Three Secrets

Psalm 139

If I were to ask you to turn to the person next to you in the pew and share your deepest, darkest secret, how willing would you be to do that? If I announced that next week I would put in the bulletin all the deep, dark secrets of your life, how likely would it be that you would come to church next week? Or how likely would it be that you would make sure I had a terrible accident this week before the bulletin could be printed?

Hiding who we are and what we have done begins early in life.

One of my early family memories is sitting on the front steps of the house with my two older sisters waiting for one of us to confess which one of us had done something wrong. I have no memory of the various offenses, only of sitting there. We waited and waited and finally my oldest sister would get tired of sitting, go to my mother and tell her she had done it. But my mother would tell her, “I know you didn’t do it so go back and sit on the steps!”

To be honest I don’t think I was the one who did whatever it was that was done. I did a lot of wrong things later, but at this young age, I think it was mostly my sister Cathy who had done it. She might dispute that if she were here.

One year when we were back from university, we sat around the table and confessed our crimes. I had played with the good bridge cards. Cathy had eaten the chocolate cake. My mother enjoyed finally hearing the truth about these events.

In many cultures there are a couple questions polite people do not ask. One is “How much do you earn in a year?” or “What is your net worth?” (Incidentally, this is not a problem in Sweden, Norway or Finland because in those countries, every person’s income tax returns are published each year.)

A second inappropriate question to ask is “How old are you?” or “In what year were you born?” which is a sneaky way of asking the same question.

We hide these superficial pieces of information from each other, but we are far more protective of details about our inner lives.

When you begin to date someone there is a delicate process in which you begin to share more deeply about yourself. It is important to be honest and open as the relationship develops, but you don’t want to share too much too soon for fear that you will scare the other person away. Allowing yourself to be known, is a scary process.

Why is revealing who I am to someone else so threatening? The reason we do not share completely and transparently with others is because we fear that if they really knew us, they would reject us. We don’t like parts of ourselves, how could anyone else love us if they knew what we know?

It is in this context that we move into Psalm 139, a wonderfully introspective psalm of David.

The psalm is broken up into four sections. This is the first:

O Lord, you have searched me

and you know me.

² You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

³ You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

⁴ Before a word is on my tongue

you know it completely, O Lord.

⁵ You hem me in—behind and before;

you have laid your hand upon me.

⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain.

This sounds wonderful but imagine having a mother or father that knew you like this. Before you could finish a thought about how you would get back at your sister for what she did to you, your mother would say, “Don’t you even think about it!”

Your mother sends you off to school with your shirt tucked into your pants when everyone at school wears their shirts hanging out and as you go out the door, your mother tells you, “When you get to school, don’t you dare pull your shirt out. I will know about it.”

You get together with some friends to make plans about a hike. This is your adventure and to assert your independence it is important to you that you make these plans yourself. But when you get home your mother tells you, “Now be careful about taking that trail. There are poisonous snakes and make sure you tell Ted to take his asthma spray.”

Every time you moved or thought your mother would know about it.

David wrote:

You hem me in—behind and before;

you have laid your hand upon me.

This makes some of us squirm more than others. “What about my freedom?” someone shouts. We don’t like being hemmed in. We want to make our own way. If we are going to make mistakes, we want to make our own mistakes. We want to make our own choices and to have God knowing everything can be a bit oppressive.

David’s first reaction to all of God’s foreknowledge is:

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain.

But he has a second reaction in verse 7:

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

It is incredible that God knows everything. It is incredible that God knows what we will say even before the word is on our tongue. This is amazing and indicates what a great and powerful God we worship.

But, by itself, this is not comforting. The fact that God knows everything is not, by itself, very encouraging. Knowing that God knows everything about us and everything about what we will do next can become very threatening.

Consider that in a war it is a great advantage to know what the enemy will do before he does it. So people work hard to break the coded messages that are sent. Each side tries to recruit spies to inform them of the enemy’s plans. The enemy wants to know everything about me, not so they can make my life better but so they can destroy me.

