Inviting God's Searchlight

Self-examination is not a simple thing. The heart is so exceedingly complicated. Just a few things, obvious, floating upon the surface, a man might discover. Yet there are chambers receding within chambers in that deepest of all deep things, a sinful heart, which no mere human investigation ever will reach.

It is the prerogative of God to search the human heart, and if you ask Him to, He will do it. Welcome to this broadcast of Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. For the last several days, Stephen's been teaching from Psalm 139. He's been examining the magnificent power and attributes of God. Today, he brings it all to a conclusion. Stephen's looking at how you and I should respond to the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence of God. These attributes are not just theoretical.

They have practical implications for how you're supposed to live. We're back in Psalm 139, and this message is called Inviting God's Searchlight. By the time we finish this session on Psalm 139, we will have spent some two hours expounding on this song, which I didn't expect at the outset, but yet at the very end, we'd have to say we've just gotten started, wouldn't we? The reason for that is the subject of this psalm is the nature of God and His attributes, and you can't get any better than that, specifically His omniscience, His omnipresence, and His omnipotence. God is all-knowing, omniscient.

God is everywhere, present, omnipresence, and God is all-powerful, omnipotent. And in this glorious psalm and the first stanza we looked at together, David began with the omniscience of God, and he basically sings, Lord, you know everything about me when I sit down, when I go to sleep, when I get up, go to work, what I'm going to say even before I say it, what I'm even thinking about at any given time before I think it. Now, you'd think he'd come to the end of something like that and say, the fact that you know everything about me, it bothers me. But that isn't what he says at all, is it? That isn't his response.

Far from it. Look over at verse 6. Knowing this about you, David effectively says, knowing that you know everything about me, knowing that is absolutely wonderful for me to know. This attribute of omniscience is too wonderful for me.

It's too high. That means I can't even begin to wrap my arms around the amazing attribute of omniscience related to the glory of your nature and character, O God. If David were writing today, you would expect him to get to the end of that and say, this attribute blows my mind completely. But David says, as it were, that's not all. In fact, in the next stanza, he begins to reveal the omnipresence of God, verse 7 through 12. He challenges you to try to get away from God.

Go ahead and try. Go up as high as you can, verse 8. He's there. Go into the depths of the earth.

He's there. Go infinitely east on the wings of the dawn. He rides upon those wings ahead of you. He's already there.

Go infinitely west beyond the sea. God will meet you there too. Travel into the darkness and discover that God is present there as well. God is omnipresent.

Everywhere present. David then composes his third stanza about the omnipotence of God as if to say we haven't seen anything yet. From verses 14 to 17, he informs us that God was actually invested in designing you. He coded your DNA with the pattern of information from which you would become who you are. David writes that God uniquely crafted each person as an original, verse 14. That he carefully embroidered you according to that pattern, verse 15. That he watched over the very forming of the embryo, verse 16, your unformed substance. He also designed into your heart the number of times it's going to beat and the number of days, the number of hours, the number of seconds you will live, verse 16.

He comes to the end of that inspired revelation of the nature of God and says in verse 17, I can't believe you, oh God, oh great creator and designer, sovereign, all powerful, all present, all knowing. You actually have thoughts about me. Your thoughts are precious. The fact that you think about me, David says, is amazing to me. It's true for us, for you to think about the fact that God thinks about you, that he created you, that he embroidered you according to trillions of personal thoughts about your design and has never stopped thinking thoughts about you. David says, how precious to me are your thoughts, oh God.

Keep in mind, this song has answered some critical questions you might be asking. How much does God really know about me? He knows everything. How close is God to me, really, right now?

He's never not close to you, ever. How carefully did God put me together? Did he slip up? Seems to me he might have made a few mistakes. Did he really mean to do that?

Oh, yes. God, according to David's revelation, made you with such molecular precision and microscopic design, even before we would say anything was formed. We've only in the past 20 years begun to unwrap the mystery and the marvel of DNA. In fact, it's only been in the last couple of years that medical scientists have discovered that what they used to call junk DNA isn't actually junk.

After all, it has a purpose. The revelation through David was way ahead of science. This is like Isaiah writing about the earth being a sphere. When everybody thought the earth was flat, it just took a while for earth to catch up to revelation. David writes, from the moment you were conceived, information about you, uniquely you, came from the source of information, the designer creator.

From your fingerprint, you remember, to the shape of your nose, the color of your hair, to your best abilities, to your most painful disabilities. David has been designed by him into each one of us to allow each of us to uniquely trust him and depend upon him and glory in him and long for him to glorify us with immortal perfection in heaven, and in the meantime, to testify along the way that in our own unique story, his grace is absolutely sufficient and he is worth trusting. Now, in this psalm, David goes on to begin singing a rather interesting stanza, verse 19, notice that. He says, O that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me. They speak against you, God, 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. This is what one author calls holy hatred.

