The Immensity Of God (Part 1)

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Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author Dr. Mike Abendroth.

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Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

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What we're going to do this morning is instead of getting right back into Romans 14,

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I've been captivated by who God is and how He knows us. And so please open your

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Bibles to Psalm 139. We're going to look at Psalm 139, the first several verses this morning, because these are those great passages, one of those great passages rather, that tell you about the immensity of God.

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We are so gullible sometimes. We just get our eyes focused on ourselves and we look inside of us and think about ourselves and believe our own press and we become the focus.

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We slip into gullibility. It reminds me of the story of the Eagle Rock Junior High freshman who won first prize at the science fair in Idaho Falls, 1997.

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He was talking about environmental issues, alarmist issues, fear spreading about the environment.

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So he wanted to urge people to sign a petition demanding strict control or elimination of this chemical.

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Some good reasons to get rid of this chemical, he said. Number one, it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting.

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It can be a major, it is a major component in acid rain. It can cause severe burns in its gaseous state.

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Accidental inhalation of this chemical can kill you. It decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes and it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients.

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Fifty people supported the ban of the chemical, dihydrogen monoxide.

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Only one knew the chemical was H2O, water. And the title of his prize -winning project was,

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How Gullible Are We? You know what's so good about Psalm 139?

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It reminds me of my grandmother -in -law Evelyn's maxim, and that is, when you gaze on the

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Lord and glance at your problems, everything's right. But when you focus and gaze on all your problems and just once in a while glance at the

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Lord, then you've got trouble. And what Psalm 139 does, it just makes you realize who

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God is. Again, you probably memorized it, maybe you've memorized it in Hebrew as far as I know, but Psalm 139 just makes you say, you know,

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God really is awesome. I know some people, they don't like to say something's awesome unless they're talking about God.

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And maybe there's some truth to that, but this Psalm should make you just think, God, you're great.

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Matter of fact, that's how it's set up. That when you see who God is, it's not just, well, okay,

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I know now about God, I've got this theology down, but instead of knowing about God, this whole

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Psalm is, God knows about you. He knows you, and it's supposed to comfort you. The greatness of God found in Psalm 139.

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A lot of people like to say that they're great, Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great, the great

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Houdini, the greatest show on earth, Muhammad Ali, I am the greatest,

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King Louis the 14th of France, died after 72 years reigning, called himself the great.

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He also is the one who said, I am the state, but I love the bishop who did his funeral, and there was a little candle on top of the casket, and he went over and snuffed out the candle and said, only one person's great.

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You're going to see that in Psalm 139. So let's take a look at our Bible, Psalm 139. It's super easy to outline this psalm or this song set to musical accompaniment.

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We don't know the music, we just know the lyrics, and this is a song about God's greatness shown to David the

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King that teaches not just theology, but applied theology. In other words, if you say, this is the doctrine of omniscience, well, that would be true, but it's omniscience applied.

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That's what I like about the psalm. It's not teaching strict truth about God, although I like that. This is in a poetic way, and there's 24 verses and four sections if you want to outline it.

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We're only going to get into the first section most likely this morning. By the way,

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I prepared to teach through the whole thing this morning, and first service I got through the first six verses, so I have to slow down and make sure you only get six verses because otherwise, how does that work?

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The congregation first sermon gets nine verses, and then you get six, and then what do we do next week?

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First six verses are about God's omniscience. God knows you.

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The second six verses are about God's omnipresence, and they're related. The only reason

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God can know you so intimately is because he's everywhere. The next six verses talk about God's omnipotence, and how can

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God protect you and know you? Well, he's got to be everywhere, and he's got to be all -powerful.

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He has to be omnipotent, and then the last six verses are about God's holiness. Who cannot love, and admire, and respect, and praise a

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God who knows everything, is everywhere, and is all -powerful, and so God's holiness comes into the play at the very end.

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I hope and pray this psalm this morning motivates you to praise God and makes you wonder about the greatness of God.

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This trip to California, we normally don't go there, but we went to Yosemite. How many people have been to Yosemite?

