God Knows All About Me (Part 1 of 2)

Have you ever Googled your own name?

Let's be honest, most of us have, right? Google can provide a lot of information about a lot of things, probably even about you. But today on Truth for Life, we'll find out that God knows even more. In fact, He knows all about you. Alistair Begg begins a brand new study today in Psalm 139 where we'll discover the importance of thinking Christianly when it comes to answering life's biggest questions. Who am I?

And why do I matter? I invite you to turn again to the Bible, to the Old Testament, and actually to the book of Psalms—Psalm 139, to the choirmaster, a psalm of David. O 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, 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 and shell, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell on 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 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. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How procious 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? 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. Amen. Chris Morfin is someone probably unknown to most of us. He's an Australian. He lives in Sydney. He's a schoolteacher. He's a chaplain of a school. And he's particularly gifted in working amongst teenagers and students. And in the last little while, he wrote a book with that audience expressly in mind.

I had my hands on it. I have a copy in my study, and I was intrigued by it. The title of the book is simply Who Am I and Why Do I Matter? Who Am I and Why Do I Matter?

And clearly, the emphasis is on identifying the many challenges that face young people as they try and make sense of their lives, as they move into the early stages of adulthood. And they wonder, Who am I, really? Am I my status? Am I my possessions?

Am I my looks? Whatever I may be. And it is a very, very helpful book. But as I was looking at it, I said to myself, you know, this is a book not simply for teenagers, but this really is a book for everybody. Because that same basic question needs to be addressed and needs to be answered in a way that only the Bible can actually answer.

And in many ways, this morning and these next few Sunday mornings are a follow-on from what we began to say last week about the importance of thinking Christianly about everything, and therefore thinking Christianly about our personal identity. I've mentioned before that I have a very scant understanding of anything to do with art, and therefore I would never pretend. But I do know that there is a painting in the Boston Museum of Fine Art that I still have on my list to go and see. And it was painted by Gauguin, one of the French post-impressionist painters, and Gauguin, like Van Gogh or others, was really rejected in his life. People didn't think much of his paintings at all. Unfortunately, he had to die for his paintings to become valuable. He never knew the value of them himself. But the largest of his paintings, which is there in Boston, apparently—and it's known partly because of its size and the comprehensive nature of the theme—but it is of interest to me, and has been always, because he wrote on the canvas, and he didn't write on his canvases at all.

None of them, save this one. And the canvas portrays the totality of life. So from the infancy of birth all the way through to some aged people who were there. He painted it in Tahiti, which is where he died, in the islands. But up in the left-hand corner, he wrote three questions. He wrote them in French, but in English they are straightforwardly this. Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going? Where do we come from, what are we, and where are we going?

Who am I, and why does it matter? Now Gauguin did not come up with an answer to that, despite the fact that he'd been raised as a Roman Catholic boy, he had been raised within the framework of the catechism, he knew the answers to those questions in his head. But he did not know the answer to the question in a life-transforming way. And we know that because he made an unsuccessful attempt at suicide shortly after completing that great painting.

But his friends knew that the longings of his heart were unanswered. I ponder that and I say, if only somebody had said to Gauguin, why don't you read the Bible? Why don't you, as an artist, go to one of the great artistic books of the Old Testament? Why don't you turn to the book of Psalms? After all, in the Psalms we find everything—all the emotions of life, joy and sorrow, grief, doubt, fear, the expressed longings of our hearts, and so on—and all of it set within the context of the infinite and unlimited goodness and knowledge and power of Almighty God. All here in the Bible, all the questions answered.

Calvin referred to it as the anatomy of the human soul. And Alec Matias said of the people who wrote the Psalms—and this is the psalm of David here—they were people who knew far less about God than we do and yet loved him a great deal more. They did not have the fullness of the revelation of God that we enjoy as new covenant believers.

They looked, as it were, over the horizon without an answer to their questions. They understood the nature of forgiveness. They understood much. And I think Matias has something when he says they knew a lot less, but by their Psalms they appear to have loved God a lot more. Now all of this to say that our focus is going to be on this hundred-and-thirty-ninth psalm. It is, without question, one of the high peaks, if you like, of the vast array of psalms that are here—the vast array, if you like, of Old Testament poetry. What you have in the Psalms is poetic theology or theological poetry, written in such a way that we can understand that all the tiny thoughts that we may have of God, all the ways that we may think to constrain him or marginalize him or make him bidable to us—all of those thoughts are transcended when we read the Psalms. And what we're reminded of in Psalm 139 are a number of really big things, big theological words—words like omniscience and omnipresence and omnipotence.

And they're all here, but not the words. All those truths are actually in the psalm, but they're not conveyed by means of a kind of academic statement of theology. And that's one of the great benefits, at least I find, of the Psalms, in that this truth, these truths are conveyed in a way that is entirely personal.

It's entirely personal. And I try to read it that way—I put the emphasis on my and I and mine and so on—so that that might come across. Let me give you the overview of the psalm, how we'll handle this. In four sections, verses 1–6, David says, You know me. Verses 7–14, You encompass me, or You surround me. Verses 15–18, You created me. And verses 19–24, You test me. So at least you have some idea of where we're going.

You can read ahead, and that will help you and probably help me, because I'll be able to assume a great deal, and I won't have to study quite as hard. And this morning, verses 1–6, You know me. You know me. Look at how it begins. O LORD, Yahweh, the God of all creation, O LORD, you have searched me and known me. In the Communion service, in the Book of Common Prayer, which we refer to seldom, but it's familiar to some of us, the opening prayer before the celebration of Communion reads in part like this. The man officiating at Communion says, Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden, we come to you.

That's very, very good. Let me just read it again. Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden, we come to you. In other words, God knows everything. Google and other Google-like things have ambitious, hugely ambitious plans for collecting data. And they are collecting data.

