God's Knowledge: Our Anxiety Series

INTRODUCTION

• SLIDE #1

• Do you have someone in your life who knows you to your core? They know you inside and out. They can tell you what you are thinking, they can maybe even finish your sentence.

• We call this intimacy.

• Many are so afraid to allow intimacy to happen.

• Have you had someone in your life that knew you in that way, but then burned you?

• When we are burned enough in life, we tend to go into protection mode. When we are in protection mode, we do our best to not allow anyone to get too close to us because we are afraid of being hurt again.

• One of the results of shutting down is that we become lonely and isolated.

• When things in life hit us, anxiety can overwhelm us because we feel that we have no one to turn to or nowhere to go.

• I have some good news for you today.

• You do not have to feel alone, you do not have to allow anxiety to rule your life because you have someone in your life who knows you better than you know yourself.

• You have someone in your life with whom you can give your anxieties.

• You have someone in your life who knows you and loves you in spite of knowing you.

• You do not have to, nor can you hide anything from Him.

• Knowing this is both comforting as well as intimidating.

• It is a comfort to know there is someone who is there for you, but it is also a bit overwhelming to know that someone knows you better than you know yourself.

• We also need to know that the one who knows you in this manner will never burn you or hurt you.

• As we land in week two of our series, Deliverance, Psalms of Thanksgiving, we can see that we can be thankful that when we feel alone, we have a God who knows us intimately and sees us regularly.

• In this psalm, David mixes wisdom and praise to describe specific attributes of God that convey how He relates to humankind on an intimate level.

• God’s knowledge is from far off, yet His knowledge is also deeply personal.

• God has a deep and unending capacity to know us fully; therefore, we should be thankful that He never misunderstands us or leaves us alone.

• When we go through times of confusion, struggling to know how to deal with our emotions, or how to overcome our negative thoughts and habits, we can surrender and thank God for knowing when we don’t.

• God's intimate knowledge of us can bring profound relief amid anxiety, stress, and self-deprecating thoughts.

• Let’s begin with verses 1-2 of our passage.

• SLIDE #2

• Psalm 139:1–2 (CSB) — 1 LORD, you have searched me and known me. 2 You know when I sit down and when I stand up; you understand my thoughts from far away.

• SLIDE #3

SERMON

I. God’s knowledge understands me.

• David could find comfort in his time of anxiety by knowing that God’s knowledge allowed God to UNDERSTAND him.

• In the same way, you can take comfort in the fact that God understands YOU!

• I have dealt with many people throughout my life who wanted nothing more than to be understood.

• This is a cry out from someone who wants to be KNOWN, who wants to be relevant.

• David took comfort in knowing that to God, David MATTERED!

• If you are going to know someone, it takes effort.

• Have you been around folks who have been with someone for years, yet knew very little about the other person?

• Maybe this is you? Perhaps you have been around someone for a long time, yet know little about them, or perhaps you are the one who knows everything about the other person, yet they have never put forth the effort to get to know you?

• That hurts. That scenario happens when a person is too absorbed in themselves to take the time to get to know you.

• David said that YOU HAVE SEARCHED ME AND KNOWN ME.

• The word SEARCH means to consider in detail and subject to an analysis to discover essential features or meaning.

• It can mean to search out in a cross-examination.

• This word implies a great effort put forth to get at the truth of the matter.

• Because of the effort to search David, God knows David.

• The word used for KNOWN means to become familiar with something through experience. It indicates there is nothing that God does not know about David.