Congregation, we'll open our Bible this evening to Psalm 139. We'll read that entire Psalm. Our text will be the last two verses, Psalm 139, verses 23 and 24. And that, to help us understand and to explain Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 113, Now, this is the first question and answer of Lord's Day 44. We're going to take each of these questions and answers, 113, 114, and 115 separately. And just to remind what was sent out in the email on Friday, 115, we're going to take up Sunday morning two weeks from this morning. And following on that sermon of 115 and the text that directs it from Ezekiel, we're going to have the opportunity for a discussion time as things are being prepared for the meal. So just kind of put that away and think about that and be prayerful about that. I'll send out more information about that as we get closer. So in a moment, we're going to read together The answer to question 113, you find that, if you haven't already, on page 250. 250 in the Forms and Prayers book. But now especially the word of the living God we find tonight of great help and value for us, Psalm 139. And our text will be those last two verses. For the chief musician of Psalm of David, O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall fall on me, even the night shall be light about me. Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from you, but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to you. for you formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, and in your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God. How great is the sum of them. If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with you. Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men, for they speak against you wickedly. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate you? And do not I loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties, and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." As far to your congregation, God's glorious, perfect, and wondrous word will keep our Bible open, especially to those last two verses of Psalm 139. But this evening, the first question and answer of Lord's Day 44, And so this question, to which then you will give an answer, congregation, what is God's will for you in the 10th commandment? That not even the slightest desire or thought, contrary to any one of God's commandments, should ever arise in our hearts. Rather, with all our hearts, we should always hate sin and delight in all righteousness. A lot of these things the Word of God does teach, and therefore, we do believe. Let's ask His help again this evening. Let's pray. Our Father, once again, we are so very thankful for the great treasure that has been handed down to us that we have received and count as our own in the Heidelberg Catechism. The treasure of significant words where the little words even are of great value as we will this evening need to understand. And that is because the catechism summarizes scripture, where also the little words are of great value. We pray, Lord, that you would help us to understand those little movements of our own hearts, to understand the need to look microscopically at times, that doing so we will know that you are sanctifying us from glory to glory, from faith to faith. Bless now your people. Help us, Lord, to receive and then to live. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. To congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul said that he would not have known sin except through the law. And particularly what he was alerted to there, as he says this in Romans 7-7, was that he was alerted to the power of coveting. So that there is a close connection between these things, sin and to covet. We need this evening to ask the question, why? Because, covenant family, when we admit that we covet, then do we admit that we sin. And awareness of the problem of coveting is awareness about the power of sin in us. Yet, and here is what David is asserting in Psalm 139. Yet, he says, sin does not control the Christian. We are not, to put it in Calvin's words, we are not devotedly bent upon the practice of sin. It is not our bentedness, our devotion to practice sin. We struggle with sin, yes. We hate sin, yes. We seek to kill sin in this life, surely. But we are not committed to sin. And in the pursuits against sin and hating sin and seeking to kill sin, in those pursuits we do have some success. And yet the problem is deep. So we need a way to look deeply and to examine the issue of coveting that is there and to do that we need to peer into the depths. We need, if I can put it this way, a covet scan. God's use of his law and his people is to reveal slight imperfections God's use of His law in His people is to reveal slight imperfections. Now we need to hold on and see what that means this evening. And so the following four things will need to be given our attention. The first, the 10th commandment reveals that sin is birthed in the heart. Secondly, we ask God to use the 10th to scan for evidence of any violation. Third, the test results will lead to a treatment plan of activity. Fourth, awareness, acknowledgement, repentance, and repeat. God's use of His