Psalm 104

 

⁰¹          Bless the LORD, O my soul!

                       

O LORD my God, you are very great!

                        You are clothed with splendor and majesty,

⁰²          Being arrayed with light as with a garment

                        stretching out the heavens like a tent.

⁰³          Laying the beams of Your chambers on the waters;

                        making the clouds Your chariot;

riding on the wings of the wind;

⁰⁴          Making Your angels spirits,

                        and Your ministers a flaming fire.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Christ – served by Angels

For the Lord’s Day:  the 19^th of January 2003

 

Hebrews 1: 7

 

“Of the angels he says,

 ‘He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.”

 

Introduction:  There does appear to be two levels of interpretation in the context of this lovely hymn to God’s creative purpose and providence.  The German evangelical, Delitzsch hints at this idea in his opening comments:  “God’s rule in the kingdom of nature, as there in the kingdom of grace, is the theme of praise, and as there - the angels are associated with it...”

 

In the first few verses of Hebrews, the Apostle carefully identified Christ as the Maker of worlds. And it is in this sense that that New Covenant author would demonstrate the superiority of the Son to the angelic messengers of the Most High God.  So even as we pursue that underlying theme – let us enjoy the majestic chorus composed by David – as Spurgeon would credit the poem:  “We have no information as to the author, but the LXX assigns it to David, and we see no reason for ascribing it to anyone else.”

 

If we would look carefully at the whole of this psalm, we can sense a sevenfold outline of the creative power being demonstrated poetically.  And while the cadences of this creative emphasizing poem do not follow the creative ordering of Genesis precisely – nevertheless it remains a most wonderful hymn of praise concerning the work of Creation and thereby it becomes an impressive Ode to thus worship the Creator God & Son Himself.

 

“Bless the LORD, O my soul!” begins the poetic psalmist.  Remember, the psalmist usually opens his prayers with an appropriate address to the Sovereign Creative Lord and King of the cosmos.  And unlike the naturalists of human tradition, the psalmist will not mistake the glories of creation for the God-head Himself.  No indeed, in the simplicity of the opening request the Creator is first addressed before being praised and honored and gloried in the descriptive prose drawn from the ongoing witness of nature itself to the higher glories of nature’s God Himself.

 

And how are we blessed in the best sense of this Psalm?  Isn’t it in the humble realization that behind the grand design of nature that we are permitted to glimpse and glorify the Designer Himself?  This is why the secular humanists so vehemently deign to keep “intelligent design” out of every school curriculum at all costs.  Because the very premise that design must be founded upon the higher authority of a Designer.; not only will they suffer not the very Name and concept of God, they will also deny any hint that nature may have behind it any Other whose presence may thereby be derived.

 

Development: “Bless the LORD, O my soul!” the psalmist prays, so that he and we might see the greater glories of our God and King behind the scenes of the ongoing presence of nature itself.

 

”O LORD my God, you are very great!  You are clothed with splendor and majesty,” The psalmist is not fooled with the natural thoughts of fallen mankind.  He is informed by the greater Spirit who would shine through the far lesser glories of Creation itself.  The delightful simile introduced here is enhanced with a seven fold expansion in the immediate verses that follow.  And all of this poetic and literate beauty to prove the one thought expressed in these four verses:  the absolute greatness of the Person of God!  In fact it is the very splendor and majesty of the created order which makes visible the very attributes and character of the essential God over and above Creation.

 

And how is this “splendor and majesty” ascribed and described?  Let us work through the sevenfold display of wonders.  We begin with the concept of the God of heaven and earth being enveloped or: “Being arrayed with light as with a garment.”  Calvin tells us that “in comparing the light with which he represents God as arrayed to a garment, he intimates, that although God is invisible, yet his glory is conspicuous enough.  In respect of his essence, God undoubtedly dwells in light that is inaccessible; but as he irradiates the whole world by his splendor, this is the garment in which He, who is hidden in himself, appears in a manner visible to us.”

 

A few years ago, there was a tawdry movie of a fictional scientist and team who achieved human invisibility.  At least the movie had one thing right in its detailed character study of what a fallen human could and would do with invisibility!  The Bible verse “God is light” was the first verse I can remember from Sunday School when I was but two years old.  Of course, by the grace of God I have moved on and up in my understanding, but the ongoing nuances of that first experience in understanding the greatness and otherworldliness of the Creator God was foundational in my spiritual development.

 

The second phrase here in this psalm portion is this: “stretching out the heavens like a tent.”  To the ancient patriarchs as well as to the contemporary Bedouin and even our own assembling warriors – the coverings of tent cloth mark out the personal space which is set aside for our shelter against the elements and our temporary domestic abode within the wilderness of the Middle East.  We may take this phrase to mean precisely that God thereby defines some sort of a limit to the areas inhabited and given over to mankind.

 

It has long been known that people living on the Great Plains, traveling on the vast seas or living amidst other expansive, however majestic panoramas – will suffer emotionally from just the sheer size of it all.  Therefore, a tent serves very well as a definitive space, not only giving us necessary shelter – but also some emotional stability as well.

 

Remember, that we are not studying the true science of how God gathers and orders the whole cosmos, but poetically seeking to fathom what we can make of the incredible natural glory displayed so that we may well know that HE IS!  With that said, we may better survey the third phrase of the psalm portion:  “Laying the beams of Your chambers on the waters” 

 

Calvin explains the sense of this verse spiritually in these well chosen words:  “David now proceeds to explain at greater length what he had briefly stated under the figure of God’s raiment.  The scope of the passage is shortly this, that we need not pierce our way above the clouds for the purpose of finding God, since he meets us in the fabric of the world, and is everywhere exhibiting to our view scenes of the most vivid description.”

