“O Lord, how manifold are thy works!”

The unknown psalmist stands at the threshold of a new spring. The sweet zephyr ruffles his hair and pleasantly swirls through the new grass of spring. God sends forth his Spirit, and the earth is renewed. The creation is coming out of the death grip of winter, and there is the promise of new life and resurrection from the death of winter. The trees begin to blossom, grass and herbs again flourish, the birds return and build their nests, and the mountain goats and conies appear on the mountainsides. The coming year of plowing, planting, and harvest awaits him.

The psalmist knows not what the coming year will bring, but he knows this: God is active in his creation. He is active, as he has always been active from the beginning of the world and as he will be active to the end of the world. God is the God who cares for his creation. He holds everything in his hands and directs all things to the goal he has established in his eternal counsel, so that the coming year will be the unfolding and bringing to pass of God’s decrees.

As the psalmist surveys the wonderful works of God, he interrupts his survey with a noble exclamation: “How manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.”

An exclamation of faith.

An exclamation of praise.

An exclamation of trust in the Lord who made heaven and earth and who is our help.

An exclamation full of hope!

The psalmist can stand in the creation at the beginning of the year and have such hope because he fixes his eye of faith firmly upon God.

This psalm has been called the finest hymn in the whole psalter and the most perfect expression of praise in the entire book of Psalms. It is a psalm of praise to God. The theme is “O Lord my God, thou art very great.” The Holy Spirit develops that theme by rehearsing God’s manifold works in creation.

In this sublime survey of God’s manifold works, the psalmist begins where every believer ought to begin—with the scriptures. In fact, it appears that, whoever the inspired scribe was, he had the book of Genesis open in front of him, and indeed the same Spirit who inspired Genesis inspired this psalm in praise of God’s work as that is recorded in Genesis. The psalmist does not begin by looking at creation, but he begins by looking at what scripture says about creation. He learned first from God’s word. He does not subject scripture to his observations, but his observations are subject to scripture. He is a keen observer of creation, as we ought to be, but he starts by observing scripture and what God says about his creation.

Creation is an elegant book. That book should lead us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely his power and divinity, but that book is closed to us apart from faith and the revelation of scripture.

The sinful heart of man draws all the wrong conclusions from the creation. He holds the truth under in unrighteousness. He denies God’s account of creation in scripture and says that God made this creation in millions of years. Sinful man robs God of the glory that is due his name in creation. Changing the truth into a lie, unregenerate man worships the creature rather than the creator. When man denies God’s work of creation, he cuts off creation from God’s providential control and places himself outside of God’s law and word. Rejecting that divine word, a man shows himself to be an unbeliever and makes himself a fool in all his observations of creation, and his mouth grows silent in giving glory to God.

But the believer begins with God’s work of creation as that is revealed in Genesis 1 and 2. That revelation of God the believer receives by faith, and creation is the first in his long catalog of the marvelous works of God. So also the psalmist in verse 5: God “laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.” As an expert builder, God set the earth upon a foundation as the very beginning of his work of creation.

Moving through Genesis, the psalmist extols the work of God in the flood: “Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away” (Ps. 104:6–7).

In verse 9 the psalmist mentions God’s covenant promise to Noah and in him to the whole creation: “Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.” God will never again destroy the earth with a flood. There will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease while the earth remains.

For the preservation of his church, for the advancement of his cause and kingdom, and for the destruction of the wicked who inhabited his creation, God sent the flood to destroy the earth and at the same time to renew it. That redemption through the flood is both a picture of the destruction to come and a promise of renewal through that judgment.

By implication, then, the believer expresses his faith in the fall as recorded in Genesis 3. By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin; so death passed upon all, for that all have sinned. When the believer looks at creation, he does not see only beauty, but he sees also a creation groaning under the curse and waiting for the promised perfect redemption. He sees lightning and hears thunder and the lions roaring after their prey. He understands that there is death in creation, that God still hides his face, and that the creation is troubled.

With the right view of creation and the flood, the psalmist passes on to survey the works of God that he beholds. God sends the waters and showers, and by those life-giving waters the beasts drink and the wild asses quench their thirst; by the waters the trees grow and the birds have a home and a place to sing; and by the waters the earth is satisfied and brings forth her fruits. By that elixir God causes the grass to grow for the cattle, herbs for the service of man, wine and oil for gladness and beauty, and bread to give life to man. God plants the mighty forests of the Lebanese hills. In the trees the birds make their nests, and on the hills the mountain goats and conies have their fortresses.

God governs the seasons of the year and appointed the sun to rule the day. Oh, that we would see God’s faithfulness every morning in the rising of the sun and his faithfulness year to year in the changing of the seasons. God made the night as a time for the beasts, when the lions roar for their prey. Their roars are their seeking food from the hand of God every night. And God hears their roars and gives them food. The day belongs to man so that he can go forth and labor until the night comes again.

The psalmist’s eyes move from the earth and heaven to the sea, in which are the ships and great and small things, from the tiniest little creature to the greatest of God’s animals—leviathan, to whom God gives the oceans as his playground.

Overcome in the middle of his survey, the psalmist pauses for an exclamation of praise to God: “O Lord, how manifold are thy works; the earth is full of thy riches!” The psalmist could not possibly recount all the works of God, for there are not enough books in the world to record all of them. All of creation and every moment of history are God’s book unfolded before our eyes to declare his eternal power and Godhead.

