Even When I Don’t Understand Life (Psalm 139) Myles Holmes | Aug 17, 2025

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

So good to be together this morning.

If you have your Bibles, you can open them to Psalm 139 if you need a copy.

You just flag down an Usher who is currently making they're currently making their way down the aisles.

They would love to give you one.

I've been at redemption for over three years now, and I want to share with you what has become one of my favorite moments, sort of recurring moments, and it happens at step two.

Some of you guys might not have experienced this if you've been there, been here longer than I have.

But Joel, who is our director of worship and connections, is a master at icebreakers and games.

And I say that I used to be, you know, the games guy, and I have been totally eclipsed by Joel, and I'm incredibly thankful for that.

But Joel asked a question, and I think he knows what the consequence of the question will be at step two.

He asked this question what's your favorite snack, chocolate bar, chip?

Like what is the best thing?

It always starts an incredibly heated debate.

There are, in fact, if there is any division in our church, it has come from this very moment where we discovered that there are some Reese's peanut butter cup fans in the house.

Anybody see on this side?

See, I'm telling you.

They all sit in the together.

Other people like chips, they're more chip people.

There are even some people who pretend to like black licorice, which I have a theory that nobody actually likes black licorice, but they like the attention they get for liking black licorice, which is why they always have to tell you they like it.

That's a whole nother sermon, though.

I'll save that for another time.

What I do love about this moment, though, is that everybody believes their pick is the best.

So that if someone else chooses differently, it's almost like an attack on your pick.

It's almost like some that they're saying, you know, that's the wrong thing to like, which by the way, there is a right answer to this question.

It's sour jujubs.

That is the right answer.

That's the thing, isn't it?

Part of our human nature is to live as though we always have the right perspective.

We have to.

It's like this, it's a we can call it a rightness reflex we have.

Just like your knee jumps when it's hit with a little hammer at the doctor's office, just like your funny bone tingles when you hit it off the table, we have this soul-level instinct that says, my perspective is the right one.

Now there's a bigger problem with this rightness reflex, and that is that it doesn't just stop with snacks.

You know, it's funny when it's on the snack level, but it carries on with other people, and maybe more detrimentally, we even take this rightness reflex to God.

We carry this into the deepest part of our lives.

We live like our perspective is the clear one is the right one.

So that we might not ever even say it, but we sort of have this feeling that if God saw things the way that we saw them, he would do things a little differently.

I mean, we see this come up when sickness comes into our life and life.

And what's the first thing we pray for?

God, give me healing.

I mean, that's good, but but one of the things we're saying is, God, you know, obviously this was a mistake.

We assume that when we miss a promotion and we're deeply saddened, as though we're missing out on something in life.

We assume that when we imagine what a relationship with someone would be like, and maybe that relationship is broken or marred, and we think, oh man, well, now, you know, life can't, I can't live life to the fullest.

This rightness reflexes at work within us.

I want you to know, love, and I feel this in my own sin struggles, don't you?

You ever look at the way that you or the that you struggle with sin and just say, like, God, why did you make me like this?

You know, I look at my idols of people pleasing, of comfort, of control, and I often have this thought, like, man, I would be a much better pastor without these heart-level idols.

And yet we struggle day after day, constantly facing this collision of God's plan and our perspective of what's best for our life.

I wonder if you ever thought that.

Maybe not out loud.

You ever ask God, why'd you let this happen?

You ever ask God why he made you the way that he made you, why he let you walk through the things that he's let you walk through, why you are experiencing the things that you are experiencing in life?

I mean, you feel it, you look at your life, you look at who you are, and you just think, man, I I could think of a thousand better ways to write this story.

What is God doing?

That's the rightness reflex.

It is a soul-level confidence that our perspective is right, and we carry that up to God Himself.

Now, in Psalm 39, we come to discover that this is a tension that David feels too.

In 139, verse 19, you can turn there shortly.

We'll read the whole chapter in a second, but look what he says.

Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God.

O men of blood, depart from me.

They speak against you with malicious intent.

Your enemies take your name in vain.

David, you see, the context of the psalm is so important.

