The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): The human body is an amazing and complex combination of bone, muscles, nerves, organs, and more. But we're certainly more than our physical composition. We're both body and soul, and we're designed to reflect the image of our creator. Today on the Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, we'll take a look at Psalm chapter 8 to answer the ultimate question: What is our destiny?

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. From the Genesis creation account to the end times prophecies, God's glory is the centerpiece of every stage of our history and our destiny.

Dr. James Boice: Now we're going to study Psalm 8, and I direct your attention to that. It is one of the great, great Psalms in the Bible. I think it would be very difficult to say anything negative about any one of the Psalms since they're all part of Scripture, and all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable, as the Bible itself tells us. And yet, it is true that some of the Psalms at least stand out as being perhaps above others, at least in our minds and their ability to speak to our hearts.

I suppose that was true for the Jewish people too. Psalm 1 is one of those Psalms. Psalm 23, of course, we refer to that often. We memorize it. Most of us know it by heart. Psalm 100, other Psalms. Psalm 8 is one of these. It's one of the truly great Psalms in the Psalter, at least in my opinion and in the opinion of other people. C.S. Lewis thought so. In his little book Reflections on the Psalms, he calls it a short, exquisite lyric.

One other commentator said something about it. I'm not going to quote any more commentators tonight, but I think you should hear what this one man said. Derek Kidner has written the book on the Psalms for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Here is his assessment: 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.

He points out in a paragraph following that the range of thought takes us not only above the heavens and back to the beginning of all things, but also, as the New Testament points out, onto the very end of the age. The theme of this Psalm is the greatness of God and the place of man within God's universe. I call it Our God, Our Glory.

You find it in four parts. Let me give you the outline of it. First of all, there is a celebration of the surpassing majesty of God. Secondly, against that background, there is a recognition of the insignificance of man. Then thirdly, and by contrast, there is astonishment at the significance of man. Finally, on the very end of the Psalm, there is a phrase that repeats the Psalm's first lines: O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

The most striking thing about this Psalm, at least in my opinion, is its rehearsal of the place of man within God's universe. Most of the Psalm is about that if you count up the words or even if you count the verses. You'll find the most of the Psalm is talking about that. Strikingly, however, that is not the place at which the Psalm begins. It's going to talk about man, but where it begins is with God. It begins with those words that I just read, the words that not only introduce the Psalm but which also end it: O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

It's a way of saying, if David were here to comment on what he's doing, he would say something like this: I'm going to talk about man and we're going to celebrate man's place in this created order, this universe that God has given. But you're never going to get anywhere in understanding men and women and where they fit into this system unless you begin with God. God, not man, is the creator. We are the creatures. We are significant creatures. God has given us a significance, as he is going to show above that of the rest of creation, but nevertheless, we are only creatures. We are not the creator, and therefore we have to begin with God. If we don't begin with God, if we don't begin by praising him, we are never going to make the first steps to understanding the doctrine of man.

That is where he begins, and how magnificently he does it. O Lord, our Lord, says David, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Our English Bibles don't really do justice to that, although you'll notice if you look at them carefully that most of them capitalize the first word, Lord, and the second word they do not. That's a way of indicating to the English reader who has only the English words that there are two different words there in the Hebrew text. The first is the word Jehovah, the very name for God, and the second is the word Adonai, which really does mean Lord and is translated that way appropriately in other portions of the Bible.

That word Jehovah in the later history of the transmission of the text and also the history of the people of Israel was not spoken by pious Jews. It was regarded as a name that was so holy that they didn't even want to say it. There are some interesting consequences of that. One thing is that when the Jew would come to that name in reading the Hebrew text, instead of saying Jehovah or Yahweh, however it would have been pronounced, we don't know because they didn't indicate to us how it should be pronounced. Instead of saying that, the Jew would say Adonai because he didn't want to say the word Jehovah. He thought that was somehow improper.

When the Masoretes, who were the scribes who pointed the Hebrew text, pointed it, as the Hebrew text originally is written in consonants and the vowels are little lines and dots that are put in above and below the consonants. When the Masoretes came to put in those pointings to indicate the proper way it should be taken and the proper pronunciation of the ancient text, when they came to the word Jehovah, they put into it the vowel points not for the word Jehovah but for the word Adonai. It was a way of reminding you as you read along in the Hebrew text and you came to the word not to say Jehovah but to say Adonai instead. As a consequence of that, because we don't know how ancient Hebrew was pronounced today, all we have are the vowel pointings for the word Adonai. We don't know whether it's Jehovah or Yahweh or something else. Yahweh is the best guess of the scholars.

