How Majestic Is Your Name

David's Skyward Gaze: A Song About the Excellence of God's Name 1:22

“O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth, who have set Your glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger.”

— Psalm 8:1-2 (NKJV)

That's what David did often, and that's what David does in today's psalm. See, David was caught up with all the things God was doing, absolutely, but David did something that sometimes we don't. He would regularly, in his psalms, just drop everything, and it's almost like his gaze just went skyward, and he looks at the stars and the moons, all these different things, and just says, oh my goodness, how amazing this God is.

He considers the handiwork of God. And that focuses him back to God. And he thinks about the nature and the excellence of God. And then he writes a song about it.

That's what Psalm 8 is. It's a song about the wondrous nature of God. It's a song, not so much about all the millions of things that God might have done, but about the excellence of the name and He who holds it. And so twice in today's text, that's going to be the focus.

At the very first verse and the very last verse, he's going to say this. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name. Now, what makes God's name so excellent? Well, that's what we're going to find out.

If you would, again, follow along with me. We're going to go back to Psalm 8. I'm going to read verses 1 and 2 and then work our way through it. Verse 1.

O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth. You have set Your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants, You have ordained strength because of your enemies, that he may silence the enemy and the avenger. You know, there's an old rhetorical question.

It goes like this. What's in a name? You've heard that phrase before. Well, when it comes to the name of God, if you were to ask what's in a name, the answer is quite a bit.

Quite a bit.

The Tetragrammaton: The Backstory of the Divine Name 2:57

Now let me give you a little back story about the name of God. The Old Testament. What language was the Old Testament written in? Hebrew.

So the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. Something, though, that we might not remember that when Hebrew was originally transcribed, the ancient Hebrew, it did not have vowels. Ancient Hebrew didn't have vowels. It only had consonants.

Now, without vowels, it's pretty hard to pronounce anything, you would think. Well, God's name in the original ancient Hebrew manuscripts, it only had consonants. Y-H-W-H. Sometimes this is referred to by linguists as the tetragrammaton.

The tetragrammaton. Try saying that 10 times fast. That's what you referred to when you're talking about the four letters that make up God's name of which none are vowels. Now how then are these four consonants supposed to be pronounced?

Well that's when things have gotten tricky. Y-H-W-H. A lot of times folks have tried to pronounce that as Yahweh. You've heard of that.

Others the translation comes out as Jehovah. But here's the thing. No one is absolutely sure how it was pronounced back in the day. Do you know why?

Do you know why that's the case? Because in about the fifth century before Jesus, something happened. The Jews of this time, they looked back at the third commandment, that you shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. And they determined that in order to really cherish that commandment, it was better not to say the name at all.

In order to avoid taking it in vain, you just wouldn't say it. And so they didn't. And across the centuries, people lost touch with how it was supposed to be pronounced, which is why there is to this day confusion about that.

Why Scripture Emphasizes the Name of God 4:32

So with that said, now if they couldn't say the name God, if the Hebrews from the 5th century forward, if they couldn't say the name God, what word, what name did they tend to substitute in its place? For the Hebrews, there was a couple of variations. The most dominant one, the most dominant thing that they substituted was Adonai.

In Greek translations, in Greek translations, the word Kyrios is used. And Kyrios means Lord, which is why if you open up your English translations, including today's text, the word YHWH is translated into English as Lord. And you might notice in the New King James, it's all capitalized L-O-R-D. Now, regardless of the word's etymology, it's clear this — the name is supposed to be unique.

And that's why people didn't say it. That's why it has given this special resonance in Psalm 8 and elsewhere, where the psalmist just steps back and says, Oh Lord, how majestic is Your name? There's something unique and powerful and significant about the very name of God. Now let me ask you, are there any other passages that come to mind that invoke or suggest the importance of the name of God?

Well, if you were to think of the Lord's Prayer, start in your mind to think how the Lord's Prayer goes, first handful of words. Well, it starts this way. So it's, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be what? Thy name.

