David Jeremiah - God Loved You Before You Were Born
You know, a lot of people think that God begins to love them when they begin to love God, and that's not true. The Bible says he loved us before we were ever born. He loved us before the world was ever born. And his love is unconditional, his love is eternal. The interesting thing about knowing God is to realize that God has always loved us, and it's just the most wonderful thing when we discover that because then we can start loving Him back. He not only has loved us from the beginning, he always has, but he will love us forever, he always will. And nothing we can ever do can keep that from happening.
God loves you now. But here's some better news: he always has loved you, even before you were born, even before the world was born. He has loved you from the very foundation of time. Before the world began, he set his love upon you and upon me. Let me tell you what the Bible says about God's relationship with you before you were ever born. If you have your Bible open to Psalm 139, let me read verses 15 and 16 of that Psalm. He is saying, "My frame, O Lord, was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them".
These verses tell us that before you were born, God knew your identity. David uses the term "me" to refer to himself before he was born. It is important to note that in verse 16, you have the only word in the Hebrew Bible for the word "embryo," it's the word that's translated by these words, "being yet unformed". As God was forming you, as he was forming me, he was loving you. With his unmatched poetic eloquence, the psalmist David writes about this Father who numbering the hairs on our heads as well as the days of our lives. We also learn that in his infinite wisdom and power, even he designs our days for us, writing them in his book before In Jeremiah chapter 1, and verse 5, God spoke these words to his prophet, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before I formed you in the womb," God says, "I knew you". God knew our identity before we were born, before we were ever formed. God loved us before we were born. Not only does he know our identity, but these passages we're reading in Psalm 139 teach us that before we were born, God knew our complexity.
Notice verses 13 and 14. in this psalm, "For you formed my inward parts; you covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are your works and This is the work of our creator God, who has put us together, in the words of David, fearfully and wonderfully. The human body, which is studied now more than ever before, is the most marvelous organism that Back in 2010, there was a presentation entitled "Conception to Birth Visualized". It was produced by Alexander Tsiaras, a mathematician, chief of scientific visualization, He shared some of the most incredible images of a child's development in the womb. As you watched the video, you could literally see never before images like the first cell division, the development of the heart at only 25 days, the development of arms and hands at only 32 days, the development of retina, nose, eyes at 52 days. Clearly, blown away by what he has seen in his work, which by the way won him the Nobel Prize.
Tsiaras concluded his talk with these words. He said, "The complexity of these things, the mathematical model of how these things are indeed done are beyond human comprehension. Even though I am a mathematician, I look at this with the marvel of how did these instruction sets build that which is us". And then he thought, "It's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity". He got it right the third time. Our Creator, men and women, is an artist of infinite majesty. He is a craftsman of breathtaking detail. And all that he does is driven and guided by his infinite love for you and for me. Before you were born, God knew your identity. Before you were born, he knew your complexity. And before you were born, he knew your individuality.
Notice what it says "Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them". Here we strike a blow to those who want us to believe that there is no such thing as an God creates us. You say, "No, God had nothing to do with it". Yes, he has everything to do with it. Before you were formed in the womb of your mother, God saw you, he loved you, he knew you. And science strongly supports the idea of genuine life in the womb. Listen carefully, this is very important information for where we are in our culture today. Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth of Harvard University Medical School says, "It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception". Dr. Watson Bowes of the University of Colorado Medical School has stated, "The beginning of a single human life is from biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter".
The beginning is conception. In fact, you see, physicians, and biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being, a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings. The scientific evidence is overwhelming. But once again, if you consider the place of God in this, the argument is settled with absolute authority. God loved you before you ever were made. He loved you as he prepared you for this world and the beauty of human pregnancy. And all along, he had a life and a purpose prepared just for you.
You say, "That's so hard for me to comprehend, pastor, because I feel so insignificant in this world, and there are so many people, and you're saying God actually knew me and cares about me". If you struggle with that, you should because we all do. But the only reason we struggle with that is because we cannot wrap our arms and our minds around the magnificence of Almighty God, who is so infinite and so majestic that it is possible for him to know you, and love you, and care about you as if you were the only person for him to care about. We know nothing about that. Our capacity to love-- I remember when our first grandchild was born. I loved him so much, and I said to Donna, "I don't think we can have anymore 'cause there's no love left in my heart. I've given it all to this one". And then we've had more.
And you know what? Your love multiplies with the children, doesn't it? You love them all in a separate way. But God loves all of us with a love far more magnificent than the love I had for David Todd when he was born, or for my own children when they were born. He loves us individually, he loves us magnificently, he loves us knowingly. Jeremiah chapter 1, verse 5 tells us that not only does he know our identity, and our complexity, and our individuality, but he knows our destiny. Notice what he says in verse 5, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; and before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations". And I wrote down in my Bible from that little verse that God said four things in that one verse. He said, "I formed you, I knew you, I sanctified you, and I ordained you".
Jeremiah, before he was ever a being, before he was ever formed, God knew him. Before he was ever born, God sanctified him. Before he ever came out of the womb, God had already determined that he was going to be his prophet. Just as he did with Jeremiah, God treasures the moments in which he sees us grow and become closer to the people he has designed us to be. For God has a plan for your life and for mine. It predates our birth, it predates our actual being formed in the womb. God created us for a special purpose. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're so hell bent on finding out what it is. The question I'm asked more than any other question as a pastor is, "How can I know the will of God for my life"? In other words, "How can I figure out what it is that God planned for me to do"?
