Psalm 8: For the director of music. According to gittith. A psalm of David. 1 O Yahweh our Adonai, 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 Yahweh our Adonai, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Review
We Need to See Majesty
This psalm begins and ends with the identical line: O Yahweh our Adonai, how majestic is your name in all the earth. So we know that’s the topic of the entire psalm – God filled the earth with his majesty. And if God filled the whole earth with it, it must be really important, right? Majesty must be something you need to see - far more than it seems you need it. Because most people don’t spend a lot of energy on a typical day seeking majesty. Most of us don’t have that on the “things to do” list on the refrigerator. We don’t think about it much, but there is a danger in living too long in the realm of the mundane and the non-glorious. There’s a danger in going too long without beholding majesty. It will shrink and shrivel up your soul. We need to see majesty.
Slight Superiority
And we saw last time that the word majestic literally means superior. We can see God’s majesty by comparing inferior things in this world to superior things, and then following that line upward toward God. Never stop at earthly things, because even the greatest things in this world aren’t enough. But wherever they fall short, Yahweh our Adonai is enough. He infinitely superior to all things and all beings in every way at all times.
And not only is he infinitely superior; he is also slightly superior. And we need that, because we can’t relate to infinity. We can only see so far, and we can only imagine so much. And so Scripture accommodates that. In one place, it says God marks off the entire universe with the span of his hand. Then in another place it says he holds all the waters of the seas in the palm of his hand. That’s two very different sized images. If you picture someone holding an ocean in his hand, you’re picturing someone several times bigger than an ocean, but way smaller than the sun. But then if you picture him holding the entire universe in his hand, that’s trillions of times bigger than the sun. Why give us images of such different sizes? Because we need both.
Think of one of the Edmond kids. The chain comes off his bike, and he spends a half hour trying to put it back on, but doesn’t know how, and it seems impossible. So his dad comes out and with one hand sets the chain on the sprocket, turns the crank one time around, and the chain is on. It’s really not that impressive for a grown man to be able to put a chain on a bike. Most adults can do that. But for that kid – he’s far more amazed at that than the fact that his dad can do things with a computer that 99% of grown adults can’t begin to do. If two little kindergardners get into an argument about whose dad is stronger, and one says, “Oh yeah? Well my dad can beat up a 5th grader!”…. – coming from anyone else that would be an insult, but coming from a child whose world is ruled by the big, tough 5th graders, it’s high praise.
God says, “I hold the universe in my hand.” “Oh, that’s great.” But then Jesus stills a single storm on a little lake in Israel, and we’re blown away, “WOW! That’s incredible!!!” We know that God created the Milky Way, but we’re really blown away when he enables a shepherd to defeat Goliath. God provides billions of tons of food to feed all the animals around the world every single day for thousands of years, and we say, “Hmm, interesting. Yes, God is quite powerful.” But then we have a bill for $806 that we can’t pay… , and we pray for God to provide, and an unexpected check comes in the mail for $806, and we are through the roof with joy. “Our God is so great and powerful and kind…”
We’re like little kids. Because of our limited experience, we need to see God as not just infinitely big, but also as 2 or 3 times the size of my little, tiny problem. So God stoops down to reveal himself at the level of our baby talk so we can appreciate his greatness from our tiny point of reference. We need to see God’s greatness at every level, and so God just filled every nook and cranny of the earth with it.
Psalm 8:1 … how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Marveling Prayer
And the more we talk to God about it, the more clearly we will tend to see it. That’s what David is doing here. One thing we can learn about prayer from this psalm is that there is a whole lot to prayer that doesn’t involve asking for anything. This entire psalm he never asks for anything – not even for God to glorify his own name. It’s all admiration and wonder. That’s an important aspect of prayer. I try to make a practice of devoting the first portion of my prayer time each day to that kind of prayer. Talk to God about God without asking for anything, and see how that opens your eyes to his majesty.