Hallowed be thy name. There's other memorable passages that refer to God's name as well. If you were to go to the Great Commission, Matthew 28, the Great Commission, the sending of the disciples out to the nation, the sending that the world would be changed, it said this, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

We could go on a lot longer than we have time for. With that said, why repeatedly, time and time and time again, does Scripture in the Old Testament and in the New Testament emphasize the name of God.

God's Name and His Identity Are Intertwined 6:23

Why is it such a big deal? Well, here's the thing. Unlike you and I, God's name and His identity are absolutely intertwined. Let me give you a simple example of that.

If you had a cat and you call that cat a dog, if you have a cat and you call that cat a dog, you're confusing the nature of the cat. You're confusing the characteristics of what it is to be a cat. If you had a king and a janitor and you call the king the janitor, you're misapplying and misinterpreting the very words that you're using in a way that perverts your understanding of the one you're talking about.

In the same way, God's nature and His name are intertwined, and if you misapply or misinterpret the one, then you're going to denigrate the other. And that's why so many people don't use the name. That's why the Hebrews didn't use it to this day, because of a fear of denigrating the name and the person behind that name, or the God behind that name.

Now, that does not mean that you can't use the name of God. The third commandment does not say, speak it. It says, don't take it in vain. And that is a difference.

The name of God can be utilized, but it is to be used wisely. And King David begins Psalm 8 by invoking God's name in a way that is consistent with His nature as one who is excellent.

Considering the Heavens: The Work of God's Fingers 7:32

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor.”

— Psalm 8:3-5 (NKJV)

All right, let's look at verses 3 through 5. When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon, the stars, which You have ordained, what then is man that You're mindful of him, and the son of man that You would visit him? If You've made him a little lower than angels, You've crowned him with glory and honor.

You know, there are a lot of advantages for you and I living in a technological age. I'm grateful, as I imagine you are, for some of the advances in technology. We have wonderful medical science and practitioners. We've got great dentistry.

I even try to explain to my kids what dentistry was like when I was a kid. And I'm not the oldest person in this room, but I tried to point back and talk to my kids about what dentistry was like, and I tried to explain headgear. And if you remember headgear, so much has improved over the years since.

Technology is a wonderful thing. We have airplanes, we have vehicles. We live in the South. We have this wonderful thing called air conditioning.

There's all manner of technology that is wonderful for us. But if you were to go back to David's time, of course, they had none of that. None of that. Now, that had a lot of different effects, but one of the effects was this.

When David went out at night, if he went out in the courtyard, he went out of the tent, he went out of the palace, if he went out in the desert, if he went in any number of places, there was no LED lights, there was no light bulbs, there was no light pollution, as they like to call it.

There was nothing that took away from the grandeur of the sky above. When David looked up, he had the advantage of looking up and seeing the million dots of light, seeing the stars above him staring back at him. He saw these things with a clarity that it would be wonderful to have. Now, if you're laying on your back in the desert and you're looking up and you're seeing all the millions of dots of light and you see the moon above and the light reflecting off of that and you see all the other lights of the cosmos itself, as you do this and you see the celestial ballet, so to speak, playing out before you, the inclination that you might have, the inclination that David had was to be awestruck by that.

The Handiwork of God Points to the God Who Made It 9:26

Sometimes we just fail to look up and realize how amazing the universe around us is and how much more amazing the God who made it all is. David was not an astrophysicist. He didn't have a telescope, but he knew as he looked out at the canvas of creation that the God who made all these things was something special, was someone special, was amazing and excellent and worthy of His praise and His contemplation.

See, David looked at God's handiwork, and that brought David's focus to God Himself. David looked at the breadcrumbs, the divine breadcrumbs gathered around him and the world of his day, and that focused his attention to the divine baker. He began to contemplate and think about God, and so that's what he does at the start of these verses.

He's thinking about God — how wonderful You must be, how excellent You are. When I see the work Thy hands have made, when I see all that You have done, it tells me You're amazing.

