Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 139:23
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
23. Search me &c.] God has searched him and knows him ( Psa 139:1): but he will welcome the continuance of that piercing scrutiny, not seek to avoid it. Cp. Psa 26:2.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
23, 24. In no spirit of presumptuous self-confidence, but with an honest desire to be saved from self-deception and guided in the way of true life, the Psalmist ends by inviting and welcoming that Divine scrutiny which he knows to be a fact and from which he cannot escape ( Psa 139:1 ff.), and praying for that Divine guidance which is indispensable for him.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Search me, O God – The word search here is the same as in Psa 139:1. See the notes at that verse. The psalmist had stated the fact that it is a characteristic of God that he does search the heart; and he here prays that God would exercise that power in relation to himself; that as God could know all that there is within the heart, he would examine him with the closest scrutiny, so that he might be under no delusion or self-deception; that he might not indulge in any false hopes; that he might not cherish any improper feelings or desires. The prayer denotes great sincerity on the part of the psalmist. It indicates also self-distrust. It is an expression of what all must feel who have any just views of themselves – that the heart is very corrupt; that we are liable to deceive ourselves; and that the most thorough search should be made that we be not deceived and lost.
And know my heart – Know or see all that is within it.
Try me – As metal is tried or proved that is put to a test to learn what it is. The trial here is that which would result from the divine inspection of his heart.
And know my thoughts – See what they are. The word rendered thoughts occurs only in one other place, Psa 94:19. The idea is, Search me thoroughly; examine not merely my outward conduct, but what I think about; what are my purposes; what passes through my mind; what occupies my imagination and my memory; what secures my affections and controls my will. He must be a very sincere man who prays that God will search his thoughts, for there are few who would be willing that their fellow-men, even their best friends, should know all that they are thinking about.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 139:23-24
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts.
Man addressing God
I. Man requesting Divine scrutiny.
1. Reverence manifested. O God. He realized Gods presence, and his soul was filled with awe.
2. Thorough investigation invoked. Search me, etc. Not that God was to thus obtain information unknown to Him before; but the asker, penetrated with a sense of sinfulness, desires God to search his heart, that the heart–with all its tendencies, passions, evils–may become known to himself through Gods inquest.
II. Man desiring Divine discipline.
1. Severe testing. Try me.
2. Moral discrimination. Know my thoughts, etc.
III. Man imploring Divine leadership.
1. Spiritual ignorance confessed.
2. Divine condescension besought.
3. Perpetual guidance implored. (M. Braithwaite.)
God the heart-searcher
This is the language of prayer; but it is prayer almost in the tone of a challenge. Taken in connection with its context, it is a claim on the part of the speaker to a spotless innocence. The words of the psalmist are, in the full sense, proper only in the mouth of His Divine Son and Lord. Has, then, the text no meaning for the sinful, struggling followers of Christ? Yea! the followers of the Messiah are His members as well as followers. The prayer of our text, then, is not out of place in the mouth of a true-hearted Christian. He may offer it. In the name and strength of his Divine Surety and Head he is bound continually to cherish the spirit of one whose soul will break forth into the prayer, Search me, O God, etc.
I. To know hearts belongeth only to the Lord. This is an attribute distinctively His own, not shared in any measure with any created being.
1. Gods knowledge of the heart differs from that which man or angel has in this, that it is immediate. God knows,–as it were, sees, the very spirit, and its every act and state. Man knows only certain outer signs which the spirit makes, from which he infers its thoughts and feelings.
2. The knowledge of God, and of God alone, is unintermittent and all-piercing. It alone is eternal in duration of exercise, and it alone is able to compass the infinite relations even of one spirit. And to be the Searcher of hearts is to have an incessant and all-piercing glance into the inner being and most extended relations, not only of one spirit, but of all spirits, human and angelic. To form, therefore, a truthful estimate of the moral character of any one soul, the Searcher of hearts must know the attitude it would assume if brought into the presence of each creature, and also the attitude it would assume to every manifestation of His own infinite nature.
II. He knows the heart necessarily: He cannot but know it.
1. Then to Him are known all the dark mysteries of iniquity which men carry about locked up in their breasts. You yourself may sometimes forget it; He never does; and He intends with a changeless purpose to discover you to the whole world in due time, to put you to open shame, and bring you to condign punishment. Struggle no more in the fruitless labour to conceal your sin. In shame and sorrow of deep repentance hasten to make confession to the Searcher of hearts; to make confession not only of your black secret, but of all the ills with which your life is filled. Cast yourself upon His mercy. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin.
2. Then all hypocritical profession of the faith is vain. You may be wickedly deceiving yourselves as well as your fellow-men, like the young man in the Gospel ready to say of the commandments, All these have I kept from my youth up, and in truth very near the kingdom of heaven; but the Lord marks with unerring certainty that beloved lust, that precious thing of earth, reserved, which you will not give up for Christ. And it, no matter how trivial, no matter how godlike, digs a gulf fathomless and bridgeless between you and life.
3. The Lord searcheth the heart; and, if so, the Lord knoweth them that are His. With this truth Paul comforted himself and Timothy amid the desponding thoughts with which the apostasy of certain flaming professors in the Church of Ephesus was crushing them. With this truth, too, comfort yourself, O child of God, amid the painful doubts which the humble heart is so ready to entertain of its own sincerity and steadfastness. (James Hamilton, M. A.)
Prayer to God to search the heart
Note the psalmists–
I. Intrepidity. Here is a man determined to explore all the recesses of his own heart. Did Bonaparte, did Nelson, did Wellington ever propose to do this? Were all the renowned heroes of antiquity present I would ask them all if they ever had courage to enter into their own hearts. If you stood upon some eminence and saw all the ravenous and venomous creatures that ever lived collected before you, it would not require such courage to combat them as to combat with your own heart. Every sin is a devil.
II. Integrity. He wished to know all his sins, that he might be delivered from them.
III. Wisdom.
1. He prefers his prayer to God Himself. God is the only Being in the universe that knows Himself–that peruses Himself in His own light. In the same light He sees all other beings; and hence it follows that, if other beings see themselves truly, it must be in the light of God.
2. He begins with his principles: his desire is to have these tried by a competent Judge, and to have everything that is evil removed from them. This is an evidence of his wisdom. The heart and its thoughts must be made right before the actions of the life can be right.
IV. Earnest desire. Lead me in the way everlasting.
1. The way Thou hast marked out for salvation.
2. The way of Thy law, in all the purity and spirituality of its requirements. (W. Howels.)
Gods search
This heart is a labyrinth more intricate than the mausoleum of the ancient kings. There are in our souls doors that have never been opened, languages which have never been translated, enigmas that have never been solved, monsters that have never been hunted down, and it was in the appreciation of that fact that the author of my text cried out, Search me, O God, and try me. I propose to show some of the ways in which God explores a man, and the use that comes of it.
1. God searches a man by His Holy Spirit. Here is a man who feels he is all right. A few inconsistencies, perhaps, and a few inaccuracies; but upon the whole he is in tolerably good condition. The Holy Spirit seizes him. Why now does he tremble? Why now that grief-struck look? Why now can he not sleep at nights? The Holy Spirit has come upon him. He finds there are inhabitants in his soul that he never dreamed of. The reptiles begin to uncoil and to hiss at him. The man says, Can it be that I have been carrying such a nature as this forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years? And he immediately begins to apologize, and he reviews the better points of his character. He says, I dont owe a man a dollar. God says by His Holy Spirit, You have robbed me of your whole lifetime. The man says, I am not arrogant, I dont take on airs. The Holy Spirit says, You are too proud to kneel. The man says, I am moral. The Holy Spirit says, You have had many an unclean thought. The man rouses up. He says, I must get away from this; I must get into the fresh air. I must go to business. The Holy Spirit says, You cannot go to business; this is the mightiest of all businesses–the business of the soul. Then all the past sins of the mans life come before him troop by troop. From that point many repent and live. From that point many turn back and die.
2. God searches a man by prosperity. He was amiable, he was kind, he was generous, he was useful, while he was in ordinary circumstances; but by sudden inheritance, or by the opening of railroad communication with his land, or by some stroke of commercial genius, he gets a fortune. God is going to search that man by his prosperities; He is going to see whether he will be as humble in the big house as he was in the small one; He is going to give him enlarged resources, and see whether his charities will keep pace with those resources. When he was worth so much he gave so much. He is worth twice as much now. Does he double his charities? God says, I will explore that man, I will try that man, I will search that man. Fifteen years ago the man said, What good I would do if I only had the means! He has the means now. What does he do? Of every dollar we make God demands a certain percentage. If we keep it back, it is at our peril. The old story of the miser who died in his money-chest, because the lid accidentally fell down and fastened him in, was a type of ten thousand men in our day who are in their own money-vault finding their sepulchre. Whatever be the style of your prosperity, by every dollar Shall you make, by every house that you own, by every commercial success that you achieve, God is searching you through and through.
3. God explores a man by adversity. Some of you are going through that process now. You say, How beautiful it is when a mans fortunes fail to see him throw himself back on spiritual resources. Yes, it is very beautiful, but it is hard to do. There are many people who suppose they have Christian faith, when it is only confidence in government securities. They think they have Christian joy, when it is only She exhilaration that comes from worldly successes. God, after a while, sweeps His hand across the estate, and it is all gone. The man first scolds the banks. He says they are not clever; they ought to have allowed him a discount. Then he scolds the Congress, because it imposed a tariff. Then he scolds the gold-gamblers, because they excited the markets. He does not understand that all the time God has him personally in the crucible.
4. God explores us often through the persecutions of the world. How we admire all those pictures which represent the sufferings of Christi Why? Because we admire patience, and we admire it although we may have but very little of it ourselves. And we sit down on the Sabbath, and we study patience, and we say, Give us patience. What a beautiful grace it is–patience! and on Monday morning a man calls you a liar, and you knock him down! That is all the patience you have. How little we understand how to bless those who curse us. It is the general rule–an eye for an eye,. grudge for grudge.
