Sermon – Psalm 8 – God Knows Us

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

Sermon – Psalm 8 – God Knows Us

Pitts Creek and Beaver Dam Presbyterian Churches

June 19, 2011

For several weeks now we have been praising God through the psalms. Praising God is what we were created to do. It helps us to see God in the world around us. It increases our faith so that we don't just believe things about Jesus, rather we believe in Jesus trusting Jesus with our lives. Meditating on the psalms is how we learn how to praise God. One thing we learn when we praise God is who we really are. So to learn who we really are let's pray and meditate on Psalm 8.

“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

Psalm 8:1-9 ^NRS Psalm 8:1 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. ² Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. ³ When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; ⁴ what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? ⁵ Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. ⁶ You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, ⁷ all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, ⁸ the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. ⁹ O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8 is a prayer and a song written by King David. It starts, as many of the psalms do, by praising God. David is a king, so he knows something about glory and honor and majesty. And he is a believer and knows that God is really the king and therefore all glory, all honor, and all majesty belong to God. David also realized that God is not just the God of Israel. God is the God of all creation, and God has the power to defeat his enemies wherever they may be. And God blesses all creation with sunshine, rain, land, food to eat and water to drink.

As David praised God he began to think about himself. He realized that in comparison to God and God's kingdom, he and his kingdom were so small, insignificant. David looked at the stars of night and he saw a vast multitude and he wondered if the God who had created all of that actually had any regard for humans. Why would God be concerned with the welfare of men and women when God has the entire universe to care for?

Whenever we praise God for creation, for his majesty, for his glory, we also begin to think about ourselves. Like David when we compare ourselves with God we seem so small. Why would a teacher or a farmer or a retired person on the eastern shore matter to God at all. Does the creator of the universe even know our names?

I know a young Korean pastor who came to Los Angeles to study English. He arrived at the airport and was completely bewildered. He spoke little English and had no idea how to navigate the airport and get to where he was going. As his stress level grew he remembered a song he had sung with his youth group in Korea. It was a praise song called “He Knows My Name” by Tommy Walker.

Here is how it goes.

“I have a Maker. He formed my heart. Before even time began my life was in his hands. He calls me His own. He'll never leave me. No matter where I go. He knows my name. He knows my every thought. He sees each tear that falls. And He hears me when I call.”

By singing this song to himself this young pastor was assured that God was with him even in this strange land where no one seemed to speak Korean and no one would help him. Eventually his cousin found him at the airport and took him home.

Does God know our names? Does the creator of the universe, who continually sustains all there is actually know us? Why should God know us? After all we are so small and insignificant when compared to his glory and majesty. Praising God expands our view of God and contracts our view of ourselves. Why would God pay any attention to us at all?

According to David the reason God knows our names is because God has chosen to bestow glory and honor on us. God has given his Spirit to us and in worship elevates our hearts to heaven. And so God hears our prayers and knows our names because God loves us so much.

David also tells us that God knows us because God has given us dominion over creation. We are not the creators. But we are the managers in charge of creation. We are to manage God's creation responsibly. For this task we have been given glory and honor and a position in the celestial hierarchy just beneath God and the heavenly beings.

Dominion over creation is gift from God. We are to use it responsibly. As managers we are to watch over creation, use it for God's purposes, and conserve it for future generations. Farmers have dominion over the land to grow the crops to feed God's people. Teachers have been given dominion over the young to mold their minds into responsible adults. All of us have dominion over something, our families, our pets, our homes, our church.

As with any gift dominion can be misused, twisted into sin. When dominion is twisted into sin it becomes exploitation. Exploitation means that you use your position in the celestial hierarchy and your gifts from God for your own purposes ignoring what God wants. Maybe you exploit workers for larger short term profits. Maybe you exploit the water or the land by making them unusable for future generations. Exploitation is a destructive way of using God's gifts and is therefore a sin.

We are given dominion over creation not for our exclusive benefit, but to use it for God's purposes. Remember we worship a God of justice and righteousness and that means whatever we do in managing creation must take into account the needs of the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the aliens among us. So long as we use the people, the animals, the land, the water and the air that God has given us for the benefit of others dominion never becomes exploitation.

The psalmist claims that we have dominion over God's creation. Is this true, or does creation have dominion over us? If you are unemployed, lost your home in foreclosure, suffer from a chronic disease, or recently lost a loved one, it is very hard to think that you have dominion over anything. It is hard to feel in control when you are swept up in a flood and chaos is the order of your life. You begin to feel really small and insignificant without being able to control anything.

In the first century the early Christians had little control over their lives. They were persecuted, hunted, and fed to the lions. They had a difficult time keeping their heads about the flood waters. In the midst of this chaos one early Christian was meditating on Psalm 8. He must have thought that the psalmist was out of his mind telling believers that they held a position just below the angels with dominion over all creation. Certainly this couldn't be true. How could persecuted Christians have dominion when the Roman Empire controlled everything? The author of the Book of Hebrews said this:

Hebrews 2:6-8 ⁶ But someone has testified somewhere, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? ⁷ You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, ⁸ subjecting all things under their feet." Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them,

Do we see in our day that everything is subject to our control? Ask someone whose home has been destroyed in a tornado, or damaged by a flood, or whose family has been swept away in tsunami if they are in control. Ask someone whose credit cards are maxed out, whose house is under water, whose job has been eliminated, whose fields are burning in the sun what they are in control of. Although some things are in our control, my wife gets to pick out the paint colors for the manse, most things are not. And so we have to conclude that either the David was wrong when he wrote Psalm 8 or at least the promise of the psalm has not yet been realized.

As the author of Hebrews meditated on the Psalm he began to realize that David was not talking about ordinary humans in the 8^th Psalm. We are not the ones made a little lower than the angels for a time with dominion over everything. In fact there is only one man who ever lived who meets this description, only one person who was God and yet humbled himself to become a man for a time, only one person who has been given dominion over all of creation. Here is what the author of Hebrews said:

Hebrews 2:9 ⁹ but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death,

So that's the answer. Jesus gave up his privileged status in heaven to become one of us on earth. This is called the incarnation. And for a period of time he was lower than the heavenly beings. But through his suffering and death Jesus received all the glory and honor that his ancestor David had talked about. Jesus Christ was and is the human who has dominion over all of creation.

Today is Trinity Sunday. This is the day each year when we celebrate our triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because of the incarnation of the Son, God knows us. God knows what we feel because Jesus felt it. God knows what we think because Jesus thought it. God knows us because the Holy Spirit is in us carrying our prayers to God. And so God knows our names.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.