A God Most Intimate
A God Most Intimate: Introduction
Ps. 139
Introduction
I love to run. I know to some of you that seems absolutely crazy and absurd, to love to exercise, but that is just the way God made me. Several years ago, I went out for a run on a winter evening. This is my absolute favorite time of all to run. There was snow on the ground, so it muffled all of the noises. There were not too many cars out, and absolutely no one else, everyone was inside, barricaded against the cold. This is just how I like it, quiet, peaceful, solitude…beautiful. I took off going west on Jason, onto a dirt road, to run a 7 mile loop that I often ran. As I was heading west, the moon was rising behind me. It was a full moon, so with the snow and the light from the moon, it was like running nearly in daylight it was so bright. I ran west on Jason, turned south on Sheppardsville Rd. and ran down to Parker Rd, where I turned back to the east to head toward home. As I ran, I had am mp3 player and I was listening to music.
I turned onto Parker road and the moon was up high enough that it lit up the snow on the road ahead of me, the way it lights a path over water at night. So I was running up this white ribbon of moonlight, and no sooner had I begun then Stephen Chapman's song, “Be Still and Know,” came on my mp3 player. So I am marveling at the moon off of the snow, and listening to Stephen Chapman singing,
Be Still and Know that He is God
Be Still and Know that He is Holy
Be Still O Restless heart of mine
Bow before the Prince of Peace
Let the noise and clamor cease.
As I listen to this song, which came up just exactly as I started up that road into the moonlight, almost as if it had been planned that way (hint, hint), I was flooded with this sense of wonder, that God, in His sovereignty would give me this incredible gift, the night, the snow, the moon, and that song. Talk about a moment made for worshipping. That was it. I knew, as I jogged along that road, that God cared for me. My heart was filled to overflowing with love, praise, adoration, thankfulness that this God, who created all of what I experienced, would set up such a moment, such a moment of intimacy and give it to me. Wow! Unbelievable really. Here I was, 1 guy out of a world that contains 6 billion people, one guy, out alone among the fields of mid-Michigan, and God was thinking of me. What I experienced that night - of course I knew it in my head, I understood the theology - but what I experienced was a God most intimate
A God Most Intimate
This is the God revealed in Psalm 139, a God most intimate. David takes many of the attributes of God and reveals, as he speaks inspired by the Holy Spirit, how those attributes relate to him as an individual, of course we read it now and we understand that David meant for us to read it as he wrote it. As if I wrote it. A God Most Intimate, is not only the God of David, but He is the God of you and me.
There is no other place in the Scriptures which so clearly reveals God in my own life and experience. God has put within us, a yearning for fellowship with him; a yearning to know and understand and have a close, living relationship with Him. Psalm 139 reveals the nature of that intimacy. This is why it is my favorite Psalm.
This evening, I am just going to introduce the Psalm, point out the importance of the Psalm as a whole, and then we will go into the themes one by one, and unpack and unfold them. I suspect it will take 7 or 8 sermons to get through this Psalm, and that is okay. It is good to slow ourselves down sometimes and dig deeper into a verse or two. I believe Psalm 139 is perfect for this type of approach.
My fascination with Psalm 139 goes back a long, long way. One of the gifts that my parents gave me, which at the time I did not recognize, was the encouragement to memorize Scripture. During the summers we would work on a few verses during the week, and the on Saturday, if we could say them, my Dad would give us money to go buy some candy. I loved candy, so they caught me hook, line, and sinker, on Scripture memory. The first Psalm I can remember memorizing all of the way through was Psalm 100 - Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.[2] Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Then I memorized Psalm 23. Psalm 139 was the third Psalm that I can remember memorizing all of the way through. This was around about 5th grade or so. Even today, some 37 years later, hardly a day goes by that some part of Psalm 139 doesn't pass through my mind, so foundational is it to my understanding of God.
When I was 12 or 13 we had an exchange student from Brazil who came to live with us for a year. Her name was Karen Ferrara and she was in high school. Poor girl, she was an only child and suddenly got 4 younger “brothers” who were not too culturally aware, nor sensitive. We might have given her a rough time, in retrospect. At any rate, Karen began to memorize this Psalm, and one of my favorite memories of her is the way she rendered the opening verse. I think she was using the Living Bible, and it started, “O Lord you have examined my heart.” Karen would render it, “O Lord, you have examinated my heart.” Whenever I read, or quote this Psalm, I think of Karen.
