Let's open our Bibles now in the book of Psalms, chapter 104. I know in your bulletin it's saying verses 1 through 13, but I could not divide this psalm, so we will read the whole psalm. But I promise I will not take one hour to expose everything. Psalm 104, and also we will cover Belgic Confession, Article 12. You can find the Article 12 in page 164 of your Forms and Prayers book. We'll start reading the Belgic Confession, and then we go to Psalm 104. I will read Article 12, the creation of all things. We believe that the Father created heaven and earth and all other creatures from nothing, when it seemed good to Him by His Word that it to say by His Son. He has given all creatures their being, form, and appearance, and their various functions for serving their Creator. Even now, He also sustains and governs them all according to His eternal providence and by His infinite power that they may serve man in order that man may serve God. He has also created the angels good that they might be his messengers and serve his elect. Some of them have fallen from the excellence in which God created them into eternal perdition, and the others have persisted and remain in their original state by the grace of God. The devils and evil spirits are so corrupt that they are enemies of God and of everything good. They lie in wait for the church and every member of it like thieves, with all their power to destroy and spoil everything by their deceptions. So then, by their own weakness, they are condemned to everlasting damnation, daily awaiting their torments. For that reason, we detest the errors of the Sadducees who deny that there are spirits and angels, and also the error of the Manicheans who say that the devil originated by themselves, being evil by nature. without having been corrupted. That's what article 12 of Belgic Confession says. Now let's move our eyes to the Scripture, Psalm 104. This is the word of the living God and He speaks to His church by saying, 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 carrier. He rides on the wings of the wind. He makes his messengers wings, his ministers a flaming fire. He set the earth of its foundations so that it should never be moved. You cover it with the deep as with a garment. The water stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to fly. 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 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. Beside 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 caused 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. The treats of the Lord are water abundantly. the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. And then the birds build their nests, the stork has her home in their firm trees, the high mountains are for the wild ghosts, the rocks are the refuge for the rock badgers. He made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun knows it's time for setting. You make darkness and ease. 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 unto the evening. O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, leaving things both small and great. There go the sheep and leviathan, which are 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 bread, they die in 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 he trembles, who touch 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 been. May my meditation be pleasing to Him, for I rejoice in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the weakened be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord." Amen. Let's pray again. Let's talk to our Father. Our Heavenly Father, what an amazing text that You gave to Your church. We ask You, Lord, that may through the works of the Holy Spirit we can open our eyes to identify the greatness of our God in every one of these verses. May we will put ourselves in the place that we should be, and we will exalt You like You should be exalted. May we join to this altar of this psalm to praise Your name, to glorify Your name, and to exalt You forever and ever. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. So, today in the morning, Pastor VanderMeer kind of introduced this text for me, and I'm very happy for that. We didn't plan that, it just happened. But this psalm, it's an amazing psalm that speaks about the Creator and His creation. Here we will see the author of this psalm speaking about many things, but our goal today is not every verse but to cover the main idea which is behind the words of this psalm. I hope you have a lot to do as homework to identify everything we will try to see here in this psalm. But this psalm reflects very well what Article 12 of Belgian Confession speaks about. First of all, because here in the whole psalm we are seeing God as the only one who created heavens, earth, and everything that exists. This is the main point of the Belgic Confession article 12, and this is the main point of the author of this psalm. And there's something very interesting in this psalm, and that's why I change instead of covering the 13 first verses to cover everything, because I realize that this psalm is also connected to Genesis 1. It's not a regular psalm written to glorify and show the greatness of God only, but it's organized in such a way that it covers the seven days of creation. This is amazing how much work did the author of this psalm put on it to organize everything like this. You will see that the first five verses, they will cover the first day of creation. in which God create heavens and earth light and separate light from the darkness. In the second part of this chapter of