Rest in Our Lord's Majesty

Psalm 8 (NIV)

Happy Labor Day to you. Over the last couple of holidays, I have made an effort to talk about where these holidays come from. The reason for that is I think there is such a movement to criticize our nation that we fail to celebrate some of the great things we have. Let's be grateful for what we have.

Labor Day is celebrated every year on the first Monday of September. The holiday grew out of the labor movement of the late nineteenth century, when industrialization had transformed American life. Factories were growing, cities were expanding, and millions of men, women, and even children were working long hours in difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions. Workers began organizing and calling for better wages, safer working conditions, and reasonable hours.

The first Labor Day celebrations were organized by labor unions, and people gathered for parades, speeches, picnics, and public celebrations. They wanted to recognize the dignity of work, but they also wanted to say something important about the human person: we were not created merely to work.

In 1894, Labor Day became a federal holiday. For more than a century, Americans have set aside this day to recognize the contribution of workers and the importance of labor in our society—grateful for a nation that would recognize and honor those things.

While we may not be trying to survive life in factories, we can all struggle to rest. People can work from anywhere, and that often means people always work. Our work may not take the physical toll of other time periods, but mental exhaustion is everywhere as people fail to honor the Lord by resting.

Finding rest isn't ultimately about having nothing to do. Biblical rest begins when we remember who God is and who we are. We are looking at Psalm 8 today. Psalm 8 teaches us that we can rest because of how great God is.

We don't have to hold the universe together. We don't have to prove our worth through our productivity. We don't have to accomplish enough to make ourselves significant.

The God who created all things is mindful of us. He cares for us, and we rest in that.

The Majesty of the Lord

This is a psalm of praise celebrating the majesty of God, His glory, His greatness, and His power. It helps us to see God for who He is. What is the opposite of praise? Complaint. Are you a praiser or a complainer?

Are you focused on God’s greatness or defectiveness? "Defectiveness" is a relative term; it is relative to how we perceive Him. We have a plan, God has not met that plan, so we think, "Clearly I know best, and God is not wise, powerful, or majestic."

¹ LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

The LORD is his Lord. This is his God. This God is majestic, glorious, and worthy of praise.

“This psalm is an unsurpassed example of what a hymn should be, celebrating as it does the glory and grace of God, rehearsing who he is and what he has done, and relating us and our world to him; all with a masterly economy of words, and in a spirit of mingled joy and awe. It brings to light the unexpectedness of God’s ways in the roles he has assigned to the strong and the weak, the spectacular and the obscure, the multitudinous and the few, but it begins and ends with God himself, and its overriding theme is ‘how excellent is thy name.’”

— Derek Kidner, Psalms Vol. 1

What do you rehearse in your mind about your work and about who God is? Take a break from complaining and dwelling on how bad everything is. If you are rehearsing that, you are probably battling depression.

Rehearse God’s majesty.

Majestic. Powerful. Noble. Mighty. Glorious.

• Psalm 93:4: Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the LORD on high is mighty.

• Exodus 15:11: Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?

I remember going to the Grand Canyon in college. I had been on a lot of hikes and spent a lot of time outdoors, but to look at the sheer size of the Grand Canyon—its length and breadth—I felt so small. Where did it come from? Someone made that, and whoever they are, they are amazing. God made it.

Majestic. Not just powerful, not just noble, but awe-inspiring. Respectful: "Yes, Your Majesty." There is a clear element of respect. You see what He has done, and you are humbled to be in His presence.

Verse 1 says: You have set your glory in the heavens.

God has set His glory in creation. I have a couple of trophies on my desk for awards I won in the corporate world (President's Club 2005, an acrylic trophy). I keep them to remember God’s faithfulness to a seminary grad who ended up doing corporate sales. I have a small shelf for a couple of trophies that no one ever sees.

God displays His trophies in the heavens. This psalm takes us back to creation to admire all that God created.

³ When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place… (Psalm 8:3)

Consider the moon and stars. Here is a trophy of greatness.

• The Moon: Mean diameter of 2,159.2 miles (less than a third the width of Earth). Equatorial circumference of 6,783.5 miles (10,917 km). Approximately 238,855 miles (384,400 km) away on average. Surface area: 14.6 million square miles (38 million sq km). Mass: 16.2 × 10²² lbs. Orbital speed: 2,288 mph. And there it is, meekly accompanying the Earth on its travels.

• The Sun: A hot, glowing ball of hydrogen and helium at the center of our solar system, about 93 million miles away. Its light will burn you and blind you; its gravity holds the entire solar system together. Core temperature reaches 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, with a mass of 4.4 × 10³⁰ lbs. There are over 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and we don't even know how many galaxies exist.

³ When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place…

They are the work of His fingers. What have you done with your fingers this week? Fingers are for fine motor skills, not heavy lifting—typing, moving paper, picking up a toothpick, spinning a fidget spinner.

