Book of Psalms - Psa. 8, Vs. 1-9 (11/27/2022)

All right, good morning We're gonna start we are in Psalm chapter 8

We've just kind of been going through the Psalms for those of you who have not been able to join us recently Glad to have you

We are in Psalm chapter 8. We've gone from 1 to 2 to 3, 4. We're just going right through them

It may take my entire lifetime to get through all the Psalms because there's so many of them Don't know if we'll get through all of it

I say that pretty much every week, but I think we might this is kind of a shorter Psalm In light of the season we're in we just celebrated

Thanksgiving I think this is a super appropriate Psalm because this one kind of has a feeling of thanks to it

It is You know, we've been we've been looking at David's prayer life and how he deals with Trouble and how he works through that trouble and how the

Lord lifts him up out of that trouble and How he goes from a low place to a high place and we've seen the different The different mental states he's been in Today we get kind of a happy song this one's just like an awe -inspiring one and we look at The very beginning of it.

It says to the chief musician upon Giddeth a psalm of David Would Giddeth we don't really know what that is

But here's what we do know about Giddeth It's used in two other places

It's used in Psalm 81. It's also used in Psalm 84 and These are both happy Psalms There's speculation about what the

Giddeth would be some people think it's a musical instrument from Gath Some people say it may have been a song of Obed, how do you say this?

Obed -edom? Obed -edom? Obed -edom of Gittite? Or Obed -edom the

Gittite is how he's called And I'll just remind you of who this guy is

Basically when the Ark was being transported back to the land of David and they stick it on wheels

Remember, they weren't supposed to do that. They put it on a cart and They're supposed to be carrying it.

So they're getting kind of lazy about how they carry the Ark and at one point the

Ark jostles and one of the men Puts his name his name is

Uzzah Puts his name on there. He puts his hand on the Ark to kind of steady it and that angers the

Lord and he kills Uzzah And he's dead. That's it. Like can you imagine?

Oops like that's how it goes like completely dead and This kind of gets

David all riled up. Like how can the Ark reside with me? This is terrible So he ends up leaving the

Ark with Obed -edom. I can't really say this guy's name.

It's so weird. It's like Obed -edom. You've been studying the Edomites, right? It's a combination of the two

But anyway, it stays at his house for three months it stays there and Like his life gets awesome.

Apparently things go really well with him while the Ark is residing in his house and word gets sent to David that things are going great for Obed -edom the

Gittite And and so then David goes, okay, let's bring the

Ark. Let's go ahead and send for it So it was a very happy time for this guy because the

Ark is in his house and things are flourishing so some people think that this

This Gittite thing might be a song of him But it's generally accepted that it is an instrument

That was used one of those ancient instruments. We've seen a few of these Especially since it says it's to be played upon a

Gittite. It kind of implies that it would be a musical instrument and It's most likely an instrument that was used at the time of vintage Which closed the civil year of the

Jews? And it was considered to be like something where you're looking forward to God's kingdom coming

And so it's also considered a very happy thing, right? So even though we don't really know what

Gittite is and we don't know where where it came from We can pretty much assume this means it's happy and this is a happy psalm

So we'll start in that frame of mind today, right? Instead of thinking of all David's kind of feeling heavy like we've done in some of the other psalms

This one is kind of a happier one and think about what we've seen We've seen him overcome quite a bit in the first few psalms.

And so now this is almost like a time of praise So that's where we are in Psalm chapter 8 verse 1 the second part of that verse says

How excellent is thy name or it starts with Oh Lord our God or Oh Lord our

Lord How excellent is thy name in all the earth who has set thy glory above the heavens?

now It starts with the word Oh and it's almost like it's

Whoa, you know, it's how do you get this word out? Like how can you even say it when you say something?

And you can't even find the words to say it. Sometimes you might start with oh

You know like this is a an awe -inspiring Thought that's being

Portrayed here. Oh Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth?

