I'm seeking for God's blessing
and his help this evening. I want to direct us to the book
of Psalms and the Psalm that we read earlier, Psalm number
eight. Psalm eight and verse number
four. Psalm eight, reading again, verse
four. What is man, though thou art
mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him. What is man that thou art mindful
of him or the son of man that thou visitest him? I wonder if anyone of you saw
on the news this week that they had sent a video of a cat across
space. They had sent this video some
19 million miles across space and had picked up the signal
on Earth. and seen this cat, please rest
assured that the cat was not 19 million miles away in space. The cat was well and truly on
Earth, but the video was taken on Earth and then it was flown
into space and they had broadcast this picture back to Earth. They considered according to
the report that this 19 million miles was a message received
for what was called deep space. Deep space. But I can maybe think,
what is deep space then? If 19 million miles into space
is deep space, then how big is space? Well, let's put that in
some perspective. 90 million miles is a long way. But Jupiter, the biggest planet
in the solar system, is 484 million miles away. And so 19 million
falls very far short of 484. But then what goes beyond that?
Well, our solar system is very small, really. The nearest star
to us, other than the sun, is 4.3 light years away. And so
that is far further than Jupiter or any other planet in our solar
system. Apparently, I saw somewhere that if our sun was the size
of a grapefruit, if you can imagine that, if our sun was the size
of a grapefruit and you stood With that grapefruit and someone
else held something else representing this nearest star, by comparison
in that scale they would need to be two and a half thousand
miles away. in order to replicate the distance
between our sun and the nearest star. The point is, it's a long,
long way. Now that's the nearest star,
and yet the telescopes are now discovering billions and billions. In fact, the current estimate
is that there are a trillion, trillion stars. Apparently that's
24 zeros on a number. It's a mind-boggling number of
stars. And of course there are planets
and rocks and asteroids and whatever in all of these solar systems. It is vast. We know today a little of the
universe out there. We don't know much. If we consider
19 million miles to be deep space, then we've hardly scratched the
surface of what the universe really is. David, in writing this psalm,
he looked up into the heavens and he didn't have the knowledge
and the visual abilities of our telescopes and rockets. But David
could tell and came really to the same conclusion that we do
when we see more detail and more of the vastness than he did.
But we consider the heavens and the work of his fingers and the
moon and the stars which thou hast ordained. We look up into
the heavens, just as he did, and our conclusion, surely in
the light of the wonder of creation, is the same as David. He looked
up. We can imagine him, can't we?
Perhaps in his early life on the hillsides of Bethlehem, just
the very spot where the angel appeared to the shepherds many
years later, looking up into the heavens. Perhaps we can imagine
him on the rooftop of his palace in Jerusalem looking up to the
heavens. Wherever he was, he looks up and he considers it
and he considers how God made. Remember, David would have cast
his mind back to Genesis and seen God made the stars also
and he would have looked up and that word ringing in his ears,
God made the stars also. And he considers the work of
his fingers and those things that he has ordained. And David's
conclusion in looking at the vastness of the heavens and looking
back down at himself. And he says, what is man? What
am I? That are mindful of him. If David does that with his,
if you like, limited scientific knowledge of what was out there,
surely we, with our still very limited knowledge but greater
than him come to the same conclusion. What am I? What is man that thou
art mindful of him? Tonight firstly I want to answer
or try to answer that question. What is man? What is man? And then secondly, we'll look
at the second part and consider his visits that thou visitest
him. What is man? What is man? What we mean by
this, of course, is what is mankind. And so this isn't only speaking
of men speaking of women. What is mankind? What are humans? What are we? What does the Bible
tell us about ourselves? Today, many would believe that we are
advanced apes. We are the product of billions
of years of evolution. We are in the process of advancement. And that over the years, over
those many, many years, we have advanced to this point of what
we are. And I would imagine the conclusion
is that if the world continued for another billion years, there
would be a further advancement to something else. Man is an
animal, just like every other animal. Man is no different from
the other creatures in the world. Man is more advanced in his abilities
and his intellect, but fundamentally, he is no different. And therefore,
we come, and we go, and we die, and that's the end. Man is an
impressive product of evolution. But that's, of course, not the
word of God's teaching. What does the Bible tell us?
