Search and Rescue
My message today, and for the next few weeks, revolves around the 139th
Psalm. We now read the portion specific for to today’s message:
(Psalm 139) “O Lord, You have searched me and
known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and
my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before
there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all. You
have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I
cannot attain to it.” (Psalm 139:1-6)
According to the latest United Nations estimates, there are some 8.2
BILLION people on planet earth. And while it’s difficult to wrap our minds
around that number – 8.2 billion – if we think too long about it, we might ask
ourselves two sobering questions. First, “Who am I among so many?” And second,
“Do I matter among so many?”
And let me quickly say this: Without a good understanding of the
Scriptures, without a correct understanding of God’s word, we can never truly
know the definitive answer to those questions – “Who am I?” and “Do I matter?”
“O Lord, You have searched me and known me . .
. and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word
on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me
behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful
for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.” (verses 1-6)
So, you might ask, “Who are you?”
The answer is easy: WHOEVER you are, You are beloved by the One
who spoke the entire universe into existence. You are beloved by the One who
created and who personally and intimately knows each one of the 8.2 billion
people on this planet. And yes, He knows YOU.
THAT’s why He searches you. He examines you. That’s why He is intimately
acquainted with you. That’s why He surrounds you, encloses you in His
arms. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, or
how often you’ve done it. He cares about YOU. He loves YOU.
The Holy Spirit tells us that in so many ways throughout the Scriptures.
For example, here is Romans 5:8 “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in
that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
And to the second and very related question, “Do we matter?” Listen: If
we did not matter to God, if we were not foremost in His heart, if He
could have for even a moment held you and me at arm’s length – if we did not
matter to God, then the brutalized and bloody sacrificial death of His Son on Calvary’s
cross would never have occurred. It never would have occurred.
At the outset of this series on the 139th psalm, I want to
make this important point. If you take nothing else away from what I say over
the next few weeks, I hope you will hear and receive this: You are not alone. Never
alone. God is with you at this very moment, at every moment. Wherever you are –
at home, or away from home. Sick in bed or up and around and healthy; When you
struggle after losing someone you deeply loved or are comforted in their arms
at night. He is with you.
I recognize that for some of us that phrase is so familiar, we’ve heard
it so many times, it has for us become almost trite. Like a throw-away phrase
people say when they don’t know what else to say.
But this is not a trite throw-away phrase. Almighty God Himself says it
to you through His holy and inerrant and infallible Scriptures.
When the psalmist writes: O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up – he wrote it because the Holy
Spirit moved him to make that promise to you and to me. He promised to make it
to the one in the mirror -- YOUR mirror. Not only does he have a precise,
moment by moment count of the hairs on our head, but He knows everything we
think, everything we do, and every motive behind it all. If He did not, if He
were not infallibly omniscient, then He would not be God.
So, you must not doubt this. He is here with you. At this moment.
Embracing you. Even if you cannot see Him, feel Him, touch Him. Remember, we
walk by faith and not by sight – or by feeling.
“Lord, You have searched me and known me.”
Think for a moment how absolutely naked your soul is as it always stands
before your Creator. And then think further of this incredible truth: Despite
who you are in the depths of your heart, despite what you have done and
continue to do, and despite what you haven’t done – God LOVES you. You must
believe that if you can ever hope to know the peace of God in your life.
As I quoted a few minutes ago from Romans 5: “God demonstrates His
love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
And as I also said as I began this message, if God didn’t love you, He
wouldn’t have sent His beloved Son to die in your stead, to take the punishment
your sins and my sins so justly deserve from a Holy, Holy God.
God gave Jesus up to the Cross to be our substitutionary sacrifice. Why?
So that you and I – and everyone else who wants His forgiveness – so we
can have eternal communion with Almighty God. Think of it! Sinners such as you
and I can live in eternal communion with our Holy God. That’s why, in a sense,
Jesus still hangs on that cross – affectionately gazing at us, waiting for us
to repent of our sins and fall in obedience at His feet.
When David realized the Lord knew him inside and out, even to the sickness
of his soul, it is no wonder he wrote: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I
cannot attain to it.” After all, how can the finite hope to
grasp the infinite? Could an amoeba fathom the mind of Albert Einstein? And so,
because of the utter impossibility for us to understand God and His love, His
mercy, grace, judgment, and His justice, we’re faced with only
two real choices:
We can either accept without reservation as entirely true what He says
about Himself and about us; Or we can bring God down to our level and recreate
Him in our own concept of what we want God to be like. That, of course, would
be an eternally deadly decision.
You are beloved by the Almighty God. And among the 8 billion souls on
planet earth, do you matter? Yes, you DO matter to Him. But there is more.
