12-7-22 - A Prayer of Praise

So if you have your Bibles, we'll be in Psalms chapter 8 tonight, Psalms chapter 8.

And I thought about jumping back into the book of Jonah, I was there a couple weeks ago, prayed through it, but I think the Lord has laid this upon my heart tonight. And we'll be in Psalms chapter 8, and if you're able to, if you would stand with me to honor the reading of God's Word. Psalms chapter 8, and I've titled tonight's message a prayer of praise, a prayer of praise. Psalms 8 verse 1, the word of the Lord says, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who has set the 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 and thy works 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 honor. Thou hast made 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 beast of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the seas, and whatsoever passes through the paths of the seas. Our Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, Lord, we thank you for the truth that we find in it. Lord, we thank you for this time of year that we can come and just reflect on you sending your son, Emmanuel, God, with us. Lord, we thank you that we could have a church to come to in a midweek service and to open your word and to study it. Lord, help it to conform us to the image of Christ. Lord, help us to bring praise, glory, and honor to your name. Lord, we thank you for the many ministries here at Lighthouse. Lord, we just pray through the different ministries tonight, whether it's in the children's ministry, the teen ministry, or even here in the adult ministry, if there's anyone lost that tonight would be the night of salvation for them. Lord, I just pray you'd hide me behind the cross, give me the words to speak. We ask this tonight in Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated. So the book of Psalms, while the book of Psalms may be one of the most popular books in the Bible and is most often associated with worship or songs of praise, the Psalms give us a very practical picture of prayer. What I mean by that is that they take us to the heights of joy and it takes us to the depths of despair. And I think of Psalm 51 as David is pleading before the Lord in this depth of despair and using words that we certainly can use as a pattern of our own prayer life. And as pastor went through several weeks on prayer, hopefully your prayer life has increased through those messages. As we look at this Psalm tonight, David stands in amazement of God and all of the creation that he has created, the great and glorious one who would ultimately, why would he pay attention to the frail people of earth? David understands that God glorifies himself in the heavens, but how can he glorify himself on earth through such weak sinful people as us? And so this is a nature Psalm, just like Psalms 19, Psalms 29, Psalms 65 and Psalm 104, they're all considered a nature Psalm, but this is also a messianic Psalm.

And the answer to the question is, what is man is ultimately answered by Jesus Christ, the last Adam through whom we regain our lost dominion. And so my hope and prayer tonight is that this will help contribute to a flood of fervent prayer on our behalf to God for what he has done for us, especially this time of season as we reflect as the banner says over here, the word made flesh, Immanuel, God with us. And so Jesus said this in Matthew chapter 21 verse 13, it is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer. And so we should continue to make Lighthouse Baptist Church a house of prayer. We should be committed to making our homes lighthouses of prayer. And when I think back on this, I've often wondered many times in my Christian walk and more so in the past than now, what is more important prayer or hearing preaching? What is more important reading the Bible or prayer? What is, and when we think of those things, should we spend more time reading or the Bible or should we spend more time praying?

And I love A.W. Tozer's answer to this question. Which is more important to a bird, the right wing or the left wing? They're both equally important, right? And when we think of our Christian walk, all of these are equally important. We must strive to keep the balance and keep it in perspective. Prayer is not better than evangelism. Worship is not better than ministry. Caring for one another is not less important than any other spiritual aspect. And they're all equally important and we must keep a balance and maintain that.

So with that as a brief introduction, we'll bring to my first point tonight. God created us. God created us. If you look at this prayer of praise, David is praising God because he has created us.

If you look at verse one, he says, Oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name and all the earth who has set thy glory above the heavens. And so this meaning of a person's name that is oftentimes we don't understand maybe even what our names mean. Have we ever looked it up and seen what the meaning of our names are? And I knew that certain people would probably be here tonight, and so I went ahead and looked some of them up. And so Aaron, strength, high mountain, inspired, and when we think of that, rather than the meaning of a person's name, it's meaning their character.

It's their position or their actions. And so in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, a person's name was important because the meaning of that name reflected or was hoped to reflect something about that person. To God and to other people of God, his names are especially important because they reveal his nature and his attributes.

