Psalm 8

Preached at Cornerstone Church in Cascade, IA on August 30, 2015

Open your Bibles to Psalm 8. Today we find ourselves stepping into a new light. Over the last several weeks we have been trudging through the Psalms of lament, and today, the cloud lifts and we find ourselves gazing into the brightness of God’s Glory and praising his name. So let us read our text today, pray, and dive into Psalm 8.

• Psalm 8 - “To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David. 1O 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. 3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. 6You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, 7all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. 9O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

O Lord, Our Lord

In this Psalm you see that it has two identical bookends. Verse 1, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” and verse 9, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” These two statements appear to be ones of great excitement and praise of David. It is as if he is bursting at the seams to declare the majesty of God’s name.

As I have said for the last three Sunday’s these Psalms are windows into David’s heart. This heart of David is one which God declared to be a heart after His own. Today we see that David’s heart desired the name of God to be given its full recognition and honor. David desired the splendor and beauty and excellencies of God’s name to stretch across all four corners of this planet. This desire was not just a desire of David’s but it is also a desire of Gods. God's will is for his name to be great.

How do I know this? First of all, these words in Psalm 8 of David’s are also the words of the Holy Spirit, for all Scripture is God breathed. Therefore for David to declare it is to say that God declared it. This is supported by the author of Hebrews citing Psalm 8 in Chapter 2 of Hebrews, which we will talk about later. However, Psalm 8 is not the only place in the Bible where we see God concerned about His name. In fact, the Psalms are replete with concern for the name of God.

• Palm 23:3 – “He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. “
  
  
• Psalm 31:3 – “For you are my rock and my fortress; and for your name’s sake you lead me and guide me;”
  
  
• Psalm 79:9 – “Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake!”
  
  
• Palm 106:8 – “Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power.”
  
  
• Psalm 109:21 – “But you, O God my Lord, deal on my behalf for your name’s sake; because your steadfast love is good, deliver me!”
  
  
• Psalm 143:11 – “For your name’s sake, O LORD, preserve my life! In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble!”
  
  

And it is not only in the Psalms where you see a concern for God’s name. You also see it in 1 Samuel 12:22, Isaiah 48:9 and 11, Ezekiel 20:9 and 14 and 44, Ezekiel 36:22. It then continues through the New Testament, for we see it again in Matthew 19:29, Acts 9:16, Romans 1:5, 1 John 2:12, etc. And we can’t forget the Lord's Prayer as taught by Jesus himself.

• Matthew 6:9-10 – “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
  
  

God desire his name to be hollowed, honored, given the majesty it deserves. Not just in the Church on Sunday mornings, but across the Earth, just like in Heaven. In fact, failure to honor God’s name is a sin.

• Exodus 20:7 – “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”
  
  

To take the Lord’s name is vain is to use it as a throw away word, or to use it as a cuss word. When we do this we bring guilt upon ourselves. God is displeased and His wrath is kindled, and someone must pay the penalty for using God's name in vain. There is no mistaking that God cares about His name. He makes this abundantly clear in His Book.

O Lord

The next thing I want to draw your attention to is how David begins this Psalm, “O Lord, our Lord.” One would think this statement is somewhat redundant and therefore meaningless. However, that is not the case, for the comma represents a great chasm between two beautiful realities.

Let us begin by understanding the first part, O Lord. In Hebrew the first Lord is the word “Yahwey.” As we have discussed before, Yah-weh is the name of God that best summarizes his self-declaration of his name.

• Exodus 3:13 – “Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
  
  

What does God mean by saying that his name is “I AM WHO I AM”? Is God waxing poetically? No. What he is saying is that he is so other, so different, so beyond description that the only way to have a name that summarizes the fullness of his attributes is to be self-defining. There is no name that will completely suffice except a name that points to his self-existing state. And the reason that God desires to provide us a name that points to his otherness, is because he desires us to have an infinitely high view of who he is. He wants His name to remind us that he is outside of creation. His name is to point to the splendor of his worth,

And when we continue reading Psalm 8 this is exactly what we find pouring out of David’s heart. Verse 1, “You have set your glory above the heavens.” Verse 3, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place.” David is overwhelmed by the work of God's hands and the weight of His glory.

When David peered into the sky he would have potentially seen several thousand stars. It is said that there are only approximately 9,000 stars that are visible to the naked eye from the planet Earth. However, this pales in comparison to the true reality of how many stars truly exist. With a pair of binoculars it is estimated that you could see 200,000 starts. With a small telescope you can see 15 million stars. Large observatories can see billions of stars. It is estimated that our Milky Way Galaxy consists of 400 billion stars. And because of the Hubble Space Telescope they estimate there are billions of galaxies. Therefore the estimate of stars is billions upon billions upon billions.

Why does God make the Universe so unimaginably big? Why does he put things in the sky that we can't even see, but we know are there? The reason is found in Psalm 19:1-2.

• Psalm 19:1-2 - “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. 2Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.”
  
  

God is speaking to us through the billions of stars and the billion of galaxies. The immensity of the Universe is declaring the immensity of our Creator. God through this general revelation is continuously revealing his Yahwehness. When we consider that our God is the one who set this all in place, it is overwhelming.

