Majestic
Notes
Transcript
Yahweh, our Lord
Yahweh, our Lord
When Lisa & I got married in 1986, I was 22 years old & I had never seen the ocean in person. We decided on a honeymoon of 3 nights and 4 days in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where I was able to experience the incredible beauty and terrifying power of the ocean for the first time. We had an ocean front hotel suite, so I was able to go out on the balcony any time of the day and see the beauty of God’s creation like I had never experienced before. We have returned to that stretch of beach a number of times over the years. We enjoy spending time among the palms during our vacations, whether that is in Myrtle Beach or further south in Florida or in exotic places like Hawaii or the Dominican Republic. People tend to be drawn to the places where the palms grow - sometimes that is in the Summer, and sometimes it is in the Winter for a getaway from the cold and snow of the North. We love to spend time in the palms.
This Summer, we are going to spend time in the Psalms. I planned several months ago to kickoff this Summer series this morning, and although we are in Newcomerstown, Ohio to dedicate our grandson, Niam, I still wanted to introduce this series and kick it off. So, welcome to a Summer in the Psalms!
1 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.
2 Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?
5 You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
LORD, our Lord
In most of our English translations, these two different Hebrew words are translated with the word Lord. The first word is the word Yahweh, the name that God told Moses from the burning bush when Moses asked who he should say had sent him back to Egypt. The second word is the word elohim, which is sometimes shortened to el. It was used as the word that signified anything that people worshipped as a god. The only hint that we have that there is any difference between the two words is that the first word is all capital letters. The NRSV tries to capture that these are different words by using LORD, our sovereign. Perhaps it would be even better to say, O Yahweh, our God.
Majestic
The very word brings up pictures in our minds of incredible places and sights that we have seen. Perhaps in your mind it is the beauty and awesome power of the ocean like I mentioned earlier. Perhaps it is the beauty and awesomeness of the mountains, or the beauty and power of a raging river. Whatever picture comes to your mind, I am sure that it is strong and beautiful.
Among humans, we save this word for use of describing royalty. The celebration last weekend of Queen Elizabeth’s 70 years of reign over England was a majestic celebration. We even use a form of the word to refer to royalty when people address a king or queen as “your majesty.”
The word is especially appropriate to describe the name of our God! For many, the very name of God is considered so sovereign that it is not pronounced out loud. That is why most of our English translations translate the name by the world LORD in all capital letters. It is also why there has been some confusion as to how the name is actually pronounced. It has been transliterated into English as Yahweh, or Jehovah. In Hebrew, it is just four letters, as they did not have letters for the vowels. in German, those four letters are JHVH. The J in German is pronounced like our Y in English, and the V is pronounced like our W in English. So, the transliteration from Hebrew would be Yahweh, rather than Jehovah. That may be more than you wanted to know about the transliteration of the name, but David makes it clear that the name of our Lord is majestic over every other name in all the earth!
Glory
“You have set your glory in the heavens.” One of my favorite things to do when I am away from the city and the lights that obscure the night sky is to go outside under the canopy of the stars on a clear night. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Arizona for a Work & Witness trip at the Sun Valley Indian School. There is an outdoor amphitheater there that is away from the buildings, and the land is flat in all directions. You can see for miles and miles and miles - so on a clear night, the stars are brighter than anywhere I have ever experienced them.
There is a sense of smallness that we experience when we stand under the stars and think about the incredible majesty of the heavens. The beauty and majesty of the heavens help to put into perspective who we are and how great our God is that He would care about each one of us.
David captures this in verse 4, where he says, “what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that your care for them?” It is beyond our ability to comprehend that this God who created the universe and has put it all in order also cares for you and for me. He cares about the things that concern us - that very thought alone ought to blow our mind!
Created by God
In verse 5, David says that this sovereign God has created us a little lower than God. I am not sure why the NIV translates the word elohim in verse 5 as the angels. The word is the same word that is translated as lord in verse 1. Elohim implies that our creator God has made humans to be a little lower than God!
He has crowned us, David says, with glory and honor. Human beings are the pinnacle of created beings on Earth. And He has given great authority to us as responsible caregivers to His creation. I wish that I could say that we have always done well with this responsibility, but that would be a lie! Perhaps a better translation would be that He has given us dominion over all things.
Dominion
Dominion implies responsibility, not just lording it over God’s creation.
He has created it all, and He has given us responsibility to care for it all. We often ask God to intervene in the problems that we see all around us, but maybe He will intervene through us!
Matthew West wrote and performed a song a few years ago that tries to capture this idea. The song says:
I woke up this morning
Saw a world full of trouble now, thought
How'd we ever get so far down, and
How's it ever gonna turn around
So I turned my eyes to Heaven
I thought, "God, why don't You do something?"
Well, I just couldn't bear the thought of
People living in poverty
Children sold into slavery
The thought disgusted me
So, I shook my fist at Heaven
Said, "God, why don't You do something?"
He said, "I did, yeah, I created you" (now listen)
If not us, then who
If not me and you
Right now, it's time for us to do something, yeah
If not now, then when
Will we see an end
To all this pain
Oh, it's not enough to do nothing
It's time for us to do something
I'm so tired of talking about
How we are God's hands and feet
But it's easier to say than to be
Live like angels of apathy who tell ourselves
It's alright, "somebody else will do something"
Well, I don't know about you
But I'm sick and tired of life with no desire
I don't want a flame, I want a fire and
I wanna be the one who stands up and says
"I'm gonna do something"
If not us, then who
If not me and you
Right now, it's time for us to do something, yes it is, come on
If not now, then when
Will we see an end
To all this pain
Oh oh, it's not enough to do nothing
It's time for us to do something
We are the salt of the earth
We are a city on a hill
We're never gonna change the world
By standing still
No, we won't stand still
No, we won't stand still
No, we won't stand still
No
If not us, then who
If not me and you
Right now
It's time for us to do something
If not now, then when
Will we see an end
To all this pain
It's not enough to do nothing
It's time for us to do something
It's time for us to do something
It's time for us to do something
Yes, we have a responsibility to leave our world a better place than we found it, because our God has granted us authority and with it the responsibility. This kind of ties in to the series of messages we just completed over the past 6 weeks, that we are to pray as if everything depends on God and then work as if everything depends on us.
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Thank you for being here this morning! We miss being there in person with you this morning - you are loved!
Let’s pray.