You all have been on my heart and mind greatly. I love this time together because you are in a very, very unique position in the Lord's work. You have unique access and unique opportunities to be salt and light. And I know that the field is difficult. Not only challenges inherent in the discipline, but even challenges inherent in the workplace.

And so I am just so thrilled to be of any kind of encouragement to you. And really when Ty Denae asked me if I'd be willing to speak again, not only was I eager, but I had a passage in my mind and I just prayed that she'd allow me to do it.

And so this has been weighing on my heart for basically many years, but particularly the last year. And I wanted to be as encouraging to you as it has been to my own soul on behalf of you. And so to that very end, shall we open our time in a word of prayer?

Our God and Father, I do thank you for what you have done, for who you are, for your immense genius and your immense wisdom and the glory of the scripture and the glory that from the scripture shines upon and illuminates the work of creation. And I thank you for the brothers and sisters here who are endeavoring with all their heart to honor you.

And we ask that as we go through your word now, that there would be great encouragement, that there would be great refreshment, that there would be great renewing of the mind so that people would leave here all the more excited to do what you have positioned them to do and given them opportunity to do for your glory, with the full confidence that they are honoring you, with the full conviction that what they are doing is that which is utmost worshipful to the Lord Jesus Christ.

May that be captured through an inadequate vessel, but may you through that be glorified mightily. And we ask this not for our sake, but so that your wisdom and your honor and your compassion and loving kindness would be magnified now. In your name we pray, amen. Just by way of introduction, this is highly unusual for me, I'd like to recount kind of two anecdotes to help us frame what I'm about to talk about.

I usually don't ever tell a story and much less too, but I do feel the need in order to situate us properly. And the first story actually happened at a conference just like this one. I was standing in the back and a gentleman came up to me and he started to talk with me and related that he was just so discouraged, not just by the workplace he was in and the loneliness that was there and the opposition that he faced, but even in the work itself.

And he didn't mean that he was coming into roadblocks or obstacles or problems that he couldn't solve or queries that he couldn't answer. He just was wondering, is this even worth it? Is this even honoring to God what I'm doing? And he wasn't doing anything unethical to be clear.

He had just wondered, can this even be used for the glory of God or not? That's what he was wondering. And when he said these things to me, my heart broke for him. And I wanted to encourage him because I know the sciences can be challenging and I want those fields and STEM and the like to be encouraged to know that there is a way and there is a reason why God is glorified, not just that we are salt and light in the workforce, but even in the work itself, even in the work itself.

And along that very line, I was, here's a second anecdote, standing in line at graduation this past year and a dear brother of mine, his name is Paul Twist, came up to me and said, "Abner, we haven't been able to talk all semester." And I said, "Yeah, I know." And he said, "You know, we've both been really busy." And I said, "Yeah, yeah, I get it.

And I know you're about to go in there for graduation." I said, "Mm-hmm." And he said, "But can we just have a conversation right now?" And I thought, "Okay." And they're like, "Chow, stand here, face that way." And Paul's like, "Paul, you're supposed to be over there." But he said, "Abner, I just think we've got godliness all wrong." And when he said that, I just stopped him and said, "Paul, it's graduation.

Do we have an issue? What do you mean by that?" And he said, "Often we emphasize what godliness is not, but sometimes we fail to remember all that godliness should be." And what he meant by this was that sometimes we just think godliness is avoiding certain things and doing other things, but we fail to remember that godliness is the full enjoyment and full approach to every single thing in our lives.

There is a way that every single experience, every single encounter, every single occasion and opportunity should be redeemed for the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's true godliness. And by just emphasizing don't do this, and okay, here are three things you need to do, there is this huge gap of an entire area or areas of your life that actually we haven't been thinking about how to live godly in those areas.

Often we call this, in theology, the sacred-secular dichotomy. We say that there are some things that are sacred, going to church, praying, reading your Bible. Those are the holy things, those are the things prescribed by scripture, and that's it. And then everything else is secular. And not only have we divided life that way, we've even implied then that the Bible has no relevance on those secular so-called areas.

We need to remember that everything should become sacred. Everything should become sacred. Yeah, you could make something secular, that's true. That wouldn't be right though. Everything should be done for the glory of God. And when you put these two stories together, the struggle of this one scientist brother in Christ that I was speaking of, and Paul twists his bombshell on me at graduation, you begin to see that there is a tremendous need, a tremendous opportunity to remind us that there is godliness in our discipline.

That it's not just, even though it's absolutely important, amen and amen, to be salt and light, faithful witness, people of character, people of integrity, in our workforce, in our learning, in our education, amen and amen. But there is also worship that can and must happen in the work itself.

It is given by God. The difficulty we often have because of the battles that we struggle with in our culture and in our society and circumstances is that we tell scientists, engineering, those in technology, those in math, about the wrong way to do things and not to do those things and we warn about it.

And yes, it is clear. There are the categories that we call special revelation, general revelation, and knowledge. Special revelation is like your Bible where God is abundantly clear. He's revealing very detailed propositions about the way this world is and who he is, that which you could never know on your own, and that is special revelation.

And then there is also general revelation, we understand that as well, which is that God through creation as an entirety, as a whole, has divulged infallible truths about himself. Namely, that he exists and he is powerful and even allowing us to understand that there is right and wrong, but general revelation is general for a lot of reasons.

