God's Knowledge of Sin
(No. 2551)
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JANUARY 9, 1898.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
OCTOBER 19, 1884.
"O God, You know my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from You "
Psalm 69:5.
IT seems, then, that the best of men have a measure of foolishness in
them and that, sometimes, that foolishness shows itself. How gentle and
tender ought we to be with others who are foolish when we remember how
foolish we are, ourselves! How sincerely ought we to rejoice in Christ,
as made of God unto us wisdom, when we see the folly that is bound up
in our hearts and which too often shows itself in our talk and in our
acts! Yet while the best of men have folly in them, it is one of the
marks of a good man that he knows it to be folly and that he is willing
to confess his sin before God. "If we say that we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." If we stand as the
Pharisee stood in the Temple and cry, "God, I thank You that I am not
as other men are," we shall go home, as the Pharisee did, without the
justification which comes from God. It is the truly good man who stands
afar off with the publican and cries, "God, be merciful to me, a
sinner," and he, also, shall go to his house "justified rather than the
other."
There is one solemn thought which deeply impresses the man who is right
at heart, but who sees his own foolishness and sin and mourns it–and
that thought is that God sees it–and sees it more perfectly than he
sees it, himself. His own sight of it makes him repent and humble
himself. And his knowledge of God's sight of it helps him to that
repentance and humiliation. God sees everything concerning every man,
but the most of men care not about God seeing them. They do not give it
so much as a passing thought. It is the gracious man, the child of God
who, from a broken heart, cries out, "O God, You know my foolishness;
and my sins are not hid from You." And this it is that makes a
Christian man so greatly value the precious blood of Christ and the
perfect righteousness which Jesus Christ has worked out, albeit that
Omniscience still perceives sin, yet Justice does not perceive it.
God knows we are sinners, but He imputes to all Believers the
righteousness of Christ and looks upon them as they are in Him. He
cleanses us in the precious blood of Jesus so that we are clean in His
sight and, "accepted in the Beloved." What a wonderful Atonement is
that which hides from God that which cannot be hidden, so that God does
not see what, in another sense, He must always see–and forgets what it
is impossible for Him, in another sense, ever to forget! In a just and
judicial way, God casts our sin behind His back and ceases to see
iniquity in His people because they are clean, every whit, through
washing in the–
"Fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins."
Now, looking at our text, I am going to call attention to the great
Truth of the Omniscience of God, desiring that each one of us may say
from our heart, "O God, You know my foolishness; and my sins are not
hid from You."
I. First, concerning God's knowledge of man's sin, I remark that IT
MUST BE SO. I am not going to argue, but just to talk a little to set
this Truth of God before you with greater assurance of certainty.
God must know our foolishness, for, first, He is infinite in knowledge.
We cannot conceive of a God whose knowledge is limited. That condition
belongs to the finite, the creature, but not to the Infinite, the
Creator, the great First Cause of everything! God knows all the past,
all the present and all the future. He knows all the things that might
have been and are not. He knows what might have come out of certain
germs and what yet may come, which at the present seems to be far
remote. All knowable things must be known to the Most High–the very
Nature of God implies it and, therefore, He must know my foolishness,
for I know something of it myself–He must know much more than I know
and my sins are not hid from him, for they are not altogether hidden
from myself. God must know perfectly what I only perceive in part,
though that partial perception is terrible to my own heart. Yes, the
infinite knowledge of God is an absolute certainty and, consequently,
His knowledge of the folly and sin of every heart is beyond all
question.
Moreover, God is everywhere present At all times, He is in every place
and, therefore, our foolishness and sin must be known to Him. It is not
merely that you committed a folly or a sin and that it was reportedto
God. No, but He was there during the doing of it. What? Though the
blinds were drawn and the doors were fast closed? Yet HE was there and
all through the sin He stood by you and observed your every thought and
every movement! There is no darkness that hides from Him, nor any other
form of screen that can be used to shut out the glances of the eyes of
the Eternal. He does not see from a distance, but He is on the spot.