The Doctrine of Man: What Is Man That You Are Mindful of Him? 10:22

With that said, in verse 4, he stops to ask the million-dollar question. He says this, he says, as amazing as You are and as grand and supreme and majestic as You are, what in the world is man that You should think upon him? What is man that You're mindful of him and the son of man that You would visit him?

Against the backdrop of the created realm, against the backdrop of all that he saw, if he looked out across the waters, if he looked up at the night sky, against the backdrop of all these things, even though he was a king, he felt insignificant by comparison. If you ever want that sensation, here's one idea.

Go rent a kayak and just head out into the Gulf a ways. You get to 100 yards, you get 1,000 yards, you get however far out there, just sit there in your kayak as the waves throw you up and down, looking how far away the beach is, looking up at the sky and the clouds.

And in that moment, I guarantee you, you will feel insignificant. The scope of creation, just in the ocean around us, let alone the canvas of all that He has made — if we're introspective in the least, it should cause us to say, like David, who am I in the midst of all of this that You should care a lick about me?

And yet You do. We should marvel on the one hand that God's attentive to us, that He honestly cares about us. We should think, what about me is worthy of being called a son or daughter, is worthy of Your attention, is worthy of being called a temple.

Adopted as Sons: God's Care for His Children 11:46

The short answer is, really, there's nothing. And yet you've done it. David rejoiced to know that he was not alone, that in the midst of all these things he was special in the eyes of God. If you've ever had a self-esteem problem, remember this: the God of all creation, if you're His child, treats you as a child, as a son or as a daughter — not as a peon, not as a speck of cosmic dust, but as one who He invites into His household to be part of His divine family.

This is unique. And David, when he thought about that, when he meditated about these things, it seized his attention. The God of all creation would treat him in such a way. Now, he isn't the only one.

How Great Thou Art: A Smaller View of Self, a Larger View of God 12:19

There's been people throughout the centuries who have just stopped and marveled. Do you know what the most popular hymn ever written is? Amazing Grace. Does anyone know what number two is?

How Great Thou Art. How Great Thou Art. Well, How Great Thou Art is based on Psalm 8, based on the very text we're looking at today. And it starts with these lines.

It says this, O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands hath made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed, then sings my soul. Oh, I better stop. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, how great Thou art, how great Thou art.

If you take a minute and shed off the veneer of narcissism that clings to us all, if you take a minute and consider all the worlds Thy hands hath made, all that God has done, it will inevitably lead you to have a smaller view of you and to have a larger view of Him.

If you think of all the worlds Thy hands hath made.

Dominion Over Creation: Man Made in the Image of God 13:28

“You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen—even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas.”

— Psalm 8:6-8 (NKJV)

Let's look at verses 6 through 8 now. Verse 6, You have made him, he's talking about man again, You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands. You put all things under his feet, all the sheep and the oxen and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the sea.

Verses 6 through 8, they remind us of two helpful things. First of all, it's a brief reminder of the scope of creation. One minute he was talking about the stars above, and then he just looks around. He says, you made all the rest of this too.

He made the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish that swim in the oceans. So these verses here, they talk about the scope of God's creation. Secondly, though, they remind us that among all those other things, you and I are unique. Jesus Christ did not climb upon a cross in order to die for a fish, but He did for you and I. We are unique among all those creatures.

We alone have been made in God's image, and we alone have the privilege of being God's stewards and having dominion over the world around us. With that said, let's consider the scope of creation for a moment. You know, as a man in his mid-twenties, I've seen a lot of things. For example, I've lived all over the country.

And every type of topography, I've lived in a lot of different places. So I've seen all manner of different creatures. My previous pastorate was in Atlanta, in Georgia. And before that, we had been in Wyoming.

Now when we came down to Georgia, we went shopping in a Target one day. And we found that, generally speaking, when you come to the south, when you come down to the south, there's a lot of things. There's the humidity, of course. But there's also a lot of bugs, a lot of bugs.

