Written by: Geraldine Canham-Harvey
Scripture: Psalm 150, Psalm 148, Genesis 1 & 2
Audio Link: Stream Sermon – 11 Jan 2026 – Geraldine Canham-Harvey by tawabaptist | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
Kia ora koutou
I’m going to begin today by reading verses 1, 2 and 6 of Psalm 150.[1]
Psalm 150 concludes the Book of Psalms with a real hiss and a roar. It’s a joyful rallying call to join together to praise God.
Imagine yourself in the picture, in the middle of a crowd as the call goes out:
1Praise the LORD!
Praise God in his Temple
Praise his strength in heaven!
2Praise him for the mighty things he has done.
Praise his supreme greatness. …
6Praise the LORD, all living creatures!
Praise the LORD!
‘Praise the Lord’ is the translation of the Hebrew word ‘Hallelujah!”.
And who does the Psalm writer say should lift those Hallelujahs? All living creatures. Other translations of the Bible have the phrase ‘everything that has breath’ instead.
So, quick question, if you think about what has breath, what comes to your mind? What about an aardvark, a cacti, a flax bush, or a pūkeko?
In Genesis 1 and 2, at the very start of the Bible, we read that all creation came from God … including the cosmos, the day and night, the land and water …
… as well all the animals, the plants, the fungi and other creatures that are usually very small, like an amoeba or a bacterium. And of course, human life.
In Genesis 1 & 2, the Bible explains that all living things share the breath of life, as a gift given from God. In Genesis 2:17, God breathes life into Adam.
While in verse 19, the same Hebrew phrase is used for when God breathes life into the ‘living creatures’ (that’s everything alive other than humans).[2],[3]
All breath, all life, came and comes from God. Nothing could exist without Him.
The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said the world is charged with the grandeur of God.
As well as the breath of life, many, many verses throughout the Bible inform us how both human and non-human living creatures rely on God to provide for their needs and continued existence. [4] All living creatures have much to thank and praise God for.
Throughout the Bible there’s many indications that all of creation, not just humans, are intended to give God glory and praise. The Psalms are a great example of this. I don’t have time to read or list them all, so I’ll put them in the notes that will be posted online.
But for now, here’s a section of Psalm 148[5], where not only living creatures with breath, but also the cosmos, the land and the weather, praise and glorify God:
7 Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
8 fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling his command!
9 Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
10 Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!
11 Kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all rulers of the earth!
12 Young men and women alike,
old and young together!
13 Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for his name alone is exalted;
his glory is above earth and heaven.
Just like Psalm 150, verse 13 of Psalm 148 signals to us that all of creation should, does and will praise God… but also, that we will do it together.
In his book, Creation Care Discipleship, writer Steven Bouma-Prediger reflects on these verses and proposes that “Creation is one grand symphony”, in which every living thing “…in their creaturely way, praise God their Creator and Sustainer”.[6]
These images raise some questions for me; maybe they do for you too?
First, how do animals, plants, fungi and other living creatures praise God? What is their ‘creaturely way?
- Do seaweed sing?
- Can a glowworm move to the beat?
- A penguin play a riff on the guitar?
- Or a kōwhai tree clap?
Singing and making music in those ways are obviously human forms of worship.
As humans we can only really know how it is to live and worship as a human.
This is our Umwelt – that’s a German term that literally translates to mean ‘environment’.
But Umwelt also has another meaning, of the way that a living creature perceives and experiences the world through its senses and perception.
In other words, how a creature is intelligent about the world around it.
Within the human population, there are different Umwelt. For example,people who are blind or deaf, or neurodiverse, can perceive the world in some way differently to other people.
Taking humanity as a whole, our Umwelt is different to other living creatures.
I think it’s fair to say that humans often think that intelligence is kind of what we have in spades, and other animals and living things, eh, they don’t have it so much.
