The Bible makes it clear that God is not indifferent to our prayers.
So why are we often indifferent in our praise? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explores the 8th Psalm to find out how we can awaken from inaction and apathy to worshiping God as He intends and deserves. One of the great benefits of being in a church, as many of you will be, where the Bible is consistently taught, is that it is the Word of God that sets the agenda. And it is actually the Word of God that sets the agenda for our praise. When, in the book of Deuteronomy, God speaks to Moses, you will remember He says to him, Moses, assemble the people before me to hear my words, to hear my words. The reason that we gather in church is, first of all, that we might hear and submit to the voice of God in His Word. He assembles us by His command, and He assembles us to listen to His Word. And when you think about the whole agenda that is framed for us in the Psalms, we realize that in many of our contexts, it is praise that creates the framework for the preaching. When in actual fact, a good case can be made for the preaching, providing the foundation for the praise. You say you're crazy. You came here to a thing called sing and you're saying this. That's typical of a preacher. You're concerned about job security and everything else. No, no, no, not at all.
Not at all. But it is out of the fullness of the heart that the mouth sings, and it is out of the fullness of God that the heart has a reason to sing. And that's why here in this particular Psalm, we realize that it begins with God and His glory and not with man and his need.
Calvin says, man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless and until he is first looked upon God's face and then descends from contemplating Him to scrutinize himself. Now the Psalm is fairly straightforward and I want to guide us through it. Noticing straightforwardly in verses one and two, the majesty of God, the majesty of God, the majesty of His name. If you have your Bible open in front of you, you will notice that although the word Lord comes twice in your English translation, the first time it is capitalized. In the second word, the L is the only capital.
And that is because it's two different words. Yahweh, sovereign Lord, Yahweh, our defender, God. That first word is the word that Moses received when he said to God, who will I say to Pharaoh has sent me? And you remember the answer is I am that I am. In other words, this is the revelation of God Himself. His name is the explication of all that He is. Wondrous and magnificent creator and sustainer of everyone and everything. Eternal, infinite, unchangeable in His power and in His perfection, in His goodness and in His glory, in His wisdom and His justice and His truth. And irrespective of people's reaction, He is everlastingly majestic.
He is the majestic one. Now that is a reminder to us and I hope a help to us of something fundamentally important to the reason for our gathering. Because we need to consider how such a straightforward observation informs and frames the way in which we assemble with one another on the Lord's day, the way in which we are brought into the presence of God on the Lord's day, the way in which we realize that we come first to bow down. Again, Calvin says of this psalm, the Holy Spirit through the psalmist intended to awaken people from their inaction and indifference.
It is a sad thing, is it not? When those who lead the praise feel that somehow or another, they're going to have to try harder. They're going to have to stir emotion more. They're going to have to cajole and exhort and say, come on, come on.
As if somehow or another, that's the foundation of it. The psalms save us from that because here God speaks to us and here we in turn speak to God. Now this majestic name of God, you will notice is opposed. It is opposed.
It doesn't go unopposed and it is responded to. It is, if you like, the opposition is silenced by frailty. Silenced by frailty. You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength or you have ordained praise because of your foes to still the enemy, to silence the avenger.
How does this happen? In frailty. To the Corinthians, think about yourselves, he says. Not many of you are particularly smart. Not many of you are particularly handsome. In fact, you're a rough-looking group. You look like the average church choir, if I might say so.
How could you ever hope to launch a revolution with this? It's not the faces. It's the praise. Now we know this because you remember when the Pharisees, the scribes, challenged Jesus after he has been manifesting the fact that he is the king. They say to him, do you hear what these children are saying? And what does Jesus say to them?
He says, yes. Have you never read your Bibles? Have you never read Psalm 8?
Out of the mouth of infants and babies? Every baby that is born and grows to infancy stands as a testimony against all of the forces of the avenger and the fall and says, Jesus Christ is Lord. That is the majesty that is mentioned in verses 1 and 2. And then in verses 3 and 4, the creator cares. Verses 3 and 4 describe the shepherd boy lying on his back, looking up at the night sky and pondering the vastness of it all. The heavens, he writes in one of his other poems, declare the glory of God.
The sky declares his handiwork. David only knew a fraction of what we know. David didn't know about the Milky Way. David didn't know about Andromeda, didn't know about light years, didn't know about galaxies and billions of stars. But as he laid there and looked, he realized each star retaining its appointed place, the alternation between nighttime and sunrise remaining constant, not as a result of some coincidental moving of the spheres. He's lying there and he's realizing what the hymn writer says, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness.
