Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and infants, you have established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. — Psalm 8

Good morning, CTK. It is such a pleasure to be up here with you guys this morning. If you don't know who I am, my name is Paul Deschamps, and I serve this church as our director of youth ministry. Some of you may not know, or if you've been here all summer, you've been hearing this: our senior pastor, Jeff Bradford, is out on sabbatical. I'm told that he is coming back in a couple more weeks, and I'm sure he's going to have a lot of wonderful things to teach us. But what that means for you is that we've hit the bottom of the barrel, and you get me this morning. So the joke's on you guys, I guess. But as we dive into this text, let me pray for us this morning.

Lord, you are majestic. You've given us your word, and it's a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. We pray that you send your spirit this morning to fill our hearts and that you would hear these words that we offer up to you and that they would be pleasing to you. We pray this in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.

This past spring, I had the great experience with Joel Eaton and Alex Clark. We took five high school guys on a backpacking trip into the Southern Virginia wilderness. It was an amazing time, but the highlight of our trip was that as we camped up on the top of Mount Rogers, the forecast was clear and there were no clouds. There was an open field with no obstructed view from trees. The moon wasn't even set to rise until 4 AM. So what that meant for us is as we were going to bed, we got a full blast view of the night sky with no light pollution from the moon, no light pollution from cell phones, no light pollution from the cities. It was the full glory of the stars, and it was awesome. It was amazing as we laid there and looked at the vast heavens. We were privileged just to lay there and see that there was a God who was so big, and we all felt small. We all felt that good kind of small where everything feels okay. Everything feels right.

As I was reading the Psalm and preparing to preach today, I couldn't stop thinking about that moment. It was easy to see why. The Psalm is one of the most beloved Psalms of the Psalter. It's one of the most quoted Psalms in all of the New Testament. As we explore this Psalm, we'll see that it is directing us not only to worship a majestic Creator, but it points us forward and helps us see a majestic Jesus. When we study this text, we can feel the wonder that David had over the universe. We're also obligated to see how he felt obligated to such a God. David, if you read these words, he's left speechless.

The point of this Psalm is really clear. When you read it and hear it, you notice something right off the bat. You look at verse one, you look at verse nine, they're the same. It's the same words. When you write a poem and you bracket your poem with the same starting line and the same closing line, you want your audience to know this is the point. This is the point of what I'm writing. Let's hear it one more time. He says, "Oh Lord, my Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth?" How majestic is the name of the Lord? David intends to use the middle verses of this text as his proof text to show us what he means—how this Lord is so majestic.

So what is so majestic about the name of the Lord? I'm not going to dig too much into this, but we see right there in your translation, "Lord" might be in all caps, and this is the covenant name Yahweh. We see this hundreds of times in the Old Testament, and it's the name that God gave himself. I'm not going to unpack that. A couple weeks ago, James preached a wonderful sermon on Psalm 110 that really digs into this name "Lord," and so I would encourage you to go back and listen to that if you haven't had the chance.

God's Name and the Majesty of Creation

But why I pointed to it here is we're told the name of the Lord is majestic and that name is Yahweh. Why did he give us a name? When you meet somebody and you give them your name, that's how you start a relationship. You don't talk about "this guy that I know," but if you say, "I met Randy," then I have his name. We can go from there.

God does this, and we see it for the first time in Exodus 3:14. We learn about Moses, and he's charged with leading his people out of Egyptian slavery. He's afraid and says to God, "Well, who shall I say sent me?" What he's asking is: whose authority do I have to tell the king of Egypt, Pharaoh, that he needs to release his slave workforce? And how do I convince all the Israelite slaves that they should come with me and fear this God more than Egyptian whips and soldiers?

And God says, "Tell him Yahweh sent you. Tell him I AM sent you. Tell him I AM THAT I AM sent you. Tell them that the Creator God who has no beginning, he has no end—he was, he is, and he is to come forever and ever—sent you."

