Well, if you have your Bibles, would you turn with me please to Psalm 139, Psalm 139. And this is an absolutely beautiful Psalm that I'm sure many of you know and love already. We're gonna look at just a portion of it this morning, verses 13 through to 18. Psalm 139, verse 13. David says, 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. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. Please keep your Bibles open there. In 2019, Paul McCartney really did become a paperback writer. And he wrote a book for children called Grand Dude. And it's a story about a granddad. He says it's not meant to be him, but it is a play on the song that he wrote, Hey Jude, Grand Dude. And it's a song about a granddad who has lots and he's a magical granddad, and they go on adventures together. And they had a book launch at Waterstones where he himself read the story to the children. And of course, the press were there to take photographs of that. And one of the things I loved about that when I saw that was the coming together of the two ages, the older and the younger. And I thought, what a beautiful picture that is. You know, it's both ends of life. and there they're enjoying something good together. Well, here in the Psalm, Psalm 139, we have a God who cares for us, not only at both ends of life, but through the whole of life. And I've called this sermon this morning, The God Who Loves You From Start to Finish. and I hope this will be an encouragement to you as it is to me. David who wrote this psalm is in a time of difficulty and a time when there's possibly persecution on him from either Saul or Absalom and he's perhaps had to flee away from where he was in Jerusalem and he's had to flee away for safety but nevertheless he knows God is with him and that's the great emphasis in the first part of this psalm. But David knows that God wasn't just with him when he was a shepherd boy, David knows he's with him now and David knows God is going to be with him in the future too. And verses 13 to 18 celebrate this fact that the Lord is the God who loves him from start to finish and it's such a touching personal psalm that speaks to us about the greatness of our God in his love for us. It's a real blessing and a real faith builder for us as we take in what it teaches here. And we ought to be interested in this subject, if you think about it, because all of us are getting older, aren't we? There's a new app now for phones, it's probably actually been out a couple of years, but it's called FaceMe. And what it does, it is able to take a photograph of you and it's able to put it through a an app that makes you look old and shows you what you will look like when you're older. They actually tried this on a few celebrities' photos. It wasn't all that flattering, I have to say. Gordon Ramsay, for instance. Now, you might think, well, I didn't like Gordon Ramsay anyway, but he definitely doesn't come off looking as great as he does, of course, when he's younger. That lady, I had no idea who it was to her. I saw it underneath. That's Courtney Cox, the girl with the brown hair from Friends. What a contrast that is. And as for Jeremy Vine, Well, what can I say? Age is projected there to take its toll upon them. We are an ageing population, aren't we? It's the issue of the day. According to the Daily Telegraph in 2017, by the year 2045, a quarter of the population will be over 65, which is a big percentage of the population. We are an ageing country in that respect. But whatever age or stage we're at, this is a good message for us to know about the God who loves us from start to finish. And whether you're a Christian or a non-Christian here this morning, I pray this will speak to you about the God we know and you can know if you don't know him yet as your savior to be in your life. So let's see this passage as David reveals these truths to us under four headings. He speaks first of all of his creation of us, then secondly his comprehension of us, thirdly his consideration of us, and fourthly his company, and that should say with us not of us. So let's have a look at these four things. First of all his creation of us. If you look in verse 13, David says, for you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. And it goes on in verse 14 to say, your works are wonderful. I know that full well. You see, David isn't like many modern thinkers in our day today who believe that man came about by some generation of his own ability or life just coming about miraculously on its own. He knew that, David knew that God himself was his creator. And what's remarkable about this verse is that David doesn't just say, I know God, you created mankind. I know you created Adam, the first man from which I came. But he's saying here, you created me. I am created by you. And it's very personal. And every human being can say the same thing. We are a creation of God. And like a diamond that can be turned and looked at in its different facets, this truth can be seen in these verses here from different angles. God created us spiritually. Have a look at verse 13 again. It says, for you created my inmost being. My inmost being. And isn't that interesting? The Bible starts off here with the deepest part of us which can't actually be seen. our spirits, our souls, the inner man, the invisible part of us. You know, when the Greeks wanted to find out if man had a soul, they would dissect dead bodies and things like that to see if it had a soul inside it. And they came to the conclusion, no, we can't find one. It is that man hasn't got one. But yet we all know it does. You know, why do you love music? Why do you find some things funny? Why do you find some things beautiful? It's because you you have a soul, you have a spiritual part of you. You're not just flesh and blood, you are a spiritual being as well. And the inmost being is the person you truly are. You can lose an arm or a leg or a limb or any part, but you can still be the same