Psalm 8

Sometimes the best thing we can do is let ourselves get caught up in the greatness and majesty of God. We all have things to work out and work on but He's the one that can change us through the power of His presence. 

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

SPEAKER_00 0:22

What's your strategy for overcoming a rough night's sleep? That isn't a deep theological question for you. That's just because my brain and my body tag teamed me last night and decided I wasn't going to sleep very much. And you know what? That's okay. This isn't me complaining to you. I'm bringing it up because I wanted to share the rest of the experience with you from this morning. So we got up and did kind of our normal thing, had a cup of coffee, which is normal for us, and just kind of welcomed the day. And then we're kind of getting ready. And I moved into my own quiet time just for a little bit before I was moving into my preparation for this. And during that quiet time, I just noticed that I just felt better about everything. And this isn't me telling you that when you spend time with the Lord, then your sleep problems just go away. But there was a noticeable difference from before I started that time to afterwards. And sure, caffeine may be part of that equation. I'm not going to say that it isn't. But I'm I'm inclined to believe that God was just genuinely meeting with me and wanting good things. And my prayer is that that would be true for you as well. That as you come and meet with him, whether it's here on the podcast or whether it's in your own, you know, separate time, that it really is that time of refreshment, that it is a time that's meaningful for you, that it's so much more than data download that we are here to meet with Jesus, because he's here to meet with us. Happy Monday. I'm glad that you're here. And we're going to be in Psalm eight today, one of my favorites for sure, Psalm eight. If you have the Word of God near you, go ahead and open that up. If you don't, just go ahead and listen in. But before that, let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for all that you have done for us today. God, thank you that you're present with us, whether we are sleep deprived or not, whether we're having an amazing day or not. Thank you that you're present and that you care for us, that you see us. Amen. It begins with for the director of music, according to Gittith, a psalm of David. Once again there's that instruction for the director. Lord our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth, you have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants, you have established a stronghold against 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 mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands, you put everything under their feet, all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. Lord our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Before we get to anything else, did the Lord highlight anything from that psalm to you as it was read? I want to encourage you, listen to the Spirit, keep inviting him to speak into your life. Let's go ahead and make a few observations here of Psalm eight together. I know I'm I'm doing all the talking here, but I think it's it's helpful in this case. So it starts and ends, and I love this, it starts and ends with the majesty of God, particularly his name. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. That phrase there is repeated. And and when I read that, either in the quietness of my own mind or even out loud, I I think about just God's reputation, the way that that the people, and not just myself and you, but like the people at large, humanity, how we understand him. And there is this sense there that we're called to just bring God glory in all that he is, and to declare that, that the bigness and the goodness of God is something that we need to partner up with, I think, in our own lives, but it's it's just there and it's central to this particular psalm. It's there at the beginning, at the end. We need to pay attention to that. Our focus is primarily on Him. And then we see this movement that takes place so familiar to us now in the Psalms. Once again, God uses the innocent and the seemingly weak, and he talks about children, even infants there in verse 2. The praise of children and infants. Through them, right, you've established this stronghold against your enemies to silence the foe and the avenger. And that's such a striking statement to me. God using the seemingly weak to shut down threats, to shut down ominous threats. And that's so unlike us. We want to meet strength with strength, force with force, kind with kind, like whatever happens to us, we want to return that. God's coming back and he's saying, like, nah, I'm gonna take a look at this threat and I'm gonna use the praise of these little ones. The ones who who may are still developing their their brains and their their functions and their motor skills. Uh them, toddlers, have you looked at a toddler lately? Man, they're they're they're all over the place. But God looks at them and when they express praise, I think that's a a delight to him. So just seeing that just is beautiful to me. The third thing that I wanted to bring out for us is in the context of God's incredible creation. And and David writes quite a bit about that, right? Verse 3, when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars. And then again, when we look in verse six, that we talks about he's made us rulers, humanity rulers over the what's happened there, but all of the animals, the creatures, the flocks and the herds, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, all of these different things. And he he looks at all of that in that context. God has focused in on us, on people, on humans, and placed us in this unique position to be over, to be stewards, to be caretakers of the rest of creation. And positionally, and I don't know how much or how we should totally understand this, but it seems like positionally we're we're just under the angels in terms of whatever hierarchy is taking place there, but but we're we're we're there, we're elevated in the context of all of the other things that are there. It's almost as if God