DATE: Sunday, 29 August 2010TEXT: Psalm 8:1 - 9 [ESV]TITLE: “How Majestic Is You Name!”✠ ✠ ✠ ✠ ✠
TEXT: Psalm 8:1 - 9
1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!
You have set Your glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
You have established strength because of Your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
3 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?
5 Yet You have made Him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned Him with glory and honor.
6 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.
9 O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is Your name in all the earth!✠ ✠ ✠ ✠ ✠
INTRODUCTION:
As any current teenager — or any other member of Generations X and Y — could tell you, we live in a culture and time in which hope, purpose and the much touted concept of “self-esteem” are seen as the rarest of rare and priceless commodities. These are quantities which everyone seems to wish to have, but which — if the weekly news magazine and television news programs are to be believed — singularly few Americans under age 30 seem to possess in any meaningful way.
Lack of this concept of self-esteem, of hope and a sense of meaning in his life, combined with a chronic, devastatingly powerful addiction to the hardest of hard drugs led then-teen “grunge Rock” idol and Nirvana band leader in 1994 to forsake his wife and then-two and-a-half-year-old daughter, place the twin barrels of his 12-gauge shotgun in his mouth and pull the trigger. He left behind him a young, troubled wife and an orphaned daughter (his widow, rudderless, and as — or even more — drug addicted than he was himself; his daughter, an orphan raised without a father and mired in the maelstrom of evil he left behind). In addition, Cobain deserted millions of adoring fans who professed themselves shell-shocked and distressed when they found their perceived sense of purpose and hope swallowed by a nihilistic philosophy of bleak nothingness embodied by the band’s own name, Nirvana.
Millions of Americas youth still, 16 years later, wander the streets intentionally dressed in rags and dog chains or collars, black nail polish and death-pallor-gray face powder in order to trumpet to adults and their peers their heart-felt belief that life has no intrinsic meaning, and that they possess no sense of hope or self. Millions more listen to music filled with dark imagery of violence, death, wanton sexuality and utter hopelessness. When they are not watching and listening to such un-edifying sights and scenes, they are watching the most banal and lascivious of “reality shows” on M-TV and VH-1.
They cry for help. They attempt to proclaim to the world their belief in that we pilot a rudderless ship in a cold, black void of meaninglessness, lust and hate.
If you think I overstate the case, I challenge you to watch an hour of any of the corral of M-TV or VH-1 sister-channels late at night sometime. You will — I guarantee you — receive a quick tutorial, by full-immersion, into the dark and murky depths of the lack of human concern, self-loathing and hopelessness that fill roughly a quarter to a third of the songs and attendant videos shown there. You will bombarded with short, sharp, disjointed and bleak micro-messages about the pointlessness of human existence.
Even as adults of the current X-Generation, we are not immune to feelings of rootlessness and pointlessness. In terms of sheer scale, and the disdain or fat boredom that greets our true condition, those of us born anywhere from 1960 on are part of the most aborted, abused and abandoned generation in human history. We live in a nation that trumpets its horror at the Chinese practice of leaving the girl-baby to die on the dung-heap, while at the same time practicing a quicker and earlier form of the same by means of sex-selective, and/or medically conditioned abortion. Daily we hear new, grim tales of a veritable explosion of physical, psychic and sexual child-abuse. We witness the mass-phenomenon of parental desertion in the form of 50 - 60 percent divorce rates, or of parents who just flat-out “up and quit” without notice — whether they actually vacate the family home or not.
The truly amazing thing in the face of such depravity is that more teens and young adults haven’t lost hold of their mental and spiritual moorings.
And it is precisely toward this type of miracle of solidity and well-rootedness that we are directed this morning’s scripture text.
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BODY:We don’t know terribly much about this psalm or the events surrounding its composition. We do know that this is one of the psalms traditionally attributed to David’s authorship. But as we examine it more closely we begin to see that we really don’t need to know all that much about its history and setting. Its message — with the exception of two verses that are clearly prophetic of Christ’s earthly life and His completed work — is straight-forward and universal in application. Even within a framework of straight-forward Biblical interpretation of the entire psalm, we see a clear message of hope and sheer awe at the order, magnificence and purpose of God’s created order, and of humanity’s premiere role in that order.