law in His people is to reveal slight imperfections. And so first, the 10th commandment reveals that sin is birthed in the heart. Now David writes these words, doesn't he? Perhaps words that we're very familiar with. Search me, O God, and know my heart. We think, well, we know something about that, and we understand something of it, and we realize that scripture tells us again and again of the significance of the heart. But we need to understand what it is that David is saying here in terms of that need to go deep. And that's the way Scripture uses the illustration of the heart. The heart is our deep. It is our core. It is the center of who we are deep down in the inside of us. Our self. And so David is asking God to scan deep down all the way into the muscle, down into the sinews that surround and the very structure of his heart itself. He wants to know what is in the deepest of David. Covenant family, the Bible often uses the word heart, often uses the word heart to describe the person we are at the deepest level of our mind, our conscience. Our deepest self is not known fully to anyone, even we ourselves, Jeremiah 17 9. And so we need tonight to carefully consider the reason why the 10th commandment is our link to the exploration of our heart and drives us even to understand our relationship with our God. Here is why the least considered commandment, and I hope that what I just said resonates with us, here is where the least considered commandment, the tenth, becomes the most revealing means of showing just who we are deep down inside. We will actually be, I think, I hope, more positive about who we are in Christ by the time we've finished with this scan, then we might think especially as we begin it, since believers, we are looking at renewed hearts. And so what we do tonight is both hard and rewarding. It is hard because we are confessing slight things, not huge things. I'm going to say to us at the end of the sermon that this is a sermon more for the mature in the faith than it is for babes, and that's significant. I want you to notice something of the answer to question 113. I'm going to make more of this later, but I want us to be thinking about it even now. That what we're doing tonight is hard, firstly, because we are confessing slight things, not huge things. Notice this is exactly the direction of the answer. Not only in that first word that actually says that answer, that not even the slightest desire or thought. I say that not only because of that one phrase, but look at the rest of the language of the answer. Begin to compound these words together. Pile them up. So not even the slightest desire or thought contrary to, and then this little word, any one of God's commandments. And then here it comes again. should ever arise in our hearts. Now listen to it again. Rather with all our hearts, we should, and here it comes, always hate sin and delight in all righteousness. When you begin to put all of those words together and understand the structure and the phrasing of the answer of the Hatterberg Catechism here, it is clear that coveting has to do, as the Catechism wants us to understand it here in 113, has to do with slight things. And this is what David is praying for in verses 23 and 24. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties. We're going to get back to what that word means a little bit later. And see if there are any wicked ways in me. Slight things are to be found in our hearts. Now we could get discouraged about that. That is to say that coveting can be, and often is, dealing with slight thoughts that might never enter into the field of actual life or behavior as we think of it in those ways. Minuscule little things that might never engage us in the actual behaviors and patterns of our lives, but still, you see, we need to understand them as sin. And yet, this is also very encouraging. Covenant family, the mature Christian is able to look past more obvious symptoms of sin, not having those, and need to look much deeper for the less obvious, slight signs tucked away in the heart. Think of it in terms of a plague. We're not here in this way looking for how to contain a pandemic. But we are rather examining the symptoms of patient zero. Our own heart. There is hope for progress in our Christian walk. And so secondly, we ask God to use the 10th to scan for evidence of any violation. I want us to pause and think about this evening in terms of what is the sign of maturity in the Christian life? Or to put the question slightly differently now again, how am I to know that I am beyond the more obvious outward symptoms? Well, we begin to know that when we, like David, begin to ask here for God to initiate the scan for coveting I wonder if you've done that in your Christian life, in your praying, in your reading of the Bible. Have you said to God, Lord, search me? Know my heart. He's asking for God to initiate a scan. And those Christians who are trapped, those Christians who are trapped in greater sins do not want God to initiate such a scan as this. Those Christians who are trapped in large and obvious and significant sins don't want anybody to know about that sin. They, like Adam and Eve, want only to run from God