Psalm 8

Psalm 8

It’s been 4 weeks that I’ve been stewing on this Psalm and I’ve found it difficult to comprehend which seems odd, because on the surface it’s rather simple. There are a few main questions that have risen to the surface for me. What exactly is “majesty”? Do I have an adequate understanding of God’s majesty? And is the middle portion of the song referring to mankind in general or Jesus specifically?

Majesty In Babies

David was obviously overcome by God’s majesty. That’s the theme of the Psalm. He opens and closes in 9 short verses with an exclamation,

“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

He then goes on to prove it with the most absurdly awesome example by basically saying God is able to still his enemies by the words of mere babies. That, friends, may be the very definition of majesty. As far as I know, nobody has made the movie where an army of babies obliterates the bad guys, yet God holds that power. This is the lore of Chuck Norris jokes, and dare I stoop to that level, God can ACTUALLY kick Chuck Norris’ behind with a mere word. From a baby. He’s THAT majestic, because he is the definition of majesty.

Proving that it’s not an absurd, abstract example, Jesus quotes this verse of himself in Matthew 21:16 after the small children were praising him in the temple. The Pharisees were rebuking him for receiving their praise and Jesus silences them with a question, “Have you not read Psalm 8?” This, by the way, was after he cleaned house in the temple and healed the sick & diseased. Imagine those kids…having seen & heard about Jesus flipping tables, throwing merchandise, chasing the religious profiteers from His father’s house of prayer. It’s easy to see why they praised him. He did it with authority, as if he was permitted and able do such a thing in the temple of God. As if he ruled and was enforcing his perfect justice. Deep down, our hearts long for such justice, the children were unable to prevent the overflow of their hearts and simply vocalized what we all should. Majesty is present in the perfect authority of Jesus.

Majesty and authority

But, how do we feel about authority today? I think we see majesty in our own authority, and overlook the majesty of God all the time. Our individualism tells us that we can do whatever seems right to us and we worship it. It’s the basic axiom of false freedom, and the exact same lesser majesty that enticed Adam to take the fruit. It’s this false majesty that Satan embodies, believing he’s greater than God. Majesty for us is most present in the worship of ourselves as god, and this is THE problem with us: We love our own lesser majesty and are prone to blindness toward true majesty.

Majesty In Nature

David turns his attention to nature, the infinite expanse of the heavens and the stars, and the meaning of the majesty of God expands even more. Though I’ve never been to Israel, I know that there are no Himalayas, Yosemite, or Matterhorn there. No natural landmarks on world-class caliber, yet David still sees God’s glory in creation.

The astounding thing about creation is its magnitude. It is huge. Even more astounding, however, is it’s smallness, or the tiny particles that the entirety of creation is composed of. Quantum physicists are currently preparing for a series of tests using a particle accelerator in Europe. They’ll send atoms round a 17-mile circle that sits under the Swiss-French border and continually slam them into them into each other. This isn’t new, but what is new is the camera they’ve developed to see these collisions. Though they don’t know exactly what they’ll see, they do expect to discover new sub-atomic particles. God is as infinitely small as he is huge. Every time we think we discover the largest galaxy or the smallest particle, we later discover we were wrong, because there’s always something we didn’t discover before. And yet this is all the handiwork of God. He’s THAT majestic.

Harold Best uses the hologram analogy to describe this. A hologram is made up of tiny pictures of itself it’s most essential level. So, a hologram of Mount Everest is composed of kagillions of tiny pictures of Mount Everest. God’s glory is as much revealed in the Mountain as it is in the infinite smallness of the atoms that compose its most basic cellular structure. This is a great mystery and meditating on it causes my stomach to jump into my throat.

This is what’s behind the lyrics in my song I look at the cross

And when I gaze upon
The oceans and the mountain tops
Vast, unending skies above
All stories of my saviors perfect love

For the Christian, the majesty and glory are seen everywhere. It’s true. This is one of the greatest things about being a Christian is knowing that God’s fingerprints are all around. Aside from worshiping our own majesty, our other biggest problem is we spend far too little time beholding God’s glory in creation and our concept of true majesty shrinks.

Coming up next:

Q: Is Psalm 8 about mankind in general or Jesus specifically?
A: Yes.