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Good morning, brothers and sisters. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler. I'm one of the lay elders here at Trinity. And it's a joy and privilege for me to be up here to bring you God's word. We've been going through numbers recently, but we're going to take a detour this Sunday, Lord willing, and we're going to be going through Psalm 8.
And normally I'm assigned a text to preach, but every so often I'll get the rare opportunity to choose a text. And I've had this text on my heart for several months now.
It's one of the most majestic psalms in the entire Psalter. And I believe it's an ancient word that speaks the time we find ourselves in today. And my prayer is that you'll be encouraged by this psalm. So let's go to the Lord for help before we look at his word together.
Father in heaven, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Father, we pray that that would be made clear in this sermon. Father, would you open our eyes to see your wonderful majesty.
Open our ears to hear the glad tidings of the gospel. And Father, would you be glorified. Father, give me freedom. Give me love. Father, help the truth to resound forth.
And Lord, would you draw all people to yourself by your son. And would you get all the glory in our time together this morning. Praise in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.
Well, in a recent New York Times interview, former columnist Ross Douthit, a New Haven resident, was interviewing Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire.
And Ross asked the question to Peter, would you prefer the human race to survive? Thiel hesitates for a disturbingly long amount of time.
Well, I don't know. Well, in all fairness to Peter, what to do with the human race has always been a very perplexing question.
It's a question that's been raised in almost every age. Almost 100 years ago, humans grappled with what to do with humanity coming out of World War II, where the best and worst of humanity was on display.
And today, that same question is as relevant as ever. For Peter and for many, humanity has run its course.
Humanity has now stagnated. We need something new, something better. A successor species. A merger between our mind and a machine.
Let's transform humanity into something fundamentally different, something better. We've stagnated, the thought goes. Look at the cultural malaise. The moral emptiness.
Fewer world-changing scientific discoveries. Lower economic output. Surely the universe would be much better off without humans as they currently exist. If you listen to some of the current conversation, Peter Thiel is not alone.
Some argue that this is the only ethical thing to do to embrace this kind of engineered future. I mean, how else are we going to reduce our carbon footprint on the earth? What do you think about that?
Okay, well, maybe you wouldn't go as far in this bizarre techno-utopia where humans are eradicated. But if you're like me, you find yourself asking a similar question.
What is humanity for? What am I here for? What should I aspire to in my life? In an age of smartphones, screens, and social media, how can I flourish?
How can I help my kids steward these technologies? Was I created to mindlessly scroll on the screen? And with everything being created on TikTok like 10 minutes ago, is there anything permanent that I can build my life upon?
How can I flourish in today's world? Well, these are some of the questions I've been asking myself for a while now. I'm sure some of you have been asking the same questions. And I think Psalm 8 helps us here.
To get an answer, we're going to go back 3,000 years and look at this psalm, which was written by a humble shepherd, taking care of his sheep, and he looks up at the stars, and he starts to think to himself, Who am I?
What am I? God, why would you even listen to me? You are majestic, and I am just a little speck of dust. And the words of Psalm 8 were formed in his mind.
So let me invite you to open Psalm 8. It will be on the screen. I don't have the page number for you. Let's look at Psalm 8 together.
David writes this, Oh 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 steal the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, that 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 path of the seas.
Oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name in all the earth. This is God's word. Well, Psalm 8 is the first song of complete and total praise in the book of Psalms.
From start to finish, this psalm celebrates the majesty of God. That's the main point in verse 1. Oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name.
In all the earth. If you look down at verse 9, that question gets repeated. That question sandwiches this entire psalm.
And God's majesty is the main point of this text. David's great aim is that you and I would stand in awe and worship of this majestic God.
What the rest of the psalm is going to unpack and develop this thought, David wants you to see why God is majestic. And if you follow David's hymn of praise, we'll look at this text in three parts.
The first part will be the greatness of God's name. The second, the greatness of God's works. Number three, the greatness of God's son. So let's consider that first point together.
David considers the greatness of God's name. He asks the question, how majestic is your name in all the earth? Now majesty, in effect, means the name of God takes David's breath away.
God's name is his reputation. His name is majestic. Is it just in Jerusalem that God is majestic? No. His majesty is worldwide.
It is known in all the earth. You know, even if you can move somehow throughout the entire universe, and you could somehow get to the very edge of the universe, God's glory wouldn't run out.
In verse one, God's glory is even above the heavens. The name of God takes David's breath away. And David here begins with God's covenant name, Yahweh.