I AM THAT I AM — Exodus 3:14

This is a name that's greater than Pharaoh. In using this name, David is reminding us that this is the God who is sovereign over everything. He's sovereign over all things, and his name is majestic. This gives us so much hope.

The Psalm of the Astronomer

David doesn't stop at the name though. As he digs into these verses, we see this hope and majesty that comes from the Lord. This hymn is a hymn of praise. One of the many names for this hymn is "the Psalm of the Astronomer," and it's easy to see why.

David is using his reflections on the night sky to frame his thoughts. Right there in verse one, David tells us:

You have set your glory above the heavens. — Psalm 8:1

God's glory is over the universe. It's higher than the universe.

As we grasp what this means, think about our own universe. Think about what we know of stars and space and planets. The scope is absolutely jaw-dropping. Just the facts of the Milky Way, our own home galaxy, are so mind-blowing. But researchers believe that there's approximately up to 200 billion other galaxies in our universe. Our huge galaxy is just a little piece of this massive expanse. The scope of things we know about our world, our galaxy, our universe is majestic. It's captivating.

You know the song "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"? We sing it to our kids: "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are." But we're so blessed through research that if you've ever seen pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, we know those twinkly little stars are massive balls of burning gas and fire. They're amazing. They're beautiful. They're majestic.

David says that God's glory, his majesty, an aspect of his character, one of his attributes, is above the heavens. This should have been stunning to David in 1000 BC, but what we know now should blow us out of our seats. God's glory is nothing less than "wow." That's the best David can come up with.

But we don't stop there. We're told in verse three that he made it. God made it. It's not just his glory above it—he made it.

When I look at your heavens, at the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place — Psalm 8:3

Think of the magnitude and beauty of Earth, then the moon and the stars. Think about the gravitational pull from orbit and how it affects the tides, the seasons, and the way the wind blows. Think about our place relative to the sun—how it's just right. Any closer and we would burn up. Any further away and we would freeze. It's just perfect. And God made this with the work of his fingers.

But this isn't work. When you work, do you use your fingers?

When I build something, when I make something, I grab a shovel and a hammer, go to Lowe's and buy some lumber. It's hard work, and I struggle over it. But God, he uses a finger. What do we use our fingers for? We use our fingers to make a model, like a ship in a bottle—tiny little detail work. We use our fingers to play with Play Doh and make little snowmen and tiny igloos. We use our fingers to make art. We snap Legos together with our fingers. We paint a picture. We write a letter to a friend.

Think of all the amazing things that you've seen maybe this summer as you've gone on vacations and experienced the beauty of our country, our world. Just think, this is the work of his fingers. When you think of God, is this what you think of? A God that is delicate and gentle and yet massive beyond the scope of our imagination? A God who is intimately working out the fine details of his glorious universe.

What are we to do with a god like this? What are we to make of a god that can whisper planets into being? How are we supposed to love and serve a god like this?

The Scale of God's Creation

Tim Keller, he's a pastor in our denomination in New York City. He's shared a story from his earlier years about a Bible teacher that he had around 1970. She taught him something that fundamentally changed his life forever. And this is what she said: "If the distance between the earth and the sun was as thick as a piece of paper, then the distance from earth to our nearest star—the closest star to earth is Alpha Centauri—would be a stack of papers 70 feet high. And then the distance from Earth to the edge of our galaxy would be a stack of papers 310 miles high. And we're just a speck of dust in all of that."

So if God created that with his fingers and he upholds it as he says in Hebrews one with the word of his power—do you ask a God like that to be your assistant? No. He's got to be a king. That God is a king.

How do you regard him today? And how do you think he regards us? Is it like a crazy, power hungry tyrant? Or does he love us?

Keller goes on to say that when you hear the great narratives about creation, and every civilization that's ever walked on this earth has one. When you hear how the world came into existence, almost universally, these theories say it came out of a battle. Great cosmic forces warring together happened and bang, there's earth. You have these gods fighting battles—good and evil. But that's not our story.

