Prayer of Nearness

Show Notes

Psalm 139 (Listen)

Search Me, O God, and Know My Heart

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

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}

Footnotes

[1] 139:14 Or for I am fearfully set apart
[2] 139:20 Hebrew lacks your name
[3] 139:23 Or cares
[4] 139:24 Or in the ancient way (compare Jeremiah 6:16)

(ESV)

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Jeffrey Heine: 00:00

If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Psalm 139. Psalm 139 as we continue our series on great prayers of the Bible. Last week, after we looked at Hezekiah's prayer, if you remember, we had our friends from Haiti. They were here at least at the 9 o'clock service. A number of the children from Canaan.

Jeffrey Heine: 00:23

They call them the Canaanites, inappropriately. But, these are good godly kids. And pastor Henry and sister Gladys were here with them. And afterwards, pastor Henry, he came up to me and, and he just had tears in his eyes. And he said how much he needed to hear that message on prayer.

Jeffrey Heine: 00:41

And he asked if we would specifically be praying for them. And that, if you've been to Canaan, and I know a number of you people have, it's a beautiful, beautiful place, a piece of property there. And all around though are are people just who've been encroaching in on the the property of Kanan. And every month, more and more people just kind of get closer and closer and then start living on their property and are eventually just kind of taking over the land in Canaan. And pastor Henry said that he had heard a rumor, that the people were gonna take a number of their buildings just by force, and there was nothing that they could do about it.

Jeffrey Heine: 01:23

And that that was gonna happen this was a few weeks ago. This was gonna happen the next day. And, he said he he went to everybody there at Canaan, the teachers and all the children, and he said, I want you all to know that I feel like the Lord has called us to fight. We're gonna fight. We can't have them just keep coming in.

Jeffrey Heine: 01:39

He says, I'm not asking you to do do this with me, he said, but if you feel like you're old enough and you're ready, you could come with me to fight. And he said a number of the older ones, the ones that had been there at Cana from the beginning, they came with him. And as pastor Henley was leading him down the road, he actually went into the chapel, and he says, this is where we fight. He goes, we're in a fight on our knees. And they just prayed.

Jeffrey Heine: 02:05

And just prayed and prayed that the Lord would have a hedge of protection around their place. He says, they didn't come the next day? He said, they haven't come? He said, we just keep praying and praying. And he asked that as we go through this entire series of great prayers of the Bible, that we would faithfully remember them in prayer.

Jeffrey Heine: 02:22

That the Lord would keep protecting them and using them. So why don't we go ahead and do that now at the start of this message. Father in heaven, we thank you that You love us, You care for us, You are our father. And I pray that we would claim and hold on to every benefit that comes with those words, that you are our father. Thank you that you are the father of all of those children in Haiti, and of pastor Henry and sister Gladys, and we pray that you would protect them and care for them.

Jeffrey Heine: 02:55

Lord, that they would know that they're loved and treasured by you. Thank you for how you have protected them. And, Lord, as we open up your word today, we ask that you would write your word on our hearts, that we would be reminded that you are a good father who loves us and knows us. I pray that my words will fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us.

Jeffrey Heine: 03:21

We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So last week, as we were starting this series, we looked at the prayer from Hezekiah. And we spent, you know, the vast majority of the time just looking at Hezekiah's life because really his prayer was the culmination of his entire life. And so at least 90% of that time, we just spent looking at his life and how his life led to that prayer.

Jeffrey Heine: 03:51

We're gonna do the opposite of that today. We're going to spend the entire time really just looking at every word in Psalm 139 Because Psalm 139 is different. It's it's a psalm. It's poetry. It's a poetic prayer, meaning that every word, not just every sentence, but every word is meant to be looked at and to be understood and it teaches us something about prayer and something about who we are and something about who God is.

Jeffrey Heine: 04:18

And so, we're just gonna walk through Psalm 139 line by line. It's gonna be one of the most boring sermons you have ever heard. And some of you are like, no, that was last week. I mean that in a good way and that we're only gonna just read it. I'm just gonna tell you what each line means.

