Psalm 8. The excellent name of our Lord. There is no name like His name. Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus, thou shalt call His name
Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. Jesus, Savior. No name like his
name. What is in a name? What is in
a name? A name reveals a person. If I say Doug West, everyone
in here, you've known him for years, a person is going to come
to your mind, a character, attributes, That's going to come to mind.
That's what's in the name. And here we have the LORD, capital
L-O-R-D, Jehovah. Then it's a little L-O-R-D, capital
L, but L-O-R-D. That means Savior. That also
means Sovereign. So what he's saying is, O Jehovah,
our Sovereign, Savior. Our Sovereign Savior. Jehovah
is our Savior. And Jehovah is Jesus Christ. He is our Savior. That's who
Jehovah is. He is Jesus Christ. Over in Exodus 15.2 and Isaiah
12.2, he says, God has become my salvation. God, Elohim, has
become my Savior. Jehovah, here in this portion
of Scripture, has become my Savior. Now he says, How excellent is
thy name in all the earth. That is, how glorious and how
majestic is the name of God in all the earth. Throughout this
world, God has a people. In every nation on this earth,
God has a people. And among that people, God's
name is glorious. God's name is majestic. God's
name is honored. How excellent, how glorious and
majestic is Thy name in all the earth." You know, some have their
names known in certain places, but the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and that's the one spoken of here, that's the one spoken
of. The name of the Lord Jesus Christ
is known the world over. His name is known the world over.
And His name is above every name. There is no name to be compared
to His name. At His name, every knee shall
bow. Every tongue shall confess that
He is Lord, He is the Sovereign, He is the Sovereign Savior, that
He's Lord to the glory of God the Father. The Lord Jesus Christ, it says
in Hebrews 1, is the brightness of His glory and the expressed
image of His person. He said in one place, He that
has seen Me has seen the Father. Our Lord's excellence is seen
in all of creation. We have not even scratched the
surface of creation. We live in what? A little galaxy.
How many galaxies are there out there? We can't even reach them. We can't even see the end of
them. We haven't even scratched the
surface of creation. We are still trying to explore
the ocean. And we've been on here what,
6,000 years. And we are still trying to figure
out and search the ocean, the depths of the ocean. How excellent is His name seen
in creation. How excellent is His name seen
in providence. Everything that went on today,
went on today by the providence of God. Everything. Everything today has been sustained
by God. Everything has been sustained.
Everything is upheld by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, our
God. But how excellent is His name
seen in salvation? Redemption. When He was hanging on the cross,
He cried, It is finished! How excellent is that! We don't
add anything to it. We don't have to do anything. It is written in Colossians,
In Him you are complete. How excellent is that! There is no name given under
heaven whereby we must be saved. There's only one name that God
Almighty recognizes for salvation, and that's the name of Jesus
Christ. How excellent is that name! He says, He has set His glory
in the heavens, or He has set His glory above the heavens. I thought about this. when I
read that, and I've read different ones on this, but He has set
His glory in the heavens or above the heavens, and the first thing
I thought of was Jesus Christ seated at His right hand. There's
His glory. His glory is seen in the face
of Jesus Christ. He has set Him at His right hand,
risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of God. And
notice here how God displays His power. You see, He says,
"'O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth,
who has set Thy glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of
babes!' God, who is great in power, demonstrates the greatness
of His power by speaking through babes, his
children. Out of the mouth of babes and
sucklings hast thou ordained strith. Our Lord quoted this
over in Matthew 21.16. He quotes this verse. Because of thine enemies that
thou mightest steal the enemy and the avenger. Notice how that God uses the
weakest instruments to speak wisdom and display His power
and His strength as He uses men like me, vessels, clay pots like
me. A word spoken, listen now, a
word spoken by a child of God in the power of God is more powerful
than all the principalities and powers put together. God could use many means to display
His power, but His greatest display of power is using one of His
children to speak His Word. God's choice weapon is His Word
spoken by His children. Look over in 1 Corinthians. Over here in 1 Corinthians 1,
1 Corinthians chapter 1, let me
see the verse. Let's start in verse 18. For the preaching of the cross
is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it's
the power of God. It's the power of God. What I'm
doing right now is the power of God to give life and raise
from the dead. The preaching of the Gospel.
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will
bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the
wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this
world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For
after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew
not God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save
them that believe. for the Jews require a sign,
and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified
unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.
