Dwell | Week Seven | Psalm 139

Hey, good morning, everyone. Glad to see you. So we are in this Dwell series. We're going to continue in that today, looking at the book of Psalms. So if you kind of open up to the middle of your Bible, go a little bit left, and then you'll run into it.

If you don't see it, go right. It's a really big book, so you're going to find it pretty easy. And we're going to be in Psalm 139. This is a collection of poems and songs written by different people. The one we're going to read today was written by King David, and it's one of the more popular, I think, psalms that people are really familiar with.

But I want to read it all the way through, and then we'll go back and look at it and talk through it. But I want you to be able to hear the whole thing together. It's a really, really powerful and beautiful psalm. So it says this in Psalm 139, verse 1. You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You're familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before, and you'd lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from youm spirit? Where can I flee from youm presence? If I go up to the heavens, you're there.

If I make my bed in the depths, you're there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle at the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me steadfast. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me. Even though the darkness will not be dark to you, the night will shine like the day.

For darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful.

I know that full well. 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, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious are your thoughts, God. How vast is the sum of them.

Were I to count them, they would outnumber the Grains of sand. When I wake, I'm still with you. If only you, God would slay the wicked. That's just kind of. I don't like.

Did he just have an ADHD moment? Like, what just happened there? It's like, beautiful. It's all. I praise you.

I'm wonderfully made, God. Kill everybody.

Your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I'm nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies. Search me, God, and know my heart.

Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Let's pray. Father, we thank you this morning for your goodness. We thank you, God, for the desire in your heart to know us intimately.

That God, you know when we rise, you know when we sit. You know our thoughts. You know the words we will say before they're said. Lord, you made us intentionally. You made us on purpose.

You weren't creating life, you were creating a life. So, God, I pray this morning that our eyes would be open to see your intent towards us, to be able to see God you more clearly and accurately in our lives. And God, that we, as Russ has mentioned this morning, would be able to receive your grace, maybe in a deeper, more fuller way than ever before, maybe for the first time. But God, I thank you that your spirit will work in people's hearts. I thank you, God, that your word will accomplish its purposes.

And God, that you will be glorified. I thank you that your glory will fill the earth.

The knowledge of your glory will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. So, Lord, be glorified in this time. Work in our hearts. You can. You can work in our lives that your glory would shine throughout the earth.

Lord, we love you and we thank you in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. So here's the thing about this psalm. So think about this.

It says, david begins this. And he says, you have searched me, Lord, and you know me.

That's kind of okay, right? And then he says this. He says, you know when I sit and when I rise, how many of you are comforted by the fact that God knows when you sit, when you rise, with everything you do? He knows everything that you do. How many of you.

That makes you a little uneasy. And then he says this. You perceive my thoughts from afar. How many are comforted by God knowing your thoughts? How many of you make it a little uneasy by God knowing your thoughts?

Right.

He says, you discern my going out and my lying down. In other words, from the time I leave the house to the time I get back home, from the time I get out of bed to the time I lay my head back down, you know everything. You're familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely.

How comforting is that, right? When you think about God, you think about the words you say, what's that feel like?

He says, you hem me in, behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. He says, such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. He's like, I can't even fathom this, the intimacy, the desire that God has to know us. And I would ask you this. Does that make you comforted or uncomfortable?

Does that give you confidence or concern? Does that bring contentment? Or does it kind of make you uneasy? Because how we perceive this, I think, says a lot about how we perceive God. I think it says a lot about how we perceive even ourselves.

And so this can be distressful, it can be concerning, it can be disquieting for different reasons. One reason, and this is just a reality, is thinking that God is present, thinking that God sees all, knows all, hears all, is aware of all. Even before we do all the things we do, there can be this concern of judgment and condemnation. And I would say this if, like Quentin talked about earlier with Ephesians 2, 1, 10, if we not receive the grace of God by faith, then we have a right. We should be concerned about judgment and condemnation because the Bible tells us that we stand condemned already just because of our nature and sin.

