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Psalm 139:1 O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. 5 You hem me in--behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. 7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. 13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. 19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men! 20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? 22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies. 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Introduction
How Interested is God in You?
With all the planets in the universe, and all the billions of people in the world, the animals, governments, nations, kingdoms - everything that is going on in the whole universe - how much does God keep up with your life? How often does God pull up your Facebook page to check in on how you are doing and what has been going on with you lately? Has God thought specifically about you today? Whatever the biggest event in your life happened to be over the past 24 hours (positive or negative) - did that event have any impact at all on God’s emotions? What about the small things that happened? Did God care about the trouble you had getting to sleep - or the difficulty of getting up out of bed this morning? Does He care if you have some heartburn, or have a bad hair day? The answer is in the opening verses of Psalm 139.
Psalm 139:1 O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise
Why would God pay attention to when you sit down? Raise your hand if you can tell me how many times you sat down and stood up just in the past 24 hours? You were not even paying enough attention to your life to notice that, and God is concerning Himself with it? That means God is concerned about smaller details in your life than even you are concerned with.
God Knows You
Psalm 139 is a favorite text people go to for the doctrine of the omniscience of God. Omniscience means God knows everything. Everything. He knows everything that has ever happened, He knows everything that is happening now, He knows everything that will happen - He even knows everything that could have happened but didn’t. In some cases Jesus would say, “If this had happened, then this would have happened." God is the only one who knows what would have happened if things were different. God knows the whole string of changes that would have taken place if one factor changed. If the light would have turned red instead of green - and the whole string of alterations that would have caused going forward for everyone all the way until the end of time. He knows every possibility. God knows not only what you said in your last conversation, but He knows what you would have said if the person you were talking to would have responded differently. Or how you would have acted if you had gotten less sleep last night. God is fully versed on every detail of the life of every creature. Nothing ever escapes His notice, nothing slips by Him, and He never forgets anything. God knows instantly and effortlessly all matters, all minds, all spirits, all creatures, all truths, all events, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all feelings, all desires, all inclinations, all things visible and invisible in heaven and earth, all motion - everything that is happening in space and time, and in heaven and in hell. He knows all mysteries, all enigmas, and all paradoxes. To Him, there is no such thing as a paradox, because a paradox is when two things seem like they contradict each other but in reality they do not.
For God, the way things seem and the way things actually are is always exactly the same. For God there is no such thing as an enigma - something puzzling or hard to understand. Nothing is mysterious to God. God never overlooks anything, never discovers anything, never learns anything. It is impossible for God to learn. There is no information that He has not fully known from all eternity past. Has it ever occurred to you that nothing ever occurred to God? He is never surprised, and never wonders about anything. God does ask questions, but He does so – not to gain an education but to give an education. And God knows one thing that no other being in existence will ever know, namely, He knows everything there is to know about Himself. To know everything about God requires an infinite mind, which we will never have. So God has information in His head that will never be in the mind of any other being in existence.
Omni-Interest
That is the doctrine of the omniscience of God. And all that is true. And it is marvelous! But it is not the main point of what David is saying here. David’s point is not that God knows everything. His point is that God knows everything about me. And He doesn’t just know everything about me, but He searches me.
1 LORD, You have searched me
Searching Shows Interest
What is the point of that? If God already knows everything about me, what is the point of searching me? As far as I know God does not search any other created thing, but numerous times Scripture speaks of God searching our hearts. The answer is this - searching points to interest and attention. Saying that God searches us is a word picture that shows God as being interested in you and is paying direct attention to the things going on inside you. This psalm is not about God’s omniscience; it is about God’s omni-interest. God is omni-interested in you and omni-attentive to you. If you are making a list of the attributes of God be sure to include these - omni-interest and omni-attentiveness to each one of His children. There is nothing in your heart that is a matter of indifference to God. There is nothing in your life that God says, “I don’t really care about that.” There are things in your life that you don’t care about, or that you don’t pay much attention to. But there is nothing about you that God is not interested in and attentive to.
