God Is Real and Always Near
Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
Psalm 139
This last week was really interesting. From last Sunday to this morning some of the events I shared in included: a wonderful BBC new member party last Sunday afternoon organized by the Assimilation Team and graciously hosted at the home of Fred and Mary Downs. What a fun time we had visiting with one another, talking, eating, and enjoying the day. Then later that night the player we were hosting for the Brewster Whitecaps told us he was heading home on Monday morning. I always enjoy hosting players and it is sad to see them go, especially in this case since Anthony left with our garage door opener still in his car. Tuesday evening Nancy Whitehurst called to ask if we could host another player who was arriving the next day, Wednesday. Wednesday we were already planning for the arrival of around 20 guests from Nagaland in northeast India, but we said “Sure,” and began cleaning to be ready for our new player.
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Wednesday our guests from Nagaland arrived in the United States but their luggage didn’t. Everyone who was hosting them came to the Downs, again, (we go to the Down’s to eat like Forrest Gump goes to the White House) for another wonderful meal, this time delicious Indian food made by Mary, only the Nagas hadn’t arrived on the Cape yet because they were delayed leaving Boston trying to figure out the luggage issue. They eventually made it to Brewster and even though they didn’t have their costumes or instruments we had a fun dinner with them at church and they sang beautifully and shared a DVD about their history, culture, and faith. After we finished the program at church, we quickly headed down to Breakwater Beach, because they wanted to get a picture by the ocean. We got down there about 10 minutes before sunset and the sun and sky were beautiful, the tide was in so the light was reflecting on the water. People at the beach and in their houses were treated to a little impromptu singing as the group sang Oh Lord God Almighty and an indigenous song. One of the lines of Oh Lord God Almighty is, “How lovely is your dwelling place, Oh Lord God Almighty,” and you couldn’t have had a better backdrop then the lovely sunset over the water. When they finished singing the people who had come out of their houses applauded. It was special.
Meanwhile in our home we were welcoming our new player Billy and trying to get Greg ready for his 12 day trip with the Boy Scouts to Washington D.C. and the 100th National Boy Scout Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia so Jill was sewing merit badges and patches for hours for several nights until her fingers were bleeding, (not literally true – the bleeding part, but it seemed like it). Friday we had a church softball playoff game in the pouring rain that we won in walk off fashion in the bottom of the 7th which was fun. After the game Mitch and Tory Summey kindly drove me over to Camp Greenough where I had left Greg and Jill because I had been asked to give the Boy Scout troop a word of encouragement and prayer of blessing before their departure which I did in my soaking wet and very muddy softball uniform. Then Jill left at 5:15 am Saturday morning to surprise her mom on her birthday. Yesterday we had a nice memorial service and reception for Richard Lynch a fine man and member of BBC of many years and then capped off the week with a great concert last night by the Lesters. Mix in my first birthday and anniversary since my mom died, our son Nathan’s rehab after shoulder surgery, and some other ministry related things – it has been quite a week and one thing I will say is that for me, it has been a week that illustrates again the truth that Psalm 139 speaks of – that God is real and always near.
God is real and always near. Choosing to believe that is true will change our life more than choosing to believe or not believe almost anything else.
One amazing thing about the Nagaland choir visit was that Jill assigned Naga guests to stay overnight with BBC folks. Obviously she knew nothing about the people from Nagaland who were dealing with having none of their luggage or belongings and unfortunately they had placed their medications in the bags of the member of their group who is a medical doctor. Two of the members of the group were sick when they got to the US and they needed an antibiotic but there was no way to find a local doctor willing to write a prescription for it without tests and an examination. Providentially, Jill assigned the two men who were sick to stay with a BBC couple who had traveled to India themselves in the past year. Their doctor had prescribed for them the very same antibiotic the men from Nagaland required! They bought the medicine but hadn’t needed it – so there it was in their medicine cabinet! Apparently it did the trick. Amazing.
Listen to the second half of Psalm 139 beginning at verse 13:
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 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.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.
19 O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
20 those who speak of you maliciously,
and lift themselves up against you for evil!
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; (see verse2)
test me and know my thoughts.
24 See if there is any hurtful way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.”
I’d like you to look at something on the screen: GODISNOWHERE
What do you see? What does it say to you?
