Psalm 8: For the director of music. According to gittith. A psalm of David. 1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. 2 From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. 3 When I consider 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, the son of man that you care for him? 5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: 7 all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. 9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Introduction
What Does It Mean to be Human?
What does it mean to be human? Right in the center of this psalm David asks the question, What is man? That is a striking question. There is a huge variety within humanity. Think of how different a 3-month-old is from a 90-year-old. Or how different a man is from a woman. Or Goliath the Philistine and a modern philosophy professor. Eve in the Garden of Eden and the Antichrist. Jesus Christ and Judas. Everyone in that list is in the category of “human,” so there is a huge range of very different beings that all fit in that category: human. And yet, it’s a very distinct category. There is also a huge range that fit in the category of animals. Everything from a little bug to a blue whale to a chimpanzee whose genetic code is 97% the same as humans. An endless variety of beings who are all very definitely in the category of animal and not human. There is a clear distinction between animals and humans and there is a clear distinction between angels and humans.
What does it mean to be human and not animal, and what does it mean to be human and not angelic? What is the purpose of humanity? And what’s the difference between our ultimate purpose and that of angels and heavenly beings and animals?
And how does that all come into play when you have feelings of worthlessness? Or feelings of inflated self-importance? The answers to all those questions are here is Psalm 8.
Significance of Psalm 8
Psalm 8 is a very important chapter in the Bible. It’s probably the most important chapter in the Bible on the doctrine of man, and it is referenced three times in the NT – one of those is when Jesus quotes it is a fascinating way. So this is an important psalm to know.
Not only that, but it’s an incredibly encouraging and inspiring psalm. It will make you want to worship God, and it will give you profound meaning in your life – your job, your role in the church, and your whole existence in general.
Astonishment
It begins with these words: for the director of music. According to gittith. A Psalm of David. We don’t know what according to gittith means - evidently at some kind of a musical notation. We don’t know if I had to do with the musical style or the mood of the song, but we can ask this question, what is the overall mood of this psalm? Some songs are dark and somber, some are happy and bouncy, contemplative, celebrative, forceful – what’s the mood of this psalm? I would say the best word to describe it is astonishment. He doesn’t just make a statement: “God is majestic.” He exclaims, “Oh, how majestic” That’s an emotional outcry. He begins and ends that way. You also feel the astonishment at the center point of the psalm where, after looking at the vastness of the universe David says, “What is man that you are mindful of him” David is astonished at the greatness of God, and the surprising role that mankind plays in his greatness.
Yahweh our Adonai
So let’s take a look at verse one.
Psalm 8:1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
Look at how he addresses God: O LORD our Lord. You’ll notice the first “LORD” is spelled out in all capital letters. The reason the English translators do that is to let you know these are two different Hebrew words. When it’s in all caps, the Hebrew word is Yahweh. When it just has the first letter capitalized, the Hebrew word is Adonai. So what David wrote was, “O Yahweh our Adonai, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”
Yahweh
Yahweh is God’s personal name. God has a lot of different titles (Lord, Master, God, Savior, King, etc.). Those are titles. Other religions used those same titles to refer to their false gods. But Yahweh is not a title; it’s his name. No other nation referred to their god as Yahweh. That was the unique, personal name of the God of Israel. He revealed it back in Exodus, when God told Moses to go free the Israelites from Egypt.
Exodus 3:13 Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?" 14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' " 15 God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
First he says “tell them I AM sent you” then he says “tell them Yahweh sent you” - that seems to indicate that Yahweh is a derivative of I AM. Maybe something along the lines of “he is.” So the significance of the fact that God named himself Yahweh seems to point to his self-existence. His name is that he just simply is.
Everything we see in this world came from something or someone else. And everything depends on something in order to exist – except God. If God stopped upholding me right now, I would vanish from existence. The same is true of you, the same is true of the universe, the same is true of the devil. Even the devil depends on God every moment to keep him in existence.
Romans 11:36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
Unlike everything and everyone else in existence, God was never created, never born, never came into existence, never began existing – he just simply IS. He is self-generating and self-sustaining. All his life and energy come from himself and no other source.
