Mark 5:24-34: Reach Out and Touch the Lord

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever experienced the reality of God?—a time when God seemed as real as someone you could see with your eyes?

If you have experienced the reality of God, you crave that sense that God is always with you and you are with him—and that he will never let you go.

This is why we read the gospels—because in the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—we meet Jesus. And it is in Jesus that we meet God.

As we read the gospels attentively, we see Jesus in our mind’s eye. We use our imagination to picture him as he touches the leper, stills the storm, gives sight to the blind, and tells the sinful woman that her sins are forgiven.

We want to walk through life with Jesus as our constant companion. We want to feel that he is there.

That is why prayer is so essential—prayer in the morning, prayer during the day, prayer in the evening—and if we awaken in the night, to pray then too.

But sometimes God seems far away. It’s distressing to feel that God has forsaken us—to feel abandoned in our troubles.

Sometimes when we feel really crummy we don’t feel close to God at all.

But sickness and trouble can also draw us closer to God.

I have a friend whose marriage has failed. She’s going through a painful and distressing divorce.

But she’s not turning away from God. She’s clinging all the more to God. She says that God is closer to her now than ever before.

It doesn’t take away the hurt, but it gives her hope.

I want to share a story with you about a woman who reached out and touched Jesus—quite literally—and what happened.

It happened in Capernaum, Jesus’s home town during much of his ministry.

Jesus was in the midst of a crowd. He was on this way to the house of a synagogue ruler who had asked his help.

Mark 5:24-34:

…And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.” And immediately the hemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, “Who touched my garments?”

And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’”

And he looked around to see who had done it.

But the woman, knowing what had been done to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.

And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

I. Jesus had become a celebrity.

A. In the chapter leading up to this one we saw Jesus in a boat during a storm. The boat was sinking, but Jesus was asleep. His disciples awoke him in terror, and Jesus awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!”

And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

Then earlier in this same chapter we saw a tormented man who dwelt naked among the tombs. He was constantly crying out and cutting himself with stones, and no one could restrain him. He was convinced that he had within him an army of demons.

But Jesus cast out the demons, and when the people came out of the town to see what had happened, they found this man sitting with Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.

Because of these mighty deeds of power Jesus had become a celebrity. A crowd surrounded him, wherever he went.

Here we see him in the midst of a great crowd of people—thronging him, jostling him.

B. But Jesus was delayed. A woman crept up through the crowd and touched him—hoping for a miracle.

This woman had a disease that was worse than death—a discharge of blood that had afflicted her constantly, day and night, for twelve years.

We need to go back to the Old Testament book of Leviticus to see why this affliction was so terrible for her.

In Leviticus 15 we read that when a woman had a vaginal discharge, she was considered “unclean.”

According to this old law, whoever touched her was unclean. Whoever touched anything she had touched was unclean. Everything on which she lay was unclean. Whoever touched her had to wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening.

Other women experienced this inconvenience each month during their periods.

But for this woman, the condition was permanent—and it had gone on for twelve years.

She couldn’t come to the synagogue or Temple to worship.

Can you imagine how lonely her life was?

Her disease had impoverished her because she had spent all her living on doctors—all the time, over the years, getting worse and worse.

Because of the loss of blood, she was always weak, always anxious.

But this poor, desperate woman had heard about Jesus, and she had come to believe that he could heal her, as he had healed so many others.

So on this day she crept up behind Jesus in the crowd and touched his garment.

She couldn’t come as others did and ask for healing. If she had owned up to her “uncleanness” the crowd would have been horrified.

She was embarrassed and afraid—but she was brave. Her faith gave her courage.

II. The woman crept up behind Jesus, reached out and touched his clothes, and her faith was rewarded with instantaneous healing. The flow of blood ceased, and she felt strength return to her body.

A. Then we read, “Jesus, perceiving that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned around and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’”

Some people think that Jesus—because he was God Incarnate—never asked an honest question.

But Jesus was not only God Incarnate; he was also completely human. He wasn’t simply God in disguise.

When Jesus felt the healing power go from him, he needed to know who had touched him with that expectant faith—and the grateful woman came forward and owned up to what she had done.

And now we come to the most important part—for us.

B. And Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you; go in peace and be healed of your disease.

I want to remind you that in Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for “healed” and “saved” and “rescued” are the same word—sōzō.

But why did he tell her that her faith had saved her? Wasn’t it God’s power that healed her?

Of course, it was. But faith was the channel through which God’s power flowed into her body and into her life.

