Psalms 37:5

Commit thy way unto the Lord.

Commit thy way

What more appropriate motto can we select for a new year? Counsel such as this is in itself a kind of revelation. It reveals us to ourselves! Is our way such that we can commit it to the Lord? Now, such committing of our way to God means--

I. Meditation before prayer. “Meditation,” says St. Ambrose, “is the eye wherewith we see God, and prayer is the wing wherewith we flee to Him.” Prayer is not an accidental expression that comes suddenly to the mind; it is the soul’s recognition of its need. And to pray aright we must have been alone with ourselves before we are alone with God. Bunyan said, “In prayer it is better to have a heart without words, than words without a heart.”

II. Consciousness of ignorance. We say to God, “Thou and Thou only knowest the true path of life.” Our ignorance is at times very humbling to us. We want to know all, and in reality we know so little. How terrible it would be if we could not commit our way unto God. How glad, then, should we be that God invites us at all times to come to Him. As Quarles says, “Heaven’s never deaf but when man’s heart is dark.”

III. Conscious obedience and cheerful acquiescence in his will. Dependence must end in obedience. Owen says, “He who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays.” Can there be a more miserable man on earth than he who knows the hypocrisy of his prayers, who is inwardly conscious of his wrong state, who knows that he is living without God, and yet feels tremulous and sad about it all? He has not really returned to God. He has not realized again the value of the Saviour’s friendship; he cannot forsake the indulgence of some secret sin; he cannot quite quit fellowships that are risking his immortal weal. The reverences of religion still touch him with awe, the piety of the early child-home is still a memory in his manhood; he despises men who have no religion. But his will is not obedient: it cannot be said of him that he is a follower of the Lamb. Let us not slight this aspect of the subject--committing our way means conscious obedience unto God. And not merely endurance, nor passive submission, but cheerful acquiescence. This lights the smile on the sufferer’s face; this gives sunlight to the gloomy Catacombs. When the soul comes away from communion with God in this spirit, the ravens of anxiety and care forsake the heart. The world may know how to provoke mirth; it may amuse with sallies of wit; it may excite with sensuous joys; but all through the ages cheerfulness has been the child of faith, and has seldom forsaken the sufferer even in life’s last hours.

IV. Committing the end to God. When and where belong to Him. Life has been quite other than most of us thought it, and so probably will death be. It would be a mean thing to wish to commit the end to God and not all that leads to it,-to rely on some mere death-bed repentance. So to live as to feel sure that when the evening comes we shall have nothing to do but to die, this is the Christian’s heritage. And then let the curtains be rent suddenly, or taken down gently; let the light go out in a sharp gust, or burn down in the socket slowly; this surely is what we all wish to be able to say, “Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” (W. M. Statham.)

Confidence in God

I. The case supposed. This psalm represents the case, to wit, the flourishing condition of the wicked to the great prejudice and hazard of God’s people. He persuades us, in such instances, to confidence in God and patience in well-doing; and discovers the estate of pious and ungodly men to be as different, not only in the world to come, but through God’s just judgment many times even in this life, as their principles and practices have been.

II. The direction, or counsel.

1. Committing our way unto the Lord, though it may be taken to signify the same as casting our burden upon Him (Psalms 55:22), and casting our care upon Him (1 Peter 5:7), yet, as “way “doth in Scripture use denote the course of life, the method and order of our conversation, I take it to comprehend these three things.

(1) An entire obedience to the Word of God, as the rule of our actions.

(2) A meek submission to the will of God, which governs human affairs.

(3) A regular walking in the duties of our particular calling; leaving the rest, as things which we are not immediately concerned in, to God Almighty’s disposal.

2. Trusting in God imports--

(1) A fiducial reliance upon His wisdom and goodness in the care and conduct of our persons, and of all our concerns.

(2) A declaration of that our dependence upon Him in earnest and frequent prayer.

(3) And withal honest endeavours of our own for our preservation, in the use of all lawful means; holding ourselves still in that station wherein God hath placed us, and leaving the event to Him. (A. Littleton, D. D.)

The believer’s present and future

I. The believer’s present state. It is one of--

1. Acceptance in the Beloved (Psalms 89:33). He may distress, but He will not disown.

2. Imperfection. He is, indeed, under the Holy Spirit’s transforming hand. While justification is complete, sanctification is progressive, and therefore at every stage but the last, imperfect.

3. Sorrow (Romans 7:21; Galatians 5:17). The time for unmingled joy is not yet. Besides this, the refinement of the feelings which the Gospel produces frequently prepares the heart to feel, more acutely than many others, the usual crosses, losses, trials or bereavements which are the common lot of all.

4. Obscurity. The same unbelief which rejected the Saviour, with all the evidence He produced of His divine mission, serves the disciples as it served their Lord. Besides, the Christian is a mixture of opposites, and therefore we wonder not that he should appear in a doubtful light even to himself and his fellow-believers.

5. Eager expectancy (Heb 9:28; 2 Peter 3:12; Luke 21:28; Php 4:5; 2 Corinthians 5:2; Romans 8:28).

II. The expectation of the church of Christ. We live between the two advents of our Lord, and the Bible teaches us to look back to the first to know how salvation was wrought, and forward to the second to know what salvation is. The first gives the title to it, the second will give possession of it. Faith looks back to the one, hope looks forward to the other. The Church of Christ will appear in its--

1. Unity.

2. Holiness.

3. Resurrection glory. (R. J. Rowton, M. A.)

Quiet trust

After the fearful defeat of Jena in 1806, when Prussia went down before the cruel and reckless ambition of Napoleon, on no one did the throe of a nation’s fall come with a more agonizing sense of ruin than on the young and beautiful Queen Louise. When she heard the news of the battle of Jena, and that she must leave her beloved home, she burst into uncontrollable weeping. How did she calm her anguish? It was the pious custom in Germany, when a pupil left school, to accompany the boy singing the thirty-seventh Psalm, of which the fifth verse is, “Fret not thyself because of evil-doers. Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He will bring it to pass.” The young queen sat down to her piano and softly sang the psalm. When she rose her eye was clear, her spirit was tranquil. That same verse was also the comfort of David Livingstone during all his perils and fevers and lastings in scorching Africa and its desert wastes. (Dean Farrar.)