person because that's the real you inside, the inmost you. The Eternal You. There was a blind lady who was blind and deaf and her name was Laura Bridgeman. And the lady who was helping her in her life was trying to explain this matter to her about the invisible side of her called the soul. And Laura said, what is a soul? And her friend who was helping her said, that which thinks, feels, hopes, loves. And Laura responded by saying, and aches, and aches. Because that's what she felt inside. And it's true, isn't it? Our innermost being, that's where we feel our most deepest thing. And the fact that the Lord created us with that part, I want to tell you, that tells us something very wonderful that we need to know. He's the one who can minister to us in the inmost being. The place where nobody else can. No doctor has a medicine that can get to your soul. But God can minister to her. And I don't know what you are going through, what you've been through in life. I know many people have had very traumatic experiences. David said in Psalm 23, he restores my soul. And God is able to minister on the inner side. He's able to forgive our sins, which are, first of all, sins of the heart, by the death of the Lord Jesus. And he's able to heal us with his power. You know, Isaiah 53, the great prophecy of the crucifixion, says about the Lord Jesus, surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. Yet we consider him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed. The Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross to save us from our sins but to put us back together in every way on the inside so we're right with God and we're able to have a healed life as well and the inner man. So the Lord is the one who made us spiritually, and he's the one we can turn to for help in that deepest area. If I'm talking to somebody today who has some deep, deep hurt in your life, I would say, go to the Lord. Go to the Lord. He's the one who can reach into the inmost being. He made the inmost being. He's the one who can minister there when nobody else can. We see then not only the Lord made us spiritually, but he also made us physically in verse 13. It says in the next part of the verse, you knit me together in my mother's womb. Now that phrase being knit together describes the formation of the physical body with all the veins, all the sinews, the bones being formed and everything and God created us physically and it truly is an amazing thing. The human body is an amazing thing. in its creation. I came across something in a newspaper which said this. It blew my mind away. It said, in the cerebral cortex alone, there are roughly 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies. isn't that staggering, you know, how the human body has been made. It's so great that actually when they're making robots they try to copy the human body. A science magazine I read some years ago back in 2014 had an article on on robot engineers, and it said this, your body is a marvel. You can negotiate almost any landscape, manipulate most objects, and carry a supercomputer around in your head. No surprise then, the robot designers are looking to us for inspiration. We're physically remarkably made. And God made us in the inner man, and he made us physically as well. I've been reading the story of Alexander Mackay, who was a missionary from Scotland, as you can probably tell by the name. And he was an engineer, and he went out to Uganda. He was one of the pioneer missionaries into Uganda. And while he was there, he was preaching the gospel to save souls and lead people to Jesus Christ, but he was also trying to combat the curse of slavery. And what would happen is, and you can see in this picture here, which is obviously just an illustration, but you can see there were Arab slave traders would come and the kings, the African kings, would sell their own people into slavery for money or for weapons and things like this. And the misery, of course, that this was causing was terrible. And so Mackay was trying to combat this terrible evil. And as a part of his work for both the gospel and this social change, He was trying to educate the people and he would have these teaching times and he bought the king a huge picture of the human body and how the human body is made and all the things he can't see through his skin, his veins, his bones, his organs and so on. And he was showing him, and the king, King Matassa, he was looking at that. And he said, it's amazing. He said, it looks like a man. And he said, it is a man. It's the inside of you. And he showed him on the picture where the heart was. And he said, and you have one. He said, king, put your hand there, and you will feel it. And he put his hand there. And he could feel his heartbeat on his chest. And for the first time, he realized something that he had never known before. He had a heart on the inside. And he showed them how he could feel that pulse on their wrists. And Mackay looked around the court. And there were all the soldiers. There were all the slaves. There were all the dignitaries. And they were all feeling for their heartbeat. And he smiled to himself. And they were all learning. And he said, you know, they said to him, this is like one of your engines, you make it. It keeps going. It keeps going. And he said, yeah. Yeah. He said, God made that. And the king said, this is wonderful. And Mackay said, yes. And it's in the slave, too. And the king nodded. He got the idea. He understood. The slave is wonderfully made by God as well. The physical creation was remarkable. And this is what David is celebrating here. You knit me together and put all that together in my mother's womb when I was being born. and remarkable and I think of our Lord Jesus Christ in the womb of Mary and that was equally true there as well. Isn't that a tremendous thought as we read this psalm? And then we see that God made us not only spiritually and physically but also wonderfully as David puts it in verse 14. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. You know, if you want to see how wonderfully you are made, just roll up your sleeve and have a look at the wristwatch on your wrist and look at your hand and wrist. Now, which of the two is more complicated? Honestly and truthfully, your wrist and your hand is far more complicated than that wristwatch. And God made that. Isn't that remarkable? We are not just made well, we're made fearfully and wonderfully. What's that mean that I'm made fearfully? It means it's frighteningly good. That's what it means, as we would say in modern terms today. It's frightening how God made us so wonderful. And I was born and made, the works of God are wonderful in creation. I know that full well, says David. And so this is God's creation of us at the beginning of life. And we deserve, we need to give God the praise. He deserves the praise for his love for us at the beginning of our lives, for how he created us. If you saw Mount Rushmore, and I'm sure you've seen it on pictures, in books, or been to America perhaps and actually seen it, you would never say that was an accident, would you? You would never go, wow, look how the wind carved out all those faces of the presidents on the rocks. You'd say, no, that's an amazing piece of creation. How much more so, you and me? Our God made us out of love in a most wonderful way. So let's praise him for his love for us in his creation. But secondly, David draws our attention to the fact of his comprehension of us in verses 15 to 16. Because in these verses we read, it says, 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. What David is celebrating here is the fact that from our earliest moments to our final days, God knows all about us. Someone has said the greatest thing you can know about God is that God knows all about you. And I think that's true. There's nothing more comforting than to know God knows. I had a friend who was a more experienced pastor. He's still alive. I think he's just still alive. He lives in Cheltenham, and he was a retired Pentecostal minister. And when he retired from his ministry, they gave him a hand-carved ornament for putting on his desk. It just said, Father knows. Because that's what he used to say all the time. And whenever we would have an issue come up in a meeting that was a matter of concern, he would always resort to, father knows, father knows. And in his own family life, that was his phrase, father knows. And God knows all about us. He knows all about the days of our lives. When our life was in the mother's womb, when we were made in the secret place, when we were so small, perhaps our parents didn't even know that they were expecting a child at that stage. God knew all about you, even then. Isn't that amazing? My frame wasn't hidden from you, said David, when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth, thinking about how God made our body in our mothers. He said, your eyes saw my unformed body, when we were just still chemicals inside. God knew it all. And then he goes right the way through to the other end of life and he says, all the days ordained for me were written in your book. Do you know, it's an amazing thing, isn't it? God could have written our diaries in advance. He had every single day worked out. He knows our high days, our holidays, our happy days, our horrible days. As Solomon says in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, the day of which is appointed us to be born, the day on which is appointed for us to die. He knows them all. And that's just such a remarkable thing, isn't it? To understand God's full comprehension of us before one of them came to be. He knew it all. What a comfort to be able to say with Psalm 3115, my times are in his hands. It's a remarkable thing. I read a story in a Gideon magazine some years back. I think it was June 2009. And it was a Gideon magazine. I think it might have come from John Irvine, who used to have a lot of magazines from America and Canada. And it had a testimony in there about a man called James Chasteen, who was distributing Gideon Bibles in a nursing home in New York City. And he spotted an old man in a wheelchair, and the two of them sat and talked, and he was able to ask the man if he knew he would go to heaven. And the man said, I would like to go to heaven. He said, but I don't think I would. I don't know how, and no one has ever told me how. And James was able, therefore, to give him the gospel and share Christ with him. And afterwards, the man became a Christian and gave his life to the Lord. And as they were drawing towards the time of closing the meeting, and James was about to go, he just asked the man, just, by the way, how old are you? The man said, I'm 101. Isn't that amazing? All the way through his life, God had it all mapped out, and God knew the day in which he would be saved. and the Lord had it in his hand. You know, dear friends, our times are in his hands and God has that planned out and we can take comfort in that fact. He has that consideration worked out. Thirdly, we see here his What did I say? His comprehension, sorry. Thirdly, we see here his consideration of us. And by that, I mean his thinking of us. In verse 17 to 18, how precious to me are your thoughts, oh God. How vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. I don't know if you ever stop to think about this fact, but the greater the mind, the deeper the thoughts. And it's obvious truth, isn't it? But you know, a child has childish thoughts. Now they can be emotionally deep, but they're not at the depth of a level of a university professor. So as we get more and more complex and more and more greater in our abilities, how greater are our thoughts? Read the great theologians and you'll see the older they get in their faith, the deeper their thoughts are, the greater they are in their revelations that God gives them. Well, how much greater then is Almighty God in his thoughts? And God thinks about you all the time. That's what David says. He says that God's thoughts is a vast sum of them. They're like the sand. They're like the sand. Some years ago, I filled up a jar on the beach down at Bute. This is probably against the law. Somebody would probably tell me, you've got to take that back. Well, it's a children's talk. But it's full of grains of sand. Anybody like to guess how many grains of sand there are in that jar alone? you wouldn't even dare. The number would be too big for us to calculate. And yet, what is that compared to the grains of sand on a beach, or in the desert, or all the beaches, and all the deserts? And David didn't just say it was just on Earth. You know, there are deserts on some of the planets out there as well. So God has more thoughts about us than we can ever count. And he says they're precious thoughts. They're not thoughts, oh, how can I get them? How can I make their life miserable? What can I do to upset them? They're precious thoughts about us. He loves us, and he's thinking of us continually according to this. I find that a tremendous thing, don't you? You know, the depth of God's thoughts, and they're all about us. He knows our plans that he has for our lives, Jeremiah 29 11, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. And he knows all the things that matter to us. The great writer F.B. Meyer put it like this. He said, these thoughts of the Lord encompass us in all our paths and penetrate the inmost region of our being. Not a nerve or tissue, valve or vessel of our bodily organization is uncared for. All the littles of our little world are thought upon by the great God. That just blessed me so much. All the littles of our little world. I mean, my little world is so small compared to the Almighty, and yet he knows about the smallest things that matter to me, and he cares about them. Isn't that tremendous? His consideration of us. There's a story that's told it's attributed to a philosopher of some years ago, of some thieves who broke into a jewellery shop one night. But instead of stealing the jewellery, what they did was they swapped the price tags around. So the next day, people were paying a lot of money for things that were rubbish, and people were paying next to nothing for things that were valuable. You know what? That's what the devil has done in our world. He swapped all the price tags around. So that the things that are really rubbish, the world goes chasing after. This is the most amazing thing, I've got to have this or my life won't be complete. And the things that really matter are priced as being nothing. Friend, how much does it matter to you that God thinks about you? Take that to heart. God thinks about you. You go home, He's thinking about you. If you don't think about Him, He's still thinking about you. When you wake up in the middle of the night, He's still thinking about you. And I'll tell you one time when He was definitely thinking about you. It's when He died on the cross for your sins. He was conscious of what you'd done. And he was conscious, he was paying the price for your salvation and your redemption. And that's why you can be saved through his atoning work, so personal for each one of us. That's how much he loves us. And the final thing David says is that his company is with us right to the end. I started off in this talk today talking about Paul McCartney. Of course, one of the famous albums of the Beatles was the Sgt. Pepper Lonely Heart. And a lot of people analyzed that album because it had such a mixture of songs on there, from jolly songs like When I'm 64, right down to lonely deep songs. And they came to the conclusion that actually the lonely hearts were the Beatles themselves. And all the great success they had, all the riches they had, all the fame they had, they were still, at the end of the day, just four lonely people. Isn't that interesting? And you know what? That's the truth about so many in humanity. There's so much loneliness in the world. I met my wife at a Castanet class. We just clicked. But you know what, not everybody's gonna wake up next to somebody tomorrow. But I can tell you this, if you know the Lord, you will wake up with him. It's what David says, look what he says at the last part of verse 18. When I awake, I'm still with you. God hasn't gone anywhere. He's still there. And his company, his presence, is still there with us when we awake. Do you know what? That was my first thought the next morning after I got saved as an 11-year-old boy. The first thing I woke up, when I woke up, the next morning was, it's still there. He's still there. I was conscious of the fact the Lord had come into my life the night before. And the next morning, he's still there. And I like to think that when I die, I will awaken his presence. And when I awake, I'm still with you. That's on the other side of death. Some loving hands received me when I came into this world. There's some loving arms waiting to receive me on the other side as well, and you, and you. When we awake, we'll still be with him. His company is there for us if we know him. What a precious reality that is. And everywhere I go, no matter whether I'm on my own or not, he is there with me. What a wonderful God we serve. a God who loves us from start to finish. We've gone from verse 13, where David is talking about being created in his mother's womb, right the way through to resurrection morning at the end of verse 18, or when we go to heaven and we're still with him, and the Lord loves us from start to finish. Let me just say this, dear friend. If you don't know the Lord as your God and Savior today, come to Him. Put your trust in the Lord Jesus, who died on the cross for you, and this loving God can be your God. and the one who's with you continually as well. Let's sing our final hymn this morning, shall we? We're going to sing How Firm a Foundation, Ye Saints of the Lord is