Faithful Steward Ministries and FSM Women's Outreach

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This is not my first time writing on this topic or a version thereof. In fact, my Master’s thesis was about ” Christian Joy.” Rarely however in scripture is one concept so clearly articulated as David did here in the climax of this psalm:

1. You God have (or will) show me the path of life.
   • David has previously noted in v.7 that he takes counsel in the Lord
2. In the Presence of God alone, he (David) finds joy.
   • Again David in v.2 notes that apart from God NOTHING is good, therefore there is no Joy. Maybe it is just me but society is vain and miserable enough, but life with NO JOY would be the ultimate misery.
3. David’s final comment infers ‘By your right hand pleasant (Happy, joyful) things happen forever.’
   • Saints if that does not bring us comfort that will?

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CONTEXT

THE progress of thought in this psalm is striking. The singer is first a bold confessor in the face of idolatry and apostasy (vv. 1–4). Then the inward sweetness of his faith fills his soul, as is ever the reward of brave avowal, and he buries himself, bee-like, in the pure delights of communion with Jehovah (vv. 5–8). Finally, on the ground of such experience, he rises to the assurance that “its very sweetness yieldeth proof” that he and it are born for undying life (vv. 9–11). The conviction of immortality is then most vividly felt, when it results from the consciousness of a present full of God. The outpourings of a pure and wholesome mystic religion in the psalm are so entirely independent of the personality and environment of the singer that there is no need to encumber the study of it with questions of date. If we accept the opinion that the conception of resurrection was the result of intercourse with Persia, we shall have to give a postexilic date to the psalm. But even if the general adoption of that belief was historically so motived, that does not forbid our believing that select souls, living in touch with God, rose to it long before. The peaks caught the glow while the valleys were filled with mists. The tone of the last section sounds liker that of a devout soul in the very act of grasping a wonderful new thought, which God was then and there revealing to him through his present experience, than of one who was simply repeating a theological truth become familiar to all.

Alexander Maclaren, “The Psalms,” in The Expositor’s Bible: Psalms to Isaiah, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, vol. 3, Expositor’s Bible (Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton Co., 1903), 44.

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v.11 – The Psalmist confirms the statement made in the preceding verse, and explains the way in which God will exempt him from the bondage of death, namely, by conducting and bringing him at length safely to the possession of eternal life. Whence we again learn what I have already observed, that this passage touches upon the difference which there is between true believers and aliens, or reprobates, with respect to their everlasting state. It is a mere cavil to say, that when David here speaks of the path of life being shown to him, it means the prolongation of his natural life. It is to form a very low estimate, indeed, of the grace of God to speak of him as a guide to his people in the path of life only for a very few years in this world. In this case, they would differ nothing from the reprobate, who enjoy the light of the sun in common with them. If, therefore, it is the special grace of God which he communicates to none but his own children, that David here magnifies and exalts, the showing of the way of life, of which he speaks, must undoubtedly be viewed as extending to a blessed immortality; and, indeed, he only knows the way of life who is so united to God that he lives in God, and cannot live without him.

David next adds, that when God is reconciled to us, we have all things which are necessary to perfect happiness. The phrase, the countenance of God, may be understood either of our being beheld by him, or of our beholding him; but I consider both these ideas as included, for his fatherly favour, which he displays in looking upon us with a serene countenance, precedes this joy, and is the first cause of it, and yet this does not cheer us until, on our part, we behold it shining upon us. By this clause, David also intended distinctly to express to whom those pleasures belong, of which God has in his hand a full and an overflowing abundance. As there are with God pleasures sufficient to replenish and satisfy the whole world, whence comes it to pass that a dismal and deadly darkness envelopes the greater part of mankind, but because God does not look upon all men equally with his friendly and fatherly countenance, nor opens the eyes of all men to seek the matter of their joy in him, and nowhere else? Fulness of joy is contrasted with the evanescent allurements and pleasures of this transitory world, which, after having diverted their miserable votaries for a time, leave them at length unsatisfied, famished, and disappointed. They may intoxicate and glut themselves with pleasures to the greatest excess, but, instead of being satisfied, they rather become wearied of them through loathing; and, besides, the pleasures of this world vanish away like dreams. David, therefore, testifies that true and solid joy in which the minds of men may rest will never be found anywhere else but in God; and that, therefore, none but the faithful, who are contented with his grace alone, can be truly and perfectly happy.

John Calvin and James Anderson, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 1 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 232–234.

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STUDY

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