March 12, 2017 Afternoon Service - How God is Mindful of Man by Pastor Josh Sheldon

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March 12, 2017 PM Service: How God is Mindful of Man Psalm 8 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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Psalm number 8, we'll read it in its entirety and then
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I will go through it section by section or verse by verse as we prepare ourselves for the
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Lord's table. Oh Lord, our
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Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory above the heavens.
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Out of the mouth of babes and infants you have established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the avengers.
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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?
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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.
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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 heaven and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
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Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
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The psalm is of course a prayer, it's a prayer addressed to God and to God alone and it's a bit important for us to understand that because in some psalms
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David speaks to others, he speaks to the assembly. Sometimes he speaks to evildoers, addressing himself to them and he warns them of the risk they take when they deride
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God or his anointed. And sometimes David or other psalmists will speak to themselves as he speaks to my soul, speaking inwardly.
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Here, in Psalm 8, he speaks only to God, whose sheer magnificence seems to have filled him with awe and wonder.
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He has this two -fold vision of God, a two -fold vision of God. He looks up, he is overwhelmed by the expanse, he looks down and he sees how small the world really is.
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He sees how small we are in the context of all that God spoke into existence, but a speck in the cosmos.
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I read somewhere and I wasn't just looking around for things to read, I looked it up for this message, but I read that it would take 1 ,300 ,000 earths to fill our sun.
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Think about that. 1 ,300 ,000 earths to fill the sun.
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Our sun is a medium star, it's not even a big star in the context of stars or suns that are out there, and yet it's 1 .3
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million times bigger than us. I also read that our sun is over 99 % of all the mass in our solar system.
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Take every planet, add it all together, and it's barely 1 % of what exists in this solar system compared to the sun.
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To continue seeing just how mighty and significant we are in this universe that remember
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God, and this is a creation psalm, and it speaks of God as the creator of all that is.
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In the context of all that God at a moment spoke into existence, and there it was.
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How small are we? I read that there are a billion trillion stars in the observable universe.
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I can't wrap my mind around a billion, really. I read once that if you start counting the moment you're born, live to a ripe old age, you cannot count to a billion.
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I never tried it, but as you have to pronounce each number in its entirety, you never make it to a billion.
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Our star is a medium star, 1 .3 million times bigger than our earth, and it is one of a billion trillion stars that can be seen.
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Ours is just one, and it's a dwarf. And so Israel's poet, considering all these things, of course he didn't have these numbers like I just gave to you, but he's still seeing this vastness and the smallness of what we are in that vastness.
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He bursts forth in praise and wonder that such a God who can do all this, and remember Genesis 1 .1,
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God spoke, and it was. Such a God who can do all this, whose word created it all, and whose will now keeps it together, that he would take notice of the fleck of dust on which we exist.
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And not just this fleck of dust that is earth, but the inhabitants. So Lord, our
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Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. How grand, how kingly, how wonderful, how magnificent, how sheerly majestic is your name here on earth.
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There's two names of the one God that start this prayer, O Lord, our
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Lord. What he says, if we took it to the Hebrew, is O Yahweh, our
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Adonai, O Yahweh, our Adonai. Yahweh has to do with his absolute and independent existence.
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It's the name he revealed himself to Moses in Exodus chapter 3, I am what I am,
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I will be what I am, what I am I will continue to be. It's his eternal name, the name of the unchanging
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God, independent, exists, he has life in himself and because of himself, dependent on nothing outside of himself for anything that he is.
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It's the name also by which he enters into covenant relationship with his people. Yahweh's word is like his person, it's eternal, it's unchangeable, depends on no one, there's nothing that compels him.
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So we read of God keeping his covenant with Israel, his covenant with Abraham, his covenant with us. It's the name
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Yahweh that is associated with that, this name of faithfulness that is tied to his eternality.
