Crowned with Glory and Honor

“O LORD, our LORD, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

This well-known declaration of God’s excellence forms the bookends of Psalm 8, which is both a hymn of praise and a creation psalm penned by King David over 3000 years ago. With Psalm 8 both beginning and ending the same way, everything in-between serves the purpose of describing the majesty and excellency of our great God. The Psalmist’ description of God’ majesty begins with a word about God’s glory.

Set your glory high above the heavens

After declaring the majesty of God’s name in all the earth, the Psalmist declared that God’s glory is set above the heavens themselves! He was saying that God is so far greater than all the heavenly bodies which at that point 3000 years ago consisted of the sun, the moon, and all the stars. Today we know that there are nebulas and galaxies and black holes and a seemingly infinite number of stars!

Did you know that astronomers believe there to be at least 2 trillion galaxies the observable Universe? And did you further know that they also believe there to be about 100 million stars on average in each galaxy? That puts the number of stars in the Universe at about 100 quintillion (1020)). But then again, what can we really know about a seemingly infinite universe? And yet, God is infinitely superior to everything in the universe; His glory is high above the heavens!

From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise

God is so awesome in His glory, according to the Psalmist in verse 2, that He doesn’t even want the praise of strong people or self-proclaimed experts. Instead, out of the mouth of babies God has ordained praise and has silenced all those who would come against Him.

Unlike other gods of mythology, the one true God of the Universe does not need His ego bolstered by the affirmation of strong leaders and nations nor is His strength is dependent on the praise He receives. He is so awesome in and of himself that He takes pleasure in using the most weak and vulnerable to shame and overcome His enemies. As one commentator put it, “The sound of opposition is silenced by the babbling and chatter of children!” (Expositor’s bible Commentary: Psalms, page 139). God’s use of the weak serves to proclaim to the world how mighty He is over all those who would think themselves strong (1 Cor. 1:27-29)

The heavens are the work of your fingers

God is so mighty that He is pictured in verse 3 as having created the universe with His fingertips and set all the heavenly bodies in their specific place. That means each star and planet and moon were formed with intricate care and purpose and placed exactly where God wanted them to be. Consider this: the largest star ever discovered (Stevenson 2-18) is 10 billion times the size of our sun which in turn is 1 million times the size of earth. To put that in perspective, the size difference between an atom and the entire earth is about the same difference between the earth and the largest star. (Atom = 6.23x10-7 cubic meters, Earth = 1.8x1015 cubic meters, Stevenson 2-18 = 1.4x1039 cubit meters …approximately). Things so absolutely tiny and enormous were formed from the same fingertips of our mighty God. GOD IS MIGHY ABOVE ALL CREATION!!

And yet, as the creator of incomprehensibly enormous stars and heavenly bodies that number over 200 billion trillion, God is mindful of mankind and cares for him.

What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

The Psalmist, and hopefully us now too, recognized the vast grandeur of the heavens and was absolutely blown away that God has chosen to make His thoughts dwell primarily on us and our adventures and misadventures here on little ‘ole Planet Earth. But not only does God think about us but He cares deeply for us above the sum total of the rest of His creation! When considering the whole of creation, God is concerned most for our welfare and wellbeing. And this is rightly so because it was only mankind that God created in His own image after His own likeness. The creation of the entire universe and the entire world and all the plants and animals was done as an opening act leading to the main event: the creation of man.

You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor

Humanity was created a little lower than the angels and heavenly beings in that we were bound to physical form and limited in our power and yet, the Psalmist said at the end of verse 5 that we were crowned with glory and honor. Not only were we crowned with glory and honor, but we still are!

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.

God has given us humans the unique glory of not only being created in His image as I’ve mentioned, but as we read in verses 6-8, we have also been given dominion and authority over all the works of God’s hands. We were told through Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28 to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the earth and subdue it, having been given dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth. Everything that has the breath of life has been entrusted to us by God. Humanity has been given the task of governing God’s creation as His flesh and bone representatives to the physical world.