The Bible is so different in that we have a God that is so powerful that he uses his fingers to make art for his delight and his glory. We're given a promise, and the promise is that we have a God, and he is a mighty and glorious king, and he's full of majesty, and he's greater than anything we have seen and ever will see.

David reflects upon the glory of God, and it makes him stop. And he asks the question.

Who is man that you are mindful of him? Who is the son of man that you would care for him? — Psalm 8

This is so much more than a deep philosophical question about what is man. This is a rhetorical question. This is David saying when I look at the vastness of the universe, I'm a speck of dust. What am I? This world can crush me. Why man? And why us? Why should we fill the mind of God?

Humanity's Purpose and Value

We're told that we're made a little lower than the heavenly beings. The Psalm says that we're crowned with glory and honor and we're given dominion of the works of God's hands and over the beasts of land and air and sea. These verses should call us back to a memory of Genesis, Genesis one and two—the creation account. According to Genesis, all people are made in the image of God. We're designed to reflect his glory, and we reflect that through our worship of him.

Man is the crown jewel of all of God's created works. We see that after God makes man, he stops. He looks. He says, "It's all very good" and he rests. After that, he gives us a job. It's a kingly job. We're crowned with glory—with the glory of his image. And we have the honor to be in his presence. And then he orders us to rule over the world, rule over all creation.

Our very being is packed deeply with value and meaning. God created us all in his image, and he ordained that we should govern over the world.

What is man that you are mindful of him? Son of man that you would care for him? — Psalm 8

We are nothing less than God's most prized and beloved aspect of creation. We bear his image, we fill his mind, and it's because it's his desire for us to be in a relationship with him.

David was promised by God that from his line would come a king, whose kingdom would reign forever, and of his rule, there would be no end.

See, in writing these words, David did know that he himself was not the Messiah. He was not the promised forever king. But through him, God would bring a true and forever king. David is left here standing in awe of God, and in the majesty of his creation, he's asking, "How is it that you even care for us? Why would you do this? We are like nothing compared to you."

How do we know that God even cares? How do we know that this great God even cared about David and that he even cares about us? If you read a few other translations of this passage, you see different words pop off the page and it helps you understand a little bit more what some of these complicated words mean. I like verse four where it says, "What is the son of man that you would care for him?" If you read in the King James version, it actually says instead of care, it says that you would visit him.

What is the son of man that you would visit us?

It's incredible to think of this creator God, and that we fill his mind. When David writes these words, he doesn't know what's coming fully. Perhaps he means how gracious it is that God would reveal things about him, his name, things of himself through the prophets, give us the law, give us order and structure, and show us the best way to live in knowing him. But what David didn't know, we do know.

The king that they were waiting for would come, and he would visit with us. He would come as a baby. Jesus, the king of kings and the Lord of lords, would come and visit us.

The Son of Man

We see this term, "son of man"—it's an important term in the Bible. We see it a couple books later in the book of Daniel in chapter seven where we see the ancient of days, a reference to God himself. And we see where it says we see the son of man presented before God and he's given dominion and glory. He's given a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him, and his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom is one that shall never be destroyed.

All peoples, nations, and languages should serve him, and his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom is one that shall never be destroyed. — Daniel 7

David didn't realize it, but he was actually giving us a picture of Christ. And what was lacking from himself, he showed us what would be fulfilled with Christ. This is the picture of the son of man, the eternal king whose reign will have no end, taking upon himself the form of a man and descending from heaven as he begins his rule.

Now fast forward to the New Testament. Far and above every other one of his nicknames, the son of man is Jesus' favorite and most used nickname. It's because he is God, and he is the God who would come down in the form of man and visit with us. But he wouldn't come as a majestic ruler. He would come as a humble man, and he would live his life as a servant.

