Creation Glorifies God - Ps 8

You can make your way, please, in your Bible to Psalm chapter 8, or better more accurately, Psalm number 8. And I was reminded as I prepared this message that this is a message I preached one other time, but that turns out to be something like 23 years ago. Yeah, that was a long time. It was one of the very first things I ever preached.

And here's a crazy providence story for you that when I preached it the first time, I had listened to a sermon from sermon audio. It and I appreciated that sermon and I kind of borrowed from it. I don't want to say stole, because that's one of the commandments, but I borrowed from it. And the preacher who preached that, I didn't know who it was, I just appreciated the sermon. Then I go to seminary and my professor's name is ringing a bell to me. Like, I know this guy's name. And it turned out he was the one that had preached that sermon. Of all the thousands of sermons on sermon audio, I happened to have picked the one that ended up being one of my professors. Isn't that wild? Yeah.

So this is not that sermon. I re prepared it. What I did was I went over my records of all the psalms that I've preached in a real preaching, meaning something expositorially or something, and just looked at the records of all the ones that I had preached and then I started making a list of those that I hadn't. So that's the ones I'm doing now. These are psalms that I haven't officially preached as a pastor.

So you're in Psalm 8. Typically I wait till the getting rolling in verse one to give you the superscription, but I'll just put it out here because I actually don't have a lot of information for it. So the superscription that says to the chief musician on the instrument of Gath, a psalm of David. So I'll get this out of the way because I don't know much.

We know this, that to the chief musician, whichever musician it might have been, David would write psalms, he would write poems, he would write music, and then he would give that poem to the chief musician to make accompaniment for it. But there were times, no doubt, in David's life, because you all know that David was a good musician, that it's very possible, if this instrument is what we think it is, the instrument of gath, it's a little like a harp thing that could be like a lute. And it's very possible that that's the kind of instrument that David played when he played to soothe Saul and other things. So it would be like a self contained small instrument. And he might have written on that instrument and then pass that along to the chief musician. So I don't know much about it.

And then also I just remind you, just for your own being a good student and all that, the superscription, that heading on those psalms, like this one that says to the chief musician on the instrument of Gath, there is question, but not a lot of question, but there's some question as to whether that is inspired or not, whether the Holy Spirit actually inspired that part of the verse. So because some people believe that it was actually added later from tradition or oral history, so I don't know the answer to that, I tend to believe they are inspired. I think they are added by the Holy Spirit rather than just editors down the line.

Incidentally, the reason that's important is because if a human editor adds to scripture that's not inspired, like your notes are not inspired, the footnotes are not inspired as much as you might like John MacArthur, his notes are not inspired, okay? So we just need to be careful to. We're trying to preserve the inspiration of Scripture, the doctrine of inspiration of Scripture in our hearts.

So anyway, a little small lute or guitar and he's singing already back there.

So real quick, I'm going to be just this much controversial, okay? I don't seek controversy for its own sake. I try to preach the word. But I am going to say a couple things that you live in a culture, if you didn't know this already, where Paul's words have come very much true that people worship the creature rather than the Creator. We know this, right? This is all the way down to animal rights and every other thing. And you hear people talk about Mother Earth and all those other things.

And so let me make something first very clear. That kind of worship is always wrong. So I'm. When I say something controversial in a minute, I am not saying that what moderns do in what I'm going to say is correct. So please don't hear me, don't do the thing is that what's the logical fallacy? Is it affirming the consequence? I'll look at that another time. Or false dichotomy, we can look at those later. But when I say what I'm going to say in a moment about stewardship and things like that, that I think this psalm can be used for, don't think that I am saying the opposite is true, which is I believe all of those things that Worship Earth are wrong now.

But what I now need to say is that maybe there might be another wrong that we think is right, because it's the opposite of that wrong.

So here's what I mean. You all know in modern climate change, all of those things that people are saying, whether it's true or not, that's not my point. I don't even know. But I do know, by the way, I know the sun is hotter than it used to be. And those things can affect things. But aside from the science, I'm not a scientist, that when people draw the conclusions of those things, you know, that they're moral conclusions. Their ethic is then to say, we need to save our planet at all costs, right?

And you who are farming, you farmers out here, or you who work in industry, you. You are ruining the environment, right? And so that you feel this pressure like, well, I don't want to ruin the environment. And so they're telling us on this side, on the left, you know, the left of politics, that we need to stop doing those things. We need to stop industry, we need to stop Big oil and all those things and corporate America and all that, because you're killing the planet.