Take a lonely hike through the woods Listen to the birds the bugs the babbling brooks you like my alliteration there

All of these speak of the Lord The animals are scared away by your footprints

They might hear you coming and they might all run away but before you came they were quite peaceful and restful

But God was there the whole time so you can go out in the loneliest woods and there he is

Why I'm the highest mountain which by the way is Everest Its altitude is at twenty nine thousand thirty two feet

That's pretty high Rise above those clouds get to the summit look out into the distance.

God is there he's just as there on the summit as He is on the horizon that you can see as far out as you can look walk in the crevice of the canyons in Arizona with all their twists and their turns their narrow pathways and their dark caves

God's there to Plunge into the depths of the sea and travel to the deepest of the deep where even the tip of Everest Couldn't reach the surface

It's over 35 ,000 feet deep at the deepest part

That's below the beach in the darkest blackest coldest basins undisturbed by human exploration

There's God You could even look in places you cannot go grab a microscope and see the realm of the microorganisms explore the cellular structures of the world and know that God's name is stamped on all of it.

I Recently read something pretty amazing About our human

DNA which stands for dioxin ribonucleic acid I remembered that from high school.

That's about the best I can do for biology the rest. I have to read But in your

DNA there are four components it's made up of these four Different Nucleic acids

And I had the names of them somewhere. I think they're in my Thought they were in my notes.

Yeah, they are adenine thiamine cytosine and guanine

It's a lot of Eames in your DNA. So there's four different of these and they are bound together by a

Nuclide acid. Alright, so each each one is bound together by nuclide acids

The first one adenine is bound together at every ten nucleotides The second one thiamine is bound together at every five nucleotides

Cytosine is bound together at every six and Guanine is bound together at every five

What's the significance of that? Well, that's just the way the Lord made it, right? But what's interesting is that if you take the

Hebrew alphabet and you take the number value of the letters in the alphabet

The tenth would be Y the fifth would be H The sixth would be

V and the fifth, of course would be H So with these four they're bound together at ten five six five

That's why HVH which is how you spell the name of God. Is that cool?

So the very glue that holds your DNA together has God's name stamped on it

That'll give you goosebumps Go to the great

Sahara Desert where life seems absent and The omnipresent God of life is there travel to the vast cornfields of Illinois Haiti knows this they are quite quiet Right stand in the middle of the natural sound absorbing crops and scream for help

You may not be heard by man, but you can still bend the ear of the Almighty God How excellent is his name in all the earth

Travel to space to escape your earthly home go beyond the grasp of gravity or the boundaries of breathable air

Only to find yourself yet in the presence of our Lord Consider the vastness of the universe.

Let's talk about that for a second it extends 46 billion light -years from us in every direction

Every direction you go 46 billion light -years and in case you don't know what a light -year is who knows what a light -year is.

I Bet zag does mr. Engineer there. I want to share Yeah, the time that it takes light to travel for one whole look at the distance

It can go for one whole year, right? So like if you take light and you shoot it out and let it travel at the speed of light for an entire year the

Distance it would go would be considered a light year. So we use light years to measure distance really really really long distances because light travels at a speed of a hundred and eighty six thousand two hundred and eighty two miles every second

That's Really far that means it could go around the earth seven and a half times in a single second

Because the earth is about twenty five thousand miles in circumference So think about how how far that is a hundred and eighty six thousand two hundred and eighty two

Miles every second and a light year is how far that travels in a whole year

I've done a little math That goes approximately five point eight seven little more than that Trillion miles in One year.

All right. That's how far light will travel 5 .87 trillion miles and the universe is 46 billion

Light -years in every direction. That's really big now.

Imagine if you traveled 5 .87 trillion miles and you did this

For 46 billion times You would reach what is known as the end of our observable universe

What does that imply? There's something beyond the observable universe, you know what that is the non observable universe

That's what it is and so Because it's 46 billion light -years in every direction

That means if you went all the way that way and all the way that way

You're at 92 billion light -years from tip to tip

In every direction do we have anything to describe this non observable universe that is beyond it.

