20260719 Psalm 8 How Majestic is your name in all the earth

 In 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft travelled to the moon. Two astronauts left a tiny disk that included messages of peace and goodwill from leaders of the world. Pope Paul VI sent the text of Psalm 8![i] This means that when humanity reached the moon, which was the greatest human achievement, Christians still can praise, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” We do not boast in Man’s achievements, we praise God. Psalm 8 is a Psalm of praise.[ii] It is a declaration of praise that invites us, God’s people, to praise the LORD.

Ps 8:1, 8:9 begin and end with praising God for his majesty in all the earth. Ps 8:1b-8 celebrates God for the order of creation and the order of redemption. The themes of creation and redemption repeat in two cycles, first in Ps 8:1-2 and Ps 8:3-8.

My goal with this message is to celebrate God’s Majesty in His Name, God’s Majesty in Creation, and God’s Majesty in Redemption.

First, we look at God’s Majesty in his Name in Psalm 8:1, 9

In this first point, I want to highlight the majesty of God’s name. Even the meaning of God's name should lead us to praise him!

Psalm 8:1, 9

Ps 8 begins and ends with “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

God’s name is four Hebrew letters. No one knows exactly how to pronounce it exactly. It was never spoken in fear of breaking the third commandment, using the name of the Lord in vain. In academia, God’s name is pronounced, “Yahweh” and in some circles of Christians and Cults, they pronounce God’s name “Jehovah.”

In the Hebrew Bible, when you see the four letters that make up God’s name, there’s a note in the margin that says, when you see God’s name, say “LORD” instead, which is “Adonai” in Hebrew. This tradition testifies to the deep reverence for God’s name.

So what do these four letters mean? God revealed his name in the burning bush to Moses in Exod 3. God sent Moses to Pharaoh. When Moses asked, who will I say sent me, God’s replies, "tell them ‘I am’ sent you.” God's name is “I am.” When God offers his name, he says “I am.” When others refer to "I am," they say, “He is.” This is what those four letters that stand for God’s name, mean, "He is."

The name, “He is” or “I am” is so majestic. While everything is in the process of becoming and changing, and aging, “God is.” In John 18:4-6, before Jesus was arrested, Jesus asked the group who came to arrest him, “Who is it you want?” They replied, “Jesus of Nazareth.” In John 18:5, Jesus said, “I am” and the group fell to the ground. In the book of Revelation, God’s name, “He is” developed into “the one who is, who was, and who is to come” or the name “the alpha and omega,” because “he is,” he was in the beginning and will be in the end and is the one who just is, he never changes.

Application

God’s name speaks to his infinity, is faithfulness by remaining the same, and his holiness is being different from the changing creation. God’s name is majestic. The appropriate response to God’s name is praise!

The Bible gives us many reasons to praise God. According to Isa 43:7, God created us to worship him. According to according to Exod 7:16, God saves us to worship him. According to John 4:23, God desires and loves our praise. According to Deut 6:13, God commands our worship. In addition, the Bible teaches us that we become like the things we worship. Negatively, according to Ps 115:8, those who make or trust in idols become like them. Positively, 2 Cor 3:18 says that we become like God as we behold his glory! For all these reasons we praise. Nothing satisfies our souls more than Praising the Lord for his majestic name. It fits with our design, it responds to God’s commandments, it pleases God, and there is nothing greater in life than joyfully doing what we were made to do. Let us praise the majestic name of LORD. This is what we do every Sunday when we gather with Christians, listen to the word read and preached, pray, and enjoy communion together. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Second, we look at God’s Majesty in Creation in Psalm 8:1, 3.

In this second point, I want to show that creation itself is a call to worship.

Psalm 8:1, 3

Ps 8:1, 3 describe God’s glory in creation. The Psalmist declares in Ps 8:1, “You have set your splendor or majesty, or glory upon the heavens.[iii] Then in Ps 8:3, he marvels, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers ….”

The Psalmist is in awe of the creator when he marvels at his creation.

