“You
Send Your Spirit”
(Psalm
104:24-35)
May
31, 2020 YouTube
Today is Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost meaning “fiftieth day.” This holiday is fifty days after the Resurrection
of Jesus – ten days after the Ascension of Jesus – and it occurs during the
Hebrew celebration of the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) – the celebration of the
wheat harvest and the remembrance of God’s giving of the Law on Mount Sinai.
We will remember that last week when we looked at the Ascension,
Jesus tells the disciples to remain in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes on
them, saying, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon
you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8, ESV).
Ten days later, we read:
“When
the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly
there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the
entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared
to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts
2:1-4, ESV).
As
Jesus had promised them, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I
will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you
forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it
neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will
be in you” (John 14:15-17, ESV).
Jesus
promises that – beginning at the day of Pentecost – the Father and He will send
God the Holy Spirit to indwell every believer – to be our Helper – as Jesus is
our Helper – forever – from salvation through death and into the Kingdom.
In
the Nicene Creed, we confess, “And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the
giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with the Father and
the Son is worshiped and glorified. He spoke through the prophets” (https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/creeds/nicene-creed).
It
is the idea of the Holy Spirit being the Giver of Life that we will focus in on
as we look at the second half of Psalm 104.
This psalm is written by an unnamed psalmist, and the purpose of this
psalm is to stir up praise to God.
He
begins by praising God as the Almighty Creator of everything that exists, and
then he praises God for creating and sustaining plants and animals, stars,
light and darkness, and humans. And that
brings us up to our text.
And
we see, first, God is to be praised for His Wisdom and
variety in Creation.
“O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you
made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.”
The psalmist wants us to look at the variety of Creation
and praise God for it.
Look
around at what you have experienced: how
many varieties of trees have you experienced?
Google
says there are 60,065 varieties of trees.
If
you have ever worked on your lawn or gone to a garden center, you know there
are many types of grass. Google says there are over 10,000 varieties of grass.
What
about all the flowers you have seen? Google
says there are over 400,000 varieties of flower.
Why? Why such variety?
Doesn’t
looking at the plants – not to mention all the animals – convince us that there
is a Wise Creator behind their existence?
Do we really want to deny God and say that all of this beauty and
variety simply popped out of the slime by accident? The likelihood of that happening is a number
bigger than I can say.
No,
as we look at the amazing differences among the different varieties of living
things that exist – even the difference among varieties! Not every terrier is the same, is it, Carol?
Who
is this that has created all these different, beautiful, living creatures? He is our God, Wise, and worthy of praise!
Even
if our eyes are normally on our I-phone and I-pad – consider the One Who
created humans and gifted us with wisdom and skill to create things that are
useful in our lives – doesn’t the existence of humans cause us to raise our
eyes to God our Creator and praise Him?
It should.
The
psalmist gives his own example:
“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.”
God
created the sea – great and wide – and He filled it with more creatures than
can be numbered – Google says the number of the varieties of creatures in the
ocean is unknown – though scientists have catalogued 230,000 different types of
creatures, they believe that is only ten percent of all the varieties of
creatures – so their guess is 2,300,000 different varieties of creatures live in
the sea!
God
created human beings and gave us the wisdom to create ships so we can travel
across the sea and fish and go on cruises.
And
God created Leviathan. We remember
Leviathan – God describes His creation to Job:
“I
will not keep silence concerning his limbs, or his mighty strength, or his
goodly frame. Who can strip off his outer garment? Who would come near him with
a bridle? Who can open the doors of his face? Around his teeth is terror. His
back is made of rows of shields, shut up closely as with a seal. One is so near
to another that no air can come between them. They are joined one to another; they
clasp each other and cannot be separated. His sneezings flash forth light, and
his eyes are like the eyelids of the dawn. Out of his mouth go flaming torches;
sparks of fire leap forth. Out of his nostrils comes forth smoke, as from a
boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame comes
forth from his mouth. In his neck abides strength, and terror dances before
him. The folds of his flesh stick together, firmly cast on him and immovable. His
heart is hard as a stone, hard as the lower millstone. When he raises himself
up, the mighty are afraid; at the crashing they are beside themselves. Though
the sword reaches him, it does not avail, nor the spear, the dart, or the
javelin. He counts iron as straw, and bronze as rotten wood. The arrow cannot
make him flee; for him, sling stones are turned to stubble. Clubs are counted
as stubble; he laughs at the rattle of javelins. His underparts are like sharp potsherds;
he spreads himself like a threshing sledge on the mire. He makes the deep boil
like a pot; he makes the sea like a pot of ointment. Behind him he leaves a
shining wake; one would think the deep to be white-haired. On earth there is
not his like, a creature without fear. He sees everything that is high; he is
king over all the sons of pride” (Job 41:12-34, ESV).
God
created this creature to play in the sea!
Amazing!
God
is to be praised for His Wisdom and variety in Creation.
Second,
God is to be praised as He gives, sustains, and renews life.
“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.”
The psalmist tells us that the reason any creature – any
living thing – continues to live – is due to God providing food for it. God sustains all life – nothing would
continue to live and grow if God did not provide food for it.
Remember what Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, do not
be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about
your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more
than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor
gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more
value than they?” (Matthew 6:25-26, ESV).
What is Jesus saying?
God provides the food for the birds and us. Everything we need for this day is given to
us as a gift. We continue to live as God
is pleased to will it.
Someone might say, “Wait a minute – I work for everything
I get. Nobody ever gave me
anything. I earned everything I
have. I have no reason to praise God
that I am alive.”
