Worship His Majesty

The only psalm that has ever been recited aloud to the whole world from the outer space is Psalm 8. On July 20, 1969, a spellbound world held its breath and watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descending from Apollo 11’s lunar module Eagle and landing on the Moon. The spot where they set their feet is called the Sea of Tranquility. Indeed, it was a tranquil moment in the history of mankind. Ancient moon gazers fancied themselves with dreams of visiting the Moon. Chinese had the fairytale of a certain fair lady named Chang’e flying to the Moon and taking abode there. Poets of all nationalities penned numerous poems about the Moon. One Hebrew shepherd boy who later became the greatest King of Israel had a moment of tranquility in the Judea desert while tending his father’s sheep. As he gazed upon the Moon in the starry night sky, he could not withhold his spirit of worship to the Creator. He poured out his worshipful spirit in Psalm 8. Three thousand years later, Psalm 8 became the choice poem worthy of being recited after the first successful Moon landing forty year ago. Tonight, let’s pause in our busyness of life and share that moment of tranquility, first experienced by David and then by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. In so doing, let’s enter into the sanctuary of our hearts and bow down before our Maker.

In both the opening and the closing verse, David repeated this refrain: O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Twice he used the Hebrew word ad-dir (ad-deer) to describe the name of God. The English equivalent of ad-dir are words such as excellent, famous, gallant, glorious, goodly, lordly, mighty, noble. It behooves us to conjure up images as recent as in the Election Night of 2008 when Barack Obama, the first elected African American President, took to the podium outside Chicago, to the thunderous applause of jubilant supporters and well wishers. A sense of unprecedented triumph and regality pervaded the whole park, whole nation, and whole world. If David did not continue to explain what exactly he meant by Addir in the following verses, we would be left guessing what exactly the majesty of God is. So let’s read on.

“You have set your glory above the heavens.” God’s glory, so foreign to us and so immense for us to grasp, is above the heavens. The same David, elsewhere in Psalm 19, says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” In essence, the heavens are but an extension, or seepage, of God’s uncontainable glory. God’s glory radiates through his handiworks in the heavens. The same Moon and stars that charmed David the shepherd boy transmit to us an even richer meaning in this age of scientific discovery. Our Moon and our star, the Sun, in the solar system, are only two of a hundred billion planets and stars in our Milky Way that measures 100,000 light years across. Furthermore, the Milky Way is but one of the hundred billion galaxies in the cosmos whose expanse can only be traversed for nearly 14 billion years even at the speed of light. Such enormity of the heavens is beyond our comprehension and reflecting the glory of God who takes the heavens as his throne and the earth as his footstool.

Curiously, in verse 2, David said to God: “Out of the mouth of babes and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.” Perhaps David witnessed in his childhood that he and his play pals praised God. During David’s time, the Philistines were a constant threat to the people of Israel. We all know the famous story of a young David standing up to the Philistine giant by the name of Goliath and killing him with a sling and just one of five stones. God’s strength of victory was surely upon the young David. But David here was talking about suckling babes and infants whose mouths were usually after milk insatiably. The poet was using the literary device of exaggeration to portray the praiseworthiness of God for his superpower by even those adorable but powerless babes and infants. We get a better picture of this verse in Matthew 21:16. There on Palm Sunday, Jesus went into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, receiving praise and honor from people lining up the street (before many of them had a dramatic about face five days later). Jesus chased out money changers and vendors selling pigeons from inside the temple of God, and healed many sick people. Many young children shouted or cried out: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” The religious of the day, the chief priests and the scribes, were indignant on hearing this. They chided Jesus by saying: “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus answered them, by quoting none other than Psalm 8:2 (possibly the Septuagint version), “Yes, have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of the infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” Perhaps unbeknown to David, almost a millennium later, his prophetic poetry would be heard of its fulfillment from the lips of those children witnessing the Passion Week ministry of Jesus the Son of David. I gained a deeper appreciation of verse 2 early this year when I read a report from China. A government scholar formulating new religious policy guideline reported his observations after spending a full year traveling through much of China and doing in-depth research on the status of house churches. Despite being an atheist, he had some very favorable things to say about the underground house churches, with an outspoken concern for the secrecy forced upon them. One recount in his report etched in my memory. Showing video clips of children singing praises to God in a house church, the scholar saw a new generation with gleaming hope in those young Christian children. He described them as “beaming with sunlight”. He said tears swelled up in his eyes. Brothers and sisters, God has indeed ordained strength or praise from the lips of babes and infants, even in China where his house churches are under constant harassment and sporadic persecution. God used those children beaming with heavenly sunlight to silence God’s enemy and avenger, and even drive one atheist scholar to tears.

