Sermon Transcript
Have you ever tried to seek your identity apart from God? How’d that work out for you? Probably not. Probably not? Really?
Well, in fact, when we try to seek our identity apart from God, it can really leave us broken or it can really leave us kind of messed up. And so we’ve been talking the last few weeks about this identity, this idea of the image of God, right. That our search for identity can be found in the image of God. And so when I’m talking about identity, really what we’re talking about is the answers that we have to these two questions of who am I and why am I here? Right.
And so just to recap, I want to put some things that we’ve discussed over the last few weeks up here. And, you know, our identity is rooted in the image of God, right? The Bible teaches us that when we. When we find our identity in the image of God, that it brings that wholeness, that fulfillment that we’re looking for. And then also that image that’s bestowed upon us is given by God to everyone that’s human.
It’s intrinsic. It’s a part of what it means to be human. And so that kind of changes our view of other people and even ourselves. And that image can’t be taken away. It can’t be diminished because of our sin.
It’s still an innate part of who we are. And finally being created in God’s image, it means that we are his representatives here on earth. And so when we seek that identity apart from God, it just leads to brokenness. It leads to a lot of hurt. Right?
And so last week, we talked about how we can, you know, on this. We’re on this journey, this search, so to speak, for this identity in Christ. Right? And so as we seek that, we first of all have to examine ourselves, we said last week, okay, if you don’t. If you don’t think you can trust God yet to search you, at least search yourself and ask yourself, how’s this working out for me?
Can I maintain, can I sustain this identity? And if so, do I believe that God will bless me for it? And so last week, if you remember, I kind of dangled the carrot and said, we’d have more answers for you this week, and we will. That’s kind of the whole purpose of today, is to talk about what, about when God searches us. But before we get there, I want to kind of illustrate for us what it looks like for us to have this identity apart from God and what that can feel like.
And so when I was teaching this retreat, this series came from a retreat that I did back in January with some high school students down at a camp in Springfield, and I actually did a magic trick for them, right? And just to kind of illustrate what it can feel like to have the deck stacked against you. Like, what if we examine ourselves and we just feel like, I don’t want to play with the hand that I’ve been dealt, right. What do I do about that? What do I do when it feels like, you know, everything is just against me?
And I don’t like what I see when I examine myself, when I let God examine me? And so I did this magic trick, and I thought, you know, maybe I could do that for you today. But then I was thinking, you know, we have our own resident magician here, magic mark. And so I’m actually gonna. We’re gonna bring Mark out here.
Is that okay if we do that? So we’re gonna bring Mark out, and he’s gonna. He’s gonna actually help me illustrate this. We’re gonna do a magic trick here. I’m going to get letters about this.
I know. It’s like, did you hear they do magic out at central Church of Christ? You know, like, can’t wait to see the comments online about this. So. So sometimes it feels like the deck is just stacked against us, like we’re just dealt a terrible hand.
So, Mark, you know, I like to play cards, and we played Euchre together before, right? And so. But sometimes I feel like I just get dealt a really bad hand. So do you think you can just deal me a really bad poker hand? I’m good at this.
Okay. Thank you. All right. I figured you could be. So.
So Marcia’s gonna deal me a really bad hand. So maybe you started out. You felt like it was foretold that you were gonna shine like a diamond. You took a lesson from Rhianna. That’s a dated pop culture reference for those of you that are not playing along.
But you thought, ladies, you thought, I’m gonna meet a guy. He’s gonna treat me like a queen, right? I’m gonna be a queen someday. Or maybe, fellas, you thought you were gonna meet your queen, but she was a queen of clubs, and now it just feels like she just wants to club you, right? And then maybe you go along through life, and things are getting hard in that relationship, and your two hearts just get broken, right?
And your hearts are broken. You’re walking along through life, and it just seems really, really tough. And then maybe that relationship ends. And so maybe you feel like things are tense, right? And you go to more clubs.
I don’t know. That’s the best I got with that one. And so, all in all, you walk through life and you just feel like life is against you, and you feel like it’s just a joke, that it’s a joke, and life is just a joke for you, and the joke’s on you, as well. But what if I told you. What if I told you that you don’t have to play the hand that you’re dealt?
