It's no secret that some of the psalms captivate us more than others. And we know that every word of God is pure. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. But there are some texts, some psalms, that resonate with us more deeply than others. And Psalm 8 is one such psalm. It's not only beautiful poetry, but it speaks of ourselves and our universe in such a way that people throughout history have deeply appreciated this. And I believe, and it's my prayer, that you will appreciate what God wants you to appreciate from his word this morning as we look at it. So let's stand together out of respect for the reading of God's word, and let's read our text, Psalm 8. The title is For the Choir Director on the Gittith. The word Gittith is a Hebrew word for some kind of musical instrument. For the Choir Director on the Gittith, a Psalm of David. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth, who have displayed your splendor above the heavens. From the mouth of infants and nursing babes, you have established strength because of your adversaries to make the enemy and the revengeful cease. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you take thought of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than God, and you crown him with glory and majesty. You make him to rule over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the sea. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. As the reading of God's word, you may be seated. Oh, Lord, our Lord and Father, the Almighty, our Creator, Lord, we come before you, adoring you for your majesty, for all of the things that we find so beautiful and glorious, all of the things that give us a sense of awe in nature. Lord, we give you the glory and credit for that. We know that this is only because you are an awesome God. And this morning I ask, O Lord, by the power of your spirit, would you open our understanding to your awesomeness? Would you bring us to a greater appreciation of you? We pray that that sin and the vanities of this life and the things that we call awesome would just fall. before you, Lord. It would melt before your glory as we look at who you are out of your word. Father, we pray you would speak to every heart. We pray that your spirit would say exactly what you desire to each one of us through what you have said. In Jesus' name, amen. In July of 79, the world watched in awe as the first man set foot on the moon. And it was following this from his perspective, looking at our planet from space, looking from the moon to earth that the astronaut Buzz Aldrin was inspired to read these fitting words from the Bible. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man? that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of Man that thou visitest him." Over a decade later, space probe Voyager 1 caught an image of our planet from about six billion kilometers from planet Earth. And from this perspective, Earth appeared as nothing more than a pale blue dot. And so the astronomer Carl Sagan wrote a book and titled it after that same expression, Pale Blue Dot, emphasizing how our planet exists without any divine purpose or significance in this vast universe. We're just one tiny particle floating in the vast sea of particles. And in some ways, what we make of creation's majesty is really a matter of perspective, isn't it? Two people living in the same universe, two astronomers, two people gazing at the same works of God can have radically different views of nature and humanity. Some will claim that we are witnessing the majesty of our God, His very handiwork, while others will say we are just too lucky to be alive. And there's no end of theories out there. So what about you this morning? What is your attitude to the universe, to nature that is all around you, to the wonder of life itself. Did you notice the blue sky this morning? Did you notice the clouds? Did you notice the sound of the breeze or the birds? And did you smell the grass? What did you think about? Did you think about the fact that your eyes are constantly following the commands of your brain and how we breathe just effortlessly on command of our brain and how they say our body is comprised, our body is like a factory comprised of about 30 trillion cells, a number we can't even fit our brain around, and each one of those tiny cells that's so small we can't even see it, it is a complex factory of its own. Who on earth is managing this factory of 30 trillion factories and giving us this experience that we call life? What do we do with nature? Whom do we thank, if anyone at all? The main point of this psalm is that creation manifests the majesty of God. Creation manifests God's majesty. But we're too often slow to see it. We're slow to see the wonder of God, aren't we? And our culture is even far more oblivious to God's majesty. I'm very thankful for this little psalm because this little psalm compels at least three responses to God's majesty in creation. The first response we see to God's majesty in creation is we must praise God. We must praise God for his majesty in creation. This is David's first response. And you need not be a poet like David or even be the sentimental kind of a person to praise God in this way. Just get a hold of three basic realities and you will praise God like David does. First, as we look at creation, we must praise God for personally disclosing himself to us. And this may be more obvious in the Hebrew text. I would say it's more subtle in our translation, but David begins by addressing God in this way, O Yahweh, our Adonai. He begins by addressing the Lord here. The first time the word Lord appears in verse one, it's in all caps. David's using the personal name of God. This is actually not a title. This is the personal