I think when Jim goes recording, those who
are singing, he'd better get one of Dr.
Armerding's because we need it.
And just because we've listened to a few
of you, not more than 400 of you
this week, say that wouldn't it be good
if Dr. Armerding's would come back next year,
I just thought we'd say that the conveners,
listening to you as we always do, have
decided that that would be a good thing,
and we've asked him if he could, and
Lord willing, he will return to the conference
next year.
I hate to think of all you folks
that, if you don't get registered early, that
are going to be sitting in Durham and
Greensboro and Raleigh wishing you were at Bristol,
so now may be a good time to
attend to that.
It has been a real joy to have
our brother with us, a man of real
experience, rich experience, and able to bring it
down to us in such a way that
it makes us feel that we can just
relive a lot of that within the Book
of Psalms and other things you've had to
say.
So we'll listen to our brother Dr. Carly
Armerding this time.
Sometimes when I listen to these lovely introductions,
I'm reminded of the story of a funeral
in a colored church, and then it's the
youth who die, it's the poor fellow who
had died.
After he got through, his widow said to
one of the children, you all go and
look in that coffin seat that's reading your
pappy.
This morning I'd like to look with you
at Psalm 8.
Inasmuch as we can't do all 150, should
the Lord tarry and leave us here for
another year, maybe we'll do some more along
these lines next time.
But we're skipping over a few, they're very
precious.
I might say, however, that many of them
have what we might call a rather minor
note.
Some years ago when I was connected with
the Moody Bible Institute, I was asked to
give a title to a series of addresses
which I was going to give on some
of the psalms, and I said, well, I'm
going to speak on the pessimistic psalms.
And of course there are a good many
of them that would qualify as such.
But the Institute was afraid to use the
word pessimistic.
They were afraid they might offend some of
the brethren, so they decided to give it
the title of Psalms in a minor key.
And that's what we've been looking at somewhat
in Psalms 3 and 4 and 5.
We might say that a good part of
them is in the minor key.
But this one we want to look at
this morning is in the major key.
Psalm 8, to the chief musician of Pongithi,
the psalm of David.
O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy
name in all the earth, who hath set
thy glory above the heavens!
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings
hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies
that thou mightest steal the enemy and the
avenger.
When I consider thy heavens, the work of
thy fingers, the moon and the stars which
thou hast ordained, what is man that thou
art mindful of him, and the son of
man that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lord
in the angels, and hast crowned him with
glory and honor.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the
works of thy hands.
Thou hast put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts
of the field, the fowl of the air,
the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth
through the paths of the sea.
O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy
name in all the earth.
You know, of course, that the general title
which is given to the book of the
Psalms is that it's a book of prayer
and praise.
And yet it's remarkable that you have to
read through seven Psalms before you come to
a note of praise in this book.
You notice the last verse of Psalm 7,
I will praise the Lord according to his
righteousness, will sing praise to the name of
the Lord Most High, and then the eighth
Psalm carries on the idea.
Now this is remarkable.
It looks to me like there has to
be a certain amount of experience, not only
pleasant experiences, but very often unpleasant ones, before
we really learn to praise the Lord.
Before we really learn to pour out our
hearts in worship to him.
And that's what this eighth Psalm is.
This eighth Psalm, by the way, is referred
to at least twice in the New Testament
and applied to our Lord Jesus Christ.
We find him applying a part of it
himself in the twenty-first chapter of Matthew,
and then of course in the second chapter
of Hebrews, we have again an inspired reference
to this Psalm.
In addition to that, we're going to notice
one or two other passages which I believe
confirm this, that this Psalm has to do
particularly with the Lord Jesus.
The fact that the Psalm is in the
position it is, that is that it's the
eighth Psalm, does not necessarily mean that it's
the eighth Psalm that David wrote, because these
Psalms evidently were arranged by someone, some people
think, some commentators think that Ezra was the
one who arranged these Psalms.
That they're not arranged in chronological order is
very evident from the fact that Psalm 90,
which is a prayer of Moses, the man
of God, occupies the 90th place, and yet
it must have been a lot older than
any of these Psalms that we have looked
at so far.
So the Holy Spirit has a purpose in
putting these Psalms in the position in which
we find them.
The second Psalm, for example, is identified as
such in the book of the Acts, and
I think there's real significance to the fact
that this Psalm occupies the eighth place, because
the number eight suggests to us a fresh
beginning.