Basically, what we have here is an inspired hymn of David’s praise of and wonder at, and awe for the fact that the sole and sovereign God is both all powerful and yet still involved with and careful over the fate of His seemingly pitiful and pitiable human creations. David — who has known doubt, fear and temporary feelings of abandonment, despair and hopelessness as his father-in-law, the king, chased and tried to kill him — marvels that there is light, purpose and hope at the end of the stifling darkness of the tunnel of human sinfulness and fear of death.
David, in a moment of overwhelming crystal-bright insight, sees fully that Yahweh (the Lord) is a personal God who has always, does now and always will hold us in the palm of His loving hand. He has created each of us in His own image (Imago Dei) with a purpose that extends over, under around and through the seemingly impenetrable pall of despair and pointlessness of our lives.
Let us then take up the challenge and look more closely at this message of hope that we so desperately need to hear, understand and grab-hold onto.V. 1.: O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! / You have set Your glory above the heavens: We begin Psalm 8 with David’s speech directed toward God. He calls to God in the same way in which you or I would hail down someone on the street whom we know. This, in and of itself, tells us that God is a personal being Who can be addressed.
We see more of this theme when we look at how it is that God has been addressed. He is addressed by name — a self-revealed proper-noun that applies only to Himself. In all of our current modern language English translations, we see this rendered as, Lord, all in capital letters. This is used to denote the Tetragammaton — the four-letter name that was never to be uttered because it was too holy to be uttered by human lips. That name is Yahweh, means “I AM WHO I AM” or “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE”. It is the name by which God personally identified Himself to Moses at Mt. Sinai when Moses asked “who is it that I should tell them sent me to them?”
The Hebrew scribes used the consonants for Yahweh but always superimposed the vowels for the word Adonai, which means “Lord”, “master” or “governor”. In, as written vowels were added to the Hebrew alphabet, Jewish scribes used the vowels for Adonai and placed them into the spelling of Yahweh. This is where the antiquated name "Jehovah" comes from. Current translations take seriously the original concern about the holiness of God’s name and continue to render God’s revealed name as we have it here: LORD.
While, on the surface, this may seem like useless quibbling about consonants and vowels, it is not. This tells us something highly significant about God’s nature and character. He is the God Who makes Himself known to us personally. He introduces Himself to us by a personal name in an intimate context and tells us that this is how He is to be identified. He gave His name to His people as a sign of His covenant with them — and with us. This is absolutely crucial for our understanding of Who God is and what our relationship to Him is and should be. Consider it in our current context; which is the more personal, intimate and more meaningful form of identification and address?- “I have these two acquaintances whom I see somewhat regularly,” or;
- “Fred and Jenny are my close personal friends. I meet and talk with them everyday.”
Or, even more to the point, the knowledge and use of first names in our culture is an almost-visible sign-post or marker of intimacy with someone. If you call someone, “Mr. Green”, it means that you know him not as a friend, but as a mere acquaintance, or as a subordinate to a superior. But when you talk to “Mr. Green” as “Charlie”, then it is seen and understood as a tangible fellowship of closeness and near-equality that can be grasped and cherished.
That’s what we have here. David, the man whom God called His own friend, intimately addresses his friend Yahweh.
Next we move on to look at the use of the word “Adonai,” (Lord, Master, or Governor). This tells us that God, while personal and intimate, is Sovereign over us and is, in fact, “Lord” or “King”; but He is a king of such incredible kindness and mercy that He condescends to allow us — His subjects — to call Him by name. We don’t have to approach Him groveling and scraping in terror as we call Him, “Your Majesty,” as we await the fall of the headsman’s axe.