One, because it is general in its scope, it covers creation in total, it's general in its content, it is talking not about all the different specific, particular, detailed truths of God and the gospel, but just that he simply exists and he's really powerful and you and I are bad.

That's all that you know. That's very, very general, and it's general in its effect. It's general in its effect because people suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And so it's general in every sense of the word, beginning, middle, and end. It's scope, it's content, it's consequence, and it's general, but it still exists.

It's enough to condemn you, it's never enough to save you. So you have special revelation and general revelation, and in all those things God is still revealing. But then you have a final characteristic, a final category, and that is the inverse of it all, and that's the category that we call knowledge.

Unlike revelation where God is revealing, God is declaring, God is disclosing, knowledge is what you and I figure out. It's what you and I discern, and it is, and it can be very specific, but it is not inerrant. It is not necessarily infallible. It is not necessarily always correct because we're the ones figuring it out.

And the danger that can sometimes happen, and this is what we always have to warn about, is that we take our knowledge and we say, "Well, I'm observing things about creation and isn't general revelation about creation? Okay, so what I observe now is equal to general revelation." And then we're like, "And general revelation has the word revelation, so that must make it the same as special revelation." And so those are the two things, and so now what we've done is we've taken what we have observed and by a series of leaps and bounds we have made it equal to what God has said, and he knows for a fact because he designed it that way.

That's the danger that we always face. That's the danger inherent, that we elevate knowledge to the level of general revelation and then elevate that to the level of special revelation. It's true. That's the dilemma of how we get so many theological issues, whether that be creation or other related factors in the whole equation that we're dealing with.

Nevertheless, while we can warn against these things, and they have been warned about, and so I'll just keep my comments to that, so often we haven't told and explained, but this is why science glorifies God. This is why this thing we call STEM and all that is embraced in it can't be done as a noble enterprise unto the Lord.

This is why he designed it that way. Put it this way, we are so concerned, and as a theologian and as a leader, I am concerned that we don't put knowledge to the level of special revelation, amen. We forget, but special revelation should be driving our knowledge, and we forget that side of the equation.

What my goal is for this afternoon, and I have no idea what time, okay, the clock over there is perfectly blinded by the light. I just like it. I just appreciate that so much. Thank you, Ty, Denae, for doing that. That way I have no ... I'm always on time.

But my goal for this afternoon, as long as the Lord allows us, is to go and give you a starting point. It's to go and say this, yeah, knowledge never trumps special revelation, amen, but for that very reason, if you start with special revelation, you're going to be driven to realize that there's a God-glorifying way to do knowledge.

There's a God-glorifying way to do knowledge, and that text that helps us know that and helps us capture that is Psalm 104. Turn there with me to Psalm 104. It is noteworthy that Psalm 104 through really 107 is part of a series of passages. It really is a part of a series of passages, and you can even hear it.

The final line is hallelujah, praise, yeah. The Lord is being so praised that the psalmist just concludes everything with an adoration of him, and he's so caught up in the emotion of it, he not only expresses it, but expresses it with a shortened form of God's full name, because he's so caught and compelled by the truths therein.

But this is not just linguistically tied together as a series of psalms. If you stop and think about it, Psalm 104 deals with creation, Psalm 105 deals with the life of Abraham, Psalm 106 deals with Israel's history, and then Psalm 107 deals with God's loving kindness all the way through.

Basically what Psalm 104 to Psalm 107 is, is it's a kind of a history book, a total recounting from the beginning all the way through of all that God has done for his people. This is a combination, a collection of psalms that is intentionally woven together in that way.

And within that, Psalm 104 in discussing creation, in discussing that beginning, you can already start to see the structure. It's not hard to figure out, and the amount of points for this message should be obvious. How many days are there in the creation week? Seven. Guess how many points are in this message?

Seven. Why? Because day one, God made light and dark. Verse two of Psalm 104, wrapping yourself with light as a cloak. Day two, separating the sky and the sea. Well, notice what happens. He lays up beams in the upper chambers, walks on the wings of the wind, makes his angels the winds and his ministers a flaming fire.

We see day two. How about day three, where he separates the dry land from the water? He founded the earth upon its place, verse five. He covered it with the deep as a garment. There are mountains that are going up and down, and there are waters so that they don't pass over a certain boundary, verse nine.

It actually even continues in verse 10, and falling with the springs that flow throughout the earth. That's all day three, the water and the dry land. How about day four, where he creates the sun, moon, and stars, the lesser and the greater lights? Well, you can see that in verse 19.

He made the moon for the seasons, and the sun knows the place of its setting. How about day five, with the sea creatures and such? Well, look at verse 24, 25, 26. You have the sea, great and broad, creeping things are without number, and there are ships even there, and the Leviathan is there.

That's the sea. How about day six, with people and animals? Verses 27 and following talks about how all people and animals wait for God, wait for God to give them their food. What about day seven, where there is the Sabbath rest, and everything is blessed, and to be holy to God forever?

Well, look at verses 31 and following. It says, "Let the glory of Yahweh endure forever. Let Yahweh be glad in his works." What is this? Psalm 104 is just recounting the seven days of creation. That's what it is. That's what it is. Now, on the one hand, we can make this point, and it's worthwhile.