You cannot conceive of a place where God is not, for He fills all
space! There could no more be a boundary to His existence than to His
knowledge and, therefore, we are sure that our text is true, "O God,
You know my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from You."
Moreover, God is also everywhere perceiving. He is never a blind God,
nor a blindfolded God. His knowledge is never, even for a moment,
stopped and rendered intermittent, but, as His Presence is on the
highest hill and in the deepest cavern, far away on the wild sea or in
the plain where the foot of man has scarcely made a track, so, in that
Presence there is a constant sight, an unfailing observation at all
times. You would not, I hope, reduce God to the level of One who has
eyes and sees not! "He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that
formed the eye, shall He not see?" The fact that eyesight and hearing
come from Him proves how abundantly He possesses those faculties,
Himself. He sees and He hears in every place and there was never
anything done of man without His knowledge. The secret murder, the
silent plot where everybody had sworn an oath of secrecy–all was known
to God. There was never a thought in a human mind, although the man had
not uttered it in words even to himself, but what the Lord perceived
it. Does not this make the fact certain that He knows my foolishness
and that my sins are not hidden from Him? Infinite in knowledge,
everywhere present, and everywhere perceiving everything, He must know
my foolishness and my sin. Dr. Watts forcibly expresses this idea in
his hymn on God's Omnipresence–
"In all my vast concerns with You,
In vain my soul would try
To shun Your Presence, Lord, or flee
The notice of Your eyes.
Your all-surrounding sight surveys
My rising and my rest.
My public walks, my private ways,
And secrets of my breast.
If winged with beams of morning light,
I fly beyond the west.
Your hand, which must support my flight,
Would soon betray my rest
If over my sins I think to draw
The curtains of the night.
Those flaming eyes that guard Your Law
Would turn the shades to light.
The beams of noon, the midnight hour,
Are both alike to Thee–
Oh, may I never provoke that power
From which I cannot fleer
Beside that, God is always reading the heart We have heard a good deal
about thought-reading. I hope that the most of you will never be gifted
in that direction, for such a power would make it very unpleasant for
many. One said that he wished that he had a window in his bosom, that
everybody might read his thoughts. I think that if he were at all a
sensible man, he would need to pull the blind down before long! There
is something which, now and again, crosses the purest mind which he
would not wish another to perceive–and he who watches his thoughts
with an exemplary vigilance will sometimes be off his guard and
tolerate an imagination which he would not wish to pollute any other
person's mind. But though we cannot read each other's hearts, God can
read them. There is no possibility of lying to the Lord so as to
deceive Him. He reads the hypocrite when he puts on his fine vestments
and prays his prayer in the most devout style–and even when he gets
into his closet and bows before his God only after a formal manner. We
may have performed what looked like a holy deed. We may have sung a
solemn Psalm. We may have appeared unto our fellow men to be among the
excellent of the earth, but if it is not really so, no one can hide
himself in secret, or conceal the deceit of his spirit in the dark
place from the eyes of the Most High.
Though you should climb to the top of Carmel in the pride of your
heart, or go down with Jonah to the bottoms of the mountains in your
deceit, yet shall He find you out, strip you, unmask you and set you in
the sunlight to be despised of men and all intelligent beings, as they,
also, shall see your lies. O Beloved, God must have seen my
foolishness! And my sins cannot be hid from Him since He reads the
secrets of the heart and the tortuous passages of the soul are easily
threaded by His unerring wisdom!
We are sure, also, that He knows our foolishness and our sin because He
knows what is yet to be. To know what men have already done is a light
matter compared with knowing what men will yet do. There are black
crimes which are recorded by Moses in Scripture which Moses never could
have known if God had not first seen them and then communicated the
knowledge of them to him. There are many incidents mentioned in the
Pentateuch which could only have come to the knowledge of Moses through
the Revelation of the Spirit of God and, therefore, God Himself knew
all about those events. But, throughout the prophecies there are
intimations of the sins of men that would yet be committed and, more
especially, that sin of sins–the Crucifixion of the Lord Jesus
Christ–that crime of crimes is described in all its dreadful details!
