Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 2003
Psalm 139

In 1961 Nikita Khrushchev was still the Prime Minster of the Soviet Union. He gave an interview that year in which he took a swipe at Christianity. He told the reporter: "As to Paradise, we have heard a lot about it from the priests. So we decided to find out for ourselves. First, we sent up our explorer Yuri Gagarin. He circled the globe and found nothing in outer space. 'It's pitch dark there,' he said; 'no Garden of Eden, nothing like Heaven.' So we decided to send another explorer. We sent Gherman Titov and told him to fly for a whole day. After all, Gagarin was up there only an hour and a half. So he might have missed Paradise. We told him to take a good look. Well, he took off, came back and confirmed Gagarin's conclusion. He reported that there was nothing there." Would Khrushchev have said the same thing about God? Did his astronauts fail to find any trace of a Creator as well? Our Psalm for today, Psalm 139, speaks of the majesty of God, specifically His omniscience and omnipresence. Let us examine today these attributes of God. For, the more we know about God the more we will love and obey Him.

Psalm 139:1 says, "LORD, You have searched me and known me." What is meant by the declaration, "You have searched me and known me"? David is the one who penned this statement. Does he mean that God was totally unacquainted with David and finally came to know him after a long and exhausting examination? That would be true of you and me. A guy once told me that he could know a person perfectly on just one meeting. I didn't believe him. Only after long contact with someone do we get to know him or her, if at all. What little we may learn of a person comes to us after time spent together and shared experiences. Is this the case with God? No. "You have searched me and known me" means that God already possesses full knowledge of David. This is a vivid way of saying that God knows all that can be known of David. And what David has here stated concerning himself is true also of you and me. God is your Lord and He knows you. He knows you very well. This is no low view of God. It expresses the great and mighty knowledge of the Almighty. Having stated that the LORD is omniscient in verse one, and that the LORD knows everything about him, David now tells us in a more detailed way how God knows him. Reading Psalm 139:2-3. [Read them.]

What is it that God knows? He knows the Psalmist's "sitting down and rising up." Sitting down may refer either to the act of sitting or to the posture of reclining or resting. How about rising up? That may designate either the act of standing, or getting up from a sitting position. The variety of bodily postures refers to the entirety of David's life. His sitting down and rising up refers to all the postures and attitudes of a person when he is awake or sleeping.

In the course of a day we may easily forget God. We do different things related to work and rest. At times we are active, standing up, walking, even running. At other times we are quiet, sitting down or relaxing. We engage in thought and meditation. Different activities give variety to life. We move from one task to another, and we get absorbed in business, forgetting that God is with us. Yet He knows all of our life, every moment, every posture, every activity. The LORD even knows our thoughts. He knows every word we say and every word we thought about saying but never did. At no time are our ways hidden from Him. When we relax and our minds engage in quiet thought, God knows. When we are busy with the cares of this life and our minds forget Him, He knows. It is impossible to escape from Him. God follows us every moment of our lives.

[R.C. Sproul, The Character of God, p. 64. Sproul's book offers many insights found in this sermon. Several other books on the attributes of God are also outstanding and written on a popular level: Psalm 139 by Edward J. Young; The Attributes of God by A.W.Tozer; The God of the Bible by Robert P. Lightner. This subject is a blessing to study.]

Not everyone however, is comforted by God's omniscience. John Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, was horrified by the notion. He likened God to a cosmic voyeur, a divine peeping tom. "God peers down from heaven and watches everything we do. Sartre saw this concept of God as radically dehumanizing and complained that beneath the gaze of such a God, man would be reduced to a mere object, to a thing that could be analyzed and scrutinized like frogs in a biology lab. It was as though God were peeping through a keyhole looking at us and stripping us naked under His omniscient gaze." (Sproul p. 63)

Why would Sartre be so repulsed by the notion of God's omniscience? Probably a combination of shame, guilt over his sin, and the dread of facing God at the Last Judgment! Each one of us will stand before the LORD at the Great White Throne Judgment. And everybody has a few skeletons in the closet. We try our hardest for everyone to see our virtues, but just below the surface we hide our vices. We all want to have a good reputation, not a bad one. Yet, every person of good repute could lose that reputation instantly if the full truth were known. The full truth will be known at the Last Judgment.

R.C. Sproul has this to say: "We are all fugitives, fleeing to our favorite hiding places. We hide from our spouses, from our parents, and from our friends. Although we may have one or two close confidants with whom we discuss some of our deep, dark secrets, none of us has a human friend to whom we tell everything. We can't even bear to tell everything to ourselves. Some of our impulses are too embarrassing to confess." [p. 61.]