5. God sometimes explores us by sickness. From other misfortunes we can run away, but flat on our backs, pain in the head, in the heart, in the limbs, we cannot run away. No school, however well endowed, however supplied with faithful instructors and professors, can so well teach you as the school of a sick-bed. People wonder at the piety of Edward Payson, and Richard Baxter, and Robert Hall. How did they get to be so good? It was sanctified sickness.
6. God tries us with bereavement. He searches a man by taking away his loved ones. An author describes a mother who had lost her children, saying to Death, Why did you steal my flowers? Death said, I didnt steal them; I am no thief; I transplanted them. Well, said the mother, why did you wrench them away so violently? And Death said, They would never be wrenched away but that you held on to them so violently. Oh! how hard it is when our friends go away from us to realize that they are not stolen, not wrenched, but transplanted, promoted, irradiated, emparadised. But unless you have had bereavement you do not know what a bad heart you have. We do not know how much rebellion of soul we possess until God comes and takes some of our loved ones away. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Our Searcher
You may say to your clerks, Now let us search into our accounts and balance our books, but while you are doing it do not forget to pray, Lord, search me.
I. Let us ask the Lord to search our principles. Our government have now appointed officers to see that ships which are outward-bound are not deeper in the water than the load-line of safety. Now, like a ship, every man has a load-line; and he says within himself, Beyond that line I will not go. Nevertheless, many men do go beyond their lead-line, and founder in the sea of vice. Every man draws the line somewhere; and, alas! it is generally as far off the standard directed by Christ as it can possibly be. Men make load-lines for themselves, and say, I am all right on this side the line. But what does the Bible say about it? Is your line in the correct place for the salvation of your soul? A thief will steal, and draw his line, saying, I will not hurt or murder anybody. Most men draw a line of conduct somewhere, and say, I am all right so long as I do not pass beyond that line. How important to pray this prayer, Search me, O God!
II. Let us ask of God to search our profession. You may say, Ah, I have got you there; I make no profession. Dont you? Why, you must be a rogue indeed if you make no profession of honesty or gratitude. What, have you never told anybody you were thankful to God for having created you? Are you not thankful to Jesus for having died for you? Christianity means honesty, virtue, truth, gratitude to God, and helpfulness to our neighbour; and do you make no profession of these? Well, if you dont I should not like to meet you in a lonely road at night. Of course you make professions. You profess to be honest, upright, and lovable. Now, let us ask God to search our professions. Do we act accordingly?
III. We also should ask God to search our lives. We often fall and wander from the way. The text goes on to say, and see if there be any wicked way in me. But we need not say if; we know full well that there is much wickedness in us. It may be the Lord will show us that we need to be more resolute. O brothers, be decided to give up sin. Rouse yourselves! It is all nonsense for you to complain clay after day, saying, I cannot help myself! Have you not the power of God to help you?
IV. We ought to ask God to search our character. Do you remember reading of the Californian mine swindle? Some men went into the interior and plastered pieces of silver upon the rocks. Then they got up a grand Mining Co. Limited, and people believed them. Engineers saw the silver on the rocks and then reported favourably of it: it was all a sham. But it is not so in your case. You are not barren rock. There is a streak of gold in every man. If it were not so Christ would not have told us to preach the Gospel to every creature. God has given you the power of noble manhood, and you shall not be disappointed if you press towards it. If you strive for the manhood that thinks nobly, speaks truthfully, and lives virtuously, you shall attain it.
V. Ask God to search your soul. Is it pardoned? (W. Birch.)
Prayer for self-knowledge
I. True religion has its seat is the heart. The man of real godliness has not only a name to live, but he lives. There is a consistency in his character. The Gospel not only enlightens his understanding, but shines into his heart; not only delights his imagination, but captivates his affections. It makes his conscience tender, his thoughts humble, peaceful, holy.
II. Hence the truly religious man is anxious to know the real state of his heart. True, he may find this self-examination painful and humiliating, but this makes no matter to him. He feels that he has the salvation of an immortal soul at stake, and he is not to lose that soul for the sake of being kept easy in his follies and proud in his sins.
III. The sincere Christian is not conscious of having within his heart any one cherished sin, It is one thing to have iniquity entering the breast, and another thing to harbour it and have it reigning there. St. Paul felt a sinful law in his members, but he felt it as warring against the law of his mind, as opposed to the habitual frame of his soul, to that holy and heavenly principle which made him delight in the law of God after the inward man, and enabled him to walk, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Every Christian also feels the same warfare within. Sin tempts and harasses him, and sometimes brings him into captivity, but it cannot hold him in bondage; it cannot make him quietly submit to its hated laws. We soon see the prisoner struggling with his vile oppressor, and bursting its bonds. Trampling his lusts underneath his feet, we hear him exclaim, I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord.
IV. Yet he often suspects himself of some undetected iniquity. The best of our actions, the brightest of our graces, the most holy of our dispositions, the most fervent of our prayers, and the most ardent of our praises, are blended with so much that is evil that we despair of separating the one from the other, and are often ready to faint with disquietude and fear.
V. Is the midst of his perplexities the sincere Christian has a firm and lively belief that God knows his heart. Like David, he knows that the Lord searcheth the hearts, and understandeth the thoughts, and compasseth the path, and is acquainted with the ways of the children of men; and, like David, he is willing to be searched, and prays to be tried by this omniscient God.
VI. He applies to God for self-knowledge and instruction, He can show us wherein we are right in our judgment of ourselves, and wherein we are wrong; what there is to be brought low in us, and what to be raised up; what we must endeavour to get rid of, and what to obtain. Laying open our hearts, He can discover to us the sin which is lurking there, and, like a worm at the root, secretly marring our comforts and withering our graces; and, shining on the work of His own hands, He can make visible to us the wails of that spiritual temple which He has begun to raise up for Himself within our souls.
VII. He who seeks instruction of God must be willing to submit himself to Gods guidance. We often pray for instruction without being mindful of the necessity of this submission. Our supplications are sincere, but we know not what we ask. We forget that the Saviour employs various methods of showing His children their hearts. Affliction, frequent and severe affliction, is the school into which prayer often brings a man, and in which he first learns to know himself and his God. It is in the furnace that the gold is proved and distinguished from the secret dross. But the path of tribulation is not the only path which we must be content to enter. If we wish our prayers to be answered, we must be prepared to walk in the way everlasting. And what is this way? It is that way of access to the Father in which the patriarchs and prophets, the glorious company of the apostles and the noble army of martyrs drew near to Him–the way of reconciliation through the blood of His Son. It is that highway which is called in the Scriptures the way of holiness. (C. Bradley, M. A.)
On being known of God
This psalm is a psalm of gladness, or deep and tranquil satisfaction in the all-searching God. It is full of humility, the profound humility of one who feels that he cannot hide himself from God. But profound as is the lowliness, equally marked is the joy of David that God knoweth him altogether. The end of the psalm is a prayer; David does not deprecate the searching of his heart by the all-seeing One, he invokes it.
I. The blessedness of Gods knowledge of our loyalty. This is the subject suggested by the context. David is declaring that he has neither sympathy nor part with the wicked. Do not I hate them, etc. He appeals to God whether this is not so. Search too, etc. Am I not right in affirming my love for Thee? Is not my heart set upon my God? Are not all my thoughts for Thine honour? The consciousness of sin, rather than that of righteousness, is the distinguishing mark of Christian experience; nor will this contrast between Jewish and Christian piety seem strange to those who compare the Gospel with the law. The sanctity of Jesus makes all our righteousness appear as filthy rags. The love of God is far more searching than the precepts of the stony table; the heart that might have been unmelted at the demands of law is broken by the claims of affection. The loyalty that might pass unreproved, did we but think of what we are bidden, proves but poor as an expression of our gratitude, our response to Gods affection. The Hebrew saint contrasted himself with the sinner; Christians, searched by the Spirit of holiness and love, rank themselves among transgressors. We have to bewail many a failure, many an imperfection, but a loyal-hearted Christian should be true to himself and declare his devotion too. At least the heart is firm in its allegiance; whatever your folly and your weakness, you mean, with all sincerity, to serve God. Now, it is an immense comfort to us to be able to rest on Gods perfect knowledge of our loyalty to Him. He knows the heart that is set on serving Him; He can distinguish between ignorance and ill-intent; He is not misled by the result; He sees integrity of purpose, and marks the desire to hold true to Him; and He will bring out the righteousness of His servants, making it clear as the light. He will also correct the hidden faultiness (verse 24).
II. The blessedness of Gods knowledge of our struggles. One of the reasons why we should not judge our fellows is that we do not know the men. We see the temptation yielded to; we know not the many temptations that have been resisted, how hard was the struggle to resist. The compassionate God takes account of all this; and hence, for the returning sinner, it is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men. Signs of feeble piety, too, we can mark. God knows all that makes even that feeble piety a very victory of faith. We note the uncertainty of temper, we hear the captious phrase; only one eye takes note of the depression and bitterness of soul out of which this is wrung. How hard is the ignorance of the world; how hard, too, the inconsideration of the Church! God does not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. Here, too, mark–the refuge of the struggling spirit is not in self-sufficiency, not in self-justification. It is a perilous thing to balance our failures with our temptations. We are not the proper judges of ourselves; our leniency would be our undoing. We need not only to be searched but also to be purged, and He is at once compassionate and firm. Search me, O God, and know my heart–see it all; what is pitiful as well as what is evil try me, and know my thoughts: and see, etc.