But here's the thing I'm saying that's wrong because it comes out of an earth worship, creation worship mindset that puts earth first instead of God's creation first swing the pendulum the other way. And then there are people who remembers Rush Limbaugh who used to. Who's old enough? Okay, yeah, it's all the people with the same color hair as my beard. Rush Limbaugh used to have this really crazy, funny thing called the. What was it called? The environmentalist update. He would have on his show, but he would have this crazy. I mean, even now I'm thinking about it, it's ridiculous, and I probably should be ashamed of laughing at it then and now. But he would have the sound of animals, like a herd of animals and elephants and everything. But then he would have guns going off and. And missiles and everything else. And his point at that time was that the environmentalists and the climate change people and the global warming people at that time were all crazy and that we need to swing the other way and forget them and kill the animals and do whatever we have to for profit right

Now, I know you don't believe that, but I do want to make sure we're clear because we're going to hear something today about the Earth and about creation and about man's place in it. And I actually think there's a really great lesson here, and I'm going to go ahead and say it. Here's the controversial part. Don't hate me. Pastor Johnny is a little bit of an environmentalist, but not because I worship the earth, but because this is God's planet and I think we're supposed to take care of it. And I don't think the end of this planet is our prophet. Like maybe some capitalists might think I'm a capitalist. Okay, capitalism is biblical.

But I want to make sure we're clear that respect for our environment, respect for the things that God gives us, the things that we are to steward. And that goes from the top to bottom. That goes from animals and what you do and agriculture, that's just convenient because we have farmers in the room. That goes to how we handle industry. We have people in construction in the room. That goes to everything, the fuel. Everything that we do is something that came from this earth that God made. And I actually do believe we are supposed to be conscientious with how we use it so as not to just spit in the face of God who created it, but use it and manage it well and to make sure we're not just getting all we humans can get out of it, but managing it for the glory of the Lord.

And I think that I'll make that case as we unfold. I mean, even when you see in the Bible, in the Old Testament, you have jubilee, right, where the land was given rest in the Old Testament and these kind of things and animals were to be treated carefully in the Old Testament, these are things that matter.

Again, I'm not going. Don't hear me say animals should be worshiped. Animals are the same as humans. I'm not saying that. I'm absolutely not saying that. We'll see that there's a difference even in this very passage. But you're not the person, right, that would just pour your antifreeze in the gutter, maybe let cats drink it and die and maybe hurt the environment. And it hurts your gutter too, by the way. It hurts the concrete.

So God made this place, he made everything in it. And when he said be fruitful and multiply and to till the earth, I think God meant for us to do that in a respectful way of the Creator, whatever that means. You can kind of figure that out on your own. But I do think we need to watch out for creature worship, but we also need to watch out for creature abuse, where we're taking these things and just laying waste to it.

So you'll see as we unfold why I'm saying all that.

Now. Let's pray and we'll get rolling.

Father, thank you for this passage. And I don't want to stretch it. I don't want to put it in places you didn't intend when David wrote it. I really do want to get its meaning out. I want us to understand the psalm, not just find ways that we can be practical or clever in how we use it. But I would like us to be mindful of these things because there are. There is great debate in our culture right now over these matters. I would like us to be on the side of the Bible. So please teach us the psalm, but then also teach us to be mindful as we use this psalm in our lives. Well, thank you. In Jesus name, amen.

Well, as we start, you'll notice that the psalm begins and ends with the same phrase, the idea of how excellent is your name in all the earth. But before it gets to that, it says, O Lord, our Lord. Now, again, I say this almost every time we open the Psalms. And I'm not tired of saying it. I. I think it needs to be repeated, that when you see it like this in my translation, the new King James, at least the digital version that I copy and paste, and then in my old version, I used to use the paper version, it capitalizes when God's name in Hebrew is translated, it makes it all capital.

I don't know if your Bible does that, because not all Bibles do that. It's okay if they don't. You're not missing something. I just like when it does it, because the indicators there, it's kind of like the red letters, you know, it's helpful to see something.

So what's happening here in verse one, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name, and all the earth who have set your glory above the heavens. So the first O Lord is all capital in many of your translations. That's because that is God's name, his proper name being translated underneath the text. In Hebrew, it is Yahweh or Jehovah. Those are the same, by the way. If you ever hear anybody make a difference between those two, if you ever hear two people fighting over whether it's Yahweh or Jehovah, just run away from those people, okay? Because we can't actually know. There are actually no J's in neither the Hebrew or the Greek. There are no Js. It's all a Y sound. And if you say that hard enough, it turns into a J with a J in it. So Jesus name is not Jesus. It's Jesus. But if you say it fast, Jesus. That's. It's a pronunciation thing. So don't fight over Jehovah versus Yahweh.

I like to say Yahweh because I feel like that is especially with the. On the end of it, Yahweh. The. It feels to me to be a little more Hebrew.

But for you students in here, that is God's proper name. When he sent Moses to Pharaoh and Moses asked, who do I say sent me? Well, who did he say sends him? I am. That is the name of God. I am is his name. It's a verb. Okay, So, O Lord. Oh, Yahweh, proper name of God.

