[0:00] Well, good morning and good to see you all here this morning. Before we begin, I just wanted to give you a little bit of an update. Those of you who are on the prayer chain know that BK's wife, Daniela, she had been in the hospital earlier this week.
[0:17] I think the email gave some details about a drain coming out that was draining the bile from her body. And the hope has been that she will recover strength over the next several months with the hope of operating on the gallbladder.
[0:37] This morning, Daniela was back in the hospital again. And so just continue to pray for that. The longer that they're able to delay the surgery and give her body the time to heal, the better it is for her, the less risky the operation is.
[0:51] But we don't know whether that operation will come sooner or later. So what I'd like to do is just begin open with prayer for them, as well as others in our church who are just going through some real struggles at this time of year.
[1:08] And then we'll continue with God's word with the sermon. Father, we thank you that we are able to gather here. Our health is not something to be taken for granted.
[1:21] We think of the many people in our church for whom that is a daily struggle. My heart goes out to folks like Rick Eby. He goes through chemo treatment for Carolyn Kingston as she faces operations and health difficulties.
[1:39] And, of course, as we've mentioned for Daniela, as she struggles with a lot of pain and with physical weakness, for those who care for each of them, for Evelyn, for BK, as he is caring for Daniela.
[1:56] Lord God, may our hearts be with them. We're asking for help, for healing. Lord God, that you would show that you are a God who brings life and healing.
[2:09] We have every hope that one day you will bring life. Lord God, I know that there are many others who, for whom good health has seemed a long way away.
[2:24] I think of Janet and of Henry, who cares for her, and for many others who know what it's like to walk in the valley of the shadow of death. Lord, in the middle of all this, may we remember that you are a God who is faithful and good.
[2:41] Lord, you are a God who, you are a God with whom we can fear no evil as long as we know that you are with us. And so today I pray that fundamentally we will remember that the God who is truly great is a God who is mindful of us, is a God who is with us, and a God who is in control, and that this Christmas we may remember that the greatest evidence, the greatest proof we have of that, is that he is a God who has sent his own son into the world.
[3:13] Lord God, we ask that you would encourage us, give us eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to understand who you really are, and to find encouragement from that.
[3:25] Amen. All right. Well, it is Christmas. And so we want to look at the Christmas story, and there are many competing Christmas stories in our culture, and some of them are kind of fun.
[3:46] Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is one that's fun. I'd like to revisit that story. It is not a sermon about Rudolph, but indulge me for a moment here. That story does go in a bit of a funny direction.
[3:59] You know how all of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names, right? And then Santa, finally he intervenes one foggy Christmas Eve.
[4:10] And why? Because he needs Rudolph's very shiny nose to serve as a fog light for his sleigh. Apparently Rudolph has a much better fog light than the fog lights that are on my car, because he gets them through the night safely.
[4:25] And so Rudolph's nose went from a liability to an asset up there in the North Pole in their operations.
[4:36] And so, of course, now all the reindeer love him, right? And I don't know. There's just something about that. I feel like poor Rudolph, at the end of the story, everyone's celebrating him, but he's just getting used for his nose.
[4:50] Now, think about that for a moment. Imagine that the story were different. Imagine if Rudolph had just a very dull, very ordinary reindeer nose.
[5:06] And imagine that this ordinary-nosed Rudolph was being bullied by all the other reindeer. Imagine if they never let Rudolph join in any reindeer games.
[5:20] But his nose was never going to be useful for anything at all. Now, imagine in this version of the story that Santa Claus had decided that he was going to take this small and insignificant reindeer.
[5:38] And even though he had no nose to serve as a fog light for the sleigh, Santa decided to put him at the head of all of the reindeer pulling his sleigh.
[5:49] He was going to do it anyway. Even though there was nothing in Rudolph, nothing about Rudolph, that merited such an honor. Now, what you've got there is now you no longer have a story that's all about Rudolph.
