“THE GOD WHO KNOWS YOU”
PSALM 139

I. Introduction
This past Tuesday night our country went through an election unlike any other in American history. Over the course of six to eight hours we went from “Hillary Clinton cannot lose, and Donald Trump cannot win,” to “Hillary Clinton cannot win, and Donald Trump cannot lose.” When Fox News called Pennsylvania’s twenty electoral votes for Mr. Trump, it was all over. For the nearly 121,000,000 Americans who went to the polls, it was either a crush-ing defeat or a monumental victory.

The pollsters were surprised and shocked. The pundits were surprised and shocked. The political insiders were surprised and shocked. They were virtually all wrong. So much for the wisdom of men. You know who wasn’t surprised and shocked, don’t you? Of course, you do! Our sovereign God wasn’t surprised and shocked. He is never surprised or shocked by anything.

God was on His throne on Tuesday, November 8. He was still there on Wednesday, Novem-ber 9. On Tuesday, He was in complete control of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. On Wednesday, He still was. And He still is. Just to be clear, it matters not whether those three people believe or even know they’re under God’s control. They are.
Proverbs 21:1
1 The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hands of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes.

Rulers usually think that they are in control, but they are not. In Ezra 6:22 the Scripture tells us that God “…turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them (the Jews) to encourage them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.” In Psalm 22:28 we’re told that God is sovereign in the affairs of men. David says, “For the kingdom is the LORD’S, and He rules over the nations.” And in Psalm 47:7-8 the Bible reminds us… “For God is the King of all the earth… God reigns over the nations, God sits on His holy throne.”

This same truth is taught in the NT as well.
*Romans 13:1
1 Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.

What does all of that mean? What does it mean that God is in absolute control, that He is the final authority over His creation and everyone and everything in it? What can you, as a Bible-believing Christian, take from that one magnificent truth, and then apply to your life every moment of every day? Simply stated, what does God’s sovereignty mean to you per-sonally?
It means that you are in God’s hands. Think of it. Jesus has already laid down His life for us. In John 10:28 He says, “…I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.” Therefore, we have nothing to fear. There is no need to fear Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, or the wrath of anyone who hates us because of our faith, or, for that matter, anything else either.
*Romans 8:31-39
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
33 Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies;
34 who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And so you and I, who are the children of God, have no need to fear anyone or anything because our sovereign Lord is in control of all things. And make no mistake, that includes both the good things as well as the things that are not so good.
*Romans 8:28-30
28 And we know (not hope) that God causes (He is sovereign) all things (good or bad) to work together for good (not always temporally, but always eternally) to those who love God (true Christians), to those who are called according to His purpose (to glorify Him).
29 For whom He foreknew, He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren;
30 and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

This is the ultimate destiny of every true Christian: Foreknown, predestined, called, justi-fied, and glorified. The God who knows you promises all these things. And He is faithful to bring them about. Even Jeremiah, who was so distraught over the sinful condition of Israel, and so saddened over the depravity of the people around him – even Jeremiah, the “weeping prophet” – knew that God would one day make all things right.
When Jeremiah took his eyes off the fallen world around him and gazed into heaven, he remembered what he had always known. Listen to him…
Lamentations 3:21-23
21 This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.
22 The LORD’S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.

God’s faithfulness is linked directly to His sovereignty. It has been said that the impact of divine sovereignty on our lives is determined, at least in part, by our understanding of God’s other attributes. It is one thing to know what Scripture says about how God’s attributes affect us and our knowledge of Him, but it’s another thing entirely to live our lives accord-ing to that knowledge.

Today’s text addresses four of God’s other attributes and how we are to respond to Him because of them. All four of them – God’s omniscience, His omnipresence, His omnipo-tence, and His holiness – display His sovereignty and what it means to every Christian.
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II. Text
Psalm 139 is about the God who knows you. Listen, He knows you better than you know yourself. As we go through the text you will begin to see just how intensely personal our relationship with God actually is.
*Psalm 139:1-24 (Please stand with me in honor of reading God’s Word.)
1 Oh LORD, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought(s) from afar.
3 You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O LORD, You know it all.
5 You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there;
9 if I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
10 even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.
13 For You formed my inward parts; You weaved me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.
17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You.
19 O that You would slay the wicked, O God; depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.
20 For they speak against You wickedly, and Your enemies take Your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
22 I hate them with the utmost hatred; they have become my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts;
24 and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.

Have you ever tried to get away from God or hide from Him? Sure you have! Maybe you tried that before you were saved. I did. And for a while it worked. But I eventually learned something. I learned that, to use the old cliché, “You can run, but you can’t hide.” Sooner or later God will find you. There is no escape.

This same thing is also true of unbelievers. They may think they are quite successful at evading God and escaping His gaze. But even if they get through this life hiding from God, they will stand exposed at the judgment. There is no hiding from God.

For Christians, it’s only when we quit trying to flee from God that we come to realize that His intentions for us are only good. He has “caught” us, not to punish us, but to bless us. It’s only when we are “caught” that we begin to know Him. And as we begin to know God and see Him for who and what He is, we begin to know ourselves and see us for who and what we are. Isn’t that what happened to Isaiah when God called him to be His prophet?
Isaiah 6:1-5
1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

3 And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.”
4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.
5 Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.”

Steven Cole, Senior Pastor of Flagstaff Christian Fellowship in Arizona, addresses this.
“In the blinding light of His holiness, we recognize instantly the desperate need we have for inner purity. Since we cannot escape from this all-knowing, all-present, all-wise Creator, we cannot escape from the need for holiness.”

That is the message of Psalm 139.
*Psalm 139:1-6
1 Oh LORD, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought(s) from afar.
3 You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O LORD, You know it all.
5 You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.

GOD IS OMNISCIENT – HE KNOWS EVERYTHING THAT THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT YOU.
One of the biblical definitions of sin is anything that fails to conform to God’s standards of absolute holiness. We often say that we commit sins in thoughts, in words, and in deeds.

In v. 2 David tells us God knows everything that passes through our minds. In v. 4 the he says God knows everything we say, even before we say it. In vv. 2-3 David says God knows our deeds – everything we do. Whether we sit, stand, walk, or lie down, God knows it. He knows our every thought, word, and deed. That is why, in v. 3, the Scripture says that God is “intimately acquainted” with all our ways. And in v. 5 we’re told that God stands in front of us, behind us, and has His hand on us. There is no escape from God.

After Adam and Eve had sinned, they tried to escape, didn’t they? Before they rebelled and disobeyed God Genesis 2:25 says, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” But only seven verses later, after their sin, Genesis 3:7 says, “…they knew that they were naked; and sewed fig leaves and made themselves loin coverings.” And in v. 8 it says, “…the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”

That didn’t work for them and it won’t work for us either. There is no hiding from God.
With all of that is it any wonder what David says in Psalm 139:6? “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.” Before David wrote those words, Job had said the same thing. When he finally repented and recognized God for He was he said…
Job 42:1-3
1 Then Job answered the LORD, and said,
2 “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.
3 ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ “Therefore I have de-clared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”

The Apostle Paul echoes the same sentiment in Romans.
Romans 11:33
33 Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!

Such is God’s omniscience. In the next six verses of Psalm 139 David expands on that and speaks of God’s omnipresence.
*Psalm 139:7-12
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there;
9 if I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
10 even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.

GOD IS OMNIPRESENT – HE IS EVERYWHERE THAT YOU CAN POSSIBLY BE.
Listen to God speak through the Prophet Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 23:23-24
23 “Am I a God who is near,” declares the LORD, “And not a God (who is) far off?
24 “Can a man hide himself in hiding places, so I do not see him?” declares the LORD. “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the LORD.

In Psalm 139:11-12 David speaks of darkness. Darkness can be foreboding and frightening, can’t it? How many of you, as children, were afraid of dark places? Isn’t it comforting to know that God is in all those dark places? Isn’t it comforting to know that in God’s presence the night is as bright as the noonday sun? In John’s gospel Jesus is described as the “Light of the World.”
In 1 John 1:5 the apostle reminds us that “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” Take comfort, Christian. You can never be out of or away from the presence of God.

In the next six verses of today’s text we read of God omnipotence. The very same power that spoke all of creation into existence also created you.
*Psalm 139:13-18
13 For You formed my inward parts; You weaved me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.
17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You.

GOD IS OMNIPOTENT – HE GAVE YOU LIFE AND LAID IT OUT EVEN BEFORE YOU WERE BORN.
What an amazing passage! Now let me just cut right to the heart of the matter. You cannot be a Christian and either support or excuse abortion. You cannot! You can argue, you can use human reasoning, logic, and the wisdom of the world, and you can rationalize all you want, but you cannot change the fact that abortion is anything less that the premeditated and deliberate murder of the innocent, the helpless, and the defenseless.

Just as God doesn’t need night vision goggles to see in the dark, neither did He need a sono-gram to see you as you were woven together in your mother’s womb. Not only did God cre-ate you at a specific moment in time, He will also take you to Himself at a specific moment in time. In Psalm 139:16 David makes it crystal clear. God determined that moment before you were created. Ponder this for just a bit – until that moment you are invincible; until that moment your life cannot be taken from you.

