The Psalm 139 God (Mother's Day 2024)

I was thinking about my mom this morning. So mom, if you're watching this later, I love you. I'm so thankful for you. My mom, when I was little, read me a book that I can still see now on the shelf right next to Goodnight Moon. The book was called The Runaway Bunny. Any fans in here of The Runaway Bunny? It's all about this little bunny who's sharing with his mother bunny all of his plans to run away from home. He's gonna go to a field, or he's gonna run away to the sea, or he's gonna become a mountain climber and climb up a mountain. But he is getting out of there. He is running away from home.

And this mother rabbit just quietly sits there and listens to all of his plans and calmly responds each time, "That's fine, but I'll just go with you." And so she says, "if you go out to the sea, then I'll become the wind that blows you back to shore and back home." "If you become a, a mountain climber, then I'll just become the mountain that you climb up." And on and on it goes--this dialogue between this little bunny and the mother bunny.

And by the time you get to the end of the story, the little bunny realizes he better just give up, because he is never getting away from his mother. He is never going to escape her presence or outrun her reach. And by the end of the book, he decides, maybe that's not so bad. Why run away from someone who loves you this much? And so he decides, "you know, I think I'll just stay right here with you. And she says, "good idea, have a carrot." Home with her is where he's loved and kept and nourished. Why run away from love like that?

That's really not so far from Psalm 139. It's about making peace with God's relentless, unexplainable, inescapable covenant love for his children, his people. It's about moving from the place where you are running and hiding from God to clinging to him and worshiping him. I think it's the word we all need on this Mother's Day. It's about a God whose love won't let you go. And I just want to work through it quickly in our time together.

Notice in verses 1-6: David cries out, "God, I can't evade your knowledge." I can't evade your knowledge. He says, "you God, you search me, you know me, my every move is exposed to you from the time I get up in the morning, to when I sit down to eat, to when I go to bed at night, and everything in between. You see me the whole time. I can't get by with anything with you." It kinda reminds me of earlier this week. It seems like some moms just kind of have this skill of knowing what you're up to, knowing what's going on.

I told Candice I was going to be home at a certain time. I was going to visit someone at church, and I was gonna be home for supper. Well the visit ran a little bit long. I didn't get home when I said I was gonna get home. And very soon I get a text message with a picture of my exact location of where I was asking if anything had gone wrong. She just kind of knows where I am all the time. And I've made peace with that. It's a good thing. It's a good thing in my life.

But David I think may be chafing against that a little bit. If you don't want to be known, then this exhaustive knowledge is very threatening, isn't it? It feels invasive. "God, you know, you not only know all of my activities, you have x-ray vision. You know stuff that mama doesn't know down to the bottom of my heart. You know my thoughts. You understand my motives. You know the words I'm going to speak before I've had time to form them on my tongue. You know everything."

And in verses 5-6, I think he's dealing with the unsettling nature of such a complete, intense, personal knowledge of him. He says, "you see right through me God. I can't evade your knowledge. I can't hide from you. You hem me in. I got no room to operate." You know what I'm saying? "You hem me in. You lay your hand on me." Now, there's a good mother's day memory verse for many of us! "You lay your hand on me. You've got a hold of me where I can't get loose and I can't get free. I can't roam and range because you know me. I can't evade your knowledge."

And then he moves in verses 7-12 to say, "I can't escape your presence. No matter where I go, no matter how hard I try, I just keep running into you. If I want to soar all the way up to heaven as high as I can go, well of course you're there. But then if I want to dig and tunnel my way all the way down into hell, into the grave, I turn around and you're there too! If I want to sprout wings and fly to the remotest point over the ocean depths where no one has been before, and I think 'Finally I can breathe, I'm alone, I'm independent,' I turn around and dern it, if you're not there too! How do you do it? Your presence is inescapable.

And if you want independence, if you want to just be left alone to do what you want to do, there is nothing more aggravating, nothing more threatening than an inescapable presence. Just ask Jonah. You can read that book sometime.

