Praise God for Creation

January 1, 2017 Background Scripture: Psalm 33:1 – 9 Lesson Passage: Psalm 33:1 – 9 Our studies this month come from the Psalms. I like to think of the Psalms as touching more of the human side of the Divine-human relationship. It is here in the Psalms that human expressions from grief to exaltation, from despair to unspeakable joy, from anger to heartfelt gratitude are laid bare. I often find it easy to identify with the various psalmists because I understand how reactionary and unstable my emotions can sometimes seem. Without the Psalms I believe we would attempt to see ourselves in a light that is not at all realistic as far as being people of faith is concerned. We may be tempted to think that religion has somehow freed us from our emotional selves. The Psalms demonstrate how our emotions are often intertwined with our faith in this Divine-human relationship. Even though I have come to know some things about God and He has given me eternal life, I still experience depression, anger, happiness, frustration, insecurity, and all of the other emotions I experienced prior to salvation. We do not know who the writer of the psalm is in today’s lesson. About one third of the psalms are anonymous and this is one of them. The author exhorts us to praise God for His creation. It is in God’s creation that we find evidence of intelligent design that leads to the inescapable conclusion that God is. The Apostle Paul declares that non-believers are without excuse seeing that creation itself is evidence of God’s existence. One of the reasons we can praise God for His creation is that in it He has given us evidence of His being that invites us to seek Him. Through the wonders of the intricacies of creation we develop the desire to seek and get to know the Creator. There is no wonder that many who, by occupation, study, teach, and/or use the principals of the physical sciences become people of faith. We are constantly confronted with evidence of intelligent design. We oftentimes struggle to find our place in the universe (or creation) when we don’t accept the Creator’s existence. But when we do accept His existence, then creation itself will draw out of us praise for the Creator. Even we ourselves are living evidence when one considers a human being. As another psalm declares, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. It does not say that we have evolved to become something of high degree but we have been made so by a benevolent Creator. When the Psalmist in our text mentions the waters of the deep, I believe the reference can only be to great seas and even oceans. I recall how intimidating it felt to look at an ocean for the first time. It seemed as though it could come upon the land and grab us and pull us to our death at any time. I was convinced that day that man can build boats and other sea-going vessels but we could never tame the ocean. It was simply too vast. Some of its depths reach down for miles. There is another world of creatures who call the depths their home. All of this is of God’s doing. So magnificent are these things that the question was asked “What is man that God would be concerned about him?” When we consider the universe as we know it, all of humanity is a small amount of physical matter in comparison to all created matter everywhere—and we still don’t know the bounds of that! But God has declared that we were created in His image and after His likeness. God has promised mankind dominion over the physical world. We have a ways to go to achieve that but on our way we should praise God for creation. Robert C. Hudson December 7, 2016