Charles Spurgeon Collection: Spurgeon - C.H. - The Golden Alphabet: 04 Exposition of Psalm 119:25-32

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Charles Spurgeon Collection: Spurgeon - C.H. - The Golden Alphabet: 04 Exposition of Psalm 119:25-32



TOPIC: Spurgeon - C.H. - The Golden Alphabet (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 04 Exposition of Psalm 119:25-32

Other Subjects in this Topic:

Exposition of Psa_119:25-32

by Charles Spurgeon



25. My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according

to thy word.

26. I have declared my ways, and thou heardest me; teach me

thy statutes.

27. Make me to understand the way of thy precepts: so shall I

talk of thy wondrous works.

28. My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen thou me

according unto thy word.

29. Remove from me the way of lying: and grant me thy law

graciously.

30. I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid

before me.

31. I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O Lord, put me not to

shame.

32. I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt

enlarge my heart.

Here, it seems to me, we have the Psalmist in trouble bewailing the

bondage to earthly things in which he finds his mind to be held. His soul

cleaves to the dust, melts for heaviness, and cries for enlargement from its

spiritual prison. In these verses we shall see the influence of the divine

word upon a heart which laments its downward tendencies, and is filled

with mourning because of its deadening surroundings. The word of the

Lord evidently arouses prayer (25-29), confirms choice (30), and inspires

renewed resolve (32): it is in all tribulation, whether of body or mind, the

surest source of help.

This portion has D for its alphabetical letter: it sings of Depression, in the

spirit of Devotion, Determination, and Dependence.

25. “My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy

word.”

“My soul cleaveth unto the dust.” He means in part that he was full of

sorrow; for mourners in the east cast dust on their heads, and sat in ashes,

and the Psalmist felt as if these ensigns of woe were glued to him, and his

very soul was made to cleave to them because of his powerlessness to rise

above his grief. Does he not also mean that he felt ready to die? Did he not

feel his life absorbed and fast held by the grave’s mould, half choked by the

death-dust? It may not be straining the language if we conceive that he also

felt and bemoaned his earthly-mindedness and spiritual deadness. There

was a tendency in his soul to cling to earth which he greatly bewailed.

Whatever was the cause of his complaint, it was no surface evil, but an

affair of his inmost spirit; his soul cleaved to the dust; and it was not a

casual and accidental falling into the dust, but a continuous and powerful

tendency, or cleaving to the earth. But what a mercy that the good man

could feel and deplore whatever there was of evil in the cleaving! The

serpent’s seed can find their meat in the dust, but never shall the seed of

the woman be thus degraded. Many are of the earth earthy, and never

lament it; only the heaven-born and heaven-soaring spirit pines at the

thought of being fastened to this world, and bird-limed by its sorrows or its

pleasures.

“Quicken thou me according to thy word.” More life is the cure for all

our ailments. Only the Lord can give it. He can bestow it, bestow it at

once, and do it according to his word, without departing from the usual

course of his grace, as we see it mapped out in the Scriptures. It is well to

know what to pray for — David seeks quickening: one would have

thought that he would have asked for comfort or upraising; but he knew

that these would come out of increased life, and therefore he sought that

blessing which is the root of the rest. When a person is depressed in spirit,

weak, and bent towards the ground, the main thing is to increase his

stamina and put more life into him; then his spirit revives, and his body

becomes erect. In reviving the life, the whole man is renewed. Shaking off

the dust is a little thing by itself; but when it follows upon quickening, it is

a blessing of the greatest value, just as good spirits, which flow from

established health, are among the choicest of our mercies. The phrase,

“according to thy word,” means — according to thy revealed way of

quickening thy saints. The word of God shows us that he who first made us

must keep us alive; and it tells us of the Spirit of God who through the

ordinances pours fresh life into our souls: we beg the Lord to act towards

us in this his own regular method of grace. Perhaps David remembered the

word of the Lord in Deuteronomy 32:39, where Jehovah claims both to kill

and to make alive, and he beseeches the Lord to exercise that life-giving

power upon his almost expiring servant. Certainly, the man of God had not

so many rich promises to rest upon as we have; but even a single word was

enough for him, and he right earnestly urges “according to thy word.” It

is a grand thing to see a believer in the dust and yet pleading the promise, a

man at the grave’s mouth crying, “quicken me,” and hoping that it shall

be done.

