As we consider Psalm 139 we come upon one of the better known Psalms. In this Church we confess responsively parts of this Psalm at the end of every communion service. It is a Psalm that the same time comforting to God’s people and terrifying to the wicked. It is comforting to God’s people because it speaks of the expansiveness of God’s watchful presence. It is terrifying to the wicked because it reminds them of how God’s justice will win out.
I.) The Omniscience of God (1-6)
A.) Consistent Testimony of Scripture
The Scriptures teach everywhere the omniscience of God.
Psalm 139:4
Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.
Proverbs 5:21
For your ways are in full view of the LORD, and he examines all your paths.
Proverbs 15:3
The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.
Jeremiah 16:17
My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.
Hebrews 4:13
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Here in Psalm 139 the Psalmist articulates that he knows that God knows him.
B.) The way God knows
As we consider God’s omniscience as it regards God we speak briefly to this matter of “God knowing us because He has searched us.” We insist here that this “searching of us” is an eternal searching and not a temporal searching. All of God’s knowledge is instant to Him. God does not learn discursively as we do. When we learn about something it takes time and effort. But God does not learn as we do. All is before Him and has been from eternity.
Acts 15:18 Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.
So, when the Psalmist here says that “God has searched him” we must be mindful that this is a matter of speech but the heart of the matter remains true. God knows us thoroughly.
C.) God knowledge as a personal truth
Alexander MaClaren could wonder at this God knowing him. MacLaren wrote,
“The Psalmist God was a God who came into close touch with him, and the Psalmist’s religion translated the powerless generality of an attribute referring to the Divine relation to the universe into a continually exercised power having reference to himself.”
We do not have here then a abstract doctrine that “God knows everything.” Instead what we find is the Psalmist applying that personally to himself. It is, of course true, that “God knows everything,” but for the Psalmist here it is the fact that God knows him personally that is being communicated.
Note the totality and comprehensiveness that the Psalmist speaks of in terms of God’s knowing.
sitting down … rising up
understanding thoughts from afar
walking and lying down
In our thoughts, actions, and speech God knows us.
And do not miss the comfort that the Psalmist finds in all this (vs. 6).
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.
The Psalmist plays in this knowledge of God’s knowing him.
We ought not to miss the subjectivity here. It could well be possible to get lost in an abstract doctrine like “God’s intimate knowledge of everything,” but far easier is it to laud the doctrine of God’s omniscience when it is personal to us.
D.) Further, the Psalmist teaches us here, by way of slight abstraction, that if we would know ourselves aright we must know God who knows us better and more thoroughly than we know ourselves. The knowledge of self then lies in the knowledge of God who alone can teach us ourselves.
This is an important insight for moderns who go crazy trying to understand themselves. The modern asks of Himself “Who am I,” and will seek to try and know himself apart from God’s knowledge of the modern.
There are dozens of different personality testing systems. There are stand-alone models or theories which seek to explain personality, motivation, behaviour, learning styles and thinking styles (such as Benziger, Transactional Analysis, Maslow, McGregor, Adams,VAK, Kolb, and others). All of these in pursuit of knowing ourselves apart from knowing the God who alone knows us.
There is no true knowledge of the self apart from knowing the one who knows us exhaustively. Knowledge of self lies then in knowing God who knows us perfectly.
John Calvin underscored the absolute necessity of accurate self-knowledge to knowing God in the opening pages of his monumental work, Institutes of the Christian Religion. He wrote:
Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists in two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves (Institutes, 1.1.1).
Calvin argued that one could not truly know God without knowing oneself and that one couldn’t truly know oneself without knowing God. Calvin acknowledged the obvious dilemma in saying, “which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern” (Institutes, 1.1.1).
E.) We can take comfort from this doctrine when
— We are confused. We may not know our own thoughts but God knows and the God who knows our own thoughts before we do can clarify matters for us and dispel our confusion.
— We are discouraged by who we see ourselves to be. We see our sin … we see our mortality. We may not like what we see at times. But, my friends … God knows us. He created us. And in that knowing of us He has claimed us for Himself in Christ Jesus. If God knows us and accepts in Christ then we can know ourselves and accept ourselves as w are in Christ Jesus.
— There is in all of us a desire to be perfectly and thoroughly known. Only God knows us like this and when we seek to be known like this by anyone else but God we run the danger of making for ourselves an idol of they who we would have know us like this.
Implications
Open Theism
Of course this overturns all other teaching that suggests that God does not know the future, or that God and man are co-operating in order to create a uncertain future. This is, of course, a non-Christian position. A non all knowing God is no God at all. A god from whom we can hide from in any sense is a limited god and so no God.