And he realizes this. God has given to man this amazing environment in which to live. Man is created for God.
The rest of the world is created for us. You think about fruit. Think of all the flowers. Think of all the bugs.
Think of all the butterflies. Think of all the creatures in creation given to us for our good, for our benefits. What a difference that is from the words of the late Stephen Hawking, a genius of a man, and yet so sad in many ways. Think of the contrast between what we're discovering here in Psalm 8 and what Stephen had to say. If there is no God and we've evolved by chance through millions of years, then everything that happens, either good or bad, must be viewed as simply the result of random, pitiless indifference. In other words, from that perspective, humanity is just a combination of cosmic chemical accidents, but you are just a collection of molecules held in suspension.
Pause. Consider then how crucial is the doctrine of creation when the people of God lift their voices in praise. Consider how significant it is when a generation grows up as the millennials have grown up believing if they are prepared to, that they were born haphazardly, that they prolong their lives by chance, and that they die and go into oblivion with no knowledge of creation, no knowledge of an end point, and no arc through their lives. Where is that addressed? Not just in the preaching of the word, but in the singing of God's praise.
That when the people come in, when that generation comes in amongst the people of God, and they realize that this is the declaration from the hearts of these folks. The Bible is not impressed with the vastness of the universe. This, he says, is the work of your fingers. Fingers.
Of course, God has no fingers. That is an anthropomorphism. I was with somebody at about 10 days or two weeks ago now, and I was asking, how did you put this thing together?
How did you scope this? Tell me how it happened. I wanted to know. Do you realize the tenderness, the genius, the intricacy of it all? This is what God has done. Vast creation, small humanity. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?
The son of man that you care for him. Now notice carefully where the question mark comes. The question mark does not come as it is often preached after the word man in verse four.
And that's a good sermon. What is man? I want to talk to you today about what is man. That's not what he's saying here. The question mark comes after him at the end of verse four. What is he asking? He's not marveling about the fact that he is simply a spark in the cosmos. He is marveling at the wonder that God who created this entire deal is mindful of him, cares for him. And again, in children's songs, God who made the earth, the air, the sky, the sea, who gave the light its birth, cares for me.
We put our children to bed at night and see before we go to sleep, before we close the curtains, we look outside and see all of this. Say, you know, honey, God, he fashioned all this and he knows you. He made you. There's nobody else like you in the entire world. Your DNA is according to God. And they always go, what's your DNA?
Then you say, ask your mother. But you get the point, don't you? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, Romans 8.32, how will he not also with him freely give us all things? Verses five to eight, humanity's dignity and dominion. One and two, the majesty of God's name. Verses three and four, whatever it was I said. And verses five to eight, humanity's dignity and dominion. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings or little lower than God or for a time or from the angels, translated variously. Here is man, you see, now as the central character in the work of creation. He's distinguished from the animals over which he has dominion.
He alone is made in the image of God. That's the significance of crown with glory and honor. God has created this immense setting in which man is then given a place and is appointed to rule it. This is a dangerous one as well.
The Bible does not have a category for animal rights. I just came from Ireland. I stayed in a hotel where they put me. There were almost as many dogs as there were people. And on one occasion, there was a giant German shepherd, not on the floor, but sitting up in the booth with the rest of the people staring me at eye level. And I said, my, what a wonderful place this is, Ireland. How amazing. This is the place to be a dog.
Other places you have to stay on the floor, but here, no, you can sit up. How does this happen? It happens because you don't have a doctrine of man, because you don't have a doctrine of creation, because we don't have a God who has actually fashioned things, put man in place and given humanity dominion. Again, contrast this with Darwin. What does Darwin say? Man has become even in his rudest state, the most dominant animal that has ever appeared on earth. There you have it. So here I am on my best day, I am the most dominant animal that has ever appeared on earth. I feel like I'm a turbocharged ape. It's not true, nor is the other extreme true when you're in CVS and you come across a beleaguered mother with one of those little monsters called children.
And they're tyrannizing the place and dismantling the pharmacy as you're observing. And you hear these amazing words coming from the mouth of the mother. Oh, come on now, my little angel. I want to say, this is not an angel.
I am not saying it's an ape, but I'm saying it is not an angel. Now, why do we know that? Because God said so.
