WHAT KIND OF GOD DO YOU BELIEVE IN?

[1] GOD KNOWS ME (vv. 1-6)

[2] GOD’S WITH ME (vv. 7-12)

A LOVE THAT WILL NOT LET US GO

THE ‘HOUND OF HEAVEN’ PURSUES US

[3] GOD MADE ME (vv. 13-18)

OUR CREATOR CAN MAKE DEMANDS ON US

RELEVANCE TO THE ABORTION DEBATE

[4] GOD UNDERSTANDS ME (vv. 19-24)

HE EVEN ACCEPTS MY ANGER!

‘SEARCH ME, O GOD, AND KNOW MY HEART;

TEST ME AND KNOW MY THOUGHTS.

SEE IF THERE IS ANY WICKED WAY IN ME,

AND LEAD ME IN THE WAY EVERLASTING.’

GOD IS… WHO YOU NEED

PSALM 139

‘God’ as described by an eight yr old boy

What kind of God do you believe in? (pause) What’s he like? (pause) What words would you use to describe him? (pause) Where did you get those ideas about God…? (pause)

Do you feel differently about God when you feel good about yourself – or others? When you’re down on yourself, what kind of God is he then? When I talk to people who are depressed, for example, God seems a million miles away.

A young man once told his pastor he didn’t believe in God anymore. The pastor asked him to describe the kind of God he didn’t believe in. When the young fellow finished, the pastor said, ‘Well that makes two of us. I don’t believe in that kind of God either!’

Well, we’re going to study one person’s view of God this morning – in Psalm 139. David felt good about some things in his life, and angry about other things – and felt free to tell it all to his God…

Any small thoughts we may have of God are magnificently transcended by this psalm: yet for all its height and depth it’s intensely personal from beginning to end. It’s memorable for its comprehension of the omniscience of God, but also for the relentless love of God, a love that pursues the sinner to the last nook and cranny of our hiding place.

Let’s have a good look at it. There are four stanzas.

The first stanza reminds me that God knows me [1-6] and he knows me personally. And not only that but He is personally interested in me, to such a degree that as I read these verses I have the feeling that there are only two people in the universe God and me. So intimate is this relationship for the psalmist that he writes ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.’

But the writer has made an even more wonderful discovery about God – not only does he know me but God is with me [7-12]. And he wants me to know this so much that he actually pursues me. George Matheson, forsaken by his fiancee, because of his blindness came in his bitterness to Jesus in whom he found a Love that would never forsake him and wrote the hymn ‘O love that wilt not let me go’. In this psalm we encounter a stubborn, jealous, pursuing God who will not let us go. We may lose our hold on him, but he does not lose his hold on us. We may turn our backs on him, but he doesn’t go away. We may run and hide from him but he tracks us down. The psalmist confesses this in the prayer of these verses – ‘Where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your presence?’

Paul Tillich in his book ‘The Shaking of the Foundations’ says, ‘A person who has never tried to flee God has never experienced the God who is really God’. He goes on to say ‘There is no reason to flee from a god who is the perfect picture of everything that is good in humans …a god who is nothing more than a benevolent father, a father who guarantees our immortality and final happiness’. But a JUST God, Tillich suggests, a God who knows things about us that we ourselves cannot face, is a God whom we actually hate. Tillich tells us that Martin Luther was terribly shocked when he recognised within himself a hatred for the all-knowing God and a desire to escape him. But Luther knew that he could no more escape God than he could himself, and that the God whom he wanted to escape was the Ground and Depth of his own being.

In fact we, we who are Christians, try to hide from God. We so often cover up or deny our wrong doing, the pain we cause others, the sharp tongue and the self centredness rather than letting God deal with it. We try to hide from him in the things of life, things we name ‘heavenly’, wonderful things like human love, professional success and affluence and pleasure – things that yield such a measure of personal fulfillment and happiness that they make God seem superfluous,

There was an OT prophet who told his people that God always speaks in two ways; first he speaks in words and then if we refuse to listen he speaks in events.