You don’t have to play the hand that you’re dealt? In fact, the whole purpose of this talk on identity is that God wants to transform your life. He wants to change your life and make it better, right? He wants to make it better in his eyes. So, Mark, do you think you can transform that into a better hand for us?
You don’t think. Okay. Well, then I guess, all right. I got a friend out there that can do it. Okay.
All right. Everybody’s turning away.
Nothing up your sleeves, right? Yeah. There you go. So, there’s a better hand. If you notice, that’s a royal flush.
Right? So, I’ve watched him do this several times. I have no idea how he did that. So, let’s give Mark a hand. Thanks for helping us out, Mark, helping us understand that we don’t have to play the hand that we’re dealt.
We don’t have to live this life apart from God. In fact, God wants to transform our lives. Now, like I said, mark’s the sleight of hand guide. That wasn’t actual magic. And it’s not just a sleight of hand that God wants to do.
He doesn’t just want to trick you into thinking your life is better. He actually wants to transform it. He actually wants to make your life different. And so we’re gonna talk today a little bit about what that looks like. What does it look like for us to live a transformed life?
But in order for us to do that, we have to be open to God searching our hearts. It starts with letting God in. Last week, we talked about how we should examine ourselves. This week, we’re gonna talk about how we need to let God examine us. And the reality is, sometimes when we let God examine us, we may not like what we find.
Right? We may not like what we see when God searches our hearts, but the reality is that we can trust God to search us, to know us, and to transform us through his grace. So, we’re gonna dive in today into psalm 139, and we’re gonna see how that transformation can happen in our lives. Right? And so in order to better understand what’s going on in psalm 139, if you wanna turn there in your bibles, we’ll be there in just a second.
But you have to understand who wrote it. And King David wrote a lot of the psalms, right? And in David’s life, David was a guy who knew God. He had this intimate and deep relationship with God. He had this journey with God where he understood a lot about who God was, and he understood who he was in God’s eyes.
And so we see from the scriptures that David is called a man after God’s own heart, right? And don’t we want to be called people after God’s own heart? And David frequently sought God’s guidance in his presence because David didn’t have an easy life. You know, David maybe felt like we do sometimes. Like the rules are just against us, like the deck is stacked against him, like the hand that he’s dealt is not one that he wants to play.
And yet David had a response, even when he was experiencing these persecutions, through his intimate relationship with God and his understanding of God’s attributes, to seek God’s guidance to shape his life. And in the psalms, we had these beautiful poems and representations of what David went through through these beautiful words. And it’s because of this deep relationship with God that we can look to David as our example for what it means to let God search us. So let’s go ahead and dive in. But first we have to answer a question.
And it’s actually similar to a question that we asked last week. And David actually answers this question for us. It’s, how do we know that we can trust God to search us? Now, it’s easy for us to examine ourselves, because if I don’t like what I find or if I feel a certain way about what I find, then nobody else has to know, right? But how do I know that God should be the one that searches me?
And David actually answers this question for us. And it’s really similar to a question that we asked last week. Do you trust God’s word to speak the truth to you through me right now? And we have to answer that first part of that question first before we can move on. How do we know God isn’t going to trick us?
How do we know that he doesn’t have cards up his sleeve, right, that he isn’t going to stack the deck against us? Can we even trust God? And in order to allow God to search us, we have to accept that we can. Now, thankfully, David gives us four really good reasons why we can trust God, and we’re gonna read through those in these first several verses of psalm 139. First of all, David gives his first reason that we can trust God.
According to him, in psalm 139 is God’s omniscience. Now, that’s just a fancy latin word, that God knows all things, right? God knows all things. And so David writes, you have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit down, when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my laying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind, and before you lay your hand upon me, such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. And so the first reason that David says that we can trust God is that he is omniscient, that he knows all things.
Now, don’t we want a God in our corner who knows it all? Right, not in a smart aleck kind of way. And he’s not a know it all. That’s not what we’re saying. God knows all things.
