The Inescapable God | Psalm 139:1-12

This series in the Psalms, you guys,

has been an incredible journey.

I know it's been incredible for me,

and from the feedback I'm getting from you guys,

our congregation, it's been really, really helpful

for many of you as well.

And it seems like every Sunday, I walk up here

and I look at you guys and I say, well,

I have another Psalm this morning

that you absolutely know and love.

It just happens over and over again

because the Psalms have been drilled into us,

many of us, for a long, long time.

Well, guess what?

I have another one for you this morning.

For so many saints over the centuries,

Psalm 139 has been a soaring encouragement

that they have come back to over and over again

to remember two important things.

First of all, the attributes of God,

but second, his love and his care for his children.

There have been many Jewish sages over the centuries

who have looked at Psalm 139 and said,

this is the crown of the entire collection,

which is high praise, right?

Unequaled in the five books of the Psalter.

Many Jewish sages have said that.

No less than Charles Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers,

declared Psalm 139 to be, quote,

the most notable of all the sacred hymns.

So we're on sacred ground here this morning

and I couldn't be more excited about it.

Whether you know it or not, you probably know

a whole bunch of the statements and verses in this Psalm.

I'll give you a few examples.

Search me, O God, and know my heart.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up.

Where can I flee from your presence?

Even the darkness is not darkness to you.

You formed my inward parts.

You wove me in my mother's womb.

I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and so on.

So because the Psalm is so filled with wisdom and truth

and because the elders are always saying to me,

Jeff, you know you can slow down just a bit.

You can actually break up a Psalm into two separate sermons.

We're doing that here.

We're gonna spend two Sundays in Psalm 139 today.

We're gonna cover the first 12 verses

and then next Sunday, Gird your loins,

we're gonna focus our attention on the issue

of the value of human life and abortion.

Now, there's something I wanna say

before we read today's passage.

And this is critically important to catch

as we frame our study this morning.

We're about to walk through

two of the greatest attributes of God,

His omniscience and His omnipresence.

And so we're gonna get a little bit technical

in places in this message,

but overall I think it'll be very practical

and very instructive.

But here's what I want you to think about

as we read the passage.

First, think how beautiful and comforting

these words are for the believer.

How comforting and beautiful these words are

for those of us who sit here this morning

and are found in Christ.

For us, the words we're about to read

are some of the most beautiful words imaginable.

But then I also want you to think about

how terrifying these words for anybody

who is found outside of Christ.

It's really quite a dichotomy.

For anybody who has not yet bowed their knee

to His Lordship, who is living,

whether they know it or not, living in rebellion

against Him by not coming to Him in faith.

For those folks, it is not a comfortable thing

to realize that God knows everything.

That God knows all of your actions,

your thoughts, your intentions,

even what motivates your heart.

Nor is it a comfortable feeling to know

that there is absolutely nowhere you can run

to escape His knowledge or His watchful eye.

And so as we come to God's presence,

as we come to God's word this morning,

if you're a believer here this morning,

I want you to think about two things.

Number one, be thankful as you sit here this morning

that God knows you and you know Him.

And then second, let this passage move you

towards a greater sense of compassion

for those who right now are outside of God's grace.

And pray that that might change, amen?

Grab your Bibles.

We're going to Psalm 139.

Now I'm calling it a wisdom Psalm,

but depending on what commentary you pick up,

there are all kinds of ways to categorize this Psalm.

Boom, there it is, a wisdom Psalm.

As I shared earlier, because of the importance of it,

we're going to limit ourselves

to just the first 12 verses today.

And as you arrive there, you see at the very top,

what do we call that thing at the top?

A superscription, which tells us

who authored this particular song.

And look, we're back to reading the words

of our old friend David.

Now remember, we talked about this at the outset.

David wrote at least 73 of the 150 Psalms,

maybe even more, but most of David's Psalms

are sort of grouped in the earlier collections.

But as we get closer to 150, the end of the Psalm series,

we're going to see there is a final grouping of Psalms

that were written by David from 138 to 145.

So we still have a couple of Sundays,

a few Sundays where we'll get to hear David's voice.

So let's read together, for the choir director,

a Psalm of David, verse one.

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, intimately acquainted with all my ways.

Even before there's a word on my tongue,

behold, O Lord, you know it all.

You have enclosed me behind and before

and laid your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It's 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 in 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 bright as day.

Darkness and light are alike to you.

