What Is My Self-Worth - 5

Christian book report we get the dish in the World Series. You only with as much as Rebecca Kevin Brenda what those you create a site that I don't throw. Jeremiah explains why that's the only on so that masses listen is that which is his message was is myself with, thank you for joining us for the weekend edition entry point today were to talk about a question that I hear a lot over the years I've heard it many times. What is myself worth what is it me, what is that question mean and does her happen to be an answer for in the Bible. There's an answer in the Bible. Some hundred 39 gives us some great insight into our self-worth and it's our subject on the weekend edition of Turning Point in getting right now. It should not suffice. Many of us today that there are countless thousands of people who were going through identity crises everywhere you look. Spending thousands of dollars to go to therapists and counselors to find out who they are, why they're here and if there were trying to discover their self-worth trying to find a reason for continuing the struggle to just keep going and of course we shouldn't be surprised that because given the evolutionary theory that seems accepted by most people these days why we are just a tiny speck on the vast universe were struggling mortals on an obscure planet located in the second-grade galaxy among billions of other galaxies. I mean, how important could we really be no I've never been so excited about portion of God's word is I have become about the 139 Psalm because here in this Psalm David writes out of his experience of struggling with and dealing with this very question. Who am I and how can I find my worth. Man is only man in relation to God. The only thing that makes us different from the rest of the animal kingdom is that God has breathed into us, his Spirit that God has given us his image, and how ever we want to define that image. It is the one thing that sets us apart from everyone else. From everything else. We are created in the image of God. We respond to God. That is because God has placed his imprint upon him. If that is true we should not be surprised to discover that our worth as human beings has something to do with him.

A man and I want to show you how the psalmist takes this wonderful portion that we have before us, and in three or four different sections reminds us of who we are as far as God is concerned, say four things to you today. Number one, your self-esteem comes from the fact that God knows you. He knows you and I think the most important person in all the world.

The person everybody would just be in all God is beyond the importance of that person is far beyond that importance. As you can possibly consider in your mind.

And yet, listen to me. God knows you listen to the writing of the psalmist or Lord you have searched me and known me, you know my sitting down in my rising up. You understand my thought far off you comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Though there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, the Lord, you know it altogether.

You have hedged me behind and before and laid your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high and I cannot obtain it not written down in my notes here is the way God knows you number one God knows what you do in verse two, he says, Lord, you know my down sittings and my uprisings. This is a reference to the activity of life is an Old Testament expression that talks about the routine of life going in in the coming out. God knows your activities. In essence, David is saying that God knew him in his active life and in his passive life. God knew what he did. Secondly, God knows what you think disbursed to you understand my thoughts of far off. The psalmist is before you ever think your thoughts. God knows what they are. God knows your subconscious life and that is why we read in the New Testament that your father know with what things ye have need of even before you ask God knows what you think. And thirdly, the psalmist is God knows where you go. He says in verse three you comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways God knows all about your habits and what things you have need of an God knows all that's going on in your life number for God knows what you say verse four says, for there is not a word on my, oh Lord, what you know it altogether and it's kind of writing is have you sent any words this week that it kind of embarrasses you that God knows them. I mean I'm not trying to make you feel guilty, but that's an awesome thought isn't it God knows everything that you say. And finally, God knows what you need in verse five it says you have hedged me behind and before and laid your hand upon me.

This is an Old Testament idiom that it's rich in imagery. He says you have hedged me in like a city that is under siege you are providing for, and caring for me, even when you do not realize it.

He knows your past that has hedged me in from behind. He knows your future that has hedged me and before any knows your present have your hand on me right now. So stop and think about it for a moment how important are you God knows you knows what you do what you think where you go, what you say what you need and when David thought about this. It was so overwhelming to him that we read in verse six he said such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It is high and I cannot obtain it. David said there's only one thing left for me but when I finally realized that you knew me, and out of all the billions of souls on this earth. You knew me better than I know myself better than I am known by anybody else that God you know me. He said it is so wonderful I can do nothing but fall down and worship you. Sometimes truth about God is like that. There's no way to respond to it. There's no way to write a critique of it when you just finally understand it, you just want to fall on your knees and say, God, you are too wonderful. How can I comprehend. So the next time you're wondering about your own self-worth. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you can put your shoulders back and say hey God knows me knows me, but the second thing the psalmist wants us to understand is that God is near you.