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Pardon me, and his unchangeability. So he says,
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O Yahweh, our Adonai, Adonai is the name of authority. If Yahweh is vast and transcendent, if he's virtually unknowable,
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Adonai is his interaction with man as he, Adonai, the Lord and Master, commands us to his will.
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So, Exodus chapter 3 verse 14, I alluded to a moment ago where he reveals himself to Moses as Yahweh, but then in Exodus chapter 4 verse 10, still in his conversation, this interaction with Moses, Moses calls him
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Adonai. Yahweh came to fulfill his covenant word to Abraham, Adonai selects whom he will to carry out his wishes.
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In the opening of the psalm, Yahweh is in absolute terms, it's simply
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Yahweh, the one who is. But Adonai has the possessive suffix attached to it.
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The word for Lord is actually just Adon, but when you add the I sound to the end of it, the vowels in Hebrew make it possessive, and that's why we can say it's translated correctly here,
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Oh Lord Yahweh, absolute, our Lord, Adonai, my king, my master, my ruler, my sovereign, it's a possessive name.
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Out of the mouth of babes and infants you have established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger.
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You know this is what Jesus quoted in Matthew chapter 21 and verse 16, he said it a little bit differently, he said out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies,
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Yevadorn prays. Now that's from the Greek translation of the old
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Masoretic text, what we call the Subtuagent, but it's not inconsistent with what was originally written in the
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Hebrew, it's simply in the Greek it allows for a more specific set of words.
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Nursing babies would be hard to, you couldn't find it in the
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Hebrew actually, so the Greek allows them to say that, but I think it's a fair rendition of what the original actually meant.
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And where the Hebrew says that it is strength that God has established, the
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Greek, which is confirmed by our Lord Jesus Christ when he quoted this, says he has ordained praise, you have ordained praise.
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I want to stay on this idea of Jesus quoting this for just a little bit, the occasion in Matthew where Jesus quotes this psalm is his royal entry into Jerusalem.
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He rode on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden. The message sent by this choice of animal is very, very important.
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You see, kings in Israel's day, the Davidic kings, when they were coming to a place in peace, they rode on donkeys, it was a peaceful, small, gentle animal.
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When they came on a stallion, on a charger, of course the message was quite different, the message was very much the opposite.
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So here's our Lord Jesus Christ quoting Psalm 8 on the day that he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, in peace.
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He came not as a conqueror, but as a peaceful emissary. In fact, his whole ministry was a ministry of peace as he declared the gospel of God's When he returns, we read in Revelation about his return, he will be on a great white warhorse.
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But for now, there's peace declared, there's a peace brokered by the cross of Jesus Christ where he went at Golgotha.
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When Jesus cited this verse, he really meant not just the one verse, to silence the
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Pharisees, he says, do you hear what they're saying? Silence them. And Jesus says, have you not read out of the mouths of babies and nursing infants,
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I have ordained praise. When he cited it, he meant that the whole psalm really applies to himself, and we have no problem, do we, thinking of all creation, which is, this is a nature psalm, a creation psalm, being attributed to Jesus Christ.
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This is how the book of Colossians opens up, attributing it all to him, all the things were made for him and by him and through him and because of him.
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For his glory they exist. We can read in Ephesians chapter 3 that the earth actually existed so Jesus Christ could come and save men and establish his church to call out his praises, which is one reason why we are here.
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He takes, meaning Jesus, he takes the name of God as cited in the psalm to himself.
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The psalm opens and closes the same way, verses 1 and 9 both say, O Lord, our Lord, O Yahweh, our
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Adonai, Yahweh I am, Yahweh the name of God, of his eternality, his self -existence, looking to no one, needing nothing, no sustenance outside of himself.