So already in just these 12 verses,

we see there's so much to unpack here

and I'll admit something,

I'm a little bit intimidated by this psalm.

It's really hard to live up to the sort of lofty concepts

that we see here, but we'll do our best

together here this morning.

Back in the year 1961, great year by the way,

I know all of you were there,

a Cambridge scholar by the name of J.B. Phillips,

who later would actually translate the New Testament,

but J.B. Phillips wrote a book called Your God is Too Small.

Your God is Too Small.

And even back then, more than 60 years ago,

he was warning the church that they were leaning

into a theology that featured a God of our own making,

a God who had been reduced to seeking our approval,

a God who seemed to exist for the sole purpose

of making human beings happy.

And he warned us about that way back in 1961.

And his remedy to that false caricature of God

was to rebuild a rich, full theology

that relied solely on biblical truth

to show us who God really is,

this omnipotent, sovereign God of the Scriptures.

And this is what Psalm 139 does for us as well.

This is what's so beautiful about it.

Psalm 139 is a great course correction for any believer

who has come to think that the world revolves around him

or his feelings or what he needs.

It's perfect for any churchgoer

who has tried to shrink God down to a deity

who will serve him rather than the other way around.

Because it tells us about how high and lofty God really is.

What we hear in Psalm 139 is a God

who is really beyond finite human comprehension.

And yet we also hear about a God who is so, so infinite,

but also so close, so nearby,

so intimate with those that he loves,

that he's condescended to reveal himself.

He wasn't obligated to do that,

but he condescended to show himself to us.

And then to show us in very practical ways

how we can know him, how can we abide with him,

how we can love him, and how we can devote our entire lives

as an act of worship for his glory.

What a God, right?

What a God that he would do that.

A God that great, that infinite, that eternal,

that he would come down and do that for us.

Spurgeon captures this issue in an epic quote

that I just wanna walk through.

I got three slides, it's that big.

But it's an absolutely epic quote

which tells us what we're gonna do this morning,

how important it is, how lofty it is.

Here's what he says.

He says, there is something exceedingly improving

to the mind in contemplating the divinity.

It is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost

in its immensity, so deep that our pride is drowned

in its infinity.

Other subjects we can comprehend and grapple with.

And then we feel a kind of self-content.

And we go away thinking, behold, I am wise.

Do you love that?

But when we come to this master science,

that is contemplating God,

finding that our plumb line cannot sound its death

and that our eagle eye cannot see its height,

we turn away with the solemn exclamation,

I am but of yesterday and know nothing.

And then he finishes.

But while the subject humbles us, humbles the mind,

it also expands it.

Nothing will so enlarge the intellect,

nothing so magnify the whole soul of man

as a devout earnest continuing investigation

of the great subject of the deity.

Wow, that is a great challenge to all of us

to continue all the days that God gives us in this life

to continually investigate who he is

and what he's done for us, amen?

And we get to do this this morning together.

Isn't that great?

Yeah, thank you very much.

That was my wife, by the way.

Okay.

All right, so these 12 verses break up very, very cleanly.

We have verses one through six,

which speak about God's omniscience,

and then we have verses seven through 12,

which speak about his omnipresence,

and we'll talk about both those things.

But let's start with the verse that begins to frame

the entire meaning of the psalm,

and that is very simply verse one.

Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me.

So this is David's passionate concern,

this God who has infinite knowledge of him,

this God who knows everything about him,

his exhaustive, comprehensive, infallible knowledge

of David's heart, David's mind, and David's life,

including every movement and every motivation.

And guys, this should be our concern,

our passionate concern as well,

to know this God who knows us this well.

The word omniscience comes from two Latin words.

We know the word omni means all,

and scientia, which means knowledge.

So when we talk about God being omniscient,

we simply mean that he exists in a state

of having total and complete knowledge of all things.

And those superlatives matter,

total, complete, and all.

Nothing escapes him.

Now think about this, not only does God have knowledge

of all things that we're aware of as human beings,

but he has total and complete knowledge

of all the things that are real and true

that are outside of what human beings have discovered.

He knows so many more things that not one human being

who has ever lived on this earth has come close to knowing.

That's how total and complete his knowledge is.

Just as he's infinite in his being,

his knowledge is infinite.

There's absolutely no limit to his knowledge.

Think about that.

So God never learns anything.

He never forgets anything that he knows.

He doesn't have to reason things through

or gradually discover them.

He knows absolutely everything that has ever happened

since the moment of creation.

