Tearing Down Walls in our Relationship with God
Speaker: Michael Rowntree, Founder & Lead Pastor Convergence Church OKC / Co-Host on Remnant Radio
Scripture:
Psalm 139, Job 16
RELATIONAL WALLS -
Walls with People - people put up different types of walls in relationships, to keep from intimacy or having to trust other people. We are born putting up walls.
Types of Walls:
Wall of Anger (if you say anything I don’t like, I’ll blow up at you)
Wall of Fear (if you say something I don’t like, I’m so fragile I might crumble)
Wall of Words (you can’t relate to me at all because I’m talking constantly)
Wall of Silence (I observe, but never participate)
Walls with God - Like human relationships, sometimes we put up walls in our relationship with God.
Sometimes we’re angry with God (Wall of Anger), or afraid of God (Wall of Fear), or pray pray pray without listening (Wall of Words), or don’t pray at all (Wall of Silence).
We ALL have walls.
Our whole life is tearing down walls and letting God in progressively.
There’s always more layers.
PSALM 139
The Impossibility of Walling God Out (v.1-6)
The Foolishness of Walling God Out (v.7-18)
The Joy of Letting God In (v.19-24)
—
#1 - The Impossibility of Walling God Out (v.1-6)
(v.1) “search” - “you have searched me and known me”
Could be translated “probed” or “interrogated”
David is saying God has searched, probed, and interrogated him. And the outcome is “you know me”
Knowing is the end result of God’s ruthless investigation
(v.2-4) - the extent of God’s searching
“you discern my thoughts from afar”
The thoughts you thought decades ago, or will think decades from now…God is intimately familiar!
(v.4) - not just thoughts, but speech! God know the thoughts you’ll think years from now.
(v.5-6) - the discomfort of God knowing
He knows every thought. Every word.
(v.5) ”you hem me in” - this is not cute. David is a man of war. He knows what it’s like to be trapped in a cave with no escape hatch, to be surrounded.
(v.6) “such knowledge is too wonderful” - God knows EVERYTHING. He’s incredibly thorough.
(v.6) “it is high” - like a high military fortress
There is discomfort for David in God knowing him. He compares God to an enemy.
Just like God’s hand was heavy against the Philistines, David feels God’s hand is heavy against him. There is no way of escape. David is hoping for an escape route and everywhere he goes, God is there.
Do you ever feel like God is your enemy with no escape? (hemmed in and surrounded, as if you’re attacked?)
God’s tests reveal what we know and what we’re made of.
Job 16 - Job put up a wall and says he’s had enough
Do you relate to Job? Basically: “God your hand is heavy against me, why won’t you leave me alone?”
Or David: “God, your searching me is uncomfortable!”
God’s testing often comes through suffering. This is how he tears down walls in our lives.
#2 - The Foolishness of Walling God Out (v.7-18)
(v.7-12) In this section of Psalm 139, David enters a meditative state.
After being really uncomfortable with God’s probing and testing, David starts to meditate on traits of God…and he sees the foolishness of trying to run from God or build up walls.
God is omniscient (knows everything) and omnipresent (everywhere)
Q: Can I go off grid with God? A: NO!
David imagines FLEEING (v.7)…and there are 3 different realms he imagines fleeing to:
Vertical Realms (v.8)
Horizontal Realms (v.9-10)
Supernatural Realms (v.11-12)
There’s a shift from God’s hand being heavy on David, to God’s hand holding him up. (v.10)
(v.13-18) God’s work in dark places
David illustrates that even the darkest of places is light to God.
Like a photographer develops film in a dark room, God does his most creative work in the darkness of a mother’s womb.
(v.13) “Forming and knitting” - careful crafting, surgeon’s precision
David challenges us to view our suffering through a different lense: God’s creative compassion…
The Hebrew word for “compassion” is similar to the Hebrew word for “womb” - this is intentional.
It’s not just: oh, these cells formed and God blessed them! No, this is intentional and creative work.
Before your life story was formed, it was written.
That doesn’t mean God writes evil things.
If you filter God’s love through your suffering, the temptation is to want to put up a wall…
Instead, David challenges us to filter through God’s (womb-like) compassion.
Don’t measure God’s love by your suffering. Measure it by His (God’s suffering on Calvary). This is even better than the filter David had!
God’s heart is to turn toward us, and to enter deep into our suffering.
David models how to avoid walling God out.
#3 - The Joy of Letting God In (v.19-24)
(v.19-22) Most people skip this section - because David says he hates people and wants them to die!
(v.19) “oh that you would slay the wicked”
On this side of the cross, we worship Jesus. Who dies for his enemies! And he tells us not to slay our enemies, but to love them.
^So what’s happening with this verse? It’s a big one to tackle. But the nutshell version = The greater the revelation, the greater the responsibility.
There was an allowance in David’s era for these mindsets, but we now have a deeper revelation of God’s love.
We don’t skip this section of Psalm 139, because it does show us something good: hatred for evil.
Jesus was a table-turner. He hated evil like David. Jesus felt a hostility towards sin and evil.
It’s impossible to love God without hating evil. The measure of our passion for God is our passion against evil. Christians should despise evil as a reflection of our passion for Christ. We should feel passionately against sin and wickedness.
There’s not just evil out in the world…there’s also evil inside of us. You have to be able to look in the mirror. It’s not just the evil “out there” but sin in our life. God search me, test me, and know my thoughts.
(v.23-24) At the end of the journey of Psalm 139, David now asks God to search him for evil.
TAKEAWAY:
If you have a wall up with God (anger, fear, suffering, etc.) - Let it go.
Trust God to search, know, and even to try you.
Pass your walls through the filter of God’s infinite love displayed on Calvary.
We build walls to protect ourselves, but you don’t need to protect yourself from God. He’s not against you like an enemy. He’s for you like a friend.
When you measure God’s love not by your own suffering, but by Christ’s…it makes you want to tear down your walls and welcome the invasiveness of his searching and knowing.
Welcome God’s friendship. God’s friendship is our joy.