Psalm 139
Turn to Psalm 139 in your Bibles. A couple of weeks ago, we looked
at, in particular, the sanctity of life issue from Psalm 139.
But tonight, we want to look at the whole of the Psalm. And
as we prepare to read it, this is a little bit strange, but
Psalms are that way. It speaks of God’s omnis, His
omnipresence, His omnipotence, His Oh, what’s the other one? Omnipotence. Omniscience. Yeah, he knows all things. That’s
right. Need a little help from the congregation. But then it
has a little section at the end. Hey, bad people, make them go
away. And then he talks about devotion.
And that’s somewhat typical of Psalms. But it’s really strange
because Psalm 139 is sweet. God is wonderful. God knows me.
God knit me together in my mother’s womb and take care of my enemies,
by the way. And then I’ll walk with you the way it goes. So hear the word of the living
God. Psalm 139, beginning at verse one. This is David to the
choir master. Oh Lord, you have searched me
and known me. You know, when I sit down, when
I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar. You stretch out my
path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh Lord, you know it
all together. You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful
for me, it is high. I cannot attain it. Where shall
I go from your spirit or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you were there. If I make my bed and shale,
you were there. If I take the wings of the morning
and the dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there,
your hand shall lead me. Your right hand shall hold me.
If I say surely the darkness shall cover me and the light
about me the night, even the darkness is not dark to you for
the night is bright as the day for darkness is as light with
you. For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together
in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully
and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My
soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from
you. When I was being made in the secret, intricately woven
in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed substance,
and your book were written every one of them. The days that were
formed for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious
to me are your thoughts, oh God. How vast the sum of them. If
I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake,
and I am still with you. Oh, that you would slay the wicked,
oh God. Oh, men of blood, depart from me. They speak against you
with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in
vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, oh Lord? And do I not
loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete
hatred. I count them my enemies. Search
me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts,
and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the
way everlasting. Amen. Well, there’s a… popular phrase that goes around
in Christian circles and it’s it’s this it’s doing Theology
I have no idea what that means. How do you do theology? Well
Psalm 139 actually tells us If you look at Psalm 139, the
omnis, God is omnipresent. He is omnipotent. He is omniscient. He is all-seeing, all-knowing,
all-doing, all-powerful. All the omnis are right here. These are the incommunicable
attributes of God. You can’t be all-powerful. You
might think so. You can’t be all-knowing. You
might be a know-it-all. You can’t be all-seeing. You’re
not only limited by your aging eyes, but you can only see what’s
in your field of vision. This is a psalm where we see
these true things about God, and then we relate it exactly
to a difficult situation in life. And the little section at the
end of the Psalm probably shouldn’t be surprising to us. David is
king of Israel. David has a lot of responsibility
on his shoulders. And so when he wants to be confident
in God for a life setting, a situation, when he wants to do theology,
as some like to say in this age, What does he do? He looks to
the God who sees all, does all, knows all. Even the God that
knitted him together in his mother’s womb, who formed him by hand.
He looks to that God and says, my enemies are your enemies.
Your enemies are my enemies. I’m gonna hate them with a perfect
hatred because that’s what you do. And I’m gonna be loyal to
the covenant, to the people, to God, and I’m gonna wish them
ill. And then at the end, he’s going
to say a lovely prayer, saying, God, you look deep. You look
all through my life, all through my mind, all through my heart,
all through my drawers, all through my to-do list, all through my
ambitions, all through my emotions, and you see what there is to
see and you judge it. So it’s a helpful little Psalm,
a helpful Psalm for lots of reasons, but it’s a helpful one to trust
in God for a difficult life situation or a life problem like enemies. It’s a Romans, 1133 to 36 kind
of Psalm, isn’t it? God is great and amazing and
wonderful. And we stand back in full amazement
of all that he has. So let’s think through the sections
of the Psalm. The first six verses, we see
God’s omniscience. I’m tempted to say omniscience.
but God’s omniscience. God is all seeing. He’s all knowing. And what does
the Psalmist say here? He says, God knows me. Absolutely. There is not a square centimeter
of my life. There is not a depth of my heart,
a corner of my brain, an aspect of my life that he does not know
and that he does not know perfectly. When you lie down on your bed
at night, and the reality of the day sets in your, your sins,
your shortcomings, the, the wish, the, the do overs you wish you
could have and all those sorts of things. Isn’t it nice to know
that God sees and knows everything perfectly. He’s going to be with
you through the night. He’s going to get you through
the next day and he’s going to, he’s going to work these things
out. Uh, that’s a, that’s a good, comfortable spot to be. God is
all seeing. He knows. Absolutely. Now, many
of you know, um, reading Table Talk or listening to R.C. Sproul
and other Ligonier teachers. You know they have the little
saying, Coram Deo, we live before the face of God. And the idea
there is to say everything I do is for the glory of God. Everything
is done in front of him. It’s for his benefit, for his
blessing, or for the glory of his name. But there’s another
sense where we live before the face of God. He sees everything. He knows everything. Maybe some
of you had a mother like mine who said she had eyes on the
back of her head. And for a while, we believed, right? We could
be in the other room doing something, and she could be in the kitchen.
