Rev. Alan J. Meenan
I direct your thoughts and attention this morning to Psalm 8. You will notice right from the start that the Psalm begins and ends with the same message. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth? Its closing line says, Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth? So the Psalmist is careful to begin and end his entire Psalm with worship and praise to God. The verses that lie between 1 and 9 substantiate the opening and closing statements, and if you go right to the heart of the Psalm in verse 5, you will find a consideration of our role as human beings a parable of life that is here where God must be the beginning and the ending of all things.
Verse 5 says, You made him, that is, humankind a little lower than the heavenly beings or the Angels. You crowned him with glory and honor. So God must be the start and the finish of the parable of human life. John the Divine, you remember, grasped hold of that significance truth in his writing of the Book of Revelation. When he quotes God as saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am the beginning and the end. I am the first and the last. These are three ways of saying the same thing.
So the starting point for the Psalmist is to extol the excellence and majesty of God as it is found in creation. As he moves to the end of the Psalm, we will find a different agenda, but creation is the starting point for the Psalmist. You will notice, for example, in verse 3 and for that he says, When I consider the Heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. He is captivated by this creation that God has brought into being because it speaks of God’s immensity, His eternity and His power. That is a great starting point in the process of praise.
We, of course, are still on the fringe of the great unknown when it comes to understanding the universe in which we live. In ancient times, some 3,000 years ago, when this Psalm was written, the Psalmist walking the Judean hills would gaze up into the Heavens with a naked eye. I have to tell you this because in Los Angeles, you know that if you look up at the sky at night with the naked eye, you might be lucky if you see half a dozen stars. In the Judean hills long ago, he could see possibly as many as 5,000 stars. What an amazing thing. He was overwhelmed by the wonder of who God was with his eternity and majesty. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name. Look at this amazing thing that you have done. When I consider the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars, which you have made. How amazing are you God?
Yet we, in our sophisticated 21st Century, understand the immensity of Heaven in even more wonderful terms. We know for example, the ancient writer would never have known that if you were to get on one of those vehicles that goes into the Heavens at Cape Canaveral, travel at rocket speed to reach our nearest star, it would take you 144,000 years. If we were to speed up the process, set you in motion at the speed of light, which travels at some 186,000 miles per second, across the universe you wouldn’t have reached the end of it after 40 billion years. Oh Lord, how majestic is your name in all the world? No heart can measure. Not tongue can utter a tenth of the greatness of the God who created the heavens and the earth.
Job says in the 9th chapter that God alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. He made Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades and the constellations of the south. Nehemiah reports in chapter 9, You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens and all their starry hosts. Earth and everything that is in it. The seas and all that is in them. You gave life to everything. The hosts of Heaven worship you. Even Genesis 1 is replete with the wonder and awe of a creator God who painted the heavens with stars beyond number. By the way, Genesis 1 was never intended to be a scientific treatise of the creation of the world. It simply contains all the marks and signature of a poem, a hymn of praise and celebration. We read in verse 4, when one looks up at the sky, Is it not a strange thing, writes the Psalmist, Is it not an amazing thing? What is humankind that you are mindful of him? The Son of man that you would care for him. How can it be, he seems to say, in relation to the universe, in relation to the cosmos? What is humanity that you should deign to look upon us, care for us and even love us.
I wonder if you have had the experience of looking into the heavens outside of Los Angeles? I’ve been thinking how insignificant and how unimportant I am. We have said before that if you think you are important, just remember that the number of people who show up for your funeral will be a measure of the weather of the day you are being buried. So there is, of course, a sense in which the Psalmist is right. In all the immensity of creation, it seems that I am such a little thing yet, not insignificant to God and not unimportant to Him. If we were to take a moment and paint this entire wall on this side of the sanctuary as a physical depiction of the physical universe, and on the other wall a depiction of an emotional universe, the picture of the physical universe with all the starry hosts would show an earth that is one little pin prick in the entire wall, if that. But if you were to draw a picture of the concentration of all the emotions in the universe, love, hatred, anxiety, fear, compassion, worry and dread, the earth would fill this emotional universe wall. If God were to come into the room today, which wall would He be more concerned to look at? We read that even though we may appear to be insignificant, as we look to the galaxies of the suns and their surrounding planets, universe after universe stretching off into immensity. Yet, says the Psalmist, God has crowned us with extraordinary glory and honor.