and to run from God's people. And they put on a good face, and they pretend about things. But really, what's going on in the depths of their heart and is evident in their life, if people press and peer just a little bit, are quite obvious and significant sins. Those are not the Christians that we are dealing with here, rather something different. We might say it, though, if you're hiding and you don't want God to see, and you're pretending outwardly to those around you, it's time to confess that sin or those sin patterns and seek help. But you see, the more mature, ask God, verse 23, to scan them. Covenant family. The 10th commandment is God scanning our heart for those trace elements of sinful behavior waiting for the tempter's lure. We want to know them and have them called out before the tempter is able to get a hold of us in terms of those yet now hidden issues. We want a scan to reveal all the problem areas. And His Word by His Spirit probes us. A scan sweeps back and forth, but also then pushes into the deep recesses to find problems. Now, we think of this in quite obvious ways physically. If we begin to have a hint that something's going on and we're concerned about it, we go to the doctor and we say, I think there's probably some problem, and so we submit ourselves, don't we, to an MRI. We go into that machine. We have a CAT scan or a PET scan. And though we want to get good news from those scans, nothing was revealed. It's all clean. You've got a great report. And that's, of course, comforting if that's what we hear. But if there is something there, we want that scan to reveal it, don't we, so that it can be treated. Now spiritually, we know that a perfect scan in this life is an impossibility. It doesn't matter who we are and how long we've walked with Christ, which is why we mentioned earlier on the Apostle Paul, who if anyone could have had a scan that came back entirely clean, it would have been him. And he says that he is the worst of sinners, right? So what we want spiritually to learn is What are the pathways of sin that sin uses to gain a foothold in my life? And when, as if we were looking at an open field that's snow-covered, we can begin to see slight footprints, and we can see the traces, we want to know those footprints and those traces so that we can get a hold of the bigger issue, so that we can come up with a plan. You see, beloved, we need to think about something tonight in terms coveting and in respect to searching out the trace elements of sin what we need to consider is that this is actually how mature Christians do live this is how mature believers do actually live that is to say we should not say oh look at what David was saying and what a what a A man untouchable in terms of a Christian presentation. Oh, I can't be like David. No, rather, beloved, this is exactly what the mature believer lives like. Lord, search me. Know my heart. In other words, David's request is real. Christians do actually pray asking God to scan their hearts. God, put me in your divine MRI. Please put me through a spiritual CT scan. I might put it to us this way, beloved, so that we not get too unnerved by this. Let's, let's think about it in the first place first. Now we're going to be called to do this in other areas of our Christian life, but let's begin in the first place, the primary place in the primary means of grace. And so let's put it this way. Here's a point of application for us. Think about this next Lord's day. When you come to church morning and evening, make it your goal to pray Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24 prior to every worship service, particularly just before the sermon. You see, beloved, again, we begin with the primary means of grace. The primary way that God matures us. And so when we come to this time of corporate worship morning and evening, and particularly we're at the edge, we're at the moment just before the primary means of grace, make it your goal to silently in your mind pray this exact prayer. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me. Show to me my anxieties. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. If you begin to pray that right before the sermon or in connection with corporate worship, you're going to be able to see some response because your heart is being made ready. Your mind and your thoughts are directed in a certain and a godly way. And so covenant family, ask God. Ask God to use preaching to scan you for slight traces of sinful tendencies. Ask God to make your heart scan ready at every sermon. Then when we are well using sermons, we will be ready to go on from there, to be scanned by personal Bible reading, to be scanned in terms of family devotions. And finally and beloved, don't miss this last one because this is where we need to go in terms of our walk with Christ. will be ready to be scanned by the providential experiences of everyday life. How do I respond to this? How do I act in terms of that other thing? Lord, scan me. Thirdly, then, the test results will lead to a treatment plan of activity. Note at verse 24, David's goal in wanting to be scanned by God. Notice his goal. Lead me in the way everlasting. Now, we would be wrong if we