Psalm chapter 8 verse 1 O LORD, our LORD, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! High who has set thy glory above the heavens, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels. and has crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passes through the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. Shall we pray? Father we thank Thee tonight for Your Word, we thank You for this gathering of Your people and Lord for this new year in which we may assemble again in these midweeks and Lord that we may just draw strength and truth from the scripture that will bolster us, feed our souls, support us, that maybe even passages that we can fall back upon in times of difficulty and stress, or perhaps times when we need to seek a promise, Lord, that we will reflect back to these classes and remember some of the great promises of your book. Father, we pray tonight that you would bless us mightily by the aid of thy Holy Ghost, that he would be our teacher, our guide, and Lord, that you would cause us, each one, to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen. Alright, we're looking tonight at the psalm of the first and the last Adam. And I have to tell you, this psalm has always stuck out in my mind for a simple reason. When I was a little lad in my fourth year of primary school, I had one of those teachers that you remember forever. And there are teachers like that, some you remember forever. all the wrong reasons and some you remember for all the right reasons and this was one of the right reason teachers. Her name was Miss Nevin and she sticks in my mind for a number of reasons. She was a very kindly woman and that's one of the reasons she sticks in my mind. Another reason is that she caught me out and my friend out telling a lie when we were very late for school one day because we decided to go to bargaining on the way to school and I came in well over an hour late and told her that we'd missed the bus only to find out that the bus had been cancelled. So we were caught in a lie, which sort of stuck with me. And then the last thing that I remember about her is that she taught her class to memorise verbatim, Psalm chapter 8. And I remember we all were citing this Psalm as a little boy in school and that first verse particularly always stuck with me, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name. and all the earth. I look back on that and I think I can only conceive the possibility that she must have been a Christian. I can't see why a teacher would teach a passage like this. It's quite an unusual passage I think you'd all agree to teach to children. But for some reason she did teach this psalm to her class. And of course when she got to verse 2 she always emphasised the second verse, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast ordained strength because of thine enemies that thou mayest still the enemy and the avenger. And I suppose that was, if she was a Christian lady, and I really do believe she was, I think that's probably her motivation was to, you know, basically get these young people, hoping these children one day would be reared up to become the very kind of men and women who would indeed still the enemy with their praise of the Lord. I suppose when I was telling her that lie that day, she didn't ever think that I would be a pastor one day. But anyway, that's life, I guess. I can't say that when I was 8 or 9 years old, or 7 or 8 years old, whatever age it was, that I really understood the psalm. It was just, to be honest with you, when she said, we're going to recite Psalm 8, my spirit used to groan. I'd think, oh dear, we've got to do this thing, whatever it is. And we'd just all sit there going over this thing by rote. And I can't say that as a child I understood it then, but it did stick. And it says something, I think, for those of you who are involved in children's work when you're teaching children memory verses. If you're very thorough with it, those memory verses will remain with them till the day they die. I always remember it was one of the highlights of my Christian life, pastoral experience, leading a lady to the Lord who was illiterate but who was able to quote Isaiah chapter 53 verbatim, which she learned as a little girl. And she was now sitting as a 70-something year old woman, not having been able to read hardly a thing her entire life, but was able because of the faithfulness of some Sunday school teacher and the patience of that Sunday school teacher to quote Isaiah 53 without making a mistake. That was remarkable, wasn't it? And so that's an encouragement to us, if we're involved in children's work, to stick at it and don't be disheartened. And you never know, the little lad that has just told you the lie might turn out to be a preacher someday. This is a purely messianic psalm. Some people want to liken it to, or at least relate it to, David's victory over Goliath. That's because of the title above it to the chief musician upon Geteth. Some people say Geteth was a type of harp that was familiar to people of Gath, from where Goliath came. And David is