Some might make exceptions for some animals such as dogs, apes, dolphins and parrots and crows. Increasingly though, research is showing that non-human living creatures have varied and remarkable forms of intelligence and perception, way outside of our human comprehension. For example:
- Trees have been found to be linked underground by a network of fungi that allow them to send nutrients to other trees, as well as chemical signals if one of them gets a disease or are eaten by parasites…this network has been termed the Wood Wide Web.[7]
- Plants played recordings of caterpillars munching on leaves, were found to flood their leaves with nasty tasting chemicals that caterpillars wouldn’t eat. It’s as if the plants could hear they might be about to be eaten and plan how to avoid this.[8]
- Kea have shown they understand how to use probability to solve problems …including that if you secretly rearrange road cones when no humans are looking, you can make traffic move in all sorts of ways (the kea didn’t realise that NZTA had CCTV at the roadworks)[9]
- Whales communicate with sounds so low, called infrasounds, they can travel over huge ocean distances (like across the Atlantic) – but also elephants use these sounds standing alongside each other.[10]
There are so many examples of these studies and research there’s no way to list them all. I hope this signals the potential of other living creatures having the wherewithal and intelligence to praise God and the idea isn’t something fanciful or impossible.
Exactly ‘how’ they will or do praise seems beyond us for now – it’s just mysterious – but as the Bible says, who knows the mind of God?
To me, it’s awe-inspiring there’s no limits to God’s creativity including the different types of intelligence that are out there and we just don’t know.
So if the first question is how do other creatures praise God, the second question that pops into my mind, is how we as humans can sing in harmony with animals like lions or sharks, who might otherwise be eyeing us up for dinner?
The Bible reveals a coming time of peace that all creation can look forward to, when God’s kingdom is fully restored and completed. It’ll be a time when all living things will live together in positive and mutually beneficial relationships. Isaiah 11 verse 6 gives a series of images, such as:
Wolves and sheep will live together in peace,
and leopards will lie down with young goats.
Calves and lion cubs will feed together,
and little children will take care of them.
But it’s not just in the future; in Isaiah 65 verse 17 states: “Behold, I will create a new heaven and a new earth. The phrase ‘will create’ is a form of grammar that also implies ‘I am in the process of creating’. So, it’s not just about God’s future intentions, but also an action He seeks to make happen now.[11]
Humans were given a specific role in helping creation thrive and praise God.
God gave humans a special character – God created humans in his image, Genesis Chapters 1 and 2 tells us.[12]
We are, as Paul said, to be ‘imitators of God’, with Christ as our model.[13]
You can think of this as ‘our job description’.[14] In having God’s likeness, God declares that humans will be responsible to have dominion over all living creatures.[15]
In fact, the first words God speaks to humans in Genesis 1 is a commandment:
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”[16]
Only humans are given this role, a unique set of privileges with responsibilities.
It’s a delegated authority, like if your manager leaves you in charge of the business, or your parents ask you to look after your younger sisters and brothers.
The responsibility then is like a caretaker.[17] But your manager or parents are still in charge at the end of the day.
Likewise, all creation remains God’s. It is His.[18] He wants it to thrive and live well, abundantly. Humanity is called to reflect and do God’s wishes for all creation.
So how can we understand what is commanded of us in Genesis?
Firstly, writers I have read suggest that the word ‘subdue’ more likely meant ‘tend and care for’.[19]
Secondly, the term ‘dominion’ does not have the same meaning as domination.
Kings in the Old Testament, who had ‘dominion’, were expected to imitate God – to be generous and benevolent, serving their people, and protecting those who were at risk of oppression, exploitation and destruction.
Jesus, is the King above all kings. He is superior to all created things, as it says in Colossians 1.[20] But Jesus, our King, came to serve, not to be served.
Of his upside-down kingdom, Jesus said ‘the first shall be last, and the last shall be first’.
Personally, I’m still grappling with what this might mean in terms of human’s relationship with other living creatures. Especially creatures such as fleas.
In Genesis 3 however, we learn that humans messed up this calling to be like God and instead tried to become God.
These actions had consequences, and impacted the rest of creation, its intended order and its response to God. In Romans Chapter 8, Paul expresses that all creation now groans for release and redemption from these consequences.[21]
We know some of the impacts to be the loss of biodiversity, pollution, deforestation, degrading of the land, climate change, and so forth. These outcomes weren’t God’s intention! How can creation praise Him if it cannot thrive?
