I have an important word to relate to you this morning.  And that word is, "God is with you!  God is with you!"  I recently heard a preacher begin the service by saying, "God is here - God is here - I know because I brought him with me."

   And that is true, but I have it from the highest authority that God is here, and he is with you, and he is with me, because Jesus, God's son, said it himself.  "I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

   God is with us not just some of the time, not just when he feels like being with us, or when we feel like having him with us.  God is with us, not just when the sun is shining, the mortgage rate is low and we are feeling good about life - but he is with us always, always, always.

   God is with you in whatever circumstance you find yourself.  God is with you whoever you are, whatever you have done, where ever you have been, and where ever you will go.  God is with you.

   Our creator, our heavenly Father, has not left us alone, but he walks with us, and he talks with us, and he tells us that we are his own.  Whatever may come our way, whatever trouble or distress we find ourselves in, whatever burden we may be carrying, God is with us.

   I pray that this truth will be real to you as we study God's Word today and as we see it emphasized by the psalmist in Psalm 139.

   In the first six verses we discover that God is with us in our thought life.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.  You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.  Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.  You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
(Psalm 139:1-6) (NRSV)

   "O Lord, you have searched me," (Psalm 139:1) the psalmist confesses, "and known me."  And for the next five verses he continues with this thought of God's complete and all-covering knowledge of his creatures.  "You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.  You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways." (Psalm 139:2-3)

   Do you see this truth?  There is no circumstance, no posture, no change in time that keeps God from reading the books of your soul.  There is no thought, no word, no action of yours that God does not know.  He is with us in our thought life.

   This fills David with reverent awe.  "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it." (Psalm 139:6)

   This is the proper attitude in our approach to God, reverent awe.  Because when you think of it, God is with you; he knows you - and that's humbling enough.  But God knows what goes on in our heads.  All those thoughts of anger, pride, lust, greed, revenge.  All those secret sinful thoughts which we think we get away with because no one knows, and we aren't caught.  But God knows.  It's humbling.  It's humbling because we really don't get away with them at all.  God knows.  There is nothing that is hid from his sight.

   But this is also awesome - because in spite of that knowledge, in spite of the fact that God knows our hearts, he knows the deceit and the pride, our innermost thoughts, our motives which often are so self centred - God does not leave us in disgust.  He does not abandon us.  God is with us, in our thought life.

   Here some may think, "Well surely there are some places in life that I can go where God isn't.  Is there nowhere that I can escape from God?"

   This is the question the psalmist asks in the second stanza of the psalm.

Where can I go from your spirit?  Or where can I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.  If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, your right hand shall hold me fast.  If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night," even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for the darkness is as light to you.
(Psalm 139:7-12) (NRSV)

   "Where can I go from your Spirit?", (Psalm 139:7) the text says.  What if I go to the very heights?  No, God is there.  Well, what if I go to the very depths?  No, God is there.  Is there any place where the sun shines that I can go where God isn't?  No.  For even if we were to settle at the farthest limits of the sea, God's hand would still hold us fast.

   And what about darkness - surely darkness hides me from God?  No, for what is darkness to God?  It is as light to the one who sees all things.

   God is with you and there is no circumstance that can separate you from him.  God is with you whoever you are, whatever you have done, where ever you have been, and where ever you will go.  God is with you.

   One of my favourite contemporary preachers is Rev. Michael Quicke of London, England.  York Minster Park Baptist Church often has him as a visiting preacher for the summer months.  He recently told a story of how in his church there was a man totally blind, recently widowed, and his son was nowhere for support.  People were worried for him.  "It's not right for him to be alone," they said.  "It's dangerous.  He sometimes heats up the wrong thing.  He heats up custard thinking it's soup.  Michael, you need to go see him."

   It was winter - already very dark when Michael arrived.  "Hello, who is it?" came the voice from inside.

   "It's me, Michael."

   He put on a light for him.  They sat down together and Michael began, "People are worried about you.  They are worried about you being on your own."

   There was a chuckle.  "I'm not on my own.  I've never been on my own.  My Lord is always with me."  And then another chuckle.  He said, "You know the woman who comes to look after the house, I tell her about the Lord being with me and she doesn't understand me at all."

   The psalmist would have understood, "Even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast." (Psalm 139:10)  God is with you.

   Some may think, "Well, God may be with me all the time, but he really doesn't enjoy being with me.  If he had a choice he would rather be with someone else, or be some place else."

   Notice what our text says next:

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.  My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
(Psalm 139:13-16) (NRSV)

   Does God wish that he could be with someone else, or some place else?  No.  Why?  Because he made you; he created you; he knit you together, so that you are wonderfully made.

   Do you see how this psalm conveys the idea of God knowing you intimately?  He has searched you and knows you, he has woven you together.

   The story is told of a census taker knocking at the door of one woman's house - asking her what children she had.  She began, "Well, there's Peter, David, and Jonathan."  But the census taker interrupted, "Never mind the names, I just want numbers."

   The woman grew impatient and a bit indignant.  "They haven't got numbers," she protested, "every one of them has got a name."

   It's true.  They were her children; each had a personality and she knew them not by number but by name.

