Psalms 112:7(v7)He will not be afraid of evil news. His heart is steadfast, trusting in Yahweh.
Psalms 16:9(v8)Therefore my heart is glad, and my tongue rejoices. My body shall also dwell in safety.
Psalms 34:4(v7)I sought Yahweh, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.
Ephesians 5:20(v7)giving thanks always concerning all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father;
Psalms 30:12(v8)to the end that my heart may sing praise to you, and not be silent. Yahweh my God, I will give thanks to you forever!
Show all 22 cross-references
Judges 5:12(v8)‘Awake, awake, Deborah! Awake, awake, utter a song! Arise, Barak, and lead away your captives, you son of Abinoam.’
Psalms 108:1-3(v8)My heart is steadfast, God. I will sing and I will make music with my soul. Wake up, harp and lyre! I will wake up the dawn. I will give…
Isaiah 52:1(v8)Awake, awake! Put on your strength, Zion. Put on your beautiful garments, Jerusalem, the holy city: for from now on the uncircumcised and…
Acts 2:26(v8)Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced. Moreover my flesh also will dwell in hope;
Psalms 18:49(v9)Therefore I will give thanks to you, Yahweh, among the nations, and will sing praises to your name.
Psalms 22:22-23(v9)I will declare your name to my brothers. Among the assembly, I will praise you. You who fear Yahweh, praise him! All you descendants of…
Psalms 96:3(v9)Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.
Psalms 108:1-5(v7)My heart is steadfast, God. I will sing and I will make music with my soul. Wake up, harp and lyre! I will wake up the dawn. I will give…
Romans 5:3(v7)Not only this, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance;
Psalms 138:1(v9)I will give you thanks with my whole heart. Before the gods, I will sing praises to you.
Psalms 138:4-5(v9)All the kings of the earth will give you thanks, Yahweh, for they have heard the words of your mouth. Yes, they will sing of the ways of…
Psalms 150:3(v8)Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet! Praise him with harp and lyre!
Isaiah 24:15(v7)Therefore glorify Yahweh in the east, even the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel, in the islands of the sea!
Isaiah 52:9(v8)Break out into joy! Sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem; for Yahweh has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem.
Psalms 2:1(v9)Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot a vain thing?
Romans 15:9(v9)and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, “Therefore I will give praise to you among the Gentiles and sing…
Psalms 145:10-12(v9)All your works will give thanks to you, Yahweh. Your saints will extol you. They will speak of the glory of your kingdom, and talk about…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (20 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
John Calvin1540 · Public DomainOn vv7–97. My heart is prepared, O God! Some read…
7. My heart is prepared, O God! Some read fixed, or confirmed, and the Hebrew word נכון, nacon, bears that signification as well as the other. If we adopt it, we must understand David as saying that he had well and duly meditated upon the praises which he was about to offer; that he did not rush into a hurried and perfunctory discharge of this service, as too many are apt to do, but addressed himself to it with steadfast purpose of heart. I prefer, however, the other translation, which bears that he was ready to enter upon the service with all cheerfulness and cordiality. And although, wherever this spirit is really felt, it will lead to steadfastness of religious exercise, it is not without importance that the reader should be apprised of the force of the word which is here employed in the Hebrew. The ready heart is here opposed by David to the mere lip-service of the hypocrite, on the one hand, and to dead or sluggish service, on the other. He addressed himself to this voluntary sacrifice with a sincere fervor of spirit, casting aside sloth, and whatever might prove a hinderance in the duty.
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 translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv7–8That is, wholly bent to give thee praise for…
That is, wholly bent to give thee praise for my deliverance.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv7–9Psa 57:7 My heart is fixed, O God, my…
Psa 57:7 My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise.
Ver. 7. My heart is fixed, O God] I am both ready and resolute; I doubt not about deliverance, and am well prepared to praise God. It is fit he should have the fruit of his own planting, and that of the best too; otherwise it is no better than the refreshing of him that standeth by a good fire, and saith, Aha, I am warm.
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 Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv7–9Fixed, or established, in a full assurance of thy…
Fixed, or established, in a full assurance of thy merciful help. It was ready to sink with fear, or bowed down, Psa 57:6; but now I have through thy grace conquered my fears, and am fixed in a stedfast belief of thy promises. Or, is prepared, to wit, to sing and give praise, as it follows.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry1710 · Public DomainOn v7How strangely is the tune altered here! David's prayers…
How strangely is the tune altered here! David's prayers and complaints, by the lively actings of faith, are here, all of a sudden, turned into praises and thanksgivings; his sackcloth is loosed, he is girded with gladness, and his hallelujahs are as fervent as his hosannas. This should make us in love with prayer, that, sooner or later, it will be swallowed up in praise. Observe,
I. How he prepares himself for the duty of praise (Psa 57:7): My heart is fixed, O God! my heart is fixed. My heart is erect, or lifted up (so some), which was bowed down, Psa 57:6. My heart is fixed, 1. With reference to God's providences; it is prepared for every event, being stayed upon God, Psa 112:7; Isa 26:3. My heart is fixed, and then none of these things move me, Act 20:24. If by the grace of God we be brought into this even composed frame of spirit, we have great reason to be thankful. 2. With reference to the worship of God: My heart is fixed to sing and give praise. It is implied that the heart is the main thing required in all acts of devotion; nothing is done to purpose, in religion, further than it is done with the heart. The heart must be fixed, fixed for the duty, fitted and put in frame for it, fixed in the duty by a close application, attending on the Lord without distraction.
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II. How he excites himself to the duty of praise (Psa 57:8): Awake up my glory, that is, my tongue (our tongue is our glory, and never more so than when it is employed in praising God), or my soul, that must be first awakened; dull and sleepy devotions will never be acceptable to God. We must stir up ourselves, and all that is within us, to praise God; with a holy fire must that sacrifice be kindled, and ascend in a holy flame. David's tongue will lead, and his psaltery and harp will follow, in these hymns of praise. I myself will awake, not only, "I will not be dead, and drowsy, and careless, in this work," but, "I will be in the most lively frame, as one newly awakened out of a refreshing sleep." He will awake early to this work, early in the morning, to begin the day with God, early in the beginnings of a mercy. When God is coming towards us with his favours we must go forth to meet him with our praises.
III. How he pleases himself, and (as I may say) even prides himself, in the work of praise; so far is he from being ashamed to own his obligations to God, and dependence upon him, that he resolves to praise him among the people and to sing unto him among the nations, Psa 57:9. This intimates, 1. That his own heart was much affected and enlarged in praising God; he would even make the earth ring with his sacred songs, that all might take notice how much he thought himself indebted to the goodness of God. 2. That he desired to bring others in to join with him in praising God. He will publish God's praises among the people, that the knowledge, and fear, and love of God might be propagated, and the ends of the earth might see his salvation. When David was driven out into heathen lands he would not only not worship their gods, but he would openly avow his veneration for the God of Israel, would take his religion along with him wherever he went, would endeavour to bring others in love with it, and leave the sweet savour of it behind him. David, in his psalms, which fill the universal church, and will to the end of time, may be said to be still praising God among the people and singing to him among the nations; for all good people make use of his words in praising God. Thus St. John, in his writings, is said to prophesy again before many peoples and nations, Rev 10:11.
IV. How he furnishes himself with matter for praise, Psa 57:10. That which was the matter of his hope and comfort (God shall send forth his mercy and his truth, Psa 57:3) is here the matter of his thanksgiving: Thy mercy is great unto the heavens, great beyond conception and expression; and thy truth unto the clouds, great beyond discovery, for what eye can reach that which is wrapped up in the clouds? God's mercy and truth reach to the heavens, for they will bring all such to heaven as lay up their treasure in them and build their hopes upon them. God's mercy and truth are praised even to the heavens, that is, by all the bright and blessed inhabitants of the upper world, who are continually exalting God's praises to the highest, while David, on earth, is endeavouring to spread his praises to the furthest, Psa 57:9.
V. How he leaves it at last to God to glorify his own name (Psa 57:11): Be thou exalted, O God! The same words which he had used (Psa 57:5) to sum up his prayers in he here uses again (and no vain repetition) to sum up his praises in: "Lord, I desire to exalt thy name, and that all the creatures may exalt it; but what can the best of us do towards it? Lord, take the work into thy own hands; do it thyself: Be thou exalted, O God! In the praises of the church triumphant thou art exalted to the heavens, and in the praises of the church militant thy glory is throughout all the earth; but thou art above all the blessing and praise of both (Neh 9:5), and therefore, Lord, exalt thyself above the heavens and above all the earth. Father, glorify thy own name. Thou hast glorified it, glorify it yet again."
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv7–9My heart is fixed, O God,.... Firm and sure,…
My heart is fixed, O God,.... Firm and sure, trusting in the Lord, believing that he should be saved by him out of his troubles; see Psa 101:1. So, in a spiritual sense, a heart fixed and established, or that is firm and sure, is one that is assured of its salvation by Christ, rooted and grounded in the love of God, firmly built on the foundation, Christ, and has its affections set on him; and is unmoved, from the hope of the Gospel, and the doctrines of it, by whatsoever it meets with in the world. It may be rendered, "my heart is prepared", or "ready" (r); that is, according to some, to receive good or evil, prosperity or adversity, at the hand of God; to which sense is Jarchi's note,
"my heart is faithful with thee in the measure of judgment, and it is faithful with thee in the measure of mercy.''
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That is, whether I am chastised with judgments, or followed with mercies, my heart is firm and true to God. The Targum is,
"my heart is prepared for thy law, O Lord; my heart is prepared for thy fear;''
that is, it is prepared for the worship and service of God; it is ready to every good work; it is prepared to pray unto him, and to wait for an answer, which are both from the Lord, Pro 16:1; and particularly to sing praise unto him, as follows;
my heart is fixed; this is repeated, to show the vehemency of his spirit, and the certainty of the thing;
I will sing and give praise; for the salvation wrought for him, and which he was sure of; and before he had finished this psalm, or while he had composed it, did enjoy it.
(r) "paratum", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, &c.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv7–9Fixed - In a stedfast belief of thy promises.
Fixed - In a stedfast belief of thy promises.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv7–9Verse 7. My heart is fixed] My heart is…
Verse 7. My heart is fixed] My heart is prepared to do and suffer thy will. It is fixed - it has made the firmest purpose through his strength by which I can do all things.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn v7Psa 57:7-11. My heart is fixed — Hebrew, נכון,…
Psa 57:7-11. My heart is fixed — Hebrew, נכון, nachon, prepared, or, established; namely, in a full assurance of obtaining thy merciful help. It was ready to sink with fear, but now I have, through thy grace, conquered my fears, and am fixed in a steadfast belief of, and confidence in thy promises. Or, my heart is prepared to sing and give praise, as it follows. Awake up, my glory, &c. — My tongue, wherewith I ought to glorify thee, shall be no longer silent; nor shall any instrument of music be wanting to accompany my hymns. I myself will awake right early — I will rouse up, and employ all the powers of my soul and body to set forth thy praises. And I will do it so early, that I will prevent the rising sun. I will praise thee among the people — In the great congregations, among the Israelites of all tribes, who are called by thy name, (Deu 33:19,) and among the heathen, as I shall have occasion. For thy mercy is great unto the heavens — Is most evident, and greatly exalted.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv7–9My heart is fixed, O God - Margin, as…
My heart is fixed, O God - Margin, as in Hebrew, “prepared.” Compare the notes at Psa 51:10. The word “suited” or “prepared” accurately expresses the sense of the Hebrew, and it is so rendered in the Septuagint, (ἑτοίμη hetoimē); in the Vulgate, “paratum;” and by Luther, “bereit.” The word is used, however, in the sense of “standing erect,” Psa 9:7; to “establish” or “strengthen,” Psa 89:4; Psa 10:17; and hence, to be erect; to be firm, steady, constant, fixed. This seems to be the meaning here, as it is expressed in our common version. His heart was firm and decided. He did not waver in his purpose, or lean now to one side and then to the other; he was not “swayed” or “moved” by the events that had occurred. He felt conscious of standing firm in the midst of all his troubles. He confided in God. He did not doubt his justice, his goodness, his mercy; and, even in his trials, he was ready to praise him, and was “resolved” to praise him. The repetition of the word “fixed” gives emphasis and intensity to the expression, and is designed to show in the strongest manner that his heart, his purpose, his confidence in God, did not waver in the slightest degree.
