Alright brethren, Psalm 104. There is the obvious thing stated
in this psalm that our Lord created everything and He upholds everything
and He provides the light and He provides the water and He
is the foundation. There is the obvious meaning
of this. But if that's all we see, we're
not going to get any spiritual blessing from it. And I want
you to see Christ in this. And so we've been looking at
this psalm and how the things God created, the earth itself
and the light and the water, how everything in it typifies
some aspect of God's salvation of His people. You know, He said
He created all things by Him and for Him. And they glorify
the Lord. Heaven showed His glory. They
said in Acts 14, 17, He left not Himself without a witness,
in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven, fruitful
seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. How many times
have you seen it rain outside and we had our plans, you know,
for the day or whatever and it rains and you murmured. You murmured. At least in your
heart. Disappointed that it rained.
You know God's preaching the gospel to us every time it rains.
We just got to have discernment to see it, to hear it. God's
preaching the gospel to us every time it rains. I hope we see
that today. Look here in verse 5. He said,
"...Christ laid the foundations of the earth that it should not
be removed forever." We saw last time that God our Father and
His Son laid the foundation by His everlasting covenant of redemption. That was the foundation. Christ
was slain from the foundation of the world. That's when. When
He entered covenant with the Father to save His people. Everything
that was created was founded on that covenant promise. That's
the word by which He upholds everything. And He's going to
hold this world in store until He's called the last of His elect
and that new creation that He made. by His blood is founded
the new heaven, the new earth, so that it shall not be removed
for eternity. This one is going to be dissolved
and burned up. It will be held in store till He calls the last
one, but then it will be the new heaven and new earth will
last forever, created in His righteousness. Now look at verse
6. It says, Thou coverest the earth with the deep as with a
garment. The waters stood above the mountains. When he says he
covers it with the deep, as with a garment, he's talking about
the waters. Everything was upon the deep,
the waters stood above the mountains. You know in the original creation,
Genesis 1.1 says, In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was
upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light.
And there was light. We come into this world ruined
in sin. Completely ruined in sin. Without
form and void. And darkness is upon the face
of the deep. That's us by nature. But by God's
covenant grace, the Spirit of God moves upon the face of the
waters. And God says, Let there be light.
And Christ the light shines. God who commanded the light to
shine out of darkness has shined into our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ
Jesus. And when he makes Christ our
light, then we behold what Christ did on the cross. And that's
when this verse also will remind us of Noah's day, the flood in
Noah's day. He says, Thou cover'st it with
the deep as with a garment, the water stood above the mountains.
That flood in Noah's day was God's justice. It was God's justice
upon the whole world. If you want to look at Genesis
6, look there at Genesis 6, and this is what the Lord said, and
this was so of all people on the earth then, And so of all
sinners on earth now, and only saved by God's grace, because
this is the natural heart in all men, the flesh, Genesis 6-5,
God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. And
that every imagination, that image nation, that image generator,
called our imagination. Every imagination of the thoughts
of his heart was only evil continually. Was that you before God saved
you? Was that you? That was me, only
evil continually. And it repented the Lord that
He made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.
And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from
the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing,
and the fowls of the air. For it repented Me that I have
made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord." God showed Noah grace when He chose him in Christ
and blessed him with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
before he made anything. That's when Noah found grace
in the eyes of the Lord. He showed Noah grace by making
Christ the light in his heart, giving Noah faith to believe
God. So He shut Noah up in the ark. He shut him up in that ark,
typifying Christ, all His people being in Christ and bearing that
flood of justice on the cross. That was the picture there. And
just like the Lord delivered Noah, It's one He chose, it's
one He loved, and His house, He delivered them into a new
world. He did it through that flood.
He delivered them into a new world, a new heaven and a new
earth, if you will, through that flood. Well, by Christ bearing
the flood of God's justice in place of His people, all His
people being in Him, and the Lord satisfying God's wrath,
He delivered all His people through that flood, through that curse,
to the new heavens and new earth. We were in Him, and when it says
He quickened us together with Him, while as yet we were dead
in sin. He's saying it's a mystical thing, it's a mysterious thing,
but we were in Christ, and when He quickened Christ and He arose
to the right hand of the Father and sat down, we did too, all
His elect people. He carried us into the new heaven
and new earth, just like He did Noah. Just like you did Noah. Now in Noah's day, for Noah's
sake and for the sake of every living thing in that ark, our
Lord made the waters subside. For their sake. And for every
living thing in that ark, He made the waters subside. Look
at verse 7. If thou rebuke they, the waters,
fled, at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. Genesis 8,
verse 1 says, God remembered Noah. and every living thing,
and all the cattle that was with Him in the ark, and God made
a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged." That's
what our psalmist is saying. At thy rebuke, the waters fled.
