FBC Midweek Service – December 9, 2020

Well, a good Wednesday evening to you. I hope you've had a good day today.

Has been a beautiful one, hasn't it? I'll take 50 some degree temperatures in early

December, all month long. I'll take them for all the month of December. Has been enjoyable. Hope you were able to get outside, get some vitamin

D from the sun today. But surely been a good day for that.

I hope it's been a good day in other ways for you as well. You were able to get done what you needed to do.

And here we are halfway through the week. Half the work week is over. And I hope likewise that your work week is going well too.

Well, let's have a brief word of prayer and then look into our Bible study time tonight.

And then we'll share some prayer requests later on and pray. Father, bless this time as we look into your word for a few moments and pray that we would be challenged by your word, but also encouraged as we learn more about what you are like.

We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, several years ago for Christmas, I got a handheld

GPS that has now been replaced by the phone. You know, the smartphone has a

GPS built into it. Don't even need a handheld much anymore. And the main thing

I use that for at the time was for that little sport,

I guess you could call it, of geocaching. And that's changed quite a bit from what it was at the time.

You could do a lot of things just for free with a free app of geocaching. Now you have to pretty much pay the premium fee if you want to get all the good features.

But anyway, the whole idea behind that geocaching was you would go to the website, you'd find a geocache you want to look for, and then you get the coordinates for that.

It gets entered into your GPS, and then you go looking for it. And the closer you get to where this cache is supposed to be, it shows up there on your handheld, shows where it is and so forth.

And so it's really kind of a treasure hunt, if you will. And you go searching for this cache.

Now there've been some times we've searched high and low and never found the thing.

Other times we searched and searched and searched and it was in the most obscure place before we ever came up with it.

Well, that's normally what we think of when we think of the word searching. You know, we look for something that we're not quite sure where it is and we're hunting, we're scrounging around for it, something that's either hidden or has been lost.

And sometimes we don't find what we're searching for. So when we read in Psalm 139, which is going to be our focus tonight, we read in Psalm 139 a couple of different verses.

Verse one says, Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. And verse 23 says,

I hate them. It says, search me, O God, and know my heart. So we read these verses, we read those words in those verses, and it can be a little bit disconcerting.

You know, like what does David mean when he writes this song of the searching

God? Well, to really understand where he's going, we have to understand what the word means that's translated search.

So the word in our song doesn't mean to look for something that's lost. It means to analyze something thoroughly, to examine it exhaustively, to look at it from every possible angle as in doing some research on a project.

You're looking into something in a very thorough, exhaustive manner.

So this psalm then begins by declaring that the Lord has searched me.

He has analyzed me thoroughly and examined me exhaustively, and thereby he knows me thoroughly.

And it ends with a prayer for an ongoing analysis, an ongoing thorough examination so that any necessary corrections in my life can be made.

Well, we'll get to it later, perhaps. What he's really concerned about,

David, is that there be no treason found in his heart, no turning away from the

Lord whatsoever. For example, in verses 21 and 22, he says, do not

I hate those who hate you, O Lord? Do I not loathe those who rise up against you and hate them with a complete hatred?

I count them my enemies. But search me, O God, and know my heart, and see if there be any wayward, grievous way in me.

So he's asking for the Lord to thoroughly examine him. Well, on what basis, then, does the

Lord's investigation end up being so accurate and thorough and effective? Well, I think we can answer that just from this psalm.

And I think David is really doing that. He's expressing why the

Lord can be so thorough in his examination and accurate. And first of all,

I think it's implied by a couple of the names for God that are used in the psalm.

So, for example, in verse 23, he says, search me, O God, and he uses the name

Elohim. Elohim is the name of the Creator God. It's speaking of his power in his creation.

In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth, and Elohim created man.

So it is my Creator who is doing this investigating. And it's kind of like,

I think to make an analogy here, it would be kind of like the inventor of a machine being called in to investigate that machine to see what's wrong with it.

Where's it gone awry? Where's the kinks in the machine? So my Creator is the one doing the investigating.

And then the other name he uses for the Lord is that name LORD, in all caps, or Yahweh, which speaks of his personal relationship with me.

So in other words, David is referring to God the investigator as the

Lord, the one who is intimately acquainted with me as my personal

God. So those are implied bases for his accuracy. But the bulk of the psalm really lays out three very explicit bases for the

Lord's accuracy in his searching, in his researching, in his examination.

And one of the bases is seen in verses two through six, and that is that the

Lord knows everything about me. He is omniscient.

