Sincerity

Psa 51:6  Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

There is a remarkable foreshadowing of the insight of Christ Jesus in these words. 

They ring with that depth which is so clear a note of Jesus' moral teaching. 

We have been inclined to think of the Old Testament as dealing with the outward sphere of action...

We have been inclined to say that it was Jesus who first ran down the act into the heart. 

But we must not separate the Old and New by any hard and fast distinctions such as these. 

They intermingle, both in creed and character.

If Abraham saw Christ's day and was glad, David saw Christ's day and was sad. 

He recognized God's passionate insistence that a man should be thoroughly sincere.

It is worth noting, too, that when David recognized this, he had a broken heart.

David had sinned, and David was repentant...

And a repentant man sees deeply.

There are some hours in life when we are blind; hours when we see nothing and forget everything... 

And all our past, and all our honor and duty and God, and heaven and hell, fade and are blotted out. 

But when repentance comes, we see again. 

We see what we have done and what we are. 

We touch a sinfulness far deeper than our act.

And that was David's case. 

On ordinary days he might have been content with ordinary sacrifices...

But in an hour like this it was "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned," and "Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts."

This, then, is God's insistence on sincerity, and it is always a hard thing to be sincere. 

Life is so full of little insincerity's that it is often the man who is seriously struggling to be true who feels most keenly how untrue he is. 

It is always a hard thing to be sincere.

But there are times when it is harder than at other times. 

And it is especially hard today.

~George H. Morrison~