Psalm 8

Psalm Chapter 8, verse 1. Let's read through the Psalm. Just 9 verses:

Obviously, you can see that this Psalm begins and ends with the very same refrain, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic…” The word, majestic refers to the radiant splendor, the revealed splendor of our God, who is beyond our imagining, and all that He says and does. David is making this declaration and marveling at how majestic the Lord is. And then right away in verse 1, David begins to recount the majesty of the Lord saying, “You have set your glory above the heavens,” and the heavens refers to everything God has created. Basically what David is saying here is that You exceed all that You have created. When we look at everything God has created, we can look with ways that David couldn't look when he was on the earth, because he did not have things like a Hubble telescope or satellites in orbit that can look deeper and farther into the recesses of space than they ever could before. He was subject to just his naked eye, and the moon, and the stars, and it was enough to overwhelm him. You and I can see so much more, so many more galaxies and planets and stars and suns and things like that.

And yet I believe it is just as true as it ever was– God, Your glory exceeds all that You have made. You have set your glory above the heavens. What a wonderful thing, or way, I should say, to begin to praise the Lord, just to magnify the Lord. God remains infinitely greater than all He created. Then David mentions one of the most incredible things about God's majesty. Look at verse 2, brings it back down to earth and “Out of the mouths of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.” You know what this simply means. It means that God uses the weak to defeat the mighty. That is what it means. And, of course, this was a concept David was all too familiar with, because as a young teenager, he went up against a man who was a much older and much more seasoned warrior, a man we know by the name of Goliath (1 Samuel 17). And yet David had victory over that man who should have beaten him to a pulp, and probably would have in any other circumstances, except that the Lord was involved. David knew that the victory God was expressing in his defeat of Goliath was a way of saying, see my Majesty. Behold my Majesty. I can cause this little scrawny teenager to put a stone in his sling and cast it at this man with such incredible accuracy that it knocks him silly. He falls to the ground long enough for David to run over and then put him to death. In so doing bring a great victory for the nation of Israel over the Philistines that day. And you know what God is saying through that? Check it out. Check out this Majesty, and that is what David is saying. “Out of the mouths of babies and infants, you have established strength.” Who in the world would establish strength through the mouth of babies or infants? Well, nobody, because it's impossible. They're just babies. They blabber. We were enjoying listening to our grandson Benjamin, who is about 6 months old now, and he is starting to get into that babbling stage, which is so cute. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba… And of course, we sit and just laugh at him, and he has this captive audience from all of us. But there is nothing strong about it. It is just the blabbering of a baby. And yet, here it says, “Out of the mouths of babies and infants, you have established strength” in such a way as to put down the strong.

This essentially happened when Jesus came into the city of Jerusalem in what we call the Triumphal Entry. And the enemies of the Lord wanted Jesus to tell these parents to silence their children, who were singing praises and saying, “Hosanna,” these little children. And Jesus basically quotes the same idea, that it is through the mouths of babies and infants that God has established strength to basically shut down the enemies of the Lord. (Matthew 21:16) This is an incredible thing, but it is part of the way God works. Let me show you this statement from 1 Corinthians, chapter 1. It says:

And so that He might show His majesty. By the way, that is why God chose you. And then David goes on, and he thinks –and this is one of those statements that I have a picture in my mind– he says, “When I look at your heavens (and your Bible may say, when I consider the heavens), the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars…” and so forth. I have to ask You, God, what is it about man that you even take notice of this scrawny little ant on the face of this planet? And I can see in my mind's eye, David as a young man sitting on a rock taking care of his father's sheep out in an open field and just looking up at the sky. Maybe it is evening, and he can see the stars now, and he sees the grandeur of it all. And he is thinking to himself, I sit here, and I ponder the greatness of what You have created. And I think, good grief. What is man that you even take notice? Look what he goes on to say about man though. He says, “5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” Man has been crowned with glory and honor, and we are made a little bit lower than the heavenly beings. And of course, that speaks to the fact that we were made in God's image, which separates us from all other walks of life.

Verse 6: “You have given him dominion over the works of your hands (in other words, over all creation); you have put all things under his feet.” And that means you have given dominion to man on the earth. Then he lists some of the things that man's been given dominion over: “7 All sheep and oxen: and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas,” and so on. And so on. And he makes this statement about how You have given him dominion over all these things. I believe that man's dominion–- David is looking at the dominion the man has now– I believe man's dominion was so much greater at first. In other words when God put Adam and Eve here on the face of this planet, I believe the dominion He gave them was absolute. He gave them dominion over the earth. They were the first king and queen of this earth. And the intention was that their children would live in the same way in total dominion over the creation that God had made. However, you and I both know, man abdicated the authority and dominion that God gave him over this earth in a larger sense, and it was given over to the enemy, who is now the prince of this world. And that is one of the reasons why we look at man today, and we don't see him with full dominion. We don't have full dominion. There are still some remnants of our dominion that we can still take hold of, but we don't have full dominion, not anything close to what Adam and Eve had. Nothing even close. Let me show you an incredible passage from Hebrews. This is one of the most mind-blowing passages– I think– in the Bible.

But there is a place where someone has testified: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? (Obviously the writer of Hebrews is quoting this Psalm.) You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet.” (Now look at what the writer of Hebrews goes on to say) In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. (But look at this statement) Yet at present, we do not see everything subject to him. (What do we see?) But we see Jesus, who was (also) made a little lower than the angels (obviously speaking of his incarnation), now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. This is an incredible passage, isn't it? Because it tells you and me, after quoting this very Psalm, that there was nothing that God did not put under man's feet. Nothing. In fact, I believe that– Jesus came back during His earthly ministry, I believe– Jesus showed us even some of the dominion that man lost. Even dominion over the wind and the waves and things like that. Yeah, of course, that is because He is also God. But remember, the passage in Hebrews says there was nothing that was not under man's dominion. Nothing. And yet, he says, at present, we don't see that, do we? What do we see? We see Jesus. We see Jesus, who has won back that dominion for us. Now it hasn't been given to us completely yet, but it is in Him. When we need dominion over something, what do we do? We pray in the name of Jesus, because it is through Him that we are getting back to the dominion that was once ours, but was lost because of disobedience and rebellion. The Psalm ends with, “9 O, LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”