A lesson overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Psalm 139, for Sunday, August 17, 2025, with the title, “God’s Greatness.” A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRODUCTION:

(From the 1982 BBC series “The Barchester Chronicles”)

Mr. Harding, an Anglican minister in Barchester England, finishes playing for his daughter Eleanor and her sister in law Mary, a new anthem he has composed for his cello. 

Eleanor: “That’s beautiful.”

Harding: “It’s a new anthem.”

Mary: “To celebrate something special?”

Harding: “Yes.”

(long pause)

Eleanor: “Mary obviously hopes you will tell her what the music is going to celebrate, Father!”

Harding: “God. Everything I write celebrates God: I know of no other compelling reason to make music.”

One might say that like Mr. Harding, all of the Psalms we are studying celebrate God, in one sense or another. That is certainly true of our Psalm for today, Psalm 139. In several important ways, it conveys to us the message of “God’s Greatness.”

AND/OR INTRODUCTION:

??? You might ask your group: “What is your favorite quality of God”???

(Of course there are countless qualities they might mention: His holiness, love, faithfulness, provision, etc.)

Then after everyone has shared you can say: “In this morning’s lesson we are going to look at three specific qualities of God, that demonstrate His greatness, from Psalm 139 …”.

CONTEXT:

The introductory note to Psalm 139 does not give us much background information; it simply says it is:

— “For the choir director” — so it was to be sung in worship

— “A Psalm of David” — so we know that David was the author of this Psalm.
This is another of those Psalms that, like Psalm 23, might considered one of God’s people’s favorites. It’s not surprising that David wrote it, as it reveals the heart of a person who is totally captivated by the greatness of the qualities of God: His omniscience, His omnipresence, and His detailed creative purpose. Derek Kidner in his commentary on Psalms has a great quote in his first words about Psalm 139: “Any small thoughts that we may have of God are magnificently transcended by this Psalm; yet for all its height and depth it remains intensely personal from first to last.” In other words, it speaks of the greatness of God, yes — but He also knows and loves and cares for US personally!

OUTLINE:

I. God’s Omniscience (:1-4)’

II. God’s Omnipresence (:7-12)

III. God’s Personal Creation (:13-16)

TEXT:  Psalm 139:1-4, 7-16

I. God’s Omniscience (:1-4)

:1 “O Lord, You have searched me and known me.

2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.

3 You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.

4 Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O Lord, You know it all.”

The first thing this text teaches us is what theologians call the “omniscience” of God: that He knows everything. We see several evidences of that in these verses. For example:

— :2 says He knows when we sit down and when we rise up

— :2b says He knows our THOUGHTS from afar! (We see a specific example of this in Matthew 9:4 where it says “Jesus, knowing their THOUGHTS …”. It’s one thing to know every movement, every action, but every THOUGHT — that is truly amazing — as well as sobering and convicting!)

— :3 summarizes it well: that He is “intimately” acquainted with “all” my ways. Not just that He knows them “somewhat,” but INTIMATELY! And not just “some” of my ways, but “ALL” of them! 

Psalm 139 very dramatically reveals the omniscience, the “all-knowing-ness,” of God.

But I would also emphasize this point: it is not merely that “God knows everything” — His omniscience — but that He knows everything about US! About “ME” personally!

NOTICE — and you might employ one of my favorite EXERCISES here: copying this page from a Bible and having your group highlight or underline every use of the words “I” or “me” in these verses. (This trains them to search and find things in scripture for themselves.) I count NINE TIMES in just the first 4 verses! This repetition powerfully emphasizes the intimate, personal knowledge that God has of each of us! He knows, and He cares, for US personally!

ILLUSTRATION

In 2012 I was stricken with an illness which led to my eventual resignation from the pastorate for two years. At first, the doctor was puzzled as to what it might be. Test after test revealed nothing. Then one day I received a call from my doctor’s office and his assistant began the conversation by saying, “The doctor said he was thinking about your situation all night last night …” and she went on with the conversation, but what struck me were those opening words: “The doctor … was thinking about your situation …”!  I replayed those words again and again in my mind after that call. I thought, “Wow, that was really something. Here is a VERY busy, VERY highly respected doctor in Lake Charles, and late at night, he was thinking about ME and MY situation?!”  I have to say, that was very meaningful to me. This was no “detached professional” here; this doctor cared about me, and was thinking about my particular case in his spare moments!  That was very comforting, and very meaningful to me as a patient.

You are free to share that story if you are led to, but of course, the point is: what should even be more comforting and meaningful is that there that not just a respected doctor, or busy professional – but the God of all the universe has the same knowledge and care for us — and so much more!  

That is what we see here in Psalm 139. God thinks countless numbers of thoughts toward us individually. Verses 17-18 (not in this week’s focus passage) says, “How precious also are Thy thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!  If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.”  If we could truly grasp this idea, and stand confidently in it, what humble assurance it would give us. God knows, and cares for us. And His thoughts for each of us personally cannot even be counted!

