When we read the Bible, it's clear that God is all knowing and all powerful.

And yet this same Almighty God is deeply intimate. In fact, He knows us better than we know ourselves.

Today on Truth For Life, we're finding out why this realization can be either terrifying or comforting.

Alistair Begg is teaching from the opening verses of Psalm 139, but he begins with an illustration from Psalm 135.

Let's just look at verse 13. Your name, O Lord, endures forever.

You're renowned, O Lord, throughout all the ages. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, all the rest, Ruth, all the way through.

Peter, James, John, Eric Little, Jim Elliott, Helen Rosefear, all the way through.

Here we are in 2023. For the Lord will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants.

And then look at what He says in verse 15. The idols of the nations are silver and gold.

The work of human hands. They have mouths, but don't speak. They have eyes, but don't see. They have ears, but they don't hear.

Nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them.

So the contrast is vast. And what He is pointing out as He goes through and writes in this way is the absurdity, and it is an absurdity for men and women to seek out His will.

And it is an absurdity for men to seek out His will.

And then look at the way He says in verse 15. The way He says in verse 15.

Because we are made in order to worship, to worship the true and living God.

And when the people turn back and when they turn aside, where did He end up?

Well, let me just read it again. The folly of it all, graphically portrayed.

The ironsmith makes His peace. The carpenter makes His peace.

He shapes it into a figure of a man with the beauty of a man to dwell in a house.

He cuts down cedars or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak, and he lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest.

He plants a cedar, the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel. It takes a part of it and warms himself.

He kindles a fire, he begs bread, so far so good.

...