For the director of music. According to gittith. A psalm of David. 1 LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. 2 Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, (strength for the sake of your enemies) to silence the foe and the avenger. 3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?[c] 5 You have made them[d] a little lower than the angels[e] and crowned them[f] with glory and honor. 6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their[g] feet: 7 all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, 8 the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. 9 LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Psalm 8
If we’ve had a few weeks of Psalms with David in crisis mode, this Psalm is David praising:
1 LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. 2 Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, (strength for the sake of your enemies) to silence the foe and the avenger.
Psalm 8:1-2
We miss the importance of v1 easily in our English translations if we forget that LORD in capitals is the English translation for YHWH, the name of God in Hebrew. In other words he’s not repeating Lord, he’s declaring that Yahweh is our Lord – our master, our sovereign, our King. Yahweh is the one who is in charge, and his name is majestic in all the earth. God has put his splendour over the heavens – God’s majesty and glory are written across creation.
And then the tone changes – God is so great, that it is simply the praise of children and infants that becomes the means of establishing strength against the enemy, that silences the foe and the avenger. God’s army is children, and the weapon is praise. In other words it doesn’t take human power to fight God’s battles – just humble praise.
Often we can wonder just what the point of praise is. Why do we need to tell God how great he is? Here we have one answer – to praise God is to establish a stronghold against the enemy. To praise God is to know that he has won. I think of moments in church life where suddenly in the midst of worship we are lifted out of the current trials into an awareness that God has won the victory. Such moments give us the ability to carry on and see from God’s perspective.
To praise in the midst of a world in chaos is vital. We need to be people who can both honestly lament the chaos, and also honestly praise God in the midst of the chaos. The honestly is vital. It is no use putting on a front to praise God – and if we find ourselves doing that we need to go to the lament Psalms and pour out our hearts to God first. But then somewhere in the midst of all the difficulties we also need to praise God. And David here, and a writer later in the Bible story show us how we can do that.
3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?[c]
Psalm 8:3-4
We need to consider. We need to look up at the heavens. When we look up at the heavens and see the stars – and don’t think of a street like ours, where the streetlights remove all but a tiny fraction of the stars, but think of the middle of the countryside, far from artificial light- think then of looking up and seeing the stars and being reminded of the greatness and grandeur of God.
As we see such sights we think – who are we that God should care about us? We are so small. In Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy there is a device known as the Total Perspective Vortex – which gives the user a glimpse of themselves in relation to the true size of the universe. It is impossible to survive the device without going mad. Adams point is that the universe is so vast, and we are so small, that no user can survive the impact of seeing their own smallness.
Without God there is no other conclusion. But here in Psalm 8 we are given a very different view. Yes the universe is vast, and we are small. But we are also the pinnacle of God’s creation:
5 You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. 6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: 7 all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, 8 the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. 9 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Psalm 8:5-9
Humanity is placed “a little lower than angels”, crowned with glory and honour, rulers over the world. That is the reason that David praises God here – that God has made not only the wonders of the heavens, but given us, who are so small a place second only to the angels.
Human beings are made to rule over and govern God’s creation – with wisdom and grace, with kindness and love. But, of course we don’t see this working out. We don’t see our rule over creation working out well. We see pollution and environmental catastrophe. We don’t see our relationships with each other working out. We have wars and murders. Fights and arguments.
The bible knows this. Look at Hebrews 2, where the writer quotes Psalm 8:
Hebrews 2
5 It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. 6 But there is a place where someone has testified: “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him? 7 You made them a little lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honor 8 and put everything under their feet.” In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. 9 But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
Hebrews 2:5-9
Look at v8-9 especially. Having quoted Psalm 8 the writer to the Hebrews recognises that we don’t see this rule and this blessing operating right now. We don’t see the world ‘subject to them’ – and I think the reason we don’t see this working right now is because of the fall. Because people have rebelled against God. But, the writer the Hebrews tells us, we do see Jesus.
We see Jesus – the perfect human being, the perfect ‘son of man’ (as the original Hebrew of Psalm 8 has it) who was by rights higher than any angel, made a little lower than the angels – and he is now crowned with glory and honour, because he tasted death for everyone. Jesus who died, is now risen and ascended, and as such he has all the honour that we will one day share.
In ourselves we don’t deserve this honour – but Jesus tasted death for everyone. And so he is crowned now with glory and honour, and is remaking us into people who will one day be all that people were supposed to be. His tasting death for all means that we can all be with him, receiving the glory and honour people were originally designed to have.
That is worth praising God for. And as we praise we build strength – we silence the enemy. Because he knows we see beyond the havoc he wreaks on this earth to the new creation where God will make all things well. We know from the rest of the Psalms that it is right to cry out in lament over the horrors of this world – but we also know from these Psalms of praise that we should cry out in praise to the one who is ultimately in control and knows the end from the beginning. We can trust him, even when we cannot see what he is doing – because in the pages of his word we do see Jesus. And so we know the end, even in the midst of tragedy.
And so we can come back to the start of the Psalm – to praise the God whose majesty is declared across the heavens, whose name is majestic in all the earth. At the start of this week let us come back to our creator, let us recognise who he is and his majesty and glory and praise him for his beauty and honour. Do not deny the pain and brokenness of a world like ours. But realise that in the midst of the brokenness there are still reasons to praise.
Joshua's Tree Rooted 