Significant By Design - Psalm 8:1-9

Psalm 8:1-9
Signiﬁcant by Design
20190630
Gloriously, even our insigniﬁcance is made signiﬁcant through faith in Christ!
Introduc:on
A man named Paul Miller, tells a story in one of his books about a day in his life that I believe captures
the essence of the quesIon presented at the center of Psalm 8. The quesIon is what is man that you are
mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him?
It is a quesIon concerning signiﬁcance; and this man Paul, a man who has been involved in ministry
endeavors his whole life is by no means exempt from struggling with signiﬁcance. In order to make ends
meet, like many of us in this area who ﬁnd one job isn’t always enough, he runs a part Ime business
during the tax season preparing tax returns to generate some extra income for his family.
Thinking he was doing something good one morning many years ago he noIced the hard drive was
nearly full on the computer he was using so he decided to back up the ﬁles and archive what wasn’t
needed. Well in doing so he crashed the computer! And on the computer was? You guessed it, the tax
preparaIon program that he used with his clients.
This sent him into a frenzy of acIvity, ﬁnding out when his ﬁrst appointment was for the day - 1130,
calling help desks, working through troubleshooIng guides, all to sIll come up short. As many of us have
experienced in Imes like this the clock doesn’t slow down and when 1130 came - his client arrived:
computer – sIll not ready. He told his recepIonist to tell her he was running late. He slunk out the door
past the woman who was waiIng for him not making any eye contact with her. He rushed to his house to
retrieve the program disk and then rushed back to the oﬃce walked past the woman again who he
couldn’t help but noIce seemed peaceful and content while he was absolutely franIc but aYempIng to
keep his cool.
He labored over the install and troubleshooIng unIl ﬁnally at 3pm he was able to call the woman back
to go over her return. She entered and went through the tax review without any complaint on her lips or
upset expression on her face. Paul was so morIﬁed that he had wasted this woman’s Ime as he did that,
he oﬀered to take her home since she had ridden the bus to get to his oﬃce that morning and would
now have to catch a bus to get back home. She accepted the ride and along the way he just couldn’t
contain himself and blurted out to the woman, “Does Jesus make a diﬀerence in your life?” He was
depressed and frustrated and was hoping she might be able to minister to him in some way. She looked
at him and said, “Jesus is everything to me, I talk to him all the Ime.” She was fully aware that her
signiﬁcance was grounded in her rela2onship with Christ. Paul just couldn’t believe the contrast in the
way he had gone through that day and the way the woman had. He had allowed cynicism to take over
his life which was keeping him from the kind of refreshing relaIonship with God that this woman
demonstrated. You see his signiﬁcance was all wrapped up in what he could do and not in what God had
done for him. Do any of you idenIfy with the way Paul was feeling that day?
You are not alone. Whether you are a believer in Christ or you are not a believer this struggle for
signiﬁcance is dealt with by all of us. Even though we can be told that God has made us, he has made
men and women, boys and girls, to be the crowning jewel upon his crea2on we oAen think that this is not
true, that it cannot be true, that we are in fact insigniﬁcant – that we are nothing!

