You may be seated. Amen. Thank you Paul and music team for a wonderful evening of music. Do you remember those little course booklets we used to have called Singspiration and Youth Praise? Wouldn't it be fun to get some of those sometime and just have a Sunday night of singing the old favorites that we used to sing? That'd be a lot of fun. Our arthritic hands are cutting, Paul. We would like that.
So I don't know if we can come up with enough of those to do that or not, but it'd be fun to sing some of the choruses like we sang earlier tonight, and I've forgotten over the years. Well, we are going to turn our Bibles to Psalm 139, one of the greatest of the Psalms written by David. But it is a Psalm which may very well be an expression of the joy of his Son, our Lord, the Messiah.
And if you read the Psalm in that sense, it takes on a new life, a new bit of meaning, to see it as a song of the joy of Messiah in his relationship to his Father. In this Psalm, there is that emphasis of the personal relationship between God and his own. And for that reason, this is a favorite Psalm of a lot of people. Regarding this Psalm, Warren Wiersbe writes, If you are faithful to the Lord, this Psalm will encourage you.
If you are trying to hide from the Lord, this Psalm will make you realize you are fighting a losing battle. He outlines the Psalm in a very interesting way, and I share it because he has such a simple way of breaking down the Word of God in a practical sense. He says, God knows what you do, verses 1-6. God knows where you go, verses 7-12. God knows what you are, verses 13-16. God knows what you think, verses 17-18. God knows what you love, verses 19-22. God knows what you desire, verses 23-24.
I enjoy reading Dr. Wiersbe's books, but I always wait until I have gotten my message done before I do. Because he has a way of breaking it down in such a way I can't see it any differently afterward. So I have to get my outline and my message together first before I go to the deep well of his thoughts.
It seems to me that as Messiah reflects upon the relationship that he has with his Father, and by application the relationship that we, God's children, have with our Heavenly Father, that there are four attributes of God that arise from this psalm. In verses 1-6 we see the omniscience of God. The omniscience of God. That means the absolute, complete, total knowledge of God. You know, God has made us so that we can know things.
The older I get, the more I forget things. I don't know if that is a blessing or not. Sometimes it is, isn't it, to be able to forget. But God has made us so that we have an intellect and can know. But our intellect cannot even be compared with God's. We discover things. We come to know things. We explore. We investigate. God knows everything. He doesn't have to discover. He doesn't have to dig into it. He doesn't have to turn the page over to see what's there. God knows everything.
And in contrast to our ability to forget, God never forgets anything. You say, well, doesn't it say in the Bible that He forgets our sins? It does say that, but you know, that's an expression that means that God chooses not to hold those things against us. He doesn't hold us guilty for those things because God knows everything. He cannot forget anything. It begins by saying, oh Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou dost know. This word know means to discern deeply.
It means to be intimately acquainted with. It is the word in the Old Testament that is known, that is used for a man knowing a woman. It's that kind of intimacy. And He says, God, you know me in the most intimate way possible. And then He begins to describe how intimately God knows Him. He says, God knows my routine. Thou dost know when I sit down and when I rise up. The routine of the day. Those times when we are at rest, those times when we are about, God knows them all.
He says that God knows our thoughts, for thou dost understand my thought from afar. That is, long before I have my thoughts, God, you know them. That's the thought here. And this word thought may also embrace the idea of intentions. So God not only knows the thoughts that we have, but God knows the intentions of our thoughts and our hearts. He knows our motives. He says, thou dost scrutinize my path and my lying down. These are the acts of life.
And to scrutinize may mean to winnow or to sift through them, like you sift through the grain. To get out the kernels that are good and so that the rest can fall away. He says, God, you do winnow my path and my lying down. You know it all. You are intimately acquainted with all my ways, which may speak of the habits of life. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, thou dost know it all. And so God knows our words.
He goes on to say, thou hast enclosed me behind and before, and laid thy hand upon me. He says, God, you have encircled me. You are on every side of me, and not only that, your hand is over me. And so you see, he doesn't see the knowledge of God as some threatening thing. He doesn't see God's intimate acquaintance with him as something to be afraid of. He sees it as protection. He sees it as a blessing because the Lord encircles him with his knowledge. And the Lord covers him with his knowledge.