Oh Lord. You'll see in verse one in the English, you'll notice that first word, Lord, is in all caps. That's referring to the name that God gives himself when God reveals himself out of the flames in the burning bush to Moses.
You remember in Exodus chapter three, Moses is tending the sheep of his father-in-law on the backwoods of nowhere. And suddenly he's confronted with an astonishing sight.
A burning bush wasn't being consumed and God begins to speak to him out of the bush. And God tells Moses to go back to Egypt as he will save his people out of slavery.
Moses says, look, I'm a nobody. And he asked in verse 14, but what if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they ask me, what is his name? What shall I say to them?
God responds, that I am, that I am. Yahweh. That's what you're to say.
Tell them that I am sent you. This is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, the God of the covenant, Yahweh. I am who I am. That's referring to God's raw existence.
I will be who I will be. I don't change my identity. There never was a time when I am was not. God simply is.
He always was. He had no beginning. He had no middle. And he will have no end. God's existence depends on no one. And what this means in Psalm 8 is that there's no place on the planet that you are not totally supreme.
He is absolute reality. There is none beside him. God. But then David continues. Because he is not a distant God.
He is a personal one. David says, O Lord, our Lord. And he uses a different term. The term Adonai. Our Adonai.
And Adonai was an everyday personal title that would have been used. So when you had a human master, you would call him Adonai. Master. Lord.
See, he's not only in absolute existence. He's the very God who rules my everyday life. He is not distant and far away. No, in fact, he's near. He acts in personal covenant relationship with his people.
And David here is speaking on behalf of the entire covenant people of God. Our Lord. It reminds me of the first line of the Apostles' Creed. I believe in God, the Father Almighty.
A father. A loving parent. But then almighty. A sovereign potentate. God is both supreme king, but he's also compassionate.
He is a king of glory. The heavens cannot contain the glory of this God. You know, I did my undergrad years in D.C.
And I remember being captivated by the grandeur, the greatness, the glory of the city. My dorm was on Foggy Bottom right near the Lincoln Memorial.
And I've always enjoyed running, so I would run around the Capitol at night, feeling like I was immersed in history. You know, you see the lines etched into the Lincoln Memorial, things like this, the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
And the architecture, the architecture was glorious, designed to echo the glories of ancient Rome. I would walk around the Capitol building, giving tours, and I'd say to myself, this is where Lincoln, this is where Adam stood.
How glorious is that? But then I realized those voices once booming in those halls are but a distant memory. That glorious fleeting, fading away.
Those elected to power are here for a minute, gone the next. It's not just the elected leaders, but America is fleeting and fading.
What kind of glory are you seeking this morning? To be known in the halls of political power, maybe? Success in the industry?
Athletic achievements? Intellectual respect? When all those things will soon fade away like a fading flower, like a rainbow that appears for a moment and is soon gone.
But you see, here in Psalm 8, God's majesty is not fleeting nor is it fading. This is what you can build your life upon. God's character, God's essential nature is glorious.
His intrinsic nature is unsearchably majestic. See, we human beings were created for worship, for praise. Not that we would be praised, but that we would find our hearts, our imaginations, our minds filled with the glory of God.
Isn't it the greatest motivation for missions? That all the peoples of the earth would have this greatest joy to see and savor God's majestic name. And this majesty is unique, as David will show us.
It's different. It's paradoxical. And the rest of the psalm unpacks why. And it leads us to point number two, the greatness of God's works. In verse two, out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes to steal the enemy and the inveterant.
That's odd. It's paradoxical. After just saying the heavens cannot contain this majesty, David shifts gears and begins talking to his enemies in a moment.
He can just say, you there, I'm taking the breath out of your lungs. To dust you shall return. Yet, God chooses to use babies. He uses babies to triumph over his enemies.
My daughter Sarah turns one today. Are we supposed to understand that babies her age are taking God's enemies to the mat? I mean, kind of like turning into the Hulk?
Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Okay, my kids act like that sometimes. Are babies suddenly a superhuman strength and agility to defeat God's foes?
No, clearly not. God doesn't use babies because of their strength, wisdom, or knowledge. It's because God chooses to use those who are weak, those who are low, those who are insignificant in the world's eyes.
You see, God doesn't use raw power. God chooses to display his power in weakness to silence his enemies. It's the same principle that we find in 1 Corinthians chapter 1.
God chooses what is weak in the world to shame the strong. Friend, this is a deep principle, that God ordains strength from weakness.