He knows absolutely everything that is happening

right this moment, including everything that is happening

in this room this morning and everything that is happening

in the most remote jungle on the other side of the planet.

And then off into the universe,

into black holes and everything else, he knows all of it.

And he absolutely knows everything that will happen

in the future to the very last day of creation's existence.

In every corner of what he has made.

And now that's amazing, right?

But here's the kicker for me in all this.

He knows all of those things, past, present,

and future simultaneously.

He knows it all at once because he exists outside

of the created order, because he exists outside of time.

He knows all things at once.

He sees it beginning to end as one thing.

He just knows every bit of it.

This is what the Bible tells us.

This is what God himself has told us

through the biblical authors.

He did this through his chosen instruments,

the biblical authors, who wrote about these high

and lofty concepts as they were carried along

by his Holy Spirit, right?

Breathing out his truth to us so that we might know

just, I mean, just a smidgen of who God is

and how great he is.

And trust me, it's just a smidgen.

I'm convinced when we get to the other side,

we pass from this life and we're in the presence of Christ,

I mean, our minds, I mean, just gonna be blown, right?

At all that we didn't know.

But we know enough, because God has disclosed himself to us.

And here's a few logical corollaries to God's omniscience.

We talk about him being utterly sovereign over creation,

utterly sovereign over everything.

Well, to be in control of so many things,

he would have to know all things, right?

If he's gonna be in control of all things,

he can't say, well, I'm not sure about those things,

I only know this subset of things.

No, he would have to know all things.

And then if he's gonna be a competent and righteous judge

over all of humanity, he also has to know all things.

Otherwise, he's not a competent or righteous judge.

And that's why we warn people who are outside the faith.

Someday, we will all stand before that judge,

and yes, he will know every detail about you, every detail.

And by the way, that's really what David is passionate

about here in verses one through six.

Not just that God is omniscient,

not just that he knows all things,

after all, honestly, think about it.

Does it really matter to you and I to know

that God is fully aware of all the plant and animal life

in some remote island somewhere?

That's not the most practical thing in our lives.

But the fact that God is all-knowing when it comes to me,

that really matters.

The fact that God is all-knowing about David,

that really mattered to him.

It's that intimate aspect of God's knowledge

that David is most concerned about here in Psalm 139.

Now, let's look at some of the language.

Based on what we read here,

we need to read the word searched in a particular way,

in an anthropomorphic way.

Anthropomorphic language, that is,

we have a human author describing the indescribable,

but using human language that we can understand.

Anthropomorphic.

God searches and knows us, and those two verbs together

describe a single truth.

This is not a, he's not trying to say

this is a consecutive thing,

that God doesn't know something,

so he conducts an investigation,

and then he comes to know it.

It's all one thing.

What David means by search is, get this now,

the Lord has eyes on the most secret corners of your heart

and your mind and your life.

He has eyes on it.

That's what he means by search.

By the way, even places that we don't know ourselves,

think about that, even places where we have not yet

come to understand our own hearts, God has eyes on that

and knows all about it.

Then we also see this word, this Hebrew verb, zara,

which means to scrutinize, you scrutinize my path,

and in the original Hebrew language,

that word has a range of meaning.

It can mean sifting, which is the type of work

that God does, knowing all things,

he is able to sift or separate the wheat

from the chaff in our lives.

He separates the things of lasting value

from the things that will not endure.

And then finally, we have to point out the Hebrew verb,

yadah, in verse one, which is translated known.

Many of you know that word.

You've been taught how intimate and relational

that particular word is.

It's used repeatedly in Genesis three and four,

and most famously, it's used to describe sexual relations

between Adam and Eve, which is wild, right?

Genesis four, one, the man knew his wife Eve

and she conceived.

He definitely knew her.

And from a human perspective, that points us to something.

The deepest and most intimate relationship

that we're given to experience on earth is marriage,

one flesh marriage.

Husband and wife get to journey through life together

and grow to yadah, know each other more and more

in every way, spiritually, sexually,

emotionally, intellectually, every way that you can imagine.

And that's God's design for us,

that husband and wife know each other in every possible way.

But even that level of human intimacy,

and some of us are like, wow, that's a lot of intimacy.

Even that pales in comparison to how much God knows you.

Think about that.

How intimately he knows every corner

of your heart, mind, and life.

Now, in order to demonstrate just how exhaustive

his knowledge is, David uses a rhetorical device

called a merism, and that's basically where you describe

two polar opposite things as a way of describing

the whole of life.