And I say it every time in psalms. Please don't tire of it. It's important whenever an author, particularly David, particularly in the Old Testament, are saying God's actual proper name. Well, it's never in the New Testament. But whenever someone's using his proper name, they pack in the meaning and the theology of the God of the name into the name. So Yahweh means covenant keeping, promise keeping, faithful, self existent, eternal, all powerful, all that's built into his name.

When God says I am, he's saying he is God. He is saying what that means in his deity and his power. And in this case, he's saying he'll say it twice here, O Lord, O Yahweh.

And then he says, our Lord, that word is the, the word Adonai. And that word is for master. That word is for Lord. Typically, the word we would translate, lord or ruler or judge or master, is probably the really most common one.

So, O Yahweh, covenant keeping God, who loves Israel and loves your people and has kept your promises to your people, who is our master? And there's a whole bunch of ways you could, you could think of that. Our support, our, our prop, our stay, our fortress, something like that.

So just out of the gate that David is saying something really big about the Lord. Whatever's going to happen next is about a very big God. Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name. And I'm suggesting that your name is Yahweh. That's when he's saying that he's connecting that to his name here, your name and all the earth, you who have set your glory above the heavens.

Now that will come into play in a little bit because the very next thing he's going to say, he's going to talk about looking well, after he talks about the children he's going to talk about looking at the stars and the work of the heavens, right? So out of the gate he's telling us, I'm going to talk to you about creation in a minute. I'm going to talk to you about stars in a minute. I'm going to talk to you about all this wonderful, awesome space you look out and see. But before I do, I need you to know something right now. Yahweh is above it. Got it? So whatever I'm going to tell you, however big it is, God is bigger. That's essentially what David is doing here. Okay?

So he starts with that, which. I like that he starts that way. So. So he says his glory is above the heavens. So whatever is going to be said is below the Lord. The Lord is above his creation.

Incidentally, that goes back to the creature worship. That's why you can't worship creation. That's why you don't want to worship Mother Earth. That's why that's paganism and idolatry, because it puts creation up or equal with God. And he is above creation. So you don't want to do that.

So now verse two. Out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants, you have ordained strength because of your enemies, that you may silence the enemy and the avenger.

Obviously, you all know that this is. That verse hits pretty hard right now because I have a new grandbaby, right? So whenever I see baby passages now, it's on my mind, you know?

But just so you know, I've always loved babies. I had three of them. They're grown now, but they used to be babies. And I love children. And I've always said that at our church, I'd like, even though we're not covenantal in our thinking, where we think that babies are born, saved and all of that, they have to learn and get saved. We still. I still very much tell young people that they should be thinking of themselves as church members, not just children of church members, especially when they ask to get baptized. We're going to have that conversation, right, that you, you are not just a kid. You're part of what we're doing.

And part of that comes from this. Also part of it comes from my rough background where I was very much mistreated as a child and neglected and felt very unworthy and unloved. So I want kids to always know they're important in the purpose and plan of God.

But here he's saying something very specific about kids. Out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants, these are not clearly not words that are being spoken of here because nursing infants don't have words yet. Got it.

So there's something that these children, babies are able to do with their ability at their level that ordains or says something about God's strength. And that's exactly what he is saying. That's exactly what God is saying. That even a helpless baby who can't even say words, who can't give marching orders, who can't flee, fight enemies, who, who are absolutely incapable of doing anything that we would classify as strong babies, can't do strong things.

It's essentially like David is saying what is the weakest thing I can think of that isn't a non human. What is the weakest human thing I can think of? And it is a nursing infant, the most helpless, weak thing.

And why is he saying they have ordained strength? Because they're created. Because they are created and the majesty of God is seen in them being created. And when a baby is cries, that is essentially a baby saying God is awesome. Now they're not really saying that. Don't think I'm going, you know, full charismatic and saying, speaking in tongues or things like that. That's not what I'm saying.

But I am saying that children just being children, being knit together in their mother's womb, being created in the image of God as the pinnacle of creation, just children by being children, even in their weakness, ordain strength, they are saying God is strong.

So that when a baby cries, a baby that God honors cries when that baby cries. That baby is saying God will win over all the enemies and adversaries. More than in a general, more than a battle plan, more than tanks, more than missiles, that a baby is saying God is in control. A baby is saying our Creator is the one we can trust.

So out of a child's mouth or out of a child's behavior, this is not news to you. You know this already, that Jesus came on a donkey, right? God loves taking humble things and doing big things with them, right? He, he says, and it's in God's, in our weakness. God's strength is made perfect. God. This is just how God does things. It's the foolishness of the preaching of the gospel that is the wisdom of God, right?

So over and over again this is, it's pretty simple. If you feel small and you understand your smallness, if you understand your okay, smallness didn't sound smart, but I'll go, how about a smart one? Finitude. If you understand that you have nothing to Offer the universe. You are not strong enough to make change. You're not strong enough to create. You're not strong enough to win. You're not strong enough to do things, and you're certainly not strong enough to save yourself. If you understand that, then in theory, that humility and smallness would tell you to look to the one who is strong, which is exactly what David is doing. The shepherd boy. David is saying this, right? The shepherd boy who killed Goliath is saying this, so it's a good reminder.