The fact that God knows everything is not by itself a good thing. Is God working for me or against me? That’s what I need to know.

In this first section of Psalm 139, David wrote of God’s omniscience, his foreknowledge. God knows everything.

Now David moves into the second section and writes about God’s omnipresence. God is present everywhere.

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

When Christians gather to pray, sometimes they pray that God will come to be present with us. This prayer is never necessary. God is never not present with us. God does not need to step down from his throne and come to be with us. As Dallas Willard wrote in his book, The Divine Conspiracy, God is as present with us as the air we breathe.

God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah about this truth. (Jeremiah 23:23-24)

“Am I only a God nearby,”

declares the Lord,

“and not a God far away?

²⁴ Can anyone hide in secret places

so that I cannot see him?”

declares the Lord.

“Do not I fill heaven and earth?”

declares the Lord.

East or west, north or south, up or down, light or dark, God is always present. He fills heaven and earth. There is nothing that in any way restricts his knowledge or his presence.

Like the fact that God knows everything, this can be good or bad news because sometimes we want to run away. Sometimes we may want to be alone. It may be that we want to escape responsibility. Or we may want to be alone with our grief. We may want to hide from the shame of things we have done. We may want to run away from the consequences for our actions. For many of us, the instinct to run away and hide is very strong.

Jonah, the reluctant prophet, received word he was to preach to the people of Nineveh, the enemies of Israel. So he immediately turned in the opposite direction of Nineveh and headed west into the Mediterranean Sea.

Jonah ran away from what God told him to do. Jonah ran away from God into the Mediterranean Sea, but God was there. A storm rose up and it was determined by lot that Jonah was responsible for the storm. He was cast overboard and swallowed by a whale. And in the belly of the whale, deep beneath the stormy sea, God was there.

Jonah prayed to God, repented and was delivered to dry land. Once again God told Jonah to preach to the city of Nineveh and this time

Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh.

Smart man, Jonah.

Jonah wanted to run away from God but he had no choice. Wherever he went, God was already there. Wherever we go, God will already be there before us. God fills up heaven and earth.

Elijah boldly defeated the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel and then ran for his life when he received word that Jezebel was seeking revenge and was out to kill him. He ran into the wilderness to get away, to hide.

But God was there. Angels fed Elijah and provided him with water. He traveled for forty days and nights and came to a cave and God was there and spoke to him.

Both Jonah and Elijah discovered that God’s presence was a blessing. Jonah ran to get away from God and Elijah ran away because he was afraid for his life but in both cases, God’s presence was a comfort and a blessing.

In order for God’s presence everywhere to be a blessing, it has to be that he loves me and has my best interest at heart. Otherwise it could be like the evil person in a suspense movie who has bugged my apartment and car and phone and computer. Because of this they know all about me and what I am thinking. And then because they have put a GPS chip in my clothes they always know where I am and can track me. But because this person is out to harm me, his knowledge is frightening.

But when God who knows everything about me and is present everywhere also loves me, then his presence is a blessing.

Whether I am in need of God’s help or running away from God, God is present. When I am grieving, God is present with me, whether I want to be alone or not. When I am shamed, God is present with me. When I am suffering, God is present with me and in all these cases we find comfort in his presence.

Even when I want to hide and be alone, God is present with me to help me through my grief, or anger, or shame or whatever it is that has made me want to get away.

Given that God knows everything and is present everywhere, doesn’t it seem foolish to try to hide anything from him?

When our daughter Caitlin was young, perhaps three years old, Annie came downstairs and discovered her standing in the living room with one hand covering her eyes and with the other hand eating a cookie she had taken from the kitchen. She knew she was not supposed to eat the cookies but thought that if she could not see anyone, noone could see her. This was so cute it was difficult to discipline her.

The little girl on the bulletin cover stands with her hands over her eyes and imagines that no one can see her. Isn’t that cute, we say, but how different are our attempts to hide from God what we are doing?

