After a particularly hard, long winter the lady went to her garden to check her blueberry bushes. She returned quite delighted because there were buds on almost all of the branches. Oh, but how disappointed she would have been if there was never anything more than buds. Buds are certainly interesting and almost miraculous when you stop and think about them. But blueberry growers aren’t interested in mere buds. Weeks later she went out to check again and found that the buds were gone and in their place were flowers. She was overjoyed at the abundance and fragrance of those beautiful flowers. But the woman was not a florist; she was a fruit grower and a pie baker. All the flowers in the world would not satisfy the desires of her heart or put desserts on her table. Thankfully, much later she went out again and harvested a bumper crop of big, delicious blueberries.
Here in this Psalm we see growth and progression in David’s spiritual maturity and knowledge. It’s much like the little parable I’ve just given you. It begins with the elementary school of natural revelation. “The Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.” We can certainly learn some wonderful things about the Lord from the study His handiwork. For example, we ought to learn something about Him from the growing and harvesting of berries. But this is all elemental knowledge, superficial and unsatisfactory in the light of ETERNITY. You might say that there is an embargo against importing earthly berries into Heavenly glory. It is absolutely necessary to graduate from the Elementary School of natural revelation into the University of Scriptural revelation.
David praises his secondary school beginning in verse 7 – “The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.” There is a sense in which the Christian must never leave this school of Scriptural Revelation. At the same time, he needs to become a tutor in this school while at the same time taking some post-graduate classes. The Christian who stops ruminating and chewing on the luscious grass of scripture will become like a beast of field who can’t enjoy the message of the stars and the wild-flowers. When living things stop eating the food God designed for them, they will die.
As he proceeds, David suggests that once we grasp the Bible, we can begin to understand OURSELVES. In verses 11-13 I think that we begin to hear the words of Spiritual maturity. “Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.” Christian adulthood is not measured by the number of scriptures memorized. It is not gauged by the number of theology text books notched on our gun handle. And it’s not in the list of commandments which we have obeyed. Christian maturity is the right application of all that the Bible teaches us – to our hearts and lives. Christian maturity is seen in humility, kindness towards others and genuine worship of Jehovah.
In verse 14 we see a man nearing readiness for final graduation. “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.” These are not mere words, but the very last drops of blood from the depths of the Psalmist’s heart. It is far easier to speak these words than to mean them, but David meant every syllable.
This man had learned in the kindergarten of nature that God’s laws sometimes appear to be cruel. For example, if someone falls off a 6 foot ladder, he could get seriously hurt. But if he falls from a 60 foot cliff, he will very likely break some bones, including his boney head. Pray all you want as you are falling, but it’s unlikely that God will reverse the law of gravity just for you. From the Scriptures which he possessed, David learned about the more important laws of the Lord. And he referred back to that written revelation constantly throughout his lifetime. The more he matured, the more he knew that the problems of his life were not because of God or His Word. David began to see the laws which didn’t so much apply to himself, but were resident IN himself. As Paul said in Romans 7:23 – “I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” By the law came the knowledge of sin; and even the hint of secret sins. It is those secret sins that I would like us to think about at this time.
There are in all of us – sins of which we are not aware.
Perhaps it would be better to say, there are sins about which we do not WANT to be aware. They are like the details of our own faces. We look at ourselves in the mirror day after day, sometimes dozens of times a day, and we go away and forget what manner of men we are. Then someone takes a candid picture us, when aren’t purposefully posing for camera, and we scream – “Hey, that’s not me! Something’s wrong with your camera. The light must have been bad.” No, my friend, that is the way that you look to everybody but yourself. Eventually David was willing to acknowledge there might be some spiritual warts that he might not see. “Lord, cleanse thou me from secret faults.”
There seem to me to be two kinds of secret sins. First there are the sins which we might recognize, but which we hope no one else does. They are secret as far as the rest of humanity is concerned. These sins are important and troublesome, but they are not a part of this point in the Psalm. They are usually presumptuous, predatory and preceded with premeditation. These are undoubtedly the most vile of all our sins, if we can say that sort of thing. But these were not David’s subject right here. It is the other variety of secret sins to which David was referring. They are sins which are not even known to the sinner.
