SERMON FROM 3/26/1978 !!

 

 

 

Scriptures: Ps. 139:1-18, 23-24, Prov. 14:12, Ps. 8:3-4, Ps. 40:5

 

Tonight I want to share with you some teaching I heard two or three years ago. It really blessed my heart then and still does now. There's a poster in the Housing and Employment office at Tennessee Temple that has the words," God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves." Consider that. I tried to understand that a little deeper and thought about the teaching I heard from Ps. 139. Realizing God Is omniscient, all-knowing means this – If God knows all there is to know about everything there is to know then the Lord is acquainted with my total being, Neither you nor I nor anyone else in the world fully knows all about themselves. Only God knows what can give us peace, Only God knows what can give us joy, Only God knows what we need. Only God knows all our deepest strengths and all our deepest weaknesses.

 

Ps.139:1-6

 

Verse 1) God has known us. There is nothing for Him to learn or discover about us. We are constantly searching ourselves and seem to know less the more we search.

 

Verse 2) God understands our thoughts before we can finish thinking them.

 

Verse 3) There's nothing about our habits, attitudes, our makeup, all our little quirks that God is not acquainted with, familiar with.

 

Verse 4) God hears us before we can speak, God hears the words we can't even find to express our joys, sorrows, needs and confusions.

 

Verse 5) God Is all around us, everywhere we are but He is not just floating, hovering, separate, standing back and analyzing us but God's close to us God reaches his hand out to us, deliberately involving himself in our lives.

 

Verse 6) David meditates on what the Lord is revealing to him in (Verses 1-5) and it is just too wonderful, beyond comprehension. If we meditate on those verses we too should sense the intensity David expresses here. We are so limited in our seeing things as God sees things (the way they really are) that we are fools if we try and run our own lives or go according to our own wisdom or debate over obeying what God tells us to do in this Word.

 

Prov 14:12, There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

 

Read Psalms 139: 13-18

 

Verse 16) God saw us formed while we were still growing in our mother's womb. God had written down just what makes tick before we took our first breath

 

Verse 17-19) David found great comfort in God's thoughts toward him. It was precious to David for God to think about him. God's concern and (Ps. 40:5) thinking about our day-to-day needs is on an infinite scale.

 

… As the sands of the sea, what is the number of our thoughts toward God?

 

(Ps. 56:8)  . . . God knows the number of our tears. Jesus spoke of the hairs of our head being numbered. Many verses clearly show that our being here in our day by day existence is not ignored by God. Whether we "feel it or understand it”, "God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. (Ps. 8:3-4)

 

God has set his love on us in spite of His knowing all about our sinfulness through and through. God knowing our worst gives us His best.

 

Reading Pg. 37 from Knowing God (by J. I. Packer):

 

APPLICATION IN LIGHT OF THE TRUTH

“Satan wants to distract us, deceive us, disgrace us, defeat us and

destroy us. One way he tries to do this – is by discouraging us. Satan can discourage us if we feel that we are alone in our struggles with ourselves. If Satan can get us hating ourselves, loving God and loving others is impossible. God loves as we are. We must realize our sinfulness but not give into it and wallow in self-pity. As saved people God has put His light in us and it is a blessing to know it is always there whether it is evident or not to us, God sees it.”

 

John Newton, the writer of “Amazing Grace” hymn, who was saved out of being in the slave trade, wrote these words - 

 

I am not what I might be,

I am not what I ought to be,

I am not what I wish to be,

 I am not what I hope to be –

But I thank God I am not what I once was,

And I can say with the great apostle

By the Grace of God I am what I am.

 

We must rest in God's thoughts towards us and give all of ourselves to He that knows all about us.

 

(Read Ps. 139: 23-24)