VBX DAY 1

Day 1: God, The Creator - David Praised God the Creator

Main Point: God is the marvelous Creator.

During the first few months of COVID, my wife and I bought a pop-camper. And before you get the wrong idea, we bought a project. We’ve replaced most of it and covered the rest in duct tape, but the point is, we can go camping and we don’t have to sleep on the ground and it gets too hot we have an AC that we can turn on.

I decided to take a few pictures and some videos on one of our first trips and thought it might be fun to put together a short video for my kids to watch when they get older, well they LOVED it. So much so that now when we go camping, I document the entire experience and make a vlog for each trip. It went from a short video clip to a video with sound effects that is anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour.

And if I want the video to make sense, I have to be intentional when I shoot the scenes, otherwise the story doesn’t flow and it isn’t interesting to watch. So I spend hours editing videos and making backing tracks so my kids have something to watch and remember all the trips that we take. I want them to have something to look at to remember their child hood and that they had fun with their parents.

Have you ever made anything that you were particularly proud of?

Did you share your creation with anyone?

In a much bigger way, God gave us something to show us all that He made this place and He has a purpose for everything in it. He gave us His Word, we call it the Bible. It tells us stories about how God created the world and everything in it. It tells us about this man named Abram that God called out and started a new nation from his son.

It tells us about how that nation (Israel) went from a family to over a million people. Eventually God set this nation up with its own land and they were supposed to be there to show the other nations who God was, Israel was supposed to be set apart and different.

But what are nations made up of? People. And what do people do? They tend to want to be like other people… people gonna people, its just the way it is.

Israel decided they wanted a king… why?

(because everyone else had one and they wanted to be like the world)

1 Samuel 8:19–20 NIV

19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

Acts records it like this...

Acts 13:21–23 NIV

21 Then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. 22 After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’ 23 “From this man’s descendants God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus, as he promised.

A lot of history is summed up in those three verses, and this week we are going to unpack a lot of that history, but for today we are going to focus on how Israel’s second king, David, wrote songs about how great God was and all the cool things God made.

If you grab a bible and open it in the middle you’re going to be close to a book we refer to as Psalms, think of it as an ancient Israelite hymnal. David wrote a bunch of these, sometimes he was asking God hard questions, or telling God that he was sad or scared or felt alone, and a lot of them deal with how big God is compared to us and our problems.

Let’s look at Psalm 104 and see what it tells us about God.

DIFFERENT (1-5)

Psalm 104:1–5 (NIV)

1 Praise the Lord, my soul. Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. 2 The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent

3 and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. 4 He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. 5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.

There is no one like our God, He is unmatched in His ways.

CREATOR (5-9)

Psalm 104:6–9 (NIV)

6 You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7 But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;

8 they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. 9 You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth.

He created the earth and separated water from land, He rose the mountains and hills up from the ground and set everything in its place.

PROVIDER (10-18)

Psalm 104:10–18 (NIV)

10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. 11 They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. 12 The birds of the sky nest by the waters; they sing among the branches.

13 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work. 14 He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate— bringing forth food from the earth:

15 wine that gladdens human hearts, oil to make their faces shine, and bread that sustains their hearts. 16 The trees of the Lord are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. 17 There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the junipers.

18 The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the hyrax.

Not only did God create everything, He orchestrates parts of His creation to sustain other parts of His creation. The created the water and animals who drink it. He created the grass and the animals who are fed by it. God made us and He provides for us.

ORDERED (19-24)

Psalm 104:19–24 (NIV)

19 He made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. 20 You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. 21 The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. 22 The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens.

23 Then people go out to their work, to their labor until evening. 24 How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

God created the world and ordered it. He gave us time to keep track of our days, have you ever thought about how insane it would be to live out side of the structure of time? God gave us stages of each day and seasons of each year to help give us order to keep our lives from being complete chaos and disorder.

GIVER OF LIFE (25-32)

Psalm 104:25–32 (NIV)

25 There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number— living things both large and small. 26 There the ships go to and fro, and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. 27 All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time.

28 When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust.

30 When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. 31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works— 32 he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke.

God is so much bigger than we can imagine. Have you ever been to the ocean or a really tall mountain? How did you feel looking out at it? Small. God is bigger than all of it, and He sustains our breath and gives us life.

WORTHY OF PRAISE (33-35)

Psalm 104:33–35 NIV

33 I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. 34 May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the Lord. 35 But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the Lord, my soul. Praise the Lord.

David lays out all the great things that God has done and how God sustains His creation and gives us life, and David responds by praising God and seeking to honor God with his thoughts.

David understands that its not enough to say you love God and obey Him with your actions, your thoughts matter, your intentions matter. We’ll diver deeper into that tomorrow.

God gave us His Word to remind us that He is:

DIFFERENT - He is set apart and Holy, unlike anything else

CREATOR - He created us, and designed us for a purpose

PROVIDER - He provides for our needs

ORDERED - He brings order to our chaotic lives

GIVER OF LIFE - He gave us life and He sustains it

WORTHY OF PRAISE - He is worthy of all praise, above everything else in life.