Sermon
God Knows All About Me
July 27, 2003
Pastor Donald Sheley

Now I would like for us to take our Bibles. We're going to just spend a few moments in God's word. For you that are a guest today, we're delighted that you're here and we have been spending the summer studying the Psalms. We've selected a number of Psalms and we've arrived at one today which is known as the most intimate of Psalms. It's Psalm 139. I'd like for you all to join with me because we're going to stay quite close to the Scriptures as we explain them today; and it's one of the great beautiful Psalms of the old Testament. Listen to it:

O 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, O 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 make my bed in hell, behold, 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, O 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, O God! Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men. For they speak against You wickedly; Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do not I hate them, O Lord, who hate You? And do I not loathe those that rise up against You? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.

Search me, O 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.

What a beautiful Psalm. Let's just for a moment or two take our notes, and then I want to just kind of talk to you about what's on my heart. I started our notes today by suggesting that language utterly fails me when I try to put this lesson together, because this Psalm is so full; it's intricate; it's detailed; it's grand in concept, and it's thrilling in its statements. It seems so wrong to leave any word unexplored, yet our space and time are limited, so we will ask the Holy Spirit to help us to learn what we need to be taught today.

I start with this observation because this is known as the most intimate of Psalms. It's clear today that many people suffer from a lack of intimate relationships. Our technological society has made it possible for us to live in one city, work in another, and relate to people in another. This has led to a significant breakdown in community. At the same time, we function in a highly competitive society. We tend to look upon people as combatants rather than companions. We constantly judge how we are measuring up and find little freedom to share our struggles and our weaknesses with each other for fear that they will be used against us. In this decade, style has replaced substance as our preoccupation. We are excessively concerned about the image we project to people, because we are uncertain that there is anything behind it.

People also tend to become means to our ends, rather than ends in themselves. We all know how it feels to be used, stepped on, and stepped over. At the bottom of all of this I am suggesting there is a deep spiritual sickness. Our lack of intimacy with each other comes from our lack of intimacy with God; and the recovery of intimacy starts with allowing God to become intimate with us. This is what He desires, and He will do it, if we let Him.

Psalm 139 is compelling in its descriptions of how close God really wants to be to us. He is not satisfied to be simply the reigning King, exalted in the heavens, enthroned before a sea of angels. He desires to have a personal relationship with us on the deepest level of our being. Notice our text that we read, He searches and knows us, verse l. His eye is always upon us, verse 2 and 3. He hears all that we say in verse 4, and His hand is upon us in verse 5. All this staggers the psalmist in verse 6. Moreover, His presence is always there, in heaven or hell, in darkness or in light verses 7 through 12.

But why is it that God knows us so intimately? The answer is that He created us, verses 13 through 16. He knows us the way a painter knows his picture, or a sculptor knows his statue. As a result of all of this, God's thoughts are precious to the psalmist, and he hates those whom God hates. And he concludes with an invitation for God to search him, to try him, to know him, and to lead him in the way everlasting.

Now although Psalm 139 deals with some of the highest and most important of all theological concepts, the omniscience, the omnipresence, and the omnipotence of God, it nevertheless has two practical aims that become very clear at its close. First, the writer wants to separate himself from all who deliberately practice evil. Second, he wants God to search him out thoroughly and to purge him of anything that might be offensive to God so that he might walk in the way everlasting. Now let's stop there.

You know, sometimes we preachers use great big five dollar words that mean very little to some in the congregation, so I want to take just a moment to explain some of those big words: omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. When you study the concept of God here are three attributes that every theologian will bring to your attention almost when he starts the concept. What's he talking about? Well the word omni means all, so if it's omnipresent that means He is present everywhere. Science equals knowledge so all knowledge, if God is omniscience then He has all knowledge. And omnipotence means all power. So when we use those great big words we're talking about massive concepts that our minds can never really grasp.

In fact, did you notice David when he gets to verse 6, he says, God, when I start thinking about all of this it's too high for me to even grasp, I cannot attain to it. What our psalmist does today is to take these grand, glorious concepts and try to bring them down into a practical area where he makes theology very real and very personal. So he is going to talk about the omniscience, and when we say God knows everything, past, present, and future, and He knows it simultaneously; there's nothing He could forget because he knows everything. He is absolutely...there's nothing that He can be taught, because He knows everything. I could read a number of Scriptures...and the Bible is full of this, full of verses that tell us that God is a God that no one has taught Him that He knows everything.

