Psalm 8 | The Glory of God In Man - Psalms: The Heartbeat of God

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

Turn in your Bibles to Psalm 8.

And what I want to talk about this morning from Psalm 8 is the glory of God in man.

And when I use the word man, I mean human beings, man and woman.

That God has given us and poured into us his glory.

And Psalm 8 is a beautiful psalm about this.

And what David is doing, and I loved what Ryan did with Psalm 19 last week, was he showed the glory of God in creation.

And it's almost like you could take Psalm 19 and juxtapose Psalm 8 right next to it.

Because what it is, is it's kind of a progression of Psalm 19.

We don't know when he wrote these, but it could be that they were similar in time frame.

But Psalm 19 focuses a lot on the creation.

But Psalm 8 gives us a glimpse of that, but then he moves into God's greatest creation.

The magnum opus of God is human beings.

That is the magnum opus.

That is the great poem of God is men and women created in the image of God.

So look at verse 1.

O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth, who have set your glory above the heavens.

Now jump to verse 3.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained.

Indeed, Thomas DuBay, I would encourage, for you that are studiers, probably for you that are light readers, this would not be a book for you to read.

It's a kind of a tome, but I think it's a magisterial work on beauty.

It's called The Evidential Power of Beauty, and you've heard me reference it before, The Evidential Power of Beauty by Thomas Dubay.

He says, Every person is drawn to beauty.

End quote.

I love that.

Every person is drawn to beauty.

So I can promise you that as a man, we're drawn to beauty differently than women are, but all of us are drawn to beauty.

And we can recognize it.

It's very rare that something that everyone notices as beautiful, that there's anyone that wouldn't say that that's beautiful.

So there's something within us that agrees on something, and that is what beauty is.

And it may be, and there's some that are intellectually, I believe, deeper than others, that evidence beauty in different ways that we don't, that is awesome and it's greater and it's deeper than than I would have.

Like I'm sure that my neighbor, Bob, who's my neighbor on my road where we live, who is a saxophonist, and he he was a principal of a high school.

He's been in band, he taught band, he's retired now.

But you'll hear him playing his saxophone at 11 o'clock at night.

It goes through the woods and it comes through.

And it's beautiful, okay?

But he, I'll bet you, Bob, Bob Dunn is his name, Bob, when he hears a violin, when he hears a saxophone, when he hears a trumpet, he has a greater understanding of beauty than I would.

But I still recognize the beauty of it.

And so levels are different.

But beauty coming forth from God's creation is not just in the created order, but it's also in the order that we create by being created in the image of God.

Isn't that interesting that God didn't give us instruments, but he gave us a mind and he gave us a heart, and so instruments were developed by man.

And in that instrumentation, there was a longing for beauty.

You know, when you study the Civil War, when you study the Revolutionary War, when you study any war in history, even World War I and World War II, there was always someone in the battalion, there was always someone in the company who could play some kind of an instrument.

And the men would gather on the battlefield at night to listen to music being played because there's a longing for beauty.

There's a longing within us for the beauty of God.

And Ryan mentioned last week the our elk camp.

We call it the Roosevelt Elk Hunting Camp that we do every year.

I've been doing it now for 20 years.

And I don't know how much longer I can do it.

But anyway, I've been doing it.

And what happens there is that we always have one of those nights, because we don't know if it's going to be snowy or not, where it is just the evidential beauty of the stars.

And you heard Ryan explain that last week.

Some of the situations we found are saying we're just, we saw the entire Milky Way.

It was just stunning.

And one of the things that I love with my sons, we always look forward to this, is that opening day when we get out there, it's about 4:30 in the morning.

Usually it's clear, and we see shooting stars.

We see shooting stars until the light starts to pierce through.

The beauty of that, the glory of God that's in that is amazing.

Beauty packs power.

Beauty packs power.

Whether it is seen on a landscape or experience in solidly grounded truth.

So when you hear truth spoken, there's beauty in that.

So it's not just in what we see, it's also what we hear.

So I love soundtracks.

I love movie soundtracks.

So any given Monday, which is my study day, I'm usually outside in the backyard.