The bigger God becomes in your eyes, the smaller your worries become.

He created the sun and the universe, and He filled them.

Do you ever consider the work of God’s fingers? Take time to do that as you walk. Look up at the sky and clouds and consider that He made it all and blows the wind where it needs to go.

I saw the Grand Canyon and stood in awe of it—and in awe of the One who created it. Whoever made this is a big deal. How much more so for the sun, moon, and stars? The Creator of those is beyond imagination. There is a greatness, a majesty, and a glory. I can trust Him. His ways are greater than mine. I thought I knew things, but now I know I don't know anything. See His majesty. Consider creation. He who formed all this certainly knows how to maintain it.

Notice the covenantal name LORD (Yahweh). How do we know there is a God? Because He has revealed Himself. Here the psalmist calls on Yahweh. This is the name God gave to Moses when He appeared to him in the burning bush. He revealed Himself to Moses and gave him His name. When you know someone's name, you can call on them and relate to them. God wanted His people to call on Him. When you meet someone, you exchange names; people who don't tell you their name usually don’t want to be known.

The Majesty of People

Notice the perfect symmetry of the psalm. Reflection and admiration of God’s majesty begin and end the text. Poetry conveys meaning.

Perhaps the most famous chiasm is from John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address:

Ask not what your country can do for you,
but what you can do for your country.

A: Ask not what your country can do
    B: for you,
    B: but what you
A: can do for your country.

Slide 4:
  1 LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
      4 What is mankind that you are mindful of them?
  9 LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Hebrew poetry brings the center of the psalm out. Verses 1 and 9 use the interrogative particle mah ("how majestic is your name"), framing the beginning and end of the psalm. That same particle appears in verse 4: "What is man?" David is marveling at creation, and central to his wonder is the place God has given to humanity. Why would God do this?

Man is crowned with glory and honor. Just as the sun, moon, and stars proclaim God’s glory, so do people. In Genesis 1, the apex of creation is humanity. They are the last thing God creates; He makes them in His image and gives an account specific to them. You are crowned with honor and glory. Don’t listen to what the enemy says—know God’s purpose and design for you.

Given all this greatness of God, what am I that You care for me? What is Adam? In Genesis, God made Adam out of the adamah (the ground). David is thinking of all people, and of himself. It is a wonder of wonders: "What am I that You care for me?"

I remember just before my friend and I got to the Grand Canyon, we listened to a sermon on election and God’s calling. We were dead in our sins, and God called us. He drew us out of the depths, put a new heart in us, gave light to our blind eyes, and opened our ears. How undeserving!

David marvels at God’s greatness and that God would care for people. But he is also amazed at what God does for people: He creates them with glory and honor and makes them rulers over His creation.

⁵ You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.

⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:

⁷ all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,

⁸ the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

First, think about this: God created a good world, and then He made people rulers over the work of His hands (v. 6).

How many of you create something and then entrust it to others? Kids don’t even let other kids play with their Legos. If you build a house, you don't want anyone to mess it up. My dad got a motorcycle when I was seventeen. He took me outside, showed it to me, and said, "Don’t ever touch my motorcycle." God is not like that. He entrusts His creation to His people; He made it for us.

The psalmist marvels at the fact that God has put man in charge of all the animals, flocks, and herds. He is marveling at taking care of sheep and cattle! God created people to have dominion. As Genesis 1:26 says:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion…”

God explicitly calls humanity to have dominion over everything on earth. David was a king—he had a palace, a trophy case with Goliath’s sword and other tokens of victory, and he brought the nation to new heights. But he was also a shepherd, and he marvels over the fact that God put him in charge of livestock. Do you ever marvel that God put you in charge of your dog, your cat, your fish, or other tasks?

⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:

⁷ all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild...

God creates us to shape His world and be a blessing to others. We reign over a part of His creation. It is amazing that God entrusts things to our care.

Do you ever marvel at what God calls you to do? Do you ever just celebrate that, praise Him for it, and rejoice at what He has done rather than lament over what He has not done?

Gratitude grows when entitlement dies.

If you are dried up and burnt out, reflect on the wonder of what God has given you to do. Stop worrying about what God has entrusted to others. Give thanks for the dominion He has given you, and be faithful to it.

Stop worrying about everything you have to do to take care of what He has given you. Demonstrate faith and gratitude. God made the moon and stars, and the fact that the sun rose again today is evidence of His goodness to you.

Consider your work. What happens if you don't do your job well? Others suffer; pain increases because people are negligent. What a privilege it is to work. Want to make a difference in the world? Do your job. Want to do your job well? Recognize its significance—don't trivialize it. Do you see the wonder of it? Are you amazed at what God allows you to do?

God has entrusted your kids to you. God has given you a spouse. Is that amazing, or is it drudgery? He has entrusted you with clients (who might drive you crazy) and with animals.

