The importance of consistently prioritizing God's house and work, even when feeling discouraged. Drawing from the book of Haggai, it highlights how the Israelites, after returning from captivity, became discouraged and stopped rebuilding the temple, focusing instead on their own comfortable lives. The message calls for self-examination, urging listeners to "consider your ways" and recognize that neglecting spiritual duties leads to dissatisfaction. Ultimately, the sermon concludes that a willingness to listen to God's word and obey Him can lead to swift spiritual restoration, as demonstrated by the Israelites' renewed commitment within three weeks.
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I'd like to turn to the same passage of Scripture that we read together last night for a couple of verses. The Little Book of Haggai. Hagai lives in a very bad time, very difficult time. He had gone through a good part of the captivity, and he prophesies, according to the first verse, in the second year of Darius, the king.
That means that Belshazzar had lost a kingdom to the immediate Persians. So this takes place after Daniel's prophecy. Daniel was one of the young men carried down in there. Haggai probably was born there in captivity. At least nothing is said about his speaking before this time. But now he and his fellow prophet Zechariah are used of God to bring the people of Golod back to himself. Their problem was that they had just gotten discouraged.
That ever happened to you? Just decided to give it up. They had been in captivity for seventy years. God had raised up Ezra and Nehemiah to stir up the people of God, and they began to build a temple, a restoration temple. A few of them have gone back to Palestine, and they were trying to do something for the Lord, but it didn't seem like it was much use. They weren't getting anywhere. So they just quit. The work stopped. And the Lord had a message for the people.
We'll read from verse one. The second year of Gerasa, king, in the sixth month, and the first day of the month came the word of the Lord by Haggai, the prophet, and his rubble, the son of Shealthiel, the governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Joseph, the high priest, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, This people say, The time has not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built. Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet saying, Is it time for you, O ye to dwell in your sealed houses, and this house lie waste? Let's be consistent.
You say there has been use to do anything for the Lord, but you're busy doing things for yourself. You're busy getting your own houses ready. What makes you say that there's no use doing anything for the Lord? And this is the inconsistency of being out of touch with the Lord. We do this invariably. We never discontinue our own affairs. We go right ahead and take care of ourselves, our physical needs and our other needs, and we go ahead with our business. But it's the Lord's thing that suffers. They have gotten discouraged and it quits. Now, some of you have not been Christians very long.
You may not have gotten to this stage, but I'd like to vaccinate you against it because it's going to happen. Time is going to come when you're going to get discouraged. You're going to begin to drag your feet and you'll think, well, it's not going to use to do anything now. This was a wrong time. Now, verse five is the Lord's word to their conscience. Is it Time for you, he had said in verse four. Now therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. This is a word to the conscience. Consider your ways.
Not so much your doings, but your ways. The things that define, that determine the course of your life. the general direction in which you're going, the things that you consider important, the emphasis in your life, consider your way. You have so much and bring in little. You eat, but you have not enough. That is, there's no satisfaction in the kind of life you're living. You drink, but you're not filled with drink. You clothe you, but there is none warm. And he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with hold.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Now, I'm thankful to say that they did consider their ways. I wish I were as successful a preacher as Haggai, but I'm afraid I'm not. I've been trying to tell the Lord's people for a good while to consider your ways, and I haven't gotten very much accomplished. But in about three weeks' time, these two prophets got the Lord's people back to work. It was a successful campaign. And when they did what the Lord said, at verse twelve, we read then, Zerubbabel, the son of Shalteel, and Joshua the son of Jossadec, the high priest, with all the remnants of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai, the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the Lord.
Then spake Haggai, the Lord's messenger, in the Lord's message under the people. You see, God doesn't just speak once. God doesn't just probe our consciousness and then leave us to suffer. If you do something about it, when the Lord stirs you up, If you allow the Lord to correct things in your life, then he's got another message for you. This time it's a message for the heart, saying, I am with you, saith the Lord. I am with you, saith the Lord. And the Lord stirred up the Spirit of Zerubbabel, the Son of Shialdi El, Governor of Judah, the Spirit of Joshua, the Son of Joseph, the High Priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people.
And they came and did work in the house of the Lord to host their God. The fourth and twentieth day of the sixth month and the second year derives the king. In the first verse we read that it was in the first day of the sixth month, and now we read that it's in the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, so that's only twenty-three days, three weeks practically. In three weeks' time there are restored to the Lord. There's anybody here who feels that he is out of touch with the Lord and hasn't been doing very well spiritually. Let me encourage you. It doesn't take long to get back to God when you're willing to listen to his word.
