Psalm 8 and the Basis for Reward

We stay in a largely self-absorbed world, and with that self-absorption inevitably comes a low view of God. Whereas it’s not incapable of occasional flashes of altruism, in the end, fallen humanity is imprisoned inside its personal ego. Somewhat than residing to the reward of God’s glory, we stay to the reward of our personal.

This self-centered worldview is against a God-centered understanding of issues. It doesn’t sq. with Scripture. The Eighth Psalm is framed with the chorus “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your identify in all of the earth!” (vv. 1, 9).

The Bible’s lifestyle is essentially totally different from that of people who don’t heed its truths. Scripture begins with God and His glory, not man along with his want. It’s solely in sufficiently answering the query “Who and what’s God?” that we’re capable of handle ourselves. Calvin feedback, “Man by no means achieves a transparent data of himself except he has first regarded upon God’s face, after which descends from considering him to scrutinize himself.”

A proper data of God is the muse for reward. Psalm 8 helps us to know God after which to know ourselves in relation to Him.

Who Is God?

The opening verses of Psalm 8 describe God by way of each His majesty and His artistic energy.

The Majestic God

The context for this psalm makes its truths all of the extra astounding. We see its creator, the majestic king David, bowing beneath a better Majesty, the everlasting God. It could be loads like sitting beside the late Queen Elizabeth, the longest-serving British monarch, and listening to her confess in worship, “O Lord, how majestic is your identify!”

Our English translations place two occurrences of the phrase “Lord” beside one another. The primary time, every letter is capitalized (“LORD)”; within the second, solely the L is capitalized (“Lord”). And that’s as a result of they’re two totally different phrases within the Hebrew.

The Bible begins with God and His glory and never man along with his want.

The primary phrase is Yahweh (or Jehovah). It’s the identify Moses obtained when he requested God, “If I come to the individuals of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has despatched me to you,’ and so they ask me, ‘What’s his identify?’ what shall I say to them?” and God responds, “I AM WHO I AM. … Say this to the individuals of Israel: ‘I AM has despatched me to you.’” (Ex. 3:13–14).

God’s identify is the revelation of Himself. Certain up in His identify is a proof of all that He’s: wondrous and luxurious, creator and sustainer of everybody and all the pieces, everlasting, infinite, unchangeable in His energy and perfection, and so forth. Irrespective of individuals’s response, God is everlastingly majestic. He’s the Majestic One.

This majestic identify of God, we discover in verse 2, is opposed by “the enemy and the avenger.” And this opposition is silenced not by man’s personal energy however by frailty: “Out of the mouths of infants and infants, you could have established energy.”

Isn’t this how God works? It wasn’t by its energy, in spite of everything, that Israel defeated Goliath however via a God-dependent shepherd boy (1 Sam. 17:1–11, 23–45). Or take into account Paul’s phrases to the Corinthians:

Take into account your calling, brothers: not a lot of you had been clever in accordance with worldly requirements, not many had been {powerful}, not many had been of noble start. However God selected what’s silly on the earth to disgrace the clever; God selected what’s weak on the earth to disgrace the sturdy; God selected what’s low and despised on the earth, even issues that aren’t, to convey to nothing issues which might be, in order that no human being would possibly boast within the presence of God. (1 Cor. 1:26–29)

After we acknowledge ourselves to be frail, we are able to embrace an id stronger than something we are able to muster by our personal benefit.

The Creator God

If the primary two verses depict a king bowing down earlier than a Majesty, verses 3–4 describe the shepherd-boy-turned-king mendacity on his again, pondering the vastness of the evening sky. “The heavens,” David writes in one in every of his different poems, “declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1).

David knew solely a fraction of what we all know. He didn’t know concerning the Milky Means. He had no conception of sunshine years, galaxies, billions of stars, and so on. However as he lay there and regarded, he realized that every star being in its appointed place, the alternation between nighttime and dawn remaining fixed, and all the opposite heavenly wonders he might understand had been outcomes not of coincidence however of divine windfall.

How totally different David’s phrases in verse 3 are from these of many in our world! Many at the moment imagine the universe to be merely a mixture of “cosmic chemical accidents”—a set of molecules held in suspension and carried out by pure processes. However the biblical worldview says, “No, behind the universe is the creator God.”

And this omnipotent Creator is personally concerned with His creatures. David marvels on the surprise that the creator God is “aware of him” (v. 4). He cares for him. Certainly, that the Almighty sacrificially loves and cares for His individuals is distinctive to Christianity. The story of faith is one by which man tries to construct as much as a distant deity; Christianity claims that the Creator has stepped down into time.

What Is Man?

The psalm’s concluding verses communicate of man in relation to each his dignity and his dominion.

Right here is man because the central character within the work of creation. He’s “topped … with glory” as God’s image-bearer and distinguished from the animals, over which he has dominion (vv. 5–6). That’s, man receives the accountability of ruling over God’s world underneath the authority of God’s Phrase. Actually, these verses are a commentary on Genesis 1: man residing underneath God’s Phrase, tending to the world in its pristine magnificence.

Why, we surprise, does the world look so totally different at the moment than the way it’s described in Psalm 8? The reply is present in Genesis 3, which describes the autumn and insurrection of humanity. In a phrase, our dignity is greater than matched by our depravity.

Man guidelines over God’s world underneath the authority of God’s Phrase.

To be wicked doesn’t imply that we’re as unhealthy as we presumably might be. Somewhat, it implies that each space of our lives—our minds, wills, feelings, our bodies, and habits—is affected by sin. We’re marked by dignity as made in God’s picture, but in addition by depravity as sinners earlier than God’s sight. The picture of God in us isn’t extinguished however obscured, just like the outdated castles of Scotland which were ruined by the weather. Their magnificence isn’t obliterated, however it’s spoiled. They’re superb ruins.

Little doubt, our depravity spoils God’s good designs. Each time we step out from beneath God’s authority, dysfunction ensues.

Jesus: Majestic God and Sinless Man

We learn this psalm, then, with a way of longing. We await its better achievement, anticipating the day when the created order shall be restored to its unique function.

David wrote looking forward to Jesus—the proper man, the final Adam, the Good Shepherd and King of Kings. He fulfills all that’s represented in Psalm 8. He’s the Majestic One. He has been raised, seated far above all authority and dominion, above each identify on this age and for the ages to return. And He has borne the curse that has befallen us in our spoil, starting even now to take away the results of our sin.

The Holy Spirit offers us Psalm 8 to awaken us from our self-centeredness, urging us to see ourselves within the gentle of the data of God. Solely then can we stand with the redeemed and say, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your identify in all of the earth! You could have set your glory above the heavens.”

This text was tailored from the sermons “The Basis for Reward” and “God and Man” by Alistair Begg.