Psalm, verses 6 to 9, it covers the second day of creation where God create the atmosphere and the firmament. The third part goes through verses 10 through 18, where God created the earth, the sea, and the plants. The next part is verses 19 through 23, the fourth day of creation where God created the sun, the moon, and the stars. The fifth part of this psalm goes through verses 24 through 26. where God created in day five the birds and the sea creatures. And the sixth day of creation is presented in verses 27 through 30, where God created land, animals, and humans. And finally, the last part of these verses, 31 through the end, 35, It covers the seventh day of creation, the creation of the day of the Lord, which here it's only a call to exaltation to the name of God. It's a day of worship. So, in the five last verses of this psalm, the psalmist is saying, let's worship Him. So, these… all of these together… They will show us the greatness of this psalm, and it will connect this psalm deeply with Belgian Confession article 12, which is trying to show us the greatness of the Creator. The article is speaking about God in more than one way. It's not saying only that God is the creator of everything, but also that God is the one who is working with His providence to keep everything and to control everything upon His hands. So God not only made the heavens, the earth, and everything that exists in it and abandoned it, but He also continues to take care of everything and He continues to show His power and His mercy by making everything that He created continue to exist. We will not be able to cover the seven parts of this psalm, but we will take a look in some specific things of this psalm to realize the power of the words of this psalm and the power of God. I call you to pay attention in some verses of this psalm. They will exemplify in a way that sometimes we never meditate before, and sometimes even being a mature Christian, we didn't realize the reality of the things that God made. But here we will see the psalmist talking about the creation of God in a way that he specifies that in every detail God is the author of everything that exists. We will see in some verses, for example, verse 9, you set a boundary that they may not pass. The idea of God taking care in the division of the mountains and the oceans, He put some boundaries, and these boundaries, they were specified by God. He put them there and He said, This is where you go, and this is where you are not going anymore. His control is in every millimetre of everything that exists. controlling everything, and He is the one who caused everything to exist exactly like they should exist. Verse 14, you cause the grass to grow for the livestock. It's very interesting because sometimes We believe that we are part of God's mercies when we see, for example, the fruits and everything growing up here. The psalmist is saying, well, the grass is growing not because there is water or a good land or anything else. It's growing because God said it will grow. He's the one who commands the grass to grow. The grass doesn't have power in itself. It only happens because of God's mercy. We can see this in many verses, but let's take at least one more example from everything that we have here. Verse… wait a minute. I just saw you, verse 20, you make darkness and it is night when all the beasts of the forest creep about. It's very interesting to see how God specifies when darkness exists and when light exists. We assume that that happened, of course, because of the creation of moon and sun, which also the Belgic Confession speaks about, and also this psalm also exemplifies. But the idea here is God is the one who is giving light to those stars or the sun which is providing light, and He's the one responsible to make darkness exist. So He is the one who commands even the darkness and things that we are not able to control. These examples, they are just to help us to understand and to see the Psalm is saying something that sometimes we don't consider, that in reality, usually Christians still has a sacralized They still think like Gentiles or they still think basing their thoughts in science. Let's use an easy example to exemplify that. Today, we had snow the whole day long. So, probably you said to someone, it's snowing. It's snowing. I said that to my daughter today. When I woke up, we woke up, I said, hey, Livia, it's snowing outside. But actually, we should say God is sending snow. The idea of this psalm and the idea of article 12 of the Belgium Confession is to help us to identify that everything that is happening around us is caused by God in His providence and by His control. And it's not just because things are happening and they will continue to happen, but it's because God is still acting in His mercies and in His power to produce exactly what He wants. But that leads us to a question that many people doesn't like to deal with, which is the fact that if God is the cause of everything, also the bad things that happen in this world, they are caused by God. We are seeing storms happening in many places. We are seeing hurricanes. We are seeing many of those things. And Christians usually don't like to connect these things to the greatness of God. They don't like to connect the Creator with the bad things in the reality of the humankind. But the fact is that the Scripture also speaks about those things. And when the Scripture speaks about hurricanes, earthquakes, and all these kinds of things, The Scripture speaks about them as an act of God to call the people of this world to repentance and to go