[6:04] That's all about how Rudolph is elevated to a place of honor. Now you have a story about the generous character of Santa Claus who elevated a reindeer who had not earned it.
[6:20] I like that version of the story that I just made up right now. In this version of the story, it's the person who does the elevating that we are praising.
[6:32] We are praising the person who is doing the elevating, not the person who is elevated. And to be honest, that actually makes a better Christmas story because it captures more what Christmas is about.
[6:46] And we're going to find the same message in a psalm that, by the time of this, I'm going to convince you it was a Christmas psalm. Okay? So Psalm 8 this morning is going to give us that same sort of message.
[6:59] And so let me read it for you first. I'm going to be reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible. If you don't have a Bible with you, just raise your hand and the ushers would be happy to provide you with one.
[7:10] Psalm 8 is about in the middle. And if you have one with you, just follow along as best you can in your translation of the scriptures. So here is Psalm 8.
[7:23] To the choir master, according to the Getith, a psalm of David. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
[7:36] 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.
[7:48] When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place.
[8:00] 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.
[8:14] 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.
[8:30] O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. So what is this song, what is this psalm all about?
[8:42] Here it is in a nutshell. The Lord displays his magnificence by elevating the insignificant. A little bit of a tongue twister. The Lord displays his magnificence by elevating the insignificant.
[9:00] And so this psalm is in fact all about the Lord. It's all about the generous, gracious, great character and nature of the Lord our God.
[9:17] Now, maybe that seems strange because there are parts of it that seem to be talking about how great human beings are, about elevating human beings. And we have the Israelite poet king.
[9:29] He's speaking to the Lord God and he's talking about man. And he says, you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
[9:39] And then he rattles off a list of all the things that God has placed under the authority of humanity. And so maybe this psalm, maybe this is a monument to the greatness of man.
[9:51] And we know, hey, personally, I think that would feel pretty good, right? But when David wrote the psalm, he made it pretty clear. He makes it very clear what he thinks is the central idea.
[10:04] Verse one reads, And then verse nine repeats it again.
[10:18] Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. So kind of hard to miss that message.
[10:29] These two verses, think of them as they're almost like this picture frame that surrounds the rest of the psalm. And this frame, these verses, they prevent us from misunderstanding what's in the picture.
[10:42] These verses tell us the central idea is not that human beings are so amazing, we're so incredible. It's not that man is magnificent. The central idea is that the Lord, our Lord, is magnificent.
[10:58] It is his name. It is his reputation that is declared to have a majesty, a supremacy, a glory to it.
[11:09] And so how does the Lord demonstrate his royal majesty? What does it look like for the Lord to show how great he is? Well, in this psalm, David is writing, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Lord displays his magnificence.
[11:28] And the way he does it is by elevating those who are insignificant. And David is going to help us understand, fill in, color in this majesty.
[11:42] We've looked at the frame of this psalm. And now what we're going to do is look at the rest of it. And the rest of it is almost like this, all these colors and these lines and these shapes that are going to bring together and evoke in us an emotion, a sense, an understanding of what it really means for the Lord to be magnificent in the same way that David understands, the same way David feels.
[12:06] And so here's the general shape of the psalm inside the frame. If you look, actually look at Psalm 8 in front of you, you're going to see it's pretty straightforward. Verse, by the time we get to verse 3, David is going to look up at the night sky.
[12:19] Maybe he is a, perhaps he's writing this as a shepherd out in the field, keeping watch over his flock by night. David takes in that vast night sky.
[12:30] Thankfully, it is not a Pacific Northwest night sky, in which case there would be nothing to see. But there's plenty to see out there. And night after night, he looks at it and he concludes that mankind is insignificant in comparison to that sort of glory.
[12:46] And then in verses 5 through 8, David is going to explain that despite that insignificance, the Lord has taken mankind, placed man in a position of dominion over the created order.
[13:01] The Lord displays his magnificence by elevating the insignificant. But the Lord likes to do it in certain particular ways. And here's the first way he likes to do it.
