Let us turn to the word of God
as the Lord may help in Psalm 139 and focus in our thoughts
particularly on the last two verses in this Psalm of David. Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24. Search me, O God, and know my
heart. Try me, and know my thoughts and see
if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. In this psalm of David, he goes
through so clearly the knowledge of God. He shows that God knows
everything about us. There's nothing that God does
not know. There's no place that we can go where God is not. God is that one who can see everything,
our innermost thoughts and intents of the heart. And David says
in verse 17, how precious also are thy thoughts. Unto me, O
God, how great is the sum of them. So David in this psalm
is showing his showing how much God knows, how infinite God is
in his knowledge, in his understanding, he knowing us before we were
even formed in the womb, he understanding us and dealing with us as it
were. So David realises that God is
one who knows everything, who knows everything about us, Thou
knowest my down sittings and my uprising, Thou understandest
my thoughts afar off. As we sit around the Word of
God tonight, our thoughts, what makes us happy, what makes us
sad, what makes us downcast, what makes us rejoice, God knows
we may not fully understand ourselves. We may have some idea, but sometimes
we are cast down and we Perhaps we can't always put our finger
on what it is that really is troubling us. Thou understandest
my thoughts afar off. God knows better than we know
ourselves our own thoughts. So this is the picture that the
sweet psalmist of Israel is painting of our God. But in verse 23,
he comes to this, search me, O God. So he's not asking somebody
who is limited in knowledge, somebody who has many limitations
to search him, thinking he probably won't find much because he's
not good at looking. No, he's talking to a God that
can see everything. The darkness and the light are
both a light to him. And David comes here and says,
search me. This is a prayer, a prayer of
David, the sweet psalmist of Israel. Search me, O God, and
know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. Why is David praying this? Well,
David knows that he has an impure heart. David knows that he is
a sinner. He knows that he is one that
comes short of the glory of God. but he's also one that is desirous
at this time to truly live to God's honour and glory. Really, I believe these two verses,
we can really gauge our spiritual health by these two verses. You see, I don't believe David could always or did always pray
these prayers. I don't believe when David had
committed adultery with Bathsheba, had killed Uriah the Hittite
and hadn't yet been visited by Nathan the prophet, I don't believe
that David was praying these two verses, search me O God and
know my heart, try me and know my thoughts. and see if there
be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. No,
David didn't want that sort of searching then. He could judge others like the
parable of the ewe lamb. Yes, he could give judgement
on others, but he didn't want the searchlight of God on him
at that time. And therefore, how we are tonight. We can see what our attitude
is, you see, to sin. What is our attitude to sin? Is it something that we want
to hide from God so we can continue on it? You see, David took great
troubles to hide his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah. He took great trouble to do so.
But David knows that God can see everything. God knows everything
and yet he still lived a lie, as it were, for those nine months
or so. But David was one. that was a
true child of God. He was one that did know this
prayer and though he fell in the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah
the Hittite, yet he was the sweet psalmist of Israel and yet it
shows how the Lord's people can get into a bad place spiritually. A place where they do not want
the searchlight of God. They do not want Him to come
and search them out, because that would mean reproof. That
would mean a stopping of their evil way. How is it with you
tonight? Are you praying from the bottom
of your heart, search me, O God, and know my heart? Try me and
know my thoughts. You see, sin, we have sin in
our nature. We have the old man of sin and
we need that man, that old man of sin to be crucified in us.
And you see, we need to put the sword through sin. And really
David here is asking God, this God of all knowledge, this One
that knows everything, the One that knows his thoughts and intents
of his heart to come and to help him and to guide him and to direct
him to rightly analyse his thought patterns and his deepest desires. And the reason he wants that
is he wants God to deal with those sins and he wants to put
the sword through them so that he can walk, you see, lead me
in the way everlasting. You see, the way of sin is the
way of ruin. But the way everlasting is the
way to walk in humble obedience to God, to walk in the way of
righteousness. And you see David here seeks
that God would search him. We can think of this like one
who is concerned for their natural health. You see, if you're concerned
for your natural health and you have some inclination that something
is not right in your body, something is causing you pain, perhaps
there's a lump somewhere that you don't know what it is or
why it's there, and you then go to the doctor. And in a sense,
you'd be foolish to not go, wouldn't you? You'd be foolish if you
had a lump in your right hand, shall I say. It would be foolish
to show the doctor the left hand. You need to show the doctor the
place where the problem is, not where it is not. You want the
doctor to search you thoroughly, to make a good examination, so
that the doctor and the surgeon can do their work. to bring you
back to health. But so it is spiritually, you
see. Are we hiding our sin? Are we like Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden? They sinned, they had rebelled
against God, but they were hiding. They were hiding, you see, from
God. They were trying to hide from God as if he could not see.
