How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.
Parallel Translations
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How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.
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Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.
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BETH. Wherewithal shall a young man keep his way pure? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word.
Cross-references (27)
Passages linked to Psalms 119:9 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 2 Timothy 2:22 Flee from youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
- James 1:21-25 Therefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with humility the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror; for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of freedom and continues, not being a hearer who forgets, but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does.
- 2 Timothy 3:15-17 From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that each person who belongs to God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
- Joshua 1:7 Only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Don’t turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.
- Psalms 25:7 Don’t remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions. Remember me according to your loving kindness, for your goodness’ sake, Yahweh.
- Psalms 119:11 I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
- Titus 2:4-6 that they may train the young wives to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sober minded, chaste, workers at home, kind, being in subjection to their own husbands, that God’s word may not be blasphemed. Likewise, exhort the younger men to be sober minded.
- Psalms 1:1-3 Blessed is the man who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand on the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in Yahweh’s law. On his law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that produces its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither. Whatever he does shall prosper.
- Proverbs 1:10 My son, if sinners entice you, don’t consent.
- Psalms 34:11 Come, you children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of Yahweh.
- Psalms 19:7-11 Yahweh’s law is perfect, restoring the soul. Yahweh’s covenant is sure, making wise the simple. Yahweh’s precepts are right, rejoicing the heart. Yahweh’s commandment is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever. Yahweh’s ordinances are true, and righteous altogether. They are more to be desired than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the extract of the honeycomb. Moreover your servant is warned by them. In keeping them there is great reward.
- Psalms 119:97-105 How I love your law! It is my meditation all day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for your commandments are always with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, because I have kept your precepts. I have kept my feet from every evil way, that I might observe your word. I have not turned away from your ordinances, for you have taught me. How sweet are your promises to my taste, more than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts, I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path.
- Proverbs 6:20-35 My son, keep your father’s commandment, and don’t forsake your mother’s teaching. Bind them continually on your heart. Tie them around your neck. When you walk, it will lead you. When you sleep, it will watch over you. When you awake, it will talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp, and the law is light. Reproofs of instruction are the way of life, to keep you from the immoral woman, from the flattery of the wayward wife’s tongue. Don’t lust after her beauty in your heart, neither let her captivate you with her eyelids. For a prostitute reduces you to a piece of bread. The adulteress hunts for your precious life. Can a man scoop fire into his lap, and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals, and his feet not be scorched? So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife. Whoever touches her will not be unpunished. Men don’t despise a thief if he steals to satisfy himself when he is hungry; but if he is found, he shall restore seven times. He shall give all the wealth of his house. He who commits adultery with a woman is void of understanding. He who does it destroys his own soul. He will get wounds and dishonor. His reproach will not be wiped away. For jealousy arouses the fury of the husband. He won’t spare in the day of vengeance. He won’t regard any ransom, neither will he rest content, though you give many gifts.
- John 15:3 You are already pruned clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.
- Proverbs 4:10-17 Listen, my son, and receive my sayings. The years of your life will be many. I have taught you in the way of wisdom. I have led you in straight paths. When you go, your steps will not be hampered. When you run, you will not stumble. Take firm hold of instruction. Don’t let her go. Keep her, for she is your life. Don’t enter into the path of the wicked. Don’t walk in the way of evil men. Avoid it, and don’t pass by it. Turn from it, and pass on. For they don’t sleep unless they do evil. Their sleep is taken away, unless they make someone fall. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.
- Ecclesiastes 11:9–12:1 Rejoice, young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth, and walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes; but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Therefore remove sorrow from your heart, and put away evil from your flesh; for youth and the dawn of life are vanity. Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw near, when you will say, “I have no pleasure in them;”
- Deuteronomy 6:6-9 These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.
- Proverbs 1:4 to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young man:
- Proverbs 4:1 Listen, sons, to a father’s instruction. Pay attention and know understanding;
- Job 1:5 It was so, when the days of their feasting had run their course, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts.” Job did so continually.
- Psalms 78:4-8 We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of Yahweh, his strength, and his wondrous deeds that he has done. For he established a covenant in Jacob, and appointed a teaching in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know, even the children who should be born; who should arise and tell their children, that they might set their hope in God, and not forget God’s deeds, but keep his commandments, and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that didn’t make their hearts loyal, whose spirit was not steadfast with God.
- Proverbs 7:7 I saw among the simple ones. I discerned among the youths a young man void of understanding,
- Luke 15:13 Not many days after, the younger son gathered all of this together and traveled into a far country. There he wasted his property with riotous living.
- Proverbs 5:7-23 Now therefore, my sons, listen to me. Don’t depart from the words of my mouth. Remove your way far from her. Don’t come near the door of her house, lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel one; lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich another man’s house. You will groan at your latter end, when your flesh and your body are consumed, and say, “How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor turned my ear to those who instructed me! I have come to the brink of utter ruin, among the gathered assembly.” Drink water out of your own cistern, running water out of your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, streams of water in the public squares? Let them be for yourself alone, not for strangers with you. Let your spring be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe and a graceful deer— let her breasts satisfy you at all times. Be captivated always with her love. For why should you, my son, be captivated with an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another? For the ways of man are before Yahweh’s eyes. He examines all his paths. The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare him. The cords of his sin hold him firmly. He will die for lack of instruction. In the greatness of his folly, he will go astray.
- Deuteronomy 17:18 It shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write himself a copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the Levitical priests.
- 2 Chronicles 6:16 “Now therefore, Yahweh, the God of Israel, keep with your servant David my father that which you have promised him, saying, ‘There shall not fail you a man in my sight to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children take heed to their way, to walk in my law as you have walked before me.’
- Job 13:26 For you write bitter things against me, and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth:
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 9. Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way?…
9. Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way? In this place he repeats, in different words, the same truth which he formerly advanced, That, however much men may pique themselves upon their own works, there is nothing pure in their life until they have made a complete surrender of themselves to the word of the Lord. The more effectually to excite them to this, he produces, in an especial manner, the example of children or youths. In mentioning these, he by no means gives an unbridled license to those who have arrived at mature years, or who are aged, as if they were competent to regulate their own life, and as if their own prudence served as a law to them; but because youth puts men where two ways meet, and renders it imperative for them to select the course of life which they mean to follow, he declares that, when a person sets about the regulation of his life, no advice will prove of any advantage, unless he adopts the law of God as his rule and guide. In this way the prophet stimulates men to an early and seasonable regulation of their manners, and not to delay doing so any longer, agreeably to the words of Solomon, “Remember thy Creator in thy youth, ere the days of trouble come, and the years which shall be grief unto thee,” Ecclesiastes 12:1 They who defer from time to time become hardened in their vicious practices, and arrive at mature years, when it is too late to attempt a reformation. There is another reason, arising from the fact, of the carnal propensities being very powerful in youth, requiring a dortble restraint; and the more they are inclined to excess, the greater is the necessity for curbing their licentiousness. The prophet, therefore, not without reason, exhorts them particularly to attend to the observance of the law. We may reason from the greater to the less; for if the law of God possesses the power of restraining the impetuosity of youth, so as to preserve pure and upright all who take it for their guide, then, assuredly, when they come to maturity, and their irregular desires are considerably abated, it will prove the best antidote for correcting their vices. The reason, therefore, of so much evil prevailing in the world, arises from men wallowing in their own impurity, and being disposed to yield more to their own inclination than to heavenly instruction. The only sure protection is, to regulate ourselves according to God’s word. Some, wise in their own conceit, throw themselves into the snares of Satan, others, from listlessness and languor, live a vile and wicked life.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Because youth is most given to licentiousness, he chiefly…
Because youth is most given to licentiousness, he chiefly warneth them to frame their lives betimes to God’s word.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Psa 119:9 BETH. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse…
Psa 119:9 BETH. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed [thereto] according to thy word.
Ver. 9. Wherewithal shall a young man] Semipuer, a lad, a stripling, who hath his name in Hebrew of tossing to and fro; confer Eph 4:14, and the same word signifieth youth and tow, Isa 1:31, or rather the shreds that fall from tow and flax, when whiffied; to note the vanity of youth, and its aptness to be enkindled, when once affections begin to boil within them. The Greek word for a youth comes from another that signifieth to be hot, and to boil up, or scald, ηιθεος of αιθω, and αιζηος of ζεω. Such a one, therefore, had need (if ever he think to be blessed, as Psa 119:1) to cleanse his ways by cleaving to the word; since an impure heart and an undefiled inheritance will not stand together.
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Cleanse his way] Mandabit, id est emendabit. The Hebrew word signifieth the cleansing of glass, which though it be very clean, yet will it gather filth even in the sunbeams, and of itself; which noteth the great corruption of this slippery age, and what care must be taken that it may shine as picked glass, or clearest crystal.
By taking heed thereto according to thy word] Which is of a purifying property, Joh 15:3; Joh 17:17, and can cleanse the heart of a young man also, where lusts are strong, stains deep, and will not out without fuller’s soap. There is a sharpness in these wholesome (or healing) words, that maketh us sound in the faith, and sincere in practice; as it did Mr Paul Bains, whose conversation, when he came first to Cambridge, was so irregular, that his father, being grieved at it before his death, left with a friend forty pounds by the year, desiring that his son might have it if he amended his manners; else not. He did so, and had it (Mr Clark’s Lives). When a child is come to be thirteen years and a day old, the Jews account him a man, and call him Barmitsuah, a child of the commandments; because bound to live by the law (Leo Modena of Jewish rites).
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Young man; or, any man. But he names the
BETH
Young man; or, any man. But he names the
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young man, because such are commonly void of wisdom and experience, heady and wilful, and impatient of admonition, full of violent passions and strong lusts, and exposed to many and great temptations.
Cleanse his way; reform his life, or purge himself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit.