You might remember from last week that glory is that sense of heaviness, of weightiness, of substance, of magnitude. God has given us weight. We become important. Honor is a recognition of status and strength, so God turns from the physical creation and turns to the human race to find a perfection of praise that is absent from the physical world. In other words, the glory of God in creation cannot be compared to the manifestation of God’s glory as he has interacted with humankind in redemption. And, says the Psalmist, he has given us dominion over the created world. All sheep, in verses 7 and 8,and oxen, all beasts, birds and fish that swim in the sea, all are under our command. In other words, God has created this earth for you to enjoy and for you to delight in. He created the world for you and all the wonder and beauty of it.
So the Psalm that begins with a celebration of praise of creation now mandates that humankind have authority and responsibility to care for the world in which God has placed us. At the center of the Psalm lies this affirmation of human authority and power and at the extremities of the Psalm, an affirmation of praise and worship to God. One of the foremost leading Old Testament scholars today is a man by the name of Walter Brueggeman who suggests to us that the center of this particular Psalm is the role of humanity. The two extremities of the Psalm in verses 1 and 9 must be read together, else we will miss the point of the entire Psalm. He says, Doxology, the beginning and end, give dominion, the center its legitimacy. Doxology gives dominion its legitimacy. What I believe the Psalmist is suggesting to us is that it is important that we hold to intention with one another because praise without human responsibility is abdication. In leaving it all to God, I am reminded of the story of the Irish farmer who just bought a 30 acre patch of land who turned this wilderness into something that was wonderfully productive to grow wheat and barley. His Presbyterian pastor came along one day as he was resting his laurels and weight upon the fence. The Pastor said, in order to make sure that God got some credit for this, Jimmy, what a wonderful field. What a great job you and God have done together. Oh, said the Irish farmer, you should have seen it when God was doing it on his own. Doxology or praise without responsibility is abdication.
On the other hand, to exercise human power without acknowledging God is to dangerously usurp more than has been given. Psalm 8 in the last analysis recognizes that humankind is the crown and pinnacle of the creation and recognizes it because of the nature of the Psalm held together by these two statements. Lord oh Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth together recognizes that human power is shaped and qualified by doxology or praise. As one looks at the Psalm a little more carefully and with a great deal more scrutiny, one might be forced to recognize that the dominion of which the Psalmist speaks is something of hyperbole. I refer you in particular to verse 6. C. S. Lewis says verse 6 is not strictly true, and he is correct. Verse 6 says, You made him, that is humankind, ruler over the works of your hands. You put everything under his feet. Lewis points out correctly that humans have not exercised such dominion over the world. They have often been defeated, and we have. We have been defeated by wild animals, and we have been defeated by storms, weather, and earthquakes. All things have not been placed under our feet.
Now without any question, I would argue that God certainly intended that from the beginning. When he brought creation into being, he set humankind as sovereign over the created order under his kingship. But we all know the story too well how human beings failed the test. As a result, creation was no longer kept in subjection to humanity, so a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came. Could it be—ponder with me for a moment—that verses 5, 6, 7, and 8 really refer to Jesus Christ? Look at them. God you made him a little lower than the Angels. You crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands. You put everything under his feet; all flocks, and birds and beasts and fish. Oh Lord, our Lord how excellent is your name in all the earth. Certainly, the early Church thought that this was the case. When they looked back, they saw Jesus crowned with glory and honor.
Paul writes to the Church at Corinth, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15:25, For Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy is death, for he has put everything under his feet. Now when it says everything has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself who put everything under Christ. When he had done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. The writer to the epistle to the Hebrews takes this very statement in verses 5 and, following from straight out of the Old Testament, puts it in the 2nd chapter of Hebrews, applying it entirely to Jesus Christ. When Paul writes to the Church at Ephesus, he also states in the last verse or two of the first chapter, And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the Church, which is his body; the fullness of Him who fills everything. So obviously, the early Church thought of the center of this Psalm as a reference to Jesus Christ.
Spurgeon on one occasion said, Take all the kings, all the monarchs of the world and not one of them ruled the entire earth. But we see Jesus, he says, crowned with glory and honor who alone embodies this reality. Only Christ can possibly be meant in the center of Psalm 8. He who was made lower than the Angels. Who became the conqueror and ruler over all things. Now I have to tell you that this brings me a great deal of joy, because while one longs and loves to talk about the creation of God and God the creator and all the wonder of creation, there is nothing that thrills our hearts more than to talk about Jesus Christ, the manifestation of God in human flesh. So what we are effectively doing is suggesting that Christ occupies the center of the Psalm.