III. The blessedness of Gods thorough knowledge of our sins. You know how frank confession becomes when all motive to concealment is gone. A wise parent who has detected his child in a fault which must be taken notice of will at once tell the little one he knows all. With fatherly sensitiveness for a childs conscience, he will remove the motive for concealment, that the confession may be full. Gods perfect knowledge of our sins takes away the motive, because it removes the possibility, of concealment. He who has feeble conceptions of Gods searching vision will be full of evasions; he will be full of self-deceit. The complete conviction of transgression follows, and does not precede, the feeling that God knows it all; for honesty in our dealings with ourselves we need to be searched of God. The Gospel offers immediate cleansing to the conscience; and its cleansing virtue lies very much in the fact that it brings so near to the sinner the God who has searched him, and who knows him altogether. It begins by speaking to us of our sins, with most considerate sympathy our Father shows Himself aware of all the pollution we would confess. The Cross of Christ supplies us with the self-condemnation we require, and with the condemnation speaks of tenderness and pardon.
IV. The power which our every good resolve derives from the fact that we can make it known to God. Such things crave an utterance; we are more faithful because we are pledged. But we may not speak of them to men: lest we become vain; lest after failure put us to shame; lest our good resolutions evaporate in mere talk. There is sweetness, too, and force in our uttering our love to God, our devotedness to Him. Of these things, also, we may not speak to our fellows, yet they must be breathed into some ear. We can ask our God to mark them, and we are confirmed in them by the fact that they have been noted of Him.
V. The blessedness of the fact that He who knows us thoroughly is our helper and our leader. A map is something for the traveller, but children-travellers as we are, we want the guide and controller of our way with us. See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. There is one way, and only one, to blessedness and goodness. Gods way is the same and everlasting. Why, then, are we wanderers? Why are we not always making progress therein? Alas! there are ill ways within us; it is our way to be indolent, wilful, to run after deceitful pleasures, to stray in folly, to sit down in sloth: and our leader knows it; and He will search these out and bring us past our perils. God will help us; that is our confidence and joy. We shall go on, well and truly on, for we have One above to lead us. (A. Mackennal, D. D.)
Search me, O God
Why should the psalmist ask for what he has just declared to be necessary from the very relation of men to God? Is he asking anything more than he declared to exist apart from his asking? Or, what is the meaning of his prayer? Now, the answer to these questions must be guided by two considerations. One is that the prayer for searching is only a part of the psalmists desire, and the answer to it will be but the first step in the process of which he longs to be the subject. Search, in order to cleansing, is what he asks; and that is more than necessary to Divine omniscience. Again, the prayer is not merely a petition. It is the expression of a willingness to submit to the search. He began by recognizing the fact; he ends by welcoming it; rejoicing in it and desiring to experience it in his own case.
I. The longing for the Divine search. There used to be a contrivance in some prisons, where solitary confinement was the rule, by which somewhere or other in the wall there was a little hole at which, at any moment, the eye of the jailor might be glued. And men have gone mad because they sat there and felt that they were never free from possible inspection. To a great many of us, Thou God seest me is as unwelcome as the consciousness of the little hole in the wall and the jailors eye was to the criminal. We think of God as an inspector, a spy, a jailor; and we shrink and shut up all the petals of our hearts that He may not see what is there. Adam and Eve concealed themselves in the garden; and their sons and daughters are made cowards by their consciences, so that Thou God seest me is an unwelcome thought to very many of us. But it may be made a welcome one. If we are quite sure that the Eye that looks upon us is the Eye of a loving Father we shall not shrink from it, but turn to Him, and say, There must be wisdom with Thee; Thou lookest with other and clearer eyes than ours, and Thou shalt look me through and through. But we have here not only the thought of welcome, but I think there is suggested, too, that of helping God in His search by frank confession. A man that says truly, Search me, and know my heart, will not be unwilling to go to God and make a clean breast of it, and tell all that he knows of his weakness and his sin.
II. The longing for the discovery of hidden sin, I know nothing against myself, yet am I not hereby justified, said the apostle; but He that judgeth me is the Lord. Similarly the psalmist does not know what there may be lying, lurking and skulking in the depths of his heart; wherefore he refers himself to God, and asks that He will come and dig into its depths. That suspicion of unrecognized evil in myself is one that we should always carry with us. By arrangement of mirrors a man can see his outward form all round. But you cannot do like that with your souls. The difficulty is that the inspector and the inspected and the instrument of inspection are all one and the same, as if star and astronomer and telescope were one. So no wonder that we make–as every autobiography that ever was written shows that men make–huge mistakes in estimating what we are. There are secret faults in us all. And so the psalmist said, Lord, I see a bit of myself, but it is only a little bit; and there must be, deep down, many things that I have not detected yet. See, then, if there be any wicked way in me. This prayer for the discovery of the hidden evil is based also on the confidence that God can and will cast out from us all the evil that He discovers in us, and the search for which the devout heart is eager is a search with a view to a purpose–viz. the ejection of the detected evil. There is another thing to be remarked about this prayer for the detection of undiscovered evil, and that is that one way of answering the prayer is by making us more quick to see the hidden sin. The thought that He is searching my heart will make my conscience more sensitive. And one of His ways of answering the petition is to open my eyes that I may behold the unsuspected evil in myself.
III. The longing for a Divine leading unto the everlasting way. Into that way we shall be led if we have spread our hearts out before God, and loyally helped Him in His search, and welcomed the blessed light of His face. He will lead us, partly by Providences pointing our course, partly by ejecting the evil, partly by giving to us new aims, aspirations, and desires; partly by strengthening our feet to run in the paths of holiness which He has before prepared that we should walk in them. The end of the Divine search is the Divine cleansing. God looks upon us in order that He may lead us into the way of peace. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Self-examination
I. What is implied.
1. That he had searched and tried himself.
2. That his own searching was ineffectual, or at least not perfectly satisfactory.
3. A firm belief of Gods omniscience.
II. The springs of this desire.
1. We are liable to be mistaken in the ideas we entertain as to our state.
2. Such mistakes are very dangerous. The house built upon the sand not only falls, but falls when it is too late to build another.
3. If God do not search us in a way of mercy, He will do it in a way of wrath, either in this world or the next. (B. Beddome, M. A.)
Self-examination: –
I. see if there be any wicked way in me;–any corruption concealed, any lust harboured, any vicious appetite indulged, any sinful course persisted in. It may refer either to mental errors, or evil practices.
1. It does not imply that the psalmist thought himself entirely free from sin. He knew there was much sin in him, and committed by him: and hence his pathetic lamentations (Psa 38:1-22; Psa 51:1-19.).
2. He hoped that sin was not predominant.
3. Though sin did not reign, yet he was afraid that more sin remained in him than he was aware of.
4. What of this nature he was ignorant of, he desires to be taught (Job 13:23).
II. and lead me in the way everlasting.
1. The object he had in view.
(1) The way of acceptance with God, Christ (Joh 14:6).
(2) The way of sound doctrine.
(3) The way of instituted worship.
(4) The way of holiness and obedience.
2. The desire.
(1) Need of guidance.
(2) A- sense of his need.
(3) He entertained high and exalted thoughts of God, as every way capable of the work he here assigns to Him (B. Beddome, M. A.)
Self-examination
It is a good sign when we are afraid of self-deception and court the scrutiny of God; when we are willing to know the worst of our own case, and desirous to judge impartially. For by thus examining ourselves, and submitting to Divine examination, believers are distinguished–
I. From the formalist, who will take no notice of the state of his heart in religion. Many, like the Jews of old, go to the sanctuary of God, and sit as His people sit, and hear as they hear, but their hearts are far from Him. This is no sweeping charge, for if their hearts were right with God they would worship Him at home as well as in their sanctuary, and in the sanctuary by sacraments as well as by prayer or praise. It is, therefore, a good sign when the claims of all duties are seriously weighed, and the state of the heart towards and in them is chiefly regarded.
II. From the reckless–those who dare not search their heart before God; they are afraid of its whispers, and conscious that a full disclosure of its secrets even to itself would be almost as humiliating as the exposure of them to others. Thus the matter will not bear thinking of, and therefore appearances are kept up at all hazards.
III. From the inconsistent, or those who are unwilling to be led out of every wicked way. It is the grand characteristic of faith unfeigned that it is willing to be kept back from all sin and to be led in the way everlasting. Examine yourselves, therefore, whether ye be in the faith, prove yourselves, etc. (Robert Philip, D. D.)
Imperfections detected
Here is a beautiful diamond, it is apparently pure white, and it sparkles with lustre. A look with the naked eye and you are satisfied the stone is without fault, a most precious and costly gem of the first water. The expert now puts into your hand a magnifying glass of great power and tells you to look at the centre of the stone, and inquires what you can see, and in reply you say there is a black speck at its very centre. To the natural eye the stone was pure white, entirely without fault; but with the assistance of this powerful glass some startling revelations are brought to light. It is equally true respecting the life of a believer, without any exception. There is a class of people in existence who claim they are capable of a perfect life in this world, and are very enthusiastic in advancing their views in public; but if the mirror of Gods truth were put to its proper use it would surely introduce them to the painful mystery of human life, and, under the powerful search-light of the Word, they would be surprised to detect the hidden faults and specks of imperfection in the holiest life. (R. Venting.)
And know my thoughts.—
Man accountable for his thoughts
I. While no one can read the thought of another, he cannot understand perfectly the processes and character of his own. The most occult of all sciences is that which concerns itself with questions how we perceive any truth, or receive any impression, or think at all. No object to which you can turn your attention is so full of perplexity as the attention itself that you pay. Whence arise these thoughts, that are drawing their trains perpetually through the mind? What are the laws that govern their intricate and disturbed order? How far are they involuntary and beyond our strongest efforts of control? What sets them in such opposition to one another, and often to our own wish? What makes them so easy and so intractable; so clear and confused; so rapid and slow; bewildered with dreams and delirium, and true and radiant as the light? We have little to answer to questions like these. There is One that knoweth. Search me, O God, and know my heart.
