God Knows All about Me

The following message by Alistair Begg is made  available by Truth For Life.  For more   information visit us online at truthforlife. org.

I invite you to turn again to the Bible, to the   Old Testament, and actually to the book of Psalms.  And as we read this familiar psalm, we realize   that in many ways, the song that we have just sung  was written in a different form and in a fuller   form thousands of years before the contemporary  writer of what we have just sung. Psalm 139. 

Psalm 139: To the choirmaster. 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 altogether. 

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 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 to you;   the night is 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 very 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 would 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 way in me,  and lead me in the way everlasting!  Amen. 

Father, we often pray, but we do so sincerely, Make the Book live to me, O Lord,  Show me yourself within your Word, Show me myself and show me my Savior,  And make the Book live to me. For Jesus’ sake. Amen. 

Chris Morphew is someone probably unknown to  most of us. He’s an Australian. He lives in   Sydney.

He’s a schoolteacher, he’s a chaplain  of a school, and he’s particularly gifted in   working amongst teenagers and students. And in  the last little while, he wrote a book with that   audience expressly in mind. I had my hands on it. 

I have a copy in my study, and I was intrigued by   it. The title of the book is simply Who Am I and  Why Do I Matter? Who Am I and Why Do I Matter?  

And clearly, the emphasis is on identifying the  many challenges that face young people as they try   and make sense of their lives as they move into  the early stages of adulthood, and they wonder,   “Who am I, really? Am I my status? Am I my  possessions?

Am I my looks? —whatever I may be. ”   And it is a very, very helpful book.

But as I was looking at it, I said to myself, “You   know, this is a book not simply for teenagers,  but this really is a book for everybody. ”   Because that same basic question needs to be  addressed and needs to be answered in a way   that only the Bible can actually answer. And in  many ways, this morning and these next few Sunday   mornings are a follow-on from what we began to  say last week about the importance of thinking   Christianly about everything and therefore  thinking Christianly about our personal identity. 

I mentioned before that I have a very scant  understanding of anything to do with art,   and therefore, I would never pretend. But  I do know that there is a painting in the   Boston Museum of Fine Arts that I still have on my  list to go and see. And it was painted by Gaugin,   one of the French Postimpressionist painters. 

And Gaugin, like Van Gogh or others, was really   rejected in his life. People didn’t think much  of his paintings at all. Unfortunately, he had   to die for his paintings to become valuable. 

He never knew the value of them himself. But   the largest of his paintings, which is there  in Boston, apparently—and it’s known partly   because of its size and the comprehensive nature  of the theme—but it is of interest to me and has   been always because he wrote on the canvas. And he  didn’t write on his canvases at all—none of them,   save this one.

And the canvas portrays the  totality of life—so, from the infancy of birth all   the way through to some aged people who are there.  He painted it in Tahiti, which is where he died,   in the islands. But up in the lefthand corner, he  wrote three questions.

He wrote them in French,   but in English they are straightforwardly  this: “Where do we come from? What are we?   Where are we going?

” “Where do we come  from? What are we? And where are we going?

”   “Who am I and why does it matter? ” Now, Gaugin did not come up with   an answer to that, despite the fact that he had  been raised as a Roman Catholic boy. He had been   raised within the framework of the catechism.

He  knew the answers to those questions in his head,   but he did not know the answer to the  question in a life-transforming way.   And we know that because he made an unsuccessful  attempt at suicide shortly after completing that   great painting. And his friends knew that  the longings of his heart were unanswered. 

I ponder that, and I say, “If only somebody had  said to Gaugin, ‘Why don’t you read the Bible?   Why don’t you, as an artist, go to one of the  great artistic books of the Old Testament?   Why don’t you turn to the book of Psalms?

’”  After all, in the Psalms we find everything:   all the emotions of life—joy and sorrow, grief,  doubt, fear, the expressed longings of our hearts,   and so on, and all of it set within the context of  the infinite and unlimited goodness and knowledge   and power of Almighty God; all here in  the Bible, all the questions answered.  Calvin referred to it as the anatomy of the human  soul. And Alec Motyer said of the people who wrote   the Psalms—and this is a psalm of David here—they  were “people who knew far less about God than we   do and yet loved him a great deal more.

” They  did not have the fullness of the revelation of   God that we enjoy as new-covenant believers. They  looked, as it were, over the horizon without an   answer to their questions. They understood the  nature of forgiveness.