I will sing and give praise - My heart shall confide in thee; my lips shall utter the language of praise. In all his troubles God was his refuge; in all, he found occasion for praise. So it should be the fixed and settled purpose of our hearts that we will at all times confide in God, and that in every situation in life we will render him praise.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv7–9I will . . . praise--both with voice and…
I will . . . praise--both with voice and instrument.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv7–97. My heart is fixed, O God— “Fixed,” here,…
7. My heart is fixed, O God— “Fixed,” here, may take the sense either of established or of prepared. He was established in his faith and purposes not to be moved by any adversity; or, he was prepared for all the will of God. The Septuagint gives the latter, (ετοιμη,) “my heart is ready.” Thus he was one with God, and would rejoice in this consciousness.
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 Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv7–97. My heart is fixed] Stedfastly resolved. Cp. Psa_51:10;…
7. My heart is fixed] Stedfastly resolved. Cp. Psa_51:10; Psa_112:7; Col_1:13 (ἐδραῖος is the word used by Symmaohus here). The P.B.V. has changed Coverdale’s ready into fixed here, but retained it in Psa_108:1, probably owing to the influence of the familiar Latin title, Paratum cor meum, at the beginning of that Psalm.
I will sing and give praise] I will sing and make melody. The latter is the verb from which mismôr, ‘psalm,’ is derived. See Introd. p. xvii.
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 Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv7–8(7) Fixed.—Better, steadfast (See Psa_51:10, Note.)
(7) Fixed.—Better, steadfast (See Psa_51:10, Note.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv7–9My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is…
My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed; or, my heart is steadfast it does not doubt or waver, it is firm in its trust on thee. I will sing and give praise. Sing to thee, i.e., and praise thy Name.
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. Spurgeon1885 · Public DomainOn vv7–9Ver. 7. My heart is fixed. One would have…
Ver. 7. My heart is fixed. One would have thought he would have said, "My heart is fluttered; "but no, he is calm, firm, happy, resolute, established. When the central axle is secure, the whole wheel is right. If our great bower anchor holds, the ship cannot drive.
O God, my heart is fixed. I am resolved to trust thee, to serve thee, and to praise thee. Twice does he declare this to the glory of God who thus comforts the souls of his servants. Reader, it is surely well with thee, if thy once roving heart is now firmly fixed upon God and the proclamation of his glory.
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I will sing and give praise. Vocally and instrumentally will I celebrate thy worship. With lip and with heart will I ascribe honour to thee. Satan shall not stop me, nor Saul, nor the Philistines, I will make Adullam ring with music, and all the caverns thereof echo with joyous song. Believer, make a firm decree that your soul in all seasons shall magnify the Lord.
"Sing, though sense and carnal reason
Fain would stop the joyful song:
Sing, and count it highest treason
For a saint to hold his tongue."
Ver. 7. My heart is fixed, O God, etc. The psalmist knowing that it is the order and work of God, first to prepare the heart for communion, and then to incline his own ear to hear his people, and to entertain communion with them in ordinances, he doth observe this order, and follow it with a practice suitable to it in his daily address to God, that is thus, wheresoever he doth find his heart put into a fitted and prepared frame for communion with God, he doth not let it die again, and go out of frame by a slothful neglect of such a disposition of heart. No, but he immediately sets himself to duty, to worship God, and to the acts of his worship, in his ordinances, as he expresses himself in Ps 57:7; viz., thus--ybl nwkg myhla ybl nwkg, Nachon libbi Elohim, nachon libbi (there is the first; he finds his heart fitted and prepared for communion with God): "My heart, "saith he, "is fitted or prepared" (for the word nwkg nachon is the passive conjugation niphal, signifying, he is fitted or prepared, from the root nzb, chun, he fitted or prepared, in the active; and so it is rather to be rendered prepared or fitted, then "fixed, "thus ykl, libbi, my heart; nwkg, nachon, is fitted or prepared), "O God, my heart is fitted or prepared" for communion with thee. Well, what follows? He presently sets himself upon that great duty and ordinance of communion with God, in the praising of his name and singing forth those praises, as in the words immediately following in the same verse, thus: My heart is prepared, O God, my heart is prepared; therefore, hrmzaw, ashidah va-azamerah, "I will sing and give praise." William Strong, in "Communion with God, "1656.
Ver. 7. My heart is fixed, O God, etc. Fitness for duty lies in the orderly temper of body and mind, making a man willing to undertake, and able to finish his work with comfortable satisfaction. If either the body or mind be distempered, a man is unfit for such an undertaking; both must be in a suitable frame, like a well tuned instrument, else there will be no melody: hence when David prepared himself for praises and worship, he tells us his heart was ready and fixed, and then, his tongue was ready also (Ps 45:1), so was his hand with psaltery and harp; all these were awakened into a suitable posture. That a man is or hath been in a fit order for service may be concluded from
(1.) His alacrity to undertake a duty.
(2.) His activity in the prosecution.
(3.) His satisfaction afterward. Right grounds and principles in these things being still presupposed. Richard Gilpin (1625-1699,1700), in "Daemonologia Sacra."
Ver. 7. I will sing. It should alarm the wicked that they are contending with a people who sing and shout on the battle field. Yea, they never sing louder than when most distressed and afflicted. Whether saints conquer or are conquered they still sing on. Blessed be God for that. Let sinners tremble at contending with men of a spirit so heavenly. William S. Plumer.
Ver. 7. Sincerity makes the Christian sing, when he hath nothing to his supper. David was in none of the best case when in the cave, yet we never find him merrier: his heart makes sweeter music than ever his harp did. William Gurnall.
Ver. 7-8. That worship that is performed with a sleepy, drowsy body, is a weak worship, but the psalmist here makes the awakening of the body to be the fruit and effect of the preparation of the heart; Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early. Why so? My heart is prepared. The heart prepared and thereby awaked, will awake the body. To worship God therefore without a prepared heart, is to worship him with a drowsy body, because with a drowsy heart, and therefore weakly. John Angier, in "An Help to Better Hearts, for Better Times, " 1647.
Ver. 7. (first clause). It is implied that the heart is the main thing required in all acts of devotion; nothing is done to purpose in religion further than it is done with the heart. The heart must be fixed; fixed for the duty, fitted and put in frame for it; fixed in the duty by a close application; attending on the Lord without distraction. Matthew Henry.
Ver. 7.
I. What is fixed? the heart, not the mind merely, but
the will, the conscience, the affections, which draw
the mind after them: My heart is fixed --
found an anchorage, a resting place, not therefore at
the mercy of every gale, etc.
II. The objects upon which it is fixed.
1. Upon God.
2. Upon his word.
3. Upon his salvation.
4. Upon heaven. III. The fixedness of the heart upon these objects, denotes--
1. Singleness of aim.
2. Uniformity of action.
3. Perseverance to the end. G. R.
Ver 7-9.
1. He that will be thankful must treasure up in his heart and memory the courtesy that is done him; so had David done, and therefore he mentions his heart; and to make it more emphatic, he names it again, My heart.
2. After he remembers it, he must be affected with it, and resolve upon it; so doth David: My heart is ready, or else, My heart is fixed; confirmed I am in it to be thankful, and I cannot be altered.
3. It is not enough that a man carry about with him a thankful heart he must anunciare, tell it abroad, and make it known publicly what God hath done for him; yea, and do it joyfully too: I will, saith David, sing and give praise.
4. He must use all means he can to make it known-- "tongue, ""psaltery, "and "harp, "all are little enough. Whence, by an apostrophe, David turns to these. Awake, my glory: i.e., Tongue, awake; lute and harp, awake; I myself will awake.
5. He must not do it in a sleepy manner, but with intention and earnestness of spirit: "Awake, awake, I will awake."
6. He must take the first opportunity to do it, and not hang off and delay it. I will awake early.
7. He must do it in such a place, and such an assembly as may most redound to God's honour: I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people: I will sing unto thee among the nations. William Nicholson.
Psalms 57:8*
Ver. 7-8. See Psalms on "Ps 50:7" for further information.
Ver. 7-9. See Psalms on "Ps 57:7" for further information.
Ver. 7-9. See Psalms on "Ps 57:7" for further information.
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn vv7–9My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is…
Psa_57:7-8
My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.
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The heart fixed
He summons his powers at once for the execution of his purpose No sooner is the resolve taken, than at once to the practice of the same. How striking and beautiful it is! Oh! it is well when the practice thus follows the principle, when the execution is contemporaneous with the purpose. I will awake early, the psalmist says. The figure there is exceedingly beautiful. It is in the original, I will awake the early dawn; not I will awake when the morning breaks, but I will awaken up the morning. I will be beforehand with it; I will challenge the day. Now, this purpose and determination results from a peculiar state of heart--My heart is fixed. Therefore let us consider--
I. This state of heart. O God, my heart is fixed--all is suspended upon that. When that is the case, there is salvation; till then, nothing is done. When that is done, all is done. The angels rejoice in heaven, and God Almighty, the Father of our Lord, is glorified. The heart, as we all know, is the man; all else of the man is governed by the heart. The physical and intellectual powers, what are they? The whole complex machinery of our constitution, what is it? Simply the servant of the heart. Aye, but some one will perhaps say, the question is, upon what is the heart fixed? Now, really, that is not the question. It is a question according to mans mode of thinking, and according to mans mode of acting, perhaps.
II. I grant you, there are ten thousand things that solicit the heart, and after which the heart of man runs; but there is but one thing in the universe upon which the heart can be fixed. Why, unless the object is fixed itself, how is it possible for the heart to be fixed? It may be directed towards, but how can it be fixed? If the thing is not fixed, what is fixed? One thing--God is fixed, and it is a simple truth that man is never fixed until he is fixed upon God. Surely a house, as to its fixedness, depends upon the foundation. Build a house on the sand, and is it fixed? You may fix it there as you think, but is it fixed? The foundation shifts, and what becomes of the house? Oh! the heart can only be fixed according to the fixedness of that on which it rests. (Capel Molyneux.)
Religious decision
I. On what was Davids heart fixed?
1. On God and His service.
2. On the diligent study of the lively oracles of God.
3. On the duty of prayer.
4. On the grand purpose of furthering the interests of Zion.
II. Why should we do likewise?
1. Because indecision degrades the character of man.
2. There is no solid and substantial reason why the heart should not be
fixed on God.
3. The nature of spiritual religion as developed in the Gospel, requires and supposes this fixedness of heart.
4. If we are not thus decided, we shall never accomplish anything truly good and great in the service of God. It is the man of settled views and fixed purposes before whom obstacles, that would be unconquerable to others, give way. (Evangelist.)
