Psalm Eight "Weak weapons are

Psalm Eight “Weak weapons are mighty in the hands of the Lord”

Introduction

Good morning. It is good to be with the saints of the Lord this morning. Today is an exceptional day because we have Christians from three different churches present this morning. When Churches gather together in join services, it is an excellent reminder to the watching world that we have a unity that others do not. We can gather together, sing, and worship because we find unity in the gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and savior. First off, I want to thank the saints of Northgate Baptist church for being such a great partner. Thank you for allowing us to use your equipment for our mission teams, and thanks for allowing us to use your venue for any events that we plan. Thanks for allowing our core team to meet in your fellowship hall on Wednesday nights for a year leading up to the launch of our church. Secondly, if I can speak directly to the members of Northgate, thanks for calling such a wonderful pastor. Josh has been a great encouragement, and I believe he and Carrie will do some incredible stuff here in the community.

For those who are new or don't know me, my name is Noah Toney. I am the pastor/church planter of Redemption Church. We are a new church plant in Beckley. In two weeks, we will be celebrating our one-year anniversary. At Redemption Church, we exist to proclaim the gospel and make disciples for the glory of God. That is our vision statement, the heartbeat of our church, gospel proclamation, and disciple-making. If you have your bible, please turn to Psalm 8.

Context

This summer Redemption Church has been going through a sermon series called "Summer in the Psalms." My personal goal is to return to the psalter every year and preach ten psalms a summer. This week we are jumping into Psalm eight. If you are new to studying the psalms, allow me to quickly tell you how the psalter works. Do not think about the psalms as a random collection of 150 poems; no, think about the psalter as a unified and strategically organized book of poems that tell a unified story of God's mighty deeds for his people. Just as the Iliad, or the odyssey, is an ancient epic poem that chronicles the works of mighty kings and their people. The psalms is an epic poem that follows the story of God's mighty deeds through the history of his people.

Psalm One teaches us about the blessed man who is the perfect citizen of God's kingdom, who walks in the way of the righteous and turns from the way of the wicked.

Psalm Two teaches us about God's Messiah-King, who will reign forever despite the raging nations.

Psalm Three teaches us about God's chosen king, David, who, when the nations are raging against him, responds in faith and trust in God.

Psalm Four teaches us that when God's people are in distress, we should reflect on God's past faithfulness to find future hope.

Psalm Five teaches us that God's people can find comfort in the character of God.

Psalm Six teaches us that God's people will experience anguish and despair, yet we find our hope in God's steadfast love.

Psalm seven teaches us that God is the righteous avenger and the Righteous defender.

This week: Psalm eight teaches us that God chooses to use the weak things of the world to defeat his enemies and establish his glory.

Psalm 8:1-10

“To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 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. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Pastoral Prayer:

Jump In:

“To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.

These superscriptions in our bibles do not have verse numbers; they almost function like titles. They are easy to overlook in the text, but I want you to know that these are extremely important. These superscriptions are in every manuscript of the Psalms that we have. Meaning these titles are the inspired word of God and deserve to be treated as such. I have been using an illustration of a photo album. Imagine you have a photo, and it is black and white. It is a picture of a young man and a beautiful young woman sitting in a green field with a picnic basket. This was before you were born, and you have no memory of this event. But you take the picture, turn it over, and it says "fourth of July 1956 our first date." That superscription on the back of this photo tells you the picture's context. It tells you information that you would not know without it. This is how these superscriptions work for the psalter, and if you do not understand this, you are very likely to misinterpret the psalms as you go and study them.

Psalm 8starts with "to the choirmaster: according to the Gittith. A Psalm of David." Quick this word "choirmaster" could also mean "preeminent one", or exalted one. I think that if you go and read through the chronicles, you will see that David himself is the choirmaster of Israel. It is David, who commands the Levites to select men to go and sing before the Lord every day, it is David who writes songs that will be sung, and when the time comes for the tabernacle to come into Jerusalem, David dresses up like the band of priests, and he leads the procession into the city and he is dancing and singing to the Lord, and this ends with David's song in 1 Chronicle 16. David sings this song and 1st Chronicles ends with "and all the people praised the Lord." So I am arguing that David see’s the king of Israel as this exemplary person who is the leader of the band, this Choirmaster over God’s people. He is to be the example of what it looks like to worship God. However, when David writes “to the choirmaster” he is not writing a song for himself, no I believe that David is looking forward to the future king of Israel who will come and lead God’s people in praise forever. Did you know that? not only is Christ the object of our Worship in heaven, but he will also be out choirmaster who will lead us in song forever as we give all glory and honor to God. If you need more proof this, go and check out Hebrews 2:12. Next in Psalm eight’s superscription is says, “according to the gittith.” Most bibles should have a foot note, that says “probably a musical or liturgical term.” That usually means that we have no idea what the word means. But we can look at clues and take educated guesses. The root word, is the word “Gath.” There was a famous battle in the Old Testament where the champion of the Philistines was from Gath. His name was Goliath. This is important because 1 Samuel 17 tells us that after David defeated Goliath, he perused the philistines all the way into Gath. Why does this matter? We might not know exactly what this superscription means, but there is a translation of the psalms in Aramaic called the Targum, and it translates this “on the instrument taken from Gath.” If this is true, this lets us know that David has the narrative of his victory over Goliath in mind when he is writing this.