He not only knows you. He is near you. For in these next six verses, he asks the questions where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your presence.

Quite often these verses have been used as an evangelistic thrust to help us understand that we can never get away from the hound of heaven that he will chase us down the corridors of life until finally he catches us in that. Like Jonah, although we can ever get on a ship that will take us away from God, he will always find us.

That's true but there's a wonderful positive application of this portion of God's word as well from what day but I believe is talking about is not so much the pursuing God with the present God is saying to us that God is everywhere. He is not everything that's pantheism but God is everywhere and in his poetic style. He researches the universe as if to go through a checklist and find out if there's any place that he could imagine were God, might not be.

He says I've gone to the heavens and of going to she'll in God you were there.

Here are the two extremes. The heights of heaven and the depths of she'll the place of living in light and the abode of death and darkness.

God when I go there you were there and it surprises some of you I know think of God in she'll let me remind you, God will be with you wherever you go from now throughout eternity either as the one around whom you have wrapped your worship and love, or as the thought in your mind throughout the eternal days of the one you rejected all the time you had a chance to know him, God will be in your mind forever in heaven or in she'll says the psalmist. Then he adds, not only is God in the heights and in the depths, but he is in the East and in the West is a curious expression. In this next verse he says if I take the wings of the morning you were there.

If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. Even your hand shall be there and if you study that in the language of the Hebrew what you find out is that the wings of the morning are reference to the East where the sun comes up.

And if I go to the furthest parts of the sea is a reference to the Mediterranean Sea, which was further west in Palestine and David is looking at the universe as he sees it.

He says God here in the East than here in the West I can get away from you. Your you're on the land and you're on the sea and then he says well maybe if God could somehow be isolated to darkness and light, there would be a way that he could not be near us, but he goes on to say if I say, surely the darkness shall fall on me.

Even the night shall be light about me. Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from you, but the night shines as the day I watch this, the darkness and the light are both alike to you God here in the light in, you're in the darkness, because with God.

There is no difference between what darkness in the point that the psalmist wants us to get is this. Listen up now. God is near you wherever you go, you can't get away from him.

You can't go to a place where God is not and I don't know what that does for you, but I'll tell you what if you get your worth from being near important people you are near God and he is near you, and what that means in the exciting truth is that he is immediately accessible to you wherever you go. When God designed to send his son into this world as his picture to us of who God is a name was given to him that we cherish, especially at Christmas time is called what Emmanuel and what is that God with us.

God is with us in the psalmist wants us to understand that you cannot hide from God, but he also wants us to understand that God is near us, so you get your self-esteem from the fact that God knows you and the God is near you. Here's the third one and basically this is the centerpiece of the whole Psalm you get your self-esteem and your self-worth from this troth. God made you, he created you. You are the incredible creation of the infinite God and I almost just took this section go rest of it aside just dealt with this because what a wonderful truth that is the psalmist is a God, you have formed me and my inward parts, and covered me in my mother's womb. St. Augustine once wrote. He said men go abroad to wonder at the height of the mountain and at the huge waves of the sea and the long courses of the rivers at the vast compass of the ocean and that the circular motion of the stars and they pass by themselves in their wonder, isn't it interesting that in the first six verses the psalmist is talking about God's omniscience. He knows everything. In the second section is talking about God's omnipresent he is everywhere and in this section is talking about God's omnipotence. He's all-powerful now listen when he wanted to use an illustration of his power even choose the vast universe with all of its stars and galaxies and planets but he chose the crowning creation called man nieces let me show you how powerful is God. Let me show you man and he says man has been in the heart and thought of God from the very moment of his conception. God is involved with the conception of each of us. He says in verse 13 for you have formed my inward parts, and have covered me in my mother's womb. These words describe reproduction in some of the most meaningful and tender verses in all of the Bible. If we read them honestly. We understand that they contain the secret for an incredible sense of self-worth.

