Isn’t it interesting, that the Psalmist ends his song with this invitation; “Search me, O God, and know my heart”
Isn’t that kind of like inviting the neighborhood bully to take your lunch, while he’s sitting under a shade tree eating it? Or saying to your boss, “Hey, I’ll work this Saturday if you want me to”, while standing in front of the newly posted schedule that has your name in bold print across the ‘Saturday’ block?
Why invite someone to do what he has already done, is already doing, and can’t be stopped from doing at will anyway? .
Well obviously, there are very good reasons to do that with God, but let me build my argument on the same structure used by the Psalmist.
Psalm 139 begins by establishing God as the Searcher of hearts (vss 1-6), then the fact that trying to hide the contents of our heart from Him is utterly useless (vss 7-18), then contrasting the attitude of the wicked with that of the righteous, as concerns our openness to His searching eye (vss 19-24).
There is not time in one morning session to adequately cover all of Psalm 139 in an expository sermon, so my primary focus is on the one line of verse 23, “Search me, O God, and know my heart”; but you’ll see that all of the Psalm is, in essence, capsulized in verse 23, because all that the Psalmist has said up to verse 23 has been leading up to this invitation.
(first read entire Psalm)
Searcher of hearts:
The Bible tells us that men of old wrote as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that truth is never more evident than in passages like the Psalm before us today.
David could not have known except through observation, personal experience, and the enlightening of the Holy Spirit, the things that he says about God in this psalm.
What David has so eloquently described for us, is God’s Omnipresence, (meaning He is everywhere and there is nowhere that He is not), and His Omniscience, (meaning He knows everything and there is nothing to be known that He does not know).
We New Testament Christians do not need to take David’s word for it alone however, because the same Holy Spirit has pointed to Christ and revealed these same truths to us in Him and through Him.
In the 6th chapter of Luke’s gospel we find Jesus standing in a Capernaum synagogue, midst a group of hostile Pharisees who are waiting for Him to heal a man with a withered hand so they can accuse Him of working on the Sabbath.
Vs 8 says, “But He knew what they were thinking, and He said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Rise and come forward’!”
In chapter 11 of the same gospel the Pharisees are again seeking to find fault with Jesus and again we are told that He knew their thoughts.
Then I direct you to John 2:24,25. It looks on the surface like Jesus has a large and faithful following of those who have witnessed His miracles and heard His teaching. But John writes, “...Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to bear witness concerning man for He Himself knew what was in man.”
There are other recorded events that point out that Jesus could not be stumped or trapped because He knew men’s thought and the hardness of their hearts.
But turn with me for just a moment to Romans 8, and let’s read the verse that very clearly states who it is, who searches the hearts of men.
Romans 8:27 “...and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God”.
Now this can only be talking about Christ Himself, since He ‘...knows what the mind of the Spirit is”, and, “...intercedes for the saints”.
Bearing in mind what the first chapter of John says about Jesus being the Word of God, listen to Hebrews 4:12,13
“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”
Not that there can really be any distinction. Certainly, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit know the deepest thoughts of the mind and the most secret intentions of the heart; but it seems to me that scripture is specifically designating Christ Himself as the One who searches.
Why Him?
Because He paid the price for us. He carried out the redemptive plan of eternity past with His own sinless blood. He bore the pain. The sorrow. The grief. Now, he searches the hearts of His purchased ones so that He might intercede for them according to the Father’s will.
Jesus is the Searcher of hearts, believer. Keep that in mind, because that fact is going to give you a great deal of comfort and peace by the end of this sermon, if you are truly His, and if your conscience is clear before Him.
The Hound of Heaven
If you do not belong to Him, or if because of sin your conscience is not clear before Him, then the fact that He is the Searcher of hearts should be the source of a great deal of discomfort to you.
Have you ever thought about what it would really be like to be able to read someone’s thoughts? Or to know the true desires and intentions of their heart?
I think that most children at one time or another, wish they could read people’s thoughts. It’s a fun game to play, and the basic idea, at least on the surface, seems very enticing.
“Hmm...if I could read Mom’s thoughts, I’d know what I’m getting for my birthday.” Or, “Did Dad find out about that thing I did? I can’t tell by looking at him. He doesn’t look angry; but I might be in for it after dinner.”