They understood much.   And I think Motyer has something when he says  they knew a lot less, but by their songs,   they appear to have loved God a lot more. Now, all of this to say that our focus   on the next four Sunday mornings that we’re  together is going to be on this 139th Psalm.  

It is without question one of the high peaks, if  you like, of the vast array of psalms that are   here—the vast array, if you like, of Old Testament  poetry. What you have in the Psalms is poetic   theology or theological poetry, written in such  a way that we can understand that all the tiny   thoughts that we may have of God, all the ways  that we may think to constrain him or marginalize   him or make him biddable to us, all of those  thoughts are transcended when we read the Psalms.  And what we’re reminded of in Psalm 139 are a  number of really big things—big theological words,   words like omniscience and  omnipresence and omnipotence.  

And they’re all here, but not the words.  All those truths are actually in the psalm,   but they’re not conveyed by means of a kind of  academic statement of theology. And that’s one   of the great benefits—at least I find—of the  Psalms, in that this truth, these truths are   conveyed in a way that is entirely personal. 

It’s entirely personal. And I try to read it   that way. I put the emphasis on “my” and “I” and  “mine” and so on so that that might come across. 

Let me give you the overview of the psalm—how  we’ll handle this in four sections. Verses 1–6,   David says, “You know me;” verses 7–14,  “You encompass me,” or, “You surround me”;   verses 15–18, “You created me”; and verses 19–24,  “You test me. ” So at least you have some idea of   where we’re going.

You can read ahead, and  that will help you and probably help me,   because I’ll be able to assume a great deal,  and I won’t have to study quite as hard.  But this morning, verses 1–6: “You know  me. ” “You know me.

” Look at how it begins:   “O LORD”—Yahweh, the God of all creation—“O  LORD, you have searched me and known me! ”  In the Communion service in the Book of  Common Prayer—which we refer to seldom,   but it’s familiar to some of us—the  opening prayer before the celebration   of Communion reads in part like this: the man  officiating at Communion says, “Almighty God,   unto whom all hearts are open, all desires  known, and from whom no secrets are hidden,   we come to you. ” That’s very, very good. 

Let me just read it again: “Almighty God,   unto whom all hearts are open, all desires  known, and from whom no secrets are hidden,   we come to you. ” In other words, God knows everything.   Google and other Google-like things  have ambitious, hugely ambitious plans   for collecting data.

And they are collecting  data. But they cannot hold a candle to this.   How many billion people are in the world this  morning?

I don’t know. Eight? Seven, eight?  

Now, just think about this for a  moment. What is the psalmist saying?   That in a personal way, the  entire eight billion—let’s   call it eight—population of the  world is known to Almighty God.  

Calvin says, “How few of us acknowledge that  he who formed the eye, the ear, and the mind   himself hears, sees, and  knows everything. ” Everything!  Now, you see, what a staggering statement  this was!

For David to sing it in his day   and for others to join him in singing it, they  were affirming something to be true of Almighty   God that was distinct in every aspect from the  surrounding gods of the nations. God had taken   his people, he had taken Abraham out of that kind  of context, and he’d revealed himself to him, and   Abraham had made these amazing discoveries of the  provision of God. Abraham had ended his life under   the promise of God, trusting in it unreservedly.

And the people were led out of Egypt. They’re   led in the wilderness wanderings. They  find themselves in the promised land.

The   declension comes. They’re exiled and so on.  They eventually find themselves despairing:   “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign  land like this?

” That’s about the 137th Psalm.   Because the gods or the idols… In fact, you can  see it if you just go back to Psalm 135. Here’s   this great contrast.

Psalm 135 and verse…  Incidentally, what I just mentioned is 137;   I’m glad that it is: By the waters of Babylon,   there we sat down and wept,  when we remembered Zion.  Psalm 135, let’s just look at verse 13: “Your  name, O LORD, endures forever, your renown,   O LORD, throughout all [the] ages. ” Abraham,  Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, all the rest—Ruth—all the   way through; Peter, James, John; Eric Liddell, Jim  Elliot, Helen Roseveare.

All the way through! And   here we are in 2023. “For the LORD will vindicate  his people and have compassion on his servants.

”   And then look at what he says in verse 15: The idols of the nations are silver and gold,   the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do[n’t] speak;   they have eyes, but do[n’t] see; they have ears, but [they] do[n’t] hear,   nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them,   so do all who trust in them.

