Psalm 139 Part 3

David was filled with amazement and adoration by considering how God knew and cared for him. It is ‘precious’ that God should think of us at all; it is beyond precious that He would think well of us and think so often of us.(vs17-18) 
‘When I awake’ in its strongest sense, is a glimpse of his resurrection. 

In the next stanza (v19-22) David abruptly shifted from a spirit of wonder and adoration to intense prayer against ‘the wicked’ and against ‘bloodthirsty men.’ It wasn’t primarily because these men opposed David, but because they opposed God: ‘for they speak against You wickedly.’ David’s adoration filled him with zeal for God’s honour. Crimes committed before the face of the Judge are not likely to go unpunished… God who sees all evil will slay all evil. We cannot love God without hating evil. God does not hate the person but hates the sin. We also cannot hate people on account of the vices they practice, but we also cannot excuse their vices through love.

In the final two verses, David asked the God who knew him on the deepest level to examine his heart and anxieties. This is an admission that God knew David better than David knew himself, and that he needed God to ‘search and know’ him. David knew that he could not know his heart at its depths, so he asked God to know it. He is asking God to discern his motives and his actions. Our ‘anxieties’ could be evidence of unbelief or misplaced trust. This is a dangerous prayer to pray because it invites painful exposures and surgery if we truly mean it. Still, it is what every wise believer should desire.

The NTL renders v24, “Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.” We may be in a way that causes God grief, even though it is not what men might term a way of wickedness. David ended this majestic psalm by declaring, by trust, his destination – ‘the way everlasting.’ This is contrasted to the way of the ‘wicked’ which will perish forever.