David is looking at God and he's saying, Listen, I know what the clear path forward is here.

Slay my enemies.

But God doesn't.

And David, through this psalm, feels the same collision we feel.

It's our perspective versus God's plan.

This is the question that Psalm 139 forces on us.

What do you do when your perspective of what's best for you collides with God's plan, the way that he's executing things in your life?

What do you do when you look at your life and you look at the promise that we just read during our time of corporate prayer in Romans 8.28, where God said that he works all things together for good for those who love him, and you can't see how these things match up.

This is where this psalm speaks right into our lives, and I want to offer to you, loved one, through the words of David, a better way to live.

By the end of this psalm, David has no answers.

Wouldn't that be nice?

I mean, I'd love to preach a sermon to you where I could say, hey, listen, here's four steps to figure out everything about your life and why it happened.

You would love that too.

I could write books and go on tour.

I don't have that.

David doesn't have that, but he has something better.

And this is the main idea I want to unpack with you this morning.

It's this I may not understand my life, but I can trust the God who does.

I may not understand my life, but I can trust the God who does.

By the end of the Psalm, David has no answers, but but he finishes it by saying, lead me in the way after everlasting.

He doesn't have answers, but he has trust.

And he wants to lead us there as well.

We're gonna read it together.

Would you stand with me as we read God's word in Psalm 193?

Is the word of the Lord to the choir master, a psalm of David.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

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

You discern my thoughts from afar.

You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it all together.

You hem me in behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It is high, I cannot attain it.

Where shall I go from your spirit?

Or where shall I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there.

If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even your there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark for you, the night is as as bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

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.

Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it well, my frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance.

In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I were to count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake and I am still with you.

Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God.

O men of blood, depart from me.

They speak against you with malicious intent.

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 complete hatred.

I count them my enemies.

Search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous, grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can take a seat.

What gives David confidence to keep following God when his perspective of what's best doesn't match God's plan?

The answer is that he got a vision of God.

David had a vision of a God so big that it emboldened a trust in him.

And this morning, that's the same vision we'll see.

I want you to see this morning four realities of God's character that embolden trust even when we don't understand what's happening in life.

And the first is this he is trustworthy because he knows me.

He is trustworthy because he knows me.

Notice this is where David begins.

The confidence he has to trust God, even when he doesn't understand why God's not slaying his enemies, starts with a theological truth of God's omniscience.

And so he says, Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me.

And what David is saying here is not just that, of course, God knows everything about the universe.

What David is telling us is that he knows everything about you.

And so he says, You have searched me.

God's knowledge isn't surface level.

He's examined, he's probed into every little detail of your life.

David says, You've known me.

He hasn't just collected this data, he's studied it, he understands you fully.

I want you to know, loved one, that the way that God knows us, it's not the cold pat down of the security guard at the entrance to the place that you're trying to get.

You ever had that pat down?

It's uncomfortable, isn't it?

You're like, I got, you know, there's nothing here, we don't have to do this.

It's not the cold pat down of the security guard when you're hiding the illegal contraband of sin.

What we have here is the tender, intimate knowledge of one who knows us, the kind of knowledge we all long for.

You think of the friend who can finish your sentence.

You think of the spouse who knows your mood, even when you don't even say a word.

Think about the kind of intimate knowledge a parent has of their child that can discern the difference between the cry of hunger and the cry of pain.

We want to be known like that.

And what David is doing this morning is pointing our eyes to the intimate, omniscient knowledge of God who knows who you are.

This is where David begins.

David has trust to know, to follow God, even when he doesn't understand life, because he believes that God knows him in a way that is total and intimate.

Look at verse 2.

Notice there that God knows your actions.

God knows your actions.

David says, You know when I sit down and when I rise up.

You know, some of us have had too many Netflix binges, that that's a bit of an embarrassing thing, isn't it?

And yet God knows everything.

Now, throughout this psalm, we see this literary device employed a time and time again.

It's called a marism.

You see it here.

The psalmist is saying, sitting and rising.

And by saying both those things, he he's saying this: God knows everything in between.