In our passage today the Psalmist deals with man’s quesIon of signiﬁcance in what I would consider a
most God honoring and God glorifying way. The Psalm is perfectly exquisite. The epitome of what a
hymn should be. On this side of the resurrecIon of Jesus it is clear that what David penned, rightly
idenIﬁes the source of man’s signiﬁcance while at the same Ime idenIfying the felt tension of
insigniﬁcance. What I see as the precious gem in the text is that: Gloriously, even our insigniﬁcance is
made signiﬁcant through faith in Christ.
1.God Rules for He is Worthy (vv1-4)
If we desire to understand our own signiﬁcance then this is where we start that discovery process by
ﬁrst carefully observing God, and how His Rule is Worthy as is His very nature - Worthy. Which
means we are to Praise God for He is Worthy.
a.Praise God for He is Worthy (vv1-3)
David starts the Psalm by boldly praising God.
i.v1 “O LORD, our Lord, how majes2c is your name in all the earth! You have set your
glory above the heavens.”
1.The Hebrew words Yahweh and Adonai are translated into the English with
LORD [all caps] and Lord. The One True and Mighty God is our Lord, he is over us and his name is
majesIc over all the earth!
a.Our Praise of God begins by acknowledging Him, by acknowledging His
Lordship, and by acknowledging His majesIc name. To oeen we begin our search for signiﬁcance by
looking elsewhere – But David rightly begins developing his search for signiﬁcance by focusing upon
God.
2.The concept of glory being set above the heavens. God’s majesty, his beauty,
his glory has been set above the heavens. This gives us perspecIve on the magnitude of God. We
think of the heavens as massive and expansive and yet the glory of God is above the heavens, God is
worthy to be praised!
Transi:on: Even the youngest among us understand this. The Psalmist says,
i.v2 “Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of
your foes, to s2ll the enemy and the avenger.”
1.We love our liYle children and the nursing babies, we know that to be true
here in the body of Pillar Bible Fellowship, but it goes beyond this doesn’t it. The kids this week at
VBS were learning about an orphanage in Guatemala where children, even new born babies, are
lovingly cared for by followers of Christ. Those pictures and video clips caused our hearts to yearn for
those children because we saw they were made in the image of God.
2.Jesus demonstrated Ime and again his love for children and he quoted this
porIon of Psalm 8 when the chief priests and scribes were indignant with him in the temple. They
were indignant because upon his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, prior to his mock trial - the people
were crying out, “Hosanna in the Highest! Hosanna to the Son of David!” And this adoraIon of Jesus
conInued MaYhew records even aeer Jesus cleansed the temple of the money-changers and those
who sold pigeons. He remained in the temple healing people in need and the children were

enthusiasIcally carrying on with the praise – “Hosanna to the Son of David!” The chief priests and
scribes couldn’t believe he was lejng the children say such things about him, and Jesus responded
with this very verse (MaY 21:9-16). Which had to only further infuriate those opposed to him all the
more, because not only was he saying the praise of him was right, equaIng himself with God, but
that they were the enemies! They who thought of themselves as religious zealots were being called
enemies and foes!
a.As we grow in our understanding of God’s word passages like this help
us understand more fully the provocaIve claims of Christ. Over and over again he claimed to be God
incarnate. This is one more instance of that! I urge you to look for these links between prophesy
proclaimed and prophesy fulﬁlled. Do this as you spend Ime in God’s word and I know the result will
be a furthering of His praise for He is Worthy.
ii.v3 “When I look at your heavens, the work of your ﬁngers, the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,”
1.CreaIon itself is a tesImony of God’s majesty. Think of the various works of
God’s as portrayed in the heavens, works you observed this past month or even this past week.
Thunderstorms, Sunrises, Sunsets, Rainbows.
2.This whole passage has been a meditaIon of mine the past several weeks, and
this verse in parIcular reminds me of the pre-dawn sky that I was observing earlier this month which
showcased Mt. Hood majesIcally glowing in the moonlight. Maybe some of you saw it too? A
beauIful full moon was basically resIng upon it. But then the human perspecIve piece must also be
recognized. StarIng with liYle me being able to observe the grandeur of the mountain, but then
realizing the vast size of the earth’s moon which appears small, but we know is really extremely
large. AddiIonally, another part of the perspecIve was a bright planet or star which was just sijng
between the moon and the mountain. Who knows how far away it is and how much larger it is than
the moon or the mountain or me? You take in such a scene and then it hits you – God made it all
with the power of his word! Suddenly when all these thoughts rush over you – you just start praising
God for he is worthy!
Transi:on: Now, God clearly rules because he is the majesIc creator. He is worthy to be praised
but we are sIll lee with how to answer the quesIon of our signiﬁcance in God’s creaIon. The
way we answer this quesIon determines whether you go through life like Paul Miller in his
cynicism and depression or like the woman he had in his oﬃce that day, full of peace because of
her faith in Christ.
a.Take Pride In Yourself to Your Shame (v4)
First, we need to look at the quesIon raised in verse 4 from a prideful perspecIve, one we
might take if we fail to do the preliminary work of verses 1-3. So, what does this verse say in
this light?
i.v4 “what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for
him?”
1.I’m not suggesIng this is the voice in which the author of Psalms wrote this
verse but rather this is the ajtude we oeen approach this quesIon with.