Application

When I was 23, I was a very young Christian. I worked with an NGO in Haiti. Outside of work hours, I spent a lot of time with my colleagues going on adventures. I was the only Christian among my colleagues, and we had many conversations about faith. They wanted me to prove that God exists. One day, I tried something. On one of our adventures, we were on a beautiful beach at sunset. And I said, “Look at this beautiful sunset. It reveals the glory of God!” One of my colleagues responded, “Yeah, I don’t see it.” God reveals his majesty in creation, but not all have the eyes to see. A sunset may not have effectually called my atheist friends to repent, but it is a call to worship for those who do believe.

Now, if the heavens declared the glory of God in the ancient world, how much more is it the case, today. Modern science inspires awe as it reveals how small we are in the created universe. So that our hearts can marvel at God the creator.

We now know that our galaxy is a hundred thousand light years across. So, if we travelled at the speed of light, which is 300 000 km/s it would take 100 000 years to get across our galaxy. Our universe contains about 2 trillion galaxies. There are more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on earth.

We think the earth is big, but even within our own solar system, the size of the earth is the equivalent of one pixel on a television. How much more insignificant we are in our galaxy and our universe! And still, Ps 8:3 tells us that what we see up there, the heavens, the moon, and the stars, are the work of God’s fingers. Not the work of God’s hands but his fingers to testify to God’s greatness, and his care for the finest details. Our scientific knowledge of the world gives us so many reasons to praise God for his order in creation.

Nobel Laureate Professor Steven Weinberg, though a skeptic, notes, life, as we know it, would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values. Were they off just a bit, we would not exist. The sun had to be exactly 93 million miles away. Further away, we would freeze, and any closer, we would burn. If the earth were closer to the center of our galaxy, we would be destroyed by radiation. We are exactly in the right spot. We are also in the right spot to observe. Elsewhere, there would be too much light. Here, we have enough darkness to see the sky. From so many different perspectives, we see incredible order in God’s created world.

Aristotle said that should a man live underground only know human art and invention, and afterwards be brought up into the day to see the glories of the skies and the earth, he would immediately pronounce them the work of, the one we Christians now call God. Creation itself is a call to worship. Let us praise God, his majesty is revealed in Creation!

Third, we look at God’s Majesty in Redemption in Psalm 8:2, 4-8.

In this third point we see that understanding God's dealings in human affairs leads us to praise.

Psalm 8:2, 4-8

Psalm 8:2

Ps 8:2 reads, “Out of the mouth of babies and infants you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.” In this verse, babies and infants represent the weak and the humble. Their mouth represents their prayers. God works in history through the weak and humble. Only a powerful God can achieve his goals through the weak. The “enemy and the avenger” refer to those who oppose God’s Kingdom. God is in the business of blessing all the families of the earth as people place their trust in Christ and submit to him as King. Enemies of God are all those who reject for themselves and hinder for others the enjoyment of eternal life that God offers.

According to Ps 8:2, God overcomes his enemies by answering the prayers of the weak. Throughout redemptive history, God chooses the small. He chose the small nation of Israel, and then David the youngest of 8 brothers.

In Matt 21, Jesus arrived in Jerusalem for his final week before the crucifixion. Following miracles, children cried out “Hosanna to the Son of David!” The religious leaders were indignant, but Jesus just quoted Ps 8:2 to them, saying, “Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise.” This is the pattern in which God operates in the world. This is how God reveals his glory. He raises up the lowly and humbles the proud. This pattern is fulfilled in Christ's redeeming work. Isaiah 53 prophecies the ministry of Jesus in this way, “Isa 53:2For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. ... 5But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”

The prophet foresaw, that the LORD would fulfill his purposes of salvation through weakness. Jesus humbled himself and did not fight to provide salvation for the world. If God used the powerful to achieve his purposes, the powerful would receive glory. But, God uses the mouths of infants, so that it is obvious that God is the one who achieves his purposes and is worthy of all praise!

Psalms 8:4-8

Psalm 8:4-8 returns to the redemptive themes. The Psalmist asks, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him, or visit him?” In contrast to the glory above the heavens and the moon and stars, humans seem insignificant. But the heavens are not the only revelation we have. God has also given us his Word to interpret his world.

