Psalm 8 Read verse 1 Majestic-stately grand
Psalm 8 begins and ends with the same verse which gives us the hint that this Psalm is going to answer the question…why God’s Name is Majestic. It tells us three reasons His Name is Majestic…
I. Because He deals with His enemies Vrs 2 - 1 Corinthians 1:26-28 This brings people to the realization that there is no way around God.
(Zane beating me in Chess humiliating) God takes care of business, He does not shrink back. Maybe you do not deal with those who oppose you?
II. Because of His creation Vrs 1b & 3 Vrs 1 “set” God is more glorious then the heavens (when we look out and see creation and are in aw God is more then that) Romans 1 tells us that people without excuse as far as the knowledge of God (General Revelation) also Psalm 19
III. Because He gave us a great responsibility. Vrs 4-8
Missiology-is tracking the culture around you and being influential within that culture. The temptation for churches and communities of faith is to get stuck into doing things the way we have always did them, not wanting to change and making the culture seem evil by only looking at the good old days.
This becomes difficult because culture moves fast due to media and also there are so many sub cultures today that have to do with music, art sports education and age groups. So how do we as individual Christians answer that call and become missionaries to our own people group?
What is man? God gave man dominion Gen 1:26 from the beginning. Man is God’s representation on the earth.
What is our responsibility to the world around us?
Christians should care about…
1. Where we live. Twofold… firs ist Creation in general. Christians should be concerned with the environment and living things that God has made. It is a stewardship issue and in our culture it is a testimony issue.
The ways of nature teach us more about the Lord Vrs 8 “paths of the sea” Us Naval Officer Matthew Fontaine Maury in the 1800’s was very sick and bed ridden, he asked his daughter to read to him from the Bible and she chose Psalm 8 and his response to verse 8 was “Paths of the sea, paths of sea, if God says paths of the sea, then they are there, and if I ever get out of this bed I will find them”
As a sailor, Maury noted that there were numerous lessons that had been learned by ship-masters about the effects of adverse winds and drift currents on the path of a ship. The captains recorded these lessons faithfully in their logbooks, but they were then forgotten. At the Observatory, Maury uncovered an enormous collection of thousands of old ships' logs and charts in storage in trunks dating back to the start of the United States Navy. Maury pored over these documents to collect information on winds, calms, and currents for all seas in all seasons.
Much of the sea charts were developed due to his work because of being inspired by the Word talking about creation.
From nature we learn there is a God (Romans 1) but we also learn that He is purposeful creative and cares about the details of His creation. We should pay attention to that.
The second is the community we live. This is where we need to ask some questions.
-Am I a good neighbor?
-Do I have concern for beauty and health of the community?
-How do I contribute to the community I live in?
2. Who lives around us. The call of the Christian is to love our neighbor. This does not only mean be good to others but it also means we should step in when bad is happening. (there are evil people that plan and promote evil) Christians can’t ignore injustice and oppression of others. That means we do not ignore mistreatment of other people. When we ignore the mistreatment of others it can lead to great consequences Vrba and Wetzel report
Rudolf Kastner By the beginning of May 1944, Kastner and many other Jewish leaders had received the Vrba-Wetzler report and other evidence that Hungary's Jews would be sent to their deaths. The report was released to the leaders of Jewish organizations in the hope that Hungarian Jews would be warned that they were being deported to a death camp and were not being resettled, as they had been led to believe. However, the report was not made public by the Jewish Council in Hungary or by Kastner.[23]
But by then 437,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported to Auschwitz, where the overwhelming majority were murdered on arrival.
It is not always easy to care about where we live and who lives by us, many times we fail because we are selfish.
We see how man has failed and as the writer of Hebrews points out man has failed when he sinned and Jesus comes and makes that right and restores man to his rightful place with Him in which we will reign as well.
This is what makes this a Messianic Psalm
3. Sharing the Gospel- Jesus is the ideal human because He is also divine Hebrews 2:6-10 quotes this Psalm and puts it all together.
God’s Name is not only majestic because He deals with His enemies, because of His creation or because He gives us responsibility. He is because He lays everything down for us.
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