V.1 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens

David starts Psalm eight by extolling God. Notice in your bibles that the first word LORD is in all caps, that is because David is calling God by his own name. Oh Yahweh our Lord. First, we see God’s glory in the earth. “How majestic is your name in all the earth!” There is nowhere on this earth that does not declare the glory of God. Everything that has life has life because it is sovereignly sustained by God. God is the creator, sustainer, of all things. God created the heavens and the earth, and everything was good and perfect. Man has sinned and we now live in a fallen state, yet even now God’s name is majestic though-out the whole earth. The physical creation screams of his glory, they scream of his brilliant design. Everything has his handprints all over it. From the beautiful Rockies mountains, that every year God descends to place a white crown around their crest, to that the world sees the majesty of God in them. God’s glory is seen in the freshness of the pine trees that with a new spring gust of wind causes your senses to be revived. God’s glory is seen the vastness of the sky, that like a ever changing canvas, is established before our eyes that we might see the brush strokes of God in real time. God’s glory is seen in the always changing sky above our head, but his glory is also seen in the lowest recesses of the sea, where no man can see. God’s name is great in all the earth.

Second, God’s glory is above the Heavens. God is not only great in the earth, but he is great in the heavens. The Hebrew idea of the heavens is not the cartoon illustration that i am tempted to imagine, but here it simply means everything above the earth. God’s glory is manifest in the moon and the stars and the sun. David looks up at the stars and he sees the glory of God. This is something that in our age of light pollution, and business we just miss. There was a time, in the not to distant past, before the invention of electricity where every human on earth could on any night with clear sky’s go outside and watch the repeating symphony that God puts on display every night, as he is the conductor and the stars and the heavenly host are his musicians and he orders them to play in unison and they gladly move according to his good pleasure. The prince of Paradox, the great poet G.K Chesterton once wrote, “A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” Do not think that God has placed the universe on a time loop like a clock, or like a computer, no every morning God speaks bloom to the Lillie of the field and they open to bless us with their beauty and perfume. and every evening he says, “lie down and rest” and they close to rest in the Lord. Our God’s glory is everywhere if you would only take the time to notice it!

V.2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.

Verse 2 teaches us one thing; God uses the weak things of the world to defeat his enemies. This is crucial to understanding the story of the bible. “Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength” This word for infants, is a pretty rare word, it literality only refers to suckling children, nursing babes. God loves to use the small weak things of the earth to shame the proud. Think about this, is this not the story of the bible. God creates the heavens and the earth, and they are good and perfect, man is placed in the garden and he is given a job, to work and to keep the garden and to multiply and fill the earth with the glory of God. But man fails, as a result Adam and Eve are cursed. It looks like all hope is lost. Adam and Eve now will taste death. It looks like Satan has won. Satan like a lion over his prey is about to bellow with pride having deceived and tricked his enemy, and they as God is giving the curses of sin God says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” It is like right from the get-go, from the fall God has promised that from the offspring of the woman, there is going to come someone who will crush the head of Satan. Satan roars like a lion, full of pride and arrogance, yet from the mouth of an infant God is going to crush him. God is going to uses the cooing and babbling of infants to shame the might of the enemy. This is a repeated theme in scripture. Moses is saved as an infant despite Pharaohs plans to crush him, and he is going to be raised up as a deliver for Israel. God saves the nation of Israel from Egypt, not because they were the greatest of nations, not because they were the strongest of nations, but because they were the weakest. And as they are in the wilderness, they are like nursing babes, who relied on the Lord to provide food and water and direction for 40 years in the wilderness. Or what about Ezekiel 16, where God says that he was walking and found Israel like a baby, wallowing in blood with the umbilical cord still not cut. Or what about Gideon, a man of weak confidence who is cowering in the threshing floor when God comes to him, and he is going to be raised up to defeat the mighty enemies that surround them.

David knows that God chooses the weak things to shame the proud first hand. David remembers being a mere boy and leaving his sheep and his flock to go check on his brothers. David finds his brothers, with the rest of Israel’s Armie “dismayed and greatly afraid.” David hearing about Goliath, says “who is this uncircumcised philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God.” And David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him, for you are but a youth, and he has been a man of war from his youth.” “And the Philistine moved forward and came near to David, with his shield-bearer in front of him. And when the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was but a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance. And the Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field.” Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hand.” And David runs and cast his stone and it sinks deeply in the head of this giant warrior. Crushing the head of his enemy. God uses the weak things to defeat the proud.