Decision
There are many temptations to a man to wander in doubt and uncertainty. He is driven hither and thither by doubts of self, of God, of revelation, of the past, and of the future. But there is no rest for that man until he is able to exclaim, My heart is fixed.
I. There is a possibility of positive religion.
1. The word positive is a species of cant phrase much used by doubters and Agnostics. But in this case we may strictly apply it to the state of a true believer. The inquirer has reached a state of satisfaction. He has found what he needed. There is for him now no further tossing about on the tempest of fear or anxiety.
2. There is something very blessed in this state of satisfaction. It is that of a mariner having arrived in port, of a student having attained the goal he coveted, the architect having seen the realization of his plans.
3. This state, too, is essentially a religious one. Nothing earthly can afford positiveness. There can be no certainty in any human act or any human hope; but in the search after God there can be, and is, perfect finality.
II. This state of satisfaction is a state of praise.
1. The key to open the door of heaven is praise. The solution of all doubts is praise. The end of all difficulties is praise.
2. The state, then, of our own miserable darkness and unrest rests upon the fact that we are always looking on ourselves, not on God. If we look on ourselves, we shall naturally see our own defects, sorrows. But if we look to His brightness we shall lose sight of all that is dark, and in His certainty we shall find an eternal stand and an unchanging hope. (Homilist.)
The fixed heart
I. The fixed heart. For a fixed heart I must have a fixed determination, and not a mere fluctuating and soon broken intention. I must have a steadfast affection, and not merely a fluttering love, that, like some butterfly, lights now on this, now on that, sweet flower, but which has a flight straight as a carrier-pigeon to its cot, which shall bear me direct to God. And I must have a continuous realization of my dependence upon God, and of Gods sweet sufficiency, going with me all through the dusty day. Is our average Christianity fairly represented by such words as these of my text? Do they not rather make us burn with shame when we think that a man who lived in the twilight of Gods revelation, and was weighed upon by distresses such as wrung this psalm out of him, should have poured out this resolve which we, who live in the sunlight and are flooded with blessings, find it hard to echo, with sincerity and truth? Fixed hearts are rare amongst the Christians of this day.
II. The manifold hindrances that we meet to such a uniformity of our religious life. There is, for example, the tendency to fluctuation which besets all our feelings, and especially our religious emotions. What would happen to a steam-engine if the stoker now piled on coals and then fell asleep by the furnace door? One moment the boiler would be ready to burst; at another moment there would be no steam to drive anything. That is the sort of alternation that goes on amongst hosts of Christians to-day. Their springtime and summer are followed certainly by an autumn and a bitter winter. Every moment of elevation has a corresponding moment of depression. But is there any necessity for such alternations? Some degree of fluctuation there will always be. The very exercise of emotion tends to its extinction. Varying conditions of health and other externals will affect the buoyancy and clear-sightedness and vivacity of the spiritual life. Only a barometer that is out of order will always stand at set fair. The vane which never points but to south is rusty and means nothing. But while there cannot be absolute uniformity, there might and should be a far nearer approach to an equable temperature of a much higher range than the readings of most professing Christians give. There is, indeed, a dismally uniform arctic temperature in many of them. Their hearts are fixed, truly, but fixed on earth. Their frost, is broken by no thaw, their tepid formalism interrupted by no disturbing enthusiasm. We do not speak now of these, but of those who have moments of illumination, of communion, of submission of will, which fade all too soon. To such we would earnestly say that these moments may be prolonged and made more continuous. We need not be at the mercy of our own unregulated feelings. We can control our hearts, and keep them fixed, even if they should wish to wander.
III. The means by which such a uniform character may be impressed upon our religious experience. A man climbing a hill, though he has to look to his feet, when in the slippery places, and all his energies are expended in hoisting himself upwards by every projection and crag, will do all the better if he lifts his eye to the summit that gleams above him. So we, in our upward course, shall make the best progress when we consciously and honestly try to look beyond the things seen and temporal, even whilst we are working in the midst, of them, and keep clear before us the summit to which our faith tends. If we lived in the endeavour to realize that great white throne, and Him that sits upon it, we should find it easier to say, My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed. But be sure of this, there will be no such uniformity of religious experience throughout our lives unless there be frequent times in them in which we go into our chambers and shut our doors about us, and hold communion with our Father in secret. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The fixed heart
Speak to those who have decided, but, who may be loosening their hold on God under the strain of life. No better description can be given of the influence of life on the Christian than this--it tends to loosen the bonds. They need to be constantly refixed.
1. Some disciples went back under the strain of Christs higher teachings.
2. Some forsook under the strain of Christs sufferings.
3. Some were hindered in running--Ye did run well, who hath hindered you?
4. Some were enticed by false doctrine.
5. Some were borne away by the love of the world.
6. Some are reproached for being neither cold nor hot.
These old readings of Christian living suit us now. Then times of refixing ourselves are needed. What fixity should we try to reach?
I. Fixity may concern the intellect. Show the importance of firm and ever-growing mental hold of truth and of God. Fixity for the intellect can only come with growth.
II. Fixity may concern the will. A power of resolve may shape a life. Illustrate by familiar tale in John Fosters Essays, showing the power of decision.
III. Fixity should concern the heart. My heart is fixed, O God. The true life-force is from the heart,. Heart things are the lasting things. To the heart God appeals. The heart God wants. Intellectual fixity may not be possible. Will-fixity may depend very much on disposition. Heart-fixity tuiumphs over all externality. It concerns the principle and spirit of the life. Fixed everywhere and in everything for ,God. How broad, comprehensive, practical! (Robert Tuck, B. A.)
The prepared heart
This psalm is very strangely compounded. It is described in the title as the utterance of David when he fled from Saul and hid himself in the cave. It is the cry of a man beset with trouble and danger; yet all through it, we are startled by sudden transitions from cries for help and stories of wrong to cheerful expressions of hope and outbursts of praise. This condition of hopefulness and of cheerful steadfastness in the midst of trouble is one of those things which always puzzle a mere man of the world, but which present no mystery to a soul which walks with God. But the fact goes much farther than cheerfulness in trouble. The word fixed literally means prepared, fit, ready. O God, my heart is prepared. It is about this habitual preparation of heart that I wish to speak. The ideal perfect Christian life would be a life in contact with God along its whole line. It would be everywhere and always in communion with God. Gods will and Gods love would fill and move in every inlet and curve of the life, as the ocean in its gulfs and creeks and round its promontories; and upon this high plane the general tenor of the life would be more even. It hardly needs to be said that we do not live in this condition, and that we do need certain special influences to recall our minds to heavenly things, to lift them into the atmosphere of rest and of devotion, and to keep them from drifting away into worldliness and sensuality. God has recognized the need and has met it. He has given the Sabbath with its rest from labour, He has given the sanctuary with its quickening influences, He has commended the season of special prayer. We are led up to these Pisgahs and Hermons of spiritual vision, to the end that we may carry the power of these visions into lifes common routine, to sanctify and to elevate that. These things are not an end unto themselves. The disciples were not permitted to stay on the Transfiguration Mount, but that glorious vision strengthened and kindled their hearts for the hard mission for which they were chosen. These exceptional experiences in our lives are intended to foster in us that constantly prepared, fixed heart of which David here sings: the heart that shall be prepared for praise, and for trust, and for worship, not only while sitting in heavenly places, but also among lions, among them that are set on fire, when the net has been prepared for the steps and the soul is bowed down, amid the fret and worry of life, and on the dead level of daily duty and care. (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D)
A fixed heart
There are many who doubt whether it is possible for a man to-day to say, My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed. There are so many ideas that have changed in only a generation, there are so many views that have broadened, and there are so many beliefs that have been entirely given up, that it seems impossible any more for a mans heart to be fixed. It seems like deliberately shutting the eyes and stopping the ears to hope that the change is all over. A Christians heart is fixed on that which is almost as old as the hills. The essence of your faith, the solid core of it, Abraham had almost four thousand years ago. Our faith in God is Abrahams faith, only fuller and lighted up with all the glory that shone from the face of Jesus Christ. It is stronger and surer for every heart that has been fixed by it since Abraham. Has it not worn well, this faith of ours? It has lived on through the downfall of five great universal kingdoms, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. It went down to Egypt with Jacob; it went forth to Canaan with Moses. It battled with the heathen. It rose in triumph under David; it sank back under defeat and destruction. It rebuilt its Holy City. It waited for Christ; it founded the Church and charged the apostles. It worked in the mines; it died at the stake; it endured persecution and loss. It fought the barbarians and converted them. It saved Europe. It kept strong when men were ignorant and debased. It quickened with the Renaissance; it purified itself in the Reformation. It fainted during the eighteenth century; it rallied again and rode the storm of the French Revolution. It burst out again in the nineteenth century in splendid missionary zeal. It is to-day stronger, broader, surer than ever it was before. The greatest thing about a man is the fixedness of his heart. When men say they cannot be sure of believing to-morrow what they believe to-day, they do not know of what kind of eternal stuff a mans soul is made. The very essence of belief is that it is something never to be changed, fixed and eternal. If there is no eternal belief there is no belief at all. Belief means that, no matter what may happen, it will stand fast; belief is the insight of an eternal soul looking beyond time and chance. The man who has not come to believe in something that will last on to all eternity has not yet found out what there is down deep in his soul. The best thing there is about us men and women is our loyalty, our power of standing fast, of pledging our souls for time and eternity. Because we are eternal souls, we cannot help believing eternally. We want loyalty and the willingness to wait. When we meet with a doubt or a difficulty we ought to wait until Christ speaks. Shame on us if the reading of a single book, or a single argument of an unbeliever, can divert the stream of the faith of four thousand years from flowing through us and refreshing us. There are men and women to-day doubting God because of their misfortunes or their sufferings, although from the dawn of history men have transformed their lives and glorified humanity through their trust. Read all the bucks you like, but remember that Christian faith is not an argument, but it is an affair of loyalty. Your mind ought to receive new impressions, but your heart ought to be fixed. (John Tunis, B. A.)
The advantages of a fixed heart
A garden that is watered by sudden showers is more uncertain in its fruits than when it is refreshed by a constant stream; so when our thoughts are sometimes upon good things and then run off, when they do but take a glance, as it were, upon holy objects, and then run away, there is not such fruit brought into the soul as when our minds by meditation do dwell upon them. The rays of the sun may warm us, but they do not inflame unless they are contracted in a burning-glass; so some slight thoughts of heavenly things may warm us a little, but will never inflame the soul till they be fixed by close meditation. Therefore David tells us his heart was fixed, and saith the same concerning the frame of a good man. (H. G. Salter.)
I will sing and give praise.--
The true source of spiritual song
The text affirms a fact, and declares a resolution. My heart is fixed; this is the fact; and hence, apparently, the resolution, I will sing and give praise.
I. The meaning of the words. My heart is fixed.
1. On what the psalmist had fixed his heart. On God. Everywhere else there might be darkness and despair, but here there were light, consolation and security. As he recalls to remembrance all that God had already done for him, and all that he had promised yet farther to do, his spirit enters a serener world, and he refrains from his complaint against his inveterate enemies. And observe, that in fixing his heart on God, the psalmist more especially contemplates those gentler features of the Divine character, on which the regards of the guilty and dependent creature must ever most complacently rest (Psa_57:2-3).