Some people look at that and see “God is nowhere.”
Other people look at it and see “God is now here.”
How we look at life; what we perceive when we look at the world; makes all the difference in the world. People can look at the same letters, the same situation, the same news – and see and receive very different messages.
It’s not too hard to imagine God when we’re at worship in a beautiful sanctuary or along the ocean on a beautiful evening or in the nice parts of nature like the singing of the birds or looking at the moon. Not so much in mosquitoes, ticks, and poison ivy although all of those have caused more than one person to call on God quite fervently. It is one thing to sense God’s presence with Christian friends on a beach with a beautiful sunset. It is harder perhaps to sense that God is real and always near when we’re sitting in a hospital waiting room for days wondering if our loved on is going to live or die, wondering if God is near to us in our pain, in our numbness, in the dark of night when the world is going to sleep and you are listening to the silence. If God is now here… how do we know that? How do we move from thinking God is “no where” to “now here?”
Psalm 139’s answer is by grasping who God is. Of all the psalms in the Bible, none is more personal or intimate than Psalm 139. The language of Psalm 139 is all “you” and “me, my and I.” Think how different Psalm 139 would sound if it was written in the third person, “I have found in my experience that God has searched me and known me” – that doesn’t have the same power or impact of the personal nature of “O Lord, you have searched me and known me.”
This psalm makes the stunning claim that God is everywhere we are and knows everything about us. If I am seated quietly at home, active at work, at rest or play, or on the go, God with me. God hears every word I say and knows me so well that God can tell how I am likely to respond in any given situation, even what words I will speak before I say them. Nobody can run away from God. Those who think they can, like the wayward prophet Jonah, fool no one but themselves. If we could soar as far as humanly possible out into space, we cannot go beyond God, if we go down to the deepest depth, there too the Lord is present. Even if we went at the speed of light from one side of the world to the other, God would be waiting for us when we arrived. Anywhere we go, God gets there first. Anything we try to hide from God, God can see.
We can’t run away from God, no matter how hard we try or how far we go.
What does it mean to believe this is true? What difference would it make to you if you lived as if this was so?
Psalm 139 reminds me of the song by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, imagine God singing these words to you (and please forgive that I am suggesting God would sing using improper grammar J):
“Listen, baby
Ain’t no mountain high
Ain’t no valley low
Ain’t no river wide enough, baby
If you need me, call me
No matter where you are
No matter how far
Just call my name
I’ll be there in a hurry
You don’t have to worry
‘Cause baby,
There ain’t no mountain high enough
Ain’t no valley low enough
Ain’t no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you.”
Psalm 139 wants us to get that God is real and always near us with complete knowledge and inescapable presence. The outline of the psalm is simple. Verses 1-6 say The Lord knows what we think and do. One of the most popular movies of the summer is Inception and the plot involves the ability to get inside someone’s mind, to inhabit their dreams, to plant an idea in their head. Psalm 139 suggests God has the ability to know what we’re thinking, to know what we’re going to say before we even utter the words. It is not enough to know that God knows us through and through; we are to be seeking to become the kind of persons who want God to know us this way.
Verses 7-12 affirm The Lord is present to us wherever we are. God is now here is true… God doesn’t abandon us whether we can sense or see God or not, the Lord is here and near and real. We can choose to believe God is now here even if our eyes do not see him.
Verses 13- 16 claim The Lord was even present to us when we began to be. Before we were born God was already present with us in our mother’s womb.
This all leads to a statement of awe and assurance in verses 17-18 about how mind blowing God is and what a blessing it is than even when we get to the end of life, we are still with the Lord.
In verses 19-24 the Psalm closes with a few thoughts about evil in the wicked and in oneself and inviting God once again to do a searching personal inventory to help the psalmist stay on the path that leads to everlasting life and not to be like those who ignore or oppose God and God’s ways in the world. Psalm 139 is like an expanded version of Proverbs 15:3, “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.” The psalmist wants to be found with the good and so do we.
Rick Warren wrote in The Purpose Driven Life that we were “made by God and for God – and until you understand that, life will never make sense. It is only in God that we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance, and our destiny.”[1] It is crucially important to understand that “God made you so God could love you. This is a truth to build your life on.”
