SPEAKER_00: In the final year of World War II, an 18-year-old Princess Elizabeth Windsor joined the British Army.
SPEAKER_00: For several years during the war, Britain had begun conscripting women to join the war effort so that unmarried women under 30 had to join the armed forces.
SPEAKER_00: So the princess was registered as troop number 230873 and went to basic training like everyone else to learn about the basics of motor mechanics and how to drive them.
SPEAKER_00: In the wake of her recent passing, the passing of Queen Elizabeth, there were a number of her peers who joined in that training regiment who were interviewed by the BBC.
SPEAKER_00: And all of them said that they recall the princess receiving the exact same treatment that the rest of them received, with one small difference.
SPEAKER_00: That is, they said, when we finished work at five o'clock, we went back to our barracks, whereas Elizabeth was picked up and taken to the Windsor Castle.
SPEAKER_00: As a daughter of the king and heir to the throne, she was set to inherit the position of commander-in-chief over the entire army, and that reality shaped everything about her experience in the army.
SPEAKER_00: It is a psalm that begins by describing the majesty of God and teaches us that we as human beings were made to relate to this God.
SPEAKER_00: And in our relating to this God, we receive this incredible destiny that we are set to inherit the world that God created.
SPEAKER_00: And if we rightly understand that reality, it will shape everything about our experience in the transient world in which we live.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to study Psalm 8 this morning under these two basic headings.
SPEAKER_00: This Psalm teaches us who our God is, and in light of who our God is, it teaches us who we are.
SPEAKER_00: So we begin by looking at who our God is.
SPEAKER_00: And there are two realities about God pointed out to us in the first two verses of the Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: God and his glory is first majestic.
SPEAKER_00: If you'll notice in verse 1, the psalm begins by addressing the Lord like this: O Lord, our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll let you in on the secret Bible code that whenever you encounter the word Lord with all capital letters, it's the common conventional English way of translating God's personal name, Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: It's the name that God revealed to his people through Moses in the burning bush encounter when he said, I am going to be your God, and you are going to be my people.
SPEAKER_00: And this second word Lord, it's not just a redundancy.
SPEAKER_00: These are two different words in the original Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: The second word that was translated Lord is the word Adonai, which means a master, a sovereign.
SPEAKER_00: So what's happening in this address is that the psalmist was putting together these two crucial truths about God.
SPEAKER_00: God is the sovereign master of the universe, He's the transcendent one, He's beyond space, beyond time, beyond human comprehension.
SPEAKER_00: And this inexhaustibly great God has condescended to make the transcendent imminent, revealing himself personally to his people and saying, I'm going to be in relationship to you.
SPEAKER_00: The transcendent one is becoming imminent.
SPEAKER_00: The inexhaustible one is making himself knowable and inviting us to relate to him, to speak to him as our covenant God.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, our Lord, the Psalm then goes on and says, How majestic is your name in all the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And what the psalmist is doing is he's describing the nature of God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the name means.
SPEAKER_00: When you speak in the ancient world of someone's name, you aren't just describing an attribute or a part of a person, you're describing the whole person.
SPEAKER_00: So when the psalmist is describing God's name as majestic, he's saying, God in his essence, who God is, is majestic.
SPEAKER_00: You know this about the name of God, because one of the very first things that you would learn as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord's Prayer.
SPEAKER_00: The way that the Lord taught his disciples to pray begins: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.
SPEAKER_00: And when we're asking for our Father's name to be hallowed, we're not just asking for some part of God to be set apart and treated as sacred as it really is.
SPEAKER_00: We're saying that all that God is, we're asking that it would be set apart and treated as hallowed and sacred and revered, because God's name is synonymous with all that God is.
SPEAKER_00: You could say God's name is just a shorthand way of saying the whole self-revelation of God.
SPEAKER_00: All that God has revealed Himself for us to know.
SPEAKER_00: And the psalmist says, all that God has revealed for us to know about him is majestic.
SPEAKER_00: God in his essence is majestic.
SPEAKER_00: And this word that's rendered majestic is actually a word in the Hebrew that occurs rather frequently through the Old Testament, and it's translated with a number of different English words, appropriately so, because it has something of a broad meaning.
