The Illuminated Path
S. Conway Psalm 119:105-112 Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path. We have here - I. A BLESSED FACT, WITNESSED TO BY THE EXPERIENCE OF MYRIADS OF GOD'S PEOPLE. (Ver. 105.) There has been no age of the world since God's revelation has been given, no period of life whether in youth or age, no rank of society from the lowest to the highest, no condition of life in which men have been placed, but what they have found this Word true. God's Word has counsel for every difficulty, comfort in every trouble, guidance in all perplexity. Men go wrong, not from want of knowledge of the right, but from unwillingness to follow the right. II. NOTABLE RESULTS TEAT FOLLOW. 1. A steadfast resolve to keep to this path. (Ver. 106.) The soul has seen how well it is to abide in God's way, and here declares that what it has seen and resolved upon it will also do. And this is the secret of the perseverance of the saints. They have known by experience how blessed the ways of the Lord are that nothing will induce them to depart from them. Their one desire is to be found walking in the ways of God more steadfastly and more vigorously. 2. The soul will turn to it in trouble. (Ver. 107.) Even the ungodly, when they are afflicted very much, will send for the minister, take down the hitherto neglected Bible, and begin to read it, under the influence of a conviction they have never been able to shake off, that here, after all, are to be found the words of eternal life, which can alone help them. But the godly soul at once turns to them. They are his songs in the night, the joy of his heart. 3. Unbounded gratitude. (Ver. 108.) For what, when we look back on our way, can we find that more makes up our grateful acknowledgments than the fact that God has so illumined our faith by his Word that we have been kept in the right way, and have not fallen? Oh, the joys of this! May we all know it, as we may, if we will! Of course, it leads to the insatiable longing to know more of God's judgments. 4. Perpetual peril cannot drive him off from it. (Ver. 109.) Such condition - "my soul continually in my hand" - by its distracting, alarming, depressing influence, is apt to banish all holy thought and all recollection of God's Word. Men have been known to become very beasts under such circumstances - selfish, sensual, brutal; the sort of spirit which the sauve qui peut is ever seen to engender in the ordinary run of men. But how different what is said here! - the calm, holy, soul-sustaining remembrance of God's Word. 5. The traps and snares which the wicked plant for the soul utterly fail. (Ver. 110.) Keep in that illuminated path, and you may laugh at these snares. For they are never placed where the light shines on them, but where there is no light. 6. Desire that it may be the heritage of himself and his children after him. (Ver. 111.) He who knows the blessedness of what is here told of longs for it, not for himself alone, but for a heritage for those who shall come after him. 7. Steady guard upon the restless heart that would wander from this path. (Ver. 112.) Strenuous care must be taken - watchfulness and prayer-or else the deceitful heart will wander away. Who knows not this? III. HOW THIS BLESSEDNESS MAY BE REALIZED. If the Word is to thus illumine our path, we must take the Word, keep it continually, and bring it to bear on the path we are to take. Many turn the light of the Word skywards, or backwards, or on the right hand or left. Hold it down on your path. - S.C. Parallel Verses KJV: NUN. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. WEB: Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path.