name by which God revealed himself to Moses and to David, to his people, the God who ultimately revealed himself in Jesus Christ. This is the God who is a covenant-keeping God and has revealed himself uniquely in the Bible. He's the God who forbid his people to make any likeness of him. He's the God who revealed himself by this covenant name and by this name he distinguished himself from all other gods of the nations. So David says, O Yahweh. And the second use of the word Lord is Adonai. Now here's a title, and it's a title by which he is recognizing Yahweh, this unique creator God, with the utmost respect. You are my master, you are my Lord, you are my superior, he's saying. And so the first marvel which compels David's praise is that our creator, has revealed himself uniquely, especially, personally, by way of covenant. It is by way of covenant and only by way of covenant that we can ever call him our Lord. The God of the planets, the God of the solar systems, the God of the galaxies, the God of this universe is the God that is our God. Think of it this way. As children, we all had our role models, people we looked up to. But especially in American culture, most of our role models tend to be people that we never even meet. People we don't personally know. We don't usually get to meet our role models. And if we do, we get excited about that. Because we just don't know them personally. But imagine the wonder of David here. as he is saying, the greatest, most excellent, most awesome being who's created all things is my God. This person is someone I personally know, who's personally revealed himself and entered into a covenant with me, an everlasting covenant. That's this God. According to Jesus, we may even call this God our Father. When we come to believe on Him, we enter into that kind of relationship by covenant. We become the very sons. We become the very children of God. He's our God, a personal God. And when you realize the God of all creation has personally disclosed Himself to you, you will, as David, praise Him. But secondly, we must praise God for powerfully displaying His glory even beyond the heavens. This personal God is the infinite transcendent God. Verse one, David says, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. He says, you have displayed your splendor above the heavens. He acknowledges God's transcendence in two ways. First, God's name is majestic in all the earth. You know, it was common in this time for many people, all the nations of the world, they had their own collection of deities. But David wants to make it plain. And of course, the Bible makes it plain that Yahweh is no tribal deity. He's God of all the earth. Yahweh may be Israel's God by way of covenant, but he's not merely the God of Israel. He's the God of all the earth. Anywhere you look, you cannot escape seeing the work of his hand. He's that kind of a God. He's the God of gods. He's the king of all kings, the Lord of all lords. But David also acknowledges God's splendor is above the heavens. He considers the immense expanse above us, this heavenly expanse that would contain the furthest reaches of the universe, the furthest reaches of God's majesty and creation. That would be like the stars, the outermost galaxies. And yet God's splendor infinitely transcends above and beyond all that. As Solomon confessed to God, Heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you. 1 Kings 8, 27. His splendor cannot be contained. We must praise God because he has personally revealed himself. He's personally disclosed himself to us through his word, through his covenant. And this God has powerfully displayed his glory even beyond earth and heaven. But thirdly, we must praise God here for particularly delighting in the smallest of creation. This infinite, transcending God is the God who condescends. He stoops to appreciate even the smallest and weakest aspects of creation. Verse two, from the mouth of infants and nursing babes, that's a very epitome of weakness and frailty. David says, you, God, have established strength because of your adversaries to make the enemy and the revengeful cease. Now this is poetry, but he's saying God receives praise from the mouth of infants and it is a praise that puts to silence his adversaries. They are dumbfounded. Jesus actually understood this as a prophecy concerning himself in some ways. Because at his triumphal entry in Matthew 21, we read that as many were wondering at the things he had done and the children who were shouting in the temple, the chief priests and scribes came to him and said, do you not hear what these children are saying? And Jesus said to them, yes, have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself? Jesus understood himself as the Lord of glory who was fit to receive praise from the frailest of creation. In this case, these children, how precious. And here are the adversaries of the Lord's anointed plotting his murder in their hearts. And yet they are put to silence by the mouth of children. Here's a fulfillment of this glorious truth in Psalm 82. But now, coming back to thinking of our context here, what David has just said about God's splendor, how it transcends the heavens, just think about this. More amazing than the fact that this God, this transcended God, has exalted himself, his splendor transcends even the highest of heavens, is this fact, that that same God particularly delights in the smallest of creation, even in infants, even in the weak things. First Corinthians 1.27 says, God has chosen the foolish things, the weak things, the base things, the things that are despised. God has chosen, Paul goes on to explain, so that no one can glory in their own presence. We must all glory in the presence of God. You're nothing