II. But, impenetrable as are the thoughts of man, he is accountable for them to an extent which it is serious to consider, and which he does not consider enough. There is a proverb that thoughts pass toll-free. And it is a truth that would be worth the mentioning, where a just liberty is brought into question; where either a political or a religious tyranny has set up the barriers of its proscription against the rights of the mind. It would show that no receipts of custom, and no iron hindrances can stop the progress of the understanding, which moves on with the confidence of an invisible being, and stays no question. But it is a proverb very ill applied when it gives licence to every roving imagination; when it pretends to hide us from the heavenly inspection; when it encourages the heart to grow libertine; when it denies that we are amenable in this secret region to Him from whom nothing is concealed. What are worldly thoughts but worldliness itself; and corrupt ones but corruptness of mind; and proud ones but haughtiness of heart? Who shall say, then, that thoughts cost nothing?
1. They may cost us our liberty; that very freedom which they profess to enjoy in the greatest perfection. They have their habits, like everything else in man, and may be brought slavishly under the dominion of them. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, is a striking example in the prophet of that figure of speech which reserves for the final word the most emphatic expression. For long after the foot and the hand, and the will itself, are withdrawn from iniquity, these subtle agents may be about their usual work of evil suggestions. They may refuse to retire, haunt with their empty shades the spots where they once stimulated to action, and torment the conscience that they can no longer betray.
2. They may cost us our reason. And what a price to pay for their mismanagement is that I They may be so ardent as to grow wild; or brood upon one point till they have no sight nor power for any other, and the healthy mind shall lose all its soundness.
3. They may cost the innocence of the mind, as well as its sanity;–they alone, though confined ever so closely within the breast. Man does not always judge so, for he is satisfied if the claims he makes are answered. He looks but at the outward appearance. But there is One who looks deeper than that, and to that One the great account is due. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Only they can. The heart is the eye that is made to gaze towards Him; and if that be clouded, the whole heaven is hid, however circumspectly the steps may be directed along the earth. No need of any purpose to do mischief. No need of any perpetrated guilt. Where the thoughts are base, the soul is polluted; where they will acknowledge no discipline, it is nigh to be undone.
III. We make of great account the climate in which we live; and the air and the weather are unfailing topics everywhere. Why will we not make of still greater that inward temperature and breath of the spirit by which we are continually surrounded;–that can carry sunny remembrances through rainy days, and need not mind much the troubles that are abroad and the east wind, since they themselves are at rest and quiet? We esteem it of high consequence what house we occupy, and what its accommodations are,–where it is situated, and how it fronts. But the house of his own thoughts is the true dwelling of man. Let it receive none but worthy guests. Let it face the sky where the light is the longest. Let it be built for the ages to come. (N. L. Frothingham.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 23. Search me, O God] Investigate my conduct, examine my heart, put me to the test, and examine my thoughts.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
And whether I do not speak this from my very heart, do thou judge, who art the Searcher of hearts, and deal with me accordingly.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Search me, O God, and know my heart,…. He had searched him, and knew his heart thoroughly;
try me, and know my thoughts; he had tried him, and knew every thought in him, Ps 139:1. This therefore is not said for the sake of God; who, though he is the trier of hearts, and the searcher of the reins, is indeed a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart at once, and knows immediately what is in man; and needs no testimony of him, nor to make use of any means in order to know him and what is within him: but David said this for his own sake, that God would search and make known to him what was in his heart, and try him by his word, as gold is tried in the fire; or by anything difficult and self-denying, as he tried Abraham; or by any afflictive providence; or in any way he thought fit to make him acquainted thoroughly with himself. His sense is this, that if he knew his own heart and thoughts, and the inward frame and disposition of his soul, it was as he had expressed it; that he was grieved with sinners, and hated those that hated the Lord, even with a perfect hatred, and reckoned them as his enemies; but if it was otherwise, he desired to be searched and tried thoroughly, that it might be discovered: and he might say this also on account of others, who charged him falsely with things he was not conscious of; that never entered into his thoughts, and his heart knew nothing of, and could not accuse him with; and therefore he appeals to the heart searching God, that he would so lay open things that his integrity and innocence might appear to all; see Ge 22:1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
He sees in them the danger which threatens himself, and prays God not to give him over to the judgment of self-delusion, but to lay bare the true state of his soul. The fact “Thou hast searched me,” which the beginning of the Psalm confesses, is here turned into a petitioning “search me.” Instead of in Psa 139:17, the poet here says , which signifies branches (Eze 31:5) and branchings of the act of thinking (thoughts and cares, Psa 94:19). The Resh is epenthetic, for the first form is , Job 4:13; Job 20:2. The poet thus sets the very ground and life of his heart, with all its outward manifestations, in the light of the divine omniscience. And in Psa 139:24 he prays that God would see whether any cleaves to him ( as in 1Sa 25:24), by which is not meant “a way of idols” (Rosenmller, Gesenius, and Maurer), after Isa 48:5, since an inclination towards, or even apostasy to, heathenism cannot be an unknown sin; nor to a man like the writer of this Psalm is heathenism any power of temptation. (Grtz) might more readily be admissible, but is a more comprehensive notion, and one more in accordance with this closing petition. The poet gives this name to the way that leads to the pain, torture, viz., of the inward and outward punishments of sin; and, on the other hand, the way along which he wishes to be guided he calls , the way of endless continuance (lxx, Vulgate, Luther), not the way of the former times, after Jer 6:16 (Maurer, Olshausen), which thus by itself is ambiguous (as becomes evident from Job 22:15; Jer 18:15), and also does not furnish any direct antithesis. The “everlasting way” is the way of God (Psa 27:11), the way of the righteous, which stands fast for ever and shall not “perish” (Psa 1:6).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
23. Search me, O God! He insists upon this as being the only cause why he opposed the despisers of God, that he himself was a genuine worshipper of God, and desired others to possess the same character. It indicates no common confidence that he should submit, himself so boldly to the judgment of God. But being fully conscious of sincerity in his religion, it was not without due consideration that he placed himself so confidently before God’s bar; neither must we think that he claims to be free from all sin, for he groaned under the felt burden of his transgressions. The saints in all that they say of their integrity still depend only upon free grace. Yet persuaded as they are that their godliness is approved before God, notwithstanding their falls and infirmities, we need not wonder that (hey feel themselves at freedom to draw a distinction between themselves and the wicked. While he denies that his heart was double or insincere, he does not profess exemption from all sin, but only that he was not devoted to wickedness; for עצב, otseb, does not mean any sin whatever, but grief, trouble, or pravity — and sometimes metaphorically an idol. (220) But the last of these meanings will not apply here, for David asserts his freedom not from superstition merely, but unrighteousness, as elsewhere it is said, (Isa 59:7,) that in the ways of such men there is “trouble and destruction,” because they carry everything by violence and wickedness. Others think the allusion is to a bad conscience, which afflicts the wicked with inward torments, but this is a forced interpretation. Whatever sense we attach to the word, David’s meaning simply is, that though he was a man subject to sin, he was not devotedly bent upon the practice of it.
(220) “ Car le mot Hebrieu duquel il use en ce passage ne signifie pas indif-feremment tout peche, mais douleur et fascherie,” etc. — Fr. “ Any way of wickedness — the word rendered after the Septuagint by wickedness means both sorrow, mischief; and idol: the former is probably the sense in which the Psalmist here uses it, a way of sorrow is a way productive of sorrow, or tending to sorrow, as is the case (Psa 1:7 [ sic ]) with every wicked way.” — Cresswell.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(23) Search.The same word with which the psalm opens. The inevitable scrutiny of the Divine Being is invited.
Thoughts.As in Psa. 94:19; a word meaning (Eze. 31:5) branches, and so expressing the ramifications of thought.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
23, 24. Because of such sin and sinful men, the psalmist prays for a search of his own heart, that no enmity to God may be left there.
Way everlasting Literally, way of eternity; so termed because it is old as eternity, being founded in the attributes of God, and because it leads to a blissful eternity; in both respects opposite to the brief and perishable way of the ungodly. Psa 1:6.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
DISCOURSE: 736
THE DIFFICULTY OF KNOWING OUR OWN STATE
Psa 139:23-24. 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.
THE perfections of God are all infinitely glorious; but, like the cloud of fire, they have a different aspect towards the friends, and the enemies of God. To the ungodly they are dark and terrible; but to the godly they are full of light and comfort [Note: Exo 15:11.]. His omniscience in particular is a ground both of joy and terror: in this light David speaks of it in the psalm before us. He represents this attribute in striking colours [Note: ver. 112.]; he declares that the consideration of it was delightful to him [Note: ver. 17, 18.]: but the prospect it afforded him with respect to the wicked was extremely melancholy [Note: ver. 19.]. Returning however to his own immediate concerns, he improves this attribute to his own spiritual advantage [Note: ver. 23, 24.].
From these words we may notice,
I.
The danger of indulging any secret sin
There is no man who is perfectly free from sin [Note: 1Ki 8:46.]; but no real Christian will knowingly harbour sin. The indulging of it could not consist with his salvation. This is strongly intimated in the text [Note: He intimates that if there were any wicked way in him, he could not be walking in the way everlasting.]. It is also expressly declared in other parts of Scripture.
[A regenerate person it is said cannot indulge sin [Note: 1Jn 3:9.]. Allowed sin characterizes those who are of the devil [Note: 1Jn 3:8.]: it entirely prevents the acceptance of our prayers [Note: Psa 66:18.]: it entails on a person everlasting destruction [Note: Mat 5:19.]. Our Lord repeatedly urges this as a reason for mortifying every sin, how pleasant or profitable soever it be [Note: Mat 5:29-30.].]
Nor ought it to be esteemed an hard saying
[The harbouring of any sin is a contempt of Gods authority [Note: Jam 2:10-11.]: it defeats the end of Christs incarnation and death [Note: 1Jn 3:8.]: it argues an entire want of sincerity [Note: Joh 1:47.]: it therefore justly brings the curse of God upon us [Note: Jer 48:10.].]
There is one thing indeed which renders the consideration of this extremely awful; namely,
II.
