Psalm 8: God's Glory revealed

Psalm 8 God's Glory revealed When King David wrote this prayer to God around about three thousand years ago he may well have been inspired by those lonely nights he spent gazing up into the heavens whilst tending the sheep of his father Jesse, no doubt at the same time keeping a wary eye out for any danger that might be lurking to threaten the flock. And if this was the case then it seems that as he was looking into the heavens so he became aware, in a fresh way, of just how glorious the Lord God is. In other words he had such a tremendous sense of God's glory which, as we read in the psalm, seems to draw out a heartfelt response from him as he cries out, or perhaps just as likely whispers to himself. "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" He responds to God's revelation of himself then, but he doesn't simply do this as a casual observer might when talking about the beauty of the world around them. No, here he's talking to the Lord of the universe ... but more than that he's talking to "our Lord", to David's Lord. So that, as he prays, his attitude is one of humility and reverence towards the one whom he's addressing, he's in awe and he's filled with feelings of gratitude. The world is a beautiful place without doubt ... I suspect that few people would deny that. Most of us only have to look around us to be reminded of the fact. Or, even if what's around us is a mess, then like David we merely have to look up. And pictures abound showing sights that take the breath away and our televisions show programme after programme dedicated to revealing to us more and more of the attractions of our world and of the heavens above. But you know it's not so much what we see as how we react to what we see that matters. And the right way to do so is the way of David, to praise God for such evidence of his greatness and power, his love and care for us, and to bow down before him acknowledging his lordship, his authority, over us. Sadly though, for many, this isn't their reaction. For example there are those who see the beauty, but it has little effect on them. They're too concerned with getting on with the business of life to think too much about the background against which that life is taking place. Then there are those whose lives are so under a cloud that they hardly notice anything that's around them. There are those too who see the beauty of creation merely as an opportunity for profit ... leading to, for example, the destruction of the rainforest or the erection of huge towns in what were once beauty spots, so as to attract the tourists. And then there are others who're full of admiration for God's creation and who even speak in those terms, but who don't actually ever take their interest any further. And yet the truth is that all the earth is filled with the stamp of God's glorious name, inviting everyone to acknowledge this fact and then to worship him. And, for David, there are such compelling reasons for worshipping the creator God ... all that we need to do is look. And what's so difficult for so many adults to understand is quite clear, he realises, to those who look in innocence and with an open mind, to the children and infants for whom it's so obvious, as they peer out on this wonderful new world, that it's all down to God. God gives them the ability to realise this, whilst at the same time many supposedly sophisticated and wise people are blind. And what can these people say in response, those who're determined to deny the very existence of the one who these babes take so much for granted? Nothing, says David, they are silenced. If only they'd truly consider the things that their eyes show to them with that same willingness to learn that the infant has and like David does here. He looks at, and thinks about, the heavens, the moon and the stars, which can be nothing but the work of the Lord's fingers which he's set in their places, and he's struck by how puny in comparison is mankind. So how is, he asks, that you, Great God, can have any thought at all for such as us? This was all so clear to David in his day. Which begs the question: how then is it that it isn't clear to everyone in our own day? After all we know so much more than he did about the earth and the universe of which we're a part. We can surely appreciate so much better our insignificance in comparison with all that we're surrounded by! We know for instance that the earth has a diameter of about 8,000 miles and that it weighs something like 6,000 million, million, million tons, but that the planet Jupiter for example is 1,300 times bigger, that the sun is 1,300,000 times larger, whilst the star Betelgeuse has a diameter of 215 million miles. And then when it comes to the movements of the stars and planets, well it just defies belief. For instance the Earth travels through space at 66,700 miles per hour and goes between 500 and 600 million miles per year around the sun at 19 miles per second, whilst some stars travel at around 100 miles per second, others as fast as 15,000 miles per second. And then we think of man, that minute speck of motionless dust in comparison, hanging onto the earth as it plunges ever onwards through space. As someone has said, "How powerless is man, the earth stirs in her sleep, and his cities fall, the wind blows and his navies are wrecked, the invisible germs crowd the air and his science is baffled. If the clouds withhold their rain a famine ensues, if they drop too much his cities are carried away in the flood." And yet, as David notes, God is mindful of them, he does care for humankind. He protects them, he knows them each one intimately so that the very hairs on their heads are numbered and he gives them the ability to reach out to him. And not only that, says David, verse 5: "You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour". God has made us in his own image, giving us the gift of reason, the ability to love and to empathise with one another. What's more he has made mankind the ruler over all the other parts of his creation, as we're reminded in Genesis 1:28, where the Lord says to the man and the woman: "fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." And also Genesis 9 verses 2 and 3, where he says to Noah and his sons: "The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I have given you the green plants, I now give you everything." However the problem for humankind is surely that we're so concerned with this