Well, we went to Target one day, and standing guard at the door of the Target was the largest bug I've ever seen. It was something called a Hercules beetle, a Hercules beetle. If you've ever seen it, you know why it's called a Hercules beetle. We went in a whole different set of doors because this thing was impressive.

The Infinite Creativity of God in the Created Realm 15:15

I've seen a lot of different interesting creatures just by virtue of having lived in a lot of different places. Well, this past week, my family were watching this clip of this underwater creature that, honestly, I had no idea that such a thing ever existed. I didn't think even such a thing could exist.

If you'd drawn a picture of the creature I saw and said, this is a real thing, I would have treated it like a unicorn. I would have said, nah, that can't be real. You made this up. Specifically, here's what we saw.

We saw a video, something called a feathered starfish. A feathered starfish. Now, what is a feathered starfish? You might ask.

Well, that's what I asked. Well, in this video, we saw that what it is, as it was swimming, is a swimming mass of feathers, or at least feather-like things. It was as if you had plucked a bird of all of its longest, most beautiful feathers, attached them to a starfish, and then set it swimming in the ocean with all these feathers spinning and spinning as this thing moved itself around.

If you ever want to see the clip of exactly what I saw, what I'm talking about, you can find it on YouTube. The title is this: Rare moment, feather star is caught swimming. Now, when I saw this thing, I was like, that can't be real. No way.

It was colorful and majestic. And there was seriously feathers on this starfish floating all over the place. Whatever you thought a starfish was, this was not what I thought a starfish was. It looked like it was out of a science fiction book.

But in reality, it was one of many reminders to me that the created realm contains far more creatures than I could possibly recognize, name, or encounter. Our God, if you stand back and just look at the creative realm around us, just look at the things we can see, our God is incredibly, infinitely creative.

If you doubt that, go to the aquarium. Now most of us will never get a chance to encounter even a small percentage of all the things that His hands have made. You know Moses? Moses lived a long time.

Moses lived a long time. Moses never saw a polar bear. Moses never saw a polar bear. He certainly never counted the rings of Saturn or the like.

Moses never saw a magnolia tree. I know, I looked this up. Moses never saw a magnolia tree. They weren't there.

Something we see all the time, take for granted, Moses never saw. Moses never ate a chocolate bar. Moses never had a hot shower. Moses lived a long, long time, but he was just scratching the surface of the created realm.

So whether you're talking about Moses or about you and I, we've only come into contact with a tiny fraction of what God has made in the created realm or what is possible in the created realm. We've just scratched the surface of all the marvels that the creative infinite mind of God can ordain and create.

And that's to say nothing about what awaits. We've encountered hardly anything of that which is here, let alone in the heaven above. The God who formed you has more surprises in store on the other side of the glory than you could possibly count or appreciate. And when David thought about that stuff, when he looked around and was just amazed and astonished, that's why he says this.

Oh, Lord, how majestic is Your name. Oh, Lord, how excellent is Your holy name. All right, now presuming that you're at least modestly impressed with the scope of the created realm, assuming that you're at least modestly impressed with the things that God has made around you, let me add this thought. How cool is it that God has made all that, and then He's put people like you and me in charge of it?

How exciting is that? Aren't you glad that you're in charge of your cat and not the other way around? I know I am.

Stewardship: Man as a Glorified Valet Over Creation 18:52

I know my cat. In verse 6, we see we've been given dominion of the created realm. God put us in charge of this place. Now, that dominion comes with certain responsibilities, certain privileges, and there's other passages that speak to those.

We're not going to attempt to cover all of them here. However, the fact that God has given us dominion over creation — there's really no good anecdote for this. If you think of a valet, you give the valet your car keys, and for a moment he gets the opportunity to drive the car, and yet the valet never forgets it's not his car.

He must show good stewardship over that which has been given to him. Well, in this psalm, King David had been given responsibility for far more than a car. He had been given responsibility as a king over this particular kingdom. And there was no man on earth at that time that was more powerful than him.