The difficulty of discerning whether we have any allowed sin in us or not
The rule of our duty is clear enough; but it is by no means easy to determine how far our experience corresponds with it. This is evidently implied in the solicitude which David expresses for divine aid and direction. It may be confirmed also by many scripture examples
[What ignorance of his own heart did Hazael discover [Note: 2Ki 8:13.]! James and John little thought by what spirit they were actuated [Note: Luk 9:55.], nor was Peter aware of his own instability [Note: Mat 26:35.]. Paul himself could not venture positively to determine the extent of his own innocence [Note: 1Co 4:4.]. God has declared that no one can attain a perfect knowledge of his own heart [Note: Jer 17:9.].]
Many reasons might be assigned for this difficulty
[The very best of our actions are blended with sin. Self-love tempts us to view them in too favourable a light: we put specious names on our bosom-sins. Hence it is hard to discern the exact quality of our actions.]
To evince however that there is one way of judging aright, we shall proceed to shew,
III.
The means we should use for the ascertaining of it
Self-examination is a duty inculcated in Scripture [Note: 2Co 13:5.]. It is necessary for the attaining of self-knowledge. The Christian therefore can adopt the words of Asaph [Note: Psa 77:6.].But he does not rest satisfied with his own exertions
[He is aware of the deceitfulness of sin, the treachery of his own heart, and the devices of Satan. Though he rejoices in the testimony of his own conscience, he dares not confide in it too much [Note: Pro 28:26.].]
He cries to God to search and try him
[He remembers whose prerogative it is to search the heart [Note: Jer 17:10.]: he reads the word that God may search him with it [Note: Heb 4:12.]: he regards conscience as Gods vicegerent [Note: Pro 20:27.]: he looks up for the Spirits aid and influence [Note: Rom 8:26.]. In this way he prays, like David, frequently, and with fervour [Note: Mark the text.].]
He commits himself to the divine guidance and direction
[He knows he shall err if God do not lead him: he trusts in the promises which God has given him in his word [Note: Psa 25:9. Pro 3:6.].]
In this way he attains abiding peace and confidence [Note: Php 4:6-7.].
Application
[Let us all begin the work of self-examination. Let us call in the divine aid with importunate supplications. Let us inquire whether there be not some sin which we indulge, or some duty which we neglect? Let us especially take notice of our thoughts Let us not think that inadvertence can excuse our sins, while we neglect the means of discovering them [Note: Lev 5:17.]: Let us tremble lest, through the indulgence of one sin, our religion prove vain at last [Note: Jam 1:26.]; let us not walk in a way which shall serve merely for a present show, but a way that shall be of everlasting benefit.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
Ver. 23. Search me, O God, and know my heart ] Look into every corner and cranny, and see whether it be not so as I say, viz. that I hate wicked men merely for their wickedness; and for no self-respect have I thus cast down the gauntlet of defiance unto them, and bidden them battle. We should not rest (saith a reverend man) in our heart’s voice; nor accept its deceitful applause. But as once Joshua seeing the angel examined him, Art thou on our side, or on the adversaries’? so should we deal in this case; yea, beg of God to do it for us, and do it thoroughly, as here: this is a sure sign of sincerity, void of all sinisterity.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
GOD’S SCRUTINY LONGED FOR
Psa 139:23 – Psa 139:24
This psalm begins with perhaps the grandest contemplation of the divine Omniscience that was ever put into words. It is easy to pour out platitudes upon such a subject, but the Psalmist does not content himself with generalities. He gathers all the rays, as it were, into one burning point, and focusses them upon himself: ‘Oh, Lord! Thou hast searched me , and known me .’ All the more remarkable, then, is it that the psalm should end with asking God to do what it began with declaring that He does. He knows us each, altogether; whether we like it or not, whether we try to hinder it or not, whether we remember it or not. Singular, therefore, is it to find this prayer as the very climax of all the Psalmist’s contemplation. It is more than the ‘searching’ which was spoken of at the beginning, which is desired at the end. It is a process which has for its issue the cleansing of all the evil that is beheld. The prayer of the text is in fact the yearning of the devout soul for purity. I simply wish to consider the series of petitions here, in the hope that we may catch something of their spirit, and that some faint echo of them may sound in our desires. My purpose, then, will be best accomplished if I follow the words of the text, and look at these petitions in the order in which they stand.
I. Note then, first, the longing for the searching of God’s eye.
One is, that it is a glad recognition of a fact which is very terrible to many hearts. The conception of God as ‘knowing me altogether,’ down to the very roots of my being, is either the most blessed or the most unwelcome thought, according to my conception of what His heart to me is. If I think of Him, as so many of us do, as simply the ‘austere man’ who ‘gathers where he did not straw,’ and ‘reaps where he did not sow’; if my thought of God is mainly that of an Investigator and a Judge, with pure eyes and rigid judgment, then I shall be more ignorant of myself, and more confident in myself, than the most of men are when they bethink themselves, if I do not feel that I shrink up like a sensitive plant’s leaf when a finger touches it, and would fain curl myself together, and hide from His eye something that I know lurks and poisons at the centre of my being.
The gaoler’s eye at the slit in the wall of the solitary prisoner’s cell is a constant terror to the man who knows that it may be upon him at every moment, and does not know where the eyehole is, or when the merciless eye may be at it, but if we love one another we do not shrink from opening out our inward baseness to each other. We can venture to tell those that are dear to us as our own hearts the things that lie in our own hearts and make them black and ugly in all eyes but love’s; or if we cannot venture to do it wholly, at all events we do it more fully, and more willingly, and with more of something that is almost pleasure in the very act of confession, in proportion as we are bound by the sacred ties of love to the recipient of the confession. There is a joy, and a blessedness deeper than joy, in discovering ourselves, even our unworthy selves, when we know that the eye that looks is a loving eye.
If, then, we have rightly conceived of our relation to Him, that infinite Lover of all our hearts, who looks, ‘with other eyes than ours, and makes allowance for us all,’ there will be a certain blessedness, almost like joy, in turning ourselves inside out before Him; and in feeling that every corner of our hearts lies naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. ‘Search me, O God!’ is the voice of confident love, which is sure of the love that contemplates the sinner.
And for us Christian people, to whom all these attributes of Deity are gathered together and brought very near our hearts and our experiences in the person of our Brother Christ, the thought of such knowledge of us becomes still more blessed. Just as the Apostle who was conscious of many sins, could say to his Master, not in petulance, but in deeply-moved confidence, ‘Thou knowest all things! Why dost Thou ask me questions? Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest, notwithstanding my denials, that I love Thee,’ so may we turn to Jesus Christ, who knows what is in men, and who knows each man, and may be sure that the eye which looks upon our unworthiness pities our sinfulness, and is ready to bear it all away. There is a deeper gladness in pouring out our hearts to our loving Lord than in locking them in sullen silence, with the vain conceit that we thereby hide ourselves from Him. Make a clean breast of your evil, and you will find that the act has in it a blessedness all unique and poignant. ‘Pour out your hearts before Him, O ye people! God is a refuge for us.’
This prayer is also an expression of absolute willingness to submit to the searching process. God is represented in my text as searching the secrets of a man’s heart, not that God may know, but that the man may know. By His Spirit He will come into the innermost corners of our nature, if this prayer is a real expression of our desire, and there the illumination of His presence will flash light into all the dark places of our experience and of our natures. We cannot afford to be in ignorance of these. Pestilence breathes in the unventilated, unlighted, uncleansed recesses of a neglected nature. It is only on condition of the light of God’s convincing Spirit being cast into every part of our being that we shall be able to overcome and annihilate the creeping swarms of microscopic sins that are there, minute but mighty in their myriads to destroy a man’s soul. ‘Search me’ is the expression of a penitence that knows itself to be full of evil, that does not know all the evil of which it is full, that needs enlightenment, that desires deliverance, that is sure of the love that looks, and that so spreads itself, as a bleacher spreads some piece of stained cloth in the gracious sunshine and sprinkles it with the pure water of heaven that all the stains may melt away.
It is useless to ask God to search us if we lock our hearts against His searching. The mere natural exercise, if I may so say, of the divine attribute of Omniscience we cannot hinder. He knows us thereby altogether, whether we like it or not; but the ‘searching’ of my text is one which He cannot put in force without our consent. We have to confess our sins unto the Lord ere this kind of divine scrutiny can be brought to bear. By His natural Omniscience, He knows them altogether, but the seeing which is preparatory to destroying them depends on our willingness to submit ourselves to the often painful process by which He drags our sins to light. Do you want Him to come and search your hearts, and tell you in your spirits what He has found there? Do you desire to know your hidden evil? Then keep close to Him, and tell Him what the sin is which you know to be sin; and ask Him to show you what the sins are which, as yet, you have not grown up to the height of understanding and acknowledging.
II. Next, there follows the longing for the divine testing of our thoughts.
So, then, the innermost man is searched by the divine knowledge, and the thoughts which the innermost man produces are tested by the divine providence. And our second petition is for a trial by facts, by external agencies, of the true nature and character of the purposes, desires, designs, intentions, as well as of the affections and loves and joys. That is to say, this second prayer submits absolutely to any discipline, fiery and fierce and bitter, by which the true character of a man’s activities may be made clear to himself. Oh! it is a prayer easily offered; hard to stand by. It is a prayer often answered in ways that drive us almost to despair. It means, ‘Do anything with me, put me into any seven-fold heated furnace of sorrow, do anything that will melt my hardness, and run off my dross, which Thy great ladle will then skim away, that the surface may be clear, and the substance without alloy.’
Do you pray that prayer, brother! knowing all that it means, and being willing to take the answer, in forms that may rack your heart, and sadden your whole lives? If you are wise, you will. Better to go crippled into life than, ‘having two hands or two feet, to be cast into hell fire’! Better to be saved though maimed, than to be entire and lost.