That the entire Psalm, the beginning and the end speaks of God, Oh Lord, our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth, now takes on a heightened perspective by having Christ in the center. So the beginning, the ending and the in between are all about divinity, are all about God. This Psalm has to do with a life that is bracketed by worship. That is centered in Jesus Christ. Will you forgive me if I quote St. Patrick in his famous breastplate? Christ ever with me. Christ before me. Christ behind me. Christ within me. Christ beneath me. Christ above me. Christ on my right side. Christ on my left side. Christ in the breadth. Christ in the length. Christ in the depth. Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me. Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me. Christ in every eye that sees me. Christ in every ear that hears me. I would say that St. Patrick was consumed with the presence of Jesus Christ.
I would suggest to you that the Psalmist who wrote these incredible words, young David, is consumed with being a person of God in his life so that we come to understand and unfold this incredible Psalm. You may say to me, Now Preacher, this is all well and good. But as you draw to a close, is it possible that you could tell me what this means for me? Let me take a moment to do exactly that, if you have not yet understood. What I believe the Psalm is encouraging us to do is to live our lives for the praise of his glory. Bracketed in God, bracketed in worship. For that is why you were created, that is what life ultimately is all about. It’s not about what you do or even who you are. It is all about God. The Psalm is basically saying, it’s all about Him. Life in the first and last and in between is all about God. It is encouraging us to have our lives bracketed in worship and centered in Jesus Christ. It teaches us that our lives are to be lived like the life of Jesus Christ within the boundaries of obedience and praise, for God gave to Christ dominion over all things as he gave human beings. Jesus Christ exercised that dominion in the context of obedience.
This Psalm also tells us that we must remember that we do not own the world, but that we should live in it responsibly, ecologically, caring for it and its well being and enjoy many of its delights because it was created for your enjoyment. So it is no wonder the Psalmist moves to the end of this incredible song like a good classical composer. He returns to the keynote of wondering adoration and reiterates the theme. He comes back again to the beginning. Oh Lord, I can’t get over this. How incredibly wonderful is your name in all the earth. He started, you see, by reflection of the creator God whose glory fills the Heavens, but he goes far beyond that. Not only to a creator God, but to a redeemer God who set his love upon the souls of humankind. This Psalm, if it tells you anything, tells you that you are beloved by God. That you are important, that you are significant so that from the lips of children and infants, you have ordained praise.
How then shall we respond to the goodness of God? How shall we respond to a God who is the most incredible creator, the only creator of the heavens and the earth? By praising the one who, in the form of Jesus Christ, touched the earth with love, and by living lives that reflect His glory and His worship. We cry from the bottom of our souls, Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
I direct your thoughts and attention this morning to Psalm 8. You will notice right from the start that the Psalm begins and ends with the same message. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth? Its closing line says, Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth? So the Psalmist is careful to begin and end his entire Psalm with worship and praise to God. The verses that lie between 1 and 9 substantiate the opening and closing statements, and if you go right to the heart of the Psalm in verse 5, you will find a consideration of our role as human beings a parable of life that is here where God must be the beginning and the ending of all things.
Verse 5 says, You made him, that is, humankind a little lower than the heavenly beings or the Angels. You crowned him with glory and honor. So God must be the start and the finish of the parable of human life. John the Divine, you remember, grasped hold of that significance truth in his writing of the Book of Revelation. When he quotes God as saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am the beginning and the end. I am the first and the last. These are three ways of saying the same thing.
So the starting point for the Psalmist is to extol the excellence and majesty of God as it is found in creation. As he moves to the end of the Psalm, we will find a different agenda, but creation is the starting point for the Psalmist. You will notice, for example, in verse 3 and for that he says, When I consider the Heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. He is captivated by this creation that God has brought into being because it speaks of God’s immensity, His eternity and His power. That is a great starting point in the process of praise.
We, of course, are still on the fringe of the great unknown when it comes to understanding the universe in which we live. In ancient times, some 3,000 years ago, when this Psalm was written, the Psalmist walking the Judean hills would gaze up into the Heavens with a naked eye. I have to tell you this because in Los Angeles, you know that if you look up at the sky at night with the naked eye, you might be lucky if you see half a dozen stars. In the Judean hills long ago, he could see possibly as many as 5,000 stars. What an amazing thing. He was overwhelmed by the wonder of who God was with his eternity and majesty. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name. Look at this amazing thing that you have done. When I consider the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars, which you have made. How amazing are you God?
Yet we, in our sophisticated 21st Century, understand the immensity of Heaven in even more wonderful terms. We know for example, the ancient writer would never have known that if you were to get on one of those vehicles that goes into the Heavens at Cape Canaveral, travel at rocket speed to reach our nearest star, it would take you 144,000 years. If we were to speed up the process, set you in motion at the speed of light, which travels at some 186,000 miles per second, across the universe you wouldn’t have reached the end of it after 40 billion years. Oh Lord, how majestic is your name in all the world? No heart can measure. Not tongue can utter a tenth of the greatness of the God who created the heavens and the earth.