It's the far this side, the far this side,

and everything in between.

That's what a merism is.

Verse two, you know when I sit down,

and you know when I get up, and everything in between.

Verse three, you scrutinize my path or my travel,

my movement, and my lying down when I rest,

and everything in between.

You are intimately acquainted with how many of my ways?

All of my ways.

What does all mean there in Hebrew?

All.

You guys, Hebrew experts.

You're intimately, intimately aware of all of my ways.

So there's no guesswork with God.

Even the most, here's the thing that blows me away.

I can almost fathom a God who knows all the really

important things happening in the world.

That makes sense to our finite minds.

But even the most mundane, trivial, minute,

everyday things are part of his knowledge.

As we heard in our call to worship this morning,

from Jesus himself, God the Son who took on flesh

and walked on the earth to walk as we walk,

even he points us out when he says,

even the feeding of the birds, God knows about.

Even the growing of the fields, the lilies in the field,

are under his providence.

And then later he talks about how even if a single

sparrow falls to the ground, he knows it.

He's actually numbered the number of hairs

on everybody's head.

That's crazy, isn't it?

That's how exhaustive his knowledge is.

The Lord even knows right now where you are gonna go

to pick up lunch after worship.

Or if you're gonna go home and make it yourself.

He knows it.

He knows it.

Mod pizza, is that where we're going?

It's Mod or it's Jersey Mike's anyway.

The Lord knows, right?

It's good.

Look at the end of verse two again.

You understand or really you discern

my thought from afar.

Now think about that.

He doesn't just have eyes on what you do,

but he discerns your thoughts.

He knows your thoughts.

What that does is it shifts it from external things

to internal things, right?

This is where it gets a little bit scary.

Because we all know a little bit something about

what's up in our minds, right?

And it's not always pure.

This moves from external deeds inward

to the affections and motivations of our hearts.

In other words, God not only knows what we do,

but why we do it.

And whether our motives are righteous for His glory

or unrighteous for our own glory.

He knows all that.

He even knows what we're gonna say before we say it.

That's what David says in verse four.

How many times have you just, you've blurted something out

and you went, wow, where did that come from?

Have you ever done that?

Like, wow, that just popped right out of me in response.

That was not good.

That was not good.

So we're surprised by what we say,

but it doesn't surprise God at all.

Think about that.

He knows every impulse that governs you and regulates you.

Every emotion, every feeling, every idea, every goal,

every commitment, every doubt you have, every worry.

All of it is exposed before the eyes of the Lord.

That's what God tells us.

He tells us through His own prophet, Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 16, He says, my gaze takes in all their ways,

speaking of unfaithful Judah right before the exile.

My gaze takes it all in.

They are not concealed from me

and their iniquity is not hidden from my sight.

Now, that's a lot to process, right?

This is big and heavy.

Up to verse four, the reader might be tempted

to look at this overwhelming knowledge that God has

and then ask this question.

This is a key question.

Is that really a good thing?

Is it a good thing that God has

that much knowledge about me?

So I would ask you, how does what I've described so far

about God's knowledge of you,

how does that sit with you this morning?

How does that make you feel?

Does it bring you joy to know

that God knows that much about you?

Does it bring you anxiety or fear

that He knows you to that extent?

Because not everybody likes that idea.

My guess would be if you went out into the streets

and pulled 100 people, almost all of them would say,

ah, I'm not comfortable with that.

Not comfortable with it.

Being utterly exhaustively and intimately known.

In fact, most human beings would say,

I prefer to hold at least one hand of cards

really close to the vest

and not tell anybody about anything in my hand.

Just hide it.

You remember how Adam reacted after he sinned in the garden?

What's man's first impulse?

To hide.

He hid in the garden to keep his secret safe.

In vain, of course, right?

He feared being exposed.

And that is the story of the human race since the fall.

Complete openness and intimacy can terrify us.

And the fact that anyone might know every single thing

and every thought and every desire

that we keep hidden for most people,

that's a very unnerving thing.

But here's the key to understanding this.

The reason we're uncomfortable

with that type of total knowledge

is because we doubt the goodwill

and we doubt the good intentions

of people who might gain that information.

Right?

We doubt that they'll use that information in a good way.

But that's not true of our father.

Oh, what a difference between another human being

knowing all about your heart and all of your secrets

and all the things you wanna hide versus God knowing them.

Because of our father.

And see, here's the thing.

If you have kids, you know this.

