Psalm 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
This week I have to do some repairs on our car. I was taken by surprise about a week ago when I noticed one of the front tires on the car was badly worn. The car had not been pulling to one side, yet the rubber was worn off on that one tire. I knew one front wheel bearing was getting noisy and so I ordered a new one and new struts. Due to my current health needs, I decided it was best to enlist the help of one of our church members to help me with the task of replacing these parts. We began that process last night.
Cars are designed by fallible people. There are some things in that design that are good and there are other things that are not so good. It was important for us to pay attention to some of the details of the struts to be able to get the new ones in place. After we finish this task, I will need to get a front end alignment to keep from wearing the new tires prematurely. All of this is just about a car that is made by fallible man and has its flaws.
Man is created by the Master Designer. Man was created without any flaws. Adam and Eve were unique to humanity. There will never be another human being like them. Adam chose to blow that uniqueness by disobeying his Creator. Adam was the smartest man who ever lived because he had no sin to interfere with his ability to think and reason. He had a unique relationship with his Creator. He threw that all away.
Since the fall of man, every human being has been born in sin. In fact we are conceived in sin. Every child born comes out of the womb a lost sinner. We all demonstrate that fact from a very young age.
God has been very gracious to man. Before He created man, He already knew what would happen with man. He knew this, but unlike the Calvinist and others like them, God gave man the option of following Him, or defying Him. Since the fall of man, God gives every human being the option of turning to Him and trusting in Him for life.
In our text, God directed the Psalmist to write about his attitude toward God. Obviously the Psalmist believed in God. He was not born that way, but he chose to come to the place of trusting and believing in the true God. This was prior to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was also prior to the completion of the Scriptures on earth. The Scriptures were always completed in heaven, but they were revealed to man over a period of some sixteen hundred years.
The Psalmist chose to praise God. He knew he was fearfully and wonderfully made. The Psalmist took a unique approach to his body and soul. He understood that his flaws, his sins, were not the fault of his Creator. He understood that God had done a wonderful job of making man. He understood that even in his fallen state, God had provided enough ability in man so that man could come to know the true God.
In my experience with our medical profession, I find that too many of them approach humanity from the wrong perspective. Rather than praising God for His wonderful design in man, they approach humanity as having developed over a long process of evolution. Thus, when they need to deal with flaws in humanity which are due to the fall, they approach it from a wrong perspective. My latest hospital stay was the result of a medical profession that does not understand, nor appreciate the intricacies of the human body. Thus I had been prescribed a pill that was taking essential minerals from my body, and nobody was monitoring this. I should have read the fine print of that pill myself, but did not. Thus I was not aware of that potential danger of this drug. My body broke down to the place where I ended up spending six days in the hospital, trying to fix a problem that was caused by negligence.
God, Who created man, saw fit to keep me alive in spite of the fact that unnecessary harm had been done to my body. If we would approach our bodies with the attitude of the Psalmist, the outcome would be much different.
Again we see here that the Psalmist declared that God’s Works are marvellous. I hear too many people use the word “awesome” to describe something that some person has done. There is nothing that any person can do that is awesome. That word belongs to God. He is awesome. Man should be in awe of what God has done and what He can do.
The Psalmist was directed by God to express his right attitude toward God. He also stated that his soul knew very well that God was a wonderful Creator. That is the key to how we approach life. When my soul is directed by God it will make a difference in how my mind functions.
If we had doctors and nurses who would accept God’s record of Creation and would know the Creator themselves, it would make a big difference in how they would approach their work with man. For me, it is amazing how much doctors and nurses can help us in spite of their very flawed thinking and training. From what I have read, it would be quite difficult for a truly born again Christian to study to be a doctor or a nurse. The colleges approach humanity from the evolutionary perspective. Thus they start from a wrong point of view. A person would need to be a strong Christian in order to be subjected to such an attack against the facts and still be able to succeed in getting the diploma needed to be licensed as a doctor or a nurse. Compromise would not be the way to go for the true child of God. There would need to be disagreement with things that were being taught in the classroom.
The devil is actively involved in trying to keep the truth away from us as people. However, the soul of man still has a core that is designed by the infallible and true God. The Bible tells us that when God formed man of the dust of the ground, He breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living soul. Flawed as we are, due to the fall, there is something in the soul of man that helps him to know that we did not come from some slop or from a rock or from a monkey. The hardened sinner, rejects that core fact and accepts and pursues the lies of the devil and develops a philosophy that is anti God and harmful to humanity.
For those who are saved, we have the privilege, and indeed an obligation to remind our fellow man of the fact that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We can know this because our soul knows that. Our souls have been made alive through the new birth and we cannot deny that. We need to be careful that we do not allow the wicked to put the fear of man into our hearts rather than operate under the fear of God. His way is right and He knows what is right and good for us.
Pastor Bartel
