Savage Street Church of Christ

12_09_2018_DoYouRealizeHowWellGodKnowsYou_Psa139_DonRuhl

Do You Realize How Well God Knows You?

Psalm 139

Don Ruhl • Savage Street, Grants Pass, Oregon • December 9, In the year of our Lord Christ, 2018

Prelude:

1. If He is God,
   1. Should He not know us?
   2. Should He not be intimately aware of all that we do?
   3. Should He not know what we are going to do?
2. If He is God,
   1. Should He not be able to go wherever we can go?
   2. Should He not be able to see wherever I am?
3. If He is God,
   1. Should He not have made us?
   2. Should not our bodies show that we have been formed?
   3. Should not our bodies show that it took great skill to make us?
   4. Should He not know how long we are going to live?
4. If He is God,
   1. Should not His thoughts overwhelm us?
   2. Should He not eventually destroy those who oppose Him?
   3. Should He not be able to see any wickedness that is in us?
5. If He is God, should He not be able to lead us in the way of eternal life?
6. I say yes, and Psalm 139
   1. deals with all of these matters,
   2. showing that the God we read about in the Bible is our Creator.

Persuasion:

1. Psalm 139.0 | A Man Who Loved God
   
   0 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.
   
   1. God loved David and David loved God.
   2. Therefore, David would think on God often.
      1. When you think on God enough,
      2. you come up with thinking like David did in Psalm 139.
   3. I encourage you to do what David did.
      1. Just think on God.
      2. Use Psalm 139 as a launching pad into your own thoughts about God.
         1. Think of what you know about Him in the Bible.
         2. Think of how He has worked in your life.
            1. I believe you will find doing so a blessed experience.
            2. Then find a fellow-believer and
               1. tell him or her
               2. what you have been thinking on God.
2. Psalm 139.1–6 | God Knows You
   
   1 O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
   2 You know my sitting down and my rising up;
   You understand my thought afar off.
   3 You comprehend my path and my lying down,
   And are acquainted with all my ways.
   4 For there is not a word on my tongue,
   But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.
   5 You have hedged me behind and before,
   And laid Your hand upon me.
   6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   It is high, I cannot attain it.
   
   1. How did David know such things?
      1. Remember that the Lord saw what he did with Bathsheba and Uriah.
      2. God knew everything about David’s problems with Saul.
   2. Ezekiel 11.5

      5 Then the Spirit of the LORD fell upon me, and said to me, “Speak! Thus says the LORD: ‘Thus you have said, O house of Israel; for I know the things that come into your mind’” (Ezekiel 11.5).
      

   3. Jesus demonstrated this ability during His ministry.
   4. David concluded of the Lord:
      1. That He searched David,
      2. That He knew David,
      3. That He understood David,
      4. That He comprehended David.
3. Psalm 139.7–12 | Wherever You Are, God Is There
   
   7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
   Or where can I flee from Your presence?
   8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
   If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
   9 If I take the wings of the morning,
   And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
   10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,
   And Your right hand shall hold me.
   11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”
   Even the night shall be light about me;
   12 Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
   But the night shines as the day;
   The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
   
   1. If you can go there, why can’t God go there?
   2. Therefore, in verse 10, David assured us that God’s omnipresence benefits us.
      1. He leads us and holds us wherever we are.
      2. We are not alone.
   3. This could be taken in one of two ways:
      1. It can terrify us because we cannot escape God.
      2. It can comfort us knowing that God is always with us.
   4. Jonah found out that you cannot flee from the presence of the Lord.
   5. Everywhere we go,
      1. God is there, for
      2. God made it.
   6. Listen to what Solomon said in First Kings 8:

      27 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!” (1 Kings 8.27).
      

   7. Do you want to know how well God knows you?
      1. Do you realize that He could see you when no one else could?
      2. Listen to what David said next.
4. Psalm 139.13–16 | God Knew You in the Womb
   
   13 For You formed my inward parts;
   You covered me in my mother’s womb.
   14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
   Marvelous are Your works,
   And that my soul knows very well.
   15 My frame was not hidden from You,
   When I was made in secret,
   And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
   16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
   And in Your book they all were written,
   The days fashioned for me,
   When as yet there were none of them.
   
   1. Almost every Christian I know
      1. when he or she learns something new and wonderful
      2. about the workings of the human body,
         1. he will quote David,
         2. “We are fearfully and wonderfully made!”
   2. [Examples]
      1. Ductus Arteriousus

         “Ever wondered what a baby does with his lungs before he’s born? He can’t breathe air inside the womb. His lungs are not used. Instead, his blood vessels are temporarily attached to his mother’s placenta, where they absorb nutrients and oxygen.

