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Pastor David Mitchell
We miss having Katie up here with us. We need to remember to pray for her, too. She's with the LATERNO group in Europe, traveling, getting some college credits and marketing, trying to see how they market things over there, I suppose.
So, continue to pray for them. They were in Spain the week they blew a bomb up over there, but apparently it was out in an area behind an airport and there weren't even any people there, so it's a good place to put one, I guess.
But we don't want to forget to pray for their safe return, as well. Turn with me this morning to the book of Psalms 139. If you would, I'm gonna finish the chapter we started last Sunday morning. The title of this message is Knowledge Too Wonderful.
Last time we covered verses one through six. Let's go ahead and read those again this morning, just verses one through six. Follow along with me. O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising.
Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou hast beset me behind and before and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it. We'll go a little bit farther in this passage, but let's review the things that we learned from those six verses last Sunday, and then we'll move on.
We talked about in those verses, verses one through five especially, that the reason that God's knowledge is too wonderful for us is because, number one, he searches me. You remember the Hebrew word there meant literally to penetrate and to know intimately, to examine.
And so we see that God has a relationship with us that is far more penetrating sometimes than we perceive because it's the perfect idea of the word baptize in the Bible and the New Testament especially.
It means to be totally immersed into something. So God is not just out there somewhere in heaven. As a matter of fact, he's not just here in the room with us. He is also penetrating your life and within you.
He is within and without. He is beyond, but he's also here. Secondly, we learned that he searches our home because the Hebrew word that deals in that passage can also be translated the home or even the family.
He also searches the things that I settle on and that you settle on in your hearts and minds when you settle to do something. Carries that connotation, and that's what it means by he is there in my down sitting.
That word carries a lot with it. It includes the entire home, your entire plans for your life, for your family. God is there in the midst of all that. And then thirdly, he is there in the things that I accomplish.
Even the things that I endure, the hardships, even when enemies attack. It even carries the connotation of his divine decree and his ordination. In other words, he has decreed a path for our lives and he is there walking in that path with us step by step.
He understands our thoughts. The Hebrew word is a little deeper than our English word understand because in the Hebrew it means direct, inform, instruct, or teach. So when you think, your thoughts literally are being directed by the Lord.
You don't just think in and of yourselves. God influences our thinking. He instructs our thinking, especially to the extent that we study his word, but his Holy Spirit enters our hearts and minds and teaches us things he wants us to know from the word of God and he directs us.
And then it says he compasses my path. That word in the Hebrew is the same as to winnow the wheat and to get the chaff out of it. So as we walk down the very path that we're walking, the very things we bump into reminds me of the story of Paul when he was a little bitty trying to run through the parking lot and this little tennis shoe stuck and he went headlong and hit the dumpster out there and cut his head right here and he looked up at me crying and bleeding like a suck pig and he said, hey, I ran into the dumpster.
So when you bump into those things in life, God is there. God actually is using those very events to winnow the chaff out of the life, to cause us to be who we shall be when we meet Jesus face to face someday.
In fact, that very word where it says that he compasses our path carries the connotation in the Hebrew that he actually cherishes the story of our lives. And as I said last Sunday, you can read the story of people's lives in the word of God.
Yours may not be written there, but it is written in God's heart. He cherishes your life. You may think you're just a number. You may just think you're part of a huge mass of humanity, not with God. You're a single individual and he is intimately interested in the story of your life because he is the one who ordained it, but he's also walking in time through it with you.
He knows the words and ideas behind the words of your tongue. He knows them completely, all together, the whole of it. You can't utter a word. You can't have a thought that he doesn't understand what's back of that thought in those words.
And then finally it says he besets me before and behind. That word is the same word that's translated to make a casting of something or to fashion something or to fortify something or to completely enclose something.
And we went into John chapter 10 and read the passage where it pictures Jesus' hand here when you're born again into his family. His hand is here. You're in his hand and then it pictures the father's hand closing on top and there you are.