Note how this first verse of the 4th octonary tallies with the first of the

third (17), — “That I may live”.... “Quicken me.” While in a happy

state he begs for bountiful dealing, and when in a forlorn condition he

prays for quickening. Life is in both cases the object of pursuit: that he

may’ have life, and have it more abundantly. Truly this is wisdom. Fools

hunger for mere, and yet lose life; but the wise man knows that the life is

more than meat. To pine for riches and neglect the soul is the common sin

of unbelievers, and to seek true riches in an increase of life is the prudent

course of the believer. Life, eternal life, this is true treasure. Our Lord has

come not only that we may have life, but that we may have it more

abundantly. Lord, evermore pour thy life-floods into us, that we may be

quickened to the fullness of our manhood, and filled with all the fullness of

God.

26. “I have declared my ways, and thou heardest me; teach me thy

statutes.”

“I have declared my ways.” Open confession is good for the soul.

Nothing brings more ease and more life to a man than a frank

acknowledgment of the evil which has caused the sorrow and the lethargy.

Such a declaration proves that the man knows his own condition, and is no

longer blinded by pride. Our confessions are not meant to make God

know our sins, but to make us know them. “And thou heardest me.” His

confession had been accepted; it was not lost labor; God had drawn near to

him in it. We ought never to go from a duty till we have been accepted in

it. Pardon follows upon penitent confession, and David felt that he had

obtained it. It is God’s way to forgive our sinful way when we from our

hearts confess the wrong.

“Teach me thy statutes.” Being truly sorry for his fault, and having

obtained Full forgiveness, he is anxious to avoid offending again, and hence

he begs to be taught obedience. He was not willing to sin through

ignorance, he wished to know all the mind of God by being, taught it by

the best of teachers. He pined after holiness. Justified men always long to

be sanctified. When God forgives our sins we are all the more fearful of

sinning again. Mercy, which pardons transgression, sets us longing for

grace which prevents transgression. We may boldly ask for more when

God has given us much; he who has washed out the past stain will not

refuse that which will preserve us from present and future defilement. This

cry for teaching is frequent in the Psalm; in verse 12 it followed a sight of

God, here it follows from a sight of self. Every experience should lead us

thus to plead with God.

27. “Make me to understand the way of thy precepts: so shall I talk of thy

wondrous works.”

“Make me to understand the way of thy precepts.” Give me a deep

insight into the practical meaning of thy word; let me get: a clear idea of

the tone and tenor of thy law. Blind obedience has but small beauty; God

would have us follow him with our eyes open. To obey the letter of the

word is all that the ignorant can hope for if we wish to keep God’s

precepts in their spirit we must come to an understanding of them, and that

can be gained nowhere but at the Lord’s hands. Our understanding needs

enlightenment and direction: he who made our understanding must also

make us understand. The last sentence was, “teach me, thy statutes,” and

the words, “make me to understand,” are an instructive enlargement and

exposition of that sentence: we need to be so taught that we understand

what we learn. It is to be noted that the Psalmist is not anxious to

understand the prophecies, but the precepts, and he is not concerned about

the subtleties of the law, but the commonplaces and every-day rules of it,

which are described as “the way of thy precepts.”

“So shall I talk of thy wondrous works.” It is in talking of what we do not

understand. We must be taught of God till we understand, and then we

may hope to communicate our knowledge to others with a hope of

profiting them. Talk without intelligence is mere talk, and idle talk; but the

words of the instructed are as pearls which adorn the ears of them that

hear. When our heart has been opened to understand, our lips should be

opened to impart knowledge; and we may hope to be taught ourselves

when we feel in our hearts a willingness to teach the way of the Lord to

those among whom we dwell.

“Thy wondrous works.” Remark that the clearest understanding; does not

cause us to cease from wondering at the ways and works of God. The fact

is, that the more we know of God’s doings the more we admire them, and

the more ready we are to speak upon them. Half the wonder in the world is

born of ignorance, but holy wonder is the child of understanding. When a

man understands the way of the divine precepts he never talks of his own

works, and as the tongue must have some theme to speak upon, he begins

to extol the works of the all-perfect Lord.

Some in this place read “meditate” or “muse” instead of “talk;” it is

singular that the words should be so near of kin, and yet it is right that they

should be, for none but foolish people will talk without thinking. If we read

the passage in this sense, we take it to mean that in proportion as David

understood the word of God he would meditate upon it more and more. It

is usually so the thoughtless care not to know the inner meaning of the

Scriptures, while those who know them best are the very men who strive

after a greater familiarity with them, and therefore give themselves up to

musing upon them.

Observe the third verse of the last eight (19), and see how the sense is akin

to this. In that place he described himself as a stranger in the earth, and

here he prays to know his way there, too, he prayed that the word might

not be hid from himself, and here he promises that he will not hide it from

others.

28. “My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen thou me according unto

thy word.”