making some point about how he is a young lad, still the enemy, the avenger, and felled Goliath in the Valley of Elah. And that may well be, but to be honest with you, it's a very tenuous link. And it seems to me that this psalm is, like some of the others we've studied, purely designed to point us to Christ. That David isn't particularly reading from a personal incident in his life, but God is inspiring him to look down the ages and to see Christ coming and to say some things about the Messiah of Israel. And this psalm is, we meet it four times in the New Testament, there are four New Testament citations. The first of those, actually, is from the lips of the Lord Jesus himself. When he's making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, you'll remember the children came out and they sang his praises, Hosanna to the son of David, and so on, and the chief priests and the scribes, they told Jesus to rebuke them. And Jesus quotes this second verse of the psalm that I just mentioned, And he continues on his way. In other words, he justifies the children and basically says, listen, if you're not willing to praise me, there's always somebody who will. The children will say what you ought to be saying. And so the Lord rebuked him by means of this psalm. But in so doing, he connects the psalm with himself. He makes that linkage between this passage and his own life story. The second quotation in the New Testament is in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 27, where it talks about how the Lord subdues everything. At the end of time, the end of the millennial kingdom, everything is subdued, put under his feet, and then is turned over to his Father, and God is all in all. And again in Ephesians chapter 1 verses 20-22 we have the third reference, the same passage is quoted, the same verse is quoted, the 6th verse, for he has put all things under his feet. And this time it's a reference to the headship of Christ over the church. And so in that respect the church is put under his feet and we are subject to his authority. But the final and by far the most extensive New Testament commentary on Psalm 8 is found in Hebrews chapter 2 and verses 5 through 9 and there the Psalm is connected with Adam's reign. Adam's tenure as God's representative upon the earth, as the one who had dominion in Eden, who falls, who leaves the world in a fallen state, and then Christ comes along as the last Adam, and he saves, not just us as individuals, but he saves the planet, he saves the plan of God. The plan of God was ever that man should reign over the planet. And so he comes along as the last Adam when he comes to reign and he's God's ultimate representative of man upon earth who has dominion over all. And we'll look at that later on in our time together this evening. So this is a psalm that on the one hand harks back to Eden and looks back at an historical event but on the other hand reaches forward to the Millennial Kingdom and speaks of a prophetical event. Now the key to understanding the psalm is really in the very first verse and also in the ninth verse a truth that is repeated for emphasis at the beginning and end of the psalm. And notice that this psalm is about the revelation of God's excellence. Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name. Literally, how great are you, how illustrious, how majestic, how wondrous, how magnificent you are. But notice the phrase, in all the earth. Now that's the key thing. In all the earth. When you think about it, Is the Lord's name, when you think about it, is it now considered to be excellent in all the earth? No. There's large portions of the earth that haven't heard His name. On evangelized fields of the world, the mission field, that people have yet to even hear the name of the Lord, let alone marvel at His majesty. And then of course there are parts of the world where people have embraced false religion and where the name of Christ and the name of God is rejected out of hand. We think particularly of the Kingdom of Islam. And you're not allowed to bring a Bible into those countries and anybody that was seen evangelizing in many of those places will suffer the consequences. And so the Lord's name is certainly not considered excellent there. And then of course there's the whole Secular societies that also reject the name of Christ, I think of places like North Korea, Cuba, places like that where atheism is the order of the day, secularism rules and reigns. By the way, when you think about that, people in our country think atheism is just wonderful. If they would just go back and look at the history of atheism, You don't have to look very far and see the damage that atheism does to societies. They would realize that in embracing that ideology, they're really bringing a great deal of trouble upon themselves and upon their future and upon the future of our country. But, be that as it may, certainly we cannot say that the Lord's name is excellent or considered excellent in all the earth. But it once was excellent in all the earth and it will be again excellent. in all the earth. So we