In this sermon, Pastor Chuck Smith explores Psalm 139 and delves into the attributes of God. He divides the psalm into three sections, discussing the omniscience, omnipresence, and creative powers of God. Pastor Chuck marvels at the intricate design of the human body and reflects on his own experience of witnessing the body's capacity to heal itself. He also touches on the topic of abortion, emphasizing the biblical perspective that life begins in the womb and that God has a plan for each individual from the moment of conception.

Oh, let the Son of God enfold you With His Spirit and His love Let Him fill your heart and satisfy your soul Oh, let Him have the things that hold you And His Spirit like a dove Will descend upon your life And make you whole Let the Son of God fill you Let the Son of God fill you verses, he talks a little bit about God's creative powers, and then the last six verses are more or less a prayer in application of these things. So the omniscience of God. O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. You know my down-sitting, my uprising. You understand my thought afar off. The psalmist is aware of how completely and thoroughly God knows him and knows all about him, even as God knows you and knows all about you. The Bible said everything is open and naked before him with whom we have to do. That is, you don't hide anything from God. Now, you remember in the New Testament, the book of Acts chapter 5, as in the early church they were having this move of the spirit and people were selling their property and they were creating sort of a communal life within the early church. And one of the couples, Ananias and Sapphira, had sold their property and they brought a portion of the money and laid it at the feet of Peter. First of all, Ananias came in and Peter said, Ananias, why is it that you have conspired in your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? Is this what you sold the house for? And he said, yeah. And he rebuked him and he said, you know, you haven't really lied to man, you've lied to God. And the idea that a person can deceive God, can hide from God issues of his life, you just don't understand God. When David said you understand my thoughts afar off, in the Hebrew that does not imply that God is way off in some corner of the universe, billions of light years away, and I'm way here but from that distance God understands my thoughts. The Hebrew indicates that God understands my thoughts in their origins. Now where do thoughts come from? What chemicals are mixed in the brain that causes these little brain flashes that bring thought and idea and all to me? Where do they originate? How do they originate? What David is saying, Lord you know my thoughts before I think them. You know the origins of my thoughts. You encompass my path and my lying down and you're acquainted with all of my ways. And so that acknowledgement and realization how thoroughly and completely God knew about every facet of his life. There's not a word in my mouth or in my tongue but lo, oh Lord, you know it all together. You have beset me behind and before and you've laid your hand upon me. This goes back to you encompass my path. I'm surrounded by God. He's behind me. He's in front of me. His hand is upon me. Paul the Apostle was invited when he was in Athens to come up to the Areopagus there on Mars Hill and to present his ideas to the Epicurean philosophers who spent their time just debating and discussing and listening to new thoughts and new ideas. And so as Paul stood there on Mars Hill with the temple to Athena above him, the temples of Jupiter just down below him and the Agora of the city of Athens with all of the gods and the idols and altars throughout the streets. And Paul said, I perceive that you're very religious people. As I've been going through the streets here I've observed all of your altars and your idols, the gods that you worship. And he said, I did observe one altar down there and I saw the inscription to the unknown God. He said, I'd like to tell you about this God. He's the one that's created the whole universe. And in Him we live, we move, we have our being. In other words, He's omniscient. He surrounds us. He's in front of us. He's in back of us. His hand is upon us. Our lives are totally encompassed by this God. I never arrive at any point but what God has not preceded me there. As I look back I can see how the hand of God has been on my life every step. And then David said, whether shall I go from thy spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? Now we're going to deal with the omnipresence of God. God is everywhere. How can I escape Him? If I ascend into heaven you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall your hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. Remember the case of Jonah. God called Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah being a true patriot did not want to go to Nineveh. That was their enemy. God had given him a message of judgment to give to Nineveh. Forty days and God's going to destroy Nineveh. And Jonah was afraid that if he went there and preached he might be successful. That they might repent and God wouldn't destroy them. And so he decided to flee from the presence of God. He tried to hide from the call of God. He