Psalm 139

Discovering that you are priceless to God.

How much does this cost? Price is Right Game

Get 3 boys and 3 girls (and three prizes - right down what you think this costs) closest gets the prize.

Next item up for bid? (picture of the kids?)

What are you worth to God?

The passage of Scripture that we will look at today will tell us how much we are worth to God. This week we memorized a verse from this passage. (Oh, Lord…you have examined my heart and you know everything about me.)

This passage of Scripture will show us that God knows all about us. He has always, always had His eye on us. He has always been around us. In the highs and the lows of our lives, He has always been there, even when you didn’t sense Him. He is also incredibly powerful…He is our Master (the one who is in control). (4th of July fireworks - the ones that flash and boom…it rocks your chest. He made us and He has all of our days planned out. What this Psalm will tell us is that, God is ultimately an inescapable reality.

What is Psalm 139 about? Repeat after me.

What “toy” from Target (or any other store) do you currently want, but don’t have?

God knows all about me...There is no place where I can flee...God, Himself is the Master of me.He is the inescapable reality.

God knows all about me. (v. 1-6)

Psalm 139:1–6 NIV

1 You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. 5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Have you ever been to Target and the toy aisle? Something catches your eye and you are all over it. You get down on your knees to get closer to it. You read the box to see all the cool features of the toy. You push a few of the buttons that demonstrate it’s capabilities. You are well aware of its features…you might have seen the commercials, or heard about it from a friend, but now here it is right before you. This poem shows us that God knows all about us.

Toys are getting pretty cool and complex these days but over time we get to know them pretty well, but I want to look closer at this poem to see how well God knows us.

Psalm 139:1–4 NIV

1 You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.

God knows when we walk and the words we say before we talk! Nothing we do with our physically body escapes Him. Nothing we think in our mind escapes Him. He is aware of all of our actions and thoughts. He knows it all.

Is it a comfort to you that God has “Yadah’d” you? Or is it intimidating? That is Hebrew word for (exploring, spying out, digging deep, to know).

The word David use is the Hebrew word “Yadah” - to explore, to spy out, to dig deep into. God KNOWS you. (explore you, spied you out, dug deep into you).

Look at verse 2…He knows when you are sitting down…and when you “rise up.” All the days activities are known by God.

Verse 3…God had the ability to “discern” David’s ways. This is a word for sifting. How many of you have picked strawberries yet this year? You sift through them picking out the good ones from the bad ones. This is what David says here…He has been discerned by God. God knows what David has done, an even what David has thought about doing. YIKES.

Look at David’s conclusion here.

Psalm 139:6 NIV

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

On the surface this reads like a praise from David. It sounds like David is impressed by God’s knowledge. “Oh how wonderful.” Actually what David is saying is, “This is overwhelming to me.” It is too much for me...

David’s is “overwhelmed” by God’s discerning knowledge! How about you?

This is David praising God for His knowledge, but he is also threatened by this God. It’s like he is saying, “O MY GOD, LOOK at GOD.” I got to get out of here. He know all about everything everywhere…and I am a thing and I am here…and I got to get out of here. That is why he says in the next verse.

Psalm 139:7 ESV

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?

David, was aware of just how much God knew and there was something in him that wanted to flee. People don’t flee for no reason.

God knows all about me. (v. 1-6)

There’s no place that I can flee. (v. 7-12)

Think about that Toy at Target. There was a time when you didn’t know that toy existed. It had to be shown to you by a friend or through a commercial. It existed but you were unaware of it. It was away from you. Now, your parents might get it for you for your birthday. Or maybe you do some chores around the house and you saved up some money…enough money to buy that awesome toy. In either case, there is a point in time when it became yours. There was a point in time where it existed and you didn’t know about it, but then you learned about it and wanted it and did whatever it took to get it.

Let’s look at what David says about God.

Psalm 139:7–12 NIV

7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

What we see here is, unlike that toy from Target, He has always been aware of us and He has always been around us.

What comfort is there in the fact that God has always been aware of you and has always been around you?

Think back to what David had previously said…God knows everything about me…there some pretty bad stuff on the inside…so I better get way. I better escape. I will go to the heavens (sky) to escape…He is there. I will go to the depths…nope He is there. I wake up early and maybe He will still be asleep…nope He is up and aware. Ok…I will go on the far side of the sea, nope…when even when I get there, I will discover, He was already there.

Man I can’t shake Him…He is on me like a shadow.

I know. I know a place where a shadow can’t accompany me. I will hide in the darkness. Surely He won’t dwell with me in my darkness.

And David thinks he has come up with a solution. Much like Adam and Eve did in the garden of Eden after they realized that they had sinned and disobeyed God. It was Adam and Eve’s custom, their daily experience and routine to walk with God Himself in the cool of the day in the Garden, but after they sinned they said…we can’t walk with Him any more…so when He comes calling, let’s go hide. Instead of walking with God, they play hide and seek with God. Except they were always the one hiding and God was the only one seeking.

Why are we so quick to try to hide our sin and shortcomings? Especially when we know that God already knows them?

The depiction of our relationship with God we get from the very beginning of our Holy Book…is mankind sinning and hiding and God seeking after us calling out to us, “Where are you?” Now certainly, He knew exactly where they were, He was not “unaware” of what happened or where they were. It’s more like God calling out, “Why did you run…don’t you know I would find you?”

David’s brilliant plan is an age old plan that never worked and will never work. You can’t hide from God. He thinks… “I will hide in the darkness…there are no shadows in darkness” but he comes to realize that...

Even when we go through periods of darkness in our lives, God is no less present in those times. God is always around us.

