WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.560 privilege. I think that's right. Correct, Mr. Moderator. Point of personal privilege, I bring 00:00:05.560 --> 00:00:14.220 greetings to you from one of those upstart little churches. In all seriousness, we are thankful for 00:00:14.220 --> 00:00:21.219 y'all's ministry here. We have benefited greatly at Westside from the blessing that it has been to 00:00:21.219 --> 00:00:28.160 share your resources, your buildings, your time, your sessions time. We are thankful for that, 00:00:28.160 --> 00:00:33.939 and we have benefited from that. I say we because I'm part of that congregation, but I'm also in the 00:00:33.939 --> 00:00:39.920 army. I'm a chaplain in the army after I was an assistant at Westside, and I want to thank y'all 00:00:39.920 --> 00:00:46.539 for the sacrificial ministry it is to invest in the lives of people that work across the street, 00:00:46.920 --> 00:00:52.460 because oftentimes you sow and don't see the reaping of that. But when you see those people 00:00:52.460 --> 00:00:57.659 years down the road, and maybe some of them will come back here, you'll see the reaping of that, 00:00:57.659 --> 00:01:03.419 because the gospel will go forth, maybe not here in Colorado Springs, but all around the world, 00:01:03.659 --> 00:01:09.659 whether that's here in the United States or in Germany or Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria. And for 00:01:09.659 --> 00:01:16.060 that, you should be thankful and you should be encouraged because the gospel is going forth in 00:01:16.060 --> 00:01:20.719 places that are very dark in this world. And so I want to thank you for that because I've benefited 00:01:20.719 --> 00:01:26.560 from people from this congregation in that regard. We're going to turn our attention now to God's word 00:01:26.560 --> 00:01:32.299 from the Old Testament. If you have your Bibles, you can turn with me to Psalm 8. 00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:37.540 Psalm 8 is the text this morning. 00:01:37.540 --> 00:01:46.540 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory above the heavens, 00:01:46.540 --> 00:01:53.719 out of the mouths of babies and infants. You have established strength because of your foes to still 00:01:53.719 --> 00:01:59.820 the enemy and the avenger. And when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the 00:01:59.819 --> 00:02:06.099 stars which you have set in place. What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care 00:02:06.099 --> 00:02:11.719 for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and 00:02:11.719 --> 00:02:17.280 honor. And you have given him dominion over the works of your hands. And you have put all things 00:02:17.280 --> 00:02:22.719 under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens 00:02:22.719 --> 00:02:29.780 and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the pass of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic 00:02:29.780 --> 00:02:36.180 is your name in all the earth. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we are thankful this morning that we have the 00:02:36.180 --> 00:02:43.300 great honor to read your word, to see it and study it. We pray that you might speak now through it. 00:02:43.520 --> 00:02:51.460 And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. So I'm from North Carolina. So don't take this as an 00:02:51.460 --> 00:02:57.480 offense if you're from this place, but there's a place in rural Western Virginia, not West Virginia, 00:02:58.420 --> 00:03:04.340 that sits at the mouth of the Shenandoah Valley, which is a place full of history, Civil War 00:03:04.340 --> 00:03:12.560 battlefields, majestic beauty of God's creation. But at the mouth, there's this place that for a while, 00:03:12.560 --> 00:03:20.780 Windows 95 and 98 and Vista and all that had as a screensaver that was preloaded. It's natural 00:03:20.780 --> 00:03:27.500 bridge, Virginia. And it's a great natural piece of beauty that is a rock bridge. And people, 00:03:27.740 --> 00:03:33.319 as they traveled to the Shenandoah Valley, would drive through it. But before it was a place of 00:03:33.319 --> 00:03:40.340 screensaver lore, before it was a state park, it was owned by a family. And they wanted to capitalize 00:03:40.340 --> 00:03:45.219 on the fact that all of these people went to go visit this place that they saw on their computer 00:03:45.219 --> 00:03:53.020 screen. So what did they do? They said, I know what we can do. We'll take this and we'll capitalize on it. 00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:58.079 And we'll put something here that will draw people in and make them pay money and we'll get rich. 00:03:58.759 --> 00:04:05.020 So what did they do? They contacted a sculptor that lived down the road named Mark Klein. And they said, 00:04:05.099 --> 00:04:11.120 hey, we want a diorama as people drive through of all these historic battles that have happened 00:04:11.120 --> 00:04:18.660 in this place. And so Mark set to work. But what did he give them? He gave them not a drive-through 00:04:18.660 --> 00:04:27.459 diorama of silver battlefields. He gave them a replica of Stonehenge. Now, why did he do that? 