Monday Devo

June 27th, 2022

Scripture Reading:

Psalm 8
1 O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!
Your glory is higher than the heavens.
2 You have taught children and infants
to tell of your strength,
silencing your enemies
and all who oppose you.

Commentary from the ESV Study Bible:

8:1–2 God’s Majestic Name. The opening words (v. 1) set the theme of the psalm, which v. 9 then repeats. The majesty of God’s name (his revealed character) is seen in the dignity he gives to mankind.
8:1 The covenant name (Lord) was given specifically to Israel, but it is majestic … in all the earth, even if not all people acknowledge it.
8:2 Perhaps the babies and infants are the people of Israel, seen as weak in comparison with the mighty unbelieving Gentiles, the foes, the enemy, the avenger. It is through these insignificant mouths that God reveals his majesty. The Greek translation of the Septuagint (see Matt. 21:16) rightly interprets strength as “strength attributed to God in song,” or “praise.”

Study Questions:

In Psalm 8, David is in absolute awe of God. He seems to be marveling at the all the stars in the night sky and is blown away. On Sunday, Brandon told the story behind "The Pale Blue Dot". Look it up real quick and look at the picture. This is an image taken, at Carl Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on 14 February 1990. As the spacecraft was departing our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, it turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 4 billion miles away when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light. Here is an excerpt from Sagan's book. “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Does this description, along with the realization that we are so small, leave you more in awe of God? Like David, does it leave you saying, "Oh Lord! How majestic is your name in all the earth!"?
When the Hebrews wanted an expression for anything too vast to comprehended, this was the image they turned to… the sky, stars, universe. Have you ever been out on a clear night, away from the city lights, and looked up at stars? The only thing you can say is, "Wow!" David, in this psalm, is trying to lift our lid, raise our view of God to invoke awe in us. When was the last time you were in awe of him? Take some time to think about the majesty of God, and ask him to let you see him more clearly, that you would be in awe of him.

Pray:

That you would live your life in awe of God.
That you would raise your view of him.

This Week's City 7:

Try to commit to memory!

2. Are there sources outside the Bible that confirm the Biblical account of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead? Many Roman and Jewish historians have confirmed that the apostles died as martyrs for preaching that they saw Jesus risen from the grave. No one dies for something they know to be a lie.
(Luke 1:1-4; Acts 26:26; 1 John 1:1-4, Josephus, Clement, Hegesippus, Tertullian, Origen, Polycarp)

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