Psalm 139: Too Wonderful

 

God knows everything and is everywhere. These are truths that most of us believe. We use fancy theological terms to describe them. God is omniscient, He knows all things and He is omnipresent, He is always present, at all times in all places. We know the facts, we know the terms, but do we understand what they mean? Are we affected by His knowledge and His presence? Are we moved by His awareness and nearness? Do we live in the limitations of our knowledge of Him or the wonder of His knowledge of us? 

David writes things that can be uncomfortable if we don’t know the character of the One he is writing about. We have been searched and known. God knows when we sit down and when we rise up, He knows our thoughts before we think them, our words before we say them, our paths before we walk them. We are thoroughly and completely known. Aren’t there some things we would prefer to be left unknown? Regrets, we’ve all got a few. Mistakes, probably more than a few. Embarrassment, shame, foolishness, failure. We’ve all come short of the glory of God, but Psalm 139 makes it clear that all of our shortcomings have been thought, spoken and acted out in the presence of God. At first glance, that’s not exactly comforting. 

We know that God knows everything, but again, do we know what the means? Is this just part of God’s vastness or is it a testament to His nearness? Look again at the first few verses of the psalm, “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.” David isn’t writing about God’s omniscience, but his personal involvement, His intimate knowledge. David is writing about God’s effort to know us. 

We aren’t known because God just knows everything, we are known because God desires and does the work to know us. Jesus said that even the hairs of our heads are all numbered (Matthew 10:30). Consider the closeness, the intimacy that is necessary for that kind of knowledge. Just think of that imagery for a moment. We lose and grow hair constantly. Jesus was saying that God’s knowledge of us is not simply absolute, it’s constant. He doesn’t just know us; He is knowing us. When Nathanael met Jesus for the first time, Jesus knew his doubts and so He told him that He had seen him when he was sitting under the fig tree. Nathanael was meeting Jesus, but Jesus had always known Nathanael. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, she learned of Him, but He had known her. He came because of His knowledge but He also came because He wanted her to know that she was known. Her community knew her by her past and refused to think that she could be anything more. Jesus didn’t just know her past that was filled with the rejection of multiple husbands, He knew her in ways that she had never even known herself. 

When I read verse six, I see David shaking his head in amazement, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.” David wasn’t afraid of what God knew about him; He was overwhelmed at being known by God. 

The next portion is not a shift of focus it’s a deepening of it. God’s knowledge of us comes from His presence with us. “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?” These are not the complaints of a person trying to get away, but the comfort of a man who knew what it was to be kept. David wrote, “If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” Again, it’s not that I can’t get away from God, but that He won’t depart from us. The picture is far less about God being everywhere than it is that God is with us. There is a detail of Jesus’ birth that we have largely overlooked. Matthew 1:22-23 says, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us).” He is with us by choice. We call Him Immanuel because He has chosen to be with us. He’s more than just everywhere, He’s always with us. He’s with us because He knows us, and He knows us because He’s with us. 

Before she’d been divorced five times, before she’d began living with a man that wouldn’t marry her, before she started going to the well in the heat of the day so that she wouldn’t have to see anyone that she knew, the woman at the well was known. David wrote, “For you formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Everyone that’s ever been made has been made by God. He’s not just the Creator of the heavens and the earth, He didn’t just start the ball rolling, He’s the Creator of all things, He’s the Father of all. If God formed David in his mother’s womb, then He formed you and me. If He knit together one man, He knit together all mankind. Add to this what God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). So, He doesn’t know us because He created us, He created us because He has known us. We are the products of His knowledge, the fruit of His heart, we are the object of His love. 

The question that rises in my mind is simply, why? What is behind such purposed knowledge and planned presence? In Jeremiah 31:3, God Himself is quoted to Judah, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you.” Everlasting love doesn’t only mean “I will love you forever” it also means “I have loved you forever”. We were created by God and for God. He made each of us in His image for a relationship with Him. God knows us, He created us, He is with us all because He loves us. Everything about God shouts that He loves everything about us. Because He knows us, He makes Himself known. Because He’s with us He sent Jesus to make a way for us to be with Him (John 14:3), not just in heaven eventually, but through His Spirit and His Word, right here and right now. It’s wonderful to be known by God, but what’s truly too wonderful, too rich to reject and too beautiful to look away from, is that God has made Himself known to us. Isn’t that what David discovered? God doesn’t show up wherever we go, He’s already there when we arrive. He wrote, “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me . . . your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” 

Let’s go back to the woman at the well one last time. In John 4, when she got to the well, Jesus was there. When she was going to draw her water and go back home, Jesus called out to her. When she was content to hide in her shame, Jesus met her with His love. In every place we’ve ever been, God was there first, making a way for us, offering Himself to us. He knows us, He’s with us all because He loves us. We are all known by God, but the thing that transforms our hearts is when we know that He knows us. It may be too wonderful to understand and too high to attain, but it is not too much to believe. He knows us and He’s with us all because He loves us.