My God is Majestic Psalm 8

CORNERSTONE BIBLE CHURCH July 8, 2012 My God is Majestic Psalm 8 Introduction: Carl Sagan I am sure when I say the name, Carl Sagan, you have an opinion. It might not be a well thought through opinion, but you have probably heard something about this popular American astronomer, scientist, and author, who was never shy to share his worldview. In one of his many rants about religion and God, he clarified that he was technically not an atheist because he could not say definitely that there was no God, since he did not have all the information available in the universe. He classified himself as more an Agnostic, that religion and God are simply not knowable. Now, I do not pretend to be an expert on Carl Sagan in any way. But this week, I ran across a quote from Sagan that made me think about the hopelessness that he must have felt in his life. He said, As long as there have been humans, there has been a longing to find our place in the universe. Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet, of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy, tucked away in some forgotten corner, of a universe in which there are more galaxies than are humans. Do you sense the hopelessness? Insignificant planet. Humdrum star lost in a galaxy. Forgotten corner. Phrase after phrase bleeds with despair. Sagan represents that at the core of man, we want to discover the meaning of life, but he also thinks it can t be found. May I suggest to you that on December 20, 1996, Sagan was given his answers. It was that day that his life here came to an end and he met his maker. It was then that he found out that earth is not just an insignificant planet or a humdrum star lost in some unknown galaxy. It was then that he found out that there is a purpose and meaning to all of this. Now, may I also suggest to you that you do not need to wait until your day, your death day, to find out the meaning of life. For Sagan, he was hoping to find his answer in science, yet I think he knew he would never find it. Maybe if he knew that science was not going to give him his answers, he should have been smart enough to turn somewhere else for the answers. I am a pastor and a preacher. Yet, first I am a Christian. And so I suggest to you that the Bible is the place that we can turn to find meaning in this life. I find it interesting that it is in the best selling book of all time that the answers lie in wait, but those that want to find them often are too busy or too smart to look there. Where can you find the answer in the Bible for life? We can turn to just a few pages in and discover that God created all that there is. Page after page tells of men and women who have found significance in their life when they lost a 1

sense of themselves. And even our text this morning, Psalm 8, this morning, speaks to this issue of meaning and significance. The main thought this morning expresses it plainly: A PERSON FINDS SIGNIFICANCE FOR THEIR LIFE ONLY WHEN THEY UNDERSTAND THE MAJESTY OF GOD. Now, it is my prayer this morning that as we talk about the majesty of God, the glory of God, the power of God, that we are brought to find our purpose and meaning. But here s the deal, to ultimately find that, I am going to have to do some things this morning that make most people uncomfortable. In order to show your meaning in life, I have to tell you the truth about yourself. Do you know what a bird mite is? I do, we recently had some outside our house. They are extremely small bugs that feed off, or cling to bird nests. My goal this morning is to help you feel about the size of a bird mite. I want to show you that it is often our pride that gets in the way of finding our significance. I am going to have to beat all of us down a bit so that we feel as big as one of those bird mites. But then, and only then, I think we will find significance. It is only when I fully realize how small I am that I realize that I have meaning in God s world. Not my world. Not your world. God s world. Psalm 8, I believe, will guide us there this morning. First things first: As we turn to Psalm 8, you will notice a heading to this Psalm that says To the choirmaster, according to the Gittith. A Psalm of David. Apparently, this Psalm was written for the choirmaster in Israel according to the Gittith. To be frank, nobody really knows what Gittith means historically. It is guessed that it was a type of instrument or even a genre of music from the country of Gath. We really don t know. But what we do know is that this Psalm was written by David and it is a song that is directed toward God. If you noticed as we read it, everything is second person with God as the object. In the Psalms, there are some that speak about God and some that speak to Him. It is like our songs today, there are some that are going to say How Great is Our God and then others like Your Great Name. This Psalm is one of those directional songs. It begins and ends with a shout out, directed to God, to the praise of His name. Vs. 1 & 9 The bookends of this Psalm have to do with the majesty of the name of the Lord God in all the earth. It is like a good song that begins with the chorus and ends with the chorus. Let me get technical for a minute, but for a purpose. David uses two names of the Lord at the beginning of His song. He says Yahweh, our Adonai. Yahweh is the covenant name for God. It is the holy name of God. Out of respect and not wanting to take the name of God in vain (3 rd commandment), the Jews often refused to even speak this name. In their prayers and in their 2

