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Psalm 139
139:1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.1
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.2
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!3
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!6:16)</note>">4
[1] 139:14
[2] 139:20
[3] 139:23
[4] 139:24
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Alright. If you would, open in your bibles to Psalm 139. Psalm 139. The last Sunday of every month, we go through a different Psalm. This past week, my mom visited us, while Lauren was away in Haiti.
Joel Brooks:And my mom and I are very different people. We have very different styles. She frames Thomas Kinkade puzzles, for example. And so we're we're just very different. And one of the things my mom gave was actually puzzles to our children, and she gives Bible puzzles.
Joel Brooks:And I was struck as I was helping Georgia fill out this Bible puzzle, which was of Noah's Ark, And you're talking about one of the most horrific stories in all of the Bible in which God sends a flood and wipes out all of mankind. And we reduced it to little happy children's puzzles because that's a lot more pleasant to think about. We don't want to think about the God who judges, the God who's angry at sin, the God who's going to use his power to destroy the earth there. We, We just kind of want a happier God. You know, many colors, fun puzzles.
Joel Brooks:This is a psalm that I think is important for us because it reminds us of who God is. And when you read it, it makes you a little uncomfortable at times. If it doesn't make you uncomfortable, you don't really understand it because it should make you a little bit uncomfortable to encounter a God like this. And so let me read through the whole Psalm and then we will walk through it. Oh, lord.
Joel Brooks:You have searched me and known me. 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 word is on my tongue, behold, oh lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me.
Joel Brooks:Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your spirit? Where shall I flee from your presence?
Joel Brooks:If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If my I make my bed in Sheol, you're 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. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night.
Joel Brooks:Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Joel Brooks:Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance and your book were written every one of them. The days that were formed for me, when is yet there was none of them.
Joel Brooks:How precious to me are your thoughts, oh god. How vast is the sum of them? If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. Oh, that you would slay the wicked, oh god.
Joel Brooks:Oh, men of blood, depart from me. They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, oh Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
Joel Brooks:I hate them with complete hatred. I count them my enemies. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any grievous way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Oh father, tonight I pray that you would remind us of your holiness. When we cry out that you are holy, what we're crying out is that you are other. You are not like us. And I pray we would be gripped by that reality as we go through this.
Joel Brooks:That we are reminded that you are not like us. You are altogether different. Remind us of your power and your majesty. Remind us of who you are when we call you almighty God. And holy spirit now open up dull hearts, dull minds.
Joel Brooks:Enable us to receive this truth. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but lord, may your words remain and may they change us. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I'm not gonna do anything fancy tonight as we go through this psalm.
Joel Brooks:We're simply going to read a verse, explain the verse. Read a verse, Explain the verse. Really, that's what preaching is. When when Nehemiah describes Ezra, he says, Ezra got up in front of people and he read them the law, and then he told them what it meant. And that's simply what we're gonna do as I go through Psalm 139.
Joel Brooks:And so the very first verse says, oh, Lord, you have searched me and you know me. The question is when when you read that is should this be a comfortable thought? Is is does that produce something like, yes. God knows. He is searching me out right now, and he knows me.
Joel Brooks:Is that a comforting thought? Because I don't think it really is. At least, it isn't for me because I spend a lot of time hiding from people. We talk about being transparent. We we talk about being vulnerable.
Joel Brooks:But there's there's issues and there's things going on inside of us that we really don't want people to know. Lauren when Lauren and I were dating one time, she was she really wanted to know my inner thoughts one time, and she she asked me at the the worst possible moment. It was after I had I had spent an afternoon with all my roommates watching kung fu movies. And she asked me, she said, penny for your thoughts. And I said, no, you don't want that.
Joel Brooks:And she goes, no, penny for your thoughts. And I decided for once in my life I was gonna be open and vulnerable. And I said, well, I'm thinking I could get my fingers, shove them in your eye, hook your nose, and slam your head down on the table. In which she thought, I am dating a serial killer. I was like, I would never do that.
Joel Brooks:But the the thought I mean, I just saw it. Since then, I've been hiding. The the thought of somebody knowing every little thing in us, you have to admit kind of makes you tremble. And god is searching, and the word there is is used for a penetrating search. He he's going deep within you to see what's going on.
Joel Brooks:Verse 2 says, you know, when I sit down and when I rise up, You discern my thoughts from afar. This is the first of what we would call a merism, and you find merisms all throughout the Psalms. And that's simply saying the opposites. You say 2 opposite things to communicate, one truth. And so when it when the psalmist David here says, you know, when I sit down and you know when I get up, he's obviously saying, yes, God.
