Wonderfully Made and Thoroughly Known

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Well, if you would, turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 139. Psalm 139. This is a day that’s being recognized in churches around the country as Sanctity of Life Sunday.

It’s normally held the third Sunday in January of each year. And in years past, I’ve taken a day like this to talk about the sanctity of life and to preach how we as believers need to stand against those who promote abortion and those who profit from it especially, as well as do all that we can to take care of those who feel like they have no other alternative but to be pushed into this practice. And I think there’s a biblical..

. No, I take that back. I know there’s a biblical case to be made for that, because I’ve made it many times before.

But as I think about this subject, there’s more to it than just, there’s more to the sanctity of life than just abortion. I remember being absolutely shocked in a philosophy class at the University of Oklahoma as I heard a professor talk about the views of a lecturer from one of the Ivy League colleges on the East Coast who talked about really children not having rights not only in the womb, but after the womb, and that you should legally be able to abort your children up to 18 years of age. And I’ve heard people joke about that before, but this man was considering it as a serious policy proposal. There was another quote in one of our textbooks, section of our textbook, as a matter of fact, where they talked about the usefulness of life and the value of life to society.

and the idea was that you get sick to a certain extent where you’re not going to get any better or you get to a certain age where you’re not as worthwhile to society and the argument being made whether or not you should have to go and turn in your life at a certain age. Yeah, I don’t buy that. I’m sure, hopefully none of you all buy that either.

But the idea that if you’re of no use to society that we just need to, you know, you just need to get out of the way. We look at it and think, well, that sounds crazy. That would never happen.

And most people nowadays don’t openly promote a position like that. But it hasn’t always been that far out of the mainstream. In the early 1900s, when eugenics was popular, there was this idea of cleansing the bloodline and perfecting humanity by getting rid of undesirables.

I want to read you a quote. I had to go, I had to look, I’d heard it before, but I had to look long and hard to go find it again this week. George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright.

Now, he’s pretty famous. The only thing I know him from, though, is that he’s the one who wrote Pygmalion, which is what they based My Fair Lady off of. It’s the only reason I know it.

I read a lot, but I don’t have lots of time to read fiction. But he wrote tons and tons of things, and he’s celebrated even now as a genius in literature. But he said, I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board, just as he might come before the income tax commissioner, and say every five years or every seven years, just put them there and say, Sir or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence?

If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight in the social group, if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life doesn’t benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself. I don’t know about you, but that is chilling to me. That absolutely, the more I think about that, that absolutely chills me to the bone, the idea that there are some in society who would say, you only matter as much as you can do something for me.

You only matter, your life only matters, as much as you can contribute something to society, as much as you are a benefit to me. And that leads me to think of Pol Pot in Cambodia. And if you’re not familiar with that, with the Khmer Rouge regime that was in power there from 1975 to 79, they killed almost a third of the country’s population in what were called the killing fields.

And their motto, as they were dealing with the peasants and the people of the country, was to keep you is no benefit, to kill you is no loss. And what a cheap view some have of human life. It’s not just about abortion, it’s about the idea of anybody being expendable when they can no longer do anything for us.

And I dare say that that idea has led to most, if not all, of the mass murder that’s taken place in the 20th century. Some of the most evil ideas that our world has seen in the last hundred years have been based on that idea that human life has value only in so far as that life is able to do something for me. And I know, I’m fairly certain nobody in here holds to that view, and yet we tend to sometimes, I know I do this, tend to devalue people a little bit if I think that they’re.

. . I’ll just put it this way.

I’ll put it the way of what I was going to tell you tonight from the book of James. James gives us an example. he says if a rich man comes into the church and he comes in fine clothes and gold jewelry he’s brought and given a place of honor and then a man comes in wearing rags and we tell him stand in the back we have this tendency to look at people oh he’s got it together he’s got money he’s got talent he’s got abilities he can do something for me he’s important and then we would look at somebody who can’t do those things or doesn’t have those things and say they’re less valuable I’m here to tell you that I am thankful this morning that the way God looks at us is the complete opposite of that.

The way God looks at us is the complete opposite of that. And King David understood better than most people what it means to be plucked out of obscurity, to be a nobody, to be unimportant, and to be shown by God a purpose that was beyond his wildest imaginations. David really was a nobody.

