<<To the Cheif Musician upon Gittith,>>
<<A Psalm of David>>
1 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is Your Name in all the earth!
You, Who have set Your Glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have ordained strength
That you might still the enemy and the avenger. (vs. 1,2, ¹wcv + ²)
¶ I take this Psalm to have been composed by David upon a Gittite harp – a “Gittith” – when he was no more a boy yet not yet a man, shortly after overthrowing Goliath of Gath, the ten-foot-tall, 600-pound Gittite Warrior of Nephilim descent. For David was, indeed, railed and mocked by Goliath as being but a “babe” and “suckling who still played with sticks and stones. To Goliath and the entire Philistine Army he was but a “babe”, nothing more than a “suckling”, that is – until Goliath hit the ground like a felled Cedar of Lebanon. I would not be a bit surprised if David, with a bit of tongue-in-cheek, did not compose this Psalm to a Gittite tune, upon a Gittite harp, knowing that it would ring for years in Philistine (Gittite) ears. Does not God have a sense of humor? Still, David, in verse 1, exalts, worships, celebrates, and admires the majesty, power, and providence of God and His overwhelming lovingkindness to mankind in giving us dominion over this lower world, which He certainly did for David, that fateful day in the Vallery of Elah!
Prompting David to declare in verse 3,
3 When I consider (the greatness of²) Your heavens, the Work of Your Fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
4 What is man, that You are even mindful of us,
The sons of men, that You even visit us?
5 For, indeed, You have made us a little lower than the angels
and crowned us with glory and honor.
6 You have given us dominion over the works of Your Hands;
You have put all things under our feet:
7 The sheep and the oxen, yes, and the beasts of the field;
8 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea,
And all that does travel thru the great, deep channels of the seas.
9 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is Your Name in all the earth! (vs. 3-9, ¹wcv + ²)
¶ David loved his Lord with ALL of his heart, and I believe it to be quite obvious that David knew his Lord as well as any man who ever walked upon the face of the earth. Considering this, should we not follow suit? After all, it is God’s great design and God’s great desire to restore us into the very image and likeness, character, and demeanor of David’s descendant, the Son of David, the Son of Man, the very Son of God Himself, Jesus Christ, our Kinsman Redeemer, for “How Excellent is His Name in all the earth.” (v. 9)
¶ So, let us fix our attention on the miraculous wonder of the knitting together of a body, soul, and spirit in the womb of a woman. The “Creation” of a child in the womb is such a masterpiece of God’s “Grand Design” that it cannot be deemed anything but a miraculous wonder; God-made, God-like, and God-sent! {Genesis 1:26,27} Even in all of the fragility, innocence, dependence, and vulnerability of a newborn babe, a suckling, dwells an Image and Likeness of Almighty God… {v.26,27} …and, when birthed on earth is meant to be nothing less than an outshining of God’s Own Image and Likeness. There is no greater display of God’s Power on earth than the birth of a newborn child. It does, indeed, rival that of All Creation! For every child born of a woman is, indeed, a “world of its own”. – And, if raised up in the “Admonition of the Lord”, and “Trained up in the Way”, then, Like David, “…out of its mouth the Lord will ORDAIN A STRENGTH that will BRING DOWN the enemy and the avenger.” which does, indeed, bring us into a Deep Fetch of Psalm VIII.
¶ Considering verse 1, let us step back for a moment into the Genesis of Creation when the Lord “…set His Glory above the heavens.” An account so miraculous, massive, immeasurable, and grandeur that it is totally bewildering and inapprehensible to the darkly veiled mind of today’s unregenerate man. The Creation of the heavens and the earth along with the creation of a man and a woman being placed in the very heart of it, a “Garden” of perfection known as Eden, is so far-fetched and bewildering to the darkly veiled mind of modern man, not to mention all of it taking place in just six days, that he would rather turn from the Truth and choose instead to live out his life in the bewildering confusion of devised fables. {2 Timothy, 4:4}
¶ There are no words in any language to give us a picture of what the Miraculous Wonder of Creation looked like when in the process of unfolding, though all of created mankind not only beholds the completion of it with their very own eyes but, literally, lives out their entire lives in the midst of it in confusion and denial. How strange that only a few ever come to acknowledge that the heavens beneath which they live and the very earth upon which they walk, as well as themselves, are Gifts from God. They are, in sooth, veiled in the darkness of the Soothsayer.
¶ The denial of our Creator is but a revealing testimony against itself of the staggering heights to which the arrogance of fallen man has risen, and the bottomless abyss into which his understanding has descended.
¶ After the Six Days of Stunning Wonders in which the Lord set the Heavens, with all its luminaries, and the Earth, with all her wonders, in place, suspending them in a vast and weightless realm, hanging them upon nothing, then setting them all on a perfect voyage; the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars moving about the Heavens in the flawless array of His Glory, He did, to His own great delight, with the finishing Touch of the Master’s Hand, create a man and a woman in His Own Likeness, saying, “Here, this is all yours.” {Genesis 1:26,27,28} Then, on the Seventh Day, as He “rested”, “The Stars began to sing, the Heavens began to rejoice, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” {Job 38:7} Can you even imagine being there?
¶ Consider the fact that the Creation of each and every newborn “babe” rivals the Creation of the Heavens and the Earth in the sense that each newborn “babe”, that every “suckling”, in a manner of speaking, is gifted with a destiny, a world, and even a universe of their own is stunning. Every newborn child is a miraculous wonder in itself, and “IF” “Brought up in the admonition of the Lord, and trained up in the Way that it should go, will bring to nothing another piece of the hard graft of the enemy and bring down many deadly scenarios of the avenger.” {Genesis 8:19, Ephesians, 6:4, Proverbs 22:6, Psalm 8:2, ¹wcv & ²}
3 “Lo, children are a man’s heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
4 As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are a man’s children in their youth.
5 Happy, strong, and blessed is the man that has his quiver full of them. If trained up in the admonition of the Lord, not only shall they never cower, but they will, without a second thought, destroy the enemy if he throws so much as a shadow upon their Father’s gate.” {Psalm 127:3,4,5, ¹wcv}
2 Yes, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings You do, O Lord, ordained strength
That you might still the enemy and the avenger. {vs.2,¹wcv&²}
THE OUTSHINING by Will Callery ©William & Cynthia Pub. Co. ©2008 BMI
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¹wcv / My Emphasis / My Version (always taken from the Greek, Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew translations, definitions, and connotations)
² / My Insert(s)
