All the Earth

You know, this series, we're going through psalms and looking at different psalms and allowing and giving permission to ourselves to not just put on our church face and try to be happy, go lucky when we come through these doors, but actually give us permission to cry from our heart whatever's going on and a peak of life. Celebrate that. Give God the praise. If we're in a valley, we can cry out to him and ask him for help, Be there with us. We have questions, we can ask questions of God.

We see all that in different psalms. And we're gonna go through a psalm today that I promise you connects to this question. And I hope that you can see the connection once we get there. But I'm gonna start off a deep theological question that you may or may not can relate to. But do you remember the first time you heard the name Lady Gaga?

Remember that? I was in my dorm room, fall of 2008. I was on Facebook and like, people talking about Lady Gaga. I'm like, who's Lady Gaga? She's some British noble I didn't never known.

And it was just this day where I was like, oh, her name is everywhere. Like, people, everybody's talking about her. It's this. She's wearing like a meat dress and like, we won't get into everything that she does, trust me. But it was this weird day where it went from.

I had never heard of this person's name before. And then everybody was talking about her name was everywhere. And I remember, you know, when I was in high school and everybody started talking about Wikipedia, and that was a name that I'd never heard of. I didn't know what it meant. But then all of a sudden, everybody was referencing Wikipedia.

Now Wikipedia puts me to sleep. It's my lullaby. And I just see the most random things I can look at and read and put me to sleep. And I remember December 2019, January 2020, and heard the city name of Wuhan. And all of a sudden it was.

I had never heard of that city. And then all of a sudden, the name of Wuhan was everywhere. Coronavirus. That name was everywhere. And that's what happens a lot of times when we become aware of something that's prevalent or start to gain stature, higher profile in our world.

It goes from not ever hearing it to hearing it everywhere. Well, Psalm 8 is going to be the psalm that we're going to be in today. And we only have eight more Lady Gaga references to get through. Just kidding. Psalm 8:1 says, Lord, or Yahweh our Lord.

How majestic Is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory in the heavens. It says your name in all the earth. And this is important because the ancient Hebrews, the people that were the. That would read this for hundreds of years before it was even translated into a language that we could read, they would not call God by his name.

If you see capital L O R D, which is the first word of verse one, that capital L O R D is actually. It stands for the name Yahweh. But the ancient scribes, they would not dare write the name Yahweh. And so they, in our English, they write it out, L O R D, capital L, O, R D. It says Lord, or Yahweh, our Lord. There was so much reverence for the name of the Lord, they wouldn't even write it down.

They wouldn't say his name out loud. A lot of times they would say Lord, or they would even actually say the name. So when you see the phrase, your name and all the earth, how majestic it is, it's meant to represent the presence of God, the essence of God, the character of God. That God, no matter where you look, his majesty is everywhere. And that word, majesty, it's like lofty or high, sometimes used to describe, like a tree or a big vine, that it's above us and we can see it no matter where we are.

It's obvious to us. There's like a ship on the water at sea, or it's something that's on the ground, it's among us, but it's so large and so massive that it's hard to get away from. That's the way God's presence is. That's the way his character is, is that it's so majestic that it's in all the earth. And it says, your glory, which is like weight or power, splendor, it's in the skies, it's in the heavens, it's high above us.

And this is King David is the one that wrote this Psalm 1000 years before Jesus. And he's talking about this important concept of God being above us and holy and set apart. And we can't get to him in a sense, but he can lower himself down to where we are, that he is with us even in the darkest of valleys, that his majesty of his name is in all the earth. And we can look around and we can see it, and we can see the splendor of God and to see how he's working in our world. If we're sensitive to it, you can't get Away from His presence.

You can't get away from who he is. Psalm 139, we won't read it, but King David writes that psalm where it talks about, no matter where I go, you are there. And that's what we can look at. And we can see how God cares for us. We can see his character.

We can see the things that he does for us. In verse 2, David continues through the praise of children and infants. You have established a stronghold against your enemies to silence the foe, the avenger, see his protection and his provision. And even like the things, the great things that he brings to our life, even though his glory is in the heavens, even though his majesty is above us, his majesty is also here with us. And it's accessible even to children.

When I first started studying Psalm 8, I read it. I thought, you know, this is pretty straightforward. I could do it in 25 minutes. And then I started digging into it, and it's like, oh, wait a second. Yeah.

