Sermon for MHBC (29 August 2021). You can listen on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or our website. Live at 11:00am on Sundays. Also available as a podcast here or by searching “Monument Heights Baptist Church” in your favorite podcast app.
This morning we are back in the psalms. Psalm 8 strikes a different note than the preceding psalms. It is the first psalm devoted to praise as opposed to lament. And it gives us this amazing picture of God’s majesty and His nearness, and it helps us make sense out of what it means to be human in this world.
Let’s begin in v. 1: O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. The first half of this verse brackets the entire psalm. You’ll see the repetition of it in v. 9. The majesty of who God is is visible in creation. Name is a shorthand way of referring to the entire person, to their reputation and character. The majesty of the one true God fills the entire earth.
This is why several Christian thinkers have referred to creation as another book of God’s revelation. And this is a biblical idea. We see it here, but we also see it in Romans 1 when Paul talks about how God’s attributes are on display in creation (1:20).
We are so busy that we seldom do what David talks about doing here. In order to write these words, David had to stop and apprehend the majesty and glory of God in creation. I had the opportunity two weeks ago to take a ministry retreat in western North Carolina in the mountains. Creation is breathtaking.
But you don’t have to drive to the mountains or even a park. Look at the birds in your backyard or the trees or the flowers or the insects. And here’s the key: let those things drive you to the worship of the one true God.
The second half of the verse talks about the glory of God being above the heavens. It isn’t necessary to translate this the way the ESV has done it. If you’re following along in a different translation, you may see a different rendering such as the NIV: “You have set your glory in the heavens.” The idea is that as we turn our gaze upward, we see the glory of God on display. So whether we look at the ground beneath our feet or feel the wind on our faces or look at the night sky, we are confronted by God’s kingly majesty and His glorious governance of the world.
One final comment on this verse is necessary. There’s a contrast in it. We see the nearness of God in creation. But we also see the transcendence of God in the heavens. The vastness of the night sky is absolutely overwhelming. We see the stars and we may get a sense of our smallness. For example, the closest star system to us is Alpha Centauri with Proxima Centauri being the closest star. It’s 4.25 lightyears away. That means when we look at Proxima Centauri, it takes the light from it 4.25 years to reach our eyes. Light travels pretty fast. If we were to get on the Voyager I spacecraft and travel there, it would take around 73,000 years.[1]
We are talking about God who is not creation itself but the creator of all that vastness. And here we have a key point of this psalm and really a key point in all Christian thinking about God. The one true God is entirely transcendent, incomprehensible by our finite minds, and at the same time, He is near to us, as someone has said, nearer than our very breath.
And v. 2 reminds us of His greatness and His glory. Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. Now why would God have enemies and foes? Again, we can go back to Romans 1. Even though humankind can see the glory of God, we suppress it, we reject it. This is the effect of sin. The human heart is curved in on itself.[2] But as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 1, God uses the weakest things of the world to display His strength and glory. The cross of Jesus is the most obvious example of course.
And even though God is so far above us, so transcendent, humans have been given a key role in God’s creation. Look at vv. 3–4: 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?
Part of being human is recognizing our own smallness in light of the vast universe.[3] We are conscious of that reality. David recognizes that here. As he looks at the night sky, he realizes his smallness.
It’s fascinating that there’s a practice promoted by non-Christians called star therapy. The idea is that you take some time to get outside your own head by looking up at the night sky. When you do so, you realize your smallness. One popular writer, physician B. J. Miller, writes, “Just mulling the bare-naked facts of the cosmos is enough to thrill me, awe me, freak me out, and kind of put all my neurotic anxieties in their proper place. A lot of people—when you’re standing at the edge of your horizon, at death’s door, you can be much more in tune with the cosmos.”[4] So that’s the secular approach to creation and we can think about this.
Two conclusions stand out if we trace them to their logical ends. First, we can conclude that our smallness reveals our utter insignificance, futility, and meaninglessness. This is best expressed by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. For example, he wrote, “Man is a useless passion. It is meaningless that we live and it is meaningless that we die.”
But there’s a second option on the table. The Bible presents humanity not as merely finite and frail but as imbued with the dignity of God. Humans are created in the image of God. To be created in the image of God means we are reflections of God’s glory in and to creation. Humans are the pinnacle of God’s creation. Yes, we are small and frail, but God has given us a premier place in His creation.
Look at v. 5: Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. The phrase translated heavenly beings presents some challenges. Its most literal rendering is gods. That’s not uncommon in Scripture, so in that sense heavenly beings fits well. Later interpreters, including the NT, understand this as a reference to angels. In any case, humanity is the crown of God’s creation on earth.