‘Try me.’ It is an awful prayer. Let us not offer it lightly, or unadvisedly; but if we are wise let it be our inmost desire. And when the answer comes, and sorrows fall, do not let us murmur, do not let us kick, do not let us wonder, but let us say, ‘Thou art a God that hearest prayer,’ and ‘I will glorify God in the fires.’ Then ‘the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, shall be found unto praise and honour and glory.’
III. The next petition of my text is a longing for the casting out of evil.
I have only time to observe here, in a word or two, what would well deserve more expanded treatment, and that is, the very striking and significant expression here employed for this evil way that the Psalmist desires to be detected, that it may be cast out. The word rendered ‘wicked’-or more properly, wickedness-is literally ‘forced labour,’ which was, in old times, and still is in some countries, laid upon the inhabitants at the command of authority; and then, because forced labour is grievous labour, it comes to mean sorrow. So the ‘way of wickedness’ that the Psalmist feels is in him is the way of compulsory service, and the way that leads to sorrow. That is to say, all sin is slavery, and all sin leads to a bitter and a bad end, and its fruit is death. And so, because the man feels that his better self is in bondage, and shudderingly apprehends that the courses which he pursues can only end in bitterness and misery, he turns to God and asks Him that He would enlighten him as to what these fatal courses are. ‘See if there be any way of wickedness in me,’ because he is quite sure that the evil which God sees, God will help him to overcome.
Ah, friends! we all have such ways deeply lodged within us, and we do not always know that we have; but if we will turn ourselves to Him, He will prevent our ‘condemning ourselves in things that we allow’ and increasing the sensitiveness of our consciences, He will teach us that many things that we did not know to be wrong are harmful.
As soon as we learn that they are, He will help us to cast them out. God has nothing to do with our evil but to fight against it. Be sure of this, that whatsoever evil in us He thus searches and shows us. He does so in order to fling it from us. He goes down into the cellars of our hearts, with the candle of His Spirit in His hand, in order that He may lay hold of all the explosives there, and having drenched them so that they shall not catch fire, may cast them clean out so that they may not blow us to destruction.
IV. The last petition of my text is for guidance in ‘the everlasting way.’
Whosoever walks in Christ’s footsteps is walking in ‘the way everlasting,’ for that path is rightly so named which leads to eternal blessedness. It is everlasting, too, inasmuch as nothing of human effort or work abides except that which is in conformity with the will of God, and inasmuch as it, and it alone, is not broken short off by death, but runs, borne upon one mighty arch that spans the gorge, clean across the black abyss, and continues straight on in the same course, only with a swifter upward gradient, through all the ages of eternity. The man who here has lived for God will live yonder as he has lived here, only more completely and more joyously for ever. ‘A highway shall be there, and a way, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Psa 139:23-24
23Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
24And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.
Psa 139:24 hurtful way in me Some translate this as idolatrous way (BDB 780 I). This may be possible because the term way can be revocalized to hold sway. It is obvious that the author wants none of the attitudes or actions of the wicked, which are discussed in Psa 139:19-22, in his life even if he does not immediately recognize them.
The other option (AB, p. 285) is to see this Psalm as being from a godly person accused of idolatry.
the everlasting way This is contrasted to the way of the wicked (cf. Psa 1:1; Psa 1:4-5). Their way will pass away but following God’s will results in eternal life (cf. Psa 16:11; Jer 6:16; Jer 18:15; Job 22:15). This ancient way developed into the OT concept of biblical faith as a lifestyle and became fully developed in the NT title for the early church called The Way.
The noun everlasting (BDB 761) is the Hebrew ‘olam, see Special Topic: Forever (‘olam) .
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
This is a study guide commentary which means that you are responsible for your own interpretation of the Bible. Each of us must walk n the light we have. You, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit are priority in interpretation. You must not relinquish this to a commentator.
These discussion questions are provided to help you think through the major issues of this section of the book. They are meant to be thought provoking, not definitive.
1. Why has this Psalm so grabbed the heart and mind of modern man?
2. What is this Psalm saying about God in our daily lives?
3. How do the negative statements of Psa 139:19-22 fit into the overall purpose of the biblical author?
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
thoughts = distractions or cares. Not the same word as in verses: Psa 139:2, Psa 139:17.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
The Searcher of Hearts
Search me, O God, and know my heart:
Try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any way of wickedness in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.Psa 139:23-24
1. No intellectual man has ever dared to despise this poem, which has been called the crown of all the psalms, and its teaching has had to be reckoned with by all schools of thought for many centuries. It is one of those pieces of literature which Bacon said should be chewed and digested. There is much food for the intellect here; but to every man who is anxious about the culture of his spirit we would say: Test your heart by this psalm. If your heart is of steel, it will be attracted by its teaching, as by a magnet; if you find nothing in it to move you to reverence, wonder, penitence, and prayer, be sure that your heart is not true, that you are in a morally perilous condition.
2. The Psalmist sets forth in poetry what theology calls the doctrine of the Divine Omniscience. He believes in Jehovah, the God of all the earth, and therefore believes in a Providence so universal that nothing is missed. It is not an intellectual dogma to him, but a spiritual intuition. It is not stated as an abstraction of thought, but flows from the warm personal relation between God and man, which is the great revelation of the Bible. Gods providence is everywhere, but it does not dissipate itself in a mere general supervision of creation. It is all-seeing, all-surrounding, all-embracing, but it is not diffused in matter and dispersed through space. It extendsand this is the wonder of itto the individual: O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and known me.
3. The practical ethical thought suggested to the Psalmist by such a conception is the question, How can God, the pure and holy One, with such an intimate and unerring knowledge, tolerate wicked men? He feels that God cannot but be against evil, no matter what appearances seem to suggest that God does not care. The doom of evil must be certain; and so the Psalmist solemnly dissociates himself from the wicked men who hate and blaspheme God. And the conclusion is simply and humbly to throw open the heart and soul to God, accepting the fact that He cannot be deceived, praying God to search him and purify him and lead him. Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
In the general reform of conventual and monastic life, the Abbey of Port Royal had set a striking example. Behind its cloistered walls were gathered some of the purest and most devoted women of France, under the strict rule of Mre Anglique Arnauld. The spiritual directions of St. Franois de Sales, who loved the Port-Royalists, had tempered firmness with gentleness, and given a charm to the pursuit of personal holiness; the Petites Ecoles of the abbey rivalled the educational establishments of the Jesuits. But St. Cyran, who succeeded Franois de Sales as spiritual director, was suspected of heresy, and Port Royal was involved in the charge. Persecution fell upon the community. It was to a psalm that they appealed. The sisters of Port Royal, says Blaise Pascal (and his own sister was one of the first victims of the persecution), astonished to hear it said that they were in the way of perdition, that their confessors were leading them to Geneva by teaching them that Jesus Christ was neither in the Eucharist nor at the right hand of God, and knowing that the charge was false, committed themselves to God, saying with the Psalmist, See if there be any way of wickedness in me. 1 [Note: R. E. Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life, 214.]
I
The Searching of God
1. The Psalmist realized that he could not thoroughly search himself. We have all of us tendencies and inclinations which we cannot gauge and do not know the force or the power of. We have depths and abysses in our natures which no human measuring line can fathom. Our souls are so disordered and disturbed by the crossing of many varied feelings, high and low, clashing and fretting against each other, good thoughts mingled with so much that is base, pure high feelings with so much that is low and degraded. We have in us sometimes perhaps more good than we realize, or more evil than we ever guessed. There is in us, not only our sinful acts, but also a deep spirit of wickedness, a mystery of evil, which no human power can comprehend. Said the prophet truly, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? No one can. Not even ourselves, who think we know ourselves well. We do not know what is in us, what powers or capabilities we have for good or for evil.
Who made the heart, tis He alone
Decidedly can try us;
He knows each chord, its various tone,
Each spring, its various bias.
One of the precepts which Thales the great philosopher, who lived about the same time as Josiah king of Judah, inculcated was, Know thyself, and it is a precept full of the highest sense and wisdom. It was regarded by the ancients as a duty of paramount importance, and received by them with all the authority of a Divine command. It is not as a matter of curiosity, but of deepest necessity, that we should have a thorough acquaintance with the state in which we are before God, and should try to see ourselves and to estimate ourselves, not as others do, but as God does, for it is a subject on which we are apt to make great and dangerous mistakes, and it is one of which many are in complete ignorance.1 [Note: R. Stephen, Divine and Human Influence, i. 262.]
2. The Psalmist is sure that God has perfect knowledge of him. He is as certain of God as he is of his own existence; indeed it is not too much to say that it is only as he is conscious of being searched and known by Godonly as he is overwhelmed by contact with a Spirit which knows him better than he knows himselfthat he rises to any adequate sense of what his own being and personality mean. He is revealed to himself by Gods search; he knows himself through God. Speaking practicallyand in religion everything is practicalGod alone can overcome atheism, and this is how He overcomes it. He does not put within our reach arguments which point to theistic conclusions; He gives us the experience which makes this psalm intelligible, and forces us also to cry, O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.
It is a fact well known to seamen that objects under water, such as shoals and sunken rocks, become visible, or more visible, when viewed from a height; and it is customary at sea, when a sunken object is suspected of lying in a vessels course, but cannot be seen from the deck, to send a man aloft, when the higher he can climb the mast the farther will his vision penetrate beneath the waves. From the top of a lofty cliff the depth is seen better still; whilst the elevation of a balloon enables the spectator to see most perfectly beneath the surface, and to detect the sunken mines, torpedoes, and the like which may be concealed there. Now, just as there is an optical reason why the depth is best penetrated from the height, so there is a moral reason why the holy God best knows the plagues and perils of the human heart. He who from the pure heaven of eternal light and purity looks down into the depths of the heart is cognizant of its defects long before they report themselves in the creature-consciousness.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Fatal Barter, 101.]