If I may stop here, one of the things I would encourage you to do, both young and old, is to set out to memorize Psalm 139. 24 verses may seem like a lot, but when you take them in small chunks you will learn them quickly. If you are 25 and under, you could memorize it in probably less than a week, spending 15 minutes or so a day. If you are 46 or older, like me, it will probably take 15 weeks, but just keep chugging away, it will be well worth it. It is the key to understanding God on a personal level. It will be time well spent.
Read Psalm 139
Two Important Things
A God Most Intimate
Two things stand out overall about this Psalm. The first is that it reveals a God Most Intimate. This is very, very important, so don't miss it. The Psalms in general, and this Psalm in particular are very unique. Most other religions, both then and now, had no concept of a God who was personal. Who was interested in me as an individual. The pagan gods of the Ancient Near East cultures were gods that were pretty much exactly like humans, but to a different degree. They had the same jealousies, the same anger, the same greed and desires, the same imperfections. Worship of these gods was centered around appeasing their anger, so that they would treat you nicely, so that they would not ruin your life.
Along comes the Hebrews and the Psalmists, and all of the sudden you have a God who is completely other, completely different from men, and with whom an individual can enter into a relationship. So I suggest to you that any worshipper of Baal, or Molech, or Zeus, or Apollo, etc. etc., if they came to Psalm 139 would understand immediately, that this conception of God was one with which they were not familiar. A god who knows what I am going to say before I say it; who is watching out for me as an individual, who knitted me together in my mother's womb. This was a radical conception of God to the other cultures of David's time. They would have said, “God does not have time for you as an individual, he is much too busy with other things, mainly fulfilling his own desires, to worry about you, more less to care about you.”
I want you to see the radical nature of David's view of God. This was a God with which they were not familiar. It would be something like before the age of penicillin, me pointing out to a scientist that the mold in the bread he was tossing out, in fact contained the greatest good because when correctly processed it could be made into penicillin which would cure many ailments which at the time were a death sentence. They would have looked at the bread and laughed at me and said, “Are you crazy, mold is dangerous!” Pencillin was beyond their conception. David stating flatly that God is interested in him as an individual, was a radically new concept of God to the cultures of his time.
It is much the same in our own day. Apart from Judaism and Christianity no religion has a similar concept of a God who is interested in the individual. In Islam the relationship between Allah and men is one of master to slave. The concept of God caring about me is foreign to Islam. Allah, in fact, does not have emotions like man does.
Trying to pin down where Hinduism stands on this is like trying to pick up jello with your fingers. It is tough to do. Suffice to say, that whatever else Hinduism teaches, it does not teach the concept of a personal God who cares about you as an individual, as David does here.
Think about that for a minute because we are so used to how we look at God, we don't understand the implications. God cares about you as an individual. Can you imagine that? You are one of 6 billion and he cares about you. He searches out your path. He knows what you are going to say before you even say it. You as an individual can never find a place where God is not present. He knitted you in your mother's womb. If God knitted you, you are worth something, are you not? Amazing.
Stop for a minute and ponder the irrationality of all this. There are something over 6 billion people in the world. 2 billion of those people are estimated to be nominally Christian. Let's assume that 25% of those are genuine believers. That would be 500 million. If every believer prayed only once a day, that would be 500 million prayers that God has to process, not to mention knowing where you are going to sit and stand, and what you are going to say before you even say it, and if He knows what you are going to say, He certainly knows what the other 6 billion people are going to say, doesn't He? Think about it. Has David lost his mind? How can he possibly conceive of a God who can do all that?
Do you see what I am getting at here? God must keep the world running and worry about divine providence across the whole world, and not a sparrow falls without him knowing, and if sparrows don't fall without Him knowing, then I assume deer don't either, nor fish, nor people, and did I mention He had to battle the schemes of Satan while He is doing all of this. And make sure man doesn't bring an apocalyptic end to his existence by evil and hatred. In the midst of all His responsibilities, He is concerned about you. Amazing! Unbelievable! But , True! This is the God that we worship, a God Most Intimate. When you start thinking about all of this, you realize with David, “such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.”
Foundational Importance
The second thing that we need to take away from this Psalm is its foundational importance. Psalm 139 is of foundational importance. What do I mean by that? Much of the truths that we take into the world are derived from this chapter. It is not that we do not find these truths elsewhere, but that we find them state more clearly here than anywhere else in the Scriptures.