[13:12] The Lord strengthens the weak to subdue his adversaries. The Lord strengthens the weak to subdue his adversaries. And we know that from verse 2.
[13:26] When you understand that this whole shape of psalm 8 and how it's playing out, verse 2 is going to look kind of strange. Take a look at it. It looks totally out of place.
[13:37] You could drop verse 2 from the psalm and you would have a nice, smoothly flowing psalm. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you've established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger.
[13:52] It's almost like an aside. He just drops that in and then moves on. And so anytime you have that, you have something that sticks out a little bit like a sore thumb, you want to immediately ask, why did the Holy Spirit move David to put that in here?
[14:08] Why would David decide this belongs here? This needs to be here. What seems to happen is I think after he has set that initial frame of verse 1, David is now setting the stage for the rest of the psalm.
[14:23] If you've ever been to a stage play, then you know the importance of that. You want to set the stage. You want to put out the right props before the scene begins. So let's say, you know, you're looking at a play and you're waiting for the next scene to begin.
[14:38] The stagehands all run out on stage and they set up a fireplace and next to it there's this tree, this evergreen tree that's covered in lights and ornaments and there's stockings full of gifts hanging on the fireplace.
[14:51] And you don't sit there going, oh hey, it must be Valentine's Day. And nobody thinks that because without a single word, the stage setting tells you it's Christmas.
[15:03] The scene is about Christmas. And that's what verse 2 is doing. It's setting a stage for the rest of the psalm. It's telling you something about who the Lord is, about how he likes to elevate the insignificant, how he loves to show his glory.
[15:18] It's getting you in the right frame of mind to understand that the Lord strengthens the weak to subdue his adversaries. Now let's stop and consider this for a moment because David is talking about the enemy and the avenger and he's talking about them as the foes of the Lord.
[15:41] We learn here that the Lord in fact has enemies. He does. His enemies are human enemies. His enemies are demonic enemies.
[15:53] They are people who oppose him as God and Lord, who do not want him to reign over them, who are working to undermine, to subvert his reign.
[16:07] And the Lord subdues these adversaries by taking small and weak and helpless people babies and infants and giving them words of strength.
[16:20] And if you weren't sure whether this was a Christmas psalm before, I hope you're sure now. Because we've been sitting here week after week over the last few weeks and BK has been preaching about what took place 2,000 years ago when Israel had a king, the terrible king Herod.
[16:40] And above that king was an even greater king, the king of kings, the Roman emperor Augustus. But the Lord did not save the world through Herod.
[16:55] The Lord did not save the world through Augustus Caesar. The Lord sent his own son into the world as an infant.
[17:06] As a small and weak and helpless person. And it is his son, Jesus, who would be the one to still the enemy and the avenger.
[17:22] To put a stop to their violent and destructive work. Jesus would humble the spiritual and human powers that turned against God.
[17:33] And in the months to come, we're going to see that as we continue through the life of Jesus. How he stills the enemy and the avenger. Earlier in the service, Carl read his mother Mary's song of praise.
[17:48] Earlier this morning, Jesus' mother. And it's a song about how God would strengthen the weak to subdue his adversaries. He was going to do it through her son. And she said, he has shown strength with his arm.
[18:01] He has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones. And exalted those of humble estate.
[18:15] This is, in some of the teachings, some of the counseling I do, I tell people, this is what perhaps we could call the honor-shame gospel. That God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
[18:28] He brings down the mighty and the powerful and the strong. And he exalts the small and the weak and the helpless. Not because they got a shiny red nose that makes them useful.
[18:43] But for nothing in themselves. But just because he is the Lord. And that is how he subdues his adversaries. So now we know what this psalm is about.
[18:54] It is about how the Lord demonstrates his magnificence. And how does he do it? He strengthens the weak to subdue his adversaries. And here is his great plan.
[19:05] Here is the great work that the Lord is doing in the cosmos. The Lord honors mortal man to shame his immortal enemies. The Lord honors mortal man to shame his immortal enemies.
