Psalms 8:3–4

Hebrews 2 quotes the wonderful Psalm 8. This Psalm is clearly a night Psalm. David says, "When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place." This is surely meant to teach a spiritual lesson. The sun is not mentioned. It was the night of Judaism; the day of Christianity had not arrived. The moon and stars told of light, and in the case of the moon, reflected light. So the types and prophecies told of the coming day. Their light was reflected. Faint as it was, they were the forerunner of the coming day.

It is a night scene of Scripture, for the Psalmist does not see the sun shining, but the moon and the stars. And during this world's night the Christian can look up in faith and see the glory of God above the heavens in Jesus. Soon the night will pass, then the sun will shine.

The book of nature reveals God's fingers; the book of revelation His heart. The first tells us of His originality, design, forethought and unlimited power. The second reveals Himself — His heart, His love, His design in creating man, and His ways in blessing Him.

We marvel at God's fingers. We stand in silent awe at the wonders of creation. Man works hard to perfect his inventions, one slow step at a time. God created things that were perfect from the first moment of creation. Man corrects his mistakes. God makes none.

It is a very solemn thing. The men who have learned most of God's wonders by searching the earth and the sky still stay ignorant of His glory as Creator, despite all the knowledge they have gained. They see the wonders of creation, but have not learned what David learned so long ago... Man does not find out God by searching. As we read in Hebrews 11:3, "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God." Someone who knows nothing about the natural sciences, if taught by God through His word, holds God's secret about His handiwork. The most advanced student, if ignorant of God as revealed in Christ, knows nothing of it.

Behold the moon; its light is dim in His holy presence. The sparkling stars are not clean in His sight. How much less is sinful man — a worm of the dust!... The light of the moon and stars is not so strong, yet the darkness around it makes it shine out all the more. This is true above all of the eastern skies over the dry lands beside the deserts. The moon and stars speak of God in a special way, and by contrast bring home to man his nothingness.

God has such marvellous things before Him as the moon and the stars. Why then does He give such a large place in His mind to man, and to the son of man? All Scripture bears witness to it: man has a place in the thoughts of God that even angels do not have, for all their greater glory and might. How do we explain this? What is the answer to the Psalmist's question? The Spirit of God gives us the answer in Hebrews 2:5-10. There He quotes the words of this psalm and applies them to Christ. He is the man who fills the mind of God; He is the ideal Son of man for whom all dominion is purposed.

When I think of all the might and the wisdom on display in the heavens, what am I? "What is man" — any man, great or small — "that You are mindful of him? or the son of man" — man in the abstract, the ideal man — "that You visit him?" We might well say that of man as the creature of God. In one sense, by certain measures, he is one of the least of God's creatures.

What made the psalmist choose two distinct names for man? The English version does not make this distinction plain; but the Hebrew does. Adam means simply man — man as God created him out of the dust of the earth, man before the fall. He is the one "who is the figure of Him who was to come" (Rom. 5:14). Enosh means man as well, but man as frail, fallen, dying, passing away.

He used a Hebrew word which has the sense of "frail man" or "mortal man." Well, what is he worth? Clearly he is worth nothing. What then shall we say of the Son of Man? Ah! now we have a very different story. Even in the psalm David changed the word for man, and wrote "the Son of Adam"; and this we know our Lord was, as seen in Luke 3:38. He is worth everything. Though He was once made a little lower than the angels, He is to be crowned with splendour and given complete rule, with all things under His feet.

Then, in Psalm 8, "What is man," that God is going to make His own Son a man, and set Him over everything? … And here, in Psalm 144, it is, "What is man," that God should be so careful over this wicked people?

The question brings out the littleness of man: the answer the greatness of Christ, the Son of Man. When David looks at the moon and the stars, he feels how small he is beside their vastness, and cries out, "What is man?" Look at man fallen, and he is very small. Look at man as God purposed him, set out in Christ, the Son of Man, and he is very great.

How is it that God takes knowledge of us, that He actually visits us? Why is it that the angels do not occupy a place in the thoughts and purposes of God such as man occupies? We ask again, Why? and we find the answer in the blessed Son of God, in Jesus… Man is lower than the angels in the order of creation, so Jesus has taken His place lower than they. And when we ask, Why did He take that place? — in the answer we read our salvation.

The Son of man there spoken of is not Adam, but Christ. The divine purpose is there declared to set Him over all the works of God's hand. The first man had this grant of power from God (Gen. 1:26-28), but failed to act for His glory. He sold himself into the hand of the enemy, and became his tool and slave. In God's own time the Second Man will take up the government of the whole world. He will glorify God fully, and bring full blessing to everyone under His rule.