want to begin tonight by considering God's majesty in all creation. God's majesty in all creation. And in verse 1 we see the place of his majesty. Oh Lord our Lord how excellent is thy name in all the earth notice who has set thy glory above the heavens. Now I think this is great because before we are led in the psalm to look around us at the wonders of creation, we are first of all directed to look up. to the one from whom all these blessings flow. And to consider Him in all His glory. And we're told He has set His glory above the heavens. And of course we know from Scripture there are three heavens. The atmospheric heaven, depicted here on our little Sunday school board with the rainbow and the birds. And that's the atmospheric heaven in which we're most familiar with. And then beyond that you have the universal heavens where the sun, the moon and the stars and the planets and everything else is. And then beyond that you have God's dwelling place, the third heaven. And what is the highest point of the third heaven? What's the pinnacle of that location? the Lord is. Alright? Remember what Isaiah said in Isaiah chapter 6? He says he saw the Lord high and lifted up. That's a heavenly scene. He sees that nothing is above God. That God is the ultimate in everything. And so we see that in this psalm. The psalmist says, O Lord, our Lord. Notice the capitalization in the King James Bible. It's O Lord, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, R. Lord, capital L, small o, small r, small d. In other words, it's, O Jehovah, our Adonai. And what he's saying here is this, Jehovah is, the word Adonai means master, he's saying Jehovah is the proprietor, the ruler, the master, the governor, the possessor of all. He is supreme. and there is none like him. And so as such his glory is set above the heavens. So that's the place of his majesty. But then we see the praise of his majesty. Verse 2. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies that thou mayest still the enemy and the avenger. Now there's a temptation when you look at that verse to allegorize it, to say, well, do babes really praise God? Do they really honor God? Are they really used of God to show his strength? Obviously not. We're Baptists and we strongly hold to the idea that you have to be of an accountable age before you can sensibly make a commitment to Christ and so on. And so we don't baptize infants for that reason. So here's what people do. They come to this and they say, is talking about spiritual babes newborn babes in Christ and new converts and how that when they're first saved they sing forth the praise of God that God has ordained these new converts these new babes to He's ordained them to express His strength, His glory, His praise in the face of His enemies. But you know what? There's no reason to take this any other way than how it is written. We should accept it literally. You know, when you think about it, how did the Lord Jesus take it? Who did He apply it to? children. He applied it to children. He wasn't applying it to new converts. He was saying it was true of children. And again, you may say, how can sucklings be capable of praise? You must remember this, any time you come to your Bible, you must be careful not to impose a Western understanding upon an ancient Near Eastern setting. Women in the Near East in ancient times suckled their children far longer than modern western women do. You have an example of that in the case of Samuel. Do you remember when Hannah promised Samuel to Eli? She said that she would return him to the old priest when he was weaned. He wasn't brought down there as a baby, was he? He was clearly old enough to be left alone with Eli and entrusted to Eli without a care. The idea here of babes and sucklings is not newborns as we would understand it. or babes that are on the milk, but it's just speaking of young children. And so, is it not the case that God is still glorified in the simple faith of little children? And even their songs that the kids sing, they glorify the Lord's name. It's always a joy to see the children sing choruses in Holiday Bible Club or Monday Club or Sunday School or getting on the platform in the little choir that Lynn's running there and listening to them on a Sunday morning. It thrills your soul. But we're all cooing and cawing and oohing and aahing because they're all cherubic. and there are kids and there are grandkids and we're taking pictures and putting them on Facebook saying look how cute our kids are. But here's the thing, all the while God is being glorified through babes and sucklings. And so we ought not to forget that and really this truth underscores the fact that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and God has chosen the weak things and in this case the weakest of humanity, to confound the things which are mating. Look in Matthew chapter 11 for a moment and see what Jesus said in this passage pertaining to children. Matthew chapter 11 and verse 25. Here the Lord is speaking, he's condemning really, Chorazin and Bethsaida, comparing them to Sodom, saying that their