Praying for a New Perspective
We returned this past week from the best vacation we ever had as a family. We drove out east, visiting Washington, D.C. and Williamsburg, Virginia. Colonial Williamsburg is set in 1774, complete with restored homes and fascinating exhibits by silversmiths, wig makers, and drum and fife players. One of the highlights for me was to listen to historical figures that were dressed just like people dressed over 225 years ago. We heard from Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Patrick Henry.
Because of Patrick Henry’s significant contribution to the Revolution, he was scheduled to speak in an air-conditioned theater in the middle of the afternoon. I pulled the parental prerogative and declared that we all needed to go and listen to this key player in American history. I pumped up the girls by saying he was going to be an exciting and passionate speaker. As we settled into the theater, Patrick Henry walked onto the stage, complete with his white wig and brass-buckled black shoes. I listened intently and kept looking at the girls to make sure they were fully appreciating this slice of living history.
After a couple minutes I started yawning. I shifted in my seat as the coolness of the darkened theater started pulling my eyes shut. When I finally came to, I had drool running down my chin, and Emily and Lydia were staring at me with big grins on their faces! As we left the theater, I commented that I was disappointed that Patrick Henry never said his famous line, “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give my liberty or give me death!” The girls assured me that he did but I missed it because I was asleep. They’re still teasing me about this today! I should mention that Beth was sound asleep, too! If any of you struggle with sleepiness this morning, I won’t be offended. If I slept through Patrick Henry’s rousing speech, you should be able to snooze during my sermon!
It’s great that we’re able to go back and read what our founding fathers have written and said. This helps us get a feel for what they were thinking and feeling. Fortunately for us, we have the privilege of going back to what our “faith fathers” have written in the pages of Scripture. This morning we’re beginning a brand new series called, “Praying Through the Psalms.”
While the Book of Psalms may be the most popular book in the Bible, and is most often associated with worship or songs of praise, the Psalms actually give us a very practical picture of prayer. They take us from the heights of joy to the depths of despair, using words that can serve as a pattern for our own prayers.
Ambrose, a church leader from the 4th Century, referred to the Psalms as the “gymnasium of the soul.” In order to catapult us into deeper prayer, both individually and as a church, we’re going to spend the next nine weeks exercising our faith as we pray through the Psalms. I encourage you to read through the entire Book of Psalms, using them as a model for prayer (if you read three a day you will finish the entire book by the end of summer).
Two years ago, we went through a series called, “Worship in the Psalms.” This helped lay the groundwork for the launch of our two-service worship format. It’s my hope that the series we’re beginning today will help contribute to a flood of fervent prayers and raise the prayer temperature around here. Jesus said in Matthew 21:13: “My house will be called a house of prayer.” I encourage you to join with us this Tuesday night as we gather together to pray. Let’s make PBC a house of prayer, and let’s commit to make our homes lighthouses of prayer. In order for that to happen we must first have hearts of prayer.
I’ve often wondered what is most important prayer or preaching? Should we be spending more time reading the Bible or praying? I love A.W. Tozer’s answer to this question: “Which is more important to a bird: the right wing or the left?” That’s why we have our IMPACT statement, taken from Acts 2. We’re called to six purposes as a church, and we must constantly strive to keep them in balance and perspective Instruction, Ministry, Prayer, Adoration, Caring, and Telling others the gospel. Teaching is not more important than caring for one another. Prayer is not better than evangelism. Worship does not trump ministry. They’re all essential and important.
My goal this summer is to allow the Word of God to catapult us into the praise of God. As we workout in the Psalms, we will find ourselves responding in protracted prayer. I will know that this series has succeeded when each of us experience a revolution in our prayer life. I don’t want to just give information about the Psalms; I sincerely want to allow this section of God’s Word to affect life transformation.
Let’s admit something this morning. Very few of us pray like we should. If the truth were known, most of us would be embarrassed if others knew how little we really prayed. Sometimes our prayer life is flabby simply because we’ve not been exercising it. But I’m convinced that for many of us prayer has become a bit boring and predictable. As we take this book of 150 prayers and actually begin praying these expressions of praise and longings back to God, we will experience nothing short of a prayer revival.
I’m not interested in giving you another formula for prayer. While they can be helpful in their simplicity, they invariably omit part of who we are or what we’re experiencing. Prayer becomes smaller and can become more like a task rather than life itself. When that happens real life and prayer begin to exist in separate compartments with few points of contact. Prayer can become a duty that we can never totally fulfill.
The call of the Bible is not a call to more prayer, but to a life of prayer. Paul calls it “unceasing prayer” in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Jesus refers to prayer as a life of “abiding” in John 15:7. The psalms are the only prayer guide that enlarges prayer so much that everything else is pulled into it. Prayer becomes the great conversation. Nothing is too large or too small to be prayed.
