I. Like all true prayer, the text begins with confession. It describes our condition as it is in God's sight; it penetrates to the heart, and shows us whence it is that sin flows, whatever be its visible and outward manifestations. "I have gone astray like a lost sheep." We know well who is that Shepherd of our souls from whom we have wandered. We know, with our understandings at least, what God has done for us in redeeming us by the blood of Christ. We know, too, what it must be to have wandered from Him; that it implies a want of love to God, a want of gratitude for His kindness to us, a want of interest in thinking and hearing of Him, a want of regard for His word and for all the means of grace which He has given us.
II. "O seek Thy servant." How much is implied in these few words. We have wandered from God; and now, like a sheep that has strayed from its fold and lost all trace of the way by which it should return, we ask God to seek us: we ask Him by His Spirit to track, as it were, our wanderings, to come after us into that waste, howling wilderness in which we have lost ourselves, and to give us at once the will and the power to hear His voice and follow Him. Such is the mystery of our spiritual life. God must first seek us if we are truly to seek Him, and yet it is in our seeking of Him that we can best recognise His search after us.
III. "Seek Thy servant." How does God seek man? Not alone in the direct call of His Son's Gospel, which is come unto us, as it is to all the world; but in every circumstance of our life, in every mercy we enjoy from His hands, nay in every interruption of our comfort and happiness, we have a speaking sign of His presence, a fresh pledge of that love which will scarcely allow us to forget it, unless already our eyes and ears be closed in wilful hardness against its appeal.
C. J. Vaughan, Harrow Sermons,1st series, p. 1.
References: Psalms 119:176. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol.v., p. 171; J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 25.Psalms 119 Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 261.Psalms 120:5. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p.249. Psalms 120:6. Preacher's Lantern,vol. ii., p. 182.Psalms 120 S. Cox, The Pilgrim Psalms,p. 1.