Introduction
How many times have you gotten envelopes that had big letters on the outside saying something like “You are guaranteed to win 10 million dollars!” Of course, in little tiny print, it says, “if your lucky numbers are the ones chosen at random from the 17 billion others.” And if you’ve ripped the envelope open before you’ve read the small print, you’ll realize that the main purpose of this letter is not to inform you that you’re really rich, but to try to get you to buy magazines or some other product that you probably don’t want.
Have you noticed the only time the world tells us we’re something special, is when they’re trying to sell us something?
Are you somebody special? It would seem a godly humility to say, “Oh no, I’m just an ordinary person. Nothing special about me.”
But as we look closely at David’s words this morning, we don’t find him saying he isn’t anybody special. He says, “I am wonderful!”
Has that shepherd boy turned king become arrogant? No, because David doesn’t say, “I’m wonderful because of what I have done!” He says, “I’m wonderful because God does really good work.”
Last week I said I was starting a series on spiritual gifts. Some of you may be wondering what happened! Well, nothing happened. I’m still going to be preaching about spiritual gifts, but discovering our spiritual gifts and how to use them is an identity issue. To talk about my spiritual gifts is to try and answer one part of the question, “Who am I?”
So before we answer “Who am I, in terms of spiritual gifts?” I think it’s worth asking some bigger questions about, “Who am I?”
My focus today is on verses 13-16. I wanted to read verses 1-16, to give us some context for why David says what he says.
Context:
In the first six verses, David talks of how intimately God knows us (1-6)
We say we “know” someone if we can put their name together with their face But that’s not the kind of knowledge God has of you and me.
He knows everything about us
He knows our habits
He knows – and understands! – our thoughts
I don’t even always understand my own thoughts
He knows what we’re going to say before we say it
Have you ever been with a married couple or even with close friends who finish each other’s sentences?
They know each other so well, they easily anticipate what the other is going to say.
There’s a song I heard several years ago about a couple who had been married for a long time.
It starts out with the words, “They seem to know each other very well. And they speak across the garden, though not a soul could tell.”
That’s the way God knows us.
Not only does God know you better than you know yourself, He is always with you.
Depending on your relationship with God, verses 7-12 are either wonderfully comforting, or terribly unsettling.
God sees every move you make
Like the old James Taylor song says, “You can run, but you cannot hide”
Ask Adam & Eve… they tried!
There is no dark little corner where you can escape His gaze even for a moment.
I have a friend who has ministered to high school students almost since I was one of them. I remember him saying that sometimes Christian students would ask him how far they could go physically with a boyfriend or girlfriend.
He said his stock answer was, “Just imagine that Jesus is in the room with you, watching everything you do, and then decide how far He wants you to go.”
It was not exactly the answer they wanted to hear!
But it was an answer rooted in the truth of Scripture
and we see it in this Psalm
David reflects on the facts that God knows him intimately and that God is always with him. Then he moves into a reflection based on the fact that God has created him. And David is quick to say, he thinks God has done a fantastic job!
The world says “You are simply a by-product of a natural reproductive process.”
But the Bible says, “You are wonderful – because you were handmade by a Master Craftsman” (13, 15)
Science can explain where babies come from, but it can’t explain why every birth feels like a miracle
It can’t explain why the wonder of it takes our breath away.
Have you ever thought about how amazing the human body is? These days we’re often amazed by the power of computers. I’ve studied electronics and especially how computers work. And as I did, I became less and less impressed with computers and more and more impressed with the people who invented them
Computers really aren’t smart, they’re just incredibly fast and unswervingly obedient. When I say they’re obedient, I don’t mean they always do what we want them to, but they always do what we tell them to.
It’s just that we don’t always realize that what we’ve told them is not exactly what we want them to do. It’s the people who figure out how to program them to do those incredible things that amaze me.
Studying computers also made me more impressed with our human bodies. There is no computer in the world that can do a fraction of the things our bodies can do.
For example, computers can’t make judgment calls. That’s why they do so many frustrating things!
If you make the slightest spelling mistake, they don’t understand you - Unless someone programmed them to understand that mistake!
We can read letters with terrible spelling and grammar errors and still understand what’s being said. Computers can’t
Another thing our bodies can do that no man-made device has ever done: We heal.
If I cut my finger, immediately my body rushes resources to the rescue:
clotting agents to stop the bleeding
infection-fighting white cells
And it actually begins the process of weaving together what was ripped apart.
The smartest computer in the world can’t do that.
I was reminded of that this week as my fairly new laptop computer just up and died.
I could have just let it sit there until it felt better
But I would have waited a long time!
Happily it’s still under warranty and is already winging its way to a repair center.
But no matter how much I let it rest, that computer would never have healed itself.
Only God’s wonderful creation can do that.
And because you were created by Him, you’re wonderful, too!
You are not simply a byproduct of natural processes, your birth was not just a fact of nature.
You were handmade by a Master Craftsman, – always remember that.
Remember who you are, who made you and to whom you belong.
Maybe you think, “OK, I’m wonderful in the sense that all humans – all of God’s creatures – are wonderful. But that still doesn’t prove there’s anything unique about me. I still just ‘a regular person.’”
But David’s not done. As we go on, I’m going to suggest some alternate translations. Poetry can be difficult to understand, and it’s even harder to translate, and there can be several ideas about what is the best way to translate it.
Take Vs 14, where the Good News has, “I praise you because you are to be feared; all you do is strange and wonderful.”
