A Closer Walk with God in 2015
Psalm 139
Have you ever spent much time contemplating Gods presence?
There are a lot of people who do not believe that God exists and struggle to put up with people like us.
David was a shepherd before he was King of Israel and he had a lot of time to think about his own existence in light of Gods presence.
Sometimes it takes getting away from people and places and finding a quiet place of your own to think things out.
David did some serious thinking about himself and his relationship to God in this passage.
Here David shares thoughts that have been common to many of us over the centuries.
The first thing that David comes to realize is that he is not alone in the world.
David realizes that there is a God and David addresses Him as Lord and not – the big guy upstairs or - the man or some other familiar less reverent term.
David knows and understands that this God is the Lord of his life and being – the Creator.
All these realizations come to David by spending quiet time alone thinking and searching out who and what he is.
It was the famous Greek philosopher Socrates who said 400 years before Christ that - The unexamined life is not worth living.
Sadly Socrates was put to death by his own generation as he tried to draw them away from the superstitious religion of their time and to examine themselves.
Instead they killed the messenger.
http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2d.htm
David wrote Psalm 139 about 600 years before Socrates so David had begun to examine his life long before Socrates had come to the same conclusion.
How about you?
What conclusions about your life have you come to?
Do you know that you were made by God?
Do you believe in a power greater than yourself?
Do you believe that your life has a purpose and plan that exceeds your own?
Well David came to realize this and he put it all down on paper and to music that we might also comprehend who and what we are and to whom we belong.
David realizes that it is God who is doing the examining of his life.
God is examining David rather than David examining God in the opening verse.
1 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. Psalm 139:1 NIV
It is God who has created us – we have not created God.
This God knows every facet of our being. How many hairs are on our heads and how many days we will live before we die?
Yes, that old saying “his number was up” is a true reflection of this biblical truth. Our days are numbered – by God.
Since that is the case we should not take a single day for granted but realize each day is a gift from God.
This realization should also compel us to live in a way that is pleasing to God.
There is nothing about our lives that God does not know. We can keep no secret from God since God knows us inside and out.
Despite all that God loves us and wants us to have a real relationship with Him.
Romans 5:6-10 NIV
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! 10 For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
You see God wants us to walk closer with Him so that we might better understand just how wonderful we are and how wonderful this thing called life is.
It is only truly wonderful when we live our life in the light of God’s presence.
For us that presence was made know to us by Jesus Christ.
Jesus became the perfect man the only man who lived a life that did not need to be examined.
Jesus however allowed all of us to examine His life in the light of God’s word and no one was able to find any flaw or weakness or sin in Jesus as a person.
When I examine my life against the life of Jesus I am truly humbled and even humiliated to realize how far from perfect my life is.
But God does not want us to be humiliated or discouraged at how far we miss the mark of perfection.
Instead God has offered Jesus His son as a perfect substitute for us.
By taking our place Jesus makes our life acceptable to God as a life that God can examine and find nothing wrong.
The thing of it is that we must take Jesus as our own. We must take Jesus as our Savior and King.
We must make Jesus the Lord of our life then our life can be examined in the light of Jesus perfection.
You see we cannot save ourselves no matter how hard we try.
But God has provided for us a way to be saved from the people we are. John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.
When we examine our life we find a lot of things that we regret and are ashamed of but Jesus covers those things with His blood.
When God looks at the life of a Christian God sees a life that has blood covering our sins and weaknesses.
There is no offensive way in us and we are led by Christ to a life everlasting.
Examine your life in the light of Jesus Christ and take Jesus as your Savior so that your sins might be covered. – Amen.
