All in All

Well, good morning. It's good to be with you this morning. It was kind of a surprise for me to get a telephone call from Brother Mike asking if I would be available this morning to drive up from Greenville, South Carolina. And so we did drive up last evening, stayed in the Mission House, and we're very grateful for the opportunity to be able to do that as well.

It's a little harder to get up and get going from Greenville to come up for a 930 service, but we'd be glad to do that if occasion occurs at any time and we are available. So since the staff is sick, and I maybe stand here in fear and trembling, Brother Mike did say he sanitized everything. I sanitized myself. We're just praying that not only the pastors and their families will recover from this quickly and easily and well, as well as the other folks in the church, but that none of us would continue to perhaps, that God would protect us from those things as well. He has been very gracious to us all, and we are grateful to him for that. Well, it is Christmas season, and since I'm about the fifth string to be perhaps called to come and speak, I am not speaking a Christmas message this morning.

So you have a program tonight, so I want to encourage you, as Dan has already done so, to get online, get involved, sing, and be encouraged through the Christmas program this evening. So with that, I would invite you to take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to the 139th Psalm. The 139th Psalm.

I was here just two weeks ago. I was able to speak at the tri-state meeting, and the Lord directed me to share a passage of Scripture that often we have read and known, and that was in Proverbs in the third chapter, verses 1 through 12. And as I talked to Mike on Friday, it was, and began to think through some things and thought I would come to this Psalm this morning. We do know, as we have prayed already and read Scriptures and sung hymns and songs concerning our God, that our God is an all-knowing and all-powerful omniscient. He is all in all. He is the eternal God of heaven in whom we are privileged to be His children. And we need to give God praise and thanks, and yet at the same time we need to examine ourselves on a regular basis to see what God would have us change in our lives and how we can grow and how we can be a different kind of people that He would like for us to be.

Because of His many attributes, and we could list many of them, communicable attributes, non-communicable attributes, He is holy, He is righteous, He is love, He is just, all of these things. But this passage here helps us to understand some more practical aspects and attributes of God that would help us in our daily living as well. Sometimes we look at the Scriptures and we have these great and grandiose theological realms, but sometimes we forget how to bring them down to where we are and to our daily living.

So I'd like to share this with you. I will read the psalm and then we will come back and examine some text with it. So if you would follow along please in chapter 139 and verse number 1 when he says, O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern our thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it altogether. You hem me in behind and before and lay Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high.

I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from Your Spirit or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there.

If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me. And Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to You.

The night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with You. For You have formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works. My soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from You. When I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed substance. If You look in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet they were none of them. How precious to me are Your thoughts! O God, how vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with You. O that You would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me. They speak against You with malicious intent.

Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?

I hate them with complete hatred. I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Let's ask the Lord's blessing upon our time together. Thank you, Father, for the privilege that we have to be together. Pray that You would guide us, direct us, help us in our words and our thoughts and our understandings. Help us as we seek to submit ourselves to You, continue to bless Your people, protect Your people, and guide Your people. And we'll give You the praise in Jesus' name, who is our only hope.

Amen. Now, in this passage, I see a number of sections within it that I would like us to consider. The first would be that of verses 1 through 6, that God knows all things.

Now, that's an interesting concept. We just read that entire passage of Scripture. God knows all things. He knows you.

He knows me. And He knows us inside and out and thoroughly and through and through. God knows it all.

There is nothing that is hidden from God. So as you got up this morning, the thoughts that you were thinking this morning before you even got your cup of coffee, maybe as you were thinking various things, why do these things happen to us? Why are we having such turmoil in our country?

Why are we having all the various things that are going on, the COVID, all of these things that are happening in our lives? Why, Lord? But God knows all of those thoughts that we have in our lives. God knows the thoughts in our lives this morning. He says, I'm not sure I want to go to church this morning. I'm not sure I want to sit anywhere near anybody today.

