God Knows You | Psalm 139

INTRODUCTION

How do you see yourself? What determines your value? Do you feel that your life is heading nowhere? Well, God has a word for you. God Knows You. God loves you and you matter to God. Open your Bible to Psalm 139.

Psalm 139

For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.

¹You have searched me, Lord,

and you know me.

²You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

³You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

⁴Before a word is on my tongue

you, Lord, know it completely.

⁵You hem me in behind and before,

and you lay your hand upon me.

⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain.

⁷Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

⁸If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

⁹If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

¹⁰even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

¹¹If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

¹²even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

¹³For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

¹⁵My 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.

¹⁶Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

¹⁷How precious to me are your thoughts, God!

How vast is the sum of them!

¹⁸Were I to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of sand—

when I awake, I am still with you.

¹⁹ If only you, God, would slay the wicked!

Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!

²⁰They speak of you with evil intent;

your adversaries misuse your name.

²¹Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,

and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?

²² I have nothing but hatred for them;

I count them my enemies.

²³ Search me, God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

²⁴See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Title: For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.

This Psalm was written by King David. 2 Samuel 23:1 gives us a title for David, “The sweet psalmist of Israel.”

This Psalm was written for the director of music like Asaph or someone else.

This psalm gives us the attributes of God.

This Psalm Can be divided into 4  Sections:

1^st Section: Psalm 139:1-6 – God Knows Everything

1. God Knows You.

Psalm 139:1

You have searched me, Lord,

and you know me.

This Psalm starts with the word LORD. David prayed with great passion of heart directing his prayer to YAHWEH. David prays to God knowing that YAHWEH has personal knowledge of David. The pagans often thought that gods were hostile to humanity or indifferent to humanity. Not so with YAHWEH. David understood that YAHWEH was a God who cared for his people.

It is this penetrating knowledge that David recognizes God has. David knew that God cared about him so much that he searched him and knows each one of us.

“To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. But it is more: It is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn.” – A. W. Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy

If God learnt anything he would not be God. You don’t need to instruct God, you don’t need to inform God. God knows everything.

Now notice, it is not enough to say that God knows everything. He knows you. David now personalises the knowledge of God.

Psalm 139:2

You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

This is a proverbial language in the ancient Hebrew literature to tell that, “You know everything about me.” You know the most everyday things about me. Jesus would later say in

Matthew 10:30

..even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

God knows the numbers of hair upon your head. God knows you, he knows you deeply. So God knows your heart, your fears, your thoughts, motives, dreams, and frustrations. He knows your past, present and your future and understands you. He notices what’s going on around you, to you, inside you.

You perceive my thoughts from afar.

God not only knows the smallest aspects of our every day and individual life, but he also knows our thoughts. He not only knows your actions, he knows your thoughts. God knows your words before you speak them and there is nothing hidden before this all knowing God.

Psalm 139:3-4

³You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

⁴Before a word is on my tongue

you, Lord, know it completely.

If God knows every word on my tongue, should it not make me careful about how I speak? Should it not make me careful about the vocabulary I use?

Psalm 139:5

You hem me in behind and before,

and you lay your hand upon me.

When the Bible uses the idea of a hem or hedge, it normally has the meaning of a protective barrier.

ILLUSTRATION

In ancient Israel they would grow thick, thorny hedges and surround vineyards or orchards with this thick, thorny hedges. It was meant to keep out predators and pests etc.

The idea is that God hems David on every side, not to trap him but to protect him, so that nothing could get to David unless it had gone through the watchful eyes of God first.

God himself was the hem.

God’s Knowledge Is Protective.

Psalm 139:5

You hem me in behind and before,

and you lay your hand upon me.

This is not a hand of oppression. It is a beautiful touch of God’s grace.

Psalm 139:6

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain.

God’s knowledge is beyond David’s understanding. I cannot even know myself as well as God knows me. God knows me even better than I know me.

Just like a child does not know what is best for him most of the time, I also recognize that many times I do not know what is best for me. But I recognize that there is a God who knows me even better than I know myself. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. If I really believe God’s knowledge as superior, when God tells me to do something that I rather do.

• God’s Knowledge Is Patient. The fact that God knows all the mistakes that we will make even before we make them and we make them again and again. Then we are told in the scripture that God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. Think of the way that God has been patient with you. How many times have we deserved the wrath of God? I deserved it many times in my life. God is so patient toward us. The ways that we fail him, the ways that we forget about him, the ways that we take advantage of one another, the ways that we function in unbelief, the ways that we lie, the ways that we break one another’s heart, the way that we break God’s heart, the way we live and yet he knows all of these things and yet God chooses to love us.

His knowledge is patient. God is compassionate toward us in spite of all our shortcomings.

• God’s Knowledge Is Protective. God’s knowledge serves His compassion toward us. God is a hem around us. Thank about that. God’s knowledge of our brokenness, our weakness, our sins eventually led God to send his Son to die for us.

• God’s Knowledge Is Directive. His knowledge of us is used to guide us into an ever deepening knowledge of himself, of others, and ourselves. God directs us paths and life.