SPEAKER_00: It combines the notions of strength and power with nobility and excellence.
SPEAKER_00: This is who God is.
SPEAKER_00: He's both noble and kind, he's both strong and imminent.
SPEAKER_00: He's majestic.
SPEAKER_00: How majestic is your name.
SPEAKER_00: So you see what the psalmist is doing is he begins with contemplating who God is, and he sees that God is absolutely stunning in his beauty.
SPEAKER_00: This is the essence of worship is to have our hearts calibrated in such a way that we would catch a glimpse of who God truly is.
SPEAKER_00: And if we see him as he is, God is absolutely stunning in his glorious, majestic brilliance.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist goes on, and he tells us something of where he's caught a glimpse of God's majesty in the rest of the text.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the rest of verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: He says, How majestic is your name in all the earth, and you've set your glory above the heavens.
SPEAKER_00: And what he's doing is he's saying, by setting your glory above the heavens, what he's cluing us into is that he's been contemplating something of the beauty of God's created world, the heavens and the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And in catching a glimpse something of the beauty of the created world, he's then tracking the logic to say, if this is so beautiful, how much more beautiful must be the God that created it?
SPEAKER_00: We do this all the time.
SPEAKER_00: If you have caught something of the glory of creation in a sunset, or standing at the top of a canyon, or beholding the beauty of a beach, your heart is wrapped up with something that is just absolutely stunning and bigger than you, and you're gripped with the gravitas of this absolute stunning scene.
SPEAKER_00: And what the psalmist is teaching us to do is that we should then reason from here to the Creator.
SPEAKER_00: If this is glorious, how much more the Creator?
SPEAKER_00: For his glory is even above the heavens.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the more that we learn about the created world, the more fuel we have for worshiping the greatness of God.
SPEAKER_00: The typical way that people will measure the space around us, the heavens around us, is through light speed, which is uh not just something that Han Solo could do, but is something that light actually does.
SPEAKER_00: Light travels at 186 miles a second.
SPEAKER_00: So that is every second light can make 66 cross-country country trips across the United States of America.
SPEAKER_00: It takes light eight minutes to travel from the sun to the earth, but if light is going to travel across the Milky Way galaxy, it would take 100,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: And the Milky Way is just one of two trillion galaxies.
SPEAKER_00: The scope of the space, the heavens that God has created is truly inexhaustible, unfathomable.
SPEAKER_00: Pascal said it is an infinite space whose center is everywhere, its circumference is nowhere, and yet Isaiah 40 says that God names every star and spreads out the heavens like a curtain.
SPEAKER_00: How inexhaustible is the strength and the majesty of our God.
SPEAKER_00: But the psalmist doesn't just say that his glory is so inexhaustible, it's even above the stretches of the heavens, but it's also manifest in the middle of verse 1, in the very earth.
SPEAKER_00: That is, we could look at ourselves and actually go into the very building blocks of ourselves and look at the molecular structure of all matter around us and be marveling at the creative ingenuity of our God.
SPEAKER_00: If you were to ask yourself, what is going on?
SPEAKER_00: What's inside of me?
SPEAKER_00: What am I actually made up of?
SPEAKER_00: First year biology student and freshman year of high school learns that you're made up of atoms and molecules.
SPEAKER_00: And how do you comprehend these?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the typical illustrations that are given are, at least all the illustrations that I was given as a student, have to do with fruit.
SPEAKER_00: So if you were to take a grapefruit and you were to ask yourself how many molecules, how many atoms rather, are in this grapefruit, in order to comprehend this, suppose that you took an atom in the grapefruit and you expanded it to the size of a blueberry.
SPEAKER_00: Well, now how big is the grapefruit going to be?
SPEAKER_00: It will be bigger than the planet Earth.
SPEAKER_00: And if you were to go into one of those blueberries and you were to ask where's the nucleus of this atom, it would still be invisible, even to the most powerful microscope.
