The Majestic Name

Psychologists say that one thing which drives us in life is the search for significance. We need to be able to look in the mirror and say to ourselves, ‘You matter. You’re worth something.’ And some of us look for significance more in achievements – ‘I’ve just got so many As in my exams – so I’m significant; I’ve just qualified or got the job – so I’m significant.’ And others of us look for significance more in relationships – ‘I’ve just been noticed and asked out by a guy – so I’m significant; I’ve finally fulfilled my parents’ expectations of me – so I’m significant.

Now achievements and relationships certainly are a source of significance. But it can be a fragile significance. After all, what if you don’t achieve – don’t get the grades or the place or the job? Then who are you? And what about when relationships go wrong, or end – or, ultimately, are ended by death? Then who are you?

And in our culture, people are looking for significance against the backdrop of a secular world-view that totally devalues us. Listen, eg, to what the atheist Richard Dawkins says in his book The Selfish Gene:

We are all survival machines for DNA. A monkey is a machine which preserves genes up trees. A fish is a machine which preserves genes in water; there is even a small worm which preserves genes in German beer mats… We are machines for propagating DNA. It is every living object’s sole reason for living. We are the throw-away survival machines of genes.

Well, how significant does that make you feel? And if that is all we are, then why not get rid of the unwanted unborn at one end of the scale and the unwanted elderly at the other?

Well tonight we’re going to look at a Psalm which tells us where our real significance lies. So would you turn in the Bibles to Psalm 8? The Psalms are a bunch of prayers, songs and meditations that were written over a long period and then finally put together after the exile in Old Testament (OT) times. God’s people, Israel, had failed spectacularly, been sent into exile as a judgement, and now a remnant was back in their homeland. But they felt utterly small and insignificant in a world of apparently stronger and more successful empires with apparently stronger and more successful beliefs. Which is how we can feel as God’s people in so-called ‘post-Christian Europe’. And, like us, they needed to be reminded that our significance isn’t found in our strengths or our successes, but in knowing God. In fact, the paradox in Psalm 8 is this: if we look for significance in our own strengths and successes – in our achievements, looks, wins, A-grades... our own glory, if you like – we won’t find it. Paradoxically, we only find our significance by getting our eyes off ourselves, off the mirror, and onto God. Which is where the Psalm begins. Look down to Psalm 8:

For the director of music. According to gittith [which the footnote says was probably a musical term.]A psalm of David [and I take it that means written by King David himself. And he writes:]O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

And then look down to the last verse, v9:

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

So he begins and ends by putting words into our mouths that get our eyes right off ourselves and onto God. And it’s doing that which will lead us to find our real significance. And if Psalm 8 is a sandwich, then the ‘filling’ in vv2-8, is about where our real significance lies. And the two ‘pieces of bread’, vv1 and 9, are about how you find it. And you find it not by looking in the mirror and telling yourself what you’ve achieved and who likes you and who praises you. You find it by looking up to God and saying:

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

Ie, ‘You are the Creator and Lord of this whole universe – and you’re my Lord. And living for your glory is what matters and gives me worth.’ And if we’re believers and that is our attitude to God then we should find our significance in three ways:


Firstly, IN OUR ROLE AS GOD’S PEOPLE (vv1-2)

That’s our first source of real significance, however insignificant we may feel. Look down again at v1:

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

Ie, look up to the glory of the heavens (some time the weather clears) and God’s glory is infinitely greater. So how would you expect such a great and glorious God to bring himself glory on earth, to present his claim to be our rightful Lord? The last thing you’d expect is v2:

From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

Now if you’d read from Psalm 1 to Psalm 8, you’d already have met these ‘enemies’. It’s the stark way that the Bible describes those who won’t say those words in v1, who won’t accept God as their rightful Lord, but who see the universe as revolving around them. Which is why as well as calling them ‘your enemies’, the Psalms also call them, ‘the proud’ and ‘the arrogant’. That’s how God sees us until we accept him as our rightful Lord. So it may be how he still sees some of us here, tonight.