The use of Adonai also tells us that God is our Chief Executive Officer, Legislature and Supreme Court all rolled into one by virtue of the fact that He created, redeems, sustains, nurtures and cares for us. Beyond that, because we have come to faith and have publicly professed and acknowledges our dedication and allegiance to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, He is our covenant God, King and Head. We are His covenant people.
Now, as we move on, we see that this God of ours is so great and magnificent that His name is known by all the earth. Even when we, His human creation made in His own image, fail to acknowledge Him as Lord, we find that the rest of the created order is more than ready to do so. We are reminded of this by Jesus in the Gospels’ “Triumphal Entry” narratives when He tells His critics that if He were to force people to stop praising His name, and acclaiming Him as God and King, then the rocks, trees and roads would pick up the chorus and acknowledge Him as their rightful Creator and Lord. All things bear the hallmark — the artisan’s stamp — of His creative authorship and, therefore, give testimony to His glory and honor as God and Creator.
V. 2: Out of the mouth of babies and infants, / You have established strength because of Your foes, / to still the enemy and the avenger: We now see in the next verse that the psalmist explains God’s greatness and creativity, and the created- nature of the universe are so blindingly obvious that people overlook the fact and actually get confused about where it and its creatures really come from. We must see this stark and simple truth in terms of contrast and paradox.
Infants and little children are enabled to perceive God’s great handiwork and testify to it while the strong and the fully-grown often fail to perceive it. God has so ordered the universe that our weakness and reliance upon Him yield the ultimate human strength, superior intelligence and perception appear weak and small beside Him who gave us the gifts and marks of human character.
To put this into more familiar terms, consider the weak child paddling a canoe downstream on a huge, fast-moving river, while at the same time pro-wrestling greats Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin attempt to paddle their canoes upstream on the same river. Which one will get furthest fastest? Which one will be relatively refreshed after his labor, and which one will be exhausted and near useless for the rest of the day? Or, if you prefer swimming and surfing metaphors, think about swimming or surfing into the oncoming tide versus riding the waves back to shore.
Either way, our strength or weakness are like the situations mentioned. We can either allow our weaknesses to be turned into strengths by the Master’s hand, or we can ignore God, pretend He doesn’t exist and then rely on our own strength and abilities, such as they are.
In fact the praise of the weakest, most handicapped child are more profound before a Holy God than are the most heinous crimes, sins, abuses, sins and degradations performed throughout history by the strongest and most sinful among the human family. Compare this in your minds with telling Messrs. Hogan or Austin to try crushing the children’s toy Slime in his bare hands. It won’t work. It would just squirt between clenched fingers.
Yet throughout human history, Satan, with the same degree of ultimate futility, has tried to use evil people and brute force to bring down the entire human race.
He has utterly failed!
The cries of praise for God from even one child in the Nazi death camps, the Soviet Gulag, the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia, or the death-filled deserts of Janjaweed-controlled Southern Sudan are more powerful and of stronger more lasting effect than anything Hitler or Stalin ever tried to accomplish. Those martyred children are now with their God and King for all eternity while the dictators and brutal criminals will be forced to suffer eternally with Satan through their own self-inflicted hatred and brutality because the Loving and Just Judge will find them without excuse. And even then, they will still suffer from the final “indignity” when, under compulsion, they are forced, as Paul tells us, to “bow the knee and confess with the tongue that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father!”
That this is so should give hope to all of us. Most of us — no matter how bleak our lives may seem right now — have not suffered anything near so brutal and hideous as what those in those camps suffered. And yet God strengthened and empowered them for service and witness (even inside the very heart of the enemies’ battle camps). How much more hope should this give to those of us who suffer the daily doubts, despair and search for some meaning in our lives here and now?
Just these two verses alone tells us that we have a personal God who really does care for a pay attention to His human creations. We are no Play-do models to be squashed underfoot and then re-made into something else.
And while this may sound unrealistic to us right at this moment, we should remember that we have the Lord’s own promise on this — His own solemn pledge that this is the way He and His created universe really function despite our current perceptions. Jesus tells us in Matthew 18:3 that if we are to be saved that we must approach Him with simple, sincere and trusting faith — like children who give their parents their unreserved trust and love.