SPEAKER_00: In order to get a glimpse of the atom, excuse me, of the nucleus of the atom, you'd have to expand the atom to the size of a football field, and now, now, the nucleus of the atom would be perceptible to the human eye.
SPEAKER_00: So what is between the periphery of this atom and the nucleus in the middle?
SPEAKER_00: Empty space.
SPEAKER_00: What you're composed of is largely just a whole bunch of drifting empty space.
SPEAKER_00: That means that if you think about your existence for just a minute, if you were to go into the depths of you, there's an entire world inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: You stand as a colossus compared to the things that make you up.
SPEAKER_00: And if you were to contemplate outside of you, you're not even worth a speck.
SPEAKER_00: You stand suspended between two infinite worlds.
SPEAKER_00: How inexhaustible is the God whose spirit searches every part of his creation.
SPEAKER_00: How overwhelming is the reality that his presence is even with you.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the psalmist is doing, as he just marvels at creation and says, How majestic is your name above all the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Now the psalmist then moves on in verse 2, and he moves to the second great truth, that God's glory is confounding.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at verse 2 with me in Psalm 8, the psalmist says, Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you are saying to yourself, that's a really abrupt turn, I don't know how we got there.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the point.
SPEAKER_00: What the psalmist is doing in the transition from verse 1 to verse 2 is he's saying that God's glory is resounding in the heavens and it echoes in the mouths of little babies, and it's supposed to be jarring and it's supposed to be confusing.
SPEAKER_00: The form of this poem is supposed to represent the content.
SPEAKER_00: That is, what he's saying is that God's glory, which is above all of the searches of the heavens, when it comes to manifestation in the world, confounds the wisdom of men.
SPEAKER_00: God's glory doesn't operate according to our natural human assumptions.
SPEAKER_00: Now, to understand what's happening, let's look at verse 2 by first considering the purpose of God establishing his glory in the mouths of children.
SPEAKER_00: He says that out of the mouths of babies and infants, he's established strength because of his foes to steal the enemy and the avengers.
SPEAKER_00: So what God is after is he wants to shut up his enemies.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that he's going to do this is by establishing strength.
SPEAKER_00: Or some translations render this, he's established a bulwark or a fortress.
SPEAKER_00: So God has put up a fortress in the world to shut the mouths of all those who oppose him.
SPEAKER_00: And what is the fortress that's going to stop the mouths of those who oppose him?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's something that comes out of the mouths of children.
SPEAKER_00: And what is it that comes out of the mouths of children that stops the mouths of those who oppose God?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what's left implicit in the text is their praises.
SPEAKER_00: The praise of children is what stops the mouths of the strong and mighty of the earth, those who oppose the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And that's actually how the ancient Greek translation renders this, and that's how this verse, when it's used in the New Testament, translates it, is that the praise that God has ordained or established out of the mouths of babies is what stills his enemies and foes.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what is happening here is that the psalmist is contemplating the reality that the majestic God over all the earth delights not in might, but in the humble, even little babies and infants.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Old Testament version of a truth that's made abundantly clear in the New Testament, that God confounds the wisdom of this world.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 that God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
SPEAKER_00: God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way the glory of God works in the world.
SPEAKER_00: The majestic God of great glory, when he manifests his glory in the world, it confounds and undoes and turns over the wisdom of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I mentioned a moment ago that this verse in Psalm 8 is quoted in the New Testament, and it when it comes up, it comes up in Matthew chapter 1 in the mouth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You'll remember the story.
SPEAKER_00: It's at the beginning of Holy Wick when Jesus rides into Jerusalem, and the people are shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna.
SPEAKER_00: And the text records in Matthew 21 that when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna, to the Son of David, they were indignant and said to him, Do you hear what they're saying?
SPEAKER_00: So here are the foes setting themselves up against God, and how does Jesus respond?
SPEAKER_00: He responds by quoting Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: He said to them, Have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise?
SPEAKER_00: What Jesus is doing is confounding the wisdom of the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's not in the mighty that God reveals his glory, it's in the humble of the earth, even little babies.
SPEAKER_00: Put this together, what Psalm 8 reveals to us about God is that the God of transcendent glory confounds the wisdom of the world by manifesting himself in humble imminence.
