MY FAVORITE PSALMS
PSALM 8: HOW MAJESTIC IS YOUR NAME
DR. JIM DIXON
PSALM 8
MAY 27, 2012
Have you ever wondered why the book of Psalms is called Psalms? The word psalm is the Anglicized form of the Greek word psalmos which means song or hymn. You might be thinking, “Wait a minute. The psalms were not written in Greek, so why should the title of the book be based on a Greek word? Weren’t the psalms written in Hebrew?” Yes, the Psalms were written in Hebrew. This book, like the entire Old Testament, was translated into Greek, from the Hebrew into the Greek, in the form of the LXX or the Septuagint. In the Septuagint, you see that this word psalmos is in the title of 57 chapters of the book of Psalms. This word which means song, which means hymn, this word psalmos is in 57 of the 150 titles of the 150 chapters in the book of Psalms. It is a translation of the Hebrew word mizmor. The Hebrew word mizmor also means song or hymn. You probably think that the Jewish people, the Hebrew people called this book of the Bible Mizmor or Mizmorum, the equivalent of the Greek in Hebrew of Psalms. That is not the case. The Hebrew people have never called this book Mizmorum or Psalms. The Hebrew people called this book of the Bible Tehillim. The Hebrew word Tehillim means praise. It is found in the title of the 145th Psalm. Literally Tehillim means song of praise or hymn of praise. When we see the Psalms we should think of songs, hymns, and poems. We should also think of praise because most of the songs and the hymns in the book of Psalms are songs of praise. It is very appropriate for today, because we begin as we look at the Psalms, we begin with a psalm of praise; that is Psalm eight, and this is a psalm of praise. In this psalm we are told that we should praise God for three reasons and we should do this every day.
First of all, we should praise him for the cosmos. Do you ever do that? Do you ever look at the heavens and praise God? Do you ever look up on a starry night and worship God? The Bible says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” It was our Lord Jesus who taught us to pray the Lord’s Prayer, and he taught us to begin by saying, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” When we pray, we hallow the name of God. One of God’s names is Jehovah Sabaoth. What does Jehovah Sabaoth mean? It means Lord of Hosts. We only know its precise meaning by Biblical context. Sometimes when God is called Jehovah Sabaoth, it is referring to the angelic hosts. He is the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of the angels. Other times, when you look at the context the title Jehovah Sabaoth refers to the armies of Israel. He is Jehovah Sabaoth. He is Lord of the hosts; he is the Lord of the military hosts of Israel. Other times, in fact most of the time, when he is called Jehovah Sabaoth, the reference is to the starry hosts. He is Jehovah Sabaoth; he is Lord of the starry hosts, the Lord of the heavenly hosts, the Lord of the Universe, and the Lord of the cosmos. So, when we look at the heavens, we praise him.
There are many mysteries about the heavens. In 1877 astronomers announced to the people of the world an amazing discovery. They had found, by long range telescopes, canals on the planet Mars. If you remember from your history classes, this was startling news. It stunned people in America and all over the world. Canals on the planet Mars. As they used the best technology that was available to them at that time in 1877, they determined that these canals were signs of intelligent life and that there were intelligent beings who therefore inhabited the planet Mars. H.G. Wells in 1898, when he wrote War of the Worlds, based his war between Earth and Mars on this kind of information that there were intelligent beings on the planet of Mars. Today we laugh. Today we know that there are no canals on the planet Mars. What looked like canals were simply geological formations, perfectly natural, and no indicator of intelligent life on Mars. Today most scientists believe there is no evidence of life on Mars, not even in the past, certainly not in the present, although this is always a subject of debate. There is really no proof of any life in the universe apart from this graced planet we call Earth.
Have you ever had a time where you wanted to check it out? Have you ever just had a wild moment when you thought, “I wish I could travel to Mars or Saturn?” I mean you would want to be safe, but where you could be up close and personal and take a look at Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and check out part of our solar system? Have you ever wanted to do that? I think that on July 20, 1969 when Armstrong and Aldrin reached the surface of the moon with Apollo 11, when the lunar module Eagle set down on the moon on the Sea of Tranquility, I think there was great hope in this nation and all over the world that we were entering a new era. I think it reflected the announcement that JFK, President Kennedy, had made in 1961 when he announced in that decade, we would send man to the moon and bring him back. Sure enough, it happened, July 20, 1969. I think there was great hope that we were going to travel to the stars and that this was just the beginning. We were going to travel to the planets in our solar system, travel to other stars, to other solar systems, travel to the galaxies. There was this thought that we were actually going to be able to, through advancing technology, mine the universe. We would be able to take precious metals from the moon and other planets and we could space transport all that wealth back to earth and bless the people.
All dreams. Understand that it was 43 years ago when we stepped onto the moon. It was 51 years ago that JFK made that grand announcement, and not much has happened. I know that yesterday that we had some astronauts that entered the Dragon, the commercial space craft that is really kind of like an outer space food bank, bringing 1000 pounds of clothes, food, and supplies. It is all on a pin. Everything is happening right by our planet. We are not going anywhere. We still haven’t gone beyond the moon, we haven’t colonized the moon, we haven’t done any of these things that we thought and expected we would do. I think it is diminishing hope now. The truth is many within the scientific community are beginning to doubt that space travel will ever be attainable.
Just imagine for a second: imagine that you have a desire to see some of our galaxy, just our galaxy, the Milky Way. You would just like to go to a nearby star. We have our own star called the sun. Our planets revolve around the sun, but you would like to see the nearest star. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy and you just want to see the nearest one. What is the nearest star? It is Proxima Centauri, 4.22 light years away. It is the closest star to us. The next closest is Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years away. Imagine you are going to take a trip there. Barb and I just traveled from Zurich to LAX. We just came back from a trip called Roots and Reformation and we went to Israel for the Roots, and we went to the Reformation country where we looked at some of the places where Martin Luther was and where John Calvin was. We went to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Germany, and France, and down into Switzerland. We saw all kinds of wonderful things. We flew back from Zurich to LAX on a 777. It took us twelve and a half hours to get from Zurich to LAX and we averaged 550 miles per hour. This is on a 777, which can travel approximately at the speed of sound if going with the jet stream. Imagine that you were able to get on a space craft that could go 25,000 miles per hour.
Imagine that you were getting on a space craft that could go 40 times the speed of sound. The Concorde can go twice the speed of sound, but you are getting on a space craft that is 40 times the speed of sound, 25,000 miles per hour. You are heading towards the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. You are all excited. How long is it going to take you to get there? How long do you think? 130,000 years moving at 40 times the speed of sound, 25,000 miles per hour. To be precise: 130,201 years. All the caskets that have ever been built in the history of the world would not contain the offspring that would come out of such a stretch of time, 130,000 years. Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees 4000 years ago. David ascended the throne of Israel 3000 years ago. Jesus was born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. We are saying 130,000 years just to reach the nearest star. You begin to see the problem if you are thinking, “I would like to go to the other end of our galaxy.” Even if you could move at the speed of light, which is not 25,000 miles per hour, it is 186,000 miles a second. If you could move at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second or 5.88 trillion miles a year, how long would it take you to move across our galaxy, just our galaxy from one end to the other? One hundred thousand years! Even moving at the speed of light it would take you 100,000 years to go from one end of our galaxy to another.
There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. You are thinking, “Well, I would like to see another galaxy. I would like to see a galaxy like our galaxy, a spiral galaxy.” What is the nearest one? Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy. How long is it going to take you to get there? If you could move at the speed of light, which you cannot, 186,000 miles per second, how long would it take you to get to Andromeda, the nearest spiral galaxy? 2.2 million years to the nearest spiral galaxy. You begin to see the problem, right? That is why scientists and cosmologists and astrophysicists are saying we have a problem here. This is incredible, but we aren’t going to see any of it. We aren’t even going to see our solar system. It is a speck of a pinhead within our galaxy which is the speck of a pinhead in our universe. What are we going to do? Scientists are speculating about the possibility of worm holes, the possibility of wrapping space time, folding space time, making shortcuts from here to there, maybe the possibility of the multi-verse and parallel universes and the ability to make a jump from one universe to another. All of this is speculation. There is really no proof that any of that exists. I don’t know how you feel about that? Maybe you just don’t care. You might just be thinking, “What is on TV tonight?”
I love science. I love astronomy. I love the study of the cosmos. I actually believe that God has a plan. I really believe that God’s people will see this stuff. God is not arbitrary. God is not capricious. God has a purpose; it is brilliant and it is cosmic. When you look at a passage like Romans chapter 8 and it says the entire creation, the Greek word ktizo, the entire creation waits with eager longing for the coming and the revealing of the children of God. What does that mean? I think God has something cosmic in mind. The entire ktizo, the entire creation waits with eager longing for the coming of the children of God. He is going to reshape the cosmos, the New Heavens and New Earth wherein righteousness dwells. He has a plan. I am excited. In the meantime, as we look at the heavens, we see His glory. We see His power. We see His omnipotence; we see his majesty. I would like you to take a moment and take a little glimpse at the universe He made …
…. Just a glimpse, but awesome. “The heavens declare the glory of God. When I consider the heavens the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast created; 0 Lord, our lord how majestic is thy name in all the earth.”
Secondly, the psalmist in Psalm 8 says we need to thank God, praise God, for the variety of life God has made. The psalmist in Psalm 8 particularly references animal life, the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea and everything that moves along the paths of the sea. 0 Lord, our Lord how majestic is thy name in all the earth. When you look at the world of animals and you think of the Creator, you praise His name. I know with regard to the whole world of animals and the whole subject of animal life, there is conflict of opinion. I know there are certain animals we tend to like and certain animals, maybe not so much. When we start moving down to insects there are a variety of feelings. I know that animals can be problems. Though God has created animals, they can be problems. We have had that right here at the church. Many of you know, we have 25 acres to the south that are undeveloped. The church owns that, we as a congregation own that. We have some dreams. We have dreamed of putting a seminary on there. We have dreamed of building a school of theology there. We have dreamed of putting in a Christian senior care center there for ministry to older folks. We know in the short term we are going to put in some athletic fields and they are going to be used by our schools and by Valor and by our congregation. We have long-term dreams as well. It is a blessing from God to have this land.
We have had some problems with the land. Some of you might know that just a few years ago we had a prairie dog community develop on our land. There were 300 to 400 prairie dogs, a normal sized prairie dog community right here on our property. We began to get complaints. Maybe you called us. We had calls from some of the neighbors who were worried about prairie dogs on that land, and worried about disease and infestation. There are some minor concerns about that kind of thing. The prairie dogs are federally protected. You can’t just go out there and kill them. These are not canines, they are rodents, but they are federally protected rodents. You have to remove them in the right way, you have to protect them and preserve them. We hired a company called DogGone to remove our prairie dog community. They charged us $35,000. That is about $100 per prairie dog. Don’t laugh because you paid it! But we had to do it. Why is it so expensive? They have to move them to another natural habitat far away and they have to move them in air-conditioned vehicles. There are laws, and they have to be given six meals a day because of their metabolism. They have to be placed on a natural habitat and there is one up in Fort Collins. We still have complaints by animal rights advocates because there are predators up in that area. I must say, if there is any habitat that is natural there are going to be predators. We live in a world like this where there is controversy all the time about animals. Sometimes animals are problems. The Bible tells us, I am sure you know this, when you look at Genesis chapters 1 and 2 and you see the creation, when God created the animals, what did He say? “It is good.” I don’t know if you always feel that way when you look at the behavior in the world of animals. I know I have some questions.
A couple of years ago on a January 2nd, I was kind of bored. I was tired of football. I love football, but even if you love football, you can only take so much. Come January 2nd I was ready for something else so I was watching a National Geographic special on animals. I was fascinated because the program began with these zebras running over an African plain. They were beautiful. The zebras were majestic. As their hooves were pounding and they slowed it down into slow motion, you could see their muscles tensing and the drama of it, it was beautiful. Then suddenly in slow motion, you see coming from the side a whole pack of hyenas. Hyenas can be vicious. The hyenas came out onto the same plain and they began to try to seek out the weakest amongst the zebras, the smallest, and those who were straggling behind. They begin to attack them and kill them and drag them off and shred their flesh. It was graphically violent, but I was amazed. Then they moved on to show a group of hyenas running across the plain, again in slow motion. They looked kind of majestic. Some of their mates had killed some zebras, but now they were running across the plain and they looked beautiful and majestic. Then suddenly you see this pride of lions come off from the side. They are mostly female lions because the hunting for food is done by the female lions and the male lion does typically not hunt for food for the pride. What the announcer who was narrating this said, “Male lions, contrary to popular opinion, male lions do hunt but they hunt for the thrill of the kill.” What they showed for this video were some female lions but also some male lions coming out to attack the hyenas. The male lions were not seeking out the weakest amongst them but were seeking out the strongest in order to take them and challenge them and fight to the death. They showed the violence of that fight. I found myself thinking, “It is good.” You have the food chain that is top to bottom, but I started thinking a little deeper and was thinking about all the diversity of life. Some of it bacteriological and some of it viral, constantly morphing and mutating. Then you think, “Is all of this good? Is it all good?”
Biblically, theologically this is profoundly deep and very complex. The Bible tells us that the fall of mankind, the Bible makes it very clear that the human race is fallen. We are created in the image of God and we are all fallen sinners in the need of grace, but the Bible speaks of a prior fall. The Bible speaks of a prior fall that pre-dates the fall of man. This was a fall in the spiritual realm. The Bible tells us that it is sheer audacity to believe that only animals and man exist and that the only form of life is plants and animals. The Bible tells us that God, in his omniscience and omnipotence, created a spiritual realm. There are angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim in the spiritual realm. As God gave freedom to man, God gave freedom in the spiritual realm. Long ago before the human race ever came along, there was a fall in the angelic realm. The Bible mentions it in the book of Revelation; the Bible also mentions it in the book of Isaiah and various other places in the Bible. This being, this entity that we call the devil or Satan, fell from glory and took a part of the angelic host with him. It had some impact on creation. The Bible said that the whole of the creation is now subject to futility. The whole of the ktizo is subject to futility. The Greek word is mataiotes, which means failure to maintain created intent or failure to attain created potential. It is all tainted because of spiritual warfare. We cannot look at the creation now and know exactly what it was meant to be. We know that it is tainted. I want you to understand that. God created mankind, but we are tainted. God created the animals, but even the animal realm is tainted. Nothing is as it was meant to be. Yet, we can look at animals and we can still praise God. We can look at animals and we can still give glory to God. Maybe you find it hard to look at animals and to praise God, so we want to give you the chance to see our pet, so you might praise God. Our children’s department here at the church in combination with our communications department made a little video about our dog, who is a Yorkshire terrier. We want you to see it…
…. A typical Sunday morning in the Dixon household. Actually, that was our prior Yorkie Terrier that Barb had rescued from Daniels Park It actually was older than we thought it was. It died having a tooth cleaning. We can all identify with that. We have a different Yorkie Terrier now. Surely that helped you praise God, right? If you love pets, if you have dogs or cats or any kind of a pet you understand that there is a beauty to animals. It is amazing what God has created. Even though the creation has some taint upon it, there is glory to God not only when you look at the cosmos, but in the diversity of life and the variety of animals that God has made.
There is a final thought from the psalmists in Psalm 8. That is, most of all we need to praise God for people. The psalmist writes that when I consider the heavens the works of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast created, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him, and yet you have made him little less than Elohim. That is an amazing statement. God has made mankind, male and female, and he has made us a little less than Elohim. What does the Hebrew Elohim mean? It means God. Little less than God. Some say that the reference must be to Christ, who is the second Adam and the representative man. It is true that in Hebrews chapter 2, Psalm 8 is quoted and that all the promises made to man will be fulfilled in Christ and through Christ. That is true. It is also true that when you look at Psalm 8, it is not a messianic psalm. It is actually describing the creation of mankind and the glory that God vested on mankind. When we look at Psalm 8 and it says that man was created a little less than Elohim, you can take Elohim in a variety of ways. It might mean God because man has the image of God. It also might mean the angels. Sometimes the Hebrew Elohim actually refers to the angelic realm, so that man would be said to be created a little less than the angels. Any way you look at it, the reference in Psalm 8 is to the image of God. God gave to man, male and female, His image. It goes back to Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27. In the image of God created He him, male and female created He them, in His image and His likeness, the imago def. There is this glory that was given to man. It is not only a reference to the imago Dei, but Psalm 8 is also referencing the dominion.
Again, you go back to Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 through 31 where it talks about the dominion over the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea; that is quoted in Psalm 8, the dominion given to mankind. This is a dominion of stewardship. We have dominion over the animals and dominion over the plants and dominion over the earth itself, but we are going to have to give an account as stewards to God. We have dominion, but as stewards. That is referenced in Psalm chapter 8, the imago dei and the dominion. What is also referenced there is the soul or the divine breath. This goes back to Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 where it says God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and he became a living nephesh, a living soul. This is mysterious language and theologians are still debating the scope of language here. There is no doubt that there is something very special about man. God created man in his image and likeness, gave man dominion, and then God breathed on man. You look at the breath of God and it always in the Bible is endowed with power. The Bible speaks of itself as having the breath of God upon it. It says in II Timothy chapter 3 that all scripture, the whole of the Bible, is theopneustos, God-breathed, the breath of God upon it. Then you come to John chapter 20 where Jesus is resurrected and alive. He appears to his disciples in the upper room in the city of Jerusalem. As Jesus appears to them resurrected and alive, the Son of God, what does Jesus do? The Bible says that He breathed on them. John chapter 20 Jesus breathed on His disciples saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit, the breath of God releasing the power and presence of God.” Then you come to Acts chapter 2 and you have Pentecost, you have the breath of God, the Holy Spirit descending from heaven like a mighty wind upon the whole company of believers. The breath of God gives life – giving life in the beginning, giving regenerated life, spiritual life. The breath of God is upon man.
Psalms 8 wants to make that clear so that you view man as unique in all the world. This has huge implications. This means you cannot practice euthanasia. You love people and you don’t want to see them suffer, but you can’t go Kevorkian, you can’t practice euthanasia. The truth of the matter is that we have not been given dominion over ourselves. The Bible makes it clear that we were not given dominion over man. We have dominion over the animals, we can take their lives. We must give an account for how we treat them. We have dominion over the plants and we can use them, but again we must give an account for how we treat the earth. We have been given dominion over the earth, and dominion over the world of animals, but never were we given dominion over mankind. God has dominion and retains dominion over mankind. He gives breath and we cannot take it away. You understand what is behind the central Christian teaching of the sanctity of life. This relates to abortion as well, and it is why so many Evangelicals are concerned about the subject of abortion. There is no effort to be anti-women. As Christians we are to love men and women equally, both are equal in His image and in His likeness. You see, life is precious. There is this great theological debate about how the breath of God is imparted to the baby born. As you look at the various views that are out there, there is the traducian view which says that the breath of God is passed on. God breathed on the original couple, he breathed on Adam and Eve and the breath has been passed on through generation through procreation. The creationist view is that when every baby is born God breathes fresh and creates soul, ex nihilo, out of nothing. That view, the question then is asked: Does God breathe at conception? Does God breathe in the first trimester, the second trimester, the third trimester? We don’t know. We know that something precious is going on here. That is why you see so many Evangelicals grieving at the tragedy of abortion in America and the cheapness of life, human life, the imago Dei, the breath, the soul. It is just discarded since the passing of Roe vs. Wade. Over 50 million babies. It is a national shame.
There needs to be national repentance. The truth is it is all a part of whether or not we worship God or whether we think of ourselves as God. You come to Psalm 8 and you worship God for the cosmos, you praise Him, and for the diversity of life that He has created, but most of all for people. I would say this. If you really believe in the sanctity of life, try treating people a little better. Understand every human being is incredibly precious and unique. That is what the eighth Psalm is telling us. When you get up in the morning and you see your wife, when you get up in the morning and you see your husband, when you see your kids, your parents, your grandparents, your grandchildren, when you see your friends in your neighborhood or out at night, when you see your associates at work, they are all precious. How do you treat them? If you praise God, if you worship God, it affects the way you treat people. We have said many times that we know the creation is tainted, we know we are bozos on the bus, but no matter how tainted we are as people, we are created in His imago Dei. We are recipients of dominion; we have been given the dominion no matter how tainted we are. The breath of God is upon us no matter how tainted, how damaged you think that other human being is, they have the breath of God upon them. This affects the way we live. This is an amazing Psalm; this is a beautiful Psalm. You learn to live each day praising God; you praise Him for the cosmos, knowing he has a plan, he is Jehovah Sabaoth. You praise Him for the diversity of life He has created; even though it has been tainted, it is beautiful still. You praise Him for people who have been crowned with glory and honor. Let’s close with a word of prayer