Consider the reactions of your children when they were small. I know, when they were small, that Sarah, Caleb and Josiah firmly expected and believed that I could make the pain flee from their bruised knees just by kissing them when they would fall and scrape themselves.
We are called to be like that with respect to God, our heavenly Father.
The Apostles did this. They were reviled by the Jewish — and Gentile — worlds as hopeless simpletons. Yet from such faith (which the world regarded as abject weakness and stupidity) God saw fit to raise up and build them from almost nothing into the mighty bastions that have become the Christian Church.
Vv. 3 & 4: When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, / the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, / what is man that You are mindful of him, / and the Son of Man that You care for Him? From such incredible assertions in Vv. 1 & 2 David then moves on to ask the question that plagues so many of us who are caught up in the midst of such an incredibly vast, complex and beautiful universe and find ourselves feeling small, puny and utterly insignificant. He refers here explicitly (if not exhaustively) to all the things that God has created by His own hand. David reminds us that God has created everything that exists, from the smallest, most simplistic particle of matter to the largest and most complicated star-clusters and galaxies. And the he stops and ponders how God can possibly be impressed with people when He has created so many other things that are so much more grand than we are.
Granted people are complicated pieces of machinery with millions of pieces and parts that we are only just now beginning to identify and understand them. But what are we when compared with supernovas and the latest photographs of the birth of stars tens of millions of light-years away? Why should God be even remotely interested in having contact with sinful and broken people who ignore and revile Him and who shoot each other in broad daylight in arguments over who has the better and more hip pair of $200 sneakers?
If I were God, I wouldn’t want to talk to me, or to the rest of you, either. It would seem a whole lot like asking the sophisticated “plastic-surgeon to the stars” wearing a brand new Fifth Avenue suit and silk tie to stop on the street to diagnose and treat a fallen “Sterno-bum.”Vv. 5 & 6: Yet You have made Him a little lower than the heavenly beings / and crowned Him with glory and honor. / You have given Him dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under His feet: Fortunately for all of us, God doesn’t think or act the way I — or many others — would if we were Him. We can see this in these two verse which tell us that every man, woman and child, from Adam and Eve on down, have been created in the image and likeness of God. This Image of God , is the Creator’s “Master Craftsman’s mark of authenticity” on all of the humans He has created.
It is a mark that sets us off from, and above, all other creations He has made with His hands. It is the mark upon our spirits that makes us, in some sense, like God. It is this that enables us to have conscience, morality, love and the desire to run toward and embrace the God Who calls to us. It is a likeness and image to God that He has placed upon us because He has sovereignly determined that it is humanity that will carry His image and have authority and responsibility over the created order. As we can see, the image the image we possess is solely because of God’s graciousness and not on account of any special quality resident in any of us as individuals, or because of the works that we do.
The lesson for us here is that we should never be prideful over our status as either human beings or as Christians because, while we do clearly and irrevocably possess that state, God could have elected chipmunks to become the bearers of His image.
Now that we have looked at the “plain sense” of this verse couplet, let’s consider it’s other nature as a prophetic pronouncement from God about the nature of His Son and Messiah, Jesus Christ. Indeed, we must look to this sense because this couplet is quoted in Hebrews 2:6-8 in reference to, and explanation of, the work of Jesus Christ (“It has been testified somewhere, ‘What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the Son of Man, that you care for Him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.’ Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.”)These verses show us that Jesus is the man Who redeems, restores and transforms believing humanity to its originally intended created order. He is the God-Man Who restores the now tarnished Image of God in humanity to its pristine condition — to the way in which it was before the Fall of Humanity from unity and friendship with our God.
We are also shown here the answer to the question posed in Vv. 3&4 as to why and how God can regard humans as anything more than broken toys at the bottom of the “cosmic toy-chest.”
