God, Man, and the God-Man

Turn in God’s Word this morning to Psalm 8, the 8th Psalm that we sang earlier in our service.

I’m informed that there’s five Sundays in this month, so those of you who are part of an elder group, if you haven’t already heard from your elder, you’ll be meeting with them. They’ll send you instructions if you’re part of an elder group.

There will be a meeting here usually as well, so if I’m wrong on that, I’ll let you know this evening. But those who aren’t part of an elder group, you may meet here. There’ll be someone to bring the Word. There’ll be a time of prayer.

Psalm 8 is where we are.

You’ll see that David is the penman of this psalm. Different ideas about what it means. It’s tied to Gath, so is it something to do with Gath? Is it Gath, I think, from memory, meaning the winepress, or something relating to seasons of harvest? But whatever the context of the psalm, here are the words.

Psalm 8.

“O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

“What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

“For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

“Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

“All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

“The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

“O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”

Amen.

I trust the Lord will bless the reading of his Word. What you’ve heard is the Word of the eternal God, which you’re to receive, believe, and obey. And the people of God said, amen.

Let’s pray.

Lord, we do ask for help. As the Word is opened before us, we pray that there would be light given. We’re so thankful that thou hast revealed thyself in such a fashion that we have the very Word of God. Let its profit be unmistakable. Let its power be felt in every life, and grant that there would be in this place a running of the Word, as our brother prayed.

Oh God, let the Word run.

Some are sorrowing and grieving. Come and lift their eyes upon the God who is sovereign, in control, and full of love. And some are in rebellion. I pray, suppress their pride, their sinful independence, and turn them to believe on the Lord Jesus today.

So give help to this preacher. We pray for a message, a message for me, a message for all. Teach us thy ways, exalt thy name, extend thy kingdom, we pray in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.

There’s something refreshing about an individual who is amazed and overwhelmed by God as Creator.

In our circles, there’s much emphasis placed upon God as Redeemer, our Lord Jesus as the Redeemer of men. When I say that there’s something refreshing about someone focusing or feeling a sense of overwhelm at God as Creator, I’m not undermining that. That’s not what I mean to say.

It’s just that there is something about the heart that not only sees God in His activity in saving and redeeming and delivering us, but seeing the splendor of His being, the splendor of who He is and the world that He has made. To have a sense of awe, awe of God, it furnishes the heart with additional expressions of praise. And I think that’s a good thing, not simply to see the world in its utility, but to see the glory of the One who made it, and to see His glory in the world that He has made.

I was edified this past week listening to a conversation between Drs. John Lennox, Stephen Meyer, and James Tour on the subject, The Origins of Everything. And I believe there’s a documentary that’s going to be released at the end of this month, maybe this week. It’s going to start being pushed out.

And these men, at least two of them, John Lennox and James Tour, you’re not just talking about scientists and mathematicians. You’re talking about men who have, you can say, reached the pinnacle of academia. Within their fields, they are some of the top in the world, and they are believers. They know the Lord.

And it’s actually fascinating just to listen to them talk about this world in which we live, and the lunacy of those who will say this world came about without the work of God, that it came about by chance, or however they wish to frame it.

In that discussion, there’s a point in which they talk about gratuitous beauty, in which many organisms have beauty beyond anything that is relevant to their survival value. And they talk about the significance of that.

But in this psalm, David sees beauty not only in the animate world, but in the inanimate world. He sees the splendor not only of living things, but the moon and the stars, the glory of God that extends into the heavens, and the marvel that he feels within his soul then as he looks at man.

Verse 3, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”

He’s overwhelmed.

Why would God, who has made this extensive universe in such splendor and glory, which can only in a small fraction of a way show the full glory of the Creator Himself, why would He have any consideration towards you and me?

Over the years I’ve been here, I’ve occasionally just turned to a psalm. And on occasion, I have gone through Psalm 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and I was brought to think about Psalm 8. And I thought, I don’t think I’ve preached Psalm 8 yet.

So that is where we are this morning. And Psalm 8 is—all the Psalms have significance—but Psalm 8 is certainly up there in terms of one of the most significant Psalms.

There are six Psalms of the 150 that are quoted in the New Testament from various places. I’m just talking about one verse quoted even several times, but different parts of the Psalm are quoted at different times in the New Testament. There are only six of the 150 that do that.

And one of the six is this Psalm. You have Psalm 2, 22, 34, 69, 118, and Psalm 8. And you will find it quoted in Matthew 21, 1 Corinthians 15, Ephesians 1, and Hebrews 2 most notably.

