Psalm 139:1-6 - Terrifying delight (part 1) – Christ everywhere

Introduction

Though most people have friends on FB, Twitter, Instagram, or other apps, there are less and less deep, meaningful, or intimate relationships these days. Do people even want these kinds of relationships anymore?

Deep down the answer is yes. The reality is that what the human heart wants to experience is a deep, intimate relationship with someone. We want to know and be known and yet still be loved. But there is a problem. We might wonder…what if someone knew me so deeply, so intimately, so fully, would they still love me?

What if someone knew us like this? What if someone knew the very thoughts we were thinking and knew the kind of thoughts we would think before we thought them? What if someone knew everything we ever did and thought before and while we did them? And what if that person still loved us anyway?

Wouldn’t it be both terrifying and delightful? To be known completely and still be loved! Today we are going to see that God knows us fully and yet Jesus still died for us so we could be with him.

Background

As far as the background to this Psalm, from the superscription, we know that it was written by David. Many believe this was from a time in his life when he was accused of idolatry or worshipping a false god, and this was a prayer to God to search him in the depths of his being and determine that this just wasn’t true. But quite frankly, we simply don’t know when and under what circumstances it was written.

The psalm has a four-part structure. First, God’s intimate omniscient knowledge of his people (1-6). Second, God’s omnipresent presence with his people (7-12). Third, God as Creator and yet still our companion (13-18). Fourth, aligning ourselves with God’s heart (19-24).

Today we are going to look at verses 1-6. In these verses we will see that Yahweh 1) knows all our thoughts comprehensively, 2) knows all our activities, 3) knows all our words, and yet he still protects us. Let me read verses 1-6 as we give careful attention to God’s word.

Exposition

Terrifying (1-4)

David begins by saying “O Lord”. He addresses God as Yahweh, the eternal God, the I Am, the ever-present One. It is only in the fact that Yahweh is always everywhere present (omnipresent), all-knowing (omniscient), and all-powerful (omnipotent) that the rest of this psalm can be sung. And this can only happen if God simply is, always was, and always will be. To Yahweh all is as an eternal present.

And because of who he is, Yahweh, we see, first, that he knows all our thoughts comprehensively. David shows us in verse one that God has explored or searched his heart and known everything about him. The idea of this word, “search”, really “examined” is that of questioning somebody to find out about their basic convictions. But it also carries the idea of an exhaustive search. In other words, God has completely and thoroughly explored David until he has found out who he is at the core of his being. God knows what David is really thinking, what he is really believing. And this is true of us as well. When we pray to God, the question we must ask ourselves is, “Is the real us meeting with God?”

Think of an x-ray machine that x-rays your soul. God looks at us and sees what we really are underneath. There are no masks. There is no posturing. Or think of a master detective who won’t stop until every single clue is uncovered, until everything is known completely. Yahweh really knows us at that deepest and most intimate level that we truly long for. He knows all of us like this, whether we want it or not.

Second, we see that Yahweh knows all our activities. David continues praying to Yahweh in verses 2-3a and is saying that God knows every part of his life and every moment. He knows us in our private and public life. He is omniscient, all-knowing, knowing the smallest details, even our thoughts, which include our desires, joys, longings, and values. Does this produce comfort or terror in you? A little of both?

But this knowledge is not of his external actions alone, but also of his thoughts. Even when David is not praying, God knows or discerns his thoughts. What does this mean? It means that God thinks about or considers David’s thoughts. Wow! This means that God cares about much more than our actions. He regards our thought life and it matters to him what we think. Thus, even when we are not praying, God is discerning our thoughts and determining who the real us is.

Though Yahweh seems “far off”, he isn’t. He knows our very thoughts as if he was inside of us. He is a God who is transcendent, above all, and immanent, with or near us. He is high above us, for he knows all, sees all, and directs all. Yet, he is so close to us that we cannot escape his presence no matter where we go. Does this sound like big brother who is always watching you? Or the all-seeing eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings. Is this terrifying to you or delightful?

How would God knowing all our thoughts even from far off change our prayer life? How would we pray if God knows what we really want or what we really think about a person or situation?

Third, we see that Yahweh knows all our words. In verses 3b-4 we see the reality that God knows when we go and when we stop. He knows everything that we do, and everything we are going to do before we do it. He is so acquainted with all our ways that he knows what we are going to say before we say it. It isn’t that he simply knows or remembers what we said. He knows the words we are going to say while they are still forming in our minds. His knowledge of us is comprehensive and prior to.

Our God knows us this much! When we consider who the real us is, this is terrifying isn’t it? If God knows us this much, shouldn’t he simply destroy us? Shouldn’t he push us away? Why would he want to deal with such half-hearted creatures?