A lot of psalms are prophecy. And we see Jesus referenced this psalm in Matthew 21. So if you want to flip over real quick, if you can, to Matthew 21, Jesus quotes this Psalm, and this is in Matthew 21. This is passion Week. So Jesus, a thousand years after this psalm is written, he goes into.

In the last week of his life before the crucifixion, he goes into Jerusalem, the week of Passover. And as he's walking into Jerusalem, he's riding on a donkey. And the people of Jerusalem are welcoming him in, saying, hosanna, son of David, save us. And it's this prophetic moment. It's this moment where he's fulfilling prophecy, where the rightful king of Jerusalem, King of Israel, is walking and riding a cult into Jerusalem.

And people are celebrating this big moment where the enemies are going to be defeated, the enemies of God are going to be defeated, where the victory that is due Israel is coming. And Jesus. In verse 14, we see where Jesus, he goes to the temple. And the blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and Jesus healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did, and the children shouting in the temple courts, hosanna to the Son of David.

They were indignant. Verse 16. Do you hear what these children are saying? They asked him. Yes, replied Jesus.

Have you Never read Psalm 8? From the lips of children and infants, you, Lord, have called forth your praise. See, even children and infants in this moment are recognizing fulfilled prophecy, recognizing the authority of Jesus as the son of David, as the one that was foretold to come to make all things right, that Jesus is being welcomed in as king and he is being proclaimed. Save us foretold Messiah. We've been waiting for this moment.

This is the moment that we've been waiting for for hundreds of years, a thousand years since King David walked the earth. Now his Son is here to fulfill and to make all things right and bring back the kingdom that God wants to establish here on his earth. See the majestic, glorious God that embodied the name of God. He had shown up and he was in Jerusalem and he was in flesh and he was real and people could come to him and be healed and hear truth.

Well, why did God do those things? Jesus was the fullness of God and also the fullness of man. And this was God's plan all along, was for Jesus to show up and to be born and to live this life proclaiming the good news and that the kingdom of God was was near. And we see Jesus do that and he's welcomed him into Jerusalem, the week of Passion Week. But why would God set things up that way?

Where God would become man, where the name of God would be embodied in a human being, that the majesty of God, that the glory of God would be revealed in a man. Psalm 8. King David writing. Let's go back to Psalm 8. 3 David asks similar questions.

When I consider your heavens, when I see what you've made in the sky, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, what you have set in place, the things that only you could do, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings, that you care for them? He's asking the question, how can the orchestrator, the creator of everything, the all powerful being that spoke our reality into existence, what in the world does he care about us for? Doesn't he have better things to attend to? Aren't we a little bit fickle? Aren't we a little bit insignificant in comparison to him?

I was listening to this interview a couple weeks ago of this astronaut who whether some of you may space is fake is a thing, I guess I don't know. But for argument's sake, let's say space is real. Okay? For this quote's sake, for the sake of this sermon working, say space is real. This astronaut who is stationed on the International Space Station, she being a Bible believing Christian, her experience there and what she saw from the windows of the space station caused her to ask some of these same questions that David was asking in Psalm 8, 3,000 years ago now.

And she said, this is A quote from a letter she wrote in the view of Earth I've seen from space, it's much like an infant placed in a hostile environment. The Earth is so plump, tender, exquisite in detail, yet soft in color. It seems so fragile, hanging there amid such intense darkness, swaddled in a thin blue blanket of atmosphere. It's so delicate, so vulnerable, yet so protected from the harshness of space. See, David, he could look up and he could see the glory of God in the heavens.

He could look at the moon and the stars and ask questions like, man, what is this being, this creator God? What does he care for us? And he would see the protection and provision and the goodness of God in his life. And he would think, man, why does God care about me? And now here and now, there are people that can go to space and can look down here and ask the exact same questions, but from the opposite perspective to look at Earth and say, man, what's up with this being Creator God, all powerful and almighty, that he cares for us, that he's gone to such great lengths to make sure that we see his character, that we experience his goodness.

God's creative power and his love, they're expressed through all these different things. Last night, I was organizing a little bit on my day off on Friday, and I found our wedding album that we hadn't looked at in years. And our kids, who were about half interested in it, I wanted them to sit and look at every picture with us. And we really enjoyed being able to walk them through the different moments of seeing the people that they knew and the people that were celebrating that day with us, the people that have passed, some loved ones that have passed that were there on that day, but no longer with us. And being able to see the party, the dancing, that was a lot of fun to remember.