Colonel Seely, shortly before he resigned office as Secretary of State for War in the spring of 1914, unfolded in the House of Commons the Supplementary Army Estimates; and, speaking of the vote for the Army Air Service, he gave a striking instance of the range of vision from a height. From an aeroplane up 5000 feet in the air one could see, he explained, quite clearly every detail of the landscape. An airman could perceive from that not only the roads and the hedges beneath, but, for instance, whether there were two horses or one attached to a cart going along a road. Persons could be seen walking in the streets of a town. How easy then, concluded the War Secretary, to see any troops! Thus the commander of an army without aeroplanesother things being equalis doomed if faced by a force with aeroplanes, for every movement of the enemys troops, except at night or in a fog, can be watched and reported by the air scouts.
3. The Psalmist was satisfied that God would search him fully, fairly and impartially. The word which is rendered search is a very emphatic and picturesque one. It means to dig deep. God is prayed, as it were, to make a section into the Psalmist, and lay bare his inmost nature, as men do in a railway cutting, layer after layer, going ever deeper down till the bed-rock is reached. Search medig into me, bring the deep-lying parts to lightand know my heart; the centre of my personality, my inmost self.
This prayer is also an expression of absolute willingness to submit to the searching process. God is represented in the text as seeking into the secrets of a mans heart, not that God may know, but that the man may know. By His Spirit He will come into the innermost corners of our nature, if this prayer is a real expression of our desire. And there the illumination of His presence will flash light into all the dark corners of our experience and of our personality.
Men may applaud or revile, and make a man think differently of himself, but He judgeth of a man according to his secret walk. How difficult is the work of self-examination! Even to state to you, imperfectly, my own mind, I found to be no easy matter. Nay, St. Paul says, I judge not mine own self, for he that judgeth me is the Lord. That is, though he was not conscious of any allowed sin, yet he was not thereby justified, for God might perceive something of which he was not aware. How needful then the prayer of the Psalmist, Search me, O God, and try my heart, and see if there be any evil way in me.1 [Note: Life and Letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn, 28.]
II
The Tests to which we are Subjected
1. We are searched and known by the slow and steady passing of the years.There is a revealing power in the flight of time, just because time is the minister of God. In heaven there will be no more time; there will be no more need of any searching ministry. There we shall know even as we are known, in the burning and shining of the light of God. But here, where the light of God is dimmed and broken, we are urged forward through the course of years, and the light of the passing years achieves on earth what the light of the Presence will achieve in glory. He is a wise father who knows his child, but he is a wiser child who knows himself. Untested by actual contact with the world, we dream our dream in the sunshine of the morning. And then comes life with all its hard reality, with the changes and the calling of the years, and we turn round on the swift flight of time, and say, O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. We may not have achieved anything splendid. Our life may have moved along in quiet routine, not outwardly different from the lives of thousands. Yet, however dull and quietly uneventful, God has so ordered the flight of time for us that we know far more about ourselves to-night than we knew in the upland freshness of the morn. Brought into touch with duty and with man, we have begun to see our limitations. We know in a measure what we cannot do; thank God, we know in a measure what we can do. And underneath it all we have discerned the side on which our nature leans away to heaven, and the other side on which there is the door that opens on to the filthiness of hell. It does not take any terrible experience to reach the certainty of power and weakness. The common days, which make the common years, slowly and inevitably show it. So by the pressure of evolving timeand it is God, not we, who so evolves itfor better or for worse we come to say, O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.
1 Jan. 1878. Marine Parade, Brighton, 6 a.m. When one thinks of the immensity of time and of the Christian hope that there is endless existence before us, one is perplexed that this infinity of time should take its character from a few years that seem to bear no proportion to it. One observes, however, that in the time here by far the greatest portion is determined by certain hours or it may be minutes.
In itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years
says Byron, and certain it is that all our lives are under the influence of moments when fresh convictions dawned on us, or when we made some important resolution, or when we passed through some special trial. With most of us the greater part of our life seems merely wasted. We eat, drink, and sleep, join in meaningless chit-chat, pay calls and the like. Others get through an immense amount of work; but at times we have glimpses which show us that life consists neither in chit-chat nor in work, and that even the latter needs something in it, but not of it, before it can be good for anything in the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps the scanty moments we give to prayer may in importance be the chief part of our existence.1 [Note: Life and Remains of the Rev. R. H. Quick, 70.]
2. God searches us by the responsibilities He lays upon us.It is in our duties and not in our romance that the true self is searched and known. Think of those servants in the parable who received the talents. Could you have gauged their character before they got the talents? Were they not all respectable and honest and seemingly worthy of their masters confidence? But to one of the servants the master gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, and what distinguished and revealed the men was the use they made of their responsibility. They were not searched by what they had to suffer; the men were searched by what they had to do. They were revealed by what their master gave, and by the use they made of what they got. And so is it with all of us to whom God has given a task, a post, a talentit is not only a gift to bless our neighbour; it is a gift to reveal us to ourselves.
See, I hold a sovereign in my hand. It appears to bear the image and superscription of the King. That is merely an optical illusion. It bears my own image and superscription. I have earned it, and it is mine. But now that it is mine, the trouble begins. For that sovereign becomes part of myself and will henceforth represent a pounds worth of me! If I am a bad man, I shall spend it in folly, and accelerate the forces that make for the worlds undoing. If I am a bad man, that is to say, it will be a bad sovereign, however truly it may seem to ring. If I am a good man, I shall spend it in clean commerce, and enlist it among the forces that tend to the uplift of my brothers. Yes, gold is very good if we are very good, and very bad if we are very bad. Here is the song of the sovereign
Dug from the mountain-side, washed in the glen,
Servant am I or the master of men;
Steal me, I curse you;
Earn me, I bless you;
Grasp me and hoard me, a fiend shall possess you;
Lie for me, die for me;
Covet me, take me,
Angel or devil, I am what you make me!1 [Note: F. W. Boreham, Mountains in the Mist, 62.]
3. God searches us by bringing new influences to bear upon our lives.Troubles and temptations are great discoverers of human character. Our passions and special inclinations may lie like some minerals, far down, and we may bore long and find no trace of their existence, but by and by we may pierce deeper, and a thick seam of evil may be found. Or our nature may, like a breakwater, stand long, and seem secure, unharmed by many a gale, but some fiercer storm, some stronger onslaught of temptation, may overthrow it, or some single stone may be dislodged, or some joint weakened, and the sea works its way in, and the whole is upset, dashed, and pounded to ruin. So you may resist long, and come unscathed through much evil, but it comes with fiercer power at some time, or it dashes upon you suddenly or unexpectedly, advancing upon you not like the long roll of the ocean, with steady force, but with a quick impact, a sudden surpriseas temptation came to Peterand your power of resistance is destroyed.
Just as engineers are not satisfied with respect to the soundness and durability of iron girders or links of ships cables merely because these look well, but proceed to test them by pressure, and ascertain the amount of strain they will bear, and the weight they will sustain, so by the rough handling of the worlds vexations and by the strain of trouble and sorrow you must be tried, to show what you really are: whether your temper patiently endures this provocation, whether your pride will submit to that mortification, your vanity to that slight, your passions to that force of temptation, your faith to that severe disappointment, your love to that heavy sacrifice.
In the making of great iron castings, through some defect in the mould, portions of air may lurk in the heart of the iron, and cavities like those of an honey-comb may be formed in the interior of the beam, but the defects and flaws may be effectively concealed under the outer skin; when, however, it is subjected to a severe strain it gives way. So under the stress of some great trial, the hollowness of the nature may be revealed and secret faults and evils exposed, and the man appears in what people say is a changed character. In reality that is his true character. If metal be real iron, the blast of the furnace will temper it into steel, and if there is reality and truth in the nature, trial will develop its finer qualities; but if these do not exist, trial will only expose that natures inherent badness and make it worse.1 [Note: R. Stephen, Divine and Human Influence, i. 285.]
4. God tests us by holding up to us the mirror of anothers life.We never know ourselves until we see ourselves divested of all the trappings of self-love. It was thus that God dealt with David, when he had so terribly sinned. For all the depth and the grandeur of his character, David was strangely blind to his own guilt. But then came Nathan with his touching story of the man who had been robbed of his ewe lamb, and all that was best in David was afire at the abhorrent action of that robber.
Especially when we draw near to Christ, who knows what is in all of us, and whose eye could read and single out the traitor whom no one suspected; when, too, He is looking at us and scanning our deepest hearts, reading in them the love we have to Him and the faith we have in Him, or detecting the treachery and perfidy that may lurk within us, surely it is right that we should ask Him to search us and try us and let us know and see ourselves as He knows and sees us. Surely we should ask Him to purify our hearts from every evil thought and feeling, and so to fill them with His love that when He asks us, as He asked Peter, Lovest thou me? we may be able to say truly, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.
Bishop Westcott preached what was to prove his last sermon in Durham Cathedral on the Saturday preceding his death. It was the annual service of the Durham miners, who came in their thousands to hear the prelate that shortly before had successfully acted as peacemaker in the great North of England coal strike. The Bishops address has a pathos of its own, since it was his last, and apparently felt by the speaker himself to be his last public utterance. The discourse was as beautiful as it was touching and impressive. Brief, yet complete, and instinct with love, it reveals the man and indicates the secret of his power. The closing words were
Since it is not likely that I shall ever address you here again, I have sought to tell you what I have found in a long and laborious life to be the most prevailing power to sustain right endeavour, however imperfectly I have yielded myself to iteven the love of Christ; to tell you what I know to be the secret of a noble life, even glad obedience to His will. I have given you a watchword which is fitted to be the inspiration, the test, and the support of untiring service to God and man: the love of Christ constraineth us.1 [Note: Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, ii. 394.]