without God. Everything you are is what God has made of you. Do we give glory to God? Do we realize God particularly delights in weak things like us? If you can call yourself a child of God, it is only because by the grace and mercy of God, he has chosen you, not because of who you are, but because he delights in showing himself merciful. Do you praise God for this? You'd think anyone important enough to be running the entire universe would have no time or attention for creatures so small and insignificant as us. But the Bible teaches us the God who sustains the universe is the God whose eye is on the sparrow. He's the God who clothes each lily of the field. He's the God who crafts each snowflake so that no two are alike and his eye is on you. That's this amazing God. So while most humanity may praise nature itself and may praise themselves and may make of nature other gods, our Creator God is worthy of our praise. Our Creator God is worthy to receive praise from weak things like us. As you think upon the fact that this God is so far transcendent, so imminent, so near to us, and yet he is our personal God who's disclosed himself to us, you will praise God, like David, for his majesty in creation. What a Lord, what a God he is. When we encounter God's majesty in creation, we must praise him. But a second response here to God's majesty in creation is we must be humbled and amazed. We must be humbled and amazed, and we will be humbled and amazed if we grasp another three basic realities. First, we will be humbled and amazed by humanity's smallness in God's vast creation. David says in verse three, what is man? It's you take thought of him and the Son of Man that you care for him. Now David didn't have near the capability to examine the stars and the immense celestial bodies of outer space like we can today. They say that given ideal conditions we can count up to about 5,000 or so stars. I don't know who actually took the time to do that, but you can count thousands of stars. And yet, given the invention of the Hubble telescope, we can now see billions of stars. These are celestial bodies that are far greater than we can even comprehend. They're so much larger than our planet, and there are billions of them. The universe is immense, and surely if David could appreciate the immensity of God's creation, how much more ought we? You know, the universe is so vast. If we were to take a trip, traveling at the speed of light, that is 186,000 miles per second. That's not 186,000 miles per hour per second. If we were to travel at that speed of light, we could travel around the earth seven times one second. Taking off from the Earth, in two seconds, we would pass the Moon. In four minutes, we would pass Mars. Traveling at the same speed, 186,000 miles per second, we would pass Pluto in five hours. And continuing at the same speed, 186,000 miles per second, it would take us 4.2 years to reach the nearest star. Get this, the universe is so big it would take us 200,000 years traveling at 186,000 miles per second to cross our entire galaxy. But if that's not surprising enough, it would take us a whole 2.5 million years then just to reach our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda. The universe is immense. It is far greater than we can comprehend. Do you feel how incredibly small we are? Do you feel small? You want to. You are small. That is the marvel that David, even from his limited perspective in this 10th century B.C., is marveling with. The grandeur and immensity and power of creation around us declares the power, grandeur and immensity of our Creator. And so the only appropriate response to this sort of majesty is humility and awe before our God. We are humbled and amazed by how small we are at God's majesty and creation. But we will also be humbled and amazed by God's special care for humanity. Look at verse three. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man? What is man that you take thought of him and a son of man that you care for him? Why does God care for humanity? Why? He cares for man, according to the Bible, because of what man is. And this is a good question then from our text. What exactly is man? You know, with the rise of artificial intelligence and increasing totalitarian governments, this is a very important question. It's very important that we understand what is man? What is the value of the individual? Some will say that man is just a highly developed animal. And of course, The same people are abhorred when any one of their fellow men, their neighbors, actually begins acting like nothing more than an animal, however highly functioning. Stealing, raping, and so on. Suddenly we hear those same people who say, we're just all animals. saying things like, how evil. You're such an evil animal, invoking morality, invoking the judgments of God upon animals. How absurd. We somehow know better than to believe we're only animals. But some humans say we're really nothing more than complex machines. We are computers. We're nothing more than meat machines. But if we're nothing more than meat machines, who's to say we're not to be exploited for someone else's pleasure? Who's to say we can't be manipulated? Who wants to live in a world where the people in charge believe and teach that humans are only machines? Really, no. Others will say, some modern thinkers, that man is a grand experiment. They suggest man is nothing more than the experiment of a far more advanced extraterrestrial civilization. So we might ask, could it be possible that man is the creation of the extraterrestrial God? And they will say, how absurd, many of them. And say, how unscientific. Better stick with the sci-fi stuff, you know. Others will claim that we are stardust brought to life and then empowered