about man is what we want to know. Much more reliable than
views and theories we have the truth in front of us and the
very word of God. So what does God tell us about
man? Well this psalm tells us that man has a very high status. Man has a very high status. Thou hast made him a little lower
than the angels. and has crowned him with glory
and honor. I was made as him to have dominion
over the works of thy hands. And so this tells us that man
is a little lower than the angels. He is the pinnacle of creation
in this world. Man has been crowned with glory
and honor, and has been set over the creation to have dominion
over the animals and the birds and the fish and all things in
this creation. Book of Genesis teaches us that
mankind is that final act of creation, and that when God looked
upon the creation of man, as well as everything else, he declared
it to be very good. Mankind was created to have a
relationship with God that the other animals and the rest of
creation does not. He was created to walk in the
cool of the day with his God, to commune with God and speak
with God, and to enjoy God forever. A man was created to rule over
this creation with that delegated power that God has given to him. He was to tend the garden, he
was to name the creatures, He has a delicated authority under
God in this world. There is a high honor and status. Part of that high honor is that
man and man only has been created in the image of God. That doesn't mean that man looks
like God, although of course God comes in human form in Christ. But it means that he has attributes
or some attributes or characteristics of God. Humankind has a rationality
that the world, that the animals and the rest of creation doesn't
have. Man has an intelligence far beyond anything else. Man has a creativity that animals
do not have. You can give a monkey a paintbrush,
but he will not paint the Sistine Chapel. He is not creative. He is not able to think, and
to process, and to rationalize, and design, and invent, and produce. Man has, in that sense, a wonderful
image of God. And of course, man is in the
image of God in the sense that he is eternal. We have immortal
souls. We will live after this world. And so that's another point that
makes mankind so unique, that is that we are body and soul. We're body and soul. Evolution will ignore the soul.
It may speak about the spirit in the sense of your insides,
that is your emotions and your intellect that's inside you,
but it doesn't speak of a soul. Because evolution cannot countenance
the idea of an eternal soul beyond this world. But the Bible makes
it very clear that to be human is to be body and soul. And if body and soul are separated,
then we die. That is what death is. Fundamentally,
death is the separation of body and soul. And the body ceases
to live and breathe, but the soul goes to be with its maker. And so mankind has a spiritual
side that the rest of creation doesn't have. And God breathed
that life into man in a way that he didn't to anyone else or anything
else. We read that God breathed life
into Adam and he became a living soul, an immortal soul, a soul
that faces eternity. And so you can see that man has
a very high status. What is man? Man is greatly privileged. We are created to know God and
to enjoy him. What is man? Well, secondly,
of course, we know that man is fallen. Man is fallen. There are many attributes that
God has given to man in his perfect state which remain, but those
attributes are marred by sin. We are rather like, if you can
imagine, a very flash car. A car worth a vast amount of
money, which is impressive to look at, beautiful in its design,
but that car has crashed and is consigned into the scrapyard. You might go around the scrapyard
and you might be able to see that once that was an impressive
car. It's still got the badge on it,
it's still got the outline of it, it's still got elements of
it, but it's wrecked. It doesn't work. In that sense,
it's worthless. And that's kind of what we are
like as fallen mankind. We've got bits about us that
show something of his glory of creation. We've got bits about
us that show the image of God, but it's marred and it's broken
and it doesn't work anymore. And so what is man? Well, man
was created to have a relationship with God, but man is now separated
from God because of sin. Man was cast out of the Garden
of Eden and not allowed to return. Man does not know God in that
deepest sense, naturally. A man in his very heart is a
