Weekly Devotional 6-13-20 By Oscar Lekse
The Majesty of the Lord is Evident in all Creation
What is Man That God Cares?
Psalm 8
1 To the Chief Musician. On the instrument of Gath. A Psalm of David. O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens! 2 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. 3 When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, 4 What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? 5 For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, 7 All sheep and oxen– Even the beasts of the field, 8 The birds of the air, And the fish of the sea That pass through the paths of the seas. 9 O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!
When we look around us at the vastness of the universe, and we consider the statistics and the figures that the astronomers give us about their millions of galaxies, about our world being just a little fragment, a little speck of dust in the totality of the universe, surely, we feel so small, so insignificant, so weak and helpless. And yet these beautiful words that I read reveal that God does not measure everything by size or by dimension, that there is another scale of values with God. And that in that scale of values we, His human creatures, are extremely valuable. In fact, the Lord Jesus Himself told us that one human soul is worth more in God’s sight than the whole universe. Isn’t that a word of encouragement and comfort? We are not just a little speck somewhere in space. In many ways we are the very objects of God’s special concern and care. He cares about us. He loves us. He knows our weakness and our frailty, but He does not despise us. He does not reject us. He has a special place in His universe for man, His creation, and you can find that place if you seek Him and you can know the comfort of His love. (From an article by Derek Prince)
I Would Like to Add This
In this hymn of praise in Psalm 8, we see that David marvels at the majesty of the Lord. God is indescribably great. Man, by contrast, is pathetically tiny. Yet God has conferred tremendous glory and honor upon man.
The majesty of the Lord is evident in all creation, if a person only has eyes to see it. Every area of natural science teams with evidence of the wisdom and power of the Creator. The planets, the stars, the limitless universe give only a partial view of how very great God really is. Yet sophisticated men shrug off the evidence as if it did not exist. How foolish of them!
No branch of science proclaims God’s greatness and man’s insignificance more eloquently than astronomy. To gaze into the heavens at night should give us great thoughts about God. The moon and the stars are the work of His fingers! When we think of the infinite number and variety of stars, of the vast distances in the universe, and of the power that holds the planets in orbit with mathematical precision, it boggles the mind.
Relatively speaking, the planet earth is a speck of dust in the universe. By comparison, if this is so, what is a single man perched upon this planet? Yet God is interested in every individual. He has a personal, intimate concern for every human being. He made man in His own image and after His own likeness. Though lower than God, man shares with Him some facilities that are not shared by any other order of creation on earth. Everything God made was pronounced to be good, but the verdict on the Creation of man was “very good.”
In Closing: Verses 6 through 8 tells us that as God’s rep-presentative on earth, man was given dominion over all kinds of animals, birds, fish, and reptiles. There was nothing that was not put under him. But the writer to the Hebrews reminds us that we do not see man enjoying this undisputed sway at the present time (Hebrews 2:5-9). Dogs bark at man, snakes bite him, birds and fish elude him. The explanation is that when sin entered the world through Adam, man lost his unqualified sovereignty over the lower creation. Yet God’s purpose still stands. He has decreed that man shall indeed have dominion, and nothing can block God’s purposes. So, while we do not see all things subject to man right now, we do see Jesus – the one Person by whom man’s dominion will eventually be restored. When Christ came to earth, He became temporarily lower than the angels so that as Man He could die for humanity. Now He is crowned with glory and honor at God’s right hand. Someday Christ the Son of man will return to earth to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords. In the Millennium, the dominion that was forfeited by the first Adam will be restored by the Last Adam (Christ Jesus).
Then, closing off the Psalm in verse 9, God’s redeemed people will join to sing with new appreciation, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!”
Oscar
Oscar Lekse F/B – Signs of our Times / www.UnderstandingTheSignsofOur Times
stevelampman.com / Transforming Power; The Work of God on Behalf of Man