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. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it. 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 take 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 overwhelm me, And the light around me will be
night,” Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as
bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You. For
You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it
very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes
have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written
the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of
them."
Which brings us now to today’s text. David has just
exalted God for His loving omniscience and omnipresence. He knows God knows his
thoughts, his words – even before he thinks them or speaks them. David knows
his loving Father knows where he lives and walks and sleeps and sits at every
moment of every hour of every day. Indeed, David understands – long before
anyone would understand about fetal development – David knew that it was his
tender, loving Father-God Himself who formed him in his mother’s womb – bone to
bone, flesh to flesh, blood vessel to blood vessel.
Is it any wonder David then continued: “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.”
Certainly, this is hyperbole, but hyperbole to make a point – a point which ought to make every Christian ponder more often than most of us do. As James tells us: “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” (James 1:17)
What kind of thoughts did he have that were more in
number than the sands of the seas? Well, while we cannot know for certain, we can
speculate. We can speculate because who God was to David, God is to us.
How often in my 52 years of walking with the Savior
have I thanked Him, as David must have thanked Him, for His
moment-by-moment protection and presence? How often? Not as often as I should
have. And how often have YOU thanked Him? If you’re like me, not as often as
you should have. Why? Because it’s human nature to take things for granted –
until we lose them.
What things? Gifts from God of safety, health,
food, clothing, family . . . and it should not surprise us if his list extended
beyond those general categories to specifics, such as being able to see, to
hear, to walk, to speak, to even get out of bed in the morning. And of food – we
shouldn’t be surprised if he thanked God specifically for things like cheese
and bread and milk and so forth.
When was the last time we thanked God for hot and
cold running water? Think for a moment how many hundreds of millions – maybe
billions – of people on this planet do not have that luxury. And what about air
conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter? What about indoor toilets?
And electricity to run our refrigerators and lights? Why do so many of us wait
until we lose those comforts because of a storm or flood – why do so many of us
wait until we LOSE things before we realize we should have been thanking Him
all along?
And may God help us to NEVER overlook or take for
granted our salvation. How often do we thank Him for Jesus, for opening our
eyes and our hearts to his call? Remember, Jesus said to His disciples: “For the heart of this people has become dull, with their
ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes . . . . But blessed
are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I
say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you
see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not
hear it.” (Matthew 13:15-17)
Are
you DAILY thankful to God that He opened your eyes, that He opened your ears
and your heart to Him? How many people do you know – even here at Ashwood – who
want nothing to do with Jesus? It astonishes me that they have one foot in the
proverbial grave and the other on the banana peel – and yet they are so nonchalant
about their impending eternal destiny.
Have
you ever asked the Lord, “Why me? What have I ever done to deserve even one of
the blessings that I’ve known?”
We
could thank God every day all day that he saved us. Every time we listen to the
news or watch it on television – when we see the evil, the destruction, the
sadness, the grief – O, how we should thank God every time we see it because He
rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of
his beloved son, and whom we have redemption the forgiveness of our sins. (See
Colossians 1:13-14)
Every good thing we have – everything is a GIFT
from our merciful and compassionate God and Father. No wonder Paul wrote to the
Christians at Thessalonica: (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) “Rejoice always; Pray without ceasing; In
everything give thanks; For this is God’s will for you in Christ
Jesus.”
There surely was good reason the song writer wrote:
“Count your blessing, name them one by one; Count your blessings, see what God
has done.”
Now, back to the psalm. After reveling in God’s profound
love for him, David makes what seems to be a startling turn: “O that You would slay the wicked, O God; Depart from
me, therefore, men of bloodshed. For they speak against You
wickedly, and Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I
not hate those who hate You, O Lord? And do I not loathe those
who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become
my enemies.
But
really, it is not a turn. These words follow quite logically the theme of the
entire psalm.
David loved God, He loved Him – as some people today say to one
another – David loved Him ‘to the moon and back.’ No wonder he took great offense when
wickedness pranced about unhindered, corrupting and destroying the good that
God had done and was doing.
