Psalm 139 - God is Great

someday we will sing our praise only to him. Hopefully that's what we're doing now. We're going to see in Psalm 139 this morning, some of the reasons why we have to sing our praise to him. I don't know about you, but maybe as a little child you learned this dinner time prayer, this little thing that went something like, God is great, God is good. Let us thank him for our food by his hands. We all are fed. We give us this day or day to pray, or I'll have to give you what it was anyway. There's been a long time since I was at, but we learned that little prayer. And I'm not sure that we really knew at that time what we meant when we said, God is great, God is good. I don't think we really understood what we were saying. Get a little older and you learn some different words for that. And you learn words like, God is omniscient, God is omnipresent, God is omnipotent. And I still don't think we understand what that means, do we? To understand the greatness of God and the person of God is I think one of the greatest possibilities and yet mysteries of all of life. Dr. Adrian Rogers, who before he died recently, was a pastor of a great church in Memphis, Tennessee, Bellevue Baptist Church. He used to tell about a friend of his that always wanted to see the Pacific Ocean, never seen the Pacific Ocean, the largest ocean on planet Earth, never seen it and he always wanted to see it. So finally one day he gets the opportunity to travel out West. He walks out on the beach and he looks at it and he kind of looks around. And he says, God, disappointed. I thought it would be bigger. You know, he's seen only a very small, infinitesimal fraction of 64 million square miles of ocean and he thinks it's too small. Well, I think that's the way we think about God a lot. You know, we see just a little glimpse of who he is and we say, I thought it was more. Well, the problem is we don't really see who he is yet. We don't really catch the real grandeur of who our God is. That's why God had put in his word the favorite Psalm we're going to look at today, which talks about God's greatness. Psalm 139, by the way, our last favorite Psalm in this series, Psalm 139 this morning, talks about the greatness of God. And David who wrote this Psalm doesn't use our theological terminology. He doesn't say God is omniscient, God is omnipresent, and God is omnipotent. No. He uses more relational terms. He uses more personal terms because what he's talking about is a very personal relationship with this great awesome God because God wants to have a personal relationship with you. And so David talks in terms of deeply felt expression of who God is. The kind of thing that we need to know, it's simple, more direct terms about what God means to us in terms of who he is. That's what David talks about. And in the midst of doing that, he also shatters any small thoughts we might have of God. So let's see what he has to say about this great God, the greatness of our God. God is great. How is he great? Well, David says first of all, he knows us. He knows us. First six verses, first of four equal stanzas in this Psalm, David tells us he knows us. And in verse one, he gives us a statement of that knowledge. The statement of God's knowledge is this. This one, O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. Very interesting word, search. It's a word for examine. It's like a doctor giving you a complete physical. It's like a psychologist explaining why you feel the way you do or why you think the way you do. It's like your best friend who knows you inside it out. And it's even deeper than that because God knows everything. Even the things that the doctor may miss in that physical. Even though the things that the psychologist may miss in his evaluation or the things that not even your closest friend or family member may know about you. God knows everything. You've searched me, you've examined me and you know me. And in order to describe the depth of that knowledge, he goes on in verses two through four to give us some examples of God's knowledge. Look at these examples in verses two through four. He says in verse two, for instance. You know when I sit and when I rise. In other words God knows all my actions. And it's interesting that he didn't choose some great and big action. He chose very small actions that we take for granted. To make sure we understand God knows everything. All of our actions. It's not like God looks down from heaven and says, you know the Trinity is talking and they're saying, wow, that was a really life-changing event in John King's life. Take note. No. It's like every time I get up out of a chair, God notices. Every time I sit down, God notices. Things that I don't even notice. Things that I take for granted. Things I do naturally and you do naturally. God knows. He knows all your actions. Secondly, he knows all your thoughts. Look again at verse two, into the verse. You perceive my thoughts from afar. Now it's not that this verse is not saying that God is far off and from way up there in heaven somewhere, he can look down and see your thoughts. It's the thoughts that are afar, not God. So what it's saying is that God knows your thoughts when your thoughts are far off. In other words, even before you think them. Long before you ever think of thought, God knows what it's going to be. That's how well he knows your thoughts. And the word perceive is the word for understanding. It's not just that God knows my thoughts intellectually. Knows what I'm thinking, but he understands them. In other words, he knows all the hidden agendas, all the motives behind those thoughts. He understands why I think the way I do. So God knows your actions, knows my actions. He knows our thoughts. Thirdly, he knows our paths. Look at verse three. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. That's the path of life that you and I walk every day. Our going out. You know, when you get up in the morning, you get ready. You go out. You go out to work. You go out to shop. You go out to your responsibilities in life. You go out. That's the beginning of the day. Then you come back at night and you lie down. So God, those are the two bookends of the day. The beginning of the day, you go out. The beginning of the day, you lie down. God knows in verse three, all my ways in between those two bookends. From the beginning of the day to the end, he knows the path. He examines the path that I walk and knows everything about it. So he knows my actions. He knows our thoughts. He knows our paths. Fourthly, he knows our words. Look at it in verse four. Before a word is on my tongue. You know it completely, O Lord. Again, it's not just that God knows everything I say. He knows it before I say it. Before I even form the words, God knows exactly what I'm going to say. God knew an eternity past what I would be saying here this morning. And what I'll say this afternoon. What I'll say tomorrow. God knows every word before it's spoken. Now that's amazing knowledge, isn't it? You begin thinking about that knowledge. The knowledge that God has. He knows all of our actions, thoughts, paths in life, words, everything. And not only about me, but he knows all that about everyone in this room, everyone in the whole world at the same time. God knows everything they're thinking, everything they could think, didn't think, everything they did do, everything they didn't do, could have done. All your actions, all your paths, God knows it all. Now if you begin thinking about that too long, smokes are going to start rolling out of your ears. You're going to start burning circuits in there somewhere. Because that knowledge is absolutely incredible. And what's our response to that knowledge? Well notice what David says in verses five and six. Our response to that knowledge is three things, or at least a potential for three things. The first two are found in verse five. And it could go either way with these first two depending on you. First of all, God's knowledge could threaten us. And that's one way to take verse five. You him me in behind and before. You have laid your hand upon me. You know, there's some of you here this morning. When you hear about God knowing everything you think, everything you say, everything you do, you think, wow, that's kind of a straight jacket, isn't it? You kind of got me himmed in here. God's knowledge threatens you if you're not right with him. If you are outside of Jesus Christ, or if you're not walking with God, God's intimate knowledge of every detail of your life is a threat to you. You don't like that. Makes you feel uncomfortable. Makes you feel like you're in a straight jacket. But if you're right with God, if you're walking with Him, if you know Jesus is your Savior, you're walking with God, this is a comfort to you, not a threat, a comfort. So verse five can go either way. You know, you can say, you him me in, you're in front of me, you're behind me, you're over me, I can't get away from you. Or you can say, thank you, God, you go before me, you come behind me, your hand is over me. That's a great comfort to me. Now, if I'm walking with God, that's the way I respond. If I'm not walking with God, I respond like this threatens me. I don't like this. So it can go either way in verse five. You can be either threatened by that knowledge or comforted by that knowledge, but regardless of which you are, you will certainly be, verse six, you will be amazed at that knowledge. It amazes us. Verse six, such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. It's staggering. It's overwhelming. I cannot compute that kind of knowledge. He knows everything about me, knows everything about you. Again, every thought, every word, every action, every path I take, every day, everything I could have done but didn't do, everything I might have said but didn't say, God knows it all. And everybody else on the planet too at the same time. It's overwhelming, staggering, amazing. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Listen, God is great. He knows us. He knows everything about us. But God not only knows us, the Psalm has said, God is great in that He surrounds us. Now that's what theologians call His omnipresence. And you'll find in verse seven, He's talking about the presence of God. Now I want to make sure you understand what I mean by that. Because one grandma had her four-year-old granddaughter in church one day. It's the first time she's been in a big church. She's always been in a little people's church and so she's going to try to sit through big church only four years old. And she did pretty good until she got to the pastor's prayer. And the pastor said, we thank you Lord for your presence with us today. She opened her eyes. Elbuter grandma said, Grandma, we're going to get presence today. That's not the kind of presence we're talking about. By presence, P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E, presence we're talking about. God is with us. God is always with us. Notice how He says it in verse seven. I think verse seven talks about the desire to escape His presence. Now some people think that verse seven is just kind of rhetorical questions kind of introducing the rest of this. It stands through verse 12. I don't think so. I think what the Psalmist is saying in verse seven is when I hear about all this knowledge, you know every intimate detail in my life, I want to get away. I want to get away. And so He says in verse seven, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? Now while our first response may be comfort to God's intimate knowledge of every detail of our lives, where our second response may be amazement at that, our third response on a little reflection may be, I want to get away, that frightens me a little bit. Where can I flee from your presence? By the way, that impulse has been in every human heart since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. You know why? Because we're sinners. And we got a lot to hide, don't we? All of us do. We've got thoughts, ambitions, motives, words, things we've done. We've got things we're not proud of. And so when we know that God knows all of that, everything, there's like, how can I get away from this? How can I flee from your presence? That's what Adam and Eve did, right? In the Garden, when they sinned against God every day prior to that time, they had been enjoying the fellowship with God. The Bible says in the cool of Eden, God would come down and walk with them in the Garden, and they enjoyed fellowship with Him, and then they sin one day. God comes down that evening, and where are they? They hide. They hide from God, because they know they're guilty. And all of us know we're guilty. And so our first impulse is to run away from this one, who knows intimately everything about us. Our first impulse is to say, where can I flee from your presence? Where can I hide from your spirit and your presence? The desire to escape his presence, but verses 8 through 12, I answer the questions with the impossibility of escaping his presence. It is absolutely impossible to escape the presence of God. You cannot get away from him. In fact, what the Psalmist does is he gives us three word pictures here to describe extremes of distances or places we may go to try to get away from God and how impossible it is. Notice the first one in verse 8. He says, if I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I go as high as the heavens, and he's talking about the starry heavens there, you are there. If I go to the depths, some of you may have a translation that says, if I go to the grave or to hell, this Hebrew word, this Hebrew word, she-o, can mean hell or it can mean the grave or sometimes it can just mean generally the depths, the depths of the earth. And I think in this context, the NIVs translated it very well. It means the depths, it's the depths of the earth. What he's saying simply is, if I go as high as I can go to the heavens, to the further star, I can imagine you're there. If I go to the deepest place I can imagine in the depths of the earth, you're there. As far as I can go that way, you're there. As far as I can go that way, you're there. Let's try a couple of other dimensions. Verse 9, if I rise on the wings of the dawn, you know what that means? That was a Hebrew way of saying, if I could get up in the morning when the sun is rising at dawn, and like a bird fly to the east toward the sun, so far that I could catch the sun. I could meet the sun. If I could go as far as I could go to the east, he's saying. And then the next part of the verse, if I settle on the far side of the sea, says the universe 9. Now if you're a good Israelite, if you're a Hebrew, you live in the land of Israel, the sea, the big one, at least, is to the west. It's the Mediterranean Sea. And nobody knows how far west it goes, because nobody's explored that far west yet. And so you see what he's saying? If I go as far east as it's possible to go, so that I could even reach the sun, or if I go as far west as it's possible to go, and nobody really knows what's out there, you're there. You see what he's saying? If I go, as far as I can go this way, as far as I can go that way, as far as I can go that way, as far as I can go that way. You're there. This is not just if I run from God and make it that far, he'll catch up with me. No, if I make it that far, he's already there. He's already there. So the psalmist scratches his head a little bit and says, oh there's one other possibility. Maybe I can go to someplace where it's dark. Look at verse 11. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me, and the light will 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. So okay, I already figured out. I can't go this way, or that way, or that way, or that way, and escape your presence. Maybe it could hide from you in the dark. Maybe nobody else can see me in the dark. And what he finds out, what God says, I can see stuff in the dark just like the light. Darkness is no impediment to me, to my sight or my knowledge. I know everything that happens in the dark as well. So no, you can't escape him that way. The impossibility of escaping God's presence. Where can I go and flee your presence and flee from your spirit? And the answer is, nowhere. You cannot go anywhere and escape the presence of God. He surrounds us. He is everywhere at the same time. I don't understand that. I can't explain that very well except like the Psalmist says, and I love the way he does it. I can't go that way, that way, that way, that way, that way, or get in the dark and be away from God. It's just impossible to escape God's presence. Now, that doesn't need to be a scary thought, because what the Psalmist really tells us in this passage is the comfort of God's presence, the comfort of God's presence. Because you see what the Psalmist found in verse 10 is this. I could go to all those places what I would find in verse 10, even there your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. What the Psalmist finds is that his presence is not to be feared. Lord, I know you know everything about me, every thought, every action, every word, every... Everything, even the stuff I wish nobody knew. You know everything about me. That scares me. I want to run from that. But you know what? When you try to run, what you find out is, no, no, God says, I'm not a condemning judge waiting for you when you get there. I'm one with a loving hand to hold you close. I'm one with a protecting hand to keep evil away from you. I'm one with a strong hand to help you. We find the hand of God there for us. What a wonderful, wonderful relief that is. When we may fear the one who knows everything about us, God says you have nothing to fear. I do know everything about you. And as we heard earlier, I still love you. And that's what I want you to know. I love you. I want you to be my child. I want you to be in my family. Back in 1889, an English poet who lived in London by the name of Francis Thompson had literally destroyed his life. Here was a young man who was in medical school, dropped out of medical school because he hated it. His father disowned him when he did that. But Francis Thompson was a young man who had a creative heart in mind. And he wanted to write. And he wanted to write poetry. It turned out to be one of England's greatest poets. But this creative mind, because there was not much market for it in that day, didn't find a lot of income from his writing. He ended up being penniless on the streets. He ended up being a drug addict on the streets. He ended up being shabby in the streets. But he wrote beautiful poetry, which most of which was not recognized till after his death. In 1889, he wrote a poem called The Hound of Heaven. Most who study his writings and so forth believe that he was really giving us his autobiography in that poem. Now, if you read that poem, and I did this week and read a little bit about Francis Thompson, it's a tragic story. And yet a story of God's grace. It's a hard poem to read. He writes it in old English and words that are difficult for us to grasp. So I'm thankful that back in the early 80s, a Christian musician by the name of Michael Card took that poem and put it to modern language with the same thoughts, much of the same words, and put it to music. Here's how it reads. I'm not going to sing it for you. I can't do it like Michael Card. But here's what it is. I fled him down the nights and days. I fled him down the paths of years. I heard all about the love of the one who was following me. Remember the poem is The Hound of Heaven. I clung to every shallow friend, the whistling mane of every wind. I feared that once I tasted that love, I could never let go. Because those strong feet kept following the way I sped, but the love that followed overcame the fear that fled. So I ran inside the world again to the ones who called this hound their friend. I thought in vain that would be the best place to hide. What he's saying is I went, tried to get in a church somewhere, get around God's people thought maybe that would be the answer. I thought that'd be the best place to hide. Maybe it'd leave me alone. Notice what he finds. To Mother Nature's breast, I flew and shouted to the sky. So blue, please hide me from the one so set on loving me. Came back a voice that sounded like the bursting sea. None will shelter you who will not shelter me. Finally, I can flee no more. I yielded to your open door. The prize you sought for so long is finally yours. Your dark and gloom have hounded me for so long now that I can't see. I surrender all those things you've taken from me. Came back a voice. I did not take them for your hurt. I only wanted you to seek them in my arms. The dark and gloom you said you could no longer stand. Was after all the shadow of my loving hand. How little worthy of my love could anyone be who else could ever love you save only me? You know, as I read about the life of Francis Thompson, I thought about what the psalmist was saying. Here was a man who feared God, ran from God for years, ran from the commitment to God as his Lord and Savior. And finally, when he got to the bottom and everything was gone and he realized he gave up and despair and he said, okay, God, you've been