He was a shepherd. At the time that Samuel came and anointed him to be king of Israel, King David was just a shepherd. And 1 Samuel 16, 11 says, He was the youngest. And when Jesse brought his sons to meet Samuel, he didn’t know what Samuel was there for, but when he came to participate in the sacrifices with Samuel and came to meet the great prophet of Israel, they forgot to even bring David.

He was out taking care of the sheep. He was the youngest of his family. I don’t think anybody around them would have looked at David’s sons and have told, hey, pick out a king out of this lot.

David wouldn’t have been anybody’s first choice. His own father, like I said, didn’t even think to bring him to meet Samuel. And while, you know, the Bible says that David was handsome, he evidently sort of paled in comparison to his brothers.

Because even Samuel, this great man of God, God had to remind him when he was looking at David’s brothers, okay, wait a minute, there’s more here than appearance. There’s something here more important than he just looks imposing and kingly, because they’d done that with Saul. And God told him, look not on his countenance, nor on the height of his stature, because I have refused him, talking about David’s oldest brother.

For the Lord seeth not as man seeth, for man looketh on the outward appearance of God, looks upon the heart. And yet in spite of this, the fact that he’s really a nobody, he’s a shepherd boy out there, his dad didn’t even remember to bring him to meet Samuel, God called him to be the king of Israel. Because God looked at him and saw value in him.

After he was called and anointed to be the king of Israel, God went so far as to call him a man after his own heart. Now we know that that doesn’t mean David was perfect, but David was a man who messed up frequently. David was a man who messed up his family because he couldn’t get it together, and yet he was someone who always recognized his shortcomings and was repentant before God.

And so God called him a man after his own heart. God empowered this man to go out and kill a giant with a sling. That wasn’t just David’s prowess with a sling.

That was God enabling him to do it because David said, I’m going to do this so that today everybody will know there’s a God in Israel. It was all about God empowering him to do it. This man was then able to reunite the warring tribes of Israel.

When Saul died, a mini version of a civil war broke out for seven years. And David led one of the factions, and God enabled him to reunite the country. He was promised this everlasting throne, too.

God promised him that his descendants would be on the throne of Israel forever, which we as Christians believe to be fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. God loved David, but God didn’t love David because he was king of Israel. God made him king of Israel. God didn’t love David because he was able to kill giants.

God made him able to kill giants. God didn’t love him because he was a great warrior. God didn’t love him because he was respected by the people.

God didn’t love him because he was the standard by which all other future kings of Israel would be judged. God loved him because he was David and because he made him. You see, in God’s economy, none of this stuff that David did or became made any difference in the value that God placed on him.

David learned that there was a much simpler reason why God loved him, why God cared about him. And it was just simply because God was able to look at David and say, I made you in your mind. Now that’s the same thing that, that’s the same lesson that I want you to take away from what we talk about here this morning.

That your value in God’s economy has nothing to do with your abilities or the things that you’ve done or the things that you might do. Or all the things that humanity would look at and say, well, he’s important because he’s got money. He’s important because he’s really good looking.

She’s important because she accomplished this. God doesn’t look at any of that stuff. God says, I made you in your mind.

And we see in Psalm 139, David sort of learning this lesson. Now it was at the time of, well, I’ll read it to you to start with, and then we’ll move on from there. Starting in verse 1, he says, O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me.

Thou knowest my down-setting and mine uprising. Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it all together. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there.

If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me.

Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. For thou hast possessed my reins, thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.

I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect, and in thy book all my numbers were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there were none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!

If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee. Now David came to this realization about how God viewed him at the end of some great trauma in his life.

Now Bible scholars disagree about when it was. Some think it was during the time before, after he was anointed king, but before he became king. When he’s running from Saul and he’s hiding in the caves, and maybe David came to this realization right after God delivered him from Saul one of those times.

Others, and I’m inclined more toward this view, I think it’s after the seven-year civil war when he’s Israelite against Israelite, brother against brother for seven years, and finally peace comes and David rules over the kingdom and brings peace to the people. That was when David looked back and everybody’s hailing him as this conquering king, this uniter of the country, and David looks back and realizes everybody thinks I’m great, but God doesn’t love me because I’m great. God loved me a long time before I was great.