That was £30 ago, probably for me. And it was this joyful occasion, the best, undeniably the best day of my life. And to see the goodness of God and to be looking at this day of my life, that's the best day of my life. And to see the fruit of that day being represented in my kids and seeing the goodness of God and all the ways that he's blessed me. And the majesty of who God is is obvious in those memories, in those pictures, but also obvious in when I look around and see what's a part of my life right now.

And what is God that He would give us those things. You know, we're kind of on the opposite end of that spectrum. Whenever we experience bad things, we Think, God, why are you letting me experience these bad things? The opposite question is what's being asked here. But, David, God, who am I that you are giving me anything to enjoy?

Who am I that you've given me so many blessings that you would care for me? The motivation that God has in sending Jesus to live a life, to have the full human experience and don't get. Don't get it wrong. And what I love about the chosen, it kind of humanizes Jesus in a way that is difficult to do in a Sunday school class, right? And we can look and we can see, like, oh, Jesus actually experienced firsthand what it was like to be a human, to be tired, to be hungry, to be made fun of, to joke around with his friends.

But also, Jesus experienced full temptation. The first thing that Jesus happens after he's obedient into being baptized, to being fully immersed by his cousin John the Baptist, is that he's sent out into the wilderness to experience temptation without food for 40 days. And he is tempted in a way that none of us will experience. But the difference is that Jesus, motivated by love and the full embodiment of who God is and his majesty and glory, and never gave in to temptation. He never gave in to the thing that he knew would fall short of what God was asking him to accomplish.

And the reason he did that was because he loves us. The reason that Jesus. The reason that God came down and fully embodied a human being in the person of Jesus, the reason he did that was because he loves us. He wanted to make a way for us to have a right relationship with our heavenly creator, with our heavenly Father. And we see that in Jesus great love ultimately being demonstrated on the cross.

And King David, he continues to go on and he describes humanity and pointing forward to the person of Jesus as well. And what's really interesting, and just to let you all know, I thought that this sermon was going to be really straightforward. I thought that it was going to be something we could just read these nine verses and get out of here and go to Cracker Barrel wherever you go. But it sent me on a path that I don't know if I'm prepared for. I don't know if you're prepared for.

But what King David writes here is something that we're going to find in the New Testament. And he writes, and he's describing humanity. And originally reading this and studying for this, I was confused because I was trying to figure out, is King David talking about Jesus or is he talking about humanity? He's talking about mankind or is he talking about Jesus? Verse 5 of Psalm 8 says, you have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands. You put everything under their feet, all flocks and herds and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, all. All that swim in the paths of the seas. This is what we were created for. You read Genesis 1 and David is trying to take us Back to Genesis 1 and our thoughts here.

In verse 26 of Genesis 1 it says, Then God said, let us make mankind in our image, that we are created to look like God, he says, in our likeness, so that they made rule that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, over. Over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God. He created them. Male and female.

He created them. God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish and the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. This is the original purpose of man.

Now, we messed it up not too long after this, right? And we're still messing it up. That the purpose that was given to us, we take it and we pervert it and we change it to what we want it to be. But Jesus shows up to make all things right. And the reason that this was confusing to me, Psalm 8 was confusing to me.

And those stretch of verses in 5 through 8 was because I knew that that was somewhere else. And I knew enough about the Bible. I knew that was also somewhere else in Scripture. And I'm pretty sure that Psalm 85. 8 was somewhere else.

And it was describing Jesus. And so that's found in Hebrews chapter two. And this is way. This passage of Scripture is way more, bar. Way more than I bargained for.

Probably way more than you bargained for. But here we are. Hebrews, chapter 2, verse 5. And Hebrews is a mysterious book. We don't know who wrote it.

We don't know who it was written to. It's a letter. But what we do know is that the original readers, recipients of this letter, were very familiar with Jewish texts. They were very familiar with the story of Yahweh and the chosen people of Israel.

One of the clear themes of this is that the supremacy of Jesus, that we have all these figures from the Old Testament in Jewish Texts, we have all these figures and Jesus is better than every single one of these that actually every single one of these points. Moses points to Jesus, Abraham points to Jesus. Everything culminates in the person and existence and the reality of Jesus. And in verse five of chapter two, the writer writes this. It is not the angels that God has subjected the world to come about which we are speaking, but there is a place.