We try to make this thing so complicated, and we jump over the most simple thing of all, and that is God is not going to reveal his path to you until you come to the place where you say, "Lord God, I'm willing to do what you've created me to do". And then watch out 'cause I want to tell you something that I've discovered. God's plan for you from eternity past is greater than anything you could ever think of for yourself. He has a plan for your life that is greater than any plan you could give for yourself. Before you were born, God knew your identity. Before you were born, God knew your complexity. Before you were born, God knew your individuality. Before you were born, God knew your destiny. And before you were born, God knew your possibility.
Back in the Book of Genesis, when the whole creative process began and we get to the creation of humanity, I want you to read these verses with me. Let's read them together off the screen, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.' So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them". The Bible says that we are Warren Wiersbe once wrote that there was a divine conference before the world began between the members of the Trinity as to how man should be. And they decided together in conference with one another that man should be created after the image of God.
Now, when we think about that in human terms, we say, "Okay, he looks like his father". And we compare physical traits with the physical traits of the father. But of course, as you know, Almighty God doesn't have a physical being. God is a spirit. So, what in the world does it mean that we have been created in the image of Almighty God? It means that we bear his character, his nature. We are made as a special reflection of who God is. We are constantly echoing his identity in a smaller way. When we work, for instance, it reflects God's work. When we love, it reflects how God loves us. And everything that we do in our lives as humans reflects some part of who God is. When we have dominion over the earth, we reflect God's dominion over the earth. And that is why we feel guilt, and why we feel love, why we feel genuine and complex emotions. As flawed as we are, we are the image and glory of the Father. And that's also why, until we get in sync with him, until we get connected with him, we can never, ever feel like we're the people we ought to be.
So many have said that God created us with a God-shaped vacuum in our heart. And until we put God in the proper place in our life, this image of God in us is flawed and broken, and it can't ever be realized. That's why there's such a hunger, and a thirst, and a craving after meaning in our world today. Why people fill their lives with drugs, and alcohol, and promiscuity, and popularity, and all the things that you see rampant around us. They're trying to find some way to fill up the ache and the hole in their heart. And the only one who can ever do that is the God who made them in his own image. He's the only one. And the only way you can connect with that God is through his Son Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for your sin and for mine.
And that's how God feels about you and me, looking through the window of time, all of his creation is good. Yes, very good. There are no exceptions. When God saw you through the window of time, he said, "It's good, very good". He loved you before you came on the scene, so when you were born, he rejoiced. And I need to tell you today that he feels that way about every child, about children who are born with defects, children who are born that aren't going to be what we would consider to be normal. With God, there is no difference. Every child with Almighty God is a child that he set his love upon before they were ever conceived. There is no such thing as a child who is not worthy to live.
I want so much for all these messages on the love of God to be so positive. And it is positive to know that God loves you, he always has, and he always will. It's positive to know that he loved you before you were born. But I know that someone's here today, maybe someone who came to Christ recently, and in your past there is this experience, and you feel some guilt about it. Let me tell you this, you cannot do anything that God will not forgive. And if you ask him to forgive you, he will, but you need to do that. And then you need to accept his forgiveness because God is not the kind of God who says, "Oh yes, I will forgive you, but I won't forget". That's how we forgive, right?
God doesn't forgive like that. When God forgives, let me tell you what the Bible says. He casts it in the deepest sea. He separates it from himself as far as the east is from the west. God forgives absolutely, completely. If you ask him for forgiveness, he has forgiven you. Don't tell me that you can't forgive yourself because that means you think you have a higher standard than God does. No, no, if God has forgiven you, you are forgiven, amen? Now, accept that. One last thing before I close my Bible and we close this session. Before you were born, God knew your legacy. If God sees all of time, and he does, then he sees what we cannot yet see. He sees beyond our lives to the eternal impact we are going to have on others. Our vision is hazy. We always fall for the illusion that we have the future all figured out. We keep thinking it will be just like the past and the present, but it never is.
The whole world is in the hands of the Almighty. And when we come into this world, we come into this world with an incredible possibility that goes way out into the future. When I was born to my mother and father, I was just the first son in the family. But I've lived my whole life, and I've fathered four children, who have now given us grandchildren. And so, from that little child that was in my mother's womb to where I am today, and to my children today, and to their children, and their children's children, all of the future and the legacy of one person goes out into the future. And the incredible possibility The psalmist said, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made".
And the word in Psalm 139 for wonderfully is translated in some Bibles by the word "skillfully". "I am fearfully and skillfully made". But the word itself is the Hebrew word for the word which means to embroider. God has embroidered us into his master tapestry of life. God has pulled all the threads together and put us in his master tapestry so that we play a part in all that God is doing. Every single one of us is a thread or a part of that great tapestry that God is embroidering. We see the threads that are around us, and we think we've got it all figured out, but we can't possibly see where God wants us all to go. The most important thing for you to take away from this message today is this.
When you feel unloved, when you feel like you're not significant, when you feel like maybe God made a mistake letting you come into this world, I want you to remember this thing, my friend. Before you were ever conceived, God loved you. In the womb of your mother, God loved you. When you were born, God loved you. As a child, God loves you. God loves you now, he always has, he always will. He loves not only you, but all of those who will come from you. And he has created you to be a beautiful part of the master tapestry of his love.
So, rejoice in your identity. If David could say in this incredible psalm, maybe he even looked at the mirror before he said it, he said, "Lord God, I am fearfully and wonderfully made". So, you go home today, will you? Stand in front of the mirror, where you usually feel really bad, stand in front of that mirror, and with a great sense of confidence stretch your arms out and say, "Lord God, I am fearfully and wonderfully made". Give him praise that God has preserved you and that he's given you help.