He knows everything about me. So these verses, he says, you know when

I sit down and when I rise up. You know all that I do.

You know all that I do. He says, you discern my thoughts afar off.

You know everything I think. Now that could be a little disconcerting, couldn't it?

The Lord knows everything I do. He knows everything I think. Well, if he were a tyrant, and if he weren't the

God that he is, then yeah, it would be disconcerting. But no, the

Lord treats me as his child, as one of his own, even though he knows me so thoroughly.

He goes on to say in verse three, you know where I go. He says, you searched out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways.

The Lord knows where I go. He knows where you went today. He knows where you're going tomorrow.

He knows everywhere you go all the time. So he knows where I go.

And then in verse four, he knows everything I say before I even speak it.

Verse four, he says, even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh Lord, you know it altogether.

Kind of reminds me, I don't know if you've seen this commercial that's just come out recently. It's probably,

I think I saw it during commercial breaks during a college football game the other day.

But it's a commercial with Tim Tebow driving a car and another quarterback, a college quarterback as a passenger.

And Tebow is talking to him and he's telling him how he needs to really work on anticipating, or maybe the other quarterback is saying he's working on anticipating, you know, a quarterback needs to anticipate what the defense is going to do and so forth.

So he's working on anticipating. And then, you know, Tebow starts to say something and the other quarterback finishes the sentence and it goes on and on like this.

And he says, I think you need to answer that. And it's like, there's no phone that has rung.

And then all of a sudden the phone rings, you know, it's tied into the Bluetooth on his, on his car and the phone rings.

And he says, I think you need to get that. It's your mom. And sure enough, the phone rings and it's his mom. And Tebow's like, how do you, how do you do that?

Well, as a little freaky and a little bit over the top, but it's not over the top with God because he knows everything you're going to say before you speak it.

Even before a word is on my tongue, oh Lord, you know it all together.

And verse five suggests that he knows me from every angle. He says, you hem me in behind and before you lay your hand upon me.

Behind me, he knows. Before me, in front of me, he knows. On top of me, he knows.

He knows me from every angle and he knows me better than I know myself. So verse six says, such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It's too wonderful for me. It's high. I cannot attain it. I can't know myself like you know me,

God. So explicitly he says, the basis, one of the bases for the

Lord's thorough, accurate understanding of me and his investigation that results in an accurate assessment is his omniscience.

He knows everything about me. The second basis is seen in the next section of the

Psalm, verses seven through 12, and that is that the Lord goes along with me everywhere

I go. In other words, to use the theological term, the Lord is omnipresent.

And there's this rhetorical question in verse seven that David asked, the psalmist asked, you can ask it too, that demands a specific answer.

The question is this, where shall I go from your spirit or where shall I flee from your presence?

And really what he's going to do here in the next several verses is answer that question. The short answer is one word, nowhere, nowhere.

So look at what he says. He says in verses eight and nine, distance, distance can't hide me from the

Lord. He says in verse eight, if I ascend to heaven, there you are. No matter how high

I go, there you are. Well, you know, we have right now astronauts at the

International Space Station, at least one I know of, and that's pretty high above the earth.

Interestingly, I read that this one astronaut who most recently went up there, he took with him a

Bible and a portable communion set. I guess his church would practice that possibility of remote communion and not in church.

But anyway, the point is, he is apparently a believer, at least enough of a believer in the presence of God and the word of God.

So there he is, he's all the way up there. And one thing he knows very well is God's there too.

God is there too. Really, in the vastness of the universe, that's not very high.

In the vastness of the heavens, that isn't very high. It doesn't matter how far out you go in the vastness of this immeasurable universe, the

Lord knows and the Lord is there. And he goes on to say, if I go to the lowest parts of the earth, he speaks of the grave, he says, if I make my bed in Sheol, the

King James translates it in hell, if I make my bed in hell or in the grave, you are there.

And really, that's the way you should understand it. If I make my bed in the grave, it's like Paul's reference in the

New Testament where he says, to be absent from the body is to be present from the Lord. And you can put my body in the ground, but I'm in the presence of the

Lord. Doesn't matter where I go, no matter how high or how low, the

Lord is there. And he's always with me. And it doesn't matter how far away

I go. Verse nine says, if I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.

Now, to understand that particular reference, we need to get the perspective of where David is when he writes this in Jerusalem.

And when he's talking about taking the wings of the morning, he's referring to an easterly direction, wings of the morning, right?

