The Throne of Grace — Bill McLeod

I'm sorry, I must apologize for having such an awful time remembering people's names. Years ago I told the Lord, I said, I don't mind having a bad memory for other things as long as you give me a good memory for the Bible, and to some extent he's done that, I guess.

But maybe he took me too seriously the other way. This afternoon, a couple of years ago, one of the professors from the university was driving to the university in the morning and he saw an old lady trying to cross the street at the lights and she was having difficulty, so he left the car running and he went over and he took her by the elbow and he let her cross the street and he forgot his car and he walked all down the university, it was just around the corner, not far away, and then when he came out in the afternoon his car was gone, he phoned the police and reported his car was stolen and they said, yes, we have it down here, we found it running at a stoplight.

And, I don't know, I think we're related. Do you know what I did one time, I shouldn't tell you this, but one time, and my wife was about six months pregnant at the time too, we were in Winnipeg, and I took her to the store, and she went in to buy some things, and I forgot she was in the store, and I drove off.

And it wouldn't have been so bad that I drove off, but I drove to Kenora, Ontario, 130 miles away, and my wife came out with these groceries and there was no car there. Let's get down to something better than that.

The Living and Discerning Word of God

Hebrews chapter 4, and you're probably curious as to what happened when my wife got home or I got home. Well, it was before revival, that's all I need to say. Hebrews 4 and verse 12, for the word of God is quick, that is, it's living, it's life-giving, and powerful, full of power, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing thunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Maybe that's why I read a while ago that so many psychiatrists who are not Christians are studying the Bible because of the fantastic insight it has into human nature. They don't believe what it says about God, but they do believe what it says about human beings.

A discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Seeing, then, that we have a great high priest that is passed into, literally through, the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession, for we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

The Mercy Seat in the Tabernacle

If you were to visit Israel when they were traveling in the wilderness with the tabernacle of witness, as it was called, tabernacle of witness, the tabernacle of Moses, the tabernacle of the congregation, as it was variously called, and were you able to walk into the tabernacle, you would have seen that the tabernacle was divided.

At the one end there was a curtain hanging, and if you were able, which you would not have been able, to go in behind the curtain, you would have seen a very small piece of furniture there. It was called the mercy seat.

It was made out of wood that was overlaid with gold. It was two cubits one way, a cubit and a half the other, and a cubit and a half high. They are not too sure exactly as to the measurement of a cubit, but obviously it was a small piece of furniture.

If you were able to look inside the Ark of the Covenant, as it was called, you would have seen there a golden pot with some manna in it, the manna of the bread that came down in the wilderness every day for the people as they were journeying.

And then you would have seen a rod that budded. It was Aaron's rod, and his name was inscribed on it. And it blossomed and budded, and it grew almonds. And then you would have found what was called the tables of the testimony, which were two pieces of stone on which were inscribed what is sometimes called the Ten Words of God, the Ten Commandments of God, which were a beautiful summary of the law of God.

Then resting on top of the Ark of the Covenant was something called the mercy seat. It was constructed out of solid gold. The mercy seat itself was really just a flat piece of gold, and then on both ends of this solid piece of gold there had been carved two cherubim.

F is not there, should not be there, they are not cherubim, im is a plural ending in the Hebrew language, so it's cherubim. And these two cherubim were carved, they are angelic creatures of course, we don't know their exact appearance because the Bible doesn't really indicate this, but no doubt if we could see them by the throne, the actual throne of God, they would be glorious in appearance.

Constructed out of solid gold and their wings met over the top of the mercy seat. And a number of places in the Bible it indicates very clearly that their faces were inward, they looked in to the mercy seat.

And then God told the people, God told Moses and Aaron, I'll meet with you there and I'll commune with you from above the testimony on the mercy seat. And the high priest, when he went in there once a year or two on the day of atonement, he sprinkled blood on the mercy seat, hence we get the expression of blood sprinkled mercy seat.

God said, there I'll meet with you and there I will commune with you. Then we come to Hebrews chapter 4 and he talks about the throne of grace, and there's a very obvious connection between the throne of grace and the mercy seat of the Old Testament, because first of all we come to obtain mercy, it says here in the 16th verse of Hebrews chapter 4.

Pride, Satan, and the Beauty of Holiness

Now let's digress for a moment or two. You remember how, or I should say this, that the carry of him was spoken of as covering the mercy seat. And over in the book of Ezekiel, God is addressing a person that Bible scholars believe is the devil, and he's called there the anointed cherub that covers, twice he's called that in that chapter.

And then the Lord said, your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, you have corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness. God said, I'm going to cast you down to the ground, I'll lay you before King, that's Satan.

