How Majestic is Your Name
Notes
Transcript
Announcements:
Youth Group tonight - at my house.
No Childrens ministry this week - Communion Sunday
Next Sunday - Braeden Barlow send off
Next Saturday - work day at the church
Next Sunday - Loren Holtberg
This morning we are finishing our series in the Psalms with chapter 8.
We just sang a version of this Psalm put to music, I wanted to do that today, so that we have that experience of singing what David would have Sang.
So far we have seen david struggle through some really hard - mental and emotional
To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.
1 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I look at 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, and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
9 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
The Bible - specifically the old testament, teaches us about who we are, who God is and how we interact with him and the world around us according to the purpose and plan he has for us.
This is a fun chapter to me. This chapter was very important to early Christians. Paul references this chapter to explain Jesus, Jesus lives this chapter out in his ministry.
David opens and closes the chapter with phrase - Oh YHWH our Adoni How majestic is your name.
Our language is kind of limited. We translate YHWH to Lord, and Adoni to Lord - when in fact two different things are being expressed here to address the same God.
Oh Lord - Yahweh is the covenential name of God, this is the name that was used when God addressed moses at the burning bush. Literally means the Great I am - the name that Jesus claimed for himself to be in John.
58 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”
YHWH stresses the presence and commitment of God to Help his people. This is a name with meaning.
Adonai - Lord - stresses the authority. He is the Lord of lords. There is no authority above him.
3 Give thanks to the Lord of lords. His faithful love endures forever.
So in those first two words - two things are expressed. God is in control, and He cares about me.
God is the authority, and we have relationship.
That is a very powerful way to bookend a song.
Oh Lord our Lord.
How majestic is your name in all the earth.
Glory and honor belong to you God. In all the land.
Your name is Majestic.
It is Grand - Noble, royal, regal, splendid.
David starts and ends this chapter with a desire to honor God. This is where we see his heart as a worshiper. His relationship with God is a special one. His love for his lord runs deep.
In that we find the theme of this chapter.
David is writing this to make Gods name great. To lift it high.
This is worship.
Worship exists for two reasons - to Glorify God and to encourage ourselves.
David was worshiping. He was giving Glory to God. Making his name great.
This would have been David’s response when He experienced the good things that God had blessed him with in his life.
But once it was written, David can sing this to himself to remind himself - even in the bad times, that God is great. That he has relationship with a God who cares.
This is who God is, I know this is who God is. I have sang this song. It is in my heart. The melody does not leave me.
That is part of the reason I wanted to sing that song today - to give these words melody.
The rest of this song really defines that Glorious nature of God. It gives several examples:
2 From the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have established a stronghold on account of your adversaries in order to silence the enemy and the avenger.
The first example is that God silences the enemy and the avenger. He is a strong and wonderful God. And what makes that more incredible than ever is that he does it with BABIES!
He uses the weakest creatures.
The hebrew is literally “nursing ones”
God is out there using the cries of babies who can’t even hold their head up and eat solid food yet to put the enemy in his place!
26 Brothers and sisters, consider your calling: Not many were wise from a human perspective, not many powerful, not many of noble birth.
27 Instead, God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
28 God has chosen what is insignificant and despised in the world—what is viewed as nothing—to bring to nothing what is viewed as something,
29 so that no one may boast in his presence.
And God really does this!
In Matthew 21 Jesus deals with the priests and the scribes about this.
15 When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonders that he did and the children shouting in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant
16 and said to him, “Do you hear what these children are saying?” Jesus replied, “Yes, have you never read: You have prepared praise from the mouths of infants and nursing babies?”
God is Glorious and Majestic because he uses those with no strength of their own
He is Glorious and majestic because he is powerful.
Verse 3 we see that God is majestic because he creates the big things.
3 When I observe your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you set in place,
This is the verse that I reach back to to explain what’s called general revelation.
The natural proof that there is a God. The way that things work together.
The fact that there is an earth, moon and stars. The fact that the gravitational pull is perfect so that we aren’t thrown into the sun. The divine way that steak tastes when grilled. All of those things - for goodness of God.
Those things don’t make God majestic - but they are real because he is majestic.
God is great - and in his greatness He has created big things. His greatness allowed him to create great big things, and we celebrate the big things that he created by calling him great.
Deep within our souls we have a nagging and lingering sense - a need to worship. When we connect that with general revelation we start to see a God with a desire to be the delight of His people. .
God wants us to be delighted in Him.
And that is hard to reconcile.
David wrestles with that in verse 4.
Why?
4 what is a human being that you remember him, a son of man that you look after him?
When we consider the whole world…
we are so insignificant.
There are lives in an ant hill than in our city.
When you look at the stars, and science has made this worse, now that we can SEE it, when you look at the stars. And science tells us that each one of those is a sun, like ours - and could have its own orbiting planets - like ours.. we are so small.
When you think about your problems… and realize that there have probably been close to 80 Billion people who have lived on earth.
If you were an asterisk - printed on a regular sheet of paper, that stack of paper would be over 6400 feet tall. One out of 80 billion.
Who is man.
Even collectively.. who am I?
That the creator of the universe would remember me, that he would care for me, that he would want relationship with me?
And it goes further than that. He empowers me. He dwells in me.
He cares about my day to day. He cares about my health and my well being.
He has a plan for my life, a purpose for who I am to be.
David asks an honest Question.
And answers it.
4 what is a human being that you remember him, a son of man that you look after him?
5 You made him little less than God 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 the sheep and oxen, as well as the animals in the wild,
8 the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea that pass through the currents of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord, how magnificent is your name throughout the earth!
Who is man?
Man is who God says He is.
First thing about this verse is that you should be careful with it.
What is meant here is not that we are little gods.
We do not have the power that God has.
We cannot do the things God can do.
But there is a great division here.
We aren’t animals.
Apes and monkeys may share some similarities physically, but they have no soul. They do not get the blessings of music. They are driven only by synapsis in their heads - they have no morality.
We
And this can get really deep and theological. We can go into the depths of what it looks like for man to have dominion. To ask the question of whether or not man still has that dominion.
What we can know for sure is that we are created for that.
Paul wrestles with this in 1 Cor 15:21-28
21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man.
22 For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
23 But each in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits; afterward, at his coming, those who belong to Christ.
24 Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he abolishes all rule and all authority and power.
25 For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet.
26 The last enemy to be abolished is death.
27 For God has put everything under his feet. Now when it says “everything” is put under him, it is obvious that he who puts everything under him is the exception.
28 When everything is subject to Christ, then the Son himself will also be subject to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.
22 And he subjected everything under his feet and appointed him as head over everything for the church,
23 which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.
My suggestion is this.
We are created of dominion. We excersise some dominion. We have authority where it is given and granted. We can do greater things that this in the name of Jesus…
and, we live in a fallen world. Where we are restricted from having total dominion.
Where things are not all as they were created to be - but shadows and fascimilies of those the creation.