A child is actually comforted

by the fact that his or her father is watching over them.

That brings great comfort to a child.

Because daddy's keeping me safe.

He's watching out for me.

He's got my best interests in mind.

That's the way we need to see as believers, as Christians,

we need to see God's knowledge of us.

That it's the greatest of blessings.

It's not to be feared, it's not to be run away from.

And I've known way too many Christians in my life,

including me when I was a young believer,

who did everything I could to hide things from God,

as if I could. And so we need to come out of the shadows

and open up our hearts before the Lord and say,

okay, God, I can't fool you.

So here I am.

I'm just gonna be honest about it.

And now Lord, I need you and your spirit to help me change.

So is this a good thing?

Yes.

Verses five and six answer that question

with an emphatic yes.

David goes on to say, you've encircled me or enclosed me,

both behind and in front of me.

And what he's describing is this protective barrier

around his children.

David believed that he was sheltered

by this powerful presence of God,

such that if anything was gonna come upon him,

it first had to get through this barrier,

this sovereign barrier that God had established around him.

Doesn't mean he's gonna be immune from hard things

or difficult things,

but he knows because he's been encircled

by this gracious God, that nothing's gonna get to him

unless God allows it and permits it.

And then he goes on in verse five to say,

and you laid your hand upon me,

which is beautiful language that talks about the Lord

guiding and caring for his sheep like a good shepherd.

You've laid your hand upon me.

And for David in verse six,

look, it's all too much for him to process.

Look what David himself declares

about this total knowledge that God has.

He said, it's too wonderful for me.

So this is a good point of analysis for us.

Like if I was hearing about God's total knowledge of me

and it unnerved me to some extent,

or it scared me, or I was fearful of it,

look at David's response.

For him, it's wonderful.

And this is what we need to take on as believers.

It's wonderful for me.

He said, look, I know it's beyond me.

Right?

He says, it's too high.

I can't really attain it.

I'm not capable of reaching to all the heights

of understanding this,

but it is wonderful that God knows me to this extent.

And you can almost see David's mind spinning, right?

How am I supposed to comprehend this?

It's too much for my finite mind.

And again, let me make sure that I get this point across.

It's not that David is just blown away by God's omniscience.

It's that God's omniscience applies to him.

It's that it's personal and intimate God's knowledge.

Because we can stand outside and go,

oh, it's great that God knows everything,

but no, it's even better than that.

He knows me.

So David makes it very personal.

He's stunned to realize that this wonderful,

too high God is near to him, is intimate with him.

And get this now, this is the thing that

if you stop and think about it for long enough,

you just can't process it.

God knows everything about David's mind, heart, and life,

all of the ugly stuff, too.

And he still loves him.

That's the difference between God's love and human love.

We just don't do that well, do we?

When we see ugliness in people, we pull away.

We're like, ah, I'm like that.

God says, I still love you.

My love doesn't change.

Wow.

It's amazing.

God knows every lust of David's heart,

every impure thought, every selfish motivation,

every bit of anger and hatred that he's wrestling with.

And still, this God shelters him, guides him, cares for him,

and loves him.

It's all by grace.

David doesn't deserve this, right?

It's all by God's grace.

He says, I'm going to love you still.

I'm going to love you forever.

He says, I'm going to love you still.

I've marked you out.

I'm going to love you still, even

though I know things about you that you don't even

know about yourself.

I still love you.

So if David could walk in this gathering this morning,

I think he would say to us, look, guys,

the omniscience of God should be a basis for great praise

and worship, not fear, but comfort.

We should love this.

We should be strengthened by it, reassured by it.

The fact that nothing escapes the eye of your loving Father

is the best possible thing for you.

Finally, there's nothing too hard for an omniscient God.

There's nothing too hard for him.

It's on the basis of our faith in him

that we can just rest in that.

We can be secure in that, because we know

his promises never fail.

So friends, if you're found in Christ this morning,

God's knowing you extends all the way back to before creation.

Think about that.

He has known you before the foundation of the world.

So we can rest secure in him.

We can rest in the promises of his word, that he says,

look, there is nothing that can separate you from my love.

If I've marked you out, if I've drawn you to myself,

if I've justified you in my sight,

if I've adopted you as my child, there

is nothing that's going to separate you ever

from me or my love.

Now, before we move on to the next section,

again, for those outside of Christ this morning,

I cannot say the same thing.

And it breaks my heart.

And it leads me to be compassionate towards those

who are lost.

