The moral to be drawn from this Psalm is that in all troubles and adversities it is our own fault if we have not a light to guide and cheer us, and that the true remedy against despondency is to look back upon the love of God pledged to us and His mercy shown to us in former days.
I. As soon as David looks his desponding thoughts in the face, he sees their absurdity; and he sees, too, that all his painful feelings have arisen, not from the absence of God's protecting care, but from his own weakness and foolishness. "I said, It is mine owninfirmity."
II. If the Psalmist allowed his mind a range wider than his own personal experience, and considered the past evidences of the presence of God with His Church, the conclusion would be the same. If God were with His Church, and David a member of it, he had sufficient to make distrust a fault and despondency a sin.
III. Each one of us in the ordinary progress both of his temporal and spiritual life may find much that is worthy of his imitation in the conduct of David as expressed in the text. In all the roughnesses of the road which we have to pass over, we may, after first acknowledging our own infirmity, repose our minds on the thought of God's mercies to us in days gone by.
Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons,2nd series, p. 66.
Reference: Psalms 77:9. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1843.