Covenant Name
And not only does the name Yahweh point to his self-existence, but also to his special, covenant relationship with his chosen people. It was Israel’s unique way of referring to him as their God. God really wanted them to get that, so he made a big deal out of this name.
Exodus 3:15 This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
And that’s exactly what happened. The word “God” appears about 2600 times in the OT. Lord appears about 770 times. But Yahweh appears 6828 times. And that doesn’t even count the many, many times when Yahweh appears in its shortened form, Ya. For example, every time you see the word hallelujah, the jah at the end is the shortened form of Yahweh. Hallel means praise, so hallelujah means praise Yahweh. So this name for God dominates the pages of the OT because that’s main way God wanted the people to think of him – their God who is the self-existent one.
Adonai
So David takes that sacred name, and combines it with a title: Adonai.
1 O YAHWEH, our Adonai
Adonai is the normal Hebrew word for Lord, and of all the various titles for God, this is probably the most exalted. When a writer really wanted to speak of God in the highest, grandest, most glorious, most exalted terms, when he wanted to highlight his awesome, mighty power and transcendent nature, he would call him Adonai - Lord.
So David begins the psalm by addressing God in a way designed to bring you to your knees. The picture is of absolute, royal supremacy – God as the great, supreme King and Master over all – in all the earth, and above the heavens.
And that was just as politically incorrect in that day as it is in ours, by the way. David also lived in a pluralistic world, where each culture had their own gods. But this language places the God of Israel not only as reigning over Israel, but as supreme over the entire universe, including all the other gods.
Majesty
So that’s who we’re talking about – Yahweh our Adonai. And David points out two things about him: his majesty and his glory. First his majesty.
1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Name
God’s name is majestic. Sometimes name refers to reputation – almost like our word fame. Other times it refers more God’s self-revelation – the way he reveals himself. When you tell someone your name, that’s how you introduce yourself. You are letting them know who you are. I think that’s the sense here. God has introduced himself to us. He has revealed to us his identity and his nature, and that revelation is his name. So when it says that his name is majestic, it means God has revealed himself as being majestic. The unveiling of God’s nature shows breathtaking majesty – in all the earth, everywhere in the world God shows himself to be majestic.
Superiority
The Hebrew word translated majestic is addir. It is translated magnificent, mighty, high, stately, majestic, or splendid. If I tell you to think of something that fits that description, what all would come to your mind? What do we experience in life that is truly magnificent, mighty, majestic, and awesome? Name a few things. Those are some things that fit that description in a limited way. Jupiter is majestic in that it has incredible size, but it doesn’t have a lot of power – it just sits there. Lightening is majestic because it has huge amounts of power, but it’s dwarfed in size by Jupiter. Everything we think of as majestic is somewhat majestic in some ways, but not so majestic in other ways. Only God is ultimately majestic.
But what does that mean in your daily life? What does it mean to experience God as majestic? When I asked you to think of those majestic things, they were all things you can see – things that are awesome to look at. So what do we do with this idea of God being majestic? He’s invisible. How can something invisible be majestic? How do we move beyond God’s majesty just being a word with no real impact on our lives?
Draw Arrows
I wrestled with that quite a bit, and the answer that I found has been a great help to me in my hour by hour fellowship with God. The literal meaning of the word translated majestic (addir) is that which is superior. A majestic mountain is one that is superior. It’s greater than other mountains – greater in all the ways you might measure a mountain (beauty, size, ruggedness, how awe-inspiring it is, how much snow it has, etc). A sunset is addir (majestic) because that display of spectacular colors is superior to what? A dull grey sky. Even a deep blue sky. So addir is a comparative term. God is majestic (addir) in that he is infinitely superior to all the most majestic things we can see or experience.
Psalm 93:4 More addir than the thunder of the great waters, more addir than the breakers of the sea-- Yahweh on high is addir.
The mighty waves of the sea are about the most powerful things you can experience in this world. God gave us things like that in this world so we could have something tangible that would enable us to have a concept of his mighty, thundering power. But I think we can do more than just say “Waves are powerful; God is more powerful.” It helps to not only think about the fact that God is superior, but the ways in which he is superior.