At the voice of thy thunder, they hasted away. Well, on Calvary's
cross, when Christ Jesus thundered with His voice and said, It is
finished, the flood of God's justice fled away from God's
people. The waters subsided. The justice
of God was settled. The wrath of God fled away from
God's people. God remembers Christ and remembers
His people in His Son, just like He remembered Noah and all the
living in that ark. He remembers Christ and remembers
His people in Christ, and the waters of judgment shall never
again fall on anyone for whom Christ died. Never again. Because Christ satisfied it.
Now, those same waters, those very same waters that were once
poured out in justice on all men, that drowned all men in
this world and all the living in this world, those same waters
are sent by Christ from the mountains to the valleys, providing all
living creatures with needed water. Look at verse 8. They
go up by the mountains. They go down by the valleys into
the place which thou hast founded for them. The waters do. Christ sends the water of the
Word. He sends the good news of Christ's satisfaction. That
same justice that once was a curse to us and caused us to fear the
torment of constantly trying to do, to do, to do, to please
God, That same justice now, just like that same water, is good
news to us. Because that same justice demands
you must be delivered, you must be saved, you must be carried
into the new heavens and the new earth. The same water. That's
the same water. God never made any new water.
I rejoice in that water. I'm thirsty and I rejoice in
it. I want to drink it. But do you think the people in
Noah's day rejoiced in it? When they saw it falling, and
falling, and falling, and falling? But brethren, that same justice
that fell on Christ, and fell on Christ, and fell on Christ,
now, because Christ satisfied justice, that same water is good
news to you who believe, because it demands your salvation. When
God smelled Noah's sacrifice, when Noah came out of that ark,
God smelled his sacrifice. God entered a covenant with Noah
and He promised. He said He would never again
destroy the world with water. And He set the bounds of the
waters. Verse 9. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass
over, that they turn not again to cover the earth. He said,
hitherto shalt thou come, but no further. Here shalt thou proud
waves be stagged. This is what God said to the
waters. He set a bound for them. They're not going to flood this
whole world again. Holy God smelled the sweet savor of Christ's sacrifice
on the cross. He smelled that sweet savor and
He's satisfied. He's satisfied. And He's promising
His believing child that the flood of justice shall never,
ever again cover us. He set the bounds. The waters
of justice are going to flow again. But He set the bounds,
they're not going to touch His people. They're not going to
touch His people, except to declare us righteous. He said, this is
as the waters of Noah to me, for as I've sworn that the waters
of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I've sworn I would
not be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee. Justice. have been poured out on Christ
in place of His people to the full satisfaction of Holy God. Full satisfaction of Holy God.
What do you think it takes to please God? Perfection. Absolute perfection. Hell will
be eternal because men will never satisfy in hell. It will go on forever. Christ
satisfied God in three hours on the cross. He satisfied the
justice of God. And so He set the bound. And
the bounds are His blood and His righteousness. Justice can't
touch His people. But instead, Even as the Lord
sends the same water and He provides life, that same water that destroyed
everybody in Noah's day, that same water falls and waters your
plants, and waters the grass of the field, and waters the
crops that we eat, and provides us food, and provides all living
things life and nourishment. Well, just like that same water
that was such a curse to the people in Noah's day, well, this
same water, this Word, this Gospel, it's life to you and I who are
saved by Christ's redemption. It's life to us. Look here in
verse 10. He sendeth the springs into the
valleys, which run among the hills. They give drink to every
beast of the field. The wild asses quench their thirst. By them shall the fowls of the
heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches.
He watereth the hills from His chambers, and the earth is satisfied
with the fruit of Thy works." Oh, brethren, our Lord Jesus
Christ The water of the Word. The water
of the Word. You've got to have water to have
life. You've got to have water to be cleansed. The water of
this Word. The good news of Christ accomplished
redemption. Christ Himself. This is the life.
This is the life. He is the life. and His Word
is life, and His Gospel cleanses, and it purges us. The thing we
have to be purged from, the filth that we have to be purged from,
is this notion that somehow we can please God. This proud notion
that we're good enough that we can please God by something we
do. That's not so. That's not so. That's why God sent His Son.