Our faith is powerless, but faith is the hand that reaches out to accept the gift from God. When we believe, we open our life to God, and his power flows into us.

That is why, when Jesus healed people or forgave them, he often told them, “Your faith has saved you.” He wanted them to know how necessary their faith was.

Jesus wanted to make sure that the happy woman knew that it wasn’t some kind of magic in his clothes that healed her, but it was her faith in reaching out and touching him that enabled God’s power to flow into her life and heal her.

C. I like it that Jesus addressed the woman as “daughter.”

Jesus tenderly called her “Daughter” to show that she had come into a relationship with himself. She had become a member of Jesus’s circle of friends. He would always be there for her.

Perhaps she became a disciple and followed Jesus with his other women disciples until the end of his time on earth. Perhaps she went back home to rejoin her family. But I have reason to believe that her healing was not only in her body but also in her soul.

D. So Jesus told her, “Go in peace.”

Peace—Shalom in Hebrew, and Eirēnē, in Greek—was a common term for “hello” and “good bye.” But Jesus is using the term in a more serious way here.

“Peace” in the Bible has a much broader meaning than it does in English.

“Peace” in the Bible means wholeness, well-being, prosperity, spiritual and physical health—and also salvation.

The Greek could just as well be translated, “Go into peace!”

Life would forever be different for this woman, because she had met Jesus with faith, and she had been made whole.

APPLICATION

This story, like all of Jesus’ miracles, is an acted-out parable. As needy people, we need a Savior. As we touch Jesus with faith, then healing and peace and salvation flow into our lives.

Many throng the Savior but few touch him.

We can sit in church and never touch Jesus. We can read the Bible and never touch Jesus.

To reach out and touch Jesus means to know our need, to see him as our Savior, and to give ourselves to him in faith and obedience.

When we touch Jesus, life is forever different.

St. Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away. Everything has become new!”

But to reach out and touch Jesus isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Every time we pray an honest prayer from our heart, we reach out and touch the Lord.

Our prayer can be as simple as, “Help me! Help me! Help me!” or, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

But we need to be serious about God. Casual, routine prayers don’t bring God into our lives.

In Psalm 62 the psalmist writes: “Trust in the Lord at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him.”

St. Paul wrote of wrestling in prayer (Colossians 4:12).
So whenever you pray with urgency, you reach out and touch the Lord.

And every time we read the Bible and consider its meaning for us, we reach out and touch Jesus.

Every time we do a kind or generous action, motivated by love for Jesus, we reach out and touch the Lord.

Have you reached out and touched Jesus? If you have, do it again and again. Do it every day.

Stories of Jesus: Mark 5:21-43: Jesus’ Kindness to a Little Girl

How the sad story of the death of a dear daughter teaches us something about our Savior’s loving-kindness and also what death really means for a believer.

MARK 5:21-43: JESUS’ KINDNESS TO A LITTLE GIRL

INTRODUCTION

Some people, when great tragedy strikes, turn away from God. They feel that God has let them down.

Other people, when their hearts are breaking, turn toward God. They know that they have no one else to turn to.

In this reading we meet two people who were beset with tragedy in their lives: a woman who had had a terrible, weakening disease which she had borne for 12 long years. During that time she had spent all her living on doctors, hoping to be cured, but she had not grown better but only worse.

The other person we meet is a man, Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue. He and his wife had an only daughter whom they loved dearly.

She was 12 years old; she had been with them the same length of time the poor woman had had her affliction.

And now their dear daughter is dying. In his desperation he seeks Jesus out and begs him to come and help his daughter to live.

Luke tells us that the little girl is his only daughter.

Often we hear sermons about the woman with the blood disease because the application is so obvious. She came up behind Jesus, telling herself, “If I can only touch the hem of his garment, I will be made well.”

And so it happened. This story reminds us that when our souls are sick from sin and the hopelessness of life, we need only to reach out and touch Jesus by faith, we will find forgiveness and wholeness.

But today I want to talk about Jairus, his wife and their little daughter.

Read Mark 5.21-43

I. Notice the Jairus’s courage, his desperation, and his faith

A. It took great courage for this man to come to Jesus.

Poor people gathered around Jesus and followed him everywhere he went.
But the better class of people had to be careful. Jesus was criticized.
People weren’t at all sure Jesus was even a good man.
Maybe he was misleading people with his extravagant claims to be the Son of God and to be bringing God’s kingdom into the world.

