Humble Yourselves Before the Sovereign Lord

Scripture: Psalm 139

Theme: Humble Yourselves Before the Sovereign Lord

Introduction:

Of all the passages in Scripture, the Lord has used this one in my life in some of the most significant ways. The Lord has been using this passage in my life since my Senior year in college when I had the opportunity to teach this passage in a Sunday School setting. The most recent time that I was able to teach this passage was during VBS to our students when learning the song ‘Sovereign One’. This was also the first passage that I read to my son before being discharged from the hospital.

While there are amazing and encouraging truths in this passage, David brings up a temptation that we all can face. We read about this temptation in verse 11: “If I should say, ‘Surely, the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,’”

In David’s words, there’s a tone of sadness and gloom.

David is talking about difficult circumstances.

We all can identify with this because either we’ve faced difficult circumstances, or we are facing difficult circumstances, or we will face difficult circumstances.

The temptation that we face during difficult circumstances is about what we think about God:

We’re tempted to question God’s knowledge: Does God know what I’m going through?

We’re tempted to question God’s presence: Where is God in these circumstances?

We’re tempted to question God’s leading: Could God have possibly led me into these circumstances?

We’re tempted to question God’s authority: Is the Lord really in control of these circumstances?

We’re tempted to question God’s character: Has God made the right decision in my life?

However, David doesn’t just leave us answerless to this scenario that he has suggested.

Instead, what I believe that David would encourage us to do as he did himself in all of life’s circumstances is to: Humble Ourselves Before the Sovereign Lord. (Repeat)

Transition: In talking about humility, this is an attitude where we recognize the greatness of God above us. In that greatness, the way that we address the temptation to question God’s knowledge is through considering how great His knowledge is …

Humbly exalt the Sovereign Lord’s Knowledge (Psalm 139:1-6)

In other words, God’s knowledge is greater than our own.

Let’s consider the extent of God’s knowledge. (Psalm 139:1-4)

Transition: there are two things that David highlights fall within the extent of God’s knowledge …

Our activities. (Psalm 139:1-3)

Word pairing ‘sit down’/‘rise up’(v. 2), ‘my path’/‘lying down’ (v. 3) refers to anything and everything surrounding our choice to rest or be active and everything in between.

He knows everything about our resting.

When we’ve chosen to rest.

What we’re doing to rest.

The circumstances concerning our rest.

Sometimes, I can have a hard time resting when I’ve got a lot on my mind.

The Lord knows all about those circumstances.

The same goes for every choice to be active!

This is more than just our successfully planned activities.

This also pertains to the activities that may have not gone as planned.

The week before July 4, I planned to go camping.

Instead, we ended up choosing to cancel that trip as the Lord was bringing my son into my home and my wife had a heart attack.

If He knows all this and more, we must trust Him!

Not only does He know the activities that we undertake but also the thoughts that we have in planning those activities!

Second half of verse 2.

The Lord knows what’s going on in our minds when we chose to either be active or to rest.

He knows both those thoughts and those motivations and the circumstances in between.

He knows this even before we are thinking about it.

This knowledge pertains to more than just the immediate but, instead, it is complete Knowledge.

Notice the pairing of the words ‘know’ and ‘understand’.

For those of you in the Cornerstone Sunday School class, you may remember that in Job 28 and 42 this word pair was used.

Throughout Scripture, this word pair is used to describe the complete mastery of knowledge related to a topic or skill.

In other words, in the Lord’s mastery of His knowledge of us, we could say that the Lord knows you better than you know yourself.

You see, this is not the knowledge of an acquaintance whom you’ve just met.

Instead, this is intimate knowledge of the One who knows everything about both our activities and the choices behind those activities! (Psalm 139:3)

Transition: As verse 4 goes on to remind us, God knows more about us than just our activities …

Our words. (Psalm 139:4)

Before we can think to speak, He knows what we’re going to say.

He knows the circumstances and thoughts that pertain to the word choices we have made, are making, and will make.

He knows the words that we’re going to speak this afternoon, tomorrow, and before our life ends.

Transition: This pairing of activities and words demonstrates how God knows everything about us. With this awareness of the extent of God’s knowledge pertaining to both our activities and words this prompts us to consider, how do we respond to the Sovereign Lord’s great knowledge?

The response to God’s knowledge: humility. (Psalm 139:5-6)

We need to live in the awareness that His knowledge penetrates every detail of our lives. (Psalm 139:5)

The statement ‘enclosed behind and before’ is a phrase that is used in the Scripture concerning siege warfare.

An army surrounds an enemy city, completely encircling it.

No one gets in or out until the operation is finished.

Just as an army surrounds an enemy city, so God’s knowledge surrounds every aspect of our lives.

Rather than such knowledge being to our hurt, we recognize that we can never attain His level of knowledge about us or anything else. (Psalm 139:6)

This demands humility, for we recognize that God knows it all and we don’t.

There’s also an element of praise implied by the phrase ‘too wonderful’.

Let us rejoice that we are known by God down to the minutest detail of both our activities and words.

Transition: Psalm 139:5 introduces us to a phrase that will carry us into the next section: God’s hand that leads us. However, this prompts us to consider how is it that God can have such great knowledge of us. The answer comes through His presence that leads us.