I Think we might But yes, there's the movie reference to infinity and beyond right buzz light -year

Look at the next verse or rather The second the second half of this verse how excellent is thy name in all the earth who has set thy glory above the heavens

The word for heavens means visible universe So there's your observable universe

It's the visible part above means outside or beyond So if you want a word or or something to describe what is beyond 92 billion light -years of universe

God's glory at least It's beyond that It extends that far because this observable universe with as big as it is can't contain his glory

It has it Within it it's seen you can see parts of it, but he has said his glory even beyond that So if you want something to describe it

There's a start at least Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings

Has thou ordained strength because of thine enemies That thou mightest still the enemy and the

Avenger now I want to I want to actually read some

Spurgeon at this point because he just you know, you try to you try to go and and get something from Commentators and go.

Okay. I'm gonna share this or i'm gonna i'm gonna rephrase that or i'm gonna i'm gonna use this over here

But so often with him it's like well, I can't do anything better than that. So let's just read what he put. Okay, so Listen to this

And In relation to verse two did not the children cry hosanna in the temple

When proud pharisees were silent and contemptuous It did not the savior quote these very words as a justification of their infantile cries

Early church history records many amazing instances of the testimony of children for the truth of god

But perhaps more modern instances will be the most interesting Fox and fox book of martyrs tells us

That when mr. Lawrence was burnt in cold colchester He was carried to the fire in a chair

Because through the cruelty of the papist he could not stand upright Several young children came about the fire and cried as well as they could speak lord

Strengthen thy servant and keep thy promise kids Coming to the aid of this martyr

God answered their prayer for mr. Lawrence died as firmly and calmly as anyone could wish to breathe his last

When one of the poppish chaplains told mr. Wishart the great scottish martyr

That he had a devil in him a child that stood By cried out a devil cannot speak such words as yonder man speaketh

Ha Isn't that amazing like a kid just standing up to the religious authorities and speaking truth

One more instance is still nearer to our time in a postscript one of his letters in which he details his persecution

When first preaching in moorfields whitfield says I cannot help adding

That several little boys and girls who were fond of sitting around me on the pulpit while I preached and handed to me people's notes

Though they were often pelted with eggs dirt and thrown at me

Never once gave way but on the contrary every time I was struck

Turned up their little weeping eyes and seemed to wish they could receive the blows for me

God make them in every God make them in their growing years great and living martyrs for him who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings perfects praise

He who delights in the songs of angels is pleased to honor himself in the eyes of his enemies by the praises of little children

What a contrast between the glory above the heavens and the mouths of babes and sucklings

Yet by both the name of god is made excellent Isn't that cool? God's glory is everywhere.

And yet he also chose to stick it in the little kids Pretty awesome

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

Think of how big god really is And now Consider for a moment how small

We actually are in a system of different planets and a star

Uh that make up our solar system we are just itty -bitty right we're tiny uh

Think of this there are different solar systems So we're itty -bitty on our solar system

But there are multiple solar systems That together make up a galaxy in a collection

Of billions of galaxies That's massive billions of galaxies

And we're on but one And on a planet not even the biggest in that one

And we're itty -bitty on this planet The galaxy in which our solar system exists is known as the milky way

In our galaxy alone, there are about 100 to 500 billion solar systems

That's in our galaxy in the whole universe

About 2 million million galaxies are observable Then the number of unobservable galaxies or the total number of galaxies

Is exceptional. That's the only word we can use for it You can't even get to the number This gives us an idea of just how large our universe is

And it's expanding every second larger and larger and larger and yet we are itty -bitty tiny

Now let's take a look at just how tiny the size of an average human Is 176 .5

centimeters I forgot to convert that into feet. I'll let y 'all do that Or 1 .76

meters While the diameter of the solar system alone Is 287 .46

Times 10 to the 11th power Something it's just massive in fact

I don't even know how it's actually not 10. It's times 1011 m meters

So 287 .46 times 1011 meters that's how big

Just our solar system is and we are 176 .5 centimeters, which is one one hundredth of a meter

Crazy Crazy Therefore the solar system is a hundred and i've got i've got notes on this but my computer went and put up in a whole bunch of extra things, so i'm having to Slowly read through it.