Sometimes people think that Genesis 1 is poetry, and they want it to be poetry so that it's not historical. Okay, even though it's not poetry, there is a point to be made. Go to a text like Psalm 104, which is poetry, and it's still what? History. It's still historical.

The genre doesn't determine the content of what is being asserted. Just because you tell your wife, "Roses are red, violets are blue, and I love you," she doesn't say back to you, "Well, you put that in poetic genre, so I don't know if that's historically true." I only accept propositional statements.

That's what I only have on my Hallmark cards. Ten reasons I love you, period. Now, we don't do that. Just because a genre is a certain way doesn't determine its content. The author determines by the way he chooses his words and the way he articulates things and portrays things, whether something is figurative or historical, abstract or concrete.

In Psalm 104, the way it is worded, and even that there are days, and the days are correlated, and the days are chronological, and all these different things are an indication that Psalm 104 is affirming, yes, God made the world six days, rested the seventh. That's true. Psalm 104, as poetry, is even affirming that, and that just reinforces the whole notion of how we need to interpret our Bible.

True, on the one hand. But on the other hand, we might ask the question, "Hey, we already got Genesis 1. Why do we need to hear about seven days all over again? I already read it once. I got it the first time. Why do we need it again? And why are you putting it in poetry?" Good question, and I love this, and this is the point of the passage.

So crucial, because Psalm 104 isn't just repeating Genesis 1. It does so, and it does so to reinforce the point of the nature of Genesis 1. True, but it's not just repeating it for the sake of repetition. What the psalmist, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is doing is he's walking us through each day of creation, and he's saying, "Did you think about what God made on that day?

Did you think about all the ramifications that are true because of what he made on that day? Do you think about all the properties, and all the characteristics, and all the attributes that are designed carefully in what he made on that day? Do you realize that all that God is going to do through what he created on that day?" And what we start to realize is exactly what the text says, Psalm 104 verse 24, "How numerous are your works, O Yahweh." Here's the key phrase, "In wisdom you have made them all." Creation in six days, God makes everything that will be leveraged for everything that happens in his plan.

In six days, everything from skies and trees to animals and man and everything is created in a certain way with certain unique properties that will carry out every single thing that ever happens in human history in his plan. That's genius. That's genius. If I gave you six days, and I said, "Assemble everything you need that you will ever encounter, and in fact that all people will ever encounter for the rest of their existence, would you be able to do it?" If I gave you 600 days, no.

I mean day six, we're just forming the committee to figure it out. And we realize God is a genius. God is a genius. He speaks it, and everything is created in such a fashion that it will have ramifications for every single day for the rest of the days of this world.

And it has to happen a certain way. And here's the punchline, brothers and sisters. Your disciplines, they are aimed to do this in and of themselves, in and of themselves to discover the genius of God and reflect it back to him. That is what you do every single day in your acts of discovery, investigation, analysis, contemplation, experimentation, whatever it is.

You are just doing exactly what the psalmist here is doing. You are plowing into the depths of the genius of God and reflecting it back to him. Special revelation doesn't say suspend knowledge. Special revelation tells us exactly how to do knowledge, and that knowledge must glorify God. He set it up that way.

He set it up that way. And so with that in mind, surprise, surprise, we're just going to be walking through the days of creation with the psalmist and thinking about how the psalmist thinks about these things and then learning from that. That's what we're here to do. The glory, the nobility, the honorability of all these disciplines is that we discover the genius of God.

That's what we're about. And so with that in mind, well, where do we start? The beginning, day one. And this is in verses 1 through 2a, verses 1 through 2a. The opening reminds us that the outcome of contemplating anything in creation, and that's what we all do here. We contemplate something in creation, something that is created.

It is this, "Bless Yahweh, O my soul, O Yahweh, my God, you are very great." We acknowledge that God is the highest good. That is why we say, "Bless Yahweh," and we love him for his greatness, and we love him for his goodness, and we acknowledge this. We acknowledge this because we understand special revelation as it is illuminating knowledge that God is glorious.

Notice the phrase, "You are clothed," as it says in verse 1, "with splendor and majesty." The word "splendor" refers to the innate impressiveness and gravitas that God has, that he is someone who is so mighty and so weighty in and of himself. He is overwhelming in and of himself, and "majesty" refers to the fact that he has thereby an effect on everything else, overcomes everything else.

No one can resist him. No one can oppose him. All fall down before him, and so who he is in and of himself, and his effect on everybody else, that is the sum of his glory. You are clothed with splendor and majesty. But here's the issue. We talk about God's glory, and we even struggle to come up with the words to describe the glory of God, and so God helps us, and this is what ties in with the first day.

What did God create on day one? Let there be light. We know that. So verse 2a, "wrapping yourself with light as a cloak." How do we know, how can we envision, how can we illustrate or make an analogy between the glory of God, which is so hard for us to express, so hard for us to explain?

God gives us a help, and it's in how he designed light, how he designed light. The psalmist, he knows by now how God has associated his glory with light. You can understand. How did God guide the people of his people from Egypt? He was a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire.

