I invite you to take your Bible
and turn with me to the book of Psalms, to Psalm 139. Psalm
139. And today, I want to speak to
you on our infinite, intimate God. I want to begin by reading
a portion of this Psalm. Lord willing, we'll look at the
whole. Psalm 139, I want to begin reading in verse 1. O Lord, You have searched me
and known me. You know when I sit down and
when I rise up. You understand my thought from
afar. You scrutinize my path and my
lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You
know it all. You have enclosed me both behind
and before and laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too
wonderful for me. It is too high. I cannot attain
to it. Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven,
you are there. If I make my bed and shield,
behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the dawn,
if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there your hand
will lead me and your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say,
surely the darkness will overwhelm me and the light around me will
be night, even the darkness is not dark to you. And the night
is as bright as the day. Darkness and night are alike. to you, for you formed my inward
parts. You wove me in my mother's womb.
I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully
made. Wonderful are your works, and
my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from
you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the
depths of the earth. 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. How precious also are your thoughts
to me, O God. How vast is the sum of them.
If I could count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake,
I'm still with you. Oh, that you would slay the wicked,
O God! Depart from me, therefore, you men of bloodshed! For they
speak against you wickedly, and your enemies take your name in
vain. Do I not hate those who hate
you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who
rise up against you? I hate them with the utmost hatred.
They have become my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my
heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts,
and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the
everlasting way." What an incredible song. I only intended to read
half of it, but I can't stop. It's so remarkable. It was A. W. Tozer who said,
The most important thing about you is what comes into your mind
when you think of God. Everything in your life is directly
influenced by your knowledge of God. The decisions you make,
the places to which you go, the associations that you make, what
you believe, and how you live. It's all governed by who you
believe God is. Tell me what you believe about
God and I will tell you the direction of your life. High thoughts about
God lead to high worship of God and lead to high and holy living.
And low thoughts about God lead inevitably to low worship. and
low and base living. Tosha was right. As your knowledge
of God goes, so goes your entire life. Therefore, it is critical
that we understand who God is. It is critical that we know what
God is like. Because our entire life is being
directed and propelled by the knowledge of God. And that is
why Psalm 139 is so important in our spiritual lives. Because
it makes a very significant contribution. It makes a very significant deposit
into our hearts and minds regarding the right and proper knowledge
of God. This psalm gives us a towering
view of God. And it reveals God as few places
in Scripture do in this particular manner. And it is in this psalm
that we come to understand that not only is God infinite, but
He is also intimate. And not only is God transcendent,
but He is also imminent. And not only is God high and
lifted up, but God is also close and near to His people. It is not either or, it is both
and. In this one psalm, we come to
understand the omniscience of God in verses 1 through 6, and
the omnipresence of God in verses 7 through 12. The omnipotence
of God, in verses 13 through 18. The vengeance of God, in
verses 19 through 22. And the holiness of God, in verses
23 and 24. This is where we are headed. And I want to remind you that
there is nothing more important in your Christian life than for
you to have a right and proper understanding of who God is. Because it will direct your worship,
it will direct your pursuit of holiness, it will direct your
evangelism, it will direct you in your ministry, it will be
that leading cause of which everything else in one way or another will
be a subsequent effect. We must have God right. We cannot be wrong here. If we
are wrong here, we will be wrong everywhere else. So let's begin
our journey through this psalm. And let's enjoy. Let us be edified. Let us be encouraged with the
knowledge of God. I want you to note first in verses
1 through 6 that David the psalmist will say, God knows me intimately. And this is the doctrine of the
omniscience of God, that God knows everything immediately,
perfectly, equally. David will say several things
about God. First of all, God knows everything
I am. Note verse 1. Oh, Lord, you have
searched me and known me. This is to say, God knows David
in his person perfectly. God knows his character. God
knows his being, God knows his essence, God knows who he is
and what he is. And the very fabric and fiber
of his soul. He says, you have searched me.
This word for search is used to Joshua and Caleb when they
went into the promised land and searched out and explored. It is used in Judges 18 to explore
a country. God, it is as though you have
searched me out and explored me and have discovered everything
about me and there is nothing that you do not know about me.
You have known me intimately, personally, deeply. But not only does God know everything
I am, The first part of verse two, he knows everything I do.
