A Song of Wonder

Well, as Australians, we love our country, don't we? I think we're pretty proud of our country. We love all the space that we have, the expanse of water that surrounds us off the coast down here. Is it that way? I don't know which way the coast is here.

I got it. There you go. Even the isolation of the bush is an amazing place for us, I think. We love it. As a family, my family, we did a couple of outback trips a few years ago, driving thousands of kilometres out in the middle of nowhere.

And at first, you drive for days and days, and you think it's all the same. But then you'd start to notice all the subtle differences in between all the scenery and even the beauty of a really harsh landscape. One of my favourite places was the Devil's Marbles. The Devil's Marbles. It's one of my favourite places.

It's out in the middle of nowhere. It's about halfway between Alice Springs and Katherine, and it's just on the side of a highway. You could drive right past it. But on the side of the highway are hundreds of stones, hundreds of them. Well, there's hundreds of these stones anyway, and they're just stacked on top of each other.

And the sun hits them in the morning and the evening and just lights them up. These are my photos. I took them myself. And you can go in the signs at the car park and read about and hear about the thousands of years of wind that's eroded this slab of stone into these beautiful stacked monoliths. And you walk around for an hour until the sun sets, and you sit in your chair back at camp in the dark, and the whole sky lights up.

The whole sky lights up. There's no clouds to block the stars. There are no city lights, and you look up and see something marvellous. You can do the big trip around Australia. Has anyone done the big trip?

Yeah. It's good, isn't it? And you can take that whole year to travel around the country, and what's interesting is those people at the end of the year with hundreds of nights of looking up into the sky will still sit back in their chair and wonder at the beauty of it all. The writer of this psalm, of this song, is David, and he became one of the great kings of the Bible. But he started off life as a shepherd boy out in the Middle East, spending night after night next to the sheep looking up, and he writes this song really out of his own sense of wonder, and he begins and ends the song with a cry of wonder.

The start and the end of the song start with these words. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. He looks at the night sky and connects what he sees with God the creator. He connects those two, and he asks the question, who is this God?

Now we might have the same question. Who is God? Is God real? How does God show Himself to us? How do we learn about God?

What type of God is He? Is God even knowable? Is He too far off and too distant for us to know Him, too powerful and too big for Him to even perceive us, let alone for us to know Him? And throughout this song, David answers those questions for us. He says that by observing the universe around us, we can learn something about God.

First of all, we learn that He is creator of it all. The Bible makes this claim that this whole universe is the work of God. And whether you believe that it was done really quickly and relatively recently, or whether you believe it was done over a long period of time many eons ago, either way, the Bible and David make the claim that it is all the work of God. When I consider your heavens, he says, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. He says it belongs to God.

Look at it. This is the world God has made. Look at the grandeur and the beauty of the planet He's made. Look at the complexity of the weather patterns there that God has established and sustains. The waves He moves on the oceans and the creatures that swim in it.

Look at those waves. Look at them. They're incredible. The next one, the peacock arrayed in the glory of God. Look at it.

The platypus in its strange beauty. This next astonishing creature robed in the beauty given to it by God. And if it's true that God fashioned it all, then it speaks to His beauty. It speaks to His majesty, and it speaks to His glory. David starts out looking at the heavens, the moon, and the stars, and then he goes on in verse two to talk about children and infants.

He's saying that everything from the biggest cosmological features that we've just looked at all the way down to the tiniest child is a testament to the glory of God, a testament to His creative ability and the beauty inherent in Him. Have you looked at a baby recently? We've got one little one over there. Aren't they incredible? Everything needed for an entire human being packed into this tiny little package.

Fingerprints on fingers that can barely reach around your thumb. Have you had a baby grab your thumb before? Those little fingers just, they're not like mine. They can barely reach around, and there's a fingerprint on every single one of them. Two eyes with incredible detail and functionality.

Look at that. That's a human eye. That's in that little child. There's a brain in there able to develop complex reasoning and thought. Even on those tiny arms, there's tiny little hairs that you can barely even see.