It doesn't take long to get back to God if you're really willing to do what he stirs you up to do. So we have two words from God that resulted in revival. The first one was a word to the conscience. And the second one was a word to the heart. Now the conscience is that part of man which we got in the hall. Tom Baird was written the only book that I know of on the subject of conscience. I knew Tom Baird. He was a very excellent teacher of the word. His book is out of print. I'm very happy that I have a copy of it in my library because it's a masterpiece.
Tom Barrett says in his book on conscience that when man sinned against the Lord and he had to be put out of the Garden of Eden and he had no Bible that God put in that man a conscience to be the watchdog for the Lord in the lives of the people. The conscience is God's watchdog in the lives of the people. Now you can't depend on your conscience. Your conscience has to be adjusted to the Word of God. Some people can do things with a clear conscience.
That's because their consciences are seared with a hot iron. But you have a conscience, and through that conscience the Spirit of God can get at you. He can make you uncomfortable. I don't think I have any streak of meanness in me particularly, any more than anybody else, but I just kind of hope that you get uncomfortable here at this conference. I don't think that's meanness. I think it'd be a good thing if you got just a little bit uncomfortable here at this conference. Don't pass these things over your shoulder because the fellow behind you's passing over his shoulder and he's grabbing out the door.
Just keep it. Just take it for yourself. God wants to stir up your conscience and mind. And then after he's gotten our conscience stirred up, he wants to say a nice word to our hearts. The heart is the part where we feel. The heart is the part where we can enjoy. There were two men preaching together back in the last century. Jay and Darby and James G. Bellat. They were as different as day and night. Mr. Darby was a bachelor, and all bachelors have a little bit of tendency to be harsh, because they haven't learned tenderness and kindness.
And Mr. Darby was pretty severe. Mr. Bellow, on the other hand, was a very kind and gracious brother. They made a fine team. But Mr. Darby was unhappy with Mr. Bellow's preaching. He thought Mr. Bellot was too nice to people. So one day he couldn't stand it any longer. He said, James, I've been listening to your preaching, and he said, you've got to remember that the people of God have got consciences. Yes, he said, that's right, Brother John, and they also have hearts. So this was the balance. This was what you have in the first chapter of Haggai.
A balance, a word to the conscience. and a word to the heart. I want to read the hundred and thirty-nine psalms this morning and look for these two things in this lovely psalm. Psalm one hundred thirty-nine, a psalm of David. Did David have a conscience? Say he did. When David sinned against the Lord, his conscience caused him so much trouble that he couldn't even sleep at nights. Did he have a heart? Yes, he was a man after God's own heart. He had a real heart for others.
God had something for both David's conscience and heart. O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. You can't tell much of that first verse how he feels about this, but as I read on a few verses, I seem to sense that he's a little bit uncomfortable about this situation, that he's complaining when he says, O Lord, thou hast searched me and know me. Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising. He seems to be saying there's a limit to this.
I don't mind the Lord taking a look at me occasionally, but this does the watch in me this close, so he knows every time I sit down, every time I get up. I understand as my thought are far off, that is, before I even think it. I wouldn't mind so much if he just was concerned with what I have to say, but he even gets at my thoughts. God's getting pretty close to where I live. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou hast beset me, and that's the word that indicates that he's unhappy about it, thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me It is high I cannot attain to it. Now the first part of this Psalm, the six verses that I've just read, tell us about God's omniscience. God knows everything. And you and I have to deal with God. We are so accustomed to being hypocrites that we almost never are what we really are.
with even those who are closest to us. I don't think my wife really knows me. It'll be thirty-four years next month since she married me. But I don't think my wife really knows me. She still likes to hear me preach. She still loves me. And I prove that she doesn't really know me. She really doesn't know me. I'm glad she doesn't know me like God knows me. I'm glad you folks don't know me like God knows me.
I don't think I would have been invited to your conference. And I very much appreciate this invitation. I'm very happy to be asked to come here. But I don't think that you know me the way God knows me. Of course, if you want to get technical about it, I don't think I know you like God knows you, or I probably wouldn't want to preach to you. See, the truth of the matter is, God knows all about us, not just what's on the surface. Not just what you see. There are three distinct parts of man here, or three distinct movements of man. We have his thoughts in verse two, and his actions in verse three, and his words in verse four.
