Psalms 94:11

The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.

God’s indictment of our thoughts

In treatises on morals and in manuals of religion, much has been said about controlling one’s thoughts. This is a difficult task to perform.

I. God in the text brings a severe charge against our thoughts. We are taught that only the blood of the Lord Jesus can cleanse them.

1. Consider what thought is, and how far and swiftly it can go. It allies us to the spirits above. It can go so far that the bounds of the infinite alone can check it; so swiftly, that it can distance an archangel in his most rapid flight. Think of its achievements!

2. This thought, so marvellous in its capacity, God charges with vanity. It is a heavy indictment.

II. There are many proofs of the correctness of the charge.

1. This vanity appears in man’s persistent seeking to pry into the mysteries of God.

2. It is seen in this, that when man cannot see, he proceeds to conjecture; when he cannot know then he guesses.

3. It is seen in the many ways the thoughts of men lead them into arrant, nonsense.

Self-importance. Pleasures of sense, and appetite, etc.

4. It appears by a review of our past. In manhood, how foolish the thoughts of our childhood appears! We have then put away childish things. So the past period of our lives appears to us at every succeeding stage.

III. Two things are needed,

1. Purification of our thoughts.

2. Regulation of our thoughts, by--

(1) Watchfulness;

(2) Discipline;

(3) Self-examination. (M. Dix, D.D.)

The true character of man’s thoughts

Suppose a man should find a great basket by the wayside carefully packed, and, on opening it, he should find it filled with human thoughts, all the thoughts which had passed through one single brain in one year, or five years, what a medley they would make! How many would be wild and foolish, how many weak and contemptible, how many mean and vile, how many so contradictory and crooked, that they could hardly lie still in the basket! And suppose he should be told that these were all his own thoughts, children of his own brain, how amazed would he be, how little prepared to see himself as revealed in these thoughts! And how would he want to run away and hide, if all the world were to see the basket, opened and see his thoughts! (J. Todd, D.D.)