Psalm 139: Searching for Identity
Notes
Transcript
Finding Identity
Finding Identity
Where does our identity primarily come from?
Is our identity primarily physical?
Our personality, our physical and mental aptitudes and abilities versus our flaws, defects, and deficiencies?
Is our identity primarily social?
Being liked, accepted, valued, validated by other people.
Being loved by someone like a spouse or a GF/BF.
Being accepted by a certain group of people.
Is our identity primarily successes and failures?
Our mess-ups and failures in the past.
How we have been treated or mistreated.
Our successes and accomplishments now and/or in the future.
What we have experienced and accumulated in our lifetime.
Or is our identity wrapped up in something else or a combination of these things.
Psalm 139 is a rich, deep, powerful Psalm that can't be pigeon-holed into a single genre. But at the heart of it, it is a Psalm about identity, both God's and ours.
And ultimately, how who we are is shaped by who God is.
Three points about how who God is shapes who we are
Then three ways we should respond.
He Is, We Are
He Is, We Are
1) God KNOWS, We are KNOWN.
1) God KNOWS, We are KNOWN.
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.
It is so easy to be "known" in our culture. You can literally broadcast your life on the internet for anyone to watch, ask questions, and even make requests.
We watch people workout, make food, surf the internet, play games, and lots of, much less appropriate, things.
We are perhaps in the greatest position in human history to be known, to be able to express ourselves,
and yet we are perhaps more lost, lonely, and aimless then any time in human history.
Our efforts to be known, and even to know ourselves, fail because we start looking in the wrong place.
"You have searched me..." "You know when I sit and when I rise...” “Before a word is on my tongue, you know...”
The deep desire in all of us to be known is evidence of the ingrained awareness of our all knowing God. He literally knows everything about us.
God’s knowledge is without limits.
He knows each and everyone of us so deeply that He sees the thoughts and intentions of our hearts in a way we are unable to see.
He knows the motive of why we sit down and why we choose to stand up.
He is not surprised by the paths we choose or the ways we walk
That might be a little off-putting. It is vulnerable to be known to that extent isn't it?
But it is also comforting to know that we are known, fully and completely. Nothing surprises Him because He knows us.
And He is not repulsed by you.
He doesn’t turn away from you, but offers you grace, forgiveness, and love.
2) God is PRESENT, We cannot HIDE.
2) God is PRESENT, We cannot HIDE.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.
We have all kinds of ways to hide don't we?
- camo
- makeup
- false internet profiles
- false images of success or togetherness
- religion
- words, smarts, athleticism...
Why do we hide?
Because we are ashamed, envious, or broken
David realizes the absurdity of hiding from an all present God.
He cannot hide in Heaven or in hell; nor in the far reaches of the morning sunrise or the even sunset.
God is present in all things and in all places.
There is no place to hide.
But he also understands the ignorance of hiding from God,
knowing the outcome of being found by him.
10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.
"I once was lost but now I'm found."
We are like kids playing hiding seek.
Hiding in the worst spots, thinking God can’t see us.
We may be hiding in fear, in shame, in pride, or in despair, but being found is good and gracious thing.
3) God CREATED, We are HIS CREATION.
3) God CREATED, We are HIS CREATION.
13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 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 there was none of them.
God doesn't make mistakes.
Our culture wants us to believe we are a big mistake
physically, gender, emotionally, mentally, sexually...
God creates us with hands on intentionality.
yes we are tainted and broken by sin, but God is a god of redemption and resurrection.
you are not an accident. You are not broken beyond repair.
Each and every person who has ever been conceived (yes from the very point of conception) was created in the image of God.
There is a value to each life God has intentionally and personally knitted together.
We must see ourselves, those around us, those around the world, and even, and especially, those who are not able to speak for themselves, and “fearfully and wonderfully made.”
God did not create you with the wrong parts and pieces.
He had purpose in making each and every piece of you.
Placing the pigment in your skin and the dna in your very being.
You are not a mistake.
Our Response
Our Response
1) Let God’s THOUGHTS shape our IDENTITY.
1) Let God’s THOUGHTS shape our IDENTITY.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.
You hear all kinds of thoughts, impressions, opinions, observations, and criticisms from all kinds of sources.
You speak to yourself more than anyone else in the world.
But what you are hearing isn’t always true.
But God’s thoughts outnumber all the thoughts anyone who has ever lived has had combined.
And His thoughts are precious, not pernicious, poisonous, or prejudiced.
Take all the thoughts you have, and all the ones you hear and let them shrink in comparison of all the precious thoughts God has of those who are His Children, beloved and blessed.
2) DESPISE the LIES.
2) DESPISE the LIES.
19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! 20 They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? 22 I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.
David is talking about real people, real enemies, and there is an important application of hatred toward evil in this passage.
But the implication drawn here is to hate the lies that distort and misconstrue who God is, and in turn, who we are.
There is a loathing that needs to be cultivated in us toward the ways our own brains cause us to distort our identity as “fearfully and wonderfully” created image bearers of God.
this doesn’t mean we curse culture, curse people, or speak with disdain.
It means we despise lies, ignore untruth, and deplore doctrines that try to distort God’s glorious goodness and His good creation.
3) RUN to HIM.
3) RUN to HIM.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
David finishes with a prayer.
It is a desperate prayer...
Search me, know me, try me, know my thought, see me in a way I could never see myself, and lead me in a way that is true, right, and good.
As David sees and embraces the all-knowing, all-present, creative, kind, and all-loving God who has saved him and promised him grace and favor, he runs to Him.
And that ought to be our response today…run to Him
That you may know Him more fully and then know yourself more completely.
You are fully known and fully loved if you are indeed in Him.