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.org.