He knows all possibilities before they even happen. And some people doubt that. Some people doubt that about God. How could he possibly know things that haven’t even happened yet? Well, God is outside of time.
He’s outside of space. And don’t we want a God in our corner who knows all possible outcomes, who knows us intimately, as David describes here? And so that’s the first reason that we can trust God. The second reason that we can trust God is like it. David says we can trust God because of his omnipresence.
Now, again, that’s a fancy latin word for meaning that God is in all places at all times. Right? David writes, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there.
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there, your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me. Even the darkness will not be dark to you.
The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. Again, David had this deep understanding of these attributes of who God is and what he’s capable of. He knew of God’s omniscience and his omnipresence, these fancy words that means God knows all things, and he’s in all places. He’s everywhere. And so David acknowledges the impossibility of fleeing from God.
But David doesn’t say this in a way where he’s defeated. He doesn’t say this in a way that, as if he’s uncomfortable with the eternal and always there presence of God. Instead, David is saying that this knowledge that God has, this presence of God, it brings him comfort. It brings him comfort into his life. It’s not a threat that God knows everything about you, that he’s always with you.
In fact, it’s meant to bring us comfort and peace. The third reason that we can trust God, according to David in Psalm 139, is that he is our creator, his creatorship. Now, I had to check if creatorship was a word that I just made up, and it’s not, okay. I actually looked it up. It is a real word.
And I even was, like, creatorship synonyms, right? And I just. I could not find a better word than creatorship to describe God as our creator. God made us. He made all things, and he’s sovereign over them.
That means that he rules over us. Now, again, it’s not a threat. That’s not God ruling with a heavy hand over us. He rules our lives with peace and love and joy. David wrote, for, you created my inmost being.
You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. 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, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. You see, this appreciation that David has, this admiration for God as our creator. And it makes sense because, you know, if you think about David’s life, he started out as a shepherd, right? He started out. We’ve talked about shepherds before, how shepherds spent a lot of time out in the wilderness with their sheep.
And so David, as a young boy, would have been familiar with creation. He would have been familiar with all the parts of God’s creation as he walked through the hills and the hollows and the rivers and the wadis and. And all these places in Israel. David was intimately familiar with this land that God had created as a soldier. Later in life, David would have to use the landscape to his advantage.
He’d have to hide in certain caves and in certain hills. You’d have to find the high ground in order to win the battle. So David had an intimate knowledge of God’s creation, and so therefore, he had an appreciation and an admiration for his creator. The fourth and final reason that we can trust God, according to David, is his holiness, that God is set apart from all others. Now, David had a unique understanding of God’s holiness.
And it may actually seem a little difficult to find this in Psalm 139, unless we really understand what David is getting at here. But he writes, how precious to me are your thoughts, God? How vast is the sum of them. In other words, David is describing God’s, just God’s thoughts as this. Imagine finding this precious gem that’s unlike anything you’ve ever found before.
And that’s how David is describing God’s thoughts. And the vastness that David is describing just the thoughts of God, as these things that are so set apart, so beyond him. And he says, were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I wake, I am still with you. Throughout his life, David had these unique experiences of the holiness of God.
David was the anointed king, the second anointed king of Israel. And even when David was anointed, he understood that message that God had for the prophet Samuel that said that God doesn’t look at the outward appearance of the man. Instead, he looks at the heart. He looks at what’s going on deep inside us, and that’s what makes us holy, as God is holy, as David understood this. So really quick, let’s just recap.
I’ll put it up here on the screen for you. There’s these four things. Now, is this an exhaustive list of why we can trust God? No, there are so many other reasons why we can trust God, but these are just four that David gave us in this psalm alone. Right?
These are just four reasons, and they’re four very good reasons that we can trust God, but they are his omniscience, that he knows all things, his omnipresence, that he’s in all places his creatorship, that he made us. And he is sovereign over us in his holiness, that he is set apart from all others. According to David, these are just some of the reasons why we should trust God to search our hearts, why we should allow him to look within us. So can we say that we trust God to search our hearts? Can we say that we trust God to be open to him, even if we don’t like what we see when he reveals what’s real in our hearts?