And so he besets us before and behind. He has cast us into a safe place in his family. He's fashioned a life for us. He fortifies us and our families and protects us and causes us even when we go through harm and as the enemy attacks, he causes us to learn from it and to grow stronger, not weaker.
All of that is found in those first six verses. So let's move to the next point. Another reason that his knowledge is too high for us is not only because of the things we learned last Sunday and that we just reviewed, but also because of his presence in my life and his abiding and loving interest in my life.
Let's start with verse seven and see what we can glean from it. Whether shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed, and that literally could be translated in the word the grave.
If I make my bed in the grave, behold, thou art there. When it says whether shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence, the word presence in the Hebrew is panim and it literally means the face.
It means the face of God. And so it's literally saying that where can I go anywhere in this world, anywhere in this universe and not be in the presence of the face of God. That's how intimate his relationship is to us.
Verse eight says, if I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in the grave, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.
So his knowledge is too high for me because I can't understand how it can be in this life that everywhere I go, the face of God is shining upon me. But also his hand is there to hold and guide and transport me and you through this life.
Even there shall thy hand lead me. This word lead is the word to guide or to transport and thy right hand shall hold me. The word hold literally means to seize. In the Hebrew, it's much stronger than the English word.
And so understand that as you walk through this life, God is continually holding you in his hand. He reaches out and seizes you as if to pull you out of danger's way, out of harm's way. Spiritually, he is protecting you and guarding you and undergirding you and causing you to grow.
The inner man grows, though the outer man may perish. Now, another thing that causes me to see that his knowledge is too high is that he is there in any darkness that the world or Satan himself might bring against me or you.
Look at verse 11. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, have you ever walked through a time like that? If you're an adult, for very long you have. Or you walked, as it were, through the valley of the shadow of death even, perhaps.
Where it seemed to be just darkness all around, that surely the darkness shall cover me. If I begin to believe that, then I need to understand this. Even the night shall be light about me. Why is that?
Because you are God's child. So, when the world system or Satan himself would cause you to fall into fear and to feel that darkness is enclosing your very life and your existence, and fear comes from Satan always.
Any time we're fearful, it comes from him. When we come into that type of darkness, we understand that even the night shall be light about me because whose face is there? Whose presence is penetrating my life from within and without?
Besetting me from in front and behind? God. Verse 12 says, "'Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, "'but the night shineth as the day when it's in God's presence.'". So, you can be in the very darkness of fear, and it can be as bright as day because God is there.
The darkness and the light are both alike to God. You see, his knowledge is too high for us. We can't think that way, can we? But there is no problem with darkness or light to God, and his presence is in our life.
So, when we go through those times of darkness, it can be the same as when we're going through a time of joy and light because of his presence, not because of the situation. Situations change. That's one of the definitive marks of this life after the curse, by the way.
We live in a cursed world, a cursed earth. We even live in bodies that are fallen, bodies that pull against what God wants for us and what we even want for ourselves. That's called the flesh in the Bible.
The Bible says we have three enemies, the world system, not the beauty of nature that God made. That's not what it means, but the systems in the world that we live in, the flesh and the devil. And we need to understand that as those things pull against our hearts and situations change, life itself changes.
How many of you love to see your children grow up and leave the home? Don't raise your hand if you do because you're a pervert because it grieves me. It's one of the few things, after I've been saved anyway, one of the few things that I've ever argued with God about.
Why do you let them grow up and leave the home? But it's not so bad because sometimes what happens is they bring another one into the home and it's all good. God's ways are good. We don't like change sometimes, do we?
But you know what we can promise? Change is what it's all about in this life. Everything changes. If you like the way it is right now, then don't love it too much because situations change. But I want to tell you what, life and darkness, the things that change, no, that's meaningless to God.
And since God is in our lives and his presence is both behind us and in front of us, around us and within us, and he penetrates the life, every detail of it, and his vast interest in every detail of your whole life story, then those circumstances are much easier to go through because you're going through them with the eternal one and time doesn't change God.