Every single action you have ever taken, loved one, no matter if it's been overlooked and unseen by other people, God has seen it and he does not forget.

But he doesn't just know your actions.

Loved one, God knows your thoughts.

Look how verse 2 continues.

You discern my thoughts from afar.

He doesn't just know what you do, he knows exactly how you think.

So that before you've even formed your thoughts about something, he knows exactly what it will be.

He knows every idea you've had, every dream you've thought of, every anxious loop you've ever been stuck in.

God knows the way you think.

He knows our actions, he knows our thoughts, but David goes farther.

He knows our ways.

Look at verse 3.

You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways, from the busyness of the path to the stillness of lying down, another merrorism.

This idea that God knows all my ways, every rhythm of your life is familiar to him from the smallest detail of your favorite coffee cup.

I mean, it's embarrassing.

God knows that my favorite coffee cup right now is one that says mama needs coffee.

And I don't know if that was a confession to my wife that I use that mug right now, but God knows that.

To the biggest detail that keeps you up at night, God knows every way.

And you know, what we need to be doing right now is making sure that we're not hearing these truths with our shoulders slumped, like, oh, cool, God knows me like that.

Like, don't let the sort of Christianese language drive your heart to apathy.

This should be driving you to awe.

God, the God who runs the affairs of the universe, not only this world, which you know is chaotic enough to run itself, but the affairs of the universe, every single planet is held in his hands.

Loved one, he knows you.

You believe it.

He doesn't just know your ways, he knows your words.

So that David said, even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it all together.

Before you even speak, before you have a word on your tongue, he knows what you are going to say.

And a loved one, if he knows our actions, our ways, our words, whatever is exciting those kids out there, if he knows these things, how do we respond?

I'll tell you how I respond to that kind of knowledge.

I'm terrified.

If we're honest, this complete, total, intimate knowledge of being known, it's terrifying, isn't it?

You ever seen those videos where they mic up, maybe like an athlete or you know, a famous person, they put a mic on him and they have a camera follow them, and and you get to hear everything that they say, and you get to watch everything that they do.

Even while those people know what's happening, there's sometimes like these really embarrassing moments for them where they, you know, say these things that they really shouldn't say in public.

And loved one, could you imagine that you were mic'd up this week and a camera was following you?

And not just like what you said, could you imagine that like you know, the heavenly technology of micing up your soul was possible?

And that everything you thought was made in public and known.

And that everything you did was watch.

We squirm at that kind of exposure, don't we?

But beloved one, look at what David does.

Look at verse 5 with me.

In verse 5, David says this.

He says, You hem me in behind and before you lay your hand upon me.

Do you see it?

David is exposed by God, known completely by God, but he can rejoice in this fact that when God knows us completely, even the wicked thoughts and actions that we have done, he embraces us.

God presses into us.

And that is the gospel that God knows you better than you know yourself.

God knows the depth of your sin to a degree that you have not even begun to understand.

And yet his knowledge does not lead him to reject you, he has embraced you in Jesus Christ, loved one.

You think about what that means.

If we are known and loved by God, then he knows far more about our life than we ever could.

So that God is like the physical therapist who you go in and there's a pain in your knee, maybe, and the physical therapist knows exactly what's wrong, and they give you, you know, the torturous exercises you need to do and the painful workouts you need to prescribe to if you want to find healing.

And loved one, if they can do that with the body, how much more does God know that that thing you don't want in your life, that that painful trial you're going through, that that sin that you're battling through, in the end will break through with endurance to eternal life.

God knows you.

He knows exactly what you need.

I mean, he knows exactly what your problem is.

And he is leading you.

So when you don't understand what he's doing, it's like you know, it feels like he's far off, it feels like he's lost track of you, it feels like maybe he's forgotten something, but love when he hasn't, he knows you.

The problem is never his understanding of you.

Right?

The problem is our understanding of what he's doing.

He's got all the details.

And his knowledge of us is personal and it is intimate, and he is for our good.

God knows us.

Well, David doesn't stop there because the sweetness of being known is really only sweet if God will know us and then press into us, isn't it?