And then he says, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is too high. I cannot attain to it. This word wonderful means incomprehensible. This particular Hebrew word is used only two times in the Old Testament. The other occasion is in Judges 13 and verse 18, where the Lord says that his name is wonderful. Gideon asks, well, what is your name? He says, is it not wonderful? And so he is saying, God, your knowledge of me is in accordance with your attributes, who you are, your name.
It is wonderful. It is supernatural, this knowledge that you have of me. Now, we will never gain the omniscience of God. But as I said before, God does give us an intellect. We can discover things. We can know things. But there are some things we could not know by self-discovery or by scientific investigation. And those are especially the things that relate to God, spiritual things. Therefore, God has to reveal those things to us.
There is a theology that is out there today that says that God is developing. I have talked to you before about it. It is the application of the theory of evolution, the theology. And it is doing to theology what it has done to every other science of life. It is destructive. But it says that God does not really know everything, that God is learning along with us. God is developing, you see. Well, that certainly flies in the face of what the Word of God says.
God reveals himself as one who knows all. And yet, God also has given to us a revelation so that we have understanding that we could not have by self-discovery. Turn back to Ephesians chapter 1. Keep your finger here. I was thinking this afternoon of this text in Ephesians 1, where he lays out for us our blessings from God. And in the middle of verse 8, he begins a new sentence. I do not know how your translation may put the punctuation in here, but the NASV puts it this way.
In all wisdom and insight, he made known to us the mystery of his will. Now, you probably know this word mystery is a very special word in the New Testament. It is a word that Paul picked up out of the religious world of his day, the mystery religions. But he washes it off, and the Holy Spirit sanctifies it, and uses it in the New Testament in a special way. And it talks about those things that we could not know in our own, but which God has revealed to us in his own time.
And he says that God has given us this special knowledge or insight into his will, according to his kind intention, which he purposed in Christ. And here he gives us here the sum of it all. He says, here's the mystery, that with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of times, that is the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things upon the earth.
What he's telling us here is that a piece of knowledge that God has given to us is this, that the end of history, the end of time, will all come together in Jesus Christ. He is the originator of time, he is the one who started history's motion forward, and he's at the end of it all to receive it when it's done. In the meantime, history has taken a lot of twists and turns, God has known them all.
But he is so working by his power through history that in the end everything is going to flow to Jesus Christ and to his reign, his eternal kingdom, and nothing is going to be left out. Everything belongs to Jesus Christ. Everything is summed up in him. Well, let's go back to Psalm 139 and reflect again upon God's omniscience as we leave the first paragraph.
The fact that God knows everything, he knows the beginning from the ending, he has given to us insights into things that we could not have apart from his revelation. Our faith is not the result of discovery, it is not the result of the changing of human thinking about God. There are those who think that monotheism, the belief in one God, is the result of people who once had many gods and they finally came to the discoverer of the idea of one God.
That isn't true at all. In the very beginning all men had the knowledge of one God, isn't that right? That's Romans chapter 1. They suppressed that truth and the result was that they came to worship the creation rather than the creator, became fools. Man developed the idea of many gods, that wasn't how we started out. That's the result of the devolution, not evolution, of human thought, the devolution of it. God has revealed himself to us, we may know him.
Well, let's go on to the next paragraph where he talks now about God's omnipresence. Now here's a word that refers to the fact that God is not limited by space. He is present everywhere. Where can I go from thy spirit? Or where can I flee from thy presence? The word means his face. God doesn't have a face like you and I have a face, but it's talking about the awareness of God, the fact that he is there, he is present everywhere.
He says, If I ascend to heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there, thy hand will lead me and thy right hand will lay hold of me. Now he lays down at least three contrasts here to show us how God is present everywhere. There's a contrast first of all in the afterlife. He talks about heaven and he talks about hell or better, Sheol.
Heaven is the realm of God, the place where God dwells. Now God is everywhere present, that's what he's saying here, but there is a special sense in which God dwells in the heavens. And he says, Lord, you're there. If I go to the heavens, I can't escape you. That's your home, your habitation in a special sense. On the other hand, he says, if I go to Sheol, which is the realm of the dead, you're there. That's the first contrast. The second one has to do with dimension of heights.
