Hurting God’s Feelings
Psalm 139 part three
Video Recording at https://youtu.be/14c37ewPNSQ
This message is the last of this current series of messages through Psalm 139. You can find part one here: https://tinyurl.com/y73zrnzx and part two here: https://tinyurl.com/ydgqpe4u
Today we look at David’s closing verses of this psalm: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.”
Notice how similar are David’s closing words to his opening words in verses 1-3: O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
David concludes his psalm with another appeal to God to search Him; To examine him; To PROBE him. THAT is honesty and integrity at work. He wants to know the truth about himself. He wants to know God’s view of His heart. It would seem David knows something about himself that the prophet Jeremiah would express about himself six hundred years later:
“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it? “I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.” Jeremiah 17:9-10)
Do you want God to search your heart and reveal to you your sins? One of the surest ways God speaks to us about our hearts is through His word.
Here is what the writer to the Hebrew says: “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing even to the point of dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow; it is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart. And no creature is hidden from God, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account. (Hebrews 4:12, NET)
But in your willingness to let God search your heart, be advised. The revelation will not be pretty. The first time I asked the Lord to show me my sins was something like 46 years ago. The revelation was so startling that I still remember it clearly.
I’d been a Christian at the time for about a year. And what a wonderful and spiritually stretching year it was. I’d devoured the Scriptures – Old and New Testaments. I probably read the whole thing twice that first year. And how my life had changed. I grew up in the sex-drugs-and rock ‘n roll era of the 1960s, and I typified the whole debauched culture.
Then I met Christ on December 25, 1972, and my life changed in an instant. Really, in an instant. As soon as I rose from my knees after promising God that I was going to follow Him for the rest of my life – I was a totally new creature in Christ. All those old lifestyle attitudes were gone.
I lived the next 12 months or so on a spiritual high, and I honestly thought I had purged myself of all my sins. I laugh at myself even now as I think how childishly innocent I was of my heart’s hidden depths and crevices.
So, one day as I got to thinking I’d like to make sure I had cleansed myself of all sin, I asked the Lord to show me if there was anything else He wanted me to confess and turn from. I genuinely thought there wouldn’t be much for Him to say to me. So, I asked Him the question.
But as soon as the words were off my tongue, my mind flooded with what to that point I’d effectively hidden from myself. In what took no longer than a few moments, the Holy Spirit replayed in my mind my anger, jealousy, unforgiveness, pride, selfishness – shall I go on? And those were sins I’d committed in only the past 24 hours. What I thought would be no more than a few incidental revelations from God about my sins turned into a veritable tsunami.
I remember stopping my thoughts from going any further with the lists. I’d seen enough. I have never forgotten it. And Jeremiah’s words continue to ring true: “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately wicked.”
Why do I share this with you? Well, for two reasons. The first reason ought to be obvious. We can with exquisite ease hide from ourselves the depths and the length and the breadth and height of our sins.
And the second reason I share my story with you is not so obvious, but just as important as the first reason.
God not only KNOWS the depths of our sins, He LOVES us despite those sins. And He really, really does want to cleanse every one of those sins, cleanse them under the blood of His Son, Jesus – whose sacrificial death alone wipes from the book of our lives every stain of every sin of every penitent sinner who comes to Christ for cleansing and forgiveness.
Why did David ask the Lord to search him? I can’t be dogmatic about the reason, but I will tell you what I strongly suspect. It was because he trusted God to be merciful to the penitent sinner. He trusted God to forgive the penitent sinner. David knew God is compassionate and abounding in love for the penitent sinner.
Do you know God in that way? Merciful? Compassionate? Loving? Oh, I so much hope you do.
I can't tell you how many Christians I have spoken with – even in the last couple of weeks – who carry such a heavy and unnecessary burden on their shoulders, thinking God would never really forgive them of their sin – whatever the sin – without first getting from them His pound of flesh.
And although I remind them time and again of the cost God paid to wipe their sins from His book, I remind them of the cost God paid to demonstrate how much He loves them and WANTS to forgive them – nothing I say, no scriptures I quote to them – nothing releases them from their conviction that God is going to make them pay dearly for their sins.
Why the bloody death of His Son does not convince them of God’s willingness to forgive the penitent – I do not understand. I am reminded of what CS Lewis said to this issue of God’s forgiveness: “If God forgives us, we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.”
And so, we truly ought to feel comfortable to pray with the psalmist: “Search me, O God. Try me, (Hebrew: test me, as one tests gold) and know my anxious [disquieting – Hebrew) thoughts.”
All of us know what it is like to be anxious, to lose sleep worrying about tomorrow. You’ve been there. Maybe right now some of you ARE there. So worried, so anxious that it affects your appetite and your sleep and your interpersonal relationships. But if you get nothing else from today’s message, please get this: God loves you. Deeply, tenderly, earnestly, sacrificially loves you. Even when we are faithless, God remains faithful to His promises to us.
David continues: “See if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the everlasting way.” (verse 24)
For those of us who have adult children, have they ever hurt your feelings by what they did or did not do? What they said or did not say? Of course, they have. But many of us don’t realize, we hurt God’s feelings when we do or say what we should not, or when we do not do or say what we should. Yes, God – who created us in His image, has emotions – including the emotion of being hurt by those He loves.
For example, speaking to His beloved nation, He says through the prophet Ezekiel, “Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations to which they will be carried captive, how I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and by their eyes which played the harlot after their idols.” (Ezekiel 6:9a)
Through St. Paul’s letter to the Christians at Ephesus: “Do not grieve (Greek – sadden, make sorrowful) the Holy Spirit of God. (Ephesians 4:30a)
And can you not sense the sadness in the Lord’s voice when He says of His beloved people in Deuteronomy 5:29 “Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me and keep all My commandments always . . .”
Or in Psalm 81:13 “Oh that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways!”
The apostle Philip asked the Lord to show them the Father. And Jesus answered: “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (John 14:8, 9)
From our repetitive reading of the gospels we have a pretty good idea what Jesus is like. St. Luke tells us: “When [Jesus] approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it.” (Luke 19). And when Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus, John tells us, “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35).
Therefore, we know what the Father is like because we know what Jesus is like. Jesus wept. We should not be surprised that the Father weeps – weeps over our sins, our self-destructive acts, and attitudes. He weeps when we hurt others. And He weeps when we walk away from Him. When we ignore Him.
You want to avoid hurting God’s feelings just as much as David wanted to avoid it. You don’t want to grieve the Holy Spirit any more than St. Paul wanted to grieve Him. That is why this simple prayer of David can bring us so much spiritual healing: Lord, see if there be any hurtful way in me. And lead me in the everlasting way.
Listen! I will risk being redundant, but it is so important that I be so: God loves you. Deeply, intimately, passionately. He wants to forgive you, and hold you close to Himself. He only waits for you to come to Him in humility.
Will you come now?
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