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The 139th Psalm. O Lord, You have searched me, and You know me.! You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, You know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in behind and before.
You have laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. Too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, You are there. If I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me.
Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to You.
The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You. For You created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. 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.
Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with You. If only You would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, You bloodthirsty men! They speak of You with evil intent. Your adversaries misuse Your name. Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against You?
I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me, and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
In all the wars that we have fought in our nation's history of 235 years, the total number of American lives lost in war is 1.3 million.
But since our Supreme Court made abortion legal in 1973, 50 million babies have been killed in the womb in our country.
And so if war is horrific because of the wanton loss of life, what is the mass murder of 50 million in 37 years?
Psalm 139 tells us that whatever man thinks about life in the womb, God cares deeply about it. And though this psalm was not written for Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, what it says could not be more pointed in exposing the wickedness of abortion in our land.
So we turn again to Psalm 139. And as we do, we're struck with two things, as we saw the big picture last week. Just how wonderful God is, and how intimately, personally involved He is with us.
Last week, we considered two wonders of God. His omniscience, and His omnipresence. But it's not just that God knows all things, but that you know me.
The personal application of it. And it's not just that God is everywhere, but that there is no place where I can go to escape from your presence.
And that causes David to break out in worship. Verse 6, he says, Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. Too lofty for me to attain.
Now we're going to go on this morning to see two more wonders of God. God creating, and God ordaining. But again, it's not just that God created all things, but that you created me.
And it's not just that God ordains all things that ever happen, but that all the days ordained for me were written in your book. We see the personal, intimate involvement of God, this wonderful being, with us.
And it causes wonder. May it move us to worship again this morning. Now the first wonder of God then today is God creating. God creating.
We pick up the account in verse 13, where David continues talking to God. And the first thing I notice is that David is not at all at a loss for how he came into being.
He knows he is the creation of God. For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb.
You created me. I am one of your wonderful works. I know that full well, verse 14 says.
Now David didn't have the higher education that many enjoy today. But on this point, he knows more than most 21st century scientists.
God made me. Kids, you know that answer from your catechism, don't you? And if you know that, you know more than some professors in our universities.
God made me. David knows that. And this text tells me that I am just as much a creation of God as our first parents were.
Now Adam had no mother. So when God made him, he made him out of the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life. And Eve had no mother. So when God made Eve, he made her from a rib in Adam's side.
But after that, God made all the rest of us in our mother's wombs. You made me.
Notice the graphic language at the end of verse 13. You knit me together in my mother's womb. Now we think immediately of Grandma with her yarn and knitting needles and she's working feverishly on that afghan.
A richly ornamented blanket. Or the word could mean weaving together as well as knitting together. And so we go into the weaver's workshop and there's the giant loom and the weaver working over it.
There's different colored threads that are starting to be woven together in intricate designs and patterns. It's all thought out.
Each thread in its exact place according to the plan. Now, this is poetic language. These are word pictures that David uses about God creating him in his mother's womb.
But though they are word pictures, they speak of concrete realities. This isn't just poetry that God made us in our mother's womb.
What's poetry is that he wove us and knitted us like we would see grandma or a weaver doing. But the reality is is that he made us in our mother's womb.
Every pregnant womb is God's workshop. You've seen signs along the highway, men at work. And sure enough, there they are with their shovels and their equipment.
And here David posts a sign over every pregnant womb. God at work. God at work.
He's in there. He's working there by his power and wisdom. He's there knitting and weaving, not with thread or yarn, but with DNA, with cells.
And he's knitting together bones and muscles and organs and arteries and nerves and skin. And he's weaving it all together in an amazing interdependence.
so that one system after another all works together in a fascinating unity. God created me.
Now the next reality under this heading of God creating is that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. God created me. Now all of creation is full of God's wonders.
Things that make you full of wonder when you see it. That make you stand in awe and gawk and almost in disbelief at what you're seeing.
You can't take it in. Some have tried to compile the seven greatest wonders of the natural world. The Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, Victoria Falls, Mount Everest.
These are some of the favorites often found on that list. And you can travel many miles all over the globe to see these wonders of God's creation and they fill you full of wonder but the greatest wonder of all is what you carry around with you every day.
Your own body. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Full of wonder you are.
That my soul knows right well, David says. Your standing miracle or a conglomeration of miracles. An amazing wonder.
And the more understood it is, the more wonderful it is. Now David never saw Victoria Falls. He never saw the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest.