Now, if God saw all that and recorded it by the agency of His servants
centuries before it happened, there can be no hope that anything which
has ever occurred has escaped the observation of the Most High! You are
all books and every page is open to the eyes of the great Reader who
reads you from the first letter to the last! There is nothing which any
man can possibly conceal from God. Men love what they call, secrets,
yet there are no such things in very truth where God is concerned, for
He observes everything! It matters not what it may be–minute or
majestic, malevolent or benevolent, a curse or a blessing–it all
passes before that eye which never wearies or sleeps, or suffers
anything to escape its notice! It is so, it must be so if God is
God–He knows my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from Him.
II. Now let us just turn the current of our thought while I ask,
concerning God's knowledge of man's sin, AFTER WHAT FASHION IS IT? If
God knows, in what particular way does He know?
The answer is, that it is complete knowledge. The Lord knows us
altogether. I must confess that I cower down beneath that thought. That
the Lord should know my public service is sufficiently
awe-striking–but that He should know my privatethoughts–ah, this
sinks me into the very dust! The Lord knows not only the action, but
the motiveof the action–all the thoughts that went with my action, all
the pride and self-seeking that came after it–and spoiled it when it
might have been praiseworthy. "Every way of a man is right in his own
eyes: but the Lord ponders the hearts." The word, "ponders," means that
He weighs us, He takes the specific gravity of our actions. They may
cover a great surface, yet there may be no real substance in them at
all–but the Lord weighs them as goldsmiths weigh the metal that is
subjected to their test. He takes care not to be deceived by anything
that is apparent to our fellow men. "The fining pot is for silver and
the furnace for gold: but the Lord tries the hearts." There is nothing
hidden from God's eyes–every separate part of us is open to His
perpetual inspection! Think of that. God's knowledge is complete and
baffles all evasion.
It is also the knowledge of a holy Being. You, perhaps, know some
people who see all they can, yet do not see all that can be seen. It is
with them as it was with the lady who said to Turner, as she looked
upon one of his notable paintings, "Mr. Turner, I have never seen
anything like that." "No," replied the artist, "I don't suppose that
you have seen it. Don't you wish that you could?" So, when God looks at
a man's life, He sees infinitely more in it than the man ever saw in
it, himself, or than all his fellow creatures have seen. The keen eyes
of envy and of malice will detect a fault, if fault there is, but
keener is the eye of perfect holiness! The Lord's eyes are as a flame
of fire. Being, Himself, essential Truth, He truly discovers everything
that is within us and makes no mistakes. When we are dealing with God,
mistakes on His part are quite out of the question. He knows us after
the manner of a perfectly holy Being and many a thing that looked white
to us, is absolutely black to God! His eyes can see according to the
clear white light of Heaven, but you and I can only see in some single
ray of faint light–we see not as God sees. We shall, one day, be holy
as He is holy, and we shall then look upon the affairs of this life in
a strangely different light from that in which we look upon them now.
And when once we get to Heaven, we shall realize how foolish we were to
form the judgments that we did while we were here. "Now we see through
a glass, darkly; but then, face to face: now I know in part; but then
shall I know even as, also, I am known." Think of this, dear
Friends–the eyes that see you are the eyes of a perfectly holy God
who, therefore, more readily discovers your shortcomings and your sins
than all the eyes of men could do!
