Charles Spurgeon Collection: Spurgeon - C.H. - The Golden Alphabet: 03 Exposition of Psalm 119:17-24

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Charles Spurgeon Collection: Spurgeon - C.H. - The Golden Alphabet: 03 Exposition of Psalm 119:17-24



TOPIC: Spurgeon - C.H. - The Golden Alphabet (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 03 Exposition of Psalm 119:17-24

Other Subjects in this Topic:

Exposition of Psa_119:17-24

by Charles Spurgeon



17. Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep thy

word.

18. Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out

of thy law.

19. I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from

me.

20. My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy

judgments at all times.

21. Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which do err

from thy commandments.

22. Remove from me reproach and contempt; for I have kept thy

testimonies.

23. Princes also did sit and speak against me: but thy servant did

meditate in thy statutes.

24. Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counselors.

In this section the trials of the way appear to be manifest to the Psalmist’s

mind, and he prays accordingly for the help which will meet his case, As in

the last eight verses he prayed as a youth newly come into the world, so

here he pleads as a servant, and a pilgrim, who growingly finds himself to

be a stranger in an enemy’s country. His appeal is to God alone, and his

prayer is specially direct and personal. He speaks with the Lord as a man

speaketh with his friend.

17. “Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep thy

word.”

“Deal bountifully with thy servant.” He takes pleasure in owning his

duty to God, and counts it the joy of his heart to be in the service of his

God. Out of his condition he makes a plea, for a servant has some hold

upon a master; but in this case the wording of the plea shuts out the idea of

legal claim, since he seeks bounty rather than reward. Let my wage be

according to thy goodness, and not according to my merit. Reward me

according to the largeness of thy liberality, and not according to the

scantiness of my service. The hired servants of our Father have all of them

bread enough and to spare, and he will not leave one of his household to

perish with hunger. If the Lord will only treat us as he treats the least of his

servants we may be well content; for all his true servants are sons, princes

of the blood, heirs of life eternal. David felt that his great needs required a

bountiful provision, and that his little desert would never earn such a

supply; hence he must throw himself upon God’s grace, and look for the

great things he needed from the great goodness of the Lord. He begs for a

liberality of grace, after the fashion of one who prayed, “O Lord, thou

must give me great mercy or no mercy, for little mercy will not serve my

turn.”

“That I may live.” Without abundant mercy he could not live. It takes

great grace to keep a saint alive. Even life is a gift of divine bounty to such

undeserving ones as we are. Only the Lord can keep us in being, and it is

mighty grace which preserves to us the life which we have forfeited by our

sin. It is right to desire to live, it is meet to pray to live, it is just to ascribe

prolonged life to the favor of God. Spiritual life, without which this natural

life is mere existence, is also to be sought of the Lord’s bounty; for it is the

noblest work of divine grace, and in it the bounty of God is gloriously

displayed. The Lord’s servants cannot serve him in their own strength, for

they cannot even live unless his grace abounds towards them.

“And keep thy word.” This should be the rule, the object, and the joy of

our life. We may not wish to live and sin; but we may pray to live and

keep God’s word. Being is a poor thing if it be not well-being. Life is only

worth keeping while we can keep God’s word; indeed, there is no life in

the highest sense apart from holiness: life while we break the law is but a

name to live.

The prayer of this verse shows that it is only through divine, bounty or

grace that we can live as faithful servants of God, and manifest obedience

to his commands. If we give God service it must be because he gives us

grace. We work for him because he works in us. Thus we may make a

chain out of the opening verses of the three first octaves of this psalm:

verse 1 blesses the holy man, verse 9 asks how we can attain to such

holiness, and verse 17 traces such holiness to its secret source, and shows

us how to seek the blessing. The more a man prizes holiness, and the more

earnestly he strives after it, the more will he be driven towards God for

help therein; for he will plainly perceive that his own strength is

insufficient, and that he cannot even so much as live without the bounteous

assistance of the Lord his God.

18. “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy

law.”

“Open thou mine eyes.” This is a part of the bountiful dealing which he

has asked for; no bounty is greater than that which benefits our person, our

soul, our mind, and benefits it in so important an organ as the eye. It is far

better to have the eyes opened than to be placed in the midst of the noblest

prospects and remain blind to their beauty. “That I may behold wondrous

things out of thy law.” Some men can perceive no wonders in the gospel,

but David felt sure that there were glorious things in the law: he had not

half the Bible, but he prized it more than some men prize the whole. He

felt that God had laid up great beauties and bounties in his word, and he

begs for power to perceive, appreciate, and enjoy the same. We need not

so much that God should give us more benefits, as the ability to see what

he has given.