But I do think that David's presence is changing a little bit in verses 10-12. Because he goes on from talking about fleeing to the furthest points on the globe to saying that, "even when the darkness of my own choices is swallowing me up, even when the darkness of despair in my circumstances that I cannot control is smothering me, and I know that this time nobody's coming for me, that nobody wants to come for me anymore because of this darkness I've brought on myself, David says, 'I found something out, that in that darkness, you're there too.'

And even my deepest darkness, where I think I am no longer accessible to anyone. "No one would ever care for me." Now I find it's not too dark for you, but even there your hand leads me. Your hand upholds me, caring for me, nurturing me, securing me. I can't escape your presence.

And I think that thought moves David in verses 13-18 to say, "And I can't explain your love." Because here's what baffles David. There are plenty of people who know David. And so they don't love David. And then there are plenty of people who love David. But it's because they don't really know David. But here is a God who does know everything about him that there is to know: public and private, outward and inward, words and actions, thoughts and motives, the whole thing. God sees it all--nothing hidden from him. He knows everything and yet he loves him.

He is fiercely committed to him with this unfailing covenant love, It's specific. He doesn't just love people in general. He loves David in particular. He is personally devoted to him. And as David continues to explore this idea of God's love for Him, he realizes it goes back so far! God's love for David goes back so far. The closest earthly love that we could probably compare it to is a mother's love for her child. But God's love for David goes back further than that!

Because God loved David and was intimately involved in his life before his mother even knew he existed, before she ever saw his face, when his substance was as yet unformed. When he was hidden from view to the world, God was knitting David together. I can't knit but it seems pretty intricate to me. You have to be pretty careful. You gotta take your time. You gotta care about what you're doing, right, Mrs Connie? You have to be really intricate with that stuff. That's the level of involvement that God has had with David since before he had a fully formed human body. His love for David goes back way far.

And then David says, "when I turn and face the other direction, I see your love for me, It extends just as far that way into the future." Because when he says, "I awake and you're still with me," I think he's talking about his death. So I die, I breathe my last, no one else can be there for me or be with me. But when I awake from that moment of death, I see your face. You're with me, you love me, you're for me there. As far back as I can look, as far forward into eternity as I can look, your love secures me and upholds me. And every day in between, think about this, every day in between my conception in the womb to the day of my death when I 'fall asleep' in the Lord, every day in between, God is with me.

Every one of those days written in his book is important to him, appointments for him, days when he is thinking about me, how to lead me, how to uphold me, how to get me home, how to conform me to the image of Jesus Christ, how to cause all things to work together for my good. He is thinking about me when he is the furthest thing from my mind. If you want to be humbled before God this morning, think for just one moment about all the days when you didn't give a rip about God in your life. And He was loving you on those days. He was thinking about you, and how to draw you to himself, and bring you to the place that He created you for, which is to be just like his son.

"God, when I think about your thoughts toward me, they are so vast, and they are so precious, and so undeserved. I can't explain your love. I can't escape your presence. I can't evade your knowledge."

And that's why finally he ends where he does in verses 19-24" "I will embrace your ways." Now, I know when we get to verse 19, it moves from that sweet Mother's Day psalm to David talking about hating people with perfect hatred. This is the part where if Psalm 139 is reprinted in the back of the hymnal or something as a responsive reading, they cut this part out. This is the part where as a 23-year-old preacher, I'd be reading at someone's hospital bedside and think, "Oh, Psalm 39, that would be pretty comforting." And then I get to, I hate you with a perfect hatred, and then I think I probably should have read this beforehand.

It just seems so disjointed. But what David is saying in verses 19-24 is, "God, I'm done running and hiding from you. I'm finished trying to put as much distance between myself and you as I can. I want to be as close to you as I can. I want to bind myself to you, because you've bound yourself to me. And so God, if there's somebody out there who hates you, I hate them too. I want to love what you love. And I wanna hate what you hate. I wanna align myself with your ways. I'm tired of going my ways. I don't want to try to pull anything over on you anymore. Why would I? I want to walk in your ways.