Refer to the dawning of the day. And when he speaks of dwelling in the uttermost parts of the sea, he's talking about the farthest reaches of the

Mediterranean sea. So he's looking west. So in other words, he says, no matter how far I go to the east or how far away

I go to the west, the Lord is there. Distance can't hide me from him.

The Lord is there. So verse 10, he says, even there shall your hand lead me and your right hand shall hold me.

No matter how far away I go from where I am right now, there you are.

What's the farthest you've been away from Sterling, Illinois? How far have you been?

Farthest I've been from here is the other side of the world. It seems is Singapore. Well, it is the other side of the world, Singapore, Malaysia, been several years ago.

But you know what? The presence of the Lord was just as much with me personally when

I was there 14 hours west of here as he is with me right here in this particular place.

This is what David is emphasizing. It doesn't matter where I go, distance cannot hide me from him.

And then in verses 11 and 12, he asserts that the darkness can't either. So he says in verse 11, 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.

Have you seen how there are these infrared cameras that can, you know, they can point to something in darkness and they can show an image of that thing, even in the darkness.

Well, if we can come up with cameras with infrared capabilities that can do that and can sense the heat of an image and portray that image through the camera lens, well, our

God can see through any darkness. There is no darkness with him and that darkness is certainly not going to hide you from him.

So the point, the basis here is that the Lord goes with me anywhere

I go, anywhere I go, distance, darkness, no matter what, the

Lord is there. And that serves as a basis for his thorough searching and his accurate assessment.

Well, a third basis for his accurate assessment is seen in verses 13 through 16.

And these communicate the fact that the Lord does with me anything that he pleases.

He is omnipotent. And David begins this, explaining this by referring to the beginning of his life in verse 13.

He says, for you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

So at the very beginning of my life in the womb prior to birth, he formed me, he created my life, forming me in my prenatal development.

In the King James, again, it says, you possessed me, you possessed me. And that word is better translated formed.

And it has the idea of drawing the blueprint. We understand a whole lot more about this today than David did in his day, when we have the capability of mapping out

DNA in that embryo, in one cell of that embryo.

And that DNA structure is the blueprint for the entire life of that infant that is yet to be born.

Where'd that blueprint come from? David tells us, the Lord drew it. He formed me.

He formed me in that prenatal development. And he wove together all of the intricacies of my life.

Again, that verse, it says, you knitted me together in my mother's womb. The Lord not only wrote the blueprint, drew up the plans, but he did the construction.

He crafted, he wove together, he knit together the very fabric of your physical existence.

So the Lord does with you anything that pleases him in his sovereignty in creating your life.

Not only creating it, but shaping it. This is the idea of verses 14 through 16.

And verse 14, this almost cries out, he says, 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.

Wow, there's a lot there, isn't there? In the Lord's sovereignly shaping your life.

And the psalmist expresses it, that shaping of your life, as a complex work of art and beauty.

Again, I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. You formed my inward parts.

You knitted me together. There is the expression here in this knitting together and being intricately, in verse 15 he says,

I was intricately woven in the depths of the earth. He's communicating um, like the work of an artist in making a tapestry, weaving together all of these different colors of threads and to, to make this, to make this beautiful tapestry.

And when it's being made, it doesn't seem to be all that beautiful. You taking this little thing here and putting this little thing there and, and weaving it together.

But then when the final product is done and you hang that tapestry on the wall, it is a beautiful and magnificent, uh, testimony to its creator.

This is what he's talking about. This is my, this is me. This is what you have done with me.

And, and he says it's a, it's a completed work before it's ever been begun.

Again, doesn't our current understanding of human DNA, uh, bring that out, bring the truth of this out.

So he says in the first part of verse 16, your eyes saw my unformed substance.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance. You saw it as a completed thing.

And so the Lord does with me anything that, that pleases him in the creating of my life, in the shaping of my life, and even in the last part of verse 16, in the concluding of my life.

So he says in your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me when as yet there were none of them.

Now that's a, that's a fascinating thought that can really blow the mind. That before you're even born, the days of your life are written down in the book of God.

He has them numbered. He knows the last day that you and I will live on this planet, and he's got it written down.

Now, be careful with that truth. Be careful with it. It can, it's, it's kind of, you got to walk along that truth like you're walking on a razor's edge, and you can fall off into danger either side.

On the one side, you can fall off into the danger of fatalism, which says this, well, you know what?

