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Psalm 139 is an exquisite Psalm by David meditating on his God, and our God. One commentator described it as “unsurpassed for sublimity and beauty.” David was a man after God’s own heart and here he expresses how much he treasured his God. It is intensely personal, with “you” and “me” pronouns throughout. You see God everywhere because He is everywhere. You see God in everything because He is the Creator and Designer of everything, especially our own beings. Psalm 139 is a wonderful wrap for our series on treasuring God in the Psalms. David treasured his God above all and so should we.
The Psalm divides into four parts, each looking at God in a slightly different way. Here are four huge reasons why God needs to be the treasure of your heart.
- God knows you thoroughly – vss. 1-6.
- God is with you always – vss. 7-12.
- God planned your life sovereignly – vss. 13-18.
- God leads you personally – vss. 19-24.
GOD KNOWS YOU THOROUGHLY – HE’S OMNISCIENT
Psalm 139:1-6, O LORD, You have searched me and known me. [2] You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. [3] You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways. [4] Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You know it all. [5] You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. [6] Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
Have you ever had a whole house inspection when you’re trying to sell your house? You thought you knew all about your house until that expert came around and started nosing around here and there and everywhere, jotting things down on his tablet or device. He found issues down in the crawlspace you had no idea were there. Here David talks to God as our whole-life inspector, “You have searched me and known me.” Search in verse 1 has the idea of digging deep into a mine or investigating a legal case. He searches deep into your life, all the way to the bottom, to the foundation, and so He knows everything about you – how you think and what you think. When you sit down, He’s fully aware. When you get up, He knows. And so He knows you and me.
Verse 3 says He scrutinizes your path, not just a casual glance but a deep and thorough look. You are not out here on your own, an autonomous being. No, God has you in full view. Spurgeon said this should “fill us with awe, so that we sin not; with courage, so that we fear not; with delight, so that we mourn not.” Whatever you are thinking or saying or doing, God is fully aware of you all the time, inside and out. Verse 4 says God even knows what you’re going to say before you say it. David adds “Behold!” to emphasize the awesomeness of this fact. “Behold, think about this! You know it all!” How often you wish He had stopped you from saying it. Calvin says David is emphasizing “the innermost recesses of our spirit stand present to His view.” You may be a private person, but you are totally known by God. It’s amazing to live with this awareness of God’s personal involvement in your life. Imagine those who have no such awareness. They act as if they won’t give account for the words they say or the thoughts they think – but they will.
Verse 5 says God has you encapsulated in His protection, guarding and keeping you. Like Jesus assured us, no one can pluck us out of His hand. Just like a father lays his hand on his son’s head or shoulder expressing approval or encouragement or caution, here is our God enfolding us in His arms with His hand upon us, perfectly guarding and caring for us. He loves and cares for us more than any father ever cared for a child. We can also be sure that God’s knowledge and hand are upon His enemies. They can’t breathe without His perfect knowledge. As free from God as people think they are, they’re wrong. But for God’s people, our Father’s constant and thorough knowledge of us is a great comfort rather than terrorizing. God doesn’t need FLOCK cameras to track us down. He is totally aware of everyone and each and every thought they have.
Verse 6 says this awareness of God’s thorough knowledge is too wonderful. David says, “It blows me away.” God is invisible but that doesn’t mean He’s not there or here – He knows us thoroughly, all the time. Do you believe that the true and living God is personally, immediately, right here, right now, fully involved in your life? He is! He is also aware of the billions of other living souls, people made in His image all around the world. God is OMNISCIENT. He knows everything and particularly knows you and me thoroughly.
GOD IS WITH YOU ALWAYS – HE’S OMNIPRESENT
Psalm 139:7-12, Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? [8] If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. [9] If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, [10] Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me. [11] If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,” [12] Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.
Did you ever try to hide from God? I worked on a farm as a kid and Dale was a little younger than I was. When Dale did something wrong his grandparents would warn him, “God’s watching you!” Then Dale would crawl under the kitchen table thinking God couldn’t see him there.
There isn’t a place you could possibly go on earth or Mars or the entire universe where God isn’t in all His perfect essence. He is omnipresent. When we sin we want to run like a criminal runs from the police. Adam and Eve sinned against God and ran, hid, covered, and blamed, somehow thinking they could get away from God and then making excuses as to why they ate the forbidden fruit. Adam was the first human to pull the victim card, “I couldn’t help it. The woman you gave me made me do it.”
Warren Wiersbe put it briefly, all “escape routes” are futile. This truth of the inescapable omnipresent God is a horror to God’s enemies and the greatest of all comforts to us. There is no place we could possibly go to escape God’s presence. Tozer noted that practicing the presence of God is not trying to imagine our God is here but recognizing He really is here. There’s no place where He isn’t. Kash Patel and the FBI repeatedly warn offenders, “We will find you.” God says, “I already know where you are.” They still haven’t found whoever abducted Nancy Guthrie but God knows exactly where they are. And just because you can’t see Him doesn’t mean He’s not here.
