Reflecting on Psalm 139

Read each verse from your Bible and compare your thoughts mine. (This was the Arthur Home Group Study tonight.)

Verse 1

David begins by confessing the obvious: God knows him.

This knowledge is not superficial – not just basic data, like birth date, favourite food, place in the family etc.

God has searched him to know him. God has probed. Searching means intent looking – it means lifting up stones to look under them – it means sweeping under beds – it means getting close up.

God looks intently into your life. Nothing is missed. You are deeply known by God.

Verse 2

God knows when you opt out or give up or take time out (you know when I sit down).

He knows when you take action, good or bad – when you attempt to make things happen (you know when I rise up).

He sees you when you are passive or active. He sees you night and day – asleep or awake. He discerns (makes out/recognizes) our thoughts when they far off - still not even properly formed. He sees our thoughts when they are still forming, like far away whispy clouds on the horizon.

Verse 3

God knows our habits – the familiar paths we tread – our usual responses to various circumstances. He knows where to find us at any time. We are totally predictable to him.

Verse 4

Even before the idea I have in my head has moved to the speech centre of my brain and activated my vocal chords and my tongue – even while that idea is still an electrical impulse in my brain – God knows the full extent of it. He knows what triggered the idea, where it comes from, why I think it and what I want to achieve by speaking it out – all this before I even think the idea completely into existence.

Verse 5

God brought you to the point where you are poised at this moment in time and space. He was working in everything behind you to bring you to this place. He is in front of you. Nothing you plan to do or plan to avoid can happen without his involvement and permission. You are hemmed in by God. His hand is upon you.

Verse 6

Isn’t that amazing information – wonderful – mind-expanding - humbling? Worship!

Verse 7

What if you don’t like this close scrutiny – where will you go? Do you think that there is anywhere you can run to? Are you tempted to have a rest from God’s close attention?

Verse 8

Will you try for heaven? Are you holding out hope that you can find fun, enjoyment and fulfilment in a place? There is no beauty, heavenly experience or genuine thrill apart from God. He has to be there for it to be anything more than ashes and disappointment!

Will you try death – lying in the grave to get peace and quiet? Suicide is no escape from God. You will meet him there also – each person gets to die once and after death the judgement.

Verse 9,10

Will you try travel as your means of getting away from God’s close scrutiny? Will you fly to another country to get away from your circumstances, your church, your family? You can’t outdistance God. Even as you travel, God’s hand is still upon you directing how far you will go and how safe you will be.

Verse 11,12

Will you try hiding in the darkness? Whether the natural darkness of night or the darkness of an immoral lifestyle – darkness is no place to shake God off your tail. His insight penetrates through the darkness to find you and see you as if you were caught in the nightlight of the Police helicopter.

Verse 13

The reason God knows you so closely and intimately is that he formed you. When you were infused with life and woven into a bundle of DNA and your tiny brain and organs were growing towards personhood – that was God shaping you.

Verse 14

Praise is the only proper response. Deep down we know only too well that we are ourselves the evidence of God’s unsearchable wisdom.

Verse 15,16

We didn’t look much when we were still a foetus, just a bundle of flesh – but even then God had decreed the length of our days in the world – even before we saw the light of our first day.

Verse 17,18

Isn’t God’s thoughtfulness about you and towards you, precious? Don’t you highly value – more than the opinion of friends or the views about you of your own family – the thoughts that God has about you? The thought he put into planning you and the thoughts he has toward you today to provide you with the best opportunity of responding to him and knowing him. God’s thoughts towards his people are limitless – the scope and detail of his purposes is mind-boggling. We go to sleep and for a few hours are unaware of God’s sleepless activity towards us and for us. But when we wake up – we are still right there, under God’s focus – he hasn’t wandered off, distracted by more interesting things, while we were asleep.

Verse 19-22

God’s care and attention leads us to feel angry when we consider those who work with the evil one to destroy and undermine everything that God is doing. We long for the day when God will finish with evil and evil men. Any enemy of God is our enemy too. In the light of God’s constancy and nurturing – the malice of violent men sickens us.

Verse 23

However, at the very moment we are seething about others’ wickedness, it dawns on us – are we in the clear?
What about me? What if there are traits of evil still in me? What if I am not pure and I am harbouring the same malicious attitude or tendancy in my heart as those I despise? O God search me! Know my heart – I don’t know my own heart the way I should. Test me – find ways to bring out my thoughts – bring to the surface my true self. See if there is anything in me that offends you. Get me on track. Get me into the way that has no end – deliver me from my dead end thinking and put in the way of Christ.

