But Psalm 8, let me read and then I'll hand over to Ray and pray for us.
Psalm 8, for the director of music, according to Gittith, a Psalm of David.
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants, you have established a stronghold against your enemies to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I considered your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them?
Human beings that you care for them.
You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands.
You put everything under their feet, all flocks and herds and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
Ray, over to you.
Amen.
Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you for the opportunity to look at it together tonight.
We are very conscious that we need you to speak to us and I do pray that you will do that.
You would show us some of your glory, show us some of your wonder and give us hearts that respond, we pray.
Amen.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen.
Okay, we just read Psalm 8, so I won't read it again, but we will read bits as we go through.
um this psalm answers the two biggest questions that we can ask tonight that is who is god
and what is man and we'll use these questions to explore what god says to us through david
in this psalm but in in this psalm david is bowled over if you may have picked that up from
from the reading there he's amazed at the glory and the graciousness of god his glory is seen in
the heavens he has made and his grace in giving mankind such a place of honor in his creation
david opens and closes you might notice there in verse one and the last verse there a kind of summary
of who this glorious god is and the verses in between pack that out and give us more information
and detail about how he sees his glory so first of all who is god this psalm opens by saying that god
is an excellent sovereign it says lord our lord how majestic is your name in all the earth
lord our lord in the hebrew is yahweh our adonai in other words he's saying lord our sovereign our ruler
so lord is the title the sovereign is who he is how majestic or how excellent is your name in all the
earth here he's declaring boldly god is the worthy king and ruler of all people all people everywhere
on earth so why is his name excellent when we read that phrase in god's word your name talking about god
you may know that he's talking about his character who he is so his name is more than yahweh it's actually
his very being and that's what he's saying your very being is altogether excellent and it's seen in how
you rule he is the excellent sovereign verses one to three also tell us about god who is god
he's the powerful creator let me read to you and follow along please in your bibles
you have set your glory up in the heavens through the praise of children and infants you have established
a stronghold against your enemies to silence the foe and the avenger when i consider your heavens
the work of your fingers the moon and the stars which you have set in place what is mankind that you
are mindful of them human beings that you care for them so here we're told that god's glory is seen in
what he's made i don't know whether you're familiar with psalm 19 but that is very similar it has a similar
theme verse one of psalm 19 says the heavens declare the glory of god the skies proclaim the work of his
hands so in psalm 19 we see the way that sun tracks across the sky and how it makes a circuit which is
rather wonderful because people didn't realize that the earth was around in those days it makes it
a circuit and david is wondering full of wonder in psalm 19 at the daytime sky but here in psalm 8
he looks at the moon and the stars the night sky and he's filled again with wonder and worship
think of this he didn't have the benefit of modern astronomy i mean this is thousands of years ago isn't
it the astronomy that's available to us today he could only see a snapshot of the sky uh that's the
that which is visible to the naked eye and and as he looked up that's that's all he could see now you
and i if we take the bother to investigate and i tried this but after a while it was just beyond me so i had to
give up uh i tried to investigate it a bit um we understand to some extent the the universe is not
made up of just that little snapshot we can see when we look up at the night sky
but it's our galaxy is massive and that galaxy we see is just one of many all right so you can only
see a tiny bit of the galaxy but that galaxy is a tiny bit of what is there the heavens that god has
made just to help us to to investigate this a bit more um how massive and glorious our universe is
let me give you some facts about the stars all right there are about 5 000 stars
that are visible to the human eye okay 5 000 that's a lot all right but the number of the stars in the
universe is estimated between 200 billion trillion
and one septillion now we forget septillion let's take the base here let's let's take the lowest thing
all right which is 200 which is 200 billion trillion the number of the minimum number of stars
uh it's about it's described like this right it's 10 times the number of cups of water in all the oceans
on earth so if you had to take a cup i can't tell you what size cup right but a cup and you take water out
of that it's 10 times the number of cups of water in all the oceans isn't that amazing that's how many
that's how many stars we have that's that's not just the planets and the other stuff but god has made
all of that verse 3 tells us in psalm 8 that not only did god create the moon and all the stars
but he set each one in place think about this just for a minute the planets and we're talking about our
solar system now not everything else that is out there but just this tiny bit of our solar system
the planets orbit the sun the moon orbits the earth and the billions and trillions of stars are all set
in place and they don't collide and they don't spin off now gravity still works and it all behaves as it
as it's about to be able to do because god has created a wonderful universe and that universe obey their creator
so who is god he's the powerful creator
here's another question for you why did god
create the universe why did god create them why do we have creation stop to think about that
any ideas to show his glory exactly okay we can see a glimpse of his glory this is the reason god created
us to show his glory to show his glory to show how glorious he is
do you see it do you see the glory in what is made david looks up and says how glorious you are
the next verse down okay i think it's first verse two tells us that god's creative power is excellent is so obvious
that even small children can see it
and we're told though the enemies of god refuse to acknowledge him
little children can see it and when they see it they praise him
him and listen to this by their praise god's enemies are silenced
we've got an example of this haven't we in matthew's gospel
where the religious leaders who should have known far better of course they refused to believe jesus
but their little children cried out his praise if you want to turn to it's matthew 21
i'm going to read to you verses 14 to 17 matthew 21
the blind and the lame came to him at the temple and he healed them but when the chief priests and
the leaders of the law and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children
shouting in the temple courts hosanna to the son of david they were indignant do you hear what these
children are saying they asked him yes jesus replied have you never read from the lips of children and
infants you lord have called forth your praise and he left them and went out of the city to bethany