chasing me all these years. I give up what he found was that the God who had been chasing him was one who was trying to show him how much he wanted to love him. The hound of heaven who seemed to be on his heels was one who was trying to rescue him from himself and from sin and bring him into his family and give him a love like he could ever never know from anyone else. That's what the psalmist is saying. Where can I get away from you, God? Where can I flee from your presence? It scares me that you know everything about me. But I recognize I can't go anywhere and get away from you. But oh, God says what you find when you get there is not a condemning judge, what you find is one who loves you, who reaches out his hand to help you and to rescue you, to give you a home in heaven, to give your sin, cancel your past, make you part of his family. That's what you find, that's the comfort of God's presence. His presence everywhere surrounding you is not meant to intimidate, not meant to cause you to fear. It's intended to cause you to recognize how desperately he loves you and he wants you to be saved and be a part of his family. God is great. He knows us. He surrounds us. But here's one that's going to blow you away. If you really understand what the Psalmist is saying next, and this next stands a, he formed us. He formed us. That's how great he is. Let's see what God says about how he formed us in verses 13 through 18. There's several things here. I want to talk first of all about the description of his forming, how it's described, and there are four things about the description of God's forming that are found in these verses. The first thing is he's talking about a forming that took place in the womb. You see it there in verse 13? For you created my innmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb. He's talking about being in our mother's womb, being formed before we were born in our mother's womb. And then he uses a couple of metaphors, word pictures, in verse 15 to describe the mother's womb. Verse 15, he says, My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, the secret place. That place where the beautiful Hebrew poetry would describe as a secret place, a place that's unobserved by others, a place that even for a while the mother does not know, she's carrying a new life within her. It's a secret place. And then notice what else he calls it in verse 15. The end of the verse when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. That again is a beautiful poetic way among the Hebrews of saying, This was in my mother's womb because this is the place of deepest concealment. You have to understand and you do, I'm sure this was the day before ultrasound. This is before we understood what was happening in a mother's womb. Before we had a window into the womb to see the developing life within the mother. Before anybody ever saw that, this was considered the deepest place of concealment, the secret place where nobody really understood what was happening, something was growing inside this mother, but really what was happening, nobody fully understood. But the psalmist is saying in that secret place, in that deepest place of concealment, in the womb, God was at work. God was at work forming us. And what was he doing? Not only was this in the womb, secondly, he was forming our inn most part. Look at it in verse 13, for you created my inn most being, our inner being. You know what the word for that literally is? It's a word for kidneys. He brought for kidneys. You were forming my kidneys. You know what he's talking about? In Old Testament thought, the kidneys were the seat of the affection and feeling and the deepest inner part of you. You know today we think of that as the heart. We take the organ of the heart and we talk of it that way. And we say, I love you with all my heart. Well if you were a good Old Testament Jew, you would say, I love you with both my kidneys. That's how you'd say it, you know. Kind of, I guess. But it really was. It was considered the seat of the emotions, the real inner you, the personality, the real you inside. That was considered the kidneys or the King James has rains. And what I used to read that I used to think of a horse, you know, and bridle them. I thought, what is that? What he's talking about is the kidneys, the inner part, the real you, the personality. God was forming you in the womb. What your personality would be like emotionally, mentally, what you would be like. God was in charge of all that forming you in the womb. Your moral, emotional sensitivities, all of that. God was forming in the womb. He was forming the inner person. So this is in the womb, this forming is, this forming is the forming of the real you on the inside. But it's also the formation of your body. God was also forming your body. And look at the wonderful way the Psalmist describes this, verse 13. For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb. Knit me together. It's like the beautiful fabrics and colors of an embroiderer or a weaver. Being knitted together, everything fashioned and fitted together just as it should be. He knit us together. Look at verse 15. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. Frame is talking about the bones or the skeleton, you know, the structure that everything hangs on. God was forming your skeleton in the womb. Notice it goes on, verse 15. When I was woven together, there again that symbolism of the weaver, the embroiderer, or taking strands of various colors and material and piecing them together in a beautiful, handy work. Like a beautiful quilt. God was forming us in the womb. But here's another one, in verse 16. Your eyes saw my unformed body. You know what that's referring to? It's what we refer to today as the embryo in the early stages of development. Before you can tell the formation of any bodily part, before you can tell what's going to be the hand or the head or the feet or anything like that. In those very early stages, before there is the formation of any part that can visibly be distinguished as a part of the body. God was at work in that early stage of human development in the womb. You saw my body when it was yet unformed, he says. So God was forming in the womb, our inner part, our body. And if that's not enough to blow you away, this one will. He was also forming all your days. Now, I read this verse this week and I've read this passage and preached this passage before. I've read this passage hundreds of times. And it never hit me like it hit me this week. Verse 16. This blew me away. Look at it. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. You know what that means? That means the length of my days was already written in God's book before I ever lived one of them. You talk about a sovereign God that has everything planned out ahead of time. The length of my days, I don't have to worry about my future because God already has that all settled. He knows exactly how many days I'm going to live. He has it all planned out. And I will live as many days as he intends me to live. And not one day less or one day more. It's already settled in his book, in his records in heaven. But not only the span of my days, the length of my days, the content of those days is also included in this. So everything that comes my way is already planned by God and ordained by God. God is never taken by surprise. It's not like God is in heaven ringing his hands saying, oh no, what do I do about that? I didn't expect that. You know, God never does that because God knows ahead of time everything that's going to happen is already ordained in his book. Now, again, I don't understand how all that happens. I do know that that also in God's sovereign plan includes my free will and responsibility and ability to make choices. That's already figured in how God does that. I don't understand. But he's God and I'm not. So all I know is what the Bible says, your God has all of my days planned before I ever lived to one of them. I don't know what that does to you, but that makes me want to go, yay! I don't have to worry about what's going to happen today. God's already got it all planned out. I just have to say, Lord, whatever you want for me today, I yield and submit to you, help me to respond to whatever you bring, whether it's tragedy, heartache, trial, difficulty, or great blessing, enjoy whatever it is. Lord, you have a purpose for it. And this day is a day you have made. I want to rejoice in it and see your purposes fulfilled. That gives a whole new outlook on life. When you realize that all the days you were going to live were formed before you were born. Now, you talk about a great God. He was doing work in the womb that included making your inner self, who you really are, your body, and then forming all your days before you ever lived to one of them. That is a great God. He formed us. And what's the response to that? Verse 14, it's got to be praised. The response to this forming praise. Verse 14, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. I like the way one commentator described this. He said, it is awesomely wonderful. That's what this means. I like that. Awesomely wonderful is the way we are made. You say awesomely wonderful. I sure don't think I look like that. God has a purpose for exactly the way you were made. Genetically, everything you are, the kind of person you are on the inside, the way you were formed on the outside. Now, you know, for some of us there are a few things we can do to change a few things about the way we appear. But, you know, the way generally we are made, God made us that way. If you are a real tall, God had a purpose for you being real tall. If you are a real short, God had a purpose for you being real short. There are some things you can't do anything about. And you need to like the Psalmist to say praise God. I am awesomely wonderful. I am made just like he wants me to be made. Praise. The next response is wonder, just wonder, just this wonder of who God is and His greatness in verses 17 and 18. Notice what He says, how precious to me are your thoughts, oh God, how vast is the sum of them. Where I'd account them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. And that's not an exaggeration, my friends. Every detail of the human body came from God's mind. And as scientists discover more and more about the complexity of the functioning and the makeup of the human body, all they are finding is an amen to what God has said. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. It is absolutely incredible. The way the human body is put together and the way it functions, the way God intended it to function. It is absolutely amazing and we should be in wonder at what God has done. But it's not just looking through a microscope at something, at the structure of the cell or the beauty of the eye and how it functions. No, this is very personal. He doesn't just say how wonderful, how many are your works, he says how precious are your acts toward me, how precious are your thoughts, oh God. This is a personal thing. This is like saying, God, it's not just I am amazed at how the human body works. It's God, I am amazed at how you put me together and how personal this is with me. How you have designed me to function and you because of all of your thoughts toward me have shown how much you care about me and how much you love me, how precious are your thoughts to me, oh God. So we respond with wonder, with wonder and with praise. He formed us. God is great. But there's one other way we can see that God is great. Not only does he know us, not only does he surround us, not only did he form us. He tests us. He tests us. What we're going to read next is going to sound kind of shocking. But in verses 19 through 22 what we're going to find is an outward test. We are being tested by the evil around us every day. We're being tested by the evil around us. Now look at, listen to these words, look at them in verse 19. If only you would slay the wicked, oh 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, oh Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies. And we're like, where did that come from? You know, here he's been talking about the awesomeness of God and the greatness of God and how precious and how wonderful and loving God is. And all of a sudden he says, I hate people who hate you. And I'm thinking, wait a second, doesn't the New Testament say we're supposed to love our enemies? How does this fit with that? What's going on? This sounds like such a shocking turn in the psalm full of harsh words and venom toward people. What's that about? Well, I think there is a way to see this that fits very, very well within the context of this flow of praise about how great God is. Did you notice something? These are not my enemies or David's enemies. These are God's enemies. He's talking about. Did you notice that? See that in the verses? He talks about wicked and bloodthirsty men in verse 19, but look at what he describes in verse 20. They speak of you, God, with evil intent. Your adversaries, misuse your name. Do not I hate those who hate you, O Lord? And he talks about those who rise up against you? Here's the test, really. In a sense, people fall into two categories. They're friends of God, of their enemies of God. And there's some enemies of God who are out and out, avowed, declared enemies of God. They hate God. They speak against God. They reject God. They revile God. They blaspheme God. And what the psalmist is saying is, God, I have a choice and I want you to know my allegiance is with you. He's using the word hatred, much like Jesus does in the New Testament when he says, if you want to be my disciple, take up your cross, follow me. You have to hate your own life. You have to hate your family, mother, father, brothers, and sisters. And it's obvious that he's using it in a biblical sense that that was common in biblical times. If not literally feeling hatred toward, but of making a choice that is so clear in priorities that it is though you love one and hate the other. That's the sense I believe the psalmist is saying here, God, I'm tested every day about where my allegiance is going to be. Am I going to walk with those? Am I going to fellowship with those? Am I going to be with those? Am I going to be a part of those who revile you and hate you and blaspheme you and reject you? Or am I going to choose to walk with you? My choice, God is clear. I choose you. And so it is as though I love you and hate those who hate you. That's the sense in which he's saying that the test is we are all tested by the evil around us every day. And we either choose to go with that crowd and be a part of them ultimately because that's where our heart is. Or we choose to take our allegiance and plant it firmly on the side of God. And say those who hate you, I reject, I turn against, I love you, I love you, oh God. That is the sense in which the psalmist is speaking. So that's a test we face every day. The outside test, the outward test, the test by the evil around us. But there's also an inward test. And this is a test concerning the evil within us, not around us, not out there within us in verses 23 and 24. Notice the psalmist says, search me, oh God, and know my heart. It's where he started. Why didn't it? Verse 1, O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. And so he says, Lord, I know that as a theological truth, I know you examine me, you know me. Now I'm inviting you, I want you to search me. And I want you to search me so deeply that you go all the way to my heart. I'm not going to hold anything back, I'm not going to try to hide anything, Lord anymore. I open up my whole life, my heart to you. I invite you, Lord, to search every part of me. We're being tested by the evil within us. And here's one who says, I will hide nothing, Lord. I give you every part of my life, open up every room of my heart, come search it, examine it. And he says in verse 