2. How, or with what sentiments, it was so fixed. The expressions of confiding regard which occur throughout the psalm indicate that the heart of the writer was fixed on God by faith. In faith it is that he exclaims, My soul trusteth in Thee, etc.; and it is in the same faith, too, that he purposes to pray, when he says, I will cry unto God most high, unto God that performeth for me. Nor could his heart have been otherwise fixed on God, than by the virtue of that all-important principle which lies at the very source of practical godliness, admitting the light by which Divine truth irradiates the soul, and constituting the assimilating power, by whose energy the things believed are converted into the bread of life.
II. If the heart be thus fixed on God, praise and devout song will be the unfailing result; for fixedness of heart, or steadfastness of faith, is the only proper condition of the soul for these sacred exercises. We may use vain repetitions without a fixed heart. But if we would pour out our whole souls before God in those fervid and earnest supplications which, and which alone, we know to be acceptable; and if we would attain a humble assurance that we have been heard in heaven, we must go to the altar with fixed hearts. When, again, with the psalmist, we would sing and give praise, the mercy of God will be brought home in clearest and most lively apprehensions to our hearts, and then, instead of finding it difficult to pour forth the melody of joy and salvation, that will become the only possible mode of giving form and voice to the sentiments that swell and glow within us. (W. Stevenson.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn v7
Psalms
THE FIXED HEART
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Psa 57:7.
It is easy to say such things when life goes smoothly with us. But this Psalmist, whether David or another, says this, and means it, when all things are dark and frowning around him. The superscription attributes the words to David himself, fleeing from Saul, and hiding in the cave. Whether that be so or no, the circumstances under which the Psalmist sings are obviously those of very great difficulty and oppression. But he sings himself into confidence and good cheer. In the dark he believes in the light. There are some flowers that give their perfumes after sunset and are sweetest when the night dews are falling. The true religious life is like these. A heart really based upon God, and at rest in Him, never breathes forth such fragrant and strong perfume as in the darkness of sorrow. The repetition of ‘My heart is fixed’ adds emphasis to the expression of unalterable determination. The fixed heart is resolved to ‘sing and give praise’ in spite of everything that might make sobs and tears choke the song.
I. Note the fixed heart.
The Hebrew uses the metaphor of the ‘heart’ to cover a great deal more of the inward self than we are accustomed to do. We mainly mean thereby that in us which loves. But the Old Testament speaks of the ‘thoughts and intents’ as well as the ‘affections’ of the heart. And so to this Psalmist his ‘heart’ was not only that in him which loved, but that which purposed and which thought. When he says ‘My heart is fixed’ he does not merely mean that he is conscious of a steadfast love, but also and rather of a fixed and settled determination, and of an abiding communion of thought between himself and God. And he not only makes this declaration as the expression of his experience for the moment, but he mortgages the future, and in so far as any man dare, he ventures to say that this temper of entire consecration, of complete communion, of fixed resolve to cleave to God, which is his present mood, will be his future whatever may wait his outward life then. The lesson from that resolve is that our religion, if it is worth anything, must be a continuous and uniformly acting force throughout our whole lives, and not merely sporadic and spasmodic, by fits and starts. The lines that a child’s unsteady and untrained hand draws in its copy-book are too good a picture of the ‘crooked, wandering ways in which we live,’ in so far as our religion is concerned. The line should be firm and straight, uniform in breadth, unvarying in direction, like a sunbeam, homogeneous and equally tenacious like an iron rod. Unless it be thus strong and uniform, it will scarcely sustain the weights that it must bear, or resist the blows that it must encounter.
For a fixed heart I must have a fixed determination, and not a mere fluctuating and soon broken intention. I must have a steadfast affection, and not merely a fluttering love, that, like some butterfly, lights now on this, now on that, sweet flower, but which has a flight straight as a carrier pigeon to its cot, which shall bear me direct to God. And I must have a continuous realisation of my dependence upon God, and of God’s sweet sufficiency, going with me all through the dusty day. A firm determination, a steadfast love, a constant thought, these at least are inculcated in the words of my text. ‘My heart is fixed, O God! my heart is fixed.’
Ah, brethren! how unlike the broken, interrupted, divergent lines that we draw! Our religious moments are not knit together, and touching one upon the other, but they are like the pools in the bed of a half dried up Australian stream-a pond here, and a stretch of white, blistering pebbles there, and then a little drop of water, and then another reach of dryness. They should all be knit together by one continuous flow of a fixed love, desire, and thought. Is our average Christianity fairly represented by such words as these of my text? Do they not rather make us burn with shame when we think that a man who lived in the twilight of God’s revelation, and was weighed upon by distresses such as wrung this psalm out of him, should have poured out this resolve, which we who live in the sunlight and are flooded with blessings find it hard to echo with sincerity and truth? Fixed hearts are rare amongst the Christians of this day.
II. Notice the manifold hindrances to such a uniformity of our religious life.
They are formidable enough, God knows, we all know it, and I do not need to dwell upon them. There is, for example, the tendency to fluctuation which besets all our feelings, and especially our religious emotions. What would happen to a steam-engine if the stoker now piled on coals and then fell asleep by the furnace door? One moment the boiler would be ready to burst; at another moment there would be no steam to drive anything. That is the sort of alternation that goes on amongst hosts of Christians to-day. Their springtime and summer are followed certainly by an autumn and a bitter winter. Every moment of elevation has a corresponding moment of depression. They never catch a glimpse of God and of His love brighter and more sweet than ordinary without its being followed by long weariness and depression and darkness. That is the kind of life that many of you are contented to live as Christian people.
But is there any necessity for such alternations? Some degree of fluctuation there will always be. The very exercise of emotion tends to its extinction. Varying conditions of health and other externals will affect the buoyancy and clear-sightedness and vivacity of the spiritual life. Only a barometer that is out of order will always stand at set fair. The vane which never points but to south is rusty and means nothing.
But while there cannot be absolute uniformity, there might and should be a far nearer approach to an equable temperature of a much higher range than the readings of most professing Christians give. There is, indeed, a dismally uniform arctic temperature in many of them. Their hearts are fixed, truly, but fixed on earth. Their frost is broken by no thaw, their tepid formalism interrupted by no disturbing enthusiasm. We do not now speak of these, but of those who have moments of illumination, of communion, of submission of will, which fade all too soon. To such we would earnestly say that these moments may be prolonged and made more continuous. We need not be at the mercy of our own unregulated feelings. We can control our hearts, and keep them fixed, even if they should wish to wander. If we would possess the blessing of an approximately uniform religious life, we must assert the control of ourselves and use both bridle and spur. A great many religious people seem to think that ‘good times’ come and go, and that they can do nothing to bring or keep or banish them. But that is not so. If the fire is burning low, there is such a thing on the hearth as a poker, and coals are at hand. If we feel our faith falling asleep, are we powerless to rouse it? Cannot we say ‘I will trust’? Let us learn that the variations in our religious emotions are largely subject to our own control, and may, if we will govern ourselves, be brought far nearer to uniformity than they ordinarily are.
Besides the fluctuations due to our own changes of mood, there are also the distracting influences of even the duties which God lays upon us. It is hard for a man with the material task of the moment that takes all his powers, to keep a little corner of his heart clear, and to feel that God is there. It is difficult in the clatter of the mill or in the crowds on ‘Change, to do our work as for and in remembrance of Christ. It is difficult; but it is possible. Distractions are made distractions by our own folly and weakness. There is nothing that it is our duty to do which an honest attempt to do from the right motive could not convert into a positive help to getting nearer God. It is for us to determine whether the tasks of life, and this intrusive external and material world, shall veil Him from us, or shall reveal Him to us. It is for us to determine whether we shall make our secular avocation and its trials, little and great, a means to get nearer to God, or a means to shut Him out from us, and us from Him. There is nothing but sin incompatible with the fixed heart, the resolved will, the continual communion, nothing incompatible though there may be much that makes it difficult to realise and preserve these.
And then, of course, the trials and sorrows which strike us all make this fixed heart hard to keep. It is easy, as I said, to vow, ‘I will sing and give praise,’ when flesh is comfortable and prosperity is spreading its bright sky over our heads. It is harder to say it when disappointment and bitterness are in the heart, and an empty place there that aches and will never be filled. It is harder for a man to say it when, like this Psalmist, his soul is ‘amongst lions’ and he ‘lies amongst them that are set on fire.’ But still, rightly taken, sorrow is the best ladder to God; and there is no such praise as comes from the lips that, if they did not praise, must sob, and that praise because they are beginning to learn that evil, as the world calls it, is the stepping-stone to the highest good. ‘My heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise’ may be the voice of the mourner as well as of the prosperous and happy.
III. Lastly, let me say just a word as to the means by which such a uniform character may be impressed upon our religious experience.
There is another psalm where this same phrase is employed with a very important and illuminating addition, in which we read, ‘His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.’ That is the secret of a fixed heart-continuous faith rooted and grounded in Him. This fluttering, changeful, unreliable, emotional nature of mine will be made calm and steadfast by faith, and duties done in the faith of God will bind me to Him; and sorrows borne and joys accepted in the faith of God will be links in the chain that knits Him to me.
But then the question comes, how to get this continuous faith? Brethren! I know no answer except the simple one, by continually making efforts after it, and adopting the means which Christ enjoins to secure it. A man climbing a hill, though he has to look to his feet when in the slippery places, and all his energies are expended in hoisting himself upwards by every projection and crag, will do all the better if he lifts his eye often to the summit that gleams above him. So we, in our upward course, shall make the best progress when we consciously and honestly try to look beyond the things seen and temporal, even whilst we are working in the midst of them, and to keep clear before us the summit to which our faith tends. If we lived in the endeavour to realise that great white throne, and Him that sits upon it, we should find it easier to say, ‘My heart is fixed, O God! my heart is fixed.’
But be sure of this, there will be no such uniformity of religious experience throughout our lives unless there be frequent times in them in which we go into our chambers and shut our doors about us, and hold communion with our Father in secret. Everything noble and great in the Christian life is fed by solitude, and everything poor and mean and hypocritical and low-toned is nourished by continual absence from the secret place of the Most High. There must be moments of solitary communion, if there are to be hours of strenuous service and a life of continual consecration.
We need not ask ourselves the question whether the realisation of the ideal of this fixedness in its perfect completeness is possible for us here on earth or not. You and I are a long way on this side of that realisation yet, and we need not trouble ourselves about the final stages until we have got on a stage or two more.
What would you think of a boy if, when he had just been taught to draw with a pencil, he said to his master, ‘Do you think I shall ever be able to draw as well as Raphael?’ His teacher would say to him, ‘Whether you will or not, you will be able to draw a good deal better than now, if you try.’ We need not trouble ourselves with the questions that disturb some people until we are very much nearer to perfection than any of us yet are. At any rate, we can approach indefinitely to that ideal, and whether it is possible for us in this life ever to have hearts so continuously fixed as that no attraction shall draw the needle aside one point from the pole or not, it is possible for us all to have them a great deal steadier than in that wavering, fluctuating vacillation which now rules them.