Reflect, again, that God knows us with an abiding knowledge. It is a
great mercy that time brings with it relief of our sorrows by the
oblivion in which it steeps us. You lost your mother and you could not
have lived a month suffering the pangs that you felt in the moment that
you realized your loss. All your losses are the same as they were when
they first befell you, but they do not eat into your spirit with that
terrible force which was in them at the onset, for time has taken off
their edge. It is so with sin–the first time that the youth told a
lie, he could not sleep–but that first time was 40 years ago and he is
almost sorry that I have brought it to his recollection! After a while,
time covers up the remembrance of sin and we think that God has covered
it up, too, but every sin, even of 50 years ago, is present to God's
eyes just as if you were committing it at this moment! And your whole
life does not stand out to Him as the dim past and the bright
present–it is all presentto Him. As when a man looks on a map and the
whole of the country is before him, so does God look down upon our life
as it is spread out for His inspection–He sees it all at once. Up from
the graves of forgetfulness where you have buried them, your sins
perpetually rise and confront the Judgment Seat of God. Think seriously
of this matter, for it is after this manner that God knows our
foolishness and that our sins are not hid from Him.
The Lord has an eternal knowledge ofour sins. He will never forget
them. If they are not washed away by the blood of Christ, He can never
forget or cease to be angry because of them! He has written the record
of man's sin in a book–He means it, therefore, to abide. He says, "Is
not this laid up in store with Me, and sealed up among My treasures?"
It is as if He had put men's sin by, to be called as a damning witness
against them in that Great Day when every action and word and thought
shall pass before the Judgment Seat. I do not know how this thought
makes you feel, but it makes me tremble while I speak of it!
For, further, all our sins are known to Him who is to be our Judge.
There will be no need of witnesses in that last dread day, for the
Judge knows all about us! There will be no need to call this one and
that to bear testimony as to our sin, for the Judge saw it, heard it
and He has never forgotten it, nor does His memory fail Him as to any
of the details. He will flash that eternal light of His into the
conscience of the criminal and write upon the tablet of his heart the
revived memory of all that he had forgotten–and there cannot be a more
terrible Hell for a man than to be in the grasp of his memory and of
his conscience in the Last Great Day. Yet so it will be and I beg each
unconverted man, woman and child to recollect that his foolishness and
his sin are known to Him to whom he must give an account at the Day of
Judgment.
One thought more might, perhaps, tend to impress some who have not yet
felt the force of this Truth of God, and that is that this knowledge
will be published. If God knows about our sin, it is tantamount to
everybody knowing about it. "Oh," says someone, "I trust it will not be
so! I hope that nobody knows of that dark deed of mine." I tell you,
Sir, everybody shall know of it, "for there is nothing covered, that
shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known." There
shall come a day, the Day for which all other days were made, when the
books shall be opened and every man shall give an account of the deeds
done in the body, whether they have been good or whether they have been
evil and, further, our Savior said, "That every idle word that men
shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment."
Can we bear to have it all known? Yet known it shall be, written as
across the sky, when those we have deceived and deluded shall discover
what we were–and we shall wake up to everlasting shame and contempt
unless we find shelter in the atoning Sacrifice and are washed in the
precious blood of Christ! If I could speak of these Truths of God as I
ought to speak of them, they would move your hearts. I pray God that
they may.
III. And now, thirdly, WHAT THEN? If God sees everything and sees it in
the fashion I have tried to describe, what then?
Why, first, how frivolous must those be who never think about it! A man
is about to commit a crime, but his child is present, so he hesitates,
or somebody looks in the window and he cannot do the wrong he intended.
How is it that men will tremble under the eyes of a child and almost at
the presence of a dog–and yet God's Presence is nothing at all to
them? A man, about to steal, had taken his child with him to help him
secure the booty. He looked all round and said,
"There is nobody here, Boy." But the lad said, "Father, there is one
way you did not look–you did not look up–God can see you." Just so.
Men do not look up and if you tell them that God sees them, of what
account is He to them? This is practical atheism, yet men say that
theywould not have crucified Christ. Sirs, as far as you can, you kill
God, for you put Him out of your thoughts! You make nothing of Him and
what is that but the Crucifixion of God? You despise Him so much that
His Presence has no effect upon you, though the presence of any mortal
man would have stopped you from your sin!
