St Michaels Church Podcast
The Power of Praise | MJ Axelson | 4.08.24
This morning's reading is Psalm 8, which can be found on page 546 of the Church Bibles, page 546. Dear Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory in the heavens through the praise of children and infants. You have established a stronghold against 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 mankind that you are mindful of Him, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands. You put everything under their feet, all flocks and herds, all the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, all that swim, the paths of the seas. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. This is the word of the Lord. M.J., do come and join me before you get going, not to break your stride, but why don't you tell us what you're doing, where you're doing it, and why you're doing it? Well, if I haven't met you, my name is M.J., and it's so lovely to be here, and I just say it's really lovely to see many familiar faces and to see some new ones. So I'm married to Guy, and we've got five children and two dogs, and we live in Cape Town, and my husband's ordained, and together we have just an enormous privilege of leading a church called Christ Church Kenilworth, and if you've been at some Michael's only length of time, one of the predecessors here was a man called David Pryor. He was also our predecessor at Christ Church Kenilworth, so we're building on wonderful foundations, and the vision that the Lord's given us, and this is through a lot of prayer and fasting before we left for South Africa three years ago, is ready to grow God's family by pursuing Christ, training leaders, and planting churches to renew society. And we believe that Christ Church is a strategic church within the Anglican province of Southern Africa, and so we just want to play our little part in revitalising the Anglican Church in South Africa, and he's a lot of revitalising, as it does in this country, but actually we're further on here. We don't have a pipeline in South Africa for training up the next generation of Anglican Church leaders, and so we feel called to set up a theological college and plant and just be a resourcing church. It's a big vision, but we've got a big God, haven't we, and we're already starting to see just the Lord's hand of blessing, and we're actually sort of playing catch up with what the Lord's doing. Do you find that in life that you sometimes, there's times that you feel like everything's going very slow, and there are other times it feels like, Lord, wow, you are doing just incredible things, and how do we put the structures in place so that we disciple well? So we now have over 700 meeting on a Sunday. It's just amazing. When we arrived, it was Covid, so numbers were artificially low, but there were about 35 people meeting on Zoom, and the Lord has just brought many people through our doors through Alpha, a lot of Alpha, and we're just frantically trying to disciple everyone now, not doing a very good job most of the time, and we're needing to raise up leaders. So we've just seen the soil, I have to say, the soil is soft in South Africa. You know, you give the little seed of the gospel, the good news of Jesus, isn't that right, Ken? And it just takes root in a way that in the UK, the soil's just got a few more rocks and weeds and harder ground. So we just give thanks that the Lord's called us there. My husband, South Africa, and he came to faith at the church that we're now leading and have the privilege to serve, and so it's wonderful to go back there. Well, God says the rocks will cry out, so join me just as we pray for MJ. Yes, yeah. Lord, we pray your blessing on MJ as she brings us a word, and we pray your blessing upon Guy and MJ as they lead that work in South Africa, that you will truly bless them and increase their fruit there in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Well, Mark and I go way back to, we were here for five years, and I just had such a, I learned so much from you, Mark, leading Alpha together in that side chapel over there and serving with you. I said, we've got to have a man lead Alpha because the women will come regardless, but when you have a man, a hunky man, leading Alpha, you'll get the men as well. So, anyway, so there we go, now he's ordained, wonderful. Okay, Psalm 8, so keep your Bibles open if you've got them, because I really want to just do a bit of an exegesis and walk through this passage with you. But I don't know if you're familiar at all with the Love Languages book by Dr. Gary Chapman. Is anyone familiar with the Love Languages? I think most of us are, but if you're not, the Love Languages is this idea that there are five languages to love, ways that we primarily give and receive love, and they could be gifts given gifts, they could be acts of service, it could be a physical touch or quality time, all words of affirmation. I don't know if any of those really chime with you as a way that you express your love. But for me, without a doubt, number one, above all the others, there's words of affirmation. Anyone here also got the words of affirmation as their primary love language. Put your hands up, don't be shy, Janet, Liza, oh, that's an interesting lie, anyone other? Mark, let's look around, because these guys need lots of love and words and affirmation, so remember that. It'd be quite a good exercise to do as a church family, find out what each other's love languages are, because then we can better give and receive love to one another. For me, on my birthday, for example, when I'm given a gift and