Can we say that about ourselves, that we have these and even more reasons to trust God. And now that we see these reasons for trusting God, will we let him search our hearts? Before we do that, it might be helpful to understand why David wants God to search his heart. In fact, David answers that question, and we can ask that question of ourselves. Why do we need to let God search our hearts?
Why isn’t it good enough for us just to examine ourselves? And I’ll just determine whether things are good or bad. Why can’t I just decide how things are going inside of my world? Look at why David is asking God to search his heart. And it’s actually surprising.
Let’s listen. David writes in verse 19, if only you, God, would slay the wicked. Whoa. What just happened? Like, David was praising God for who he was, and I just imagine David’s, like, sitting on the top of the palace, and he’s, like, strumming his harp.
Blum bloom. You know, he’s singing praises to God, and then all of a sudden, this turned into a metal song, like, what’s going on? Like, that got dark really quick. He says, away from me, you who are bloodthirsty, they speak of you with evil intent. Your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies. That’s intense. That just took a turn, didn’t it?
Didn’t see that one coming. But do you notice why David is asking God to search him? He’s surrounded by his enemies. He’s surrounded by adversarial voices. Bloodthirsty adversaries, he calls them.
And this is the story of David’s life. He was often surrounded. He often faced adversity and persecution. The deck was often stacked against him. He was often dealt a hand that he didn’t want to play.
But do you see his response?
He’s turning it over to God. Think about some of these situations in David’s life. Just a few of them. Early on, King Saul, David’s father in law, right, wanted to kill him only because he was jealous of him. That’s the only reason.
He was just jealous of him. Saul had been rejected by God because of his sin as the king of Israel. And God anointed David, and Saul was jealous. And so he was a constant threat to David’s life for years. And yet God said that David was his anointed, that he was set apart, that God had a purpose and a plan for him.
Do you think David had to trust God throughout those years when Saul was breathing out murderous threats against him. Think about, I mean, we could go on and on, right? The Philistines. The Philistines were a great enemy of Israel, and so therefore, David fought them with the Lord on his side. Absalom, David’s own son, was one of his adversaries.
And on and on and on and on. David was surrounded, and he’s crying out to God, surrounded by these voices, surrounded by these bloodthirsty adversaries.
And the experience of being surrounded by enemies is reflected. And David’s expression of his hatred of those who oppose God. Notice he’s saying, these aren’t just my enemies. These are your enemies, God. The reality is that just like David’s life, we often find ourselves surrounded, don’t we?
We often find ourselves surrounded by adverse voices and the weight of our circumstances. And it can feel like those things will crush us. It can feel like the game is set against us, like we can never. And it could cause us to accept identities for ourselves outside of the identity that God has for us. Think about it this way.
If at the very least, maybe you’re thinking, well, Paul, I don’t have a lot of enemies. In fact, I don’t know if I have any, right? Everybody likes me. At the very least, every single one of us has an enemy of God who would have nothing more in our lives than for us to seek our identity apart from God because he knows it would destroy us. At the very least, we have that adversary in our lives.
And so we look at how David responds. These adversarial voices can make us question if God has really said he’d be there to protect us from our enemies, or does he really love us, or is he really there for us?
Can he really change our lives and make us something other than what we’ve become? Can he really change us to be more like him? It can lead us to ask those questions, and it can feel like the deck is stacked against us, like the game is over before it even starts. But what if we don’t have to play the hand that we’re dealt with? What if we don’t have to play with that set of rules?
And no matter how the deck is shuffled, that God can transform our lives? What if we, like David, could turn to God? What should we do when we examine ourselves and we don’t like what we see? We should turn that over to God. David gives us that answer that time and time again throughout his life, David sought God’s guidance through his adversaries through even his own sin.
And he asked God for his involvement in every aspect of his life. And psalm 139 is just one example of how David does this. He pleads for God to search his heart, to know his thoughts, to lead him in his way everlasting. David writes in verse 23, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me, and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there’s any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. You see David’s response? It’s not to blame everyone else. It’s not to seek an identity apart from God. Instead, surrounded by his enemies, David turns to God and asks him to search his heart.
