Let's pray this morning as we're facing another year, just for God to bless from one end of it to the other. Some of us are facing difficulties, a lot of us are wondering what is going to happen internationally. There's just a lot of questions and uncertainties. So, I'll tell you this, I'd much rather face the new year with you guys than anybody else. So we're in this together, let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, with the turning of another year, we turn our hearts naturally towards you because of who you are. As we have discovered already in this Psalm and we'll discover yet more truths and treasures. We pray that you would calm our hearts, you'd banish any fears we might have. Fill us with your strength and with trust in your impeccable wisdom and character. We turn to you, it's the best place to turn, it's the best place to live, it's the best way to live. Thank you for your word, thank you for your people, thank you for those who are sitting around us whom we love, those who have influenced us, those who have supported us. We pray now for your wisdom. In Jesus' name. Amen.
The title of this message today, you can pretty obviously see comes from the kind of stuff we would say to each other as kids, I don't know if girls do this as much as boys but we'd always say things like, "Well my dad's bigger than your dad. My dad could beat up your dad." My dad was six foot one, so typically he was bigger than a lot of guy's dads. And we loved going back and forth, and essentially though it's not as explicit in this Psalm, David in the Psalms would declare that in comparison to any other gods that are worshipped, Yahweh, his God, was bigger. For example in Psalm 115 he says, "Why do those nations say where is their God?" And then he says, "For our God is in heaven and he does whatever he pleases. But their gods are idols made out of silver and gold, they have eyes but they can't see, feet but they can't walk, hands but they can't handle." So in essence he's saying, "My God is bigger than your God. My God can actually do stuff. My God is actually awesome and powerful and filled with wonder." Just how powerful is God? How big is he? Well he's powerful enough to create everything in your universe. And big enough and powerful enough to care for everything in your life. And he'll never run out of power.
I don't know how many Trek fans we have here, Star Trek that is, at this service, we got any? Okay, so who was the chief engineer in Star Trek? Scottie. And Scottie would inevitably say things like, "I don't know how much longer we can hold it together, captain" (Scottish brogue), "We haven't got the power." And he was always worried about what kind of power would be available for him to finish the task. God never runs out of his unlimited power. He is all powerful, he is omnipotent and that's a Bible word by the way. One of the great anthems sung in eternity, Revelation 19, is "For the Lord God omnipotent reigns." He's omnipotent and he can control everything. Now to get our minds around the concept of God's greatness is not so easy, for an adult or for a child. Although I sometimes as you know think children do a better job of articulating how great God is or wrestling with the issue. I love talking to kids about God. I love reading books about what children say about God, I have two of them. One of them is called Letters from Children to God. And here's a few entries. One writes, "Dear God, Are you really invisible? Or is that just a trick?" Norma writes, "Dear God, did you mean for giraffes to look like that or was that an accident?" Little Nan said, "Dear God, Who draws all of those lines around all of the countries?" Tom: "Dear God, When you made the first man did he work as good as we do now?" Susan said, "Dear God, I know all about where babies come from I think. From inside mommies, and daddies put them there. Where are they before that? Do you have them up in heaven? How do they get down here? Do you have to take care of them all first? Please answer all my questions." Jeff wrote, "Dear God, It's great the way you always get those stars in just the right places." Dawn has said, "Dear God, We read that Thomas Edison made light, but in Sunday School they said you did it. So I bet he stole your idea." Jonathan said, "Dear God, If you would have let the dinosaurs not be extinct, we would not have a country. You did the right thing." (Laughs) I'm glad he thinks so. And I love the way one small boy told his buddies about how powerful God is, he said, "He's greater than Superman and Batman and the Power Rangers all put together."
That's actually a good, from a child's perspective, description of just how big and powerful God is. Psalm 139, we have been there for a few weeks, because there's four great and unique qualities of God. We would call them incommunicable attributes unique to God alone, nobody else can have them. He is all-knowing, he is everywhere present and he is all-powerful. Or, he's omniscient, he's omnipresent and he is omnipotent. Now the biographer in this Psalm, God's biographer here is David. And it's pretty obvious that David only scratches the surface in any of these attributes, how in six verses can you fully write about one of the great concepts of the eternal God? We just scratches the surface but it's enough to get us started. And it's basic. This is basic. In fact I would say that if you want to flourish in your faith there's some things you need to know. Number one is the cross. Nobody ever gets saved or gets to heaven without the cross of Jesus Christ, his shed blood on our behalf. Number two is the authority of scripture, to believe that God's book is authoritative, inerrant, and passed down to us. Number three is the greatness of God. It's absolutely essential that you get a handle on God's greatness. Because if you have a teeny weenie little God he can't help you or do anything for you. So it's good to be refreshed on the awesomeness, the magnitude, as a child would say the bigness, of God.