a card, do you know what? I'm actually much more interested in what the card has to say than the gift. The words mean so much to me. A compliment, a genuine sincere compliment, I could live off for about a week. That's how I operate. This morning, we are thinking about, I think we've got some slides, the power of praise, the power of praise, and did you know that the most powerful muscle that we have in our body, it aren't your biceps, they're probably larger than mine, or your quads, or your gluteus maximus, which my boys have just discovered is their bottom, and they find it very funny to say. The most powerful muscle that we have in our body, some would say, is our tongue, is our tongue, because it's got the power to build up, and it's also got the power to tear down. It's got the power to comfort and to heal, and it's also got the power to destroy. And our hearts and our tongues were made by God to worship Him. Do you remember the famous North African bishop Augustine who said, "I'm getting a little bit like I need a bit of water, Mark, I don't know if I could just, I just finished my water. Is it possible to have?" So speaking about praise and using our tongue, thank you so much, Tim. The famous North African bishop said in his confessions that our hearts, you'll know this one well, are restless until they find their rest in you, oh God. And these summer psalms, I love the fact that we're looking at the Psalms over the summer. In fact, we're doing exactly the same at Christchurch in June and July, although it's our winter there. We also take a look at the Psalms, but the summer Psalms are all about redirecting our tongues and redirecting, thank you, Tim, our hearts to worship God. And if you're anything like me, we need a fresh vision of God in order that our hearts are raised to worship, don't we? We need a fresh vision of God. That's why we gather on a Sunday. That's why we're meeting small groups and gather around the Word of God. That's why we have the discipline of opening the Bible in the morning so that we have a fresh vision of the God who were to worship. And A.W. Tozer, the American theologian, said this that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven. Because, friends, that's the trajectory we're on. That's where we're headed. If you want to know what's going on in heaven, as we pray in the Lord's Prayer, we want to pray your kingdom come. We've just prayed it now. I love the fact that we pray this every week at some Michaels. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And if you want to find out what's going on in heaven, you can just flick over to Revelation 7, and you'll see that all the angels and all the elders and the creatures are bowing down before the Lamb who is slain, King Jesus, on the throne, and they are caught up in worship. So when we worship, we're just caught up with them and what they're doing. Witness will cease, evangelism, alpha courses will cease, wonders, healings, miracles will cease, worship is where we're heading. And it's not whether you like the particular songs we sing or the particular starts, not even about that. Worship is much deeper than even the words we sing, although we want to create authentic, sincere Christ-exalting worship. Worship literally derives from the word "worth," "ship," and it involves two things. It's a posture of the heart, and it acknowledges number one what that the Lord is worthy. And secondly, giving him that worth with all that we've got. So we need a fresh vision of God, and that's why I've chosen Psalm 8 for today. And I want us to just look at it together, because King David, who wrote this Psalm, you'll notice actually at the top of Psalm 8, it'll tell you that it's King David who wrote it. It's the Psalm of David. He both expresses a heart of worship, but he also exhorts our hearts to worship. So let's dive in. I'm going to look at Psalm 8. I found John Piper actually incredibly helpful on the color coding of this. Sorry. It probably looks a little bit small there, but we'll go through it together. What I want you to notice, first of all, is this important structural pattern that's probably very easy to identify. Because this Psalm begins and aims with the same declaration of praise. Look at verse one with me. He says, Lord, and that Lord actually should be in capitals on the slide there. Do you notice it's in capitals in your Bible? Have a look at it with me. The Lord is in capitals, which means it's the revealed name of Yahweh. When we see Lord in capitals, it's Yahweh, it's how God chose to reveal himself to Moses at the burning bush. It starts out, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth? And then verse nine finishes the same. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth? And the theme here in this Psalm is this. It's the majesty of the Lord in all the earth. That's the theme that we're looking at. So don't we want a fresh vision of God? Well this Psalm is going to give us that because it's all about the majesty of the Lord in the earth. And the question really is, what is going to be said about the majesty of the Lord in all the earth between verses one, B and down to verse nine? Let's look at it together. Well, verse one, the second half of verse one, just keep your Bible's open and look at it on the screen as well. What does the Psalmist King David say about the majesty of the Lord? He says this, "You, Lord, have set your glory in the heavens." In fact, the ESV translation, the English standard version, actually translated, translates it above the heavens. You've set your glory above the heavens. In other