Psalms

We continue our sermon series through the book of Psalms. We will be in chapter

eight today and as you will soon notice, this Psalm has a bit of a different tone

than the previous seven psalms. The previous psalms included expressions of

anxiety and worry and distress. Psalm 8 is entirely about how big our God is.

I remember being a young kid in elementary school and hearing my classmates

going at each other. “I bet my dad could beat up your dad.” “Well, my dad would

actually beat up your dad.” Now, when we look beneath the surface of these

threats, we have to ask ourselves, where in the world did kids ever get this idea?

Do you remember being a kid? I do. I remember thinking that no one could

actually ever beat up my dad. I remember thinking that if someone actually came

up against him it would be a bad day for that guy. As a kid, we think of our dads

this way, because of our position and perspective. In our eyes as children, our

dads are the toughest and biggest and the fastest there ever was. I know this

because that’s what Josiah and Malachi have expressed to me.

The boys like to talk about superheroes sometimes and they say things like, “I’m

strong like Hulk. (Show picture of Malachi). Or, “I’m as strong as Batman or

Spiderman.” But then I ask them if they think I’m strong, and they say, “Daddy,

you’re the strongest of all.” And I take a moment to soak all that in, but then I

gently correct them. “Even though I’m pretty strong, God is even stronger than

me.”

You know, that’s one of the greatest joys I have as a father. I get to teach and raise

my children in the way of the Lord. Although the illustrations and the references I

make will change as they get older, the truth will always remain the same.

I believe a lot of adults have lost some of their positive childlike qualities. Here’s

an important thing. We are to be childlike, not childish. Unfortunately, life has

disillusioned us in various ways. I think it’s mostly true that, as we got older, ourviews of our moms and dads have gotten smaller and in effect, our view of our

heavenly Father has gotten smaller. When we were your or maybe young in our

faith, we would think, wow, nothing could ever stop our God. And then we find

ourselves later wondering if God is going to come through during a difficult season

of life. Or we think that God is somehow handcuffed or unable to change things

whether it’s a work situation or a relationship or a family issue or a political issue.

You know, we no longer have this idea that “no one can beat up my God”, but yet

we live as if bills or relational strife or politics or health concerns, and you fill in

the blank…can somehow pose a match to the Creator of the universe.

I think today’s message will be of great benefit to us all. To recenter us and restore

us to a correct posture and position and perspective of how big our God really is.

Let’s begin with the introduction.

“To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.”

This is a psalm written as a song to be sung in corporate worship. Now, the

instrument accompanying this song was called a gittith and many scholars believe

it was a stringed instrument much like a guitar. And of course these words were

written or spoken by David himself.

Psalm 8:1

O Lord, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory above the heavens.

In August, our Childrens Director, Andrea, had the children memorize this very

verse. There were hand motions included with it and my two boys can recite it.

And what a memory verse to write upon our hearts.

Most Sundays, during service, you may have noticed that I begin my prayers by

establishing who God is. “God, you are the Creator of the heavens and the earth,

you are the maker of all the things seen and unseen. You are worthy of our

worship.” You may ask, well why do you do that? It’s very intentional. When we

establish and reinforce who God is at the beginning, it then sets the tone for therest of the prayer and for the rest of the service. We understand that God is God

and we are not. We establish the fact that God is large and in charge, and we are

not. Therefore we establish for ourselves a proper position, posture and

perspective through which we engage with the sermon to follow.

I didn’t make this up. How did Jesus teach us how to pray?

Matthew 6:9

“Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.”

What we call the Lord’s Prayer begins by establishing who God is. He is our Father

and He is holy. He is to be revered. And then everything else follows.

There is no one like our God. There is no one greater than Him, no one mightier

and no one more majestic as this Psalm tells us.

One commentator puts it this way,

“The heavens and the earth are stamped with the glory of their Maker. The power,

the wisdom, and the majesty of God, as reflected in nature, stagger human

consciousness. We speak of the mysteries of creation, but they are an open book

to God. The intricate wisdom evidenced in the natural world is but a dim

reflection of his wisdom. The unbelievable power packed into a single atom

scarcely hints of the power of him who placed it there when he called the

universe into being.”

