-Video of Psalm 8-

Good morning everyone.  It is always a blessing to be able to share with you from God’s word!  I am really excited about today’s message because it is a message that I hold near to my heart and it is titled by one of my favorite words: “AWESOME!”  I can’t think of a better title for what we are going to be talking about today.  So let’s dig in!

The word awesome has three definitions according to the American Heritage Dictionary.  The first: Inspiring Awe.  The second: Expressing Awe. And the third: Slang. Remarkable and Outstanding.  Now I realized that you can’t really fully comprehend what awesome means unless you take a look at the root of the word which is “awe”.  The definition of awe according to dicitionary.com is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, or fear produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful or the like.  Specifically today we will be looking at awesome as being filled with awe through admiration.  Now as we go through the rest of this message you will probably hear me say the word “awesome” at least 100 times.  It really is one of my favorite words and if you have been around me enough, you know that I say it more than necessary.  But please understand that when I use this word in talking about God I am using the slang definition to its fullest extent.  God truly is remarkable and outstanding.  The goal today is that by the end of our time together you will be inspired through the awesomeness of God to tell him each day how awesome he is and to live our lives as a reflection of God’s awesomeness!

As we take a look at Psalm 8 we can see that it can be broken into two very distinct parts.  1. God’s glory and majesty reflected in all creation.  2. The astounding reality that God, who created all these amazing things (heavens and earth), is mindful of all of his creation; especially us!  To get a better picture of just how awesome our God is let’s turn our attention to a drama that describes God’s creation of everything as portrayed by my wife, some friends and some dowel rods.

I want to take a minute and focus on the first part of the drama where God created the heaven’s and the earth.  Let’s take a look at some awesome pictures of his creation.

The first picture is that of the planet on which we reside: Planet Earth.  The second picture is that of our sun.  Our sun lies about 93 million miles away from earth and it’s light takes about 8 minutes to reach us.  The galaxy in which our solar system lies is the Milky Way galaxy.  This galaxy is a whirlpool shaped galaxy.  The next picture is a picture of stars forming in the constellation Serpens around 1,000 light years away.  Now keep in mind a light year equals 5.88 trillion miles.  That is how far it takes the light to travel through a vacuum in one year.  The next picture is that of The North America and Pelican Nebulas which are 1500 light years from Earth.  Following that is The Horsehead Nebula which is also 1500 light years from Earth.  The next is a picture of The Eight Burst Nebula which is 2,000 light years (ly) from Earth.  Even farther is the Cat’s Eye Nebula 3,000 light years away and 5 light years across.  The next is one of my favorite pictures.  This Nebula is known as the Trifid Nebula and is 4,000 ly away from Earth.  This one is especially awesome because with the technology we have today we can zoom in and take a look at some of the dusty material we see from the main picture.  This picture shows in great detail the solar dust that is so massive being 1 light year in length.  How beautiful is that picture.  Our God is so awesome.  OK the next picture we are going a little further out to 5,000 light years.  This is the Boomerang Nebula.  Scientists say that this nebula was created by a high-speed wind of gas and dust blowing from an aging central star at speeds of nearly 600,000 kilometers an hour.  This has caused the nebula to be one of the coldest places in the whole universe…that we know of.  I say that God created it that way for a purpose.  I want to show you just four more amazing pictures.  This next picture is that of the Rosette Nebula.  It lies about 5,000 ly away from Earth and I showed this because of its beauty!  Just look at the detail and color in which it holds.  Also I hope you guys remembered to get your wives a rose for Valentines day!  (I hope I didn’t get anyone in trouble!!!)  The next picture is that of The Hidden Galaxy.  This galaxy is 11 million ly away from Earth.  And to think that there are even more nebulas in that galaxy is unbelievable!  The next is the Galaxy known as NGC 7331.  It doesn’t get a cool name so we will call it God’s creation which is visible distant in the northern constellation of Pegasus. This galaxy is about 40 million ly away from Earth.  The last picture I want to show you is that of the Hoag’s Object galaxy.  This galaxy is 600 million ly away and 120,000 light years wide.  So beautifully designed and amazing! 