For the unbeliever, God's omniscience

is a source of terror.

For he not only knows everything about you,

but there will be accountability someday at the judgment seat

for the people who are lost.

There will be accountability at the judgment seat

for every word, every thought, every motivation,

and every deed.

And for the unbeliever who thinks, well, I've

managed to dodge him in this life

and I've gotten away with hiding things,

it all gets exposed in the end.

It will all be brought to light.

You might have dodged him in this life

and escaped some consequences, but it doesn't last.

Ultimately, there is no place to hide

the truth of Jesus and just God.

OK, let's move to the second major section of the passage.

We'll go quicker on this.

Verses 7 through 12.

Look at verse 7.

Where can I go from or where can I escape from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

So David, first of all, tackles this amazing concept

of omniscience.

Now he goes to omnipresence.

What I love about this is David so helps us.

He gives us, this is so cool the way God does this,

he gives us almost systematic theology,

but in poetic form, which is really, really cool

and is really interesting.

So what do we mean when we say God is omnipresent?

Well, we start at the beginning with the very first truth

that the Bible tells us, that God is eternal in nature.

Before the world or matter itself existed, God was.

And before time was even a thing, God was.

He has no beginning, He has no end.

There was never a time that He didn't exist.

There will never be a time where He ceases to exist.

He is the necessary first cause of all things.

You have to have a first cause ultimately, right?

For anything to come into existence,

He is the necessary first cause of all things.

Things that we see, things that we don't see,

things that are physical, things that are spiritual.

God is not limited by time or space.

He is present everywhere in creation, in every molecule,

yet He is distinct from the creation at the same time.

That's important.

Meaning God is everywhere, but He's not everything.

That is what we call pantheism, the idea that God is in everything

and therefore nature itself is divine.

That is a pagan view of things.

We know from scripture that creation is ontologically

other than God.

It is an ex nihilo product, an effect of His divine will,

not an extension of the divine being Himself.

And if you need to hear that again, just rewind the tape.

That's a hard one.

So all things are permeated by God, sustained by God,

but God is not in all things.

In fact, He transcends all spatial limitations.

His being cannot be contained, His being cannot be localized.

He cannot be contained even with the immensity of the universe

that we don't even know how big it is.

He can't be contained.

So it's not even proper to speak of God as having size,

because if you use the term size, that implies that He's somehow measurable,

that He has boundaries or limitations, but He has none.

So if the question gets asked, well, how big is God?

That's a category error.

It invalidates the question to begin with.

Now Psalm 139 is going to lay this out in poetic fashion,

but guys, it's hardly the only place where we see this.

I'll give you two examples.

Jeremiah 23.

Am I a God?

This is God.

This is God asking a rhetorical question.

Am I a God who is only near and not a God who is far away?

There's a merism, right?

Near and far away and everything in between.

Am I not that God?

Can a person hide in secret places where I cannot see Him?

Do I not fill, love that word, fill both the heavens and the earth?

First Kings 8, Solomon is praying over the dedication of the temple,

and he asks, will God indeed live on earth?

Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain you,

much less this temple, this building that I've built.

Solomon knew.

So in verses 7 to 12, David's passion now turns to the completeness

of God's presence, and like omniscience, for him it's not just about God's omnipresence.

What's important to David is that he's omnipresent with Him,

omnipresent with His children.

Same thing.

They are whatever's happening, God is overwhelmingly with us as believers,

with you as a believer.

Now the way verse 7 is written, I've seen people misunderstand this.

You might get the impression that David would like to escape from God's presence, right?

But that's not the case.

He's not like Adam trying to hide in the garden.

He's not like Jonah who says, Nineveh's that way,

I'm going to get on a boat and go this way and try to hide.

That's not what's going on here.

David once again is using this rhetorical device.

He's speaking hypothetically to make his point.

He says, if I intended to ever run away from your presence, where could I go?

If I ever wanted to, where could I go?

And the answer's obvious, nowhere, right?

Have you ever thought about that, by the way?

Could you?

Have you ever thought about disappearing?

Oh, that just went dark.

Okay, here's when I think about this.

This actually, Stone's laughing at me.

This hit me last night.

Have you ever watched like a movie or a documentary about inmates who do this elaborate plan to

escape from a prison and they're able to break out?

And what do they have to do now?

They have to disappear.

They have to find a place to hide and just lay low and just disappear as the authorities

search for them.

They have to melt into the population so that they can't be found.

And by the way, that's been done before.

