“The
God Who Knows You”—Psalm 139:1–10
1.
Grace,
mercy and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s
Word this 2nd Sunday after Epiphany is taken from Psalm 139:1-10,
it’s entitled, “The God Who Knows
You,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Psalm
139 teaches us that all of life is valuable to God our Lord and Creator.
We minimize God’s power when we
say He can’t be at work and give value to the deformed baby who lives only a
few hours. We minimize God’s power when we say He can’t be at work and
give value to the grandma who has lived 95 years but no longer remembers her
family. An elderly pastor living in
a nursing home struggled each day to care for his wife, who had lost all
physical strength and her ability to communicate. Despite these troubles, her
husband visited with her each day, recalling the life of love and commitment
they still shared. They didn’t realize that their simple gestures were observed
by a young man working at the nursing home. The couple’s loving interaction
moved the young man to consider dedicating himself to the pastoral ministry. “Why is
God keeping me around?” “The quality of Grandma’s life just isn’t what it used
to be.” You may have said similar things. Statements like this reflect a view of the
value of life based on people’s abilities rather than on God’s ability.
Assigning value to human life based on mental or physical capacity can lead to
the terrible conclusion that maybe there is life not worthy of life.
3.
Not
so! All life is worthy of life, because God makes it so. He created life with
His hands. God knows you better than you
know yourself. You
and every life have value! God redeemed life with His outstretched hands
when He sent His Son to die on the cross for your sins. You and every life
have been bought with a price! God’s power is at work in those He calls His
own. Thank God for the gift of life!
Thank God for the value He gives to every life!
4.
Psalm
139:1-10, 13-16 says,
“O Lord,
you have searched me and known me! 2You
know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my
path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is
on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you
know it altogether. 5 You
hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is
high; I cannot attain it. 7 Where
shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to
heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings
of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand
shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me…13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me
together in my mother’s womb. 14 I
praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was
being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 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.”
5.
This
psalm reveals something of the attributes of God in relation to His creation. It reveals that God is all–knowing
(omniscient), He is everywhere present (omnipresent), and He is all–powerful
(omnipotent). That God knows our every thought, word, and deed can be
terrifying to us sinners. This psalm proclaims God’s love, which He
expresses in His personal care and involvement in all of His creation. God’s
knowledge, power, and presence were manifest most fully when He Himself assumed
our substance, with a human body knit together in the womb of the Virgin Mary,
and grew up to bear in that body God’s hatred of sin at the cross.
6.
Notice
here in Psalm 139 that David says he was a person before his body was even
formed. He
was a person as he was being formed in the womb. The personhood is declared
to take place at the very moment of conception.
This is very important in our day because of the question of abortion.
While the body was being formed, David said he was a person, a human being. God
had the blueprint of his members before they came into existence. The person was there. Now hear it straight: abortion is murder
unless it is performed to save the mother’s life or even the child’s life.
Abortion to get rid of the little unformed baby before he has an opportunity to
utter a cry in order to cover up sin or escape responsibility merely enhances
the awful and cruel crime. The unborn
child is being shaped and cared for by God, and God has already ordained his
days for him. So a human being who interferes and cuts off the life that
God is developing is certainly taking over a right that belongs to the Creator
alone. As the giver of life, God alone has the right to take it.
7.
Although
God does not create us directly from the ground or from a rib, as he did Adam
and Eve, the Lord is our Creator just as much as he was theirs. Although he brings us into
existence through the natural processes of conception and birth, he remains
fully in control of creation. He maintains the processes and watches over
us with a personal care even before our birth. He shapes us as he shaped Adam,
so that it can be said that we were made in “the depths of the earth.” Like Adam, we came from the dust and will
return to it.
8.
If
we are fearfully and wonderfully made by God and all life is precious to Him,
then we as Christians need to be especially careful how we treat our own bodies
and the bodies of those around us. This leads us to what the Apostle Paul
says in 1 Corinthians 6:18–20, “18Flee
from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but
he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19Do you not know
that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have
received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a
price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
Notice how the Apostle Paul puts it bluntly, “Flee from sexual immorality.” He doesn’t
say “Stand up to it.” He commends the
example of Joseph, who ran out when Potiphar’s wife invited him to have sex
with her.
9.
Paul’s
reason for avoiding sexual immorality is this: “All other
sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against
his own body.” The body of a Christian is violated by sexual immorality
more than by any other sin. Maybe Paul has in mind the complete physical
intimacy; or that in sexual immorality the participant uses his own body as the
instrument of sin; or that no other sin affects the body as this one does. What
is clear is that God considers sexual immorality to be an especially shameful
sin. Old Testament accounts show that his penalties for such sins are severe,
even the penalty of death.
10.
Paul continues in saying, “Do you not know that your body is a temple
of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” Our bodies are sanctuaries
where the Holy Spirit, God himself, lives. We can no more conceive of our
sainted bodies as polluted by sexual immorality than we can imagine the temple in
Jerusalem turned into a brothel.
“You are not your own; you were bought at a price.” The words of
Luther’s explanation of the Second Article come to mind: “He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned
creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of
the devil, not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and with
his innocent suffering and death … that I should be his own.” We do not
serve that Savior with bodies surrendered to lust, but with bodies that “serve him in everlasting righteousness,
innocence, and blessedness.”
11.
It would be fitting for us to
conclude with what David says at the end of Psalm 139 in verses 23-24.
We realize that we don’t honor our bodies as we ought. For this reason we need God’s forgiveness. We need God’s forgiveness for allowing
abortion to take place, for allowing our minds to wander to sexually impure
thoughts, or to say things we shouldn’t that are sexually degrading. So David writes, “23Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my
anxious thoughts. 24See if there is any offensive way in me, and
lead me in the way everlasting.” David closes not with pride but with
humility. He recognizes that without forgiveness he too would fall under the
wrath of the holy God. David circles back to the beginning of psalm 139 and
asks that the Lord would use his knowledge of us as His creation to cleanse us
from every evil way that would lead us away from God. For us as sinners the
only solution to God’s holy anger against sin is the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord. This love moves him to use his knowledge and power to save
us, rather than to destroy us. This love opens the way of life everlasting.
Amen.
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