Study of Psalm 139

The following notes were used in a Bible Study at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Orlando FL, on September 4, 2013.

I was with someone not long ago and we were in a public place, but at a private setting – we were in a restaurant sitting at a table and next to us was another table and at that table was a very young woman who seemed to have some sort of mental health issues.  While this other person and I were sitting at our table having a low, confidential conversation, this young woman was sitting at her table, her body turned toward us, and she was obviously hanging on our every word.

How do you feel when you think that someone is watching you and listening to your every word?

Psalm 139

¹ You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.

1. God sees us

This is the first point of this psalm – God sees us.  He is watching over us.  We are under constant surveillance by God.

The second point is that God knows us.

2. God knows us

³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
    and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too lofty for me to attain.

The woman in that restaurant was listening to every word we were saying, but she did not know us at all. 

God listens to our every word and he knows us deeply.

Verse 2, “You perceive my thoughts.”

Verse 3, “You discern my going out and lying down and are familiar with all my ways.”

It is one thing for God to see all, but to know us, to truly know us, is something else entirely.

Anyone here watch Rizzoli and Isles?  One of the actors on that show was 29 year old Lee Thompson Young.  Now to watch him on the show, he seemed young, healthy, happy, competent, likeable.  But to watch him on the television is NOT to know the actor.  The actor committed suicide a few weeks ago. 

Now we can say – but he was an actor.  Yet, the world is a stage and we are all actors on it.  It is one thing for us to see and watch someone, but something else to really know an individual.

God sees us, and knows us intimately.

How many people do you believe know you – the real you?

⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.

I have to share that one book I read in researching Psalm 139 the writer said, “I don’t know what I say until after I say it, and here is God who knows my words before I say it.”

3. God is with us.

God is not a distant God – he is in our lives and in our midst.

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

Anyone remember the poem, THE HOUND OF HEAVEN?

I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

This poem is about a sinful man who is pursued by a loving God who will not let go.  It shares with Psalm 139 the common element – there is no running away from God.

Have you ever wanted to get away from God or flee from him?

I had a Sunday School teacher who used to say that one should use the term AMEN only in a public prayer.  In part because AMEN is a word of agreement.  A person leads in a prayer and the term AMEN is the congregation’s way of saying, “We agree.  That person’s prayer is our prayer.”

But more than that, says my old Sunday School Teacher, the term AMEN is a way of hanging up the telephone.  It is a way of disconnecting from God so that our thoughts now become our thoughts.  When you pray a personal prayer and you do not say AMEN, then there is an increased awareness that God is still listening.

In verse 13, there is a shift from the watchfulness of God, to the creative nature of God.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.

I remember when my wife had an ultra sound and we could see our unborn child.  That was new technology back then and we had never heard of such a thing before.  I remember thinking at that moment about the words of Psalm 139,

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

With verse 17, there is another shift – from our thoughts being known by God to God’s thoughts that we can never understand.

¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts,^[a] God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.

Most of us want a God we can comprehend and explain.  Few of us are comfortable with being able to say, “I have no idea what God is up to and I can’t explain God.”  But the Psalmist is very comfortable with that – because comfortable with it or not, like it or not – God is a God we cannot comprehend.

Who can fathom the Spirit of the LORD, or instruct the LORD as his counselor? Isaiah 40:13

"Who has known the mind of the Lord?  Romans 11:34

"Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ. I Corithians 2:16

Now in verse 19, we glimpse the humanity of the psalmist.

¹⁹ If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
    Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
²⁰ They speak of you with evil intent;
    your adversaries misuse your name.
²¹ Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
    and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
²² I have nothing but hatred for them;
    I count them my enemies.

These words sound like a vengeful prayer. 

Verse 22, “I have nothing but hatred for them,” is rendered in the RSV as “I have nothing but perfect hatred for them.”

Powerful and strong words, but the theme here is a prayer in which God would set the world right – the elimination of evil.

Finally, the psalm closes with these words:

²³ Search me, God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

This brings the prayer to a full circle.  The one who begins

You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me,

Now moves to the request, “Search me, God.”

There is not a desire to flee from the hound of heaven who knows us so well, but to be nurtured, forgiven and loved by the God who created us.