Jeffrey Heine: 04:38

And by the end, I hope that you will be awestruck as to who God is and what He has to say in His word and that you don't need to add anything to it. You just need to listen to Him speak to you. And so Psalm 139, The Psalm begins with, oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. Now the question is this, is that a comforting thought? Is that a comforting thought to be searched and to be known?

Jeffrey Heine: 05:11

And when we often talked about how we want to be known as people, we want people to really know us. Yet do we? Because we spend most of our time kind of hiding from people. Not letting people know what's really going on in us. Not letting people know the deep thoughts in our hearts.

Jeffrey Heine: 05:28

But here the psalmist begins by saying that the almighty God searches us and He knows us. This word knows is a very intimate term here. He is saying that this is a deep, it's a penetrating search into our souls. Verse 2. You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar.

Jeffrey Heine: 05:56

This is the first of what we call a merism. A merism, it's a it's a poetical device and the Psalms are full of them. And in a merism, you have 2 opposites, Two opposites that are used to describe the totality of something. So parents when you've lost your kids at the mall or something, if you know, or the summit, wherever it is, we do not have malls. But, if you lose your kids for a while and eventually you find them, you say, I have looked high and low for you.

Jeffrey Heine: 06:29

Now you didn't look high and low, but what you're saying is I looked everywhere. Everywhere. Not just the highest heights and the lowest deaths, I've looked everywhere. That's that's what a merism is. It's the totality of something.

Jeffrey Heine: 06:41

So here God says, He knows when we rise up and we know when He knows when we sit, meaning he knows everything in between, the totality of who we are. He's aware of every activity that we do. And then the psalmist says, you discern my thoughts from afar. So not only is God looking at the activities we do, he's now looking at our very thoughts. He's discerning what we think.

Jeffrey Heine: 07:13

The word thoughts there. It means your motivations, your desires, your intentions. It's the things that make you tick. And He is saying that He knows. He knows the whys in your life.

Jeffrey Heine: 07:29

He knows why you are dating that guy or that girl. He knows why you were so anxious at work. He knows why you have a hard time sleeping at night you can't turn off your brain. He knows all of those inner workings. He knows all of your thoughts.

Jeffrey Heine: 07:49

It says that he knows them from afar. This isn't talking about he knows them from outer space. He's he's talking about time here. Not a distance, but time. He knows what you are thinking and he has known it since way before you were born.

Jeffrey Heine: 08:10

God doesn't exist in time as we think of time. David understands this. He understands that God's name is the great I am. He's he's the eternally present one. And so when God looks at our lives, He sees the totality of it, from beginning to end.

Jeffrey Heine: 08:28

A way to think of this is, think of your life being a river. And so, you know, in front of you is is the future, and behind you is the past you. Well, you can't see the past you because there's bends in the river, and you can't see the future you because of the bends in the river. You only know the present you, but God has this unique perspective. He looks down, and He sees the totality of your life.

Jeffrey Heine: 08:52

At all times, He's holding the totality of your life from the beginning to the end. He knows what's your thinking from birth to death and He knows that from afar. So if we were to be honest, doesn't this creep you out a little bit? I mean, just a little bit. It's beginning to unsettle you that somebody could know all of these things about you.

Jeffrey Heine: 09:18

Now, it's beginning to unsettle David. We like to always go to Psalm 139 and we say it's just this beautiful psalm, but we forget that actually David is being unsettled as he thinks about who God is and how God is just probing him. In verse 3, he says, you search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Now it's kinda lost on us in this translation. It's it's an agricultural term that's being used here.

Jeffrey Heine: 09:50

Literally, this says, you winnow or you sift. You sift my journey. You sift my journey. Sifting is is an image that's used throughout scripture and it's when you separate the wheat from the chaff. You separate the the wheat, which is the good fruit, from the things that are worthless.

Jeffrey Heine: 10:15

And so what God is saying here is not only does he see everything that we do, he also sees our every thought. And as he is thinking through this knowledge, He is separating it into what's good and what's worthless. Meaning God is judging your every action and your every thought. And just let that sink in. Your every action and your every thought God is judging.

