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Psalm 139 part 2This week was especially hard for several of Our Savior’s families. Even if COVID19 wasn’t a thing – this week would have been hard on them. But COVID19 has isolated us – especially under the Governor’s “no social gatherings of any size” order which includes weddings, funerals, Bible studies and even family get-togethers if they don’t live under the same roof.During his ministry, Martin Luther faced wars between nations and cultures, a plague worse than COVID19 and guided all who were willing through the Reformation of the church – during which he was branded a heretic and enemy of the state. Long before he was convicted through the book of Romans that he was saved by God’s grace – he struggled with God, the world and himself – and many of those struggles were dark and painful.In 1530, Luther received a letter that his father Hans died. Luther told Philipp Melanchthon “the death of my father has shaken me in the innermost parts of my being, so that seldom if ever have I despised death as much as I do now.” Luther’s friend and fellow reformer Vitus Dietrich noted, “After two days he had recovered although it was very hard. While reading the letter, he said to me, ‘So my father is dead.’ Then he promptly clutched his Psalter, went into his room, and wept so profusely that the next day his head hurt.”Throughout his life, Luther turned to the Psalms to find refuge and strength. A few years before his own death, he wrote Psalm 119:92 in his Bible,?“If Your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.” Selah.The Psalms were made to pray through or sing over and over again – meditating on the words and the emotions behind them. They were not meant to be a fast food hamburger that is quickly eaten and forgotten. They were to be like a very expensive wine that you savor and take your time drinking. When you read the Psalms, there are times you will say, “how did they know exactly what I’m going through” and other times where you will say, “I don’t get it” and still other times where you want to reject what it is saying because it is so crass or mean spirited. But this is exactly what they are meant to do – push us to think and feel and struggle – because they are Psalms of life and love and faith. Luther went on to say, “Every Christian who would abound in prayer and piety ought…to make the Psalter his manual…everything that a pious heart can desire to ask in prayer, it here finds Psalms and words to match, so aptly and sweetly, that no man…nor all the men in the world — shall be able to devise forms of words so good and devout…In my opinion, any man who will but make a trial in earnest of the Psalter…will very soon bid the other pious prayers adieu, and say, “Ah, they have not the sap, the strength, the heart, the fire, that I find in the Psalter; they are too cold, too hard, for my taste!”To pray requires the mind, the heart, the soul and the entire body. We often settle for prayers of the lips or the head – but deep prayer involves all of us. When the Bible says, “the Spirit intercedes for us with groans too deep to understand” – because we do not know what to pray for – or we are at a loss for words – we are beginning to see what brought the Psalmist to write as they did.Luther again, “The best of all is, that these words of theirs are spoken before God and to God, which puts double earnestness and life into the words. For words that are spoken only before men in such matters do not come so mightily from the heart, are not such burning, living, piercing words.?It is therefore easy to understand why the Book of Psalms is the favorite book of all the saints. For?every?man on every occasion can find in it Psalms which fit his needs, which he feels to be as appropriate as if they had been set there just for his sake. In no other book can he find words to equal them, nor better words…Place the Book of Psalms in front of you; you will see your own self in it, for here is the true “know thyself,” by which you can know yourself as well as the God who created all things.”Whenever I hear someone say, “I’ve found my soulmate” or “I’m still looking for my soulmate” – I understand what they are saying. We want someone who understands us on a level where we don’t need to speak words – they already know. Most often we are seeking this because we are lazy – we don’t want to have to explain ourselves or work at the relationship – we just want it to happen. For the other person to know us as we desire them to know us – they either have to have created us (designed might be a better word) or we have to open ourselves up – holding nothing back and let them explore every corner of our being. And they have to be willing to bear both the light and the dark spaces without fear or rejection.Often those who think they know us best will say, “you didn’t mean that” when we say something particularly offensive or hurtful – but those who truly do know us best will say, “I know why you said that – I know you mean it right now – let’s talk it through until we find a way out of the darkness…”Verse 13: For it was You who created my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.The literal translation of “inward parts” is “my kidneys.” Since the kidneys filter the blood of impurities there may be a connection to Leviticus 17:11 where it says, “the life of a creature is in its blood” which some have translated, “the soul is in the lifeblood.” God created our “inward parts” out of love and with a purpose.