There was none of that belabored piety with David. David wasn't cautious about using the name Jehovah. So when he begins his Psalm, he begins it with a rehearsal of God's glory. O Jehovah, he says, our Adonai, Jehovah our Lord, one who is over us, the one who is our king and our God. That's the one we praise. How majestic is your name in all the earth. He does say that God sets his glory above the heavens, and I think that is significant as well. It's a way of saying that God's glory is so great that even the heavens can't exhaust it. He's going to talk about that a little further on.

We begin to reflect on what David must have done. He must have looked at the heavens and seen how glorious they were and reflected that they are only an expression of the glory of God. But he recognized that God was the creator, therefore he was above it. God's glory, though it is glorious in the creation, was of necessity above it. And so he says, you have set your glory above the heavens. That means that nothing in creation is ever going to exhaust it, and certainly not mere men and women. When God's glory is beyond expression even in the whole of the created order, how are you and I ever going to praise him adequately?

Yet, that's the task that God has set before us and it's the opportunity he's given. And so, in a strange combination of ideas, David, who says you have set your glory above the heavens, that is beyond even the ability of the stars and the universe to express, immediately steps down and says, but nevertheless, from the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise. Even the heavens can't express your glory, but you receive praise from mere mortals like ourselves and even from children and infants.

This Psalm is such a glorious Psalm that it's quoted a number of times in the New Testament, and one of those places is in Matthew. The story appears elsewhere as well. When our Lord had entered the temple after what we call Palm Sunday, everybody had come out to praise him as the son of David. As he went into the temple and began to heal, Matthew tells us, the lame and the sick, the blind, the children were still there that had taken part in the celebration of that day and had heard the chanting of the elders. They began to praise him, Hosanna to the son of David.

The scribes and the teachers of the law were there. They didn't like any attention being given to Jesus. It detracted from their glory and they were really upset. They objected to Jesus. Don't you hear what these children are saying? Look at the way they're praising you. That's improper, they were saying. On that occasion, Jesus referred them to the Psalm. He said, haven't you read? Haven't you read the Old Testament in Psalm 8, these words: From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise?

I guess they were upset with Jesus before, but if they were upset with Jesus before, they must have been virtually catatonic after they heard that. Because he wasn't merely authenticating the words of the children in praising him as a mere man, which is all that phrase son of David would have meant. That means a descendant of David, and he was, and perhaps suggested that he was the Messiah, a human Messiah. It wasn't anything like that he was authenticating. They were saying that, and that was right, and he was quoting the Old Testament to prove it. But when he went back to the Old Testament and quoted as he did from Psalm 8, what the lips of children and infants are doing there are praising God.

So as a way of saying not merely that they are right in honoring me as a mere human descendant of David and perhaps the Messiah if you consider it only on a human level, but they're praising me as God, they're fulfilling Psalm 8. Having talked about the revelation of God in the heavens and the created order, and how that has revealed though it has not exhausted his glory, David now turns to man. By contrast, beginning in verse 3 and following, he talks about the insignificance of man.

I sense as I read this that David, probably writing as a king in middle age or in his later years, was reflecting on the experiences he must have had many nights in his youth, perhaps going way back to his childhood when he would be out in the fields taking care of his family's sheep. David was a shepherd, as you know, and he would lie there on his back in the fields under the stars at night gazing up into the glory of the heavens. You and I don't have many opportunities to do that. Philadelphia, even if the lights were down, you wouldn't be able to see the stars. The air is so impure. But if all the lights were out and the air were pure, you could look up and have an experience similar to that of David's.

In the Near East, the air really is pure even today. If you look up at the stars on a cloudless night, most nights are cloudless in the Near East. You just see millions upon millions of stars, and they hang there in a glory and they seem so close in their vast array. It almost seems as if you could reach out with your hand and touch them. David must have remembered all of that. So when he begins to talk about the glory of God and to praise God and the heavens, and the glory of God being even above the heavens, he thinks of himself and other human beings in that vast created order. He says, what is man that you are mindful of him? How insignificant we seem in that creation.

You and I don't have that experience very often. I doubt if many of us have spent much time reflecting on the stars. If you think back in your memory, remember your childhood, it would be pretty hard for most of us to have great memories of that, though some of us may. But there's a sense in which we go a little bit beyond David, at least in our knowledge of the universe and especially mathematically. We know, for example, that the earth, vast as it is, is only a tiny planet in our particular solar system. Our solar system is only one little solar system toward the outer edge of the Milky Way, which is our galaxy, and that's only one galaxy in the universe of many billions of galaxies. The distances are so vast that the light coming from the furthest reaches of the universe, at least as far as we can see with our telescopes, takes billions of years to get here.