We understand that. There's light. And in Genesis 15, when he's coming to Abraham, and he puts the guy out and puts him to sleep, so to speak, he comes as a pillar of light. Ezekiel chapter 1, when it's describing the glory of God, it says there were flashes of light going to and fro, talking about the speed of God's presence.

By the way, that word "flashes of light" in Hebrew, in modern Hebrew, is actually the word that they use for electricity, electricity. It's fascinating how they're conceiving of these things. In Revelation 1, there's dazzling light. In Daniel chapter 10, there's overwhelming purity of white, brilliant light. And in the transfiguration, of course, there's a lot of light.

And in Isaiah chapter 9, one of the clearest demonstrations of the nature of light, it says this, "The light has shone. The land is pierced in darkness, but those in darkness have seen a great," what? "Light." Light is invasive. Light is powerful. Light shines. Light cannot be put out, John chapter 1.

Light is fast. Light is flashy. Light is resilient and brilliant and can be overwhelming. All of those are descriptors of light. And those are only descriptors of light because God made it that way on day one. Day one. You can't have that unless God didn't design it that way.

God designed light with all of its properties on day one. And when we study light in any fashion, in any way, whether that be from electricity to light itself, any kind of energy, what we start to realize is the absoluteness of all of those characteristics that I just mentioned, all of those facets that I just described, we start to quantify how absolute those things are.

And with that, then we understand the absolute majesty of the glory of God, the majesty of the glory of God. You see, God, to help us understand himself better, on day one, when he said, "Let there be light," he assigned light all of these different properties just so that we could study them, just like the psalmist is doing here.

And through them, one application is to actually understand the glory of God better. Every facet, even its mystery, I know you all know better than I about these things, but that light is a wave and a particle, and which one is it, and all these kinds of questions that people have, yeah, that's the point.

That amplifies exactly God's message about himself. You can't contain him. You can't even contain light, which is the analogy of him. What makes you think you can contain him? God designed on day one that which helps us to grasp things that are very hard for us to grasp, namely, his glory, his glory.

Here's another one, day two, day two. Speaking of grasping things, on the second day, we know that God made sky and sea. And so, with that, the psalmist even instructs us on the nature of God as reflected in this. God, as it says in the end of verse two, he stretches out the heavens like a tent curtain.

That's the aesthetic aspect of God, that he can craft the world as if a tent curtain, taunt and smooth, and with a specific kind of curvature. One of the cool things about when you look at the world, and you look at the earth from space, and I know Jeff Williams is here, and he'll chide me on this simple, simple observation, but it's so smooth.

It's not wrinkly. I can't draw straight lines or curved lines. I can't draw anything. So, and it's just, you know, you just feel like it's everything's a wave, you know, and when I try to draw waves, they become smooth. It just doesn't work. But God can shape things so that it's perfectly curved, perfectly smooth, no ruffles at the end.

That's a sign of his craftsmanship. That's a sign of his brilliance. And we say, "Well, yeah, how else are you going to make it?" He could have made it a lot of other ways. He could have, but he didn't. He designed it that way to demonstrate something about himself, and the more we study about those matters, and the more we realize how brilliant that is, that's just studying the genius of God.

That's just studying the genius of God. It's not just that. It's not just his aesthetic aspect. It's also his strength. He lays the beams of his upper chambers in the waters. The idea is that he keeps the sky from falling, so to speak, and ensuring that it just doesn't perpetually rain, things are contained, things are stable, and that's indicative of his strength.

When we understand how atmosphere works and all these different things, what we are magnifying is the genius of God and how he designed things strong and stable, and even his own power. We are learning about the God we cannot see, speaking of which, continue on, he sets up the clouds to be his chariot.

Clouds move fast. They're swift, and that's why they're God's chariot. We learn about the swiftness of God, but we don't just learn about the swiftness of God. Here's another one. He walks upon the wings of the wind. We learn that though he is not visible, he is invisible. That doesn't mean he's not present.

Do you remember what Jesus recalled in John chapter three, that the spirit, he moves as he wills, just like the wind. You feel the wind, but you don't see it. You feel the wind, but you cannot see where it came from. In the same way, there is a supernatural realm.

You might not be able to see it, but you have every analogy to comprehend it, and God in creating all the meteorological properties that we see on day two, the sky and how it works, he is helping you to understand what you cannot see by virtue of what you can see.

That is the genius of God. The more we study these kinds of things, the more we learn about that which we wouldn't know on our own per the revelation of the word of God. By way of illustration, he makes his angels the winds, and his ministers flaming fire. Angels in the supernatural realm can go quickly, and not only can they go quickly, but they are equally effective.

The notion of the word flaming here, referring to actually like lightning, it refers to that which can consume anything. In Deuteronomy 32, a flaming fire can consume a mountain. In Joel 119, it consumes trees. In Psalm 97 verse 3, it consumes all of God's enemies. This is a fire that cannot be quenched.

We know that, especially in Southern California, fire can have those kinds of properties. Even lightning can have those properties. Even when you study lightning and such from the sky, we can be impressed by the statistics. Lightning in an average thunderstorm releases more energy than a plutonium bomb. We think about that.

People are worried about nuclear wars. There's a nuclear war every time there's a thunderstorm. That is just an illustration where we study something, and it helps us to know the depth of God, to understand his careful design, and to realize this, that yes, you may not know that there ...

