He Made Us (God's Omnipotence)

Psalm 139:13-18

Dr. Richard L. Strauss
January 1, 1992

 

Have you ever watched a potter fashion a piece of pottery? It's a fascinating thing to observe. He puts this lump of clay on his circular table and he starts the table spinning. You have no idea what is going to come of that soggy mass of mud laying in the middle of the table. But he can see the end product in his mind's eye, and so he begins to work it. Slowly but surely, it starts to take shape as the table turns and his skillful fingers move up and down and inside and out until this lovely piece of pottery emerges.

The Bible likens God to a potter and our lives to a lump of clay. It's not very flattering, but it clearly pictures the way things are. God fashions each one of us just exactly as He pleases for His own perfect purposes, the purposes He has planned for our lives.

Now, that bothers some people; maybe it bothers you. Some folks resist it and they rebel against the God who made them. They don't like the way He did His job. They would like for Him to have done it differently. They want to be something other than what they are or somebody other than who they are. And as a result, they're absolutely miserable. And there doesn't seem to be anything they can do to change that and extricate themselves from that misery.

Actually, the only way they will be able to be delivered from that kind of bondage is to understand this truth of the Potter and the clay and believe it and fully accept it—and suddenly the bondage will be released.

Psalm 139 is a good place to begin, if that's what you like to happen in your life, because it's all about God. In the first six verses, David taught us that God knows us. He's omniscient. He's all knowing. He knows absolutely everything about us, down to the minutest detail. He knows everything.

In the next six verses, we learn that God is always with us. He is omnipresent. He is wholly present everywhere at the same instant. And so He is always with us wherever we go. He is there to accompany us. He goes with us.

Now, some might be thinking, well, this is certainly lovely poetry, and these are all lovely thoughts, but how do we know they are true? All right, I'll tell you how we know they're true, says David. We know they're true because God made us. Only a God who made us could know us so completely and thoroughly and want to be with us so continuously. These truths lead us to the next: that is, God's omnipotence. His all power.

So after discussing His omniscience and omnipresence, David's going to talk about God's omnipotence. But one particular facet of God's omnipotence: His power expressed in creating each one of us personally and individually. God made us. That's the major theme of the next six verses.

The Source of Our Being (Psalm 139:13)

He begins by simply stating the fact. For the purpose of our outline, we're going to call it the source of our being. The source of our being is that we were made by God. Made by God. Notice the first word, please, in verse 13: “for.” That introduces a reason, a reason why God knows us and God is with us.

“For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13).

How do we know God is all knowing and all present? How do we know that? Because He made us. He formed us.

Inward parts is actually the Hebrew word for “kidneys.” The Hebrews considered the kidneys to be the seat of the emotions and the will. If God created the center of our deepest feelings, then certainly He can help us control them. Do you let God help you control your feelings? He can, you know. If you spend time in His presence and yield your will to His will, He can help you. But that's not all He did.

In the rest of verse 13, he says, you have covered me in my mother's womb. And that word cover can mean “to weave or knit together.” David is saying that God actually wove us together in our mother's womb. That's what he says. Our lives are like a tapestry with every muscle, tendon, nerve, artery, vein, capillary, and everything else all interwoven together. And God was the artist who blended it all together while we were mere embryos in our mother's womb. “You covered me. You wove me together in my mother's womb.”

You see, we're not biological accidents, products of an impersonal force of some kind. Creatures of mere chance just happening to appear on the scene of human history. We're here because God made us personally and individually from the moment of our conception. Long before our birth, He was superintending our development in our mother's womb.

Interestingly enough, a Gallup poll taken a few years ago revealed that approximately 50% of all Americans believe that. That God created mankind in his present form, just as the Genesis record reveals. That surprised me to read of that. Fully half of all Americans do believe that. Of the rest, 38% believe that man has evolved from lower life forms, but that God directed the whole process. Only 9% believe in an evolution in which God had no part whatsoever.

Boy, the liberal establishment would sure like to have us believe otherwise, wouldn't they? They keep trying to tell us that that's passé. People don't believe that God made us anymore. That we who believe that He did are in the vast minority. Not so. Now, we don't decide doctrine by Gallup polls. You know that. We decide it by what the word of God says. But it is encouraging to know that so many people out there agree with what the Bible teaches: That God made us, just as David points out to us so graphically.