Listen to me.

God knew you before you were born and he knows the moment when you were conceived in those the very beginning of your life. God was involved in it all and every phase of development.

From that moment on he is there. So I want to tell you something.

In case you haven't heard it recently from this pulpit that the human embryo is not the result of the biological accident. God is aware of the union of the sperm and the egg and the attachment of the embryo to the uterine lining and the development of human life and God formed the inward parts and arrange the genetic structure and processes are rains and God is in conception and we believe that the Bible teaches that human life begins at that moment. And God knows about that human life and God loves that human life from the very moment of that union and God is involved with the development of read verses 14 and 15 with me. He says I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well do you know that the psalmist tells us that God protects even at birth, our individuality, the word wonderfully in that little phrase fearfully and wonderfully made it what that word means the word literally in the Hebrew language means you are fearfully and differently made and you know we can look around, or we can joke about the sometimes we can say boy is she different or boy is he different.

Let's face it were all different. There has never been to human beings created anything like God has made us fearfully and uniquely. We are all stamped with our own special genetic code that sets us apart from every other human being on the face of God's earth and out of the billions of people. The billions of souls. God made certain that everyone of us would be special wonderfully uniquely made and then not only does he protect your individuality, but he protect your identity in the whole process of life. In verse 15 he says this my substance was not hid from the one I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth.

The words substance here is a keyword, it means frame it refers to the complete structure of the adult person. According to David. Now listen up. According to David, the full-grown body had actually been planned, designed and programmed when it was not even large enough to be visible in the unseen parts of the earth since David before you were born the whole genetic plan of exactly what you would be as an adult was sent by God and scientist in molecular biology have not too long ago discovered this and we call it DNA and I've read so much about this this week. I mean, I feel like bowing down and worshiping God a whole new way. I discovered some incredible things do you know that in every cell of your body. There is enough information to re-create your adult person as if there were no other cell necessary, and that every time that cell divided in the process of your growth. All that information was contained in each cell. That was a part of the division and there is so much information each cell that if they just had the one they could re-create your whole adult person and someone has reasoned that all of the instructions in one cell in the genetic code in the DNA of one cell. If all of those instructions were written out.

It would take 1600 page books to put all that information down in writing God put it in the cell that no one could see except with the magnification and it's in every cell in your body. Incredible. In fact, the DNA strands are so fine and so unique that if you put them altogether from one human body they would fit into a size of an ice cube. And yet, if you spread them out in the end they would go from the earth to the sun and back 400 times that's how much information is in one cell of the human body did it and he did it so that you would have your identity. You are unique you are individually precious to God. Not only does he protect your individuality and protect your identity in the very process he protects your importance. He says you are so important that all of your days were written in his book before one of them came to be something incredible. God knew everything about you before you ever started out in life and he has your whole life charted. He knows everything there is to know about you, you are so important to him.

Your self-esteem comes from the fact that God knows you that God is near you, that God made you, but watch now. Your self-esteem comes from the fact that God right now at this very moment. Listen to me. He is taking a view in the great mind of God. He is thinking of you. Did you ever call somebody you love goes a long way away and when you say that person just want you know thinking of you thinking of attending somebody's presence all the time. It's good to be in their thoughts, but the psalmist says were in God's presence and were in his thoughts and the psalmist says the way God thinks of this is so incredible that he can't comprehend.

He said if I tried the number of the ways you think concerning me. I would build to do it, but God even when I'm not aware that your thinking of me you're thinking of me because I go to sleep God you never sleep all during the time that I'm sleeping you're thinking of me when I wake in the morning there you are, and your thoughts are of me to tell you something.

You are so valuable and so incredibly important to God that he knows you and he stays near you and he made you and he is right now thinking of you as you in his mind and in his heart.