So looking at verses 13 through 18 today, this third paragraph or third section of the Psalm this is what we consider. And David would want us to know three things about this characteristic of God. Number one, God's work is marvelous. God's work is marvelous. He says so in verse 14. And I'm going to go right to verse 14 instead of beginning at the beginning because I want to lift out a concept. Look at the second part or the second strophe of verse 14 where it says, "Marvelous are your works and that my soul knows very well." You just can't beat the King James here, "Marvelous are thy works and that my soul knoweth right well." Powerful way to say it. Marvelous are your works. Now that little phrase is the pinnacle phrase or the hinge phrase in this section. There are equal amount of lines poetically before that phrase as well as after that phrase in verse 13 through 15. So this becomes sort of the summary that David is getting our attention on. "Marvelous are your works." Up to this point David would say, "Marvelous is your knowledge," verses 1 through 6. And David would say, "Marvelous is your presence," verses 7 through 12. But now his emphasis is on what God can do, his ability, "Marvelous are your works." And David would want you to know that God is not weak, that God operates at full power. Now Job in Job 42 who is way before David was said, this, "I know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be restrained." Job said he knew that about God, he knew that. And David here says he knew that, "Marvelous are your works and that my soul knows very well." Here's my question: Do you know that? Do you really know that God, your God can do everything? Because if you know that, let me take it a step further, why not learn to say that more often? That is, as you and I go through our day and we notice the work of God, it could be a sunrise, a sunset, some cool thing that you discover that God has done in your day, why not pause to actually articulate that? Marvelous are your works. I was driving last Sunday after church west through New Mexico and into Arizona, it was snowing all the way, nothing like New Mexico when there's snow on the ground. And then at the end of the day, the clouds broke, the sun came through and the sunset was unbelievable. And this verse came to my mind, "Marvelous are your works."
Now why is it so important that we not only know it but as Job and David, we say it. And here's why: I think if we learn on a daily basis to praise the Lord and thank the Lord and actually say, "Marvelous are your works," it will keep us from having a hard heart, it keeps our hearts soft when we're thankful and we articulate that we're thankful and noticeable with God's work.
All right, it almost goes without saying but every great biblical author understood this attribute of God, that he is all-powerful. But perhaps none framed it as well as Paul. In Ephesians chapter 1 verse 11 he writes, God is this powerful, "He works all things according to the counsel of his will." Once again, "He works all things according to the counsel of his will." Just how big and powerful is God? Well, God's powerful enough to take a ninety-nine year old man and his ninety-year-old wife and they can't have kids and make them have kids. And who am I talking about? Abraham and Sarah. When God said he was going to do it, what did Sarah do? She laughed. She didn't think anybody heard it. She was behind a curtain and God said so, and she laughed. God said to Abraham, "Why'd your wife laugh?" And she said, "I didn't laugh." And God said, "Yeah, you did, I heard it." And then God said to her, "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" Now there's a good question for you to answer when you face something insurmountable, impossible, "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" So God did that. That's how powerful he is. And God could open up a body of water to let two to three million people go on dry land across it and use the same body of restrained water to then bury their enemies. God is so powerful that he can take a ragtag group of slaves in Egypt and give them their own land and make them a world power at the time. God is omnipotent, all powerful, super strong, operates at full power. Every now and then you'll get somebody arguing these points. And it's really a nitwit argument. That's a word my mom taught me, nitwit. I remember it quite well I was called that on a number of occasions because of the things I did and things I said. But here, the nitwit questions like "Well can God make round squares? Or triangular circles?" Or here's one, "Can God make a rock so big that even he can't lift? See these are self-canceling questions, these are nitwit questions. And here's the answer to those questions: God can do anything he pleases that is in harmony with his nature. And that is the confluence of all the biblical teaching on this subject. God can do anything and everything he pleases that is harmony with his nature. Now having said that, there are some things the Bible says God cannot do. Number one, God can't lie. Hebrews chapter 6 verse 18, "It is impossible for God to lie." Because it is in opposition and in disharmony with this nature. The second thing the Bible says God can't do is God cannot approve of evil or let it go in his presence unchecked. Habakkuk chapter 1 verse 13, the prophet says, "You are of purer eyes than to behold eyes, you cannot look at wickedness." So God can't lie. God can't approve of evil or have it in his presence undealt with, unchecked. The third thing God cannot do, you'll like this, God can't be unfaithful. Can't be, impossible. Paul wrote to Timothy in II Timothy chapter 2 verse 13, "Even if we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself." It is contrary to his nature. God is every faithful.