The prayer implies a conscious darkness, a dimness of spiritual vision, a

powerlessness to remove that defect, and a full assurance that God can

remove it. It shows also that the writer knew that there were vast treasures

in the word which he had not yet fully seen, marvels which he had not yet

beheld, mysteries which he had scarcely believed. The Scriptures teem with

marvels; the Bible is wonder-land; it not only relates miracles, but it is itself

a world of wonders. Yet what are these to closed eyes? And what man can

open his own eyes, since he is born blind? God himself must reveal

revelation to each heart. Scripture needs opening, but not one half so much

as our eyes do; the veil is not on the book, but on our hearts. What perfect

precepts, what precious promises, what priceless privileges are neglected

by us, because we wander among them like blind men among the beauties

of nature, and they are to us as a landscape shrouded in darkness!

The Psalmist had a measure of spiritual perception, or he would never have

known that there were wondrous things to be seen, nor would he have

prayed, “Open thou mine eyes”; but what he had seen made him long for

a clearer and wider sight. This longing proved the genuineness of what he

possessed, for it is a test mark of the true knowledge of God that it causes

its possessor to thirst for deeper knowledge.

David’s prayer in this verse is a good sequel to verse 10, which

corresponds to it in position in its octave: there he said, “O let me not

wander”; and who so apt to wander as a blind man? and there, too, he

declared, “With my whole heart have I sought thee”; and hence the desire

to see the object of his search. Very singular are the interlacings of the

toughs of the huge tree of this psalm, which has many wonders even within

itself if we have opened eyes to mark them.

19. “I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.”

“I am a stranger in the earth.” This is meant for a plea. By divine

command men are bound to be kind to strangers, and what God commands

in others he will exemplify in himself. The Psalmist was a stranger for

God’s sake, else had he been as much at home as worldlings are: he was

not a stranger to God, but a stranger to the world, a banished man so long

as he was out of heaven. Therefore he pleads, “Hide not thy

commandments from me.” If these are gone, what have I else? Since

nothing around me is mine, what can I do if I lose thy word? Since none

around me know or care to know the way to thyself, what shall I do if I fail

to see thy commands, by which alone I can guide my steps to the land

where thou dwellest? David implies that God’s commands were his solace

in his exile: they reminded him of home, and they showed him the way

thither, and therefore he begged that they might never be hidden from him,

by his being unable either to understand them or to obey them. If spiritual

light be withdrawn, the command is hidden, and this a gracious heart

greatly deprecates. What would be the use of opened eyes if the best object

of sight were hidden from their view? While we wander here we can

endure all the ills of this foreign land with patience, if the word of God is

applied to our hearts by the Spirit of God; but if the heavenly things which

make for our peace were hid from our eyes, we should be in an evil case —

in fact, we should be at sea without a compass, in a desert without a guide,

in an enemy’s country without a friend.

This prayer is a supplement to “Open thou mine eyes,” and as the one

prays to see, the other deprecates the negative of seeing, namely the

command being hidden, and so out of sight. We do well to look at both

sides of the blessing we are seeking, and to plead for it from every point of

view. The prayers are appropriate to the characters mentioned: as he is a

servant, he asks for opened eyes that his eyes may ever be towards his

Lord, as the eyes of a servant should be; as a stranger, he begs that he may

not be strange to the way in which he is to walk towards his home. In each

case his entire dependence is upon God alone.

Note how the third of the second octave (11) has the same keyword as this

third of the third octave: “Thy word have I hid,” “Hide not thy

commandments from me.” This invites a meditation upon the different

senses of hiding in and hiding from.

20. “My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at

all times.” True godliness lies very much in desires. As we are not what

we shall be, so also we are not what we would be. The desires of gracious

men after holiness are intense; or they cause a wear of heart, a straining of

the mind, till it feels ready to snap with the heavenly pull. A high value of

the Lord’s commandment leads to a pressing desire to know and to do it,

and this so weighs upon the soul that it is ready to break in pieces under

the crush of its own longings. What a blessing it is when all our desires are

after the things of God! We may well long for such longings.

God’s judgments are his decisions upon points which else had been in

dispute. Every precept is a judgment of the highest court upon a point of

action, an infallible and immutable decision upon a moral or spiritual

question. The word of God is a code of justice from which there is no

appeal.