I'm not sure I want anybody to breathe towards me today. God knows our thoughts on all of those things in our lives. Now, if we were to ask a question this morning, if I asked this question to you, how well do you know one another? So if I was to ask you, how well do you know your spouse?

Most of you, perhaps many of you, have been married a long time, one that I've been married thirty-five and a half years. And as we think about that, we say, how well do we really know each other? We think that we really know each other quite well.

And as some of you do, when we start to say something, the other one completes the sentence before we finish the sentence ourselves. How do we know, how well do we know one another? Our spouse, our kids, our church members, people who are sitting here together, our pastors, the pastors with our people, how well do we really know them?

The answer probably is something like this. Probably not as much or as well as we think that we do at times. Or maybe more than you want to know them. Those are all interesting questions for us. But in the realm of that, and in the realm of this passage as we were meditating upon it, oh Lord, you have searched me and known me that God knows everything all the time about you and about me and about every other individual in the billions of people on the face of the earth at any given second. God knows it all. Think about that. God knows everything about you.

Everything. Every thought that you might think, every action that you will do, every person that you are going to speak to, God knows all things about you and about me. He knows them from all of eternity past. God is not surprised by any thought, any action, anything that you might do or that I might do. He knows it actually before you think it in your mind because God is eternal. God is all knowing, omniscient. He knows all things.

God does not have to learn anything. We understand that as we understand this attribute and this characteristic of God as we perceive these words. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways even before a word is on my tongue. Behold, oh Lord, you know it all together. You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high.

I cannot attain it. Before there was anything that was made, God knew you and God knows and knew every thought before you were made that you would think about. It's quite interesting to meditate and think upon that because it helps us to understand how unsearchable our God is.

We think we know our God better than what we really do. God knows us. He knows the integral parts of our lives. He knows our thoughts and our words and our actions before any of us could possibly think upon them.

Interesting even with mathematics I would think that God knows all equations. He knows all the possibilities. He knows everything that every scientist could ever think about. God knows it all. He knows. He just simply knows because He is eternally present.

Not that He knew something was possible that was going to happen, but God knows. It's interesting that David says this over and over again. You have searched me and you have known me. You know when I sit down and you know when I rise up.

You understand or discern my thoughts. You search out my path and my lying down. And you are acquainted with all my ways. And even before a word was on my mouth, behold, O Lord, you know it all together.

You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. And then he says such knowledge is far above anything that I could ever, ever comprehend. That's an amazing thought for us because as we notice in verse number one, he says, you have searched me and you have known me through and through all of my ways. Everything there is to know about me inside out, frontwards and backwards, up and down.

God, you know everything about me. So you might want to think about that as we come across the Christmas season this year and as you perhaps are purchasing gifts for friends and relatives and as you are trying to gather together and as we gather together with our families on Christmas morning, all the thoughts that go through our heads, all the things that go through our minds, are we really seeking to worship the eternal God of heaven? Now I said that, but I also mean to say that I don't think there's anything wrong with buying gifts and giving gifts and encouraging people and celebrating family together. But I do want to encourage us to be mindful that God knows our thoughts. And as we rise up in the morning on Christmas Day, what we celebrate is Christmas Day, are we thinking about our Savior? The passage of scripture that Brother Bob read this morning, verse number 21 is a precious verse, and you shall call His name Jesus.

Why? Because He shall save His people from their sins. That's a thought to meditate upon on Friday morning. So He knows us. He knows our movements in verses 2 and 3.

Every part of me, everything I do in its complete entirety. The Proverbs says this as well in Proverbs 5 21, for a man's ways are before the Lord and he ponders all his paths. So as he says in verse 2 and 3, you know when I sit down and you know when I rise up, you understand and you see all of my paths and all of my wonderings and all of my ways, that we are reminded that a man's ways are before the Lord and he ponders all his paths. They are directly before the Lord and he is carefully watching us all the time. He never slumbers.

He never sleeps. He always sees. God always knows. Isn't that interesting how when our children were young, sometimes they would say, when we would correct them about something or catch them doing something, they would say, how did you know that? And moms would always say, I have eyes in the back of my head. So we gave the impression that moms and maybe dads who are all knowing are always present.

I saw you. But you take that in the realm of our eternal God and God is all knowing and he is all present and he sees it all and he understands it all and he knows it all before we do those things. My thoughts, before I know them, before I think them, even tomorrow, God knows them all together. Now you may not want anybody to think or to know what you are thinking even at this moment but God does. God knows it all. And in verse number 3, he indicates that he knows all my ways. That's a repetition of verse number 2 as well. Through and through, he knows my ways intimately. In verse number 4, we see that not only are my thoughts are known by God but my words and yet he says things that are not yet unspoken. Isn't that interesting? Things that are not yet spoken.

You know them all together. Even before a word is on my tongue. See, nothing surprises God. And so as we consider this omniscient, omnipotent, all powerful, all wonderful, unsearchable God, whom we tend to think sometimes is far above and yet not close by, to be reminded that he knows all and that he sees all. Nothing surprises God. The writer of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 4-13, no creature is hidden from his sight but all are naked and exposed to see the eyes, to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. So as we take this unsearchable God that we have come to know and to love because he so loved us and we understand that he knows all things about us and sees all things about us, that we must also go a step further and understand as the writer of Hebrews says, none of what we do and think and say is hidden from God and that we will give an account to all of those things before him. Well then in verses 5 and 6 he kind of gives us the scenario and he says, all of this is too high for me to comprehend and understand.

When he says, you, hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high.

I cannot attain it. God is so high, so holy, so marvelous, so unique that it is difficult to part from the scriptures to understand who he is. All of this is too high that you know everything about me. You know all of my uprisings and all of my downsiddings and all of my goings and all of my pathways and all of my words.

You know it all. All of this is too high. It's too much for me to comprehend and to understand. It's out of my reach so to speak in comprehension. It is way beyond in one sense my pay grade to understand where God is and who he is and how he knows all these things. It's beyond my understanding.

It's beyond my understanding. I'm reminded of Romans in chapter number 11 and verse 35, maybe verse 33 where he says to us here, Paul writes, he says, all the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. As David writes in these first six verses, he really exposes to us a lot about ourselves and a lot about who God is. God knows it all and therefore we have to be careful on how we conduct our lives, how we talk, how we speak, all the things that we do, all the things that we say, all the places we go, everything about us we need to scrutinize as well because God sees it all.

There is nothing that is hidden from him. Well, second of all, in verses 7 through 10 to maybe 12, we see that God is everywhere present. God not only knows all things, God sees all things. God sees all things. God is everywhere present.

You know, when I was a little boy living in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, and before I had come to Christ, I was under sore conviction by the Holy Spirit as he was working on my heart and drawing me to himself. And I always thought for some reason as a 10, 11 year old boy that God was only in the front of the auditorium building. And if I could just get away in other parts of the church building, God could not find me there. But you know what I found out is that I would sit over here and then I would sit back there. I'd sit over there. We had a balcony and I would go up in the balcony with another fan.

And you know what? God always was there. God always found me. God always was by his Spirit drawing me to himself and convicting me of my sin. And so as I consider verses 7 through 12, the omnipresence of God, the all-seeing God, that David pretty much says, there is no place to hide from God.

Notice that again. Where shall I go from your Spirit or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there.

If I make my bed and shield, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. No place to hide.

I found that out as a little boy. And as I grew up, sometimes you try to hide from God yet. I think that's why men who are unsaved seek to do all kinds of things under the cover of darkness.

Most murders, most crime takes place at night. People are trying to do things where they can hide and be away from things, but there's no place to hide from God. Now that is both for the believer, both a comfort and a fear. I should fear reverencing God, that I cannot hide from Him as a child of God. And it should be a comfort to us too, that we should be able to be able to walk in the course of this life knowing that God sees me every step of the way in everything. He gives the intentions here, the ideas of the heights and the depths, they're all the same to God. The brightness and the darkness, it's all the same to God.