You might not be able to see the supernatural realm, but it's there. Wind is there, even though you can't see it, and even more, it's very effective. It's so effective that it is that like lightning. It is that like fire, all-consuming, and so God, in his design of days, in his design in six days, he ingeniously crafts every single property, every single aspect, every single characteristic to carry out not only his purpose, but to reveal things about himself.

He does that, and for those who have the scripture, they can behold the genius of God. Well, there's day three, and day three, I wanted to get here because it demonstrates the breadth of God's purposes, the breadth of God's purposes. This is found in verses five through 18. Day three, we know God created the land and the sea, speaking of which, that's why it opens in verse five with, "He founded the earth upon its place so that it will not shake forever and ever." God made dry land a certain way so that it would be that way, and in fact, you and I presume that every single day of our lives.

We're presuming it right now. Why? Because we're here. We're sitting. We're seated, and no one's just ready to jump because the land is about to collapse from under them. The properties of the dirt, the properties of concrete, the properties of rocks and geology and such, we understand them, and the more we understand it, we realize the genius of God to do that, and there are other implications that we'll cover in a second.

But God didn't just create on the third day dry land. He dealt with the sea. He dealt with the waters. Look at verse six. "You covered the land with the deep as with a garment," and at this point, with this word covered, we might be wondering, "Is this talking about the flood or is this talking about day three?" Good question.

And the question continues. The waters were standing above the mountains. In the flood, the flood waters came above the mountains. We know that. End of Genesis chapter seven. So is this talking about the flood or is it talking about day three? We understand that God had power even in the flood.

At your rebuke, they fled. It's amazing to think about. If you go to the ocean and you just yell at it, it doesn't do anything for you, but when God says one word, the waters move, and you say, "How do you know that?" Well, day three, evidently it happened.

The flood, evidently it happened, but how about when Jesus was on the Sea of Galilee? He just says, "Hush," and it's done. The waters hushed. That's how powerful God is. That's the genius of God. That's the properties by which He dealt with. But at the sound of your thunder, they hurried away in alarm.

Only the waters can be commanded by God and seized by fear at who He is. The mountains went up. The valleys went down. Again, is this talking about the flood or day three? Because yeah, in the flood, we can see some of these tectonics happening, and to the place where you found it for them, the water is properly allocated, and you set a boundary that they may not pass over so that they will not return to cover the earth.

Two observations here. One is, and I'm always astounded by this, that God sets a boundary for water and it just doesn't cross. We do that all the time, and it just doesn't work. You have a boundary. It's called a pipe. For some reason, the water just seems to cross it all the time.

You have a boundary called a levee, and then they just break. But God says, "You shall not pass," and it never does. It never does. Absolutely profound. So that they will not return to cover the earth, and here's the question once again. Is this talking about day three or is it talking about the flood covering the earth?

I thought that would be the flood. Which one is this? And the answer is yes. Which one is it? Day three or flood? Yes. Say why? Because when God designed water on those days and formed it and formed the land in certain ways and gathered one to one place and the other to another place all on day three, He designed it so that the flood could happen.

Think about that. This is why I tell my students, "You know, if God was like me," which we're thankful He's not, and He said, "Wouldn't it be hilarious to design the water like Jell-O?" You can't have a flood if the water is like Jell-O. It won't be called a flood.

You know, it would just be called wobbly or something. It won't work. The reason the flood happens and the reason it's linked with day three is because God designed everything about water to have certain properties so that that would happen. And the more you understand the properties of water and the more you understand the properties of land, the more you see and understand the genius of God in doing that specific formulation.

That's what you learn. And you say, "Wow, well, that doesn't sound very nice though. I mean, God just designed water to kill people. Great." Hey, before you jump to that conclusion, look at verse 10. The same water that was used to destroy the earth is the same water used to provide for the earth.

Isn't that profound? And it's the same properties of water. Notice this. He sends forth springs in the valleys. They flow between the mountains. Why could the waters kill everybody? Because they flowed. Why do the waters provide for everybody? Because they also, what, flow. That's the genius of God. That's the genius of God.

They give water to every beast of the field. The wild donkeys quench their thirst. God designed water so profoundly, so brilliantly that it can both destroy and give life and all kinds of life and, in fact, all kinds of places of life. Notice verse 12. "Above them, the birds of the heaven dwell.

They give their voices among the branches." How do you get water all the way up there? Simple. Verse 13. He gives water to the mountains from his upper chambers. Water has the unique property that it can evaporate and re-precipitate. That is part of the genius of God. You say, "Well, like, you know, water is a liquid." Yeah, but it also can be a gas, and it can also be a solid, and all of those things allow water to do what God intended it to be.

In one entity, in one object, God designs every single property, every single nuance of water, and in one moment, he says it, and it is, and all of these applications come from it. And so the earth is satisfied with the fruit of his works, verse 13. And verse 14, what also happens on day three is, because of the way water works and the way land works, now you can have grass grow, and grass grows for cattle and vegetation for man's cultivation to bring forth food from the earth.

Now you can have sustenance, and not just sustenance, verse 15, joy. All of this is because of how God designed water, and how he designed everything to interact with that water so that man's heart can be made glad, and his face would glisten more than oil. But here's something fascinating.