But the wonderful work that took his breath away and filled him with awe was his own body. And when he thought of it and saw it he said, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Do we appreciate the wonders of the body that God made for us? There is your heart. And it is beating, isn't it? About 100,000 times a day.
That translates into about two and a half billion times in 70 years. And it is pumping 2,500 gallons of blood a day.
Kids, that is enough to fill up your bathtub 40 times every day. Every day your heart is doing that work. Could man design such a pump?
Self-powered, self-maintaining, no oil changes, grease jobs for 70 years? Now you've only got about a gallon and a half of blood.
But your heart is pumping that gallon and a half all throughout your body. through a highway system of blood vessels. And it keeps circulating that blood throughout your body.
And if your blood vessels were laid out end to end in one long line, how far would they reach? All the way to South Bend? To Chicago?
To California? Oh, you must keep going. 60,000 miles. You could circle the globe twice and go another third around.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made. There's your immune system and two main components of it are the white blood cells and the antibodies that circulate in the bloodstream.
Again, without the bloodstream and the heart pumping them around, they couldn't get to the places in your body where they need to be. And so when an antigen invades the body, one of those bad guys, bacteria that's unhealthy and some virus or fungus or parasite, a specific antibody is produced in your lymph nodes or spleen.
And that antibody goes out and finds the intruder. And he either destroys it himself or marks it. Marks it for the white blood cell to come along and swallow it up and destroy it.
And all of this is happening in our bodies without us even thinking about it. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Some of you children like to play with Legos.
Have you seen Legoland where you see these huge animals, life-size and even some bigger than life-size made out of thousands of little Legos? You know, our body is made out of many little parts.
In fact, they tell us that the average body is made out of 75 trillion parts, cells. 75 trillion cells, plus or minus 25 trillion, according to who's doing the estimates.
And these little cells are constantly replacing themselves. so that especially in youth, your bones replace themselves every year.
Kids, that elbow isn't the same elbow you had last year. It's a new one. The old one has been replaced with new bone cells and over a period of 10 years, all of our body parts have replaced themselves.
It's a new me. Only nerve cells and brain cells are never replaced, so don't waste them, kids. And stored within the nucleus of every one of those 75 trillion cells is your body's DNA, the genetic blueprint for your entire body.
And the DNA is arranged on strands that look like a winding staircase or an Arby's curly fry. And there's all the genetic information for making your body, for every one of those cells telling it what to be, what to do.
And the information contained within each one of those curly fries, DNA strand, if it was written out, they estimate it could fill 1,600 page books.
Now, a nerve cell may operate according to the instructions from volume 10, while a kidney cell may operate according to the instructions according to volume 683.
But both cells have all the volumes in them. Indeed, every single one of those 75 trillion cells has the whole library of genetic information for every cell in your body.
Now, that DNA strand in each cell is so thin that all those strands in my body could fit into an ice cube.
But if you stretch the curly Q strand and line all of those DNA strands up end for end, well, you would not just be circling the earth, folks.
You would head to the sun and back. 93 million miles there and 93 million miles back.
And then you would need to turn around and go right back over 400 times to the sun and back. 74 billion miles of DNA all neatly tucked into your body as you sit there and telling each cell what it's to be and what it's to do.
Indeed, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And that's just the body. You add to it the soul because the body without the soul and the spirit is dead.
But God made us soul-body creatures and the soul is that part that distinguishes us from the animals, that makes us different from the animals, that bears the image of God.
And how does God keep soul and body together? Wonders, everything there is to go wrong in our bodies, the wonder is that we're still alive, that we live so long as we do.
Amazing precision. And so what is our response? What is our response to being so fearfully and wonderfully made by God?
Notice David's response, I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. That's our response. there's no mention here of father and mother, especially of mother nature.
He goes to the first source, to the maker, the creative weaver himself and says, I praise you. Your works are wonderful. And if the creation is so wonderful, what must the creator be like?
I praise you. I praise you. God is to be praised for his wonderful works. It's only right that we praise him.
It's the rent that he requires of all the subjects to acknowledge him as the creator and to thank him. And it's here that we see the wickedness of Darwin's theory of evolution because it takes the divine weaver out of his workshop.
Oh, there's the loom and there's the colored threads and the tools, but there's no designer in there. There's no weaver, no craftsman, just lots of time and random chance to get all 75 trillion cells in the right place working together.
It's a refusal to acknowledge the all-wise powerful weaver. It's a refusal to give God his praise. The only fitting response to his creative work of us is to praise him and we will not.