And he's saying, david his own life. Remember when he was standing before Saul? And Saul's looking for the warrior of Jesse's sons. Where's the little guy? Where's the shepherd, right? And that's just the way God does things. He likes to look strong, and so he'll use weak things.

And to that this guy says, hallelujah. That he does those things, he's also going to silence his enemies, right? You've decided to use those strong things the way you do, and your enemies might try to puff their chest out and say they're strong and that they can beat the Lord or beat his people and destroy.

And you can imagine, right, you have the enemies of God all lined up over there. You can look at that scene with David and Goliath there in the valley, and you can see them all lined up over there. And then you can see this little guy come out, this little teenager, David, right, Probably somewhat scrawny, and come out there. And you, someone who knows the story can look back in history with your imagination and say, okay, I understand why people think this is an impossible task.

But look at the text. It says you've ordained strength over your enemies. I love what Spurgeon says. I have quite a few Spurgeon quotes tonight. Spurgeon says, aha, aha. O adversary, to be overcome by behemoth or leviathan might make the angry. In other words, if something big beats you, that's bad. And it might make you angry. But to be smitten out of infants mouths causes thee to bite the dust in utter dishonor. Thou art sore broken now that out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou art put to shame. Like it's bad to get beat by somebody who's bigger than you. But a baby, you know, and that's what there's actually what the Lord is saying. If I'm on a baby side, a baby can be any enemy, right? So it's a powerful thing. And that God is saying here that it's Children, small things.

Now we get into the creation. Back to the introductory thoughts here. Verse 3. Creation is supposed to glorify God, and man, I think, is supposed to use creation to glorify God.

You can see verse 3. 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.

Now you always, if you don't know this as a student of Scripture, when you're in the Old Testament, in particular in the wisdom literature, you know, Job, Proverbs, Psalms, when you're in that kind of literature, you need to be careful to be. Because we want to be doctrinal, right? We care about sound doctrine. We care about theology. And there are certain things, certainly theology, in the Psalms. But you want to be careful because the first thing I do when I'm reading those things is jump to the New Testament and start talking about judging angels and all those other verses that talk about those things, right? That Paul talks about.

And that's okay to do that. It's okay to have a cohesive biblical theology of both Old and New Testament. But I really think that this is. One of my professors said one time that the Psalms are heart language, that they really are intended like music to hit our guts, right? And to. I'm going to use that bad word you're not supposed to use in the pulpit, but they're supposed to make us feel right because we always say, don't depend on your feelings, you know, but. But these words are supposed to hit us in the heart.

And what David is saying is when I, David, consider your heavens when I look up, and the work of your fingers and the parallelism, the moon and the stars which you have ordained. So those are parallelisms right there. When I look up and see the heavens, and then he's going to be specific, the moon and the stars and then the parallelism of your fingers and then the things that you have ordained, you've put them in their place.

When I look up. I have a question. I'm looking up and seeing how amazing creation is in the sky and the galaxies and everything I see. And by the way, I'll get to what David could see in his day without telescopes.

When I look up and I see the moon and I see the sun and I see just the way you've laid things out, ordered. That's what ordained means. That you put everything in its proper place. My question is, how do you even think about men? Like why would we even be on your radar? Like look at that, look at, look at that. And you look at that out there and then you say look at this. Why would he look in, why would he look at us? What is man that you are mindful of him.

Then he says, for you have made him a little lower than the angels. That's by the way, that's not a compliment. That is a, I mean an insult. That is a high compliment. When he says a little lower than the angels, he's not saying low. He's saying like the next level up for them is directly in the presence of God. Right? So this is not at all diminishing men. It's actually saying there's something very, very special. So human beings are very special. They have a built in dignity that makes them almost equal with angels.

And I'll get to the point in a minute about this not being self esteem and all those things. This is something that's created.

But David has a real question. He has a quandary. I can't imagine a God who made all of that. I can't imagine God setting the stars in their place. I can't imagine him just speaking light into existence and making the solar system and the moon and everything that happens on our planet. And I look around me and I'm just asking why, why would he pay attention to me now?

Again, the human ego is broken enough and messed up enough in sin that men do indeed say, I don't care about Grand Canyon, I'm awesome. Go click and like and subscribe. Right? Go view my TikTok and you'll know. You'll know just how great I am. Don't go out there and look at trees and stars. Look at me.

So human beings can and do try to get that attention on themselves. But that's not David. I don't think David would be have TikTok right now. David would be saying, are you kidding me? Go outside and look up. That's what you should be looking at. Because the Creator did that. And that Creator cares about us.