Ominscience as an inescapable concept for deity
Inescapable concept — Bugs Bunny and Lumps on the head
When we deny omniscience to God, omniscience does not go away, but instead it seeks to find itself seized by whatever immanent god seeks to be god. Of course when we deny omniscience to god it finds itself being located in man somewhere.
We are hearing of the attempt to seize temporal omniscience all the time today. We are seeing reports about Government agencies — seeking to collect all kinds of information and data on Americans.
A Congresswoman (Maxine Waters) recently noted that,
“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday.
“That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that…. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”
What else can this be but an attempt for man to claim God’s prerogative?
Rushdoony noted here,
“When the State claims sovereignty, the logic of its position requires that a like total knowledge be acquired concerning all men and things, and the result is the inquisitive and prying state which aims at knowing all in order to govern all.”
So, by this doctrine we can also identify entities that are seeking to arise to God’s position of Omniscience. Any entity that seeks to know everything about us there is to know so that nothing is kept hidden from them is an institution that is seeking to aspire to Godhood with all its omniscience. And of course to willingly yield to that desire of omniscience of the State is to participate in idolatry — to instate another God above God.
It is not hard to think of the entity or institution in our daily lives that insists that nothing be kept private from them. Any institution that would demand all our records and would even spy on us to gain what it wants to know is an institution or entity seeking to be God.
For God to know all communicates absolute control. The Psalmist understands that. But God being God he is the only one who is to have the privilege of omniscience. The Psalmist finds comfort in this (vs. 5-6)
God’s omniscience for the believer is a like a child’s security blanket.
II.) The Omnipresence of God (7-12)
Remember here that one indication of man as sinner is his desire to escape God. When Adam sinned he sought to hide from God.
Isaiah 29:15 Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?
It is the fallen man’s nature to hide from God but here in Psalm 139 the Psalmist readily confesses that he can not hide from God and there is the clear sense that he is delighted with that.
And so should we be. All men may forget us or our cause. All men may despise us and wish we would hide ourselves from them. Yet, despite the wish of men that we might disappear God is with us. He has promised he will never leave us nor forsake us.
Another help that this passage is to us is that in being ever in God’s presence we must be mindful that there is no such things as secret sins. Whenever we sin, we blow a trumpet in the face of the ever present God and rebel boldly in His presence. Perhaps the thought of God being ever present could be a hedge against what we think is private sinning?
And what comfort God’s presence is to His saints. This comfort has even been put into poetry and hymn,
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
So, the omnipresence of God is stressed in a very personal and particular way. We are not permitted to think of God deistically, as a remote, determinism and a far out power.
God is taught here as being omnipresent, everywhere at every moment. A true God cannot be God if He is not totally present. If he is not totally present at all times to all man’s doing then there are places that men can go to escape God’s presence and judgments. Omnipresence, total presence, is therefore, necessary and the concomitant to total government, to effective government. We believe, as Christians, that God is everywhere present. It could not be otherwise, because if God is not everywhere present, He is not God. If we can escape Him and say, “Over there belongs to God but over here I can escape God then we have limited God and En-Goded ourselves. We have therefore defeated God and become God wherever God is not present. Therefore, basic to scripture is the doctrine that God is every-where present, and basic to every theology that has ever been developed, every doctrine of God, is this same concept of the omnipresence of God, the everywhere presence of God.
Just as No God can be truly God if He does not know all there is to know about man so no God can be truly God if He is not everywhere present to man. Accordingly, the State not only seeks to be all knowing but also all present so as to have total control.
Now we must say a word as to why we can find this omniscience and omnipresence comforting. It is for the same reason that the Psalmist can find it comforting. We find that which is a terror to those who hate God to be a comfort because we are covenant men. Being covenant men we belong to Christ. Belonging to Christ we know we have favor with God. If God’s omniscience and omnipresence be for us, who can be against us.
Introduction
Review from last week
We spoke about the omniscience and omnipresence of God but we did so as the Psalmist does so in personal and concrete ways. The Psalmist here does give us these high doctrines of the character of God — His Omniscience (all-knowing-ness) and omnipresence (all present-ness) but he does so in a way that these high and potentially abstract doctrines become very tender and cherished doctrines — doctrines that we can not navigate without.
The Psalmist tells us that in a impersonal world God is personal. God is not a deistic God who has wandered away but He knows each of His people individually and thoroughly. Unlike the State, which has aspirations to be God, God knows us not abstractly by our social security number but intimately. The Pslamist tells us that God has made a personal search, that He is interested in the most mundane details such as your lying down and rising up. This knowing of God is extended even being familiar with our speech patterns before we have crafted that speech.