00:04:27.899 --> 00:04:35.259 He said, because when I made Stonehenge out of styrofoam, it was a lot cheaper and easier to build 00:04:35.259 --> 00:04:42.199 than what they wanted. It took the Druids 1,500 years to build Stonehenge, but I did it in 10 days. 00:04:43.240 --> 00:04:48.099 So there's a sense in which when people drive through this road in the Shenandoah Valley, 00:04:48.539 --> 00:04:58.060 they happen upon Foam Hinge. Foam Hinge is a real representation of Stonehenge. It's exact in its 00:04:58.060 --> 00:05:05.240 dimensions. It's exact in the way the rocks face or pieces of styrofoam face. Because Mark Klein, 00:05:05.240 --> 00:05:12.639 took that amount of precision, and he went and actually studied Stonehenge to create this 00:05:12.639 --> 00:05:17.480 representation of the reality. So there's a certain amount of awe when you go visit it. 00:05:17.660 --> 00:05:24.340 How could somebody even build this? There's a sense in which this is actually Stonehenge, 00:05:24.460 --> 00:05:30.680 the same dimensions, the same positions, exactly the same, except it's not in England. 00:05:30.680 --> 00:05:37.000 It's in the Blue Ridge Mountains out in a field. Now it's since been moved, but if you'd like to 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:43.300 visit it, somewhere in Northern Virginia. But Foam Hinge is a dim reality of something that's true, 00:05:44.019 --> 00:05:53.560 something that has glory, something that's real, just like us as humans. We have glory. We don't like 00:05:53.560 --> 00:05:59.100 to talk about that in the Reformed Church, and that's okay normally, except for when we come to texts like 00:05:59.100 --> 00:06:04.680 this. Because there's a certain amount of glory that humans have because they're created in the 00:06:04.680 --> 00:06:09.360 image of God. So this morning, we're going to talk about those two glories. We're going to talk about 00:06:09.360 --> 00:06:16.920 God's glory, and that our glory is humans because we reflect God's glory. And then it's bookended in 00:06:16.920 --> 00:06:23.260 this section by praise to God. So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Psalm 8, because we're going 00:06:23.259 --> 00:06:29.379 to spend a lot of our time going back to the text this morning. Let's start with that praise. We're 00:06:29.379 --> 00:06:34.099 going to start, as this text goes, we're going to start with the praise of God, and then it's going to 00:06:34.099 --> 00:06:40.240 flow to God's glory, our glory, and then come back and tie it all together with praise to God. 00:06:41.259 --> 00:06:45.699 If you spend some time in the Psalms, and I know that you guys have had over the last couple years, 00:06:45.699 --> 00:06:53.319 you're going to start to notice something that happens over and over and over again. A pattern 00:06:53.319 --> 00:06:58.759 is going to spring up. And one of those ways in which individual Psalms are written, they're written 00:06:58.759 --> 00:07:05.319 in a way that we can't quite put our fingers on, but we can feel it. And I say that as someone who's 00:07:05.319 --> 00:07:12.120 generally unemotional. There's something that we can feel in the text, and it's almost more appropriate 00:07:12.120 --> 00:07:20.019 to sing them as we've just done. There's something that sings songy about them, or maybe even rap them, 00:07:20.420 --> 00:07:26.840 because they're lyrical. When you think of the Von Trapps and the sound of music, they flow instantly 00:07:26.840 --> 00:07:34.840 from story time into singing. That's exactly how we should feel with the Psalms, because the way the 00:07:34.840 --> 00:07:41.420 truth is presented, it goes from God's nature, all these big things about theology, and then it flows 00:07:41.420 --> 00:07:47.340 naturally into praise about who he is and what he has done. That's exactly what is going on in the 00:07:47.340 --> 00:07:53.600 Psalms, and that's exactly what's going on here. If you don't see it in this text, think of something 00:07:53.600 --> 00:07:59.620 like Psalm 1. There's a certain cadence to it. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, 00:08:00.259 --> 00:08:06.740 nor stands in the way of sinners. It flows. But if you can see it here, and one Old Testament scholar 00:08:06.740 --> 00:08:12.420 has said, if you're ever going to write a hymn, make sure it looks like Psalm 8, because this is the 00:08:12.420 --> 00:08:19.900 pinnacle. It is the unsurpassed example of what a hymn should be, because there's praise, there's doctrine, 00:08:20.259 --> 00:08:26.460 and there's kind of confession about who we truly are and who God has actually made us to be. 00:08:27.780 --> 00:08:34.500 The opening lines of this hymn are praise to God. It starts in verse 1, where it starts with 00:08:34.500 --> 00:08:42.279 his name. What does it say? His name. Oh Lord, our Lord. But what's in a name? Are names actually that 00:08:42.279 --> 00:08:48.019 important? Earlier, I was talking with a gentleman, and he's made a remark about my son's name, because 00:08:48.019 --> 00:08:53.460 my name's Andy, and his name's Amos, and there's a famous radio show that was about our names. 