By taking heed thereto according to thy word; by a diligent and circumspect watch over himself, and the examination and regulation of all his actions by the rules of thy word.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain Here is, 1. A weighty question asked. By what…
Here is, 1. A weighty question asked. By what means may the next generation be made better than this? Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? Cleansing implies that it is polluted. Besides the original corruption we all brought into the world with us (from which we are not cleansed unto this day), there are many particular sins which young people are subject to, by which they defile their way, youthful lusts (Ti2 2:22); these render their way offensive to God and disgraceful to themselves. Young men are concerned to cleanse their way - to get their hearts renewed and their lives reformed, to make clean, and keep clean, from the corruption that is in the world through lust, that they may have both a good conscience and a good name. Few young people do themselves enquire by what means they may recover and preserve their purity; and therefore David asks the question for them. 2. A satisfactory answer given to this question. Young men may effectually cleanse their way by taking heed thereto according to the word of God; and it is the honour of the word of God that it has such power and is of such use both to particular persons and to communities, whose happiness lies much in the virtue of their youth. (1.) Young men must make the word of God their rule, must acquaint themselves with it and resolve to conform themselves to it; that will do more towards the cleansing of young men that the laws of princes or the morals of philosophers. (2.) They must carefully apply that rule and make use of it; they must take heed to their way, must examine it by the word of God, as a touchstone and standard, must rectify what is amiss in it by that regulator and steer by that chart and compass. God's word will not do without our watchfulness, and a constant regard both to it and to our way, that we may compare them together. The ruin of young men is either living at large (or by no rule at all) or choosing to themselves false rules: let them ponder the path of their feet, and walk by scripture-rules; so their way shall be clean, and they shall have the comfort and credit of it here and for ever.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain With my whole heart have I sought thee,.... Not…
With my whole heart have I sought thee,.... Not himself, his own honour and applause, as formal worshippers and self-righteous persons do; but the Lord and his glory, his face, his presence, and communion with him, his grace, and fresh supplies of it, to help in time of need; his doctrine, as the Targum; and to know more of it, and of him, and of his mind and will; and this he did in the most sincere manner, with all his heart and soul. The character of the good man, in Psa 119:2; the psalmist applies to himself; see Isa 26:9; and uses it as an argument to obtain the following request:
O let me not wander from thy commandments; the way of them. Good men are apt to go astray, as David, Psa 119:176; their hearts, their affections, and their feet, wander from, the way of their duty: there are many things which lead them aside, and cause them to turn to the right hand or the left, at least solicit them to do so; as a corrupt nature, an evil heart, a body of sin and death, the snares of the world, and the temptations of Satan; and, what is worst of all, when God leaves them to themselves, withdraws the influences of his grace, and brings them into such circumstances as expose them to going astray, which the psalmist here deprecates; "suffer me not to wander", but uphold my goings in thy ways; preserve me by thy grace, and keep me by thy power; hold me by thy right hand, and guide and direct me. Or, "cause me not to wander" (q) &c. a like petition to those in Psa 141:3, Mat 6:13; with which last Kimchi compares these words.
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(q) "ne errare facias me", Pagninus, Montanus.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain A young man - Or, any man. But he…
A young man - Or, any man. But he names the young man, because such are commonly void of wisdom and experience, and exposed to many and great temptations. Cleanse - Purge himself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain LETTER: ב BETH - Second Division
LETTER: ב BETH - Second Division
Verse 9. A young man cleanse his way] ארח orach, which we translate way here, signifies a track, a rut, such as is made by the wheel of a cart or chariot. A young sinner has no broad beaten path; he has his private ways of offence, his secret pollutions: and how shall he be cleansed from these? how can he be saved from what will destroy mind, body, and soul? Let him hear what follows; the description is from God.
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1. He is to consider that his way is impure; and how abominable this must make him appear in the sight of God.
2. He must examine it according to God's word, and carefully hear what God has said concerning him and it.
3. He must take heed to it, לשמר lishmor, to keep guard, and preserve his way-his general course of life, from all defilement.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Psa 119:9. Wherewith shall a young man — Or,…
BETH.
Psa 119:9. Wherewith shall a young man — Or, any man. But he names the young man, because such are commonly void of wisdom and experience, and exposed to many and great temptations. Cleanse his way — Reform his life, or purge himself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit. By taking heed thereto — By diligently and circumspectly watching over himself, and examining and regulating all his dispositions and actions by the rule of thy word.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Wherewithal - This begins the second portion of the…
Wherewithal - This begins the second portion of the psalm, extending to Psa 119:16, in which all the verses begin with the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet (ב b), indicated in our translation by the word Beth. These names of the letters, inserted for convenience, are no part of the psalm, as it is not so marked in the original. This mode of indicating the divisions of the psalm is special to our version. It is not in the Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, or the German versions. The word wherewithal means “by what” (Hebrew); that is, What means shall a young man adopt by which he may “cleanse his way?” it indicates a state of inquiry. The case supposed is that of a young man pondering the question how he may be saved from the corruptions of his own heart, and escape the temptations to which he is exposed in early years, and lead a pure and upright life. There can be no more important inquiry for one just entering on the journey of life; there can be found nowhere a more just and comprehensive answer than is contained in this single verse. All the precepts of ancient and modern wisdom, all the teachings of pagan morality and religion, and all the results of the experience of mankind, could furnish nothing in addition to what is here suggested. The world has no higher wisdom than this by which to guide a young man, so that he may lead a holy life.
Shall a young man - The remark here might be applied also to those who are in middle life, or even to those who are in more advanced years, but it is applied here especially to the young, because it may be supposed that in the other cases the matter may be regarded as settled by experience; because to the young, as they commence life, the inquiry is so momentous; and because it is a question which it may be supposed will come up before the mind of every young man who has any right aspirations, and any proper conception of the dangers which encompass his path.
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Cleanse his way? - Make his course of life pure and upright. The language does not necessarily imply that there had been any previous impurity or vice, but it has particular reference to the future: not how he might cleanse himself from past offences, but how he might make the future pure. The inquiry is, how he might conduct himself - what principles he could adopt - under what influence he could bring himself - so that his future course would be honest, honorable, upright.
By taking heed thereto ... - The word “thereto” is not in the original. The Hebrew is, “To keep according to thy word;” or, “in keeping according to thy word.” Prof. Alexander supposes that this means “to keep it (his way) according to thy word;” and that the whole is a question - “How may a young man so cleanse his way as to keep it according to thy word?” - and that the answer to the question is to be found in the general strain of the psalm, or in the general principles laid down in the psalm. But it is clear that the answer to the question must be found in the verse, or not found at all; and the most natural construction is that in our translation. So DeWette renders it: “How can a young man walk guiltless? If (or, when) he holds (or, keeps) himself according to thy word.” The meaning clearly is If he governs himself according to the law of God - if he makes that law the rule of his life and conduct, he would be enabled to do it. All other things might fail; this rule would never fail, in making and keeping a man pure. The more principles of common honesty, the principles of honor, the considerations of self-interest, the desire of reputation - valuable as they may be - would not constitute a security in regard to his conduct; the law of God would, for that is wholly pure.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain ב, Beth.
ב, Beth.
9-16. After the general preliminary given in “Aleph,” the value of the divine word, as the guide of early life, is considered. The youthful lack of experience is compensated by its lessons, and the buoyancy of youthful spirits is sustained by its rich, joyous sympathies.
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“Religion never was designed To make our pleasures less.”
Have I hid—Meaning, not only I have learned it by heart, but I have hoarded it as my choice treasure. “One practises self-control,” says a Greek philosopher, “as long as he remembers thought-regulating words.” Such words are thy statutes.
I will delight myself—Here is expressed the glad resolve of a young heart. The writer may have been no longer young, but he speaks from the standpoint of youth, and utters an early covenant.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 9. Derek, ‘way,’ LXX ὁδός, denotes the course of…
9. Derek, ‘way,’ LXX ὁδός, denotes the course of conduct marked out by God’s law. Cp. Deu_5:33; Deu_9:12, &c.
9. a young man] Who most needs help to keep himself pure from sin (Psa_25:7). Cp. Psa_34:11 ff.; and the constant address of the teacher to his disciple in the Book of Proverbs, ‘My son.’
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by taking heed &c.] The answer to the question of the previous line. The object of the verb is not expressed, and the exact meaning is doubtful. It may be ‘by taking heed to himself according to the rule of Thy word’; cp. P.B.V., ‘even by ruling himself after thy word’: or more probably, ‘by observing thy statutes (Psa_119:4; Psa_119:6) according to thy commandment.’ The LXX and Jerome seem to represent a different reading, ‘by observing thy words.’
9–16. Beth. Love for God’s law the safeguard and the joy of life.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (9) Wherewithal.—There can be little question that the right…
BETH.
(9) Wherewithal.—There can be little question that the right rendering of this verse is By what means can a young man purify his way, so as to keep it according to Thy word? but from Jos_6:18 we might render keep himself. The English rendering, which follows the LXX. and Vulg. is, of course, possible, but the other is more natural and more in accordance with the general drift of the psalm. The answer is supposed, or rather left to be inferred, from the whole tenor of the psalm, which is that men, and especially-young men, whose passions and temptations are strong in proportion to their inexperience, can do nothing of themselves, but are dependent on the grace of God. The omission of a direct answer rather strengthens than impairs the impression on the reader.
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We must not, from the mention of youth, conclude that this psalm was written in that period of life. Perhaps, on the contrary, it is one who, like Browning’s Rabbi ben Ezra, while seeking how best to spend old age, looks back on youth, not with remonstrance at its follies, but with the satisfaction that even then he aimed at the best he knew.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? It…
bBETH.
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? It does not follow from this inquiry that the writer is a "young man rather the reverse. He is anxious to give advice to young men, which is naturally the part of one somewhat advanced in life. By taking heed thereto, according to thy Word. This is the answer to the question raised in clause 1. By looking to God"s Word, and guiding himself thereby, the young man may "cleanse his way not otherwise.
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Vers. 9, 63, 74, 113, 115. The way of life: the young.
Our attention is called to
I THE WAY OF LIFE; especially as it presents itself to the young. It is interesting to look forward to a long journey; to anticipate the scenes that will be witnessed, the companionships that will be formed, the memories that will be gathered for years to come, etc. But how much more interesting to look forward to the journey of life still in prospect; to anticipate its joys, it successes, its triumphs; to hope for its friendships and achievements; to guard against its dangers and its mistakes! The uncertainties of the future in the case of the young, the possibilities of failure or of victory, make the earlier years of life to be fraught with the deepest interest.
II THE SECRET OF SUCCESS. This is twofold.
1. It is found in manly thoughtfulness. How shall a young man make his course sweet and clean and pure? "By taking heed thereto; " by refusing to treat his life with levity, to let things take their own course, to make his "way" nothing but a "chapter of accidents;" by determining that it shall be a matter of intelligent, deliberate choice; by devoting to that most serious subject his most earnest consideration, and bridging to bear upon it the full faculties of his nature.
2. It is found in Divine guidance to thy Word." And this "Word
(1) counsels the application of holy principles those of truthfulness, purity, temperance, honesty, generosity, etc.;
(2) lays great stress on right companionships. Here is:
(a) Rejection of some the resolute refusal to admit to our confidence those who are unworthy of it. I hate "vain thoughts," or "doubters, skeptics, double-minded men" (ver. 113); the peremptory dismissal from friendship of those who are unprincipled (ver. 115).
(b) Admission of others. (Vers. 63, 74) Very few things go so far to decide the way of life as the choice of companions. Associate with the frivolous or the skeptical, and the path of life leads downward to folly, unbelief, ruin; walk with the wise, the earnest, the godly, and that path leads upward to wisdom, virtue, usefulness, heaven.
Vers. 9-16. Sanctified through the truth.
We have here
I A DIFFICULT QUESTION. "Wherewithal shall a young man," etc.? (ver. 9).
1. The very word wherewithal" implies this. It seems to suggest that all manner of means had been tried, but found inadequate.
2. It is also implied that the way is already defiled. And this most true, as most sad. The young man starts with an evil bias, and he has made this stronger than before by frequent compliance with it. So that it is not a clean way that has to be kept clean that is difficult enough, but a defiled way that has to be made clean.