Psalm 8:2

Out of the mouth of babies and infants,

you have established strength because of your foes,

to still the enemy and the avenger.

Here we have another verse that Jesus quotes. Remember when Jesus cleanses

the temple?Matthew 21:12-16

12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the

temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of

those who sold pigeons. 13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be

called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. 15

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did,

and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they

were indignant, 16 and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?”

And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,

“‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies

you have prepared praise’?”

In this example, we see children exclaiming and proclaiming the truth about Jesus

and yet, the chief priests and the scribes (the experts; the ones with credentials)

are put in their place by Jesus. They’re angry because they think these children

are shouting out lies about who Jesus is; they might have even called it heresy. But

then Jesus quotes Psalm 8 and, in essence, is telling the experts, “hey, these

children get it, why is it that you don’t? Jesus, metaphorically speaking, hit them

where it hurt. He took aim at their pride.

It is so true that we can learn a lot from children. Oftentimes it is the simple truths

that we’ve simply forgotten. So let us not become childish, but let’s strive to be

childlike especially when it comes to acknowledging how big our God truly is.

Psalm 8:3-4

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?David is just in awe of God. When’s the last time you were simply awestruck by

God? JJ and I took Josiah and Malachi to the Creation Museum last March and we

went to their planetarium. I had been to a planetarium before when I was

younger, but now that I’m getting older, I’ll admit that the presentation had me

feeling a bit queasy. You sit down in these chairs that recline and you lean back

and you’re staring at a big screen above and projected on that screen is a view of

planet earth. Next thing you know it zooms out to our solar system and earth

seems pretty small at this point. Then you fly around the solar system and the

narration tells you all about the celestial bodies and their names and how big they

are. We see how small the earth is compared to our Sun, and then we see our Sun

and how small it is compared to larger ones in our solar system. Then next thing

you know were zoomed all the way out where there are multiple solar systems in

view that make up an entire galaxy. And then it zooms out even further and you

realize there’s not just one galaxy but clusters of galaxies.

And this amazing concept is made crystal clear. Everything that we just saw, God

created. He’s bigger and greater and stronger than we could ever begin to

comprehend. And we not only acknowledge the greatness and bigness of God, but

we, with great sobering effect, become very aware of how small we are. And take

notice that I didn’t say insignificant. I said small. It is only when we come to this

understanding that we take on the proper position, posture and perspective

relative to God. And we cannot but help to respond with worship. How foolish it

would be to see all of that and think, “wow, look at me.” The only rational

response from anyone in this situation would be to point to how great God is.

What I am talking about here is this posture of humility. It is not self-deprecation

and thinking badly about oneself, but it is thinking of oneself in his or her proper

place in respect to God. I’ve heard it said this way. As Christians, who find our

identities in Christ, we don’t walk with our noses turned up (i.e. smug and

arrogant), but we also don’t walk with a limp either (metaphorical).

And David recognizes this. When he looks into the heavens he can’t help but

sense how small he is. That’s why he asks the question in verse 4, “what is man

that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”

Even more marvelous than the vastness and the glory of God imprinted in His

creation is the fact that that same God cares for us and loves us.Psalm 8:5

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

and crowned him with glory and honor.

Now, if you’re following along in your Bibles, which I hope you are, you may notice

that your translation of this verse may be different. Some of your Bibles may have

“heavenly beings” (as seen here), or they may have “angels” (NIV), or “God”

(NASB), or “divine” (CEB). So which translation is correct? Well technically all of

them. Well how can that be when they all seem to be saying different things.

This is why it is so important to go to the original language (in this case, Hebrew)

in order for us to grasp what is really being said in our Bibles. We saw this Hebrew

word last week. The Hebrew word translated “heavenly beings”, “angels”, “God”,

“divine” is elohim. The gods “small g”. The heavenly host. Those that dwell in the

heavenly realm that may or may not be angels, because we know that angels is a

job description (messengers) and not all heavenly or divine beings are

messengers. And so our best understanding of verse 5 here is in the plain reading

of the ESV and others that have the “divine”.

“Yet you (God) have made him a little lower than the “heavenly beings” or

“divine” and crowned him with glory and honor.