You may recall Francis Thompson’s poem ‘The Hound of Heaven’ which is actually a modern version of the 139th Psalm. Thompson was a fugitive from God. Brought up in a religious home, he studied for the priesthood, then for medecine, each time failing because of laziness and lack of interest. Narcotics almost destroyed him. He lost himself in London, picking up jobs like boot cleaning, selling matches, holding horses, anything for a few pennies to buy his ‘fix’. The only decent thing left in his life was a love for poetry. He wrote a few poems and on an impulse sent them to an editor and publisher – Wilfred Meynell, who saw signs of genius in them. Meynell and his wife searched out the poet and drew him from his pitiable surroundings. From that wretched condition Thompson was rescued for English literature and for the enrichment of the world by two people in whom he recognised the love of God. He came to see that even though he had made his bed in the hell of misery and the darkness of despair, even though he had secluded himself from others and fled to the limits of loneliness he could not escape the pursuing love of God. Here’s his testimony.

‘I fled him, down the nights and down the days; I fled him, down the arches of the years; I fled him, down the labrinthine ways Of my mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from him, and under running laughter…

From those strong feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy They beat – and a voice beat More instant than the feet- ‘All things betray thee, who betrayest me’

But not only does God know me, and is with me, but he made me [13-18]. The psalmist is moved by the realisation that God has a peculiar claim upon him, because the creator always has a right to make demands on the created thing. He comes to see that he is precious in God’s sight because of the marvelous way he was created, a special object of divine love.

Not only has God formed us, he has ransomed us from – from sin, from death, at unbelievable cost: the death of his Son. His great love for us should elicit from us the strongest love imaginable in return. And his purpose in creating us should challenge a devotion such as the world has not seen. He has a right to demand our best love and devotion by right of creation, by right of redemption and by reason of his great love for us.

So we are seeing that this Psalm is intensely personal. Can any of us read it without suspecting that the Psalmist’s experience is just like our own? Much of our life is an attempt through new knowledge and agnosticism, through constant activity and incessant noise, through being driven to make a name for ourselves, through overworking in order to be a ‘success’, all this to escape God who knows us better than we know ourselves. But we cannot escape him since he has known us since before we were born. So the Psalmist prays:- ‘For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb’. This all knowing God is not to be cursed and hidden from, he is to be praised:- ‘I praise you , for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well’.

By the way, this Psalm is very relevant to the debate about abortion. God, says the psalmist, is most concerned about each one of us, not just after we were born, but before. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about that…

Finally God understands me [19-24]. The abrupt change here is disturbing, but its wholly Biblical in its realism.

Most of us have been brought up to believe that we should always say ‘nice/kind’ things to others. Can you remember your mother/father saying something like ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything!?’

I’m suggesting, however, on the basis of this psalm, that it’s OK sometimes NOT to say nice, kind things. This psalmist was MAD, very mad, and he felt free to express this to God…

It’s probably a form of confession, because he then in full confidence asks God to search him and test him. The God of our experience is not like a police inspector, tracking down the escaped convict in order to make an arrest. Our God is like a shepherd who leaves the rest of his flock while he goes serching for a single stray, and when he finds the lost sheep he cradles it tenderly in his arms and brings it back to the warmth and safety of the fold. Our God is like a father who does not wait for the return of the prodigal but follows the rebellious one into the far country because he loves that child and wants him at home, the child of his love again. Our God brings us not accusation but forgiveness, not imprisonment but freedom, not death but life – and this because he loves us with a greater love than we can ever imagine. In his prayer the Psalmists awakens to this love: ‘ [17] ‘How precious are your thoughts to me O God! How vast is the sum of them. I try to count them – they are more than the sand, I come to the end – I am still with you’.

It is inevitable that this pursuing God, who knows us better than we know ourselves should at a point in history thrust himself into our human situation and come where we are, loving us even when we hound him to a terrible death, and still loving he breaks down all the barriers, crying to us from the cross ‘You can do with me what you like; you can bruise my flesh and take my life but you cannot stop me from being what I am, the Father who loves you and will not let you go…

(Rev. Jan Croucher)