Mensa Otabil - God Wants to Use You (10/30/2025)
This week, we are looking at the eighth Psalm, Psalm 8. Psalm 8 is the first Psalm that breaks with a note of celebration. The previous Psalms have been full of sorrow, lamentations, and prayers of anguish, but in Psalm 8, we hear sounds of joy and victory from David. As I noted earlier, it has been strongly suggested that this Psalm was written after David had defeated Goliath. If that is so, then the Psalm has very special meaning for how we also view God after we have seen Him do great things with us.
So, we look at verse two of Psalm 8: «Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger.» Putting this into context as to when the Psalm was written, David now sees himself as a baby or a nursing infant. Babies are not mature enough to speak. They are not mature enough to take care of themselves, and they have to be fed. They are weak and unable to walk by themselves, much less fight an accomplished warrior. David juxtaposes the babes and infants with an enemy and an avenger. An avenger is someone who goes out to do damage, and here are babies fighting an avenger.
He says two important things that I want you to pay attention to as you look at verse two of Psalm 8. He states that God ordains strength out of babies. God is so strong and powerful that He can use powerless people to demonstrate His power. God does not need powerful people to show how powerful He is; He can take the weak things to confound the things that are strong. From babies, He is able to deal with avengers. He uses those who are surrendered to Him, the weak things surrendered to Him, to showcase His power. He is so perfect in Himself that He doesn’t need anything to help Him to be any better than He is.
Out of the mouth of babes, David recognized himself as that nursing infant, as that immature person -someone who was not ready for battle, someone who was incompetent to even be enlisted yet in the Israelite army because of age. And yet God used him to bring down a boastful giant. Out of the mouth of babes, God ordains strength! If you think you are a baby, if you think you are an infant and don’t have what it takes, God can still use you to do great things for His glory, because out of the mouth of babes, He ordained strength.
The second thing that David says is, «that You may silence the enemy and the avenger.» God silences those who speak boastfully. If you know the battle between Goliath and David, Goliath starts by presenting himself before Israel for forty days. He speaks bombastically and boastfully, defying God and the armies of Israel. This guy is full of himself; of course, he’s a huge guy, well-armed, and he speaks so arrogantly to defy God.
Then, at the height of all this boast, at the height of all this hubris, God raises a shepherd boy who comes in the name of the Lord. This shepherd boy shuts the mouth of the boastful giant, and that’s what David is talking аbout: that God uses babes to shut the mouths of giants, people who speak loudly and think they are all that. God picks a nobody to shut them up. That’s the God we worship! That’s the God who created us, and that is the God we love, because He is able to take babes and silence the avengers.
I don’t know what you’re dealing with. Maybe you are also like David, and you see yourself as a babe, as a nursing infant. You don’t have it all, and you look at all the things you have to do; it seems like people have it figured out. But if you trust in Jehovah, if you trust in this Creator God, then He can take you as a baby and silence the mouth of the avenger. May the Lord silence every avenger that has risen against you.
Let’s pray. Say with me: «Heavenly Father, You do mighty things through feeble vessels. Take my life and use it for Your glory. In Jesus' name, Amen and Amen.»