3. And youth is so open to temptation. The passions and appetites of the body clamoring like a set of foul harpies for indulgence. The mind, impatient of control, giving heed to all manner of unbelief and doubt and denial of the truth; the heart inexperienced and untaught, ready to be ensnared with the varied deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Here is the fuel ready and the fire, and they come together in youth. What can prevent the conflagration?
II BUT IT IS NOT A QUESTION THAT CANNOT BE ANSWERED. It has been again and again. See the history of Joseph; of Daniel and the noble Hebrew youths in exile with him; see the young men to whom St. John writes. (1Jn_2:13, 1Jn_2:14) And there are many such today, glory be to God!
III HERE WE ARE TOLD HOW THE QUESTION IS ANSWERED. "By taking heed. thereto," etc. (ver. 9).
1. There must be taking heed to the way: thought and care given to it. It will not come right by chance, or when we are asleep, but it will need strenuous endeavors.
2. And this must be according to Gods Word. For that Word supplies the pattern and model of such cleansed way; especially in Christ, "who did no sin," who was "holy, harmless, and undefiled." And it supplies the all-constraining motives the love of God, the cross of Christ, the beauty of holiness, the eternal reward. And it gives the wisest counsel as to all holy living; there the right road is marked out for us. God"s Word is a sure guide (ver. 105). And it points to the one source of help the Holy Spirit of God, by whom God causes us to will and to do according to his good pleasure.
3. And all this he had done. See the following verses in this section. He tells how he had sought God with the whole heart, had hidden God"s Word in his heart, etc., so that he had come to rejoice therein; and this, doubtless, because of their help. S.C.
Cleansing one"s way.
This should be a familiar text to us all one of those that are enshrined in memory, and made an abiding power in the life. Occasions for its consideration and for its counsels are ever recurring, because:
1. Among us are always boys coming out into the responsibilities of youth and young manhood.
2. While phases of youthful sin may vary for each generation, Bible counsels fit to every age, because they deal with principles.
I THE GROUNDS ON WHICH THE INQUIRY OF THE TEXT IS BASED. The moral perils to which the young are exposed. The text does not say that the way of the young is actually unclean, but it views the young as just beginning to walk in a way that is miry and dangerous. To compass the whole truth we should consider:
1. The moral weakness of the young man himself. It partly lies in
(1) the relics left of evil influences, and the imperfect and incomplete results of early training;
(2) in an inexperience of life which young people never estimate worthily;
(3) in susceptibility to influences that are merely attractive, not deeply true;
(4) in the intensity with which they enter on present pleasures, heedless of future issues and results. These make dangers on the side of the young man himself.
2. The evils actually lying in the way of the young.
(1) The appeals of evil to the sensual side of human nature. See the warnings in the Book of Proverbs.
(2) The pride of independence loosening the moral restraints of education and home influence.
(3) The false maxims that are attractive to opening mental faculties, and readily meet youthful dispositions; such as "Youth is the time for pleasure;" "Gaining wealth is the true end of life;" "Religion is a gloomy affair, and awfully dull;" "No certainty nothing that can be called "knowledge," is to be obtained about morals, or about spiritual things." Show the moral influence exerted by such prevailing evil sentiments.
II THE GROUNDS ON WHICH A WISE ANSWER TO THIS INQUIRY MAY REST.
1. No other answer than that given in the text can fully meet the case.
2. The Word of God can become a deliverance from young men"s moral weaknesses and perils. It can be a power of practical wisdom and self-restraint. Illustrate by our Lord"s use of the Word, as a weapon, in the time of his temptation as a young Man.
3. The Word of God acts as do beacons and lighthouses and sign-posts it points out the dangerous parts of the way, and indicates the safe and direct roads.
4. The Word of God delivers us from the mischievous influence of false maxims by its revelation of truth and duty. But the Word does not, once for all, cleanse any man"s way. All through life the way in which we walk will be foul and full of perils, traps, and temptations. The Word enables us to pick our path safely amidst the dirt and the snares and the pitfalls that may be put in our way. "Not defiled their garments;" Unspotted from the world." Appeal thus: In view of life, do you think you can safely go all alone? Can you certainly triumph over all the subtlety and all the strength of evil in your own sufficiency? "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. R.T.
The perils of youth.
Because the psalmist refers to the "young man," we need not imagine that, at the time of composing the psalm, he was himself a young man. The stanzas represent a variety of moods; and for this one the psalmist was in a mood of retrospection; he was looking back over the past, and seeing what a help God"s Word had been to him amid the perils and temptations of his youthful years. He had "ruled himself after God"s Word," and rejoices in having come through his youth-time clean-souled and unspotted from the world. The Prayer-book Version suggests that no external defenses will ever suffice to keep the young man from "city snares and town traps." He will be kept if he keeps himself; he will only keep himself if he asks God to keep him; and God will only keep him as he diligently seeks direction and counsel from God"s book of instructions and warnings. "Even by ruling himself after thy Word." It is implied in the expression, "cleanse his way," that there are things surrounding the young man that may easily defile him. But that is true for old men as well as young men. What is of special importance to young men is that
(1) by bodily constitution,
(2) by disposition,
(3) and by inexperience, they are unusually exposed to defiling influences.
I THE YOUNG MAN WANTS A STANDARD AND A GUIDE. The ship of a young life has to sail over unknown seas, and there must be culture for managing the vessel, and a chart for directing its course. This the young are not ready to admit. "Why not wait and gain power out of experience?" Experience is a dear school, and its lessons are only learned aright when the life is in the ordering of God"s infallible guide. Experience is to a man according to what the man is.
II THE YOUNG MAN CANNOT SAFELY RE A LAW UNTO HIMSELF. Can any man? "It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." If any man can, it is the experienced and sanctified Christian. But he is the very man who is sure that he cannot. If he cannot, how can the youth? What always happens when youth takes the ordering of life into its own hands?
III THE YOUNG MAN CAN GO RIGHT WITH THE HELP OF GOD"S WORD. Which is no mere set of rules, but the Father-God finding counsel and warning and help for every emergency. It is a strengthening of the soul to resist, as well as a clearing of the eyes to avoid all that would befoul. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon 1885 · Public Domain Ver. 9. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his…
Ver. 9. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? How shall he become and remain practically holy? He is but a young man, full of hot passions, and poor in knowledge and experience; how shall he get right, and keep right? Never was there a more important question for any man; never was there a fitter time for asking it than at the commencement of life. It is by no means an easy task which the prudent young man sets before him. He wishes to choose a clean way, to be himself clean in it, to cleanse it of any foulness which may arise in the future, and to end by showing a clear course from the first step to the last; but, alas, his way is already unclean by actual sin which he has already committed, and he himself has within his nature a tendency towards that which defileth. Here, then, is the difficulty, first of beginning aright, next of being always able to know and choose the right, and of continuing in the right till perfection is ultimately reached: this is hard for any man, how shall a youth accomplish it? The way, or life, of the man has to be cleansed from the sins of his youth behind him, and kept clear of the sins which temptation will place before him: this is the work, this is the difficulty.
No nobler ambition can lie before a youth, none to which he is called by so sure a calling; but none in which greater difficulties can be found. Let him not, however, shrink from the glorious enterprise of living a pure and gracious life; rather let him enquire the way by which all obstacles may be overcome. Let him not think that he knows the road to easy victory, nor dream that he can keep himself by his own wisdom; he will do well to follow the Psalmist, and become an earnest enquirer asking how he may cleanse his way. Let him become a practical disciple of the holy God, who alone can teach him how to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil, that trinity of defilers by whom many a hopeful life has been spoiled. He is young and unaccustomed to the road, let him not be ashamed often to enquire his way of him who is so ready and so able to instruct him in it.
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Our "way" is a subject which concerns us deeply, and it is far better to enquire about it than to speculate upon mysterious themes which rather puzzle than enlighten the mind. Among all the questions which a young man asks, and they are many, let this be the first and chief: "Wherewithal shall I cleanse my way?" This is a question suggested by common sense, and pressed home by daily occurrences; but it is not to be answered by unaided reason, nor, when answered, can the directions be carried out by unsupported human power. It is ours to ask the question, it is God's to give the answer and enable us to carry it out.
By taking heed thereto according to thy word. Young man, the Bible must be your chart, and you must exercise great watchfulness that your way may be according to its directions. You must take heed to your daily life as well as study your Bible, and you must study your Bible that you may take heed to your daily life. With the greatest care a man will go astray if his map misleads him; but with the most accurate map he will still lose his road if he does not take heed to it. The narrow way was never hit upon by chance, neither did any heedless man ever lead a holy life. We can sin without thought, we have only to neglect the great salvation and ruin our souls; but to obey the Lord and walk uprightly will need all our heart and soul and mind. Let the careless remember this.
Yet the "word" is absolutely necessary; for, otherwise, care will darken into morbid anxiety, and conscientiousness may become superstition. A captain may watch from his deck all night; but if he knows nothing of the coast, and has no pilot on board, he may be carefully hastening on to shipwreck. It is not enough to desire to he right; for ignorance may make us think that we are doing God service when we are provoking him, and the fact of our ignorance will not reverse the character of our action, however much it may mitigate its criminality. Should a man carefully measure out what he believes to be a dose of useful medicine, he will die if it should turn out that he has taken up the wrong vial, and has poured out a deadly poison: the fact that he did it ignorantly will not alter the result. Even so, a young man may surround himself with ten thousand ills, by carefully using an unenlightened judgment, and refusing to receive instruction from the word of God. Wilful ignorance is in itself wilful sin, and the evil which comes of it is without excuse. Let each man, whether young or old, who desires to be holy have a holy watchfulness in his heart, and keep his Holy Bible before his open eye. There he will find every turn of the road marked down, every slough and miry place pointed out, with the way to go through unsoiled; and there, too, he will find light for his darkness, comfort for his weariness, and company for his loneliness, so that by its help he shall reach the benediction of the first verse of the Psalm, which suggested the Psalmist's enquiry, and awakened his desires.
Note how the first section of eight verses has for its first verse, "Blessed are the undefiled in the way." and the second section runs parallel to it, with the question, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?" The blessedness which is set before us in a conditional promise should be practically sought for in the way appointed. The Lord saith, "For this will I be enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them."
The eight verses alphabetically arranged:
9. By what means shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word.
10. By day and by night have I sought thee with my whole heart: O let me not wander from thy commandments.
11. By thy grace I have hid thy word in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.
12. Blessed art thou, O Lord: teach me thy statutes.
13. By the words of my lips will I declare all the judgments of thy mouth.
14. By far more than in all riches I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies.
15. By thy help I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways.
16. By thy grace I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word. Theodore Kuebler.
Whole eight verses, 9-16. Every verse in the section begins with b, a house. The subject of the section is, The Law of Jehovah purifying the Life. Key word, xkz (zacah), to be pure, to make pure, to cleanse. F. G. Marchant.
Ver. 9. Whole verse. In this passage there is,
1. A question.
2. An answer given.
In the question, there is the person spoken of, "a young man, "and his work, "Wherewithal shall he cleanse his way?" In this question there are several things supposed.
1. That we are from the birth polluted with sin; for we must be cleansed. It is not direct "his way, "but "cleanse his way."
2. That we should be very early and betimes sensible of this evil; for the question is propounded concerning the young man.
