I have chosen the way of truth: Thy judgments have I laid before me.
The commendable past and the desirable future in life
I. The commendable in the past.
1. The best choice has been made. The way of truth is the way of reality, in contradistinction to the way of sham and fiction.
2. The best guide has been followed. God’s Word is the only true guide.
3. The best cause has been adhered to. Whatever else he had given up and forsaken, he had stuck to God’s testimonies. “If ye continue in My Word, then are ye My disciples.”
II. The desirable in the future. “I will run,” etc. “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.”
1. The pursuance of the Divine law is essential to human happiness. Man can find no happiness in any way but in the way of God’s commandments.
2. The enlargement of the human heart is essential to the pursuance of the Divine law. The moral heart of man is sadly contracted by selfishness and materialism. Love alone can expand it, and make it wide enough to embrace God and His universe. (Homilist.)
The way of truth
I. The way of truth. It is the way of God; for the Lord is the God of truth: it is the way of Christ; for, said He, “I am the way,” etc. it is the way of the Spirit; for “ the Spirit beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.” And as all that we know of God--of God who made us by His power, of Christ who redeemed us by His blood, of the Spirit who renews us by His grace--is contained in Scripture, the way of truth” is the way of God’s Word. “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth.”
II. To choose the way of truth.
1. To determine, with entire honesty of intention, and with full purpose of heart, that you will walk, as far as you know it, in the way of God’s precepts--entertaining, not only a confident hope, but cherishing a firm assurance, that so doing you shall attain, sooner or later, when the days of your appointed time are past, to the end of God’s promises.
2. To be careful that, so far as lies in our power, we act out what we have determined; that we do not, like too many, ask one thing in our prayers, and seek another in our practice; that we do not through the after stages engage in any occupation, or devote ourselves to any amusement, or join ourselves to any society, by which our early approach to God may be made to seem hypocrisy, and our very petitions be turned into sin.
3. A continual dependence upon the help of God, as promised for the sake of Christ, and conveyed by the influence of the Holy Spirit; and not only a continual dependence upon it, but a constant expectation of it; and not only a constant expectation of it, but an earnest and frequent entreaty for it. (T. Dale, M. A.)