I'll apologize for that our solar system Is about a hundred and sixty three point thirty three times one

Thousand eleven times greater than a human Then The universe must be infinite times greater than a human

That's that's the conclusion according to scientists. They didn't even try to do the number

They just said it's infinitely times greater than a human If you take all of human life and you add it all together

We make up point zero zero one percent of all the life that's just on our earth

So we are Itty bitty. I don't think we can even describe ourselves as itty bitty.

It's not small enough Microscopic isn't even small enough So consider that that god took man

Who's just dust And consider what god did with man

So here in in verse three when I consider thy heavens the work of thy fingers the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained

That's the that is what david has in his mind as he's about to try and think through What god does with man?

All this massiveness And i'm just itty bitty He says 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 has crowned him with the glory with glory and honor

Who's this talking about? It definitely is talking about jesus

But in the broader scope, it's actually talking about man It is without a doubt a reference to jesus

Um, but I want you to think about The way it's written it's written.

What is man? Why is it written that way? So if you see a If you see dust, how much value does it have?

Value have does dust have much value? Not really, right none

Wars have been fought over land from which the dust settles But as that dust blows up and away in the wind it is no longer valued

But instead it's seen as just the opposite it's valueless If you see a desert in a movie

It looks dry and it looks hot That's worthless enough as it is. Would you agree?

But then they have the wind blow and there's this little bit of dust that comes up and blows in the in the

Desert and that just makes it work look even worse Like ah, like there's a desert.

It's hot. It's dead It's but then there's Sand blowing in the air and it's oh now it's miserable.

It's not just hot and dead. It's miserable So dust is just beyond worthless

We sweep away dust We throw it out of our houses. It's unwanted. It's unsightly.

It's unimportant And it's unclean and that Is what god chose to form man out of?

Think about that. He's like, what can I use?

Dust let's go with that not oak Big and strong, you know not water

Adaptable can move through anything right like bruce lee said when he poured into a pot it becomes the pot

Poured into a teacup it becomes the teacup. No god's not gonna use he's not gonna form us out of the water

Yes, our bodies are 75 80 percent of water. But what did he form us out of? dust and we know

That as part of the curse come on in. Yeah, we're one of those churches

Lock the doors Well, that's true dust can have dominion

Oh that door locked on you, didn't it? You didn't know we were one of those cultish groups, right? We we get you in we lock the door.

You can't leave until church is over Make a profession of faith then you can leave kidding

Okay, so yeah dust it's just it's unvaluable it's it's it's Worthless, it's meaningless.

That's what god decided that he was going to make us out of but then unlike any of his other creation

He scooped up that valueless mess and he began to form us He did not merely speak us into existence with his words the powerful logos

With which he set those billions of stars in heaven or gave the planets their shape No He got way more intimate with us

The scripture tells us that he formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed life

The very breath of the creator Imparted more than the spark of life into man

He gave him a soul Setting him apart from all other creation

See what the world wants to do Is remind us Of the dusty part of us

They want to make us Just dust again The world wants to say well you're just like the animals you're just they'll they'll categorize you as a mammal you're just Evolved from a monkey or a fish a frog.

I think I would have been a frog I have I like to jump I have a lot of problems with my voice sometimes

So I must have been a frog If it were up to to man, that's what I would have been.

That's what I would have evolved from but by doing that they deny the very

Life that god breathed into you the soul that he gave you You're vastly different You were fearfully and wonderfully made scripture tells us that he knit you in your mother's womb

He didn't do that with anybody else or anything else right only people only man

Why You know it's for his glory It's for it's for him for his pleasure

And so He set us apart from everything in genesis chapter 1 verse 27

We see god creating man And when the scripture says something it's important.