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This is what Jesus is attributing to himself, he is Yahweh, he is
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Adonai. In John chapter 5, verse 26, he said, For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the
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Son also to have life in himself. I'm going to leave the idea of God granting something to the
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Son for another time. That's a whole subject in itself, what it means that God the Father granted anything to God the
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Son. But for now I want to rest on what is clear. What's clear is that Jesus, just like his
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Father, has life in himself, which is the very definition of Yahweh. Is not derived, not even from the
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Father, if Yahweh is the name of God and Father, Son, Holy Spirit together, as three persons are the one unified
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God, then Yahweh, this name must apply equally to each of them,
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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But if ever a citation was proof that Jesus thought of himself self -consciously as God, in exactly the same way the
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Jews of his day thought of God, I think this is one of them, or the one,
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Matthew 21, 16, where Jesus says, Yahweh, our Adonai, oh
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Lord, our Lord, and he's saying, this is me. Not just the one verse about the babies and the nursing infants and God ordaining through them praise.
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The whole psalm, he,
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Jesus, is the self -existent Lord, master, and ultimate authority in the entire universe.
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There's a short passage in the New Testament that many think was actually an ancient hymn in the early church.
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It was a hymn of praise used back in that day when the church was first founded. That's what
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I alluded to a moment ago in Colossians, and I'll read it. Colossians chapter one, verses 15 to 17,
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Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the first born over all creation, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
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And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. I don't know of a better way to describe those last few words than how we've described them before.
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I hope it's not redundant for you. You don't get tired of hearing them. I don't know of another way to say it other than the reason we're held together right now, the reason this earth is held together this moment, the reason anything in the universe consists and doesn't simply fall apart is because right now we consist, we hold together in Jesus Christ because right now, this moment,
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Jesus is thinking of this place and we who are in it, and because he's thinking of us and because he is holding us together, we are.
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If he stopped thinking about us for a moment, the opposite would be just as true. I don't know what that would look like, but I know we would no longer consist.
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This is the psalm that Jesus applies to himself and I think is very consistent with the opening of the book of Colossians, here at Colossians 1, 15 through 17, speaking of Jesus as that Yahweh, that Adonai, that creator of all things, that eternal
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God, that master of all things and in him, we certainly do consist. We do consist in him in terms of our salvation, as we learned this morning.
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We are in him. We are in him to gain the benefits of what he accomplished on the cross.
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When I look to your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place with no great effort, all this was made.
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God's creating of everything was no more trouble for him than his finger painting for children.
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It's interesting, he says the work of your fingers, because almost everywhere else in scripture, I say almost because I didn't have time to make absolutely sure, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't say anywhere else except that his work is the work of his hands.
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And here he says fingers. And I was wondering about that, I said, why would he switch to fingers when everywhere else where he speaks of God creating, it's the work of his hand or his hands.
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I think his fingers are smaller. I think of finger painting for children. How easy is that?
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We have the watercolors, they're just going to rinse off, you just dip your finger in there and just spread it on the paper. I think maybe that's what the psalmist is getting at.
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It's the work of his fingers. God just flung out his fingers this way and said, be, and then it all was.
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Father of light says, light, be, exist. And so it goes, and each step of his design being assessed as good.
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And I think it goes to the fingers again because he doesn't need all the strength of a hand to grip a tool and work it out, he just spreads his finger out like that and there it is.
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He says, what is man that you are mindful of him? The son of man that you care for him. What is the son of man that you care for him?
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How is it possible that such a God as this should have any regard at all for man? If our earth is 1 .3
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million times smaller than the sun, how small are we on this earth? And yet,
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David, looking up at all this and not having the numbers that we have but the same idea, he says, how can you notice a single individual within all of this?
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Well, there is an answer. There's an answer that shoots from heaven across all the universe, across a billion trillion stars, and straight down to here, straight down to this one speck of land in this huge, vast expanse.
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There is an answer about the son of man, all small case, not capital
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S, capital M, son of man meaning Jesus, small s, small m, son of man meaning us.
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Not man, in essence, man generically, mankind, what is the son of mankind that you care for him?
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And where does this go like a laser? It goes to Calvary, it goes to the cross of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Adonai, he is my Lord, Galatians 2 .20
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speaks of the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
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What is man that you are mindful of him? Book of Romans says, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners,
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Christ died for us. What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
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David wonders why God even notices us. Let us alone wonder with mouths agape that he goes so far beyond just noticing us.
