I. The character here presented for our study: the perfect and upright man. The essential principle of the perfectness of which David speaks is a heart right with God, a life whose root and whose aim is God.
II. "The end of that man is peace." For (1) he knows Whom he has believed, and is persuaded that He is able to keep that which he has committed unto Him until that day. (2) He knows to what he is passing to a world which is brighter, a bliss which is deeper, than even his most vivid dreams. (3) The rest and a man has other cares at such hours he leaves with God. To be able to cast his care upon Him who he knows will care care with a tenderness of which earth has no measures is peace, the peace of God in the contemplation of the future of our beloved.
J. Baldwin Brown, Aids to the Development of the Divine Life,No. 8.
I. "Keep innocency." In the strictest sense of all, innocence was a treasure forfeited for ever in Paradise. It is only in a very modified sense that we can speak with truth even of the innocence of childhood. It is but a comparative innocency which belongs to any child of man.
II. "Take heed unto the thing that is right.'' How general the language; at first sight how vague, yet in reality how intelligible and how emphatic! We all know, or may know if we will, what is right: the duty of praying always, of loving God, of trusting in Christ, of seeking and obeying the Holy Spirit. But mark well the words, " Take heedunto the thing that is right." However easy to discover, our duty is not easy to do. If we will not take heed, we shall certainly miss the thing that is right.
III. "That shall bring a man peace at the last" in its widest sense, at the end of life. A life of innocency and of steadfast obedience shall end in a peaceful death, a peaceful eternity. But there are other endings between us and that last end; and, however inferior to that in importance, they may yet be thought and spoken of without irreverence as affording each a minor fulfilment of the promise here expressed.
C. J. Vaughan, Harrow Sermons,2nd series, p. 384.
References: Psalms 37:39. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Genesis to Proverbs,p. 151.Psalms 38:2. Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons,4th series, p. 162.Psalms 38:4. Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 353.