We don't have to work our way to condemnation. We pretty much find that on our own. But it's God who enlightens us to salvation through his Son, Jesus. So if there's a weight of condemnation on us that exists, and there's a concern or even a disinterest of God's presence in our life, then if we haven't come to faith, right, to feel that way. But there is also this shadow of conviction that can be over our heart because we know we're not walking in God's ways.

And that's what he says in verse 24. He says, See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. In other words, lead me to walk in your ways, God. Lead me to live a pleasing life to you. But for some of us, there's conviction in our hearts because we know we're not living in God's ways.

For some of us, there's things God's been putting his finger on for a long time and we just keep ignoring.

Another reason would be that we know God, but we don't have a good understanding of the character and nature of God. So his presence doesn't really bring us peace, but despair. And so in many ways for a lot of believers, the weight of condemnation that hangs over your life is very similar to the weight of condemnation that hangs over an unbeliever's life. But for the unbeliever, it's just for the believer the condemnation has been taken away. So that Paul says there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And this is one that I think is really popular in the church. It's almost a plague in the church and is we don't really understand the character and nature of God. So we walk in a lot of condemnation and shame. That doesn't push us towards becoming more like God. It causes us to turn away from God.

And the Bible says in verse 5 that God hems us in. David says, you hem me in behind. And before, think about this, this word for him in. If you look in at the Hebrew word, it's a word that literally means to surround. He's saying, you surround me, God.

If you look at its uses in scripture, the majority of times it is used, it's used to describe an army that has surrounded another army, a city or something to besiege it to almost like force surrender. And when we think about God hemming us in, when we think about God besieging us, if we don't understand the character and nature of God, then that can be a horrifying thought. That can be a thought that turns us away from God, or it can be a life giving thought and a thought that gives us courage. Because if we believe what we just sang, that his goodness is running after us, then it changes everything. If we believe that God is like this cosmic Santa Claus who's just constantly making a naughty and nice list, who's just looking to catch us in our mistakes and in our errors, then to be hemmed in by God is terrifying.

But to know that God wants to bring us to a place of surrender for our good is an incredible thing. To know that God loves us so much, that he is aware of when I sit and when I rise, that he is aware of my thoughts, that he's aware of when I go out and when I lie down, that he loves me so much he's familiar with me. He's familiar with me.

You ever notice, like, somebody that you're really familiar with, you can know it's them without knowing it's them?

Like, I can hear certain noises and I'll know, like, that's Susan doing whatever.

A lot of times people come up to me at the store or somewhere and they're like, are you the pastor at Connection Church? I'm like, yeah, one of them. And like, I didn't recognize you, but when you started talking, I recognized your voice. One of the things I get, I actually got this today, is a lot of people meet me and they're like, wow, I thought you were a lot bigger than you are. Like, sorry, sort of average.

And it's subbed. One of those things, though, like, God's so familiar with us. He knows us intimately. He knows us.

He knows every word that's on our tongue, knows it completely. And he hems us in this good God who desires to work in our lives in good ways, who, as Quentin said, has created good works for us to do. And when David realizes this reality, that can be one horrifying or two so life giving, he's like, this knowledge that you are so knowledgeable about me is too wonderful. I can't even begin to wrap my little mind around this.

And so he goes on, and he can't fathom this. He goes on and he says, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you're there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, when he says, when I rise on the wings of the dawn, he's talking about the east. He says, if I settle on the far side of the sea, he's talking about the west. And so he's saying, if I go, if I as far as I want to go east, or if I go as far as I want to go west, he says, your right hand will hold me fast. When the Bible speaks of God's right hand, it speaks of strength. He says, I can go as far east as I want to go, I can go as far west as I want to go.

But one thing that is for certain is my God is with me to strengthen me in my time of need.

Even there, your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold fast. He says, if I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you. When you think about this, think about how incredible this is.

David is like. He's saying, like, I can't get away from God.

It's like I can go wherever I want to go. I can go to the highest heights, I can go to the lowest lows.

I can go as far west, I can go east. And not only is God there, but he beats you there. That's like, crazy. That's hard to wrap our mind around. But God's already there.

