Sunday Sermon: It's All About the Gap

Today I preached from Psalm 8, about the gap between us God, finite and infinite. "The Fourth Part" was amazing, and we had a good potluck after service. Enjoy the sermon!

Introduction: The Gap

In 1997, a man from New York jumped over 23 miles on a pogo stick. In 1998, this same man walked almost 81 miles while balancing a bottle of milk on his head. From May 17th, 2004 to July 18th, 2005 two Brazilian men windsurfed for 5,045 miles along the coast of Brazil. From April 25 to August 6th, 2005, a Russian man drove a tractor for 13,172 miles. And from May 31st, 2000 to February 14, 2001, a man drove a riding lawn mower 14,594.5 miles across all 48 states and parts of Mexico and Canada.

Pretty crazy huh? You know what is so impressive about those feats? It’s the distance. That and the fact that someone would spend over 1 year of their life driving a mower. No, what is really amazing is the distance. No one would care if the guy balances a milk bottle on his head for an hour or goes across a parking lot with a pogo stick. Big deal. It’s the distance that makes these people incredible.

Jamie and I went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for our honeymoon, and I can remember the drive down. It took 17 hours driving in one day for us to get there. And we didn’t mess around. It’s not like we took the scenic route and took bathroom breaks every hour on the hour. We got to our destination at 1:00 in the morning. What a drive! Like those other big records, the amazing thing about our drive was the distance. And this is what I want to talk about today. Distance. The distance between you and me and God—and how that distance is necessary for us to worship Him.

The third century Christian Novatian said, “God is greater than mind itself. His greatness cannot be conceived. Could we conceive of His greatness He would be less than the human mind which could form the conception. He is greater than all language, and no statement can express Him. All our thoughts about Him are less than He, and our loftiest utterances are trivialties in comparison with Him.” He is speaking of the infinitude of God, of how God is infinite and we are finite. And because of this we can never fully comprehend God. Not only can we not comprehend Him except what He reveals to us, we must realize how utterly different we are from Him. And in so doing, we must make a choice: ignore Him as One pointless to try to love, or to worship Him because of how great He is.

The writer of Psalm 8 chooses the latter: to worship Him. And I would ask us today to consider the great distance, the gap, between us and God, and choose to renew our passion for worshiping Him, singing to the God of wonders beyond our galaxy.

If you have your Bible, please turn with me to Psalm 8. It says, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Now in order to understand the gap between us and God, we must know a little about who God is and who we are. So, let's look at what the psalmist says.

Who God Is

The psalmist begins by addressing God as LORD. In my Bible, it’s in all capital letters. That’s because the Hebrew word is Yahweh, God’s proper name. The root of Yahweh means “to be.” That’s why, when Moses asks God what His name is, God tells him, “I AM WHO I AM. Tell them I AM has sent you” (Exodus 2:14). God is. There was no beginning to God, there will not be an end to God. He is the Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet—the beginning and the end.

Yahweh also means that God doesn’t change. His name isn’t “I AM love sometimes and I AM hate other times. Or, I AM merciful sometimes and I AM vengeful sometimes.” God’s nature never changes; He never changes. Yahweh also stresses the faithfulness of God. The LORD promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob He would be their God and they would be His people; that He would give them land as a place of service and inheritance. The LORD then calls Moses to lead Israel into this land, and He brings them to it, thus fulfilling His promise. Yahweh is a covenant God who makes promises and keeps them.

Then he calls God “Lord,” this time not in all capital letters. The Hebrew for this word is Adonai, which means “master, ruler, owner, lord.” This name is frequently used when a person is worshiping God. When one wanted to praise God, to acknowledge God’s majesty and greatness He would call Him Adonai. Adonai also is a humbling name for the one speaking it. It reminds us that God is our master and we are His servants.

As Yahweh and Lord, God is majestic. He is mighty, and He is glorious. This word has connotations of one being a noble, of a higher social class than others. And it makes sense that God would be majestic, in light of what we hear later on. His majesty is reflected in the awesome creation seen in the heavens. Only a God who is majestic, powerful, could create the moon and the stars. Only his fingers could be responsible for setting everything in its place. When you know the character of God, the things God does make more sense.

It’s like a buddy I had in high school named John Stangland. He did everything he could not to conform to social norms. He would trip himself in the hall just to get a laugh, or walk by someone and tap them on the shoulder just to get a look. A few years after we graduated, John got married. It was no wonder that at his wedding he wore tennis shoes with bright pink shoelaces and a bright green shirt with a bright pink tie. That was John. If he would have worn a normal tux I would have questioned what happened to him.