Picture a horizontal line on a graph, and everything above that line is something you like, and everything you don’t like goes under that line. Most people spend their time just plotting each event in their life somewhere on that graph. “It’s really hot today. I don’t like this” – and they place that dot under the line. Then, “Mmm, this is really good food. I like this” – and that dot goes above the line. All day long, either “this is good,” or “this is bad,” and that’s pretty much the extent of it.
Many Christians will take it beyond that and have a response of gratitude for God’s gestures of love in those things, and that’s extremely important. But I think we can go even beyond that. We can think through the ways God is superior to that good thing, and you do that by thinking about what it is that thing is superior to. Everything in life that you regard as good, it’s good in comparison to something that’s not as good. Why do we think of bone-in ribeye as being really good? Because it tastes better than most other foods we eat. Sunsets are better than grey skies, and the Alps are superior to foothills.
So whenever you experience something good, think about the addir aspect – good compared to what? This mountain is amazing because if you compare it to some unimpressive, little hill, it’s much bigger, more imposing, more majestic, more rugged, etc. It’s superior in those ways. So now, in your mind, draw a line from that boring little hill to that beautiful, spectacular mountain. But don’t stop there. When you draw that line from the inferior thing to the superior thing, keep extending out beyond that good thing. Then make it into an arrow, and that will always point you in the direction of God. It will point you to one aspect of God’s addir – his superiority. It’s one thing to just think in the abstract: God is more majestic than this spectacular waterfall. That’s just a dry fact that may or may not move you to worship. But if you take a moment to picture in your mind, “Why am I impressed with this waterfall? Because it’s superior to what lessor thing, and in what ways?” Then you let your thinking go from that lessor thing up to the waterfall and then just keep going.
Steak is better than a piece of celery, because it’s more pleasurable, more satisfying, it gives me energy, it gives me strength. Then draw a vector from the piece of celery to the piece of steak, and keep going and it points toward God, who is greater in that he is even more pleasurable more satisfying more strength giving, etc. There are times when there are really low clouds and it’s just all socked-in and dark, and thunder is rumbling and something about that just gives me a feeling that I absolutely love. I can’t even put it into words, so I won’t try. It’s just a feeling that I love having, and I can think, “How does that feeling compare to times when I’m bored or depressed or unhappy or whatever?” And I can draw the line and think, “If these clouds can make me feel this way, how much better can God’s presence make me feel?”
The best time to do this is with people. Why do I like this person? Because he is encouraging. Why is that good? Compare it to someone who is discouraging. Then draw a line from that discouraging person to the encouraging person, and keep that line going and it will point you to what God is like.
And here’s the great news – this works with bad things too. I’m upset because this person lied to me. Why is that bad? It’s bad compared to so-and-so, who I can trust. Draw a line between the two, extend that line out on the high side, and it will point you to what God is like. God is utterly trustworthy in every way.
And that will be an especially encouraging and delightful truth to you in those moments when you’ve been disappointed by people who aren’t like that. This is the best way to handle times when people disappoint you. A friend is cruel to me, and I know that’s bad because I’ve experienced kindness from other people. So I draw a line from that cruelty up to that kindness, keep the line going, and it points me to God. And you can worship the God who is up at the extreme end of that line.
And in that moment I’m much more able to appreciate that attribute of God, because I feel the sting of how bad it is when that attribute is missing. Every time someone does something bad to you, that puts you at a huge advantage in knowing God. Most of us hear a statement like “Great is thy faithfulness” and it just sort of goes in one ear and out the other. It’s just a fact about God that we’ve heard a million times all our lives. But after you feel the sting of what unfaithfulness feels like, when someone you love is unreliable in really painful ways, at that moment you have a unique ability to see how good and beautiful and important the attribute of faithfulness is, and when you sing Great is The Faithfulness, it can bring tears of joy.
So that is God’s addir – his superiority, and it is everywhere in the earth. Everywhere you look in the world, you can see this. In every category, God has created inferior things and superior things, and the lines we draw between the two will point us to God.
Glory above the Heavens
And then he goes on in v.1.