judgment would be more severe than that of the Sodomites. In verse 25 he goes on, he says, At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." Isn't that an interesting statement by the Lord Jesus? You know, children, you think about it, they often ask the most profound questions, don't they? I mean, any of us that have been parents, you know, they're far harder questions than adults ask sometimes. And, you know, sometimes you're looking at this little kid and you're thinking, I don't know the answer to that. Just go away, right? Because they pursue, don't they? Kids, they don't let go of stuff. They just keep asking and asking. Why, why, why? And what does this mean? And why would God do this? And it's difficult. It's difficult. But sometimes in the simplicity of their faith, they teach us the deepest of lessons. Children have a very simple understanding of God, don't they? When you become an adult, we suddenly become all sophisticated in our theology. We want to study all of the isms and the schisms and the various doctrines and argue the finer points. of Bible doctrine with one another. And you know sometimes we do that, I think we detract from the simplicity of the faith. And children remind us at the end of the day that Satan is defeated, not so much by our clever theological arguments, but by our simple trust in the Lord. And they bring us back to that sometimes. And it's that same childlike trust that often silences the enemy, the avenger, as he's referred to in verse 2, who of course is Satan. So we see the place of God's majesty, he has set his glory above the heavens, the praise of his majesty out of babes and sucklings, and the power of his majesty. The psalmist says, when I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained. Now, in this respect, I think the psalm does fall a little bit back, not on a particular event in David's life, but a general experience as a shepherd boy. Because he would have spent many a night out in the fields around Bethlehem, just lying there in the sheepfold, across the gate there, guarding the sheep from night-time predators. And he would have been looking up into the night sky. Notice that there's no mention of the sun there. He doesn't talk about the sun. So he just talks about the moon and the stars. And so this tells us this is a psalm that seems to have been written from the perspective of a night time, of a darkness. And of course in Psalm 19 he writes later, The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament, the sky, shows his handiwork. As I say, the conspicuous absence of the sun in verse 3 would seem to intimate to us that this is a psalm which was considered by David at night time. He's looking at the stars and he is reminded that everything he sees is testimony to God's great power. that it's a statement of his majesty, that it's a revelation of his eternality. You know, I think living in the city we're rather spoiled in the sense that we don't enjoy the night sky as much as people who live away from light pollution. I just read an article yesterday, I think it was, that they said the Isle of Man is the best place in the British Isles from which to view the night sky. So we'll get a boat and we'll go. but there's very little light pollution. And they showed some photographs that were taken from the Isle of Man and it was rather glorious, the view they had of the stars and the solar system and so on. But all of that is expressive. It's expressive of God's majesty in all creation. Which then brings us to a second thought, which is human dignity over all creation. You know, look in verse 4, he says, It's interesting that so many people today, in this age, are convinced that we are just animals. That's all we are. We've just evolved from other animal forms and that's as much as we are. Of course, you hear this over and over again from people, we're just animals. That's obviously the outcome of generations or certainly decades of evolutionary teaching. As time progresses, I think, and as people embrace that ideology, we're starting to see the consequences of that. You're starting to see the results of that thought process as people lose their dignity. There's a whole genre of programs on television that I think are entirely about just robbing people of their dignity and they're presented to us as entertainment. Well, personally I don't find them entertaining and I would really doubt the wisdom or the you know, the sense of anybody else who did. But, you know, as time goes on, you know, you see man, he's losing his moral compass, you know, he's becoming more and more promiscuous, he's becoming less and less modest, you know, and he's just abandoning himself as though he were an animal. And so we see in every area of human behavior that man is falling further and further away from his original purpose in the creation of God. And so when you think about it, when somebody says that you're just an animal, what are they telling you? They're telling you to look down. That's Satan's trick. Satan says to us, look down, look at what you were, just look down. I always think