SPEAKER_00: God makes himself known to the humble.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in light of the reality of who God is, the rest of the Psalm goes on to articulate for us the place of humanity in God's world.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll see that in verse 3 and following.
SPEAKER_00: So if you look down at your scriptures at verse 3, read with me the psalm as it continues in verse 3 saying, When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the sun and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
SPEAKER_00: What is man?
SPEAKER_00: That's the question of the Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: That's the question that he's going to explain and answer in the rest of this text, but that really is the question of every human civilization.
SPEAKER_00: What is man?
SPEAKER_00: What is it to be a human being?
SPEAKER_00: And what the psalm illustrates for us is that if you begin without God, you're going to come to some catastrophically incorrect conclusions.
SPEAKER_00: If you begin to contemplate human existence without God, you will be logically bound to come to the conclusion that human existence is utterly without significance.
SPEAKER_00: We are less than a speck worth contemplating on a giant rock spinning around space.
SPEAKER_00: There is no purpose for our existence, at least no transcendent purpose that arises above any individual's whims and desires.
SPEAKER_00: There's certainly no grand reason for human existence.
SPEAKER_00: There could be nothing that would be sacred or inherently valuable.
SPEAKER_00: All of human existence would be reduced to following our most base impulses.
SPEAKER_00: All of our bodies would be reduced to accidental collocations of atoms.
SPEAKER_00: Or if we were to look at on a more macro level, you could say your body is really just a bunch of fleshy Legos to be sliced and diced at whim.
SPEAKER_00: But you know that's not true.
SPEAKER_00: You know in your heart of hearts that human life and human existence is more than mere matter.
SPEAKER_00: The scripture says that that's because God has put eternity into the heart of man.
SPEAKER_00: But the only way that we can reach that is if we acknowledge that there's a creator to the creation.
SPEAKER_00: And if you start with the creator, then you can begin to understand the significance of human existence.
SPEAKER_00: If you start, as the psalmist does, with God, then you will be able to get to man.
SPEAKER_00: If you start with God, then you will conclude that human existence matters.
SPEAKER_00: Every single human life has a reason and a purpose, and that reason is to know and enjoy the God that made you.
SPEAKER_00: That's a transcendent purpose for human existence that rises above individual whims and desires.
SPEAKER_00: There is something sacred to all human life in every human body because God created them in his very image.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly where the psalmist goes, the rest of this text.
SPEAKER_00: I want to condense what the psalmist tells us about humanity's place in God's world by just giving us two headings.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, humanity's place is important to God.
SPEAKER_00: And you see this embedded in the question that I just read to us out of verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist says, What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
SPEAKER_00: Well, embedded in this question are two claims.
SPEAKER_00: One, God is mindful of humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Or some translations render this, God remembers humanity.
SPEAKER_00: And what do you remember in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Well, my wife has often reminded me, I only remember the things that are important to me.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the same for all human beings, and it's certainly the case for God, that God remembers, he intentionally sets his mind upon, which is why I think the ESV has a good rendering.
SPEAKER_00: He is mindful of the things that matter to him.
SPEAKER_00: What matters to God are the humans that he created in his image.
SPEAKER_00: Human life has significance because it's important to God.
SPEAKER_00: Or the second line of verse 4 says that what is the Son of Man that you care for him?
SPEAKER_00: How is it that God that you care for humanity?
SPEAKER_00: But in asking that question, the psalmist is claiming that God cares for humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this word in the Hebrew text is a very common verb that occurs all over the scriptures, and it's given a number of different translations in different contexts.
SPEAKER_00: The base meaning, the kind of neutral meaning of this verb would be something like to visit.
SPEAKER_00: But you can visit someone for good or for ill.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that it would be best to conceptualize the psalmist saying that God visits humanity, because sometimes God visits humanity for the sake of punishing their injustice and their evil, which is the way that this verb is rendered in Isaiah 24, that says that God is going to visit humanity to judge him in the final day.
SPEAKER_00: But it can also be used for God blessing his people graciously and kindly, which is the way this verb is translated in Ruth 1, when it says that God visited his people, he blessed them and gave them food.