God is majestic…powerful, awesome. Therefore it should come as no surprise to us the wonder of His creation we see all around us. His creation speaks to His majesty, and because of it we know how great and unfathomable God is.

Scientists tell me they cannot count the number of stars in the universe, but guess there to be an excess of one billion times one billion stars. And odds are David, looking up into a starry night sky could not begin to count them either. He may have tried, and then about halfway—okay, not even one percent of the way—through given up. It’s like dropping a glass bottle off the top of this church building and then trying to glue it back together again. You just can’t do it. Looking into the sky, seeing the work of God and knowing the one who made it leaves only one logical next step: not trying to comprehend that one, but seeing how small you are in comparison.

Who We Are

It is tempting to think that we, as human beings, rule the universe. The passage does describe us as being put in charge of the works of God’s hands: flocks, beasts, birds and fish. We are smarter than animals, we have emotions, a soul, can communicate sophistically, and on and on. But we must remember that we are only in charge of these creatures because their Creator has made it so.

And quite frankly, we are only humans. When the psalmist writes about us, he says, “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” The word he uses for man is one that speaks of man’s insignificance or inferiority. Job 33:12 uses the same word to say, “God is greater than man.”

John Wesley once preached a sermon from this passage, and in it he spoke of the finiteness of man. He said, “What is one individual compared to all the inhabitants of Great Britain?” At that time he thought there were between 8 and 10 million people. Then he asked, “What are all the inhabitants of Great Britain compared to all the inhabitants of the earth?” At that time, it was guessed that there were 400 million people on earth. Now there are over 6 billion people on earth. So, what is one man compared to six billion others? What is Josh Hilty compared to them, that God would be mindful of me, the word literally meaning that God would “remember” me?

Then John Wesley thought, “What is the magnitude of the earth compared to that of the solar system?” Especially once you think that Earth is much smaller than some of the other planets and the moon. And then he thought, “What is the magnitude of the solar system compared to that of the rest of creation that man cannot see?” It is inconceivable. And finally, John Wesley thought, “What is all of this…the earth, the solar system and everything beyond it…all that is finite, compared to the Infinite God?” He said we should think of this question, and then ask, “What is man?”

Man is defined in this passage in relation to what God has made him. God made him a little lower than the angels. God made him ruler of His handiwork. Whereas God is defined by Who He is. Nothing outside of God defines Him. Neither you or I or anyone else who has grand ideas about who God is can define Him. He is the I AM.

The Gap

And here’s where worship comes in. Worship is taking in all of that: that God is bigger than we are and we are tiny little people in comparison to all of His creation, and then deciding to praise God for it. The key to all of it is the gap between us and God. If there were no gap, how do you think we would respond to God’s handiwork? “Nice stars God. Give me another hour and I’ll count them all. Oh, I like that moon. But it’s not quite a full circle. You see all those craters…yeah, they distort its shape. Fill in the craters and it will be perfect.” If there is no gap, there is no awe and wonder. If we feel we are even remotely close to understanding God, worship will never make sense to us. Because we feel like we have God down, like we have His number. And instead of worship our goal would become trying to figure God out. That’s why there’s a gap.

I love to sing. If you could be a fly on the wall in my office on any given day, you would hear music playing and me belting out the melody or a tenor harmony. I’ve been singing in choirs ever since I was in fourth grade. In high school I was part of an octet of guys who sang southern gospel music at local churches, something like what The Fourth Part did today. I also was part of my church’s praise band. And in college I traveled with four of those same guys for another year as Brother’s Keeper. We sang at churches on the weekends, and in the summer sang at Wesleyan Church Camps. I was in Indiana Wesleyan’s choir for three years. I love to sing. For me, it’s a way to tell God I love Him. Singing is my main avenue for praising God. The words to songs in our hymnal and to modern worship songs express the way I feel so much better than I ever could.

I have to confess that I went through a phase in college of being critical of worship. I analyzed songs and who was singing them. I picked apart their words, and only if I liked the words would I sing the song. How silly of me. Worship is not about that. It’s about recognizing how small we are and how big God is. I know that we’ve heard a lot of music today, but I want us to hear a song from Phillips, Craig and Dean called “How Great You Are.” It expresses everything I’ve been trying to say to you, and everything that Psalm 8 is saying.

Conclusion: How Majestic is Your Name

It’s all about the gap. And as we know, the gap between us and God is beyond our understanding. It’s greater than all the distances traveled by guys on tractors and pogo sticks. It’s greater than the number of stars in the universe. And for that reason, I praise Him. And I ask that you praise Him too. If nothing else, walk out of here with a renewed sense of the majesty of God. And when we come back here next week, be ready to praise Him.