You are only man in relation to God. Let me finish all of this and try to help us really come to grips with it with the story. During World War II, when the Germans were bombing London until it looked as if London would not survive the massacre. There were many episodes of heroic courage, but found their way into the English history books during one period of the bombing. I am told the German bombers flew attacks on London for 57 consecutive nights bombing that city eight hours at a time they had over 1500 bombers that came in each night they would come in waves of 250 at a time just blowing the center of London away and it looked as if it was only a matter of time until the whole city and its culture would be destroyed. With the possible exception of one thing that stood in their way. That was the Royal Air Force. The Royal Air Force set up their hurricanes and their spitfires to fly around those huge bombers from Germany and the English people took their whole and their courage from those brave flyers every once in a while. These maneuverable planes would fly in the position and shoot down one of the German bombers in the whole hand would rejoice in when these men came home for their time away. They weren't the national heroes they could walk down the streets in London without being mobbed by the citizens who wanted to express to them. Their appreciation for their courage. Unfortunately, many of these Royal Air Force people. Many of these men paid a living price for their sacrificial service to their country. You see, the hurricane was a marvelous plane, but it had one basic problem and that is this problem driven fighter plane. The engine was just a few feet from the cockpit and if that plane ever took a direct hit.

Oftentimes the plane would burst into an inferno of flames and while the pilot could inject and get out of the plane because the fuel lines came up alongside of the cockpit to the engine in the two seconds that would take from the pole lever reject there would be such intense heat in the cockpit that it could basically erase all of the features of the space. Many of these handsome young Air Force pilots came out of that fray and they had their noses burned off and their eyelids burned off, and sometimes their ears scorched often times their cheeks and their skin just taken from her face. They were sent back to the military hospitals and there they had to undergo consecutive plastic surgeries to try to repair the damage and put back together some kind of feature that they could go home with many of these men, even though they were admired for their bravery went back to periods of great loneliness one pilot by the name of Peter Foster. Describe what it was like to go through the surgeries and prepare to reenter public life and this is what he said. He said your fears and concerns came to focus in the mirror every day for months you use the mere as an objective measuring device to scrutinize the progress you surgeons have made you study the scar tissue. The odd wrinkling of the skin. The thickness of the lips, the shape of the nose and from the survey you ask for certain adjustments to improve appearance and the doctors tell you whether or not they can make this adjustment, but he said nearer to the time when you knew you were going to be released.

Your view of the mirror changed and now as you gaze at the reflections of the new face, not the one you were born with an inferior imitation you try to see yourself as strangers will see you in the hospital. You've been the object of pride supported by the camaraderie of your friends in the ministrations of the staff on the outside, you will be a freak and fear creep into your spirit will any girl dare to marry the space.

Will anyone give the space a job and at that critical moments of Peter Foster. One factor alone begins to matter to you. The response of your family and your intimate friends surgeons success in rebuilding your face doesn't really matter anymore because your future hinges on the reactions of those who are closest to you will. They love you and accept you or will they hold you at arms distance because of the changes in your facial features Peter could write this because he was one of the fortunate ones. His girlfriend came to the hospital where he was soon to be released and insisted that they be married before they left the hospital and she told him in no uncertain terms that she loved him, not his facial membranes and when Peter return home. He came home on the arm of somebody who loved him for who he was. But of course he came home to face a pretty painful rejection to some of his adult friends would look away quickly.

You've known that as you seen that happen in some of the children not trained not talked teased him with cruelty and laughter and mocked him, but Peter Foster said whenever that would happen. I would always look to my wife and she was the one who gave me the image of myself and he said even now to this day, regardless of how I feel if I begin to feel unworthy. I just looked at her and she gives me a warm loving smile that tells me I'm okay in Psalm 139 is God's loving smile to you, you are okay. He knows you. He's near you and made you thinking of you. Your worthy because God is smiling on you today. We have you enjoyed today's Turning Point, weekend edition with Dr. David Jeremiah. You can hear this and other programs and get more information about administering by downloading the free Turning Point by developing smart phone or tablet by visiting our website that David Jeremiah.org/ready Jeremiah.G/ready. You can also turning on television on Friday to channel 17 Sunday morning tonight and I CCTV Sundays at 6:30 AM and Fridays at 1 PM. We invite you to join us again next weekend is Dr. David Jeremiah.

She is another powerful message from God's word of Turning Point weekend edition thanks for taking time to listen to find a nice friend.

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