Although the psalmist doesn’t say it here specifically, we know from the
length and breadth of the entire Bible taken in context, God not only searches
us, but He also actively searches FOR us.
Listen so verse six of the 23rd Psalm: “Surel goodness and
merc shall follow me all the days of my life . . . .” The Hebrew word David used here mores lightyears
more that simple follow me. It means God’s goodness and mercy will ardently PURDUE
you all the days of your life.
Ardently pursue.
Why? At the risk of being redundant to a fault, Because we matter
to Him. He searches for us because He knows we’re lost – lost in our sins. And
because sin is so much a part of the warp and woof of our nature, most of us
don’t even know we’re lost. That’s why He searches for us – to rescue us
from ourselves and, ultimately, from eternally palpable darkness which is the
destiny of all who fail ask Christ for forgiveness and eternal life.
Listen to God say it through the apostle Paul: (Colossians 1:13-14) “For
He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the
kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the
forgiveness of sins.”
And in this text in Galatians 1:4-5 “[Jesus] gave Himself for our
sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according
to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory
forevermore. Amen.”
I remember years ago when I took our daughter shopping at the
supermarket. She couldn’t have been more than three or four at the time. I told
her not to wander off, but as most children often do, she wandered when my attention
was momentarily diverted. I watched her as she ambled down the aisle and turned
the corner into the next one – oblivious that I wasn’t with her.
I put the bread back on the shelf and followed several yards behind. It
didn’t take more than another minute before she stopped in the middle of the
food aisle, looked around for me, suddenly realized she was lost – and
screamed, “Daddy!” “Daddy!”
There is hardly a parent who doesn’t have a similar story to tell about
his or her young child. And those real-life experiences make Scripture’s point
about our drifting from God – and for some – suddenly realizing they’re
lost and very far from their heavenly Father.
You may remember the parables in Luke 15 of the lost sheep, the lost
coin, and the lost son. One sheep out of his flock of one hundred sheep wandered
from the fold. It was lost. Probably frightened and confused. If you know the
story, you know what happened. The shepherd left the 99 in the corral and went
in search of the one lost lamb.
Of the lost coin, of course, the coin didn’t know it was lost, but the
woman who lost it was frantic to find it. She turned her house upside down and
swept it from front to back until she recovered it. And the application of that
parable is, I hope, clear: Even for those who don’t know they’re lost, God searches
for them. He is today, now, still searching for your children, for your
grandchildren, for your siblings, for all you know and for those you love.
Finally, the Great Shepherd told the story of a young man who got tired
of living down on the farm. I imagine he was frustrated with his father’s seemingly
endless rules and chores. I imagine he was angry that he was unable to come and
go as he pleased. So, at the end of his patience, he asked his father for his
share of his inheritance and took off on his own. The lure of city lights, and
the proverbial wine, women, and song enticed him. And for a time, he drifted
from one wave of excitement to another.
Then disaster struck. A famine. Economic collapse. With his money gone,
he was suddenly homeless and hungry. That might be like the story some of you
can tell of yourselves. But the story of the lost son continues: “When the
young man came to his senses” he decided to return to his father.
What was the
father doing at the time? Here is how the Lord tells it in verses 20-24 of Luke
15: “But while he was still a long
way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him and ran and embraced
him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have
sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called
your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly
bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and
sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and
let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine
was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they
began to celebrate.”
Let me say it again for
emphasis: Not only does God search us, but God also searches for
us. And it is the Great Shepherd’s JOY to search for and to find His
lost sheep. And as the Lord ever wants to remind us: “The good shepherd lays
down His life for the sheep.” (John 10:11)
Some people – I suspect MANY people –
might be tempted to think the Good Shepherd is no longer interested in
searching for them. They might think their sins are so grievous and they have
lived so long in their sin that He has given them up for lost.
But that would be
demonstrably untrue. Please, we should not believe everything we think! Instead,
we ought to simply choose to believe what GOD says about us – that He
loves us so much, and that we matter to Him so much, that He left the 99 who
were already in His fold to search for the one and carry it on His shoulders
safely back home.
Hear it again: God so
loved YOU that He gave His only begotten Son – so that whoever believes in Him
—in Jesus – will not perish but have everlasting life. (See John 3:16)
Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, and no matter how often you’ve done it –
the Good Shepherd is STILL searching for you. And if you’ve been paying
attention this far, it’s because something inside of you is stirring you to
believe that. The stirring you feel is the Holy Spirit’s gentle voice. And you
can believe Him when He says to you: “I’ve found you. Let’s go home.”
Who am I? Who are you? We are God’s
beloved. And yes, we DO matter to Him very, very much.
“O Lord, You have searched me and
known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and
my lying down and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.”
We’ll continue this series next week.
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