“Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering Yourself with light as with a cloak, stretching out heaven like a tent curtain” (Psalm 104:1-2).

Psalm 104

H ow did the cosmos form? How did it begin? Was it always there, the “eternal constant,” as Darwin surmised? What about the mystery of the four seasons of the year? What causes the earth to annually and predictably adjust from summer to spring to fall to winter? Was there a worldwide flood? If so, what happened to all the water that covered the tallest mountains by 15 cubits? Where did the water go? How did the water dissipate in just half a year?

If I told you that the psalmist, writing in about 1,000 BC, knew the scientific answers to all the above and wrote them all in one psalm, would you be surprised? Would you believe in divine inspiration?

“Covering Yourself with light as with a cloak, stretching out heaven like a tent curtain” (Psalm 104:2).

“It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in” (Isaiah 40:22).

Recent data from NASA, published on April 8, 2017, established the fact that the cosmos indeed had a beginning. From the moment of supernatural inception, it expanded “like a giant curtain being drawn across the heavens,” a trillion trillion-fold in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

Indeed, an all-powerful being stretched the giant curtain instantly across the heavens to defy all laws of naturalistic science.

“He established the earth upon its foundations, so that it will not totter forever and ever. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters were standing above the mountains. At Your rebuke they fled, at the sound of Your thunder they hurried away. The mountains rose; the valleys sank down to the place which You established for them” (Psalm 104:5-8, emphasis added).

With countless fossil deposits all over the earth and under the earth, from tiny bacteria to 80-foot-long dinosaur skeletons, all buried instantly under layers of mud, sand, and gravel in a cataclysmic, worldwide flood–the evidence of such a flood exists on all seven continents. Some sea-going fossils have even been discovered as high as 29,029 feet above sea level in the Himalayan mountains (i.e., near the summit of Everest). There is only naive doubt that the flood is factual and historical. Furthermore, a National Geographic study published on September 13, 2000, produced evidence of a several-thousand-year-old human habitation 300 feet below the surface of the Black Sea 12 miles off the Turkish coast. Coupled with the evidence of vertical and semi-vertical layers of hardened sediment in the geology of the giant Rocky Mountains, the Himalayan Mountains, and the Apennine Mountains, as well as the deep sedimentary-layered canyons in Arizona, Peru, Australia, and Namibia, the evidence bears witness to an instant raising of the mountains and the lowering of the seas at the end of the flood, causing the waters to rush through the hardened layers of mud, sand, and gravel in the valleys below.

“He made the moon for the seasons; the sun knows the place of its setting” (Psalm 104:19).

Finally, the moon is credited with two-thirds of the “precision effect” of the 23.4-degree tilt of the earth’s axis. It is the critical, exact tilt of the earth’s axis that causes the four seasons vital to the production of crops that feed our hungry planet. Twenty-five hundred years before Copernicus correctly positioned the moon as a satellite of the earth in the earth’s rotation around the sun, how did the psalmist know the secret of the “precision effect” and the moon’s influence on the seasons?

Surely the psalmist had the divinely inspired news release many centuries before science even had a clue.

• Psalm 104:1-24 – “Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty. … O Lord, how many are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all; the earth is full of Your possessions.”
  • Does the greatness of God increase your awe of and reverence for Him? How does it affect your worship of the Creator?

 

• Romans 1:19-20 – “Because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”
  • What is Scripture saying about humanism, naturalism, and atheism?

 

• 2 Timothy 1:9 – “Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.”
  Titus 1:2 – “In the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago.”
  • The work of astrophysicists Stephen Hawking, Jane Hawking, and Don Page proved that time was also created. Astrophysicist Dr. Hugh Ross stated on April 16, 1994, “If you prove time had a beginning, that it was created, it eliminates all theological positions but Jesus Christ.” What does such coordination of Scripture and science tell you about God and the Bible?

 

• Psalm 147:5 – “Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite.”
  1 Corinthians 1:25 –“Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
  • Hugh Ross also stated that in terms of the gravitational constant of the cosmos alone, God must be 100 trillion trillion times more precise than man. (That’s just 1 of 41 fine-tuned characteristics necessary to have a planet that supports life as we know it on earth! If all 41 factors were included, there would not be enough space on the page to print all the zeros in the measure of God’s “fine tuning” precision.) How does that incredible wisdom of God affect your view of Him? Does it make you want to draw closer to His shepherd’s heart in wonder and awe?

 

• Jeremiah 10:6 – “There is none like You, O Lord; You are great, and great is Your name in might.”
  1 Chronicles 16:25 – “For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; He also is to be feared above all gods.”
  • The visible size of the universe is 93 billion light years in diameter, encompassing more than 100 billion galaxies with at least 100 billion stars in each galaxy. But that’s only what we can observe. No one knows the vastness of our starry “home.” Describe the “God of Wonder” in your own words.

 

• 1 Chronicles 29:11 – “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and You exalt Yourself as head over all.”
  • Why is it futile, pointless, and intellectually impossible to put God in a “man-sized box”?
    • In your personal worldview?
    • With a challenge you’re facing in your life today?

John 13:15 – ​“For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.”

From today’s scripture, how does ​THE​ Shepherd inspire ​you​ to shepherd ​your​ flock?

“O Lord, how many are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all; the earth is full of Your possessions” (Psalm 104:24).

A​doration, ​C​onfession, ​T​hanksgiving, ​S​upplication