3. That we should earnestly seek for a remedy, how to dry up the issue of sin that runneth upon us. All this is to be supposed.
That which is enquired after is, What remedy there is against it? What course is to be taken? So that the sum of the question is this: How shall a man that is impure, and naturally defiled with sin, be made able, as soon as he cometh to the use of reason, to purge out that natural corruption, and live a holy and pure life to God? The answer is given: "By taking heed thereto according to thy word." Where two things are to be observed.
1. The remedy.
2. The manner how it is applied and made use of.
1. The remedy is the word; by way of address to God, called "Thy word"; because, if God had not given direction about it, we should have been at an utter loss.
2. The manner how it is applied and made use of, "by taking heed thereto, "etc.; by studying and endeavouring a holy conformity to God's will. Thomas Manton.
Ver. 9. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? etc. Aristotle, that great dictator in philosophy, despaired of achieving so great an enterprise as the rendering a young man capable of his hyika akroamata, "his grave and severe lectures of morality"; for that age is light and foolish, yet headstrong and untractable. Now, take a young man all in the heat and boiling of his blood, in the highest fermentation of his youthful lusts; and, at all these disadvantages, let him enter that great school of the Holy Spirit, the divine Scripture, and commit himself to the conduct of those blessed oracles; and he shall effectually be convinced, by his own experience, of the incredible virtue, the vast and mighty power, of God's word, in the success it hath upon him, and in his daily progression and advances in heavenly wisdom. John Gibbon (about 1660) in "The Morning Exercises."
Ver. 9. A young man. A prominent place one of the twenty-two parts is assigned to young men in the 119th Psalm. It is meet that it should be so. Youth is the season of impression and improvement, young men are the future props of society, and the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, must begin in youth. The strength, the aspirations, the unmarred expectations of youth, are in requisition for the world; O that they may be consecrated to God. John Stephen, in "The Utterances of the 119 Psalm, "1861.
Ver. 9. For young man, in the Hebrew the word is reg naar, i.e., "shaken off"; that is to say, from the milder and more tender care of his parents. Thus Mercerus and Savailerius. Secondly, naar may be rendered "shaking off"; that is to say, the yoke, for a young man begins to cast off the maternal, and frequently the paternal, yoke. Thomas Le Blanc.
Ver. 9. Cleanse his way. The expression does not absolutely convey the impression that the given young man is in a corrupt and discreditable way which requires cleansing, though this be true of all men originally: Isa 53:6. That which follows makes known that such could not be the case with this young man. The very inquiry shows that his heart is not in a corrupt state. Desire is present, direction is required. The inquiry is How shall a young man make a clean way a pure line of conduct through this defiling world? It is a question, I doubt not, of great anxiety to every convert whose mind is awakened to a sense of sin how he shall keep clear of the sin, avoid the loose company, and rid himself of the wicked pleasures and practices of this enslaving world. And as he moves on in the line of integrity many temptations coming in his way, and much inward corruption rising up to control him how often will the same anxious inquiry arise: Ro 7:24. It is only in a false estimate of one's own strength that any can think otherwise, and the spirit of such false estimate will be brought low. How felt you, my young friends, who have been brought to Christ, in the day of your resolving to be his? But for all such anxiety there seems to be an answer in the text.
By taking heed thereto according to thy word. It is not that young men in our day require information: they require the inclination. In the gracious young man there are both, and the word that began feeds the proper motives. The awful threatenings and the sweet encouragements both more him in the right direction. The answer furnished to this anxious inquiry is sufficiently plain and practical. He is directed to the word of God for all direction, and we might say, for all promised assistance. Still the matter presented in this light does not appear to me to bring out the full import of the passage. The inquiry to me would seem to extend over the whole verse. (This opinion is confirmed by the quotation which follows from Cowles.) There is required the cleansing that his way be according to the Divine Word. The enquiry is of the most enlarged comprehension, and will be made only by one who can say that he has been honestly putting himself in the way, as the young man in Ps 119:10-11; and it can be answered only by the heart that takes in all the strength provided by the blessed God, as is expressed here in Ps 119:12. The Psalmist makes the inquiry, he shows how earnestly he had sought to be in the right way, and immediately he finds all his strength in God. Thus he declares how he has been enabled to do rightly, and how he will do rightly in the future. John Stephen.
Ver. 9. Instead of question and answer both in this one verse, the Hebrew demands the construction with question only, leaving the answer to be inferred from the drift of the entire Psalm thus: Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way to keep it according to thy word? This translation gives precisely the force of the last clause. Hebrew punctuation lacks the interrogation point, so that we have no other clue but the form of the sentence and the sense by which to decide where the question ends. Henry Cowles, 1872.
Ver. 9. His way. xra, orach, which we translate way here, signifies a track, a rut, such as is made by the wheel of a cart or chariot. A young sinner has no broad beaten path; he has his private ways of offence, his secret pollutions;and how shall he be cleansed from these? how can he be saved from what will destroy mind, body, and soul? Let him hear what follows; the description is from God.
1. He is to consider that his way is impure;and how abominable this must make him appear in the sight of God.
2. He must examine it according to God's word, and carefully hear what God has said concerning him and it.
3. He must take heed to it, rmvl, lishmor, to keep, guard, and preserve his way his general course of life, from all defilement. Adam Clarke.
Ver. 9. By taking heed, etc. I think the words may be better rendered and supplied thus, by observing what is according to thy word;which shows how a sinner is to be cleansed from his sins by the blood of Christ, and justified by his righteousness, and be clean through his word; and also how and by whom the work of sanctification is wrought in the heart, even by the Spirit of God, by means of the word, and what is the rule of a man's walk and conversation: he will find the word of God to be profitable, to inform in the doctrines of justification and pardon, to acquaint him with the nature of regeneration and sanctification; and for the correction and amendment of his life and manners, and for his instruction in every branch of manners: 2Ti 3:16. John Gill, 1697-1771.
Ver. 9. By taking heed. There is an especial necessity for this "Take heed, "because of the proneness of a young man to thoughtlessness, carelessness, presumption, self confidence. There is an especial necessity for "taking heed, "because of the difficulty of the way. "Look well to thy goings"; it is a narrow path. "Look well to thy goings"; it is a new path. "Look well to thy goings"; it is a slippery path. "Look well to thy goings"; it is an eventful path. James Harrington Evans, 1785-1849.
Ver. 9. According to thy word. God's word is the glass which discovereth all spiritual deformity, and also the water and soap which washes and scours it away. Paul Bayne.
Ver. 9. According to thy word. I do not say that there are no other guides, no other fences. I do not say that conscience is worth nothing, and conscience in youth is especially sensitive and tender; I do not say that prayer is not a most valuable fence, but prayer without taking heed is only another name for presumption: prayer and carelessness can never walk hand in hand together; and I therefore say that there is no fence nor guard that can so effectually keep out every enemy as prayerful reading of the word of God, bringing every solicitation from the world or from companions, every suggestion from our own hearts and passions, to the test of God's word: What says the Bible? The answer of the Bible, with the teaching and enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, will in all the intricacies of our road be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Barton Bouchier.
Ver. 9. Thy word. The word is the only weapon (like Goliath's sword, none to equal this), for the hewing down and cutting off of this stubborn enemy, our lusts. The word of God can master our lusts when they are in their greatest pride: if ever lust rageth at one time more than another, it is when youthful blood boils in our veins. Youth is giddy, and his lust is hot and impetuous: his sun is climbing higher still, and he thinks it is a great while to night; so that it must be a strong arm that brings a young man off his lusts, who hath his palate at best advantage to taste sensual pleasure. The rigour of his strength affords him more of the delights of the flesh than crippled age can expect, and he is farther from the fear of death's gunshot, as he thinks, than old men who are upon the very brink of the grave, and carry the scent of the earth about them, into which they are suddenly to be resolved. Well, let the word of God meet this young gallant in all his bravery, with his feast of sensual delights before him, and but whisper a few syllables in his car, give his conscience but a prick with the point of its sword, and it shall make him fly in as great haste from them all, as Absalom's brethren did from the feast when they saw Amnon their brother murdered at the table. When David would give the young man a receipt to cure him of his lusts, how he may cleanse his whole course and way, he bids him only wash in the waters of the word of God. William Gumall.
Ver. 9. The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying. John Flavel, 1627-1691.
Outlines Upon Keywords of The Psalm, by Pastor C. A. Davis
Ver. 9-16. Sanctification by the word, declared generally (Ps 119:9); sought personally (Ps 119:10-12); published to others (Ps 119:13); personally rejoiced in (Ps 119:14-16).
Ver. 9.
1. The young man's question.
2. The wise man's reply.
Ver. 9. In the word of God, when applied to the heart by the Spirit of God, there is,
1. A sufficiency of light to discover to men the need of cleansing their way.
2. Sufficiency of energy for the cleansing their way.
3. A sufficiency of pleasure to encourage them to choose to cleanse their way.
4. A sufficiency of support to sustain them in their cleansed way. Theophilus Jones, in a "Sermon to the Young, "1829.
Ver. 9. The word of God provides for the cleansing of the way.
1. By pointing out to the young man the evil of the way.
2. By discovering an infallible remedy for the disorders of his nature the salvation that is by Jesus Christ.
3. By becoming a directory in all the paths of duty to which he may be called. Daniel Wilson, 1828.
Ver. 9. The Psalmist's rules for the attainment of holiness deduced from his own experience.
1. Seek God with thy "whole heart" (Ps 119:2). Be truly sensible of your wants.
2. Keep and remember what God says (Ps 119:11): "Thy word have I hidden, "etc.
3. Reduce all this to practice (Ps 119:11): "That I might not sin against thee."
4. Bless God for what he has given (vet. 12): "Blessed art thou, "etc.
5. Ask more (Ps 119:12): Teach me thy statute, .
6. Be ready to communicate his knowledge to others (Ps 119:13): "With my lips have I declared."
7. Let it have a due effect on thy own heart (Ps 119:14): "I have rejoiced, "etc.
8. Meditate frequently upon them (Ps 119:15): "I will meditate, "etc.
9. Deeply reflect on them (Ps 119:16): "I will have respect, "etc. As food undigested will not nourish the body, so the word of God not considered with deep meditation and reflection will not feed the soul.
10. Having pursued the above course he should continue in it, and then his happiness would be secured (Ps 119:16): "I will not forget thy word: I will (in consequence) delight myself in thy statutes." Adam Clarke.
Ver. 9. A question and answer for the young. The Bible is a book for young people. Here it intimates,
1. That the young man's way needs to be cleansed. His way of thinking, feeling, speaking, acting.
2. That he must take an active part in the work. The efficient cause in the operation is God. Other good influences are also at work. But the young man must be in hearty and practical sympathy with the work.
3. That he must use the Bible for the purpose. This records facts, presents incitations, enjoins precepts, utters promises, and sets up examples, all which are adapted to make a young man holy. By reading, studying, and imitating the Scriptures in a lowly and prayerful spirit the young shall escape pollution and ornament society. W.J.
Ver. 9. A word to the young.
