“Track 8: Big God, Little Me (Psalm 8)” | 5/19/24
Psalm 8 | 5/19/24 | Will DuVal
It is fitting that we are worshiping our way together through one of the great chapters in all of the Bible - Psalm 8 - this morning for Church in the PARK (and I know I CHEATED a little by skipping Psalms 5-7; don’t worry- we’ll save those for the next 3 weeks, but I think you’re gonna understand WHY I wanted to preach Psalm 8 out here in the glory of God’s creation).
It would be even MORE fitting (and also a lot COOLER!) if we would’ve moved our service time to 10 Pm instead, because I’m convinced that David WROTE this psalm at NIGHT, out under the breathtaking canopy of the starry night sky. Perhaps God even moved David to pen these lyrics back when he was a humble SHEPHERD, keeping watch over his flocks by night, lying on his back, gazing up into the heavens.
Did you know you that on a perfect night “with the naked eye, you can see about 5,000 stars? With just a four-inch telescope, you can see about 2 million stars. And [from the most POWERFUL telescopes we’ve built so far], you can see more than 1 billion stars.” (David Guzik, “Psalm 8”) But astronomers estimate we’ve discovered less than 1% of the more than 100 billion stars just in our Milky Way galaxy alone. And our galaxy is a pretty averaged sized one… of the estimated 2 TRILLION galaxies out there, for a whopping total of 200 billion trillion stars - kids: that is a “2” followed by 23 “0”s. (https://www.astronomy.com/science/astro-for-kids-how-many-stars-are-there-in-space/ )
Let me try and put the MAGNITUDE of our universe in perspective: if the entire EARTH was the size of just ONE grain of sand (can you see it? OK, that’s the earth…) then our SOLAR system - the sun, mercury, venus, earth, mars… all the way out to NEPTUNE and beyond (R.I.P., Pluto): our solar system would be the size of TWO of our church buildings; TWO WEST HILLSes,
Now, if you shrunk our SOLAR system down, that massive solar system down, to just the size of this grain of sand now, our GALAXY, the MILKY WAY, would be the size of 5 Faust Parks (over 1,000 acres). And finally, if we then took our entire GALAXY, and we shrunk IT down to the size of this grain of sand again, the visible UNIVERSE would be the size of TWO WEST HILLSes again. And that’s just the OBSERVABLE universe; we have no IDEA how big our universe actually IS, nor CAN we, since it’s expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7yFDb1zOA )
Is anyone else starting to feel really, really SMALL?
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Now consider THIS: if we shrunk the entire known universe down to this grain of sand - the Bible says that GOD holds the whole thing - like a tiny grain of sand- in the palm of his HAND -
[*Sing*] “He’s got the whole… UNIVERSE… in his hand.”
“BIG God… little Me.” That’s your title for this morning.
Would you STAND with me - out of reverence for THAT kind of God - as we read HIS word together; hear the word of the Lord, from Psalm 8:
“To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. [Wait- Pastor Brian: Did you bring your GITTITH this morning, to play along, can I get some accompaniment? You forgot it?! Opportunity missed. Nevertheless, this is…] A Psalm of David.
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 [just] a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
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!”
[This is the word of the Lord… Seated…]
I know it’s HOT, so I’ll try and keep this SHORT. As David is laying out in that green pasture beside those still waters, just staring up into the night sky, God gives him FIVE sequential REVELATIONS here. Kids: that means God sends ONE thought into David’s mind, which leads him to ANOTHER thought, which then leads him to ANOTHER thought… FIVE times. So we find 5 TRUTHS here that you and I - LIKE David - ought to “consider”; we need to PONDER, to REFLECT on, MEDITATE on these five truths REGULARLY, in order to keep our lives, and our place in the universe, and most importantly, to keep GOD… in proper perspective.