Would you agree? What about when it says it twice? Typically more important Yes, twice as important but when it says something three times there's something truly special about it

It's it's it it's almost like a completeness god uses three

To describe even the fullness of the godhead right the father the son and the holy ghost

And he made us in his image and he gave us a body soul and spirit right and then

When he created us look at how he describes it in genesis 1 27. So god created man.

There's one he created man in his own image in the image of god created he him

Male and female created he them it said created three times

Which I like to think means god was at his most and complete creativity

At his most creative he was completely creative when he created you He was pretty creative when he spoke everything else in existence, there's no denying that You have billions of life forms on this earth you have

So many different varieties if you just think about the flavors of food

The amount of variety in just the flavor of food is just astonishing. You can never run out of flavors

There's always new flavor combinations right That's amazing and that came from god and yet He was more creative When he made us out of dirt

Like it took some creativity to do that, right? And then We messed it all up, didn't we?

We mucked it up good Because he gave us dominion because not only did he put man on this earth and used

Like the highest level of creativity to do it He then gave man dominion over the fish of the sea and the foul of the air and everything that creepeth on the land like he gave us dominion gave us a place of honor and glory and to the point of Parading the animals in front of adam now think of this has anyone ever done anything artsy

Like tried to paint or draw or anything? Right. Did you spend some time on it?

Was it kind of hard? Took it took a lot of effort And when you were done, it was your piece of art, wasn't it?

and You get to name it. Don't you? Yeah And like i've always been that way like I did this i'm gonna give it a name, you know

But then I found out Once you have kids You almost kind of want them to do it, you know, like I made this

I made it for you What are you gonna call it, you know? And then you get joy out of seeing what your kids would do with it

What do you think it is? I'm not gonna tell you you tell me And that's what god did with man because he thought we were so special he was like Let's see what adam names all these things that i'm making

Isn't that cool? And so adam gets to name all the animals God parades all of them in front of him

Really really cool. That's the kind of dominion. That's the kind of position we had past tense

Because that relationship was severed broken when man sinned

Messed it all up And so this verse That it says what is man that thou art mindful of him.

It kind of pictures just how special man is to god Because out of all the billions and trillions of things in the universe known and unknown

He chose us to give the attention to That's where his attention is

And the scripture makes us know that he his thoughts are continually towards us

They're always about us It's like he just can't stop thinking about us You ever been in love?

Right When you know how that feeling that you have where you just can't stop thinking about the person that you love

Like that's how god is with us His thoughts are consumed with us the almighty god

Weird Because we were just dust And he gave that dust value

And put it at a really high place. That's what the first part of verse Four is showing us but then it brings in this other concept when it says and the son of man

That thou visitest him Who's the son of man? That's jesus

Because then it goes on to describe jesus for thou hast made him A little lower than the angels and has crowned him with glory and honor see this amazing super creation that god made and man rose up against god

And became enemies with the lord And god who was so in love with this creation decided

All right I'm gonna make my kid go And save this creation

And i've done a lot of artsy things in my life. I like to do art. I love to sketch That's my thing.

I like to do things on the computer. I do like graphic design and stuff I will never let my kids die for my creation

It's just never gonna happen so For god to love his creation that much

Is beyond my comprehension And so Jesus also known as the second adam

Not formed by god like we were but begotten of god

Was sent to restore that relationship with us God's very child not just his handiwork

Like we are No, this was his offspring the light of the world and the apple of his eye

What a much greater estate he has than we had And yet he gave up his position in heaven

To come to earth a spiritual sacrifice He lived a perfect life for 30 some odd years a mental sacrifice

And then he died on a cross Physically for our sins physical sacrifice.

