Experiencing The Majesty Of God Series

INTRODUCTION

A. Our culture, I am sure you need not be told, has forgotten God.

1. In Christian Reader magazine, a woman from Oklahoma told this about her daughter:

Our nine-year-old recently received her first autograph album and immediately began recording personal data. We could tell she has lived in a remote area of Alaska with no television or movies when we saw her answer to the line "Name your favorite star." Without hesitation, she wrote "North."

Jack Eppolito, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Christian Reader, "Kids of the Kingdom."

2. I saw this in another way when I was in college – looking back, it was beginning even then. Some of us were on a trip for some reason that I had forgotten and were at Turkey Run State Park in Indiana, when one of my classmates, Randy Evans, looked out over the beautiful scenery and said, “Thank you, Big Bang.” Oh, yes, we could be facetious in college. I can still be. Many people, though, would rather believe it more likely that a big explosion could bring our universe into being rather than an all-powerful God.

• Since my college days, I have seen some far more beautiful sites than Turkey Run State Park, and I am still awe-struck by them.

B. This Psalm expresses the greatness of God in creation and in man.

1. The Psalm demonstrates who man is in comparison to God and to our world.

2. As is the case with Psalm 1, which we looked at, and Psalm 23, along with some others such as Psalms 19 and 100, this is one of the most familiar Psalms.

3. This Psalm is again written by David, and we will talk in a moment about what might have caused him to write it.

4. The inscription says David wrote the Psalm to the director of music “according to gittith.” That word means a winepress, but it comes to designate a stringed instrument, which originally may have been shaped like a winepress. If you follow the word’s history far enough, it becomes our English word guitar.

a. David himself may have used such a stringed instrument when he sang under the stars while watching his sheep and when he later played music for Saul in order to soothe Saul’s troubled spirit.

b. Ray Stedman says, “We are therefore in the prophetic succession when we have a guitar accompaniment to these psalms. They were designed to be sung to the music of a guitar.

5. The Psalm is clearly written in four stanzas:

a. Vss. 1,2 view the majesty of God from the viewpoint of creation.

b. The middle two sections, vss. 3-4 and vss. 5-8 consider the nature of man and our position in God’s creation.

c. Vs. 9 closes the Psalm with a concluding refrain that repeats the psalm’s first line.

6. As we examine this Psalm, then, ask yourself how you view God and how you view humanity in light of God.

KEY STATEMENT

Consider how David shows us the majesty of God.

I. CONSIDER GOD – Vss. 1-2.

A. David begins the Psalm by referencing the Lord himself.

1. In vs. 1 and again in vs. 9 David uses two great words for God. Literally, he says, “O Jehovah, our Lord.”

a. The first word we bring into English as Jehovah. It literally is a word that cannot be pronounced. David uses it to show the greatness of God. He is beyond anything that we can even imagine.

• He is so beyond everything that God would tell Moses his name “I am who I am.” He is the one who simply is. He is not past, present, or future; he just is.

• Jesus would attach this name to himself in John 8:58 when he said, “Before Abraham was born, I am.”

b. The second word is best translated “Lord” and is used to show that everything is subservient to God. That is how great he is.

2. God, as Jehovah, is so majestic and his glory so great that his glory is “above the heavens.”

a. David’s son, Solomon, helped us understand this in his great prayer at the dedication of the temple: He said, “The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).

b. The reason the creation, as wonderful as it is, cannot exhaust the glory of God is that God is its maker. So although creation expresses his glory, it is only a partial revelation of the surpassingly greater God who stands behind it.

c. If God has set his glory above the heavens, it is certain that nothing under the heavens can praise him adequately.

B. Yet, even children can recognize the greatness of God – vs. 2.

1. We can understand the meaning of this verse from the single time it is quoted in the New Testament, in this case by Jesus.