Psalm 8 - What Is Man? Series

We have been spending time in the Psalms this summer and since the summer is ending, we are also winding the Psalms down to an end. Last week we looked Psalm 90; the whole idea of the brevity of life. I have to admit it was probably a little bit of a downer to talk about the shortness of life. We talked about our mortality, but it also taught us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Today, we are going to look at a more upbeat Psalm. It is actually a very uplifting Psalm because it uplifts the name of God. Not only that, it elevates man and woman to the status that they deserve. A status where they find themselves under the authority of God while being over the authority of all of God’s creation. We will be looking at Psalm 8:1-9. (Scripture read here.)

Hopefully, you can see that this is a Psalm of praise. if you were paying attention you will also see there is a repetition here. Verse 1 and verse 9 were composed of the same words. It says “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” The psalmist is using a poetic device that puts brackets on this particular Psalm. Other than that, he is making a statement about God. He is saying God you are majestic. Your majesty brackets everything. Your majesty encompasses everything out there. Really more than that, what it is also saying for us is we find our source of identity, our sense of worth right smack in the middle of God’s majesty. In other words, we answer the question “what is man?” Before we consider what is man, we want to spend a few minutes considering who is God. That is what the psalm writer David was doing. In fact, he was so excited about writing this Psalm he just kind of belts it out. “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” He understands that God is majestic. We don’t use the word majestic that much, but really majestic has this idea of greatness. It has the idea of royalty. It has the idea of infinity. It has the idea of power. Really, majesty is a word we use when we can’t think of other words to use when we are trying to describe something like God. It is a word that should be reserved for God. We might look at a king and say your majesty, but really even an earthly king should not be called majesty. Only God should be called majesty. David knows this and he belts out this Psalm. “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” He belts it out. He is just not sitting there like some of us do when we sing. He is not doing that. He is belting it out. He is so full of the wonder and the awesomeness of God that he can’t help but just begin to praise and worship.

As a side note, until we really understand the awesome nature of God, the majesty of God, our worship is always going to be hindered a little bit. We are always going to hold back a in our worship. The thing that is kind of cool is that the Psalm tells us that every single person was wired for worship since the day they were born. He goes on talking about the little kids. He says “You have set your glory above all the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies to silence the foe and the avenger.” What he is saying is kids are wired to worship. This week we start the week of Vacation Bible School. There has been a lot of work put into it. What is cool about it is that first night, if you have ever worked a Vacation Bible School, the kids come in and some of them don’t feel like worshipping. They need a little kick or whatever, but they are definitely wired. You just have to take that energy and focus it and put the songs up there and before you know it all the kids are jumping around and worshipping. By the end of that week they know all their songs and they have learned how to worship. They don’t care who is watching them. They just enjoy worshipping. Somehow along the line, they lose sight of what it means to worship. We don’t know how that occurs, but over time that idea of worship that we have inside us begins to diminish. We all become adults and no longer is it cool to worship. It’s not cool to stand even in church and worship because you are thinking about what the person next to you might be thinking or saying. We lose that sense of wonder and that sense of worship that we see in little kids. God says if you don’t want to worship, I will just let the kids worship and they are going to be the ones that are actually going to turn back the nonbelievers, the atheists, back to me. That is an amazing thing. I want to show a slide from The Message which is a contemporary translation of the same verse, but I like how he says it. “Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you; toddlers shout the songs that drown out enemy talk, and silence atheist babble.” Isn’t that awesome? The little babies in the nursery when they are gurgling and spitting up on themselves, they are just praising God. You work the nursery and you get spit up on your shoulder, praise God. I have been praised by God all over me. That is what he is saying. He is saying I don’t need the scholars. I don’t need the preachers. I don’t need all this stuff. I am just going to let the little kids do it. That is why we are sold on children’s ministry. We know if we get the kids, we will eventually get the parents. Some of you were there right? Those little kids become little mini Billy Grahams, little evangelists walking around because what happens is they get their CD from VBS. They get their songs on Sunday. They come home and they just sing it. They want to sing about Jesus all day long. The parents are participating and over time the kids start looking at the parents. Mommy how come you aren’t singing about Jesus? Don’t you like Jesus? Don’t you believe in God? About that time it gets a little complicated. The poor parent realizes I have to sit down and talk to the kid. I have to explain our perspective. If you think the sex talk is hard, try explaining to a kid about evolution. They just don’t get it. A parent sits down with a kid and says we don’t really believe in God around here. Let me explain why. What we believe is that billions of years ago, there was absolutely nothing. Nothing existed anywhere but then out of the blue, something happened, a big bang. We don’t know where it started, but it just kind of happened. Then all this cosmic dust and planets started going out for billions of years and over time it started creating planets and stars and all that kind of stuff and eventually you ended up with this thing that we call earth. This thing that we are sitting on in the middle of nowhere. Then out of the most extreme conditions, somehow where no life existed before, suddenly sprung up. Life came from nothing and it developed in the harshest conditions and over time turned into slime and seaweed and everything. Eventually it got legs and crawled out of the muck and then it became birds and giraffes and all that kind of stuff and then there were monkeys and then there was you. At about that time the kid is looking at you like you are an alien, and maybe says something like do you believe that stuff? You answer, yes, I do. So you are saying I am a monkey. Well, not really. Kind of. Then I guess I have an excuse for misbehaving in school. At about that time the adult is scratching their head and says you are right. I don’t believe it. Let’s go to church. So the little kids become the Billy Grahams. All they start out by singing about Jesus. The parents don’t know what to do with it. Basically with little kids they have ordained praise. They shut the mouth of the atheist babble. They don’t need the scholars. God doesn’t need the scholars. He is using the little babies in the nursery and the toddlers. He is using all those kids to proclaim the praise of God. That is the situation. You have David thinking about this.