Only God can please God. God came in the flesh to please
God. And because He did please Him, and because He did satisfy
justice, and because He thoroughly honored His own law, now He's
sending forth this water of this Word, just like He sends the
rain from heaven. to give you life, and to nourish
you, and to grow you, and to keep you. That's what He's doing.
That's what He's doing. He sendeth the springs into the
valleys. We're in the valleys, and you
just picture the mountains, and you picture the streams coming
down out of the mountains, They come down into the valleys, and
they go into the meadows, and they water the grass, and the
grass grows, and the living beasts, they feed on the grass, and he
says it grows the cedar, and that's where the fowls of heaven
have their habitation, is in the cedar. All this that he's
doing. You go out and you have a garden.
You take your water hose and you go out there and if it doesn't
need water, you don't water it. But if it needs water, you go
out there and water it. Our Lord waters this whole garden. It's just like you go out and
you got your little potato patch or whatever, you're going to
water that little planter box you got. Well, that's about the
size of this place is to him, and he's watering the whole thing.
Literally, with the rain it comes down. But in that rain it comes
down. Behold the Gospel of our Lord
from His heavenly mountain, from His throne in glory where He's
now ascended. See Him sending the rain of the
Word, sending the Gospel down to His people. and watering us
and giving us life and making us to grow. That's what we see
in what He's doing. Just like every beast of the
field and the fowl of the air, Christ sends the water from His
chambers. Look at that last verse, verse
13. He watered the hills from His
chambers. That's His dwelling, where He
is. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of Thy works. Our Lord, He said, consider the
sparrow, consider the lilies, consider the raven. They are
just feeding on what God provides them, what He gives them. And
they are satisfied. Well, when you consider this
water coming down, the water of the Word coming down from
His chamber, that's not the way it's going to be sent. It's Christ
sending it. And when He comes and He waters
you and He sends this Word into your heart, this will be the
sure result. You're satisfied with the fruit
of His works. Satisfied. Satisfied with what
He accomplished. Satisfied with what He did. Satisfied
with all His wonderful works. And to His people, Christ is
life. Look at verse 14. He says, He causes the grass
to grow for the cattle, herb for the service of man, that
He may bring forth food out of the earth, and wine that make
glad the heart of man, and oil to make His face to shine, and
bread which strengthen a man's heart. Everything in that is
what Christ is to us. Christ is our life just like
the grass and the herb is life to cattle and to man. He is our
life. The Gospel of Christ is the wine
that makes glad the heart. Where does it come from? How
does a grape vine grow and produce grapes from which wine is made?
It all starts with the Lord sending the rain from heaven. He's the
Gospel who sends this water into our hearts and it's His blood,
it's the Gospel of Christ that's the wine, the best wine that
cheers your heart. The oil He sends, He causes the
oil to make the face of man to shine. This is from Him. He's the oil of the Spirit He
sends to give us a new heart, to make our face shine with gladness
because of what He's done for us, to know Him as He is. We
feast upon Christ our bread. He says He gives bread which
strengthens man's heart. Just like we wouldn't have any
wheat growing and have any bread made if He didn't send the rain,
we wouldn't know Christ the bread if He didn't send the water of
the Word, the Gospel to our heart and make us know Christ is our
living bread, our life. I was thinking about this as
I was looking at this. I never thought about this before,
but we see our own depravity, the depravity of those God saved,
in the fact that whenever the Lord founded the nation of Israel,
where did He found them? In a dry desert. In a dry desert. And brought them through a dry
wilderness, a dry desert. But here's salvation in Christ.
You know where He said He was going to take them and where
He took them? The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land,
a land of brooks, of water, of fountains, and depths that spring
out of valleys and hills. He brought them into a well-watered
land. God finds us in a desert, in
a wasteland wilderness, and we're the desert, and he brings us
into the well-watered plain where his gospel is. You think about
regeneration and life that he creates. He said in Isaiah 35.7,
the parched ground, that's what we are by nature, the parched
ground, the parched ground shall become a pool. And the thirsty
land springs of water. In the habitation of dragons
where each lay shall be grass with reeds and rushes. This is
the doing of our Lord. Antipathizing Christ our life,
coming down in his gospel like rain and dew. God says, I will
open rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of the
valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land
springs of water. Isn't that what our Lord said?