You talk about a case against abortion. What more do we need? This Psalm 139, verse 13. God fashioned us in our mother's womb. In January 1958, I was a student, a senior at Dallas Theological Seminary. Mary was pregnant. It was during final exam week. She was having pains and we were concerned. I was studying in the library at the school, but I could see our living room window. The code was if the blinds were closed, everything was all right. If they were open, come a running. And I came a running and we lost the baby. Three and a half months. We retrieved it, put it in a jar to take to the hospital with Mary. And I looked at that little fetus. Three and a half months. About that big, perfectly formed. It was another male. A male pregnancy. By the way, we have five male pregnancies in our house, not just four. But nobody will ever convince me that that little baby was not a person and that I will not see that child someday in heaven's glory. He's a person. That's what the scripture is teaching us, you see.

And by the way, the abortion statistics are not nearly what the media leads us to believe either. Surprisingly enough, a Gallup poll released last February, but receiving coverage in only a handful, I mean like a half a dozen major newspapers across this land, indicates that the large majority of Americans oppose abortion, contrary to what the liberal press tells us. That is, they oppose abortion even in the first trimester for reasons other than—I want to be honest about this. I don't want to use statistics to lie as so many others do—they oppose it except for cases of rape, incest, health of the mother or birth defects. The overwhelming majority. Let me give you the statistics.

And yet the pro-abortionists would say, “Any reason is satisfactory. It's my choice.”

I wonder if the opposition to abortion wouldn't even be greater if people clearly understood what God's Word says here. “For you have formed my inward parts and you have woven me together in my mother's womb.” So where did we come from? What is the source of our being? We were made by God. Made by God.

The Wonder of our Being (Psalm 139:14-15)

Second, David wants to talk about the wonder of our being. The wonder of it all is that we were miraculously fashioned by the Master Craftsman. Now David is so overwhelmed by the truth that he was made personally and individually by God that he can't even continue his train of thought without first praising the Lord.

“I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well” (Psalm 139:14).

“I will praise you.” And the greatness of God's creative activity ought to call forth adoration and praise from all of us. Just to think that God made me and God loves me. Oh, the wonder of it all, as we sang a little while ago.

Fearfully made. It doesn't mean there's anything to be afraid of. The idea in the Word is that we're unique and distinctive, distinguished from every other created being, unique in God's plan and program.

And wonderfully made. That refers to the marvel of the human body. David recognized it. Even though he didn't have a whole lot of education in biology and embryology and anatomy and physiology, he knew that the human body was an amazing organism. Why, anybody, even in ancient times, could have known that. More than just amazing, downright miraculous. And that's the idea in the word marvelous, that it was really miraculous. With what we know today, we'd echo a hearty amen, wouldn't we, to what David was saying?

Wilbur Nelson wrote a book entitled, If I Were an Atheist, in which he includes a chapter called, “If I Were a Medical Doctor.” And he suggests a whole list of “think ofs”—that’s what he calls them. He wants us to think of this and ponder it and meditate on it and its implications. Here are a few. Let me read them to you.

Wow! And that's only a fraction of the wonder. Man's brain is another. It has 10 billion nerve cells to record what it sees and hears. Ten billion nerve cells. Its capabilities surpass any man made computer. And then there are chromosomes. Did you know that a single microscopic human chromosome contains 20 billion bits of information?

How much information is 20 billion bits? Let me see if I can describe it for you. If there were approximately six letters in an average word—and that's pretty average, six letters—that information would correspond to about 500 million words. Now, at 300 words a page—and that's a lot of words on an average page—that would translate to 2 million pages. And at 500 pages a book—and that's a pretty big book, 500 pages—that would correspond to some 4,000 volumes. So picture a library of 4,000 500-page books. And one microscopic human chromosome contains as much information as in all those volumes. That's incredible. And such an enormous library of information or one chromosome would indicate that the body it governs must be an exquisitely constructed and infinitely, intricately complex and wonderfully functioning organism. And that's exactly what it is.

“Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.”