I wonder how many husbands wish they could read their wife’s mind?
Guys, they can read our minds, so just deal with it.
As attractive as the idea seems on the surface though, I don’t think it would be a very fun thing for very long. Many of us might be quite hurt to learn some of the things people really think about us, if we could read their honest thoughts...know what’s really going on in their hearts concerning us.
Besides, the heart may be a rather nightmarish thing to look into for a mortal. Through Jeremiah the Holy Spirit says, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick”.
My friend, if you’ve lived at all; you adults here...if you’ve not been sheltered all of your life, then you’ve undoubtedly had some experience with the deceitfulness of the heart. The hearts of others and even your own. Because you see, we are even deceived by our own heart at times, and since, because of sin, it is a sick thing, it often causes grief and pain to others around us, and even to us.
Most of you, if given time to reflect, can think of times you have been deceived by your own heart, but you blindly followed against common sense, or the advice of your elders, and you were hurt.
I recently read something that said, “Good judgment comes from experience. And a lot of that experience comes from bad judgment”.
But it’s worse than just bad judgment. Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is more deceitful than all else, and desperately sick. Who can understand it?”
Now, in scripture, when a question is asked like that, the implication is that the answer would be in the negative. Otherwise, the writer would say something like, “Only few can understand it” or “It is difficult to understand”.
He asks “Who can understand it?”, because he knows that among mortal men there is none who truly can.
But he goes on in the next verse to answer his own question with the only possible answer: “I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind...”
Listener today (or you who read this), this is what you need to understand, if you get nothing else out of this sermon; You may be deceived by your own heart. You may be entirely blinded to truth, to potential harm or danger to yourself and others caused by your actions, because your heart convinces you that you are right and what you want is right, and that no one has a right to tell you otherwise. BUT THE LORD IS THE SEARCHER OF HEARTS, and nothing is hidden from His sight; He cannot be deceived by man’s sinful heart; His plan cannot be thwarted through deceit, or pride, or selfishness. Our self-serving tantrums do not effect Him in the least...they only harm us because we listen to a deceitful heart, go our own way, and step into the mire of sin.
BUT THE LORD IS THE SEARCHER OF HEARTS. That is not to say that He peers in, sees the true nature, reads our thoughts, discerns our intentions, and marks it down somewhere in one of His books for future reference. No. He is not a peeper. He is the searcher. He examines the deepest depths, and understands, and deals with what He sees.
Jeremiah finishes his sentence this way; “I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds”.
In the mid 1800’s Francis Thompson was in the throes of battle with truth. Ravished by alcohol and drug abuse, He had begun to sense the relentless pursuit of the Holy Spirit, and the harder he ran, the more he felt the hot breath (so to speak) of what he called “The Hound of Heaven” on his heels. He found there was no speed fast enough to outrun God; no place to hide from God; no safe haven, no place of rest, no armor or weapon that would serve to help him against the One he was striving so desperately to avoid.
Here are just a couple of short excerpts from his poem, “The Hound of Heaven”
“So my pursuer persisted; never rushed or agitated, always steady,
constantly in control. And, continually I heard the accompanying Voice that
spoke above the sound of the footfalls, now saying, ‘There is nothing which will hide
you...you who will not hide Me in your heart’.”
Then, later:
“The chase continues, the Pursuer coming closer to the one pursued;
never rushed or agitated, constantly in control. And, always
the Voice - if anything, faster than the Feet - ‘Listen! Nothing
will ever bring contentment to you; you who resist contenting Me’.”
Finally, at the end of his poem, having given up and surrendered to the One who would not let him get away, he says:
“Now the One who was always pursuing from behind is alongside.
The chase is ended. I sense a darkness. Is it danger?
No, it is rather the shadow of His hand of affection reaching out to me. And, this
One who has chased so relentlessly after me says, ‘You who were so foolish, so blind to
the truth, so utterly weak; I am the One whom you have always sought in all of
your furious searches for security, well-being, and wholeness.
You find all you want and need when you walk with Me’.”
Is your heart deceiving you, even today? Why are you here? (or reading this) Do you know? I can guarantee to you, that if you are in church listening to this (or continuing to read it), it is either because you know Him, or you know that you should know Him.