sermons, they would most often use the name, Adonai, in place of Yahweh. Adonai simply means master or Lord. It was a name for God that signified His sovereign power and man s humble submission to Him. For David to begin like this might be lost in our culture today, mostly because we do not pay a whole lot of attention to the meaning of names. Names do not mean what they used to mean. In Biblical times, names were meant to reveal character. Can you imagine what it would be like if you were called by your character? If the name you were given had to do with your character? What would your boss call you; Hey, lazy, get in here. What would your spouse call you; What do you want for dinner selfish? Get the point? David didn t have to wander what sort of name to call God; he knew His name. This was not just a cute way for David to begin and end his Psalm. It was a way in which David sought to reflect back to God the character of His being. That comes vitally into play when David says, How majestic is your name in all the earth. The term majestic means excellent, large, or powerful. David is affirming that the name of God is majestic in and through this world. This is why talking about the meaning of names is important. There are some commentators that believe this Psalm is prophetic, looking at a time in the future. They say that because, well, the fact is that God s name is not necessarily spoken of in excellent terms these days in our world. God s name is cursed. God s name is defamed. God s name is thrown around and trampled around every day in every part of this world. If name simply means name in the sense of address, then it would be true His name isn t really excellent. But if name means name in the sense that He is a covenant powerful master, then yes, of course, it is seen throughout the entire world. And this is what David meant. He further explains it at the end of vs. 1, when he adds: You have set your glory above the heavens. He is saying that God s glory cannot be contained. His glory is not just on the earth, it is not just in the heavens, it is above the heavens. When I read that this past week, my thought immediately went back to Solomon as he is dedicating the temple. Remember, the temple? It was a place that was built so that God could come and dwell with His people. Remember what Solomon said about God as he was dedicating the temple? 1 Kings 8:27 But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built. For God to set his glory above the heavens means that God s glory is not even contained in the highest heavens. He is so much grander, so much larger, and so much more excellent than even the excellencies that we can see that 3

represent Him. For sure, the Scriptures say, the heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1). They shout it loudly, that God is of infinite worth. The sun speaks of God. The moon displays His glory. The rivers and the oceans show His strength. And on and on it goes. But it is not just a few things that we look at in this created world that display His glory; it is literally everywhere in creation. If you were to come into my office or if you were to help me move my office this week (hint, hint), you will see that I have a picture of Charles Spurgeon in my office. He certainly had a way with words. He had a way of putting things that makes things come alive. Listen closely to his description of God setting His glory everywhere: There is no place where God is not. The miracles of His power await us on all sides. Travel the silent valleys where rocks enclose you on either side, rising like heaven s battlements until you can see but a strip of blue sky. You may be the only traveler who has passed through that glen; the birds are frightened, and the moss may tremble beneath the first step of a human foot. Yet God is there in a thousand wonders, upholding the rocky barriers, filling the flowers with perfume, and refreshing the lonely pines with His breath. Descend to the lowest depths of the ocean where the water sleeps undisturbed and the sand is motionless in unbroken quiet. The glory of the Lord is there, revealing its excellence in the silent palace of the sea. Borrow the wings of the morning and fly to the farthest parts of the sea. God is there. Fly to the highest heaven, and God is praised in everlasting song. Dive to the deepest hell, and God is justified in terrible vengeance. Everywhere and in every place, God dwells and is manifestly at work. 1 Amen! Spurgeon is just affirming what David said, that God has set His glory above the heavens. He has set to display His glory everywhere at all times. In the rising of the sun, in the middle of the thunderstorm, as you walk on the beach by the ocean, even in a wheat field in Kansas, God s glory has been set! Now, we will come back to creation in just a minute, but it is not only there that we see this glory displayed. Vs. 2 What we should understand here is that God will regularly use the weak to defeat the strong. He uses the simple to destroy the wise. We see his glory on display when God uses the mouths of babies and infants to still the enemies of God. I really struggled this week to see how vs. 2 fit into this context. It was only when I turned to the NT, to see how Jesus quotes this verse that I finally got it. In Matthew 21, Jesus has just ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey, what is traditionally known as the Triumphal Entry. People have bowed down to Him, shouting Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna to the Son of David. The people are ready to follow Jesus. He enters the temple and becomes righteously angry 1 Spurgeon, Charles Haddon. The Treasure of David. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 44 5. 4