But that didn't mean that he could just go strolling through the gardens and exalt his own name. Instead, King David realized that he was a steward. He was a glorified valet who had been given a responsibility for something precious. And his job was to take care of it during the season that God had appointed.

And he took that responsibility seriously. And when he failed in those responsibilities, it weighed upon him. And if you doubt that it weighed upon him, read Psalm 51. David was a sinner, and when he messed up, he didn't just shrug and go, well, better luck next time.

It weighed upon him. If you have a high view of God, it will distress you when you let Him down.

Repetition and Emphasis: How Excellent Is Your Name 20:20

To a high view of God, it will distress you when you do that which He has not told you to do all right let's look to wrap up with a look at our final verse now verse 9. Verse 9 is a familiar verse. It says this, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth.

You know, the Hebrew way of emphasizing a particular point or statement was always to repeat it. If you see that God is holy, holy, holy, that's an example of taking one thing and giving it great emphasis through repetition. You and I in text messages, you know, we might put something in all caps.

We might put eight exclamation marks or a bunch of emojis or what have you. Well, they didn't have emojis and exclamation marks, so what they did was they repeated things for significance. Well, here, the author repeats the exact same thing he said in verse 1, he repeats in verse 9. And that would suggest to us, based on the repetition, that he thought it was really important.

The excellence, the majesty of God's holy name. I wonder, if you were to go home this afternoon, let's say you go home and you're sitting on the couch. You hear a knock at the front door and because it's already been a long day, you don't want to get up. So you shout out, you say, who is it?

Now you could have any number of responses. I mean, it could be the Maytag man or the vacuum repairman or something like that. Now, if that's the case, if it's the vacuum salesman or the encyclopedia salesman or whatever, you might not even get up. At the name Bob, the vacuum salesman, you might not even respond.

You might dim the lights and pretend you're not even home. But what if Brad Pitt knocked on your door? What would be your answer? Let me try something different.

Brett Favre, Archie Manning, am I getting close? Let's say that someone of great significance comes knocking on your door. If Brad Pitt or Archie Manning or Brett Favre or someone should knock at your door, you might trip over yourself trying to go and greet them. I guarantee you if we publicized to our community that Brad Pitt would be greeting people in the parking lot after church, we would be full this day.

However, the irony, the irony is that when we come to church, we're meeting with someone that is far better. We come into this house to meet with God Himself. Today, we will literally be blessed through an encounter with God through the sacrament. This is far better than Brad Pitt.

This is far better than anything we could come up with. There's no celebrity on this planet that is more important, more valuable, and better to come in contact with than the God of all creation, who we are meeting this day in His own house.

Humble Faith: He Must Increase, I Must Decrease 22:49

This is a great privilege, great opportunity, great responsibility. Now, King David in his own age was a celebrity, so to speak. If you went knocking on doors and someone said, the king is here, I guarantee you they all ran to the door to open it up. David was important in his day.

But as we've seen in Psalm 8, David knew that as important as he might be, that he served one who was far, far greater, and whose name was far more worthy than his. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a culture where all our celebrities and influencers and the like understood this? Healthy faith is always going to be a humble faith.

If you remember John the Baptist, John the Baptist was a pretty well renowned individual in his day, and yet what did he say? What did he say specifically about Jesus? he said this. he said, Jesus, He must increase, and I, I, John, I must decrease. He must increase, I must decrease. If only our celebrities and influencers had a similar understanding.

If only our own evangelical leaders understood this as well. If only they understood that there's no platform that you should aspire to that has you at its center. David had every earthly right to point to his own majesty and his own glory, and yet he did not. He routinely, routinely pointed to the glory and majesty of God alone.

You and I, today going forward, we should be like David in this regard, like John in this regard, one whose faith makes us humble. We should all have one name on our lips, and it shouldn't be ours. We should have one name on our lips. It shouldn't be our own.

We should all be able to say or to sing these same words from Psalm 8, O Lord, how majestic is Your name over all the earth. Let's pray.