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Quite a few. And it's pretty amazing to just stand there and look at El Capitan, or at Half Dome, and I just always go there, and I just say, it was an evolution grand,

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I mean, bang, and it all just happened. It's just amazing to me. People on audio can't see tongue -in -cheek there, but you just look at it, and I said to the kids, why do you think it's so tall?

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Why do you think it's so wonderful? Why do you think it looks like that? Massive!

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You know, you take a picture of it, it just doesn't show it, but why is it like that? And I said, many reasons, but one is so you can say, you know, if that is great, how much greater is

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God? How much greater is the Creator who makes the creation? And when you look at that, you just think, this is incredible.

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And then you go get a coffee, they actually had Pete's Coffee served over in the little kiosk area, and I thought, well, this is kind of nice.

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You wake up in the morning, and you're, you know, you got your little blue coffee cup mug thing, trying to make some tea with, you know, elderberries or something, and you go, well,

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I could just walk over here and get a Pete's Coffee. And you know, the thing is, the Pete's Coffee people, they're just so used to this grandeur and splendor, they don't even look.

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You know, I can barely order my Pete's Coffee because I'm looking at Half Dome, and I'm looking up there, and you know, at night, you could see the stars, and you could see the lights on Half Dome, where people are, you know, sleeping on the side of the cliff.

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These people are so familiar with Half Dome and El Capitan, they don't even look at it twice.

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And you know what, the same thing happens to us. We get to know who God is, and it's just like, okay, it's no big deal.

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So Psalm 139 stokes the coals of the hearts of people so you can realize how great

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God is. One guy said you should read this psalm every morning and every night. I think he's on to something.

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Steve Lawson said this psalm talks about a God who's immense, but also eminent.

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In other words, he's large, but he's close to his people.

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Very personal. I'm not going to do it right now, but sometime this week, read through Psalm 139 and look at the personal pronouns.

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Lord, you have searched me and known me, and you'll see this is a psalm about the doctrine of God's omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence, but it's done in a very personal way.

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So let's take a look at Psalm 139, verses probably one to six today. Here is this prayer in a song that talks about God knowing everything.

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Omniscience means omni, all, science, knowledge. God knows everything.

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If you take a look at the little opening, it says, to the choir master, a psalm of David.

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Now the last psalm that was introduced that way was Psalm 109, and now this one, we come up to 139, announced the same way.

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To the choir master, we're going to take this psalm about God, and we're going to put a choir together to sing it.

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So it's going to be a song about doctrine that's very personal and applied theology.

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If you take a look at Psalm 138, it seems like it's connected to the last psalm.

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Psalm 138, verse six, for though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly.

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That's going to be the tie -in for the theme of Psalm 139. He's immense, but he's also eminent.

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He's great, but he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar.

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This book is going to remind you that God is not only great, but he's close, and when

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I think about that, I think about the incarnation of Christ Jesus, the God who existed in eternity past, the great

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Yahweh, yet he cloaks himself, does the Son, with human flesh,

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God with us. Now look how it starts off, verse one, O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

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Now here's the good news. It starts off the right way. The focus is on not

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David, not me, myself, and I. This is how you approach life. You don't start with you in the center.

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I mean, I have to tell you this, because I guess it's kind of true confession as you come back from vacation. I think on my bad days that the world is microcentric.

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The world revolves around me, doesn't it? Of course it does. The whole world revolves around me, myself, and I.

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Of course, I know that's wrong thinking, and David now gets it right, Lord. So when you think about problems, and life, and issues, it starts off the right way.

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This is the personal covenant -keeping name of God, Yahweh.

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Not Elohim, the creator, not Adonai, the sovereign, but Lord. David has his eyes and his focus on the

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Lord, and that is right. That's a good example that we need to keep in mind.

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You say, well, what's the big deal? It says here, you have searched me and known me. David was the writer, and David was a what?

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He was a king. Proverbs 25, how about this? As the heavens for height, and the earth for depth.

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So the heart of the king is unsearchable. King's hearts can't be searched.

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Actually, if you were a king back in those days, and somebody came along, you didn't have to tell them anything about you. You didn't have to recognize them.

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You didn't have to shake their hand. You didn't have to let them talk to you. You didn't have to say anything to you, because you were the king.