where he spent the night the chief priests and the scribes were silenced here by the praise of children to their savior
so here in matthew 21 jesus is claiming psalm 8 for himself
as god is glorified by the children's praise in psalm 8 so jesus is glorified by the children's praise in psalm 21
do you see what the children saw in that reading we we just read they saw that jesus was the messiah
the son of david and their response was to shout hosanna which means save
so the children teach us two things here let's learn from these children first of all they teach us that
jesus is god
uh we see this because jesus accepted their praise in the in the context of psalm 8
where it was said of god now it's said of jesus
and the second thing is it teaches us what the correct response is to seeing god's glory
because we all see god's glory
it's it's it's it's all around us it's in what is made and it's particularly seen
in our lord jesus christ so we all see god's glory the question for us is what is our response to that
i'm challenged to think how much time i take to thank him to reflect on his glory
and do i like um like the children call out in praise do i fall on my feet fall on my knees in worship
it should have some his glory is so marvelous it should have some profound impact on us
when david sees a glimpse of the vast heavens
he then sees how small and seemingly insignificant in relation to the amazing creation he is
and he asks in verse 4 our second major question what is man what is mankind that you are mindful of them
human beings that you care for them and he sees the answer to his question in the order of creation
he sees god's care in the risk position and responsibility that god gave human beings
back in genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 which is reflected here in psalm 8
so what is man the first thing we learn about ourselves here is that we were created to rule
man was created to be a ruler not in the sense that god is sovereign ruler obviously but man made in god's
image was made to rule reflecting that image of god to take care and to rule over god's creation
look down will you at verse 5 and follow through with me the next few verses
you have made them a little lower than the angels you crowned them with glory and honor you made them
rulers over the works of your hands you put everything under their feet all flocks and herds and the animals
of the wild the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea all that swim in the paths of the seas
the sea now here's an amazing fact you and i are created a little lower than the angels
would you believe it isn't that amazing we are we were created a little lower than the angels so not
insignificant as we may count ourselves but loved by god and given glory and honor as it says here in verse 5
in god's care for us we're given responsibility to care for his creation to reflect the creator
but we know don't we that our next thing for what is man we have to say that man has fallen
from that glorious state how miserably we failed the position the honor the glory given in genesis chapter 1 and 2
was spoiled tainted marred by the rebellion to god in genesis chapter 3
so here's a more amazing fact than the first amazing fact
god god again showed his care for us by sending jesus made a little lower than the angels
that he might suffer and restore us to god
turn with me if you can to hebrews chapter 2
verses 6 to 8 pick up this uh these words of psalm 8 again
and what david was saying so halfway through verse 6 what is mankind's that you are mindful of them
a son of man that you care for him you made them a little lower than the angels you crowned them with
glory and honor and put everything under their feet in putting everything under them
god left nothing that is not subject to them
yet at present we do not see everything subject to them but we do see jesus who was made lower than
the angels for a little while now clapped crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death so that
by the grace of god he might taste death for everyone
i do like the um esv version of this if you have an esv you will see that it actually uses
the word man rather than mankind and the reason i like that is because you can see how wonderful
jesus just is just slipped into this picture that god not only created man uh he gave jesus this the
second adam um to die for our sins
so it struck me how amazing it is that christ should be made a little lower than the angels
the one who created the angels the one who created all that we see and all that we don't see
amazing so man is uh was created to be ruler man is fallen but man is restored
jesus the creator god the son made lower than his creation why would he do this that he might suffer
death and restore us and win us back his rebellious creatures
but we in creation how we are today you and i standing or sitting here tonight we're not yet back
in genesis chapter 2 there is still that fallenness in our world we still
we still sin we still die and there still continues to be brokenness and we don't as
many of the climate change advocates will tell you we don't care for creation and they're dead right
we are not back to genesis 1 and 2 but this is only because god's wonderful plan of redemption
is not finished yet now hear me carefully in this i'm not saying that christ's work on the cross
wasn't finished of course it was finished but his restoring us is not finished yet
one day we will be restored to rule again with christ in heaven so our rule will be in some
measure given back to us we will be with christ in heaven no more sin no more death no more brokenness
2 timothy chapter 2 verse 12 i'll read it to you it's just two verses here is a trustworthy saying if we died
with him we will also live with him if we endure we will reign with him reigning with christ for the rest of eternity
now
two things here we haven't got time but also i i i wasn't able to prepare this properly i couldn't get
my head around it properly but i just wanted to mention christ's reign here christ's reign in 2
timothy chapter 2 that we just read is future but what does christ's reign look like now today this evening
you can look up 1 corinthians 15 and ephesians chapter 1 and they both
when you get home if you want to they both reflect psalm 8 and hebrews 2 in recalling this fact
he has put everything under his feet
ephesians 1 tells us that christ was raised from the dead seated in power in heaven given the highest
place all things put under his feet he was pointed head of his church
the highest place he was raised from the dead seated in power in the dead seated in power in the dead
and 1 corinthians 15 tells us that he is still putting things under his feet
one last thing to put under his feet is death
so christ is still doing his marvelous work for us in heaven
so let's conclude now david concludes this psalm as he started it
verse 9 lord our lord how majestic is your name in all the earth
yahweh our sovereign ruler how excellent is your name in all the earth
so as we go into this week um
i and you need to take time to wonder and worship at god's amazing creation
you're in london so there's not much not much hope of seeing many stars as you look up
but you can see god's creation in other ways
so take time to worship god for his creation and his beautiful but costly plan in saving us thank you
shall i just pray
father i do thank you for psalm 8 i do thank you for the truth of it and lord
um our failing is that we sometimes can't see it we certainly can't see it as to all of your glory
help us to do so this week we pray in jesus name amen