And God is acquainted with all of those. Of course, all actions and all words spring from thoughts. Everything in your life starts back there with the thought. You have a wrong thought, and you don't judge that thought. It will result in a wrong action or a wrong word. You remember that. The things that we do and say, which are wrong, all stem from a wrong thought. And there's no use for you to say, well, I said that, but I really didn't mean it. If you didn't mean it, you wouldn't have said it. The trouble was you lost control long enough to let out what was really on the inside of you. And you came out with some things that were kind of shameful.
You wish you hadn't said them. You had no more said them than you said, I wish I could bite my tongue off. But you see, you never would have said them if you hadn't thought of them. They had to be on the inside. Out of the abundance of the heart, the loudspeaker. And God knows your thoughts, as well as your actions and your words. That's because God is omniscient. Now, only God is omniscient. That means knows everything. The devil doesn't know everything. The devil is a very smart being. He's too much for you and me, I can assure you.
But he doesn't know everything. The angels don't know everything, and I'm mighty sure that we don't know everything, but God does. Now, the second part of the psalm, from verse seven through twelve, has to do with God's presence everywhere, his omnipresence. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? Now, that's an awful thing to say. Why does anybody want to get away from God? David was a believer. David was one of God's own. I couldn't understand an unsaved man saying, where can I go to get away from God?
The Lord tells us in the book of the Revelation that when he comes back, that men are going to cry for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them and hide them in the face of him that sits on the throne. I couldn't understand an unsaved man feeling like that, can't you? Why, naturally, he'd want to get out of God's presence. This man's a believer. He says, where will I flee from my presence? Oh, he got over this, all right. He changed his mind later on because when you come to the last verse of the next Psalm, the thirteenth verse of Psalm, he says, surely the righteous shall give thanks unto thy name.
The upright shall dwell in thy presence. And the Hebrew word for dwell means to settle down and feel at home. That nice word? We don't have a word just like that in the English. The Hebrew language is not a very full language. There are only some eight thousand words in the Hebrew language. You know, it's a dead language. All we have is the Old Testament in the Hebrew. And, of course, some comments... in later Hebrew, but all we have of the ancient Hebrew is in the Old Testament. There are only eight thousand words, but there are some lovely ones.
And here's a good one. This word for dwell. Too bad we don't have an English word for it. We have to use a phrase. And so we say, the upright shall settle down and be at home in thy presence. Now this man wants to get away from God's presence. What does that tell me? That tells me that God's getting at His conscience. Many years ago I was staying in the home where they had a little three-year-old girl. And I'm always interested in children. I thought I would teach her a course.
So I taught her the B.I.B.L.E. and she liked it very much. until she came to the last line. It tells me that my Savior died for sinners just like me. And she said, just like me? Yeah. Just like Leela? Yeah. Hey, she says, what is a sinner? That song said for sinners just like me. If this is me, I don't know. What is a sinner? I said, well, a sinner is a little girl who doesn't mind their mama and has to be thanked sometimes. Do you know any sinners? And she stood up on the Davenport and pointed out the window and she said, do you see that house way over there?
She was a little sinner. Little sinners, only three years old, get uncomfortable when you touch their consciences. And so the big sinners, a lot more than three years old, We don't like to have God touch our consciences. We don't like to have God get too close to where we live. We don't mind hearing preaching about great sins. Oh, that's fine. I never did that sin. Give it to them. The old colored woman said when she was listening to the preacher talk about the bootleggers, you know, moonshiners.
She said, Amen, brother. Give it to them. So then he started talking about people stealing. That's right, brother, she says, that's right. Give it to him. So he said, now, before I quit, I want to say a word or two about dip and snuff. And she pokes the woman next to her, and she says, now he's quit preaching and doesn't go on medley. That's the kind of preaching we don't like. It doesn't hurt me a bit to hear people talk about What a terrible thing it is to rob banks. Oh, I say amen, brother. Let's put all the bank robbers in the penitentiary. But you just stay away from some of my own pet little frailties.
You just keep away from those. That's what David is saying. Where shall I go from thy presence? If I send up to heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, the old art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there shall I hand lead me in thy right hand so hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness will cover me, even the night shall be light above me. Yea, the darkness highted not from thee, but the night shineth as the day, the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. That's an awful thing for a sinner to find out.
