Psalm 139:1-24 [NLTse]

For the choir director: A psalm of David.

¹ O Lord, You have examined my heart and know everything about me. ² You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away. ³ You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. ⁴ You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord. ⁵ You go before me and follow me. You place Your hand of blessing on my head. ⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!

⁷ I can never escape from Your Spirit! I can never get away from Your presence! ⁸ If I go up to Heaven, You are there; if I go down to the grave, You are there. ⁹ If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, ¹⁰ even there Your hand will guide me, and Your strength will support me. ¹¹ I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—¹² but even in darkness I cannot hide from You. To You the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to You.

¹³ You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴ Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. ¹⁵ You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. ¹⁶ You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in Your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

¹⁷ How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! ¹⁸ I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, You are still with me!

¹⁹ O God, if only You would destroy the wicked! Get out of my life, you murderers! ²⁰ They blaspheme You; your enemies misuse Your name. ²¹ O Lord, shouldn’t I hate those who hate You? Shouldn’t I despise those who oppose You? ²² Yes, I hate them with total hatred, for Your enemies are my enemies.

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. ²⁴ Point out anything in me that offends You, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

I had just finished preaching and was getting ready to sit down for the pastor to lead the congregation in prayer when this kid in the Youth Group who’d started looking up to me began clapping. And then some of the other kids began clapping, and their parents, and soon the entire church was standing up in applause! And that had never happened in that church before. (And it had certainly never happened to me before.) And although I was a little embarrassed by it, secretly it also made me feel good and special, and I began thinking that I’d even deserved it because it was such a very good sermon. And as the pastor began to lead us in prayer I remember recognizing my pride and silently asking God to humiliate me because I did not know how to be humble. And the Service continued…

After Worship I was chatting with the people around me and some of the kids who’d come over. And this woman – her name was Margaret – came over to me and pulled me aside. And Margaret said, “I don’t know why God wants me to say this to you, but He made very clear to me during the prayer time that I had to let you know He is not going to humiliate you, but that you can trust Him to teach you how to be humble.” And then she turned and hurried away, clearly uncomfortable…

And I remember standing there, looking around me, feeling so exposed: Like I was standing in my underwear right there in the middle of the sanctuary. And I remember looking after the woman as she walked away, and I was scared, wondering, “What else did God show you while He was giving you a tour of my secret thoughts?”

…

Psalm 139, and so many stories out there like I just told, make absolutely clear to us that God knows us intimately. And, of course, the cross shows us that He cares. God knows us and God cares.

As we are focused on Psalm 139 this morning it strikes me that at the heart of even being able to truly care about others is knowing them: Knowing each other’s joys; knowing each other’s sorrows; knowing the good, the bad, and the ugly about one another. Because only in truly knowing one another can we face and overcome the temptation to judge others, either favorably or condemningly. Only in truly knowing each other can we face our fears about the needs of those around us overwhelming us. (Because sometimes we don’t care and we don’t help because we’re afraid it will be too much for us.)

But, sometimes, we keep ourselves to ourselves, afraid that if others truly knew us then they wouldn’t like us or wouldn’t want to hang around us or think as highly of us as they do not knowing. And we can have some pretty dirty laundry in our pasts, and even some pretty unsavory things going on in our lives right now, even as we’ve begun to live for Christ.

The priests and religious leaders in Jerusalem during Ezekiel’s day had some pretty nasty secrets: Ezekiel 8 tells us they had begun worshiping the Babylonian’s gods. (Perhaps because Babylon seemed so great and powerful, so the leaders thought their gods must be great and powerful, too. Whyever…) But these priests and leaders were hiding their worship, doing their heinous secret rites in areas of the Lord’s Temple where the common people couldn’t see them. Ezekiel records that they thought even God wouldn’t see them! But God knew their secrets and what they were doing in their secret places, and He showed their secrets to Ezekiel in a vision, and Ezekiel proclaimed their abominations to all the exiles in Babylon!

God knows every thought, word, and deed of every man, woman, boy, and girl on the planet. He is intimately familiar with our every action and undertaking, our motives and the manner in which we pursue these things, even our thoughts before we’ve fully sorted them out, and our words before they’ve even been spoken! Jesus tells us to give our gifts of charity in secret and to pray in secret where only God can see and hear because God does see and will reward and He does hear and will answer all our prayers…

One of the nice things about knowing that God knows us so completely and loves us anyway is the freedom that can give us with Him (if we can grow content with the knowledge of it), but also the freedom it can give us with others around us, too.

Our headlines are regularly full of the dirty laundry our politicians or celebrities have tried so hard to keep secret. I asked you earlier what your most well-kept secret was. These politicians and celebrities don’t want their secrets known. That knowledge gives the media power over them.

But you and I don’t have to be concerned whether or not others find out about our dirty laundry. Because the politicians and celebrities are all about themselves (most of the ones making the headlines, that is), but you and I are all about Christ! So as the newspapers and newscasters are using the secrets they’ve uncovered to tie these politicians and celebrities in knots, you and I can let our secrets be opportunities to tell the world about Jesus!

As everyone else is trying to “spin” the ugly truth into something flattering, you and I get to tell everyone that, yes, that was how we used to live and, yes, those were some of the things we’ve done, but how Jesus has made us new: How Jesus has died to set us free from all that’s come before, set us free to ask forgiveness and be forgiven, set us free to make restitution and be reconciled; that He’s made us new creations, healing us from all that’s happened and been done to us, made us new creations, washing us clean from shame and abuse and that dirtiness that without Him just won’t go away: Set us free and made us new creations today! [Hold up newspaper]

And, of course, that’s one of the things I like so much about being Jesus’ church together, too. Because together we can share the reality of His setting us free, and the reality of His making us new.

Yesterday morning during the Men’s Bible Study we ended our teaching through Revelation 17 by asking each other: “What are the kings – the powers, the lies, the strongholds, etc… What are the kings – fighting for dominion over your life?” And it was as we began sharing our secrets, our weaknesses, our fears, the things that many men try to keep concealed and pretend are not there, that we broke through some barriers in our relationships. Being vulnerable, we opened up opportunities for us to be God’s agents of caring and healing to each other.

As we share our stories (stories that others try to keep secret) we can help each other trust and see His caring presence with us across our lives and help each other take those first steps of freedom and help each other recognize the healing, the newness, our coming to life again. As we experience Jesus’ care for us we can, in turn, help others experience His care and be a part of that care ourselves!

Yes, God knows us… intimately, and cares about us anyway! God cares! But, because Jesus lives with us and within us Christians, we can know all the good, bad, and ugly about one another, and even about those making headlines out there in the world, too, and (by His Holy Spirit) we can truly care, as well!

God cares! And we care! And it’s not a slogan, but something God has done in giving us human beings His Holy Spirit. But we need to activate Him in us! We need to put His caring presence and power into action! So, who’s been reaching out to you for help but you’ve been shrugging off in your busy-ness or fear? When we go from this Worship Service today let’s go, not concerned about whether or not people are caring for us the way we want them to, but knowing the Lord has sent us out to show the world He cares: Forgiving those who hurt us; helping those in need; serving our wives or husbands or children or parents (instead of demanding they serve us); … looking for opportunities to go out of our way to help, looking for opportunities to go out of our way to heal, looking for opportunities to go out of our way to pray, looking for opportunities to go out of our way to care…

God cares! And in Christ He’s set us free and made us a new creation, and He’s sending us out to care, too!