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Welcome to the Grace Church Messages Podcast! These are the weekly Sunday messages from Grace Church in the greater Cleveland, Ohio area. Listen to biblical teaching from our weekend services to help you understand Scripture, follow Jesus in your everyday life, and grow in your faith. Perfect for the morning commute, the treadmill, or wherever life happens.
Amen. And good afternoon. I'm Josiah. I'm the young adults pastor here at Grace. If I haven't met you yet, I would love to. Today I get the honor of wrapping up our series on Psalm 139, recalling near of a few weeks ago, Pastor Jonathan opened it up and he began by preaching on the opening verses, which is one into which say, You have searched me, Lord, and you know me, you know, And I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar.
And then the Psalm goes on to further describe God's omniscience and God's omnipresence. God knows everything and He is everywhere. Pastor Jonathan explained how this is precisely the good news that we need to hear in a world in which loneliness has reached unprecedented levels. He said that relationship is core to the Christian faith and that our relationship with God is the only relationship that will truly satisfy our souls.
Then over the next two weeks, he shared with us the importance of practicing God's presence. He is near. We got to get good at being aware of that nearness, especially by praying everywhere we go. And then he encouraged us to take hold of the truth that every individual has been carefully and masterfully crafted by God with eternal purpose.
That's from versus 13 and 14 for you created my inmost being unit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And then last week, Pastor Karim so powerfully illustrated for us the reality that God is not only near and he's not only our Creator, but he thinks about us and the thoughts that he thinks toward those who are alive in Christ are called precious.
How precious to me are your thoughts? God. How vast is the Some of them were I to count them. They would outnumber the grains of sand. And Pastor Karim challenges us to accept the truth that the very core of our identity ought to be shaped by God's precious and immeasurable thoughts towards us. Hasn't it been such a rich study?
Well, amazing Psalm. Psalm 139. Yeah, It's been so beautiful. Well, now this morning, these two seasoned pastors that I highly respected left me with the last few verses of someone 39, which begin like this. if only you, God, would slay the wicked. Can we pray? Let's pray. Lord, we do need you. We're so grateful that you are here with us.
Would you help us to be aware in our minds and in our hearts, whatever it is you want to say, whatever it is you want to do this morning or this afternoon, would you guide us towards your thoughts? Would you guide us towards your the next great step that we need to take in our spiritual walk, to walk more closely with you and to be aimed more directly in the direction of that everlasting way?
Slow. Would you humble us? Would you search us and would you guide us this morning? This afternoon, as we as we open your word in Jesus name? Amen. I'm used to it being morning Moon. I welcome those that Olmsted falls in at our Lorraine campus and online. So glad all of you have joined us. Let me ask you all a question.
I pray never actually happens to any of us. If you found yourself on an airplane in which both the pilots were suddenly incapacitated. How confident are you that you would be willing to land that plane if the assignment was given to you? If it's there's there's a lot of social media videos going around right now where people answer that question with varying degrees of confidence.
It's kind of interesting to watch. For fun, I asked the ministry staff here at Grace where they would how confident they would be in that situation to even the playing field to make it all clear, I clarified that they would have communication with an expert in the control tower in this fake scenario, and they needed to respond to me with a percentage.
And so I got back some very interesting answers from our ministry staff. It was all over the board. There were two that were 0% confident that they could safely land that airplane. One is in this room right now. I won't point them out. One was 1%, one was 2%. We had five between 60 and 86% confident and four were between 90 and 100% confident that they could safely land that airplane.
Two being 100% confident. I think it's interesting. Our youth ministry is led by one person who is 0% confident in this and one who is hundred percent confident in this. I think they make a great team. I'll leave you to guess who are these people are on the ground? One of our counselors here at Grace, Carolyn Roediger, Dr. actually has a former career as a commercial pilot.
And so I did some research and I wanted to ask her what she think my chances would be of being able to land that plane safely. I told her I'm not very good at directions or buttons or lovers. What chance do I got? And she said that if I had communication with the control tower, that would be my only hope.