00:08:54.120 --> 00:08:59.840 But when we have those names, when we talk about names, what do they mean? Does it mean the radio show, 00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:07.379 or something different? Names have meanings, though. It's not like in Romeo and Juliet, where they're 00:09:07.379 --> 00:09:12.660 trying to get past their family names. What's in a name? They don't want all that baggage, just like 00:09:12.660 --> 00:09:19.800 we don't want to be the radio show. We're something different. But names are really important in 00:09:19.800 --> 00:09:26.700 Scripture. In fact, names are everything, and God's name is no different. This name here, 00:09:26.700 --> 00:09:33.320 in the original, is his covenant name, Yahweh. He's saying that, the psalmist is saying, you, 00:09:34.040 --> 00:09:41.560 Yahweh, your Lord. It's this name, that exact name that's uttered all throughout redemptive history. 00:09:42.440 --> 00:09:50.680 It starts in the beginning, even when Israel is disobeying and is sinful. That name is used. That name 00:09:50.679 --> 00:09:58.039 is what this psalm begins with. That name is the name that's confessed when Israel forgets who they are 00:09:58.039 --> 00:10:06.919 in the desert, in the Exodus. They forget who he is. It's that name that solidifies the covenant promises 00:10:06.919 --> 00:10:16.099 of God to David about a king, about a king that would come that David wasn't, and David wanted us 00:10:16.100 --> 00:10:23.340 to look past him to look past him and see Christ. It's that name that was used. But in that name, 00:10:23.519 --> 00:10:33.019 there's also so much that comes with it. All these history of promises, all these history of disobedience 00:10:33.019 --> 00:10:41.820 on God's people's part. But God, in spite of all that, is communicating, even in that name, 00:10:41.820 --> 00:10:50.340 the kind of love that he has for his people, the love that looks like it never stops, never giving up, 00:10:50.379 --> 00:10:56.620 even though Israel is disobedient all throughout history. It's never giving up, unbreaking, always 00:10:56.620 --> 00:11:02.740 and forever. One of those kids' Bibles communicates God's love in those terms. And that is the picture 00:11:02.740 --> 00:11:11.020 that we have in God's name. But it's not just his name alone that we see in verse one. It's his name, 00:11:11.019 --> 00:11:16.899 and then there's an utterance. There's a confession of how majestic that name is because of his 00:11:16.899 --> 00:11:24.079 character. It's a name that is attended to with majesty. It's an acknowledgement that he is Lord. 00:11:24.179 --> 00:11:31.439 He rules over all things, which we'll come to in a minute. But that name alone is majestic because of 00:11:31.439 --> 00:11:38.439 all those promises that were kept in spite of our disobedience, in spite of Israel's disobedience. 00:11:38.440 --> 00:11:49.720 It's also ruling. He's Lord. He rules over all things great and small. He rules over all other names, 00:11:49.940 --> 00:11:56.720 all the other little fake gods that are out there that have no power. It rules over all things, 00:11:56.720 --> 00:12:08.660 all hopes, dreams, promises, all our failures, all of our sin, that we think they're corners of this earth 00:12:08.660 --> 00:12:13.820 in which God doesn't rule even in our own hearts. He rules over all of them. 00:12:13.820 --> 00:12:20.800 We should be comforted by that. We should be comforted by that fact, but we should also be 00:12:20.800 --> 00:12:27.379 challenged by that, that God rules over all those things. He rules over all created beings and beasts 00:12:27.379 --> 00:12:36.640 and humans. We see that in this text. All of life centers around him because he is the end of all things. 00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:43.279 All things are working towards him and his glory. That's what this text is communicating. 00:12:44.360 --> 00:12:50.360 This psalm starts out with what's important in life. Notice who it doesn't start with. 00:12:50.740 --> 00:12:55.399 It doesn't start with me and it doesn't start with you. It starts with God. 00:12:56.980 --> 00:13:04.840 Because in the midst of all of this, we get consumed in life. The busyness of life, kids, marriage, 00:13:04.840 --> 00:13:09.820 family, family, those are all good things. Our job, working for God's glory. 00:13:11.420 --> 00:13:18.600 But God is the start of all of this. We must be reminded that he is shaping all of our lives 00:13:18.600 --> 00:13:23.980 around this central fact that God's glory is more important than anything else. 00:13:25.899 --> 00:13:30.080 But what are we supposed to do with that as we start summer? As kids are out of school, 00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:36.560 are we supposed to sit back and relax and think about, hey, I just need to chill and rest until 00:13:36.560 --> 00:13:42.639 Labor Day comes? I confess like that's how my heart is most of the time in the summer. I'm ready to have 00:13:42.639 --> 00:13:49.120 some fun. There's nothing wrong with that. But we need to center our lives, even in the summertime, 00:13:49.840 --> 00:13:57.020 even when kids are out of school, around the fact that God's glory is more important and that all of life, 00:13:57.019 --> 00:14:03.960 even the summer, starts with God. The second part of verse one represents a shift for us. 00:14:04.299 --> 00:14:09.960 The fact that it's now transitioning from who God is and praise to his name to something different. 