Sample of Psalms for Advent Prayer and Praise
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Psalms for Advent Prayer and Praise
Sermons by Rev. Ken Behnken
that offer
Instruction and Guidance
from Our Lord's Prayer Book
Note: These meditations make use of Beck's An American Translation of
the Bible. It is necessary that you
include the text in the worship folder for the use of the worshipers during the
meditation and so they can join you at the end in speaking it as a Psalm of
Prayer and Praise.
1. THE CREATOR'S REPRESENTATIVE. Psalm 8
LORD, our LORD, how wonderful is Your name all over the earth! Your glory is sung over the heavens.
From the mouths of children and babes You have established praise despite Your foes, in order to silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at Your heavens that Your fingers made, the moon and the stars that You set up, what is man that You should think of him, or a son of man that You should come and visit him?
You make Him lower than God for a little while; then crown Him with glory and honor and make Him ruler over what Your hands have made, putting everything under His feet: All the sheep and cattle and the wild animals too, birds in the air, and fish swimming in the paths of the seas.
LORD (JESUS), our Lord, how wonderful is Your name in all the earth!
– The Holy Bible, An American Translation
by Dr. William F. Beck
In
our Midweek Advent Devotions this year we will draw from the book of Scripture
that was our Lord's own Prayer Book. As
a young boy in the synagogue school in Nazareth he committed many psalms to
memory. After his Bar Mitzvah, as he
joined the men of Nazareth in the synagogue services on the Sabbath Day, the psalms
of David and other inspired musicians and poets became his formal expression of
praise to his heavenly Father.
On
our three Wednesday evenings together we will imitate Jesus and the people of
Nazareth in devoting ourselves to three psalms of David. They are familiar to us, being some of the
more widely known and used in the Scripture's collection of psalms. As we focus on them in our Advent
meditations we will be led to worship and praise God and review our
relationship with him as our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sanctifier.
Tonight
Psalm 8 offers itself to us. It's
printed in the service folder so you can refer to it during the course of the
meditation. (Read the psalm as your text at this point, but do not include (JESUS)
in the last verse. That is to be used
instead of "LORD" in a unison reading that ends the meditation.)
Psalm
8 is one of the great Psalms of Praise.
Its beauty and its poetic expression of the awe we must feel as we look
thoughtfully at God's creation have made it a favorite of many Christians.
It
has been called "a lyric echo of Genesis" – and that's how we'll
consider it and use it tonight. When we
do so, it will not only be for us a section of instructive Scripture, but will
be a means by which our praise is added to that of the psalmist and all the Old
Testament faithful and all our Christian brothers and sisters who have used this
psalm for that purpose down through the centuries.
"LORD, our LORD, how wonderful is Your
name all over the earth!" In
more familiar versions it says "how excellent" instead of "how
wonderful". The point is that
praise is to be given to God because of His Name. It is excel-lent – far above all other names. It fills us with wonder. The name in the Hebrew text, of course, is Yahweh. This is the name by which God revealed himself to Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob and, centuries later, to Moses and to Israel as a nation. It means "I AM" – and points to
God as the living God, the One and Only who has existence purely in
himself. All other things exist through
him and by his power. But Yahweh is fully self-existent. He is!
In
ancient times names were given more significance than we give them today. We often select names because we like the
way they sound. But to the Hebrews a
name meant something. It stood for the
person himself. His being was wrapped
up in his name. And so the Psalmist
praised God by saying, "How excellent, how wonderful, is Your Name!"
The
Hebrews considered God's name so wonderful that they would say it only in the
most special of circumstances. In
everyday usage, when they came to the name Yahweh
in Scripture they would say Adonai
instead, a more general word that means "Lord" or
"Master". Our English
versions have generally continued that practice – so they read "Lord, our
Lord" instead of "Yahweh, our Yahweh." But in his version at least Dr. Beck has capitalized
"LORD" whenever the Hebrew has Yahweh.
The
Hebrew people substituted the more general "Adonai" for "Yahweh" as a way of avoiding taking
Yahweh's name in vain. We might think
of this as very mechanical and legalistic, but really we could use some of
their wonder and awe – not leading us to avoid saying God's name, but to
see it and say it in all its wonderful-ness.
In a day when even some Christians get into the habit of saying
"God" or "My God" or "Good Lord" or
"Jesus" as careless exclamations, we need to learn to say prayerfully
and praisefully: "Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is your Name all over the
earth!"
The
psalmist points to the testimony of the heavens about their Creator: "Your glory is sung over the
heavens." Another psalm is even
more pointed, saying: "The heavens
declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork." Even children and babies are able to wonder
at the sun, the moon, and the starry skies – and the psalmist says that in
their wonder the Lord has "established praise" for himself, putting
"to silence the enemy and the avenger" and all who are unwilling to
see his hand behind everything that is.
In
our increasingly secular and humanistic society the tendency has been to focus
more and more on the creation itself.
