In the “Dark Ages” of television, before there were hundreds of cable channels with nothing to watch and before there was even color broadcasting, much less HDTV, the news division of one of the networks (CBS) had a show entitled, “You Are There!” The idea of the show was to take you back and allow you to watch some pivotal events in history as though they were being broadcast as news that was happening. What an interesting concept that was! Via the magic box of ultimate mind candy, I could find myself ANYWHERE geographically and temporally within human history. I could hear great men deliberate great actions, listen to their motives for making great decisions, and observe the consequences close-up.
It was a pretty cool experience, but it doesn’t compare with how our Eternal Father comprehends our daily experiences and total life-spans from the perspective beyond Time because it was all being a spectator and not being involved. But God is involved with us and wherever we allow God to direct our lives, God is not only THERE but making a difference. And if we learn to respond with integrity and enthusiasm to our Eternal Father, His perspective can become our perspective such that it shrinks our everyday problems and increases our potential for the future, both in Time and with Him in eternity. I truly believe that this is an important concept and will affect the way we relate to our Holy Father. Since I believe we relate to the Father in prayer, and since I believe that it is most eloquent to pray the Bible in our prayer lives, I feel led to look at this question from the perspective of a famous prayer. In fact, I hope it will help us to pray more effectively ourselves.
In fact, I’m going to ask you to do something unusual. I’m going to ask you to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 139 and follow along with eyes wide open, praying quietly to God as I lead us in prayer following the boundaries of the Psalm. After all, many of the psalms (including this one) were actually prayers prompted by and preserved by the Holy Spirit. So, I don’t see how we can go wrong by praying them.
Father,
I need you to assess and appraise me according to Your knowledge of me,
[You see, I can’t be objective, but You know more about me than I do…] (v. 1)
You know where I’m comfortable and where I’m willing to take a stand
And You can understand my intentions before I even get around to acting. (v. 2)
You know the boundaries of what I can do and the limits of my endurance;
You know all the little things about my habits and my intentions. (v. 3)
I can’t even say what I’m thinking before You know where I’m going. (v. 4)
You protect me on all sides (though some think I’m sheltered) and You give me guidance. (v. 5)
I simply cannot comprehend all You are and do;
I can’t storm the fortress of Your Presence. (v. 6)
[On the other hand, You come to me…]
Is there any place I could go where Your Spirit couldn’t bless?
And is there any place where You are incapable of demonstrating Your Presence? [Of course not!] (v. 7)
If I could reach beyond nature and find myself in divine space, I would find You.
If I were as helpless as a ghost of myself, You would be there for me. (v. 8)
If I were powerful enough to bring the dawn [each morning]
And I could live where the sun sets, (v. 9)
I would still need You to guide me and to hang onto me. (v. 10)
Even when I want to be hidden, to sink deep in the shadows of depression, (v. 11)
The light of Your Presence guarantees that even night must be as day. (v. 12)
That must be because You made me the thinking being I am,
Weaving together my twisting DNA code in the womb of my mother. (v. 13)
I’m really thankful that You are as awesome as You are.
Your actions all around me make me feel low and properly worshipful.
You know my essence, inside and out. (v. 14)
You know everything about my body from the skeleton out;
Since You sculpted me out of the available elements (v. 15)
You “signed off” on my zygote,
Even though You could see my entire future on the scroll of history;
You’ve known what I was going to go through, before the circumstances occurred. (v. 16)
Thinking about all of this [and still considering the miracle of “free will”] is mind-boggling.
It should make me feel secure that You are aware of everything from the start. (v. 17)
Considering the things that You know would be as hopeless as counting grains of sand for me.
But knowing that You know the final chapter in my life helps me quite worrying. (v. 18)
Of course, I would be thrilled if You would remove certain unscrupulous people from my life
So that their presence wouldn’t be a constant impediment and danger to me. (v. 19)
I know You can see that these people are devious;
They are serving “emptiness” or “worthlessness” instead of You. (v. 20)
I refuse to partner with those dedicated to worthlessness;
I pledge to stand up for Truth when they attack You. (v. 21)
I just won’t stand for it. I don’t trust them. (v. 22)
So, Lord, I’m asking You to assess and appraise me to know my real motives.