After seven, which speaks of completeness, we get
the eighth, and so in our reckoning of
time, we have seven days a week, and
even in these days when we'd like to
have everything, shall we say according to the
decimal system, we find that this simply stays
with us.
I know that one time they tried to
make Sunday one in ten days instead of
one in seven, but it didn't work.
It has to go according to God's own
arrangement that you have in the first chapters
of the Bible.
And so this eighth Psalm speaks to us
of a fresh beginning, and you and I,
thank God, can date that from the days
of our conversion, when we got to know
the Lord Jesus Christ as our own personal
Savior, that was a new beginning.
It was from that time on that we
began to really pray to the Lord.
Now, an interesting thing about this title here
is that it introduces the name of a
musical instrument.
This word gittit, according to the footnote in
my Scopia Bible, the word gittit means wine
press, but it is also the name of
a musical instrument.
And this musical instrument, believe it or not,
came from the land of the Philistines.
It came from the city of Gad.
Now, this to me is very remarkable, that
a hymn of praise should be sung to
music produced by an instrument that comes out
of the enemy's country.
Because if the children of Israel, if the
Lord's people in those days ever had enemies,
it was the Philistines.
And it may interest you to know that
these Philistines were really, as far as I
can tell from the tenth chapter of Genesis,
they were Egyptian in origin, but they came
into the land by the shortcut which was
known as the Way of the Philistines.
And in that way they represent a good
many people who are in the professing church
today, but who've never been born again.
And these very often become the pitiless enemies
that the church has ever had.
I could mention some names this morning which
are in the press continually about men who
occupy high ecclesiastical positions, but who are really
enemies of the Word of God.
Yet how wonderful when God takes one of
these, and regenerates him, and puts him into
the heavenly choir, or uses him in the
heavenly orchestra.
And that's exactly what happens to this instrument
from God.
For many years I had a great prejudice
against the saxophone.
I didn't think a saxophone could ever play
any part whatever in the worship of God.
But one night in a conference in Flagstaff,
Arizona, where my breath is a good deal
shorter than it is here, being 7,000
feet above sea level there.
One night I had retired, and I heard
a lovely song being played, and I tried
to identify the instrument.
I said it couldn't be a cornet, it
couldn't be a trumpet, and finally I just
decided it must be a saxophone.
But I just couldn't connect the saxophone with
the hymn that was being played.
But the next morning, sure enough, I found
out it was a converted saxophone.
And it's been used in the glory of
God.
And so here is the converted gitty, an
instrument coming out of the enemy's territory, and
God using it to produce music for him.
And this music, of course, I don't need
to remind you, is concerning the Lord Jesus
Christ.
In that verse which is printed on the
covers of your hymn books, you'll notice one
of the first songs that ever was sung
when the morning stars sang together for joy,
as we have it in the 38th chapter
of Joel.
Then later on we have that wonderful song
that was sung in the book of Exodus,
that song of redemption, after the Israelites had
been delivered from Egypt.
Then they sang.
And here we have a song which looks
on to that glorious day when our Lord
Jesus will indeed be celebrated as King of
Kings and Lord of Lords.
And so we begin our song this morning
by looking at his name.
It says, O Lord, our Lord.
I could just leave it as it's put
there in the English and say nothing more
about it except to say that we're not
only talking about the Lord, but we're talking
about him as one who belongs to us.
And we belong to him.
That's involved in this word our, isn't it?
He's our, and we're his.
And you know, this is something which we
find is even in the mind of a
child, oh how they like to belong.
They like to belong.
I'm thinking especially of some orphan children who've
been robbed of their parents, and sometimes I'm
sorry to say the parents have actually deserted
them.
To have these little ones adopted into a
family, and then to have again the feeling
of belonging.
This is wonderful, isn't it?
And you know, whenever I get down to
prayers, and I think of all that the
Lord has to occupy him, if I may
use that term reverently, in his great creation,
to think that he's concerned with me.
Concerned with me.
That's what this word visitors, down here in
the end of verse four, might have been
translated just that way.
Or perhaps I'd better say it a paraphrase
rather than a translation.
But anyhow, this is one of the ideas
in the original word, that thou visitest him,
that thou art concerned with him.
And of course St. Peter gives us this
thought, doesn't he?
He says, casting all your care from him,
for he cares for you.
He's concerned with you.
So much so that he's numbered the very
hairs of your head.
Beloved, this is a wonderful feeling, isn't it?
And when you get down in the presence
of God, to know that you're bowing in
the presence of one who's concerned about you.
Who, even though there are billions who are
dependent upon him for the very breath they
breathe, he's concerned about them.
