Sunday Night, March 23, 2003---Continuation of Morning Message

 

Third Key Idea:  Even though we are small, we are known to God.

Scripture Reading:  Psalm 139   Page 444

1 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. 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, 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. 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 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. 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. (NIV)

 

In this passage there is a progression of ideas relating to the knowledge of God directed toward us. 

·        In verse 1, God knows me. 

·        In Verse 5, God has laid his hand upon me.  

·        In verse 10, the hand of God will guide me. 

·        In verse 13 I know why God knows me.  It is because he knit me together in my mother’s womb. 

·        In verse 17, the thoughts of God toward me are so vast. 

·        In verse 19 I erupt with indignation against anyone who cannot appreciate such a God. 

·        In verse 24, I ask God to again turn his thoughts to me to root out any offensive way and guide me in the way everlasting.

 

Isaiah 40:1-5

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins. 3 A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. 5 And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken." (NIV)

Matthew 3:3  This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: "A voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'"

 

The desert or wilderness has multiple meanings. 

·        In one sense it is merely an inhospitable place. 

·        In early Christianity, it was known as the last haunt of the devil and demons.  Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Jer 51:37-44 “Babylon will be a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, an object of horror and scorn, a place where no one lives. 38 Her people all roar like young lions, they growl like lion cubs. 39 But while they are aroused, I will set out a feast for them and make them drunk, so that they shout with laughter-- then sleep forever and not awake," declares the LORD. 40 "I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and goats. 41 "How Sheshach will be captured, the boast of the whole earth seized! What a horror Babylon will be among the nations! 42 The sea will rise over Babylon; its roaring waves will cover her. 43 Her towns will be desolate, a dry and desert land, a land where no one lives, through which no man travels. 44 I will punish Bel in Babylon and make him spew out what he has swallowed. The nations will no longer stream to him. And the wall of Babylon will fall. (NIV) Isaiah 13:19-22 Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians' pride, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah. 20 She will never be inhabited or lived in through all generations; no Arab will pitch his tent there, no shepherd will rest his flocks there. 21 But desert creatures will lie there, jackals will fill her houses; there the owls will dwell, and there the wild goats will leap about. 22 Hyenas will howl in her strongholds, jackals in her luxurious palaces. Her time is at hand, and her days will not be prolonged. (NIV)

·        It is a desolate place of being alone.  We think of Abraham as being a Bedouin.  He came the area of Southern Iraq where they are presently fighting, near Basra.

·        My memory of being on Mt. Sinai.  We arrived in the morning.  I rode a camel part way up and walked the rest.  It was incredible to sit and sing on top that mountain where God gave his law.  The rocks were of rose, and purple.  It was absolutely barren and still.  When there was silence, only a light wind made any sound.  In this place there is only you and God.

 

God wants a holy place in our hearts for himself.  The difference between Jacob and Esau was that Esau was a profane (common) person.  He had no holy place in his heart for God.  This Lenten season, find a place for God