“Lord, who may abide in Your tabernacle?” asks the writer of Psalm 15, and “Who may dwell in Your holy hill?” The answers are profound. One of them is, “He who speaks truth in his heart.”
Speaking truth in your own heart–that’s a very interesting thing to mull over. The people who may live in God’s presence are people who speak truth inwardly–in their own hearts. They tell themselves the truth. The don’t keep lies hanging around in their own heads.
Charles Spurgeon’s A Treasury of David includes a section where he collects other people’s writing’s on each verse of the Psalms. He has this meditation by Benjamin Bennet in my copy. Enjoy…
I this day heard a sermon from Psalm 15:2 “And speaketh the truth in his heart.” … O my soul, receive the admonition that has been given thee! Study truth in the inward parts; let integrity and truth always accompany thee and preserve thee: speak the truth in thy heart.
I am thankful for any conviction and sense I have of the evil of lying; Lord, increase my abhorrence of it: as further assistance and help against this mean, sordid, pernicious vice, I would endeavor and resolve, in pursuit of the directions laid before us in the sermon, to mortify those passions and corruptions from whence this sin of lying more ordinarily flows, and which are the chief occasion of it, as “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts” (Matthew 15:19); so, from the same fountain proceed evil words.
And I would, with the greatest zeal, set myself against such corruptions as upon observation I find more commonly betray me into this iniquity: pride often indites our speech, and coins many a lie; so envy, covetousness, malice, etc. I would endeavor to cleanse myself from all this filthiness: there never will be a mortified tongue while there is an unmortified heart.
If I love the world inordinately, it is a thousand to one I shall be often stretching a point to promote a worldly interest; and if I hate my brother, it is the same odds I shall reproach him. Lord, help me to purge the foundation, and then the streams will be pure. When the spring of a clock, and all the movements are right, the hand will go right; and so, it is here. The tongue follows the inward inclination. I would resolve to do nothing that may need a lie. If Gehazi’s covetousness had not shamed him he had not wanted a lie to excuse him.
“He that walks uprightly, walks surely,” and safely in this, as well as other respects (Proverbs 10:9). May I do nothing that is dishonorable and mean, nothing that cannot bear the light, and then I shall have little temptation to lying. I would endeavor for a lively sense of the eye of God upon me, acting and speaking in his presence. Lord, I desire to set thee always before me; thou understandest my thoughts as perfectly as other so my words. I would consider before I speak, and not speak much or rashly (Proverbs 29:20). I would often think of the severity of a future judgement, when every secret shall be made manifest, and the hypocrite and liar exposed before angels and men.
Lastly, I would frequently beg divine assistance herein (Psalm 119:29, Proverbs 30:8). O my God, help me in my future conduct, remove from me the way of lying; may the law of kindness and truth be in my past miscarriages in this respect, and flee to thy mercy through the blood of Christ; bless to me the instructions that have been this day given me; let no iniquity prevail against me; “keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins, and cleanse me from secret faults.”
I commit my thoughts, desires, and tongue to thy conduct and government; may I think and act in thy fear, and always speak the truth in my heart.