We’ve all seen or received the greeting card: “I’m thinking of you.” It’s nice to receive those — but the awesome and humbling message of Psalm 139 is that this is what GOD says to us: “He’s thinking about US!” 

II. God’s Omnipresence (:7-12)

“Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?

8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

9 If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,

10 Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,”

12 Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.

David says: where can I go, where God is not there?  He says if I go up to heaven, God is there. He says if I go to Sheol (the Hebrew word for death or the grave) God is there too! He says if I could “take the wings of the dawn” – in other words, if somehow he could sprout wings and travel at the speed of light – if he could fly as fast as the morning sunlight which rises in the east and almost instantly shines to the furthest reaches of the west, he could still not escape the presence of God! The picture here is all-encompassing: from east to west; from high to low; soar as high as heaven; burrow as low as hell; travel at light speed from the rising of the sun to its setting – there is no place where God is not present!

The old Southern Baptist theologian J.P. Boyce explained it this way: “He is present at one and the same time everywhere.” Boyce goes on to say in his Systematic Theology that it is not just that God knows what happens everywhere (as we saw in the first section of Psalm 139) but that He actually IS everywhere! God doesn’t just “see” what you are doing; He is right there WITH you wherever you are! He is omnipresent.

Cross-reference scriptures might include:

— In Acts 17:27-28, Paul, speaking to the Greeks on Mars Hill in Athens, said that people seek God “if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist.”  Everything we do is done in the presence of God; like a fish lives his whole life surrounded and enclosed by water, so we move and have our being constantly in the presence of God. 

— Jeremiah 23:23-24 “’Am I a God who is near’, declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far off?  Can a man hide himself in hiding places, so I do not see him?’ declares the Lord.  ‘Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?’ declares the Lord.” 

— Solomon said in I Kings 8:27, “But can God indeed dwell on earth?  Heaven itself, the highest heaven, cannot contain Thee; how much less this house that I have built.”  We speak of temples or churches as being “the house of the Lord”, but Solomon said the truth is, there is no “house” that can hold God!  The highest heaven cannot contain Him!  He’s everywhere! 

— Psalm 46:1 says: “God is our refuge and strength; a very present help in time of need”.  That Psalm goes on to describe the worst possible circumstances: “though the earth should change, though the mountains fall into the heart of the sea” – God is “very present.”  No matter how tumultuous the situation, God is always there! 

— Jonah 1:3 says that when God commanded Jonah to go and preach at Nineveh, that instead “Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.  So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”  Twice there it uses that phrase: “from the presence of the Lord.”  Jonah seemed to think, like many of the ancient peoples, that there was a god for each country, and if he left Israel, that he could escape from the presence of Yahweh.  He soon found that there was no such place!  He could take the fastest ship to the most remote territory, but God was always there.  Even in the depths; in the belly of the great fish, God was there to hear his prayer.  Jonah learned a great lesson on our behalf: Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is everywhere. 

QUOTES:

In the middle ages, Christian theologians had a saying: “God’s center is everywhere; God’s circumference nowhere.”  In other words, He is just as much present in any place as He is any other place; nowhere do you find a limitation on the presence of God. 

Theologian Thomas Oden writes: “No atomic particle is so small that God is not fully present to it, and no galaxy is so vast that God does not circumscribe it.  No space is without the Divine Presence.”  (Systematic Theology, Vol. I, p. 67)  This is what we mean by the doctrine of the Omnipresence of God. 

APPLICATION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

— ??? “What are some situations you can think of where we can be COMFORTED because God is omnipresent?”???

(When we’re in difficult situations like Psalm 46 talks about; when we are facing a vengeful enemy, or anxious circumstances, then we can be very glad that we know God is always with us. 

— ??? Can you think of some situations when we might actually be UNCOMFORTABLE because God is omnipresent??

(Like Jonah when we want to run from His conviction, or presence. When we would like to sin and not have Him see us. 

But like Jonah we need to remember: There IS no such place! God is everywhere, so we need to act like it.)

ILLUSTRATION:

When we were in high school, some of our church youth group members were riding in the back of the bus on the way back from a school activity. One of our young men was acting in an ungodly manner, and one of our young ladies said to him: “Would you be doing that if Jesus were here?” He said, “No way!” And she said back to him: “Well my friend He is!” That became a famous saying in our youth group from that time on — and it should be remembered by all of us, all the time. For what we may consider “better or worse,” God is always with us! 

III. God’s Personal Creation

13 For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.

14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.

15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;

16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance,

And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.”

What do these verses tell us about ourselves? GOD MADE US: He designed us exactly as He wanted us to be.