There isn't any place at all to hide. Shortly after the atomic bomb was exploded, a book came out written by one of the scientists who had to do with the development. And he called the title of his book, No Place to Hide. That book has never become a bestseller. It makes people so uncomfortable to read it. that it never will be a bestseller. It's a book that just leaves you feeling simply terrible. Because you realize here is something in the hands of men and some madman may get his finger on the trigger, may release this thing, and there is simply no place to hide.
And since that book has been written, we have the hydrogen bomb, and now they're working on the cobalt bomb. And the human mind simply cannot conceive the destruction that's possible through these inventions of the human mind. No place to hide. But why should anybody want to hide from God? Does God want to destroy anybody? As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Judgment is his strange work.
God doesn't want to punish anybody. God doesn't want to torment anybody. God doesn't even want to make anybody unhappy. All God wants to do is to take away the evil out of the lives of both unsaved and saved. Now, if I'm talking to anybody this morning who isn't a believer, don't you make the mistake of turning your back on God just because you get a little uncomfortable about your sin. You'd be willing for God to go right in there and find a trouble. I remember when I was a boy, I disobeyed my parents.
They got up on top of the coal house. I was told to stay off of because they ruined the roof. making it leak. In those days, everybody had a coal house at the back of the lot and carried our coal in for our stove. And the top of the coal house was covered with tar paper and walking around on it was scuff it and make it leak. And I was told to stay off of it. And I heard the screen door closed and so I jumped off the back of it so nobody would see it. When I jumped, I lived on a I was barefooted and I lit on a ketchup bottle cap, you know. And this thing cut a half moon in my heel.
Well, it didn't bleed very much, but it hurt off the bat. And this thing was rusty, this ketchup bottle cap. And one of the boys who was playing with us said, I don't want to fix that. He said, I'll go get some turpentine to pour that in. He said, that'll cure it right away. So that's what I wanted. I wanted pure dried away so my folks wouldn't know what I'd done. So he went and got turpentine and he poured it in and hurt like pure, but I hopped around on my other foot until it quit hurting. Sure enough, it quit bleeding and it was just fine. I thought, say that. Great, I must get some of that. That's a wonderful remedy.
It just heals up a cup right now. All seared over, you know, and it's fine. The next morning, the next morning, when I awakened, I had terrible pain in my foot and my leg. And I tried to get out of bed and walk on it. And mother said, what's the matter with you? I came to breakfast. I said, but my foot hurts. She said, and they looked at me. And she saw what had happened. She said, how did you do that? So I had to tell her the truth. Well, she said, the first thing to do is get you to a doctor. I had a red streak running up the side of my leg.
So she took me right down to a doctorate. What do you suppose he did? The cruel man, instead of putting a nice soft bandage over that and giving me an aspirin or something to ease the pain, he starts digging into it. Yes, sir, he started digging in that soil of mine. Wasn't he cruel? No, he wasn't cruel. He knew that there was something in there that had to come out. That rust and dirt and corruption and my wound had to come out. When he got it cleaned out thoroughly and then got it sterilized, then he made me as comfortable as possible.
That's what God wants to do with you when he saves you. He wants to take away your sin. That sin will send your soul to hell. And the Lord Jesus died for that sin of yours. And he must separate you from that sin or he can't take you to heaven. But you know the same principle applies for us as a Christian. While we're not in danger of going to hell, we're certainly of no use to God until we allow God to separate us from those evil things in our lives. When I first started to learn the jewelry business, started in as an apprentice, The watchmaker under whom I was working was a very particular man.
I'm glad for that now, but at the time I didn't appreciate it at all. I thought he was the hardest man in the world to satisfy. He'd give me a job to do. He was teaching me how to do, in those days you had to know how to make parts. We don't do that now. Watchmaker today just puts in new parts. Everything is standardized. I think I could be a watchmaker today at one end tied behind me. But in those days, you had to really know the business. We had to make parts. There were many parts that were not attainable at all. And one of the things that we had to learn to do when the tube was broken out of a wheel, we had to put in a new tube. And this had to be put in with a dovetail joint.
And then it had to be riveted in place. And then it had to be polished off so that you couldn't find the joint. You couldn't see it. That's the way it had to be done to satisfy my boss. Well, I began with clock wheels, of course. Then I graduated from there on to watch wheels. But anyway, I remember one of the first jobs that I did for him. And I thought I'd done a pretty good job, although I realized it was a little rough. I realized it wasn't, the tooth wasn't, didn't look quite like the others. I'd filed and filed until I got it just a little bit smaller. I thought it was pretty good. Good enough, you know. But instead of taking it over to his desk, I waited until he was walking across the room, and then I said, how do you like that?
