Sermon series: A SUMMER IN THE PSALMS

Psalm 139

0 Lord, You have searched me and known me, You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but, behold, 0 Lord, You know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, "Surely the darkness shall fall on me," even the night shall be light about me; indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You. For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, 0 God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; when I awake, I am still with You.
Oh, that You would slay the wicked, 0 God! Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men, For they speak against you wickedly; your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I not hate them, 0 Lord, who hate You? I hate them with a perfect hatred; I count them my enemies. Search me, 0 God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting."

Message:
The 139th Psalm is the soliloquy of a man who had made an astounding discovery—the discovery that God knows him personally! The Psalmist believes that God not only knows everything about him but that God cares for him and considers the smallest details of his life, even the purposes of his mind before that take thought-form. Indeed, the Hebrew poet is so completely overcome with a sense of God's personal interest in him that there seem to be only two people in the universe, himself and God!
This is a Psalm which deals with the great theological theme of the OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD! God is always present in every space of the universe. The Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah wrote: "Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can a man hide him-

PAGE BREAK
(Page Two)

self in secret places so that I cannot see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord" (Jeremiah 23:23-24)
There is nowhere in the entire universe, on land or sea, in heaven or in hell, where one can flee from God’s presence.
We should also note that there is no indication that simply a part of God is in one place and a part of Him in another. It is God HIMSELF who is present wherever we might go. We cannot say that some of God or just a part of God is present, for that would be to think of His being in spatial terms, as if He were limited somehow by space. It seems more appropriate to say that God is present with His whole being in every part of space. Paul says in Acts 17:28 that "In Him we live and move and have our being."
While it is necessary for us to say that God's whole being is present in every part of space, or at every point in space, it is also necessary to say that God cannot be contained by any space, no matter how large! In 1 Kings 8:27 we read: But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You; how much less this house which I have built.
While the thought that God is everywhere present with His whole being ought to encourage us greatly in prayer no matter where we are, the fact that no place can be said to contain God should also discourage us from thinking that there is some special place of worship that gives people special access to God; He cannot be contained in any one place!
We must be careful not to think that God Himself is equivalent to any part of creation or to all of it. A pantheist believes that everything is God or that God is everything that exists. The biblical perspective is rather that God is present everywhere in His creation, but that He is also distinct from His creation. The idea of God’s omnipresence has sometimes troubled people who wonder how God can be present, for example, in hell. In fact, isn't hell the opposite of God’s presence, or the absence of God? This difficulty can be resolved by realizing that God is present in different ways in different places, or that God acts differently in different places in His Creation.
Sometimes God is present to punish. A terrifying passage in Amos vividly portrays this presence of God in judgment: "Not one of them shall flee away, not one of them shall escape. Though they dig into Sheol, from there shall My hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down. Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, from there I will search out and take them; and though they hide from My sight at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them. And though they go into captivity before their enemies, there I will command the sword, and it shall slay them; and I will set my eyes upon them for evil and not for good." (Amos 9:1-4)

PAGE BREAK
(Page Three)

