Sundays in the Psalms (8)
Notes
Transcript
The Excellency of His Name
The Excellency of His Name
Discovering God’s Greatness in Creation
Everyone has a specific way of looking at life, we call it a worldview.
Our worldviews help us answer the ultimate questions of life:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
Is there a God?
What’s it all about?
What will happen to me when I die?
Is anything worth dying for?
We can’t avoid these questions. We have been asking them since time began and sin entered the world.
Because Deep within our souls we have a nagging and lingering sense that things are not quite right.
Something has gone wrong.
Something is amiss in our world and lives.
The great church father Augustine (AD 354–430) saw our dilemma and directed our attention to God. He wrote, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (Confessions, 3).
People are extremely religious,
worshiping creatures
worshiping objects
even worshiping man.
Society looks for a god to worship even if it is the wrong god who is destined to disappoint and not deliver, the wrong god who is nothing more than an idol.
These gods can come in a variety of worldviews:
• Atheism—those who say there is no god often turn and worship themselves.
• Pantheism—those who worship creation and all that is.
• Deism—those who tip their hats toward God, convinced he is out there but doesn’t care.
• Finite theism—those whose impotent god is hardly worthy of worship.
• Panentheism—those who think they sense a divine force running throughout the universe like an electrical charge we need to tap into.
• Polytheism—those who perceive a smorgasbord of gods for the picking and choosing, and the more the better.
In contrast to all these wrong worldviews, the Bible teaches there is One and only One God who is personal, powerful, and perfect.
He is the magnificent God who made the universe and all that is in it.
He is also the approachable God whom you can know by name and with whom you can have a life changing relationship.
Psalm 8 tells us all about this magnificent God!
Psalm 8 is a praise hymn of creation.
It comes most likely from young David’s life as a shepherd.
When lying in the fields one night, gazing into the majestic night sky, he may have been filled with awe and wonder concerning God’s marvelous creation.
This God, and only this God, is to be worshiped and adored as the good and great Creator, the Ruler, and the Sustainer of all things.
The psalm looks back to Genesis 1–2 and God’s creative activity, especially his creation of man.
However, it also looks forward in anticipation to the coming of a new Man, a second Adam, who will make right all that has gone wrong since sin entered the world through the first Adam’s disobedience.
The God who accomplishes all this truly has an excellent name.
So if you will allow me the next few moments I would like to preach on: The Excellency of His Name: Discovering the Greatness of God in Creation
I. The Praise of God in Creation v.1
I. The Praise of God in Creation v.1
A. The Name in the Praise
A. The Name in the Praise
v.1a and v.9 are identical, forming bookends that bracket this psalm meaning that every word and every truth that is mentioned in this psalm is to be understood in light of the “excellent name” of the LORD.
The word excellent means, majesty, or radiant.
Yahweh
It occurs 6,828 times in the Old Testament.
The name Yahweh, Gerald Wilson points out, conveys the idea of “the God who is and continues to be” (Psalms, 210).
The name is “a powerful promise of continuing divine presence in their lives” (Psalms, 210).
The psalmist begins in worship, as we should begin.
He begins his theology as we should begin our theology: with God.
His name alone is worth the Praise
B. The Nobility of the Praise
B. The Nobility of the Praise
v.1b. - God’s glory is above the heavens.
David looking up to the starry sky declares that God’s greatness can not be contained by his creation alone.
His glory exceeds the very heights of creation
creation can only partially express his excellence because the Creator is far greater than what He creates
This verse expresses the prayer of the writer that the name and nobility of God so manifest in the earth, that it might be exalted in the highest possible degree.
In His name there was such grandeur that he desired that it might be regarded as the highest object in the universe, and might blaze forth above all worlds.
II. The Proof of God in Creation v.2
II. The Proof of God in Creation v.2
A. The Ordaining of the Proof
A. The Ordaining of the Proof
God uses children to prove his exsistance
The faith of a child
You ask a child to sing about God, and watch the joy come on their face.
Children are born with a knowledge of God,
Its adults that teach them to not believe
I think it was in Ezikel that God says that if man does not praise Him, that He will make the rock to cry out.
The psalmist especially focuses on the proof that comes from the wee ones. This shows that men who reject God are indeed great fools.