Not only did God determine both the moments of your conception and your passing into His presence, He also knew you before you were conceived. Listen once more to Jeremiah…
Jeremiah 1:4-5a
4 Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
5a “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…” (set you apart) (God exists OUTSIDE of and APART FROM time!)

Paul acknowledges the same truth. In Galatians 1:15 he says that God “…set me apart, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace…”
When we come to grips with such magnificent truth, how can you and I, as children of God, fail to praise Him, thank Him for His matchless grace, and give Him the glory He deserves?

Consider the awesome complexity of the human body that God makes with every concep-tion. Yet unbelief says man has evolved up from the “primordial ooze,” and argues that you and I are nothing more than an accidental product of random chance and inordinate amounts of time. That is not only ludicrous; it is inexcusable. Listen, the reality of God’s power is in plain view. Only the spiritually blind are unable to see it.
*Romans 1:18-20
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
19 because that which is known about God is evident within them.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Look again at Psalm 139:17-18. In v. 17 David stands in awe of God’s omniscience, omni-presence, and omnipotence. They are infinitely beyond what he can comprehend. But even though that is all true, in v. 18 David understands that God is with him every day. He was with David from his conception all the way into eternity future. That brings us to the last six verses of the psalm, and how David – and you and I – are to respond to God’s holiness.
*Psalm 139:19-24
19 O that You would slay the wicked, O God; depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.
20 For they speak against You wickedly, and Your enemies take Your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
22 I hate them with the utmost hatred; they have become my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts;
24 and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.

GOD IS HOLY – AND BECAUSE HE IS HOLY, YOU AND I ARE CALLED TO BE HOLY AS WELL.
But, you ask, “How can I do that?” In the last verses God answers us with two principles.

The first principle is that we’re called to live our lives as those who are set apart from the sin and depravity of this fallen world, and we are to hate sin. Think of the old cliché, “Chris-tians are in the world, but not of the world.” In v. 19 David’s desire for God to “slay the wicked” is not at all politically correct, is it? But ask yourself this: “Isn’t David’s plea in perfect agreement with God’s revealed plan to judge sin and destroy the wicked?” It is! So isn’t David’s desire in perfect agreement with what God’s absolute holiness requires?” It is!
How can we be holy if we oppose God’s holiness?
Ephesians 1:4
4 …He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, (so) that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

Look again at Psalm 139:21-22. It’s clear, isn’t it? We are to hate those who hate God because they are His enemies. But most of us have been raised not to hate anything. And aren’t we called to love our enemies? Charles Spurgeon can help us through this enigma.
“To love all men with benevolence is our duty; but to love any wicked man with com-placency would be a crime. To hate a man for his own sake, or for any evil he has done to us, would be wrong; but to hate a man because he is the foe of all goodness and the enemy of all righteousness, is nothing more nor less than an obligation. The more we love God the more indignant shall we grow with those who refuse Him their affection.”

How can we simplify these thoughts? Try this; it may help. “If someone hates you, love him. If someone hates God, hate him.” The whole point is this: The enemies of God are to be our enemies as well. How could it be any other way? Let me give you a concrete exam-ple of an enemy of God. A false teacher – one who preaches and teaches a false gospel – is an enemy of God. He or she is leading people away from the Jesus of the Bible and into eternal hell. God hates such things and so should we. And so it is that the first way we are called to be holy is to live lives separated from the world and its systems by loving all that God loves and hating all that God hates. Take that with you from Psalm 139:19-22.

The second principle for living a holy life is found in the last two verses of the psalm. In v. 23 David asks God to shine His light deep into the darkest parts of his life and expose his sin so that he might acknowledge it, confess it, and draw nearer to God. Finally, in v. 24 David asks God to “…lead him in the everlasting way.” What a lesson for us! David not only wants to know what is right, he wants to do what is right. This is what James meant when he said, “…prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves (James 1:22).”
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III. Conclusion
In Psalm 139 David is saying to us, “Look upon God and see Him for who He is. He is the sovereign Lord of the universe. He is omniscient. He knows everything there is to know about you. He is omnipresent. There is nowhere you can go to escape from Him. He is omnipotent. He wields all power; there is no power above or beyond Him. He created the universe and everything in it… even you.” How are we to respond to such a God? We are called to be holy, just as He is holy. We can only do that by loving what He loves, hating what He hates, confessing our sins, and obeying His word. ~ Pray ~

The Sunday Singers will lead us in a hymn taken directly from Psalm 139.