And to think it all works without a thought. Your heart is thumping right now. You don't have to tell it to pump, pumping life giving oxygen to every cell in your body to keep you alive right now. I'm sure glad you don't have to tell it to pump too, or you wouldn't be listening to me, would you? Wouldn't it be something if we all sat here and about every three seconds we have to say, “OK, heart. now pump. Right. Once again. Now pump. All together. Pump.” Why that's all we would do. We wouldn't get much out of the Word, would we?

And you breathe. You didn't even think about that before. Now you're thinking just about. You're probably taking your pulse right now. Make sure your heart's still beating too right. And you're breathing. Breathe in, breathe out. You didn't think about that a minute ago. You just did it. It was automatic. That's the way God made it. Without even a thought, even while you're sleeping. Aren't you glad about that? You could never sleep if you had to think about breathing.

And it all just works.” Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.”

Ray Stedman tells the story of Whitaker Chambers, the communist who was associated with Alger Hiss, who later became a Christian. One day he was sitting with his little two year old daughter on his lap and his eye fell on her ear and it just captured his attention. He began to stare at it. He was struck by its design, how shell-like it was and how perfectly fashioned to catch every sound wave in the air. And knowing something about the mechanics of the ear, he began to think about it and study it and just mull it over and meditate on it. And he came to the conclusion as a result of thinking just about the ear—no other amazing part of the body but just the ear—that it would be absolutely impossible for anything so intricate, so complex, so beautifully designed, so perfectly fashioned to occur by mere chance. And his reasoning led him ultimately to become a Christian. Just the ear. “Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.”

“My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth” (Psalm 139:15).

Our frame is the bony skeleton of our bodies, the muscles and sinews that hold it all together. That's the foundation of the body. Without it we would be nothing more than just soft blobs. I'd just kind of appear in a ball today if I didn't have a frame. God made me a frame. I'm sure glad about that.

My frame was not hidden from Him when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Now the secret place is obviously the womb. That's where I was put together. That's where my frame took shape. And skillfully wrought actually means “embroidered.” That's almost identical to what we saw in verse 13 where it was knit together. Woven together. What a beautifully descriptive way to explain how God put us together like a beautiful piece of tapestry or a work of fine needlepoint woven by a skilled artist. I was embroidered.

But what is this” in the lowest parts of the earth” business? That kind of bothers me. “Skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.” Almost sounds like I emerged from a slime pit somewhere, doesn't it? That's what the evolutionists say. How do we explain it?

Well, let me teach you something about Hebrew poetry. And that's what this is, poetry. It uses a unique element called parallelism, oftentimes where the second line says the same general thing as the first line, only using different words. Knowing that helps us understand a number of difficult passages in poetic books. So this refers to the same thing as the secret place. You see in the first line, the first line is obviously the womb. And that's what this refers to as, well, the deep darkness of the womb. Maybe David used the terms the lowest parts of the earth to remind us that our mothers were made of dust and we are made of dust. But in the deep darkness of the womb, God was embroidering us, fashioning us together.

The point is, God did it. You may be able to change some of what you see in the mirror, like the roll around the middle. You could probably get rid of most of that if you really wanted to. It's work, I know, but you probably could do it. Or the way you fix your hair or even the color of your hair. It's kind of accepted by everybody. If you don't want to be gray, you can be black or blonde or whatever you want to be, or maybe you like to be gray. And some of you maybe dye gray. I don't know. Nobody knows for sure except your hairdresser. But you can change some of those things.

And yet some people become obsessed with their appearance. I mean, they spend thousands and thousands of dollars on plastic surgery to alter their nose or their lips or their chin or their cheeks or their breasts or their buttocks or whatever. Mary and I were in a grocery store this week, walked up to the checkout counter, and there was People magazine. And the cover story was about celebrities that have spent thousands of dollars to alter their appearance.

We're happy with the way it was as God made it. Now, it's not wrong to look our best for the glory of God. That's certainly not wrong. But don't find fault with God's handiwork. He made you just the way He wants you for the job he wants you to do. And there may be parts that if you had done the job, you would have made a little differently. But thank Him for the way they are because that's the way He wanted you to be. Why don't you think of something right now you don't like about your physical appearance? And I'm sure most all of us could think of something. Maybe it's your nose or your ears or your size of your feet or maybe how tall you are or aren't or whatever. Think about it. Now thank God for it. Can you do that? Can you thank Him?

