Most of us are familiar with this Psalm, but in order to help us realize its message I must refer to the previous Psalms. In Psalms 3 through 7, we see how sad was the situation of the Psalmist. But suddenly in Psalm 8 the Spirit came in with this: “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!” What a change! If we spend much time reading the newspapers, we will say, “How long! How long!” But if we turn to the spirit, we will say, “How excellent is Thy name in all the earth!” We will not care for man; we will not care for the wars; we will not care for all the riots and disturbances. We will only say, “Hallelujah, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!”
Now note how the Psalmist continues: You have set your glory above the heavens, but You have ordained strength out of the mouth of little ones on this earth to silence all the enemies (our paraphrase). In the previous Psalms the Psalmist prayed that the Lord would deal with all the adversaries, all the enemies. In the Psalms the adversaries refer to the opposing ones among the Lord’s people: for example, in the time of David, Absalom, David’s own son, was an adversary. The enemies are the foes from without, like the heathen. The adversaries are within and the enemies are without, and when they come against you, there is no need for you to smite them; just say, “O Lord, how excellent is Thy name!” Your praising will silence them; your praising will frighten them away; your praising is the secret.
The second verse of Psalm 8 has these two meanings: out of the mouth of the babes, the little ones, the unweaned ones, God could 1) establish strength and 2) establish praise. What is the strength? The praise is the strength. The praise silences the enemy. You may say that you are weak as David said in Psalm 6:2. But even if you are a babe, even if you are a suckling, the weakest of the weak, God can establish from you the strength that will smite the enemies. But you must open your mouth to praise. If you simply praise Him, God will establish strength out of your mouth stronger than an army. Hallelujah, praise the Lord! Regardless of how weak you are, regardless of how weak I am, regardless of how weak we all are, if we will open our mouths and say, “O Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth,” God will establish the strength to shut the mouths of all the enemies. In what way? Just by praising Him the power will break forth. It is not a small matter.
I am the same as many of you. In my youth I attended Christian meetings continually. I liked to hear messages, especially those from the mouths of famous speakers and spiritual giants. But, I tell you, simply doing this did not work so well. Could we not come to the meetings without a message, without a sermon, but just praising and singing? Have you ever seen the power released from the praises out of the mouths of babes and sucklings? Do you trust in the praising as much as in the message?
Let us come back to the Word, back to the beginning. When the Pharisees spoke with the Lord Jesus concerning marriage and divorce, the Lord Jesus told them, “From the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). We all must go back to the beginning. In the beginning of the church in the early days, it was not as it is today with teaching upon teaching, message upon message, sermon upon sermon. It was not so in the beginning. In the last verse of Acts chapter two it says that the church, the local church, was “praising God.” It was a praising church, not a sermon-listening church.
This Psalm says, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised.” We cannot tell how great He is, but we must greatly praise Him. Our praise must match His greatness; we must have greatness in our praising. I say again, we must all forget our background. According to 1 Corinthians 14:26 the primary thing we must do is to sing a psalm. Singing and praising must be the first thing in our meetings.
Then what about the matter of noise? Some may not agree with the matter of making noise and consider it a kind of confusion. But in the Psalms, it is said seven times, “Make a joyful noise unto God” (66:1; 81:1; 95:1, 2; 98:4, 6; 100:1), and one time, “Make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise” (98:4). The Bible says, “Make a joyful noise unto God.” Another version says, “Make a joyous shout unto God”—not only a joyful noise, but a joyous shout. We must drop our backgrounds, and come to the meetings in the spirit and make a joyful noise to praise the Lord.
We all know the story of how Paul and Silas sang praises to God at midnight in the prison. Their praising caused an earthquake which released all the prisoners and eventually brought the jail keeper and his family to the Lord. Do you see the power and strength of praising?