Psalm 139

August 01, 2024

1 O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.

2 Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

3 Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

4 For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.

5 Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

11 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

12 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.

14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

17 How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!

18 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.

19 Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.

20 For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.

21 Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?

22 I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

The Point: 

Meditating upon God’s piercing knowledge of every aspect of our existence drives us to more trust, more confession, and more praise.

How do we feel in the recitation of this Psalm? 

We are not lonely. To be known by somebody is the antithesis to loneliness. To be known very well by somebody we love and to be in the very intimate presence of that person gives our life a value that is outside of us. If that other person looks upon us with favor, then we will readily accept their scrutiny with gratitude because we know they know us well. This is how the Psalmist views his relationship with God. David feels God’s right hand over him, under him, and around him. As we participate in this psalm, we feel the comfort and the security of knowing God’s intimate interest in our lives. 

The psalm ends with a call for the destruction of the wicked. To some this may appear as a vindictiveness that suddenly erupts within the psalmist. That cannot be the case here. Rather, we should see the intense love that David has for God and a deep appreciation of His hand in his life. We understand that love must have something of a jealous aspect to it. When we love something, we will desire an end to whatever thing is trying to destroy what we love. That is the nature of love. We cannot possibly approve of that which utterly despises God and His revelation. An intense love by necessity involves an intense hatred as well, especially in this sinful world where the hatred of God is so virulent. 

What does this Psalm say? 

Verses 1-6

First, this psalm consists of a meditation on the knowledge of God. What a difference between our comprehension and God’s. Our knowledge is fleeting, imprecise, and shallow. God’s knowledge is thorough, completely accurate, piercing, and utterly substantial and comprehensive. If this is the case, then God must know us better than we know ourselves. 

God knows you through and through. There is comfort in knowing that somebody knows you. For example, the fact that a spouse or a mother knows you is a blessing because you are known by someone who loves you. This is one who wants the best for you, and in the case of our God, He knows exactly how to obtain the very best for you. 

When Adam fell into sin, he broke relationship with God. He hid behind the trees in the garden, partly out of shame for his own sin and partly out of hatred for God. This is the picture of the natural man. He doesn’t want to know that God knows him and everything that he does. When we come back into relationship with God through Jesus Christ, we gladly accept God’s piercing eye and all-knowing heart, and we desire an amiable relationship with Him once again. Every day we wake up to the reality of God’s presence, and we say with Jacob, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not!”  

God’s knowledge of us is intimate when we are living in covenant with Him through His Son. Unlike the wicked whom God knows afar off (Ps. 138:6), His knowledge of His own children involves a deep and vital concern, a connectedness to their every condition. A Christian father is always far more concerned about the goings-on in the lives of his own sons and daughters than he is with the neighbor’s kids. He’s attuned to their moods, their habits, their relationships, and their perspectives because he has bought into their development. How much more is God connected to His children?   

The whole world pulsates with the life of God. Indeed, He sustains it all by the Word of His power, and He sent His Son to rescue this world from the curse of sin and death. His interest in this world, therefore, is vital, but His interest and knowledge of His own children could not possibly be more intensive than it is. “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me!” 

Verses 7-12

Where shall I go from your presence? The prophet Jonah somehow thought he could escape the presence of God when he sailed the other direction, toward Tarshish (Jon. 1:3). God soundly corrected him for his ignorance and petulance. For most Christians, however, their urgent concern is whether God is present in their darkness. Will we find God in the valley of the shadow of death? When tossed away into a communist prison, will God’s presence be felt? If there is anything we learn from the biographies of Richard Wurmbrand and others in similar situations, it is that God’s presence is very real and thoroughly felt in the worst possible predicaments. There is always a “fourth man in the fire,” when God’s people must face the dragon’s wrath. On the day that 31 men were delivered from a mine in Chile after they were encapsulated in what seemed like a tomb, half a mile underground, for 69 days, they left a carved message in the wall of the mine that read, “God was with us.” Shift foreman Luis Urzua commented to the press, “The devil couldn’t do anything because God was present.”  From the very depths of the earth, the men with faith testified in no uncertain terms that God was there. Many other men and women can also testify to the presence of God under the most excruciatingly difficult circumstances. 

We are hampered by the darkness, but God is not. We are threatened by the devil, by tyrants, by despairing thoughts and stifling emotions, but God is not. His light overwhelms the darkness everywhere and nothing can possibly limit His knowledge and His love for His own.  

