3. Thou hast proved mine heart. Like Peter,
David uses the argument, “Thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love
thee.” It is a
most assuring thing to be able to appeal at once to the Lord, and call upon our
Judge to be a witness for our defense. Thou hast visited me in the night.
As if he had said, “Lord, you
have entered my house at all times, and have seen me when no one else was near;
you have come upon me unawares and marked my unrestrained actions, and you know
whether or not I am guilty of the crimes laid at my door.” Happy is
the person who can thus remember the omniscient eye, and the omnipresent
visitor, and find comfort in the remembrance. We hope we have had our midnight
visits from our Lord, and truly they are sweet; so sweet that the recollection
of them sets us longing for more. If we had been hypocrites, would we have had
such fellowship, or feel such hungerings after a renewal of it? Thou hasttried me, and shalt find nothing. Surely the psalmist means nothing
hypocritical or wicked in the sense in which his slanderers accused him; for if
the Lord should put the best of his people into the crucible, the dross would
be a fearful sight. When the chief of all assayers says of us, at the last,
that he has found nothing, it will be a glorious hour indeed—“They are
without fault before the throne of God.” Even the all-detecting glance of
Omniscience can see no flaw where the great Substitute covers all with beauty
and perfection. I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress. The
number of diseases of the tongue is as many as the diseases of all the rest of
the man put together, and they are more inveterate. Hands and feet one may
bind, but who can fetter the tongue? Those who have to smart over the
falsehoods of others should be the more jealous over themselves; perhaps this
led the psalmist to register this holy resolution. Notwithstanding all this
David was slandered, as if to show us that the purest innocence will be bemired
by malice. There is no sunshine without a shadow, no ripe fruit unpecked by the
birds.
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