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July 1 Today’s Reading: Psalm 136-144 “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Psalm 139:14
The 139th Psalm clearly displays the omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of our great God as our Creator, Ruler, and Judge. David speaks by divine inspiration, declaring his astonishment in the consideration of his own creation and sustenance as a man, God’s knowledge of him, and the Lord’s care in providing for and protecting him. But who can read this Psalm and not see clearly that David, writing by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, spoke prophetically of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior? Behold a greater than David is here! This blessed psalm will be full of comfort to our souls, if see our dear Savior in the things written here. This 139th Psalm was written by God the Holy Ghost that we might know him whom truly to know is life eternal (John 17:3).
Covered in the Womb Our Savior declares that the Lord covered him in his mother’s womb. Then he says, “I am fearfully, and wonderfully made.” With those words, our God-man Mediator asserts that he was no ordinary man. The creation of his manhood was something more than an ordinary work of creation. Our Savior’s humanity, his body of flesh and bones, was “fearfully and wonderfully made!” The word “wonderfully” means “differently, distinctly, in a unique way.” So it was with our Savior’s incarnation. — “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Body Prepared The apostle Paul, commenting upon the prophecy of David concerning Christ as set forth in the 40th Psalm, wrote, “Wherefore, when he cometh into the world he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me” (Hebrews 10:5). How was his body prepared? The angel who announced the miraculous conception to Mary declared, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee” (Luke 1:35). Truly, his holy humanity was “fearfully and wonderfully made.” The Lord God created a new thing in the earth. — A woman compassed a man, just as the Prophet of God said (Jeremiah 31:22). Our Savior was conceived in Mary’s virgin womb, without the use of a man, by God the Holy Ghost. He had no earthly father. But this work is even more wonderful in our eyes when we remember that Mary had no part in the creation of our Savior’s body in her womb either. She was altogether passive in it. The Lord Jesus was not begotten of a woman, but was made of a woman. Being conceived in the virgin womb by the work of God alone, without the aid of a man or the aid of a woman, our dear Savior is the man from heaven (1 Corinthians 15:47). Because God the Holy Ghost formed Christ’s body in Mary’s womb, our Redeemer said, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” He was indeed made secret, and curiously wrought in the dark place of the virgin’s womb, called the lowest parts of the earth. — “My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Mystical Body Then, the Savior says, “Thine eyes did see my substance yet being imperfect; and in thy book all my members were written” (Psalm 139:16). The members of his mystical body, the church, were written in the Lamb’s book of life from eternity (Philippians 4:3; Revelation 13:8; 17:8; 21:27). When the Lord God said, “Let us make man” (Genesis 1:26), he made Adam and all the human race in him. But we never read of a book in which all the members of the human race were written before their creation. Obviously, the psalmist’s words cannot refer to men in general. Rather, these words refer to our Lord Jesus Christ, our God-man Surety and Representative, and all his members, God’s elect, the members of his mystical body, the church. — “For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Ephesians 5:30).
Don Fortner
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Pastor Fortner’s
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