Sermon Tone Analysis

*Living in Light of our Infinite and Intimate Creator*

*Psalm 139:13-18*

 

Spurgeon called Psalm 139 “one of the most notable of the sacred hymns” as bright as a sapphire or crystal.

Even non-Christian writers like Plato appear to have been affected by its portrayal of God’s omniscience and omnipresence.

One Jewish scholar called this Psalm the “crown of Psalm-poetry” and John Gill debated whether this might be “the most glorious and excellent Psalm in all the book.”[1]

As we think of mothers on mother’s day, this passage is a beautiful reminder of our God who is not only Infinite, but also intimately involved with us, including the formation and intricate design of each of us in our mother before we were born.

There is nothing in the world like a mother bringing a new human life into the world.

With all the advances in science and medicine, there is still so much of a miracle and mystery about the creation and development of a child in the most secret and intimate place.

When I first studied and taught this message, my wife was exactly nine months pregnant with our first child and words cannot express the emotions and feelings involved in that whole experience.

Before we were pregnant, couples from church would show us pictures of their ultrasound, and I would smile and pretend I could tell what it was, but I really had no idea what I was looking at.

You can read about it in books or see diagrams in magazines, but there’s nothing like experiencing it first hand, with your own flesh and blood, especially as a first-time parent feeling the little person moving around and growing.

Being able to actually see it with a live ultrasound was thrilling when it was my own child!

For us, the first several weeks of our pregnancy were exciting, but it didn’t seem real until we were able to see it with our own eyes; to get that inside peek at what is really going on in there.

Witnessing the birth of Ella was one of the most emotionally moving moments of my life.

You mothers know about this miracle and process in a more profound and personal way than we men ever can.

Thousands of years before technology could even dream about looking into the womb, the Bible records somewhat of a “scriptural sonogram,” an inside peek at pregnancy from God’s perspective.

Psalm 139:13-15 is the most intimate and vivid portrait I know of in scripture about what was going on inside my wife, and I chose to study this passage for my seminary class because I wanted to get a deeper understanding and appreciation of what God’s Word said about this subject.

Most of you have heard the verse “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” but it was very special for me to spend a semester studying that verse in the original language while my own child was being fearfully and wonderfully created by God.

I want to invite you to join me on this biblical ultrasound with our Infinite and Intimate Creator

 

*I.

**God’s Personal Involvement Creating Unborn Life (13)*

 

/God made his insides/

“*For you formed my inward parts*”

Some who study Hebrew poetry have concluded that verse 13 is the apex or climax of this poem,[2] which would make this a very important and emphasized section of the psalm.

The grammar and word order in the original puts great emphasis on the first two words “For you” and the extra emphatic pronoun - “YOU formed.”

You, God, You and You alone “formed” – a word that speaks of “originating” or “creating” by God.

This isn’t evolution, or the product of mere biology and man and a woman, the text explicitly says this is God’s work.

Other ancient cultures saw conception and childbirth as dependent on idols, goddesses, and incantations, and we have record of Egyptian charms chanted for “magical protection for a child.”

[3] But in contrast to these pagan understandings, the biblical scriptures saw the LORD as the sole source and safety of human life from embryo to infancy and beyond.

Psalm 119:73 says “Your hands made me and fashioned me.”

What was God forming ~/ creating?

“/My inward parts/” - If you are reading from NASB you may have a footnote for this word, saying it literally means “kidneys.”

In the flow of this psalm, David may be emphasizing that the most secret internal part of an unborn person is not secret to God (v.

12), and in fact, even the tiniest of organs are not only seen by God but formed by God.

One scholar suggests that the writer mentioned kidneys because he an embryo (mentioned on v. 16) resembles a kidney.

The word can mean “the innermost, most secret part of man,”  “the center of deepest human emotions, such as joy or grief” or it may represent the entire inner person being formed by God.

It’s an interesting study to learn about the different ways the ancient Israelites used internal organs to describe emotions:                                

“Hebrew uses the liver (/ kābēd/ …) in expressions of joy, the kidneys (/kĕlayôt/) for affections, the heart (/lēb/) for both affections and mind and the abdominal organs (/mēı’m/) for compassion … In English the word “heart” is used for most of these …”[4]

 

You can’t help but notice how personal this whole song is.

Depending on your translation, there are at least 80 personal pronouns in this poem, including 50 times when David refers to himself personally using “I,” “me” or “my,” and here he says “/my /inward parts.”

And that’s the way this whole hymn is – David is not just talking about omniscience as an abstract concept, he’s talking about God’s knowledge that knows /him /personally and completely.

He’s not just discussing omnipresence as a theological concept, this is a presence that surrounds /him /constantly and intimately.

And the omnipotence he’s talking about is not some stuffy definition from a textbook, it’s a power that personally created him and his most delicate and sensitive parts.

It’s been said this is “one of the grandest psalms in the entire collection, if not, indeed, the best of them all … the O.T.’s highest conception of the relationship of God to the individual soul.”[5]

In the prior verse, David just finished talking about the immensity and inescapability of God’s massive presence that fills the whole universe.

If I was going to turn the corner and talk about how all-powerful God is, I would maybe talk about how He created the vast galaxies, or hundreds of billions of stars, or the majestic mountains.

But David instead focuses on his tiniest internal parts and the tiniest stage of human life.