At other times God is present neither to punish nor to bless, but merely present to sustain, or to keep the universe existing and functioning in the way He intended it to function. In this sense the divine nature of Christ is everywhere present: "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:17)
One of the great theologians wrote this paragraph illustrating the practical application of the doctrine of God's omnipresence:
"When you wish to do something evil, you retire from the public into your house where no enemies may see you; from those places of your house which are open and visible to the eyes of man you remove yourself into your room; even in your room you fear some witness from another quarter; you retire into your heart, there you meditate; He is more inward than your heart. Wherever, therefore, you shall have fled, there He is. From yourself, whether will you flee? But since there is One more inward even than yourself, there is no place where you may flee from God. There is no place at all whither you may flee. Will you flee from Him? Flee from Him!"
It is this vast concept of the omnipresence of Almighty God that fills the writer of this Psalm. This Psalm is one of the most sublime of them all...a meditation that flowed from the heart of David.
"O Lord!, You have searched me and known me."
The word for "searched" means "to dig," and is applied to the searching for precious metals. "Thou hast dug deep into me." God has penetrated far below the surface of the psalmist’s acts and words. We speak today of our "deep" subconscious. Jeremiah 17:10 says, "I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."
We sometimes say that ’we know’ a certain person who may be our neighbor or working partner. By this we mean nothing more than that we can distinguish him or her from other persons and we do know their name. Sometimes when we make such an affirmation we mean that we have general knowledge of their occupation and their general personal traits. Sometimes we mean more than this-we intimate that we know what a person's principals are, what they believe and what they may not believe.
But we do not know what a man's spirit is, and what is his real character, until we have seen him (as the apostles saw our Lord) both in public and in private--at those times when they are conscious of our observation, and when they are perfectly unrestrained, and express themselves with unchecked freedom. Even then, how imperfect is our knowledge of another human being.
And yet again, how far from being absolutely true is the estimate we form of ourselves! How possible and how predictable it is for us to overestimate our virtues and underestimate our weaknesses, our follies, our guilt! We are convinced that it is often the case that the verdict of a man's intimate friend is much nearer the mark of truth than is his own!

PAGE BREAK
(Page Four)

The conclusion to which we are driven is the One, and only One, "knows us altogether." ONLY GOD KNOWS US AS WE ARE.
The God who is ALL-PRESENT is also ALL-KNOWING. When we speak of the ALL-KNOWLEDGE of God we are speaking of His Omniscience. The unique quality of the knowledge possessed by God is perfection. God knows all things, and he knows them exhaustively. We also know things, therefore we have some idea of God's omniscience, but our knowledge is only partial and imperfect. Arthur W. Pink wrote, "God...knows everything; everything possible, everything actual; all events, all creatures, of the past, the present, and the future. He is perfectly acquainted with every detail in the life of every being in heaven, in earth, and in hell...Nothing escapes His notice, nothing can be hidden from Him, nothing is forgotten by Him...He never errs, never changes, never overlooks anything."
"Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out!" (Romans 11:33)
The author of our Psalm knows that only God can see into the recesses and remote points that escape our eye. We can and may conceal some things from man and elude his keenest search; we can hide nothing from God; He searches all and knows all things, even the most secret chambers of the soul!
The perfection of God's knowledge is also disturbing, however, which is one reason why people try so hard not to think about God. As long as we only think about God knowing things or other people, the idea of God's knowledge is only amusing, like our reaction to the report about schoolchildren who were asked whether they thought God understood computers, and the majority thought He did not! We are amused because we know that God does understand computers. The subject is not so amusing when we consider that God also knows about us. What are we to do with a God "before whom all hearts are open, all desires known?" An all-knowing God is immensely threatening, which is why we try to banish Him from our minds. The thought of divine omniscience fills us with uneasiness. In the divine omniscience we see set forth against each other the terror and fascination of the Godhead. That God knows each person through and through can be a cause for shaking fear to the man that has something to hide-some unforsaken sin, some secret crime committed against man or God.
O Lord! You have searched me and known me! The verb "known" is used in a very personal manner. It refers to that kind of total knowledge that a husband and wife have of each other. It is knowledge that leaves us completely naked in God’s sight and therefore no longer belonging only to ourselves, no longer wanting or able to declare that "I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul."