We spoke that this knowledge that God has of us must be the fulcrum by which we know ourselves. There is no knowing of our selves apart from knowing the God who knows us. We noted that no psychological test can tell us about what we want to know about ourselves in comparison to what we learn about ourselves by knowing the God who knows us. Our knowledge of self is the ectype of God’s archetypical knowledge of us. God’s knowledge of us is original and our knowledge of ourselves is derivative of God’s knowledge of us.
We spoke then briefly about those pretenders to Christianity that deny this doctrine of Omniscience and we considered then the State which seeks to take on the mantle of God and so replace God as the all knower and the all knowing.
Then we spoke about God’s Omnipresence which the Psalmist brings out next in Psalm 139. The Psalmist notes that fact that God is a inescapable presence. We spoke of what a comfort that doctrine should be to God’s people. We reminded ourselves that the certainty of God’s presence means we can withstand the hostility of God’s enemies and the loneliness that often creates. Though all would flee from us God is present and God is enough company and in that we find comfort.
We noted briefly that God’s Omnipresence can be a means by which we flee sin. We noted that all sin — even that sin we think done in secret — is sin that is committed on center stage spotlight in the full presence of God. The thought of that might slow down our mad rush into what we think are private sins.
Finally, on this score we noted again the attempt of the State to overthrow God and en-god itself and we noted that on way we see that is the States desire to take up the prerogative of all-presence-ness. State agents, state camera’s and state satellites are ubiquitous. The capacity to eavesdrop on almost any conversation. All this is suggestive of how the State has morphed into this entity that desires to be all present.
And finally we noted that the reason we find all this comforting is that we belong to the Lord Christ. Christ has atoned for our sins and made such an introduction of us to the Father that we find comfort in God inescapable knowing and presence. Because of Christ God is for us. To the contrary, those outside of Christ find this everywhere knowing and presence of God to be a threat and so they seek to escape God by conjuring up other deities that they think will be more kindly to their sins in those deities omnipresence and omniscience.
That was last week in reduced to the nub. Now we consider the third and fourth strophe of Psalm 139
III.) The Creative work of God As The Foundation Upon Which His Intimate Knowing and Presence Is Constructed
The inspired Psalmist has been accentuating the character of God. He professes God’s knowing of Him and God’s constant companionship and it is as if he says now in Psalm 139:13-18 that these attributes of God are only to be expected in the one who created him. We should not be surprised that He who is the very creator of us is a God who then goes on to know our sitting and rising and a God from whom we cannot escape.
Here we see God as the great creator King who is set forth as the one one who brings us into being. Cast into the background are the indirect means of human sexuality and / or human artifice that God uses to create each individual. Instead what we are focused on here is the direct agency of God in creation.
The Psalmist isn’t interested in the “science or biology of it all.” What he is focusing on is the agency of God in man’s creation. And so he uses poetic (lowest parts of the earth) language to describe what happens in conception and in man’s development in the womb.
The Psalmist can say here,
For thou hast formed my inward parts.
The “reins” in the Hebrew thinking referred to the kidneys. In the Hebrew mindset the Kidneys (reins) was used to signify a man’s desires or longings. In this Psalm what is being communicated is that God was the one shaping our whole physical being including the core of our being. As the one who has formed us and woven us God is the one who has absolute right of ownership.
So, like the previous words of the Psalmist which spoke of the intimacy of God, inasmuch as God knows all there is to know about the Psalmist, and inasmuch as God is everywhere present to the Psalmist so here the intimacy of God to the Psalmist is declared in its most intense expression … “God is the one who knitted me.”
It is a reversed lesser to greater argument.
“Of course God knows me … of course God is everywhere present to me … After all, God is the one who created me before I was even cognizant to talk about a “me.”
What a deliciously Biblical (Reformed) way to speak. God is always prior. In our being God is prior to our self consciousness. In our thinking God must be our beginning assumption. God, as the objective reality, precedes and gives definition to all our subjective encounters with His reality. From beginning to ending we begin and end with God.
Do not miss this high view of God. This high view of God is exactly the tonic that the Church needs to return to in order to be faithful once again. The Psalmist here is intoxicated with the character and glory of God. It is his main reality in which he comprehends all other reality. When he finds any value in himself it is only because He understands the creative work of God in creating his self.
Note again here God’s personal involvement in the affairs of His people. His not a bloodless God so to speak. He is not removed us as some kind of passionless God. From our conception to the end of our days God is present as our Creator… as our High King … as our companion. Christianity is not the faith of the stoic who endures for the sake of some absent God. God is near and present. God sees … God cares … God loves.
