I grew up in Dover, Delaware so for a long time my concept of “the beach” was: big waves, undertows, deep, murky colored COOOOLD water and grayish—tan sand. Then a few years into our marriage Sue took me to Panama City, Florida to visit her grandparents. It was my first ever trip to the gulf coast. While there I got an entire new concept of “the beach.” I mean, in Panama City there were no waves. The sand was almost white. The water was clear, calm, shallow, and bathtub warm.
Well, to quote The Little New Mermaid, a WHOLE NEW WORLD opened to me. With no breakers to knock me down and with water crystal clear, I could see fish of all kinds. Plus, I could wade out a long way and watch crabs and other crustaceans crawling along the bottom. Sea shells were all over the place—easy to see and reach. I mean, it was amazing what I could learn by being submerged in those clear gulf waters.
Well—for the next five days over 200 children and nearly 100 workers will experience a similar revelation as they attend our largest annual church-wide mission trip—RBC CAMP. To quote The Little Mermaid again, our theme is definitely “under the sea—under the sea” but instead of submerging ourselves in the ocean—we will be submerging ourselves in the Bible. Our goal is to open up a whole new world for our children and staff as we learn more about our Lord by studying His written Word. Each day we’ll look at a different account from the Gospels showing that Jesus doesn’t just see the outside of people. As God in the flesh He is able to look inside our hearts.
The writers of this year’s curriculum picked a great overall text as the basis of our study—it’s one of my favorite psalms—Psalm 139 and this morning I want us to submerge ourselves in it—so we can join our children in understanding more about our Lord. Take your Bibles and turn to Psalm 139. Follow along as I read verses 1-18 and 23-24.
1 – O Lord, You have searched me and You know me.
2 – You know when I sit and when I rise; You perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 – You discern my going out and my lying down; You are familiar with all my ways.
4 – Before a word is on my tongue You know it completely, O Lord.
5 – You hem me in—behind and before; You have laid Your hand upon me.
6 – Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
7 – Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?
8 – If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there.
9 – If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 – even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast.
11 – If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
12 – even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You.
13 – For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 – I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 – My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 – Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.
17 – How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 – Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with You.
Now skip down to verses 23 and 24—this year’s RBC CAMP memory verses:
23 – Search me, O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 – See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Okay—with the words of this passage ringing in our hearts I want to prepare ourselves to pray for this year’s RBC CAMP—by reviewing four things King David tells us about our Lord in this beloved psalm. Perhaps God will use our study this morning to open up “a whole new world” for some of you!
(1) The first thing this psalm tells us about God is that He KNOWS each of us.
Now—I’m sure you’ve heard about the OMNISCIENCE of God—the fact that He has absolutely complete knowledge. Well in this psalm David affirms the mind-boggling fact that of all the limitless knowledge that God possesses—God’s MOST PRECIOUS knowledge concerns you and me!
And—this fact that each of us as individuals are KNOWN by God is especially welcome news in our day and age—because due to the world’s ever-increasing population and to our rapidly advancing technology, you and I are becoming just one of the crowd. More and more we are seen as insignificant numbers and statistical units in a computer data base rather than unique human beings. Plus—science continues to reveal how BIG and VAST and wonderful our universe is. As a result, our planet itself has become somewhat insignificant—a speck of matter surrounded by galaxies measured by light years rather than miles. All this makes us wonder, “Who am I? How could ‘little old me’ possibly matter in all of this?”
Well in these first few verses David says that you and I are SUPER-important—we matter—to the Creator of the universe Himself. He has a personal interest in each individual on this planet—that means YOU! In fact, David affirms the fact that our Creator has focused His attention on each of us from the very instant that our lives began. Look at verse 13. David says, “For You—God—You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place.” Verse 16 takes God’s focus on us back to the moment of conception by saying, “When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed body…”
Now, the Hebrew here for “woven together” literally means “to fold together or to wrap up.” It is in its noun form here in verse 16 and it means “embryo.” So in these verses David is saying, “In my very first seconds of life, when I was still wrapped up in embryonic form…God was watching over me. He was never absent or unconcerned.”