There's no difference. You can't run, you can't hide, you can't flee from God, and many Christians have sought to do so. And yet, I think about Jonah, think about how that worked out for Jonah when you remember in the first chapter of Jonah that he rose to flee from the presence of the Lord and to Tarshish, to go to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Now Jonah probably knew, I'm going to insert some words in his mouth here, probably knew that God knew exactly where he was, and God did. And as he sought to run from the presence of the Lord, run from the responsibilities and accountability that God was giving to him at that moment in time, that he decided he was going to leave and head to Tarshish and get on a boat, and he was going to flee from all the things that God wanted him to do. And even in the boat, God was there.

And as God prepared, said a great fish, and as he was cast over, swallowed by this great fish, that he knew that he was still in the presence of God, we can never hide from the presence of God. Some of those thoughts change the older we get, don't they? Sometimes the older we get, we start thinking differently than we did when we were young. When we were young, we thought we were invincible. We could accomplish anything, do anything. Nothing could harm us.

We could do whatever we want to do. We could return and everything would be okay between me and the Lord, but the older we get, the closer we are to glory in that sense by way of natural age processes. And we begin to think about those things and say, you know, my preparation is shorter time yet before I'm going to meet the Lord.

And so I need to do the best that I can to walk with God and serve God in my life. I cannot run, I cannot hide because God is there all the time and he sees it all, all the time. Even the darkness, it says, the darkness and the light, that's a unique contrast here. When he says in verse 11, surely the darkness shall cover me.

Well, if I could just wait until it gets dark, nobody will see me. But God sees us in the darkness, doesn't he? In fact, he says, and the light about me be night, so I'm out in the pitch blackness of it all. Even the darkness is not dark to you, God. The night is bright as the day. Generally speaking, I don't like darkness. I like the daylight.

I like it bright. I don't like strolling through a graveyard, a cemetery at night time. It's just the way man is made up. But to God, it is all the same.

There is no darkness to him. See, for me, I could not live in places like certain parts of Alaska where there's 65 days of darkness at one time. I didn't look up to see what the suicide rate in a place like that would be.

But I would think that it would be much higher than other places. For me, I would probably prefer to live at the equator where there's 12 hours of daylight all the time. That is what I like. But it doesn't make any difference to God, does it? Whether it's in the brightness of the day or whether it's in the blackness of night, it is all the same to God. And he sees it all, and he knows it all. And we need to be careful of how we live in accordance with God's omniscience, his all-seeing of everything.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. As Hebrews tells us, there is nothing hidden, no thought, no word, no deed before him. Well, as we move on in verse number 13 through 18, we find here that God's omnipotence is vitally important for us to understand as well that God not only knows all things, he not only sees all things, he knows all things about me personally as well.

This is a fascinating passage of Scripture that you know well. Because we ask the question, when did God know all of this? God knew it all forever. Because he is eternal, and he has not had to learn anything. He knows all things. He never learned a thing. God has never learned a thing.

He is not learning anything today, and there will be nothing new to him tomorrow. He is personally involved in everything and everyone in our formation. Notice, there in verse number 13, for you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. All are your works, and my soul knows it all very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 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 were none of them. What a magnificent thought.

We tend to look at that passage of Scripture and to use it as our proof text only of against abortion. But there is so much more that you can see there. The intricacies that God knows of us because he has done them in us and formed them in us. He is the God who knows you intricately. He knows all of your DNA. He knows every line of your fingerprints. He knows every section and thought that could be within our brains. He knows every blood vessel that goes through our veins. He knows and controls every beat of our heart. He knows all of it.

We are fully made, wonderfully made, skillfully formed, as tragic as it is and we all believe and understand that, the tragedy of every aborted life. But God knows them all and he has formed them from the very tiniest parts of those cells in the very beginning of conception. He knows them personally and that is precious to us to know a God who knows us this way.