Or even to bring it down a little closer to home, you've seen in the news the reports of the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it made its way out through our solar system toward outer space. It passed by and photographed four of the planets on its journey. This latest episode, it photographed Neptune, but out beyond that is Pluto. It hadn't even gotten to the furthest of the planets. It began to send back these magnificent pictures. What impressed me was the fact that it had taken years and years and years to get there. 12 years just to get to Neptune in our own solar system. When it sent back its pictures with radio waves at the speed of sound, 186,000 miles per second, it took four hours for the radio signal to get back. So if you signaled the spacecraft, it took four hours for your signal to get to it and four hours for it to get back. An exchange of information took a third of a day.

That was just Neptune, and beyond that is all of space. That's how vast the universe is. No wonder David, when he contemplated that, even with the part that was known to him, said, what is man that you are mindful of him? And yet, the funny thing is that in spite of all of that, in spite of the way the Psalm has gone up to this point, beginning with the glory of God which is above the heavens and the glory of the heavens and the insignificance of men and women measured against that vast array of the heavens, he nevertheless at this point begins to turn and talk about the significance of man.

It has to do with the place in which God has put him. What he says is this: When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him? The son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands and you put everything under his feet. All flocks and herds and beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the sea.

It's interesting how he describes the significance of man after having said the things he has said. One thing he does is talk about man's glory. Isn't that interesting? In verse 1, he's talking about the glory of God and he says the glory of God is set above the heavens. It's so great that even the heavens can't express it. But now he begins to talk about man. In verse 5, he says even though you've made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, you have crowned him with what? Glory. It's the same word. He's talked of God and his glory, a glory inexpressible, but now nevertheless he begins to talk about man in exactly the same way. It's a way of saying that the significance of man comes not from his size, but from the fact that he is made in God's image. Because he's made in God's image, he bears something of the divine glory.

There's another way in which he does it. He talks about man being made ruler over the works of God's hands in verse 6. We know by studying the Scriptures elsewhere that there is a sense in which God alone is the ruler. The apostle Paul, when he writes about that in 1 Timothy, speaks in those terms. He says you are the only blessed ruler, speaking about God. And yet, here is David applying that very word to man. He's saying you are the ruler, but in an amazing way. You've not only created us and given us something of your glory, but you have given us the same responsibility you exercise. You are ruler over all, you have made us ruler over the things beneath our feet, all the things on the earth, and especially the living intelligences that we find on the earth.

What a way of stressing the importance of man, and all because man is made by God. It's one of the tragedies of our civilization that it's tried to find the significance of man in other ways. When it does that, it's always doomed to frustration. You try to describe the significance of man in terms of his chemical makeup, you end up saying that man is worth about 98 cents. At least that's what we used to be in terms of our chemical constitution before inflation took over. I suppose now it's $98, but it's not very much. If you begin to approach man that way, he really isn't significant. He's next to nothing. But that's not what David does.

What I find most important about this is the way he places man in what has been called a mediating position in the created order. I've talked about this before, especially when we were talking about Romans 1, and some of you may have heard it then because I used Psalm 8 to illustrate some of the things you find in the latter half of that chapter. Saint Thomas Aquinas was the first person to do this as far as I know, and he did it in his own unique way. He said what distinguishes man from the rest of intelligent creation is that we are spirit-body beings. That is, we have spirits and we have bodies. If you look upward to the angels that are above us, the angels have spirits but not bodies. If you look downward to the animals who are beneath us, the animals have bodies but not spirits. What's unique about men and women is that we are both body and spirit. So according to Aquinas, we occupy this mediating position.

I don't think that's what David is talking about particularly, but he's nevertheless speaking about a mediating position. You see it as you read the Psalm. He begins with the glory of God and the majesty of the heavens. Having talked about that, he comes down to talk about man, and after he describes man, he goes on to say he has been made ruler over the flocks and the herds and the beasts of the field, the birds in the air and the fish of the sea. What he's done is he's started with God and the angels and the heavens and man and the animals and the beasts and so on, and here in the middle is man.

The interesting thing is that when he describes man, he uses this phrase in verse 5: You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings. Man really is in a mediating position as the Psalm says, and I've tried to indicate. Why did he not say you've made him a little higher than the beasts? That would be true as well, wouldn't it? Man is halfway between the angels and the beasts. You could just as easily say you've made him a bit higher than the beasts as to say you've made him a little bit lower than the angels. But he doesn't say that. He says you've made him a little bit lower than the angels, and that is a way of saying that it is not only man's possibility but also man's responsibility not to look downward to the beasts and compare himself to them essentially, but to look up to the angels and beyond the angels to God and to recognize that he derives his glory from God because he's been made in God's image.