Men will not praise him. That's what Darwinian evolution teaches us. It's wrong, folks. It's wicked that God is not being praised for creating our bodies.
It's robbery. If you spent your whole life coming up with a way to take salt water and to turn it into fresh drinking water and someone came along and claimed, took all the credit for it, well, that would be thievery.
And that's what humanistic evolution is doing. Time and chance are getting the credit and praise is being stolen from God and given to another.
And according to Romans 1, that's the greatest rip-off ever, that men neither glorify God for his creation nor give thanks to him for it.
Now, we don't know how much David knew about the body. I've got a suspicion he knew a little bit more than some wild man in a cave somewhere that we might have portrayed of pre-moderns.
But David knew enough to cause him to drop in wonder, love, and praise to his creator. I mean, just looking at your hand, how does it do that?
How does it do what I want it to do, when I want it to do? How's this signal getting to it? And fearfully and wonderfully may David knew enough to be moved to praise and folks, if he with his limited knowledge of anatomy was led to praise God, how much more should we praise him?
With all that we know about the body, but oh, when our increased knowledge of God leads us away from praising him, the Bible says we have ceased to be wise and we have become fools.
PhDs who are fools. Oh, but let's leave them there. I want to ask you, when's the last time you praised God for making your body?
When's the last time you thought, God, you are wonderful? Maybe it was when you were last sick, because that's when you last realized how wonderful it is to have this body working correctly so much of the time.
God's life. God's life. God's life. God's life. It's a wonder we too rarely think about and praise God for, and David's words would be a corrective to us here. Kids, as you study biology and science, perhaps using textbooks where God is noticeably absent, be sure to give God his praise.
and do it in the class. Do it where God's wonders are being discovered.
And should not all of us have an interest in God's wonders? And should not some of you go further and study these wonders of the body and give God his praise at every discovery?
And should our voices of praise not be heard in a world trying its best to forget its creator? Psalm 139 surely highlights the wickedness of evolution.
But it also highlights the wickedness of abortion. Because abortion goes right into the divine workshop in the womb and it tears the masterpiece being made right off the loom.
It cuts it in pieces. It destroys it with chemicals. It vacuums and trashes it as rubbish. It shows no regard for the master craftsman or for his masterpiece that he is fearfully and wonderfully weaving together in his own image.
The life that he has given to it at conception. Pro-abortionists call it a woman's right. life. What about God's rights?
What right have we to go into the weaver's workshop and to tear his work out of his hands?
Or it's called a woman's choice. And God calls it murder. The taking of life that he has given in an unlawful way.
It's irreverence for God. It's saying I don't care about the maker. I don't care about the one weaving. Irreverence for God. Now, can you connect the dots between evolution and abortion?
Can you see the connection? if there's nothing special about this life in the womb? If it's not God's special creation made in his image but merely the product of time and chance, well, then, destroying it's no big deal.
It's just a blob of random cells that have got together. You can't offend time and chance. And so, evolution takes God out of the workshop.
And then, abortion marches in and destroys his handiwork. So, one, two. It's a working together. Because if the womb is not God's workshop in which he is making his creatures wonderfully and fearfully, then we can march in and do whatever we want.
And that's what is going on in our country. Girls and women not wanting the inconvenience of a baby. Nervous mothers and boyfriends not wanting the embarrassment of a baby.
Abortionist doctors wanting the money. Politicians wanting the votes. But no one wanting to bow before the master craftsman as he is making his wonderful creature.
Shame on the United States of America for declaring open season for all nine months while the baby is in the womb.
The very protective place where God has assigned it to be safe. The sanctuary of safety has become a bloodbath.
And should not I judge them for this, declares the Lord, God have mercy upon our land. Let's remember where we're at here in this song.
What is David telling us? He's telling us God is wonderful. He's wonderful in his knowledge. He's wonderful in his presence everywhere. And here he's underscoring further the wonder of God's omniscience and omnipresence.
verse 15. He's saying, you know me and and your knowledge of me didn't start at birth. No, verse 15. My frame was not hidden from you when I was in the secret place, when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
That's just poetic language again for the secret place of the womb. It's as dark and concealed as the depths of the earth. I was made there, woven together there outside of the view of men, but not hidden from you.
For your eyes saw my unformed body. Even there, your eyes saw my unformed body. Even while it's still unformed, it hasn't come together altogether yet.