He would come, but he wouldn't be a king. He would be a penniless carpenter. He wouldn't be born in a castle. He would be born in a barn. He wouldn't live in comfort. He would be homeless, and he would wander in a desert. He would be hot, tired, hungry, thirsty. He would face every single temptation that you and I will face. He wouldn't be respected. He would be mocked. He wouldn't be crowned king. He would be crowned with thorns. He wouldn't be placed on a throne. He would be nailed to a cross.

But his humiliation would bring about his exaltation.

Jesus the King

The writer of Hebrews in chapter two actually quotes Psalm eight and tells us that Jesus was made lower than the angels. And through his death and resurrection, he has been crowned with glory and honor. We hear Jesus himself speak these words to his disciples in what we call the great commission from Matthew 28 where he says:

All dominion in heaven and on earth has been given to me. — Matthew 28

Jesus is our long awaited king, and he stands before God to argue on our behalf for the forgiveness of our sins. The dominion of ruling over this world belongs to Jesus. He's the risen king, and he's invited us in to share in his reign.

David was given his status as a king to foreshadow what was coming with Christ, who would be our forever king. And we too, we're invited to be part of that reign. We're invited into Jesus' kingship.

We too get crowned with glory and honor and dominion, and we're all called to serve him. We're all called to go to hard places, to bring the gospel in the places that we don't think is possible. We're called to serve with love and care and to look over his creation—for it's all his. We're called to do that, and he promises us that his power will be sufficient for us.

But sometimes, it doesn't feel that way, does it? If we're honest, sometimes it seems scary. I mean, all too often in the face of such challenge, I feel really small and really weak.

Now that story that I opened with a couple minutes ago about our backpacking trip in Virginia in the beautiful starry night, well, there's more to that story. A couple of you know it. But that night, as we were drifting off to sleep and we're looking out our tents and we're just amazed at the beauty of the starry sky. We fall asleep content knowing that we have a big god. But just as we fall asleep, we're awoken, and it would start what would become the longest night of camping of my entire life.

So we were awoken because a massive black bear had come wandering into our campground. And this bear was smart in that he knew that this area had a lot of hikers and he had learned that when you hang food in a tree, it's like a pinata of fun for this bear. And he found our bag and he was going for it. And as I'm laying there in my tent, I'm like, oh my goodness, there's this bear. It dawned on me that I was the staff member from CTK that was overseeing this trip. And it became my job to get out of my tent and go face a bear. I'm not a small guy, but thinking about that made me feel pretty petite.

I had these visions of realizing that I had to be the last person to stand in between some high school guys and a 400 pound black bear that was hungry. And then I realized I only have a flashlight, a really tiny pocket knife, and I can yell. That was my tool belt to go fight the bear. And so I got out of my tent, and I yelled. Everybody's yelling. We're making a bunch of noise. And thankfully, the bear ran off. We'd hear him a couple times throughout the night, but he never put any of us in very real danger. But I felt so small that night. Every stick that cracked in the woods, every acorn that would drop, every squirrel that ruffled leaves—that was fuel for my imagination to run wild to picture myself having to fight off this bear. By the grace of God, I never had to use the pocket knife, or else I probably wouldn't be here.

But what stands out to me about this story is this: I went to bed confident in my God. I was pleasantly small in the scope of his kingdom. But when I ran into that bear, my perspective changed. I took my eyes off the god of the universe, and all I could see was the enemy I had to fight. All I could see was the bear. What was a majestic night turned into a night of terror. I had no dominion over that bear. If he had wanted to, he could have killed me real easy. I was totally helpless over one of God's majestic creatures that's supposed to point me back to his glory.

Now, I hope that most of you in this room have never been in a situation with an actual bear. We feel this though. Ever feel like the weight of this world is crushing? Be it your work, be it strained relationships with friends, with family. Maybe it's depression. Maybe it's loneliness. Maybe it's an addiction to drugs or alcohol or porn. Maybe you've suffered the hands of an abusive relationship. What if it's Alzheimer's or Zika or even the common cold? It isn't often that we feel like we really have dominion over very much at all.