Rightly seeing God’s majesty leads to seeing His grace. Seeing His grace leads to gratitude, contentment, and joy.

People often feel entitled to more than they have. We need an attitude of gratitude to serve the Lord and others. When people feel entitled, they get angry and bitter for not having more. Enjoy what you have; if you don't enjoy what you have now, you will never enjoy the next thing.

What happens when you fail to see God’s majesty in people? Things that are precious, you seek to keep, honor, preserve, and restore if broken. The cancel culture of today devalues people—just get rid of them, do away with them. But we should want to save them because we see what is precious. Secular culture uses and throws away.

Ungratefulness is the result of divine inversion: when you take God off His throne, fail to see His greatness, majesty, power, and brilliance, and put yourself in His place—assuming you know better than Him and everyone else. You think God made a mistake because things didn't go your way. This is what happened with Job. He questioned God, and God came to him in a whirlwind to question him about the creation of the world.

This is the height of pride: believing God is not good enough for you and looking on Him with disapproval. When you look on God with disapproval, you will easily look on others with disapproval as well. You may find yourself in a place where you have few friends and most of your relationships are broken. You removed God, inserted yourself, and that inversion is destroying you. You have little gratitude, appreciation, wonder, or love; nothing is ever good enough for you. If you want to be restored in your soul—to become human again—express gratefulness and cultivate optimism. Begin to consider the greatness of God.

Be grateful—the God of the universe knows and cares for you!

Take time to marvel at God’s work in your life. David could marvel even about overseeing livestock because he saw the wonder of it. Wonder in life is connected to seeing the majesty of God. Rest. Reflect. Rejoice.

The Majesty of God’s Promises

I don’t think you can find rest simply by stopping work for a day. It just doesn’t happen. The only way you can rest is if you are confident that things will work out—and you cannot know that simply by looking at nature. You need a promise from God. That is why we rest.

A neighbor may be a nice guy, and you may think he will be there for you, but has he promised to be there for you? God made a promise, and that promise is in view in this psalm.

David takes us to creation, but he also takes us to a promise of God.

² Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

He mentions enemies—a recurring theme in the Psalms. There is opposition in the world; don't think it is unusual when you encounter enemies, or when they pursue, rage, and attack.

Do you feel the enmity of the enemy? Do you feel his work in our day? People misunderstand one another and need restoration. People oppose God, and brothers and sisters get mad at one another.

Here, "enemy" is singular—one particular enemy is in mind.

When did enmity enter the world? It came after the Fall as part of the curse on Satan. God pronounced judgment, but with that judgment came a promise: the seed of the woman would crush the work of Satan (Genesis 3:15). A child would come and undo all his work.

God chose a child to establish a stronghold and silence the foe.

This child is the One born in a manger—the One whose glory was made a little lower than the angels, who was obedient to the point of death, and who would redeem God’s people and save them from their sin. In this, God truly shows His love, His care, and His remembrance of His people. If you are in Christ, this is a comfort to you: God has seen you, known you, remembered you, and will deliver you from the hand of the enemy.

The reference to stars might also be a reminder of God’s promise to Abraham to make his descendants as numerous as the stars—a promise fulfilled in Christ.

That is what allows you to rest. Christ's work and calling on your life will motivate you to do great things for God, but it also compels you to rest and tend to your own soul and spirit. Work is not first; God is.

Who is Jesus to you? Is He your Lord and Savior, or is He just another inspirational figure? If He is merely an inspirational figure, you will put Him on a shelf next to Elon Musk, Benjamin Franklin, or other people you quote. If He is your Lord, you submit to Him and marvel at His greatness. Don't be wishy-washy on something so important.

You can admire Jesus without ever surrendering to Jesus.

This psalm teaches us to stop acting like our own God. Stop trying to fix everything ourselves or trying to make ourselves into who we need to be as if God merely hands us a few tools. No, He is God, and we simply surrender in admiration to who He is.

God makes a promise to us, but resting in that promise requires believing in Him and submitting to Him as Lord. This is not a casual commitment.

Amanda is my wife because I made a decision one day that I did not want to go through life without her. I spoke words that were true and powerful, and I committed my life to her. If I had been wishy-washy, she would have kept moving on.

Have you trusted in Christ? Have you truly surrendered to Him? Have you spoken words of truth and commitment to Him?

Rest begins when you stop running your life and start trusting the One who made it.

Discussion Questions

1. In verses 1–4: What does David observe about God and His creation? What does this teach us about how we should view God and the world around us?

2. In verses 5–8: What do these verses say about the dignity, purpose, and responsibility God has given humanity? How does this challenge either a low view of yourself or an overly high view of yourself?

3. Fulfillment: How does this passage point to the promises of God, and how does Jesus fulfill the ultimate hope expressed here?

4. Application: How does this passage cultivate gratefulness to God, and how does that gratefulness help us surrender our lives to Him?