Well, how does God plan to present his claim to be every person’s rightful Lord? Well, look at v2 again:

From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise [or literally, ‘you have established a stronghold’]

So, the picture is that this world is enemy-occupied territory – full of people refusing to let God have his rightful God-place in their lives. And the way God presents his claim on those people is... to send in a crack squad of children and infants. What does that mean? Well, I think we’re to take it metaphorically. The OT speaks of God’s people as ‘the children of Israel’, and I think that’s what is going on here. Israel had never seemed strong or significant even in David’s time when this was written – let alone after the exile when the Psalms were put together. And what better metaphor for the small and the insignificant than ‘children and infants’? And the paradoxical thing is that God deliberately reveals himself to, and uses as his witnesses, the small and the insignificant – the ‘little people’, if I can put it like that. Why? Because paradoxically it’s the ‘little people’ who best glorify God.

That’s partly because the ‘little people’ embody what’s needed to come into relationship with God in the first place. What’s needed is to humble ourselves – to ‘become little’ – by accepting our need for God’s forgiveness for living as if we were the centre of things, and by accepting his right to be Lord over us from now on. And while we’re still holding onto our pride – thinking of ourselves as big and of God as small (or even non-existent) – we can’t do that. So it’s partly that the ‘little people’ embody what’s needed to come into relationship with God. But it’s also that they’re willing to be known as God’s people and to speak for God. Because it’s so often pride that holds us back from doing so, isn’t it? – the fear of what people will think and how they’ll react. But ‘little people’ don’t have that kind of pride and self-preoccupation.

And the ‘little person’ who came to my mind, reading this, was Maisie. She’s with the Lord now in heaven, but I remember one of the doctors in our congregation giving his testimony of how he came to faith through Maisie. He was a medical student back then, and next door in Jesmond lived this little old lady. And when she bumped into him, Maisie would repeatedly talk about her faith and how she went to church and how much she was looking forward to heaven. She once told him, ‘You should come long to our church – it’s very lively.’ And looking at this eighty something year-old, he found himself wondering with some scepticism just what ‘lively’ meant! And I remember him saying, ‘In worldly terms, she was the least impressive person you could think of meeting. And looking back, I’d have expected it to have been one of my own peers who’d have pointed me to Christ.’ But God uses the ‘little people’ because they best glorify him – they’re little enough not to get in the way of his glory. Are you?

Now was Maisie significant in the world’s eyes? No. But she was doing something immensely significant in God’s eyes as she lived and spoke for him and his glory. So if you’re tempted to think you’re too insignificant or unimpressive to do the same, then think again. And equally, if you’re tempted to think, ‘If only our church was more impressive – if only the preachers were more impressive, if only we had some converted celebrity footballers giving their testimonies (after they’ve been re-promoted to the Premiership, of course)...’ and so on – then think again. I’m not arguing against being a big church. But we need to be a big church of ‘little people’, of humble, self-forgetful people. Because paradoxically it’s ‘little people’ who best glorify God.

So that’s the first way to find our real significance – in our role as God’s people. Then we find it,


Secondly, IN OUR PLACE IN GOD’S CREATION (vv3-8),

Look on to v3. David’s still pondering where real significance is to be found, and he goes on to remind himself that it’s found in realising we were created by God and for God. Look at v3:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place...

Now just ‘press pause’ there. What does happen when you do that – when you go outside on a clear night and look up into the sky? The story’s told of how President Roosevelt used to do that, amidst all the pressures of high office, to keep his sense of perspective. On a clear night, he would step out onto the White House lawn with his aides and look up. And he would always point to the same place and recite the same words: ‘That is the lower left hand corner of the great square of Pegasus. Just beside it is a small hazy blur. It’s the spiral galaxy in Andromeda. It’s as large as the Milky Way itself. It’s one of 100 million galaxies. It’s 750 light years from us and contains 100 billion stars, each of them larger than our own sun.’ He would pause, and then he would turn to then and say, ‘Gentlemen, I think we now feel small enough to go to bed.’