1. Show how the young man is in special danger of defiling his way. Through,
(a) His strong passions.
(b) His immature judgment.
(c) His inexperience.
(d) His rash self sufficiency.
(e) His light companions, and,
(f) His general heedlessness.
2. The circumspection he should use to cleanse his way. "Taking heed, "
(a) Of his evil propensities.
(b) Of his companions.
(c) Of his pursuits.
(d) Of the tendencies of all he does.
3. The infallible guide by which his circumspection is to be regulated: "according to thy word" that is to say,
(a) Its precepts.
(b) Its examples.
(c) Its motives.
(d) Its warnings.
(e) Its allurements. C.A.D.
Psalms 119:10*
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
Psa_119:9
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
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by taking heed thereto according to Thy Word.
How a young man may cleanse his way
I. This is the great practical problem for life. It is more especially the question for young people.
1. You are under special temptations not to ask it. There are so many other points in your future unresolved that you are only too apt to put aside the consideration of this one in favour of those which seem to be of more immediate importance. And you have the other temptation, common to us all, of living without any plan of life at all. At your age, judgment and experience are not so strong as inclination and passion; and everything has got the fresh gloss of novelty upon it, and it seems to be sometimes sufficient delight to live and get hold of the new joys that are flooding in upon you.
2. It is worth while for you to ask it. For you have got the prerogative that some of us have lost, of determining the shape that your lifes course is to take.
3. You have special temptations to make your ways unclean.
II. We can only make our way clean on condition of constant watchfulness. Take heed to thyself is the only condition of a pure and noble life. That such a condition is necessary will appear very plain from two considerations. First, it is clear that there must be constant watchfulness, if we consider what sort of a world this is that we have got into. And it is also plain if we consider what sort of creatures we are that have got into it. We are creatures evidently made for self-government. Our whole nature is like a monarchy. There are things in each of us that are never meant to rule, but to be kept well down under control, such as strong passions, desires rooted in the flesh which are not meant to get the mastery of a man. And there are parts of our nature which are as obviously intended to be supreme and sovereign; the reason, the conscience, the will.
III. This constant watchfulness, to be of any use, must be regulated by Gods Word. The guard on the frontier who is to keep the path must have instructions from head-quarters, and not choose add decide according to his own phantasy, but according to the Kings orders. Or, to use another metaphor, it is no use having a guard unless the guard has a lantern. In the Word of God, in its whole sweep, and eminently and especially in Christ, who is the Incarnate Word, we have an all-sufficient Guido. A guide of conduct must be plain--and whatever doubts and difficulties there may be about the doctrines of Christianity, there are none about its morality. A guide of conduct must be decisive--and there is no faltering in the utterance of the Book as to right and wrong. A guide of conduct must be capable of application to the wide diversities of character, age, circumstance--and the morality of the New Testament especially, and of the Old in a measure, secures that, because it does not trouble itself about minute details, but deals with large principles. A guide for morals must be far in advance of the followers, and it has taken generations and centuries to work into mens consciences, and to work out in mens practice, a portion of the morality of that Book. If the world kept the commandments of the New Testament, the world would be in the millennium; and all the sin and crime, and ninety-nine hundredths of all the sorrow of earth would have vanished like an ugly dream. Here is the guide for you, and if you take it you will not err.
IV. All this can only be done effectually if you are a Christian. My psalm goes as far as the measure of revelation granted to its author admitted; but if a person had no more to say than that, it would be a weary business. It is no use to tell a man, Guard yourself; guard yourself. Nor even to tell him, Guard yourself according to Gods Word, if Gods Word is only a law. The fatal defect of all attempts at keeping my heart by my own watchfulness is that keeper and kept are one and the same. And so there may be mutiny in the garrison, and the very forces that ought to subdue the rebellion may have gone over to the rebels. You want a power outside of you to steady you The only way to haul a boat up the rapids is to have some fixed point on the shore to which a man may fasten a rope and pull at that. You get that eternal guard and fixed point on which to hold in Jesus Christ, the dear Son of His love, who has died for you. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
On cleansing our ways
The picture in his mind was of this sort. There stood before him a young man who had not long set out on the journey of life; and who yet, to his own deep surprise and disgust, found many shins of travel already upon him. He had not meant to go wrong; as yet, perhaps, he was not gone very far wrong. And yet where did all this filth come from? And how is it to be got rid of? How is he to make his way clean, and keep it clean?
I. If we are to make our life pure, noble, satisfying, we are to take heed to it: We are to think about it, and to force ourselves to walk according to our best thoughts and aims. Carlyle sums up the whole teaching of Goethe in the brief citation, Think of living. Many never look forward and think of their life as a whole, and of how they may make the best of it. God has put this great and solemn gift of life into their hands: yet they never really think of it as His gift, nor ask themselves what they mean to do with it, what they have done with it, or how they may so use it as to show that they are not unworthy to be trusted with it. Nay, more; many of them do not even think of it bit by bit, day by day, step by step. So far from considering what they can make of their life as a whole, how they may make it pure and fair and bright; they do not so much as ask, What shall I do with my life to-day, so as to make it as clean, as fair, as useful as I can? Is it any wonder that they often wander round and round without making any real advance; and sink, again and again, into the very sloughs from which, again and again, they have been drawn out; or fall, again and again, into the very traps from which they have been set free? But to think is not enough. We want a high and true standard to which to refer, by which we may measure and direct our thoughts.
II. And this standard the psalmist gives us when he tells us to take heed to our ways according to the Word of God. It bids you remember that you have a soul as well as a body; that moral virtues and graces are still more valuable than mental gains and shining parts; that there is a world above and beyond this present world, a life above and beyond this mortal life; and it warns you to provide for that as well as for this. It asks you to believe that God is more than man, the soul more than the body, virtue better than pleasure, goodness better than gain, and the life to come more and better than the life which now is. It demands that when the claims of God clash with those of man, as they sometimes will, or the claims of the soul clash with those of the body, or the claims of virtue and goodness with those of gain and pleasure, or the claims of eternity with those of time, that you sacrifice the lower claims to the higher, that you sacrifice passing and inferior interests to interests which are noble and enduring. (S. Cox, D. D.)
Moral culture of young men
I. Young men require cleansing. Somehow or other, from the very commencement of moral agency, impure thoughts enter the mind, and impure emotions are awakened. So that cleansing is required almost at the beginning, because spiritual uncleanness is
(1) Inimical to peace of conscience.
(2) A hindrance to true soul growth.
(3) An obstruction to Divine fellowship.
II. Moral cleansing requires circumspection in life. By taking heed thereto. If you tread the path of vanity, avarice, sensuality, selfishness, you will go down deeper and deeper in moral filth. If you tread the path of virtue as trod by Jesus of Nazareth, you must take heed that you tread that path constantly and not turn to the right hand or to the left. Take heed. There are many on all hands who will try to turn you from the path.
III. Circumspection of life should be guided by the Divine Word. Thy Word, that contains the map; Thy Word, there burns the lamp; Thy Word, there dwells the inspiration. (Homilist.)
Young manhood: its peril and its rescue
I. Its peril. One thing that makes it hard for a young man to succeed in his manhood is the prevalence among us of influences that work distractingly and scatteringly. It takes time and a certain amount of leisure if a man is going to be at his best. We are torn hither and thither by multiplicity of interest.
2. Another disadvantage under which our young men are suffering is that they have so largely slipped their old anchorages. They have cut adrift from the past. Hereditary tastes, ideas and methods are ignored. The age to which a custom or doctrine has attained is taken as measure of its inherent absurdity. To be old-fashioned is, with them, to be silly.
3. Another tooth in the jaw of the Babylonian lion is the rum-shop and the wine-cup.
4. Still another incisor that pricks into and tears the life of our young manhood is the prevalence among us of so much that works personal impurity, in the shape of coarse literature, dirty pictures and houses of ill-repute.
5. Another obstacle that obstructs the efforts of our young men to maintain their manliness is the engrossing love of money.
II. The service of succour that we can render.
1. Prayer. Christ teaches us that He not only regards the prayer of faith when offered by those who need help, but that He regards the prayer of faith when offered in behalf of those who need help. Prayer generates work, and so makes us co-operate with God in bringing the answer to our own prayer.
2. Another thing we can do is to contribute in a material way to the work of the Young Mens Christian Association that has the interests of our un-homed young men in particular charge.
3. But we must not relegate to organization the work and responsibility that devolves upon us in our character of individual Christians. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)
The young mans conduct
I. It requires moral cleansing.
1. There are several elements more or less impure in a young mans life that must be cleansed:--
(1) Animalism. The senses are likely to control him.
(2) Illusion. His imagination creates fictitious joys and dignities.
(3) Vanity. The tendency of the young to overrate themselves is all but universal.
2. From these elements of impurity he must be cleansed. The animal must give way to the spiritual, the fictitious to the real, the vain to the sober and the humble.
II. Its moral cleansing requires personal circumspection. By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word. Sanctify them through Thy truth: for Thy Word is truth, said Christ. Now ye are clean through the Word I spoke unto you. By personal circumspection the Word must be applied
(1) For correction;
(2) for guidance. (Homilist.)
A young mans way
I. The Bible makes a great deal in its teaching about the ways of men.
1. There is the way of the transgressor, which is hard; and the way of the fool, which is right in his own eyes; and the way of the slothful, which is a hedge of thorns; and the way of the wicked, which is as darkness. And there is the way of the righteous, which is plain, and which the Lord knows; and the way of the saint, which is preserved; and the way which is like the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
2. There is variety in the ways of individual men at different periods of their life. There is the peculiar bent and passion of the old man, the characteristic of the man in middle life, and, differing from these, the way of a young man.
II. What is meant by cleansing the way. It is something very deep and pure which is intended, or Job would never have said, What is man that he should be clean? It is something very practical and searching, or Isaiah would not have begun his prophecies with the call, Wash you, make you clean, etc. It is something intended to cover the whole area of life, or it never would have been made an ordinance in the old dispensation to have the vessels and persons clean that came into the presence of God; nor would Jesus in the new, in so solemn a way have washed the feet of His disciples to make them every whit clean. It is the cleanness which is part of Gods life which is intended. God is of purer eyes than to look upon sin. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever. It is the cleanness which is also the holiness of God--cleanness from sin, from evil, from guile, from insincerity; the very quality praised by the adoring angels when they cry, Holy, Holy, Holy, in the presence of God. The question, therefore, means, Wherewithal shall a young man lead a holy life like the life of the Holy God? Wherewithal shall he make his way the way of a saint?
III. The answer to this question is By taking heed thereto according to Gods Word. By taking Gods Word as the light, the guide, and the director of the way; by considering your steps in the light of that Word; by taking that Word as the chart, the pilot, and the propeller of your way. For the young soul who receives this Word and makes it his bosom companion, who accepts its light as the guide of his way, who follows the Lord whom it commends--life from that hour is changed. His heart is fixed on the strength of God. His career is along the lines of the life of God. He will be no more a straw tossed in the wind, a dead log swung hither and thither by the swirl in the river, a wave driven this way and that by the wind; but a life--a stream from the life of God--a life made wise by the indwelling of Gods truth in the mind, and by the constraint of His love in the heart. (A. Macleod, D. D.)