If I look to myself for my authority over the problems of this world, I have very little to give. I need a better king than myself. I need the king. I need the one who has all the authority that I lack.

God's Majesty Over His Enemies

There's one more mark of majesty that I really want us to see today. How does God deal with our enemies, with his enemies? As we've spent time looking at this text, you might be tempted to ask why do we skip verse two? It's a little odd if you read it. It seems almost out of place. So when we look at the majesty of God, we see it plainly in the created universe. We see this big God. We see this intercessing king and it's almost unnecessary to include verse two. It seems a little weird. Let's read it.

You've set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. — Psalm 8:2

As we read this Psalm, we could almost do without this verse. We've seen that God is majestic, and we are not. We could do without it except for one thing: this verse is the only verse of the Psalm that's actually quoted by Jesus. So we need to see why this was significant to him. Verse two speaks of how the majestic God deals with his enemies.

First, we have to see that God has enemies. If this God, the God that created the universe, is so big and so over everything, does he really have an enemy? There's no problem for him. There's no enemy that he can't face. All power, all glory, all dominion is his. There's no enemy that even stands a chance at defeating this God.

So why not just squash them? Why not wipe them out? Gone. No more enemies. No more problems. And what are these babies doing here? Why the babies? Because it tells us something about God. It tells us the way he works, and we're told that God takes what is weak and he takes what is worthless in the eyes of the world, and he uses it to stop his enemies to bring him glory.

This wasn't a foreign concept to David's audience. This is the story of the people of Israel. God would take a weak, enslaved nation who would cry out to rescue and Yahweh—that all caps Lord. He would deliver them. He would choose for himself a people that was the most insignificant group of people in the entire ancient Near East and he would take them from slavery and he would plop them right down in the middle of warring Gentile nations. And he would work. He would show himself through the widow, through the outsider, through the foreigner, through the old barren woman. He would work through the lowest common person. God does this, and it humbles the proud, and it gives him all the glory.

Just who are these enemies of God? Who is it that would dare stand against him? And if you read Psalm 8 and you understand that the point is to demonstrate the majesty of God, then his enemies are anybody that would deny that he is majestic. These are not enemies in that they're opponents struggling for victory and interstellar dominance. These are people. These are people that are created in the image of God just like you and just like me. And there are people that have forgotten him, people that have turned their back on him. I don't know about you, but this sounds like me. And how often am I in awe of this God? And the next second, I turn around, there's the bear. An enemy here is any one of us who would not see his glory.

And his battle plan, if we're even going to call it a battle plan, is to use babies and infants. And from the cries of their mouths, they will silence the enemies of God. There's good news in this for the enemies. God's word says that he's a merciful God. He's slow to anger, and he's abounding in steadfast love. There's no deed that he can't forgive, and his plan for his enemies is to silence their opposition and to draw them into wonder. And he does this through the cry of babies.

Now, in my time as a parent, I've heard my share of crying. When your baby is sad, when your baby is hurt, or they're hungry, they're needy, and they cry out to you, and you will do just about anything that you can to make it stop. You want to fix them. You want to make it better. As their parent, they recognize that you are the one, that you're their person. You can fix what is wrong. They need you to be their advocate. We see this in Psalm 8. God hears the cry of babies, the weak, the insignificant, and he uses their cry to humble the proud.

Jesus and the Triumphal Entry

This is the context from which Jesus will quote this Psalm. If you look at Matthew 21, in this chapter, we see what's known as the triumphal entry, and this is where Jesus is walking to Jerusalem. He's walking to his death. He knows this. And he's ridden in on a donkey to the people's cry of Hosanna, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord, and he makes his way to the temple. And we see him overturn tables and clear out money changers. And as he does this, we see something remarkable.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. — Matthew 21:14

This is the weak. This is the broken, the unclean, the forgotten. He healed them. Returning to the text:

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. And they said to him, "Do you not hear what these are saying?" And Jesus said to them, "Yes. Have you never read, 'Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise?'" — Matthew 21:15-16