There are inmates who have escaped prison, have melted into the population, have disappeared

for years, decades, even lifetimes.

That has happened.

But it won't work with God.

It doesn't matter how crafty you are, how clever you are, how elaborate your plan is.

It will not work with God.

There is no melting into the population unrecognized.

There is no secluded hideaway.

No, you think about, maybe there's a remote corner of the earth somewhere.

If I just sat there and didn't move for weeks, nobody would find me.

God would.

God would say, you-hoo, I'm right here.

Actually, I don't think he would say you-hoo.

Okay, I'm moving on.

I have so many thoughts.

Okay, and to make this point again, we come back to Marisms.

It uses a vertical and a horizontal Marism.

First the vertical.

If I ascend to heaven, that's the highest high of the created order, he's there.

If I then drop down into the lowest hell, make my bed in Sheol, the absolute depth,

oh no, you're there too.

You're there too.

You can't ascend outside of God's presence.

If you reverse course, you cannot drop down into hell itself.

He would still be patiently waiting for you there.

And that's true.

You might not have ever thought about this before.

In Hebrew theology, Sheol, or the grave, was known as a place where there's no praising

of God, and yet still David says, yeah, in Sheol, God is present because there's no place

God cannot be.

There's no place where God says, oh, I can't go there.

No, even in Sheol, God is present.

And so we talk about the presence of God's glory and his grace in heaven, and we talk

about the presence of God in his glory and his justice in hell.

Both places give him glory, but one is related to grace, the other is related to justice,

but he's present everywhere.

Then in verse 9, we see a horizontal Marism.

If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, and scholars

point to this as David, really what he's describing here is the spread and the speed of light

as it fills the morning sky, its radiance, it pops up and its radiance flies from east

to west and fills the entire earth at the speed of light, right?

The New American Standard translation of the second phrase, in my opinion, is not the best.

It's actually not talking about dwelling in the sea.

It's talking about arriving on the other side of the sea.

So a human being that looks up into the sky from east to west, David is describing this

vast motion of the sun's rays as it moves at the speed of light, which, Ross, you'll

have to correct me later, I believe is 186,000 feet per second.

Oh, miles.

So even better.

Thank you.

See?

He fact-checked me.

186,000 miles per second, the speed of light.

And guess what?

David said, even if I fled from your presence, God, at the speed of light, I could not outrun

you.

Wow.

I can't outrun your knowledge at the speed of light.

Again, God would just be sitting on the other side of the shore going, what took you so

long?

I've been here all the time.

This is the poetic way that David is expressing these really deep systematic theology points.

And it's really quite beautiful.

Verse 10, even there, he says, your hand will lead me, and your right hand will lay hold

of me.

So just like in that first section, now David talks about the goodness of this, the goodness

of God's omnipresence with me.

His absolute knowledge of me is good, and His absolute presence with me is also for

my good.

Why?

Because look at it.

Verse 10, because God leads His children, leads them by the hand, like any good daddy.

He guides and He protects and He cares and He empowers.

And with His right hand, His hand of skill and strength, He holds us fast.

Don't you want that?

Every child wants that from his or her daddy.

And we want that from our heavenly Father.

This is not something to fear.

God's omnipresence with us is to your good and to your blessing.

Plus then, if we can't run anywhere, David gives us one last example.

Maybe the best thing to do would be to turn off all the lights and close the blinds and

close the drapes and go into the covers, and then God won't see you.

Just pitch darkness.

Have you ever been in pitch darkness, like in an underground cave?

Then God won't see me, right?

Nope.

Verse 12, even the darkness is not dark to you.

And the night is as bright as the day.

Still sees.

And again, for the unbeliever, this final verse invites further terror and ultimately

seals their doom because you cannot escape God or His judgment.

There's nowhere to run, there's nowhere to hide, and there is no darkness to conceal

you.

Because to God, even the darkest cave underground is brighter than the sun to you and I.

There's a reason that for more than 100 years, you've heard people describe God with an interesting

phrase.

How many of you guys have ever heard, He's the Hound of Heaven?

Oh, you've got to be my generation.

Okay, good, a few of you guys.

The Hound of Heaven.

Well, where did that come from?

Well, it goes back to a poem written by an English poet by the name of Francis Thompson

back in 1890, and it's the story of how God's love relentlessly pursues the soul of a mound

like a hound on a scent.

And the pictures of this guy who's constantly trying to flee from it, and it doesn't make

sense to us because we know how loving God is, but he's constantly running trying to

evade God.