by the universe. And you know, some people can say nonsense. with the greatest sort of eloquence. Well, when you say something like, human beings are really just stardust, we are literally stardust, you might as well say that we're all literally a pile of crap. Because really all you're saying, however eloquent, is that we are nothing more than a pile of chance chemicals. And we know better to believe that. Any child knows better than to believe that. We all know better than to believe that any symphony is just a mix of chance sounds. It's so much more if you understand music. Our bodies may be composed of chemicals, but scripture teaches we are infinitely more to God than chemicals. All these ideas about man are not only false, they're dangerous because they strip humanity of man's intrinsic value, God-given value. What's missing in all these theories is the one thing that gives man intrinsic, inestimable value. It is the fact that man was created uniquely by God. What is man? What is man? The Bible answers, man is the image and likeness of his creator. And nothing changes that. Now this is not to say we physically resemble God in any way, but rather that we reason because He reasons. We are self-conscious, we are rational, we crave understanding after the likeness of the one who made us. We are, secondly, beings who choose. We choose because He chooses. We are not pre-programmed machines. We are not pre-programmed computers. We are not animals programmed by instinct. We are created in the image of God. We have the power of choice uniquely. after the likeness of our Creator. Thirdly, we create because our God creates. This is showing forth the image and likeness of our God in us. We create and appreciate beauty after the likeness of the ultimate architect and artist who designed us. Fourthly, we love because He loves. human relationships and social interactions are so much more, in fact, they are categorically more complex and above anything we observe in the animal realm. Because we interact after the likeness of God's relationship with himself, which he experienced from eternity in the Trinity and continues to experience. We interact after the patterns of relationships with which God relates to us. That's how we're His image and likeness. And finally, we worship God. We worship because God designed us for an eternal relationship with Himself. And we may not all worship the right thing. We all feel compelled, like Dostoevsky said, to bow before the infinitely great. That is because Ecclesiastes 3.11 says, God has put eternity in the hearts of men. To be human is to worship. Why does God care for humanity? The Bible teaches God uniquely cares for us because he uniquely created us after his own image and likeness. But the next question for our text is really this. How does God care? How does God take thought for humanity? Three lines of argument prove David's claim. that God cares for, especially for humanity. First, this is what we call the Anthropic Principle. This is the idea that from creation God has demonstrated his care for humanity in providing us with ideal conditions for life. You know, if you change any one, any single one of a number of what are called physical constants, such as the gravitational constant or the speed of light and so on. If you change any one of these numbers, just the tiniest bit, we don't even have the galaxies arising, forming. We don't even have the possibility of life on Earth in the first place. So who finally tuned the world for life? You see, the mind-blowing immensity of the universe does not disprove man's significance. It doesn't prove man is insignificant or meaningless, like Carl Sagan assumed, and many others. It proves the exact opposite. The Earth was created as a special habitat for humanity. And you know that. And you live like that. And you expect the world to function like that, whether or not you profess to believe that. Thank God for the right conditions for food and water and air and temperature and pressure and the gravitational field and electromagnetic forces and everything is in the right proportion it is because without that we cannot experience what we call life. When we experience all of the fine-tuning of creation for life, we ought to thank God. Rather than thanking our lucky stars or mother nature, we ought to give glory to the one who deserves it. We ought to give glory to the fine-tuner himself, knowing he cares for us. But there's a second line of argument that proves God's care, how he takes thought especially for humanity, and that is the incarnation. The incarnation which the scriptures teaches is uniquely true of this God, the covenant keeping God of the Bible. God demonstrates his care for humanity by taking upon himself the form of a man, human flesh. John 1, 1 tells us that the word who is God became flesh and dwelt among us. Philippians 2.7 tells us that God took upon himself the form of a bondservant and was made in the likeness of men. Does God care for humanity enough to leave heaven, enter our world, step into our shoes, and do for us what we could not do for ourselves? Yes, he cares. A third line of argument proving God's care for humanity is redemption. Redemption. God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5.8. by his death and bodily resurrection, Jesus Christ proved the material aspect of humanity and of all creation in general is not something evil and inferior or something to be discarded. You know, when something is of no value to us, when it is broken, when it is damaged, we don't have use for it, we discard it, we throw it away. And yet God does not discard humanity. However twisted, however corrupted, however broken we are, God does not discard us, but seeks to redeem us and to