“Knit together” - In Job 10 we see a similar verse, “You clothed me with skin and flesh, and wove me together with bones and tendons.” Knitting is often considered a labor of love – it is something a mother does for her children or a wife does for her husband. To be “knitted together” is more than just being spoken into existence or manufactured. We are a labor of God’s love.Verse 14: ?I will praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and I know this very well.From the very first time someone told me my ears were too big, my body the wrong shape, my voice not good enough and my brain not smart enough – I have wanted to be someone else. I looked around and saw who and what the world valued – and asked God to make me “like them.” Such moments are especially hard in Jr and Sr high school.To be “fearfully and wonderfully made” is to accept that God created us for a purpose – and that purpose requires that we not be someone else. Mark Twain said, “be yourself – everybody else is taken.” The only way to accept who we are is to believe that God really is God – that He doesn’t make mistakes and that if we are willing to “be still and know that He is God” we will discover why we are who and what we are. To know “God’s works are wonderful” is to know that we are wonderful – that we are “unique and unreproducible miracles of God.”Verse 15 My bones (frame) were not hidden from You when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth. A child goes into his or her room and secretly makes a gift for their mom or dad. They do their best to keep it hidden – until it is time to reveal it. They know exactly what they are doing and why – but no one else does. God “made us in secret” – His plan was for us to discover and treasure the uniqueness of one another. When you buy a book or watch a movie – even if no one told you anything about it – you have an idea of how it is going to end. And much of the joy is seeing the development of the character and the journey that gets them there.St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:11, “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him?” We reveal little bits of us to stranger, a little more to acquaintances and our heart and soul to those who are closest to us.Verse 16 Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began. This verse is the one I turn to every time the world (and more specifically my life) doesn’t make sense. When you consider the complexity of life – how billions of people and physics and gravity and the environment and a million other things are all acting and reacting both with and against everything else every moment – it’s a wonder any of our world and life makes sense. Ephesians 1:5 says, “For God chose us in Him [Jesus] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.” I know it sounds like a broken record – but because God is not trapped by time – He is able to know all things. His omniscience means He knows all about us – everything we as “humanity” would do – and He chose to send His Son to save us anyway. That’s love.But even more specific, He knows every day of our life and put it all down in a scrapbook that has everything – not just the highlights. We are not puppets. God is not directing our life by pulling strings. He allows us to live the way we want to live – which is why we not only bear the consequences of our own sin but the sin of others. But for those who seek Him – since He knows what is going to happen tomorrow and next week and five years from now – He places before us things that will help prepare us for those moments. He allows us to get ready for things we don’t know are going to happen. Our prayer is always that we don’t have to go through them – but that is rarely an option.Verse 17 God, how difficult Your thoughts are for me to comprehend; how vast their sum is!As we already noted, the Psalms are often an emotional appeal – and sometimes they are loud, angry words against God. In Isaiah 55 God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.” Since we cannot see “eternity” and sometimes get a little too attached to the past – we tend to struggle with our life and our world and all the things that are or aren’t happening.Imagine knowing everything – not just what was but what will be. And experiencing it by living in it and through it as though it was all happening at the exact same moment – but you choose which moment and which time you will be in. We often want to “know the future” – but that’s because we want to manipulate and change it – not simply observe it. Here is a quote from a BBC special on Albert Einstein:“As Albert Einstein lay on his deathbed, he asked only for his glasses, his writing implements and his latest equations. He knew he was dying, yet he continued his work. In those final hours of his life, while fading in and out of consciousness, he was working on what he hoped would be his greatest work of all. It was a project of monumental complexity. It was a project that he hoped would unlock the mind of God.