The Defeat of God’s Enemies
So David starts with an exclamation about God’s majesty, and then he starts describing that majesty. And he could have picked any one of a million different examples of God’s greatness and majesty, but he chose two of the greatest. The first is the way God defeats his enemies using weaklings.
God Does Have Enemies
And it’s probably worth mentioning that God does, in fact, have enemies. People want to say we are all God’s children, and all religions worship the same God… , and God would never have any wrath toward anyone. Not true. God has enemies, he is at war with them, and every one of them will either be won over to his love… , or will be defeated and eternally punished by God. God will have the victory, and that victory will come through unimpressive, weak human beings.
So that’s v.2. And as soon as David writes that, he stops and compares it to v.1, and it just blows his mind. Yahweh, the great Adonai whose majesty fills the earth and transcends the heavens uses these little specks of dust called humans in his greatest work. And David has to just stop and wonder out loud, “How can that be, given the size of the other things God has created?”
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?
HIS Heavens
This all comes as a result of David looking up at the night sky and considering the heavens. Isn’t it amazing the impact it can have on your soul to just look at the sky and think for a while about what you’re looking at? How can just looking at the sky inspire a human being? I’d love to hear an evolutionist explain that one to me. And why only human beings? Why don’t you ever catch your dog out in the back yard stargazing? Why isn’t your goldfish mesmerized when it gets a glimpse out the window and a huge thunderhead with the sun shining on it?
The reason we can look up at the sky and be inspired is because as humans we are capable of seeing the glory of God. When I first memorized Psalm 8 as a kid, I memorized it wrong. And so for years I have always quoted it wrong. I’ve always thought it said, “When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?” Did anyone catch what word I got wrong? It’s not “When I consider the heavens…” It’s When I consider your heavens… It can completely change your day to just look up at the stars, or in the daytime, look up at the clouds, and remind yourself, Those are his. Those are God’s. Imagine a woman who is separated by a long distance from the man she is deeply in love with. But one day she sees an object in her car or something that belongs to him, and her heart leaps just from seeing something that is his. That can happen to us when we look up at the sky and remember, Those are his clouds. The unfathomable sizes of the galaxies, the unapproachable explosions on the surface of the sun and other stars… , the inescapable gravity of a black hole – it all belongs to him. He owns it, he controls it, he uses it as he pleases – our Father owns the universe. And just reminding yourself of that each time you look up at the sky can really pull your heart into worship.
There’s just something about considering the heavens that makes us marvel at the connection mankind has with God. That’s where it’s really obvious that we are in God’s image. It gives us a little glimpse of God’s perspective on time and space – almost lifting us out of the limitations of time and space in a way. There have been times I was in another state at a conference and I talked to Tracy on the phone and we were both looking at the big, beautiful, full moon. At the same moment, we are both watching the same object, and it just seemed to bridge the thousand miles between us and make me feel like I was close to her.
It’s the same with time. Have you ever looked at the moon and thought, Eve and Adam looked up and marveled at that same object that I’m looking at right now? David stared at it. Abraham was moved by it. (In fact, Abraham worshipped it before he was a believer.) The Lord’s heavens have a way of shrinking time and distance and expanding and inspiring our souls and drawing us near to God.
But the less awareness you have of the Lord, the less all that happens. As Charles Darwin became more consumed with his theories of evolution, he lost the ability to appreciate the wonders of creation. He wrote this in his autobiography: “My mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years... Now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry… I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness…” Darwin eliminated God, and his world went grey, and he lived out the rest of his days color blind to glory. He became like an animal, who can’t marvel at the sky.
But for those of us who know God, the opposite is true. When G Campbell Morgan was a child he encountered a man in the family garden who was staring at something. As he got closer he saw that it was a leaf. He asked the man, “What are you staring at?” and the man said, “The glory of God.” It doesn’t matter what you look at in God’s creation; if you look closely enough you’ll see the glory of God.