“This is the Judge which ends the strife

Where wit and reason fail;

Our guide through devious paths of life,

Our shield when doubts assail.”

David had such reverence for the Word, and such a desire to know it, and

to be conformed to it, that his longings caused him a sort of heartbreak,

which he here pleads before God. Longing is the soul of praying, and when

the soul longs till it breaks, it cannot be long before the blessing will be

granted. The most intimate communion between the soul and its God is

carried on by the process described in the text. God reveals his will, and

our heart longs to be conformed thereto. God judges, and our heart

rejoices in the verdict. This is fellowship of heart most real and thorough.

Note well that our desire after the mind of God should be constant; we

should feel holy longings “at all times.” Desires which cart be put off

and on like our garments are at best but mere wishes, and possibly they are

hardly true enough to be called by that name, — they are temporary

emotions born of excitement, and doomed to die when the heat which

created them has cooled down. He who always longs to know and do the

right is the truly right man. His judgment is sound, for he loves all God’s

judgments, and follows them with constancy. His times shall be good, since

he longs to be good and to do good at all times.

Remark how this fourth of the third eight chimes with the fourth of the

fourth eight. “My soul breaketh;” “My soul melteth.” There is surely

some recondite poetic art about all this, and it is well for us to be careful in

studying what the Psalmist was so careful in composing.

21. “Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which do err from thy

commandments.”

“Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed.” This is one of God’s

judgments: he is sure to deal out a terrible portion to men of lofty looks.

God rebuked Pharaoh with sore plagues, and at the Red Sea “the

foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O Lord.” In the

person of the haughty Egyptian he taught all the proud that he will

certainly abase them. Proud men are cursed men: nobody blesses them, and

they soon become a burden to themselves. In itself, pride is a plague and

torment. Even if no curse came from the law of God, there seems to be a

law of nature that proud men should be unhappy men. This led David to

abhor pride; he dreaded the rebuke of God and the curse of the law. The

proud sinners of his day were his enemies, and he felt happy that God was

in the quarrel as well as he.

“Which do err from thy commandments.” Only humble hearts are

obedient, for they alone will yield to rule and government. Proud men’s

looks are high, too high to mark their own feet and keep the Lord’s way.

Pride lies at the root of all sin: if men were not arrogant they would not be

disobedient.

God rebukes pride even when the multitudes pay homage to it, for he sees

it in rebellion against his own majesty, and the seeds of yet further

rebellions. It is the sum of sin. Men talk of an honest pride; but if they

were candid they would see that it is of all sins the least honest, and the

least becoming in a creature, and especially in a fallen creature: yet so little

do proud men know their own lame condition under the curse of God, that

they set up to censure the godly, and express contempt for them, as may be

seen in the next verse. They are themselves contemptible, and yet they are

contemptuous towards their betters. We may well love the judgments of

God, when we see them so decisively leveled against the haughty upstarts

who would fain lord it over righteous men; and we may well be of good

comfort under the rebukes of the ungodly, since their power to hurt us is

destroyed by the Lord himself. “The Lord rebuke thee” is answer enough

for all the accusations of men or devils.

In the fifth of the former octave the Psalmist wrote, “I have declared all

the judgments of thy mouth,” and here he continues in the same strain,

giving a particular instance of the Lord’s judgments against haughty rebels.

In the next two portions the fifth verses deal with lying and vanity, and

pride is one of the most common form of those evils.

22. “Remove from me reproach and contempt; for I have kept thy

testimonies?”

“Remove from me reproach and contempt.” These are painful things to

tender minds. David could bear them for righteousness’ sake, but they

were a heavy yoke, and he longed to be free from them. To be slandered,

and then to be despised in consequence of the vile accusation, is a grievous

affliction. No one likes to be traduced, or even to be despised. He who

says, “I care nothing for my reputation,” is not a wise man; for in

Solomon’s esteem “a good name is better than precious ointment.” The

best way to deal with slander is to pray about it: God will either remove it

or remove the sting from it. Our own attempts at clearing ourselves are

usually failures: we are like the boy who wished to remove the blot from

his copy, and by his bungling made it ten times worse. When we suffer

from a libel it is better to pray about it than go to law over it, or even to

demand an apology from the inventor. O ye who are reproached, take your

matters before the highest court, and leave them with the Judge of all the

earth. God will rebuke your proud accuser; be ye quiet, and let your

advocate plead your cause.