Most of the time we are not paying attention to God. We cannot pay direct attention to Him all day every day. Most of our time we have to attend to other things. God wants us to pay attention to our work, or if we are talking to people we need to be listening to them and attending to them. Living life requires we keep our focus on matters at hand, so even on our best days, if you add up all the minutes we spend actually attending to God, it would be a tiny fraction of our time. But there is never a single moment in which God is not paying direct attention to you. If it has been four hours since the last time you paid attention to Him, during that whole four hours He was paying attention to you, waiting for your attention to return to Him. So what does God find when He searches me?
Actions
Well, for one thing He examines and evaluates everything I do.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
The word translated discern means to sift. God sifts through all your actions - all of them.
Going out – that is your public life.
Lying down – that is your private life.
Going out is your working.
Lying down is your resting.
It is an “A to Z” kind of statement that includes both extremes and everything in between. God is paying close attention to everything you ever do - from putting on your socks in the morning or brushing your teeth, all the way to carrying out ministry at church. It is all being carefully observed.
Words
And not just your actions, but also your words.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
God knows every word that comes out of your mouth before it comes out, which means He also knows every word that almost came out of your mouth. There are times I don't even know something was in my heart until it comes out of my mouth. But God knows exactly what is in there.
Thoughts
He knows the words before they come out because He knows the thoughts.
2 ...you perceive my thoughts from afar.
God knows every thought. He knows the intensions and feelings and motives as they are developing - before they are fully formed into words. That word perceive means to understand or have insight into. God knows not only what you are thinking, but the meaning and significance of every thought. A thought about some person pops into your head - God knows the significance of the fact that it came up when it did, the significance of your emotional reaction or lack of reaction - everything about it.
From Afar
God scrutinizes everything - actions, words, thoughts, motives, intensions, desires, affections - everything about you. And He does it, according to verse 2, from afar. Why say that? This whole section is about the nearness of God, and yet David says you perceive my thoughts from afar. It is important for us to know that God is near and far at the same time. And that is an important and wonderful truth. Very often people latch on to one of those and lose sight of the other. Some people love to think about God as being transcendent - far above and beyond this world. And He is. But sometimes people who focus mainly on that lose sight of the fact that God is also nearby. They are awed by the greatness of God, but they neglect intimacy with God. They do not have a sense of Him being right here in the room. And they do not really think of Him as attending to the little details of their life.
Other people fall off the horse on the other side. They focus so much on the nearness of God, and intimacy and closeness with God that God ends up being their buddy but they lose sight of His greatness and transcendence. And they subconsciously think of God as being caught up in the tangle of details of life, and stuck with them in the mire and muck of daily living, and they forget that He sits enthroned far above and looks down on humanity with a bird’s eye view that has sovereign oversight and control of everything. God makes a point to emphasize to us in Scripture that He is both near and far at all times.
Jeremiah 23:23 "Am I only a God nearby," declares the Lord, "and not a God far away? 24 Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?" declares the Lord. "Do not I fill heaven and earth?" declares the Lord.
So even in a psalm about God’s wonderful nearness and intimacy, David reminds us that there is also a sense in which God is knowing us so intimately from afar.
Good News Or Bad News?
So, how does all of this hit you? Is this good news or bad news? For most people in the world this would sound like terrible news - especially in our culture, where people value privacy so much. When people move into a new house the very first thing they do is buy shades or curtains for privacy. Then they build a privacy fence. We have private rooms with doors and locks, even privacy glass on our car windows. We love our privacy. And so to discover that there is no such thing as privacy - that you are the object of Someone’s constant gaze 24/7 - most people would hate that. What do you think would happen if you just walked up to a random person on the street and got right in front of him and started staring at him, and no matter what happened you would not turn your eyes away? That could make some people turn violent. Nobody would welcome that. So how could David talk about how God is scrutinizing him every moment, and actually like it?