And that’s meditation #1…
#1- We need to Consider God’s GREATNESS. (vv1-3)
The very FIRST thought we oughta have when we gaze up into the night sky - is the GREATNESS of our God. A God who can not only hold it all in the palm of his hand, but who CREATED it all, v3 says, with “the [mere] work of his FINGER”. God didn’t need an ARM, not even a HAND; his PINKY was enough. Actually we know God didn’t even need THAT, did he? God created the entire universe - seen and unseen - with just a few WORDS. He SPOKE, and it WAS.
Friends: THAT is a GREAT God. A BIG, and POWERFUL God.
And so David’s FIRST thought, and OUR FIRST thought, when we see anything that is GLORIOUS anywhere in Creation - from the night sky to the Grand Canyon to that first ultrasound of your tiny unborn BABY - we ought to IMMEDIATELY be reminded of how much more INFINITELY great the One who CREATED it all is. David’s mind goes IMMEDIATELY to God. Consider how much he communicates to us here in just the opening four WORDS of this Psalm; he communicates that God is PRAISE-worthy, PERSONAL, POSSESSIVE, and PROVIDENTIAL.
“O”! It’s the smallest word - just a single LETTER! - with the BIGGEST message, of PRAISE! When do you say, “OHHHH!”??
I’ve been watching a lot of NBA playoff highlights lately. Anthony Edwards had a dunk with 2 minutes left in a close game, he jumped OVER 7-foot superstar Kevin Durant and absolutely POSTERIZED him; I was watching the highlights while eating my lunch in the office - I JUMPED out of my chair, spit the FOOD out of my mouth and yelled, “OOOOOOHHH!” - I think I SCARED the rest of the staff…
But that’s what you SAY, when you WITNESS, when you CONSIDER something absolutely ASTOUNDING. When there really are no adequate WORDS, to CAPTURE the MAGNITUDE of the GLORY - as you peer over the EDGE of the Grand Canyon, you say: “O”.
That’s PRAISE; David thinks about God and he says: “O”.
And YET, the very NEXT thing David remembers is that SAME awe-inspiring God is also PERSONAL; he says, “O YAHWEH”; you notice the FIRST “Lord” there in your Bibles is in ALL CAPS, that’s like Bible CODE for God’s PERSONAL name, the name he revealed to Moses at the burning bush: YAHWEH. Kids: did you know God has a NAME! My name is Will, your name is ______ or ______, but GOD’S name is YAHWEH. And the transcendent God, who created the entire UNIVERSE, chose to reveal himself to us PERSONALLY - have you ever just stopped to consider THAT? If the President of the United States rolled up into the park right now with his whole entourage, NONE of us would you walk up to him and say, “What’s up, JOE?” And yet the almighty God of the UNIVERSE, who is worthy of INFINITELY more HONOR and reverence has invited you and me to be on a FIRST NAME BASIS with him: “Just call me YAHWEH.”
And why is that? Because THIRDLY, we are his POSSESSION.
“O Yahweh… OUR”. We can call him OUR Lord because WE are HIS people, “a people for his own possession” (1 Pet 2:9). God has ADOPTED us into his heavenly FAMILY. That’s why Jesus taught us to pray WHAT? “OUR Father”. He’s not just “A” father; Yahweh is now OUR father. (Also not just “MY father”, but “OUR” - faith is also PLURAL)
But he’s not just our FATHER, is he?
He is PRAISE-worthy… PERSONAL… POSSESSIVE… and yet he’s ALSO PROVIDENTIAL. He’s our father AND our LORD.
That’s what the SECOND “Lord” here - different word; Adonai - means: “Master, OWNER”. God is our sovereign RULER; he has total DOMINION over every square INCH of the universe he created; Abraham Kuyper famously noted: “There’s not one square INCH in the whole domain of existence over which God doesn’t cry, “MINE!”” And God doesn’t just rule over the UNIVERSE, friends; he rules over OUR lives as well. He is OUR Lord.
And he is a MAJESTIC one indeed. Some of your translations say “how EXCELLENT” is his name; He’s all of it and MORE - we couldn’t find enough superlative synonyms in the whole English LANGUAGE to exhaust God’s greatness. And every square INCH of the universe he CREATED is FILLED with his glory; every molecule SHOUTS his glory; Psalm 19 says: “The heavens declare [they RESOUND] the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”
As a matter of fact, the whole universe isn’t even capable of CONTAINING God’s glory; if the universe was a TUPPERWARE, God’s GLORY would be SPILLING out over the sides. V1 says God had to set his glory “ABOVE the heavens”.