Now—look back at verse 1. Here David says that God, “SEARCHES” him. The Hebrew for this word literally means “to explore.” It conveys the idea of digging into or through something. To use some slang popular when I was young each of us could say, “God DIGS me!” because God explores, digs into, and examines each of us through and through. David says that even our most COMMON and CASUAL moments—sitting down and standing up are completely familiar to our Lord.
Bobby told me that the little boy in Baltimore whose room our team re-did a couple weeks ago loved the Cleveland Cavaliers. Knowing this they painted his room in Cavalier colors. Here’s a couple pictures. I bet that young man is happy with their win last Sunday! Perhaps like a lot of kids he idolized King James—knowing all his stats—three-point and foul shot percentages. Maybe he knows Labron’s height, favorite food, favorite color, and other trivial info like what car he drives—his birthday, etc.
Well, David says, God cares like that about you and me. He focuses His omniscience around us every moment of our lives. In fact, he says that even our THOUGHTS are an open book to God. David says that even THOSE are known by our Lord. As He puts it, “God understands our thoughts from afar.” Plutarch, the first century Greek biographer, had this in mind when he wrote:
“Man may not see thee do an impious deed;
But God thy very inmost thoughts can read.”
Now—you and I “see” thoughts enter people’s heads as their faces “light up” or as, in some other way, they telegraph the entrance of ideas. We can HEAR thoughts as they leave people’s minds through their mouths. But we cannot see what happens BETWEEN the entrance and the exit. Well God can! God even understands what PROMPTS us to think our thoughts. He understands the hidden, unspoken motives behind all our actions.
By the way, the Hebrew word we translate as “innermost being” in verse 13 literally means “kidneys.” This word is used because the Hebrews thought of our anatomy differently from us.
They looked on the kidneys as the seat of a person’s thoughts, feelings and actions.
I’m reminded of the story of the little boy who was having a difficult time in his elementary-school anatomy class. His teacher pointed out the various parts of the human body again and again, but he could never seem to get them straight. When she pointed to her shoulder he called it a hip. When she pointed to her elbow he called it an ankle. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t learn the various parts of the body. Then one day something clicked and he began to get all the parts right. That day, when the teacher asked him to name the parts of the body, he got every one of them correct. She pointed to her should and he called it a shoulder. She pointed to her elbow and he called it an elbow. She pointed to her knee and he called it a knee. The teacher was elated. In her joy she said, “Johnny, that’s wonderful! You have tried and tried to name the parts of the body, and you just couldn’t do it. What happened? How did you finally learn the human anatomy?” Little Johnny pointed to his brain and said, “Kidneys, teacher, kidneys!”
All kidding aside, have you ever yearned to be completely understood by someone—to have a kindred spirit with someone whom communication is easy because you two are on the same “sheet of music.” Well, as David says in his psalm, no one understands and knows you as completely as the all-mighty and all holy God.
Even though He is infinitely more different from us than we are from a single-celled organism, God KNOWS us—our thoughts and actions—our struggles and our victories—our moments and our days. Let that sink in. God knows you, fellow human. Even though He is separated from you—Holy, Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient—He knows each of you. He is THE expert on you!
Verse 3 says that God “scrutinizes” our paths. In other words, He watches very closely everything we do—everywhere we go. He knows our mannerisms. He is “intimately acquainted with all our ways.” In fact, David says He knows us so well, that He knows what we are going to say, before we say it. A. W. Tozer describes this aspect of God’s omniscience in this way:
“Our Heavenly Father knows us completely. No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an accusation stick. No forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to abash us and expose our past. No unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn God away from us since He knew us utterly before we knew Him—and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us.”
So—God could not possibly know you better. But, please understand, God doesn’t just ADMIRE you like that young man does a Labron James. God LOVES you. And because He does—you are CONSTANTLY in His thoughts. Isn’t that wonderful!
A little three-year-old girl came home from Sunday School and said, “Mommy, mommy, I learned a new song in church today!” The mom said, “What is it? Sing it for me!” The little girl stumbled around and finally said, “Jesus knows me this I love…” This little girl’s mistake reminds us that YES JESUS LOVES US—but He KNOWS us too. And I don’t know about you but I LOVE the fact that my Lord knows all there is to know about me. I am never out of His thoughts. Sing it with me: “Jesus knows me—this I love!”
David goes on to share a second thing we can know about God. He says that not only does He know us—
(2) God CREATED each of us with a specific PURPOSE in mind.
Look at verses 13-16 again where David says, “For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.”
David proclaims the amazing truth that God custom-made each and every one of us. That is how intimately He knows us. I mean no one knows something better than the one who made it.
I just read Michener’s Chesapeake and one of the stories in surrounds a family of Quakers—the Paxmore family—who became experts at ship-building in the 18th century. One of the Paxmore’s ships was made to haul cargo quickly past the British naval blockade during the Revolutionary War. But after the war it’s captain had it refitted to carry slaves. To the naked eye it looked like a completely different ship—but not to the Paxmores. They designed it so the recognized its keel and masts—and they lamented the fact that their ship was now used for such a horrible purpose.
Well—God custom-designed each of us for a specific purpose—and He is grieved when we don’t live out that purpose—grieved when we don’t acknowledge Him as Creator and spend our lives furthering His kingdom by doing the good work we were prepared in advance to do. In fact, I believe one of the things that grieves God most is when people ignore the sanctity of human life and treat human beings like refuse to be cast aside.
And to help us see why God might feel that way—to help us see how evil it is NOT to respect every single human being on this planet—let’s stop and consider just how fearfully and wonderfully each and every human is made.
Think of the HUMAN HEART—that amazing 12-ounce muscle that pumps the blood throughout your body. There are more than sixty-thousand miles of blood vessels inside your body and the heart recirculates it through all of them every twenty minutes. In 75 years, your heart will beat eight-hundred million times. Every day it pumps enough blood to fill a four thousand-gallon tank car. In a lifetime that is enough blood to fill a string of such tank cars stretching from New York City to Boston. And yet as complex as it is, the heart is actually one of the simpler organs of the body. I mean scientists can make an artificial heart that works reasonably well but they cannot make an organ like the LIVER, which performs so many biological functions that a huge laboratory would be required to duplicate all it does.
Think about the human HAND. It is the most magnificent piece of engineering in all creation. Nothing compares to it. There are twenty-five different joints in the hand. It is capable of making fifty-eight separate and distinct motions. With our hands we can pick up a pencil and write or grab a hammer and build. Yet the same hand is so nimble that a skilled surgeon using only his or her thumb and forefinger, can tie a knot inside a space the size of a tiny matchbox.
Think about the human FOOT. Did you know a soccer player’s foot absorbs a cumulative force of over one thousand tons in a single game with no damage!
Think of the human brain. This week I read that: “The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out somewhere in the region of between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibers by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Despite the enormity of the number of connections, the ramifying forest of fibers is not a chaotic random tangle—but a highly organized network in which a high proportion of the fibers are unique adaptive communication channels—following their own specifically ordained pathway through the brain. Even if only one hundredths of the connections in the brain were specifically organized—this would still represent a system containing a much greater number of specific connections than in the entire communications network on earth.”
It gives me a headache to think that all that is in my skull! God put it there. Perhaps this is why the ancient Greek philosopher, Sophocles once wrote, “Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none more wondrous than the body of man.” To me, this underscores how sad—how evil—it is that modern man has come to treat the human embryo the way he treats a tumor—something to be scraped away and discarded. Or he treats an embryo like a commodity—something to be harvested for the benefit of others—something to be bought and sold in the market place. I pray that God uses those baby bottles you turned in last week to help more and more people understand that we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made.
This little lecture I’ve given on the human body—created so wonderfully by God—also makes me angry when I hear about shootings like the one in Orlando—or when I hear stories about slavery in our world today—which by the way is more widespread than it has ever been before.