PAGE BREAK
(Page Five)

This awareness reminds us that, if we should try to talk about God to a man who says, "But I don't believe in God", it is possible to declare (and so help him to faith): "But that is not the issue. The first issue is that God believes in you." Since that is what God is like, God must be known as a real "Person."
In verse 2 and 3 of our Psalm, the author reminds us that God observes all our ways. From morning till evening, from evening till morning, everything is done before Him. He is the Lord "before whom we stand," as the old prophets used to say. There is no action of ours that is to slight for His notice; He is the Infinite One, and infinity reaches downwards as well as upwards. The omnipresent God is familiar with every uttered word and unuttered word. "Thou understandest my thought afar off." Not that God is at a distance from our thoughts; but He understands them while they are far off from us, from our knowledge.
For my part, I don't know what I'm going to say till I say it: but You know what I'm going to say before I open my mouth, O Lord! You know every detail about the flow of my sentences, their superficial sound, their real meaning, their connection with my attitude to life, to faith, or even my lack of it.
In 1802, B. B. Edwards wrote this poem:
Searcher of hearts! To thee are known the inmost secrets of my breast:
At home, abroad, in crowds, alone, thou mark’st my rising and my rest.
My thoughts far off, through every maze, source, stream, and issue-all my ways.
How from Thy presence should I go, or whither from Thy Spirit flee,
Since all above, around, below, exist in Thine immensity?
If up to heaven, I take my way, I meet Thee in eternal day!
Dr. Spurgeon makes this comment in his great commentary:
"God knows everything that passes in our inmost souls better than we do ourselves; He reads our most secret thoughts; all the cogitations of our hearts pass in review before Him; and He is as perfectly and entirely employed in the scrutiny of the thoughts and actions of an individual, as in the regulation of the most important concerns of the universe.
This is what we cannot comprehend; but it is what, according to the light of reason, must be true, and according to revelation, is indeed true.
God can do nothing imperfectly; and we may for some idea of His superintending knowledge, by conceding what is indeed the truth, that all the powers of the Godhead are employed upon the least as well as upon the greatest concerns of the universe, and this includes the conduct of every human being."
Our Psalm says: "You know when I get out of bed in the morning, and when I go to bed at night--all intimate, personal, private affairs."
"Thou compassest my path and my lying down."

PAGE BREAK
(Page Six)

The use words seem to be a metaphor, taken from soldiers surrounding the ways with an ambush, or placing scouts and spies in every corner, to discover the enemy in his march. The Lying down is signified to mean the private and close actions of life; such as were attended only by darkness and solitude. Spurgeon writes: "My running and my resting are alike within thine observation. I may leave thy path, but thou never leavest mine. I may sleep and forget thee, but thou doest never slumber, nor fall into oblivion concerning thy creature. The Lord judges our active life and our quiet life; He marks that which is good and also that which is evil. Nothing is concealed from thee, nor misunderstood by thee. This should fill us with awe, so that we sin not; with courage, so that we fear not; with delight, so that we mourn not."
YOU HAVE HEDGED ME BEHIND AND BEFORE, AND LAID YOUR HAND UPON ME.
There you are, Lord, in front of me and behind me in space, as well as before me in time, and after me also, after I experience this moment and then can look back upon it. I cannot put back the clock to escape you, or put it forward to an unthinkable future. But apart from "before" and "after", at this very moment your hand lies on my head in blessing. I have discovered that I am fenced in by You, fenced in by Your love!
Verse 6 then gives us an exclamation, not of fear and horror, but of reverent awe at the mystery of such a wonderful God. The Psalmist uses here a new word for KNOWLEDGE. He is desperately trying with mere human language to point to what can be described only as miraculous, to "a reality which at once includes and transcends intellectual disquisition, for it involves a man's total personality in the presence of God," as a modern commentator puts it. He is learning from day to day always more about what total commitment to God must mean for him and his people. When we are about to look upon God's perfections, we should observe our own imperfections, and thereby learn to be more modest in our searching of God's unsearchable perfection, for, compared with our stinted knowledge, how amazing is the knowledge of God.
Job 11:17 says: "Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?"
Ecc. 3:11 "He had made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
Isaiah 40:18 "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding no one can fathom."
WHERE CAN I GO FROM YOUR SPIRIT? OR WHERE CAN I FLEE FROM YOUR PRESENCE.

