HOW MAJESTIC IS YOUR NAME
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant used to love taking long walks on summer evenings, meditating and thinking. One time he was seated in a park when a policeman noticed that he had been there for several hours. The policeman came up to him and said, "What are you doing?" The philosopher replied, "I'm thinking." The policeman said, "Who are you?" Kant said, "That’s precisely the problem I've been thinking about. 'Who am I?'"
I want to tell you today that you do not have to sit on a park bench by yourself for hours trying to figure out who you are. God’s word tells us who we are. Today we are continuing in our series looking at the Psalms and we come to Psalm 8.
Psalms 8:1-9 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!
Why did God create the heavens and the earth? What is the chief purpose of man? How are we to live on this world that He has given us? This Psalm tells us that we exist for 3 purposes;
1. Sing His Praise - how majestic is your name
The psalm starts out saying “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” The first reason that we exist is to give God praise. We exist to sing His praises. Out of the overflow of love in the heart of God, He created us. God didn’t need us, He wanted us.
Sometimes we sing here in church that song “What a Beautiful Name it is.” People have asked about the one line in that song “You didn’t want heaven without us, so Jesus you brought heaven down ...” Does that mean that God needs us? Does that mean that heaven is somehow incomplete without us? Not at all. The song does not say you couldn’t have heaven without us, it says you didn’t want heaven without us. In eternity past God, who was perfectly satisfied and content within the Godhead, decided to create us. Out of the overflow of His love, He created us.
Revelation 4:11 You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.
God did not need us, He wanted us and so he created us. We exist as objects of love from the overflow of the heart of God. Since this is the reason we exist, it also the purpose of our existence. We exist to worship. We exist to love God back. We exist to praise Him, to sing His praises.
Psalms 8:1 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.
What does majestic mean? Oxford dictionary defines majestic as “having or showing impressive beauty or scale.” The word in the original Hebrew is ADDIYR which comes from the root word that means to expand. It means something that is great in size, magnificent or mighty. The King James uses the word excellent, and that is certainly part of its meaning, but something can be excellent yet small like a pure diamond. The word implies something that is expansive – huge in scale.
Naomi and I went on our honeymoon to Lake Louise. When you see the mountains, how they completely fill your entire view, they are majestic. Their sheer beauty and scale take your breath away. So it is with God. His greatness is majestic, it takes our breath away.
It says that from the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise. That is because kids see the world through fresh eyes. Their faces reflect what is going on in their hearts. Their hearts are not hardened by years of routine. When we visited Lake Louise, we were struck by its beauty, but not the locals. For them it was just another mountain, just business as usual.
Years ago, we lived in Niagara-on-the-Lake. We were not that far from Niagara Falls. In all the years we lived there I think we visited the falls maybe once. That is because we were used to them. We had seen them before. People would come thousands of miles from all over the world to see the falls, but we who only lived a short drive away never went. They had become familiar to us and ordinary.
I remember the first time we took our kids to Disney World. Naomi and I had been many times before this. As we were riding the monorail towards the Magic Kingdom their eyes were the size of saucers. When they caught a view of the castle there was this look of absolute wonder and delight. For us it was just another visit, for them it was a whole new world.
As believers we need to always remember that childlike wonder. When we come to worship, we need to remember that the God we worship is truly majestic. We exist to worship, but that is a choice we have to make. God has given us free will, because love must always be a choice. We can recognize who we are and who God is and respond in worship, or we can simply ignore who we are and respond with indifference. It is a choice we must make.
2. See His Provisions - when I consider your heavens
We exist to sing God’s praise, to marvel in who God is. We also exist to give thanks, to recognize what God has done for us. As children of God, we get to enjoy everything that God has given us. That is the second reason we exist. Not just to worship God but to enjoy Him. The Westminster Catechism asks “What is the chief end of man?” The answer it gives is “the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”
Psalms 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 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.
One of the ways we enjoy God is to recognize His provision for us. It is counting all the blessings that we have. One of the ways that God has provided for us and blessed us is through this world we live on. This world is an amazing creation.
When we consider the heavens, the work of God’s fingers… Back in 2005, five secular planetary scientists met at the American Museum of Natural History and agreed that our solar system appears special. One commented, "The older I get, the less likely it seems to me there could be a bunch of places like our solar system."
The earth is an amazing creation. There is a book out called the Improbable Planet. In his book, Hugh Ross talks about how truly unique our world is. Any closer or further from the sun and life on earth would be impossible. If the earth did not have just the right chemical and mineral composition… If the moon were not just the perfect size and at the perfect distance... If the earth’s rotation was any slower of faster… Our world is such a gift to us from God.
It is interesting that often when people go into space they are overwhelmed by the experience and by what they see. Ed White, the pilot of Gemini 4, was the first American to walk in space. At the end of his walk, he said to ground control: “I’m coming back in… and it’s the saddest moment of my life.”
Roger Chaffee of Apollo 1 said “The world itself looks cleaner and so much more beautiful. Maybe we can make it that way - the way God intended it to be - by giving everybody that new perspective from out in space.”