And he says, even in the darkness, I'm not hidden. And it made me think about some of David's other words where he said, even if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil, because even in the darkness, God is as light. John 1 tells us very clearly that the light has shined in the earth and in the darkness, and yet the darkness has not overcome it. Here's what I would tell you, is whether you are at the highest of highs or the lowest of lows, whether you feel like you're in a dark place or in a great place, God is there. If you feel like you're in the valley of the shadow of death, guess what?

The darkness cannot stop the light. God is there. God is with us who belong to him through faith in Jesus. Where can you go to escape him?

Where do you try to escape God?

I'd ask you this question. Why are you running?

Verse 11 can be both startling and comforting. The fact that the darkness can't hide us.

These six passages can be both startling and comforting. To know that we can go nowhere to escape God.

On the one hand, the darkness can't hide you. But here's the good news. Here's the good news. The darkness cannot hide you, right? But there's also no place that God cannot find you.

There's no depth that's so deep that God can't find you. There's no darkness that you're in that God can't shine a light upon it and give you the way out.

There's no distance so great that God is not pursuing you and his goodness is not running after you. So why are you running? And where do you try to escape God?

He goes on, and these are some really famous passages. But David declares this. For you created my inmost being, and you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful.

I know that full well. 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. When he says the depths of the earth, he's still speaking of the mother's womb. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

He says, listen, this is going to be big. He says, how precious to me are your thoughts, God. How vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I wake, I'm still with you.

When he goes into this, he's talking about how God has made him. He's talking about how God created him. So on one, the first six verses in this psalm is really broken up into four sections of six verses. When you look at the first six verses, he's talking about how God knows him intimately. When he goes to the next six verses, he's talking about how he can't get away from God's presence.

God is always pursuing us. God's hemmed us in. His goodness is running after us to bring us to a place of surrender. That's for our good and for his glory. And he says, even before I was born, you knew me.

Here's what's incredible. Before your mother knew you were conceived, God knew you were conceived. Was that not pretty? Incredible? And even in that moment, God was shaping and forming and molding you to be you.

He was shaping and forming and molding and creating you to be you. He was creating. But he wasn't just creating life. He was creating a life. He wasn't just creating people.

He was creating a person.

He wasn't doing this with generalities. He was doing this very specific. He wasn't doing it haphazardly. He was doing it with extreme intention.

And the way you were made was not an accident.

How you were created.

Was not an accident.

I would challenge you with this thought today.

What if God thinks very differently about you than you think of yourself?

What if when you rise or sit, what if, with the thoughts you have, what if, with the things you say? What if God, even with all of our faults, with all of our mistakes, with all of our warts and the ugliness and. And all of these things that exist in our life? What if God still loves us to a degree that is higher than we can fathom?

What if we lifted our estimation of God and who he is and how great his grace really is, how effective his grace is, how powerful his spirit is. What if we began to see ourselves differently? See, Jesus said this he says that the greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. He said, the second one is like it. He said, love your neighbor as yourself.

But think about this. If you love your neighbor as yourself, how well would you love them?

What if there are things that you despise about yourself that God loves? What if there are aspects of your personality and your makeup that you see as a weakness? That God goes, no, I put that in you to be a strength.

I can tell you some of mine. Mine. One of mine is injustice. I can't stand to see injustice. I can't stand to see something wrong when it can be made right.

But here's the problem. I can handle that in a righteous way, or I can handle that in an unrighteous way way. This is what I discovered about myself, and this is what's true of you as well. We're dangerous. I'm dangerous.

Listen, you're dangerous.

You're dangerous to the kingdom of darkness when your life is submitted into the hands of this God who knows you so intimately.

But you're dangerous to yourself when you're not.

What if we begin to see ourselves the way God sees us? See, when David is talking and he says that I've been perfectly made. I've been fearfully and wonderfully made. He's like, your works are wonderful. David's not standing in front of a mirror going, God, you made perfection.

He's talking about the fact that you made me just as you wanted me. You made me in your image. It may be marred and imperfect, but you made me like you. You knit me together. Have you ever watched somebody knit?

I would rather like, run out in front of a bus or something than have to sit there and knit something like, for hours. It takes time.

