Psalm 8: How Majestic is Your Name

Call to Worship

Psalm 77:11–15 ESV

I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples. You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph. Selah

Sermon

This morning we’re going to be in another Psalm, just like we were last week. And we’ll continue to be in the book of Psalms for the next few weeks while we’re still here. This week we’re going to be in Psalm 8. Let’s read it together.

Psalm 8 NIV

For the director of music. According to gittith. A psalm of David. 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!

Once again we’re going to break it down section by section. The Psalm more or less has four major section. The first verse and the last verse are bookends, acting as the introduction and conclusion but also summarizing the main point of the Psalm. The middle two parts act as a parallel to each other where they show the way that God declares His glory. Let’s start in section one, and hopefully you’ll see what I mean.

Verse 1

Psalm 8:1 NIV

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.

To start we need to go back in our minds nearly a month and a half and recall when we talked about the name of God. In many of our English translations of the bible, when we see the word LORD, all uppercase, it most likely implies that the Hebrew name is YHWH. When Lord has an uppercase L, but lower case o-r-d it often means that the Hebrew word is adon, or adonai, maybe you’ve heard that one before as well...

If you recall, YHWH means “I am who I am” or “I will be what I will always be”, it means that God is consistent, and throughout the Hebrew bible, and through the history of the Israelite people, the word YHWH would draw to mind the verse that we spent several weeks looking at. More than likely they would remember the story of Moses and the burning bush, and the story of the Exodus, and of the golden calf story, and they would have in their mind that YHWH means that God is consistently compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

And so when we look at this first line of this Psalm we see something interesting, the Psalmist, David, is saying a name and then a title. The name is YHWH, and David’s bringing to mind all of the things associated with that name. And then he says our Lord, or our adonai. And this part isn’t a name, it’s a title. And like it’s transalated here, the most literal term in our Lord, implying a position of authority, respect and perhaps royalty. Like over in the UK where you might refer to specific people as Lord and Lady.

But adonai can also be translated as god, and in a culture that was filled with different people groups claiming to follow different god’s. It was important that David was declaring that our, that is Israel’s, God, their lord, their king, their master, is YHWH; the one true God.

And so if we read the passage with this in mind we start to see the bigger picture of verse one. Psalm 8:1 “O YHWH, our adonai (god, lord, master), how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.”

“How majectic is your name”… what name? The name YHWH, the God who stays consistent, who’s character we can depend on, the God that brought Israel out of Egypt and delivered them into the promised land, despite all of their sins. How majestic is that name in all the earth, YHWH’s glory goes above the heavens.

Verse 2

Psalm 8:2 NIV

Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

This verse is part one of the two parallels. And it’s the introduction to how God shares His glory in all the earth. He does it in a really unique way; by elevating people who everyone else sees as weak powerless, and God rules the world and declares His majesty through them.

To really see what’s going on this verse we need to give a couple more definitions. For example, the word praise here is referring to the act of acknowledging God as the king, ruler, and creator of the universe, and responding to Him with trust and dependence. And so as we think about the praise of children and infants with this definition in mind we see that God is using the dependence of children to establish His dominion and protection over the world. God uses something that many people see as a bad thing, cries of complete and utter dependence, and He works within that to bring His protection and glory, and to stop the enemy.

Pastor John Piper said this: "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him".

And in the context of this verse we see this interesting idea: that God is most glorified when we humble ourselves like children recognize His greatness and cling to it with complete dependence, because it’s in doing that: completely depending on Him, that we become most satisified in Him.

The more that we rely on Him, the more satisfied we’ll be in Him, the more glorified that He will be. And in His glory He creates strongholds to protect those who are relying on Him.

Jesus quoted this verse in the book of Matthew, and in the context that Jesus quoted it in, I think we begin to see an even bigger picture.

I love how the Bible Project summarizes the context of the passage they say this (the story comes from Matthew 21)

“Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem on a humble donkey to be crowned as king. His coronation would ultimately come with a crown of thorns, mockery, and death, but the crowd didn’t yet know that. They cheered him on and looked to him as the promised king who would save them from Roman oppression.

After this, Jesus entered the temple. This is the place where Heaven and Earth overlapped, where God met with humanity, and where priests were called to rule and reign with God by representing him to the people and the people to him. But when King Jesus arrived, the temple was in shambles. The religious leaders had turned the sacrificial system into an opportunity to profit. The priests ruled in the temple behind cash registers, and the poor were charged money in order to meet with God. The temple was meant to be a sacred home, a house of prayer, but instead it looked more like a thieves’ hideaway.

This angered Jesus, so he drove the corrupt business dealers out the door and threw out the cashiers’ desks. And with his house reclaimed, Jesus welcomed the poor to freely meet with God. The blind and lame entered, and Jesus healed them. And the children came in shouting, “Hosanna, to the Son of David!”

Jesus removed the obstacles in the temple in order to prepare a place of protection for those dependent on God. This is how the King was meant to rule in his royal temple. But when the chief priests saw it, they were resentful and questioned Jesus. “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,” Jesus replied, “have you never read, ‘from the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?”

The question was rhetorical. Of course, these teachers of the law had read the entirety of Psalm 8 They probably even had it memorized. So they not only knew what was said, they also likely remembered the very next line, which states that the infant's message would “stop the enemy and the avenger” (Psalm 8:2)

You can imagine how this would have stung, since it implied that the religious leaders were the enemy of God’s work. With this reference, Jesus is also showing that he is the King of Creation, who is worthy of this praise. He is declaring that the opponents of his mission to rule the earth will not get the last word. God is at work, using the praises and dependent cries of the vulnerable to stop the enemy.”