In verses 3 and 4, David felt a strong sense of unworthiness when he discovered the worthiness of God as displayed in the heavens, the Moon and the stars. So unworthy, David had to resort to the rhetorical refrain of synonymous parallelism to adequately express his feeling of gross inadequacy: When I look at 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, and the son of man that you care for him? Worship is the most natural response of man when man is confronted with God’s greatness evidenced by his mighty handiwork. Man can only prostrate before the Maker and feel unworthy of God’s providential care. George Smoot III, a UC Berkeley professor, won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution in understanding the cosmic microwave background radiation. In describing his team’s discovery in the early 1990’s, he likened the map of the embryonic heavens by the cosmic background explorer satellite as looking at the “fingerprint of God”. The stars we see and not see in the sky came into existence because of the handiwork of God. Now scientists can trace back in time and find the earliest fingerprint of God. Science is discovering more and more how awesome our God is! Another scientist, by the name of Francis Collins, led a group of some 3000 scientists a few years ago in deciphering the human genome, the book of life that makes human biologically human. Lately, he published a book “the language of God”. It is this instruction book with over six billion letters, jointly given by our parents, that drives both our embryonic development and everyday living. It is this language of God that literally speaks us into an embodied existence containing no less than ten to the 27th power of atoms in over 10 trillion cells of various kinds, including about 100,000 hairs on our head (yes, God has numbered them), over 200 bones that frame us to stand upright before God, 40 billion capillaries that, altogether with arteries and veins, make up nearly 100,000 miles of rivers of blood within our body (that is four times the circumference of the earth’s equator, arguably the longest river on earth!). If all of the DNA molecules in our body were stretched and stacked end to end, it would have to travel back and forth 8000 times between Moon and earth! If we only care to gaze deep into the heavens, we would find the fingerprint of God. If we only care to gaze deep into our own cells, we would find the language of God. God’s glory is splendid and resplendent, everywhere we gaze into.

David’s feeling of unworthiness before the Creator God was intensified furthermore in verses 5 to 8: Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. If the high heavens that bears the fingerprint of God proved unbearably humbling to the poet, then the fact that God created us in his own glorious image and likeness and ordained us to have dominion over his creation is simply mind-boggling, eye-opening, breath-taking, heart-throbbing, gut-wrenching, and knee-shuddering. The most unthinkable has happened: “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” Wow! Wait a minute! The majestic God of immeasurable glory and honor has created man just a little lower than heavenly beings (me·'e·lo·him), variously translated as God (as so rendered in some translations’ footnote) or angels (per Septuagint), and crowned him with glory and honor. Not only is God’s fingerprint on display in the heavens, his very image of glory and honor is being borne by man, the imago dei. When we survey the history of mankind, we see an enduring struggle in our dominion over nature, often for our selfish ends. To say that we have lived up to this lofty aspiration as God’s glorious image bearer and stewarding caretaker is simply not true to our collective experience. So was David wrong then? Absolutely not! David’s prophetic words were first and foremost fulfilled with Jesus, according to the author of the Book of Hebrew 2:6-8. Apostle Paul further predicts in 1Corithians 15:27-28 and Ephesians 1:10 the ultimate dominion over everything under Christ.