Joel Brooks:You do know when I sit down, and you do know when I get up. But he's using that merism, those opposites, to say you also know all the activities between those. Everything that happens between the moments I get up and the time when I go to bed, you know every one of them. And then he says, you discern these things from afar. And so God's not just looking at what we do.
Joel Brooks:He's he's discerning them. He's not just a, a distant observer with, with nothing at stake or or or not really wanting to be involved. No. He's he's making judgments as he looks at us. He's discerning these things and he does them from afar, which can mean one of 2 things.
Joel Brooks:It can either mean from a, from way off a distance and space, or it can mean afar off in time. And I think here, because this psalm is mostly about the nearness of God that he's talking about, far off in time. So from way off, way back when, God is discerning our thoughts. And by thoughts there, he's talking about your inner motivate motivations, your desires, the reason you do things, the things that make you tick. So from way off in the past, god is already looking at the deepest motivations in your hearts, and he's discerning them.
Joel Brooks:David here, he understands that god doesn't exist, in time. You know, god has has already revealed himself as the great I am. He's the great present one. And so when God looks at us, he doesn't just look at you in the presence. He sees you in the past.
Joel Brooks:He sees you in the future. He sees the totality of who you are in that moment, and he's discerning what's going on in you. Well, this knowledge begins to make me feel a little uncomfortable. Verse 3 says this. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways.
Joel Brooks:This is actually an agricultural term that David uses to describe God. He says, You winnow or you sift out my journey or my path. Sifting. That's, what a farmer does to separate the wheat from the chaff, To separate what's useful and edible, fruitful from what's wasteful. What should be thrown away in the trash.
Joel Brooks:And so God doesn't just know everything we do. He's sifting through everything we do. He's saying that's fruitful. That is worthless. And he's doing that for every motivation we have, every intention we have, every every stray thought we have.
Joel Brooks:He's making these judgments and he's done them from way off in time. Once again, you start feeling a little bit more uncomfortable that he is so actively judging us. Says he's acquainted with all of my ways. And the word acquainted there means habitual. It's habitual.
Joel Brooks:Confession. There's times I'm driving. I zone out. And I'll find myself at home. And I have no idea how I got there.
Joel Brooks:My mind is just who knows where. And all of a sudden I pulled up in front of my house and I'm safe. I'm assuming everybody around me was safe during that time. But driving home has become so routine. It's just a habit.
Joel Brooks:I don't have to think about it. Now, this is awesome that God uses this to describe us. He says that he is acquainted. He is habitual with our ways. He is so familiar with our inner workings that that he doesn't even have to think about it.
Joel Brooks:He he's so acquainted. It's it's normalcy. It's mundane to him. He knows us so well. Now David realizes at this point that probably our minds are reeling to understand kind of these abstracts.
Joel Brooks:And so he gives us a concrete example in verse 4. Says, even before word is on my tongue, behold, oh lord, you know it altogether. So one of those verses, I mean, you just read and you just kind of pause. You you just have to let that sit in. I mean, before you ever utter a word, God knows exactly what you're going to say.
Joel Brooks:Not only that, he knows the reasons you're gonna say it. Usually, you don't even know that. Every word of praise, every curseful utterance we give, god knows it before we ever say it. There there's no stronger verse I know of in the bible that spells out god's foreknowledge than this. When David really begins thinking about this, He starts to feel claustrophobic, like like God is really just kind of closing in on him.
Joel Brooks:And so we get to verse 5. It says you hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Hem me in. It's it means besieged. It means locked up.
Joel Brooks:Lauren hems our girls' clothes a lot. And so, you you know, to to hem something is when you fold it over, crease it, stitch it so it doesn't move. It's not a comforting image here. You you hem me in. You're you're pressing me down.
Joel Brooks:You're locking me up. You're besieging me. I I can't even move without you knowing everything about it and why I'm doing it. Then it says, you lay your hands upon me. The word for hand here is an unusual word that's used for ham hand.
Joel Brooks:It's not the most common word that's used. It's used to describe the palm of your hand. And so when when we read here, it says, and you lay your hand upon me, the image is like of God trapping a bug. He puts his palm on it. My girls have the bug club.
Joel Brooks:Them and the the Johnson's next door, they whenever they see a bug, they always go bug club, and they all run out. And that's what they do. You know? They they get there and they they try to find that little roly poly, and they cup it. And they keep it from moving.