But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God and the wisdom of God." Our Lord, remember when He was
12 years old, He stood in the temple and confounded. He absolutely confounded the
scribes and the Pharisees. They couldn't handle his wisdom
when he was just 12 years old. Oh, out of the mouth of babes
and sucklings. Not the educated, not the noble,
not those who have high offices, God takes His simple child and
through preaching saves sinners, raises them from the dead, gives
them life. Out of the mouth of babes and
sucklings hast Thou ordained strength because of Thine enemies.
That's how He destroys His enemies. Thou mightest steal the enemy
and the avenger. When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers like
an artist's painting, the moon and the stars which Thou hast
ordained, when I consider them..." Have you ever really just stopped
for a minute and looked at God's creation? Have you ever really
considered the vastness, the immenseness of God's creation? First of all, heaven belongs
to our Lord. Heaven is His throne and earth
is His footstool. Heaven and earth do not belong
to evolution. They belong to our Lord. Our
Lord created everything we see. He just spoke it into existence. That's our God. But I can see David here, when
I read this, when I consider thy heavens and the work of thy
fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, can
you not just see David? out there at nighttime with the
sheep. He's just a young lad, young boy. He's out there with
the sheep and he's sitting there and he's looking at the stars.
I can remember growing up on the farm when we weren't around
all the city lights, you know, you couldn't, the city lights
block out a lot of things. But when we would be out camping
and it would be dark, I mean, it just looked like, it just
looked to me like pinholes in the sky, just multitudes, just
pinholes. And, you know, All those stars,
way, way out there, some of them many, many light years away,
light years away. David said, when I consider them,
when I consider the immenseness of your creation, I tell you, When I consider thy heavens,
the greatness, the greatness of it. When I consider them, I have
to consider the greatness of God who made them. Is not He
who built the house? Does He not have more honor?
Is He not greater than the house that He built? How great must be our Creator
to create all this. How great must He be! Listen, how wise must He be who
created all this? It is written in the Scriptures
that He has made a way for the water course. What engineering
is in this earth in creation? We're on a ball and all the water
is not running to the bottom. And God has made a way for it
to drain in such a way that it doesn't all run off that fast.
It just gently flows off to the sea. Goes up and makes clouds
and comes back over and rains back down. What wisdom in that! The wisdom in creation. Look
over in Psalm 104. We get so busy most of the time,
we're just so busy we don't even pay a bit of attention to what
we're looking at. Let me see where I want to start
reading. I've got the verse I want to
read, but I'd like to read the whole thing. Well, let's read verse 24. When
you get time, read that Psalm. Oh Lord, how manifold are Thy
works! In wisdom hast Thou made them
all. The earth is full of Thy riches. The earth is full of
Thy riches. Take time to see it. Take time
to stop and recognize the riches that God has put on this earth,
the minerals. I mean, you'd think we'd run
out, wouldn't you? But it's still coming. It's still
coming. How wise must our Creator be! And then how powerful must He
be who made all this! What power! Not just to make
this earth and to make it work in harmony and to supply all
of our needs, but all the planets, all the universes, all the galaxies
out there. God makes them all to work in
harmony. They're not crashing into each
other. They're sitting right there. where He put them. And they are held there by His
Word. By the power of His Word, they stay put. How powerful must He be who made
all this? And listen, if God can create
and God can sustain all of this and much more that we don't even
see, surely He can sustain me. You would think one of these
days we would, even though we're older, we might just go out and
lay down in the grass and look up into the sky like a kid would,
and look up in the sky and just think, all of this is sustained
by Him, created by Him, sustained by Him. What do I have to worry
about? Why am I so worried? What power? Then listen, how
good must he be who made all this? How good must he be? Look
in Psalm 107. Look in verse 8. Oh, that men would praise the
Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children
of men. Oh, well, you haven't, but I
started to say, when's the last time you heard anybody on the
news ascribe anything to God? I haven't. I've never heard them.
