Word of Salvation – Vol.50 No.7 – February 2005

 

The Glory of God

 

Sermon by Rev J Haverland on Psalm 8

Scripture Readings:  Hebrews 2:5-18; Matthew 21:1-17

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ...

At some time or other all of us think about the purpose of our lives: Why are we here? What is our goal? What is the reason for living? We follow the same routines each day - we sleep, we get up, we eat, we work or study, we eat, and sleep; and we repeat that cycle over and over. For what? What is the point? For what purpose?

Many people try to answer that question and they come up with a blank. They don't see any purpose. They can't see any point. It doesn't make sense. Life seems pointless, empty, hopeless and directionless. John Cage, a composer of the early 20th century, made this the philosophy of his life and music. "The main purpose in life", he said, "is to have no purpose." A 20th century artist, Francis Bacon, said much the same thing: "I think of life as meaningless." Your average man in the street may not express it like this but they, too, see it like this. Many young people in our country come to this position, so much so that they can't see the point of living any longer and they take their own life.

Others ask about the purpose of life and they decide that the main point is to make the most of life. "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!" "The person who dies with the most toys wins." But that is an empty existence. There is little happiness or satisfaction in a life lived for selfish pleasure.

Still others ask this question and they come up with the answer of this psalm: Life is to be lived for God. We were created in the image of God and have been put here to honour, praise and worship God who is the Great Creator of the whole world. This is our purpose. This is why we are here. This is what makes life worth living. This is what makes life satisfying and fills us with joy and thanksgiving. This is the theme of this psalm.

We will consider this under four points:

1. Our primary purpose;

2. Our original position;

3. Our fallen position;

4. Our restored position.

First of all then we will see that

OUR PRIMARY PURPOSE is to glorify God.

This is how this psalm begins - it begins with God as the creator. "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth." God's name stands for his person and His character. God is majestic - all-powerful, awe-inspiring, exalted - He is almighty.

Your calling in life is to recognise who God is as the Creator of all things and to worship Him as God. This is what David did in this psalm. This is what we are commanded to do in the whole Bible. That is expressed in different ways.

You are called to put God first: The first of the ten commandments says, "You shall have no other gods before me." That is, God must be first. He must be primary. He must have the top priority above all else.

That is put in different words in the summary of the law: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind." That is, love God with all you have and everything in you. Pour out your life in the service of God.

The Westminster Assembly meeting in 1648 beautifully captured this biblical theme when it wrote the first question and answer of the Shorter Catechism: "What is the chief end of man?" it asks. The answer: "To glorify God and enjoy him forever." This is your purpose.

It is very difficult to do this at present because we live in what is called a "secular" society. God is ignored, forgotten, pushed to the edges of life. God is disregarded in every area of society - in politics, education, law, medicine, industry, the workplace, and the office. God is not mentioned. It is as though He does not exist. It's not just that people do not praise Him. It's worse than that - they completely ignore Him!

What about you? Do you do this? Are you ignoring God? Do you neglect Him? Have you let other things occupy a more important place in your life and activity? Your work? Your car? Your home? Your wife? Your children? Money? Wealth? Sport? Or do you put God first in everything? Do you honour Him? Do you praise Him? Do you thank Him? Do you worship Him? Do you do these things all the time? Every day? Does God dominate your life?

Plenty of people give God a passing thought. They might thank Him at odd moments. But this psalm is not talking about that; it is talking about a life made up of praise in every part. This is what you are called to do. This is the purpose of life.

You can learn to praise God from children. "From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise..." (vs 2a). Children are very open in expressing their faith and trust in God. Your young children or grandchildren will go through the supermarket cheerfully singing Christian songs. They are not inhibited in their praise of God. They speak freely of their faith and trust in him.

The children did that when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. "Hosanna to the Son of David", they sang. The pharisees were angry about this and wanted Jesus to quieten them down. But Jesus quoted the words of this psalm and saw their praise as the fulfilment of these words.

Children, God loves to see you singing on Sundays in worship and He loves to hear children praising Him. Keep praising God, in the words you say and in the songs you sing.

This praise of children is sufficient to defend God's glory. "From the lips of children you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger." (vs 2). When the children were singing the praise of Jesus on that Palm Sunday, they silenced the unbelief and objections of the pharisees. Their praise was a rebuke to the foes and enemies of Jesus. The glory of God is so powerful that even children can defend it! God's majesty is so secure in the world that even the praise of children will secure His honour.

The apostle Paul explained this in 1 Corinthians: "God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong" (1:27). This principle is also illustrated in the life of George Whitfield, who was a great evangelist and preacher in the 18th century revivals in England. Children loved to hear him preach, and they would sit at his feet looking up at him even while those who hated him were throwing tomatoes and eggs at him. God used their support to silence the foe and the avenger. God has created us for His praise and He will be praised even through children. The psalm also tells us that God is to be praised for His creation.

In verse 1 David tells us that God has set His glory above the heavens, and in verse 3 he said that He considered the heavens. The word 'consider' means to look carefully at something. It's not just glancing at something but rather taking a long and thoughtful look. Maybe David was thinking about the times he had been out in the fields as a shepherd boy, lying on his back, looking at the stars. Think of times when you have been out on a clear night away from the city lights and seen all the stars.