Either way, he had just been through a great time of trouble. He went through one of those times in his life, he went through several of those times of trouble that we often go through, those kinds that lead us to question everything around us, that lead us to question ourselves. Can I really do anything worthwhile in my life for God’s kingdom, for any of it?

Can I really accomplish anything? Can I really contribute anything? How can I possibly get through this pain that’s been inflicted on me?

Is all the struggle really worth it? If I go through all of this that’s been thrown at me, is it going to be worth it in the end? Does anyone care about me?

Does my life even matter? I think at some point we all ask those questions or questions like those. And David, as he’s hiding out in the caves running from Saul, as he’s fighting with his fellow countrymen to take what God had set up for him, as he’s dealing with his children going astray because of the life he’s lived.

At many points, David did soul-searching, and at the end of one of those periods, he came to the realization that God’s love for him has nothing to do with anything he’s done. God’s love for David had to do with who God was and what God had done in David’s life. And so God gave him this vitally important realization that we see in Psalm 139 here, that there is no human being so invisible or so insignificant that his creator does not know him, love him, and have a purpose for his life.

There is no human being so invisible or insignificant. There are people that we walk past every day and never give them a second thought. I feel like every time I go into the city for something, I get off the highway, and it doesn’t matter where I am, there’s a panhandler there.

My mother sent me a picture of one the other day because it looked, it could have been my uncle, and she sent me this picture to look at, And we decided it wasn’t him. Thank goodness. But when she sent me that picture, I thought, half the time I don’t even really notice these people as I’m getting on and off the highway.

Don’t even read their signs. And now I know you’re probably sitting there thinking, a lot of them are scammers. Yeah, a lot of them may be.

But that’s not the point. That’s not the point I’m making. I’m trying to make the point that there are people that we pass every day that aren’t even on our radar because they’re invisible or they’re insignificant.

But not to God. There are people that we write off on a daily basis. I’m not even going to mess with them.

They need Jesus, but there’s no way they’re ever going to. We don’t know that. God loved them.

God made them. The Son of God died for them. We may look at people as invisible.

We may look at people as insignificant because of what they can or can’t do for us, whether for us individually or for us as a church or as a society. But there’s nobody so invisible or insignificant that they’re creator. The God of this universe who made them, who spoke them into existence, or set up the laws of biology and physics so that they could exist, that their creator doesn’t look at them and love them and know them and have a purpose for them.

And so when David understood God’s perspective, but it really has nothing to do with my accomplishments. It has nothing to do with, I’m King David. When he realized this, David was blown away.

He said in verse 6 that this knowledge is too wonderful for me. Have you ever gotten news in your life that was just so big you couldn’t wrap your brain around it? It might have been good news.

It might have been bad news. I’ve had some of both. Those times of how am I going to make it through the next 20 minutes after this bombshell has been dropped on me.

And those times where I’m given news that I suddenly hear that song, I’m walking on sunshine in my head. Sometimes things will happen that we just, they’re so incredible that we can’t wrap our brains around them. And that’s how David looks at this, this realization.

And if you’ve never come to this realization of how God feels about you, when you do realize it, I think you’ll have the same reaction, I know I did, that it’s not about God being impressed with your achievements. That God loves you just because he made you, and he chooses to love you. When David realized that, he was blown away.

This knowledge is too wonderful for me. I can’t even comprehend it. My brain can’t even make sense of what I’m hearing.

Because it is so opposite to the way we as human beings think. And so David was amazed, first of all, because God knows us better than we know ourselves. Now, depending on where you are in your relationship with God this morning, that can either be a comforting thought or that can be a terrifying thought.

God knows you better than you know yourself. I’ll find myself sometimes praying to God and asking him for something and giving the reason and saying, you know, I just want what’s best for X, Y, or Z, and then I’ll stop and I’ll realize what God already knows. Wait a minute, there’s this ulterior motive.

Yeah, this would be good for me too. But God, you already knew that, so let’s not pretend. God knows our hearts better than we do.

God knows the motive that’s there sometimes before I know it. God knows the thoughts that are there that nobody else knows you’re thinking. Like I said, that’s either very comforting or very terrifying.

But either way, it’s incredible. There’s the deist view of God that some of the founding fathers held to that was popular 200 years ago. I said some, not all.

Some of the founding fathers held to that God is like a watchmaker. And God created the universe. God built it and God wound it up and set it in motion and then he just steps back.