I mean, if God knows us and then he's like, ew, you know, and backs himself away.

There's no gospel there.

But but what David finds is that he is not only known by God, that God presses into him with a fellowship and his presence, which leads to the second thing I want you to see: that he is trustworthy because he is with me.

Now, David raises this question in verse 7.

Look at it with me.

In verse 7, David says, Where shall I go from your spirit?

Or where shall I flee from your presence?

This is a rhetorical question.

The answer is given to us in the way that the question is being asked.

But David here, though we know the answer is obvious, that God, that there's nowhere you can go to escape God's presence, David wants to press us in and this into us until we feel it into our bones.

And so notice then in verses 8 to 12, he carries on.

If I ascend to heaven, you are there.

If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the morning, which is far in the east, you are there.

If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, far on the west, you are there.

If I say, Surely darkness will cover me, God can't see me in this.

Even the night is as bright to God as the day.

You see it, love one.

Another string of memorisms.

God saying, No matter how high you are, no matter how low you are, no matter how far east, no matter how far west, no matter how dark you No matter how light, God is with you.

His presence is inescapable for his children.

He's always with you.

You know, one of the things I love about being a parent is playing hide and seek with kids who have not yet figured out the ability to hide.

Don't you love that if you have kids?

I mean, I'm terrified for a few years from now because we live out in the boonies, and there's a lot of places you could hide.

You could be lost forever.

But right now, especially my four-year-old is still trying to grasp this concept of how to hide in a way not to be seen.

And so if you're a parent, you've seen this before.

In fact, I had to take a picture so that you could really, you know, you didn't have to visualize it, you could see it.

This is how my four-year-old likes to hide.

There is a sheer curtain there.

But there are feet poking out beneath the bottom, and you can see right through it.

And as much as she thinks that she's hidden from our presence, she is out in plain sight.

Loved one, do you know that the farthest you have ever felt from God, you've never been hidden from him?

You know that sin that you wrestle with that corrupts you and you feel like it stains you, you say, God could never come near to me, your feet are sticking out of the curtain.

He sees you.

That dark season of depression and anxiety where you just feel like God's presence is so far away from you, God is right outside.

He knows exactly where you are.

That loneliness, that thing that you hold that you assume nobody else knows, God knows it and he has you surrounded.

You cannot hide from him.

Loved one, I want you to notice that in these passages, the presence of God is not a threat.

It's not hide and seek in the way that if he hides you, you're in trouble.

It's hide and seek that when he finds you, you find his intimate embrace.

His present is a comfort.

It's not a shame.

I love what Andrew Bonard says about these verses.

This is going to come up on the screen.

He says, This call in verse 7, it is not the utterance of the first Adam slinking from sight behind the trees of Eden, but the utterance of the second Adam.

That is Jesus dwelling in blissful fellowship with God, which fellowship he would not for all worlds ever lose.

See what he's saying here.

You remember Adam in the garden.

You remember that when Adam sinned, he tried to hide from God.

He tried to make a covering of leaves and hide from God.

And what was Adam doing?

I love the language here.

He's slinking from God's sight.

He's running and hiding from God.

But but Jesus comes, and as the second Adam, he does not run from God's presence.

He runs right into God's presence.

He wanted nothing more than fellowship with the Father.

And after his resurrection, he ascended to heaven to be with God.

That's the fellowship that Christ purchased for us on the cross.

So that our fellowship with God is like Christ enjoying perfect nearness.

What we are being reminded in these verses of is this that through Christ we experience a perfect nearness to God.

The same nearness that Christ experiences.

So that if God were to abandon us, it would be like, if you are in Christ Jesus by faith, it would be like him abandoning his own son.

Loved one, that's the way that you, if your faith is in Christ, enjoy the presence of God.

You know what that means.

It means that what's happening in life may not make sense to you, but you are never walking alone.

We will often in our life look at the other side where the grass is greener and think, man, my walk with God would be so much easier if I was just over there.

But loved one, I want you to know that God is not over there.

He is where you are, he is with you.

You cannot outrun him.

You cannot outsuffer him.