I’ll never forget laying flat on my back in Zimbabwe, Africa in 1983 in the middle of a soccer field when it was pitch black. As I looked up at the stars and the moon I was overwhelmed with the majesty of God and my own sense of smallness. Tears started to run down my face as God brought the words of Psalm 8 to my mind. I picture David, the author of this psalm, lying on his back gazing at the heavens, when these words started flowing out of his mouth.
“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your 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, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Please join me as I pray this Psalm back to God…
We can outline this Psalm very simply.
1. God matters more than anything (1-3)
2. You matter to the Majesty (4-9)
God Matters More Than Anything
The theme of Psalm 8 is found in verse 1 and is repeated again in verse 9: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” The first word “LORD” is the name Yahweh, which was the unspoken name of God, and means “the self-existent one.” The second use of “Lord” is the name Adonai and is a title that reflects that He is master of everything. The use of “O Yahweh” focuses on God’s otherness, or separateness from us. The phrase “our Lord” helps us see that God is personally involved with us. God is powerful and He is also personal. Theologically speaking, He is both “eminent” and “immanent.” This dual orientation is a key to understanding this psalm.
We get in trouble when we emphasize one of these at the exclusion of the other. God is both beyond us and right near us. If we focus only on Him as forgiving, loving and not expecting too much, we can trivialize the Almighty. Conversely, if we picture God has removed from us, as One who is mysterious and to be afraid of, we can feel like He is impossible to know. Psalm 8 calls us to revel in the paradox of God’s being He is “other” but He is “ours.” If I know Jesus as Savior, then God is both majestic and He is mine.
God’s name is “majestic” in all the earth. This means that His name, which stands for all that He is, is excellent and famous in the earth. There is no one else like Him. He is omnipotent and incomparable. Exodus 15:11: “Who among the gods is like you, O LORD? Who is like you--majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?” David is overwhelmed by the majesty and greatness of the Almighty, and recognizes God’s global glory, much like Paul does in Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
David concludes verse 1 by saying that God’s glory is way beyond the heavens. The word “glory” encompasses all of His attributes. The word literally means, “heavy” and refers to the fact that God is weighty, or awesome. As David stared into the night sky he was dazzled by what He saw and yet God’s glory fills the galaxy and beyond! When contemplating God’s glory, Solomon writes something similar in 1 Kings 8:27: “The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!”
Verse 2 takes us from the highest heavens to one of the smallest things on earth: “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise…” We move from heavenly bodies to infant expressions. I picture David’s stargazing being interrupted by a baby’s cry or a child’s voice. This is really cool. God’s transcendent glory, His greatness that is far above the heavens, can be grasped and expressed by a child! Children have a way of capturing spiritual truth in ways that amaze, and even rebuke us grownups.
A father was reading the Bible story about Lot to his young son: “The man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city, but his wife looked back and was turned to salt.” When he was done, his son asked, “What happened to the flea?” That reminds me of our three-year-old’s response to a song that Beth sang to her recently, “Megan is a gift from God. Megan is a gift to be enjoyed. Megan is a gift from above. Megan is a gift to be loved.” When Beth was done, Megan said, “But I don’t have any wrapping paper on…”
Children have the innate ability to see things simply and literally. That’s why we’re focusing our energies this summer on our 5-Day Club ministry and why we have children’s church and Sunday School classes for all ages. It’s for their benefit, but actually, if you’re a teacher, you benefit from the praises that come from the lips of kids. Jesus quoted this verse in Matthew 21:16 in response to the chief priests and teachers’ complaint about children confessing the deity of Christ. This helps us see that praise is instinctive to us as human beings. We have been made to worship. It’s natural to praise Him!
In verse 3, David’s mind returns to the marvels of the cosmos: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place.” The word “consider” means to meditate, or to see. As he looks at the star-spangled sky, He quickly gives testimony to God’s work “your” heavens, “your” fingers, which “you” have set in place.
David is astonished at the greatness of a God who could create such things. It is estimated that there are at least 10 billion galaxies in the universe, with each galaxy containing perhaps 100 billion stars. The word “fingers” is a metaphor that was used for embroiderers. God knit everything together, arranging all the planets and stars in such a way that would bring Him the most glory. David only saw a fraction of this stellar display but he was overwhelmed nonetheless.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are best known as the first astronauts to land on the moon and take that “giant leap for mankind.” What you may not know is that before they emerged from the spaceship, Aldrin pulled out a Bible and as his first act on the moon, he broke bread, took a cup and celebrated communion.
Frank Borman was commander of Apollo 8 and had the thrill of looking down on the earth from 250,000 miles away. He radioed a message, in which he and his fellow astronauts took turns quoting the opening verses of Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” He later explained, “I had an enormous feeling that there had to be a power greater that any of us, that there was a God, that there was indeed a beginning.” There’s something about space that sparks our spirit, isn’t there? I like what John Glenn said after his return to outer space 36 years later, “To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible. It just strengthens my faith.”