Delight (5-6)

If the psalm ended here without anything further, we would have great reason to be terrified, for we would be undone, judged, and condemned. But the psalm doesn’t end here.

We see in verses 5-6 that Yahweh still protects us even though he knows us like this. David’s understanding is that God encircles us, almost like a siege. He surrounds us on every side. He is behind us and in front of us. This sounds like the language of war, and it is. But God is not besieging us to destroy us, but to protect and defend us.

He puts his hand upon us, possibly another war term. He puts his almighty, eternal hand, the hand that destroys his enemies, upon us. But it is to take care of us and to protect us, to guide us and lead us, not to destroy us. He is with us for our good.

And so, the psalmist stops. His mind breaks down. The two thoughts...first, that God knows him so intimately, so thoroughly, that nothing that he thinks, speaks, or does is hidden from God. God knows him in his most pure times and his most evil times. And so, the logical conclusion is that if we were weighed in the balance, we would be found wanting and must be judged.

But, second, that God surrounds him on every side, he is with him, and he is for him. God protects him and cares for him. And so, the logical conclusion is that God loves him.

Therefore, knowing that these two things are true is mind-blowing. How is it that a perfect, holy God who is a consuming fire can know us as thoroughly as he does and not simply destroy us? How is it that we can still be loved when we are known at this deep and intimate a level? This takes us to one of the first stories in the bible.

Adam and Eve had rebelled against God, they were naked and ashamed. They ran away from God and hid from him while he sought them. They knew that the judgment coming was death, and so they hid from him. But God in his grace and mercy provided a covering for them from animal skins. Then God promised that one day he would send a redeemer born of a woman to rescue humanity from their sin.

Life-altering

This fact that we are known and loved is life-altering and we can see this in verse 6. This knowledge of God’s love while we are so imperfect and sinful is too wonderful for us to grasp, it is way too high for us to understand. Why? God loved us while we were yet sinners in rebellion to him and came to live and die for us. Who does this kind of thing?!?

This kind of love is so beyond our grasp that we need God’s revelation to even grasp it. Which is why Paul prays in Ephesians 3:17–19, “…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Connecting to Christ

Understanding who we were and who we still are is an important key to worshipping and delighting in God through Christ. If we never wrestle with our sin and darkness at the “who we are” level, then we can never understand the incredible riches of God’s mercy toward us in Christ. If we relegate our sin and evil to simply immoral actions, to external behaviors, then we will never see that the problem isn’t the “what we do”, but the “who that we are”.

When we see that we are the problem, then and only then can we see that God’s rich mercy and grace is completely undeserved and completely unmerited. In fact, we are saved not because of us, but despite us. If it were up to us, we would hold our hands up to God and say, “No thanks! Not today! Not ever!”

The “who we are” was dead in trespasses and sins. We were without God and without hope in the world, but as Paul says in Ephesians 2:4–7, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.“

Not only have we been raised from the dead and made alive together with Christ by the grace of God, but we have been seated with Christ in heavenly places. And after we die, we will be shown the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness in Christ.

The eternal, all-knowing, all-seeing, ever-present God, Yahweh, saw us and knows us, and still came down to earth, taking on flesh, humbling himself, and enduring the pain of the cross, but worse yet, the eternal wrath of God for our sin, then dying and being buried, all for our sake. Jesus Christ took the wrath that we deserved for the “who we are” even though the “who he was” was absolutely and completely perfect. He humbled himself even to the point of death on a cross so that those things that he sees in us could be paid for by his bearing the wrath of God for us so that we could be hemmed in on every side.

Jesus’ life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension secured for us the presence of Christ in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The work of Christ is the very hand of God laid upon us which pulls us into him and names us as children of God…loved and protected by Yahweh, the eternal, all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing God.

Application

When we look deeply into the real us, don’t we see something that we want to hide? Don’t we see our half-heartedness. Don’t we see our weak affections toward God? Don’t we see our emptiness? Isn’t the problem at the core of who we are?

We rely on our strength and our own power just like Adam and Eve. We try to sew together fig leaves to cover our shame and guilt. We know we don’t live up to God’s approval, so we try to earn our way. We gauge our value and worth based upon what others think of us, how good we are doing, or by what good works we have done.

We need to repent of the “who we are”. We need to fully embrace the pardon we have in and through Christ. We need to lean into our adoption as children. We need God to show us how deeply he knows us and yet how deeply he loves us. We need to remember that Christ, came to earth to pay for the “who that we are” so that we could live in the power of Christ to be the “new us” in Christ Jesus.

When we sin and fail, we need to run toward God as he lovingly calls out and asks, “Where are you?” We must remember that he sees what we are really like underneath and still loves us. This is why Christ died.

Listen to Jesus’ words from John 10:14-16, “I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd."