We do not know who wrote this psalm. The superscription says that it was
David's, and although its place in the Psalter seems to suggest another
author, the peculiar fervour and closeness of intimacy with God which
breathes through it are like the Davidic psalms, and seem to confirm the
superscription. If so, it will naturally fall into its place with the
others which were pressed from his heart by the rebellion of Absalom.
But be that as it may, whosoever wrote the psalm, was a man in extremest
misery and peril, and as he says of himself, 'persecuted,'
'overwhelmed,' 'desolate.' The tempest blows him to the Throne of God,
and when he is there, what does he ask? Deliverance? Scarcely. In one
clause, and again at the end, as if by a kind of after-thought, he asks
for the removal of the calamities. But the main burden of his prayer is
for a closer knowledge of God, the sound of His lovingkindness in his
inward ear, light to show him the way wherein he should walk, and the
sweet sunshine of God's face upon his heart. There is a better thing to
ask than exemption from sorrows, even grace to bear them rightly. The
supreme desire of the devout soul is practical conformity to the will of
God. For the prayer of our text is not 'Teach me to _know_ Thy will.'
The Psalmist, indeed, has asked _that_ in a previous clause--'Cause me
to know the way wherein I should walk.' But knowledge is not all that we
need, and the gulf between knowledge and practice is so deep that after
we have prayed that we may be caused to know the way, and have received
the answer, there still remains the need for God's help that knowledge
may become life, and that all which we understand we may do. To such
practical conformity to the will of God all other aspects of religion
are meant to be subservient.
Christianity is a revelation of truth, but to accept it as such is not
enough. Christianity brings to me exemption from punishment, escape from
hell, deliverance from condemnation and guilt, and by some of us, that
is apt to be regarded as the whole Gospel; but pardon is only a means to
an end. Christianity brings to us the possibility of indulgence in sweet
and blessed emotions, and a fervour of feeling which to experience is
the ante-past of heaven, and for some of us, all our religion goes off
in vaporous emotion; but feeling alone is not Christianity. Our religion
brings to us sweet and gracious consolations, but it is a poor affair if
we only use it as an anodyne and a comfort. Our Christianity brings to
us glorious hopes that flash lustre into the darkness, and make the
solitude of the grave companionship, and the end of earth the beginning
of life, but it is a poor affair if the mightiest operation of our
religion be relegated to a future, and flung on to the close. All these
things, the truth which the Gospel brings, the pardon and peace of
conscience which it ensures, the joyful emotion which it sets loose from
the ice of indifference, the sweet consolations with which it pillows
the weary head and bandages the bleeding heart, and the great hopes
which flash light into glazing eyes, and make the end glorious with the
rays of a beginning, and the western heaven bright with the promise of a
new day--all these things are but subservient means to this highest
purpose, that we should do the will of God, and be conformed to His
image. They whose religion has not reached that apex have yet to
understand its highest meaning. The river of the water of life that
proceeds from the Throne of God and the Lamb is not sent merely to
refresh thirsty lips, and to bring music into the silence of a waterless
desert, but it is sent to drive the wheels of life. Action, not thought,
is the end of God's revelation, and the perfecting of man.
But, then, let us remember that we shall most imperfectly apprehend the
whole sweep and blessedness of this great supreme aim of the devout
soul, if we regard this doing of God's will as merely the external act
of obedience to an external command. Simple doing is not enough; the
deed must be the fruit of love. The aim of the Christian life is not
obedience to a law that is recognised as authoritative, but joyful
moulding of ourselves after a law that is felt to be sweet and loving.
'I delight to do Thy will, yea! Thy law is within my heart.' Only when
thus the will yields itself in loving and glad conformity to the will of
God is true obedience possible for us. Brother! is that your
Christianity? Do you desire, more than anything besides, that what He
wills you should will, and that His law should be stamped upon your
hearts, and all your rebellious desires and purposes should be brought
into a sweet captivity which is freedom, and an obedience to Christ
which is kingship over the universe and yourselves?
II. Note, secondly, the divine teaching and touch which are required for
this conformity.
The Psalmist betakes himself to prayer, because he knows that of himself
he cannot bring his will into this attitude of harmonious submission.
And his prayer for 'teaching' is deepened in the second clause of our
text into a petition, which is substantially the same in meaning, but
yet sets the felt need and the coveted help in a still more striking
light, in its cry for the touch of God's good spirit to guide, as by a
hand grasping the Psalmist's hand, into the paths of obedience.
We may learn from this prayer, then, that practical conformity to God's
will can never be attained by our own efforts. Remember all the
hindrances that rise between us and it; these wild passions of ours,
this obstinate gravitating of tastes and desires towards earth, these
animal necessities, these spiritual perversities, which make up so much
of us all--how can we coerce these into submission? Our better selves
sit within like some prisoned king, surrounded and 'fooled by the rebel
powers' of his revolted subjects; and our best recourse is to send an
embassy to the Over-lord, the Sovereign King, praying Him to come to our
help. We cannot will to will as God wills, but we can turn ourselves to
Him, and ask Him to put the power within us which shall subdue the evil,
conquer the rebels, and make us masters of our own else anarchic and
troubled spirits. For all honest attempts to make the will of God our
wills, the one secret of success is confident and continual appeal to
Him. A man must have gone a very little way, very superficially and
perfunctorily, on the path of seeking to make himself what he ought to
be, unless he has found out that he cannot do it, and unless he has
found out that there is only one way to do it, and that is to go to God
and say, 'O Lord! I am baffled and beaten. I put the reins into Thy
hand; do Thou inspire and direct and sanctify.'
That practical conformity to the will of God requires divine teaching,
but yet that teaching must be no outward thing. It is not enough that we
should have communicated to us, as from without, the clearest knowledge
of what we ought to be. There must be more than that. Our Psalmist's
prayer was a prophecy. He said, 'Teach me to do Thy will.' And he
thought, no doubt, of an inward teaching which should mould his nature
as well as enlighten it; of the communication of impulses as well as of
conceptions; of something which should make him love the divine will, as
well as of something which should make him know it.
You and I have Jesus Christ for our Teacher, the answer to the psalm.
His teaching is inward and deep and real, and answers to all the
necessities of the case. We have His example to stand as our perfect
law. If we want to know what is God's will, we have only to turn to that
life; and however different from ours His may have been in its outward
circumstances, and however fragmentary and brief its records in the
Gospels may sometimes seem to us, yet in these little booklets, telling
of the quiet life of the carpenter's Son, there is guidance for every
man and woman in all circumstances, however complicated, and we do not
need anything more to teach us what God's will is than the life of Jesus
Christ. His teaching goes deeper than example. He comes into our hearts,
He moulds our wills. His teaching is by inward impulses and
communications of desire and power to do, as well as of light to know. A
law has been given which can give life. As the modeller will take a
piece of wax into his hand, and by warmth and manipulation make it soft
and pliable, so Jesus Christ, if we let Him, will take our hard hearts
into His hands, and by gentle, loving, subtle touches, will shape them
into the pattern of His own perfect beauty, and will mould all their
vagrant inclinations and aberrant distortions into 'one immortal feature
of loveliness and perfection.' 'The _grace of God_ that bringeth
salvation hath appeared unto all men _teaching_ that, denying
ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly,' controlling
ourselves, 'righteously,' fulfilling all our obligations to our
fellows, 'and godly,' referring everything to Him, 'in this present
world.'
That practical conformity to the divine will requires, still further,
the operation of the divine Spirit as our Guide. 'Thy Spirit is good
lead me into the land of uprightness.' There is only one power that can
draw us out of the far-off land of rebellious disobedience, where the
prodigals and the swine's husks and the famine and the rags are, into
the 'land of uprightness,' and that is, the communicated Spirit of God,
which is given to all them that desire Him, and will lead them in paths
of righteousness for His name's sake. It is He that works in us, the
willing and the doing, according to His own good pleasure. 'He shall
guide you,' said the Master, 'into all truth'--not merely into its
knowledge, but into its performance, not merely into truth of
conception, but into truth of practice, which is righteousness, and the
fulfilling of the Law.