But to conclude that Psalm 8 is prophetic about Jesus only would undermine the richer meaning of this poetry, since the bible also clearly teaches that we are co-heirs with Christ (e.g., Romans 8:17). It is in Christ that we find the ultimate meaning of God’s creation and redemption. It is by Christ and for Christ that the heavens and earth were created. As part of the creation order, indeed the crowning jewel of the creation, mankind is to exhibit God’s glory and honor in all we are and all we do. Unfortunately we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In God’s mercy and grace, he sent his one and only son Jesus Christ to come into the world and redeem mankind from sin and death. Not only will we be saved from the penalty, power and presence of sin, we will be saved unto eternal life as the divine image bearers and co-heirs with Christ. The new heavens and the new earth will be our new, eternal home, wherein we shall directly gaze upon the glory of God and fulfill our caretaking stewardship. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the greatest and best news there is under heavens and on earth. Brothers and sisters, let’s learn from David a lesson of worship. David gazed into the starry night in the moment of tranquility and found God’s glory beaming through not only the Moon and stars, but the image bearers of God as caretakers of his mighty creation. Let’s pause during each of the four seasons and marvel at the changing colors and thank God for adorning our planet earth with such rich diversity of liveliness. Let me give you a few tips in case you wonder how.

In this fall season, walk in Central Park or your neighborhood, hike in Bear Mountain, pick up a fallen leave and inspect its veins, the highway that once transported the carbohydrates made by the process of photosynthesis. Some of the leftover sugars helped staining the leave reddish. Ponder on the fact that all of the foods consumed by the millions different kinds of living species in our biosphere were ultimately made by the green plants, God’s Food Inc. And give thanks to God for his generous provision year after year to humans and sparrows and fish and sheep and oxen. Amazingly, God’s Food Inc. takes an extended Sabbath break in the fall and winter every year, without causing real food shortage overall. The fall foliage is like a holiday celebration in flying colors. Go stand by the bank of Hudson and delight in the tapestry on both sides of the mountain valley. Savor the moment of tranquility. God is in the fall season. Do not miss his show.

In the winter season, light the fireplace of your heart and let it snow, let it snow. Walk in the snow country and kiss the snowflakes that gently fall on your face and lips. Taste it, the ultra pure, chilled and shapely disguised water supplied free of charge. Click to fasten your snow board or skiing board but let loose your inhibition at the top of the trail. If you dare, pick the daredevil black diamond trail and have a free fall. If not, crisscross the cross country trails at a leisure pace. If too timid, take the snow tubing and ride along with it. Regardless, recite your favorite Psalms and praise God for making mountains and opening the storehouse of snow. God is real cool and chill. Worship him for being so cool. You be cool too.

In the spring season, pay attention to the budding trees and blooming flowers. Observe their growth in slow motion. Gently touch the green buds and wipe off the morning dew. Analyze the color patterns in the flower and understand that all types of colors in varying shades and intensities are finely painted by an invisible artisan programmed internally within the book of life. Even the crayons are self manufactured, distributed and deposited with the right amount and in the right time and location. Nose up to a flower and breathe in its aromatic fragrance. Watch how a butterfly flutters and dances her way to a flower or a bum bee skillfully lands on the narrow strip of the petal, before they collect the nectar and become the unwitting facilitators for flowers’ cross fertilization. God has to be an artist par excellence. God is in the spring. Let your singing of praise and adoration to God bloom like wild flowers in your heartland.

In the summer season, check out the beaches and enjoy the giant Jacuzzi by the name of Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. Know that the whirlpool is being agitated by the joint gravitational pulls from the Moon and the Sun. If you have ever felt envious of the rich having indoor Jacuzzi within their oversized mansion, then think again while you are immersed in God’s super-sized, outdoor Jacuzzi stirred by the Moon and the Sun. And feel super special being so pampered by God. In the coolness of a summer night, count the stars in the heavens as if you numerate the blessings from God. Watch cereus blooming in the night and folding up its petals and withering in the morning, as I am fortunate to witness a few times at home in August since 2004. Our life on earth is as brief as the night-blooming cereus, yet it is deeply rooted in God’s mindfulness of us even before the foundation of the world, it is lived in the present age to know our Maker and Redeemer, and it is to be lived endlessly throughout eternity in the presence of our Maker and Redeemer. Let us echo David the psalmist’s refrain: O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!