The answer has to do with God’s attitude toward us. You see, it is not that we hate being scrutinized. What we hate is being scrutinized by someone who is against us, not for us. David loved God’s scrutiny because He knew God was for him and not against him. If you catch a stranger peaking in your living room window, you might call the police. But if one of your kids is looking in the living room window from outside, you are fine with that.
Privacy vs. Intimacy
The more you love someone, the more you prefer intimacy above privacy. Privacy and intimacy are opposites. You desire privacy from people you don’t want to be close to, and you desire intimacy with people you do want to be close to. If thinking about God’s eye always being on you is a negative thing for you - if that makes you nervous, and makes you think, “Oh great - I’m under constant surveillance. I’d better watch myself,” that reflects a relationship with God that is not marked by very much love. If you take your wife on a date does she think, “Oh no. My husband is going to be with me on this date the entire time? That means I have to be on my best behavior”? No. If a woman loves her husband and she is confident that her husband loves her, she is delighted that he is going to be with her and the more attention he pays to her the better. When was the last time your wife was talking to you, and you were looking her in the eye and listening intently, engaging in what she was saying, and she suddenly stopped and said, “Stop paying so much attention to me and listening to everything!”? Do your kids say that to you?
“Stop paying attention to me, Daddy!”
There were times when my kids were little where I would have one of them on my lap, facing forward so they couldn’t even see me. And without turning my head, I would just turn my eyes over toward my computer screen. And by some inexplicable powers of perception they would somehow know. They would turn around and put their hands on my face to make sure I was focused on them. When you are a little kid, the only time you don’t want your parents paying attention to you is when you are into some kind of mischief. But all the rest of the time they want your attention. They desire intimacy, not privacy.
That is how the psalmists felt about God always watching them. They loved it! If the opening verses of this psalm sound like bad news to you - if you think of God as a supreme surveillance camera and it makes you fearful or uncomfortable, that probably means that either you are into some mischief (living in a way you know displeases God and you are not repentant about it), or you just don’t love God very much, or you don’t believe God loves you very much. Because if you love someone who loves you, and you are not currently at odds with that person, you desire intimacy and not privacy. The psalmists thought of God’s loving, purifying gaze as a great privilege that they thoroughly enjoyed. It is the great benefit of being a believer.
Psalm 11:5 The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates.
The opposite of God hating you is God examining you. And if that is a foreign idea to you, let me just suggest five reasons why being examined and known by God is such a wonderful thing.
Benefits Of Being Known
1) A Judge’s Examination - Helps With Resisting Sin
Let’s start with the most obvious one. God examines us like a judge, before whom we must give an account. And that is a wonderful thing because it helps us resist sin - especially sins of the thought life.
Job 31:1 I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl. 2 For what is man's lot from God above, his heritage from the Almighty on high? 3 Is it not ruin for the wicked, disaster for those who do wrong? 4 Does he not see my ways and count my every step?
Job regarded every thought as a step in some direction. Every thought you entertain in your mind is a step toward or away from God. If someone followed you all day every day with a video camera, they could catch your actions and words, but not the steps you take in your thoughts. But the fact that God is watching my every thought and every step helps me say no to temptation. My flesh wants to entertain some sinful thought - thoughts of revenge, thoughts of self pity, thoughts that stimulate anger, thoughts of lust, thoughts of pride - and my conscience says, “Not right now, God’s here.” When someone whose opinion you care about is present, it is amazing how willpower is suddenly no longer an issue. A woman is struggling with a temper problem. She yells at her kids a lot, and has a sharp tongue. She hates that sin in her life, but when she is provoked she just can’t seem to control herself. And one day she is right in the middle of yelling at one of the kids, and at that moment the phone rings. And she picks up the phone and within one second her emotions are totally under control.
“Oh, hello Darrell, how nice of you to call...”