00:14:10.759 --> 00:14:17.600 You have set your glory above the heavens. That's the shift. It's a focus on God's glory exclusively. 00:14:17.919 --> 00:14:23.799 It's not just praise. It starts with this otherworldly description of glory. It's like in 1 Kings, 00:14:23.799 --> 00:14:31.579 speaks in this way about it, that even the highest heavens cannot contain his glory. That's how big it is. 00:14:32.019 --> 00:14:39.039 That's how big God's glory is. The psalmist is saying, think of the vastness of the heavens. 00:14:39.319 --> 00:14:47.199 Even when you're out in the Colorado mountains or the Hindu Kush and you can't see any lights at all, 00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:56.460 you see the glory of the stars that are unmuted because of the city. His glory is even more vast 00:14:56.460 --> 00:15:06.180 than that. But what should follow such a grand description of a king? Right? Armies, power, 00:15:06.500 --> 00:15:11.720 might, all of those things. A royal throne room. We have that picture from other places in scripture 00:15:11.720 --> 00:15:17.700 with scepters and weird beasts and all that stuff. Stuff that's kind of scary to me, if I'm honest. 00:15:18.360 --> 00:15:24.860 All of those things bowing down in obedience to Christ. But what we have here is a much different 00:15:24.860 --> 00:15:33.500 picture. We have babies and infants. No royal pomp and circumstance. We have something that's different. 00:15:33.500 --> 00:15:40.299 Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes to 00:15:40.299 --> 00:15:48.299 steal the enemy and the avenger. Not so regal looking, especially if you're in the throes of 00:15:48.299 --> 00:15:54.860 raising children or you've done that before. There's nothing regal about changing infants' diapers. 00:15:55.379 --> 00:16:02.919 There's nothing regal about disciplining kids in the grocery store. That doesn't seem fit for a king. 00:16:03.500 --> 00:16:10.500 But also, in the midst of this, God is demonstrating a couple truths to us. He's demonstrating that his 00:16:10.500 --> 00:16:17.620 name alone is so powerful that even out of the mouths of children, those things that are helpless, 00:16:18.519 --> 00:16:27.600 those babies and infants, that he has power just at his name. He doesn't need armies. He doesn't need 00:16:27.600 --> 00:16:36.740 displays of conquering nations. But his name in the mouths of children is sufficient. And that has 00:16:36.740 --> 00:16:45.620 more glory than all those other things. That those things he uses to work through. He uses instruments, 00:16:45.840 --> 00:16:55.600 secondary means to accomplish his glory. He also demonstrates that in that, his name was sufficient 00:16:55.600 --> 00:17:03.500 enough to destroy all his enemies. He doesn't need those armies because his nature is vast enough, 00:17:03.600 --> 00:17:11.420 is strong enough to defeat all those enemies. And his kingship is kind of twofold in that. He subdues 00:17:11.420 --> 00:17:18.440 these children and infants to himself, and then he protects them in the same way. Protects them from evil. 00:17:18.440 --> 00:17:26.740 He protects his children. That's us, not just the babies. If that wasn't enough to demonstrate his 00:17:26.740 --> 00:17:34.539 power and glory, what else does the text talk about? Talks about his creative power. Read with me in 00:17:34.539 --> 00:17:39.580 verse three. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have 00:17:39.579 --> 00:17:45.240 set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him. 00:17:47.019 --> 00:17:54.039 His power in creating the world that we can see and experience through our senses testifies to this 00:17:54.039 --> 00:18:02.399 same thing. It's not just his nature that we know in his name, but we see it on display in all of the 00:18:02.400 --> 00:18:09.040 world. And we reflect that as God's vice regents, right? Ruling over our little things, subduing 00:18:09.040 --> 00:18:16.680 the grass and the weeds that grow in our yard, doing a good job at work. We see that. We mirror that. 00:18:17.600 --> 00:18:22.560 This, though, has an echo of something else in scripture. When we read it, we should remind 00:18:22.560 --> 00:18:31.380 ourselves, we should hear Genesis 1, where we see God is the one that is active. God is the one in his 00:18:31.380 --> 00:18:38.480 activity that subdues all this, that creates all this. And how does he do it? He does it here 00:18:38.480 --> 00:18:46.040 through his fingers. Imagine if you were to create a mighty mountain, Pike's Peak behind us, right? 