Of course, because he's looking upward to the angels and to God in whose image he is made, he will, if he does that, become increasingly like God. You always become increasingly like that to which you look. It's the tragedy of the human condition that instead of looking up to God, we have turned from God as Romans 1 very clearly describes, and we look down to the beasts and we derive our identity from them. That's what evolution is all about. This is what evolution says: We are just slightly improved animals. Christianity says we are creatures made in the image of the creator. We are made like God.

Have you noticed as I begin to talk along those lines that David here is reflecting the first chapter of Genesis? It's very significant. It shows that he knew the book, derived his theology from it. References here to the first chapter of Genesis run right through from beginning to end. What he's doing is thinking about man in that context as God made him. I have been saying when we talked about verse 5 that it is indicating that we're made a little lower than the angels. But it's worth mentioning that that phrase heavenly beings in the Hebrew text is actually the word Elohim. Elohim means God. It's the plural name for God. Gods is how we would translate it, but God uses it of himself in the plural sense. Perhaps it's an indication of the Trinity.

What it really says here is you've made him a little lower than Elohim. I suppose that was so shocking to most of the translators that they didn't want to translate it that way. I know it must have been that way to the translators of the Septuagint, that is the Greek version of the Old Testament, because at this point in the Septuagint, it uses the word for angels rather than the word for God. That is what has been picked up by the author of the book of Hebrews because in the second chapter of Hebrews, it refers to angels.

There's some justification for that. That word Elohim meaning gods or God in the Old Testament is sometimes used for spirit beings. For example, the story of Saul going to the witch of Endor. He had stopped consulting God, he had fallen away from God because of his disobedience, and so he went to the witch. He wanted to find out what the future held. It was just on the verge of the battle in which he was finally killed. The witch of Endor, probably a charlatan, was pretending to bring up the spirits from the earth and suddenly was startled when spirits really came. The word she used was Elohim. She says I see spirits ascending from the earth, Elohim.

Psalm 82 used the word Elohim: Behold, he said, you are gods, referring perhaps to spirits or to the rulers of the people. It can be used in that way. But what I want to suggest is that since David is referring obviously to Genesis 1, and since Elohim is the word that is used for God in Genesis 1, the very beginning of the Bible says Bereshit Bara Elohim, in the beginning God, Elohim, created the heavens and the earth. Since it says in that very first chapter to which he is obviously referring, the phraseology is there straight through: Let us, God said, Elohim said, let us make man in our image. That is obviously what David is talking about here. So although it's bold and although it seems perhaps indelicate to us to say it, what David really says is you made man a little lower than yourself. You made him a little lower than God and you crowned him with glory and honor.

Yet as I say, although God made us that way, we turned from him. We despised the relationship we had and instead of that we look to the animals and we become like them. If you won't become like God, if you won't have God, the animal creation is the only other way to look. That's what I say is the strength of evolution. It's not that evolution is such a great theory. There's no evidence really to support it in my judgment, although there are some circumstantial things, but no conclusive evidence. But the strength of evolution is that if you throw out God, it's the only theory left. What else can you have? Where did we come from if you don't have God? It has to be something like evolution.

That's the strength, but you choose that at your peril because what you really lose is what makes you distinct in God's creation. You were made for fellowship with him. You're not made simply to fellowship with animals, and you're made to be like God, not to be like the beasts. I've often referred in this connection to the story of Nebuchadnezzar because it is the great illustration and example of this in the Old Testament. Nebuchadnezzar took the glory of God to himself. He was in his capital of Babylon on one occasion. He was on the roof, he looked out over this great city, probably over the hanging gardens which were known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. As he looked out over this magnificent city, the greatest thing of the time, he said to himself, is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?

It says that all of that out there, everything I see, is of man, by man, and for man's glory. That's humanism. That's what Nebuchadnezzar was saying. It tells us in the story that while the words were still on his lips, a voice came from heaven. The voice said, this is what is decreed for you Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. You will be driven away from people. You will live with the wild animals. You will eat grass like cattle. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.

God punished Nebuchadnezzar with insanity, and the expression of that is that Nebuchadnezzar went out to behave like the animals. That's a way of saying that that's what the human condition is when we reject the kind of place we are given according to what we are told in Psalm 8. If you won't see yourself in this universe being made by God, responsible to God, in his image to rule the world for him, well all you're going to do is see yourself like an animal and you will begin to behave like animals. Our world is doing that. As a matter of fact, our world is behaving even worse than animals because we do things as human beings that even the animals wouldn't do.