And this is extremely important as we think about the significance and sacredness of humanity. Our dignity is derived from our Maker. Human dignity is a reflection of God’s glory.
This is why Christians have historically valued humans. Caring for the poor and disabled, the widow and the orphan, infants left for dead, these are Christian tasks because we believe that humanity bears the marks of our God.
In his famous speech, “The Weight of Glory,” C. S. Lewis: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” He concludes by saying that our fellow humans are one of the holiest objects we encounter.[5]
Human dignity is derived from God. This goes back to the opening chapter of Scripture. God creates humankind in His image. According to the Christian worldview, human value is not earned, it is derived. When God creates humans, he creates them in His image.
Practically, this means we must resist our culture’s view of humans. In our culture, human value is earned. That is why we reward successful and beautiful people while we largely ignore powerless people. But in Christianity, human value is not earned because someone agrees with our position or because they are successful, human value is derived because that person is created in God’s image. When we devalue another human by demonizing them or depicting them poorly, we are failing to love God because we are rejecting His creative mark on humans.[6]
Now there’s great debate about what it means to be made in the image of God, but part of what it means is told to us in Genesis 1. When God creates humans, He gives them rule over creation to cultivate and care for it. In that way, humans are reflecting God’s image in creation. Think of it this way, we have been given the authority of the King to steward and rule in His creation.
Look at vv. 6–8: 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.
This is the human task and a major feature of what it means to be created in the image of God. We are vice-regents in His creation. But we know the task isn’t fulfilled by humanity. Humanity rebels. Creation is corrupted. Human value is neglected. We see that illustrated in Genesis 4 as Cain murders his brother Abel. We know that humans fail in this task. The image of God stamped on us is not totally lost, but it is distorted.
And here we can realize that we must look elsewhere for one to fulfill this psalm. It is Christ who ultimately fulfills this psalm as He does all of Scripture. God’s involvement with humanity does not stay distant as in the god of deism. God draws near to humanity in the incarnation of Christ. God takes on flesh in order to restore creation. It is Christ who is the perfect image of God. It is Christ who fulfills the task of humanity.
Hebrews 2 gives us an exposition of Psalm 8. The author of Hebrews tells us that Christ lowered Himself by becoming human so that He might redeem us from sin, Satan, and death. The incarnation is a cosmic invasion of a territory held in the grasp of sin, Satan, and death. That invasion makes it possible for us to be restored, to be fully human, as we were created to be.
The fourth century church father, Athanasius, is particularly helpful here. He has two lines that I want to share with you. First, he writes, “The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father, Who could recreate man made after the Image.”[7] Christ came because He alone could restore the image of God in us. He does that by redeeming us from sin, Satan, and death and by filling us with the Holy Spirit of God so that we can be remade.
Later Athanasius wrote that [Christ] “assumed humanity so that we might become God.”[8] Now of course he didn’t mean we take God’s place. He meant, as C. S. Lewis would later put it, that we become little Christs as the image of God is restored in us. The image of God in us becomes more radiant through the work of the Holy Spirit, which is poured out on us when we trust Christ.
So all of this comes down to the message of the gospel. The gospel does not refer to the first four books of the NT nor is the gospel that we must make ourselves right with God through our actions. We’ve seen how that would go. The gospel isn’t even that we go to heaven when we die, though it is supremely true that because of Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, “death is no longer terrible.”[9] The gospel is that creation is in deep need of redemption and the living God has acted by becoming incarnate in order to redeem His creation.
This psalm calls us to behold the majesty of God in creation. Another way we can say this is that we must behold the glory of God in Christ. Look to Christ. I cannot emphasize this enough. If we want to know what it means to be fully human, if we want communion with our creator, if we are looking for meaning in this world, we must look to Christ, the exact image of the one true God.
[1] https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/nearest_star_info.html
[2] The phrase incurvatus in se is original to Augustine.
[3] Mays, “What is a Human Being? Reflections on Psalm 8,” Theology Today, p. 514.
[4] https://www.tolstoytherapy.com/stargazing-as-therapy-tim-ferriss-tools-of-titans/
[5] “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory, pp. 45–46.
[6] Some of this material originally appeared in an essay I wrote on the ninth commandment. https://revseanmcguire.com/the-image-of-our-neighbor/
[7] On the Incarnation, p. 13.
[8] Ibid., p. 38.
[9] Ibid., p. 21.