It’s WRONG for our culture to treat humans as they do. I hope it makes YOU angry—but I also hope it reaffirms the fact that God not only made you. He made you—-custom designed you—for a PURPOSE! As Rick Warren put it, “Long before you were conceived by your parents you were conceived in the mind of God.”
Understanding our uniqueness—understanding why God made each of us the way He did—is part of finding our purpose—and experiencing the joy of fulfilling that purpose. When Gladys Aylward was a young girl she hated her straight black hair. She hated that she was short. She wondered why she couldn’t be blond and couldn’t be tall like the other girls in school. As an adult she began to understand God’s plan her life. He called her to be a missionary in China during a time in which Westerners weren’t welcome. Her dark hair and small frame helped her blend in with those whom she served; she seemed less of an outsider because of her appearance. That was God’s plan all along!
When Amy Carmichael was a child she used to pray that God would turn her brown eyes blue; she thought blue eyes were more beautiful. Her brother had blue eyes, and she was a little jealous about it. Later, when she was called as a missionary to India, she understood why God gave her brown eyes for they helped her blend in with the population of the people she served.
Much of her ministry involved saving children from temple slavery; her brown eyes helped protect her anonymity. Again—God’s plan!
Sometimes you may be tempted to ask: “God, why did you put me in this place? Why did you give me this family? Why did you give me these limitations?” The answer is that God placed in this time and situation because He has a plan for your life. As Paul said in the book of Acts,
“From one man He has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.” (Acts 17:26)
In one of my favorite Broadway shows, Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye asks the Lord, “Would it spoil some vast eternal plan if I were a wealthy man?” Amazingly, the answer is “yes.” If you were not the person you are, God’s plan would be incomplete. So if you’re tempted to be disgruntled when you look at yourself and your lot in life, remember that God created you long ago with something very special in mind.
(3) Here’s a third thing submerging ourselves in Psalm 139 tells us about God. He is always WITH us.
David says that God is not like the false idols fashioned out of stone that the nations around Israel worshiped. The people of those pagan cultures had to travel long distances to be in the presence of their silly, impotent, man-made gods. Well David says, “Not so with the One True God! No matter where we are, almighty God is with us!”
The same is true for you and me. Wherever we are in life—whatever we are going through—we can always say, GOD IS HERE. He is with me. Look again at verses 7 – 12: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me—even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You.”
Referring to this verse, Ron Mehl writes, “God works the night shift.” and aren’t you glad He does! Aren’t you thankful that no matter how dark life seems to you—it isn’t to God—that HE never goes off duty but is always with you?!
Now—in the Hebrew Bible, the pronouns referring to God in these verses are abrupt and emphatic. I mean, it literally reads like this, “If I go up to Heaven—THOU! If I go down to the grave—THOU!” The other day we saw a movie with Tom Welling in it. Remember, he starred as SUPERBOY in the old series Smallville? He’s aged by the way and put on some weight! Well, this aspect of God’s character reminds me of an episode of Smallville in which a criminal is trying to escape from Superboy. He runs—but due to Superboy’s super-speed, the crook runs right into the teen of steel. The crook changes direction and flees again but runs smack into Superboy again. That’s the way it is with God. No matter where we go or where we turn, we run smack into Him because He is always with us. In fact, this is the gist of verse 9 where it says, “if I take the wings of the dawn…Your right hand will hold me fast.” In this verse David is describing the rays of sunshine that emanate out of that glowing ball in the morning light. So in essence he says, “If I could travel at the speed of light—to the nearest star. Four years later—after traveling 186,000 miles each second, when I arrived THOU would be there too.”
