Expositions of Holy Scripture: PsalmsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Psalms -- Commentaries
'Thou hast delivered my feet that I may walk.' What are feet for?
Walking. Further, notice the precise force of that phrase, 'that I may
walk _before God_.' It is not altogether the same as the cognate one
which is used about Enoch, that 'he walked _with_ God.' That expresses
communion as with a friend; this, the ordering of one's life before His
eye, and in the consciousness of His presence as Judge and as
Taskmaster. So you find the expression used in almost the only other
occasion where it occurs in the Old Testament, where God says to
Abraham, 'Walk before Me, and'--because thou dost order thy life in the
consciousness that I am looking at thee--'be thou perfect.' So, to walk
before God is to live even in all the distracting activities of daily
life, with the clear realisation, and the continued thought burning in
our minds that we are doing them all in His presence. Think of what a
regiment of soldiers on parade does as each file passes in front of the
saluting point where the commanding officer is standing. How each man
dresses up, and they pull themselves together, keeping step, sloping
their rifles rightly. We are not on parade, but about business a great
deal more serious than that. We are doing our fighting with the Captain
looking at us, and that should be a stimulus, a joy and not a terror.
Realise God's eye watching you, and sin, and meanness, and negligence,
and selfishness, and sensuality, and lust, and passion, and all the
other devils that are in you will vanish like ghosts at cockcrow. 'Walk
before Me,' and if you feel that I am beside you, you cannot sin. 'Walk
before Me, and be thou perfect.' Notice,
III. The region in which that observance of the divine eye is to be
carried on.
'In the light of the living,' says the Psalmist. That seems to
correspond to the first clause of his hope; just as the previous word
that I have been commenting upon, 'walking before Him,' corresponds to
the second, where he speaks about his feet. 'Thou hast delivered my soul
from death.... I will walk before Thee in the light of the
living'--where Thou dost still permit my delivered soul to be. And the
phrase seems to mean the sunshine of human life contrasted with the
darkness of _Sheol_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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