Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomim:
Psalms 139:17 “How precious also are your thoughts unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them.”
I trust in God, wherever I may be,
Upon the land or on the stormy sea
Let come what may, from day to day,
My Heavenly Father watches over me.
-W.C. Martin –
Last Sunday during his message, our pastor asked his young son to come to him. He explained how, as a father, he wanted to control him, protect him and all the other things he wanted to do as a father. I immediately thought of that old hymn, “My Heavenly Father Watches Over Me.” Just the title of the song is such a comfort. Yet, as I listened to our pastor speak, I could not help but wonder if I had just made another step toward understanding the heart of God.
David said: “how precious also are your thoughts unto me.” Can we really know the thoughts of God or does this word in the Hebrew rendered as “thoughts” suggest something even more profound? The word is “ra’ah.” “Ra’ah is a common word for “evil.” Obviously David was not referring to an evil nature of God that was precious to him. This word “ra’ah” is rendered as an evil in the sense that you have a consuming passion for something that causes you to forget everything else such as family, friends, job etc. In the application to God in this passage what David is saying is that he is the object of God’s all consuming passion.
If we are a consuming passion for God it stands to reason that He not only watches over us, He wants to watch over us, He longs to control us and keep us out of trouble. The only thing stopping Him is that He has given us a free will. God delivered Israel from the Egyptians, He provided for them, parted the Red Sea for them and just a few days later when their water ran out they began to complain talking like God did not care. We say this murmuring made God angry, yet if we really look at from the standpoint of this consuming passion, I would say it broke God’s heart.
David is saying that this consuming passion is “precious” to him. The word in Hebrew for “precious” is “yakar” which means priceless. There is an old saying: “Every man has his price.” If you had your choice of winning a billion dollar lottery and becoming a billionaire or being the object of God’s consuming passion, which would you take. The answer is obvious, yet we live as if we do not possess something more than the sum of all the treasuries of this world.
There is something even more important than the fact that we have a Heavenly Father who watches over us. It is the that He wants and longs to watch over us. The next time we face a Red Sea on one side and the Egyptians bearing down on us on the other side, rather than sit and complain, fret or worry perhaps we should consider God’s heart and say: “God, you long to watch over me, well here’s your chance.”
That last phrase, “how great is the sum of them,” is literally translated as “how strong are the heads of them.” That could mean many things. However, in context of my rendering of “thoughts” as “passions” I would suggest what David is saying is that God has numerous desires or passions for us. His desires or passions for us are so numerous, it is like the sand of the sea but for him the chief passion is the strongest or greatest. The following verses suggest that the greatest passion of God is to protect us and save us from our enemies, so He can have us all to Himself. Of course the greatest enemy is Satan. It cost Jesus his life to protect us from that enemy.
After all that, can we really doubt that our “Heavenly Father watches over us.”
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