God has set His glory in the heavens, in the new baby, and everything in between. It's on display for us to discover and wonder at and to consider the nature of such a creator. David even goes so far as to say that the glory of God is on display in such a way that it should cause those who oppose God to be silent. It should cause those who oppose God to be silent. Now maybe there's different ways to oppose God.

Right? It could just be simply a denial of His existence and His glory. That's one way to oppose God, or maybe it's something more aggressive than that. Whatever it is, God has set His glory throughout the whole world so that we might look at it, consider it, understand it, and have our opposition to Him silenced. When you go out on your big outback trip or when you see the sunset at night or when you see a peacock like that, be careful to consider that anything made has a maker.

Anything created has a creator. And the God who spins stars off His fingertips is worthy of acknowledgment and praise. Our second point is why should God care about us? Why should God care about us? David's mind goes to a reasonable place next, I think.

It really is reasonable. He says, when I consider your heavens, when I look up here, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? His point is that we are part of what is created. We are created creatures. And if we're dealing with a God, a being of this scale, of this power, of this level of majesty and glory, why should He bother with us?

We often look at Earth like this. We often look at Earth like this with mankind in the centre. Right? Look at us. Look at our achievement.

Let's wonder at what we've done. We've made it into space, and we can take photos like this. But the next one is the reality. This is a very famous photo. I don't know if you've seen it before.

It's a very famous photo taken by Voyager 1. It's a space probe that was sent out, I think, in the late seventies. I didn't look that up. At this stage, Voyager 1 has gone beyond Pluto, and it's about to exit the solar system. But before it did, they asked it to turn around and take this picture.

This is us, all of humanity on that tiny dot. Where's that astronaut now? When we look up, we look up as specks of dust on a dot of stone into the scale of the universe, and we should be dwarfed. And ask the fair question, what should such a creator concerned with stars and black holes and quasars and light years, what could He want with us? What importance could we hold?

What service might we offer such a creator? What gift might we give Him? What power might we contribute to such a being? Something happens to David when he looks at the heavens. He reflects on the limitations of earthbound humanity.

When he looks at the stars, he cannot even count them, but yet God has made them and numbered them and even named them. He can begin to understand the clockwork precision of the stars maybe, that the precision that marks out the days and the years of human existence, but he could never have designed it or built it. And he won't outlast more than a few turnings around the earth himself, and he's gone. Now this is not self sorrow or deprecation. He's not crushing himself into the mud or considering humanity worthless.

He simply sees and understands the wonder of God. How could someone working at this level be mindful of those working at this level? What type of being can be engaged at such a scale with such glory and beauty and also be engaged at this scale? First, he asks, who on earth am I dealing with? And then he asks, who am I?

What are we when compared to this? And isn't that a fair question? Because I haven't named each of the blades of grass that I mow. I don't understand the lives of all the bugs in my house. What politician knows the day to day life of every single citizen in their country?

Who are we dealing with that both knows the stars and names them and knows every hair on our heads? Why would such a God be mindful of us? Why should humanity be a concern of God? But even as David asks this question, he states as if it's true. God is mindful of us.

God does care for us. We've asked who is this God. We've asked why should He care about us, and now I just want us to look at what He does. David starts to wonder at the privileged position God has placed humanity in. He says, you have made them, us, a little lower than the angels.

You've crowned them, us, with glory and honour. You made them rulers over the works of your hands. You put everything under their feet, flocks and herds and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim in the paths of the sea. David's thinking here back to Genesis 1 where God makes people in His own image and blesses them. Genesis 1:28 says, God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

The same words as we've got here in our Psalm. God has elevated the created creature, us, to a position of authority and responsibility. David's song doesn't describe why, but God is acting out of His nature. He's acting with care and with love. He is mindful of us, and He's elevated humanity to a position of authority.

He's crowned us with glory and honour. He's made us rulers of this world and given us responsibility for it. As creator, God is owner of the world. As owner, He is therefore ruler, but He has given us His image and delegated some of His authority to us. He's placed this beautiful planet, the animals of the sky and the land and the ocean, everything under our rule.

