LESSON ONE
Who Am I?
Why Am I Here?
PSALM EIGHT
In this lesson we will learn three important answers to questions regarding our purpose on earth.
OVERVIEW
In the beginning of his life, H.G. Wells had an incredibly positive view of mankind. His early writings contained the belief that “Our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations.” He believed peace and unity were forthcoming; he envisioned a utopian world. But World War I punctured his philosophy of optimism like a pin punctures a balloon. Especially after the beginning of World War II, H.G. Wells’s writings became dark, dismal and discouraging. Despair was written over everything. As he came to the end of his life, he could hardly remember that earlier he had been an apostle of positive thinking in his day.
Life has a way of doing that to many of us. We start out with hopes and dreams, and then life settles in. If we aren’t plugged in to the right circuits along the way, we can become the epitome of everything we preached against in our early years. Trying to come to grips with the meaning of life can cause despair if the questioner cannot come up with any meaningful answers.
When I read David’s question, “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?” Psalms 8:4), I don’t want to know just what the question is, but what the answer means. There are three important truths that we need to write down in the table of our heart if we are going to come to grips with that answer. These critical points will help us to understand who we are and why we are here.
Answers Found in the Creator
You cannot understand who you are and why you are here until you understand the Creator. The theme of Psalm 8 blazes across the first and last verse of this hymn. The writer says, “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!” The psalmist wants us to understand that human meaning begins and ends with the glory of God and who He is.
What makes people different from every other creative work on earth? “God created man in His own image” (Genesis 1:27). When God created people He created them to respond to God. God possesses intellect, emotion and will, and He created people with intellect, emotion and will so He could walk in the garden with the first people and talk with them and commune with them. There is no other creature that knows that kind of intimate, personal fellowship relationship with God in heaven. And so it is true to say that man is only man in relationship to God.
Transcendent Creation
The Psalmist tells us that we can know our Creator through His creative works. It’s beautiful how he writes about the fingerwork of God—putting the stars in the sky, hanging the moon and the sun. Who has not looked up at the sky and thought about the grandeur and majesty of our God?
Personal Communication
God is known to us in His transcendent creation, but He is also known to us in personal communication. The psalmist says in verse two, “Out of the mouth of babes and infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger.” What impressed the Psalmist was that this transcendent glory of God, this greatness which was far above all the heavens, could still be grasped and expressed by a child. Evidently the psalmist had often struggled to put his words into thoughts and ideas and had found that his intelligence and rationality as a psalmist was challenged by such an attempt. Yet this same God who can overwhelm us by revealing Himself in the star-studded heavens can be known in the heart of a child.
Jesus nailed this truth for us in Matthew. Jesus had been healing the blind and lame in the temple. When the chief priests saw this and heard the children shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they got upset. These children weren’t a trained temple children’s choir. They were the ragamuffins of the street. And the chief priests and scribes thought Jesus should be offended that these street urchins were crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” But Jesus reminded them of this particular psalm and said, of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise” (Matthew 21:16).
God is so magnificent—He created the world and hung the stars—yet the simplest child can comprehend Him. In fact, simple children understand Him better than we do once we get our minds messed up with the intricacies of life.
Ken Poure tells a story about his granddaughter who was about eight at the time. He and his granddaughter were talking about God and he asked her, “What do you like about God?” She thought about it for a minute and then she said, “You know what I like about God? God never says, ‘Oops.’ ” Isn’t it incredible that a child could understand the perfection of Almighty God?
Out of the mouths of babes come little words of challenge, like the questions from the child who said, “Why don’t we have a Bible? Will you buy me a Bible?” Or the statement to the father who never prayed, that it was daddy’s turn to pray. If we’ve written down the memoirs of our family, our notebooks will be full of illustrations like that.
Answers Found in Creation
You cannot know who you are and why you are here until you come to know your Creator. You also cannot know who you are and why you are here until you understand creation. The answer to the second part of the question is—you are here to subdue the earth. Psalm 8:6 says, “You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet.” Psalm 8 is a commentary on what God intended humankind to be.
Hebrews 2 tells us what happened to God’s original intention. God wanted people to live in the Garden of Eden, in control over the animal kingdom just as they were king of the earth—God’s sovereign creation ruling in sovereign control over all creation. But human-kind wanted more. The only thing God withheld was withheld in order that they might remember who God was, and that they were not God. But they took hold of the forbidden thing and caused what we call the Fall. Man was divested of all opportunity to rule over the animal kingdom.
Our relationship to creation is evidence of our lost sovereignty. In our fallen condition, as we try to rule and reign over the earth, we build factories to provide jobs for people and goods for nations, but the factories pollute the waters of our streams and lakes. We take the money we make at the factories and buy automobiles to make it easier to get to work, and the automobiles fill the air with poisonous gases. Our eyes burn and our lungs are clogged with smog. Trying to do right we do wrong, because we have lost our sovereignty in creation.
You will never understand who you are and why you are here until you understand that. Why is the world in the mess it’s in? Because Adam rebelled against the Almighty God. That’s why if you love God and want to serve Him and make a difference in this world, you discover there are bumps in the road. That’s why scripture says the whole creation groans until the day of redemption (see Romans 8:22).
Answers Found in Christ
We’ve lost our sovereignty, and we’re living in a fallen world. Something had to be done. The writer of Hebrews tells us what it is: “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9).