We find the worth of the individual clearly in this chapter. Look at verse 13. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” If God stitched you together in your mother's womb, does he not care about you as an individual? He created you. You are of infinite worth because God made you. If you are of infinite worth, then every other human being is also of infinite worth, so I should treat them as if they are. No place for racism here is there, not when God has knitted together every individual. There is only place for celebration of God's marvelous diversity in stitching!
We find in those same two verses the understanding that life must begin, at least in regards to how we treat it, at conception. When a single cell is fertilized and it splits into two and then into four cells, is God not knitting then? Of course he is. We as Christians don't insist on life beginning at conception because we like being at odds with culture, because we enjoy being beat upon by pragmatists, because we want to pick fights and make everyone hate us. Our view of life is driven by God's view of life. We hold that life begins at conception because we bow to the authority of Scripture and the Scriptures say that when God is knitting, there must be life!
This chapter, for obvious reasons, is the foundation for the truths that we hold in regards to abortion and to sanctity of life issues. How can we kill what God is knitting? How can we do that? What a scourge abortion is upon this nation, as we feel free to interrupt God's work, God's forming of this individual with infinite worth for the sake of “convenience.” We fight for life, as believers, we are against abortion because of the infinite worth of every individual, and mostly of the weakest of the weak, the unborn. If we cannot find in our heart to protect the weakest of the weak, then anything else that we say about the worth of life rings hollow doesn't it?
This chapter is foundational to our understanding of divine providence in our lives. Thus vs. 16, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were none of them. We will go into how freeing this doctrine is in depth, but suffice to say that all of the worry we put into health, will not add one day to our lives. Should we be stupid about it then? Of course not, but that is a topic which we will take up later.
Psalm 139 is of foundational importance in so many areas. Then we must address a difficulty as well. We only have time to mention it here, but let's not downplay the obvious problem. Look at verse 19. You have this marvelous, incredible Psalm, which reveals so much to us, you have this picture of a God Most Intimate, and then rather abruptly, David says, “O that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of bloodshed, depart from me! Vs 21. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? Do I not loathe those who rise up against you?” Uh…what is going on there? How does that fit with Christ's words in Matt 5.43,44, “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” That's a problem isn't it? Did Christ forget what David wrote? Is David letting his flesh take over here? We must address that issue.
Finally, I want to issue a note of caution. David writes on an individual level and rightly so. However, while we will explore this Psalm as he wrote it, we must remember that the Christian life is not meant to be lived out as an individual. We are all part of the body of Christ. It would be a horrible mistake for me to get so wrapped up in my intimate walk with God as an individual that I neglect to pursue Him in community. It is certainly true that you cannot be a genuine member of the community of the church, without individually putting on Christ as your righteousness. However, it is also true that there is no place in Scripture for putting on Christ and not entering into community. We will study God most intimate on an individual level, but the application of this chapter is meant to take place in the community of believers. Do not forget that. We Americans are radical individualists, and that often gets in the way of how we work out faith, because there is no place in Christianity for radical individualists. It is all community!
My constant prayer for you and me as we study through Psalm 139 is that you might gain a greater vision of a God Most Intimate. A God who created you, who knit you together in your mother's womb, who knows everything about you, who set your worth as infinite. You. Of infinite worth. It does not matter who you are, or what you have done, whether you are the President of the United States, or a movie star, or a drug addict, or a thief, or an unborn baby, or anything else, you are of infinite worth to a God Most Intimate!
God Most Intimate: Ps. 139
I. Introduction
A. Running
B. Intro to Text. Be Still and Know that He is God
1. God of David - You and Me Be Still and Know that He is Holy
2. Only and Introduction 7-8 SermonsBe Still O Restless heart of mine
3. My own Fascination Bow before the Prince of Peace
4. Karen Ferrara Let the noise and clamor cease.
C. Application - Memorize
II. Two Overall Points of Importance. Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye A. Read Psalm 139 lands.[2] Serve the LORD with gladness:
B. A God Most Intimate come before his presence with singing
1. Radical Conception of God - Then
Illus: Finding Penicillin from Mold
2….And Now
a. Ponder the Irrationality
Application: Intimate God to You and Me
C. Foundational Aspects
1. Worth of the Individual - vs. 13
2. Beginning of Life - vs. 13.14
3. Abortion and Sanctity of Life - 13-16
Illus: America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience.
4. Divine Providence - vs. 16
Application: Believers are so “ornery” because we bow to the authority of Christ.
D. A Difficulty - vs. 19ff
E. A Caution - We live in Community
III. Conclusion
A. Constant Prayer - Gain a greater understanding of God Most Intimate
B. But…We are busy with other things.
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