God Made Us Series

“GOD MADE US”

Psalm 139:13-24

Have you ever seen a potter fashion a piece of pottery? It’s a fascinating thing to see. He puts this lump of clay on a circular table and he starts the table spinning. And looking at that soggy piece of mud, you have no idea of what it will eventually turn out to be. But the potter can see in his mind’s eye what the end product will look like. So he begins to work the clay. Slowly but surely that mass of clay starts to take shape. The table spins around and his hands move skillfully up and down, inside and out, until eventually you see the shape of a piece of pottery.

And once the potter is satisfied with the shape, then he takes the piece of pottery and puts it in a kiln (an oven). It’s quite an interesting process. Two of my children took pottery in high school, and I’ve brought some of their work to church this morning. I’ve also brought another piece of pottery that was given to us when we left our church in Colorado Springs. This was made by Ed Shrock and has on it one of my favorite verses, Psalm 32:8.

Why do I bring this to church today? Is this show and tell Sunday and I didn’t’ tell you?  No, I brought these in because the Bible likens God to a potter. And our lives to a lump of clay. That’s not very flattering, is it? But it’s a clear picture of how things are.

God fashions each one of use just exactly as He pleases for His own perfect purposes...the purposes He has planned for our lives.

Now, that bothers some people. Maybe it bothers you. Some people resist it and rebel against the God who made them.

They don’t like the way He did His job. They would like for Him to have done it differently. They want to be something other than what they are. Or somebody other than who they are.

And, as a result, they are absolutely miserable. And there doesn’t seem to be anything they can do to change that. Even an extreme makeover doesn’t help too much. They are in bondage.

And the only way they will be able to be free from that bondage is to understand this truth of the potter and the clay.

Psalm 139 is a good place to begin to understand more about God who is the potter. This Psalm is all about God!

(Recap here) In the first six verses (139:1-6), we learned that God knows us. He is omniscient. He is All-Knowing. He knows everything! He knows absolutely everything about us down to the very tiniest details of our lives. He knows everything.

In the next six verses (139:7-12), we learned that God is always with us. He is omnipresent. He is holy present everywhere all at the same time. And so He’s always with us, wherever we go.

He is there with us. He goes with us.

Some might be thinking, “Well, this is all fine and good. These are nice thoughts. But how do we know they are true?”

David answers by saying, “We know they are true because God made us. Only a God who made us can know us so completely and thoroughly and want to be with us all the time.”

These truths lead us to the next aspect of God, His omnipotence. He is All-Powerful. So after talking about God’s omniscience, and God’s omnipresence, now we look at God’s omnipotence.

And one particular aspect of His omnipotence...and that is His power in creating each one of us. He made us! He made us personally and individually. God made us! That’s the major theme of the rest of Psalm 139 (139:13-24).

David begins by simply stating the fact....

I. THE SOURCE OF OUR BEING (v. 13)

The source of our being: we were made by God.

Psalm 139:13

“For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Notice the first word of v. 13 “For...” This introduces a reason... A reason why God knows us and why God is with us.

How do we know God is All-Knowing? How do we know God is always with us?

Because He made us.

Because He created us.

Because He formed us.

“...inmost being...” is actually the Hebrew word for “kidneys.”

The Hebrews considered the kidneys to be the seat of the emotions and the will. But that’s not all God did, He also “knit me together in my mother’s womb.” “Knit” can also mean “to cover, or to weave together.” David is saying that God actually wove us together inside our mother’s womb. Our lives are like a tapestry, with every muscle, tendon, nerve, artery, vein, capillary, and everything else all interwoven together. And God was the artist that created the tapestry. While we were but embryos in our mother’s womb, God was creating us, weaving us together to create a masterpiece.