Find any causes of anxiety within [so I can depend more fully upon You]. (v. 23)
Help me stay away from depending on the false and undependable,
So I can live life according to Your Reality that doesn’t dissipate with Time and Space. (v. 24)
[And I pray this with the advantage the original psalmist didn’t have, the name and authority of my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.]
I don’t know if you found that meaningful, but I believe it helps us get a prayer session off on the right foot. If we want to have an open line of communication with God, we need to be aware of where we stand. And, since we have a built-in protective mechanism that causes us to try to rationalize anything we’ve done wrong or any wrong attitudes or goals we might have, it’s a pretty good idea to start any time of prayer with a request that God will reveal our flaws and inadequacies—especially the ones we refuse to see. In that way, we can confess our disobedience, our failures, our flaws, our inadequacies, and our wrong attitudes so that God can forgive them and get them out of the way. We clear the way for God’s business before we start praying for anything else we may need and others may need. In this way, we allow God to direct the rest of our prayer time.
Now, one reason people hesitate to pray prayers like this (or sometimes, even pray at all) is because they have an inadequate understanding of God’s omniscience. They figure that since God already knows everything they are going through, it isn’t worth mentioning in prayer. But I think that’s a cop-out and I’ll tell you why. God wants to spend quality time with us. God wants to share His perspective with us. In order to get beyond the prayer time equivalent of “Good food, good meat, Good God, let’s eat!” we need to be willing to discuss specifics with God. In order to get beyond the prayer time equivalent of just feeling warm and fuzzy, we need to take the risk of opening ourselves up to God.
Jesus pictured God as our heavenly Father. I don’t understand all that it entails to be Father of All who will receive Him, but I know what it is to be an earthly father. As an earthly father, I have some memories filed away in the organic storage I call a brain and some tangible mnemonic aids I call pictures. Now, I already have those memories, but how do you think I feel when any of my four children say, “Remember when we did this together?” and “Do you still have those pictures?” I love it. Such times are very special. Not only do we get to relive a moment that made an impression on both of us, but we both gain perspective on the same event from each other’s perspective. Now, God (as we shall soon see in the text) already knows our perspective, but He graciously allows us to discover His perspective as we communicate honestly with Him. And don’t you think it pleases our heavenly Father to know that we recognize God at work in our lives, just as I love it when I discover that my actions meant something in my children’s lives?
God Knows
But the psalmist began his prayer, not with self-assessment but with a petition for divine assessment. As I translated the first six verses this week, I was tremendously impressed with these verses.
1) Yahweh, appraise me and, [as a result] You will know me [intimately].
2) You, You really know my sitting and my standing;
You discern my thoughts at a distance.
3) You measure my wandering and my resting;
And You cause yourself to be intimate [literally, habitual or familiar] with all my ways.
4) BECAUSE a word [of a saying] isn’t [even] on my tongue
Before [literally, thus] You, Yahweh, know all of it [the saying].
5) Behind me [or, to the west] and in front of me [or to the east], you bundle me up,
You place your hand upon me.
6) Understanding is wondrous, beyond me;
I am unable to capture it [verbs suggests it is like an unassailable fortress/city].
He said he was ready for an authentic or intimate relationship with God. He knew that such a relationship begins with an appraisal of where we are. Are we near God or are we far away? We really can’t know by ourselves. It requires God’s revelation to help us see our situation objectively. We don’t have all of the facts. We don’t see all of the potential.
But God sees us at rest and God sees us ready to move (v. 2). In fact, God can ascertain what we’re about to do before we do it. God knows when we’re on the move and when we’re idle (Notice how verse 3 sort of reverses the active verb and passive verb?). God knows what we’re about to say before we say it (v. 4), but that doesn’t imply that we shouldn’t say it. Saying something brings it out in the opening so that it can be dealt with.
The truth is, we aren’t afraid (in human relationships) to share anything with those we trust. A sure sign of intimacy is that best friend we don’t need to keep any secrets from and that loving spouse who knows us inside and out. One test that counselors use when evaluating couples in marriage counseling is to see whether there are areas that each spouse doesn’t feel comfortable sharing with the other. Healthy relationships are candid relationships. Shouldn’t our relationship with God be at least that good?
