Examine Me, Prove Me

There is a kind of prayer in the Psalter that startles a modern reader: "Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering. Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and my mind." We hesitate. We know our hearts too well to volunteer them for testing. Who walks in integrity all the way through? Who trusts without wavering? We would rather pull the curtain on our heart than ask God to fling it open. So is the psalmist a hypocrite? A self-deceiver? Reading him that way misses the point. The Psalter is a prayerbook for the King — a King with hands clean enough to ascend the hill, a King who can stand under the gaze of God and not be ashamed. David himself fell short of this prayer over and over, but the prayer was written in the Psalter for the King David could not yet be.

There is one Man who could pray every line of Psalm 26 without a tremor. The Lord Jesus walked in integrity to the end. He trusted in the LORD without wavering even in Gethsemane. He hated the assembly of evildoers and loved the habitation of His Father's house. He could ask the Father to examine Him, test His mind and His heart, and the testing only proved His perfect obedience. And when He had finished His walk, He did not keep His integrity to Himself. He laid it down at the cross and bought ours. So now, when we are joined to Him by faith, the prayer of Psalm 26 is no longer a boast we cannot make; it is the testimony of our Head, and we are His body. Our Lord prays it for us. We pray it after Him. "I have walked in my integrity" — in His. "I have trusted in the LORD without wavering" — through Him. The Psalm has become a song of the redeemed who have been clothed in someone else's record.