A Word in Season: Divine Vindication (Psalm 17:3)

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Psalm 17 is a cry for justice. that he would receive vindication from the presence of God himself as the

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Lord's eyes look on the things that are upright. And then in verse 3 he speaks words that perhaps put us to shame.

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I don't think that this man is testifying that he's had a perfectly sinless tongue through the entirety of his life.

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I think he's speaking particularly with regard to that with which he has been charged or accused and he is saying to God that God knows all his heart,

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God knows all his speech, that nothing can be hidden from him but his eye has penetrated to the very depths of his soul and his ear has heard every word that his lips have uttered.

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And he is saying that God has tested him, he has visited him in the night and has tried him.

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Now that may well refer to the kind of experience that you may have had when you either go to bed and can't sleep or you wake up in the middle of the night troubled and there's this particular situation, these particular circumstances and you begin to examine your own heart and you think did

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I speak in the right way and at the right time? Were my motives pure?

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Were my intents clean? Was my desire righteous? Did I choose the right moment?

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Did I speak the right words? If I was forced to speak perhaps more in a tone of rebuke did

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I at least do it with appropriate gentleness or forcefulness? Were all these things the way that they should have been?

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Were all of these things the way that would be honoring in the sight of God and profitable to the person into whose ears they were poured?

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And this man says that God with regard to the charges that he faces can search him and try him and find nothing in him.

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He had purposed that his mouth should not transgress. Now wouldn't it be wonderful if we could say something similar with regard to our lives or even say something similar with regard to accusations that are laid upon our door.

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That we have not spoken out of turn. That though we have searched and examined our own hearts, though we have looked deep into our own souls, though we have come with hopefully a trained conscience to the bar of God, though we have examined ourselves according to the standard of God's Word, though we recognize that we ourselves are still sinful creatures and in our words we easily and often offend, yet we can say with a good conscience that as God has searched us in our hearts, as God has brought his

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Word to bear upon us, as God by his Spirit has stirred our consciences to examine ourselves, that we believe that we have always spoken with clarity, with compassion, with a proper concern for truth and for righteousness, that we have not been cutting or ripping unrighteously, that where we have been obliged to speak with greater force or with greater distinctness, we have always been moved by a right motive.

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If we can speak like that about our speech, then we can go to God in the courtroom of heaven when we are accused and say, let my vindication come from your presence.

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David seems to be saying that perhaps with regard to Saul and the attitudes that he'd had toward him reflected both in his speech and in his deeds.

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Of course our Lord Christ could say it about every word that proceeded from his mouth.

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Can we say it too, that our speech as a reflection of our hearts, that our deeds as the mirror of our speech, that these things have been such that God himself could consider what we have said and he could vindicate us that we have spoken righteously from a righteous heart.