Hi everyone. How’s your self-esteem?
I hope looking at Psalm 8 together will remind you that you are known and loved by the majestic creator of the universe and have a unique, significant role to play in the coming of His Kingdom.
But if you struggle with feeling worthless, please speak to someone, a friend, Ruth, your GP or call the lifeline number 131114.
Because you are not alone in the universe.
When humans look at the stars, our smallness in the vastness echoes around us
And the more we look at the stars, the smaller we seem
The late agnostic astronomer Carl Sagan wrote:
“We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”
But it’s not just the stars that can leave us feeling insignificant
Sometimes, it’s the stars (movie stars that is)
Or just other people,
we look at their beauty
Their contribution
Their success
Even their loves
And think, I don’t have that,
I haven’t achieved that,
what is my life worth?
what am I worth?
We feel indistinguishable in a crowd
And, sometimes, that makes me feel incredibly alone
Just living
imagining dying
in my own tiny corner of the universe
Which spins on,
regardless
Keep looking at the stars and it can get worse
Mr Sagan again:
“And after the earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it’s burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being — and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth.”
So even if I do achieve… fame, fortune, family
It’s all so inconsequential,
gone so quickly compared to the stars,
What does it really matter?
What do we matter?
Is life merely “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?”
And if not,
what is our significance?
These aren’t new questions,
The ancient Israelite, King David, confronted them when he wrote Psalm 8.
I imagine King David remembering nights as a boy watching his father’s sheep, nothing between him and the stars
But he doesn’t start with him, with people,
He doesn’t start with the stars
He starts with God
Which brings us to our first point, follow along in your outlines if you like.
God is the truly majestic, truly significant One.
The psalm starts, ends and really revolves around God.
From the cry “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” that bookends it
to the way the question of humanity’s significance is phrased in the middle
“what is man that YOU are mindful of him, the son of man that YOU care for him?”
This psalm is actually a prayer to, and primarily about, God.
God is the truly significant One,
The LORD, the “I AM” beyond comparison
However astronomical his subjects to come
God’s glory is greater, and God has made it so, setting his glory above the heavens.
And then, suddenly, verse 2:
From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise
Astronomy to paediatrics?
But God does both:
And why? Because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the vengeful one.
“Have you considered my servant Job?”
God’s display of majesty and glory is purposeful
- The heavens declare the glory of God
- and because of this people “are without excuse”
But the contrast is also purposeful.
The God of the universe choosing little children as the other stronghold of his glory.
- … God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things–and the things that are not–to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him.
God does this a lot, it’s kind of his thing, here’s a few examples:
- choosing little Israel
- Gideon’s little army
- Even when Goliath saw little David “was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, if choosing the “least of these” is God’s thing, it’s Jesus’ thing too:
In Matthew 21, after entering Jerusalem the week before his death, Jesus has just driven everyone buying and selling from the Temple, and in verse 14
14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. [that’s God of the Universe power right there] 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.
16 “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him.
“Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read,
“ ‘From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise’ ?”
17 And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.
That’s a mic drop there.
To silence the enemy and the avenger.
You saw the Psalm talking about the praise of God, the Creator,
and Jesus appropriates that for himself
So, what the psalm encourages us to do first is get our perspective right,
Worship the stars’ Creator
then David considers the heavens and humanity’s place under them in verse 3,
The heavens, the work of God’s fingers, the moon and the stars which God set in place
And when he does
He addresses his conclusion in verse 4
to this majestic God
who graciously makes Himself known
What is man that you are mindful of him?
The son of man that you care for him?
We’re so small, how can we, or anything we do, have any worth, any meaning?
Indeed the scale of our lives compared to the universe is one argument atheists marshal against the existence of God
- “If God is human-oriented, wouldn’t you expect him to create a universe in which humans feature prominently? You’d expect humans to occupy most of the universe, existing across time. Yet that isn’t the kind of universe we live in. Humans are very small, and space, as Douglas Adams once put it, “is big, really really big”.” (by Emily Thomas, 2017)
But this is not a problem posed by the Universe or science
It’s a belief issue
It’s saying
I can’t believe someone who created the universe.
Could also care about me.
But that’s exactly what psalm 8 is crying out to us.
The Universe is immense,
And God is even more majestic, more glorious.
And we’re little children,
And this somehow God’s design
But what is that design?
And so we come to our second point
Humanity’s significance is to rule God’s creation as His image-bearers.
