Sermon
Our God...Our Glory
April 6, 2003
Pastor Donald Sheley

I'd like for all of you have a Bible in your hands because we're going to read a number of different scriptures today, and I'd like for you to follow along as we do that. Someone said to me this week, Pastor, did you give up on John? We've been in the gospel of John for about 2 years plus, and no, I haven't given up on John.

But I'll tell you what, if ever there's a man who knew how to touch the heart of God and who had a heart for God, it was David. What I've decided to do during these days of crisis that we just take our focus away from other things and just focus upon our God -- His greatness and His glory. And I pray that will take place today as we change our focus from the things of time that are temporal and fleeting to that which is eternal, the wonder and the splendor of our glorious God.

David begins this great Psalm with these words: "0 Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, who have set Your glory above the heavens!
Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands: You have put all things under his feet.
All sheep and oxen-even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the sea.
0 Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!"

I begin our lesson today by suggesting it is time for us to praise our God, and the psalm before us with assist us in doing just that. It's a psalm of praise and thanksgiving and its primary idea is the condescending love and goodness of God toward man.

David is voicing his wonder as he thinks of God who has made the heavens and set His glory on them. That's He should have a regard for man, and visit him, and not only so, but to give him so lofty a position and such an exalted destiny. This is a thought that is well-nigh overwhelming, and this is at the heart of David's psalm today.

The psalmist, filled with the thought, can do no less than pour out his feelings and his love and his gratitude in song. The psalmist seeks to give to God the glory that's due His name. As I typed that particular line in your notes, I started just thumbing through the psalms to catch the heartbeat of David, a heartbeat that's expressed so beautifully in the psalm that's before us. But, turn with me to Psalm 9 in your Bible and we'll just take a few of the psalms where we catch the heartbeat of David.

He says: I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy name, O thou most High.

Look at Psalm 18 verses 1 and 2: I will love thee, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

Look at Psalm 19: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. Verse 6: His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.

Look at Psalm 33:4-8. For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth. He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD. By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.

Ah, what majestic thoughts David had of God. And we notice back in our notes that David is the author of the psalm, and he has slain Goliath there in the valley of Elah. And soon afterward he was appointed court musician and given the task of trying to charm the king out of his dark moods with the music of his harp. Now it was probably about this time that David wrote this beautiful psalm that's before us this morning.

Now we learned that from tradition, from one of the ancient writings of the Hebrews called the Targum, suggests that this is a psalm, a song, that David wrote after his great victory over Goliath. This psalm, written by David, the champion of champions, was perhaps sung before King Saul to subdue the demon that flared from his jealous heart.

C. S. Lewis says that this is an exquisite lyric. Derek Kidner says, in his excellent commentary says: "This psalm is an unsurpassed example of what a hymn should be, celebrating as it does the glory and grace of God, rehearsing who He is and what He has done, and relating us and our world to Him, all with a masterly economy of words, and in a spirit of mingled joy and awe. The range of thought takes us not only 'above the heavens' but back to the very beginning."

The psalm's theme is the greatness of God and the place of man within God's universe. The most striking feature in all of the verses is the description of man and his place in God's created order. But the psalm does not begin immediately by talking about man. You'll notice that it begins by celebrating the majesty of God, and this places men and women within that cosmic framework of God's great universe.

In our notes I suggest that man has many responsibilities, but the major responsibility that we have is to praise God, and David does this in so many of his psalms so beautifully. Thank you David. And you'll notice as he begins a number of his psalms he addresses them using Hebrew titles for God. As we were studying Psalm 91 you remember he used four Hebrew names for God, and these names describe the character of God.

Well in this particular psalm he uses two Hebrew names: JEHOVAH (Yahweh) and ADONAI (Lord). So in the verse that opens before us he is saying: "0 Jehovah, our ADONAI." As David is here the mouthpiece of humanity, praising God for mercies common to us all, he uses the plural pronoun instead of the singular one. In later, Judaism, the divine name was held to be so sacred that the title was always used in place of the name, but here, David enunciates the name and then immediately he goes on to praise the majesty of that name.

Now again, when we read the psalms over and over again, he speaks about 'blessed be the name of the LORD', 'praise be unto the name of our God.' You'll notice that the word 'name' here represents not only God, but also God's revelation of Himself, and it is critical to an understanding of the theme of revelation in the psalm as a whole. Thus God's "name" and God's "majesty" are poetically synonymous, for the majesty of both God's person and His creation are revealed to mankind in the divine names and all that it implies.

We have talked about the tremendous number of names that the Hebrew people gave to God describing His character, His love, His mercy, and His justice. But when David uses the phrase "the name of the LORD", he is not only talking about the character of God, as described in His names, but he's also including all the majesty, all the wonder, all the greatness of His creation. And he wraps those two thoughts together and that's why he uses the phrase "the name of the LORD".

ADONAI means properly master, Lord, or ruler. So the meaning here in the psalm is that the psalmist acknowledges JEHOVAH to be the rightful ruler, the king, and master of himself, as well as all others. He comes before Him with the feeling that Jehovah is universal ruler--the king and proprietor of all things.

You'll notice that he often also uses the word excellent. And again, the Hebrew thought behind that word is the beyondness of God. It's a word we don't normally use, but it comes out in verses such as: "The high and the lofty One that inhabiteth eternity." Also in the verse, "Thou art a God that hidest thyself." Another Scripture verse: "Thou thoughtest I was altogether such a one as thyself." Then James has another verse where he says, "The Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

So when that word "excellent", how excellent is thy name, identifies His character as well as His creation. The word "excellent" is a word that the Hebrews used to say, it's so wonderful, it's so glorious. You cannot measure it. You cannot use human words to describe it. It's beyond the thought and the comprehension of mortal man -- that's the beyondness of God. And when he says that word "excellent", he's thinking of God in all of His glorious character, that God in His mighty awesome spans the universe and spans all of His creation. He says, O how excellent, how magnificent, how unmeasurable, how wonderful, how awesome, how glorious our Lord.