And I want us to look at it. I can’t look at every word, but I hope that you will get a sense of the Psalm as we look at it here this morning, and it will do something within your soul in terms of appreciation for who God is and what He has done.

Considering this morning: God, man, and the God-man. God, man, and the God-man.

And we’ll see three things. First of all, God in His excellent greatness, man in his frail glory, and the God-man in his redemptive goal.

So first, note with me God and His excellent greatness. Look at verse 1.

“O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”

You will note how he ends in the same way in verse 9.

“Who hast set thy glory above the heavens.”

His glory, the glory of God, fills all.

“O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.”

He uses the covenant name of God, David does. Jehovah, our Lord.

It’s the first of the corporate Psalms as well, because this is the first time where you have a sense of language that is designed for a congregation, with the intent of a congregation bringing this as praise to God.

“O LORD our Lord,” not speaking in terms of himself or of his own experience merely, but he is putting his arms around the corporate body, like we are representing here this morning, saying, O covenant-keeping God, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.

This is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who makes promises to men, and who has kept those promises to men and fulfilled His Word to men. And here we are to worship, not some distant sovereign, but One who has condescended, as later He expresses more particularly.

Our Lord. Our Lord.

I hope you can say that. I hope you can feel that, your participation with David, that you feel yourself aligned with David, and say, yes, yes, I understand this heartbeat in David to worship this covenant-keeping God who has come to men. How great He is. What majesty He shows.

“How excellent is thy name in all the earth!”

When he says, “how excellent is thy name,” he’s not just thinking about a noun. He’s thinking about how the name displays characteristics of God, that you cannot say the name of God without thinking of what it conveys about His being.

“How excellent is thy name.”

Yes, it’s not just a word. It’s not just a term. It’s not just a form of identity. It is the full splendor of all revealed in your name. How excellent is this in all the earth, this manifested glory that shows the extent of our God.

And, of course, the language shows that God has condescended. By implication, He has condescended.

“How excellent is thy name in all the earth!”

Why should we even know about His name? Do we assume this knowledge? Do we assume that God, who made all, should be known in His creation? We should not assume that. For God to be revealed in the glory of His being, but also then to be known upon the earth that He made, is a wonderful condescension.

And His majesty is not shut up. It’s not hidden away. He’s given to man the ability to see it.

Of all the created creatures in the world, he makes mention of sheep and oxen and beasts of the field. These creatures don’t write poetry about the world they live in. They don’t sit there and marvel at it. They don’t look and examine how the sun works to cause the grass to be green and to grow, and the moisture, and create the very food. They don’t ponder that. It doesn’t enter their minds, at least as far as I’m aware. They don’t consider this. They’re not rational creatures.

But God has given to man this capacity so that he can see the greatness of God, ponder the glory of His being, and then come to this realization that His name is excellent, is above the very heavens. There’s no one like this God.

The heavens display Him in a certain fashion, but they cannot give the full measurement of Him. His glory extends beyond the heavens. They can’t fully convey all that He is and all that He does. Of course, the full glory of God is going to be seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

So God in His excellent greatness. His glory fills all.

“O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.”

In verse 3, he continues with a similar theme: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained.”

The work of Thy fingers. The moon and the stars, these great entities suspended there to man’s view, are seen like the very tapestry of God. He’s making this. It’s like He’s spread out this glorious carpet across the nocturnal skies for man to observe and to ponder and to see. It’s just the work of His fingers.

The scale overwhelms. And this brings, of course, a sense of worship.

“When I consider”—do you do that? Do you consider?

I fear we don’t do this enough. I’ve said this before, and most of the time, I’m going to confess, when I read this language, language that gets us to ponder God and His created order and the glory that He has displayed Himself in creation, I’m preaching the conviction of my own soul.

To go out and to view it—of course, with light pollution today, we live in the city, it becomes more difficult to see the full splendor of this glory.

Living in South Australia for a year and a half, and you would drive—I’ve mentioned before—it was about 90 miles or so north from Port Lincoln. Port Lincoln’s a town of about 15,000 people at that time. And you drive 90 miles north into the wilderness of Australia, and already you’re not really close to any major city. Like I say, there’s a town there of 15,000 people, 90 miles away, and anything else that’s there, these are just little farm hamlets that exist in the wilderness. There’s a mechanic, there’s a place to get groceries, there’s a few little stores and so on, but there’s not much going on.

