CELEBRATING THE
GLORY AND GRACE OF GOD
The Psalms express in words feelings that we ourselves
have trouble finding words for. They help us to put words to our sadness and
despair; they help us to exalt and praise God for His character and goodness.
This morning we are being led by Psalm 8 to celebrate the glory and grace of
God.
Derek
Kidner wrote, “This Psalm is an unsurpassed example of what a hymn should be,
celebrating as it does the glory and grace of God, rehearsing who He is and
what He has done, and relating us and our world to Him; all with a masterly
economy of words, and in a spirit of mingled joy and awe.”[i]
One
morning this week as I was in my quiet time with the Lord, a flood of thoughts
overwhelmed me about God’s glory. What the Holy Spirit impressed upon me was
that, for the most part, God does not point out His glory in a verbal way. He
does not point to the Rocky Mountains and declare, “I did that.” He does not
shout from the sky concerning the Northern Lights saying, “This is my art.”
Instead,
what the Spirit revealed to me is how God wants us to discover this truth on
our own. When we gaze upon the mountains, behold the Northern Lights, or hold a
newborn baby in our arms, God wants us to recognize His masterful touch in the
glory that surrounds us.
Sometimes
we are overwhelmed with God’s visible glory. Other times, we must admit, we
have lost the wonder of the world around us. I believe part of the work of the
Holy Spirit is to reveal God’s glory in the everyday events of our lives. Those
who do not believe in God will never see this and give credit to God. But you
and I are led by Psalm 8 to stop and wonder at the glory and grace of God. When
we consider the greatness of God and how He includes us in His glory we will
not be able to help but worship God for His majesty.
Come
with me and get lost in the worship of God in Psalm 8.
1. The Greatness of God’s Glory
a) Observe the
Majesty of God – The directions for Psalm 8 read, “For the director of
music. According to gittith. A psalm of David.” The word Gittith means a
winepress but also designates a stringed instrument which was shaped like a
winepress. The Greeks took the word and the instrument which it represented and
called it a kithara and from that comes the Spanish guitarria and from that the
English guitar.[ii]
So it seems that guitars preceded pianos and organs in worship music. Who knew?
Most
scholars believe David wrote this psalm early in his life, perhaps as a
shepherd boy gazing up at the stars while tending his sheep. He was struck with
the person of God and wrote:
“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name
in all the earth!” (1a). Your Bibles show two aspects of “Lord” in the
text. The first is all-capitalized indicating that the name “Yahweh” is meant.
This is God’s covenantal name and comes from the Hebrew “to be.” God first
revealed this name to Moses when he asked what name God went by.[iii]
God replied, “I am who I am,” pointing to his self-existence.
The
second “Lord” is the Hebrew “Adonai” and means “sovereign” or “lord.” So we
could reword this phrase as “O eternal covenant God, our personal king!” God is
eternal and great and mighty and far above His creation, but He also stooped
down to His created people to be their King.
David
looked around and considered that all he saw was God’s handiwork and proclaimed
the majesty of God. “You have set your
glory in the heavens,” (1b), completes the picture. Both earth and heaven
(the skies) tell of an intelligent Creator who made the world we live in. If we
contemplate the vastness of the universe and the countless galaxies with
planets that make earth look like dust, and also consider the two minute
molecules that come together to signal the beginning of a child in the womb, we
must stand in awe.
And yet
so-called intelligent people will teach that facts and science point to a
random eruption of planets and life. Isaac Newton had a model of our solar
system made for him. In the center, of course, was a large golden ball
representing the sun. Revolving around it were small spheres for planets
attached with rods. Cogs and belts were applied to make them move in harmony
around the sun. One day, Newton was studying the model, a friend who did not
believe in the Genesis account came by and marveled at the model, he asked,
“My, Newton, what an exquisite thing! Who made it for you?” Without looking up,
Newton replied, “Nobody.” “Nobody?” his friend asked. “That’s right! Nobody!
All of these balls and cogs and gears just happened to come together and wonder
of wonders, by chance they began revolving in their set orbits with perfect
timing.” Point made.
God has
displayed His glory in the earth and in the heavens for all to see so that “men are without excuse,” (Ro. 1:20).
b) How God
proclaims His Glory – As I said before, God does not personally boast about
His handiwork. However, He does incite the most unusual subjects to bring Him
glory.
David
wrote, “From the lips of children and
infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies to silence the foe and
the avenger,” (2). God has chosen to display His majesty and power in
seemingly weak infants to defeat His naysayers.
When
Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly, He headed straight for the temple where He
chased out the money changers. Then He healed the lame and the blind much to
the delight of some nearby children. (Turn
to Matt. 21:15-16 to read what happened). Jesus quoted Ps. 8 in defense of
the children and their response to these healings.
If the
chief priests were upset before, they were livid now. Jesus had just identified
the children of Jerusalem with Ps. 8 and Himself as the Son of David and the
Son of God.
God
loves to confound His enemies through the unexpected and “least of these.”
There is a story of a rather liberal Sunday School teacher who had a class of
boys. He was teaching the story of the feeding of the five thousand, and said
something like this. "You know, this isn't really a miracle. Jesus did no
miracles. What really took place here was that when this crowd was hungry a
little boy present there decided to share his lunch with Jesus. He brought his
lunch to Jesus and Jesus commended him for this. When the crowd saw that, it
suggested to them that if they would share the lunches they had brought,
everybody would have enough. So they all began to share and there was plenty
for everyone. If there was a miracle at all it was a miracle of sharing."