We are created to be loved by God. 1 John tells us “God is love.” “Love is the essence of God’s character.” and God wanted to create something to love so God created us. God wasn’t lonely, God didn’t need us, but God wanted us.
God had a purpose in bringing you here today. God wants to be in relationship with us and for us to live out the Lord’s purposes for us now and for eternity.
Psalm 139:7-10 tells us that we can’t escape God, it doesn’t matter how far we try to flee. In a positive sense, it means there is no where we can go that God won’t be with us. One of the scriptures on my mom’s refrigerator was, Psalm 139:9-10, “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me.” No one can be with you all the time, someone can be with you in different moments, hours, or days… but no one is with you “24/7.” If God is real and always near, that is something no one else can be or do for you. We have to choose to believe that and act on that, even if we do not see or sense God. In Luke 12:6-7, Jesus explains that God doesn’t forget even the smallest animals and because we are worth more to the Lord than sparrows, Jesus won’t forget about you either. Your life matters to God.
Psalm 139 tells us that God knows, searches, and tests the heart of every person; that from conception to the present moment there is no aspect of our life that is unknown or hidden from God – on the one hand that can be terrifying on the other it can be very reassuring. Psalm 139 says that if we choose to believe that God is real and always near then God will lead us in the way everlasting.
In 1 Corinthians 13 when Paul is writing about the nature of love he says, “Now I know only in part; then I will know fully even as I have been fully known.” We are fully known by God now, even if our knowledge of God can only be partial at the moment, it is more than enough to make a huge difference in our life. On the trash barrel next to the garage out back there is a sign that says, “Bagged trash only, God is watching.” Yesterday after the reception following the memorial service I received a call on my cell phone and I excused myself to take it and walked out the back sidewalk to take it. As I was walking out toward the parking lot a young woman was walking toward the church dumpster with garbage in her hands and opened the gate and threw it all in the dumpster. By then I was nearby, dressed in a suit and she shut the door and backed against the door. I said, “Hello.” She nervously pressed against the gate and tried to make conversation about what kind of church it was, what made a Baptist different than other churches. I answered her questions and told her I was one of the pastors and showed no sign of leaving. I finally said, “It’s okay that you put garbage in the dumpster.” She visibly relaxed and stammered there were no garbage cans at the library. I wished her well and told her I hoped she enjoyed her visit to Cape Cod. I walked back to the church laughing to myself and thinking, “How often do we try to do this with God? Thinking we can sneak our garbage into the dumpster without God seeing or knowing?”
What would it be like to live each day believing, “Wherever I go, whatever I do, whatever I say, the presence of God goes with me, seeing what I do, and hearing what I say?” Remember a person truly believes something when he or she lives as if it is so. The title for this sermon came from John Doberstein’s introduction to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together (New York: Harper & Row, 1954). In that introduction, the story is shared of an English officer, imprisoned with Dietrich Bonhoeeffer during the last weeks of his life before he was hanged by the Nazi’s just before they surrendered in the spring of 1945 at the end of World War Two. The officer wrote about Bonhoeffer’s faith, “He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near.” What would it mean for you and me to aspire to be men and women and boys and girls for whom God is real and always near? What difference would it make?
Let’s pray together:
“Dear God, I realize that if it weren’t for you. I wouldn’t be alive. But because you made me, you must have a purpose for me. I admit that at times I focus on my plans for my life, not yours. But I want to know who you want me to be and what you want me to do. Thank you for making me so you could love me. Thank you for caring for me when I didn’t know or care for you. Thank you for making me to last forever. I want a life filled with meaning. I know that starts by getting to know you better. So as best I understand, I ask you, Jesus, to come into my life and help me to know and live your purposes for me. I am taking the first step today, in your name I pray, Amen.”
Blessing:
Jeremiah 9:23-24, “Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord.”
For further reflection or discussion:
Note the emphasis on word “search” in verses 1, 3, & 23. How do you feel about the idea of God searching you and knowing you completely?
Think about your own life – on what occasions has God seemed closest to you?
When did God seem farthest away? How does Psalm 139 help us at this point?
Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.”
[1] Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, page 18.