So, here's David writing God's biography in part. He was a king, he was once a shepherd, he had been a warrior, he's a poet. He's seen a lot of God's work, a lot of God's power. And he would sum it up and say, "It's marvelous. God's work is marvelous." Or as one translation puts this phrase, "I worship in adoration, what a creation." That's a good way to put it. God's work is marvelous.
The second thing David would have is know is that God's workmanship is meticulous. Now, look at verse 13, notice the emphasis, "For you (God) formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully (created is the idea) made." You created me, you're my creator. Now I know, I'm very aware of the culture in which I live, I'm very aware of the ideologies that surround us. And I know that whenever you talk to any person who's not a believer in God about creation or design, you lose them. There's this assumption that, "Look it's a done deal. Everybody who's intelligent knows that we were evolved, not designed, not created." And when you say, "I've been created by God," they go into altered states of consciousness, they just go berserk. Even though they do not have the stack of evidence on their side and I know we've beat this to death in a number of studies, I'll just sum it up by quoting to you molecular biologist Michael Denton's words, "The evolutionary theory is still as it was in Darwin's time a highly speculative hypothesis that is entirely without direct factual support." We've already covered that in previous studies, how design is apparent, etcetera. What David points to here is one particular aspect of God's creation and that is us, human beings, because human beings are the crown of God's creative genius. So, it's just interesting to me and follow me here, all of the examples David could have pointed to about how big and great and powerful God is in creation, he didn't go to the stars like he does in Psalm 8, "When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained." Or Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God." Rather than pointing upward to the bright lights, he points inward to the dark womb where a developing child is inside the mother and is born, that's the section here. He points to the gestation period, the nine-month development of the child. Let's look at that, verse 13, let's follow it through, "For you formed my inward parts, you covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 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. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed and in your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there was none of them." Speaking of the marvels of the human body, your body, marvelous, fearfully wonderfully made. That's interesting to me, a lot of people, dare I say in our culture most people aren't really happy with their body. We'd be quick to say, "Marvelous are your works," but we'd be reticent to say, "Marvelous is this work," because we're always trying to fix it and change it and alter it and fight the aging process, all that comes with it. But David would say and wants you to know, "You are marvelous," so let me just say it to you collectively, "You're marvelous!" You are, you're the crowning part of God's creation. Marvelous are your works, the crowning work is you, you are in the image and likeness of God.
Look at verse 15, notice the language that David employs, "My frame," he says, "was not hidden from you." What is he speaking of? The bones, the skeletal system of the developing child. "My frame was not hidden from you when I was skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth." Did you know that the term skillfully wrought literally is embroidered or knit together. And I think what David is describing very poetically is the network of veins and arteries that develops very rapidly in the placenta that surrounds that child and gives it that blood flow to life. Skillfully wrought, embroidered or knit. Then notice "the lowest parts of the earth," that describes the darkness of the womb. Verse 16, "Your eyes saw my substance (notice) being yet unformed." That means rolled up, being yet rolled up or wrapped together. In the embryonic and especially the fetal stage, the body parts are folded up, scrunched together, the lack distinct proportions, that's what he's describing.
Okay, so here we get the picture. We all had humble beginnings, we all started out as a speck. You were once a speck, a zygote, a fertilized ovum. And one day you became an embryo and later on you became a fetus, you probably don't remember that it was so long ago. And then you were born and you grew and developed and here you are today, a human being, an adult, with about a hundred trillion cells, about one hundred thousand miles of nerve fibers, sixty thousand miles of veins and arteries, 206 bones, muscles, tendons make you you. David's point is God has been superintending your development since those early stages onward and it's not going to stop now. And the big thought of this Psalm since it begins with, "You've searched me, you've known me oh God," is God has known me so well because he knew me and watched over my development since I was in those primary stages. If that is true, God's not going to stop now.