00:18:46.460 --> 00:18:51.720 If you were to create all that, you would think you would have to do it with more than just your 00:18:51.720 --> 00:18:58.420 fingers. The psalmist here is capturing the fact that all of this that's on display, that's majestic, 00:18:58.420 --> 00:19:06.240 it's inconsequential. It's not even hard for him because he just uses his fingers to create it. 00:19:07.940 --> 00:19:15.380 That's a big God. It's a big God that's working throughout history. And that's what the psalm is 00:19:15.380 --> 00:19:21.539 doing. It's showing us as we walk through Israel's history, as we walk through history in the modern day, 00:19:21.539 --> 00:19:28.480 we're going to some place. It's not all just happenstance. And so when we come to texts like 00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:35.599 this in the Old Testament, we have to think about how is this getting us to the end? What is this 00:19:35.599 --> 00:19:42.980 showing us about the central theme of all the Bible? How does it all fit together? So if the answer to 00:19:42.980 --> 00:19:51.779 that is Christ, and I think it is, how is this pointing to Christ? How is this showing us who Christ 00:19:51.779 --> 00:19:57.759 truly is? We see in Psalm 2 things like this promised king that David was supposed to be 00:19:57.759 --> 00:20:06.480 is fulfilled in Christ. But when we come to Psalm 8, it seems a lot about God and his creative powers, 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:13.220 his glory, what he's doing in the world. So how does this point us to Christ? There's some texts in 00:20:13.220 --> 00:20:19.860 the Old Testament that point directly to Christ. And we can see that in its original context. But this 00:20:19.860 --> 00:20:29.680 does in a small glimmer. But then when Christ applies it to himself, we see that more fully. So turn with 00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:36.039 me if you have a Bible to Matthew 21. I know you guys are going to be working through the Gospel of Mark, 00:20:36.039 --> 00:20:42.720 and this is recorded in the Gospel of Mark as well. So Matthew 21, it's a familiar scene in verse 12 00:20:42.720 --> 00:20:52.200 through 17. Jesus enters the temple, and he just starts sorting out the riffraff. He starts putting 00:20:52.200 --> 00:20:58.480 people aside because they're doing things that are evil. I'll pick up in verse 12. Jesus entered the 00:20:58.480 --> 00:21:05.000 temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:10.940 changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, it is written, my house shall be a 00:21:10.940 --> 00:21:17.039 house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. And the blind and lame came to him in the 00:21:17.039 --> 00:21:22.019 temple, and he healed them. And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, 00:21:22.380 --> 00:21:29.220 the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to Son of David. They were indignant. And they said to him, 00:21:29.220 --> 00:21:35.460 do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, yes, have you never read out of the mouths 00:21:35.460 --> 00:21:42.420 of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise? And leaving them, he went out of the city 00:21:42.420 --> 00:21:53.759 to Bethany and lodged there. Jesus is using Psalm 8 to answer the evil that is lobbied against him 00:21:53.759 --> 00:22:02.079 from the money changers, from the scribes and Pharisees, from those people who sought to oppose him. 00:22:03.119 --> 00:22:08.879 The king that they had longed for, the king they thought he was going to be, was one that rode in 00:22:08.879 --> 00:22:17.539 with an army and just started schwacking all the Romans, putting them aside, defeating them in battle, 00:22:17.799 --> 00:22:21.819 but they got something different. They got something that they weren't expecting. 00:22:21.819 --> 00:22:31.099 They got a king who spent time with people that were blind and lame, who didn't dismiss the children. 00:22:32.319 --> 00:22:39.759 They got a king that answered them with Psalm 8. He points them back to verse 2 in Psalm 8. The 00:22:39.759 --> 00:22:46.039 children were praising the covenant name of God in Psalm 2, or excuse me, in Psalm 8. And Jesus applies 00:22:46.039 --> 00:22:51.799 those words to himself. So whenever we hear in the modern day that Jesus is just a moral teacher, 00:22:51.819 --> 00:23:00.299 he responds differently. He says, no, I am God. He's applying that, this confession of who God is and 00:23:00.299 --> 00:23:06.759 his creative power and his vastness that's beyond the heavens, and he's applying it to himself. He's 00:23:06.759 --> 00:23:14.299 saying, I am that person. And then on top of that, the children are confessing this, whether they know it 00:23:14.299 --> 00:23:22.960 or not. Maybe they do. But what is it saying about the scribes and Pharisees, those people that sought to 00:23:22.960 --> 00:23:31.240 oppose him? It's saying, based in Psalm 8, that they are the foes and enemies of God. They are the ones that 00:23:31.240 --> 00:23:39.859 are opposing Jesus. They are the ones that are opposing God. Now imagine why that's so hurtful to them, 00:23:39.859 --> 00:23:46.859 why that's so pointed, why that digs at them. It's because they thought that they had the corner 00:23:46.859 --> 00:23:56.839 on the market of religious thinking, of religious doing. But Jesus is saying, no, you don't. In fact, 00:23:56.879 --> 00:24:03.719 you're not even faithful. You're not even neutral. You're actually an enemy of God. You're an enemy of 00:24:03.720 --> 00:24:10.519 me, and you're an enemy of this God that's in Psalm 8. It's not going to go too well for you. 00:24:11.559 --> 00:24:18.940 Jesus is saying that he is God. And the victory that he has in his kingship doesn't look like what 00:24:18.940 --> 00:24:27.299 they wanted. In fact, his victory looks a lot like defeat. It's death on the cross. 00:24:27.299 --> 00:24:39.700 It's a death that anyone could experience redemption. They simply had to put their faith 00:24:39.700 --> 00:24:46.159 in something other than themselves, not in their own being, but put their faith in Christ's work 00:24:46.159 --> 00:24:54.399 on the cross. The fact that he shed his blood as God and man for the redemption of sin, their sin, 00:24:54.400 --> 00:25:04.300 our sin. Just like us today, if we put our faith and hope in God, in Christ, in his work on the cross, 00:25:05.200 --> 00:25:14.560 then we can participate in the feast of the new heavens and new earth. We enjoy all the splendor 00:25:14.560 --> 00:25:23.400 on display. If that's not motivating to us, if that's not the center of our being, if that's not 00:25:23.400 --> 00:25:29.620 something that we see God's glory in, then we have to ask ourselves, what are we doing? 00:25:31.280 --> 00:25:37.900 Are we seeking out other things? Are we seeking out rest? Are we seeking out enjoyment and other 00:25:37.900 --> 00:25:43.680 things in this world? We need to turn away from those things. Maybe there are even evils in this 00:25:43.680 --> 00:25:50.920 world. Turn away from them and put our faith and hope and confidence in Christ. That's what this is 00:25:50.920 --> 00:25:55.019 calling us to. That's what Christ is calling us to in these words. 00:25:57.660 --> 00:26:06.019 In Psalm 8, we have a pointing forward to Christ. And Jesus uses these words to point us back to the 00:26:06.019 --> 00:26:14.640 vastness of who God is, his nature and all that is going on. And we owe him praise because of that glory, 00:26:14.640 --> 00:26:22.900 because of who he is. His nature and his being require it. And the actions of God for all of Israel, 00:26:23.060 --> 00:26:30.120 and even in our own lives, testify to that. He could very well give up on us because we've disobeyed him, 00:26:30.640 --> 00:26:31.660 but he doesn't. 00:26:31.660 --> 00:26:42.220 Even in all that, he's loving and kind. And he demands our worship because of who he is. 00:26:42.540 --> 00:26:47.320 There's a famous American theologian named Jonathan Edwards. He wrote this. He said, 00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:55.160 the great end, talking about the purpose of all humanity, is God's work. The purpose of God's works 00:26:55.160 --> 00:27:02.259 is indeed but one. This one end is most properly and comprehensively called the glory of God. 00:27:03.160 --> 00:27:10.620 That our lives as human beings, all things, the end is God's glory. That's the purpose of it all. 00:27:11.860 --> 00:27:19.300 Our lives should reflect that. But Edwards, he's cheating a little bit. All he's doing is taking 00:27:19.299 --> 00:27:25.319 the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question one, and he's expounding on it. What is the chief end of 00:27:25.319 --> 00:27:32.319 man? What is man's main purpose in life? To glorify God and enjoy him in the midst of that. 00:27:33.279 --> 00:27:39.940 Our response to God, to everything that we see on display in scripture and throughout this life, 00:27:40.599 --> 00:27:46.919 should be his glory. Glory in his name and his nature and his being. Glory because of what he's 00:27:46.920 --> 00:27:58.160 created and done. Glory in his kingly rule over us in all things. Glory because it's what he is owed. 00:27:58.800 --> 00:28:06.080 Our view of that fact alone, of how we view God, affects how we live. It affects the decisions that 00:28:06.080 --> 00:28:12.640 we make from day to day. It affects what we do with our money, our time. It affects the fact that we get up 00:28:12.640 --> 00:28:22.460 on a Sunday morning and come here. We need to shape our lives around God's glory. Edwards went on and 00:28:22.460 --> 00:28:27.640 said this, that a believer is one who loves to attribute to the glory of God what he is and what 00:28:27.640 --> 00:28:34.500 he has and what he does. The believer delights in attributing, giving the praise of all that he has 00:28:34.500 --> 00:28:41.140 and all that he is and all that he enjoys to God and acknowledging it comes from him. You should see a 00:28:41.140 --> 00:28:48.600 theme in that, that our view of ourselves is affected most of all by our view of God. That we can't view 00:28:48.600 --> 00:28:57.800 ourselves rightly until we view God rightly. So how are we thinking this morning about how God has 00:28:57.800 --> 00:29:05.259 revealed himself and how that applies to us? Is that affecting what we want in life, what we view as 00:29:05.259 --> 00:29:14.480 success? Is it affecting our bank account, our time, what we put our hopes and dreams in? Our own name, 00:29:14.539 --> 00:29:21.180 like our family name. Some of you might heard that grown up. I sure did. That my name is more important 00:29:21.180 --> 00:29:29.599 than God's name. That's not true. I want to bring honor to Christ. We should want to bring honor to 00:29:29.599 --> 00:29:36.699 Christ, whether it is in parenting, whether it's in finances, whether it's in recreation. But when those 00:29:36.699 --> 00:29:43.919 things, even rest, even good things that God has ordained, when those things become ultimate things, 00:29:44.219 --> 00:29:52.259 that they're more important than God himself, then we miss the mark. We've exchanged good things with 00:29:52.259 --> 00:30:00.960 ultimate things. And when those, that happens, then we've missed the mark. We have to focus on God's glory, 00:30:01.460 --> 00:30:09.259 specifically as he's revealed himself in the person and work of Christ. Because all of redemptive 00:30:09.259 --> 00:30:15.379 history is marching to that point, are looking back to that. And we enjoy God's true glory. 