Jeffrey Heine: 10:46

He is acquainted with our ways. The the word acquainted, it means the word habitual. I love this. It's habitual. Now, how many confession here?

Jeffrey Heine: 10:59

Those of you who drive, how many of you sometimes you're driving and all of a sudden you you find yourself back at home and you cannot remember at all how you got there? Does that happen to you? Oh, come on people. Alright? I am not the only one.

Jeffrey Heine: 11:14

This is my confession. We all zone out at times when we're driving And and and all of a sudden, you're at your house. You're like, I don't even remember going here. You were just so deep in some other thought that you didn't even have to think about driving. But the reason that you were able to safely get home is because you know that route so well.

Jeffrey Heine: 11:34

It's routine. It's habitual. You have driven home 100 of times. You don't even have to think about it. God is saying your life, your journey is routine to me.

Jeffrey Heine: 11:49

It's habitual. I know you so well. I know what you're going to do even before you know what you're going to do. Now David realizes that, I mean, these are some pretty big concepts here. It's beginning to to blow our mind a little bit, and so he needs to give us a concrete example of this.

Jeffrey Heine: 12:10

And so he does this in verse 4. The example is this. He says, even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh lord, you know it altogether. This is another one of those verses that just kinda gives you pause that the Lord knows what you're going to say before you ever say it. And if you find this unsettling and you're thinking, I kinda disagree with that and you wanna argue with God about that?

Jeffrey Heine: 12:45

Know He already knows your argument before you argue with Him. Alright? He knows everything you're going to bring to the table here. Even before word is on your tongue, He he knows it. Every word of praise, every curseful utterance, He knows before you do.

Jeffrey Heine: 13:07

And He knows it all together which means He understands the completeness of the thought. He knows every nuance as you were saying these things. And hear me, there's you'd be hard pressed to find a stronger verse in the Bible about the foreknowledge of God than this one right here. Now as David begins to contemplate these things, he's he's getting a little claustrophobic. He's beginning to feel a little smothered here.

Jeffrey Heine: 13:35

When I was in college, I used to go spelunking, caving. I don't know why it was stupid, but but I would do that some. And there's in the tag area, the Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia area, for those of you who know it, there's a whole lot of caves there. And, some friends and I, we we had found a cave and we were gonna go in it, but it was a 2 day, like, ex exploration of this cave. It would be a day all the way through it and then a day all the way back.

Jeffrey Heine: 14:01

And and as we're going in this cave, and you're just going deep in, you start off on a raft. It was a stream that went into the hillside and you lay down and you would just grab the ceiling and you'd pull yourself in this boat deep into the deep into the cave and then you would finally open up a little bit, you could get out and you could start crawling some. Well, after a full day side there crawling around, I was getting into places where your helmet wouldn't even fit. And so we're taking off our helmets and we would just push one another through these crevices. And so we're about a full day in at this point, and I'm flat as I could be having somebody push me in.

Jeffrey Heine: 14:38

And it's just it's just a stone just right above my nose. And at that point, I started to feel a little smothered, a little claustrophobic and I didn't think I could feel that way. And I wanted to get out and I realized I can't. I can't even move my arms up. I couldn't even scratch my nose if I wanted to.

Jeffrey Heine: 14:59

Like it would take me a full day to see daylight again and I remember this horrible feeling of just feeling smothered. David's getting here. As he's thinking, it's like, I can't even have a thought. I can't do it. Actually like, God you're over all of this?

Jeffrey Heine: 15:17

He's feeling a little smothered here. Verse 5 says, you hem me in behind and before, and You lay Your hand upon me. You hem me in means you besieged me or you lock me up. When one of my daughters gets a, you know, a hole in one of their dresses, Lauren will hem it up. And to hem something, it means that you fold the fabric over and then you stitch it together.

Jeffrey Heine: 15:47

You press it and you stitch it. David says, I I'm I'm feeling kind of like that right now. And then that that word that's used there or lays his hand upon me, The image here is this, there's 2 words for hand in Hebrew. There's one that's the entire hand. The one commonly used throughout scripture, that's not here.