You cannot outsin him.

God is with you.

He has hemmed you in behind and before he is there, so that the very thing we often think that disqualifies us from God is the thing indeed that qualifies us for him.

Of one, David wants to comfort you with this thought.

You cannot escape God's presence.

But he doesn't stop there.

He presses the reality of who God is even deeper.

That this God who knows me, that this God who is always with me, is also the God who made me, which leads to our third point.

I can trust God because He made me.

I can trust God because He made me.

Look at verse 13.

David says, For you formed my inward parts.

This word formed has the sense of creating or shaping.

You think of a potter with clay who is making exactly what they want.

And he then adds, you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

It's this language of precision and of intimacy.

God knows exactly each and every thread that he has placed together that is your life, so that David can say in verse 14, erupting in praise, I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works.

My soul knows it very well.

David looks at the way that he's been created, set apart by God.

It is awe-inspiring.

You hear what David's saying?

He's saying you're not accidental.

Nothing in who you are is accidental.

You are knitted together with precision.

From your inward parts, David says, to your physical frame, from the smallest detail of who you are, to the most formational identity markers, every piece has been put in its place by God.

He is the master craftsman who has woven you together with intricacy.

That's what David's reminding us of.

This is who you are.

Now there's some application we need to draw out from this, and that and that is that part of that it is if you, if this is why you are so praiseworthy, because God made you, this needs to impact the way that you treat everybody.

You realize this, that everyone that you lock eyes with has been made like this, that they are crafted by God, that they are uniquely designed, that there is an interest that we should have in all people, regardless of what they believe or whether their interests are like ours or not, or whatever it is, there is an interest we should have in them because they have been made by God.

But perhaps nowhere should this truth shape our worldview more in the than in the how we think about and care for the unborn.

Before a mother knows that she is pregnant, before technology can discern if there is a child in a mother's womb or hear a heartbeat, God knows.

And He has begun the process of weaving together a beautiful life.

This is why our hearts should break when the secular world sort of makes this argument that the thing in a mother's womb is just a fetus or a bundle of tissues, our hearts should break.

Because to call something that has been made in God's image, something so degrading as a bundle of tissues, should be to us offensive.

Every child in the womb bears the fingerprints of God.

They have been created as God's masterpiece.

Regardless of their size, regardless of their ability or disability, no matter what, they are a masterpiece of God.

The second, it should stir us to lovingly persuade others of the value of human life.

And to do so in a way that doesn't just point our fingers in condemnation.

I mean, there is condemnation for the people who propagate these kind of beliefs and who open these institutions of murder.

But loved ones, we need nothing but compassion for those who are caught up in them.

To preach this news of the way that God has designed human life and to not stop there to let our actions speak louder than words by first supporting frontline ministries like the Pregnancy Help Center and the Pregnancy Care Center, these centers that are stepping in and walking with mothers in crisis, but also to take action as the Lord leads ourselves.

That may mean at times in our lives that maybe we need to think about fostering, that maybe we need to think about adopting, that maybe we need to think about very practically stepping into the paths of lives of people who are considering abortion and thinking about how we can serve them and walk alongside them as individuals and as a church.

God values life.

That means his people should have the loudest voice and the most caring lives as it comes around the life of the unborn.

But I don't want to brush over this with application just for others.

I want you to see here the application for your own life.

Loved one, as you look at your life, are there features in your life?

Maybe it's your personality.

The way that you think, your thought patterns.

The bad habits you just cannot shake.

Maybe it's even physically.

What about weaknesses in your life?

I mean, are there weaknesses that if you had the opportunity, like if there was some sort of trade-in option like we have with cars, like I would trade this in in a heartbeat?

If seasons of life you look at and just think, man, I mean I would be in such a better place if I didn't go through that, if I didn't deal with that pain.

David looks at all his life, and he, and even in verse 16, all his days, every single one of them, and says that his days were formed for me.

We look at these things, we're tempted to see them as nuisances, accidents, mistakes in our life.

We're tempted to see them as setbacks, but God looks at them and sees them as essential.