wherever, doing laundry, whatever. And she knew what we were up
to. And so we believed her for a while, maybe till the teenage
years. Parents are not all seeing. It’s good to put that fear into
your children though. But guess who does see it all? God does. You can’t hide from him. There’s
not a place you can go. There is not a thing you can
do. Think through verses one through
six, Lord, you have searched me. You have known me. You see the intimacy there. You
know when I sit down. You know when I rise up. You
discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path, my lying
down. You’re acquainted with all my
ways, even before a word is on my tongue. Behold, O Lord, you
know it altogether. You hem me in behind. And before
you lay your hand upon me, such knowledge is too wonderful for
me. Isn’t it wonderful to know that
God sees all, He knows all, and every nook and cranny of our
life. is intimately known by him. You know, most of us have a couple
of kids, right? We have one or two or three or
maybe four kids if we were brave. But then we see a large family
and we say, how can they know all the kids? And then you, maybe
you read an obituary or you know a family and they had like 30
some grandkids. First of all, how could they
afford the birthday cards? But how could you keep up with that
many kids? We can’t. But God keeps up with the untold
numbers of children and offspring throughout the whole earth, throughout
all the ages. And he knows them this well.
That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? It’s pretty wonderful. Usually
we say the first kid gets all the attention. The second kid
gets man to man defense, right? And then by the time you get
a third kid or maybe more kids, the other kids are just raising
them. And not so with God. He is intimately knowledgeable
about our entire lives. So there’s a bit on his omniscience. How about his omnipresence? Verses seven through 12, God
is everywhere present. And as you read through seven
through 12, you see all the edges, all the borders, the North and
the South, the depths, the height, even the place of the dead shield.
God is there. Where shall I go from your spirit,
verse seven says. Where shall I flee from your
presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed
and shale or descend, you are there. If I take the wings of
the morning, that’s the east, and dwell in the uppermost parts
of the sea, the depths, even there your hand shall lead me.
Your right hand shall hold me. Kind of reminds us of our, every
fourth Sunday or so when we recite the Heidelberg, Catechism, the
first and second questions and answers. Um, I am not my own,
but belong to my faithful savior, Jesus Christ. Not a hair can
fall from my head that being the will of the heavenly father,
wherever we are. Uh, you know, some of us, um,
claustrophobic, you know, you go into one of those MRI machines,
you know, God is there with you. Uh, God is there with you through
the cancer treatments. He’s there through the pain of,
um, and hardship and sufferings of this life. He is everywhere.
He is an ever present God. Elsewhere in the Psalms, he is
our ever present help in times of trouble. And so the edges
and the borders, the highs and the lows, the east and west,
and notice what it says, even in the darkness, verse 12, verse
11 as well. If I say surely the darkness
shall cover me, the light about me, be night, even the darkness
is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day
for darkness is as light with you. There is nowhere you can
go, no trouble you can be in, no difficulty, no hardship where
God cannot be with you. His providence. reaches all places.”
Now, these two are big picture ideas, right? God is omniscient,
all-knowing. God is omnipresent. He’s everywhere.
But notice His omnipotence, His power, His ability, all power,
it zeroes in in verses 13 to 18 to just David himself. Now, there are implications to
all of us. But he says in verse 13, you
formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my
mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully
made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My
frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every
one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet they
were none of them. And again, he says, how precious
to me are your thoughts, how vast the psalm. If I would count
them, they are more than the sand. I awake and I am still
with you. So in this third section, God
is, well, he’s omniscient, he’s omnipresent, but he’s omnipotent,
all powerful. And in his being all powerful,
what does the psalmist say? I’m handmade by God. We love
things that are handmade, don’t we? We don’t want the factory
made. We want something handcrafted. You know, we go to the arts fair
instead of Walmart, right? We get something at Walmart.
It’s made in China, shipped over on a boat and nothing special.
But we get something from the art fair. It’s handmade. It’s
special to us. It’s handcrafted. And that’s
how God shows his omnipotence. He handcrafts each and every
one of us. There’s a special creation word.
Some of y’all were here Wednesday night. We talked about the difference
between God making out of nothing, the difference between man making
out of something, and here we have a third creation word that
doesn’t appear in Genesis account. It’s special only maybe five,
six times in the Old Testament, but God carefully constructs
the human body. Now, God made a wonderful creation. You can just look out the window
and tell. And it’s going to get even better in the new heavens
and the new earth. But he didn’t make anything as special as us.
He didn’t make anything with dignity and with souls that would
last forever. Like us, we have a carefully
constructed human body. And did you notice in verse 17
and 18, the Psalmist just kind of blurts it out, how wonderful
it is. He did this before in some of
the other sections on omniscience and omnipresence as well. It’s,
it’s, it’s too good to be true. It’s more than my mind can say. It’s more than my lips can utter. And it’s why it’s so wonderful
for us to be able to sing the Psalms and the hymns of the faith.