Now we come to verse 2. This is the interesting, fascinating thing about David's mind. He's a poet, but he's thinking, and most likely when he writes something like this he has spent the night out with his sheep on the hillside there in Palestine. He's laying there in the beautiful grass and they didn't have smog nor the fog to cloud up the skies. Here is this shepherd boy with his sheep laying nearby asleep and he's pondering this magnificent canopy of stars and majesty of God's awesome wonders.

He sees God in the beyondness of things but he immediately switches and says, look at verse 2, he says, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength. David is saying that not only do we see the splendor, and the wonder, and the glory, and the awesomeness of God in His mighty creation, but turn your eyes on the baby's crib and see the wonder of life in the infant child -- even from infants, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings.

We who have had the joy of having little ones born to us, we can understand that. The other day a mother brought her newborn child by the office -- just two days old. I took that little guy, and those hands. I said, God, You've made such beautiful hands and his little feet. I look at that little bundle of God's creation and you just can't help. David says, look at, God, You've thrown this marvelous universe. It's so magnificent. But even in the splendor of that may we not miss the glory of Your creation and Your creation of a little babes. Amen?

Seeing God's wonder, seeing His splendor in the little things. And you know, as I thought about this this week, I thought that David taught himself to take time out for God. We live in a world that pushes us with schedules and timetables, and we are running through here so fast, this glorious universe that He's created, we really don't take time like David did just to say, God, this is great.

I've walked by that flower bed out there in front of this church, we have a wonderful gardener who makes sure it looks nice all the time. And I'm sitting in my office thinking I don't even take time to see the splendor of the flower bed. So I walked out here in front of the church and I took one of those beautiful flowers and I said, God, You must have had fun painting that one -- what beauty, what glory. You know, you have to train yourself to see God and to view His magnificent because the world around us is so distracting. That's why David is such a unique character -- he took time for God, to enjoy God. That's why his heart is so filled with praise and adoration.

He took his attention away from the mundane things of time and fixed them on the magnificence of eternity. Look at what he says in verse 3: When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your and. He throws his attention back to the magnificence of the universe. The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? Here's what's going through David's mind: God, this universe is so vast. It covers billions and billions and billions and billions of stars and we cannot comprehend its greatness. And in the middle of it you have this little thing called the earth, and on this little ball this speck of dust You placed me as a smaller speck.

And he said the marvelous thing about it, God, is that You who created this vastness, that You're so mindful of me a mortal man. You've created me with tremendous potential. You crowned me with glory and honor. What a God so mindful, so filled with concern for us He made us with the capacities to enjoy His creation. He's given us a magnificent mind so that we can learn to love Him and to worship Him and to praise Him, and in that glory He's crowned us with a brilliancy.

If David were writing that psalm today he wouldn't say He gives us dominion over the beasts, he would say, God in His glory so equipped man with a genius and the glory of a mind that we've captured the energies of the universe and we hold them in our control. David said that just blows my mind -- that that God who is so glorious and so great and so wondrous would make me capable with a mind to enjoy His wonder.

He said, who is man that God would give them such wonderful consideration? Not only here, but God made us so that one of these days when the trump sounds and time shall no longer be, ah what an eternal destiny He's provided for us. David said, that's just amazing God. You've had all the vastness and here I am this little speck, and You love me so much You gave me the capacities to enjoy Your creation, and then someday I'm going to enjoy all of eternity in Your presence.

And the next phrase: You visited us. Many theologians say here is the prophecy concerning Christ. And if David could put it in the words of a preacher of my age he'd say, you know, I'm absolutely amazed at the wonder of God, and I marvel and I revel in His majesty and his awesomeness. But, he said, when I think of this little speck and God so loved me, the creator of this vast universe came and shared His love in sending His Son Jesus -- God Himself, Emanuel, God with us. He visited us!

God's not interested in planets nor universes. What David is saying, who is man that God is so attentive to his needs and his desires, and God loves him. He's the object, he's the apple of His eye. David said it amazes me, and then God stepped out of heaven and came in the form of a babe in Jesus and He visited us. Ah, what a visitor. God, the creator of the universe.

Do you see how David's mind is absolutely overwhelmed? The majesty of God, the beauty of His creation in a babe, the glory of His universe, and yet He created us with tremendous capacities. We can choose. We can serve Him. We can love Him. We can enjoy the universe around us, all the things He's given to us. He says, God, that's terrific. He comes back for his last stanza: "0 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!"

You say, what's your purpose today Pastor? Very simple, my time is gone, but I want you to join with me for the next week just to make a determined effort -- I'm not going to let the mundane little things that I can't change around me that are so distracting -- I'm going to fix my heart on worshiping God's. If you'll read the psalms through each day this week you'll come back different people next Sunday. Worshiping God because He's the God in history. He's taken care of everything. But He loves us so much He visited us.

Let's bow of our heads in prayer. Lord Jesus, we do become distracted in our world. There are so many things around us that call for our attention, and we give in. And yet there is so much about You and Your glory, and Your majesty, and Your wonder, and Your greatness, and Your love for us, that we need to be refocused. We do that today. As we drive along in our cars going home, may we talk of Your wonder and Your greatness and Your love. May You be the center focus for our minds and our thoughts this week. We'll leave history and its writing to You, dear God, because You're the God of history. We're going to concentrate on loving You, worshiping You. That's our goal. In Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you. God bless You.