It’s true, God works through means – through people and
nature. But God gave you your body and
mind. God gifted you with the abilities
you use in your job and life. God gave
you your boss – even if you don’t like him.
God gave your boss the company you work for. God gave the country in which the company can
exist and hire people. God gave the
planet that would be habitable for humans and would sustain the type of
countries we have. On and on. Do we have no reason to praise God for what
we have?
James writes, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is
from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no
variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17, ESV).
Everything good that we have, everything pleasant,
everything that functions, everything that is enjoyable – it is all given to us
– even through means – but it is given to us by God. And that is reason to praise Him no matter
how we may feel at any given moment.
And when God hides His Face – we are dismayed. And when God stops our breathing, we return
to the dust from which we are created.
And again, someone may object, “What about accidents and
suicide? Do you mean we can blame God
for them?”
No, what the psalmist is saying is that God set a time
for our death, and we will die at that time, and there is nothing we can do to
hasten our death or stop our death.
Although death will be thrown into the lake of fire when Jesus returns,
God is sovereign over death. Every death
occurs exactly when God intends it to occur.
“So, God intended for all these people to die of Covid?”
God is Sovereign over every death and its time, though
that does not answer the question as to why any given person died at any given
time or in any given way.
And, the psalmist tells us, it is God the Holy Spirit Who
creates life and restores life – spiritually and physically. He is the Holy Spirit Who causes the baby to
grow in the womb. He is the Holy Spirit
Who causes our hearts to come alive and receive Jesus as God and Savior. He is the Holy Spirit Who will raise us from
the dead and unite our bodies and souls again on the last day. The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of
Life.
Paul writes “Not only that, but we rejoice in our
sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces
character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame,
because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who
has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5, ESV).
Paul goes on to say that this is so because Christ lived
and died to save us before any of us had any interest in being saved. The work is Christ’s and the Holy Spirit
applies Christ’s Work to us and helps us, preserves us, raises us, and assures
us in His salvation.
This is the One Who is given that first Pentecost. Prior to Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon
people, but He did not reside with them eternally. Now, the Holy Spirit not only causes a person
to believe in the Savior, but He resides within us forever. God lives within us to lead us and empower us
and convict us and assure us as we live our lives to His Glory and praise.
You and I, and all of Creation, are in the Hands of God
the Holy Spirit, and that should comfort and amaze us.
God
is to be praised as He gives, sustains, and renews life.
Third,
God is to be praised for His Sovereign Wisdom, Power, and Goodness.
“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!”
The psalmist prays what will surely be – we remember that
God answers “yes” to every prayer that is in accordance with His Will – and
prayer is learning to align ourselves with God’s Will – the psalmist prays that
God’s Glory will endure forever – that God will be eternally glorified for Who
He is and all that He has done – that there will be an ongoing unfolding of the
Character and Attributes of God..
He
prays that God will rejoice in Himself – in everything that He does. Does that sound strange? God’s greatest joy is found in Himself – God
rejoices most and best in Himself and all that He does. Why?
Because He is deserving and the Only One Who can do all that makes God
rejoice eternally.
And
that’s not pride since it is true. It is
a reality.
Remember,
this is the God Who can look at the world and have it tremble, Who can touch a
mountain and turn it to smoke. We
remember early on in Isaiah – when Isaiah meets God in the Temple – the Temple
itself was shaking down to its foundations with God in it. This is the idea that
God is Absolutely Sovereign, Wise, Powerful, and Good.
Since
this is true, the psalmist can do nothing less that sing to God and praise God
forever – in this life and in the life to come.
“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.”
This
is a picture of life in the Kingdom:
“No
longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb
will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and
his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need
no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will
reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:3-5, ESV).
What
will we do in the Kingdom? We will
worship – we will glorify the Lamb, Jesus.
So,
our lives now are a preparation for that day when Jesus returns and restores
the earth for His Kingdom. So, we ought
to pray that our lives now would be lives of praise to God – Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. God chose us to be
His. God saved us through His work. God changed our hearts and lives within us
and will raise us to eternal life in body and soul on the last day.
Let
us pray that God the Holy Spirit will help us to pray better, to praise better,
to worship better, to be more pleasing to God.
And we should not be discouraged, but strive by the Power of the Holy
Spirit to be the men and women God has called us to be – and when we have no
idea what or how to pray, ask the Holy Spirit.
As
Paul writes, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know
what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with
groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind
of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the
will of God” (Romans 8:26-27, ESV).
But
it is not that way for the wicked.
“Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the
wicked be no more!”
And notice this is how we should pray – not for any
specific person to suffer Hell, but that sinners and the wicked would be
gone. That God would be purely praised
by holy hearts – and the Holy Spirit is making us so.
“Bless the LORD, O my soul! Praise the LORD!”
The Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit to indwell
everyone who believes. As the Giver of
Life, He created us, sustains us, and bring us to life – spiritually and physically
on that final day.
And so all praise is to God Who chose us and loved us and
made us a people for Himself – Who gives us the indwelling of God the Holy
Spirit so we will live and survive and be transformed into the Image of Jesus
Christ.
Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!
Let us pray:
Almighty God, we thank You for choosing a people for
Yourself and sending Jesus to live and die to save us. We thank You for the Holy Spirit Who created
us and sustains us and applies the work of salvation to us so we will be Yours
forever. Help us to strive after
holiness knowing that God lives within us – another Helper, as Jesus promised –
so we have the ability, now, to do all You have commanded. And we ask this is Jesus’ Name, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment