Turn with me tonight to Psalm 139. Psalm 139. Tonight we consider the first six verses and hope in the weeks to come to consider this psalm in four separate sections. The first six verses tonight. But before we read this, throughout the history of mankind, there have been different conceptions or ideas of God. Of who He is, of what He is like, and of what He does. And one of the many heretical beliefs about God is what is called deism. And one of the false beliefs or teachings of deism has to do with the relationship or the connection that God has with His creation. Deism believes and teaches that after creating the universe and everything in it, that God has withdrawn Himself, that He has taken a step back, as it were, and He simply sits back and watches it run. Watches the universe operate. It's been explained like a watchmaker who makes a watch. He makes this wonderful watch, he winds it up, and the rest is up to the watch. It runs all by itself with no further influence from the maker of that watch. And this is deism's view of God. He created the world in the beginning and, as it were, wound it up like a watch or even like a top that spins. And when it stops spinning, when the universe stops spinning, as it were, then that will be the end. But in the meantime, God doesn't have anything to do with the world or with man. It's hands off. His hands are off of what He has made and we're on our own. That is the teaching of deism. Now, for us as believers, That alone is a scary thought. But praise be to God for the truth. We have been considering over a number of weeks and months the first epistle of John, including God's love for us. That He is intimately connected and involved with His creation and especially His people. We want to take a little break from that now. Psalm 139, there David speaks of some of the attributes of God, including His omniscience and His omnipresence and other things. And in doing so, David explains the awesomeness and the greatness of God. He gives us a true and unbelievable, yet a very comforting picture of the greatness of the one God. The Creator of the heavens and the earth. Yet the One who loves His people with a sacrificial love. With that in mind, let's read together Psalm 139. Again, noticing particularly tonight the first six verses. O Lord, You have searched me and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, You know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in behind and before. You have laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. Too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there. If I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there, Your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you the night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you for you created my inmost being you knit me together in my mother's womb I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made your works are wonderful I know that full well my frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place when I was woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed body All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men! They speak of you with evil intent. Your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against You? I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them as My enemies. Search Me, O God, and know My heart. Test Me and know My anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in Me and lead Me in the way everlasting. Beloved, in this psalm, David beautifully unfolds and explains the relationship that God has with him. And in this text before us, David teaches us that God has a real and a personal and involved interest in David's life. Far from a hands-off approach like deism teaches. But this also means that God has the same interest in the lives of His people today. David was a believer and he represents believers. In verses 1-6, then David confesses God's intimate knowledge of him. But before we go any further, we must understand that God's intimate knowledge of David is the same kind of knowledge that God has of every single human being, every single man, woman, and child. God has an intimate knowledge of each and every one. But we will consider this from the believer's standpoint, because David, the believer, is confessing these words. God is omniscient. Boys and girls, that means that God knows all things and He knows all things completely and perfectly. And therefore, in this text, David teaches that the believer is perfectly known by God. And first of all, we want to notice the reason for this knowledge. The reason that the believer is perfectly known by God. Or again, the reason that any human being is perfectly known by God. David begins verse 1, O Lord, You have searched me and You know me. Now, simple language, isn't it? Yet what does David mean? God has entered into a personal relationship with David. This is one-on-one action that has already taken place. God has already done the searching even without David's permission, even without his approval. But notice how personal this is. David doesn't say, O Lord, You have searched the world and you know all things. Which is also true, of course. No, instead, David says, you have searched Me. You know Me. The Almighty God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, has taken the time to focus His attention on one small individual human being. Now that doesn't mean that He ignores or forgets about everyone else as if He can only concentrate on one at a time. He is omniscient. He knows all things about everyone at the same time and all the time. Of course, something that we cannot even begin to understand. But again, a beautiful confession from David the believer. The unbeliever wouldn't even make this kind of a confession. The unbeliever would never say, O Lord, You have searched me and You know me because the unbeliever doesn't even know the Lord. What a beautiful confession from David the believer. But how are we to understand this searching? In the original language, the term that is used in this case means to explore, to spy out. It means digging into and to do all of this in a thorough manner. We get the idea here of an archaeologist who works on a particular plot of ground and he works with small tools and he carefully loosens a little bit of dirt or sand and then he carefully brushes that away with a small brush. He doesn't want to miss anything. He literally leaves no stone unturned. And this is the way that God has searched David. His searching is perfect. It is complete. He has not missed a thing. But notice the Bible not only says, you have searched Me, but it also says, and you know Me. Now David is saying that whatever there is to know, God knows it. He has a full and a complete knowledge of David. God searching again is perfect. Whatever there is to discover. Just like the archaeologist again, searching in unknown places. Whatever there is to discover, God discovered. Even our secrets are not hidden from Him. Psalm 44 verse 21 says, Would not God search this out? For He knows the secrets of the heart. Now we must not misunderstand this searching. You see, God did not have to search David because there was something about David that he didn't know. Something that he needed to learn about. God was not ignorant about David and therefore He had to carefully examine him so that this ignorance would go away. Instead, we need to understand the Lord's searching in this way. First of all, the Lord knows us thoroughly as if He has examined us. Remember, His perfect, infallible knowledge has always existed. Especially of all that He has made. All of His creatures, including us. Nothing is a surprise to Him. But also, His searching and His knowing is continual. He continually, as it were, searches and knows us and knows the depths of our hearts. Congregation David has been searched and that was the reason that he was perfectly known by God. And believe it or not, God has also searched us and knows everything there is to know about us. Now indeed, that's a scary thought for some. Some who would rather have their lives remain a closed book because they know all too well the story that it tells. But if you are a child of God, this is a comforting message that God knows everything there is to know about you. Because only the one true God can truly know us. To pretend God, one made of sticks and stones by man's hands, or one made up in man's imagination, cannot know us. And as God's children, we have the assurance that David's God is our God. And our comfort too is that God's perfect knowledge leads the believer to desire not to hide anything offensive to God, but to confess his sin before the searching eye of God, knowing that God is the only One who can and will forgive our sins. But our comfort is also that God knows our needs even before we ask. And that's why David also speaks of the completeness of God's knowledge in verses 2-5. David describes God's knowledge of both His physical actions and His mental actions, or we might say His outward actions, as well as His inward actions. And he begins verse 2 by saying, you know when I sit and when I rise. Can you imagine that? Actions that we take for granted. That we do without thinking. Actions that some say that God doesn't have time to worry about. He only has time to worry about the big things in life. David teaches a much different story here. These actions that we do without thinking God is fully and completely aware of. That's how interested God is in our lives. How many times in a day do you sit down and stand up? You see, the truth is we do these simple actions too many times in a day to count. How many times did you breathe in and out yesterday? How many times did you not only sit down for a meal yesterday, but did you take a bite of food? Boys and girls, how many times in the past week have you asked your mom for a snack? I can only imagine in some of your households. How many times did you get in and out of your car in the past week? I'm sure there's not one of us here tonight who could give an accurate answer to these questions, but God can. He knows all of these things for each one of us. but then think about it too think about what you did that maybe you shouldn't have done and you thought surely no one saw you do it well God did and by saying sitting down and rising up David is also talking about being at rest versus being in motion activity versus inactivity and he adds to that idea in verse 3 when he says you discern my going out and my lying down see whether we're running a race or taking a nap whether we're on vacation traveling across the world or whether we're simply going about our normal daily activities and duties, God knows what we are doing. Because as the psalmist says in Psalm 121, He never slumbers. He never sleeps. In fact, He knows what we are going to do even before we do it. God scrutinizes, as with a microscope, David's path. He examines our paths. He judges them. He knows whether our paths are good and righteous paths or whether they're dangerous, whether they are paths that we should not take. And David ends verse 3 by saying, you are familiar with all my ways. Just tying everything together. You are familiar with all my ways. Everything we do is within the scope of God's knowledge. He knows what we do, when we do it, and why we do it. Sometimes if we do something ridiculous, we stop and say, you know, I really don't know why I did that. I have no idea. And even though we might not know, God knows. And God knows why we do what we do because He knows our thoughts. You see, our mental actions are also a part, are also included in His perfect knowledge. In verse 2 we read, you perceive my thoughts from afar. People of God, God knows our thoughts and He knows them even before we think them. And this is scary even for the most faithful saint. The most private thing that we