   So God looks upon you and me and knows us by name.  For he is the one who gave us life, he knows us completely and fully.

   Not only this, but look at verse 16 again, "Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.  In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed." (NRSV)

   This tells us that God actually planned for you and me.  You were and are wanted.  God planned for your creation - he wanted you.

   Did you ever tell your brother or sister that he or she was a mistake and wasn't wanted?

   My brother used to tease my sister this way.  "You were a mistake; you weren't wanted, you know.  Mom and dad wanted to end the family with me," he would say, "but then mom and dad went away for 3 weeks to Hawaii and then 9 months later you arrived.  You were a mistake."

   Not with God.  You were not a mistake.  God planned for you.  He is with you because he made you.  He planned for you; he put you in his day-timer to be with you every moment of your life and in every place and in every situation.

   No wonder David responds by saying, "How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!  How vast is the sum of them!  I try to count them - they are more than the sand; I come to the end - I am still with you." (Psalm 139:17-18) (NRSV)

   But the psalm does not end there, does it?  David has another response to the truth that God is with him:

O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me - those who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil!  Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?  And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?  I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.
(Psalm 139:19-22) (NRSV)

   "O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me." (Psalm 139:19)

   These bloodthirsty ones are described in the next verse:  "Those who speak maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil."  (Psalm 139:20)  To which the psalmist adds, in vivid oriental style, "Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and loathe those who rise up against you?" (Psalm 139:21)

   Some people get terribly worried about these harsh-sounding passages in the Psalms.  I doubt if our worry is necessary, for here David, having realized that the holy presence of God is all around him and never leaves him, wants to separate himself from everything that is evil.

   Do we pray passionately, for example, against the drug traffic, or pornography?  David prays a similar prayer here but not in the abstract.  Instead of saying, "God overthrow the drug business," he would probably say, "God smite down the drug dealers."  But the meaning would be no different.

   You'll remember that David once had a chance to take personal vengeance on Saul, but he deliberately spared the evil king's life.  He wasn't a vengeful man.

   David simply wants to separate himself from all that is evil, realizing that the holy presence of God is all around him.  Sometimes we have this feeling when we are watching a film with our parents - they shouldn't be watching this.  I shouldn't be watching this with them!

   So, when we are watching that video, or reading that novel, we do not watch or read alone; God is with us, and so let us keep ourselves from all impurity.

   And that prayer of cleansing now includes David's own heart so that he prays in the closing verses:  "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.  see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." (Psalm 139:23-24) (NRSV)

   O the wonderful thoughts that David has expressed - God is with us in every situation, in every circumstance, in every place, and now he prays a prayer of commitment.  He entrusts his life into the hands of the one who loves him so much that he will never abandon him.

   It's as if he is saying, "Lord, since you are with me, since there is no way that I can escape from your presence, then search me, test me, know me, cleanse me, lead me.  I entrust my life into your loving, ever-present hands."

   It's not a prayer that asks God to shield us from the troubles of life.  It is not a prayer that asks God to make life full of sunshine, ice cream and laughing times.  It is a prayer that ultimately says, "I recognize you as the one who knows me, is always with me, and who chooses to be with me.  So here I am; take me and lead me.  I commit myself to you."

   In closing, can I give you a practical picture of what this looks like?  Jill Briscoe, a gifted Bible teacher and communicator, tells of a time when she and her husband, Stewart, were immigrating to the United States, from Britain.  The two of them came ahead of their children to look for a house.  They left their kids back home in the care of some friends at their previous church.  One night, while they were gone, their youngest daughter went to a Church youth event.  It was a night of fun, as they were playing hide and seek, and it would have been wonderful because they were playing in one of those old castles that jot the countryside in England.  The walls were three feet thick, with lots of passages and dark places to hide.  But soon the evening took a turn for the worse when Jill's daughter got locked in one of these old rooms, and couldn't get out.  No one could get into the room; the walls were too thick, the door was locked and she couldn't open it.  She panicked - crying, fearful.  In an effort to escape, she put her fist through a plate glass window and severed the hand at the wrist, right though the tendons.

   Jill's daughter was rushed to the hospital, with her mom and dad 3,000 miles away.  And Jill Briscoe asks, "Where was God then?  Was he standing in the corner with his hands in his pockets while my little girl almost lost a hand?"

   In the hospital, Jill's daughter prayed, "I want my daddy."  But daddy wasn't there.  "I want my mommy."  But mommy wasn't there.

   But then she remembered that her God was the same God that her mommy and daddy had.

   Where can I go from your spirit?  Or where can I flee from your presence?  Even if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

   So she asked her heavenly Father to wrap his loving arms around her, because her earthly father couldn't.  And, says Jill Briscoe,  "My daughter traces her conversion to that night."

   Where was God?  God was there - he had never left.  His presence was felt and known in the midst of life's difficulty.

   My friends, hear the good news, God is with you.  Let this truth bring you confidence as you face life.  Let this truth bring you strength.  He knows all about us:  our trials, our difficulties, our problems, our deepest needs.  He is with us through them all and he cares for us; he loves us more than we can imagine.

   God is with you.

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - September 2001