So the Lord knows what all my days are. Well, there's no sense trying to do anything to improve or to, to improve my health or to maintain my health.

I mean, the end of my life is settled anyway, so I might as well just, you know, not take care of my body, not get exercise, not eat nutritious meals and all that kind of stuff, because I'm, you know,

I'm going to die when I'm going to die. So you don't want to fall into the trap of fatalism.

Well, you don't want to fall off on the other side, which is the side of foolishness, the side of testing

God, where it says, well, you know, I might as well live it up since, yeah, you don't know when your time's up anyway.

Might as well just do whatever I want to do and, you know, any, take any risk that I want to take, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, because, hey,

I'm going to die when I'm going to die. So you don't want to fall off into the danger of foolishness either, but you do need to acknowledge the power and authority and the sovereignty of your

God, who knows even the conclusion of your life before you ever get there.

Now, what then does the Lord do with this knowledge? All right, so He accurately knows you because of His omniscience and His omnipresence and His omnipotence.

He knows you thoroughly. So what does He do with that knowledge? Well, verses 17 and 18 tell us.

Verse 17 says, how precious are your thoughts toward me, O God, how vast is the sum of them.

Now, one of the things He does is He blesses His own, the righteous, with favorable thoughts.

So I remember earlier when I said, you know, it might concern you that the

Lord knows everything you've said, everything you've done, even the very thoughts in your head, even if they never got expressed.

He knows every one of those things. That can be a scary thing, and it could lead you to a great deal of anxiety.

And yet, when the psalmist says this, he reaches the conclusion that the

Lord's thoughts toward him are precious. They're favorable thoughts.

Now, again, be careful with that. Don't allow that to lead you into presumptuous sin, saying, well,

I guess it doesn't matter what I do or what I say or what I think. You know, the Lord's got favorable thoughts toward me anyway.

No, no, that's a faulty conclusion to draw. It's a faulty conclusion to draw.

But it is true that the Lord is merciful and gracious. He is slow to anger.

He is long -suffering toward the righteous, toward His own. So with the knowledge that He has,

He blesses the righteous with favorable thoughts. And verse 18 suggests that He blesses the righteous with ongoing blessing.

Verse 18 says, if I could count them, if I could count them, they're more than the sand.

Your favorable thoughts toward me are more than the sand. I awake, and I'm still with you.

Well, by the grace of God, you're going to wake up tomorrow morning. And when you do, if you're

God's child, He's still with you in this very special way. So He blesses

His own, the righteous, with that knowledge. Well, what He also does in verses 19 through 20 with that knowledge is

He destroys the wicked who reject Him. Verse 19, the psalmist cries out, oh, 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.

And what the psalmist is calling for here is he's calling for the end that is determined for the wicked.

They are determined to be destroyed. The wicked are ultimately, and the

Lord knows who they are, and the Lord will take care of them. All right. So the

Lord has this vast, incredible, thorough, accurate knowledge of you. How then should you respond?

How should you respond? Verses 23 and 24. He says, search me,

O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any grievous way in me.

King James translates that wicked. See if there be any wicked way in me. And the word literally means a way that causes pain, a way that causes grief.

And wicked isn't necessarily a bad translation of it, but it misses the emphasis, any way that causes grief.

The focus of the word is on the outcome of that bad way, that wrong way, that errant path.

So he says, see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. So how should I respond with this understanding that the

Lord's knowledge of me is thorough and accurate and complete? Well, it should lead me to respond with a desire for a clean heart.

Search me and know my heart. I want the

Lord in his thorough knowledge, as he sees my heart, to see a clean heart.

It should also cause me to respond with a desire for pure ambitions. Try me and know my thoughts.

What are my thoughts? What are my plans? What are my intentions? Knowing that the

Lord knows should compel me to have a desire for noble, pure ambitions.

And it should encourage me to desire a godly walk. Lead me in the way everlasting.

Lead me in the way everlasting. One of the things that the writer of the book of Hebrews in the

New Testament points out is that one of the ways that the Lord searches us is by way of his word.

He searches us through his word. Hebrews 4 .12, the word of God is quick and powerful.

It's sharper than any two -edged sword. It pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and joint and marrow.

It gets down to the very depths of who we are and reveals us to ourselves.

The Lord uses his word to reveal to us what he himself knows to be true about us.

So, if you really want a clean heart, pure ambitions, a godly walk, ask him to search you out and then listen.

Listen to his word as he tells you what he finds. Well, may this song of the searching

God encourage us in such a pursuit. Well, before we pray tonight, just a couple of prayer requests and praises.