Some people don’t like praying to an omniscient God because it makes them feel constricted, hemmed in, deprived of possibilities for personal potential. In fact, one way of translating the verb I’ve written as “bundled up” can be translated as “bound” or “tied up.” It can have a negative way of viewing God as being too restrictive in our lives. It can be the opposite of trust—that feeling expressed by many teenagers when they yell at their parents that parental restrictions are keeping them from growing up, from becoming more adult.
But I prefer to see this as more analogous to what I saw at a Cubs game on Tuesday night. Pastor Nick, Yoon, Ellis, and myself took advantage of Wailam’s employee bonus and attended that rain-shortened 6-to-1 victory. During the rain delay, I found myself going against the grain of the (mostly) departing crowd as I tried to make my way to the restroom. On the way, I saw a mother with her little baby in one of those carriers attached to her front. My first thought was, “Wow! That poor baby is going to be squished in this crowd.” But even as I was thinking this, I noticed that the mother had her arms stretched out to form a boundary around that baby, so that people would bump into her arms before bumping the baby. Then, I realized that the father, who had a wider reach, had his arms out forming a boundary around both mother and child—double protection. Without that extra effort of caution on the part of the parents, that baby could have been hurt.
Verse 5 tells us that God is both behind and in front of us. It might mean that God is both to the west and the east so the psalmist (and Israel as a whole) could be protected from both sides (from the sea and from the desert). But I like to think of it as being like a small unit operation in the military or maybe a S.W.A.T. team where one trusted colleague (or more) provides cover from the back while another trusted colleague (or more) takes the point and scouts for trouble ahead of the main group. I like to think of it as meaning that we’re “covered.”
I think this is how Martin Luther once pictured the condition of the believer. He pictured us as being like infants bound in a blanket. We’re being held in God’s arms and we’re safe in them. However, we occasionally let our bare feet peek out from under the blanket and that is when our enemy and his minions try to bite our exposed toes. In short, we have a tendency to put ourselves at risk whenever we try to wriggle out of the safety of God’s plan and provision for our lives. We have a tendency to act like God’s hand is heavy on us, oppressively holding us down, even though we know God wants what is best for us. We resent being in God’s “arms,” so to speak. We foolishly and rebelliously slap at God’s guiding hand.
[Slide 6] In fact, verse 6 describes God’s knowledge as so incomprehensible, so far beyond us that we cannot “capture” it. I use that verb to translate the verse because the Hebrew verb was used both in the Bible and outside it for describing the capture of a fortress. So, the psalmist is indicating that we cannot control God’s knowledge and shouldn’t try to do so. It isn’t that we pray to cajole the knowledge out of God that we think we need. Rather, we need to open ourselves to the knowledge that God, working with infinitely higher bandwidth than we can even conceive, knows we need.
Does the theology of God’s omniscience make a difference in my prayer life? You’d better believe it. I can put myself in God’s hands, knowing that God not only understands my feelings but also knows all the circumstances surrounding the decisions I need to make, the desperation I might be feeling, and the direction I need to go. Prayer isn’t a matter of briefing God on my problems. It often involves talking out those problems in order to see more clearly where God wants to work in my life.
God’s Here!
As we move further in the psalm, I’m reminded of the little girl who was afraid of the dark. She kept waking up her parents and calling them into her room because she was afraid. Finally, her parents tried a different approach. Instead of coming into the room, they called back, “Don’t you know that Jesus is everywhere? He’s in there with you. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” But the little girl responded, “Yes, but I want someone with skin on him.” She simply wasn’t comforted by the idea of a God who was present in her darkness, but invisible to her.
And many of us discount God’s Presence in the same way as that little girl. We know God is everywhere, but you wouldn’t know it from the way we act at work or school. We know God is everywhere, but you wouldn’t know it from what we mutter under our breaths, at times. We know God is everywhere, but you wouldn’t know it from the way we worry about things we can’t control. Frankly, when we read the next six verses of the psalm, we ought to have a sense of relief and excitement at the same time. The God of the entire universe is with us in whatever we have to do.