restore us. Does this not prove that God takes special thought for us? Verse three, David says, Now one commentator points out the titles man and son of man both point to the weakness and frailty humankind. The second line would then be understood as generally reinforcing the first line. This is very common in Hebrew poetry. This is David's way poetically of saying God is mindful of man and literally this idea of you care for him that is literally saying you visit him. It's a poetic way of saying yes God does specially care for us. We are humbled and amazed by how small we are and by God's special care for us, but we will also be humbled and amazed by the surpassing excellence of humanity. David continues, verse five, yet, that is, in spite of man's weakness, you have made him a little lower than God and you crown him with glory and majesty. The surpassing Excellence of humanity ought to humble and amaze us because we know it's not what we've done for ourselves. This is what our God has done for us. And this ought to amaze us in two ways. First of all, here, David's saying God created humans with a unique majesty of their own. Now I know the New American Standard translation, which is what I'm at least preaching out of here, says that you have made him a little lower than God. That's because the Hebrew word for God there is Elohim. That's how we usually translate that word. But this same word Elohim can also be translated angelic or spirit beings. This is how the Septuagint translators understood this text. That's why they rendered it that way. And this is how the author of Hebrews cites this verse, Psalm 85, as understood where Jesus was made a little lower than the angels. But whether you translate this as a little lower than God or a little lower than angels, the bottom line remains. The point is that man is categorically exalted above beasts. That's the point. Secularism's compliment to humanity is that you are a little bit above the beasts. God or the Bible's compliment to humanity is that you are a little bit below the angels. And as mysterious as angels are, they're superior to us in their speed, their power, their beauty, their glory, their intelligence. And yet he's saying here we are just a little lower than If our text is to be understood as saying man is a little lower than God, this would be simply affirming how God has uniquely created humanity as in Genesis chapter 1. After his own image and likeness, there is nothing in creation he's saying on earth, nothing like him. Hamlet was hardly exaggerating when he said, what a piece of work is man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and in moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a god. The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. God crowns humanity with unique majesty. But David adds a second point, verses six through eight, namely, God created humanity to rule over all creation. This is God's design. That's pretty comprehensive. Genesis, Genesis 1 records this very thing, where God placed humankind over all creation. And scripture even claims, as if this wasn't enough, it even claims that man will one day judge angels, 1 Corinthians 6, 3. The book of Revelation reveals that Christ has made us to be a kingdom and priest to himself, so that the end of the story is redeemed humanity will be restored and will rule and reign with Christ over creation. Then it's this glory and this awesome wonder that David is marveling over and he's in awe over it and he's amazed at it and humbled by it. Now we don't have time to labor this, but the Psalm does give off messianic overtones. It certainly would be accurate to say that the Messiah is in view here just as the Messiah is even more explicitly in view in Psalm 2. According to Jewish tradition, even some early Christian readings, psalm 8 isn't simply about humanity, it's a royal messianic psalm. In other words, when it's describing the son of man who will rule over creation, it's talking about the son of man par excellence. The son of man who is the ultimate king of kings and lord of all lords. That son of man who will rule and reign over all creation in a very literal sense. And you can, of course, just read Psalm 8 in light of Psalm 2 to appreciate what I'm talking about there. But we have to move on. So as we encounter God's majesty in creation, we must praise him and we must be humbled and amazed before him. But there's a third response here, suggested from our text, a response to God's majesty in creation. And it's not explicitly stated here in the psalm. Nevertheless, it is inescapably implied. That is, as we encounter God's majesty in creation, we must respect God by respecting His creation. Do you believe creation manifests God's majesty? If you do, you will respect God by respecting what He has made, by knowing that everything you see was created by our magnificent Lord. The first and most direct application here is really how do you treat other human beings? Do you respect all humans as the image and likeness of our Creator? Do you respect that human individual that you don't like as the same image-bearer of God, equally an image-bearer of God as you? Any culture you visit across the world, you will gravely offend people by failing to appreciate what it is they respect and value most. Some of you could tell stories. You've been in those situations. The question is, do we respect what it is God values? And how can we say that we respect God, as the psalm calls us to do, unless we also respect what God himself so dearly values? What does God so dearly value? Humanity. It's why he created man uniquely in his image and likeness. The Bible says in 1 John 4, 20, if someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. Any human being you