Psalms 8

Psalms 8:1

Psalm 8: What Is Man?God is indescribably great. Man, by contrast, is pathetically tiny. Yet God has conferred tremendous glory and honor upon man. The wonder of this fact brings forth an eloquent gasp from David. 8:1 The majesty of the LORD is evident in all creation, if a person only has eyes to see it. Every area of natural science teems with evidences of the wisdom and power of the Creator. God’s glory is higher than the heavens. The planets, the stars, the limitless universe give only a partial view of how very great God really is. Yet sophisticated men shrug off the evidence as if it didn’t exist. 8:2 But infants in their innocent faith chant God’s greatness in their simple hymns. It is exactly as Christ Himself declared: God has hidden these things from the wise and understanding and has revealed them to babes (Mat_11:25). Whether we think of babes in a literal way or as those disciples of the Lord who have childlike faith in Him, it is still true that they form a bulwark for the Lord because of His enemies. They can often silence an enemy of God through an innocent question or a naive observation. Just as it takes only a small pin to prick a large balloon, so these homespun followers of the Lamb often bring low the lofty pretensions of those who deny God’s hand in creation and providence! 8:3 No branch of science proclaims God’s greatness and man’s insignificance more eloquently than astronomy. The simple fact that distances must be reckoned in light-years (the distance that light travels in a year) illustrates the point. Light travels 186,000 miles per second, and there are 31.5 million seconds in a year, so light travels roughly six trillion miles in a single year! Yet some stars are billions of light-years from the earth. No wonder we call such computation astronomical. To gaze into the heavens at night should give us great thoughts about God. The moon and the stars are the work of His fingers! When we think of the numberless myriads of stars, of the vast distances in the universe, and of the power that holds the planets in orbit with mathematical precision, it boggles the mind. 8:4 Relatively speaking, the planet earth is a speck of dust in the universe. If this is so, what is a single man perched upon this planet? Yet God is interested in every individual! He has a personal, intimate concern for every human being. 8:5 God made man in His own image and after His own likeness. Though lower than God, man shares with Him some faculties that are not shared by any other order of creation on earth. Everything God made was pronounced to be good, but the verdict on the creation of man was “very good.” 8:6-8 As God’s representative on earth, man was given dominion over all kinds of animals, birds, fish, and reptiles. There was nothing that was not put under him. But the writer to the Hebrews reminds us that we do not see man enjoying this undisputed sway at the present time (Heb_2:5-9). Dogs bark at man, snakes bite him, birds and fish elude him. The explanation is that when sin entered the world through Adam, man lost his unqualified sovereignty over the lower creation. Yet God’s purpose still stands. He has decreed that man shall indeed have dominion, and nothing can block God’s purposes. So while we do not see all things subject to man right now, we do see Jesusthe one Person by whom man’s dominion will eventually be restored. When Christ came to earth, He became temporarily lower than the angels so that as Man He could die for the human race. Now He is crowned with glory and honor at God’s right hand. Someday Christ the Son of Man will return to earth to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords. In the Millennium, the dominion that was forfeited by the first Adam will be restored by the Last Adam. 8:9 Then God’s redeemed people will join to sing with new appreciation, “O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!”