Preached at Redmarley, Afternoon of the 14th Sunday after Trinity, September 1, 1861.
“Oh, Lord, our Governor, how excellent is Thy Name in all the earth.” ——Psalm viii.
I have been reading this Psalm together this afternoon. Let us try if we cannot get some good out of it that will go through the week—that will make us rejoice more together in the bright skies, and the harvest, and in all other good things that we receive at God’s hands.
I suppose the person who wrote it was out on some evening or night when the moon and the stars were shining very clearly. Perhaps he was out on the hills with his flock of sheep; for you know that a shepherd sang a great number of these psalms; one, who the Scriptures say, was taken from following the ewes great with young, that he might be a leader and shepherd of the people.
That shepherd must have seen many beautiful nights and mornings whilst he was about his work. But I doubt if merely seeing them would have done much for him. Many of us have such sights often before us, and yet we do not mind them at all; they are not much more to us than they would be to a blind man. But David had believed that He who created the heavens, and stretched them out, was the Lord God of his fathers and of him; that He had cared for his fathers, and that He cared for him; that He had desired them to trust Him, and know Him, and worship Him. He sung songs to God because he believed in Him as a helper and as a friend; as One from whom every good thing, and every good thought, and good work, must come.
Well, that was what was most in his mind on the morning that I speak of. “Oh Lord,” he says, “our Governor, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth; Thou that hast set Thy glory above the heavens.” “Oh Lord, our Governor,” that is, the governor of us—Thy people Israel, whom Thou hast watched over and brought out of the house of bondage, and to whom Thou hast given a good and righteous law; and whom Thou defended against our enemies. Surely Thy great name is not confined to us. It is “excellent in all the earth.” Thou rulest over all this wide world, however far it may spread, though there may be countries in it that I have never heard of, or dreamed of. Yea, Thou canst not be confined to this earth. These heavens over my head speak of a glory that goes further than I can think or dream of. This moon, and these stars, what are they? Who can tell me? I only know they show forth Thy glory; Thou that art our king and our deliverer.
Then a thought comes to him of his own littleness. He is venturing to think of God, and to praise Him—he, a mere child! Yes, he says, Thou hast ordained me to do so; Thou hast put these thoughts and praises into my heart and my lips. Thou choosest babes and sucklings to praise Thee; Thou showest them what beauty and joy there is in Thy universe. When the enemy and the darkness say, I have spoiled it all; I have brought death and sin and misery into it; I am the lord of it—No, cry these babes and sucklings, Thou art not the lord of it. Evil and death have not conquered the Lord, our Governor. See how these glorious heavens, that last over from generation to generation, bear witness of Him; see how they tell of a living and unchangeable God.
Yes, he goes on—“I will consider the heavens the work of Thy hands, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained.” It is a great strength and comfort and wonder to consider them, and to be sure that they are Thine, and that Thou art our God.
But then, when I consider them, I cannot help thinking again what poor beggarly creatures we are. Can it be that Thou who madest these heavens carest for such worms? “What is man that Thou art mindful of him; and the son of man that Thou visitest him?” He stops for a moment at that question; it staggers him. These glorious heavens, and then the little creature who lasts at the best but three score years and ten, and who may be cut off in an instant; who is weaker than most of the animals about him; whom an insect may kill; who spends his time in such trifles—what is this man, that Thou the creator of the heavens and earth, should think about him, should even want him? But he recollects himself—He does not speak meanly of man, for all he looks so poor and contemptible. “Thou madest him lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and worship.”