“My soul melteth for heartiness.” He was dissolving away in tears. The

solid strength of his constitution was turning to liquid, as if molten by the

furnace-heat of his afflictions Heaviness of soul is a killing thing, and when

it abounds, it threatens to turn life into a long death, in which a man seems

to drop away in a perpetual drip of grief. Tears are the distillation of the

heart when a man weeps he wastes away his soul. Some of us know what

great heaviness means, for we have been brought under its power again

and again, and often have we felt ourselves to be poured out like water,

and near to being like water spilt upon the ground, never again to be

gathered up. There is one good point in this downcast state, for it is

better to be melted with grief than to be hardened by impenitence.

“Strengthen thou me, according unto thy word.” He had found out an

ancient promise that the saints shall be strengthened, and here he pleads it.

His hope in his state of depression lies not in himself, but in his God; if he

may be strengthened from on high he will yet shake off his heaviness and

rise to joy again. Observe how he pleads the promise of the word, and asks

for nothing more than to be dealt with after the recorded manner of the

Lord of mercy. Had not Hannah sung, “He shall give strength unto his

King, and exalt the horn of his anointed” God strengthens us by infusing

grace through his word: the word which creates can certainly sustain.

Grace can enable us to bear the constant fret of an abiding sorrow, it can

repair the decay caused by the perpetual tear-drip, and give to the believer

the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Let us always resort to

prayer in our desponding times, for it is the surest and shortest way out of

the depths. In that prayer let us plead nothing but the word of God; for

there is no plea like a promise, no argument like a word from our covenant

God.

Note how David records his inner soul-life. In verse 20 he says, “My soul

breaketh”; in verse 25, “My soul cleaveth unto the dust”; and here, “My

soul melteth.’” Further on, in verse 81, he cries, “My soul fainteth” in

109, ‘“My soul is continually in my hand’”; in 167, “My soul hath kept thy

testimonies”; and lastly, in 175, “Let my soul live.” Some people do not

even know that they have a soul, and here is David all soul. What a

difference there is between the spiritually living and the spiritually dead!

29. “Remove from me the way of lying: and grant me: thy law

graciously.”

“Remove from me the way of lying.” This is the way of gin, error,

idolatry, folly, self-righteousness, formalism, hypocrisy. David would not

only be kept from that way, but have it kept from him; he cannot endure to

have it near him, he would have it swept away from his sight, He desired to

be right and upright, true and in the truth; but he feared that a measure of

falsehood would cling to him unless the Lord took it away, and therefore

he earnestly cried for its removal. False motives may at times sway us, and

we may fall into mistaken notions of our own spiritual condition before

God, which erroneous conceits may be kept up by a. natural prejudice in

our own favor, and so we may be confirmed in a delusion, and abide under

error unless grace comes to the rescue. No true heart can rest in a false

view of itself it finds no anchorage, but is tossed to and fro till it gets into

the truth and the truth into it. The true-born child of heaven sighs out and

cries against a lie, desiring to have it taken away as much as a man desires

to be set at a distance from a venomous serpent or a raging lion.

“And grant me thy law graciously.” He is in a gracious state who looks

upon the law itself as a gift of grace. David wishes to have the law opened

up to his understanding, engraved upon his heart, and carried out in his life;

for this he seeks the Lord, and pleads for it as a gracious grant. No doubt

he viewed this as the only mode of deliverance from the power of

falsehood if the law be not in our hearts the lie will enter. David would

seem to have remembered those times when, according to the eastern

fashion, he had practiced deceit for his own preservation, and he saw that

he had been weak and erring on that point; therefore he was bowed down

in spirit and begged to be quickened and delivered from transgressing in

that manner any more. Holy men cannot review their sins without tears,

nor weep over them without entreating to be saved from further offending.

There is an evident opposition between falsehood and the gracious power

of God’s law. The only way to expel the lie is to accept the truth. Grace

also has a clear affinity to truth: no sooner do we meet with the sound of

the word “graciously” than we hear the footfall of truth: “I have chosen

the way of truth.” Grace and truth are ever linked together, and a belief of

the doctrines of grace is a grand preservative from deadly error.

In the fifth verse of the preceding octave (21) David cries out against pride,

and here against lying — these are much the same thing. Is not pride the

greatest of all lie?

30. “I have chosen the way of truth; thy judgments have I laid before

me.”

“I have chosen the way of truth.” As he abhorred the way of lying, so he

chose the way of truth: a man must choose one or the other, for there

cannot be any neutrality in the case. Men do not drop into the right way by

chance; they must choose it, and continue to choose it, or they will soon

wander from it. Those whom God has chosen in due time choose his way.

There is a doctrinal way of truth which we ought to choose, rejecting every

dogma of man’s devising; there is a ceremonial way of truth which we

should follow, detesting all the forms which apostate churches have

invented; and then there is a practical way of truth, the way of holiness, to

which we must adhere, whatever may be our temptation to forsake it. Let

our election be made, and made irrevocably. Let us answer to all seducers,

“I have chosen, and what I have chosen I have chosen.” O Lord, by thy

grace lead us with a hearty free-will to choose to do thy will; thus shall

thine eternal choice of us bring forth the end which it designs.