There’s no place that I can flee. (v. 7-12)

The reason He knows all about you, even your darkness is because, unlike the toy in the Target aisle that you didn’t make, God Himself made you. That toy was thought up by someone else and then made by someone else, then put on the shelf by someone else and then finally wanted by you.

But here David say’s that God Himself was the one who thought us up and created us and then set our feet on this earth to walk it’ aisle and all along He Himself has wanted us.

God, Himself is the Master of me. (v. 13-18)

Psalm 139:13–18 NIV

13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.

Look at verse 13 again…this doesn’t really come across in the English language. This was originally written in Hebrew and do you know what it says?

Psalm 139:13 NIV

13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Inmost being…you created my kidney’s! What in the world are my kidneys? Kidney’s are a part of the inside of your body that filters unwanted stuff out of your blood and turns all the unwanted stuff into a liquid so your body can get rid of it! Do you know how to get rid of that unwanted stuff that was in your blood that was filtered out by your kidney’s? You say, “Can I please go to the bathroom!”

God made your kidney’s and your bones! You were fearfully and wonderfully made. What part of the human anatomy amazes you most?

Isn’t that kind of funny? David says…you created my “KIDNEY’S.”

What David is trying to say with this word is…God, Himself is working like a Master Craftsman when He made our bodies. God was extremely creative in how He designed and then He actually put together our bodies. And He did this work on us even before we were born. He workshop was inside our mom’s!

David also says...

Psalm 139:15 (NIV)

15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together...

My frame…meaning “my bones.” So David says my organs and my bones were not hidden from you. You are the Master builder of them...

But not only was God the Master designer and builder of your body before you were born…but He also is the Master designer and builder of everything that happened to you BEFORE you were born, but also everything in your life since you were born.

God has also ordained all of our days? How is that a comfort to you? Or how is that intimidating?

Psalm 139:16 NIV

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

All the days were ordained for me were written in your book. David says what happens to you in your life is not by random chance… it is according to His book. Your birth and your eventual death and everything you experience in between is happening on schedule and on purpose.

Things in your life might be crazy, but they are also on schedule. We say, “for what?” Why would God allow me to go through what I am going through? Why would this happen or that happen?

Have you ever considered that everything in your life has happened right on schedule?

And that leads us to the last point of this poem. Life itself is not about you…it is about God. God is the ultimate reality…not you. Everything happens in your life the good stuff, the bad stuff, all the in between stuff is designed by God for you to be lead to all consuming truth that...

He’s the inescapable reality.

He is the inescapable reality that you have to deal with. And it is better to deal with Him in this life and not just wait for the next one. Now this is where David writes some pretty strange stuff in his poem. Ready?

Psalm 139:19–24 NIV

19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty! 20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? 22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies. 23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

This poem ends so weird…seems like a switch from the flow of the rest of the Psalm. It was so good up till this point and then David ruined it. Like I was going to make some wall art with this Psalm but these last verses?!?

Why does David ask God to “slay the wicked?” Why does David claim that God “abhors those who are in rebellion against God?”

Well let’s think for a minute…it is hard to grasp this reality…but the reason why David writes these words down, is because He was lead by the Holy Spirit of God to do so and the statement is true. God abhors those who are in rebellion against Him. (NA-KAHT - loath, hate). And this sounds judgmental and harsh until we read the next verse and see that David invited this judgement on Himself.

David wasn’t just hard on others…he was hard on himself. He invites God, the God who He just asked to slay those people who were wicked, to see if there was any wickedness in himself. And we think. David have you lost your mind? Of course the all knowing, all seeing, all powerful God is going to find some offensive way in you…and then you will deserve to be crushed for it. Why are you inviting this on yourself…in fact you should try to hide it. Conceal it…stuff it away, so that God can’t see it.

Have you invited God to show you your offensive ways? What is stopping you?

And if David was here…he would say to us…didn’t you just read the last 18 verses? There is no hiding from God.

God knows all about me...There is no place where I can flee...God, Himself is the Master of me. He is the inescapable reality.

David doesn’t ask God to search him because He doesn’t think that God will find any wickedness in him. David asks God to search him because David knows that he is blinded to his own wickedness. He wants to be healed, but in order to be healed he must be broken first. David’s only hope is that God would search him out and show him his offensive ways (his anxieties), so that David can acknowledge it, confess it and have it removed from him He wants to be lead in the way of holiness and chase after a God who can see the depths of our hearts and love us the same. You are amazing God!

Sounds great…preaches well…but you didn’t answer the initial question. How much do we cost?

Well we know nothing is free. What was God willing to spend on us? If we are that Toy on the Target shelf…what would God willing to give in order to get us?

Value is often assigned to things that are rare. Let’s think about Jesus for a moment and consider how rare He is. He is the only one of His kind. He is the the second Adam, who did what the first Adam failed to do. He obeyed His Father fully. How rare? How valuable? In fact Jesus is the infinitely valuable sinless Son of God.

Ok…so Jesus is valuable…what’s that to me? Let’s look at what happened to the infinitely valuable sinless Son of God. Remember when David prayed for God to slay the wicked? It’s almost hard to stomach that. Seems brutal David. We would say… “Well at least they got what they deserved.”

Well what about Jesus? He was slaughtered and slain. He and didn’t get what He deserved, He got what you and I deserved. He took the punishment that was due us, and in return promises to “never leave or forsake us.”

So how precious and valuable are you to God? God did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all.

You are a priceless treasure to God. You were the next item up for bid…and God gave His Son for you.

How much are you worth to God?