possess that absolutely no other person can have access to without our will is our thoughts. We alone have the key to unlock our thoughts. No one else has that key. At least that's what we thought. But God also has a key. In fact, He has the master key to unlock our thoughts. He knows each and every one of our thoughts, good or bad, whether those thoughts turn into words or whether they do not. He knows our intentions. He knows our motives. He knows our desires. God knows all of these things. And therefore, we may not and we must not live as if He doesn't. Because He most certainly does. This fact that God knows our thoughts together with what we read in verse 4 ought to cause us to take some time to examine ourselves. Verse 4 says, Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord. David is saying, even before I know what I'm going to say, You, O Lord, You know what I'm going to say. You see, words and speaking are our major mode of communication. We depend upon our ability to communicate with each other by one spoken word or by actions. But God doesn't depend upon our spoken word to know what we say. He knows our words when they are still in our hearts. And of course, this could be a dangerous situation for some of us, couldn't it? How many of us have the bad habit of speaking before we think? How many of us have essentially two languages? One that we use on Sunday, which is quite pure and righteous and holy, but the other that we use throughout the week, the other six days of the week that reflects the world's language. How many of us like to spread a little juicy gossip once in a while instead of speaking the truth in love, as we considered last Sunday morning with the Ninth Commandment? Beloved, God records everything we say or think. Remember what Matthew 12, 36 and 37 says, But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. God knows our words even before they are on our tongues, and therefore we too, beloved, must know our words before they are on our tongues. We must choose our words carefully. We must think before we speak. Psalm 34 verse 13 says, Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. All of our actions, mental or physical, are included in God's perfect knowledge. God knows all things at all times, both visible and invisible, both public or private. David, in essence, says to the Lord, You know it all. Nothing that we could do or say or think is a surprise to God. But again, this must be a surprise. And it can and it must be a comfort to you and me. God's knowledge of us must drive us in His strength to practice thinking good thoughts, to think God's thoughts after Him, to weigh our words carefully. And we must take great care in the decisions with regard to our path. We must strive to do what is pleasing to God. Our physical actions must be to His glory and even our rest must be pleasing to God. You see, beloved, knowing the greatness of our God and His perfect knowledge must drive us to desire a lifestyle that's in complete devotion to Him first of all because of who He is. Not simply because of what He does, but first of all because of who He is, because of His greatness, but also because of what He has done for us in Christ Jesus. In verse 5 of the text, David says, You hem me in behind and before you have laid your hand upon me. We know that a hem in a garment is to protect the edge of that garment so that the threads won't come apart. It's to protect it and keep it in its place. God hems His people in. This verse draws together our understanding of the completeness of God's knowledge. And here, David is bringing together God's omniscience, the fact that He knows all things, with His omnipresence, the fact that He is everywhere at all times. God's knowledge and His presence go hand in hand. Wherever God is, there His knowledge is too. And David is saying here that he is completely surrounded by God. God is before him. And God is behind him. David moves in the presence of God. In Acts 17, verse 28, Paul says of the Lord that in Him we live and move and have our being. This also means, beloved, that God is where we have been. He's behind us. He is where we are going. He's before us. Again, past and future references. But what about the present? David says, you have laid your hand upon me. In the original language, the word for hand can also mean power. Therefore, God's hand of power is upon David. This is David's confession, remember? There is no place for David to go that is outside of God's control. And since God has been with David past, present, and future, that means that God's knowledge also completely surrounds David. God knows David's past, what's behind him. God knows David's future, what's before him, and God knows David's presence. His hand was upon David even as David wrote the words of this psalm. Beloved, God is in our past. He's in our future. He has His hand upon us at this very moment. He hems us in behind and before and as His people. There is never a time when we are away from the power of His protecting hand. We might question at times whether that's really true. When we find ourselves in difficult or dangerous situations or when the storms of life seem to be pounding down upon us. But even then, you see, He directs us and restrains us so that we look only to Him for help. These situations may range from death to financial hardship to spiritual attacks from the devil or simply anything that could cause us to waver in our faith. But God is always there to protect us. Psalm 121 verse 8 says, The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever. Beloved God, our God knows us so completely. And His knowledge of us is so perfect that we cannot make the slightest move without Him knowing about it. And we should not want to make the slightest move without God knowing about it. In fact, our desire ought to be with Moses before the Israelites crossed the Jordan into the land of Canaan. Moses prayed, O Lord, if Your