The reason I show you those pictures was not to simply put up really cool pictures for us to look at.  Rather, I put those up for us to see how AWESOME our God is.  He created each and every one of those objects in the images.  His creativity is unbelievable and his majesty is insurmountable!  He created each of those galaxies and stars with the same care that he created our sun, moon, and earth!  From the Hoag’s Object galaxy to the grass outside God created it all.

 Now from the end of the drama we saw that on the sixth day God created man and woman.  This moves us into the second part of Psalm 8.  David states what most of us think after we see such amazing pictures of God’s creation.  Verse 4 “What are mere mortals that you should think about them, human being that you should care for them?”  It really is awesome that God even created us after he had created all those other amazing things, but even more than that that he gave us a crown of honor and glory!  This passage upholds God’s account of creation that we saw in the drama when God saw that everything was very good.  Let’s take a look at Genesis 1:26-27. We were made in his image given a specific purpose, and we are valued by God by being made just a little lower than him and the heavenly beings!  In ancient times rulers would place images of themselves by way of statues throughout their kingdoms to show their dominion over those areas.  God does the same thing by creating us in his image and placing us all over the world!  We are his reflection in this world. 

Psalm 139 explains just how important we are to God.  Though he created all these amazing things we are the pinnacle of his creation!  Let’s take a look at Psalm 139 vv. 13-14, 16-18.  His thoughts about us are more numerous than the grains of sand on the seashore!  Though we are the pinnacle of Gods creation and God values us more deeply than any other creature, we must not let pride get in the way.  James 4:6b says “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”  It is when we realize that we are nothing that God lifts us up and shows us our value and uses us for his purpose!

This week begins our series on prayer.  As we continue to go back to basics this year, prayer is an essential building block of our relationship with God.  You may think that the beginning part of this message has nothing to do with prayer but with worship…but I guarantee it deals with prayer big time!  Good communication is an essential to any relationship and it is essential to our relationship with God.  I Thessalonians 5:17 says “Pray continually!”  As we focus on prayer and our communication with God this first step is that of admiration!

When we realize that God has created all these amazing things that are so much bigger than we are, it brings us to our knees.  David opens his psalm declaring God’s amazing glory because of God’s creation.  This is important because David realizes that it isn’t about him.  David admires all that God has made from the heavens to the humans.  David saw that he was nothing compared to God’s amazing creation and thus gives God all the glory and praise allowing himself to be humbled and able to be used by God.  David can’t wait to exclaim about his awesome creator!  This Psalm is David’s declaration of admiration to God.  “How majestic is your name in all of the earth…” David clearly gives the glory to God for all he has made and all he has done!  Romans 1:20 tells us that we should always give God the glory for we are without excuse because God is revealed to us through his creation! 

Psalm 8 is a great passage for us to memorize because it humbles us and allows God to inspire us with awe which lifts us from our knees to be used by him!  We can’t do this without communicating with God.  Children are so good at this that it makes me wonder if we really get smarter as we grow up.  I love v. 2 of Psalm 8.    Children tell us without worry that God created the fish, trees, and play dough.  How right they are!!!  When they talk to God they simply tell them how they feel. Just like David, children speak the truth of God through their praise of him which silences the enemies of God! Jesus actually uses this passage to silence those speaking against him at the temple in Matthew 21:16.  You might think that you have to use big words and fancy pants speech to talk to God and tell him how much you admire him—NO WAY!!!  Check out this video that helps us put talking to God into perspective.

So what is the practical application of all of this?  Good question.  We need to be like David in realizing that this world…it’s not about us.  It’s all about God and listening to him.  How do we listen to him—we communicate with him.  Prayer is simply communication between us and God.  Like we call our friends on the phone, Facebook, or IM we can call on God just by speaking to him and more than that listening to him.  David knew that, that is why he wrote Psalm 8!  We learned in the past four weeks that everything belongs to God.  We don’t own anything.  It is God who gives us life, food, money, everything so it is he who deserves our admiration.  We are God’s reflection on this earth.  We need to be sure that we are reflecting him the way he truly is.  We can only do this by communicating with God to see what he truly looks like.  Admiration is a great start!  When we admire God we will act like him and give him the credit for anything good that we can do.