What is Man?
Psalm 8
July 1, 2018
I’m not sure if you know this, but as of Tuesday at 5 PM, there were over 7.6 billion people on this planet! That’s a lot of people. And there’s over 326 million in the United States. So, when you feel crowded by people, yes, it’s happening. On a typical day, we gain about 228,000 people per day! That’s a lot of people.
We’ve been talking about Psalm 8. Last week we saw how huge our universe is, and how small planet Earth is in comparison. Yet, we saw how God loves us and cares for us and the fact that as Jeremiah tells us ~
17 Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you. – Jeremiah 32:17
Now, I want to remind you of what David said in this 9 verse Psalm. There’s so much to what David is saying, and today I want to concentrate on verse 4 and keep us moving to the end of the Psalm.
We believe David was tending the sheep and was looking up at the night sky and marveled at God’s creation and he sung these words ~
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! – Psalm 8
David looked to the sky and while picturing all that God did, he asked this question to God . . . and then he went ahead and answered as well! He asked ~
4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? – Psalm 8:4
That’s a great question. Sometimes we ask that question too. God! Why do you care about me? What is there about me that you even want me around? Lots of questions we can ask God about who we are and why we’re even here.
If we took an evolutionary approach, we would say we were kind of a chance occurrence. That some one celled amoeba mutated and became 2 cells and so on and our not so distant cousins are the apes.
When you think about it this way, we aren’t all that different than the birds and fish, dogs and frogs, cats, rats, gnats and bats, baboons and racoons, and slugs and bugs.
That’s us - - - We’re really nothing more than all of these. And if that’s the case, we really don’t have much value and not much value to God - - - if there even is a God. A relationship with God is really inconsequential in our lives.
And there may be times we might agree with that evaluation.
There are times we don’t think we’re worth very much.
Times we think that we’ve messed up so badly - - no one could want us around.
Times when we wonder if anybody would miss us if we were gone.
Sometimes we may even wonder if it matters that we even exist.
But the Bible doesn’t agree with that.
The Bible teaches that you are NOT an accident
You were planned and you have a purpose. You have value because God created you. You see, you were created in God’s image. In Genesis 1:26, we read ~
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.” – Genesis 1:26
Do you see that? Firstly, God said LET US MAKE man in OUR image, after OUR likeness. That’s the first reference in the Bible to the Trinity . . . to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
But notice that we are the only part of creation made in the image of God. Nothing else was made in God’s image. Not the beagle or eagle, not the deer or steer, and certainly not the moose or goose. Nothing else was created in God’s image. After every day of creation, God said it was good, but when He created man, God said it was very good!
We are special, unique in God’s eyes. He looks at us as His holy and dearly loved children. And David goes on with this Psalm as he considers his smallness in the vastness of this world. I can see him asking, Father, why do you care so much about us, who am I that you care for me? Yet, David answers his own question ~
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
What a fantastic answer. I think most of the time we don’t look at it this way. Now, before I tell you how I think we see ourselves - - David says, God, you’ve made us a little lower than the heavenly beings. There’s a really important word here in Hebrew you need to know about, because it changes the meaning of what your Bibles say.
The word in Hebrew to describe us as being a little lower than the HEAVENLY BEINGS is the word ELOHIM.
It’s translated in 5 different versions this way! You can see some of the major translations of the Bible, how they translate this word.
ELOHIM is used 2,603 times in the OT. 2,582 times it is used to denote God. It’s more of a generic term for God. That means 99.1% of the time it means God.
Yet, most translations don’t use this as part of their translation. Angels is not at all an accurate translation, nor is heavenly being. The only version to do it right in my chart is the NASB. I will add the NLT also uses God.
My point is this ~ We have been created in the image of God and we are to live our lives as people who were created just a little lower than God. But here’s the problem, we don’t look at ourselves this way. We tend to look at ourselves as created just a little higher than animals.
And when you look at the news, it’s pretty disgusting.
Last week a 15 year old was dragged out of a New York drugstore, beaten and stabbed. After he was stabbed, he came back in to get help, nobody helped him, they shooed him out and he died. Video footage shows a customer stepping over his blood to finish his transaction. Is that humanity?
A woman called to find out if it’s OK for an 8 year old to sell bottled water in front of her home. Who cares!
And the 2 craziest stories I’ve heard in a long time is the fact that a woman gave birth to a baby, but wants to be legally recognized as the child’s father! How’s that? She really believes she’s a man, and wants to be recognized as the child’s father, even though she’s the mother. You’ve got to be kidding me?
Just 2 weeks ago, a judge in Canada (Newfoundland) declared a child born to a woman, has 3 parents, since the woman and the 2 men are involved in a stable and ongoing polyamorous relationship.
There are fights at softball games by parents and coaches . . . and the list goes on and on. So, sometimes we act like we’ve been created just a little higher than the animals.
Well . . . . maybe we are a little more than the animals. Not really, we were created a little lower than God, but it sure can seem the other way around!!
Even without the benefit of modern science, David, was mesmerized by God’s presence in his life. It’s as if we can hear part of that great song again ~
O Lord, my God, When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made;
I see the stars; I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
O, Lord, how great thou art!
You may not think you matter, but you do. You may think your contributions will not matter, yet they do. We don’t know how we will impact the future. The future may be changed 80 years from now because of something you do tomorrow, that you don’t even know about.
Do I Matter? You’ve heard that old philosophical question - if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?
What about this one? If a person lives and dies and no one notices, and if the world continues as it was, was that person ever really alive?
But maybe we need to change the question and that changes everything, because on our own, we may really think we don’t matter. Maybe the better question is ~
DO I MATTER TO GOD? That changes everything, doesn’t it? The answer is ABSOLUTELY! YES! OF COURSE!
Jesus taught us that God is like a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to frantically hunt for one that’s missing, like a father who can’t stop thinking about his rebellious ungrateful child - - even though he has another who’s respectful and obedient, like a rich host who opens the doors of the banquet hall to street people.
God loves you and I because we were created in His image. And God loves each one of us. God knows us so intimately that even the hairs on our head are numbered. Do I matter? Do you? One of over 300 million? Yes, you matter.
And Jesus did more than talk about it - He showed it.
* He went out of his way to embrace the unloved and unworthy, the folks who might ask "Do I matter?" doing it with a sense of urgency.
* Lepers who were not allowed to live inside the city wall were touched by Jesus, even as the people ran from them.
* The blind, the lame, the beggers were not ignored by Jesus - they were healed and given new life.
* A woman, too shy and full of shame to approach Jesus face to face, grabbed His robe, hoping He wouldn’t notice. He noticed and she learned like so many other "nobodies," that you cannot escape from Jesus. That everybody is somebody to God. Why? They mattered.
David wrote ~
4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
We heard it again in the song ~
And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in.
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.
Oh, Lord, How Great Thou Art!
Around 1600 years ago, Augustine perfectly said it ~
God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.
Do we understand it? Of course not. It joins a long list of other things in our lives we do not understand. We struggle with sickness and death and evil and so much more that we will never understand.
We don’t understand how BROWN cows eat GREEN grass and produce white milk. We don’t understand a parent's love and patience, but we count on them and cherish them. We don’t understand how pain can help us grow, but we know it does. There is much we do not understand, and this is just one more thing.
Then sings my soul, my Savior, God, to Thee;
How great Thou art; How great Thou art.
Do I matter? Do you matter? 1/326,000,000? Absolutely yes.
God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.
Can we say this together?
God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.