And it just kind of passed it under his nose and on back. He said, let me see it. Well, there, how do you like that? He said, let me see it. And he took it. He went over to his desk, turned on his light, put on his eye loop, and then he looked at it. And he picked up his pliers and he broke that one out and one on each side of it. Now he said, see if you can do a better job next time. So I had three teeth to put in instead of one. Wasn't he cruel? That's the only way you can learn to be a watchmate. Just learn to do it right. You don't want God to examine your life.
Tell me this now, brother and sister. Do you honestly? Day by day, get into the presence of God and lay your heart bare before the Lord. You know very well you don't do it, neither do I. We do it only when we are brought to extremes, only when God puts his hand upon us. As long as we can keep in the dark, we do it. And there are some Christians who have never faced up to these things. Consequently, they've never been really right with the Lord. since the day they were saved. Now from verses thirteen to sixteen, we have another thing about God.
And if anything, this would make him even more uncomfortable. He says, For thou hast possessed my reins, I was covered me in my mother's womb. That is, thou art my Creator. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. David wasn't a doctor, but he had good intelligence, and he realized that he was fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous of thy works, and that my soul knows right well. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance yet being unperfect, and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of that.
Think of God's daily miracles in the forming of a child in its mother's womb. From the tiny ovum until that baby is born, a well-formed child. What a marvelous continuous of God's creation. I don't know any place that David could have turned to more wonderfully describe the omnipotence, the all-powerfulness of God.
I wanted to be a doctor. There were five of them in our family, but my branch of the family didn't have any money. My father died when I was young, and I had the responsibility of caring for the family, and so I was never able to study medicine. But I've made a hobby of it. I read the American Medical Journal, and I've read a great many medical books. their book of anatomy, the standard book of anatomy, which is used in all of the various medical schools I've read through from cover to cover.
I was talking to a medical friend of mine the other day, and he said, that's more than I can say. He said, I should get through it and got enough of it so I could pass my examination, but he said, I haven't read that book through myself. I'm interested in the human body. I've learned some wonderful things about the human body. I am fearfully and wonderfully amazed. God has made the human body in such a marvelous way that you cannot doubt that there is a God. Don't talk about evolution to me. Don't ever talk about such a ridiculous theory to me.
There are too many differences between a human being and the highest of the animals to even consider relationship. God has done a wonderful thing in making the human mind. When I was in Chicago, I visited the Adler Planetarium one time, and in this golden-shaped building, they have a machine that is capable of projecting on this screen in the dark the very star so that you feel like you're sitting outdoors in a summer evening and watching the stars.
And then they can change this to any position that they wish. They can show you the position of stars at any time. They can show you the southern hemisphere as well as the northern hemisphere. They can show you the planets and their motions. And he gave us quite a demonstration. And when he was through with the whole thing and turned the lights on, and we were sitting there listening to his closing remarks, he said, I have just been demonstrating to you a very wonderful machine. He told us about this machine, how it was built, how it was geared, and so on. Then he said, through this machine, I have been demonstrating to you the most marvelous universe.
But he said, there is something more marvelous yet than this machine or this universe. And he said, that is the human mind which God has made capable of understanding, did he say. God gave you that mind. Shouldn't that touch your conscience? When you allow that mind of yours to be misused, when you allow evil thoughts to be entertained in that mind of yours. Better thoughts against another Christian, don't tell me you haven't had them.
We've all had this experience. I spent two miserable years in my life one time after I had been badly treated. I had been, no question about it, I was badly treated by some fellow Christians. I spent two miserable years with my mind filled with bitter thoughts toward those two men. God and His mercy cleared that out so that I have no feeling of that kind now. Isn't it an awful thing that your body and your mind would be turned to misuse, to disobey God?
No wonder this man is troubled. For David's mind had been misused, and David's body had been misused, and David knew what it was to be a sinner against God, even after he was saved. So now we come to the nice part of the psalm. From verses seventeen to twenty-two, he talks about an entirely different subject. Now he talks about the love of God. How precious also are thy thoughts. unto me, O God. My thoughts, they make me pretty uncomfortable.
My actions and my words, Lord, I wish I could get so far away that you couldn't find me. I wish I could hide in the dark someplace. But now I'm thinking about thy thoughts. How wonderful that sinners like us should be loved by a God like he is. When I was a boy, I learned a little couplet, and I was able to learn long poems, but I have a number of couplets that I enjoy, and this one I think is very good. How thou canst think so well of me, and be the God thou art, is darkness to my intellect, but sunshine to my heart.
