Psalms 25:8,9

Good and upright is the Lord; therefore will He teach sinners in the way.

The guarantee in God for guidance from God

The Psalmist exchanges petition for contemplation; and gazes on the character of God, in order thereby to be helped to confidence in an answer to his prayer. Such alternations of petition and contemplation are the very heartbeats of devotion, now expanding in desire, and now closing on its treasure in fruition. Either attitude is incomplete without the other. Do our prayers pass into such still contemplation of the face of God?

I. The Psalmist’s thought of God. “Good and upright.” God equals here, kind, beneficent. He binds the two quantities together in the feeling of their profoundest harmony. Neither of these reaches its highest beauty and supremest power except it be associated with the other. In the spectrum analysis of that great light there are the two lines; the one purest white of righteousness, and the other tinged with a ruddier glow, the line of love. We are always tempted to wrench the two apart. Hence you get types of religion in which one or the other is emphasised to such a degree as almost to blot out the other. God is love. We cannot make too much of His love, unless by reason of it we make too little of His righteousness.

II. The calm confidence builded on this conception of the Divine character. What a wonderful “therefore” that is!--the logic of faith, not of sense. The co-existence of these two aspects in the perfect Divine character is for us a guarantee that He cannot leave men, however guilty they may be, to grope in the dark, or keep His lips locked in silence. The Psalmist does not mean guidance as to practical advantages and worldly prosperity. He means guidance as to the one important thing, the sovereign conception of duty, the eternal law of right and wrong. What is love, in its loftiest, purest, and therefore in its Divine aspect? What, except an infinite desire to impart, and that the object on which it falls shall be blessed. God is the “giving” God. Not our happiness, but our rectitude, is God’s end in all that He does for us. Since righteousness is blended with love, therefore He comes, and must desire to bring all wanderers back into the paths which are His own. God can find His way to my heart, and infuse there illumination, and pure affections, and make my eye clear to discern what is right.

III. The condition on which the fulfilment of this confidence depends. “The meek will He guide,” etc. The condition of our hearing and profiting, by the guidance is meekness; or what we might call docility, of which the prime element is the submission of our own wills to God’s. The reason why we go wrong about our duties is mainly that we do not supremely want to go right, but rather to gratify inclinations, tastes, or passions. Some of us do not wish to know what God wishes us to do. Some of us cannot bear suspense of judgment, or of decision, and are always in a hurry to be in action, and think the time lost that is spent in waiting to know what God the Lord will speak. If you do not clearly see what to do, then clearly you may see that you are to do nothing. Wait till God points the path, and wish Him to point it, and hush the noises that prevent your hearing His voice, and keep your wills in absolute submission; and, above all, he sure that you act out your convictions, and have no knowledge of duty which is not represented in your practice, and you will get all the light which you need: sometimes being taught by errors, no doubt, often being left to make mistakes as to what is expedient in regard to worldly prosperity, but being infallibly guided as to the path of duty and the path of peace and righteousness. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Our Divine Teacher

Men die for lack of knowledge, hence teaching has ever held a high place in God’s dealing with sinful man, and the Divine Teacher--the Holy Spirit--not only points out the way of life, but confers power to pursue that way. The first without the second would prove ineffective to accomplish the salvation of any man. “It would have been,” says T.G. Selby, “a cruel absurdity if someone had stepped up to Caliban or to Quasimodo, the dwarf in Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame, who impersonates all ugliness, and had said ‘Be Apollo, he is the one mould of physical perfection into which you may try and compass yourself.’ It would be insane stupidity if Tadema or Burne Jones were to go to some limbless monstrosity in a penny show and say, ‘Join our school, paint according to our methods, reproduce our best characteristics.’” The poor wretch lacks the natural endowments which fit him to take his first lessons in art.

The meditation of a devout soul upon God

God guides the soul in a certain way. What is it?

I. It is the way of moral excellence. It is described as--

1. “Judgment,” i.e. rectitude.

2. “His way,” the way which is in accordance with their nature.

3. “His covenant.” All these expressions mean holiness, for thereinto doth God guide the soul.

II. Of experimental blessedness. “All the paths of the Lord are mercy (Psalms 25:10).

1. They experience the mercy of God in their use. In healing their diseases, sustaining their existence, removing their perplexities, etc.,

2. The truth of God in their use. “Mercy and truth.”

III. Of forgiveness. “Pardon mine iniquity,” etc. (Psalms 25:11).

1. There is an urgent need for pardon; and--

2. A sovereign reason,--“Thy name’s sake.”

IV. Of moral wealth. Such wealth is--

1. Abundant. “His soul shall dwell at ease.” He shall lodge in goodness, as the margin has it.

2. Permanent, “dwell.”

3. Transmissible. “His seed shall inherit the earth.” A truly gooey man can transmit his goodness to his children, and bring them into the spiritual inheritance. And these--not the owners of broad acres--are the true inheritors of the earth.

4. Free. “What man is he that feareth the Lord? Him,” etc. It does not matter who he is, if he has true religion.

V. Of Divine friendship. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.” The man who walks in this way gets so intimate and grows so friendly with God that he becomes initiated into His secrets, acquainted with His counsels. There is no mystery in this. We see it every day where there is strong mutual sympathy between two minds.

VI. Of ultimate deliverance. “He shall pluck my feet out of the net.”

1. Men are entangled in dangers. The devil has laid his snares in all directions.

2. True men will be delivered. The “net” will be broken, the snarer confounded, and the soul set free.

3. For their eyes are ever towards the Lord. God fills up the horizon of a good man’s soul. (Homilist.)