Job says in the 9th chapter that God alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. He made Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades and the constellations of the south. Nehemiah reports in chapter 9, You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens and all their starry hosts. Earth and everything that is in it. The seas and all that is in them. You gave life to everything. The hosts of Heaven worship you. Even Genesis 1 is replete with the wonder and awe of a creator God who painted the heavens with stars beyond number. By the way, Genesis 1 was never intended to be a scientific treatise of the creation of the world. It simply contains all the marks and signature of a poem, a hymn of praise and celebration. We read in verse 4, when one looks up at the sky, Is it not a strange thing, writes the Psalmist, Is it not an amazing thing? What is humankind that you are mindful of him? The Son of man that you would care for him. How can it be, he seems to say, in relation to the universe, in relation to the cosmos? What is humanity that you should deign to look upon us, care for us and even love us.
I wonder if you have had the experience of looking into the heavens outside of Los Angeles? I’ve been thinking how insignificant and how unimportant I am. We have said before that if you think you are important, just remember that the number of people who show up for your funeral will be a measure of the weather of the day you are being buried. So there is, of course, a sense in which the Psalmist is right. In all the immensity of creation, it seems that I am such a little thing yet, not insignificant to God and not unimportant to Him. If we were to take a moment and paint this entire wall on this side of the sanctuary as a physical depiction of the physical universe, and on the other wall a depiction of an emotional universe, the picture of the physical universe with all the starry hosts would show an earth that is one little pin prick in the entire wall, if that. But if you were to draw a picture of the concentration of all the emotions in the universe, love, hatred, anxiety, fear, compassion, worry and dread, the earth would fill this emotional universe wall. If God were to come into the room today, which wall would He be more concerned to look at? We read that even though we may appear to be insignificant, as we look to the galaxies of the suns and their surrounding planets, universe after universe stretching off into immensity. Yet, says the Psalmist, God has crowned us with extraordinary glory and honor.
You might remember from last week that glory is that sense of heaviness, of weightiness, of substance, of magnitude. God has given us weight. We become important. Honor is a recognition of status and strength, so God turns from the physical creation and turns to the human race to find a perfection of praise that is absent from the physical world. In other words, the glory of God in creation cannot be compared to the manifestation of God’s glory as he has interacted with humankind in redemption. And, says the Psalmist, he has given us dominion over the created world. All sheep, in verses 7 and 8,and oxen, all beasts, birds and fish that swim in the sea, all are under our command. In other words, God has created this earth for you to enjoy and for you to delight in. He created the world for you and all the wonder and beauty of it.
So the Psalm that begins with a celebration of praise of creation now mandates that humankind have authority and responsibility to care for the world in which God has placed us. At the center of the Psalm lies this affirmation of human authority and power and at the extremities of the Psalm, an affirmation of praise and worship to God. One of the foremost leading Old Testament scholars today is a man by the name of Walter Brueggeman who suggests to us that the center of this particular Psalm is the role of humanity. The two extremities of the Psalm in verses 1 and 9 must be read together, else we will miss the point of the entire Psalm. He says, Doxology, the beginning and end, give dominion, the center its legitimacy. Doxology gives dominion its legitimacy. What I believe the Psalmist is suggesting to us is that it is important that we hold to intention with one another because praise without human responsibility is abdication. In leaving it all to God, I am reminded of the story of the Irish farmer who just bought a 30 acre patch of land who turned this wilderness into something that was wonderfully productive to grow wheat and barley. His Presbyterian pastor came along one day as he was resting his laurels and weight upon the fence. The Pastor said, in order to make sure that God got some credit for this, Jimmy, what a wonderful field. What a great job you and God have done together. Oh, said the Irish farmer, you should have seen it when God was doing it on his own. Doxology or praise without responsibility is abdication.
On the other hand, to exercise human power without acknowledging God is to dangerously usurp more than has been given. Psalm 8 in the last analysis recognizes that humankind is the crown and pinnacle of the creation and recognizes it because of the nature of the Psalm held together by these two statements. Lord oh Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth together recognizes that human power is shaped and qualified by doxology or praise. As one looks at the Psalm a little more carefully and with a great deal more scrutiny, one might be forced to recognize that the dominion of which the Psalmist speaks is something of hyperbole. I refer you in particular to verse 6. C. S. Lewis says verse 6 is not strictly true, and he is correct. Verse 6 says, You made him, that is humankind, ruler over the works of your hands. You put everything under his feet. Lewis points out correctly that humans have not exercised such dominion over the world. They have often been defeated, and we have. We have been defeated by wild animals, and we have been defeated by storms, weather, and earthquakes. All things have not been placed under our feet.