And if you ‘press pause’ at the end of v3, that’s just how you are left feeling, isn’t it? Very, very small. And that’s how a secular worldview does leave you feeling. Because it says we’re nothing but a cosmic speck of dust, nothing but the throwaway survival machines of genes, nothing but naked apes. ‘We’re nothing but...’ has become the modern way to describe a human being. Which is why people ask themselves, ‘What am I without a qualification, or without the looks the magazines tell me I should have, or without a job, or without a relationship?’ But now take the ‘pause’ button off and replay from v3. Look at vv3-8 again:

3When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,4what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?5You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour. 6You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: 7all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, 8the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

Now if you’re not yet a believer in God through Jesus Christ, I don’t know where you get your sense of worth. But if you are a believer, what I’ve just read should make you feel very significant indeed. Because it says, v4, that God is mindful of us and caring for us – like a father constantly mindful of a child and what it might bang its head on, or what it might want or need. And it says, v5, that God made us in his image – that we are uniquely just a little lower than the heavenly beings and capable of relating to God like no other creature on earth. And it says, vv6-8, that God has given us a unique position to rule in his world for him – so that our lives do have ultimate meaning and purpose, because we are accountable to him.

And if you’re a believer, if you’re someone who looks up to God and says to him what it says in v1, you can then look in the mirror, and instead of telling yourself what you’ve achieved and who likes you and who praises you, you can tell yourself who you are in God’s creation. Because that’s where real significance is found, from the moment a human being is conceived, to the moment they die – and every moment in between: whatever your position in society, whatever your skin colour or shape or size, whatever your gender, whatever your age, whatever your employment status, whatever your abilities or disabilities, whatever your state of health or state of mind – whatever. So can I call on you to think like that of yourself? And to think like that of every other person you encounter?

Now vv5-8 are an echo of Genesis 1 and they paint a picture of what we were created to be. But we don’t live in Genesis 1 – we live the other side of the fall in Genesis 3, in a creation spoiled by sin and its consequences. Which is why ultimate significance can actually only be found in Christ and in the new creation he came to bring. Which is why we’re to find our real significance,


Thirdly, IN OUR PLACE IN GOD’S NEW CREATION (vv5-8 and Hebrews 2.5-9)

You see, even as David wrote vv5-8, he would have been painfully aware of how he fell short of what he was made to be in v5. Like you and me, he was created for the glory and honour of ruling God’s world. And yet, like you and me again, he couldn’t even rule himself. Sin constantly got the better of him – most spectacularly in his adultery with Bathsheba, with all the fallout and personal shame that followed. And then the Israelites who read this much later, after the exile, would also have been painfully aware of how they fell short of what they were made for. The exile had stamped the word ‘failure’ over their life and witness for God, just as ‘failure’ could often be stamped over our Christian lives – individually and as a church.

But it’s not just our sin that robs us of our sense of worth and means we sometimes can’t look ourselves in the face in the mirror. It’s the ultimate judgement on sin – death – that’s the ultimate robber of significance. That’s something God used as he drew the author Leo Tolstoy to faith – he wrote in a period of despair, ‘Is there any meaning at all in my life that will not be annihilated by the inevitability of the death that awaits me?’

So sin and death are the great significance-robbers, which seem to neutralise everything I’ve said. But if our faith is in Jesus, we will be saved from them – beyond this life. And that’s why Psalm 8 is quoted in the New Testament and applied to the Lord Jesus and those trusting in him. So keep a finger in Psalm 8 and turn over in the Bibles with me to Hebrews 2 and v5:

5It is not to angels that he [God] has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. 6But there is a place [namely Psalm 8] where someone has testified"What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? 7You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honour 8and put everything under his feet.

In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him [ie, to man. In fact, on the contrary, we see man subject to sin and death, and robbed of worth by them]. 9But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels [in his incarnation and death], now crowned with glory and honour [risen from the dead and back in heaven] ,i>because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

So now look back at Psalm 8. Run your eye over that description of mankind in vv5-8, and Hebrews 2 is saying there’s only one man presently enjoying that unspoilt glory. And that is the risen Lord Jesus Christ. But if we're connected to him by faith – if we’re ‘in Christ’ as the Bible puts it – then one day, where he is, we will be. Thanks to his death on the cross for our sins, we will be accepted as forgiven people into heaven. And the same power that raised him from the dead will raise and change us into sin-free people in a sin-free world.
And if we were to look in the mirror there, we’d see nothing to threaten the perfect sense of significance and worth that heaven will bring. But of course we won’t be looking in the mirror (in fact, I wonder whether there will even be mirrors in heaven – apart from ourselves, of course). No, we’ll be looking at the Lord and saying to him what Psalm 8 taught us to say while we were here: ‘O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name – in all the new heavens and the new earth’ – where we will finally and fully realise how much he is worth to us, and how much we are worth to him.