words, God's glory is higher than the earth. It's in the heavens. It's above the heavens. It's greater than the heavens. He's drawing our attention to the exceeding glory of God, the majesty of God. It's where He's placed His glory. It's in the heavens. And then I wonder, I had a little chuckle when you get to verse two, if you haven't read this Psalm in a while, because suddenly, out of nowhere come these babies. We've had the glory of God in the heavens, and then come these babies. Look at verse two with me. Can we just flick on to the next slide, because we'll get some color code. There we go. And then on to the next one, look at verse two with me. He says, "Through the praise of children and infants," in fact, the ESV says, "out of the mouths of babies and infants," in other words, He's drawing attention from the glory of heaven to the very weakest things on this earth, babies. Now we don't know how old these babies are. We don't know if they're just saying, "Goo-goo-gaga," you know, a few months old and just beginning to make noises, or whether they're a little bit older like our son John to use, 22 months old, and just get a few words here and there, mama, dada, daga. We don't know how old they are, but the point is this, they're very weak in comparison to the glory of God. Now what happens through the mouths of these babies? Let's look at the end of verse two with me. I've color coded it in red here, the next one. "Through the praise of children and infants," look at this, look at in your Bible. It says this, "You," that's the Lord, "have established a stronghold against your enemies to silence the foe and the avenger." Just pause for a second. What the psalmist King David is saying here is that through the mouths of babies, enemies are defeated. Through the mouths of infants, avengers are defeated. Now when the disciples saw children coming to Jesus Christ, do you remember how they rebuked the children? Probably the parents two saying, "Jesus is far too busy to have the children." And Jesus said, "No, no, let the little children come to me. Bring them here. I want them." And he doesn't just call them to come to him. He blesses them. Children are highly esteemed in the kingdom of God. Jesus put his arms around them. He blessed them. And he used them as a teaching example. He said, "The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." So these babies in this psalm have the praise of God somehow on their lips so much so that they have the power to silence God's enemies. And then suddenly these babies just leave, don't they? That's the end of the babies. They come out of nowhere, they disappear into nowhere. You don't have the whole situation here. What particular babies or what particular avengers? All you need to know from what God is saying here is this. He says, "I am supreme in glory, and I want to defeat my enemies using babies." I love how the Passion Translation puts it. It says, "Strength rises up with the chorus of singing children, and I want to pray that prophetically over this church that we would have a chorus of rising children in our midst, because it's the kind of praise that's got the power to shut Satan's mouth." Our middle son Benjamin is seven years old. He's quite a character. You'll remember him when he was three here, and he's at his school. His teacher came up to me one afternoon when I was doing pick-up, and he's also Sambana's godson, so just shout out to Sambana. He loves you very much, Sam. And his teacher, Benjamin's teacher, came up to me at pick-up, and I knew she was quite antagonistic to the gospel and things of God. She's always been quite hostile towards me and Guy. She came up to me, and she said, "M.J., I need to have a word with you." And I thought, "Oh dear, what's happened?" And she said, "We were talking about Madrasa Club in our class, and I was telling the Madrasa boys needed to go over to the hall over there. And then one of the boys piped up, "What's Madrasa?" And then she explained to the classroom that Madrasa is after care, after school club for the Muslim boys, and then another boy pipes up and says, "What are Muslims?" And she explained that Muslims pray to Allah and Christians pray to Jesus. But I got the mountain. She said, "For me, it's all the same. We've all got the same God. We all believe in the same God." And then she says to me, "Benjamin pipes up." Now to contextualize this, we read the Bible every morning as a family. We've got different Bibles that we read for each of our different children because we've got quite an age range. Our youngest is nearly two, our oldest is nearly eleven. So we go through, we have a morning routine, we all clamber into our bed together. We bought an extra large bed so that we could all fit in because there's seven of us. And we read the Bible in the morning and they have their hot milk, and we've got about five minutes where it's lovely and calm, five minutes, that's all we manage. And we read through the Beginner's Bible with Lucy, who's now four, and John T. And then we read the action Bible with Benjamin, and of course we've been reading through the Old Testament with them and about the prophets of Baal, and who's Baal, and Baal's are idols, an idol, an idol is a God, a fake God, anyone that isn't Yahweh because he's the one true God and only Jesus is there. Anyway, so Benjamin pipes up in the classroom in front of everyone, "You're God's a fake God like this." So the teacher says this to me, and I just felt incredibly embarrassed and I sort of wanted the earth to swallow me up. But on the other hand, I thought out of the lips of babes and