Now there's a problem oft times, and in fact in the last service I had a gentleman come up to me and say, Pastor, when you say that God knows everything, does His knowledge predetermined human action? In other words, does it eliminate the possibility of human freedom? If He knows everything, then He knows what we're going to do before we do it, so does His knowledge predetermine our actions? No it doesn't. That's the marvel. God knows how we're going to use are free will, how we're going to choose. He knows that, but His knowledge does not predetermine our action. Now if you can get your mind around that one, that's wonderful, because I haven't yet.

Then, when we say God is everywhere completely, simultaneously, always everywhere, and there's no part of His universe that He's not there, now that's a big one. So our New Age people come along and say well that's easy to grasp, God is the universe and we are gods. That's a lie. That's New Age teaching. Christian teachings says, no, God created the universe and all that's in it but He remains separate from His universe, but intricately involved in His universe. He is always there. And thus as Christians, we say the God, the Creator God, is everywhere present at all times completely. I can't get that, but that's what this psalmist is going to try to explain to us.

Then he takes the concept of God's power and he does something with it that absolutely amazes me. I'll get there in just a minute, but when you say that God is omnipotence, we are saying that God can do anything He wants to because He has all power in heaven and earth. He threw this world into existence, and God can do anything.

So the psalmist is dealing with these massive concepts of: God knows everything, God is everywhere, and God can do anything He wants to do -- and best of all, He's my God. Now let's go to the text and with your Bible follow right along with me and you'll see how he works this out.

First of all he says, O Lord, You have searched me and You've known me. Now those are interesting words in the Hebrew because the word for searched is God you have dug deep down within me, you know me so far more than I know myself. The old philosopher said, 'know yourself', but you can't. There are times you say things then say, where did that come from? We don't know ourselves. But this psalmist is saying, God, You've dug deep down within me and you know me.

Now that word 'know' when used in the Hebrew text means an intimacy so close as the relationship between husband and wife -- a deep knowledge of each other. So here's what he's saying, as God, the God of the universe, You've dug deep down within me. You know me better than I know myself. And then he says in that intimate knowledge You know when I'm going to sit down; You know when I'm going to stand up. In fact, God, You know my thoughts even before I think them. You understand; You comprehend my path. And he said, there's not a word on my tongue but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.

He's trying to grapple with his idea of God's great knowledge and he says, God, it amazes me that You...we live in a world of 6 billion souls, and yet God You want to be so intimate with me that You know me much better than I know myself. And in one other psalm he says, God, You took time out to count the hair on my head. I've never done that. You know me so well. You know how I think and the words I speak before I speak them.

And he says, not only that but God there's nowhere I can...You hedge me from behind. If I turn around You're there. Wherever You are God, You never leave me. Then he has a very tender thought, he says, God, even in Your greatness You laid Your almighty hand upon me. Now here's his thought, knowledge can be used either negatively or positively, and his thought is, God, You always use Your knowledge for my good to express Your love and Your care. In fact, God, You laid Your hand upon me. Now this is really getting to him because he's beginning to grasp this thought: that the God who has all knowledge is the God who intimately loves him so well, far beyond he knows himself.

So he's dealt with the issue of God's knowledge as to how it relates to him. And verse 6 says, God, I can't even grasp this. He's almost...he says in awe and wonder as he tries to grapple with this concept, but he moves on. Now he's going to talk about the omnipresence of God; remember God is everywhere. So he said, where can I go from Your presence, or where can I go from Your spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? And the original word for presence is face. How can I get out of Your face dear God?

If I ascend into heaven, You are there; and if I make my bed in hell, You are there. Now that's a thought. God in hell? But what he's saying is this, even at death if you've ignored God all your life you'll meet Him at death because He'll be there in justice and in judgment. You'll never get away from Him. Milton in his PARADISE LOST was wrong when he said only Satan was there. No, God will be there in justice. And the psalmist is saying, God if I go to heaven I know You're going to be there, but boy, to go to hell and I'm going to meet You there too.