God sent His own Son to earth as a human being — not as a rat, rock or water-buffalo! This is unprecedented in all of cosmic history and even the strongest god-myths from different cultures — the Creative God of the entire Cosmos condescends to become human as we are human. He shows us in “real-time” how valuable we are by becoming one of us. Even in the very best of ancient myths about the gods and their dealings with mean and women, this never occurs. Sometimes, in the myths, a lesser godling or son of a god might live among people on earth as a god — he might even seduce or rape a woman here and there. But never anywhere does the God become one of his created beings and redeem them.
All wrapped up into one neat package, this is the perfect example of strength in weakness and of the importance of humanity and its resident Image of God. God loves and regards us as His own by virtue of His having become one with us and suffering as we do in the person of His one and only Son.
The answer to the question of the source of our hope, purpose and sense of esteem comes, then, from the fact that we possess all of these qualities through Jesus Christ Who is our God, our glorified Older Brother, and our resurrected Covenant King Who exercises dominion, authority and responsibility for creation.
Our hope is in Jesus Christ.
Our self-esteem and value as creatures in the cosmos come in knowing that we are made in God’s Image and that God shared, in full-measure, in the human condition when Christ became incarnate as the Son of the Virgin Mary.
Our purpose comes in fulfilling the things God has created us to accomplish.
Our responsible exercise of dominion over creation is done as the King’s stewards over the vineyard. We are exercising the trust and commission He has given to and placed upon us.Vv. 7 & 8: all sheep and oxen, / and also the beasts of the field, / the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, / whatever passes along the paths of the seas: This brings us, then, to the listing of other creatures over which we are given charge. It is used to show us just how far runs God’s writ. Everywhere and for all time and eternity. But the list also shows us that, subject to Christ’s authority, all things and other creatures have been placed in our care and control by the owner of the vineyard who will return at some future date to make a full accounting of our stewardship of His possessions. We may use them, and we are to care for them, remembering always Who has made and entrusted them to us.V. 9: “O LORD, our Lord, How majestic is Your name in all the earth!” This brings us full-circle then to the repetition of the opening lines of V. 1. This identical closing serves to envelope or bracket and highlight everything that falls in between. In this verse, though, we also note a new and fuller understanding of God’s grace and love on David’s part. We see, now, not just awe, wonder and praise, but also thanksgiving for God’s great gifts to humanity and for His friendship and kinship with us. ✠ ✠ ✠ ✠ ✠
CONCLUSION:
We have been given the gift of hope, purpose and meaning by our own Creator and Father. We can see now that He has created us for a reason and with much care and skilled workmanship. He did not create junk. He does exist and He is not a capricious, cruel cosmic four-year-old burning ants with a magnifying glass, or pulling the wings off us benighted flies. He is our covenant God Who has, does and will redeem us by an act of His own love for us. We need only ask Him to redeem and transform us by the gift of Faith in Christ Jesus as Savior and Lord.
We can remember and rely upon Question and Answer 1 of the Shorter Catechism : “What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Similarly, but in a more full manner, Question and Answer 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism ask us:
- Q.1] What is your only comfort in life and in death?
- A 1] That I am not my own, but belong — body and soul, in life and in death — to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
No longer do we need to be contained within the high walls of black, bleak hopelessness. No longer do we need to fear death, or contemplate with apprehension and dread the black nothingness that follows that fatal shotgun blast. No longer need we wonder how and why we have been placed on this rock floating aimlessly in darkest cold space.
We can see that all of these feelings and thoughts — real as they may now appear to us — are lies uttered by Satan to snare, deceive, abuse, destroy and devour us. We can see that we are created not for destruction or despair but for joy, hope, love service and communion with each other and with God because that is the way He has made us to be; they are the way that His Son frees us to follow.
What are we that God is mindful of us?
We are His Covenant Children created to bear His image and live with Him for all eternity in joy, praise and thanksgiving. So rejoice, open your eyes and see that the darkness of this present age is not the impenetrable shroud we once thought it to be. It is a broken shell that encases, but no longer suffocates us. It is broken and we are God’s loved and redeemed Children through the grace and love He has shown to us in Jesus Christ.
“O LORD, our Lord, How majestic is Your name in all the earth!”
