Psalm 139

Ah yes, the all-famous and ever-so-quoted 139^th Psalm.  As I read through this today, I realized that it is one of those biblical passages that we tend to pluck single verses out of and apply them in ways that may not fully represent the tone of the song in its entirety.  Maybe the person using said verses has its context correct, but is the recipient of the wisdom also receiving it appropriately?  I really liked reading through it completely to get a better view of what David is ultimately expressing here: the vastness of God’s being and also the specificity of how closely He is involved in our lives.

Some may have experienced this psalm in a way that created spiritual trauma and abuse.  Verses 7-12 can be easily used as a message of, “God’s always watching!  He shakes his head at every sin and bad decision you make.”  On its own, that certainly seems to be the message but read within the greater context of the whole psalm, it takes on a different meaning.

David really sets the scene in the first 6 verses, acknowledging God’s sovereignty and omniscience.  THIS is the point, not that He is a holy watchdog waiting to condemn you for your sins.  How can I say this with utmost conviction?  Verse 17 clarifies, “how precious are your thoughts to me and how vast they are!”  If God only looked upon us as an enemy spy, waiting to exact justice on our iniquities, it wouldn’t be precious at all, would it?  Just before that, David expresses that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  How could God be fearful?  Have you ever wondered that?  A better translation of the word for fear here would be reverently.  It is the same word used to describe fearing God.  While we certainly we should hold a healthy fear of being vaporized in God’s presence, it is more of an awe than the human emotion of fear, like being afraid to get hit by a car when walking down the street.  This is why I believe David adds the word “wonderfully” to his description, which denotes: extraordinary, hard to be understood, God’s dealings with His people.  In other words, God took great care in creating each and every one of us, from the moment of conception and even before!  

While this analogy doesn’t hit the mark exactly, I consider when I was younger and enjoyed building model cars.  The pieces were so intricate, I needed tools like an exacto knife and tweezers, toothpicks and hair-thin paint brushes to get in the tiniest of spots and construct it.  I had to take great care, patience, and time to “get it right,” yet when I was finished, I could always see ways I could make it better.  Thankfully, God doesn’t have that problem, yet He creates us even to the cellular level…where the naked eye cannot even see or fathom!  This is David’s celebration of God giving us life.  Because of this absolute wonder of how God creates us, he also expresses the antithesis: people who have no regard for human life or God’s magnificence.  In comparison, David wishes He would wipe them from the earth, because they do not even deserve to be alive as a result of their incredulousness.  Yet He doesn’t, because they are fearfully and wonderfully made too!  Have you ever struggled with this?  I have to repeatedly remind myself, “Jesus loves them too.”  Therefore, if I am His disciple and trying to emulate Him, I need to be willing to die for them just as He did.  I definitely still need more work in the sanctification process, for sure!

David recognizes this as well, after expressing his disdain for the “wicked,” he turns to asking God to purify him, through searching, trying, seeing, and leading.  I would like to close this post by highlighting something I picked up in verse 24.  David asks God to see, or reveal, if there is any _____ way in him.  I left that blank because as I read different translations, I found a vast difference in English words used here.

In the Hebrew direct translation, the word that is used translates to:

1. way, road, path; cstr. way of (oft. = to, toward). 2. journey; a common (not sacred) journey; go one’s way. 3. of direction, almost or quite = toward. 4. way, manner: a. usage. b. = customary experience, or condition. c. the manner of Egypt. d. habit of animals, ants. 5. fig. of course of life, or action, undertakings. 6. a. of moral action and character. b. of duty (commanded by ˊי, etc.). c. specif.: in good sense. d. oftener in bad sense. e. way of ˊי: (a) = his creative activity; applied in concrete sense to behemoth (hippopotamus). (b) = his moral administration. (c) = his commandments.

That’s a lot of meaning to pack into one or two words!  This is why there is such a discrepancy between various translations.  Basically, David is asking God to reveal to him any way that he is heading in the wrong direction.  Honestly, that is a bold request!  We all have things in our lives that we recognize aren’t the best for us but are hard to correct or let go of.  Yet, there is a very important lesson here that we can learn.

David’s heart is to worship God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and body.  As discussed about Psalm 138 previously, worship is about praising that which is worthy of praise.  Because he wants to worship God alone, he recognizes that there are probably things in his life he worships that isn’t God.  Here he is asking the Lord to reveal that to him, so that he can change his ways.

In view of this, what do you worship in your life that isn’t God?  Are you bold enough to ask God to show you?  Once He does, what will you do with it?  It’s one thing to recognize it, but it is entirely different to take action to change it.  Change is hard, especially when we have engrained a habit many times over a long period of time.  I want to offer a solution that I have experienced in my own life, that as I have shared it with others seemed like a simple yet surprising technique.  It is surprising because the people I have shared it with were surprised they had never thought of it before.  It’s more of a “duh” moment than an “aha” moment.  There’s no judgement in that, just a simple sharing of what has worked for me.

We are used to Jesus’ quote of saying “ask and it will be given to you” in Matthew 7:7-8, but in Luke’s version of this conversation, he includes something else that Jesus says which, in my opinion, is more powerful and useful than what Matthew recorded.  In Luke 11, he records Jesus’ teaching on prayer, where he also includes the Lord’s Prayer, but also records some of Jesus’ parables to illustrate how the Kingdom of God operates.  To conclude, in verse 13, He says something most profound:

Therefore if you, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father from heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

When reading Matthew’s version, we don’t get the Holy Spirit part of the teaching.  It is very possible that Luke’s record isn’t taken directly from the Sermon on the Mount, but other instances of Jesus’ teachings (in fact, Luke wasn’t present for the original sermon, but that’s a rabbit trail I am trying not to go down right now).  When I first discovered this, I considered the struggles I had been having as a result of past sexual immorality.  My actions were no longer as sinful, but the memories of sinful acts had been engrained into my memory and the enemy would occasionally remind me of them.  One day I prayed, “Holy Spirit, please erase this from my memory.”

To be completely honest, I was shocked when He actually did it!  The enemy could no longer use those memories against me because I didn’t have them anymore.  If we have received God’s salvation, His Spirit lives inside of us and is more powerful than we can comprehend.  David understood the access he had to God’s power and wielded it effectively to glorify God with his life.  You can do it too!

I say all this, so that if you are bold enough to ask God to show you if there is anything that has you off course, you can also ask Him to help you in that struggle.  The best thing we can do for ourselves is to keep God as the only object of our worship, because He alone is worthy of our praise.  Yet, in this broken world we must constantly fight to be sanctified, pure, holy, and set apart.  But He hasn’t left us to fend for ourselves.  He has done the heavy lifting, we just have to recognize we are not God, are not alone, and ask Him to use His power to heal us.