Verses 13-16

Nobody knows the watch like the watchmaker. Nobody knows every board, every electrical outlet, and every pipe weld in a home like the contractor who built it. Similarly, nobody knows your personality, your mind, your weaknesses, your strengths, and your physical make up like the One who made you. There is no reason to believe that the Creator is any less intelligent or aware of His creation than the contractor and the watchmaker are of theirs. Certainly, the human frame and soul is far, far more involved than a house or a watch. This Creator doesn’t throw something together haphazardly and then walk away from His creation. 

Verse 14 needs to be on every page of every biology textbook produced. Today, we know 10,000 times more information about the human body than David would have known in 1000 BC. The human eye alone is made up of 2,000,000 moving parts and can detect up to 50,000 shades of gray. It can detect the smallest amounts of light down to a single photon and can work a dynamic range up to 10 billion photons. No camera or computer can focus on everything in its field of view as quickly and immediately as the human eye. Even the anti-Christian evolutionist Charles Darwin admitted the absurdity of his own theory of evolution when he studied the human eye. In his words, “To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” (Emphasis my own.) Such contemplations press us to cry out with the psalmist, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!” 

Verses 15 and 16 underscore the careful planning and intentional purpose God brings into the creation of each person. He records “all of my members,” which speaks of the DNA molecule, as well as all of the other cells, tissues, bones, and organs constituting the human frame. For every human on earth, he has written a code for three billion DNA bases that would fill up three gigabytes of computer memory. That amounts to as much information as would be contained in two-hundred 1,000-page New York City phone directories. 

This passage shows the value in the creation of a child because God’s hand covers the fetus in the womb (vs. 13). If this creative work of God is praiseworthy, if it is defined as marvelous and wonderful (vs. 14), then certainly there must be some tremendous value in the child who is still in his mother’s womb. If the psalmist could speak of “my substance” while “I was made in secret,” this appears as irrefutable proof that the unborn child has personality and personhood. That being the case, aborting a child in its mother’s womb is the murder of a human person. This is the consensus view of 2,000 years of Christian theologians, pastors, and teachers who have studied Holy Scripture. 

Verses 17-18

Now the Psalmist turns from God’s presence and works into a meditation concerning God’s thoughts. As he comes to realize that God is vitally concerned with every aspect of his life and has been since he was formed in his mother’s womb, David expresses both awe and deep appreciation. God’s knowledge is intensive and extensive. He knows everything about everything and everybody. This is the great starting point for all true belief. God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and God’s revelation must never be questioned. Conversely, unbelief begins with the devil’s question to Eve: “Yea, hath God said…?” 

Verses 19-22

Now, the psalm takes what appears to be a strange turn. For eighteen verses, David has expressed His awe and appreciation for God’s omnipresence and omniscience. But here he takes note of the fact that others do not reverence God in this light. This is not altogether unfamiliar to our world. In fact, almost everybody in our society today takes His name in vain. Most of the Western nations have done their utmost to offend God’s law in the most egregious ways. They promote abortion by government funding, by trading baby body parts, and by murdering the child that God is forming in the womb of its mother. They aggressively set themselves against Christ’s church and God’s Word. Should a Christian pastor read certain “politically-incorrect” Bible verses in a public forum, he will be subjected to unmitigated scorn and persecution. This psalm is of great use when confronting the wickedness of a post-Christian, apostate age. 

Therefore, David exclaims, “Surely, God will kill the wicked.” Some will attempt to explain away such hard-edged language. However, we must be careful to uphold these truths. We know that God will slay the wicked either in hellfire or He will crucify the old man on the earth (Rom. 6:6, Col. 3:5). Either way, the wicked will die a most violent death. Did you think that the wicked would continue forever? We must not in any way lessen the impact of these words. 

Nonetheless, the text gets even more difficult. We hear people tell us that we ought to hate the sin and love the sinner, but does that comport with these words here? “Do not I hate them, O Lord, who hate You?” We need to take all of Scripture into account when considering these words. Our Lord Jesus Christ impressed on us the importance of loving our enemies, and doing good to those who despitefully use us (Matt 5:44). There is a difference between God’s enemies and our enemies. In a true sense, we do not know the names and addresses of those who hate God. We are usually fairly well aware of those who despitefully use us, because they have made some contact with us in their treatment of us. But how do we know which thief on the cross is in the process of repentance and looking to Christ for salvation? At any given moment, we have no idea who will bow the knee to Christ and who will not. Thus, the category of those who hate God must be general, and non-specific. 

