This psalm faces us with the most breathtaking contrast that we could imagine. Can you think of anything bigger and more overwhelming than this vast universe in which we live, and can you think of anything weaker and more apparently insig­nificant than a tiny baby? The Psalm begins by putting those two side by side to sing about them together and about the amazing things that God is doing with both of them! First, let's take a look, as the Psalm tells us to do, at the stars. Then take an even closer look at the little babies. And then look at the wonderful things God tells us, here and in other ex­planations in His Word, that He is doing with both of them, and how He is doing it.

A Look at the Stars⤒🔗

The Psalm invites us to step out-of-doors and look at the sky. "Consider the heavens, the work of (God's) fingers, the moon and the stars which (He) has ordained." When was the last time you did that? How many of us ever do that? We usually go through the routine of living, paying little or no attention to what is overhead — maybe it's cloudy anyway. Yet the Bible says that we ought to do that. Abraham was told by God to look upward and as he saw the multitude of God's stars, to learn from them what God was promising to him and his (long child­less) family in His covenant. Other of the Psalms tells us to look at the heavens in this way. And it is striking that we, with all of our pretentious 20th century education, have usually grossly neglected that revelation of God above our heads.

About 55 years ago I took a course in Astronomy. It was given in a very liberal college by a professor who was far from being an evangelical Christian. He told us that we would "never be the same again" after taking this course. A few years ago I became interested in that study again and began reading some astronomy journals and books and using telescopes. I looked especially for material written from a Christian point of view to help us look at that amazing universe overhead as Psalm 8 teaches us to do. I was surprised to discover how rare such books are and even how many Christians work­ing and teaching in such fields only repeat the same kind of (godless) theories and guesses they learned, as I did, from unbelievers who dominated those fields. (Note, for ex­ample, Howard J. Van Till's 1986 book, The Fourth Day or the 1988 production by himself and two col­leagues, Science Held Hostage.) A welcome exception to such con­ fusion was Paul M. Steidl's The Earth, the Stars, and the Bible. He wrote to show how, "even though most astronomers have been blind to the glory of God in the heavens, they have enabled us to see it much bet­ter" with their telescopes and other equipment.

David wrote, "When I consider thy heavens, the work of they fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him?" Seeing something of the grandeur of God's heavens, impressed him with the comparative smallness and insignificance of man. All of our discoveries with modern equipment haven't altered that at all. Rather, they should enormously in­crease our awareness of what David saw. One winter we were looking up­ward with a telescope trying to find the tiny light patch in the sky called the Andromeda Galaxy. Experts who have studied it tell us that that hard to find little light patch is evi­dently twice as big — not as the earth, not as the sun together with all of its planets, but as the whole Milky Way of which our sun and its encircling bodies are only an inconceivably small part! Nobody knows how many millions of stars like our sun and big­ger there are in that one little area of sky!

The Bible teaches us to see in this mindboggling work of the Creator above and around us, how infinitely small we and all mankind are. Job had to be taught this lesson. That sorely troubled man became so preoccupied with his own misery that he began to lose himself in questioning the reason for it. God shock­ed him back to reality by directing him to the heaven and asking him whether he could control the bril­liant little cluster of the Pleiades, untie the stars in the belt of Orion or manage those other bodies (Job 38:31, 32), And the startled Job real­ized and confessed that he had been rashly talking of things about which he knew nothing. We, deluged by man's pretentious learning and ar­rogant and foolish theories, need to learn that lesson even worse than Job did.

God's Word's referrals to the heavens usually stress this point. Isaiah (ch. 40) had to face despairing Israelites confronting captivity with it:

Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, Who brings out their host by num­ber and 'calls them all by name...' He 'sits above the circle of the earth' and before Him 'the na­tions are as a drop in a bucket, and are counted as the small dust on the balance.... All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted by Him less than nothing and worth­less.' This 'Creator of the ends of the earth' is saving the people who 'wait on Him.'

A Closer Look at the Babies←⤒🔗

Having "cut us down to size" and shown our comparative insig­nificance, the 8th Psalm also abruptly shifts our attention away from that vast universe to this tiny and ap­parently insignificant little man and all his kind — more particularly, to the tiniest and most insignificant of all, the little babies! It tells to give even more attention to what God is doing there than to His work in the vast universe overhead. Something more important is happening here than in the whole remote universe. Today some astronomers are giving a great deal of attention to picking up radio signals that come in from the stars. Their evolutionary theory tells them that if our little earth has developed human beings, some of those uncountable other worlds must have developed them too and therefore they are spending a great deal of time and expense trying to pick up from those other beings the radio communications that never come! God tells us in this Psalm, to listen, not (like modern Baal prophets) for interstellar communications, but to what He has said He is doing in men and, in particular, in these tiny babies

The world doesn't think much of babies. If you have any doubt about that, just consider what may be one of the worst atrocities in human his­tory, our nation's slaughter of over 20 million of them before they are even born, sanctioned by our highest court and even defended by apostate churches. We should not be surprised if God judges our land, as he once did his Old Testament people by captivity, because their ruler had filled his capital city with "innocent blood which the LORD would not pardon." (2 Kings 24:4).