B. But, like the woman, Jairus was desperate.

Some of you know how sad it is when a child dies.
It is even sadder when an only child dies.
The child was so near death that already the mourners had arrived to be ready to weep and wail and play their flutes as was the custom to help the grieving family expresss their sorrow.
In his desperate need Jairus doesn’t care what people think.
He just hopes that this man Jesus that everyone is talking about might be able to help his daughter.

C. Can you imagine how anxious Jairus was when Jesus stopped to talk to the woman who had touched him on the way?

I can just see Jairus wringing his hands, standing on one foot and then the other as he wonders how it is going at home, hoping that Jesus will hurry. But Jesus isn’t in a hurry.
Can you imagine how his heart sank when they came to him and said, “It’s too late. Don’t trouble the Master any more; your daughter is dead.”

D. The mourners

Perhaps from far off they could hear the weeping and wailing coming from the house. The custom of the time required that when a loved one died even a poor family would hire one woman mourner and two flute players. They were paid to make a lot of noise to help the family express their grief.
As ruler of the synagogue, Jairus had probably hired a large number of mourners. They wept and wailed and clapped their hands. They made a lot of noise.
This little girl must have been so near death, and death was so certain, that the weepers and wailers were ready whenever they got the word and now they were expressing their grief, as sympathetic friends gathered around to join in.
We are much more restrained nowadays in expressing our grief than they were. They know how terrible death was and let themselves express the full force of their grief.

II. Now we will turn our attention to Jesus.

A. Jesus says, “Do not fear, only believe.”

It is easy to believe when all is going well with us.
When everything is most wrong, then is when it is hardest to believe.
That’s when faith comes in. Do not fear, only believe.
In times of great trouble, Jesus wants us to keep crying out to him, trying to believe, taking hold of God and not letting him go.

One Christian woman says she has two favorite prayers:
“HelpMeHelpMeHelpMeHelpme!”
and “ThankYouThankYouThankYouThankYou.”

B. When Jesus came into the house with his three disciples, Peter and James and John, he saw all the weeping and wailing and said, “Why do you make a tumult and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.”

Now, the little girl was obviously dead.
Jesus knew that, and the mourners knew that. That’s why they laughed at Jesus.
Often to soften the sadness of death people used the word “sleep” to refer to death; sort of like when we say, “She’s passed away.”
But this time Jesus said she was “sleeping” because he knew what he was going to do.
He was going to wake her up.
Her death would be like sleep because she would be raised up to life again.

C. Notice the tenderness of Jesus

Now I want you to notice all the details of this scene because here we see the tenderness of Jesus.
He insisted on privacy. He put out everyone except the three disciples and the mother and father. Then he went in to where the child was, lying lifeless on her bed.
He took the little girl’s hand and said, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” Mark even gives us Jesus’ exact words in the language he was speaking, “Talitha cumi.”
And the little girl immediately awakened, put her feet on the floor and began to walk.
No wonder they were overcome with amazement!
When someone’s been so dreadfully sick and begins to get well, they don’t just get up and start walking.
They have to get their strength back. But when Jesus awakened her, the little girl already had her strength back.
And then Jesus said, “Now you need to give her something to eat.”

III. But what does the story mean to us?

I think this story is a sign to those who saw it and for all of us who read the story.
We treasure this story because it tells us something about what death means to a believer in Jesus.
Death is terrible, but death is temporary. It is like sleep. When someday we enter that dark valley the next thing we will know is that Jesus is taking our hand and calling our name, “Jim, arise. Margaret, arise. Frances, arise. Jane, arise.”
And we will be completely well.
This little girl in the story had to die again, just as Lazarus did, and the son of the widow at Nain had to die again.
But the event that these stories point to is a true resurrection.
We will someday rise again. We will meet Jesus. And we will eat and drink and enjoy life in God’s kingdom forever.

CONCLUSION

When John Todd, a 19th century pastor was six years old, both of his parents died.
A kind-hearted aunt raised him until he left home to study for the ministry.
Years later, this aunt became seriously ill and began to be distressed with uncertainties about death.
She wrote of her doubts to Todd, now grown up and a pastor.
Here is the reply John Todd wrote his aunt:
"It is now thirty-five years since I, as a boy of six, was left quite alone in the world.
You sent me word you would give me a home and be a kind mother to me.
I have never forgotten the day I made the long journey to your house.
I can still recall my disappointment when, instead of coming for me yourself, you sent your servant, Caesar, to fetch me.
I remember my tears and anxiety as, perched high on your horse and clinging tight to Caesar, I rode off to my new home.
Night fell before we finished the journey, and I became lonely and afraid. “Do you think she’ll go to bed before we get there?” I asked Caesar.
'Oh, no!' he said reassuringly, 'She’ll stay up for you. When we get out o’ these here woods, you’ll see her candle shinin’ in the window.'
Presently we did ride into the clearing, and there, sure enough, was your candle.
I remember you were waiting at the door, that you put your arms close about me—a tired and bewildered little boy.
You had a fire burning on the hearth, a hot supper waiting on the stove.
After supper you took me to my new room, heard me say my prayers, and then sat beside me till I fell asleep."