What happened? He got looking at himself instead of looking at God. The cherubim were to look inward always at God, and to a point he did that. The Bible says, thou wast perfect in all thy ways from the day that thou wast created until iniquity was found in thee.

And his iniquity began when he stopped looking at God and began looking at himself. He became aware of his own beauty, and I guess he began comparing himself with other created beings like the other cherubim or angels or seraphs or whatever, and he realized that of them all he was the most beautiful, and he knew he was the most powerful, and he became proud.

And God eventually had to cast him down. Jesus said in Luke chapter 10, I beheld Satan's lightning fall from heaven, which is in part a quotation from Isaiah chapter 14. So he became aware of his own power, his own beauty, his own glory.

And he sinned, and God said, I will cast you as profane out of the mountain of God, and he did. There's a warning here, because pride was, in my opinion, the first sin in the universe, and from that came all that awful sum total of wickedness that we hear about, read about, see about, and sometimes, alas, partake in.

Remember, the mercy seat, the cherubim, God on that blood-sprinkled mercy seat communing with his people, and under the mercy seat, significantly, the manna, the rod, and the testimony of God. Keep that in mind.

The Blood of Christ and the Authority of Scripture

Let's go back to Hebrews chapter 4, then the twelfth verse, the word of God. You see, it's a blood-sprinkled mercy seat, and God doesn't meet with people that reject the blood. Canada's largest Protestant denomination has deleted all references to the blood of Jesus Christ from their hymn book.

They call it a slaughterhouse religion. They do not believe that one person could shed their blood for somebody else. I have a book at home written by thirty or so of their scholars, who between them I think had around a hundred degrees and all, and it's very, very nebulous.

They even think that some day Satan will be converted, that there are many more conversions on the other side of the grave than there are on this side of the grave. It cuts the nerve totally of missions and evangelism, and since it's a form of universal salvation, forget about it.

God doesn't meet with people that reject the blood. It's a blood-sprinkled mercy seat. God doesn't meet with people that reject the word of God. Remember that underneath God he was, in a sense, sitting on the testimony, on his testimony, on his word.

The Lord Jesus Christ said, "...heaven and earth shall pass away, and they will. But my word shall not pass away.". He said, "...if you reject me and receive not my word, you have one that will judge you.

The word that I have spoken, the same will judge you in the last day. For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven, the word of God.". How we ought to cherish it, love it, believe it, obey it. John said, "...I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.

And the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged out of those things written in the books according to their works.". God won't have to ask you what you did.

He knows what you did. He has a complete record of all that all of us have ever done. One of the problems is, as in Ecclesiastes, where it says, "...because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.".

Just because God doesn't crack down on sin when it happens, a lot of people are emboldened to go on and to sin. Indeed, some people experiment with this idea, this God idea, and they sin and they watch heaven and nothing happens, there is no lightning, no thunder, the earth doesn't open up and it doesn't swallow them as it did in the Old Testament days, apparently, and so they are emboldened to try something else, to go a little further, and nothing happens, and finally they feel, well, you know, God is not in business at all.

In the language of some people in the Old Testament, the Lord has forsaken the earth. But don't be deceived by it. God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man, Jesus Christ, whom he has ordained.

Rothy has offered faith unto all men in that he has raised him from the dead. The small and the great will stand some day before God, and God will open the books, it says in Romans 14, so then every one of us shall give account of himself to God, and that day is coming.

Inspiration, Prophecy, and New Birth Through the Word

The word of God, in every respect, it's God-breathed. It's not that men wrote a book and then God sort of straightened it out a little bit and breathed on it. No, these words were breathed out from God to men, through men, so that they often did not even know what they were writing.

That's why it says in 1 Peter 1, they searched diligently, they inquired, they prayed, God, what does this mean? When they wrote, for example, in Psalm 22, they pierced my hands and my feet. What did this mean?

They didn't know. When they read in Isaiah 50, I gave my back to the smiters, my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting. What did it mean when they wrote, But thou, Bethlehem, the fruitful, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of these shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from the days of eternity.

God what does this mean? The flowers plowed upon my back, they made long their furrows. God, what does this mean? They didn't know. They pierced my hands and my feet. God what does this mean? The Word of God.

Love it, believe it with all your heart. The Word of God is quick, it's living, it's life-giving. James 1 .18 says, Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

We were born again, as Peter says in 1 Peter 1 .23, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides forever. And the Bible has that wonderful power that sinners can be changed into saints when they hear it.

And if you're born again, you were born again by the word of God, or you're not born again. You know, sometimes people get talked into it. They have all the right answers. I have a daughter, Joanna, she's teaching high school on an Indian reserve, and you know, when she went to school, we used to thank God for one of the principals in one of the schools told us, we're so glad to have your daughter in the school, and I said, why?

