This week a magnificent worship psalm, Psalm 8… `O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!` But why?
Well: first, `You have set your glory in the heavens!` Or, Kidner’s excellent Tyndale Psalms commentary says this can mean `You whose glory is chanted above the heavens!` – which is continually happening, Revelation 4:8-10; and whenever we want, we can join in!
But here’s the second majestic thing about God: He really loves to use the `weak things of the world` (1 Cor 1:27). So `Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe` (Psalm 8:2). It’s striking that deliberate praise from weak instruments like ourselves (eg when we choose to use the Psalms!) has that sort of impact in spiritual warfare (see 2 Chron 20:20-23).
But then thirdly comes an even bigger example of the sheer majesty of God’s grace, how astonishingly He loves to be involved with weak people like us: `When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place… what is mankind that You are mindful of them, human beings that You care for them?` (`Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow`, adds David in Psalm 144; and yet, as F B Meyer says of that word `mindful`, `There is not a moment in God’s existence in which He is not as mindful of [us!!] as the mother of the baby whom she has left in the next room`… Thank you Lord!)
And then a fourth cause to praise God – what a great thing it is to be human!: `You have made [us!!] a little lower than the angels, and crowned [us!!] with glory and honour. You made [us!!] rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under [our!!] feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.` The sheer majesty of God’s loving partnership, and the dignity He gives to us!…
Although… Hebrews 2 quotes these verses, noting that this is how it will be in `the world to come`; that `You crowned [humankind] with glory and honour, and put everything under [our] feet.’ But then it observes, `At present we do not see everything subject to [us].` Then what?: `But we do see Jesus`, says Hebrews, opening up a bigger panorama than anything David knew, `who [as a Man!] was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour.` As Man, Jesus was – wonderfully – everything that God designed humans to be, and all that one day, becoming completely like Him, each of us will be, as we share all His glory (Rom 8:29,32, Rev 3:21, etc…) In the gospels we watch Him exercising this rule over all the works of God’s hands, calming storms, walking on the waves, nullifying infectious bacteria, summoning shoals of fish… One day, in the wonderful `world to come`, that kingship will be ours!
But how incredible. Racially, generation after generation, we threw away our destiny; so God went to the huge lengths of being born as one of us, being tempted and pushed to the limits `in every way just as we are`, and finally `tasting death for everyone` – paying that huge cost, so that we might have our destiny back!
Time then to respond in worship! Last verse of Psalm 8: `O LORD, our Lord, how majestic [indeed!] is Your name in all the earth!`