“I am not interested in this phenomenon or that phenomenon," Einstein had said earlier in his life. "I want to know God's thoughts – the rest are mere details." But as he lay there dying in Princeton Hospital he must have understood that these were secrets that God was clearly keen to hang on to. The greatest scientist of his age died knowing that he had become isolated from the scientific community; revered on the one hand, ridiculed for this quest on the other.”For us – to know the mind of God we only need to read the Gospels – and yet in our reading we find things we struggle to accept – and other things that we want to change. As Niels Bohr told Einstein, “Stop telling God what to do with His dice” – which tells us we may not be as smart as Einstein, but there are things we share.Verse 18 If I counted them, they would outnumber the grains of sand; when I wake up, I am still with You. To fully understand the mind of God we would have to spend every waking moment – and every dreaming moment – our whole life and even then we would not know what we needed or wanted to know. And yet, this is the life of the believer. Consciously or unconsciously we seek to know God – either my studying Him or daring Him or blaming Him or ignore Him (so we’ll find out how He responds.) And the Psalmist notes – in each of these moment and all of them collectively – no matter where we are in our contemplations, God is still there.Verse 19 - 20 God, if only You would kill the wicked - you bloodthirsty men, stay away from me - who invoke You deceitfully. Your enemies swear by You falsely.Random thought or a thought that the Psalmist intentionally inserts into the Psalm to appear more holy. Jesus said, “whatever you ask the Father in My name…” – and here the Psalmist – after he notes he’s been studying the will and mind of God and how it all fits into his life – and suddenly he blurts out “why do you tolerate evil? If you would just get rid of them, my life would be so much easier!”We know God does not tolerate evil. We know God has promised to deliver His people. So maybe all we need to do is ask? And shouldn’t we expect this?And this takes us back to verse 17 and “God’s thoughts.” Why does He allow evil – especially the kind that hurts those of us who say we believe in Him? Shouldn’t He vanquish evil – wave His hand and make everything better? Verse 21- 22 Lord, don’t I hate those who hate You, and detest those who rebel against You? ?I hate them with extreme hatred; I consider them my enemies. Asking God this question is a double-edged sword? We know what is holy – we know what is right – and the baptized, sanctified, church going part of us is against evil and for God. But as long as we are in this world we are not whole – we are simul justus et peccator simultaneously a sinner and a saint. And as long as we are here, we will struggle between what we want and what God wants. Think about all the times you have known the right thing to do – and the times when you struggled because you didn’t want to do it. This is why in Romans 10 St. Paul says, “One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.” Which is completed nicely by the words of the father in Mark 9, “I believe – now help me with my unbelief, Jesus.” Verse 23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.The Psalmist is not full of himself or trying to pretend he is perfect. Just the opposite – he wants God to “test him” – so that all the mistakes and sins and failures are brought to the surface. And once they are exposed – they can be forgiven. We are not saved because we are perfect or because we are trying hard – we are saved because we are forgiven. “He who knew no sin became our sin that we might become the righteousness of God.” We only reveal our most secret thoughts (and sins) to those who we know we can trust. We ask for an honest evaluation from those who we are willing to be wounded by – who we trust to “speak the truth in love” not to condemn, but to save us. Verse 24 See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the everlasting way. And Jesus said, “follow Me…” When Thomas said, “Lord we don’t know where you are going so how can we know the way?” Jesus replied, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life…”To be led through this world into life everlasting is not easy. There are so many distractions and obstacles and dead ends. And yet that is exactly why this Psalm starts out the way it does. God has already cleared the path – He knows us and every step of our journey. He is walking beside us (having already walked before us) and in truth He is carrying us (that’s what it means to be “saved by grace, through faith…” Again, the words of Luther, “We cannot pray the psalms without realizing in a very special manner the communion of the saints, the oneness of the Church militant and the Church triumphant. We cannot pray the psalms without having our hearts opened, our affections enlarged, our thoughts drawn heavenward. He who can pray them best is nearest to God, knows most of the spirit of Christ, is ripest for heaven.” ................
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