The Omnipotent God Made Me

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them. 
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them! 
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

Psalm 139:13-18

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them. 
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them! 
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

Psalm 139:13-18

In Psalm 139, David is meditating on God’s penetrating knowledge of him, His inescapable presence with Him, and His sovereign purposes for him. In the opening section (vv. 1-6), David meditates on God’s omniscience. The totality of his life—everything he would ever say, do, think, feel, was not only known by God but had always been known by God, and evaluated by God according to His perfect standards. In the second section (vv. 7-12), David mediates on God’s omnipresence. All of David’s life is lived coram deo—before the face of God. David feels overwhelmed, but where can you flee to escape the gaze of an all-knowing, all-present God? David soon comes to his senses. After considering not only the glorious realms of light and life but also the fearsome realms of darkness and the grave, David takes great comfort in God’s protective omnipresence. Even if the darkness should overwhelm him (Ps 139:11), it can’t separate David from the protective presence of God. To Yahweh, the darkness is as the light (Ps 139:12).

How does David know these things? These verses seem to be the first time in Scripture that God’s omniscience and omnipresence are so clearly described. The answer seems to be from observing Creation. Specifically, from David’s meditation on God’s formation of him! That’s why David’s statement in the opening line of the third section begins with the word “for.” David is using deduction. He’s drawing a conclusion.

  1. For you formed my inward parts;
    you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

David’s conclusion is very simply this: the reason that God knows everything about me and the reason that He is always present with me, is that He made me.

  • The word translated “inward parts” literally means “kidneys”. In David’s culture and language, the “kidneys” were used figuratively to represent the emotional being, or the soul. “Knitting together” represents the formation of the physical body.
  • Together these ideas give us a beautiful picture of God, with the greatest of skill, with the greatest of care, with the greatest attention to detail, weaving together the tapestry of the whole person, body and soul.
  • And to top it all off, David writes, He does it… in the dark! In a place totally inaccessible to the human eye (which was still the case until only recently), in the darkness of a mother’s womb, God, the great Craftsman, weaves together His greatest masterpieces!

Meditating on this wonderful truth causes David to stop and praise his Creator! He says,

  1. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

And that doesn’t just apply to himself. David writes…

  • Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

ALL your works are wonderful Lord! “Wonderful” as in awe-inspiring. Your works in Creation are wonderful! Your works in redemptive history are wonderful! You are a wonder-working God! You are a God of wonders!

And now in verses 15-16, watch how David traces it backwards.

  1. My frame was not hidden from you, 
    when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

  1. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; 
    in your book were written, every one of them,
    the days that were formed for me,
    when as yet there was none of them.

Follow David’s reasoning here: To paraphrase: “Yahweh, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You, God, the master craftsman, made me in all my intricate detail, in “the depths of the earth”, flowery language representing the womb, which in David’s day was as dark and remote and inaccessible.

“Well…” David reasons, “…if you made me in such intricate detail then, if you knew everything about me then, you must know everything about me now.” David’s logical conclusion, going back to the first section, “You are the omniscient God who knows me!”.

And if, God, I was “not hidden from you” there… if “your eyes saw my unformed substance” there, surely I am not hidden from you now.” David’s logical conclusion, going back to the second section, “you are the omnipresent God who sees me!

“And if, God, you ordained every thread, every color, every detail of the tapestry when you wove me together then, then surely your directing and governing of my life did not end at birth but will continue into the future. David’s logical conclusion, in verse 16: surely “in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.”

And when David says in verse 17,

  1. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!

  1. If I could count them, they are more than the sand. 

The “thoughts” he is referring to are probably God’s “intensions” for David’s life as written in God’s “book” from verse 16. “How vast is the sum of them!” Again to paraphrase: “Every aspect of my life has been ordained in advance by the God Who knows me, the God Who sees me, the God Who made me for a purpose.”

And David writes at the end of verse 18,

  • I awake, and I am still with you. 

To “awaken” in this case probably means to awake from meditation. David has been meditating on God’s intimate knowledge of David, His inescapable and protective presence with David, and His foreordained purposes for David. Why has he been meditating on these things? We’re told in the next section, the last section starting in verse 19, where David writes,

  1. Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
    O men of blood, depart from me!

While we’re not given specifics, it appears that David is dealing with a situation where these “men of blood,” these murderers, are either trying to kill him or trying to coerce him because of his position of power to be an accomplice in the murder of someone else. David’s response to this danger is important. David’s response, which should also be our response whenever we are faced with a situation that seems overwhelming, is to withdraw and to meditate on the character of God, drawing strength, wisdom, and resolve from Him. More on that next time.

I leave you with these thoughts: God makes no mistakes. “This God—His way is perfect.” (Ps 18:30). Dear friend, this wonderful truth extends to God’s formation of you. Prevailing worldviews tell us that we are nothing more than the product of time + matter + chance, but the philosophers never add up the math. Time + matter + chance = despair, because if humanity is a cosmic accident, then there’s no objective purpose to our existence, life is ultimately meaningless, and we have no intrinsic value. That’s a logical conclusion that’s inescapable, and we see the consequences of his horrific thinking all around us.

The Bible screams at us no. No, your life is not purposeless. No, your life is not meaningless. No, you are not without value. There is an inestimable dignity to your humanity that comes from the fact that you were made in the image of God (Gen 1:27). God, with the greatest of skill, care, and attention to detail, “wove you together” in your mother’s womb. Far from the crushing meaninglessness imposed by cruel worldviews like materialism, the reality is that you were intentionally created for the highest and most noble of purposes—to know, love, trust, worship, and obey the True and Living God!

If you are trusting in Christ, you know this. You know what it is to find true joy. You know what it is to be restored to the purpose of your humanity. You can say to God along with David, “You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Ps 16:11).

If you are not yet trusting in Christ, you long for this. In the end, all the world’s promises of true and lasting joy through materialistic pursuits are “broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jer 2:13). Why? Because we were made for more than that! As Augustine wrote so long ago, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Living for the trinkets of this world leaves us empty in the end. And then, there’s the looming fear of judgment. Try as you might, you can’t ignore the fact that God is there (Rom 1:18-20), that you have sinned against Him (Rom 3:19), and that there is a coming judgment (Heb 9:27). God commands you to repent (Acts 17:30). Stop running from the God you know is there. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim 1:15). Trust in Him for forgiveness of sins and peace with God. Turn from sin, and embrace the purpose of your existence—to live for the glory of this great God Who calls you out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Pet 2:9).

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