that it has become a place of profit for people. If you remember, He overturns the money-changers and then has an interesting interaction with the religious leaders. You see, they were upset that even the children were crying Hosanna to the Son of David. To which Jesus quotes Psalm 8:2, Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise. Jesus is telling the religious leaders that God had prepared that praise from the mouths of those little ones... and those religious leaders would have finished the sentence... to still the enemy and the avenger. They would have known that Jesus was saying that the children were there to put them to shame. Just another way that we see God being glorified in this world. Where is this seen today? Well, have you ever been with your child as they begin singing, Jesus loves me in the middle of the store, at the top of their lungs? No fear. And you? My guess is that you are like me, telling them to be quiet because there is a bit of embarrassment in your heart! One commentator makes the observation: Mighty Yahweh, whose majestic power and glory are displayed throughout the creation, is able to build the innocent weakness of these dependent babes into a powerful opposition to his enemies. 2 It is at this point in this Psalm that David begins to show us meaning for our life by actually showing us our insignificance. Vs. 3 4 I can picture David sitting out under the stars (or reflecting back on one night doing such a thing) and looking up at the heavens... When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars which you have set in place... what is man that you are mindful of him? It is a very humbling thing to sit out under the stars in the evening, isn t it? It tends to make us realize how small we really are in this world. Let me see if I can put our size into perspective. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second (700 million miles per hour). That might seem fast, but let me show you how large of a space that we live in. It is not a big deal for the moon, since it is 250,000 miles from Earth; it only takes about 1.3 seconds for light to reach us from the moon. But the sun is so far away from the earth that it takes about 8 minutes for the light from the sun to reach us. That means the light that you see right now left the sun 8 minutes ago. Crazy thought. It would take that same sun about 6 hours to make it to the furthest planet in our solar system, Pluto. As it keeps going, it would take about 4.3 years to get to the nearest star. It would take that light about 75,000 years to get to the 2 Wilson, Gerald H. The NIV Application Commentary: Psalms Volume 1. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 202. 5

most distant stars in our galaxy. As it continued, to get to the nearest large galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, it would take it about 2.2 million years traveling at 186,000 miles per second. Can we even comprehend that? Maybe a visual description would help you grasp how insignificant we really are compared to all of creation. Picture 01 This is the earth in comparison to some of the smaller planets in our solar system. We look pretty important, don t we? Picture 02 This is the earth in comparison to some of the larger planets in our solar system. We are starting to feel really small. Picture 03 This is a picture of our sun in comparison to the earth and those larger planets. Did you know that you could fit approximately 1 million earthsized balls inside the sun; that is if it were hollow and not so hot. Picture 04 Sirius, Pollux, and Arcturus are some of the brightest stars in the sky that shine millions of light years from our planet. They make our sun look puny. Earth is invisible at this scale. Picture 05 These are a couple super-sized stars that, put in scale, make our sun appear to be 1 pixel. I read this past week that if one of these stars were to take the place of our sun, it would extend beyond the orbit of most of the planets. Now, how does that make you feel? I can tell you one thing for certain: King David never had such a picture of the different stars or planets in the galaxy or universe. All he had was his eyes. And as he sat out on a starry night looking up in the sky, as he contemplates how big everything looks and contemplated how great of a Creator God is, he says to God: What is man that You are mindful of him or the son of man that You care for him? And that is the proper question in light of the creation of God s handiwork. You see, contrary to popular thinking, you are not the center of the universe. I know you might think your spouse thinks you are, but your NOT. God is! After thinking of that and seeing all those pictures, let me ask you one very important question in your pursuit of meaning in life: How stupid is it for a person sitting on this puny planet called earth to look into a mirror and find their significance in themself? The superstar athlete says, Yep, look at me, all 6 5 220lbs of supurbness. That s just dumb! And yet we do it, don t we? We think & we live as if this life has something to do with us. We love to be the hero of all of our stories. We love to be the center of attention. We love to think that the world revolves around us. And in comparison to our great light shows, God shows up and throws a few lighting bolts around on the 4 th of July. It s almost as if God is saying, You 6

