Resources: Lesson Manuscript, PowerPoint, and Devotional
Franklin Heights Church Connect Groups: https://franklinheights.org/connect/groups/
Review: Last week we looked at how God cares for us as a gentle, protecting, providing, loving and caring, good Shepherd.
Title: God’s Greatness
Text: Psalm 139:1-4, 7-16
Key Verse: Psalm 139:1, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me!”
Theme: Because God has made us, he knows us personally and is with us always.
Introduction: God has created us and formed us for a purpose to know Him intimately and enjoy a relationship with Him, and to bring glory to His Name; what a privilege! Why is sit crucial to know your purpose in life? What happens when people don’t know this purpose for their lives? What are some steps you can take or have taken to realize and enter into God’s purpose for your life?
Main Points:
- His knowledge (vv. 1-4)
O Lord, you have searched me [ The wording here means a thorough investigation, a thorough amount of research and knowledge.] and known me! [This highlights and affirms God’s omniscience, His all-knowing-ness of all things. In fact, there is a Hebrew term used here, yadah, which suggests complete and intimate knowledge.]
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar. [Even from afar, a long distance, God would be ever present and close enough to discern our thoughts and emotions, our feelings.]
3 You search out my path and my lying down [CSB, “my travels and my rest…”]
and are acquainted [CSB, “aware”; Whatever happens to us, wherever we are, and whatever we are doing, wherever we are going, God is with us. That’s amazing and comforting.]
with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
2. His presence (vv. 7-12)
[Even though God’s Holy Spirit did not abide in and live in all believers, He came upon specifically called individuals for specific leadership tasks and He was very much actively involved in the Old Testament: Empowerment, actions, inspiration, etc.]
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, [The poetic parallel to the heights of heaven, Sheol was the place of the dead, the underworld.]
you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, [CSB, “The western horizon”; “Uttermost parts of the sea” (ESV, KJV); This would be the Mediterranean Sea for the writer. Jonah tried crossing it to escape God’s plan for his life, but he couldn’t. These kinds of efforts are futile because God’s presence is still there. There is no escaping God.]
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day, [God is light. I John 1:5 says, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” Where God resides, no darkness can dwell. This is a comforting and hope-giving reminder that even the darkest situation you may be facing today is no match for the light God brings into it. He brings His powerful light into the most darkest of situations, and he sorts things out according to His plan and will.]
for darkness is as light with you.
3. His power (vv. 13-16)
For you formed my inward parts; [“reigns” (KJV); “inmost being” (NIV); The Hebrew uses this to refer to the kidneys and poetically here it refers to the deepest parts of the human being’s life.]
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. [God doesn’t make any mess ups. He makes everything He makes perfectly, just the way He intended. He never misses one single detail. Knowing this should cause us to praise Him.]
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; [CSB, “formless…”; “Unperfect” (KJV); “unformed” (ESV and NIV); This is human beings in the embryonic state. God knew us before we even were formed into a place where we had the appearance of being human, and this gives His created image bearers particular value and worth, (Gospel) so much so that God sent His own Son in human likeness to take on humanity and our sin and willingly suffer and die on the cross in our place and rise again offering us eternal salvation to all who call on His name. What a Savior!]
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Doctrine: Our key doctrine for this week is Man.
Lifeway says, “Man in the special creation of God, made in His own image.”
Genesis 1:26-27, “26 Then God said, “Let us make man[a] in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
Psalm 8:3-6, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings[a]
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,”
Discussion Questions:
- What does it mean to be made in God’s image?
- Why is that important to understand?
- Why should God’s intimate knowledge of each of us bring out our praise to Him?
- How does His purposeful creation of you change the way you live this week?
Big Takeaway(s):
- Believers can praise God for His knowledge of them.
- Believers can be comforted by God’s presence.
- Believers can be encouraged that God has purposefully created them to serve Him.
Caleb Walker 
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