It's still on the loom, still being woven. your eyes saw my unformed body. But it's not just that you saw me, but that you were present with me.
Of course you saw me because you are the skilled craftsman who was making me and knitting me together in my mother's womb. You were present there in your wisdom and power, weaving me together in every detail of my being.
And so we learn from this psalm that from the beginning of life at conception, God has been intimately and actively involved with us.
Even during those nine months as a fetus in the secrecy of our mother's womb, you know, when an artist works, he or she often works in the privacy of their workshop.
And then only after the work of art is done do they unveil it and bring it into public view. That's what God is doing. In the secrecy of the womb, in the darkness concealed womb, he's working.
And at the end of the nine months, he unveils and brings it out for all to appreciate his work of art. abortion kills one with whom God is intimately and actively involved.
Now, the next wonder of God in this psalm is God ordaining, and we're not going to have time to spend, say much about this. David is in wonder and all about it.
Verse 16, all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Now, this speaks of God's extensive planning and mapping out of our lives, indeed of every day of our lives before even one of them came to be.
His thoughts of us actually predate our existence in the womb. Before we had day one, he had them all planned out. It takes us back into eternity past, before the creation of time when he decreed all things that would be, and he decreed every day, for me.
Not only the number of my days, yes, he limits the number of our days, he sets those limits, but also everything that happens in those days, as Ephesians 1.11 says, for we have been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.
Everything in every day is being worked out according to his predestined plan. God ordaining all my days. What's the proper response for that?
Well, we'll look at three responses. Number one, gladly overwhelmed with God's interest in me and thoughts of me. Verses 17 and 18, how precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. So David's lost in wonder at the number of thoughts God has about him.
O Lord, it's one thing for me to think about you. Thou my best thought by day or by night. But what is this for you, the Almighty, to think about me?
You who stooped down, who is so exalted over all that you have to stoop just to see what's going on in the heavens and the earth? How low must you stoop to notice and to think of me?
And David says, he thinks about me. This vast mind thinks about me and he thinks about me a lot. Consider the number of his thoughts.
I mean, just from creating you, think how much God thought of you. your whole DNA structure. Nobody else has one like yours. God put a lot of thought into that for you.
It determines the color of your eyes and perhaps your propensity to all sorts of things, of diseases, but it's all planned by him in the mind of God as he thought about you and made everything, every detail of your body.
And then how many thoughts would we have to add on to that if he's been planning all of your days before one of them came to be, where you would live, the parents you'd have, the brothers and sisters you'd have, where you'd go to school, the job you'd get, the spouse you'd marry, the children you've had, the church you'd worship at, all of it.
every detail of every day of your life. He's thinking about you now. He was thinking of you then. He was choosing you, choosing to give you eternal life.
He was thinking of all your sins and imputing them onto his son at Calvary. And he was planning when he would bring you to new birth by the Holy Spirit, how you would hear the gospel and believe.
he was thinking loving thoughts of you even while your back was turned to him racing towards hell. And now as his child, how many are his thoughts of you each and every day thinking about you, about how much you can take, weighing out your every temptation, no more than that.
Thinking about every need you have and how he's going to meet it. Thinking of your every fear and of how he's going to comfort and encourage you.
Considering all your thoughts, all your words, all your ways, even your rising and sitting. He's thinking about you that much.
He's familiar with all your ways. And he's planning for all your days. Folks, that reaches into eternity. And that being the case, it's no exaggeration that David says that your thoughts about me cannot be numbered.
They're infinite. When I awake, I'm still with you. Though I've been sleeping, you haven't. Though while I'm asleep, I'm no longer thinking about you. When I wake up, I'm still with you.
You're still thinking of me. You've not dozed off. You've not daydreamed. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God. You know, not everyone is glad to be the object of God's continual thoughts.
But David is so happy about this. How precious is this to me, O God, that you think this much about me.
However unwelcome to others, it's a welcome thought to David. Not something dreaded, but precious that God should think so much of me. folks, in Christ, God's omniscience becomes a friend.
Our response, glad, glad that God is so interested in us and in awe of his many thoughts about us.
But secondly, we must take God's side in the contest between good and evil. David's been floating into the heavens thinking about God and all that he knows and everywhere he is and his mind's been lifted to the heavens and suddenly his mind comes crashing back to the earth where there's wicked evil men and he says, O God, you know them just as you know me and O that you would rid the earth of them.
