Psalms 119:87

They had almost consumed me upon earth; but I forsook not Thy precepts.

David’s behaviour in trouble

I. How he behaved in extreme distress.

1. The precepts of God were the constant subject of his thoughts.

2. He was careful to walk in the way wherein he was directed by the Word of God to walk.

3. He patiently submitted to the will of God in all his persecutions and tribulations.

4. His patience was attended with meekness of spirit and behaviour towards the instruments of his calamities.

5. He maintained his uprightness under all the temptations of adversity and persecution.

6. He served God and his country in the best way that he could when he was restrained from serving them as he wished to do.

II. What his reasons were for so invariably adhering to his duty.

1. He was fully persuaded that nothing happened or could happen to him without the permission of Divine providence.

2. It was of incomparably greater importance in his view to behave dutifully under trouble than to obtain deliverance from it.

3. He knew that his troubles would all come to a happy end.

4. He knew that his troubles would turn to a good account through the grace of God enabling him to make the proper improvement of them. (H. Belfrage, D. D.)

When obedience is difficult

One of Dickens’s most enjoyable and helpful characters, Mark Tapley, always kept up his spirits, and the spirits of all those around him, but he was dissatisfied because his surroundings were so pleasant that there was no credit in being jolly among them. At last his circumstances changed, and his surroundings became doleful indeed; but he saw his chance to be jolly with some credit to himself, and manfully rose to the glorious opportunity. In a similar way we may say that obeying when obedience is easy does not count for much; the real test of obedience comes when it is hard to obey, when we are asked to do something that we do not want to do, something that all our nature shrinks from. If we obey then, and, moreover, if we obey cheerfully and even with gladness, we may know that the spirit of obedience is really in us. The essence of Christian life is obedience. It is the key to all progress in character, to all growth in happiness, to all ownership in the Kingdom of Heaven. Any one that realizes this will actually long for opportunities of difficult obedience, as the athlete looks forward with ardour to the laborious practice, since it is the way, and the only way, to the olive wreath. (J. B. Morgan.)