Now, as I was reflecting on this, I get up here and I preach the word every so often and I feel like inevitably this point has always come up. Every time it seems that God is using a weak creature to accomplish his ends.
I think it's because this is a truth that's evident on every page of the Bible. God's strength in our weakness is a topic I could preach from any page of the Bible because that's how he acts.
And commentators note that David here may be using figurative language of babies to refer to the people of Israel, weak in comparison to the surrounding nations. And through these insignificant small people, God reveals his majesty.
I think that's right. Friend, can you say that God ordained strength in your weakness? Now, many of you are familiar with this psalm.
Some of you have even memorized it. And we can recite verse 1 and we mean it. God's name is majestic. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
We can say it in good times and we mean it. When that bonus check, where the tax refunds hits the bank account, we say, O Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. When that cancer screening comes back negative, we praise God.
When you finally get recognized for something, or ladies, when that guy finally works up the courage to ask you on a date, or even better, proposes, God, I praise you, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
But what about when the times aren't good? What about the times when you feel weak, when the bank account is empty? When those relationships, they're falling apart.
When you're in a desperately dark place, you're helpless, you're like a baby, all you can do is cry out. I think David knew firsthand what that was like. Because if you look at the surrounding psalm, you'll find Psalm 8 lives in a very troubled neighborhood.
And to the left of the house, in the neighborhood, there are lots of problems, lots of pain. From Psalm 4 to 7, David is distressed. He's facing slander. His enemies are hunting him down.
He's emotionally exhausted. He's crying himself to sleep at night in Psalm 6. And to the right of Psalm 8, you'll find even more problems. And here in Psalm 8, we see that David's reflecting that God can ordain strength from his weakness.
David knew that God can use weak, vulnerable, helpless babies to defeat his foes. And we can praise him even in our weakness. It's interesting that Jesus quotes this passage in his triumphal entry into Jerusalem to make that very same point.
In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it reads that out of the mouth of babies and infants you have produced praise because of your foes and still the enemies and the Avengers.
And it's the Septuagint that Jesus quotes. You remember when he makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the cloaks are put out on the floor and people are yelling out, Hosanna!
Hosanna! Jesus goes in and cleanses the temple of money changers and thieves. In the temple, children are yelling out, praise! Hosanna! to the son of David.
And the reaction from Jesus' enemies, the chief priests and the scribes is anger, indignant. And Jesus quotes, have you never read?
And he quotes Psalm 8. In other words, he's saying, it is right for them to praise me because it's right for people of all ages to praise God. No matter what anyone else says, David is saying, the praise of the weak is going to be used to drown out the threats of God's enemies.
His name, his character is our protection. God can produce praise from babies. And David doesn't just stop there and look at the greatness of God's works.
He looks in two additional directions to reveal God's majesty. To the heavens and to humans. First, let's consider the heavens in verse 3.
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? Think with me for a moment about the splendor of a single star.
Consider the sun, a star that is 93 million miles from earth. On the sun, there are these things called sunspots, violent hurricanes that happen on the surface of the sun.
And late last year, scientists detected one of these hurricanes on the sun was larger than 10 earths put together. And this powerful storm creates an explosive release of solar flares.
And the release can move 5 million miles per hour. It's so intense, these massive solar storms can cause blackouts here on earth. And that's just the sun.
There are stars 2,000 times the size of the sun. God created all of these stars. All of this was the work of God's finger.
The divine digits create the stars. Now, of course, God doesn't physically have fingers. Fingers are a figurative way of describing, expressing his capabilities. How great is his power.
And this was light work for God. He didn't grow weary when creating trillions of stars. He didn't need to enlist volunteers at a work day. He didn't need heavy machinery. He created the sun, moon, and stars with his finger.
How can he declare this is the case? Well, it's because David reads the Bible, isn't it? David is looking up at creation with his Bible open in his other hands. And he's reading Genesis chapter 1.
He had eyes of faith and he saw that God's fingerprints were all over how he created the world. And the idea of God's fingers doesn't just show his power, it also shows his skill, his craftsmanship in how he creates.
God's creation is a skillful work of God's fingers. It's like the way an expert pianist is able to command every joint, tendon, muscle, and their fingers to strike the key at just the right time.
Lifting their fingers at just the right moment to strike the next key, to give a melody the right emphasis. And so the listener can savor the subtle brilliance of the music of a pianist.