Next, dear Brothers and Sisters, what care this ought to work in us!
How diligently we ought to do our work for God! How earnestly we ought
to pray when we know that we always have the great Taskmaster's eyes
upon us! Or, better still, that dear eye that looked in pity upon us
when we were lost and ruined! The eyes of the Well-Beloved, who gave
Himself for us, are always fixed upon us. "Fight, my children," said a
Highland chieftain, "fight and conquer, for your chieftain, though he
lies here bleeding, has his eyes upon you." And they fought like tigers
under their leader's eye and thus should Christians fight against sin
when the eyes of the beloved Captain who died for them is always upon
them! There must be no sleeping, there must be no "scamping" of our
work, as bad workmen do when the master is away. It must be gold,
silver and precious stones that we build with–and every stone must be
well laid upon the one great Foundation. Everything must be done at the
very best because God sees it. You know how the heathen sculptor put
it–he was working with his chisel and hammer upon the back part of a
statue of which only the front was to be seen. The back part was to be
built into the wall, so someone said to him, "Why are you toiling so
elaborately at that which will be hidden in the wall?" He answered,
"The gods can see inside the wall." The heathen gods could not see, but
our God can and, therefore, the secret part of one's life is, perhaps,
the most important part of it! That which is never meant for the eyes
of man, but wholly for the eyes of God, ought to have a double care
exercised in the perfecting of it, that His eyes may rest upon it with
a sacred complacency, according to His abounding Grace and mercy.
And what holy trembling this ought to put within us! It is often a joy
to think that God knows everything. It was a true comfort to Peter when
he could say, ' 'Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You."
It is a great joy, when you are slandered and misrepresented, to be
able to say, "Well, God knows the way that I take. And when He has
tried me, He will bring me forth as gold. My true record is on high, so
I need not fear what the record below may be." That is a very
delightful thought! At the same time, can any among you look forward to
that Last Great Day without some trembling? Does it not take all your
faith in the atoning blood and in the Divine Substitute to gird up your
loins that you may face that Day without fear? Yes, and even that you
may now live in the full conviction that your life is all known to
God?
Just let us think for a minute or two more about this subject and then
I will close. The Lord knows all about us, so that He knows our
omissions. I do not know any subject that so much depresses me, humbles
me and lays me in the dust as the thought of my omissions. It is not
what I have done about which I think so much as of what I have not
done. "You have been very useful," says one. "Yes, but might I not have
been 10 times more useful?" "You have been very diligent," says
another. "Yes, but might I not, somehow, have been more diligent? Might
I not have done my work in a better spirit? If I had been better, would
not my work have been better? If I had borrowed more of my Master's
strength, which I might have had, might I not have accomplished much
more?" Do you ever feel satisfied with yourself? If so, I would advise
you to fling that satisfaction out of the window, as Jehu said of the
painted Jezebel, "Throw her down!" A sense of satisfaction with
yourself will be the death of your progress and it will prevent your
sanctification. Many a man might have been sanctified if he had not
thought that he was already sanctified. By that thought he clutched the
shadow and so he lost the substance! Mind that such a thing as that
does not happen to you.
Our Lord knows all the faults of our holy things–the coldness of our
prayers, the wandering of our thoughts, the scantiness of our
alms-giving and the hardness of our hearts–so that they do not go in
generous tenderness with the gift we feel bound to bestow. Our sermons,
our Bible reading, our Sunday school teaching–the Lord sees the faults
of them–while our friends often see the excellences of them. I have
had many abusive letters at different periods of my life, but specially
in the early part of my career in London I think that I had as much
abuse as ever fell to the lot of anybody. But, as I read letter after
letter, I said to myself, "O foolish writers, if you knew me better,
you could say sharper things than these–that would sting me much
more–but, happily, you have never been able to lay your hands on the
truth. You have had to tell a lie in order to abuse me and that does
not hurt me a bit. If you had known me as God does, you might have had
something to say which would have caused me great sorrow." If men could
read the secrets of your soul, sincere though you have tried to be,
they would see such failures, slips and errors that you would not dare
to set your holiest things in the light of day–yet the Lord knows the
sins–even of your holy things.