There’s not great streetlights pouring up into the air, into the sky, their light. So you stand there in the night, and you can see just this great expanse of the stars. Just with the naked eye, you’re able to see something that you don’t normally see.

I remember feeling the same one time when we were driving down to Yosemite. And went to Yosemite and tried to find a place to stay. This is our haphazard Ulster way. We’ll see how far we go, and maybe around noon we’ll look up and see if we can find a hotel or somewhere to stay that day.

But there was nothing near Yosemite. It was all booked up months in advance, and I couldn’t find anything at all. So instead, we just tried to make, as best we could, some kind of comfort out of our SUV and slept there.

But the wonder of it was standing in that park, and able to see the glory of the stars over that great area of this wonderful country.

David looked. He considered the heavens. He thought about it as the finger work of God. He considered how the splendor of them all was just like the work of His fingers. It’s not great effort to Him, not great work for Him. But it shows the grandeur. If this is the work of His fingers, what does it say about who He is? About the very God who has made it?

And this is something that I think we don’t do enough. We don’t consider the heavens. And the heavens are there as a testimony to show us our own smallness and to give a little hint and reminder of the grandeur of God.

And we don’t do this. We are easily distracted. Even sitting here, in which your distinct purpose is to gather to worship, how many times do we have to confess our mind is wandering to what the person next to us is doing, or someone in front of us is doing, or even some internal distraction of the mind, and we are showing that we are not considering. We’re not considering in the way David considered.

That God is small, in that moment at least, in our view. God is small. God is so small, I can be distracted by this insignificant thing happening a few feet away from me.

When God is huge, when His grandeur defies explanation in your view and you’re awestruck by Him, nothing on the lower level can take away from that view. You’re taken up with Him.

That’s how I feel David is feeling as he draws everyone in worship in this psalm.

“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained.”

Oh, that God would help us and deliver us from a small view of Him. A small view of God producing small prayers. It produces limited obedience, where we imagine we can negotiate with this God.

That’s what happens. That’s what happens when you see everyone from Cain—yeah, even go back to Adam and Eve—and all the way through the Scriptures. In the moment of their sin, they’ve lost a sense of the grandeur of God. Had they any contemplation of the greatness of their God, they could not do what they did. At least they would be greatly restrained.

There’s a small view of God that leads to sin. A small view of God that leads to shallow repentance. Small views of God.

Beloved, I don’t know about you, but I think we need a healthy work of the Spirit of God in each of our hearts for us even this morning to become more aware of how small God is in our view. I’m not talking about our stated theology. I’m talking about the felt theology.

And you can tell me, I believe that God is omnipresent and omniscient and omnipotent. And you can use these words, but to feel it in the soul—that’s what David felt. He felt it.

“When I consider.”

We don’t do enough considering, or that we would have a sight of Him. What an awful expression of atheism that is seen in the very church. Atheism. We don’t really believe that God is as He is revealed to be, or that He would show us Himself. He must do this.

But His strength also silences enemies through weakness. His strength silences enemies through weakness.

Not only does glory fill all, but His strength silences enemies through weakness. Look at verse 2.

“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.”

What a strange turn of observation. This is not where you would go, probably, if you were thinking about how to think upon. You saw this, “how excellent is thy name in all the earth,” “who hast set thy glory above the heavens.” He goes from the nocturnal sky into the nursery to ponder the mouth of babes and sucklings, out of which He ordains strength.

He has founded strength in the context of the fact that there are enemies to still, to silence, to overcome the enemy and the avenger. What a strange thing to say.

What is this all about? What’s David showing?

He’s showing that God shows His power by dealing with His opposition, what opposes Him, through the weakest expression of humanity. Just babes, infants, little children.

The greatness of God is not only seen in the heavens that He has made and the vastness of them, but also in the weaknesses of this world, where He will make the weakest to stand in opposition to the strongest.

This is where we have one of the quotations, and it’s found in Matthew 21, when there are the Hosannas ascending to the Lord Jesus Christ from the children. Hosanna. Here’s the One from which salvation comes. Hosanna.

Matthew records how the religious leaders were mad. They were mad. They shouldn’t be saying this. This is ascribing things that should be ascribed to God alone. These children, they’re moved. The theologians are silent. They can’t see the glory of the Lord Jesus, but the children will. The children do.

They begin to sing His praise. And all His enemies, all His enemies are mad, because all their best effort to distort the mind of those in their generation, to make people believe lies about Jesus, are failing in that moment as the very children cry out, Hosanna to the Lord Jesus. And all they can be is mad.

