Know my heart

Psalm 139 from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

God’s Omnipresence and Omniscience.

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar.
³ You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
⁴ Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, You know it all.
⁵ You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.

⁷ Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
⁹ If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
¹⁰ Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,”
¹² Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.

¹³ For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
¹⁶ Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.

¹⁷ How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You.

¹⁹ O that You would slay the wicked, O God; Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.
²⁰ For they speak against You wickedly, And Your enemies take Your name in vain.
²¹ Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
²² I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies.

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
²⁴ And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.

David, the psalmist recognizes the omnipresent and omniscient character of God. Even with that knowledge and understanding that God is everywhere and knows all things, David did some things in the course of his life, falling into sin and disobedience, acting as if God couldn’t see or didn’t know. David was human as we are. He was subject to the temptations and struggles with the lusts of human nature just like each one of us. In Psalm 14 David wrote:  The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”     They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,     there is none who does good.     He understood the condition of man, he was like us. In Acts 13:22 we see how God viewed David, it says:     After He had removed him, He raised up David to be their king, concerning whom He also testified and said, ‘I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who will do all My  will.’     Despite the fact that David, like every one of us sometimes failed, God knew that David’s heart was to do right, his heart was after God’s heart, to do His will. It was this heart after God, his acknowledgement of the omniscience and omnipresence of God that caused David to always return to God, to repent and submit Himself to the goodness of God.  In 2 Samuel 24, David had sinned and was given a choice whether the consequences of his sin would be at the hands of his enemies or at the hand of God. In verse 14 he says:   "I'm in a desperate situation! But let us fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is great. Do not let me fall into human hands."

There are some who will try to distort the fact that God judges our hearts not our flesh to excuse their sin. They will say:  “God knows my heart.”  The truth is God does indeed know our hearts, better than we ourselves know them.   Jeremiah 17:9-10 says:   “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?  “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.”  We cannot deceive God, but we deceive ourselves if we think that our actions, our deeds do not reflect our heart. In Matthew 15:18-20 Jesus says:   “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.  For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.”   Like David, we too will at times fail in our flesh. If our heart is, like David’s, after God’s heart, then our response too will be like his in Psalm 51 when he sinned with Bathsheba and had Uriah killed.   

Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity And cleanse me from my sin.  For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me.  Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge.     David didn’t justify his sin, his deeds instead he acknowledged that God was justified to speak and judge.      David continues: 
Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, Let the bones which You have broken rejoice.  Hide Your face from my sins And blot out all my iniquities.  Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Do not cast me away from Your presence And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit.

Jesus Christ, through the finished work of the cross is the one who washes us and cleanses us from our sins. In Christ, God no longer see our iniquity, He see us as pure. He takes our deceptive heart and creates a new heart within us. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says:  Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.   We though still must choose. God is indeed omniscient, all knowing, and omnipresent, everywhere, but while He knows all things and see all things He has created us with a free will, an ability to choose and affect our destiny.  In today’s text the psalmist says:   in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.  God has ordained our days, a beginning and an end.       There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven— A time to give birth and a time to die. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2) God has a plan for our days, He says:   I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)   We also though affect our destiny. Will we follow the deception of our own hearts, judging them ourselves or will we allow God to judge our hearts? Will we have the confidence to like the psalmist say:   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.

The question is not whether or not God is omniscient and omnipresent. The question is how will we respond to His omniscience and omnipresence? May the declaration of the psalmist, the one whose heart was after God, be our declaration also.  

I’ve also posted a song, “Nothing is Beyond You”  as the worship video on the site. May it too be your declaration and prayer.