It is an awful circumstance, and yet it is true, that our mercies may be our curses; that our desire may prove our ruin. The man, you will say, who has obtained the object of his desire, whether through prayer or toil, ought to be happy. He sows, and reaps abundantly; he casts his nets into the sea, and brings them up full of fish; all his bargains end in gain: he might have in his possession the philosopher's stone, which turns all it touches into gold. But there is a dark set-off against all this. When you come to look down through the man's circumstances into himself, you find what the psalmist here terms leanness; and by leanness he means waste, emaciation, loss of strength and beauty. What is this leanness? How shall we discover its presence in ourselves or others?
I. By its trust in outward things. You hardly need to be told that one of the dangers which always beset us is that of placing our confidence in things that are in our sight and within the reach of our hand. And the more these things multiply around us, the greater our danger becomes. Grace is needed by every man, but great grace is needed by the man who gets his request. The eclipsing power of success is fearful.
II. Another symptom of spiritual leanness, and one of the results of having our request, is self-pleasing. We do not live in a heroic age. Like men under the influence of a Southern climate, our stamina is becoming deteriorated. We covet rest rather than labour, enjoyment rather than self-sacrifice for our own real good or that of others. It is no calumny to say that pleasure is the god of our times, and that men are shrinking more and more from everything which involves self-oblivion and self-sacrifice. But this spirit defeats itself. Pleasure sought for its own sake is difficult to find, more difficult still to retain, and becomes more coy and unattainable the more the pursuit of it becomes the aim and the business of life.
III. Loss of sympathy with all that helps to build up the spiritual life. There is no life save that of God Himself which possesses a self-perpetuating power; and though the life which is begotten in us by faith is the highest on earth, even that is not immortal if it be denied the food which has been provided for it. Our text speaks to us as with the voice of a trumpet, and rings out the great and impressive truth that we cannot be too guarded in our petitions or in our desires for merely temporal things. Beyond necessaries all else should be sought in very humble and willing subordination to the will of God. For who of us knows what beyond these is good for us?
E. Mellor, In the Footsteps of Heroes,p. 106.
The principle of the text applies:
I. To the man who starts life with an idea that to be rich is the highest result of labour.
II. To all who would escape from painful duty in order that they may indulge love of ease and quiet.
III. To men who make all their arrangements with a view to the comfort of their physical tastes exclusively.
IV. The judgment of God falls on the highest nature; it falls on the soul. The man on whom God's disapprobation rests withers at his very root. His mental power declines; his moral nature shrivels; he goes down in the volume and quality of his being.
V. The great lesson from this text is to say from the heart, with trembling yet earnest love, "Not our will, but Thine, be done." The school in which this great lesson can be learned is called the Cross.
Parker, City Temple,1870, p. 147.