Joel Brooks:David says, when when I start thinking about your omniscience, When I begin thinking about your omnipresence, it's it's it's you're sewing me in. You're locking me up. You're besieging me. I I tried to run away like a bug, and you just cup me. There's no place for me to run.
Joel Brooks:He he he he's starting to feel suffocated. Verse 6 says, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It's high. I cannot attain to it. Don't think of the word wonderful there as, like when we say it's a wonderful day outside, which it is.
Joel Brooks:That doesn't the day doesn't fill you full of wonder or awe. That's what this word means. It's it's encountering something fearfully awesome that shakes you. When when David came into a worship service you are wonderful. Those those were not just empty words to him.
Joel Brooks:He's thinking of these things. And and and and and and And then he says, It's high, I cannot attain it. This is a military term. Attain there, the Hebrew word is sagab, and it it means to scale. When I think of this, it it it's like a a wall, an insurmountable wall.
Joel Brooks:And I'm a military man, God. I've I've I have fought so many wars, but this is a wall that I cannot scale. You're just too big. Together, you you you find in literature these words wonderful and the words high that you cannot attain it used of lawyer some lawyers would use this. If they made an argument that was so concrete, so intelligent that you just stood in awe of it.
Joel Brooks:That's how it was described. And so David is saying, God, I can't out think you. I can't. You're simply too wonderful. So we come to verse 7.
Joel Brooks:Where shall I go from your spirit? Where shall I flee from your presence? So David wants to run. You know, he's feeling suffocated. He just he just wants to get some fresh air.
Joel Brooks:Anybody who has kids understands this. To some degree, I I you just you just long for that one moment. Can I just have a moment all to myself, please? Just one moment. And that's all.
Joel Brooks:You're just, like, begging for that one moment. Can can can nobody say anything to me for 1 minute? Nobody, you know, pull pull on my jeans asking for something. Nobody asked me to get any food. No.
Joel Brooks:Just for one minute, can can I have some peace and quiet all to myself? As a parent, you kinda understand that at times. And that's what David wants. God, can I please just have one one moment? Just a little moment where you're not invading my head, you're not looking in my heart, just one moment that I can maybe have over here that you're not looking at and judging?
Joel Brooks:Can I flee from your presence? And the word for presence there is the Hebrew word for face. He says, I don't I don't wanna keep looking at your face. I don't want that relationship right now. This is the exact phrase that's used to describe Jonah.
Joel Brooks:If you go to Jonah 13, says that he fled from the presence or he wanted to flee from the presence of God, which implies that he thinks God is dangerous. It's not like you flee from something pleasurable. Oh, wow. Joy's coming. I got to flee.
Joel Brooks:You know, it's you, you, you see, this is gonna hurt me. This is gonna oppress me. I need to run from this. For Jonah, it was God saying you need to go to the Ninevites. Those powerful, hateful people who are trying to destroy you.
Joel Brooks:He's scared of that. He runs. And David here wants to flee as well. Let me tell you, there are times I believe every one of us want to flee from God's presence. I know we always sing about inviting God's presence in, and we we.
Joel Brooks:That's true. That is true. But I think there's times we want to flee. And I think we do it a number of ways. Ways.
Joel Brooks:One, sometimes it's just blatant disobedience. It's like, I know you want me to do this. Don't wanna do it. For once, right here, I'm gonna do what I want, when I want, and I'm just gonna ignore you. Another way we flee, and I think is the more common way, is when god reveals his face, He reveals who he is in scripture clearly to us.
Joel Brooks:And we say, I don't want that. That's not the face of the God I want to worship. When when confronted with with this with your sovereignty, which is what David's being confronted with here is absolute sovereignty over everything. David's like, I don't like the way you look. It makes me feel uncomfortable.
Joel Brooks:And so I think there's a lot of truths in scripture that are so clear that we actually try to muddy the waters because we wanna flee from his face. David's no different. Well, David starts going through scenarios. He's like, okay. Alright.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna flee. So where can I flee? It's a good plan. Where can I go? Verse 8.
Joel Brooks:If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. Once again, this is a merism. It's 2 opposites. If I go way up high into the stratosphere, you're there.
Joel Brooks:If I, go to Sheol, whatever you wanna make of that, the the the Hebrew underworld, death, if I go down into the grave, you are there and everything in between. Verse 8, I mean, verse 9, it says, if I take the wings of the morning and dwell on the othermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall take hold of me. Here, David's using a horizontal merism. He's thinking, if I watch the morning sun just come up and the rays are shooting across the sky, if I could grab hold of one of those rays and just kinda go at the speed of light all the way to the western sea, maybe there you wouldn't find me. Says, god, you're there.