encounter, however twisted, however corrupted, however much you dislike them and want to dissociate yourself from them, that individual is still uniquely precious. That individual is precious not because he is kind, not because of his behavior, or his ability, or his appearance, or his relationship to you. That human individual is of intrinsic precious value beyond price because that individual is equally created in the image of God as you. Do you respect people as made in the image and likeness of our God? If you don't, you don't respect God. All men are created equal because all men are created equally in God's image. Nothing changes that. Not time or culture. Not any immorality. We still bear the image of our God because that is our design from God himself. How different would our choice of words or our tone of voice be even to one another if we were to stop first and consider that the one we are to address bears the image and likeness of God. If you respect God, you will respect humanity. But more generally, if you respect God, you will respect nature itself. And I believe this is more generally implied even from what we've seen in verses six through eight. The fact that God has given man dominion over nature. So let me ask, how do you treat nature? Do you respect nature? Do you respect creation as the gift and blessing, the creation of our God? Some of you might wonder, Pastor, are you an environmentalist? Where are you going with this? Well, tragically, many, Christians included, have abused their dominion over nature. In fact, some Christians have appealed to Genesis chapter one, what is called the Dominion Mandate, where God is giving man dominion over all of nature. And they've appealed to this as said grounds for doing virtually anything they wish with God's creation. And so many environmentalists have blamed even Christianity itself. They blame the Bible for man's careless and greedy exploitation of nature's resources. And others have gone so far in our culture to say that a pantheistic view of nature is really the key to truly respecting our environment. That's what we need. But is this really the case? You know, when we elevate nature to the status of God, which is exactly what pantheism is and does, not only have we just undermined our right to step on grass, so I don't know how you could live in such a world anyway, but humanity is reduced, effectively demoted to the status of dirt. In fact, we are logically below the dirt because at least the dirt knows its place. We ought to be very concerned about government leaders who talk about nature as though she were a goddess and humanity as though we were parasites. What do we do with pests and parasites? We eliminate them. And so nature worship does not forecast something good for the human race, does it? What does it forecast for the future of our race? Likely something dark, likely something involving manipulation and Slavery, perhaps even genocide. Let's not be naive. No, nature worship is not what we or our planet needs. And no, the biblical idea of man's dominion over nature is not what accounts for man's abuse of nature. Here's what accounts for man's abuse of nature, greed. Greed, selfishness, impatience. Our God-given right to rule over creation is not God's sanction for us to abuse nature in any way we please. Rather, if you want to read the Bible in context and honor it for what it's saying, you will realize God has given man a stewardship over creation. We are not to worship nature, but we must respect and care for nature as God's gift to us. Now in closing, notice verse 9. Oh Lord, Our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. Sounds familiar, right? It's a restatement of verse one. And this psalm returns exactly where it began. And why should it not? What more appropriate response could we have when we think upon the beauty of God's majesty and creation than to praise him? and to just stand in all of His glory. Creation manifests the majesty of God. Creation manifests the majesty of God. You might feel that your life is a mess right now. You might feel that the chaos of suffering and undesirable circumstances around you has dimmed the glory of God, as it were, all around. And yet, while The Bible tells us we are living in an aboriginal world, a world that is not what God originally intended, but a world that is presently under the curse of sin. Because yes, our sin, our rebellion against God does have dire consequences. Yet scripture also teaches the earth is still full of the glory of God. In fact, the Bible tells us that God's glory is so manifest in our universe. Scripture teaches that every single one of us is without excuse. We are without excuse for acknowledging Him. If you don't worship that one true God, if you don't return glory to Him, if you don't get on your knees and humble yourself before Him, and repent of your waywardness and seek after him with your heart, you have no excuse because this God has revealed himself. He's not just revealed himself in nature, he's revealed himself in his holy word. He has come himself in the personal presence of Jesus Christ. More amazing than anything in creation ought to be the fact that our creator desires an eternal relationship with us. Like David, you can not only come to acknowledge this creator, but you can know him personally as your Lord, your God, the one whom you've entered into a covenant with. How and why? Because that is why this God entered into this world. to redeem us from the curse of sin by being made a curse for us, Galatians 3.13. If you have any concerns or questions about what we've discussed today from the Word of God, please don't leave without giving us the opportunity to address them. We'd love to speak with you more. Let's pray.