Not only what happens on day three are all the grass that grows, and all the plant life that grows, that can have so many applications from keeping you full in your tummy to giving you joy in your life. It makes good for people who are just hungry, and people who are foodies.

Everything above, it is good for all of them. That's the genius of God. That's how he designed it all, in one instant, to have that many ramifications. But notice this, and I love this, this is so profound, verse 16. He didn't just design grass that day. He designed trees.

He designed trees. I'm bad at so many things. I'm also, one of the additional things I'm bad at is construction. Anything involving building stuff. If you give me a plank of wood and say, "Cut it in half," you will have no plank of wood by the end of the day, because I'll just keep trying to cut it in half.

Well, that wasn't in half, but I'll try to cut it in half again, and I think that's even a math equation. But here we are. The trees of Yahweh are satisfied, and notice what it says here. The cedars of Lebanon, which he planted. Why does God make a mention of the cedars of Lebanon?

The cedars of Lebanon are the trees that made the temple. The trees that made the temple. Do you realize, and here's what the psalmist is reminding us of, God didn't just say, "Trees," and then a random plant ensues. He made each tree with its certain properties intentionally on day three, including a tree that could be used for the construction of the temple.

He had that in mind. Take it one step further. Day three, when he made a tree, he made a certain kind that could carry the weight of the body of his son, so that when he died on the cross, it would carry him. All on day three. God doesn't just create random things.

Everything is perfectly designed to carry out all of his purposes, and yes, people who work in engineering and STEM can appreciate the tensile strength, the density, all the different factors that go into finding good wood for construction, all that, but what you are discovering at that moment is the genius of God.

What you are discovering at that moment is the genius of God, because God designed it that way for those kinds of purposes. He didn't have to make it that way, but he did, and he did for very specific purposes, all purposes, but even these purposes here, and that illustrates that nothing in this universe is random, and all of it is for him.

That's why this can not only support things of man's efforts and God's, of course, superintended efforts, but even the efforts, verse 17, that's where the birds build their nests and the storks' home is in the fir trees. Not just the strength of a tree, but the height of a tree.

All of it designed by God. All of it designed by God. Every single aspect of it designed by God for his purposes, his genius, all of that there. Verse 18 kind of closes out this section. It says, "The high mountains are for the wild goats. The cliffs are a refuge for the Shefanim." These are the different kinds of animals, the different kinds of creatures that live in the heights, and it's allusion all the way back to the fact that God made not only the waters on day three, but the dry land, and why did he make the dry land the way he did?

Simple, because it's a refuge. It's even a refuge for those who are in the most remote places. We live in homes, don't we? We walk on the planet, don't we? We do all these things assuming the ground is going to hold us up and that we're going to have provisions, and God made it that way.

So when you study anything from erosion to the composition of rocks in the mountains and everything, what you are studying is the genius way God made it so that it would do all that he wanted it to do, things that we presume all the time. You know, if God had made the entire world out of sand, on the one hand, you know, every day would be a beach day, I guess, but every day you wouldn't be able to survive because you wouldn't have a home.

You wouldn't have any stability. God made things a very certain way so that everything that can happen happens. That's what we learn from day three, the breadth of all God's purposes. It can even be for judgment or revival, all of it there. What about day four? What about day four?

Day four is the sun, moon, and stars, and we understand that, and it's not at that day to be clear that God made light. He made light on day one. Day four was the light bearers who organized all of this for all of light for the sake of time, and that's why in verse 19 it says this.

He made the moon for the seasons. The sun knows the place of its setting. That's the point, and so the psalmist read Genesis 1 very, very carefully. He understood that it wasn't just that God created light on this day. No, no, no, no, no. That's not what's going on at all.

It is that he created the light bearer to organize time, to organize time, and that matters. Time matters for animals. You appoint darkness so that it becomes night. The beasts of the field, forests cry out. The lions go after their prey. They seek their food from God. Verse 22, when the sun rises, they gather together, lie down into their dens, and man goes forth to his work and to his labor unto evening.

If you don't understand the value of time, realize this. What would happen if predators and us all were awake at the same time? You wouldn't get anything done. We wouldn't advance at all. Redemptive history, the rest of the biblical story would be, and then there was Adam, and Adam ran from a lion, the end, and then he had Cain, and Cain ran from the end, and Abel, the end.

I mean, that's all you would read about because you would just keep dying over and over and over and over again, but God ordained day and night and assigned animals and man different times so that we would be safe and that animals would operate a certain way and be provided for at the same time.

All of that's happening because of this. Time is so profound. Man goes forth to his work and to his labor until evening. Notice that time and the way that time is ordained by the sun, moon, and stars, even back then and now, shapes human industry. You say, "Really? Does time do that?" Oh, yeah.

Think about this. Think about how consumed we are with time, particularly in this land of America. Think about school. What do we have? Credit, hours. Everything's measured by time. If you don't think that that's enough, how about this? How do we describe food? You can go to fast food.

Why do we call it fast food? Because it's fast, hypothetically, which relates to what? Time. Why do we call a restaurant a restaurant? Because it takes a little bit more time so that you get a little bit of rest. How about how we calculate the hours that you have to work?