infants, out of the lips of babes and infants, they say it as it is. And I did have to say to him afterwards, you know, Benjamin, there's some things that are true, but the way that you present them might not always, might not always endear you to other people, might not always make them want to believe, you know, you might offend people when you say that. So like if someone wets themselves and you don't go, "How you wet yourself, it's true that they have wet themselves." But maybe just say, "Can I offer you a fresh pair of, I don't know, would you like to know Jesus is my best friend? He's a great little evangelist." But that to me was an example of out of the lips of babes and infants. You can't make it up with children. Children just say it as it is. And can I just appeal to you if you've got children under your care? Can I appeal to you as parents, Godparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles? The greatest gift that you can deposit in your children and the influence we have over them is a sincere worship of God. It's them not just seeing that we worship God on a Sunday, but we worship God in the during Monday to Saturday, in the middle of the week. If we can model that through how we sing praise songs over them, how we worship to God as a family, around the dinner table, how we have Christian groups around our house and we meet together. And they can be part of that. There's an osmosis. There's a porous in and out that the children see and witness. Even little John T who's not yet too is learning that before we eat a meal, we always hold hands and we give thanks to Jesus. And all he can say is, "Our men. Our men." But the Lord loves that, "Our men." John Piper puts it like this, "The majesty of the Lord and the earth is manifest in this." God's majesty stoops to make babies the means of his triumphs. Isn't that awesome? Okay, let's carry on because there's quite a bit more here, but you're going to start seeing a pattern emerging. See if a theme is carried on in the Psalm, because what's the point of that? The babies come, they go, let's look at verse three together. And do you notice verse three, if we can have the next color, the next slide, is actually just like the second half of verse one. I've put the same color there. And half of verse one, he says in verse three, "When I consider your heavens the work of your fingertips, the moon and stars which you've set in place." See King David now is drawing our attention, like he did in the blue of one bee, where his glory is in the heavens, he's drawing our attention to the fingerwork of almighty God. The moon, the billions of stars, the galaxies are put in place by the fingers of God. Now when my children come back from nursery school and show me the work of their fingers, we put it up on the fridge for a little bit of time. But that's all we've got. I wish I had a, I should have brought it with you. I should have brought up a roll map of Lucy's fingerwork. But when you look at the finger, Lucy's grace is God, daughter, and we give thanks. She loves you so much and we give thanks to God for you and your example, amazing people in this church. Bless you guys. When you look at the fingerwork of almighty God, you see the moon, you see the stars. If you look through a telescope long enough, you can see the galaxies put in place. What is the majesty of God and all the earth? And it's just the work of his fingertips. See the pagan nations around Israel at the time would have actually worshipped the moon and stars as divine beings. And King David is saying here, "They're just the work of your fingers, oh God." So just like glory was highlighted at the end of verse 1, majesty and glory are highlighted here in verse 3. And then suddenly, do you notice the shift in verse 4? And it's this question of, look at verse 4 with me. What is mankind? Who are we as human beings that you're mindful of them? Human beings that you care for us. So in the same way that King David drew significance to your glory, which is above the heavens and out of the mouths of babes and infants, tiny weak things, he says, "Look at the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars." And then he says, "What is mankind that follows logic here? We are so weak. Do you feel weak and fragile?" I often feel so weak and so fragile in comparison to the majestic God who puts stars into space with his words. What is man? The passion translation again puts it beautifully. What honor you have given to men. Let's follow his logic, keep the Bible open so you can see. It says, "The passion translation puts it like this. You have crowned them like kings and queens with glory and significance." Human beings, my friends, are the royalty of God's creation. God has taken his crown of glory and he's bestowed it on weak human vessels. To give us dominion and rule over this whole world, look at verse 5 with me, "You've made them rulers over the works of your hands. You put everything under their feet, all flocks and herds and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, all that swim, the paths of the seas." You have made them as humans just a little lower than the angels. Actually, that word for angels is Elohim. It's the same word that's used about the divine council, Creator God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Genesis 1. Here it's translated angels, it's actually Elohim, the Creator God. And he says, "You've crowned human beings with glory and honor. You've put everything under them." In other words, what honor God has given to you and to me to rule over this entire world under his lordship. In our