That's why. Now this psalm is giving this, you see. Man is given the responsibility of ruling over God's world only as he lives under the authority of God's word.
In other words, it is doxology that provides the basis for dominion. It is because we are saying this of God that we're able then to consider the thisness of ourselves. And then, although I'm being somewhat facetious, to put the animals in their place, the place God said they should be.
That's why Adam was given the privilege of giving them their names. Now, here we have it, and there's a little sticking point with a word here that you find in verse six. You've given him dominion over the works of your hands.
You have put all things under his feet. Well, of course, what we have here is a description, is really a commentary on Genesis chapter 1. But as we look around our world today, we realize that that is not exactly true of humanity, is it? It doesn't look like this.
Why is that? Because of Genesis chapter 3. Because the world in which we live is not the world as was made in its pristine beauty by God, but is the world as it has been defaced and dismantled on account of the rebellion of man. This means that we possess still a dignity made in the image of God, that God's image has not been extinguished in us, but it has been defaced in us, and it is obscured in us. If you like, what the Bible is saying to us in all of its pages is that we are by nature ruined. We're ruined. Husband, if you don't know that you're a ruin, ask your wife to come in and watch you while you're shaving, and she will have a chance to see the ravages, the way in which your chest has dropped down into your drawers. It's pretty clear.
It's pretty clear. You only need a mirror. You're a ruin, a glorious ruin. Now, here we must finish. When man steps out from underneath the authority of God, the inevitable result in the world, in our own personal private worlds and beyond, is ultimately chaos and disorder. Therefore, when we read this psalm, we find ourselves saying, this psalm awaits a greater fulfillment.
There has to be someone who fits verses five to eight perfectly. And of course, the answer to that, we all know. And this again is where it is so crucial to read our Bibles backwards. Because when you read, for example, in Hebrews, you discover that the writer of Hebrews says in verse six, it has been testified somewhere, which is fascinating that he couldn't remember where it was.
It is, which should be an encouragement to most of us. It has been testified somewhere and then he goes through it. What is man that you're mindful of him and so on.
And what does he say? He says, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. We do not yet see everything in subjection to him, but we see Jesus. But we see Jesus.
For Jesus is the second Adam. Jesus is the perfect man. Jesus is the one who fulfills all that is represented here. He in all of his majesty and in all of his magnificence. He who is raised, seated far above all authority and power and dominion above every name that has been named in this age and in the ages to come. He who has borne the curse that has fallen on us in our ruin. And he now has even now begun to remove the effects of man's sin. That you see why the Pharisees were so annoyed because the blind began to see, the lame began to walk, the seas began to respond. The king had come. He is the king and he must reign until finally the last enemy will be destroyed.
When he puts all of his enemies under his feet and death too. So what? So where is this supposed to be seen in microcosm?
Where is somebody supposed to come walking in off the street and get any of this? In your church? In the singing? Think about how your singing was yesterday. Do you think anyone got converted by your singing yesterday? Singing like this.
Do you expect anyone coming off the street and say, oh, this guy's life must have been turned upside down by Jesus or something? How will it be seen when the children's voices are heard? The infant voice is proclaiming. And we realize that eye has not seen. It's invisible. Nor ear heard. It's inaudible. Nor there has it entered into the heart of man.
It's inconceivable. The things that God has prepared for them that love him, but he has explained this to us by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit that gives to us Psalm 8 to awaken us out of our inaction and indifference so that we will stand together and say, oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have said your glory above the heavens.
Thank you very much. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. We've been listening to selections from a series called What Is True Worship?
And today wraps up our time in this series. If you'd like to hear all 12 messages in this series, you can stream or download the complete series for free online at truthforlife.org. And while you're on our website, check out the book we are recommending called Sighing on Sunday, 40 Meditations for When Church Hurts.
The book is yours when you donate to Truth for Life at truthforlife.org slash donate. Well here we are at the end of March. Are you still thinking about vacation plans? How about joining Alistair and me on the 10-day deeper faith cruise that sets sail November 10th out of Lisbon, Portugal.
Our journey will include stops in the Azores, the Canary Islands, Morocco, and Spain. And along the way, we'll fellowship together as Alistair teaches from God's word. Find out more at deeperfaithcruise.com. I'm Bob Lapine. Tomorrow we'll start preparing our hearts for Easter by focusing on the final chapters of Mark's Gospel. We'll begin with Jesus being confronted by the traitor Judas in the shadows of the garden. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