He is involved in our lives. It is God's plan for me, all of these things and it demonstrates his sovereignty over our lives. What I find fascinating is verse number 16 when he says, Your eyes saw my unformed substance.

In your book were written every one of them. And notice the days that were formed for me, all of my days, when as yet there were none of them. What an amazing thought. God knows each and every day and moment of our lives yet to come because there is an appointed time as the scriptures tell us. Now we shall meet our Lord and stand before him and enter into his presence. That is a tremendous thought. Well that should bring praise to our God from us as well in verses 17 and 18. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God. How vast is the sum of them.

If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake and I am still with you. That unique relationship with the child of God and this eternal God, our Heavenly Father, is so unique that as we understand his all knowing, his all seeing, his personal involvement in our lives from the moment of conception and even prior to that, that it should bring us to the point of praise in our lives. That we have the privilege that he has granted to us life and he has given to us his Son who has taken our sins away and cleansed us from our unrighteousness and made us his own. That to think about the preciousness of who he is and what he has done and what he is doing and all of this should bring us to an amazement in our lives of this God. Again I am reminded of that passage I read a moment ago in Romans 11. All the depth of the riches, the knowledge of this incomprehensible, inscrutable God who he is, all of his ways.

He is unsearchable, incomprehensible, unfathomable and yet he loves us and because he loves us we can love him even though, as Peter says, we have not seen him with our physical eyes at this time. The blessings of God outnumber and outweigh everything. Sometimes I see things differently than that. My wife has to remind me, remember all the blessings of God that outweigh all the troubles of life.

And they do. And sometimes we just are so consumed with the things of this life that we do not see the preciousness, as he says here, how precious to me are your thoughts. That you think about me, that you have been concerned of me, oh God, that you have cared for me and you have met my needs and you have driven me along this course of this life.

They are unsearchable. Psalm 40 and verse 5 tells us the same thing, that they are just all of the works of God are so many that we cannot count them, they are beyond the sands of the sea. There is a lot of blessings of God that we should be meditating upon. In light of all this, I am still with you. God is all knowing, God is all seeing, God knows me personally and he does not have to keep me around. As I awake this morning, as I woke this morning, as I awake each day, I can say I am still with you Lord and you are with me and we shall walk through this day.

I am still with you. Trust, sleep, refreshment, living in his presence. Because we are reminded of what he says in Hebrews 13 when he says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Those are precious thoughts and that is what David is saying.

These are precious thoughts for us. But with that, next of all in verses 19 and 20 we can see we have great confidence in this God who is going to make all things right. David here speaks in a sense which seems almost like it shouldn't be in this passage. And he says, O that you would slay the wicked, O God. O men of blood depart from me.

They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? Interesting concept because he is saying right off the bat, O God, would you slay them? Would you kill them, God?

There is an element of imprecatory prayer there. Kill them, God. We need to realize that this world is filled with wickedness, filled with men who hate God, filled with men who will do all manner of evil against God. They speak against him. They speak his name in vain.

They would just assume God would be destroyed, which could not be. And David comes to the point and he says, you have to deal with them, God. I cannot deal with those. You eternally will have to deal with them. And we know that God will deal with the unrighteous as well. But he says that our hearts should be different as well because the wickedness of mankind upsetting the psalmist here should also upset us as well. Sin should upset us. He says, they are enemies that take your name in vain.

Do I not hate those? There is an element that we should hate sin. I am reminded of the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5, verse number 4, he says, blessed are they who mourn. I think there is an element that even in the church sometimes today we do not mourn over our own sin.

Not necessarily, but maybe so collectively, but individually at times too that we just do not mourn over our own sin. I began to think more deeply about that about two years ago when my dad died. He was 92 years old. And as I was meditating upon some passages of scripture afterwards, one of the things that I was meditating upon and thinking about was that my dad did not die just a body failure. He did not die just a heart disease or any other disease. He died ultimately because of sin. That is what sin does. It destroys lives and it destroys our lives. And we too one day will succumb to death. We want to soft pedal death.