it's ironic that if you go to a football match and a black footballer runs past the pitch and you call him a monkey, they'll virtually put you in prison. You'll certainly come down on you like a ton of bricks. Racism, they'll cry. But then you go to school on Monday and they say, well, you're just a monkey. And they go, oh yeah, such intelligence and enlightenment. And you're like, what's going on here? You can't have it both ways. Now of course we would very definitely deny any thought that a black person was a monkey or came from a monkey or any such thing. But that is actually part and parcel of evolutionary thought. And so, you know, here's Satan, he's telling us to look down, look down the family tree, see where you came from, you're really just a monkey, you're just really a glorified imbecile, you know, you've come a long way from goo to you, you know, and so on. And so he says you're no different from, you know, the dog or the worm or whatever else. But God doesn't call us to look down, what does he say? He calls us to look up! to see where he really came from. You know what's interesting? The Greek word for man is anthropos, and it means literally this, one who looks up. One who looks up. Man is one who looks up. Doesn't look down. And this psalm is designed to remind us of our human dignity and the wonder of it. What is man that thou art mindful of him? You see, If you have got out on a dark winter's evening, and you've looked at the night sky, and you've had a clear night, and you're lying, if you can lie in your garden on a winter's evening, but if you're lying somewhere, sitting in your car or whatever, and you're looking up into the sky, and the thing about it is, when you get into a really dark place, It's like stars start appearing. And you begin to think your eyes are tricking you, don't you? Because especially if you're a city person, you think, there can't be that many stars. You don't want the spectators. And then you realize, you sort of realize where you are in the scheme of things. How do you feel? This small. this small. And that's exactly what David is saying here. He looks up into the sky and he says, when I consider the heavens, he says, when I consider the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars which you've ordained, who am I? What am I that you should be mindful of me? Why would you even think about me? Now, when David looked up, He could probably see at most, assuming he had 20-20 vision and a perfect night to look up, at the very most he would have seen, with the naked eye, would be about 2,000 stars. Absolute max. And so he was in awe of God just seeing 2,000 stars and then considering his place in the universe. But you and I now know by virtue of telescopes and space probes and all the rest of it, that there are billions of stars, and that the universe is really this spectacular place. I mean, it's glorious. And, you know, secularists, they look at that, they look at the sky, the night sky, they consider all the planets and the stars and so on, and they reason that we cannot be alone in the universe. They're always looking, aren't they, Life on Mars, life on Jupiter, life on this, life on that. There's got to be somebody, even recently I read that when we find a planet the same size of Earth and has the same gas density and all this stuff, maybe there's life out there. You know, what's their deal? What's their problem? Well, they believe that life accidentally evolved. It accidentally evolved on earth. And so they reason with such a huge universe that it must accidentally have evolved somewhere else. And of course the problem for them is they can't find it, can they? They search and they search and they'll go on searching and they'll never find it. And so if you put it to them that, you know, we're alone in the universe, which is, you know, that's disturbing for an atheist. Who wants to be alone in the universe? You know, if there's no God and you're alone in the universe, what does that lead you to? It leads you to futility. But as a Christian, you don't reject the idea you're alone in the universe, you actually relish it. Because God has made it this way. And he's placed this little planet, a pinpoint in the scheme of things. And he said, all the focus of my attention is on that little planet and the people who live there. Now, the atheist comes along and he says, well, God must have made a mistake then. You know, if you're the only people, if we're the only people that are in the universe, why would he make such a big universe? It's like making, you know, a high-rise building to house your pet ant. Makes no sense to the atheist. You know, why would you put up a great big building when you could keep the ant in a matchbox? But what the atheist misses is that the whole purpose of the universe is to express the eternality of God and His power. And here's the thing, you can never get to the end of it. Because even as we're speaking now, the universe is expanding. It's ever expanding. And so even if you sent out a space probe tonight that could possibly go at such a speed as to get