Lord, You Are Majestic
Psalms 8
Picture a young boy, alone with sheep in the desert, late at night. In the utter darkness of moonless nights, the only lights were in the heavens above. Far away from city lights, with a clean atmosphere, the sky must have been dazzling.
David stood in awe and worship, thinking of the Great God who created the heavens above. This is David's memory and the setting for this Psalm. This psalm was either written by David during his youth or written as a reflection of David's youth.
The contrast in this Psalm is the greatness of God compared to the lowliness of mankind.
Psa 8:1 To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
1. The superiority of God’s name, and thus his personality and character.
Notice in most of your translations the use of the word “Lord” in upper and lower Caps….”LORD, Lord, O Yahweh, our Adonai. O God our Master.”
Our God us the owner and ruler of all things, whether acknowledged or not. But that acknowledged, He is also our God. The name represents here the character and characteristics. That name is the emphasis…
How excellent, majestic, honorable, glorious, exalted is your personality and character. In all the earth, in our realm, what we see and experience daily, attests to that. This is saying that apart from heaven (what we can’t see), our observations are from what we can see only.
But not limited to what we see, for you have set your glory above the highest point of our imaginations. Above the heavens.
Psa 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.
2. The simplicity of the concept.
How great is our God.
No one in these days had to explain man's unworthiness. They understood that without God's direction. Mankind could commit all sorts of evil. They understood sin and man's bent towards it. They saw the sins of the Philistines, Canaanites, Egyptians and those who worshiped idols. They knew about human sacrifices, child sacrifices, forces male and female prostitution in pagan worship, abuse of the most vulnerable in society. They knew the hearts of man were naturally pulled away from God, not to God.
Yet, God was awesome beyond imagination. He is able to take lowly mankind, in our weakest form, an infant and suckling who needed constant attention and was totally dependent on others, and defeat His most powerful enemies. He could even take the utterances of such a dependent fallen creature and defeat His enemies.
No doubt, God makes a majority, and so God plus anybody is a vast majority.
Look at two infant examples, Moses and Christ. (Review, both were set apart from infancy and both brought much change to the world).
Psa 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?
3. The Splendor of concern.
What brought young David to the heights of his worship of God was a question. “Why would such a mighty, awesome God even be concerned with lowly, sinful mankind?”
When Galileo first gazed through his telescope at the night sky, something occurred to him that was more evident the more he looked at the stars. He made the statement that shook the world, “The earth is not the center of the universe.”
An enraged pope sent him a message, “Cease to attack the theology of the Church or pay the consequences.”
However, the word was out. We were not near as important and central to the universe as misguided theologians had been teaching.
Now we know how true Galileo's statement was. Even with exploring probes and the ability to view a million more times in distance than Galileo's first telescope, we only find out that the universe is far more expansive than we could have known. There seems to be no end to it. And things in space are traveling so much faster than we ever knew.
The more we learn, the more we should worship. At the equator, for the earth to spin into night and day, it must move at a rate higher than 1000 miles per hour. To get around the sun to create the seasons of the year, the earth must travel at 67,000 miles per hour. Our galaxy is said to be moving, around something, what scientists call the “Great Attractor” at 1000 km/sec. That adds 2.3 million miles per hour that I am traveling riding in the galaxy.
David did not know this, but just looked up in the skies and was amazed by the creation and the creator who formed it. More than 3000 years later, we find that we still don't know how big the universe is.
The Hubbell space explorer took over 10 years to leave our galaxy. It reported back that the next nearest star was 8000 times further out than this fast moving space probe had traveled in 10 years. That is the closest star to our galaxy. Truly, the size and vastness of the universe is but a reflection of the greatness of the creator.
Several interested things are presented in David's carefully worded question.
First, that amazing, unimaginable night sky he calls them the works of God's fingers. For David, the use of the word “hand” it would have indicated strength and power. Same as today, “lend a hand”. Give me your effort. It was understood in those days that the use of the word “fingers” meant two things.
First, it was not an issue of strength. It did not even challenge God's power to create the entire universe.
Second, it did reflect skill. The stars are moving at millions of miles per hour. The planets circle the sun like clockwork. Everything is timed, balanced, precisely, more like a quality time piece than a big bang. This reflects the bigness and greatness of the Creator.
Another interesting thing in this verse is the use of words to describe man. David uses two. “Enoshe” is in reference to our mortality. Man's falleness causes us to question God's consideration of us. Our sinfulness separates us from God, yet God looks past that, at what? What is there but mortality, death, weakness, and failure.
Then David uses the “Son of Adamah”. Son of man. Son of Adam. Adamah reminds us of our value; dust. When God looks to us for a relationship, what value does He see in such a relationship? We have nothing to add. Nothing in us is worth more than dust. Six places the scriptures tell us that we were created from dust and will return to dust. That doesn't sound worth much. What is man? Why consider us?
Psa 8:5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
4. The Specialness of our creation.
When God made mankind a little lower than heavenly beings in rank (not because of our place in heaven, but our ability to sin), He displayed Grace. He took mortal mankind and valueless dirt, son of Adam, who fell to not only be worthless, but to be a deficit (to cost HIM), and gave him honor and glory.
Ecc_3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
God is Omnipresent, and we are not. But we have within us the desire to explore the depths of the oceans, the heights of the heavens, and the riches of foreign continents in the far reaches of the earth.
God is Oniscient, and we are not, but we have the desire for learning and understanding the greatness of the creation.
God is omnipotent, and we are not. But we have the desire to control our world, our environments and the outcomes of our actions to the best of our ability.
But in all of our efforts to be “stewards” of the creation, we have utterly destroyed it. In those areas, he made us a little lower than heavenly beings and higher than animal life. And by His grace, He crowns us with honor and glory.
Psa 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.
Remember back when man was created?
Gen 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
Gen 2:5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up--for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,
The King James uses the word, “till”. The Hebrew “abad” means to till, to work, to serve, to care for. We were created to care for what God created.
Gen 3:23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.
When God gave man dominion, He gave him responsibility to serve the earth. Our modern culture does not look at the natural resources as something to serve, but something to serve us. So God gave us power over the animal kingdom to serve it, as well as the ground, and we have distorted that purpose of man in our sinfulness.
Yet it is grace that He has not removed the dominion from us, although we have abused the power.
Isaiah 24:4-6, 19. The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth languish. 5 The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. 6 Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left...The earth is utterly broken, the earth is split apart, the earth is violently shaken.
Rom 8:20-23 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
And it is grace that will restore us, and the earth.
Psa 8:9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Oh Lord, our Master and King, how truly excellent (majestic and glorious) is Your name in all the earth!