Now there's an obvious point to be made, it may be so painfully obvious but I cannot pass it up at this point especially at this juncture in our culture, but it's safe to say by reading what we just read that the Bible acknowledges personhood from the moment of conception. It's really not a big debate, it's not a huge issue for us. The culture might debate it, they can argue over it in political halls and news reports at night and when life begins but for us who believe the scripture, there's no argument: from the moment of conception onward it's life. Even though today we live in the culture that regards the fetus as a nuisance sometimes and to be discarded like a ruptured appendix, it gets in the way. Now listen careful, since 1973 in Roe vs. Wade, in our country alone there have been 49 million abortions. I know that's just a number so let me give you perspective: the entire population of Canada today is 33 million people, the entire population of the country of Spain in Europe is 40 million people. Since 1973 in our country alone, 49 million abortions. Well a teacher was talking about this issue with her ethics class and she posed a problem, they had to answer it, here's what she said to make a point, "How would you advise a mother, pregnant with her fifth child, based upon the following family medical history. The husband had syphilis, she has tuberculosis, the first child was born blind, second child died, the third child was born deaf and the fourth child had tuberculosis. The mother is now considering an abortion, would you advise her to have one? Almost everybody in the class would answer, "Yes," they said, "Based upon her medical history, absolutely." So they voted, she waited, she took in their data, and then she said, "Congratulations, you have just killed one of the greatest composers ever, Ludwig von Beethoven." And she went on to describe that that was the exact medical history of that family and that child that was born was Ludwig von Beethoven. So here's the deal, it gets down to this: Life is either secondary or life is sacred. It's secondary for some, it's incidental, it's accidental, it's disposable. Or, life is sacred and we would say marvelous as David put it, from the moment of conception onward.
You're made in the image of God, a special creation, crowning creation. And if you happen to say, "Well I think life is secondary," then I'll say unashamedly to you, "My God is bigger than your God," because he considers life sacred from the very earliest stages onward up until old age. (applause)
Look at the 16th verse a little more carefully, "For I saw my substance being yet unformed (and look at this) and in your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me when as yet there were none of them." Now I know that is a beautiful and just poetic description of saying, "You knew me in advance, you knew my life in advance, you saw my development in advance in such a detailed meticulous way as if it were written in a book or programmed. But the language was enough this week for me to just stop and ponder the way David wrote this, "You've written in your book," and then it says, "the days fashioned for me when as yet there were none of them." And I was thinking I couldn't help but go in my mind to what has been discovered about the DNA, the programming of every cell of the human body, and in our generation we've uncovered and unlocked the DNA code. I read a book recently called The Language of God by Dr. Frances Collins who is head of The Human Genome Project and he called it The Language of God because he purports to say that we're designed by God and he says that he's a believer, I disagree with a lot of his book, I'm mad at other parts of his book but it's a great read nonetheless, The Language of God. He writes about the DNA molecules in every cell, the deoxyribonucleic acid molecules. And here's what he says, one cell and here's what he says one cell, listen to his language, "In one cell there's three billion letters long and they're written in a strange and cryptographic four-letter code." Now you have a hundred trillion cells in your body and every cell, most of your cells are forty-six segments of DNA, twenty-three from Mom, twenty-three from Dad. Each cell with those molecules contains densely coded information that tells every cell of your body how it's going to function and act from the moment of conception to the moment of demise, it's a program, what body type you'll have, the color of skin, color of hair (even though you want to change it), how your body will respond to the aging process, diseases that will come about, it's all part of the program. And it so detailed and so complex that if you were to decode one cell's worth of information in the DNA into written form it would fill a library with four thousand volumes, that's one cell. According to Dr. Frances Collins, the author of that book, "A live reading of that code at the rate of three letters per second would take thirty-one years reading nonstop day and night. That's one cell. You've got a hundred trillion cells give or take a few million. If you were to take all decoded information, not in just one cell but all one hundred trillion cells and put them into written information you'd have enough books to fill the Grand Canyon seventy-eight times. And that's just one human being. So the Grand Canyon, two hundred miles long, three to twenty miles wide, you fill it seventy-eight times and that's the information coded in the cells of one adult human being. So, this language just grabbed me. We're determined, it's programmed, God knows it all in advance before it happens.
Which leads David to the third great truth in verse 17 and 18, notice how he puts it, "How precious also are your thoughts to me oh God, how great is the sum of them. If I should count them they would be more in number than the sand awake, when I awake I am still with you." So David would tell us that God's work is marvelous work, God's workmanship is meticulous workmanship, and that God's wisdom is matchless wisdom. Now follow the thinking here, verse 17 and 18, what stirs David more than his knowledge of God is God's knowledge and care of him. David isn't going, "You know I'm a pretty good poet, huh? Boy, I've managed to articulate three cardinal doctrines of truth in just a few verses. He doesn't even go there, what astonishes him is that this powerful omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God even knows I exist, even cares, he's not just cognizant that I exist, he cares that I exist. "How precious," he writes, "are your thought toward me." I'll tell you what this do for me, I don't know about you but I'll tell you what this truth has done for me and my conclusions. Number one, it produces a sense of purpose. It elevates me to a sense of purpose. If every you're the kind to walk through life kind of sagging down, know that this incredible God that superintended your development watches over you now and should fill you with a sense of purpose. How different from the unbeliever who doesn't see the special creation, we're just here by accident. He gets up every morning as a fortuitous occurrence of accidental circumstances and has to face the day with that every day. No purpose. Versus getting up and going, "I'm God's crowning creation. I'm going to live with purpose, there's a reason I exist." So that's what it does number one for me. Number two, it fills me with faith, because if all this is true about the God that I serve, it would just make sense that I'd be able to entrust everything in my life over to him. If he's that big and that powerful and that meticulous, and watched over me that carefully when I was an embryo, he knows my need now and I can trust every bit of my life, my future, my misery, my problems, to him. And the third thing this does to me is fills me with a sense of responsibility. If God does have a purpose and I can trust him with everything then I want to make sure that as far as I can possibly do that I understand what God's will is for my life and walk in it as close as I can every day. And wasn't that Paul's prayer for the Colossians? He said, "I pray (chapter 1) that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding." It's the highest possible knowledge, isn't it? :You could say, "I know that I'm walking in God's plan and will and purpose for my life."
So, how big is your God? How powerful is your God? He's big enough to make everything in your universe and big enough to take care of everything and anything in your life. And he'll never say, "I cannot hold it together, I need more power" (Scottish brogue), He's got you covered.
One of my favorite stories that's a true story of all times was about Donald Gray Barnhouse. Now Donald Gray Barnhouse, he's a great author, one of my favorite authors, who wrote a great series of books, one on Revelation, that's the best. He's in heaven now. Donald Gray Barnhouse attended Princeton Theological Seminary, graduated, went back to Princeton twelve years after graduation to speak to the class at a place called Miller Chapel on the campus of Princeton University. And as he was speaking, in the front row was his old Hebrew professor, Dr. Robert Dick Wilson. Old Dr. Wilson in the front row couldn't hear that well, squinted you know, an old guy. And Donald Gray Barnhouse gave his message, and afterwards the old professor went up, put his hand out, shook it and said to Dr. Barnhouse, "If you come back again I will not come and hear you preach. I only come once. I'm glad that you are a big Godder. When my boys come back I come to see if they're big Godders or little Godders and then I'll know what their ministry will be like. Barnhouse asked him to explain further. Old Dr. Wilson said, "Well some men have a little God and they're always in trouble with him. He can't do any miracles. He can't take care of the inspiration and transmission of the scriptures to us. He doesn't intervene on behalf of his people, they have a little God and I call them little Godders. And then there are those who have a great God, he speaks and it's done, he commands and it stands fast, he knows how to show himself strong on behalf of them that fear him. You Donald have a great God and he will bless your ministry." With that he grabbed his hand, said ‘God bless you' and they parted never to see each other again.
So which is it? Are you a big Godder? Are you a little Godder? I guess you could tell by looking at the ends of your fingers in some cases, do you bite those nails a lot, chewed them off, are so frightened and worried about the future? When God said that he'll walk every step of the way and that impossible isn't in his vocabulary and his will is perfect for you. And I just hope that you are filled with a sense of purpose and trust and that more than anything else tomorrow and the rest of this week and this year, your pursuit would be to be filled with the knowledge of his will for your life, because He's so powerful.
And if you don't know this God on a personal level and you think, "I'd love that whole concept of being able to face my life with that kind of confidence," would you please before you leave this morning step into our prayer room, right over here up front to your left, speak with a pastor.
Let's pray. Well Father we say that you are a great God. And we declare in prayer to you here what David said, "Marvelous are your works," because you yourself are so marvelous, so unique, so outstanding; that even words, books, songs can never tell the whole story. We have barely peeked into the greatness, the bigness, the power, and the awesomeness of God. For we declare it, Lord. And I pray that we would learn to declare it and even articulate it every day, that our hearts would ever be soft to your work. And we would say it's marvelous. And we would also rest in that it's meticulous, you care for us in a detailed fashion. Nothing escapes your eye, you're intimate that way. And therefore we can trust you. We can live with purpose. Because your wisdom in matchless, your thoughts are so precious to us and so ever-available. And we thank you Lord and I pray that we would leave here today and live our days with that sense of confidence in you, not because of who we are but it's because of who you are. In Jesus' name. Amen.