Psalm 139: In My Mother's Womb

  • Bill Kittrell
  • Jan 24, 2010
  • Series: Psalms

Psalm 139: In My Mother’s Womb Sermon Quotes
Bill Kittrell Sunday, January 24, 2010

#1:
“David…exclaims against the folly of measuring God’s knowledge by our own, when it raises prodigiously above us. Many when they hear God spoken of conceive of him as like unto themselves, and such presumption is most condemnable. Very commonly they will not allow his knowledge to be greater than what comes up to their own apprehensions of things. David, on the contrary, confesses it to be beyond his comprehension, virtually declaring that words could not express this truth of the absoluteness with which all things stand patent to the eye of God, this being a knowledge having neither bound nor measure, so that he could only contemplate the extent of it with (an offensive opinion of his own intelligence)...”
John Calvin

#2:
“The psalm is a piece of poetry, not a part of a law code, so it is not a knockdown proof text to demonstrate that abortion is wrong. But the wonder it expresses at the growth of a fetus and at God’s involvement in this process is grounds for reckoning that a decision to cause a woman to miscarry is not merely one involving a decision about what happens to her body. It involves terminating a project that God is involved in. One would need special reasons to do that.”
John Goldingay

#3:
“In classes on the Psalms, I always ask students whether they think these verses are good news or bad news, and they always divide between people who see them as good news, people who see them as bad news, and people who perceptively discern that it depends on who you are. There is inherent in the psalm recognition of this ambiguity, which is a recurrent feature of the Scriptures. While they often do their work on us by being crystal clear in their meaning, on other occasions they do their work by being allusive and requiring us to work out what we would mean by them. Instead of our reading them, they read us...” John Goldingay

#4:
Nahum 1:6 Who can stand before his indignation?
Who can endure the heat of his anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire,
and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.
7 The LORD is good,
a stronghold in the day of trouble;
he knows those who take refuge in him.
8 But with an overflowing flood
he will make a complete end of the adversaries,
and will pursue his enemies into darkness.