We have this one huge bush.

I'm tucked up under there to protect me from the sun if it's a hot day.

I'm out by the fire pit if it's a cold day.

But that my office is actually our backyard.

I mean, I've got an office, but I hardly ever use it when it's nice outside.

So I'm in there and I've always got a soundtrack on.

Because I love movie soundtracks.

I love the beauty of the orchestration and the instrumentation that comes from that.

That beauty there.

Well, what's going on?

What's going on is Genesis 1.

Genesis 1.

Let me just, you don't have to turn there, it'll come up on the screen.

But let me just read Genesis 1, 1 and 1 and 2.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was without form and void.

Now in the Hebrew, the word could be also translated, it was chaotic.

It was chaotic.

And darkness was on the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

It continues.

Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

And God saw the light and it was good.

And God divided the light from the darkness.

God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, so the evening and the morning of the first day.

Verse 6.

Then God said, Let there be firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Thus God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.

Talking about the heavens here.

A canopy over the earth.

And it was so.

And God called the firmament heaven, so the evening and the morning of the second day.

Now here's, I don't want to go through all of the creation account, but let me just make this point.

This is the reason I read that.

Here's what God does, church.

God unscrambles eggs.

God takes disorder, chaos, and he brings order.

God always brings order.

If you've got a disorderly life, if you've got a chaotic life, that in most cases is not from God unless it's from God for you to now seek God.

Like I say on Tuesday mornings when we've been talking about dancing with chaos and leadership of Moses, that chaos being created in a culture, a society, a family, a marriage, or whatever, is an indication that there's a need for leadership there.

In other words, in other words, chaos is preemptive to need leaders.

You don't need leaders until you have chaos.

When you have chaos, the leader comes in.

What does he do, though?

What the leader does is he brings order.

He brings order with this chaos because that's God's way.

It's always God's way.

God's way is always to take chaos and bring order.

And so when you are in your life, in areas of your life where there's a ton of chaos, you need God in there.

You need to bring God and his word into the chaos and let him start to bring order.

So God's way of beauty is always orderliness.

When you go out, like we were, we were up on a hike, we were on a couple hikes this week, Liz and I, and there's still some wallflowers left.

And if you picked, which we don't, but if you did pick a wildflower, we like to take pictures of them, you see order to the flower.

You see order to the trees.

There's order.

Wherever there is order, God is somehow there.

God, in some mystical or direct way, God always brings order, and order is beauty.

And it is evidential to anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear that there is a God.

So this is what Romans 1, we're gonna go into Romans in a few weeks.

We're gonna open up with Romans soon.

I've been reading it and rereading it and outlining it over the last few months.

Romans 1, 19 through 20.

What may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and God has, so that they are without excuse.

In other words, there's no excuse for not believing in God.

And then in Romans 1, what we're gonna study is that the only way you cannot believe in God is by a choice you make to restrain yourself against the beauty that you actually see.

And I've got some unbelievable quotes by Richard Dawkins and others like him, who would be classified as the new atheist.

That it's obvious by what he says that he has made a choice.

There's some kind of a wound in that man's life.

There's some kind of a shame wound in that man's life that he can't see.

And we know it's demonic, but he can't see the beauty that's before him.

Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman said, quote, you can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity.

Biochemist Lewis Thomas experienced the power of beauty when he discovered that every species of animal on the paleontological strata is perfect according to its kind.

New discoveries in the early stages of the formation of human beings in a mother's womb have pointed to the perfection of God's design.

The unmatched beauty of the lives of the saints in history.

Leave us with the understanding of the beauty of men and women who have lived their lives well.

So now look at verse 2.

Sandwich between verses 1 and 3, we have verse 2.

Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants.

This is crazy.

He's talking about creation.

And then he says, This out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants, you have ordained strength.

Now, some of your Bibles say you have ordained praise.

It can be translated as strength or praise because of your enemies that you may silence the enemy and the avenger.

Listen to this.

God's highest creation at its most potent point is a baby.

See?

Hear that?

God has ordained strength through the cries of a child, through a nursing baby.