The Ease of Creation
And I love how David calls it the work of God’s fingers.
3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers
He didn’t even have to use his biceps. The billions of galaxies and giant stars and supernovas and all the rest are so small to him that creating it all was just intricate finger work for him. You picture someone putting on his reading glasses so he can work on something really tiny and delicate… (except God didn’t need glasses just because his eyesight is so good).
I love the creation account in Gn.1 where there is a whole paragraph describing the creation and purpose of the sun and moon… , and then, right at the very end of all that, it just says, …he also made the stars (Gn.1:16). He just wanted to fill the empty sky, so he creates the entire universe almost as an afterthought. That shows the ease of creation for God, and then he points to the arrangement of creation.
The Arrangement of Creation
3 … the moon and the stars, which you have set in place
The Hebrew word for stars refers to all the lights in the night sky – stars, comets, planets, galaxies – whatever’s up there. God put the stars in fixed places in the sky, and the planets, in relationship to the stars, wander around the sky. In fact, that’s what the word “planet” means – wanderer. Even in ancient times they noticed that. God filled the night sky so we would have something to look at, like when we put a mobile in a baby’s crib. The baby watches the little rabbit go around, then it passes behind the giraffe, and there’s the kangaroo. God did that with the solar system. I’ll hang a little planet right here, and a great big one out here, and I’ll put one with rings over here… and he gave them a spin. It’s just a giant mobile, except God didn’t need strings. He just hung them in space.
Throughout history man has used the placement of the stars for navigation. And the placement of the moon is especially important. If it were closer, the tides would wipe us out. And if it were farther, there wouldn’t be tides and it would ruin the ecosystem. David wouldn’t have known that, but he did understand that the placement was significant. Now we know a lot more about the placement of the earth just the right distance from the sun, the perfect tilt of the earth for seasons… , our placement between the spokes of the pinwheel so we could see the stars - God placed it all just right.
Man Seems Insignificant
David considers all that and says, What is man that you are mindful of him? When you see a question like that in the Bible (“Who are we that…” or “Who am I that…”) the idea is, “I’m nobody. I’m not worthy of something like this.” But here the question is even more humbling. The normal syntax in Hebrew would be to say “Who are men, that you are mindful of them?” But he doesn’t even say that. He says, “what is man…?” Even if you think of man a just an object, we’re not that great compared to inanimate objects.
The Heavens Make us Feel Small
David knew that when he looked up at the night sky he was seeing mind boggling distances and sizes. He they knew that even really low clouds are way up higher than the highest tree he ever climbed. And he saw other clouds way up higher than those. He saw thunderheads that were way bigger than mountains. And he saw really high clouds that were far above the thunderheads. And yet, no matter how high the clouds were, they always passed in front of the moon – the moon never passed in front of them. So the moon was way, way out there. And yet the moon passed in front of the sun, so it was really out there.
And David knew that no matter how big a bonfire is, or a structure fire, if you’re just a quarter mile away, you can’t feel the heat from it. And yet the sun, even though it’s unimaginably far away, you can feel the heat – even to the point of burning your skin. So that’s fire beyond imagination.
And he saw that the moon always passed in front of the stars – never a star in front of the moon, so those were even farther. And he saw that there were a handful of lights in the sky that wandered around the sky compared to the fixed stars beyond them. He didn’t know they were planets, but he did know that the farther away something is, the less you can see its movement… , so the fixed ones must be a lot farther than the wandering ones.
Size of the Universe
Now we have more detailed information (although I don’t even know if our knowledge is any more mind-boggling, because our brains can only imagine so much. Is a trillion light years really more amazing than a billion light years?) But I’ll give you a few numbers anyway.
The sun is so massive – you could put a million earths inside it. It’s 93 million miles from the earth. And there are stars that are so huge that if you put them where the sun is, the earth would be inside the star. The edge of the star would go all the way out to the orbit of Mars. And when they explode – I told you last time about supernovas (if the sun were 10 ft. away, the crab nebula would be the size of the United States). That’s really the only way we can think about these sizes – by shrinking down the scale. Otherwise the numbers are just meaningless.