[19:22] God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. This refrain that is repeated throughout scripture. Let's see how he does it.
[19:34] First, the Lord begins with something insignificant. The insignificant thing is you. And me.
[19:46] It's us. The human race seems unimportant to the universe. The human race seems unimportant to the universe. This is something that David reflects on in verses 3 and 4.
[20:02] 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?
[20:16] And the son of man that you care for him? So David is looking up at that night sky. He's feeling a sense of wonder. And he had a spectacular view of the night sky out in those fields.
[20:32] So many stars that the Milky Way would stretch across the sky in this amazing, mesmerizing band. The full moon would be so vivid, so bright.
[20:43] It's almost painful to stare at. And he would have spent many nights under that moon, under those stars. He would have known them like the back of his hand. He knew those constellations better than you and I do.
[20:55] And they provoked in him that sense of mystery, that sense of wonder. But the marvelous thing about the heavens is that the more we learn about their true nature, the more wonderful they seem.
[21:13] It's been 3,000 years since David wrote this, and it's never more true than it is now. The more we know, the more true these words seem. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place.
[21:27] What is man that you are mindful of him? And the son of man that you care for him. You know, it's a little bit hard to see the starry night sky from the time and place we're sitting.
[21:40] I mean, I got a good view out the windows, but it's not helping me very much. So it's a little hard right here, right now where we are, to capture David's sense of wonder at that vast cosmos God has created.
[21:54] So maybe we can do a little astronomy lesson. How does that sound? What I'm going to do is I'm going to build for you a very small scale model of our solar system.
[22:07] Let's understand these heavens that God has made. Let's understand our insignificance. So I went grocery shopping the other day, and I picked up an acorn squash.
[22:23] And this is about five inches, about 13 centimeters in diameter. And this acorn squash is a great candidate to stand in for our sun.
[22:35] Like the sun, it is round. It is orangey-yellowish. It is delicious with butter and brown sugar. And in our scale model, where the sun is a five-inch squash, how large do you suppose our own planet, the Earth, is?
[22:55] How far away from the sun do you suppose it would be? Well, I asked Shane back in the sound booth to hold on to the Earth for me.
[23:06] And so Shane is going to hold it up for you, the Earth. If you have trouble seeing it, that's because the Earth is a mustard seed. Shane's got the whole world in his hand.
[23:16] So the Earth is this mustard seed about a millimeter in diameter, and that's how big it is compared to the sun. And in our scale model, that's how far away it would be.
[23:28] Our mustard seed, Earth, is 45 feet away from our acorn squash sun, all the way back there at the sound booth. Are you feeling small yet?
[23:40] It's going to get a lot worse. Let's do another planet. Okay? So I'm going to, first of all, we'll add the sun maybe to these Christmas decorations over here.
[23:52] Got a nice Christmas squash going on there. And I've got another planet stored up here. And this is the planet Jupiter. That's a big planet, right? If you've ever seen Jupiter, it's... Outside of the sun, Jupiter has 90% of the mass in our solar system.
[24:05] It's huge. It is huge. Jupiter in our scale model is a grape. It's just over a centimeter in diameter. Do you know how far away it is from our acorn squash sun?
[24:20] It is about 230 feet away. That means it is out past the end of the building, out past the house next door, all the way to the next house over from that. That is how far away our grape is from the sun.
[24:35] Now, Jupiter is not even close to the farthest planet away in our solar system. Our solar system would extend way out into the rest of the neighborhood. Way out into the rest of the neighborhood, slowly moving around that acorn squash.
[24:50] But you know what? You're thinking, okay, all right, all right, all right, all right. The solar system, I'm feeling really, really small now. But that's just one star and the planets around it. What about all the other stars out there?
[25:00] Well, I brought another star with me. And so I brought the nearest star to us. It is Proxima Centauri, 3.7 light years away.
