Psalms 8-9a
Psalm 8 – Living Like a King
When God saved you, He made you a king. You may not look like it or act like it, but you are a king. Your day of salvation was a day of coronation. God put you on the throne in Jesus Christ. Psalm 8 deals with sovereignty. “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth, You who set Your glory above the heavens!” (v. 1). The first “Lord” means “Jehovah,” the covenant-keeping God, the God who keeps His promises. The second “Lord” means “the sovereign,” the One who not only has the ability but the authority. What good is it to make promises if you can’t keep them? “O Lord [the promise-making God], our Lord [the sovereign, who has the power to keep His promises], how excellent is Your name in all the earth.” When God saved you, He made you a king. Then why do you live like a slave?
As you read Psalm 8, you discover that God gave to Adam and Eve the first crowns. But what did they do? They handed those crowns and scepters to Satan, because they wanted to become like God. And they lost their dominion. Man today does not have dominion over beasts and fowl and fish. But we’ve regained our spiritual dominion in Jesus Christ. Everything we lost in Adam, we have regained in Jesus Christ. He had dominion over the fish. He gathered them into the net when Peter was fishing. He even had dominion over the animals of the field. He rode on a donkey that no one had ever ridden before. You have dominion in Jesus Christ. You were saved to live like a king. Don’t live like a slave.
Psalm 9a – Your Song of Victory
Psalm 9 is a great victory psalm. “I will praise you, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will tell of all Your marvelous works” (v. 1). Notice the universals in that verse–“my whole heart,” “all Your marvelous works.” I must convess that there are times when I don’t praise the Lord with my whole heart. At times I’ve been standing in church with the hymnbook in my hand, singing a great song of praise–but not with my whole heart. I had some reservations down inside. The best way to have victory is to be wholehearted in your praise to the Lord.
Granted, there are times when it’s hard to praise the Lord. Think of Paul and Silas in prison, but they were praising the Lord (Acts 16:16-34). They’d been humiliated. Their rights had been taken away from them. Their bodies were hurting. Yet they were wholeheartedly praising the Lord. God can heal a broken heart if you give Him all the pieces. If your heart is broken today, just turn all the pieces over to God. He’ll put it back together again and give you wholehearted praise.
Don’t just praise God about circumstances. Praise Him for who He is. “I will be glad and rejoice in You” (Ps. 9:2). Maybe you acn’t rejoice in your circumstances or in the way you feel. Maybe you can’t even rejoice in the plans that are made for today, but you can always rejoice in the Lord (Phil. 4:4). You can rejoice in the Lord today because He is worthy of your praise. “I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High” (Ps. 9:2).
The whole thrust of this psalm is simply this: If your cause is right, God is on your side. God is on His throne, and He is administering His world the way He wants to. David didn’t quite understand all that God was doing, but he knew that God knew what He was doing. So, when your cause is right, you can praise the Lord, even in the midst of seeming defeat. When God is on the throne, everything turns out all right.
Dr. Warren Wiersbe (1929-2019) was an internationally known Bible teacher, author, and conference speaker. He graduated in 1953 from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, Illinois. While attending seminary, he was ordained as pastor of Central Baptist Church in 1951 and served until 1957. From September 1957 to 1961, Wiersbe served as Director of The Literature Division for Youth for Christ International. From 1961 to 1971 he pastored Calvary Baptist Church of Covington, Kentucky south of Cincinnati, Ohio. His sermons were broadcast as the “Calvary Hour” on a local Cincinnati radio station. From 1971 to 1978, He served as the pastor of Moody Church in Chicago 1971 to 1978. While at Moody Church he continued in radio ministry. Between August 1979 and March 1982, he wrote bi-weekly for Christianity Today as “Eutychus X”, taught practical theology classes at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and wrote the course material and taught a Doctor of Ministry course at Trinity and Dallas Seminary. In 1980 he transitioned to Back to the Bible radio broadcasting network where he worked until 1990. Dr. Wiersbe became Writer in Residence at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids and Distinguished Professor of Preaching at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. In his lifetime, Dr. Wiersbe wrote over 170 books—including the popular Be series, which has sold over four million copies. Dr. Wiersbe was awarded the Gold Medallion Lifetime Achievement by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA).