And the distances – even one light year is beyond our comprehension. Light travels so fast that if there were a train track that went all the way around the earth – oceans and everything… , and the train went the speed of light, if you fell down on the track you would get run over 8 times per second until you got off. And light, going at that incredible speed, can travel the 240,000 miles from the earth to the moon in 1.3 seconds. But to go from the sun to the earth, 93,000 miles, it takes 8 minutes. To go across just our local galaxy, it would take 100,000 years. The closest galaxy to ours is Andromeda. It’s so close that you can see it with the naked eye. But if you took that speed-of-light train there, it would take over 2.5 million years. And with a telescope you can see a galaxy that would take over 13 billion years to reach. And we don’t have any idea what’s beyond that.
The bottom line is this: if you reduced the universe down to the size of the earth, you wouldn’t be able to spot our sun even with an electron microscope. And we are millions of times smaller than the sun.
Unbelievers see all that and conclude that we are nothing. Atheist Carl Sagan said, “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us.” Atheist Stephen Hawking said that mankind is “just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting round a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant…” Jason Gots: “What quantum and astro-physics means for us humans is that from the perspective of the universe, we hardly matter at all.” My response to that is this: When they say we are insignificant and that we don’t matter, I say, “Says who?” “Says me, Stephen Hawking.” “But wait a minute, aren't you one of the ones that doesn't matter? And if you don't matter, then the little puffs of air coming out of your mouth matter even less, right? So if you are an utterly meaningless insignificant bit of chemical scum on a speck of dust in the universe… , how is it that you're making ultimate pronouncements about the value of mankind and the universe and ontology and meaning and the existence of God? I’m having a hard time believing that you really believe in your own rhetoric.”
They claim to believe these things, but they don’t live as people who really think they are nothing. You would think that based on their own reasoning, they would be the most lowly, humble people in the world. They aren’t. They are just like everyone else - they live as people who think they are gods. They live for their own glory, not God’s glory, and they do what they please. They disregard God and his Word, and elevate their own ideas above the words of Jesus Christ. They claim to believe they are nothing, yet they live as though they were a little higher than God. They pontificate with authoritative pronouncements about morality – and pass judgment on Jesus Christ… , telling us that the words of Jesus about there only being one way to God are immoral and wrong.
That whole argument about mankind being insignificant because of the size of the universe nonsense. I don’t know why scientists and educated people would use that argument, because there is nothing scientific or even logical about it. How does the size of one’s environment determine that person’s worth or significance? The city dump is larger than Steven Hawking, does that make it more important than him? It’s a nonsense argument. On what basis would the size of one’s surroundings have anything to do with that person’s worth or importance or significance?
The Real Question: Why is Man So Significant?
But someone will say, “Wait a minute – isn’t that exactly what David says in Psalm 8?”
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…
Isn’t David looking at the size of the universe and concluding that man is small and insignificant in comparison? Isn’t that the same thing that Hawking and Sagan and the others are saying? No, not even close. It might be, if the sentence ended where I stopped reading. But David didn’t say, “When I consider your heavens … what is man? Nothing.” What he said was, “When I consider your heavens … what is man that you are mindful of him?” David isn’t saying, “The heavens are huge therefore man means nothing.” He’s saying, “The heavens are huge, so why, God, does man mean so much to you?” Then he goes on to talk about just how much mankind means to God and how supremely significant we are in the creation. David isn’t making an argument for our insignificance; he’s asking God why he has given us so much significance.