PAGE BREAK
(Page Seven)

The height of heaven cannot transcend Him; the depth of hell cannot hide from Him; flight, rapid as the rays of the morning sun, cannot outstrip Him; distance, like that of the uttermost parts of the sea, cannot separate from Him; darkness, deep as midnight, cannot concealed from Him.
It used to be said of ancient Rome that the extent of her empire rendered it impossible for anyone who had incurred the displeasure of her emperors to escape their vengeance; yet more truly is it impossible for us to do what Jonah vainly tried to do--to flee from the presence of the Lord!
But His presence is a perpetual joy to believers! Our Lord cheered His disciples ere He left them, by promising that He would be with them always. "I will never leave you nor forsake you."
Isaiah 43:2 "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze."
A heathen philosopher once asked, "Where is God?" The Christian answered, "Let me first ask you, Where is He not?"
Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? The Psalmist does not desire thus to flee, but he supposes the case, which would be only too common if men realized God's knowledge of all their ways. He imagines himself reaching the extremities of the universe in vain flight, and stunned by finding God there. The utmost possible height is coupled with the utmost possible depth. Heaven and Sheol equally fail to give refuge from that moveless Face, which confronts the fugitive in both, and fills them as if fills all the intervening dim distances. The dawn flushed the East, and swiftly passes on wings to the farthest bounds of the sea. In both places and in all the broad lands between, the fugitive would find himself in the grasp of the same hand. Turn where the soul may, however, it can find no rest or peace till at last it confesses that evasion is impossible, that in nothing but surrender is fullness of life to be found.
We have seen that David is writing with his heart as well as with his head in this Psalm, and this means that he is not thinking of God's omnipotence abstractly, but as it applies to him. More particularly, he is thinking of the power of God in forming him while he was still in the womb of his mother. No wonder God knows me, he says, God made me. He formed me from my very first moments, from my beginning! "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made."
These verses plainly teach the individuality of a child while still in its mother’s womb. David is not writing about abortion, of course. Nothing could be farther from his mind. But no one can

PAGE BREAK
(Page Eight)

read these verses thoughtfully today without considering their obvious bearing on this important contemporary problem.
The chief issue in discussions about abortion concerns the identity of the fetus. People who argue for the right of a woman to have an abortion--"It's my own body; I can do with it as I please"--usually argue that the fetus is not yet a person, but is only a part of the woman's body, like a gallbladder or appendix that she can elect to have removed. That is why language describing the unborn child has changed so radically. A generation ago everyone referred to the unborn child as a baby, the pregnant women knew they were carrying a baby. It is hard for anyone to think calmly about killing a baby. So today people talk about the fetus or the embryo were even mere "tissue" instead. To get rid of tissue doesn't seem so bad. But this is not the way the Bible speaks of the unborn child. What is more, growing medical knowledge of unborn children undermines that comfortable delusion. The Greek philosopher Aristotle speculated that the fetus becomes human when it quickens in the womb, that is, when the mother feels it move. We know today that the movement of the fetus is only a matter of degree; the baby is moving all the time. Others have argued that the fetus becomes human only when it is old enough to survive outside the womb, but advocates in the care of premature babies make it possible for even extremely small infants to survive, certainly infants that are younger and smaller than many being aborted. It is increasingly common today to identify life with brain activity, but we know there is brain activity in the unborn child even before the mother is aware that she is pregnant. For that matter, there is a beating heart and the circulation of the babies own blood as well! The problem with trying to determine a point before which the developing child is fully human is that there isn't one. There is an uninterrupted development of the child from the very moment in which the sperm of the father joins the ovum of the mother and the cell begins to divide. The father's seed cannot multiply by itself, nor can the mother's egg, but as soon as the two sets of chromosomes combine, not only does the development of life continue steadily unless interrupted, either accidentally or deliberately, but the life that is developing is a unique life. In the perceptive wording of this Psalm David is speaking of his unique individuality from the first moments of his existence in the womb. From the very first moment, God knew him and had ordained what his life was to be. "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." (Verse 16)
David ends this Psalm with a beautiful prayer: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."