You know, the watchmaker, if you have a really expensive watch, he builds it and then he doesn’t come with you every day, holding you by that arm and making sure the watch is running smoothly and wiping specks of dirt off of it and all that. That’s not how the watchmaker operates. And the deists view God as the watchmaker.

He wound the universe up and then let it run. But doesn’t really intervene. He kind of stepped back from it.

That’s not what the Bible teaches. God could have created us and left us to our own devices. I mean, he’s the creator of all things.

He’s the most powerful, the most insanely powerful entity in the entire universe by a long shot. Second place isn’t even close. And yet he has time to care about us and to know us.

That’s incredible. He doesn’t have to do that. He doesn’t have to care about us.

He doesn’t have to know us personally. Have you ever been to a government office? That sends shivers up my spine just saying that.

Go to the Social Security Administration. You’re just a number, aren’t you? Or you go to get your driver’s license, you’re just a number.

I hate that feeling. Or sometimes you’ll work at a place. You’re just employee number 33410.

It’s a number I just made up. You don’t matter, you’re just another number. I think sometimes we have the idea that that’s how God sees us.

No, no, no. God doesn’t see me as child number 75662. God sees me and says, that’s Jared. I know him.

That’s Julie. That’s Kay. That’s Greg.

That’s Sharon. God sees us and he knows us by name. David said, he searches us.

Verse 1, he knows us. Verse 1, he knows our activities. In verse 2, he understands our thoughts.

Again, comforting or terrifying. Verse 2, he understands our thoughts. He is acquainted with all our ways.

He knows our habits. He knows the things that we do. He knows how we work.

He hears our words. Verse 4, he hears everything you say, even the things you say under your breath. Verses 11 and 12, he sees us even when we think we’re hiding from him.

You can’t hide from God. He sees our future and he sees our past. Verse 16, God knows everything about you. Not only what you’ve done in the past and where you stand with him right now, But God sees your future as well.

God knows us better than we know ourselves. And again, that’s so incredible because he doesn’t have to. We would think someone so powerful would have bigger fish to fry.

And he does. He’s got a whole universe to run. And yet, in the midst of that running of the whole universe, he makes time to know me and to know you and to know the homeless guy under the underpass and to know the child starving in a foreign country that we can’t even pronounce and to know the elderly shut in and to know the baby in the womb.

God takes the time to know all of us. David was amazed because God takes care of us throughout all of our days. In verse 3, he talks about God preparing our paths.

God sort of clearing the way for us to walk. He surrounds us. If there’s anybody I want to be surrounded by, it’s God.

The world doesn’t surround us. The devil doesn’t surround us. The forces of darkness don’t surround us.

God surrounds us. His hand is on us. His protection, his providence, his care, it’s there every day.

And you might think, well, you don’t know what’s happened to me. Where was God’s hand of providence then? Just let him take it off of you.

And we’ll see how things go. I shudder to think of all the things. Even with the hard things I’ve been through, I shudder to think of what life would be like without the providential hand of God watching over me.

He’s with us everywhere we go in verses 7 through 9. He leads us, verse 9. He upholds us.

He lifts us up when we have no strength of our own. Verse 10. God takes care of us every day of our lives.

Where’s the proof of that? The heartbeat. That breath you breathe in and out.

God takes care of us in thousands of little ways every day. The Bible says in him we live and move and have our being. He’s responsible for this life that we live.

That’s what this whole series is about, by the way, that I started last week. That God is the giver of life. That life is a gift from God.

That we don’t treat it, we don’t treat it with disrespect, we don’t treat it as garbage, we use it in the best way that we possibly can as a gift from God. And God takes care of us every day for as long as he gives us that life. And sometimes we’ll run into difficulties.

Sometimes it’s because we’re not letting him lead us. We’re trying to wander away. Charlie’s got a big dog.

Some of y’all have heard her call it her puppy. Some of y’all have heard me sigh and roll my eyes when she calls it her puppy. And I’m not saying anything I wouldn’t say if she was here this morning.

That dog is bigger than I am. And I’ll go try to lead him with his leash. He hasn’t learned how to walk on a leash yet.

Or sometimes I’ll try to lead him by his collar. And when he cooperates, you know, things go smoothly. I’m trying to say, okay, I need to get you in here so we can feed you.