Here we have it. Jesus has ridden into town. He's received praise. He's cleansed the temple. He's healed the broken, and these children are crying out, Hosanna to the son of David. And the religious leaders are seeing this, and they look at Jesus and they say, Jesus, do you hear what they're saying? Of course, he hears what they're saying. He's right there. He is causing it. Their question isn't a question to see if he's paying attention. Rather, it is to ask Jesus to understand: do you know what they are saying? The people are saying this is it. This is the Messiah. This is the chosen one. This is the one, the last one from the line of David. This is the forever king. He's our guy. What the teachers of the law are telling Jesus is you had better stop this. Do you hear this blasphemy? Do you think you are the promised one, the Messiah? They think you're the deliverer.

If you don't put a stop to this, we will. Now, don't miss this. And Jesus looks at them and he says, yes. Yes. I hear it. Yes. I understand it. Yes. I know the implications of their words. Yes. I know what I am about to do. And then he goes and he quotes Psalm 8:2.

Haven't you read out of the mouths of babies and infants, you have prepared praise? — Psalm 8:2

See, the words used by Jesus are a little bit different from the words used by David, and the difference is this. In Psalm 8, we don't know what these babies are saying. We're told that from their mouths, God has established strength to silence the haters. Here, we get a glimpse of what they're saying. See, Jesus says, out of the mouths of these babies, you have prepared praise. See, these aren't cries of woe. These are children. They're shouting Hosanna.

Now, if you're not familiar with the word Hosanna, that's okay. It's not a very common word. We most often hear it around Palm Sunday around Easter time. But if you look at the breakdown of this word, it's not an English word for sure. It's also not even a Greek word, but this is a borrowed word from the Hebrew. And if you look, you cross reference where does this word occur? It occurs in the Old Testament in one place, and it's from the Psalms.

Please save us. — Psalm 118:25

Look, we don't have to wait any longer. We hear their words. Please save us, Son of David, Son of Man.

The teachers of the law knew that salvation, forgiveness, righteousness, and healing alone comes from the Lord, from Yahweh, from the great I am. And these children are crying out, oh Jesus, you are the majestic one. Hosanna. Save us. And Jesus looks the religious leaders in the eyes and says, yes. I am he. This praise due to Yahweh is due to me, and I will not silence them. For out of their mouths comes the recognition of my majesty. Yes. I hear them.

Friends, these are words that silence an enemy, and these are words that get you fit for a cross. Yes. Jesus is entitled to all the majesty of the God who created the entire universe, but he was willing to lay it down for our sake, to lower himself below his angels, to live as a servant, and to die. But death could not contain him. And on the third day, he rose from the dead and he ascended into heaven and he's seated at the right hand of God.

When we hear David write Psalm 8:1, we can hear:

Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth? — Psalm 8:1

But for verse 9 now, we can put in a new name. Oh, Jesus, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

An Invitation to Gaze Upon Majesty

CTK, here's my invitation to you. Will you stop this week and gaze? Will you gaze upon the majesty of the Lord? Like, seriously, I dare you to go do this. Will you go out? Will you look at a night sky? Will you look at the sea, the beach, the mountains, the places as you look back from your pictures over vacations this summer? Will you look out? Will you look at the people of God? What he's doing in their lives? And will you cry out to his goodness? Will you look at Jesus and just wonder at him for a minute? Like, it's amazing.

The Lord God is the Lord of majesty over all creation, and he created us with a purpose, and that purpose was that we would be in a relationship with him. We get to be in that relationship because Jesus is the majestic one, and he alone can save us.

We look at him today, and if you never have before, would you cry out, Hosanna, Jesus, please save me? Again, crying out the words of infants, you can move from being an enemy of God to being a son or a daughter of the king. You can do this right here, right now, in your seat. We don't need an altar call. We don't need big words. We don't need to be showy. You can do this without blinking.

I ask you, will you put your faith in Jesus today? He is majestic, and he has promised to save you forever and ever. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.