III
The Purpose in View
1. The purpose of this searching is that we may be delivered from our own way of life. See if there be any way of wickedness in me. The Psalmist recognizes that human life is determined from within. The way is first in us. How often do we see this! A youth is set in the right path, every assistance is secured for him, every encouragement is given him to pursue it; but he soon breaks away from this, forms other habits, adopts other companions, pursues an altogether different life. He does not follow the path that was opened up to him from the outside, but elects one already traced in his heart. We popularly say of such a wilful soul, He took his own way, followed his own course. A modern cry calls upon us to fulfil ourselves. That really means to work out our own fancies, tastes, and passions; to propose our own ideals, be ruled by self-will, take counsel of the pride and passion of our own hearts, chase our own phantoms. But if everybody should fulfil himself, it would mean pandemonium; it would be the working out of ignorance, egotism, and lust. This is precisely what the Psalmist deprecates. He urgently pleads for deliverance from himself; from the poisonous particle, the diseased fibre, the false substance and quality which may exist latent within him, waiting for the stimulation of circumstance, opportunity, and association.
(1) Our own way is a way of emptiness. Some would translate these words, any way of idols in me. It signifies the vanity, the unreality, the delusiveness of the objects on which the natural man fixes his ambition and hope. We sometimes say of a thing, There is nothing in it. We may say this of wealth, honour, pleasure, fame; if we make idols of them, we know that an idol is nothing in the world. If we follow the desires and devices of our own hearts, we walk in a vain show and disquiet ourselves in vain.
(2) Our own way is a way of pain. See if there is any way of grievousness in me. The path of self-fulfilment is hard and bitter. If the roses in the broad road of sensual pleasure, sordid gain, and worldly pride are red, there is no wonder; enough blood has been shed to make them so. In the forests of South America, where gorgeous orchids dazzle the eyes and gay blossoms carpet the earth, are also creepers furnished with formidable thorns known as the devils fishing-hooks; and as these trail insidiously on the ground, their presence is revealed only by the wounded foot that treads upon them. How closely this pictures the wayward, sensual, worldly life!
(3) Our own way is a way of destruction. It does not lead to a goal of lasting felicity, but descends into darkness and despair. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. That is the path and doom of self-fulfilment. We do not know why Solomon, in another place, exactly repeats this warning, unless, perhaps, because it is so immensely significant, and yet so likely to be overlooked. So, then, we must pray that God will not abandon us to ourselves; that we may not be permitted to work out the lurking naughtiness of our heart.
Let a man persevere in prayer and watchfulness to the day of his death, yet he will never get to the bottom of his heart. Though he know more and more of himself as he becomes more conscientious and earnest, still the full manifestation of the secrets there lodged is reserved for another world. And at the last day who can tell the affright and horror of a man who lived to himself on earth, indulging his own evil will, following his own chance notions of truth and falsehood, shunning the cross and the reproach of Christ, when his eyes are at length opened before the throne of God, and all his innumerable sins, his habitual neglect of God, his abuse of his talents, his misapplication and waste of time, and the original unexplored sinfulness of his nature, are brought clearly and fully to his view? Nay, even to the true servants of Christ the prospect is awful. The righteous, we are told, will scarcely be saved. Then will the good man undergo the full sight of his sins, which on earth he was labouring to obtain, and partly succeeded in obtaining, though life was not long enough to learn and subdue them all. Doubtless we must all endure that fierce and terrifying vision of our real selves, that last fiery trial of the soul before its acceptance, a spiritual agony and second death to all who are not then supported by the strength of Him who died to bring them safe through it, and in whom on earth they have believed.1 [Note: J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, i. 48.]
2. The searching shows us also how we may walk in Gods way. Lead me in the way everlasting. The greatest test of a mans life is with regard to leadership. Who shall lead? Shall it be the world, or self, or God? There is no advance until that is settled; yet not to have settled it is to have decided in favour of self and sin: He that is not with me is against me. It is a vital question, and presses for an instant response. This petition obviously includes surrender and submission, and it is to be a constant, continuous thing. It therefore rightly completes the circle of the permanent, universal elements in religion. The way everlasting, which is so beautifully interpreted in Isaiah 35 as the way of holiness, an highway, upon which no unclean thing shall walk, but the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads, has been made clear in Jesus Christ, and He will lead us in triumph along this way towards the everlasting Zion. Let us welcome the leadership of Him who has come to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.
There is a story told of a good old preacher in Wales, in those early days when preachers used to go about Wales from one end of the country to the other. The custom among Christians who realized their privileges and responsibilities was, when a man had preached the Gospel on one side of a mountain, and had to preach it the following night on the other side, that some kind friend accompanied him a large part of the way, if not the whole way, and thus showed him the path to take. But there were some who begrudged this kindly service. The preacher of whom I speak came on one occasion into contact with one of these. He was a wealthy farmer in the district. The preacher stayed the night at this mans house. On the following morning, when the preacher was about to start, the farmer took out a bit of a slate and traced on it the way over the mountain to the other side, and said, Now follow this. Here the road divides, and there a path turns to the right, etc. etc. The good old man tried to follow it, and, after making very many mistakes on the wild mountain, succeeded at length in reaching his destination. Some time after that he visited the same people a second time, and preaching from one of those tender references of Paul to those who were so ready to minister to him, significantly said, Ah, these were a people who, when Paul preached to them, and he had to cross a mountain in order to preach the next night, would not give him a map on a slate, but would accompany him on the way and further him on his journey. That is exactly it. There are some people who will give you a map on the slate to tell you how to walk through life, and how to enter heaven at last. They give men a few outlines of Christian teaching, or a few precepts of morality. Some are especially fond of referring you to the Sermon on the Mount, adding that you do not need anything else, as you have only to trace what Christ has taught there. What sinful men need is not a map only, although that be traced by a Divine hand. The Psalmist felt that what he wanted was a guide, who would take him by the hand, and hold him up when he was ready to fall, along the rugged journey, or on the brink of a dangerous precipice. Lead me in the way everlasting.1 [Note: D. Davies, Talks with, Men, Women and Children, iii. 495.]
O might it please God that we should little regard the course of the way we tread, and have our eyes fixed on Him who conducts us, and on the blessed country to which it leads! What should it matter to us whether it is by the desert or by the meadows we go, if God is with us and we go into Paradise?2 [Note: St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Letters.]
Literature
Black (H.), Christs Service of Love, 158.
Bradley (C.), Sermons, ii. 337.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, iii. 490.
Garbett (E.), Experiences of the Inner Life, 106.
Hamilton (J.), Faith in God, 78.
Joynt (R. C.), Liturgy and Life, 125.
Keble, (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Lent to Passion-tide, 253.
Kemble (C.), Memorials of a Closed Ministry, ii. 43.
Mackennal (A.), Christs Healing Touch, 45.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Psalms 51145, 360.
Maclaren (A.), The Wearied Christ, 170.
Moore (E. W.), Life Transfigured, 87.
Mountain (J.), Steps in Consecration, 13.
Slater (W. F.), Limitations Human and Divine, 97.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xv. (1869), No. 903.
Stephen (R.), Divine and Human Influence, i. 262.
Thackeray (F. St. J.), Sermons Preached in Eton College Chapel, 120.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ix. (1872), No. 775.
Voysey (C.), Sermons, iv. (1881), No. 40.
Walker (A. H.), Thinking about It, 1.
Watkinson (W. L.), The Fatal Barter, 95.
Wilkinson (J. B)., Mission Sermons, ii. 152.
Church of England Pulpit, xxxvii. 105.
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Search me: Psa 139:1, Psa 26:2
know: Deu 8:2, Deu 8:16, Job 31:6, Pro 17:3, Zec 13:9, Mal 3:2, Mal 3:3, 1Pe 1:7
Reciprocal: Exo 33:5 – I may 2Ch 32:31 – to try him Job 9:21 – yet would Job 10:2 – show me Job 13:9 – search Job 13:23 – make me Job 34:21 – General Job 34:32 – which Psa 11:5 – trieth Psa 19:12 – secret Psa 77:6 – and Pro 4:23 – Keep Pro 12:5 – thoughts Jer 12:3 – knowest Jer 17:10 – the Lord Jer 20:12 – that Lam 3:40 – search Luk 9:47 – perceiving Joh 3:21 – he that 2Co 13:5 – Examine
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 139:23-24. Search me, O God Do thou, who art the searcher of hearts, judge whether I do not speak this from my very heart, and deal with me accordingly. See if there be any wicked way in me Hebrew, , way of trouble or grief; any course of life, or temper of mind, which is a source of grief or trouble, either, 1st, To myself, as all sin is to the sinner, sooner or later; or, 2d, To others, as I am accused of causing much trouble, and designing evil to the king and kingdom; and lead me in the way everlasting In the way of godliness, the way which is right and good, and leads to everlasting life; whereas the way of wickedness, to which this is opposed, will perish, as is said Psa 1:6, and bring men to utter destruction. Or, as the words may be rendered, In the old way, which is the good way, as it is called Jer 6:16, the way of righteousness and holiness, which may well be called the old way, because it was written on the hearts of men from the beginning of the world, whereas wickedness is of later date. Observe, reader, they that are upright can take comfort in Gods omniscience, as a witness of their uprightness, and can, with an humble confidence, beg of him to search and try them, and discover them to themselves, for a good man desires to know the worst of himself. Nay, they have no objection, but rather desire to be discovered to others. He that means honestly could wish he had a window in his breast, that any man might look into his heart; for his ruling desire is, in all things, to know and do the will of God.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The psalmist concluded with a prayer that God would search him, so it would be clear that he was not like these enemies. Thus he ended this psalm as he began it-with a reference to God’s searching knowledge (cf. Psa 139:1). David wanted God to test him, as a refiner tests metal, to show that he was loyal to the Lord. Since God knows all, he would know David’s anxious thoughts. He would discover no pain that God’s afflicting him for doing wrong had caused him, or any offensiveness in him that might lead to God’s affliction. Consequently God would preserve his life.
Knowledge of God’s attributes can bring great peace into the lives of believers. His comprehensive knowledge, personal presence, and absolute power are all working for the welfare of His people. Therefore we should commit ourselves to Him in loyalty and resist those who oppose Him.