As moderns we tend to be amazed with our technology. We stand amazed at in vitro fertilization. We stand amazed at stem cell research. We stand amazed the prospects of cloning. But we have largely lost the ability to stand amazed at the God who stands over and above all this technology like a great Architect stands over his child’s first Lego house.
The Psalmist presses on. Not only does he speak of God’s work in his creation but he speaks also of God’s intimate knowledge of his own end. (Psalm 139:16).
It is not only that the Psalmist is fashioned for God it is also that the days of the Psalmist are fashioned by God. Here is the strong Biblical (Reformed) doctrine of Predestination. Before conception God has numbered our days. This ought to give us great confidence. Nobody can take a day from our life nor can we add a day to those days that God has ordained for us. Let the wicked breathe out threats against us. They are no threat to the one who holds are days in the palm of His hand.
Application
1.) If we honestly believe Psalm 139 we will be slower to cavil against God when He forms and weaves some children different from others. God forms and weaves the Down’s syndrome child, the cystic fibrosis child, the cerebral palsy child. Why?
On this side of eternity who of us could ever begin to say, but confidence in the God who forms and weaves all requires us to rest in His character and wisdom, as difficult as that often times is.
2.) Of course it is fitting in our looking at this only a few days after the commemoration of those who were tortured and murdered while still in the womb. To date this is how we have treated some 57 million fellow image bearers.
Would any Christian, no matter how well intentioned, take up for Abortion if Psalm 139 and the Character of God it portrays was lodged deep within their souls? Would any of us dare to interrupt God’s work of forming and weaving a child thus communicating that we know His business better than he does?
In light of this weeks commemoration of 42 years of legalized slaughter, ponder the connection between the slaughter of innocent children, the rise of government brutality in the streets and courts of our land, and our own culpability as citizens. Here we turn to Kuyper,
“If the institution of government is an act of God’s grace and an important part of his common grace, then it is obvious that a people is punished with a bad government, and blessed with a good one. As the people is, as a rule so will its government be as well. If, as is the case among many African tribes [replace this with: ‘many Western nations’], there is no respect for human life among the people themselves, even to the extent of still being sunk into cannibalism, and if they murder recklessly among themselves and among other tribes, then it is quite understandable that their heads and rulers also do not show any respect for the life of their subjects. If, conversely, respect for human life has already entered the consciousness of all the people, so that murder is considered an abomination, then it is equally understandable that the government itself does not commit murder either, and to the contrary, tries to oppose all murder. Thus Holy Scripture teaches us that a good king must be honored as a blessing of God, and conversely, a people that itself sinks into sin is punished with bad rulers.”
From *Common Grace*, by Abraham Kuyper, vol. 3, p. 55 (1904 ed.)
IV.) Prayer that God would oppose those who hate His majesty
Of course when we turn away from God our hatred lands upon the judicially innocent. We hate God we do all we can to strike out at Him. This is seen, in part, by our slaughter of the innocent. Surely no one can deny that the torture and elimination of the unborn is anything but hatred no matter how nicely we dress that hatred up with hand wringing and talk about “every child being a wanted child.”
But the Psalmist introduces us to a different kind of hatred here. It is a righteous hatred … a hatred of all that finds God to be vulgar and desultory. Thus we are taught that “hatred” is an inescapable category. Either we will hate those who hate God or we will hate those who God loves.
The Psalmist bellows hot with his claim of hatred. Something we find shocking. Keep in mind though that the Psalmist has been caught up in the vision of the glorious God he serves which has elicited strong affections of love to God. What else might we expect then but a corresponding loathing for those who are opposed to what the Psalmist deeply loves?
“Sin is the antithesis of virtue. That moral principle is the reason which makes us desire the reward of righteousness is one and the same with that which makes us crave the due punishment of wickedness; moral approval of virtue and moral indignation against evil are not effluences of two principles in the reason, but of one only. They are differentiated solely by the opposition of the two contrasted objects. The sincere approbation of the good necessitates moral indignation against the evil, because the objects of the two sentiments are opposites. Everybody thinks thus. Nobody would believe that man to be capable of sincere moral admiration for good actions who should declare himself incapable of moral resentment towards vile conduct.”
-R.L. Dabney
Christ Our Penal Substitute, pp. 48-49
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Alexander Pope
“They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.”
― Edmund Burke
Conclusion
The Psalmist ends with the same theme he began with
“Search me”
The Psalmist invites his covenant Lord to continue to probe his inmost thoughts and feelings. He longs for the wicked way to be exposed and removed. He desires to walk in God’s law way.
