Charles Spurgeon Collection: Spurgeon - C.H. - The Golden Alphabet: 01 Exposition of Psalm 119:1-8
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Charles Spurgeon Collection: Spurgeon - C.H. - The Golden Alphabet: 01 Exposition of Psalm 119:1-8
TOPIC: Spurgeon - C.H. - The Golden Alphabet (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 01 Exposition of Psalm 119:1-8
Other Subjects in this Topic:
Exposition of Psa_119:1-8
by Charles Spurgeon
1. Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of
the LORD.
2. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek
him with the whole heart.
3. They also do no iniquity: they walk in his ways.
4. Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently.
5. O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!
6. Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all
thy commandments.
7. I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall
have learned thy righteous judgments.
8. I will keep thy statutes: O forsake me not utterly.
These first eight verses are taken up with a contemplation of the
blessedness which comes through keeping the statutes of the Lord. The
subject is treated in a devout manner rather than in a didactic style. Heart-
fellowship with God is enjoyed through a love of that word which is God’s
way of communing with the soul by his Holy Spirit. Prayer and praise and
all sorts of devotional acts and feelings gleam through these verses like
beams of sunlight through an olive grove. You are not only instructed, but
influenced to holy emotion, and helped to express the same.
Lovers of God’s Holy Word are blessed, because they are preserved from
defilement: (verse 1), because they are made practically holy (verses 2 and
3), and are led to follow after God sincerely and intensely (verse 2). It is
made clear that holy walking must be desirable, because God commands it
(verse 4); therefore the pious soul prays for it: (verse 5), and feels that its
comfort and courage must depend upon obtaining it (verse 6). In the
prospect of answered prayer, yea, while the prayer is being answered, the
heart is full of thankfulness (verse 7), and is fixed in solemn resolve not to
miss the blessing if the Lord will give enabling grace (verse 8).
The changes are rung upon the words “way”— “undefiled in the way,”
“walk in his ways,” “O that my ways were directed”: “keep”— “keep
his testimonies,” “keep thy precepts diligently,” “directed to keep,” “I
will keep”: and “walk”— “walk in the law,” “walk in his ways.” Yet
there is no tautology; nor is the same thought repeated, though to the
careless reader it may seem so.
The change from statements about others and about the Lord to more
personal dealing with God begins in the fourth verse, and becomes more
clear as we advance, till in the later verses the communion becomes most
intense and soul moving. “I will praise thee. I will keep thy statutes. O
forsake me not utterly.” O that every reader may feel the glow of personal
devotion while studying this first section of the psalm!
1. “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the
Lord.”
“Blessed.” The Psalmist is so enraptured with the law of the Lord, that he
regards it as his highest ideal of blessedness to be conformed to it. He has
gazed on the beauties of the perfect law; and, as if this verse were the sum
and outcome of all his emotions, he exclaims, “Blessed is the man whose
life is the practical transcript of the will of God.” True religion is not cold
and dry; it has its exclamations and raptures. We not only judge the
keeping of God’s law to be a wise and proper thing, but we are warmly
enamoured of its holiness, and cry out in adoring wonder, “Blessed are
the undefiled!” meaning thereby, that we eagerly desire to become such
ourselves. We wish for no greater happiness than to be perfectly holy. It
may be that the writer labored under a sense of his own faultiness, and
therefore envied the blessedness of those whose walk had been more pure
and clean; indeed, the very contemplation of the perfect law of the Lord
upon which he now entered was quite enough to make him bemoan his
own imperfections, and sigh for the blessedness of an undefiled walk.
True religion is always practical, for it does not permit us to delight
ourselves in a perfect rule without exciting in us a longing to be conformed
to that rule in our daily conduct. A blessing belongs to those who hear and
read and understand the word of the Lord: yet is it a far greater blessing; to
be actually obedient to it, and to carry out in our walk and conversation
what we learn in our searching of the Scriptures. Purity in our way and
walk is the truest blessedness.
This first verse is not only a preface to the whole psalm, but it may also be
regarded as the text upon which the rest is a discourse. It is similar to the
benediction of the first psalm, which is set in the forefront of the entire
book: there is a likeness between this 119th Psalm and the Psalter, and this
is one point of it, that it begins with a benediction. In this, too, we see
some foreshadowings of the Son of David, who began his great sermon as
David began his great psalm. It is well to open our mouth with blessings.
When we cannot bestow them, we can show the way of obtaining them,
and even if we do not yet possess them ourselves, it may be profitable to
contemplate them, that our desires may be excited, and our souls moved to
seek after them. Lord, if I am not yet so blessed as to be among the
undefiled in thy way, yet I will think much of the happiness which these
enjoy, and set it before me as my life’s ambition.
As David thus begins his psalm, so should young men begin their lives, so
should new converts commence their profession, so should all Christians
begin every day. Settle it in your hearts as a first postulate and sure rule of
practical science, that holiness is happiness, and that it is our wisdom first
to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Well begun is half done.
To start with a true idea of blessedness is beyond measure important. Man
began with being blessed in his innocence, and if our fallen race is ever to
be blessed again, it must find blessedness where it lost it at the beginning,
namely, in conformity to the command of the Lord.
“The undefiled in the way.” They are in the way, the right way, the way,
of the Lord, and they keep that way, walking with holy carefulness, and
washing their feet daily, lest they be defiled by contact with the world.
They enjoy great blessedness in their own souls; indeed, they have a
foretaste of heaven, where the blessedness lieth much in being absolutely
undefiled; and could they continue utterly and altogether without
defilement, doubtless they would have the days of heaven upon earth.
Outward evil would little hurt us if we were entirely rid of the evil of sin,
an attainment which, with the best of us, lies still in the region of desire,
and is not yet fully reached, though we have so clear a view of it that we
see it to be blessedness itself; and therefore we eagerly press towards it.
He whose life is in a gospel sense undefiled, is blessed, because he could
never have reached this point if a thousand blessings had not already been
bestowed on him. By nature we are defiled and out of the way, and we
must therefore have been washed in the atoning blood to remove
defilement, and we must have been converted by the power of the Holy
Ghost, or we should not have been turned into the way of peace, nor be
undefiled in it. Nor is this all; for the continual power of grace is needed to
keep a believer in the right way, and to preserve him from pollution. All the
blessings of the covenant must have been in a measure poured, upon those
who from day to day have been enabled to perfect holiness in the fear of
the Lord. Their way is the evidence of their being the blessed of the Lord.
David speaks of a high degree of blessedness; for some are in the way, and
are true servants of God; but they are as yet faulty in many ways, and bring
defilement upon themselves. Others who walk in the light more fully, and
maintain closer communion with God, are enabled to keep themselves
unspotted from the world; and these enjoy far more peace and joy than
their less watchful brethren. Doubtless, the more complete our
sanctification the more intense our blessedness. Christ is our way, and we
are not only alive in Christ, but we are to live in Christ: the sorrow is, that
we bespatter his holy way with our selfishness, self-exaltation, willfulness,
and carnality, and so we miss a great measure of the blessedness which is in
him as our way. A believer who errs is still saved, but the joy of his