Psalm 139:13-18

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. 17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.    They cannot be numbered! 18 I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!

One aspect of God’s omnipotence is seen in His power to create us both personally and individually and after stating the source of our being in verse 13 David now reveals:

• The Wonder of our Being (v. 14-15)

The wonder of it all is found in the truth that we were created and fashioned by the Master Craftsman. David’s response to this truth is one of thanksgiving and praise, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” I wonder is that our response when we remember that God made us? It should be because God doesn’t make junk.  Some versions refer to us as being “fearfully made” but this does not mean that there is anything to be afraid of. What it means is that we are unique and distinct. We are distinguished from any other created being; we are unique in God’s plan and program. It also says that we are “wonderfully made” which refers to the marvel of the human body. David recognized this truth even though he had never taken Biology 101 or Anatomy and Physiology. David understood that the human body was more than just an amazing organism, he saw it as miraculous. The King James Version translates this as “marvelous are Thy works” and it truly is marvelous. Wilbur Nelson wrote a book called, “If I Were An Atheist” in which he includes a chapter entitled, “If I Were A Medical Doctor.” In it he includes a whole list of “think ofs.” That’s what he calls them. He wants us to think of these things, ponder them, and meditate on them. Here are a few… “Think of the human body composed of more than one hundred trillion cells. Think of the skin. While water penetrates the skin outwardly, it cannot penetrate inwardly. Aren’t you glad about that? I mean, if not, you would have blown up and exploded in the shower this morning! Think of the bones, capable of carrying a load 30 times what a brick will support. Think of the liver, it breaks up blood cells into bile and neutralizes poisonous substances. Think of the blood. 10-12 pints of syrupy substances distributes oxygen and carries away waste from tissues and organs. It also regulates the body’s temperature. Think of the heart. weighing less than a pound. It’s a real work horse. On the average, it pumps a hundred thousand times every day, circulating 2,000 gallons through 60,000 miles of arteries, capillaries and veins.” Wow! And that’s only a fraction of the wonder! Our brains are another thing to consider. “It has 10 billion nerve cells, to record what it sees and hears and feels. Can you imagine! 10 BILLION nerve cells! The brain’s capabilities surpass any manmade computer. And then consider the chromosomes…Did you know that a single microscopic human chromosome contains 20 billion bits of information?! How much information is 20 billion bits? Let me try to put it into perspective for you…Let’s assume that there are six letters in an average word. That same information (20 billion bits) would correspond to about 500 million words. Assuming 300 words a page as an average, that would translate to 2 million pages. And assuming 500 pages a book, that would correspond to 4,000 books! So, do you get the picture? Imagine a library of 4,000 500-page books. One microscopic human chromosome contains as much information as in all of those books! Incredible, isn’t it?! It shows the intricacy of our bodies, the exquisitely designed construction of our bodies. We are a very complex and wonderfully functioning organism.” This is why David says “Your works are wonderful, I know that full well” When was the last time you stopped to contemplate the complexity of creation and marvel at what God has made? Not only is it amazing, but to think that it all works without a thought. Right now your heart is pumping and you don’t have to tell it to. It’s pumping keeping you alive by providing life-giving oxygen to every cell in your body. Imagine if we had to consciously tell our hearts to pump, which on average is 110,000 beats per day or over 40 million per year. If we did it’s probably all we would get done. Think about your breathing, we breathe in, we breathe out, and you probably didn’t even think about that a minute ago until I said something. We do it automatically, without thinking even while we sleep. David goes on to say in verse 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” Our frame is the bony skeleton and the muscles and sinews that hold us all together. Without it we would have no structure, we would be but blobs.  “the secret place” refers to the womb where we were woven together. “Woven together” means embroidered, like a work of fine needlepoint, or a tapestry woven together by a skilled artist. We have been marvelously made by the Master, intricately knit together in the our mother’s womb. I want to encourage you to take some time today to not only ponder God’s marvelous creation but also to praise Him for who He made when He made you. Because God doesn’t make junk.