Doesn't that tell you something?

Do you realize how much power you have as human beings against the enemy?

Do you realize how much anointing is upon you from God that He would say to us that a baby silences the enemy?

A child that doesn't even know much of anything except a longing for food, when they cry, it somehow, in a mystical way, some mysterious way, silences demons.

Why would David say that?

Why would David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, say that?

Because I think it's a reminder to us of how much power we have even as we mature in Christ.

That child can't make a confession, that child can't make a declaration, that child is created in the image of God, now lost from that image in its fullness because of sin, yet still has the stamp of the order and the symmetry and the beauty of God.

Why is it that our courts and those on the left want to destroy babies?

They don't even know in most cases how demonized their efforts are.

And that's why the greatest decision of the 21st century and the 20th century is Roe v.

Wade being taken down by our Supreme Court.

Because it does open up the way.

It actually creates a scenario in the states for the states to decide what they're going to do rather than being told what to do.

And so it's actually going to be quite a debatable issue in the days ahead, even among different parties and stuff.

So the enemy of silence, my babies, Satan hates children.

And all through history, child sacrifice has been the main way in which Satan has worked, even in Israel.

So now, take verse 2.

Now, with that as a starting point, look at verse 3 through 5.

When I consider your heavens and the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, so as I look out and I see incredible creation, stars, solar system, what is man?

So he takes that beauty, now points it down to man.

What is man that you are mindful of him?

So why would you be so it seems like on the surface, church, that God who created the planets, who created the beauty of our solar system and the Milky Way and the trees and the badgers and the deer and the elk and all these, and you know, you catch a trout and the beauty of a trout.

What is man?

What makes us so special compared to that?

What is man that you're mindful of him?

And the son of man that you visit him.

You have made him a little lower, seemingly lower than even the angels, and you, but this is the part that's mind-boggling.

You have crowned him or her with glory and honor.

That's kabod.

That's one of the most powerful Hebrew words in the Hebrew language.

Kabod, the glory of God is upon men.

The glory of God is upon human beings.

The glory of God is upon that baby.

The glory of God grows and is restored when we receive Christ.

So, in one sense, every person is created in the image of God and there's a beauty about them because there's something of the essence and the character of God on that human being.

But it's marred.

It's marred, it's been stolen away.

And then when you receive Christ, and if you haven't received Christ, this is a challenge to you this morning.

The glory of God returns.

What you lost, that you never had, can be regained by the grace of God coming into your life by you opening up your heart to the glory of God made known through Jesus Christ.

So Christ comes into our life and he begins to restore the glory.

Now listen, when God's restoring the glory, he's restoring order into your chaos.

He unscrambles your eggs.

And some of you have had mental problems, and some of you have had emotional problems.

Some of you are addicted to stuff.

And if you'll let the glory of God start to take over, he will take your chaos and he'll bring order.

That's what he does.

That's the job description of God in every marriage, in every human being, and in every child, and every person that opens themselves up to him.

And we have our stories of how God's done that.

And so this is God's way.

Every believer carries the glory of God with them.

This word kebod is so important.

Kabod is the most significant word in the Hebrew language, it means weight and figuratively denotes splendor, abundance, honor, or glory.

It can also mean fame, reputation, strength, and dignity.

So we talk about, so when C.S.

Lewis wrote the weight of glory, he was it was a play on words, the weight of glory.

So the best way to describe glory is it's a weight.

It's like a, it can be used as a weight.

It's like someone who has weight.

You say, well, that guy's got a, he's got a lot of weight in politics.

He has a lot of weight in the company, meaning there's there's uh an equity and a reputation that follows that person.

There's weight on it.

That's that's a beautiful way of describing figuratively what glory is.

There's a weight upon you that you carry with you wherever you go.

And to the extent that you know that is the extent which God gives you confidence in him to know that you can take territory away from the enemy.

So that's why in Romans 3.23 it says, for all have sinned and fall short of what?

The kabo, the Greek, the glory of God.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

So, so maturity, church, is restoring glory that's yours.

It's rightfully yours.

You have it.

