Who are you? Who are you, church? I think this is a question that is both the simplest and the most profound question human beings can ever ask. Who are you?
Not, what do you do for a living? Not, what are your hobbies? Not, where are you from? But who, in the innermost of your being, are you? What is it that gives you your value? Your dignity? Your purpose?
Our world offers a thousand different and sometimes conflicting answers to that question. Culture will tell you that who you are comes from your achievements, appearance, net worth, or political affiliation. It may also tell you that you are a sum of all your desires, defined by nothing but your own choices. Science might say to you that you are nothing more than a cosmic accident, a collection of molecules that randomly came together. And in the face of all these different voices telling you who you are, it is easy to feel confused, lost, and insignificant.
Do you know that feeling? When you are driving and all of a sudden it hits you like a truck and you start thinking about where your life is headed, what you have done or haven’t done? You replay the tape of your life, and add the wins and losses, and you feel that you’ve come up short. You're working hard, but it doesn't feel like you're getting anywhere. You feel under-appreciated, overlooked, underpaid, or even unnecessary.
But this morning, we turn to one of the most beloved psalms in all of Scripture to find God’s answer to that question. This psalm is an intimate confession, almost a love song about God’s personal and constant care for His people. And this is the truth I want us to hold onto today, our big idea: You are intentionally and wonderfully made by a God who knows you completely.
GOD KNOWS ME
The psalm opens with a profoundly personal statement. David writes, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.” It is interesting that this entire psalm is almost like a fabric woven of first and second-person pronouns. Virtually every line’s syntax contains “you” or “your” and “I” or “me” (Verse 1: You have searched me; you know me/Verse 2: You know when I sit; you perceive my thoughts). When David wrote this Psalm, God was not someone who was far away and distant, but very close. This is so important because, from the get-go, it reveals what God’s relationship with David was like and what our relationship with God is like.
Think of a couple that has been married 50 years. They sit in their living room, and a whole conversation can happen without a single word. He starts to get up from his chair, and she says, “Here’s your slippers.” How did she know? Because for a lifetime, she has known him.
The keyword that frames this entire psalm is the Hebrew verb yada, “to know.” It appears seven times. The word “yada” means so much more than our English word, “know.” When we say, “I know,” we are talking about a certain knowledge that we have gathered through observation, studying, information, or relationship. We “know” that the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West. I know my neighbor is this person, works at this job, drives this car, and has this number of children. It’s mostly head knowledge. However, in Hebrew, yada refers to a deep, experiential, and intimate knowing. It’s the same word used in Genesis to say that Adam “knew” his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore a son.
And that’s how God knows you–not just head knowledge, not like knowing your neighbor, but a deep knowledge that comes from an intimate relationship.
He says in verse 2, “You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.” The NIV says God perceives our thoughts; the ESV says He discerns them; the King James says He understands them. All these point to a God who is not just aware of our outward actions—our sitting and our rising—but intimately knows the secret, interior world of our minds. He knows our motives, our anxieties, our unspoken questions, our deepest intentions, from a great distance. There is no thought so private that He is not already there.
He continues, “You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.” He knows our every journey and our every resting place. He knows what we are going to say before the thought has even fully formed into a word on our lips. This is total, comprehensive knowledge.
Think about one of the most recognized symbols of precision and quality in the world: a Rolex watch. There’s a well-known saying that it takes a full year to create a single Rolex watch. Now, that doesn't mean one watchmaker sits at a bench and works on a single watch for 365 days. The reality, as the company explains, is even more impressive. It reflects a year-long journey that prioritizes uncompromising quality above all else.
The story of a Rolex doesn't begin in a workshop with tiny gears and screws. It starts in the fire and heat of Rolex's very own foundries. Before a single piece is shaped, they mix their own pigments and create their unique metals from scratch. They carefully forge their proprietary stainless steel, and out comes a metal that is so tough that it can be used in space. This is then molded and polished into the desired shape. From there, hundreds of tiny, complex components are machined with precision down to the microscopic level.
