Oh Lord, how manifold are your works. In wisdom have you made them all. The earth is full of your creatures.
– Psalm 104:24
On, this whole chapter is breathtaking. Verse 24, in many ways, sums it up.
Psalm 104:24 Is a Reflection on God’s Creation
So I’m just going to read different parts of the chapter all under the umbrella of this verse, Psalm 104:24, I’ll read it again. “Oh Lord, how manifold are your works. In wisdom you’ve made them all. The earth is full of your creatures.” So just think about the manifold works of God, the wisdom of God, and the earth full of creatures made by God.
So Psalm 104 just lists all the things God has done in creation, all the works he’s done in creation. He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters. God makes the clouds his chariot. He rides on the wings of the wind. He makes his messengers winds. The wind is a messenger of God. His ministers’ a flaming fire. Fire are his ministers. He set the earth on its foundations so that it should never remove. The earth is solid because God made it that way.
“You covered it with the deep as with a garment, the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke, they fled. At the sound of your thunder, they took to flight.” Thunder comes from God. Water flees from God. “The mountains rose. The valley sank down to the place that you appointed for them.” When you think about the Grand Canyon, when you think about the Himalayan Mountains, when you think about low valleys, it’s all because God appointed these mountains to be this high, these valleys to be that low. “You set a boundary that they may not pass, so they may not again cover the earth.”
And then, well just to verse 10, “You make springs gush forth in the valleys. They flow between the hills.” Just picture, rivers flowing in valleys between hills and mountains. That’s all because God is bringing about to, give drink to every beast of the field. The wild donkeys quenched their thirsts. So all the beasts of the field and wild donkeys, they’re drinking from the streams that God provides them.
Psalm 104:24 Speaks of God’s Awe-Inspiring Majesty
I could keep going on and on. You got to read the whole Psalm, Psalm 104. And then you get to verse 24, “Oh Lord, how manifold are all your works. In creation, in wisdom, you’ve made them all. The earth is full of your creatures.” So can we just praise God in light of this Psalm? Just look at creation around you or picture creation around you today and say to God, and let’s say to God, “Oh Lord, how manifolded are your works.
When I look at the trees around me and see animals, I see the sun, the moon. When we see stars at night, when we see rain falling from the sky, when we hear thunder, when we see lightning, when we see little insects, how manifold are all your works. In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures, and we worship you as the Lord over all creation. As the creator of everything, including us.”
Oh, even as we think about the wonder of your works in creation, we’re in fresh awe of the fact that you have made us unlike anything else, in all creation, in your image with the ability to have relationship with you, the ability to talk to you and hear from you, know you, and walk with you and worship you. Oh God, our creator, the creator of all the beauty and wonder we see around us in creation. We praise you, we exalt you. God, we love you. We worship you, God. And we praise you Jesus for making a way for us to be restored to relationship with you. God, we praise you for salvation, that you have made possible for the promise of new creation to come a full and final redemption of this world.
Praying for the Parsee People
Lord, we pray that you’d help us to spread that gospel to all the peoples of the world. God, we pray today specifically for the Parsee people of Iran. God, we pray for the 170,000 of them. There are no known followers of Jesus, no known Christians. They don’t know your wisdom in Christ. They don’t know you as their creator. They’ve not been restored and reconciled to you through faith in your son Jesus Christ. God, we pray for the spread of the gospel of Jesus to the Parsee people of Iran that they might know you, praise you, and glorify you. Oh God, we pray all of this and light of your manifold works and wisdom and earth full of your creatures. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name according to Psalm 104. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