00:30:15.380 --> 00:30:23.820 No offense to Mr. Edwards, but this is far from an original thought. As we've seen, this is from Psalm 8. 00:30:24.120 --> 00:30:28.600 It screams out to us that God's glory is the most important thing in the world. 00:30:29.680 --> 00:30:36.260 What often happens, though, in our own hearts is we mistake God's glory for our own glory. We've talked 00:30:36.260 --> 00:30:42.640 about that a little bit. And when we do that, we kind of get in trouble. Look with me at verse 4. 00:30:42.640 --> 00:30:49.820 4. What is man that you are mindful of him? If we stop there alone, that's a good corrective to how we often 00:30:49.820 --> 00:30:56.980 think, even when we're Christians. And the son of man that you care for him, yet you have made him a little 00:30:56.980 --> 00:31:03.860 lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. Verse 4 represents a shift in this thought. 00:31:04.259 --> 00:31:08.400 It's gone from God's glory now to focus on man's glory. 00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:16.360 It's a framework in which to view ourselves as human beings. But we have to view it in the framework 00:31:16.360 --> 00:31:23.300 that starts with God's glory. We're not so insignificant that God doesn't care. Yet you're 00:31:23.300 --> 00:31:30.220 not as important as you think. So cheer up. God is way more important than that. And in verse 4, 00:31:30.300 --> 00:31:36.380 there's this rhetorical question that why should he even care about man? But he does, is the answer. 00:31:36.380 --> 00:31:44.740 He cares because he's made you, because you reflect his own glory. Underlying this question is the sense 00:31:44.740 --> 00:31:52.320 that God does consider us all more worthy than all that he has created. Look at verse 5. Yet you have 00:31:52.320 --> 00:31:57.400 made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. We're crowned with 00:31:57.400 --> 00:32:06.860 glory and honor because we're made in his image. Out of reverence for God's holy name, the Israelites 00:32:06.860 --> 00:32:12.980 were really uncomfortable with certain things. And they were uncomfortable with this verse because 00:32:12.980 --> 00:32:18.580 they were comparing man to God. And they said, there's some translations that might have a little 00:32:18.579 --> 00:32:27.039 wrinkle in this and say, why we heavenly beings might be angels. So if you have like the NIV or 00:32:27.039 --> 00:32:35.179 another translation, it might be reflected in that. But they surely thought rightly that God's glory was 00:32:35.179 --> 00:32:41.139 more important than all of this. And we as humans reflect God's glory. And that's a good thing because 00:32:41.140 --> 00:32:49.220 it should point our hearts, it should lift our hearts to God. And reminder, in all of this, this is after 00:32:49.220 --> 00:32:54.840 the fall. This is after the fact that we know we're marked with sin. We still have God's glory. 00:32:55.840 --> 00:33:02.759 We still reflect God's glory. We're still pointing to all of that. And the psalmist is still writing this 00:33:02.759 --> 00:33:10.160 because we've been crowned by another. We've been crowned by God. And part of that is ruling over 00:33:10.160 --> 00:33:14.720 creation. Look with me at verses six through eight. You have given him dominion over the works of your 00:33:14.720 --> 00:33:20.480 hands and you've put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, beasts of the field, birds of the 00:33:20.480 --> 00:33:29.000 heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. All of that, all of God's 00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:36.259 authority and presence in which he rules over all things. We reflect that as we rule over creation. 00:33:37.099 --> 00:33:43.660 And yet, because of sin, we get confused. We think that it's all about us. We think that God, like some 00:33:43.660 --> 00:33:51.160 cosmic genie, when we come rub the bottle, that God serves at our beck and call. The furthest, that can be 00:33:51.160 --> 00:33:58.579 the furthest thing from the truth. We serve God. We serve in a capacity in which he is trusted 00:33:58.579 --> 00:34:06.460 and enabled us to rule over these things. We are not served by God as a butler, but we're also not 00:34:06.460 --> 00:34:15.199 left to flounder without him. He is active and involved in the universe, not detached and uncaring. 