III. Lastly, note the divine guarantee that this practical conformity
shall be ours.
The Psalmist pleads with God a double motive--His relation to us and His
own perfectness, 'Thou art my God; therefore teach me.' 'Thy Spirit is
good; therefore lead me into the land of uprightness.' I can but glance
for a moment at these two pleas of the prayer.
Note, then, first, God's personal relation to the devout soul, as the
guarantee that that soul shall be taught, not merely to know, but also
to do His will. If He be 'my God,' there can be no deeper desire in His
heart, than that His will should be my will. And this He desires, not
from any masterfulness or love of dominion, but only from love to us. If
He be my God, and therefore longing to have me obedient, He will not
withhold what is needed to make me so. God is no hard Taskmaster who
sets us to make bricks without straw. Whatsoever He commands He gives,
and His commandments are always second and His gifts first. He bestows
Himself and then He says, 'For the love's sake, do My will.' Be sure
that the sacred bond which knits us to Him is regarded by Him, the
faithful Creator, as an obligation which He recognises and respects and
will discharge. We have a right to go to Him and to say to Him, 'Thou
art my God; and Thou wilt not be what Thou art, nor do what Thou hast
pledged Thyself to do, unless Thou makest me to know and to do Thy
will.'
And on the other hand, if we have taken Him for ours, and have the bond
knit from our side as well as from His, then the fact of our faith gives
us a claim on Him which He is sure to honour. The soul that can say, 'I
have taken Thee for mine,' has a hold on God which God is only too glad
to recognise and to vindicate. And whoever, humbly trusting to that
great Father in the heavens, feels that he belongs to God, and that God
belongs to him, is warranted in praying, 'Teach me, and make me, to do
Thy will,' and in being confident of an answer.
And there is the other plea with Him and guarantee for us, drawn from
God's own moral character and perfectness. The last clause of my text
may either be read as our Bible has it, 'Thy Spirit is good; lead me,'
or 'Let Thy good Spirit lead me.' In either case the goodness of the
divine Spirit is the plea on which the prayer is grounded. The goodness
here referred to is, as I take it, not merely beneficence and
kindliness, but rather goodness in its broader and loftier sense of
perfect moral purity. So that the thought just comes to this--we have
the right to expect that we shall be made participant of the divine
nature for so sweet, so deep, so tender is the tie that knits a devout
soul to God, that nothing short of conformity to the perfect purity of
God can satisfy the aspirations of the creature, or discharge the
obligations of the Creator.
It is a daring thought. The Psalmist's desire was a prophecy. The New
Testament vindicates and fulfils it when it says 'We shall be like Him,
for we shall see Him as He is.' Since He now dwells in 'the land of
uprightness,' who once dwelt among us in this weary world of confusion
and of sin, then we one day shall be with Him. Christ's heart cannot be
satisfied, Christ's Cross cannot be rewarded, the divine nature cannot
be at rest, the purpose of redemption cannot be accomplished, until all
who have trusted in Christ be partakers of divine purity, and all the
wanderers be led by devious and yet by right paths, by crooked and yet
by straight ways, by places rough and yet smooth, into 'the land of
uprightness.' Where and what He is, there and that shall also His
servants be.
My brother! if to do the will of God is to dwell in the land of
uprightness, disobedience is to dwell in a dry and thirsty land, barren
and dreary, horrid with frowning rocks and jagged cliffs, where every
stone cuts the feet and every step is a blunder, and all the paths end
at last on the edge of an abyss, and crumble into nothingness beneath
the despairing foot that treads them. Do you see to it that you walk in
ways of righteousness which are paths of peace; and look for all the
help you need, with assured faith, to Him who shall 'guide us by His
counsel and afterwards receive us to His glory.'