Psalm 8

Who God is to us and how we view Him determines our response in worship to Him. What does, and what would life look like when God and His greatness are constantly on our hearts and minds and we are immersed daily in His majesty?

Tozer said it like this, “I want the presence of God Himself, or I don’t want anything at all to do with religion… I want all that God has or I don’t want any.”

Psalm 8 reminds us of the privilege we have and the great responsibility of worship. It is about the majesty of God and the role that God has given man in the place of His amazing creation, His cosmos, His world, His earth, that we’re privileged to be a part of.

Give God the Glory because His name is majestic! His name refers to the perfection of His attributes and the mightiness of His deeds. His name refers to who He is and what He has done. His name is God, LORD, and Yahweh. God’s majesty is such, that when and if He wants to push back the enemy, God has the power to do that even out of the mouths of infants.

We give God the glory, we worship Him, because His name is majestic in all the earth. We give God the glory because we serve a special and unique function (v.3-8). Creation and the complex nature and function of the human body alone are sufficient evidence that none of this is the product of random chance. So David here is not practising his apologetic, he’s making a statement of absolutes. This is God…this is the way He works.

It is through humans, Christians today more specifically that God is to be revealed and known. How? By being credible believers – “salt and light”. This Psalm calls us to renew our sense of awe and reverence of God, to be the image of God to a world desperate for Him. How we steward creation is a product of this.

Man can eliminate God, deny our need of God, take God out of national anthems, remove Bible in schools, develop our own beliefs about sexuality and morality, declaring war on God in the process…but it doesn’t change that He is sovereign. How we view Him determines our response in worship to Him. If I have a dim, or twisted view of God that affects my worship.

Oh, how we need a move of the Holy Spirit to turn our hearts toward Him. Give God the glory because creation order restored (reconciled) through Jesus (Hebrews 2:5-9) is the key New Testament text to interpreting Psalm 8. The person of Jesus fulfils for us what man has been unable to do – Genesis 1:26 and Psalm 8. By the grace of God, Jesus died to restore creation order, which is to come.

“O Lord our Lord, how majestic is Your name…”