Skilled hands, steady and patient, spend months assembling the movement, the heart of the watch. Every gear, every spring, every jewel is set into a symphony of perfect motion. And after all that, the watch isn't finished. It then endures weeks of rigorous, relentless testing. It is subjected to pressures that simulate depths far deeper than any human could survive.
Now, if you asked that watchmaker, “What do you know about the watch?” How do you think they would respond?
They don’t just know its model number. They would know the very batch of steel that was forged for its case. They would know the precise tension of the hairspring. They know every one of the hundreds of tiny, polished components that work in perfect harmony within it. They know the watch’s strengths, its unique character, and its flawless performance. They understand it fully because they designed, forged, assembled, and tested it at every stage of its existence.
But God knows you better than that. If a human watchmaker can have such comprehensive knowledge of a timepiece because they spent a year overseeing its creation, how much more does your eternal Creator know you? Infinitely more. That is how God knows us. In a world that often judges us by our outward performance, our function, or our superficial qualities, what a profound comfort it is to know that our Maker knows us completely. He knows every strength, every weakness, every hidden pain, every unspoken thought. We are His own intricate handiwork. Charles Spurgeon wrote of this very psalm: "This is no guess or venture; God is not a partial knower of our character, but he knows us altogether... This knowledge is not a bare inspection, but an intimate acquaintance." God’s knowledge of you is an intimate acquaintance.
You are intentionally and wonderfully made by a God who knows you completely.
GOD IS EVERYWHERE
David asks the next logical question: if God knows me completely, then “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” If God’s knowledge is this total, is there any escape from His all-seeing gaze?
He says if I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, in Sheol, the place of the dead, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn and fly to the eastern horizon, or if I settle on the far side of the great western sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. There is no place in the entire cosmos, from the highest height to the lowest depth, from the farthest east to the farthest west, where David is outside the reach of God’s loving, guiding hand. Even the darkness cannot hide Him.
If you are running away from God, or if you have something to hide from this, this could be a terrifying thought. But for the child of God, for the one who feels lost or alone, this is a promise of profound comfort.
Think of a diver exploring the ‘midnight zone’ (the deep depths) of the ocean, thousands of feet below the surface. Down there, the sun never reaches. It is a world of crushing pressure and absolute, silent blackness. It is perhaps the most isolated, alien environment on our planet. The diver is, in one sense, utterly alone.
But they are not truly alone. They are physically connected to the ship on the surface by a lifeline. That cord provides everything they need to survive: it pumps air into their lungs, warm water into their suit to fight the deadly cold, and power for their small light. Most importantly, it contains a communications line, a voice from above that constantly reminds them, “We are here. We are with you. You are not lost.”
There are times in our lives that can feel like the midnight zone—seasons of profound grief, pain, loneliness, disability, or many other things. But God is there, connect with you like the lifeline, and continually pours out His grace and mercy upon us. As Corrie ten Boom, who endured the unspeakable darkness of a Nazi concentration camp, testified from her own experience, "There is no pit so deep, that God's love is not deeper still." For David, for Corrie, and for us, this is the profound comfort of the psalm: even in the deepest pit, in the darkest night, we are never, ever alone.
God knows us intimately, and He is with us constantly. But where does this incredible sense of value and security come from? Once again, you are intentionally and wonderfully made by a God who knows you completely.
GOD CREATED ME
David now turns from what God knows and where He is, to what God has done. We are not a biological accident. Every single one of us is a divine masterpiece, intentionally and wonderfully made by a God who knows us completely. Verse 13 – “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” David declares, “You created my inmost being.” The Hebrew verb here, qanah, is fascinating. The Hebrew doesn’t just mean “to create”; it more often means “to acquire by purchase.”
To “create” is a transactional term. David is saying that God not only made him, but He acquired him; God took possession of him as His own treasured creation from the very beginning. He continues, “You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” To be “fearfully” made speaks of reverence and awe. To be “wonderfully” made means to be set apart.
Here and there on TV, you might see a “Weaver.” (We know what I am talking about, right?) How they weave different threads and create fabric or clothes. Imagine a master weaver working at a loom. If we stand behind the loom, all we can see is a chaotic mess of threads, knots, and loose ends. It looks random and confusing. But the Master Weaver, working from the front, sees the magnificent picture He is creating. Every single thread–even the dark ones, the rough ones–is being intentionally and purposefully woven into a masterpiece. Every single one of us, no matter how we look, is created as a masterpiece.