1 You have set your glory above the heavens.
His majesty pervades the whole earth; his glory is above the heavens. I’m not sure why the NIV and ESV use the word glory here, because this isn’t the normal word for glory. The Hebrew word here is hod. And you can get an idea of what this word means in a context like Job 40:9. Job 40:9 Do you have an arm like God's, and can your voice thunder like his? 10 Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor, and clothe yourself in honor (hod) and majesty. So hod fits in a list with the words glory, splendor, and majesty, with a mighty arm and a thundering voice. So the idea is very close to addir. It’s another word for the greatness of God, but this time, instead of saying it is in all the earth, he says it is above the heavens. The night sky is the biggest thing we ever see or contemplate in the human realm and God’s hod is above that. That which is spectacular, glorious, amazing, awe-inspiring, majestic, magnificent, astonishing about God – not only does it pervade the whole creation, in every nook and cranny, but it also stands transcendently above the whole creation.
Every decade or so they come out and say, “Oh, we built a new telescope. Turns out the universe is 10 times bigger than we thought it was.” They keep discovering more and more. “Oh, it turns out that little star is a cluster of galaxies with a half trillion stars each.” “Oh, it turns out that completely black spot in the night sky, now that we look with the latest telescope, has more galaxies than we can count.” The numbers and distances are so staggering that the numbers just become meaningless – so far beyond anything we can conceive or comprehend. We have no idea where the end of it all is, or what might be beyond that, and beyond that. But at some point the created order ends. And far beyond and above that is the dwelling place of God – not inside the creation, not resting upon the creation, not a part of the creation, but transcendent. And God’s greatness dominates there too.
And that makes sense. Obviously, whoever created this place has to be greater than this place. Whoever supplies the power for all these galaxies and countless trillions of exploding suns has to have more power than they do. Even Elvis Presley knew that much. And who hung the moon in the starry sky? Somebody bigger than you and I That’s definitely the first time in my life I knowingly quoted Elvis Presley, but he had it right on that one. It should be the most obvious thing in the world – whoever made the universe has to be not just bigger than you and I, but bigger than the universe. The source of all the beauty, all the creativity, all the splendor, all the power, all the goodness – he has to be greater in all those areas than the things he created. God’s magnificence dominates from the bottom of the Mariana Trench, beyond the farthest galaxy, all the way up to the highest heaven. Even the entire universe is way too small to contain the glory of God.
The Best Isn’t Good Enough
This is such great news for us because the best things in this world, as wonderful and amazing as they are, aren’t good enough. Look at us – we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, we can look up at the stars whenever we want, we have access to the best food, all the comforts of life, and still, we still get down. We get discouraged, we get depressed, we get irritable, we get dry and empty. Even the best things in this world aren’t enough to satisfy the massive, massive appetites God has put inside us. Our only hope is a God who is better in every way than all the best things in this world. Every good thing in this world, we enjoy it to a degree, but eventually we bump up against the boundary of it. We find it has limits. We touch the bottom. Only in the presence of God are we ever launched into an infinite ocean of goodness that has no bottom, no shore, no boundaries, no end.
Spurgeon was once walking through the Alps, and he was struck with how infinitely greater the Lord is than all his greatest works. And he wrote a long poem about it – I’ll paraphrase part of it:
Yet in all these however great they may be
We see not him
You Alps, that lift their head above the clouds
And converse with the stars,
Are dust compared with His divine immensity.
The snow crowned summits fail to set Him forth,
Who dwells in eternity, and bears alone,
The name of High and Lofty One.
Depths unfathomable are too shallow to express
The wisdom and the knowledge of the Lord
Earth’s wheels would break, her axles snap,
If loaded with the freight of deity.
Space is too narrow and time too short
Even an avalanche and thunder lack of voice,
To utter the full volume of his praise.
Whatever this world lacks, God has. Whatever your needs are, God is more than enough. Whatever your desires are, however powerful your cravings, God is more than enough to satisfy. Whatever you’re afraid of right now, whatever problem you have, God is bigger. However far short you fall, God can reach down and span that gap.
O YAHWEH, our Adonai, how superior is your name in all the earth! You have set your magnificence above the heavens.
