Towering Yet Tender God

Questions This Sermon Answers:

1. What is Psalm 8 about?

Psalm 8 is a psalm of David that moves from the majesty of God revealed in creation to the surprising dignity God grants to frail man. Looking up at "the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars" (Psalm 8:3), David asks why so great a God would be mindful of so small a creature. The psalm answers that the towering Creator stoops in tenderness, crowning man "with glory and honor" (Psalm 8:5) and giving him dominion. Dr. Holt frames it as the towering yet tender Creator who has formed us and holds us in His hands.

2. Who wrote Psalm 8, and what is its setting?

Psalm 8 was written by David, the shepherd-king of Israel who had faced Goliath and the armies of the nations. Dr. Holt pictures David on his palace rooftop at night, gazing at the canvas God has painted in the sky. Verses 1 and 9 bookend the psalm with the same refrain, "O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth." From a man who had seen great enemies, it is a confession that none of them compare to the God who made them.

3. What does "what is man that You are mindful of him" mean?

In Psalm 8:4 David, a famous king, speaks of himself as if he were nothing before God. Having considered the heavens, he is overwhelmed that the transcendent Creator would so much as speak a word to him, let alone reach down to raise him up. Dr. Holt draws out two precepts here: the doctrine of God, who is majestic and transcendent over all He made, and the doctrine of man, who against that backdrop is nothing. It is the question Psalm 8 exists to answer.

4. Why does the Bible put such emphasis on size and scale?

Dr. Holt observes that size runs through Scripture and that even small increments make men quiver. Goliath was big, yet against the scale of the mountains and the universe he was only a couple of feet taller than the average Israelite — a fraction of a fraction. At Jericho Israel feared the great wall, and against the Philistines, Midianites, and Pharaoh at the Red Sea they measured their strength against their adversary's. The point is to drive us past human comparisons to the God who is infinitely greater than all of them.

5. Why does God let His people face enemies too strong for them?

Again and again God let Israel seem the smaller, even shrinking Gideon's army to three hundred against a host (Judges 7), so that when the small conquered the great, the glory would go to God and not to man. As Dr. Holt puts it, God regularly lets us face what we cannot overcome so that we look skyward and say, "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name." If you could conquer all your problems, you would be your own god and would have no need of Him.

6. How great is God compared to the nations and their armies?

David had seen Goliath and great armies, but how impressive are any of them compared with the God who made them? Isaiah 40:15 declares, "Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket, and are counted as the small dust on the scales." Dr. Holt says that to charge God's holy hill with every army, warhead, and sword would be like a gnat pounding its head against a mountain of granite. God is not greater by ten feet but infinitely greater, which is exactly why the dignity He gives man is so astonishing.

7. What is the significance of God's name in Psalm 8?

Twice the psalm exclaims, "How excellent is Your name in all the earth" (Psalm 8:1, 9). Dr. Holt explains that our names are interchangeable and convey nothing — there is no such thing as "Bob-ness" — but Adonai, Jehovah, and Yahweh convey, because embedded in the name is the nature of the One who bears it. To praise His name is to praise His nature, and to denigrate it is to denigrate His nature, which is why taking His name in vain is sin (Exodus 20:7). The name represents who He is in power, nature, and might.

8. What did David conclude when he considered the stars?

Where modern light pollution might let you see only a hundred stars, astrophysicists say David, against true blackness, would have seen forty to forty-five thousand — more than he could count in a night. From that canvas David drew two conclusions: that what is designed must have a Designer, for they are "the work of Your fingers" and stars "which You have ordained" (Psalm 8:3), and that this Creator is far greater than he. As Dr. Holt notes, the first thing a seminary professor wrote on the board was, "There is a God. You are not Him."

9. What does it mean that man is made in the image of God?

The imago Dei means that we share aspects of God's nature. Some attributes are incommunicable — we will never be infinite, omnipresent, or omniscient — but others are communicable, such as creativity. Dr. Holt calls God the cosmic Bob Ross, whose canvas scopes everything, and says God made us creative too, planting in our hearts a desire to apply our hands and skills to the canvas He has given us. We are also called to be loving, patient, and kind, reflecting capacities God gave to no animal.

10. How does Psalm 8 hold together God's greatness and His tenderness?

Dr. Holt insists the point is not only God's size but His substance: a bowling ball overcomes a soccer ball of the same size because of what it is made of, and so God's very nature, not merely His magnitude, is superior to ours. Yet within the created order He has put man at the top, crowned with glory and given dominion (Psalm 8:6). Contrasting proud Nebuchadnezzar, who praised his own name, with David, who praised his God, Holt closes that this towering God still condescends to care for you — the God whose fingers paint the stars will one day wipe away your tears.