David imagines all possible scenarios. Out into the universe, or we could say up into the International Space Station, He’s there. Ray Stedman said, “God owns and runs His universe and there is no escaping His presence.” What about in Sheol, the place of the dead, or even hell and eternal punishment. Some say God won’t be in hell. But as one preacher I heard recently say, “The worst thing about hell for lost people is not the darkness and fire, but that God is there in all His holiness and wrath and fury forever.” God is in hell but with no relationship of mercy and forgiveness. The inhabitants will gnash their teeth and hate Him forever.
In verse 9 David imagines going to the furthest place in the east where the sun rises or the west, the sea and the deepest part of the sea. The wings of the dawn are those rays of light the sun shoots out as it rises in the east. If you rode a beam of light, which travels 186,000 miles per second or 671 billion miles per hour (now there’s a cure for the need for speed), or if you do a deep dive 35,000 feet down into the Marianna Trench, you’ll find God is there. So whether you rode a beam of light or plunged to the deepest part of the sea, verse 10 says no matter where you go, God is there. And if you are a believer, He goes with you and will lead you with His hand of redeeming love (vs. 10). No matter where, there is no escaping our God’s presence. As a child of God His loving hand and arm are always with you. When you feel lonely, betrayed, deserted, fearful, anxious, or maybe reeling under some really bad news – here is your God with His hand right on you.
What about when night and darkness set in? Every child needs to know God is right there with you no matter how dark the night. Verse 12 says everything is always light and bright to God.
GOD PLANNED YOUR LIFE TOTALLY – HE’S SOVEREIGN
Psalm 139:13-18, For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. [14] I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. [15] My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; [16] Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them. [17] How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! [18] If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You.
This is an amazing truth – you aren’t here by accident. God planned every aspect of your life, even before your conception. And He designed every part of you, from your toes to your nose, from your chromosomes to your brain cells. “Made in secret” and “in the depths of the earth” poetically speak of the womb, where God works when a man and woman produce a new image-bearing human being. As you gestated through those nine months, God was busy weaving you together. He’s the author and designer of every detail of our being. As our cells were dividing and multiplying, some skin, some muscle, some bone, blood, brain, nerve cells, God was at work. We can say every baby forming in the womb is wonderfully made by God. What a blasphemous charge against God when someone announces or was told they were born in the wrong body, with the wrong gender. God picks the gender, and He does it through chromosomes, XX and XY! Plus, there are no accidents, even if you were born out of wedlock or the result of rape. God’s sovereignty overrules man’s sins and God produces babies.
Verse 14 says you were “fearfully and wonderfully made.” The whole creation declares God’s glory, but God’s producing image bearers as He does is especially wonderful, full of awe and wonder. Every person God produces is a walking, talking, breathing, reproducing miracle, a marvel of divine engineering. How a microscopic sperm can unite with a one-celled ovum no bigger than a period at the end of a sentence in your bulletin and begin to grow as a human being is amazing. At the moment of conception the gender of the baby is determined, by God. The fertilized little guy or girl begins a process of splitting and dividing and reuniting and combining and specializing and forming over days and weeks into a head, arms, hands, legs, feet, reproductive organs, brain, ears, eyes, fingers, heart, lungs, kidneys, nerves, blood vessels, fingerprints – a unique, everlasting being reflecting the image of God – made by God, for God, to become like God. This is a miracle. From Him, through Him, and to Him are all things! To Him be the glory! Have you ever thanked God for your synovial fluid? Life would be miserable if your joints weren’t lubricated with this God-designed fluid to keep your bones from scraping together. Or how about your joints? How thankful we are for our knees and fingers with all their joints.
From the pro-life Human Life International website I gleaned just a few fearful and wonderful facts about this skillfully wrought little being. At six weeks his muscles are growing, arm and leg bumps are visible, blood is flowing apart from the mother’s blood. At eight weeks his heart is pumping away, bones are forming, and his brain is working. At nine weeks his lips are sensitive to touch and his ears resemble his family’s pattern. At ten weeks he consists of about one billion cells, full of genetic information. At eleven weeks he sucks his thumb. At twelve weeks he swallows, squints, and frowns. At fourteen weeks he can grasp with his hands, swim, and turn somersaults. At seventeen weeks his heart is pumping 100 pints of blood per day. At twenty-one weeks his bone marrow is producing red blood cells. At week thirty he can recognize his mother’s voice. At thirty-one weeks all five senses are working. At thirty-five weeks he shifts to head down, getting ready for birth. At thirty-eight weeks his toenails and fingernails are complete and his vocal cords are developed. At thirty-nine weeks he’s ready for the real world! The Stages of Fetal Development | Human Life International. The exquisite design and development of the human body blows evolution totally out of the water and back to the garbage heap of man’s ridiculous theories.