Humbly follow the Sovereign Lord’s Leading Presence (Psalm 139:7-12)

No space can separate us from the Sovereign Lord’s leading presence, for He is everywhere. (Psalm 139:7-10)

The psalmist is not voicing a desire to escape from God’s presence.

Instead, this is a rhetorical statement highlighting the impossibility of escaping His presence! (Psalm 139:7)

Neither height nor depth can separate from God’s leading presence. (Psalm 139:8)

The contrast between both places is to draw a distinction between the height of the heavens and the depth of Sheol, or the grave.

In other words, there is no place between great heights or the lowest depths and beyond that is outside of God’s presence.

Distance cannot separate us from God’s leading presence. (Psalm 139:9-10)

I‘ve always loved the image presented in v. 9.

Essentially, David is calling attention to traveling as fast as the light of the sun travels at sunrise.

In other words, traveling at the speed of light.

Not even traveling that fast to the furthest place on the planet can outrun or escape God’s great presence that is leading us.

No event can separate us from God’s leading presence, for He is leading us through all of life. (Psalm 139:11-12)

This is whether the circumstance is good or difficult.

In referencing that darkness and light are alike to God references His unchanging character.

God is unchanged by circumstances.

He is the same.

Or we can say that God is constant.

This is what we need most in all of life’s circumstances.

He knows where we are for He is with us, leading us through both difficulty and good.

Take comfort, friends, in this truth that your God is always with you, always leading you.

Transition: If the Sovereign Lord knows everything about us on account of His leading presence, then what gives Him the right to do so? That is, what is the foundation that gives Him the right to lead us. His sovereign authority.

Humbly praise the Sovereign Lord’s Sovereign Authority (Psalm 139:13-18)

He sovereignly created each of us and all parts of us. (Psalm 139:13-15)

That is He created each of us individually.

But also, He created every part of us that makes us who we are.

The combination of the phrase ‘inward parts’ and ‘wove’ references both the thinking and physical parts of us. (Psalm 139:13)

He created our ability to think and reason.

He has created us physically.

Even as we’re being formed inside our mother’s womb outside of the world’s notice, we have not escaped God’s notice. (Psalm 139:15)

He has sovereignly planned our lives from beginning to end. (Psalm 139:16-18)

The Lord has formed His plans for your life just as He formed you in your mother’s womb. (Psalm 139:16)

The Lord has given careful attention to the details of your life’s events. (Psalm 139:17)

He is working out the details of your life regardless of your state of alertness (Psalm 139:18)

Let us praise the Sovereign Lord’s authority over all of life.

The Lord’s creation of all people deserves our praise. (Psalm 139:14)

Psalmist’s praise directed towards the Lord’s creation of himself, individually.

Psalmist’s praise is also directed towards the Lord’s creation of all things.

But we can also praise the Lord because we are on the Lord’s mind whether you are asleep or awake. (Psalm 139:18)

Our consciousness neither hinders or aids the Lord’s purposes for us.

You are always on the Lord’s mind.

He is always working out His plan for your life.

Transition: As encouraging as it is to reflect on God’s knowledge, leading presence and Sovereign authority, this last section reminds us that we cannot separate these truths from God’s great character: that He is righteous.

Humbly repent before the Righteous, Sovereign Lord (Psalm 139:19-24)

This is not an encouragement to repent for nothing.

Instead, it is a readiness to repent when confronted with sin.

Hence, the need for humility to acknowledge before the Sovereign Lord when we are wrong.

Verses 19-20 are an affirmation that, regardless of the choices of others, God will execute His righteousness towards everyone, including the wicked.

He will judge the violent actions of others. (Psalm 139:19)

He will judge those who attempt to mistreat the Lord. (Psalm 139:20a)

He will judge those who misuse the Name of the Lord. (Psalm 139:20b)

Transition: This truth that God will judge righteously actually has an impact on us personally.

Verses 21-22 demonstrate that when we consider the sins of others, we examine ourselves to determine our level of loyalty to the Lord.

You see, David is not pointing his finger to judge others.

Instead, David’s questioning highlights that he is humbly reflecting on his own life that such aspects would not characterize himself.

Thus, in the face of the sin of others, we are humbled to think that we are capable of the same sins.

Verses 23-24 conclude with what we should do when we recognize sin in our life.

We’re ready to humbly repent of sin. (Psalm 139:23, 24a)

This is not a boast that David is most certainly in the right.

David’s humility is demonstrated in his invitation for the Lord to search him again.

David has just confessed how his life is entirely open before the Lord.

David’s invitation also expresses both trust and confidence that the Lord will evaluate his life correctly.

We’re eager to follow the Lord’s ways. (Psalm 139:24b)

These are time-tested and proven ways or instructions as implied by the word ‘everlasting’.

The only instruction that would meet this criteria would be the Lord’s instruction.

We need to seek God’s trustworthy instruction.

We can learn these only through God’s Word.

Conclusion: When we’re tempted to question God’s knowledge, leading presence, authority, and character, David reminds us to Humble Ourselves before the Sovereign Lord. Maybe you’re here today and you do not know this Sovereign Lord as your Savior. Jesus died and rose again to save you from your sins so that you could be made God’s child. Let’s talk at some point today if you do not know the Sovereign Lord like this. Church, we can walk through life confident that our Sovereign Lord knows us, is leading us through His presence, exercises Sovereign authority over our lives, and is always doing the right thing. Let us humbly follow Him and repent when necessary.