Frank Borman of Apollo 8 said “It makes us realize that we all do exist on one small globe. For from 230,000 miles away it really is a very small planet.”
Alan Shepard of Apollo 14 said “If somebody'd said before the flight, “Are you going to get carried away looking at the earth from the moon?” I would have say, ‘No, no way.’ But yet when I first looked back at the earth, standing on the moon, I cried.”
James Irwin of Apollo 15 said “As we got further and further away, the Earth diminished in size. Finally, it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful thing you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.”
Perhaps Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14 said it best, “My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.”
It is interesting that the Psalm talks about the moon and the stars, when the sun is the primary star in our solar system. Why is that? Perhaps it is because the sun is something you cannot really study. You can’t just stare at it, unless you have special protection. Years ago, we had a solar eclipse during camp. We had to take the children in so that none of them would be tempted to look up at the sun and damage their eyes. Some of the leaders were standing outside and a worker at the camp came out with a welding helmet. Wearing that helmet, we were able to look up and see the eclipse clearly.
In a way, that is like God. You cannot look at the sun, but you can look at the moon which reflects the sun. You cannot look at God but you can look at what he has made because it reflects His glory. We exist to sing His praise and see His provision.
3. Serve His Purpose - you made him ruler
As children of God, we not only get to praise Him and enjoy Him, we get to serve Him. When we understand who we are and all that God has done for us, the natural response is service. We seek to give back a portion of what we have received. Who did God create us to be?
Psalms 8: 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!
God created this world for us and expects us to manage it well. When it says ‘O Lord our Lord’ in verse 9 that is not a word repetition. The titles are different in the original Hebrew. The first title is Yahweh, the name given to God. The second is Adonai which means lord or master. The difference between the two is that the first is strictly the title, translated as Lord. The second is the trust, a relationship. God is not simply Lord but He is our Lord. The word Adonai does not simply speak to who God is but also to who we are. We are children of God. We are His creation. God created us for a purpose. O God our master… if God is our master than we are His servants. God created us to sing His praises and to see His provision, but we were also created to serve.
Genesis 1:26-28 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Genesis 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it… 19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field…
We are the hands and feet of Jesus. As Christians we are called to be salt and light, to be agents of change in the world. We are called to make a difference. That requires work. God did not simply create this earth and then assume we would just sit back and enjoy and do nothing. He expects us to be involved in creation. That requires effort.
All relationship require effort. Think about getting married. You do not walk down the aisle and say I do and then figure that is it, that nothing more is required from you. It is one thing to get married, it is another thing to stay married. It requires effort.
Because of a shortage of maids, the minister’s wife advertised for a male servant to help around the house. The next morning, a nicely dressed young man came to the front door of the parsonage. The minister opened the door and jumped right into the conversation. “Can you start breakfast by 7 o’clock?” asked the minister. “I guess so,” the young man said sheepishly. “Can you polish all the silver, wash all the dishes, do all the laundry, take care of the lawn, wash all the windows, iron all the clothes and keep the house clean and tidy?” The young man was speechless. Finally, he spoke out. “Look, pastor, I came here this morning to see about getting married to my girl. But if it’s going to be that much work, you can count me out right now!”
As believers in Jesus, we have work to do. If you look at the history of this nation and so many others you can see the importance the church has played in their growth and development. Throughout history Christians have laboured and strived to be the salt and light that God called us to be. If our church was to disappear from this community, would Chatham even notice that it was gone?
Churches have a huge impact on society in Canada. The problem is that our nation today has a growing amnesia, they forget the longstanding role the church in Canada has had. Charities and churches make a massive impact. Our politicians and leaders need to be reminded about the good deeds that happen daily without using a single tax dollar from government coffers.
The church has a huge role to play in our nation and world today. We as believers need to be reminded that there is still work to be done. We need to be the salt and light God has called us to be. Salt is a preservative; it keeps things from rotting. It is also an antiseptic, it heals wounds. Light shows direction and provides protection.
I received an interesting gift for Christmas a few years ago. It was a DNA test from Ancestry.com. I decided to take some time over that Christmas to trace my family roots. I traced my dad’s family back to Ireland and Scotland. I traced my mom’s family back to England and colonial America. I did the same for Naomi’s family. What I found was very interesting. Through all the census pages and stories, what I saw was a legacy of faith. All the old census information listed religious affiliation. My mom’s great grandfather as a young man in 1845 had helped start Fingal Baptist church in Southwold County south of London. One of Naomi’s ancestors was an empire loyalist and we traced them all the way back to Plymouth Mass, just 20 years after the first Pilgrims landed in America. He was a founding deacon of Old Ship Church, the oldest continually worshipped church in America – built in 1681. Through all the genealogical data there was a story of faith going back centuries.
For hundreds of years the church of Jesus Christ has made a huge difference in the founding and keeping of this nation. There is still work to do. There is still a community and city around us that is looking for direction and peace. We have come today and sang His praise. Hopefully you have also seen His provisions, God’s many blessings to each one of us. As we leave today, let us go out and serve His purposes.