I've never heard them. You know, mother nature. Oh, that men... Wouldn't you
like to hear someone come on the news or on the weather or
something and ascribe the goodness, God's goodness to creation, God's
goodness to His creation? How good must He be who made
all this? No other planet produces like
this. No other planet. And then, listen,
how independent must he be who made all this? He didn't ask
anyone. You know, if we were going to build a building, we'd
all get together, wouldn't we? We'd get a building committee. We'd all get together and see
if we could do this. God got together with no one
but himself. He didn't consult with anyone
but his own will and good pleasure. That's it. When I consider the
heavens, I have to consider the One who made them. When I consider
the heavens and the moon and the stars that He ordained, not
that He just created, but He ordained them to be in their
place doing what they're doing, I have to consider the One who
made them. I'm not just considering what that moon's made of, I'm
considering the One who made it. When I consider all of that,
when I consider all that God has made with His fingers, I
have to ask, what is man? What is man that thou art mindful
of him and the son of man that you visit or you take care of
him? What is man? It's like when David
saw the vastness of this. It's like he said in another
place, who am I and what is my house? I feel so insignificant in the
scheme of things. I feel like a grain of sand on
the beach. What is man that they aren't mindful of him? You
take care of him. What is man? Well, originally,
listen, man was created, we were created in the image of God.
When God created Adam, He created him in His own image and in His
own likeness. No other creature was created
like that. No other creature. Let us make man in our image. He was created upright. He was
created innocent. Adam knew no sin. When God created
him, there was no sin in Adam. Adam was a genius. I mean in
the true sense of that word. And there hasn't been one since.
Just because somebody has a little higher IQ than me, doesn't make
them a genius. Adam was a genius. God brought
all the cattle and all the animals before him and whatever Adam
named them. Adam, how did you come up with
that name? Where did you even think about that? How did you even
think of a horse? I mean, how did a cow? You don't have a dictionary
to look it up in. You couldn't Google it. But yet Adam looked at that and
he said, that's a cow. That's a horse. That's a dog. And he
named everything. He named everything. God brought
him in front of him and he named everything. He was created in the image of
God. He was brilliant. I mean, and
I tell you, he had full use of his mind. I haven't met anybody
like that. He had full use of his mind. His body was perfect, His soul
was perfect, and He was placed in a garden that was perfect.
And listen, God gave Him dominion over this earth. You know that
Adam, when God created Adam, God made Adam king over all creation. He told him over there in Genesis
1, subdue it, replenish the earth, subdue it, you have power over
all of the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle,
the herbs, everything's given to you. And then he fell. And he lost
that dominion. He lost everything. He lost everything. But, all of that, All of that is a
picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, the second Adam. This is the
one to whom God gave everything to before creation. This is the
one whom God purposed to have dominion over. Listen, not only
on this earth, Adam had dominion over the earth. He never had
dominion over God. He never had dominion, as far
as I know, over any angels. He had dominion over the cattle,
the things of this earth. The second Adam has dominion
over heaven and earth. He has dominion over principalities
and powers. He has full dominion. Not partial,
but full. I mean, heaven and earth. Heaven
and earth. The man Jesus Christ, He has
been given dominion over all. This is the man. that the first
man pointed to before he fell, in type, in picture. This man
is the God-man. He is God manifested in the flesh. God became a man. He's the mediator. He's the king
priest. He's everything we need in this
man. Look over in Hebrews chapter
2. Hebrews chapter 2. Hebrews 2, look in verse 6. But one in a certain place testified,
saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the Son
of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower
than the angels. Thou crownest him with glory
and honor, and didst set him over the works of thy hands.
Thou hast put all things in subjection under His feet, for in that He
put all in subjection under Him, He left nothing that is not put
under Him." But now we see not yet all things put under Him,
but we see Jesus. Now we see Him who was made a
little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned
with glory and honor. All things are now being turned
over to Him. He said He has all power and authority in heaven
and earth. crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace
of God should taste death for every man. For it became him
by whom are all things, and bringing many sons to glory, to make the
captain of their salvation perfect through suffering." This is the
man who does have dominion and who will reign forever and ever
and ever. This is our King. This is our
King. The creation of man was for the
man Jesus Christ. All things were created by Him
and for Him. And He truly has dominion over all, over all angels,
over all men, He's the head of the church. He truly has dominion
over all. What is man? In Christ, man is what God created
him to be. Outside of Christ, he's dead
in trespasses and sins. And then he ends with the way
he began. In reverent wonder, O Lord our Lord, Jehovah our
Savior, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth. His name
is excellent here, isn't it? It's excellent here. It's on
earth majestic. All right.