[25:12] It is a strawberry, this little strawberry here. And in our scale model, this little red dwarf star, small and dim, this little strawberry, you know how far away it is?
[25:23] Montreal. No joke. That's our next door neighbor, the closest star. It is in Montreal.
[25:34] Beyond that, the distances between all the stars, all the galaxies, by the way, which are composed of hundreds of thousands of stars.
[25:46] And there are hundreds and thousands. Who knows? We don't even know how many galaxies there are in the world. At vast distances that no scale model will ever help you to fathom.
[25:57] This is more true than David could have even imagined. What is man? What is a mere atom on that little tiny mustard seed?
[26:12] What are you that the Lord should be mindful of you? The human race seems unimportant to the universe. It is tempting to lose heart here.
[26:28] After all, what thought do you ever give to the atoms coating the surface of a mustard seed? Why would God keep you in mind?
[26:39] Why would he devote even a single thought to you and me? If he's like us, then we are surely forgotten. We are tiny and forgotten, small and desperately alone in the cosmos.
[26:51] But here's the good news. We as Christians know that God is not like us. He does not forget the small and insignificant. In Psalm 8, David tells us there is more to the story.
[27:06] What is man that you are mindful of him? And the son of man that you care for him? The human race seems unimportant to the universe. Yet the Lord has crowned man with royal prestige.
[27:20] The Lord has crowned man with royal prestige. And that is a beautiful word, the word yet. That is how verse 5 begins.
[27:31] Yet. It is a hinge. The whole psalm turns on this word. It turns us from despair to hope. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
[27:52] Now, notice who is at the center of this story. The subject of the verb. You.
[28:03] You made him. You crowned him. The subject is the Lord. It is the Lord who gives us our rank.
[28:14] It is the Lord who crowns humanity with glory and honor. In other words, mankind hasn't risen to a position of nobility because, you know, we're just plain amazing. Not by ourselves.
[28:29] Not on our own. We are not Rudolph with a shiny nose. We've got nothing to give to Santa. We've got nothing that makes us worthy of honor. It is purely the Lord's sovereign choice.
[28:41] His creating power. His divine decree. The Lord has crowned man with royal prestige. He has appointed man to a position a little lower than the heavenly beings.
[28:53] Just right there with the angelic authorities. Even the ones who have chosen to rebel against the Lord. His adversaries. And we keep reading in verses 6 through 8.
[29:04] Now, this position of royal prestige.
[29:24] This is a position of dominion over all living things. Over the created order. David is drawing from earlier scripture.
[29:35] He had scripture too. And he's thinking about it as he writes this. He is thinking about Genesis chapter 1. He is thinking about how God created the world. And there we read, God said, Let us make man in our image.
[29:49] After our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea. And over the birds of the heavens. And over the livestock. And over all the earth. And over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
[30:01] So, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. Now, to be made in the image of God.
[30:15] God means that we, you and I, represent God. We act on his behalf over his creation.
[30:27] God is the great king. We've been appointed as governor general on his behalf. And this is what gives us meaning and purpose. We are meant to rule the way he rules.
[30:41] With wisdom. With courage. With kindness. As a representative of the Lord. Walking by his spirit.
[30:54] So, all human life is valuable. Every human being is valuable. Why? Not because of what we can contribute. But because we are.
[31:05] Just created in the image of God. And he has appointed us to represent him. Now, in our culture, we seem to value human life. But only in so far as people are useful.
[31:18] Rudolph is valued. Because he could contribute a shiny red nose. But if Rudolph had no such nose, he would be the forgotten reindeer.
[31:29] No song written about him. Nothing at all. The message in our culture is simply this. Be useful or be forgotten. Some of you have felt that.
[31:41] You have felt that pressure. You've placed yourself under that pressure. Be useful. Contribute or be forgotten. The unborn.
[31:55] The mentally handicapped. The elderly. They are only valuable if they serve our own ends. But Genesis 1, Psalm 8, they teach us that all human life is valuable.