Jeffrey Heine: 16:13

What's being used here is a really rare word for hand, and it just means the palm. And when it says, you lay your hand on me, the image is this, God cupping him like you would cup a bug. So my daughters when, you know, they were little, they had the bug club with the Johnson boys next door, like the bug club. And what they would do is, you know, you find a little roly poly, and when you get it, you just cover it. Trap it.

Jeffrey Heine: 16:39

That's what David is saying, you lay your hand on me, I feel completely trapped by you. There's nowhere to go. Verse 6, Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high I cannot attain it. David's not using the word wonderful like you used the word wonderful, like it's a wonderful life or, you know, it's just a wonderful day.

Jeffrey Heine: 17:06

No. This is like this awesomeness. This is a awesome wonder. It's it's producing fear in him. He's trembling as he thinks of these things.

Jeffrey Heine: 17:21

He doesn't come to a worship service and just casually sing about these things. He's being struck with awe and fear as he thinks about these things. They're wonderful. For you lawyers out there, this this term wonderful was also used to describe an argument that was incomprehensible. It was wonderful.

Jeffrey Heine: 17:41

An argument that was incomprehensible. It was one that was too difficult to understand and it was too difficult to defend against. David is essentially saying this, God, you out think me. You out think me. And then in the second half of verse 6, he uses a military term there when he says, it is high.

Jeffrey Heine: 18:04

I cannot attain it. The word attain, it's the word, segab, and it means scale. He's saying, I can't scale this. David was one of the most powerful military men of all time. He's saying, but here is a is a wall, I can't scale.

Jeffrey Heine: 18:28

I like to do mud runs, And one of the ones that I like to run is, the Tough Mudder. To get to the starting line at a Tough Mudder, they put a wall there, that you have to scale and get over just to get to the starting line. And you see, some people come, and they can't make it to the starting line. They they get there and they're trying to scale over this wall and they're telling people, hey, can you help me? And people are trying to help and push them over, and you wanna just say, hey, buddy.

Jeffrey Heine: 18:57

Alright? Just don't even you can't get over this. There's no way you can actually do the race. David's saying, I feel like that. I can't even get to the starting line.

Jeffrey Heine: 19:11

When I'm confronted with this knowledge of who you are is so tall, how can I even begin to understand it? It's overwhelming to him. Verse 7, Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? So as David is thinking about these things, he now gets this desire to run.

Jeffrey Heine: 19:39

I just got I just got to get out of here. I just got to run. I got to flee. He's starting to feel suffocated by God and he just wants some fresh air. Now anyone who has kids knows this feeling.

Jeffrey Heine: 19:51

Alright? In which you're like, can can I just have 2 minutes to myself? Like, 2 minutes in which you're not grabbing onto me, you're not asking me a question, you're not wanting me to feed you, you're not wanting me to keep you alive in any way. Can I can I just have 2 minutes of peace and quiet all to myself? So David is saying here, I just is there something?

Jeffrey Heine: 20:14

2 minutes. Can I just have something in which you're not invading every aspect of my life? Can I just flee? We don't flee from things we think that are safe. What David is saying here is he thinks God's dangerous.

Jeffrey Heine: 20:33

You flee from danger. He wants to get away from God. He said he wants to flee from God's presence. It's the Hebrew word for face. I want you to let that just sink in for a moment.

Jeffrey Heine: 20:50

The King David, a man after God's own heart, doesn't want to look at God's face. There are times he just wants to get away from them. When he says that he wants to flee, once again he's thinking God is dangerous And if I look at him too long, that's gonna be a danger to me. It's the same phrase we found when we went through the book of Jonah When it says that Jonah After God called him, it says that Jonah got up to flee the presence or the face of the Lord. Same phrase.

Jeffrey Heine: 21:34

Now, at all times, all of us at times have wanted to flee from the face of God. What I mean by that, is there are certain things about God, we don't like how he looks. And so we could be confronted with something in his word and you're like, God, I don't like the way you're looking as I'm reading this. And so what we could do is we could just maybe try to muddy the waters, maybe try to do some mental gymnastics, or maybe just ignore certain things that God says to us so we can make God into our image, because we don't like the way he looks. We we flee all of the time here.

