psalm 139 takes a strange twist at verse 19...

It has been said that if Psalm 139 finished at verse 18 it would be the most beautiful psalm of all. However it doesn't and it does leave us with some really challenging verses to deal with.

Psalm 139:19-24

19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!

20 They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.

21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD,
and abhor those who rise up against you?

22 I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.

23 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.


At verse 19 the psalm takes a strange twist. The psalmist talks about his hatred of those who reject God. Maybe he has his accusers in mind and he sees these people opposing the very God whose presence and knowing the psalmist finds so precious. Maybe it is just an outburst of misplaced zeal. But when he sees the wonder and the love of the God whom he serves, he is aware of the great travesty of sin and he wishes that God would destroy the sinners.

It’s as if he sees God’s presence and knowledge like a great tree in the forest, like Tane Mahuta and sees people’s rejection and disregard like someone cutting their initials in the trunk. In the face of all that grandeur trying to say don’t look at the tree, actually it’s all about me.

You’ve got to admit that as he will finish this strope and psalm by asking God to search him and see if there is any wicked way in him that this is not a stance for the faint hearted. Maybe our picture of God is that we are concerned that God knows us so well and sees everything and that we cannot escape from him because we are aware that there is darkness within us. The very words that the psalmist finds comforting are used word for word in the book of Amos, to describe the terrible day of the Lord. The day of judgement, says the prophet, there is no getting away from it. Maybe he had heard David’s psalm being used at religious festivals where there was great rejoicing before God but the poor were being oppressed and says well you say it’s comfortable to know that God sees and God knows and God is everywhere, but God sees beyond our religious observance to how we treat other people, he sees the injustice and inequalities and unless that is changed, the day of the Lord it will be devastating.

While the Psalmist says that God knows him in this pray we see that the Psalmist may not know God as well as he thinks because not only is God all knowing, all powerful, always present but also all loving and full of grace. God does not answer the Psalmists prayer right away with wrath. No lightning bolts turning people into instant sinner burgers, like a cosmic ray gun.

But ultimately, and in God's time, God does answer. The answer echoes in the cry of a tiny babe born in a manger in Bethlehem.

It echo’s and resonates in nails being driven into flesh, not of the sinners and wicked but fixing the hands of an innocent man to a cross.

It echoes and is answered in the pain and anguish intoned voice from the cross saying ‘father forgive them they know not what they do’.

It is answered by grace: The God who knows us who knows all things who is everywhere, eternal and almighty gives his son for us. That as we have confessed our sins and put our hope in Jesus Christ, God searches us and sees not our disgrace but his grace..

Then the Psalmist finishes by asking the all-knowing all present God to come and search his heart. It’s in light of God’s grace we can pray the same challenging prayer. ‘Search me O God and see if there be any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting”. At the heart of spiritual renewal is a willingness to be open to the Holy Spirit showing us where the darkness within us that we need to repent of and to be sorry for, and to then confess our sins and look again to knowing and following God anew. It is the truth that sets us free.

psalm 139 part 3: God's presence it ain't no dream

In the third Stanza/strope of Psalm 139 the psalmist picks up the fact that God’s knowledge is not restricted to the present. But that God’s knowledge and knowing of us was from before the beginning of our lives and encompasses the whole of our lives and on into eternity.

13 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.

17 How precious to [b] me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!

18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.
-Psalm 139:13-18

Even the secret place where we were put together in our mother’s womb was not hidden from God. When that half a DNA strand from our father meet with that half a DNA Strand from our mother and that first cell of who we were was fused. We were not hidden from God, God knew us, he was able to read that whole DNA sequence, not just as a long line of letters representing amino acids. Not just line after line of letters like computer code but knowing our uniqueness, knowing who we are. He knows all this even at three days old when we are but eight cells big (see image).

The psalmist marvels at how wonderful and complex he is, his individuality, all this is a gift from God: 'God does not make junk'. Before we saw the world or were seen God saw and knew us. Like in the creation story in Genesis 1 he says it’s very good. This has ethical implications for how we see and value life in the womb.

Then the psalmist turns and looks off into the future, which from our physical mortal perspective is shrouded in uncertainty and while we can have hopes and dreams for what lies ahead we are unable to see, but God sees and God knows. Like some sort of cosmic diary those days were ordained by God and written there. Not that life is fixed and determined, Christians do not believe in fate rather in providence, that God cares and hopes and plans for us. His pans for us are good and are never thwarted.

In light of this the psalmist stops and wonders and marvels at God “how precious are your thoughts about me O God how vast their sum. They outnumber the grains of sand on the beach.” By the way I Googled the number of grains of sand on the world’s beaches and one estimate from the University of Hawaii was that there are 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on the world’s beaches. That’s 7.5x (10x18) or 75 followed by 17 zeros.

While our modern mathematical brain wants to quantify this the psalmist just marvels and again brings it down to a very personal very mystical wonderful experience, its beyond his wildest dreams, yet when he awakes this God is with him.It’s not a dream it’s real This God is with us.

One of the great things about the Psalms is that they are real people in real situations really calling out to God. We find many examples of people calling out to God because the assertion that God is in control seems so far from their own experience. When it does feel like God is just a dream a vain hope. In Psalm 42 the writer uses illustrations of a deer being hounded by a hunter and unable to stop for a drink and the turmoil of waves crashing on the shore and the rapids in the river to express how he feels being dragged off into exile in Babylon. It is what is called a psalm of disorientation where like being caught by a monster wave you just get spun round and round and have no sense of which way is up or down. But even then the truth of this assertion that God's plans are never thwarted comes through as the writer of that Psalm tells his soul to be calm to give thanks to the God who feels so far away because despite all the evidence to the contra there is still the assertion of God's presence and his goodness.

psalm 139 part 2: nowhere is beyond the love of God

The second strope speaks of God’s presence. Where can I go from your spirit O God. The psalmist asks.

7 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, [a] 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.


I don’t mean to harp on about Google but Google Earth is another search engine which searches NASA’s virtual globe. A globe made up of satellite images of the whole earth’s surface. You enter an address and swoop in closer and closer in what’s called a God’s eye view.

From looking at a computer generated globe closer and closer

to a country

closer and closer to a city

closer still to a suburb

even closer until where you were looking for or the very building you are in comes into view.

Now with Google street level you can even then go in and see a photo of the place you are in or want to go to..

It’s the sort of stuff that science fiction techno thrillers are full of. But its real and Urban myths speak of even more powerful even more worrying technology; spy satellites able to do face recognition and read the paper over your shoulder, technology that some worry impinges on our personal freedom and privacy that in the wrong hands could be devastating and you can’t get away from it. but for the psalmist the fact that he cannot escape God’s presence is comforting. That power to know is in the right hands, in God’s hands. A god who is righteous and Just in all he does.

The depth of the ocean, the deepest darkest cave, the most distant shore do not mean we are away from God’s presence. We cannot hide from God. The most distant shore is rather comforting for us here in New Zealand because we find ourselves close to being that for the psalmist. Even in the most hostile inhospitable places we are not away from God. Like the white desert here.

Not only physically but even in the most inhospitable landscapes for our soul we are not away from God. The pits of despair, the long dark night of the soul, grief and sorrow fear and doubt. As Romans says nothing can separate us from the love of God.

The strope finishes in verse 12 with praise for God. Google earth often struggles with light and cloud cover to see clearly but the psalmist says “Even the night is as day to you O God. “ And not just he ghoastly green glow of night vision goggles, not just the blips of light on a swath of blackness in satellite photos marking our cities.