Psalm 139 - You know me

Psalm 139 is a big psalm, one of the best known out of all 150. As a Christian pastor I have often read and shared this psalm with others, in many many different situations and circumstances. As a son, a husband, a dad, an individual follower of Jesus, these are words that I have also often engaged with personally and taken great comfort in.

The psalm itself comes in five blocks, each of which contain wonderful truths, first penned by David as he wrote about the God who He knew and who knew him.

Verses 1-6 speak of how God has searched us. He knows us. In the original Bible language knowing another person is a complete thing, a connection that goes to the core of our humanity and who we are. The LORD knows David and knowing this is almost too wonderful a thought for David to even grasp.

Verses 7-12 marvel at the bigness of God’s reach. There is quite literally nowhere that David can go (be that in terms of where he travels or what he experiences) that will put him beyond God’s reach. God’s hand and hold on David are without limits.

Verses 13-18 locate all of that has been written in the logic that God has seen, but also been actively forming David, since before he was born. Life under God’s watchful eye begins in the secret place and this is truth is precious to David as he looks back over his life.

Verses 19-21, on first reading, don’t seem to quite fit this comforting Psalm. It’s maybe only after having read the first 136 psalms that these words make sense. The world in which David lives, the world in which he knows God’s presence is a world of much threat. It still is (1 Peter 5:8, Ephesians 6:12).

Speaking to God of his enemies creates a final space (vs 23-24) where David lays all that he knows of himself before all that he knows of God. A big finish to a big psalm:

Prayer: Search me, God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.’