Why would he care about us now if you didn't know? I've read a commentary. The first time I preached this, I had a commentary from the 1800s. I want to say it might have been Matthew Poole or might have been Matthew Henry, one of my favorite old dead guys. But he said at that time, and listen carefully to how he said it because he was saying it in amazement this old 1800s commentator said David would have looked up and seen the amazing, magnificent, awesome 25 stars, 25,000. And David would have been just amazed by that.

And I want to go back in time and tell that commentator. What if you found out that just our galaxy, just ours, there are trillions of galaxies, but just our galaxy has 400 billion stars in it. Just one, one galaxy out of the trillions has 400 billion stars in it. Maybe, maybe whoever that was would have said what's a billion? Because maybe they hadn't even thought in those big numbers yet. But they were impressed with 25,000. That's the point I'm making. They were impressed with that.

Since James Webb telescope went up. Do you understand what they have found up there? First of all, it's turned all of evolutionary thought on its head. It's completely ruined evolutionary theory to where now they're making up theories that because we're seeing old galaxies where we only expected to see young galaxies, that maybe time doesn't work the same as it does there. In between here and there and like there are pockets where there's no time. Yeah, let's just be convenient and make up physics, you know, because it doesn't fit your narrative.

How about the fact that God could just speak galaxies into existence? That's not big enough, right?

Okay, 25,000 with the naked eye on the, in the best conditions on Earth, with the naked eye you can see about 5,000 stars. Okay, that's in like in your places that don't have light pollution with cities and things like that. With a 4 inch telescope you can see 2 million stars and the observatories can see billions and billions. Even from Earth. You don't even have to go up into James Webb or Hubble to see billions. We can see it from Earth.

So imagine what David would have said if he could look into the lens of that telescope. Yeah, he would have said the ball game's over. I already thought I was small just by looking into the sky. And now you're telling me there's trillions. Now you're telling me that there's that.

Do you know that it takes. Light moves at about. I don't have it written down, but it's something like 186,000 miles a second. That's how fast the light moves. Okay, so take that in. Hear me again, 186,000 miles in one second. That means roughly that light, if it starts right here, it can go around the Earth seven times in one second. Okay, you with me?

It Takes light. It would take light 40 billion years to get to one. From one side of our universe or the known universe to the other.

Now, I'm going to ask you, can you see why David asks his question? And he didn't even know all of that. Now that you know that, what do you think? What is man? That he's mindful of him, and somehow on this crazy little blue rock out in the middle of space, life found a way, the way the evolutionists would say. No, this is a blessed planet. God. God made something very special here. You have to have atmosphere to have life, and you have to have life to have atmosphere. It's like credit, right? You can't have credit unless you can't get it. Unless you have it already and you can't get it. Well, life is like that on our planet, is just this perfect little thing. Even in the fall, it's still very much maintained life.

Spurgeon, again, he's quoting somebody else. He says, we gave you but a feeble image of our comparative insignificance when we said that the glories of an extended forest would suffer no more from the fall of a single leaf than the glories of an extended universe would suffer though the globe we tread upon and all that inherits it should dissolve. In other words, it's about the equal effect that one leaf would have suffering in a forest, as if our tiny little planet would suffer.

And by the way, Spurgeon was also early 1900s, 1800s, late 1800s. So imagine if he knew what we're talking about. Weak, feeble, small when compared to the universe.

When you think of the how man is dwarfed by the size of our universe, it is really a meaningful, accurate thing to ask, why would God care about man? And you know the answer? It isn't that he just cares about man. He made man to care about them. He made them for his glory. He didn't. It wasn't an afterthought. Look at, I made a universe. What should I do with that little thing? No, he put those people on that planet at that time.

And then it says, by the way, with the Son of man, that's not Jesus. We typically equate the phrase son of man with Jesus. It's also other people in the Bible too, but in this case, it's just a parallelism. What is man and the Son of man? Those are parallelisms. He's saying the same thing twice.

And again, I don't want to dig too deep into the angel talk, but it is true that A little lower than the angels means that you might think of spiritual rank with God himself, then the angels and then us. Something like that. But then we do see in the New Testament that eventually we will judge angels. So in glory, when everything is renewed and we have new bodies and we are now sinless and incorruptible before the Lord, that we will judge angels.

So I think the point here is very clear though you would think of angels as very high. And then when David is saying, how can you think of man at all? And then even more, how can they be so highly favored and ranked in your view? And you think of them as something so big and significant as close to angels.

Just a quick thought. Remember in the New Testament where it uses language like brute beasts, sin always makes us more animalistic. So sin moves us away from the nature and character of God and properly reflecting his image. So that the more sinful we get, the more animalistic we get. The reason I think that's significant is because if you wanted to invent a new religion where we were just animals and evolved from animals, that would be a good way to undo God, wouldn't it? If the closer to God you get and the understanding that we're the pinnacle of creation, created in his image, very special creation man is, then it would make sense that the more like animals we act, man. If you could just invent and try to make everything say that all we are is animals, that'd be convenient, wouldn't it? We are not animals. You'll see that in a moment.