2^nd section of the Psalm: Psalm 139:7-12 – God Is Present Everywhere

2. God Pursues You.

Psalm 139:7-8

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 are there.

Here is David is considering the unbelievable truth that God is present everywhere.

We are never alone. There is no place that I can go in the universe that God is not possibly there. David considered the truth about God’s omnipresence. God fills every corner of the universe. But at the same time, David was not a pantheist. God was everywhere but God is not everything. God is separate from his creation. In other words, “You presence, your spirit, you are there.” Those things are not part of God, yet he is everywhere in every aspect of the universe that he has created. David recognized that everywhere he goes God is there.

ILLUSTRATION

I just what to remind you that if somebody is everywhere with a watchful eyes on us, we feel dangerous and threatened. When the police finds a murder suspect or any serious offender, they put that person under surveillance. Their every word and movement is under scrutiny, where everything is being examined.

ILLUSTRATION

We have the technology where we have the Alexa or the Amazon Echo and you realize it is listening all the time. It is only activated when you say a certain word, but it is listening to you all the time before that word.

We can get this strange idea that God has us under hostile surveillance. It could be uncomfortable to know that we are watched at our every move. We can get nervous if we see that video camera or to know that the microphone is on us. In other words, when you see the camera at the supermarket or at the bank and what does that camera say, “You better not steal, we got our eye on you.” It is a little bit uncomfortable.

When David presents God looking upon us, knowing us, examining us this carefully and this closely, for some of us that disturbs us. This is different with the God of love, care, and concern.

Yet, what do you think about the video monitor that is on our baby room when we are working or in the kitchen? That is a camera of love, that is a camera of concern and care. When we understand who God is, it is a great comfort in the same way that a child is at comfort that a loving parent watches over them. We are confident in the care and love of our God and Father. His constant knowledge of us is a comfort and not a terror.

Psalm 139:8

⁸If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

The word here is depts means grave or afterlife. David says, “Even in the world beyond, even after my life God is there.”

Psalm 139:9-10

⁹If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

¹⁰even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

David was so assured of the constant presence of God’s love and care that God’s hand would be with him that even death could separate him from the love of God.

Psalm 139:11

¹¹If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

¹²even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

God’s constant presence with David was like a constant light in the darkness. As a pillar of cloud illuminated Israel in the wilderness, so it was with God’s presence.

It is such a joy to know that God knows everything about me and God is with me everywhere.

God’s presence also means that God desire to be engaged in human life. Omnipresence simply means that there is nowhere that God is not.

God says that I am with you. One of the great dilemmas of human existence as incredible sense as modern people is that we are alone.

We are living in this postmodern society where connectivity is at the tip of our fingers. We can sit at our couch and connect with people across the globe in the move of a finger and yet people are increasingly getting lonely. People feel isolation from everyone around us and even within our own self. All that the world is declaring by loneliness is what the scripture already says, “Sin creates isolation and makes us feel lost, sin makes us feel alone.”

Here the Psalmist says, “God has not left you. You are not alone.” He is with you everywhere that you go. There is nowhere that you are that he is not. The question is, “How do we begin to live life with a realization that God knows me and God is present with me?”

3^rd Section: God Created Everything. Psalm 139:13-16a

3. God Made You.

Psalm 139:13

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

The proof that God knows me and God is with me is that God made me. God knows us and God is present with us to the extent that God knew David even before he was born. God himself made David.

David understood that God knew him from before his birth and God was there over his conception and development in the womb.

The fact that God knows and cares for the children in the womb, means that God’s concern for life begins even before the child is in the womb. So God’s people also have a responsibility to care for the children in the womb and to do whatever we can do to preserve life.

Psalm 139:14

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

The human body is amazing. God has designed a brilliance in the design and working of the human body. avid understood that. The human brain processes information even faster than the fastest computer. Scientists estimate that our brain carries out 10 quadrillion operations a second. D. We know more than David about the human body regarding genetics, DNA, the scans and the chemical levels of our body. We must be praising God more than David did.

Psalm 139:15

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.

He is talking about his mother’s womb.

It makes us think about birth defects. What if people are born with some kind of birth defect. Did God mess up? We should regard birth defects as injuries to God’s original design. Just as a person out of the womb can be injured in some way, somehow there can be some injury in the process of formation while they are still in the womb. This too is a part of the fallen world. God is not responsible for it. The injuries in the womb or out of the womb are the result of the fact that we live in not a perfect world but a fallen world and the corruption that was introduced in the world through mankind’s original rebellion. For the person who is injured outside the womb, we say, “God have a place in God’s plan.

God has not abandoned you. He makes something beautiful and glorious even with the life you have because of your injury.” We take this same idea with someone who is injured in the process of formation. It does not diminish the fact that you are precious in the sight of God., made in God’s image and God will work in and through your life just as he would with any of your creation.

Section 4: Psalm 139:16-18

4. God knows the Plans Just For You.

Psalm 139:16

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

God’s perfect knowledge extends to the past, it is true in the present, was even for the future of David and his life. God has created each day of my life, tailoring circumstances, establishing boundaries, and fashioning opportunities for His glory and my good.

Psalm 139:17

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!

