Sermon Extras

SERMON NOTES

Summer in the Psalms: Psalm 8 “God’s N.A.M.E”

INTRO> Finally, a happy Psalm! lol! Psalm 8 is like a break in the clouds! On April 30, 2013, Robert Galbraith released his crime novel, Cuckoo’s Calling. It barely sold 500 copies in the first few months. Many store owners considered pulling the book from their shelves. But the news on July 14 changed all of that. Galbraith, it was announced, was not the true author. J. K. Rowling actually wrote and published the book pseudonymously. Authors do this from time to time when they are writing something new in a new genre and don’t want the fame to influence their writing. From there, sales skyrocketed. “Before the news broke… the book was ranked 4,709 on Amazon’s bestsellers listing; it jumped to number three. Unsurprisingly, that makes it the number one “mover and shaker” on the site, with a 156,866% increase in sales over just one day. What’s the power in a name? Quite a lot, it seems.”

CONTEXT> That’s exactly what David is talking about in Psalm 8, If you noticed this Psalm is book ended by the same verse. “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” v1,v9 David also asks a central question in this Psalm in v4, “what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? There are two big theological concepts in this psalm that we see: 

• Theology– the study of God. 
• Anthropology – the study of mankind

APP> These are the two most important things for us to understand but HOW we go about doing that is massively important, notice how David does it in Psalm 8. He start with God, looks out at his creation, then speaks about humanity. He starts with God first. One of the Fathers of the reformation, John Calvin wrote his massive “Institutes” when he was only 26 years old and said these words, “Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves…Man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends…”

Big Idea > You can’t know who you are until you know who God is.

1. God’s N.A.M.E. v1

• When David talks about God’s name, what does he mean? well actually, David uses God’s name in the very first word of the Psalm. Do you see how the word LORD is in all caps there, that is the personal name of God, יְהֹוָה – ye.ho.vah , the other Lord is the word “adoni” which is a title. Why this name is so important is the fact that God gave himself this name, nobody else, this is Gods self revealed name. God is given many names in the scriptures but there is ONE name that he says is his, Exodus 3:13 “Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”
• Also in ancient culture, your name meant everything, that why you see “The son of ____” I want to try to help us break down this concept of the “majesty of God’s name” 

God’s N.A.M.E. communicates:

• God’s Nature. This is God’s character who he is. And the two most described of God is that God is holy love. 
• God’s Attributes. God is infinite, unchanging, self-sufficient, creator, sustainer, all powerful, all knowing, faithful, merciful, just, – God is glorious! 
• God’s Mission. God mission is to be a loving Father to his children. 
• God’s Eternality. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have always existed! Before there was something, there was and is someone! 

APP> What does all of this mean? 

1. The God of the Bible is both powerful and personal. 
2. The God of the Bible is the creator of all creation.
3. The God of the Bible must be responded to properly. “When I was a new Christian, a young Christian, at a camp in Colorado, I listened to a woman who was a great Bible teacher. In her teaching, at one point she said if the distance between the earth and the sun (93 million miles) was the thickness of a piece of paper, then the distance between the earth and just the nearest star would be a stack of papers 70 feet high. The distance between the earth and the end of just our galaxy would be a stack of papers 310 miles high. Our galaxy is just a little speck of dust in the universe. If God created all that with his fingers and if God upholds it all according to Hebrews 1 with a word of his power (like his pinky) … a word of his power … she said, “Do you ask a God like that into your life to be your assistant? Do you connect with him in order to get him to do what you need? Do you ask him into your life to be your consultant, to be your assistant?” No, if you come into connection with a God like that, you are his assistant.”- Tim Keller 

2) Humanity’s frame.

• David lays out 4 things in the text that he realizes about himself in light of who this God is. 

1. We are created by God.
2. We are cared for by God. 
3. We are crowned by God. 

APP> But there is a problem here isn’t there? There is still a separation between the Creator and his creation. Blaise Pascal has said that, “human beings are the greatest paradox for we are both wretched and great.” So what’s the solution… there is a Gap between God and man… 

• That word “care” in verse 4 can actually be translated “visit”. A God who visits his translation. 
• “the son of man” is a phrase that is given to Jesus in the NT. 
• We see this Psalm quoted in the book of Hebrews: “For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. 6 It has been testified somewhere, “What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? 7 You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet…But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

Jesus was fully God and fully man in order to fully bridge the gap between God and man.