We say with the Apostle Paul, “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ let him be accursed” (1 Cor. 16:22). To completely reject the Son of God, the gift of salvation, is to declare oneself as an enemy (accursed) of the Father forever.. The hatred we have is a God-oriented jealousy, and it has nothing to do with personal vindictiveness towards somebody who killed our dog or drove their automobile through our backyard fence. There is a form of hatred that is a godly hatred. It must be a derivative of our love for God. It is a “perfect hatred,” as described here in verse 22. 

Verses 23-24

An undue focus on the material contained in the previous few verses will make us run the risk of giving in to Pharisaical pride (Luke 8:11) and judgementalism (Matt. 7:1-3). Therefore, the psalmist quickly balances out these bold declarations with a focus upon his own condition. The “wicked” are not the only ones who have to deal with wickedness. Believers must also deal with the wickedness that lurks in their minds and lives. We are anxious to kill the old man, along with the deeds of the flesh (Rom. 6:6, 8:13). To be anxious for the destruction of the wicked in the world without a primary interest in the slaughter of the old man and the deeds of the flesh in our own lives is gross hypocrisy. Indeed, the dead remnants of the old man are closer to us, and the noxious fumes of this dying flesh more distasteful to us, than anything or anybody else further removed from us.  Of course, God will slay the wicked either in eternal hellfire (where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched), or He will crucify the old man on the earth (Rom. 6:6, Col. 3:5).

This is the perfect spiritual conclusion to the eloquent words this psalm spoke earlier concerning the penetrating knowledge that God has of each of us. Given that God knows us so well, we need Him to search our hearts and reveal any wicked motive, purpose, and thought within us. We need Him to strip back the hypocrisies and deceptive perspectives that keep us from seeing the truth about ourselves. We shudder to think how easily we can deceive ourselves. Without the Holy Spirit clarifying the real me and the real you and convicting us of our sinful condition, there would be no hope for us. We look for divine conviction, and then we rely entirely upon Him for His salvation. “Lead me in the way everlasting.” 

How do we apply this Psalm to our lives? 

If God really does know everything about us, there is no sense in pretending that there is some secret thing about us that He doesn’t see. There is absolutely no hiding anything from God. His eyes are in every place beholding the evil and the good. Fallen man wants to hide from God behind the trees in the garden. He will hide his sin until he can get enough support for that sin from others, and then he “comes out of the closet”—looking for public approval for his sin. True believers, however, won’t allow themselves to do this. They will cry out to God, “Search me oh God; deal with me. Try me. See if there be any wicked way in me.”  

 Christians must defend the lives of children in the womb. Even in the case of an accidental death of a child in the womb, the Bible imposes a fine on the perpetrator (Exod. 21:22ff). The loss of life is treated as a crime. How much more egregious would it be if the child was purposefully dismembered and killed while still residing in his/her mother’s womb? Moreover, certain chemicals used for birth control create hazardous conditions in the womb for the developing fetus by thinning the uterine wall. This is no way to treat a little person whose body is developing according to the purposes of the Maker.  

How does this Psalm teach us to worship God? 

Worship calls for a sensitivity to God’s works and a careful observation of the many complexities and creative nuances built into His creation. We study the human hand or the human eye, and then we burst out in praise, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made!” 

Worship declares open season on all that is wicked and evil. First, we confess our own sin and mortify our sinful flesh. However, we do not stop here. It is appropriate to declare God’s judgment upon the wicked who do not repent as well. In this sense, worship is not confined to being “nice” and “positive” and “inclusive.” Certainly, preachers must be bold and courageous to go after sin within and sin without, individual sin and corporate sin, open sin and hidden sin, big sins and little sins—calling for God’s mercy and cleansing, repentance, and judgment—they must go after all of it. 

Questions:

1. Why was Adam uncomfortable with God’s presence after the fall? 

2. What sorts of believers have testified to God’s very close presence? 

3. How does this psalm speak against abortion (the killing of a child in his/her mother’s womb)? What other verses in the Bible speak against abortion? 

4. What are two ways in which God will kill the wicked?

5. What are the differences between our enemies and God’s enemies? 

5. How do verses 23 and 24 help us to avoid the potential of falling into hypocrisy? 

Family Discussion Questions:

1. Give several examples of how the human body is wonderfully and fearfully made. 

2. Are we to “love the sinner and hate the sin?” How does that comport with Psalm 139?