Even as David asks how God could even notice beings as insignificant as us
The words shift from:
- What is “enosh” that you are mindful of him
- a word highlighting our frailty, our mortality
To:
- The son of ’âḏâm that you care for him
David draws us back to Genesis 1
- Then God said, “Let us make man (’âḏâm) in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
David says that God made humanity a little lower than elôhîym (heavenly beings, angels, gods or even God)
Now this can’t mean ‘humans are nearly god’ because Psalm 8 centres on our smallness and Genesis says clearly we’re part of creation, not the creator
But
God crowned us with glory and honour
As an Emperor crowns a subject king
to rule under him as his representative
His image-bearer
Ruling God’s handiwork he places under our feet
The flocks and herds and beasts of the field in verse 7
The birds of the air and fish of the sea in verse 8
“Under his feet” sounds uncomfortably like trampling
- like the words translated rule and subdue in Genesis 1
But, more importantly for psalm 8 are the covenant overtones
– when a greater king (the Suzerain) made covenant treaty with a lesser, vassal king, the duplicate copies of the contract were placed literally under the feet of the image of the god in the parties’ respective temples, as the stone tablets of the covenant were placed in “the footstool of our God”.
So,
both what we are
and what we do
are to represent God
To signify – sign-ify Him,
We are significant,
Because we are to be signs pointing and leading all creation towards God.
In our labour,
In our relationships,
In our interaction with creation…
Does that make anyone else nervous?
Because if we’re not inconsequential,
there’s consequences
for breaking covenant obligations.
It’s one thing to feel what I do doesn’t matter,
Sometimes it can even be “satisfying and reassuring”
but if we do matter,
then what we do also matters.
And we don’t rule creation well,
Not the fish of the sea
Nor the birds of the air
Not the beasts of the field
Or even other people,
In fact humans, the Church included, do it really badly and God’s name is blasphemed because of this.
The old King James Version translates verse 4
“what is… the son of man, that thou visitest him”
God cares enough to check out what you and I are doing
Will he be pleased with what he sees?
Which brings us to our third point,
Jesus, God’s perfect image-bearer, is perfecting our role in creation!
Because, Jessie reminded us last week, from Psalm 2,
there is a Son of Man,
With whom God is well pleased
Hebrews 2 verses 8 and 9 recognises
at present we don’t see everything subject to humanity, even to Jesus,
We do “see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour
God has done in Jesus, the last Adam, what the first Adam and his descendants fail to do…
Perfectly obey God
Perfectly image God
Perfectly satisfy God,
Both as human
And sacrificial substitute bearing the consequences of our failure to signify God correctly
Because he suffered death, so that
By the grace of God
He might taste death for everyone
Scripture shows us Jesus: crucified, resurrected, ascended, the one “like a son of man” now seated in glory, honour and authority at the right hand of God
When we trust Jesus to save us,
We are included in Christ the perfect Adam.
Becoming part of his body the church, of which Christ is the head
And “…he chose us in him before the creation of the world”
God’s purpose for humanity,
included in and under Christ
to rule, signifying Him to creation
has always been God’s plan and, such is God’s power, it is being fulfilled despite our sin,
We still don’t see everything subject to Him.
But it’s on the way
Christ’s resurrection and glorification guarantee this
And in Christ
our significance is so amazing that we have a role to play in the timing.
Remember that Sagan quote about the earth burning to a crisp?
Peter says something similar
- 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.
11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.
Jesus tells us “…this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Entropy and astrophysics don’t determine earth’s fate,
Christ’s work does,
As He works all things for good in us, as members of His body,
to be signs pointing and leading all creation towards the majestic God
so that one day “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God”
Now, Christ’s body, like all bodies, has many parts, and they don’t all look the same or do the same thing,
But they all play their part
A significant, signifying part.
You might be sharing your faith,
Serving or being served
Praying (and, if you’re not already, apps like Operation World help us pray for the gospel of the kingdom to go out as a testimony to all nations)
Or simply living your signpost “peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3 This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, 4 who wants all people [your family, friends, colleagues, housemates, neighbours] to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”
You might do that as a little child
a chaste single,
Working well in what earthly eyes see as a dead-end job,
Lovingly changing nappies,
Earnestly looking for work,
You might do it faithfully struggling with physical or mental ill-health
It might not seem significant
Compared to the universe
Compared to others
But
if you’re doing it
living in and for Jesus,
you are playing your part signifying God,
signposting for others the way to His Kingdom,
speeding the day of the Lord,
and that
is Eternally significant.