David rejoices in the fact that experience has taught him that God is not a distant, preoccupied deity. He knows where we are and what we are going through because He is always with us. I read a true story a few years ago that illustrates this truth so beautifully. It concerns a man named Ken Gaub—whose goal in life was to help hurting people. And he did this by following God’s call to serve as an evangelist—conducting crusades all over the world. His ministry blossomed into a magazine, a radio and television ministry and a youth outreach program. Well in the 1970’s this traveling minister faced burnout and began to wonder if his chosen career really was God’s call. One day in the midst of all this wondering, while traveling between crusades he and his family pulled their ministry bus off of I-75 just south of Dayton, Ohio for a meal. As he saw a sign directing them to a Pizza Hutt, he thought, “That’s what I need God, a sign.” They hopped out of the bus and started into the restaurant but Ken decided not to eat. He wanted time to think and pray. He wanted to know if God wanted him to continue in this grueling ministry. So, he started out on a long walk, and as he passed a pay phone, he heard it ring. No one bothered to answer, so he walked over, picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.” The voice of the operator said, “Long distance call for Ken Gaub.” Ken was stunned. He said, “This is crazy. This can’t be. I was just walking down the road here, and this phone was ringing…” The operator ignored his ramblings and asked again, “Is Ken Gaub there? I have a long distance phone call for him.”
At this moment, Ken thought sure it was a Candid Camera set up so he combed his hair and looked around but then he realized this could not be the case—because they had stopped at a random Pizza Hut. No one knew they were there. Well, the operator was about to reach the limits of her patience so she said, “I have a long-distance call for Ken Gaub sir. Is he there or isn’t he?” Ken said, “Operator, I’m Ken Gaub.” The operator said, “Are you sure?” And then another voice chimed in—that of the caller. It was a woman and she said, “That’s him operator. I recognize his voice. Mr. Gaub. I’m Millie from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. You don’t know me but I’m desperate. Please help me.” He said, “What can I do for you Millie?” She began to weep and explained that she was about to kill herself but as she attempted to compose a suicide note, she felt led to pray. As she did, she began to realize that God didn’t want her to do this. She remembered having seen Ken on TV and felt that if she could just talk to him she would get the help she needed. She said, “Mr. Gaub, I knew it was impossible because I didn’t know how to reach you. So I started to finish the note. And then some numbers came into my mind and I wrote them down. I looked at those numbers and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had a miracle from God and He has given me Ken Gaub’s phone number?’ I can’t believe I’m talking to you. Are you in your office in California?” “I don’t have an office in California,” Ken explained. “It’s in Yakima, Washington.” “Then where are you?” Millie asked, puzzled. Ken told her what had happened and then gently counseled her. He led her to make a profession of faith and in that commitment Millie began a personal relationship with the Wonderful Counselor—the One Who would never leave or forsake her. After they hung up, Ken realized that God had given him his “sign” so, he ran into the restaurant and told his wife, “Barb, you won’t believe this, but God knows where I am!”
Well, God knows where you are too—because wherever you are, He is there with you. Once an atheist professor wrote on the whiteboard of his classroom, “God is NOWHERE.” After class a Christian student used the eraser and marker and made a significant change so that it read, “God is NOW HERE.” Listen—no matter where you are—no matter what you are going through—GOD IS THERE. He is always with us.
Okay—enough SUBMERSION! Everyone “surface.” What did God SHOW you today? Did He help you to see that He KNOWS you because He MADE you? Did our submersion help you to see the unique job God has called you to in life? Maybe you are going through a tough time—a scary time—in life and our submersion comforted you because it helped you to see that God is WITH you. And you know, God not only knows you, He wants You to know Him. He has made a way—THE way—for this to happen, in spite of our sin and His holiness, by sending His only Son, Jesus Christ, to take our sin upon Himself. Through Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross we can be forgiven—we can come into relationship with the God we were designed to need.
If you’ve never made that commitment won’t you do so today? And—if you are a Christian, then perhaps you need to pray with David, “Search me oh God and know my heart…see if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” In other words, “Point out my sin God—help me to turn from it to the very center of Your will.” If God leads you to respond publically, whether that involves sharing with us your decision to become a Christian or to rededicate your life to Christ or to join our church family, we invite you to do so right now, as we stand and sing by coming forward and sharing your decision with me. Won’t you come as God leads?