That's the glory and honour He gives us. Mere created beings have been given some of the authority and responsibility of the creator. What a privilege. David kinda stops there. He wonders about such honour from God, but God doesn't stop there.

David does, but God doesn't. If we go back to verse four, depending on your translation, I keep forgetting that you guys mostly use the ESV. But for those of us like myself who use the NIV, you might notice there's some difference between the translation. Thirty to fifty years ago, we used our language a bit differently. It's evolved in the last thirty to fifty years.

These verses, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them, used to be translated like, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him. I think you've got that in the ESV. So we used to read man and understand mankind, all of humanity, and we used to read son of man as descendants of humanity. And as our language has become more gendered and it's begun to be read differently, our translators have made the decision to update the language. But as we've done that, we might tend to miss something here.

Although if you've got the ESV, you probably won't. Because a thousand years after this song, Jesus came. What was His favourite title for Himself? Son of man. Son of man.

In taking this title, Jesus, the creator God, maker of heaven and earth, comes to live with us and identify with us. He wasn't just God living in a human avatar or living in a human type of robot to control. In the son of man, Jesus was made to be one of us. He takes up this title to identify with us and become one of us. But so much more than that, as Jesus adopts humanity, as He titles Himself the Son of Man, we see the creator made for a time a little lower than His creation.

He does it in order to care for us because He is mindful of us. Christ stoops to meet with us. Christ stoops to meet with us. Us, who are so obsessed with our power and recognition, stand before a God who is so far above us and who instead of laughing at us and crushing us, He instead identifies with us, takes on our weakness, and makes Himself a little lower than His creation.

He cares and is mindful of us. Do you feel insignificant? Compared to God, you are. But in God's eyes, you are not. It's wonderful.

We know, don't we, that He didn't just come to identify with us but to rescue us? In fact, we know that He identified with us in order to take on our sin and deal with it. We know that the result of this was to be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. See, we're not just crowned with glory and honour by being put in charge of creation. I mean, that would be a lot.

But through Jesus, we are adopted into the family of God. We're given an eternal inheritance with Christ. We move from created creature down here through to honoured custodians here and onto being the adopted children of God. If you ever wondered whether God cares for humanity, if you ever wondered whether He cares for you, if He's mindful of us down here from way up there, stop wondering and begin to wonder at what He's already done for us. Why?

Why elevate your own creation? These tiny, delicate, finite creatures? Why elevate them to become your children and give them an eternal relationship with you? The implied answer is that God is the type of God that does what He doesn't need to do because of a mindfulness and care for those who are much lower than Him. Wonderful.

If that's true, what do we do? Well, the psalm actually does nothing more than wonder. It just sits there wondering. It doesn't even command us to respond. It simply lays out the wonder of it all and expects us to join in.

I wonder if you'll pray with me and wonder at God together. Our Father, we are in awe as we turn our minds and our souls to this psalm, and we have slowed down and considered truly what you have done. We are in awe. We're in awe of the creator of the Devil's Marbles and the starry skies and of the peacocks and the fish and the platypus and the babies and everything in between. And we wonder at how you can elevate us to being in charge of this world.

Give us some of your responsibility and authority. What an incredible privilege. But then we are blown out of the water by the way your Son Jesus stepped out of the throne room of God, stepped into humanity, became one of His own creation, allowed Himself to be strapped to a cross, be humiliated, spat on, jeered at, and died to save us. Lord, we are in awe. We thank you that it is in your nature to care for your creation no matter how small.

We thank you that you don't consider us insects on the highway to be hit with a car. You have lifted us up. We thank you and praise you for who you are in your very nature and what you have done to rescue us. Thank you for the eternal inheritance you have given us that leaves us speechless. We pray that this wonder may fill our hearts and lives, our souls, not just for the next few minutes, not even just for the rest of the week, but for the rest of our lives and into eternity.

We thank you and praise you that we will be able to wonder at you and witness you for the rest of eternity. In Jesus' name, amen.