These verses contain or imply an answer the unvarying answer of Holy Scripture to the question which is ever recurring, which perplexed wise and anxious heathen men, and still puts itself at one time or another to each of us the question, I mean, What is the object of man? for what end do we, the human race or the individuals who make it up, find ourselves here on earth? Various are the answers which men have given and give. To please himself, to find happiness, to search farther and farther into knowledge, to perfect the race each of these has been said to be the end of man. The Bible carries us high above these selfish answers. It lifts our eyes upwards from earth to the glorious order of the heavens, and to Him that sitteth thereon; and, with the Psalmist in the text, we learn to look upon man as part of a mighty universe, his voice but one note in a wondrous harmony of praise, his course but one among many orbits of obedient service, his race but one among countless orders of beings, reaching upwards to the highest angels, reaching downwards to the lowest creature that hath breath, to whom there is but one task, end, and function: the service of God their Maker. Consider in detail the bearing upon our daily life of this great thought, that our life and all its parts must not merely be consistent with, but be,a sacrifice of service offered to Almighty God in Jesus Christ.
I. Although service and worship may in heaven blend in one, yet as heat, which science shows to be only a form of motion, is for practical purposes a thing distinct from it, so the devout adoration of Almighty God must be distinct from those duties of daily business in which He bids us actively serve Him. And doubtless it is of the two the more heavenly. The things of earth which we treat in daily life do, although we handle them in His name and for His sake, yet soil our hands and engross our faculties. In devotion we turn from them to be alone with God, or rather, in company with a worshipping universe, to look towards God alone.
II. You come out from these more sacred parts of your time to do your daily work and live your worldly life. This too must be made the service of God. To remember that this must be done will enable you to do it. The thought will overshadow your lives with a sense of responsibility. Our Lord's parable of the talents entrusted to the servants may deepen this sense. Whatever powers creatures have much more such a creature as man, created once by God, re-created in Jesus Christ are talents to be employed, laid out at interest, for their God.
E. S. Talbot, Keble College Sermons,p. 1.