V.3-4When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

David looks back at the sky, that proclaims the Glory of God, David sees the works of God’s fingers with the moon and the stars, they have their place in the heavens. They are established and remember in the creation account, “And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good (Gen 1:16).” I think we are about to see a-bunch of creation language from David in psalm 8, and it starts with this great contrast. David looks up and sees the Sun and the Moon ruling over everything in their dominion. The Sun is accomplishing its job, of bringing heat and light upon the creation that sustains plants and animals alike, and the Moon is accomplishing its job of ruling over the night sky. Then David looks to man, and says “what is man that you are mindful of him? and the Son of Man that you care for him?

This question is really a reflection upon man’s charge to rule and have dominion over creation. It is like David, is looking at man after the fall and saying, “what is man that you remember him? we are but dust, we are lowly beings, we are of sorrowful estate. Man, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we wage war against each other and against the creation.” What is so special about man that you care for him? what have we done to deserve your care? the answer is nothing. We are not deserving of God’s care; we are not deserving of God’s covenant remembrance and covenant love.

Very quickly, I try not to get caught down in the weeds with Hebrew, but there is something I think we are meant to see and ponder here. Who was the first man? Adam, what was his sons name? Seth, what was Seth’s son’s name? Enosh. Ok, check this out, all three names are used in these two verses, it could be a coincidence, or it could be an allusion to the promise that God has made that is going to come from the offspring of Adam. God is tracing his faithfulness though the genealogy of Adam, and though Seth, and though Enosh. It’s just a thought.

V.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.

Who is man? We are weak, we are fragile, yet God has given us incredible dominion over His creation. “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” God takes man, who is weak and small, and he gives us tremendous dominion. For example, this is crystal clear in the Creation of man in Genesis 2. God takes the “Adamah- Dirt, or dust. and he makes “Adam” man. Then he gives man a charter over all of the earth, to work and keep. I think that David is meditating upon this and he astonished at the glory that God has given man. Man for all of our troubles, and our failings. We are the only thing in creation that is an image bearer of God. Man is capable of incredible things. 2 weeks ago we had a mission team in town and we took them one evening to the New River George. As we are standing down at the bottom looking up at this incredible bridge, a pastor looked at me and he said, “who is man that God is mindful of him, and cares for him, yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.” He was quoting Psalm 8. I think he had the right idea in mind, Man as God’s image bearer has been crowned with much glory and honor and intelligence and ability. What other thing in creation, can build rockets and go walk on the moon. In 1969 when Apollo 11 went to the moon, leaders from around the world were asked to record brief statements that would be played aloud in space. Pope John Paul the 6th chose to submit Psalm 8. Because the moon landing itself, though it was a secular endeavor, magnified the glory of God in man as His image bearers. Though man is but dust, God has given him dominion over the works of His hands. Look at the list, you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also the beast of the field and the birds of the heaven and the fish of the sea. In Genesis one God created the “fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the beast of the field. David is just quoting scripture. He is looking at the creation account and pondering this dominion God has given man. In other words, God has made Adam like a royal son over God’s creation. As a father gives dominion to his son, so God did with Adam. God established Adam as a royal king over creation, and Adam failed. Sin has entered the world, and now instead of having perfect dominion over the creation we are now in constant battle against creation. Man has to fight to till the ground, we must labor day by day with the sweat of our brow. We battle natural disasters. We battle famine, we battle the beast of the field, we face the severity of the elements and worst of all we battle sin and death. All things are not under our feet, we are like a remnant of this former glory.

This morning we started with a scripture reading from Hebrews 2. The author of Hebrews understood Psalm 8. He understood that as we stand, we do not have all things under out feet, as it stands we do not have perfect dominion over creation, we are cursed. We all are mared by sin and shame, and oh how far we have fallen from our days in the garden. We need a new Adam, to accomplish what we could not. Yet the author of Hebrews wrote, “For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, “What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” This is the person of Jesus Christ, he who is worthy of infinite glory above the angels, for a little while was made lower than them. The immortal God was subjected to mortality. The creator was subjected to the creation. The fountain of Life was subjected to thirst for us. The true King over all of the earth, was placed under the curse of sin and death, so that he might reverse the curse for those who trust in him. Jesus was the baby, born of the woman who was made weak so that he might silence his enemies. Christ was the suckling infant, who would coo and babble and Satan would tremble with fear. Christ is the perfect picture of strength that has become subjected to weakness. It was at Christ weakest moment when he was crucified that he delt the final death blow to the enemies. Now as Hebrews 2 says, “he has been crowned with glory and honor because of his suffering death.” Christ has tasted death, so that those who trust in him might not taste eternal death. Christ bore the curse, so that we will not take the curse. Now all things have been placed under his feet, he is worthy, he is faithful and this is the Christ that we worship.

Now that Christ has all things under his feet, look at the last verse of Psalm 8:9 “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”