has stepped back a moment and he's taken time to consider or to view or to kind of take in the whole of creation. Not just, you know, people, but all of the wildlife, all of the stars in the heavens, the solar system that we have, everything that's there, everything that we have come to discover. Because I think all of that was and is within God's view. And he's taken time to consider all of the beauty that's there, all of the goodness that is present in that, and yet as he does that, as he steps back, his gaze keeps coming back to people, people like you and me, people like us. And in that excellence, in that majesty of God that's talked about there, how majestic is your name, how excellent is your name. And all of that, he he has this ability to look at us and to be mindful of us, to in that certain way delight and and take joy in us. Psalm eight is absolutely one of my favorites in the list of of all the psalms, and and I wanted to share with you a few reasons as to kind of why that is. And these are maybe personal reflections, but I hope that they're encouraging and helpful to you as you interact with the passage. By the way, I would encourage you, you know, to take time and think about these different scriptures on your own and not to like give you more homework or whatever, but just for your own, you know, your own relationship with the Lord, I think it'll be helpful to you. So the first thing for me is that this is a humbling psalm. You know, it begins and ends with with God, and that's rightfully so. I think we're supposed to start and end there. Like that's that's important to get that part right. And yet as we move through this psalm, there's there's clearly this sense of of God's uh magnitude, but then this elevation of humanity in the context of what God has done. In verse 4, it says, What is mankind that you are mindful of them? And in some translations it's it talks about like the son of man, that you are mindful of them, that you would care for them. And and just thinking about that idea to me, it's it's humbling. It makes me feel small and valued all at once. And not every passage of scripture does that for me, but this one does. It makes me feel small and valued all at once. And I think there's something when we enter into a space of worship, which this absolutely is, when we enter into a time or a space, a particular space of worship, and we're we're coming into the presence of God to recognize that that we're coming into the presence of somebody who absolutely is holy. And and we really have no business being in his presence save for the grace and and the kindness shown to us through Jesus. And yet he seems to welcome us into that space. And and even though we come and we're we're flawed, and we know that, right? We we absolutely know that. We come into his presence and and he looks at us and he loves us, and in fact, he doesn't just love us like a like a stray dog, right? He he loves us like people that he wants to partner with. In fact, he has partnered with us and he's he's given us a role in the context of what he's created, and and it's not an insignificant one. And and that to me is just an absolutely incredible thought that we get to come and not only worship God and glorify him, but recognize that that he has this plan for us, he has this intention, this purpose for us that that is part of what he's done from the very beginning. So it makes me feel small and valued all at once. And then finally, it it really reminds me to take in the beauty of the world around me. Like when I read those bits about, you know, you've placed the moon and the stars, all of these different things, I consider all of these things that you've set in place. And at least on a clear night, going out and and just taking a moment. It doesn't need to necessarily need to be long, but just taking that moment to look up, to get out of my own headspace and just look up and see what God has done around me. And I appreciate that. But then even in the context of that, it it leads me back to this focus in on the Lord Himself to kind of get swept up in that a little bit. And I'm not trying to be like melodramatic or any of those sorts of things, but but just legitimately to have the rest of the world kind of fade out a little bit, as beautiful as it is. All of a sudden, when we're looking at the Lord, especially when we're mindful of Jesus, that just everything else matters less. You know, on my smartphone, which is probably smarter than I need it to be, there's this feature, and it's probably on yours as well, I don't know. But you can take a like a portrait shot, and like with a tap, you can blur the background, and it just kind of fades out and it highlights, right? It highlights the focal point of that photo. And it's kind of like that when we look at God. That is beautiful, no matter what the background looks like, and in this case it's stunning. We look at God and all the rest of it just kind of fades out. It it's there, and we appreciate it, but it matters less. I'm gonna leave you with one last little twist. Well, it's not so little, but it's to look at this psalm, particularly a few of the verses there, through the context of Christ. And so we're looking now just real quick at Hebrews chapter two, verses five through eleven. The writer of Hebrews is talking about Jesus, and then he writes this, and we're starting at verse five, and I'm gonna just read it through and and just let this kind of plant a seed in your mind as you go throughout the rest of your day. It says this. It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking, but there is a place where someone has testified. What is mankind that you were mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him. You made them a little lower than the angels, you crowned them with glory and honor and put everything under their feet. And then he goes on to say, In putting everything under them God left nothing that is not subject to them, yet at present we do not see everything subject to them, but we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it is fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for who you are and what you've done for us. Thank you for meeting with us here today. We love you. Amen.