Something good is going to happen if you’ll just come with me so I can feed you. Other times he tries to fight. Other times he tries to get away.

And that doesn’t go smoothly. It causes all sorts of problems. and he likes to slip out of the collar. I have to twist it one time with my finger just enough to tighten it up.

Not enough to choke him. If there’s anybody here from the PETA people. I’m not choking the dog.

I’m just making the collar not slip off. But it gets tight and it’s uncomfortable. And he starts trying to flail around like a fish on the deck of a boat.

And he bashes himself into walls and he just does all sorts. It’s just he has all sorts of trouble because he’s not willing to be led. And God is there leading us daily.

If we’ll just cooperate. If we’ll just quit trying to fight and cooperate, his way is best for us. It doesn’t mean that we’ll never have trouble or anything uncomfortable, but his way is best. And finally, David was amazed by God because God’s love for us began before we were even born.

God’s love for you began before you were even born. Ralph, he knew you before you were born. LaWanna, he knew you before you were born.

Louise he knew you before you were born and he knew every time you’d ring that bell he knew you and you know how he knew you I mean I’ve known each of my babies before they were born because I’d see them on the ultrasound and I’d talk to them when they were in the womb and you could see how they react and once they’re bigger you could feel how they react and I knew Benjamin was going to be a wild child I knew that the one we lost right before Benjamin or a year before Benjamin I knew he was quieter I knew Madeline was going to be quieter than Benjamin but not as quiet as the other one I’ve known each of them I’ve known something about what they were going to be like before they were born but I didn’t know them like God does God knew every hair on our heads God knew what we were going to grow up to be I don’t even know yet if this next one coming up is a boy or a girl I think I know but I only have a 50-50 shot of him right at this point God already knows if that child is a boy or a girl.

I submit to you, God knows all the times that that baby’s going to choose right and it’s going to choose wrong. God knows what that baby’s going to grow up to be. God knows, and I don’t think God forces all of that.

We can debate free will versus determinism all day, but whether we believe in, wherever we fall in that spectrum, I think we can all agree that God knows those things. God knew who we were before we were born. Verse 13 says, He formed us in our mother’s wombs.

Verse 14 says, He fashioned us carefully. We weren’t just accidents of genetics. God fashioned you carefully.

God made you just how He wanted. Now I might question why God made me a certain way. God, couldn’t I have been taller?

God, could I not have been taller in ratio to my wideness? God, could I not have held on to my hair a little longer, God? We might question, God, why did you create in this way?

But the fact is, God designed us just how he wanted us to. And you were no accident. You are who God made you to be.

And he knew us. Verses 15 and 16 tell us he knew us and had a purpose for us before we were ever born. Before we were fully formed.

And I read you the quote from George Bernard Shaw. And unfortunately, too many people subscribe to this view or a lesser version of it. Even if they don’t say, yeah, we want to gas you if you’re no benefit to society.

A lot of times, even those of us who believe in the sanctity of life, find ourselves getting sucked into this viewpoint of thinking that somebody’s value and how much value they have is somehow dependent on how their existence benefits us. And thank God that his view is completely the opposite. And we as believers, we as those who follow him and try to do what he says, need to fight hard to make sure we have God’s view on it and not man’s view.

That when we find ourselves writing somebody off because, oh, they can’t do anything for us. That’s just the bum on the side of that. No.

Shame on me. Oh, it’s just a shut-in. Shame on me.

Just a kid. Can’t do it. Shame on me.

Shame on us when we do that. Our value has nothing to do with our actions or our abilities. It has everything to do with God’s love for us.

your value has everything to do with God’s love for you. And as we read this and as we get acquainted with what David realized here, it should change the way that we look at our lives and the lives of others around us. We need to value other people’s lives, even those that we look at and society would look at and say, they don’t benefit us at all.

They can’t do anything. It doesn’t matter. And then those times we get down on ourselves and say, well, I can’t really contribute anything.

I’m not that important. That doesn’t matter. First of all, it’s probably not true, but even if it were, it doesn’t matter.

You have value because God says you do. I have value because God says I do. And when we realize that, when we really take that to heart, we will live each day of our lives, not solely for ourselves, but primarily as an expression of gratefulness and amazement toward God that he would love us and care for us at all.

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