SPEAKER_00: So why what the psalmist is claiming is that God visits humans, that is, he takes every single thing that you say, speak, and do into account, and he will visit everything about you to judge and to reward.
SPEAKER_00: God cares about human existence.
SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, if you think about this text for very long, it's not going to take you long to get to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, an easy way to get there is to just think of this word visit and its usage in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: The first place it shows up is in the Song of Zechariah, the son of the father of John the Baptist, as he's contemplating this promise that God is going to come into the world as the Messiah, and he says, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people.
SPEAKER_00: God proved that humanity is important to him, so important that God condescended to take upon human nature.
SPEAKER_00: God himself, the immortal God, whose glory is above the heavens, took upon himself mortal nature, united himself to human nature, and lived in this fallen human world and died a human death in the place of humanity, bearing the wrath that all of his people deserve.
SPEAKER_00: Then he resurrected from the dead, and he also demonstrated how important humanity is to him in that in his resurrection, he did not leave human nature, but the Son of God chose to unite a human nature to himself forever.
SPEAKER_00: In his resurrection, Jesus unites himself not to a mortal human nature anymore, but now to a glorified, immortal human nature.
SPEAKER_00: And because the Son of God is perpetually, eternally united to an immortal human nature, in his ascension and his seat at the right hand of the Father, he guarantees that all who are united to this Son of God, just as he has died for their sins and resurrected for their justification, so also he will bring them to be with him where he is to see his glory and participate in his reign over the new heavens and the new earth in your own immortal human nature, just like your Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus proves the value of humanity to God by perpetually, eternally uniting himself to an immortal human nature.
SPEAKER_00: Because he is so united to that nature, so too will you.
SPEAKER_00: Which leads us to the second truth that Psalm 8 teaches us.
SPEAKER_00: Humanity's place is important to God, and the purpose of human existence, the destiny that God has ordained for human existence, is to rule over his world.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the text beginning in verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read a few verses together.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5, the psalmist says, Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned him with glory and honor, and you've given him dominion over the works of your hands, and put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, and whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're reading that, and that sounds a little bit like Genesis 1, the creation story, that's the point.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to think about the creation story.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1 26, that says, God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens, over the livestock, and over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: That is, all that God has made, God made man to rule.
SPEAKER_00: Humanity is supposed to rule over all of God's created world.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not working out very well, is it?
SPEAKER_00: Everything that we do is corrupted by our fall.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that we do is corrupted by sin.
SPEAKER_00: I learned this week that every time I buy a new shirt, you know, we're constantly coming up with new innovative ways to create fabrics.
SPEAKER_00: And every time I buy a new shirt, I pollute the world with microplastics.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that we do is fallen.
SPEAKER_00: Which also gave me justification to hold on to all my old shirts for a very long time because I'm not just Saving money, I'm saving the world.
SPEAKER_00: What Psalm 8 is doing is reasserting God's creation purpose for humanity.
SPEAKER_00: He made us to rule over everything that he has created, but it's not going very well.
SPEAKER_00: So how can it be made right?
SPEAKER_00: And the solution to that problem is embedded in this Psalm, but I think the best way to understand it is to go forward to the other two places that Psalm 8 is picked up and quoted in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: We've already read Jesus' youth of Psalm 8 in Matthew chapter 21, but there are two other texts that elaborate the way that Psalm 8 says God is going to make everything right that was lost in the fall of Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to go forward in your Bible, flip over to Hebrews in chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: And you can leave Psalm 8 behind because we're going to the New Testament for the rest of this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews in chapter 2, if you're using one of the Bibles in the seat in front of you, this is page 1001.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews in chapter 2 is describing Jesus' ministry as the Son of God taken on human flesh to bring human beings into the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And in order to explain how Jesus is going to reverse what was lost in Adam, the author of Hebrews quotes from Psalm 8 to explain how Jesus will restore what was lost in our world.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to pick up in Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: Follow with me as I read from Hebrews chapter 2, verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: It was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking, for it's been testified somewhere, and here's the quotation of Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: What is man that you are mindful of him, or the Son of Man that you care for him?