You know, we prayed earlier, got a, sent out a prayer request last evening for Zach, Zach, who was to have surgery this morning, had that surgery.

It went well, and we just want to pray for healing and pray that the purpose of that surgery, you know, the thing that caused it, what compelled it, that there won't be any return of the problem.

So, want to pray to that end. And this was a sinus surgery, and Zach has suffered with some asthma -related symptoms, and one of the prayer requests is that those symptoms will be alleviated with the surgery.

And then we also got word today, Bob had, had another round of chemo today, but also got the results of the

CAT scan from a couple weeks ago, and the scan showed very good results.

The nodules on the lungs had shrunken, as had those on the liver, and that there is, shows no cancer anywhere else.

So, that is wonderful news, and we thank the Lord for that, for that encouraging word to Bob and Jerry.

So, continue to pray for Bob and that this chemo that he got today would not cause any physical ailments tomorrow or the next day.

And then we want to pray for the Hammermeisters, our missionary, or the Heinecks, I'm sorry, the Heinecks, our missionaries of the week this week, serving in Costa Rica.

Continue to pray for Kathy and for her rehabilitation on her knee, for Harold with his shoulder, for Heather and the rehealing of her hand from the surgery she had last week, just a number of things there.

And then pray for June, they had the funeral for her mom today, and just, just pray for God to be gracious to her family and give them comfort.

So, let's look to the Lord in prayer, shall we? Our Father, we thank you that we can pray to you right now because you thoroughly know all about us.

You are right here with us wherever we are, even though we're not together in one place, you're with us, each one of us.

We thank you for that. Thank you that you know our hearts, our minds, our actions.

You know us thoroughly, and therefore we can come before you because you know the desire of our heart in these requests.

And we do pray tonight that you would bless Mark and Lynette Heineck as they serve you in Costa Rica.

We pray for the freedom that they might have to further serve you there and get this

Bible study developed into a gathering of people for church, and pray that you would just bless and prosper that.

I pray that they might be able to do so in peace and without any threat of coercion from government or even from some of the established religion there in Costa Rica.

Father, we pray for Zach, that you would heal him, that the cause of this surgery, what made him need it, would not reoccur.

It would just have been a completely successful surgery. Give complete healing soon, we pray.

And we pray for that also for Heather and her hand, and pray that you'd give relief from the pain, and pray that the healing would be rapid and thorough.

Thank you for the good report from Bob today, and pray that you'd continue to bless him, and if it would please you to just eradicate this cancer and just give him life, we pray.

And encourage Jerry and give her strength as she cares for him. And for Kathy, I pray for ongoing success and efficiency in the rehab, the exercises she's doing to regain complete use of her knee, and I pray that that would be successful.

And for Harold as well, as he seeks strengthening for his shoulder, and I pray that this would come, and that you give strength to that shoulder as he goes through various processes of rehab.

Thank you, Father, for the opportunity of gathering on the Lord's Day for those who are comfortable doing so.

Continue to protect us from COVID. We pray for those in our area who are suffering from it.

We ask that you would give relief and healing. We pray for the workers and the health care workers who are confronting this every day.

Give them protection, especially Rebecca, as we think of her and the connections we have with her.

I pray you would bless her and keep her and her family away from this disease as well. We pray that even nationwide, you would be merciful to us and gracious, and we would see a rapid decline in the number of cases and a number of deaths related to this.

And we pray for our nation and the upheaval, the disunity, the corruption,

Lord, so much that is of concern to us in these days. Lord, be merciful to us, a people, we pray.

I pray that you would bring people to repentance, bring our nation to its knees in humility before you, and we pray do a work of grace, bring a revival to our land, we pray.

Father, I pray that if we can gather together on the Lord's Day, that you would bless in the gathering and that you would use your word to encourage our hearts as we consider

Christ the candle of Christmas, and may it be a great blessing as we go even further into this

Christmas season. So this we ask, all these things in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.

Well, as I indicated on Sunday, the Lord's Day, we will be having in -person service for those who feel comfortable attending.

It's, as you know, not particularly recommended by the healthcare professionals and so forth to gather, but we're not going to prohibit it.

We know those who, everybody's aware of the risks and so forth. If you're up to that, you're welcome to attend.

Otherwise, you can watch on live stream, be available at 1030, and I trust it'll be a blessing either way.

So until the Lord's Day or until the devotional time tomorrow, you have a good night.