The Psalmist pleads with God a double motive--His relation to us and His own perfectness, Thou art my God; therefore teach me.' Thy Spirit is good; therefore lead me into the land of uprightness.' I can but glance for a moment at these two pleas of the prayer.
Note, then, first, God's personal relation to the devout soul, as the guarantee that that soul shall be taught, not merely to know, but also to do His will. If He be my God,' there can be no deeper desire in His heart, than that His will should be my will. And this He desires, not from any masterfulness or love of dominion, lint only from love to us. If He be my God, and therefore longing to have me obedient, He will not withhold what is needed to make me so God is no hard Taskmaster who sets us to make bricks without straw. Whatsoever He commands He gives, and His commandments are always second and His gifts first. He bestows Himself and then He says, For the love's sake, do My will.' Be sure that the sacred bond which knits us to Him is regarded by Him, the faithful Creator, as an obligation which He recognises and respects and will discharge. We have a right to go to Him and to say to Him, Thou art my God; and Thou wilt not be what Thou art, nor do what Thou hast pledged Thyself to do, unless Thou makest me to know and to do Thy will.'
And on the other hand, if we have taken Him for ours, and have the bond knit from our side as well as from His, then the fact of our faith gives us a claim on Him which He is sure to honour. The soul that can say,' I have taken Thee for mine,' has a hold on God which God is only too glad to recognise and to vindicate. And whoever, humbly trusting to that great Father in the heavens, feels that he belongs to God, and that God belongs to him, is warranted in praying, Teach me, and make me, to do Thy will,' and in being confident of an answer.
And there is the other plea with Him and guarantee for us, drawn from God's own moral character and perfectness. The last clause of my text may either be read as our Bible has it, Thy Spirit is good; lead me,' or Let Thy good Spirit lead me.' In either case the goodness of the divine Spirit is the plea on which the prayer is grounded. The goodness here referred to is, as I take it, not merely beneficence and kindliness, but rather goodness in its broader and loftier sense of perfect moral purity. So that the thought just comes to this--we have the right to expect that we shall be made participant of the divine nature for so sweet, so deep, so tender is the tie that knits a devout soul to God, that nothing short of conformity to the perfect purity of God can satisfy the aspirations of the creature, or discharge the obligations of the Creator.
It is a daring thought. The Psalmist's desire was a prophecy. The New Testament vindicates and fulfils it when it says We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.' Since He now dwells in the land of uprightness,' who once dwelt among us in this weary world of confusion and of sin, then we one day shall be with Him. Christ's heart cannot be satisfied, Christ's Cross cannot be rewarded, the divine nature cannot be at rest, the purpose of redemption cannot be accomplished, until all who have trusted in Christ be partakers of divine purity, and all the wanderers he led by devious and yet by right paths, by crooked and yet by straight ways, by places rough and yet smooth, into the land of uprightness.' Where and what He is, there and that shall also His servants be.
My brother! if to do the will of God is to dwell in the land of uprightness, disobedience is to dwell in a dry and thirsty land, barren and dreary, horrid with frowning rocks and jagged cliffs, where every stone cuts the feet and every step is a blunder, and all the paths end at last on the edge of an abyss, and crumble into nothingness beneath the despairing foot that treads them. Do you see to it that you walk in ways of righteousness which are paths of peace; and look for all the help you need, with assured faith, to Him who shall guide us by His counsel and afterwards receive us to His glory.'