He is immutable. That's a good Bible word. It means he cannot change. If he changed, he would cease to be God because God, by definition, is perfect. And when you're perfect, you don't change. That's why we're all changing, by the way.
That's why God puts us through the things we don't like, the changes that happen. It's to make us be more like him. So we see the light and the darkness cannot affect us when we're in the presence of God.
He is there, but verse 13 tells us more than that. It tells us that he was there from the very beginning of our existence. Look at it. For thou hast possessed my reigns. That means everything that I'm made of, down to the atoms and the molecules, the things that hold our bodies together.
Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. Now, when it says God possessed my reigns, the word possessed literally is qo 'naw. In the Hebrew, it means to erect or create. So it doesn't just mean that he possessed us.
It means he erected us and created us in the womb. God's hands bolded us together in the womb. Also, it says that his hand, that he has covered me in my mother's womb. This word cover in the Hebrew means to intertwine as a screen going through this way.
And it means, by implication, to fence something in and protect. So God is intimately involved with you from before you even were born. He was involved with your life from the mother's womb. So what side of the abortion issue do you think the Bible stands on?
There's no question. If it's true that God is with us and he possesses, he erects and creates the very reigns of our bodies and our lives and our soul and the whole thing, and he covers us like a hen over the chicks while we're still in the womb, how can some physician play God and think he can change that?
Well, he can change it, but he will answer for it. He will answer for it. The very framework of my own body should cause me to praise God, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Look at verse 14. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. That's an interesting verse, because the real you just lives in this body. This body is like a tent or a tabernacle that you live in. And you, being your soul, can look at this body that you live in knowing that it's not going to always be.
You will have a renewed body someday to live in an eternity, but this body is for here and now, and you can look at this body and say, this is amazing. It's fearfully and wonderfully made. It is self-replicating, self-duplicating, self-correcting.
None of it really is self. None of it would work if God wasn't there, if Jesus Christ wasn't holding it all together. But isn't it an amazing piece of engineering? Think about just the human eyeball. How can an evolutionist even exist?
He's never even looked at himself in the mirror. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. We are literally, our bodies are made out of the same minerals that this earth is made of.
My substance was not hid from thee. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect. So God's eyes saw your body when it was in the womb, when it was just one cell about to divide into the second cell.
He saw you. You were real. He was molding you. He had you in his hands just like he does now. And in thy book are my members. Every member of your body is written down in this great engineer's book. It says, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them.
Before the physical even existed, God had you fashioned in his heart and mind already. He knew you by name. He knew everything about your life. He had already ordained it and foreknown it. And that's how powerful your God is.
And this knowledge is too high for us. We can't figure out how he can do that. When it says that he saw your substance, the word substance means to fold or to wrap together. So it's not just a seeing of it.
It is a working with it. And when it says that your members were written, the Hebrew word there is kothob, which literally means to engrave something. It's like it was engraving. It's not just written on ink.
It was stamped in the metal. It was stamped in in such a way that it never would have changed, never could have changed because God's already been out to your future and walked there with you. It's all done to God.
You are engraven as the person that you are. Not only that, but there's scripture that says you're engraven on God's hand where he sees you before him every moment as he pictures it. And it says that while in continuance, my parts were fashioned when as yet there were none of them.
The word fashion means to mold into form, especially as a potter determines the shape of something. So what side of the abortion issue do you think the Bible is on? God has been with you since the very womb.
So again, we conclude that his thoughts are too high, but also too heavy and too powerful, and they're unable to be numbered. Look at verse 17. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them.
The word precious in the Hebrew means to be heavy. How heavy are the thoughts of God. The word great there in that verse means to bind fast or to close. It means powerful. So God's thoughts are so heavy and powerful to us, it's difficult to even think about it sometimes.