And he moves in those final verses 23 and 24 to say, "God, I'm not fighting this searching knowledge. I'm not fleeing this inescapable presence. I'm asking you now, 'God search me, God, please know me. God, please lead me in the way everlasting.' I want to embrace this love that has been pursuing me all the days of my life."

Well, that's Psalm 139. And I want to suggest on this Mother's Day that it is just what we all need most. Whoever you are, man or woman, a mother, a child with a mother, a child without a mother, what you need most in this world is the Psalm 139 God in your life.

Mothers, when you are pushed to the extremities of life (and there's nothing like parenting that can do that), and you say to yourself, "surely the darkness will overwhelm me," you need the Psalm 139 God. When you look back with regret over things you wish you had done differently, or words that you wish you could take back as you're raising your children, you need the Psalm 139 God.

All your days are written in his book. And even on the days when you weren't thinking about him, he was thinking about you. And even when your commitment to him has been so wavering, his commitment to you is unfailing.

You need the Psalm 139 God when your children are reaching those different milestones of adulthood and maturity that we talked about earlier and you realize, 'I just lost a little bit more control. I can't lay my hand on them like I once did. I can't hem them in. I don't always know everything that's going on. I can't do The Runaway Bunny thing and literally go with them everywhere they go. And it scares me, right? Have you ever had that thought moms and dad?

In those moments you need the Psalm 139 God, because believe it or not, he's loved them longer than you have. And he will keep loving them and walking with them long after you can. He can come to them in the darkest places when they have shattered their lives by their foolish choices. And the one who knit them together in there's mother's womb, he can knit them back together, and make something beautiful out of their lives for his own glory. He is the one who actually can never leave them or forsake them.

He is the one who can not only press God in from the outside (we're all trying our best to press God in from the outside on our children's lives), but God can do an inside job. He can access their hearts. He can bring them to the place as he deals with them, as he walks with them, as he hems them in, he can bring them to a place where they say, "God lead me in the way everlasting. I want you to search me. I want you to know me. I'm not trying to see how little I can get by with. I'm not trying to see what I can pull over on you. God, I wanna walk with you." Don't we all want that for our kids?! God can do that.

And so maybe the most ringing call for some of us today is to trust our children to the Psalm 139 God. And if you don't give them anything else (I know the world tells you that you need to give your kids all this different stuff), you need to give them the Psalm 139 God. You need to tell them about him. You need to live joyfully before him, and with him, and let them see that. They need to see your heart at rest. And this God who's so big, but so near, and so personal, (my goodness, what a God he is), give your kids that God, and he can do for them what you can never do.

And there are also some of us here today who are probably doing our very best to run and hide from God. Maybe you're doing that very overtly. You don't care who knows it. You're just here to try to kind of placate mama, and you're even doing that sort of halfheartedly. If so, we're super glad you're here. You would not be the first person to come to church on Mother's Day like that. So, welcome. But I want you to know that there is a God who is so intimately involved in the lives of individual people like you, that it could very well be he has been directing all the little tiny scattered random details of your life to 'hem you in' so that you had to come to little ol' Sharon Baptist Church on Mother's Day, and hear about a God who came all the way down into the darkness of sin and death for you. Because he knows you completely and yet somehow he also loves you completely.

And the God of Psalm 139 came to us in the person of Jesus Christ, God's own son. And he went to the cross and he was shattered. He was broken. He was covered in the darkness of our sin. But he rose from the dead three days later. He now reigns at the right hand of God. He never ceases to intercede for his people to get them home. He has said to us Hebrews 13 5: "I will never leave you or forsake you," Matthew 28:20, "And I will be with you always to the ends of the earth."

That savior knows you, and he loves you, and he wants you. Why not just give up? If you're running from him, why? What are you running to that's been so great for you? What is it about your life apart from Christ that's so awesome and satisfying? Why not come home to the God who's been pursuing you all the days of your life?

Have a carrot. Let's pray.

Sermon by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church