If I didn't have any connection with any expert that I could. Radio in her cell phone, make a call to, All I could do is get on my knees and pray because it would take an absolute miracle to safely land that plane. However, if I did have communication with the control tower would make all the difference, she said.
I should still pray, but I would have a decent chance of that person in the control tower, knowing being able to figure out where I was and, how fast I was going, and what direction the speed of the wind was and all the science things that you need to take into account when landing a giant metal object on the ground.
And I could have a chance of safely landing it. She said communication with the expert in the control tower would make all the difference. What of our spiritual lives are similar to airplanes soaring through the sky with the destination we're supposed to arrive, but not if we're honest. Very much confidence that we know how to fly this thing.
I mean, our lives could take so many directions. How do we actually know if we're going the right way? Our emotions are pretty complicated. How do we know we're processing them the right way and expressing them the right way? And when it comes to our sin, especially the motives behind our sin, I think it's very clear that we're kind of in a mess that we can't really understand how to figure out by ourself if we can't see clearly enough to really diagnose what is good and what is bad for ourselves, how can we possibly overcome sin?
Well, the end of Psalm 139 reminds us that in life we have a connection. And with the expert in the control tower, we're capable of communicating with the one who sees everything. It's God. And he's offering to lead us in His everlasting way. But before we get into all that fun part, we do need to deal with the difficult verses 19 through 22, where David does imagine God slaying the wicked.
Let's read that some one 3919 through 22 says if only you God would slay the wicked away from me. You who are bloodthirsty, they speak of you with evil intent. Your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them.
I count them my enemies. What do we do with a scripture like this that seems to condone an attitude of hatred towards the people that God so fearfully and wonderfully made? Well Since this Psalm is both a prayer and a poem, we actually honor it by treating it as both a prayer and poetry. We we know that poets often will use big images.
They'll paint big pictures with big words to explore a theme in a way that really evokes an emotion from the reader, or that expresses the complicated emotion from the poet. And I think their priority is more about painting that picture then a black or white truth statement sometimes. And I think that's the case in this psalm. I'll explain what I mean.
And then the second I think David is using bold language to express his fierce loyalty to God in these verses, as you also might know, maybe from your own experience with God in prayer or maybe from several scriptures throughout the Bible that have pretty raw and honest prayers in them. Humans really need to be able express ourselves to God without being over concerned that all of our words are totally correct.
Do you know what I mean? God wants us to be able to to Him from where we're at before we've got it all figured out, before we know everything perfectly, before we've mastered theology or whatever. And we need to be able to go to God as honest as we can and just express what's on our hearts. And so I think that's also happening in this song.
It can be healthy to have open communication God about how we're feeling without being over concerned about being about using all the right words. So when we read these intense verses in the middle of this beautiful psalm, it kind of comes as a shock a little bit. We can see that David's main point in these verses, I believe, is that he's expressing his loyalty to the God that he has just described, this omniscient God, this God who is everywhere, the God who carefully crafted everything, including us deeply in mother's wombs.
He he was so thoughtful of each of us. And David's praising God for all of this. And as he praises God for all of who He is, he stops to say, God, I want to be on your side. There's also sorts of wicked people out there that oppose you. I'm really offended by the things that they're saying and that they're doing.
They're misusing their name. They're bloodthirsty and evil to the core, and I don't want to be associated with them. I want to be associated with you. I think that's the gist of what he's saying. No, it doesn't. There there are some violent tendencies in the words that he uses, aren't there? And so I think it's helpful to go back to the words of Jesus and where he clarified a bit what our attitude towards our enemies are supposed to be.
And so Jesus says, You've heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. David kind of said that, didn't he? But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your father in heaven. He causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends reign on the righteous and the unrighteous.
I'm also reminded of a story of two of the most prominent disciples, James and John, as they were walking with Jesus at one point. They're on the way to a Samaritan village, and Jesus was going to go do ministry there. And the Samaritan village got word that Jesus was coming and said, No, we don't want Jesus here. They rejected Jesus and it made James and John so furious because they were loyal to Jesus.
