## Questions About Man

## Psalm 8:1-9

Last week we looked at a number of questions concerning God. Is He really there? What is He like? Does He speak to us today? All of those are valid questions to which each of us need to find answers. But Psalm 8:4 poses another very important question: "What is man?"

Is man only a highly developed animal, as Darwin taught, or an underdeveloped child, as Freud believed? Or perhaps man is only an economic factor, as Karl Marx believed? It is interesting that Luke 15 presents all three pictures: the animal-a lost sheep; the economic factor-a lost coin; the spoiled child-the prodigal son!

What man thinks of man may be important, but most important is what God thinks of man. In Psalm 8, David had the courage to declare that man was-a king! God crowned him with glory and honor! But there must be something wrong, because man doesn’t act like a king.

There is something wrong, and Psalm 8 explains what it is. In order to understand man’s place in the universe, and in order to fulfill it, we need to meet the three "kings" who are involved in this psalm.

I. King Adam. cf v6-8; Ge. 1:26-28

A. Man was created by God.

1. "Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture." (Ps.100:3)

2. Man shares the same mineral matter as the dust, but he is more than matter.

3. Man is the climax of Creation, the creature for which everything else was created.

4. Because man was created by God, he has personal dependence on God and a responsibility to God.

B. Man was created in God’s image.

1. This implies that man has personality like God-mind, emotions, will-and that man is basically a spiritual being.

2. His body may, at death, return to dust, but the spirit lives on.

C. Man was created for God’s glory.

1. When David contemplated the greatness of man, he wrote Psalm 8 to give glory to God!

2. Twice David sang, "How excellent is Thy name in all the earth!" (v. 1, 9).

3. "...for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him." cf Is. 43:7b

D. Man was created by God to be a ruler.

1. God crowned man and gave him dominion!

2. It was this fact that so amazed David as he contemplated the place of man in God’s vast universe.

3. Adam became the king over God’s creation, and his wife, Eve, ruled at his side.

E. Man lost his throne and his crown.

1. As long as man was ruling under the authority of God, in the will of God, and for the glory of God, everything went well.

2. But when man went his own way, in obedience to Satan’s will, then everything started to fall apart.

3. The familiar story is recorded in Genesis 3.

a. Sin marred God’s image in man, and sin robbed man of God’s glory: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23).

b. While man still has tremendous power in subduing creation, he creates new problems every time he makes a new discovery.

c. No wonder David was amazed that God would be mindful of him.

- Why would Almighty God pay any attention to sinful man?
- The celestial bodies obey God and give Him glory, but man disobeys God and robs Him of glory.
- Instead of ruling over creation, man has all but ruined creation!
- Is there any hope for man?
- Yes, there is; and this leads us to our second king.

II. King Jesus Christ. cf Heb. 2:5-9

A. Christ came to earth as a man: the Last Adam.

1. The first Adam came from the earth, but Jesus came down from heaven ( I Cor. 15:47).

a. Our Lord had a real human body; He became tired, ate and drank, felt pain, and died.

b. But He was both God and man that He might be our Savior.

2. The first Adam was tempted in a perfect paradise, and failed, but Jesus was tempted in a horrible wilderness and was victorious.

B. Christ on earth exercised dominion.

1. This dominion was an important part of God’s mandate to Adam.

2. Jesus had dominion over the animals.

a. He was with wild beasts in the wilderness (Mark 1:13).

b. He rode on a colt on which had never been ridden before. (Mark 11:1-7).

3. He had dominion over the fowls.

a. Every bird in Jerusalem kept silent so that the one cock might crow at just the right time (Luke 22:34).

3. He certainly had dominion over the fish!

a. He enabled Peter and his partners to catch a great haul of fish (Luke 5:1-11; John 21:1)

b. He even helped Peter catch one fish with a hook (Matt. 17:24- 27). 4. All of nature recognized its Creator and Lord when Jesus Christ ministered on earth.

C. Christ died to free us from the bondage of sin.

1. This truth is expounded in Romans 5 in a series of contrasts.

2. Adam’s sin plunged the entire human race into condemnation, sin, and death...

3. But Christ’s act of obedience--His death on the cross--brought right- eousness, salvation, and life.

4. Because of the sin of the first Adam, sin and death reign over mankind...

5. But because of the righteous act of the Last Adam grace reigns in the lives of those who trust Him.

- God the Father created us to be kings.
- This we learned from King Adam.
- God the Son redeemed us to be kings; this we learned from King Jesus.
- The important question is: how do we make this work in our daily living?
- For the answer, we will meet our third king-King David.

III. King David.

A. We do not know when David wrote this psalm.

1. Some imagine young David, the shepherd, watching over his sheep at night and marveling at God’s creation.

2. No doubt he did this often, for David was a man who saw the handiwork of God in nature.

3. Still others have suggested that there might be a connection between Psalm 8 and David’s slaying of Goliath (I Sam. 17).

4. It is not difficult to see parallels between the two passages of Scripture.

B. Goliath taunted the armies of Israel for 40 days, and defied them to attack.

1. David wrote that "Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger"

2. Goliath laughed at David and said he was only a youth, and David wrote that it was "out of the mouth of babes and sucklings’’ that God "ordained strength" (v. 2).

3. The Philistine threatened to give David’s carcass to "the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field", and in Psalm 8, David rejoiced because God gave man dominion over these creatures.

4. In Psalm 8 David gave glory to God and magnified His name; and that was exactly why he challenged the giant!

5. David cried, "I come to thee in the name of the Lord hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied." (1 Sam. 17:45)

6. And later wrote, "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!" (Ps. 8:9)

C. The story of the kings is now complete.

1. God the Father created us to be kings.

2. God the Son redeemed us to be kings.

3. And God the Holy Spirit enables us to reign in life and live like kings!

All of us face "giants" in our lives: physical problems, difficult people, impossible demands, along with satanic attacks-and we will either conquer them or be conquered by them.

We will be either victors or victims. If we depend on ourselves, we will fail, for our old nature came from King Adam, and he was a failure. But if we depend on Jesus Christ, through the Spirit, we will succeed.

What is man? He is a king! How do we reign in this life as kings?

- First, we must belong to Jesus Christ. Like David, we must have received the anointing of God through faith.
- Second, we must yield ourselves to Christ. Romans 5:17 states that we ‘ reign in life by . . . Jesus Christ."
- Third, we must depend on the Spirit of God. It was the Spirit who enabled David to face the enemy bravely and defeat him completely.
- Fourth, we must live for God’s glory alone. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring glory to Jesus Christ (John 16:14).
- Finally, we must trust God in the everyday needs and problems of life. Before David ever killed a giant in public, he had trusted God for strength to kill the lion and the bear.