When You Feel Small

St Timothy Presbyterian Church in Toronto: Sermons

Scripture Passage

Psalm 8

Worship Video

Worship Audio

Sermon Script

It is a beautiful psalm. It starts with this.

How majestic is your name in all the earth!

And it ends with this.

How majestic is your name in all the earth!

Where was he when he wrote this psalm? Was he in front of Grand Canyon or Rocky Mountain or Mount Everest? Probably Not!

But definitely he discovered the majestic world God created. And he saw the majestic power of God.

I shared with you once. I used to take young people every year to Algonquin. At one point more than 30 people.

We had a night hike. We went through the woods.

It was pitch dark. We couldn't see anything. Even a person right in front of me, I couldn't see.

And then we came to an opening. All of a sudden, the sky opened up and we were surrounded by millions of stars.

So bright and majestic. Nobody spoke. We were just there in complete silence.

That was what David experienced.

He was in darkness. His life was in darkness. He couldn't see anything hopeful.

He was so surrounded by his problems. Enemies were all around him ready to attack.

Today's psalm is Psalm 8.

When you read psalms that lead up to Psalm 8, they all deal with David's darkness and his problems.

When you read from Psalm 2 to Psalm 7, you see David's problems.

Why do the nations conspire,
and the peoples plot in vain? (Psalm 2:1)

O Lord, how many are my foes!
Many are rising against me; (Psalm 3:1)

How long, you people, shall my honour suffer shame?
How long will you love vain words, and seek after lies? (Psalm 4:2)

For there is no truth in their mouths;
their hearts are destruction;
their throats are open graves;
they flatter with their tongues. (Psalm 5:9)

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.
My soul also is struck with terror,
while you, O Lord how long? (Psalm 6:2, 3)

O Lord my God, in you I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers, and deliver me,
or like a lion they will tear me apart;
they will drag me away, with no one to rescue. (Psalm 7:1, 2)

David was in deep darkness, in deep trouble. He was in danger. He was surrounded by enemies. There was no way out.

His life was so dark that he couldn't see any light. He saw no hope.

But when you look at Psalm 8, he came to an opening from this complete darkness and experienced God who created this beautiful world.

So he started this psalm with this.

How majestic is your name in all the earth!

There are times when we feel small.

There are times when we are bombarded with so many problems.

There are times when we are surrounded by complete darkness.

No hope, no light, and no way out. We all feel that way sometimes.

That's why Simon and Garfunkel's song, Bridge Over Troubled Water captured so many young people's hearts at that time, who were disillusioned by so many things including the assassination of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr., and the war in Vietnam.

When you’re weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all
I’m on your side
Oh, when times get rough
And friends just can’t be found

He wrote this song while hearing the gospel song over and over again, Oh Mary, Don't you weep.

That's why there is a gospel flavour.

He said, I have no idea where it came from. It just flowed through him.

That's why somebody said this song was written by Paul Simon and God.

We all experience sometimes that we are weary, feeling small. That is when we experience our own frailty, weakness, finitude, and helplessness.

We don't like it. We want to feel powerful. We want to feel invincible. We want to believe that we are capable.

That is why we like super hero's movies.

When I was young, I didn't grow up with Marvel series.

Captain America. Iron Man. The Incredible Hulk. Thor. These weren't around in my time.

I had Bruce Lee. But the effect was the same.

After watching Bruce Lee's movies like Enter the Dragon , I felt like I could fight anyone. 10, 20 people, I felt that I could fight off as long as I have a pair of nunchucks.

I liked that feeling. Feeling powerful!

But that's not our reality. Many times, we feel powerless.

Tremper Longman, an OT scholar, commenting on Abraham, said,

Being human is not being safe, or comfortable.
Being human is being uncertain, being on the way to an unknown place.

Yes, that is what being human is.

We are faced with many challenges and often we feel that we don't have strength. We don't have any idea of how to deal with these challenges.

We feel we are not smart enough, strong enough.

Finitude, Fallibility, and ultimate dependence – that's who we are. These are structural to our existence, James Luther Mays said.

We often forget that. We often pretend that we are not. We often deny that.

Then we face our own failures and our own weaknesses and the problem is we don't know what to do.

David didn't know what to do either. That's why he wrote Psalms. That's why he let out through poems and prayers.

When he didn't know what to do, he turned to God. And there he found his solution.

When he turned to God, David experienced God in a new way.

It's like coming out of the dark woods and seeing the bright sky filled with stars.

He realized that he was very small and very insignificant and yet the almighty God was mindful of him.

The almighty God did not forget him. The one who created this whole universe cared for such an insignificant person like him.

This was what he said.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3, 4)

He felt so small and yet God who created heaven and earth was thinking about him.

He was almost invisible compared to the majestic world God created and yet he was so visible to God.

Not only was he important to God, God honoured him with the crown of glory.

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honour. (Psalm 8:5)

He discovered about himself. He discovered who he was.

He realized that he was not just an insignificant dirt but that he was a precious jewel, honoured with the crown of glory.

He discovered this when he felt small. That's mystery.

When you feel small, often that is when God appears to you. And crowns you with his glory.

That is when God becomes real. That is when you become healed and restored.

When you feel small, faith becomes a powerful tool for you. Until then, you don't know how powerful faith is.

But when you feel so helpless and hopeless, you know the significance of your faith.

And that faith will bring you out of your darkness. And that faith will give you honour.

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