anywhere of any distance, it would never reach the end of the universe. And that is telling us that God is eternal. And then that even increases all the more our wonder. that this great eternal God would show the slightest degree of interest in us. Now, we're in the Old Testament, we're not in the New. I did mention to you that the Greek word Anthropos, relating to man, means one who looks up. But of course we're not dealing here in the Old Testament with an underlying Greek language, but the underlying Hebrew language. And the word for man in verse 4 is the word Enos, which speaks about man in his absolute weakest. It talks about man as a frail and the most frail kind of creature. And that's how you feel. When you look at the night sky, even without a telescope, you feel this small, don't you? Just feel tiny. So David asked this question, what is man that thou art mindful of him? And he continues, I'm the son of man that thou visitest him. When did God visit mankind? Think about it. When did God first visit man? In the garden. Garden of Eden. The Lord Jesus came walking down to visit Adam in the cool of the day. When else did he visit man? At what point? Alright, he visited Abraham. And another time? In what form with Moses? Think about what Moses was instructed to build. The tabernacle. He built the tabernacle. And the presence of God dwelt in the tabernacle. That's what it was there for. It was there to house the presence of God. That pillar of fire by day, or pillar of fire by night, smoke by day. So then later on, what does the Lord do? He inhabits the temple. Then of course we know from Ezekiel he abandons the temple because of the idolatry that was taking place there. And the Lord Jesus comes and he is said to dwell among us. He tabernacled among us. That's the exact word. He tabernacled among us. So all along God has been visiting man and he's been coming to earth and said, you know what I'm going to stay here a while, I'm going to spend some time with Adam, I'm going to speak to Abraham here, I'm going to come and deal with Moses, I'm going to dwell among the people of Israel, I'm going to come now in the form of Christ and of course Today he's dwelling with us in the form of the church. The church is his tabernacle. The Holy Spirit indwells us. But there is coming a day where Jesus actually comes physically and visibly to the earth and he will again tabernacle with men. He will inhabit his millennial temple. All right? And so he will visit us again. Now, why would God do that? You think about the universe, how big it is, and it's hard to imagine how big it is, but it's vast by any stretch of the imagination. And the God who makes it is greater than all, greater than even that which he's made, which we're all struck by. Why would he then want to come to this pinprick of a planet and keep dwelling with us, living with us? Why would he do that? You know, in these Psalms we've considered many truths about God. We've thought about the Lord Jesus, about his eternal sonship. We've thought about his incarnation. We've thought about his temptation. We've thought about his betrayal. We've thought about his crucifixion. We've thought about his resurrection. We've thought about his ascension. It's all there in the book of Psalms. And you read all of that and now we get to this point and we say, well, why is God even interested? As wonderful as that story is, why is God even interested? Because God has a plan. And man's destiny is part of that plan. And his purpose is to serve his glory. His purpose is to reflect his glory. And to understand what that means, David takes us back to the Garden of Eden. And he talks to us about the wideness of human dignity, not just the wonder of it, but the wideness of it. You see, man is not one of the animals as our evolutionist friends would have us believe, but he's been placed at the outset above the animals. Notice it says, Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet. Now in the first instance we read in the psalm that man is made a little lower than the angels yet he was crowned with glory and with honor. That is he was afforded a special dignity that was given to him above every other creature by God. So we're made in the image of God. There's no other creature that is made in the image of God but man. And then when Adam was made in the image of God, he was given dominion over all the earth. That has put all things under his feet. That's where Adam was in the beginning. All things were under his feet. He had rule over all. He was king, if you like, over all the earth. Now admittedly he only had a kingdom of one to begin with. Eve, she was enough trouble for a small nation. But nevertheless he was king, he was a ruler. And his reign extended not just within Eden but beyond the boundaries of Eden. to the entire planet. In fact his reign took in the entire animal kingdom. Notice what it says here in verse 7. So that's everything. You know, it's the domestic animals, the sheep, the oxen, it's the wild animals, the beasts of the field, it's the animals that are airborne, the fowl of the air, the