“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.” —Psalm 139:23-24
Among the attributes of God few are more daunting to the mind of man than omniscience; God knows everything: universally, instantaneously and everlastingly. Not only are all our actions (v.2) and all our words (v.3) known to God, but all our thoughts are known to Him as well. He not only knows what we are, but He knows what we would be if we were not afraid of the consequences.
Many years ago, when nuclear weaponry was in its early development, a short film was produced entitled “No Place to Hide,” “An amazing film about growing up in the shadow of the (atomic) bomb,” according to one review. That title might be most appropriately applied to this awesome doctrine, with Christ as the only exception, and the implications even more devastating than the atomic threat. And, in fact, it is this very quality in God’s nature that arouses so much hatred of God in fallen mankind. By nature we are averse to the idea of accountability to God, especially a God who knows all about us from the inside out.
The psalmist was keenly aware of this divine quality, as the opening verses of this psalm indicate, but rather than being angry at the Lord, he solicits in our text God’s research of his heart and mind, not because he deems himself perfect, but because he knows that he is not.
In Psalm 19 he had expostulated, “Who can understand his errors? cleanse Thou me from secret faults.” He knew the subtlety of sin and its pervasive quality and, as here, longed for the divine searchlight to bring to light the sins that were invisible to his own conscience. The same spirit motivates his cry here, “And see if there be any wicked way in me.” It is not that he thinks there may be none, but that he fears there may be lurking in the darkened recesses of his own soul sins yet undiscovered, unconfessed and unconquered from which he longs to be free.
Every Spirit quickened man or woman is aware that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” and less than transparent to our sin dimmed vision. With David in that 19th psalm we cry, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.” (See Ps. 19:12-14) So here the man of God invites the inevitable: “see if there be any wicked way in me.” It is the passion of the truly godly person to be rid of sin. He is not inviting God to discover what He already knows, but to discover it to himself that he may be aware of it and flee from it.
Yet the discerning believer knows this also, that even when our sins are revealed to us, we are powerless in and of ourselves to abandon them. Sin clings to us like the raw flesh of the leper. The apostle Paul in a lengthy passage that deserves long and thoughtful meditation (Rom. 7), said, “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" [Rom. 7:21-24].
The heart of every sincere Christian can identify with Paul’s struggle and with David’s plea, “Lead me in the way everlasting.” In every one of us there are two natures seeking the ascendancy. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary, the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would [Gal. 5:17].” If you have never experienced this struggle, you may want to ask whether, in fact, you are truly born again.
Thankfully, there is deliverance from this dilemma. There is, first of all and fundamentally, deliverance from the penalty of sin through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. “Whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved.” He is our hiding place. Secondly, there is hope of deliverance from the residual power of sin in our lives. That deliverance is not by our good intentions, nor by our best efforts; it is by the power of God. Paul said, “I thank my God, through our Lord Jesus Christ” As Ian Thomas said, “It takes God to be godly!” Christian victory (a lost concept in much of today’s “Christianity”) is a supernatural thing. “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy [Prov. 28:13].” That was David’s aspiration. May the Spirit of God make it ours!
Oh Lord, led me in the way everlasting!
For His glory and our good,
"Pastor" Frasier
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