The Song of Man

Introduction

The Hubble Space Telescope, released over 11 years ago, has allowed us to view outer space without the interference of our atmosphere. The images captured boggle the mind. Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope recorded the birth of a new star in a cloud of gas 170,000 light years away. That means that if you could travel at the speed of light—which is around 186,000 miles per second or six trillion miles per year—it would take you 170,000 years to arrive at this cloud. In other words, a journey of 102 quintillion miles. The cloud itself is 150 light years wide and is the nursery for stars ten times bigger than our own sun. It is estimated that there are at least 10 billion galaxies in the universe, with each galaxy containing perhaps 100 billion stars. In other words, not only are the stars we see in the night sky far away, they are a mere fraction of what’s really out there.

Time magazine published some of the Hubble telescope’s magnificent photos of luminous, gorgeous, enormous pillars of clouds and gas. A few weeks later someone wrote a letter to the editor stating that these photos should finally put an end to the religious idea that humanity amounts to anything. Not only are we clearly not the center of the universe, this person wrote, we don’t even register.

That respondent could not be any more wrong. Psalm 8 is written to dispel the notion that humanity doesn’t matter to God. Long before the Hubble Space Telescope, long before the first telescopes turned their lenses to a darkened space, long before science became the norm for understanding our world, the writer of Psalm 8 knew something about the nature and character of God and how we as humans fit into that scheme. Today we will be encouraged in our relationship with God.

God Creates

Most attribute this psalm to David. It is the only psalm in which the entire psalm is directed to God. It is the first psalm in which God is identified as the congregational God rather than just a personal God. In other words, God is Israel’s God, not just David’s. Others have seen the nighttime creation of God and marveled at its majesty and wondered about its mysteries.

What causes a writer to write a song like Psalm 8? Maybe it was a cool, crisp autumn night. Maybe the psalmist was out tending to his sheep. All around was the kind of darkness that we only see away from the city. Maybe the writer looked up into the sky and began to focus on what he saw. Maybe there was a sense of wonder and bewilderment as he looked at the stars and the moon. Maybe he could see the Milky Way. Maybe he had already noticed how the stars seemed to take shape before his very eyes. Maybe in the distance he could hear the bleating of his flock and he wondered if Israel’s God thought of him as he thought of his sheep. Maybe not too far away he could make out the faint cry of his young child crying for his mother’s milk. You can imagine the scene in any way that you want to, but when you imagine it, relive the sense of awe that must have accompanied the writer of this psalm.

Is it any wonder that the song begins with “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” Haven’t there been nights that you looked up into the nighttime sky and experienced a sense of wonder and awe about God? It isn’t possible to hold on to that emotion for a long time, but it is possible to remember and in the remembering to refocus on the God who creates. The themes of this psalm include God’s majesty, creative abilities, awesomeness, and power.

Man

The psalmist’s response to the majesty of God is one in which he is overwhelmed with creation. God is so great and man is so small. With a vast universe and such a large expanse, how is it that God has time to think about man? How is it that the One who has been able to create billions upon billions of galaxies can care about man? And yet, the writer declares that God does indeed think about man. But more than think, God cares for us. The Hebrew writer uses this exact text in reference to Jesus. The Hebrew writer says the presence of Jesus is God’s declaration of his intense and majestic care for his creation and for humanity. Everything has been put under the power of Jesus, although we do not see the full extent of that power in our world.

Verses 5 and 6 are not a declaration of man’s significance. This is a declaration of the sovereignty of God and his grace. God made man a little lower than the heavenly beings—or angels or gods; any of these words would fit the translation. But this is not designed to cause man to puff out his chest, but to realize the great blessing from God. We have been divinely blessed. There is a huge gulf between God’s ways and ours, between God’s thoughts and ours, but in his grace and sovereignty, God has blessed man with dominion over all things on this earth. Both the tame and wild animals are under our dominion. They are for our use and enjoyment—not to abuse and misuse, but this is God’s wisdom at work. God has given man the responsibility to care for this world, to use this world, to be inspired by this world, to rule over this world. This is God’s blessing to us.

First, we are people of divine worth. God has declared it to be so. Out of the vastness of this universe and the vastness of the billions of other galaxies, God has crowned human beings with glory and honor. We have been crowned by God. No other creature in heaven or on earth has received this blessing. By the declaration of God, you are a person of worth and value.

Second, according to this song, our purpose is found in taking care of this world. We are to take care of and rule over this planet on behalf of God. Psalm 8 may tell us that God has put everything under our feet, but that hardly means we’re allowed to trample those things with our feet. Because, as verse 6 makes clear, what God has placed under our feet is the work of his hands. You don’t want to smash God’s fingers!

All through the Bible we are given tasks and commands by God. But in every case the expectation is that we will carry out those mandates in a God-like way. This includes taking care of this earth. If a famous artist gifted you with one of his sculptures, you would not put it in a precarious place where the kids might knock it over, and you surely would not let them color on it with their crayons. Nor would you place it into a closet somewhere and never look at it again. No, you will tend it, keep it, display it, appreciate it, show it off to guests, and protect it from harm.

So also with God’s world: we rule it because God has given us the authority to do so. That means we protect, celebrate, display, appreciate, and love the gorgeous work of God. None of this means that we are not allowed to enjoy the fruits of creation. None of it means we may not use trees for wood or oil for cars or water for boating and fishing. But all of it does mean that as we do those things we always keep God in mind, thanking him for the bounties we can consume.

Of all the ways that God chose to reveal himself, he chose to give the complete representation of his character and nature through his son Jesus. As majestic as God is, he did not refuse to reach out to his creation. He reached down to us and gave us Jesus so that we could be in relationship with him.

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