He says, you have known when I sit down and when I rise up. This speaks of all of the activities
of David's life, and it is a figurative way of saying, you know my every
going, whether I sit down, whether I rise up. These are two opposites
in expression, and it implies an everything in between. You know everything that I do. Further, you know everything
I think. At the end of verse 2, he says, you understand my
thought from afar. You read my mind like an open
book. There is no thought within my
mind that is hidden from your sight. You know my every thought. Others see my actions, but you
see with penetrating x-ray vision into the very thoughts that no
one else knows. Not only do you know everything
I do and think and am, but you know everywhere I go. In verse
3, David says, you scrutinize my path and my lying down. Again, this is a figurative way
of saying, you know, everywhere I go, whether I lie down, or
whether I am active on a path, or anything in between in the
spectrum of where I would go in life, God, you see it all. You know it all. The word scrutinize,
verse 3, you scrutinize my path means to sift through something
in order to discover what might otherwise be hidden at the bottom
of the content. You have sorted out my activities,
the good from the bad, the secular from the spiritual, and you see
every little detail of wherever it is that I go. Lying down speaks
of private life. Path speaks of public life. Lying down speaks of night time. Path speaks of day time. Lying down speaks of resting. Path speaks of working. No matter
what I do during the day, during the night, whether I'm awake,
whether I'm asleep, God, you know my every step and my every
motion. And my every activity, in fact,
he says at the end of verse three, and you are intimately acquainted,
not distantly acquainted, intimately acquainted with all my ways. You know, my ways inside out
and frontward and backwards, but not only, you know, what
I am and what I do and what I think and where I go. You know everything
I say. Verse 4, even before there is
a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all. You know what I am going to say
before I know what I'm going to say. You know what I'm going
to say before I say it. This intimate knowledge of God
is extraordinary. And not only do you know everything
I say, you know everything I need. In verse 5, you have enclosed
me behind and before and laid your hand upon me. And the idea
is that you have laid your hand upon me in order to supply exactly
what I need. Notice David's response in verse
6. Such knowledge is too wonderful. This is beyond me. I don't have
a category for this. This is incomprehensible. This
is mind-boggling. Such knowledge is too wonderful
for me. It is too high. I cannot attain
to it. There's two ways to respond to
this knowledge. One is to be extraordinarily
convicted. That God knows my every conversation.
That God knows my every thought. And that is, granted, very convicted. But in this case, in this psalm,
with this psalmist, David draws great encouragement from this.
And so should you and I today be greatly strengthened by this,
because he says in verse 6 that such knowledge is wonderful.
It's too wonderful. It's over-the-top wonderful.
It's overflowing wonderful. God always knows everything about
me. What an encouragement this should
be to us today. Nothing ever catches God by surprise
in your life. God is never caught off guard.
God never learns anything about your life. There are no unforeseen
events in your life. of which God is not aware, and
God sees the steps you are taking, and God knows the direction that
you are going, and God is always out ahead of you, He knows what
is around the corner, He knows what lies in tomorrow, and He
knows everything about you where you presently are. In addition
to that, He knows all of your faults, all of your sin, all
of your shortcomings, all of your failures, and He still loves
you. The one who knows you the best,
loves you the most. A. W. Tozer speaks of this knowledge
of God and the knowledge of the holy. And he writes, God knows
all that can be known. And this he knows instantly and
with fullness of perfection. that includes every possible
item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could
have existed, anywhere in the universe, at any time, in the
past, present, future, Because God knows all things
perfectly, He knows no thing better than any other thing,
but all things equally well. He never discovers anything.