Verse 18 says, if I should count the thoughts of God, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with God. How many of you ever wake up in the morning? I mean, some people are morning people and others are not.
You're not looking at one here. I'm not a morning person. I wish we could have church at two in the afternoon. But you wake up in the morning, you go about a few things, and all of a sudden, the presence of God comes into your heart and mind and you say, I love you, God, or something like that.
Isn't that amazing that when you awake, his thoughts are there with us? And then we see that his thoughts are too high because he does not think like we think. He does not think like this world thinks.
In fact, Isaiah 55, nine says, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Psalm 139, verse 19 says, surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God.
Now, we don't think that way politically in this country anymore, do we? We don't think that way. Look how God thinks. Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me, therefore, you bloody men, for they speak against God wickedly and God's enemies take his name in vain.
The word vain there is a word that means uselessness, so they use God's name in a useless way. Verse 21 says, do not I hate them. Now, David was the apple of God's eye. The spirit of God was so strong upon David that he writes things in the book of Psalms that you would think they should be in the New Testament.
The prophets of old didn't even understand some of the things that God used David to write in his Psalms as he just wrote love songs to God. This man who loved God so much and God loved so much said, I hate them.
Now, who is it that David hates? Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? And am I not grieved with those that rise up against thee? This word hate is a very strong word in the Hebrew. It literally means to hate, but it is translated enemy, foe, and odious and utterly hated.
It's a strong word for hatred. And then it says, I am grieved by those people that hate God. This word grieve means to cut off and detest. Now, listen, the world you're in today doesn't think this way.
The world thinks we just love everybody. We even love the terrorists as they blow up our children. We don't wanna discriminate them, against them. We're not as bad as England, unfortunately. Over there in England, they just passed a law last week that prohibits anyone to discriminate against Islamic people.
Why don't they pass a law to protect their own people from the Islamic people? So you see, even as I speak, it seems like a wrong tone, doesn't it? I've had people criticize me, saying I pick on other religions.
All I do is read the scriptures. Isn't that funny? I read scriptures and what God says about certain things, people say I'm picking on other religions. I don't pick on other religions. I just read the scriptures.
Now, I wanna tell you why. David hated the enemies of God. An enemy of God, as the Bible says, is someone who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ personally. That leaves a lot of enemies. David says that these people are odious to him.
He says, I detest them and I will cut them off from my life. I won't let them be in my life. Verse 22, look what it says. I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. Now, ladies and gentlemen, God's knowledge is too high for us because politically today, we just don't think this way.
We don't even think this way in our churches today. We're taught to get along, we're taught to love, we're taught all this, but we don't understand that God's love is a little bit different. God loves his own so much that he will destroy an enemy that comes into the home to destroy his family.
You as men in your family, if an intruder comes in your home to kill your wife and your children, if you have the mindset today that Hollywood puts out, you'll just let him come in and destroy him because you would never want to hurt that dear intruder.
God doesn't think that way. I'll tell you what, God from eternity past loves his own and he knows who they are and he has known them from all eternity. The rest are enemies and we don't know who's who.
As the great Spurgeon said, God didn't paint a yellow stripe down the back of the people that are God's children. And we're supposed to preach the gospel to everything that moves as we live in our lives around this world.
But we have to understand how it is with God. It is not the same to him. One human being is not the same as another to God. There are God's children and there are Satan's children and God knows exactly who they are.
That should comfort us because they're all around us and we don't know who they are. We don't have a clue sometimes. We can't go by the countenance of their face, fortunately, but God is protecting us.
He is holding us in his hand. There is an enemy out there. The Bible says Satan goes to and fro, roaming to and fro, seeking who he may devour, from your family, from this flock, from our nation. He is always going around looking and waiting.
You know what he does? Picture it this way. He's got a flock of sheep. What the lion will do, or the wolf, he will look for one that's limping. He will look for one that's laying around a little too much because it's a little bit sickly and he'll grab that one and the other one and take off with it, hoping that the shepherd can't chase him with two of them or three or four.
