God Knows All about Me (Part 1 of 2)

April 11, 2026·25 min·2 clips

Alistair Begg recites Psalm 139, revealing a God who knows your every thought and action before you do.

1. Truth For Life Weekend presents Alistair Begg beginning a series titled 'The God Who Knows Me,' focused on Psalm 139. 2. Begg is the host and preacher; no guest appears; he cites Warren Wiersbe, Calvin, Alec Matthias, and Chris Morphin as intellectual sources. 3. The episode's thesis is that God's knowledge of each individual is personal and intimate — not merely vast — and that Psalm 139 is the biblical text that answers the human identity question most completely. 4. Begg introduces Australian chaplain and schoolteacher Chris Morphin's book 'Who Am I, and Why Do I Matter?' written for teenagers navigating identity questions. 5. He pivots to the painter Paul Gauguin, who inscribed three questions — 'Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?' — in French on his largest canvas, now housed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 6. Begg notes that Gauguin had been raised Roman Catholic and knew the catechism answers intellectually, yet made an unsuccessful suicide attempt shortly after completing the Tahiti painting. 7. Calvin called the book of Psalms 'the anatomy of the human soul,' encompassing joy, sorrow, grief, doubt, and fear within the framework of God's unlimited goodness and power. 8. Scholar Alec Matthias observed that Psalm writers 'knew far less about God than we do and yet loved him a great deal more,' a contrast Begg uses to challenge contemporary believers. 9. Begg outlines Psalm 139 in four sections: verses 1-6 ('You know me'), 7-14 ('You encompass me'), 15-18 ('You created me'), and 19-24 ('You test me') — the episode covers only the first section. 10. He reads the Book of Common Prayer's communion opening — 'Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden' — as a compressed statement of Psalm 139's claim. 11. Using Psalm 135:13-17, Begg contrasts Israel's God with the idols of surrounding nations — which have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see — to set up the distinctiveness of Psalm 139's claims. 12. He quotes the Isaiah passage on the idol-maker who burns half a log for warmth and fashions the other half into a god, calling this 'an absurdity' for anyone seeking ultimate answers from substitute gods. 13. Begg draws on Warren Wiersbe's outline to identify four specific things God knows about David in verses 1-6: what he does (actions and movements), what he thinks, where he goes, and what he says. 14. Verse 2 — 'You know when I sit down and when I rise up' — is read as covering all actions and movements, including mundane ones such as brushing teeth. 15. Verse 3 — 'You search out my path and my lying down' — is linked to the hymn lyric 'all my ways are known to you,' which the congregation had sung earlier in the service. 16. Verse 4 — 'Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether' — is highlighted with the observation that the Hebrew 'behold' signals an exclamation of astonishment, not casual statement. 17. Begg applies the sermon directly to teenagers, arguing they need to understand they are not products of chance but are divinely assembled and personally known. 18. The episode is a solo expository sermon with no interview element; Begg's tone is measured and pastoral, with occasional light humor (the McDonald's 'behold' comparison). 19. People who respond to expository Bible teaching rooted in Psalm 139 and questions of personal identity would find this episode engaging. 20. Listeners seeking contemporary cultural commentary, debate, or interview-format content are unlikely to find this episode a match.

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A steady Psalm 139 study that turns divine knowledge into something personal and searching.

Psalm 139 opens Truth For Life Weekend with an intimate view of God: he searches, knows, and stays present in ways no one else can. Alistair Begg keeps close to David's language and lets the psalm do most of the work, so the episode reads more like a devotional reflection than a…

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If you want Psalm 139 to feel personal rather than distant, start here.

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