Or it's like the expert brush stroke of a painter on the canvas. Or a way a woodworker is able to craft a piece of furniture using a chisel when cutting with the grain. God is a craftsman.
And if you read the psalms, it's true just how the psalms are written. God is a poetic lyricist employing rhyme schemes in his word. God is an artist that crafts things with skill.
If you pay attention to some of the conversation around AI these days, one of the hopes is that this technology will produce greater productivity. And with that, the hope is that one day, AI will deliver us from the drudgery and boredom of working.
More leisure, less work. Now, maybe for some of you who are working ridiculous hours, that will serve you very well. But I think we've come to a point in our culture where we view work as we do it just enough to support our play.
Where heaven will be one long vacation. You know, Islam's view of heaven involves no working. It's just a never-ending vacation. A vacation for Muslim men.
Sorry, ladies. A type of vacation that's so explicit I can't describe it in detail to you. It's TGIF except the F never stops. But, you know, work is a function of God's good creation.
Our creativity in how we work is a part of being made in the image of God. God is a craftsman. So, if you're younger here, aim to learn a craft.
He has created you to work excellently, honestly, creatively. And for those of you who are working, ask yourself if your use of AI is helping you do that.
Or is it helping you becoming a more excellent sub-creator in imaging God? Now, this will depend on the task and what industry you're in. But ask yourself, is this tool helping me be a craftsman, learning a craft to image God and how I'm working?
See, David could look up at the sky and he saw God's craftsmanship. But, you know, from the macro to the very micro, the cosmos teemed with complexity, with design, with beauty.
You know, how much more can we see this at the molecular level? You know, preparing for this sermon, I spoke to a couple of Yale-trained scientists who are experts in cellular biology, and I asked them, where do you see God's craftsmanship as you observe God's good creation?
And they had a bunch of examples. They both mention the amazing proteins in our body, ATP synthesis. Apparently, there are these microscopic turbines that exist within your cells that are spinning thousands of times per minute in order to produce energy for your body.
It's pretty amazing, isn't it? They mention the information-carrying capacity of DNA. It's stunning. One human body holds vastly more information than all the data of the tech giants.
The Amazon, Facebook, Google, all that data together pales in comparison to the amount of data that your DNA holds. If you've translated all the books ever written into DNA, you could put everything on a hard drive the size of a teaspoon.
God's creation is teeming with complexity, with his craftsmanship. And scientists can answer the how, the why, and the when sometimes, but scientists can't tell you the who and the why.
We have copyright law because we care about who gets credit for a work of art. The entire universe displays the ingenuity of the creator's artistry and how he's created the world.
The universe declares who God is. The stars are chorus singing his majesty. Psalm 19 says the heavens declare the glory of God. They declare it, they sing it, they testify, they proclaim, they shout, this God is glorious.
Let me ask you, you, if you aren't reaching this crescendo of praise that David is reaching here, where are you looking? David says, when I look at the work of your hands.
And so often our praise is tied to where we are looking. In our modern life, how many of us, rather than looking up at the cosmos, we look down.
We look down at our screens, it gets dark outside, we flip our lights on, we go inside, we start watching TV. All of us, myself included, will be so well served if we found opportunities to look at God's good creation more, and to receive God's creation as a gift, which glorifies him.
Now, I love Basil of Caesarea once, one of the Capendocian fathers once said this, I want creation to penetrate you so much, with so much admiration, that everywhere, wherever you may be, that each plant may bring to you the clear remembrance of our creator.
May that be so. Receive God's creation, the witness of creation that glorifies their creator. And David doesn't just stop looking, he doesn't stop at the heavens, he looks at something even more glorious, something even greater than the heavens.
He shifts his focus to humans. And David sees a contrast in verse 4. What is man? The vastness of space, he looks down at his puny finger, there's no contest.
Outwardly, we pale in comparison to the pristine beauty of the heavens. Aren't we just specks of dust in the vastness? We're tiny. We have no significance whatsoever.
Now this same sentiment was expressed recently by the astronauts in the recent Artemis 2 mission, for those of you who followed it. In April of this year, NASA performed the Artemis 2 mission, which launched humans the furthest into space than we've ever gone.
They went into the dark side of the moon. like a Pink Floyd song. And during the mission, the astronauts observed a total eclipse as the sun disappeared behind the moon.
And all they could see was a bright halo. At a news conference afterward, the crew said they felt infinitesimally small. They felt fragile.
