March 16, 2025 Fearfully & Wonderfully Made |Psalm 139:13-16

Today we are once again celebrating the sacrament of baptism. We will be reflecting on Psalm 139:13-14, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. Psalm 139 reminds us of how precious each one of us is, and how God actively shapes and forms each one of us in the womb. The Psalmist confesses that all God’s works are wonderful, God is the original creator who has created us in his own image! In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul picks up on this theme, when he writes that we are masterpieces of God. Next Sunday we will be blessed to place God’s sign and seal on another child of God, a masterpiece of God!

Transcript

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Psalm 139:13-16

What a special morning! We’ve commissioned young people and leaders to serve in Mexico over the March break and we’ve celebrated the sacrament of baptism of Peyton, remembering the grace of God through Jesus in claiming Peyton as his daughter, sealing her to himself as Arte and Jennifer responded by promising to raise her to love and serve him in faith as they do themselves. We’re reminded of the beauty and preciousness of life in the birth and baptism of Peyton, and how this preciousness of life compels us to go and serve others so they too can know how God desires to pour his blessings on us throughout our entire life, as we read earlier on in Psalm 139. 

Arte and Jennifer, in the verses you’ve picked to reflect on for Peyton’s baptism, we hear an echo back to Genesis and how God created humanity, Genesis 1:26–28, “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” We see how God created man in Genesis 2:7, “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” The word in Hebrew for breath is also the word for spirit, God breathed his spirit of life into Adam, a beautiful picture of the intimacy God desires to have with us.

David picks up on this imagery here, “For you created my inmost being; you knit, or weaved me together in my mother’s womb.” I love how personal this is, Peyton, and Kaden before her, were knit or weaved together by God’s own hands, given life through God’s active work and presence. Our lives are a divine gift from God to be valued and cherished as they are precious to God. As we hear in the psalm, life is already precious in the womb as Isaiah also affirms, Isaiah 49:1, “Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.” God knew and called Peyton even before she was born, speaking her name, maybe even before you were certain of what you were going to name her. 

This is how we know Jesus, because he knows our name, John 10:14–15, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.” We know how much God cares for us when Jesus teaches us not to worry in Matthew 6:25–26, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” It’s easy to see how precious children are, but sometimes it’s a challenge for us as we grow up to remember how precious we are to God and to remind our children in their own times of doubt. 

King David marvels at how God works in ways and places we can’t always see, using the images of the depths of the earth, a place often associated with the afterlife, and being made in the secret place, the mother’s womb, pointing to how God is working and acting with us from conception to even after we die, a picture of God’s faithful presence our entire life. There’s a mystery here that we can’t completely understand even with all the knowledge we have today of how life begins, how intelligence, creativity, the ability to wonder and dream and create, all come together in each of us, and it all begins in the warmth and darkness of the womb. We call these communicative attributes, things that make up who we are as people that we share with God because we’re created in his image.

There is so much we don’t know about how we’re created, body and soul, we know that we are fearfully and wonderfully made by God’s hand. This is important to remember today. Paul, picks up on this when he writes the church in Ephesus, Ephesians 2:8–10, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” The Greek for “handiwork” or “workmanship,” depending on which version of the NIV you’re reading, can also be translated as “masterpiece.” This picks up on the images in the Old Testament of God as the great artist creator, echoing to Isaiah’s image in Isaiah 64:8, “Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” As the scholar P.A. Ross writes, “This fact prompted the psalmist to break forth in praise over the thought of how marvelously he had been made. Even David’s rudimentary knowledge of the marvels of the human body led him to be in awe and wonder. The words wonderfully and wonderful are mindful of God’s marvelous knowledge.” God knows us, he knows our hearts and souls, and he loves us deeply as our creator and Father. 

David offers us the reassurance that our lives are in God’s hands, Psalm 139:16, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Albert Mohler writes, “The verse declares that, even in the womb, the child was being formed under the supervision and by the active involvement of God who already had planned the course of his life. This statement has much to say about how people must give human life in the womb the same loving care that God—whose Spirit gives life—bestows upon it. The passage is poetry, but is still revealed truth. The passage also stresses the sovereignty of God more than any other psalm; people are not the masters of their own destiny, but are in the hand of the Lord.”

Every person is precious to God because we’re all created in his image and by his hand. This is so important to remember and live out today. In a world where hate is so easily and quickly spread, we need to remember that whenever we talk to or about someone, we’re talking about someone in the image of God, someone that God desires to be saved, as Peter writes, 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Every person is precious and valuable, whether we like them or not, so when you want to say something hateful, or share a hateful meme online that seeks to belittle or mock someone, stop and pray for them instead and acknowledge that God cares deeply about them and so should we. As followers of Jesus, we’re to be known for being respectful of all life, for protecting life from conception to death, not for creating division or hatred based on our differences.

Jesus came to earth, formed in Mary’s womb, fearfully and wonderfully made through the work of the Holy Spirit, taught his through his life and teachings how we are to live with each other with grace, loving God above all, loving each other, and even loving our enemies and those who persecute us. Jesus shows us how precious we are by taking all our sin on himself, washing us clean, as baptism reminds us, giving us a new life as children of God. Psalm 139, like baptism, calls us to remember that our identity is found in God who has made us, and in Jesus who has washed us clean, and in the Holy Spirit who lives in us and calls us to share this gospel message so that all those who struggle with feelings of self-worth, all those who have experienced abuse and rejection, all those who have been discriminated against because of skin colour or ethnic backgrounds can hear the good news that they are precious and valuable to God!

David marvels at a God who has personally created each one of us, an artist who has created each of us unique; Peyton has been created different from Kaden, God has different plans for her, unique to the gifts and talents he’s placed in her for you and her to discover.