A Majestic Name Above The Heavens

I often look up to the sky on a clear summers night and seen the bright shining stars and I find myself in complete and utter awe of God and His creation. All of a sudden, in that moment my problems and situations seem a little bit smaller as I've realized that I am a part of something much, much bigger. This is the perspective King David writes from in Psalm 8; praising God for His majestic genius!

"O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, Because of Your enemies, That You may silence the enemy and the avenger. When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;You have put all things under his feet, All sheep and oxen—Even the beasts of the field, The birds of the air, And the fish of the sea. That pass through the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:1—4NKJV)

Psalm 8 is a wonderful Psalm of praise that declares the majesty and mindfulness of God. God, the creator of the universe is not only mindful of us but He cares for us! What a wonderful thing to celebrate. But, it is important to remember that God does not need our praise and worship?  It’s true, He doesn’t.  God already has everything He could need without our help.  God wants us to praise and worship Him and He deserves all the praise and honor because He is Lord of all the earth; He created everything!  

The psalmist tells us that the whole span of what we can imagine seeing is held together by God. God is majestic.  This means that God is so wonderful, beautiful, and grand.  He is superior in all ways.  Is it not amazing that a king said this about God?  King David was so captivated by God, that he had to praise Him. David may have been a king, but he recognized that God was King of kings and Lord of lords.  Our lives are under the command of a loving and just God.  If we follow Him and His son, Jesus, then we can have eternal life.  We must make Jesus our Lord and nothing else.  For this reason, we praise God.  For this reason, we worship King Jesus. 

An important part of what I understand as I studied this passage of scripture is that Christian worship is putting our focus away from our own concerns. That's not at all to suggest that we need to suppress our concerns when we come to worship, but we must realize that worship will put them in perspective. In true worship our own lives are set in proper perspective in relation to others, to the universe, and most significantly to God who is rightly the object of that worship. We can't hold on to small things if we are reaching for the infinite. We need to sit down and just think about God. We get so caught up with our petty little selves and so many trivial things. But when we consider the created universe, the wonders of the natural world. God is everywhere, knows all, all-powerful, utterly holy and pure, knows, loves and cares.

Then consider the unbelievable grace to totally insignificant rebellious people like us,  God offered His son up for all of us.  (Romans 8:32) and crowned us with glory and honor and gave us dominion and authority over the works of His hands (Psalm 8:5-9). Let these truths sink in. That will take our breath away. What can we do but worship, bow down, and submit? And to think He is our God! Belongs to us, and we to him. What love! How grateful we should be.

But we only turn to Him in panic, He blesses us and then we simply ignore Him and carry on with lives without Him. He is just there to be used and then forgotten. Then people insist they are not sinners, not much wrong with them. Let's get things into perspective with this one simple truth, God should dominate the entire life of a believer. God should be the greatest fact in our lives. Getting to know Him should be the most important thing in life. The only thing that matters in life is doing His will and living to please Him. Then promoting His honor and glory, anything less is a waste of a life. 

If we think deeply about what He has done, whether we are right with him or not,  we can begin to truly understand how majestic God is above the heavens and how excellent is His Name!

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