They didn't have the vocabulary to describe what they saw. The chief broke down into tears. He needed to talk to somebody about what he saw in space.
That's what David experiences in verse 4. He feels his smallness. But amazingly, in verse 4, he knows this transcendent God whose glory is above the heavens is mindful of him, of us, of you.
He cares. Notice it's not whether you care for us. He knows that God does. Do you live in wonder that God is mindful of you?
If not, pray. Pray that God helps you to feel your smallness. That's humility. Make little of me, God, and so be amazed at God's care of you.
And if you double-click on that word care, in verse 4, it means to visit, in the sense that God takes careful notice of you and comes to your aid when in trouble. The God who is transcendent, he is imminent.
He is near, he is close, he is not far away. But sometimes it's hard to see, isn't it? It's hard to believe that God cares for you, especially when you're experiencing pain, like David was.
I mean, you feel the pain of a broken past. You look in the mirror and you think to yourself, I'm made in the image of my past wounds. But God is like the owner and the manager.
of everything that exists in the entire world. He is not too busy to take notice of you. He is mindful of you. He cares enough to keep your heart beating and your lungs pumping oxygen every moment of every day.
He cares enough to bend down and hear your prayer when you call upon it. Why? Why does God take notice of us? We're like little worms, grasshoppers.
Well, David answers his own question in verse 5. David sees the dignity of humanity in the exalted place of honor and glory given to every human. Know the terms in verse 5 that he uses?
Yet a little lower than heavenly beings? Where men and women are just a little bit below the exalted status of the heavenly courts. You have crowned him with honor and glory?
humanity owns a place of dignity and honor. Glory even. Back in verse 1, David talks about God's own glory.
His own intrinsic glory. You have set your glory above the heavens. How can it be that you and I have glory? Well, David again here is reflecting on Genesis 1.
He knew his Bible. It's because we were stamped with the royal image of the glorious God. When God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, he was designing us, friends, to reflect his glory in the way that heavens could never do.
Humans are distinct. They're special. They're full of dignity and worth. What does it mean to be crowned with glory and honor? Well, it's exposit in verse 6.
He has given us something that he has not given to any other being. He created us as image bearers to have dominion. God's authority and rule would be mediated by humans.
He would establish his kingdom through his human representatives, the vice regents. Think about like a vice president acting on behalf of a president. We are to exercise dominion in his stead.
Now, he didn't leave this task to angels. He didn't program robots to carry the function. He made us to carry out this mission. Weak humanity is called to rule the universe.
You know, I was able to exercise dominion this week by organizing my sock drawer. Order from absolute chaos. And you could do the same thing. The smallest thing has significance, friends.
Take out the garbage, make your bed, organize your sock drawer. The way you work is exercising God's dominion in the earth. And to know the value of something, isn't it true that you need to know what that thing is for?
Let's say we could travel back in time, hop at a time machine and you could bring your smartphone with you. And suppose we went back to the year 1825 and you left your smartphone on the ground for someone to find.
And someone traveling by horse and buggy just happened to pick it up. And they look at it and think, what in the world is this thing for? Well, it must be a small mirror. So they put it and they start looking at the reflection and you're on the phone.
Well, maybe it's used as something to hold a candle on. Or maybe a coaster to hold my drink. No, that's not what it's used for.
You don't know the value of something unless you understand what it's meant to be used for. And we have to know what God made us for, to know the value of who we are as human beings.
You know, Calvin, in the opening line of his work, The Institutes, wrote this. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts. Number one, the knowledge of God.
And number two, and of ourselves. To know ourselves, friend, we need to have knowledge of God. And to reject the knowledge of God is to degrade your own humanity.
You know, oftentimes we want to create our own identity apart from God. Because we don't see the beauty of who God created us to be, made in his image. We think, if I can just insert whatever, my body, my job, my spouse, if I can just change those things, then I'll feel very valuable and worthy.
But what's the most important thing about you is that you were created in God's image. Do you believe that? Do you believe that you were created with dignity and honor?
That every single human being carries this same glory and honor? Many don't. Maybe look at Peter Singer, a very low view of humanity.
If it came between saving the life of a disabled child or a fully healthy Labrador, well, the decision's easy. The lab wins every time. Now, we might chafe at that undervaluing of humanity.
But do we functionally act the same way? That a dog is more valuable than an image bearer of God? If you believe this, how does this change how you treat people?