Ps 8:5-8 clearly alludes to Gen 1. According to Ps 8:5, God crowned humanity with glory and honor. According to Ps 8:6, humanity has dominion over the works of God’s hand and God put all things under his feet, the beast of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea. No human is insignificant. According to God himself, we were created to rule the world. Psalm 8 celebrates God’s creation of humanity.

What is striking about Psalm 8, is that this is a meditation of Genesis 1, after sin has entered the world. It affirms the goodness of humanity even after sin entered the world. Human beings remain incredible creatures! We remain image bearers called to manifest God's glory to the ends of the earth!

There is also a sense that, in a world of sin, Psalm 8 does not feel true. Often, humanity does not rule over creation, we abuse creation. For Psalm 8 to be true, the redemption of humanity must be true. When we read Psalm 8 in the context of the book of Psalms and the rest of the OT, we can see that it finds its fulfillment in Christ. While it rehearses and celebrates the creation of humans of Genesis 1, the phrase from Ps 8:6, "you have put all things under his feet" echoes Gen 3:15, the first promise of the Messiah who will crush the devil's head with his feet. While God created humanity to have dominion, the rest of the book of Psalms narrows this human dominion to the Messiah’s dominion. According to Psalm 2, the one who has dominion is the Messianic King. According to Ps 110, the one who defeats God’s enemies and makes them a footstool is the Messianic King.

Daniel 7 connects the themes of a son of Man and his dominion, both found in Psalm 8 to the Messiah. Daniel 7:13-14 reads, “I saw one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. 14 And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” The human dominion described in Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 finds its fulfillment in the Messiah, the true human, who comes to rule and restore.

The author of Hebrews interprets Psalm 8 in the same way. Heb 2:5-8 declares that Psalm 8 is about Jesus. He quotes Psalm 8, then writes, “6But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” The text turns from contemplating the insignificance of humanity in the universe to praising God’s Majesty in Redemption when he turns to Scripture. We must do this too.

Application

If all we have is the universe to stare at, we will feel insignificant. Atheists often come to this conclusion. This is a famous quote from Bertrand Russel, a 20th century philosopher: “Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; … his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.” By looking at the universe, this is the right conclusion. It doesn’t matter in the end if you live a nice life or a bad life, everything will burn in the end anyway. Nothing matters.

Like the Psalmist, we must turn from the heavens to the Scriptures. There we learn God has crowned us with honor and glory to rule. Though we have failed in that rule, the celebration of Genesis 1 remains. God provides a human, God the Son incarnate, the second Adam, the Messianic King, the Son of Man, to fulfill the human mandate. He became the weak baby of Ps 8:2. He took the form of a servant, and manifested God's power through weakness. It is through his humility and offering his life for the sins of the world that he conquered his enemies. He was exalted on high and is the human king of Ps 8:6 who has dominion over all the creation and will one day have everything under his feet. We can praise God for His Majesty in Redemption.

Conclusion

Psalm 8 is on the moon! It begins and ends with "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" The moon landing was the greatest human achievement, but still, we remain creatures who must worship our creator. Psalm 8 is a call to worship God’s Majesty for his name, his creation, and his redemption.

There is no being like him – He is, he was, and will be, the unchanging, faithful, true to himself, God. In the face of a galaxy 100,000 light-years across that is one two trillionth of the universe, we might feel like a pixel on a screen, but we are a pixel crowned with glory and honor. We all have significance because God declares us significant. Not only this, because Ps 8 affirms our dignity after sin, we have hope for redemption. The Father sent The Son. He visited us and cared for us. His loving dominion will know no end. We must praise God’s Majesty for his name, his creation, and his redemption.

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[i] Nancy L. DeClaisse-Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, and Beth LaNeel Tanner, The Book of Psalms, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), Epub Edition. Psalm 8.

[ii] Psalm 1-2 introduce the book of Psalms. Psalm 1 declares that the Blessed Life is one that meditates on God’s Word. Psalm 2 introduces the main character of the Psalms, the Messianic Davidic King who will rule the entire earth. Psalm 3-7 are Psalms of distress. Psalm 8 is the first Psalm of Praise.

[iii] Waltke lectures – “Above” the heavens.