So let us pray the prayer, ‘Unite my heart to fear Thy name,’ make the resolve, ‘My heart is fixed,’ and listen obediently to the command, ‘He exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they should cleave unto the Lord.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv7, 9My heart is fixed, God, my heart is fixed
My heart is fixed, God, my heart is fixed
Being confident is spoken of as one's heart being firm rather than shaken or easily moved. The phrase is repeated to show that he has complete confidence in God and will not change. AT: "I am completely confident in you, God" (See: Metonymy)
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I will sing praises
Who he will sing to can be stated clearly. AT: "I will sing praises to you, God" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
Wake up, my honored heart
It can be stated clearly that the purpose of waking up is to sing praises to God. Waking up may be a metaphor for starting or preparing to do something. The heart represents the psalmist or his emotions. AT: "Wake up, my honored heart, to sing praises to God" or "I will prepare my honored heart to sing praises to God" or "I am honored to wake up and sing praises to God" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information and Metaphor and Synecdoche)
wake up, lute and harp
It can be stated clearly that the purpose of waking up is to sing praises to God. The psalmist speaks as though the lute and harp were people who could wake up to sing praises to God. AT: "Wake up, lute and harp, and sing praises to God" or "I will play the lute and harp while I sing praises to God" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information and Personification and Metaphor)
I will wake up the dawn
The dawn is spoken of as if it were alive, and getting up before dawn happens is spoken of as waking it up. The purpose of getting up before dawn is to praise God. AT: "I will get up before dawn" or "I will get up before the sun rises" (See: Personification and Metaphor and Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv7–9 7. My heart is prepared, O God! Some read…
7. My heart is prepared, O God! Some read fixed, or confirmed, and the Hebrew word נכון, nacon, bears that signification as well as the other. If we adopt it, we must understand David as saying that he had well and duly meditated upon the praises which he was about to offer; that he did not rush into a hurried and perfunctory discharge of this service, as too many are apt to do, but addressed himself to it with steadfast purpose of heart. I prefer, however, the other translation, which bears that he was ready to enter upon the service with all cheerfulness and cordiality. And although, wherever this spirit is really felt, it will lead to steadfastness of religious exercise, it is not without importance that the reader should be apprised of the force of the word which is here employed in the Hebrew. The ready heart is here opposed by David to the mere lip-service of the hypocrite, on the one hand, and to dead or sluggish service, on the other. He addressed himself to this voluntary sacrifice with a sincere fervor of spirit, casting aside sloth, and whatever might prove a hinderance in the duty.
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 On vv7–8 That is, wholly bent to give thee praise for…
That is, wholly bent to give thee praise for my deliverance.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv7–9 Psa 57:7 My heart is fixed, O God, my…
Psa 57:7 My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise.
Ver. 7. My heart is fixed, O God] I am both ready and resolute; I doubt not about deliverance, and am well prepared to praise God. It is fit he should have the fruit of his own planting, and that of the best too; otherwise it is no better than the refreshing of him that standeth by a good fire, and saith, Aha, I am warm.
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 On vv7–9 Fixed, or established, in a full assurance of thy…
Fixed, or established, in a full assurance of thy merciful help. It was ready to sink with fear, or bowed down, Psa 57:6; but now I have through thy grace conquered my fears, and am fixed in a stedfast belief of thy promises. Or, is prepared, to wit, to sing and give praise, as it follows.
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 On v7 How strangely is the tune altered here! David's prayers…
How strangely is the tune altered here! David's prayers and complaints, by the lively actings of faith, are here, all of a sudden, turned into praises and thanksgivings; his sackcloth is loosed, he is girded with gladness, and his hallelujahs are as fervent as his hosannas. This should make us in love with prayer, that, sooner or later, it will be swallowed up in praise. Observe,
I. How he prepares himself for the duty of praise (Psa 57:7): My heart is fixed, O God! my heart is fixed. My heart is erect, or lifted up (so some), which was bowed down, Psa 57:6. My heart is fixed, 1. With reference to God's providences; it is prepared for every event, being stayed upon God, Psa 112:7; Isa 26:3. My heart is fixed, and then none of these things move me, Act 20:24. If by the grace of God we be brought into this even composed frame of spirit, we have great reason to be thankful. 2. With reference to the worship of God: My heart is fixed to sing and give praise. It is implied that the heart is the main thing required in all acts of devotion; nothing is done to purpose, in religion, further than it is done with the heart. The heart must be fixed, fixed for the duty, fitted and put in frame for it, fixed in the duty by a close application, attending on the Lord without distraction.
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II. How he excites himself to the duty of praise (Psa 57:8): Awake up my glory, that is, my tongue (our tongue is our glory, and never more so than when it is employed in praising God), or my soul, that must be first awakened; dull and sleepy devotions will never be acceptable to God. We must stir up ourselves, and all that is within us, to praise God; with a holy fire must that sacrifice be kindled, and ascend in a holy flame. David's tongue will lead, and his psaltery and harp will follow, in these hymns of praise. I myself will awake, not only, "I will not be dead, and drowsy, and careless, in this work," but, "I will be in the most lively frame, as one newly awakened out of a refreshing sleep." He will awake early to this work, early in the morning, to begin the day with God, early in the beginnings of a mercy. When God is coming towards us with his favours we must go forth to meet him with our praises.
III. How he pleases himself, and (as I may say) even prides himself, in the work of praise; so far is he from being ashamed to own his obligations to God, and dependence upon him, that he resolves to praise him among the people and to sing unto him among the nations, Psa 57:9. This intimates, 1. That his own heart was much affected and enlarged in praising God; he would even make the earth ring with his sacred songs, that all might take notice how much he thought himself indebted to the goodness of God. 2. That he desired to bring others in to join with him in praising God. He will publish God's praises among the people, that the knowledge, and fear, and love of God might be propagated, and the ends of the earth might see his salvation. When David was driven out into heathen lands he would not only not worship their gods, but he would openly avow his veneration for the God of Israel, would take his religion along with him wherever he went, would endeavour to bring others in love with it, and leave the sweet savour of it behind him. David, in his psalms, which fill the universal church, and will to the end of time, may be said to be still praising God among the people and singing to him among the nations; for all good people make use of his words in praising God. Thus St. John, in his writings, is said to prophesy again before many peoples and nations, Rev 10:11.
IV. How he furnishes himself with matter for praise, Psa 57:10. That which was the matter of his hope and comfort (God shall send forth his mercy and his truth, Psa 57:3) is here the matter of his thanksgiving: Thy mercy is great unto the heavens, great beyond conception and expression; and thy truth unto the clouds, great beyond discovery, for what eye can reach that which is wrapped up in the clouds? God's mercy and truth reach to the heavens, for they will bring all such to heaven as lay up their treasure in them and build their hopes upon them. God's mercy and truth are praised even to the heavens, that is, by all the bright and blessed inhabitants of the upper world, who are continually exalting God's praises to the highest, while David, on earth, is endeavouring to spread his praises to the furthest, Psa 57:9.
V. How he leaves it at last to God to glorify his own name (Psa 57:11): Be thou exalted, O God! The same words which he had used (Psa 57:5) to sum up his prayers in he here uses again (and no vain repetition) to sum up his praises in: "Lord, I desire to exalt thy name, and that all the creatures may exalt it; but what can the best of us do towards it? Lord, take the work into thy own hands; do it thyself: Be thou exalted, O God! In the praises of the church triumphant thou art exalted to the heavens, and in the praises of the church militant thy glory is throughout all the earth; but thou art above all the blessing and praise of both (Neh 9:5), and therefore, Lord, exalt thyself above the heavens and above all the earth. Father, glorify thy own name. Thou hast glorified it, glorify it yet again."
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 On vv7–9 My heart is fixed, O God,.... Firm and sure,…
My heart is fixed, O God,.... Firm and sure, trusting in the Lord, believing that he should be saved by him out of his troubles; see Psa 101:1. So, in a spiritual sense, a heart fixed and established, or that is firm and sure, is one that is assured of its salvation by Christ, rooted and grounded in the love of God, firmly built on the foundation, Christ, and has its affections set on him; and is unmoved, from the hope of the Gospel, and the doctrines of it, by whatsoever it meets with in the world. It may be rendered, "my heart is prepared", or "ready" (r); that is, according to some, to receive good or evil, prosperity or adversity, at the hand of God; to which sense is Jarchi's note,
"my heart is faithful with thee in the measure of judgment, and it is faithful with thee in the measure of mercy.''
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That is, whether I am chastised with judgments, or followed with mercies, my heart is firm and true to God. The Targum is,
"my heart is prepared for thy law, O Lord; my heart is prepared for thy fear;''
that is, it is prepared for the worship and service of God; it is ready to every good work; it is prepared to pray unto him, and to wait for an answer, which are both from the Lord, Pro 16:1; and particularly to sing praise unto him, as follows;
my heart is fixed; this is repeated, to show the vehemency of his spirit, and the certainty of the thing;
I will sing and give praise; for the salvation wrought for him, and which he was sure of; and before he had finished this psalm, or while he had composed it, did enjoy it.
(r) "paratum", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, &c.
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 On vv7–9 Fixed - In a stedfast belief of thy promises.
Fixed - In a stedfast belief of thy promises.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv7–9 Verse 7. My heart is fixed] My heart is…
Verse 7. My heart is fixed] My heart is prepared to do and suffer thy will. It is fixed - it has made the firmest purpose through his strength by which I can do all things.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v7 Psa 57:7-11. My heart is fixed — Hebrew, נכון,…
Psa 57:7-11. My heart is fixed — Hebrew, נכון, nachon, prepared, or, established; namely, in a full assurance of obtaining thy merciful help. It was ready to sink with fear, but now I have, through thy grace, conquered my fears, and am fixed in a steadfast belief of, and confidence in thy promises. Or, my heart is prepared to sing and give praise, as it follows. Awake up, my glory, &c. — My tongue, wherewith I ought to glorify thee, shall be no longer silent; nor shall any instrument of music be wanting to accompany my hymns. I myself will awake right early — I will rouse up, and employ all the powers of my soul and body to set forth thy praises. And I will do it so early, that I will prevent the rising sun. I will praise thee among the people — In the great congregations, among the Israelites of all tribes, who are called by thy name, (Deu 33:19,) and among the heathen, as I shall have occasion. For thy mercy is great unto the heavens — Is most evident, and greatly exalted.
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 On vv7–9 My heart is fixed, O God - Margin, as…
My heart is fixed, O God - Margin, as in Hebrew, “prepared.” Compare the notes at Psa 51:10. The word “suited” or “prepared” accurately expresses the sense of the Hebrew, and it is so rendered in the Septuagint, (ἑτοίμη hetoimē); in the Vulgate, “paratum;” and by Luther, “bereit.” The word is used, however, in the sense of “standing erect,” Psa 9:7; to “establish” or “strengthen,” Psa 89:4; Psa 10:17; and hence, to be erect; to be firm, steady, constant, fixed. This seems to be the meaning here, as it is expressed in our common version. His heart was firm and decided. He did not waver in his purpose, or lean now to one side and then to the other; he was not “swayed” or “moved” by the events that had occurred. He felt conscious of standing firm in the midst of all his troubles. He confided in God. He did not doubt his justice, his goodness, his mercy; and, even in his trials, he was ready to praise him, and was “resolved” to praise him. The repetition of the word “fixed” gives emphasis and intensity to the expression, and is designed to show in the strongest manner that his heart, his purpose, his confidence in God, did not waver in the slightest degree.
I will sing and give praise - My heart shall confide in thee; my lips shall utter the language of praise. In all his troubles God was his refuge; in all, he found occasion for praise. So it should be the fixed and settled purpose of our hearts that we will at all times confide in God, and that in every situation in life we will render him praise.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv7–9 I will . . . praise--both with voice and…
I will . . . praise--both with voice and instrument.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv7–9 7. My heart is fixed, O God— “Fixed,” here,…
7. My heart is fixed, O God— “Fixed,” here, may take the sense either of established or of prepared. He was established in his faith and purposes not to be moved by any adversity; or, he was prepared for all the will of God. The Septuagint gives the latter, (ετοιμη,) “my heart is ready.” Thus he was one with God, and would rejoice in this consciousness.