And how does God SHOW OFF all of his glory and power, his greatness and STRENGTH?
Look at v2: “ Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
[God has] established [His] strength because of [his] foes”.
KIDS: How many of y’all, when you pick teams in GYM class (actually, I bet they don’t DO that anymore, do they; they try and protect your self-esteem a little more these days, don’t they?). But IMAGINE your class was picking teams - maybe at RECESS, when the teachers aren’t paying attention - how many of you are the TOP pick? Everybody wants you on their team?
Okay- now I know who I need to pick to be on MY kickball team, if we get a game going here after lunch. Because I need all the help I can GET.
But here’s what GOD does - he lines ALL of us up and he says, “Okay, I pick BO… and DAWSON… and; you know what, No, they’re too big. They’re practically TODDLERS now. And the Hebrew words here in v2 mean “BABIES”; NURSING infants…
So God says, “Actually, give me LUXTON (he’s 3 months old), and LOGAN and HENRY (they’re 4 months)”; God says, “I’m gonna build the WEAKEST team POSSIBLE”; Why?
So that when He wins ANYWAY, who gets ALL of the glory? GOD does! God ALONE!
And that’s how God’s ALWAYS done it, by the way. 3,500 years ago, God brought down the most powerful empire the world had ever known - Egypt - with WHO? A little baby in a bushel basket. Who grew UP to be God’s MOUTHpiece even though he couldn’t “talk so good” - God said, “GREAT; you’re JUST the guy I’m looking for. That way folks won’t listen to YOU; they’ll listen to ME.”
God used a little RUNT of a pre-teen - this same David - to bring down the most feared WARRIOR Israel had ever seen, Goliath.
Later, God TOLD Israel that he CHOSE them to be his people NOT because there was anything great about THEM, but actually because they were the WEAKEST, SCRAWNIEST nation out there - that way HE could get all the glory for prospering them in SPITE of it.
This is how God WORKS, Church. “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world… so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” (1 Cor 1:27-29)
Jesus QUOTED Psalm 8:2. After he rode into Jerusalem on a humble DONKEY, the Bible says, “the blind and the lame… and the children… [they] came to him” and they were PRAISING him: “Hosanna to the Son of David!”, our long-awaited MESSIAH. And the religious leaders REBUKED them; they said, “Jesus: tell them to STOP; this is EMBARRASSING. The Messiah is gonna ride into town on a WAR horse and recruit US - the wise and powerful - to help him overthrow our enemy, ROME. And Jesus replies, “Have you not READ?!” “You think you’re so WISE; read your BIBLES? ““‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies”.
Jesus said, “Not a WAR horse but a humble DONKEY - Zechariah 9:9; not the wise and powerful, but the weak and power-LESS - Psalm 8:2; and not the Romans, I came to conquer your GREATEST enemies: Sin and Hell and Death ITSELF!”
But the ONLY way to join MY army - the only way to WIN is by LOSING (“whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”). Jesus says: “Mine is an upside-down Kingdom: Victory goes to those who SURRENDER.” “The PROUD will be HUMBLED, but the HUMBLE will be EXALTED”. Those who realize: “Jesus - I can’t DEFEAT my sin, I can’t defeat DEATH; I need a SAVIOR!” Jesus says: “Now THOSE folks I can WORK with!” Now you’re right where I want you: HOPELESS. DESPERATE. Utterly POWERLESS. Like a newborn BABY. Cry out to me like THAT, and we’re ready to play some KICKball. Sorry: no spots on the TEAM for ya if you’re STRONG; God says: “I WILL get ALL of the glory; every last little BIT of it. Cuz friends, he deserves it.