He is never surprised. He is never amazed. He never
wonders about anything. He never seeks information. He never asks questions in order
to learn. God is self-existent and self-contained
and knows that no creature can ever know us like He knows us. David starts by saying, God knows
me intimately. And God knows you intimately. He not only sees you, He sees
into you, He sees through you. And there is nothing hidden from
His sight. from Him with whom we have to
do. Therefore, when we confess our
sin to God, if we try to cover it up in any
way, God will uncover it because He knows what we're trying to
cover. But if we will uncover it in confession, God will cover
it with His grace. Why would we ever try to hide
that which God sees? But second, not only does God
know me intimately, secondly, God is with me closely. Beginning in verse 7, we see
the doctrine of the omnipresence of God, that God is everywhere
present with the entirety of His being. Beginning in verse
7, he has two rhetorical questions. The answers of which are so obvious,
he does not even bother to answer the questions. Where can I go
from your spirit? It's a rhetorical question. The
answer is so obvious, nowhere. Or where can I flee from your
presence? And the answer is nowhere. There
is nowhere where God is not present. And so, he now stretches this
out a bit for our thinking, for us to understand that God is
always everywhere present with the fullness of His being, and
that therefore, God is always with us. It says in verse 8, If I ascend
to heaven, You are there. Of course, God
is there in heaven. To be absent from the body is
to be present with the Lord. The Lord is upon His throne in
the heavens. God has established His throne
in the heavens and His sovereignty reigns over all. God is enthroned
in splendor and majesty in the heights of heaven. But there's more. If I make my
bed in Sheol, Sheol is a Hebraic expression, a euphemistic expression
for the grave, for death. If I make my bed in death, in
other words, if I die and they place my body in the grave, behold, you are there. You and I will never have a more
face-to-face encounter with God than the moment we die. If I
ascend to heaven, you are there. If they lower me down into the
grave, you are there. Then he says in verse 9, if I
take the wings of the dawn, now the sun rises in the east, and
what he is saying is, if I could fly with the speed of light to
the east across the globe, behold, you are there. And if I dwell in the remotest
part of the sea, now the sea refers to the Mediterranean Sea,
which is to the west of the promised land, And if I travel due west,
you are there. And what David is setting before
us is something of a compass, north, south, east, west, no
matter what direction I go, God is there. If I go north to heaven,
south to the grave, east to where the dawn rises, or west to the
sea, God, you are already there at all points of the compass,
no matter where I go. And verse 10, even there, and
the there refers to anywhere. Even there, your hand will lead
me. God is everywhere present. And
God is always with us, no matter where we go, with His hand upon
us to lead us. He says in Hebrews 13, I will
never, never, never leave you nor forsake you. And your right hand will lay
hold of me. You are never beyond the reach
of God. In verse 11, If I say, surely
the darkness will overwhelm me and the light around me will
be night, and when he refers to darkness here, he is referring
metaphorically to dark times in his life, trials in his life,
the dark nights of the soul, dark days. When I cannot see
the way, when I cannot see the path to take, when I cannot see
the future, When I most need to be led, when I just do not
know which way to turn or what to do, it is dark all around
me, it is not clear the way that I should take. He says, even
the darkness, verse 12, is not dark to you. And the night is
as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike
to you. That is to say, God can see in
the dark. And in the darkest days of our
lives, God knows the way forward. And whether it's good times when
it's light or bad times when it is dark, whether it's days
of prosperity or days of adversity, whether it's days of triumph
or days of trial, it matters not to God. He always sees and
knows and goes the way with us. And He makes the way where there
is no way. I remember when I first went
off to college many, many years ago. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee
and signed a football scholarship to play for Texas Tech University. And when I went off to West Texas,
I felt like I had journeyed to the moon. It was four days of
cell phones and all of the rest. And I'll never forget when my
mom and dad put me in their Volkswagen van and drove for two days and
dropped me off. And then that little van turned
around and left, and I saw it disappear over the flat West
Texas horizon. I have never felt more alone
in my life. And I had wanted to get away
and play football, and the moment I got what I wanted, I didn't
want what I got. And I'd sit in my little room,
my dorm room, with a Bible, And I remember coming to Hebrews
13. I will never leave you nor forsake
you. That was. A rope for a drowning freshman. To hang on to. That God was with
me. And I remember the first time
I ever preached in my life. I was 18 years old. way too young
to ever do anything like that. But it wasn't by my choice. And
because I played on the football team, certain doors opened, and
I won't bother to tell you all of that. All you need to know
is I ended up in a little town in West Texas on a Sunday morning
called Fluvanna, Texas. And you can pull it up on Google
search, and all there is is a grain elevator and a post office. You're
on the set of a John Wayne movie. It's not the end of the world,
but you can see it from Fluvanna, Texas. They had a Baptist church
on one side and a Methodist church on the other side of the road,
and they had one preacher. And one week they were Baptists,
and the other week they were Methodists. So I showed up on
Baptist Sunday. And the pastor said, so glad
you're here. I've promised everyone that a
football player would be here and that he would bring the morning
service, a sermon. I said, sir, I've never preached
a sermon in my life. I don't have a sermon. I couldn't
preach a sermon no matter what. I said, I've never even prayed
in public. And he said, would you at least
Give a prayer. I said, I'll give a prayer. So
it came time in the service for me to give my prayer. And he
said, I'd like for Steve Lawson to now stand, be making your
way to the front. And I came walking up to the
pulpit. And he said, now, Steve Lawson will bring the morning
sermon as I stepped into the pulpit. So that's my John Knox experience. So then, right into the ministry.