This poor creature—man—may be very weak, the weakest of Thy creatures; but there is a spirit in him. He is more like an angel than all these beautiful and glorious things which I look at. Yea, and though he is lower than the angels; though he suffers sorrow and death; I believe that Thou hast permitted these only that Thou mayest crown him with glory and worship. I believe Thou hast made him to show forth Thy glory and worship more than angels even can show it forth. I may not be able to see how that should be, but I cannot doubt it. For I see that “Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the sea.” Very wonderful indeed that that should be so, and yet David knew that it was so. Flocks of sheep, droves of oxen, obeyed him, a feeble man; they did the things which he bade them do. He was able to direct them, not by the strength of his arms, but by the power of his words. He was able to direct them best when he was most gentle with them. With the wild beasts of the field—those that preyed upon other creatures—it was different; these he had power to kill if he could not tame them. David told King Saul how when a bear and a lion came out against his flock might was given him to slay them; that assured him that he should have might to slay the huge Philistine who was defying the armies of his country. In all these ways he was taught that it is the spirit that is in a creature—not its size or its fierceness—which makes it victorious, and that this spirit is what God put into man when He made him after His own image. Therefore, he did not doubt that some day or other it would be shown him how glorious man is; how truly God had put all things under his feet. It was hard to expect that when he saw how mean human beings made themselves; how they stooped to all the animals and even worshipped them; how they seemed to prize the food which the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, supplied them with, more than their own bodies and souls; how wicked they were, while the birds and beasts and fishes were innocent—it was hard to think that one day men should be shown to be indeed what God had made them to be, in spite of their own wilfulness. And yet he who wrote this psalm could not believe in God and not believe that what He had said must come to pass. It must be shown that neither the moon nor the stars were so great and divine as the lowest human being that they shine upon. He was sure of this, and therefore he could say again, “Oh Lord, our Governor, how excellent is Thy name in all the world.” Thy purpose will prevail, however we may try to set it at nought. Thou wilt make Thy name glorious, and men shall be glorified in Thee.
Was the psalmist mistaken? We were reading a few Sundays ago the Epistle to the Hebrews. That letter was written to the Jews who heard the Psalms full a thousand years after David’s death. It was written forty or fifty years after the death of Him whom we call the Son of David and the Son of God—Jesus Christ our Lord. And the writer says in it, We do not yet see all things put under him, as the psalmist says they are meant to be; “but we see Jesus, who for the suffering of death was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour.” What has that to do with what we have been speaking of this afternoon? Everything. “When we consider the heavens and the earth the work of God’s hands, the moon and the stars which He hath ordained,” we must needs begin to think, as the Psalmist does, “What is man?”—this poor, wretched, sinful, dying creature—“That thou art mindful of him.” And then we who believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord, can make answer and say, ‘Yea, verily, but the Son of God, by whom the world was made, and all the host of them, was born of a woman, became a poor man upon this earth of ours; and He, while He was upon earth, showed that the winds and the waves and all creatures were subject to Him. And then He suffered the death of the Cross, and was buried and went into hell, and rose again from the dead, and sitteth at the right hand of His Father. And, therefore, no people shall frighten us and crush us with talking about the heavens and all the host of them. We verily believe that a man is above all these. We verily believe that One who is of our nature, and who bore our sins and died our death, is the King who was before all ages, and so He shall live on through ages upon ages. And, therefore, we are sure that God has not created all things in vain; and that it is a truth, and no lie, that He has created man in His own image; and that every little baby just born has a glory upon it which does not belong to all works of God’s hands, let them be as great and glorious as they may. And we believe, moreover, that He who has exalted His own Son to be our king, has sent His Spirit to raise up our spirits, that we may not be poor crawling creatures, meaner than all the things we see and handle, but that we may look up to Him where He is, and may call His Father our Father, and may join with angels and archangels in blessing Him for all the works of His hands.’
And, my friends, this is what we have desired for that little infant whom we have just received into the congregation of Christ’s flock, and signed with the sign of the cross. We said that that child was one of the race for which Christ died; we said that that child was one of that family of which He is the elder brother and the head; we said that this child is a spirit child, and is therefore greater and diviner, not only than the sheep and the oxen, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, but than the earth and the air and the sky about us. Do not forget that, you that are parents. Do not forget what treasures God has put into your hands. And since you know that you cannot take care of them yourselves, do not forget that you have committed them to God; that He has promised them greater blessings than you can ask for or dream of, and that that promise He for His part will most surely keep and perform.
Take every autumn; it comes round and brings you in the fruits of the tiny seeds that you sowed last autumn, or last spring, as a witness and pledge that He does not neglect any, the least things, and that He does not merely give you rain to nourish them, and sun to ripen them, but that He gives you what is much better—power to work, and wisdom to know how you should work in the right way. Thank Him for not scattering the fruits in your path without your labour; you would soon become miserable heartless creatures if He did. Thank Him for caring more to make you brave and true than to make you easy and weak and self-indulgent. Thank Him for having set you over the sheep and the oxen, and the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea. Thank Him for having given you the moon and stars, not only to direct you in your path, but to make you wonder and ask after Him. Thank Him that He has given you all these lesson-books for your children as well as you. Thank Him because He has said there will be a day in which He will gather up all things unto Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth, unto Him who is the head over all His universe; and when every child, and every star, and every animal, and every flower, shall be seen to have been created by infinite love for His infinite glory.