Need proof? V3: Just LOOK UP AT THE HEAVENS, the work of God’s FINGERS. When we DO, we can’t HELP but recognize #1 - God’s GREATNESS. But THEN, what’s the SECOND realization we oughta have?
#2 - We Consider OUR SMALLNESS. (vv3-4)
“What is man that you are [even] mindful of [us],
and the son of man that you care for him?”.
Picture yourself there, lying next to David IN the pasture, looking up: we are filled FIRST with a tiny GLIMPSE of the GRANDEUR and the GREATNESS of GOD. But SECOND, with a SUBSTANTIAL sense of OUR SMALLNESS.
If the universe WAS a grain of sand, do you know how small YOU’D be? Exactly. Psalm 103 blows us WAY out of proportion when it says we’re like “DUST”; we’re not THAT big. Even Psalm 144 overestimates us when it says we’re like a “BREATH”. Friends: we are LESS than that, compared to the magnitude of the UNIVERSE… compared to GOD!
And YET, here’s revelation #3 now:
Consider God’s CARE!! (vv4-5)
That a God like THAT… would look down on tiny, otherwise insignificant creatures like US… and be MINDFUL of us, take NOTE of us.
You know what I bet NONE of you noticed this morning?
The Clostridia. The microscopic, single-celled bacteria living in the soil beneath us. You say, “No, I was more worried about the CICADAS”; the cicadas are the MILKY WAY; the Clostridia is our SOLAR system; the earth is like a single ATOM out of the hundreds of trillions that make UP that bacteria; and you and I are like QUARKS INSIDE that atom (I’ll let you go home and research just how small a QUARK is!).
But here’s the POINT: you didn’t NOTICE that QUARK inside that ATOM inside that CLOSTRIDIA, and yet YOU AND I are far SMALLER than that in comparison to GOD…
And YET, He is MINDFUL of us, friends.
And not just “mindful”; he CARES for us. Actually, the Hebrew word there in v4 literally means: “God VISITS us”.
And he HAS, friends. The INFINITE God of the universe became a QUARK, to come VISIT us. To come be WITH us. He’s not just “YAHWEH” - the great “I am”; the ground of all being, the source of all EXISTENCE; he’s ALSO EMMANUEL - “God WITH us”.
God’s word tells us He cares about us so much that he actually numbers the hairs on our heads (Lk 12:7). That He cares SO much, he collects all of our TEARS in his BOTTLE (Ps 56:8); God cares when we CRY, he draws even NEARER to us, when we need him the most (Ps 34:18).
In fact, God cares about us SO much, that he made us the crowning JEWEL in his work of Creation. Remember Genesis 1: God made LIGHT, and it was GOOD. He made the EARTH, and it was GOOD. He made the SUN & the MOON, the PLANTS & the ANIMALS, and ALL of it was GOOD. But when God made US - human beings - when God “CROWNED us with GLORY and HONOR” by MAKING us in HIS VERY OWN, WHOLLY GOOD IMAGE, THEN God said, “Now THEY are VERY good.” Tobe Meod: EXCEEDINGLY Good.
So good that according to verse 5, we’re just a LITTLE lower than the “heavenly beings”. Now, you may remember from our study of Hebrews last year that when the author of Hebrews quotes this verse, he translates “angels” here; “a little lower than the ANGELS”, because he was reading the Septuagint, the GREEK translation of the Hebrew Bible. But some of you will RECOGNIZE the actual Hebrew word here - ELOHIM; “God made us a little lower than ELOHIM - which 99 times out of 100 in the Old Testament refers to GOD. Sometimes it’s used to refer to the gods of other nations (“you shall have no other ELOHIM before me” (Ex 20:3)), but pretty much NEVER is it used of ANGELS. So some scholars speculate that the Greek translators just had such a theological PROBLEM with the idea of God making measly little humans like US only a LITTLE lower than HIMSELF, that they just changed the word to ANGELS.
I’ll leave THAT one to the Hebrew EXPERTS, but in ANY case, David’s POINT here is that BECAUSE you and I are the ONLY creatures that God made in his very own, very GOOD image, we really are SPECIAL to God, quarks as we may be.