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And so if you don't have to talk, you can't know what's in the heart of a person, and so you can't know what's in the heart of a king, except God knows everything.

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It says, what does the text say? You've searched me. That word means to examine carefully, to dig.

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It's used in Job of mining. You're mining for things. You're trying to dig down.

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I guess since I just was in California on Highway 49, I use the illustration. It's like you're panning for gold, and there's all the stuff on top, and you're running water over it, and finally you get down to the gold.

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Here, getting down to us. This is the same word where, in Judges, it's used of men who spy out.

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When I fly internationally, and I come back to Logan, I don't know why it's always the same dog, but it's always this little beagle.

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And the beagle always comes right up to me, and you start sweating, even though you realize I didn't do anything wrong, but I'm still nervous, because the dog's gonna find a tangerine or something in my bag.

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I think once that happened, I'm sure one of the ladies from the grease strip planted it there, but that's another story.

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And the beagle comes right up, and the beagle's sniffing it out, and they're just trying to search for things, contraband.

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That's the exact word here. God knows everything about us.

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He investigates. The literal Greek word is to dig. I hate it that one of the old commentators from the 70s says,

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God really digs you. It's not the right phrase.

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He searched me. Now, so far, you might be saying, this is going to get very uncomfortable.

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This psalm makes me afraid, because God knows all my business. Secondarily, that's true, but primarily, this is a psalm of comfort.

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God knows all about you, and yet he still cares for you. He knows everything about you, yet still loves you.

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That's going to be the idea, so keep that in the back of your mind. That this thorough search of God is not going to stop him from loving

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David and loving you, if you're in Christ Jesus. Scoured every detail of David's life, and still, he's

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David's king. You know, the text says, you've known me.

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I love it when Hannah said, God, you're a God of knowledges. Not just a God of knowledge, but knowledges.

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God knows everything about you. Because he knows everything.

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A .W. Tozer said, God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter, and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and hell.

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And if you were writing this psalm, he'd say, and he knows you. This is a good knowing, because Psalm 1 -6 is reflective of it.

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The Lord knows the way of the righteous. He knows all about it.

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He is the one who has no recall. He just knows.

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No random access memory. He just knows everything perfectly and everything perfectly simultaneously.

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Did you ever think about this? God never learns. Well, I'm not talking about the incarnation and Jesus being fully human.

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I'm talking about God never learns. He never forgets.

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If he learns something, that means he would be no longer God. And what's the extent of this knowledge of God knowing

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David and knowing me? Let me give you five things that God knows about you.

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The extent of God's knowledge, if you want an outline, I guess that's the outline we're gonna just probably get through about verse six today.

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This is gonna be very important because if God knows everything about you, why does he still love you? And the answer is going to be grace.

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Why was it that when I met Kim that I was in a big rush to get married? Well, probably at the top of the list was when

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I asked her to marry me May 6th. And we got married June 6th. I've told the story before and there's other factors with the vacation and other things.

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But the truth is still, I wanted her to marry me quickly because if she found out what I really was like, maybe she'd say no.

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Strike that, she'd say no. But God knew everything about me.

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And in eternity past, can you imagine? I'll use me as an illustration, you use you. In eternity past to glorify the son and to praise the father,

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God knew every sin that I would ever commit, every skeleton in my closet, everything I should have done but didn't and everything that I did do that I shouldn't have done.

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And God said for the sake of my name and for the love that I have for this creature who's not even born yet,

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I am going to save him. I'm going to have my son die for him.

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He knew all about it. And so David gives the extent of this knowledge so that you would just go, you know what, this is incredible.

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Number one, God knows what you do. What's the extent of God's knowledge? He knows what you do.

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And again, there's an undercurrent of, this is scary, he knows. But the main point is he knows all about you and still loves you.

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So don't lose the comfort side. You know when I sit down and when

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I rise up, Psalm 139 verse 2. God knows all your actions.

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And here it's emphatic in the Hebrew. You know, you, yes, you, you alone know when

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I sit down and when I rise up. When I sit down, talking about my passive life, things that I do, rest and leisure.

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And when I stand up or rise up, as the NES says, N -E -S -V, it's the active stuff.

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Working, driving, working out. This is called a merism.

