A Word in Season: God’s Scrutiny (Psalm 26:2)

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Our hearts are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. We're told to examine ourselves, and we properly should.

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But my fear for myself, and perhaps your fear for yourself, is that our eye is too often jaundiced, our heart will tell us the things that we want to hear, and despite that attempt to turn an inward eye upon ourselves, nevertheless we won't see the things that we need to really see.

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And so it is that in Psalm 26, David cries out, Vindicate me,

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O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity. I have also trusted in the Lord. I shall not slip.

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Examine me, O Lord, and prove me. Try my mind and my heart.

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David clearly has been considering his own soul, because he says, I have walked in my integrity.

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But David is not content to rest only with self -examination. He also wants to be subjected to God's examination, perhaps to ensure that what he sees in himself is indeed the truth, and not just some imagination of his own heart.

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And so he says, Examine me, O Lord, and prove me. Try my mind and my heart.

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It's a prayer for close scrutiny. Examine me. Do not leave any stone unturned.

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Look into the depths of my being. It's a prayer for personal scrutiny.

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Examine me, O Lord. I'm opening up my heart before you. I am ready to be seen by you.

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It's a prayer for immediate scrutiny. David brings his life at that very moment before the

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Lord and spreads it out before him. And it is very much then a divine scrutiny.

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Not even the eyes of other men, not even his own eyes, but the eye of God himself upon him.

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And it is searching. Try me. Prove me. Test me,

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O Lord. Make sure that what I believe to be there is really what is there.

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Now, do you and I subject ourselves to the searching scrutiny of a gracious and merciful and truthful and righteous

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God in this way? Do you want God to examine you to know whether or not you are truly saved, that your state, spiritually speaking, may be clear to you?

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Do you want God to examine your thoughts, whether or not they are pure, your desires, whether or not they are right, directed toward things that are pleasing to him, whether or not your actions are truly just, the things that you pursue in the world, and those goals themselves, are they genuinely

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Christian, marked not first and foremost by selfishness and narcissism, but rather by a desire to bring glory and honour to God and to do good to one another, to do good first of all to the household of faith, but also to others as well?

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Are we then ready to have God turn his eye upon us in this way?

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And should the Lord's scrutiny prove that we have overlooked something in our own life that we have not seen clearly?

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When we subject ourselves to the word of God, opening up the scriptures or having it pressed in upon us by the preaching of the word, and with humility, asking that God by his spirit would convince us and convict us where we are going astray, and establish and assure us where we are going right.

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For when we have subjected ourselves to God's scrutiny in this way, when we have invited and welcomed and submitted to the eye of the

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Lord, then there are two possible outcomes at the very least.

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The first is that upon seeing what is still lacking, we should need then to repent of our sins and to ask

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God for grace to turn us back into the way. But the other possibility is that as David believed that the

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Lord would vindicate him, so we might be able to say, O Lord, you have searched me, you have tried me, and you have proved me.

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Your loving kindness is before my eyes, and I have walked in your truth.

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And with that assurance and with that confidence, it helps us to go on in the right way, not swerving to one hand or the other, not turning out of God's righteous course, but holding fast and doing what pleases him.

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So whether it is for correction or for direction, whether it is to turn us back or to keep us on, let us ask the

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Lord to examine us and to prove us, to try our minds and our hearts, that we may truly honour him.