I’m not sure if David was thinking of any of you in particular when he said that all God does is strange – or maybe he was thinking of me!
One possible translation (and don’t even try to figure out from the English where it came from!) is, “I am distinguished by your wondrous works” That is:
you’re wonderful because you reflect your Creator in a way that is absolutely unique (v 14)
When God handcrafted you, he didn’t just say, OK, let’s make another one, this time with brown hair, or with blue eyes.
You are one of a kind
When your mother told you “They broke the mold when they made you,” she was partly right!
There is no “mold”
There is only handcrafting.
Did you ever notice a tag on a piece of clothing saying, “The irregularities in this product are not flaws, but are a natural result of the handworking of the fabric.”?
That’s the way we are, too!
God put into your very being certain things that reflect His nature and His character in a way that no one else ever has or ever will.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you have certain characteristics that no one has ever had before
But no one has the unique combination of characteristics that God has placed in you.
David likens God’s work to that of a weaver
He picks the exact color and thickness of every strand
Then He carefully puts them together to create a unique and beautiful creation.
For decades, schools have been teaching that God did not create the universe, let alone each individual human
Instead, we have been taught that there was a “Big Bang” in a dead universe that just happened to produce the right conditions to form life.
Each one of us has come along as just another coincidence
Maybe you’ve never thought there were any personal implications of the theory of evolution, but there are
and they’re huge
If we just happen to be here by a freaky coincidence
there is no purpose to life
there is no reason to live a moral life
there is no real reason to do anything, except, “I feel like it.”
And isn’t that exactly where our society is right now?
These days, however, even scientists are questioning the validity of the theory of evolution.
In his book, Beside Still Waters: Searching for Meaning in an Age of Doubt, Award-winning journalist Gregg Easterbrook, writes:
If the Big Bang had been slightly less violent, the expansion of the universe would have been less rapid, and would … have collapsed back on itself. If the explosion had been slightly more violent, the universe might have dispersed into a soup too thin to aggregate into stars. The odds against us were - this is just the right word - astronomical. The ratio of matter and energy to the volume of space at the Big Bang must have been within about one quadrillionth of 1 percent of ideal. Life is so improbable it must somehow be favored by something. By some First Cause, "to which," said Aquinas, "everyone gives the name of God."
In 1989, Professor H. S. Lipson, a distinguished member of the Institute of Physics, published an article in the professional journal “PHYSICS BULLETIN.” He studied the mathematical probability that Darwinian evolution has occurred. As with many scientists who are beginning to argue against evolution in favor of “Intelligent Design,” Lipson has concluded that many facets of nature simply could not have evolved. He says this:
"We must … admit that the only acceptable alternative [to evolution] is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it."
Those scientists who are willing to look at the evidence with open minds are coming to the conclusion that the evolutionary theory that life just happened to evolve as a result of a series of lucky coincidences requires far too much faith!
At the very least, something or someone “got the ball rolling”
You’re wonderful – because you were created by a Master Craftsman
You’re wonderful – because you uniquely reflect the character of the one who created you
You are not here by accident
There are people who have reason to think their lives are just accidents.
In a former church, I spent some time with a woman who was the product of an incestuous rape. If that wasn’t bad enough, her family hated her because they blamed her for the fact that her biological father was in jail (He was there for the crime that created her life.)
Not surprisingly, she had a lot of anger at God, at her family and at the world
What do you say to someone like that?
That’s an extreme case, but what about folks who know that not only was their birth not planned, it was not wanted: the millions of children born to unwed mothers. What do you tell them about why they’re here?
The difference between creation and evolution is that those of us who believe we are the handiwork of God know that there is no such thing as an “accidental” human life.
Each person who has ever lived is not only
wonderful – because they were created by a Master Craftsman
Not only
wonderful – because they uniquely reflect the character of the one who created them
but
They are wonderful because their life has a purpose (v 16)
God does not go to the trouble of handcrafting each individual person for nothing
When he wove you together in your mother’s womb –
When he carefully chose every gene and every chromosome –
When he placed in you characteristics that uniquely reflect His character –
He did so with a purpose.
You are wonderful because your life has a purpose
That purpose is to live in relationship with God
and to allow Him to show His glory through you.
You have been carefully handcrafted in order to demonstrate aspects of His character: His glory, His power, His love, His grace, His goodness, His holiness to a world hungry to know Him.
To do that, you need to know Him
You need to know yourself
You need to know the gifts God has given you
the natural gifts
and the spiritual gifts.
for both are from the hand of the Creator
You’re wonderful – because you were created by a Master Craftsman
You’re wonderful – because you uniquely reflect the character of the one who created you
You are wonderful because your life has a purpose
And let me give witness to the fact that there is nothing that can make life more meaningful than discovering that purpose and – with God’s power – fulfilling it. There is nothing that will transform your life like knowing that you are making an eternal difference in the world.
Conclusion
Unlike David, We’re not all comfortable saying, “I’m wonderful.” It sounds awfully proud!
But can you see the enormous difference between saying, “I’m wonderful!” and “I’m wonderful because I am the workmanship of God, the Almighty Weaver.”?
Turn to someone and say, “You’re wonderful, because a wonderful God made you!”
How did that go? OK? Now turn to the same person and say, “AND I’m wonderful, because a wonderful God made me!”
It’s OK to say, “I’m wonderful” – not out of pride in myself, but because I was created by a Master Craftsman, because I uniquely reflect the character of God and because my life has a purpose.