She wasn't out of control at all. A teenager is looking at pornography on his computer, and he knows it’s wrong, he is telling himself, “I need to stop this,” but he just can’t bring himself to stop - just one more click, one more image. He is fighting the battle, but no matter how hard he tries, he just does not have the willpower to stop. Then he hears his mom about to open his bedroom door. “Slam” – that fast he shuts that laptop. Suddenly he has all the willpower in the world to stop. Why? Because someone whose opinion he cares about is present. When we can learn to live with an awareness of the presence of God in the room, it helps us resist sin. When I realize all my wicked actions are being performed right at the foot of His throne; all my vilest thoughts are being played out right in front of His face - that has an impact.
It is easy to think about the fact of God watching you without really having a sense of an actual person literally being right there in your presence. The point of living under the constant gaze of God is not so much an issue of just agreeing that a certain theological reality is true, but living with the sense of His nearness that you enjoy so much that you do not want to forfeit it or jeopardize it.
2) A Doctor’s Examination - Peace Of Mind Regarding My Wellbeing
So the omni-interest and omni-attentiveness of God are wonderful truths because they help us fight against sin. God examines us like a judge, and that motivates us to do what is right. That is one reason it is wonderful. Secondly, it is wonderful because God examines us like a doctor. Think about going to the doctor for a checkup. What is a checkup? That is when the doctor takes away all your privacy, and thoroughly examines you for one purpose and one purpose only - to find things wrong with you. Normally we hate it when people are looking to find things wrong with us. But we will pay big money to a doctor to do that - why? Because we want to make sure nothing is wrong so we can have peace of mind. We get checkups to make sure we don’t have too much cholesterol or too high of blood pressure or cavities, or cancer or various diseases. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in our bodies without our knowing about it, and so we get checkups so we can catch them early. We are not equipped to do that on our own; we need a doctor to examine us.
God is the Great Physician and He is giving you a checkup right now. If you think there are a lot of diseases that can come up in your body without you knowing, there are really a lot of diseases that can come up in your soul without you realizing it. And only God knows how to do a full-soul exam.
So one of the benefits of being a child of God is the peace of mind that comes from knowing God is continually doing checkups on you. The other reason we pay good money for checkups is not just so we have peace of mind when we don’t have a problem, but also so we can discover what problems do exist and need attention. In those times when God examines us and we don’t get a clean bill of health, and some sin problem shows up on the scan, God catches it early and gives us exactly the medicine we need to recover. That is great news. No spiritual problem can run amuck in you because of lack of early detection.
3) A Lawyer’s Examination - Vindication
So we rejoice in being the object of God’s gaze because it is a judge’s examination and a doctor’s examination and thirdly, it is beneficial to us because it is like a defense lawyer’s examination. When you are falsely accused, you rejoice in God’s penetrating gaze that is able to look right into your heart and motives and verify that you are innocent. Of all these benefits this is probably the primary one David has in mind in this psalm. I say that because of that section starting in verse 19, where David gets all riled up about the wicked. At first it seems like that section doesn’t fit with the rest of the psalm. David suddenly out of the blue starts asking God to punish his enemies. But I don’t think it is a digression - I think it is an insight into why David is focusing on these particular attributes of God. Most likely it is yet another one of those times when David was being unjustly accused by his enemies. And people are believing wrong things about David. They are assuming bad motives. That is hard. When you have good motives, and people don’t believe it, nothing is more comforting than God’s omniscience about you. There is nothing out of character at all in a prayer that starts out taking delight in the fact that God has searched me and knows me, and then asking Him to deal with my enemies. We see the same thing in other places in Scripture.
Jeremiah 12:3 Yet you know me, O Lord; you see me and test my thoughts about you. Drag them off like sheep to be butchered! Set them apart for the day of slaughter!
He is being falsely accused and so he says, “God, You know me - You know these charges against me are false, You know I’m in the right and they are in the wrong here, so bring about justice.”
Jeremiah 15:15 You understand, O Lord; remember me and care for me. Avenge me on my persecutors.
