I HAVE heard the heart of the wicked described as “a sin-creating machine,” and I cannot but think that the simile is very apt. It is a sin-factory; a cesspool of inequity; a fountain of deceit and treachery so deep and profound that it may well be asked, “Who can know it?” It is indeed “deceitful above all things and desperately (that is incurably) wicked.” And yet out of the heart are the issues of life. When it is wrong all must be wrong.
I was greatly struck this morning in reading Psalms 10 by seeing therein the workings of the heart of the wicked. Kindly bear with me while we together examine these evil workings as shown in that psalm.
We read in verse 4 that “the wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God. God is not in all his thoughts,” or, as in another version, “All his thoughts are, There is no God.”
Let us start with that. He thinks there is no God; but it may be safely affirmed that the wish is father to the thought. He wishes that no such Being as God existed, and therefore he tries to persuade himself that He does not. The fact is the sinner has an inherent dread of God—like Adam after the fall. A guilty conscience makes him a coward. He feels somehow that sin and retributive justice are correlative; and, seeing that he has sinned (all have done so), he has a fearful intuition of judgment to come. He can regard God in no other light than that of a Judge. He has no idea of grace, or mercy, or divine compassion; no glimmering of the work of the cross, or the atoning blood of the Son of God. All he feels is that he deserves punishment for sins committed. This punishment he attributes to God; and, as the thought is intolerable, he banishes it (if he can) from his mind and says, “There is no God!”
But to erase God from your mind is not to erase Him from His own creation; nor can it absolve the sinner from his responsibility. The ostrich may bury her head in the sand, and dream that she is safe, but her pursuer is not thus to be baulked. You cannot hide from God.
Well then, what about the heart of the wicked? What are its devices? First, verse 11, “He saith in his heart, I shall not be moved, for I shall never be in adversity.” “Never” is a long time! However, suppose that you escape adversity this year, and can say to your soul, “Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” and the year slips peacefully away, and the next, and the next, and you live to sixty or seventy, ah! then at last you begin to hear the roll of Jordan, and to feel the harbingers of death! Adversity knocks at your door, gently but persistently, and you begin to be moved after all—to tremble, to find that your ease is broken up, and your long period of prosperity has come to an end. Your boast that you should not be moved was vain, and you are in adversity now. Alas, your wicked heart deceived you as to all this.
But, second, in verse 11, “He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it.”
Never? never see it? Be not so sure. Tell me of one thing, good, bad, or indifferent, in His wide universe which God does not see. “All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do,” and you may depend upon it that the sins you wish to cover up are seen by God.
“He hideth his face.” No doubt you think so, but how can you prove it? “God hath forgotten,” that is a mere ipse dixit, a groundless and utterly false idea. God forgets nothing. He may, in wondrous mercy, forgive the poor penitent, may justify him, and remember his sins no more; but to say that God forgets is wholly wrong. You would like God to forget, just as you yourself like to forget; but again the wish is the source of the thought. The heart is at work again in deceiving.
Lastly (vs. 13), “He saith in his heart, God will not require it.” Are you sure? We read the opposite, viz., “God requireth that which is past” (Eccl. 3:1515That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past. (Ecclesiastes 3:15)). Again the heart is sorely in error.
But what will God require? Ah! the day of adversity has come, and the guilty soul is deeply moved at last; God has not forgotten, nor did He hide His face; He saw it all, and now God requires it at your hand. Escape is impossible. Mark (ver. 14), “Thou hast seen it; for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to requite it with thy hand.”
God had seen and beheld it all along, and now His hand must requite the evil—the life-long evil of your heart and ways. How true it is that “he who trusteth his own heart is a fool.” You have not a worse counselor on earth than your own heart. It is deceitful above all things—mark that! above all things! and desperately wicked! Saul of Tarsus trusted his, and discovered his abject folly in time. Then he saw that in him, that is in his flesh, there dwelt no good thing. He fled to Christ for righteousness and received it by faith in Him; and thereafter lived a life of dependence on and obedience to God, — a holy life, a happy life, a useful life—one of suffering for Christ’s sake, but one which was pleasing to God, and therefore truly fruitful.
Dear reader, place yourself before the eye of God. That is the first step in the right direction. Fear not to do so. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He made the poor penitent prodigal never so welcome; and, mark, if your sins do not bring you to God they will force you into hell. Turn, I pray you, to God, and turn now.
J. W. S.
LONG before man is to be judged for his sins, God unfolds two things—first, that forgiveness is offered to every soul that believes in His Son, and secondly, that He sends the Holy Ghost to dwell in the believer. Is not that wide enough, broad enough, to take you and me in? W. T. P. W.