Sermon Tone Analysis

*Title: Living in Light of God’s Omniscience *

*Text: Psalm 139:1-6*

!!!!!! Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church on April 29, 2007

www.goldcountrybaptist.org

 

/1 //For the choir director.

A Psalm of David.

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.

\\ 2 //You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar.

\\ 3 //You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.

\\ 4 //Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, You know it all.

\\ 5 //You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me.

\\ 6 //Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.

\\ \\ /

Psalm 139 has been called “applied theology.”

James Boice called it “theology of the very best sort … Psalm 139 has both head and heart.

It is strongly theological, dealing with such important doctrines as God’s omniscience (it is probably the weightiest part of the Bible for discussing God’s omniscience) … but it is also wonderfully personal, because it speaks of these attributes of God in ways that impact the psalmist and ourselves” (/Psalms, /3:1201).

Last week we ended on the note of the immensely big and vast universe and the heavens that declare the glory of God who is even bigger and grater.

Since then I learned that the Hubble Space Telescope sends back infrared images of faint galaxies that are billions of light years away.

A light year is six trillion miles - per second that’s over 186,000 miles /a second, /fast enough to go around the earth 7 or 8 times every second.

I read somewhere that the rays from the sun traveling at that speed take several /minutes/ just to arrive at earth, that’s how far the distance is from that star to one of its closer planets.

To get an idea of how big our solar system is, I read it takes several hours just to send signals at this speed within our solar system.

It’s hard for our minds to even fathom that sort of thing, but we certainly get the point that compared to God and His glory and creation, we are all relatively tiny and insignificant and essentially nothing in comparison to the God of wonders beyond our galaxy.

But what’s amazing is that Isaiah 40:26 says that every single one of the billions of stars, trillions, sextillions of stars, God knows them all by name.

And God knows and does care about every single sparrow every time it lands on the ground.

And He knows and cares about you – astounding and surprising as that may seem in the bigger scheme of things – God knows and loves you more deeply than anyone, He knows you better than you know yourself.

He knows the exact number of hairs on your head, Jesus says.

God knows everything – He is omniscient – that means all knowing.

And the first 6 verses of this psalm are one of the most powerful summaries of this truth in the Bible.

Our Big God is also an intimate God who is personally concerned with little things.

!!!!!! OUTLINE

1.      God Knows Everything I Do, v. 1-2

2.      God Knows Everything I Think, v. 2b

3.      God Knows Everywhere I Go, v. 3

4.      God Knows Everything I Say, v. 4

5.      God Knows Believers Intimately and Relationally, v. 5-6

*1.      **God Knows Everything I Do, v. 1-2*

 

Verse 1 begins “O LORD” – Notice that this prayer begins with God and ends with God and it is thoroughly permeated with God in every line.

/Searched/ - In the Old Testament, this word was used for digging, excavating, spying out and exploring a land.

It was a word used to thoroughly examine a case or situation, like a judge or detective.

‘This word was used for mining operations … Here the term implies the ransacking of our entire life, a moral inquisition into guilt, and nothing escapes God’s all-seeing eye.’

(Lockyer, 719-20)

 

/Known me - /This Hebrew root for “know” (/yada/) occurs throughout this section: “you know me … you know when … you know it completely … Such knowledge.”

Here David does not begin by saying “Lord you know /all things/” or even just “you know /about /me” but He says you know /me/.

This is profoundly personal, not theoretical.

Note the words “search” and “know” are repeated in verse 23, this is called an envelope figure when bookending beginning and end, showing this is what this psalm is primarily about

 

God ‘alone could detect the secret source of any spiritual disease, and cure it.

What His search reveals, His grace can remove.’

(Lockyer, 719)

 

We don’t even fully know our own heart, but God does.

Jer 17:9 “/the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?

I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind/”

 

!!!! VERSE TWO

/To Sit Down and Rise Up/ is a phrase that covers both activity and inactivity, coming and going, it’s used for all the ordinary acts of life which come between them.

This is a figure of speech (merism) that expresses completeness by listing two ends of the spectrum and therefore God knows everything in-between.