When we look out into the heavens we can see the moon and the stars which God has set in place. This is a staggering thought especially with what we now know about the universe. The universe is full of billions of stars and planets, most of them gathered in massive galaxies. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has about 100,000 million stars. It is 100,000 light years across. (light travels 186,000 m/p/s). Our closest neighbour galaxy is Andromena which is 2.2 million light years away and it is twice the size of the Milky Way.

Using strong telescopes astronomers can see about a million galaxies like our Milky Way system. God is the creator of all of this and all of creation gives evidence of the fact that God exists and that He is all powerful.

Above the entrance to the Christchurch museum are words from the book of Job, inscribed in the stone at a time when people had more faith in God than they do now. The words read, "These are parts of His ways: but how little a portion is heard of Him" (26:14). All the marvels in all the museums of the world are only a small part of what God has made, only a small portion of all He has done. Our response must be to praise him. This is why we were made.

All this thinking about God and his creation and His greatness makes the psalmist think of mankind. Verse 4 says, "What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him." Who are we in comparison to the Lord God.

Let's consider secondly,

OUR ORIGINAL POSITION in relation to God.

One of the phrases David used to describe us in verse 4 is "son of man". He uses the Hebrew word "adam", which takes us back to Genesis 1. It reminds us that we were created by God from the dust of the earth. We are not the product of fate, of time plus chance, or of evolutionary mutations. No, we were created by God.

He created us in His image, in His likeness. Not like Him in any physical way because God has no physical shape or form, but rather in our mind, and will and spirit. We were made spiritual beings so we can relate to God, love Him and know Him. We have been "crowned with glory and honour."

This is how we ought to see ourselves and how we ought to see others. This is the biblical basis for self-esteem: we should esteem ourselves highly because we were made in the image of God. And we ought to see others in the same way. They, too, are made in the image of God; so we should treat them with love and respect and look after them.

Our society is losing this perspective as it loses a memory of Christianity. This is why abortion is so common in our society and why there is pressure for euthanasia. We have lost this biblical perspective of each life being precious in God's sight, including the unborn child and the elderly. This is who we are in relation to God.

We also have a relationship to God's creation. David describes this in verses 6-8: "You have made him ruler over the works of Your hands; You put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim in the paths of the sea."

God placed us in charge of His creation. We are to look after it and rule over it and care for it. He gave us dominion and authority over all He made. We are to develop its potential, use its resources carefully and creatively.

This is a major focus in our world today. Organisations such as Greenpeace and the Green Party have this as the main plank of their programme. But they are concerned about the world from a totally different point of view than the Christian. They make a god out of Nature, speaking about 'Mother Nature', or 'Mother Earth'.

Christians, however, are concerned about the world because it belongs to God and He has told us to look after it. We, too, want clean rivers and pure lakes; we want to look after the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. We, too, want to care for all the animals. We want to conserve the earth's resources and use them sensibly and encourage recycling because this world belongs to God. We do all this for Him, in obedience to His commands and for His glory. But we don't live up to this.

So we consider, thirdly,

OUR FALLEN POSITION.

David was aware that we are not what we ought to be. "What is man?", he asks in verse 4. He uses a different word from the word translated 'man' in the next line. This Hebrew word, "anosh", describes man in contrast to God; it emphasises how frail, weak and sinful we are.

This brokenness and sin goes back to the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They broke God's command. They rebelled against God. They did it their own way. They thought they knew better than the Lord. And their sin affected all of humanity because Adam was the representative head of the whole human race. His sin meant all sinned. His sin was passed on to us.

Today we can see the effects of this sin all around us.

Our relationship with God is broken. Left to ourselves we live far away from God - at a distance - isolated, alone and lonely.

Sin has affected us in every aspect and part of our being: our mind, body, emotions and will. In theology we call this total depravity. Every part of the human person is stained and tainted by sin.

Our relationship with others is also twisted. Instead of respecting others as God's image-bearers, we often ignore them, neglect them, gossip about them, or hate them. The daily papers and news on television are full of terrible stories of neglect, theft, violence, sexual abuse and murder.

And instead of looking after the world we have messed it up, polluted the air and rivers, burnt the forests, eroded the land, wasted the earth's resources. We have been motivated by greed rather than by a concern for the honour and praise of God.

This is our fallen position. But this position can be restored. This is the good news of the Bible.

So we consider, fourthly,

OUR RESTORED POSITION.

The writer of Hebrews applied the words of this Psalm to the Lord Jesus. We are only pale reflections of God's image, but He is the full image of God's glory. We have fallen far short of the people God created us to be, but Jesus is the perfect man and is all we were meant to be. He did what we failed to do. He is the second Adam. He was and is humanity in all its full potential. He has been exalted to a high place in heaven so that these verses, 6-8, are fulfilled in Him.

By believing in Jesus and His saving death on the cross for your sin, you can be renewed and restored to what God meant you to be. If you believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, you will find your purpose for life - which is to live for the praise and honour and worship of God.

This is the reason you are here. This is why you have been placed on this world. This will give your life purpose and meaning. This will make life worth living and the future worth waiting for.

It is this perspective on life that will enable you to live each day declaring, "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!"

Amen.