Psalm 8
1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour. 6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, 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. 9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Sometimes we believe the whole world revolves around us. On the other hand, we also go to the opposite extreme, wondering if God really cares about us. Psalm 8 gives us the right balance. Our true self-esteem is found in God. It begins and ends with Him.
David starts and ends what we know as Psalm 8 with a bold declaration about God. CUE
The first and last verses are the same: “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” The capitalised LORD is His name “Yahweh,” while lowercase Lord is His title “Adoni”, so a more accurate translation would be “O Lord, our master.”
God is over all, and as such, His name, His character and His very nature deserves to be praised and worshipped across the whole earth. This is the central theme of the psalm. Do you want to know why you matter? Because God is great! This is so important that David bookends it at the beginning and end of the psalm. No matter what role we find for humanity here, everything we have and everything we are comes from God, our Master, who deserves to be praised.
Then David gives us a couple of reasons why God deserves such praise. First, he points to the glory of creation. He says, “You have set your glory above the heavens.” And he adds in verse 3, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place...” You can picture the shepherd David gazing at the night sky as he writes these words.
The universe is an amazing creation. David lived about 3000 years ago, and he certainly knew far less about the sheer size of the universe than we do, but the irony is, the more we learn about the universe, and the bigger and better we make our telescopes and interplanetary space probes, the more we realise how little we know. Will we ever find the edge of the universe? Probably not. It is simply too big, yet God holds it all in the palm of His hand.
We know a lot more about the stars today than David did. Yet, the more we know, the more we should be amazed. When we are in awe of God’s creation, whether it be the night sky, a rainbow, a beautiful sunrise, or the detail in a flower, we should praise the Creator behind it all. As David poetically wrote, God’s fingers put the stars in place, but even this poetic language doesn’t define the size of God. When David’s son Solomon built the temple, he said in his prayer of dedication, “Will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!”
So David, when speaking of the heavens, makes the point that God is great because the universe is great. But then he talks about another reason. He says in verse 2, “Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.”
There are a couple of things here.
First, we see that God has enemies. There are people and angels who do not praise God, who do not give credit to God for the glory of the universe, but instead want to take it for themselves. They want to praise themselves. But then David says a curious thing: He says God takes the praise of babies and infants to silence them.
What does that mean?
A recurring theme in Scripture is that God uses the weak to overcome the strong. When Paul writes in 2 Corinthians about how God refused to take away his thorn in the flesh, he found peace in the reality that in his own weakness, God’s strength would shine through. “When I am weak, He is strong.”
God takes down a giant with a boy and a simple slingshot. This way He gets all the glory.
As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, He quoted this same verse. Parents and their children were praising Him as the promised Messiah, when the Pharisees complained to Jesus, saying, “Don’t you hear what these children are saying?” Jesus replied with a simple, “Yes.” In other words, “Yes, I hear them, and I am not going to correct them, because they are right. I am the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Matthew 21 says, “The blind and the lame came to Him at the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things He did and the children shouting in the temple area, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they were indignant. ‘Do you hear what these children are saying?’ they asked Him. ‘Yes,’ replied Jesus, ‘have you never read, From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise?’”
The enemies of God would be silenced by the praise of children and infants.
Jesus, along with the children, fulfilled Scripture that day.
Then we come to a key question in verse 4: David asks, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”
To be “mindful of” means to remember someone. “God, why are we so important that you remember us, that you care for us?”
Many Christians struggle with this. Some think God must not love them, and others think God has to love them, that He has no choice. But neither are correct. God chooses to love us. He chooses to cast His favour upon us.
As Christians, our esteem comes from the truth that God esteems us. He finds value in you just because He chooses to. And no matter what trials you face, remember that God remembers you. You are on His mind today.
Not only does God love us, but He entrusts a special task to us. David talks of how God created humans just a “little lower than the heavenly beings,” and put us in authority over His creation. There is an echo of Genesis 1 here. “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.”
David is in awe that we have been elevated to such a level of responsibility to entrust all of creation to us. It is amazing when you think of it. And it is sad, when you consider ways we have let down our Creator.
Pollution, cruelty to animals, cruelty to each other, litter, wastefulness, envy, gossip, adultery, assault, murder. Our sinful state, beginning with our first parents Adam and Eve, has brought into the world sickness and death and natural disaster. It is all a corruption of our original role: to care for the creation in honour of the Creator.
Since we fall short, the psalm carries a prophetic hope of future fulfilment. The Bible paints some very bleak pictures of the state of humanity, but it also consistently points us to our great hope. Someday there will be harmony again. Someday there will be beauty again. Someday all will be right with the relationship between the Creator and the created. And that harmony comes through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.
Paul and the writer of Hebrews both point to Jesus as the ultimate fulfilment of Psalm 8. Jesus made Himself a little lower than the heavenly beings, to become one of us, to die on a cross, and to be raised on the third day, overcoming sin and death for good. And He will return for His bride – the church.
So we can join the psalm of praise with David, “O Yahweh, our Master, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” There is hope. And that hope has a name – Jesus Christ.