And they’re like, you need to silence them.

And the Lord quotes this, right here: “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.”

He has founded praise. He has ordained the praise and strength of Himself out of babes and sucklings. What’s He saying?

You know, the Lord is doing an interesting thing there. David here, you can see David is without any doubt praising the God of creation. And the Lord Jesus, in the praises of the children, Hosanna to Himself, He quotes the psalm and attributes, He attributes the language of the psalm to what the children are doing concerning Him. That in praising Him, in praising at that moment, the Hosannas and His entrance and so on, they are praising the living God.

He takes the weakness of these little children and defies His enemies.

I prayed in my opening pastoral prayer about the sense of warfare that is going on here. I don’t often contemplate it, that worship is warfare. It’s warfare.

But God takes the weakest, and out of their praises, silences the enemy, opposes the forces of darkness. When you gather here, it’s not a mere religious event. It is warfare against the enemy. It is doing battle against the forces of darkness.

It is a spiritual battleground in which your praises exalt God and push back the darkness that prevails and pushes in on this world.

There is such light, such light when you lift and you sing and you give your heart an amen to the prayers. So be it, Lord. Extend your kingdom. Save these precious souls. Let justice prevail in our nation.

It is warfare, and the psalm shows it to us. None of us are mighty. None of us have great powers in this world. We are little more than infants. And yet He ordains through the praise of our lips to push back darkness.

Yes, the world has its soldiers. The Lord has His singers.

Don’t despise it. Don’t despise it.

I’ll not go to church. I’ll not go to church today.

It’s like, I’m not going to go to battle. That’s what it’s saying. It’s like the soldier, I’m not going to go to battle. I can miss that battle. Really? Really?

Imagine an army in which soldiers could, of their own volition, decide whether or not they’re going to fight on a given moment. And imagine if 40% of them decide on a given moment, we’re not going to turn up for that event. What the powers of darkness might do. What the enemy might accomplish because we don’t show up to engage in the warfare that is praise unto God.

We all play such a significant part in the spiritual warfare that is going on, though not seen by the visible eye, yet real. What you feel in your daily temptations, what you know in your daily observations in this world, there is a battle going on. God pushes it back through the feeble praises of little ones, the mouth of babes.

I love it. I love it.

Just like the splendor of the heavens into the cradle and the glory of our God revealed in both. So God and His excellent greatness.

Man in his frail glory. Man in his frail glory.

You see how he leads from verse 3: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”

Man in his frail glory.

Yes, man is little beneath the heavens. What is man? What is man? I’m pretty sure there’s somewhere in Job where Job says the same thing: what is man?

But David here, he’s contemplating, and what is man in light of what we see in the heavens, their grandeur and splendor, their glory? And he did not have access to the outer-space telescopes that we have today, sending back images of the extent of the universe. I mean, we have more to furnish us in wonder and amazement than David ever did. Yet he could see it.

He did not live where there was light pollution. There in his shepherding days, lying out there, taking watch over the sheep belonging to his father, he would, as they rested in their pastures, he would gaze and consider the heavens, the work of God’s fingers, and think, what is man?

Who am I? What am I?

Because the same David knew that this Lord was a shepherd, had been the God of his fathers, had heard them in their affliction in Egypt, had led them through their wilderness and pilgrimage days, had appeared unto their father Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees when he was surrounded by idolatry. They’re all worshiping idols and false gods, and God appears unto Abraham, saves his precious soul, and shed light into that soul, and establishes then a new family, which becomes a family of families, and a nation of families, which eventually become a family of nations brought under the rule and reign of Christ.

So what is man?

How small he is. We swagger here around the earth, don’t we, with such a posture of attainment and achievement, don’t we? Look at what we are. Look at what we’ve achieved.

And yet, look at it. What is it?

His body is clay. His days are short. His breath is in his nostrils. He’s not self-made. He’s not self-sustained. He’s a dependent being upheld every moment by God, utterly at the mercy of divine providence, in which the strength you’ve enjoyed in the past may at any moment be gone by divine appointment, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Your time is up.

Man is so little, and we’re so filled with a sense of the grandeur of our accomplishments, admiring our machinery and our cities and our inventions, and we don’t honestly ask at times, what is man?

Our pride is a veneer over our reality, is it not? Look at what we’ve done. This is veneering over the reality in comparison to God.

What is man?

Scratch the surface, and what do you find? You find frailty. You find mortality. You find limitation. You find ignorance. You find fear. You learn that one little fever can end the life of the strongest of men.