2.Pridefully we say to our self, If I can think and do all that I can and know so
much – then what is man that God is mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him. This is
the way of Nebuchadnezzar and Herod.
a.To understand our posiIon in God’s creaIon in this way ulImately
brings shame upon us and does not bring God praise.
3.You might say, I would never act like that. But so oeen we do in that we don’t
give God the praise that is due to him for the good things in our lives. Maybe you have earned
enough money to buy something nice and it gets noIced – instead of praising God for the job that
allowed you to have some money, in the ﬁrst place, you engage in a prideful exchange of words of
why the item you purchased is so good or why even another brand is so inferior. This happens oeen
in our day to day living where we accept praise without redirecIng to God or we even solicit praise.
This prideful view of self only brings shame upon us, it is an empty and unfulﬁlling way of life.
Transi:on: What then is the alternaIve way of looking at this quesIon?
a.Humble Yourself for He is Worthy (v4)
i.v4 “what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for
him?”
1.This voice ﬁts with where David has been going with the Psalm. A voice of
humility that in the middle of all God’s majesty and glory, in the midst of his creaIon he set man
apart in a special way.
2.This Ies into our understanding of creaIon just as it would have for the
Hebrew worshippers of God when God said “Let us make man in our image, aAer our likeness” (Gen
1:26a). It is only when we humble ourselves in light of God’s supreme worthiness that the shie which
occurs in this Psalm, right here in the middle, over to the responsibility of man in light of his posiIon
before God can make any sense. We can begin to understand our signiﬁcance comes from God.
3.That is why it is right and good for tears to well up at the birth of a child, or
why it is right and good to fall down in the worship of God when we witness his splendor on display
in the heavens. We are humbled at Imes such as these that God would conInue to allow us one
more breath in his creaIon to even take up space in his kingdom!
Transi:on: It is only from our humble acceptance of God’s created order that we can rightly carry out
our rule and dominion over other created beings and the environments in which they live.
1.Man Rules for he has been made for this (vv5-9)
David takes his quesIon of signiﬁcance from v4 in light of everything ascribed to God in vv1-3 and
then applies truth from Scripture as to where we ﬁt in the midst of all other created beings. It is
densely packaged and theologically rich poetry, each verse is worth much meditaIon and
consideraIon as to how we are to live as the signiﬁcant image bearers God has made us to be.
a.Humbly Accept Your Posi:on for He is Worthy (v5)
i.v5 “Yet you have made him a liKle lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him
with glory and honor.”