thought that what David is praying for is lead me into eternity where there is no fight with sin, where there are no issues of turmoil and no struggles of temptation. That is not what David is praying for here. But rather he is praying, lead me to live now like those who live in eternity. Lead me to live now like those who already are in glory. Can we say that, beloved? In terms of our striving toward biblical maturity and godliness, David wants with all his heart, answer 113, he wants to hate all sin. He wants to delight in all righteousness. But not even the slightest desire or thought contrary to any one of God's commandments should ever arise in our hearts. That's what David is praying for. To facilitate that, he wants God to show him how he still covets. Here's a good and helpful definition of coveting covenant family. Coveting is the slight tendency. Notice again, that word, the slight tendency toward any violation of God's whole law. Coveting is desiring but not yet acting. Desiring but not yet acting on the desire to have or do anything God forbids. It's a matter of the heart. It's an internal issue. And so therefore a covet scan will reveal what issues, areas, tendencies, patterns, pronenesses need our immediate attention. James, of course, gets at this when he gives that definition of how sin comes to life, how sin comes to be born and birthed in us. And here James is talking about those, if I can put it this way, iron filings of sinfulness in our hearts that the tempter comes with his magnet and he wants to draw us from those iron filings in our heart to do something sinful, a tendency of sinfulness are those iron filings. And so God's scan is going to show to us the problems so that we can focus resources to the exact issue. We talked about a plague earlier, but think about the outbreak of some plague. What happens? No matter where the plague occurs, what is it that immediately goes into effect once it's become Know that a plague has broken out somewhere. Well, the agencies in charge, the CDC or whomever else, they need to know exactly what is that vile pathogen. They need to know how it works, what its structure is, so that when they can rightly understand it, they are then able to develop, concoct an antidote that is exactly what is needed. We want to know how sin first comes to life in us. in me, in you. And so again, the catechism here uses words which have led us to this way of constructing the sermon. You notice by the way, of course, the footnote there to answer 113 where, and this is very helpful in every one of our Lord's days, we have these scripture footnotes, the texts of scripture that the catechism is drawn from, and of course there it is, Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24. But it's not just that. As we've been saying, those words of the answer do fully agree with Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24. That is to say, the catechism is written to be in agreement with scripture. See if there is any wicked way. Now you can't really circle these because this isn't your personal one, but if you've got a text and forms book at home, go home and circle these little words. Slightest desire contrary to anyone of God's commandment should ever arise in my heart. Underline, emphasize, highlight, whatever it is you need to do to get a hold of what it is scripture is telling us here. And so it must be the case that God's scan is searching out all slight imperfections because we want to know what's in us so that we can make the best use of our time and energies, attacking the enemy's temptations at the very point of our own weaknesses. He doesn't tempt. your spouse the way he tempts you, your children the way he tempts you, your parents the way he tempts you, other believers in the congregation the same way he tempts you. You want to know what is in your own heart. And this knowledge is a work of grace and it's a cause for rejoicing. This knowledge is a work of grace and it is a cause for rejoicing. Covenant family, every time the Lord makes you aware makes you aware of sinful tendencies and the areas of your life most prone to temptation, give Him thanks. His grace of a covet scan puts you on the path to spiritual health. He loves us and His commandments are good for us. including the law against coveting. As we mature, we begin to understand his law more and more. And we want the desire to live out of his word more and more fully. And we come to see more clearly with God's perfect wisdom that there are yet these remaining issues in our life. And we say, Lord, I want that to be the issue that your word attacks in my heart and in my life. And so we say, oh, how I love your law. root out those things remaining in me." And so forth, awareness, acknowledgement, repentance, and repeat. This will be our pattern, the pattern of the mature Christian, the believer, until our dying day. Growing by sanctification in our life, it will be our pattern Because this is how the Holy Spirit uses the Word to lead us in the growth of godliness in these very things. And so underlying this, write these words down, put them somewhere where you won't forget them. This is going to be your pattern. First awareness, then