SPEAKER_00: You made him for a little while lower than the angels, and have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.
SPEAKER_00: Now in putting everything in subjection to him, you left nothing outside his control.
SPEAKER_00: At present we do not yet see everything in subjection to him, but we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, now crowned with glory and honor because of his suffering and death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
SPEAKER_00: What Hebrews 2 claims is that God's purpose for humanity has been fulfilled through Jesus, so that all who are united to him will have a share in the world to come.
SPEAKER_00: How does that work?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to walk through this, but first I have to explain two differences in the text of Psalm 8 and Hebrews chapter 2 that aren't really differences at all.
SPEAKER_00: And I say this because if you were to take your English Bible and you were to look closely at Psalm 8, and then look closely at Hebrews 2, you would notice that there are two small differences in the text.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 7 of Hebrews 2.
SPEAKER_00: It says, you made him for a little while lower than the angels.
SPEAKER_00: And that little while seems a little different than most English translations of Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: That is, Psalm 8 says you made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.
SPEAKER_00: And that sounds like it could go either way.
SPEAKER_00: Like in Psalm 8, it could be you made him a little lower, like quantitatively.
SPEAKER_00: He's basically an angel, but just a little bit lower.
SPEAKER_00: Or it could be for a little while he's lower than the angels.
SPEAKER_00: And what he, excuse me, what the author of Hebrews does is he resolves the ambiguity.
SPEAKER_00: And I think he resolves the ambiguity rightly, and I can give a whole grammatical argument for that from the Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: But I also think that as a Christian, I can say the author of Hebrews is inspired by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He's a good authority.
SPEAKER_00: For a little while, he's made lower than the angels, and that leads to the second difference.
SPEAKER_00: If you're reading from your English Bible, Hebrews 8, your translation of Psalm 8 will probably say he was made a little lower than the heavenly beings, or he's made a little lower than God.
SPEAKER_00: How do you reconcile that?
SPEAKER_00: And now in Hebrews, it says he's made a little lower than the angels.
SPEAKER_00: Where did angels come from?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in the Hebrew text, that word for that's translated as either divine beings or God or angels is the Hebrew word Elohim that can mean any one of those.
SPEAKER_00: It's a generic word for God, and sometimes it's used for the God of the Bible, but sometimes it's used generically for divine beings, supernatural beings, what we would call angels and demons.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're a little lower than the angels, you're also a little lower than God.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not wrong to translate it a little lower than God.
SPEAKER_00: But what the author of Hebrews is getting at is the meaning of Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: What the author of the Psalm is saying is that for a little while humanity has been subjected to be lower than the angels, but one day they're going to be made above them and to rule them, which was the original design of humanity.
SPEAKER_00: When God said that he made humanity to rule over his created world, he meant all of it, even the angels that he created.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, if that sounds outrageous, because it should, it seems preposterous, unless the scripture had told us this.
SPEAKER_00: And it's certainly implicit all the way through the biblical narrative, but there are times when the scripture makes it absolutely explicit that God designs for humanity to rule all of his creation, even the created angels.
SPEAKER_00: For example, in 1 Corinthians in chapter 6, the Apostle Paul, when he's telling us why Christians shouldn't sue one another, he says, When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?
SPEAKER_00: Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world?
SPEAKER_00: And here he's talking about the world to come, the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: And if the world to come is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know that we are to judge even angels?
SPEAKER_00: How much more than matters pertaining to this life?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the teaching of Scripture that the destiny of humanity is to rule over all of God's created world.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not working out very well.
SPEAKER_00: And what Hebrews 2 is saying is that the way it's going to be put together is through Jesus, who will fulfill what we have failed to do.
SPEAKER_00: And the way he does this is verse 7, by being made a little lower lower than the angels for a little while.
SPEAKER_00: Now that leads to a question.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrews 1:1, the author writes, long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed as the heir of all things, through whom he also created the world.
SPEAKER_00: And he, the Son, is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
SPEAKER_00: So the Son is the eternal Son.
SPEAKER_00: All that's in God is in the Son.