 

I am reminded of Francis Schaeffer’s short history of philosophy and theology.  In describing a two-tiered cosmos divided into that area where God’s true essence resides in heaven and the lower realm where all nature and men reside, Schaeffer described the natural philosophy of the Greeks as seeking to penetrate the cloudy screen to thereby anticipate and comprehend the real world that exists above, beyond and around this place in the grand order where we reside.

 

In that same two-tiered cosmos, Schaeffer will tell us what the Greek philosophers did not discover was given by revelation to Moses and the other ancient prophets in Israel alone.  The “chambers on the waters”  Here may be understood as that dividing point perceived and truly appreciated by the philosophers even though they were not finally successful in penetrating to the hidden secrets of the Almighty Himself.

 

The next two similes we may take together:  “making the clouds Your chariot; and riding on the wings of the wind” While not as high in altitude to the previous layer, nevertheless even down to our own day – primitive people who had no higher perspective from aerial or space photography would suppose in their myths that God traveled above the cloud cover, even as many frequent flyers do today.  My own grandmothers did a good job of confusing me when I asked them about the natural phenomenon of thunder.  My maternal grandmother gave me the Germanic and Dutch version that heavenly beings were bowling.  My fraternal grandmother announced that the rumblings were from heavy war wagons, or chariots were being mobilized to storm the earth with rain and lightning.

 

Of course, by investigating the natural order as God created it, we know better today, but the simile is still accurate in describing the ultimate control that God retains over even the minute sources of rain drops.  I still remember the story of a farmer long dead who was converted by the fact that the long prayed for rains stopped at his line fence.  He quickly repented his linguistically creative condemnation of the recent prayer meetings for rain which he had avoided on purpose because he would not be caught up in those religious superstitions!

 

Certainly we well understand that the Lord allows the rain to fall on both wicked and righteous alike, but every once in a while He does indeed draw a line in the sand and thereby limit the forces of the weather.

 

In the first Desert Storm of another earlier decade, the prevailing desert winds which usually blew toward the coalition forces from the enemy territory suddenly shifted just a few hours before the 100 Hour land war.  More than anything else – that weather phenomenon kept the Mad Man of Baghdad from using his bio-chemical weapons directly against our advancing troops.  May we hope and pray that the righteous hand of the Almighty will once again provide some measure of protection of our troops as they prepare for another military storm to be unleashed in the same areas.

 

Application:  The last verse in our text today is one that the Apostle to the Hebrews would use to argue the greater superiority of Christ over the Angels.  While some authors would ignore the implications of the LXX text which underlies the report of Hebrews 1:7, the symbolic and spiritual weight of the Greek text does indeed add another dimension to the whole scene being played out before us in the grand creative design being described in Psalm 104.

 

While the creative forces of the Triune God are certainly the object of the whole psalm itself, at the very least – the active spiritual agents of the God-head are mentioned in the ordered context of natures design.  Our sixth and seventh phrases in the first four verses read thus:  “Making Your angels spirits, and Your ministers a flaming fire.”  Now, we have to remember in the context of the simile here, that the biblical words here translated as angels and spirits can just as easily be translated as messengers and winds.

 

In the context of the original hymnology of Psalm 104, we should read messengers and winds, but as the hymn was handed down and later understood for its second spiritual sense angels and spirits would be more appropriate.  Well do we understand that the natural wind can speed ships, birds, storms and rain clouds on their way.  In the higher sense explained by Jesus in the third chapter of John, so is the wind blown where it wishes, and the sound is heard, “but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

 

John Owen tells us on Hebrews 1: 7 that “the providence of God in disposing and using angels in his service is meant here.  God employs his angels and heavenly ministers in producing those winds, fire, thunder and lightning, through which he executes many judgments in the world.  … ‘He makes (or sends) his angels like the winds, or like a flaming fire,’ making them fast, spiritual, agile, powerful and effective to accomplish the work they are appointed to do.”

 

Now let us suppose you are displeased with a UPS, FedEx or other delivery person.  Yes you might let them personally know you are irritated.  However, you are more likely to pick up the phone and make certain they will hear of your displeasure the minute they return to base.  I realize that my point is very crude, but it is to the point.  The One who sends the messenger is obviously mightier in power and standing than the messenger himself.  So what better proof do we need from the mighty power of God demonstrated in the creative work of Christ to prove His now completely obvious superiority to the angels?

 

Thereby we may be instructed and realize the correct order implicit in all of creation and even within the Church itself.  And dare I, in a Reformed congregation admonish one and all that neither I, nor the elders and not even R.C Sproul or John Calvin has the last word on what God would say and do?  Sometimes we seem to get a little carried away in our affectations and affections around here and we would do well to know that all of God’s messengers are like so many moths – so easily consumed in the fire of God’s higher importance and presence.  So let us all the more count everything loss except for Christ Himself who we all know is revealed as far better than all the angels and messengers in God’s Kingdom of the Spirit.  Amen.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

PREACHING RESOURCES

 

Calvin, John:  Commentary on Book of Psalms.

Delitzsch, F:  Commentary on the Old Testament – Psalms.

Spurgeon, C.H:  Treasury of David.

The Westminster Confession & Catechisms.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Permission granted to redistribute unedited versions with this notice.

http://www.tulip.org/Hebrews/Heb024.htm

To Subscribe or Unsubscribe go to:  http://www.tulip.org/trf-list/