And David is saying, like, he knit you together. You were woven. You were made on purpose for a purpose. Not just a life or life, but a life.

What if we began to see this so differently?

The greatest challenge I see in most people's lives is that we cannot escape the trap of seeing ourselves the. The way the enemy wants us to see us and begin to see ourselves the way God wants us to see us.

And we'll never attain to the fullness of what God wants in our life until we're able to see ourselves in light of the righteousness of Christ and what he's given us. Until we can see ourselves as Christ has made us by faith, it'll never manifest itself in reality.

And that is the number one thing that I See, holding most Christians back, You are fearfully, wonderfully made.

If you are in Christ, his presence is with you, his hand is upon you.

Let that bring comfort, confidence, contentment, courage, boldness.

Know that you were made as a masterpiece is what Ephesians 2:10 actually says. It literally means that God made us as masterpieces, as trophies of his grace, that we could do the good works that he has already created for us to do.

And my heart for you today is to be able to step into those good works, to step into those things. But there's a cause and effect. The cause is not so that God will love me. The cause is because God loves me. The, the effect is that I do the good works that God created me to do.

And the outcome of that is I find contentment. I find joy in doing what God made me to do.

But most of us feel inadequate or unqualified or disqualified or.

And so we just take ourselves out of the game.

We lack motivation because we can't see, we can't fathom. We can't wrap our minds and our hearts around the fact that God loves us this way, That his goodness is running after us. And we can sing it. We sing so many things with our lips that our hearts don't believe.

Do you really believe that God's goodness has you hemmed in? Do you really believe that God made you for good works? Do you really believe that God loves you? Do you really believe that you can't outrun Him? Do you really believe that he is pursuing you?

Do you really believe that he desires relationship with you? Do you really believe that God can use you? Do you? Do you really believe that God has a bigger plan for you? Do you really believe that God created you for more than just breathing in oxygen?

For just getting up and going to work and coming back home?

Every day that you rise, God has good works for you to do. Before you lay down again, Can you praise him because you're fearfully and wonderfully made?

I'll be honest with you. When I look in the mirror like this morning, this is gross. I had this big old just zit right on my nose.

And when I look in the mirror, like I don't see that just physically. Many times I see it inwardly and for so many of you. You can look at the person next to you and you can so confidently declare you are fearfully and wonderfully made. God knows everything about you and he loves you so much. But when you look in the mirror, you can't say that to your yourself.

We're Called as Christians to be a people that live by faith and not by our feelings.

We've got to come to a place where we begin to see the way God sees. See, if God says we're fearfully and wonderfully made, if God says we were created as masterpieces to do good works that bring him glory and we believe and live otherwise, then what we're doing is calling God a liar.

When God's word begins to speak, When it becomes the loudest voice in our lives, things begin to change.

I wonder how many of us have been able to accept our brokenness.

I wonder how many of us have been able to accept our weaknesses.

Not saying, giving into them, but I'm saying I can accept it and I'm okay.

I can accept my weakness because I know that if I turn it over to God, it becomes a strength. I can accept my brokenness because when I surrender it to God, he'll use it to heal the broken.

But rather than us realizing that God turns our weakness to strength and our brokenness to a tool that he uses to bring healing, most of us continue to hide our brokenness.

There's a account in the New Testament, in the Gospels, where Jesus is teaching. And there's a man there with a withered hand.

And Jesus is going to heal this man. And I can see the man standing there. There are people all around.

And Jesus says, reach out your hand.

In that moment, this man has a choice.

He can, in front of everybody, reach out his good hand and look, okay, Be normal. What is that now? Who knows? Or he can reach out his withered hand that's deformed.

He can reach out his withered hand and be healed.

But I wonder how many of us are living our lives just putting out what looks the best, denying the brokenness, living unaware of God's intimate love for us, his intimate knowledge for us, his great desire for us, his presence with us, his desire to take even those broken parts of us, bring healing not just to us, but to others.

David says, how precious to me are your thoughts, God. Listen, this has exclamation marks after it. So this means David was excited writing this, right? This is like David's texting in all cats.

