OUR MAJESTIC LORD
PSALM 8:1-9
INTRODUCTION... adapted from www.sermonillustrator.org/illustrator/sermon8/never_ending_sermon.htm
I would like us to pause for a moment at the beginning before we read the passage for today and ponder the boundless expanse of the universe. We need to do that to understand a little of what our passage will speak about today.
The moon that we see most nights orbits the Earth roughly 239,000 miles from the earth If we traveled by plane at about 500 miles an hour, to the moon, it would take nineteen days. Let’s continue to think about this... the sun is 93,000,000 miles from the earth. If you boarded a jumbo jet today and traveled to the sun, your journey would take over twenty-one years! That’s nonstop too! Where were you twenty-one years ago? That’s a long time. Can you imagine flying that long without a moment’s break in order to reach the sun? For those who prefer driving ... well, it couldn’t be done in a lifetime. It would take roughly two hundred years, not including any gas or rest stops!
Let’s leave the sun and move on to the nearest star. The nearest star to our planet is 4.3 light years from the earth. Not going into too much scientific information... that is really far. To reach this closest star by airplane would take approximately fifty-one billion years, non-stop!
Scientists estimate there are billions of galaxies, each of them loaded with billions of stars. Galaxies tend to group together. Andromeda Galaxy and our Milky Way are part of a cluster of at least thirty galaxies. Other clusters could contain as many as thousands of galaxies. The Guinness Book of World Records states that in June 1994 a new group of cocoon-shaped clusters of galaxies was discovered. The distance across this group of galaxies was calculated at six hundred fifty million light years! Can you imagine how long it would take to cross such a vast distance by airplane? I cannot... my brain hurts just thinking about it. The Guinness Book of World Records also states that the most remote object ever seen by man appears to be over 13.2 billion light years away. Our finite minds cannot even begin to comprehend distances this immense and yet God can measure all this with the span of His hand! To top it off, the psalmist tells us in Psalm 147:4-5, "He [God] counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name. Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite." Not only can He count the billions upon billions of stars, but He knows the name of each one!
We are not the only people to ever think about such things. David looked up into the sky and reflected on
the Creator that made the sky. David looked at the sea and saw the miraculous animals that God had made. He saw all of these things and so much more and he wrote his thoughts down in Psalm 8.
READ PSALM 8:1-9
I. The Thought (verse 1)
David has an overarching thought that he just cannot get out of his head. It is a phrase that just keeps running in his mind over and over. In fact, David writes it once at the beginning of the Psalm and once at the end. His thought is, "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" The word that catches my attention in this statement that David makes is the word ‘majestic.’ I am not sure that this is a word that we use a lot today, I know that I do not use it a lot. There are other words that we use in its place. I might use the word ‘awesome’ before I use the word majestic. I might use the word ‘glorious’ before I use the word majestic. I might also use the word ‘impressive’ before I use the word majestic. And yet, all these words mean the same thing. David is thinking about the awesome impressiveness of God.
II. The Proof (verses 2-4)
So what does David see around him that makes his jaw drop in awe of God? What does he see that shows the glory of who God really is? In verse 2, David sees the little children around him and marvels at what God has done. David sees in these children the praises that God deserves.
ILLUSTRATION... personal story
I remember the intense feelings when Abigail, our first child, was being born. I of course was not in any pain or under any duress, but Kelly certainly was. She was doing all the work and I was very much a spectator. I was for all three of ours. Kelly did the work and I watched. I remember after they cleaned Abigail up and put her in the warmer in the nursery, that one of the nurses wheeled the mobile warmer to the window so I could look at her... and I had our new video camera in hand. She was so small. Her feet were so small and wrinkled. Her eyes would open for just a moment and then close. She had the smallest fingers... and I remember saying out loud to everyone standing in the waiting area... "Who can look at this little girl and say there isn’t a God?!" Maybe you have had that experience as well.
I think David was having one such experience. He looked and saw the majesty of God in the children around him. In verse 3, David looks up to the sky and wonders at all that he sees. The moon is amazing. The stars are amazing. In verses 7 and 8, David looks around him and sees the beauty of the Earth and the impressiveness of Creation and attributes all of it to God.
