Desiring Direction!

The next tow verses join with the prior to form a single contiguous thought.  “Oh” introduces a note of real emotion, real desire on the author’s part.  He is showing us his heart’s desire.

“My ways” is the same word that appears in verse 3 and sets up a direct comparison between the author’s ways and God’s ways.  The idea is that the author wants his life’s habit to be appreciable the same as God’s life habit.  Of course, we are not talking about a direct comparison but rather an indirect one.  God is not mortal, he has no “ways” in the same way we do.  However, He does have a desire for His people and for His creation.  Those desires can be understood and described as His “ways”.

The writer desires that his ways be the same as God’s ways.  This is no blind desire.  He knows that God has defined what His “ways” are in His Word, and the writer has just thought about the positive and negative impact of those commands.  Because he is a genuine child of God – his earnest desire is to please God and to be like Him.

That is the best definition of God’s “ways” – it is to be like Him as described in His Word for us.

“were directed” is interesting for us.  The word means to be prepared or established.  The root idea is to bring something into being with the consequence that its existence is a certainty.  It is Passive and in the imperfect, here being punctiliar.  The writer plainly struggles as we all do to obey God.  He knows his duty and fully desires to accomplish it.  Yet, it is plain that there is at least some difficulty in his accomplishing his goal.

The use of the passive voice indicates that he wishes that God would do what work is needful in him to assure his obedience.  The punctiliar past shows his confidence that the work that God would do would be sufficient.  It would do the job and would assure his conformity to the standards of the Word.

This is not to imply that such a work is ever actually done by God.  I suppose in an abstract sense, it is surely possible for God to do such a work – but the testimony of the Word of God is that God does not do such works in men.  At least, not any once and for all dramatic sense He surely does do that work in the process of progressively sanctifying men.  Bit by bit, we are moulded and shaped into the image of Christ as God works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

But that is not the sense in which the writer uses the idea.  Nor does he use it in any sense that implies a desire to avoid the work and hard choices of obeying and submitting to God.  What is in view here is simply the cry of the redeemed heart that is offended at itself and merely wishes to be clean and pure as God is and as He desires us to be.

This is the desire for holiness that is an inevitable part of the makeup of the new nature.  Anyone who is a true believer in Christ, a genuine child of God, will inevitably have the desire to be like His Word tells us He is!  There is no such thing as a believer who has no desire to be like his Savior – such a being does not exist.  Naturally, as this passage implied – that desire goes unfulfilled – but it is ALWAYS there!  It must be by definition.

“Keep” is the same word as was used in the prior verse and refers to guarding or observing.  We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the goal in mind for this holy zeal of the writer’s.  It is to keep or to observe the objective commands of God.  “Statues” is a word with the primary meaning of a cutting or an engraving as on a tomb or some other stone.  It carries the idea of permanence and definiteness to the concept.

The “ways” of God are permanent and sure.  The writer knows this.  He also knows all too well his own shortcomings and the bitter failure of his efforts to measure up to that Word.  Yet – there is the hope of his knowledge of God and the desire of his heart to please his heavenly father.

Paul said much the same thing when he cried out to God to deliver him from the flesh that so easily and so frequently betrayed him.  He cried from the heart for God to deliver him, namely to do a once and for all work to rid him of the plague of his flesh.  So is th cry of all of those who love their God!