Psaml 8 - How Majestic Is Your Name Series

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.