Week 1 Psalm 8

Opening Prayer

How Great Thou Art

4 in Hymnal, 33 in Sing Hymnal

Read Psalm 8

Devotion Psalm 8

Last week we structured the worship service around the acronym ACTS. This model of prayer just gives us a helpful guide to prayer. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. So this week we are focusing on the adoration of God in prayer. The great part of the Psalms is that we get such wonderful God inspired examples of this and today in Psalm 8 we are going to see how David used the adoration of God as part of his song.

So what is adoration? feeling or showing great affection and devotion. is the Meriam Webster dictionary but I think this better.

Adoration fundamentally involves a “Godward gaze of grateful delight that melts self-will and purifies the soul.” More than an internal emotional state, it manifests through physical gestures—bowing, raising hands, kneeling, and prostration that externalize devotion. While adoration shares similarities with praise, it carries distinct emotional and volitional dimensions, conveying delighted fascination and love with a strongly affective character. Even when emotional fervor wanes, adoration remains valid as a deliberate act of the devoted will.

When we adore God in prayer we are telling God what we think about him. We are trying to the best of our abilities show how great God is. Specifically all the ways that we see God’s greatness. But we recognize that we are not able to see all the greatness of God. That’s what David does so well in Psalm 8 so we can use Psalm 8 as a way for us to explore the idea of giving God adoration in Prayer.

Psalm 8:1 “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.”

Verse 1 is strong so strong that it is actually repeated in verse 9. So this Psalm starts and ends with the same statement. In English the way we usually translate the first word in this verse is LORD in all capital letters. That is because this represents the proper name of God. Any time you see the word LORD you know that is God the Father’s proper name the letters YHWH. We typically say the name of God as Yahweh that is how the LSB translates it. So the first Lord is the name of God the second lord is a different Hebrew word. It gets translated as Master or Lord and more times than not refers to God. The first Lord is God’ the Fathers proper name and the second is his title as our master or lord. So right off the bat David has focused us towards God and declared that he is true the master and lord. David was the King of Israel but Yahweh is Lord.

David continues to declare how Majestic is your name in all the earth. The word Majestic is translated as excellent in the KJV, magnificent in the CSB, other times this word gets translated as mighty, glorious, noble, or awesome. David is saying that God’s name is this wonderful, magnificent, awesome majestic name and it is in the whole world.

God shows us a little bit of his awesome majesty in his creation. Think of the Rocky mountains, the grand canyon, the sky on a clear dark night, or even a new born baby.

What is part of creation brings you the most awe. Think about that thing or place that God created.

Now think about how the God who created that is infinitely greater than his creation.

All these things display for us just a little bit of Gods amazing majesty in his creation. Paul said it in Romans 1:19-20

Romans 1:19–20 “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

God has created a world full of wonderful things for us to discover his eternal power and divine nature. But those things are not God they were created so we could see how great God is but they are no where close to our great creator God.

David in Psalm 8 is really shouting O Yahweh God our Lord, how majestic is your name is in all the earth! David begins and ends the Psalm with a exclamation. I believe he does this for the same reason that we begin with adoration in the ACTS model of prayer. when you start with the adoration of God in your prayer. YOu first identify to whom you are praying, the awe inspiring amazing creator of heaven and earth.

Nehemiah 9:6 ““You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.”

Not only do you identify God as the to whom you are praying to but you also orient yourself and your heart in the right way. It is easy for us to become very self focused in prayer what we want or what we need. When we begin our payer with Adoration like David begins this Psalm we put our heart in the right place and humble ourselves by recognizing how great God is and how small we are.

Having our hear in the right place is critical as we pray. When we pray confession we have to be humble enough to know that we are not God and that we sin against him. We are forced to recognize that when we see the greatness of God then we see the lowly nature of ourselves.

When we give thanks to God in pray we have to have that right heart that is established by adoration because if we think too much of ourselves we don't recognize that the good gifts of God are from him we think they are the from us we begin we to think we deserve everything we have rather than recognizing that its all Gods.

When we pray supplication we have to have our heart right because we all will inevitable ask God for things that he is not going to give us or he will not give us in our time. If our hearts are not in the right place we can become impatient and angry with God because he didn't give us what we want. We start to pray for our will to be done. When we need to be praying in supplication for the purpose of God’s glory to be shown and that his will be done.

That's why we should start with adoration so that when we pray for everything else we have oriented our heart in the correct place.

I want to finish this part of our time together by looking how David gave adoration in Psalm 8.

Psalm 8:3 “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,”

Take a moment to think about the wonders of the universe the stars and the planets.

Now think of the power and the might of the God who placed them there with his fingers.

We who would be destroyed if we even approached a star yet God places them with his fingers.

Psalm 8:4 “what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”

The amazing wonderful powerful transcendent God still is mindful of us and has care for us. Think about a God who is so great and powerful and yet has care for our small problems.

Psalm 8:5–8 “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.”

God has placed us on this earth and we may seem small but he gave glory and honor and placed us in dominion over the world and all the animals he created. He can do this because he has the authority to do it. We could not place ourselves in dominion over the world God did that. God is the king giving us his servants a little portion of his creation to be in charge of.

Think about how great God and how much authority God has if he is able to place us in dominion over the all the animals of his creation.

Then the psalm ends in the same way it begins Psalm 8:9 “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Reflect on how God’s name is majestic in all the earth. Everywhere in the earth shows God’s Majesty.

Guided adoration prayer in small groups

Holiness - Isaiah 6:3

Love - 1 John 4:19

Mercy - Psalm 145:8

Justice - Psalm 37:28

Omnipotence - Jeremiah 32:17

Omniscience - Psalm 139:1

Sovereignty Psalm 103:19

Faithfulness - Deuteronomy 7:9

Wisdom - Proverbs 3:19-20 C.T.S.

Closing prayer