Sermon – “The God who knows us” (Psalm 139)

It was my original intention this morning for us to look together at the Old Testament passage we read a few moments ago: the story of Samuel’s first encounter with God. The narrator opens the account with an observation that has to be one of the saddest statements in all of the Bible: “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions” (1 Samuel 3:1). Generations had elapsed since the time of Moses and the great events of the exodus. The voice that had thundered from the peak of Mount Sinai was scarcely a faint echo from the past. The worship of the tabernacle had degenerated into a hollow ritual. And the great moral principles that had made them unique among the nations had largely slipped from the people’s collective consciousness.

From this sad overview of the spiritual state of the nation of Israel the camera focuses in on a young lad fast asleep in the large tent structure that served as the centre of Israel’s worship. And in the stark silence of the night we hear a voice: “Samuel!” The young lad stirs, sits up, rubs his eyes and answers, “Here I am.” He gets up and runs to his master, the aged priest Eli. “You called me?” he asks. But the old man replies, “It wasn’t me; go back to bed.”

A second time it happens. “Samuel…” A second time he gets up and goes to the old man. And a second time he is sent back to his bed. He has barely fallen asleep when it happens again: “Samuel!” But this time the old priest has begun to figure out what’s going on. It’s all rather like what we read in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Narnia has been trapped in winter almost since anyone can remember, as suddenly the snow starts to melt, buds appear on the trees, and spring flowers begin to sprout and blossom. “Aslan is on the move!” So old Eli instructs the lad, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” Back to his bed the young Samuel goes—and sure enough the Lord comes to him again, “Samuel! Samuel…”

You know me

And this brings me to Psalm 139, which begins with the words, “Lord, you have searched me, and you know me…” I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us that God knows us. After all, he is the creator of the universe! Several weeks ago Karen and I watched the film Citizenfour. It centres on the story of Edward Snowden and how government agencies in our western nations are increasingly able to snoop on seemingly every detail of our lives. 1984 is long in the past, but it appears that George Orwell’s catchphrase, “Big Brother is watching you,” has become a reality—and for many of us, who value our privacy and our freedom, it can be a frightening one.

So what does the psalm mean when it says, “Lord, you have searched me, and you know me”? Well of course it includes the idea that God knows all about us. He knows what’s in our emails and our bank accounts. He knew our DNA long before Francis Collins and others were able to map the human genome. Furthermore, the psalm tells us he knows what’s going on inside our hearts and minds—and that can be a scary thought! But all of that is not the point. For the Hebrew verb “to know” is not just about knowing facts. It is about knowing someone personally, having a relationship with them.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” the Lord says tenderly to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5). When Jesus speaks to his followers about his being the good shepherd, he tells them, “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10:14-15). So what we are talking about here is a personal knowing, an intimate knowing. To my mind we see it most poignantly in that scene outside the empty tomb on the first Easter morning. Mary Magdalene has come with her pounds of spices to anoint the body of Jesus. But the stone has been rolled away and the body has gone. Through her tears and the morning mist she sees a figure whom she mistakes as the gardener. “Tell me, sir,” she says to him, “where you have put him.” Then she hears the word that changes her life forever: “Mary…” (John 20:11-16)

“Mary…” “Adam…” “Emily…” “Alvin…” “Kewoba…” “Lolita…” “Gil…” “Brian…” “Samuel…” The Lord does not look on us only as a collectivity. He knows each of us by name. He knows our highs and our lows, our joys and our sorrows, our strengths and our weaknesses, our dreams and our secret fears—not to use them against us, but to come alongside us and to strengthen us along the journey of becoming the women and the men that he has created every one of us uniquely to be. And with that I have already arrived at my second point.

You hold me fast

That personal, intimate knowing of our hearts on God’s part inevitably leads to something more. So it is that we read in verses 9 and 10,

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
     if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
     your right hand will hold me fast.

When we read these words we need to remember that ancient near-eastern cultures gave particular significance to the right hand as opposed to the left. The right hand is the strong hand. The right hand is the useful hand. The right hand is the hand of blessing. It is for this reason that through Isaiah God promises the people of Israel, “Do not fear, for I am with you… I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). By the same token, when Jesus spoke about being struck on the right cheek, what he was referring to was a slap from the left hand, and that was a grievous affront. It was quite literally to add insult to injury. And so when we are failing or falling, it is with his right hand, the hand of strength, the hand of blessing, that God graciously reaches out to us and lifts us up and puts us in the place where we should be.

The apostle Paul expressed it memorably those magnificent verses in the eighth chapter of Romans when he wrote,

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 37-39)

The late Scottish theologian T.F. Torrance hit the nail on the head in an illustration that I have found myself going back to again and again. He wrote,

Many years ago I recall thinking of the marvellous way in which our faith is implicated in the faith of Jesus Christ and grasped by his faithfulness, when I was teaching my little daughter to walk. I can still feel her tiny fingers gripping my hand as tightly as she could. She did not rely upon her feeble grasp of my hand but upon my strong grasp of her hand which enfolded her grasp of mine within it. That is surely how God’s faithfulness actualized in Jesus Christ has hold of our weak and faltering faith and holds it securely in his hand.[1]

Torrance’s fellow countryman, the hymn writer George Matheson, put it lyrically in the successive verses of his hymn of 130 years ago: “O love that wilt not let me go… O light that followest all my way… O joy that seekest me through pain…”

As we read in the psalm, there is nowhere we can go, whether to the heights of ecstasy or to the depths of despair, or to the farthest place imaginable, that our gracious God is not able to reach out his hand to us and take us firmly into his grasp—and as we look at that hand we see on it the mark of a nail and the stain of his blood.

You lead me

All of these observations take us in the end, and as they should, to a prayer:

Search me, God, and know my heart;
     test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
     and lead me in the way everlasting.

If there is nothing else that we can learn from the verses of this psalm it is that we have a God whom we can trust to lead us through life, and trust to the uttermost.

Yet we would be horribly mistaken if we thought for one minute that following him turns our lives into a cakewalk. That is the false message being promulgated by the purveyors of the so-called “health, wealth and prosperity gospel”. The true gospel—and our faith—centres in the one who proclaimed, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me,” (Luke 9:23) and who warned those same followers, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). A couple of generations later one of those followers would reiterate the same warning: “Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you” (1 John 3:13).

The Letter to the Hebrews dedicates an entire chapter to the stories of those who chose to follow God’s leading. It tells of some

who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated… They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:35-40)

Torture, floggings, stoning and imprisonment! All of this seems like a rather discouraging note on which to end a sermon. And it would be, were it not for two things: the companion and the destination. We have a God who promises, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Do you remember the story of Daniel’s three companions whom King Nebuchadnezzar commanded to be thrown into a blazing furnace for their refusal to bow to a graven image? When the king looked into the furnace, he saw not three men but four. They trusted in God’s promise,

Do not fear, for I am with you;
     do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
     I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)

And were not Jesus’ final words to his followers before he departed this world, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20)?

When we come to the end of that journey (where the Lord has been with us at each step along the way) it will be to arrive at a destination to which nothing that we have ever experienced in this world can compare. It will be to set foot in the new Jerusalem, the very dwelling place of God, where God himself will be with us and we will know his unmediated presence, where he will wipe every tear from our eyes; where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away and everything will have been made new (Revelation 21:3-4). And our only possible response will be,

“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory!” (Revelation 19:6-7)

Amen.

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[1]     The Mediation of Christ, page 83