And you know, this is one thing that
enables one to start a day with real
joy and confidence to think that no matter
what the world may think, well no matter
what even my loved ones may think, here's
one who's really concerned.
And all of this is locked up in
this little word, our.
Oh Lord, our Lord.
But there's more than that.
If you have a Bible that makes the
distinction, you notice that the first time the
word Lord is printed here, it's all capital
letters.
The second time, you'll notice, it's in just
one capital letter and three small letters.
Now there's a difference in the original language.
And the printers have tried to make this
difference for us in the way they have
printed this word.
The first occurrence of the word Lord, all
capital letters, is the word Jehovah.
Or as some of the moderns would like
to pronounce it, Yahweh.
But it really means the Eternal One.
And if you can read French, you'll probably
recognize this.
When you read this in the French, l
'Eternel, it's the Eternal One.
The Eternal One.
In other words, it's the One who was
and is and is to come.
The One who is, shall I say, the
Great I Am.
The One who is self-existent.
The One who has all power and life.
Here He is.
And yet this is the name which He
has taken when He wants to express His
covenant relationship with His ancient people Israel.
Jehovah.
Yes?
And how we love to think that the
One with whom we have to do is
not some individual who is going to pass
off the scene, but who was here in
the ages past, is here now, will be
there in the ages to come.
The same yesterday, today, and forever.
Oh beloved, this is He.
This is He.
Then the second time the word Lord is
used here with just one capital letter, it's
another Hebrew name.
This name means the Sovereign One.
The One who has absolute authority.
And I think this is a thing we
need to emphasize and need to remind ourselves
of, that we're not only in blessed relationship
with the Eternal One through His Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ, who Himself could take the
title I Am, because He said before Abraham
was, I am.
Our blessed Lord is claiming that title of
deity in the 8th chapter of John.
He does as much in the 14th chapter
of John, when He said, Let not your
heart be troubled.
You believe in God?
Believe also in Me.
Only one who is equal with God, who
is God, could use words like that.
I couldn't stand up here this morning and
say, you believe in God?
You say, why yes I do, that's why
I'm in this conference.
Suppose I were to say which God forbids.
Well then believe in Me too.
Couldn't do that.
But the Lord Jesus could say, you believe
in God?
Believe also in Me.
He's asking for the same faith that we
put in God the Father.
He is the Eternal One.
But beloved, He's also the one who would
be sovereign in our lives.
And may I speak to my younger friends
here this morning about a very wonderful experience
in my own life along these very lines.
I have been a Christian for about two
years.
When I was reading the twelfth chapter of
Romans one morning, where the Apostle Paul says,
Brethren, I beseech you by the mercies or
compassions of God, that ye present your bodies
a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which
is your reasonable or intelligent service.
As I pondered that verse in Romans twelve,
I said to myself, Carl Armisen, you've never
done this.
I went to another young chap who was
baptized the same night I was baptized.
I said to him, Sam, have you ever
read this verse?
Yes, read it lots of times.
I said, have you ever done this?
Well, he said, I don't think I have.
I said, well do you know how it's
done?
No, he said, I don't think I do.
So I thought I'd go to another one
of my younger friends in the assembly.
I went to him, I said, Arsh, have
you ever read this verse?
Oh, lots of times.
I said, have you ever done it?
Have you ever presented your bodies a living
sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God?
No, he said, I don't think I have.
I said, do you know how it's done?
No, he said, I don't think I do.
Well, neither one of these was very much
help to me.
But I went to Arsh's father.
Oh, dear old brother McCallum, he was really
what we would have called in the Presbyterian
church a rude inhaler.
And he was a dear old saint of
God, dear old brother McCallum.
So I went to him, I said, Mr.
McCallum, I've been reading Romans 12.
And I said, here's a verse that I'm
puzzled about.
I think I would like to do this,
but I don't know how to do it.
I said, how do you present your bodies
to the Lord?
Well, he said, I don't know that there's
any particular way in which it's done, but
I could suggest a way to do it.
And so he told me, he says, go
to your room with your Bible, close the
door, lock it if necessary, so that you
won't be disturbed.
Open your Bible to this verse and tell
the Lord you want to do this.
Well, that's very simple.
I went home, did exactly as he told
me, got down my knees.
You know, when I started to say, Lord,
I want to do this, a cold sweat
just came up.
I began to realize the implications of this.
You know, this meant something.
It meant that my eyes, which I use
to look around, to read and so on,
that's going to be part of it.