Why?

Because he thinks he knows what he wants and he thinks he knows what he needs, but by the

end of the poem, guess what he figures out?

Everything that he wanted, everything that he need was actually found in God, and yet

he was running away from it the whole time.

God's like the Hound of Heaven.

He will relentlessly pursue you with His love and say, my grace is sufficient.

So I say to anybody here this morning who doesn't know Him, stop running.

Everything that you think you want out of this life or need in this life is actually

found in Him.

For David and for believers who trust in God and have made Jesus the Lord of their lives,

there's no fear in this.

There's no need to run because the truth of God's absolute presence is the ultimate comfort

for us.

So as we close, I hope that what I've shared this morning is what you believe about the

attributes of God.

And I hope that like David, you delight in these two things because you want your Father

to know you completely, and you want your Father to be with you in every single moment.

Now, to wrap up, drop your eyes down to the last two verses of Psalm 139.

Look at the language in verse 23.

See how David bookends here, right, with the word search and know between verse one and

then the very end.

Only this time, he then also adds a prayer request, a very specific thing that he asks

God to do.

Verse 23, search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me or test me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any hurtful or offensive

way in me and lead me in the everlasting way.

Now friends, I am going to, this is going to be short, so stick with me.

This is a bold prayer.

This is a very bold prayer request for any believer to say, Lord, here's what I want.

Here's what I desire from you, God.

Would you rummage around in my heart?

That's a dangerous prayer.

That's a bold prayer.

Rummage around in my heart and test every single chamber of it, every corner of it,

even the really dusty parts that I don't like to look at.

Rummage around there, look in there, and then show me, reveal to me anything that I need

to discover.

If there's a hurtful way in me, anything that is offensive to you, Lord, I want you to root

it out and put me on the path towards a more vibrant walk with you.

This is what Calvin talked about when he talked about having the knowledge of self, which

is second only in importance to the knowledge of God.

You have to know God and you have to know your own heart.

Here's what he said about it.

It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he is first looked

upon God's face and then descends from contemplating Him, God, to scrutinizing himself.

For the believer, that is a lifelong process that we ought to engage in daily.

This is where David connects verses 1 through 12 in Psalm 139 with these last two verses.

First, he says, look at the attributes of God.

He knows you completely.

He's present with you everywhere you go.

He's encircled you.

His gracious hand is upon you.

He will hold you fast.

So in light of that, now ask Him to come and do an even greater work in you.

If you believe all those things about God and that they're good for you, now ask Him

to do this greater work.

In fact, open yourself up to that work.

Take the searchlight of God's Word into the depths of your mind and heart and see what

the Spirit might show you, what He might reveal to you.

New things to work on, new challenges, sins to overcome, greater convictions to hold,

becoming more Christ-like in the way you think, the way you feel, the way you live.

Friends, don't be afraid of this.

It is always to your benefit.

And you can pray this prayer.

You can pray this bold prayer when you know your heavenly Father, when you know that He

is good, when you know that He has only your best interests in mind, when you realize that

He knows everything about me, even the ugly parts, and He still loves me.

That's when you can pray that prayer.

He loved you enough to die on a cross in your place.

He loved you enough to ransom your sins with His own blood.

He loved you enough to impart His righteousness to you so that you could live eternally with

Him.

So you can pray this prayer.

May we agree with David this morning.

Listen, such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It's too wonderful.

It's too high.

It's too lofty to reach.

But then let's also add this, and I am so grateful for it.

Amen?

As bar heads.

Father, it's my prayer for my brothers and sisters here this morning that this type of

prayer would become just a regular routine in their lives, that we would take all that

David has shared with us in these just these 12 verses, Lord, and make it just a daily

practice of saying, Lord, search me and know me.

You already know me, Lord, but I want to know more.

And I want you to reveal to me even more about myself, about the things that might be offensive

to you and that you might grow me and conform me more and more to the image of your son.

God, we're grateful people this morning for your omniscience and your omnipresence.

Grateful for the fact that you are God and we are not, as we sang earlier today.

We know, Lord, that you are sovereign and in control of all things.

And as your child, we don't have to worry.

We don't have to be anxious.

We can rest secure in you.

So thank you, Lord, for all of these truths.

And I ask God that you continue to seal them to our hearts as we try to just grasp in these

finite minds and bodies that we have to grasp just how great you are.

Help us to do that well, Lord, for your glory and our good, we pray.

Amen.