Jeffrey Heine: 22:15

I think David, one of the things he wants to flee from here is the sovereignty of God. He's being confronted with the sovereignty of God, and perhaps that's a doctrine that makes you guys wanna flee. But where can he go? Well, he can't go anywhere. David begins to run through all these different scenarios.

Jeffrey Heine: 22:35

He's like, okay. If I could flee, I guess I could do this. I guess I could do this. And here he begins to think of all the possible places he can run from God. And so we get to verse 8, if I ascend to heaven, you're there.

Jeffrey Heine: 22:49

If I were to make my bed in Sheol, you were there. Alright. So this is a vertical merism. Alright? So if he goes way up into the stratosphere, well, God's gonna still be there.

Jeffrey Heine: 23:01

If he goes all the way down to the underworld to Sheol, well, God's gonna be there, meaning God's not only in those two extremes, he's everywhere in between. He can't get away from him. So that's a horizontal or that's a vertical merism. And then next, we see a horizontal merism in verse 9. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the othermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me.

Jeffrey Heine: 23:31

So now David's thinking, okay, if I can't go that higher that low to get away from you, what what if I did this? When the morning sun when it first rises up, what if I could somehow grab on to its first rays and be launched all the way over to the Western Sea? If I could do that, could I escape you? It's like, I can't. Even there you would be with me, holding my hand, guiding me.

Jeffrey Heine: 24:02

So God won't let him go. And hear me, for the first time, this begins to become a comforting thought to David. As he begins to say, okay. Even if I were in these extremes, God's hold on me is much stronger than my hold on Him. He begins to think and contemplate what this will look like.

Jeffrey Heine: 24:23

And in verse 11, you know, maybe if he went to the depths, he said, if I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night. Well, even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. So we see his attitude changing here as he's thinking about being in one of these dark places. The words the phrase, surely the darkness will cover me, that word cover can be the word bruise.

Jeffrey Heine: 24:55

When the darkness come and it bruises me. He's talking about dark times, suffering, depression. He's being beaten up. He says, for the first time when I'm in that dark hole and I'm suffering and I'm being beaten up like, you know what? You're with me, and your presence brings light.

Jeffrey Heine: 25:18

The God who in darkness said, let there be light and there was light. He now looks in the midst of my suffering and He could say, let there be light and there is light. And that is a comforting thought to David, to have light in such a dark place. Come to verse 13. For you formed my inward parts.

Jeffrey Heine: 25:40

You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 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.

Jeffrey Heine: 26:01

What David is saying here is we are not accidents. We actually have a creator. And God didn't create us for from a distance. We see that God was intimately involved in in making us into who we are. He uses beautiful metaphors throughout this, and he he the metaphor he mostly uses is that God carefully is knitting us.

Jeffrey Heine: 26:26

In the darkness, in the womb, God is knitting us together. He's stitching us. Verse 15, you read that phrase, intricately woven, meaning God is embroidering us. God is making us into a beautiful tapestry. You can't help but when you read this to think of Paul's words in Ephesians 2 when he says that we are God's workmanship or God's masterpiece created for good works, I can't help but think of Jeremiah or John the Baptist, both who were filled with the Holy Spirit while still in the womb when no eye had ever seen them.

Jeffrey Heine: 27:09

I mean it's remarkable if you think about it. The the very first person to recognize Jesus as the son of God and to worship him was an unborn child. John the Baptist, an unborn child was the first to recognize Jesus and to leap in the womb. After contemplating the beginning stages of life, now David's starting to move to the ends of his life. We get that in verse 16.

Jeffrey Heine: 27:37

It says, your eyes saw my unformed substance and your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me when as yet there was not where there was none of them. Every moment of your day has been determined. Your entire life, God has been the author and He has written out your life just like He has written out a book determining the beginning from the end. This is one of the reasons I love the hymn, I love the hymn, in Christ alone, which has those lines, from life's first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny. Our entire lives, he has written out.