Some day soon God will send for me and for you, to take us to our new home.
Don’t fear the summons, the strange journey, or the messenger of death.
God can be trusted to do as much for you as you were kind enough to do for me so many years ago.
At the end of the road you will find love and a welcome waiting, and you will be safe in God’s care.
That’s the way God is.

(Another message on this text was posted 10-27-2015)

Stories of Jesus: John 3:1-16: Nicodemus Meets Jesus

Everyone knows John 3:16, but do you remember the story that goes with it?

JOHN 3:1-16: NICODEMUS MEETS JESUS

Today we will talk about one of the most famous conversations of all time.

I. Read vv1-2: Picture the scene

A. It was night time. People imagine the scene in different ways.

Some think Jesus was staying that night at Martha’s house in Bethany when Nicodemus came knocking at the door.

One picture shows Jesus and his disciples in a garden at night. Jesus is sitting among the olive trees instructing his disciples when Nicodemus comes.

I like a picture that depicts Jesus and Nicodemus sitting on the low wall that surrounds the flat roof of a Palestinian home.

Palestine is a hot, dry country. In those days houses were typically built with flat roofs and had an outside stairway leading up to the roof. People would go to the roof in the evening because it was cooler there, and they often would sleep under the stars.

Imagine Jesus sitting on that low wall in the moonlight with Nicodemus beside him. They are deep in conversation.

B. People have different explanations about why Nicodemus came to Jesus at night.

1. Some people suppose that Nicodemus was worried about his reputation and was afraid to meet Jesus during the day when people would see him.

2. I think Nicodemus came at night because during the day there would have been such a crowd around that it would be difficult to have a serious conversation, and Nicodemus had questions he wanted answered. He wanted to have Jesus to himself for a little while.

C. Nicodemus is a ruler of the Jews. I picture him as a well-dressed, dignified elderly gentleman.

1. He is courteous, respectful, and fair-minded. At a time when many of his associates among the ruling class opposed Jesus as an imposter, Nicodemus looks deeper. He sees in Jesus, a teacher come from God.

2. And so they sit down to talk, and what we have is only the gist of t he conversation. They talk on into the night about these important matters.

II. Their conversation: vv 3-4

A. Nicodemus explains to Jesus that he has seen some miracles—maybe a blind man given sight and a crippled person made to walk—and he remembers a passage in Isaiah that says that when the Messiah comes he will do these things.

So he says (v2), “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs unless God is with him.”

B. And then Jesus abruptly changes the subject (v3): “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

The Greek word translated “anew” or “again” also means "from above." What Jesus is telling Nicodemus is “Unless one is born again from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

C. Now Nicodemus is really confused. He doesn’t understand what Jesus means when he says “born anew.”

He doesn’t understand that Jesus is speaking figuratively. He says (v4), “How can a man be born when he is old?”

But Jesus means that we need a new start. We need to begin a new kind of life, with God. This is what St. Paul was saying when he wrote: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!”

D. The new birth: listen as Jesus explains—vv5-8

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.”

Jesus is leading Nicodemus to understand that there is a new kind of birth from God that gives us a new kind of life—much better than the life we already have—and one that lasts forever.

Then Jesus says something strange—vv14-15: “As Moses lifted up the servant in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

II. Jesus is referring to a story from the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament, a story that Nicodemus would have been familiar with. It is the story of the snake on a pole

A. The Israelites were in the desert. They had left Egypt and were on their way to the promised land.

They were rebellious and they were accusing Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?”

Then, we read, the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit them. They were called “fiery” serpents because their bites caused a painful inflammation. Many people died.

And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray that he take away the serpents from us.”

So Moses prayed for the people, and the Lord said to Moses: “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone when he sees it shall live.”

And Moses made the bronze serpent and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and he would live.

Not, of course, that the bronze serpent, by some kind of magic, healed anyone, but this was the way God gave them to express their faith in the one who could heal them.

The serpent represented sin and its deadly effect—but, paradoxically, the serpent also represented healing. The serpent on the pole is pictured on the American Medical Association logo and you also see it on ambulances.

B. So also the cross of Christ represented sin and its deadly effect—but it also symbolizes life, the eternal life Jesus won by giving himself for us.

Jesus is telling Nicodemus that, like the bronze serpent, he will be lifted up—he will be lifted up on a cross. And those who look to him in faith will have eternal life.

Jesus is God’s appointed way to eternal life, and he can be the way to eternal life because he was raised up on the cross. When he died there, he paid the penalty for our sins.

Can you remember John 3:16? Let’s repeat it together.

CONCLUSION: There’s a reason why our parents and Sunday school teachers thought it was so important that we know this Bible verse.

A. They asked us to learn this verse because it tells us what we need to know. It sums up our faith.

It tells us that God loves you—and me—and everyone else that he has made.

It tells us that God loves you and me so much that he gave his Son, Jesus, so that we might live for ever.

It tells us that eternal life is free if we will only believe that Jesus is God’s gift to the world.

B. But what does it mean to “believe in Jesus”?

To believe in Jesus is to look to Jesus for our salvation, just as the Israelites looked at the bronze serpent and trusted God for healing.

To believe in Jesus is to welcome him into my life as my constant companion.

To believe in Jesus means to bring all my fears, all my cares, all my hopes to him and trust that he will do for me what is best.

To believe in Jesus means to come to Jesus trusting him as my Savior and obeying him as my Lord.

C. God calls you and me to come to Jesus, and we answer: “Jesus, I come…I come…”

(You can go to Google Images and find pictures or Nicodemus. You can also find the logo of the serpent on the pole that you see on ambulances.)

The Glory of God: Psalm 8: Thinking of God Magnificently

Through the ages, people have looked into the night sky and seen in the glorious display of stars the majesty of God—and their own insignificance. But in Psalm 8 the psalmist sees something more.

PSALM 8: THINKING OF GOD MAGNIFICENTLY

Introduction

When I was a child the sky was much darker than it is now because there weren’t many electric lights then. We could really see the stars.
I slept on the sleeping porch during the summers and I could look up into the dark sky and see the bright stars blazing there. I could see the Milky Way as a bright band across the sky.
When we studied the stars in school I learned that what I saw as the Milky Way was the rim of our galaxy. All of the stars are in galaxies, each one having at least 100 billion stars. There are at least 10 billion galaxies.
With powerful telescopes astronomers can see stars that are 100 quintillion miles away from our earth—that’s 100 with 18 zeroes after it. And we don’t know how many stars that we can’t see even with the powerful telescopes.

A famous astronomer was once lecturing on the infinite greatness of the universe compared to our tiny earth. When he finished his lecture, a woman came to him and asked: “If our earth is so little, and the universe so great, can we believe that God actually pays attention to us?”
The astronomer replied, “That depends, Madam, entirely on how big a God you believe in.”

In the psalm I am going to read, the poet looks up into the night sky and marvels at the grandeur of the universe God has made. Then he considers himself and his fellow mortals and marvels that the God who made this vast universe cares so much about human beings.

He could see only a few thousand stars, and he had no knowledge of galaxies and all the rest. But he saw enough to make him gasp in wonder.

Read Psalm 8

I. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth…”

“How majestic is thy name…” God’s name is his reputation, that part of his nature that he reveals to us. When we praise his “name” we praise him for all that we know of him—his love, his power, his wisdom, and his goodness.

I read in an old book a conversation between a wise father and his son. The father is teaching his son what is important in life. He says, “First of all, my child, worship and adore God. Think of him magnificently.”

This psalm will help us to think of God magnificently.

B. He says that God’s glory is “…above the heavens.”

The beauty of the stars tells the psalmist that God is majestic. Though this poet didn’t know as much about science as we do, he was better at seeing how nature reveals the glory of God.

C. Then the poet drops from the grandeur of the heavens to the babble of children. He says that the praise of mere children is powerful to silence the enemies of God.

We can take this in two ways. We can take it as referring to actual children and infants, or we can take it to refer to mean lowly believers. I take it both ways.

Little children, if they look in wonder at creation and praise God, can do something that even the sun and moon and stars can’t do. They can acknowledge the greatness of the creator. Sometimes children praise God in wonderful ways.