00:34:17.179 --> 00:34:25.000 We are not at the center of the universe, but we also don't rule the universe alone. We rule 00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:32.739 with an authority that's been granted to us. And our obsession over ourselves kind of muddies the 00:34:32.739 --> 00:34:39.800 water on this. How should we respond? How should we respond to these great truths? That should bring 00:34:39.800 --> 00:34:47.280 us joy. That's great. I don't know how many of you guys are meme followers or enjoy memes. You know, 00:34:47.320 --> 00:34:53.000 those little pictures that people send? I'm not a meme user. My wife is. So occasionally, 00:34:53.000 --> 00:35:00.940 she'll chuckle at a picture that somebody has sent to represent reality. There's a famous meme. I don't 00:35:00.940 --> 00:35:09.440 know if it's the first meme, but there is a meme of a cat that had a very angry face. And that cat 00:35:09.440 --> 00:35:19.940 was tartar sauce of Morristown, Arizona. Now, her owner, Tabitha Bundanson, she invested all of her life 00:35:19.940 --> 00:35:28.179 in that cat, in this cat with a grumpy frown, like upside down smiley face. The cat, I'm not going to 00:35:28.179 --> 00:35:34.000 do the face because y'all laugh at me. But she quit her job in order to take care of her cat. 00:35:36.220 --> 00:35:41.599 And the cat also, grumpy cat, tartar sauce was her name, also had a brother who had the same genetic 00:35:41.599 --> 00:35:50.559 defect. But she's world famous for that scowl. And so anytime my wife wants to communicate, or this is, 00:35:50.759 --> 00:35:54.679 I guess, a couple years now, she wants to communicate. She's angry. She sends me a picture 00:35:54.679 --> 00:36:04.559 of the cat with an upside down face. To communicate her scowl. As Christians, how do we respond to God's 00:36:04.559 --> 00:36:12.299 glory? Is our face responding like grumpy cat with a scowl? Do we look at texts like this, and are we so 00:36:12.299 --> 00:36:20.980 unmoved that we can't remove the scowl from our face? Or should we rejoice? Should we know that, yes, 00:36:21.019 --> 00:36:27.820 we are sinners, but God's grace is greater than that? That should cause us rejoicing. Should we rejoice in 00:36:27.820 --> 00:36:35.660 God's creative powers? Absolutely. That should change our physical countenance. We shouldn't be scowling. 00:36:38.240 --> 00:36:46.120 Christians should most of all be moved by God's glory, and our subsequent glory of being made in 00:36:46.120 --> 00:36:53.660 his image. We should rejoice in that more than anyone. That's convicting to me. Whether you're naturally 00:36:53.659 --> 00:37:02.879 a little more melancholy by disposition, you see those people in life that don't understand these 00:37:02.879 --> 00:37:12.079 truths, but are joyful. We should, as Christians, be so moved by God's grace and the truths of who God is 00:37:12.079 --> 00:37:20.420 that we rejoice, that our physical countenance is changed. We must see our identity is not in who we 00:37:20.420 --> 00:37:28.119 think we are, but who God says we are. Even in my own sin, I know that God's grace is greater, and that 00:37:28.119 --> 00:37:37.039 is cause for rejoicing. That's cause for praising. That's cause for verse 9, a repetition of this. 00:37:37.180 --> 00:37:44.180 Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Even in that, even in our sin, we can still 00:37:44.179 --> 00:37:51.440 confess that if we put our faith and trust in Christ. We're returning again to God's covenant name. 00:37:51.879 --> 00:37:59.839 In this, we see that his nature of his love, his faithfulness to his people, despite their disobedience. 00:38:00.799 --> 00:38:09.500 We see this promise of a returning redeemer that we hope for, that's Jesus. Being so fully God that 00:38:09.500 --> 00:38:17.019 out of the mouths of babes and children, that it's powerful, that we might have everlasting life. 00:38:17.539 --> 00:38:25.199 That's the crowning message that's worthy of praise. That's what we celebrate. Can you confess today, 00:38:26.639 --> 00:38:29.440 oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name? 00:38:29.440 --> 00:38:40.519 I pray that we can. Let's pray. Lord, we're thankful for this confession of who you are, 00:38:40.840 --> 00:38:49.220 that you are majestic, that you are mighty, that your name is above all names on this earth. 00:38:49.480 --> 00:38:57.400 We pray that we might confess that. We pray that we might see ourselves rightly as being made in your image. 00:38:59.440 --> 00:39:02.360 as struggling through sin. 00:39:04.340 --> 00:39:07.679 But Father, knowing that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, 00:39:08.240 --> 00:39:14.960 because of our repentance, our turning away from sin and putting our faith in Christ is greater, 00:39:15.139 --> 00:39:20.139 and that is cause for rejoicing. Father, we pray that might be true of our hearts. 00:39:20.639 --> 00:39:24.460 We pray that might be true in our lives. 00:39:24.460 --> 00:39:31.280 Lord, we ask that you would bless our time as we turn our attention to your supper, 00:39:31.820 --> 00:39:35.320 where we remember what Christ has done on our behalf. 00:39:35.840 --> 00:39:38.300 And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.