SPEAKER_00: He's the radiance of His glory.
SPEAKER_00: And then the Psalm goes, excuse me, the author goes on in the middle of verse 3 and says, But after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty of on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
SPEAKER_00: So the question embedded in the text is this How can the eternal Son of God, who is the fullness of all of God's glory, who created the world by his power, who created the angels, become greater than the angels?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't he by his nature, by his very self-existence, greater than the angels he created?
SPEAKER_00: What the rest of the letter of Hebrews will explain to us is that the way that the Son of God becomes greater than the angels, is he becomes greater than the angels and his resurrected, perfected humanity.
SPEAKER_00: The Son of God, to make purification for sins, added to himself a human nature.
SPEAKER_00: But the nature he added to himself in his incarnation was a mortal nature, subject to death.
SPEAKER_00: And a death he did die, a real human death in the place of sinners.
SPEAKER_00: And in his resurrection, he's resurrected no longer to be united to a mortal human nature, but now united to a glorified immortal nature.
SPEAKER_00: And that glorified immortal nature is the fulfillment of all of God's purposes for humanity.
SPEAKER_00: And so when God brought him back to heaven, he brought him back to heaven, not just as the eternal Son of God, but he brought him into the heavens as the immortal human appointed to rule over the world to come, the representative of a new human race who would fulfill the destiny that God originally gave to humanity to rule over all of God's creation.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, but now has been crowned with glory and honor, which is what the text says in verse 9, because of his suffering and death.
SPEAKER_00: So, verse 8 of chapter 2, now God has put everything in subjection under his feet.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, we don't see everything in subjection, which is what the rest of verse 8 says.
SPEAKER_00: At present we do not see everything in subjection to him, but as surely as he was raised from the dead, as surely as he ascended to the Father, as surely as he is seated, enthroned above the angels, and his perfected human nature in the world to come as we speak this morning, so surely will he bring the world to come to this world.
SPEAKER_00: Will he swallow up mortality with immortality?
SPEAKER_00: And will he put all things in heaven and on earth under his feet?
SPEAKER_00: And when he does, all who belong to him will be joined to him and rule with him for ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Which is exactly what the other text in the New Testament, which quotes Psalm 8, tells us.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to conclude this morning by asking you to flip over in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians and chapter 15.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians chapter 15, this is page 961, the chapter where Paul contemplates the resurrection and begins by saying, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then there's really no purpose for human life.
SPEAKER_00: As we said a moment ago, if there's no God, or if there's no resurrection for humanity, what's the purpose of human existence?
SPEAKER_00: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: But in verse 20, he concludes, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
SPEAKER_00: So verse 22, as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order.
SPEAKER_00: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So verse 27 concludes, For God has put all things in subjection under his feet, quoting Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: But when he says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is exempted, who put all things in subjection under him.
SPEAKER_00: That is, Paul is saying, God is going to fulfill what he said in Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to fulfill the human mandate, he's going to fulfill his purpose for creation through humanity, to bring an everlasting world to come, the kingdom of God, over which humanity will rule, because Christ has resurrected and is seated as the ruler of the heavens and the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And because he has resurrected, verse 23 says, at his coming, all those who belong to Christ will be joined with him.
SPEAKER_00: Which means if you belong to Christ through repentance and faith, that's what repentance and faith does.
SPEAKER_00: Turning from sin and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ unites you everlastingly to the resurrected, immortal Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: And when he comes and brings the new heavens and the new earth, you will be joined with him, not just to participate, but to rule over even angels forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: If this is your destiny, how then shall it shape everything about the way we live in a transient and passing world?
SPEAKER_00: Oh Christ, we do pray that you would open the eyes of our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that you have destined for us things that are beyond what we could hope or imagine.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that we have an inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: We have hope and we have power because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ to live lives that matter eternally because our lives matter to you.
SPEAKER_00: So now we pray that you would give us strength to live worthy of the calling that you have given us in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: What a gift it is to belong to Jesus Christ, our resurrected and exalted head.
SPEAKER_00: We pray these things in his name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBC.church.
SPEAKER_01: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_01: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_01: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.