But how precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
For sixteen verses the writer has felt God closing in — searched, known, followed everywhere, with nowhere to hide. Then the tone changes: the God who knows everything about him has thoughts toward him too precious to count.
Being watched by God brings no rest on its own. Relief comes from another direction.
Here we have in the psalm which follows (139) how a saint can come to be at home in the divine presence. The sense of God's omniscience as well as of His omnipresence cannot provide that. Rather the opposite. God's eye on him is no comfort. From under that eye he cannot escape, wherever he goes... What then can bring relief? The answer is very simple and very blessed. God's thoughts as revealed can do it. The psalmist's thoughts about God have not done it.
God knows every detail of us because He made every detail of us.
He knows all, because He has also formed all. This connects us with His taking perfect notice of us in goodness. He cares for us. He watches over every part of the body as it is formed, just as He knows our every thought. If He does, He has His own thoughts too, and these are precious to us. This is just the change and working of faith. It must begin with conscience under God's eye, because that brings us into His presence. Then it reaches God's thoughts.
The same shift is described as a reversal of feeling: what first crushed the writer ends up steadying him.
When at last he realises that God's "works" and God's "thoughts" are toward him in grace, the omniscience of God becomes the source of his deepest comfort.
If God's thoughts are precious, where do we read them?
Our souls do not just need thoughts about God. Every religion, divine or human, true or false, will teach us to think about God. What we need is God's own thoughts brought into our souls. Those thoughts are learned only in the Word, with authority and without mixture. The Scriptures are these thoughts of God conveyed to us. And the psalmist can say of them, "How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!"
God's thoughts about us stand far above our own low view of ourselves.
This is a blessed theme: the theme of God's thoughts. They are higher than our thoughts, as the heavens are higher than the earth. It is the theme of God's grace, which has no bottom and no limit. Here is real liberty. Our own thoughts are so narrow, so poor, so mean. Do we know what it is to have them beaten down by God's high, generous, liberal thoughts — His thoughts about us, about what we are in Christ?
What is God thinking about? One answer is a Person.
Every spiritual mind will readily agree that verse 17 applies to Jesus as its true subject. For it is He who from eternity filled the thoughts of God above all. The church, or any other creature, becomes the object of the Lord's thoughts only as it is in Him. Nor can those thoughts be numbered by the tongue of man. Their full expression is in Christ, and they are precious.
These thoughts did not begin when we did.
And these thoughts of God are eternal. He had them about us before the world began. Even then He purposed to have us in the same relationship His Son has to Himself, and in all the love of which His Son is the worthy object.
He tries to count them and gives up — and even that failure ends in comfort.
Those thoughts are numberless, for they are like the sand. How could they be counted? Trying to count them would put a man to sleep. But even sleep would not take him out of the presence of the Lord (v. 18).
Because His thoughts are precious, the psalm can end by inviting the very searching it once fled from.
And what is the reply of the soul to all the sifting it has consciously passed through? "Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!" If that is the result, we may well say, "How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!" ... Let this precious thought comfort our hearts. The Lord is sifting away much that we have valued more than Himself. But He does it only to bring out what He knows lies at the bottom of our hearts.
- Searched — The psalm opens with a man who cannot escape God's eye. That knowledge alone brings him no comfort.
- Turned — Relief comes from God's thoughts about him, not from his thoughts about God.
- Given — We do not guess at those thoughts. Commentators point to Scripture, where God gives us His mind.
- Filled — Christ is their true subject. He filled the thoughts of God from eternity, and in Him we become their object.
- Opened — Because they are precious, the man who once fled God's searching now asks for it: "Search me, O God."
[If] I would count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee.
The psalmist gives up trying to count God's thoughts toward him — they outrun the grains of sand. Then sleep comes, and he wakes to find himself still with the God he could not get away from.
How can anyone be at home with a God he cannot get away from? One writer traces where the relief comes from — and it is not from the psalmist's own thoughts.
The psalm shows how a believer can come to be at home in God's presence. Knowing that God knows everything and is everywhere cannot provide that. Rather the opposite. God's eye on him is no comfort. He cannot escape from under that eye, wherever he goes. What then can bring relief? The answer to this is very simple and very blessed. God's thoughts as revealed can do it. The psalmist's thoughts about God have not done it. So up to verse 12 he is uneasy. In verse 13, however, he strikes a different note. The first thing that brings relief is the memory that God thought of him when he was in his mother's womb.
The verse before speaks of the "sum" of God's thoughts; this verse speaks of counting them one by one. A commentator holds the two together.
To him they were a revelation of God's thoughts toward him — precious thoughts of divine wisdom and love. Looked at as a whole — the final outcome of it all — the sum was great indeed. But if you took them up to look at them in detail, they were numberless as the grains of sand. And still, to the man wakened up out of the unconsciousness of his beginning, as he has been recounting it, this same God remains. Could he wish to have Him banished?
Why does waking come up at all in a verse about counting? One writer ties the two together.
Those thoughts are numberless, for they are like the sand. How could anyone count them? Trying to count them would put one to sleep; but even his sleep would not deprive him of the presence of the Lord (v. 18).
What are these countless thoughts about? One writer ties them to redemption.
The thoughts of God mentioned in verses 17 and 18 may be applied to the thoughts of His love in redemption. How precious are these thoughts, in which He has remembered the sinner's need. They are indeed more than the sand.
Another writer asks how long it would take to reach the end of them, and what to do with them now.
God is love, and all the thoughts of God spring from the great love of His heart... Eternity alone will be required to tell out all these great thoughts of love. Let us get our hearts and minds well stored with them. They were all purposed and thought out before the world's foundation.
Earlier that searching eye was no comfort. By the end he asks God to search him — the same eye, a changed heart.
He would not have it otherwise. He was oppressed before; now he is free in spirit, and he takes God's side against God's enemies... "O LORD, You have searched me and known me," are the opening words. "Search me, O God, and know my heart." ... Awake, he knows he is with God.
One writer sets David's words beside what God has done in Christ. The believer's portion, he says, is larger.
David could say, "When I awake, I am still with You" (v. 18). But we know the new creation power that worked in Christ in raising Him from among the dead... How blessed our portion, not only to be "still with" Him but to be seated there where He is in Christ Jesus.
One writer turns the verse into a daily habit.
"When I awake I am still with You" (Ps. 139:18). If you would still be with God, watch over your hearts every day; lock up your hearts with God every morning, and give Him the key.
- Searched. The psalm opens with God's eye on a man who cannot escape it, and up to verse 12 that thought leaves him uneasy.
- Relieved. The relief comes from God's revealed thoughts, not from the psalmist's own thoughts about God.
- Countless. Taken as a whole the sum is great; taken one by one the thoughts are as numberless as sand, and eternity alone will tell them out.
- Unbroken. Even sleep does not deprive him of the Lord's presence — he counts himself to sleep and wakes still with God.
- Welcomed. The man who could not escape God's eye now asks to be searched. The believer's portion runs further still: not only "still with" Him, but seated where Christ is.