Why would David ask a question like that after considering the heavens? Because being in surroundings that are so much larger than you doesn’t make you less significant, but it does make you feel less significant. If I build an addition onto my house, does that make my family less significant than they were before I increased the size of the house? No, of course not. Although, if you went into a huge, massive cathedral with 60 or 80 foot ceilings – that would make you feel small… , but walking in there wouldn’t actually make you less important as a person. Being surrounded by something much bigger than you doesn’t make you less important, but it does make you feel less important. When I consider the heavens, I feel really small. And what David is saying here is, “God, I look at the vastness of your heavens and I feel like mankind is small and insignificant… , but I know mankind is huge and important from your perspective – how can that be?” David is not making a statement about the smallness of man… ; he’s making a statement about the astonishing, inexplicable wonder of the greatness of man in God’s sight.
And that question is never answered in the psalm. David just says, “I look at the vastness of your heavens, and I’m blown away that you care so much for puny man – wow, how majestic is your name!” The psalm doesn’t provide us with the answer to the great mystery of why God has exalted man above the creation; it just marvels at it.
Go back to that quotation from Jason Gots: “What quantum and astro-physics means for us humans is that from the perspective of the universe, we hardly matter at all.” Think about that for a second. From the perspective of the universe? The universe doesn’t have a perspective. Perspective is a point of view, a way of looking at something, or an attitude – all of which require eyes and a brain. Intelligent beings have perspectives; empty space and rocks and burning gasses do not have perspectives. The universe doesn’t consider us small because it doesn’t look at us. It doesn’t think about us, it doesn’t think about itself, it doesn’t think about anything.
It’s fascinating to me that they just can’t help attributing personal characteristics to immaterial matter. No matter how hard they try to avoid the idea of God, they just can’t help it. They want to be atheists and naturalists, but they end up turning the universe into a personal being, even when they are trying their hardest not to. When one of those atheists says, “The universe is very large, therefore we are insignificant” you can ask, “We are insignificant from whose perspective?” The only meaningful answer they can give is that they are insignificant from their own perspective.
But as I said before, they don’t even really believe that. They believe that while they are star gazing, but the other 23.9 hours in the day they believe they are of great significance. We can join them in how they feel when they look up. We can stand next to them and say, “Yeah, when I consider the heavens I feel like nothing too.” But that’s just how it looks from my perspective. There’s another perspective to consider. Jason Gots was actually on to something when he talked about the universe’s perspective. He intuitively knows that there is another perspective besides the human perspective that we should consider. But it’s silly to think that empty space and balls of burning gas have a perspective. The perspective that matters is the one who created those massive heavens. That’s what David is doing in this psalm – he’s comparing his perspective to God’s perspective. David’s perspective is that he feels small; God’s perspective is that he has exalted mankind above the creation. And as you read the psalm you can see that David is going with God’s perspective, not his own. Because David understood what should be obvious to all of us: you are what God says you are, not what you feel like you are. Our perspective is distorted, God’s perspective is perfectly accurate, because God’s perspective is what determines reality. And so the only factor that determines how much we matter is how much we matter to God.
4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
Mindfulness & Care
What does it mean for God to be mindful of us? The word literally means to remember. How can an omniscient God remember something? He is already aware of everything at every moment. Whenever the Bible speaks of God remembering someone, it always implies movement with favor toward the person.
Psalm 74:2 Remember the people you purchased of old … 3 Turn your steps toward these everlasting ruins
For God to remember you means to turn his steps toward you – to move in your direction with his favor. It’s the opposite of when your caretaker forgets about you – leaves you high and dry somewhere. God doesn’t do that. He doesn’t leave us stranded, he doesn’t leave us without hope; he pays attention to our needs and moves in close to us.
The other word David uses here is care – what is man that you remember him, the son of man that you care for him? Care refers to an attending to someone in action and concern. It’s just like our English word care – you care about them in your heart (that’s emotion), and you take care of them by supplying their needs (that’s action).
The word literally means to visit. God visits mankind in a way he doesn’t visit the rest of his creation. He gives us special care, special love, and moves toward us with a kind of relationship that is not possible for other created things. Only man can have that kind of relationship with the Creator. And it’s astonishing, when you think about how vast the universe is and how tiny we are, that God would show that kind of special concern for us.