John Gerstner, one of my mentors, was talking on Romans 1 on one occasion. He was saying how when we run away from God, we end up behaving like the animals. As a matter of fact, he said we behave like rats. Men and women act like rats all the time. Afterwards he had a question period. People didn't like that and they came up to him. One woman in particular was incensed. She said to him, Dr. Gerstner, that was a terribly unfair comparison and I demand that you apologize. Dr. Gerstner said, Madam, you are right, and I do apologize. In fact, I apologize profusely. That was a terribly unfair comparison to the rat.

What he meant to say is that when a rat acts like a rat, it acts the way a rat should behave. Nobody blames a rat for doing what a rat does, or a dog for doing what a dog does, or a lion for doing what a lion does. But when men and women get out there and start acting, they do things even worse than the animals and it's a sad, sad thing because they have lost that relationship with God. What we are challenged to do is to look up to God and to find him and to become like him rather than to look down.

But we've all looked down, and so we ask the question, well in that situation, what is it that God does? We know what God does because he's done it, because the Bible is all about it. What does God do? God sends Jesus Christ to live among us, to die for our salvation and what? To fulfill Psalm 8. Because Jesus is the fulfillment of the Psalm. He is the one who is made a little lower than the heavenly beings, who is crowned with glory and honor, and who throughout all his earthly days was always looking up to his father. He was the perfect expression of his father, the image of the invisible God, and he never got his eyes off his father once.

Which of course is why the author of the book of Hebrews quotes this Psalm as it does in chapter 2. It's not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, says the author of Hebrews of Jesus about which we are speaking, but there is a place where someone has testified, he's referring to the Psalm, what is man that you're mindful of him? The son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels, you crowned him with glory and honor, you put everything under his feet. He's talking about Jesus Christ. In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him, is what he says.

Jesus, the perfect man as well as perfect God, fulfilled that Psalm and showed us not only what the Psalm is about, but what God intends us to be. How do we find that? How do we realize that great destiny? We find it by coming to God in Jesus Christ. He died for us that our sin might be punished. He enters our hearts by his Holy Spirit to work and to make us like him. It is true that we don't see all things put under him yet, and the author of Hebrews says as much. Yet at present, we do not see everything subject to him. He says he became obedient unto death, even death on a cross, wherefore you've given him a name that's above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.

But every knee is not yet bowed. As the author of Hebrews says, at present we do not see everything put under him. We will one day. But what do we see? The author of Hebrews says, but we see Jesus. We see Jesus. A little further on in the next chapter, he says, therefore holy brothers who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus. What does that mean? Well, if we fix our thoughts on Jesus, what are we doing? Well, what we are doing is exactly what Psalm 8 is talking about. Instead of looking down, we are looking up. You say to yourself, we can't see God. We see him in Jesus Christ. What the author of Hebrews is saying is he's the fulfillment of the Psalm. He is the express image of the invisible God. Fix your thoughts on him and you'll become like him by his grace. You following in his footsteps will begin to become what God has always intended you to be.

We'll fulfill the Psalm. It's what the Psalm is all about, and we will end up where David ends up. That is, with our eyes upon God and we will find ourselves saying at the end as we did at the beginning, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

Our Father, we thank you for the Psalm. We thank you for the teaching here. Some of it profound, much of it beyond us, but certainly much of it here that we can understand and which we must obey. We pray that if there are people here who perhaps have heard a great deal of Christian preaching or religious teaching but have never had their thoughts redirected from the world around for which they're selling their souls to Jesus Christ who died to save them, we ask that you might so redirect their minds and their hearts in this hour. Use this Psalm to touch them and to show them that you've made them not to be mere animals, but to experience an eternity of fellowship with yourself through what Jesus Christ has done. Grant as they find him as savior, they might also find him as one who is their ever present companion and friend to whom they can look and by whose grace and by the power of your spirit, they can become increasingly like. Father, help us all to do that and grow in that direction to the praise of the glory of your great grace in Jesus Christ. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the reformed faith, and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, visit Alliancenet.org. While you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians. Or ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888. Please take the time to write to us and share how the Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We'd love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Please consider giving financially to help keep the Bible Study Hour impacting people for decades to come. You can do so at our website, Alliancenet.org, over the phone at 1-800-488-1888, or send a check to 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. For Canadian gifts, mail those to 237 Rouge Hills Drive, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 2Y9. Thanks for your continued prayer and support, and for listening to the Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.