God knows everything. God is present everywhere. How effective can our attempts to hide be? We cover our eyes and turn off the lights and he still sees us.

We cannot hide from God, so why do we try?

We work hard to present the best image possible to each other in church. We want people to like us, think good of us. And we do the same with God because we also want God to like us, to think good of us.

So when we journal, we avoid writing about the nastier sides of ourselves. When we pray, we avoid talking to God about certain areas of our life that we do not want to bring up. We keep them hidden, thinking like our daughter Caitlin, that if we don’t mention them or think about them, God will not see them.

David opens his psalm with a declaration that God knows us through and through.

O Lord, you have searched me

and you know me.

Maybe he wrote this after being confronted by Nathan with his sin against Bathsheba and Uriah and the other innocents in what we today call collateral damage. If he wrote Psalm 51 before Psalm 139, then this declaration comes from the experience of his sin being found out. If not, then there was other sin in his life that was discovered. Through experience David had discovered that he could not hide from God.

David began his psalm with a declaration that God knows us through and through but notice how he ends the psalm.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

David began the psalm with a declaration of truth, perhaps painfully discovered. But he ends the psalm with an invitation to be known. It is not as if he had a choice, God would know him whether or not David wanted to be known. But David ended his psalm wanting to be known. David ended his psalm with an open heart. Search me, O God.

How did David get from God’s omniscience and omnipresence, God’s knowing everything and God’s being everywhere present, with all the fear and anxiety that might bring, to wanting to be known?

When I was studying Psalm 139 this week, I knew there had to be an expression of God’s love somewhere in the second half of the psalm. This is the only way it made sense for David to move from a declaration of God’s knowing everything and being present everywhere to an invitation to know him completely. Just God’s knowledge of everything and his presence everywhere do not lead to a desire to open myself in a trust relationship with God.

This leads to the third section of the psalm.

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

¹⁶ your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me

were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

The third section of this psalm needs to be understood as an expression of God’s love. It is this section that made David feel loved.

It is only when we know that God who knows everything and is present everywhere loves us, really loves us, that his powers become a source of strength and comfort to us.

How does this section of Psalm 139 express God’s love for us?

There is a tenderness in this section.

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

We have at least two pregnant women with us this morning. And inside their wombs are babies who are loved. In one case the baby is a girl and in the other, the baby is probably a boy. In both cases, the parents are looking forward to meeting their child.

The parents’ knowledge of their unborn child is limited but God knows for sure whether the baby is a boy or a girl. God knows what personality the baby will have. God knows all about these babies. These babies are being knit together in the loving hands of God.

This is a wonderful act of love. Is God a good knitter?

David wrote:

¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

Fearfully and wonderfully made. This too means that God loves us but are we really fearfully and wonderfully made?

I was born with a birth defect that led to having two back operations when I was 17 and 18 years old. And these days my back hurts every morning. Sometimes when I go out to run it takes a kilometer or more before my muscles loosen up and I can run without my back hurting.

Watching the Olympics and seeing the beautifully sculpted bodies of the athletes makes me aware of my own inadequacies. I am not beautifully sculpted. I am not handsome like the movie stars. So in what way am I fearfully and wonderfully made?

When I was in high school, I thought that my arms were too skinny and my legs too long. One of the worst days for me was the first day in the spring when I went to school with a short sleeved shirt that had to be tucked in. I couldn’t wear a sweater that would disguise the length of my legs and cover up my skinny arms. I had to bear myself and show the parts of myself that embarrassed me.

I didn’t think I was fearfully and wonderfully made.

Because I grew up with a poor self-image, I made it a point with my daughters, early on, to affirm them. When I would put them to bed at night, I would whisper to them that I had three secrets. And then I would whisper in their ear, You are beautiful. You are smart. You are a lot of fun to be with. This was a nightly routine.

As they got older, I would play with them and ask them to remind me what the three secrets were.