So the contrast is vast. And what he is   pointing out as he goes through and writes in this  way is the absurdity—and it is an absurdity—for   men and women to seek ultimate answers from  substitute gods. But that’s what we do.

You see,   when we turn away from God as he has made himself  known, we don’t trust in nothing; we trust in all   kinds of things. Because we are made in order  to worship—to worship the true and living God.   And when the peoples turn back and when  they turn aside, where do they end up? 

Well, let me just read it again—the  folly of it all, graphically portrayed.   The ironsmith makes his piece. The carpenter makes  his piece.

“He shapes it into a figure of a man,   with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a  house. He cuts down cedars, or he chooses   a cypress tree or an oak,” and he “lets it  grow strong among the trees of the forest.   He plants a cedar … the rain nourishes it.

Then  it becomes fuel …. He takes a part of it and   warms himself; he kindles a fire”; he “bakes  bread. ” So far, so good.

But wait a minute:  Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it  an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he   burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he  roasts it and is satisfied.

… He warms himself and   says, “Aha, I am warm …! [Great fire! ]” And the  rest … he makes [it] into a god, his idol, and   [he] falls down to it and worships it.

He prays  to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god! ”  Now look back at Psalm 139: “O LORD,  you have searched me and [you know] me! ”  Now, here is the fascinating and vitally important  thing—and I’ve read this psalm ever since I was   wee, but I’m not sure that I really focused on  this till I began to look at it this past week.  

The knowledge of God is, as I have said,  comprehensive. It spans the globe. But the point   that he’s making here is not the comprehensiveness  of the knowledge of God but the fact that David   says, “You know me.

” “You know me. ” It’s one thing  to say, “You know everybody in the world. ” “He’s   got the whole world in his hands.

” True. But David  says, “You have searched me, and you know me. ”   See, we’ve got to be able to say these things to  our teenagers.

We’ll go on through the psalm and   see how vital it is that they understand  that they’re not the product of chance,   that they’re divinely put together, and  that God knows them. And he knows us.  Now, let’s just look at how he outlines this. 

Some of you will remember Warren Wiersbe. What   a wonderful man he was! I met him in the early  days of my life here, enjoyed him very much,   and he always had a funny story.

But he was  masterful at outlining passages of the Bible. And   when I found out what he did with this section,  I said, “That’s for me. That’s for me.

” And now   it’s going to be for you. Because this is how  he worked his way through it. The headings,   some of them are his, and some are a corruption.

But there, look at this in verse 2. First of all,   “You know what I do. ” “You know what I do.

”  “You know when I sit down and when I rise up. ”   So the psalmist says, “You know my  actions, and you know my movements.   You know whether I brushed my teeth or whether I  didn’t.

You know everything. You know what I do. ”  [Verse] 2b:   “You discern my thoughts from afar.

” “Not only  do you know what I do, but you know what I think.   You know what I think. All that goes on  in my mind is known to you, Almighty God.

”   In other words, David is acknowledging the fact  that it is impossible for him to deceive God,   because God knows even our secret thoughts. God  knows the motives of my heart as well as the   actions in my life. “You know what I do—whether  I’m moving around, whether I’m sitting up or   lying down.

But you know my thoughts. You know  them from afar. ” Distance is no issue to God. 

Then, in verse 3: “You know what I do. You know  what I think. You know where I go.

” “You search   out my path and my lying down and are acquainted  with all my ways. ” We sang it, didn’t we? “All my   ways are known to you.

” Do we actually believe  that? All my resting spots? All the lay-bys?  

All the spare time in the airport?   “You search out my path … [you’re]  acquainted with all my ways. ” Are you   following this?

“You know what I do. You  know what I think. You know where I go.

”  Verse 4: “You know what I say. ”  “Even before a word is on my tongue…”   There’s a “behold. ” Remember, we said a few  weeks ago, we don’t often say, “Behold, there   is McDonald’s!

” So when you come to a “behold”  like this, he’s saying… It’s an exclamation mark,   almost. He says, “You know, even before  a word is on my tongue, behold! ”—“Think   about this!

” he says—“You know  it. You know it altogether.   Behold, you know everything.

You  know it altogether. ” In other words,   what he’s saying is “You know  me better than I know myself. ”  It’s quite staggering, isn’t it?

It’s  wonderful—unless you’re scared by it.   It’s a threat to the unbeliever, for sure.   That God knows all this?

