Mensa Otabil - God Has a Plan For You

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We’re looking at Psalm 8, and if you haven’t done so or have been doing so, please take time to read through the whole Psalm. It’s just a few verses, and each day try to read through so that the studies will fit into your own reading of the Psalms. Psalm 8 is a very important Psalm, and today we’re going to look at verses 3 and 4. Now, what I’m going to do is break my teaching between today and tomorrow on the same verses, 3 and 4. So, tomorrow I’ll still preach from verses 3 and 4.

Let’s read verses 3 and 4 of Psalm 8: «When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him?» I want you to imagine David sitting alone in the still night. How do we know it is the still night? Because he talks about the moon and the stars; he doesn’t talk about the sun. So, this is a night meditation, the meditations of his heart in the night, and he’s watching the stars and the moon in their courses above. He doesn’t have a telescope to see as people would today, but he just knows that this is grand space-it’s huge, it’s massive. He can’t even fully appreciate all of it with his mind, and it is in that space that he’s meditating.

So, let’s follow David’s meditation. He says, «When I consider your heavens,» and here he’s talking about the created universe. He’s considering all of it. He sees this vast expanse that is out there, and he says, «the moon and stars which you have ordained.» And why does he say that? Because he sees order; the moons come and go, and the stars move in their places, denoting weeks and months and year after year. They still point us to what a month is, what our times are, and what the seasons are. There is a certain precision with which David is now looking at this thing that God has created. So, while human beings come and go, the order of the moon month after month continues, and he sees it as the ordination of God.

Then he talks about " the work of your fingers.» He says, «You know, God, these things we see out there are massive, but they didn’t just appear; you flung them into space; you created them. They are the work of your hands.» So, David is lying down under the stars, under the sun, watching God’s handiwork. And he’s not just watching it; he sees God at work; he sees the fingers of God. He sees this as God’s handiwork.

Then, as he contemplates all of that, he has a very important question: «What is man?» Why does he ask that? I’m sure it’s a big question all of us have been asking. I mean, if you look at the size of a human being and then compare it with a mountain, and then you compare the mountain to the Earth, and you compare the Earth to the Sun, and you compare the Sun to the solar system, and you compare the solar system to the Milky Way galaxy, and to think that there are trillions of galaxies-if you shrink it back-who are we? What is man? Where is our place in this huge universe? Do we have a place? Does God have a plan for us? That’s the big question that people ask. Scientists are asking it, astronomers are asking it, and then this is a theologian asking the question, a worshiper asking, «What is man?»

So, like David, sometimes we also feel small in the largeness of God’s creation, and we wonder if we have a place in God’s plan. Does God have us in mind? Is God able to hear us in the midst of all of this? Well, tomorrow we will answer that question, but today we just want to pause and ask ourselves, in the midst of all the things God has created, where is our role? What is our place? What are we supposed to do? Why did God place us here? What are we supposed to find out? And that’s the contemplation of David that night, asking all of that in the context of what God has used him to accomplish. «Who am I, just a shepherd boy, to lead a nation to victory, to conquer a giant that nobody is able to fight?» David is putting the pieces together to find his place in God’s scheme of events, and I believe that God has a plan for your life that is far bigger than your size.

Let us pray. Say with me: «Heavenly Father, you are the King of creation. From the depths of my being, I bow to worship you. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.»