If you compare this verse to Psalm 8:5–8, you will discover that the same terms are used to describe Jesus in Hebrews 2 as are used of mankind in the Psalm. What was lost through the first Adam, has been recovered through the “second Adam,” Jesus Christ. Christ walked into this world and took back the control that was lost when Adam sinned. In other words, Christ started a new humanity. He started a whole new race of people, call “redeemed,” who have been caught up out of this world and set up on a new level that makes sense and puts meaning into every day. It gives a sense of adventure knowing why you are here and that God has a plan for your life. Christ has recovered everything that was lost in the Garden of Eden for those who put their trust in Him.
Christ Recovers Our Innocence
What was lost in the Garden? Man’s innocence and eternal life. Jesus entered our world as a baby and left as a man, hanging on a cross with all the sin of the world upon Him and the wrath of God poured on Him—the sinless Son of God. He takes away all the penalty of our sin when we put our trust in Him so that we can recover the sense of purity and righteousness in Jesus Christ.
Christ Recovers Our Eternal Life
The scripture says when Jesus died, He took the sting out of death. He took the poison away and emptied death of its sting. The message of hope and encouragement is that the grave is not the end, the sting of death is momentary and there is life everlasting.
When Jesus grew up on this earth, he demonstrated everything we could be in Christ, even in the physical realm. Jesus turned water into wine. He told a storm to be still and it was still. The miracles He did, He did as a man—the Son of Man who had control over nature. He was demonstrating again for us everything God had originally wanted us to have that was lost in the Garden through sin. He was reminding us that someday in the Kingdom the lion will lay down with the lamb and there will be peace between humanity and the animal kingdom. Someday we will once again have dominion over the living things.
It is through Jesus Christ that we can recover the sense of who we are and why we are here. We can never understand or recover it in any other way. When we put our faith in Jesus Christ and allow Him to be our representative, He pays the penalty for our sin and sets us free from the prison house of our human desires and offers us the opportunity to understand what life is all about.
Insight into who you are and why you are here is available only from the Creator, because you were created for Him. The missing piece in your life is not more education or better therapy. The missing piece in your life, if you don’t know Christ, is to put Him at the center where He belongs. God created you uniquely for Himself. He put a vacuum within you that cannot be filled with anything else but Him. When you stuff in all the pleasure and all the madness of this age trying to find meaning to life, you will never discover it. But something happens when you say a simple prayer giving in to God and receiving Him into your life.
Then Jesus comes to live within you. Your problems are not gone, but you have a new understanding, a new perspective, a new sense of purpose, and new sense of meaning. Life starts to make sense. The rest of your life as a believer is the gradual awareness day in and day out of who you are in Christ and what God intends for your life.
God loves you, He knows you, He has a plan for your life. He wants you to know who you are and why you are here, and if you will put your trust in Him, He will give you that perspective in your life. You were created in God’s image, so you are really only yourself in relationship to God. When you let God take control of your life through His Son, life begins to have some meaning.
APPLICATION
1. Have you ever wondered why you are here on earth? What are your thoughts on the meaning of life? Do you know anyone who feels that life is meaningless?
Read Psalm 8. What is the main thought the psalmist is trying to set down?
How does thinking of the glory and majesty of God make you feel about yourself? Does it make you feel wonderful, being made in His image? Or does it make you feel small?
What kind of thoughts come into your head when you look at the stars and planets? Is there anything else in nature that makes you think similar thoughts?
2. Read Genesis 1:27–28. What does it mean to you to be made in the image of God?
What is the difference between having dominion and being domineering? What do you think God intended our role to be in subduing the earth?
Read Romans 8:19–22. What pictures come to your mind when you think of the creation being “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God”?
Read Isaiah 11:6–9.
3. Read Matthew 21:12–16.
Why do you think the chief priests and scribes were upset?
In Jesus’ reply to them, what was He saying about Himself?
Why do you think children can often grasp truths about God? Have you ever experienced a child showing wisdom in innocence? Read the following verses:
Psalm 8:2
Matthew 18:1–5
In what way are we supposed to become like children? What elements of being grown-up get in the way of being in relationship with God?
4. Psalm 8 is a commentary on Genesis 1 and 2. Hebrews 2 is a commentary on Genesis 3, after the fall. Compare Psalm 8:6–8 with Hebrews 2:8.
Compare Psalm 8:5 with Hebrews 2:9. What terms does the psalmist use to describe man? What terms does the writer of Hebrews use to describe Jesus? Why do you think the humanity, not just the deity, of Jesus is important? Read the following verses:
John 1:14
Galatians 4:4
Philippians 2:5–8
1 Timothy 2:5
Hebrews 4:14–15
5. Read Genesis 3. What was it that was forbidden to Adam and Eve? Why do you think they wanted it?
Do you see a parallel in how we fall every day?
6. Read the following passages:
Matthew 14:25
Matthew 17:24–27
Mark 4:37–41
Mark 6:35–44
Luke 5:4–11
John 2:1–10
How do these miracles show Christ’s control over the forces of nature?
Do you think these acts would have been available to us if the fall had never happened? Does this make life in the Kingdom seem even more appealing?
DID YOU KNOW?
When H.G. Wells was in his early optimistic years, he wrote, “Can we doubt that presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations? That it will achieve unity and peace … that the children of our blood and our lives will live in a world more splendid and lovely than any palace or garden we could ever know … going on from strength to strength in an ever widening circle of adventure and achievement. What man has done, the little triumphs that he has known, will certainly achieve the greatness that we have all dreamed of.”
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