birds, the insects, it's the fish of the sea, everything that's in the water, and whichever passes through the paths of the seas. You know, Matthew, I found 10 more, eh? The man who charted the sea lanes of the world did so on the basis of this verse. And here's the thing, what's where it passes through the paths of the seas? That's something that's just floating along. Well, what floats along in the sea? Plankton. So the Lord takes us from the great big beasts, the elephants, the mammoths, all the way down to the plankton. He says, I gave him dominion over all of it. He had control over every last creature. He was a king. Now, look in Genesis chapter 2. I know this is familiar territory for us all, but let's just remind ourselves. Go back there to Genesis chapter 2 and remind ourselves of Adam's rule in the garden over all of those creatures. Genesis chapter 2, verse 19 says, Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air. That's the similar language that we see there in Psalm 8. And brought them on to Adam, I like this, to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, to the fowl of the air, to every beast of the field, and for Adam there was not found in help, meat for him. I love what it says there. God brought these creatures to him to see what he would call them. That's always a fatherly touch, isn't it? It's like we do with our kids. We do it on Christmas Day, we bring a doll. What's the name of the doll? We don't really care what the name of the doll is, the truth be told. But we just want to see. We want to get a little tickle out of hearing what the kid has called the doll. Screw thing, or Addison wasn't in Adam's shoes, or everything would be called Jack. She calls everything Jack. Doesn't matter what's male, female, animal kingdom, human kingdom, it's Jack. But Adam was a little bit more creative than Addison. Obviously, he was a lot older and wiser, too, in terms of his mentality, mental age. But nevertheless he calls all of these creatures by name. Now you think about that. That tells you something about his dominion. God brings everything to him. He brings a lion to him and Adam decides what to call it. Now if I brought a lion in here or somebody opened the door and let a lion loose It wouldn't be a pretty scene, would it? I mean, we'd be all bundling out the windows and the doors as quickly as our little feet could carry us. And so it's evident that something went wrong because man who once ruled over the animal kingdom now lives, for the most part, in fear of it. You think about it, you know, here's what T.E. Wilson, the great brethren teacher, he says, the crown has fallen from his head, Adam's head, and his scepter is in the dust. The writer of the Hebrews epistle sadly says, we see not yet all things put under him. What we do see is a groaning creation under the curse. Man is afraid of the lion and of the snake, and even of a dog or a mouse. Now think about that. Think about that. A mouse. And it's not just women who are afraid of mice, let me tell you. Men don't like mice. If you threw a mouse out here, there'd be some guys that'd be brave enough to scoop it up, but there'd be some guys that'd be manly slipping out the door. I'll go and get you something to help catch it. Spiders, I mean, honestly, if you're afraid of a spider, come November time, October, November, you get those big spiders that come in from the cold, you know, and you're sitting at, you know, you're watching telly or whatever, and this big spider dashes across the, you've seen those, haven't you? See when that happens in our house, honestly. There's screams, cries, you know, all kinds of wailing and weeping goes on. And you think about it. You think about it, you know. At the beginning, Adam was the one who put fear into the animals. But now we see the outcome of the curse in the fall and even a tiny little insect like a spider, which in this country, for the most part, 99.9% will not hurt you one iota. Don't worry. Those big ones are harmless. Those big ones that are running across your floor, they're harmless. You can stroke those. Take them for a walk. Take pictures of them for Facebook. But you think about the reality. Stomp on it. You can stomp on it. It's dead. But what? We're dancing around it. Catch it. Catch it. Oh. Oh. And you see what's happened here. What a pitiful state this is. Man, who was crowned with glory and honor, who was given dominion over all the earth, is now a slave to sin, clothed in the filthy rags of his own fallen state, and afraid of the very creatures that God gave him dominion over. That's a remarkable state of affairs, isn't it? So what then becomes of God's purpose? What happens now? Having given us dominion over all the earth to rule the planet on his behalf, man has fallen and lost it all. We're in a mess. The planet is ruined and, you know, logically speaking, we would be finished with Adam. You know, hardly, even before we got started, we were finished. Isn't that right? So what happens now? Well, here's what I want you to see. No matter what happens, the Lord never departs from his