Deo Gloria
Sermon for August 16, 2020
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Psalm 139:13-18
Theme: The Seven Wonders of the Spiritual World
Wonder #3 – God Made Me
How many of you have seen the Body Worlds exhibit? Even if you haven’t seen it, I’m sure you’ve heard about it. Body Worlds is a somewhat controversial exhibit put together by a German scientist named Gunther von Hagens. It’s controversial because the human bodies that make up the exhibit are not models made out of plaster or plastic. They’re real human bodies, bodies that have been preserved by a unique process developed by Dr. Hagens. The controversial nature of the exhibit hasn’t stopped people from going, however. The exhibit has drawn millions of people all around the world. And I can understand why. No, I haven’t seen the exhibit myself; but I’ve seen pictures. As I was preparing for this sermon, I looked at some of the pictures online and it truly is amazing. One exhibit shows all of the muscles being used as a person plays basketball or jumps over a hurdle. Another display shows the entire nervous system and how it winds its way through the human body. Another display shows all the blood vessels in the human body—from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers to the toes on your feet. After viewing those pictures on the internet, I have to confess I was hooked. I was fascinated. I was amazed by some of the things I saw. And I gained a new appreciation for what David is saying this morning in the verses of our text. David, of course, never got to see the Body Worlds exhibit, and yet he too was amazed. He could not help but marvel at the third wonder of the spiritual world: that God made me.
Have you ever gotten one of those envelopes in the mail that has a message like this printed across the front in big, bold letters: “You are guaranteed to win 10 million dollars!” Of course, in tiny, little print somewhere on the back it says, “if your lucky numbers are the ones chosen at random from 17 billion others.” And if you happened to rip the envelope open before you read the small print, you soon discovered that the main purpose of the letter was not to inform you that had won all this money and you were really rich, but to try to get you to buy some magazines or some other product that you probably didn’t want. Have you noticed that the only time the world tells us we’re something special is when they’re trying to sell us something?
Are you somebody special? Not according to what they teach in science textbooks now days. According to scientists, your life is just an accident. The fact that our world is here and that you and I are here is just the result of random chemical reactions. You and I are just the latest link in an unending chain of evolution, the next rung on the ladder on the way to something better. You and I are no different from the animals. In fact, we descended from apes and the frog in the pond out behind your house is probably one of your long, lost relatives.
What a striking contrast we see this morning in God’s textbook! David makes it clear in Psalm 139 that you and I are special, because we were made by God. Speaking to God, David says, “For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb”(v. 13). When I was just a tiny baby, so small I could hardly even be seen on an ultrasound screen, God could see me as plain as day. And he was busy, carefully forming my tiny, little body: my heart and my lungs, my eyes and my ears, my fingers and my toes. Already at 18 days after conception, about the time my mother first began to suspect that she was pregnant, I already had a heartbeat. Just a couple of weeks later, my facial features began to take shape, including my mouth and my eyes. And my brain was working too. Brain waves could already be measured. By the 12th week my vocal chords were formed and I could cry. By 14 weeks my muscles were developed enough that I could start kicking and moving around and start playing soccer with mom’s bladder. By 16 weeks I had eyebrows and eyelashes and hair. At 20 weeks my ears were fully developed and I could hear my mother’s voice. And I still had 20 more weeks to go before I would be born. Is all of that just an accident? No, David compares it to knitting, like a grandmother carefully knitting a new pair of mittens or a nice, warm scarf for one of her grandchildren. God knit you and me together. He carefully formed us in our mother’s womb. He gave us life.
And yet, it’s more than just the fact that God made us that makes us special. It’s also the fact that he made us in such a fearful and wonderful way. Again speaking to God, David says, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well”(v. 14). Computers are certainly amazing machines and can do some pretty amazing things, but they can’t do even a fraction of what your body can do. Your computer can’t get up and walk around the room. It can’t play catch with you outside and it’s really lousy at 4 square. Did you know your computer can’t turn its head and look around the room? And even if it could, it couldn’t tell you what it saw? Did you know that a computer cannot figure out spelling mistakes? You and I can read a letter that is full of spelling mistakes and full of grammatical errors and still understand the message. But if I type in just one wrong letter in programming my computer, the computer won’t understand, or even worse, it might crash. Did you know that a computer cannot heal itself? If I cut my finger, my body immediately starts rushing in clotting agents to stop the bleeding and white blood cells to fight off infection. And before long it’s producing new skin cells to cover that wound and close up that wound. If, on the other hand, I accidentally cut some of the wires inside my computer, do you think my computer could fix them and make them better? Not a chance! If I wanted it to work again, I’d have to take it in to a computer repair shop.