Humanity
Ok, so how’s that for a little jolt of praise to start off a psalm? It’s amazing – you tell David, “You’ve got one verse to praise God,” and he knocks us on our backs. And at this point you might be thinking, “That’s great, but I thought you said we were going to learn about what it means to be human?” We will. Look at all the rest of the verses. Verse 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 8 – it’s all about mankind. “Oh, so he just gave this word of praise as an introductory comment and then moved on to his main topic which is man?” No. Notice how the psalm begins and ends.
1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Letter-for-letter identical.
David makes it very clear what the point of the whole psalm is. And even the verses in between that seem to talk about man, if you look at them, you’ll see they are really talking about God.
2 you have ordained praise because of your enemies
3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 you are mindful of him you care for him
5 You made him a little lower and crowned him
6 You made him ruler you put everything under his feet
So the first and last verse make it clear that the point of the psalm is to show the majesty and greatness and transcendent magnificence of God in all the earth. And his way of showing us that magnificence is all that material in between v.1 and v.9. In vv.2-8 we are going to see God’s staggering magnificence and power in two ways:
1) The way he defeats his enemies
2)
3) The way he rules the world
4)
God’s MOAB
We’ll just look at the first one tonight. In verse 2 we see God silencing the foe and the avenger. After reading v.1, how would you expect God to do that? All that language about God’s addir and hod – his transcendent superiority and power and greatness and grandeur that is greater than the heavens. If you just wrote that, and your next verse was to talk about how God shows off that immensity and omnipotent greatness in defeating his enemies, how would you do it? I’m thinking, something along the lines of a supernova. That’s when a star explodes. There was a star that exploded in our own Milky Way Galaxy that became visible to us in the year 1054 and could be seen with the naked eye for 2 years. The wreckage of that explosion can still be seen with a telescope. They call it the Crab Nebula, and the cloud of wreckage from that explosion is 10 light-years across. So if we reduced the universe down so the earth were right here, and the moon were ½ inch away, The Sun would be 15 ft. away, and the debris field of that explosion would cover the entire United States. And it’s still expanding at the rate of 700 mi/second. Scientist don’t understand why it’s expanding so fast – according to their calculations it shouldn’t be expanding that fast. At the center of it is a pulsar that has the same mass as our sun but it’s the size of a small town. That’s the sort of thing I would be talking about in v.2 if I were trying to describe God’s majesty in the way he defeats his enemies – drop a couple supernova’s on them.
Not long ago the United States dropped a bomb on an airfield in Syria that they were calling the MOAB – mother of all bombs. It’s the biggest non-nuclear bomb there is. If you’re in a war, and you really want to decisively wipe out the enemy, you pull out your biggest bomb. That’s how we ended WWII. The U.S. dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, and they surrendered – just like that. It was over.
Children
God will finally defeat his enemies with his mighty, majestic supremacy. So what kind of weapon is he going to use? What is God’s MOAB? What kind of mother of all weapons will the most powerful being in existence come up with the utterly destroy his enemies?
2 From the lips of children and infants you have established strength because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
That’s God’s MOAB – kids. Infants. Think of Lebron James with a bunch of guys in a gym who are about to play a pick up game. So two captains are choosing teams, and Lebron is one of the captains. He tells the other captain, “You pick first.” So the other guy picks this big, 7’3” center who plays pro ball. Then Lebron picks a little toddler. The other guy picks Steph Curry. Lebron picks a baby in a stroller. They keep going until Lebron has a whole team of children and babies, and his team still wins the game with a score of 100 to zero. That wouldn’t happen, because not even Lebron James is that good, but if it did happen, I think it would eliminate any trash talking from the other team.
That’s what God did. When it came to choose up sides – not in a game, but in a war, God chose children and infants – the weakest possible teammates. I think that’s what the children stand for here – the weakest of the weak. That’s what impressed Jesus with the power of his Father.
Matthew 11:25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.
That’s how powerful God is. He wins decisively using a bunch of weaklings.
I once saw a sitcom where Billie Jean King (who was like the Serena Williams of the early 70’s) was showing how much better she was at ping pong than the guy she was playing, so first she beat him with a ping pong paddle, then she beat him using a tennis racket, then she used a ruler or something. You see, the lesser the tool you use, the more impressive your victory is.