7) Where could I go from Your Spirit
And where could I flee Your face? [even if I wanted to…]
8) If I go up to the heavens, You are there;
And if I lie down in the place of the dead, there You are.
9) I could lift up the wings of the dawn
And dwell beyond the sea [lit. behind the sea],
10) [But] Even there, Your hand would guide me,
[in fact] Your right hand would grasp me.
11) And I could ask darkness to cover me and night [become] the light around me,
12) [But] Even darkness cannot darken around [from] You.
[In that case,] night shines like the day, like darkness like day [basically, darkness is like day].
Of course, like the idea of God watching our back and taking the point for us in the first section of the psalm, this portion also suggests that, unlike the psalmist, some people want to get away from God. Frankly, I think the clearest illustration of this attraction/repulsion relationship of human beings toward our loving God that I’ve ever heard was delivered by a great Presbyterian pastor named Earl Palmer. He compared God’s omnipresence to the limited presence of law enforcement in our society. He notes that it is entirely possible to be unaware of even marked police cars unless we have just realized that we’re doing something wrong or really need them. In the former case, we’re likely to sarcastically proclaim to ourselves or anyone in the car, “Hooray for the Illinois State Police!” On the other hand, assume that a strange car has been following you for a long time on a deserted road. Suddenly, the bubble gum lights of an Illinois State Police car appear behind your pursuer and pull the mysterious car over. In that case, you’d say quite differently, “Hooray for the Illinois State Police!” What a difference perspective makes.
Now, let’s see what the text says. Verse 8 indicates that whether the psalmist is above the skies or underground, God is still there. This wording is a lot like some old Egyptian texts that say that whether one is in the heavens or in the underworld, the Pharaoh reigns. I think anyone who heard the psalmist’s prayer would have understood that he was saying that God is in charge whether one is where the source of life was presumed to be or in the place of the dead. There is no avoiding God’s authority.
[Slide 8] Verse 9 takes us from East to West, from dawn to sunset (beyond the sea). Remember that most mythological ideas of that era were that some god (or dung beetle) carried the dawn from the East to its sunset in the West. Here, the psalmist appears to suggest that even if he had the power to carry the sun like a god, he would still be under God’s command and subject to God’s Presence. Even there, God’s hand would guide the psalmist. And even there, some people would feel that God’s hand was punishing, like that Illinois State Police ticket we might deserve. But I like to think of God as grasping hold of us so that we can’t fall in the darkness. I like to think of it as God keeping us safe. That’s why even if the psalmist was encased in darkness both night and day (verses 11 and 12), he knows that God would still be aware. The very darkness that would cover the psalmist and provide obscurity, confusion, and danger to him is dissipated by God’s Presence, God’s Light.
Does the theology of God’s omnipresence make a difference in my life? You’d better believe it does. It means that I cannot consider any activity beneath God’s notice. Does it make a difference in my prayer life? Of course it does! It means that I can appeal to God or speak to God at any point or time—silently, quietly under my breath, or talking aloud as I’m driving my car down the tollway. I probably don’t want to close my eyes for that last one, but you know what I mean.
God is Awesome!
In the next six verses of the Psalm, we read about God’s impact in creating the psalmist.
13) BECAUSE You, You formed my conscience [lit. kidneys],
You wove me together in the womb of my mother.
14) I thank You, Most High, BECAUSE You are awesome;
I fall down [in adoration], Your deeds so extraordinary;
My essential being [lit. “soul”] You know exceedingly well.
15) My skeleton was not hidden from You when You made me in secret,
[When] You crafted me [stamped me out of?] with damp soil [lit. underneath] from the earth.
16) You saw my embryo [fetus?] with Your own eyes
And everything is written upon your scroll;
Days molded and they hadn’t happened yet.
17) And for me, how weighty are Your thoughts,
Oh, God, how powerful from their beginning!
18) I could count them [but they would be] as numerous as sand,
If I come to the [very] end, and yet, I would be with You.
