Is the thought that God knows you better than you know yourself scary or comforting? An ancient believer found great comfort in the idea that he was perfectly known by God.
PSALM 139: GOD KNOWS ME BETTER THAN I KNOW MYSELF
INTRODUCTION
How would you feel if you knew that your best friend could read your mind and know what you were thinking at every moment?
That might be very uncomfortable for many of us because we know that we have thoughts that we would be ashamed for others to know.
Many of us take great care to present our “best selves” to each other.
We are so anxious to have other people think well of us that we make every effort to hide our faults and display our virtues.
The only trouble with this effort is that none of us really knows ourselves very well.
Parts of me are hidden from myself.
People spend good money with psychiatrists and psychologists to have them tell them about their deepest thoughts and desires.
But maybe if we knew all about ourselves we would be even more depressed because then we would be confronted with the sin we keep buried within.
Long ago an ancient believer wrote a psalm in which he rejoices because God knows him inside and out—even better than he knows himself.
Read Psalm 139.1-6
I. The writer of this psalm finds great comfort in the knowledge that God knows his every thought.
A. I have read that in Victorian times parents would sometimes put on the wall of their child’s room a picture of a big eye with this Bible verse under it: “Thou God seest me” (Genesis 16.13 KJV).
This was supposed to remind the child that whatever he or she did, God was watching.
The parent hoped the picture of God’s watching eye would lead to good behavior, even when the parent wasn’t looking.
That eye probably frightened more children than it helped.
I remember that that one of the first memory verses I learned in Sunday school was that verse from Genesis: “Thou God seest me.”
I don’t know whether it improved my behavior or not.
B. Theologians explain to us that God is omniscient and omnipresent.
Omniscient means that God knows everything.
Omnipresent means that God is everywhere.
Our psalmist isn’t concerned that God knows everything or that God is everywhere.
What thrills him is that God knows him—inside and out.
What thrills him is that God is here, with him—right now, and always.
C. When I read this psalm, I think about a story of Jesus.
One day Jesus sat down on a well near the Samaritan city of Sychar. He was all alone.
A woman came to draw water.
They had a conversation and Jesus told her about the living water that he would give her that would gush up within her to eternal life.
In their conversation, as recorded in John 4, the woman confessed to Jesus that she had had five husbands, and that she was living now with a man who wasn’t her husband.
Then they talked about worship and Jesus explained that God is worshiped in spirit and in truth.
We don’t have all the conversation, but in the end the woman was so impressed that Jesus loved her, even though he knew all that she had ever done, that she left her water pot and ran into the town to tell her neighbors: “Come see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”
Even though we might think she had a lot to hide, she is excited and happy to meet a man who knew her so intimately.
I think that what gave her such comfort is that she knew that—even though he knew all the faults and mistakes and sins of her past life—he loved her anyway.
This woman had not known that kind of forgiving love before.
The ancient believer who wrote Psalm 139 was comforted to know that his God was so great and wise that nothing about him escaped God’s attention.
He was glad that he was so important to God that God had made a study of him, and God knew him better than he knew himself.
Maybe we have thoughts and actions in our life that we are ashamed of, and we know we can’t hide those thoughts and actions from God, but the great thing is that God loves us anyway.
II. Let’s look more closely at the psalm.
A. “O Lord, you have searched me and known me…” (v1).
Our psalmist realized, as we do, that he didn’t know himself very well at all.
Sometimes we may even lie to ourselves—and sometimes we may even believe our lies.
One of my prayers is that God will show me the sins that I am blind to, so that I come to him for forgiveness and cleansing.
One of my prayers comes from a hymn by Charles Wesley. It goes like this:
“Show me, as my soul can bear,
The depth of inbred sin;
All the unbelief declare,
The pride that lurks within;
Take me, whom thyself hast bought,
Bring into captivity
Every high aspiring thought
That would not stoop to thee.”
But I think there is something else going on here.
Maybe the psalmist has been misjudged and criticized and accused by others.
He finds comfort in knowing that God does not judge him so harshly, because God knows his heart, and God knows his limitations and God knows how much he loves his Lord and how earnestly he wants to please him.
B. “You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways” (v3).
God knows our past, and he knows where we are going.
He understands the road we are on.
He understands the difficulties we have faced and the difficulties we will face in the future.
And our Lord will be with us to the end of the road.
C. “Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely...” (v4).
Sometimes words come out of my mouth that I don’t intend.
They just seem to jump out to embarrass me.
But God knows me better than I know myself.
I never surprise him.
I have secrets from other people, and even from myself.
But I have no secrets from God.
D. “You hem me in behind and before, and lay your hand upon me…” (v5).
God has been with me all the way, watching me, hemming me in, keeping me from danger, and guiding me along life’s road.
When the psalmist says, “He lays his hand upon me,” This is what I think he means:
God chose me, he draws me to himself, he makes me his own, he is by my side forever, and when I wander, he will bring me back.
E. “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it” (v6).
The psalmist trembles at the wisdom of God.
But he is not terrified; he is filled with wonder and gratitude because he knows that God loves him.
Toward the end of the psalm the psalmist says,
“How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you” (vv17-18).
As a dear child is always in the thoughts of his or her mother, so we are always in the thoughts of our God.
God always keeps us in mind and is always caring and feeling what we are feeling.
Recently a friend said to me, “I don’t like to pray for myself. I figure that God has more important things to attend to.”
No, God has you in mind as if you were the only person in the world.
God is infinite. He has each of us in his mind as if each of us were the only person in the world.
And God remembers me, even when I am forgetting him.
I may feel myself to be far from God, but he is near to me.
CONCLUSION
Finally, at the very end of the psalm, the ancient believer looks into his heart.
He welcomes God’s searching gaze and says,
“Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting” (vv17-18).
Why does he invite God to search him and know him, when he has already professed the certainty that God already knows him so thoroughly?
I think that in these last lines our believer is asking God to show him his heart as God sees it.
We really know ourselves only as we look at ourselves from God’s point of view.
Boldly he asks God to show him any wickedness lurking within and lead him in the ways of God—the way everlasting.”
In these last lines, the psalmist is in a humble mood.
He doesn’t shrink from God’s gaze. He longs for it.
He knows that his only hope is that God will keep his eye upon him and that God will reveal God’s self to himself and lead him to his glorious destiny, which he calls “the way everlasting.”
St. Paul wrote in one of his letters:
“Now we see in a mirror dimly,
but then we will see face-to-face.
Now I know only in part;
then I will know fully,
even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13.12)
It is sad for the unbeliever to come to the end of life and think, “It is almost over; life will end soon.”
It is not sad for the believer to come to the end of life and think, “This temporary part of life is almost over; real life will begin soon.”
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