To young men
I. The character of the way spoken of.
1. Its moral aspect. The law cannot relax its claims; it is inexorable, and cries, Pay me that thou owest. it smiles on the obedient, and frowns on the disobedient. Hence, your every word, thought and deed should be subject to its authority.
2. Its social aspect. Evil communications corrupt good manners is a truth which receives daily corroboration. Hence, how important that young men should be very particular in forming connections, and that great care should also be observed in making companionships (Pro_1:10; 2Co_6:14; 2Co_6:17). Divine grace does not destroy our social nature; it sanctifies it, and directs our social instincts in a pure channel; so that whilst sinners are joining hand in hand, Christians may enjoy the communion of saints.
3. Its intellectual aspect. Mental culture is an important part of your duty. When Virgil was asked by a friend why he studied so much accuracy in the plan of his poems, the propriety of his characters, and the purity of his diction, he answered, I write for eternity. Let it be, my young friends, the daily language of your hearts and life, I am living for eternity.
4. Its spiritual aspect. Your soul in its origin, capacities, immortality, and the price paid for its redemption, has a claim on your attention and efforts to save it.
II. What is implied in the phrase, Cleanse his way?
1. That the young man must ponder his steps. Want of reflection and forethought is characteristic of youth.
2. That he must resist temptation. Wealth, pleasure, fashion, company, amusements, pernicious books, and sensual enjoyments surround you, and you are in danger of being unduly influenced by them.
3. That he improve by the use of his privileges.
4. That he prepare for eternity.
III. How is this to be done? All your proceedings are to be regulated by Gods Word. Its cautions and threatenings must serve to preserve you from sin and danger. Its precepts and doctrines must guide you in your journey through life: and its precious promises and bright examples must allure you to scenes of felicity and glory beyond the grave.
IV. Lessons. A young mans way is--
1. Highly critical. Beset with snares, dangers, and enemies. Demanding constant watchfulness and prayer.
2. Deeply solemn. Leading to heaven or hell, eternal happiness or endless woe.
3. Personally responsible. The means of salvation within reach. (James White.)
To young men
I. The danger to which young men are exposed.
1. The depraved nature common to them as well as others.
2. The strength of their passions.
3. Their inexperience.
4. The incitements of wicked men.
5. The evil example of others.
6. Want of solid religious principles.
II. The Divinely-provided remedy, or preventive to pollution.
1. We must begin by seeking regenerating grace.
2. We must keep constant watch over our own hearts, or they will ensnare us.
3. We must pay strict attention to every part of our conduct.
4. We must seek assistance from the proper quarter. (W. Peddie, D. D.)
A young man cleansing his way
I. What is implied in the question. That for a young man to cleanse his way is--
1. A necessary thing.
2. A difficult thing.
3. A noble thing (verse 1). Such are beautiful in youth, and strong in their radiant manhood. They are the flower of the race. They are the hope of the Church. And the Lord Jesus, beholding them, loves them.
II. What is taught in the answer.
1. He must have a fixed purpose to cleanse his way. Determination is everything in religion, as in other matters. The young man who is firmly resolved to live a holy life will succeed in doing so, provided he lays hold of the grace of God, and uses the appointed means of sanctification.
2. He must take Holy Scripture as his guide. The Bible is the cleanest book in the world. Its ideals are the noblest. It is the purity of the Divine Word that has invested it with indestructible vitality. The morality of Scripture satisfies our moral being as the very perfection of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good; and Scripture shows us that fair ideal of purity embodied in an actual human life--the life of the Son of God in our nature. (C. Jerdan, LL. B.)
Religion the only safeguard of youth
The infidel, Thomas Paine, was one night haranguing a promiscuous company, gathered in the common room of the New York tavern where he had his lodgings, on the great harm done to the world by the Bible and the Christian religion. When he paused for breath, he was much astonished at the remark of a stranger, who said, Mr. Paine, you have been in Scotland. You know there is not a more rigid set of people in the world than they are in their attachment to the Bible. When a young man loaves his fathers house, his mother in packing his chest always puts a Bible on the top of his clothes. The infidel nodded acquiescence. You have also been in Spain, continued the stranger. The people have no Bibles, and in that country you can hire a man for a dollar to murder his neighbour, who never gave him any offence. Mr. Paine answered that this was so. Then, see how the argument stands, said the advocate for Christianity. If the Bible were so bad a book as you represent it to be, those who use it would be the worst members of society; but the contrary is the fact. Our prisons, almshouses, and penitentiaries are filled with men and women whose ignorance or unbelief prevents them from reading the Bible.
I. The young man who rules himself after Gods Word will walk in the ways of honesty. Make it a rule, young men, never to sacrifice integrity for broad.
II. The young man who rules himself after Gods Word will cultivate a spirit of reverence. The young man who rules himself after Gods Word will utter no profane oath; and when he comes into Gods holy temple, it will always be with uncovered head, as becomes the presence-chamber of the King of kings.
III. Another thing which will distinguish those who walk in obedience to Gods laws is that they will be found in the ways of sobriety. By one of the laws of ancient Greece, every offence committed by a drunken person received double punishment. Christian nations would do well to adopt it.
IV. The young man who rules himself after Gods Word will be found in the ways of purity. Keep thyself pure (1Ti_5:22).
V. The young man who rules himself after Gods Word will be religious. Youth is the stormy cape, within sight of which many a frail bark is lost; and Gods Word is the only chart which can guide one safely On his voyage. (J. N. Norton.)
The cleansing Word
I. The question.
1. Mans ways need cleansing.
2. Youth is the most important time for this.
(1) The youngest person has contracted defilement and sin.
(2) The young may die.
(3) Youth is a time of the greatest danger.
(4) The young are forming those associations and habits which go on increasing in strength, and give colour to all the actions of their future lives.
(5) In youth the hopes of your parents, and friends, and masters, look for some reward for the pains they took with you in early infancy.
II. The answer.
1. How does the Word of God provide for this cleansing of the way?
(1) By pointing out to the young man the evil of his way. The Bible tells him what God is, and what he is, and what evil is in him and in his way.
(2) By discovering an infallible remedy for the disorders of his nature. And that remedy is the salvation that is by Jesus Christ.
(3) By becoming a directory in all the paths of duty to which they may be called.
2. You must take heed to it. This implies--
(1) Care and thoughtfulness.
(2) Prayer. (D. Wilson, M. A.)
Take heed to thy way
I. The senses is which the Word of God is a cleanser of the way of life.
1. It purifies as a rule.
2. Gods Word is an instrument by which He cleanses the heart. So Jesus prayed--Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth. The Word that said, Let there be light, and in a moment changed the darkness and confusion of the aboriginal elements into the light, order, and beauty of creation, is the same Word which breathes the breath of spiritual life into the new creature in Christ Jesus.
II. The manner is which the Word of God is to be applied to cleanse the young mans way. By taking heed thereto.
1. This implies an earnest study of the Word; frequent and unintermitred contemplation.
2. It also implies a care and watchfulness over our own hearts and ways.
III. The reasons which should appeal to youth to take heed to their way.
1. How reasonable it is in itself. Ought not God to have our first and best, who loved us first and gave us His best?
2. Temptation is never so strong and fiery as in the tropical clime of youth.
3. The fearful hindrances to the work of grace which increase and aggravate upon the postponement of repentance. (J. B. Owen, M. A.)
Clean ways
A way has a direction, and leads somewhither. A way is continuous, and if we are in it, we are advancing in it. A way differs in its direction from other ways, and diverges more and more from them the farther one travels upon it. There is hardly any error so perilous as that of imagining that there can be isolated acts or states of mind. Every present has its closely affiliated future. Every deed, every reverie, every thought, is a cause. We are moving on in character, as in years. Let me beg you, then, to see whither you are going, whither your way leads. Start not in a direction which you are not willing to follow to the end. Take not your first step on any evil way, unless you are ready to encounter the dishonour, degradation, misery, and ruin which have visibly overtaken the advanced travellers on that way. Remember, our ways lead on through the death-shadow; and I know that there is but one way on which you are willing that death should overtake you,--but one way whose steps brighten under the shadow, and in which you can hope to walk with those whom you would crave as your companions in the life everlasting. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way, or, more literally, make his way clean? This is a metaphor which appeals vividly to our experience. What is there so disheartening as the necessity of treading muddy streets? We sedulously seek, if they are to be had, clean paths for our feet, and bewail ourselves when we cannot find them. We are ashamed, even though no other eye be upon us, if we are forced to prolong travel-stain or any squalid condition of person or attire. Can it be that there is one so imbruted that he feels not the travel-stain of sinful ways,--that there is not a close-clinging sense of impurity when the soul has debased itself by foul deeds, indulgences, or associations? Must there not be a self-loathing, a self-contempt, in those who are making themselves vile? Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word. What is the Word of God? An unerring and undying conscience, a sense of right and wrong, native in the soul of man, is Gods Word to you and me. There is never a question of duty, in which you do not know what you ought to do. There is never a sinful compliance to which you are tempted or urged, of whose moral character you have the slightest doubt. So long as you obey your conscience, you are taking heed to your way according to the Word of God. But this phrase has for us another meaning--another, yet the same. The Word of God--the very same word which speaks to us in con-science--has lived incarnate in the one sinless Son of Man, or rather, not has lived, but ever lives, in the heaven whither He has gone before us, and where His welcome awaits our following Him, in His Gospel, fresh as when the words of grace and truth fell from His lips, in the pure spirits trained in His nurture, in the examples of excellence that have transmitted His holiness in a line of living light all down the Christian ages, and in whom the Christ within has shone forth in radiant beauty. (A. P. Peabody, D. D.)
Taking heed to Gods Word
You are to take heed. Look at the pilot at the helm, when he is steering the vessel, in the storm, amidst the rocks: what is he doing? Taking heed. He is all eye, all sensibility, all intelligence, as to the position in which he stands. That is taking heed. Look at the sentinel, walking his weary round, when he knows that the enemy is at hand. Hearken to his footsteps; why, they seem to be but the echo of the mans sensibility of alarm and of danger. He is taking heed. And you are to take heed to your way. What did God give you faculties for, but to be employed? You have the faculty for observation: employ it. You have the faculty for examination: employ it. You have the faculty for reflection: employ it. You have the power of taking heed: employ it. And recollect that no man can do this for you. It is to be done individually, vigilantly; you, as a man alive to your danger, are to enact the part of the pilot amidst the rocks. And doing this according to Gods Word, you shall not labour in vain, nor spend your strength for nought. You can discern between good and evil, you know what is offensive, and you know what is pleasing to God; you know what you must do to be saved; you know that yonder is a scene of profligacy and vice, and that here is an opportunity for serving and worshipping God; you know that there is a literature which is saturated with all manner of ungodliness, and that here lies a Book which will lead you to glory, honour, immortality, and eternal life. Take heed, then; and take heed, according to Gods Word. When your vigilance is once excited, and your mind is all in action, and you leave your house of business, and are plied with all manner of fascinations, take heed what you are about; but be sure to take heed according to the requirements, the directions, the expostulations, the promises of Gods Word. To take heed according to the maxims of the world, or the suggestions of fashion, would only be to mock your misery, and accelerate your downfall; but taking heed according to Gods Word, that Word being hid away in your hearts, for constant and appropriate use, you will be able to say with a voice which he will be forced to listen to, Get thee behind me, Satan, and to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ shall make you free. But this requires attention, diligence, and personal effort. How will Gods Word enable you to take heed? You must get it into your memories, it must be associated with your recollections, it must be ready whenever you want it, your hearing of it having been mixed with faith; and when it has thus been lodged and assimilated there, it will be the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. (W. Brock.)