And they said, well, if there's anything wrong going on, she'll take a very strong stand against it. We're so glad to have your daughter in the school. If you used to carry your Bible to school, and remember her, when a teacher would say something in support of evolution, my daughter would get up and very politely defend the Bible account of creation and so on.

She was baptized, a member of the Church, and the whole thing. And God showed her she had never been born again. She knew all the language. She came to me after morning service at Ebenezer, and she said, Daddy, I've never been saved.

God showed me I've never been saved. I said, Honey, you mean your heart is cold? No, Daddy. She said, I've never, never known the Lord. I've known all the answers. She hadn't been born again. So she was born again by the Word of God and the Spirit of God, and she was baptized again.

Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ. This is the teaching of the Word of God. Just to digress perhaps a wee little bit, you know, sometimes people say, well, I'll get baptized when the Lord tells me I should.

Didn't you know he's already told you? You know, when people in the house of Cornelius got saved, what did Peter do? He commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. And if they didn't get baptized, they were disobeying the Word of God.

It's very clear. Repent and be baptized. How many? Every one of you. It's just a matter of saying yes to the will of God, that's all it is. The Lord probably intends that for some of you here tonight.

The Word of God is living, life-giving, it's powerful, it's full of power. Psalm 29 speaks about this in very wonderful terms. He says that the Word of God is full of majesty, the Word of God is full of power, the Word of God is on many waters.

You know, waters in the Bible are often symbols of nations and people, and so on. The Word of God is felt all around the world. Paul once said the Word of God is not bound. He was in jail part of his life, but you can't put the Word of God in jail.

You can put the preacher in jail, but not the Word of God. That's a wonderful thing to know. Just to keep in mind, I prayed for years for China. China was closed to missionaries, but not closed to the Word of God.

There are different ways by which God was getting his Word in there. Powerful. And so in Psalm 29, he says the Word of God, it breaks, it shakes, it makes, it divides. It breaks the cedars of Lebanon, and cedars and oaks in the Bible are very often symbols of proud people.

Ever read Isaiah chapter 2? It's speaking about the coming day of God, when man's day ends and God's day begins. And it says the day of the Lord will be on all the high towers, all the high hills, all the high-fenced walls, it'll be on all the oaks of Bashan, all the cedars of Lebanon, they'll all come down.

All the proud people. Thirteen references to pride and imbalance, and I think what it is, eight verses perhaps? In other words, pride is going to be the number one sin in the world prior to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's going to deal with it. The Word of God is able to break the cedars. And God is able to break proud people's hearts, well, it broke mine. Thank God for the power of the Word. And then it says that it makes the hinds to calve.

They bring forth young by the Word of God. And we as Christian people, we bring forth young. Others find Christ because we happen to pass by. Any Christian can have that glorious privilege. When I first got converted, I was such a shy person, when I lived in Winnipeg, if I was walking down the sidewalk and I saw somebody coming down the street on the same side of the street, I just crossed over.

I went like this all the way up and down the street. I know in western Winnipeg, I know every back lane in the country, because you used to travel a back lane. You don't meet people down back lanes. One of the reasons why, when I left home when I was 18, one of the reasons why I went to work on the bush camps was because the trees didn't talk.

I could talk to a tree and sometimes did, and I wasn't crazy, but at least I don't think I was. And the Lord met me and saved me by his wonderful grace. But there was pride there, just the same, and God took care of that by his Spirit and his Word.

And when I was converted, I was so shy, I didn't know how to talk to people about the Lord. So I wrote them letters. I wrote a fellow a letter and got a nice letter back. He said, I got your letter. I was shocked.

He said, I saddled my horse, I went off in the bush with your letter, and I reined the horse in on a clearing in the forest, and I read your letter through two or three times, and I gave my heart to Jesus.

Wow! Boy, that was wonderful. So I wrote another letter. Another fellow got converted. Well, then I thought, being shy, why not save a six-cent stamp. And so back in those days, I think that's all it was.

Something happened in the meantime. Listen, God can use you. The Word of God causes the hinds to calve. It shakes the wilderness, it says in Psalm 29, that's mission. It divides the flames of fire, that's revival, that's the Word of God, and we see it.

I remember preaching one time, it wasn't a crusade, just preaching on Sunday morning. The Word of God just laid a hold of that congregation in the most marvelous manner. Every word seemed to hit like a hammer, and God broke many, many hearts.

The Word of God has that power. The Word of God is living, powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. You remember when John saw the picture of the resurrected Christ in Revelation 1, among other things, there was a two-edged sword coming out of his mouth?