And he says this. He says, how precious to me are your thoughts, God. How vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I wake, I'm still with you.

What is the context of David saying that God's thoughts are precious, that the sum of them are too much to count? But because they outnumber the grains of sand, it's God's thoughts about him.

So not incredible. I mean, if I think about God, I kind of think about it like he's pretty busy.

That seems like a pretty busy job being God.

And yet David says, your thoughts about me can't even be counted.

How incredible that God loves us that much, that he would be that involved in our lives, that God is thinking of you.

Who are we that God would be mindful of us?

And yet we see this throughout Scripture. That's what the gospel is, is God's eternal plan to reconcile his creation back to himself through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

Even when sin entered the world, God was already had already been thinking about us.

And then David seems to go off on a tangent.

He's like, how precious are your thoughts? If only you would slay the wicked away from me. You who do blood, who are bloodthirsty, they speak of you with evil intent. Your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not abhor or hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?

I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies. This kind of makes me go, what the heck is happening? Like, there's all this beautiful language of God intimately knowing us and being with us and creating and shaping us. And then all of a sudden, David is like, just kill them all, God.

But I think there's a couple of things happening here.

One of them is, I believe that David is declaring his loyalty to God.

But the second thing, and I think this is probably the bigger thing, is David's recognizing even in his own heart that there is sinfulness.

We know this from verse 23, where he says, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxiousness thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

Where does your loyalty lie? Are you aware of your own sinful heart? Is God still searching your heart and refining you and me?

Do you know him?

Why are you running?

What if God's thoughts about you are very different in the way you think of yourself?

What if you were able to accept and surrender your brokenness and your weaknesses and watch God turn them in to tools that he would use to heal and bring strength to others?

What if you continue to allow God to search you and know you and work in you and bring you to a place of knowing Him? Even better, I would tell you this. Let his light shine in the darkness in the darkness of your life, in the darkness of your circumstances, in the darkness of your heart, in the dark corners of your heart where you hide the things that you're ashamed of, that you hide that withered hand rather than taking a chance and putting it out before the Lord.

And yet he already knows and he already desires to heal.

Let his light shine in the darkness. Rejoice in his knowing you and know him through Jesus, who's made a way for the unrighteous to be made righteous by becoming sin and taking the punishment for our sin.

Stop running to dead things and away from God.

He's hemming you in with goodness. He's running after you with goodness.

It's his loving kindness that leads us to repentance.

Run to him.

Give him your brokenness and let him heal what's broken and use your weaknesses.

Let God do the deep work in your heart that he desires to do.

One of the things that I do as I come out here to deliver the message, usually y' all are greeting each other, and it gives me a moment to kind of get everything set up, but it also gives me a moment to look at everybody.

And I try to see faces, try to see people. I try not to just let it be a blur. I don't preach like I'm preaching to people's foreheads, right, like they tell you. Like, just look at their foreheads. I don't picture you naked, right, like to try to ease my nerves like they tell you to.

Thankfully, What I can tell you is when I look at your faces and I see you as people, I try to get God's heart for you. I try to think about what God's saying. What would God want you to know?

How does he love you, care for you, desire relationship with you?

And my greatest desire for you is that you would know that. That you would know how much God loves you, how much God cares for you, that he created you on purpose, for a purpose, and that you would have the courage to step into that.

He has a kingdom purpose for you. And my prayer is that you will step into that purpose, knowing that it's not going to be perfect, but knowing that God is with you every step of the way.

Why don't we stand? We'll pray. Will be dismissed. Lord, I thank you for this morning.

I thank you, God, for your word and its truth. I pray that it would shape our hearts and our minds, Lord, open our minds and our eyes and enlighten our hearts that we might be able to see the depth and length, length and height and the width of your love for us. Lord, you are truly pursuing us with your goodness in Christ. I pray that your spirit would work in our hearts. I pray that God, we would spend this week reflecting on your goodness and who you are.

That we would run to you, not away from you. Lord, we thank you, we worship you, we honor you. In Jesus name, Amen. Amen. Guys, y' all have a good week.