you? He replied: “My book, O Philosopher, is the nature of created things, and whenever I want to read the word of God, it is usually right in front of me.” We can learn from almost anything – a tree, a bird, a squirrel – you name it. What do I mean by that – here are some examples: from a tree we learn that the reach of our branches can never exceed the depth of our roots. As we grow deeper in our relationship with God we become more stable and the reach of our influence and service grows. Storms reveal if our roots are deep enough to hold fast because even if we look good on the outside, like a tree if we are decaying or rotten on the inside – that will be revealed in the storms of life. Birds teach us to sing every day – whether it is clear or stormy, summer or winter, no matter what’s happening, every day as the hymn says, “the birds their carols raise” in praise to God. What about us? So often we look at squirrels as pests, however, if only we shared the persistence, determination, and creative problem solving skills of the squirrels in our yard we’d probably be better off.
An example of this sort of learning from God’s creation in the Bible is the wisdom of small creatures in Proverbs 30:24-28 which says, “Four things on earth are small, yet they are exceedingly wise: the ants are a people without strength, yet they provide their food in the summer;
the badgers are a people without power, yet they make their homes in the rocks;
the locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank;
the lizard can be grasped in the hand, yet it is found in kings’ palaces.”
We can learn much about God, faith and life from observing nature, even small creatures like ants, badgers, locusts, and lizards.
Think about the following scenario – what if a friend of ours offered to let us stay in and use their large beautiful home and gardens, what would we do? I’d hope in that situation we’d do our best to care for the home and property and when we left to leave it as least as nice and clean as we found it. We’d want to respect our friend’s property and care for it well enough that they might even be open to having us return. On the other hand, how would we feel if we owned such a property and someone came in and trashed the house and grounds, left all their garbage lying around, dirty dishes in the sink, the shower still running, lights, computer, and TV on, and the gardens trampled? How would we feel in that situation? I think most of us would be pretty mad. Sadly, the second scenario is much closer to how human beings have treated God’s creation than the first.
The world we live in is kind of like a house and gardens that doesn’t belong to us that the Owner has graciously granted us permission to live in for a short time, it is not ours and we will be accountable for how well we took care of it while we lived in it. Our future is directly tied to having clean air to breath, clean water to drink, and managing our lives so we can produce enough food and not bury ourselves in our own waste and pollution. It is imperative for our children and grandchildren that we do all we can as stewards to care for the Creation God has made. Things as simple as: Using less water.
Turning off the lights when you leave a room.
Don’t litter and that includes cigarette butts and pick up stuff when you see it.
Recycle everything you can – plastic, glass, cardboard, metal, and paper.
Compost all your fruit and vegetable waste.
Coordinate your driving trips. Car pool with a friend to church or the grocery store – it makes it a social time and saves gas, money, and pollution. Figure out how to take a few less trips by yourself. There are many websites and books that have lots of suggestions, tips, and ideas that we can all do as stewards of God’s creation and virtually all of them save money too. Since God is the Creator, we should take good care of all that the Lord has made.
From a Christian perspective – we don’t worship nature or a part of nature – like a tree or a shark – as a god or as divine, but we believe that nature can teach us about and point us toward the Creator. Christians also believe that being in nature can help restore our sense of perspective and allow us to hear the voice of God – this is part of why the Gospels regularly portray Jesus as going away by himself up a mountain or in a deserted place or by the shore. It is why so many of us enjoy going for walks on the beach or in the woods, or out on the water, or even up to the mountains.
The Psalms are the prayers, poems, and songs of the Bible so I want to close with poem, The Worship of Nature by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) which is not about worshiping nature, but the unending chorus of the worship of nature to God.
HE harp at Nature’s advent strung
Has never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.
And prayer is made, and praise is given,
By all things near and far;
The ocean looketh up to heaven,
And mirrors every star.
Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
As kneels the human knee,
Their white locks bowing to the sand,
The priesthood of the sea!
They pour their glittering treasures forth,
Their gifts of pearl they bring,
And all the listening hills of earth
Take up the song they sing.
The green earth sends its incense up
From many a mountain shrine;
From folded leaf and dewy cup
She pours her sacred wine.
The mists above the morning rills
Rise white as wings of prayer;
The altar-curtains of the hills
Are sunset’s purple air.
The winds with hymns of praise are loud,
Or low with sobs of pain,–
The thunder-organ of the cloud,
The dropping tears of rain.
With drooping head and branches crossed
The twilight forest grieves,
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost
From all its sunlit leaves.
The blue sky is the temple’s arch,
Its transept earth and air,
The music of its starry march
The chorus of a prayer.
So Nature keeps the reverent frame
With which her years began,
And all her signs and voices shame
The prayerless heart of man.
As we come to the end of our Psalm Series Summer Songs, one thing I hope you will remember is the Psalms teach us is that the greatest good of life is to enjoy God’s presence. This is a theme that continues through the Bible. In fact, in Revelation 5:13-14, part of the climax of history is that every creature, not just people, will worship the Creator and Christ.
13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing,
“To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might
forever and ever!”
14 And the four living creatures said, “Amen!”
And the elders fell down and worshiped.”
Here’s hoping each of us will be part of that chorus of praise and worship to our Creator and Provider and to Christ.