That's how the enemy is. But we are in God's hands and his presence in the light of his face through it all and it's all there to make us be who we will be someday. Search me, oh God. And know my heart, verse 23 says.
Try me and know my thoughts. You know when the enemy attacks and it comes close to your home, close to your life, you know what it always does? Causes us to reflect on our life. Causes us to reflect on our relationship with God.
And it causes us to ask the Lord to search us. Is there anything in me that's unclean? Search and know my heart and know my thoughts. This is the proper prayer of one who is in awe of the high knowledge of God.
Try me, test me. The Hebrew word means investigate my life to see if there's anything there that you need to work on and there probably always is. I'm glad we can't always see it all at once. Verse 24, and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
This word everlasting is belong out to the vanishing point. I'm out of my eternity. Lead me in the way of eternity. Ladies and gentlemen, do you realize the Bible teaches that we're already living eternal life?
If you're born again this morning, you live in eternal life already. You don't have to wait to get there. You're in it now. And we're traveling with the Lord through this place and this is not our home.
It's enemy territory. We're behind lines. That's why we're attacked from time to time. But we're never attacked when we're alone because we're never alone. The great shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ is with us, watching over us all the time.
His face is with me everywhere I go. His hand is there to hold, guide, and transport me. He is there through any darkness that the world or Satan himself may bring. He is there, but he was also there from the very beginning of my existence.
The very framework of my own body should cause me to praise him for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And again, we conclude his thoughts are too high, but also too heavy and too powerful, and they're unable to be numbered by us.
His thoughts are too high because he does not think like the world thinks. He doesn't think like we think, and it brings us to the proper prayer of any of us who are in awe of him. Search me, investigate me, remove the idols from my life.
When it's said remove any wicked ways, it's interesting that Hebrew word is the word for idol. Remove any idol from my life and keep me on the right road. This is what God does for us every moment. Those idols are the things that have our affection more than God does, our time more than God does, our hearts more than God does.
The things that we go through, we need to remove those one by one. I would dare say that the older saints in this room have a completely different walk than they had when they were younger because God has removed these things one by one as they go.
They have a closer walk to the heavenlies. This world doesn't mean as much as you get older. It's not nearly as lovely because he's preparing us for the one to come. It's almost like boot camp here, getting us ready.
Isn't it wonderful that he is intimately involved with the story of our lives? Well, before we stand and are dismissed, I would like to give an invitation today. If there's any family in this church that God has moved to join our church, would you come forward at this time?
It's amazing how I can do that. Come stand right over here, and I think it's interesting in our church that folks generally come and just stay a while and don't make a formal thing out of joining sometimes for a whole year, and that's how we like it.
We don't want people to feel pressure, and I don't think you've felt any pressure, and we want you to be here if that's what the Lord wants. And so Bob and Vicki and Erica and Zach and Josh Mooring have expressed a desire to me, obviously, before this morning that they wanted to come down and let you know.
Yeah, well, that's true. We'll make Erica come stand by herself. We'll do that. But they wanted to express publicly that they felt the Lord wanted them to be a part of this local body. So we'll have a word of, I tell you, before we pray, Brother Bob, really, wouldn't you like to join by a profession of faith rather than letter?
Why don't you give a little brief testimony?
Dear Father, we thank you for being so dear to us.
It comes alive on the pages as your Holy Spirit moves among us in the room and speaks to our hearts and teeth from your heart and mind. And we thank you for the fellowship time we're about to have. We thank you for the meal that you've provided for us.
Thank you for this wonderful family that you've brought our way. And Lord, what a miracle it is that you put the members of the body in a local church together to make it be whole. And we thank you for that today.
We ask you to bless them in this church, that we would be a blessing. This ministry would bless their hearts and help them to grow spiritually. And Lord, we know they'll be a blessing to you. Father, we ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship now, and we ask it in Jesus' name.