sinner. He's got a Sinful, fallen nature. And as a sinner, mankind is set
to receive the wages of sin. If you go and work, you would
expect your wages. It wouldn't be right if your
employer not to pay you what you deserve. And the Bible tells us what the
wages of sin is, what we deserve, what God gives in return for
sin. If you give God sin and rebellion
and disobedience and unbelief, God gives you wages for that
sin. He gives what you deserve. And the wages of sin is death. And in a sense, it is a continuation
of the spiritual state that you've been in all along, separated
from God, fallen in his presence, not desiring nor loving him,
and not knowing him. But it is a sealing of that state
for all eternity in hell, where there is no hope of knowing him. What is man? Man now is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked. Man is a sinner. Man is spiritually dead. David in Psalm 51, repenting
of his sin, recognized something of the sinfulness of mankind
in his very nature. When he says, I was shapen in
iniquity, And in sin did my mother conceive me. That means I was
a sinner from my very conception. And when I was formed in the
womb, I was a sinner. It's what I am. And I sinned against God. Against
thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. And so what is man? Well, man
is spiritually dead. Not spiritually, not dead in
the sense that they are just laid out, if you like, completely
unresponsive, but dead in the sense that they do not know the
living God and they choose willfully and willingly the ways of death. They are unwilling to seek the
Lord and they will always choose sin and self. This is what man is. What is man? Man is high status,
but man is fallen in God's sight. And yet, what is man? That thou
art mindful of him. Because David is marveling that
God is mindful of mankind. That God, who is so glorious
when he looks up to the heavens and thinks about the works of
God, And yet, God remembers sinful, fallen mankind. Because God is gracious to man. We read, I have loved thee with
an everlasting love. and therefore with loving kindness
I have joined thee. There is a graciousness about
God that when we understand something of the fallenness of man and
the helplessness of man and the sinfulness of man that magnifies
God's grace. Rather like looking up to the
heavens and thinking how can God look on little me in comparison
with the vastness of the trillions of the stars rather like that
we look at the holiness and the greatness and the glory of God
in his perfection and we say how can God look upon little
me in my fallen nature and that's what David was doing how can
it be that thou art mindful of him not just that you are mindful
of the creation as small as it is in comparison to the heavens
not just that you are mindful of the animals and all their
movements and all of the things that they're doing and they're
mindful of all of this beautiful creation when we think of the
vastness of the universe. But they are mindful of him. Him who is wretched and vile
and filthy in his sin. That's what's so remarkable.
A man is a recipient of grace. That God looks on this fallen
mankind, looks on his people in their desperate condition,
and he looks on them and says, my people. He looks on them and
he says, here's my bride, who I love. Or here is my sheep,
who I care for. They are mine. And David is trying to grapple
with this truth when he's saying, what is man? What is there about
man that you're mindful of him? And the conclusion is, there's
nothing about man. But God is gracious. God is a
God of grace. And so what is man? This high
status of man, this fallen state of man. his recipient of grace. But then we look at God's visits
to man. What is man that thou art mindful
of him and the son of man that thou visitest him? And you see,
this is where we see God's grace. He visits fallen, sinful man. We see his visits in the Old
Testament. We read, don't we, of the account
when the Lord comes to Abraham and speaks to him about the coming
birth of his son Isaac. And he promises to him that he
would have a son and be a great nation. He said, I will certainly
return unto thee according to the time of life. And lo, Sarah
thy wife shall have a son, a visit of the three angels. But it's
clear that one of the angels is the Lord. It's referred in
that way. Later on in the chapter, the
Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham the thing which I do?