And he's thinking about God's enemies. enemies. These wicked bloodthirsty men who speak evil about you O Lord and misuse your name who hate you and rise up against you.
O God, I'm not with them. I'm not falling. These are no companions for me. Away with them. Be far from me, he says.
I'm tired of them. He longs for God's total victory over them. You see, David views the world from the Bible's worldview of absolutes.
There are only two sides in the world, folks. There's God's side and Satan's side. There's good and there's evil. Now, which side are you on?
Those who are for him, those who are against him. Jesus says as much in Luke 11, he who is not with me is against me and he who does not gather with me scatters.
You're either for me or against me. There's no neutrality in the world. David says I'm with you, God. I'm not with them. I'm on your side and that means I want to see your victory over every one of your enemies.
Are they your enemy then they're mine. No one who truly loves righteousness unless they also hate wickedness.
For what fellowship does light have with darkness? And so David takes God's side in the contest between good and evil and so must we. But then rushing on to the last response, David is not merely taking aim at the evil out there and these evil wicked men, but he's also aware that that evil also finds its way inside of him.
And so often that evil goes undetected inside of us and so he responds to this wonderful God who knows all things.
Search me oh God and know my heart. You see the reality of verse one is now welcomed and invited. The reality is oh Lord you have searched me you do know me.
And now David makes that his prayer. Oh searcher of hearts I can't even know myself. Apart from your searching eye.
I don't want any sin left undiscovered and unknown so search me and try me and show me what you see. Point out to me my wrong thoughts, my anxious thoughts, my wrong motives, my attitudes of heart, my offensive ways.
Any offensive way David sees that all sin is offensive to God. He doesn't want anything in him that's offensive to God. Show it to me Lord.
So it's easy to look out at those who are taking the lives of the unborn to sit in judgment upon them. But do I hate sin and evil here as much as I hate it out there?
That's the test of true belief. Is my concern for the current health care legislation more driven by my concern for my pocket book than for the concern for the unborn?
Which is it? Searcher of hearts, search me and try me and show me what you see. How much I am motivated by greed and self and wanting to keep my image untarnished and wanting my convenience.
Yes, every sin I see out there. Oh, Lord, search me and try me and show me what you see that I might repent of it. I might be done with anything offensive in my heart and lead me in the way everlasting.
everlasting. There's only two ways, kids. There's only two sides. There's only two ways. There's the way of the wicked that shall perish and there's the way that leads to everlasting life.
And the New Testament reveals that way is Jesus Christ. He's the gate onto the way. He is the way and he is the end. Blessed Lord, take me by the hand and lead me in the way everlasting.
That's his cry. for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. So whoever you are, whatever you've done, will you welcome God's all-searching eye, his x-ray vision?
Will you ask him, will you invite him to show you what he sees? You know in Christ we can do that. We have an answer for every sin he uncovers.
maybe someone here had an abortion. Do you know the blood of Jesus cleanses from every sin?
What a precious savior. Where will you find grace like this? That the very one who is offended at our behalf and over our actions is the one who gives up his own son to crush him under eternal wrath, infinite wrath, to give to him the punishment that we and our offensive ways deserve.
What grace is this? Receive his offer. He's offering you full and free forgiveness on the spot. Come and receive Christ. Blessed Jesus.
What a gospel we have for sinners. what a gospel we have for saints. Come and search me. Come and try me. And come and wash me and cleanse me and lead me in the way everlasting.
Lord, we thank you for your word, for the pages of scripture that correct our small thoughts of you and fill us with large views of you. Thank you for Psalm 139.
Thank you for the realities that are true in it. That you, O God, are this wonderful, all-knowing, everywhere present God in the womb, ordaining all of our days and so intimately and personally involved with every single one of us.
Forgive us for our sins. Forgive us that our response has not been to praise and worship and offer ourselves up to you to take your side in this battle to open ourselves to your searching eye and long for every offensive way to be gone.
Wash us and cleanse us and start that revival that this nation needs in us. Fill us with a sense of the grace that we have received in Christ that will make us love every person that we meet, even those who are disregarding you that would long to see them come to know the joy and the forgiveness that we have found in Christ.
Come and have mercy upon our land. Turn us and we will be turned. Help us to lift up our voice for the unborn who cannot speak.
Bless the monies that we give today. Save lives, but Lord, we pray that these lives made in your image might come to know you and live for you and praise you themselves.
Hear us then and do immeasurably more than all we've asked or even could imagine through your power at work in us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.