Pastor Fredo Ramos: Today we come to Psalm one zero four. Let all that I am praise the Lord. Oh, Lord, my God, how great you are. You are robed with honor and majesty. You are dressed in a robe of light.
You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens. You lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds. You make the clouds your chariot. You ride upon the wings of the wind. Verse five, you place the world on its foundation so it would never be moved.
You clothe the earth with floods of water, water that covered even the mountains. Verse 10, you spring you make springs pour out water into the ravines so streams gush down from the mountains. They provide water for all the animals, and the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The Lord has not forgotten about donkeys. Verse 13, you send rain on the mountains from your heavenly home.
Verse 14, you cause grass to grow for the livestock and plants for people to use. You allow them to produce food from the earth, wine to make them glad, olive oil to soothe their skin, and bread to give them strength. There, the birds make their nests, and the storks make their home in the cypresses. High in the mountains live the wild goats and the rocks from a refuge for the hyrrhexes. You made the moon to mark the seasons and the sun to know when to set.
You send the darkness and it becomes night when all the forest animals prowl about. Then the young lions roar for their prey, stocking the food provided by God. Verse 24. Oh Lord, what a variety of things you have made. In wisdom you have made them all.
The earth is full of your creatures. Here is the ocean vast and wide, teeming with life of every kind, both large and small. See the ships sailing along and the Leviathan. In other words, the sea monsters which you have made to play in the sea. They all depend on you to give them food as they need it.
When you supply it, they gather it. You open your hand to feed them, and they are richly satisfied. But if you turn away from them, they panic. When they when you take away their breath, they die and turn again to dust. When you give them your breath, life is created and you renew the face of the earth.
May the glory of the Lord continue forever. The Lord takes pleasure in all he has made. The earth trembles at his glance. The mountain smoke at his touch. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.
I will praise my God to my last breath. May all my thoughts be pleasing to him for I rejoice in the Lord and let all the sinners vanish from the face of the earth. Let the wicked disappear forever. Let all that I am praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.
Man, what a song. Another one that begins and ends the same. Let all that I am praise the Lord. Now this moment for praise and this invitation to join the psalmist in praise today is rooted in the fact that God is intimately near his creation. God cares for his creation.
In fact, I'll go so far as to say he takes pleasure. Look at verse 31. The Lord takes pleasure in all that he has made. By way of reflection today, I want you to consider that Psalm one zero four is this amazing depiction, this detailed explanation of all the ways that God every day cares for the universe, cares for the world. From the wild donkeys to the sea monsters to you and your home today, God cares for you.
Even more so, God takes pleasure in you. Why is that important? Because on any given moment, as you and I come to the reality of our day, of who we are, the jobs we have, the people we care for, the problems in our lives, it is easy to forget that God actually takes pleasure in you. In other words, you make God smile. God is happy towards you.
He has love and joy in your direction. And it's common for us to wake up and not naturally feel like that today. And so what a opportunity for us to think about all the special ways we 're told here that God opens his hand. There in verse 28, you open your hand and you feed everything. Imagine that.
God is coming to you today, please, opening his hands, desiring to provide for you. And so Jesus, we hear you now inviting us to respond first with praise, with gratitude, and also with humility because God, you take pleasure in us. God, you actually like us. You don't just love us. You're not forced to love us.
You actually like us. And so would you help us to align what we know to be true in our head to be sensed in our feeling and in our hearts? Because you take pleasure in us, we can take pleasure in you. And so would you allow us, God, to live today, not just with obedience, but with joyful obedience. Not with just kind of this cold, I'm gonna do it because God says it, but I'm gonna do it because I enjoy it and God enjoys me.
And so would you live as God God, would you allow us to live today with freedom and with joy as we follow Jesus? We pray these things in his name. Amen.