Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken Thou me in Thy way.
An exemplary prayer
This prayer includes three things:--
I. Diversion from the false.
1. Vanity is a bad thing.
2. Men are interested in this bad thing.
3. Their interest in it is a great evil.
4. Deliverance from this evil requires the agency of God.
II. Devotion to the true. The way of
1. Practical spirituality.
2. Practical benevolence.
3. Practical godliness.
This is God’s way. To walk in this way is to walk away from vanity and into all the blest realities of being.
III. Confirmation in the right (verse 38). Set me “steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.” (Homilist.)
Deadness and quickening
I. David here prays for deadness in one direction,--deadness to the world, that he may be so dead to it that he will not even look at it: “Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity.”
1. What, think you, does the psalmist mean here by vanity? I think he probably means four things, or one thing which may be seen under four aspects.
(1) Frivolity.
(2) Carnality.
(3) Falsehood.
(4) Wickedness in every form.
2. He felt that his eves were inclined to go this way. Alas! we seem to drink up sin readily enough; but we have with care to put good and true thoughts into our minds. This river of our life brings down plenty of snags, the old dead trees from the evil country come floating down the stream; but seldom does it bring to our door a log of the cedars of Lebanon. Such good wood is scarce in this river; but its torrent seems to bear along all that is base and vile. We find another law in our members, warring against the law of our mind, and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin and death, so that we have to cry, with Paul, “O wretched man that I am!” and with David, “Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity.” The psalmist knew the evil of a growing familiarity with vanity. For the most part, men do not fall into great sin by sudden surprises. It is sometimes so; but, usually, there are several descending platforms, and the descent is made by slow degrees.
3. He craved Divine help.
4. He expects God to help him in a particular way. He does not say, “Put out my eyes, O Lord!” but he prays, “Let me look another way,--a better way.” The way not to be affected by sin is to look at something else. If you have fixed your eyes on Christ the crucified, the risen, the exalted, the soon to come, if your eyes are taken up with Him, you shall find that passage true in many senses, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.”
II. Having prayed for deadness in one direction, David prays for life in another direction.
1. He was in God’s way. If you are not, may He bring you into it at once!
2. Those who are in God’s way are to pray that they may have increasing life while they are in that way.
3. Nobody but God can give us this life in God’s way.
4. We need this quickening often. “Quicken me, quicken me, quicken me,” is the prayer of the soul when first it begins to live. It is the prayer of the Christian when he gets into the stern struggles of life, and the poisonous damps of the world; and the prayer of the Christian when he is about to die is still, “Quicken me, O Lord, quicken me in Thy way! O Life of life, be life to me! O Spirit of God, breathe into me power, vigour, force, energy! Give me all these by giving me Thyself to be my life.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
How may we get rid of spiritual sloth, and know when our activity in duty is from the Spirit of God
I. Explication.
1. Spiritual sloth is threefold.
(1) Resolving sloth is when a soul is settled upon its lees, and resolves to lie still, and never to stir in that momentous concernment of its own eternal salvation (Proverbs 26:14; Jeremiah 44:16-17).
(2) Delaying sloth; when a person intends to look after soul-concernments, but not yet (Proverbs 6:10).
(3) Disturbing sloth is when a person doth intend and endeavour to walk in God’s way; but sloth, as rust, hinders the wheels of his soul from coming to and running in the way of God.
2. Activity in duty is a victorious conquest over the great Goliath, sloth, and riding triumph in the way, work, and worship of God. There are three things which concur and contribute to complete this activity in duty:--
(1) A straining and stretching of the soul to the utmost peg, and highest pin; a putting of it upon the tenter-hooks in service.
(2) An unsatiable and unsatisfiable desire or longing for the effecting and accomplishing of a duty.
(3) A constant and continual waiting and working until the duty be perfected.
II. Corollary. Every man and mortal hath some of the ass’s dulness and sloth in him; and therefore I have brought a whip of ten strings to scourge this sloth and dulness out of us.
1. Keep a strict watch over your eyes at all times, especially when you are in duty. The eyes are the portholes that sin and Satan creep in at. It is accounted a great piece of charity to a man’s body to close his eyes when he is dead: I am sure it is more charity to our souls to close our own eyes whilst we are living (Job 31:1).
2. Send sin packing, bag and baggage. Sin is the soul’s sickness. Now, sickness makes men lazy, loath to stir.
3. Frequent a quickening ministry.
4. Make out to the Lord Jesus Christ, whose promise and office it is to make us active and vivacious (John 10:10).
5. Get quickening love to the ways of God.
6. By faith apply the quickening promises, and the promises of quickening.
7. Consider quickening considerations. They that are apt to faint and tire in a journey, carry about their bottles of water to quicken their spirits. Let these considerations be such bottles to you when you tire in the journey of a duty:--
(1) Consider how odious and abominable sloth is to man or God.
(2) Consider, sloth exposes you to all manner of sin, especially these two desperate and dangerous ones:--
(1) Sordid apostasy.
(2) Spiritual adultery.
(3) Consider how impossible it is that creeping snails in God’s way should ever get to their journey’s end. “Fair and softly” goes far, but never so far as heaven. “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence,” etc.
(4) Consider how equitable it is that you should be as active in the way of God as you were once in the way of sin and Satan (Romans 6:19).
(5) Consider how you contradict your own prayers, your very Paternoster, wherein you desire God’s will should be so done by you on earth, as it is done by the angels in heaven. Now, those winged Mercuries and messengers of heaven do speedily and spritefully execute the commandments of God.
(6) Consider you lose the very soul and life of your duty if you do not perform it as for your life and soul.
(7) Consider the infinite and wonderful glory, greatness, majesty of Him you appear before and approach unto in your duties. (J. Simmons.)