That place is Psalm 8 where someone has testified, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, A son of man, that you care for him. These are thousand year old questions that are being asked yet again in Hebrews chapter two. You made them a little lower than the angels, you crowned them with glory and honor, and you put everything under their feet. And putting everything under them, God left. And so that's end quote, right?

And so the writer picks up and says, and in putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Them being humans, mankind. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. This is a future garden state. This is a future thing that's not yet here.

We don't see everything that is subject to us, but we do know from Genesis 1 that it is subject to us. But we don't exactly understand all of that, but one of these days we will. And then verse 9 says, but we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, being fully man, experiencing that full human experience. He's now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. See, Jesus is this conflation of man who experiences temptation that has some finite things.

He has this finite experience and abilities, but he's also the fullness of God that has no limits. And he's all powerful and all glorious. And somehow Jesus is both of these things. And that God indwelled and had a human experience and he lived a life where he experienced that finiteness and that limitedness that we all experience and that temptation. But here's the difference.

He never gave in to that temptation. And then he tastes death. God, fully man, but also fully God. He experienced death. And not just any kind of death, but the kind of death that we would give to a murderer.

It was part of the justice system. Moments after the few days after he entered into that Jerusalem scene where they're singing Hosanna, he's arrested and put on trial and he's whipped and beaten and put on a cross. And he died the son of God, fully man, but also fully God. Somehow he died, they put him in a tomb. He came back to life.

But we're going to focus in on that death because he tasted death for everyone. It says it. And in bringing in verse 10, in bringing many sons and daughters to glory, which is abundance or splendor, or having a divine quality or. Or the manifestation of the presence of God, it was fitting for God, for whom, and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect. Through what he suffered.

Jesus experienced that arrest. He experienced that trial, he experienced that whipping and that beating and the cross, so that everything could be made perfect, made whole. Nothing is lacking. The things where we fall short because of the temptation that we give into in our human experience, because we make selfish decisions for selfish reasons that we know hurt other people and hurt ourselves and disappoint our Heavenly Father and disappoint our earthly Father and make a mess of our life. We deserve not the goodness of God, but the wrath of God.

And what the writers of Hebrews trying to get across is that the Son of God, who did not deserve the wrath of God, took on the wrath of God and died. Not because that he thought it would be a good thing to do, but because he loved us and wanted us to have a relationship with our Heavenly Father. It's what it took for us to be redeemed back to the purpose that we were created for. And nothing short of that is going to get us there. And your faith in what Jesus has done for you allows you to be covered in the blood of Jesus that he shed for you because he loves you.

And when Jesus looks at us, he sees not, but he sees the blood of his Son, his perfect Son that never sinned. And because of that, he gives us his Holy Spirit that lives within us and empowers us to live the life that we were created to live. And we take that and we can look at that and we can see in verse 11, this is kind of the meat of this passage here. He says both the one who makes people holy, Jesus, and those who are made holy believers in Jesus, sinners, saved by grace through faith. They are of the same family.

So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. That's heavy.

That Jesus, the Son of God, did what it took to for the worst person on the planet to be called a son or daughter of God. That what he did in his perfect life and his death on the cross, the shedding of blood, the breaking of his physical body and the ceasing of his physical life, what that did is it gave us the opportunity and the privilege to be called a son and daughter of God, a co heir with with Christ. And with it comes the inheritance that's due the Son of God. A relationship with God that this world can't take away. A changed eternity to go from eternal damnation to eternal life in paradise with our Redeemer.

That's what Jesus did by being tempted and never giving into that temptation to being arrested as criminal a and being executed. And he did all that motivated by love. And the writers of Hebrew goes on and he quotes Psalm 22 that we did two weeks ago. And he says, I will declare. And actually, let me not skip those first two words of that verse 12, very important.

It says, he says, he says, actually we're going to read a quote from Psalm 22 and Isaiah 8, Psalm 22 written by King David, Isaiah 8 we see that we're going to read the words of Isaiah 700 years before Jesus. In Psalm 22 it says, he says, well, verse 12 and referencing Psalm 22 he says, I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters in the assembly. I will sing your praises. This is King David writing these words. But it says the writer of Hebrews says this is actually Jesus saying these words through David.

He says, I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters in the assembly. I will sing your praises. And again, verse 13 quoting Isaiah 8, I will put my trust in him. Isaiah's words that were recorded in the scroll of Isaiah. We see Jesus is actually the one that says these words.

