Summer Devotional Series

Psalm 139 ranks with Psalm 23 as one of the best known and loved Psalms. It is the clearest statement in the Old Testament of God’s personal relationship to His people individually.

A.W. Tozer wrote, “The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of him.”

Several ideas stand out in this Psalm:

God knows me. vv1-6

God knows who we really are. Not only is he fully sustaining the universe, he takes time for us personally. He who knows us best, loves us the most.

God is with me. vv7-12

The Psalmist lays out the boundaries. If we go to Heaven, or Sheol, or the uttermost parts of the sea, God is there. There is no height or depth, spacial or intellectual, social or moral, where we can escape God’s all seeing eye, or where we can escape our responsibilities to our Maker.

God made me. vv13-16

The focus in the meditation turns in a remarkable and beautiful way, to the growth and development of the Psalmist in his mother’s womb. To think that something as intricately balanced and complex as the human body is the result of sheer chance plus time is ridiculous. God skillfully makes each human being and has his hand on life from conception through eternity. I see no way that a child of God can in good conscience support anyone or anything that does not support life from natural conception to natural conclusion.

vv23-24 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.

To love God is to hate evil. True faith is marked not only by what it believes and does, but what it disbelieves and rejects. We must be known by what we are against as well as what we are for.