Psalm 139:13-18

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. 17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.    They cannot be numbered! 18 I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!

Have you ever watched a potter fashion a piece of pottery with their hands? It’s an amazing thing to witness as they begin with a lump of clay and start spinning it on a circular table. At the beginning of the process as you looking at what is basically a soggy piece of mud, you have absolutely no idea what it will eventually become. But while you may have no idea what it will end up becoming the potter knows exactly what it will become because he can see it in his mind’s eye. As he begins to work the clay, slowly but surely it starts to take shape. As the table spins around and around his skillful hands mold and move the clay into its intended shape. What began as a ball of clay becomes an intricate piece of pottery, not only is it a one of a kind piece but it also has both beauty and purpose. The same is true of our potter, God the Father, who fashions our lives as He pleases for His own perfect purpose. This is the purpose that He has planned for us to pursue. There are those who instead of being blessed by this are bothered by it. As a result, they resist and rebel against the very One who made them. For others, they don’t like the work that He did, as they look at themselves in the mirror they wish He would have done things differently. While others constantly complain about His creation because they don’t like who they are and they would rather be someone other than who He made them. Many people are miserable today because they don’t appreciate the masterpiece that God has created. They are trying to live up to an image that the world has created instead of living out who God has created. In order to find our worth we have to come back to the truth of who God is and the part, He plays in our life as the potter. Psalm 139 is a good place to begin if we want to understand more about our Creator. In the first six verses of Psalm 139, we discovered that God knows us, He is omniscient, All-Knowing. He knows absolutely everything about us down to the very tiniest details of our lives. In the next six verses of Psalm 139, verses 7-12, we discovered that God is always with us, He is omnipresent. This is the truth that He is holy present everywhere all at the same time, which means He is always with us wherever we go. These truths lead us to the next aspect of God, His omnipotence, He is All-Powerful. One aspect of His omnipotence is seen in His power to create us both personally and individually. David begins by stating:

• The Source of our Being – Verse 13

The source of our being is God, we were made by Him. The first word of verse 13 “For…” introduces the reason why God knows us and why God is with us. How do we know God is omniscient, All-Knowing and how do we know God is omnipresent, always with us? Because He made us. God is the source of our being, He created and formed us. The Psalmist goes on to say: He “knit me together in my mother’s womb.” “Knit” can also mean “to cover, or to weave together.” David is revealing that God actually wove us together inside our mother’s womb. Our lives are like a tapestry, with every muscle, tendon, nerve, artery, vein, capillary, and every cell all interwoven together. The Almighty is the artist behind the tapestry. While we were but embryos in our mother’s womb, God was creating us, weaving us together to create a masterpiece. Contrary to culture we are NOT biological accidents or products of some impersonal force. We were not created by chance but by our Creator. Nor are we products of evolution which somehow progressed from slime to the sublime.  We exist because God made us. The goal of evolution is to explain all of creation without a creator. But if we did just evolved from some primordial soup then there is nothing special or significant about us. We are just a random combination of cells thrown together through evolutionary history. Our worth is tied to chance instead of to our creator. When we cast aside the Creator we also cast aside our worth. But the truth is that God made us personally and individually, from the moment of conception to the day of our delivery He was overseeing our developing. Since 1982 Gallup polls have been asking the question, who made us? Today almost 50% of the US population believe that God created mankind in our present form just as the Genesis record reveals. The other 50% believe in an evolutionary process but the vast majority of these believe that while man evolved from lower life forms God directed the whole process. Only about 18% believe in an evolution in which God had no part whatsoever. What is interesting is that while evolution is being taught in schools, deep down the majority of Americans still believe that God was involved in our lives. The Media pushes the message that those of us who believe that God actually made us are in the vast minority but this is actually not true. Now regardless of what current culture says Christians don’t decide doctrine by Gallup polls, we base our beliefs on the Bible. So let me ask you what are you basing your worth on, what the world says or what the Word says? Are you basing it on the Creator or on chance? So this Thanksgiving take time to give thanks to God the One who molded and made you in His image.