         “The lung develops until birth, without being called upon to function. In fact, a baby can be born without lungs and survive until the placenta is removed. In contrast, the heart is critical to life from the start. It’s the only vital organ that must function from the beginning stage of its development (the heart starts beating at five weeks).

         “Since the baby’s heart does not yet need to devote one of its pumps to circulating blood to the lungs, the heart develops a small hole, called the foramen ovale, in the wall that separates the two pumps. The baby also develops a small vein, called the ductus arteriosus, which allows blood to bypass the lungs and move directly to the body.

         “At birth, a marvelous transformation takes place. When the lungs inflate and the baby takes his first breath, the pressure in the heart shifts, forcing a flap over the foramen ovale to close the hole. The body also produces chemicals that cause the bypass artery to close.

         “By marvelous design, the baby emerges from its watery home and breathes the air without a glitch. Blood begins pumping to the lungs to absorb oxygen without a moment’s delay.”

         https://answersingenesis.org/human-body/heart/
         

      2. The body needs oxygen.
         1. The blood provides it.
         2. The blood gets it from the lungs.
         3. The hearts pumps the blood throughout the body.
            1. Did the body’s need for oxygen happen first?
            2. Or did the heart and blood make it available first?
               1. If you believe in evolution, and
               2. you say the body needed it first,
                  1. how did the body survive until the heart & blood evolved?
               3. If the heart & blood evolved first,
                  1. why did it evolve without a need?
      3. The body’s need for oxygen and
         1. the sources to provide
         2. were all created simultaneously.
   3. Here is the point of all of this:
      1. God saw us in the womb.
      2. God made us in secret.
      3. God skillfully wrought us.
   4. If He knows everything about us, and
      1. if He is wherever we are, and
      2. if He created these marvelous bodies that we inhabit,
         1. then He must know the days fashioned for us,
         2. even before our days had started.
5. Psalm 139.17–18 | God Thoughts Are Precious
   
   17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
   How great is the sum of them!
   18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
   When I awake, I am still with You.
   
   1. How much is there to know about us?
   2. How many different places have each of us been?
      1. If He knows everything about me,
      2. how many then are His thoughts about me?
         1. Now multiply that by 7 billion
         2. just for the people living on the earth now.
   3. That means that He knows all about the bad stuff, yet,
      1. He still provides for us,
      2. He still gives us new days,
      3. He still pursues us with His love!
         1. Does that not make His thoughts precious you,
         2. whether you speak of the number of His thoughts or
         3. the kind of thoughts He has?
   4. How much sand is there?
      1. We have no way of calculating the number.
      2. So it is with God’s thoughts.
         1. How many different thoughts does He have at one time?
6. Psalm 139.19–22 | Slay the Wicked, God
   
   19 Oh, that You would slay the wicked, O God!
   Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men.
   20 For they speak against You wickedly;
   Your enemies take Your name in vain.
   21 Do I not hate them, O LORD, who hate You?
   And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
   22 I hate them with perfect hatred;
   I count them my enemies.
   
   1. David sought to repent of all of his sin all the time.
      1. However, you cannot say the same thing about the wicked.
      2. They violate every reason for which God created us.
   2. Therefore, David prayed for their removal.
      1. Whatever way God thought about the wicked,
      2. David wanted God to know that he thought the same way.
7. Search me, O God, and know my heart;
   Try me, and know my anxieties;
   24 And see if there is any wicked way in me,
   And lead me in the way everlasting.
   
   1. Since God does slay the wicked,
      1. knowing them as He does,
      2. David did not want to be included in that number.
   2. Therefore, knowing that God searched him and knew him,
      1. he wanted God to do a search for wickedness and
      2. even anxieties within him and then
         1. to lead him in the way leading to eternity.

Exhortation:

1. How well does God know us?
   1. He knows everything about us,
      1. even whether we are sitting or standing,
      2. whatever we are thinking,
      3. where we are walking,
      4. when we lie down to sleep, and
      5. what we are about to say.
   2. However, it is not just that He knows us now, but
      1. He knows our past,
      2. going back further than our pre-adult days.
         1. He knew us when we were still developing in the womb.
         2. Job said of himself and his servants:
            
            15 “Did not He who made me in the womb make them?
            Did not the same One fashion us in the womb?”
            (Job 31.15)
            
         3. The psalmist of Psalm 33 made this declaration:
            
            15 He fashions their hearts individually;
            He considers all their works.
            (Psalm 33.13–15)
            
2. As many and as profound the thoughts of God must be,
   1. why does He even bother with us?
   2. Why does He seek to know us so well?
      1. We are His creation.
3. What is it about God’s knowledge of us and
   1. what is it about His presence everywhere?
   2. What are we supposed to do?
      1. Acts 17.26–28
         
         26 “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring’” (Acts 17.26–28).