fools, you think you are big stuff because you took the brains that I gave you and figured out how to blow things up... how about this? Listen to me very closely: It is only when we realize that we are infinitely small and unimportant that we are on the right path towards our real meaning. The truth is found in the answer to David s question. What is man that you are mindful of him? NOTHING. What is the son of man that you care for him? NOTHING. We are nothing. And by that, what I mean is that we have done nothing to make ourselves loveable. There is nothing that we have done to make ourselves worthy of being cared for and esteemed. However! And here is where we turn. Even though we have done nothing; even though we are nothing; even though we are just like the tiniest of bugs compared to God; even though we have nothing to offer God; even though we seem as nothing compared to the greatness of the universe; Even though all those things... Vs. 5 Even though we are insignificant amidst this grand created world, God has chosen to honor man above all other creations. This is where we begin to be reconstructed, but it is very important to note: if your self-worth is found in yourself, you will always struggle with finding your significance. It will come and go based upon how you compare to others. Do you have a better job? Are you needed by your spouse? Do you feel important or needed by others? How good at sports are your children? What kind of grades do you get? And on and on it will go. But if your value as a human is found in the fact that despite your insignificance, God has placed significance on you; well, that makes all the difference in the world. David defines the significance placed upon humanity in three ways. First, he says that God made us a little lower than the heavenly beings. The word that he uses here is Elohim, which is almost exclusively used as a reference to God. There are a few times it is used of angelic beings, which most bible translations seem to think is the case here. We will look at it in a second, but this passage is used of Jesus and it is used in the context of being made a little lower than angels, which is probably why they say angels and not God. There is another way to say what this means. David could have also written that we were created higher than the animals. Instead of forcing our minds to look down, he makes us look up. And this is seen specifically in the second way David defines our significance: we have been crowned with glory and honor. This goes all the way back to creation. Humans were created differently than any other being. We were created in the image of God. Imago Dei. And being created in His image, we have unusual opportunity to reflect the glory of God in ways that other parts of creation do not. The third way that David defines our significance is found in... 7

Vs. 6 8 When God created man, God placed them in the garden and gave man the unique privilege of having dominion over this earth. I want you to think long and hard about this. God created a very special world and then gave that world over to man, entrusted His special creation to man. In the garden after God created man and woman, God said to them... Genesis 1:28 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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. God did not do this with the dog or the cat. Not with the tiger or lion. He did it with mankind. We have been created to have dominion over all sheep and oxen and beasts of the field. We are over the birds and fish, and all living things. This is part of what it means to be created in His image. God has given us a job of extreme importance. This dignity of being made lower than the heavenly beings, being crowned with glory and honor, and being given a job to do on this earth has way more than saving the rain forest. You get that, right? This is not about planting trees and being vegan, or not eating meat and living one with the earth. It is not about fracking or not fracking (I m still trying to figure that one out). It is about reflecting the glory and honor that has been bestowed upon us as being created in God s image back to the world by how we live under His sovereign rule. And how has man done with that? How did Adam & Eve do with that? How are you doing with that? You know how we do with that. Horrible. Sinful. Detestable. We are a complete and total failure. And this is where we need to turn Hebrews 2:5 9 [open & read] Do you want to know the greatest proof of God s love and regard for mankind? It is that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to this earth in the form of a man; not an angel, a man. And what did Jesus do? He did what we never could or never would. He lived the perfect life and became obedient to the point of death (Philippians 2). By His incarnation, substitutionary sacrifice, and victory over sin and death, He has fulfilled man s original purpose. As the Second Adam, He was for a short time lower than the angels. Now, He has glory and honor, and all things (including angels) are subject to Him. 3 Why did He do it? We see it in vs. 9, that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. That is, everyone who believes in Him. The death of Jesus Christ is only applied to your account when you come to the point of 3 MacArthur, John. The MacArthur Bible Commentary. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2005), 1840. 8

repenting and believing in Him. How do you do that? Let me just say, it begins by realizing your insignificance and realizing that you need Him to save you. There is no salvation without first an understanding of your need. And then you turn from your sin and cry out to Him to save you. And it is to the remembrance of His death that we turn this morning. Bow Your Heads! As The Men Come Forward... Let me reiterate to you what we began with this morning: A PERSON FINDS SIGNIFICANCE FOR THEIR LIFE ONLY WHEN THEY UNDERSTAND THE MAJESTY OF GOD. His majesty is ultimately found... Philippians 2:6 9 [Christ Jesus], who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above ever name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Look up at me: Do you want to know where you find meaning in your life? It was even though you were not special in any way, God sent His son to this earth to die to provide a way of eternal life with Him. That brings meaning. It means that your life is about Him, not you. You are special because Christ died for you. And that is what we now turn to celebrate! Open Communion I invite you to participate this morning with us. PRAYER FOR BREAD: 1 Corinthians 11:23 24 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me." PRAYER FOR CUP: 1 Corinthians 11:25 26 In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. 9