How vast is the sum of them!

Considering how God cared for David’s life and filled him, it made him respond to God with adoration with amazement. It is precious to know that God would think even once about us and amazing that God will think about us all the time.

It gives David comfort to know that God knows all about him.

“More than any other person in the universe, God knows us and he loves us.” – Tim Keller

Psalm 139:18

¹⁸Were I to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of sand—

when I awake, I am still with you.

Do you how much God thinks about you? Go to the beach and see the sand. It is more than you can number that is how much God thinks about us.

“You know that people are very proud if a king has merely looked at them. I have heard of a man who used to boast, all his life, that King George IV— such a beauty as he was!—once spoke to him. He only said, “Get out of the road,” but it was a king who said it, so the man felt greatly gratified thereby. But you and I, Beloved, can rejoice that God, before whom kings are as grasshoppers, actually thinks of us and thinks of us often. One or two thoughts would not suffice for our many needs? But he thinks of us constantly! Yes, God does in very deed and of a truth think upon His people—and His thoughts concerning them are very numerous!”

– Charles Spurgeon

This Psalm shifts from v19

Psalm 139:19-22

¹⁹If only you, God, would slay the wicked!

Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!

²⁰They speak of you with evil intent;

your adversaries misuse your name.

²¹Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,

and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?

²²I have nothing but hatred for them;

I count them my enemies.

David almost cries out with all of his strength. He shifts from his spirit of adoration and wonder now against the wicked and against bloodthirsty men.

Why? V20 They speak of you with evil intent;

your adversaries misuse your name.

David is worried about God’s honor.

David was on God’s side, so he hated those who hated God. I am not saying that we should imitate David exactly in this. Jesus has now commanded us in the sermon on the mount that we should never take revenge or return hated or evil. Love our enemies and do not hate them. So we do not imitate David on this.

This talks about loyalty towards God. This talks about David’s zeal for God’s honor.

But we should imitate David in the fact that to love God is to hate evil.

Someone said, “We are not to hate the men for the vices they do, nor do we love the vices because we love the people who practice them.”

Last 2 verses of the Psalm.

Palm 139:23-24

²³Search me, God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

²⁴See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

David starts off by telling:

God knows me

God is with me.

He has plans for me.

God, I do not like the evil in this world.

This let us thinking that David is self-righteous. No he is not.

Here is total surrender. He asks God to search him. I want to be sure, I am your man.

David is giving himself over to God’s examination. David knew that he could not understand his own heart, so he says God I want you to tell me my heart.

One man quoted by Charles Spurgeon said this, “I call upon you to be cautious in using this prayer. It is easy to mock God by asking him to search you while you have made little effort to search yourself and perhaps still less to act upon the result of the scrutiny.”

Is it not mocking God to search me and know my heart, when I have made no effort to look at my life?

See how this psalm ends: Lead me in the way everlasting.

I know when I trust in the Lord he knows me and he is with me, God will lead me in the way everlasting, all the days of our life and even beyond.

CONCLUSION

In this Psalm:

God is all knowing. It is not enough to say God knows everything. He knows you. God you know my heart and know my anxious thoughts.

God is everywhere. It is not enough to say that God is everywhere. He is everywhere with you.

God created everything. It is not enough to know that God created everything. He created you.

God loves the world. It is not enough to know that God so loved the world. He loves you. David understood that.

That is why God sent his son, Jesus into this world to be Immanuel God with us.

 “All my postures, gestures, practices; whether I sit, stand, walk, lie; you search and knows all. Some search and know not, but You do both.” – John Trapp

David sang this song to teach himself when he would have felt that God was far away. God I feel like you are distant but I am going to choose to believe the truth about you that you are near. I am going through a situation now and Lord I don’t know if you are there but I know that the word of God says, you are near me, so I am going to sing that you are with me and near me.

Don’t think that these good songs are coming from a high life, no sometimes these songs are sung from the pit and humbling experience.

Will you pray that prayer in your life?

APPLICATION POINTS

1. You Are Intimately Known By God.
2. You Are Purposely Made.
3. God Is In Control.
4. You Are Never Alone.
5. God Has Plans For You.

Prayer: Father,

Thank you for being our God. You are God from everlasting to everlasting but yet so mindful of each one of us. And you search us and you know everything about us. You are present in our day to day life. Thank you for the plans you have for us. Your care and love for us is like nothing else. Thank You, Jesus, for leaving heaven to defeat death on the cross. Praise and glory and honor to the God who formed us and rescued us. Though the world is hard and dark at times, You can only be light. You are good. It’s who You are, and we are Yours. May we remember these truths David divinely penned in this psalm. Cover our lives with them like a blanket of comfort on a cold, dark night.

Strengthen our brothers who are weak and down. Let you love and presence surround them. You are our strength, God. In You, and You alone, we find peace, love, joy, forgiveness, and mercy. May our lives bring glory to Your name. Bless our enemies and search our hearts. Forgive our wicked ways and lead us to paths of righteousness. Give us a blessed week. We know that your presence is with us through all the phase of our life and this week. Thank you for hearing our prayer.

In Jesus’ name, we pray,

Amen.