March 10, 1999

EXPLORE THE BIBLE:
God's creation gives
evidence of his greatness
___ Psalm 8:1-9
___By Dillard Wilbanks
___Travis Avenue Baptist Church, Fort Worth
___Psalm 8 is a psalm or hymn of praise. Traditionally, the psalm is ascribed to David. The subject is man and nature. Although nature is vast and magnificent, man is greater. The moral must ever take precedence over the material, and so man is greater than matter, and the eternal greater than the temporal.
___ Praise to God (Psalm 8:1-2). David first addresses God by his personal name: "O Lord" (Yahweh). Yahweh is also the Lord of Israel, so David immediately adds, "our Lord." He then moves to give "excellent" value to God's name. The entire creation is filled with his glory and radiates with the excellency of his power. However, not on earth alone is Jehovah extolled. Above the region of the stars he has set his everlasting throne where he dwells eternally. The glory of God is witnessed to by all of creation, both earth and heaven.
___In verse 2 David introduces the fact that our Lord has enemies who oppose his purpose and question his providence. Yet, for all history there are those who bear him witness and the feeblest of these (babes) is stronger than the mightiest adversary. When God's people, both weak and strong, begin to praise his name, the realm of Satan and his demons is stormed.
___ God's glorious universe (Psalm 8:3-4). David marveled at what he saw with the naked eye of the creation God had set in place (ordained). How much more reason do we have to marvel! We now know that within the universe there are 100 billion galaxies, each with an average 100 billion stars, 10 billion trillion stars. These statistics are beyond human comprehension. This vast universe stands on the workbench of God. We have even more reason to ask "What is man...(v.4)?"
___ God's glorious creation--man (Psalm 8:5-8). Here the God who has revealed his excellent name, his glory above the heavens and the vastness of his creation, answers that we are made little lower than he ("God," NASB) and have been placed in this world to exercise his sovereignty over the planet. Contrast this revelation to the position of modern science as stated by Carl Sagan, "As long as there have been humans we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
___David reminds us that, rather than being imprisoned by reason, we are liberated by revelation as our glory is seen in light of the glory of God. We know our greatness only in relationship to God.
___Granted, we do not now see the order of creation in the world. The original purpose of God for his crowning creation has not been fulfilled because of man's sin.
___Yet that divine design is not forever frustrated for God himself has become man, and by the incarnation and sacrifice on Calvary, what was lost by the first Adam (Hebrews 2:6-10) has been restored.
___Just as in Jesus Christ the fallen creation has been restored, upon his return all things will be consummated in him (Philippians 2:10-11). Until then, our role dictates that we be good stewards of the responsibility for which we were created.

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