David began stating the well-known truth that God searches and knows us. He ends his Psalm by pleading with God to search him, know him and keep him in the clear.

A Hastily Eaten Meal - Exodus 12

Here a 6 ideas to reflect on from Exodus 12:

1. New beginnings are possible with God

· ‘This month shall be the beginning of months for you’ (12.2). Israel was beginning a totally new phase of living as a free nation – free in God to serve, worship and follow him. They had a lot of baggage to leave behind - 430 years’ worth (12.40). By faith in Christ, the ultimate Passover lamb, we can make a new beginning. We can shake off our slavery to habits held for a long time. There is hope for us; we are not trapped in a way of living that will channel us to the grave.

2. God’s people must die to the world and the world must die to them.

· As Pharaoh evicted Israel and the Egyptians begged them to go, so we must face the truth that as we live strongly in Christ our lives will often grate on the world. While to some we will be the aroma of life, to others we will be the smell of death to all their shallow dreams. Paul said: Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world (Gal 6.14). We do not aim to be objectionable or annoying, but if we sincerely intend to be like Jesus, we must expect that people will treat the servants as they treated the Master. If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: “ A servant is not greater than his master.” John 15.18ff.

3. God’s people are a delivered people – essentially no better than others.

· That night, the Israelites who were safe in their houses, remained so because of the lamb, not because they were more worthy than the Egyptians. We must retain our humility as we bring the gospel into the places where we live. We must not appear as those who look down on others, but as those who have themselves been delivered from all the things in us that attract God’s wrath. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, or men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers (the abusive), nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. AND SUCH WERE SOME OF YOU. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. 1 Cor 6.9-11

4. God’s unites his people into clusters or households.

· Being saved from our sins must certainly be an individual experience; we are not saved by association with others who are enjoying God’s salvation. However, we are saved among others to live with them in God’s household. We need fellowship. As we cluster together, the moderate heat of the Spirit of God in each of us is increased to a roaring fire. We must learn to see ourselves as members of God’s family and expect to take up our responsibilities to the other members. So then, you are no longer strangers or aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Eph 2.19-22. Home groups are an excellent expression of this clustering of family members. When we eat together (both natural food and the Bread of Life, God’s Word) we are very close to what the Israelite families were doing in Egypt that night.

5. God provides a place of safety from his judging anger (wrath).

· Christ is that place. It wasn’t the family unit and it wasn’t the structural integrity of the house that kept them safe from the judging angel that night. It was the blood on the door posts and the meat in their stomachs. Not that these had magical powers. They were emblematic – that is they spoke to something more real than themselves. First, they pointed to a little carcass that represented a young animal life cut off for the sake of the family gathered around it. But the blood and food pointed further and deeper than the substitution of an animal for a family. It pointed to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John the Baptist extended his finger to point the last few metres of the long distance in space and time from the first Passover to Jesus on the Galilee beach. Jesus said that we need to eat his flesh and drink his blood – meaning that we need to take him in to our lives by faith. We need to take in his death for us – the death that satisfies God’s demand for righteousness. In Christ is the safe place, where the wrath of God is turned away from us. A genuine Passover.

6. The Meal teaches how Christ is our sustainer.

· Christ not only stood in for us under God’s wrath visited on him at the cross, but he also stands in for us in life. The lamb gave the Israelites strength for a breathless march to the edge of the Red Sea. We draw strength by feeding on Christ. We do this through the Bible. The Spirit takes the Word of Christ and makes it real and clear to us – feeding our minds and spirits. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. John 16.13-15.

· The flatbread (yeast-less) that they carried with them as they hurried away from Egypt, reminds us that we are to travel light in this world. Our lives are stripped down to the basics so we are not distracted from our journey. Let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12.1,2.

Reading the Whole Bible

Have you ever wanted to read the whole Bible and yet realised that it is just too much to cope with? I found this handy plan for reading the entire Bible each year. This website gives you the readings for each day - you just log in and the day's readings pop up (actually they're a day behind because it is sourced from America). This isn't a substitute for the in-depth study you may be doing in any particular book of the Bible, but it is a great way to keep the entire scope of the Scriptures running in the background of your thinking each day. Here's the web address:
http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/devotions/every.day.in.the.word/