But think for a moment: Doesn’t it ANGER you when you hear of
children – CHILDREN – being trafficked into sexual slavery? Doesn’t it make
your blood boil when murderers and rapists do what they do – even repeatedly –
and the justice system turns a blind eye and sends them back into their
neighborhoods?
David knew of such wickedness. The nations surrounding Israel
practiced hideous sins of child sacrifice, sexual immorality and perversion, murder,
rape – just as is practiced today. A cursory reading of the books of Judges and
Kings will demonstrate that truth.
And so, of course, David was incensed by what he saw and heard. And
it ought also to incense the Christian – you and me. Listen to the
Scriptures: (Psalm 97:10a) “Hate evil, you who love the Lord.” (Romans
12:9b) “Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.” (Psalm 119:158) “I
behold the treacherous and loathe them, because they do not keep
Your word. (Ephesians 5:11) “Do not participate in the
unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them.”
Abhorring
evil, hating evil, exposing evil also includes what we do in the ballot box at
every election. Be wise in how you vote, and remember: (Psalm 111:10) “The
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding have all
those who keep His commandments.”
Let’s
now move to the final verses of this psalm, and I want to draw attention to
something I’d never noticed until I was preparing this message.
David
turns from his imprecation, from his condemnation of the godless wicked, and
says this of himself: 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.” (Psalm 139:17-24)
We don’t know if David wrote this psalm before or after the
Bathsheba and Uriah debacle, but I think his appeal to God in these last verses
indicate that David knew all too well his own sin nature, his susceptibility to
temptation and sin. I also think David knew that ‘but for the
grace of God,’ he could become like those whom he cursed.
And don’t think for a moment that there’s not a potential Judas in
all of us. We
can curse the darkness all day – but we should each fear, lest we become the darkness
we curse. As Scripture warns, (1 Corinthians 10:12) “Let him who thinks
he stands take heed that he does not fall.”
That’s
why the wise man and woman humbly approaches God and asks “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.”
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.
David concludes his psalm with an appeal to God to search Him,
to examine him, to PROBE him. And THAT, my brothers and sisters is integrity
at work. David wanted to know the truth about himself. He wanted to know God’s
view of His heart. It seems David knew something about himself that the
prophet Jeremiah would express several 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) And every honest Christian knows all too well how easily we can hide
from ourselves the depths and the length and the breadth and height of our
sins.
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 – and this is important – God not only KNOWS the depths of our
sins, but 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.
Do
you know God in that way? Merciful? Compassionate? Loving? Oh, I so much
hope you do, because if you do you will not shrink from asking the Lord, “Show
me my worst, Lord. Show me my worst that I may repent and receive your
incomprehensible forgiveness.”
I
can't tell you how many Christians I have spoken with who carry a heavy and unnecessary
burden on their shoulders, thinking God would never really forgive them
of their sins without first getting from them His pound of flesh either in this
life or in some fictitious place called Purgatory – a place invented by people
who clearly did not believe in the fullness, the richness of God’s immeasurable
mercy.
Why
the bloody death of His Son does not convince them of the Father’s willingness
to completely erase their sins – 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.” David then concludes his prayer this way: “See if there be any hurtful way in me and
lead me in the everlasting way.” (verse
24)
Many people, even Christians, don’t realize, we hurt
God’s feelings when we sin. And yes, God – who created us in His image –
God has emotions.
Listen to what He says to His beloved nation Israel
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)
Listen now to Paul’s words 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 pathos in the Lord’s
voice when He says of His beloved people, (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!”
And so we should not be surprised that the Father weeps – that He weeps,
as Jesus wept over Jerusalem – the Father weeps over our sins, our destructive
and our self-destructive acts and attitudes. He weeps when we hurt others. He
weeps when we walk away from Him, when we ignore Him.
The true Christian wants to avoid hurting God’s feelings just as
much as David wanted to avoid it. We 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 to Him? Will you come often?
Let us pray: Search us, O God. Reveal to us our
sins, our waywardness, how we offend you, how often we hurt your feelings by
our unrepentant acts, words and thoughts. And, for Jesus’ sake, for His honor
an His glory – lead us in the everlasting way. Amen.
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