back to Christ. We have full chapters of these in the book of Revelation. If we go there, you will see God saying that He would send... earthquakes and storms to mankind, and instead of repenting and moving their hearts to God, they will be even harder to listen to the voice of God and they will reject Him even more. So, God will start to send other signs, stronger than the last ones. And instead of listening to Him, they will close their hearts to Him even more. But the idea is that God is using these signs not only to manifest His power, but also to call the people of this world to repentance and to move back to Him. the Creator of all things because He is the only one who can provide life for them, not only in this world but also for eternity. And instead of listening to Him, they close their hearts to Christ. This is not a case of this psalm. But exactly that is what the Belgic Confession is talking about when it speaks about the falling angels. They reject the power of the Creator. They close themselves to God and they start to act against the power of the Almighty. And because of this, God already judged them by saying that they will be sent, they will be thrown in the lake of fire and flame. They will be completely destroyed at the end of the story of this word. But they reject God. They were created by Him. made to serve the people of God, but instead of listening to Him, they became enemies of God. And because of this, they are acting against the church and against everything that exists in this world to glorify and praise the name of the Lord. Because of this, the Belgian Confession denies some heresies, especially the Sadducees and the Manichaeans heresies that said that God didn't made angels and spirits, that God didn't produce any...didn't allow the evil on them, that they were born without the creation of God. These heresies, they are denied in the Belgic Confession, and they are also denied in the text that we cover here, and also in the text that we cover before that in Psalm Both of them quote the angels of God glorifying the name of the Lord and the angels of God serving the church of Jesus Christ. And here the angels, in verse 4, they are together Here is messengers in English, but the word in Hebrew is melech, and it speaks about angels too. They are together with the whole creation praising the name of the Lord. They are exalting the name of their Creator. And this is the main topic of this psalm, and this is the main topic also of the Belgic Confession. The idea here is by comparing the skulls of glorification to God with the seven days of creation, the psalmist is trying to guide us and to lead us to produce the same behavior. What he's saying is, look around you right now. Look to the moon, to the stars, to the sun, look to the animals in the fields, look to the birds, look to everything that God made. Well, what the psalmist is saying is they are exalting the name of the Lord in every moment. They never stop to proclaim His majesty. They never stop to celebrate His name. The trees, He includes the trees here and the grass in the fields. He says that they are praising the name of the Lord, they are exalting Him. And He's calling Himself, this is the call that He makes in the first verse and in the last verse. to bless the Lord, oh my soul, because He's trying to convince Himself to producing Himself the same behavior. I should always praise His name. I should always bless the Lord because this is the only answer that we can offer to Him because of His majesty, His power, and His greatness. The idea here is that we have two options when we look to the creation. or we join to them in the exaltation of the Lord, or we will act like those who are rejecting the Lord, here the falling angels, the devils, the evil spirits, because instead of glorifying Him, they are acting against Him. And this is the main idea of this psalm. Because this is a call, a huge call to worship God for His creation. And it's very interesting to see this in a practical way, bringing this psalm toward ordinary life. Because usually The motives that we have to not praise the Lord, they are among dozens of other motives that are calling us to praise the Lord. You wake up in a regular morning, in one day of the week, you will be in a warm house, probably, even being cold to that outside, at least for Brazilians. I don't know if you enjoy this season, but for us it's cold to kill this. And even so, We are not celebrating His name for the heater. It's essential that we should every day glorify His name for someone who invented the heater. But it's okay, this is just one thing. You go, you take your breakfast, your milk will be cold in the fridge, the bread will be safe, you take butter, pass in your bread, prepare your breakfast, and only when you start to eat you remember that you need to say thanks to God. This is one time a day. Then you go to the work. You usually don't glorify God because you have a car. I think very strange that without a car in Michigan, you are not able to survive. You need a car to go anywhere. And this is a motive of thanks to God. We should thanks to God every day for our cars. And you have a job you go to your job and You have people involved in your work there. All of you will work together. You will produce something. You will have lunch probably with them or just have some snacks during your day. You will go back to dinner. So many things. I'm speaking about ordinary things. But the point is, usually we see all those ordinary things as normal. But all of them are small gifts of God to every one of us. small gifts