He sacrificed mine Body and spirit all of it just all of it for us

That was the estate that jesus had god's kid And he came and gave up Everything for us

He was made a little lower than the angels. See the angels are eternal man

In a sense is eternal as well see It's because we have we have the saints we have us right we have those who who god has redeemed

When he does that we are now made in a sense eternally where we get to be

Living with him forever. So while man and jesus is the man pictured here was made lower than the angels

That's only momentary because then jesus ascends back to the throne

And is now higher than the angels and here's the coolest part To them gave he power to become the sons of god

To those who would believe on his name. So what does that mean for the dust the handiwork those who?

God formed who raised up against him to become an enemy instead of destroying his creation

He not only saved us he is now giving us an even higher estate than we had in the past Higher than adam's first estate think about that There's no

Way, you can make that make logical sense to man It has to be a step of faith just like it has to be a step of faith for you to want to be evolved from a monkey

Right like that you can either have faith that you are

Great enough to Somehow evolve from a monkey and rise up against god who created the monkey in the first place right

Okay, it came from a big bang God who made the big bang in the first place like none of that makes sense

You can think that it's all about you, but when you really stop and consider just how tiny you really are

How ridiculous is it that we have pride? How ridiculous is it that we have anything that we think we should be prideful about?

The only reason why we would have anything to think we should be prideful about is that we can look and see something beneath us

But why is it beneath us because god put it there He gave us dominion over it

So anything that we can say gives us value comes from the lord

Which is funny because we came from the lord the concept of value comes from the lord

The concept of anything comes from the lord the concept of concepts comes from the lord

You can't get to the start of the lord And god crowned us with glory and honor and now the psalmist here will go on to Describe what that looks like thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands

Just like the first adam was supposed to have And jesus restored that Thou hast put all things under his feet.

That's how we know it's talking about jesus All sheep because now in case there's anything that you forgot it's going to be everything but all sheep and oxen

Yay, and all the beasts of the field That would be great and small the fowl of the air

The fish of the sea and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea What is that?

I mean like like it's like anything else you can think of that could possibly be Thrown into the sea or pushed through the sea

All of it's under his feet. So he has complete dominion over all things everywhere at all times

Never seen or even imagined Yeah So it's everything you can think of and everything you can't

He has dominion over all of it and as co -heirs with christ, so do we

Think about that Because of the finished work of jesus. We have a greater dominion than we've ever had and so appropriately

The psalm ends the way it began Oh lord our lord How excellent is thy name in all the earth

Because it's the name of god that activates it all That enables it all that gives us meaning it gives us purpose.

It gives us power. It gives us position It all comes from god and it's all for god and it's all

For god and it's all for god So that We can learn more about him when we use our microscopes to look deep into Microbiology We will eventually get to see god's name stamped on dna

When we look far out as far as our telescopes will let us see And get to the edge

We realize that edge is only there For about a second and then it expands out farther

And we'll never reach it And god's glory extends beyond it because he set his glory above the heavens

And so when we look at all the creation around us and we even look at all the creation inside us

It should be a humbling thought Because all the value that we have and we do truly have tremendous value that far surpasses 92 billion light years in both directions

That's our value. It surpasses that all with inside you We should remind ourselves that that value originates

And extends And is only because of god's glory

And god's name How excellent is thy name in all the earth? Isn't that cool? So that's psalm chapter 8

And does anybody want to add anything? We got a couple of minutes Thank you

I'll applaud the king james version as well Because that's where it all came from All right.

Well Let us pray Heavenly father lord, we just thank you for the vastness of you we thank you for Uh the the glory that you have set above the heavens

And that you direct all of your glory and all of your attention And all of your thoughts

Towards something that would otherwise be completely meaningless and dust but because You've directed your thoughts towards us

We now have greater value than anything else That can even be imagined. We thank you for that.

We thank you for your son who you Who you sent to pay the price to redeem that value?

We thank you that We have a lot to be thankful for this thanksgiving season

We just ask that you remind us of that at all times Because it's when we become unthankful that we begin down a pretty dark road of sin

So help us to always be mindful And thankful We love you and send your name.