Oftentimes, when we look at a life of suffering or even disability, we are often looking at the back of the loom. We see the knots, the tangled threads, and the ugly pieces, and we ask, “Why, God? Why did this have to happen to me? Why was I born like this?” But the Scripture is clear that God, the Master Weaver, sees the glorious design He has created in you. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Your life and identity have a purpose.
This is why the testimony of someone like Joni Eareckson Tada is so powerful. She has lived as a quadriplegic for decades, and from that place of deep suffering, she testifies to this truth that there was an ultimate purpose in her suffering. She writes, “If God can bring beauty out of the brokenness of the cross, then He can bring beauty out of our broken bodies... He is the God who delights in turning tragic and ugly things into things of beauty and praise.”
Church, if this is true. If God is the Master Weaver, and you are His masterpiece. If your life is God’s part of intentional design, how does that change your view of your life?
1. First, it frees us from the tyranny of performance. The world measures your value based on what you can do: your productivity at work, your success as a parent, your physical strength, and your mental sharpness. We internalize this, and our self-worth rises and falls with our abilities. When we are healthy and capable, we feel valuable. When sickness, age, or disability limits what we can do, we can feel worthless. But God says no, because you are His masterpiece. You are a masterpiece not because you are flawless and perfect, but because you belong to God. He is your creator.
This means that on the days when you are battling an illness, when your body aches, when your mind feels foggy, or when you feel you have failed as a parent or a professional, your value in God's eyes has not diminished one single bit. You are still His fearfully and wonderfully made creation.
2. Second, it changes the questions we ask about our sufferings. Our natural, human response to hardship is to look at difficulties and cry out, “Why, God? Why this sickness? Why this pain? Why was I born like this?” We see our suffering as a meaningless interruption to the life we were supposed to have. But if we trust that there is a Master Weaver at the loom, the question can begin to shift. The "why" may never be fully answered on this side of eternity, but we can start to ask a new question: “God, what are you weaving in me through this?”
3. Third, it alters how we perceive and interact with others. If every single person is a divine masterpiece, then we are constantly in the presence of God’s wonderful creation.
Because we are intentionally and wonderfully made by a God who knows us completely.
GOD HAS A PLAN FOR ME
Going back to the Scripture, after 18 verses of breathtaking praise, David takes a sharp turn. He cries out with raw anger, “If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty…” This can feel weird and out of place.
But these verses are the key to the context of 139. They reveal that David is not writing from a peaceful sanctuary. He is a man who has been hurt. He knows the wicked; he knows the people who are against God; he knows the people who are pressing in on him. And what David does is a declaration of faith from a place of pain and opposition. His anger at the wicked is not a personal vendetta; it is a declaration of covenant loyalty. He is saying, “God, because you are my magnificent King, I am completely on Your side. Your enemies are my enemies.”
And so, with confidence and trust, he prays the final prayer in verses 23-24, “Search me, 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.”
This declaration of loyalty gives him the integrity to pray the final, vulnerable prayer: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” God knows you completely, and He will lead your path, as long as you continue to put your faith and trust in him.
CONCLUSION
One of my memories with my father was at a public pool, before I learned how to swim. Now, you know that in public pools, there’s always the shallow side and then the deeper side. It was really before I knew how to swim, and my dad took me to the deep end of the pool. And I was terrified, because I knew that my feet couldn’t touch the bottom.
All I could do was to hold on tightly – which is what I did. And then he started to swim, pulling me along with him. My only job was to trust, to hold on, and to let his strength carry me through the very water that I was so afraid of. And, of course, we made it to the other side safely. My security was never in my own ability to swim, but in my complete trust in the one who was holding me.
David’s final prayer is like that. After reflecting on the fact that his Father knows him, is with him, and wonderfully made him, his only logical response is to reach out to God, hold on to him, and say, “I don’t know the way through these deep waters, but You do. Lead me.” Friends, that is the confidence we can have in God.
Because we are intentionally and wonderfully made by a God who knows us completely.