It made them so furious that they turned to Jesus and said this Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them? Their loyalty cannot be questioned. Right. But they're there. The response that came out of that loyalty to God needed some correction. And so Jesus turned and rebuked them because of what he had taught them about loving their enemies.
Clearly, David, James, John are all very loyal to God, even if their expression of that zeal needed a little bit of correction and wasn't completely on point. Well, what's amazing about this song is that David doesn't just look around him at the evil all around him when he's expressing his loyalty to God. He actually takes it a step further and he says, God, I know there's wickedness all around me and I'm on your side and not theirs.
But if I'm really honest, there's also wickedness inside me and I so desperately want to be loyal to you that I'm going to admit that I have evil tendencies in my own heart. That could be my biggest liability. But again, serving you a big against being faithful to you, my own heart, my own sinful nature could work against me.
And so he turns inward, and right after declaring his loyalty to God over and against all those who do evil, he says this Search me God and know my heart. Test me and all my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. David's invitation here for God to search him, to reveal what he finds and then to lead him forward is really critical moment in this psalm.
It's important because up to this point, David has made it really clear that he understands that God knows everything, and God is everywhere. Well, it hasn't become super clear yet is how God, how David feels about the fact that God knows everything and is everywhere at one point. David says this. He says, Where can I go from your spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence? Could it be that David is alluding to the discomfort that we can all sometimes feel about the fact that God is always watching, that if we're trying to hide from God or if we're trying to get away from God, that's actually kind of a threat to what we're trying to do, right?
If God is everywhere and sees everything but I'm trying to hide from him, that's kind of bad news for me. So is that where David stands and up to these verses? We're not 100% sure. Have you ever wanted to hide from God? I think since Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, people have been attempting to hide from God.
Right after they send Adam and Eve ran and hid in Genesis three, nine and ten, it says. But the Lord God called to the man. Where are you? And Adam answered, I heard you in the garden. And I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid. I know one way that I do it. I keep myself busy.
If I know that there's some some conversation that I need to have with the Lord that begins with. I'm sorry. It can take me a while to get around to it. I'm a little embarrassed even of my amazing ability to keep my mind busy from the moment it wakes up in the morning to the moment it falls back asleep at night.
Running from task to task to task. And in between every task, keeping myself distracted with the screen in my hand. As if I can hide from God by avoiding eye contact, by never looking him in the eye. Well, part of the purpose of this Psalm is to help us think about our tendency to hide from God. Even we we all try to hide from God at times, even though we know hiding from God is like playing hide and seek with a two year old.
It doesn't matter if you close your eyes when you count because they're so loud the whole time and they'll probably end up hiding at the floor in front of your feet anyways. I've got a lot of experience playing hide and seek with two year olds at my house. Isn't that what it's like trying to hide from God? But at the end of this beautiful psalm, David moves through a posture of hiding, too inviting.
Now he's showing that he once got to know him and he wants God to search. He says, Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. These verses reveal that even if we once desire to hide from God, there was never a good reason to do that.
There was never a need to hide from him because his desires for us are good and his intentions are to lead us in the everlasting way. He's the expert in the control tower that fashioned our lives, and he desires to steer us in the direction of righteousness and peace and joy in His Holy Spirit. We don't need to hide because he's not coming to find us to harm us.
He's coming to find us, to lead us. This is the heart of a good shepherd. Remember some 23? The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right path for his namesake. David knew that God is good and God is trustworthy, and God is eager to guide us along the right paths.
So in light of His goodness and his commitment to lead us, the end of the Psalm 139 urges us to move from hiding to inviting as well. Because God is good, we can move from hiding from all of you, from God's all seeing eye to inviting God to search us and to reveal what He finds and to lead us in His everlasting way.
May we stop hiding from God and begin inviting him in? If you're ready to do that, hear that prayer again. And let's make it our own prayer. This afternoon. Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and leave me in the way everlasting or otherwise.