of a heavenly Father who is giving you clothes, who is giving you food daily, who is giving you health to your family, who is making your children grow in not only in stature but also in their knowledge to God. He is providing you a Scripture to make you learn. increase your knowledge about Him. He's taking care of your heart every day. He's taking care of your legs every day. He's providing everything. And sometimes the only thing we can produce at the end of the day is complaining because it was a very tired day, a very busy day, and we are done, instead of glorifying Him for everything He has been giving to us. That's a secularized mind. This is exactly what Gentiles do every day. Even with the best of this world, they are still complaining. They are still saying that they don't have enough money, they don't have the better house, they don't have the most impressive car, they don't have the most beautiful things, so they complain and complain and they want more and more and more. They are never glad. giving thankful, thankful to God. And we cannot be like this, you know. Being Christians, we cannot produce the same behavior that Gentiles because we must consider the voice of the psalmist here saying, hey, give thanks to God even for the snow, for the rain, for the water in your fridge, for the bed that you can take every day, for a soft bed to sleep, for everything you have, they came from Him. And only because of Him, you still have them. He's the one who takes care of His people, and we are called to praise Him, to praise Him for everything. This is something that the psalmist here is trying to teach us. He's showing us through many examples, through the verses of this psalm. And the idea for us is we need to learn to praise the name of the Lord. We need to learn to bless the Lord. That's why the beginning and the end of this psalm, they are exactly the same. Bless the Lord, O my soul. The psalmist is saying, I need to learn how to bless the Lord. I need to produce on myself thanksgiving for God. I need to produce a sentiment that will please God for everything He gives to me. Because at the end, that's exactly what God made through His plan of salvation. Although in many moments in the story of the Israelites and the story of the Christianity, we had difficulties and persecution and trials among the story of God with His people. The final end points always to one moment in which God said, I will solve all the problems of my people. And He made that by sending His only begotten Son to die for us. He paid the prices of our sins, and it's amazing. We know that, but the psalmist doesn't. He was expecting the Messiah, but he doesn't know Jesus Christ. We know we are much more privileged than the psalmist here for knowing those things. We know that He came, He paid the price of our sins, and now the situation of our lives It's different from any other person alive that doesn't know Jesus Christ. We are completely saved by the Son of God. That is the major, the most important motive of thanksgiving that any person can have in the history of the world. Someone paid the price of my sins and nothing can take me from His hand, even the evil spirits, even sin, even the darkness, even death, nothing can take me from His hands. If that is not enough, to convince us, to join us and say, bless the Lord, O my soul, it's because we don't understand the gospel and it's because we don't understand who is our God. We need to change our hearts to a heart that will glorify God in every situation. We are not called to serve God only if everything goes well. We are called to glorify Him in every moment, exactly like the creation is doing in any time. It doesn't matter if it's winter or summer outside. The trees, they will glorify the Lord. They don't seem pretty during winter, right? But they are still glorifying His name. And when the summer comes, they will continue to glorify. For us as the saint, we must celebrate His name in a good season and in a bad season, in a good day or in a bad day. If we have a healthy body or if we are sick, if we are dealing with difficult things or if we are living in a great time for our family and for our life. The call to glorify God is for all the time because this is why He made us. We were born to glorify the name of the Lord. So, I will finish with this call. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord. Let's pray, close your eyes. Our Heavenly Father, what a great teaching from this psalmist. What a great teaching from Your Word, from Jesus Christ, the author of this book. We pray, God, that may we can join the creation in praising Your name. We know, God, that many times we cannot see because of many things that are happening around us the greatness of Your love. But even so, God, we ask You that may change our hearts in order to help us to be like this Psalter says and to glorify You during all the time of our lives. Even when we are dealing with trials, we ask You to help us to glorify Your name. Oh God, we know that it's not easy. We know that our hearts, they will fight against the will of God for us. We know that our minds sometimes, they don't want to be convinced about Your love and Your care. But here we are asking you, God, to change us, to change us and make us like a good disciple of the Lord. and may even through our sufferings we will glorify Your name. Even with our cry, we will praise the name of the Lord. And we ask You that may we can teach that to our children and to our grandchildren. May the church of Christ will learn to celebrate and to glorify Your name properly. We pray