If you were thoroughly convinced that He didn’t exist or that you had no need of him, then you wouldn’t be here. If you are thinking that you are here for any other reason, then your heart has deceived you again.
If you think that only certain circumstances of time and necessity find you sitting here today, you are deceived by your own heart. The Holy Spirit is the one who assembles...draws together...and it is by His design and His design only that each and every breathing soul is sitting here (or reading this) today.
Alright, so you’re here. So it is by the drawing of the Holy Spirit. So you are here according to His intricately woven eternal plan, which calls even for such minute detail as your sitting in this place on this particular day. So what?
This is what. Your heart is more deceitful than all else, and desperately sick. Only the Lord searches it; but He does search it.
You may convince yourself that your heart is pure before Him. You may even have yourself convinced that you can go your way, commit your favorite sin, have what you want according to your own will now and presume upon His grace to forgive you later...
...BUT THE LORD SEARCHES THE HEART, and He knows better.
Can you feel the hot breath of the Hound of Heaven breathing down your neck as you run? Give up the chase. He could pounce upon you in an instant. But He relentlessly follows, untiring and never rushed, always in control, waiting for you to come to the end of yourself and invite Him to do His sanctifying (purifying) work in your desperately sick heart.
Invitation of a wise man
In verse 23 of Psalm 139, we see the invitation of a wise man.
You see, in order to extend this invitation sincerely, he has had to defy the sinful cowardly nature of his own deceitful heart.
The Psalmist already knows that there are hurtful ways in him; he is all too acutely aware that his thoughts tend to be anxious; worrisome, faithless, unbelieving. Yet he delights in His Lord and trusts in His goodness and His love, and invites Him to search out his heart. Why?
Because he already knows that the Lord intends only his good, and he knows that as painful and humiliating as it may be to have the Lord shed light on the darkness within, the outcome will be a purging of those things so that the Lord can continue to lead him in His everlasting way.
The patient with a malignant tumor has a choice. He refuses to trust himself to the surgeon’s knife, ignoring what he cannot see with his eyes until it eats him away from the inside and takes away his very life; or, he accepts the truth of what lurks within, submits to the surgeon’s knowledge and skill, and lays himself down willingly under the Doctor’s hand so that he might have life.
Some of you may have run across a news item from some months ago, about Pastor Joe Wright of Wichita Central Christian Church in Wichita, Kansas. He was invited to deliver the invocation at the opening of a session of the Kansas State Legislature, and I think we can safely assume that they won’t ask him back.
I won’t repeat the entire prayer here ( I have a transcript of it at home), but here are just some excerpts from that public prayer:
“We know your Word says woe to those who call evil good, but that’s exactly what we have done...we have worshipped other gods and have called it promoting culturism, we have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle, we have exploited the poor and called it a lottery, we have neglected the needy and called it self preservation...In the name of choice, we have killed our unborn. In the name of right to life, we have killed abortionists...We have ridiculed the time honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.”
As I said, there is more to the prayer. Notice please, that this godly man shared the blame of the society he prays for. He ended the prayer by asking for God’s blessing and direction for the people who ‘...have been ordained by you to govern this great state.” Yet the reaction he got was almost violent.
Hardly had he concluded his prayer, when three Representatives on the legislature were on their feet at microphones protesting. “He can’t talk like that about us!”
One Representative called the invocation gross, divisive, sanctimonious, overbearing. Another called it blasphemous, ignorant.
There were several, I understand, who walked out during the prayer itself.
But don’t judge these folks too harshly. It is to be expected of the sin nature, that it will rise up indignantly and defiantly against God’s truth, when His truth hits most closely to home.
Now you and I in the church may have reached a place where we more readily recognize and acknowledge these sinful tendencies in ourselves, but we still have a penchant for suppressing within ourselves the knowledge that the Lord searches the heart.
We commit, and do not want to be found out, so we let our deceitful hearts tell us that it’s ok. God will forgive. We’re not under the law, but under grace. I’ll confess tomorrow. It’s ok until then.
But people, it is the sinful sickness of the carnal heart that presumes so upon God’s matchless grace.
When I was assistant pastor during Bible college, I was taken a bit by surprise one day. A young couple popped in to the church for counseling, but the Sr. Pastor was busy so he sent them to my office.