Even our Lord's own disciples didn't appreciate the important role He assigned to the little children in what He was doing. A rare time in which He became extremely angry with them was when they tried to keep parents with their children from interrupting a discussion on the problem of divorce. He "was indig­nant" and said,

Let the little children come to me, and do not for­bid them; for of such is the kingdom of God....whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.Mark 10:14, 15

What God is doing: His Holy War←⤒🔗

The text draws our attention away from the vastness of the universe and focusses it especially on tiny babies to see what God is really doing. What it says surprises, and, at first glance, baffles us. "Out of the mouth of babes and infants" God has "or­dained strength," because of His "enemies," that He may "silence the enemy and the avenger." The scene is one of war, the great war that began with the good creation, quick­ly followed by the devil's revolt and man's fall. God, in His saving pur­pose, established an "enmity" and a continuing warfare between Himself and the devil. (Jesus once identified the whole purpose of his coming "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:81.) The Bible highlights that age long war as the real action in the world's otherwise mystifying history. And our seeing this "antithesis" is in­dispensible if we are to at all under­ stand it. The worst source of con­fusion and threat to Christendom today appears in the wide refusal to any longer admit that warfare, and to the extent that the war is being denied, would-be "Christians" are being hoodwinked by the Enemy.

Now in this cosmic drama of world war the Psalm spotlights not merely people, but "the mouth of babes and infants" as silencing "the enemy." The prayer at the end of our old form for the baptism of infants dramatizes the same point in asking that these tiny babies may "manfully fight against and overcome sin, the devil, and his whole dominion..." The psalm (echoed by the form) faces us with a real problem, what Dr. Schilder called a "riddle." How can tiny babies, the most helpless things in creation, "silence" and "overcome sin, the devil and his whole dominion?" Look more close­ly at the text. Does it state that these helpless little children are going to do it? Rather, it says that God "has ordained strength" and will do it. How does He do it? For an answer, we need to turn to Hebrews 2 which is, in fact, the New Testament com­mentary on this prophetic Psalm. After quoting much of the Psalm, it observes that "now we do not yet see all things put under" man, as the Psalm states that it is. Man, in and despite all his efforts, achievements and triumphs, always eventually ap­pears the defeated victim instead of the victor — that is, until, with the New Testament, "we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the an­gels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor ... bringing many sons to glory." In other words, only in relationship to Christ's saving life, death, resur­rection and glorification is God ful­filling the promise of the Psalm in the life of believers. And that promise extends even to their infant children, who, in picturesque com­ments of Dr. Schilder, appear "as a camp of God's recruits ... in the moral and religious war." From them "come the hosts of the faithful who ... will raise the battle-cry of holy war in the world in order that God may triumph in it."

Training the Lord's Recruits←⤒🔗

The promise of the Psalm comes as grand encouragement to us, believers today who often see our Faith threatened by numerically overwhelming paganism as well as by more destructive compromise and betrayal within.

God assures us as He did Luther, that "though this world with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God has willed His truth to tri­umph through us."

That triumph, en­visioned and predicted in Psalm 8 for believers and their children, will surely come, but it will not come automatically. God has predicted that he will raise up from these little children His army to "fight against and overcome, sin the devil and his whole dominion," but He has also told us that He will do it by imposing on believers the duty to receive their children "in His name" (Mark 9:37) and to bring them up in His training and discipline (Ephesians 6:4). Especially as the school season begins we recall that that most immediate of respon­sibilities spurs us to Christian educa­tion. That does not mean only "Christian" education in name — even by well-meaning church mem­bers who may be repeating the same anti-Christian notions that one would get in any secular school. It means training to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, God's Word from the lies of the devil and his deluded followers. It means the kind of disciplined train­ing required in military service to help them become faithful "soldiers of Jesus Christ" (2 Timothy 2:3, 4) to share in the battles and victories of His kingdom.

An ostensibly conclusive argument of some who brush aside the whole Bible teaching of the creation of the heavens in favor of latest unbeliever's theories rests on the changes that obviously appear over our heads. These changes are hardly "new" discoveries, however. Psalm 102 pointed out long ago that these heavens (far from creating themsel­ves) are "the work of God's hands," and that they "will perish" as they... "all of them ... grow old like a garment" and God will change them." The stars grow old and some­times explode, but because God will not change, the children of His ser­vants will continue and their descen­dants will be established before Him. (vv. 25-28).