“LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens” (Psalm 8:1)

Dear Friends and Members of IBC, In our current sermon series, Summer in the Psalms, we are exploring some of the varied Psalms found in Scripture. In this week’s Word for the Week, we will consider one of the most beautiful psalms in Scripture. All of the earth has been shown God’s glory. No-one can say they haven’t seen it. Romans 1:20 also affirms that the world is without excuse, God’s glory has been revealed to them: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” David writes Psalm 8 as a hymn of meditative praise, a reflection on God after maybe just looking up – “when I consider the heavens”. I can imagine him just looking up at the night sky one evening, and it sets off a reflection on how majestic God is. David sees God’s majesty, his glory in creation, and it causes him to go deeper into reflecting about God, how He amazingly chooses to show his glory through fragile, dusty, broken human beings. The glory of God’s creation points him to God. This is what it should do. The beauty in the world isn’t contained within itself. The writer C.S. Lewis once said that it is a message. It is a message that points us towards a greater beauty, it points us towards the messenger, the architect of that beauty. And it is a glory that all people have seen. The verse says how majestic is God’s name in all the earth. But some choose to look away from it. Romans 1:20 goes on to say that people exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings. They worshipped themselves instead. They worshipped created things rather than the creator. So, choose not to look away from it! We can choose to deliberately immerse ourselves and discipline ourselves to consider the glory of God’s creation and allow it to point us to God, allow it to draw our hearts to God. Every day we decide whether we will orientate ourselves to God or not. We often have five minutes to endlessly scroll the news or watch that pointless YouTube clip. Are we really saying we don’t have five minutes to consider the beauty of God’s creation? Consider this. There are 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and there are estimated to be 100 billion galaxies, so the number of stars in the universe is just beyond comprehension. Why create so much! Who is going to see this? God loves to create. Plus, it takes millions of years for the stars light to reach our eyes, so when you see these stars, it’s actually like looking back in time thousands of years. Many astronauts considered the heavens God created and had their faith transformed through their actual experiences in space. The American astronaut John Glenn, one of the first astronauts to orbit the earth in 1962, returned to space in the 1990s when he was 77, and when he came back to earth, he said: “To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible. It just strengthens my faith.” Another astronaut, James Irwin, was one of the first astronauts to walk on the moon and after his experience of being in space came back to earth to dedicate his life to telling people about Jesus. These men looked at God’s glory shown in his creation, they considered the heavens, the moon (they walked on it!) and the stars, and it pointed them to the great creator. It changes us. Like when we worship God through song, the focus is no longer on ourselves but enjoying God. So, let’s ask ourselves again: Do we reflect and just regularly take the time to enjoy God, just for who He is? God bless you James