23, test me and know my anxious thoughts. It's an interesting word, anxious thoughts. Literally, it's the word which could be translated misgivings. You know what it's talking about? It's talking about doubts. Because all of us inside at times have doubts. We have doubts about God. We have questions why? We have doubts about what he's doing, who he is. We have doubts. There are misgivings sometimes that we have about God or his ways in our lives. And the Psalmist said, Lord, I'll confess to you, I have those times in my life. I want you to search those out. Those times when I doubt and I may get so confused that I may even sin against you, Lord, I want you to have that part of my life too. I want you to control my thoughts and guide my thoughts. I want everything to be open to you. I want you to know, Lord, I have questions sometimes. And I want to bear those before you. That's what he's saying. And then he says, Lord, once I have opened everything up, my heart, my thoughts, my misgivings about you, everything. And I've given you free invitation to come examine it all. What he says in verse 24 is if you find anything bad, please clean it up. Please correct it. He says, if there's any offensive way in me, see if there's any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Lord, if you find anything that offends you when you look deep into my heart, when you look deep into my thoughts, when you find anything that offends you, Lord, please correct it. I don't want it to stay there. That's being tested by the evil within us. And it's the desire to take everything we are and have and open it up to that great God and let him clean us thoroughly so that we can then walk every day in the world. And we look every day in the way that is in everlasting way, the way that pleases him and honors him. The road to heaven, if you will. See in the Old Testament, there are two ways of life, the way of life, the way of death. It's not necessarily talking about heaven and hell. It's talking about the way people live. If your heart is right with God, you're living a way that's pleasing to him. That's the way of life. Life is truly fulfilling and satisfying. It means something has purpose. If you don't know him, you're walking a way of death. A way that ultimately will destroy you and will leave you unfulfilled and unsatisfied. It's a way of death. And the psalmist says, Lord, I want everything bad out of my life. I want my heart, my thoughts to be totally open to you. Clean me up so that I can walk in the way that's pleasing to you. Lord, test me every day and when you find bad stuff there, please clean it up. That's an inward test. Every one of us is tested by what's outside, we're tested by what's inside. And we need to open ourselves up and ask God that great God to test us in those ways every day. Well, you can say it this way, you can say, God is great, God is good. Or you can say, wow, God is omniscient, God is omnipresent, God is omnipotent. Or you can simply say it like the psalmist did in very personal, relational terms. He knows me, he surrounds me. He formed me and he tests me every day. And I invite him to do that. But however you say it, what you're saying is, God is awesome, God is great, God is far above me and my capability of understanding him fully. You can say that however you say it with real meaning. And you know what the greatest part of it is? That great God wants to have a personal relationship with you. That God who is way up there who is so great wants to have a personal relationship with you. He's already proven it. He said his son, Jesus, to die in your place, to pay the penalty for your sin on the cross. That's how much he loved you. And if you feel like God is on your trail, that hound of heaven, who's following you won't let you alone. You know why he's chasing you? Because he loves you. And he wants you to find the real meaning of life, eternal life, forgiveness of sin in his arms, in his love. He wants to have that personal relationship with you through Christ. If you're running from him today, if you're trying to find fulfillment in life and all the things that this world says, here's where it is. Try this. If you're trying that, you'll ruin your life that way. And God with a passionate love runs after you to say to you, I want you to be my child. I will forgive your sin, give you a home in heaven, make you a part of my ever, forever family. If you'll only trust my son, Jesus, as your Savior, you can have that personal relationship with this great God. You bow with me in prayer. Father, thank you for how great you are. You are indeed an awesome God. And Lord, it is even awesome to us to think that you would want to love us so much that you would be willing to give your son to die for us. That really does blow us away. Father, I pray that if there's anyone here this morning who does not know Jesus as their personal Savior that today would be the day they recognize how much you love them and they turn to Christ in faith. I pray for those of us who are believers who may be running from you, who may have decided that we want to try some things out there in the world that we think or we've been told will make us happy. Father, help us to see how much you know everything and how much you love us and want us to walk with you. Jesus' name, amen.