A clean life
Some years ago, in most of the large railway stations of England, there was a picture which greatly amused me. It represented a little boy who had been washed, and stood half white and half black beside a bath. A certain kind of soap had been used in the boys ablutions, and the result was that, although he had not become white, he was half white and half black. Like some people of my acquaintance, I thought many a time; not so dirty as they once were, but they are far from clean yet. We ought to be clean every whit--that is, clean in all our thoughts, words, and especially in our conduct. Let us all aim at having a clean life. Almost the first thing that we discover when we begin to think about ourselves and the world in which we live is this need of cleansing. Sin has defiled everything, and its marks are upon our hearts. How can we remedy this? what can be done for us to remove the stain which seems fixed so fast in the fibres of our lives? What would you think of a negro who washed his face, and scrubbed it with all his might, in order to make it white? He could not make his skin fair like ours, even if he used all the soap in England, and all the washing powders, too; because the black lies underneath the skin, and it cannot be got at by rubbing. Once a year farmers wash their sheep so as to cleanse the wool, but then all the dirt is on the outside. That which defiles us, however, is inside us, and so it cannot be so easily got rid of. We must become clean within, and to do this for us is Gods good work. Mr. Moody tells us that one day he promised to take his little boy out for a drive. But the child played about in the dirt, and made himself quite unfit to be seen. Let me come with you, father, he pleaded. No, Willie, you are not ready. I must take you in and wash you. Oh, papa! Ise ready. No, you are all over dirt. Mamma washed me; Ise clean. Finding that he could not convince the child that he had contracted dirt since he had been washed, Mr. Moody lifted Willie up in his arms and showed him his face in a looking-glass. Says Mr. Moody, The looking-glass stopped his mouth, but I did not wash his face with it! Now, the Bible is a looking-glass, and intended to show us our need of cleansing; and if you will but prayerfully study it you will see your need of cleansing. George Herbert, while catechizing asked, after other questions about mans misery, Since man is so miserable, what is to be done? and the answerer could not tell. He asked him again what he would do if he were in a ditch? This familiar illustration made the answer so plain, that he was even ashamed of his ignorance; for he could not but say he would haste out of it as fast as he could. Then the minister asked whether he needed a helper, and who was that helper? And then we must be kept clean, and that every day. For one thing, we must avoid that which would defile us, and that we can do if we are careful. A gentleman, when he brought his son to London in order that he might apprentice him to an engineer, made up his mind to give him a few words of kindly counsel. He turned over in his mind how best to say what ought to be said, without getting any nearer the solution. But as they walked along the street,, they observed that the roadway was very muddy. The youth was about to cross in the mud, but his father stopped him. Wait, he said, we will seek a clean crossing. Always seek a clean crossing in life. After he had been left alone in town, the youth pondered these words, and dimly began to see their meaning. Seek a clean crossing in life; mind where you go, and keep out of the mud. There are some places that are known by almost every one to be evil--keep away from them; seek a clean crossing. There is another thing said in the text about the cleansing Word of God, and that is, we must frequently consult it. On board ship the captain consults his chart, and shapes his course by it. The Bible is our chart, a map of the roads through life along which we must tread in order to reach heaven. A chart kept wrapped up would be useless; look at it, study it, and then follow its guidance. At times we are perplexed as to what is the right and wise course for us to adopt. We are perplexed, and do not know whom to consult. Open your Bible, and you will probably find there some one in precisely the same circumstances. You will certainly find some text suitable for you, and will thus learn what to do. The entrance of Thy Word giveth light, says a psalm, and many people can testify that this witness is quite true. (N. Wiseman.)
Go by the directions
Go by the directions. I saw a picture once which has stuck to my memory for years and years. It was a picture of a dark, wild, stormy night, and a traveller was standing up in the stirrups of his horse at a parting of the way, trying to read the directions on the finger-post. How eagerly he was looking! I can see him yet holding the lighted match carefully in his hand lest the wind should blow it out before he had read the directions l It was a good thing for him that there were directions, and it is a good thing we have them, too. Where are our directions? They are--the Bible. That is Gods Word to us, telling us which road to take when we come to the parting of the way. Go by the directions Do what God says, and you will never go wrong. (J. R. Howatt.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Psalms
A CLEANSED WAY
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Psa 119:9.
There are many questions about the future with which it is natural for you young people to occupy yourselves; but I am afraid that the most of you ask more anxiously ‘How shall I make my way?’ than ‘How shall I cleanse it?’ It is needful carefully to ponder the questions: ‘How shall I get on in the world-be happy, fortunate?’ and the like, and I suppose that that is the consideration which presses with special force upon a great many of you. Now I want you to think of another question: ‘How shall I cleanse my way?’ For purity is the best thing; and to be good is a wiser as well as a nobler object of ambition than any other. So my object is just to try and urge upon my dear young friends before me the serious consideration for a while of this grave question of my text, and the answers which are given to it.
If I can get you once to be smitten with a passion for purity, all but everything is gained. But I shall not be content if even that is the issue of my pleading with you now, for I want to have you all Christians. And that is why I have asked you to listen to what I have to say to you on this occasion.
I. So, first, we have here the great practical problem for life: ‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?’ Or, in other words, ‘How may I live a pure and a noble life?’ It is a question, of course, for everybody: it is the question for everybody, but it is more especially one for you young people. And I wish to urge it upon you for two or three reasons, which I very briefly specify.
First, I desire to press upon you this question, because, as I have said, you are under special temptations not to ask it. There are so many other points in your future unresolved, that you are only too apt to put aside the consideration of this one in favour of those which seem to be of more pressing and immediate importance. And you have the other temptation, common to us all, but especially attending you as young people, of living without any plan of life at all. The sin and the misery of half the world are that they live from hand to mouth, knowing why they do each single action at the moment, but never looking a dozen inches beyond their noses to see where all the actions taken together tend; and so being just like weathercocks, whirled round by every wind of temptation that comes to them. If they are good or pure they are so by accident, by impulse, or because they have never been tempted. They have no definite plan or theory of life which they could put into words if anybody asked them on what principles, and for what end, and towards what objects they were living. And as everybody is tempted into such an unreflecting way of life, so you especially are tempted to it, because at your age judgment and experience are not so strong as inclination and passion; and everything has got the fresh gloss of novelty upon it, and it seems to be sometimes sufficient delight to live and get hold of the new joys that are flooding in upon you. And therefore I want you to stop and for a moment think whether you have any plan of life that bears being put into words, whether you can tell God and your own consciences what you are living for.
And I urge this question upon you for another reason-because it is worth while for you to ask it. For you have still the prerogative that some of us have lost, of determining the shape that your life’s course is to take. The path that you are going to tread lies all unmarked out across the plain of life. You may be pretty nearly what you like. Life is before you, with great blessed possibilities; it is behind some of us. All the long years which you may probably have are all plastic in your hands yet; they are moulded into a rigid shape for men like me. We have made our beds, and we must lie on them. You have your life in your own hands; therefore, I beseech you, while you have not to ask this question with the bitter meaning with which old men that have made their paths, and made them filthy, have to ask it-’How shall an old man cleanse his way, and get rid of the filth?’-consider how you may secure that your way in the untrodden future shall be clean, and do not rest till you get an answer.
And I press it upon you for another reason, because you have special temptations to make your ways unclean. It is a fearful ordeal that every young man and woman has to face, as he or she steps across the dividing boundary between childhood and youth, when parental authority is weakened, and the leading-strings are loosened, and the young swimmer is as it were cut away from the buoys, and has to battle with the waves alone. There are hundreds of young men in Manchester, there are many of them here now, who have come up into this great city from quiet country homes where they were shielded by the safeguards of a father’s and a mother’s love and care, and have been flung into this place, with its every street swarming with temptation, and companions on the benches of the university, at the desks, in the warehouses, and the workshops, leading them away into evil and teaching them the devil’s alphabet-young men with their evenings vacant and with no home. Am I speaking to any such standing in slippery places? Oh, my young friend! there is nothing in all these temptations, the fascinations of which you are beginning to find out, there is nothing in them all worth soiling your fingers for; there is nothing in them all that will pay you for the loss of your innocence. There is nothing in them all except a fair outside with poison at the core. You see the ‘primrose path’; you do not see, to use Shakespeare’s solemn words, ‘the everlasting burnings’ to which it leads. And so I plead with you all, young men and women, to lay this question to heart; and I beseech you to credit me when I say to you that you have not yet touched the gravest and the most pressing problem of life unless you have asked yourselves in a serious mood of deep reflection, ‘Wherewithal shall I cleanse my way?’
II. So much for the first point to which I ask your attention. Now, secondly, look at this answer, which tells us that we can only make our way clean on condition of constant watchfulness. ‘By taking heed thereto.’
That seems a very plain, simple, common-sense answer. The best made road wants looking after if it is to be kept in repair. What would become of a railway that had no surfacemen and platelayers going along the line and noticing whether anything was amiss? I remember once seeing a bit of an old Roman road; the lava blocks were there, but for want of care, here a young sapling had grown up between two of them and had driven them apart; there they were split by the frost, here was a great ugly gap full of mud; and the whole thing ended in a jungle. How shall a man keep his road in repair? ‘By taking heed thereto.’ Things that are left to go anyhow in this world have a strange knack of going one how. You do not need anything else than negligence to ensure that things will come to grief.
And so, at first sight, my text simply seems to preach the plain truth: if you want to keep your road right, look after it. But if you look at your Bibles, you will see that the word ‘thereto’ is a supplement, and that all that the Psalmist really says is ‘by taking heed.’ And perhaps it is to himself rather than to his ‘way’ that a man is exhorted to ‘take heed.’ ‘Take heed to thyself’ is the only condition of a pure and noble life.
That such a condition is necessary, will appear very plain from two considerations. First, it is clear that there must be constant watchfulness, if we consider what sort of a world this is that we have got into And it is also plain, if we consider what sort of creatures we are that have got into it.
First, it is plain if we consider what sort of a world this is that we have got into. It is a world a great deal fuller of inducements to do wrong than of inducements to do right; a world in which there are a great many bad things that have a deceptive appearance of pleasure; a great many circumstances in which it seems far easier to follow the worse than to follow the better course. And so, unless a man has learned the great art of saying ‘No!’ ‘So did not I because of the fear of the Lord’; he will come to rack and ruin without a doubt. There are more things round about you that will tempt you downwards than will draw you upwards, and your only security is constant watchfulness. As George Herbert says:-
‘Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack,
And rots to nothing at the next great thaw.’