It’s frail. What is man beneath the heavens? The God who made them.

So man is little, but man is remembered. Man is remembered.

You see what it says? He is mindful of him. He visits him.

This is the amazing thing. You see, what David is contemplating here is not just the grandeur of God and the creation that He has made and then the existence of man, because there’s the existence of the oxen and the sheep and all the rest as well. They all exist.

But what is unique about man is that God visits man in a way He doesn’t visit the oxen. He doesn’t visit the sheep. He visits man.

And he was looking across at the sheep that he cares for, or in his memory that he looked after all those years, and really, is there that much of a difference? What is man? That God would visit man, that God would condescend to man, that God would redeem and save man.

Makes no sense to him. Makes no sense.

And here’s what he says, verse 5: “For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.”

So he is remembered and crowned by God. Crowned with glory and honor. Why would God make man in such a way? And yet He has. It’s the amazing thing.

He goes back to his record in Genesis, and he sees the significance of man made in the image of God. He ponders the way he has been crowned with glory and honor, that man is distinct from the rest of creation.

In verse 6, noticing that man is not only remembered and crowned, but he is entrusted with dominion: “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.”

“All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

“The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.”

All these, man has dominion over these things. He rules them. He rules them.

Animals do not enclose man into a space and then make the other animals pay to come and look at them. That’s what we do. We take the tigers and the bears and the pandas, and we take them all, even the largest of them, and we enclose them.

And we help them when they can’t help themselves, when the dumb panda isn’t motivated to procreate for the very continuance of its own species. And man takes dominion, tries to force these dumb creatures to do what they seem so hesitant to do. Save the panda, because he doesn’t want to save himself.

And we do these things. We take dominion. They’re under us.

Amazing thing.

And yet, when we observe our world, we find that it doesn’t go so easy for us, does it? It doesn’t seem so subservient. We are challenged at times. We find difficulty.

And this is where we come into our third point: the God-man and His redemptive goal.

Because man has been made in this wonderful way, given this crowning of glory and honor, and made to have dominion over the works of God’s hands, and put all things under his feet. But we find that it doesn’t always go that way.

So we toil in the sweat of our brow, and we discover the difficulty in gaining the bread for life, the effort that must be put in just to scrape out an existence at times, the challenge of living in a world that will not submit to God’s vice-regent, man.

So we have the God-man and His redemptive goal, because what the New Testament shows—and if you go over to Hebrews 2, you will see this. You will see how Paul acknowledges there that we don’t see this full plan of everything being under man in the way that Genesis initially had it.

So Hebrews 2, where you see this language from verse 8 being used, Hebrews 2 verse 8: “Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.”

“For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him.”

But now, here’s what we see: “But now we see not yet all things put under him.”

We don’t see this. We don’t see the outworking of this. So man seems limited in his ability to actually exercise the dominion that God has given.

What David is talking about is the ideal scenario, and it was Adam in his created state. What Paul observes is that seen through the lens of Adam alone, we see the limitation of man to really bring this world to be subject to his authority. It’s always pushing back and rebelling against man. It makes it tough and hard.

Every weed that grows is an act of the world’s rebellion against the Creator and the one who has dominion. Every time an animal doesn’t do as is the very will of its master.

So Paul takes off his Adamic lenses, as it were, he puts on his Christological lenses, and he says this: we don’t yet, now we see not yet all things put under man, but we see Jesus. We see Jesus.

And without going into all the details of it, what Paul does in the New Testament—and it’s not just in Hebrews, he does the same in 1 Corinthians 15 and in Ephesians, where he talks about all things under his feet—he’s talking about Christ. And he is showing how Christ comes to elevate the humanity, to do what was impossible for man because of his fall, because of his rebellion against God.

So Christ enters man’s lowest state. He takes our nature to elevate this nature. He comes into our experience. He doesn’t come just to redeem, but He enters into our very nature in order to redeem, entering our experience, taking our flesh, experiencing our hunger and weakness and sorrow and pain, and ultimately death.

He’s put under the law. He’s made a curse. He’s subjected to death. He who made the stars in agony pleads in Gethsemane under their light. He made a curse for us.

All because this creature, man, that God is mindful of, has failed, and can’t fulfill His purpose, and can’t bring honor to God as he ought, being made in the very image of God.

So Christ comes. He enters in. He fulfills man’s calling then. He takes the curse. He takes the fall. He puts His arms around all. And as I said, He’s made a curse for us, and He defeats death, the ultimate enemy of man, the ultimate expression of the fall.