Most people, including Christians, live four kinds of lives all at the same time. There is one life by which the world judges us; and another that is lived before our family. There is a life which we think ourselves to be living, and a fourth which only the Lord can see. Our most dangerous secret sins come into play with this last life. Of course, ideally, there shouldn’t be four lives at all. We are actually living only one real life – and Jehovah sees that life perfectly. Whether the world knows that we are hypocrites, the Lord certainly does if that is the case. We should be making sure that what the world sees and what our closest loved ones see are the same. And it should be our prayer that the Lord enable us to see what He sees us to be. For nearly everyone, there are things we should do in order to fulfill the will of God, but we don’t do them. We know that “to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, it is sin.” And we also know when we aren’t doing some of those things. On the other hand, there may be other things which the Lord commands of which we aren’t aware. But, can we say that ignorance of responsibility means there is no responsibility? Just because we have not made ourselves acquainted with what God demands, that doesn’t mean we are free to do as we please. As I have said, there are laws throughout God’s creation, and they cannot be ignored. We have both direct acts of sin and indirect acts of sin which are unknown to us, but they are still sin.
In 1215 Pope Innocent III, who was far from innocent, presided over the Fourth Lateran Counsel. That meeting of the bishops and priests of Catholicism was one of the most heretical ever held. For example, Canon1 was the affirmation of transubstantiation, which is the idea that the bread and wine of the Mass become the literal body and blood of Christ. Canons 3 and 4 condemned people like the Baptists and provided that those who persecute us purchase indulgences towards their own forgiveness and entry into Heaven. Canon 5 affirmed Papal primacy. Canon 51 forbade all marriages except those approved by the Catholic church. Canon 68 required everyone who was not a Catholic to wear special clothing, and that those people could not leave their houses during four days in Easter week. And Canon 21 commands every Catholic to confess his sins to his priest at least once a year. That was called the law of “Auricular Confession.” It also made the confessor a slave to his priest, to do everything he demanded as penance for sin. Then depending on the whim of the priest, absolution of those sins might, or might not, be given.
In regard to that idea of Auricular Confession, what about the sins those poor slaves do not confess? According to Catholic doctrine, they can not be forgiven. Then what about those sins that the sinner doesn’t even know to be sin? They can never be forgiven, because they can never be confessed. What an unbiblical and ungodly doctrine.
It seems to me that secret sins can be secret in a number of different ways. For example, they are secret as to their number. By the end of our three score and ten years, they could number in the tens of thousands. If it were not for the grace of God, their weight would sink us to the bottom of the Lake of Fire. Very often they are secret as to their results. How many Christians a 150 years ago were caught up in the “harmless” fad of smoking tobacco? They knew that their bodies were temples of Holy Ghost, and that any harm to that body was sin. But they knew nothing of the nicotine, tar and the other poisons they were inhaling with each puff. Multitudes eventually died of emphysema, heart and lung cancer without ever knowing the cause. They were committing secret sins, which were secret even to themselves. And who knows, a dozen years from now we might find out that seeping from our cell-phones are electro-magnetic waves, and we are deliberately frying our brain cells. “Lord, cleanse thou me from secret faults.”
Sins, faults, errors and rebellion are the foundation blocks of Satan’s kingdom. He is personally guilty of transgression after transgression. And yet he points out and accuses us of our sins against God. He rejoices in the sins of God’s professed disciples. It doesn’t matter to him if some are hidden below the surface or if there are as public as a light house.
Not so obvious, there is special danger in these secret sins.
When Paul said, “The wages sin is death,” about which variety of sin was he speaking? Some evangelists try to say it is only the sin of not believing on Christ which condemns the soul. That is heresy. It is not just one religion which lists sins as “mortal,” “venial,” “corporeal,” “incorporeal” and “menial.” The true reward for every act of disobedience to God – or neglect of God – is a spiritually fatality. In 45 years I have seen a lot people begin to serve Lord and then fall into the ditch because of sin. And for every one life destroyed by some big sin, like adultery, there have been a dozen lives ruined by the little sins, or by things which they didn’t even consider to be sin at all. “He that despiseth little things shall fall little by little.”