And again he says, here am I and the children God has given me. This is going to be the deep end. Here Isaiah says these words In a time 700 years before Jesus, as Assyria is bearing down on the kingdom of Israel and Assyria is going to come in and wipe out the northern kingdom of Israel and take away some people to be in captivity. And then not long after that, Babylon is going to come back through and finish the job and take out the kingdom of Judah. And Isaiah, this is when he's writing these words, when these things are about to happen.

Isaiah is given two sons. One name means that there will be a remnant. There'll be some leftover people that come back to Israel to reestablish the kingdom. There's some hope. There's a second part to the story of them being wiped out and taken off into captivity.

But he also has another son that says, the plunder is going to come quick. You're going to be carried off in a hurry. And these two sons are a Symbol and a sign to the God's chosen people that God is good and that there's hope for the future. But right now, what we're looking at is destruction. What we're looking at is brokenness.

What we're looking at is a deep, dark valley, probably the darkest valley in Israel's history. And we see this quoted in Hebrews 2, and we see this being referenced in a way that Jesus is actually the one saying this, that Jesus is actually the one that makes it possible for us to be a child of God. And what we can look at is we can say that we people that believe in Jesus Christ are a sign and a symbol of not just the wrath of God, that we are sinners desperately need of a Savior, but we also have a Savior that did everything that it took for us to be redeemed. Everything that it took for us to be a child of God, even though we don't deserve it, even though we try and we struggle and we fail, Jesus fills in the gap. And it's his perfection, his holiness that makes it possible for us to be a son and a daughter with God.

That's going to. When this life ends with we will have eternal, not hope, but we will have eternal peace with God lacking nothing, where there will be no darkness, no deep valley. There will be no need to say that God is with me, because we will see him face to face.

But here and now, on this side of that, we are a sign and a symbol to a world that's in deep trouble. That even though they're in trouble, man, it's bad news. All around us there's some good, good news. And we who believe in Jesus, who have experienced his redemption, experienced the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, are a sign and a symbol to that Jesus. At the end of the Gospels we see different accounts of this, but he ascends back to his rightful place.

For a little while, he was lower than the angels, right? But after the crucifixion came the resurrection. And after the resurrection came 40 days of him teaching and preparing his followers to do the job that they were created to do. And Jesus final words to his followers. We see an old promise, but also a new command.

It says in Matthew 28:18. Then Jesus came to them and said, all authority on earth and in heaven has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, all the earth, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you and surely I am with you always. To the very end of the age, what Jesus does. And after he says these words, he ascends into heaven.

And the disciples, 11 of them at that point, are left, and they're looking up into the sky. And still in that moment, some of them are doubting what Jesus has said and probably have to be confused about what just happened over the course of the last couple months of their life.

And then these angels show up and they're like, what are you doing standing here? He's going to come back in the same way you saw him go almost to say, you got a job to do. These three years that you just spent with your rabbi, that you now know is the Son of God, that you now know as the Messiah, that you now know as the fullness of God and the fullness of man come together and lived and paid everything that you needed to pay but couldn't. You've been given a job to do. When I look at these words and I force myself to put together everything that my life is supposed to be about, I don't really like these words, because here's the truth, and this is the final point of today, that God reveals who he is through us.

3,000 years ago, King David writes that the Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. And that's how he closes Psalm 8.

We can read this psalm and we can think. Yeah, we can celebrate God's majesty and we can see his presence and how he's working and his character. It's all around us. We can celebrate them. We can look to the sky and see the glory of God.

What's scarier is to read the New Testament, understand the new Covenant, understand the old promise, but with this new command and be super convicted that how the majesty of God, the name of God, how it's revealed to our world is through us.

That's a struggle. That's heavy. That's a lot.

And I don't know about you, but a lot of times I hope nobody's looking to me to see the name of God. I hope that my parents hope my kids don't look at me and say, that's who God is.

I hope that my wife has enough grace for me to look at me and say, you know, he's just a sinner saved by grace. The responsibility given to us is for us to fill the earth, that all the earth would know who God is and that he loves mankind, he loves everybody. He tasted death for everybody in Jesus, and that Jesus makes it possible for them to be a son and daughter of God if only they would place their faith in Jesus and depend on him and nothing else to. To be a son and daughter of God, and they could be redeemed and His Holy Spirit could live within them and empower them to live the life that God created for them.

How committed are you to that responsibility, to that commission, to being a participant in this new covenant?