Look at what else -- he goes on: 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. Now here's what he's thinking that. He's standing there in Israel and as you know out to the west is the Mediterranean Sea and off to the east are the hills of Moab, and what he's thinking about is when the sun starts its journey across the sky and as soon as that sun hits the mountains of Moab, and that streak of light flashes across and goes into the Mediterranean -- he says if I could travel as fast as light and go as far as I could travel, even when I get there You are there.

He's trying to grapple with this idea that there's no place that God isn't. And then he goes a little further and says, God, even darkness doesn't make any difference to You. It's the same. A night is the same as a day. Now again, there's an interesting thought in the original and the idea is that God even in the darkest of life's experiences never, never walks away from us. And yet, you and I have traveled in some of those deep dark moments of despair when the tears are hot and the trials are heavy, and the first question you ask is, God where are You?

The old psalmist is saying, God no matter how dark it gets it's just like light to You. You understand my path. You're in charge. So when it comes to God's presence it brings a great thrill to the psalmist's heart to say, God, there's nowhere I can go that You won't be there. There's no place I can travel that Your care will not be with me, even in life's darkest moments You don't desert me.

Now verse 13. Now this is the one that really amazes me. You see he's told us about God's knowledge, he's told us about God's presence, now the subject is God's power. He could've used to thousand different illustrations for God's power, but he used the birth of a child. That amazes me -- no it doesn't. That wonderful moment when as dads you stood in the hospital corridor waiting for that first voice. And I remember that when little Leighton was being born. I could hear that yell. I knew he was a preacher's kid.

But you know, when I picked up that little guy -- this is absolutely marvelous. Look at those little feet, look at those hands and look at... This is a miracle! This is the power of God at work, and our psalmist is saying you can look around you, but just think of the birth of a child and here God demonstrates His glorious power. And I think every parent here would agree with me; that's a glorious moment when you see that miracle of God's power.

Now look at what he's says. He says, You covered me in my mother's womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. He said, My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought. That word for 'wrought' in the original Hebrew is like a weaver weaving a carpet with all the strands of the various colors. He's looking at God at work in the womb of the mother tying together the tissues and the tendons and the muscles, and putting together that little body, and he said, when God wove the tapestry of the human body it was a marvelous miracle.

Go with me to page 6 in our notes. I just want to share some additional thoughts. I write: David knew nothing of the modern science of embryology, nothing of the mysterious process by which a baby grows in the womb. He had only the haziest of ideas about these things, but he knew enough to be awed at the process. And if David knew enough to be awed, what about us? We know that every living creature is made up of microscopic cells so small that the letter O on this page would contain between thirty and forty thousand of them. Each microscopic cell is a world in itself, containing an estimated two hundred trillion tiny molecules of atoms. Each cell, in other words, is a micro-universe of almost unbelievable complexity. All these cells put together make up a living creature. Each cell has its own specialized function and each works to an intricate time table which tells it when to grow, when to divide, when to make hormones, and when to die.

Every minute of every day, some three billion cells in the human body die and the same number are created to take their place. During any given moment in the life of any one of the cells, thousands of events are taking place, each one being precisely coordinated at the molecular level by countless triggers. The human body has more than a million million of them-a million in each square inch of skin, thirty billion in the brain, billions of red blood cells in the veins. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Now these verses plainly teach the individuality of a child while it is still in its mother's womb. David is not talking about abortion, of course. Nothing could be further from his mind. But no one can read these verses thoughtfully today without considering their obvious bearing on this most 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 say, "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 the appendix that one 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, and a pregnant woman knew that she was 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 or even mere "tissue" instead. And 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 when it is old enough to survive outside the womb, but advances 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 today.

It is increasingly common today to identify life with brain activity, but we know that there is brain activity in an unborn child even before the mother is aware that she's pregnant. For that matter, there is a beating heart and the circulation of the baby's own blood as well. Now 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.

Now the perceptive writing of this psalm David is speaking of this unique individuality from the first moments of his existence in the womb. From that very first moment, God knew him and ordained what his life was to be. Ladies and gentlemen, if that is how God views the unborn child, dare we call it only tissue and destroy the unborn, as we are doing in this country at the rate of more than a million-and-a-half babies a year.

