Dave preached from Psalm 8 this morning, one of the most well known psalms of David, which looks at the majesty of God. The psalm starts and finishes by declaring “how majestic is Your name in all the earth!” – majesty which David first experienced through the wonder of creation. Yet, despite the grandeur of nature, it is God’s simplicity which impresses David, the way that the transcendent glory of God can still be grasped and expressed by children and infants. Jesus quotes from this psalm in Matthew 21:14-16 and we are reminded that there is a need for us to become ‘as little children’ if we are to enter into the kingdom of God (Matth 18:3), experiencing and believing God with child-like faith.
David is also amazed that, given the majesty of the creation all around him, God cares for humanity. Those important questions about the meaning and purpose of life can be answered in one of two ways: we can either, like Bertrand Russell, the father of humanism, decide that there is nothing beyond the whirling stars, that ‘the life of man is a long march through the night surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, toward a goal that few can hope to reach and where none may tarry long’ facing ‘omnipotent death’ (a bleak, pessimistic view of life which surely leads to despair), or we can assert, as the Bible does, that God’s purposes for man are profound and that we have a two-fold relationship, with God and with His creation. We may not yet see everything subject to Christ (Heb 2), but we know that Jesus has been crowned with the glory and honour that God had intended for man at the beginning and that despite the Fall of man, there is redemption and hope available for us. The whole creation is eagerly looking forward to the day of the manifestation of the sons of God (Romans 8) and our present troubles are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed (2 Cor 4.)
Truly, “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!”