This glory of being God’s specially designed governing representatives over His creation is more than enough reason to throw up our hand and lift our hearts to praise and worship Him! O LORD our LORD, how majestic is your name in all the earth!!!

And yet, we know something isn’t quite right.

Corrupt Governors

As the specially designed governors of God’s glorious creation and as people He has so specifically given His attention and love, how have we repaid Him? With entitlement and discontentment. As we learn from Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God, we weren’t content with the glory given to us but instead were jealous for the glory God has reserved for Himself. We were tempted with the thought of becoming like God and so in our lust for more, we damaged what glory we did have and failed to obtain what we didn’t have. Sin distorted God’s image in us and we became tyrannical rulers over the earth. Because of our sin, creation itself was corrupted and groans and longs even now for renewal (Romans 8:22). All over the world people abuse one another, they abuse animals, and they abuse the earth itself. Why? All for the sake of pleasure and comfort. Sin has made people inherently selfish and self-centered and by nature we think only of ourselves.

This sinfulness of humanity to abuse life for the pleasure of self almost caused God to completely destroy everything and start over (Noah and the flood). But instead of destroying the whole earth and eliminating humanity, God chose to redeem. And He did so through a man named Jesus.

The Redemption of Humanity

Jesus is the incarnate Son of God. He is the second person of the Trinity who was made a little lower than the heavenly beings by becoming a flesh and blood man, born of virgin, Mary who miraculously conceived through the Holy Spirit. Jesus then is both 100% God and 100% man: the God-man. Because of His full humanity and being made in the image of God, Jesus became crowned with the same glory and honor as the rest of us; Jesus became a participant with us as a governor over physical creation.

But Jesus did something none of us have ever done or will ever do…He lived a life of perfect obedience, obedience that led Him to a cross where He was crucified to pay the price for our sin. Jesus, the perfect man, took the sins of His fellow men and women and offered Himself to God the Father so that He would be punished instead of us. Jesus’s willing sacrifice was accepted by God and when He rose from the dead on the third day after His death, He, the perfect man, was given all authority in heaven and earth (Matt. 28.18, Philippians 2:8-11, Hebrews 1:3) All heavenly and earthly authority and dominion was given to the man Jesus. In summary, Jesus is the image of perfect humanity described in Psalm 8.

As the perfect human being, Jesus is who we fail to be and He did what we fail to do.

But even more than that, Jesus is the image of what we human beings may yet become through faith in Him.

If a person recognizes their sinfulness before God and accepts God’s free gift of forgiveness and eternal life through faith in Jesus, that person begins a spiritual transformation. This transformation is made by the power of the Holy Spirit as one chooses to deny his sinful nature and desires. See, It’s God’s divine and eternal plan to create for Himself a redeemed humanity who will properly govern the works of His hands for all eternity. Each person who denies themself and follows Jesus by faith is counted among the number of those who are redeemed and will be transformed completely when the man Jesus returns as the eternal King of those men women and children who have followed His example.

When that last day comes, and when the redeemed are given their glorified bodies, the redeemed will all become like Jesus in His glorified Humanity. Our God-given glory will be restored as we share in Jesus’ authority not only over the earth but our authority will also extend over heaven! We will govern creation for the rest of eternity, but according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:3, we will also judge and govern all the angels and spiritual beings created by God (1 Cor. 6:3). Therefore, the coming of Jesus will see humanity perfectly redeemed and restored to our designed glory as rulers over God’s creation.

However, we will never be as great or greater than Jesus because as the God-man, Jesus also retains for Himself the glory and authority that belongs only to God and so He will forever be our Divine and Glorious King who will perfectly rule over redeemed humanity for all eternity!

Because of God’s promise and active work to redeem humanity through Jesus the Christ, what else can we say but “O LORD our LORD, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”