All I had was a living Bible. You remember those living Bibles?
I had pictures in my living Bible. I didn't even have an Old Testament.
All I had was a New Testament. That's all I had was hardback,
wasn't even leather. And as I stood before those people,
I had no idea what to say. I didn't even know I'd be saying
anything. And the only thing that I could think of to say
with what I had been reading again and again and again and
again in my little dorm room, scared to death. Hebrews 13,
verse 8, I will never leave you. And as best I could, having never
heard an expository sermon in my life, I tried to explain what
that meant. And I remember as I did, these
rancher men in the pew, they were ranchers. I thought it was
like a Western themed Sunday or something, but this was like
every Sunday for them. They began to say amen. I'd never
been in a church where anyone had said amen. I thought they
were upset with me. So I stepped back and then gave
another running start that God will never leave us nor forsake.
Amen. And I finally realized they were
with me, not against me. But what a glorious truth this
is. That in every circumstance, in
every trial, in every adversity and in every difficulty, the
Lord is with us. And as John Knox said, God plus
one still makes a majority. And I remember the last Sunday
when I resigned from a church that I was run out of. As I stepped into the pulpit,
distinctly aware of this reality that two were stepping into this
pulpit. And that I was not alone. And
that God was with me as I stood to preach His Word. God is with
you when you go to work. God is with you when you go to
school. God is with you when you awake in the middle of the
night to care for your dying parents. God is with you to be
everything to you that you need. I mean, look at these verses
just one more time very quickly. In verse 8, he says God is with
us. In the first part of verse 8, He's with us in eternity.
The second part of verse 8, He is with us in death. In verses
7 through 10, He's with us in life. In verses 11 through 12,
He is with us in trials. In eternity, in death, in life,
in trials, He is with us. And please note, He began at
the end and works backwards. He starts in eternity at the
beginning of verse 8. He starts at the end of life
after death. And then at the second half of
verse 8, He moves back to death itself. The only way you get
to God in heaven is going through death. And then in verses 9 through
10, He goes backwards from death to life. And then in verses 11
through 12, He goes backwards to the most difficult days of
life, to trials. It's a beautiful, sermonic, poetic
layout that David has made his case. Starting with the heights
of heaven and eternity and working down to death and then to life
and then to trials. God is with you to be everything to you that
you need. Third, not only is God with me
closely, but third, God made me uniquely. Here's the doctrine
of the omnipotence of God, that God possesses all power to do
all things, and God can create out of nothing. Notice beginning
in verse 13, all that God has made. First, He's made my inward parts. For you formed my inward parts. Literally, in the Hebrew, it's
kidneys. And it represents all of our
vital organs on the inside, our heart, our liver, our lungs,
and perhaps symbolically of our inner emotional life, our temperament,
our personality. God, You formed everything on
the inside that I am. He says, You wove me in my mother's
womb. Like a beautiful tapestry, You
knit me together carefully and skillfully and beautifully. You have wired me the way that
I am. With my unique personality, with
my unique sense of humor, with my unique temperament, with my
unique inner organs, everything on the inside of me, God has
crafted like a skilled master craftsman. And look at the response in verse
14. He says, I will give thanks for
you. For I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works,
and my soul knows it very well. You see, it's this high theology
that produces high doxology. It's this high view of God that
creates such a luminous, thankful spirit. But there's more. In verse 15, he says, not only
have you made my organs, my inside, even my temperament, but you've
made my bones. In verse 15, my frame was not
hidden from you when I was made in secret, meaning God has made
my frame. When he says in secret, he is
referring, that's a euphemistic expression for my mother's womb. It's a very private place. It's
very secret. No one else can see in there. But God was in there and God
was at work creating my frame that refers to my bones, my skeleton. God was building our entire size
and our stature and our height and all that we would grow to
be, God was putting it into us. And then he says, and skillfully
wrought in the depths of the earth. Depths of the earth is
another euphemistic expression for my mother's womb. And that dark place, that secret
place. And it says God skillfully wrought. And the idea here is like fine
needle pointing. Perhaps this is a picture of
our veins and our arteries and our tendons and our muscles. And like a skilled weaver with
a tapestry, God was networking all of our veins and our muscles
and our sinew. Listen, we didn't make ourselves.
It was God who was doing this. And then in verse 16, our embryo,
your eyes have seen my unformed substance. And the idea here,
perhaps, is our genetic makeup, our DNA, our unformed substance. God was the one who was making
it and putting it within us. And then on top of that, He says
that God made all of the days in which we would live in this
body in which He has made for us. And He said, in your book
were all written the days that were ordained for me when as
yet there was not one of them. This is mind-boggling. Not only
did He make my entire physical body and my entire temperament
and personality and DNA and everything, my organs, my veins, my muscles,
my sinews, the entire skeleton framework, but God then also
made every day in which I would live in this body and He has
a book. It is the book of His eternal
decree and He has written in this book every single day that
I will live for the rest of my life. And it's not just the number
of these days, it's everything that will occur in each and every
one of these days. When I would be born, when I
would die, how many days there would be in between, and where
I would go and what I would do. It was all pre-scripted by God. And it's all in God's book. And no human has ever looked
into this book. It's a closed book known only
to God. And I don't know how many days
he wrote down in that book for you, but it's the perfect number of
days. The perfect number of days. And you won't live one day longer
or one day shorter than the number that he has preordained for you
to live. I remember when my father died. In my tears, I could rejoice that this was
the perfect day for my dad. to die. It was God's sovereign choice. And Job 14.5 says we will not
exceed the number of our days. God is so good and He is so wise
that He knows exactly how many days you need to be here to do
what He has foreordained for you to do. And in your book were all written,
all written, not some of your days, not most of your days,
but all of the days that were ordained for me. So unique to
me. The number of days that I have
to live is different from the number of days that you have
to live. Just like my body is different
than your body, just like my genetic makeup is different than
your genetic makeup, so the number of days that you have to live,
and when you would be born, and when you would die, and where
you would live, and where you would go, and what you would
do, is different than what God has ordained for me. He's got this all wired. The devil is not in the details.
God is in the details. So he responds in verse 17. What do you think this kind of
theology produces? It produces extraordinary catalytic
doxology. It causes the heart and the soul
to rise to the heights of heaven and to rise and to bless the
name of this great God. So he says in verse 17, he has
to stop. He doesn't even wait till the
end of the psalm. He has to sprinkle this throughout the psalm. Precious
are all your thoughts to me, O God." God, you are the master
architect. You are the master designer.
You have ordained my body and my makeup and you have ordained
the number of my days. This is precious. This is priceless.
How vast is the sum of them. I can't even... Count up all
the thoughts that are exploding in my head right now. They're
so vast. If I should count them. All of
God's thoughts towards me and all of my thoughts towards God,
they would outnumber the sand. There's not enough grains on
the on the beaches of this world, grains of sand on the beaches
of this world to equate to God's precise, intimate, detailed thoughts
toward me. When I awake. They're still there. Meaning, this wasn't a dream. When I awake, this has never
been more real than any moment in my life. So this God who knows me, who
is with me, who has made me, He also defends me. And so beginning
in verse 19, God defends us powerfully. Verse 19, O that you, God, would
slay, that means kill, the wicked, O God. Now, these wicked are
men of bloodshed, verse 19. They speak against God, verse
20. They are God's enemies, verse 20. They take God's name in vain,
verse 20. They hate God, verse 21. They
rise up against God, in verse 21. And thus, they have become
David's enemies, verse 22. This is what we call an imprecatory
prayer, an imprecatory song that calls for divine judgment to
be brought on the enemies of God. First, I want you to know this
is not a personal vengeance. This is not personal malice.
This is an appeal for God to take vengeance. And for God to
take the vengeance that God has already promised He would take. Time does not permit me to trace
this out throughout all the Psalms. If you have a study Bible, you
ought to be able to network a number of different notes. But what David is doing is he
is so aligning himself with God and the heart of God, that he
is loving what God loves, and he is hating what God hates,
and he is loathing what God loathes. He is being godly, not ungodly. So it says in verse 19, depart
from me therefore men of bloodshed. They are ruthless. They are killers. They are worthy of the death
penalty according to Genesis 9 and verse 6. And what David
is calling upon God to do is for God to execute the death
penalty. On these who have taken the lives
of other innocent lives, they have destroyed that which has
been made in the image of God. So, David is praying the Word
of God to God for God to do what God requires in His Word. This isn't out of bounds, this
is within the parameters of divine revelation. And in verse 20,
for they speak against you wickedly. They blaspheme God's name. They
defame God's name. They speak abominations against
God. They speak atrocities against
God. And he says, and your enemies
take your name in vain. They count your name worthless.