“Thy judgments have I laid before me.” What he had chosen he kept in

mind, laying it out before his mind’s eye. Men do not become holy by a

careless wish: there must: be study, consideration, deliberation and earnest

inquiry, or the way of truth will be missed. The commands of God must be

set before us as the mark to aim at, the model to work by, the road to walk

in. If we put God’s judgments into the background we shall soon find

ourselves going back from them.

Here again the sixth stanzas of the third and fourth octaves ring out a

similar note. “I have kept thy testimonies” (22), and “Thy judgments

have I laid before me.” This is a happy confession, and there is no wonder

that it is repeated.

31. “I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O Lord, put me not to shame.”

“I have stuck unto thy testimonies,” — or, I have cleaved; for the word is

the same as in verse 25. Though cleaving to the dust of sorrow and of

death, yet he kept fast hold of the divine word. This was his comfort, and

his faith stuck to it, his love and his obedience held on to it, his heart and

his mind abode in meditation upon it. His choice was so heartily and

deliberately made that he stuck to it for life, and could not be removed

from it by the reproaches of those who despised the way of the Lord. What

could he have gained by quitting the sacred testimony? Say rather, what

would he not have lost if he had ceased to cleave to the divine word? It is

pleasant to look back upon past perseverance and to expect grace to

continue equally steadfast in the future. He who has enabled us to stick to

him will surely stick to us.

In these days, when so many make their boast of “advanced thought,” it

may sound singular to speak of sticking to God’s testimonies; but

whether singular or not, let us imitate the man of God. Perseverance in the

truth when it is unfashionable is the test of a real believer. The faith of

God’s elect wears constancy as its crown. Others may gad abroad after the

novelties of human opinion; but the true-born child of God glories in saying

to his heavenly Father — “I have stuck unto thy testimonies.”

“O LORD, put me not to shame!” This would happen if God’s promises

were unfulfilled, and if the heart of God’s servant were suffered to fail.

This we have no reason to fear, since the Lord is faithful to his word. But it

might also happen through the believer’s acting in an inconsistent manner,

as David had himself once done, when he fell into the way of lying, and

pretended to be a madman. If we are not true to our profession we may be

left to reap the fruit of our folly, and that will be the bitter thing called

“shame.” It is evident from this that a believer ought never to be

ashamed, but act the part of a brave man who has done nothing to be

ashamed of in believing his God, and does not mean to adopt a craven

tone in the presence of the Lord’s enemies. If we beseech the Lord not to

put us to shame, surely we ought not ourselves to be ashamed in the

presence of the adversary.

The prayer of this verse is found in the parallel verse of the next section

(39): “Turn away my reproach which I fear.” It is evidently a petition

which was often on the Psalmist’s heart. A brave heart is more wounded by

shame than by any weapon which a soldier’s hand can wield.

32. “I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge

your heart.”

“I will run the way of thy commandments.” With energy, promptitude,

and zeal he would perform the will of God, but he needed more life and

liberty from the hand of God. “When thou shalt enlarge my heart,” Yes,

the heart is the master; the feet soon run when the heart is free and

energetic. Let the affections be aroused and eagerly set on divine things,

and our actions will be full of force, swiftness and delight. God must work

in us first, and then we shall will and do according to his good pleasure.

He must change the heart, unite the heart, encourage the heart, strengthen

the heart, and enlarge the heart, and then the course of the lift will be

gracious, sincere, happy and earnest; so that: from our lowest up to our

highest state in grace we must attribute all to the free favor of our God.

We must run; for grace is not an overwhelming force which compels

unwilling minds to move contrary to their will: our running is the

spontaneous leaping forward of a mind which has been set free by the hand

of God, and delights to show its freedom by its bounding speed.

What a change from verse 25 to the present, from cleaving to the dust to

running in the way! It is the excellence of holy sorrow that it works in us

the quickening for which we seek, and then we show the sincerity of our

grief and the reality of our revival by being zealous in the ways of the

Lord.

For the third time an octave closes with, “I will.” These “I wills” of the

Psalms are right worthy of being each one the subject of study and

discourse.

Note how the heart has been spoken of up to this point: ‘“whole heart’”

(2), “uprightness of heart” (7), “hid in mine heart” (2), “enlarge my

heart.” There are many more allusions further on, and these all go to

show what heart-work David’s religion was. It is one of the great lacks of

our age that heads count for more than hearts, and men are far more ready

to learn than to love, though they are by no means eager in either direction.