There’s another passage where God’s forming of the inward man is put on the same level as God’s grand works: “/Thus /declares the Lord who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him…” (Zechariah 12:1).

Another powerful section introduces God like this in Isaiah 44:2 “Thus says the LORD who made you, and formed you in the womb, who will help you, do not fear …”  The comfort and the most amazing thing to David in this context is not God’s creation of the Universe, it’s His intimate and providential knowledge, His delicate working in the smallest details, and His caring for him personally.

/God not only made his insides, God made him inside and out/

 “*You wove me in my mother’s womb*”

 

The verb here has the idea of shaping, knitting together or weaving.

The imperfect tense of this verb is emphasizing continual action over a period of time, so the original language may be explaining that God is constantly weaving the unborn body together throughout the entire pregnancy.

The imagery is beautiful - the developing skin, sinews, bones, and muscles are the fabric being delicately and intricately wound together by the master Weaver with as much painstaking care over its formation as a woman laboring over important tapestry.[6]

To weave or sew requires the maximum amount of light possible, but the God of David does the most delicate sewing and prenatal operations in the darkest possible place.

This fits with the end of verse 12: “darkness and light are alike” to God.

 

*II.

**God’s Praise Should be the Response of our Life (14)*

* *

“I will give thanks to you” – David will continue talking about his unborn body in a moment, but here he can’t help but interrupt himself.

He can’t continue this thought without bursting into irresistible thanksgiving.

Much like the Apostle Paul in many of his epistles, he can’t talk very long about God and His Works without breaking into spontaneous praise.

One lesson we can learn from this psalm is the appropriate response to learning about God – worship.

God’s attributes and character are not just to be intellectually /analyzed/, they are to be /adored/.

I like what one writer said:

 

Indeed, one cannot think of God and His wondrous works without bursting forth into praise.

This is the reason why in so many textbooks of theology, even in the midst of their exposition of the truth, the author allows his feelings of love and praise to God to break through.

It is well that such is the case.

To be pitied is the man who can discourse about the greatness of God without emotion.

He who knows God and loves Him cannot speak of Him without feeling … If we are not moved to praise by the contemplation of God’s attributes, we may well examine our hearts whether we possess the true knowledge of God.

When the devout heart begins to contemplate the greatness of God, it loses itself in wonder, love, and praise.[7]

Unlike the way many churchgoers think today, there is no dichotomy here between doctrine and practice, between theology and life.

To the scripture writers, doctrine is immensely practical, and theology should have a great impact on how we live our life.

Spurgeon rightly said this song “warns us against that practical atheism which ignores the presence of God, and so makes shipwreck of the soul.”[8]

“*For I am fearfully and wonderfully made*” – this is what makes him praise God.

This is one of the most familiar phrases in this section, and also is among the most heavily emphasized by the original pen.

David uses several literary devices[9] to make this statement especially intense.

There are three consecutive passives in this verse, which perhaps stress that all of the action was done by God alone (divine passive).

Each human being is marvelously unique, and we should give God all the glory: “Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well.”

David doesn’t say “my /mind /knows” – he says that his soul knows.

Clearly David is talking about more than an intellectual knowledge.

Notice that he doesn’t have to give a laundry list of extra blessings in his life to say, “Wonderful are Your works,” nor does he need to recount God’s works in Israel’s history.

Simply the miracle of life itself and God’s involvement is enough.

In discussing amazing recent advances in prenatal science, Stanford University biologist Matthew Scott says we understand a lot more now than ever before, but it still “just seems marvelous.”[10]

A Scottish Christian writer named Alexander MacLaren wrote: “the psalmist cannot contemplate his own frame, God’s workmanship, without breaking into thanks, nor without being touched with awe.

Every man carries in his own body reasons enough for reverent gratitude.”[11]

/Read verses 17-18./

It’s a staggering thought how much our Infinite God intimately cares – what a precious truth for a believer!

How are we fearfully and wonderfully made?

I need to make a disclaimer here that I’m not an expert when it comes to pregnancy and the science of and stages of embryonic development (until we had kids, I thought “placenta” was a city in Southern California).

But what I have read from those who are experts in this field is amazing.

Look at the word “inward parts” in verse 13.  Do you see the tiny dot over the letter “i” in the word inward?

We’re told that in a speck of watery material smaller than the dot over this i, all the future characteristics of the child are programmed—the color of his skin, eyes and hair, the shape of his facial features, the natural abilities he will have.

All that the child will be physically and mentally is contained in germ form in that fertilized egg.

From it will develop:[12]

 

60 trillion cells, 100 thousand miles of nerve fiber, 60 thousand miles of vessels carrying blood around the body, 250 bones, to say nothing of joints, ligaments and muscles.

God formed our inward parts; each one a marvel of divine engineering.

Think of the brain, for instance, with its capacity for recording facts, sounds, odors, sights, touch, pain; with its ability to recall; with its power to make computations; with its seemingly endless flair for making decisions and solving problems.

The language of knitting together is appropriate in describing the marvelous weaving of the muscles, sinews, ligaments, nerves, blood vessels and bones of the human frame.

The more we think of the marvels of the human body, its orderliness, its complexity, its beauty, its instincts and inherited factors—the more we wonder how anyone trained in natural science can fail to be a believer in an infinite Creator.[13]

Even Charles Darwin, said this in /The Origin of Species/, the book which largely launched the naturalistic evolution theory: