Psalms 8
1O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
The believing heart is ravished with what it sees, but God only knows the glory of God.
Note the fact that even the heavens cannot contain his glory, it is set above the heavens, since it is and ever must be too great for the creature to express.
2Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou might still the enemy and the avenger.
How often will children tell us of a God whom we have forgotten!
Did not the children cry “Hosannah!” in the temple, when proud Pharisees were silent and contemptuous? What a contrast between the glory above the heavens, and the mouths of babes and sucklings! Yet by both the name of God is made excellent.
3When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
4What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
At the close of that excellent little manual entitled “The Solar System,” written by Dr. Dick:–A survey of the solar system has a tendency to moderate the pride of man and to promote humility. Pride is one of the distinguishing characteristics of puny man, and has been one of the chief causes of all the contentions, wars, devastations, systems of slavery, and ambitious projects which have desolated and demoralized our sinful world. Yet there is no disposition more incongruous to the character and circumstances of man. Perhaps there are no rational beings throughout the universe among whom pride would appear more unseemly or incompatible than in man, considering the situation in which he is placed. He is exposed to numerous degradations and calamities, to the rage of storms and tempests, the devastations of earthquakes and volcanoes, the fury of whirlwinds, and the tempestuous billows of the ocean, to the ravages of the sword, famine, pestilence, and numerous diseases; and at length he must sink into the grave, and his body must become the companion of worms! The most dignified and haughty of the sons of men are liable to these and similar degradations as well as the meanest of the human family. Yet, in such circumstances, man–that puny worm of the dust, whose knowledge is so limited, and whose follies are so numerous and glaring–has the effrontery to strut in all the haughtiness of pride, and to glory in his shame. When other arguments and motives produce little effect on certain minds, no considerations seem likely to have a more powerful tendency to counteract this deplorable propensity in human beings, than those which are borrowed from the objects connected with astronomy. They show us what an insignificant being– what a mere atom, indeed, man appears amidst the immensity of creation! Though he is an object of the paternal care and mercy of the Most High, yet he is but as a grain of sand to the whole earth, when compared to the countless myriads of beings that people the amplitudes of creation. What is the whole of this globe on which we dwell compared with the solar system, which contains a mass of matter ten thousand times greater? What is it in comparison of the hundred millions of suns and worlds which by the telescope have been descried throughout the starry regions? What, then, is a kingdom, a province, or a baronial territory, of which we are as proud as if we were the lords of the universe and for which we engage in so much devastation and carnage? What are they, when set in competition with the glories of the sky? Could we take our station on the lofty pinnacles of heaven, and look down on this scarcely distinguishable speck of earth, we should be ready to exclaim with Seneca, “Is it to this little spot that the great designs and vast desires of men are confined? Is it for this there is so much disturbance of nations, so much carnage, and so many ruinous wars? Oh, the folly of deceived men, to imagine great kingdoms in the compass of an atom, to raise armies to decide a point of earth with the sword!”
5For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
6Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:
7All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
8The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
These verses may set forth man’s position among the creatures before he fell; but apostle Paul bringeth it in to prove and to convince the Hebrews, to whom he wrote, that that Psalm was meant of Christ, of that man whom they expected to be the Messiah, the Man Christ Jesus, in the Lord Jesus this was accomplished, for he was made a little lower than the angels by the suffering of death. Man in Eden had the full command of all creatures, and they came before him to receive their names as an act of homage to him as the viceregent of God to them.
“All things under his feet,” and quoted by the apostle in Ephesians 1:22–therefore it is proper–was not meant of man in innocency, but of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ; and therefore, answerably, that the world there is not this world, but a world on purpose made for this Messiah, as the other was for Adam. Why? Because in the first verse he saith, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength.” There were no babes in the time of Adam’s innocency, he fell before there were any. Secondly, he addeth, “That thou might still the enemy and the avenger;” the devil that is, for he shewed himself the enemy there, to be a manslayer from the beginning. God would use man to still him; alas! He overcame Adam presently. It must be meant of another therefore, one that is able to still this enemy and avenger. it is indeed to prove that man fallen cannot be meant in Psalm 8. Why? Because, all things at least, subject unto him; you have not any one man, or the whole race of man, to whom all things have been subject; the creatures are sometimes injurious to him. We do not see him, that is, the nature of man in general considered. Take all the monarchs in the world, they never conquered the whole world; there was never any one man that was a sinner that had all subject to him. “But we see Jesus,” that Man, “crowned with glory and honour.” So now it remaineth, then, that it is only Christ, God-man, that is meant in Psalm 8.
A full list is given of the subjugated creatures, to show that all the dominion lost by sin is restored in Christ Jesus. Let none of us permit the possession of any earthly creature to be a snare to us, but let us remember that we are to reign over them, and not to allow them to reign over us. Every dish of fish and fowl that come to our table, is an instance of this dominion man has over the works of God’s hands, and it is a reason of our subjection to God, and to his dominion over us. The souls of the faithful, lowly and harmless, are the sheep of his pasture; those who, like oxen, are strong to labour in the church, and who, expounding the Word of Life, tread out the corn for the nourishment of the people, own him for their kind and beneficent Master; nay, tempers fierce and intractable as the beasts of the desert, are yet subject to his will; spirits of the angelic kind, that, like the birds of the air, traverse freely the superior region, move at his command; and those evil ones whose habitation is in the deep abyss, even to the great leviathan himself, all are put under the feet of King Messiah.
While the father and master know their place, and keep their distance, so long children and servants will keep theirs by being dutiful and officious; but when they forget this, the father grows fond of the one, and the master too familiar with the other, then they begin to lose their authority and the others to grow saucy and under no command; bid them go, and it may be they will not stir; set them a task, and they will bid you do it yourself. Truly, thus it fares with the Christian; all the creatures are his servants, and so long as he keeps his heart at a holy distance from them, and maintains his lordship over them, not laying them to his bosom, which God hath put “under his feet,” all is well; he marches to the duties of God’s worship in a goodly order. He can be private with God, and these not be bold to crowd in to disturb him.
It is not that we have everything under our feet but we are SUBJECT to HIM who has everything under His feet. Again, we are the imperfect mirror. So long as we subject to Him and maintain this ‘holy distance’ with ‘all creatures’ ‘these will not crowd in to disturb us’
9O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