Mm-hmm. In other  words, I may be a master of disguise before you.   You can conceal where you go during the week;  so can I.

You and I can cover up our pasts   if we choose. You and I can exaggerate  what we do, how clever we are,   what we have achieved. You and I can  cover our hearts’ secret longings   from those who sleep in our own beds.

But we  cannot before the searching gaze of Almighty God.  And that is the point that he’s making:  “You know what I do. You know what I think.  

You know what I say. You know me better  than I know myself. You know where I go.

”   “You have searched me and known me! ” This  is quite wonderful. A God before whom we   could conceal all these things would  have to be one of these made-up gods.  

I mean, it’s like Augustine says: a God  who doesn’t know the future is not God.   I mean, a God that didn’t know  this, he wouldn’t be much of a God.  So that’s why, you see, we want to make a god in  our own image.

We want a manageable god—you know,   a god who kind of looks after things generally  so that the floods don’t finally overwhelm us,   that the equilibrium of our existence is  managed and so on, so that we can get by.   But surely not a God like this! “Yes,” he says. 

And sixthly, “You know what I  need”—verse 5. What do I need?   “I need your presence every passing  hour.

” “You hem me in, behind and before,   and [you] lay your hand [on] me. ” Now, we do not know in what context   David wrote this psalm. I’ve thought about it a  lot, and perhaps you will later on today as you   think all your way back through 1 and 2 Samuel,  at all the points and places along the journey   where we followed his life, that he might have  sat down and written this particular psalm.

If   there is any indication of a context or occasion,  perhaps it is to be found in the verses to which   we’ll come in the end of this study: “Oh that you  would slay the wicked, O God! [The] men of blood,   depart from me! ” If, then, the occasion is that  he is confronted again by those who oppose God,   who oppose David as God’s covenant king…  Remember, we said that David’s response to things   like this—not to anticipate the final study—but  David’s response was the response of he who was   the covenant king.

He was the Lord’s anointed. And  David, who writes this psalm, sings this psalm,   and he recognizes—verse 5—that he needs the  sheltering protection of the hand of God:   “You hem me in, behind and before. ” It’s  like being hedged around.

It’s protected.   I don’t think that we ought to read it,  although some of the commentators do,   in terms of restriction, so the picture of  one as being hemmed in by way of restriction—I   don’t think so—but rather by way of protection.  I don’t want to go to the same  old analogies I always use about   grandchildren and putting pillows around  them to stop them from collapsing and so on.  

But the picture of being hemmed in, of the hand of  God, of being watched over is wonderful. You think   about it: I just mentioned Elliot. He was in my  mind this week.

Somebody sent me a picture from a   notice board of a church in the North of Ireland,  and it had Jim Elliot’s picture from Wheaton   College, and it had the dates of his life. He  died at twenty-nine as a martyr, as you will know.   And the great statement from his diary: “He  is no fool who gives [up] what he cannot keep   to gain what he cannot lose.

” And if you know the  story that his wife Elisabeth Elliot wrote of him,   you remember that before they encountered  the forces that finally took their lives,   they stood on the beach, and they sang, We rest on thee, our Shield and our Defender!  We go not forth alone against the foe; Strong in thy strength,   [and] safe in thy keeping tender, … [It’s] in [your] name we go.  “You hem us in, behind and before.

” You say,  “But how does that work? They lost their heads. ”   “As for God, his way is perfect.

”  We’ll see later on in the psalm that all the days   that he ordained for us were written in  his book before one of them came to be.   And again you have that lovely picture of the  hand of God, don’t you? The psalmist mentions   it frequently; the prophets mention it always:  “I am the Lord.

I will take you by the hand. I   will keep you. ” If you’ve started to read in Ezra  this past few days of the year, then you know that   that was a recurring word concerning all of the  kindness of Artaxerxes towards the people of God.  

And Ezra says on more than one occasion, “And he  was aware that the hand of God rested upon me. ”  You think about hands, think about  God’s hand. God doesn’t have a hand.

If   you think about it, when a child takes a father’s  hand: it’s a tiny hand inside a big hand.   “You lay your hand upon me. You protect me. 

You’re watching over me. ” We sing of it,   don’t we? “Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble  meeting, [so] to take, as from a father’s hand…”   Jesus sang the 139th Psalm.

As a boy  he sang this. Jesus not only sang it,   but in many ways he fulfilled it. He lived  it.