If Jesus Christ lives in your life through the power of the Holy Spirit working within you, you've accepted Christ, you've by faith, you've given your heart to Christ, the glory of God is within you.

This is greater glory than the stars in the heavens.

This is greater glory than uh a wildflower.

It's a it's greater glory than a whale, it's a greater glory than seals, it's a greater glory than a beautiful, majestic bull moose.

It is a glory upon you like nothing else in all of creation.

You are the magnum opus of God.

That's why we treat people well, Christian or non-Christian.

We honor people, we show dignity to people.

That doesn't mean we don't have a spirited debate and call something what it is is an untruth.

But even in the midst of that, we as a church should be a people that love all people, whatever our differences might be.

He continues, verse 6 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, the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas.

Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth.

Man is the magnum opus of God.

Now I want you to turn to Genesis 1.

So turn in your Bibles to Genesis 1, verse 26.

Genesis 1:26

Genesis 1.26.

This is the greatest description of our purpose and our destiny here on earth as men and women.

And you understand, I pray that Adam, where we get the word Adam, in the sense here means men and women.

Genesis 1.26.

And I want to talk about four quick things, and then we'll finish out here.

Four quick things.

Okay, number one.

Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish.

So if you have a pen or you can highlight, I want you to highlight or underline, make man in our image.

Make man our image.

Make man in our image.

The Latin is Imagio Dehi.

Imagio dehi.

You're an image, you're a God image carrier.

According to our likeness, our likeness.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were in creation.

There was already a family.

There was already God, God creates family.

It's intuitive to who he is.

Let them have dominion.

Underline, have dominion.

First, God's image.

Second, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created, verse 27, man and man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him.

That's what I mean.

Adam, meaning male and female, male and female, he created them.

So underline male and female.

Talk about going against the cultural narrative right now.

Male and female, there's two genders.

Everybody say there's two genders.

And anybody who tells you difference, that's a falsehood.

Because the reality is God ordered things from the beginning, male and female, he created them.

We need each other.

Verse 28.

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply.

Underline that.

Be fruitful and multiply.

Four things.

Fill the earth to subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, every living thing that moves in the earth.

So David is directly quoting this passage in Psalm 8.

So first thing is, we are made, let me say it this way: we are made like God.

Number one, we are made like God in his image, in his likeness, we have a soul, we have a conscience.

We are a Magio Dehi, the image bearers of God.

I love my dogs.

My labs are great labs.

But if they throw up in the house on the carpet, which is not uncommon, because of something they ate, because we have people at our house and they'll they're on the move, man.

Those dogs, they're always hunting.

And they're not always hunting birds, which is what I trained them to do.

They hunt little kids.

And they're always behind a little kid because they know there's something on that plate that's gonna fall off.

And so they move in and they eat stuff, right?

They're labs, they eat anything.

And then they throw up.

And then you see them throw up, and my dogs are pretty good.

They'll go to the door, which is a hardwood floor at the door by design, and they'll throw up there.

And then I reprimand them and they go out and then we clean it up.

They have no conscience.

It doesn't seem to, I mean, they seem a little sad for a moment because you say some, you know, some things to them, and then they're just wagging their tail and fine five minutes later.

Right?

Image bearers, though, have a conscience.

It's a big difference between creation and God's highest creation is that we do have a conscience, we have a soul.

Ephesians 2.10, for by grace you've been saved through faith, not of yourself.

It is a gift of God, not a result of works that no one should boast.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Workmanship, Greek, poema, where we get the word poem.

You are a poem of God.

You are God's workmanship.

You're a poem with specialized gifting and talent that God sovereignly placed in each one of you that's unique just to you.

We reflect the nature and the character of God like no other created thing.

And so every person has unique worth and dignity.

No matter one's ethnic background, color of their skin, socioeconomic status, everyone has dignity before God.

We're all created in the image of God.

And for the Jesus follower, it is a restored image.

We've been restored to the glory of God by receiving Christ.

Number two, we've been made to have dominion, to have dominion.

Dominion, authority is within you.

You have the dominion, authority of God.