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He gave his son to die for our sins. Our Adonai, our Lord, our master, our sovereign died in order to bring us to his father.
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It says, you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. Does it mean that we are lower because we sinned?
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No, it can't mean that because some angels sinned and so they were expelled from God's presence.
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Can it mean God has a lesser regard for us than for angels? No, it can't mean that because Christ did not die for angels, he died for us.
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I think it means two things. One of the two things I think about this is a little bit less certain than the other, so I'm going to give it to you first.
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We are lower than the angels because our abode is lower. If they're with God in heaven, heaven is above.
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We are below. We are here. They are above.
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They are facing our Savior. We are here below and we're looking up to him, but we don't yet see him as he is. The more certain meaning is that we're less than they are in terms of our purity, in terms of our power.
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Angels desire to look into the salvation the prophets proclaimed because they don't know anything about salvation.
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But then they don't need to. They might sin. Sin is possible for them.
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Their fallen brethren attest to that, but the ones who are now in heaven singing Christ's praises have not sinned.
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They hide their eyes from God because even without sin in them, his glory so outshines theirs that they are not worthy to look directly at him.
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So they cover their faces. And we have something also that no angel has.
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And that's a realm of dominion. Verse 6 in the psalm, 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.
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What's he speaking of here? He's speaking of the mandate that the first couple had at creation.
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There's a certain consistency here. As God is superior to man, so man is to animals.
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As God is the one who gives man authority over animals, so that authority was first exercised when
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Adam named them all. And so we're taught here that our reign over this earth must be one that displays the glory of God.
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There is a glory and a dominion which man has. It is like God's, not in power certainly, even less so is our authority exercised with the perfection or wisdom of God.
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Similarities are by analogy only, nothing more. He finishes with,
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O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What's the name of our
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Lord? He says, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name. What's the name of our
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Lord? It's Jesus Christ. He is the only name given to men by which they must be saved.
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He is the name to which every knee shall one day bow, whether in heaven or on earth. He says, when I look to your heavens, you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.
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Every tongue, says Paul, every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the
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Father. The psalm teaches us that God is indeed mindful of man.
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As small as we are, as you and me as individuals, we are specks on this earth.
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As small as this earth is compared to the sun that warms us, as small as our whole solar system is compared to the hundred billion trillion stars that are out there, as teeny and insignificant as all that is,
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God is mindful of man whom he created. And his concern, his regard, his looking upon us runs deeper than we could ever think or imagine.
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He sent his son, his son who knew no sin, to die for sinners such as us.
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While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, says the apostle Paul. That's God's mindfulness of man.
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That's God's regard for those whom he chose to be in his son when he suffered his wrath against our sin.
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That's the answer to the wonderings, to the musings of Israel's poet.
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What is man that you are mindful of him? Man is those that he put in his son
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Jesus Christ, that he sent his son to die for. I think this prepares us well for the
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Lord's Supper, where we remember specifically that great sacrifice that Jesus Christ made.
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I think as we ponder Psalm 8 and understand that it speaks from beginning to end of our
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Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore should put our mind on his sacrifice at Calvary.
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Because it asks, why do you care at all about men? What do
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I have, God, that shows me that you are mindful of men? Not in a challenging way, in a wondering way.
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And God's answer is the cross. My son's broken body is the bread that we will partake.
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My son's life poured out for you, which is the fruit of the vine that we will partake.
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The Psalm does have an answer. What is man that you are mindful of him? He's the one for whom my son
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Jesus Christ sacrificed himself. Let's just close with 1
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John 4, verse 10. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
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So what is man that Yahweh is mindful of him? And we should all be able to say now with complete confidence and with great rejoicing, he, you, me, we together who have faith in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, who know that he died for my sins, he's the son of God who gave himself for me, me, the object of his son's work on the cross of Calvary.