Thank you, Lord, for making me the way I am, even though there have been times in my life where I haven't been pleased with it. I just want You to know that I do believe You. You made me the way You wanted me for the job You wanted me to do.

What a great encouragement that is to believe that and accept it. That's the next thing David wants to talk about is the job that God wants us to do. Let's call it the plan for our being.

The Plan for Our Being (Psalm 139:16)

The plan is that we have a significant purpose to fulfill. The first part of verse 16 is actually a review of what we've already learned. But let's read it.

“Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed” (Psalm 139:16a).

My substance being unformed is one Hebrew word that refers to something rolled up or rolled together. And “my rolled up substance” I don't think could refer to anything other than the human fetus. Men's eyes can't see it. They're natural. I can't. But God's eyes do see it. And what David is saying here is that in my very first hours and days of life, right after my conception, when I was still rolled up in embryonic form, God was watching over me. I was a person even then, a precious human being about whom God cared deeply. And He was superintending my development from that day on. Yes, even from day one. That's the beginning of verse 16. But read on.

“And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them” (Psalm 139:16b).

What was fashioned for me? The days of my life before they ever existed. And another familiar and wonderful Bible doctrine comes to the surface again, one that we see over and over in the Scripture, and that is God's sovereign control over every detail of our lives. Because you see, the days that were fashioned for me, the days refer not only to 24-hour periods, but to every circumstance that occurs in those 24-hour periods. Each individual day with all that it brings, was all wonderfully planned by God, carefully planned by Him.

And He can work every bit of it together for good, and He promises to do that very thing. Now, that doesn't relieve our responsibility for how we act, but it assures us that anything that's out of our control is in His control. And we can trust Him. We can believe that He is in control. He's working out His own perfect plan for our lives to accomplish His own perfect purposes. And they are good. Absolutely good. I may not be able to understand why they're good right now, but He assures me that they are. They're not only good, His ways are perfect.

The psalmist reminded us of this earlier in the book:

“As for God, His way is perfect” (Psalm 18:30a).

See, you don't think that God is going to make such a marvelous creation as you and redeem you from sin and then run off and leave you, do you? Well, that would be absurd to think such a thing. He will not do that for a minute. He is superintending your circumstances to accomplish His will for your life. We don't always know what He's doing, but we can trust Him with the confidence that He always does what's best.

If we liken life to a tapestry we may see the underside with all its gnarls and tangles, but He sees the beauty of the upper side. There's a very lovely poem to that effect. As far as I know it's anonymous. I don't know the author. I didn't see it when I copied the poem. It goes like this.

“My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me.
I may choose the colors, but He works it steadily,
full oft He weaves in sorrow and I in foolish pride
forget He sees the upper and I the underside.
I choose my strands all golden, and cry for woven stars.
I murmur when the pattern is set in blurs and mars
I sometimes don't remember whose hand the shuttles guide,
and that my stars are shining upon the upper side.
I choose my threads all crimson, and wait for flowers to bloom,
for warp and woof to blossom upon the mighty loom.
Full oft I seek them vainly, and fret for them denied,
though flowering wreaths and garlands may deck the upper side.
My life is but a weaving between my God and me.
I see the seams and tangles the fairer side sees He
Then let me wait in patience and blindness satisfied
to make the pattern lovely upon the upper side.”

Wait in patience satisfied with what God is doing on the upper side, even though I can't see it.

You see our lives as believers are more than, as Shakespeare suggests in one of his plays, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That's a very poor description of human life.

We can say with the Psalmist,

“My times are in your hands” (Psalm 31:15a).

“My times,” that is, my days and all that they bring. Same idea as this psalm. We can say with the psalmist,

“The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way” (Psalm 37:23).

Every detail of life is part of His plan for good and meant to serve some worthwhile purpose. And we're in His conscious thoughts every minute of every day because He's working that plan for good. In fact, He's thinking about us right now. Did you know that? God is thinking about you at this very moment. He has everything about you in His mind at this very second. Let's call that the joy of our being.