Now the phrase, "when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth" needs some explanation. The Hebrew words used refers to the act of weaving, such as weaving carpets. The reference here is to the various and complicated tissues of the human body; the tendons, the nerves, the veins, the arteries, the muscles, as if they had been woven and as they appear to be curiously interweaved. No work of tapestry can be compared with this; no art of man can weave together such a variety of most tender and delicate fibers and tissues as those which go to make up the human body. But God did it.

Now he uses a phrase, "in the lowest parts of the earth", and it's a Hebraism. It's a way of saying that the infant baby is wrought in a place as dark, as obscure, and beyond the power of human observation. Now remember he wrote this before we had the mechanisms today to determine the life of a little one being born. So David sees the mother's womb as a place even as dark as would happen in the deepest part of the earth, but here in a mother's womb God is marvelously at work weaving together the tendons and the body. And he is awed by it because it's a work of God, and it's one of God's greatest demonstrations of His power.

Here he is: God, even though I don't understand all there is to know about You, I know one thing, that in Your knowledge You know me. I know that wherever I go You're going to be there, and I know that Your power is beyond my imagination because You were there when You created me. And then verse 17; he said, God, You're always thinking about me. But you say, Pastor, how can that be? There are 6 billion people plus on this planet and how can God think of each one of us individually? That's the thing that amazes the psalmist. And that's what we believe as Christians, that we are the objects of God's love and His grace and His mercy, and He's very deeply concerned about each of us. We believe that. That's what the psalmist says.

Now he does something very interesting. Look at verse 19. All of a sudden he starts talking about...He says, Oh, that Thou would slay the wicked, O God! Where did that come from? I'll tell you what, here's the psalmist deeply meditating in the greatness, and the majesty, and the glory, and the wonder, and the splendor of God. He's lost in a sense of God's presence, and all of a sudden the awfulness of sin becomes very clear to him. That's a spiritual truth. He's saying the closer we get to God, the more uncomfortable we become with sin.

And I say, ladies and gentlemen, if we find ourselves comfortable in a situation where God is being blasphemed and His name is being used in vain, and we see the God that we love and the God who is so in love with us being misused, you cannot be comfortable in that setting. Let me explain. Sometimes we have these marvelous moments where together we're here, and you're with me and we are worshiping God, and then I get in my car and I go to the restaurant and in the seat next to me the people there are swearing and using God's name in vain. And all of a sudden, because I've been in His presence, all of a sudden the awfulness and the ugliness of that thing, that they're taking my God and they're speaking ill about Him. And this psalmist is saying, God, I can't help it but when I get near to You I am extremely uncomfortable with those who defy You, and those who misuse You, and those who use Your name in vain.

Some time ago I was sitting in a restaurant and the people next door to me were using Jesus' name in vain and I turned to them and said, Sir, pardon me, but the man you're talking about died on the cross to save me; and He's my Saviour, and I don't want to hear you talking that way again about Him. He got up and walked out. But I couldn't help it. I love Jesus. You love Him and to hear people use His name in vain hurts. And this is what the psalmist is saying; God, the closer I get to You the more sensitive I become about those who misuse You.

And then look at that last. He ends the Psalm with a little prayer -- not a little one. Search me, O God, and know my thoughts. What he realizes is the closer you draw near to God in worship and love and service, the more of His light shines on you, and when it does, the more you see yourself as He sees you. Things that you never thought were wrong; things that you do just naturally, and yet all of a sudden as you draw near to God and recognize His love for you you're saying, God I didn't know that bothered You so much.

I'll use an illustration. I used to use some language, not vulgar, but just slang language. And once I said it, all of a sudden I said, God, that doesn't bespeak the language of a Christian. Please forgive me and I'll never use that language again.

So the psalmist is saying, God, You know everything; I never can leave Your presence; You have all power. You created me and the closer I get to You the more I want to be intimate with You. Ladies and gentlemen, that's a tremendous thought. God loves us so much, the God of the universe, that He wants us to love Him in return, and in loving Him in return, there is a beautiful relationship between the Creator and the created. Amen?

Father, what a Psalm, and we agree with the psalmist some of these thoughts we can't even understand. But to know that You love us, to know that You care for us, to know that You were there when we were being formed in our mother's womb, and You wrote the story of our life before it was written. What an amazing, intimate thought of Your love. Help us to love You, O God, in return. In Jesus' name, amen. God bless you, God bless you.