In fact, the next verses will make it clear. Look at verse six. You have made him, this is man. So God, you have made man a little lower than the angels. That's not an insult, it's a compliment. And eventually, and the way know in the future eschatologically that we'll be over the angels, right? So even then we still have this high place in God's viewpoint.

When I say high place again, I want to make sure we're clear. I don't mean self esteem. I don't mean feeling good about ourselves. No, we're in the image of God. That means we have built in dignity. That's what that means. As a reflector of God's image, we have dignity. We have. We are respectable by the sheer fact that we exist.

Now I know that some people don't show respect and they live lives of disrespect, but that doesn't mean as human beings they're not to be respected. That's always a good that's just a side note, and I'm only saying it because I'm here right now.

But when I read these last verses and dig in, just put it in your pocket that Christians are not better than anybody else. That's one problem we have, is that we say so much over long periods of time that sin and righteousness and sin and righteousness, and early when you're a Christian, it's sin. And yes, I was over here too, but now I'm saved. And I don't think I'm better than anybody else. But isn't long before we get a little priority, proud of our Christianity, start looking down our noses at everybody and think, well, they're bad and I'm good. That's exactly what Israel did, right? Like God chose us of all the nations. We should be humbled by that. No, we're better than all the nations or he wouldn't have chosen us. That's just what we do as humans.

When God shines his light on us, we tend to take that as ego fuel instead of what it should be, which is we look up and see all those trillions of things and say, I'm small and I'm going to remain small in God's eyes and stay humble.

But I do want you to know that humans that are all created in his image, all deserve dignity and respect. And if you want to see your culture change, if you want to impact change in this crazy, divisive, angry culture right now, show some respect to somebody you disagree with. Be respectful, be honorable.

Like, how does King. How does Paul respond to King Agrippa, the evil king who was flippant about his life, who didn't care whether he lived or died or anything? King Agrippa, live forever, showed respect to the king.

Remember when Paul was apparently to their viewpoint, disrespectful to the high priest, and the high priest says, smack that guy. And the guy smacks him. And then Paul says to that, to that religious leader, to that high priest he didn't know was the high priest, God's going to smack you. And then somebody said to Paul, are you going to talk to the high priest that way? And then what does Paul do? Yeah, I'm going to talk to him that way. Nobody could push me around. I have my rights. First Amendment. No, he says, I didn't know he was the high priest. And he tames it down. He calms down. He shows respect to somebody that just smacked him in the face.

We're not supposed to be pushovers. I don't think we're supposed to be weak, but I think our strength is supposed to be in our message, not in our volume. Right. That we, that we show dignity and respect.

When's the last time you've said to somebody who you dramatically disagree with, I want to hear you out, let's make a deal with each other. Let's have a conversation and share viewpoints and be friends when we're done. You can do that when you understand that they are created in the image of God and deserve the respect of an image bearer.

Again, that doesn't mean you're a doormat and say, okay, I'm going to turn this cheek and then this one and this one again, and you just beat me up and treat me like garbage. No, I'm not saying volunteer to be abused, but I am saying our world is so me centered and ego centered and you can't push me around and I'm so important. And we forget that the thing that makes us valuable first is the image of God, that we're created in his image. And then secondly, the gospel of Christ, which we couldn't have done for ourselves. So it should have this built in humility to it. Yeah, I don't know if you've noticed that, but Twitter doesn't change a lot of people's minds. I don't know if you know that. It just makes them have stronger viewpoints in what they're saying.

So the reason this matters to me is because it all fits a worldview, a paradigm, a way you see the world you live in. I look at a world that God created. That's how I see the world. My lens is that God made this. He made those trillions of stars. He made all of it. He made those bugs, he made those animals. He made cats even, which is hard to believe. I'm just kidding. We have cats. But if I respect the creator of those things, I don't look at those things as consumables for me. I don't look at those things as they're for me to abuse. I look at them as things that God made for me to show that I care that he made them.

If I can do that for animals, surely I can do that for human beings. Even the ones that hate me, even the ones that are very different than me, even the ones that have different colored skin than me. We should be dignified, respectful. Talk to me, Talk to me about your viewpoint. Did you. Do you know what Christians think about these things? Because a lot of people think they know what Christians think about These things, but they don't really know the Christian things like we talked about in Islam. Not a lot of people actually getting to our sources, the Bible in particular, and what it says about things. There's a lot of assumptions made, but let's have a dialogue.

I've always said that you should be able to fight with someone. Like, I don't mean physically, but like have a meaningful, intense differing of opinion argument and then go eat together. That's what I think.

Now, verse six. You have made him man to have dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet. Do you see that? That creation is beneath man in that sense, not equal, not the same, beneath 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 sea.

O Lord, there it is again. Our Lord, how excellent is your name. And all the earth that has all that in it.