presence will not go with us, do not send us. We would rather be in the desert with You than in the land flowing with milk and honey without You. May that be our prayer too. Lord, if You will not go with us, do not send us ahead. He knows if we honor our parents or if we dishonor our parents. He knows if we fight for the faith or whether we compromise our faith. He knows whether we treat our customers respectfully and fairly or whether we cheat our customers. And again, beloved, for the child of God, This is real comfort because by ourselves, all we would do is stumble and fall into danger, but God knows what we need even before we ask Him. If you're not a child of God, this must make you nervous and scared because there is no escape from God's presence and knowledge, as David will talk about in the next section. Again, He knows every thought, He knows every word, and He records every last one of them. But in this text, in this psalm, David, the believer, is expressing or confessing words of comfort. He's not at all uptight or upset about the fact that God knows everything there is to know about him. He is comforted by the fact that his whole being, his thoughts, his words, his actions are included in the perfect knowledge of God. He expresses this in verse 6 where he is praising God for God's knowledge. And as he gives another confession of who God is, this is David's response to God's knowledge. He says, such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Now first of all, he says that God's knowledge is wonderful. You see, congregation in Scripture, God is described as wonderful. The term wonderful is used to describe deity, divinity. Isaiah says of the child to be born, that he will be called Wonderful Counselor. When the angel of the Lord, whom we believe was the pre-incarnate Christ, talked to Samson's parents, Manoah and his wife, and when Manoah asked him what his name was, the angel replied, why do you ask me my name, seeing it is wonderful. In other words, as David goes on to say, the angel was saying to Manoah, you can't comprehend it anyway. But David is confessing here that the one who knows him completely and perfectly is none other than God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth. But again, he also goes on to confess that God's knowledge is incomprehensible. That is, he simply can't understand God's knowledge. He says, it's too lofty for me to attain. And this means that there is a distinct separation between David's knowledge and God's knowledge. All David says is that God's knowledge is so far out of his reach, It is infinitely above David's knowledge. And therefore, I believe what we can glean from what David says here is that God knows best. He's proven that in His Word that He's given to us. God knows best. Take Him at His Word. He's proven that in His only begotten Son whom He has given to us. He knows. David knows that it is complete foolishness to even try to measure his knowledge against God's knowledge. But that he is to be content in God's knowledge. He knows that he can't have God's knowledge any more than he can become God himself. It's completely impossible. And people of God, that's a fact that we must be fully aware of. To forget that fact. That we cannot have God's knowledge any more than we can become God ourselves. To forget that fact puts us in danger of either elevating ourselves too high or lessening, thinking less of God than we ought. Man cannot know what God knows. Man cannot reach the level of knowledge that God has, although man tries. God's knowledge is so high and so great that we can't even begin to find the words that will adequately explain what His knowledge is like. And fortunately, we live in a day when man thinks that he knows as much as God, if not more. We have the technology and the intelligence to explore space and we have the technology to see inside the human body with the use of the ultrasound or the MRI or the CAT scan machines that man has invented. However, man has conveniently forgotten or simply never even thought about the fact that the ability and the intelligence to invent these things comes only from God. But because of this knowledge, Man thinks that he can prove that evolution, for example, is the cause of this world and not creation. Out of nothing. And those who believe in evolution are calling God a liar, which of course is a dangerous thing to do. Or man thinks that he can prove that there either has been or can still be life on other planets. Today, men try to compare themselves to God. They try to suppress or lower God's knowledge and say that His knowledge is no more or no greater than man can conceive of. And in some cases, man must correct God, correct God's Word. Man pulls God down to his level. Even in the church, so many have lost a sense of awe and the greatness of God in His perfect knowledge. The same sense of awe and greatness that David is expressing in the psalm. we must pray that God will give us back that sense of awe and greatness of God. But even in the church, many have lowered the authority of God's Word, the Bible. So that even the most clear passages are taken and twisted to say that God didn't really mean what it says here on the pages of Scripture. That these passages really mean something else. In fact, it's okay, you see, if we all think that a passage means something different. What it means for me, it might mean something different for you. And that's okay, they say. But God says, no. It means what I say that it means. There are also those who say that the Apostle Paul, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit, didn't really understand Genesis that well. Beloved, to twist the Word of God is to bear false witness or testimony against God Himself and the truth of God. We cannot understand, grasp, attain to, comprehend, or possess God's knowledge. Why? Because our knowledge comes from God's knowledge. We can only know what God gives us to know. We