high position that we have that we forget the one who's given it to us ... our thinking is one dimensional. We take our lordship over the rest of God's creation for granted and in the process we abuse our power. We're cruel to animals, we waste the food that we've been given, we spoil the good things of the earth. We forget that our authority isn't absolute but that we've been made stewards of the earth, and the things in it, on God's behalf. And the more we use our God given intellects to discover about his world and his universe, discoveries which enable us to develop and to improve our position, the more puffed up we become attributing the new knowledge that we have to our own abilities rather than seeing it as it is ... our creator's self-revelation to us. We don't see with the eyes of David, with the eyes of the children and infants, we don't recognise the great and mighty God who is behind it all, we don't acknowledge with reverent awe the anomaly that such as we, poor feeble creatures in the great scheme of things, should be gifted such a place of honour by him. Even though the truth is that we are, as God's creatures, totally dependent upon him for living in his world and for interacting with the rest of his creation. And yet dependence has become something of a dirty word among us. Those who are dependent are seen as people who must grow out of that state, or else they're to be pitied. Where we find ourselves dependent on someone or something then we see this as a backward step and we strive to regain our independence. Because this is the thing to be, independent, to make our own way not needing to rely on anyone else. And to have to admit that actually this isn't where we are is seen as a sign of weakness. So that we work, and we accumulate, and we gain knowledge and expertise so that we can go it alone, whilst dreading the day that our circumstances or our growing infirmity might make us dependent. As a result we don't see the majesty of God in all the earth, his glory above the heavens, even though our very experience of life, is shouting it out to us such that like the babe we should gaze upon it in open mouthed awe. We don't see in the way that Matthew Henry says we ought, when he tells us: "When we are observing the glory of God in the Kingdom of nature and providence we should be led by that, and through that, to the contemplation of his glory in the Kingdom of grace." Which was just how David was thinking as he penned this psalm; a psalm that isn't only about God but was fully inspired by God as He revealed, probably more to David than he was then able to understand. Because, actually, Christ Jesus the coming Messiah is also revealed to us in these words. Something that Christ himself acknowledged when he used the psalm to apply to his own situation in our passage from Matthew chapter 21. There he was in the temple healing the sick and the lame and, although the chief priests and teachers of the law weren't happy with what he was doing, the children shouted, "Hosanna to the Son of David" ... making them even more angy. So that Jesus said to them, "Have you never read, "From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise"? ... These children, with their greater perception, were giving God-the-Son the honour and glory to which he was due. And the writer to the Hebrews also realised this link between our psalm and Jesus. After all, as we read about the honour that God has bestowed upon us humans, it's hard to take it in isn't it, because it doesn't quite ring true ... "A little lower than the heavenly beings"? "Crowned with glory and honour"? Tell that to the starving millions and to those who allow their situation to continue. Tell that to those whose lives are in such a mess, or seem so difficult, that they're unable to cope anymore. The fact is that, yes, this might be the picture that the early chapters of Genesis give us of man's and woman's God given position, but actually, through sin, we've fallen a long way from that place. David himself had fallen a long way from that place. So that his words in Psalm 8 can only truly apply to one man ... the man Christ Jesus. He is the one to whom the whole world will one day be subjected, who will have everything put under his feet. As the writer of Hebrews tells us, chapter 2 verse 8, "In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him." So that Jesus is the fulfilment of this psalm, the one through whom God displayed his glory here on earth, and who was crowned with glory and honour himself ... in his humiliation as the angels sang "glory in the highest", and in his exaltation as they declared "he is risen", and then as they oversaw his ascension back in to heaven where he is now seated at the right hand of the Father. He came as a man and left as a man, a sign of God once again bestowing glory and honour on mankind. And so now the wonderful thing is that as we come to Christ, accepting the free salvation that he offers to us, so we begin to once more have the eyes, minds and hearts of children, to see God's glory all around us, to understand our place in his creation and in his great plan for it, and to give ourselves to him in total dependence. Serving him with lives given over to him, going where he wants us to be, infants through whom he's able to reach out to the world. Whilst yearning for that time when our every thought will be his, our every action determined by him; so that he might truly be glorified in us. Jesus, who God has placed in authority over all things, is working by his Spirit within us, if we are his, to mould us into the image that we were created to have, that of God's Holy children. But of course as we also read in Hebrews chapter 2 from verse 8, "Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." He is the one, the writer continues, who is "bringing many sons to glory". So then, as Christians, we now have access, by God's grace, to an understanding of God's world and our place in it that once we were blind to. And once again we are truly a little lower than the heavenly beings. But this is nothing to what we will be and to what we will see and understand when we ourselves pass through the death that Christ has tasted and conquered for us. What a wonderful thought; what a great encouragement to come to him and, where we have, to persevere. And what reason for us to close as does David here in our psalm, saying: "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" Amen