Then the Lord also knows our lies. That is a very tender point. "We do
not lie," we say, but is there any man among us who is perfectly true?
When you prayed, did you not say a little more than you had ever
attained in your own experience? Or you were talking about yourself and
you wished to be very sincere and truthful, but you put just a touch of
color into the picture, did you not? At least you painted yourself with
your finger over your scars–there are not many like Oliver Cromwell,
who said, "If you make a portrait of me, paint me as I am, warts and
all." You may do that with the warts on your forehead, but I question
whether you would like the warts on your characterto be seen. "I hate
flattery," says one. Why, you are flattering yourself all the while
that you are saying that! "But," says one, "I feel that I am humble."
Do you? Then I guess that you are not really so, for he who is humble
still laments his pride and thus shows his humility better than in any
other way. But, whatever we are, God sees all our lies and there is
nothing hidden from Him.
Lastly, the Lord knows–and this is the best thing that He knows about
us–He knows, concerning some of us, that we are clinging to Christ
alone! Unless I am utterly deceived, I can truthfully say to the Lord
Jesus Christ–
"Other refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on You." Can you say
the same, dear Friend? If you can, take heart. Do not be afraid of God
knowing all, but rather say, as we read a little while ago, "Search me,
O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if
there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."
Pray with David, "Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me
from my sin." Come and cast yourself upon the Omniscience of God,
desiring to be cleansed–spirit, soul and body–and made meet to enter
where the redeemed and glorified Church adores the Lord forever without
fault before His Throne!
God bless this searching message to every one of you for His dear Son's
sake! Amen.
EXPOSITION BY C. G. SPURGEON: PSALM139.
1. O LORD, You have searched me, and known me. God does not need to
"search" us, for that implies a lack of knowledge, a knowledge obtained
by search. But the meaning of the text is that God knows us as well as
if He hadexam-ined us through and through, just as an excise officer
searches a house to find contraband goods. "O Lord, You have searched
me, and known me."
2. You know my sitting down, and my rising up. "Such commonplace things
as these, my sitting down at home, my rising up to go to my business,
You, O Lord, observe and know even such minor matters as these."
2. You understand my thoughts afar off "Before the thought has entered
my mind, You know what it will be. When I run far away from You in my
own apprehension, You are still so near to me that You can hear my mind
think and You know the meaning of my thoughts when I try to think
crookedly."
3. You compass my path and my lying down, "You surround me when I go
out, or when I rest at home; when I labor, or when I sleep. You set a
fence around about my every action and my non-action, too."
3. And are acquainted with all my ways. "You know all that I do, as One
that is most intimate and familiar with me. You, great God, 'are
acquainted with all my ways.'"
4. For there is not a word on my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, You know it
altogether ''Not only the words of my tongue, but the words on my
tongue, are known to You, O Lord." As we sang just now–
"My thoughts, before they are my own, Are to my God distinctly known!
He knows the words I mean to speak, Ere from my opening lips they
break."
5. You have beset me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me "I
am taken as in an ambush: I am held captive; I cannot get away. 'You
have beset me behind and before'–more than that, You have arrested me,
'laid Your hand upon me.'"
6, Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain
unto it' 'You have it, but I cannot reach it. You have it, but, 'I
cannot attain unto it.'"
7, 8. Where shall I go from Your spirit? Or where shall I flee from
Your Presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, You are there. For so it
runs in the Hebrew. The translators put in the word, "are," as you can
see by the italics. "If I ascend up into Heaven, you there"–that is
all the Psalmist says.
