September 19, 2023: Psalm 139:23-24- Search me, O God, and Know my Heart
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” - Psalm 139:23-24
King David, Israel’s most beloved king, closed his beautiful psalm the same way he opened it, but this time, he was asking God, inviting God, to search him and to know his heart. David also asked God to try or to test him and to reveal if there were any wicked way in him. It is one thing to acknowledge that God created us and knows everything about us, as David did earlier in this psalm, but it is another thing to ask Him to examine us, to test us, and identify any wickedness in our lives. The intent of asking God to do this was for God to lead David in the way everlasting. What a different state our world would be in if each one of us did this! Sadly, a large percentage of people in the world do not believe in the one true God, the God that sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to offer salvation from our sins to all who believe in Him and put their trust in Him and in Him alone for their salvation. How many of us are willing to let God into our innermost thoughts, including all the sinful ones? How many of us are willing to let God examine our heart and see if it is divided between Him and the things of this world? How many of us are willing to let God see what makes us anxious or fearful and the reasons why we feel this way? How many of us are willing to have Him reveal to us the wickedness in us? King David was willing, and God referred to him as “a man after My own heart”:
“And when He had removed him [Saul, the king prior to King David], He raised up for them David as king, to whom also He gave testimony and said, ‘I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.’” (Acts 13:22)
God had chosen David to be a king when he was young, likely no older than a teenager and possibly younger than that. God had told the prophet Samuel that He had rejected Saul, the king of Israel at that time, because Saul had not obeyed God’s commandments and had turned from following Him:
“Now the word of the LORD came to Samuel, saying, ‘I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.’” (1 Samuel 15:10-11).
God told Samuel to go to the house of a man named Jesse and for Samuel to take his horn and fill it with oil and anoint a new king that God had provided Himself from among Jesse’s sons (1 Samuel 16:1) Like most people, when Samuel went to Jesse and had Jesse present before him Eliab, the firstborn of his eight sons, Samuel presumed Eliab would be chosen as the king:
“But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)
Jesse then proceeded to call six more of his sons, but God had not chosen any of them to be king. Finally, Samuel asked Jesse if there were anymore young men there. Jesse replied, “There remains yet the youngest, and there he is, keeping the sheep.” (1 Samuel 16:11) Samuel told Jesse to bring him to them, and Jesse brought his youngest son, David, to him:
“Now he was ruddy, with bright eyes, and good-looking. And the LORD said, ‘Arise, anoint him; for this is the one!’ Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel arose and went to Ramah.” (1 Samuel 16:12-13)
David loved the Lord and would go on to do many great things for Him and through Him. However, David was not exempt from sin. One year during springtime, David had sent his men out into battle with the people of Ammon and David remained in Jerusalem. One night, David got out of bed and went to the roof of his house and looked and saw a beautiful woman bathing. Instead of turning his eyes from her lest he be tempted to sin, he inquired about her and found out that her name was Bathsheba, that she was married to Uriah the Hittite and he sent messengers to her. She came to his house and they had sexual intercourse and she became pregnant with David’s child. In an attempt to make it look like she was pregnant with her husband Uriah’s child, David called Uriah back from the battle and told him to go to his house. David was hoping that Uriah would have sexual intercourse with his wife and that once Uriah found out she was pregnant, he would assume it was his own child. However, Uriah did not go to his house but “slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house.” (2 Samuel 11:9) When David heard of this, he asked Uriah why he hadn’t gone to his own house:
“And Uriah said to David, ‘The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields. Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.’” (2 Samuel 11:11)
David’s plan to cover up his sin had failed. Instead of repenting of his sin and asking God to forgive him, he came up with another plan, which was to have Uriah return to the battlefield and have him placed in the frontlines and be killed, and that is exactly what happened. David later married Bathsheba and she bore him a son. The Bible tells us: “But the thing that David had done displeased [was evil in the eyes of] the LORD.” (2 Samuel 11:27) God then sent Nathan the prophet to confront David about his great sin against the Lord. Nathan told David there was a city where two men lived, one rich and one poor. The rich man had everything he could ever want, with many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb that was like a daughter to him. Nathan told of a traveler who came to the rich man but instead of the rich man taking one of his many lambs and preparing it for dinner for the traveler, the rich man took the poor man’s one and only lamb and prepared it for the dinner. When David heard this he was enraged and said, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.” (2 Samuel 12:5-6)
“Then Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man!’ Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have give you much more! Why have you despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife to be your wife, and you have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun.’” (2 Samuel 12:7-12)
David could not see his hypocrisy in his own life, his own sin, until Nathan called him out on it. How many of us have been in similar situations with our own lives, our own lies, our own sins? Through Nathan, God told David that He would hold him accountable for what he had done. What did David do next? Did he dig in his heels and continue in his sin? No, he acknowledged he had sinned and his sin was against God:
“So David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the LORD.’” (2 Samuel 12:13)
Nathan then told David:
“The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die.” (2 Samuel 12:13-14)
That is what happened. As God had told him, David experienced a lot of adversity in his life and in his own family because of his sin. How many of us have experienced such a thing when we ourselves have made poor choices in our lives, things that God calls sin, and had it affect not only us but members of our family?