Jeffrey Heine: 28:28

They're in a book. And can I just say that if you take verses 13 through 16 alone, that's all you had in your Bible, just 13 through 16, there is no way you could get around the fact that both abortion and euthanasia is wrong? There's no way you could get around it. Both of these stages of life are fragile. They can even be, at times, inconvenient, but we see here that God is the one who determines when life begins, and He's the one who determines when it ends.

Jeffrey Heine: 29:06

And we see His care spans the entirety of it. Let's move on. Gosh. I'm so behind. Verse 17.

Jeffrey Heine: 29:21

How precious to me are your thoughts, oh God. How vast is the sum of them? If I were to count them, they are more than the sand. We'll stop right there. So now he's these thoughts, they're becoming a real comfort to him and he's he's trying to count them all up.

Jeffrey Heine: 29:36

This is just so amazing that God hear this, this, this, this, this. But he realizes he can't count it. It's just like the sand. His best math doesn't even come close to being able to to count or to make sense of all of this. And then we come to this second half of verse 18.

Jeffrey Heine: 29:56

Says, I awake and I am still with you. Now this is somewhat a curve ball when we get to this one. It it seems out of context. Yeah. Hear me, every commentary you read on this Psalm is going to tell you that verse 18 is the climax of the entire Psalm.

Jeffrey Heine: 30:19

Structurally, the way it's all written, it's leading to this one point. After this, he's gonna start talking about judgment on the his enemies and slaying the wicked. This is the climax right here of everything He's been talking about, and yet what does it mean? Because he's trying to think of all of these things. He can't even count them.

Jeffrey Heine: 30:38

The pinnacle is this, I awake and I am still with you. I don't think he's talking about just being awake. He's already covered that in verse 2. You know, when we rise up or when we sit down, like, He's already covered this. I think He's talking about death here.

Jeffrey Heine: 30:58

He's talking about when we wake from the big sleep, if you will. The big sleep of death. And he is saying that God is so near, so powerful, has such a grip on us that even when we die, he then brings us back and we are alive in His presence, that we are fully awake. I think Jesus, he he demonstrated this so well when he raised up the little girl back to life, when he went to her and he said those sweet words, taleth accoun, which means, little girl, get up. Love that.

Jeffrey Heine: 31:40

Jesus just goes to a girl who's dead and he treats her like she's asleep and just says, hey, little girl, it's time to get up. That's what David is saying here, that when we die, that God's hold on us is so great death itself cannot break away. Little girl, it's time to get up. Alright. Verses 19 through 22, if you were Baptist, grew up Baptist like me, this would be like your verse 3 in the hymnal that you never sang.

Jeffrey Heine: 32:07

Alright? Did did y'all do that? You know, you would sing, you know, verses 1 or 2, and then for some reason, 3 was always just omitted and you went to 4. And I still don't know why we did that. But but so we I mean, a lot of you are familiar with Psalm 139.

Jeffrey Heine: 32:23

And even as you're reading it, you just kinda like you just kinda go past these. What are you supposed to do with these things here? But, let's read through this. Oh, that you would slay the wicked, oh, God. Oh, men of blood, depart from me.

Jeffrey Heine: 32:39

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? I hate them with complete hatred.

Jeffrey Heine: 32:55

I count them my enemies. Alright. It's gonna be a long time before we ever redeem or sing a hymn like this and ever get there. I loathe these people, Lord. Oh, that you would slay the wicked.

Jeffrey Heine: 33:09

I mean, we don't sing these things. Hear me. As Christians, we no longer pray these things. We no longer pray these things. We absolutely cannot because Jesus himself taught us this, that we are to love our enemies and that we are to pray for those who persecute us.

Jeffrey Heine: 33:36

And he's not meaning, like, you know, if you see your boss as an enemy, you you love them and you're gonna pray for them and you're gonna pray that God smites them. That's that's not what Jesus is talking about when he says we pray for those who persecute us. We're not praying that God would slay them. We love them. We pray for their salvation.