1.This is amazing! God is amazing - and yet - here in his word it says he has
crowned man with glory and honor. Look back up at verse 1. “O LORD, our Lord, how majes2c is your
name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.”
2.Both verses, v1 and v5, resonate with the creaIon story itself and we must
turn back to Genesis 1 for a minute to see again what God’s word says about the creaIon of man.
Gen 1:26-31
3.Here in v5, in talking about the created image bearer of God is this connecIon
with glory. We are to bring God glory and somehow God has allowed man to be crowned with glory
and honor? I don’t get this! But I must humbly accept it. I want you to see that it is stated right here
in the text and humbly accept it too.
Transi:on: Because only by accepIng your special place in God’s creaIon will you be able to
carry out your duty.
a.Humbly Carry Out Your Duty for He is Worthy (vv6-8)
i.vv6-8 “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.”
1.Do you noIce the order of God’s plan? He is over all, his name is majesIc, his
glory is above the heavens. He has created man to share in his glory to be a liYle lower than the
heavenly beings and to use his posiIon to rule over all things!
2.Is this how you go about your day as a steward of God’s creaIon? Maybe you
don’t have sheep and oxen but what about their modern-day equivalents? What were sheep and
oxen to the ancient Hebrew? They were their source of power and commerce. Such as electricity is
today and everything that is connected from its generaIon to its consumpIon. Or the vehicles we
use to get to and from our places of employment or to the store to purchase food for our families.
Those might be a good places to start for some of us. Our job, whether it is income producing or not
and our consumpIon of resources, how are we stewarding those?
3.For some here you have a more direct Ie to domesIc livestock, wild beasts of
the ﬁeld, and ﬁsh - along with their paths to the seas. Are we stewarding these animals and their
environments in God honoring ways? What has gone into our understanding of how this is done?
The way our parents taught us? That might very well be correct but more importantly have you
allowed the Bible to inform your understanding of stewardship, even of all the things I’ve just
menIoned?
4.Who does v6 say these things belong to? They were created by the hand of
God, and ulImately belong to him. He has placed mankind over these things as image bearers, as
stewards.
5.Here in the church body it is common for one family or one person to have an
item that another member would greatly beneﬁt from. You name the resource and it has probably
been shared: horse to house, fridge to frying pan, truck to trailer. With all these items being shared if
the item is not purely a consumable how does it get returned when it is no longer needed? It gets
returned clean and oeen repaired if repairs were required. Why? Because we appreciate the

opportunity that has been given to us to use it and we show that appreciaIon by saying thanks and
by taking great care of the item – we are stewards.
6.Is this the same way we take care of all the things God has entrusted to us?
CreaIon belongs to him and yet he has placed us over his creaIon as stewards.
7.Now, thinking of our community we would all acknowledge that when it
comes to stewarding the environment that diﬀerent approaches are taken. So how do we relate to
someone who might be going about stewardship in a way that diﬀers drasIcally from our own?
a.I think of the water here in the valley. Some think all the water should
ﬂow free and natural from the top of Mt. Hood to the mouth of the Columbia with nothing to hinder
it.
b.Others think the water needs to ﬂow but it also needs to be used as a
resource to culIvate the valley for producing crops and feed to sustain human ﬂourishing.
c.How do individuals with these diﬀerent views interact? First, if you are
using a Biblical worldview to formulate your posiIon aYempt to see where the other person might
be working towards a similar goal – even if they are coming at it from a diﬀerent worldview and use
that as a point of commonality. They can now be viewed as more of an ally than an enemy, at least at
that one point of commonality. You now also have a posiIon from which you can be evangelical.
Now how does this help you be more evangelical? It comes back to the perspecIve you have on
signiﬁcance and focus.
d.As one commentator menIoned, as a believer in God’s word you look
at Psalm 8 and you see we are to be oriented towards heaven. Our looking, our gaze, is to be upward
towards the heavenly beings that we have been made a liYle lower than. This upward orientaIon
gives us a more proper understanding concerning our signiﬁcance.
e.But oeen Imes those who do not trust God’s word are resigned to
look beneath them, if you will, at the created beasts and the environment we live in to aYempt to
make sense of who they are. This orientaIon inevitably leads to confusion about their signiﬁcance
and about their relaIonship to God and others.
f.Consider this next Ime you are building up all your defenses when
preparing for a discussion with someone who holds an opposing view. Pray for them, look for an
intersecIon of commonality concerning aspects of stewardship – something you can agree on and
then explain why you hold the posiIon you do from a Biblical perspecIve and see where their
posiIon comes from. Maybe it will provide an opportunity to share the gospel?
Transi:on: We could probably discuss nuances of our dominion mandate all day, even the rest of
the week and I would encourage the discussion and for the quesIon to keep coming back to how
did the Bible help you in developing that posiIon. But moving on to our last verse in the Psalm
will help us Humbly Praise God.
a.Humbly Praise God for He is Worthy (v9)
i.v9 “O LORD, our Lord, how majesIc is your name in all the earth!”

