The Fugitive's Folly and the Believer's Comfort Text: Psalm 139:7-12
Introduction: Nowhere to Run
We live in an age of fugitives. Modern man is on the run, and he doesn't even know what he is running from. He runs from authority, from responsibility, from the created order, from the distinctions of male and female, and ultimately, he is running from God. He imagines that if he can just find the right hiding place, some remote corner of the sea, some dark alley of the soul, some sophisticated philosophical hideout, he can finally be free. He believes in the possibility of a private life, a secret thought, a place where the all-seeing eye of God does not penetrate.
This is the foundational lie of our secular age. It is the lie whispered in Eden: "You can be as gods." You can define your own reality. You can create your own moral universe. You can escape the presence of the one who made you. This desire for autonomy is not a bug in the system; it is the central feature of fallen humanity. It is the engine of all rebellion. From Jonah in the belly of the great fish to the modern man in the belly of his own self-absorption, the story is the same: a creature trying to outrun his Creator.
But Psalm 139 confronts this fugitive mindset with a breathtaking declaration of God's total and inescapable presence. This is not presented as a threat, at least not initially. For the believer, for David, this is a profound comfort. But for the man in rebellion, the one who loves his sin and wants to keep it in the dark, these words are terrifying. They are the death knell of his imagined autonomy. This psalm teaches us that there is no "off the grid" when it comes to God. There is no Witness Protection Program for sinners. Every square inch of the cosmos, from the highest heaven to the depths of Sheol, is stamped with the words: "Property of God."
So the central question this passage forces upon us is this: Is the omnipresence of God your greatest terror or your greatest comfort? Your answer to that question reveals everything about the state of your soul. For the one who is at war with God, the thought that God is everywhere is the ultimate claustrophobia. But for the one who has been reconciled to God through Christ, the fact that God is everywhere is the ultimate security.
The Text
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I lift up the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will bruise me,
And the light around me will be night,”
Even the darkness is not too dark for You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.
(Psalm 139:7-12 LSB)
The Rhetoric of Inescapability (v. 7)
David begins with two rhetorical questions that frame the entire passage.
"Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?" (Psalm 139:7)
The answer, of course, is nowhere. This is not a man genuinely seeking an escape route. This is a man marveling at the glorious impossibility of escape. He is laying out the terms of reality. The Spirit of God is not a localized influence; He is the very atmosphere of existence. To flee from God's presence would require fleeing from existence itself. It would be like a fish trying to flee from water or a man trying to flee from air. The very medium of your flight is sustained by the one from whom you are fleeing.
This establishes the fundamental Creator/creature distinction. God is not a being within the universe, a big man upstairs that you could theoretically get away from if you traveled far enough. He is the one in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). He is not contained by the universe; the universe is contained by Him. Our secular friends get this backwards. They think of God as a hypothesis to be tested within the box of the cosmos. The Bible presents God as the box, the uncreated reality that makes the cosmos, and all our testing and hypothesizing within it, possible in the first place.
Notice the two terms: Spirit and presence. The Spirit is the active agent of God's power and life, the one who hovered over the waters at creation. The "presence" refers to His face, His personal being. David is saying there is nowhere to go to escape either God's power or His person. You cannot escape His reach, and you cannot escape His gaze. This is the great problem for the unregenerate heart. He doesn't just want to escape God's law; he wants to escape God himself.
The Vertical Axis: Heaven and Hell (v. 8)
David then explores the limits of the created order, starting with the vertical axis.
"If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there." (Psalm 139:8 LSB)
Heaven is God's throne room, the place of His manifest glory. Of course He is there. That is the easy part. To ascend to Heaven is to run toward the central fire of God's presence. But what about the other direction? "If I make my bed in Sheol." Sheol, in the Old Testament, is the realm of the dead, the grave, a place of shadow and silence. It is the furthest conceivable point from the land of the living, the furthest you could get from the light of day. It is the ultimate dead end.
And David says, "Behold, You are there." This is a staggering claim. The pagan world was filled with underworld deities, shadowy gods who ruled the dead. David demolishes that entire mythology. There is no rival kingdom. There is no place where God's writ does not run. Sheol is not a god-forsaken place; it is a God-governed place. God's sovereignty extends over life and death, over the cradle and the grave. This is a truth that Jonah learned the hard way. He tried to flee to Tarshish, but God's jurisdiction followed him, even into the depths of the sea, which he described as the belly of Sheol (Jonah 2:2).