church that we were at, before coming to St. Michael's in Oxford, we were at a church called St. Andrews, Oxford, and we're part of a small group, a home group there, and one of our members of our home group was a chap called Phil. It was a very ordinary kind of guy, a little bit overweight, and we came over, I don't know why I mentioned that, but he was just a kind of ordinary kind of guy. Anyway, there we go. He happened to be a security guard for a VIP who happens to have a house just over the road from us here at St. Michael's, Andrew Lloyd Webber, who we'll all know. It was this very ordinary guy who came to our small group, and Phil's job for Andrew Lloyd Webber was to drive his car for him. Every now and then when Andrew Lloyd Webber was out of town, and not in his beautiful townhouse here in Belgrave here, Phil would often come and house sit for Andrew Lloyd Webber, and once he was over here, and he rang Guy up, and Guy was in his study just up here, and he said, "Guy, I'm in London. Do you want to come over for a cup of tea?" And Guy said, "Well, where are you, you know, Baker in Spice or somewhere?" And he said, "No, no, over the road, I'm house sitting. Do you want to come in?" So Guy was feeling very sheepish, but he went through the doors and met by Phil, and Phil took him in to this house that he was house sitting and gave him a cup of tea. And Guy said it was the most exquisite house. They've got a pool underneath, beautiful art collection where many museums borrow the artwork from, and Phil, regular Phil, is looking after that house. What honour he's been given to be given the keys to this beautiful mansion? What dignity? What a privilege. But friends, can I say that you and I have been given an even greater privilege to stew this beautiful world, because the King of Kings has given us the keys, if you like, to look after this world. What is man that you're mindful of him? So here's the pattern, and I'm going to come into land here. Here's the pattern in the psalm. As glory is exalted, verse one and verse three, weakness is pointed at in verse two and verse four in red, through the praise of children and through human beings. Humans are insignificant compared to the glory of God, but here's this, God rules the world with the weakness of humanity. With the weakness of human beings, God rules the world. And the babies and mankind in this psalm are two instances of how the majesty of God is peculiarly shown in the earth. It isn't what you think. Two often friends, we have the complete opposite view. We have two smaller view of God and two bigger view of ourselves, don't we? We can only truly worship when we have a right view of God. And lest you think that this is an exception to the rule, this is actually the pattern throughout the whole Bible, God exerts his majesty by stooping to win his triumphs through weak human beings. Hallelujah. God rules the world with the weakness of humans. And I'm sure you remember that this psalm is actually quoted and applied many centuries later to another man who came to rule the world. And this man picks up on this principle that God rules the world through weakness because he gets on a donkey and he goes to conquer sin. One Corinthians 15, 27, Paul applies this psalm to Jesus Christ. And in it, Paul writes that God has put everything under him. Let me just read it because I can see there's some scuffling of pages. One Corinthians 15, 27. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, verse 27, for he has put everything under his feet. Paul writes that God has put everything under Jesus Christ. He is the true king who rules over this world, who is made for a time a little lower than the angels. What a God we serve. And he, my friends, is the only one who offers himself in weakness on the cross to shut Satan's mouth. Do you remember back in Genesis 3 when the curse was given, there was a glimmer of the good news of the gospel because one day a baby would come out of whose lips the praise of God would be known for all generations. And this baby would come to crush Satan's head and he would come to crush sin and death and the strongholds that you're carrying in life. And that's exactly what Jesus did on the cross when he died and rose again. He came in weakness as a baby to shut Satan's mouth. And he rules the world as the only God man who's able to take on himself the weakness and rebellion in all of our hearts. And the writer to the Hebrews puts it brilliantly. Again, he quotes this Psalm, it's a very oft quoted Psalm in the New Testament. He says this, "We see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels for a while, now crowned with glory and honor. And he suffered death so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." What a God we said. What a King we worship. If you feel something stirring within your heart that wants to say, "Hallelujah," you can let it out. It's okay. There we go. He's not just Yahweh, the Lord. Friends, he's our Lord. Shall we sit together? Psalm 1, why don't we stand and say this together and proclaim it to him, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Psalm 8 verse 1, let's just say it. Let's say it three times together, okay, and let's build a bit of a crescendo. So don't stop too loud, although I do want to hear you. Let's go for it. Just verse 1, 1b. Here we go, "Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth." Let's say it again, "Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth." Final time, "Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth?" Alleluia, Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]