June 1 Daily Devotional

Strength in Weakness: A Meditation on the Eighth Psalm

Psalm 8

1 O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:
7 All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
8 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
9 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

Devotional

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Strength Made Perfect In Weakness

To glory is added glory when the Psalmist is aware that God is pleased, through feeble man, to accomplish His works of power among men. It is not through the strong and mighty of this world that God accomplishes His purposes. He has rather chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. Strength rests upon those who are humbly dependent upon Him alone. God uses such to still the enemy and the avenger.

The Saviour adapted the words of this psalm to silence the priests and scrihes because they objected to the praises of the children in the temple. He said to them, "Have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?" Men, and even formal religionists, have no use for any appearance of weakness. They cannot conceive of anything being accomplished without influence, the display of numbers, and human might and power.They reckon not with the mighty Spirit of God who is not dependent upon the arm of flesh. With such feeble instruments as worldly-wise men despise, God has ever been pleased to accomplish good. The strongest enemy of God's kingdom is no match for the helpless and weak whom God delights to honor and use. When they are weak then are they strong.

You may belong to a despised few in the religious world. Power and display of greatness in which you can boast is not yours.

But you have the truth of God on your side. His Word is your stay, and the Lord Jesus is your portion. Then remember that it is through such that God is pleased to bring His salvation to men and to put to flight the armies of the aliens. For such conquests God alone receives the glory.

Man's Glory Seen In Christ

All that man has is conferred. In the garden of Eden, as man came from the hands of the Creator, he was little distant from the heavenly state. The knowledge, righteousness, and holiness which man had at the first were God-given and not acquired. His excellency was all of God. That image is now marred, but yet in his fallen state there are remains of a former dignity and beauty.

In the New Testament the apostles, beholding what grace God has bestowed upon man, as here spoken of by David, seize upon this exhibition of God's fatherly bountifulness toward man in order to set forth the glory which is man's in Christ Jesus. Not all men, however, shall share in the restored heavenly favor. Only the faithful in Christ Jesus shall recover that which 'they lost in Adam (Heb. 2:6-9).

Outside of Christ man is lost and degraded. All grace that God has ever shown to man has been through the Redeemer. It is because of the dominion that is Christ's that man through faith in Him shall come to honor and lordship.