Faith's bold request.
"Examine me," etc. A very bold prayer. The image is taken from the testing and purifying of gold in the furnace, to which the word rendered "try" properly applies. It is as if the gold begged to be cast into the furnace (Job 23:10). Who can say, if this prayer is to be answered, how hot the furnace may need to be? But "we have boldness" (Ephesians 3:12). There are cases in which this bold prayer may be justifiable, wise, needful. It includes—
I. A RECOGNITION OF GOD'S ALL-SEARCHING KNOWLEDGE. (Psalms 139:1; Jeremiah 17:10; Revelation 2:23.) God's free, forgiving mercy is represented under the image of his forgetting our sins (Hebrews 8:12, etc.). This must not make us lose sight of the fact of his actual knowledge (Hebrews 4:13). If men see faults where God does not, it is their blindness, not their keenness.
II. THE APPEAL OF CONSCIOUS INTEGRITY, from men's slander or misjudgment to the righteous judgment of God. Such an appeal is perfectly consistent with true humility and a deep sense of sinfulness before God (cf. Acts 23:1; Acts 24:16; 1 Corinthians 4:3-5 with 1 Timothy 1:12-15). At the same time, we can hardly suppose David could have composed this psalm after his great and shameful fall. Regarded apart from that dark passage of his life, we see a man, with the faults, it is true, of an ardent, passionate temperament, but conscious of honest purpose, high sense of duty, fervent love to God, and true desire to rule God's people well; yet we must bear in mind (what Bishop Perowne has well expressed) that "the full depth and iniquity of sin was not disclosed to the saints of the Old Testament. Sin could only appear to be sin in all its blackness and malignity when it was brought into the full light of the cross of Christ. And it is only as any man grasps that cross that he can bear to look into the pollution which cleaves to his nature" (Perowne, ad loc.).
III. PRAYER AGAINST SELF-DECEPTION. An appeal not only from the unfair judgments of men, but from our own ignorance of ourselves (Psalms 19:12; Psalms 139:23, Psalms 139:24). Peter's boastful, self-ignorant self-confidence was the immediate forerunner of his fall (Matthew 26:33, Matthew 26:35).
IV. SUBMISSION TO GOD'S METHODS OF TRIAL. These may be severe, the faithful severity of love. It needs the courage of faith—undoubting confidence in God's love—to enable us to offer this prayer with full thought of all it may mean in our case. Christ sits as a Refiner (Malachi 3:2, Malachi 3:3). God searches by his Word (Hebrews 4:12), by his Spirit (John 15:8), by the dealings of his providence and outward trials (1 Peter 1:6, 1 Peter 1:7), even by the permitted temptations of the evil one (Luke 22:31, Luke 22:32).
Thus a prayer which would be the height of rash presumption, offered in the spirit of self-righteous self-confidence, becomes a wise, safe, and fitting prayer, offered in the spirit of humble, childlike faith.