And these ears by which I listen to
things, whether they be beautiful music or some
salacious filthy tale, this is part of it.
This tongue with which I speak, which can
utter lovely phrases from the Word of God,
or might even be used to curse and
to swear, that's part of it.
This hand, that I could use for so
many things, something else.
And these feet could carry me places where
I ought never to go.
Oh, how the cold sweat came onto me
as I began to think about the details
of this, what it meant to surrender this
to the Lord.
Mind you, I was a teenager then, 17
years of age, but I can never forget
that blessed experience after I had gone over
this whole thing, realized some of the serious
implications of it.
And also the shortcomings, because as a boy
of 17, I suffered greatly with asthma.
In fact, I knew what it meant to
sit up night after night, never to go
to bed.
I believe I saw the morning star rise
more often than any member of my family,
because I would sit in a big Morris
chair by the window where I tried to
get a little bit of sleep at night,
so that there wasn't really much to offer
the Lord, just a crippled body.
But it was a tremendous and a wonderful
transaction.
And you know, beloved, and I'm speaking again
directly to my younger friends, this thing preserved
me.
Oh, it kept me back from many things,
which I thank God for today, as I
near the four score line, to think that
God kept me back from habits that would
have ruined this body long ago.
I thank God that even though there's lots
of the machinery inside that's really worn out,
you know there's more things can be wrong
with you and me than with your Ford
car, if it's that many things wrong with
your car, it'd be in the garage.
But you and I are here, the doctors
look us over, and they tell you what's
wrong with your vision, what's wrong with your
hearing.
They tell me that I ought to be
wearing two hearing aids instead of one.
And your heart's particularly enlarged, you've got scar
tissue in your lung, your kidneys aren't exactly
where they ought to be.
I know that because the lady who took
a picture of them one day was disappointed
after she took the picture and couldn't find
them.
And you've got an ulcer and all these
other things.
When you add all this up you say,
well what have you got left?
But thank the Lord he's able to use
even this, and proves again what he proved
to the Apostle Paul, that his strength is
made perfect in you.
And beloved, I just want to pass on
to you with an old man this morning,
the blessedness of making a complete surrender.
A complete surrender.
Let this be a personal thing between you
and the Lord.
You get alone in your own room and
just turn it over to him.
Oh, it'll do a lot of things for
you.
It'll close your eyes to a lot of
things that you'll wish you'd never seen.
It'll close your ears to a lot of
things which later on you wish you'd never
heard.
I'm sure I'm telling, I'm expressing the feeling
of every mature Christian here this morning that
lots of things we've heard in our lives
we wish we had never heard.
How they intrude themselves upon us, even in
our moments of worship.
These things come back and say, oh Lord
I wish I'd never heard that.
Well it's a wonderful thing to turn the
ear over to him, turn the eye over
to him, the hand over to him, the
tongue, everything.
Oh Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy
name.
You know, when he says how excellent is
thy name it means he's compared it with
something else.
You don't think, you don't say one thing
excels another without implying that you've made some
comparison.
You know, sometimes we Christians are accused of
simply following along in the steps of our
parents.
Well, I'm willing to be accused of that,
because I think my parents took the right
road, see.
And I'm very happy to think that I
had leaders like my parents who led me
in these paths.
So when a fellow says, oh you're just
simply following along with your parents, thank you
for the compliment.
I had parents who were worth following.
I had the funeral of my dear old
dad who died when I was nearly nine
or two.
My brothers said to me, you better take
dad's funeral, we'd like for you to express
for all of us, because I'm the oldest.
I think of my dad lying in his
casket there, and I could say to the
assembled people, my father was a noble man.
He was a noble man.
He was a Christian who lived Christ before
his sons and daughters.
Yes, this is a wonderful heritage.
But dear friends, I've also made some comparisons
for myself.
And in the course of one's studies, you
get to studying what is called comparative religion.
And you look at other names besides the
name of the Lord Jesus.
You look at the name of Mohammed, and
you read his history, and there's no comparison
between him and the Lord Jesus.
And then you read the story of Gautama,
the founder of Buddhism, who has millions of
followers today, just like Mohammed has in the
Muslims.
And you look at the Buddha, and you
say to yourself, well, he doesn't compare with
my Lord.
And so I read something of Confucius, and
I compare his sayings with those of the
Lord Jesus, and I say, no, he doesn't
compare with him.
And then I come down to more of
the moderns, like Descartes, of whom we referred
the other night, and some of these like
Jean-Paul Sartre, and Hemingway, Harry Sutherland, Henry
Miller, a few of these.