One of the big problems in our relationships is the gap between perception and reality. People think things about us that are not true. With God, there is no gap. In times like that it is so wonderful to be able to go to God and say, “God, You know. You know the truth. Even if everyone else believes lies about me - as long as You know the truth that is all that matters to me. I know You will bring it to light in Your perfect timing.”
4) A Lover’s Examination - He Knows My Love For Him
And it is especially wonderful to be able to say that when it comes to your love for God. Have you ever expressed your love for someone and they didn’t believe you because of your past actions? You made some mistakes, and did some things wrong, and even though you’ve repented of that, the person cannot see past it. And so they will not accept your claim that you love them. Is God like that? Does He look at our actions and say, “Don’t try to claim that you love Me after the things you’ve done”? If unloving actions mean that your claims to love are false, then the most hollow claim to love ever would have to be Peter’s claim to love Jesus after publically denying Him three times. Talk about unloving actions - “I don’t know the man!” How would you feel if your wife was so embarrassed to be associated with you that someone asked her, “Aren’t you his wife?” and she said, “What? Are you crazy? I wouldn’t go near him with a ten foot pole”? Would you believe her if she came later and claimed to love you? In John 21, after Jesus rose from the dead, He is in a conversation with Peter and He asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” And all three times Peter says, “Yes, I love You!” But the fact that Jesus keeps on asking grieves Peter, because Peter really did love Jesus. What he did was a terrible sin, but he repented of that and now he really does have love in his heart for Jesus. But how do you prove that after what Peter did? Does Jesus say, “We’ll see. Let’s wait and see what happens in the months to come - see if you’ve really changed”? Is there anything Peter can do at this moment to prove his love for Jesus?
John 21:17 The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."
Oh, what a wonderful thing to be able to appeal to! Maybe you have really blown it. You have fallen into terrible sin. You have had a period of rebellion. You have not demonstrated love for God, but you have repented of that now, and there really is love in your heart for God. Oh, what a wonderful privilege to be able to say, “God, no one else can see it. But You know all things. You know that I love you.” God’s examination of your heart is a wonderful thing not only because it is the examination of a judge and a doctor and a defense attorney, but also because it is the examination of a lover - someone you love and who you want to accept your love.
The More Someone Knows You, The More Their Acceptance And Love Mean
It comes back again to intimacy. When you want to be close to someone you welcome that person’s attention and knowledge of you. You want them to know you well because the more someone knows you, the more that person’s acceptance of you means. If you approve of me, but you barely know me, then your approval doesn’t mean that much. Because for all I know, if you ever saw the real me - with all my weaknesses and failures and the ugliness of when I am at my worst, then you would reject me. But if you have seen me at my worst, and you still accept me and even love me - that has a lot more meaning. That is why it means so much more when Tracy tells me she loves me than if anyone else tells me that.
Although, not even Tracy knows everything about me. Not even she sees all my evil thoughts and attitudes and ways. In fact, not even I know all the evil that is in me.
1 Corinthians 4:4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.
I can have a clear conscience but still not be innocent. Some of my evil flies even under the radar of my own ability to detect. But when God looks at me, He can easily see not only all my evil actions that all of you see, and not only all my evil that only Tracy can see, and not only all the evil in my heart that only I can see, but even the evil in my heart that is so hidden I cannot even see it. And knowing all that, He still approves of me and accepts me and even loves me! What a security we can have in God’s love. All your other relationships, if you mess up bad enough, they could go south. But did you know that God will never discover anything about you that He did not already know on the front end? If before we got married, my wife was able to look into the future and. learn every negative thing about me that she would come to know in the 23 years of our marriage, I cannot imagine she would have gone through with the wedding. That is probably true of most every married person. If God let you see all the bad news about your spouse all at once, it would be too much for anyone to handle in one shot. But God knew every bad thing about you, every bad thing you would ever do, every mistake, every rebellion, every act of stupidity - He saw you at your ugliest - all of it was right in front of His face when He chose to love you. There might be some things about you that if they were known would turn everyone in this room against you. People would think of you as a vile person and you would be an outcast. God knows all of them, and He still really, really likes you. It is good that God examines every nook and cranny and crevice of your heart at all times, because that makes it mean so much more when God says, “I still love you.” The Person in this universe who knows you the best, loves you the most.