We can’t import Jesus back into the psalm,   but the psalm will always send us, ultimately,  forward to Jesus. And maybe your mind goes where   mine went when I sat for a while thinking  about the hand of God, and then I said,   “Well, isn’t that what Jesus said from the cross?  ‘Father, into [your hand] I commend my spirit.

’”  Well, just a few closing thoughts.  But let me give you a paraphrase of   the six verses. See if this helps to register it.  

David says, I’m an open book to you;   even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking. You know when I leave and when I get back;   I’m never out of your sight. You know everything I’m going to say   before I start the first sentence.

I look behind me and you’re there,   then up ahead and you’re there, too—  your reassuring presence, [as I come] and [go].  Now look at verse 6. What is his response  to all of this?

His response is wonder.   It’s wonder. He says, “This is actually beyond  my ability to fathom.

” “Such knowledge is too   wonderful for me. ” “This is… I never completed  this course. I can’t complete this course!

”   It’s very clear, isn’t it, that David, as  representative of the Psalms and the psalmists,   thinks very differently about God than we  are prone to do? I said to myself as I was   reading it this week, “You know, I think in  many ways I’ve become a practical atheist.   ‘You know my thoughts’?

‘You know the  words before I even get them on my lips’?   That’s somewhat daunting! ”   In fact, Jim Packer, in a wonderful little  statement in his book Knowing God, he says,   “Living becomes an awesome business when you  realise that you spend every moment of your life   in the sight and company of an [all-knowing],  [ever-present] God.

” He’s got that dead-on. It   “becomes an awesome business. ” Awesome.

So there’s two ways to look at this,   you see? You can look at it and say,  “Oh, this is a terrifying reality,”   or you can say, “This is an unbelievable  privilege. Almighty God, you’ve got, what,   eight billion people to look after, and you know  my every thought?

You care about me that much?   You watch over my coming and going. You’re  interested in all my ways.

You know my fears. You   know my failures. You know my starts, my stops,  my missteps, my disasters, and yet you love me.

”  I said to Sue through the last few days… She  said, “Are you ready for Sunday? ” I said,   “Well, I know how to start, but  I don’t know how to finish. ”   She said, “Well, I think it’s pretty  important that you get to a finish.

”   So here’s the best I can do with the finish. I  was thinking about it just this morning when I   woke up. You say, “Well, you’re running  close to the deadline, aren’t you?

”   Well, there’s nothing like the  thrill of that scare, I tell you.  I woke up thinking about Nathanael—not   my son-in-law, but that’s his name, one of  them. Not that one.

No, the Nathanael of John 1.   Philip has found Nathanael, and he says  to him, “[Nathanael,] we have found him   of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets  wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. ”   And Nathanael says to him—this is  not very complimentary—he says,   “[Well, hey, wait a minute.

] Can  anything good come out of Nazareth? ”   Philip said to him, “Come and see. ” So he  says, “Okay, I’m going to go see Jesus.

”   “Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and  said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed,   in whom there is no deceit! ’ Nathanael  said to him, ‘How do you know me? ’   Jesus answered him, ‘Before Philip called you,  when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

’”  How could he do that? Because he’s the Messiah.  Because he’s God.

Because he’s the Shepherd of   the sheep—which brought me to my concluding  observation; I hope it’s helpful to you:   “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays  down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired   hand…” Remember David was a shepherd?

“He who is a  hired hand … not a shepherd, who does not own the   sheep, sees the wolf coming … leaves the sheep …  flees, … the wolf snatches them … scatters them.   He flees because he[’s] a hired hand and  cares nothing for the sheep. ” Now listen:   “I am the good shepherd.

I know my own and my  own know me. ” “I know my own and my own know me,   just as the Father knows me and I know the  father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. ”   And then further down—it’d better be further down. 

Yeah: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them,   and they follow me. I give them eternal life,  and they will never perish, and no one will   snatch them out of my hand. ” Fantastic, isn’t  it?

He knows. We sing it sometimes in that song:   “You know all the things I’ve ever done, and yet  your blood has canceled every one. ” O God!

O God!  Well, just a moment of silence,  and then we’ll sing a final song.  This is wonderful, Father.

It’s high.  It’s beyond our ability to comprehend.   Thank you for giving us an inkling of  it.

Help us to live in the light of it.  This message was brought to you from Truth For  Life where the learning is for living.   To   learn more about Truth For Life with  Alistair Begg visit us online at truthforlife.

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