Others were able to put into words and we say, that’s how
I would have said it. If I would have said it, it’s
there for us to use. We are wonderfully excited about
who God is and what he has done. But ever think about this. If
God thinks on me, if God ponders me, and he is so wise and his
wisdom is vast, his knowledge is great. If God thinks on you,
isn’t it wonderful? And deep, those thoughts. I mean,
we spend our whole lives trying to get noticed, right? We selfie
it, we Instagram it. None of y’all, of course, y’all
are good Christian folks, but we put ourselves out there seeking
approval. Right? And, and we’ve got the
God of the universe. He knows every nook and cranny
of our minds and our hearts and our bodies. And if he thinks
on us, how great it must be. Well, then we come to the strange
part of the Psalm. Maybe not so strange, but the
prayer for vindication, verses 19 to 22, oh, that you would
slay the wicked. Isn’t that an abrupt change?
I’m a tiny little baby with cute little fingers and you made me
God. What wonderful, great, you know, we put these 139 verses
over our baby cribs and send it on cards when somebody has
a baby and then slay the wicked God. It’s kind of, you know,
Out of place, it may seem. Oh, that you would slay the wicked.
Oh, men of blood, depart from me. They speak against you, that’s
God, with malicious intent. They’re enemies. They’re your
enemies. They take your name in vain.
Do I not hate those who hate you, oh Lord? And do I not loathe
those who rise up against you? I hate them with a complete hatred
and I count them my enemies. So what are bloodthirsty enemies
of God and his people? What do these
bloodthirsty enemies, and then all these wonderful pieces of
theology we’ve just looked at, what do they have to do with
one another? Well, David’s king, right? He
has a nation on his shoulders. He has all these enemies who
hate God. They hate the nation of Israel.
They hate holiness. They hate a sanctified, set-apart
people. And so they are bloodthirsty. And not only do they hate the
people of God, they blaspheme the name of the Lord. And David
is so jealous for the nation, so jealous for God, uh, that,
that the omnis are what gives him peace. You’re everywhere.
You see everything, you know everything, and you can do anything
and everything. So guess what I want you to do?
Slay the wicked, take care of business. God, you are almighty. Uh, you are ever present. You are all seeing, uh, these
enemies are bloodthirsty. They’re malicious. They’re, they’re
blasphemous. And you who handmade me, can
hand deliver them out of our presence. That’s in a sense what
he’s saying. And we have to think communally
here. This is David, the king. This
is David, the spiritual leader, the shepherd over Israel. And
so if these are enemies against Yahweh and enemies against Yahweh’s
ways and his commands, and especially enemies against the name of Yahweh
and their blasphemy, what should David say? Hey, they hate you.
They hate me. Or as God sees it, if we’re hated,
then he is hated. And so our enemies are his enemies
and our King goes out to war. And so this is a communal threat. It’s against God. It’s a reproach.
And so we see a lot of words of covenant loyalty, but at the
end of the day, verses 19 through 22, get rid of the wicked. They
serve no purpose. They’re wicked and they’re evil
and they destroy God’s people. And then we come to a happier
part of the Psalm at the end. It’s an echo of the first part.
It’s a bookend. It’s the beginning and the end,
sandwiched with God’s omnipotence, his omniscience, his, I can’t
ever remember my omnis, it’s all the omnis bookended by these
wonderful words, search me and know me, try me, know my thoughts,
see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the
way everlasting. This is a God who knows everything. He is everywhere. And he handmade
you by his great power and he is worth submitting your life
to. Submit yourself to this God.
Let him, let him, let him take a look under your hood. Let him
explore all the nooks and crannies of your life. Let him test your
motives. Let him test your behavior. Let
him see into your life and see if there be any offensive way
so that you may walk in the way everlasting. This is a sweet
Psalm, a sweet ending. Yes, it has a little vengeance
on enemies, but that’s the way of the Psalms. But here’s a Psalm
that says, I am kept by God who sees everything, knows everything,
he can do everything. And not only can he hand make
me, he can take care of my enemies and his enemies, but he can also
keep me on the path that leads to life. So just a thought or
two, be humble, right? God does have eyes on the back
of his head. And God does have a microscope and can see in your
life. He’s the big brother, like the spying big brother, right?
He’s the big brother you do want, because you want him seeing and
knowing and taking care of business. But that ought to humble us.
It ought to bring us comfort, right? This is not a world left
to chance. This is not a world governed
by maybe, maybe not. This is a world governed by the
God who handmade you, who is everywhere, all seeing, all knowing,
but it also ought to motivate us. Why did mom say they had
eyes on the back of their head? It was to motivate you to behave.
And doesn’t this motivate you to live for God? I can’t get
away with anything. If I go in the darkness, it’s
as light to him. If I go east, west, north, south,
up, down, in the depths or in the heights, he is there and
he sees. And so these are true things
about God, but aren’t they very practical? They’re very helpful. So you’ve just done theology,
whatever that is, right? And may the Lord bless these
things to our lives. Pray with me. Lord, we pray that these
eternal truths, which are known to us, may be better known to
us tonight for our practical living, our following you and
this world as we serve you and make our way to heaven. And we
ask your blessing as we go this night, that your word may dwell
in us richly, in Christ’s name we pray, amen.