A Road Map for Life | Beginning With GodSample

THE CREATOR AND THE CHRIST (Psalm 8)

“O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”

Those nine verses are powerful and profound. Psalm 8 has been called a "Nature Psalm" because it deals so much with God’s created world; the world He spoke into existence. It also deals with the man He fashioned with His own hands. It is a psalm about the Creator.

But this same passage is also referred to as a Messianic Psalm. I love this connection between the Creator and the Savior. The God who made man is the God who became a man without ceasing to be God, so he could restore us to Himself. He is the God of the creation and the New Creation. He is the God who not only created the world and put man in it but also did not leave man to himself and his own devices. Praise God, the Lord Jesus came to us!

Psalm 8 should make you think of both the Creator and the Christ. We know it is a psalm of David but it is not certain exactly when it was written. Most people believe that it was inserted near the end of his life, perhaps in Chronicles 20, when he was commanding Solomon and leaving things behind.

But, I have to think that David wrote this somewhere while he was outdoors. He spent a great deal of time outdoors over the years; from his boyhood in an open field watching a bunch of dirty sheep, to his time on the run hiding in caves. As a warrior on the battlefield, he no doubt spent many a night looking up at the stars, thinking about the God who put them there. Certainly, while riding all day under the hot sun, he also thought about the One who held the sun in place.

He was overwhelmed. This is truly a psalm of worship.

In addition to showing us about David and his acknowledgment of the greatness of God, Psalm 8 points directly to God’s great power. It begins and ends with the same sentence: “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” Notice the exclamation point in both places. It is as if the Psalmist is just overjoyed. He is overcome with it.

When was the last time you were just excited about God? You can tell a lot about a man by what excites him and makes him glad, sad, or mad. David is just overcome with the greatness of his God. Are you?

By the way, when you see the greatness of God, you will see your own smallness. That is why he wrote in verse 4, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” In other words, next to an infinite God, what is finite man? I am nothing. I am a peon, a speck of lint on the page of human history. A ball of dust and clay. Yet, what a great God I serve.

Psalm 8 is a reminder to us that we should be worshipping God. When was the last time you truly worshipped? I am not referring to just the last time you were in a worship service. Worship is not a group sport. Worship is the individual heart's attitude toward God. You can be in a collective worship service and not be worshipping. You can be in a place all alone and worship because worship is when your heart is in awe of who God is.

There are two simple applications here. The first is that you must humble yourself. We should remind ourselves frequently that we are nothing. As a matter of fact, just looking at the big world around us should remind us of how little we are, and how insignificant we are without our great God. Humble yourself today under his mighty hand. Second, you must honor God.

Now see how these two go together. As God is lifted high, we are brought low. It sounds a lot like when John the Baptist said in John 3:30, “He must increase. I must decrease.” Let me challenge you today to spend some time just honoring God, worshipping, and talking to Him about His goodness.

Think about your prayer life. Most of the time when we come to God in prayer, we come to ask for something. When was the last time you came to God and did not ask Him for anything? Think about the last time you came to the Lord and said, “Lord, I just want to praise You, I just want to thank You for who You are and what You have done, I just want to talk to You about Your name.”

This psalm talks about God’s creative work, His sustaining work, and His gracious work of coming to man. Rehearse those simple things.

According to Ps. 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.” In other words, God has put his testimony all around us every day. That is why the Bible says in Romans 1 that the whole world has some light because even in the created world, there is light.

Here is something simple and practical you might be able to do today. Take a walk outside through an open field or through the woods. If that is not possible, just walk to the window. Look up into the sky and consider the God who keeps the sun where it is, who doesn’t let it get even a little bit closer to the earth where we would burn up, or a little further away where we would freeze to death at night. Consider the God who put the moon and the stars there to reflect His glory and His goodness in the world, and let even nature drive you to a reminder of who your God is. He is your creator and He is your Christ.

And while you’re at it, talk to someone else about His greatness today. Use even the world around you to testify to the goodness of your God. Say to somebody today, “My Father put that there. My Savior keeps all of this in motion and working like it is supposed to.” In other words, use the world around you as a tool for witnessing, to point people to the God who created all things and then came to man so that we could know Him personally.

I just want to say today, “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”