have a limited capacity for what we can know. It doesn't matter how many years you go to school or how many degrees you earn, you will never know what God knows. And if God were to let us to try to understand Him completely, that would literally blow our minds. We must understand that it is God, again, who gave man the knowledge and the ability to invent and to research and to explore and to build. And it is God who has given us what we need to know in Christ Jesus. God has given to us the knowledge that we need. God has given to us the faith to receive all of the benefits earned for us by Christ. All that we need to know for salvation comes from Him. Just like David, our actions are included in God's perfect knowledge. He has searched and He knows you and me. He knows when you sit or stand. He knows when you rest or move. He knows your thoughts and your words even before you think or say them. And boys and girls, you must understand this. So often we think that the only time we sin is when we say something bad or when we do something wrong. But that's not all. Even if you think bad things that no one else ever knows about, God knows those thoughts. And those thoughts are sin as well. God knows each one of us perfectly. And His knowledge of us, beloved, was fully demonstrated in our Lord Jesus Christ. He knew our need. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice for your sins and my sins. If God didn't know sinners perfectly, how could He have prepared a perfect plan of salvation? Only Jesus Christ could save us from our sins. Our sins of thought. Our sins of word. Our sins of deed. Only Jesus could live that perfect life that was required for our salvation that we might have the righteousness that we need to stand before God. And as well, Jesus demonstrated even before He went to the cross, before He paid for our sins, He demonstrated that He is the God that David is exalting in this psalm. You remember time after time, Jesus demonstrated that He knew the thoughts and the hearts and the lives of men. Think of Peter's denials which Jesus foretold. Think of His calling of Nathanael. I saw you under the tree. just yesterday before you knew Me. Think of the Samaritan woman by the well of whom He told her everything that she had ever done. And He was right. These are just a few of the illustrations in which Jesus demonstrated that He is the God that David was speaking about. He is David's God and He is still our God today. God's perfect knowledge of us brings us comfort because even if we sometimes let God out of our thoughts, which undoubtedly we do many times in a day. He will never let us out of His thoughts. Verses 17 and 18. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God. And that's referring to God's thoughts about David. How vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. Beloved, do you have the comfort that God's perfect knowledge indeed brings a child of God? Do you feel the safety of God's hand laid upon you? If this comfort isn't yours and if knowing how well God knows you makes you feel violated, like you have no privacy, like you're bound tight with no freedom to move, then you need to examine yourself. Is Jesus Christ living in you? Or are you living for yourself? Your life will only be pleasing to God if it has been transformed by the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit. Remember what Hebrews 4 verse 13 says, And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Don't try to run from God. That's a waste of time. You can't outrun God. Again, David will address that in the next section. Instead, repent of your sins. and receive the salvation that is only found in Him. Because only when you recognize your sin and your need of a Savior, and that salvation comes only from God through Jesus Christ, only then will you be comforted by God's perfect knowledge of you. In fact, it is God's perfect knowledge that first of all reveals to us that we might know how great our sin and misery is. It's God's perfect knowledge that shows us our need for repentance. It's God's knowledge that shows to us that there is salvation in Jesus Christ. Turn and run to God and experience the comfort of His perfect knowledge and don't forget, He also knows the repentant heart. That's what it comes down to, huh? Praise God for His knowledge in that, if nothing else, that God knows the repentant heart. Being in God's knowledge is the only real place of refuge. That's what David is going to talk about a little later on. The only real place of refuge. God alone is our refuge and strength. It is protection of the greatest kind. Those who understand and take comfort in God's knowledge are indeed in good hands. Beloved, may our lives of gratitude for God's salvation include thoughts and words that are seasoned by His Spirit, that are pleasing to God, and that are a blessing in this life to God and to our neighbor. Amen. Shall we pray? Dear Heavenly Father, we do confess that so often there are things that we would rather hide from You, that we would wish that You didn't see and that You didn't know. And when we shrink back into the sin that still clings to us against our will, we desire that these things would be hidden from Your sight. But yet, Father, by the power and the illumination of Your Holy Spirit, we take great comfort that You do know us completely and perfectly, that You are the One who shows us our sin, who reminds us of our need for salvation, who assures us of Your pardon for confessed and repented sin. Father, we take great comfort that You are the One who completely surrounds us, not only with Your presence, but with Your knowledge, that the devil cannot attack us in a way that he can penetrate your presence, that we are safe from now until all eternity. Thank you for that blessed truth, O Lord. And give to us increased comfort and assurance from your word that we have considered in this night. In Jesus' name we pray these things. Amen.