OPEN: In Robert Wise’s book “Your Churning Place” he tells a story about Burt Lancaster - a famous movie Star who made almost 100 movies between 1939 and 1989. But before he began working in the movies Burt Lancaster was a circus performer - a job he was fortunate to land, considering his less than flawless audition. He was asked to perform on the parallel bars, so he leaped on the bars and began his routine. Because he was nervous, his timing was off, and he spun over the bar falling flat on his face some 10 feet below. He was so humiliated that he immediately leaped back on the bar. As he spun again in the same point, he flipped off and smashed to the ground once more. His tights were torn. He was cut and bleeding, and he was fiercely upset. He leaped back on the bars again, but the 3rd time was even worse because this time he fell on his back.
The agent came over, picked him up, and said "Son, if you promise not to do that again, you’ve got the job!"
APPLY: Burt Lancaster was frustrated.
He just knew he could do the job, but every time he tried he failed.
A lesser man would have given up. But Lancaster was so convinced of his own abilities that he kept at it even when he fell down repeatedly.
Many of the great men and women of the past have approached life in this same fashion.
Henry Ford was broke at age 40, and yet he created the first automobile empire.
Albert Einstein flunked in math and yet he devised some of the most powerful math equations.
One of Great Britain’s greatest admirals – Horatio Nelson – suffered from seasickness.
Helen Keller could not hear nor see - graduated with honors from a famous college.
Abraham Lincoln was well known throughout his life for his failures in business and life and yet he is remembered as one of the greatest presidents of our nation.
These people overcame difficulties because they were convinced they had purpose and value - a purpose and value that their handicaps could not damage or undermine. Abraham Lincoln explained the reason he was driven to accomplish so much in his life:
"Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day. No, no, man was made for immortality."
In Psalm 139, David has arrived at the same conclusion. He’s come to believe that he has been created by God. That he has been fearfully and wondrously made. He realizes that God had “knit him together”.
I can visualize David sitting on a hillside watching his father’s sheep and having nothing to do but think. And something he sees and hears of feels has turned his thoughts to God.
Maybe he looked at his hands.
ILLUS: Dr. Scott Karrison noted hands are one of "…the most intricate and beautiful parts of the human body. Nineteen bones arranged to form a cup, an arch, a flat surface or a balled fist, each shape occurring on demand. Fingers able delicately to lift a needle from a table or twist open the stubborn cap of a fruit jar or distinguish between a penny and a dime merely by touch. No engineer designing robot hands has ever come close to such perfection." Guideposts Dec. 1993, p. 41-42
Or perhaps David listened to a bird in a tree and wondered at the marvel of hearing
ILLUS: Whittaker Chambers wrote a book where he told of sitting with his little two-year old daughter on his lap - and he just started looking intently at her ear. He was struck by the design of that ear. How beautiful, how shell-like it was, and how perfectly designed to catch every sound wave in the air to be translated into sound by the brain. Knowing something of the mechanics of the ear he began to think about it. He was struck by how impossible it is that anything so intricate, so complex, so beautifully designed could ever occur by chance. That led him to other lines of thought and eventually he investigated the Christian position and became a Christian.
Or maybe David just thought how his breathing
Just think about your breathing for a minute. Breathe in…. (pause) Breathe out. What if you had to control that action every moment of your life? What if you had to remember to breathe in and out? How long do you think you could live? Not long, obviously. And yet God has designed our lungs to automatically do that action over and over again.
Whatever got David to thinking… it led him to realize how much he meant to God.
He was fearfully and wondrously made. God cared for him enough to “knit him” together in a marvelous and awe-inspiring way. And when David thought about this he realized how much God cared for him… and that led him to realize that God cared so much that He would always be there.
Look with me to vss 7-10 Psalm 139:7-10
“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.”
David was basically visualizing the greatest distances he could imagine
UP in the heavens
DOWN in the depths
OVER the seas into an unknown land
It wouldn’t matter… God would always be there.
ILLUS: Ray Stedman once of when he “was about twelve years old we moved from Minnesota to Montana. The night before we left I got down by my bed and said, ‘Good-bye, God. We’re going to Montana.’ I was sure I would not find him there, but when we arrived, there He was.
And I have found him - EVERYWHERE since.”
It was thinking about how marvelously God had created him that led David to realize God would be there for him wherever he was, and that God’s love for him gave him value and purpose…
But we need to realize that there are people who don’t think God exists. There are people out there who believe man is little more than an advanced animal… a complex but accidental collection of chemical interactions that has no purpose and which has no inherent value beyond… reproduction.
ILLUS: Back in 2005, “Time” Magazine quoted Evolutionary author Robert Wright who was answering the question of what makes people happy?: “People so reliably pursue food and sex because eating and (sex) release neurochemicals that make them feel happy. And the reason this neurochemical rule is part of the human heritage is that the genes responsible for it have, understandably, done well for themselves.” Robert Wright, quoted in Time 1/17/05
In other words… we’re able to be “happy’ because our “happy” genes survived evolution. If those genes hadn’t made it through that long evolutionary process all we’d be able to do is mope around.
But it goes even further than that…another “Time” magazine article told of a “science” known as "evolutionary biology.” The premise of this “science” is that we are "human animals" and can look to the realm of other animals for reasonable models for the underlying rational for how we behave.
According to the Time article, “it is to man’s evolutionary advantage to sow his seeds far and wide (they just naturally “sleep around”). Women instead seek mates with the best genes and the most to invest in offspring. These strategies can put the sexes in conflict and undermine love."
As an example, these scientists point to the ape culture: "Among Apes, the GREATER the difference in size between Male and Female…the less monogamous the Male."