He defeats death. He rises from the dead in order to elevate humanity again.

Eternal life is the elevation of human nature, restoring what was lost and regaining it in a way where it can never be lost ever again.

Eternal life begins here when He, by His dominion, looking at not only a world at enmity with God and rebelling against God, but man himself has become the enemy of God. His own heart is inclined away from God. And Jesus Christ takes our nature and lays claim to the heart. And He changes the very heart. He changes the very nature. He makes us new creatures in Himself, so that all things are passed away and behold, all things are become new.

He changes by restoring that which has been broken by the fall. Man begins to emanate the light that was lost. The darkness of rebellion and unbelief diminishes as He puts faith in the heart.

And it enables us then to see the glory of this God in a way we have never seen before. So we can sing that something lives in every hue that Christless eyes have never seen. They couldn’t see. But through regeneration, through the new birth, through the dominion of Christ taking our nature and purchasing our salvation and bestowing eternal life, He’s raising up human nature again, the one made a little lower than the angels.

And all to what end? What is the purpose of all this? The ultimate goal of Him entering into our nature, fulfilling our purpose?

It is to restore us to praise, is it not?

“O LORD our Lord”—that, that.

You see, dominion is nothing without doxology. Dominion is nothing without doxology.

Man’s dominion, man’s powers expressed, man’s effort to subdue this world—to what end? His breath is in his nostrils. He’ll be buried like anyone else.

But when there’s a marriage of dominion and doxology, when man’s dominion is elevated because it’s done in doxology, it’s done in praise, it’s done in recognition of the One who’s excellent, whose glory is above the heavens, so that all of his effort and all of his toil and all of his accomplishments are done not to the praise of our name, but to the praise of the God who has given us such occupation and called us to such purpose.

So that the accountant who adds his numbers together is no longer dominion over the mystery of God, finding the place of every sentence, is done in doxology to the God who made an ordered world in which such a thing can exist as mathematics.

And the nurse who’s by the bedside helping someone sick, exercising the dominion of man and his medicine to bring healing and comfort, can do so in doxology to the God who made us fearfully and wonderfully made.

And the mother who tends to her little ones. And the father who provides for his family and protects his home and counsels his children. It’s done not just as bare dominion in this world, it’s done in doxology to the God who made it and made us in His image.

Doxology that should emanate from every creature, so that the bookend of our life from beginning to end is, “O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” “O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”

It is about Him.

Man in his dominion, but losing his position, messing up through sin and rebellion, restored through Jesus Christ in order that in his life, both now and in the future, would be a perpetual praise unto God.

Beloved, do not minimize your place in this world. Do not have a small view of God. He is great and glorious.

And do not look at yourself and say, what am I? I’m nothing. Yes, compared to Him, yes.

And yet, this is the thing: out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, out of the weakest of humanity, He has ordained praise. In opposition to the avenger, in opposition to the enemy, He is opposing the forces of darkness through the weakest frame of man.

He’s put dignity into every one of us made in His image, no matter the limitations or the extent of our abilities, whether disabled or limited through age and ill health. Through our doxology of life, He pushes back on the darkness of this world and brings glory to His name.

“What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”

Why would He ever care about you or me? Yet He does. And every life counts.

If you’re not in Christ, the will, the will of God is to pull you in to this message of life. Through this message of life, you begin a life of doxology and praise. However you occupy your time in this world, honorably before God, taking dominion however you can, it will be to the praise of His glorious grace.

Let’s bow together in prayer.

You may look at your life and it may not amount to much. An empty bank account. A life full of trouble. Age and infirmity all around you. Innumerable challenges, difficulties that show no signs of letting up. Sorrow from which there seems no reprieve.

Leave here with a song that He has been mindful of you. He sent Christ in love to your soul and mine. He has visited you. And though you may have lost many things in this life, you’ll never lose Him. He’ll never lose you.

Lord, help us. Help us. Help us to live accordingly, to be amazed at Thy condescension, to be overwhelmed by and to be humbled by use of our praise.

Lead us out of here today as soldiers with no weapons but our song, with no name but our God’s.

Fill us with the Holy Spirit, and may we make a difference in the little span we have, whatever remains between today and our passing into eternity.

Humble the proud who are yet without repentance. Draw them savingly to Christ today. Hear prayer. Give joy this afternoon.

May we return tonight to consider the Word again, to be instructed, to ponder, that even Jesus wept.

Hear us, and may the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of every child of God, now and evermore. Amen.