Turn away my reproach which I fear; for Thy judgments are good.
The dreaded and the desired
I. What is here dreaded (verse 39).
1. Reproach is of two kinds.
(1) The deserved. The man who is false, mean, corrupt, deserves reproach.
(2) The undeserved.
2. Now, whether reproach is deserved or undeserved, it is a thing to be dreaded. In fact, it is more to be dreaded when deserved than when undeserved. The best men have been reproached. Even the Son of God Himself was reproached. But undeserved reproach may be well borne.
II. What is here desired? (verse 40).
1. God’s precepts are desirable things. “Thy judgments are good.” They are good in every sense. Good in their origin, in their essence, in their results.
2. A righteous life is a desirable thing. “Quicken me in Thy righteousness.” Man’s well-being consists in living in the righteousness of God. (Homilist.)
Reproach rolled away
A man who had lived for many years the Christian life told me how there was a place in a street in Edinburgh which was associated with a sin. Every time in his early life he passed it, it brought back again the keen remorse and shame. It seemed to stain his life afresh whenever he saw the very place. But when he came to God and gave his heart and life to Christ, the first time he passed that place afterwards his soul, he told me, was filled by a great transport of joy that all that was done, that it was no longer part of his life, that God had forgiven and forgotten and cast it behind His back. And he entered, he told me, for a moment at least in foretaste, into the perfect joy of soul, and he forgot the shame of his youth and remembered the reproach no more. (Hugh Black.)