Regardless of who preaches it, it's still the Word of God. In Isaiah 55, God said, As the rain comes down and the snow from heaven and returns not to them but waters the earth and makes it bring forth in blood that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that comes forth out of my mouth.

It shall not return unto me empty, void, it shall prosper. And the thing whereto I sent it, it will not return unto God empty, because it is the word of the living God. It shall prosper, and the thing whereto I sent it, it will accomplish, God said, that which I please.".

Think of Acts 2, when Peter preached on the day of Pentecost and the people were pricked in their hearts and they cried out and said, Men and brethren, what shall we do? The Word of God had a tremendous effect.

They had an all-night prayer meeting in a church that was called the Kirk of Schott in Scotland years ago. Man called Livingstone, not the missionary, another man by the same name, he'd spent that whole night in prayer.

Five hundred were converted in the meeting that following day. We know something of the power of God in revival. Well, we read about it, sometimes we see it, but oh, that we might learn to make the Word of God central in all our work, in all our preaching, piercing even through the dividing of the sunderer of soul and spirit into the joints and marrow, and is a discerner, a Greek word there is kritikos, from which we get our English word critic.

It's a friendly critic. As a matter of fact, in a certain sense, the Word of God is the Christian's conscience. And the more we know it, the more God has to work with. Many Christians know so little of the Word of God, they complain that God never speaks to them.

I remember a lady one time, she told me she was having these wonderful visions at night and she was hearing organ music and choirs, angelic choirs singing, and she wanted more of this, and so she asked me to tell her how she could have more of this.

I said, Is your basic desire to get to know God better, to grow as a Christian, to be strong? Well, of course, she said, that's what I'm thinking about. Then I said, in 1 Peter 2, it says, Desire the sincere milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby, but she didn't want that.

She wanted more visions and more sights and sounds from the other world. But remember, if we're going to meet God, we meet God over the Ark of the Testimony, the Word of God. Remember, the blood-sprinkled mercy seat, the Word of God, that's where God meets with his people.

So it is a discerner, a critic of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Maybe you'll recall that in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, he talks about people prophesying in the assembly. He says if everybody speaks in tongues and someone comes in that's not born again, that's ignorant, he's going to say, Everybody's mad in that place.

But if everybody prophesies, what does it mean to prophesy? He that prophesies speaks unto man to edification, to exhortation, and to comfort. That's New Testament prophesying, and 1 Corinthians 14 says, You may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted.

That's true prophesying. It's why in the Old Testament it even talks about people prophesying with a harp. How in the world can you prophesy with a harp? Well, by singing the word of God. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

You may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted. He that prophesies speaks unto man to edification, to exhortation, and to comfort. Do you remember what Moses said? Oh, he said, Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them, if that was a prophecy or a prayer that has been fulfilled and answered.

You may all prophesy, we all have the Spirit of God. We cannot be a prophet in a formal, public sense, but all of us have the gift of prophesying in the sense of being a blessing to other people by speaking for God, what we know.

I just want to say it again, he that prophesies speaks unto man to edification, to exhortation, and to comfort. So the Word of God, then, is a discerner, and to go back to 1 Corinthians 14 for a moment, it says, Of all prophesy, thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest.

He is judged of all, he is discerned of all, and judged of all, and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest. And so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is in you of a truth.

The Word Revealing Sin and Producing Worship

When you get a church that is healthy, I have a book at home that talks about revivals of religion that were sweeping across the United States back about the 1860s or so, if I remember correctly. And he was telling about certain churches that Sunday evening, Sunday morning they had the preaching of the Word of God, Sunday evening they had nothing but testimony.

And they gave many examples of the hardest of sinners finding Jesus Christ in that Sunday evening service. He tells of one man so hardened that people despaired he would ever be saved. They didn't even know how he ever got in the building, and there he was.

And a little old lady got up with a heart full of God and began to share, and they just saw that man break into a thousand pieces and find Jesus Christ within a matter of moments. All right, the Word of God is powerful, sharp, let's learn it and let's use it.

There is no creature that is not manifest in his sight, all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. The eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good.

God's been everywhere, God has seen everything, God has a record of all that's ever happened. That's why God can conduct a judgment time, because he has a perfect record of all that's ever gone on. I read somewhere that there are 250 ,000 unsolved murder mysteries in North America.

They'll all be solved someday, and the blame will be laid at the proper door at the coming judgment time. You know, up in northern Manitoba, two Eskimos went hunting some years ago, and only one Eskimo came back.