Manifold works: a great richness, enormous variety, and vast scope belong to the works of God. Everything in heaven and on earth and in the sea waits upon him. The leviathan is God’s concern, but so are the conies that hide in the rocks. The movement of the sun is his work, but so is giving the stork a place to lay her young in safety. Giving to the lions their food, but also making the sun to rise so that man can work. In God all men live, move, and have their being. Every moment of time and all that they contain are his work, and all of those moments, forming one history, are his work. God created the world in the beginning, and he has never abandoned that world but has been active in it and still is to this day—all the unfolding of his decree.

Manifold works in the sense of great. How very great they are—beyond our comprehension, indeed, mysterious. God’s ways are very deep. He created a perfect world. He decreed the fall. He brought the flood, out of it made this world, and he will make another. Who can come to the bottom of that great mystery of creation, the fall, sin, the curse, redemption, and re-creation? God’s manifold works, then, which the believer observes from scripture, are creation and providence and redemption through judgment. The believer reads of them in scripture, and he believes them, and they govern his view of creation. It is God’s world. It is ruled and upheld by him from moment to moment, and all is held in existence for his sake and for his purpose.

God’s works.

“O Lord my God, thou art very great!”

“How manifold are thy works!”

“In wisdom hast thou made them all!”

Wisdom. Wisdom refers to God’s virtue according to which he works all things for the glory of his name in Jesus Christ. Wisdom is the name of Jesus Christ. He is the wisdom of God. “Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). “The firstborn of every creature…by him were all things created…all things were created by him, and for him” (Col. 1:15–16).

In relationship to God’s manifold works, this means that God created every creature and all things as one organic whole, so that the whole creation is as a tree with each of its parts in its particular place and each of the creatures serving the purpose of God’s glory in Jesus Christ. To be made in wisdom means that God had Jesus Christ in view in everything that he created, and God has Jesus Christ in view in everything that he does in creation.

So Jehovah created! Jehovah is the God over all. Jehovah created with a view to his covenant, and he is faithful in creation with a view to his covenant—the covenant that he determined to be revealed in the world through Jesus Christ, establishes with his elect people, and will perfect in the new creation when God shall be all in all.

The profundity of God’s wisdom is that he made everything in wisdom in order to reconcile all things to himself in Jesus Christ through the cross of Jesus Christ, so that through the way of sin, death, the curse, the cross, and redemption the creation might be the perfect, spiritual, and heavenly dwelling place of Jesus Christ and his elect church in the new creation.

All the earth is full of God’s riches. Riches means acquisitions. The whole creation is God’s by the act of creation, and all of creation was made in wisdom. God in wisdom determined the fall in order to acquire the creation, which is his and which he loves, in the highest sense of the word as a redeemed creation with the elect church at its heart through the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ. God would consecrate all to his glory through the heart, Jesus Christ. Through the blood of the cross, God reconciled to himself all things, whether things in heaven or things on the earth.

Then it makes perfect sense how the psalm ends: “Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more” (v. 35). Unbelief calls this jarring, insensitive, unnecessary, and harsh. But every believer who is consumed with God and confesses that in wisdom God made everything and that the earth is full of his possessions can understand the important and necessary connection between praising God for his manifold works and praying for the destruction of the wicked.

Jesus Christ did not die for all men, and God did not intend to save all men. When the believer looks at creation, he sees not only beauty but also death, that God still hides his face, and that the creation is troubled. Precisely in this the believer sees wisdom. He sees that God has firmly planted the cross of Jesus Christ in the middle of history in order that this whole creation might be redeemed with the elect church at its heart.

Thus elect believers see that the whole creation is destined to become the perfect dwelling place of the righteous with Jesus Christ and that out of that creation will be cast all adulterers, all whoremongers, all who love and make a lie, all idolaters, all rebellious, all who offend against God’s commandments.

As believers we see also the reason we have the use of creation and why we may live in creation and expect God to provide for us. It is because of Jesus Christ, who is God’s wisdom, by whom he made the creation and through whom he has become our God, so that if he provides for the lions and the birds, will he not also provide for us who are his dear children?

That we are able to see this and do see this are because God is our God, and he has made himself such in Jesus Christ our Lord. No man, woman, or child looks at creation and praises God except that God is his God. Not that many have not been enamored with creation. There have been many nature poets, but man worships the creature rather than the creator. The Greeks said, “O Zeus.” The Romans said, “O Jupiter.” The modern unbeliever says, “O Evolution.” The believer says, “O Lord my God, thou art very great, and how manifold are thy works!”

He says this because of God’s marvelous and wonderful work of re-creation through the Word and the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who made the believer a new creature in Jesus Christ. So the believer praises Jehovah his God. He praises God with his soul and with his lips and with his whole heart, for God is very great. The believer praises God in the sanctified use of creation. The whole life of the believer is in praise of God. Before the face of God, the believer goes forth unto his work, and he labors until the evening. He uses God’s creation and such things as God gives him from it for God’s glory.

The wickedness of the wicked and the transgressions of the sinner are that when God gives him strength for his labor, work to do, wine, bread, and oil, then man presses these things into the service of sin and the fulfillment of his lusts, and he will not praise Jehovah God.

The church, the believer, praises God, who laid the foundations of the heaven, bid light to stand forth out of darkness, covered the world with a flood, placed the waters in their garners, feeds and shelters the animals, gives to all life and breath and all things, and is gracious to his people in Jesus Christ.