Joel Brooks:As far east as I look and as far west as I look, you're there. But I want you to notice at this point, there's a subtle shift in the song. There's a different word for hand there. It's it's not the oppressive cupping hand. It's it's the mighty strong powerful saving hand.
Joel Brooks:And here he says, even there, your hand shall hold me or your hand shall lead me or guide me. Verse 11, he contemplates going into the darkness. Says, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night. That word for cover there, the darkness shall cover me, is the Hebrew word for bruise. The darkness bruises me.
Joel Brooks:So it's not just talking about a physical darkness here. This is dark times when life is beating me up, when I am suffering. God, you're there. Says he could turn that suffering, that night into light. And and he's starting to now, like, I want this.
Joel Brooks:When when in those darkest hours, I actually want you to be there. I I I don't want to stay in the darkness. I want it to be bright. And he's he's likely thinking back to Genesis and creation and how God can just speak light into darkness, and there becomes light. And as he's thinking about creation, he begins thinking about his own creation.
Joel Brooks:The God who can speak light into darkness and there's light. He's the one who who created me. And so we get these next verses which are some of the most famous in here. For you formed my inward thoughts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb.
Joel Brooks:I praise you for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you This is intimate language to describe our creation. David is not saying god just kinda, you know, started the work and walked away.
Joel Brooks:He he uses these beautiful metaphors to talk about what God does in the womb and how he says, God is knitting us together. God is embroidering us. He's he's making a tapestry. You know, verse 15 says, we are intricately woven. Woven.
Joel Brooks:My wife quilts. She, I don't know how many quilts she's made over the years. Probably 25, 30. When she quilts, it is a labor of love. Let me tell you.
Joel Brooks:Some of y'all are quilters as well. I know. But you know, for when it takes over your house with fabric and the sewing machines, and you cannot tally the number of hours that it takes to do this. You only hand stitch something, embroider something if you're gonna do it for someone you really love. And Lauren always says, I will never sell any of my quilts.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you're not you can't put a price tag on this. God is saying, this is what I've done with you in the womb. This was a labor of love that I got involved with, that I rejoiced in. I'm making a beautiful tapestry. You can't help but think of Ephesians 2 when it says we are God's workmanship.
Joel Brooks:And that word for workmanship is masterpiece. We are God's masterpiece that he has created. We gotta move on. 16. After contemplating, I think, the start of life, he begins moving to the end.
Joel Brooks:Says her eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, and when as yet there were not or none of them. Every moment of every day has been determined. Your life every day, every moment written in a book, meaning it's settled. God is the author of our life.
Joel Brooks:He determines the beginning of our life, and he is one who determines the end of our life. It's one of the reasons I love that hymn in Christ alone. When it says, From life's first cry to final breath, Jesus commands our destiny. Really, it should be before life's first cry It's our final breath. Jesus commands every aspect of it.
Joel Brooks:And and I just I mean, I have to say this, that when you read these verses 13 through 16 together, you you have to agree that both abortion and euthanasia are wrong. There there's there's there's no way around it. Both are wrong. But both of these stages of life are very fragile. Both of these stages of life can be inconvenient, but god is the one who starts and ends the life.
Joel Brooks:God is the one who lovingly knits and puts together everything and who writes the story for our life, and we don't have any say in the in the ending of that. These are strong verses against abortion and euthanasia. We gotta move quickly. Verse 17. How precious to me are your thoughts, oh god.
Joel Brooks:How vast is the sum of them? David is is now thinking, wow. Now that I'm really thinking about all this and how God has a plan for my life and how God is completely in control of my life. This is this is like treasure. And this is and the word some there is actually plural.
Joel Brooks:It's how vast are the sums of them. And it gives the the idea of like he's made lists, and then he makes another list, and then he makes another list. And Says if I would count them, they are more than the sand. And then we come to a curve ball. The last part of verse 18.
Joel Brooks:I awake and I am still with you. Now, if you read through a lot of commentaries on Psalms, Almost every scholar will tell you that this is the apex or the climax of the Psalm is verse 18. It builds up to this before David goes off into the judgments and then gives his summary kind of statements at the end. So it's it's building up to to this. But then you get this just bizarre statement out of left field that has nothing to do with before it.
Joel Brooks:I mean, he saw me how precious are the thoughts of God, how vast are the sum of them. If I count them, they're more than the sand. Then he says, I awake and I am still with you. And you read through the commentaries that are all scratching their head. They're like, we really it's it's not a merism.