God visits Abraham with this promise. As we go through the Old Testament,
you come to Moses walking in the Wilderness of Midian and
there he sees the bush which is burning and yet not consumed
and God speaks to him out of the bush and calls him and Tells
him that he would deliver Israel out of Egypt and the Moses is
called to that role God visits him And you come through the life
of Moses and you come to the journey in the wilderness and
to Mount Sinai. And he's called up the mountain and God speaks
with him for those 40 days and 40 nights, gives the law and
other commandments. God visits him. Come on into the history of Israel
and Solomon has built the temple. And as he prays in dedication
to the temple, the spirit of God, the presence of God, the
cloud fills the temple so much so that the priests can't minister
because God has visited them. Come into Babylon with the three
Hebrews who refused to bow down before the idol And the king
says that if you fail to do so you'll be cast into the fiery
furnace and they in faith in the power and faithfulness of
God do not flinch from the furnace. And as they walk in the midst
of it there is one like unto the son of God in the midst because
God visits them. And so there are many times when
God appeared to his people and spoke to them in their time of
need, or spoke to them of deliverance, or spoke to them through the
prophets of the coming Saviour, spoke to them of the place of
His birth in Bethlehem, or spoke to them of the suffering Saviour
of Isaiah 53, or reveals to them that He'll be born of a virgin
God visits you see in speaking and appearing and being with
his people so many times and we see his goodness and his grace
throughout the scriptures. What is man? The son of man that
thou visitest him. Every visitation was an act of
grace. And yet we come on the son of
man, that thou visitest him. We read John chapter one, the word was made flesh and dwelt
among us. And we beheld his glory, the
glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace
and truth. And John chapter one, first of
all points us to who he is as creator. In the beginning was
the Word. The Word was with God. The Word
was God. All things were made by him.
Without him was not anything made that was made. In him was
life, and the life was the light of men. You see, it is pointing
us to his eternal nature as the creator of the heavens and the
earth. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers. And
John is pointing us to the one whose fingers were at work was
Jesus Christ. the word who made the heavens. And so when David looks into
the heavens, he is seeing the work of the fingers of Christ. And John then says, this word
became flesh and dwelt among us. He, he moved among us. He walked among us. He became
one of us and we beheld his glory. thou visitest him. And this is the wonder of the
incarnation of Jesus Christ, is that all the other visits
of the Old Testament, we have him appearing for a time, or
he's described as the angel of the Lord. But he is there in that moment,
and then gone. He appears to Moses in the burning
bush, but then he is gone. He's in the fiery furnace, but
then he is gone. But in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, he takes on
flesh. He becomes and dwells among man. Remember what man is. Fallen,
dead, sinful man. thou visitest him." It is a wonderful
errand of mercy, the visit of the Lord Jesus Christ to mankind
in his fallen state, to become man. And so this psalm takes
on a messianic view, doesn't it? And the apostle opens this
up when he writes the epistle to the Hebrews. Thou hast made
him a little lower than the angels. And there he speaks how this
is applied to Jesus. He has been made a little lower
than the angels for the purpose of the suffering of death. Christ took on mankind. Why? Well, you could say, in
one sense, there's an element that Christ takes on mankind,
that he walks with us, that he understands us. He becomes one
of his people in that way. You know the account of Hudson
Taylor, missionary to China, and how after years of laboring
and preaching and being rejected for dressing as a Westerner and
speaking as a Westerner, he decides to dress as a Chinese person,
become one of them. And once he does so, they accept
him and they start to listen to his message because he seems
to be one of them to the point that he is willing to be identified
as one of them. He will walk with them as one
of them. And in that sense, we could say
Christ comes to visit his people that he walks amongst them. And so he knows your sorrows
and your experiences. He knows your temptations. He knows the path that you walk
in because he has walked the same. What is man without mindful
of him? He comes amongst man, but it's
more than that. He was made a little lower than
the angels for the suffering of death. Because he suffers on the cross.