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 On vv7–9 7. My heart is fixed] Stedfastly resolved. Cp. Psa_51:10;…
7. My heart is fixed] Stedfastly resolved. Cp. Psa_51:10; Psa_112:7; Col_1:13 (ἐδραῖος is the word used by Symmaohus here). The P.B.V. has changed Coverdale’s ready into fixed here, but retained it in Psa_108:1, probably owing to the influence of the familiar Latin title, Paratum cor meum, at the beginning of that Psalm.
I will sing and give praise] I will sing and make melody. The latter is the verb from which mismôr, ‘psalm,’ is derived. See Introd. p. xvii.
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 On vv7–8 (7) Fixed.—Better, steadfast (See Psa_51:10, Note.)
(7) Fixed.—Better, steadfast (See Psa_51:10, Note.)
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 On vv7–9 My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is…
My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed; or, my heart is steadfast it does not doubt or waver, it is firm in its trust on thee. I will sing and give praise. Sing to thee, i.e., and praise thy Name.
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 On vv7–9 Ver. 7. My heart is fixed. One would have…
Ver. 7. My heart is fixed. One would have thought he would have said, "My heart is fluttered; "but no, he is calm, firm, happy, resolute, established. When the central axle is secure, the whole wheel is right. If our great bower anchor holds, the ship cannot drive.
O God, my heart is fixed. I am resolved to trust thee, to serve thee, and to praise thee. Twice does he declare this to the glory of God who thus comforts the souls of his servants. Reader, it is surely well with thee, if thy once roving heart is now firmly fixed upon God and the proclamation of his glory.
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I will sing and give praise. Vocally and instrumentally will I celebrate thy worship. With lip and with heart will I ascribe honour to thee. Satan shall not stop me, nor Saul, nor the Philistines, I will make Adullam ring with music, and all the caverns thereof echo with joyous song. Believer, make a firm decree that your soul in all seasons shall magnify the Lord.
"Sing, though sense and carnal reason
Fain would stop the joyful song:
Sing, and count it highest treason
For a saint to hold his tongue."
Ver. 7. My heart is fixed, O God, etc. The psalmist knowing that it is the order and work of God, first to prepare the heart for communion, and then to incline his own ear to hear his people, and to entertain communion with them in ordinances, he doth observe this order, and follow it with a practice suitable to it in his daily address to God, that is thus, wheresoever he doth find his heart put into a fitted and prepared frame for communion with God, he doth not let it die again, and go out of frame by a slothful neglect of such a disposition of heart. No, but he immediately sets himself to duty, to worship God, and to the acts of his worship, in his ordinances, as he expresses himself in Ps 57:7; viz., thus--ybl nwkg myhla ybl nwkg, Nachon libbi Elohim, nachon libbi (there is the first; he finds his heart fitted and prepared for communion with God): "My heart, "saith he, "is fitted or prepared" (for the word nwkg nachon is the passive conjugation niphal, signifying, he is fitted or prepared, from the root nzb, chun, he fitted or prepared, in the active; and so it is rather to be rendered prepared or fitted, then "fixed, "thus ykl, libbi, my heart; nwkg, nachon, is fitted or prepared), "O God, my heart is fitted or prepared" for communion with thee. Well, what follows? He presently sets himself upon that great duty and ordinance of communion with God, in the praising of his name and singing forth those praises, as in the words immediately following in the same verse, thus: My heart is prepared, O God, my heart is prepared; therefore, hrmzaw, ashidah va-azamerah, "I will sing and give praise." William Strong, in "Communion with God, "1656.
Ver. 7. My heart is fixed, O God, etc. Fitness for duty lies in the orderly temper of body and mind, making a man willing to undertake, and able to finish his work with comfortable satisfaction. If either the body or mind be distempered, a man is unfit for such an undertaking; both must be in a suitable frame, like a well tuned instrument, else there will be no melody: hence when David prepared himself for praises and worship, he tells us his heart was ready and fixed, and then, his tongue was ready also (Ps 45:1), so was his hand with psaltery and harp; all these were awakened into a suitable posture. That a man is or hath been in a fit order for service may be concluded from
(1.) His alacrity to undertake a duty.
(2.) His activity in the prosecution.
(3.) His satisfaction afterward. Right grounds and principles in these things being still presupposed. Richard Gilpin (1625-1699,1700), in "Daemonologia Sacra."
Ver. 7. I will sing. It should alarm the wicked that they are contending with a people who sing and shout on the battle field. Yea, they never sing louder than when most distressed and afflicted. Whether saints conquer or are conquered they still sing on. Blessed be God for that. Let sinners tremble at contending with men of a spirit so heavenly. William S. Plumer.
Ver. 7. Sincerity makes the Christian sing, when he hath nothing to his supper. David was in none of the best case when in the cave, yet we never find him merrier: his heart makes sweeter music than ever his harp did. William Gurnall.
Ver. 7-8. That worship that is performed with a sleepy, drowsy body, is a weak worship, but the psalmist here makes the awakening of the body to be the fruit and effect of the preparation of the heart; Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early. Why so? My heart is prepared. The heart prepared and thereby awaked, will awake the body. To worship God therefore without a prepared heart, is to worship him with a drowsy body, because with a drowsy heart, and therefore weakly. John Angier, in "An Help to Better Hearts, for Better Times, " 1647.
Ver. 7. (first clause). It is implied that the heart is the main thing required in all acts of devotion; nothing is done to purpose in religion further than it is done with the heart. The heart must be fixed; fixed for the duty, fitted and put in frame for it; fixed in the duty by a close application; attending on the Lord without distraction. Matthew Henry.
Ver. 7.
I. What is fixed? the heart, not the mind merely, but
the will, the conscience, the affections, which draw
the mind after them: My heart is fixed --
found an anchorage, a resting place, not therefore at
the mercy of every gale, etc.
II. The objects upon which it is fixed.
1. Upon God.
2. Upon his word.
3. Upon his salvation.
4. Upon heaven. III. The fixedness of the heart upon these objects, denotes--
1. Singleness of aim.
2. Uniformity of action.
3. Perseverance to the end. G. R.
Ver 7-9.
1. He that will be thankful must treasure up in his heart and memory the courtesy that is done him; so had David done, and therefore he mentions his heart; and to make it more emphatic, he names it again, My heart.
2. After he remembers it, he must be affected with it, and resolve upon it; so doth David: My heart is ready, or else, My heart is fixed; confirmed I am in it to be thankful, and I cannot be altered.
3. It is not enough that a man carry about with him a thankful heart he must anunciare, tell it abroad, and make it known publicly what God hath done for him; yea, and do it joyfully too: I will, saith David, sing and give praise.
4. He must use all means he can to make it known-- "tongue, ""psaltery, "and "harp, "all are little enough. Whence, by an apostrophe, David turns to these. Awake, my glory: i.e., Tongue, awake; lute and harp, awake; I myself will awake.
5. He must not do it in a sleepy manner, but with intention and earnestness of spirit: "Awake, awake, I will awake."
6. He must take the first opportunity to do it, and not hang off and delay it. I will awake early.
7. He must do it in such a place, and such an assembly as may most redound to God's honour: I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people: I will sing unto thee among the nations. William Nicholson.
Psalms 57:8*
Ver. 7-8. See Psalms on "Ps 50:7" for further information.
Ver. 7-9. See Psalms on "Ps 57:7" for further information.
Ver. 7-9. See Psalms on "Ps 57:7" for further information.
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 On vv7–9 My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is…
Psa_57:7-8
My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.
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The heart fixed
He summons his powers at once for the execution of his purpose No sooner is the resolve taken, than at once to the practice of the same. How striking and beautiful it is! Oh! it is well when the practice thus follows the principle, when the execution is contemporaneous with the purpose. I will awake early, the psalmist says. The figure there is exceedingly beautiful. It is in the original, I will awake the early dawn; not I will awake when the morning breaks, but I will awaken up the morning. I will be beforehand with it; I will challenge the day. Now, this purpose and determination results from a peculiar state of heart--My heart is fixed. Therefore let us consider--
I. This state of heart. O God, my heart is fixed--all is suspended upon that. When that is the case, there is salvation; till then, nothing is done. When that is done, all is done. The angels rejoice in heaven, and God Almighty, the Father of our Lord, is glorified. The heart, as we all know, is the man; all else of the man is governed by the heart. The physical and intellectual powers, what are they? The whole complex machinery of our constitution, what is it? Simply the servant of the heart. Aye, but some one will perhaps say, the question is, upon what is the heart fixed? Now, really, that is not the question. It is a question according to mans mode of thinking, and according to mans mode of acting, perhaps.
II. I grant you, there are ten thousand things that solicit the heart, and after which the heart of man runs; but there is but one thing in the universe upon which the heart can be fixed. Why, unless the object is fixed itself, how is it possible for the heart to be fixed? It may be directed towards, but how can it be fixed? If the thing is not fixed, what is fixed? One thing--God is fixed, and it is a simple truth that man is never fixed until he is fixed upon God. Surely a house, as to its fixedness, depends upon the foundation. Build a house on the sand, and is it fixed? You may fix it there as you think, but is it fixed? The foundation shifts, and what becomes of the house? Oh! the heart can only be fixed according to the fixedness of that on which it rests. (Capel Molyneux.)
Religious decision
I. On what was Davids heart fixed?
1. On God and His service.
2. On the diligent study of the lively oracles of God.
3. On the duty of prayer.
4. On the grand purpose of furthering the interests of Zion.
II. Why should we do likewise?
1. Because indecision degrades the character of man.
2. There is no solid and substantial reason why the heart should not be
fixed on God.
3. The nature of spiritual religion as developed in the Gospel, requires and supposes this fixedness of heart.
4. If we are not thus decided, we shall never accomplish anything truly good and great in the service of God. It is the man of settled views and fixed purposes before whom obstacles, that would be unconquerable to others, give way. (Evangelist.)
Decision
There are many temptations to a man to wander in doubt and uncertainty. He is driven hither and thither by doubts of self, of God, of revelation, of the past, and of the future. But there is no rest for that man until he is able to exclaim, My heart is fixed.
I. There is a possibility of positive religion.
1. The word positive is a species of cant phrase much used by doubters and Agnostics. But in this case we may strictly apply it to the state of a true believer. The inquirer has reached a state of satisfaction. He has found what he needed. There is for him now no further tossing about on the tempest of fear or anxiety.
2. There is something very blessed in this state of satisfaction. It is that of a mariner having arrived in port, of a student having attained the goal he coveted, the architect having seen the realization of his plans.
3. This state, too, is essentially a religious one. Nothing earthly can afford positiveness. There can be no certainty in any human act or any human hope; but in the search after God there can be, and is, perfect finality.
II. This state of satisfaction is a state of praise.
1. The key to open the door of heaven is praise. The solution of all doubts is praise. The end of all difficulties is praise.
2. The state, then, of our own miserable darkness and unrest rests upon the fact that we are always looking on ourselves, not on God. If we look on ourselves, we shall naturally see our own defects, sorrows. But if we look to His brightness we shall lose sight of all that is dark, and in His certainty we shall find an eternal stand and an unchanging hope. (Homilist.)