ILLUSTRATION... The Master Designer (http://elbourne.org/sermons/index.mv?illustration+3941)
What animal is longer than 3 dump trucks, heavier than 110 Honda Civics, and has a heart the size of a Volkswagen Beetle? The answer is a blue whale. How much food does it take to sustain such an animal? Try 4 tons of krill a day--that’s 3 million calories! Even a baby blue whale can put away 100 gallons of milk every 24 hours. When a blue whale surfaces, it takes in the largest breath of air of any living thing on the planet. Its spray shoots higher into the air than the height of a telephone pole. Did the blue whale come into existence by chance? By some evolutionary quirk? No way! The Master Designer put that giant creature in the sea.
God made all that David sees... God created with a word...
... the moon and the stars and galaxies of this vast Universe.
... the amazing animals and birds and fish of this planet.
... the people that walk the Earth.
David also sees something else in the majesty of God. David looks around with the eyes that God gave him and sees the awesome impressiveness of God displayed in Creation. He sees that our God is majestic and the proof is in what is all around us. And yet, David also sees with eyes of faith something that was yet to come for him that would show the character of God even more.
III. The Person (verses 4-8)
You see, David not only looked with his physical eyes, but also with his eyes of faith. And with those eyes of faith David saw someone unique. Verses 5-6 tell us, "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." Who is David talking about? What does David see?
Matthew 21:15-17 helps us understand, "But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they were indignant. "Do you hear what these children are saying?" they asked him. "Yes," replied Jesus, "have you never read, "’From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise’?" And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night."
Hebrews 2:6-9 also helps us understand, "But there is a place where someone has testified: "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 angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet." In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone."
You see the witness of Scripture is that David looked with eyes of faith and saw the coming Messiah. David looked and saw Jesus Christ. David saw that the majesty, awesomeness, impressiveness, and true glory of God is revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the most impressive thing God has ever done! Jesus was born, lived a perfect life, submitted Himself on the Cross for us, and rose triumphant... what do you call that... David called it majestic.
ILLUSTRATION... An Inside Job (http://www.pastorport.com/sermon.asp?mode=view&index=361)
In a remote Swiss village stood a beautiful church. It was so beautiful, in fact, that it was known as the Mountain Valley Cathedral. The church was not only beautiful to look at--with its high pillars and magnificent stained glass windows--but it had the most beautiful pipe organ in the whole region. People would come from miles away--from far off lands--to hear the lovely tones of this organ. But there was a problem. The columns were still there--the windows still dazzled with the sunlight--but there was an eerie silence. The mountain valley no longer echoed the glorious fine-tuned music of the pipe organ. Something had gone wrong with the pipe organ. Musicians and experts from around the world had tried to repair it. Every time a new person would try to fix it the villagers were subjected to sounds of disharmony--awful penetrating noises which polluted the air. One day an old man appeared at the church door. He spoke with the sexton and after a time the sexton reluctantly agreed to let the old man try his hand at repairing the organ. For two days the old man worked in almost total silence. The sexton was, in fact, getting a bit nervous. Then on the third day--at high noon--the mountain valley once again was filled with glorious music. Farmers dropped their plows, merchants closed their stores--everyone in town stopped what they were doing and headed for the church. Even the bushes and trees of the mountain tops seemed to respond as the glorious music echoed from ridge to ridge. After the old man finished his playing, a brave soul asked him how he could have fixed the organ, how could he restore this magnificent instrument when even the world’s experts could not. The old man merely said it was an inside job. ’It was I who built this organ fifty years ago. I created it--and now I have restored it. That is what God is like. It is He who created the universe, and it is He who can, and will, and is in the process of restoring it.
Jesus Christ came to fix the brokenness that you and I deal with because of sin. To be honest, who else would better know how to fix the relationship between us and God than the one who Created us in the first place. God came in the flesh and dwelt among us and showed us the way to live. God came to this planet and lived a perfect life to give us a way back to Him. Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. That is majesty... is it not?
IV. The Thought (verse 9)
David says, "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" What makes God majestic? David saw the Creation around Him and attributed majesty to God because of what he saw with his eyes. What makes God majestic? David saw the eventual arrival of Jesus Christ and His death on the Cross and attributed majesty to God because of what he saw in faith.
I would like us to sing this truth this morning. I would like to ask the ladies if they would play a special song for us today as we close our time thinking about the majesty of God. The song is number 74 in the hymnal. As you sing, I would ask that you reflect on the majesty of God that is around us in Creation. I would also ask that you reflect on the majesty and awesomeness of God as it is revealed in the plan of salvation and Jesus Christ.
SING #74
CONCLUSION