You like that? How thou canst think so well of me, and be the God thou art. It's darkness to my intellect, but sunshine to my heart. And David is enjoying this now. How precious also are thy thoughts. Son to me, O God, how great is the sum of them. If I should count them there more in number than the sand, God thoughts about me. I'm just a little speck on this little speck in God's universe. And God thoughts about me personally are more than the sands of the sea. God has thought about you, brother and sister, more times than there are sands on the sea.
Do I understand it? No, I don't understand it. That doesn't keep me being happy about it. And then he said, when I awake, I'm still with me. Mr. A.N. O'Brien, whom I traveled for a number of years, said that when he read this, that David was counting, apparently, counting God's thoughts toward him, thinking of the different ways that God had thought toward him. He said he must have got thoughts to sleep because he said, when I wake, I'm still with me. He said, when he woke up the next morning, he was still counting. And he said, don't let a day go by with what you go to sleep, counting the mercies of the Lord, and wake up the same way. That's a good way to start any day.
When I awake, I were still with him. He was still thinking about God's love. God's kindness to him. Surely, thou will slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me, therefore, you bloody men. I take sides with God. Oh, brother and sister, this is what we need to do. We need to take sides with God. We said, did that when I was saved, didn't I? Yes, you did. We need to do it every day. We not only need to take sides with God against the wicked world in which we live and against Satan, but we need to take sides with God against that evil nature that's within us.
Have you ever taken sides with God against that evil nature that's in you, or do you justify it? Say you've got a besetting sin. You know what it is. You know your own heart better than I do. Say you've got something in your makeup, something in your character that you know is unbecoming to a Christian. What do you do? Excuse it? Or you just lay it open before the Lord and say, Lord, there's no use in my justifying. It's wrong. That's all. It's just wrong. And I confess it as a sin, and I take sides with God against myself. That's what this man does. I don't know any other way to get really restored to the Lord.
They speak against thee wickedly, and thy enemies take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee. Am I not grieved of those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them mine enemies. Wicked things come in for a share of my hatred, because God hates wickedness. I hate wickedness. Well, he says, I find myself in fellowship with the Lord now. I was bothered by his searching me. I didn't want him to search me, but now I found that it's a good thing. And so he says, search me, O God. The very thing that hurt him at the beginning, the very thing that he complained about at the beginning of the psalm is now his prayer.
Search me, O God, and know my hearts. In the seventeenth of Jeremiah in verse nine, we read this, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately or incurably wicked. Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the reins. Don't you try it yourself. In the fourth chapter of first Corinthians, the apostle Paul says, I know nothing against myself. yet am I not hereby justified for he that judges me as the Lord. You can say, well, I've looked over this, I've thought about it, I've meditated on this, and I've gone over this thing several times, and I just have to say that I'm right and they're all wrong.
Oh, but you can't tell. You're not capable of judging. God himself is the only one who can do it. Lay your heart bare before him and say, Lord, I want to be perfectly honest about this. It may mean that I'm wrong. It just could be. I was once. I could be wrong again. So I'm going to be honest, Lord, and just admit that I did make a mistake one time, and maybe I made another one now. Could you do that? Could you get into His presence and say, Lord, I want you just to search my heart and try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me.
These wicked ways are innumerable. How many of us have the wicked way of unbelief, so unlike our Lord Jesus, who is perfectly trusting in his relationship with his Father? How many of us have the ways of hatred, bitterness, selflessness, worldliness, indifference to spiritual matters. Oika Gwang naming them by the bush of. How many of us have things in our ways which are not right? See if there be any wicked way in them.
The marginal reading says any way of pain or grief. So this is not only bad in the sense that I maybe have done something wrong against God, but it's bad in the sense that it hurts me. You remember that verse that says, Take heed, brethren, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble who? You. You are the one who gets hurt by bitterness. It troubles you first, and then many are defiled. If you were going to throw some acid on somebody, and you put that acid in a tin shop, and then you walked across town to throw that acid on somebody, do you know what had happened?
That acid would eat up the tin cup and drip all over you and eat up your clothes before you ever got to where you could throw it on somebody else. And that's what happens when you carry that bitterness in your own heart. It'll eat you up. before you get a chance to use it on somebody else.