But David is not hiding. You see, David here realises
that the Lord Jesus, his God, is actually one that he is to
come and confess to. See, if you're frightened of
a judge, you try and, as it were, hide as much evidence perhaps
from that judge so that he can't judge against you because he
hasn't got the evidence to prove that you were guilty. But David
doesn't come to God like that. He comes to God realising that
in the Lord Jesus there is a way made for sinners and for uncleanness. There is a way and that way is
the opposite to what we do by nature. Our way by nature is
to hide our sin, to try and cover our sin, not with Christ's righteousness,
but to cover our sin from him. to try and pretend that we didn't
do it, to try and pretend that this is not true of us. But a
true Christian, when he's in a good, spiritual, healthy place,
we read, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins. Search me, O God. He's opening his heart. You see, we have this naturally
with a friend, if you've got somebody close to you, and somebody
that you know loves you, and something you have a great concern. We say sometimes you go and open
your heart to them, you go and share with them your greatest
concern, and you do that because you trust them, because you love
them, because you feel that they would try and help you, and try
and support you, and try and guide you. in a much greater
plane. This is true of David. Search
me, O God. He comes to one he loves, one
he knows is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Search
me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts.
You see, David was aware that the heart of man is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked, we read in Jeremiah.
And in Proverbs we read, there is a
way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways
of death. That's Proverbs 14 verse 12. There is a way that
seemeth right, for David didn't want to spend his life seeming
to be right, seeming to be one that feared the Lord, but in
his heart having all the workings of iniquity going on without
him being aware of it. And so we ask here, search me
O God and know my heart. You see those who do not realise
their sin will not pray this prayer. Saul of Tarsus in his
unregeneracy, he certainly wasn't praying such a prayer. We read
that he said himself, I verily thought I did God's service. He thought he was walking rightly
in his unregeneracy. He thought he was pleasing God,
although he was a great enemy to the Church of God. So Saul
would not have prayed this in his unregeneracy. David would
not have prayed this in his time of backsliding. But a heart,
you see, that's tender to sin, a heart that hates sin, wants
sin to be found out and to be dealt with by God, rather than
hidden and allowed to continue to fester inside us. What is
our attitude to sin? Because what our attitude to
sin is will tell us a whole lot about what our spiritual health
state is. Because if we are in love with
sin, more keen as it were to stay friends with sin than we
are to be the friend of God, It's clear, you see, that we're
walking far off from God. But if we are truly to come to
the Lord and say, search me, O God, and know my heart, try
me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way
in me. David was not challenging God
in the sense of, I'm so wonderful, I'm sure you won't be able to
find anything wrong in me. No, David was very well aware
that he was a sinner and needed the Lord to find out all those
wrong thoughts and all those wrong ways so that he could walk
rightly, so that he could put sin to death. You see, it says
if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive
us our sin. But if we don't know that we
are sinning, we're not going to be confessing it, are we?
We need God to show us our sin and we need to then confess our
sin. So this prayer of David, the
sweet psalmist of Israel, may it be each of our prayers by
God's grace. Search me, O God. A realisation
of the nature of indwelling sin, that we do not do God's service
by nature. Paul, as all of Tarsus, thought
he did God's service, but he didn't. And we, you see, in our
unregeneracy can think that we're doing God's service, think we're
serving the Lord, and then we won't really be praying for the
Lord to search us. We would try and be hiding from
such a judge, hiding and despising his law. Have we been brought
to love the law of God? We read in Psalm 119 how much
the law of God is the delight of the child of God. Do we delight
in the law of God? And if we do, We cannot also
delight in sin. You just can't do that. You can't
delight in the law of God and simultaneously, as it were, delight
in sin, although we have an old nature that does. Yet, as Paul
puts it in Romans 7, the evil that I do, I allow not. He never
gave countenance to sin. He never said it was acceptable.
He always reproved it. He always stood against it. And as we read in Romans, let
not therefore sin reign in your members. Put the sword through
it. Search me, O God, and know my
heart. Try me and know my thoughts. and see if there be any wicked
way in me. Open our heart to the Lord, ask
him to come and search us out. Because we want that sin to go
too. If we hate sin, if when it rears
its ugly head as it so often does in our lives, do we hate
it? Do we seek that the Lord would
put the sword through it or help us put the sword through it and
pray to give us grace to walk humbly before our God? Lead me
in the way everlasting that is a way everlasting. The way of the world, the way
of walking in sin, enjoying the lusts and the pleasures of this
world is a way that leads to death, a way that is not everlasting,
a way which is perishing. But the way of walking with God,
having him search us, having us have that nearness with the
Lord Jesus, because he has said, come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden. You see, the Lord Jesus has been
our judge and we've come guilty before him, before the judgment
day, as it were. That's taken place in the life
of a believer on this earth, as it were. They've become guilty
before God. They fled for refuge to lay hold
upon the hope set before them in the gospel. And now they pray
that the Lord would would undertake for them. He has forgiven them,
they are justified, but justification and sanctification are joined.
And the evidence of justification is a sanctified life. That means
that our life is conformable to the image of Christ, that
we are made conformable to it. And therefore David wanted to
research He wanted the Lord to lead him in the way of everlasting.
He did not want to run in the way of the ungodly or the way
that his heart would naturally wish to go. He wanted God to
be king of his life. Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done. Well, may the Lord help us each
and may it be true of each one of us that we are spiritually
healthy. Therefore, we are not hiding
and running from God. but that we are coming to God
in the Lord Jesus Christ, confessing our sins and pleading the blood
which does for sin atone. May the Lord have His blessing.