The psalmist here shows that godly people are happy people; they are,
and shall be, blessed indeed. Felicity is the thing we all pretend to
aim at and pursue. He does not say here wherein it consists; it is
enough for us to know what we must do and be that we may attain to it,
and that we are here told. All men would be happy, but few take the
right way; God has here laid before us the right way, which we may be
sure will end in happiness, though it be strait and narrow.
Blessednesses are to the righteous; all manner of blessedness. Now
observe the characters of the happy people. Those are happy, 1. Who
make the will of God the rule of all their actions, and govern
themselves, in their whole conversation, by that rule: They walk in the
law of the Lord, v. 1. God's word is a law to them, not only in this or
that instance, but in the whole course of their conversation; they walk
within the hedges of that law, which they dare not break through by
doing any thing it forbids; and they walk in the paths of that law,
which they will not trifle in, but press forward in them towards the
mark, taking every step by rule and never walking at all adventures.
This is walking in God's ways (v. 3), the ways which he has marked out
to us and has appointed us to walk in. It will not serve us to make
religion the subject of our discourse, but we must make it the rule of
our walk; we must walk in his ways, not in the way of the world, or of
our own hearts, Job xxiii. 10, 11; xxxi. 7. 2. Who are upright and
honest in their religion--undefiled in the way, not only who keep
themselves pure from the pollutions of actual sin, unspotted from the
world, but who are habitually sincere in their intentions, in whose
spirit there is no guile, who are really as good as they seem to be and
row the same way as they look. 3. Who are true to the trust reposed in
them as God's professing people. It was the honour of the Jews that to
them were committed the oracles of God; and blessed are those who
preserve pure and entire that sacred deposit, who keep his testimonies
as a treasure of inestimable value, keep them as the apple of their
eye, so keep them as to carry the comfort of them themselves to another
world and leave the knowledge and profession of them to those who shall
come after them in this world. Those who would walk in the law of the
Lord must keep his testimonies, that is, his truths. Those will not
long make conscience of good practices who do not adhere to good
principles. Or his testimonies may denote his covenant; the ark of the
covenant is called the ark of the testimony. Those do not keep covenant
with God who do not keep the commandments of God. 4. Who have a single
eye to God as their chief good and highest end in all they do in
religion (v. 2): They seek him with their whole heart. They do not seek
themselves and their own things, but God only; this is that which they
aim at, that God may be glorified in their obedience and that they may
be happy in God's acceptance. He is, and will be, the rewarder, the
reward, of all those who thus seek him diligently, seek him with the
heart, for that is it that God looks at and requires; and with the
whole heart, for if the heart be divided between him and the world it
is faulty. 5. Who carefully avoid all sin (v. 3): They do no iniquity;
they do not allow themselves in any sin; they do not commit it as those
do who are the servants of sin; they do not make a practice of it, do
not make a trade of it. They are conscious to themselves of much
iniquity that clogs them in the ways of God, but not of that iniquity
which draws them out of those ways. Blessed and holy are those who thus
exercise themselves to have always consciences void of offence.