He says, if I ascend to heaven, if I go up, on the other hand, if I go down, if I make my bed in Sheol, you're there. So here we have the ups and the downs, God's everywhere. To the Hebrew mind, Sheol, the realm of the dead was down, going down to Sheol. And that gives rise to the concept that the realm of the dead in the Old Testament may well have been down. It has nothing to do with the body, it has to do with the soul.
And there is the concept of Sheol that it was in two compartments, as most of you know, and that there was the place of the righteous dead, which was paradise, where the beggar went in the parable that Jesus told in Luke. And then there was hell, Gehenna, the place of fire, the place of suffering, where the unrighteous dead went. Both were embraced in the Hebrew concept of Sheol, and they looked upon that as going down to Sheol.
So he's thinking here of dimensions, ascending to heaven, going down to Sheol. Then there's a third contrast, it is the contrast of distance and direction. He talks about the wings of the dawn. Now we're going to transport ourselves to Israel for a moment. And whether we're in Israel or Minnesota, for that matter, the dawn is which direction? Right, it's in the east.
I remember when I was a kid being on vacation, I was 11 years old, and we had driven rather late into the night and stopped at a motel. Now this was 1956. Do you ever remember what motels were like in 1956? If you ever see the I Love Lucy, where they're traveling to California, it was a whole lot like that. And I got up in the morning out of this little cabin, and I went outside, and do you know, I'm telling you, the sun came up in the west. The sun came up in the west that morning.
I remember running back into the cabin and telling my mother, the sun is coming up in the west. Well, I'd gotten so turned around in the night, you see, but it was the east. It was the east. And he talks about these fingers of the sun ray, the wings of the dawn. It's a very beautiful picture, isn't it? I love to see the dawn, those rays of light shooting into the air. So he talks about the east, and then he says, I dwell in the remotest part of the sea.
Now, if you're in Israel, what's the sea all about? Sure, the Mediterranean, and that's to the west. And so he's measuring the distance, which you really can't measure, east and west, and he says, I can go as far as I can to the east, to the dawn. I can't escape you. I can go to the west, into the sea. I can't escape you. And so he's talking here about, and describing for us, the omnipresence of God.
And then he talks about the circumstances of life, and there's another contrast between light and darkness. He says, if I say, surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night, even the darkness is not dark to thee, and the night is as bright as the day, darkness and light are alike to thee. He's using the words here of darkness and light, but it's probably a metaphor talking about the circumstances of life, the light circumstances, the dark circumstances.
And he's saying that in both of these, God is present, and that there is no difference between light and dark to the Lord, that they are the same to him. And so God is present everywhere. And then beginning in verse 13, we have another attribute. Here we have the attribute of omnipotence, which is God's power, that God is all-powerful. He says, for thou didst form my inward parts. Now he's going to illustrate God's omnipotence here in a very specific way.
He says, thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst weave me in my mother's womb. Inward parts is that word that we remarked on a few weeks ago, kidneys. Thou didst form my kidneys. To the Hebrew mind, the kidneys were the source of affection, the source of conscience. That's where the real person, the immaterial part of a person was. And so that's what he's talking about. He's saying, Lord, you formed the invisible part of me, the spiritual part of me, my soul. Not only that.
You wove me in my mother's womb. And so here he's talking about his body, his physical body. So by God's power, God had created him and put him together, bringing the soul and the body together within the womb. And we have a picture here in the weaving together of the chromosomes, don't we? In the wonderful miracle of human conception. He says, I will give thanks to thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. The word fear here means I am awesomely made.
I am made in such a way that my soul is caused to reverence my Creator. He says, wonderful are thy works, and my soul knows it very well. Different word here for wonderful than earlier. It's a very similar meaning. It's the idea of singular. Extraordinary are your works. It's a word that is used 70 times in the Old Testament. The very first time is found in Genesis 18, 14. Just go back there and look at that for a minute with me, will you?
Whenever a word is used for the first time, it's always kind of interesting to see how it's used. This is Genesis 18, verse 14. Here we have the Lord coming to Abraham and talking with him. Without going into the whole context of the story, you remember that the Lord made a statement regarding the birth of a child. Sarah laughed to herself, saying, verse 12, After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my Lord being old also?