Jeffrey Heine: 33:57

So what what is it that we're supposed to do with this? Well, the reason we can no longer pray this judgment is is because this judgment has already been fulfilled. God has already answered this prayer of David. He answered it at the cross. He answered it at the cross where judgment did happen.

Jeffrey Heine: 34:19

The punishments that David was praying for here happened. They fell on Jesus. They've been fulfilled. As a matter of fact, when we read the Psalm, I hope you see that this entire Psalm is leading us to Jesus here. Just just look how the Psalm ends.

Jeffrey Heine: 34:38

23, 24. 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. You read that and you're thinking, seriously David? You're praying this?

Jeffrey Heine: 34:57

That you want God to look deep in your heart and your soul and your mind? Like, you were just saying earlier you wanted to get away from that. That was a very disturbing thought to you and now you're, like, God, bring it on. Search me. Try me.

Jeffrey Heine: 35:14

See if there's any wickedness in me. Like, how how can David go from the start of the Psalm to getting right here? Well, don't miss it. That comes after he prays for judgment. It's after he had just prayed for judgment.

Jeffrey Heine: 35:31

And I believe David is is hinting at something, and I I I think I guess he's speaking better than he knew. Better than he knew here, but he's pointing us to a righteousness that only comes through Jesus because Jesus was punished for us. That's why he only talks about this after praying about judgment. I think this speaks to Jesus. Do you realize that on the cross, Jesus experienced the exact opposite of everything we've read in Psalm 139?

Jeffrey Heine: 36:08

The exact opposite. So at the cross, we don't see God slaying the wicked. Who do we see God slaying? The one righteous man who has ever lived is being crushed by God. At the cross, we don't see darkness becoming light.

Jeffrey Heine: 36:29

You know what instead we see? The opposite. At midday, the sun was darkened and it became as dark as night. At the cross, Jesus does not feel in any way this nearness of God. He feels the exact opposite.

Jeffrey Heine: 36:45

He feels completely abandoned by him. That's why he cries out, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why have you left me? Why is it that I can descend to the depths of Sheol and behold you are not there? I'm utterly alone.

Jeffrey Heine: 37:02

Compare Psalm 22, which Jesus cries out from the cross with Psalm 139, and they're so different. We see when we look at the cross that Jesus is experiencing all the things that David was praying for that would happen to the wicked. And all those things happened to Jesus so that we might experience this nearness and this love that will never go away. I read yesterday in in USA Today, they had a an article there that was about the rates of suicide, with the, kind of famous suicides that have happened recently. They did an article on this, and it said that in the last 18 years, the suicide rate has risen by 30%.

Jeffrey Heine: 37:52

30% in 18 years. And the article is exploring why is this happening, and of course, there's no just one thing. It's it's always multiple layers of this, but the main thing it pointed out was this, loneliness. In an age where we're supposedly more connected than at any other time, people just feel alone. We read Psalm 139, and I hope you hear me, you are not alone.

Jeffrey Heine: 38:25

God is ever near to you. Not only is he near to you, he loves you. I believe that every human has 2 basic needs, to be known and to be loved. The problem is we grow up thinking these things are mutually exclusive. If somebody really knew me, I mean, really knew my inner thoughts, what makes me tick, there is no way they could ever love me.

Jeffrey Heine: 38:54

And therefore, if you want to be loved, you have to not really be known. You have to put up a front in order to receive affection. But here, what we find in Psalm 139, I hope you see this, is God knows you way better than you even know yourselves. You think you know your depravity, you don't know half of it, but God sees it all. He knows you and then we see how he loves you, how he's gone to the depths for you.

Jeffrey Heine: 39:24

You're both known and you're both loved by God. Pray with me. Lord Jesus, I pray that as we just meditate on this psalm, that your nearness, your nearness would be something that we truly believe and can see and feel in our lives, that we are both known by you and we're both loved by you. And Jesus, we thank you that how your work on the cross has made that possible. And I pray that would be an extraordinarily comforting thought to us this week as we work, as we parent, as we date, as we just go through life.

Jeffrey Heine: 40:14

We go through life knowing that you are with us. It's in your name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.