God rebukes pride even when the multitudes pay homage to it, for he sees

it in rebellion against his own majesty, and the seeds of yet further

rebellions. It is the sum of sin. Men talk of an honest pride; but if they

were candid they would see that it is of all sins the least honest, and the

least becoming in a creature, and especially in a fallen creature: yet so little

do proud men know their own lame condition under the curse of God, that

they set up to censure the godly, and express contempt for them, as may be

seen in the next verse. They are themselves contemptible, and yet they are

contemptuous towards their betters. We may well love the judgments of

God, when we see them so decisively leveled against the haughty upstarts

who would fain lord it over righteous men; and we may well be of good

comfort under the rebukes of the ungodly, since their power to hurt us is

destroyed by the Lord himself. “The Lord rebuke thee” is answer enough

for all the accusations of men or devils.

In the fifth of the former octave the Psalmist wrote, “I have declared all

the judgments of thy mouth,” and here he continues in the same strain,

giving a particular instance of the Lord’s judgments against haughty rebels.

In the next two portions the fifth verses deal with lying and vanity, and

pride is one of the most common form, of those evils.

“For I have kept thy testimonies.” Innocence may justly ask to be cleared

from reproach. If there be truth in the charges alleged against us, what can

we urge with God?. If, however, we are wrongfully accused, our appeal

has a locus standi in the court and cannot be refused. If through fear of

reproach we forsake the divine testimony we shall deserve the coward’s

doom; our safety lies in sticking close to the true and to the right. God will

keep those who keep his testimonies. A good conscience is the best

security for a good name; reproach will not abide with those who abide

with Christ, neither will contempt remain upon those who remain faithful

to the ways of the Lord.

This verse stands as a parallel both in sense and position to verse 6, and it

has the catchword of “testimonies,” by which it chimes with verse 14.

23. “Princes also did sit and speak against me: but thy servant did

meditate in thy statutes?”

“Princes also did sit and speak against me” David was high game, and

the great ones of the earth went a-hawking after him. Princes saw in him a

greatness which they envied, and therefore they abused him. On their

thrones they might have found something better to consider and speak

about, but they turned the seat of judgment into the seat of the scorner.

Most men covet a prince’s good word, and to be spoken ill of by a great

man is a great discouragement to them; but the Psalmist bore his trial with

holy calmness. Many of the lordly ones were his enemies, and made it their

business to speak ill of him, they held sittings for scandal, sessions for

slander, parliaments of falsehood, and yet he survived all their attempts

upon him.

“But thy servant did meditate in thy statutes.” This was brave indeed. He

was God’s servant, and therefore he attended to his Master’s business; he

was God’s servant, and therefore felt sure that the Lord would defend him.

He gave no heed to his princely slanderers; he did not even allow his

thoughts to be disturbed by a knowledge of their plotting in conclave. Who

were these malignance that they should rob God of his servant’s attention,

or deprive the Lord’s chosen of a moment’s devout communion? The

rabble of princes were not worth five minutes’ thought, if those five

minutes had to be taken from holy meditation. It is very beautiful to see the

two sittings: the princes sitting to reproach David, and David sitting with

his God and his Bible, answering his traducers by never answering them at

all. Those who feed upon the word grow strong and peaceful, and are by

God’s grace hidden from the strife of tongues.

Note that in the close of the former octave he had said, “I will meditate”;

and here he shows how he had redeemed his promise, even under great

provocation to forget it. It is a praiseworthy thing when the resolve of our

happy hours is duly carried out in our seasons of affliction.

24. “Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counselors.” They were

not only themes for meditation, but “also” sources of delight and means

of guidance. While his enemies took counsel with each other, the holy man

took counsel with the testimonies of God. The fowlers could not drive the

bird from its nest with all their noise. It was their delight to slander and his

delight to meditate. The words of the Lord serve us for many purposes; in

our sorrows they are our delight, and in our difficulties they are our guide;

we derive joy from them and discover wisdom in them. If we desire to find

comfort in the Scriptures we must submit ourselves to their counsel, and

when we follow their counsel it must not be with reluctance, but with

delight This is the safest way of dealing with those who plot for our ruin;

let us give more heed to the true testimonies of the Lord than to the false

witness of our foes. The best answer to accusing princes is the word of the

justifying King.

In verse 16 David said, “I will delight in thy statutes,” and here he says,

“They are my delight”: thus resolutions formed in God’s strength come to

fruit, and spiritual desires ripen into actual attainments. Oh that it might be

so with all the readers of these lines!