We calculate that by, inherently, time. Holidays are calculated by time. Retirement is calculated by time. Everything is dictated by time. And when did God ordain all that? He ordained it, of course, the very first day when He ordained evening and morning, and there's time. And He organized that time by the sun, moon, and stars.

Here's the profundity of God. When you look at astronomy, and you look at meteorology, and you look at just even the science of time, God ordained all of that a certain way in one day to organize everybody's life. He did it like that. And yet, you know how often you feel the effects of that?

Every single day. Because every day has time. Well, we've been through day one, two, three, and four. We've seen the glory of God reflected, the invisible made visible. We've seen God's multitude in His purposes on day three, and how He can just create water with its certain properties. We've seen it in day four, that He can create just a few entities that control and dictate all of human experience, and the world's experience, that's the depth of it.

And on day five, here we are, verse 24 and following, verse 24 through 26, here is the punchline of it all. The psalmist cannot contain himself anymore, and he says, "How numerous are your works, O Yahweh, in wisdom you have made them all." That's the absolute truth. Have you seen that God, in these things, in everything He has created, He's created it with wisdom.

Nothing is random. Nothing is by chance. Nothing is purposeless. Nothing is outside of design. No, He's actually designed it for certain purposes, and we are just catching up to how brilliant that design is, how brilliant that blueprint is. That's what science is. In wisdom, you have made it all, and He, that is the psalmist, just contemplates day five, which is the sea creatures and the sky creatures that are created, and here's what he says.

There is the sea, great and broad. I love going to the beach and just looking out into the ocean, because it is that vast. It's just so massive. It's so sweeping, and that magnifies God, because He alone designed it that way. There are creeping things without number, creatures both small and great, and we know that about creatures.

They're amazing to even understand the depths of the ocean. If you want a justification for marine biology, here it is, right here, because God created that for us to investigate. There the ships move along. If you want nautical engineering, here you go. The ships are there to explore it all, to enjoy it all, to engage in commerce, and here is what is profound.

There is the Leviathan, and the Leviathan is a dinosaur-like kind of creature, and it is the mascot of evil, a mascot of evil in the scriptures. It had that reputation, but at that time, and there seemed to have been the Leviathans at the time of the psalmist, the psalmist comments that you formed to play in it.

Yes, you might have seen this fearsome, terrifying creature that you're scared of, but for God, He just made that thing to play in the water. It's a big bath toy, and He just magnifies God. That's the genius of God. That's where you really understand something about God. You think evil is so formidable and so insurmountable, and for God, it's just His toy.

It's just to play before Him, because it's not even a rival to Him whatsoever. There are so many lessons to learn, so much to be impressed about, so much to be engaged in and to discover here, speaking of which, day six, day six, and now it gets personal and powerful.

What about man? What about animals? That's what was created on day six. Let me give you one word, maybe two, that help to describe some things here. Here's the first word, dependence. They all wait for you to give them their food in due season. You give to them, they gather it up.

You open your hand, they are satisfied with good. You hide their face, they are dismayed. You take away their spirit, they breathe their last and return to the dust. What does this show you? What is God demonstrating with His creatures? How dependent we are on Him. Do you know one of the most major lessons I think that you can learn, we can learn in studying this world, this creation, is how much we are not in control.

How much we are not in control. I grew up in a family of scientists, and so sometimes I've asked my family, "Well, what would happen if this happened or that happened? And why doesn't this experiment prove this, that, or the other? And what is always the case?" Well, in an experiment, in that environment, it's a what kind of environment?

Controlled. Everything presumes that we have to have control to make things work. And absolutely, that's the case, because you don't want some other situation or some other factor coming into play and messing up the equation. We understand that. But in the real world, there is no such thing in that way as the same controlled environment.

Why? Because we don't have that control. We don't have that control. And that's what makes science applied hard, and we understand that. And what do we learn here? God says, "That's part of the point." You start to realize, how do you know if this medicine's going to work? Well, that's why we don't say for certain, we just give a probability, don't we?

How do we know that this treatment's going to work? How do we know that this procedure's going to work? How do we know? We never give it for sure, because there are things outside of our control. When you look at human beings, and you look at people on this land, and animals on this land, we all wait for God.

Everything is God-willing. Everything is dependent on Him. And the more we study, and the more we know that we have to control things to produce scientific discoveries and outcomes and conclusions, the more we realize how much we don't control, how much is outside of our control truly, how much we depend on God.

I think one of the greatest fallacies, sometimes people think, "Oh, I've got science. I don't need God." What God reminds us here is if you really studied science hard, you would realize how much depends on Him, how much depends on Him. Lots is not in your control. If that was the case, you could run experiments not in a lab.

But there's a reason why we have to, because there's so much outside of our control. We are so contingent on Him. But here's something beautiful to think about, verse 30. You send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. On the one hand, this refers to both the birthing of animals and people.

That's true. And on the one hand, this can even refer to the rejuvenation of plants and such. That's true. God sends forth the breath of life, and things are made, and things are renewed and come to fruition. But on the other hand, this is crucial. This is so crucial.

With the language of created and with the language of renewed, we can't just be talking about resuscitation. We can't just be talking about a seed falls into the ground and grows up again. That is included and obviously referred to, but the description is pointing to so much more than that, and here's the logic.