NOTICE all the verbs that deal with how God designed us:

(You could have your class search for/call out these as well. If they circled every first-person pronoun in the first point, you could have them underline each action of God’s creation in this point). However you share it, the following are God’s actions of creation towards us that we see in these verses:

— :13a “You FORMED” (“qanah,” Keil & Delitzsch = “weave, plait (braid)”

— :13b “You WOVE” “sawkak, literally “hedged in,” “overshadow, cover”)

— :14 “fearfully and wonderfully MADE” palah, “separated,” “distinct”)

— :14b “WORKS” (from asah, “make, do”) 

— :15 “MADE in secret” (asah: “make, do” as in :14)

— :15b “skillfully WROUGHT”  (“raqam”: “embroider, weave with colored threads.” This word is used in Exodus 36 & 39 of the skilled weaving of the tabernacle, and of the holy tunics for Aaron and his sons. Just as those holy garments and the tabernacle were carefully and skillfully embroidered, so GOD carefully and skillfully “knit/embroidered” US!)

ILLUSTRATION:

If you have a garment or other piece of knitting or embroidery that you carefully stitched — or maybe a beloved relative made you, or that you bought from a skilled artisan, you might consider brining that Sunday, and show your class the care and detail that went into it. Then make the point: THIS IS HOW PSALM 139 says GOD KNIT YOU — carefully, skillfully, in detail!

ILLUSTRATION:

John Adams had told his wife Abigail about General George Washington, how he was such a “commanding figure.” When Abigail actually met Washington, she wrote to her husband:

“You had prepared me to entertain a favorable opinion of him, but I thought the one half was not told me.’ And she quoted to John Adams ‘those lines of Dryden,’

‘Mark his Majestik fabrick! He’s a temple

Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine …’”

(Stanely Weintraub, General Washington’s Christmas Farewell, p. 2)

Abigail Adams’ description of George Washington is lofty, but we need to realize that it is also true for EVERY ONE of us as well: ALL of us whom God has created have a “majestic fabric.’ We are ALL “a temple” (+x I Cor. 6:19). We are ALL “sacred by birth, and built by hands divine.”

GOD HIMSELF personally designed us, and knit us together. 

APPLICATION:

The overall application is that we need to appreciate God’s personal design and creation of us.

There are also some very specific applications we can make, for issues we face today. For example, Psalm 139 has something to say about gender issues, doesn’t it? GOD HIMSELF knit us together in our mother’s womb. Thus our gender is not a “mistake.” Our gender is God’s plan, not to be lightly set aside.

To reject your gender is to reject the design God intended for your life — as though you know better than God! So the Bible speaks here in Psalm 139 to a very pertinent issue in our society today. We should share this truth with our group members, to correct the faulty input they’re getting from the world on this. 

Another application of this text is for the issue of abortion. If God is personally knitting us together in our mother’s womb, surely it is a grievous sin to terminate that life!  Thus Psalm 139 is one of the strongest Biblical passages against elective abortion. God is “weaving” that life together; we have no business ending it!

But this applies to more than these social issues only. Many of us who wouldn’t question our gender, still question God’s creation.

DISCUSSION QUESTION/APPLICATION:

??? What are some things we might be tempted to question God about, regarding our personal creation??? (In other words, why did He make me a certain way, or without certain abilities?)

(For example, we might be tempted to ask:

— “Why aren’t I taller?”

— “Why aren’t I more good looking?”

— “Why aren’t I more healthy?”

— “Why don’t I have ____ talent?” (athleticism, music, math/science aptitude, public speaking. There are many!) 

The point is, we may gasp when we read how in Matthew 16:22 Peter “rebukes” Jesus and says, “No Lord …”! The audacity, that he might attempt to rebuke and correct Jesus; it’s outlandish!

But the truth is, many of us do this to God all the time. We act as though we know better than He does: “Lord, You should have made me taller,” or with better ability, and on and on. We’re questioning the design and wisdom of God, whom Psalm 139 says specifically created us as we are! 

A couple of cross-reference scriptures here could include:

— Isaiah 45:9 ““Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker—
An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’”

— Romans 9:20b “The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it?”

So God’s word teaches us not to doubt His wisdom when He made us. INSTEAD, :14 says “I will give thanks to You.” We should respond to God’s creation of us with awe for what He has done, and with thanksgiving.

Psalm 37:3 also teaches us the attitude we should have towards these things: “Trust in the Lord and do good.” Trust the wisdom of Him who made you just as He intended to. Trust His plan for you, and do the best you can with how He has made you, and with what He has given you. That is what you will be accountable to Him for, and what you will ultimately be judged for — not what you “wish” He had made or given you, but what He did!

Psalm 139 not only teaches us about the greatness of God, but it also teaches us to respect what He made, when He created US! Some of our group members need to learn and practice quoting one or more these verses from Psalm 139, and apply them to our own specific situations:
— “For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.” (:13)

— “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (:14)

— “I was … skillfully wrought …” (:15)

Now, I do think some have taken the concept of “self-esteem” a bit too far; but on the other hand the Bible tells us that God has revealed His glory through His created works. And Psalm 139 makes it eminently clear: you & I are part of the glorious Creation God has made. And it is an act of worship on our part, just like it was for David, to recognize that God’s greatness is revealed in how He “fearfully and wonderfully made” US — just as He did the author of this 139th Psalm!

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