This couple began asking some rather cryptic questions, but it didn’t take long for me to piece things together. They were having an affair. He was not married, but she was. It turned out that the only reason they were there in my office was that she had insisted on coming there to ask this question:
“Since my husband and I are Christians, but (the boyfriend) is not, if I divorce my husband to go away with (boyfriend), will God forgive me, or will I go to Hell?”
Now, what they wanted, was for me to give them a wink and a nod, and tell them something like, “True love conquers all...go in peace”, and send them on their merry way.
But what I saw as the most pressing need, was for the boyfriend to know Jesus; so I began to give him the gospel. As soon as he recognized what was going on, he angrily blurted, “I told you this was a waste of time”, and grabbed her hand and led her from my office.
As they passed out the door, she, still being dragged along by the wrist, looked back at me with tears beginning to flood her eyes and an expression of desperation on her face.
She knew the truth, but she was about to let her deceitful, sick heart make decisions for her that would override the truth of God’s Word.
If I could have that couple in front of me again, under the same circumstances, I think I would simply tell them that to ask if God will forgive their sin before they commit it, is like asking if 3rd degree burns will heal later, if they place their hands on a red hot stove.
Yes, there will come healing. But there will be much, much pain first, and deep, hurtful regret later, and it will affect others who love you, and there will always be scars. Would you ask permission to place your hand on a red hot stove? No. Then why ask me to give you my blessings for an act that will bring death to relationships, cause pain to you and many that love you, and leave scars and create circumstances that will set your entire life on a different path than God ever intended for you?
Friends, this is the truth; when we come to Christ for salvation God imparts the Divine Nature to us. We are born again, and the Holy Spirit communes with our spirit to conform us to the image of Christ.
But until we leave this world we will deal with the sin nature, the carnal, fallen nature, that wants to defy God and God’s laws, and do us harm. Keep us from growing. Frustrate life. Make us ineffectual in our walk and witness. It is the deceitful, sick, human heart; and it is the Godly man or woman, who humbly submits to the Father’s will and prays,
“Search me, O God, and know my heart...”
The ability and willingness to sincerely pray that prayer is evidence of the Holy Spirit’s dwelling within you; because only with His help and influence can you dare or care to pray that way, and open yourself up to His searching revelation.
This is why I quoted Andrew Murray at the bottom of your bulletin, saying, “A good man desires to know the worst of himself”.
It is the man or woman who belongs to Christ, who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, who has His kind of Life within them, who is given spiritual discernment to see the need, and spiritual wisdom to seek the help, who delights in asking the Divine Surgeon to search out, point out, and cut out the hurtful wickedness within...and to obliterate the anxiety that springs like a thorny weed from faithlessness and unbelief.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, AND LEAD ME IN THE EVERLASTING WAY.”
If you’re here today (or reading this) and you’ve never come to a place of acknowledging your sinful condition and your need of a Savior, then I can only tell you that you are dead, spiritually, in sin. But if you will confess your sin to Him, and believe that Jesus Christ shed His blood on Calvary’s cross and died to pay the penalty for your sin, and be sincere enough in this belief to confess Him with your mouth, you’ll be saved. The cleansing process will begin at that moment. He already knows your heart even better than you do; why not give it to Him and let Him do His life-giving work?
Believer, I don’t care when you came to believe in Jesus. Maybe you made a confession of Him as a child, and have always been in the church. Maybe since you first confessed Him you’ve been through many trials, failed many times; and you’re just beat up by life.
Maybe your Christian experience has been rather uneventful. Maybe you’re just, by nature, the kind of person who submits willingly to man’s laws and society’s expectations, and you haven’t seen much personal grief or trouble.
Whatever your case is, I want to assure you that you need, nevertheless, for the Lord to search your heart, to try your thoughts, and to daily bring you back into line with His own plan and intention for you...which is to conform you to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Please covenant with me today, to begin to build a daily habit of inviting the Lord to search your heart, try your thoughts, cleanse you from unrighteousness, and lead you in His everlasting way.
That is the mark of a true disciple of His. It is the mark of a heart broken and sensitive and attuned to His tender Voice; ”...you find all you want and need when you walk with Me”.
Invite Him today to search the depths of your heart and cleanse it, and ask Him to lead you in the everlasting way. He will do it, for that is His desire for you from the moment you answered His call. (Selah)
