Psalm 139:23-24 “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Pastor Herk took a break from his Ephesians sermon series, and gave a Sunday message based on a survey of church member’s life verses from the Bible. This was the first from this new “Life Verse” series. Most people say good prayers, but “safe” prayers. Prayers that allow us to keep our distance. Prayers that keep God off where He belongs and we stay where we belong and feel safe. But in Psalm 138:23-24, we are asking God to come close and do somethings which are out of our “comfort zone”. An intimate prayer that opens us and draws us much closer to God.
In this prayer, we are asking God to reveal some things that we might not want to hear. King David of Israel write this psalm after his enemies were on the attack. Instead of defending himself, David turned to God and prayed. See if there is any grievous, offensive, evil or wicked way in me. So, what makes this an unsafe prayer? Once we know, we should have more off a desire to come before God and ask Him to look into our innermost thought of our heart. The first thing is: Search me, God, and know my heart. God already knows our hearts, our thoughts and everything about us. But. without the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross for the redemptive remission of our sins, and going forward as the Lord of our heart, mind, soul in every part of our life, then we don’t really have a “good” heart. Because of the Fall of Man to original sin, our heart are not naturally good (of good constitution or nature, upright, honorable). Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?
Galatians 5:16-19 instructs us, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident.” This means that we are basically evil and our fallen flesh tends to desire sin, prideful sovereignty and self-indulgence, so it takes work to deal with the incurable wickedness by walking in the Spirit, aligned with the Lord’s perfect Word, Will and Way. Even with transformational hearts in Christ and regeneration of the spirit, the lusts of the fallen flesh causes us to struggle on this side of Heaven. We constantly have to listen to what the Lord and the Spirit reveals to uncover and discover more about ourselves. That’s not safe, but constructive for life improvement.
Sometimes we deceive others, and more often deceive ourselves. We tend to think that we are good enough. The Ten Commandments of God’s Moral Law state that we shall not have other gods before Him, we shall not make, bow down to or serve things that we make into gods, we shall not use the Lord’s name vainly or as a cuss word, we shall keep the Lord’s Sabbath holy and observe the day of the Lord faithfully, we will honor our father and mother who gave us life, loved and raised us, we shall not hate or murder in thought word or action, we shall not lust after someone sexually or commit adultery, we shall not steal, we shall not lie, and we shall not covet (to desire inordinately; to desire that which it is unlawful to obtain or possess). How do we measure up to God’s standard? We don’t. But, the Apostle Paul explains in Romans 3:21-25, “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith.” None of us are innocent, and that is why we need Christ.
Let’s continue Pastor Herk’s message on the life lessons from our Heaven Father in the next post. In Christ, Brian
No comments:
Post a Comment