“How often will children tell us of a God whom we have forgotten! How doth their simple prattle refute those learned fools who deny the being of God!” (Spurgeon)
B. The Object of the Proof
B. The Object of the Proof
God uses the weak things to confound the strong
I have yet to meet an atheist on his or her death bed
The culmination of this verse will not come till the judgement but God will get his in the end.
III. The Power of God in Creation v.3
III. The Power of God in Creation v.3
A. The Consideration of God’s Power
A. The Consideration of God’s Power
The Psalmist looked at the heavens at night (“moon and stars”) and in the awesome sight saw the display of Divine power.
Of course, there are those who can look at the heavens and never see God.
They are blinded by unbelief and cannot see proof of God’s power anywhere.
But to the wise person, looking at the heavens and beholding all the vast universe is overwhelming and emphasizes the tremendous power of God.
B. The Demonstration of God’s Power
B. The Demonstration of God’s Power
With the swipe of His figure (I know He spoke into exsistance the light)
He created the moon and the stars
What demonstration of His power
No one really knows how many stars there are
all these points of light shine from millions of miles away
like clockwork they return night after night
even when we cant see them they are there
Man comes and goes
they are born then die
But the moon and stars continue in their regular appearnce
They appear again and again, ready to praise their Maker
Each right where they should be all the time, every time in perfect obediecne to their master who ordained their exsistance and assignment.
IV. The Primacy of God in Creation vs.4-8
IV. The Primacy of God in Creation vs.4-8
A. Humanity’s Creation as Designed
A. Humanity’s Creation as Designed
1. God’s Care of His Creation v.4-5a
1. God’s Care of His Creation v.4-5a
Think about it....
The creator of all sought fit to create man.
What is man that thou art mindful of him.
In the vastness of His creation he is mindful of us
What a thought
2. God’s Crowning of His Creation v.5b
2. God’s Crowning of His Creation v.5b
We are lower than the angels, yet We have been crowned with glory and honor
If we were a little higher than the animals, that would mean that they could soon catch us, but being a little lower than the angels leaves no room for the animals to come to our level.
The ultimate fulfilling of crowning is in God’s Son Jesus Christ. Phil.2:9-11
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
B. Humanity’s Commission as Designated 6-8
B. Humanity’s Commission as Designated 6-8
The works of thy hands..
This is as far as our reach goes. nothing more
vs. 6-8 refrence Gen.1:20-26
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
The Psalmist understood Gen. 1 to refer to the things that man can touch.
This takes evolution and throws it out the window.
We can not have dominon over the moon, sun and stars but we do have dominion over
The flocks and folds
beasts and birds
swimmers and sea
V. The Preeminence of God Through Creation V.9
V. The Preeminence of God Through Creation V.9
A. Because of His Existence
A. Because of His Existence
O Lord our Lord,
Yahweh, the self-existent one, the one whose own existence is contained within himself as the only Triune deity and sovereign
—he has a magnificent and excellent name.
One commentator but it best about the name Yahweh “(it) is a majestic name for a majestic God, who promises to be with us, continues to reveal himself to us in each and every new circumstance, and yet remains forever beyond our power to control or manipulate to our own purpose”
Our Lord possesses a magnificent, majestic, and mighty name who has exsisted before the formation of time.
B. Because of His Expanse
B. Because of His Expanse
“Name” here stands for his authority.
The whole earth belongs to him.
All of it is under his lordship.
In every square inch he is there and should be praised.
Charles Spurgeon captured something of what the psalm is saying when he wrote,
Descend, if you will, into the lowest depths of the ocean where undisturbed the water sleeps, and the very sand is motionless in unbroken quiet, but the glory of the Lord is there, revealing its excellence in the silent palace of the sea. Borrow the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, but God is there. Mount to the highest heaven, or dive into the deepest hell, and God is … justified in terrible vengeance. Everywhere, and in every place, God dwells and is manifestly at work. (Treasury, 79–80)
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:
For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
Conclusion
Conclusion
The wonderful theologian J. I. Packer says of the era in which we live, “We stand at the end of four centuries of God shrinking” in the public mind (Engaging, 275).
He gets smaller while we get bigger.
The Bible does not see it this way.
David did not see it this way.
We must not see it this way.
We are small.
God is great!
Let us make his name excellent throughout all the earth!
Notes:
v.2 - Christ refers to this verse in Matt. 21:16