And that is what will happen to you, as sure as you are living, in spite of all your good resolutions, unless you back up those resolutions with perpetual jealous watchfulness over yourselves. ‘Keep thy heart with all diligence.’
And the same lesson is pealed out to us if we consider what sort of creatures we are that have got into this world all full of wickedness. We are creatures evidently made for self-government. Our whole nature is like a monarchy. There are things in each of us that are never meant to rule, but to be kept well down under control, such as strong passions, desires rooted in the flesh which are not meant to get the mastery of a man, and there are parts of our nature which are as obviously intended to be supreme and sovereign: the reason, the conscience, the will.
There is a deal of pestilent talk which one sometimes hears, amongst young men especially, about ‘following nature.’ Yes! I say, ‘Follow nature!’ and nature says, ‘Let the man govern the animal!’ and ‘Do not set beggars on horseback,’ nor allow your passions to guide you, but keep a tight hand on them, suppress them, scourge them, rule them by your reason, by your conscience, and by your will.
Suppose a man were to say about a steamship, ‘The structure of this vessel shows that it is meant that we should get a roaring fire up in the furnaces, and set the engines going at full speed, and let her go as she will.’ Would he not have left out of account that there was a steering apparatus, which was as plainly meant to guide as are the engines to drive? What are the rudder and the wheel for?-do they not imply a pilot? and is not the make of our souls as plainly suggestive of subordination and control? Doth not nature itself teach you that you do not follow, but outrage, nature, when you let your passions rule, and that you only then follow nature when you bow the whole man under the dominion of the conscience, and when conscience stands waiting for the voice of God?
‘Unless above himself he can erect
Himself, how mean a thing is man!’
You are called upon by the very world that you have come into, and by the very sort of person that you yourself are, to exercise that perpetual watchfulness which is the only condition of cleansing your way. There must be a strong guard on the frontier, which shall examine all the thoughts and purposes and desires that would pass out, and all the temptations and seductions that would pass in; and take care that none shall pass which cannot bring the King’s warrant, ‘Keep thy heart with diligence.’ ‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto.’
III. This constant watchfulness, to be of any use, must be regulated by God’s Word. ‘Taking heed thereto, according to Thy word.’
The guard on the frontier who is to keep the path must have instructions from headquarters, and not choose and decide according to their own phantasy, but according to the King’s orders. Or to use another metaphor, it is no use having a guard unless the guard has a lantern, and the lantern and light is the Word of God.
That brings me to say, and only in a word or two, how inadequate for the task of regulating our own lives our own watchfulness is. Conscience is the captain of the guard, and there is only one judgment in which conscience is always and infallibly right, and that is when it says, ‘It is right to do right; and it is wrong to do wrong.’ But when you begin to ask conscience, ‘And, pray, what is right and what is wrong?’ it is by no means invariably to be trusted; for you can educate conscience up or down to almost anything; and you can warp conscience, and you can bribe conscience, and you can stifle conscience. And so it is not enough that we should exercise the most watchful care over our course, and decide upon the right and the wrong of it by our own judgments; we may be fearfully wrong notwithstanding it all. It is not enough for a man to have a good watch in his pocket unless now and then he can get Greenwich time by which he can set it, and unless that has been secured by taking an observation of the sun. And so you cannot trust to anything in yourselves for the guidance of your own way or for the determination of your duty, but you must look to that higher Wisdom that has condescended to speak to us, and give us in this Book the revelation of its will. Men rebel against the moral law of the Bible, and speak of it as if it were a restraint and a sharp taskmaster. Ah, no! It is one of the greatest tokens of God’s infinite love to us that He has not left us to grope our way amidst the illusions of our own judgments, and the questionable shapes of human conceptions of right and wrong, but that He has declared to us His own character for the standard of all perfection, and given us in the human life of the Son of His love the all-sufficient pattern for every life.
So I need not dwell at any length upon the thought that in that word of God, in its whole sweep, and eminently and especially in Christ, who is the Incarnate Word, we have an all-sufficient Guide. A guide of conduct must be plain-and whatever doubts and difficulties there may be about the doctrines of Christianity there is none about its morality. A guide of conduct must be decisive-and there is no faltering in the utterance of the Book as to right and wrong. A guide of conduct must be capable of application to the wide diversities of character, age, circumstance-and the morality of the New Testament especially, and of the Old in a measure, secures that, because it does not trouble itself about minute details, but deals with large principles. The morality of the Gospel, if I may so say, is a morality of centres, not of circumferences; of germinal principles, not of special prescriptions. A guide for morals must be far in advance of the followers, and it has taken generations and centuries to work into men’s consciences, and to work out in men’s practice, a portion of the morality of that Book. People tell us that Christianity is worn out. Ah! it will not be worn out until all its moral teaching has become part of the practice of the world, and that will not be for a year or two! The men that care least about Christian doctrines are foremost to admit that the Sermon on the Mount is the noblest code of morality that has ever been promulgated. If the world kept the commandments of the New Testament, the world would be in the Millennium; and all the sin and crime, and ninety-nine-hundredths of all the sorrow, of earth would have vanished like an ugly dream. Here is the guide for you, and if you take it you will not err.
My dear young friend! did you ever try to measure one day’s actions by the standard of this Book? Let me press upon you this: Cultivate the habit-the habit of bringing all that you do side by side with this light; as a scholar in some school of art will take his feeble copy, and hold it by the side of the masterpiece, and compare line for line, and tint for tint. Take your life, and put it by the side of the Great Life, and you will begin to find out how ‘according to Thy word’ is the only standard by which to set your lives.
IV. And now I have one last thing to say. All this can only be done effectually if you are a Christian. My psalm does not go to the bottom; it goes as far as the measure of revelation granted to its author admitted; but if a person had no more to say than that, it would be a weary business. It is no use to tell a man, ‘Guard yourself, guard yourself,’ nor even to tell him, ‘Guard yourself according to God’s word,’ if God’s word is only a law.
The fatal defect of all attempts at keeping my heart by my own watchfulness is that keeper and kept are one and the same, and so there may be mutiny in the garrison, and the very forces that ought to subdue the rebellion may have gone over to the rebels. You want a power outside of you to steady you. The only way to haul a boat up the rapids is to have some fixed point on the shore to which a man may fasten a rope and pull at that. You get that eternal guard and fixed point by which to hold in Jesus Christ, the dear Son of God’s love, who has died for you.
You want another motive to be brought to bear upon your conduct, and upon your convictions and your will mightier than any that now influence them; and you get that if you will yield yourself to the love that has come down from heaven to save you, and says to you, ‘If you love Me, keep My commandments.’ You want for keeping yourself and cleansing your way reinforcements to your own inward vigour, and you will get these if you will trust to Jesus Christ, who will breathe into you the Spirit of His own life, which will make you ‘free from the law of sin and death.’
You want, if your path is to be cleansed-the youngest of you, the most tenderly nurtured, the purest, the most innocent wants-forgiveness for a past path, which is in some measure stained and foul, as well as strength for the future, to deliver you from the dreadful influence of the habit of evil. And you get all these, dear friends! in the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses from all sin.
So, standing as you do in the place where two ways meet, and with your choice yet in your power, I beseech you, turn away from the broad, easy road that slopes pleasantly downwards, and choose the narrow, steep path that climbs. Better rocks than mud, better the painful life of self-restraint and self-denial than the life of pleasing self.
Oh! choose the better portion, choose Christ for your Leader, your Law, your Lord! Trust yourselves to that great sacrifice which He made on the Cross, that all the past for you may be cleansed, and the future may be swept clear; and, so trusting, be sure He will be with you, to keep you and to guide you into the path which His own hand has raised above the filth of the world; the path of holiness, along which you may walk with feet and garments unstained till you come to Zion, ‘with songs and everlasting joy upon your heads,’ and bless Him there for all the way by which He led you home.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain Beth. Of the Distinguishing Signs of an Irreproachable Life.…
Beth. Of the Distinguishing Signs of an Irreproachable Life. —
v. 9. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? When will it be possible for a young person, surrounded with the many temptations of youth, 2Ti 2:22, to be and remain clean in his conduct? By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word, by watching carefully over every step and applying the rule of God’s Word to every situation with which he is confronted. The state of mind of such an earnest seeker after truth and holiness is now described.
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v. 10. With my whole heart have I sought Thee, earnestly desiring the closest fellowship with the Lord; O let me not wander from Thy commandments, so as to lose sight of the fundamental directions for conduct.
v. 11. Thy Word, all that God had said in revealing Himself and His holy will to men, have I hid in mine heart, like a precious treasure which fills his entire inner life, that I might not sin against Thee, for sin cannot gain a foothold in a heart filled with the knowledge of God and with love for His Word.
v. 12. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the object of the believer’s joyful praise; teach me Thy statutes, for the more a Christian knows of the precepts of God’s holy will, the more he desires to learn the way of sanctification. At the same time he exercises himself in confession.
v. 13. With my lips have I declared, he will solemnly proclaim, all the judgments of Thy mouth, especially those decisions of God’s justice which approve of a righteous life and act as a constant spur to the faithful.
v. 14. I have rejoiced in the way of Thy testimonies, in the manner in which God has revealed Himself and all His attributes, as much as in all riches, for therein the true wealth of the faithful consists, in the active possession and in the constant use of the Word of God.
v. 15. I will meditate in Thy precepts, pondering them, mulling over them, trying to penetrate ever more deeply into their divine meaning, and have respect unto Thy ways, ever on the lookout for the paths which God’s Word prescribes.
v. 16. I will delight myself, find the greatest joy, full happiness, in Thy statutes, studying the rules of God’s holy will in their relation to the conduct of every person in the world; I will not forget Thy Word. It is this rallying around the Bible which makes the individual and whole church organizations a power in the Lord.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 This is the name of the second letter of…
BETH
This is the name of the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the Hebrew language, each line of verses 9-16 begins with this letter.
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How can a young person keep his path pure?
This question is used to introduce a new value to the word of God. This rhetorical question can be translated as a statement. AT: "This is how a young person can keep his path pure" (See: Rhetorical Question)
keep his path pure
The writer compares living according to God's law as a path kept clear of obstructions. (See: Metaphor)
With my whole heart
This is an idiom. The heart refers to all of one's emotions, feelings, desires, and will. AT: "with all my being" or "with everything in me" or "sincerely" (See: Idiom)
Do not let me stray from your commandments
Here to disobey God's commandments is described as straying off a path. AT: "Do not let me disobey your commandments" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
pure
obey
word of God
heart
command
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 119:9-16 Beth (ב): The psalmist is determined to pursue…
119:9-16 Beth (ב): The psalmist is determined to pursue purity and encourages the cultivation of wisdom through God’s principles (119:9) and instructions (119:10-16).
119:9 A young person tends toward foolishness (Prov 22:15) and can easily make mistakes that destroy his life (Prov 7:6-23). Youth is also the best time to develop personal discipline and pursue wisdom (see Ps 34:11; Prov 1:4). • To stay pure means to remain uncorrupted by wickedness and sin and to develop the integrity of life defined in Ps 15.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.