So instead of using a supernova, God defeats his most powerful enemies with puny, tiny human beings. Now, relatively speaking, mankind can be pretty formidable. Through our technology, we’ve developed some pretty impressive weapons – like nuclear bombs. And the strongest men in the world and the most skilled warriors are pretty impressive. But those aren’t even the things God is going to use to bring victory. It’s not our technology, it’s not our physical strength, it’s not our weaponry. It’s our ... lips
The Weapon of Praise
2 From the lips of children and infants you have established strength because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
Your Bible might say from the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise. The Hebrew says you have established strength. The Greek translation from Jesus’ day interpreted that a little bit and put you have established praise. You can see where they got that, since he’s talking about what comes from their lips. And if you wonder, “Is that a valid application?... ” the answer is yes, because when Jesus quoted this verse, he quoted the Greek translation and applied it specifically to children who were offering praise. So I think the original said that from the lips of children God establishes the strength needed to defeat his enemies, and the main way that happens is through praise.
So the point is this – God is so powerful, not only does he pick the weakest players for his team, the weakest fighters for his army, and he doesn’t even use the strongest part of those weaklings. He doesn’t use our firsts or our technology or any of that; he uses our praises. When you go to church tomorrow and sing about God’s greatness, or you go home tonight and talk to your family about God’s greatness, or you praise him in your prayers on the ride home – when you do that, something very, very powerful is taking place. A war is being won. A powerful enemy is being silenced and defeated.
We talked a few weeks ago about how all of history is moving from Genesis 1:1, where only God is in existence, to Rev.5:13, where a massive throng of created beings are all, unanimously, enthusiastically, praising God – every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, in the sea, and all that is in them – all shouting praises to God. That’s where all of human history is going, that’s the purpose of the creation, it’s the final goal of everything. And every time you and I praise God, we’re moving in that direction, toward the greatest victory ever won, where evil is eradicated forever.
In 2 Chronicles 20 Israel was facing three superior armies that were all coming at once to annihilate Israel: Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir.
2 Chronicles 20:15 This is what the LORD says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s. 16 Tomorrow march down against them. 17 Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will give you
So Israel marches out to face this army.
18 Jehoshaphat bowed with his face to the ground, and all the people of Judah and Jerusalem fell down in worship before the LORD. 19 Then some Levites stood up and praised the LORD, the God of Israel, with very loud voice.
21 Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the LORD and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: “Give thanks to the LORD, for his love endures forever.” 22 As they began to sing and praise, the LORD set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.
God sent confusion into the opposing armies and they slaughtered each other, and Israel didn’t even have to fight. And he accomplished it through his people’s praises. That event serves as a picture of how we will be used by God to win the ultimate battle against his enemies. Another example is in Acts 16, where Paul and Silas are locked down in stocks in a dungeon in the middle of the night, and they sing hymns, and God sends an earthquake and smashes the prison wide open. Islam spread around the world by the sword – powerful people killing those who wouldn’t convert. Christianity spread around the world through weak, insignificant people praising God, winning people’s hearts to see the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Praising God – taking true, emotional delight in the goodness of God and announcing it, is the most powerful force in the world. People who are a lot smarter than I am may be able to tie me in knots with their arguments against God. But what can they say about the fact that God is so delightful and satisfying to me that his presence gives me greater joy that all the best things in this world? How can they argue against that? How can they argue against true delight in God? They can try, but they will fail. Praise will win. That’s God’s plan, that’s his strategy, that’s his promise, that’s his MOAB.
Don’t Be Shy
And it’s the very fact that the praise comes from weak nobodies that exalts God all the more. Remember that the next time you’re too shy to pray out loud in a prayer meeting. Why are you afraid to pray out loud? Because people will discover that you don’t know much? That you’re not very impressive? That you’re like a child who doesn’t know anything and doesn’t have powerful rhetoric? You’re the exact kind of person God wants to use to declare his praises so he can bring about the most spectacular victory ever and put on full display his magnificence and splendor that fills the earth and transcends the heavens. So don’t hold back! Let’s close with the doxology