~*Good cross-ref: Deut 6:5ff “talk of them when you sit at home, when you walk along the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” (point: and everything in-between, all of life)

* *

Question: WHAT DOES OMNISCIENCE MEAN?

All knowledge.

God knows and has always known all things:

-          actual and factual

-          material and spiritual (inside and outside, visible and invisible)

-          contingent possibilities (ex: Tyre and Sidon would have repented if they saw signs done in Chorazin and Bethsaida, 1 Sam 23:12 he says to David if you remain these people will deliver you to Saul)

-          past, present, and future (ex: prophecy).

* *

*2.      **God Knows Everything I Think, v. 2b*

 

The expression God knows our thoughts “from afar” may mean that even when they are far off, and not yet developed in our mind, God knows them at that point.

As one writer said this phrase ‘implies that God anticipates our thoughts and purposes before they are matured in mind, even the most intimate thoughts, wishes, and inclinations … /Thou knowest.

/“Thou,” in the original, is emphatic and means, /Thou—Thou alone knowest/’ (Lockyer, 720)

 

Maybe you’ve heard the expression “your life is an open book.”

Well verse 16 of this psalm says every detail and day of your life is in an open book in heaven recorded and written down.

Who of you would like to have all your sinful thoughts put up on the overhead projector here for all to see?

That may not happen here on earth, but it is how God sees it all the time, in living color, He knows all our thoughts all the time.

!!!!!! Read Hebrews 4:12-13.

Point: God and His Word goes deeper into the inner person than any psychologist or surgeon can ever go

 

“/the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

[13] And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare [“naked” in NKJV] to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do [give account]/ \\ \\

Maybe sometimes you’re tempted to cherish sinful thoughts in your heart or mind as long as you don’t act them out or say the mean or evil things you’re thinking (“I’m not gonna say it, but I sure am gonna think it”).

It is good to stop saying sinful things, but remember that God sees even those thoughts in broad daylight, and if you harbor sinful thoughts in your heart, Jesus says you’re guilty.

The Bible declares that God will one day judge the secrets of every heart (Rom.

2:16).

He “will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil” (Eccl.

12:14).

Not only that, secret sins will not remain secret.

“The Lord [will] bring to light the things hidden in the darkness” (1 Cor.

4:5).

Jesus said, “There is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.

Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms shall be proclaimed upon the housetops” (Luke 12:2-3).

* *

I think it was J. Vernon McGee who said “your secret sins on earth are a scandal in heaven.”

* *

*Hebrews 4:15-16  */For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

[16] Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need/”

* *

Our Lord Jesus knows experientially and sympathetically the weaknesses and temptations of this planet, so we can pray to Him in this confidence and find comfort, mercy and the grace we need.

Back here in Psalm 139:2, David says God knows the thoughts in our hearts, echoing the Lord’s words through Samuel before he anointed David as the next king of Israel “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Sam.

16:7).

* *

*3.      **God Knows Everywhere I Go, v. 3*

* *

Again the phrase in verse 3 for going out and lying down representing a whole day’s activities, and everything in-between.

“the path he followed when he rose in the morning and the resting place to which he returned for the night,” while “/all my ways/” indicates everything that happened between morning and night.

Matthew Poole says the metaphor is either from hunters watching the motions and movements of the animals they seek, or from soldiers setting watches around their enemies, like a “stakeout.”

In a society where walking was the primary means of transportation, the language of walking and a path are the most ready illustration of everyday living, step-by-step, all of life.

! Scrutinize [“comprehend” in NKJV] – means to discern, that is “to sift through something, to winnow as grain, to sort out the good from the bad.”

Jesus did this, of those who believed on some level, Jesus is able to sift through and discern the paths to know who is a true disciple.

John 8:30-32 (NASB95) /30 //As He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him.

\\ 31 //So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; \\ 32 //and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”/

\\ \\

John 2:23-25 (NASB95) /23 //Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing.

\\ 24 //But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for *He knew all men*, \\ 25 //and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for *He Himself knew what was in man*.

\\ \\ /

Have you ever wanted to read someone’s mind?

Our Lord doesn’t even need to, because He already exhaustively knows all things.

One of the amazing things we learn is that God never learns.