So I look up and see what you do up there, and I look down and see what you do down here. But specifically now we get this beautiful, respectful. I don't want to, when I say exalted, make sure you know that I don't mean exalted to God's place. But definitely there is an exalted view of man in these passages because David is humbled by it. He's humbled by what God has done. God, you made all of this. And it's magnificent and it's humbling.

And when I look out there, when I look into the face of a child, when I look at the DNA molecule, when I look at all these amazing things that you've done, I'm asking the question, why men? Why people? Why do you care about people? Why have you seen fit then in all of that out there to bless us specifically with your presence and your love and your kindness.

And not only that, you've taken us and put us as managers over all that stuff. Like it is our job to take care of the stuff you made. It's out. You've. You've made us to have dominion.

And again, back to the animal rights thing and all the climate change things. And to think that you worship earth and all of that. No, no, it's all there for us to manage. Got it? That's what it's there for. God made the things that he made for human beings to function and to live and to breathe and to do all that we do. He made it all there for us to live and to take care of and to exercise Dominion over.

And a quick side note, watch out. You might hear the phrase dominion theology. This is not what David's talking about. Dominion theology is the idea of enacting and trying to employ Christian thought and the worldview into our culture. Like in all the laws of the land. Sometimes it's called theonomy and there's other names for it, but the idea of us trying to press our Christianity into the culture so that we can Christianize the culture. And by the way, I don't care if you try to press Christianity, you should go spread Christianity for sure. But I don't think there's a mandate in Scripture, and this is definitely not that mandate, to try to overtake the evil society with Christianity. No, Christianity is ideological, theological, philosophical, worldview that is truth based, not conquest based. Right?

So we don't find our home here on Earth. We just learned all that in Hebrews. They didn't look for home on Earth, they looked for home in glory. So when I say dominion, I don't mean that. I don't mean what a lot of popular, newer teachers are talking about, dominion. I do mean what God intended in the garden, which is to be fruitful, to till, to farm, to do the things that God told us to do with the earth, so, so that we can provide, we can be taken care of, we can feed our families.

Commerce is an amazing thing when it's done right. Like business and industry are amazing things when they're done correctly, when they're done with dignity. This morning I talked about the man in our church that you don't know who did the thing he did with the insurance company. But I also could have given you other examples of men at our church, some in the room, who have done things in their business that have cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars because they won't lie, they won't cheat, they won't defraud, they won't take advantage, they won't break the law.

But they do industry, they do work, they do produce, they do, they do function in our society in a way where they're taking the things that God has made and using them in a way to produce, to produce income for their families, to produce something productive for society to have a meaningful impact while they're here on Earth. So that something they're doing.

Like, you know, Steve Jobs was not a Christian. You all know that, right? The founder of Apple. But man, isn't it amazing what he did? Now, he didn't give God credit for it, but you and I can, right? We can. That's giving him dignity.

Well, you're a Christian. Do something. Do something like with your work, with your hands, with your mind. Do something, produce something. Be active. Don't. Don't think that we are as Christians just sitting in a bus station waiting for heaven to come.

We are supposed to be exercising dominion over the earth in the sense that we are using the earth to bring God glory. That's one thing that I've. I've talked about it quite a bit lately on, on an individual basis with people that I. And I've said it even recently from the pulpit. You've heard me say it. But the idea that, like when, when Paul talks about how. How do husbands and wives interact in Ephesians 5, or, or Peter talks about submitting yourself to every ordinance of man or, or Romans 13 and how you yield to government properly, when you understand it correctly, and all those things that talk about our interaction as Christians in this world, that's lost and against God. I wish more people understood that that is ministry.

When you do that, that when you produce something, when you build something, when you are active, when you, whatever it is, five fires, do law enforcement, do electrical work, whatever you do, whatever God has called you do, when you are a homemaker, when you're taking care of a family and raising children in the Lord, that this thing you're doing. I wish more people understood that that is ministry.

Now, I know it isn't ministry in the sense that we think of as formal ministry, church ministry. It isn't preaching or teaching or discipling necessarily, but it's absolutely the Christian's duty to go out into the world and to display what Christ is like to the world. And you absolutely can do that in all areas, as long as they're not sinful areas. Right? You're not. I'm not the Christian bank robber I talked about this morning. Like, you can't be the Christian hitman or something like that, but as a Christian, you function in your position and you shouldn't be thinking, okay, I'm going to go punch my clock right now, or go to school or whatever it is I'm doing. And now that I'm on campus or I'm at work or I'm in the kitchen, whatever, wherever you might be, I am punching a clock that says, now I'm on earth duty, and that's all I'm doing. That's all I'm doing is earth stuff. And it doesn't count. That is the wrong way to look at your work.

You're Supposed to be saying, God made my kitchen. God gave me the ability to do what I do at work. God gave me the ability, the mechanical ability to solve and do the things that I do. God gave me the ability and the position and the opportunity with whatever education, upbringing to put me here to be a cowboy or whatever that God made me that. So because God gave me that opportunity, I am going to do that thing for his glory.