What David is saying here is that, yes as big and as large as God is and how hugely

impressive all of creation is, despite how small that might make us feel, we still

have significance. Not of our own, but because of the fact that we were made in

His image. And because we are his image bearers, we have been stamped with His

glory and His honor. What we are talking about here is the dignity of man. Each

and every single one of us have intrinsic value. That just means that no one could

ever take that away from us. The world can be a pretty degrading place. And if you

hadn’t noticed that yet, all you would need to do is go in the comment sections on

Facebook or step into a middle school.

There are many people walking around today that you rub shoulders with at work

or at school or at the grocery store that believe they’re not worth anything.

Whether it’s something that’s been said to them, or something they just havethought themselves, they don’t think they have any value at all. Do you know

what these people need? Well first they need to know that Jesus loves them.

Another thing is just a big warm hug. And also, the knowledge that they do in fact

have value. Not because of anything they’ve done or haven’t done, but because

they bear the mark of their Creator. They were made in God’s image. It is replacing

the lies in our minds with the truth.

And so what we have here in these few verses that we’ve read is the

magnificence/glory of God, and the dignity of man.

Many of you may have seen on the news last week the tragic passing of a young

chess grandmaster named Daniel Naroditsky. He was only 29. I’ve watched

multiple of his instructional YouTube videos and have learned a lot from him. One

day, he’s here preparing for a big tournament. The next day, he was found dead on

his couch. Many of us in here know the pressures the world places on us. And

sometimes, when we feel that we are all alone with no one to go to or who could

relate to what we’re feeling we tend to go to very dark places in our minds. So, if

you know someone is going through a tough time, tell them you love them. Tell

them that you’re there to talk to if they ever need it. Christians ought to be

beacons of hope and that’s what our world needs now more than ever.

Psalm 8:6-8

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under his feet,

7 all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field,

8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

I remember being taught in school, even as early as elementary school that

human beings were just another category that fell under the umbrella of what is

called “The Animal Kingdom”. And what ends up happening is we have a lot of

young children who grow into adults thinking and believing that humans are

animals. Can humans be animalistic in behavior? No doubt. But the Bible teaches

that we are a completely different category of being than animals.One commentator puts it this way (bearing in mind that humans are the only

beings made in the image of God),

“Man, therefore, is of an entirely different nature from every other earthly

creature. It is not a matter of degree, of his being a superior animal. It is a

difference in kind.”

And being crowned in God’s glory, we were given dominion over all of creation

(“you have put all things under his feet”) including all the animals, birds and fish.

Now along with the honor that goes along with this task comes responsibility and

accountability. Now I’m the furthest away that you can imagine from being a tree

hugger. However, we are held accountable as Christians to the way we steward

the earth. Are we being careless with where and how we dispose of waste? I read

that in 2021, 85% of plastic waste in the US ended up in landfills. 17% of what is

put in recycling bins ends up not being recycled at all and are dumped in landfills.

What happens when you return a product to Amazon? It gets repackaged and

stored at a warehouse until it’s sold again right? Well, sometimes. In 2022 and

article included this quote,

“From all those returns, there’s now nearly 6 billion pounds of landfill waste

generated a year and 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions as well…”

In other words, those returns are either burned or thrown in a landfill. Yes, we’ve

been given so much to be responsible for, but we must never forget the

accountability that comes along with it. You may ask, well why does it matter? It

matters because, if we are careless with how we steward what God has given us,

we are not reflecting the nature and character of God.

And so, Psalm eight has taken us on a roller coaster ride. We started with “God

you’re so big and awesome!” to “I’m so small” then to, “but I have intrinsic value

because I was made in your image” to “we have dominion over all the earth” to

now, in verse 9, we’re back to where we started. “God you’re so big and amazing.

You’re large and in charge and there’s no one like you.Psalm 8:9

O Lord, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

I love how in these psalms, no matter what’s going on at the beginning or in the

middle, we always come back around to giving God honor and praise for who He

is. What a beautiful foreshadowing of our lives. That no matter what happens

right now or in a few years or in several years down the road, we know the story

ends with us in heaven praising God around His throne.