acknowledgement, then repentance, and then you go back and you repeat on the next issue. David uses, by the Holy Spirit's inspiration, a particular word here Sharifi, which we get in our New King James Bible as anxieties. Now I thought about that, perhaps that's a good word in the English, just fine, except for as we live and breathe in this particular day and age, the issue of anxiety is kind of a challenging translation because we become very familiar to think of that word in terms of an emotional struggle. Now, that's not bad. Of course, the Bible talks about anxiety in that way in a number of places, but that's not the meaning of the Hebrew word here, actually. So let's try a different English rendering of the Hebrew, sharifi, and let's try the word misgivings. That puts things a little bit differently, doesn't it? And so we ask about ourselves, Lord, show to me what are those things in me where there's something that's slightly off in me. That's what David is talking about here. Something spiritually a little bit off. You know how it goes in the trajectory of missile launch. If your missile launches an inch off at the pad, by the time it gets 3,000 miles down range, it's going to be a long way off. And that's what David is talking about here, the slight things that are just a little bit off. Lord, make me aware of those things in my heart so that I can realize it and so that I can name it. And once I know its name, maybe it's the slight beginnings of lust, or greed, or selfishness, or hatred, or anger, or idolatry, or whatever it is, when I see the slight DNA traces of it in my heart and I can name it, then I can begin to understand what Scripture says about that sin. I can acknowledge it. I can repent of it. I can glorify You in the work of deliverance You've given me about that sin. Covenant family. Covenant family. Here is where in spiritual terms, knowledge is power. We need to know what needs repentance in our life. We need to know that. We are led by God's Spirit as He uses His Word. We are led to know. We are led to admit. We are led to repent. And then we do the same thing with the next stronghold of sin in our heart. Now, of course, the assumption is that complete sinlessness will not occur in this life. And that's a good assumption. Not good in delight, but good in that it's true, it's right. It's much more than an assumption, isn't it? Actually, this is what the Bible teaches us. That we are not finally and fully done with the fight against sin in this life until we are done with this life. And this is why a covet scan is so very vital. We really live as Christians with two opportunities. Augustine put it this way when talking about the abilities that Adam had in the garden. He said that the believer has four. Adam had the ability to sin or not sin before he sinned. And that's where we are also as Christians. We have been placed back to that position, as Paul talks about it in Romans 7, of having the ability to either sin or not sin And we need to engage that ability. We need to engage that situation and position which we have by grace been put back into. To see, verse 24, if there is any wicked traces, any wicked movements, any wicked motions in my heart, any, the slightest, the smallest, Because you see, we need those test results to show the wicked ways, notice again, in us. In us. In me. In you. And that's because of another important presupposition that the believer has. And it is this. That the believer hates wicked ways. Especially those wicked ways inside us. We want awareness. We want to acknowledge these things. We desire to repent of sins. And note this, as I said earlier, not every sermon is for beginners. The things we are considering this evening are for the more mature who have walked longer with Christ. But beloved, our walk is not finished with Christ. Each one of us, as mature as we may have arrived at in whatever situation of maturity we are today, there are still these tendencies. Rather, says the Catechism, with all my heart, I should always hate sin. I should delight in all righteousness. It is we who want a covet scan. Covenant family, drill down looking for traces. Miners do that, don't they? And perhaps they'll see the trace of gold and know they've begun to hit it rich. Drill down looking for traces. Why? Because you have a deep desire with all your heart to always hate sin, And to delight in all righteousness. Become. Complete 2nd Corinthians 1311. Pursue. Perfection. Amen. Her God this evening, how we praise you for the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who both saves us and who is saving us. We are pulled out of death and sin and hell, and we are brought into a new condition with renewed hearts. But we have not yet arrived. Lord, help us to live up to what we have already attained, but to go on toward perfection, knowing that we will only achieve that, only have it in its fullest measure when we are free of this life. And yet, Lord, to not be content in mediocrity. but grant us to desire righteousness and to pursue holiness. Lord, help us to hate the slightest tendencies and to love fully all things of righteousness. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.