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When you combine two thoughts and it refers to the entirety, M -E -R -I -S -M.

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So when I lie down and when I rise up and everything in between, that's the figure of speech, a merism.

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I know we've had lots of merisms while I was gone on vacation, people getting merisms.

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But this is a different kind, M -E -R -I -S -M. A combination of two thoughts referring to its entirety.

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So no action is overlooked. God knows everything you do, is the point. One of the reasons why

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I like to go to football games, I'm not a sports nut like I used to be. Once every five years

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I go to a college football game or a pro game, if it's on Monday night, then I can go. Why are all these games on Sunday?

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But that's another point. Like a bicycle ride that's 100 miles through the five boroughs of New York.

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Wouldn't that be a fun ride? How great would that be? They shut down the roads and it's on Sunday. But anyway, back to the point.

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One of the reasons why I like to go to these big games is because I can tangibly think to myself, there are 60 ,000 people here and God knows everything about every one of them.

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If I told you billions of people, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around that, but I think 60 ,000 people.

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He knows everything about them. He knows wherever they go. He knows them. Pretty amazing.

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We are transparent and not opaque before God. Even the liberal beacher said, you know what?

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We live in transparent beehives before God. Everything you do, he knows.

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He also, number two, knows what you think. God knows what you do, but he also knows what you think.

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Verse 2b, you, God, discern or understand.

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This is not a surface knowledge word. You understand, NIV says you perceive, but it's stronger than that.

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My thought from afar. Now, many people say, that means

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God's really far away and he still knows. I think it's better to look at this and say, when thoughts are still far off our mind and away from us, thoughts far from us,

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God still knows those. He sees my plans and my designs and what

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I'm thinking about, Deuteronomy 31, for I know their intent, reasonings.

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Remember, it was said in Luke 15, some of them said, Jesus cast out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of demons.

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And others to test him were demanding of Jesus a sign from heaven. But Jesus knew their thoughts.

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That's the picture here. He understands our thoughts while they're far off from us.

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They're near to God. Jeremiah 23, am I a God who is near and not a God far off?

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God knows what you do. God knows what you think. God knows where you go. Verse 3, this is interesting.

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Again, it's a poem. It's a song. You sing this. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.

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You search out my path. Literally, you scrutinize our winnow. So he uses the little metaphor here, the little wordplay here.

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It's like you grab a bunch of wheat that has chaff on the outside, throw it up in the air, the wind blows away the chaff and you're left with the good stuff.

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God does the same thing with us. That's the idea. You scrutinize our winnow, my path.

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He's not just far away, he's close, he understands, discriminates. This word is used of spying and scouting out every corner to ambush.

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And are intimately acquainted, the NAS says, with all my ways, all my behaviors, all my ways.

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No wonder Job says in Job 31, does he not see my ways and number all my steps?

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God knows what you do. God knows what you think. God knows where you go. And now look at this one.

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Verse 4, God knows what you will say. If he knows what you will say, he knows what you say, too.

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Verse 4, Psalm 139, verse 4, even before a word is on my tongue, behold,

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O Lord, Yahweh, you know it all together. Now there's been some debate on this, so I double -checked my resources.

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And according to dailymail .co .uk science tech article, it's still true that women speak 13 ,000 more words a day than men.

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On average, 20 ,000 for ladies, 7 ,000 for the men.

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Women talk three times as much. Just, I'm not saying the word chatterbox, not saying any kind of other words.

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I would never do that. Come home from vacation and make any kind of comments. If you speak 10 ,000 words a day, that's 3 ,650 ,000 words per year.

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And there are over 300 million people in America, and just start doing the math across the world.

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God knows everything that they've said, of course, but he knows what they're going to say. Whatever language, future's easy for God.

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James Boyce said, omniscience involves not only God's knowledge of us, but also his knowledge of nature, the past, present, and future.

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It involves everything that we can possibly imagine, and much more besides. It is a knowledge that God has always had and will always have.

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There's no need for him to learn. It is not necessary to say that God has never learned and cannot learn, for he already knows and has always known everything.

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Whatever you say or about to say, God knows every word. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please, come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. And Sunday evenings at 6 p .m.

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We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org

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or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.