And the Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying, Indeed, shall I bear a child when I am so old? And then he says, verse 14, Is anything too difficult for the Lord? The word difficult there is this word. Is anything too singular, too extraordinary for the Lord? The Lord said, At the appointed time I will return to you, and Sarah will have a son. So we have an illustration of the singular, wonderful works of God.
Then he says in verse 15, going back now to Psalm 139, My frame was not hidden from thee. The word frame means bone, probably a reference to his skeleton as it was formed. My frame was not hidden from thee. When I was fashioned, when I was refined in secret, wouldn't that be a way to describe what happens as the fertilized egg begins to develop and it's refined? As each critical part begins to form, to be developed?
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth, which is a poetic phrase referring to the womb of the mother. He says, Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance, a reference to the embryo. And in thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them. And so he talks about the omnipotence of God as we see it in the miracle of birth and of human life.
Now you think of this particularly in relation to Messiah, and to the unusual, unique birth of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth of our Lord, and how that God, in a way that we cannot understand, united himself to humanity, became a real man. It wasn't that human nature kind of shrouded, became a shroud for his deity. It is that deity and humanity united and then dwelt in the body, in the womb of Mary.
So you can see how this text, while it refers to all of us, is a very wonderful expression of what happened in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. How precious also are thy thoughts to me, that is, your thoughts, the thoughts I have of you, God. How vast is the sum of them. If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee. Do you remember that old hymn, still, still with thee, when morning something awakens?
One of the great hymns. I'm sure that's not in our hymnal. It's not. You didn't even look. You know, you know these things, don't you, Paul? Okay. I'm sure it's not in there, too. It's one of the great hymns. If you have an old hymnal, look it up. When I awake, I am still with thee. And when he talks about I count them, he means to score them,
to tally them up, to enumerate them, to list them in detail. Like we sang earlier about counting our blessings, he says, God, if I should count all of the thoughts of you, they would outnumber the sand. Well, that brings us to verse 19, where we have the last of the attributes of God the Messiah rejoices in in his personal relationship with his Father. We might call this the Omni-righteousness of God.
I don't think I've ever seen that term in a theology book, but I have heard that term in a theology class, and so I'm going to use it tonight. It is the fact that God is righteous, totally, the Omni-righteousness of God. O that thou wouldst slay the wicked, O God. Now there's a turn. Do you see it here? So far it's been a very wonderful, pleasant psalm, and now there is the injection of a prayer for judgment upon the wicked.
And so this psalm has what is called a tone of an imprecatory psalm, one that prays for God to deal with the wicked. And may we not think of our Lord in these words? Listen to them. O that thou wouldst slay the wicked, O God, depart from me, therefore bloodthirsty men, that's what it literally says, those who have no respect for life, for they speak against thee wickedly. That is, there's no respect. And thine enemies, take thy name in vain.
Do not I hate those who hate thee, O Lord, and do not I loathe those who rise up against thee? I hate them with the utmost hatred. They have become my enemies. Now, some of us may have a hard time thinking of the Lord Jesus talking like this, but let us remember that as perfect as His love is, so is His hatred perfect. It's not the sinful kind of hatred that we can be characterized with.
It is a perfect hatred that is not based upon some personal thing, but is based upon the sinfulness of those that are characterized as wicked. And so He says in the most holy sense, do not I hate those who hate thee, O Lord. The word hate is a very strong word, and as much as anything it may underscore the loyalty of the one who is speaking to God. In other words, His love for God is so strong that His feelings for those who hate God can only be described as hatred.
You see the same kind of a contrast in the words used in Malachi where God says, Jacob, I have love. Esau, I have hated. Did God have a hatred for Esau? No. Not in the sense that we sometimes use that word, but it's an expression of the fact that God had chosen Jacob in love. And on the other hand, God had not chosen Esau. So there's the contrast. It's the pulling apart of the two.
And what the psalmist is saying here, what I believe our Lord is saying, He pulls apart the wicked in God and says, God, I love you so much with such a deep abiding loyalty that when I look at the wicked, it is His hatred. Is there a sense in which we ought to hate the wicked? Well, not in the sense of personal malice. Unfortunately, sometimes we fall into that trap of hating those who are wicked. And we ought not to hate them. We can hate their sin, but we ought not to hate them.