But they cannot hold a candle to this. How many billion people are in the world this morning? I don't know. Eight? Seven?

Eight? Now, just think about this for a moment. What is the psalmist saying? That in a personal way, the entire eight billion—let's call it eight—population of the world is known to Almighty God. Calvin says, How few of us acknowledge that he who formed the eye, the ear, and the mind himself hears, sees, and knows everything?

Everything. Now, you see, what a staggering statement this was—for David to sing it in his day, and for others to join him in singing it. They were affirming something to be true of Almighty God that was distinct in every aspect from the surrounding gods of the nations. God had taken his people. He had taken Abram out of that kind of context, and he had revealed himself to him. And Abraham had made these amazing discoveries of the provision of God.

Abraham had ended his life under the promise of God, trusting in it unreservedly. And the people were led out of Egypt. They're led in the wilderness wanderings. They find themselves in the promised land. The declension comes. They're exiled and so on.

They eventually find themselves despairing. How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land like this? That's about a hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm. Because the gods are the idols. In fact, you can see it if you just go back to Psalm 135. Here's this great contrast. Psalm 135, and verse—incidentally, what I just mentioned is 137.

I'm glad that it is. By the waters of Babylon there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. Psalm 135, let's just look at verse 13. Your name, O LORD, endures forever. Dear renown, O LORD, throughout all the ages—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, all the rest, Ruth, all the way through, Peter, James, John, Eric Little, Jim Elliot, Helen Rose Fear, all the way through.

And here we are in 2023. For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants. And then look at what he says in verse 15.

The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but don't speak. They have eyes, but don't see. They have ears, but they don't hear.

Nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them.

So the contrast is vast. And what he is pointing out as he goes through and writes in this way is the absurdity—and it is an absurdity—for men and women to seek ultimate answers from substitute gods. But that's what we do. You see, when we turn away from God as he has made himself known, we don't trust in nothing. We trust in all kinds of things. Because we are made in order to worship, to worship the true and living God. And when the peoples turn back, and when they turn aside, where do they end up?

Well, let me just read it again. The folly of it all, graphically portrayed. The ironsmith makes his peace. The carpenter makes his peace. He shapes it into a figure of a man with the beauty of a man to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak, and he lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar, the rain nourishes it.

Then it becomes fuel. He takes a part of it and warms himself. He kindles a fire, he bakes bread.

So far, so good. But wait a minute. Also, he makes a god and worships it. He makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat, he roasts it and is satisfied. He warms himself and says, Aha, I'm warm!

Great fire! And the rest he makes it into a god, his idol, and he falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, Deliver me, for you are my God. Now, I look back at Psalm 139. O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. Now, here is the fascinating and vitally important thing—and I've read this psalm ever since I was wee, but I'm not sure that I really focused on this till I began to look at it this past week. The knowledge of God is, as I have said, comprehensive.

It spans the globe. But the point that he's making here is not the comprehensiveness of the knowledge of God but the fact that David says, You know me. You know me. It's one thing to say, You know everybody in the world. He's got the whole world in his hands.

True! And David says, You have searched me, and you know me. See, we've got to be able to say these things to our teenagers. We'll go on through the psalm and see how vital it is that they understand that they're not the product of chance, that they're divinely put together, and that God knows them. And he knows us. Now, let's just look at how he outlines this. Some of you will remember Warren Wiersbe, what a wonderful man he was.

I met him in the early days of my life here, enjoyed him very much, and he always had a funny story, but he was masterful at outlining passages of the Bible. And when I found out what he did with this section, I said, That's for me. That's for me.

And now it's going to be for you. Because this is how he worked his way through it. The headings—some of them are his, and some are a corruption. But there, you look at this in verse 2. First of all, you know what I do. You know what I do. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. So the psalmist says, You know my actions and you know my movements.

You know whether I brushed my teeth or whether I didn't. You know everything. You know what I do. To be, you discern my thoughts from afar. Not only do you know what I do, but you know what I think.

You know what I think. All that goes on in my mind is known to you, Almighty God. In other words, David is acknowledging the fact that it is impossible for him to deceive God because God knows even our secret thoughts. God knows the motives of my heart as well as the actions of my life. You know what I do when I'm moving around, when I'm sitting up or lying down, but you know my thoughts. You know them from afar.

Distance is no issue to God. Even in verse 3, you know what I do, you know what I think, you know where I go. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.

We sang it, didn't we? All my ways are known to you. Do you actually believe that? All my resting spots, all the spare time in the airport, you search out my path, you're acquainted with all my ways. You following this? You know what I do? You know what I think?

You know where I go? You're listening to Truth for Life, and we're studying together in Psalm 139 with Alistair Begg. He titled today's message, God Knows All About Me.

We'll hear more tomorrow. We're learning that indeed God knows all about each one of us, but how much do you know about Him? Today, we want to recommend to you a book that will help you get to know God the Son a lot better. The book is called Confronting Jesus, Nine Encounters with the Hero of the Gospels. The author is Rebecca McLaughlin, and she draws from all four Gospel accounts to give you a clear picture of exactly who Jesus is. The book is a compelling and relatable book. It references contemporary issues and pop culture examples to connect with those who may not be familiar with the stories of the Bible. In fact, as you read this book, you'll gain a deeper understanding of who Jesus is, Jesus the healer, the friend of sinners, the Lord's servant. There's so much more here. Request your copy of Confronting Jesus when you donate to support the teaching ministry of Truth for Life at truthforlife.org slash donate, or call us at 888-588-7884.

And if you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to Truth for Life at Post Office Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. We are learning that God is omniscient, he's omnipotent and omnipresent, and yet he is intensely personal. So how should we respond to this God who knows us better than we know ourselves? We'll find out tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.