You cannot worship and glorify the majesty of God and then treat his creation with contempt. God's grace. When you are carrying a grudge and you say, I can't stand him or her. When you ridicule someone when you find out who they voted for in the last election.
Parents, when you lash out at your children. Parents, do you understand that our children are made in God's image with dignity and honor even when they're smaller than us? When you dismiss people, people who can't help you, old folks, special needs folks, poor folks, the unborn being butchered, and you say, ah, that ain't nothing.
You are dismissing those who have a place of honor in God's sight. 1 John 4, verse 20, it says, You know, it seems here that the psalm is tying the greatness of God's works and recognizing that greatness with the worship of God as creator.
How you look at God's works, his heavens or his humans, affects the way you look at God as creator. If you don't love people made in God's image, friend, you don't love God.
Some of you are thinking, well, what you're saying is kind of true, but isn't there more to the story, though, Tyler? I mean, what about sin? What about evil? I mean, look at the world around you.
Turn on the news, Tyler. There are tsunamis, there are hurricanes, there are wildfires. We haven't exercised dominion over the earth. Isn't Peter Thiel right?
Humans have stagnated. Things are so terribly wrong. Well, that's the last point, the greatness of God's Son in verse 7a, and David addresses this. And of course, Adam did fail, and sin entered the world.
Sin has defaced, but friend, it has not erased God's image in sinners. So we are made in the image of God with dignity. Yes, yes we are, but we are sinners deserving of hell and God's wrath.
That is true. We rebel in ways that the sun and moon and stars never have. And as descendants of Adam and Eve, we are prone to shout out, how majestic is my name and all the earth, as you look in the mirror.
David knew this. He saw it in his own life. And like Adam, he failed to exercise this God-given dominion over the earth. But you see, he is painting a portrait of what humanity ought to be.
This is poetry from David. And despite our sin, God is committed to making his name majestic throughout the whole earth. God made a binding covenant with David, a promise, a solemn promise, that one day his line, there would come a king who would exercise perfect dominion.
That is the story of the Bible. God will silence his enemies. And in Hebrews 2, the author tells us this. The author sees a set of contrasts, just like we see.
He says, we don't yet see this reality where humans are exercising perfect dominion. But we see the one who went before us, a forerunner who did exercise perfect dominion.
Jesus, far superior than anything that came before him. He is far superior than any king in the line of David. And David knew that one day God would bring down his foe and the avenger.
Look at verse 2 again. It's interesting, isn't it, that David uses the enemy in the singular, echoing that single enemy that slithered into the garden, and then God promising to crush that serpent's head.
And I love the way Jim Hamilton put it. He says this, God answered Satan's triumphant roar with a baby's cry. out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to steal the enemy and the avenger.
You see, in the fullness of time, Yahweh became a man to execute a divine rescue plan, the one who made all things. This one whose glory cannot be contained.
The one who made this moon, the sun, the stars, and given them splendor. The one who made us, who made you, this king of glory, of grace. He took the form of a servant. See, in Christ Jesus, the eternal Son of God, who was the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature, he did what no one else could do.
See, Christ was the perfect man. He left the eternal realm of majesty, and he did what David describes here. He exercised perfect dominion when he took on human flesh.
He did what no one could do since Adam. He never sins. See, he lived the perfect life for you and me. Jesus, the true king, crowned with all glory and honor, took a crown of thorns.
The one who set his glory in the heavens, who hung the stars, the moon, and the sky. He himself was hung high in the sky on a cross. And was not his majesty on full display as he hung there?
As he hung on the cross, he came to give you and I a new creation. He came to redeem what sin has broken, to bring many sons and daughters to glory.
And he will save you, friend. He will set you free to praise him with the psalmist, to save all people everywhere if they turn from sin and put their trust in him. And on the third day, he rose again from the dead.
And he's crowned with glory, honor, and majesty. He is the true and better David, who is reigning forever. And as the author of Hebrews says, we don't yet see it now, but one day we will.
We see the one who went before us. 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. See, this God is a God of grace. That's why he's majestic. Who is a God like him?
A king who would die for his enemies? Whose grace is so rich and free? Oh, friend, there is none but him. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you that you, God, are a majestic God. God, your glory is above the heavens.
O Father, you've made your glory known to us in your son. Father, would we look to him today? Help us to look to Jesus and define our ultimate satisfaction in him.
O Father, would you raise us up to newness of life, that we would walk as image bearers of God, doing the work that you've given us to do. Father, we pray that you would be glorified even now, in Jesus' name.
Amen.