The Joy of Our Being (Psalm 139:17-18

And the joy of our being is simply that we are vitally important to Our Creator.

“How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; when I awake, I am still with You” (Psalm 139:17-18).

The thoughts that David mentions here are all the things he's been talking about in this psalm. The intricate details of his body and the numerous circumstances of his life. God has it all in His mind at every moment. If you could add it all up, it would be more than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the entire world. That's what he says. God has that many thoughts in His mind about each one of us. What an incredible thing! It's a lot of thoughts. It's innumerable.

David starts to rehearse them, and even as he starts rehearsing them, it boggles his mind and he seems to drift off to sleep. And in the morning he wakes up and God is still right there with him, still watching over him, still thinking about him, still caring for him. Because God doesn't slumber and God doesn't sleep. So even through the night hours, He's got you in his mind. He's thinking about you.

When David wakes up, he's still enjoying the personal presence of the Lord. “When I awake, I am still with You.”

David doesn't rebel against such close scrutiny as this. On the contrary, there's not a trace of bitterness or resentment because God knows all about him and superintends every detail of his life. On the contrary, he considers God's constant care for him and thoughts about him to be one of his most valuable treasures, one of his greatest assets. He says it's precious.

“How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God.” Priceless, of inestimable value.

If I were to ask you to make a list of your most valuable possessions this morning, what would you name? I would imagine in most cases you would walk mentally through your house room by room and mention whatever is there of great value―maybe a piece of antique furniture, maybe a lovely stereo set, maybe a collection of gold coins, maybe some precious family photos. Those would be the things most of us would name.

If you are a child of God, one of your most precious possessions is the awareness that God is thinking about you right now. “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God.”

You may seem to be unimportant and insignificant to yourself right now, but you aren't God. You are His unique and special creation. He made you so He cares about you deeply, and that care is never diminished one iota. You're so important to Him that he never puts you out of His mind, not even for an instant. And He wants you to believe that and accept it and begin to enjoy His presence with you, and rest in His sovereign control of your life and in the assurance that everything He does will be best.

Cultivate your relationship with Him. Get to know Him intimately and trust Him fully, and you will find that there is no greater joy in all of life.

Trusting Jesus as Your Savior

Of course, if you've never begun a relationship with the living God, that has to come first. There is only one place to begin it, according to the Bible, and that is through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).

Peter reaffirmed it. He said, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

If you expect to be saved, that is, delivered from the penalty that your sin deserves, you must put your faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. There is no other way. No other way.

Are you willing to do that? That's how we enter into that relationship. And having begun the relationship, we can cultivate it and it can grow. Not only does it bring pleasure to God's heart, but it will bring joy and pleasure to our lives as well.

Let's bow before Him prayerfully right now. With our heads bowed, may I ask you if you know Christ as your personal Savior? Have you made this decision? Put your faith in Him, acknowledge your sin and your need of a Savior, and then turn from your sin in faith to the Lord Jesus? If you're not sure you've done that, would you be willing to enter into that personal relationship with the living God right now by receiving His Son as your Savior?

He who has the Son has eternal life, and he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

It's just that simple. Have you invited God's Son to be part of your life? When you do that, there will be some changes that will give evidence of it. But the changes aren't what saves you. God saves in answer to our faith. If you'd like to put your faith in Christ right now for your eternal salvation, I suggest you tell Him so in prayer, just in the quiet of your mind and your soul, right where you sit.

Lord, I acknowledge to You my sin. I believe Jesus died in my place and paid for my sin. Come into my heart and save me, Lord Jesus.

Closing Prayer

Father, I pray that if there are some with us this morning who have not made that decision to this point in their lives, that they will turn to You in faith and receive Your gracious gift of eternal life. And that those of us who have made that decision will learn to live daily in Your fellowship, resting fully and completely in Your sovereign care and control over our lives, confident that You made us for a specific purpose and that You work every circumstance together for good to accomplish that good purpose and goal, which is ultimately to make us like Jesus. So I pray, Father, that we will be fully yielded to Your will, that all we are and all we have may be Yours, for we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

Continue to Psalm 139-4: He Wants Us