Why? Well, it might seem odd for him to begin to write like this after everything we've just learned, but it actually makes sense. When you see the glory of God and when you marvel at the magnificence of the nature and attributes of God, his character, his design, his power, his care, and his thoughts toward mankind, you all the more despise and loathe those who would trample upon his name and glory. And would you notice, verse 19 and 20, they are unrepentant murderers. They are malicious blasphemers. They glory in the fact that they are enemies of God. They intentionally and maliciously defy God. These aren't passive atheists. These aren't people who just aren't the going-to-church kind of people.

These are unashamed, hateful, open, blatant despisers of God and God's people. So David basically says this, God, why don't you go ahead and slay them now? Why wait till the coming day of judgment to deliver to them the just verdict of your holiness? Why wait until then?

Do it now! Cut off their blasphemy, is what he's saying. Now, nowhere in this psalm is David going to take matters into his own hands.

That's important to understand. He leaves to God the timing of judgment and justice, but he pleads for it because he seeks the glory and honor of God. Verse 21 provides an interesting nuance to David's attitude. He writes, do I not hate those who hate you? What does he mean?

The next phrase is helpful. Do I not loathe those who rise up against you? That word loathe explains the word hate.

It's a Hebrew verb that could be translated to grieve. It isn't so much a hatred of the sinner as it is a hatred for their sinning and the sin they represent and applaud and promote. David says, I cannot stand their sin and I grieve over their condition. Charles Spurgeon comments on this text and wrote, This isn't ill will so much as it is pain of heart and sorrow over their unbelief. It's interesting in my study to find that the Old Testament translation in Greek called the Septuagint uses the same word that Mark's gospel uses of Jesus here in chapter 3 and verse 5 where it says he looked out upon his unbelieving audience with anger.

This isn't quite the doe-eyed, soft and meek and mild Jesus. He's looking at this group of people and he's angry with them. And then the next phrase, being grieved for the hardness of their heart.

That word grieved is the same word used here. This is holy hatred for sin. This is righteous anger mixed with sorrow and grief over the sinner's defiance against Creator God. They're not just saying something you don't like about one of your friends.

They're saying something you don't like about your Creator. The average Christian misses the mark when they so easily dismiss the unbelieving blasphemy of those around of them. They reject God and they reject the authority of God. And then Christians think, well, we're just supposed to plaster on a little smile and be quick to forgive those who blatantly sin in rejection to God's authority even though the sinners never ask for forgiveness, which is an interesting thing to watch. I've always been a little troubled and I will admit a little irritated to see or hear of pastors, religious leaders standing on courthouse steps and confessing someone else's sins. Certainly the sins, and in fact I've heard them confess the sins of a nation, which is interesting because they're confessing the sins of a nation that unapologetically, categorically defies the glory and authority of God's Word, which then to confess for them when they're not asking for forgiveness is utter nonsense. The description of God's great power and his all-encompassing presence and his total and complete eternal knowledge should in fact lead a person to hatred of and a loathing for sin and a grieving not only over sinners around him but his own sin and he doesn't get up and pretend that we're still in the Old Testament, that we're somehow Israelite priests and America is Israel. America is not Israel and you and I are not high priests. We cannot forgive the sins of other people. We can't forgive the sins of a nation. We have a gospel to deliver to a nation and a gospel says there's really bad news unless you respond in obedience to the authority of God.

That's our message. But it's interesting that David, he works through this stanza and he's not just interested in exposing the sinners around him and grieving over them. He's actually most interested in his own sin, his own transparency before God, his own impurity. So he ends this song with one of the most powerful personal prayers of all of Scripture, verse 23. He says, search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my thoughts. This final stanza makes perfect sense too, doesn't it? I mean, having just reveled in the omniscience of God, there really isn't any need to try to hide anything from him if you believe it. But David isn't simply saying here, well, okay, God, since you know everything, I guess I'll submit to your inspection.

No. David is welcoming this inspection. In fact, he's pleading for it.

He's begging for it. The word search, search me, O God, is the Hebrew verb that means to explore. It means to dig. It means to probe.

It means effectively to break through some outer defensive shell and dig down deeply into the core of who I am. See, David here is inviting God's searchlight. Point it on me. Take a good look. I'm going to let down the defense shield, so to speak. Lord, place me under divine investigation.

You see, you get to the end of this description of God's attributes, and this is exactly where you have to be if you want to walk with him. Have you ever noticed the news footage as the headlines break that someone is under investigation? The news footage always looks the same. There are lines of officials just carting away boxes after boxes after boxes after boxes out of that person's office. Boxes of files, boxes of computers, boxes stuffed with phones and records and bank books and emails and everything. And that person is no doubt hoping that they don't find that one box or that one receipt or that series of emails if they're guilty. They would be thinking, don't look there. I hope I covered that up well enough.

Well, that isn't the picture here. In Psalm 139, David is running out into the open with all of his boxes and all of his records and all of his emails, and he's saying, Lord, don't overlook this. Don't miss this.