A mother tells about one day when she spent an afternoon engrossed in a piece of sewing.
The waste basket near her sewing machine was filled with scraps of fabric she had cut away from her project.
Her daughter Annika was fascinated with the basket of discards. Her mother noticed that Annica was rooting through the scraps, searching out the long bright strips. When Annica had enough strips collected, she went off.
Finally, the mother took a moment to check on her, she found Annika in the garden sitting on the grass with a long pole. She was fastening the scraps to the top of the pole with great sticky wads of tape.
“I’m making a banner for a procession,” she said. “I need a procession so that God will come down and dance with us.”
And with that she solemnly lifted her banner to flutter in the wind and slowly she began to dance.
That little girl was praising God. She was enhancing God’s reputation. She was helping God put to flight the forces of darkness in the universe.
(This story came from Gertrud Mueller Nelson's book "To Dance with God.")

But we can also take the phrase “Thy glory is chanted by the mouth of babes and infants” in another way. We ordinary believers could also be referred to as “children and infants” when we consider the vastness of the universe, the greatness of God, and our insignificance.

Aren’t we all really babbling infants as we try to praise a God we can’t begin to understand?

And yet God is glorified by our praise because we are reasoning creatures and our praises come from our hearts. Jesus was talking about ordinary people when he said,

“I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea Father, for such was thy gracious will.”

II. The psalmist goes on,

“When I look at the heavens, the work of your hands,
what is man that thou art mindful of him,
and the son of man that thou dost care for him?”

A. Some translations say, “When I consider the heavens…“ We can look at something without really seeing it. The poet not only looked at the stars, he considered them. He learned something from what he saw.

A pastor told his son: “If you have only 3 minutes to give to Bible reading in the morning, give 1 minute to reading and 2 minutes to thinking of what you read.” So it is with the book of Nature. The Bible speaks to us, and nature speaks to us, only when we consider what they are telling us.

And when he considers the immensity and grandeur of the universe, he is filled with wonder that God cares about mere mortals, such as himself.

One might suppose that with the universe so huge and human beings so small, God would hardly notice us, but the truth, the psalmist knows, is the opposite.
The gap between human beings is unimaginably great, yet the gap between human beings and the rest of creation is even greater, because we are only a little lower than the God, or, as other versions have it “a little lower than the heavenly beings.”
We are crowned with glory and honor. We are crowned with glory and honor because we are made in the image of God. We have reason, we can create things, and we can love God. No other creature can do those things.

III. Then:
“Yet thou hast made him little less than God,
and dost crown him with glory and honor.
Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the sea.”

A. God has given to his little human beings the rule of his creation.

The psalmist mentions the animals, which human beings have tamed and used as their helpers, and for clothing and for food.
But animals are just one example: human beings also can use plants for food, and fuel, and lumber. They can use the minerals in the earth’s crust: the metals, the oil, the gems, the stones. They fly through the air in airplanes and pass over the sea in ships.

B. Human domination over nature filled our psalmist with wonder and praise, but we live in a different time.

We see cropland as overgrazed and ruined. We see water and air that have been often made poisonous. We know that we are quickly using up the resources of the earth. Human activity has driven some animals and plants to extinction.

We think about how different our world would be if humans had used God’s earth as God intended it to be used.
Something has gone wrong with God’s plan for his earth and the people he has put into the earth.

IV. And that is where we have to go to the New Testament to find the happy ending to the story.

A. In Hebrews 2.5-9 the writer quotes this psalm—and then he says that it is really Jesus Christ who perfectly fulfills the psalm.

Listen. Here is the way the psalm is quoted in the book of Hebrews:

“What is man that thou art mindful of him,
or the son of man, that thou carest for him?
Thou didst make him for a little while lower than the angels,
thou hast crowned him with glory and honor,
putting everything in subjection under his feet.”

And then the author of Hebrews adds,

“Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one.”

B. God’s purpose for all men and women has been fulfilled in one man, Jesus Christ.

Jesus is man—as man ought to be—the proper lord of creation.
And we, who are united to Christ and as his sisters and brothers, will someday take our proper place with him as the lords of creation.
One more thing to notice: “We see Jesus… crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one.”

This shows us that the glory and honor that God has crowned his humans with in Psalm 8 isn’t success and self-importance but service and self-sacrifice.
Jesus was a suffering servant, and we also are servants of God and of creation.

CONCLUSION

So now we come to the end, and what do we hear? The poet ends just as he began…“Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!”

Everything the poet wrote in his hymn of praise is framed by these words: “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!”

The psalm isn’t really about the grandeur of Nature or about the dignity of human beings; the psalm is about our majestic God, who is proclaimed glorious by both Nature and also by his human creatures.

“Worship and adore God! Think of him magnificently.”