He that cometh to me out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water. And this is all by our Lord sending
the rain of the Word into our heart and giving you life. Giving you life. When David was
suffering his trials in the wilderness, he was praying. And you remember,
this is what he said in Psalm 63. He said, O God, Thou art
my God. Early will I seek Thee. My soul
thirsteth for Thee. My flesh longeth for Thee in
a dry and thirsty land where no water is. to see thy power
and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary." That's
what he was longing for. Thirsting after Christ, His righteousness,
to behold Him. So, because Christ is the full
provision of His people, because this has all been accomplished
by Him, satisfied God, He's going to send the gospel
to His people. It pleased Him to save through the foolishness
of preaching. He's going to send the water.
Every time you see it rain, you think about the gospel. And through
that preaching of the gospel, He's going to save His people.
He's going to save His people. Look at verse 16. The trees of
the Lord are full of sap. The cedars of Lebanon, which
He hath planted, where the birds make their nests, the fir trees
of her house, and the high hills of refuge for the wild goats,
and the rocks for the colonies." He calls us trees of righteousness. He calls us cedars of Lebanon,
the planting of the Lord that He may be glorified. And in that
cedar of Lebanon, immovable roots running deep into the earth,
by the rivers of water where it's fruitful and it's growing
and it's strong and it's full of sap. Our Lord said, He spoke
through Paul and He said, that you might be rooted and grounded
in faith. Trust in our Lord. And He fills
you with sap. He fills you with the Spirit
of God. And He makes His house, His habitation, His people a
habitation. Just like He's the habitation
for all His people, He makes His church a habitation for the
fowls of the air. All these different descriptions
of these animals. I think all the different animals that were
in the ark. God saves all kinds of sinners. All kinds of sinners. And by nature, we're all just
beasts of the field. That's what we are. But there's
all kinds that He saved. But for every one of them, we
got one salvation, we got one life, we got one righteousness,
we got one hope, we got one faith, we got Christ. Christ. And by Him sending this gospel,
He makes His people fruitful. He makes Himself to be our refuge.
So the next time, brethren, that we have plans, outdoors or what
have you, and it rains, Rather than murmuring about the rain,
hear the gospel in the rain. Go back and read this psalm again.
Compare this with what our Lord does by grace in sending us the
gospel. And remember, that same rain
that's fallen, that same rain that's fallen today, that's the
same water that fell in Noah's day. Same water. And this gospel is coming down.
It's not coming as a curse to us now. It's not coming as bad
news to us now. All before we knew Him, we didn't
like to hear He chose a people, because we thought we could do
the choosing. We didn't like to hear that Christ is the only
righteousness of the people, because we thought we could keep
the law and satisfy God. I'd do it. We didn't like to
hear, it wasn't good news to us that the Spirit of God is
the only one that produces fruit, because we thought we were fruit
producers. We're a pretty good fruit inspector. And we have
to be taught, we have to be taught over and over, we're the dry
parched land. We're the dry parts land. We're
as dependent on the Lord to send this gospel and His Spirit and
all His blessings to us just like all the beasts of the field
are absolutely dependent on the Lord. You think about this. You
think of places. He says this. We're going to
see this at another time. There's places that man has not
been on this earth. There's places in the ocean we've
never been to on this earth, and there's creatures that live
there. Who provides for them? The Lord does. There's places
in the wilderness where no man's around that, you know, we get
to thinking, oh, we got to do this and that to the environment
to save it. There's places where the cattle
are calving And He's making them calf, He's providing them food,
He's providing the rain, He's keeping things growing, He's
keeping them alive. The Lord's doing all that. That's
how dependent we are every single day ourselves on Him for this
thing of salvation. Just that dependent. And it's
all through the water of the Word. Remember what Moses said? Moses said, Give ear, O ye heavens,
and I'll speak. And hear, O earth, the words
of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the
rain. My speech shall distill as the
dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, as the showers upon
the grass, because I will publish the name of the Lord. Ascribe ye greatness unto our
God. Remember how this psalm starts?
Look back up there at verse 1. Oh Lord my God, Thou art very
great. Very great. Ascribe greatness
to God. This is what we're declaring. If all we get out of a verse
like this is that God is the Creator who created all things,
that's a great thing to know. It's a great thing to know. But
we've got to see Christ. We've got to hear Christ. We've
got to know the only salvation we have is Him. It's Him. It's only Him. Look how that
next psalm starts. O give thanks unto the Lord,
call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people. Sing
unto Him, sing Psalms unto Him, talk ye of all His wondrous works. Glorify ye in His holy name. Let the heart of them rejoice
that seek the Lord. It's His strength. It's His works. This is our rain from heaven. This is our nourishment. This
is our life. Christ Jesus. Alright brethren,
we'll observe the Lord's table now and remember Him.