Now without any question, I would argue that God certainly intended that from the beginning. When he brought creation into being, he set humankind as sovereign over the created order under his kingship. But we all know the story too well how human beings failed the test. As a result, creation was no longer kept in subjection to humanity, so a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came. Could it be—ponder with me for a moment—that verses 5, 6, 7, and 8 really refer to Jesus Christ? Look at them. God you made him a little lower than the Angels. You crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands. You put everything under his feet; all flocks, and birds and beasts and fish. Oh Lord, our Lord how excellent is your name in all the earth. Certainly, the early Church thought that this was the case. When they looked back, they saw Jesus crowned with glory and honor.
Paul writes to the Church at Corinth, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15:25, For Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy is death, for he has put everything under his feet. Now when it says everything has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself who put everything under Christ. When he had done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. The writer to the epistle to the Hebrews takes this very statement in verses 5 and, following from straight out of the Old Testament, puts it in the 2nd chapter of Hebrews, applying it entirely to Jesus Christ. When Paul writes to the Church at Ephesus, he also states in the last verse or two of the first chapter, And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the Church, which is his body; the fullness of Him who fills everything. So obviously, the early Church thought of the center of this Psalm as a reference to Jesus Christ.
Spurgeon on one occasion said, Take all the kings, all the monarchs of the world and not one of them ruled the entire earth. But we see Jesus, he says, crowned with glory and honor who alone embodies this reality. Only Christ can possibly be meant in the center of Psalm 8. He who was made lower than the Angels. Who became the conqueror and ruler over all things. Now I have to tell you that this brings me a great deal of joy, because while one longs and loves to talk about the creation of God and God the creator and all the wonder of creation, there is nothing that thrills our hearts more than to talk about Jesus Christ, the manifestation of God in human flesh. So what we are effectively doing is suggesting that Christ occupies the center of the Psalm.
That the entire Psalm, the beginning and the end speaks of God, Oh Lord, our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth, now takes on a heightened perspective by having Christ in the center. So the beginning, the ending and the in between are all about divinity, are all about God. This Psalm has to do with a life that is bracketed by worship. That is centered in Jesus Christ. Will you forgive me if I quote St. Patrick in his famous breastplate? Christ ever with me. Christ before me. Christ behind me. Christ within me. Christ beneath me. Christ above me. Christ on my right side. Christ on my left side. Christ in the breadth. Christ in the length. Christ in the depth. Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me. Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me. Christ in every eye that sees me. Christ in every ear that hears me. I would say that St. Patrick was consumed with the presence of Jesus Christ.
I would suggest to you that the Psalmist who wrote these incredible words, young David, is consumed with being a person of God in his life so that we come to understand and unfold this incredible Psalm. You may say to me, Now Preacher, this is all well and good. But as you draw to a close, is it possible that you could tell me what this means for me? Let me take a moment to do exactly that, if you have not yet understood. What I believe the Psalm is encouraging us to do is to live our lives for the praise of his glory. Bracketed in God, bracketed in worship. For that is why you were created, that is what life ultimately is all about. It’s not about what you do or even who you are. It is all about God. The Psalm is basically saying, it’s all about Him. Life in the first and last and in between is all about God. It is encouraging us to have our lives bracketed in worship and centered in Jesus Christ. It teaches us that our lives are to be lived like the life of Jesus Christ within the boundaries of obedience and praise, for God gave to Christ dominion over all things as he gave human beings. Jesus Christ exercised that dominion in the context of obedience.
This Psalm also tells us that we must remember that we do not own the world, but that we should live in it responsibly, ecologically, caring for it and its well being and enjoy many of its delights because it was created for your enjoyment. So it is no wonder the Psalmist moves to the end of this incredible song like a good classical composer. He returns to the keynote of wondering adoration and reiterates the theme. He comes back again to the beginning. Oh Lord, I can’t get over this. How incredibly wonderful is your name in all the earth. He started, you see, by reflection of the creator God whose glory fills the Heavens, but he goes far beyond that. Not only to a creator God, but to a redeemer God who set his love upon the souls of humankind. This Psalm, if it tells you anything, tells you that you are beloved by God. That you are important, that you are significant so that from the lips of children and infants, you have ordained praise.
How then shall we respond to the goodness of God? How shall we respond to a God who is the most incredible creator, the only creator of the heavens and the earth? By praising the one who, in the form of Jesus Christ, touched the earth with love, and by living lives that reflect His glory and His worship. We cry from the bottom of our souls, Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