The logic is illustrated by our Lord in John chapter 12. What does He say? But the seed must die in order to come back to life. That's the illustration of the what? The resurrection. And what we have here is the psalmist saying, "I know my God can raise people from the dead.

I know He can make them new creatures and renew them in that way. How do I know that He has that power? What gives me a taste of seeing that power?" He says, "I look in creation, and I see the God. If He can cause birth, He can cause new birth.

If He can cause a seed to go in the ground that dies and comes back rejuvenated as a plant, then He can do that with me too and more." What are God revealed here is not, to be clear, that creation just inherently tells the gospel. It's not general revelation as the same as special revelation at all, but rather this, that when you understand the truth of scripture and then you look at creation in it, you can see that the God who did one thing can do the other thing, that you can see the analogy, that you can see the correspondence, that you can see the illustration, that you can see the evidence.

You know what science should do? Science should give us the greatest confidence in the competence and the power of our God. Because we know what He has designed. We know what He has put together. We know what He has constructed, and if He did all that by one word, and all of that is so genius and all of that had to work a certain way to get outcomes and it couldn't have worked any other way, then that God is able to save souls.

That God has the most amazing power ever. Then we learn the worship of God, and that moves us from days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to day 7. Let the glory of Yahweh endure forever. What happens on day 7? God rests. He enjoys all of His works, and all works are sanctified.

They're made holy unto Him, and that's why the text doesn't just say, "Let the glory of Yahweh endure forever," verse 31, "Let Yahweh be glad in His works." That's the whole point of all this. Everything He made, He should have delight in. Everything He made, we should remember that we are revering Him.

He looks at earth and it trembles, He touches the mountains and they smoke. And here's the thing, for us personally, we don't just want God to be glad in us, but here's what we want to do to God, verse 33 and verse 34, so crucial. "I will sing to Yahweh throughout my life.

I will sing praise to my God while I have my being." Why does the psalmist talk so much about singing? Some people don't like to sing. They struggle with this verse. What does it mean that I have to sing? I only can sing monotone. Is that really counted as singing?

You know, you don't have tonal variation, all that kind of stuff. But everything that has breath, praise the Lord, singing is the usage of your breath. The breath is what designates you as alive. And what is the psalmist saying here then? I will use what uniquely shows that I am alive to honor my God.

It is the culmination of all that life is leveraged to the praise of God. That's why he wants to sing. He might not have been the greatest singer. He might not have been Pavarotti. We don't know. David, if it was David, he probably was, but what makes me alive should be there to give God glory.

That's why he sings. That's what's going on there. But it's not just what we do with our entire physicality and life. Verse 34. And this is what's so appropriate for all of us here. Let my musing be pleasing to him. The psalmist, what has he just done? Mused on creation.

Days one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And what he has done is he has thought about all that God did in those days and all the ramifications that have come about and all the careful design that happened to accomplish very particular purposes. It couldn't have happened any other way.

And he is magnifying the genius of God in all of those designs. This is the activity of everything in STEM. It is my musing. And what do we want it to be? Pleasing to him. You might wonder, "Well, what in the world is going on in verse 35? Let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more.

Why would you end with that?" Simple. Because this creation, God made for himself. And what do we want it to be? The way he always made it. And whether that be through judgment or whether that be through the gospel, we want it to be that way because that's the way it always was supposed to be.

And at that moment, and at that moment, our heart is really captured to what our God has done. In fact, it's captured to the purpose of all of this because what's the purpose of flood and what's the purpose of cultivating and allowing man to exist and what's the purpose of allowing us to enjoy creation and what's the purpose of God sending forth even his spirit and so that there can be rejuvenation and everything?

What is that all pointing to? What is that all providing demonstration and illustration of the reality that he redeems? That is all his goal in all of redemptive history is to do that. And if we really understand what God did on those first six days, then we have to say with verse 35 what it says because that's the entire point.

This is our father's world. It must in the end belong to him and that is our whole desire. And so at the end, at the end, the psalmist having just thought about creation in these magnificent ways, he says, bless Yahweh, oh my soul, bless Yahweh. You want to know why?

He says it at the beginning. He says it at the end because Yahweh is so amazing. But even more, he is agreeing with what God did in Genesis 1. What did God do? He blessed. He blessed and he is affirming. That is exactly who God is and what he has done in this world.

Because only one so genius, only one so good, only one so kind and coordinated, and only one who has designed all of this for such a redemptive purpose, that one is blessed. He blessed because that's true and we bless him to acknowledge that truth. Bless Yahweh, oh my soul, praise Yah.

That's the cry of every scientist in the end, amen? Shall we pray? Our God and Father, thank you. Thank you for this text which reminds us that all we are doing as those who investigate this creation is we are magnifying the works of God back on himself, that we are discovering the genius of God and exposing the genius of you in all the particulars and all the specifics that you have done to achieve every single purpose, every single end result.

We are magnifying and amplifying all of that back to you. And so these endeavors, they are inherently noble and they are inherently worshipped because of what they do in the discovery of all the glory therein that you have magnified in six days. Remind us of these things, oh God.

Help us to marvel at these things. It may be every discovery we make, every find that we have, we say bless Yahweh, oh my soul. Bless Yahweh because we are proving that indeed you are so blessed. In your name we pray, amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen.