O Lord, our Lord...

Psalm 8:1-9 (NASB) from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

The Lord’s Glory and Man’s Dignity.

For the choir director; on the Gittith. A Psalm of David.

8 O Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is Your name in all the earth,
Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!
² From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength
Because of Your adversaries,
To make the enemy and the revengeful cease.

³ When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
⁴ What is man that You take thought of him,
And the son of man that You care for him?
⁵ Yet You have made him a little lower than God,
And You crown him with glory and majesty!
⁶ You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
⁷ All sheep and oxen,
And also the beasts of the field,
⁸ The birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea,
Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

⁹ O Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is Your name in all the earth!

Technology and the wisdom and knowledge man has accumulated is an amazing thing. That through the technology we have I can, with one click post these daily nuggets that they can be seen around the world. Our reliance on our technology is not without  it’s  problems though. Today rather than that one click saving everything I had written it simply disappeared as though it never existed.

In today’s text the psalmist rightly attributes what exists to God the creator as opposed to the knowledge of man.  He credits God for all of creation. Sometimes simple logic far exceeds what we can begin to understand with our human understanding and knowledge. The psalmist see the magnificence of creation and recognizes there must be a creator.  Nothing  just becomes something from nothing.

The psalmist then asks the question : What is man that You take thought of him,
And the son of man that You care for him?  When we compare ourselves to the magnitude of all of creation, what we can see with our eyes, let alone what we can now see beyond our human capability, in both  the expanse of the universe  and the intricacy and complexity of molecular structure, we realize how insignificant we are. Yet the psalmist answers his own question.  He says:

⁵ Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty! ⁶ You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet, ⁷ All sheep and oxen, And also the beasts of the field, ⁸ The birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

Genesis 1:26-28 says: Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.²⁸ God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

When we attribute all of creation to the hand of God as creator and we assume our God ordained position of dominion we should care for creation, but not worship or serve it. If on the other hand we attribute all of creation to a random sequence of events, it means our existence is without design or purpose. We are left hopeless when the random events of our lives mount against us. I believe, just my observation,  that one of the main reasons men have for rejecting the idea of a creator is that when acknowledging the magnitude and complexity of all that exists, to credit it’s existence to a creator would require acknowledging His superiority and so our accountability to Him.

In the same way that a child naturally emulates and wants to please his or her parents, when we see ourselves as created in the image of God, we aspire to be like Him and please Him.  If on the other hand we believe we have our heritage in more base animals we tend to become more like them. If  our society continues to reject the idea of God as  creator  and teach and believe that our heritage is in animals, we should not be surprised that we become more base, vile and violent.

We do in fact have an inheritance that we obtained through an animal.  Genesis 3 tells of that inheritance.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” ² The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;³ but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”⁴ The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die!⁵ For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”⁶ When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

Sin and the fall of man and creation exist because man  believed and followed a created thing rather  than obeying God. Believing our  heritage is in and from created things rather than in the creator of all things leads us to be more like them rather than what we are called and created to be like God.

Genesis 3 tells the story of the fall of man. The rest of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation tells the story of God’s plan to redeem and restore.   God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.(Romans 5:8)

 O Lord, our Lord, How majestic is Your name in all the earth!

Thank You Heavenly Father, Creator of all things, Lord Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, Savior and Lord and Holy Spirit, my teacher and guide.   Amen