as a real man. A real man. He endures the burden of guilt
of his church as a real man. He experiences the anger and
hiding of his father's face as a real man. He experiences the
nails of the cross as a real man. And he enters in the experience
of hell as a real man, as a suitable, acceptable substitute for his
people. He visits him. This is the wonderful savior
that we all need. and the sheep and the oxen, the
animals, the goats, the bullocks, all the blood of the sacrifices
could never take away sin. But Christ, and only Christ,
as the real God-man, could bear the sins of many. And as real
man, He experiences real death, body and soul separated at death. The soul ascends into glory where
he told the dying thief he would see him in paradise, but his
body is buried in Joseph's tomb. He enters through the path of
death for his people. that they might know resurrection
when one day body and soul will be reunited and will live eternally
with him who is risen before them. What saviour we all need. This is a saviour you need. One
who can stand in the sinner's place. One who in his grace and
mercy has visited the unworthy. But then what about his visits
today? The son of man that thou visitest
him. We think of his visits in the
Old Testament. We think of his coming to Bethlehem. But what about today? Because
we don't want to just be filled with the understanding of the
historical accounts. When we come to worship, we want
to understand something of his visits today. Is he mindful of man today? Well, the word of God is so encouraging. He is mindful today. he does
visit today. The Lord says when he speaks
to his disciples that he will send forth the Holy Spirit, the
Comforter, who will speak of him, who will open the eyes of
the blind, who will lead sinners to repentance and faith. And
so this news is good news for us all today. What is man? Thou
art mindful him, the son of man, that thou visitest him, because
God visits unworthy sinners today with the gospel of His grace. You know, I say, oh, but the
Lord only visits the good people. And the Lord only visits the
worthy people. And the Lord only comes to those
who are deserving. What does the Apostle Paul tell
us when he writes to the Ephesians about who God visits? Ephesians
chapter two, he describes our state by nature. You who are
dead in trespasses and sins. In time past you walked according
to the course of this world, according to the prince of the
power of the air and the spirit that now worketh in the children
of disobedience, among whom we all had our conversation in time
past in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the
flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath,
even as others. That's not good people being
described, is it? That's not worthy people. righteous
people, acceptable people. It's people who are walking in
the course of this world. It's people who are walking to
fulfill their lusts in their flesh and in their mind. It's
people who are dead in trespasses and in sins. It's people who
are as fallen mankind. But Paul says, but God, who is
rich in mercy, For his great love wherewith he loved us, even
when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together with Christ.
By grace he has saved and has raised us up together and made
us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. These are the
people that God comes to. But God, he intervened, he worked. He worked in his rich mercy and
he has raised you up. And he has not just raised you
up, he's raised you up to sit in the heavenly places in Christ
Jesus. This is who he visits. Paul knew
that by his own experience. who describes himself as a blasphemer
and someone who did injury to the church and the cause of Jesus
Christ, but God had mercy on him, and he knows it's true of
the believers in Ephesus, and it's true today. He visits the unworthy. So do not ever conclude that
you are too bad, you are too fallen, too much a sinner. Always
remember Ephesians chapter two, But God, but God. If it were not for God, then
we would all despair. But God, what is man that thou
art mindful of him? If his visits in the Old Testament
were an act of grace, and his coming to Bethlehem was an act
of grace, then his wonderful grace is extended today to the
unworthy. And he comes to those who seek
and cry to him. David opens the psalm, O Lord,
our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. How excellent. All of his visits, as we thought
this morning, they humble us, don't they? O Lord, our Lord, how excellent
is thy name in all the earth. What is man? What are you? What
am I? What is man? That thou art mindful
of him. What is man? Man is nothing, but man is also precious. His
people are precious in his eyes. Man is lost, yet in Christ they
are found. Man is dead, yet in Christ they're
alive. And so what is man? They're nothing, but in Jesus
Christ they have such worth. because they are in him and they
have been visited by his grace. And so this evening, if we were
a believer, if we know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, doesn't
it bring us to join with David and say, oh Lord, our Lord, how
excellent is thy name in all the earth? Doesn't it lead us
to worship him and adore him and to remember that we are what
we are only by the grace of God? And if we do not know him and
we seek him this evening, remember what you are. And maybe you don't
need me to tell you what you are. You know it already. But
remember, he visits the unworthy. He comes to the guilty. He pardons
the sinner. He visits him. The hymn puts it this way, when
I think that God, his Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce
can take it in, that on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, he
bled and died to take away my sin, then sings my soul, my Saviour,
God, to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art, when
I consider thy heavens. and the works of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained. You can go
home, you can look up online, you can see the pictures that
the new telescope are taking, you see the glories of the heavens.
When I consider the heavens, how great thou art. But you will
not comprehend the greatness and the glory of God until you
know him who has been mindful of you and visited your soul. by his grace. O Lord, our Lord,
how excellent is thy name in all the earth. May God bless
his word to us this evening.