Psalm 139:13-18 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,[a] 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.
Hold on to these two statements. Your works are wonderful. How precious to me are your thoughts.
David highlights God’s omnipotence as he talked about His mighty power as the Creator of all people. No one else can create a person. No one else has that kind of power.
Listen, God is not random when it comes to expressing His power. When God does something, He does it on purpose. When God does something, He means to. He doesn’t create something as an experiment.
When God creates, He has a purpose for that creation. Our attempt to deny or change what God creates doesn’t undo what God intends. It’s just a rejection of what God intends.
Further, our effort to alter what God creates is simply an expression of our willful decision to turn our back on what He has made, to reject God as the omnipotent, Almighty God that He is. In other words, the person who seeks to do so, rejects God’s wonderful works and doesn’t consider or care about what God thinks of those works.
When David recounted the way he had been made by God, the way God moved in power to form and fashion his body, the way God was hands-on and intimately involved in putting his DNA together, in forming his organs, how God accounted for his bone structure, how He add in his veins and arteries, how He inserted the materials necessary for the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems, how each organ was painstakingly created, how He installed his brain capacity and filled David’s body with all the potential for life, for personality, for talents and abilities, and the assignment of his gender, whether male or female, when he considered all of that, David said two fundamental things. He said two things that became the bedrock for the way he lived his life, the way he ruled as King, the way he made decisions. He said, “Your works are wonderful. How precious to me are your thoughts.”
David had settled who God was. He had established that God was Sovereign, that God was the Designer, the Architect of his life, the omnipotent One who expresses His will through the works of His hands. David believed God was a powerful AND purposeful God. He believed that as He created life, He did so with a distinct plan for that life. He believed that life was an intentional expression of not only the power, but also the will of God and that no conception would be an “accident.” If a child was conceived, it was because God was at work to work on, to work in and to work through that child’s life.
When we disregard that God is the Creator of life, and that He has a plan for each life, then life, in general, is devalued. In addition, no person can project someone’s future based on a contemporary set of circumstances or perceived circumstances. No person can determine what someone’s future will look like if they are given the opportunity to pursue it. God alone, knows the intentions and thoughts He has for each person. With God’s help, people overcome physical and mental challenges all the time. People deal with and overcome adverse circumstances, like being born to young parents or being born into poverty, all the time. For us to decide that someone is better off dead is for us to dismiss that the omnipotent power of God is an expression of His intended will and is an attempt to play God ourselves. God has thoughts and plans for every life.
As David thought about the unlimited, creative power of God, he concluded, “Your works are wonderful. How precious to me are your thoughts.”
This isn’t intended to be a “Right to Life” message, per say, but this is a message about the power of God on and in creation as an expression of His will for all that He creates. When God moves in power to create something, because He can, because He is omnipotent, that creation, that action contains an expression of His will at the same time, for whatever He creates.
And while we are here, I just want to touch on transgenderism. I know that there are some cases where, because of a birth defect, it is difficult to know what sex a baby is when it is born. I think we can all agree that those cases are heartbreaking and complicated and parents have to consult doctors and pray and wrestle with very difficult decisions. What I want to mention doesn’t involve the nuances surrounding those situations. What I want to address is the notion that anyone would attempt to reverse what God, by His sovereign and omnipotent power, has established. When God is at work in a mother’s womb, to create life, He assigns a gender to that life. That precious miracle is a boy or a girl. A boy OR a girl. Building on what I the groundwork I have laid, I believe Scripture teaches that being made male or female, expresses the desire of God for the way a person is to live out their life.
We see in the very first book of the Bible that God created Adam and Eve, man and woman, intentionally, on purpose. Talk about God’s omnipotent power. He created Adam from the dust of the earth, and He created Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. Do you know anyone else who could do that? Adam and Eve were created to be equal but different. Both were created to reflect God’s image on the earth. The two sexes were intentionally created on purpose for multiple purposes. When God creates a man or a woman, it’s because He means to. To decide one day, whether at five or six or twenty-five or twenty-six or even later, that you were born the wrong sex, and to try to alter what God has, through His power and plan established, is a rejection of that power and intended will.
David said, “Your works are wonderful. How precious to me are your thoughts.” In other words, David said, “I am going to trust that the Almighty God knew what He was doing when He created me, and I will seek to honor those intentions because God has the perfect plan for me.”
I’m glad God is omnipotent. I sure want His power to be available when I am sick or am in a difficult situation, but what I can’t do is divorce His power from His purpose. We must not divorce God’s power from His purposes. God has a reason for releasing His power every time He does. We need to be able to receive and cooperate with His purposes when that happens.
David ended Psalm 139 with a prayer. Here it is: 23 Search me, 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.
In light of God’s omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence, as expressed in all of Psalm 139, what if we apply David’s prayer this way?
“God, if I have offended You by believing and acting as if You don’t know it all, can’t see it all, aren’t everywhere or don’t have a Sovereign plan when Your power is released, change me. If I don’t line up with who You have revealed Yourself to be in Scripture and through all You have created, I repent. I want to adjust my life to Your plan. I don’t want to be led by my feelings, but by the truth and the Holy Spirit who can enable me to make the necessary adjustments. I am sorry for minimizing You in my mind, God, and for elevating myself and my will over Your intentions. I don’t want to live my life out of tune with You. Please bring a resolution to the dissonance in my life, and lead my heart and mind to enable me to experience You in Your fullness as I get out of the way.”
God knows all. God is everywhere. God’s power reveals His will. Let’s worship and live as if we believe it.