The fixed heart
I. The fixed heart. For a fixed heart I must have a fixed determination, and not a mere fluctuating and soon broken intention. I must have a steadfast affection, and not merely a fluttering love, that, like some butterfly, lights now on this, now on that, sweet flower, but which has a flight straight as a carrier-pigeon to its cot, which shall bear me direct to God. And I must have a continuous realization of my dependence upon God, and of Gods sweet sufficiency, going with me all through the dusty day. Is our average Christianity fairly represented by such words as these of my text? Do they not rather make us burn with shame when we think that a man who lived in the twilight of Gods revelation, and was weighed upon by distresses such as wrung this psalm out of him, should have poured out this resolve which we, who live in the sunlight and are flooded with blessings, find it hard to echo, with sincerity and truth? Fixed hearts are rare amongst the Christians of this day.
II. The manifold hindrances that we meet to such a uniformity of our religious life. There is, for example, the tendency to fluctuation which besets all our feelings, and especially our religious emotions. What would happen to a steam-engine if the stoker now piled on coals and then fell asleep by the furnace door? One moment the boiler would be ready to burst; at another moment there would be no steam to drive anything. That is the sort of alternation that goes on amongst hosts of Christians to-day. Their springtime and summer are followed certainly by an autumn and a bitter winter. Every moment of elevation has a corresponding moment of depression. But is there any necessity for such alternations? Some degree of fluctuation there will always be. The very exercise of emotion tends to its extinction. Varying conditions of health and other externals will affect the buoyancy and clear-sightedness and vivacity of the spiritual life. Only a barometer that is out of order will always stand at set fair. The vane which never points but to south is rusty and means nothing. But while there cannot be absolute uniformity, there might and should be a far nearer approach to an equable temperature of a much higher range than the readings of most professing Christians give. There is, indeed, a dismally uniform arctic temperature in many of them. Their hearts are fixed, truly, but fixed on earth. Their frost, is broken by no thaw, their tepid formalism interrupted by no disturbing enthusiasm. We do not speak now of these, but of those who have moments of illumination, of communion, of submission of will, which fade all too soon. To such we would earnestly say that these moments may be prolonged and made more continuous. We need not be at the mercy of our own unregulated feelings. We can control our hearts, and keep them fixed, even if they should wish to wander.
III. The means by which such a uniform character may be impressed upon our religious experience. A man climbing a hill, though he has to look to his feet, when in the slippery places, and all his energies are expended in hoisting himself upwards by every projection and crag, will do all the better if he lifts his eye to the summit that gleams above him. So we, in our upward course, shall make the best progress when we consciously and honestly try to look beyond the things seen and temporal, even whilst we are working in the midst, of them, and keep clear before us the summit to which our faith tends. If we lived in the endeavour to realize that great white throne, and Him that sits upon it, we should find it easier to say, My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed. But be sure of this, there will be no such uniformity of religious experience throughout our lives unless there be frequent times in them in which we go into our chambers and shut our doors about us, and hold communion with our Father in secret. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The fixed heart
Speak to those who have decided, but, who may be loosening their hold on God under the strain of life. No better description can be given of the influence of life on the Christian than this--it tends to loosen the bonds. They need to be constantly refixed.
1. Some disciples went back under the strain of Christs higher teachings.
2. Some forsook under the strain of Christs sufferings.
3. Some were hindered in running--Ye did run well, who hath hindered you?
4. Some were enticed by false doctrine.
5. Some were borne away by the love of the world.
6. Some are reproached for being neither cold nor hot.
These old readings of Christian living suit us now. Then times of refixing ourselves are needed. What fixity should we try to reach?
I. Fixity may concern the intellect. Show the importance of firm and ever-growing mental hold of truth and of God. Fixity for the intellect can only come with growth.
II. Fixity may concern the will. A power of resolve may shape a life. Illustrate by familiar tale in John Fosters Essays, showing the power of decision.
III. Fixity should concern the heart. My heart is fixed, O God. The true life-force is from the heart,. Heart things are the lasting things. To the heart God appeals. The heart God wants. Intellectual fixity may not be possible. Will-fixity may depend very much on disposition. Heart-fixity tuiumphs over all externality. It concerns the principle and spirit of the life. Fixed everywhere and in everything for ,God. How broad, comprehensive, practical! (Robert Tuck, B. A.)
The prepared heart
This psalm is very strangely compounded. It is described in the title as the utterance of David when he fled from Saul and hid himself in the cave. It is the cry of a man beset with trouble and danger; yet all through it, we are startled by sudden transitions from cries for help and stories of wrong to cheerful expressions of hope and outbursts of praise. This condition of hopefulness and of cheerful steadfastness in the midst of trouble is one of those things which always puzzle a mere man of the world, but which present no mystery to a soul which walks with God. But the fact goes much farther than cheerfulness in trouble. The word fixed literally means prepared, fit, ready. O God, my heart is prepared. It is about this habitual preparation of heart that I wish to speak. The ideal perfect Christian life would be a life in contact with God along its whole line. It would be everywhere and always in communion with God. Gods will and Gods love would fill and move in every inlet and curve of the life, as the ocean in its gulfs and creeks and round its promontories; and upon this high plane the general tenor of the life would be more even. It hardly needs to be said that we do not live in this condition, and that we do need certain special influences to recall our minds to heavenly things, to lift them into the atmosphere of rest and of devotion, and to keep them from drifting away into worldliness and sensuality. God has recognized the need and has met it. He has given the Sabbath with its rest from labour, He has given the sanctuary with its quickening influences, He has commended the season of special prayer. We are led up to these Pisgahs and Hermons of spiritual vision, to the end that we may carry the power of these visions into lifes common routine, to sanctify and to elevate that. These things are not an end unto themselves. The disciples were not permitted to stay on the Transfiguration Mount, but that glorious vision strengthened and kindled their hearts for the hard mission for which they were chosen. These exceptional experiences in our lives are intended to foster in us that constantly prepared, fixed heart of which David here sings: the heart that shall be prepared for praise, and for trust, and for worship, not only while sitting in heavenly places, but also among lions, among them that are set on fire, when the net has been prepared for the steps and the soul is bowed down, amid the fret and worry of life, and on the dead level of daily duty and care. (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D)
A fixed heart
There are many who doubt whether it is possible for a man to-day to say, My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed. There are so many ideas that have changed in only a generation, there are so many views that have broadened, and there are so many beliefs that have been entirely given up, that it seems impossible any more for a mans heart to be fixed. It seems like deliberately shutting the eyes and stopping the ears to hope that the change is all over. A Christians heart is fixed on that which is almost as old as the hills. The essence of your faith, the solid core of it, Abraham had almost four thousand years ago. Our faith in God is Abrahams faith, only fuller and lighted up with all the glory that shone from the face of Jesus Christ. It is stronger and surer for every heart that has been fixed by it since Abraham. Has it not worn well, this faith of ours? It has lived on through the downfall of five great universal kingdoms, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. It went down to Egypt with Jacob; it went forth to Canaan with Moses. It battled with the heathen. It rose in triumph under David; it sank back under defeat and destruction. It rebuilt its Holy City. It waited for Christ; it founded the Church and charged the apostles. It worked in the mines; it died at the stake; it endured persecution and loss. It fought the barbarians and converted them. It saved Europe. It kept strong when men were ignorant and debased. It quickened with the Renaissance; it purified itself in the Reformation. It fainted during the eighteenth century; it rallied again and rode the storm of the French Revolution. It burst out again in the nineteenth century in splendid missionary zeal. It is to-day stronger, broader, surer than ever it was before. The greatest thing about a man is the fixedness of his heart. When men say they cannot be sure of believing to-morrow what they believe to-day, they do not know of what kind of eternal stuff a mans soul is made. The very essence of belief is that it is something never to be changed, fixed and eternal. If there is no eternal belief there is no belief at all. Belief means that, no matter what may happen, it will stand fast; belief is the insight of an eternal soul looking beyond time and chance. The man who has not come to believe in something that will last on to all eternity has not yet found out what there is down deep in his soul. The best thing there is about us men and women is our loyalty, our power of standing fast, of pledging our souls for time and eternity. Because we are eternal souls, we cannot help believing eternally. We want loyalty and the willingness to wait. When we meet with a doubt or a difficulty we ought to wait until Christ speaks. Shame on us if the reading of a single book, or a single argument of an unbeliever, can divert the stream of the faith of four thousand years from flowing through us and refreshing us. There are men and women to-day doubting God because of their misfortunes or their sufferings, although from the dawn of history men have transformed their lives and glorified humanity through their trust. Read all the bucks you like, but remember that Christian faith is not an argument, but it is an affair of loyalty. Your mind ought to receive new impressions, but your heart ought to be fixed. (John Tunis, B. A.)
The advantages of a fixed heart
A garden that is watered by sudden showers is more uncertain in its fruits than when it is refreshed by a constant stream; so when our thoughts are sometimes upon good things and then run off, when they do but take a glance, as it were, upon holy objects, and then run away, there is not such fruit brought into the soul as when our minds by meditation do dwell upon them. The rays of the sun may warm us, but they do not inflame unless they are contracted in a burning-glass; so some slight thoughts of heavenly things may warm us a little, but will never inflame the soul till they be fixed by close meditation. Therefore David tells us his heart was fixed, and saith the same concerning the frame of a good man. (H. G. Salter.)
I will sing and give praise.--
The true source of spiritual song
The text affirms a fact, and declares a resolution. My heart is fixed; this is the fact; and hence, apparently, the resolution, I will sing and give praise.
I. The meaning of the words. My heart is fixed.
1. On what the psalmist had fixed his heart. On God. Everywhere else there might be darkness and despair, but here there were light, consolation and security. As he recalls to remembrance all that God had already done for him, and all that he had promised yet farther to do, his spirit enters a serener world, and he refrains from his complaint against his inveterate enemies. And observe, that in fixing his heart on God, the psalmist more especially contemplates those gentler features of the Divine character, on which the regards of the guilty and dependent creature must ever most complacently rest (Psa_57:2-3).
2. How, or with what sentiments, it was so fixed. The expressions of confiding regard which occur throughout the psalm indicate that the heart of the writer was fixed on God by faith. In faith it is that he exclaims, My soul trusteth in Thee, etc.; and it is in the same faith, too, that he purposes to pray, when he says, I will cry unto God most high, unto God that performeth for me. Nor could his heart have been otherwise fixed on God, than by the virtue of that all-important principle which lies at the very source of practical godliness, admitting the light by which Divine truth irradiates the soul, and constituting the assimilating power, by whose energy the things believed are converted into the bread of life.
II. If the heart be thus fixed on God, praise and devout song will be the unfailing result; for fixedness of heart, or steadfastness of faith, is the only proper condition of the soul for these sacred exercises. We may use vain repetitions without a fixed heart. But if we would pour out our whole souls before God in those fervid and earnest supplications which, and which alone, we know to be acceptable; and if we would attain a humble assurance that we have been heard in heaven, we must go to the altar with fixed hearts. When, again, with the psalmist, we would sing and give praise, the mercy of God will be brought home in clearest and most lively apprehensions to our hearts, and then, instead of finding it difficult to pour forth the melody of joy and salvation, that will become the only possible mode of giving form and voice to the sentiments that swell and glow within us. (W. Stevenson.)
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 On v7
Psalms
THE FIXED HEART
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Psa 57:7.