Joel Brooks:He's already talked about, you know, when I rise up. He's already talked about waking up. Maybe he's talking about waking up from a from his meditation. But I don't think that is the case at all. I think it it is the climax here.
Joel Brooks:I think David is talking about death. When death comes, the the big sleep, if you will, when death comes, God is so near, so powerful, and has loved us and taken care of us so much that he will not let death separate us from him. He will not. And so when we die, we will become awake, and we will still be with god. It it reminds me, one of my favorite stories to tell my kids in the Bible.
Joel Brooks:It's in Mark chapter 4, I think. I'm pretty certain. Mark chapter 4, and it's Jesus going to heal Jarius's daughter. And she dies before he gets there. And so, everybody's weeping and crying like she's died.
Joel Brooks:And he goes in and he sees her and he's like, she's not dead. She's sleeping. And they actually start mocking him at this point. They're making fun of him. And he says, all right.
Joel Brooks:Everybody leave the room. Everybody leave. And just just the parents are there. And he leans over this little girl, and he says, teletha kum, which is I love it. It's it's, little girl, it's time to get up.
Joel Brooks:I don't Don't you just love that? You just, hey little girl, it's time to get up. And she wakes up from the dead. She wakes up. And and that's just such a picture of what Christ will do to every one of us after we die, if we have placed our faith in our hand in his.
Joel Brooks:He just says, hey, it's time to wake up. All these things previously in Psalm 139 are true still. So that's what I think is going on here. Verse 19 through 22. Whenever you get passages like this, everybody is typically skips over.
Joel Brooks:You know, oh, that you would slay the wicked, oh, God. He he goes off on all these judgments. Now let me just say right off the bat, as Christians, we cannot say these things. We cannot pray these things because Christ taught us differently. He doesn't say, slay the wicked.
Joel Brooks:He does he says, love your enemies, and bless those who persecute you, pray for your enemies. And he doesn't mean, like, if you have an enemy, you're to love them, but then to pray that they're destroyed. He's not saying that. It's like we we're supposed to have hearts for our enemies. And the reason Christ says that is because something changes when he comes.
Joel Brooks:You have to understand every Psalm points to Christ. And usually no, no, no much more than when you get to the judgment parts. Because Christ is the one who fulfills all of the judgments. Oh, that you would slay the wicked. Yes.
Joel Brooks:The wicked need to be slain. But on the cross, Christ took that punishment. Therefore, we cannot pray god slay the wicked because Christ has taken that. And so we have to see all of this in light of the cross. As a matter of fact, you have to see this entire Psalm as pointing to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:He's the key that holds it, that unlocks it. When you get to verse 23 and 24, you know, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me. You've got to be asking at this point, are you kidding me, David? Really?
Joel Brooks:I mean, this is what you were trying to run away from earlier. You didn't want any of that. And now all of a sudden you're saying, search me. Go deep within God. See if there's any grievous way in me.
Joel Brooks:How can he say how how does his heart turn so much there? Now I think David is is speaking possibly a little bit better than he knows because he he he's realizing to some degree that god is seeing him as righteous. And I don't think there's any, any coincidence that you have judgment, and then you have David saying, search me, examine me. If you want to understand the meaning of this psalm, you've got to go to the cross because the cross is the antithesis of this. Look what happens to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you read Psalm 139, and then you go to the cross, and it's like Psalm 139 just implodes. Even darkness is not dark to you. You know, you you can make light out of darkness. It's midday. The sun is shining bright.
Joel Brooks:Jesus on the cross, darkness covers the entire land to where it's pitch black. At the cross, Jesus isn't crying out, may you slay the wicked, May you hate those who hate you. He's saying, I forgive you. Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.
Joel Brooks:At the cross, Jesus isn't experiencing that nearness of God. He's saying, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why have you left me? And you read Psalm 13:9, it's like, God doesn't ever leave. But here God, you're so distant.
Joel Brooks:God, you never listen to me. God, you're so far. And And so you see that Christ is experiencing the opposite of what we have written here in 139. He's experiencing the judgment. He's experiencing the sleigh of the wicked.
Joel Brooks:In order that we might have that joyful closeness and presence of God. In order that we can be face to face, and it be a delight instead of us wanting to flee. All the Psalms speak of Jesus. We're we wanna remember this tonight as we, in a very tangible way, partake of this table here. We wanna remember Psalm 139 and the sacrifice that Jesus made for that nearness to be possible.