He looks at the things that we're so quick to cast off as annoyances, and he says, I if they're going to be redeemed, I need those things.

Now it's been a while since I shared an illustration from the Lord of the Rings.

I've been very practically staying away from it because there is a season there where it's getting a little too intense.

But now I know some of you are really hungering for an illustration from the Lord of the Rings.

I can tell by the way that you know you're smiling right now.

You're so happy you want to hear it.

So here it is.

One of the most fascinating threads that Tolkien weaves through all the books of the Lord of the Rings is this story of the role of Gollum.

You remember Gollum?

Don't make me do an impression of him right now.

That will not, you will walk out.

He's the twisted little creature who is consumed by the ring.

And at one point, Gollum is following Frodo and Sam, and Sam especially wishes he was gone.

But Gandalf has this word of wisdom that Sam doesn't really even get until after everything's finished.

He says this even Gollum may have something to do.

And then through the rest of the story, Gollum is just this nuisance.

He's constantly around.

His presence is constantly causing Sam especially to fear, and Sam despises him.

Time and time again, Sam looks at Gollum and just wishes that he had put an end to his life.

And yet, all along the journey, Gollum is there, woven in every aspect of the story.

And in the end, I'm gonna ruin this for you if you haven't read it in the last 70 years yet, but in the end, Gollum is essential to the destruction of the ring because when Frodo gets there, he doesn't have the will in and of himself to destroy the ring, but it is Gollum who takes the ring from him and then falls into the fires of Mount Deom.

And what looked like an accident of the plot, what seemed like a constant irritation to Frodo and Sam on their journey actually was essential to the salvation of Middle earth.

Love one, do you see it?

The very things in your life that you want to erase, the weaknesses, the wounds, the battle with sin, the suffering you endure, these are the things that God will use to shape you into the person that He is redeeming you into.

They are necessary.

You cannot grow without them.

You need these hard things specifically in your life to grow into the person that He is redeeming you to be.

You need them.

I mean, we know that about the gym, right?

Like if we we want to go to the gym and get physically strong, you got to do hard things.

You gotta lift heavy weights, you gotta put resistance on the muscle, and the more you do it, the weaker you get.

And yet we look at our lives and there are these things that we endure, and the more that we endure it, the weaker we get, the harder we fight with the sin, the harder it fights back, and we wonder, God, what are you doing?

And God is doing just the same thing.

He is building in us a spiritual strength that will be necessary for our redemption.

They are essential.

That is why you can trust God.

He made you.

And if he made you, nothing is wasted.

No day is wasted.

Every part is folded into the story that God is weaving your life into.

That at the end of time, for all of eternity, he will get praise from your specific story and the battles that you faced and the sin that you overcame through Jesus Christ, and the suffering that you endured while singing a song of glory to the King that is Jesus Christ.

Your story is filled with gallons.

It is filled with nuisances.

But God needs them.

It is for his glory and for your good.

And that leads to our fourth thing I want you to see.

That he is trustworthy because he guides me.

It's trustworthy because he guides me.

David ends this psalm with a prayer.

Look at it in verse 23.

You put your eyes on the text with me and notice what David prays, Search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me to the way everlasting.

See what David does at the end of this Psalm?

He doesn't just say, God, you know me.

What David wants is for God's knowledge of him and his perspective to be aligned.

He's saying, God, show me what you see.

And don't just expose me.

He prays, God, lead me.

He knows that if there isn't, if there is any way that his heart isn't aligned with God's, it will just hold him back.

And loved one, isn't that where we so often struggle?

We don't understand what God is doing, and so we resist him.

But what if, as we've seen this morning, the very things we resist are the things that he has called essential?

Then our resistance to those things, it only slows our progress.

It's like fighting against the current of a river that is currently dragging us home.

That's what being in Christ is like.

So what do we need?

The heart of David.

He said, Lord, if I don't understand, help me see the problem.

That the problem isn't you, it's me.

Search me.

Correct me, David says.

Lead me.

This is what David came to believe.

That the problem is is not with God and the way that he's executing his plan.

The problem is with the way that he understands it.

You know, I love what one pastor said.