[32:11] Because it's valuable to God. There is no place to treat any human being as less valuable. What God considers important, even if it is just an atom coating the surface of a mustard seed.
[32:29] It is important. The Lord has crowned man with royal prestige. But we look out there and we think, okay, if we are supposed to be the governor generals of God's creation, our reign doesn't really seem to be a very good reign.
[32:44] We certainly don't seem to be reflecting the character of our God. We seem to be running the show our own way. Ignoring his commands.
[32:57] Refusing to acknowledge him. Both as individuals, as a community. We seem to be siding, not with the Lord, but with those supernatural authorities who are trying to usurp his throne.
[33:11] We are guilty of insurrection. Atoms on a mustard seed. Rebelling against their creator. We have sinned against God.
[33:24] We have caused a lot of harm to the world that he has given us. And we are still doing it. We are part of a culture that is still doing it. All the more reason for the Lord to forget about us.
[33:36] To walk away from the mustard seed. But though we may be rebellious and sinful. Though we may be those tiny specks on a mustard seed.
[33:47] Our God delights in taking a weak and worthless people. Unworthy people. And giving us dominion and honor.
[33:58] Taking the weak and the unworthy. And elevating them to dominion and honor. God delights in taking a sinful and twisted people. And restoring and redeeming many of them to be his image bearers who represent him to the world.
[34:17] How is he going to do that? How is he going to do that? Well, here is how. All the people that the Lord redeems from the penalty of sin.
[34:30] All the people that the Lord redeems from the power of sin. They are all redeemed because of one man. One man who stands in our place.
[34:43] And I want to tell you. In the end, Psalm 8 isn't so much about you and me and so much about humanity as it is about this one man. The son of man that God cares for.
[34:58] You are my beloved son. With you I am well pleased. Those were words that he spoke about a man 2,000 years ago at his baptism. A man who became the son of God who became one of us.
[35:11] The book of Hebrews tells us that this one man is Jesus Christ. This one man who died and rose again. This one man who has risen from the dead and he is Lord.
[35:27] In Hebrews chapter 2, we hear Psalm 8 quoted and guess what? It's all about Jesus. In Hebrews 2, we read, It was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking.
[35:43] 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.
[35:55] You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Now, in putting everything in subjection to him.
[36:07] To Jesus. He, that's God, left nothing outside his control. Nothing outside Jesus' control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.
[36:19] So I want to pause there. He says, look, it doesn't look like this is true. It doesn't look like Jesus is risen from the dead and reigning and acting as Lord. It does not seem that all things have been placed under him, but they have been.
[36:34] But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus. Crowned with glory and honor. Why?
[36:45] Because of the suffering of death. So that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. He was crowned with glory and honor.
[36:59] Why? Because he went low. And he suffered. And he died. And God in his kindness and grace, because he is a God who loves to give grace to the humble.
[37:15] This Jesus, who tasted death for us all, God elevated him and raised him up to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name.
[37:26] He is King of kings and Lord of lords. The Son of God became a man to fulfill this very psalm. He became a man. He experienced the suffering of death as one of us so that God might crown him with glory and honor.
[37:46] That is what Christmas is all about. Christmas is all about that incarnation. God become flesh. That God the Son takes on human nature. And now he is not just God.
[37:57] He is also fully man. 100% God and 100% man at the same time. And that baby boy, away in a manger, he now stands as the last Adam.
[38:15] There was an Adam who is the father of us all. And this is the second Adam and the last Adam. That one man, crowned with glory and honor. And he is the one that God is mindful of.
[38:28] He is the one, that true son of man that God dearly cares for. And that last Adam, he was obedient to the point of death on a cross.
[38:41] And now he stands, the obedient and righteous servant of God, raised to life again in victory over the grave. Ruler and authority over all the created world.
[38:51] Ruler and authority. And in the age to come, his reign will be made complete. On earth as it is in heaven.