Listen, folks, to walk into any chaos, and through humility and the power of the Holy Spirit, you can start to bring order to that chaos.

Nobody else can do that.

My dogs come and they come into order and they create chaos.

But but people, godly people, spirit-filled people, we we walk into a situation and we hear bickering and we see fire and we see anger and we see depression.

And as a Jesus walk, I say, God, what are you doing here?

There's chaos here.

How do I bring order?

We we bring dominion, we bring the dominion of God into that place with love and with kindness and care.

But first we have to have dominion over our own hearts.

I mean, that's what the whole heart advance is.

The wholeheart advance is about learning to be wholehearted.

It's about you men having dominion over your own heart in your own life.

Romans 6.

For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we should also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

Knowing this that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

No longer be slaves of sin.

For he who has died has been freed from sin.

It continues, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you're not under law but under grace.

So you now have, listen, as a Jesus follower, you have the kabo, the glory of God, you can conquer sin wherein you did not have power to do that before.

Romans 8 continues.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Now listen to this.

For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, men and women, you are created to have dominion over your life.

You do not have to keep acquiescing to that addiction.

You can conquer anger in your life if you get serious about it by asking the Holy Spirit to do it through you.

Then, thirdly, God has made us masculine and feminine.

God has made us masculine and feminine, and you can tell whether it's a man or a woman when the child is born.

Can you believe I have to even say that?

But man and woman not to compete, but to complement.

So all the studies show, I'm talking about science.

Science.

All the studies show, there's none that show differently, that men, by and large, not 100%, but by and large, like 88% of men tend to think about things, and women, about the same percentage, think about people.

It's the way we're wired.

And I you show me a woman who is an awesome entrepreneur, and I'll tell you, when we're in the room talking, she's gonna be talking about her nieces, her nephews, and her kids.

And you show me a guy, even if he's a stay-home dad, when he gets together, he starts talking about guns and cars and stuff.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

God wired us differently.

And so Liz is a compliment to me, and I'm a compliment to her.

There's a wholeness that comes with complementarianism as God designed it.

Let me give you a definition.

Complimentary is not complementary with an I, but complementary, which means this something that completes or makes perfect either of two parts or things needed to complete the whole counterpart.

So every on every issue, Liz and I are like yin and yang.

It's, I mean, it's hardly ever that we agree initially on anything.

And God just made us different, complement.

We complement each other.

So God made us male and female to be complimentary, and then lastly, to be fruitful and multiply.

So if we if we walk in a complimentary lifestyle, and for you that are single, that are that are in that singleness, God's gonna put people in your life that complement you.

You don't have to be married to be whole.

Don't hear me say that.

I'm saying that those that are called to be married are made whole through the complementarianism of the relationship, but those that are called to be single, there's other complementary relationships that God will give you.

But it's to be fruitful and multiply.

Men and women are called to be fruitful and multiply.

So Jesus tells a story of a landowner who gave his servants talents.

You remember the story.

There were five talents, there was two talents, there was one talent.

And he goes away and he comes back, and the person with the five talents multiplied it, doubled the fruit of that.

The one with two talents doubled the fruit of that.

Here's what he says to them The master returned and said to them, Well done, good and faithful servant, you are faithful over a few things.

I will make you ruler over many things.

Enter into the joy of your Lord.

Matthew 25, 21.

Jesus said in John 15, 5, He would abide in me, and I in them bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.

So here's the reality.

The reality, folks, is that God has called us as the magnum opus of God to be fruitful and multiply.

We're called male and female.

We learn to love each other.

We work together.

We complement each other.

In the process of that, there is a dominion-taking aspect, even to worship that we're going to do with Brian right now.

When Brian leads us into worship, there's dominion actually being taken in the spiritual realm around you.

That's why we worship together.

That's why those who tend to not have a church, they say they're Christians, but they kind of do their own thing and they're isolated from the body of Christ, are missing out on so much.

Because there is a supernatural nature to the complementation, not just male and female, but also brothers and sisters in Christ.

We need each other.

We're a community.

When we worship, you're taking dominion.

Thank you for listening to the Born for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.