• Romans 1:19-20 - “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,g in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
  
  

No one who stands before God on the day of Judgment will be able to say I didn't know you were real, for we are surrounded by the evidence, each day pours this reality out upon us. Everything that has a beginning has a cause. God is the cause of everything, and this reality should make us tremble, for our God is an AWESOME God!

Oh but how seldom do we dwell upon the greatness of Yahweh? How little do we ponder the shear magnitude of a God who holds everything that exists by merely declaring it that it shall be. How often do Church's focus on the creature and not the Creator. Week after week preaching self-help sermons, and never once pointing to the Glory of God. Whether you recognize it or not, this is what your heart longs for, do dwell upon the fullness of your God. To worship him in all of his splendor and his glory.

And for those who long for authentic and powerful worship, the answer does not lie in old hymns or edgy contemporary music, nor does it rest in the hands of a polished worship leader. The catalyst to powerful worship lies in the revelation of a powerful God. This is why our worship will never compare to the worship that will take place in Heaven in the presence of God.

• Revelation 19:6 - “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.”
  
  

Whether I achieve this or not, my goal each week should be to exult God as high as I possible can for each one of you. I should lift Him up as glorious and majestic before the eyes of your heart. This is my role as the preaching pastor hear at Cornerstone Church. To point you to the majesty of Yahweh.

Our Lord

With majesty of God before our eyes, the second part whereby Daivd says “our Lord” found in verse 1 becomes all the more unfathomable. The second word Lord that is not all caps is ’ă-ḏō-nê-nū". It is the possessive of adonai, which means master, father, Lord.

To say that God is Adonai is to proclaim a posture of submission. It is to recognize God as Yayweh and to bend you knee and declare your allegiance to Him. It is to recognize His authority over all creation, the stars, the moon, the Sun, and you. It is to have your eyes open to your need to get into a right relationship with him.

But what is truly amazing is not our desire to get right with God, but his desire to allow us to get right with Him. And this is really what causes David to stand in awe. With such a high view of God, he cannot understand why a God of such glory has any interest in humanity, and not only humanity, but a sinful humanity. David is recognizing the infinite chasm that exists between who man is and who God is. The difference between us and God is truly unmeasurable. It is greater than our relationship with an ant. Yet our God cares for us. He not only cares, but his is intimately aware of who you are. He is totally invested in your life.

• Psalm 139:1 - “O LORD, you have searched me and known me! 2You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. 5You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. “
  
  

Job 14:5 tells us that God determines how long we will live. Luke 12:7 tells us that God knows the number of hairs on our heads. Proverbs 16:9 tells us that God determines our steps. And if that was not enough God tells us that he also delights in us.

• Psalm 147:11 - “but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him,
  in those who hope in his steadfast love.”
  
  
• Zephaniah 3:17 - “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love;”
  
  

The God of the Universe is not one who is distant and unconcerned with man. He is a God who is intimately involved in the comings and goings of our lives.

For David, however, he is amazed not just that God is involved with man, but that he uses man. This God who uses stars to speak of his glory, simultaneously uses man for the same purpose, to declare his glory. However, our declaration is unique in this universe. We have a special relationship with God, for it is only man who is created in the image of God. The sun, the moon, and the stars are not created in God's image, the angles are created in God's image. Man is the only thing that exists that is created in the image of God. We are the clay that best points to the Potter.

Having said that, because of our sin, this image bearing is marred, it is corrupted. Instead of using God's gift of dominion over creation for His glory, we use it for our glory. We exchange it. We trample the name of God, in order to exult our own.

One would think this would be the end of us. One would think that this awesome God who is unlimited in power would squash us like the cockroaches we are. There is no doubt that this is exactly what we deserve. God has given us the greatest gift in the universe, bearing his image, and we have trampled it under the feet of our sin. Justice demands our eternal punishment for rejecting an infinitely awesome God. So what did God do? He sent his Son, Jesus, into the World.

To deal with our refusal to live in accordance to God's design, God sent Jesus into the world. John 3:16. “For God so loved the World that he sent his only son...” Now what is amazing about this is how God sent His Son. God sent His Son into this world as a man. God took the two realities of Psalm 8, the greatness of God and the weakness of man and merged them together in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus was both fully man and fully God.

Once again, I do not think we appreciate the magnitude of that reality, an infinite and Holy God humbling himself to put on skin. To be conceived, to be born, required to eat, sleep, and walk amongst a world that had rejected Him. Why would he do this? Turn with me to Hebrews 2.

• Hebrews 2:5-9 - “For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. 6It has been testified somewhere, “What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? 7You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor,8 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. 9But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”
  
  

The author of Hebrews takes Psalm 8 one step farther. He is telling us that God's care for us does not stop at just being mindful of us, and giving us dominion as image bearers, but that his care for us is substantially greater. His care for us compels Him to send Jesus into the world to be the true image bearer, the true representative of the human race. The one who will live in accordance to the original design of humanity, having dominion of the earth in accordance to God's Word. As we have have discussed in our Sunday School class, Jesus is the better Adam. Jesus had to become a man so as to pay the penalty of man. What was that penalty? Verse 9, “he tastes death for everyone.”

And because of what Jesus has done in his life, death and resurrection as the God/man, God has raised him up and appointed him to be the heir of all things, so that at the sound of His name, every knee will bow on heaven on on earth. Verse 8, “putting everything in subjection under his feet.”

So where does that leave us? It leaves us right back to where David was, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”