Paul says through Jesus, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.[22]
Ultimately God seeks a relationship with the creation in which He delights.
And God wants the different parts of creation to be in positive relationship with each other, to support each other to thrive.
So, what might this all mean for us, if the Bible purports that “all that has breath, praise the Lord?” (Psalm 150) Or, as Bouma-Prediger asks, “How can we strengthen the symphony so that all God’s creatures are enabled to sing praise to God?”[23]
Well, Jesus gave His followers no exemption to the commandment to protect God’s creation and to help it flourish and thrive.
A writer on Christian practices for creation care, Jonathan Moo, has framed humanity’s role in caring for creation as: “…a sign of participation in the life of God’s kingdom…”
And he says we can do this as a “…grateful response to the work God has already accomplished and is bringing to completion in Chris through the Holy Spirit.”[24]
You might be expecting me to finish up with some kind of to do list of what you and we can all do to care and protect other living beings and the environments in which they and we live. But that’s outside the time of this talk, plus there’s so much information out there.
One group and their website I will recommend from a Christian perspective is A’Rocha – an international organization, which has an Aotearoa New Zealand branch, and also local groups throughout the country.[25]
The writer, the Rev Dave Bookless, whom I referred to earlier, is A’Rocha’s Director of Theology. To conclude, I’d like to give a few of the principles that he lists in that article, for you to ponder on:
- The world and all its creatures (human and non-human) belong to God and exist to bring glory to God.
- Humanity has a divine vocation in reflecting God’s character towards living creatures.
- Christianity offers hope for all creation through the redeeming work of Christ.
Thank you.[26]
[1] Bible verses are from the New Revised Standard Version (Updated Edition)
[2] David Bookless, ‘Let everything that has breath praise the Lord’, in Cambridge Papers, September 2014 (volume 23 number 3). Available online at: https://www.cambridgepapers.org/the-bible-and-biodiversity/
[3] See Psalm 104:30
[4] For example, see Psalms 24:1, 65:9-11, 104:10-18, 145:15-19
[5] Psalm 148:7-13
[6] Steven Bouma-Prediger, Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping is an Essential Christian Practice, Baker Academic, 2023.
[7] There’s been a few books and documentaries on this, but for a quick overview see the article in New Zealand Geographic here: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-wood-wide-web/
[8] This example came from Hope Jahren’s book, Lab Girl, Penguin Random House, 2016
[9] Caught on NZTA’s CCTV – watch a clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuA5tO_c7s4
[10] Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animals Sense Earth’s Amazing Secrets, Penguin Books, 2023
[11] For examples, see Psalm 104:30, Isaiah 65:9, , Revelation 21:1
[12] Genesis 1:26-27, 2:7.
[13] Ephesians 5:1
[14] David Bookless, ibid.
[15] Genesis 1:26
[16] Genesis 1:28
[17] Or kaitiaki, in Te Reo Māori. Te Ao Māori, the Māori worldview, is imbued with the concept of stewardship.
[18] See Psalms 24:1 and 50:10-12; 1 Cor. 10:25-26; Col. 1:15-20.
[19] Those who first heard Genesis came from farming communities, and very attuned to the needs of the animals, crops and the soil, and how they thrived. See the chapter ‘People Who Care for Creation”, in Christopher Wright’s book The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission, Zondevan, 2010. I have a copy if you’re interested to read it.
[20] Col. 1:15-19.
[21] Romans 8:18:23; see also Hosea 4:3.
[22] Col. 1:20
[23] Bouma-Prediger, 2023, ibid.
[24] Jonathan Moo, ‘When Good Christians Destroy the Earth’. In Ecoflourishing and Virtue, (editors Steven Bouma-Prediger, Nathan Carson), Routledge 2023.
[25] The Aotearoa New Zealand website URL is: https://arocha.org.nz/
[26] For an overview of some of the themes in this message, see also Christopher Wright’s book.
Tawa Baptist 