The Almighty Weaver

Introduction

How many times have you gotten envelopes that had big letters on the outside saying something like “You are guaranteed to win 10 million dollars!” Of course, in little tiny print, it says, “if your lucky numbers are the ones chosen at random from the 17 billion others.” And if you’ve ripped the envelope open before you’ve read the small print, you’ll realize that the main purpose of this letter is not to inform you that you’re really rich, but to try to get you to buy magazines or some other product that you probably don’t want.

Have you noticed the only time the world tells us we’re something special, is when they’re trying to sell us something?

Are you somebody special? It would seem a godly humility to say, “Oh no, I’m just an ordinary person. Nothing special about me.”

But as we look closely at David’s words this morning, we don’t find him saying he isn’t anybody special. He says, “I am wonderful!”

Has that shepherd boy turned king become arrogant? No, because David doesn’t say, “I’m wonderful because of what I have done!” He says, “I’m wonderful because God does really good work.”

Last week I said I was starting a series on spiritual gifts. Some of you may be wondering what happened! Well, nothing happened. I’m still going to be preaching about spiritual gifts, but discovering our spiritual gifts and how to use them is an identity issue. To talk about my spiritual gifts is to try and answer one part of the question, “Who am I?”

So before we answer “Who am I, in terms of spiritual gifts?” I think it’s worth asking some bigger questions about, “Who am I?”

My focus today is on verses 13-16. I wanted to read verses 1-16, to give us some context for why David says what he says.

Context:

In the first six verses, David talks of how intimately God knows us (1-6)

We say we “know” someone if we can put their name together with their face But that’s not the kind of knowledge God has of you and me.

He knows everything about us

He knows our habits

He knows – and understands! – our thoughts

I don’t even always understand my own thoughts

He knows what we’re going to say before we say it

Have you ever been with a married couple or even with close friends who finish each other’s sentences?

They know each other so well, they easily anticipate what the other is going to say.

There’s a song I heard several years ago about a couple who had been married for a long time.

It starts out with the words, “They seem to know each other very well. And they speak across the garden, though not a soul could tell.”

That’s the way God knows us.

Not only does God know you better than you know yourself, He is always with you.

Depending on your relationship with God, verses 7-12 are either wonderfully comforting, or terribly unsettling.

God sees every move you make

Like the old James Taylor song says, “You can run, but you cannot hide”

Ask Adam & Eve… they tried!

There is no dark little corner where you can escape His gaze even for a moment.

I have a friend who has ministered to high school students almost since I was one of them. I remember him saying that sometimes Christian students would ask him how far they could go physically with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

He said his stock answer was, “Just imagine that Jesus is in the room with you, watching everything you do, and then decide how far He wants you to go.”

It was not exactly the answer they wanted to hear!

But it was an answer rooted in the truth of Scripture

and we see it in this Psalm

David reflects on the facts that God knows him intimately and that God is always with him. Then he moves into a reflection based on the fact that God has created him. And David is quick to say, he thinks God has done a fantastic job!

The world says “You are simply a by-product of a natural reproductive process.”

But the Bible says, “You are wonderful – because you were handmade by a Master Craftsman” (13, 15)

Science can explain where babies come from, but it can’t explain why every birth feels like a miracle

It can’t explain why the wonder of it takes our breath away.

Have you ever thought about how amazing the human body is? These days we’re often amazed by the power of computers. I’ve studied electronics and especially how computers work. And as I did, I became less and less impressed with computers and more and more impressed with the people who invented them