1.We have come back to where we began. It is right to do so as the center of this
Psalm was the main thrust of the passage. Where we have contemplated the important quesIon of
signiﬁcance that haunts us all. Who is man that God is mindful of him?
2.God is mighty and powerful, He is creator of all things, and his name is
majesIc in all the earth.
3.These 9 verses are absolutely exquisite, Derek Kidner writes, “This psalm is an
unsurpassed example of what a hymn should be, celebraIng as it does the glory and grace of God,
rehearsing who he is and what he has done, and relaIng us and our world to him; all with a masterly
economy of words, and in a spirit of mingled joy and awe. It brings to light the unexpectedness of
God’s ways in the roles he has assigned to the strong and the weak (2), the spectacular and the
obscure (3–5), the mulItudinous and the few (6–8); but it begins and ends with God himself, and its
overriding theme is ‘How excellent is thy name!’”
Conclusion
Now at the end of our course through this magniﬁcent Psalm you may be thinking, “Of course the ideal
looks good but is sure doesn’t match up with reality.” So, you ask, “What am I supposed to do when I am
struggling for signiﬁcance tomorrow?” I readily admit, you are right, we are suﬀering under the
ramiﬁcaIons of Genesis 3 where the Bible describes in detail what we oeen call the fall. It was at the fall
that the good and right order God set was badly shaken, sin entered in and disturbed this ideal picture.
But our signiﬁcance can be solidiﬁed and it can be done so in the person of Jesus Christ. If Psalm 8 was
read with only our human eﬀort in mind we would be going crazy, like Paul Miller trying to get his
computer ﬁxed for the faithful woman who sat in his waiIng area. The author of Hebrews helps us
understand Psalm 8 in light of the person of Christ.
Hebrews 2:5-11 “For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come,…”
The suﬃciency of God’s Word brings about wonderful clarity on the passage we have been looking at
and reveals a fuller picture of Christ. His suﬀering death was his source of honor and glory. By his tasIng
of death for the sins we have commiYed, the death we deserved, he became the founder of our
salvaIon.
Friends, this is why as we read what Christ has done and then we read Psalm 8 in light of what he has
done we proclaim: Gloriously, even our insigniﬁcance is made signiﬁcant through faith in Christ!
Prayer

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23-25

Table Talk

June 30, 2019

GOD’S TRUTH
Gloriously, even our insignificance is
made significant through faith in
Christ!

Family Discussion
1. Have you ever stood on a street and
looked up towards the top of a really
tall building? How big did you feel
looking up, up, and up? What about
looking up into the night sky and
seeing thousands of stars, they look
so tiny, do you get a sense of being
really big or really small when you
take in the night sky?
2. Pondering large and expansive
portions of creation inevitably makes
you ponder how you fit into
everything. The way you understand
your role in God’s creation has a
tremendous impact on how you relate
to Him, to other people, and to the rest
of creation. What or who has been
influential in helping you to develop
this understanding?
3. Do you see how having a high view of
God helps develop a proper view of
your place in his creation? It is God
who has given your life significance
and he has proved it by giving up his
Son, Jesus, for you. Praise God for
who you are in Him!

Key Verse

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

TABLE READING
Lead your kids into God’s
Word...
1. Genesis 1:14-19, Genesis 15:5-6, Psalm
8:4
2. Psalm 8:1-5, Genesis 1:26-31, Daniel
4:28-37
3. Psalm 8:1-9, Hebrews 2:5-11

Scripture Memory: Psalm 1:5-6

“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You
shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when
you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down,
and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they
shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the
doorposts of your house and on your gates.” - Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (ESV)


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