THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH

"Who can discern his errors?" Read that line on its own, right after eight verses praising the heavens, the sun, and the perfect law of the Lord and you might wonder if David was questioning God's errors. He hasn't. Look closer at the sentence before it: "Moreover, by them is your servant warned" (v. 11). The "your servant" is David. The "his" in verse 12 points back to him, not to God. That small clarification changes everything about how the verse lands. David has just spent ten verses marveling at creation and at God's perfect law. So when David turns inward in verse 11, the contrast is the whole point. "Who can discern his errors?" isn't a question about God. It's a confession that David can't even fully see his own sin. Some faults are hidden even from the person committing them that's why he prays, "Declare me innocent from hidden faults" (v. 12), asking God to do the seeing he can't do for himself. But David goes further still. He doesn't just want exposure. He asks restraint (v. 13) and then with honesty prays, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight" (v. 14). Notice the order. Meditation comes before words. What fills the heart eventually comes out the mouth. If we want to speak well, we have to think well first and that starts with letting God's Word search the places we'd rather not look. Before you speak today, let him search your heart first.