Make sure you see this. Keep in mind, David is not saying this because he's pretty confident God isn't going to find anything. He's saying this because he knows God will find what David himself might overlook because we do not even know ourselves like God knows us. We can manage our sin. We can shove it under some rug.

We can say that's not really that bad. So David is saying, find it, Lord. Bring it to my attention because I want to walk with you. Again, if I can go back into the treasury of David where Spurgeon wrote over a hundred years on this text, self-examination is not a simple thing which at first sight it might appear.

No Christian who has ever really practiced it has found it easy. But is there any exercise of the soul which any of us has found so unsatisfactory, so impossible as self-examination? The fact is this, the heart is so exceedingly complicated and intricate and it is so very near your eye which must examine it and both your heart and your eye are so restless and so unsteady that its deep anatomy baffles our investigation.

Just a few things. Obvious, floating upon the surface, a man might discover there are chambers receding within chambers in that deepest of all deep things, a sinful heart which no mere human investigation ever will reach. Thus it is the prerogative of God to search the human heart and if you ask him to, he will do it. He created you. He made you. He knows you. He knows your strengths. He knows your weaknesses. He knows your sin. So David is effectively writing in verse 24, Lord, point out whatever it is that you see that is grievous.

You could translate that hurtful or self-destructive or dangerous. Point it out to me. And then that last phrase, and lead me in the way everlasting. Old Testament scholars point out that you could translate this closing phrase this way, lead me in the old way. Or lead me in the ancient way. That is, David is saying, lead me in the way that was revealed in ancient days to Moses. David is asking God to lead him according to his word, what he had available to him.

Far less than we have today. So what David is doing is effectively admitting, I'm prone to look for a new way. I'm easily susceptible to some popular way, some well-traveled way, some majority opinion way, some new way according to some new bestseller way.

No, no, no. The ancient way is still the true way. Lead me according to your word, he says, effectively from an ancient past all the way to an everlasting future. Lead me in the way everlasting. The fulfillment, by the way, of this ancient way, of course, is the person of Jesus Christ, who before Abraham was, was the son of David, who will announce in his personal ministry, I am the what?

Way. I am the way. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one travels into life everlasting with the Father except the path that runs through me. John 14, 6. So you come to the end of this description of God and we're all brought to the same place, and that is to worship God and surrender to God and open our hearts to God who already knows everything. In fact, he knows more than we know and transparently ask him to purify us as we follow him.

Why? Because he made us. He not only created the universe, he fashioned the embryo. He knows everything. He will graciously inspect you and reveal to you that grievous way as you ask him to, as you want to walk with him in fellowship toward your eternal home.

And what can we do then? But thank this amazing creator, God. Thank him for his omnipresence. Thank him for his omniscience. Thank him for his omnipotence.

We worship him. One news story that never really did make it into the headlines was when Apollo 11 landed on the surface of the moon on Sunday, July 20, 1969. Most of us are familiar with astronaut Neil Armstrong's historic statement. It was in the textbooks. As he stepped out onto the moon's surface, he said, one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Few know what happened next because it never did make it into the textbooks. Buzz Aldrin had brought aboard the spacecraft a tiny communion kit he'd picked up. He sent a radio broadcast to Earth asking listeners to contemplate the events of the day and give thanks to God. And then in radio blackout, Aldrin alone opened his Bible, which he had brought along as well, and read from John 15 aloud, where Jesus Christ said, I am the vine, you are the branches, he who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.

And he gave thanks and partook. He wanted the glory of God and the gospel of God to be declared, as it were, into the universe from the next place they'd visited, the moon. David wants the same glory to be declared. And this kind of song is one that when you reach the end of it, you can't do anything but bow your head and worship God, for the truth glorifies him and it humbles us. But it also encourages us. It reassures us. It purifies us. And at the very end, it points to the coming fellowship we will one day have with God, the designer of life, and ultimately the giver of eternal life.

Think about it, David would say. The one who designed you has designed eternity for you. So Father, we want to thank you for Psalm 139. We want to thank you for the revelation of your character and your nature, which we would not know were it not from special revelation. We want to thank you that this truth places us where we ought to be placed, at your feet. And it gives great glory to you who crafted and created us, who thought trillions of thoughts over us in embroidering us, and yet at the same time, forgives us by means of Christ our Savior. We also want to thank you that you're not only interested in designing our lives for here and now, you have already planned our eternal life. So we honor you and praise you and thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you, Stephen. If you joined us midway through this broadcast, you're listening to Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. Today's message is called Inviting God's Searchlight. This message was the conclusion to a 13-part series looking at some of the Psalms. If you had to miss any of the messages, you can go to our website or our smartphone app and listen free of charge. If you'd like to get a copy of this series on CD, we can help you with that as well. Call us today at 866-48-BIBLE or look for the set in the resource section of our website. On our next broadcast, we begin a series from Revelation entitled The First Hymns of Heaven. Be sure and join us for that right here on Wisdom for the Heart. .