went down to Joppa and got a ship that was going to Tarshish, which was the end of the world at that time. Where can I flee from your presence? If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. And Jonah discovered that he could not escape from the presence of God out in the Mediterranean. God stirred up the Mediterranean in a storm. You remember the story? They threw over all of the tackling and everything else, the cargo. Finally, one of the sailors looking for anything else in the hold to throw overboard found Jonah fast asleep. They woke him up and they said, man you better start calling on your God. We're in big trouble. Jonah said, well just throw me over and it'll all be over. I'm a prophet of God, you know. And they didn't want to do that. They did their best to try and ride out the storm, but they saw that it wasn't going to happen. And so they finally threw Jonah overboard. And suddenly there was a great calm. And you know the rest of the story. But trying to flee from the presence of God by taking off to Tarshish. Many times people make a mistake of thinking of God in a way of sort of localizing God. In the Old Testament they said, well he's the God of the mountains. Let's fight him in the valleys. We'll whip him if we can get him. You know our mistake was fighting them in the mountains. So God says, okay next time meet him in the valleys and I'll really whip him this time to show that I'm the God of the valleys too. A lot of times we think that he's the God of the mountains. You know when things are going great and we're on the mountaintop, oh yes, praise God. But he's not the God of the valleys. He's forsaken us when we're in the valleys. Or we think that when we enter into the church we come into the presence of God. Oh Lord it's so wonderful to gather in your presence. And we think of as we enter into the church, you know, be dignified. We're coming now into the presence of God. And you know let's be holy. Let's change our voice. And let's be stiff in God's presence here, you know. As though God's presence wasn't with us when we were on the way. Where can I escape from his presence? Our problem is the lack of the consciousness of his presence. That's what we need. What we need is to be more aware of the fact that I cannot escape his presence. And when I do those things that I think are being done in secret, God is there. I do not hide from God. I cannot hide from God. I cannot escape his presence. Where can I flee from your presence? And the answer is you can't. We live, we move, we have our being in God. So the omnipresence of God. If I take the wings of the morning, dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall your hand lead me and your right hand shall hold me. Jonah found out that God was down in the depths of the sea when he was there in the belly of the whale. He called unto God. I cried unto the Lord out of the depths of hell. I cried and he heard me. He found God's presence down there in the depths. If I say surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hides not from thee, but the night shines as the day and the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. An interesting thing about light is that we have the infrared by which it what is to our eyes dark. The infrared light, if you have the equipment and all, you can see in a dark room. The armed forces have these special glasses that will pick up the infrared light. And with these glasses you can see in the dark. And they use them a lot in the night fighting. And we've discovered that it's possible to see in the dark if you have the proper glasses that are equipped to help you see with the ultra or with the infrared rays. With God, it doesn't make any difference if it's dark or light. It's all the same to him. They go, you know, I'll wait until night and then I'll slip out where God can't see me. No, he can see just as well in the darkness of night as he can in the noonday sun. They're alike unto him. The darkness hides not from thee, but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. For thou has possessed my reins. You're in control of my life. You're the one that are holding the reins of my life. And you have covered me in my mother's womb. So now we're going back to even before I was born. God knew me. And so we're getting now into this area of God's knowledge from the eternal. So that before I was ever formed, before there was ever any substance, God knew me. God said that to Jeremiah. He said, before you were ever formed, I knew thee. And he called him actually to, in Jeremiah first chapter verse five, he said, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. And before you came forth out of the womb, I set you apart and ordained you as a prophet to the nations. God spoke of Cyrus, the work that he would do 150 years before he was ever born, before his mother was born. God spoke about Cyrus and way that God would use him to set the children of Israel free from the Babylonian captivity. So David said, you've covered me in my mother's womb. There I was surrounded by you. You knew all about me. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. And so looking at my human body and all of the marvelous attributes and aspects of the human body, truly I am fearfully and wonderfully made. The capacities of the body, sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch, these marvelous capacities, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I marvel at the design, the body's capacity to mend itself. A while back when I was cutting down one of our trees with my chainsaw, and as I was cutting the small branches, trying to hold a branch and cut it, the chainsaw jumped and came across my finger and ripped the flesh on out to the bone there. And I was just so disgusted with myself for doing something that stupid. And I took off my t-shirt and wrapped it around it, and as I watched that thing, the blood spurting and all, I grabbed it and put some pressure on to slow it down. And I saw it, and you can still see the little scar here, the width of the chainsaw, but I watched the blood begin to coagulate. I saw it shutting things off. And I just stood there and watched it for a while, marveling at how these little platelets were already beginning to seal the thing off. And I realized in a couple of weeks, you know, be like new again. I said, God, you're so marvelous to build in that system to cause those little platelets to begin to seal off that wound and all, and soon the old cells will take over. They'll begin to reproduce, and the scab will be gone, and you know, all I've got is just a small little line there. Now you can hardly see it. Marvelous. I love it. Fearfully and wonderfully made. Think of that. Creating me so that my body can mend itself. Just what tremendous wisdom in creation. Marvelous are thy works, that my soul knoweth right well. Now, my substance was not hid from you when I was made in secret. That is, when I was being formed within my mother. When those two half-cells came together, and they began that process of reproduction, and I was starting to be formed within my mother's womb, God knew all about me. Curiously wrought, put together. Your eyes did see my substance, though they were still yet not complete. I was in the formative state within my mother's womb, and God saw me. And in your book, all of my members were written. God made it, said, yeah, give him four fingers and a thumb on each hand, and you know, I mean, got it all listed. It came out, you know, all together. It was all there. Which in continuance were fastened, when as yet there were none of them. I think of this scripture in light of abortion, and though the humanist would pass it off as just tissue, and they're always careful not to call it a baby, but the fetus, and they refer to it just as tissue. But it's interesting, that's not the way God looks at it. God sees it as a being, as a person, from the moment of conception. We'll return with more of our verse-by-verse venture through the Bible in our next broadcast, as Pastor Chuck continues his study of the Psalms, and we do hope you'll make plans to join us. But right now, if you'd like to secure a copy of today's message, simply order Psalm 139, verse 1, when visiting the wordfortoday.org. And while you're there, be sure to browse through the many additional biblical resources by Pastor Chuck. You can also subscribe to the Word for Today's YouTube channel by clicking the link on the screen now. Or, sign up for our email subscription. Once again, that's thewordfortoday.org. And for those of you wishing to call, our toll-free number is 1-800-272-WORD. And our office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time. Again, that's 1-800-272-9673. And if you prefer to write, our mailing address is the Word for Today, P.O. Box 8000, Costa Mesa, California, 92628. And now, on behalf of the Word for Today, we'd like to thank all of you who share in supporting this ministry with your prayers and financial support. And be sure to join us again next time as Pastor Chuck continues his verse-by-verse study through the Bible. That's right here on the next edition of The Word for Today. And now, once again, here's Pastor Chuck with today's closing prayer. Father, we thank You for David, for his relationship with You, for the honesty with which he was able to express himself, his feelings, his heart. And because of that honesty, Lord, we find ourselves easily identifying with David, for we, too, go through the same kind of trials in this life. As we try to live for You, and we seek to live a pure and holy life, we find, Lord, that there are those who do wickedly, and they would like to destroy us. And they set traps, and they do their best to bring us down to their level. But, Lord, we know that You preserve the righteous, and that You will keep us as we keep our eyes upon You. Lord, help us to understand more fully how powerful You are, how wise You are, and how loving You are. In Jesus' name, amen. For today, a daily devotional that speaks volumes of wisdom to apply to your everyday life. Come alongside Pastor Chuck as he takes you on a journey from Genesis to Revelation, providing God's truth to answer your questions and discover how this might very well become your most beloved and cherished devotional ever. To order your copy of Wisdom for Today, a leather hardback for yourself or a loved one, please call the word for today at 1-800-272-9673 or visit us online to read a preview at thewordfortoday.org. This program has been sponsored by The Word for Today in Costa Mesa, California.