Think with me here. Verse 15 says, “My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.” The womb is God’s workshop where He produces His image bearers. Here’s the Workman in his shop carefully molding and fitting, fearfully and wonderfully knitting together this image bearer, when suddenly a huge instrument comes in through the window invading the Workman’s privacy, crushing and smashing everything the Workman is making down to shreds and scraps, and then withdraws, only to be followed by a vacuum tube that sucks out all the remaining bits and pieces of the project, leaving the workshop clean except for the Workman, who sees all this and takes it into account. No true Christian can vote in favor of abortion.
Paul Brand and Philip Yancey wrote two fascinating books in the 80s about the amazing human body, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and In His Image. Your body has 60,000 miles of blood vessels, enough to circle the earth twice. All the DNA strands in the human body could stretch out to the sun and back 400 times, 40 to 60 billion miles. You have over 30 trillion cells in your body. In one minute your heart pumps out one and one-half gallons of blood, 53 million gallons in a lifetime, and it only weighs about one pound. Truly, we are fearfully and wonderfully made!
Isaiah 43:6b-7, Bring My sons from afar And My daughters from the ends of the earth, [7] Everyone who is called by My name, And whom I have created for My glory, Whom I have formed, even whom I have made.”
Verse 16 God says He had you completely planned out before your conception; every single day ordained and written in His book, His book of everything. You aren’t here by chance, accident, or fate. You are here for a purpose, and that purpose is to glorify your God and Creator and Redeemer. That’s why verses 17-18 say all eternity won’t be long enough to count God’s thoughts to us!
Just a note about all the various birth defects. Does God make mistakes in the womb? I read an article this week on the Answers in Genesis website by a mother who gave birth to a boy with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder. She said while the world calls it a spontaneous mutation, she says, “I call it a providential one.” We have to remember two things. Our bodies are still under the curse of sin so reproduction isn’t perfect. And, most importantly, the Bible clearly says that God isn’t taken by surprise by any mutations. When his disciples ask Jesus who sinned, the blind man or his parents that he was born blind, Jesus replied, “Neither but that God’s works may be displayed in him” (John 9:3). Then Jesus healed him of his blindness. In Exodus 4:11 God says He makes men “mute or deaf or seeing or blind.”
GOD LEADS YOU PERSONALLY – HE’S HOLY
Psalm 139:19-24, O that You would slay the wicked, O God; Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed. [20] For they speak against You wickedly, And 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 the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies. [23] Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; [24] And see if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the everlasting way.
God is perfectly holy and just and holds all men accountable. If we love God the way David did, we’ll despise all attacks on God. This righteous indignation expressed by David is exactly the kind of thoughts we should have against God’s enemies. We despise attacks on God, on the Bible, on creation, on the true gospel, on biblical marriage. You can’t know and love God who formed you in your mother’s womb and be neutral about atheistic evolution or abortion. And worse than attacks on God’s creation are all the false religions that attack the gospel of the pure grace of God in Jesus Christ designed by God to save people from their corruption. Paul pronounced a curse on anyone who teaches a gospel contrary to the gospel of grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone (Gal. 1:8). There is a godly righteous indignation about all the godlessness we’re seeing in our culture. We don’t hate those who hate us, but we hate those who hate and rise up against God. We love what God loves and hate what God hates. God hates abortion; we hate abortion. God hates transgenderism; we hate transgenderism. God hates every false religion; we hate every false religion. Psalm 97:10, “Hate evil, all you who love the Lord.” Warren Wiersbe wrote, “We need more ‘holy hatred’ in this day when blatant sin is a popular form of entertainment.” But we need to remember, vengeance belongs to God. Our business is to try to win God-haters to Christ. When they know we oppose all these cultural evils, they may reject us as judgmental. That’s okay.
Verses 23-24 are a beautiful close to this great Psalm. It’s a great prayer for every day. “Search me O God and know my heart. Know my anxious thoughts.” Ask God to do a thorough inspection of all your thoughts and cares and anxieties. This is a prayer of a heart melted, tender, humbled, repentant, believing, loving and wanting God to be honored in his or her life. “Break down every idol, cast out every foe, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow!” Take my hand and lead me in your everlasting way!
SO WHAT?
What do we do with all this? When we are lonely, we know God is with us. When we are confused, fearful, anxious and worried, we realize God is in control over each and every day and moment of our lives. With David, treasure God as your God. Direct your mind to think about the personal, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, holy, sovereign, righteous, just, wise and loving, merciful God. And that He is all these things, first for His own glory and then for your good. As His child, God brings only your best, right now, here, today. Are you His child? Is He your God through your faith and allegiance to His Son Jesus Christ, who died bearing God’s righteous wrath against the sin of all who come to Him? Do you treasure your God?