Let me offer a few other examples. Did you know that your body contains almost 60,000 miles of blood vessels? In other words if you took all the blood vessels in your body and laid them end to end, they would stretch all the way from New York to Seattle 20 times! Did you know your body contains almost 100,000 miles of nerve fibers? Did you know that your body produces 2 million red blood cells per second? Did you know that your bones are 4 times stronger than concrete and that your body replaces your entire skeleton—every bone in your body—every 7 years? Can we help but marvel as David does? Can we help but marvel at the wonderful works of God, that he made us in such a fearful and wonderful way?
The third thing David teaches us in theses verses is that God has a plan for our lives. In v. 16 he writes, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” I imagine some of you are hoping to watch a few football games this fall. Hopefully the season won’t be cancelled and you can watch the Vikings play the Packers or the Vikings play the Bears. Do you suppose the coaches and the players go into those games without a plan, that they just make it up as they go? Not at all! Long before those teams ever set foot on the field, the coaches have a plan. They know which plays they’re going to run on offense–which running plays, which passing plays. They know what kind of defense they’re going to use and what kinds of coverages on passing downs. They have a thorough and detailed plan which they hope will lead their team to victory. Before I was even born, God had a plan for my life. He knew when I would be born. He knew my birthday even before my parents did. He knew where I would grow up and where I would go to school. He knew that I would be a pastor some day and would serve a congregation in a place called Belle Plaine, Minnesota. And he knows how long my life will be and when I will die. He already knows the date that will be on my tombstone. My life, you see, is not meaningless. I’m not wandering aimlessly, hopelessly lost in this maddening maze we call life. My life has purpose and direction, because God has a plan, a plan to lead me to victory.
The most important part of that plan is that I come to believe in Jesus as my Savior and be saved. You see our lives are our time of grace, the time God has graciously given us to learn about Jesus our Savior and come to faith in him so that we might live with him forever. And God has accomplished that part of the plan as well. In his grace and mercy he has brought us to faith in Jesus as our Savior and made us members of his family. And day by day he continues to sustain our faith and strengthen our faith with his holy, precious Word. And one day when our lives in this world are over, he will take us to heaven, where we will have perfect bodies, even more amazing and more wonderful than the ones we have now; and where we will live in a perfect place, a place so beautiful and so awesome that we can hardly even imagine; and where we will live with him in perfect peace forever. What an amazing plan God has for our lives, a plan he laid out before we were even born, a plan he designed for our eternal good!
So how have we responded? God has done all of this for you and me. He has given me life. He has made me in a fearful and wonderful way. He has designed a wonderful plan for my life, a plan that will ultimately bring me to eternal life in glory. And how have I responded? How have you responded? Are we thankful to God, thankful for his gift of life? Is it precious to us as it was to David, or do we just take it for granted? Do we view every baby’s life as precious or something that can be aborted and discarded if we don’t want it? What about the wonderful bodies he has given us? Do we appreciate them and do our best to take care of them? Or we neglect them or abuse or pollute them with things like smoking or drinking or drugs? Do we use our bodies in a way that brings honor and glory to God, or do we use them in sinful and selfish ways, ways that bring shame not only to us, but also to the one who made us? What about our lives? Do we live our lives in service to our Creator? Do we do our best to follow his plan for our lives? Or do we tell God, “Sorry, it’s my life. And I’m going to live it the way I want to”? May God forgive us for being so foolish at times, so ungrateful, so selfish, so sinful! May he forgive us for the sake of Jesus Christ our Savior!
Jesus did what you and I should have done. He never forgot where he came from or who it was who gave him life. He never misused or abused his body. He lived his entire life according to God’s plan, giving glory and honor and thanks to God in everything he did. He did that for you and me as our Savior. And for all of the times we did not appreciate God’s gift of life or the wonderful bodies he has given us, for all of the times we misused or abused our bodies or failed to use them in a God-pleasing way, Jesus gave his life on the cross, suffering the penalty for all our sins, so that we might be forgiven.
For Jesus’ sake and our own good, let’s take to heart the message God recorded for us in these verses from Psalm 139. With David let’s appreciate what God has done for us and marvel at what he has done for us and live our lives in gratitude for what he has done for us, because it truly is amazing. The 3rd great wonder of the spiritual world is that God made me. He made me in a fearful and wonderful way. And he has a plan for my life, a good and gracious plan that leads to eternal life in heaven. Amen.