Not too long ago, I read an article about American fugitives. They seem to prefer the Mexican resort cities. Once there, they put on their dark sunglasses, grow a beard, dye their hair, don a hat, and then blend in with all the other gringo tourists. They don't have to hunker down in some cave. Murderers, thieves and pedophiles can thus elude the authorities and live comfortably. Some get caught; other don't.

David puts into poetry the words of the sinner who attempts to escape from God. Psalm 139:7-12 brings it out. [Read the passage.]

This passage proves the inescapability from God. We use the word omnipresence to speak of God being present everywhere. This is different from Pantheism in which God is everything. In Christianity, God fills all space. The universe is replete with His divine presence. The being of God pervades the world and holds it together, yet the world is not an extension of God. A mysterious boundary separates God from the world, the Creator from the creature. Nevertheless, God the Creator is infinite. Wherever we are in the universe we enjoy the fullness of His presence. Therefore, He is inescapable. The doctrine of God's omnipresence is good news to some and bad news to others. How is that possible? For those who have tasted the sweetness of reconciliation with God, His omnipresent majesty is good news. If the blood of Jesus Christ is what covers your sin, then there is nothing or nobody to hide from. You are forgiven. God's majesty is a comfort to you. But for those who remain hostile and estranged from God, His omnipresence is very bad news. There is nothing a runaway wants to hear less than that his pursuer is everywhere. There is no place to hide from an infinite Spirit. His eye is on the sparrow when it falls. His eye is also on the thief when he steals.

The English poet Francis Thompson is a case in point. He is the man who wrote a famous poem called "The Hound of Heaven." Thompson was a fugitive from God. He grew up in a religious home and studied for the priesthood. Laziness put a halt to his seminary stint. Instead he started experimenting with drugs. This turned into a full-blown drug addiction that nearly destroyed him. Getting high and staying high came to dominate his life. He made his way to London, picking up odd jobs, shining shoes, selling matches, cleaning horse stables, anything for a few pennies that would buy him a fix. In spite of the drug-taking, he maintained a love of poetry. He wrote a few poems, and on a lark sent some of them to a publisher. The publisher, Wilfred Meynel, saw a glimmer of genius and went looking for Frances Thompson. He found him living in squalor. Meynal and his wife took Thompson into their home and cared for him. Meynel later wrote, "He was more ragged and unkempt than a beggar, with no shirt, and bare feet protruding from broken shoes." From that wretched condition Thompson was rescued by two people in whom he recognized the love of God. He came to realize that, even though he had sought a haven in the world of drugs, and fled to the anonymity of the city, yet he could not escape the pursuing love of God. A portion of his poem called "The Hound of Heaven" goes like this:

"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy
They beat ­ and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet ­
'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me'"

What Francis Thompson discovered is that there is no refuge from God. The Almighty Creator is always and everywhere at hand. Nobody can escape from His omnipresence, nor His omniscience. In some stores and amusement parks, video cameras are set up to watch your every movement. That is similar to God's omnipresence. He sees everything you are doing. His surveillance is total. He even knows your thoughts. God's majesty looks upon you 24-hours a day, and He possesses an exhaustive knowledge from which you cannot hide. You may be able to conceal your thoughts from other people but not from God. Thoughts of anger, jealousy, hatred, and perverse things lodge in your heart. None of this can be kept hidden from God. He knows it all.

To be known by God is an idea that divides the human race. Sartre abhorred the notion that God could see and know him entirely. Frances Thompson fled from God, panicked by God's omnipresence. Nevertheless, there are those who long to be known by God and love this aspect of His majesty. Look how Psalm 139 concludes. David prays to the Lord:

"Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting" (vv. 23-24).

Why did David yearn to be known by God? Because he knew that God still loved him. His sins had been forgiven by God's grace. For unbelievers nothing is more dreadful than the thought of being known completely by God. The pagan does not want God to look at him; he wants God to overlook him. David in contrast, asked God to shine His searchlight on his soul. David willingly submitted to the gaze of God and desired the divine scrutiny. He even asked to be put on trial: "O God, try me." David did not do this arrogantly, daring the LORD to find anything wrong. On the contrary, David knew that God would find wicked ways in his heart. He wanted to be made clean. David wanted to be purified from secret faults and blind spots. God's majesty had oriented him to love and obey the Lord. He welcomed the gaze of God. Do you?

God says, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Mt. 28:20). Is that a comfort to you? It should be. Think of the things in life that frighten you. We all fear death at some point. How about death by torture? Or getting maimed in a car wreck? One of our parish members faces the fact of suffering with cancer. Who would want to experience any of these troubles? But wouldn't you be less anxious if you knew that God was with you every second of the way? He has promised precisely that. David praised the Lord's majesty when he sang, "O Lord, where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? You are there."

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