They trample underfoot the precious holy name of God. They treat
it with disgust and with disdain. Verse 21, Do I not hate those
who hate you, O Lord? He is so aligned with God. He
stands with God. And the reproaches that fall
upon God fall upon David. And do I not love those who rise
up against you? Well, this is exactly what Paul
said to those who preach another gospel. Let them be damned. Let them be anathema. In verse 22, I hate them with
the utmost hatred. They have become my enemies.
Now, it's a love-hate relationship. We are to love the sinner. But
there is an element here. of hating everything about them. Notice it says, they have become
my enemies. I have not made them my enemies. They have lined up
on the wrong side and they have made themselves my enemies. They
have become my enemies. They are active, I am passive. As we live in this godless age. There is more for us to say and
feel than smile. God loves you and has a wonderful
plan for your life. There is an alignment that we
are to have with the heart of God. For those who blaspheme
the name of God and trample underfoot the precious blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ and who insult the spirit of grace, we are to utterly
reject as we try to reach them with the gospel. Finally, in verse 23 and 24,
and I'm finished, God searches us intimately. David does not want anything
to be between God and him. And so he says in verse 23, search
me, O God, and know my heart. Now, he has already said in verse
1 and 2 that God has already searched him and that God knows
everything about him. Why on earth would he close this
prayer, search me, O God, and know me? And the answer is, God,
search me and bring to the surface so I can see what you see in
me. so I can repent, so I can confess
it. Search me, O God, and know my
heart so we can get this out in the open. Explore me, probe
me, dig down deep within me. So it will all be mined out of
the shafts of my heart and brought out into clear daylight so that
I can see those blind spots in my life, so I can see what is
hidden from my own sight. He says in verse 23, try me and
know my anxious thoughts. That means put to the test, examine
the quality of my own heart. And know my anxious thoughts. so that I can deal with things
in my own heart. Would you be so bold as to pray
this to God today? I was driving down the highway
not long ago. I was in a rental car driving
to Orlando, Florida for a series of meetings with Ligonier Ministries.
And as I got on the interstate driving through the panhandle
of Florida, for whatever reason, I thought, I need to confess
sin. I'm in the car by myself. I need
to use my time profitably rather than turning on the radio and
just listening to whatever. So I began to confess sin to
God, and I thought, This will be two or three minutes. And as I confessed one sin, it
was like opening a closet door that I thought was a broom closet,
and I opened that door, it's a garage. I opened the garage
door, it's the Astrodome. And confessing one sin was interconnected
with other motives and attitudes and Priorities and things that
I've said and I began to confess sin and it was like a multiplying
effect It's like a cheap sweater beginning to unravel And it was
God searching me and knowing me and Trying me and revealing
to me what he has known all along. Certain attitudes. Certain priorities. Certain words. Must be named. And brought before the throne
of grace. And asked for God's forgiveness. just as specifically as I bring
my petitions and I ask for specific things and just as specifically
as I praise God for individual attributes and actions that he
has carried out. Even so, I must confess my sin. That is what David is doing. God, test my water, check my
oil, kick my tires, reveal to me what needs to be dealt with. And see, verse 24, if there be
any hurtful way in me, Because all sin is hurtful to God, all
sin is hurtful to me, and all sin is hurtful to others. And
lead me in the everlasting way. As I bring this psalm to a close,
this psalm is an extraordinarily encouraging psalm. God knows
us. God is with us. God has made
us. God has ordained our days. God
defends us. And God searches us and knows
us. May you find great comfort this
day. That this God is with you. And he is for you. And He will
bless you. And if you do not know this God,
there is only one way to know this God, not two, three or ten,
one. And that is to come to His Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and to repent of your sin and to throw
yourself upon His mercy and say, Lord Jesus, be merciful to me,
the sinner. And if you will believe in his
son, he will take you by the hand and lead you to the father.
And there he will lead you into a personal relationship with
a father. Through the son, by the spirit,
you've never believed upon Christ. Let me tell you, he knows you
just as well as he knows a believer. And you have every reason in
the world to forsake your sin. and to flee to the Lord Jesus
Christ. May God give you much grace this
day to believe upon His Son. Let us pray. Our Father in Heaven, how we
thank you for the way you are so intimately involved in our
lives. We still cannot get our arms
around everything that is in this psalm. There is a sense
in which we put our hand over our mouth for fear that we would
say that which falls short of the mark of the enormity of who
you are. And we praise you for the way
you are so intimately involved in every detail of our lives. May we draw comfort and strength
and encouragement this day from This truth, may you bless each
one of us as we have gathered here today. And may we cling
to you with the arms of faith and say with David, such thoughts
are too high for me. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.