Sermon Tone Analysis

Is God watching?

I read of a college student who recalled a humorous sign in his campus cafeteria.

Evidently students were taking apples from the cafeteria to their room.

Someone put up a sign, “Please take only one apple.

God is watching you.”

Someone else put up a sign by the cookies: “Take all the cookies you want.

God is watching the apples.”

I know your head says that is absurd, but how often do you live your life as if God is not watching, or not involved?

How often does your heart feel as if God is not aware of your circumstances like your suffering or your hardship?

How oftern do you fele distant from God, almost as if he does not know you or even pays attention to you? Feeling this way can tempt the heart to believe God does not care about you.

The greatness of God is that knows the depths of your heart and still loves you the same.

This morning I want you to see the greatness of God.

I want you to behold the greatness of his knowledge of you and the the greatness of his love for you.

Knowing His greatness, I want you to surrender to Him and live to the glory of his greatness.

The greatness of God’s knowledge of you.

Psalm 139 reveals to everyone who reads it that God is an omniscient God.

That is, God’s knowledge is unlimited, comprehensive, and perfect in every way.

It is the complete opposite of our knowledge.

Our knowledge is passive.

We enter the world needing to learn meaning and truth of the world around us.

We learn the law of gravity.

We learn good hygiene is healthy.

We don’t know the possible.

Possibility, for us, is left to the imagination.

God’s knowledge is active as it pertains to his will and creativity.

He knows what he wills and he knows what he does not will.

He knows the actual and the possible.

I was told as a child that I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grow up.

There were thousands of possibilities of what my life would look like.

I could imagine myself being a doctor or professional football player, but I didn’t know.

God knows both what I am and what I will be.

He knows my genetics, my will, my circumstances, every human other human being who will interact with me, and everything in between God’s decision for me to exist and my eternal life.

Think about the prophet Jeremiah.

God said to him,

God determined Jeremiah would exist.

He determined when he would live, where he would live, how he would live, what he would do with his life, and when and how he would die.

Because God is omniscient, He thoroughly knew Jeremiah, friend, God thoroughly knows you.

Psalm 139 also reveals that God is omnipresent.

What this means is that God is everywhere, in all spaces and places.

It’s not that he takes up space everywhere.

That is called pantheism.

To say that God os omnipresent is to say that he does not have spatial dimensions.

He has no size nor is is localized in one space.

God created space and is free from any boundaries that makes up space.

For example, think about time.

God is eternal.

He created time for our sake.

He is not bound by the limitations of time.

In the same way, God is spiritual.

He does not have a body.

He is not bound by the limitations of physical presence.

David says in our text this morning,

Friend, because is omnipresent, God is always with you.

Now, put the two ideas together, God’s omniscience and omnipresence and you begin to understand who God knows you so well.

How well does God know you?

Consider five truths about how well God knows you from Psalm 139.

God carefully orchestrated your life (Psalm 139:13-18)

God created your life.

The Hebrew concept here is that God fashioned you shaping your body with intentional care.

Job describes this fashioning

God not only forms the body, but brings life to the body by providing the soul.

David describes this work as wonderful, extraordinary, exceedingly great, works filled with greatness.

The birth of every child, black or white, abled or disabled, born into wealth or poverty, is a display of the greatness of God.

The implications of God’s thoughtful care in the process of the womb means that disability is not a mishap or outside the will of God for us on earth.

Autism is a beautiful pattern in the tapestry of God’s design for his image bearers in a fallen creation.

People born with disabilities are just as fearfully and wonderfully made as abled bodied people.

I’m so drawn two the wisdom Hebrew Scholar Dr. Mark Futato reveals about God’s knowledge of me and presence with me in my mother’s womb.

He says,

“Though I was hidden from human view in my mother’s womb, I was not hidden from the gaze of God.

His eye was on me, and I was in his thoughts from my very beginning.

When I was in the utter seclusion of the womb, God was watching over the process of my formation.”

You are not a mistake.

Your skin color, your gender as male or female, your physical features like your nose or your eyes or your head, your personality, your ability to understand truth or knowledge, whether great or small, was not hidden from God, but was made fearfully and wonderfully by God for His glory to display his greatness.

And do you know how God felt about you as he was making you?

As God was laying out your life before the foundation of the world to your mothers womb to the time you would spend on earth, David says God’s thoughts were precious.

David is overwhelmed by thoughts of God’s intimate care for every detail of life, from the smallest cell on your body to the day you would meet him face to face for eternity, he says that they are like grains of sand.

There are just too many of them to count.

God has carefully orchestrated your life from the very beginning.

He took great care to make you into his image to display his greatness the way he wants it displayed.

God thoroughly knows the smallest details that fill your days (Psalm 139:1-3)

In the opening verses of Psalm 139, David is reflecting on God’s personal knowledge of him.

Verse 1, “Lord, you know everything about me.”

Verse 2, “You know when I sit down or stand up.”

Verse 4, “You know what I’m going to say.”

There is nothing about your life, in the morning when you rise or at night when you sleep, that God is not deeply involved and aware of.

I cannot help but be reminded of a lyric of a song by the band Police,

“Every breath you take

And every move you make

Every bond you break

Every step you take

I'll be watching you

Every single day

And every word you say

Every game you play

Every night you stay

I'll be watching you”

Thats the idea in the first three verses.

The guy in the song is stalker, God, however, is your creator father who keeps his eyes on the whereabouts of his children.

He is not limited by blindspots around corners or the bumper of a car.

He sees everything in every place, in every space your feet find a step.