32. I will run the way of thy commandments. With energy, promptness, 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. 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, and enlarge the heart, and then the course of life will be gracious, sincere, happy, and earnest; so 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. The 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; there are many more allusions further on, and these all go to show what heart-work David’s religion was.
No comments:
Post a Comment