SO special, in fact, that God has given US alone…
#4 - a unique CALLING. David’s FOURTH invitation is to “Consider our CALLING. (vv5-8)
David now remembers the REST of the Creation account from Genesis 1, when AFTER God had made us, he gave us “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”” (Gen 1:28) As David puts it in v6: “ you have put all things under [our] feet”.
We humans have a special ROLE, a special responsibility given to us by God, to take CARE of the rest of Creation. And not only THAT, but as God’s IMAGE-bearers, He actually calls us to REPRESENT Him, to serve as His STAND-ins for God’s OWN personal, intimate CARE for HIS Creation.
Think about THAT the next time your neighbors go on vacation and ask you to water their plants: that’s not just THEIR plants; you’re watering GOD’S plants! That’s not just THEIR dog you’re letting out for a walk; that’s GOD’S dog!
Now, David ENDS here in verse NINE pretty ABRUPTLY. He returns to the refrain he STARTED with: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”. It’s a GLORIOUS truth, no doubt, as we’ve already unpacked. And it gives the chapter some nice CLOSURE; brings it full circle. But it seems pretty ABRUPT. David’s been going on and on for five verses about how much CARE and GLORY and DOMINION God has given to US, to HUMANITY, and then, almost as if he’s in the middle of that thought and he gets interrupted, David stops to exclaim: “O YAHWEH, you are GREAT!” again. WHY??
I hope you’ll allow me an educated GUESS here as we close; I’ll admit - I am reading between the LINES here, specifically, between verse EIGHT and verse NINE. But here’s what I imagine is going on in DAVID’S mind, because I know what’s going on in MY mind as I try and FOLLOW his train of thought here:
When I think about just how great GOD is (or ATTEMPT to, any way)...
And then I think about just how SMALL and INSIGNIFICANT I am by comparison…
And THEN I think about how - in SPITE of it - how MUCH a God like THAT deigns to CARE about an infiniTESimal little creature like me…
SO much that he would actually CHOOSE me - ME, and YOU - to be in CHARGE down here, have DOMINION over ALL of Creation!
PERSONALLY, I’ll just tell you that the very NEXT thought that comes to mind for ME, is actually TWO thoughts: #1 - how incredibly UNQUALIFIED I feel - absolutely out of my DEPTH - to be trusted with that kind of dominion, over ALL the works of God’s hands? And my SECOND thought is just how often I PROVE that to be true, by demonstrating how difficult it is for me to faithfully exercise dominion over, for instance, just the three KIDS in my house. I know an elder is supposed to “manage his household well and keep his children SUBMISSIVE” (1 Tim 3:4), but I’m just TELLING y’all; depending on where you wanna set that BAR, you may be looking for a new PASTOR. I picked Bo up to give him a HUG yesterday, and he SMACKED me in the face. I said, “Bo! Do we HIT?!” He shook his head and said, “No,” he pretended to cry and gave me a hug, and then IMMEDIATELY SMACKED me in the face again. And HE is NOT my most rebellious child.
God: are you sure you’ve left the right guy… the right SPECIES… in CHARGE down here?!
See, Psalm 8 doesn’t just confront us with our SMALLNESS, friends; it confronts us with our SIN-fulness as well. We DON’T always - or even OFTEN! - exercise our dominion faithfully, do we? Not just over “all God’s WORKS”, not just over my little HOUSEHOLD; how about over just MY OWN little LIFE?! I don’t know about YOU, but I’ll admit it: so often, I’m a MESS; I just can’t seem to get it TOGETHER.
David says: On days like that, what do we fall BACK on?
V9: “O YAHWEH, our LORD.” Our Master and Commander; “Jesus, take the wheel; SAVE me from this trainwreck that I’VE brought upon myself, by trying to exercise dominion WITHOUT you.” God: I need YOU, at the helm.
That’s #5, friends: we need to Consider God’s INVITATION. His gracious invitation, to TAKE the reins, and RIGHT the ship, if we will just surrender our lives to HIM, in humble faith.
Won’t you do that TODAY?