Without God's expert guidance, we can't find that everlasting way on our own. We're lost about several years ago, I was driving through Tennessee from Georgia to home and I had my trusty GPS on my phone. I was by myself and I was about 8 hours from home. I was really enjoying the drive. It was a scenic summer day somewhere in the Appalachian Valley.
Actually, to be honest, I don't know if that's where I was. I didn't know where I was back then either, because that's what my G.P.S. is for. I just plugged in home from Georgia and I was following it along nicely until I lost connection with the cell phone towers. And suddenly the screen went gray and all I knew was I was supposed to turn right at some point next.
And so all I could do was just continue driving until hopefully my phone reconnected with all seeing satellites in the universe that can guide us along the right path and hopefully be able to have my phone refreshed and find out where I'm supposed to go. So I just kept driving and driving randomly, hoping that my phone I probably could ask for directions, but I just kept driving and hoping that I would reconnect.
And eventually I did. Eventually, my cell phone reconnected with those mysterious data, sending gadgets in the universe that can see from above and pointed me in the right direction. And I found my way home. We all want to live a meaningful life, the kind of life that blesses other people and leaves a positive mark on the world. But anybody disagree?
That's not the kind of life you live you want to live. Well, Jesus calls this bearing good fruit, and Jesus actually has a special kind of fruit that he talks about the fruit that will last eternally with good fruit. But he says that it's impossible for our lives to bear that kind of fruit, actually impossible for our lives to bear that kind of fruit without remaining in continuous connection with him.
Here's how he says it. In John 15 verses four and five, he says, Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine, Jesus says, and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I and you, you will bear much fruit apart from me.
You can do nothing. The only way to bear eternally good fruit in our lives is to remain connected to Jesus, to abide in him. And so hopefully we move from hiding to fighting Him, to search us and lead us to abiding in his love and in his and in his and a connection with him that helps us to navigate, trying to figure out how to bear good fruit on our own or trying to navigate our lives without a connection with the one who can see from above.
It's like driving to an unknown place without a map or a G.P.S.. What's north or south? East, west? How do I possibly navigate myself out of my own sin when I can only see through these eyes that are tainted by sin? It gets confusing sometimes to know what's truly good and and only God can accurately judge what's truly good.
So we need his help to navigate. For example, we need help discerning all the time what is good and bad, don't we? Like, what's the difference between a healthy confidence and pride? Or where is the line between self-care and selfishness? It's hard to tell. Or when am I giving charitably and when am I patting myself on the back?
Or when am I putting up healthy boundaries for my own good? And when am I just pushing people away or when what's the difference between feeling comfortable with people who understand me and just being prejudiced? When am I eating healthy and working out to honor my body, the temple that God has given me? And when am I being vain about what I look like?
When is it called a celebration of the good things of life? And when is it called gluttony? When is it being wise with my money? And when is it cheating the system? Where does smart investing end and greed begin? Was that written in 500 feet or in 500 miles? Navigating out of our sinful ways is impossible without God's expert guidance.
But guided by his spirit, we can know what to do. We can know what's right and wrong because we're connected to the one who searches our souls and sees perfectly. And who defines goodness itself? It might be that there aren't simple answers to all those questions that I asked, because the answer is to remain connected to God because he knows the whole situation and he knows all your motives and he knows the whole story.
He can see from above, and he wants to guide us in the everlasting way. So to begin to untangle the messes of our own sin is beyond our ability, because we can't even really see it for what it is. We're all tangled up in it, so we need to cry out to the God who sees everything. The expert in the control tower, the one who fashioned our lives and ask him to search us, to reveal what's really true about us and to lead us in the everlasting way.
And he's so capable of leading each of us exactly the way that each of us needs to believe. I love this whole song because it shows just how capable God is of being the one to lead us. Who better to search our hearts than the only one who is seated over and above all, creation, the omnipresent one who is better suited to accurately diagnose our sin than the only one who is good.
The very definition of goodness. Who better to reveal our secret motives than the one who fashioned us in the secret place and knows us better than we know ourselves? Who's more capable of pinpointing the source of our anxious thoughts than the God who thinks more precious thoughts about each of us than there is sin in the sea or stars in the sky.
Who's better suited to help me see my blind spots than the one who sees everything? Who's more capable of drawing me out of my same field hiding than the one who saw me crawl? That corner in the first place. Watched me the whole time while I was there with his loving gaze upon me and is ready to receive me back into his embrace.
The moment I'm ready. There is no better place for our sinful hearts to turn than to an omniscient and loving God, the God who is near the God of Psalm 139, who is offering to lead you in his and his everlasting way. He's offering to shepherd you into a life that bears everlasting fruit. And I beg you to take him up on that offer.
This is the God who has searched you, the God who has known you, the God who perceives your thoughts from afar, the God who is familiar with all of your ways, the God who knows your every word before it leaves your mouth. The God who created your innermost being. Who needs you together in your mother's womb, who is ordained all your days for you, and who thinks precious thoughts about you all the time.
There's no better place for our sinful hearts to turn than to him. And this God is the only one worthy of trusting to lead our lives, because He's the only one that knows where we're really coming from. And he's the only one who knows where we're supposed to be going. He's the only one who can see all of our motives, and he's also the only one who knows what pure goodness even is.
He's the one who ordained your path, and he's the only one capable of leading you down it. So where would you come out of hiding and join David in this beautiful prayer? God. I'm making the decision to be loyal to you and not to the wicked ways around me that I see everywhere. And God. I'm also willing to admit that there's wickedness in my own heart and that you're the only one that can really diagnose it.
So search me, reveal whatever you find, and lead me in your everlasting way. And what does that everlasting way look like? It looks like Jesus. John 14 six. Jesus claimed it. He said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. Jesus is both the way to the Father and the Good Shepherd, who will walk with us along that way until we have arrived at our destination.
Heaven. Confessing our belief Jesus and our loyalty to him saves us. It opens up heaven's doors to us, gives us access to an eternal relationship with God. And then for the rest of our lives as Christians. Praying, humble prayers like Search me, Lord, reveal whatever you find and lead me in your way. Will keep us on the right path and it'll help us continuously grow towards spiritual maturity and continuously grow in our ability to bear fruit from our lives.
The fruit that will last. We'll look more and more like Jesus, and our character will be shaped to be more and more like his as we continuously allow him to refine us, to search us, to reveal what he finds, and then to lead us in his ways. Humble, trusting, surrender to God's ways is the founder rational heart posture of our relationship with God.
So in this sense, the end of Psalm 139 is an amazing daily prayer for any Christian. Search me God reveal from your perfect vantage point the habits and actions in my life that cause you grief or cause others harm and lead me to your perfect ways. It takes some humility to pray a prayer like this. It means that we have to be willing to let somebody else lead us instead of just leading ourselves.
But this humility, this decision to allow God to leave our lead, our lives day by day, is essential. It's what Jesus calls taking up your cross daily to follow him.
Jesus has an abundant life in store for everyone who's going to follow him, seek for his kingdom and, his righteousness, and everything else will be given to you, he says. The path to whatever might not be easy, but it will be fulfilling. It will be abundant, and it will bear good, everlasting fruit. So are you ready to come out of hiding and invite God to search you and then to abide in Him as he leads you in the way of righteousness?
Let's pray.
Jesus, we're so grateful that you are the good Shepherd and you lay down your life so that we could be reconnected to the father so that we could have a connection with the father that would last eternally. And you also invite us, Jesus, to take your yoke upon us so that you can walk alongside us and show us how to live that way that actually bears good fruit and makes a difference in the world and blesses the communities around us and blesses our workplaces and our families and everywhere we go.
Because Jesus walking with you bears the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the love, the joy, the peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control that you have in store for everyone who would walk along your path, who would walk in, surrender to you. So may that be said of us or Jesus that our life will be marked by that everlasting fruit and may none of us be blocked from that life because we weren't willing to surrender, because we were still trying to high for some reason.
But you continue to reveal your goodness to each of us so you can open up our hearts and say, Yes, Lord, search me and know me. Lead me and Jesus name, Amen.