Psalm 139 | God Cares
Levi Stuckey
Summer in the Psalms: Breezing Through Life's Emotions • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 40:07
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· 28 viewsRecognizing and receiving the tender care of God will make you care like Him
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Well, this is our final message from the Psalms this summer.
Hopefully you’ve seen by the depths of emotions covered throughout them that God is not offended by all of our feels.
We’ve spent a lot of time working through how to deal with those feels in a way that honors the Lord and while I hope it’s been helpful to think through our feelings, I wanted to conclude this series by focusing more on God and His feelings.
You see Church, if we loose sight of God, it doesn’t matter what coping strategies or psychotheorapies we learn or master, if we loose sight of our Creator we’ll be lost.
I hope you’ve noticed of all the Psalms we’ve looked at, that has been the common theme.
It doesn’t matter what you and I are feeling, if we will look to God, if we will come to Him and cry out to Him, He will meet us and when we see Him, our feelings will fall in line and our perspective will shift.
I’ve shared this song with you several times throughout this summer called That’s The Thing About Praise by Benjamin Hastings. In it there is a line that goes:
It don't always fix your problems, but it'll tell ya how small they are
That's the thing about praise
It won't always move the mountain, but it's good for the heart
That's the thing about praise
and then the Chorus goes:
Sometimes the only way through it is a Hallelujah.
This is what this song is saying. Praise, focusing in on God. Acknowledging who He is, is the medicine we take to correct our feelings.
When we choose to look for and look to the God of the Bible, we will be enabled to live with peace, a sense that everything is going to be OK and joy, a sense that someone is glad to be with me. And if we’ve got peace and joy, then again, all our other emotions will fall in line. It’s not that they’ll magically disappear and it will be all rainbows and unicorns, no, but we will be OK and we will have what we need to be able to deal and cope with whatever feelings life throws at us.
If you take nothing else from this series, I want you to take this. When the feelings of life overwhelm you, look for God and look to God.
He is our true north! He is our North Star. With Him, when our eyes are fixed on Him, we will never be lost! When our eyes or fixed on Him, we’ll know that we are never alone!
That’s because when we when we look to God, we will see an All-knowing, All-powerful Father who cares so tenderly for us and when we recognize and receive His care, we will begin to care like Him!
Church Hear me, when we when we look to God with praise, we will see an All-knowing, All-powerful Father who cares so tenderly for us and when we recognize and receive His care, we will begin to care like Him!
So that’s what I want to do with you this morning. I want to lift your eyes to look for and look to God with praise. Through Psalm 139, I want you to see who your creator God is. And as we gaze upon Him this morning, I hope and pray that the Holy Spirit will make us care like Him just a little bit more in our own lives.
With that said, let’s read Psalm 139 together.
Psalm 139 (NIV)
For the director of music. Of David. A psalm. 1 You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. 5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
As we look to God here in vv. 1-6, what do we see? We see a God who knows. He is all-knowing.
He knows you. He knows every move you make, if you stand up.
Everybody stand up. God knows you’re standing. If you sit down. Everybody sit down. He knows.
If you move your finger a millimeter! Everybody, move one of your fingers a millimeter. God knows the position of your finger right now at this moment, precisely. He knows you. He knows the number of hairs on your head! And for Wes, that’s not really that impressive, for most of the rest of us, it is! God is familiar with you!
He knows your thoughts. He knows that when I told you to move one of your fingers, some of you thought about moving a certain finger in my direction because I made you stand up and sit down! God knows that others of you are thinking right now, can he say that from the pulpit! God knows that others of you are planning your nap later. God knows! God knows your thoughts. He knows you! He knows all. He knows not just what you do, but what you could do and what you will do, in every single possible situation!
He knows all.
And for some of us that’s wonderful news. For most of the rest of us, that’s more than a little fear inducing.
Why? Well for one thing, as technology improves, the knowledge of some of these companies and they way they’re using it, scares us. We talk about a right to privacy because we’re nervous what governments and companies will do with all that they know about us. And we’ve seen a glimpse already… they’ll use us. They’ll use what they know to commoditize us and control us for selfish gain.
I kid you not, before Rachel and I had told anyone that we were pregnant with our 4th child her and I both were receiving ads for diapers and other baby things on our phones. I’m talking just days after we found out.
So when we learn that God is all-knowing, fear is a common response, not just because we’ve seen what we do with intimate knowledge, but also because we have things in our lives we’re ashamed of and don’t want anyone to know, let alone an all-powerful-perfectly righteous being.
But as we continue to gaze upon God through this Psalm we should not fear! Why because God’s knowing is not vengeful or judgmental. His knowing is not distant, indifferent, or corrupt. God’s knowing is personal. You are not a number or commodity for Him to use. His knowledge of you is personal and better yet, His knowledge of you is protective and it’s corrective.
Look with me at vs. 5.
5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
Folks, there are really only 2 occasions where I lay hands on my children. When I want them to experience my care and protection or when I need them to experience some correction.