It is easy to say such things when life goes smoothly with us. But this Psalmist, whether David or another, says this, and means it, when all things are dark and frowning around him. The superscription attributes the words to David himself, fleeing from Saul, and hiding in the cave. Whether that be so or no, the circumstances under which the Psalmist sings are obviously those of very great difficulty and oppression. But he sings himself into confidence and good cheer. In the dark he believes in the light. There are some flowers that give their perfumes after sunset and are sweetest when the night dews are falling. The true religious life is like these. A heart really based upon God, and at rest in Him, never breathes forth such fragrant and strong perfume as in the darkness of sorrow. The repetition of ‘My heart is fixed’ adds emphasis to the expression of unalterable determination. The fixed heart is resolved to ‘sing and give praise’ in spite of everything that might make sobs and tears choke the song.
I. Note the fixed heart.
The Hebrew uses the metaphor of the ‘heart’ to cover a great deal more of the inward self than we are accustomed to do. We mainly mean thereby that in us which loves. But the Old Testament speaks of the ‘thoughts and intents’ as well as the ‘affections’ of the heart. And so to this Psalmist his ‘heart’ was not only that in him which loved, but that which purposed and which thought. When he says ‘My heart is fixed’ he does not merely mean that he is conscious of a steadfast love, but also and rather of a fixed and settled determination, and of an abiding communion of thought between himself and God. And he not only makes this declaration as the expression of his experience for the moment, but he mortgages the future, and in so far as any man dare, he ventures to say that this temper of entire consecration, of complete communion, of fixed resolve to cleave to God, which is his present mood, will be his future whatever may wait his outward life then. The lesson from that resolve is that our religion, if it is worth anything, must be a continuous and uniformly acting force throughout our whole lives, and not merely sporadic and spasmodic, by fits and starts. The lines that a child’s unsteady and untrained hand draws in its copy-book are too good a picture of the ‘crooked, wandering ways in which we live,’ in so far as our religion is concerned. The line should be firm and straight, uniform in breadth, unvarying in direction, like a sunbeam, homogeneous and equally tenacious like an iron rod. Unless it be thus strong and uniform, it will scarcely sustain the weights that it must bear, or resist the blows that it must encounter.
For a fixed heart I must have a fixed determination, and not a mere fluctuating and soon broken intention. I must have a steadfast affection, and not merely a fluttering love, that, like some butterfly, lights now on this, now on that, sweet flower, but which has a flight straight as a carrier pigeon to its cot, which shall bear me direct to God. And I must have a continuous realisation of my dependence upon God, and of God’s sweet sufficiency, going with me all through the dusty day. A firm determination, a steadfast love, a constant thought, these at least are inculcated in the words of my text. ‘My heart is fixed, O God! my heart is fixed.’
Ah, brethren! how unlike the broken, interrupted, divergent lines that we draw! Our religious moments are not knit together, and touching one upon the other, but they are like the pools in the bed of a half dried up Australian stream-a pond here, and a stretch of white, blistering pebbles there, and then a little drop of water, and then another reach of dryness. They should all be knit together by one continuous flow of a fixed love, desire, and thought. Is our average Christianity fairly represented by such words as these of my text? Do they not rather make us burn with shame when we think that a man who lived in the twilight of God’s revelation, and was weighed upon by distresses such as wrung this psalm out of him, should have poured out this resolve, which we who live in the sunlight and are flooded with blessings find it hard to echo with sincerity and truth? Fixed hearts are rare amongst the Christians of this day.
II. Notice the manifold hindrances to such a uniformity of our religious life.
They are formidable enough, God knows, we all know it, and I do not need to dwell upon them. There is, for example, the tendency to fluctuation which besets all our feelings, and especially our religious emotions. What would happen to a steam-engine if the stoker now piled on coals and then fell asleep by the furnace door? One moment the boiler would be ready to burst; at another moment there would be no steam to drive anything. That is the sort of alternation that goes on amongst hosts of Christians to-day. Their springtime and summer are followed certainly by an autumn and a bitter winter. Every moment of elevation has a corresponding moment of depression. They never catch a glimpse of God and of His love brighter and more sweet than ordinary without its being followed by long weariness and depression and darkness. That is the kind of life that many of you are contented to live as Christian people.
But is there any necessity for such alternations? Some degree of fluctuation there will always be. The very exercise of emotion tends to its extinction. Varying conditions of health and other externals will affect the buoyancy and clear-sightedness and vivacity of the spiritual life. Only a barometer that is out of order will always stand at set fair. The vane which never points but to south is rusty and means nothing.
But while there cannot be absolute uniformity, there might and should be a far nearer approach to an equable temperature of a much higher range than the readings of most professing Christians give. There is, indeed, a dismally uniform arctic temperature in many of them. Their hearts are fixed, truly, but fixed on earth. Their frost is broken by no thaw, their tepid formalism interrupted by no disturbing enthusiasm. We do not now speak of these, but of those who have moments of illumination, of communion, of submission of will, which fade all too soon. To such we would earnestly say that these moments may be prolonged and made more continuous. We need not be at the mercy of our own unregulated feelings. We can control our hearts, and keep them fixed, even if they should wish to wander. If we would possess the blessing of an approximately uniform religious life, we must assert the control of ourselves and use both bridle and spur. A great many religious people seem to think that ‘good times’ come and go, and that they can do nothing to bring or keep or banish them. But that is not so. If the fire is burning low, there is such a thing on the hearth as a poker, and coals are at hand. If we feel our faith falling asleep, are we powerless to rouse it? Cannot we say ‘I will trust’? Let us learn that the variations in our religious emotions are largely subject to our own control, and may, if we will govern ourselves, be brought far nearer to uniformity than they ordinarily are.
Besides the fluctuations due to our own changes of mood, there are also the distracting influences of even the duties which God lays upon us. It is hard for a man with the material task of the moment that takes all his powers, to keep a little corner of his heart clear, and to feel that God is there. It is difficult in the clatter of the mill or in the crowds on ‘Change, to do our work as for and in remembrance of Christ. It is difficult; but it is possible. Distractions are made distractions by our own folly and weakness. There is nothing that it is our duty to do which an honest attempt to do from the right motive could not convert into a positive help to getting nearer God. It is for us to determine whether the tasks of life, and this intrusive external and material world, shall veil Him from us, or shall reveal Him to us. It is for us to determine whether we shall make our secular avocation and its trials, little and great, a means to get nearer to God, or a means to shut Him out from us, and us from Him. There is nothing but sin incompatible with the fixed heart, the resolved will, the continual communion, nothing incompatible though there may be much that makes it difficult to realise and preserve these.
And then, of course, the trials and sorrows which strike us all make this fixed heart hard to keep. It is easy, as I said, to vow, ‘I will sing and give praise,’ when flesh is comfortable and prosperity is spreading its bright sky over our heads. It is harder to say it when disappointment and bitterness are in the heart, and an empty place there that aches and will never be filled. It is harder for a man to say it when, like this Psalmist, his soul is ‘amongst lions’ and he ‘lies amongst them that are set on fire.’ But still, rightly taken, sorrow is the best ladder to God; and there is no such praise as comes from the lips that, if they did not praise, must sob, and that praise because they are beginning to learn that evil, as the world calls it, is the stepping-stone to the highest good. ‘My heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise’ may be the voice of the mourner as well as of the prosperous and happy.
III. Lastly, let me say just a word as to the means by which such a uniform character may be impressed upon our religious experience.
There is another psalm where this same phrase is employed with a very important and illuminating addition, in which we read, ‘His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.’ That is the secret of a fixed heart-continuous faith rooted and grounded in Him. This fluttering, changeful, unreliable, emotional nature of mine will be made calm and steadfast by faith, and duties done in the faith of God will bind me to Him; and sorrows borne and joys accepted in the faith of God will be links in the chain that knits Him to me.
But then the question comes, how to get this continuous faith? Brethren! I know no answer except the simple one, by continually making efforts after it, and adopting the means which Christ enjoins to secure it. A man climbing a hill, though he has to look to his feet when in the slippery places, and all his energies are expended in hoisting himself upwards by every projection and crag, will do all the better if he lifts his eye often to the summit that gleams above him. So we, in our upward course, shall make the best progress when we consciously and honestly try to look beyond the things seen and temporal, even whilst we are working in the midst of them, and to keep clear before us the summit to which our faith tends. If we lived in the endeavour to realise that great white throne, and Him that sits upon it, we should find it easier to say, ‘My heart is fixed, O God! my heart is fixed.’
But be sure of this, there will be no such uniformity of religious experience throughout our lives unless there be frequent times in them in which we go into our chambers and shut our doors about us, and hold communion with our Father in secret. Everything noble and great in the Christian life is fed by solitude, and everything poor and mean and hypocritical and low-toned is nourished by continual absence from the secret place of the Most High. There must be moments of solitary communion, if there are to be hours of strenuous service and a life of continual consecration.
We need not ask ourselves the question whether the realisation of the ideal of this fixedness in its perfect completeness is possible for us here on earth or not. You and I are a long way on this side of that realisation yet, and we need not trouble ourselves about the final stages until we have got on a stage or two more.
What would you think of a boy if, when he had just been taught to draw with a pencil, he said to his master, ‘Do you think I shall ever be able to draw as well as Raphael?’ His teacher would say to him, ‘Whether you will or not, you will be able to draw a good deal better than now, if you try.’ We need not trouble ourselves with the questions that disturb some people until we are very much nearer to perfection than any of us yet are. At any rate, we can approach indefinitely to that ideal, and whether it is possible for us in this life ever to have hearts so continuously fixed as that no attraction shall draw the needle aside one point from the pole or not, it is possible for us all to have them a great deal steadier than in that wavering, fluctuating vacillation which now rules them.
So let us pray the prayer, ‘Unite my heart to fear Thy name,’ make the resolve, ‘My heart is fixed,’ and listen obediently to the command, ‘He exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they should cleave unto the Lord.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv7, 9 My heart is fixed, God, my heart is fixed
My heart is fixed, God, my heart is fixed
Being confident is spoken of as one's heart being firm rather than shaken or easily moved. The phrase is repeated to show that he has complete confidence in God and will not change. AT: "I am completely confident in you, God" (See: Metonymy)
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I will sing praises
Who he will sing to can be stated clearly. AT: "I will sing praises to you, God" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
Wake up, my honored heart
It can be stated clearly that the purpose of waking up is to sing praises to God. Waking up may be a metaphor for starting or preparing to do something. The heart represents the psalmist or his emotions. AT: "Wake up, my honored heart, to sing praises to God" or "I will prepare my honored heart to sing praises to God" or "I am honored to wake up and sing praises to God" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information and Metaphor and Synecdoche)
wake up, lute and harp
It can be stated clearly that the purpose of waking up is to sing praises to God. The psalmist speaks as though the lute and harp were people who could wake up to sing praises to God. AT: "Wake up, lute and harp, and sing praises to God" or "I will play the lute and harp while I sing praises to God" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information and Personification and Metaphor)
I will wake up the dawn
The dawn is spoken of as if it were alive, and getting up before dawn happens is spoken of as waking it up. The purpose of getting up before dawn is to praise God. AT: "I will get up before dawn" or "I will get up before the sun rises" (See: Personification and Metaphor and Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
translationWords
heart
praise
honor
lute
harp
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 On v7 57:7-11 This section is repeated with a few modifications…
57:7-11 This section is repeated with a few modifications in 108:1-5.
57:7-8 The psalmist is confident that God will end the night of evil (cp. 56:13).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.