We want to make it easy for everybody. We want to say my dad is in a better place. We want to say, which is true, and we want to say, you know, my dad had a good life. We want to celebrate his life and all these other things. We want to buy fancy caskets as though it makes any difference to him. All of these things. But as I was reminded in reading a book called Remember Death, that though we want to soft pedal it, death is simply that.

My dad died. And ultimately because of sin. And David says we should hate all that. We should hate that sin. We should hate what God hates. And God hates sin. And it should detest us.

And we should be detestable to us when we look at others who are blatantly living in sin. Well then he closes off and those are always great words for you to hear. David is closing off and so I will too with these last couple of verses. When he says in verse number 23 and verse 24, therefore search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way of everlasting.

See if there be thoughts and grievous or cries of anxieties and things of my heart and my life. So last of all, David really here desires to have a clean heart and conscience. And I think that's important as we understand an all-knowing God and an all-seeing God and a God who is personally involved in all of our lives from before conception of our bodies and as we developed in our mother's wombs and as we were born and we were fearfully and wonderfully intricately made. And that should drive us to praise this eternal God and it should also drive us in understanding and seeing the wickedness of man and crying out in God, God you deal with this as you see fit. And then he closes off similar to how we began with a desire to be known of God and to have his heart and his mind and his life searched out.

It is a cry to be searched. Now that's an interesting thought because you have to stop and think, why does God have to search me? I thought God knows all things.

I thought God sees all things and He does. It is not that God needs to try to find things out, but David wants God to search his heart, his own heart and expose him for who he is as well. To expose David's heart, to expose my heart so the Holy Spirit can change us as we see our lives in realm of an all-knowing God and all-seeing God and all these things. David wants to be known. David wants to be exposed. And to remember, David reminds himself perhaps, it is impossible for me to keep anything hidden from God. There are no secrets.

That's exactly what David was saying in the first opening verses. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with my ways.

You know everything. And so God, I pray that it's not that I want you to know what's in my heart because you already know. God, I want you to show me what's in my heart and to expose me for who I am and what I am so that I might come into compliance and submission to you who is my all-knowing, all-loving, all-kind, all-judging Father. So perhaps Psalm 139 is written in these last few verses, not just with the element to condemn us in our walk and how our lives are, but to comfort us. And that God knows us. And we have great comfort in that. And it helps us to walk day by day in a right relationship with Him.

We don't like that He alone knows us so well. But it does help us. It helps us to guard our lives as Proverbs says, verse 23, guard your hearts. Guard your hearts. That phrase guard, that word guard and guard your hearts is the idea of put a fence, put a wall around your hearts and protect it.

Because out of that comes all of the issues of life. Guard your hearts, guard your lives to live in His presence. And second of all, to comfort our hearts, to know that He cares for us and He guides us and He loves us.

And all of that we know should affect how we guard our hearts and how we guard our lives. So as we close in prayer, take a second here, take a moment and meditate on this word. Do whatever business you might need to do with God. And then as I close this in prayer, Brother Dan will come and we'll sing our hymn. Thank you Father for your love and your grace to us for who you are. We are sinners whom you have saved by your grace and we can never show enough gratitude or love to you for that. But we would pray as the psalmist has shown to us this morning that you are an all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful, all-seeing God whom we must give an account to someday. And so we pray that as we see what you have done and what you know and what you are doing that we might praise your name and to sing praises to you for you are worthy of all of our praise and adoration. Help us Lord to hate sin. Help us not to be overwhelmed by it in the world but to know that you are in control and you shall deal with it in your time as you see fit. But help us to examine our own hearts. We ask that you would expose our hearts so that we might live according to your will and we will give you the praise and thanksgiving for we pray in Jesus' name who is our only hope. Amen.