We all want to know who we are. We seek and search and try to “find ourselves.” Many of us have taken personality tests and other assessments. We learn personality inventory lists that tell us we are a lion, a beaver, a competitor, a high “I,” high “D.” We all want to know who we are. But what if I told you, you’ll never know who you are until you know who He is. I invite you to turn on your Bible and turn in your Bible to Psalm 139. You’ll never fully explore your psyche, your personality until you have come to know God.
How You View God Matters
We continue a seven week series tracing out some of the chief characteristics of God in the book of Psalms. Whether you call it attributes, traits, or characteristics, these are the adjectives the Bible uses to describe God. How you view God matters. Here’s why your view of God matters: You’ll never see God’s commandments as anything more than joy-killers until you know the God behind the commandments. Once you know the God behind the command, “Thou Shall Not Lie,” then you realize He operates like a physician who is writing you a prescription for your life and your happiness. Again, how you view God matters.
Think with me about God’s character for a moment for we need to tread carefully here. God CANNOT be fully known. God is so great, He cannot be searched out. I am sharing with you four reasons why God is incomprehensible by sharing with you one a week over the first four weeks of this series. Got it? Think of these four reasons as breadcrumbs left along the trail of the series (like Hansel and Gretel). Last week, I said only the infinite God can fully comprehend the infinite. But here’s a second reason God is incomprehensible: the perfect unity of God’s traits are far beyond our comprehension.
Have you ever said, “I like to think of God as …” and then share their personal picture of God? The Bible doesn’t allow us to simply picture God as love or grace or mercy. Instead, the Bible gives us a complex but complete picture of God’s traits. The Bible describes God as: “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (Psalm 145:3). So no matter how much careful thought you put into it, you’ll never be able to completely trace how God’s wrath, justice, holiness, jealousy, mercy, grace and love are integrated together in perfection. Yes, God has descended down the mountain and we see Him but our minds can only trace His steps up so far before the thick clouds obscure our perfect view of Him. The infinite complexity of God’s character is perfectly unified in Him and we are amazed.
While God cannot be fully known, we can be confident that we know Him. Yes, we trust Scripture here because inside the pages of Scripture, God has chosen to reveal Himself. The Bible is the curtain pulled back on God, so we can better see Him and know Him and ultimately trust Him.
Today’s Scripture
“O LORD, you have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.” (Psalm 139:1–6)
“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.” (Psalm 139:17–18)
“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23–24)
This psalm actually breaks down into four almost completely equal and symmetrical parts. Some traits belong to God alone and Psalm 139 describe the 3 the omni- attributes. He is omniscient; He knows everything. He is omnipotent; He has all power. He’s omnipresent; He’s everywhere. The main point of Psalm 139 is God is present everywhere. We cannot get around Him. We cannot get away from Him. His presence is our inescapable environment.
1. God Knows Me
God’s knowledge of you is precise and full proof. He has exact intelligence on you; He’s better than the NSA or the KGB.
1.1 He Knows Me Physically
“You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar” (Psalm 139:2). He has perfect knowledge of our every posture in verse two. You don’t even remember exactly when you woke up this morning. Nor do you know exactly when you’ll lay your head on the pillow tonight. Yet, God’s eyes are everywhere: “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3). Say this after me, “He sees me.” Yes, He even knows you intimately: “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” (Matthew 10:30)
1.2 He Knows Me Mentally
“…you discern my thoughts from afar” (Psalm 139:2b). God knows your thoughts before you think them. Go ahead and “speed think” for a moment. Think as fast as you possibly can. Go ahead and dare to race God mentally. “Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether” (Psalm 139:4). He knows your words before you articulate them and your tweets before your type them. He knows your every emotion, feeling, idea, thought, aim, doubt, motive, bewildered moment, and your every anxious moment. God can even separate the outward actions and your inward motivations.
1.3 He Knows Me Effortlessly
“…you discern my thoughts from afar” (Psalm 139:2b). While He maybe far off, nevertheless, He knows us precisely and intimately. He knows you instantly and effortlessly. All your matters, all your mysteries, and all your secrets … yes, He knows them all. He knows all this without even the slightest strain on his mind. That is what it means to be God. He knows the number of sand on the collective beaches of earth instantly. And He doesn’t have to stop to count the stars as He has immediate recall. Nor does He simply have “access” to your information, as a computer might retrieve a file. No, all His knowledge is always immediately and directly before His mind. He knows everyone this in one simple and eternal act.
“And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). Everyone say, “I’m a creature in His sight.”
“O LORD, you have searched me and known me” (Psalm 139:1)! God is just like a teenager; you can’t tell Him anything, because He already knows it all. Further, God has never learned from anyone for God cannot learn. If God were to go to school, He isn’t better in one subject than another. He doesn’t prefer “second period” science over “fourth period” French.