This then forms the basis for understanding infidelity and promiscuity in the human race - thus understandable to a race of animals that have evolved into its present higher form. Time, August 15, 1994 pp. 45ff.
So, without God in the picture, men and women are reduced to being selfish animals who are principally driven by their desire to reproduce.
As Allen Webster put it “Evolution sees man as one step above apes. Scripture sees him as one step beneath angels”
That’s what David is saying here. He realizes what a marvelous creation he is.
He is seated on a hillside watching his father’s sheep and he’s feeling the breeze blow over his body. He looks down at his hands and his feet. He feels his heart beat and watches in wonder as his chest rises and falls with each breath. And he realizes this is no accident.
He is designed by God… fearfully and wondrously made.
This points one of the major characteristics of Christianity.
We believe we were created by God.
And because we’ve been created by God we realize we’ve been created for something more than selfishness and the seeking of pleasure. You and I were made to do great things.
Or Ephesians 2:10 tells us “…we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Burt Lancaster fell again and again and got back up again and again because he KNEW he was capable. Inside his heart and mind there was this confidence of his own value and ability.
But that isn’t really enough for us to make our way through life.
ILLUS: Ophrah Winfrey has recently endorsed a book called “The Secret” which attempts to share the “secret of life” it’s author believes has made her life meaningful. The secret? From one critique of the book I’ve read, it appears that it is recommending the “power of positive thinking.”
Now, I have nothing against the power of positive thinking. It’s ok in so far as it goes. But if it’s simply based upon the idea that “I can because I think I can” or “I can have something because I believe I can get it” is little more than wishful thinking. It just doesn’t work that way in real life.
David was a man who had positive thinking. He was a man of confidence and courage. But his confidence and courage were based NOT on his personal abilities or potential… but upon God’s power and grace.
There’s a song by a Christian Bluegrass group named the Isaacs called “I come in the name of the Lord” and it does a great job of explaining what I’m trying to say here:
“One day a crowd was gathered to watch a giant fight a little shepherd boy named David who served God with all his might.
They offered him great armor but he chose a sling and stone
He said “you come to me with a sword and a shield, but I come in the name of the Lord”
I come in the name of the Lord (repeat)
There’s not a battle that I cannot win, we’ve already won the war
I come in the name of the Lord
Mountains will crumble, giants will fall
We serve a God who created them all”
David was a man who was willing to face giants and to lead his men against the enemies of Israel. But his confidence was based entirely upon the realization that he was created in the image of God and was special to Him.
Look again at Psalm 139:1-5
“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.”
He knew God had “laid His hand” upon him, and this was the basis of his feeling of value and purpose.
(pause)
And this is where I ran into a wall. I got this far in preparing the sermon and I realized I had run out of things to say… but I just knew there was more in this passage than I had found.
So I did what I often do when this happens. I read the passage again and again. And then I saw something I’d never seen before. I saw this psalm of David’s in a whole new light.
And what I saw in Psalm 139 was a psalm that was that this was not just any ordinary song. This was literally a love song. This was David declaring his undying love for his God.
How many of you have you ever watched a young man who’s in love? They’re almost unbearable aren’t they?
· They can’t think of anything but that girl.
· They can’t talk about anything but her.
· They want to be with her ALL the time
· And when this guy gets home from a date with her, he racks his brain, examining everything he’s said and done, asking himself if he’s messed things up with her.
When you’re around such a young man, you sense that he realizes how much he has and how lost he’d be without her.
That’s how David comes across in this Psalm. It’s a lover’s poem. An expression of his adoration of God.
He focuses the bulk of his song on proclaiming how much God has done for him. And then David goes to great lengths to express to that he loves what God loves and hates what He hates.
And twice he asks God to examine his heart and MAKE SURE it is clean and acceptable.
Nothing in David life matters to him nearly as much as God.
He is hopelessly in love with God - and that’s why the Bible tells us that David was “a man after God’s own heart.”
This is where we want to get in our relationship with God.
We want to get to the point where all we seem to be able to talk about is God.
We want to get to the point where we are so taken by God that people just know how much we love Him.
We want to get to the point where–in everything we do–we ask whether it pleases Him.
And we want to get to the point where that every time we take communion we ask ourselves if there’s any sin in our lives we need to deal with. And we do this because we know God loves us and we love him back… and that’s what lovers do. They are vulnerable with each other, because they trust in each other’s love.
A man or woman in love is a driven individual. They’ll do anything to please the one they love. And they act like this because they sense that the one they love, loves them.
It’s when we truly realize HOW MUCH God cares for us that our lives take on new meaning an purpose.
CLOSE: Ben Hooper, who has twice been elected governor of Tennessee, tells this story about his childhood:
“My mother wasn’t married [when I was born]. When I started to school my classmates had a name for me, and it wasn’t a very nice name. I used to go off by myself both at recess and during lunch time because of the taunts of my playmates, which cut me deeply. What was worse was going downtown on Saturday afternoon and feeling every eye burning a hole through you. They were all wondering who my real father was.
“When I was about 12, a new preacher came to our church. I would always go in late and slip out early. But one day the preacher said the benediction so fast I got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. I could feel every eye in church on me. Just about the time I got to the door,… I looked up and the preacher was looking right at me.
“‘Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?’
“I felt the old weight come upon me. It was like a big, black cloud. Even the preacher was putting me down, I thought.
“But as the preacher looked down at me, studying my face, he began a big smile of recognition. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, ‘I know who you are. I see the family resemblance. You are a son of God!’
“With that, he slapped me across the back and said, ‘Boy, you’ve got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.’ “That,” Ben Hooper said, “was the most important single sentence anyone ever said to me.”
With Christ’s help, Ben Hooper had overcome his sense of rejection and inadequacy and claimed his inheritance as a child of God.
