“How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!” Psalm 139:17
It is marvelous that God should think of us as He does. That, infinitely great and holy – all worlds, all beings, all events occupying His mind – He should yet have individual thoughts of us, those thoughts not mere passing glances of the mind, but involving pre-determination and pre-arrangement of each event, circumstance, and step of our personal history, trivial though it be as a hair falling from the head – is a truth too mighty to grasp were it not too precious to refuse and too divine to disbelieve. You have, doubtless, beloved, often appeared in your own view so obscure and insignificant a being – a mere cipher in the great sum of human existence, a single drop in the vast ocean of human life – as to be almost at an infinite remove from God’s notice.
You could not, indeed, relieve yourself from the conviction of individual responsibility, nor stifle the reflection that for each transaction of the present life the future holds you accountable; yet that, isolated and solitary, perchance, poor and mean, as you may be, God, the great, the holy Lord God should think of you, notice you, regard you, set His heart upon you – that His thoughts, more precious than the ocean’s gems and more numerous than the sands which belt it, should cluster around you, clinging to you with a grasp so fervent and intense as to lift you to the distinction and privilege of a being in whom, the Divine regard were solely and supremely absorbed—is a truth distancing all conception and well-nigh overwhelming you with its mightiness. And yet so it is! Each child of God dwells in His heart and engages His mind as though he were the sole occupant of this boundless universe – a tiny insect swimming in the ocean of infinity.
Such is the truth to which the psalmist gives utterance in a burst of devout, impassioned feeling, “How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!” “Unto me!” Here is faith attracting to, and concentrating upon, its individual self all the precious thoughts Jehovah has of His people. Oh, there is not a thought of His wisdom, nor a thought of His love, nor a thought of His power, nor a thought of His grace which does not entwine itself with the being, and blend itself with the salvation of each child of His adoption.
The subject now engaging our meditation is – the preciousness of God’s thoughts – and may the theme lay low all high, towering, sinful thoughts of ourselves, and inspire and raise our holy, grateful, adoring thoughts of Him – His glory, beauty, and love – until with a depth of adoration and an intensity of affection worthy the theme our hearts respond, “How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!” Let us first contemplate a few characteristics of God’s precious thoughts of His saints.
God’s thoughts of His people are – infinite. Believers deal too little with the infinitude of God. Hence the tendency to “limit the Holy One of Israel.” Thus, too, it is, that our confidence in God is so hesitating, our views of His power so dwarfish, our love so defective, and our requests and expectations so contracted. “I am a great King, saith the Lord God.” All His thoughts are vast, infinite, worthy of His greatness. His electing thought of us was a great thought; His thought of redeeming us was a great thought; His thought of making us divine by the regeneration of the Holy Ghost is a great thought; His thought of bringing us to glory to enjoy Him fully and forever is a great thought. All these thoughts of God are as great as they are precious, and as precious as they are great. O child of God! Think not lightly of the thoughts God has of thee – they are so vast, nothing can exceed; so precious, nothing can equal them. The thoughts of an Infinite Mind encircle and enfold thee more closely and fondly than the ivy clasps the elm or the mother her new-born infant. Whether they appear clad in darkness, or robed in light, they are equally the great and precious thoughts of thy covenant God and Father. “How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!”
God’s thoughts of His people are – hidden. The thoughts of the Invisible One, they must necessarily be so. It is His glory to conceal until it becomes His wisdom and love to reveal them. Treasured up in the Divine Mind, they repose in profound mystery until each circumstance in our daily life unfolds and makes them known, then we learn how real and how precious God’s thoughts of us are. There is not a moment, beloved of God, that the Lord is not thinking of you; nor is there a moment that He is not, in some form or other, embodying those thoughts in His gracious and providential dealings with you. His wisdom withholds and His love veils them until the event transpires that gives them utterance and form. Therefore, when God is silent, let us be still; when He speaks, let us hearken.
Hidden to us though His precious thoughts are, they are all known to Him. “I know the thoughts I think towards you, saith the Lord; thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” Attempt not, therefore, to fathom the Divine Mind or to penetrate the thoughts that are hidden there. Know thou that they are thoughts of everlasting love, thoughts of assured peace, and let this bring your heart into silent, patient waiting until all these thoughts shall stand unveiled in His wise, loving, and holy dispensations, here, and in heaven’s own light hereafter. Enough is revealed by Christ to satisfy you that God’s thoughts of you are thoughts of reconciliation – that there exists not in the Divine Mind a solitary thought adverse to your well-being. Jesus, our Friend, reposes in His people the same confidence His Father has reposed in Him. “All things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” Jesus is the expression and embodiment of our Father’s mind. Jesus is God thinking, God loving, God working, God redeeming. “He that bath seen me hath seen the Father.” Be not, then, troubled in mind at the dark and mysterious in your path. God is dealing well with you. By His light, you shall walk through darkness. Confiding in the wise and loving, though concealed, thoughts of your heavenly Father, your trustful heart can respond, as those thoughts gradually unfold, “How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God!”
Unchangeableness is another characteristic of God’s thoughts of His people. This is self-evident since they are the thoughts of the Unchangeable One. Change implies imperfection. God is a perfect Being, consequently He cannot change. “I the Lord change not.” With Him is “no variableness, neither the shadow of a turning.” He may vary His providences, multiply His dispensations, and shift the ever-moving scene of human life, but – “His eternal thoughts move on, His undisturbed affairs.” How precious is this truth to the child of God!
Human thoughts change; mind itself fails and with it fades from memory countenances that were familiar, and names that were fond and scenes that were sacred. Human thoughts that cluster and cling so warmly and closely around us today, ere many weeks are past, attracted by new objects of interest, or absorbed by new engagements of time, have fled and gone, and we are alone and forgotten. But there is ONE whose thoughts of us never change, whose mind never ceases for a moment to think of us. “O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of me,” is His own loving declaration. Directing us to a mother—the last earthly home of human tenderness, sympathy, and love – He tells us, “She may forget, yet will not I.” Beloved, whatever fluctuation you find in human thought or change in human affection, God’s thoughts of love, and care, and faithfulness, are changeless. Have they ever darted into your heart like solar beams, causing that heart to sing for joy? Then, though in darkness, loneliness, and sorrow you are led to exclaim, “Hath the Lord forgotten to be gracious?” God still bears you in His thoughts and on His heart. Relatives may forget, friends may forget, the saints may forget, but thy God never can. He thinks of you at this moment as lovingly, as carefully, as from all eternity. Once in the thoughts of thy covenant God, thou art in those thoughts for ever.
Be not cast down, then, if God appears to forget you. “My way is hid from the Lord,” says the desponding Church. “No,” says God, “I have engraved thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” Amidst all your mental wanderings, your fickle, faint thoughts of Him, He still remembers you. In the multitude of your anxious and perplexed thoughts within you, awakened by a sense of your ungrateful oblivion of God, or by His trying and mysterious dealings, let this comfort delight your soul, that He never forgets you!
Edited from The Precious Things of God, originally published in 1860; currently in reprint through Soli Deo Gloria.
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