plans. No matter what happens, he never departs from his plans. He never departs from his purposes. Which brings us to Hebrews chapter 2 and the commentary of the Holy Ghost upon these things. And here we see Christ's sovereignty over all creation. Hebrews chapter 2. And let's begin our reading in verse 5. It says, for unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come whereof we speak. Now notice what we're speaking of. The subject matter is what? The world to come. Under the angels he has not put the world to come in their subjection. But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Sound familiar? Psalm 8. Thou meetest him a little lower than the angels, thou crownest him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet, for in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him, but we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels. for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour, that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. Now, it's no mistake, when you think about it, that this psalm, Psalm 8, begins and ends with the same statement. And God doesn't do things just incidentally or on a whim. These verses are placed in this order for a particular reason. And I think the reason is that this is the sum of God's dealings with man. It begins in Eden at the creation. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. But it concludes in consummation at Jerusalem with the coming of the Lord Jesus. Where again we say, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. Now there is no North Korea. Now there is no Islamic states. Now there are no, you know, un-evangelized mission fields. The Lord is ruling and reigning over all the earth. The songwriter put it, And that is what the writer of Hebrews brings to our understanding of Psalm. He reminds us of God's original purpose. He takes us back to that psalm and he says, yep, there was one who wrote and said, well, what is man that thou art mindful of him and spoke about how he was made lower than the angels and how all things were put in subjection under his feet. But we get to the end of verse 8, notice what he says at the end of verse 8. He says, but now we see not yet all things put under him. What's he saying there? He's saying it didn't quite work out. It didn't quite happen, did it? So the first Adam and his descendants, us and others, have sadly failed in the original mandate that was given to us. But in Hebrews chapter 2, the writer tells us what God did about that. He introduces the subject of the head of the new creation. Remember the context, verse 5, about the world to come. a new heaven, a new earth, a new creation is coming, a new day is dawning. And he says, who's going to be man's head in that day? The one that was man's head has failed. Now we see not yet all things put under him. But we get to verse 9, and what does it say? But we see Jesus, who was made a little Lord of the angels. What does that mean? It means he was made as one of us. He became God's man. He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. He was born to die in honour and he is thought he should taste death. The Lord Jesus is what the book of 1 Corinthians calls the last Adam. And in quoting Psalm 8, this book of Hebrews outlines four great pinnacles Speaking of which, he's made a little lower than the angels. When did that happen? When he comes to earth, when he lives his 33 and a half years upon this planet. He lives a little lower than the angels. Crowned him with glory and honor. When did that happen? We've already covered it in the Psalms. At his ascension, he's covered in glory and honor. He goes back up into heaven. He receives a name that is above every name. And he sits down at the right hand of God the Father. And he set over the works of thy hands. Now we're looking at his coronation. We're looking at his coming again. Of course you know we're going to look next week at Psalm 72 and the Millennial Kingdom. But one of the characteristics of the Millennial Kingdom is the alteration that takes place in the animal kingdom. Now the wolf lies down with the lamb. The little child puts his hand in the cockatrice dead and he's unharmed. He can take a lion for a walk and it's okay. The days of running away from spiders are gone. When does that happen? It happens when the Lord sets Christ over the works of thy hands. and then all things are put under his feet. And that speaks of the consummation, the eternal state when all opposition is forever put down. So writing this Psalm, Psalm 8, David is moved to worship in the first instance when he considers the night sky. He's then led to thoughts about our place and our purpose in the world. How is it that we really matter to God? Why does he pay any attention to us at all? which finally brings him to the reign of the Lord Jesus and the realization that God has not abandoned this broken planet. Everything that he is destined for man will come to pass. So that we can now say, as David then said, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. So we'll leave it there for this evening.