We moved from Boston to New Jersey when Elizabeth was in 6^th grade and Caitlin in 4^th grade. We moved in December so they came into school in the middle of the year, new kids in school.

On Valentine’s Day, February 14^th, all the girls in Elizabeth’s class received Valentine’s Day presents: roses, a stuffed teddy bear or something. She didn’t receive anything. All the girls in the class received something except for her. When I came home that night she was upset and I sat with her in bed and she cried. We talked about what had happened. I explained how it is boys think and not to take it to heart. I told her that some day a wonderful man would be very fortunate to love her and be loved in return.

And then I asked her what our three secrets were. She wouldn’t tell me. I pressed her, “Come on Elizabeth, what are they?” I tickled her and finally she told me, reluctantly, “I’m smart. I’m beautiful and I’m fun to be with.” And we hugged and I told her in many ways how wonderful she was.

I realized that the world is out to attack us. The world teaches us that we are not as good as others. The world teaches us that our bodies are not wonderful. The world teaches us that we are not handsome or beautiful. The world teaches us that we are not as talented as other people.

And I realized that it is a parent’s responsibility to fight for their children against the world that is trying to beat them down. Parents have to stand up against the world and remind their children about who they are, how special they are.

As a pastor, I also need to fight for you and remind you of who loves you and what he thinks of you.

Not many of us have bodies that conform to the world’s standard of beauty and the world is very good about reminding us about our inadequacies.

The world is beating against you and I need to fight the world’s message and remind you of what God thinks of you.

God whispers in our ear three secrets, You are my child and you are beautiful through and through. I have given you talents that I want you to use for my kingdom. Because I love you I want you to be with me in heaven.

Did you hear that? What is it God is telling you? You are my child and you are beautiful through and through. I have given you talents that I want you to use for my kingdom. Because I love you I want you to be with me in heaven.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made and because of this we know we are loved.

The truth is that all the beautiful bodies and faces on earth will turn to dust and what will last will be the soul contained by our bodies.

When I look at gargoyles, those demented, distorted, ugly figures on the outside of European cathedrals, I think that if the new body we receive after we die takes on the character of our soul, then ugly souls will look like this.

One of the more pathetic sights in the world is someone who has taken pride in his or her beauty and physical appearance and neglected their soul. In later years when the body fades, there is nothing left and the person is just an empty shell. The body is fading away and the soul is wrinkled and ugly.

Jesus is described in prophecy from Isaiah 53

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

But who does not want to be more like Jesus?

Paul was a short, bald-headed, bow-legged man. Yet what beauty there was in the soul of Paul who at the end of his life, with his beaten, broken body, reflected the glory of Jesus.

There are some beautiful faces and bodies in the world that have ugly souls and there are some who the world says are not attractive who have shining, beautiful souls. Who we are is not a matter of how the world judges our body.

As God’s child, listen again to the three secrets he has for you. You are my child and you are beautiful through and through. I have given you talents that I want you to use for my kingdom. Because I love you I want you to be with me in heaven.

I want you to know that as a child of God, you are fearfully and wonderfully made and the Holy Spirit is working with you to make your soul more and more beautiful. In Paul’s image from I Corinthians, your clay pot may be cracked and chipped, but the spiritual treasure in you is being renewed day by day.

When we become aware of how deeply we are loved, how fearfully and wonderfully made we are, how precious we are in God’s sight, then we come to the end of the psalm and say with David

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Because we know how much we are loved, we want God to know us. We want God to be present with us. We give praise that God knows everything and is present everywhere. We take great comfort in his all-knowing presence.

We invite Jesus into our lives, into all the rooms of our lives, even into the hall closet with all its junk we have hidden away. We invite Jesus because we trust his love for us.

What are the three secrets God wants to whisper in your ear? You are my child and you are beautiful through and through. I have given you talents that I want you to use for my kingdom. Because I love you I want you to be with me in heaven.

So invite Jesus into all of your life.