The soul's most blessed condition.
That which the psalmist here affirms of himself is undoubtedly the spiritual condition which is nearest to heaven that here on earth we can know.
I. HE TELLS US WHAT IT IS NOT.
1. Pride of heart is absent from it. "My heart is not haughty." We may say this to our fellow-men, and deceive them by a show of humility; but it is quite another thing to affirm this, as is here done, before the Lord, "to whom all hearts are open, and from whom no secrets are hid" Happy are we if before him we can say this. For pride is destructive of all real happiness: it is continually meeting with rebuffs; nothing people like so much as to take down the man who is haughty of heart. To humiliate him is the keenest delight. If the devil has planted pride in all men's hearts, as he has, God has so ordered the world that every man's hand shall be against such pride.
2. It is free from ambition. "Nor mine eyes lofty." The man's eyes are not forever fixed on and hankering after something higher up in the world than it has yet reached. Blessed is the man who is content with the lot God hath ordered for him, and is solicitous only to be found faithful there.
3. And from presumption. "Neither do I exercise myself," etc. (Psalms 131:1). But how many there are who are forever doing that which the psalmist here disclaims! David's brothers accused him of this, though wrongly, and blamed him for leaving his sheep to come to the battle-field. But though David was innocent of such fault, many are guilty of it. They want to know all mysteries, to be able to explain all that they see around them in God's providence, and all that they meet with in the Scriptures: they want to undertake work which is beyond them, whilst that which is within their power they refuse. They could sweep a crossing, but they want to rule a kingdom; they could manage the one talent, but because they have not the five, the one they have they bury, to their infinite shame and loss.
II. HE TELLS US WHAT IT IS. To have one's soul "as a child that is weaned from its mother." Therefore:
1. It is separation from what it once loved. It is a terrible time for the child when this separation has to be made: the metaphor is as touching and beautiful as it is powerfully expressive. And the soul knows how it once loved the world, not so much, perhaps, the evil things of the world as those that were not evil; but it has come to give them all up, and to be content with what the Lord orders for him. Yet morels it separated from the sinful ways of the world. Once it loved them, but that time is past.
2. And it is not only separated from them, but has ceased to desire them. The child is happy and at rest, though no longer allowed that in which it once so delighted. The very desire is gone.
3. And this is not through any disappointment, chagrin, or disgust with the world. Some men rush from the world in anger because of the way it has treated them. But this is not the motive here: such are wrenched from the world rather than weaned from it.
4. Nor either is it the relinquishment which comes from satiety with the world's pleasures;—from having had so much that the soul has come to care no more for it, its sweets clog and nauseate rather than give pleasure.
5. Nor from want of capacity to enjoy what the world has to offer. But it is a willing abandonment of that which once it delighted in—the world's pleasures, profits, honors, comforts, as well as its more questionable belongings.
III. HOW WAS THIS BROUGHT ABOUT?
1. It was not self-produced. No child ever weaned itself.
2. It has been the Lord's work. By his Holy Spirit and his providence he has wrought this wondrous change. Hence we have come to find that what once delighted us so much fails to do so now. The world has become embittered to our taste. Our God has separated us from what we loved and clung to; there was no chance of our voluntarily giving it up, and so God took it away. And he has given us what is better far than that which we have lost (cf. Psalms 63:1-11.). Higher, purer joys are ours. Also he has blessed our own endeavors after self-denial and renunciation; he has "worked in us to will and to do,' etc.
3. And the result is most blessed. The calm quiet and stillness of the soul; its freedom from fret; its heavenly peace.
IV. WHAT THIS EXPERIENCE LEADS TO. A delight in God, and a conviction of his love and faithfulness, which make him call upon all his countrymen to hope in the Lord. When the soul has this experience, it cannot but commend the Lord to others. It must bear its testimony.—S.C.