[39:05] As a baby, Jesus was placed in a lowly manger. He was placed in the feeding trough of an animal. Now, he is Lord.
[39:21] He is Lord not only of those very animals. He is Lord not only of the animals we read about in Psalm 8. Not only over the sheep and oxen and beasts and birds and fish. He is Lord over the spiritual authorities and the human authorities as well.
[39:33] He rules over man and beast. He triumphs over the human and demonic enemies of God. He brings joy to our world. The Lord has come. And Psalm 8 tells us that the Lord displays his magnificence by elevating the insignificant.
[39:52] He sends his own son, Jesus Christ. And he sends him not as a conquering hero. But as a baby who grows into a man.
[40:03] A nobody who is born to suffer and to die and to rise again. God strengthens that. Strengthens what is weak.
[40:15] To subdue his adversaries. He honors mortal man. To shame his immortal enemies. Christmas is the beginning of a triumph. So there is no one more majestic.
[40:28] There is no being with a more magnificent reputation. Than the Lord who does these things. How magnificent is the Lord. And his Messiah.
[40:38] How magnificent is the Lord and his Messiah. That one man. Jesus the Messiah. Jesus the Christ. The Son of God.
[40:50] And so David, he ends his psalm the only way he can. Oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name in all the earth. Now before you ever encountered this magnificent Lord.
[41:05] You may have thought that your purpose. You may have thought that your significance came from, you know, being a pretty good person. Or being maybe a tough person or intelligent person. Or going out there and doing all the things our culture says makes for a meaningful life.
[41:19] Fulfilling all your desires. Having a great job. Having a great family. But then we know that we are little specks on a mustard seed.
[41:33] The immense scale of the heavens shows you that in and of yourself, you don't have significance. You don't have purpose. You don't have anything. It is not because of any natural greatness in yourself that you possess any dignity and worth.
[41:49] It is because of the Lord's creating power. It is because the Lord has proclaimed that he is going to take what is small and insignificant and elevate it.
[42:04] The Lord has a deep and tender care for every little atom on that mustard seed. And that means you. And you. And you.
[42:14] By the power of Jesus Christ. Everybody who is united with Jesus. Who has faith in him. Who believes in him. Is connected with this victorious, triumphant son of man.
[42:32] Every person in Jesus. Will conquer death itself. With him. And reign with him. Forever. And ever. It is the Lord's magnificence.
[42:44] That makes the difference. It is not our own. It is the Lord's majesty. That truly matters. Jesus Christ.
[42:55] Is what it's all about. He is the one and only Lord. And if you haven't yet believed in him. If you haven't yet entrusted yourself. Body and soul.
[43:06] And life and death. To Jesus. Do it. Turn from your sin. Turn from your. Turn from your.
[43:19] Rebellious little mustard seed speck ways. Believe in that one man. Believe in the son of God. Believe in the victory. He has won. You must leave the side of the enemies and the avengers.
[43:33] That the Lord is going to subdue. Side with Jesus Christ. Christ. Believe in that one man. Who demonstrates the magnificence of God. In a lowly manger.
[43:45] Our father. We thank you. That you have. Crowned. Your son. With glory and honor.
[43:57] For a little while. He stooped down low. Became a baby. A child. Suffered persecution. Suffered hardship. And now he's exalted to the highest place.
[44:09] Given the name that is above every name. We thank you that at the name of Jesus. Every knee is going to bow. In heaven and on earth. And under the earth. That. Every tongue is going to confess.
[44:20] That Jesus Christ is Lord. And it's all for your glory. God our father. Because you are magnificent. Because you are a God who is.
[44:31] Not only great. But a great God doesn't. A God who is only great. Doesn't care for mustard seed specks. You are good. And you are with us.
[44:43] And Lord God. Reassure us. And remind us. That our. Your son Jesus Christ. Is the greatest proof of love. The greatest proof of your love. And tender care. That we.
[44:55] Could ever have. Could ever want. Let us turn our lives to him. And celebrate him. Amen. Amen.