It was so incredibly helpful to me.

He said, If you if you knew what God knows, you would choose what he chooses.

You would choose what he chooses every single time.

And you know what the problem is?

We just don't know.

We just don't know.

Can you trust God's knowledge and leading?

You know, one of the fascinating elements of this psalm is that we have been dancing on a knife's edge the whole time between what is incredibly fearful and what is comforting.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I read these words where where David says, you know, search me, try me, see if there be any grievous way in me, know my thoughts, and I cannot fathom saying those words comfortably, because I know what God will find, don't you?

I mean, if God exposes you like that, every corner he turns, the holy God will find in me sinfulness, sinfulness in my thoughts, sinfulness in my attitudes, sinfulness in the things that I desire, sinfulness in the ways that I've acted, even this, even today, even this past week.

Left to ourselves, David's prayer would only condemn us.

None of us, none of us could pray it.

This is the gospel, though.

That the true David, Jesus Christ, came, and he was the one who could utter these words.

He was the one who could say truly to God the Father, search me and see if there be any grievous way in me.

And you know what happened?

When the Father searched the Son, he found nothing.

Not a single word, not a single action.

God, God's Son was without sin.

And yet, the one who had no grievous way was the one who took himself upon the cross.

He was the one who died the death of the ones who did have the grievous way.

That's why ultimately you can trust God's leading.

Because if you are in Christ, God doesn't just search and expose you, He searches you.

And He's looking for your sin.

And He finds it and He forgives you through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Love one, there will be currents of resistance in our lives.

There will be waves, there will be sharp rocks in the river that is leading us home.

But if your faith is in Jesus Christ, you can trust this.

God is leading you through Jesus Christ to the way everlasting.

To the way everlasting.

That's why we participate in communion together.

Communion is a reminder that we are not yet home.

The cup that you have in your hands, which if you don't have, the ushers are currently bringing up right now, and I'm gonna ask one of them to come up onto the stage and give at least me one.

Oh, thank you, Joel.

Now you can give Joel one, maybe.

That would be great.

Now you notice something about this cup in the wafer.

You notice that it's incredibly small and will do nothing for your appetite.

And there's a reason for that.

Because it points to a communion feast that is coming, the final communion, where we will sit at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

It's also a reminder of how we will get home.

There is only one.

Path home, and it is through the broken body and the shed blood of Christ so that we don't have to hide anymore, so that we don't have to fear, we can trust the one who has given himself fully for us, loved us completely, so that we could walk in his presence.

As we take this cup together, I want to work through a couple of practical details with you.

And that is that if you are here and you haven't placed your faith in Jesus Christ, then we would ask that you would let this pass.

The Bible warns us not to take this meal in an unworthy manner, that to do so without faith is to drink and eat judgment on ourselves.

And so I would just ask that you would let this be a time to reflect and to pray and consider Christ's invitation to you.

But if you are here this morning and you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, this meal is for you.

You've trusted in him for forgiveness, and what he gives to you in return is the payment for the penalty of your sin.

For all of us, this is a time of self-examination.

Paul says, let a person examine himself then.

And so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

It doesn't mean we need to be perfect.

But it means that in a time like this, it is right for us to go before the Lord and to confess the things in our life that we have been unwilling to embrace.

To say, God, I thought this was a nuisance, but I know, Lord, you are using it for my good.

And so I'm going to follow you wherever you lead.

Let me give you a moment just before the Lord to reflect on that truth.

Now on the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Let's take the bread together.

In the same way he also took the cup after supper, saying, This is the cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's take the cup together.

As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Would you stand with me as we pray together?

Father, we thank you.

God, despite our sin, you know us.

You are with us.

You made us and you lead us.

God, you have not cast us off.

And as we have celebrated communion together this morning, we are reminded of this reality, Lord, that you long to be near us, that you are a holy God, and through Jesus Christ, you have made us a holy people so that we can live and dwell in your presence and worship you.

And so, God, that's what we are here to do now to declare your worship, to declare your goodness, even when we don't know what life brings.

God, we trust you.

And we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Let's sing this together.