8, If I make my bed in Hell, behold, You. Again it is more emphatic
without the words supplied by the translators. "You, O God, are in the
depths as well as in the heights, You are everything in every place,
You are All in All."
9, 10. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea; even there shall Your hand lead me. "I cannot go
anywhere except You enable me to go."
10, 11. And Your right hand shall hold me. IfIsay, Surely the darkness
shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. "There is no
escaping that way, for the night shall be transformed into light, and I
shall be as clearly perceived in the darkness as in the daylight."
12. Yes, the darkness hides not from You. "It hides from eyes which are
but mortal, but You are pure Spirit and You discern not through the
impinging of light upon the retina of the eye."
12. But the night shines as the day: the darkness and the light are
both alike to You. Now the Psalmist goes back to the very foundation
and origin of his being.
13. For You have possessed my reins.' 'You are within the secret
portions of my bodily frame."
13, 14. You have covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You for
I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Therefore Galen, the oldest and
the best-known of the ancient surgeons, was known to say that an
undevout anatomist must be mad, as another said that an undevout
astronomer was mad, for there is such a marvelous display of skill and
wisdom, delicacy and force in the making of a man, that we may, each
one, say, "I will praise You; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."
14-16. Marvelous are Your works; and that my soul knows right well My
substance was not hid from You, when I was made in secret, and
curiously worked in the lowest parts of the earth Your eyes did see my
substance, yet being imperfect and in Your book all my members were
written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was
none of them. Still he dwells upon his birth and all that went before
it–and he did well to speak of those marvels. We are too apt to forget
God's goodness to us in our infant days, but we should remember that we
come not into this world without a Creator and in that Creator we find
a Friend, the best we have ever had, the best we can ever have! Oh, for
Grace never to wish to stray away from Him in whom we live, and move,
and have our being!
17. How precious, also, are Your thoughts unto me, O God! How great is
the sum of them! How often God has thought of each one of us! Remember
that if you were the only man in all the world, He would not think more
of you than He does now that you are only one of myriads of myriads!
The infinite mind of God is not divided by the multiplicity of the
objects brought before it, but His whole mind goes forth to contemplate
each individual. What deep thoughts, what bright thoughts, what
faithful thoughts God has had concerning us! "How precious, also, are
Your thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!"
18. IfIshould count them, they are more in number than the sand: when
Iawake, Iam still with You. "Whether I sleep or wake, You are with me,
but, better still, I am with You! Before I fell asleep, I put my soul
into Your hands. And when I awoke, I found it there."
19. Surely You will slay the wicked, O God. I t cannot be that God, who
sees everything, will forever endure the wickedness of men. It cannot
be that He will suffer all crime and villainy and blasphemy to escape
with impunity! "Surely You will slay the wicked, O God."
19. Depart from me therefore, you bloody men.' 'I do not want to be
with you, or to have you with me, in the day when God metes out
vengeance upon the ungodly."
20-22. For they speak against You wickedly and Your enemies take Your
name in vain. Do not I hate them, O LORD that hate You? And am not I
grieved with those that rise up against You? I hate them with perfect
hatred: I count them my enemies. We are bound to love our enemies, but
we are not bound to love God's enemies. We are to wish them, as
enemies, a complete overthrow, but to wish them, as men, a gracious
conversion, that they may obtain God's pardon and become His friends,
followers and servants.
23. Search me, O God. Is it not amazing that what the Psalmist started
with as a doctrine, now becomes a prayer? Before, he said, "O Lord, You
have searched me, and known me." Now he cries, "Search me, O God!
23. And know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts. Every attribute of
God works for the good of those who trust Him. If you are a Believer,
you may ask for His infinite power to protect you and His infinite
knowledge to search you.
24. And see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way
everlasting. May God first make that our prayer and then graciously
hear it, for His great name's sake! Amen.