He said they ran into a terrible blizzard, they were hunting polar bears, and his friend got lost, and after the blizzard subsided, he searched for him and couldn't find him, and so that was that. The following spring, a motorboat was chugging down Hudson Bay, and there were some icebergs floating in the bay, and as they were going past an iceberg here, they saw an Eskimo encased in the ice with a bullet hole between his eyes.

They turned around and went back to Churchill, and the Mounties came out with their powerboat, they chopped that body out of the ice. It was the Eskimo that supposedly had disappeared in the snowstorm.

Then they confronted this other Eskimo with what they had found, and then he confessed to what had happened. He hated this man. He took him hunting, and he shot him between the eyes, and then he went out, and there was an iceberg there right up against the shore, and there was a huge crack in the iceberg, and he dropped the body in the crack of the iceberg and shoveled it all full of snow, and they thought they would never find him, but they did, and if they hadn't of, God knew all about it.

Do you remember that verse I quoted before, those sent into evil, a hundred, pardon me, because sentencing against an evil work is not executed speedily, they were the hardest sons of men. It is foolish to set them to do evil, but the next verse says, those sent into evil a hundred times, and their days be prolonged.

You can be very wicked and live to be a hundred years old, or maybe a hundred and five. Those sent into evil a hundred times, and their days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God.

Knowing Ourselves Before the All-Seeing God

All right, all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Dear people, when you come before God, when you come to meet God in prayer, does it frighten you that God knows everything?

It ought to be a beautiful comfort to your heart, that before you ever kneel to pray, God knows all about it. It ought to inspire us to be honest. But if you look at Psalm 139, do you notice how it begins, O Lord, thou hast searched me unknowingly?

How does it end? Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. I wonder why it ends that way when it starts the way it does.

There can only, in my opinion, be one answer to that question. It's because it's true enough that God knows all about me, but I don't know what God knows about me. I'd like to know how God sees me. Ever prayed that way?

Ever asked God to show you what you look like to Him? A friend of mine was preaching in a revival meeting, and just before he began to preach, he asked the congregation to pray. He said, I'd like all of you to pray this prayer, God, show me what I look like to you.

He barely got praying when a man gave a scream at the back of the auditorium and came running down the aisle and fell flat on his face on the floor at the front, and just lay there trembling. Some of the men came and they carried him out into another room, and all he could say was, God answered my prayer.

And he saw himself. Daniel just stood in the presence of an angel of God, and all of a sudden he had no strength to even stand. He said, my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength.

And when Peter, in the book, Luke chapter 5, he heard Jesus Christ preach, he saw him work a miracle, then he fell down at Jesus' knees and he prayed and said, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man. Oh, Lord, that's how we feel when we get close to God.

All things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. In Psalm 139 it says, There is not a word in my tongue, but, Lo, O Lord, thou knowest it all together. Every word I've ever spoken or you've ever spoken, God knows all about it.

He could stand you up, how old are you, 40, 30, 20? He could stand you there for 20 years and repeat into your ears every word you've ever spoken for 20 years or 30 years or 40 years or 60 years or whatever.

He knows it all, because he's the God of the universe. The problem is, you know, we think in terms of God being so tiny and so small, we sort of bring him down to man's size. We must not do that. Do you know what it says in the Bible about man in relation to God?

It says that all the nations of the world are like one drop in a bucket. If you're walking down a path and somebody's with an empty bucket in your hand and somebody came along and put one drop of water in the pail, would you be aware of the weight?

Of course not. And all the nations of the world before God are like one drop in a bucket, that's all. And God is so great, the Bible says he has to even humble himself to look at the things that are happening in the earth, Psalm 113.

That's not all it says there. It says that God is so great he has to humble himself to behold the things that are in heaven. Did you ever think of that? Our God is so great, so mighty. We call him a transcendent God, greater than the universe.

Man is less than nothing in vanity, that's a mathematical impossibility. I accept that as being true, and I remember when God worked in my heart in the time of the revival, prior to the revival, for two years, from 1969 approximately on.

So many times I saw myself as being absolute zero, less than nothing in vanity. I remember sometimes telling God, God, I'm just a hole in the ground, why don't you fill it in and forget that I ever lived.

That's how I felt. I couldn't understand how God could ever spend a moment with me, how God could bother with me at all. But he did, because of his grace. It's not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his infinite mercy that he saved us.

God has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. And the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world.

To go back again, all things are naked, and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. And there in Psalm 139, not a word of my tongue, but, Lo, O Lord, thou knowest it all together, you understand my thought afar off, you are acquainted with all my ways.

What was the reaction of the writer? O God, where will I hide? Where can I hide? Where will I flee? And you get a beautiful answer a little later on in one of the later psalms, I flee unto thee to hide me.