For the believer, this is a profound comfort. Even in death, even in the grave, we are not separated from Him. Death is not a leap into the unknown void; it is a passage into the immediate and waiting presence of the God who is already there. For the unbeliever, this is the ultimate terror. There is no escape, not even in death. Death is not an exit from accountability; it is an immediate summons before the Judge who is sovereign over the courtroom of the dead.
The Horizontal Axis: East and West (v. 9-10)
Having covered the vertical limits, David now turns to the horizontal, the breadth of the world.
"If I lift up the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me." (Psalm 139:9-10 LSB)
The "wings of the dawn" is a beautiful poetic image for the speed of light. If you could ride the first rays of the morning sun as they shoot across the sky from east to west, you would still not outrun God. If you could travel to the "remotest part of the sea," the far western horizon where the sun appears to sink into the water, a place of isolation and exile, you would find that God has gotten there ahead of you.
But notice the shift in tone. This is not just about God being there. It is about what His presence means. "Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me." The fugitive sees the hand of God as the hand of an arresting officer. But the child of God sees it as the hand of a Father. The hand that lays hold of him is not a hand of judgment, but a hand of guidance and protection.
To be led by God's hand is to be guided in His wisdom. To be held by His right hand, the hand of strength and power, is to be kept secure. This is covenant language. This is the language of a shepherd with his sheep. No matter how far we wander, no matter how remote or desolate our circumstances, His pastoral care is there. In our loneliest moments, in our deepest trials, when we feel we are at the very ends of the earth, His hand is there to lead and to hold. The omnipresence of God is not a cold, metaphysical fact; it is a warm, pastoral reality.
The Moral Axis: Darkness and Light (v. 11-12)
Finally, David considers the last possible hiding place: not a physical location, but a moral or metaphorical one, the darkness.
"If I say, 'Surely the darkness will bruise me, And the light around me will be night,' Even the darkness is not too dark for You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You." (Psalm 139:11-12 LSB)
Man's first instinct after sinning is to hide in the dark. Adam and Eve hid among the trees. The sinner loves the darkness because his deeds are evil (John 3:19). He thinks the darkness can conceal him, that it can "bruise" or "cover" him. He hopes that the darkness can provide anonymity, a place where he can be someone else, a place where the light of God's holiness does not expose him.
But David shatters this illusion. "Even the darkness is not too dark for You." For God, there is no such thing as darkness. His perception is not dependent on photons. He sees all things, not because light reveals them to Him, but because He is the source of all light and all reality. For God, "the night is as bright as the day." This is not just poetry; it is a statement about the nature of divine omniscience. There are no secrets. There are no hidden motives. There are no dark corners of the heart that are not fully illuminated before Him with whom we have to do.
This is a terrifying thought for the hypocrite, for the man who maintains a public facade while nursing secret sins. But for the believer who is struggling with sin, who feels overwhelmed by his own inner darkness, this is a word of hope. God sees you in your darkness, not to condemn you, but to bring His light. He is not afraid of your darkness. He is not repulsed by it. He is the one who, at creation, spoke light into darkness, and He is the one who, in redemption, shines in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6).
"Darkness and light are alike to You." (Psalm 139:12b LSB)
This final phrase sums it all up. God is utterly transcendent over all created limitations. Space cannot confine Him, and darkness cannot conceal from Him. He is the absolute sovereign, and His governance is total. The distinction between light and darkness is a creaturely distinction. It matters to us, but it does not limit Him. He is the Lord of both.
Conclusion: The Gospel for Fugitives
So where does this leave us? It leaves us with no place to hide. The universe has no closets. For the man still in his sins, this is the bad news before the good news. You cannot get away. Your sin will find you out because God will find you out. Every attempt to flee is futile. Your only hope is not to run from Him, but to run to Him.
And this is the glory of the gospel. The God from whom you cannot flee is the very God who has made a way for you to approach Him. The one whose presence is everywhere is the same one who, in the person of Jesus Christ, made His presence tangible and accessible. God the Son took on flesh and dwelt among us. He entered our world, our darkness, our Sheol.
On the cross, Jesus was taken to the remotest part of the sea, a place of ultimate exile. He was plunged into the ultimate darkness, a darkness where He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He entered the one place where the presence of the Father's blessing was withdrawn, so that for us, it would never be. He went into the darkness so that we could walk in the light. He was laid in the grave, in Sheol, so that the grave could never hold us.
Because of Christ, the inescapable presence of God is transformed from a terror into a treasure. Because of Christ, the hand that lays hold of us is not the hand of a judge but the hand of a Father. Because of Christ, the God who sees us in our darkness is the God who leads us into His marvelous light. Therefore, stop running. The fugitive's folly is to believe escape is possible. The believer's comfort is to know that because of Christ, escape is no longer necessary.