And I think of David. David means dearly beloved. Daniel means God is my judge. Anna, God was gracious or God has shown favor.

Sharon, name means princess. And so when we look at this and he says, our Lord, he says, oh Lord, our Lord, when we look at it and you look in your Bibles, that first Lord that you come to in verse one is all capitalized, it's all caps. And what that is, is that's a translation of the Hebrew word for God, which we did not, we don't know exactly how to pronounce it because the Hebrews were so reverent of God's name, they never wanted to say it in vain. And so they, they would only use the consonants. So they would always, in all their writings, they would have Y H V H or what's known as the tetragrammaton. And so it was to remain unpronounceable. And this is the most frequent use of God's name in the Old Testament.

It's used 5,321 times in the Old Testament. They didn't want a person to even pronounce it silently wrong when they were reading it. So in their writings, in the manuscripts, they would literally just write Y H V H. And so when they came to it, they couldn't pronounce it. And so as they would come across this in this verse, as they were reading it in the Hebrew, as we would see, oh Lord, our Lord, the Jew would say, oh, then he would bow his head and then he would just say the name. So he would say, oh, the name, our Lord, or they would say our Adonai, which is the second name we'll get to here in a moment. It is a verb in the Hebrew, which means he is, or he will be. And so the name indicates that God is and he wills to be. The name implies that he had no beginning. We know God had no beginning and he has no end and he is ever present. And so these names are speaking to the nature and the attributes of God. And we see that in this very first word, name of God of Yahweh. And so this revelation came to Moses in the burning bush, and I would like to see that on replay. I want to get to heaven.

I want to see that moment where that bush, like Carolyn does such a great job with these, but you imagine that thing just engulfs in flames, but it's not consumed by fire. And God is talking through, I just want to see that moment. So this is the revelation as God reveals himself to Moses and he says, I am who I am in Exodus 3, verse 14. And so the principle idea is being that God was present with the people of Israel and he's present with us today as well. And so the significance of a name, of Yahweh, is it emphasizes that God is changeless.

He's self-existent. It assures God's presence with his people. And thirdly, it relates to God's power to work on their behalf. The second Lord here in verse one is our Lord. You notice that in your Bibles there, it's a capital L, lowercase O-R-D. And this signifies the Hebrew word Adonai, which means that Adonai means master or owner.

And so Adonai is a plural word, basically meaning majesty. And so it is a title, therefore, that signifies our relationship to him. It conveys the idea that he is the absolute authority in our lives.

The second name indicates our relationship to him as our master. And in the New Testament, the equivalent to this is kordios, where we get the word Lord in the New Testament. And so the phrase our Lord also is a threefold confession of faith. And what we mean by that is there is but one God.

The second thing in this confession of faith is that all people were created by God. And thirdly, that the Jewish people in particular are his people and the sheep of his pasture. And I think of a Jeremiah 10-10 and it says, but the Lord is the true God. He is the living God and he is an everlasting king. In Isaiah 45 verse five says, I am the Lord and there is none else.

There is no God besides me. And Genesis 1-1 speaks of God's creation in the beginning was God and he created the heavens and the earth. And we see in Genesis 1-26, the very first part of that verse, and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. And then verse 27, so God created man in his own image.

In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. And lastly, Psalms 100 verse three speaks to Israel being God's people. Psalms 100 verse three, know you not or know you that the Lord, he is God that and it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves, we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. And so God wanted his name to be known not only amongst the Israelites, amongst the Jews, but he also wanted it to be known amongst the Gentiles as well throughout all the world, all the earth. And we see that in Psalm 66 one and says, make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands. And think of a Psalms 83 verse 18, that men may know that thou whose name is Jehovah art the most high over all the earth.

And so God's name is excellent in all the earth and stands for all that he is, his excellency, it goes throughout all the earth, the Bible tells us. There is no one else like him. He is omnipotent.

He is incomparable. And I think of Exodus chapter 15 verse 11 says, who is like thee, O Lord, amongst the gods? Who is like thee, glorious and holiness, fearful and praise, doing wonders?