I love how they put that, it really shows the whole picture of the story, and helps us to see an even fuller picture of what the Psalmist meant in Psalm 8:2, Jesus shows how He acts on behalf of the children who give Him praise, He is glorified by them and stands in place as their king, and as their king He protects them from those who would try and stop them from coming before God, the crooked and corrupt leaders that prevent them from being able to worship God.

And in our case what we see is that when we are fully relying on God to take care of us, and we’re glorifying Him with our lives, then He does what we can’t, fights on our behalf, and elevates us even in our weakness.

Verse 3-8

The rest of the Psalm repeats this same idea, but with different words.

Psalm 8:3–8 NIV

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.

There’s a couple of different scenes here. First, David is talking about a moment where He’s observing and contemplating the moon and the stars and how vast they are compared to humanity. I can recall times that I’ve done that. At the camp that Cassidy and I grew up at there’s a wilderness site where we hike out a ways and build shelters and sometimes sleep overnight in the woods, and in the times that I’ve done that, I’ve seen the night sky in a whole new perspective, when there’s no man-made light around, and all you have is the vast night sky and you look at the different stars, and constellations, and sometimes you can faintly see other planets. And it’s just breathtaking, and it makes you really see how small you are compared to the rest of creation.

And that’s what David is saying here, He considers the stars and then says: “what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” It’s a crazy thought that despite how vast the world is, God chooses to take care of each human individually, to know us so intricately that He knows the number of hairs we have, that He knows every breathe we’ve ever taken, that He sees every mistake we’ve ever made, and still chooses to shape each of our steps individually, to elevate us from our weakness and to lift us up beyond what we deserve.

And that’s where the rest of the Psalm goes, that God when He made people elevated them, gave them specific glory and honour and put them in charge of the rest of creation. If you remember back in the beginning of Genesis, God tells Adam and Eve to have dominion over the rest of creation, to take care of it, and to rule over it. And that’s where verses 6-8 go.

But like Jesus quoted verse 2, and framed it in a light that helps to better understand it, the author of Hebrews quotes verses 4-5, and helps us to understand them even better, because that one line about angels seems kind of confusing until we understand it in this context.

Hebrews 2:5–18 (NLT)

And furthermore, it is not angels who will control the future world we are talking about. For in one place the Scriptures say (Psalm 8:4-5),

“What are mere mortals that you should think about them,

or a son of man that you should care for him?

Yet for a little while you made them a little lower than the angels

and crowned them with glory and honor.

You gave them authority over all things.”

Now when it says “all things,” it means nothing is left out. But we have not yet seen all things put under their authority. What we do see is Jesus, who for a little while was given a position “a little lower than the angels”; and because he suffered death for us, he is now “crowned with glory and honor.” Yes, by God’s grace, Jesus tasted death for everyone. God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation.

So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters. For he said to God,

“I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters.

I will praise you among your assembled people.”

He also said,

“I will put my trust in him,”

that is, “I and the children God has given me.”

Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.

We also know that the Son did not come to help angels; he came to help the descendants of Abraham. Therefore, it was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people. Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested.

What the author of Hebrews is showing here is the rest of the story after God gave human the ability to rule over creation. When Adam and Eve sinned, the world was put out of order, creation was no longer subject to them, like in Genesis 3, where God says that Adam will now have difficulty getting food out of the ground. And so what the author of Hebrews is saying, is that ever since then we don’t see a world fully put back into order with creation but under the authority of man again. But what we do see is Jesus.

Just like in verse 2, where we see God exalt the weak in order to bring to fruition His plans. Here we see that that is the same thing Jesus did, He humbled himself lower than the angels, that is that Jesus came down from heaven and took the form of a human. And through His death and suffering He was crowned with glory and honour, because He defeated sin and death. And God chose to use His glory and honour to bring many people to glory. We are those people, the ones that Christ died for, and when we accept His gift of salvation we are made holy because of Him, and are presented as sons and daughters of God the father, co-heirs in the kingdom with Christ, and we no longer need to fear death or sin or hell or grave, because Christ came down for us, humbly submitted Himself to be lower than the angels, took on suffering to save us, and offered Himself a sacrifice in a way that we couldn’t do, and it’s because of that, that He’s able to put creation back in the order it was intended to be in, that He reigns with glory and honour and offers us the same righteousness and holiness that He has.

What this passage in Hebrews does, is take the verses from Psalm 8, show what it means in the context of Jesus, and presents an even fuller picture of the Psalm.

When we finish the Psalm we see the main idea repeated again, Psalm 8:9 “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” That God’s name is majestic, because of His character, because of His magnificent creation, and because of the beautiful salvation that He purchased on our behalf. And so the Psalmist leaves us with the same response. “How majestic is His name in all the earth”. And that’s what we continue to cry out, all the more as we continue to see God’s beautiful creation, as we continue to experience His goodness in our lives, and as we reflect on the same beatiful gift of salvation that the author of Hebrews talks about.

God is so, so good, and so our response should be to tell of His majestic name to all the earth, to go and find anyone who doesn’t know Him yet and declare His majesty to them, to show them His work in our lives, to invite them to see the beauty of the world around us with fresh eyes as we consider the majesty of our creator, and to show them how God elevates the weak to be able to share in His glory and to share His glory with others.

Let’s pray.

Benediction

2 Corinthians 12:9–10 NIV

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Communion

Matthew 26:26–28 NIV

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.