He takes care of the whole creation, but not like he cares for us. We have a unique kind of relationship with him. And he not only cares for us, he has exalted us. David describes God’s exaltation of man in 4 ways:
Verse 5
1) You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
2) crowned him with glory and honor.
Verse 6
3) You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
4) you put everything under his feet
That’s where we’ll plan on picking it up next time. For now, learn how to use the sky. The unbeliever contemplates the vastness of the universe, and feels like nothing. And since his perspective is the only perspective there is in his mind, then he concludes he is right – he really is nothing. But then he turns around and lives like a god. Why such hypocrisy and schizophrenia? Because they think what they feel like they are determines what they are. So when they contemplate the sky, they feel small, therefore they must be small. But when they live the rest of their life, they feel entitled, therefore they are entitled. As Christians, we are learning more and more how to live according to the knowledge that you are what God says you are, not what you feel like you are.
Discussion
What are some areas where we feel one way about what we are, but God’s Word says something different? Let’s start on the high side, then we’ll talk about the low side.
High Judgment of Self
On the high side – what are some things we tend to feel about ourselves that are too high, and God’s Word has to correct us?
• I feel entitled to a certain level of treatment from others.
- God’s Word says the good treatment I get from God is enough.
• I feel like my opinion is important and should be headed and adopted by others.
- God’s Word says our opinions and judgement calls are fallible and shouldn’t be imposed on others. (That includes our opinions of God’s Word, such as where to draw the line with modesty or materialism.)
Low Judgment of Self
• I feel like my worth is tied to my accomplishments/wealth/job
• I feel like my worth is tied to my looks/intelligence/abilities/gifts
• I feel like my worth is tied to how my children turned out
• I feel like my worth is tied to what people think of me
- God’s Word says my worth has to do with care, visitation, and exaltation by God.
Conclusion: His Majesty, not My Worth
One final point: the solution to feeling worthless is not feeling important or valuable. The solution is to feel loved, because that will draw your attention off of yourself and back to God, and that’s where the real joy comes. When you feel loved, that will make you love God more, and that’s where the highest joy comes from. Not self-importance, but loving God and being loved by God.
If you think the universe is an accident, the size of it will do nothing but make you feel small. But once you realize that it was made for you, then when you see the size and extravagance of it, instead of making you feel small, will make you feel loved. Earlier I asked, “If I built an addition on to my house would that make my family less important because they are living in a larger place?” No. If I built that addition to give them more space, and give them a more comfortable place to live, then it will make them feel loved. If you walk into a massive cathedral-type building with 80-ft ceilings, and at first it makes you feel really small… , but then you find out it was your dad who built it, and he built it just for you, and you say, “Why did you make it so extravagant dad?... ” and he says, “Because I wanted you to always remember me when you’re in here,” that wouldn’t make you feel insignificant. It would make you significant in his eyes. It would make you feel loved, which would make you love him. And when you love him, your attention is off of yourself an onto him.
David looks at the heavens and says, “Wow. What is man that you care about us?” Then he goes on to talk about how much God cares for us. Then what is his final conclusion in v.9? “O LORD our Lord how valuable and important I am!” No. It’s not even “O LORD our Lord how valuable and important I am to you.” He does say that, but that’s not his conclusion. That’s a step to get him to the conclusion. The conclusion is about the majesty of God. The final conclusion isn’t that God loves me, or I’m important to God, or I’m special. The thing that will pull me out of my funk when I feel worthless is to think about the majesty of the Creator who chooses to make much of me. He cares for me, visits me, and honors me, even though I’m nothing, therefore, Wow! How majestic is his name in all the earth!!! Verses 2-8, about God’s care for you – that’s important. But the highest joy doesn’t come until those thoughts bring you to v.9.