In recent years there has been a resurgence of paganism, which sees the
created world as having its own spirit-powers and worships and tries to utilize
these powers instead of looking to the world’s Creator. Our
science-orientation, on the other hand, leads us to look at the universe only
in a naturalistic and mechanistic way, and to leave the realm of the spirit out
of the picture. It has always required
the eyes of faith to look beyond the creation to see the Creator – and, while
not all men and women of science deliberately set out to discredit truth that
is based on faith, the scientific method does intentionally limit itself to
that which may be observed or demonstrated in one way or another. How striking, then, that the observations of
many astronomers have led them to conclude that the countless galaxies in the
seemingly limitless space are moving away from a common source – and they posit
a cosmic explosion of energy, a Big Bang, as the starting point.
What
caused the Bang? Science deals with the
HOW?, not particularly with the WHY?
This led one astronomer to end an article in The Sunday Punch by saying that scientists are finding themselves
climbing the mountain of scientific data only to find the theologians waiting
for them at the top of the mountain. We
who are willing to look with the eyes of faith look beyond the Bang to the
"Banger". With the psalmist
we praise the Creator, and tell him, "Your
glory is sung over the heavens."
Psalm
8 deals also with man's unique place in creation. It's not surprising that it begins by expressing the humility
produced in us when we look at the wonder of the vast creation. "When
I look at Your heavens that Your fingers made, the moon and the stars that You
set up, what is man that You should think of him, or a son of man that You
should visit him?" Always, the
first reaction to God's awesome creation is our own insignificance. But man is not insignificant in God's plan
and purpose. While the vast reaches
of space make us appear as insignificant specks, we must remember that it is
man who is the astronomer. It is man
who looks with a questioning and analyzing mind to gain knowledge,
understanding – to build his science.
It
is man who can also look with the eyes of faith to see and bless the
Creator. The psalmist points to man's
special position in God's creation, perhaps using hyperbole, when he says that
man was made "lower than God for a
little while." What he's
referring to is God's creation of man in his own image. We are not things. We are not animals. We
have been endowed by God with a spark of his own Personality; we are rational,
self-conscious beings. We enjoy
personality and were designed with the spiritual potential for living as children
of God, not just as God's creatures. We
surely are part of the physical creation, but with an affinity for the Creator
himself, not just for his creation. Our
Creator intends that we enjoy a close, personal relationship with him – one
that will continue forever.
Notice
our role in God's plan: "You make him ruler over what Your
hands have made, putting everything under his feet: All the sheep and cattle and the wild animals, too, birds in the
air, and fish swimming in the paths of the seas." What a privileged position we enjoy in God's
creation! And what responsibility comes
along with it – responsibility to be good stewards, good managers, as we "work in the Garden and care for it", and responsibility to share our
abundance with those in need. We are
the Creator's representatives!
Notice
especially that in his version Dr. Beck capitalized the pronouns referring to
man. That's because by ancient
tradition the Church saw this psalm as Messianic in character, describing also
the coming of the Savior. As we look
through the window of the New Testament we see that many parts of the Old
Testament have this quality of a double thrust: An immediate application to man's world or to human history of
that time, and a larger significance regarding God's revelation in Christ and
his establishment of God's Kingdom among us.
The
words take on a significant Advent ring as we apply them thus to the birth of
Jesus, for the Babe of Bethlehem is Yahweh
in action, coming to fulfill his covenant promise. It was he who "was
made lower than God for a little while, then crowned with glory and
honor." That's what we
are preparing to celebrate – the coming of the eternal Word, the One by whom
all things were made. He is the true
Creator’s Representative, made flesh to be our Savior.
Over his manger there were
both the shadow of the cross and the luster of the crown. The Creator’s Representative would be humbly
obedient to the divine plan of salvation even to dying on a cross for us, and
because of it the risen Jesus would be highly exalted and given the name that
is above every name. He was Yahweh, the I AM, in action as Jesus, the Savior. And because he fulfilled the covenant of
salvation as Jesus it is no longer
at the name Yahweh, as wonderful as
that is, but it is “at the name Jesus that every knee will bow and
every tongue confess ‘Jesus Christ is Lord!’ to the glory of God the Father.”
It
is our Lord Jesus who is the true Creator's Representative. As he comes to us in our frame of reference
as Jesus, the Word made flesh, we see him, not only as the Creator who gives us life
and breath, but also as the Savior who lovingly gives us new life and
refreshes us with the Holy Spirit.
Because of that we may, without violating the Word in any way, take the
liberty of changing the last verse of this song of praise to read "Jesus, our Lord, how wonderful is Your
name all over the world!"
Thus
Psalm 8 helps us express our praise to our Creator, accept our role as the
Creator's representatives, and praise the One who is the true Creator's
Representative. In closing, let's read
Psalm 8 together that way, in Advent praise to Jesus, our God and
Savior.
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