He recognizes God as the creator of his kidneys—the center of conscience according to the ancient world. So, the psalmist appeals to God as the source of his information about right and wrong. We have an advantage over the psalmist. We can depend upon the Holy Spirit rather than some physical portion of our bodies. But the point is, the psalmist like you and I can appeal to God as the arbiter of right and wrong in our lives.
We can also echo the thoughts of the psalmist that God wove us together in our mother’s wombs. What great imagery! The psalmist may actually have had the skeleton in mind, connecting the bones together so that we get the mention of the skeleton in verse 13, but I like the imagery because it suggests that those strands of DNA that are woven together in my chemical make-up didn’t happen by accident. My very genetic structure is a fabulous tapestry from God.
Verse 14 is often misunderstood, though. I almost played an excerpt from a very cynical, satirical movie this morning. It was a Python film called The Meaning of Life. In it is a scene where the headmaster of a private school in England leads the boys in prayer. The prayer begins saying that God is very big. It goes on to say that we are mightily impressed with how big God is. God is sooooooo big! God is super! And it ends by talking about how prayer is “toadying” to God. In case you don’t know that term, it’s British English for kissing up to a person or being sycophantic. In short, the satire suggests that God has such low self-esteem that God requires us to praise Him to reassure Him of His superiority over other claims to faith.
That ISN’T why we praise God as an awesome God. We praise God as an awesome God to remind ourselves that we have nothing to fear, nothing so problematic that God cannot handle it, and nothing that is beyond God’s capacity. God doesn’t require our praise to reassure Him. God requires our praise to encourage and inspire us.
But let’s move on. The skeleton suggests that God anchored our physical bodies together according to divine wisdom and with divine oversight. The next phrase suggests sculpting or molding the psalmist together from the soil much as God created Adam in Genesis 2. With the mention of the embryo or fetus, the psalmist suggests that God’s plan began before the actual birth and that God was well aware of all the deeds to be accomplished BEFORE the child was born. The scroll or book mentioned here is much like those mentioned in Revelation and those which are described as being in the heavens in the scrolls we found at Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls).
We cannot comprehend God’s thoughts because they are too numerous and complex for us. It would be as absurd as trying to count the grains of sand on the beach. BUT, the reason the psalmist affirms all of this is because he wants to claim God’s power and God’s purpose for himself. So, I ask you, does the theology of God’s omnipotence affect your life? It ought to. God’s power and presence in our lives means that we ought to be able to live up to the slogan you see on those shirts and sweatshirts—No Fear.
My Innocence versus Their Guilt
The last six verses make us quite uncomfortable. Does hating the enemies of God mean that we have to be priggish and self-righteous? Does it mean that we have to go on a crusade against those who do not trust in God? Let’s read the text and come back to these questions.
19) If only You would kill the wicked
And the men of blood [bloodthirsty men?] would retreat from me,
20) [Men] Who speak of you for devious purposes,
Your enemies, lifting themselves up to emptiness.
21) Do I not hate the ones hating You, Yahweh?
And loathe the ones attacking You?
22) I have really, really hated them
They have become enemies to me.
23) Appraise me, God, and know my will [lit. heart]
Test me and know if there is anxiety in me.
24) And check out if the way of an idol is in me
And guide me in the everlasting way [lit. ancient way].
Here’s the question. Do we really want to get rid of all the devious, carnal, and despicable people around us? C. S. Lewis suggested in his Reflections on the Psalms that we are really only opposed to the enemies of God when they cease to amuse us, flatter us, and serve some utility for us (p. 74). In reflecting on this Psalm and others like it, Lewis interpreted a phrase from the Model Prayer to reflect how we should understand this.
“’Lead us not into temptation,’ often means, among other things, ‘Deny me those gratifying invitations, those highly interesting contacts, that participation in the brilliant movements of our age, which I so often, at such risk, desire.’” Isn’t that what this last section of the Psalm is all about? The psalmist asks God to keep him aligned with God and not dependent upon idols. And when we refuse to align ourselves with those who oppose God, are we not also avoiding the idols of power, prestige, and privilege? And I, for one, need to keep on praying that.