Until He returns, we are to serve and love Christ. C.T. Studd played in the very first Ashes test against Australia. After he retired he became a full time missionary in China, India and central Africa. Towards the end of his life he wrote, “Only one life. ’Twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”
1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour. 6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, 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. 9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Sometimes we believe the whole world revolves around us. On the other hand, we also go to the opposite extreme, wondering if God really cares about us. Psalm 8 gives us the right balance. Our true self-esteem is found in God. It begins and ends with Him.
David starts and ends what we know as Psalm 8 with a bold declaration about God. CUE
The first and last verses are the same: “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” The capitalised LORD is His name “Yahweh,” while lowercase Lord is His title “Adoni”, so a more accurate translation would be “O Lord, our master.”
God is over all, and as such, His name, His character and His very nature deserves to be praised and worshipped across the whole earth. This is the central theme of the psalm. Do you want to know why you matter? Because God is great! This is so important that David bookends it at the beginning and end of the psalm. No matter what role we find for humanity here, everything we have and everything we are comes from God, our Master, who deserves to be praised.
Then David gives us a couple of reasons why God deserves such praise. First, he points to the glory of creation. He says, “You have set your glory above the heavens.” And he adds in verse 3, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place...” You can picture the shepherd David gazing at the night sky as he writes these words.
The universe is an amazing creation. David lived about 3000 years ago, and he certainly knew far less about the sheer size of the universe than we do, but the irony is, the more we learn about the universe, and the bigger and better we make our telescopes and interplanetary space probes, the more we realise how little we know. Will we ever find the edge of the universe? Probably not. It is simply too big, yet God holds it all in the palm of His hand.
We know a lot more about the stars today than David did. Yet, the more we know, the more we should be amazed. When we are in awe of God’s creation, whether it be the night sky, a rainbow, a beautiful sunrise, or the detail in a flower, we should praise the Creator behind it all. As David poetically wrote, God’s fingers put the stars in place, but even this poetic language doesn’t define the size of God. When David’s son Solomon built the temple, he said in his prayer of dedication, “Will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!”
So David, when speaking of the heavens, makes the point that God is great because the universe is great. But then he talks about another reason. He says in verse 2, “Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.”
There are a couple of things here.
First, we see that God has enemies. There are people and angels who do not praise God, who do not give credit to God for the glory of the universe, but instead want to take it for themselves. They want to praise themselves. But then David says a curious thing: He says God takes the praise of babies and infants to silence them.
What does that mean?
A recurring theme in Scripture is that God uses the weak to overcome the strong. When Paul writes in 2 Corinthians about how God refused to take away his thorn in the flesh, he found peace in the reality that in his own weakness, God’s strength would shine through. “When I am weak, He is strong.”
God takes down a giant with a boy and a simple slingshot. This way He gets all the glory.
As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, He quoted this same verse. Parents and their children were praising Him as the promised Messiah, when the Pharisees complained to Jesus, saying, “Don’t you hear what these children are saying?” Jesus replied with a simple, “Yes.” In other words, “Yes, I hear them, and I am not going to correct them, because they are right. I am the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Matthew 21 says, “The blind and the lame came to Him at the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things He did and the children shouting in the temple area, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they were indignant. ‘Do you hear what these children are saying?’ they asked Him. ‘Yes,’ replied Jesus, ‘have you never read, From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise?’”
The enemies of God would be silenced by the praise of children and infants.
Jesus, along with the children, fulfilled Scripture that day.
Then we come to a key question in verse 4: David asks, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”
To be “mindful of” means to remember someone. “God, why are we so important that you remember us, that you care for us?”
Many Christians struggle with this. Some think God must not love them, and others think God has to love them, that He has no choice. But neither are correct. God chooses to love us. He chooses to cast His favour upon us.
As Christians, our esteem comes from the truth that God esteems us. He finds value in you just because He chooses to. And no matter what trials you face, remember that God remembers you. You are on His mind today.
Not only does God love us, but He entrusts a special task to us. David talks of how God created humans just a “little lower than the heavenly beings,” and put us in authority over His creation. There is an echo of Genesis 1 here. “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.”
David is in awe that we have been elevated to such a level of responsibility to entrust all of creation to us. It is amazing when you think of it. And it is sad, when you consider ways we have let down our Creator.
Pollution, cruelty to animals, cruelty to each other, litter, wastefulness, envy, gossip, adultery, assault, murder. Our sinful state, beginning with our first parents Adam and Eve, has brought into the world sickness and death and natural disaster. It is all a corruption of our original role: to care for the creation in honour of the Creator.
Since we fall short, the psalm carries a prophetic hope of future fulfilment. The Bible paints some very bleak pictures of the state of humanity, but it also consistently points us to our great hope. Someday there will be harmony again. Someday there will be beauty again. Someday all will be right with the relationship between the Creator and the created. And that harmony comes through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.
Paul and the writer of Hebrews both point to Jesus as the ultimate fulfilment of Psalm 8. Jesus made Himself a little lower than the heavenly beings, to become one of us, to die on a cross, and to be raised on the third day, overcoming sin and death for good. And He will return for His bride – the church.
So we can join the psalm of praise with David, “O Yahweh, our Master, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” There is hope. And that hope has a name – Jesus Christ.
Until He returns, we are to serve and love Christ. C.T. Studd played in the very first Ashes test against Australia. After he retired he became a full time missionary in China, India and central Africa. Towards the end of his life he wrote, “Only one life. ’Twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”