Now, remember I said this morning that the mistake, such a simple mistake in one sentence that many people think that Jesus is a means to an end, our end, right? That's what many people think that Christianity is for us and our happy life. But when you flip that correctly, you recognize that God gave you your life so that you can give praise and honor to Jesus. He's the focus.

And when you do that, right, it makes work. Well, should I say fun? That might be too much to say. Work can be fun, but work was never a part of the curse dominion. And in this case, Doug, you'll be happy to know fishing is there, right? The fish of the sea.

These are things that, when done properly, your brain is in the same mode. David's brain is. When I see the fish, even if I'm catching them for food, when I see the lawn that the spring is coming around the corner and telling me I have to mow, when I see the creation that God has put me in and given me the influence over, I can see it, what it is, this handiwork of God and that I am your manager that has dignity, that is built in respect for God.

And then more than that, as a Christian, I've been saved and redeemed from my sin so that I can honor God with everything I do. Then I'm going to do everything. Music, even your entertainment, even the things you do for entertainment, can be done to glorify God if they're not sinful entertainment, right?

So to me, I think there's a massive lesson to take away. How excellent is God's name in the earth?

And I might ask you, who is making his name known in all the earth? How do you do it? Are you the person who, when the boss is watching, they see somebody that isn't grumbling and complaining and undermining them behind their back?

You all know that my dad wasn't a church guy. I do believe he was saved, but he never really committed to church. By the way, he always said he felt like a hypocrite. That's why I didn't want to go. But I always respected My dad, because he didn't have a father, his dad left when he was three years old. And so I always respected that my dad had the ethics that he had because they were kind of biblical ethics, even though he didn't know.

So my dad would teach me things like, if you ever borrow a tool from somebody, return it to them in better shape than they loaned it to you. So if somebody loaned you something, however clean it was when you got it and you're done using it, give it back to them in better shape. If you borrow somebody's car, give them back that car with gas in it, right? He would always say, you treat the boss's money like your own money, meaning you don't think the boss is rich. You don't go abuse the boss and his money. And he worked hard to be the boss, so you show him respect.

My dad taught me all those things from childhood. And then, of course, as I get older, and I see the opposite of that, and I'm sorry to say I saw that in my mom, the opposite. I see all those things, and then I come into this thing called the Christian faith. And you learn from page one of the Bible, be fruitful and multiply. Dominion, cultivate. And I always wanted to be productive.

So it's an awesome story. It was hard being a janitor and cleaning the same toilet, and then it had to be dirty next week, but you got to try. I cleaned it for that moment. I exercised dominion, right?

Some of you get to build things right? You go into a construction site and there's nothing. And then there's something that's amazing. Some of you get to write things, some of you get to fix things. And you have that awesome satisfaction of seeing the before and after. But sometimes you got to just be a mom or a dad and take care of your kids. But the thing you're building isn't showing fruit yet, but it will later when they're in their teens and they still love you and serve the Lord, right?

So be productive, because God gave you this place and this opportunity to exercise dominion because his glory is over it. And then you feed that back to him. So whatever you do do to the glory of God.

And again, please take that with you, put it in your pocket. That is not only church ministry, that's life ministry. Of course it's church ministry. Of course you should be serving your church and the body of Christ and helping people and taking part of fellowship and all those things, and worship services. Of course you're supposed to do that.

But I'm also talking about being good to your neighbor, being a good neighbor to literally your neighbor sometimes, right?

There's a Jehovah's Witness that lives down the street from me. And he and I, we were in an argument, but it was a theological argument. And I told him, I said, you and I can still be good neighbors to each other, right? And we don't have to hate each other. We can still look out. And sure enough, we've had a great relationship.

I saw him one day lifting. He had sold something on Craigslist and he was having trouble lifting it in this lady's car. And I was driving by and I stopped and just parked in the middle of the street because I thought, he's going to kill himself. Like he was having a rough time. And I don't know why she wasn't helping him, but she didn't help at all. She just stood there and watched him struggle. So I jumped out and helped him.

And as I was walking away from him, I kind of punched him in the arm. Like I hit him in the arm. I go see good neighbors. We look out for each other, right? And he laughed, you know, but this is a guy that has a diametrically opposed worldview than me. Why can't we be good neighbors and treat people well? Because they're just a little lower than the angels and we could show respect.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for this psalm and those like it. Thank you for the truth that we are created in your image. And Father, that doesn't mean that we should think highly of ourselves. It means we should be humble. So thank you for the lessons that we can be humble and still yet understand that we have work to do and value, particularly your Christian people on earth. That we have a mission to share the gospel and to live the gospel to be a good testimony to the watching world. Would you just help us do that in a way that shows that we believe your glory is above the heavens. In Jesus name, amen.