Psalm 139:1-24 O lord, you have searched me, and known me.… : — The fact that God is always present and knows every minute trifle in our lives, and that His unerring judgment will assuredly take count of every detail of our character and our conduct, neither exaggerating nor omitting, but applying absolute justice; this truth is one of those which lose force from their very universality. God has made us so. We become unconscious of everything by long use. We could never discharge our duties properly if we were to be perpetually distracted by the consciousness of what was around us: and, above all, we might be daunted by the perpetual thought of the presence of God, and so be paralyzed instead of helped. There is, therefore, nothing wrong in our forgetting that we are in the presence of God any more than there is anything foolish in our forgetting that we need air to breathe or light to see by, or that if we fall we may hurt ourselves: just in the same way as we very often, and quite rightly, forget that we are in the company of men who will take notice of our faults. The right state of mind plainly is to have the thought of God's presence so perpetually at hand that it shall always start before us whenever it is wanted. So that whenever we are on the point of doing or saying anything cowardly, or mean, or false, or impure, or proud, or conceited, or unkind, the remembrance that God is looking on shall instantly flash across us and help us to beat down our enemy. This is living with God. This is the communion with Him, and with Christ, which unquestionably helps the struggling, the penitent, the praying, more than anything else. And this perpetual though not always conscious sense of God's presence would, no doubt, if we would let it have its perfect work, gradually act on our characters just as the presence of our fellow-men does. We cannot live long with men without catching something of their manner, of their mode of thought, of their character, of their government of themselves. Those who live much in a court acquire courtly manners. Those who live much in refined and educated society acquire refinement insensibly. Those who are always hearing pure and high principles set forth as the guides of life learn to value and to know them even faster than they can learn to live by them. From the just we learn justice; from the charitable we catch an infection of charity; from the generous we receive the instinct of generosity. So, too, by living in the presence of God and, as it were, in the courts of heaven, we shall assuredly learn something of a heavenly tone, and shake off some of that coarse worldliness, that deeply ingrained selfishness, that silly pride and conceit which now spoils our very best service. In short, to live with God is to be perpetually rising above the world; to live without Him is to be perpetually sinking into it, and with it, and below it. And lest the presence of God should be too much for us, Christ has taken human nature on Him, and has provided that He will be always with us as long as the world shall last. How shall we learn to walk by His side? The daily prayer in the closet, the endeavour to keep the attention fixed when praying with others, either in our regular services or in family worship. the regular habit of reading the Bible at a fixed time, the occasional reminders of ourselves that God is looking on, — these are our chief means of learning to remember His presence. But yet there is another, not less powerful than any, which deserves special mention. Our hearts will put us in mind of God's eye being upon us every now and then involuntarily. The thought will flash across us that God sees us. And this will generally be just when we are tempted to do wrong, or perhaps just when we are actually beginning to do it: some secret sin of which no one knows or dreams perhaps, some self-indulgence, which we dare not deny that God condemns. Then is the moment to choose whether or not we will live in the presence of God; then when the finger of conscience is pointing to Him and saying, "He is looking at you." (Archbishop Temple.) Parallel Verses KJV: {To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.} O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. |
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