He leaned back rather satisfied with himself that he had explained away the
miracle when one little boy in his class said to him, "Sir, may I ask a
question?" The teacher said, "Yes." And he said, "What did
they fill the twelve baskets with afterwards?"[iv]
Stories
like this make us pause to listen to children. Jesus said that unless we have
the faith of a child we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. God will use
children to teach us truths that we cannot see or have forgotten about the
simplicity of faith and the glory of God. God seems to delight in this.
2. The Greatness of God’s Grace
a) How to feel
tiny – There is a pattern forming that you may or may not see (I’ll show
you in the conclusion). David brings us back to his gazing up at the sky on a
warm summer night when the sheep are bedded down. At first he revels in the
beauty he sees, but then he shivers as a question crosses his mind:
“When I consider 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, the son of man that you care for him?” (3-4).
Around
about 9:30 our dog needs her nightly constitutional. I go out with her and
stand on the deck while she does her business. Meanwhile I get a breath of
fresh air and stare up into the night sky, marveling at how bright Venus is or
the great clusters of stars. For some reason, the night sky makes one feel
smaller than any other time of day. That must have been how David felt.
More
than a hundred years ago when Theodore Roosevelt was President of the US, a
friend of his would visit him at his Sagamore Hill home. The two men would go
outdoors at night to see who could locate the Andromeda galaxy first. Then, as
they gazed at the tiny smudge of distant starlight, one of them would recite, “That
is the spiral galaxy of Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one
of a hundred million galaxies. It is 750,000 light years away. It consists of a
hundred billion suns, each larger than our sun.” Then Roosevelt would grin and
say, “Now I think we are small enough! Let’s go to bed.”[v]
It’s a
good practice to be reminded of our smallness, that we are not God. But David
asks an important question: What is puny man that God even thinks of him? In
all of creation, in a most natural sense, we are not that significant. Even
PETA puts animals on the same plane as humankind as far as rights are
concerned. Lobby groups are seeking to establish a post-birth abortion for
children with defects up to the age of four. Humankind is treated with
frivolity.
What is
man? Where did he come from? What is his purpose here? Why does he exist on
this small planet in this vast universe? Is there meaning, is there
significance, is there reason for his living? Those are the questions that are
being asked more and more. You can hardly open a magazine today but what you
find writers who are trying to come to grips with that question. What is man?
b) How to feel significant
– Despite feeling tiny, David recognized that God had crowned humankind with
His glory. It is simply astounding to think that God, who is self-sufficient
and almighty, needing nothing from anyone, wants to share His glory with
people. David wrote:
“You have made him a little lower than the
angels and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works
of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the
beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that
swim the paths of the seas,” (5-8).
The word
David uses actually refers to God (Elohim) and not to angels. In the Hebrew it
reads, “You made him a little lower than God…” David would have thought back to
Genesis where God created man in His image and likeness. “What is included in that remarkable
expression is the revelation of God's purpose for man. According to the Bible,
God made man to be the expression of God's life, the human vehicle of the
divine life, the means by which the invisible God would be made visible to his
creatures. Man was to be the instrument by which God would do his work in the
world and the expression of the character and being of God. He is the creature
nearest to God.”[vi]
Above all creatures God chose man to be His representative to Creation.
I think
we see the hand of God in humanity on so many levels. One person sees a chunk
of marble; another (Michelangelo) sees a form of David. We hold in our hands
today “smart phones,” the achievement of humankind – or is it the gift of God?
Again, we have lost a sense of holy wonder about such things. We have claimed them
as our own making.
And yet
we have failed to be God’s representative. We have become our own gods and
stolen God’s glory. Humankind is not what it should be in respect to God. Who
will fill this role as God intended? Who will be “Psalm 8”?
The
writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 8:4-6 in reference to Jesus (Read Hebrews 2:5-9). Where humankind
failed in mediating between God and Creation, God sent His own Son in the
person of Jesus to fulfill Psalm 8. Jesus was crowned with glory and honor
because He suffered death.
Once
again, God has raised us up beyond what we deserve. And why would God do this?
Why does He show such grace to creatures like us? What is the point of our
existence? What does God want with us?
In us,
He reveals His grace. If you have discovered Jesus Christ you have discovered
the new humanity. He is beginning a new humanity right now, and he is teaching
us lessons we could never learn in any other way, through the struggles and
difficulties of life. He does this in order to fit us for the day when he will
pull aside the curtain and the whole world will suddenly see what he has been
working on all the time -- a new humanity, the glory of God in humankind that
has been hidden in us all this time.
“O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (9).
Do you
see the emotional roller coaster ride that David has led us on? In v. 1 we look
up to the majesty of God; v. 2 to the feeble vehicle of God’s praise and glory
(babies); v. 3 the glory of the heavens; v. 4 the tininess of humanity compared
with Creation; v. 5 the privilege of ruling His Creation; vv. 6-8 the
implication that we have failed to be what He intended…and Jesus who saves the
day by being exactly what God intended. How great is our God!
What do
we make of Psalm 8? We make much of it – that God would even consider us as the
objects of His grace – but not too much, remembering our finiteness. We should
think highly of ourselves and all of humanity, since God has shared His glory
with all human beings, but not too highly that we forget God. Whatever we see
that is beautiful in Creation – a great mind or a lovely person – should compel
us to worship the Creator.
God thinks so much of humanity that He gave
His Son to save it. That act of love is both encouraging and humbling. Human
life is precious to God; human life should be precious to us as well.
AMEN
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