The problem is that sometimes sin can be measured only as it is resisted. And where there is no resistence there is no recognition of the thing as sin. How many gallons of water flow down the Spokane River every minute? We don’t know until we put some measuring device right in the path of the torrent resisting it. Ultraviolet light from the sun can blind and give cancer, but the eye can’t recognize UV light. However, some people have skin that quickly resists those rays and proves the existence of a battle by turning red. Then the person next to us, with dark complexion, may be on verge skin cancer but not know it, because his skin doesn’t send out the warning signs, resisting those UV rays. Most Christians have a compulsion to resist the sins which are plain and powerful. For those other sins which are just as deadly, but impossible to see, we must cry out to God for help and insight. “Lord, cleanse thou me from secret faults.”
Practical applications.
We must learn to make introspection a regular and prayerful occupation of our lives. But this is something which must be done in the most serious and spiritual way. Too many people look at themselves and see extra pounds and crows feet. They recognize their loss of vitality, along with their loss of hair. They see how much of the world has passed them by, in money and possessions. And about these things they begin to moan and groan. But how many of them see their loss of spiritual vitality? When David remarked about secret sins, it was after his meditation on the Word of God. Only in the light of Christ and the Word, should we make this introspection. Because we’re talking about things spiritual here, not temporal or secular. Any standard less than the Bible and we end up comparing ourselves among ourselves, which is not wise.
Every Christian from time to time needs to attack the things which are only mechanical in his life. I’m as guilty as anyone in living my life by habits, ruts and routines. But how many of those habits by their very nature contain, or are infested, with hidden sins? There may be no way of knowing, but there are certain characteristics. For example, “whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Don’t habits, by the fact that they are habits, lack genuine faith? Most Christians don’t want to be rebels; most are not overt sinners. Their sins are hidden like viruses in that innocuous looking e-mail that an acquaintance sent us. Only the Lord’s protective software can find these viruses and root them out.
We need educate and activate that conscience of ours. The way to do that is to take it back to the Word of God where our spiritual life began. “If the salt hath lost its savor it is good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of man.” But our consciences can be healed, rejuvenated and reused. Learn to bring every choice and action to the judgment bar of God. There will eventually be a judgment from which all verdicts will be final. But that same Judge is more than willing to examine cases today and to make observations, giving us time to make corrections and improvements right now. Pray that the Lord will guide that conscience of yours as much as He guided Moses or Joshua. And then, when your spiritually-directed conscience has spoken, act upon it. Every time that you deny a suggestion which your conscience makes, you help to seal and silence it more for the next situation.
We should assume that there are secret faults in our lives. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Just because you are a child of God, this doesn’t mean that you have been glorified and delivered. So constantly compare your life with the life of your Model, our Saviour. That means you really must learn the Word of the Lord. You cannot be anything but a failure unless you learn Christianity at the feet of the Master. Our only deliverance as Christians while still in this world, is our increase in depth and closeness to Christ.
And then finally, never cease to ask the Lord to cleanse you. Not necessarily to save you, but to cleanse you. And begin with an examination of your relationship to Calvary. There is only one agent strong enough to cleanse the stain and guilt of sin – and that is blood. But it’s not just any blood, but the blood of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin. “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the Holy Place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” If you have never approached Cross with the freshly shed blood of Christ on its shaft… if you have never come to the Cross of Christ in true humility, brokeness and faith that Jesus died there for YOUR sins – YOURS specifically …. then you are still in those sins, to be judged for them in Hell for eternity. But if you will, in repentance and by faith, receive Christ as your redeemer, He will cleanse you from all iniquity. Not only will that cleansing be of your known and oppressing sins – But His blood will avail over your sins of ignorance and neglect as well. “What can wash away my sins, nothing but the blood of Jesus.”