In Psalm 8, David searches for superlatives to describe the brilliance of God’s creation while marveling at the thought that He might place the wonder of His creation under our stewardship.
If there were a Top Ten Psalms chart, I think Psalm 8 would make it on the list fof many. Of the chunks of scripture that creation or situation prompts me to pray when I run, this would be Number 1 by a fair margin. Whether it’s a glassy river (like yesterday’s), a wild torrential downpour, the way the sun catches a path or tree or a winding trail in the hills, it doesn’t take much for verses like ‘O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth’ or ‘when I consider your heavens the work of your fingers’ to well over into thought and prayer.
God is magnificent and his magnificence is manifest through His creation. And yet, strangely, He has placed them under the dominion of those who were created in His own image. This makes sense when we were faithful image bearers of our Creator and of His divine plan for His creation. Genesis 2:9 gives us a perfect picture of God’s heart for us in His creative plan: ‘The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it’.
When things went awry and we made decisions that put enmity between ourselves and the creator it seemed to go hand in hand with us missing the point of faithfully stewarding His creation. Even among Jesus-followers we seem to have taken verses like ‘You made him ruler over the works of Your hands, you put everything under His feet’ as an invitation to ecological destruction. God placed us in a position of leadership to shepherd creation…not to be lead by it, but not to trash it either. In His wisdom he placed creation under our stewardship so we’d look after it. Since Adam though, creation has been subjected to frustration by our actions and God’s heart for restoration and reconciliation. Paul puts it this way in Romans 8:
The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Psalm 8 is a Psalm for overflowing thanksgiving to a creator God (way more than it is an invitation to an environmental rant) but it does remind us that as image-bearers of our Creator and part of a people ushering in a new humanity, through Christ, that the Kingdom of God is ushered in through us partnering in the restoration and reconciliation of all things…including creation.
The the middle section of Psalm 8 also foreshadows the role of Christ, and is referred to by the writer of the Hebrews in the New Testament. ‘In putting everything under Him, God left nothing that is not subject to him…but we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone’. Our Lord and Savior is also ‘Lord of all creation’.
The great news is that as Jesus is coming back to restore all things and the majestic creation of Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 will be brought back to its full glory. Until then, we revel in it, praise Him for it and look after it.
– Simon Elliott