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O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens (v. 1, ESV).
This Psalm should be our focus in 2023. It is a Psalm of praise!
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (v. 9)
A short Psalm – only nine verses – Psalm 8 begins and ends in praise. Between the first and the last verses of this Psalm, King David gives us four reasons to praise God.
Reason #1: As children, we were created to praise
Out of the mouth of babies and infants! (v. 2)
This verse is repeated in Matthew 21:14-16:
And the blind and the lame came to Jesus n the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to Him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”
Children often see glory and experience wonder better than adults. Jesus said that we must become like children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Reason #2: God will take care of our foes
You have established strength in us because of our foes, to still the enemy and the avenger (v. 2, OGV).
Why take revenge when God promises justice?
Scholars believe that most of the Psalms were collected as the Jewish hymnal when the Israelites were held captive in Babylon. Odd, but this is the way of faith, that the Jews felt more like singing songs of victory when they were in bondage than when they were free!
Sing praises loud and like children during difficulties in 2023.
Reason #3: God has created everything
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place (v. 3).
This verse is more fully explained in Colossians 1:16 …
For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him.
The other world’s religions present their founder as a prophet, a doer of great deeds, and filled with wisdom. The Bible presents Jesus as the Creator of the universe.
With Jesus, we praise not another man but the Creator and Sustainer of everything.
Reason #4: Jesus gives us a crown
What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor (vv. 4-5).
Our destiny is to rule with Christ both in the Millennium and in eternity (2 Timothy 2:12). Too often, we live as slaves instead of as heirs to the throne of Jesus.
N.T. Wright about the Psalms …
The Psalms represent the Bible’s own spiritual root system for the great tree we call Christianity. You don’t have to be a horticultural genius to know what will happen to the fruit on the tree if the roots are not in good condition. But I’m not writing simply to say, “These are important songs that we should use and try to understand.” That is true, but it puts the emphasis the wrong way around – as though the Psalms are the problem, and we should try to fit them into our world. Actually, again and again it is we, muddled and puzzled and half-believing, who are the problem; and the question is more how we can find our way into their world, into the faith and hope that shine out in one psalm after another.
A long quote, but I hope that you read it slowly.
The Psalms aren’t something we should try to fit into our difficulties in 2023. We need to bring our “muddled and puzzled and half-believing” lives into the world of the Psalms this year!