I don’t know my kids the way God does, but I know and care for them similar to how He knows and cares for us. I try to know their comings and goings and I near enough to them to protect them and correct them.
God is all-knowing and His knowing is not something we need to fear because His heart is to protect and correct us!
God is also all-powerful. His power too is personal and it is relentlessly perusing again with an aim to protect and correct! Look with me at vv. 7-18
7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 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. 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. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.
We’ve all seen power in various forms haven’t we.
We’ve seen it on the bid screen in super hero movies. When I was in college there were many late nights in my dorm discussing who was the most powerful superhero. I’m not proud of this, but I’ll admit it. Very nerd discussion.
I will still go to bat for Hulk any day. Although Wolverine with his ability to heal puts him high up there and of course Super Man is always in the conversation. X-ray vision. Flight. Freeze breathe. Laser eyes. Bullet proof. Super speed.
We’ve all seen what power looks like on the big screen in the form of super powers. Strength, speed, flight, Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne with their super smarts. We’ve seen what super powers look like.
And we’ve seen what political powers look like. Charisma. The ability to turn a phrase. To gather a following and move crowds.
We’ve seen also what power looks like in industry. Technological advancements. Guys like Elon Musk, inventing crazy things and pushing us forward technologically to hopefully make this earth more safe and prosperous for all.
We’ve seen power in all it’s shapes and forms. But we’ve never seen anything like the power of God! Every faucet of power we’ve seen reflected in movies and in life, is just that; a reflection — and a dim one at that — compared to it’s source, the God of the Universe.
God is All-powerful. He is All-Powerful Church, and you say, how powerful is He?
Well for one, there is no place you can run to, no place you can go, where God cannot come.
No darkness is to dark for Him, because night shines like the day in His presence. No height is too high, no depth to dark or too low. There is no place where the hound of heaven cannot sniff you out.
There is no place where He cannot go. Nothing is impenetrable to Him! He knits bodies together Church. Bodies.
The most complex, technologically advanced machines in the universe. Bodies. I don’t know if we have any surgeons in the room, but they kit bodies together too to some degree. They have all-kinds of fancy machines and very skilled hands to stitch and sow and cauterize and dissect. And they’re good and they’re helpful, but they can’t do what God does. They can’t do what God does!
God knits bodies together. In the womb of every mother ever, God has knit the physically bodies of each and every one of us. Wonderfully so. He made you! According to His design and purpose! And let me just say of the most skillful surgeons, have you every heard of a surgeon preforming more than one surgery at a time? I haven’t. God doesn’t just knit one body together at a time, We have several expectant mothers in this room right now. God’s working in and through all of them, at the same time! Making life.
That’s power Church! And again, don’t miss this, He’s not just creating bags of meat. He’s specially forming each individual with their personal and physical biology and makeup yes, but also he’s outfitting those bodies with souls and spirits and ordaining the days of their lives. Before any of us are born, before any of us are even a twinkle in the eyes of our parents, God knows us. He knows who we will be and how many days we will have on this earth!
This Church is power! God creates from nothing! And again His power is not wicked or selfish, it’s tender, personal, protective and corrective.
Were you to count the thoughts that God has of just you! They would outnumber the grains of sand, presumably on the earth!
Folks that is incomprehensible. Sand on the earth, that is the thoughts that God has about you. I have a lot of thoughts about people that are close to me, but if I’m honest most of my thoughts just circle around myself. Who I am? If I did this good or bad? Why other people don’t see or appreciate me and all the things I do. Maybe I could say my thoughts about me number that of a small beach at a local pond here in Henry county… and that’s not really something i should admit and certainly not something I should brag about… it’s something I’m ashamed of.
But God, in all His power, in all his knowing, He has thoughts of others, of you and of me that for each of us outnumber the sand on the earth!
And His thoughts are good and pure!
Again, if I were to share the numerous thoughts in my head with you, much of them would be prideful thoughts about myself or sinful thoughts of judgement towards others and me giving so and so the business for being this or that… my thoughts are many, but not many of them are pure and good and righteous and others focused!
But our Creator God, His thoughts are.
And I hope as we have been contemplating the power and knowledge of Lord God Almighty, you are coming to understand David’s seemingly abrupt switch here in v. 19.
When you recognized and receive the all-knowing, all-powerful tender care of God, you will begin to care like Him.
David writes:
19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty! 20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. 21 Do 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.
David looks up at God in marvelous wonder and then when His gaze drifts back down to earth, the zeal for God, in recognizing and receiving His tender care, fills David with the same care of the Father! His zeal for God makes Him care tremendously for things that are not as they should be! David here is hating what is evil because he is clinging to what is good!
Church, this is how you tell fake Christians from real Christians. If you know and recognize and receive the tender care of the Father, you will hate what is evil.
There is much in our world today, that is being called good by culture, by fake Christians and by false churches which is evil.
The murder of children has been re-framed as a woman’s right to choose or an elective procedure to terminate an embryo. This “right to choose” the death of an innocent and defenseless human being is celebrated as a human progress and a great good… This is indefensible in every way folks. Killing Children is evil. Always. Period. Full stop. In the womb or out of the womb it’s never right.
Along with this, laws are being promoted and passed to allow surgeons the ability not to knit people back together but to mutilate and dismember people, even children. It’s being called an elective sex change operation! Many in this world are celebrating it as good and human progress. Do you know what God calls it, what the Bible calls it? Evil. It’ genital mutilation and it’s evil Church. It’s perverting, corrupting and undoing what God did and it’s being celebrated!
Marriage as well, God’s ordained institution to raise and rear children into model citizens and god fearing men and women, marriage and the nuclear family is also under attack as those in this world attempt to redefine it. This too is evil, sinful and wrong. The nuclear family as God designed it between one man and one woman for life is being torn asunder as those within this world have sought to free sex from God’s good design. We’re constantly bombarded with the message do what feels good with whoever and whatever, whenever you want! And this too is evil Church.
Those of you who’ve been with us for a while know that the Bible tells us sex is a good gift like fire. Within the confines of the fireplace, sex is a fire that is beautiful and gives off warmth to our house. Take sex out of God’s ordained place and, what, it’ll burn your house down!
Church any so called Christian that opposes God’s good designs or organizations like LifeWise who teach God’s good designs or any so called Christian who supports any of this so called good and human progressive evil nonsense needs to seriously question whether or not they know the God of the Bible!
You say, Levi, this seems kind of harsh!
I don’t mean to be harsh Church, I don’t, but I do mean to teach the truth! In love. And in love, if you’ve recognized the love and care of God and received the love and care of God in and through Jesus, then you will begin to care like He does about all that He cares about and how He cares!
And you say, how does He care! To that I’ll point you to Luke 19:41
Luke 19:41 (ESV)
41 And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it,
He wept over the city. Why. Because it couldn’t see Him! He came to the city in all it’s filthiness and evil and wickedness and it coudln’t see God and so God wept over that city, because He cares and His care is protective and corrective!
And you might be thinking well, you’ve pointed a lot of fingers here this morning, what about you! You sanctimonious preaching!
Let me tell you about me.
I don’t have it all together Church. I’m not a perfect husband. I said a few things to my wife this week out of a place of selfishness and an expectation to be served rather than a willingness to serve that I regret and needed to seek forgiveness from her for. I’m not a perfect husband. Far from it. I’m also not a perfect dad. I yell too much in anger at my children and lack a whole lot of patience.
I’m not perfect and when I look to the God of Heaven who cares for me, I know that truth all the more and I say with David, search me oh God and know my heart. Reveal the wickedness that exists within me. Show me the ways I offend you Lord. Lead me away from my sin. Lead me in the way ever lasting.
Church, I’m not perfect. None of us here are. And if we’re in Jesus we shouldn’t claim to be, but that doesn’t mean we have to roll over and pretend like there is no good and no evil! Just because we do evil sometimes and have evil within us does not mean that we can’t call it out!
A Christian is not perfect, but a Christian cares like Jesus! We see and recognize our sin for what it is. Evil. Wickedness from which we need saving and cleansing. It is not something we should ever celebrate!
Friends. Loved ones. When you recognize and receive the care of God, you’ll begin to care like God.
We’ve talked a lot about our feelings this summer. Hopefully you’re encourage by God’s this morning. He knows you. Better than you know yourself. He’s all-knowing. His knowledge is not something he’s going to use over you, no, it’s something he’s committed to using for your protection and your correction. He’s all-powerful. His power too is personal, pursuing, protective and corrective.
He loves you. And never was His love more clearly displayed than on the Cross when He sent his one and only Son to die in your place. His thoughts of you outnumber the sand on the earth and when Christ spoke these words from the Cross you and all those thoughts were in His mind. Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing. May we see the Lord God Almighty, and as we experience the wonder of His care, may we begin to care like He does.
Pray:
Lord Jesus, lift the veil from our eyes this morning and let us glimpse a little bit more of your glory together! Help us not to get caught up thinking about things below. No help us to thing on things above. Help us to think on you. To look for you. To look to you. To think on what is noble and good and true! Help us praise you and you alone for you wonderful deed and beautiful works and good design! Let us not be swept up into this evil age that celebrates evil and condemns good! Let us this morning recognize the care you have for us. Let us receive the care you have for us through Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. And as we do, Lord, make us more like you. Break our hearts for what breaks yours! Help us care for those afflicted by evil in our world who do not know what they are doing. And keep us humble Lord. Be every searching our own hearts, ever exposing our own wickedness and offenses so that we too would never loose sight of the reality that we are just as sick and we too are just in need of a Savior.
Thank you Lord for loving us. Help us love you and love others like you love us.
And when we fail, be strong in our weakness. We ask you humbly Lord to increase our faith. Give us faith Lord Jesus, to trust what you say! Help us recognize and receive your goodness and care. Show us a fresh every morning the greatness of you love.
For your glory and our joy. Amen.