O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, Because of Your enemies, That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, All sheep and oxen—Even the beasts of the field, The birds of the air, And the fish of the sea That pass through the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!
Psalm 8:1-9
In these verses we find the psalmist marveling at God’s creation, and how we as one of God’s creations are honored by God. These verses also tell us of what place we hold in God’s heart.
The pesky housefly is the most talented aerodynamicist on the planet — superior to any bird, bat, or bee. According to a British scientist, “a housefly can make six turns a second, hover, fly straight up, fly straight down, fly backwards, do somersaults, land on the ceiling, and perform various other show-off maneuvers. And it has a brain smaller than a sesame seed.”
Flies are also loaded with sensors. In addition to their compound eyes, which permit panoramic imagery and are excellent at detecting motion, flies have wind-sensitive hairs and antennae. They also have three light sensors, called ocelli, on the tops of their heads, which tell them which way is up. Roughly two-thirds of a fly’s entire nervous system is devoted to processing visual images.
If God put so much wisdom into ordinary houseflies, imagine what it means to know that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”
The psalmist looks at God’s creation of the heavens and the other works of his hand and wonders why God even cares about man. Compared to all creation man is so small, so seemingly insignificant. But God thinks different.
The psalmist is pondering the imponderables, and I have a few that I want to present to you.
• You tell a man there are 400 billion stars, and he will believe you. But tell him a bench has wet paint, and he feels the need to touch it. Why?
• Why do you put suits in garment bags and put garments in suitcases?
• If a cow suddenly laughed, would milk come out of its nose?
• How come glue does not stick to the inside of the bottle?
• Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?
• Why is a boxing ring square?
• If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?
• Why are there five syllables in the word monosyllabic?
• Why do banks charge you a nonsufficient funds fee on money they know you don’t have?
• Why are they called apartments when they are stuck together?
God has entrusted all his earthly creation to man, to be stewards of it. Is that love or what? But humanity has a low opinion of itself, and this is evident by the fact that we rob and steal from each other, that we abuse each other mentally, emotionally, and physically. God created us to love and care for one another.
Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love God with your mind, body, and soul. The second greatest is like the first, to love your neighbor as yourself. God is asking us to just get along, and He knows that we can do it, but alas, we just don’t want to.
I believe that we feel that we are not capable of the task of the stewardship that God his placed upon us, and so we turn to our own selfish ways. But by the grace of God, the love of Christ Jesus, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit we can be better, we can be God’s pearl.
Many Germans who had immigrated to the United States were sitting in a theater when the movie Psyche was shown. The propaganda movie, produced by Hitler’s Third Reich in 1940, followed the invasion and Blitzkrieg through Poland. Whenever a Polish person appeared on the screen, people in the audience would scream, “Kill him! Kill him!” in a frenzied commitment to the destruction of Germany’s enemies.
W. H. Auden, the Pulitzer Prize – winning poet, playwright, and literary critic, was so shocked that he walked out of the theater. He later said one question ran through his mind: “What response can my enlightened, humanistic tradition give to this evil, to those who cry out for the blood of innocent victims?” He began to sense that the only answer to evil was not in humanism, but in God and the revelation of God in the Bible.
He was convicted of God’s holiness and his own sinfulness. In 1940 he became a Christian.
What is a pearl and how is it made? (explain)
We are God’s pearl that started off as a piece of sand or dirt, which by itself is harmless. Likewise, man started out as the dust of the earth created in the image and likeness of God. Genesis 1:26-27 tells us this:
“And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
The psalmist even states in verses 5 of Psalm 8 that we were made a little lower than God and that we have been crowned with glory and honor.
Like a pearl we became a piece of sand or speck of dirt in God’s body. But instead of destroying us or spitting us out he clothed us in His righteousness and continues to refine us so that He can bring us back to the way we should be.
Like a pearl, God is wrapping us with layer after layer of His love and righteousness, which in effect helps to isolate the sin component of our lives. This is being done through the sanctifying work of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, through His saving work upon the cross.
Matthew 13:45-46 tells us of Jesus’ redemptive work that reconciles man back to God:
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.
With Jesus’ work on the cross, we were purchased. He did so with the only thing of value He had, His own life. 1 Corinthians 6:20 confirms that we were purchased from the world with a price:
“For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.”
Christ Jesus purchased us with His blood, the price he paid was His life, and you are the goodly pearl. We start out life as sinners and then we turn to Christ Jesus and are saved, whereupon His redemptive action on the cross starts to transform us into God’s pearl. For we read in 1 Corinthians 15:51-53:
“Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”
During the rapture, this is where we as God’s pearl will have matured and are ready for God to receive us in heaven.
Become a pearl of God by the renewing of your mind, by making a choice to believe in Christ Jesus. Make a choice to remove the filthy rags of your life and be clothed in the white robe of Jesus Christ. Change your thinking from the ways of the world to those that are of God. Let God transform you from that speck of dirt into a pearl of God. For Hebrews 10:14 tells us:
“For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.”
So, by the one sacrifice of Christ Jesus, we are being perfected and made holy.
Choose the salvation of Lord Jesus to make you whole again. Let him remove the tarnish from the image that God created you in. Choose the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to guide you into salvation. Work out your soul salvation by renewing your mind to the saving power of Christ Jesus.
Be crowned with glory and honor by living a life that is pleasing to God.
In closing I want to mention the New Jerusalem mentioned in Revelation 21:21:
“And the twelve gates were twelve pearls: every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.”
The entrance is a pearl, you are a pearl of God, so allow your witness to be an entrance to the kingdom of God for someone you know or meet. Let someone know the wonders of the kingdom of God. Be that pearl entrance and lead someone to Christ.