And you compare what they've said and what
they're saying with what the Lord Jesus says.
There's just not any class between them.
He's in a class by himself.
Yes, he's excellent.
This is a wonderful thing.
And this enables me, as a Christian, to
look the whole world in the face.
Because I say, what I have, whether I
live up to it or not, what I
have is so far superior to what they
have to offer, that there just isn't any
comparison.
How excellent is thy name in all the
earth, who has set thy glory above the
heavens.
Well, you say, a being like that must
have a wonderful choir to sing his praises.
No doubt these are trained voices that have
been to this and that conservatory, and so
on and so forth.
But you know, when you look at this
second verse, you say to yourself, it isn't
so.
Out of the mouth of faves and suckers.
Why did he bring it down to this?
Well, this is a brand new generation, you
see.
And he just brings a new generation into
being to sing his praise.
And so, dear friends, we can see and
hear a suggestion of the necessity for the
new birth, before we can really enter into
the Lord's choir to sing his praise.
Last night, looking at these dear young people
here on the platform, this was a thrill
for me.
I believe last night was one of the
highlights of this conference for me, to see
these children up here, even if a good
number in the front row were minus two
or three teeth.
But they were singing the praises of the
Lord, and it just, as the old Scot
would say, it just warmed the cockles of
my heart.
It really did.
This is the kind of people the Lord
has in his choir.
And if ever you wanted an argument for
teaching children something which they can use later
on in their Christian lives, you had it
last night.
You had a concrete example of it.
It really did.
Oh, how sweet to be able to teach
the children a language which the Holy Spirit
can make more real to them in the
years to come.
This is it.
Out of the mouth of faith and suppleness.
Now it's this very passage of Scripture that
the Lord Jesus refers to in the 21st
chapter of Matthew.
When he says to them, have you never
read?
When they objected to the praise that he
was receiving, these children were saying, Hosanna to
the Son of David!
And they objected, but he said, have you
never read?
And he refers to this 8th Psalm, and
in so doing he claims it for himself,
you see.
And I accept the praise of those children
given to himself in Matthew 21.
But then you'll notice as you come down,
the psalmist compares everything here with the creation
around him, and he can't find anything there
that moves him like this.
But what does move him is that man
who is so insignificant in comparison with this
creation should yet be the object of God's
concern.
And that's what we've already touched on this
morning.
But now for a word or two in
closing, but I see my time is gone.
I'd just like to refer you to a
couple of passages of Scripture in the New
Testament which also could be linked up with
this.
Let us turn first of all to Ephesians
1.
Ephesians, the first chapter.
And here we're going to see a text
of Scripture, or at least a thought, which
we find in Psalm 8.
Notice please, speaking of the exceeding greatness of
God's power in verse 19, Ephesians 1 verse
19, verse 20, which he wrote in Christ
when he raised him from the dead and
set him at his own right hand in
the heavenly places.
Far above all principality and power and might
and dominion and every name that is named,
not only in this world, but also in
that which is to come, and hath put
all things under his feet, and gave him
to be the head over all things, to
the church which is his body, the fullness
of him that filleth all in all.
All things under his feet.
That's Psalm 8, isn't it?
Hath put all things under his feet.
Then let's turn back to 1 Corinthians 15
for a verse.
1 Corinthians 15, beginning at verse 24.
Then come at the end when he shall
have delivered up the kingdom to God, even
the Father, when he shall have put down
all rule and all authority and power.
For he must reign till he hath put
all enemies under his feet.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is
death.
For he hath put all things under his
feet.
Very manifestly, the apostle is referring back here
to Psalm 8.
When he says all things are put under
him, it is manifest that he has accepted
which did put all things under him.
And when all things shall be subdued unto
him, then shall the Son also himself be
subject unto him that put all things under
him, that God may be all in all.
That is, our blessed Lord carries his humanity
with him even into eternity.
And it is only in that sense, of
course, that he is subject.
But think of this, all things under his
feet.
He is in perfectly full.
Beloved, what a Savior we have.
You know, the more you ponder the faith
psalm, the more you come to appreciate the
one whom we adore as our Savior and
our Lord.
And even though the clock now says 10
o'clock, I think we'd like to sing
one or two stanzas of hymn number two.
And our hymn.
Hymn number two.
All hail the power of Jesus' name.
Let angels prostrate fall, bring forth a royal
diadem and crown him Lord of all.
Hymn number two, the first and the last
stanzas.
And of course, you won't fail.