5) A Caretaker’s Examination - He Knows My Needs
There is something wonderful about being thoroughly and deeply known. The comedian Tim Allen once said, “When a man designs a stop sign, it just says ‘STOP.’ If a woman designed a stop sign it would say, “If you really loved me, you would know what to do right now.” We laugh at that because we know there is an element of truth to it. Wives always want their husbands to be able to read their mind. Why is that? Most women do not have any problem communicating verbally, so why not just tell your husband what you want instead of expecting him to just know? Why does it ruin it if you have to tell him? It is because women want to be deeply and thoroughly known.
But why women? Husbands usually aren’t like that. If I wanted Tracy to get me a greeting card on my birthday I would just say, “Tracy, would you please get me a greeting card on my birthday?” Or if I want to go out for dinner, I don't expect her to know. I just say, "Hey, let's go out for dinner." Why is it different for wives?
It is significant that a woman does not expect everyone to know what she wants - just her husband. In fact I would venture to guess most women, while they want to be thoroughly known by their husband, would rather not be thoroughly known by others. She does not want some stranger knowing everything about her - all her desires and thoughts and preferences. That would actually be pretty creepy. But you want your husband to know - why? Could it be because God designed the marriage relationship so that the husband is the caretaker and the provider and the protector of the wife? The husband plays the role of Christ in that relationship? You do not want everyone to know everything about you, but it is nice when the person who is in charge of providing for all your needs knows you inside and out.
Wouldn’t it be great, ladies, if your husband not only knew your desires, but if he understood your desires even better than you do? Those times when you don’t really know what you want - you can’t think of anything that would make you feel better, and your husband comes up with something that just absolutely hits the spot? Some moment when you didn’t realize you needed a quick back rub, but he can sense it and he just comes over and starts rubbing your back. Well, you can stop elbowing your husband, because it’s not his fault that he isn’t capable of that. But what you can do is turn that desire toward God. God knows you better than you know yourself, and He loves you more than you love yourself, and He is constantly meeting needs that you don't even know you have.
Romans 8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
Whether you are a man or a woman, your Provider and Caretaker and Protector knows exactly what you need from minute to minute - from second to second. Your needs right now are little different than they were five minutes ago, and you only have a vague idea of how they have changed, but God knows in infinite detail. And He cares about those needs with infinite love.
Conclusion: More Than I Know Myself
All these things this passage says God knows about you. You do not even know those things about yourself. Sometimes I will be praying and I get distracted and my mind wanders and the next thing I know I am thinking about some obtuse subject, and I have no idea what train of thoughts led me there. Evidently, most of my own thoughts go unnoticed even by me! I cannot measure, with any accuracy, the intensity of motives or attitudes or drives. I cannot even begin to unscramble the egg of the complex mixture of my various motives. He knows me; I don’t. Which means if it were not for God knowing and understanding me, no one would. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me - too lofty for me to attain.
Thank You Lord, for allowing me the blessedness of being thoroughly and deeply known and understood, and thank You that even with all that knowledge of me, You still love me. Teach me to live as one who is aware of the marvelous, penetrating, purifying, life-giving, love-affirming gaze of my Protector, Provider, Judge, Doctor, Defense Lawyer, Bridegroom, and Savior.
Benediction: 1 Timothy five:15,16 God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.
1:25 Questions
1) Does the knowledge of God's constant examination of your heart strike you mostly as a pleasant thing or an unpleasant thing? Why?
2) Which of the five benefits of God's omni-interest do you find the most comforting?
• A Judge’s Examination - Helps with Resisting Sin
• A Doctor’s Examination - Peace of Mind Regarding my Wellbeing
• A Lawyer’s Examination - Vindication
• A Lover’s Examination - He Knows My Love for Him
• A Caretaker’s Examination - He Knows My Needs