After Nathan had confronted David of his sin with Bathsheba, David wrote Psalm 51 in which he confessed his sin, which I have included below:
“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight - that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sin, 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 uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart - these, O God, You will not despise. Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion; build the walls of Jerusalem. Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering; then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.” (Psalm 51)
Notice what David said about what are the sacrifices of God. God didn’t want David to sacrifice with any sort of animal as a burnt offering to atone for his sin; rather, He wanted David, and He wants us too, to sacrifice with our broken, guilty, and remorseful heart. God wants us to turn away from our sin and to turn to Him, and that is what David acknowledged and that is what David did. God knew even before He formed David in his mother’s womb that David would commit this horrible sin, and yet God still created him and God loved David, just as He loves each and every one of us. But with God’s love also comes the consequences of our sins against Him, and each of us must decide if we will continue in our sin or if we will acknowledge our sins and turn to Him for forgiveness of sins.
God’s forgiveness of David’s sins was a foreshadow of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, who would come to offer salvation of all sins for all who put our faith and trust in Him, no matter what sins we have committed. God doesn’t expect us to be perfect; rather, He wants us to turn back to Him when we sin, just as King David did.
King David was from the tribe of Judah:
“Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem Judah, whose name was Jesse, and who had eight sons.” (1 Samuel 17:12)
It was through the lineage of David, the Israeli tribe of Judah, that Messiah, Jesus Christ, would come, and the Bible foretold of this long before Jesus’ first coming to earth. In the book of 2 Samuel, God made a covenant with David through Nathan the prophet:
“When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his Father, and he shall be My son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever. According to all these words and according to all this vision, so Nathan spoke to David.” (2 Samuel 7:12-17)
This prophecy applies both to the son that David and Bathsheba would later have named Samuel and to the coming Messiah, Jesus the Christ. Samuel would go on to build the first Jewish temple, a house for the Lord. However, Samuel’s kingdom did not reign forever and he committed many iniquities (sins) against God and he was chastened by God. But as God promised, the Messiah would come through the line of David:
“There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. His delight is in the fear of the LORD, and He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, nor decide by the hearing of His ears; but with righteousness He shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, and faithfulness the belt of His waist.” (Isaiah 11:1-5)
“And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, who shall stand as a banner to the people; for the Gentiles shall seek Him, and His resting place shall be glorious.” (Isaiah 11:10)
“‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the LORD, ‘That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness; a King shall reign and prosper, and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.” (Jeremiah 23:5)
There is coming a time when Jesus will return to earth, defeat all evil, reign with His saints for 1,000 years on earth, and then will create a new heavens and a new earth and will reign in righteousness for all eternity. Those who are saved by trusting in Him will be with Him in glory, forevermore, in a place where sin is no more and the world is as God created it to be, from the beginning. Jesus Himself - the lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of Jesse, and the Branch of righteousness - proclaimed in the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible:
“I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star.” (Jesus Christ; Revelation 22:16)
In closing, I ask you, have you asked God to search you and to know your heart, and have you given your heart to Him? Are you letting Him lead you in the way everlasting? If not, why? He is waiting for you to turn to Him, He wants you to turn to Him, for He loves you with a love that is so much deeper than any love we can know from anyone here on earth. Just as He saved and forgave David, a sinner, because David turned back to Him, so can He save you. I pray you do turn to Him, before it’s too late, and that one day, I will meet you in the way everlasting. ✝️