They too are creatures of God who God loves in Jesus Christ. But you know, the more you draw close to God, the deeper your loyalty to God, sometimes the stronger your feelings are in a sense toward those who hate God. And while you don't have personal malice toward them, there is a sense in which there is directed toward them a hatred. Only in the sense that they are the enemies of God, not because they're my enemies, but because I love God so much and they're His enemies.
Well, think about that. I can see that doesn't settle well with all of you. But it's worth talking about, I think. He says, I hate them with an utmost hatred. Remember, this is David talking now. It's David who said this, even though I think he's speaking for Messiah, his son. They've become my enemies because of the enemies of God. Having said all of this about his intimate relationship with God, he now concludes by a prayer. He has already said, you have searched me and known me.
But notice he comes full circle and he says, search me and know me. He invites God to yet again search him and to know his heart. Can we know our own hearts? What does Jeremiah say about that? The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, he says. Who can know it? But God can. And David, Messiah, you, me, we can come to God who knows us, who made us, who knew us before we were born. And without fear we can ask Him, Lord search me and know me.
Try me. The word try here means to investigate the quality of my spirit. And know my anxious thoughts. Now he says anxious thoughts. So there may have been in David's mind some concern about his enemies. Now we don't think of the Lord Jesus as being worried about them and yet he was human, wasn't he? And he as man felt the pressure of his enemies, especially as they closed in on him. And then at the garden they arrested him. Try me and know my anxious thoughts.
I wonder if this may have been one of the Psalms Jesus used in the Garden of Gethsemane. And prayed as he was about to become the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, and prayed as he was about to become the sacrifice for our sins. Oh God search me. Oh God know me. Oh God try me. And see if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. There's a contrast here in verse 24. The hurtful way is the way of the world. It's the way that produces sorrow.
The root word here in hurtful means to carve out. It is a word associated with idolatry and rebellion against God. Idolatry that produces heartache and sorrow and pain and disappointment. It's the way of the world. So he says see if there be any idolatrous way, any way of sorrow because of sin that is in me. And then he says lead me in the everlasting way. Now in the Lord Jesus there was no hurtful way.
Oh he was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, but it wasn't his sin that caused the sorrow. It was ours. There was not a hurtful idolatrous way in the Lord Jesus. He passed the test. But we can pray this and need to. And then he says lead me. Lead me in the everlasting way. This is the way of the Lord. The way of the Lord. Lead me in the everlasting way. This word everlasting is one of the names of God. Back again in Genesis chapter 21 verse 33.
God gives his name to Abraham. It is the name El-Olam. The everlasting God. That is the God of eternity. And so he prays lead me in the way of eternity. Lead me in the way of the eternal one. Let's turn over again to another book to Proverbs this time. To chapter 4. Where we have a thought that is somewhat similar as we close. Here the writer is advising his sons to stay away from evil people. The way of evil men. But he says in verse 18, the path of the righteous. That's the everlasting way.
The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn. That shines brighter and brighter until the full day. The way of the wicked. That's the hurtful way. Is like darkness. They do not know over what they stumble. Isn't that the truth? Which way are you on? Are you on the everlasting way? The way that begins with a shaft of light. And then it grows brighter and brighter and brighter as you go along. That's the everlasting way of God. I hope that's the way you're walking on tonight.
If you're walking on the way of the wicked. And stumbling in the dark over things you can't even understand. Know this. That you can change directions. And you can enter the way. Through the narrow gate that Jesus talked about. That is the way that leads to life. The everlasting way. Well this is a great psalm. Psalm 139 is indeed one of my favorites as well as the favorite of a number of you I'm sure. I wonder if we shouldn't sing one of the three hymns in our hymnal.
And I know you already know that. But there are three hymns in our hymnal that are based upon Psalm 139 entitled Search Me, O God. And I think we ought to use the Neoran melody. And of course you know what that is Paul. He's fun to tease. What is the page? I've forgotten the page. 343 is that it? 438. Okay. 438. You'll recognize the page. You'll recognize the page.