His heart. He relies on God to reveal within him his wisdom and understanding to guide him. He doesn’t lean on his own understanding, and we must be willing to let God search us as well. Like David, when we are surrounded by enemies who would have us seek that identity apart from God? Anything other than God.
It may feel like we’re stuck in that endless game, but when we find ourselves there, if you find that identity that you’ve accepted for yourself is no longer working and you can turn to God for that transformation, you could swap it out for the real thing. And it’s not a trick, it’s not an illusion. It’s a real thing that God wants to do in your life. Jesus wants to bring such a transformation to your life, and you can trust him to do so. Redemption through faith in Jesus is not only a transformation of our identity, it rids us of our brokenness and our shame through the cross.
God’s love for us is not like our love for others. It’s unconditional. It’s eternal. And when we open our hearts to God and he finds anything unpleasing or offensive to him within us, God doesn’t crush us under the weight of that sin. He forgives us.
He cleanses us. So how can we experience that transformation and that redemption of our identity in our own lives? I want to give you some practical ways, four practical ways that you can do that today, because we need to open our hearts to the search that God wants to do. Just as David asked God to search his heart, we should also invite God in to search us. And if you’re going to take anything away from today’s message, you know, from the magic trick all the way to this moment, if you want anything that you should take home today, it should be this, that God redeems our identity.
When we open our hearts to his search, God redeems our identity when we open our hearts to his search. So how do we do that? Like I said, I want to give you four ways. First of all, ask God to reveal any areas in your life that need transformation. A good way to do that is pretty simple.
Every night when you lay down at bedtime, just ask God in. Ask him to search you. God, pray this prayer. Pray psalm 139, and just say, God, if there’s any offensive way in me, any sin, through my own doing, my own deeds, my own words, my own actions, if I’m turned against you in any way, God, just reveal that. Pray that prayer like David’s praying.
A simple task, but it could transform your relationship with Jesus. And here’s the thing. Trust that God is going to reveal some things that you don’t like, but that’s okay. When he does, what do we do about it? Do we just, you know, try to go out and, you know, like, right there, just get up out of bed and go out and try and make the world a better place?
Try to undo all the harm that we’ve done before we ever go back to sleep? Is that what we’re supposed to do to. I don’t think that’s possible. I think instead, we just receive that forgiveness and that grace of God. We say, thank you, Jesus, that you’re a friend of sinners like me.
And as you receive that grace and it transforms your life, there’s more things that we can do. The second thing, we can seek our true identity in the image of God. Our true identity is found in being created in God’s image. We’ve said that multiple times over the last several weeks. But instead of searching for our identity in worldly things or in the opinions of others, we should center our identity on the truth that God has already given us.
We need to swap out those false identities, address them for what they are and the brokenness and the shame that they bring into our lives, and instead bring on that identity in Christ that’s redeemed. We need to let God be God in our lives instead of wearing that name tag that says, hello, I’m God. Now, remember that third thing? We need to embrace God’s unconditional love. God’s love for us is unconditional, and it’s eternal.
And we don’t have to earn it. We can’t earn it. God’s never gonna love you anymore, and there’s nothing you can do to make him love you any less. It’s unconditional and eternal. Regardless of your past mistakes or your perceived shortcomings and so let that love transform the way you perceive yourself.
When you look in the mirror, do you see those names, beloved and redeemed as God sees you when you look at others, does that love of God transform our view of others? Do we see in others beloved and redeemed? The final thing is receive redemption through Jesus. If you’ve come here today and you’ve never taken that first step of faith to follow Jesus as your lord and savior, I want to invite you. Maybe today’s the day.
Is God speaking to your heart? Is he telling you to walk forward into Jesus to receive that transformation? You don’t have to play with the hand that was dealt to you. God wants to transform it. He wants to transform your life.
And so, as we come to this time, end of this time together, as we enter this time of invitation and communion, we could trust God to search our hearts and transform us according to his truth, because God redeems our identity and we open our hearts to his search. And that’s what he wants to do in your life today.