There's no one like our God. And so David is overwhelmed by the mystery and the greatness of the almighty. As he's writing this, he is just taken back by the mystery and the greatness of our God and recognizes that God's glory, much like Paul did in Romans chapter one, verse 20, says this, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power in Godhead.

So that they are without excuse. And so David concludes here in verse one by saying that the glory is way beyond the heavens. The glory of God is way beyond the heavens. The word glory here encompasses all of his attributes.

It literally means his splendor, literally means his majesty, beauty, comeliness, excellency, his gloriousness, his being goodly and his honor. And I can envision David as he's sitting out on the starstruck night, looking across the vastness of the sky and here where we are now, you have to go out in the country to see most of the stars because the city lights wash it out. But you get out on the ocean at night or you get out into a place where there's hardly any light at all and the stars jump out. And it's in an amazement that you see just the vastness of heaven. And we sit on this side of technology now where we have the Hubble telescope and others that can project deep into space and we can see images that David never saw. And we know the vastness of space and how it continues to expand.

Yet David looking at the starry night, he was dazzled by what he saw. And yet God's glory extends beyond that. And we think about on this side of where we sit in the 21st century and what we can see the vastness of space and God's glory expands beyond the known universe and beyond the known space that we have been able to take in. Again, glory equals magnificent. It means worship. It means highest praise.

It means radiance and beauty. Exodus 40 verse 34 says this, then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And so Moses was given the instructions to build the tabernacle of God. And as he was building the tabernacle, the scriptures say that it was not complete. The tabernacle was not complete until the temple was filled with the glory of God. And so God's glory is a display of his perfection, of his honor and his fame that should go out throughout all the world. God's glory is the going forth of his holiness.

I think of the seraphim in Isaiah chapter six and the seraphim are flying around the throne of heaven. And this is what they say, and one another cried unto another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And so I think today, many people take Jesus as like their homeboy. They take Jesus as just a casual Jesus. They take God as a casual God, but God is a holy God is to be reverence. He is to be respected. He is to be revered. And I fear that many times, not so much people here, but you just see it in the culture and casual Christianity at times and watered down Christianity, that there's not a reverence for God's holiness. When you ask most people that quote unquote are Christian, you ask them what an attribute of God is.

The first thing that they typically say is that he is love. They forget the holiness of God. And so Solomon, think about this, Solomon, when he contemplated God's glory, he said the following in first Kings chapter eight, verse 27, but will God indeed dwell on earth? The world, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee.

How much less this house that I have builded. And so the heavens are glorious. We can sit back and we can see the heavens. We can see pictures from the Hubble telescope and we can say that is glorious. That is breathtaking.

We can go out, not this night when it was all cloudy in Ohio, we got the four months of gray coming in. But normally when the sun's out, we can go out and see a beautiful sunset or a beautiful sunrise and we can see the first heaven, which is our outer atmosphere that we see around us. And we can say, man, God is a beautiful painter.

He's a beautiful artist. And these heavens are glorious and they declare the glory of God. However, they are not, I will tell you, they are not the glory of God. When we look at the cosmos, that is not the glory of God. They merely declare his glory.

I will tell you. His glory is above the heavens. Psalms 19 one says, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. And so the glory of God, um, the glory of God dealt with Israel and the tabernacle.

He dwelt with Israel and the tabernacle and in the temple, but this was revealed to us mankind when Jesus came and we have the banner over here and uh, John chapter one verse 14 and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we'd be held as what? His glory as a, the glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. And so here David is making this transition from verse one to verse two now and David moves from God's transcendence. God is transcendent. He is above everything in the known cosmos and the known universe, yet he's also going from his transcendence to his eminence or his closeness. And we have a personal God who wants to have a personal relationship with us. He is transcendent, but yet he is imminently close to each and every single follower of his. And God is so great that he can entrust his praise to infants and children and still not be robbed of his glory. I will tell you when there's a small child that gives praise and glory to God, it does not rob God. One bit. It gives him further glory. Um, Isaiah or Psalms 50 or Psalms eight verse two says out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hass thou ordained and strengthened because of thine enemy.