These first three verses help us see that God matters more than anything. The rest of the Psalm establishes a second truth: You matter to the Majesty. The first half focuses on God’s glory. The second half answers the age-old questions: “What is man? How do we fit into the cosmos? What is our purpose? Why are we here?” By the way, these questions can only be answered as we come to grips with who God is. Any attempt to find out who we are apart from the One who made us is doomed to failure. We must always start with God.
You Matter to the Majesty
As David pondered the power of God while seeing the solar system, his thoughts come back to earth in verse 4: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” On this dark night, on this little pebble of a planet, why would God even care about me? Listen carefully. In God’s eyes, you are more spectacular than a supernova. The glory of the galaxy has been placed upon your head. If there is anything more marvelous than the sheer scale and splendor of the universe, it’s that in all of that vastness, you matter to the Majesty.
The word for “man” here is the word that means “weak and frail.” Our lives are like a vapor, here one moment and gone the next. And yet, God is mindful of us, meaning that He remembers us. This is a covenant term, indicating that He is committed to us and will never forget us. The word “care” has a rich meaning. It literally means, “to visit.” Because God treasures His creation, He looks for ways to come and get close to us and to visit us with His blessings.
Some of you don’t really believe that God thinks about you all the time. You have a hard time understanding how He could love you because of all the things you’ve done. While you may be unworthy, as we all are, you are not worthless! Allow the truth of Psalm 139:17-18 to break through your guilt and shame: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.” Do you know what that means? It means that you can’t even count the number of times God thinks about you!
And Zephaniah 3:17 tells us what He does when He thinks about us: “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” When God thinks about you, which He does all the time, He takes great delight in you and even breaks out into song!
You are the pinnacle of His creative power, the apex of His awesome plan for the cosmos. We see that in verses 5-8. We are made just a little lower than the heavenly beings and have been crowned with glory and honor. God’s plan for us was to make us co-regents, as He’s called us to have dominion over flocks, herds, beasts of the field, birds of the air, and the fish of the sea. There has always been a special place in the heart of God for humans, whom He made superior to any other part of His earthly creation. Genesis 1:26 reminds us that we have been made in His image and therefore we reflect His glory, though rather dimly because of sin.
Allow Jesus to Recreate You
This Psalm leaves us feeling a bit unsettled because we know that while we can ride a horse and catch some fish, all of God’s creation is definitely not under our feet. Earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, fires, cancer, and death are a stark reminder that our world is out of whack. Our trust in corporations, our courts, and even churches has been fractured these past months. And, we wonder when the next terrorist attack will come.
We can heal and we can harm. We both educate and exterminate. We can overflow with humanitarian help and then explode in inhumanity to others. The writer of the Book of Hebrews felt a similar tension when he read this Psalm. Right after quoting a section of Psalm 8 in Hebrews 2:8 he wrote: “In putting everything under him [meaning man], God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him.”
We’ve come a long way from the day when God made mankind to have dominion. Great things have happened. Inventions have made life easier. The Sons of Liberty made a stand for independence. We have looked for ways to subdue our planet and have headed to space, looking for other worlds to conquer. We’ve done well…or have we? There’s still one thing you don’t have dominion over. Do you know what it is? It’s you. Humans have never learned to subdue sin. It was unleashed into the human bloodstream by Adam and Eve and it continues to infect lives today. That’s the root of the human dilemma. We’re image-bearers of God and yet we’re marred by the magnitude of sin.
The Book of Hebrews also gives the provision to our predicament. Quoting Psalm 8, the writer of Hebrews 2:9 no longer applies it to us but rather points us to “…Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death…” Jesus took on the form of a man in order to taste death for us. He did this, according to verse 14-15 in order to “…destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil; and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
Humans have been made in the image of God to rule and reign as the divine agent in charge of the earth. But because of sin, we have rejected God and pursued ultimate destruction for both our planet and ourselves. But Jesus came and dealt the devil a deathblow. When we put our faith in Him, we will become who God has made us to be. He is fashioning a new creation of men and women, boys and girls, who reflect His image and accomplish His purposes in the world.
One People Under God
That brings us full circle to the last verse of Psalm 8: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” Let me ask you a question. Is Jesus your Lord right now? David could say with confidence, “O Lord, our Lord.”
This week a federal appeals court declared the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional because of the phrase, “under God.” Thankfully, that decision has been stayed and will hopefully be overturned. It was amazing to see how our entire nation rallied behind the pledge. I really enjoyed watching Congress recite it on Friday, giving special emphasis to the phrase, “under God.”
As I watched the reaction and read different responses, I couldn’t help but wonder if we are really “one nation under God.” Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that the public outcry has been so overwhelming. But let me bring this a bit closer to home. Psalm 8 establishes that God’s glory is above the Heavens and yet it reminds us that He can be “our” God. He can be your God. But that can only happen if you decide to live your life “under God.” Under his authority. Under his Word. Under His values. Under His purposes for your life.
As we approach our celebration of independence this week, are you ready this morning to pledge your dependence upon God and your determination to live under His leadership? If so, will you please stand and join me as I conclude our time by praying through Psalm 8.