The U.S. Department of Education budget is just under $70 billion dollars this year. The World Bank predicts the life expectancy of American children born this year to be just under 79 years of age. If this same child attends college after completing the normal kindergarten through senior year of high school, she will spend approximately 21% of her life in school. Yet, God has not discovered anything. He isn’t surprised and He’s never amazed. Think you’ll walk in on God wondering about someone or something, one day? Think again. If God were to acquire even one new thought throughout the history of ideas, this would show God is imperfect. God has never asked Google anything. God is the ultimate Google.
1.4 He Knows My Future
Nothing is invisible to His sight, not even the future. He knows your words before they are spoken. In fact, He knows everything about your future. “…for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose…’” (Isaiah 46:9–10). God doesn’t need a DeLorean to travel to the future. He even knows your future prayers: “Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). God knows everything actual and everything possible.
Jesus said on one occasion that had He been walking around doing miracles in the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes” (Matthew 11:21). Jesus knew what would possibly happen had He showed up more than a 1,000 years before.
One more note, everything part of God’s unsearchable knowledge applies to Jesus as well as the Holy Spirit. “But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man” (John 2:24–25). Most of you are familiar with the Apostle Paul. Toward the end of his life, he was on board a ship being transported as a prisoner. While on board, a storm pushed it along until the sailors began to throw items off the ship itself in hopes to save their lives (Acts 27:13-20). Paul stood up among the fearful men to say: “Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship.” (Acts 27:22) Days pass after Paul delivered this news from heaven when the sailors decide to abandon ship. It’s here Paul delivers more news: “Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved” (Acts 27:31). When just one event happens, He not only sees the one event, but He also sees the eternal chain of effects that flow from this one event and from all the billions of events that are unleashed by every other event. He doesn’t even need the President’s Book of Secrets to know what it’s in Area 51.
Consider how awesome God is for a moment. How many times have you said to yourself, “If only I knew then what I know now”? Yet, God is never overheard saying this. “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure” (Psalm 147:5).
2. This Scares Me
Not everyone is excited to be exhaustively known. For many, to be known precisely and intimately, scares them. Perhaps this even scared David a little: “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence” (Psalm 139:7)? Having anyone know you perfectly and precisely presents a radical threat. I don’t think you have to think too long as to why this is a threat for many people. Have you ever seen a bloodhound at work, tracking own a fugitive? An article at PBS tells how they get on a trail and how they stay on it:
When a bloodhound sniffs a scent article (a piece of clothing or item touched only by the subject), air rushes through its nasal cavity and chemical vapors — or odors … bombard the dog’s scent receptors. Chemical signals are then sent to the olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that analyzes smells, and an “odor image” is created. For the dog, this image is far more detailed than a photograph is for a human. Using the odor image as a reference, the bloodhound is able to locate a subject’s trail, which is made up of a chemical cocktail of scents including breath, sweat vapor, and skin rafts. Once the bloodhound identifies the trail, it will not divert its attention despite being assailed by a multitude of other odors. Only when the dog finds the source of the scent or reaches the end of the trail will it relent. So potent is the drive to track, bloodhounds have been known to stick to a trail for more than 130 miles.
When a fugitive is on the run, he leaves behind a trail. You leave behind a trail of breath and sweat and dropped skin cells that is invisible to the human eye and undetectable to the human nose, but it contains all the information a bloodhound needs to stay on the trail, to distinguish that 1 scent from 1000s of others. A bloodhound can trace a smell over 300 hours old – that’s twelve days.
Should I talk your social media and internet activity now? Think of your life before God as an airplane’s contrails. You know line-shaped clouds that sometimes appear in the sky above? These are typically produced by aircraft engine exhaust as an airplane flies several miles above the Earth’s surface. Your every word and your every thought leave contrails in the sky. God sees them all. Does God knowing your every move scare you? Does God knowing your hidden secrets threaten you?
3. This Excites Me
God is not like you and that is a good thing. “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139:6). David says, “This is overwhelming to me. This is too much for me.” Let me give you some practical items that should impact you because of God’s precise knowledge of you.
3.1 It Doesn’t Matter What Others Say Falsely about You
God knows all and everything will be revealed one day. Trust in this knowledge; let this comfort you.
3.2 God is Good and Can be Trusted
Think of Edward Snowden for a moment. He feared government omniscience as most of us do in this room. Government omniscience could be used to harm us and we don’t trust our private lives in the hands of others. Truly, we are not far from George Orwell’s vision of government eavesdropping on us at all times, getting inside our motives, and accusing us of thought crimes (or even pre-crimes). But we do not fear God perfect knowledge of us when we are in Christ. If you are in Christ, all of your pre-crimes were judged on the cross of Jesus.
3.3 God Will Not Forget You
“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you” (John 21:17). When God knows everything about you, He knows your love for Him.
Conclusion
Here’s a challenge for you: Would you take this week and pray this one prayer in earnest? “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23–24)!
